Galina Benislavskaya
There is no gossip to the intoxicated with joy.
You yourself, under the caresses, will throw off the silk of the veil,
I'll take the drunk until the morning into the bushes.
And let the capercaillie cry with bells,
There is a cherished longing in the alost of the dawn.
S. Yesenin
A maiden is crying on the grave hill.
No wife, no mistress, no widow.
Dawns, sunrises, flashes of night...
Someone prophesied the fate of the girl ...
She has no life, no breath,
To the passion of unfulfilled sobs are deaf.
The dawn does not blaze with a scarlet ribbon.
No Sergei, woe crescendo!
The life of a moth can be shorter!
These dark nights will also perish.
She will be buried next to her in a year.
And the harrow will not touch their love ...
Life story
As a little girl, she ended up in the house of her aunt, who adopted her after her mother Gali began to suffer from a mental illness. The baby's father, a Russified French student Arthur Career, either left the family, or never lived with her. The girl received the name of her adoptive father, the doctor Benislavsky. Together with her adoptive parents, Galya lived in the Latvian city of Rezekne. Having matured, she left for St. Petersburg, where she graduated from the Preobrazhensky Women's Gymnasium with a gold medal. During the revolution, already a convinced Bolshevik, Galina Benislavskaya studied at Kharkov University at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. But in 1919, the White Guards captured the city, and the brave girl, having crossed the front, settled in Moscow.
“The long ordeal on the road ended very unpleasantly,” Vasily Berezhkov, a veteran of the USSR state security organs, and journalist Snezhana Pekhtereva, tell about this period of her life in their book “Women-Chekists”. - Having got to the Reds, Benislavskaya was arrested. She was simply mistaken for a spy for the Whites!..
However, fate favored Benislavskaya. Once in Moscow, Galina met Yana Kozlovskaya, whose father was a Bolshevik. Moreover, Mikhail Yuryevich Kozlovsky (1876-1937) after February 1917 was a member of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, chairman of the Vyborg District Duma. In November 1918, he served as chairman of the Extraordinary Investigative Commission, and in 1919 for some time he headed the People's Commissariat of Justice of Lithuania and Belarus ...
Thanks to the intervention of Kozlovsky, Galina Arturovna was released. Mikhail Yurievich took care of Benislavskaya even after her arrest. He assisted her in obtaining a room in Moscow ... Kozlovsky helped Benislavskaya join the party. In addition, he arranged for the post of secretary in the Special Interdepartmental Commission under the Cheka.
Later, Benislavskaya went to work in the editorial office of the newspaper "Poor". Galina read a lot, was well versed in literature, visited the famous Pegasus Stable cafe, in which the best poets of Moscow read their poems in the twenties. But her whole life turned upside down on September 19, 1920, when one of the evenings held at the Polytechnic Museum, she heard Sergei Yesenin.
In Memories, Benislavskaya wrote:
“Suddenly the same boy comes out: a short, unbuttoned reindeer jacket, hands in the pockets of his trousers, completely golden hair, as if alive. Slightly throwing back his head and camp, he begins to read:
Spit, wind, armfuls of leaves, -
I'm just like you, bully.
He is the whole element, a mischievous, rebellious, unrestrained element, not only in poetry, but in every movement that reflects the movement of the verse ...
What happened after reading it is hard to convey. Everyone suddenly jumped up from their seats and rushed to the stage, to him ... Coming to my senses, I saw that I was also at the stage itself. How I ended up there, I do not know and do not remember. Obviously, this wind picked up and spun me too.
Yesenin turned twenty-five, Galina Benislavskaya - twenty-three. “Since then, endless joyful meetings have gone on in a long string,” she recalled. - I lived in the evenings - from one to the other. His poems captured me no less than he himself ... "
There is a version that Benislavskaya was assigned to the poet as an agent of the Cheka. This fact is denied by the already mentioned V. Berezhkov and S. Pekhtereva: “... the materials of the personal file ... refute such an opinion. The OMK (Special Interdepartmental Commission) did not set intelligence and information tasks for itself; the secret department of the Cheka was engaged in the life of writers and poets. Therefore, the assumption that Benislavskaya was instructed by Agranov to “watch Yesenin” is an idle fiction.
They met and parted; Yesenin met with other women, Galina suffered ... Finally, Isadora Duncan arose in the poet's fate, and Sergei Alexandrovich settled with her in a mansion on Prechistenka.
