Biography

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884−1937) was born in Olonets province in a village on the Vytegra River; his mother taught him "literacy, song structure and all verbal wisdom." He studied in Vytegra at the parochial school, then at the city school, he did not finish the medical assistant's school due to illness.

He began to publish in 1904, and in 1905 his poems appeared in the Moscow collective collections Surf and Wave. At the beginning of 1906, he was arrested for "inciting" the peasants and "agitating illegal ideas." I spent six months in Vytegorsk and then in Petrozavodsk prisons. Klyuev's rebellious ideas had a religious (close to sectarian) basis: the revolution seemed to him the onset of the Kingdom of God, and this topic is his leitmotif early creativity.

After his release, he continued illegal activities, became close to the revolutionary populist intelligentsia (including the sister of the poet A. Dobrolyubov, Maria Dobrolyubova, the “Madonna of the Socialist-Revolutionaries”, and the poet L. D. Semenov). New acquaintances led him to the pages of the capital's journal "Working Way", which was soon banned for its anti-government orientation.

In the autumn of 1907, Klyuev was called to military service, but following your religious beliefs refused to take up arms; under arrest, he is brought to St. Petersburg and placed in a hospital, where doctors find him unfit for military service, and he leaves for the village. At this time, he began a correspondence with A. Blok (the problem of relations between the intelligentsia and the people - from different poles - occupied both, and this communication was mutually important and significant).

Block contributed to the appearance of Klyuev's poems in the Golden Fleece magazine, later Klyuev began to collaborate with other publications - Sovremennik, Niva, Zavetami, etc. Especially often in 1910−12. Klyuev is published in the Novaya Zemlya magazine, where they are trying to impose on him the role of the spokesman for the “new people's consciousness”, a preacher and prophet, almost a messiah.

In the autumn of 1911, Klyuev’s first collection of poems, “Pine Chime,” was published in Moscow, to which almost all influential critics responded, unanimously regarding the book as an event in literary life. At this time, Klyuev becomes known in literary (and even bohemian) circles, participates in meetings of the "Workshop of Poets" and in publications of acmeists, visits the literary and artistic cafe "Stray Dog"; around his name there is an atmosphere of increased curiosity, rush interest, and a variety of people are looking for acquaintance with him.

After the release of two collections - “Brotherly Songs”, 1912 (religious poems inspired by genuine “fraternal songs” of the Khlysts), and “Forest were” (stylizations folk songs) Klyuev returns to the Olonets province. His poems continue to appear in the capital's magazines and newspapers, he visits the capital from time to time.

In 1915, Klyuev met Yesenin, and a close relationship arose between them: for a year and a half they spoke together both in the press and at readings, Klyuev became a spiritual mentor young poet, in every possible way protects him. A circle of “new peasant” writers gathers around them, but attempts to institutionalize the commonwealth do not lead to the creation of a durable and lasting association (the Krasa and Strada societies lasted only a few months).

In 1916, Klyuev's collection Worldly Thoughts was published, on the subject of which military events left their mark. Klyuev greeted the revolution enthusiastically (this was reflected in numerous poems of 1917-1918), regarding everything that was happening primarily as a religious and mystical event that should lead to the spiritual renewal of Russia.

In 1919, the books "The Copper Whale", the two-volume "Songs" (selected from previous years and new poems) and in 1922 his best lifetime collection - "Lion's Bread" were published.

The lyrics of those years reflect the complex experiences of the poet - the painful belief that all suffering will be redeemed by the onset of "brotherhood", "muzhik's paradise", longing for dying Russia, crying for the disappearing, murdered village.

In 1928 comes out latest collection Klyuev's "Hut in the Field", compiled from already published poems, everything that was written by him in the 30s did not get into print.

In 1934 Klyuev was arrested in Moscow and deported to Tomsk; in June 1937 he was arrested a second time, imprisoned in Tomsk and shot.

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884−1937) was born in the Olonets province, in a village that stood on the Vytegra River. The poet studied at the parochial school, then entered the city school, then the medical assistant's school, whose diploma he never received due to illness. The literary path begins in 1904, and since 1905 the Moscow collections "Wave" and "Surf" have been publishing poems. For anti-political views and "incitement" of the peasants, he was arrested and spent six months in the prisons of Vytegorsk, and then in Petrozavodsk.

Klyuev's early work is permeated with a religious idea, a revolution in his understanding is the coming to earth of the Kingdom of God, without which the life of citizens will not be full and correct.

In 1907, Nikolai Alekseevich was called up for military service, but being a deeply religious person, he categorically refused to take up arms. Again the arrest, and this time the St. Petersburg hospital, where he was declared unfit for service and sent home to the village. Klyuev is in active correspondence with Alexander Blok, who will subsequently contribute to the appearance of Klyuev's works in Sovremennik, Niva, Zavetakh, etc.

After the release of the first collection of poems "Pine Chime", it immediately follows the reaction of authoritative critics who consider this important event in the development of literature, at the same time, not only domestic, but also world. This was the real peak of the popularity of the poet Klyuev, many wanted to personally get to know him and chat.

After meeting Yesenin in 1915, Klyuev became the mentor of the inexperienced poet. One and half year joint work at readings, speeches to the press served as a good impetus for the author. Yesenin becomes a protege of Nikolai Alekseevich, and Klyuev helps him in all his creative impulses. Societies such as "Krasa" and "Strada" were created, but they were not destined to exist for more than a couple of months.

Due to his religious views, Klyuev perceives the revolution of 1917 with joy, as a mystical event that was supposed to spiritually change Russia.

In 1922, his best brainchild, the collection "Lion's Bread", will be released. In the works of that time, one can read the longing for the dying village, the perishing Russia.

1934 Klyuev was arrested in Moscow, sent to Tomsk. After constant torture and imprisonment in June 1937, Nikolai Alekseevich was shot.

Of course, dividing writers according to their place of residence into "village" and "urban" ones is utter nonsense. Where, in this case, to “stick” the creativity and personality of V.M. Shukshin, who rushed about and was torn “between the city and the village”? Unless to the marginals, people with a dual social orientation. And yet it is impossible for us to get rid of the fact that Russia at the beginning of the last century was a purely peasant country. And is it any wonder that from time to time real nuggets, like, for example, N.A. Klyuev, entered the literature.

Biography of Nikolai Klyuev

Born on October 10 (22), 1884 in the Olonets province in the village of Koshtugi. He belongs to those who with good reason can be called a myth-maker own life. On his contemporaries, he made an impression either of the holy fool, or of Christ, or of the second Grigory Rasputin. Klyuev has so confused his own biography that it is almost impossible today to separate the truth from poetic fiction in it.

