Perhaps this is one of the most famous poetic names of Russia of the 20th century. In his short thirty years, the poet reflected in his work the most dramatic and turning points in the life of peasant Russia, which is why in his work a kind of tragic worldview and at the same time a surprisingly subtle vision of the nature of his vast homeland runs like a red line. This feature of creativity can be explained by the fact that he was born and lived at the junction of two eras - the outgoing Russian Empire and the birth of a new state, a new world, where there was no place for the old orders and foundations. , the First World War, the February and October revolutions, severe - all these events tormented the long-suffering country and its people, leading to the collapse of the old world. The poet felt better than anyone the tragedy of this situation, reflecting it in his work. However, one of the most bitter confessions is in his poem "I am the last poet of the village." In this work, deep pain comes through from the beginning of the death of that peasant life, whose singer he was throughout his life. , of which he was a supporter, did not bring freedom and prosperity to the life of the village, but, on the contrary, aggravated its situation, making the peasants even more powerless than in tsarist times. The presentiment of the future death of the village is best reflected in these lines:

On the blue field path

Iron guest coming soon.

Oatmeal, spilled at dawn,

Will collect his black handful.

The poet says goodbye to the dying village and at the same time feels that his time has also passed. This is especially heard in such bitter lines:

Soon, soon wooden clock

My twelfth hour will wheeze!

Yesenin became the last poet who sang of the past peasant Russia, which now remains forever in that old era. He has a conflict with the new Soviet Russia, where the poet feels like an absolute stranger here. In addition, he does not know where the country is leading, and especially his beloved village, which he so idolized, future events. Such a work, where the poet forever says goodbye to his old life and rural Russia, was the poem - “Yes! Now it's decided! No return…”, where he bitterly writes that he “left his native fields” and now he is destined to die on “Moscow’s crooked streets”. After that, the poet no longer addresses the village and peasant life in his works. And in the poems of the last years of his life, there are mainly love lyrics and amazing poetic glorification of nature, where, however, there is bitterness of memories of that past happy life.

Poems of 1925, the last year of the poet's life, are saturated with a special tragedy. Sergei Alexandrovich seems to feel his imminent death, therefore he writes “Letter to his sister”, where he refers to his past life and already says goodbye to his close relatives, admitting that he is already ready to leave forever. But, perhaps, the feeling of imminent death was most clearly reflected in the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ...”, where the poet says goodbye to an unknown friend and at the end says the phrase: “In this life, dying is not new, But living, of course, not newer.” On December 28, 1925, he died in Leningrad, leaving a trail of unsolvable mysteries with his departure. He was the last poet of the outgoing era with its peasant patriarchal way of life and careful attitude to nature, which he deified. And the Yesenin village was replaced by a new way of life, which the poet was so afraid of, which completely changed the life of the peasants.

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born on September 21, 1895 in the Ryazan village of Konstantinovo. Came from a peasant family. At the same time, his mother was forced to marry, so when Serezha was two years old, the family broke up. The boy was given to be raised by his maternal grandparents. Grandmother told Yesenin a lot of folk songs, poems, ditties, fairy tales and legends, which became the "basis" of his poetic nature.

After graduating with honors from the Konstantinovsky four-year school (1909), he continued his studies at the Spas-Klepikovskaya teacher's school (1909-12), from which he emerged as a "teacher of the literacy school." In the summer of 1912, Yesenin moved to Moscow, for some time he served in a butcher's shop, where his father worked as a clerk. After a conflict with his father, he left the shop, worked in a book publishing house, then in the printing house of I. D. Sytin; during this period he joined the revolutionary workers and was under police surveillance. At the same time, Yesenin was studying at the historical and philosophical department of Shanyavsky University (1913-15).

Here, at the end of 1913, he became close to the Surikov literary and musical circle and, soon becoming a member, was elected to the editorial commission. Since 1914, he has been publishing poems in the children's magazines Mirok, Protalinka, and Good Morning. Dissatisfied with his "Moscow" entry into literature, he arrives on March 9, 1915 in Petrograd. Here, almost immediately, he is highly appreciated by the poets of the metropolitan elite: A. Blok, Z. Gippius, S. Gorodetsky. His poems appear in many metropolitan magazines, in the fall of 1915 he is a member of the literary group "Krasa" and the literary and artistic society "Strada", which became the first symbolic association of poets, according to Yesenin's definition, "peasant merchant" (new peasant).

In 1916 he was called up for military service. The revolution found him in one disciplinary battalion, where he ended up for refusing to write poetry in honor of the king. Left the army without permission, worked with the Socialist-Revolutionaries (“not as a party member, but as a poet”). During the split of the party, he went with the left group, was in their fighting squad. Yesenin met the revolution enthusiastically with the hope of "transforming" Russia. But soon I realized that the revolution is also devastation, famine and terror.

In 1917, he met and on July 4 married Zinaida Reich, a Russian actress, the future wife of the outstanding director V. E. Meyerhold. At the end of 1919 (or in 1920), Yesenin left his family, and in the arms of a pregnant son (Konstantin), Zinaida Reich, a one and a half year old daughter Tatyana remained. On February 19, 1921, the poet filed for divorce, in which he undertook to financially support them (the divorce was officially filed in October 1921). Subsequently, Sergei Yesenin repeatedly visited his children adopted by Meyerhold.

In 1918 he again moved to Moscow. Yesenin was at a loss from the events taking place: changes affected all spheres of life, creative salons and societies were filled with an audience far from literature.

In May, Yesenin's second poetry collection "Dove" with poems of 1915-1916 is published, in December the poet becomes a member of the Moscow Professional Union of Writers. In Moscow, he met A. Mariengof and V. Shershenevich. The result of this was the creation of the "Order of the Imagists", which also included Rurik Ivnev, G. Yakulov and B. Erdman. Yesenin actively participates in the collective collections published by the Order, in the organization of the Imagist publishing house and the literary cafe Pegasus Stall, trades in a bookshop owned by the Imagists, writes a work on the theory of art "Keys of Mary" (published in 1920).

However, the poet only partly shared their platform - the desire to clear the form from the "dust of content". His aesthetic interests are turned to the patriarchal rural way of life, folk art, the spiritual fundamental principle of the artistic image (treatise "Keys of Mary", 1919). Already in 1921, Yesenin appeared in the press criticizing the "clownish antics for the sake of the antics" of the "brothers"-Imagists. Gradually artsy metaphors leave his lyrics.

An event in Yesenin's life was a meeting with the American dancer Isadora Duncan (autumn 1921), who six months later became his wife. A joint trip to Europe (Germany, Belgium, France, Italy) and America (May 1922 August 1923), accompanied by noisy scandals, shocking antics of Isadora and Yesenin, exposed their "mutual misunderstanding", aggravated by the literal lack of a common language (Yesenin did not speak foreign languages , Isadora learned several dozen Russian words). Upon returning to Russia, they parted.

Arriving in Russia, he began to work on the cycles of poems “Hooligan”, “Confession of a Hooligan”, “Love of a Hooligan”. In 1924, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), a collection of poems by S.A. Yesenin "Moscow tavern" was published. Then Yesenin began to work on the poem "Anna Snegina" and already in January 1925 he finished working on this poem and published it.

After parting with his ex-wife Isadora Duncan, Sergei Yesenin married Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya, who was the granddaughter of the famous Russian writer of the 19th century - Leo Tolstoy. But this marriage lasted only a few months.

In August 1924, creative differences and personal motives (a quarrel with Mariengof) prompted Yesenin to break with Imagism. In autumn, the platy goes on a trip again - to the Transcaucasus. The impressions of this trip are reflected in the collection of poems "Persian Motives" (1925).

One of his last works was the poem "Country of Scoundrels" in which he denounced the Soviet regime. After that, persecution began in the newspapers, accusing him of drunkenness, fights, etc. The last two years of Yesenin's life were spent in constant traveling: hiding from prosecution, he travels to the Caucasus three times, travels to Leningrad several times, seven times to Konstantinovo.

At the end of 1925, Yesenin's wife agreed on the poet's hospitalization in a paid neurological clinic. Only a few people closest to the poet knew about this. There are two versions of the reasons for S. Yesenin's hospitalization. The first is the treatment of a depressive state, including alcohol addiction, the second is the constant monitoring of law enforcement agencies (imaginary or real). It was the second reason that forced the poet to leave the clinic in an atmosphere of haste and secrecy and move to Leningrad.

