Textological Notes: the New in the History of Texts of Some Works by Sergei Esenin

The article deals with variants of a number of works by Sergei A. Esenin, which have not been in the fi eld of view of researchers until now. According to the facsimile of the autograph, fi rst published on March 15, 1930 in the Brussels magazine “Variétés”, the source of the text of the poem “Green hairstyle...” is introduced into the scientifi c turnover. Frans Ellens, who, having met Esenin in 1922, together with his wife Maria Miloslavskaya translated the poet’s works into French, was published in this edition. The article makes a reasonable assumption that the autograph published in the magazine “Variétés” came to the editorial offi ce from Ellens. The diff erence between this text and all lifetime publications is the presence of the title “Birch”, which is absent in other sources of the text. An edit made by Esenin in line 29 of the poem “Goluben’” (1916) is noted: “Reaching for warmth, inhaling the fl esh of bread”. Nikolai A. Klyuev corrected in pencil the word “pulp” to the word “parable”, and Esenin authorized this correction by circling the pencil in ink, but later abandoned this edit. In the fi nal version, the line reads as follows: “Reaching for warmth, inhaling the softness of bread”. Also considered is a variant of the lines in the poem “Otchar’” (1917), which appeared when the poet was preparing the Berlin “Collected Poems and Poems”, where the poems “Singing Call”, “Comrade” and “Otchar’” were combined in the section “February”. This compositional decision led to the emergence of a new edition with the line “February snowstorm”. It is proposed to make an edit to the text of the poem “The soul is sad about the heavens...” (1919), correcting “p’iushchuiu” to “b’iushchuiu” in line 14: “So the horses will not shake off with their tails / The moon beating in their ridges...”.