Being from the Old Believers, Klyuev refused army service, for which he was repeatedly arrested and persecuted by the authorities. Traveled a lot in Russia. It appeared in the capitals at the beginning of the 20th century, quickly gained fame, performed at literary salons, dressing up as a rustic peasant, sometimes together with S. Yesenin. Like the last one, took the events February Revolution and the October Revolution in a folk poetic, religious way, dreaming of a peasant paradise.

He highly appreciated the personality, finding that it has a "Kerzhen spirit" and "abbot's cry." Nevertheless, criticism looked at Klyuev first as a suspicious "fellow traveler", and then as a "kulak echoer". In fact, he was on the periphery literary process. He lived from hand to mouth, almost never published, but he did not give up creativity. "Black days" came in the second half of the 30s. In 1934, even before the assassination of Kirov and the spinning of the flywheel mass repression Klyuev was arrested and exiled to Siberia. There, in Tomsk, three years later, the poet was shot and rehabilitated posthumously only twenty years later, in 1957.

Creativity of Nikolai Klyuev

Klyuev's poetic debut came in 1904. Until 1928, several collections of poems were published. Period most active the 1910s began, because then the poet began to be “squeezed out” from literature, even despite the initial loyalty to the Bolshevik regime. It is difficult to put any of his contemporaries next to Klyuev in terms of poetic originality - bowing before, being friends with V. and N. Gumilyov, he went his own way and did not imitate anyone. Rather, they imitated him - the same S. Yesenin and younger contemporaries: S. Klychkov, P. Oreshin, A. Shiryaevets. However, without special success. Klyuev managed to combine the incompatible: symbolist aesthetics with the elements of folklore, literary poetic vocabulary with the density of dialectisms.

Reading Klyuev's poems is an extremely difficult task. It requires intellectual effort, a certain encyclopedism, good knowledge peasant life, as well as the historical past of Russia, when it was still called Rus. When it dawned on Klyuev that the Bolsheviks were heading for the destruction of the peasantry as a class, that rural Rus was rapidly becoming a thing of the past, he responded with perhaps the most powerful and poignant work - the poem "Pogorelshchina", an excerpt from which was even preserved in a phonographic record. In many ways, this poem became fatal in the fate of the poet.

• It is known that homosexuality and lesbianism were commonplace in the literature of the Silver Age.
• Nikolai Klyuev also belonged to the adherents of same-sex love. During the last meeting with a friend-enemy, in order to expose the imaginary religiosity of Klyuev, he decided to quietly extinguish the lamp, assuring that the owner would not notice anything. The idea was completely successful.

1. Introduction

Childhood and youth of the future poet

Poetry and the Revolution of 1905

Klyuev and Blok

"Pine chime" - subtotal

Transition to folklore

Smooth break with literary circles

2.7. Last years

3. List of references.
Introduction:

In the brilliant galaxy of names of Russian poets of the beginning of the century, the name of Nikolai Klyuev stands apart, as if aloof from the others. His path seems to us uneven, unclear, more “hidden” than that of his other contemporaries, and his fate is more dramatic, bleaker.

The "People's Poet", whose name once thundered throughout Russia, has been ousted from the native culture and literature for half a century since the end of the 1920s.

The vagueness, blurring of our ideas about Klyuev is explained by the fact that his life path has not yet been studied. An aura of mystery accompanies the name of the poet, his personality is surrounded by legends, conjectures, conjectures. Klyuev's biography is deliberately obscured by the poet himself, who created legends about his life. Not understood until the end of his life, he seems so to this day.

Since the 1920s, Nikolai Klyuev has repeatedly been tried to be deleted from literature. In 1924, the proletarian poet Vasily Knyazev wrote in his book The Rye Apostles: “Klyuev is dead. And will never rise again; cannot be resurrected: there is nothing to live with…”. This was the first attempt to remove Klyuev from literature. In 1937, Nikolai Klyuev was exiled to the Narym Territory. For several decades, Klyuev was stubbornly silent in our country. And only in our time, thanks to the researchers of the writer's work, can we have an idea of ​​who Nikolai Klyuev was, what was his life and creative way what contribution did he make to his native literature
2. Life and work of Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev

2.1. Childhood and youth of the future poet

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev was born in the small village of Koshtugi, located in the Vytegorsk district, Olonets province. The inhabitants of the village of Koshtugi were distinguished by piety, since schismatics previously lived here. In this region, located on the banks of the Andoma River, among dense forests and impenetrable swamps, he spent his childhood. The homeland of Nikolai Klyuev was famous for its singers and storytellers. Klyuev parted ways with the Kashtug volost back in early childhood. In the 90s, his father moved to the village of Zhelvachevo, Makachevo volost, Vytegorsk district. Having received a seat in a state-owned wine shop. Klyuev's father was the former simple, self-confident peasant.

Special mention should be made of Klyuev's mother, although information about her is extremely scarce. His mother was born in 1851, and according to the testimony of the Vytegorsks who remembered her, he kept watch. Was a woman tall, always dressed in a dark-colored dress with a black scarf on her head. She had a soft and friendly disposition. Klyuev adored his mother, called her “bylinitsa”, “songwriter”, and never forgot to note that it was she who taught him “literacy, song structure and all kinds of verbal wisdom. However, the image of the mother that grows up in Klyuev's stories is highly stylized. It was created already in the 10s, when the idea of ​​Klyuev as the leaders and "sufferers" of the Russian schism began to spread. The story of the mother Klyuev tried to substantiate and certify his tribal involvement in the "forefathers" - the Old Believers. Being already famous poet, Klyuev repeatedly reminded of the antiquity of his Old Believer peasant family, tracing its origins, both blood and spiritual, and literary, to the frantic arotopop Avvakum:

When I knit my knitting

Verbal words, bear thoughts?

"Get ready for the fire early in the morning" -

Thundered my great-grandfather Avvakum!

The poet tried more than once to present her as the bearer of the culture that he consistently mastered himself, but by no means in childhood, but later in mature years. The Old Believer roots of the Klyuev family is a completely plausible fact, the mother of Nikolai Klyuev was from a family of Old Believers. The death of his mother in 1913 was a terrible blow for Klyuev. The memory of his mother is dedicated to "Hut Penalties" - one of the pinnacles of Klyuev's mature poetry. "My" Hut Songs "displays my great orphanhood and shrine - my mother." We find these wonderful lines about the mother in Klyuev's autobiographical essay "Loon's Fate".