The poetess Lika Styrskaya, the author of the sensational little book of erotic poems "Mudnoye Vino", which was published in Moscow in the 1920s with a circulation of three hundred copies, recalled those times already in exile:
“He was loved by modest provincial women - naive souls. He was loved by Galya Benislavskaya, a girl with fiery eyes, with a fiery look and a Lenin badge on her chest. She was devoted to him and faithful as a friend and a woman, demanding nothing for it, nothing. She had a miserable room and many responsibilities: business and party work. But in the name of her love, she was ready to give up everything. And she mortally hated her brilliant rival Isadora Duncan.
Yesenin disappeared from her circle. He moved to a mansion on Prechistenka. Rarely appeared in the Pegasus Stable. And if he came, it was only on the arm with Isadora ... "
When the famous couple flew abroad, Benislavskaya ended up in a psychiatric clinic with a nervous system disorder.
Nevertheless, she believed that Yesenin would still be with her. And so it happened: after returning from abroad, the poet left the luxurious mansion of the dancer and moved to the little room of Benislavskaya (however, as in all places of his residence, he stayed here on short visits). Her joy knew no bounds! Together they composed a farewell telegram to the bored “Dunka” (as the poet called her) who was resting in the Crimea:
“Do not send letters, telegrams to Yesenin. He is with me, he will never return to you. We must reckon. Benislavskaya.
“Sergey Alexandrovich and I laughed at this telegram,” Galina Arturovna later recalled. - Still, such a defiant tone is not in my spirit, and if Duncan knew me a little, then, of course, she would understand that this is a scare, and nothing more.
In response to Isadora's bewildered message, another telegram flew to Duncan:
“I love another. Married and happy. Yesenin.
For the poet, this period of life was perhaps the most difficult. Constant drinking with friends, conflicts with imagists... He was seized for any reason, dragged to the nearest police station and prepared materials there on charges of anti-Semitism and hooliganism. And always Galina Benislavskaya, who helped her beloved out of trouble, was his guardian angel: she attached his poems to the editors, knocked out fees, looked for the poet at cheap pubs, worried about his health, fussing about a ticket to a good sanatorium ...
“When Sergei Alexandrovich,” continues Benislavskaya, “moved in with me, he gave me the keys to all the manuscripts and, in general, to all things, since he himself lost these keys, handed out manuscripts and photographs, and what he didn’t hand out, they dragged from him themselves. He noticed the loss, grumbled, cursed, but he did not know how to protect, store and demand back ... "
In the winter of 1924-1925, Galina took care of the household with pleasure: she bought six Viennese chairs, a dining table, a wardrobe, and bought dishes. As the sister of the poet Alexander Yesenin explained, living alone, she "worried little about home comfort, and her environment was extremely poor ... But cleanliness was always perfect." The household got so good that I had to hire a housekeeper. There were also difficult days, “when Sergei met with his“ friends ”. Katya and Galya did their best to protect Sergey from such “friends” and they were not allowed into the house, but they were looking for Sergey in publishing houses, in editorial offices, and, as a rule, such meetings ended in drinks.
There was no need to be bored at home, which, in fact, became a literary and poetic "transshipment base". In the two little rooms of Benislavskaya, after heated debates about the problems of modern versification, interspersed with rollicking ditties to the accordion, sometimes up to twenty people stayed for the night.
Yesenin was cruel to Galina - however, as well as to his other women. Confessed:
“You are free and free to do whatever you want, it has nothing to do with me. I am also cheating on you, but remember - do not touch my friends. Don't touch my name, don't hurt me, anyone, as long as it's not my friends."
In the last years of the poet's life, Galina devoted herself entirely to his publishing affairs. "Dear Galya! You are close to me as a friend, but I don’t love you at all as a woman!” Yesenin confessed to her. “Yesenin wrote this insulting and murderous letter for Benislavskaya because he needed an open break with her ... Sofya Tolstaya, the granddaughter of the “great old man,” entered his life, Stanislav and Sergey Kunyaev explain in their book about the poet. “Unexpectedly and frivolously, as he always did in these cases, the poet decided to marry her.”
Yesenin and Tolstaya met at a party at the same Benislavskaya, where Sofya Andreevna came with Boris Pilnyak, her then lover.
According to some testimonies, having learned about Galina's affair with journalist Lev Povitsky, Sergei Alexandrovich finally left her. Although there are other versions. Ilya Shneider, Duncan studio administrator, recalled:
“This girl, smart and deep, loved Yesenin devotedly and selflessly ... Only Yesenin’s marriage to Leo Tolstoy’s granddaughter Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya forced Benislavskaya to move away from him ...”
The poet's sisters, Katya and Shura, since the autumn of 1924 (after Yesenin left for the Caucasus) lived with Galina in Bryusovsky Lane.
