The "fun-loving Moscow reveler" (as he described himself in one of his poems) was not averse to using his fists. He didn't even need a reason. For example, once, Yesenin hit poet Ivan Pribludny with a beer mug so hard that the latter was taken to hospital. Also, the poet and his first wife Zinaida Reich used to argue in raised voices and the affectionate couple even resorted to blows.
But, the most dramatic clashes happened between Yesenin and Boris Pasternak. According to one version, Yesenin believed that his opponent's poetry was mediocre and that only ‘pasternak’ the vegetable (‘pasternak’ is Russian for ‘parsnip’) would go down in history and not Pasternak the poet. Their verbal altercations ended up escalating into an ugly brawl. The poets had one of their fights in the editorial office of the 'Krasnaya Nov' magazine: After a verbal exchange, a drunk Yesenin grabbed his fellow poet by his lapels and tried to box his ear, so Pasternak retaliated by trying to punch him in the face. Pasternak later wrote that he had had no choice but to act the way he did and, looking back at the fight, he hated and despised its perpetrator.
A fight landed the poet in front of a comrades' court. According to the memoirs of writer Korney Chukovsky, the incident was sparked by an unpaid debt. The poet failed to return 75 rubles, which he had borrowed from his neighbor and colleague Sergei Borodin. When the latter came to demand repayment, a verbal altercation ensued. According to another account, it was Borodin who had borrowed the money from Mandelstam, but was in no hurry to pay it back. There was a quarrel, followed by a fight, in which even Mandelstam's wife Nadezhda ended up on the receiving end. For a long time, she couldn't believe her neighbor was responsible for her bruises. It all ended at a comrades' court: Its chairman, writer Aleksey Tolstoy, found both brawlers guilty. Mandelstam was deeply offended by the verdict and, one day, lightly slapped Tolstoy on the cheek when they met. He explained that it was his way of punishing the executioner, who had issued the warrant for his wife to be beaten up.
Alcohol had a terrible effect on the poet: Even a small amount was sufficient to make him lose control. In 1913, Balmont came back to St. Petersburg after several years in Paris. He spent all night celebrating his return to the northern capital and was quite drunk by morning. So, when Pushkin expert Pyotr Morozov came up to him to express his admiration, Balmont told him he didn't like the sound of his voice, adding: "Go to bed, old man." A fight ensued: A glass of wine flew into the poet's face and not only did Balmont give Morozov a pummeling, with others joining in, but poetess Anna Akhmatova, who was present at the scene, had a fit of hysterics.
The author of 'The Garnet Bracelet' liked to live life to the fullest: He knew how to enjoy a drink, have a good time and to fight. Once, a friendly binge entailing the recital of short stories descended into a fight with writer Leonid Andreyev. They had only just been paying each other compliments and expressing admiration for each other's talent when Kuprin, for a joke, decided to aim a number of boxing punches at his friend and started to strangle him. This wasn't enough for Kuprin and some other colleagues of his ended up on the receiving end of the writer's blows. It was quite an effort to calm him down.
He, sometimes, literally tried to prove the saying that “you can't do good without using your fists”. In Chernigov, he happened to hear of a local veterinary surgeon, who was hogging a billiard table all day and wouldn't let anyone else play. Kuprin immediately decided to settle the matter with his fists. They brawled for a long time and, the next morning, the physician came to the writer with a peace overture: It transpired that he was in love with Kuprin’s sister and wouldn't have exchanged blows had he known about the family connection.
Writer Lyudmila Shtern once witnessed a shocking scene: In the courtyard of her house, poet Joseph Brodsky was hitting Anatoly Nayman, a poet and translator, against a table tennis table. It transpired Brodsky had spat at his colleague's feet and Nayman had replied by overturning the table tennis table when Brodsky had been perched on it.
The principal poet of the Revolution resented fighting. He had a simple explanation: "If I start, I'll end up killing someone." So, Zhak Izrailevich, an assiduous admirer of Mayakovsky's lover Lilya Brik, could consider himself lucky. On happening to read a letter Izrailevich had written to Lilya, the poet went to Petrograd, where he assailed him right in the street. He laid into him so hard that his fists were black and blue. The brawlers were detained by the police and it was only Maxim Gorky's intervention that helped get Mayakovsky released. The poet practiced boxing and was fully aware of the force he could deliver with a punch: Even in his youth, he had preferred to use his fists to break up a fight than to start one.
Sergei Dovlatov got into an epic fight and the cause, naturally, was a woman. Having had a bit too much to drink, he decided to propose to writer Lyudmila Shtern. Her husband was none too delighted and a fight ensued, in which Viktor Shtern grabbed Dovlatov by the ear and it was only the intervention of the Shterns' nanny that put an end to the brawl. In the evening, Dovlatov complained to his friend Joseph Brodsky that Shtern had pulled his ear off. But, the next morning, after sobering up, he did make his apologies.
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