We encourage everyone to take part in this action and sign
PETITION

Elizaveta Grishanova

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 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 come from 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 floated 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!

My young memory is dying with iron,
and my thin body fades...
(Crying 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, you 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 -
Pay with vigilance, unquenchable goddess.
I scrawled out an ardent word from the back of the store
To you, my little owlet, 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 went out,
my forest lamp,
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 floated 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 was stuck.

Not a cross from her, not a pestle, not flour,
(Whether he got married or died - she’s at the 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 -
brotherly word,
Kiss only the carpet,
the sun and the color blue.

I would like to lie with you in an honest coffin,
Into the yellow sands, but not with a rope around your neck!..
It may or may not be true that the Russian paths
Do the flowers of your eyes grow bluer?

Only I grieve - gorin-grass...
I became a widow without you, like a furnace without a flame,
It’s like a little town without Nastenka, where are the silks and the canvas?
Empty, unsewn hoops are on guard!

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 Christmas tree, which is winter blue,
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 - a hollow storage room?

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, sad about the sky.

In vain Athos and Sarov
Words flowed like a flood,
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!

Where the shepherd didn't knock -
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 flights beyond reach,
And on quiet rafting through 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 -
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...
And Udavna began to sing and hum,
To gorgot with a goiter, to invite you to visit:

"On a ruddy apple tree
Darling,
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 the clear moon,
Took a soul to kill
Is it under the right warm wing,
The soul turned into chrysoprase stone,
And I bring the loss to my homeland
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,
Is it with your orphan work,
She will sing along with the thread
And quietly and quietly:

You are a white goose
What did you do today?
Bye-bye, bye-bye,
don’t rock the tree with bangs!

Ali weaved, Ali spun,
Did you bathe the baby gosling?
Bye-bye, bye-bye,
Bug, don't bark in vain!

There is fluff on the baby gosling,
Tega 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!

My land, my seaside,
Where are the songs in the depths!
Your glaciers, hills
Watched by Yegor
On a swan horse!

Your destiny is a loon
With Kashcheev's egg,
With a ray of fire,
And the gloomy midwives
They leaned over the nest.

You shine a torch,
Bluebeard grandfather!
The nest is noisy as an aspen,
Yamshchitsky steeple
With the blizzard following.

Behind the blizzard
The loon will not fly soon...
Would you like a garden with a gate?
Yes, let's go wild
By the swan waters.

Hawthorn sable
I dreamed of you
But at forty it hurts
Look into the eyes of a falcon
It's shameful to be in silence.

I dreamed about you being a squirrel -
Eyebrow-deep canvas cloth,
But Alkonost the bird
Or things in zegzitz
Don't get lost in the string harmony.

Only the hills remain
Feather grass and blue fog,
Meanwhile, as a rare fight
Above the swan Yegor
Orlit airplane.

III. Calm

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.

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.

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.

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (October 10 (October 22), 1887, village of Koshtugi, Olonets province - October 23 or 25, 1937, Tomsk) - Russian poet, representative of the so-called new peasant movement in Russian poetry of the 20th century.

Nikolai Klyuev was friends with Sergei Yesenin, who considered him his teacher. Due to the fact that some of his works (in particular, the poem “Pogorelschina”) contradicted the official Soviet ideology in 1933, Klyuev was exiled to the Narym region, to Kolpashevo, then, at the request of Gorky, he was transferred to Tomsk. In 1937, he was again arrested and executed.

Klyuev was rehabilitated in 1957, but the first posthumous book was published only in 1982.

Klyuev is a missionary poet, not a pure lyricist. He grew up in the remote Zaonezhie, in a family of Old Believers, his frantic religiosity did not coincide with the official religiosity, the official Orthodoxy of the Empire. He felt himself to be the bearer of secret knowledge about the “true underground Rus'”, the Rus' of remote monasteries, the village way of life, secret church books, and was a preacher of the revival and purification of the world through the living poetic word.

His relations with the Soviet government were also very difficult. Having supported it in 1917, he then became an increasingly intolerant enemy for it, in 1934 he was exiled to the Tomsk province (by the way, formally for homosexuality with the poet Pavel Vasilyev), and in 1937 after terrible torture he was shot.
His poetry is quite difficult to read, it is so oversaturated with complex metaphors, even tongue-tied, that it looks like a thick soup in which “the spoon stands.” in contrast to the most transparent watercolor Kuzmin.

Klyuev was a pure gay, never interested in women. But his young friends, the most famous of whom was Sergei Yesenin, were not just his lovers; the spiritually powerful Klyuev, in his own words, “sculpted their darling like a killer whale’s nest, strengthened thoughts with saliva, and words with tears,” tried to completely subordinate them to his spiritual influence.
Yesenin both obeyed Klyuev and was burdened by him at the same time, wrote: “Here Klyuev is the Ladoga deacon, his poems are like a padded jacket, but I read them out loud yesterday, and a canary died in a cage.”
The homosexual content of Klyuev’s poetry does not stick out as clearly as Kuzmin’s, but an attentive eye, of course, will reveal it without difficulty.

Here are fragments from Klyuev’s poems about Yesenin: