Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925) is a great creator, whose heartfelt poems about the Russian soul and the “voice of the people” have long become classics of the early twentieth century. It is not without reason that he is called the “subtle lyricist” and the “master of landscape” - you can be convinced of this by reading any of his works. But the work of the "peasant poet" is so multifaceted that two words are not enough to describe it. It is necessary to evaluate all the motives, themes and stages of his path in order to understand the sincerity and depth of each line.
On September 21, 1895, Russian poet Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born in the village of Konstantinovo in the Ryazan region (province). The parents of the "yellow-haired" boy "with blue eyes" - Tatyana Fedorovna and Alexander Nikitich - were of peasant origin. Among them, it was customary to give young girls in marriage against their will, and such marriages usually broke up. This is what happened in the family of Sergei, who had 2 sisters - Ekaterina (1905-1977) and Alexandra (1911-1981).
Almost immediately after the wedding, Yesenin's father, Alexander, returned to Moscow to earn money: there he worked in a butcher's shop, while his wife, Tatyana, returned to her "father's house", it was there that little Sergei spent most of his childhood. There was not enough money in the family, despite the work of his father, and Yesenin's mother left for Ryazan. It was then that grandparents took up the upbringing of the child. Titov Fedor Andreevich - Sergey's grandfather - was a connoisseur of church books, while the grandmother of the future poet - Natalya Evtikhievna - knew many folk songs and poems. Such a “family tandem” pushed young Seryozha to write his first future prose works, because already at the age of 5 Yesenin learned to read, and at 8 he tried to write his first poems.
In 1904, Yesenin went to the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School, where, after receiving a “letter” with honors (1909), he decided to enter the second-class parochial teacher's school. The young man, missing his family, came to Konstantinovo only during the holidays. It was then that he began to write his first poems: "The Coming of Spring", "Winter" and "Autumn" - the approximate date of creation is 1910. After 2 years, in 1912, Yesenin receives a diploma in the specialty "literacy teacher" and decides to leave home for Moscow.
Work in Krylov's butcher shop, of course, was not the subject of the young Yesenin's dream, so after a quarrel with his father, under whom he worked, he decides to go to work in the printing house of I.D. Sytin. Why did this position become one of the most important "stepping stones" on the way to the fulfillment of his desires? It was there that he met his first common-law wife, Anna Izryadova, and opened himself access to a literary and musical circle.
Entering the Moscow City People's University named after Shanyavsky at the Faculty of History and Philosophy in 1913, Yesenin soon left the institute and devoted himself entirely to writing poems. A year later, he began to publish in the journal "Mirok" ("Birch" (1914)), and a few months later the Bolshevik newspaper "The Way of Truth" published several more of his poems. The year 1915 became especially significant in the judge of the Russian poet - he met A. Blok, S. Gorodetsky and N. Gumilyov. In October of the same year, the Protalinka magazine published Mother's Prayer, dedicated to the First World War.
Sergei Yesenin was called up for war, but thanks to his influential friends, he was assigned to the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital train No. 143 of Her Imperial Majesty Empress Alexandra Feodorovna - it was there that he began to devote himself even more to the "spirit of the times" and attend literary circles. Subsequently, the first literary article "Yaroslavna cry" was published in the journal "Women's Life".
Omitting the details of the life of the great poet in Moscow, one can also say that his “revolutionary mood” and his attempt to fight for “Russian truth” played a cruel joke on him. Yesenin wrote several small poems - "Jordanian Dove", "Inonia", "Heavenly Drummer" - which were completely imbued with a sense of a change in life, but this was far from changing his status and made him famous. His freedom-loving impulses only attracted the gendarmes to his speeches. Significantly, his fate was influenced by a completely different circumstance - acquaintance with Anatoly Mariengof and flirting with new modernist trends. Yesenin's Imagism is a description of the patriarchal way of life of "poor peasants" who have lost the ability to fight for their own independence ("Keys of Mary" 1919). However, the outrageous village boy in a shirt, belted with a red sash, begins to annoy the public. And a year later, in his work, the image of a drunkard, a hooligan and a brawler, who is surrounded by "rabble" ("Confession of a Hooligan"), appears. This motive was met by the inhabitants of the capital with approval and enthusiasm. The poet understood where the keys to success lie, and began to actively develop his new image.
Yesenin's further "success story" was based on his scandalous behavior, stormy romances, high-profile breaks, poetry of self-destruction and persecution of Soviet power. The outcome is clear - a murder staged as a suicide on December 28, 1925.
Poetry collections
The first collection of poetry by Sergei Yesenin was published in 1916. "Radunitsa" has become a kind of personification of the relationship of sweat to the homeland. Critics said that "his entire collection bears the stamp of captivating youthful spontaneity ... He sings his sonorous songs easily, simply, like a lark sings." The main image is the peasant soul, which, despite its “thoughtfulness”, is endowed with “rainbow light”. A feature is also the fact that Imagism is present here in the role of searching for new lyricism and fundamentally new forms of versification. Yesenin conceived a new "literary style". Next came:
- "Dove" 1920
- "Poems of a brawler" 1926
- "Moscow tavern" 1924
- "The Love of a Hooligan" 1924
- "Persian motives" 1925
Each collection of poetry by Sergei Yesenin differs from the previous one in mood, motives, muses and main themes, but they all make up one concept of creativity. The focus is on the open Russian soul, undergoing changes in the process of changing places and times. At first she is pure, immaculate, young and natural, then spoiled by the city, intoxicated and unrestrained, and in the finale she is disappointed, ruined and lonely.
Art world
Yesenin's world consists of many overlapping concepts: nature, love, happiness, pain, friendship and, of course, the Motherland. In order to understand the artistic world of the poet, it is enough to turn to the lyrical content of his poems.
Main topics
Themes of Yesenin's lyrics:
- Happiness(search, essence, loss of happiness). In 1918, Sergei Yesenin published the poem "Here it is stupid happiness." In it, he recalls his carefree childhood, where happiness seemed to him something distant, but at the same time close. “Stupid, sweet happiness, fresh rosy cheeks,” the author writes, thinking about the long gone irretrievable days that he spent in his native and beloved village. However, do not forget that this topic was not always associated with the native land, it was also the personification of love. So, for example, in the poem “Shagane you are mine, Shagane! ..” he speaks of his love for a young girl who gives him harmony.
- Women(love, separation, loneliness, passion, satiety, fascination with the muse). He thinks about parting, and about longing, and even about joy, consonant with his own sadness. Despite the fact that Yesenin was popular with the opposite sex, this did not prevent him from adding a share of tragedy to his lyrical lines. For example, it will be enough to take the collection "Moscow Tavern", which included such a cycle as "The Love of a Hooligan", where the Beautiful Lady is not happiness, but misfortune. Her eyes are a "golden pool". His love poems are a cry for help from a person who needs real feelings, and not a semblance of sensuality and passion. That is why "Yesenin's love" is more of a pain than a flight. Here's another .
- motherland(admiration for beauty, devotion, the fate of the country, the historical path). For Yesenin, the native land is the best embodiment of love. For example, in the work "Rus" he confesses to her his lofty feelings, as if he had a lady of the heart in front of him, and not an abstract image of the fatherland.
- Nature(the beauty of the landscape, the description of the seasons). For example, in the poem "White Birch ..." both the tree itself and its white color are described in detail, which is associated with instability, as well as with the symbolic meaning of death. Examples of Yesenin's poems about nature are listed.
- Village. For example, in the poem “The Village”, the hut is something metaphysical: it is both prosperity and a “well-fed world”, but only in comparison with peasant huts, which differ from the above in their “musty” forms - this is a clear allegory between the authorities and the common people.
- Revolution, war, new power. It is enough to turn to one of the best works of the poet - the poem "" (1925): here are the events of 1917, and Yesenin's personal attitude to this tragic time, which develops into a kind of warning to the "coming future." The author compares the fate of the country with the fate of the people, while they undoubtedly affect each person individually - that is why the poet so vividly describes each character with his "common vocabulary". He miraculously foresaw the tragedy of 1933, when the "farmer" turned into a famine.