“Gali's neighbors were young,” recalled Alexandra Yesenina, “who were interested in everything, especially literature. Poems were very much loved here, and successful novelties were recited right on the go ... But the main place with us was occupied by Sergei's poems. At this time, he very often sent us new poems from the Caucasus ... Galya and Katya conducted his literary and publishing business in Moscow, and he often gave them written instructions on where, how and what to print, how to compile a newly published collection .. .
“We received 3 letters from you from Batum at once. The poem "Letter to a Woman" - I'm crazy about him. And I still rave about them - how good it is ... "
During the poet's stay with the granddaughter of the great old man in the Caucasus, the singer of the Moscow Tavern sent letters to Galina almost daily. He confidentially shared his state of mind with her, as he reported a great achievement that they drink only two bottles of wine with Leva (Povitsky, who sheltered Yesenin in the Caucasus) a day and in general “I write devilishly well ... I will soon overwhelm you with material. ..".
In the summer of 1925, apparently, already after the Caucasian voyage, Yesenin, together with Benislavskaya, went to his homeland, to the wedding of distant relatives.
“A young woman with long braids came up to us,” Ivan Kopytin, a fellow countryman of the poet and a friend of his childhood, later recalled. - Later I found out that it was Galya Benislavskaya ... a peasant on horseback towards us. Yesenin raised his hand and stopped him. He asked for a horse - Galya wanted to ride. And he has paper money in his hand. “I will pay,” he said. Sergei Galya put on a horse, and she rushed through the meadows like a real horsewoman ... And when they approached the Oka, they, Yesenin and Galya, got into the boat and sailed away from me ... They sailed away forever ... "
How did Benislavskaya react to Yesenin's marriage to Sofya Tolstaya? She went through a very hard time, but, apparently, she could not come to terms with it. Too strong, too deep was her feeling for Yesenin, she knew Sergey Alexandrovich too well not to understand what different people the newlyweds were. From her diary:
“I chased the name Tolstoy - everyone pities and despise him: he doesn’t love, but he got married ... even she herself says that if she weren’t Tolstaya, no one would notice her ... Sergey says that he pities her. But why regret? Just because of the last name. He didn't take pity on me. He did not regret Volpin, Rita and others whom I don’t know about ... Sleeping with a woman who is physically disgusting to him because of his last name and apartment is not a pound of raisins. I could never do this…”
The news of the tragic death of the poet caught Benislavskaya in a hospital. She was very upset by the death of a loved one, but did not come to the funeral. And less than a year later, at his grave, she herself ended her life.
“The poet’s sister Shura believed,” Stanislav and Sergey Kunyaev write in the book Yesenin, “that Benislavskaya’s suicide was due not only to Yesenin’s death, but also to a failed marriage to Trotsky’s son, and also to the fact that during the division of Yesenin’s inheritance, she, in essence, , who for several years was both a literary secretary and a friend of Yesenin, whom at times he even represented as his wife, turned out to be nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately, these assumptions remain the same.
When a friend of Galina Arturovna came to her on the day of her suicide, she found an open closet, things thrown out on the floor and a rout in the room, which was obviously searched ... The death of Galina Benislavskaya turned out to be one of many in a terrible series of mysterious deaths associated with the personality of Yesenin . There is a version that Galina was killed ...
Every evening, as the blue becomes cloudy,
As the dawn hangs on the bridge,
You go, my poor wanderer,
Bow down to love and the cross...
On the afternoon of December 3, 1926, in Moscow, at the Vagankovsky cemetery, at the grave of Sergei Yesenin, rare visitors could see the lonely figure of a modestly dressed young woman. Like a mournful statue, she bowed before the grave mound, covered with fresh flowers.
The woman took out a pack of cigarettes and lit a cigarette. She quickly sketched something on a piece of paper, then scribbled a few words on a cigarette box ... And then a pistol shot sounded.
The cemetery watchman called the police and an ambulance. The seriously wounded woman had documents in the name of Galina Arturovna Benislavskaya. Found a note:
“I committed suicide here, although I know that after that even more dogs will hang on Yesenin ... But he and I will not care. In this grave, everything is dearest to me ... "
Moaning a little audibly, she was hastily taken to the Botkin hospital. On the way, she died.
Galina was buried on December 7, 1926 next to the poet - hastily so as not to cause unnecessary talk. Previously, there was an inscription on her grave: "Faithful Galya." Now - another, more official.
“The scarlet light of dawn wove out on the lake ...” Sergey Yesenin
Weaved out on the lake the scarlet light of dawn.
Capercaillie are crying in the forest with bells.An oriole is crying somewhere, hiding in a hollow.