The poet's biographer believes that his mother and father were literate people, since there were "many old printed and handwritten books" in the house.

The Klyuevs had three children: in addition to Nikolai (the younger), their son Peter and daughter Claudia. It is known about Pyotr Klyuev that he studied in Vytegra, then became an official in the postal and telegraph department, served in Kronstadt, and after October revolution- in Vytegra.

The poet's sister, Claudia, also studied in Vytegra, then worked as a village teacher, and around 1909-1910 she married her countryman Vasily Rassheperin and left with him for St. Petersburg. When visiting St. Petersburg in 1911–1915, Klyuev invariably visited the Rasheperenykh and lived with them for a long time.

The conclusion suggests itself that the Klyuev family, and even more so future poet, had no direct relationship either to the land or to any other peasant labor.

In 1893-1895, Klyuev "studied at a parochial school, and then at a two-year city school." After graduating from college, Klyuev studied at the Petrozavodsk paramedic school, but a year later he was expelled for health reasons. In 1912, Brikhnichev wrote from the words of Klyuev, “Very young, young and pure, the poet ends up as a novice in the Solovetsky Monastery, where he spends several years.” Nicholas impressed his contemporaries with his erudition, his vast knowledge of various areas.... There is no doubt that both at a young and mature age, Klyuev studied mostly on his own, read a lot, pondered and memorized what he read. And he owes his extraordinary development only to himself, to his exceptional thirst for knowledge. In addition, Brikhnichev assumed that "the development of the poet was greatly influenced by exiles from the Caucasus and other places appearing in the village from time to time." One of the most mysterious places in Klyuev's biography is his wanderings in Russia in his youth, his stay on the Khlyst ship, his connections with sectarians. In one of his essays, Klyuev claimed that he had been to the Caucasus, where he saw different secret people that went all over Russia from north to south from Norway to Persia. Klyuev liked to color his biography with vivid but fictional episodes, often “fooling” his listeners,” he emphasized. Klyuev's stories about himself are not a complete fiction, they combine facts and fantasy in a bizarre way. Using, possible genuine events. Klyuev in fact "enriched", "colored" this basis, turning its "tale", which over the years acquired details from him, improved. In other words, Klyuev created a poetic myth. All his work clearly gravitates towards the mythological!

So, everything that concerns the first twenty years of Klyuev's life is shrouded in fog, doubtful. Indefinitely!

2.2. Poetry and the Revolution of 1905

On the moods and views of Klyuev in the years. lets judge him early poem that was free-spirited. The first poems in the collection "New Poets" in 1904. These are very naive and bitter lamentations of the poet, who acutely felt the discord, trouble, violation of life that prevailed in life. natural connections between nature and social world. The only respite for the suffering poet is the convergence of "free" and beautiful Nature:

I am again in the open, in the wild

And admire the beauty of heaven

……………………………

In this realm of green nature

I will not see sobs and tears

The indignation and anger of the poet grows in the poems of 1905, brought to life by the revolution that began in the country. They were published in the collections of the "People's Circle", which consisted of writers "nuggets".

Much in the poems of the young Klyuev recalls the work of peasant poets of the 19th century and their followers, the poets of the "Surikovites", whose muse was plaintive and mournful. The main theme of their work was the miserable poor lot; the leading motive is hopelessness. Angry, rebellious moods intensify in his poems, starting in 1905. The liberation of the people from the great slavery - Klyuev's poems of the revolutionary era are imbued with this biographical pathos. He believes that life will change with the advent of the revolution.

Klyuev responded to the revolutionary events not only with freedom-loving poems, the poet plunges headlong into propaganda work: at meetings and gatherings of peasants he calls for disobedience to the authorities and explains the decisions of the All-Russian Peasant Union. Klyuev takes up educational work, organizing a rally of amateur performances, creating folk theater as one of the main means of propaganda mass revolution. He reads his poems at the “red evenings”, makes speeches, making a huge impression on the audience:

Spread eagle wings

Beat, alarm, and thunder thunder, -

The chains of violence are broken

And the prison of life is destroyed!

In April 1905, Klyuev was brought to the inquiry by the Moscow gendarme department in connection with the distribution of revolutionary proclamations among the workers of the Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod railway in Kuskovo.

At the end of 1905 - beginning of 1906. the poet continues his work in his native places - the Vytegorsk district of the Olonets province. In January 1906, for anti-government propaganda, Klyuev was arrested and imprisoned, where he spent four months, and then was transferred to a Petrozavodsk prison, where he stayed for another two months. This was his first conclusion. Thanks to a merciful court decision, Klyuev is released after six months in prison.

The revolutionary spirit of Klyuev was not suppressed within the prison walls. Once at liberty, he immediately enters into contact with his like-minded people, continuing to write poems imbued with civil pathos.

In 1905, five poems were published in the collections "Waves" and "Surf": "An unrequited slave ...", "Where are you seething impulses ...", "People's grief ...", "Listen to a simple song ..." and "Hymn to freedom." In the poem "Listen to a simple song ..." the poet declared his civic vocation:

Songs about the old days

It's embarrassing to sing now.

New Songs of Freedom

It is necessary to compose the world.

The conscious opposition of the bitter "old" songs to the new ones, calling for struggle, for courage, is contained in the poem "An unrequited slave ...". The main motive of all five poems is "with fearlessness we rush to the battle ...". One of the best poems (“Where are you, ebullient impulses”), the poet dedicates to freedom fighters persecuted by the autocracy, imitating the democrat poets of the past generation:

Where are you, seething impulses,

Feelings boundless space,

Burning curse words

An angry emphasis on violence?

Where are you, innocent, pure,

Brave fighters,

The homelands of the stars are radiant,

Shares of folk singers?

Motherland, drenched in blood,

Waiting for you like a holy day

Covered in darkness

Can't wait for the fire!

This purifying fire

All enduring people!

Even in the lyrics of nature, in the quiet “pine land”, memories of the victims and “resonant casemates” break in:

Winters are embraced by a premonition,

Pine trees are crying in the forest;

Again deaf casemates

You will dream in the evening.

During the years of the onset of reaction, Klyuev remains a singer of "holy dreams", "hope for a better life."