On December 14, 1925, Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin finished working on the poem “The Black Man”, on which he worked for 2 years. This poem was published after the death of the poet. On December 23 of the same year, Yesenin arrived in Leningrad and stayed at the Angleterre Hotel.

Yesenin died on December 28, 1925. The official cause of death is suicide. He was found hanging from a pipe in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad. His last poem was also found there - "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ...", written in blood. In recent decades, many alternative versions have been put forward about the causes of Yesenin's death. It is believed that the poet was killed. Yesenin was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovsky cemetery.

Introduction

The poetry of real great thoughts and feelings is always truly folk, always conquers our hearts with the harsh truth of life, inextinguishable faith in Man. “My lyrics are alive with one big love, love for the motherland. The feeling of the motherland is the main thing in my work ”- this is the main thing that Sergei Yesenin highlights in his poetry, in which he sees her pathos, civic aspiration. How deeply, selflessly one must love the Motherland, what civic courage, wisdom and fortitude of the soul one must possess in order to reflect so confessively and uncompromisingly on one’s future fate and at the same time how prophetically far-sighted and aspiring to dream about the steel future of peasant Russia.

Field Russia! Enough

Drag along the fields!

It hurts to see your poverty

And birches and poplars.

The larger the artist, the larger his work, the more original his talent, the more contradictory his era, the more difficult it is sometimes for contemporaries to appreciate his true contribution to the spiritual life of the nation, to reveal all the facets of his talent. For Yesenin, nature is the eternal beauty and eternal harmony of the world. Gently and caringly, without any external pressure, nature heals human souls, relieving the tension of inevitable earthly overloads. This is how we perceive the poet's poems about our native nature, this is how, sublimely - enlightened, they affect us.

The feather grass is sleeping. Dear plain,

And the lead freshness of wormwood.

No other homeland

Do not pour my warmth into my chest.

The poet, as it were, tells us all: stop, at least for a moment, break away from your daily bustle, look around you, at the world of earthly beauty surrounding us, listen to the rustle of meadow grasses, the song of the wind, the voice of the river wave. Living, quivering pictures of nature in Yesenin's poems not only teach to love and preserve the world of earthly beauty. They, like nature itself, contribute to the formation of our worldview, the moral foundations of our character, moreover, our humanistic worldview. The world of man and the world of nature in Yesenin's poetry are one and indivisible. Hence - the "flood of feelings" and the wisdom of thought, their natural fusion, participation in the figurative flesh of the verse; hence the insight, the moral height of Yesenin's philosophical lyrics. The poet is well aware that the removal of man from nature, and even more so the conflict with it, brings irreparable damage and moral damage to society.

§1.Childhood and youth of the poet

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born on September 21, 1895. in the village of Konstantinov, Ryazan province, on the banks of the Oka. Born into a peasant family. From the age of two, due to the poverty of his father and the large number of his family, he was given up for education to a rather prosperous grandfather. Grandfather was an Old Believer, a man of strict religious rules, he knew the Holy Scripture well. He loved his grandson very much. On Saturdays and Sundays, he told him the Bible and sacred history. But already in childhood, a wider influence also made itself felt - the element of folk art in which the boy grew up. In addition to his grandfather, the boy was introduced to folk art by his grandmother. She told stories. He did not like some fairy tales with bad endings, and he remade them in his own way. Thus, the spiritual life of the boy took shape under the influence of sacred history and folk poetry. The boy lived freely and carefree. He was not familiar with the early hardships of peasant labor. He was rarely at home, especially in spring and summer, he grew up in the bosom of Ryazan's wild nature. He fished, disappeared all day with the boys on the banks of the river. Childhood passed among the fields and steppes. Here that great love for native nature was born, which later nourished his poetic imagination. Even in early childhood, Yesenin had a sincere and heartfelt pity for all living things. His love for animals remained with him throughout his life. When it was time to study, the boy was sent to the Konstantinovsky elementary school. Yesenin's teaching was easy. The certificate of graduation from the school said: "Sergey Alexandrovich Yesenin in the month of May of this 1909 successfully completed a course at the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo 4-year school." Then he entered the Spas-Klepikovskoe School. Those who graduated from it had the right to teach in the primary grades of general education schools, to serve in civilian institutions.

The lessons of Russian literature and native language were interesting. Here Yesenin was surrounded mainly by peasant youth, who were drawn to knowledge, independently reflecting on life, looking for their place in it. It is here, in the Spas-Klepikovskaya school, that Yesenin's poetic path begins. After graduating from this school with honors, he left it as a "teacher of the literacy school." In the summer of 1912 Yesenin moved to Moscow, for some time he served in a butcher's shop, where his father worked as a clerk. Yesenin was completely left to himself, there was no thinking environment, there was no person who could become an adviser and mentor. Father could not become such a person for Yesenin. Purely material calculations obscured the spiritual life of the young man from him. There was estrangement between them. There was a gap between father and son.

§2.Literary debut

In search of a livelihood, Yesenin has been working in a bookstore since the autumn of 1912. But at the beginning of 1913. this store is closed, Yesenin goes to Konstantinovo for a short time and returns to Moscow in March. This time he gets a job at the printing house of the famous publisher I.D. Sytin, where he worked until the summer of 1914. During this period, he joined the revolutionary workers and was under police surveillance. The craving for self-education leads him in 1913 to the Moscow People's University named after A.L. Shanyavsky. The purpose of the university was to expand the scope of higher education in Russia, to make it accessible to the poor, democratic strata. The university has grown and grown rapidly. Teaching was carried out at a high level. Yesenin studied at the historical and philosophical department, the program of which included political economy, the theory of law, and the history of new philosophy. Yesenin studied at the university for about a year and a half, which was not an easy task. One of the poet's contemporaries, writer Semyon Fomin, in his memoirs, argued that from the very first literary steps, Yesenin had no weak poems. He allegedly immediately began to write bright, original, strong things.

This is not true. At first, Yesenin also came out with pale, inexpressive, imitative poems, like, for example, such

Red dawn lit up

In the dark blue sky

The band appeared clear

In its golden brilliance.

But for all the primitiveness of such lines, they came from what they saw, experienced. Only two years pass, and the poet’s feeling, having gained depth, will spill out already in Yesenin’s own, unearthly verse: “The scarlet light of dawn wove out on the lake ...” In Russian boldly, sweepingly, mischievously shaking his golden curls, he entered the chamber of Russian poetry, to stay there forever. Since childhood, he composed poetry (mainly in imitation of A.V. Koltsov, I.S. Nikitin, S.D. Drozhnik), Yesenin finds like-minded people in the Surikov Literary and Musical Circle. The composition of the circle was rather mixed. Organizationally, the circle took shape in 1905. Yesenin was brought to the "Surikov Circle" at the beginning of 1914 by his Moscow acquaintance S.N. Koshkarov. Yesenin was accepted into the circle. The beginning young poet had a literary environment. Exhibitions of literary works were organized, literary collections were published, and the literary and social magazine “Friend of the People” was published. Yesenin quickly got used to the situation that prevailed in the circle. The young man was quite strongly captured by the socio-political activities of the Surikovites. Yesenin's new position naturally gave rise to new thoughts and moods in him. Back in 1912, he tried to write a poetic declaration, which he gives the program name "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.

Yesenin's stay in the "Surikov Circle" did not mean that he had become a conscious revolutionary. But it helped him get away from loneliness, attached to the team of working people, made him involved in social life. Yesenin's spiritual awakening took place here. Yesenin's completely independent life begins in 1914, when his name is already quite often found on the pages of literary and art magazines. Yesenin's first printed poems are poems about Russian nature. Pictures of the seasons, fairy-tale motifs were the best suited for children's magazines, where Yesenin mainly placed them. It was mainly published in two of them, Protalinka and Mirok.

"Birch", "Bird cherry", "Powder" - these are the names of Yesenin's poems of 1914. In the spring of 1915, Yesenin arrived in Petrograd, where he met A.A. Block, S.M. Gorodetsky, A.M. Remisov and others, approaches N.A. Klyuev, who had a significant influence on him. Their joint performances with poems and ditties, stylized as a "peasant", "folk" style (Yesenin is a golden-haired young man in an embroidered shirt and morocco boots) were a great success.

§3.Collection Radunitsa

The poet was only twenty years old when the first book of his poems appeared. The collection "Radunitsa" was published in early 1916. "Radunitsa" - enthusiastically welcomed by critics, who found a fresh stream in it, noting the author's youthful spontaneity and natural taste.