Main motives
The main motives of Yesenin's lyrics are passion, self-destruction, remorse and worries for the fate of the fatherland. In the latest collections, more and more often, elevated feelings are replaced by a drunken frenzy, disappointment and an end to the unfulfilled. The author becomes an inveterate drunkard, beats his wives and loses them, gets even more upset, and plunges even deeper into the darkness of his own soul, where vices are hidden. Therefore, in his work one can catch Baudelaire motifs: the beauty of death and the poetry of spiritual and physical degradation. Love, which was present in almost every work, was embodied in different meanings - suffering, despair, longing, attraction, etc.
Although not a long, but eventful life of the “last poet of the village” embraced a change of ideals in Russia - this, for example, can be traced in the poem “Return to the Motherland”: “And now the sister breeds, opening, like the Bible, pot-bellied “Capital”.
Language and style
If Yesenin's style is a little chaotic and isolated from the notion of "poetic composition" familiar to readers, then the language is understandable and quite simple. As a measure, the author chose dolniki - the oldest form that existed even before the advent of the syllabo-tonic system of versification. The poet's vocabulary is colored with dialectisms, vernaculars, archaisms and typical colloquial fragments of speech like interjections. Widely known.
The vernacular that Sergei Yesenin uses in his poems is rather a feature of his artistic design and, of course, a sign of respect for his origin. Do not forget that Yesenin's childhood took place in Konstantinovo, and the future poet believed that it was the dialect of the "common people" that was the soul and heart of all of Russia.
The image of Yesenin in the lyrics
Sergei Yesenin lived in a very difficult time: then the revolutionary events of 1905-1917 broke out, the civil war began. These factors undoubtedly had a huge impact on the entire work of the poet, as well as on his "lyrical hero".
The image of Yesenin is the best qualities of the poet, displayed in his poems. For example, his patriotism is indicative in the poem "Poet":
That poet, who destroys enemies,
Whose native truth is the mother,
Who loves people like brothers
And I'm ready to suffer for them.
In addition, he has a special "love purity", which can be traced in the "Love of a Hooligan" cycle. There he confesses his lofty feelings to his muses, speaks of the diverse palette of human emotions. In the lyrics, Yesenin often appears as a gentle and underestimated admirer, to whom love is cruel. The lyrical hero describes the woman with enthusiastic remarks, flowery epithets and subtle comparisons. He is often guilty and theatrically downplays the effect he has had on the lady. Insulting himself, he is at the same time proud of his drunken prowess, broken fate and strong nature. Humiliating himself, he sought to give the impression of a gentleman misunderstood and deceived in the best of feelings. However, in life, he himself brought his passions to a complete break, beating, cheating and getting drunk. He often initiated the breakup, but the lyrics mentioned only that he was cruelly deceived in his expectations and upset. An example is the famous "". In a word, the poet clearly idealized himself and even mystified his biography, attributing mature works to the early period of creativity, so that everyone would think that he was phenomenally gifted from childhood. You can find other equally interesting facts about the poet.
If at first Yesenin accepted the revolution, given his peasant origin, then later he rejected the "New Russia". In the RSFSR, he felt like a foreigner. In the countryside, with the advent of the Bolsheviks, it only got worse, strict censorship appeared, and more and more often the authorities began to regulate the interests of art. Therefore, the lyrical hero eventually acquires sarcastic intonations and bile notes.
Author's epithets, metaphors, comparisons
Yesenin's words are a special artistic composition, where the main role is played by the presence of the author's metaphors, personifications and phraseological units, which give the poems a special stylistic coloring.
So, for example, in the poem “Quietly in the juniper thicket”, Yesenin uses a metaphorical statement:
Quietly in the thicket of juniper along the cliff,
Autumn - a red mare - scratches her mane.
In the well-known work “Letter to a Woman”, he presented to the public a detailed metaphor the length of a poem. Russia becomes a ship, revolutionary moods become a pitcher, a hold becomes a tavern, the Bolshevik Party becomes a helmsman. The poet himself compares himself to a horse driven in soap and spurred by a brave rider - a time that was rapidly changing and demanded the impossible from the creator. In the same place, he predicts for himself the role of a fellow traveler of the new government.
Features of poetry
Yesenin's features as a poet lie in the close connection of his poetry with folklore and folk traditions. The author was not shy in expressions, actively used elements of colloquial speech, showing the city the exotic outskirts, where the capital's writers did not even look. With this coloring, he conquered the captious public, which found national identity in his work.
Yesenin stood apart, never joining any of the modernist movements. His passion for Imagism was brief, he soon found his own way, thanks to which he was remembered by people. If only a few lovers of belles-lettres have heard about some kind of "Imagism", then Sergei Yesenin is still known from school.
The songs of his authorship have become truly popular, many famous performers still sing them, and these compositions become hits. The secret of their popularity and relevance is that the poet himself was the owner of a broad and controversial Russian soul, which he sang in a clear and sonorous word.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!"Sergey Yesenin. Personality. Creation. Epoch"
Sergei Yesenin was born on September 21 (October 3, according to a new style) in 1895 in the village of Konstantinov, Ryazan province, and lived only thirty years. But the trace left by him in Soviet poetry. So deep that neither the efforts of some deaf and blind of his contemporaries, nor the subsequent decades, in which distrust and prejudice towards the poet is palpable, have erased it. His poetry is always alive in the soul and in the memory of our people, because it is rooted in the thickness of people's life.
A faithful and loving son of a multi-million peasant Russia, Yesenin lived by her faith, feelings and hopes. Both the strength and weakness of the Russian peasantry were reflected in the work of the poet, who found himself at the turn of two eras - the old and the new. The spiritual image of the poet took shape under the influence of the revolution of 1905, the February revolution of 1917. The complexity and inconsistency of Yesenin's work can only be explained by the difficult circumstances of the historical period in which he lived. Attempts to understand and explain Yesenin outside of this connection are obviously doomed to failure.
Yesenin cannot be represented as a pure lyricist, who was not touched by time and was not interested in the era. The well-known saying can be applied to his work that if the world splits in half, then the crack passes through the heart of the poet.
Difficult, painful, difficult was Yesenin's path to a new life; this is one of the most dramatic pages in the history of Soviet literature. But despite all the falls and disruptions, the poet followed this path, because the main feeling that possessed him never died in him - the feeling of an indissoluble spiritual connection with his people.
On the example of several works by Yesenin, I will try to reveal and understand those feelings that completely captured the poet, in different time dimensions; a poet looking for his way in the poetic world of that time.
In Yesenin's early work, and even somewhat later, the poet resorts to religious images instilled by his grandfather from early childhood.
In his young head there is an incredible confusion of read and misunderstood books. He ranks Christ and Buddha among the "geniuses", and the poets of that time - judge for yourself:
At that time, Belinsky in his letter called him the apostle of ignorance. Yesenin's immaturity, the confusion of his impressions, the lack of knowledge were reflected in the haste of his judgments. He believed that Pushkin was a cynic; Lermontov, Gogol - rude and ignorant; Nekrasov is a hypocrite.
This is how an early poet appears before me, who did not consider himself a poet, but was a searching and doubting young man, who was left to himself from childhood, who did not have a person who would become an adviser and mentor for him.
His early work, I can’t say that it was successful, can be associated with entering the Shanyavsky People’s University and joining the Surikov Circle. These two events gave rise to new thoughts and moods in Yesenin. Such poems are born as “Knock down my chains, throw off the fetters”, “Poet” - the poet of enemies who destroys ......, which I think help to understand the turmoil of that difficult time - the revolution of 1905, the plight of the simple Russian people - "Blacksmith" - Forge, blacksmith, strike with a blow ...
But Yesenin did not become a conscious revolutionary, being in the "Surikov Circle" was only the next stage in the round of his work. He did not become a revolutionary, like most artists, musicians, poets of that time, he was not interested, I think that in this way, joining such circles, he simply escaped from the loneliness that pursued him.
So, Yesenin, after a long search for himself, not feeling like an urban, returns to poetry about rural nature. He was always attracted by freedom-loving and independent natures, Russian prowess and breadth of soul, as well as historical themes.
And Yesenin's first printed poems are poems about nature - "Birch", "Bird cherry", "Powder".
In his poem "Song of Evpatiy Kolovrat" (about Batu Khan and the ruin of Ryazan), "Maria the Posadnitsa" (Novgorod's struggle against Moscow) and in the poem "Us" (about Stepan Razin's comrade-in-arms) - the motif of Russian history, which he knew and loved.
In my opinion, this is how Yesenin gradually developed as a lyric poet and folklore storyteller who sympathizes with his heroes.