In 1906, Klyuev sought to get in touch with the Social Democrats and revolutionaries. The young Olonets poet is no longer a lone fighter. Already in 1905, he established secret ties with like-minded people in other cities. Some of them are Maria, and Alexander Dobrolyubov, Leonid Dmitrievich Semenov, Viktor Sergeevich Mirolyubov. These people are revolutionaries and propagandists, seized by people-loving sentiments. They knew and appreciated Klyuev not only as an active fighter for the "people's cause", who had already suffered for his beliefs. The Olonets revolutionary poet aroused trust and sympathy among his St. Petersburg landmarks.

2.3. Klyuev and Blok

At the end of 1907, Klyuev began a relationship with Alexander Blok. This acquaintance turned out big event in the life of Nikolai Klyuev.

Klyuev's first letter to Blok was written in late September - early October 1907. The poet-peasant dreamed of being published in famous magazines of that time, he was in dire need of patrons, and, above all, he wanted to see Blok in this role - a poet whose poems were especially consonant with him.

The correspondence between Olonetsky and St. Petersburg poets, which began in the autumn of 1907, immediately turned out to be meaningful and necessary for both. Klyuev's second letter to the bloc was "programmatic". The Olonets poet, as it were, enters into a conversation with Blok not on his own behalf, but on behalf of the people, forcibly torn away from mental labor and cultural property. Klyuev reproachfully and not without threat writes about the “essence of the nobility everywhere”, about the “irresistible wall of non-rapprochement”, about the “spiritual dependence” of the peasants on the “lords”. Klyuev's letter was partly "provoked" by Blok's letter containing "very abstract excuses in the spirit of a 'repentant nobleman'." In a purely populist spirit, Blok believed that the Russian intelligentsia was indebted to the people. The intellectual, who has been torn off from the “soil”, must atone for his “sin” by approaching the people, in which the religious truth is supposedly hidden.

Thus, it was not difficult for Klyuev to understand what exactly tormented Blok; he immediately took up the topic. His second letter was thoroughly inspired by the spirit social protest, its tone is sharp, accusatory notes appear in places. Blok's doubts undoubtedly intersected with own opinions Klyuev of that time.

For several years, Klyuev continued to influence Blok, tried to persuade him to break with "culture", to captivate him from the artistic path to the path of religious service.

The climax in the relationship between Blok and Klyuev is a letter from the latter, written on November 30, 1911. It is open and sharp as in none of the earlier letters. Klyuev opposes the "foreigners" who, in his opinion, have taken control of the Blok. And yet, Blok could not and did not find it necessary to go over to the side of Klyuev definitively. The path that Klyuev urged him to take, Blok considered "not his own."

Klyuev recognized Blok as a senior in poetry, admired his work and constantly sent him his poems for review and publication in magazines. Blok, for his part, willingly helped the Olonets poet.

2.4. "Pine chime" - subtotal

Klyuev's first work, published in Novaya Zemlya, was the poem "In the Evening". Beginning in February 1911, Klyuev's participation in Novaya Zemlya became systematic. Klyuev's poems, and sometimes prose, now appear in every issue. In years, Klyuev published in the journal a significant part of his poems, which compiled the collections "Pine Chimes" and "Brotherly Songs".

The poems that made up these collections were created in the era of post-revolutionary reaction in the years. Memories of the days of struggle are combined in them with pictures of the bleak present. The collection is full of hidden allusions, its images are Symbolic. An analysis of the poems that made up this collection gives a clear idea not only of the social and social, but also of the religious and philosophical views of the young Klyuev.

By 1911, Klyuev had become a well-established neo-populist ideologist. In October of the same year, the book "Pine Chimes" was published. This collection was dedicated to Blok and did not go unnoticed by the progressively inclined sections of society. At the end of 1911 and in 1912, a wave of responses to Klyuev's first book of poems swept through the pages of the Russian press - mostly approving and even enthusiastic. Thus was born the exotic image of the "folk poet", singer-storyteller, carrier of " folk soul» living a single life with Nature and God. It is not surprising that, having barely appeared in 1911 in St. Petersburg and Moscow circles, Klyuev immediately aroused interest, not only with his poems, but also with his whole peculiar personality - appearance, manners, speeches.

So, literary debut Klyuev turned out to be, apparently, extremely successful. From the pages of leading Russian newspapers and magazines, it was loudly announced the appearance of a talented "folk" poet.

In May 1912, "Brotherly Songs" were published - the second book of Klyuev's poems. Critics disagreed on this collection. One of them claimed that in this book "there is no thrill of beating" fiery soul"of the poet, there is no that passionate impulse that gave special charm to Klyuev's former poems. The inner fire illuminating the poet's verse has gone out, and his words and images have died ... "

But nevertheless, such critics as Gumilyov, Bryusov and others spoke positively in his direction. They talked about the originality and singularity of Klyuev's first books, about the "people" of the poet, about the forerunner new strength, folk culture».

2.5. Transition to folklore

In the work of Klyuev of the period from 1911-1912. a fracture occurs. The Olonets poet moves from revolutionary poetry to folklore. In the poet's verses, the thinking, way of life, customs and language of the Russian church are increasingly penetrating.

Klyuev the writer was replaced by Klyuev the storyteller, a collector and connoisseur of Russian folklore, as well as a wonderful performer of folk epics and songs.

The first experiments in this spirit were "The Song of the Falcon and the Three Birds of God", "The Song of the Girl". Both of these folk works Klyuev introduced into the first edition of the book "Pine Chime". Klyuev's transition from literary language to the epic proceeded gradually. In the years his poetry still bifurcates, as it were, between lyrics and folklore. Stylization "under the folklore" turned out very well. This fully applies to the “Brotherly Songs”, which, of course, were based on the Old Believer chants and prayers heard by Klyuev more than once.

By September 1912, in addition to the collections "Pine Chime" and "Brotherly Songs", Klyuev published two small books, both were published on the initiative of Brikhnichev in July-August 1912 in the "New Land Library" series. In the fall of 1912, Klyuev finishes work on the third collection of his poems and gives it the name "Forest were." Undertook to publish his collection.

2.6. Smooth break with literary circles

In December 1912, there was a break between Brikhnichev and Klyuev. Because of the entry of the first against Klyuev with accusations of plagiarism and, in addition, of greed, greed, and so on.

Around October 10, 1912, Klyuev returned to St. Petersburg from Moscow. Where he lives for three months, maintaining friendship with Gorodetsky. In the middle of 1913, the poet leaves St. Petersburg and until September 1915 more than her appears in the capital. His relations with the St. Petersburg writers subside for a while.

