Klyuev Nikolay Alekseevich short biography. Nikolai Klyuev

"Old Believer"

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev is an ambiguous personality. To many, he is known only as a poet, contemporary and good friend of Yesenin. Some consider him a simple village peasant, a native of the people, who wrote about the people and the village. Some consider his poems beautiful, others find them incomprehensible. Not much is known today about how he was in life: he seems to be in the shadow of his friend Yesenin, on whose work, as many admit, he had a significant influence.

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev was born on October 10, 1884 in the village of Koshtug, Koshtug volost, Olonets province, on the Vytegra River.

Love for art, according to researchers of the poet's work, was instilled in him by his mother, who came from a peasant Old Believer family. The population of the village in which Klyuev was born was a kind of sect that strictly observed religious customs. The boy spent all his childhood in this sect, and there is no doubt that this is what influenced his worldview.

Mother, Praskovya Dmitrievna, was born in Zaonezhie in a family of Old Believers. She taught Nicholas everything she knew herself. It was she who instilled in Nikolai a love for folk art - he greatly appreciated Russian folk legends, songs, spiritual poems, fairy tales. Later, Nikolai Klyuev recalled: “I owe my late mother to literacy, a song warehouse and all verbal wisdom, whose memory I honor tearfully, even to death.” Poems dedicated to mother literary critics recognized as the pinnacle of creativity N. Klyuev.

Nikolai Klyuev always spoke warmly about his mother and was very upset by her death: “And so I had wonderful dreams. When my mother died, on the day of her funeral, I arrived from the churchyard, exhausted from tears. They undressed me and threw me on the floor, near the stove, on a straw bed. And I slept for two days, and on the third day I woke up, about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, with such a cry, as if I had been born again. In my dreams, my mother appeared to me and showed me the whole path, what kind of person goes from the moment of death to the eternal world. But I can’t tell about what I saw, I won’t be able to, I just carry it in my heart. Something faintly similar to what was experienced in these dreams glimmers in my Bottom Psalm, in some of its lines.

In his letters, autobiographical notes, stories, N. Klyuev always emphasized that there were many gifted, remarkable, artistic people in his family. He said that all the talents in people of his kind are inherent in them by nature itself.

Later, in 1893, Nikolai studied at the parochial school in Vytegra, after which he entered the city school, and then the Petrozavodsk paramedic school, which he did not finish due to illness.

This is how the events of his childhood are described in official biographies. However, in reality, Klyuev's parents belonged to the Khlysty sect. The fact that the boy was in this sect from birth and took part in religious rites could not but leave its mark.

However, today few people know what kind of sect this is, and why it is terrible for adults, not to mention children. The encyclopedias provide rather scarce information about this sect, for example, the following: “Khlysty (Christian believers), a sect of spiritual Christians. Originated in Russia in con. 17 - beginning. 18th century They consider it possible to communicate directly with the "Holy Spirit", the incarnation of God in the righteous sectarians - "Christs", "Mother of God". In zeal, they bring themselves to religious ecstasy. There are small communities of whips in Tambov, Samara and Orenburg region., to Sev. Caucasus and Ukraine. However, from time to time, information leaks into the press about how the rites actually take place, what constitutes "religious ecstasy" and what happens after. Eyewitnesses say that rejoicings often end in "sinful sin." In addition, the sect of Khlysty is often associated with the sect of eunuchs.

And they are not in vain. It is known that Klyuev himself left the sect after they tried to castrate him against his will. It happened not in childhood, but in adolescence. However, after some time, he again restored ties with the sectarians, which he continued to maintain throughout his life.

So, Nikolai Klyuev went on a trip, during which he visited a number of Old Believer monasteries. His friends subsequently claimed that he visited India, Iran and China, where his horizons expanded significantly. Moreover, he was interested not only in the culture and way of life of these peoples. There were people who quite seriously, but cautiously, in an undertone, claimed that in the East he studied magic. Even more people claimed that Klyuev owned hypnosis and repeatedly demonstrated his abilities. In general, the poet was quite versatile personality- he sang well, knew how to play several musical instruments, had an excellent acting talent. However, all this manifested itself only in personal communication. At first glance, Klyuev was an ordinary person, even had a rather repulsive appearance, dressed very simply, like a peasant who came to the fair from a neighboring village: in a simple shirt, belted at the waist, and pants that he tucked into boots. So he walked around the capital, despite the fact that all his friends, even former villagers, had long been dressed in fashionable suits and wore ties.

At the beginning of 1900, fifteen-year-old Nikolai began to write poetry. And in 1904 he published his works for the first time. In the St. Petersburg almanac “New Poets”, Klyuev’s poems “Rainbow Dreams Did Not Come True ...”, “Widely Vast Field ...”, etc. were published. Since 1905, Klyuev began to be published in the Moscow collections “Surf” and “Waves”. In his early poems, Klyuev most often wrote about people's anger and grief: "People's grief", "Where are you, ebullient impulses."

Where are you, seething impulses,

Feelings boundless space,

Burning curse words

Angry violence reproach?

Where are you, innocent, pure,

Brave fighters,

The homelands of the stars are radiant,

Shares of folk singers?

Motherland, drenched in blood,

Waiting for you like a bright day

Covered in darkness,

Waiting - can't wait for the fire!

This purifying fire

All-bearing people.

This poem clearly shows that the revolutionary trends of that time were not alien to the poet. Indeed, he took an active part in underground activities. In this regard, in early 1906, Nikolai Klyuev was arrested, accusing him of "inciting" the peasants and "agitating illegal ideas." The poet at that time communicated with various revolutionary organizations, which was noticed by the Moscow gendarme department.