A great influence on the work of Yesenin was made by the work of Blok. Their meeting took place and Blok noted Yesenin's poems as fresh, clean, vociferous and verbose. And I agree with Blok, since Yesenin's poems and poems have been familiar to me since early childhood.
Yesenin himself noted that Blok's poems taught him "lyricism", this is evidenced by the poem "Hewn roads sang", where he imitated the great poet.
The poet was twenty years old when the first book of his poems appeared - the collection "Radunitsa". The victory of real life over religious legends.
The World War of 1915 left its imprints on Yesenin's work, but Yesenin's responses to the war did not contain social protest. He writes very calmly such poems as “O Russia, a quiet corner”, “Mother's Prayer”, “Bogatyr's whistle”, “Dare man”. Yesenin's poems of that time reflected the deplorable state of the village in tsarist Russia - "Goy, you are my dear Russia ...", "Spas". But love for the motherland was generated not only by sad pictures of the impoverished peasantry, but he saw it in another way: in joyful spring attire, with fragrant summer flowers and herbs, with bottomless blue skies, cheerful groves, with crimson sunsets and starry nights - this is evidenced by such verses as: “The valleys turned blue”, “Bird cherry waves its sleeve”, “Do not wander, do not crush in crimson bushes”.
The image of a person in communion with nature is complemented by Yesenin with another very noticeable feature - love for all living things: animals, birds, pets. With an extraordinary personality and pity, he writes poems: "Cow", "Song of the Dog" (after reading this poem, Gorky wrote: "I told him that in my opinion, he is the first in Russian literature to write so skillfully and with such sincere love about animals ).
Recalling his youth, Yesenin wrote in his autobiography: "Of the poets, I liked Lermontov and Koltsov the most." And he writes poems in structure reminiscent of Koltsov’s poems, in which bast shoes and torn caftans have firmly entered poetry: “My thoughts, thoughts”, “In the hut”, “Threshing”.
The poem "Oh Russia, flap your wings" was written shortly after the February Revolution, the illusion of hope for change was reflected in Yesenin's work.
I agree with the positive reviews of the “Radunitsa” by the famous literary critic P. Sakkulin, “People’s Golden Flower”, in which he was one of the first to point out that Yesenin’s work is in the “stream of artistic folklorism”, that in his poetry “the direct feeling of the peasant speaks , nature and the countryside enriched his language with marvelous colors. “For Yesenin, there is nothing more precious than the Motherland,” Sakkulin made the correct conclusion (“Bulletin of Europe”, 1916, No. 5, pp. 205, 208).
“The poetic creativity of the Russian people has not stopped: it has only taken on new forms,” he argued. So Yesenin's work has already served as a weighty argument in a serious literary dispute.
In responses to the February Revolution, the poet does not at all refer to any specific historical facts or life circumstances.
It can be argued that Yesenin, in his attitude to the revolution, shared the mood of the patriarchal part of the Russian peasantry, its passive strata, far from the idea of a conscious revolutionary struggle, faithful to the cherished laws of the countryside and the illusory dream that life would proceed in the same direction, but without the oppression of the landowners and violence of tsarist officials.
The October Revolution intensified the political struggle in the country.
Esenin's sketches for the poem "Anna Snegina", in which he tried to portray the sharp literary struggle caused by the revolution, are a clear evidence of Yesenin's position at that time:
"Retribution has reached rock,
The links of the ring crumbled.
Yesenin's position during the revolution can be judged by some facts of his biography. The poet D. Semenovsky recalled: “It is known that in response to the appeal of the Council of People's Commissars “The socialist fatherland is in danger”, written by V.I. Lenin in connection with the German offensive in 1918, Yesenin signed up for a combat squad. That time dictated its own approach to literature, and Yesenin, together with M. Gerasimov and S. Klychkov, wrote the text of the Cantata, which was performed at the opening of the memorial plaque - a monument to the foremost fighters of the October Revolution. The poet also wrote the poem "Heavenly Drummer" - this is a pathetic poem, faith in the victory of the revolution. In his poems, the theme of brotherhood and unity begins to sound, publicism, sloganism appear - “Whoever wants freedom and brotherhood, He does not care to die!”, “Long live the revolution On earth and in heaven!” So the revolutionary era broke into the verses of a soulful lyricist, introduced pathos and high enthusiasm into his work.
He even wrote the screenplay "Calling Dawns", in collaboration with Gerasimov, Klychkov and the writer Pavlovich, and took the most ardent part. N. Pavlovich recalls: “Yesenin could not help but see the shortcomings of our immature offspring, but he rewrites most of the clean copy of the script with his own hand, not renouncing it, wanting to bring it to print” (Almanac “Literary Ryazan”, book two, 1957. Here first published script for "Calling Dawns")
Yesenin took part in the classes of Proletkult, was keenly interested in the work of proletarian poets. And there was nothing unexpected in this, since the poets came from peasants who did not break ties with the countryside. But in Proletkult there was no unanimous opinion about him, and in a review of Yesenin's collections, published in one of the Proletkult magazines, it was said: “Yesenin's ideology is very definite: this is left-wing populism .... Yesenin cannot be called a proletarian poet. Nevertheless, it is so large and unique that even the proletariat cannot help but look closely at it.”
But proletarian journals also published opposite assessments of the poet's work: "completely unnecessary for the proletariat", "goes straight to the camp of reaction." Such an attitude towards Yesenin obviously doomed him to failure to get closer to Proletkult. And he, together with Konenkov and Klychkov, submitted an application to the Moscow Political Culture with a request to organize a section of peasant writers under him. But this desire to get closer to revolutionary art failed. The word "Bolshevik" was not for Yesenin only a means of poetic language, and he makes an attempt to join the Communist Party. But he was not accepted. Yesenin, like all other poets, was captured in the spirit of the times by the pathos of the revolution. Yesenin poet Duncan imangist
Now let's figure out what changes in Yesenin's work occurred in connection with the October Revolution?
The poet sought to touch upon issues vital to the Russian village, trying to realize the significance of the great historical turn in the fate of the Russian peasantry. However, his attempts are complicated by the lack of clarity of political views, helplessness in the face of difficult political questions, and above all in front of one of the most important - about the Russian peasantry and the proletarian revolution. Painful searches led him to rapprochement with the Socialist-Revolutionary circles. He sought political self-determination. And it was more difficult than many to find the right position for Yesenin, who was associated with the patriarchal village. He enters into "Scythianism" and is published in the newspaper "Znamya Truda" - the works "Oktoih", "Coming", "Inonia", "Rural Book of Hours". All of them were marked with religious symbols. The use of biblical symbolism is a very characteristic sign of the literature of the first years of the revolution. Biblical images, myths and parables were capacious in meaning and quite understandable to representatives of various strata.
But the poet is not worried about religious problems, but still the fate of the peasantry.
Gradually, he moved away from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and left the "Scythians", realizing that he did not follow the true path, noticing that he disagreed on the issue of the national characteristics of the Russian people.
The poet was looking for a new foothold, a new position in life, other means of artistic expression.
He joins the imaginists who robbed Yesenin of his glory, without giving anything of value in return, getting off with the rubbish of their political lines. They created the appearance of a poetic school, but in fact they were marked by all the signs of the lowest bohemia, as evidenced by their literary life and constant scandals for advertising. And it was the imangists who destroyed his marriage with Zinaida Nikolaevna Reich. Yesenin could never get rid of the thought that he had taken the wrong step by leaving his family. The destruction of the hearth entailed another disaster - the homelessness and homelessness of the poet. So the Imanzhist environment not only tried to mutilate the poetic talent of the poet, but also crippled his personal life. But the imangists were unable to subordinate the true talent of the poet to cold and prudent buffoonery. Yesenin did not lose his own poetic voice. Against the background of the monotonous verbal exercises of the imangists, Yesenin's poetry was distinguished by its bright originality. And V. Bryusov wrote: “The third prominent imangist, S. Yesenin, began as a “peasant” poet. From this period, he retained much more direct feeling than his associates .... Yesenin has clear images, a melodious verse and light rhythms.
Yesenin goes abroad. He turned to figurative and everyday symbolism and came to the conclusion that it was in it that one should look for the origins of true poetry. But the poet is possessed by sadness about the departing, and he feels attached to the past. The inability to clearly understand the present, to see the signs of the future, at times leads the poet to fatalism, and the word “rock” is increasingly heard in his poems -
Mysterious world, my ancient world,
You, like the wind, calmed down and sat down.