So, in the years Klyuev found himself outside literary groups for a while, which was partly brightened up for the Olonets poet by his still growing fame in Russia. In February - March 1913, the publishing house almost simultaneously published "Forest were" and "Pine Chimes" (second edition). Their appearance turned out to be a significant event in the history of Russian pre-revolutionary poetry.

In the autumn of 1911, in St. Petersburg, Klyuev established relations with the editors of the Apollon magazine, where both symbolists and future acmeists were published. By this time, Klyuev was already personally acquainted with Akhmatova Gumilyov. Then, in 1911, the "Workshop of Poets" was formed in St. Petersburg - a poetic association headed by Gorodetsky and Gumilyov and other acmeists. It was they who at that time tried to draw the attention of the Russian reading public to the young poet from Olonia, supported him in every possible way.

Since April 24, 1915, friendship has been established between Klyuev and Yesenin. Together they visit friends, writers, artists, communicate a lot with Blok. In winter, Klyuev and Yesenin confidently entered the circle of capital writers, They visited Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Gorky.

In January 1916, Yesenin and Klyuev arrived in Moscow. In alliance with the young Yesenin, whose talent he appreciated immediately, as soon as he saw his poems in print, Klyuev hoped to draw the attention of the public to "peasant" poetry. Public readings in Moscow and St. Petersburg were extremely important to him. Klyuev's influence on Yesenin at that time was enormous. Taking care of your own little brother» Klyuev tried to neutralize the impact that other writers had on Yesenin. Yesenin, in turn, considered Klyuev his teacher, and loved him very much.

In 1916, the publishing house published two books almost simultaneously: Yesenin's Radunitsa and Klyuev's Worldly Thoughts. This fourth collection of Klyuev's poems, like his previous books, had a dual structure. There is an opinion in the literature that the "Worldly Thoughts" are imbued with pseudo-Russian pseudo-patriotic pathos. Klyuev tries to look at contemporary events through the eyes of the “people”, to speak about them in “popular” speech, his perception of the Russian-German war rather reflects the patriotic upsurge that captured thousands of peasants dressed in soldier's greatcoats. The heroes of Klyuev do not fight "for the tsar and the fatherland", but first of all - for their native Russian land, and even Klyuev's attitude to "alien land" and the "basurman horde" is conveyed in the style of popular ideas about the "German":

The iron kingdom was born

With Wilhelmschisch, the filthy king.

Does he, the wicked, have armies - strength,

Ordinary people - utterly;

They believe in Luther the god

Don't lay a cross on yourself

The main thing that attracts and captivates the reader of "Worldly Thoughts" is an example of the motherland, Russia, captured expressively and vividly by the poet.

At the beginning of 1919, the poet remained in Petrograd for some time. But already in 1919, he went to Vytegra, where on February 23, at the celebration - the anniversary of the creation of the Red Army, he speaks "with a greeting to the Red Army" and reads the poem "Hymn of the Great Red Army." Speaking to fellow countrymen, Klyuev especially often addresses parting words to the soldiers going to the front. Klyuev's speeches made an unforgettable impression on the listeners.

In 1919, Klyuev experienced a clear creative upsurge. His works were systematically published in the county newspaper: poems, articles, reviews, notes. However, with unprecedented energy, Klyuev devoted his energies to journalistic prose that year.

As in the years of the first Russian revolution, Klyuev, in his works, never ceases to denounce enemies - "the rich and flatterers", "people of violence and cunning, accomplices of oppression." “A curse,” he exclaims, “an eternal curse on this gluttonous, stinking locust, trampling the blood of the martyrs with its feet and mockingly waving its filthy snout at the redemptive cross on which red Russia is now crucified.

And yet for Klyuev, first of all, it is a great religious mystery: in its purifying fire, the old world burns down and a new one is born. However, the exorbitant delight and "fiery admiration" of Klyuev, already in those years, was overshadowed by reality. Klyuev believed that the primary task of the Soviet government was to take care of beauty and culture, to preserve the spiritual values ​​of the Russian people. Folk culture in Klyuev's concept was inseparable from religion and the church, and it was precisely with them that the struggle was waged, and all this worried Klyuev. He thought a lot about the fate of folk art and about the "Great People's Vision". He collected icons from the surrounding villages, ancient handwritten books and antiquities - perhaps hoping to save them from destruction. Klyuev does not leave hope that in Soviet Russia, where "the truth must become a fact of life," the great importance of folk culture, "its connection with the culture of the Soviets," will be recognized. But events did not develop as Klyuev dreamed. The civil war did not subside, devastation and hunger intensified, the villages became deserted. The poet's apocalyptic forebodings seemed to be confirmed; despair, a feeling of general death seized the poet.

In 1919, a two-volume edition of Klyuev's works, "Songs", was published. In it, he includes a number of poems that were not included in his previous collection "The Copper Whale", in particular the cycle "Lenin". "Song" was the final edition: it is possible to trace all of Klyuev's work from 1905 to 1918.

From February 1919 to May 1920, Klyuev did not leave Vytegra. In the spring of 1920, Klyuev was expelled from the party. His religiosity, visiting churches and venerating icons, caused discontent among some of the Vytegorsk communists. At first it was just dissatisfaction, later the debate in the party took on a very stormy character.

In x. years, Klyuev was seized by conflicting moods. They permeated his poems of those years, most of them were included in the collection "Lion's Bread". In Klyuev's new book, the reader is presented with a picture of a burning and dying "restless" Russia. “Russia is crying with fires”, “Stars and songs are dying”, “Above the dead steppe, a faceless something has given birth to madness, darkness, emptiness” - these and similar lines give the collection “Lion's Bread” an eerie tragic coloring. The traditional Klyuev themes also sound the same : denial of the City, the West, "madame of Culture" iron edge»; "From Marconi, Radio Vervi Sabaoth has no mercy on us" and so on. But the main thing in this book is the saturation with images of the East. "Lion's bread" is, after all, the fate of the West of the East, - said Klyuev about his book. Klyuev's polemic with proletarian poets, which began back in 1981, will continue in Lion's Bread.

In 1923, a new collection of Klyuev's "Lenin" was published, consisting of two sections: "The Crimson Lion" and "The Fiery Face". The first section formed ten poems of the 2Lenin cycle; the second is Klyuev's revolutionary poems. In the same year, Klyuev moved to Leningrad. The literary situation in Leningrad in 1924 would have been different than in the first revolutionary years: a whole galaxy of talented young writers came to the fore. Klyuev established friendly relations with many of them. He continues to communicate with writers of the older generation (Akhmatova, M. Kuzmin). Klyuev led a rather unrestricted life. He willingly visited his numerous acquaintances, visited exhibitions, spoke at literary evenings. In years periodicals his poems appear, but still Klyuev is reluctantly published. Attitude towards him already in those years was largely determined by Trotsky's article and V. Knyazev's book "The Rye Apostles" with the subtitle "Klyuev and Klyuevshchina". Increasingly, the epithet "kulak" is combined with the name of Klyuev. The myth of Klyuev - " folk poet”is inferior to the new myth, fixed by official criticism and staunchly held in the Soviet press for more than ten years.

