Nikolay Klyuev. "Lament for Sergei Yesenin"
Kuznetsova V. E. Nikolay Klyuev. “Crying for Sergei Yesenin” / V. Kuznetsova // The spiritual path and earthly life of Nikolai Klyuev. – Murmansk, 2002. – P. 15-21. – (Science and business on Murman. Vol. 4, No. 4).
On the night of December 28, 1925, Sergei Yesenin passed away. Many poets mourned him. But perhaps the most significant document that testified to the close friendship of the two poets was “Lament for Sergei Yesenin,” written by Nikolai Klyuev immediately!!!
Klyuev learned about Yesenin’s death from Pavel Medvedev: “I was in the room at about two o’clock in the afternoon on the 28th (Hotel Angleterre, No. 5). Just like now, I see this convulsively stretched body. The hair is no longer flaxen, not golden, but matte, ash-gray. The burnt forehead makes him somehow sinister. The right hand, the one on which Yesenin tried to open the veins, is raised and unnaturally curved, as if Yesenin froze, preparing for a gloomy, tragic dance. I remembered: “Dance, gypsy, my life”...
From Sergei Yesenin I went to Klyuev. Told him. He listened calmly (outwardly): “This is what we had to wait for.” They fell silent. Klyuev got up, took a candle from the chest of drawers, lit it at the shrine and began to pray for the repose of his soul. Sat down. Could not resist. He cried: “I told Serezhenka and wrote to him: give up this life. I’ll lie down like a dog at your threshold. I won’t let the wind blow on you. I’ll be your slave. I didn’t believe it - envy, they say, of literary fame. He promised not to take up a pen for 10 years.” hands. I didn’t believe it - I was deceiving. And this is what fame leads to,” Pavel Medvedev wrote in his notebook that day.
On December 28, 1925, Nikolai Klyuev attended a civil memorial service for Yesenin, which took place in the evening at the premises of the Writers' Union on Fontanka. He continuously looked into the face of the dead man and cried. In the famous photograph, Klyuev stands at the head of the coffin, next to him are Ilya Ionov, Ilya Sadofyev, Nikolai Brown, Sofya Tolstaya-Yesenina, Wolf Erlich, Vasily Nasedkin, Ivan Pribludny and others.
When they began to lower the lid of the coffin, he bent over the body, whispered something for a long time and kissed Yesenin. Then he escorted the coffin along Nevsky to the Moscow station. And here is “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” by Nikolai Klyuev, his song brother and friend of Yesenin’s best years. Yesenin considered Klyuev his teacher.
Klyuev read “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” at an evening in memory of the poet in Leningrad already at the beginning of 1926. And during 1926, he repeatedly read this poem. And on December 28, 1926, on the anniversary of Yesenin’s death, “Crying...” appeared on the pages of the evening edition of Krasnaya Gazeta. Olga Forsh described one of Klyuev’s speeches on the pages of her novel “Crazy Ship”:
“He came out with the right, imperiously, like a kissing brother, a mentor and a teacher. He bowed deeply to the audience - like the clerk in the opera bows to Godunov. He straightened up and pushed his face slightly forward, with his eyes narrowed for a moment. The face was already covered with the collected song power. Suddenly Mikula opened his eyelids and, without error, let out his voice like a striking arrow. He divided the soul's commemoration into two parts. In the first - his meeting with a young poet, in the second - the betrayal of this young man to his mentor and his older brother, and to himself...
People were still under the spell of this song tenderness, when suddenly he stepped closer to the ramp, approached like a tiger about to jump, and hissed sarcastically, with such ancient accumulated poison that it became creepy.
There was no longer a loving mother who covered weaknesses; the sorcerer father cruelly tortured, as he did in “Terrible Revenge,” Katerina’s soul for not listening to his words. /.../
No one caught the transition when he, having taken another small step forward, began to speak not his own poems, but the poems of the one who had left... / ...... / It was so faithfully similar to the voice of that one when with the deaf he finished with despair, brashness, and a drunken hiccup:
You are my Scatter... Scatter...
Asian side...
With moderate lust, the audience was done. The people became silent, turning pale from real fear. This violation of respect for death and for universal aesthetic and ethical tastes was monstrous for the feelings of the average person.
Mikula bowed to the ground again, touching the parquet floor of the stage with his hand, and solemnly walked out into the lecture room. He was asked: “How could you???”
And suddenly, from his eyes, which turned blue, like those of Vrubel’s “Pan,” it was clear that he did not know human language and feelings at all and would not understand the impression made. He acted in some kind of clear, his own right.
“I wanted to pee,” he said in a woman’s manner, with a drawl. - I’m crying for him. Why didn't you listen to me? I wish I could live!.. And I knew that this was how he would end up. The last time we saw each other, I knew it was our farewell hour. I look: blackness has already covered everything...
- Why did you leave him alone? This is where you shouldn’t leave...
“I warned you a lot before,” he explained reluctantly. - Did he really listen?! He swore. And if it’s all black, let the wise man go away. Otherwise, his blackness might spread to me! When a person's trial is taking place, one must not interfere with it. I went home. I didn’t sleep, I cried...”
Almost simultaneously, Nikolai Bukharin’s “Evil Notes” were published, in which a “volley” was fired at Yesenin and Yeseninism. Pavel Medvedev's research provided a worthy contrast to Bukharin's "Evil Notes".
“At the beginning of January 1927, even before the book was published, on one of the “Fridays” at the Leningrad Union of Poets, P. Medvedev read a report on the work of Yesenin and Klyuev, and Klyuev himself read “The Lament for Yesenin” and “The Village.” About the evening dedicated to Yesenin at T.L.’s apartment. Shchepkina-Kupernik, where P. Medvedev and Pumpyansky gave reports, and Klyuev and Rozhdestvensky read their poems, it is known from the testimony of M.M. Bakhtin, given after his arrest on December 28, 1928, written by him in his own hand (Archive of the KGB for the Leningrad Region, case No. 14284, volume 3, sheet 7),” writes Yuri Medvedev.
Immediately, furious attacks on Klyuev began in the press. The famous Komsomol poet A. Bezymensky was the first to shoot: on April 5, 1927, his article “What are they crying about?” appeared in Komsomolskaya Pravda, issue No. 76.
“First of all, “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” by N. Klyuev. The thing is strong, to be sure. The kulak on the Soviet side can’t do much, but he wants a lot. Klyuev really wants it. He knows how to want, he knows how to write poetry. But we are picky people. We tend to analyze not only the artistic design, but also the content of what is written...
Klyuev begins with boasting:
And I have a new hut,
Pay with vigilance, unquenchable goddess...
Okay, goddess, so goddess. Inextinguishable, so inextinguishable. Although, however, it depends on who. We will extinguish the goddess of your counter-revolutionary lusts, Klyuev, rest assured...
We know the value of the strength and upbringing of Klyuev, who wanted to kulakize Lenin as well. Yesenin betrayed the baking gods. Yesenin left the kulak village and died.
Attention!:
Know that you crushed him to death,
That none of the little girls began to cry,
The red girls went deceitful,
Single guys are all shameless!
That's the power! Yes, the Tears are old for fists. Oh, how they hate Soviet Rus'. And Klyuev puts an end to and...
My white linden tree has bloomed in the garden,
The nightingale dawn rang over the river.
It would be more free to bow to the Golden Horde
Try the scimitar with the Khan's notch!..
We saw the face of those who would rather kiss the heels of the khans of the Golden Horde than see the Soviet country...” - this is how A. Bezymensky responded to Klyuev’s “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” and continued sarcastically: “Klyuev’s counter-revolution found a commentator in the person of Pavel Medvedev. .. No, dear!.. No symphony of images, emotions and rhythms can cover up the fact that this is a KULAT cry, that these are KULAT emotions, that this is a COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY symphony, that in general this is a Black Hundred “Russian cause” ... ".