Many verses are associated with the name of the collection, inspired by religious ideas and beliefs, well known to Yesenin from the stories of his grandfather and from the lessons of the law of God at the Spas-Klepikovskaya school. Such poems are characterized by the use of Christian symbolism.

I see - in a blueberry board,

On light-winged clouds

Beloved mother is coming

With a pure son in her arms...

In verses of this type, even nature is painted in religious-Christian tones. However, such verses much more often come from Yesenin not from the Gospel, not from canonical church literature, but precisely from those sources that were rejected by the official church, from the so-called "detached" literature - apocrypha, legends. Apocrypha means secret, hidden, hidden. The Apocrypha were distinguished by great poetry, richness of thought, proximity to fairy-tale fantasy. An apocryphal legend underlies such, for example, Yesenin's poem, which is filled with not at all religious, but worldly-philosophical content:

The Lord went to torture people in love,

He went out as a beggar to a kuluzhka.

Old grandfather on a dry stump, in an oak tree,

Zhamkal gums stale donut.

After all, this is not so much Christian as purely human morality. The old man shows human kindness, and the image of Christ only shades it, emphasizes the humanistic idea. In the first place is not the idea of ​​God, but the idea of ​​humanity. The words of Yesenin and his Jesus and Mikolah were said by him after the revolution, but this was not a belated attempt to justify himself to Soviet readers. Even when Yesenin wrote poems with a religious shell, he was in a far from religious mood. Religiousness in Yesenin's poems manifests itself in different ways in different periods of his creative activity. If in verses of 1914. Yesenin's ironic attitude to religion is quite easily captured, but later, in 1915-1916, the poet creates many works in which the religious theme is taken, so to speak, seriously. The victory of real life over religious legends is very tangible in Radunitsa. A significant part of this collection is poems coming from life, from knowledge of peasant life. The main place in them is occupied by a realistic depiction of village life. Unremarkable peasant everyday life in the hut flows peacefully. But he shows the village only from one, everyday side, without touching on the social processes that took place in the peasant environment. Yesenin was undoubtedly familiar with the social life of the village. And it cannot be said that he did not make attempts to reflect it in his poems. But material of this kind did not succumb to his truly poetic incarnation. It suffices to cite such verses, for example:

It's hard and sad for me to see

How my brother dies.

And I try to hate everyone

Who is at enmity with his silence.

Here Yesenin has not yet found his own voice. These verses are reminiscent of a bad transcription of Surikov, Nikitin and other peasant poets. On the other hand, one cannot ignore what the poet himself admitted when he said that he “comes not from the ordinary peasantry”, but from the “upper layer”. Yesenin's first childhood and youthful impressions were reflected in Radunitsa. These impressions were not connected with the severity of peasant life, with forced labor, with the poverty in which the "ordinary" peasantry lived and which gave rise to a sense of social protest. All this was not familiar to the poet from his own life experience, was not experienced and felt by him. The main lyrical theme of the collection is love for Russia. In poems on this topic, Yesenin's real and apparent religious hobbies, decrepit Christian symbols, and all the attributes of church literature immediately faded into the background. In the poem "Swarm you, my dear Russia ..." he does not refuse such comparisons as "huts - in the robes of the image", mentions the "Meek Savior", but the main thing and the main thing is different.

If the holy army shouts:

"Throw you Russia, live in paradise!"

I will say: “There is no need for paradise,

Give me my motherland."

Even if we assume that “Savior” and “Holy Army” are taken here not in a conditional, but in the literal sense, then the love for the native land, the victory of life over religion, sounds all the stronger in these verses. The strength of Yesenin's lyrics lies in the fact that in it the feeling of love for the Motherland is always expressed not abstractly and rhetorically, but concretely, in visible images, through pictures of the native landscape. But Yesenin's love for the Motherland was generated not only by sad pictures of impoverished peasant Russia. He saw the other one too: in joyful spring attire, with fragrant summer flowers, merry groves, with crimson sunsets and starry nights. And the poet did not spare colors in order to more vividly convey the richness and beauty of Russian nature.

"I pray for ala dawns,

I take communion by the stream."

§4. Great October in the work of S.A. Yesenin

Great October ... Yesenin saw in him the events from which a new era began. ("The second year of the first century" - so he designated the date of the release of three of his books - 1918). Already on the eve of it - after the February Revolution - the poet was full of joyful forebodings.

Oh Russia, oh steppe and winds,

And you are my stepfather's house!

On the golden line

Spring thunder nests, -

He exclaimed enthusiastically.

In the “small” (as he called it) poems “Comrade”, “Singing Call”, “Father”, “Oktoikh”, Yesenin, like many poets of that time, uses church vocabulary, biblical images. It was a time of grand gestures, oratorical intonations, solemn chants...

The poet rejoices, he is all in delight, admiration. His thoughts are about the happy and enduring hour of the fatherland.

You, your fogs

And sheep in the fields

I carry like a sheaf of oatmeal,

I am the sun in my arms...

Contemporaries who met the poet in those stormy days recall his inner upsurge, his desire to be in the midst of the people, absorbing everything that worried a wide variety of people who opened their hearts to the wind of the revolution.

A few days after the October Uprising, Yesenin is present at the rally of "the intelligentsia and the people", listening to A.V. Lunacharsky. Looking around the crowded hall, he smiles:

Yes, it's an audience!

Meetings with Alexander Blok, whom he met upon his arrival in Petrograd (March 1915), are becoming more frequent. For all the difference in their paths to the revolution, their worldviews of poets were brought together by reflections on the fate of Russia, faith in its great future. The fact that Blok and Yesenin took the side of the insurgent people immediately separated many bourgeois writers from them. “Yesenin called, talked about yesterday’s “morning of Russia” in the Tenishevsky hall. Newspapers and the crowd shouted at his address, A. Bely and mine: "traitors." They don’t shake hands,” Blok enters in his notebook on January 22, 1918 and adds: “Gentlemen, you never knew Russia and never loved her!”

Yesenin could also address the same words to "gentlemen". He, a peasant son, was pleased to feel close to people who had broken the fetters of slavery. "My mother is the motherland, I am a Bolshevik." Although this statement in the mouth of Yesenin sounded too categorical, he did not compromise the truth of feelings one iota. It seemed to him that the revolution, having destroyed the old world, would immediately erect a “desired city”, the country of Inonia (from the word it is okay, good), a peasant paradise. In this country there are no taxes for arable land, all the land is peasant, "God's", there are no landowners, officials, priests, free cultivators live in abundance, practicing their "free" religion, worshiping their "cow god". Yes, the tsar and all his henchmen were expelled, the land became peasant land, the people became free. But the "earthly paradise", as it was portrayed in Yesenin's works, did not come. Economic ruin. Hunger. Lack of fuel. The offensive of the interventionists, the rampant White Guard and anarchist gangs ...

"Who is it? My Russia, who are you? Who? the poet asked in confusion, peering at the face of his native land disfigured by war and deprivation.

Oh, who, who to sing

In this frenzied glow of corpses?

And above this terrible vision, as in a time of troubles and misfortunes, “the death horn blows, blows” ... The city, stretching out its hand to the village, seems to the poet to be an iron monster, a “terrible messenger”, a soulless enemy of meadows and arable lands, of all living things. Yesenin's poems "Mares' ships", "Sorokoust", "Mysterious world, my ancient world..." are filled with anxious, heavy feelings and thoughts.

The field freezes in melancholy,

Choking on telegraph poles, -

In these verses, the very torment of the poet, as it were, takes on flesh and blood, becomes visible and therefore especially impressive. And this despair, this inner pain, was sometimes covered up by feigned arrogance, thoughtless bravado, cynicism. But a kind, sympathetic soul could not hide under any masks. And that is why the sigh is so natural and deep:

I love my homeland

I love my homeland very much.

The answer to the question: “Where does the rock of events take us?” - he should have been prompted by life itself and this feeling - stored in the heart, inescapable.

And so it happened.