From that moment, the prison period began in his life - for six months Nikolai was in prison in Vytegor, and then he was transferred to Petrozavodsk.

Some time after that, false rumors began to circulate about the death of Nikolai Klyuev from a heart attack at the Taiga station. It was said that at the same time his suitcase with manuscripts went missing.

In the early work of N. Klyuev, one can also see his rebellious ideas directly related to religion. The revolution seemed to him the coming of the Kingdom of God.

In his poems, Nikolai Klyuev tried to protect the "dense" age-old foundations. He saw the danger in the attack on Russia by the "iron" urban culture. All this led to a complete rejection of social progress.

After some time, Nikolai Klyuev was released, but even after that he did not leave his illegal activities. He began to communicate with the revolutionary populist intelligentsia. At this time, the poet became very friendly with Maria Dobrolyubova, who was the sister of the poet A. Dobrolyubov. M. Dobrolyubova was also called the "Madonna of the Socialist-Revolutionaries."

The acquaintance with the poet L. D. Semenov was just as dangerous. Thanks to this friendship, Nikolai Klyuev began to publish in the Moscow journal Trudovoy Put, but after a while it was closed, accusing him of anti-government orientation.

In the fall of 1907, Nikolai Klyuev was called up for military service. This was unbearable for the poet's vulnerable heart, and he tried to refuse service on religious grounds.

The refusal was not taken into account, N. Klyuev was arrested and brought to St. Petersburg. There, the poet was placed for examination in a hospital, where he was declared unfit for military service. Rejoiced at such an outcome of the case, Nikolai Klyuev left for the village.

In 1907, N. Klyuev began to correspond with A. Blok. This correspondence was important both for one and for the other poet.

Subsequently, 37 letters from Klyuev to Blok were found, the main topic of which was a discussion of the problem of the relationship between the people and the intelligentsia.

Blok quoted lines from these letters in his articles, calling them "a document of great importance - about modern Russia- folk, of course. “The words of his letter seem like golden words to me,” said A. Blok.

Thanks to the support of Blok, the works of N. Klyuev were published in the magazines Golden Fleece, Novaya Zemlya, etc. After some time, N. Klyuev began to collaborate with other magazines: Zavety, Sovremennik, Niva, and others. In the Novaya Zemlya magazine, they even tried to present Nikolai Klyuev as a kind of prophet and preacher, the spokesman for the “new people's consciousness”, who considers the enlightenment of the people his mission.

In 1911, a collection of poems by Nikolai Klyuev "Pine Chime" with a preface by V. Bryusov was first published in Moscow. Very quickly, this collection became popular among the regulars of various literary circles. Almost all influential critics of Moscow unanimously recognized the collection brightest event literary life these years.

After the release of the collection of poems, N. Klyuev became quite prominent figure both in literary and bohemian circles. He took part in meetings of the "Workshop of Poets" and in meetings of acmeists. At this time, the poet could often be found in the literary and artistic cafe "Stray Dog".

Nikolai Klyuev became practically central figure literary life of the time. He was very popular, many famous and famous people wanted to meet him. powerful people. They were also interested in his work. Admirers of the work of N. Klyuev were not only Blok and Bryusov, but also Gorodetsky, Mandelstam, Gumilyov, Akhmatova and others.

The poet himself did not stop writing. During that period, two collections of his poems were published. The first collection, "Brotherly Songs", included religious poems, and the second, called "Forest Were", is more of a collection of folk songs.

In 1915, N. Klyuev met Sergei Yesenin, and a society was formed around them, which included poets with a new peasant trend in creativity (P. Oreshin, S. Klychkov, A. Shiryaevets and others). Since 1915, Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin spoke together in the press and at readings. After some time, N. Klyuev became the spiritual mentor and teacher of S. Yesenin.

Klyuev's friendship with Yesenin was so strong that for two years they lived together in the same apartment, which Klyuev had acquired by that time. There were rumors that the two poets were connected not only by friendship. N. Klyuev devoted many of his poems to his close friend. Subsequently, using all his connections, he even saved S. Yesenin from mobilization into the army.

In 1916, Nikolai Klyuev released his new collection "Worldly Thoughts", the main theme of which was military events.

N. Klyuev greatly supported the October Revolution that took place in 1917, considering it necessary for Russian society and the only way out for the peasantry. During these years, N. Klyuev experienced an unprecedented creative upsurge, and wrote a large number of poems.

In 1919, Nikolai Klyuev released the collection "Copper Whale", where he collected various revolutionary poems: "Red Song", "From cellars, from dark corners ...".

In 1922, the best, according to critics, N. Klyuev's lifetime collection, "Lion's Bread", was released.

In all the works written by Klyuev in those years, his inner feelings and torments are reflected. Nikolai Klyuev believed that all past suffering should be atoned for and pass along with the formation of a "brotherhood", a "peasant's paradise". In all the work of Nikolai Klyuev of that time, his longing and crying for dying Russia slip through.

In 1922, L. Trotsky published an article in which he criticized Nikolai Klyuev. Calling Klyuev "a kulak poet", he branded him with this nickname for a whole decade. This article put Nicholas in a difficult position. The need that he experienced at this time undermined the poet's faith in himself. N. Klyuev turned to the Union of Poets for help, he wrote to M. Gorky: "... Poverty, wandering around other people's dinners destroys me as an artist."

All this time, N. Klyuev continues to write poetry. After the death of S. Yesenin, Klyuev wrote the poem “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” in memory of him.