But Klyuev mourned Yesenin bitterly, bitterly, and not just mourned, but grieved, clearly realizing his doom. And he also said this in “Lamentation for Sergei Yesenin”!
A few years later, in the “Literary Encyclopedia” of 1931, L. Timofeev will evaluate “The Lament for Sergei Yesenin” and “The Village” by Klyuev as “completely frank declarations of a brutal fist” (vol. 5, p. 326). Saying goodbye to Yesenin, Klyuev speaks in the words of folk lamentation, folk song, the syllable of an epic, the syllable of an akathist (Oksana Pashko from Kiev said this at the XVII Klyuev Conference in the city of Vytegra, emphasizing that in “The Lament for Sergei Yesenin” the ritual element is decisive).
Pavel Medvedev described “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” as follows: “This is not a poem. This is not a funeral lament, giving vent only to the feeling of personal loss and grief.
This is precisely a CRY, similar to the laments of Jeremiah, Daniil the Zatochnik, Yaroslavna, and Prince Vasilko.
In it, the personal is intertwined with the public, the deeply intimate with the general historical, grief with reflection, tender love for Yesenin with a calm assessment of his life’s work, in a word - lyrics with epic, creating a complex symphony of images, emotions and rhythms...
From the tangled network of personal relationships with Yesenin, complex and uneven, sometimes fraternal, sometimes enemy, N. Klyuev managed to emerge in “Lamentation” through forgiveness...
“The Lament” bears the stamp of enormous originality and deep originality.”...
In the assessment of our modernity, the poem is greeted as follows: K.M. Azadovsky notes that the poem is characteristic of the “epic” style of the late Klyuev. It organically merges together both streams of Klyuev’s poetry: epic and lyricism, stylization and one’s own. .
V.G. Bazanov believes that this “is a multifaceted work, obscured by a thick layer of riddle-metaphors and complex symbolism.”
L.A. Kiselyov – that “The Lament for Sergei Yesenin” is “a landmark work for Klyuev: it opens the great epic of the Russian “pogorelshchina”... This is a lament about a culture that “sold off its own before the deadline”... But this is also an attempt to find the “pritin” from the “mortal sands” of time and, together with Yesenin, enter the road of eternity.”
It is generally accepted that the book of 1927, unlike the newspaper publication of December 28, 1926, included the full text. This text was reproduced in all reprints known to date, including the two-volume collected works of N.A. Klyuev, published in 1969 in Munich under the general editorship of G.P. Struve and B.A. Filippov, and in the last one-volume edition of the poet’s poems “The Heart of the Unicorn,” published in 1999 in St. Petersburg by the publishing house of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute.
However, it is not. In his publication “Nikolai Klyuev and Pavel Medvedev” in the “Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement,” Yuri Medvedev cites unpublished notes by Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev and among them the following entry: “The manuscript of “The Lament” contains the following stanzas, not included in the printed text, thrown out by censorship:
Is it for this purpose, my golden brother,
We have forgotten the old beliefs -
What is captured by toads and cuttlefish?
The swan heart will lose its feathers,
What do you need from black hemp
The eyeless night will weave a rope,
I like White Sea snowstorms
They will weave a shroud - a bitter new thing.
We finished off ours before the deadline -
Cranes caught in a blizzard.
We are leaving for our distant homeland
The snowy forest rings with its chain mail.
The last stanza took the place of the epigraph."
“The Lament” begins unusually:
Remember, little devil, Yesenin
Kutya made from coals and bath soaps!
And in my kneader it foams drunkenly
Dough for weddings and scarlet games.
And I have a new hut -
Polati with a valance, unquenchable goddess,
I scolded an ardent word from the back of the store
To you, my little owl, my beloved bird!
According to Christian custom, suicide is considered a grave sin. Klyuev returned to that fateful evening more than once. On May 28, 1927, Mirolyubov left the following entry in his notebook: “I was in Tsarskoe-Detskoe Selo. Razumnik told how Yesenin, 2 hours before his suicide, asked Klyuev, whom he had brought to him, to stay overnight with him at least for one night. Klyuev refused and left, and Yesenin committed suicide... / ... / All this, i.e. Klyuev himself told him how Yesenin spent his last evening.
“I didn’t stay with him, but I prayed for him all night,” said Klyuev.”
You read “The Lament for Sergei Yesenin” by Klyuev, and in your memory something distant, similar in tone to “The Lament”, sounds like the music of verse: now proud boasting, now bright tenderness, now steep pain, now inconsolable humility... Where does it come from?
In Pomorie I don’t remember crying for the dead, lamenting or crying for the dead...
And they cried and lamented in the ritual of the wedding ceremony. That's where the familiar voices come from. Lamentations and cries were especially inconsolable and emotionally high if the wedding ceremony was performed, and the bride and groom were married not out of love, but according to the fatal will of heaven, fate, and circumstances.
So, maybe the ritual of the wedding ceremony of the groom Sergei Yesenin with the bride Death sang - cried - wailed Nikolai Klyuev?
And then, in this popular lamentation and lamentation, the whole fate will be told: the bright tenderness of youth will be emphasized, and pure beauty, and a soul sensitive to goodness and truth. Imperceptibly, reflections will begin about life that did not turn out that way, reproaches and complaints, lamentations and pleas. But it will still end with hope in God’s mercy, that fate may have mercy and give them consolation...
Remember, little devil, Yesenin
Kutya made from coals and bath soaps...
“Bayna” for the bride in Pomorie was organized before the wedding. And when the bride walked to the bathhouse and back, the screaming girlfriends cried and lamented all the way. They washed the bride with soap and fried her with a broom received from the groom. The bride threw a piece of soap over her head - whoever it hit, the one from her girlfriends would be the first to marry. And after the bathhouse, the bathhouse soaps were destroyed, the bathhouse was washed while the girlfriends lamented and cried. They themselves took turns washing after the bride.
These were the wedding baths and bath soaps... , .
And for the “beloved bird” the words are really light and bright, imaginative and colorful, “the Olonets sorcerer chalked out an ardent word in the back of the shop:
You came from Ryazan with a Bukhara handkerchief,
Unwashed, unrinsed, unsoaped,
He called my bosom the Tatar ulus,
The teeth are like herds, and the beard is like an owl!
The poet Klyuev lovingly and tearfully resurrects the image of Yesenin, the bright youth on the poetic Parnassus:
I sculpted your darling like a killer whale’s nest,
He strengthened his thoughts with saliva and his words with tears.
Yes, the dawn candle, my forest lamp, went out,
You left me along robber paths!
The paths of the two poets diverged, and the student went his own way, moving away from the teacher.
Reproaches, magnification, lamentations, songs - all this was part of the musical wedding ceremony of Pomerania. There were also reproachful songs at weddings. And in Klyuev’s “Lament” there are reproaches to Yesenin: he did not listen to his older brother, did not heed his word, he wanted to go his own way, and this is what happened:
From under the mare's head, with bent mosses
The damned drunken stitch stretched out,
Following your patent leather shoes
A lean, dead cat got stuck -
Not a cross from her, not a pestle, not flour,
Whether you got married or died - it’s at your throat,
So you've become stupefied by cheerful boredom
Sink your boats in the tavern breakers!
And all for sins, for treason,
To the baked gods Medost and Vlas...
I would like to lie with you in an honest coffin,
Into the yellow sands, but not with a rope around your neck!..
Fact or fable is what Russian trails have
Do the flowers of your eyes grow bluer?
Ritual dialogues were also part of the Pomeranian ritual. But both the dialogues and the lamentations were always fulfilled to the fullest. There is a dialogue in Klyuev’s “Lamentation”.
Tell me, my lucky child,
Who are you worried about,
Why are you going to a dark grave?
Are there old men with beards?
Al a humongous woman with a broom,
Are the old women in disarray,
Is it gnarly in games?
Everyone has their own path in life. The songs and spiritual poems also reflect thoughts about the meaning of life and death. “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” by Klyuev is the voice of peasant Russia, which lost its beloved son. V. G. Bazanov writes that folk ritual lamentations were known to Nikolai Klyuev from childhood, he heard them performed live by talented Zaonezhsky lamentations. “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” includes entire excerpts from lamentations. The funeral lament for his mother, “Crying on Parental Saturday,” was recorded by Klyuev in 1922 from the Vytegorsk voplenitsa Eremeevna. He also compiled notes to the folklore text. Here is Klyuev’s “goryn-grass” and “singer-grass” in “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” from this lamentation of the Vytegorsk lament, and in the recording of Klyuev himself:
I'll carry you on my little arms,
Like a river carries floating grass,
Doesn't waver - won't collide
It won't bother you with yellow sand! .
Klyuev’s figurative language is still inaccessible to many due to the fact that modern culture has lost its sacred principles... Yes, “The Lament for Sergei Yesenin” is difficult to read today, since it contains many metaphors-riddles, symbols, folklore riddles, myths, Old Russian hint. The keys to the riddles of “The Lament for Sergei Yesenin” are hidden in allegories that could easily be understood by the contemporaries of Yesenin and Klyuev, village residents, and even those who knew the Bible, mythology, and folklore. After all, this is both the language of religion, and the language of folklore symbolism, and the language of mythological symbols, where the symbolism of birds, herbs, gods is also important...
But even today we read in “Lamentation” the outline of the life of Sergei Yesenin. When we read that a white swan, flying over the Neva, saw the death of the poet:
There is a formidable courtyard on the Neva River,
It is a hut upon a hut, covered with iron.
Across the yard there are a thousand smokestacks,
And run along to drive the horse.
Like in that yard, in a big locker,
Under the sworn black mother,
The young kid amazed himself, -
Then we unmistakably call this place – the Angleterre Hotel, No. 5. And when we read the lines:
How does this lively crimson look?
Unclean birds flew in -
Boil, Gnaw, Subcutaneous,
Finally, the bird is the Constrictor.
Udavna flew to the mother,
Spread the hemp wing,
She lowered the feather to the ground,
The feather turned into a noose...
- about a wedding feast, and birds of prey feast on it, then today we understand how Nikolai Klyuev condemns the unhealthy environment that pushed Yesenin to death:
There was a din from all the gateways:
“Come, sand-faced, to us!”
And a flock of lean newspapers
She whined: “Kulak poet!”
Wherever the shepherd knocked -
Rumbling bellies are everywhere.
All the more furiously into the fiery darkness
The tavern opened its doors.
Interestingly, according to the observation of V.G. Bazanov that “after Yesenin was mourned by the screamers (the people themselves),” the poet’s mother, the mother of Sergei Yesenin, also sings a lullaby:
With a long spinning wheel, with a spindle,
Is it with your orphan work,
She will sing along with the thread
And quietly and quietly:
…………………….
“The birch tree is sleeping outside the window
Blue Kupala dream -
Bye-bye, bye-bye
Shugai got the mittens!
The birch tree's dream is beautiful,
Looks like Serezhenkin!
Bye-bye, bye-bye
How he’ll wake up by chance!”
A person’s life path is closed from birth to dormition (death). Not everyone gets a bitter share, but everyone prepares to accept it with dignity. Yesenin had a bitter fate.
“Crying for Sergei Yesenin” ends with a separate chapter “Calm”. Klyuev did not title one of the chapters of the lamentation poem: they are all separated only by asterisks. And he gave the last one a name. Everything that was in my heart was cried out. Everything that pained my heart was expressed. But we must live with this sorrow, with this pain, with this grief. The earthly life continues for those who cried for Sergei Yesenin. And to Sergei Yesenin - sleep. And there, beyond this line, is calm. There is no strain, no recitative pronunciation of pain, no emotional nervous tension in “Calm.” In Yesenin’s way, “the sad tenderness of the Russian soul” sounds in these Klyuev poems: the lines flow so sincerely, melodiously, thoughtfully, calmly, like a pensive folk song:
Snow is falling on the road -
White chamomile color,
Maybe I'll get there little by little
To the windows, where is the gentle light?
Tired feet trample
White chamomile color.
…………………………..
Life is a multi-layered ocean
It splashes after the traveler.
Is it the Volga, or the banks of the Rhone -
The poet accepts everything...
Quietly lies on the slopes
White chamomile color.
The poem has been read. “And here it is a miracle, the providence of true, high poetry! - willingly or unwillingly, by accident or not - Klyuev asks in “Lamentation...” the same question that every poet asks himself when mourning the death of Sergei Yesenin:
About the evening sacrifice and the new Judas
Is milkweed making noise near the road ditches?
Judas betrayed Christ. Who betrayed and destroyed Yesenin? – with this question the editors of the Slovo magazine prefaced the publication of “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” by Nikolai Klyuev in 1989 after many years of silence. The text was printed without the chapter “Calm”.
Even today there is no exact answer to the magazine’s question, as well as to the question about another victim - about the fate of Klyuev himself.
“Lament for Sergei Yesenin” is a people’s lament, a lament for Russian culture at the beginning of the century, a lament for the fate of the Russian people, because both Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin were wonderful sons of their great people. This is a voice “from the native shore of Russia.”
Literature:
1. Azadovsky K. Nikolai Klyuev. The poet's path. – L., 1990. – P. 262. See: diary entries of P. Luknitsky // Aurora. – 1988. – No. 2. – pp. 41-44.
2. Bazanov V.G. “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” by Nikolai Klyuev // Russian literature. – 1977. – No. 3. – P. 193.
3. Bazanov V.G. From my native shore. About the poetry of Nikolai Klyuev. – L., 1990. – P. 185.
4. Balashov D.M., Krasovskaya Yu.E. Russian wedding songs of the Terek coast of the White Sea. – L., 1969.
5. Bezymensky A. What are they crying about? // TVNZ. – M., 1927. – No. 76. - 5th of April.
6. Bernshtam T.A. Russian folk culture of Pomerania in the 19th – early 20th centuries. – L., 1983.
7. Kiseleva L.A. “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” N.A. Klyueva. – New about Yesenin. Centenary of Sergei Yesenin. International Symposium. Yesenin collection. No. 3. – M., 1997. – P. 294, 283-284.
8. Klyuev Nikolay. “Crying for Sergei Yesenin” // Word. – 1989. – No. 10. – P. 65.
9. Klyuev Nikolay, Medvedev Pavel. Sergey Yesenin. – L., 1927. – P. 86.
10. Klyuev Nikolay. Unicorn heart. – L., 1999. – P. 969-970.
11. Medvedev Yuri. Nikolai Klyuev and Pavel Medvedev // Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement No. 171. – Paris; NY; Moscow. – I-II. – 1995. – P. 160.
12. Forsh Olga. Crazy Ship: A Novel. Stories. – L., 1988. – P. 130-132.
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Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev: a tragedy of two destinies
Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev were poets of the “new peasant” movement in literature of the 20th century. The poets were friends with each other, their creative relationship was not easy.
Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev. 1916 Photo: website
They repeatedly dedicated poetic works to each other. They had a lot in common - firstly, they came from the provinces: Nikolai Klyuev from Olonetsk, Sergei Yesenin from Ryazan, and, having arrived in St. Petersburg and speaking in literary salons, they challenged the capital's society, appearing in public in blouses and caftans . Secondly, they are connected by the tragedy that occurred in their lives due to disappointment in the Soviet regime.