5. Meeting with Isadora Duncan

Trips abroad

In 1921, during his stay abroad, A. Lunacharsky had a conversation with the American dancer Isadora Duncan, whose fame spread all over the world. Duncan (1878 - 1927) Irish by birth, was born in California, becoming an American citizen. She was the initiator of a new dance school that revived the choreographic traditions of ancient Greece, plastic gymnastics. Duncan patiently studied ancient dance from images on ancient vases. She invited A. Lunacharsky to organize a dance school in Moscow, believing that the very spirit of free ancient dance corresponds to the mood prevailing in Soviet Russia. In 1921 Duncan arrived in Moscow. This decision of hers was completely disinterested. One of the spacious Moscow mansions was assigned to her school. She enthusiastically undertook to teach young people the ancient dance, began to develop a choreographic embodiment of such themes as the "Red Banner". It was relatively easy for Isadora Duncan to get used to the Moscow environment, since she had already toured Russia twice before. In the autumn of 1921, at the apartment of the artist G. Yakulov, she met Yesenin. They quickly got close. On May 2, 1922, their marriage was registered. By the time they met, Duncan was almost twice as old as Yesenin. This, of course, could not but affect their relationship. There were other circumstances that spoke of the unreliability of their rapid rapprochement. Duncan did not speak Russian, Yesenin did not know a single European language. In addition, their life views and habits were too different. All this involuntarily created the impression of the unnaturalness of their life together.

Duncan has been married several times. She had children whom she carefully raised. And both of them - a boy and a girl - died in Paris when the car in which they took a walk unexpectedly fell into the Seine. When she met with Yesenin, it seemed to her that his face was somewhat reminiscent of the features of her son. This gave her affection for Yesenin a somewhat painful character. Duncan was attentive to Yesenin, always worried about him. Yesenin broke up with Duncan in the autumn of 1923. In his last letter to her, he confessed: "I often remember you with all my gratitude to you." Yesenin's meeting with Duncan was one of the reasons for his trip abroad. Going on a tour of Europe and America, Duncan invited Yesenin with her. But in the poet's decision to go abroad, purely literary considerations were also of great importance.

May 10, 1922 Yesenin and Duncan went by plane to Germany. Obviously, in order to make it easier to obtain a visa from foreign officials, Yesenin and Duncan, already husband and wife, were forced to remarry abroad. Yesenin wrote on June 21, 1922 from Wiesbaden: “Isidora married me a second time and now to Duncan - Yesenin, but simply Yesenin. Soon his collection of poems was published in Berlin. The trip turned out to be restless for Yesenin. His words sound like a complaint: “If Isadora were not extravagant and gave me the opportunity to sit down somewhere. She, as if nothing had happened, rides in a car to Lübeck, then to Leipzig, then to Frankfurt, but to Weimar.

After visiting America, Yesenin again ended up in Paris. This time D. Merezhkovsky himself rushed at him. On June 16, 1923, he published an article in the Eclair newspaper in which he hysterically implored the French not to succumb to the propaganda of "representatives of the Bolshevik tyranny." Merezhkovsky also carried "Isadora Duncan and her husband, the muzhik Yesenin." He expressed the hope that Duncan "would not be able to infect Paris" with "his dance, embellished with propaganda", terrible details were reported about Yesenin, such as the fact that he tried to rob an American millionaire in a hotel.

Far from his homeland, Yesenin felt sad and lonely. Following Europe, Yesenin visited America. She seemed to him cramped, uncomfortable and soulless. Yesenin stayed in America for four months. Soon after their arrival in America, the troubles associated with Duncan's performances began, Duncan gave her speeches an agitational character: each time she performed the Internationale dance developed by her in Moscow, which sometimes ended with the intervention of the police. Yesenin defined this whole complex political operation in simple terms, saying in a letter that he and Duncan were "asked back."

§6.Return to Russia

In August 1923 Yesenin returned to Moscow. “I am most pleased with the fact that I returned to Soviet Russia,” he wrote shortly after his arrival from abroad. Everyone who at that time had to meet with Yesenin saw how the poet now peered especially intently into life, into the transformations that took place in his native land during his travels abroad. From America, as Mayakovsky noted, Yesenin returned "with a clear craving for the new." Lost in many respects for the poet's interest in his former literary connections. “It seems to me,” wrote one of the poet’s contemporaries, “that Yesenin, having traveled around Europe and America, began to suffocate in a narrow circle. Yesenin is increasingly trying to understand, comprehend what is happening in these years in Russia, around the world. Expanding horizons, the scope of his poetry. With joy, Yesenin now speaks in verse about his "epiphany", about that great historical truth, which is now more and more fully revealed to him:

I see everything

I clearly understand

That the era is new -

Not a pound of raisins for you.

These are lines from Stanzas, written in 1924. “In our literary construction with all the foundations on the Soviet platform,” Yesenin will say about his civic position even earlier, in the essay “Iron Mirgorod”, in the fall of 1923.

The theme of the two Russias - the outgoing and the Soviet, - already clearly indicated by Yesenin in his "return to his homeland", is further developed in his small poems, the names of which - "Soviet Russia" and "Departing Russia" - are full of deep inner meaning. These small poems, capacious and large-scale in thought, are perceived as ethical works of great social and social tension. The motif of the competition between the old and the new, outlined in the poem “Sorokous”, (“Red-maned colt” and “cast-iron train on its paws”) is developed in the verses of recent years: fixing the signs of a new life, welcoming “stone and steel”, Yesenin increasingly feels like a singer "golden log hut", whose poetry "is no longer needed here." Yesenin's trip to the countries of Western Europe and the USA (May 1922 - August 1923) made him think about many things. From a world where “Mr. Dollar is in terrible fashion,” where the soul was “surrendered as unnecessary to Smordyakovism,” he saw more clearly the meaning of the transformations in Soviet Russia. “...Life is not here, but with us,” he wrote with all certainty from Germany to his Moscow friend. He did not work abroad. And what lay down on paper was internally connected with memories of the fatherland. He could repeat Nekrasov's verses:

Not the heavens of someone else's homeland -

I composed songs for my homeland!

Commissar Rassvetov's monologue from the unfinished dramatic poem "Country of Scoundrels", sketched in America, became such a "song to the motherland", Soviet Russia. In "Steel" America, capitalism has devastated the soul of a person, putting a dollar, a profit, over everything. The world of acquisitiveness, chistogan gave rise to enterprising businessmen, businessmen.

These people are rotten fish

All of America is a greedy mouth.

But Russia... Here is the lump…..

If only the Soviet power.

In "steel" Russia, Soviet power and socialism will elevate a person, because in the name of his happiness a new life is being built - "there will be what anyone needs in the republic." The poet clearly likes Commissar Rassvetov, a convinced communist, collected, strong-willed person who knows what he stands for, what he fights for. He liked that the “former” considered him a “Bolshevik agent”, a “Red propagandist”, an “employee of the Cheka”. A decisive step was taken abroad to drive away the "black man". Drive away the ominous creation of "Moscow Tavern", spiritual confusion, tragic delusions. Thinking about his native land, his life, his "heart drank blood with sobering brew." The first words he said at home were: "Most satisfied with the fact that he returned to Soviet Russia." Lyricism is the strongest side of Yesenin's talent.

Glory to Yesenin was brought not by poems, but by his lyrical poems. Even in the best of his poems, Anna Snezhina, the lyricist prevailed over the epic poet. Until today, there is an opinion that Yesenin's love lyrics are isolated from the era, devoid of any signs of time, that it has no connection with the public biography of the poem, but only with narrowly personal facts. From this point of view, Yesenin appears as a “pure lyricist” completely immersed in himself. His love lyrics were never divorced from the general moods and thoughts that owned the poet, it was always conditioned by his social views, which powerfully left their imprint on his most intimate poems. This confusion, depressed state, pessimistic thoughts then left a tragic imprint on the poet's love lyrics. Here are the characteristic lines of one of the poems of this cycle:

Sing, sing. On the damn guitar.

Your fingers dance in a semicircle.

Would choke in this frenzy,

My last, only friend.

By the beginning of 1923, Yesenin's desire to get out of the crisis in which he found himself becomes noticeable. Gradually, he finds more and more solid ground, a deeper awareness of Soviet reality, begins to feel not adopted, but a native son of Soviet Russia. This was most strongly reflected not only in political, but also in love lyrics.

It was to 1923 that his poems belong, in which he first writes about true, deep love, pure, bright and truly human.

A blue fire swept

Forgotten relatives gave.

The first time I then about love,

For the first time I refuse to scandal.

