Relationships between people of different generations. “The problem of intergenerational relationships” essay

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born in September 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province, into a family of wealthy peasants. In 1904, Yesenin was sent to the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo four-year school, and in 1909 he was sent to continue his studies at the second-class church and teacher Spas-Klepikovskaya school. In 1912, after graduating from school, he left for Moscow with the firm intention of devoting himself to poetry. In 1913, Yesenin got a job at Sytin's printing house - first as a loader, and then as a proofreader.

At the end of December 1925 Yesenin arrives from Moscow to Leningrad. On the night of December 28, he was found dead at the Angleterre Hotel. He was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow.

In August 1920, the poet wrote poems about the death of his native village world "Sorokoust". The title of the poem is very symbolic, since it means a church service for the deceased, which takes place within forty days from the date of death.

The work was based on an episode described by Yesenin in a letter to E.I. Livshits dated August 11-12, 1920: “We were driving from Tikhoretskaya to Pyatigorsk, suddenly we hear screams, look out the window, and what? We see a small foal galloping behind the locomotive with all its strength. It jumps so much that it immediately became clear to us that for some reason he decided to overtake him. He ran for a very long time, but in the end he began to get tired, and at some station he was caught. The episode is insignificant for someone, but for me it says a lot. The steel horse defeated the living horse. And this little colt was for me a clear dear endangered image of the village ... ".

The poet announces the tragic death of all living things, defenseless before an unequal fight with the advancing iron guest. Yesenin correlates and contrasts an iron train and a living horse: the train has an iron nostril, the train runs - the foal gallops, across the steppes - over large grass, cast-iron paws - thin legs. An unexpected and hopeless epithet - "radiant" fields. The author's contemporary life, the advancing technological progress in all spheres, devalues everything natural, truly living.

"Sorokoust" is a waste product according to the traditional way of life of the people. The “terrible messenger” with an “iron belly” and a “bulky” fifth tightly compresses, strangles the “throats of the plains”. Steel fever shakes the village. Now, when the industrial attack on nature continues, pollution of rivers and reservoirs, deforestation, we begin to understand these poems of Yesenin not as backward patriarchal, but as a real threat to all mankind.

Vasily Shukshin "The Sun, the Old Man and the Girl"

content:

Sorokoust is a forty-day statutory church service. Remembrance for the deceased.

Only I, as a psalmist, sing

Hallelujah over the native country.

What happened? Why hallelujah sounds over the native country?

1917 - the poet met, like many artists of his circle, with hopes for renewal, for a happy turn in the peasant lot. In Yesenin's poetry in 1917, a new feeling of Russia appears: "Rising Russia has already washed away, erased the tar." 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 Yesenin's "Sorokoust", the eternal theme of confrontation between nature and reason, technological progress merges with reflections on the fate of Russia.

In 1920, the poet's utopian dreams of socialism as a "peasant's paradise" collapsed. Yesenin expressed this attitude with special lyrical excitement and drama in the poem "Sorokoust". The poem was written by Yesenin during his trip to the south of Russia in August 1920.

More and more painfully, the question arises before the poet: “Where does the fate of events take us?” Especially hard, at times tragically, in 1919-1921, the poet experiences a revolutionary breaking of the old, patriarchal foundations of the Russian village. The story of how a locomotive overtook a thin-legged colt has a deep inner meaning in Sorokoust. It is in this scene that the poem reaches its climax:

The whole poem is illuminated with a piercingly disturbing "feeling of the motherland", losses. The images of "Sorookust" ... are daring, impressive.

Yesenin introduces the image of a horse as a symbol of the old patriarchal village, which has not yet realized the transition to a new life. The image of this “past”, which is trying with all its might to fight change, is a foal, which appears as a symbolic situation of a “competition” between the “cast-iron horse” - the train and the “red-maned foal”.