Remember, damn it, Yesenin

Kutya from coals and from bath soaps!

And in my kvass drunkenly foamed

Opara for weddings and crimson games.

And I have a new hut -

Polati with a valance, inextinguishable goddess,

Namel from the undergrowth of the ardent word I

To you, my owlet, my beloved bird!

Nikolai Klyuev was very worried about Yesenin's death. Z. N. Dydykin recalled how he and his father met N. Klyuev and about the poet’s feelings about a dead friend: “My father met Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev at an exhibition in the Union of Artists in 1925, where his first work was presented - a bust Sergei Yesenin.

The bust was created under the impression tragic events that took place at the Angleterre Hotel. The work expressed great emotionality and expressiveness, so my father, not being a member of the Union of Artists at that time, was able to participate in the exhibition. Klyuev, examining the exhibition and stopping at the bust of the poet, exclaimed: "Oh, Seryozhenka!" Nikolai Vasilievich stood nearby, and Klyuev's companion said: "Here is the author." That's how we got to know each other."

In 1931, Nikolai Klyuev decided to settle in Moscow, but even there his works were banned - any poem was rejected by all editions.

As a result of this, N. Klyuev often went hungry during these years, but nevertheless did not give up his writing. Z. N. Dydykin recalled the poet during these years: « Klyuev often visited our house. We lived on Rimsky-Korsakov Prospekt, in the attic, where a high iron staircase led. He went to his mother more often, as he was starving, and his mother, a very kind and hospitable person, always fed him. Sometimes, without finding anyone at home, he sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and waited for someone to come.

I remember one Easter: sitting at the table, holding an Easter egg in his hand, in a loose-fitting shirt, embroidered on the collar and sleeves with a cross, in brown and raspberry tones. A smooth, youthful face was striking, he himself was strong, small in stature, plump. There was one memorable photograph of this Easter day in the house, taken in our apartment at the Easter table in the circle of our relatives. He sits sideways, in his hands is an Easter egg.

He loved to tell his dreams, he told them very colorfully, fantasizing uncontrollably. A shirt with a belt hangs, the belt comes to life and turns into a snake, wraps around the table leg and stands like a cobra. I screamed all night after that. In conversation, very "okal". Over his shirt he wore a dark-colored undershirt, a black hat, boots, and a scarf wrapped around his neck. Nikolai Vasilyevich presented a book of his poems with an autograph. Where the book is now is unknown.

We were with his father. The apartment was not far from the House of Composers, in the courtyard to the left. About two rooms. The abundance of shelves, such as library ones, was striking. I sat with candles, and at the same time there was a telephone. Many icons with lamps hung, and there was one very large candle on the table.

During these years, Nikolai Klyuev showed sympathy for the seventeen-year-old graphic artist A. N. Yar-Kravchenko, to whom he dedicated a large number of his poems.

In mid-1934, Nikolai Klyuev was transferred to Tomsk. The poet was very worried about such excommunication from literature. During these years, he directed all his efforts to restore his name and the opportunity to publish his works. Nikolai Klyuev wrote: “I don’t feel sorry for myself as a public figure, but I feel sorry for my bee songs, sweet, sunny and golden. They sting my heart hard."

On June 5, 1937, in Tomsk, Nikolai Klyuev was arrested, accused of "counter-revolutionary insurgent activity."

In October 1937, in the same place, in Tomsk, the poet was sentenced to death.

Later it turned out that the Siberian NKVD fabricated a case about the Union for the Salvation of Russia, which was preparing an uprising against the Soviet regime. The role of one of the leaders of this union was attributed to Nikolai Klyuev.

There were rumors that the real reason for the arrest of Nikolai Klyuev was something else. N. Klyuev was arrested on a denunciation, and he was accused of treason, but in fact - for homosexuality. Allegedly, during these years, N. Klyuev turned his attention to the poet P. Vasilyev, who was a relative of one party functionary. An influential relative did not like such sympathy, and he immediately took action.

They shot Nikolai Klyuev in 1937.


| |

Spiritual and poetic origins. Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev was born on October 10, 1884 in the village of Koshtug, Koshtug volost, Vytegorsky district, Olonets province (now Vytegorsky district Vologda region). AT different time in autobiographical notes, letters, oral stories, the poet liked to emphasize that in his family there were many remarkable, gifted, artistic people by nature. So, he recalled his grandfather from his father’s side: “My late aunt used to say that his father, and my grandfather, was full of bear dancing. He took the bear to the fairs, played the snot, and the shaggy wise guy walked around in snot chic. In the Kirillov side, up to two hundred rubles were brought to my grandfather a year. So my grandfather Timothy lived ... The ruin and death of grandfather came from the decree. A decree was issued to deliver the bears-dancers to the county administration for execution ... For a long time the breadwinner's skin hung on the wall in the grandfather's hutch, until time wore it to dust. But the bear's snot is alive, it pities in my songs, crumbles into golden grains, echoes in my heart, in my dreams and consonances.

But more often than others, Klyuev recalls his mother Praskovya Dmitrievna. She was originally from Zaonezhye, from a family of Old Believers. Mother knew many folk songs, spiritual poems, and had an extraordinary gift as an improviser. “I owe literacy, a song warehouse and all verbal wisdom to my late mother, whose memory I revere tearfully, even to death,” the poet admitted. Klyuev carried the veneration of his mother through his whole life. Already at the last stage of his way of the cross, he constantly returns in his memories and reflections to the image of the person most dear to him. So, in August 1936, the exiled poet wrote from Tomsk to V. N. Gorbacheva (the wife of the poet Sergei Klychkov): “A visit to the beautiful hilltop church of the 18th century with rare images for an exile is a monstrous crime. I don’t know whether in a body or without a body, in reality or in a dream, but my late mother appeared several times to me and this church - against the backdrop of northern carvings and paintings -: all, like a swan feather, in bluish rainbows, consoled me and wiped my tears ... "Praskovya Dmitrievna, the poet dedicated one of his best works - the poetic cycle" Hut Songs ". The poem "Zaozerye" is also dedicated to the memory of the mother.

