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 - on the basis of numerous documentary evidence seek to recreate the image of Yesenin in its entirety. Following from early childhood to the tragic ending of the poet's life, they reveal the inner logic of his biography. The book contains about three hundred illustrations and is equipped with an annotated name index.