The beginning of the way
Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev met for the first time in St. Petersburg, where they arrived from their provinces. The young poet Sergei Yesenin, born in 1895, was strongly influenced creatively and ideologically by Nikolai Klyuev, who was 11 years older. He contributed to the development of folk, religious and peasant motifs in the work of the young poet.
Sergei Yesenin with his comrades, 1913. Photo: website
As stated in various sources, Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev met either in 1914 or 1915. In any case, in the memoirs of the Kostroma artist Efim Chestnyakov, a student of Ilya Repin, it is written: “I saw Yesenin and Klyuev, 1914, autumn... “Maxim Gorky, in an essay about Yesenin, writes: “I first saw Yesenin in St. Petersburg in 1914, somewhere I met him together with Klyuev. He seemed to me to be a boy of fifteen to seventeen years old.”
Official sources claim that Klyuev and Yesenin met in 1915, based on a letter that a young poet from the Ryazan province wrote to Klyuev in Olonets. This letter says: “I am also a peasant and I write the same as you, but only in my Ryazan language. My poems in St. Petersburg were successful. Out of 60, 51 were accepted.” Sergei Gorodetsky, a Russian and Soviet poet, introduced the poets: he talked with Yesenin and told him about Klyuev. And the young poet wrote a letter to Klyuev.
Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev. 1915-1916 Photo: website
At the beginning of their literary journey, Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev walked next to each other. In 1923, Yesenin, already a mature poet, wrote about Klyuev: “He is my teacher...”, despite the fact that by that time disagreements had already arisen between them.
Yesenin’s poem, written in 1917, “O Rus', flap your wings,” contains the following lines:
"From Vytegra to Shuya
He fermented the entire region
And he chose a nickname - Klyuev,
Humble Mikolay."
In turn, Nikolai Klyuev wrote about Yesenin in the same year in the poem “That’s why you’re asking in my eyes”:
“We were waiting for a boor, an obscene fool
In a spinjak, fists into a watermelon, -
Dahl sent the Palm boy
With a voice sweeter than a girl’s beads.”
Literary life in the capital
Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev became close friends: they read poetry together in the editorial office of the Monthly Magazine, paid visits to Alexander Blok, published in the newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti, went to the artist Vladimir Yunger, who depicted one and the other, and successfully organized " peasant" poetry evenings.
Collector Fyodor Fidler wrote in his diary: “Both admired my museum and seemed to me to be quite knowledgeable in the field of literature. Apparently, Klyuev loves Yesenin very much: leaning his head on his shoulder, he affectionately stroked his hair.”
L.O. Povitsky, Sergei Yesenin and Sergei Klychkov, 1918. Photo: website
In 1915, the association of new peasant poets “Krasa” was formed, which included among the poets, in addition to Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei Yesenin, Alexander Shiryaevets and Sergei Klychkov. The term “new peasant poets” appeared in the 1910s - 1920s. in literary criticism, belongs to the historian of Russian poetry, bibliologist Ivan Rozanov and critic Vasily Lvov-Rogachevsky.
Sergei Yesenin and Sergei Gorodetsky, 1915. Photo: website
The association "Krasa" transformed into the literary and artistic community "Strada", which appeared in the apartment of Sergei Gorodetsky. The heart of Strada was Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev, but it also included other “folk” poets. Strada published a collection that included Sergei Yesenin’s poem “Warm Wind.” In 1916, the poets came to Moscow, where they performed in front of the public in colorful national costumes, thus emphasizing the folk style of their poetry.
Vladimir Mayakovsky. Photos from open sources
Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky, a famous poetic antagonist of Yesenin, in his article “How to make poetry?” not without irony he wrote: “I knew Yesenin for a long time - ten, twelve years. The first time I met him, he was wearing bast shoes and a shirt with some kind of cross-stitching. As a person who had already worn and put aside a yellow jacket, I busily inquired about the clothes:
- What is this, for advertising?
Yesenin answered me in a voice that must have been spoken by revived lamp oil. Something like:
- We are villagers, we don’t understand this of yours... we somehow... in the primordial, eternal way...
When leaving, I told him, just in case:
- I bet you will throw away all these bast shoes and cockerel combs!
He was carried away towards Klyuev..."
Mayakovsky turned out to be right: with the onset of the revolution, Sergei Yesenin changed his “simple peasant” image not only in clothes, but also in creativity.
About disagreements between Yesenin and Klyuev
Nikolai Klyuev was so attached to Sergei Yesenin that when he started an affair with a woman in Moscow, he begged the young poet not to go to her.
Klyuev wanted Yesenin to continue to remain a Russian folk poet with a pure soul, and tried in every possible way to protect him from the negative influence of the approaching “godless” time, when revolutionary sentiments were fermenting in the minds. However, time still influenced the young ambitious poet: he reacted with disgust to Klyuev’s affections.
In 1916, Yesenin was called up for military service. Klyuev, despite the fact that the young poet gradually began to move away from him, wrote a letter to the headquarters officer, Colonel Dmitry Loman - “A prayer to Colonel Loman about the song brother Sergei Yesenin.” He asked YeseninThey were enlisted on a medical train, but not taken to the front. Dmitry Loman, being an enlightened person, heeded the request and enrolled the poet in the Tsarskoye Selo field military ambulance train.
Sergei Yesenin among the personnel of military field train No. 143. 1916. Photo: website
Nikolai Klyuev at this time became close to the singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya, who performed Russian folk songs, and toured with her around the cities of Russia.
In 1917, Yesenin left for his native village - Konstantinovo, and then for 6 years did not see Nikolai Klyuev, who foresaw the moral fall of his like-minded person.
The young poet was so imbued with the atheistic spirit of the Soviet regime that, while drunk, he once wrote abusive words on the walls of the Strastnoy Monastery. Yesenin became an urban rebel poet who - at first - saw hope for the people in the revolution. His early poem "The Jordan Dove", written in 1918, contains the following lines:
"The sky is like a bell,
The month is a language
My mother is my homeland,
I am a Bolshevik."
Nikolai Klyuev had a dislike for the intelligentsia and urban poets, whom he contemptuously called “noblemen” - he had the idea of speaking on behalf of the people and peasants. In his creative work, he always prioritized physically difficult peasant labor over “urban” and intellectual labor.
In 1916–1917, Klyuev developed folklore, religious, and peasant motifs in his poetry: the theme of “peasant” labor, Orthodoxy, “hut paradise,” and the spiritual confrontation between the West and the East sounds more and more clearly in his work:
“Perish the West, Snake and Harlot -
Our betrothed is the youth of the East!”
Nikolay Klyuev. Photo: galandroff.blogspot.ru
At first Klyuev accepted the coming Soviet power with delight. In 1918, he wrote poems such as “Commune”, “Comrade”, and then published a poetry collection “Lenin”. As the poet believed, the Soviet government had to take care of the preservation of folk spiritual culture, inextricably linked with Orthodoxy.
But Bolshevik atheism ran counter to Klyuev’s ideas.
According to the recollections of one of the Cheka employees, Nikolai Klyuev became a member of the party in 1918, and in 1920 he was expelled from it for his religious beliefs and, in particular, for collecting ancient icons and trading them.
In 1924, Sergei Yesenin wrote a poem-epigram “In the Caucasus”, which contains sarcastic, caustic lines about Nikolai Klyuev:
“And Klyuev, Ladoga deacon,
His poems are like a quilted jacket,
But I read them out loud yesterday,
And the canary died in the cage.”
These lines added fuel to the fire: they were savored with pleasure by literary critics, Komsomol poets, and magazine editors.
After all, Nikolai Klyuev, who was arrested in 1923 on a false denunciation, was already persecuted on the initiative of Leon Trotsky, who in the article “Revolution and Literature” spoke negatively about the poet, calling him “a selfish, freedom-loving man who carried his peasant soul through bourgeois training "
In 1922, Klyuev wrote a letter to Yesenin asking for help. After all, after his arrest, Klyuev needed money: his poems were poorly published. Yesenin turned to the Soviet literary scholar and critic Razumnik Ivanov-Razumnik, and a telegram signed by Anatoly Lunacharsky was sent to Petrozavodsk with a request to help Klyuev, who was living in poverty.