You can't ignore the line:

"For the first time I sang about love." After all, Yesenin wrote about love in the Moscow Tavern. This means that the poet himself did not recognize the true love that he wrote about in his gloomy cycle of poems. At this time (1923-1925), one persistent motive appears in his works, to which he repeatedly returns - the poet judges true love more strictly, which should not be confused with random impulses:

Don't call this ardor fate

Frivolous quick-tempered connection, -

How by chance I met you

I smile calmly dispersing.

In Persian Motives, Yesenin, by the power of his poetic imagination, created a really tangible atmosphere of the East: Yesenin, as it were, constructs it from his personal impressions of the Soviet East and book ideas about the ancient East. This conditional East is designated as Persia. At the heart of "Persian motives" are the impressions of his long trips around the Caucasus (Tiflis, Batumi, Baku). Lyrics of such great poets as Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam, Saadi occupied a prominent place in the book. Their lyrics contain a lot of life experience. The favorite theme of famous lyricists is the theme of love, warmed by a feeling of friendship and respect for a woman. This is love without fatal passions that incinerate the soul. Such is the general atmosphere of ancient Persian lyrics; it also occupies a dominant position in Yesenin's Persian Motives. Let us recall one of the most characteristic poems of the cycle:

I asked the money changer today

What gives a ruble for half a fog,

How to tell me for a lovely lady

In Persian gentle "I love" ..?

In addition, "Persian Motifs" has internal relationships with Persian material. So, for example, Yesenin writes: "If a Persian composes a bad song, It means that he is never from Shiraz." This is an adaptation of a Persian proverb that Yesenin knew well and used in one of his letters: “And it’s not for nothing that Muslims say: if he doesn’t sing, then he’s not from Shumu, if he doesn’t write, then he’s not from Shiraz.” We remember that during his trip abroad to the West, Yesenin wrote almost nothing. He was tormented by homesickness, the Western world seemed to him antipoetic. Yesenin created "Persian motifs" in completely different conditions: he was in the Soviet East, he was close to the romantic and poetic world of Eastern life. Yesenin deepens this principle. He has a birch "girl", "bride", she is the personification of everything pure and beautiful. The poet speaks of her in the way that one can only speak of a person, endows her with specific human signs “Green-haired, in a white skirt there is a birch tree over a pond.” In some of Yesenin's poems, we even meet with the facts of a "biography", with the "experiences" of a birch:

green hair,

girl breast,

O thin birch,

What did you look into the pond?

This principle of the image unusually brings nature closer to man. This is one of the strongest aspects of Yesenin's lyrics - he kind of makes a person fall in love with nature. The work of Yesenin in the last two years of his life leaves no doubt that the poet has found solid ground under his feet. Contemporary criticism of Yesenin noted the emerging process of the poet's spiritual recovery. Significant changes in the inner appearance of the poet were also noticeable in his desire to finally break with the unhealthy life that darkened life, to overcome old habits, to subordinate his actions to reason. In the poems of the same 1925, we quite often find a direct expression of Yesenin's love and affection for life, a cheerful mood, and peace of mind. This, for example, can be judged at least by his poetic confessions:

"Again I came to life and again I hope

Just like in childhood, for the best destiny,

“I still love this life,

I fell in love so much, as if at the beginning,

"And the earth is dearer to me every day."

§7. Death of a poet

The most dangerous thing was that, as a result of a constant overstrain of forces, signs of Yesenin's mental imbalance began to appear. Extreme suspiciousness began to develop in him: he constantly feels the threat of neurasthenia, angina pectoris, transient consumption, it seems to him that he is being watched, even an attempt is made on his life, painful fantasies begin to appear in him. In the medical report of the psychiatric clinic of Moscow University dated March 24, 1924. it was said that he "suffered from a severe neuropsychiatric illness, expressed in severe attacks of mood disorder and obsessive thoughts and drives." Benislavskaya became a close person, friend, comrade, assistant for Yesenin. Benislavskaya's participation in the fate of Yesenin especially increased in 1924-1925. During Yesenin's frequent absences from Moscow, Benislavskaya was in charge of all his literary affairs: she published his works in the periodical press. With great interest, Benislavskaya treated each new work of Yesenin, expressed her opinions about them to him. Her assessments were impartial in nature, and Yesenin reckoned with them. During his departures from Moscow, Yesenin learned all the literary news mainly from Benislavskaya, who was interested in modern literature and well versed in it. He travels three times to the Caucasus, travels to Leningrad several times, seven times to Konstantinovo. Nature, dearly beloved by the poet, for which he always found bright, joyful colors and tones, more and more often becomes gloomy, sad and ominous in his poems:

Snowy plain, white moon,

Our side is covered with savannah.

And birch trees in white are crying through the forests

Who died here? Died? Am I myself?

There are thoughts that the creative time has ended, poetic forces have dried up, it begins to seem to the poet that "Talyanka has lost her voice, Having forgotten how to talk." Disbelief in one's own strength was the most terrible thing for Yesenin. But even in this difficult state, Yesenin still struggled with himself. In moments of enlightenment, he expressed the hope that he would cope with the situation in which he fell. In an effort to break out of the darkness that surrounded him, he tried to turn the tide of events, decisively change his life.

Once again trying to start a family life, on September 18, 1925, the marriage of Yesenin and Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya (L.N. Tolstoy's granddaughter) was registered. For a short life together with Yesenin, Tolstaya did a lot: she sought to tear Yesenin away from an unhealthy environment, to establish a family hearth. And yet their life together did not go well. Apparently, it was not easy for Yesenin to get used to a new, orderly life. And so the marriage falls apart. His departure from Moscow is like an escape. He hurriedly collects things, telegraphs his Leningrad friend V. Erlich “Immediately find two or three rooms. On the 20th I am moving to live in Leningrad. Even in Moscow, it was decided that the sisters would move to Yesenin in Leningrad. In order for everyone to settle down, Yesenin asked to find two or three rooms. Arriving in Leningrad on December 24, Yesenin drove from the station to V. Erlich and, not finding him at home, left a note on the back of which he wrote a cheerful impromptu. Yes, indeed, he went to Leningrad to live, not to die. However, everything that gave hope, the desire to believe in the future of the poet, which caused the joy of true friends, collapsed on the night of December 27-28. That night, Yesenin committed suicide at the Angleterre Hotel. He hung himself on a steam heating pipe, not making a loop out of the rope, but wrapping it around his neck. With one hand he held on to the pipe - perhaps in the last moments the thought of life still flashed through him. But it was already too late. Yesenin died not from suffocation, but from a rupture of the cervical vertebrae.

The tragic death of the poet, of course, was associated with his unbalanced state of mind. It occurred in one of the most severe attacks of melancholy and pessimism.

Conclusion

True poetry is always deeply human. She conquers our hearts with love for a person, faith in the best impulses of his soul; it helps a person in the most tragic moments of his life. Poetry wages an eternal battle for Man! Great artists are always great humanists. Like an unquenchable fire, they carry through the centuries their unshakable love and faith in man, that his future is bright and beautiful. In their creative essence, in their convictions and ideas, they are great thinkers and revolutionaries of the spirit; they constantly and persistently listen to the beating of the people's heart, to the mighty breath of their homeland, sensitively catching the growing peals of new revolutionary storms and upheavals. The deeply national basis of Yesenin's poetry always worried Alexei Tolstoy. After Yesenin's death, he wrote: “A great national poet has died. He has already knocked on all the walls. He burned his life like a fire. He burned before us. His poetry is, as it were, the scattering of the treasures of his soul by both handfuls. I believe that the nation should wear mourning for Yesenin. “Big and expensive we have all lost. It was such an organic fragrant talent, this Yesenin, this whole gamut of simple and wise poems - it has no equal in what is before our eyes, ”wrote Alexander Serafimovich about his friend. Many poets, whose lyre sounded after Yesenin, experienced the joy of the first meeting with his poems, each of them in their souls. “Own Yesenin,” each of them said his lively, excited word about the great poet. Yesenin's poetry is close and dear to all the peoples of our country. His poems are heard in different languages, for example: Georgian and Kazakh, Moldovan and Uzbek.