Being already famous poet, Klyuev repeatedly reminded of the antiquity of his Old Believer peasant family, raising his origins, both blood, and spiritual, and literary, to the frantic Archpriest Avvakum:

When I knit my knitting
Pine words, bear thoughts?
"Get ready for the fire early in the morning" -
Thundered my great-grandfather Avvakum!

Of course, one cannot perceive Klyuev's stories about his life, about his relatives as reliable, factual, accurate in detail. They have a lot of poetic-legendary, fictional. The poet creates artistic image their ancestors, as well as their own. But this was not just a desire to embellish his biography. No. In this, it would seem, individual, Klyuev's aspiration, one of the tendencies characteristic of peasant poetry as a whole manifested itself. Before Klyuev, there was already a well-defined, established "peasant" tradition in Russian literature. But the peasant poets of the second half of XIX in. most often acted as spokesmen for the oppressed state of the most numerous estate in Russia. Sorrow and sadness are the main motives of their work. And Nikolai Klyuev, a native of the northern Olonets region, entered Russian poetry with a different worldview, with a different intonation. However, he entered, and not so boldly as it might seem to a reader who knows mature Klyuev poems and poems. His first publications (the poems “Rainbow Dreams Did Not Come True...”, “Widely Vast Field...” in the almanac “New Poets”, 1904) did not differ in originality, did not stand out among the many neo-populist poetic variations of the pre-revolutionary period. So far, only one thing was clear - the young poet was not going to sing a sad song about the hard fate that made him literary fathers- peasant poets of the 19th in.:

But not with the groan of fathers
My song will sound
And the roll of thunder
It will fly over the earth.

The rebellious appearance of the lyrical hero of these lines coincided at that time with the appearance of the author. The aspiring poet actively cooperates with revolutionary organizations of populist and socialist-revolutionary orientation. As the biographers established, “in 1905, Klyuev was brought by the Moscow gendarme department to an inquiry into the case of the dissemination of revolutionary proclamations among the employees of the Kuskovo station of the Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod railway.

In early 1906, he was arrested for agitation activities in Vytegra and the surrounding villages. He spent about six months in prison, first in Vytegorskaya (Klyuev calls it prison), and then in the province, in Petrozavodsk. “For the first time I was in prison at the age of 18 (Klyuev again creates a legend - in fact he was already over twenty then. - V. Zh.), beardless, thin, voice with a silver crack. The authorities considered me dangerous and secretive. When they were transporting me from prison to the provincial prison, they put me in leg irons. I wept, looking at my chains. Through the years, the memory of them gnaws at my heart. But, speaking of the rebellious moods of the young Klyuev, one must remember the originality of his revolutionary spirit. Remember that she was closely associated with religious beliefs, the idea of ​​Christian sacrifice, suffering for "brothers" and "sisters":

I will wear a black shirt
And after the muddy lantern
On the stones of the yard I will pass on the chopping block
With a silent, gentle face.

Campaigning activities and imprisonment could not but be reflected in the poems of an artistically impressionable young man. One of these reflections is the poem "Walk" (1907). It resembles folk "prison" songs in terms of plot and emotional mood, and more specifically, Lermontov's "Neighbour" created according to folklore samples and then included in the folk song repertoire. Reminds, but, of course, does not repeat.

In Klyuev's poem, there are characteristic signs of the new time. The girl she accidentally sees in the window lyrical hero, not a free beauty, arousing the dream of freedom, the desire to escape from prison, but a sufferer imprisoned alone. The pale face of the ascetic excites the author's imagination. And if in this poem the poet nevertheless pays tribute to the tradition of “prison” songs: the hero is carried away in dreams to freedom along with the girl, then in the poem “You are more private and stricter ...” (1908), the idea of ​​“Calvary” sacrifice becomes the main . Here the heroine deliberately follows her thorny path, knowing its sad outcome:

And ashen braids are smoother,
The sooner you tighten
A deaf mother sits at the yarn -
On funeral canvases.

Most likely, the image of a revolutionary girl, a "sister" in Klyuev's poetry was not abstractly generalized, but had a specific biographical basis.

One of its prototypes was Elena Dobrolyubova, the sister of Alexander Dobrolyubov, a well-known symbolist poet at the beginning of the century who went “to the people”. Klyuev dedicates several poems to her, written in 1906-1908. E. M. Dobrolyubova probably told Klyuev about her sister Maria, who died shortly after her release from the Tula prison, where she was imprisoned for revolutionary propaganda. It seems that the facts of the fate of the Dobrolyubov sisters found a poetic refraction in the verses:

Bridegroom, shot through the chest,
Sister who died in battle -
All in the evening desert
They will go to your hut.

