This book about Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925) is a new, unbiased look at his dramatic fate. Here the circumstances of his life are examined in detail, in which myth and reality, mask and true face are sometimes difficult to distinguish. The authors of the book - authoritative philologists, specialists in the literature of Russian modernism - based on numerous documentary evidence, strive to recreate the image of Yesenin in its entirety. Following from early childhood to the tragic end of the poet’s life, they reveal the internal logic of his biography. The book contains about three hundred illustrations and is equipped with an annotated index of names.