Nikolai Klyuev, Sergei Yesenin, Vsevolod Ivanov, 1924. Photo: website
Sergei Yesenin and Nikolai Klyuev met again in the fall of 1923 in St. Petersburg, and then came to Moscow, where they lived in a communal apartment on Bolshaya Nikitskaya. They began to appear in public again. Klyuev met Isadora Duncan.
In November, Klyuev returned to St. Petersburg, and his revolutionary poems and the collection “Lenin” were published.
Death of Yesenin and Klyuev
Sergei Yesenin was in a depressed mood in the last years of his life. He began to become disillusioned with the Soviet government, noticing that it did not correspond to the ideals that were spoken about at its very beginning.
In 1923–1924, he wrote the poem “Country of Scoundrels,” in which he exposes the vices of the representatives of the new government. He expresses his beliefs in the image of the central character: the bandit Nomakh - he adheres to anarchist, rebellious views and does not recognize any authority. This poem was Sergei Yesenin's swan song. “The Country of Scoundrels” was published in the magazine “New World” in 1926 after Yesenin’s death: according to the official version, he committed suicide at the Angleterre Hotel on December 28, 1925.
The room in Angleterre where Yesenin committed suicide.
The photo was taken immediately after the tragedy, 1925. Photo: website
At first, Klyuev accepted the news of Yesenin’s death calmly, but then he could not stand it and began to cry. According to the recollections of an eyewitness, he said: “I told Serezhenka and wrote to him: give up this life. I'll lie down like a dog at your doorstep. I won’t let the wind blow on you. I will be your slave...” Until the end of his life, Klyuev remembered Yesenin with warmth.
Nikolai Klyuev dedicated the poem “Crying about Sergei Yesenin” to the memory of the poet, to which in 1927 the Komsomol poet Alexander Bezymensky wrote a sharp critical article “What are they crying about?” Yesenin’s antagonist Vladimir Mayakovsky in the article “How to make poetry?” wrote: “Yesenin’s end saddened him, he usually saddened him in a human way.”
Photo of Nikolai Klyuev from the investigative file. Photo: e-libra.ru
Nikolai Klyuev was arrested for the second time under Article 58 on February 2, 1934, and after a trial on March 5, he was exiled to Western Siberia, to Kolpashevo, Narym District, where he was forced to eke out a miserable, hungry existence: he did not even have warm clothes. He wrote letters - including to Sergei Klychkov, Maxim Gorky, to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in the hope that someone would help soften his situation, and he was transferred to Tomsk.
In 1937, the time came for mass executions. “Execution” points were added to the points of Article 58, under which Klyuev was convicted and exiled. Klyuev was accused of belonging to the sectarian “Union for the Salvation of Russia,” which in reality did not exist, and on October 23, 1937, after his birthday, the poet was shot.
Revizor.ru
27.03.2018
My young memory will die with iron,
and my thin body fades...
Lamentation of Vasilko, Prince of Rostov
We finished off ours before the deadline -
Cranes caught in a blizzard.
We are leaving for our distant homeland
The snowy forest rings with its chain mail
Remember, little devil, Yesenin
Kutya made from coals and bath soaps!
And in my kneader it foams drunkenly
Dough for weddings and scarlet games.
And I have a new hut -
Polati with a valance, unquenchable goddess,
I scolded an ardent word from the back of the store
To you, my little owl, my beloved bird!
You came from Ryazan with a Bukhara handkerchief,
Unwashed, unrinsed, unsoaped,
He called my bosom the Tatar ulus,
The teeth are like herds, and the beard is like an owl!
I sculpted your darling like a killer whale’s nest,
I strengthened thoughts with saliva, words with tears,
Yes, the dawn candle, my forest lamp, went out,
You left me along robber paths!
Kruchinushka was the forest grandfather,
Gray hairs of birch bark fluttered across the tracts,
The barnyard cried with smoke, and the straw was spun
They were blown in the wind like swan fluff.
From under the mare's head, with bent mosses
The damned drunken stitch stretched out.
Following your patent leather shoes
A lean dead cat got stuck, -
Not a cross from her, not a pestle, not flour,
Whether you got married or died - it’s at your throat,
So you've become stupefied by cheerful boredom
Sink your boats in the tavern breakers!
And all for sins, for treason,
Baking gods Medost and Vlas.
The appearance is sickeningly bloody and lumpy
It's dawn to embroider on river satin!
My horny child, my dear swearer,
The coffin board is a covering for all sins,
Forgive me, hog, that boar's strength
I didn’t drink you to the golden surplus!
The golden destiny is to be a fat bee,
Watch out for hiding places and honey logs.
Yes, you dropped the Khazar hryvnia - a brotherly word,
Kiss only the carpet, the sun and the color blue.
I would like to lie in an honest coffin with you,
To the yellow sands, but not with a rope around your neck!..
True or fable, what is on Russian paths
Do the flowers of your eyes grow bluer?
Only for me, the mountain-grass, the mountain-grass...
I became a widow without you, like a furnace without a flame,
It’s like a little town without Nastenka, where there are silks and canvas.
Empty, unsewn hoops are on guard!
Tell me, my lucky child,
Who are you worried about?
Why are you going to a dark grave?
Are there old men with beards?
Al a humongous woman with a broom,
Are the old women in disarray,
Is it gnarly in games?
Know that you crushed him to death,
That none of the little girls began to cry,
The red girls went deceitful,
Single guys are all shameless!
My white linden tree has bloomed in the garden,
The nightingale dawn rang over the river.
It would be more free to bow to the Golden Horde
Try the scimitar with the Khan's notch!
You should die like Mikhail Tverskoy,
Rest like a peasant - with a beard up to your arms!..
It’s not in vain that I hit my home’s eyebrows
The dashing years have jammed the roof.
It’s not for nothing that killer whales don’t make nests,
The kitten does not play with a cheerful ball, -
From a cart, a sheaf of loose ends, into empty furrows
You fell to test your chest with a wheel.
So the bones crunched... On the yellow stubble
The widow song wanders - the sister of bad weather...
Happier than the winter blue Christmas tree
Shrouded in a shroud, waiting for the axe.
Smarter boat, holey breasts
Healing lint of mud and herbs...
About the evening sacrifice and the new Judas
Is milkweed making noise near the road ditches?
Will the plowman forget the threshing floor,
The moon is a hut window,
Honey porridge bee
And the squirrel's nest box?
Will my heart stop loving
Forest love and housing,
When, like a lily of the valley in a stream,
Have you looked at my songs?
And grandma Ryazan listened,
In a crimson hat Kuban,
Like their dear child
Sang about the sky, sad.
In vain Athos and Sarov
Floods of words flowed
And an angel of smiles with a wing
Sprinkled over a sad flower.
My lily of the valley appeared like a birch tree, -
birch bark bell tongue,
Magpie in green curls
Luck and fear settled down.
In those years, Moscow Rus'
She threw off the sovereign vileness,
And in vain Ivan the golden
The Tsar Bell was the fifth.
When from the darkness and chains
The city stood guard over the fields,
As a shepherd, with a goldfinch bagpipe, -
The birch tree came to its brother.
The scientist came across a guest,
I marveled at the embroidered hem,
He said that Christ may rest in peace
Overgrown in the Kunstkamera jar.
There was a din from all the gateways:
Come, song-faced, to us!
And a flock of lean newspapers
She whined: kulak poet!
Wherever the shepherd knocked -
Rumbling bellies are everywhere,
All the more furiously into the fiery darkness
The tavern opened its doors.