Here they squeezed the neck of the village
Stone arms of the highway.
So scared in the snow
There was a ringing horror.
Hello you my black doom
I'm going out to meet you!
In this poem, the poet compares himself to a hunted wolf surrounded by enemies. Painful thoughts haunt Yesenin, exhausting him, giving rise to an indifferent and indifferent attitude to life - “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry ....”
And being in torment and in inner withdrawal from the world of those ideas in which he lived, he writes - "There is no love for either the village or the city", "I left my native fields." Yesenin was in a state of imbalance, which tormented and caused unbearable pain in his heart. He became addicted to wine and scandals, experiencing a creative crisis - "Moscow Tavern", "They drink here again, fight and cry." In "Moscow tavern" - the traits of the poet's character are closely intertwined with his painful thoughts about the era, about the ways of Russia, there are undoubtedly echoes of how and what he lived then. The dissolute and depraved women of the "Moscow Tavern", to whom Yesenin refers, are not so much real faces as a reflection of the general atmosphere of that difficult time.
The terrible tavern life overwhelmed the poet, and I think this was due to his weak character, his inability to resist circumstances. Yesenin himself was aware of everything that was happening to him, called himself a "mischievous reveler", "bulldoom", "scandalist", "hooligan". Realizing his position, Yesenin was tormented by mental pain and bitterness, which caused him a whole theme - the theme of repentance: "Young years with hammered glory, I myself poisoned you with bitter poison." He was visited by deep doubts about the usefulness of what he writes.
October 3, 1921 Sergei Yesenin meets Isadora Duncan. Lunacharsky officially invited the dancer to open a school in Moscow, promising financial support. However, the promises of the Soviet government did not last long, Duncan was faced with a choice - to leave school and go to Europe or earn money by going on tour. And at that time she had another reason to stay in Russia - Sergei Yesenin. She is 43, a plump woman with short, dyed hair. He is 27, a golden-haired poet with an athletic build. A few days after they met, he moved things and moved to her himself, on Prechistenka, 20. 1922. - Yesenin and Duncan were married.
Surprisingly, with all her great desire to love and be loved, Isadora only once got married. And then, it turns out, by calculation - Yesenin was not otherwise allowed to go abroad with her. This marriage was strange for everyone around, if only because the spouses communicated through an interpreter, not understanding each other's language. 1922-1923 - Yesenin and Isadora make a long trip to Western Europe and the USA.
It is difficult to judge the true relationship of this couple. Yesenin was subject to frequent mood swings, sometimes something came over him, and he began to shout at Isadora, call her last words, beat her, at times he became thoughtfully gentle and very attentive. Abroad, Yesenin could not come to terms with the fact that he was perceived as the young husband of the great Isadora, this was also the cause of constant scandals. It couldn't go on like that for a long time. “I had a passion, a big passion. It lasted a whole year ... My God, what a blind man I was! .. Now I don’t feel anything for Duncan. The result of Yesenin's thoughts was a telegram: "I love another, married, happy." They were bred, since it was so easy to do in Russia at that time. .1923 - they broke up.
1924 - 1925 - Yesenin travels through the Caucasus. At the same time, the collection "Persian Motifs" was published, along with the poems "Departing Russia", "A Letter to a Woman", "A Letter to a Mother", "Stans".
The poet needed to make certain efforts to control himself, and he found them. He wrote the poem "The Black Man", filled with inexpressible inner pain. This poem was published after the death of the poet. This poem is Yesenin's conversation with a gloomy stranger who has terrible power over the poet. I believe that the reason for the appearance of this poem is a kind of premonition of the imminent death of the poet, since this is the most tragic work, his double, which has absorbed into its image what the poet himself considers disgusting and vile. Such was the attitude of the poet towards himself.
Yesenin's work is one of the brightest, deeply exciting pages in the history of Soviet literature. It occupies a prominent place in the artistic chronicle of the life of our country in the first years of the revolution. And we all know the truth that only a truly national art becomes a universal art.
The more time passes, the more obvious is the universal significance of Yesenin's poetry, with its ideas of humanism, love for all living things, this is poetry of kindness and warmth, understandable and close to the Russian heart, this is that atmosphere of sincerity, without which human communication is impossible.
The Georgian poet G. Leonidze wrote about Yesenin: “We loved him just because he sang “in his own motive and dialect”, expressing the “human feelings” that worried us all, because he was a truly national poet ”(newspaper“ Truth, 1965).
February 27, 1925 - Yesenin moves from Moscow to Leningrad and writes his last poem "Goodbye my friend, goodbye ...".
Goodbye my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined parting
Promises to meet in the future.
Goodbye, my friend, without a hand, without a word,
Do not be sad and do not sadness of the eyebrows, -
In this life, dying is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.
That's the country!
What the hell am I
Shouted that I am friendly with the people?
My poetry is no longer needed here
And I don't even need one here.
But his sense of belonging to the fate of Russia, his sense of love and responsibility for her, make Yesenin fight to the end. Yesenin passed away in 1925 at the Angleterre Hotel, not having time to see how his beloved homeland was voluntarily collectivized. No wonder Gorky wrote: "You can't hide Sergei Yesenin, you can't erase it from our reality, he expressed the groan and cry of many hundreds of thousands, he is a bright and dramatic symbol of Russia."
Every student understands the meaning of Yesenin's name in Russian literature. It is no coincidence that it is rated so highly, because the poet had a significant impact on the development of Russian culture and morality. During his career, Sergei managed to create a unique poetic fund that covers many topics related to the life of ordinary people. His lines have long been cited, and his works are actively studied in schools and other educational institutions, as an example of the art of the Russian style. Masterpieces of poetic skill are thoroughly saturated with incredible sincerity and passionate feelings that tend to be transmitted to the reader.
The poetry of Sergei Yesenin is imbued with a sense of patriotism and love for his homeland. He describes the beauty of Russian nature and awakens in the souls of people the hidden strings of awareness of belonging to a great people. He does not get tired of describing the natural beauty of his lands and singing respectful feelings for the successes of the working class. Yesenin's poems about nature can never be confused with the poems of other authors. He describes her so subtly and so accurately. Sergey put in the first place the primitiveness of life and its everyday moments, describing them gently with a soul full of spirituality and kindness.
The words that fly from the poet's lips are masterpieces each separately, and together they create an incredible composition imbued with love for their native lands. Reading skillfully composed poems, the layman involuntarily experiences feelings of empathy and responsibility to the heroes of the works. Yesenin had an amazing gift to revive the simplest scenes from a person's everyday life and turn them into something meaningful and really important.
Sergei always showed a special love for animals, which is typical for his poetry. The experiences of animals are conveyed with truly human warmth, which is given in every line of the reporting works. Yesenin endows animals with human feelings and on the pages of books they tend to feel sad, experience joy and other emotions characteristic of a person. It does not matter at all who represents the world of animals, in any poem they have a special drama and genuine sincerity. Plus, the poet emphasizes the full depth of suffering of our smaller brothers through the fault of a person who does not always deal with them with dignity.
Among other things, the theme of maternal love has a rather great influence on the poet's work. This is not surprising, given that Yesenin attaches great importance to this aspect.
Sergey's creativity does not lie on the surface and is far from accessible to every layman, because the meaning of the poems is revealed only as a result of hard mental work. His style cannot be confused with anything else, because the penetration resonates with many generations of readers. Yesenin possessed the soul of a Russian free man and zealously defending the essence of his native people, which was reflected in his work.
The lyric of an incredibly broad soul has gained immense popularity, mixing sincerity and relevance in the vessels of poetry, which is not lost over time.
S.A. Yesenin was born on September 21 (October 3), 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province, into a peasant family. He grew up in a religious family of his grandfather, an Old Believer. He began writing poetry at the age of 8. In 1912-1915. studied in Moscow at the Shanyavsky People's University and worked as a proofreader. Since 1914, Yesenin began to publish in the children's publications Protalinka, Mirok, Nov, etc. In the spring of 1915, he went to Petrograd and met there with A.A. Blok, S.M. Gorodetsky and other metropolitan poets, met publishers. Since that time, Yesenin has become a professional poet.
At the beginning of 1916, Yesenin's first collection of poetry, Radunitsa, was published, highly appreciated by critics, who drew attention to the original talent of the young poet. Soon he was drafted into the army, until the February Revolution of 1917 he served as an orderly on a military train. “During the years of the revolution he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias,” he later explained his attitude to what was happening in the country.
In 1919, Yesenin moved to Moscow and joined the literary group of Imagist poets. First half of the 1920s - the most productive period of Yesenin's work. The lyrical collections Treryadnitsa (1920), Confessions of a Hooligan (1921), Tavern Moscow (1924), Poems (1924), Persian Motives (1925), On Russia and the Revolution ( 1925) and the poems Mare Ships (1920), Sorokoust (1920), Song of the Great Campaign (1924), Return to the Homeland (1924), Soviet Russia (1924), Homeless Russia (1924), Departing Russia (1924), Lenin (1924-25), Poem about 36 (1925), Anna Snegina (1925), Black Man (published in 1926); dramatic poems "Pugachev" (1922), "Country of Scoundrels" (1924-1926). In 1922-1923. Yesenin made a long journey to Europe and the USA.
early lyrics
Sergei Yesenin (unlike, for example, Blok) was not inclined to divide his creative path into any stages. Yesenin's poetry is distinguished by a high degree of integrity. Everything in it is about Russia. “My lyrics are alive with one big love, love for the motherland. The feeling of the motherland is the main thing in my work,” the poet said. Yesenin brought Russian nature to poetry with all its distances and colors - "amazing in their beauty." But his contribution to Russian literature is connected not so much with the novelty of the subject (landscape lyrics are the main theme of all poetry of the 19th century), but with the ability to see nature from the inside of the peasant world. In Yesenin's poems, everything turns into the gold of poetry: soot over the damper, and clucking chickens, and curly puppies (the poem "In the hut"). And the poet sees the low-key Central Russian landscape as follows:
Beloved edge! Dreaming of the heart
Stacks of the sun in the waters of the womb,
I would like to get lost
In the greens of your bells.
Goy you, my dear Russia,
Huts - in the robes of the image ...
See no end and end
Only blue sucks eyes.
Peasant Russia is the central image of Yesenin's first collections "Radunitsa" (1916) and "Dove" (1918). The titles of both books are indicative. Radunitsa is a day of commemoration of the dead, usually the first Monday after Easter. The word itself means "brilliant", "enlightened". So called in Russia and the first spring days. Blue, blue - constant epithets of Yesenin's Russia:
Again in front of me is a blue field.
The puddles of the sun sway the ruddy face.
Unsteady water freezes the blue in the eyes ...
The specific, “individual” use of color is a phenomenon characteristic of all poetry in the early 20th century. If Blok has "blue" - the color of separation, sadness, the unattainability of happiness, then in Yesenin's poetry it is almost always fixed in detail, more concrete. The semantic associations of "blue" color definitions in Yesenin are youth, fullness of bright feelings, tenderness.
"The charm and mystery of Yesenin's Russia - in the quietly radiant absence" (L. Anninsky). The key images of early poetry are ringing and sleep (drowsiness, fog, haze). Yesenin's Russia is the heavenly city of Kitezh. She quietly dozes to the sound of bells "on the foggy shore":
Milky smoke shakes the wind of the village,
But there is no wind, there is only a slight ringing.
And Russia slumbers in its merry anguish,
Clutching your hands in the yellow steep slope.
("Dove").
And even though your fog drives away
The stream of winds blowing with wings,
But all of you are myrrh and Lebanese
Magi, mysteriously sorcerers.
(“I’m weaving a wreath for you alone ...”).
Of course, Yesenin's Russia, like the Russia of Tyutchev, Nekrasov, Blok, is just a poetic myth. For the young Yesenin, she is the embodiment of paradise. However, gradually this image becomes more complicated. Noteworthy are the echoes of Yesenin's image of Russia with Blok's Russia. Both poets, next to "Russia-mystery", "bright wife" - another, "googly mother Russia", walking, impoverished and homeless:
Is it my side, side,
Hot lane...
Only the forest, yes salting,
Yes, the river scythe ...
The puddle shines like tin.
Sad song, you are Russian pain.
But, in spite of everything, the feelings of the lyrical hero are unchanged: “I weave a wreath for you alone, / I sprinkle a gray stitch with flowers” and “... not to love you, not to believe - / I can’t learn.”
In the poem "Beyond the dark strand of copses..." the lyrical hero directly identifies himself with his homeland:
And you, like me, in a sad need,
Forgetting who is your friend and enemy,
You miss the pink sky
And dove clouds.
These are very revealing lines. Two Russias - "earthly" and "heavenly" - coexist in the soul of the poet, although his longing is for blue Russia, the heavenly city of Kitezh. Yesenin's lyrical hero is "an ever-wandering wanderer", "leaving into the azure". And the homeland is loved by mortal love because it is abandoned. The motif of the abandoned father's house is one of the leading ones in Yesenin's lyrics.
The following are usually distinguished as specific features of the lyrical hero of Yesenin's poetry:
The maximum proximity of the "biography of the hero" to the biography of the author (autobiographical motives are at the heart of most of Yesenin's poems);
The naturalness of the tone, the confessional openness of the lyrical hero (“poems are a letter from Yesenin,” Yu. Tynyanov determined this feature);
Feeling by the hero of a blood, mortal connection with all living things in the world (“I understand the verb of the earth”);
The hero's openness to the world, his grateful acceptance, but at the same time - longing for "foreign fields" and for "the one that is not in this world."
Post-October lyrics
"The last poet of the village". Despite the extraordinary integrity of Yesenin's artistic world, throughout the poet's career, the style of his "verbal gait" changed. “During the years of the revolution he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias,” the poet wrote in his autobiography (“About Me”, 1925). The “peasant deviation” consisted in the fact that Yesenin, like other poets who wrote about the peasantry (N. Klyuev, P. Oreshin, S. Klychkov), expected the liberation of the peasants from the revolution, the transformation of Russia into a great Peasant Republic - the blessed country of Bread and Milk. In 1917-1919. Yesenin, almost ceasing to write lyrics, creates a cycle of revolutionary poems: "Jordanian Dove", "Heavenly Drummer", "Inonia", etc. - "The New Testament of the New Peasant Era". However, it soon became clear that Yesenin's expectations were not justified. In the spring of 1920 in Konstantinov (trips home were usually “fruitful” for lyrics), Yesenin wrote a single poem - “I am the last poet of the village ...”:
I am the last poet of the village
The boardwalk bridge is modest in songs.
Behind the farewell mass
Birch trees stinging with leaves.
If we didn’t know for sure that the poem was written in early spring, when the leaves on the trees are barely pecking, if it weren’t known for certain that it was written in Konstantinov, where there are no bridges, it could well be mistaken for a sketch from nature. But this is not a landscape, but an image of farewell created by means of landscape painting with both the dying - wooden - village, and with its last poet - still alive, but already feeling that his time has passed:
Not alive, alien palms,
These songs will not live with you!
Only there will be ears-horses
About the owner of the old grieve.
The wind will suck their neighing
Funeral dance.
Soon, soon wooden clock
My final hour will wheeze!
Yesenin seems to order a memorial service for the doomed world dear to his heart, he “celebrates” it alone, and does it in the very Temple where worship can be performed at any hour and in any place - in the temple of Nature. Through the “woody” figurative sign, traditional for his poetry (“everything from a tree - this is the religion of the thought of our people,” the poet believed), he expresses his deepest pain. This is pain from the death of that life, where everything is connected with the "tree", and most importantly - from the extinction of the art born of this "religion". Therefore, the "modest" bridge, which the "last poet of the village" builds in songs, is a "plank", well-coordinated wooden bridge. Therefore, the wheezing of the “wooden” clock of the moon becomes a sign of death. Therefore, the servants of the temple are trees, "incensing" with autumn foliage. And even the candle, necessary in the rite of the memorial action, like everything that rallied in the doomed protest against the inanimate palms of the iron guest, is a living candle, created from bodily wax:
Burn with golden flame
Candle made of body wax
And the moon clock is wooden
My twelfth hour will croak.
Yesenin became the "last poet" not only of the village, but of all the outgoing Russia, that Russia, the myth of which has existed for centuries. “I am very sad now, history is going through a difficult era of killing the individual as a living person” (from Yesenin’s letter, August 1920).
Dear, dear, funny fool
Well, where is he, where is he chasing?
Doesn't he know that living horses
Did the steel cavalry win?
Only I, as a psalmist, sing
Hallelujah over the native country.
("Sorokoust", 1920)
The year 1920 is a turning point in Yesenin's work. The motives of the abandoned house are complicated by the conflict “Soviet Russia” - “Russia is leaving”. The poet himself is in the “narrow gap” between them: “The language of fellow citizens has become like a stranger to me. In my own country, I am like a foreigner.”
Literary critic Alla Marchenko called the hero of Yesenin's lyrics of recent years "talking Yesenin." Poems 1924-1925 amazingly vociferous. The poet himself does not know the answer to the question “where does the fate of events take us?”, Therefore, he gives the right to vote to many of his heroes - mother, grandfather, sisters, countrymen:
I'm listening to. I look in memory
What the peasant gossip about.
“With Soviet power, we live according to our guts ...
Now it would be calico ... Yes, a few nails ... "
How little these bradachs need,
Whose life is in solid potatoes and bread.
("Rus leaving").
Love lyrics. “A blue fire swept, / The native distances were forgotten. / For the first time I sang about love, / For the first time I refuse to scandal. These are the lines of a famous poem from the Love of a Hooligan cycle (1923). Indeed, in Yesenin's early work (until the early 1920s), love poems were rare. Indicative of his poetic world is the poem of 1916 "Do not wander, do not crush in the crimson bushes ...". Here, the beloved is inseparable from the natural environment: she has a “sheaf of oatmeal hair” and “eye grains”: “With scarlet berry juice on the skin, / Tender, beautiful was / You look like a pink sunset / And, like snow, radiant and bright. The departed beloved, who was “a song and a dream”, did not disappear without a trace - she disappeared into the world around her:
The grains of your eyes crumbled, withered,
The thin name melted like a sound,
But remained in the folds of a crumpled shawl
The smell of honey from innocent hands.
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Sergei Yesenin lived a short life (1895-1925), but he is alive in the memory and consciousness of the people. His poetry has become an integral part of the spiritual culture of the nation. Yesenin belongs to those artists whose works are characterized by great simplicity. They are clear to any reader. The poet's poems enter the soul, merge with a feeling of love for the motherland. Perhaps it is this feeling of indissoluble connection with the native land that is the essence of Yesenin's poetic world. Russia is in the heart of the poet, and that is why this declaration of love for his native land is so piercing and loud! One of the successors of the Yesenin tradition in modern poetry, Nikolai Rubtsov, conveyed this quality of Yesenin's work in precise and expressive lines:
Versts of all the shaken earth,
All earthly shrines and bonds
As if the nervous system entered
In the waywardness of Yesenin's muse!
Yesenin was born in the Ryazan region, in the village of Konstantinovo, freely spread among wide fields on the steep bank of the Oka. But the poet left the Ryazan village very young, then lived in Moscow, and in St. Petersburg, and abroad, came to his native village from time to time as a guest.
Childhood memory - "I was born with songs in a grassy blanket" - nourished the roots of his poetry and life itself. In one of his autobiographies, the poet notes that he had "a childhood like that of all rural children." It left an indelible mark on his work.
How good
that I saved you
All the feelings of childhood.
Yesenin was destined to spend most of his life in the city, only he visited endlessly expensive places where he spent his childhood and youth. The soul remained forever attached to the father's house, native family, beloved Ryazan expanses. Russian nature, the peasant way of life, folk art, great Russian literature - these are the true sources of his poetry. It was the separation from his native land that gave his poems about her that warmth of memories that distinguishes them. In the very descriptions of nature, the poet has that measure of detachment, which allows this beauty to be seen and felt more sharply.
For a poet, his native village in Russia is something unified, his homeland, especially in his early work, is, first of all, his native land, his native village, something that later, at the end of the 20th century, literary critics defined as the concept of "small homeland ". With the lyrical tendency inherent in S. Yesenin to animate all living things, everything around him, he also addresses Russia as a person close to him:
Oh, you, Russia, my meek homeland,
Only for you I save love ...
Sometimes the poet's poems take on a note of aching sadness, a feeling of restlessness arises in them, their lyrical hero is a wanderer who left his native hut, rejected and forgotten by everyone. And the only thing that remains unchanged, that preserves the eternal value, is nature and Russia:
And the month will swim and swim,
Dropping oars across the lakes...
And Russia will also live,
Dance and cry at the fence.
It is the folk ideas about beauty and goodness that are embodied in Yesenin's work. In his poems, poetry accompanies man in everything - in hard peasant labor and in cheerful village festivities.
Oh arable land, arable land, arable land,
Kolomna sadness,
Yesterday in my heart
And Russia shines in the heart .
Nature itself is the center of beauty. Yesenin drew poetry from this pantry. And it is difficult to name another poet whose poetic perception would be so directly and deeply connected with the world of native nature:
I wander through the first snow,
In the heart are lilies of the valley of flashing forces.
Evening blue candle star
He lit up my road.
Man and nature are merged in the attitude of the poet. They have a common life and a common destiny. Nature in Yesenin's lyrics is really alive, endowed with reason and feeling, capable of responding to the pains and joys of a person.
Yesenin's poetic vision is concrete, therefore his poems are so visible, sonorous and multicolored. The poet creates a harmonious world where everything is coordinated and has its place:
Quietly, squatting, in the patches of dawn
They listen to the tale of the old mower...
Such vivid imagery can only be born from a deep and true feeling. Yesenin searched and found unexpected images, his amazing comparisons and metaphors came, as a rule, from everyday peasant life: “a frosty evening, like a wolf, a dark storm”; “birch milk is pouring across the plain”; "dawn with a dewy hand of coolness knocks down the apples of dawn."
The image was never an end in itself for him. Reflecting on the poets who sinned with form-creation, he accurately identified the source of their delusions: “My brethren do not have a sense of homeland in the entire broad sense of the word, therefore everything is inconsistent with them.”
Yesenin was endowed, as noted by almost all who wrote about him, with an exceptional, phenomenal impressionability. He discovered the beautiful in the usual, spiritualized the everyday with his word:
Weaved out on the lake the scarlet light of dawn.
Capercaillie are crying on the forest with bells .
And this same increased impressionability did not allow him to pass by someone else's grief, endowed his Muse with responsiveness, which really extended to all living things:
They did not give the mother a son, The first joy is not for the future. And on the stake under the aspen, the breeze ruffled the skin .
Sometimes his poetic revelations, the accuracy of his vision, seem like a miracle born not of man, but of nature itself. It is no coincidence that M. Gorky in his essay on Yesenin emphasized precisely this idea: “Yesenin is not so much a person as an organ created by nature exclusively for poetry, to express the inexhaustible“ sadness of the fields ”, love for all living things in the world and mercy, which - more than anything else - deserved by man.
Yes, the poet's natural gift is enormous. But it would not be entirely fair to consider Yesenin a kind of careless village shepherd singing on the flute, Lel. By the way, the poet himself has always been uncomfortable with such an interpretation of his work. Behind each of his poetic insights was a serious literary work. Yesenin did not come to the city as a naive "natural person". He knew classical literature well, he traced his poetic pedigree from A. Koltsov. And in his final autobiography (October 1925) he emphasized the great importance of Pushkin for him: “In terms of formal development, now I am drawn more and more to Pushkin.” Interest in Russian classics woke up in Yesenin while still studying at the Spas-Klepikovskaya teacher's school. And later in Moscow, in the classroom at the Shanyavsky People's University, he continued its in-depth study. The poet especially loved Gogol. And just like the author of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, Yesenin not only organically felt and remembered the fairy tales, songs, ditties he heard in childhood, but also thoughtfully studied oral folk art. The poet studied with the people, in folklore he saw the “nodal ties” of the figurative expression of the world.
It is known that Yesenin collected and recorded four thousand ditties. Already it was a peculiar, but, undoubtedly, a living and serious poetic school. Yesenin was not alone in his interest in this form of folk art. At that time, the ditty was actively included in the works of Blok, Mayakovsky, D. Poor. In 1918, 107 ditties recorded by Yesenin appeared on the pages of the Moscow newspaper Voice of the Working Peasantry. And in 1920 he published the book "Keys of Mary" - an interpretation of the worldview and creativity of the people.
Already in the first youthful poems that appeared in print in January 1914, Yesenin is an outstanding poet, his poetic feeling is so rich and fresh, his figurative vision is so precise and expressive! But his life in great Russian literature began, perhaps, on March 9, 1915, after a significant meeting with A. Blok. Yesenin, an aspiring poet, did not accidentally come to Blok. He knew well the work of his older contemporary and felt a certain poetic affinity with him. Subsequently, comprehending his path in art, Yesenin accurately outlined the range of his interests and poetic origins: “Of the contemporary poets, I liked Blok, Bely and Klyuev the most. Bely gave me a lot in terms of form, while Blok and Klyuev taught me lyricism.” Blok instantly felt the original sonorous gift of the “young Ryazan guy” and spoke to him as to a fellow writer. He did not teach and instruct, but invited Yesenin to think about creativity, as if foreseeing the difficult poetic fate of the young poet: “... I think that your path may not be short, and in order not to stray from it, you must not hurry up, don't be nervous. Sooner or later, you will have to give an answer for your every step, and it is difficult to walk now, in literature, perhaps, the most difficult thing. Blok does for Yesenin, perhaps, the most necessary thing for him at that moment: it helps to strengthen the feeling of self-confidence and brings closer, through letters of recommendation to magazines, the meeting of Yesenin's poems with his reader.
Readers of Petrograd magazines, in which Yesenin's poems began to appear one after another, were literally stunned by the sincerity of his poetry. A rush to people, closeness to nature, love for the Motherland, poetization of simple human feelings - these moods and thoughts, voiced in Yesenin's poems, captivated contemporaries. Before the revolution, only one book of the poet was published - "Radunitsa" (1916), but Yesenin's fame was enormous. Contemporaries were waiting for his new poems, they treated them as an unparalleled document of life, addressed and addressed directly to each reader. The poet rapidly reduced the distance between the author, the lyrical hero and the reader. Giving himself entirely to the reader's judgment, sharing his innermost feelings, he could rightfully write later: "... as for the rest of the biographical information, they are in my poems." The poetry of Sergei Yesenin is deeply patriotic. Already in the first verses, with merciless sincerity, he sang the high civic love for the Motherland:
If the holy army shouts:
"Throw you Russia, live in paradise!"
I will say: “There is no need for paradise,
Give me my country."
Motherland, in essence, is the main human and creative theme of the poet. With all the inevitability, Yesenin's filial love for the world around him turns into a great love for the Motherland, its past and present. The poetic perception of the Motherland by the poet is as concrete and direct as his depiction of nature. First of all, this is peasant Russia, the width of the Ryazan fields, fellow villagers, relatives. The joy of communicating with your beloved land does not obscure the pictures of the difficult peasant life.
The drought drowned out the sowing,
Rye dries, and oats do not sprout,
At a prayer service with banners girls
Stripes dragged in butts.
A thorough knowledge of peasant life, the aspirations of rural workers makes Yesenin a singer of the people, of Russia. With all his heart, he wants the life of the peasants to become more joyful and happy. In pre-revolutionary Russia, the poet cannot but see the bleak downtroddenness and deprivation of the village (“You are my abandoned land, you are my wasteland”). The poet angrily does not accept the First World War, which brings new troubles to the people. But, perhaps, the feeling of hopelessness of what is happening depresses the compassionate soul most of all:
And Russia will still live,
Dance and cry at the fence.
A sharp social vision allows Yesenin to perceive the February Revolution in an expanded historical perspective. He calls for a further and deeper renewal of the country in his very first poetic response after February 1917:
O Russia, flap your wings, Put up a different support!
With particular enthusiasm, in The Heavenly Drummer, the poet will express his attitude to the transformative power of the October Revolution. Its truly popular character, the scale of social changes cannot but attract the rebellious soul of the poet to it. Even his theomachic poems of those years, "Transfiguration", "Jordan Dove", "Inonia", permeated with a vague understanding of the revolution, a naive idea of the coming "peasant's paradise", were still a tangible blow to the old world. The voice of Yesenin, singing the revolution, sounds in unison with the poetic anthem of the revolution in Blok's poem "The Twelve", with the revolutionary poems of Mayakovsky and D. Poor. A truly new kind of Soviet poetry is being born.
And, nevertheless, it is pointless, and it is not necessary to deny the complexity and inconsistency of the poet's perception of a radical break in the patriarchal way of life. Yesenin noted in his autobiography: “During the years of the revolution he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias.”
Reflections on the fate of the modern peasantry lead Yesenin to history. He turns to the peasant war of the XVIII century and creates a poignant dramatic poem about the outstanding leader of the peasant masses Emelyan Pugachev. The element of popular revolt splashed out powerfully in the lines of Pugachev. He draws the hero of the poem as a great sympathizer of national disasters, but at the same time a historically doomed political figure.
During the civil war and the first post-war years, the country is undergoing colossal changes, the village is being transformed before our eyes. The unheard-of depth of perestroika at times frightens the poet. These fluctuations were especially significant in 1919-1920. The village seems to him to be sacrificed to an alien city. The poet's lines in Sorokoust sound poignant:
Dear, dear, funny fool
Well, where is he, where is he chasing?
Doesn't he know that living horses
Did the steel cavalry win?
And yet the new inevitably captures the soul of the poet. He feels that patriarchal foundations can no longer be perceived as the unconditional and the only ideal principle. Time gives birth to other values.
A trip with his wife, the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan, around Europe and the United States of America (1922-1923) helps to fully understand the legitimacy and prospects of the country's social reorganization. A true patriot, Yesenin cannot see without pain the irrefutable evidence of Russia's technical backwardness. At the same time, he keenly felt the wretchedness of the spiritual life of the West, the all-consuming power of money. Pride is born in the heart for the grandeur of the revolutionary transformations taking place in the Motherland. There is a turning point in the mood of the poet, there is a steady desire to discover, as it were, anew his own country:
Nice publisher! In this book
I indulge in new feelings
Learning to comprehend in every moment
Commune rearing Russia.
Sergei Yesenin is the son of Russia. Her new, social choice of the majority of the people becomes native for him too. The poet clearly understands “what the peasants gossip about”, he fully shares the decision of his fellow villagers: “With Soviet power, we live according to our guts.” Farewell to the old village is inevitable:
Field Russia! Enough
Drag along the fields.
It hurts to see your poverty
And birches and poplars.
How palpable in these lines is the pain for Russia, the spiritual continuity of Yesenin's work to the Russian classics!
The selfless feeling of love for the Motherland leads Yesenin to a revolutionary theme. An amazing revolutionary epic “Song of the Great Campaign” appears, written in the form of a ditty. He pays a grateful tribute to the heroes of the revolution (“The Ballad of Twenty-Six”, “Captain of the Earth”, etc.), bowing to selfless fighters for a great idea, to people who opened up new horizons for Russia. Their life for the poet is an example of civic service to the Fatherland:
I envy that
Who spent his life in battle
Who defended the great idea...
Comprehension of the revolution and social transformations in the country reaches true historicism in the poem "Anna Onegin" (1925). And in mastering this topic, Yesenin is again on a par with Mayakovsky and D. Poor. In "Anna Snegina" surprisingly accurate and expressive words were heard about Lenin as a truly popular leader:
Trembling, swaying steps
Under the ringing of the head:
Who is Lenin?
I answered quietly:
"He is you"...
The revolutionary theme in Yesenin's poetry objectively introduced the poet into a common circle with the people, gave a life perspective. However, finding a place in the new reality turned out to be very difficult for him. That new, which with such artistic power was embodied in his art, was hardly affirmed in his own destiny. The new is accepted and sung, but somewhere in the recesses of the soul, longing is hidden, the poet is burdened by a feeling of spiritual fatigue:
I'm not new!
What to hide?
I stayed in the past with one foot,
In an effort to catch up with the steel army,
I slide and fall another.
Personal life is also difficult. Always surrounded by admirers and friends, Yesenin is essentially lonely. A bitter line breaks out of him - "I do not find shelter in anyone's eyes", - but how much he needs a "friendly smile"! All his life, Yesenin dreamed of a family, of "his own home." The family didn't work out. For many years his life was disorderly. Such a way of life is alien to the nature of the poet. “With unprecedented cruelty to himself” (P. Oreshin), Yesenin exposes his delusions and doubts in the “Moscow Tavern” cycle. Not the ecstasy of revelry in these verses, but painful philosophical reflections on the meaning of life, on one's own destiny.
He sought salvation from the "dark forces that torment and destroy" in the images of his native nature, in turning to people dear to him - mother, sister, beloved women, friends. Yesenin's messages of recent years open up new possibilities for the epistolary poetic genre, traditional in Russian literature. This poetic form of confidential appeal is filled with a special lyrical confession and patriotic sound. Behind the image of a woman dear to him stands the "iconic and strict face" of the Motherland, his beloved sister is compared with a birch tree, "that stands behind the birth window." Yesenin's intense confession, in many verses addressed to a specific addressee, turns out to be universally significant. From the personal experience grows the universal. The fusion of the personal and the public in Yesenin's poetry leads to the fact that in the lyrics he acts as a poet "with a big epic theme", and in poems, especially in "Anna Snegina", his lyrical voice fully sounds.
The famous lines of "Letters to a Woman" speak not only about the complexity of the poet's fate, but also about the drama of history:
You didn't know
That I'm in solid smoke
In a life torn apart by a storm
That's why I'm tormented that I don't understand -
Where the rock of events takes us.
Indeed, in every image, in every line, we feel the naked Yesenin "I". Such sincerity requires wisdom and courage. Yesenin rushed to people, immersion in himself, "desert and breakaway" were for him a dead end, creative and human (this is one of his last works - the tragic poem "The Black Man", completed on November 14, 1925). The poet hoped to find a new creative life:
And let another life of the village
Will fill me
New strength.
Like before
Led to fame
Native Russian mare.
The poets of the circle of S. Yesenin of that time are N. Klyuev, P. Oreshin, S. Klychkov. These hopes are expressed in the words of N. Klyuev, a close friend and poetic mentor of S. Yesenin: "The peasant land is now, / And the church will not hire a government official." In Yesenin's poetry in 1917, a new feeling of Russia appears: "Already washed away, wiped off the tar / Resurrected Russia." The feelings and moods of the poet of this time are very complex and contradictory - these are both hopes and expectations of the bright and new, but this is also anxiety for the fate of his native land, philosophical reflections on eternal topics. One of them - the theme of the collision of nature and the human mind, invading it and destroying its harmony - sounds in S. Yesenin's poem "Sorokoust". In it, the competition between the foal and the train, which acquires a deeply symbolic meaning, becomes central. At the same time, the foal, as it were, embodies all the beauty of nature, its touching defenselessness.
The locomotive takes on the features of an ominous monster. In Esenin's "Sorokoust" the eternal theme of confrontation between nature and reason, technological progress merges with reflections on the fate of Russia. In the post-revolutionary poetry of S. Yesenin, the theme of the motherland is saturated with difficult thoughts about the poet's place in a new life, he is painfully experiencing alienation from his native land, it is difficult for him to find a common language with the new generation, for whom the calendar Lenin on the wall replaces the icon, and "pot-bellied" Capital " - The Bible. It is especially bitter for the poet to realize that the new generation sings new songs: “Poor Demyan's agitation sings.” This is all the more sad because S. Yesenin rightly remarks: “I am a poet! And not like some Demyan there."
Therefore, his lines sound so sad: "My poetry is no longer needed here, / Yes, and, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either." But even the desire to merge with a new life does not force S. Yesenin to abandon his calling as a Russian poet; he writes: "I will give my whole soul to October and May, / But I will not give only my dear lyre."
Today, it is difficult for us, living in Russia, to fully understand the meaning of these lines, and yet they were written in 1924, when the very name - Rus - was almost forbidden, and citizens were supposed to live in "Resefeser". With the theme of the motherland, S. Yesenin understands his poetic mission, his position as "the last singer of the village", the keeper of her precepts, her memory. One of the programmatic, important for understanding the theme of the motherland, the poet has become the poem "The feather grass is sleeping":
The feather grass is sleeping.
Plain dear
And the lead freshness of wormwood!
No other homeland
Do not pour my warmth into my chest.
Know that we all have such a fate,
And, perhaps, ask everyone -
Rejoicing, raging and tormented,
Life is good in Russia.
The light of the moon, mysterious and long,
Willows are crying, poplars are whispering,
But no one under the cry of a crane
He will not stop loving his father's fields.
And now that behold the new light
And my life touched fate,
I still remain a poet
Golden log cabin.
At night, clinging to the headboard,
I see a strong enemy
How someone else's youth splashes with new
To my glades and meadows.
But still cramped by the new,
I can sing heartily:
Give me in the homeland of my beloved,
Loving everything, die in peace."
This poem is dated 1925, refers to the mature lyrics of the poet. It expresses his innermost thoughts. In the line "rejoicing, raging and tormented" is a difficult historical experience that fell to the lot of Yesenin's generation. The poem is built on traditionally poetic images: feather grass as a symbol of the Russian landscape and at the same time a symbol of longing, wormwood with its rich symbolism and a crane cry as a sign of separation. The traditional landscape, in which the no less traditional "light of the moon" is the personification of poetry, is opposed by the "new light", rather abstract, inanimate, devoid of poetry. And in contrast to it, the recognition of the lyrical hero of Yesenin's poem in adherence to the age-old rural way of life sounds. The poet's epithet "golden" is especially significant: "I will still remain a poet / of the Golden Log Cabin."
It is one of the most frequently encountered in the lyrics of S. Yesenin, but usually it is associated with a color concept: golden - that is, yellow, but certainly with a touch of the highest value: "golden grove", "golden frog moon". In this poem, the shade of value prevails: gold is not only the color of the hut, but a symbol of its enduring value as a symbol of the way of village life with its inherent beauty and harmony. The village hut is a whole world, its destruction is not redeemed for the poet by any tempting news. The finale of the poem sounds somewhat rhetorical, but in the general context of S. Yesenin's poetry, it is perceived as a deep and sincere recognition of the author.
In the last years of his life, human and creative maturity comes to the poet. The years 1924-1925 are perhaps the most significant in terms of what he created. From September 1924 to August 1925, Yesenin made three rather long trips to Georgia and Azerbaijan. As a result of these trips, in particular, an amazing cycle of poems "Persian Motives" was born. The Georgian poet Titian Tabidze noted that “... The Caucasus, as once for Pushkin, and for Yesenin, turned out to be a new source of inspiration. In the distance, the poet had to rethink a lot ... He felt the influx of new topics ... ". The scale of the poet's vision is enlarged. His civic feeling is able to glorify not only his native Ryazan corner, but the entire "sixth of the earth" - the greater Motherland:
I will chant
With the whole being in the poet
sixth of the earth
With a short name "Rus".
Yesenin's poetry lives in time, appeals to empathy. His poems breathe love for everything, "that clothes the soul in flesh." The earthly simplicity of the subject of the image turns into high poetry:
Bless each work, good luck!
To a fisherman - so that a net with fish.
Plowman - so that his plow and nag
They got bread for a year.
The poet strove for the fullness of being, hence this cheerful line was born: “Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!” And even the picturesqueness of many of his works, especially in his early work, is due to this desire to include all the diversity of the surrounding life in his poetic world. Yesenin comprehends the deep laws of human life and nature and wisely blesses everything that "came to flourish and die." In his heartfelt “I am happy that I breathed and lived” - a generous gratitude to the world that filled the soul with inexhaustible impressions.
Sergei Yesenin always lived and wrote on the extreme strain of mental strength. That is his nature. Filled with love for the Motherland, for man, nature, Yesenin did not spare only himself. He did not know another way for the artist:
Being a poet means the same
If the truth of life is not violated,
Scarring your soft skin
To caress other people's souls with the blood of feelings.
The reader, feeling this generous dedication of the poet, submits to the emotional power of Yesenin's poems.
Today, Yesenin's poetry is well known and loved in all the republics of our country, in many foreign countries. So profoundly Russian, glorifying native nature, native country with great lyrical power - it turned out to be truly international. And that is why the words of the Lithuanian writer Justinas Marcinkyavichus about the Russian poet are so organic: “Yesenin is a miracle of poetry. And like any miracle, it's hard to talk about it. A miracle must be experienced. And we must believe in him ... "Thus, the theme of the motherland in the poetry of S. Yesenin develops from an unconscious, almost childishly natural attachment to the native land to a conscious, withstood the test of hard times, changes and fractures of the author's position.