Nikolai Klyuev and Alexander Blok. A great event in the life of Nikolai Klyuev was his acquaintance with Alexander Blok. Their correspondence began in 1907. In his first letters addressed to the famous master, the novice poet is shy as a student, but, realizing that the poet takes him seriously and respectfully, moreover, that he himself is interested in talking with a person from the depths of Russia, from depths of her people, Klyuev gets rid of shyness and speaks confidently with Blok. Confidently and passionately argues with him, feeling himself "initiated from the people." Klyuev writes to Blok not only about the social protest brewing in the Russian countryside, but also about the deep artistic potential of the people, that Creative skills peasants cannot open up, develop in existing conditions: “Forgive my impudence, but it seems to me that if our brother had time to give birth to images, they would not be inferior to yours. The chest of building principles contains so much, the great inspiration is felt so clearly. Klyuev considered himself entitled to speak like that with the famous poet, being the successor and continuer of the poetic traditions of the North Russian storytellers and screamers. After all, it was in those regions, whose attorney he felt himself to be, Hilferding wrote down a set of Russian epics, the Sokolov brothers compiled a collection of fairy tales, this land was glorified by Kryukov and Krivopolenov, Ryabinina and Fedosov. Klyuev's letters made a strong impression on Blok. “This is a document of great importance (about modern Russia - people's, of course), which again and again confirms me in my cherished thoughts and hopes,” he wrote about one of Klyuyev's letters. Blok repeatedly quotes the letters of the Olonets poet in his articles. With his assistance, Klyuev's poems are published in the magazines Golden Fleece, Novaya Zemlya and other publications. Metropolitan poets pay attention to Klyuev's poems. He manages to meet some of them personally, including Valery Bryusov.

literary recognition. With a foreword by Bryusov in 1911 (1912 is indicated in the imprint), Klyuev's first collection of poems, "Pine Chime", was published. The book was met with interest and approval in Russian literary circles. Sergei Gorodetsky, Nikolai Gumilyov, and other famous poets responded to her release. The poems of Klyuev's first poetic book struck readers with their unusualness, the absence of rhythms, images, and tropes that leveled individuality. Valery Bryusov, presenting young poet, wrote that his poems are like a wild forest that has grown at random over glades, along slopes, along ravines. Nothing in it is foreseen, not predetermined in advance, at every step of surprise - either a bizarre stump, or a trunk that has long fallen, overgrown with moss, or a random meadow, but it has the strength and charm of a free life ... Klyuev's poetry is similar to this wild free a forest that knows no "plans", no "rules". Nikolai Gumilyov, in his review of The Pines Chime, with his characteristic perspicacity, noted that Klyuev’s book was only the beginning of a new, fresh and strong movement not only in poetry, but throughout Russian culture: “To replace the outdated culture that led us to dreary godlessness and aimless malice, there are people who can say to themselves: “We are early morning clouds, dawns of dewy springs ...” ”Gumilyov quotes a line from Klyuev’s poem “Voice from the People” (1910). This poem can be considered programmatic to a certain extent. Here, for the first time, the rejection of “book”, “paper” literature, and, in general, culture that has departed from folk origins, has lost its life-giving connection with the traditional peasant culture that exists in parallel, almost unwritten, anonymously, but indestructibly, is so clearly and definitely stated. In subsequent years, this theme will be one of the main ones in Klyuev's poetry. Perhaps most clearly it was expressed in the poem "You promised us gardens ..." (1911). The polemical pathos of this work is emphasized by the fact that Klyuev prefaces his "poems with the same epigraph as Konstantin Balmont (to the poem "From there") - a line from the Koran "I promise you gardens." Hoping that his poetry can lead a person away from the problems, conflicts, upheavals of real life into the sublimely beautiful world of wondrous dreams, Balmont promises:

I call you to the country
Where there is no sadness, no sunset,
I will initiate you into silence
From where there is no return to the storms.

Klyuev is convinced that the inhabitants of such gardens are "Plague, Mutilation, Murder, Famine and Debauchery." The real cleansing, in his opinion, is in another, truly "refreshing" force - a force coming from the depths of the peasant world, supported by an inextricable connection with nature and the people's way of life, folk morality and art.

They fed us the gorges of the bowels,
Rained down the sky,
We are boulders, gray cedars,
Forest keys and pines ringing.

Klyuev develops these thoughts in the poems of his subsequent collections "Brotherly Songs" (1912), "Forest were" (1912).

Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin. Klyuev had to conduct a debate with the "paper" poets almost alone. And so he enthusiastically received a letter received at the beginning of 1915 from a novice poet from the Ryazan province:

“Dear Nikolai Alekseevich!

I read your poems, talked a lot about you with Gorodetsky, and I cannot but write to you. Especially when we have a lot in common with you. I am also a peasant and I write in the same way as you, but only in my Ryazan language ... I would like to talk with you about many things, but “A voice does not reach through a fast river, through a dark forest.”

So there was an acquaintance, albeit in absentia, of Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin, poets, around whom the best writers of a "peasant" orientation soon united. Their poetry really had so much in common that they, living at the same time, in the same country, simply could not help but feel it, not reach out to each other with their souls. One of the initial, native signs of Yesenin's poetry was a quiet, sincere, but uplifting idealization of peasant life. His poem “In the hut” (“It smells like loose drachens ...”) turned out to be an artistic discovery for Russian poetry. Klyuev's hut becomes by that time not only a symbol of the reliability and creativity of the peasant life arrangement, but also the center of his poetic world. In 1915, he creates one of his best poems, "The Christmas of the Hut", in which the process of building a peasant house is likened to an act of high creation:

The groove is warm, the captors of the kokora,
Krutolob tesovy shell.
Valances will be rippled
And the horse is speckled with ludyanka.
On the wall, like a grain, notches will pass:
Sucrest, paws, netting, rows,
So that the young hut in a red coat
Reality and dream seemed - easy.

The poets were also united by the song, folklore element, which had a decisive influence on the formation of their poetics. It is no coincidence that both Klyuev and Yesenin call many of their poems songs. Both first master the techniques of stylization “like folklore”, and then master the forms of folklore poetic thinking, creating original works that are close to folklore not only in form, but also in the essence of thought, image, idea. They also shared an interest in heroic pages Russian history, the legendary images of heroes and ascetics.

Klyuev and Yesenin were given the poetic gift of creating verbal pictorial pictures of Russian nature. In their song poems, the psychological state of a person and the emotional mood of the landscape were organically combined. Everyone who has read Yesenin's poems at least once remembers forever and snow fringe on the branches of a birch, and the soft sadness of a dozing road, and drops of morning dew on the thickets of nettles. Klyuev not only skillfully paints his native northern landscape. He, as a descendant of frantic preachers, indignantly denounces those who are born with a cold, indifferent heart, and therefore hostile to nature:

In coniferous incense he breathed a cigarette
And spitting forget-me-not burned,
Pleso charged with tears,
Moss covered with gray hair ...

... The bird cherry twisted her hands,
An ermine confuses a trace to a mink ...
Son of iron and stone boredom
Trampling birch bark paradise.

But already in the early poems of Yesenin, there is a clear difference from Klyuev's poetry. Yesenin's verse is lighter, more mobile, receptive to the intonations of a rapidly changing time, more open to contact with others. poetic worlds and systems. This, of course, Klyuev felt and tried to take the talented Ryazan under his wing, to warn against the influence of "urban" writers. Already in one of his first letters to Yesenin, the “Olonets sorcerer” warned his young brother: “I am especially afraid for you: you are like a bush of forest thorn, which the more it makes noise, the more it crumbles. All the poets have gorged themselves on your loose drachens, but it should be clear to you that this is after pineapples in champagne. My words are justified by experience. The caresses of poets are not animal bread, but “candied rat”, and this dish will not come to the liking of Ryazan and Olonchan, and it is a sin and godlessness for us to savor it.”

After reading such warnings, the modern reader may get the impression that Klyuev was an opponent of civilization, of “urban” culture in general. Of course, this is not true. Klyuev was a well-educated man. He perfectly knew not only ancient Russian literature, folk art, but also European literature, painting, and music.

In the original language, he read Heine and Verlaine, as contemporaries testify, he played Grieg well on the piano. Warning Yesenin, he was afraid of losing a talented poet who continued the tradition of peasant culture, oral folk poetic creativity. He was afraid that the influence of "urban" poetry would neutralize his "peasant" identity.

The range of Yesenin's talent turned out to be wider than the limits in which Klyuev tried to keep him. Both poets began to understand this. By the middle of 1917, a period of cooling began in their friendly relations. And in the fall of 1917, Klyuev published the poem "Elushka-sister ...", which contains the lines:

White color Seryozha,
Similar to Kitovras
Loved my story.

But it was in the seventeenth, and in 1915-1916. was the peak of their creative friendship. Klyuev and Yesenin constantly appeared together on literary evenings, acted with reading works. They attract other talented poets to promote their literary direction. “Nevertheless, Klyuev remained the first in the group of peasant poets,” Sergey Gorodetsky testifies in his memoirs, “this group grew and grew stronger. In addition to Klyuev and Yesenin, it included ... Sergey Klychkov and Alexander Shiryaevets. Everyone was talented, everyone was united by a system of song and epic images. This group has become a noticeable phenomenon in the cultural life of Russia. Representatives of the creative intelligentsia, fascinated by the study of Russian antiquity, poetics, treated her with sympathy and interest. ancient Russian literature and traditional folklore, magical power folk image(writers Alexei Remizov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, artist Nicholas Roerich). For some time, they even united into the Krasa group. In the diary of A. Blok we read the entry: “October 25, 1915. Evening "Beauty" (Klyuev, Yesenin, Gorodetsky, Remizov) - at the Tenishevsky School. It was practically the only (although it received a great response) public speaking"Beauties". The group broke up as soon as it appeared. Probably, among the reasons for this was Klyuev's Avvakumov intransigence. Gorodetsky recalled: “In general, “Krasa” did not last long. Klyuev pulled Yesenin away from me more and more.

In disputes with proletarian poetry. The October Revolution found Klyuev in his native place, in Vytegra. He perceives the revolution with enthusiasm (like the February one), but, like Yesenin, in a peculiar way, “with a peasant bias”, with a dream of a “peasant's paradise”. At the beginning of 1918 the poet joined the Bolshevik Party. Leads lecture work, performs in Vytegra with the reading of revolutionary poetry. The active propaganda of revolutionary ideas by a deeply religious person made a particularly strong impression on the listeners. So, one of them, A. K. Romansky, recalled: “All the summer of 1919 I lived in the city of Vytegra ... Around June I had to directly hear Klyuev’s performance ... performance. I came to the theater when all the seats in the hall were occupied, and found myself in a crowd standing at the side exit, close to the stage. There was no one on it except Klyuev, no one announced the topic of the speech. The hall is silent. It’s hard for me now to remember what exactly he was talking about then, but I remember that he figuratively compared the revolution with a woman striding across Russia. Comparisons and juxtapositions of the poet were unexpected and peculiar. He also knew how to pose, to attract attention. As I remember now: Klyuev is standing, one hand is pressed to his heart, the other is thrown up, his inflamed eyes are shining. I have never heard before that they can speak so passionately and convincingly. But many of his words made me think that Klyuev was undoubtedly a religious person. It seemed strange that he could combine, on the one hand, large, wide, modern ideas and, on the other hand, faith in God. Well, for many of the poet's contemporaries, then, faith in God and "big, broad ... ideas" seemed incompatible. The fighters against the "opium of the people" quickly saw that Klyuev was promoting some kind of "wrong" revolution. In the spring of 1920 he was expelled from the party. They almost stop printing. Klyuev not only became objectionable with his religiosity, but also began to irritate the new literary authorities with an irreconcilable disagreement with the most revolutionary, most proletarian poets. Klyuev rebels against the substitution of true poetry with high meaning, beautiful fiction, semi-precious words with slogans on the topic of the day, momentary propaganda crafts such as the noisily popular, but then reliably forgotten play "Marat is a friend of the people." Turning to the famous proletarian poet Vladimir Kirillov, he patiently convinces:

Poetry, friend, is not a cigarette butt,
Not Marat, played out by hearsay.
Caravan of Ossetian cloaks
The muses will not warm in your book.

Run away, Kirillov, to Kirillov,
To Cyril - the alphabetical saint,
Listen to the robins overflow,
Fall to the unmourned, native.

The Olonets poet is even sharper in his dispute with Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose urban, urban poetry was alien to Klyuev. Klyuev was annoyed by overly bold experiments in the field of word formation and rhythm, breaking the song mode of the Russian language.

But most of all, Klyuev was frightened that many poets tried to replace the poetry of the soul, feelings, heart with verbal industrial-ideological paraphernalia:

Does the songwriter care about cranes,
Feeding the crows - moaning hammer?
Only in soulful thoughts, in heart blast furnaces
Crimson gold will be melted into life.

Klyuev entered into an unequal battle. Defenders of proletarian poetry attacked his collection The Copper Whale, published at the end of 1918 (in imprint - 1919). They caustically suggested that "this book was published by the Petrograd Soviet, probably for a scientific purpose, so that they would know how modernity was refracted in the head of a person who was exactly 30 centuries behind life." V. Knyazev hastened to announce the literary death of Klyuev. Created by the poet in the 20s. the poems "Mother-Saturday", "Zaozerye", "Village", with an abundance of folklore motifs and ethnographic details, which he lovingly writes out, choosing the most expensive, most cherished words, caused conflicting responses from critics. Kind words Vs. Rozhdestvensky and Vyach. Polonsky, some other writers. But words of approval were few, very few. The poet's accusations of adherence to the patriarchal, old, outgoing sounded a lot and loudly. In Klyuev's picturesque and vivid pictures of rural life, they saw the propaganda of kulak ideas about a peasant prosperous life.

The poet tried to rebel against the primitive, vulgar class assessment of his works. He did not lose hope of explaining the meaning of his work to the critics crushing him. In a letter sent to the All-Russian Union of Writers, Klyuev defended the legitimacy of his chosen path in literature: “Enlightened and well-educated people have long been familiar with my appearance as an artist of his colors and, in some way, native painting. This is not the brave “so exactly” of the royal fellows, not their barracks uniforms, but the images that live in me, the precepts of Alexandria, Korsun, Kyiv, Novgorod from the grandchildren of the Velesovs to Andrei Rublev, from Daniil Zatochnik to Pososhkov, Fet, Surikov, Nesterov, Borodin , Yesenina. If Mediterranean harps live for centuries, if the songs of snow-covered Norway on the wings of polar gulls are carried all over the world, then why should the Russian birch bark Sirin be plucked and executed for his many-colored witch's pipes - just because they are gray, with an uneducated ear for music people will say something, hurriedly and recklessly asserting that Comrade Mauser is sweeter than a round dance of muses? .. "

But the main form of preaching views on the meaning of creativity, the importance of art in the life of a person and the whole country remained for Klyuev poetry itself. At the end of the 1920s, when the tragic future of the Russian peasantry, its ethical and artistic values, was more and more clearly foreseen, the poet creates one of his top works - the poem "Pogorelshchina".

For many years there lived a legend about the death of the poet at the Taiga station from a heart attack and the loss of his suitcase with manuscripts. In reality, Klyuev was shot in Tomsk on October 23-25, 1937.

His poetry returned to readers a few decades later.

1. Introduction

Childhood and youth of the future poet

Poetry and the Revolution of 1905

Klyuev and Blok

"Pine chime" - subtotal

Transition to folklore

Smooth break with literary circles

2.7. Last years

3. List of references.
Introduction:

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

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

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

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

2.1. Childhood and youth of the future poet

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

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

When I knit my knitting
Verbal words, bear thoughts?

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

Thundered my great-grandfather Avvakum!

The poet tried more than once to present her as the bearer of the culture that he consistently mastered himself, but not at all in childhood, but later in his mature years. The Old Believer roots of the Klyuev family is a completely plausible fact, the mother of Nikolai Klyuev was from a family of Old Believers. The death of his mother in 1913 was a terrible blow for Klyuev. The memory of his mother is dedicated to "Hut Penalties" - one of the pinnacles of Klyuev's mature poetry. "My" Hut Songs "displays my great orphanhood and shrine - my mother." We find these wonderful lines about the mother in Klyuev's autobiographical essay "Loon's Fate".

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.2. Poetry and the Revolution of 1905

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

I am again in the open, in the wild

And admire the beauty of heaven

……………………………

In this realm of green nature

I will not see sobs and tears

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

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

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

Spread eagle wings

Beat, alarm, and thunder thunder, -

The chains of violence are broken

And the prison of life is destroyed!

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

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

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

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

Songs about the old days

It's embarrassing to sing now.