Admiration for Yesenin is heard in the words of the Lithuanian poet Justinas Marcinkevičius: “Yesenin is a miracle of poetry. And like any miracle, it's hard to talk about it. A miracle must be experienced. And you have to believe in him. The miracle of Yesenin's poetry not only convinces, but always excites, as a manifestation of a great human heart. Filled with love for people, for a person, for the beauty of the earthly earth, to be imbued with sincerity, kindness, a feeling of constant concern for the fate of not only their compatriots, but also the peoples of other countries and nations, Yesenin's humanistic poetry actively lives and acts today, helping to preserve and governance of world peace. Yesenin's deeply humane, freedom-loving, highly patriotic poetic word now reaches the hearts of millions of people in all corners of our planet, awakening in them all the best human traits, uniting them morally, spiritually, helping them to know and discover even more fully the poet's homeland - the country October Revolution, the first country of socialism, which gave the world the most "humane person". “The man of the future will read Yesenin in the same way as people read him today. The strength and fury of his verse speak for themselves. His poetry cannot grow old. Eternally young blood of eternally living poetry flows in their veins. Esenin's work is very contradictory and heterogeneous, sometimes hopelessly sad and hopeless, sometimes cheerful and laughing. It seems to me that it is precisely in the lyrics that everything that makes up the soul of Yesenin's creativity is expressed. And these are pictures of Russian nature filled to the brim with unfading freshness - a “flood” of the most secret human feelings and desires.

Bibliography

1. Selected poems - M .: "Spark", 1925

2. "Birch calico" - M .:, GIZ, 1925

3. S. Yesenin. Image, poetry, era - 1979

4. S. Yesenin. Poems and poems - 1988

5. S. Yesenin. Collected works in five volumes: T 1-Sh, fiction - 1966-1967

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Yesenin, Sergei Alexandrovich, poet (October 3, 1895, the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province - 12/28/1925 Leningrad) (see his biography). Born into a peasant family, he grew up in the house of his grandfather, an Old Believer, in religious strictness. In 1912-15 he studied at the People's University of A. L. Shanyavsky in Moscow and worked as a proofreader.

In 1914, Yesenin's first poems appeared in magazines. In 1915, in Petrograd, Yesenin met with Blok and entered the local literary circles. block and Gorodetsky oriented him towards rapprochement with peasant poets, especially with N. Klyuev. The first collection of poems by Yesenin Radunitsa(1916) was received positively.

Sergei Yesenin in newsreels, 1918, 1921, Living voice of a Russian poet

In 1917, Yesenin was close to the left-wing socialist revolutionaries (Socialist-Revolutionaries). He welcomed the October Revolution from the point of view of spiritual uplift, full of messianic expectations, which were portrayed in the image of a peasant paradise. In 1919, during the Civil War, Yesenin moved to Moscow and joined the Imagist literary group. From time to time he indulged in revelry in the company of drunkards, prostitutes and drug addicts.

The meeting with the American dancer Isadora Duncan led to an unsuccessful marriage, scandals, widely covered by the world press, while Yesenin was abroad (May 1922 - August 1923). Yesenin was in despair, from which he could not be brought out by a temporary return to his native village (1924), as well as attempts to somehow adapt to communist reality. In December 1925 he was found dead in a hotel room in Leningrad. According to the official version, Sergei committed suicide, but there is a lot of evidence that he was killed on the orders of the authorities, dissatisfied with his latest anti-Soviet poem Country of villains.

During his lifetime, Yesenin was one of the most popular poets, but later party criticism consistently deleted him from Soviet literature. "Yeseninshchina" has become a negative concept. Only since 1955 his works began to be widely published again in the USSR.

Yesenin's innate lyrical talent, which manifested itself in the melancholy chanting of the old Russian village with its meadows, clouds, huts (for example, in a poem Russia) and combined with religious imagery, developed through various symbolist influences (Blok, Bely), but was strong enough to always remain himself. His early poems, which arose upon returning to the village after the first meeting with the city, include simple, very emotional ballads about animals, for example, Song of the dog(1915). From an early age, he also gives heartfelt samples of love lyrics (for example, Do not wander, do not crush in the crimson bushes ...).

Yesenin, like Blok and Bely, revolutionary events appear in connection with the ideas of Christianity, moreover, the religious element, manifested in the system of images, or, for example, in a poem Comrade in the description of Christ, has a dual character, up to blasphemy.

In a poem Inonia(1918), reminiscent of Chagall's paintings in its figurative language, Yesenin paints the peasant paradise he so desired, free from the enslaving influence of urban civilization. In search of revolutionary content, he turned to Russian history and created a lyrical drama Pugachev(1921), where linguistic eccentricity makes it very difficult to understand the allegories used by the poet.

Secrets of the Century - Sergei Yesenin. Night in Angleterre

Yesenin was by nature predisposed to melancholy; it was intensified by the disappointment from the process of urbanization and proletarianization taking place around, which were detrimental to the peasantry. Escape from reality into a wild life led to a different theme of his poems, written since 1920 and published in two collections - Confessions of a bully(1921) and Moscow tavern(1924). Yesenin feels that he, as a poet, has no place in Soviet Russia; the despair associated with this permeates his confessional lyrics.

In the last two years of his life, Yesenin's poetry, often narrative, rich in colors, sounds and unusual phrases, becomes more and more clear and simple. The discord that ruined his life and led him to a tragic end was deeply understood by thousands of young people who, like the poet, lost their roots and fell into the maelstrom of this flood: in verses full of confusion and loss, they saw their own life, heard their own complaints.

Brief biography of Sergei Yesenin.
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born on September 21 (October 4), 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province, in the family of a peasant Alexander Yesenin. The mother of the future poet, Tatyana Titova, was married against her will, and soon, together with her three-year-old son, she went to her parents. Then she went to work in Ryazan, and Yesenin remained in the care of his grandparents (Fedor Titov), ​​a connoisseur of church books. Yesenin's grandmother knew many fairy tales and ditties, and, according to the poet himself, it was she who gave the "impulses" to write the first poems.
In 1904, Yesenin was sent to study at the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School, and then a church teacher's school in the city of Spas-Klepiki.
In 1910-1912, Yesenin wrote quite a lot, and among the poems of these years there are already quite mature, perfect ones. Yesenin's first collection "Radunitsa" was published in 1916. The song warehouse of the poems included in the book, their ingenuously sincere intonations, the melody that refers to folk songs and ditties is evidence that the umbilical cord connecting the poet with the rural world of childhood was still very strong at the time of their writing.
The very name of the book Radunitsa is often associated with the song warehouse of Yesenin's poems. On the one hand, Radunitsa is the day of commemoration of the dead; on the other hand, this word is associated with a cycle of spring folk songs, which have long been called Radovitsky or Radonitsky stoneflies. In essence, one thing does not contradict the other, at least in Yesenin's poems, the distinguishing feature of which is hidden sadness and aching pity for everything living, beautiful, doomed to disappear: May you be blessed forever that it has come to flourish and die ... Poetic the language already in the early poems of the poet is peculiar and subtle, the metaphors are sometimes unexpectedly expressive, and the person (the author) feels, perceives nature as living, spiritualized (Where the cabbage beds ... Imitation of the song, The scarlet light of dawn wove out on the lake ..., The flood licked with smoke ill. ., Tanyusha was good, there was no more beautiful in the village. .).
After graduating from the Spaso-Klepikovsky School in 1912, Yesenin and his father came to Moscow to work. In March 1913, Yesenin again went to Moscow. Here he gets a job as an assistant proofreader in the printing house of I.D. Sytin. Anna Izryadnova, the poet's first wife, describes Yesenin in those years as follows: "He was in a depressive mood - he is a poet, no one wants to understand this, editorial boards are not accepted for publication, his father scolds that he is not doing business, he has to work: He was reputed to be a leader, attended meetings, distributed illegal literature, pounced on books, read all his free time, spent all his salary on books, magazines, did not at all think about how to live ... ". In December 1914, Yesenin quit his job and, according to the same Izryadnova, "gives himself all over to poetry. He writes all day long. In January, his poems are published in the newspapers Nov, Parus, Zarya ..."
The mention of Izryadnova, about the distribution of illegal literature, is associated with Yesenin's participation in the literary and musical circle of the peasant poet I. Surikov - a very colorful meeting, both in aesthetic and political respects (its members included Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and Bolshevik-minded workers ). The poet also goes to the classes of the Shanyavsky People's University - the first educational institution in the country, which could be visited free of charge by volunteers. There, Yesenin receives the basics of a humanitarian education - he listens to lectures on Western European literature, on Russian writers.
Meanwhile, Yesenin's verse is becoming more confident, more original, sometimes civil motives begin to occupy him (Kuznets, Belgium, etc.). And the poems of those years - Marfa Posadnitsa, Us, the Song of Evpatiy Kolovratka - are both a stylization of ancient speech, and an appeal to the origins of patriarchal wisdom, in which Yesenin saw both the source of the figurative musicality of the Russian language, and the secret of "the naturalness of human relations." The theme of the doomed transience of being begins to sound in Yesenin's poems of that time in full voice:

I meet everything, I accept everything,
Glad and happy to take out the soul.
I came to this earth
To leave her soon.