The poem is built on oppositions:

Runs - jumps

Train - foal

Paws (at the train) - legs (at the foal)

The train moves "in the fog ... hiding" - the foal gallops like on a holiday

Iron - red-maned

Thus, in the first stanza, the images of the train and the foal are contrasted at all levels.

This opposition is intensified in the second stanza, where the antithesis of two time layers arises: modernity and antiquity, “When did a Pecheneg give a couple of beautiful steppe Russian women for a horse?”

In the second stanza, the author's position is clearly expressed: dear fool. A word with a pronounced expressive coloring, an appeal to someone very close. This impression is reinforced by the use of the pronoun ours (Our stretch awakened by the gnashing). The image of the lyrical hero is merged with the image of the village, thus, the poet shares his fate with the fate of the village, because the position of the lyrical hero reflects the position of the author.

The struggle of the village for survival is lost, more and more preference is given to the city.

The poem is filled with love for the red-maned colt, and at the same time it is permeated with pain, despair and horror before the fatal intrusion into the life of a soulless and cruel enemy - the steel cavalry. Tenderness, touchingness and tragedy are merged in it. The red-maned foal personifies all that is beautiful. This is a poem about soul and soullessness. The soul of the poet is filled with pain and despair. A foal is like a child. As nature in the image of Yesenin is childishly naive and therefore crushed by the advancing steel cavalry. With the advent of the steel cavalry into our lives, the “big grass” has turned into “radiless fields”, gray and dull: all living things wither. They have lost the magical glow of pristineness.

"Sorokoust" Sergei Yesenin

A. Marienhof

Blows, blows the death horn!
How can we be, how can we be now
On muddy haunches of roads?
You, lovers of song fleas,
Don't you want to……

It is full of meekness of muzzles to celebrate,
Like it, not like it - know take it.
It's good when the twilight teases
And they pour us into fat asses
Bloody broom of dawn.

Soon freeze with lime will whiten
That village and these meadows.
There is nowhere for you to hide from death,
There is no escape from the enemy.
Here he is, here he is with an iron belly,
Pulls five to the throats of the plains,

Leads the old mill with his ear,
He sharpened his flour-grinding scent.
And the yard silent bull,
That he spilled his whole brain on heifers,
Wiping the tongue on the spinner,
I sensed trouble over the field.

Oh, not from the other side of the village
So the harmonica cries pitifully:
Talia-la-la, tili-li-gom
Hanging over a white window sill.
And the yellow autumn wind
Is it not because, touching the blue with ripples,
As if from horses with a comb,
Comb leaves from maples.
He goes, he goes, a terrible messenger,
The fifth bulky thicket aches.
And the songs yearn more and more
Under the frog squeak in the straw.
Oh electric sunrise
Belts and pipes deaf grip,
Se hut wooden belly
Shaking steel fever!

Have you seen
How it runs through the steppes
Hiding in lake mists,
Snoring iron nostril,
On the paws of a cast-iron train?

And behind him
On the big grass
As at a feast of desperate races,
Thin legs throwing to the head,
Is the red-maned foal galloping?

Dear, dear, funny fool
Well, where is he, where is he chasing?
Doesn't he know that living horses
Did the steel cavalry win?
Doesn't he know that in the fields of the radiant
That time will not return his run,
When a couple of beautiful steppe Russians
Did you give a Pecheneg for a horse?
In a different way, fate repainted at the auction
Our splash, awakened by the gnashing,
And for thousands of pounds of horse skin and meat
Now they are buying a steam locomotive.

Damn you, nasty guest!
Our song will not get along with you.
It's a pity that you didn't have to as a child
Drown like a bucket in a well.
It's good for them to stand and watch
Paint mouths in tin kisses, -
Only I, as a psalmist, sing
Hallelujah over the native country.
That's why in the September skelete
On dry and cold loam,
Head smashed on the wattle fence,
The rowan berries were covered with blood.
That's why the sadness has grown
In the busts of talyanka voiced.
And a straw-smelling man
He choked on a dashing moonshine.

Analysis of Yesenin's poem "Sorokoust"

The well-known poetic text of 1920 often comes to the attention of researchers as a work that predetermined important trends in the development of Russian literature of the 20th century. The touching image of a foal trying to compete in speed with a train has gone down in history. The race is an expression of the confrontation between the living and iron horses, the conflict between the natural world and human society, which has chosen the path that moves people away from the natural beginning.

The thanatological theme is given by the title of the poem and is supported by numerous reminiscences from the biblical Apocalypse. The disturbing voice of the "death horn", indicated in the opening, resembles the sound of a terrible orchestra of seven trumpets, sending misfortunes to the earth and announcing the end of the world. The image of the train is endowed with the features of an apocalyptic beast that emits a loud rattle and frightening snoring.

Prophetic intonations are manifested starting from the first episode: the subject of speech speaks with anxiety and bitterness about the imminent arrival of trouble. The source of danger is named - the enemy "with an iron belly". Aggressive and fast, he has already set a goal and is preparing to attack. Pampered habitues of literary salons are not given to foresee the danger. The indifference of the esthetic public provokes outrageous attacks of the lyrical "I", which in anger promises society a bloody dawn. Death is foreseen only by those who are used to living according to the laws of nature.

An ominous atmosphere defines the nature of the rural landscape presented in the second part: the pitiful cry of the harmonica, whirlwinds of leaf fall, the dreary accompaniment of folk songs, the squeak of frogs. An important element of the picture is the image of a maple, from which the wind combs the leaves. In Yesenin's figurative system, it is associated with the appearance of a person: in the poem "", the old maple tree is similar to the head of a lyrical hero. Including this detail in the overall sketch, the author of the poem reports that the subject of speech belongs to the tragic share of the Russian village.

The central place of the third chapter is given to the episode of the unequal competition mentioned above. A series of rhetorical questions is followed by a philosophical conclusion: the system of values is determined by time, and each era reshapes them in its own way.

In the fourth part, the role of the hero is clearly defined: he is a prophet and psalmist, celebrating a memorial service for the perishing homeland. The poem ends with short fragments from village life, in which dissonant notes reach a climax. The motif of blood returns the reader to the theme of retribution, indicated by the beginning, and the final image of the drunkard man symbolizes the hopelessness of the future peasant world.

"Sorokoust" was written in 1920, excerpts (parts 2 and 3) were published in No. 7-10 of the "Creativity" magazine. The entire poem was included in the collection Confessions of a Hooligan (1921).

Sorokoust is a special church prayer held for 40 liturgies. At this time, the person who is prayed for, not being present in the church (usually due to a serious illness), becomes a partaker of the blood and flesh of Jesus. Sorokoust is also ordered about the dead, especially often about the recently deceased. So who is Yesenin's poetic prayer about? Is it about the living or the dead?

The answer to the question can be found in one of Yesenin's letters, in which he recalls how he saw a foal galloping after a locomotive and trying to overtake him. The foal ran for a very long time until he was caught. In the same letter, Yesenin explains how he understood this life image: "The steel horse defeated the living horse." The foal became for Yesenin "a visual expensive endangered image of the village."

The poem is dedicated to Mariengof, Yesenin's comrade during the period of enthusiasm for Imagism (since 1918).

Literary direction and genre

Yesenin 1920 - a staunch imagist. The main goal of the Imagists is to create a bright and unusual, striking artistic image, mainly with the help of metaphors. Although "Sorokoust" is called a poem, formally it is too small for a poem and breaks up into a cycle of poems united by one theme shown in its development. But the poem corresponds to the idea of "Sorokoust" - a prayer of hope for the healing of a seriously ill person, his familiarization with the life of the people. This sick, almost dead - the old life, the patriarchal way of life, Yesenin's beloved village.

Theme, main idea and composition

The theme of the poem is the collision of the outgoing world of the patriarchal village and the new iron world of the city, industry. Sorokoust in the old, seriously ill and even dying (or just dead) world Yesenin sings. The main idea is the inevitability of the dying of the old, but so dear to Yesenin world. He himself defined the idea of the work in the same letter to Livshits: “It touches me ... only sadness for the departing dear dear animal and the unshakable power of the dead, mechanical.”

The poem consists of 4 parts. In the first part, Yesenin creates an image of a grandiose world transformation, the end of the world, which began with the sound of a death horn, similar to that of the Archangel. Nature is waiting for death, the enemy "with an iron belly", which corresponds to the biblical image of the beast. The appeal of the lyrical hero to the “lovers of song fleas”, who do not want to see changes and enjoy the sentimental verses of the past, at one time outraged the first listeners and readers of the poem, as it contained rude words and curses.

In the second part, the onset of the "steel fever" becomes more and more noticeable. The iron belly of the city, civilization is opposed by the wooden belly of the huts, as if mechanically alive.

The third part is central to the poem. The train in it is likened to an iron monster that defeats a colt, which embodied not only all living things, but also the past era.

The fourth part is addressed to the bad guest - progress, which the majority accepts with joy, but the lyrical hero, the singer of the old world, sees his calling in his funeral service. On the side of the lyrical hero, nature and the villagers mourn with him.

Heroes and images

The images of Imagism are bright original metaphors that turn familiar objects and phenomena into rough or touching pictures. Metaphors are rude and even abusive images. soiled thighs of the roads, lovers of song fleas, which celebrate the meekness of muzzles, which teasing twilight(personification) pour a bloody broom of dawn into fat asses.

Epithet bloody itself carries a tragic connotation and echoes the epithet of the first line: fatal horn. The metaphorical meaning of the first metaphor in the opening is not completely clear. What is this deadly horn that sounded to the lyrical hero? Is there a material embodiment of this sound, or is it just a symbolic beginning of the end of the world, the beginning of the death of all living things, man-made murder?

In the next two stanzas, the usual living picture of the Russian village is contrasted, the nature of which is personified ( the old mill leads with its ear, sharpens the flour-grinding scent), and an enemy with an iron belly that pulls five to the throats of the plains. This is urbanization, a technological revolution, a necessary evil that engulfs the village and the meadows. The bull, whose work will also become unnecessary, is the prophet of a dying village who senses trouble.

The first part begins with a description of a global catastrophe, which by the end of the first part focuses on a specific village and meadows, even on a specific yard with a bull. In the second part, the view of the lyrical hero, on the contrary, turns from the particular to the general. Sound weeping harmonica(personification) outside the village hangs over a white window sill in the house of the lyrical hero (metaphor). It would seem that the harmonica is habitually sad with the advent of autumn, which, like a scraper from horses(comparison), combing the maple leaves(metaphor of old age, when a person loses hair). The autumn wind is called yellow, this metaphorical epithet describes leaves flying in the wind and is opposed to the immobility of a white window sill.

But this is not the reason for the crying of an accordion. Her tears are about a terrible messenger with a bulky heel, with which he breaks thickets. An attentive reader will already see in this image a steam locomotive, presented here in the form of one of the angels of the apocalypse. Nature is expected to react to the arrival of the end of the world. Longing songs(a personification, perhaps a metonymy, depicting more and more yearning people). The suffering of all animals is embodied in the image of a biblical animal that portends catastrophes - frogs that squeak in horror.

The second part is very emotional, it has 2 interjections. In the last quatrain, the onset of the technical revolution horrifies not only all living things, but also the spiritualized, personified village. Metaphor electric sunrise, personifications dead grip of belts and pipes, steel fever opposed to the original, emphasized by the obsolete se. This is the original - the personification and revival of the village - the wooden belly of the huts.

The style of the story changes in the third part. The lyrical hero asks several rhetorical questions, addressed not to enemies or opponents, but to like-minded people with whom he shares his innermost. The locomotive symbolizes the beast of the apocalypse, which snores with an iron nostril and runs on cast-iron paws. The red-maned colt is opposed to the train. This is not only the opposition of the old and the new, the mechanical and the living, the natural and the technical. This is a cry for dying beauty, for changing aesthetics - a sense of beauty. Beauty for the lyrical hero lies in the absurdity of the irrational movement of the foal, throwing its thin legs to the head, in the meaninglessness of its existence.

At the end of the third part, the lyrical hero tries rationally, but bitterly, to explain to like-minded people and to himself the inevitability of the departure of the old and victory. steel cavalry(a metaphor for the victory of technological progress). Yesenin calls fields where horses do not gallop radiant, and the value of horses is turned into the value of their skin and meat, that is, they are valued only by the dead, and even then not highly.

The fourth part is an appeal to technical progress, which is called the bad guest. The lyrical hero rudely sends him to hell and regrets that he did not drown him in childhood. This is a common personification - the recognition by the lyrical hero of the process of urbanization as a living progressive movement, as a living being. The lyrical hero sees life in everything, even in iron.

The following lines show that the lyrical hero nevertheless distinguishes between mechanical, automatic and real life. “They” appear, who “stand and watch”, accepting all the changes, paint their mouths “in tin kisses”. This prophecy is still relevant today, when even love is becoming automatic and mechanical.

The lyrical hero opposes himself to the rest, calling himself a psalmist, singing the glory of his native country. As in the second part, Russian nature and peasants become his like-minded people. They also understand the inevitability of what is happening and each in their own way join the funeral service. Rowan, around which red berries are scattered in autumn, reminds the lyrical hero of a man who smashed his head on a wattle fence and poured his blood over dry and cold loam. A person, like nature, yearns, performing ritual actions that are usual for him: he pours out “tuzhil” in the sounds of a talyanka or revels in dashing moonshine to death (a metaphorical epithet). The people of the past, like nature, seem to hasten their own death in order to make room for the coming progress. Longing is emphasized by the natural dying of autumn nature.

Artistic originality

Yesenin makes extensive use of the author's neologisms, often metaphorical: celebrate, autumn, woody (from the word tree according to the word-formation model log), tuzhil (noun from grieve), beamless, sklen. Formally, the last word is a dialectal adverb and means "to pour into the dish flush with the edges." But in the poem it is a noun, obviously meaning rainy, wet weather.

Size and rhyme

The poem is written with a dolnik with a different number of syllables in the first and third parts and a three-strike dolnik in the second and fourth. Dolnik is characteristic of folk poetry.
The rhyme is mostly cross, the feminine rhyme alternates with the masculine. In the first part, dactylic rhyme alternates with masculine, and the rhyme is varied. If in the second (full) quintuple the cross-rhyming is combined with the adjacent one (AbAAb), then the next quatrain has a cross-rhyme (ВгВг), and in the last two there is a cross-rhyme with the loss of one line that remains unrhymed: DeJzIzI. At the same time, it is not quatrains that have semantic completeness, but five- and six-verses, which makes the first part recitative, similar to rhythmic prose.

A. Marienhof 1 Blows, blows the death horn! How can we be, how can we be now On the soiled haunches of the roads? You, lovers of song fleas, Wouldn't you like to suck on a gelding? It’s full of meekness of muzzles to celebrate, Love it, don’t love it - take it. It's good when the twilight teases And they pour the bloody broom of the dawn into your fat asses. Soon the frost will whiten with lime That village and these meadows. Nowhere can you hide from death, Nowhere can you escape from the enemy. Here he is, here he is with an iron belly, Pulls his five fingers to the throats of the plains, Leads the old mill with his ear, Sharpening his flour-grinding scent. And the courtyard silent bull, That he spilled all his brain on the heifers, Wiping his tongue on the spinner, He sensed trouble over the field. 2 Ah, is it not from that outside the village? So the harmonica cries pitifully: Tal-la-la, tili-li-gom Hanging over the white window sill. And the yellow wind of autumn Is it not because, touching the blue with ripples, As if from a horses' comb, Combing the leaves from the maples. He goes, he goes, the terrible messenger, The fifth bulky thicket ache. And more and more yearn songs Under the frog squeak in the straw. Oh, the electric sunrise, The tight grip of belts and trumpets, Se hut, wooden belly Shakes steel fever! 3 Have you seen How it runs across the steppes, Hiding in lake mists, Snoring with an iron nostril, On its iron legs a train? And behind him On the big grass, Like on a feast of desperate races, Throwing thin legs to the head, A red-maned colt gallops? Dear, dear, funny fool, Well, where is he, where is he chasing? Doesn't he know that the living horses were defeated by the steel cavalry? Doesn't he know that in the radiant fields of that time his run will not return, When a couple of beautiful steppe Russian women He gave a Pecheneg for a horse? In a different way, fate at the auction repainted Our reach, awakened by the gnashing, And for thousands of pounds of horse skin and meat They now buy a steam locomotive. 4 Damn you, nasty guest! Our song will not get along with you. It is a pity that in childhood you did not have to Drown like a bucket in a well. It's good for them to stand and watch, Paint their mouths in tin kisses, - Only I, as a psalmist, sing Alleluia over my native country. That's why in the September skre On dry and cold loam, Head smashed on the wattle fence, The blood of rowan berries spilled over. That's why the tuzhil has grown into the ringing of the ringing talyanka. And the straw-scented peasant Choked on dashing moonshine. 1920

Notes

Sorokoust(p. 81).- Zhurn. "Creativity", M., 1920, No. 7/10, July-September, p. 14 (vv. 23-60: first vv. 39-60, then vv. 23-38); Sat. "Imagists", M., 1921 (actually: December 1920), p.<5-10>; Use hul., Rzh. to.; Grzh.; Art. speed; Article 24.

White autograph Art. 35-76 - art. 35-52 (IMLI), Art. 53-72 (GLM), Art. 73-76 (IMLI).

Printed on emb. copy. (cutting from Grzh.) with correction in Art. 9 (“to you” instead of “us”) according to other sources (except St. Sk.). Dated according to Rzh. to. The same date - in a white autograph (IMLI), Sat. "Imagists" and Spanish. blasphemy

The whistle resembles a tropical storm. The audience runs up to the pulpit, fists flash. Serezha stands on the table, smiling imperturbably. Kusikov jumps up next to Yesenin and pretends to take a revolver out of his pocket. I have been standing in front of Yesenin for a long time and demand that they let him finish reading.<...>

Then Bryusov calmly rises and holds out his hand as a sign that he asks for silence and a word.<...>

Bryusov spoke quietly and convincingly:

I hope you believe me. I know these verses. These are the best poems ever written! (Later, V.Ya. Bryusov called "Sorokoust" a "beautiful poem" and printed (P&R, 1922, book 7, September-October, p. 59))

The audience froze. Sergei read the poem. Ovations "(in the book:" My century, my friends and girlfriends: Memoirs of Mariengof, Shershenevich, Gruzinov ". M., 1990, p. 461-462). I.N. Rozanov testified that “in a week or two there was, it seems, in Moscow a young poet or simply a lover of poetry who follows the news, who would not recite the“ red-maned colt. And then in the press they began to quote these lines ... ”(Vosp., 1, 435).

The third chapter of Sorokoust really turned out to be the focus of criticism at that time. A.E. Kaufman wrote about her (journal “Bulletin of Literature”, Pg., 1921, No. 11, p. 7; signature: A. Evgeniev) and I.G. Erenburg (in his book “Portraits of Russian Poets” , Berlin, 1922, pp. 83-84; clipping - Tetr. GLM), P.S. Kogan (Kr. Nov, 1922, No. 3, May-June, p. 256; clipping - Tetr. GLM) and A. K. Voronsky (Kr. nov, 1924, No. 1, January-February, p. 278), V. L. Lvov-Rogachevsky (in his book “The Newest Russian Literature”, 2nd ed., corrected and supplemented ., M. (region: M.-L.), 1924, p. 317) and F.A. Zhits (Kr. Nov, 1925, No. 2, February, p. 282; clipping - Tetr. GLM), I.N. Rozanov (journal "People's Teacher", M., 1925, No. 2, February, pp. 113-114; signature: Andrey Shipov) and B. Makovsky (gaze. "Polesskaya Pravda", Gomel, 1925, May 17, No. 111; clipping - Tetr. GLM). So, I.G. Erenburg wrote: “In vain, the poor foolish foal wants to overtake the locomotive. The last fight and the end is clear. Yesenin speaks about this unequal struggle, he speaks, cursing hard, crying bitterly, for he is not a spectator.<...>Where, if not in Russia, this mortal song of vast arable lands and meadows should have been heard? Regarding these same lines, A.K. Voronsky noted that “his<Есенина>anti-machine lyricism rose to genuine pathos.

In the fourth chapter of the poem “the despair of the defeated village” (I.N. Rozanov), I.G. Ehrenburg also heard I.G. . GLM), G. Lelevich (October magazine, M., 1924, No. 3, September-October, pp. 181-182; clipping - Tetr. GLM), B. Makovsky (quoted above), I. T. Filippov (journal "Lava", Rostov-on-Don, 1925, No. 2/3, August, p. 69-70), V. A. Krasilnikov (PiR, 1925, No. 7, October-November, p. .119).

As for the shocking beginning of "Sorokoust", the critics turned out to be more condescending to him than the first listeners of the poem. Elvich (an undisclosed pseudonym) substantiated the appearance of these lines in this way (with reference to the author himself): “To my question about the reason for the addiction to“ strong words ”, the fiery and talented Sergei Yesenin explained:

I would like to challenge the literary and all kinds of philistinism! Old words and images are tattered, it is necessary to break through the thickness of petty-bourgeois literary complacency with the old price list of "recommended" words: hence the exit into cynicism, into vulgarity, hence my joy that

when the spring wind teases
and pours into your fat asses
bloodied broom of dawn.
(Sorokoust)

This is not just literary “mischief” and “pampering” (generally speaking, very close to S. Yesenin): here is the torment of the word and the thirst for a well-aimed, albeit arbitrarily rude, all-defining word-shot, although the challenge to philistinism here too often turns into a challenge to any healthy artistic and artistic taste, and the thirst for originality - in acting originality, if not in boyish antics.

And this deliberate vulgarization has its own venerable tradition in Russian literature: remember, at least, what catchphrases and cries A.S. April, p. 7).

Reflecting on "Sorokoust" in the context of Yesenin's work preceding this poem, G.F. Ustinov wrote: “Yesenin came to the city almost as a boy. His old village existence in the new urban environment underwent tragic breaks, breaks to the point of pain, to excruciating suffering. And Yesenin hated the "soulless city" for this pain, he felt that this soulless city turned out to be stronger than his soul - a full and completely organized soul, at least in its same implacable anarchism. This battle went on for a long time - several years. For a poet, this is a long time. And it ended or begins to end - with the victory of the city, which Yesenin himself recognizes and which he brilliantly expressed in his poem "Sorokoust". Sorokoust is a waste throughout the old life, a complete recognition of the victory of the new - recognition of the organization's victory over chaos.<...>Yesenin symbolizes the victory of the industrial economic organization by a train rushing wildly through the steppes, which is given powerful images of a laboratory that is not Yesenin at all - not a village laboratory. The new urban existence defeated the old rural Yesenin. He succeeds in new industrial images no worse than his old - rustic ones. And the fact that for many is still a mystery that raises doubts is a fait accompli for Yesenin. For him, the revolution has won, it has defeated the rural anarchosamoyed in himself and is beginning to defeat the urban anarchomist. And right there, almost following Sorokoust of the whole old conquered life, after he sang her waste, Yesenin began to take widely public motives, and take them in a new way, not in the way that writers who had a hero, a personality, took before him. , inevitably led to a crash. Yesenin writes the dramatic poem "Pugachev", in which he deliberately puts in the forefront not a person, not a hero, but the masses ...

The steel cavalry won...

And if Mariengof only a few years ago was the future of Mayakovsky, and then dragged after him already as the past, then Yesenin is Mayakovsky's tomorrow, the creator-creator who replaced the creator-destroyer, the revolutionary. By the way Yesenin improved the verse, how he expanded the scope of rhythm, rhyme, assonance, brought the poetic form closer to the highest artistic form of prose, how he achieved the highest degree of clarity and artistic expressiveness through the image - this alone even now, when his work has not yet unfolded in all its breadth and power - Yesenin can be called a first-class European poet. In form, he achieved a lot, the content will come to him along with the new culture, which has already captured him and made him even now almost one of the most enlightened Russian writers ”(journal“ Bulletin of Art Workers ”, M., 1921, No. 10/11, July-August, pp. 38-39).

However, two years later, composing a book on modern literature from his newspaper and magazine articles, G.F. Ustinov made significant corrections to the text just quoted. He included only the first half of it in the book, ending with the phrase that Yesenin “succeeds in new ... images no worse than old ones ...” (see G.F. Ustinov’s book “Literature of Our Days”, M., 1923, p. 51-52). The second half of it, where Yesenin the poet was highly appreciated, was here replaced by another text. He entered the chapter of the critic's book with the title "Condemned to Perdition":

“Do poets sense their doom? Of course. Grandfather's Russia is gone, and with it, with a melancholic song, its poets depart.<...>Yesenin in general very keenly feels and experiences the end of old Russia. He touchingly mourns over the departing old way of life, to which he sang “Sorokoust” back in 1920.<приведена вторая половина второй главки поэмы>.

In such melancholy tones, he yearns for the usual Russian chaos, which is defeated by the iron organization. Is it defeated? For Yesenin, he is undeniably defeated. But the poet has not yet given up - perhaps he himself decided to die along with this chaos, not wanting to betray his Ryazan ancestors.<...>

Now it is quite obvious that if there is no turn in Yesenin's work, his poetic path can be considered completed. But it's easy to say - turn!<...>What is required here is a new inner content, a new faith, a new man.

It is most likely that the form that Yesenin gave to the verse will remain and be resurrected in another poet who will pour new content into it. This will be his merit. The content, along with Yesenin, will depart - but hasn’t it already departed? - in the past. Together with grandfather Russia, together with the bygone era of bourgeois subjectivism and pseudo-Pugachevism.

The class struggle continues” (ibid., pp. 60-61).

A year later, G.F. Ustinov gave Yesenin an even harsher description: “He broke away from the village, sang “Sorokoust” to her, did not stick to the city - and, like Pugachev, wanders like a bandit - a psycho-bandit - over the disturbed land" (gaz. "Latest News ”, L., 1924, April 21, No. 16). However, this assessment (if we ignore its normativity) in some way echoes the words of R.B. Gul: “Sorokoust is an animal longing for the village. Cynicism and foul language are confused with extraordinary tenderness, which only those who have overstrained themselves in life know. The strain overcomes. A man chokes on moonshine. Drama comes to the tragic ”(Nak., 1923, October 21, No. 466).

Sorokoust- church service for the deceased; performed within forty days from the date of death.

About A.B. Mariengofe see t. 1 present. ed., p. 551-552.

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Sorokoust

White autograph Art. 73-76 (IMLI).

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