A white swan is flying in flight,
Under the wing he carries a chrysoprase stone.
Tell me, pure swan,
On unattainable flights,
And on quiet floats along the lakes
Didn't you look like you looked
Didn’t I see with a clear eye,
Didn't a pearl roll across an open field,
Didn't the golden fish swim through the still waters,
Wasn’t the good fellow walking along the shore,
Didn't he press the grass to the singer's heart,
Was it given to your dear side?
The smart swan answered:
There are only falcons on the skies,
And on quiet floats - whitefish and perches,
A bear sits on the hard ground,
The bear sits, washes itself with its paw,
He is waiting for his betrothed.
And I heard and I saw:
There is a formidable courtyard on the Neva River,
He is a hut upon a hut, covered with iron,
Across the yard there are a thousand smokestacks,
And run along - to drive the horse.
Like in that yard, in a big locker,
Under the sworn black mother,
The young kid amazed himself.
He threw blood into his veins,
Spilled it on the oak floor.
How does this lively crimson look?
Unclean birds flew in -
ChireYa, GryzeYa, Subcutaneous,
Finally, the bird is the Constrictor.
Udavna flew to the mother,
Spread the hemp wing,
She lowered the perisch to the ground.
The feather turned into a tight noose...
And Udavna began to sing and hum,
To gorgot with a goiter, to invite you to visit:
On a ruddy apple tree
Dove, -
At the silver casket
Watchman.
Who will open the gatekeeper?
That's it for Yakhontov!
On the autumn branch
The apple is visible, -
Hello, son-in-law falcon -
Husband Snafidin!
Snafida has rings -
There are lights in the swamp!
Please with politeness,
Falcon, mother-in-law,
To caress the peacocks
In the white grove!
You put it around your neck
Gold money! -
Here I flew from a clear moon,
Took a soul to kill
Is it under the right warm wing,
The soul turned into chrysoprase stone,
And I’m bringing the lost thing home
Under the mother's window.
Chrysopras will sprout birch,
Curly, dewy, like Sergeyushko.
Mother will sit under the window
With a long spinning wheel, with a spindle,
With your orphan work,
She will sing with a thread on the same level
And quietly and quietly:
You, white goose,
What did you do today?
Bye-bye, bye-bye,
Christmas tree, don’t rock your bangs!
Ali weaved, Ali spun,
Did you bathe the little gosling?
Bye-bye, bye-bye,
Bug, don't bark in vain!
There is fluff on the little gosling,
Tag curly boy -
Bye-bye, bye-bye,
An ermine sleeps in a fur coat!
The birch tree is sleeping outside the window
Blue Kupala dream -
Bye-bye, bye-bye,
Shugai got the mittens!
The birch tree's dream is beautiful,
Looks like Serezhenkin!
Bye-bye, bye-bye,
How to wake up by chance!
1926
To the poet Sergei Yesenin
1
That's why in my eyes, ask
That I am a son of the Great Lakes.
Autumn sharpens the blue cinnabar
To the native White Sea expanse.
At sunset the seals splash,
I looked into the lake of chum...
Zlatorogs are my deer -
Herds of tunes and thoughts.
It pulled my soul like a goose,
In the blue, midday region;
There are Mikola and Light Jesus
They will prepare a wheat paradise!
I'm coming. I see mountain huts,
There are steel whales on the waters...
I sang about blue forests,
About Pine Ringing and hermitages.
Scientists told me:
Why holy words?
Shorten the shirt to the waist
And tie her sleeves! -
I cried with Brotherly Songs,
They decided: I didn’t dare to rhyme! -
I began to babble in streaky streams
And the Forest Ones sang.
They gave me Igor as a lesson
Northerner's powdered volume, -
The heart understood: they will burn alive
Those who are touched by the wing of death.
Hard times iron clock
They heralded the fire of war, -
And the Worldly Dumas are painful
I brought it to my fatherland as a gift.
Told how spruce dolls
Overshadow the soldier's mother,
And the paper woodpeckers chirped:
He is not a poet, but a literal thief!
Rus' exchanged Christ for the Platovs.
A peasant's paradise is childish nonsense...-
But from the Ryazan Kolovrat fields
Suddenly a horse light began to dawn.
They were waiting for a boor, an obscene fool,
In a spinjak, with fists in a watermelon, -
Dahl sent the Palm boy,
With a voice sweeter than a girl's beads.
He told about the brown twilight,
About the haystacks, about the harvest sheaf;
The newspapers hissed: Tataria!
And Yesenin is a anti-Semitic poet! -
Oh, soulless book chalk,
You are a raven, I am a tundra goose!
Overshadows the Word Tree
Hut, dense Rus'!
Singing diamond-colored frost
Above me is a tree canopy,
And my country, White India,
Full of secrets and miracles!
Life-foremother matins dewy
Serves the birds and the sons of truth;
Corpse books, cigarette hearts -
Incense, hated by the Creator!
2
Izba is the sanctuary of the earth,
With baking mystery and paradise, -
In the spirit of dewy hemp
We will find out the secret.
There are rows of brooms on the bed -
The soul of green-mouthed birches...
From the stars to the onion ridge
Everything is in prophetic whispers and crunches.
The earth is like an old fisherman,
Weaves cloud networks,
To catch the darkness beyond the grave
Deaf and mute millennia.
I see: as in the top catfish,
The darkness will splash in a man's hand, -
Zolotobrevny Father's House
It's getting sunny in the clearing.
Giant wheat ear
The yard will be overshadowed by a healing shadow...
Isn't it you, my brother, groom and son,
Can you show me the path to transformation?
There is smoke from the huts in your eyes,
The deep sleep of river silt,
Ryazan, poppy sunset -
Your singing ink.
The hut is a feeder of words
It was not in vain that I raised you:
For Russian villages and cities
You will become a red rainbow.
So don't forget baked heaven,
Where is it good to love and cry!
On your way, to eternal May,
I weave a poem - a seasoned bast shoe.
You, sir, have a new necklace...
The words of the murderers of St. Dimitri Tsarevich
Yolushka-sister,
Blue willow,
I came before you:
White color Seryozha,
Similar to Kitovras,
I fell out of love with my tale!
He is a distant alien
Seraphim disgraced,
Hands are scrolls of wings.
Like the bells of communion,
Mom's icons,
I loved him.
And in the eternal distance,
Light, three-crowned,
I have foreseen him.
I may be ugly
Sick and bald,
But the soul is like a dream.
Living dream, peacock,
Where is the pearl frost
Shut down the window
Where in the corner, behind the stove,
With a sorcerer's speech
It whispers.
Is this the Spirit of Glory,
Golden-domed city,
Is the shroud splashing?
Just wider, wider
The whiteness of the psalter -
Unbearable shine.
It’s hard, honey, it’s hard!
There's blood all over my shirt...
Where are you, my Uglich?..
Godunov's victim
I'm in the middle of nowhere
I will perceive peace.
I'll be in a coniferous miter,
Murdered Mitriy,
Rest, forgotten...
The universal hour will strike,
And the Assumption Cathedral
A fairy tale will shelter.
4
Paper hell will consume you
With inky black Satan,
And demons: Buki, Vedi, Az
Line by line bent with phyto.
Until the resurrection trumpet
Troubles will fall on you like blots,
And blotting fate
Paper eaters will not escape.
Instead of glory there will be death
Amuse them with bone rhyme,
On a paper-blot pole
They will plant bald laurel patches.
Line by line flame a hundredfold
Combustible bogey and sulfur.
But bookworm, ink hell
Not for singers of love and faith.
Not for you, my cornflower,
Resin terza, charter pliers,
Rye magic east
I revealed earthly things to you:
Zarya the kitten washes her mouth,
A lamp glows in my heart. -
That you and I are not people -
One paper attack.