Only I don’t cry - my heart is light.I know that in the evening you will go beyond the ring of roads,
Let's sit in fresh shocks under the neighboring haystack.I'll kiss you when I'm drunk, I'll crush you like a flower,
There is no gossip to the intoxicated with joy.You yourself, under the caresses, will throw off the silk of the veil,
I'll take the drunk until the morning into the bushes.And let the capercaillie cry with bells,
There is a merry melancholy in the alost of the dawn.
Analysis of Yesenin's poem "The scarlet light of dawn weaved out on the lake ..."
Researchers of his life and work consider Yesenin's early lyrics to be unequal and heterogeneous. It is difficult to single out a single dominant motive in it; it should not be summed up under one key idea. Sergei Alexandrovich experienced various influences. Here are Russian folk tales, songs, ditties, and works by professional writers - Tolstoy, Gorky, Nadson. Therefore, among his poems there are both imbued with daring fun and unbridled joy, and reflecting pessimistic moods that develop the theme of death.
Yesenin’s early poetry includes the poem “The scarlet color of dawn wove on the lake ...” written in 1910, which combines the features of intimate and landscape lyrics. The first few couplets are devoted to the description of nature. The lyrical hero admires the sunrise. An amazingly beautiful sight appears before him - as if on the blue background of the lake someone wove a scarlet color. To create a three-dimensional picture, Sergey Alexandrovich adds sounds to it - “capercaillie are crying in the forest with ringing”, “an oriole is crying somewhere”. It would seem that the lyrical hero should be sad, but his soul is light. The reason for this is love. The young man is looking forward to a date with a girl dear to his heart. Feelings overwhelm him. The character is immersed in dreams regarding their time together. In the finale, Yesenin uses a curious oxymoron - "joyful longing." With the help of this means of artistic expression, the poet manages to quite accurately convey the state of a man in love, who wants to see the object of sigh as soon as possible.
There is a possibility that the poem “The scarlet color of dawn wove out on the lake ...” is dedicated to the first serious feeling of Sergei Alexandrovich. The heart of the young Yesenin belonged to Anna Alekseevna Sardanovskaya, the daughter of relatives of the Konstantinovsky priest Father John, who came to the village to stay for the summer. It is difficult to name the exact time of the poet's acquaintance with the girl. The most common version is 1907 or 1908. First, a childhood friendship began between them, then Yesenin fell in love, which was reflected in a number of his early works. About his first strong feeling, pure and innocent, Sergei Alexandrovich remembered until the end of his life. Perhaps it is Sardanovskaya - the prototype of Anna Snegina. The strongest blow for the poet was the early death of Anna Alekseevna, who died in 1921 at the age of twenty-five.
The poem “The scarlet color of dawn wove out on the lake ...” is an example of S.A. Yesenin. It was written in 1910. Researchers believe that the creation of the work of the young poet was prompted by a bright feeling for Sardanovskaya Anna Alekseevna, who came to his village in the summer. The approximate date of the acquaintance of young people is 1907 and 1908. Anna Alekseevna died in 1921, but her image was preserved in the memory and heart of Yesenin until the end of her life. The poet's work is diverse in moods: there are pessimistic poems and full of optimism and vitality. The analyzed work belongs to the second group.
The theme of the poem is the joy of love overflowing the heart; meeting of lovers at dawn. The author shows that when the soul laughs out of love, external events are not capable of upsetting it.
The poem is conditionally divided into two parts - a landscape and a story about a date with a girl. Both parts are united by a lyrical hero. First, he watches how evening descends on the earth and weaves “on the lake the scarlet light of dawn.” The young man notices the crying of birds, but he cannot overshadow his soul. The pictures of nature depict traditional images of the Russian landscape: forest, haystacks and haystacks, a lake. In the following stanzas, the hero reveals the secret of his mood: he is looking forward to meeting his beloved.
There is no portrait of a girl in the verse, the author does not even mention the details. All his attention is focused on the meeting, kisses and caresses. Yesenin hints that the lovers cross the line of youthful innocent love, while the girl deliberately takes a serious step: “you yourself will throw off the silk of the veil under caresses.” This development of events is contrary to the traditional morality, according to which a girl should maintain her innocence until marriage.
In the last verse, the poet returns to the description of nature, speaking of the crying of capercaillie. He speaks of cheerful longing, by which he understands the feelings that embrace lovers even in a short separation.
The work of S.A. Yesenin “The scarlet color of dawn wove out on the lake ...” is full of artistic means that serve to convey the internal state of the characters and convey the idea. Metaphors are used in the verse (“the scarlet color of dawn wove on the lake”, “capercaillie are crying”, “it is light in the soul”, “ring of roads”, “drunk with joy”), epithets (“fresh shocks”, “scarlet dawn”), comparison (“I will bend like a color”). In the last couplet, the main idea is emphasized by the oxymoron "joyful longing". Contrast also plays an important role: the image of the crying of nature and the joy of the lyrical hero.
The poem consists of six couplets. Short stanzas help convey the joyful impulses of the lyrical hero's heart, his excitement. The poetic size is iambic six-meter with pyrrhic. The intonation of the poem is measured, calm, which contrasts with the content of the verse and the experiences of the lyrical hero.
Verse S.A. Yesenin “The scarlet color of dawn wove out on the lake ...” is quite “mature” in content and idea, despite the fact that it was written by the poet at the age of 15.
Sergey Yesenin
verse
Weaved out on the lake the scarlet light of dawn.
Capercaillie are crying in the forest with bells.
An oriole is crying somewhere, hiding in a hollow.
Only I don’t cry - my heart is light.
I know that in the evening you will go beyond the ring of roads,
Let's sit in fresh shocks under the neighboring haystack.
I'll kiss you when I'm drunk, I'll crush you like a flower,
There is no gossip to the intoxicated with joy.
You yourself, under the caresses, will throw off the silk of the veil,
I'll take the drunk until the morning into the bushes.
And let the capercaillie cry with bells,
There is a merry melancholy in the alost of the dawn.
R. Kleiner reads
Rafael Aleksandrovich Kleiner (born June 1, 1939, village of Rubezhnoye, Lugansk region, Ukrainian SSR, USSR) - Russian theater director, People's Artist of Russia (1995).
From 1967 to 1970 he was an actor at the Moscow Drama and Comedy Theater on Taganka.
Currently director and screenwriter of the Moscow Philharmonic
Yesenin Sergey Alexandrovich (1895-1925)
Yesenin was born into a peasant family. From 1904 to 1912 he studied at the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School and at the Spas-Klepikovskaya School. During this time, he wrote more than 30 poems, compiled a handwritten collection "Sick Thoughts" (1912), which he tried to publish in Ryazan. The Russian village, the nature of central Russia, oral folk art, and most importantly, Russian classical literature had a strong influence on the formation of the young poet, directed his natural talent. Yesenin himself at different times named different sources that fed his work: songs, ditties, fairy tales, spiritual poems, “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”, the poetry of Lermontov, Koltsov, Nikitin and Nadson. Later he was influenced by Blok, Klyuev, Bely, Gogol, Pushkin.
From Yesenin's letters of 1911-1913, the complicated life of the poet emerges. All this was reflected in the poetic world of his lyrics in 1910 - 1913, when he wrote more than 60 poems and poems. Here his love for all living things, for life, for his homeland is expressed (“The scarlet light of dawn was woven on the lake ...”, “Smoke high water ...”, “Birch”, “Spring evening”, “Night”, “Sunrise ”, “Winter sings - calls out ...”, “Stars”, “Dark night, can’t sleep ...”, etc.)
Yesenin's most significant works, which brought him fame as one of the best poets, were created in the 1920s.
Like any great poet, Yesenin is not a thoughtless singer of his feelings and experiences, but a poet - a philosopher. Like all poetry, his lyrics are philosophical. Philosophical lyrics are poems in which the poet speaks about the eternal problems of human existence, conducts a poetic dialogue with man, nature, earth, the universe. An example of the complete interpenetration of nature and man is the poem "Green Hairstyle" (1918). One develops in two plans: a birch is a girl. The reader will never know who this poem is about - about a birch tree or about a girl. Because a person here is likened to a tree - the beauty of the Russian forest, and she - to a person. Birch in Russian poetry is a symbol of beauty, harmony, youth; she is bright and chaste.
The poetry of nature, the mythology of the ancient Slavs, are imbued with such poems of 1918 as “Silver Road...”, “Songs, songs about what are you shouting about?”, “I left my dear home...”, “Golden foliage spun...” etc.
Yesenin's poetry of the last, most tragic years (1922 - 1925) is marked by a desire for a harmonious worldview. Most often, in the lyrics one feels a deep understanding of oneself and the Universe (“I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry ...”, “The golden grove dissuaded ...”, “Now we are leaving a little ...”, etc.)
The poem of values in Yesenin's poetry is one and indivisible; everything is interconnected in it, everything forms a single picture of the “beloved homeland” in all its diversity of shades. This is the highest ideal of the poet.
Having passed away at the age of 30, Yesenin left us a wonderful poetic legacy, and as long as the earth lives, Yesenin, the poet, is destined to live with us and “sing with his whole being in the poet the sixth part of the earth with the short name “Rus”.