AT last days July 1924 Klyuev leaves Leningrad for Vytegra. Yesenin, I. Markov and other friends see him off. The next ten years of Klyuev's life until his arrest in February 1934 is a period of severe need. In July 1924, he asks the All-Russian Union of Writers for help, which he receives along with other writers.

Several poems by Kyuev belong to m. years, where the poet tries to switch to a “major” mode. These are "Bogatyrka", "Leningrad", "Table", sustained in the upbeat spirit of Soviet poetry of the 20s:

As if arguing with a wolf blizzard,

As a pilot vigilantly lobat,

At the bald spot of the gloomy sea

There is a hero Leningrad.

Waves buzz to him about the edge,

Where is youth and May beauty,

And the Lapland wind blows

In the boundary pupils of the sail.

More accurately reflects the true mood of Klyuev in the 1920s, the poem "Our dog barked at the gate ...", miraculously penetrated into the press then.

On December 28, 1925, Yesenin, Klyuev's "song brother", dies. His death shocked Klyuev; until the end of his days, he remembered him with unfailing love. True monument the departed friend was a requiem poem "Cry for Sergei Yesenin." This poem is characteristic of the "epic" style of late Klyuev. It organically merges together both streams of Klyuev's poetry: epic and lyrics, stylization and "own". This work is multifaceted, obscured by a thick layer of metaphors, riddles, and complex symbolism. During 1926, Klyuev repeatedly read this poem. The poem "Lament for Sergei Yesenin" was completely printed by the Leningrad publishing house "Priboy" in 1927.

The second poem of this period is “The Village”, the whole poem is imbued with a sense of the catastrophe that happened to Russia, pain for her fate:

You are Rasseya, Rasseya-mother-in-law,

You famously salted cabbage soup,

I prayed porridge with blood ...

The optimistic notes that sound at the beginning and at the end of the poem are Klyuev's undying hope for the realization of his peasant utopia - a hut with a "pot-bellied mother" and a "fruitful God". In addition, the poem contained very transparent threatening hints. It is not surprising that immediately after the appearance of "The Village" in the press, dewy attacks on Klyuev began. The famous "Komsomol poet" A. Bezymensky was the first to speak. His article served as a signal for an attack on Klyuev.

Since 1926, Klyuev's rapprochement with Sergei Klychkov, who lives in Moscow, begins. The poets met before the revolution, appreciated each other, but there was no special friendship between them.

At the beginning of 1927, Klyuev writes new poem"Pogorelshchina", which he considers the pinnacle of his work and willingly acquaints his listeners with it. In early January 1929, he performed it at the Leningrad House of Writers. In February 1934, Klyuev confessed to the investigator that he had read "Pogorelshchina" "from Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy, from the writer Sergei Klychkov and in some other places ...". More than other poems of the 1920s, "Pogorelshchina" reveals the colorful, pictorial, "icon-painting" style of the mature Klyuev.

In March 1928, Klyuev's last lifetime collection, "The Hut in the Field," was published. The collection consisted of three sections and was dedicated to the "Memory of the Mother". It included Klyuev's poems; all of them were published earlier, but some of them have now appeared in a revised form.

2.7. Last years

The turn of the 1920s and 1930s coincided with the "revolutionary upheaval" in the countryside. total collectivization and new policy in relation to the kulaks, could not but be reflected in the "peasant" literature. 1928 was a turning point for "peasant" literature. At the plenum of the Central All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers in May 1928, it was said that “the peasant writer must inevitably become the proletarian writer of the countryside.

In June 1929, the 1st All-Russian Congress of Peasant Writers was convened, held under the slogans: Cleanse yourself of unnecessary ballast and attract new ones. creative forces. To develop an active creative struggle against the kulak ideology in literature, and so on. At the congress he made a report in which he emphasized that “the peasantry is stratified, and so are its writers. We treat them simply as enemies ... ”The“ enemies ”were meant, first of all, Klyuev. Next to his name are the names of Yesenin, Klychkov, Oreshin.

No less was sharply spoken about Klyuev at the First All-Russian Congress of Peasant Writers. Klyuev was accused of harmful influence for university youth.

Subjected to unrelenting persecution, Klyuev is completely eliminated from literature. Since 1929, it has ceased to be printed at all; they are clearly interested in the NKVD. The unbearable situation in Leningrad forces Klyuev to look for opportunities to move to Moscow.

At the end of the 1920s, Klyuev's health deteriorated sharply, which made him start fussing about a personal pension. A few months after his request, in July 1931, the commission for re-registration of the Writers' Union invites Klyuev to submit to the Union "an extended detailed criticism of his work and social behavior." Klyuev refused, and at a meeting of the bureau of the section of poets on January 9, he was withdrawn from its membership.

In the fall of 1931, Klyuev received a ticket from the Literary Fund to the Sochi Printers' Rest House. In the Caucasus, he spends the whole of November.

In late 1931-early 1932, Klyuev lives in Moscow, enjoying the hospitality of an artist of the Bolshoi Theater. With him and his wife, Klyuev establishes a confidentially close relationship. Finally, by the summer of 1932, with the support of the Union of Writers, Klyuev became a Moscow resident; he gets the right to occupy two tiny rooms in Guards Lane. Klyuev furnishes them in his usual manner - with rustic utensils, folk art objects, hangs the walls with icons. Here he spends about two years - the last in his "free" life.

Starting in 1929, he leaves to rest in Vyatka province, in the village of Potrepukhino, located on the Vyatka River near the city of Kuraki (now the city of Sovetsk). Once, according to the stories of A. N. Yar-Kravchenko, who accompanied Klyuev, on the Kotelnichesky tract, Klyuev saw a column of "dispossessed kulaks" they were driven to nearest city. People were exhausted, many could not walk, they asked for water. The escorts behaved rudely, mocked the arrested. Klyuev, without looking up, with a pale face, looked at the stage. The scene made an indelible impression on him.

The events taking place in the country, as well as his expulsion from Soviet literature, Klyuev experienced very painfully. In 1932, he wrote a poem "To the Slanderers of Art" in which he angrily and sorrowfully attacked those who, for ten years, stifled, as it seemed to him, Russian poetry:

Pegasus Russian in the quarry

Bats woven into the mane

And they drank blood like dry winds in a field ...

All Klyuev's attempts to get into the press remained fruitless. The poet is even ready to make concessions, agree to changes in the text of his works, but this does not help either. The only publication of the 1933s, the cycle "Poems on the Collective Farm" is an expressive example of "reforging", the transition of the most prominent "kulak" writer to "socialist" positions. Over the years, he created more than a dozen "long" poems, characteristic of his late style: excited, sometimes intimately playful narratives, executed as if in "ligature". Poems are multi-line detailed compositions, densely saturated with metaphors and allegories, rare obscure words.

AT hard days, when Klyuev was not published, the editor of Izvestia helped him with rations and clothes, sent him on creative business trips. He, outraged by Klyuev's antics, his secret hatred of the Bolsheviks, turned out to be the initiator of repressions against the poet. On February 2, Klyuev was arrested for the corruption of literary youth and then sent by the OGPU board to an administrative exile for a period of five years in the village of Kolpashev, Narym Territory (Tomsk Region). During his exile, Klyuev writes little - everyday life, severe poverty killed any opportunity to work.

In these difficult years Klyuev writes to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee a petition for pardon, but his application did not find its addressee, everyone was afraid of the Stalinist terror.

In 1936, his health deteriorated sharply. In March, Klyuev was paralyzed and was bedridden for a long time. After an illness, he again tries to restore correspondence and in one of the letters to Yar-Kravchenko notifies that he is returning to Moscow. This served as the first version of his death, which existed for a long time in Soviet times. The version was that Klyuev had a heart failure at the Taezhnaya station, and the suitcase with his manuscripts was gone. The second version was that Nikolai Klyuev died in the Tomsk prison. And only at the beginning of 1989 it became known from secret documents that Klyuev did not die a natural death, he was shot on October 25, 1989 by sentence - for "counter-revolutionary insurgent activity." This case of the "Union for the Salvation of Russia" was fabricated by the Siberian NKVD, Klyuev was accused of being the leader of this Union. All manuscripts were confiscated. Klyuev foresaw his inevitable, unknown death in a distant land and a grave without a cross or churchyard.

A native of the village, but not a peasant. A man of a religious warehouse and at the same time - a radical "left" populist. A poet who has achieved high skill, and a stylist aspiring to folklore and archaic. All this, like many other things, was combined in Klyuev and manifested itself in different ways - sometimes more clearly, sometimes weaker - in different periods his creative life.

The “real” in Klyuev is his poetic gift. In the history of Russian literature, Klyuev will remain not only a master stylist, but also an outstanding original poet. In the 10s and 20s he composed many wonderful poems, "songs" and "laments". In folklore stylization, Klyuev achieved more than other Russian poets who chose the same path. Klyuev achieved high skill within the art system. He was talented, and he managed to convey in his the best works and the charm of folk "songs" and "byly", and the original charm of the outgoing ancient culture. Klyuev's poetry is not anarchism, but the living present of our culture. And in the words of the poet, that nature is higher than Civilization, there is a deep meaning.

Born on October 10 in one of the remote villages of the Russian North (Olonets province) in peasant family, closely associated with the Old Believer traditions, which had big influence on the character and work of the future poet. From his mother, Praskovya Dmitrievna, he inherited a love for folk art- to songs, spiritual verses, tales, legends. She also taught him to read. In 1893-95 he studied at a parochial school, then at a two-year city school, after which he studied at the Petrozavodsk medical assistant's school for a year. Left due to illness. Klyuev's wanderings began in Old Believer sketes and monasteries.

In the early 1900s, he began to write poetry: in 1904, his poems appeared in the St. Petersburg almanac "New Poets" ("Rainbow dreams did not come true ...", "Wide vast field ...", etc.); in 1905 - in the collections "Waves" and "Surf".

In 1905-07 he took Active participation in revolutionary movement peasants and in 1906 was in prison for six months for this, after which tacit police supervision was established behind him.

By 1907, the beginning of Klyuev's correspondence with A. Blok, which had great importance for both (37 letters from Klyuev to Blok have been preserved). Blok used these letters in his articles, considering them "a document of great importance - about modern Russia- folk, of course" ("The words of his letter seem like golden words to me"). With the assistance of A. Blok, N. Klyuev's poems are published in the magazines Golden Fleece, Novaya Zemlya, and others. In 1912, two poetic books by Klyuev were published - " Pine Chime" (with a preface by V. Bryusov) and "Brotherly Songs". Before the revolution, two more collections were published - "Forest were" (1913) and "Worldly smokes" (1916). Not only Blok and Bryusov noticed this original, great poet, but also Gumilyov, Akhmatova, Gorodetsky, Mandelstam and others. In 1915 Klyuev met S. Yesenin, and poets of the new peasant direction (S. Klychkov, P. Oreshin, A. Shiryaevets and others) grouped around them.

Klyuev warmly welcomed the October Revolution, perceiving it as the fulfillment of the age-old aspirations of the peasantry. During these years he worked hard and with inspiration. In 1919, the collection "The Copper Whale" was published, which included such revolutionary poems as "Red Song" (1917), "From cellars, from dark corners ...".

The decisive role in the fate of Klyuev played critical article about him by L. Trotsky (1922), which appeared in the central press. The stigma of a "kulak poet" accompanies him for a whole decade. The poet is in dire need, he appeals to the Union of Poets with requests for help, writes to M. Gorky: "... Poverty, wandering around other people's dinners destroys me as an artist." He continues to work, creates several very significant works: "Lament for Sergei Yesenin" and the poem "Pogorelshchina".

Since 1931, Klyuev has been living in Moscow, but the path to literature is closed to him: everything he writes is rejected by the editors.

In 1934 he was arrested and exiled from Moscow for a period of five years to the city of Kolpashevo in the Narym Territory. "I was exiled for the poem "Pogorelshchina", there is nothing else for me," he wrote from exile.

By the middle of 1934 Klyuev was transferred to Tomsk. Painfully experiencing his forced separation from literature, he wrote: "I do not feel sorry for myself as a public figure, but I feel sorry for my bee songs, sweet, sunny and golden. They sting my heart very hard."

