Izabrane pjesme

Selected Poems (1973) by Sergei Yesenin, selected and edited by Branislav Glumac and translated by Dobriša Cesarić, Zvonimir Golob and Gustav Krklec, represents a representative Yugoslav selection of one of the most widely read Russian poets of the 20th century. Such an edition is not only important as an overview of Yesenin's oeuvre but also as a document of domestic reception: several translators' voices convey a poet who, in the local reader's horizon, has long been perceived as a lyric poet of intimacy, melancholy, rebellion and self-destruction.

Yesenin's poetry rests on the tension between tenderness and dissipation. At its center are the Russian village, nature, religious and folklore overtones, but also a sense of loss, wandering, guilt and inner duality. That is why such selections usually do not only act as an anthological cross-section, but also as a shaping of the poet's image: Yesenin is read here as the voice of vulnerable subjectivity, torn between homeland longing and modern collapse.

The value of the book is additionally in the translations by three important poet-translators. Cesarić, Golob and Krklec convey not only the meaning but also the tone, rhythm and emotional color of the original, so the edition also acts as an encounter between Yesenin and the domestic lyric tradition. This is why this book has both literary and cultural weight: it confirms Yesenin as an author permanently present in the South Slavic space.