New Songs of Freedom

It is necessary to compose the world.

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

Where are you, seething impulses,

Feelings boundless space,

Burning curse words

An angry emphasis on violence?

Where are you, innocent, pure,

Brave fighters,

The homelands of the stars are radiant,

Shares of folk singers?

Motherland, drenched in blood,

Waiting for you like a holy day

Covered in darkness

Can't wait for the fire!

This purifying fire

All enduring people!

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

Winters are embraced by a premonition,

Pine trees are crying in the forest;

Again deaf casemates

You will dream in the evening.

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

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

2.3. Klyuev and Blok

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

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

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

Thus, it was not difficult for Klyuev to understand what exactly tormented Blok; he immediately took up the topic. His second letter was thoroughly inspired by the spirit social protest, its tone is sharp, accusatory notes appear in places. Blok's doubts, no doubt, intersected with Klyuev's own opinions of that time.

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

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

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

2.4. "Pine chime" - subtotal

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

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

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

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

In May 1912, "Brotherly Songs" were published - the second book of Klyuev's poems. Critics disagreed on this collection. One of them argued that in this book “the tremor of the beating of the“ fiery soul ”of the poet is not felt, there is no that passionate impulse that gave special charm to Klyuev’s former poems. The inner fire illuminating the poet's verse has gone out, and his words and images have died ... "

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

2.5. Transition to folklore

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

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

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

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

2.6. Smooth break with literary circles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The iron kingdom was born

With Wilhelmschisch, the filthy king.

Does he, the wicked, have armies - strength,

Ordinary people - utterly;

They believe in Luther the god

Don't lay a cross on yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if arguing with a wolf blizzard,

As a pilot vigilantly lobat,

At the bald spot of the gloomy sea

There is a hero Leningrad.

Waves buzz to him about the edge,

Where is youth and May beauty,

And the Lapland wind blows

In the boundary pupils of the sail.

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

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

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

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

You famously salted cabbage soup,

I prayed porridge with blood ...

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

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

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

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

2.7. Last years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pegasus Russian in the quarry

Bats woven into the mane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884 - 1937) - Russian poet, coming from the people's environment. His work was not like the work of other poets "from the plow". It is filled with symbolism and religious images.

Childhood and youth

The future poet was born on October 10, 1884 in the Olonets province. His father was a constable. The mother of the future poet had a great influence on his development.

A storyteller and crying, she taught the boy to love the song style and see the surrounding beauty. The woman was literate and passed on her knowledge to her son.

Parents were convinced of the need for education for their child. Therefore, Nikolai graduated from the parochial school and the city school. His father also sent him to a medical assistant's school, but due to illness, Klyuev could not be trained there.

In 1904, the poems of the young poet were published for the first time. The public accepted them favorably. The poems were melodic, full of symbols, which aroused curiosity and a desire to solve the riddle. In addition, Klyuev did not hide his religiosity, he used biblical themes with might and main in his work. Everything went to the fact that the first collection of the poet was to appear soon, but events turned out differently.

First revolution

Nikolai Klyuev was carried away by the ideas of the revolution. He began to actively agitate the peasants, to promote new views among them. Several times he was arrested and soon released.

Interestingly, Klyuev's religious beliefs coexisted perfectly in his perception with the revolution. In it he saw the struggle for the coming of the Kingdom of God. This he tirelessly reported in his works.

In 1907, the poet still went to jail because of his refusal to do military service. However, this time he did not have to stay there for long. The young man was declared unfit for health reasons and sent to the village. Being far away from St. Petersburg and the main events, the poet began to actively correspond with familiar poets and writers. Among them was Alexander Blok, who had a huge influence on Klyuev.

Hoaxes

Nikolai Klyuev has always been a mysterious person among his acquaintances. This was largely facilitated by the fact that no one knew anything about the life of the poet. Klyuev himself actively used this and told interesting stories that happened to him. In particular, according to him, he traveled a lot, traveled all over Russia.

The devout religiosity of the poet enveloped him in a mystical halo. He often mentioned his origin from among the Old Believers. This was true, but Klyuev's parents and grandfathers had long since departed from the old religion. The poet allegedly novitiated in distant monasteries, including Solovki, was familiar with Rasputin and Tolstoy himself.

Creation

Blok became not just a friend of Klyuev. It was thanks to him that the poet's poems began to be published in literary magazines.

In 1911, the collection "Pine Chimes" was published. Critics unanimously announced the emergence of a new brilliant poet. This attracted increased attention to Klyuev. He became a welcome guest in many literary associations.

The following collections "Brotherly songs" and "Forest were" consolidated the poet's fame.

In 1915, Klyuev met Yesenin. The latter saw in him his teacher and subsequently repeatedly stated this. Both took a liking to each other. They even organized joint performances on several occasions. But their relationship was uneven, with frequent quarrels and disagreements.

Life after the revolution

The events of 1917 delighted Klyuev. He believed that his dream of the spiritual renewal of Russia was finally coming true.

However, he was severely disappointed. The new collections "Copper Whale" and "Lion's Bread" reflect Klyuev's confusion, his attempts to see suffering in what is happening in the name of redemption. He understands that the beloved land was in the power of the wrong people, that it was destroyed and trampled, the village is dying, like all of Russia.

Gradually, Klyuev began to stigmatize the new order. His poems were practically not printed, but this did not prevent them from being distributed illegally.

Death

In 1937 the poet was arrested. He was found guilty of participating in the rebel organization "Union for the Salvation of Russia". Despite the fact that in fact such an association never existed, Klyuev was sentenced to death.