It is known that in 1916 in Tsarskoye Selo Yesenin visited N. Gumilyov and A. Akhmatova and read to them this poem, which struck Anna Andreevna with its prophetic character. And she was not mistaken - Yesenin's life really turned out to be both fleeting and tragic ...
Meanwhile, Moscow seems close to Yesenin, in his opinion, all the main events of literary life take place in St. Petersburg, and in the spring of 1915 the poet decides to move there.
In St. Petersburg, Yesenin visited A. Blok. Not finding him at home, he left him a note and poems tied in a rustic scarf. The note was preserved with Blok's note: "Poems are fresh, clean, vociferous...". So, thanks to the participation of Blok and the poet S. Gorodetsky, Yesenin became a member of all the most prestigious literary salons and living rooms, where he very soon became a welcome guest. His poems spoke for themselves - their special simplicity, combined with images that “burn through the soul”, the touching immediacy of the “village boy”, as well as the abundance of words from the dialect and the Old Russian language, had a bewitching effect on many leaders of literary fashion. Some saw in Yesenin a simple young man from the village, endowed with a remarkable poetic gift by a twist of fate. Others - for example, Merezhkovsky and Gippius, were ready to consider him the bearer of the saving, in their opinion, for Russia, mystical folk Orthodoxy, a man from the ancient sunken "City of Kitezh", in every possible way emphasizing and cultivating religious motifs in his poems (Child Jesus, Scarlet darkness in the blackness of heaven., Clouds from the hare) (Neigh like a hundred mares.).
In late 1915 - early 1917, Yesenin's poems appeared on the pages of many metropolitan publications. At this time, the poet also converges quite closely with N. Klyuev, a native of Old Believer peasants. Together with him, Yesenin performs in the salons to the accordion, dressed in morocco boots, a blue silk shirt, girded with a gold lace. The two poets really had a lot in common - longing for the patriarchal village way of life, passion for folklore, antiquity. But at the same time, Klyuev always consciously fenced himself off from the modern world, and Yesenin, who was restless and aspiring to the future, was irritated by the feigned humility and deliberately didactic unctuousness of his "friend-enemy". It is no coincidence that a few years later, Yesenin advised a poet in a letter: "Stop singing this stylized Klyuev Rus: Life, the real life of Russia is much better than the frozen drawing of the Old Believers ..."
And this "real life of Russia" carried Yesenin and his fellow travelers on the "ship of modernity" farther and farther. In full swing. The First World War, disturbing rumors are spreading around St. Petersburg, people are dying at the front: Yesenin serves as an orderly in the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital, reads his poems in front of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, in front of the Empress. What causes criticism from his St. Petersburg literary patrons. In that "deaf breath of fire" about which A. Akhmatova wrote, all values, both human and political, turned out to be mixed, and the "coming boor" (D. Merezhkovsky's expression) revolted no less than reverence for the reigning persons .. .
At first, in the revolutionary turbulent events, Yesenin saw the hope for a speedy and profound transformation of his entire former life. It seemed that the transformed lands and sky were calling out to the country and man, and Yesenin wrote: O Rus, flap your wings, / Set up a different support! / With other times. / A different steppe rises... (1917). Yesenin is overwhelmed with hopes for building a new, peasant paradise on earth, a different, just life. The Christian worldview at this time is intertwined in his poems with theomachy and pantheistic motives, with admiring exclamations addressed to the new government:

The sky is like a bell
The month is the language
My mother is the motherland
I am a Bolshevik.

He writes several short poems: Transfiguration, Otchar, Octoechos, Ionia. Many lines from them, sometimes sounding defiantly scandalous, shocked contemporaries:

I will lick on the icons with my tongue
Faces of martyrs and saints.
I promise you the city of Inonia,
Where the deity of the living lives.

No less famous are the lines from the poem Transfiguration:

The clouds are barking
The golden-toothed heights roar...
I sing and call:
Lord, recline!

In the same revolutionary years, in times of devastation, famine and terror, Yesenin reflects on the origins of figurative thinking, which he sees in folklore, in ancient Russian art, in the "nodal tie of nature with the essence of man", in folk art. He expresses these thoughts in the article Keys of Mary, in which he expresses hope for the resurrection of the secret signs of ancient life, for the restoration of harmony between man and nature, while relying on the same rural way of life: "The only wasteful and slovenly, but still the keeper of this secrets was a village half-broken by seasonal work and factories.
Very soon, Yesenin realizes that the Bolsheviks are not at all the ones they would like to pretend to be. According to S. Makovsky, an art critic and publisher, Yesenin “understood, or rather, felt with his peasant heart, with his pity: that it was not a“ great bloodless one ”, but a dark and merciless time began ... ". And now the mood of elation and hope is replaced by Yesenin's confusion, bewilderment before what is happening. Peasant life is being destroyed, famine and devastation are marching across the country, and the regulars of the former literary salons, many of whom have already emigrated, are being replaced by a very diverse literary and near-literary public.
In 1919, Yesenin turned out to be one of the organizers and leaders of a new literary group - the Imagists. (IMAGINISM [from the French image - image] is a trend in literature and painting. It arose in England shortly before the war of 1914-1918 (its founders were Ezra Pound and Windham Lewis, who broke away from the Futurists), it developed on Russian soil in the first years of the revolution. The Imagists published their declaration in the journals Sirena (Voronezh) and Sovietskaya Strana (Moscow) at the beginning of 1919. The core of the group was V. Shershenevich, A. Mariengof, S. Yesenin, A. Kusikov, R. Ivnev, and I. Gruzinov and some others. Organizationally, they united around the publishing house "Imaginists", "Chikhi-Pihi", a bookstore and the well-known Lithuanian cafe "Stall of Pegasus" in their time. number 4. Shortly thereafter, the group disbanded.
The theory of the Imagists is based on the principle of poetry, proclaiming the primacy of the "image as such". Not a word-symbol with an infinite number of meanings (symbolism), not a word-sound (cubo-futurism), not a word-name of a thing (acmeism), but a word-metaphor with one specific meaning is the basis of I. "The only law of art, the only and incomparable method is to reveal life through the image and the rhythm of images" ("Declaration" of the Imagists). The theoretical substantiation of this principle comes down to likening poetic creativity to the process of language development through metaphor. The poetic image is identified with what Potebnya called "the inner form of the word." "The birth of the word of speech and language from the womb of the image," says Mariengof, "predetermined once and for all the figurative beginning of future poetry." "You must always remember the original image of the word." If in practical speech the "conceptuality" of a word displaces its "figurativeness", then in poetry the image excludes meaning, content: "eating the meaning with the image is the way of development of the poetic word" (Shershenevich). In this regard, there is a breakdown of grammar, a call for agrammaticity: "the meaning of the word lies not only in the root of the word, but also in the grammatical form. The image of the word is only at the root. By breaking the grammar, we destroy the potential power of the content, while maintaining the former power of the image" (Shershenevich , 2×2=5). The poem, which is an agrammatic "catalog of images", naturally does not fit into the correct metrical forms: "vers libre of images" requires rhythmic "vers libre": "Free verse is the essential essence of Imagist poetry, which is distinguished by the extreme sharpness of figurative transitions" (Marienhof) . "A poem is not an organism, but a crowd of images, one image can be taken out of it, ten more can be inserted" (Shershenevich)).
Their slogans, it would seem, are completely alien to Yesenin's poetry, his views on the nature of poetic creativity. What are, for example, the words from the Declaration of Imagism: "Art built on content ... should have perished from hysteria." In Imagism, Yesenin drew close attention to the artistic image, a significant role in his participation in the group was played by the general domestic disorder, attempts to share the hardships of the revolutionary time together.
The painful feeling of duality, the impossibility of living and creating, being cut off from the folk peasant roots, coupled with disappointment in finding a "new city - Inonia" give Yesenin's lyrics a tragic mood. The leaves in his poems are already whispering "in autumn", whistling all over the country, like Autumn, a charlatan, a murderer and a villain, and sighted eyes. Only death closes...
I am the last poet of the village - Yesenin writes in a poem (1920) dedicated to his friend the writer Mariengof. Yesenin saw that the former village life was disappearing into oblivion, it seemed to him that a mechanized, dead life was coming to replace the living, natural. In one of his letters in 1920, he admitted: “I am very sad now that history is going through a difficult era of killing the individual as a living person, because there is absolutely not the socialism that I thought about ... Closely in it is living, closely building a bridge to the invisible world, for they cut and blow up these bridges from under the feet of future generations.
At the same time, Yesenin was working on the poems Pugachev and Nomakh. He had been interested in the figure of Pugachev for several years, collecting materials, dreaming of a theatrical production. The surname Nomakh was formed on behalf of Makhno, the leader of the Insurgent Army during the Civil War. Both images are related by the motif of rebellion, a rebellious spirit, characteristic of folklore robbers-truth-seekers. The poems clearly sound a protest against contemporary reality, in which Yesenin did not see even a hint of justice. So the "country of scoundrels" for Nomakh is the region in which he lives, and in general any state where ... if it is criminal to be a bandit here, / That is no more criminal than to be a king ...
In the autumn of 1921, the famous dancer Isadora Duncan arrived in Moscow, with whom Yesenin soon married.
Spouses go abroad, to Europe, then to the USA. At first, European impressions lead Yesenin to the idea that he "has fallen out of love with impoverished Russia, but very soon both the West and industrial America begin to seem to him a kingdom of philistinism and boredom.
At this time, Yesenin was already drinking heavily, often falling into a rage, and in his poems the motifs of hopeless loneliness, drunken revelry, hooliganism and a ruined life, partly related to some of his poems with the genre of urban romance, sound more and more often. Not without reason, even in Berlin, Yesenin wrote his first poems from the Moscow Tavern cycle:

Again they drink here, fight and cry.
Under harmonica yellow sadness...

The marriage with Duncan soon broke up, and Yesenin again found himself in Moscow, not finding a place for himself in the new Bolshevik Russia.
According to contemporaries, when he fell into hard drinking, he could terribly "cover" the Soviet government. But they did not touch him and, having kept him for some time in the police, they were soon released - by that time Yesenin was famous in society as a folk, "peasant" poet.
Despite the difficult physical and moral condition, Yesenin continues to write - even more tragic, even deeper, even more perfect.
Among the best poems of his last years are a Letter to a woman, Persian motifs, small poems, Russia is leaving, Russia is homeless, Return to the Motherland, Letter to mother (Are you still alive, my old woman?.), We are now leaving little by little to that country where there is silence grace...
And, finally, the poem "The Golden Grove Dissuaded", which combines a truly folk song element, and the skill of a mature, experienced poet, and a poignant, pure simplicity, for which he was so loved by people who were far from elegant literature:

The golden grove dissuaded
Birch, cheerful language,
And the cranes, sadly flying,
No more regrets for anyone.
Whom to pity? After all, every wanderer in the world -
Pass, enter and leave the house again.
Hemp dreams about all the departed
With a wide moon over the blue pond...

On December 28, 1925, Yesenin was found dead in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad. His last poem - "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ..." - was written in this hotel in blood. According to the poet's friends, Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room, and he was forced to write in blood.
According to the version accepted by most of the poet's biographers, Yesenin, in a state of depression (a month after treatment in a neuropsychiatric hospital), committed suicide (hanged himself). Neither contemporaries of the event, nor in the next few decades after the death of the poet, other versions of the event were expressed.
In the 1970s and 1980s, mainly in nationalist circles, there were also versions about the murder of the poet, followed by a staged suicide: on the basis of jealousy, mercenary motives, murder by the OGPU. In 1989, under the auspices of the Gorky IMLI, the Yesenin Commission was created under the chairmanship of Yu. L. Prokushev; at her request, a number of examinations were carried out, which led to the following conclusion: “the now published ‘versions’ about the murder of the poet with subsequent staging of hanging, despite some discrepancies ... are a vulgar, incompetent interpretation of special information, sometimes falsifying the results of the examination” (from the official response professor at the department of forensic medicine, doctor of medical sciences B. S. Svadkovsky at the request of the chairman of the commission Yu. L. Prokushev). In the 1990s, various authors continued to put forward both new arguments in support of the murder version and counterarguments. The version of Yesenin's murder is presented in the TV series Yesenin.
He was buried on December 31, 1925 in Moscow at the Vagankovsky cemetery.

Creativity of Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin, uniquely bright and deep, is now firmly established in our literature and enjoys great success with numerous Soviet and foreign readers.
The poet's poems are full of heartfelt warmth and sincerity, passionate love for the boundless expanses of his native fields, the "inexhaustible sadness" of which he was able to convey so emotionally and so loudly.
Sergei Yesenin entered our literature as an outstanding lyricist. It is in the lyrics that everything that makes up the soul of Yesenin's creativity is expressed. It contains the full-blooded, sparkling joy of a young man who rediscovers the wonderful world, subtly feeling the fullness of earthly charms, and the deep tragedy of a man who has remained too long in the "narrow gap" of old feelings and views. And if in the best poems of Sergei Yesenin - "flood" of the most intimate , the most intimate human feelings, they are filled to the brim with the freshness of pictures of native nature, then in his other works - despair, decay, hopeless sadness. Sergei Yesenin is primarily a singer of Russia, and in his poems,
sincere and frank in Russian, we feel the beating of a restless tender heart. They have a "Russian spirit", they have a "smell of Russia". They absorbed the great traditions of national poetry, the traditions of Pushkin, Nekrasov, Blok. Even in Yesenin's love lyrics, the theme of love merges with the theme of the Motherland. The author of "Persian Motives" is convinced of the fragility of serene happiness away from his native land. And distant Russia becomes the main heroine of the cycle: "No matter how beautiful Shiraz is, it is no better than the expanses of Ryazan." Yesenin met the October Revolution with joy and ardent sympathy. Together with Blok, Mayakovsky, he took her side without hesitation. The works written by Yesenin at that time ("Transfiguration", "Inonia", "Heavenly Drummer") are imbued with rebellious moods. The poet is captured by the storm of the revolution, its greatness and is eager for the new, for the future. In one of his works, Yesenin exclaimed: "My Motherland, I am a Bolshevik!" But Yesenin, as he himself wrote, took the revolution in his own way, "with a peasant bias", "more spontaneously than consciously." This left a special imprint on the poet's work and largely predetermined his future path. Characteristic were the poet's ideas about the purpose of the revolution, about the future, about socialism. In the poem "Inonia" he draws the future as a kind of idyllic kingdom of peasant prosperity, socialism seems to him a blissful "peasant's paradise". Such ideas also affected other works of Yesenin of that time:

I see you, green fields,
With a herd of brown horses.
With a shepherd's pipe in the willows
Apostle Andrew is wandering.

But the fantastic visions of the peasant Inonia, of course, were not destined to come true. The revolution was led by the proletariat, the village was led by the city. "After all, there is absolutely not the socialism that I thought about," says Yesenin in one of the letters of that time. Yesenin begins to curse the "iron guest", bringing death to the patriarchal rural way of life, and mourn the old, outgoing "wooden Russia". This explains the inconsistency of Yesenin's poetry, who has gone through a difficult path from a singer of patriarchal, impoverished, destitute Russia to a singer of socialist Russia, Lenin's Russia. After Yesenin's trip abroad and to the Caucasus, a turning point occurs in the life and work of the poet and a new period is marked. It makes him fall in love with his socialist fatherland more strongly and more strongly and evaluate everything that happens in it in a different way. "... I fell in love even more in communist construction," Yesenin wrote upon his return to his homeland in the essay "Iron Mirgorod". Already in the cycle "Love of a bully", written immediately upon arrival from abroad, the mood of loss and hopelessness is replaced by hope for happiness, faith in love and the future. love, gives a clear idea of ​​the new motives in Yesenin's lyrics:

A blue fire swept
Forgotten relatives gave.
For the first time I sang about love,
For the first time I refuse to scandal.
I was all like a neglected garden,
He was greedy for women and potion.
Enjoyed singing and dancing
And lose your life without looking back.

Yesenin's work is one of the brightest, deeply moving pages in the history of Soviet literature. Yesenin's era has passed away, but his poetry continues to live, awakening a feeling of love for his native land, for everything close and different. We are concerned about the sincerity and spirituality of the poet, for whom Russia was the most precious thing on the entire planet...