On June 5, 1937, Klyuev was arrested in Tomsk "for counter-revolutionary insurgent activity" (the Siberian NKVD fabricated a case about the Union for the Salvation of Russia, which was allegedly preparing an uprising against the Soviet regime, in which the role of one of the leaders was attributed to Klyuev). In October 1937, N. Klyuev was shot in Tomsk. Posthumously rehabilitated.

Used materials of the book: Russian writers and poets. Brief biographical dictionary. Moscow, 2000.

Childhood and youth

Father - police officer, inmate in a wine shop. Mother was a storyteller and weeper. He studied at the city schools of Vytegra and Petrozavodsk. Among Klyuev's ancestors were Old Believers, although his parents and himself (contrary to many of his stories) did not profess the Old Believers.

He participated in the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, was repeatedly arrested for agitating peasants and for refusing the army oath out of conviction. He served his sentence first in Vytegorsk, then in Petrozavodsk prison.

Klyuev's autobiographical (or pseudo-autobiographical) notes "Loon's Fate" mention that in his youth he traveled extensively in Russia. Specific stories cannot be verified by sources, and such numerous autobiographical myths are part of his literary image.

Klyuev also tells how he was a novice in the monasteries on Solovki; and how he was "King David ... of white doves - Christs" (one of the Orthodox "sects", see Khlysty), but when they wanted to castrate him, he fled; and how in the Caucasus I met the handsome Ali, who, according to Klyuev, “fell in love with me the way Kadra-night teaches, which costs more than a thousand months. This is a secret Eastern teaching about marriage with an angel, which in Russian white Christianity is denoted by the words: finding Adam ... ”, then Ali committed suicide from hopeless love for him; and how in Yasnaya Polyana talked with Tolstoy; and how he met with Rasputin; and how he was in prison three times; and how he became a famous poet and " literary collections, evenings, artistic feasts, the chambers of the Moscow nobility for two winters in a row grinded me with colorful millstones of fashion, curiosity and full boredom.

Literary fame

For the first time, Klyuev's poems appeared in print in 1904. At the turn of the 1900s and 1910s, Klyuev appeared in literature, and did not continue the standard for “poets from the people” tradition of descriptive minor poetry in the spirit of I. Z. Surikov, but boldly uses the techniques of symbolism, saturates poetry with religious imagery and dialect vocabulary . The first collection - "Pine Chime" - was published in 1911. Klyuev's work was received with great interest by Russian modernists; Alexander Blok (in correspondence with him in 1907; had a great personal and creative influence on Klyuev), Valery Bryusov and Nikolai Gumilyov spoke about him as a "harbinger of folk culture".

Nikolay Klyuev tied up complicated relationship(sometimes friendly, sometimes tense) with Sergei Yesenin, who considered him his teacher. In 1915-1916, Klyuev and Yesenin often performed together with poetry in public, later on their paths (personal and poetic) converged and diverged several times.

Religiosity Klyuev

As A. I. Mikhailov points out, Alexander Blok repeatedly mentions Klyuev in his poems, notebooks and letters and perceives him as a symbol of the mysterious folk faith. In one of the letters, Blok even stated: “Christ is among us,” and S. M. Gorodetsky attributed these words to Nikolai Klyuev

In his 1922 entry, Klyuev says:

Klyuev after the revolution

Klyuev’s poems at the turn of the 1910s and 1920s reflect the “peasant” and “religious” acceptance of revolutionary events, he sent his poems to Lenin (although a few years earlier, together with Yesenin, he spoke to the empress), became close to the Left SR literary group “Scythians ". In the Berlin publishing house "Scythians" in 1920-1922, three collections of Klyuev's poems were published.

After several years of hungry wandering around 1922, Klyuev reappeared in Petrograd and Moscow, his new books were sharply criticized and withdrawn from circulation.

Since 1923, Klyuev lived in Leningrad (in the early 1930s he moved to Moscow). The catastrophic situation of Klyuev, including the material one, did not improve after the publication of his collection of poems about Lenin (1924).

Soon, Nikolai Klyuev, like many new peasant poets, distanced himself from Soviet reality, which was destroying the traditional peasant world; in its turn, Soviet criticism smashed him as "the ideologist of the kulaks." After Yesenin's suicide, he wrote "Lament for Yesenin" (1926), which was soon withdrawn. In 1928, the last collection "The Hut and the Field" was published.

In 1929, Klyuev met the young artist Anatoly Kravchenko, to whom his love poems and letters of this time (the predominance of the chanting of male beauty over female beauty in Klyuev's poetry of all periods is emphasized by the philologist A. I. Mikhailov).

Arrests, exile and execution

Klyuev himself, in letters to the poet Sergei Klychkov and V. Ya. negative attitude to the policy of the Communist Party and Soviet power. Similar accusations (of "anti-Soviet agitation" and "compiling and distributing counter-revolutionary literary works") were also brought against Klyuev in connection with his other works - "Gamayun's Song" and "If the demons of plague, leprosy and cholera ...", which are part of the unfinished cycle " Ruin." AT last poem, for example, the White Sea-Baltic Canal is mentioned, built with the participation a large number dispossessed and imprisoned:

Poems from the "Devastation" cycle are stored in the criminal case of N. Klyuev as an appendix to the protocol of interrogation.

According to the memoirs of the functionary I. M. Gronsky (editor of Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and editor-in-chief of the magazine “ New world”), Klyuev increasingly switched “to anti-Soviet positions” (despite the state allowance), when he sent a “love hymn” to the newspaper, the subject of which was “not a“ girl ”, but a“ boy ”, Gronsky expressed his indignation in a conversation with Klyuev, but he refused to write “normal” poems, after which Gronsky called Yagoda and asked to expel Klyuev from Moscow (this order was sanctioned by Stalin). The opinion that the reason for Klyuev's arrest was precisely his homosexuality was also expressed later in private conversations by M. M. Bakhtin.

On February 2, 1934, Klyuev was arrested on charges of “compiling and distributing counter-revolutionary literary works” (Article 58 10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). The investigation was conducted by N.Kh. Shivarov. On March 5, after the trial of the Special Conference, he was exiled to the Narym Territory, to Kolpashevo. In the autumn of the same year, at the request of the artist N. A. Obukhova, S. A. Klychkov, and possibly Gorky, he was transferred to Tomsk.

Nikolai Klyuev was rehabilitated in 1957, but the first posthumous book in the USSR came out only in 1977.

Addresses in Petrograd - Leningrad

• 1915-1923 - the apartment of K. A. Raschepina in tenement house- Embankment of the Fontanka River, 149, apt. 9;
• 1923-1932 - courtyard wing - Herzen street, 45, apt. 7.