We, like Saul, look for donkeys
Let's go to our native gullies,
And we came across the splendor of capitals,
To hell, burning in the darkness.
And so, along a roundabout path,
We go with a bridle and a cry: Sivka!
Sing with a crystal trumpet
I have pine needles, you have liqueur -
That murderous Varenets,
What did the Ryazan cook cook?
You are Kolovratov’s treasure,
I am bora cloudy force.
It's okay to use a paper ram
For adamantine chain mail...
Oh, if only we could travel together,
From Solovki to Kaluga.
Through the Mozdok blue fog,
To the whinny of a roe deer, the creaking of a roe deer!..
But there is wormwood, an evil dope
In the steppe pitiful July.
It rings behind the mounds
And he purrs like a mermaid:
Be lonely like the zenith
Let nothing call you. -
You moved away from me
Behind the grasslands, deep puddles...
By the neighing of a singing horse
The mound soul is ill.
And I know, my little hunchback
In a pine bald spot by the seaside;
Already the underworld of the lines
Coniferous Yegorya trembles.
He will thunder like God's army,
Preparing retribution for the enemy,
So as not to give in the book flame
My dear Kolovrat will burn.
1916-1917
Sergei Yesenin...
Snow is falling on the road -
White chamomile color.
Maybe I'll get there little by little
To the windows, where is the gentle light?
Tired feet trample
White chamomile color.
I see a spinning wheel outside the windows,
Mom sings a song
With a cheerful thread side by side
The plump cat purrs
Widow mouse for a washcloth
A cricket gives you marriage.
It's sweet to fall asleep on a bed...
The cat is a constant neighbor.
Let him drone on early in the morning
Let's hive on the wanderer, grandfather,
He's gray like a tree stump in a clearing -
White chamomile color.
If only I could touch peace,
There is flint and tinder in the bag,
Apple tree in pink heat
My cheeks will bloom
Where the left-handed weaves
There's comfort in mom's braids.
Life is a multi-layered ocean
It splashes after the traveler.
Is it the Volga, or the banks of the Rhone -
The poet accepts everything...
Quietly lies on the slopes
White chamomile color.
We are spouses...In living centuries
Our seed will sprout,
And the younger tribe will remember us
At song-making feasts!
Thanks to Klyuev’s help, Sergei Yesenin managed not only to avoid military service, but also to become widely known in the most brilliant literary salons of pre-revolutionary Petrograd. At one of the charity evenings, the young poet was even introduced to the imperial person. All this time, Klyuev was uncontrollably jealous of Yesenin for any of his hobbies. Sergei recalled that as soon as he stepped outside the threshold of the house, Nikolai would sit on the floor and howl.
This terribly burdened the ambitious poet, who did not have any feelings for the homely man almost 10 years older than him. And yet they were together for 1.5 years. Then 1917 struck, and the paths diverged. The image of a peasant poet in a blouse became irrelevant, so Yesenin immediately changed his image. He became an imagist and a reckless hooligan. Klyuev was no longer needed, and Yesenin abandoned his patron without the slightest regret.
After his first acquaintance with Yesenin in 1915, Fyodor Sologub said that his “peasant simplicity” was feigned, completely false. Fyodor Kuzmich, with his characteristic insight, was able to read in the depths of the young poet’s soul the frantic thirst for recognition and fame. Nikolai Klyuev could not see this. For which he paid. He was very upset about parting with his “beloved Serezhenka.” The pain of loss permeated Klyuev’s lyrics during that period:
Yolushka-sister,
Blue willow,
I came before you:
White color Seryozha,
Similar to Kitovras,
I fell out of love with my tale!
He is a distant alien
Seraphim disgraced,
Hands are scrolls of wings.
Like the bells of communion,
Mom's icons,
I loved him.
And in the eternal distance,
Light, three-crowned,
I have foreseen him.
I may be ugly
Sick and bald,
But the soul is like a dream.
Living dream, peacock,
Where is the pearl frost
Shut down the window
Where in the corner, behind the stove,
With a sorcerer's speech
It whispers.
Is this the Spirit of Glory,
Golden-domed city,
Is the shroud splashing?
Just wider, wider
The whiteness of the psalter -
Unbearable shine.
It’s hard, honey, it’s hard!
There's blood all over my shirt...
Where are you, my Uglich?..
Godunov's victim
I'm in the middle of nowhere
I will perceive peace.
But Sergei himself hardly experienced even a drop of the same feelings. His goal was achieved - now Yesenin’s poems were published. Klyuev helped him overcome obscurity and remained in the past. Now there was fame, wine, poetry and women ahead.
E. A. YeseninaExcerpts from letters
Yesenin S. A. [Excerpts from letters] // Complete works. In 7 volumes. T. 6. Letters / S. Yesenin. – Moscow: Science: Voice, 1999. – P. 66, 81–82, 99–100, 112–113, 117, 122-123, 131-132, 135-136.
Dear Nikolai Alekseevich!
I read your poems, talked a lot about you with Gorodetsky, and I can’t help but write to you. Especially when you and I have a lot in common. I am also a peasant and I write the same way as you, but only in my Ryazan language. My poems in St. Petersburg were successful. Out of 60, 51 were accepted. We took Sev<ерные>zap<иски>", "Rus<ская>cape<ль>", "Monthly journal<нал>”, etc. And in “Voice of Life” there is an article about me by Gippius under the pseudonym Roman Arensky, where you are also mentioned. I would like to talk to you about many things, but “no voice can reach across a fast river, through a dark forest.” If you read my poems, write to me about them. In the fall, Gorodetsky will publish my book “Radunitsa”. I will also be at Kras. I'm very sorry that I can't say anything more on this card. I shake your hand tightly.<...>
2. N. A. Klyuev.
July – August 1916 Tsarskoe Selo
Dear Kolya, life passes quietly and very sadly. In my service, things don’t matter to me. When you arrive in Petrograd, only trash sticks out. Only yesterday was a day that brought me a lot. Your father arrived, and what I learned from him I really can’t convey to you. This is nature - isn’t it richer than all our books and debates? Everything that you and your sister put a haze on, he tries to emphasize even more clearly, and only in order to put forward, in addition to himself and his desires, the wisdom of what is acceptable. There is, of course, a lot in him from worldly affairs with a desire for profit, but this disappears, it is even imperceptible to him, life taught him from the first steps, in order not to fall, to seek visible support. He knows intuitively that when the old wolf's teeth fall out, he will have nothing to fight with, and he must die of hunger... I like him.
Ganin was sitting here, you know, and his mouth was completely twisted from the empty and unnecessary truth that had eaten into him. It’s a pity for him, it’s a pity because he does everything the way it should, but explains himself differently.
I haven’t written much during this time, I was at home - I just poisoned myself and all the time I walked from corner to corner and smelled what smacked of my being there, carrion or damp rot.
I haven’t received any cuttings lately, Pimen told me that he saw a big article somewhere, but I don’t know where. Cl<авдия>Al<ексеевна>She said you got three. Please come and look at me, I will send them back to you right away. Grandfather showed me what size it was, and he kept talking about you first, about Nikolai after something.
Come, brother, in the fall, no matter what. Your absence is very noticeable to me, and very boring. The main thing is that loneliness is round.
How I remember the experience...
Should I return it?<...>
3. Ivanov-Razumnik
End of December 1917 Petrograd
Dear Razumnik Vasilievich!
I really liked, with the addition of not, Klyuev’s “Song of the Sun-Bearer” and the laudatory odes to it with the mediocre “Red Song”.
The stamp your “first deep folk poet”, which you attached to Klyuev from the achievements of his “Song of the Sun-Bearer”, obliges me not to appear in the third “Scythians”. For what you and Andrei Bely considered to be the height of perfection, I considered only the squeak of a mouse.
I already told you this, if not in these, then in similar words, once under Arseny Avramov.
Klyuev, with the exception of “Hut Songs,” which I appreciate and recognize, has recently become my enemy. I know him better than you, and I know what made me write him “the most beautiful” and “the white light of Seryozha, similar to Kitovras.”
The unity that you find in us is only apparent.
"I am a spring verse"
And
"Common to me, brothers"
it’s disgusting to my gut, which wants to spill out of my body and bite through the belly of the sky in order to move not only the sovereign from Nicholas to the barn, but...
But it is not customary to talk about this, and I leave it for “contemplation in the press”; it seems that Andrei Bely is already waiting...
In my dedication to Klyuev, I called him the middle brother of the numbers 109, 34 and 22. The meaning of the middle in “The Little Humpbacked Horse,” and in almost all Russian fairy tales, is “this way and that.”
That’s why I said: “He’s all in the carving of rumors,” that is, in the retelling of what was said. Only an isographer, but not a discoverer.
And I “knock down the month with a stone,” and to hell with him, with Seraphim of Sarov, with whom he rushes around like that, if, besides himself and the stone in the well of heaven, he reflects nothing.
I am telling you this not out of infringement by the “primacy” of the Sun-Bearer and mine “echoes in harmony,” but out of true resentment for the Word, which is not golden, but is pecked from the heart of itself as a chick...<…>
<…>
...broke up with Klyuev...<...>
And Klyuev, my dear, is a Bestia. Cunning as a fox, and all this, you know, like this: for yourself. Thank God that a lively cow does not get horns. He harbors great desires within himself, but little strength. Very similar to his poems, just as clumsy, sloppy, simple in appearance, but devilish inside.
Klychkov, on the contrary, is simplicity itself, purity and gentleness, but he smells too much of physical uncleanliness. I love him very much and value him more than Oreshin. In many ways he is better than Klyuev, but, of course, not overall.<...>
You write a lot of people who see it. I especially don’t like your poems about the east. Are you really that upset or do you feel little of the influx of your native soil forces?
Then stop singing this stylized Klyuevskaya Rus' with its non-existent Kitezh and stupid old women, we are not like how it all comes out in your poems. Life, the real life of our Rus', is much better than the frozen picture of the Old Believers. All this, brother, was, went into the coffin, so why sniff these rotten log remains? Let Klyuev smell it, it suits him, because he himself smells, but you don’t.< ...>
<…>
Well, what about Klyuev?
About a year ago he sent me a very cunning letter, thinking that I, as I was, was 18 years old, I did not answer him, and since then I have not heard anything about him. His poems during this time made a rather unpleasant impression on me. He, Razumnik Vasilyevich, is very weak in form and somehow doesn’t want to grow. And what seems to him to be a form is nothing more or less than a manner, and sometimes quite tiresome.
But still I wanted to see him. I am deeply interested in what groping path he will take now?<...>
6. Ivanov-Razumnik
May 1921 Tashkent
Dear Razumnik Vasilievich!
I sent you a letter, books, another letter, I was waiting for at least some answer from you and did not receive it, and it seems to me that you, apparently, were offended by something. Isn’t my opinion about him also for Klyuev? Is it for Blok?
I have thought a lot, Razumnik Vasilyevich, over the years, I have worked a lot on myself, and what I am saying is something I have suffered through enough. I didn’t even tell you everything in that letter; in my opinion, Klyuev has completely become a bad poet, just like Blok. I don’t want to tell you that they are very small in their internal content. Just not. Blok, of course, is not a genius figure, and Klyuev, as once crushed by him, was unable to move away from his Dutch romanticism. But still, of course, they mean a lot. Let Blok, by misunderstanding, be Russian, and Klyuev sings of Russia according to book chronicles and its false sketches of all visitors, in this they, of course, did something. They even did it in an original way to some extent. I don't like them mainly as masters of our language.
Blok is a formless poet, and so is Klyuev. They have almost none of the figurativeness of our language. In Klyuev they are very small (“a dark blueberry sits with a hoop under the window to sew golden airs,” “Zoy ku-ku zagozye, hubbub hangs on the branches with thundering Shyrgunians,” “the cloud is a spruce, and the sun is a squirrel with a gilded tail,” and etc.). And Blok exclusively feels only a simple word according to Gogol, that “a word is a sign with which a person conveys to another what he has caught in an internal or external phenomenon.”
Dear Razumnik Vasilyevich, 500, 600 roots is a very poor economy, and the branches of verbal images are a rather boring business.
To be a master of poetry, you need to know them like hell. Neither Blok nor Klyuev know this, just like the entire fraternity of numerous poets. I was sick a lot over the years, studied the language a lot, and to my horror I saw that neither Pushkin nor all of us, including me, knew how to write poetry.<...>
I was also extremely pleased with your magazine or collection. It’s high time to start - we’ve all fallen apart so much, I want to be a little more “united in the family” again, because I, for example, am damn tired of hanging around with my empty-mouthed brothers, and Klyuev is completely drying up in his Baobabia. He writes desperate letters to me. His situation there is terrible, he is almost dying of hunger.
I stirred up the whole audience here, did what I could for him with rations and sent 10 million<ионов>rub. In addition, I sent another 2 million<иона>Klychkov and 10 – Lunacharsky.
I don’t know what kind of devil makes him sit there? Or is he afraid to stain the “robes of his soul” with our everyday dirt? But then there is no point in howling, then give your body to the dogs, and let your soul go to God.
This mysticism of cheap Orthodoxy is wonderful and funny to me, Razumnik Vasilyevich, and it always requires some kind of necessarily stupid and cruel feats. This Vytegorsky ascetic always wants to be a calendar saint instead of a poet, which is why everything turns out so badly for him.
His “Rome,” despite the fact that you spoke so warmly about it, made a desperate impression on me. Tasteless and ignorant to the last degree in terms of form. “Prayers milk” and “cheese of love” - but these are his beloved Mariengof and Shershenevich with their “sandwiches of love.”
Only one figurative comparison is interesting, but alas - how old it is in Klyuev’s way!.. Well, this is a very small reproach for him, like Klyuev. I myself know what his strength is and what the truth is. If only I could knock this Optina nonsense out of him, like out of Bely-Steiner, then, I’m sure, he recorded it even better than “Hut Songs.”<...>
Dear friend!
I arranged everything that was possible for you with money and parcels, and with a parcel from “Ara”. One of these days I will send another 5 million<ионов>.
In two weeks I'm going to Berlin, I'll be back in June or July, and maybe later. From there I will also try to send you what is due from the Skifs. I take it upon myself to discuss the conditions, and if I take your book from them, don’t be offended, because I’ll arrange it much more profitable than their payment.
My letter to you is purely businesslike, without any lyrical outpourings, and therefore forgive me for writing so little and sparingly.
I’m very tired, and my last binge has made me completely nervous, so that I’m even afraid to write to you, lest I hurt you for no reason.
I don’t advise you to go to Moscow until the fall, because here everything is still in the period of organization and is empty - even if it’s a big deal.
Hunger in the central lips<ерниях>almost the same as in the north. My family scattered in such conditions in all directions.
Before leaving, I will arrange another package for you. Maybe you can check it out somehow. You really have become some kind of child if you sold your “Rome” to this lousy speculator “Epoch” for pennies. This has never happened to you before.
I didn't like the thing. Awkward and cheesy.
Well, everyone has their own path.
I am delighted with many other poems.
If you need anything, write to Klychkov, and stop scolding him, because he loves you and will do everything you need. Then you can write to the address of my store, my friend Golovachev, B. Nikitskaya, 15, bookstore<ин>artistic<иков>words. This is in case of lack of money. Write and they’ll send you some of my share, then someday we’ll settle down. On this side, I also owe you a lot in my early days. From abroad I will write to you at Razumnik.<...>
