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In Persian-speaking countries, including Tajikistan, Sergey Yesenin’s work attracts special interest. For example, his poems from the Persian Motifs cycle are well-known among enthusiasts of Russian poetry. These poems express the poet’s love for the sacred lands of the East, its people, and their traditions.
Yesenin was inspired by the rich heritage of great poets such as Khayyam, Saadi, Hafez, Ferdowsi, and others. He studied their works with devotion.
In the 1980s, when Tajikistan’s People’s Poet Loik Sherali translated this cycle into Tajik, young readers eagerly engaged with it. The theme of love in these poems is filled with the most delicate nuances. These translations played a significant role in popularizing Russian poetry in Tajikistan and allowed the youth to become more closely acquainted with Russian poetry, particularly Sergey Yesenin’s works.
Interest in Sergey Yesenin is not limited to Persian-speaking Tajikistan but is also strong in other Central Asian countries, including Uzbekistan. One factor that increased Uzbek readers’ interest was the 2022 publication of Yesenin’s Persian Motifs poems in Uzbek. The cycle was translated by Uzbekistan’s People’s Poet Erkin Vahidov.
Yesenin repeatedly showed deep attention to the poetic heritage of the East. The poet dreamed of visiting Iran, the homeland of great poets whose works had been widely translated and were well-known in Russia. He also found Eastern motifs in Turkestan (modern Uzbekistan) and the Caucasus. In 1921, Yesenin visited Tashkent and Samarkand, and in 1924–25, he traveled to Baku and Tbilisi. In Tashkent, he experienced for the first time the authentic atmosphere of the East that had fascinated him so much, which later enabled him to create Persian Motifs. Samarkand, with its remarkable architectural monuments, also left an unforgettable impression on the Russian poet.
The first poem of the cycle, “My old wound has healed…”, speaks of love and notes that in the East, forming relationships with women is more complicated than in Russia:
We do not chain spring girls
Like dogs in Russia,
We learn kisses for free,
Without cunning tricks and fights.
The poem “Shagane, you are my Shagane!” is a love letter to an Eastern woman:
Shagane, you are my Shagane!
Perhaps because I am from the north,
I am ready to tell you about the fields,
About the wavy rye under the moonlight.
Shagane, you are my Shagane.
Who is Shagane? She is not a fictional character but a teacher, Shagane Talyan, whom the poet met in Batumi and whose Eastern beauty captivated him. He shared warm friendship with her. This poem, with the repetition of the first and last lines in a five-line stanza, recalls Persian poetry traditions:
Perhaps because I am from the north,
Where the moon is a hundred times larger,
No matter how beautiful Shiraz is,
It is not better than the Ryazan plains,
Perhaps because I am from the north?
Shiraz is one of the most beautiful and fairy-tale-like cities in Iran and the birthplace of many poets such as Saadi and Hafez. While admiring the East, the poet also feels longing for his distant and beloved home. Later, he acknowledges that his Slavic soul is vast and boundless and suggests that in the north, there might also be a girl resembling Shagane, who could be thinking of him at that very moment:
Shagane, you are my Shagane!
There, in the north, a girl too
Might be thinking of me…
Shagane, you are my Shagane!
In other poems of this cycle (“You said that Saadi only kissed the chest…,” “Today I asked the money-changer…,” “I have never been to the Bosphorus…,” “Why does the moon shine so dimly, / On the gardens and walls of Khorasan…”), Sergey Yesenin created a romantic, somewhat fairy-tale, yet realistic world of Persia. For this reason, his work is as cherished by Eastern readers as it is by Russian ones.
