Yesenin recalled with a smile about his childhood in the Ryazan province, saying that it was exactly the same as that of all rural children. Fights in the dust, eternal scratches and a broken nose, raids on other people's gardens and a furious dislike for Saturdays - on this "bath" day, the reins of power passed to the grandmother, who struggled to give her beloved grandson a civilized look, wash, comb and change into clean clothes. .

Serezha's parents did not get along too well - the marriage of convenience was on the verge of collapse for many years, the mother left her husband and went "to the people", to work, leaving her two-year-old son to his grandfather and grandmother. The male half of this rather well-to-do (by peasant standards) family was distinguished by a temperamental violent and hooligan - the grandfather supported the grandson's desire to gain authority among his peers with his fists. The upbringing that the boy received could be called Spartan. Three unmarried uncles enthusiastically began to sculpt a "real man" from a tiny nephew. He was taught to swim by being thrown from a boat into a lake at the very depths, and given plenty of water to drink before being pulled back. At the age of three, the boy was put on a horse without a saddle and the stallion was put into a gallop, leaving the frightened boy to death with "God's mercy." Is it any wonder that in adolescence, Sergei Yesenin was known in his native village as the main mischief-maker, the ringleader of all kinds of dashing tricks? Grandmother "pulled" her grandson in the other direction. She was very religious, believed in the benefits of education, and in her dreams saw Seryozha as a village teacher. Thanks to her efforts, he could read from the age of five, tried to compose ditties, and then graduated with honors from a four-year zemstvo school in his native Konstantinovsky. However, it took him five years - the boy was transferred to the last class only on the second attempt "because of disgusting behavior."

After receiving his primary education, Yesenin easily entered a special parochial school for teachers. However, own youthful sword you pictured him a much more attractive future in the field of literature. Yesenin composed poems more and more professionally, many of them later gained fame, and today are included in textbook collections. “Winter sings - calls out ...” and “Bird cherry snows ...” he wrote at the age of fifteen.

Not distinguished by excessive modesty, the young man considered himself a ready-made genius and was extremely indignant at the coldness of the publishers who refused to publish him. To deal with such injustice, he personally went to conquer Big world. Yesenin moves to Moscow, completely despising the career of a teacher, works as a clerk in a butcher's shop, actively sends his works to famous poets, attaches them to all kinds of competitions.

Such a cavalry onslaught bears fruit - the young talent is noticed, they begin to publish and praise it. It seemed that dreams come true!

Brilliant start - and a beautiful flight ... to nowhere

Compared to many other writers, whose path to the heights was strewn with thorns, Yesenin's fate was truly caressed. Or so it seems at first glance? The year is 1915, his poems are on the pages of the most popular metropolitan publications, and the poet himself reads his works to the Empress and Grand Duchesses in the infirmary for soldiers who were injured on the fronts of the First World War.

At the same time, he enthusiastically takes part in the work of various “near-revolutionary” circles, makes friends with “unreliable” poets and members of the RSDLP (b), for which he himself falls into the “black lists” of the police. Yesenin welcomes the coming revolution, seeing in it the possibility of renewal, the revival of spirituality. It can be easily assumed that such idealism later became the cause of great disappointment - the pastoral picture of patriarchal Russia did not much correspond to the horror that was happening in reality after 1917.

Objectively, everything turned out just fine. Yesenin is on good terms with the "singer of the revolution" Alexander Blok, Gorky speaks well of him, Dzerzhinsky personally consults about his well-being. In addition, the poet's family was reunited (at least formally), two younger sisters are growing up with him, whom he loves reverently and fiercely. In general, contemporaries noted that the easiest way to get hold of Sergei Yesenin among his enemies was to say harshness in relation to his relatives - he was endlessly devoted to them.

But what was really going on in his soul at that time? They say that the first thing a revolution devours is its children. Yesenin was tormented by the fact that the expectations and the truth of life, which he observed every day, did not want to coincide. Everything was different, unsteady, strange and scary. And now traces of sad reflections about “where the fate of events takes us” appear in his poems.

Trying to escape into the metaphorical world of semi-fairytale images, the poet takes part in the creation of a new literary trend - Imagism, somewhat outrageous, sometimes preaching hooliganism and anarchism. However, shortly before his death, Yesenin will be disappointed in this brainchild of his, but for now he is actively traveling around the country, visiting Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, speaking to a very different audience. Looking, looking, looking... What? Either peace of mind, or the truth that is not given to him in any way.

The dearly beloved family also does not please the poet too much. By their own woeful admission, his relatives perceive him solely as a source of additional funds, a potential "golden bag", and do not understand why he does not pay attention to improving his well-being. The peasant patriarchal dream of prosperity no longer touches, but irritates Yesenin.

All they want is money!” he is outraged.

He drinks a lot and is increasingly involved in various scandals, many of which involve women. Personal life is not going well, stormy novels end as quickly as they begin. By 1925, there were already three official marriages behind Yesenin, which turned out to be very fleeting. The first lasted the longest, with Zinaida Reich, who gave birth to the poet's daughter and son. Then there was a bright and incredibly passionate relationship with the American dancer Isadora Duncan - the poet lived with her for a little over a year. The last alliance was concluded with Sophia Tolstaya, but this marriage broke up almost immediately.

It is interesting that many women loved Yesenin earnestly and devotedly, but even this did not bring him peace, did not allow him to escape from the "inner demons". He drank more and more, was repeatedly detained by the police for hooliganism, sometimes he was ashamed of his antics, sometimes he flaunted them. There were streaks of lack of money, relations with friends deteriorated. It seemed that Sergei was running, running after some elusive dream - and could not catch up with it in any way ...

End of the road - tragedy at Angleterre

What caused the end? Disputes about this have not stopped for a long time. On the one hand, Yesenin's civic position in the last years of his life was very different from the optimistic perception of social changes that helped him become so popular in the "revolutionary" environment. Increasingly, in his speeches, criticism of the “powerful of this world” broke through, which was usually attributed to alcoholic delirium or a nervous breakdown. The poet even spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, but did not get rid of his "freethinking".

The pendulum of his life was swinging stronger and stronger. He drank terribly, almost without leaving a feverish state. In parallel, Yesenin "lit up" in connection with a criminal case initiated under the "execution" article about anti-Semitism. Friends began to fear suicidal moods, which increasingly took possession of the poet - he repeatedly made attempts to “leave” and even more often spoke about them in his works, bitter, hopeless, reminiscent of the confession of a hopelessly deceived person.

The last poem "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye" was written in blood - Yesenin handed it to Wolf Erlich, one of the few true friends, just a few hours before his death. He wrote it in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad, and on the same night committed suicide by hanging himself on a suitcase belt, throwing it over a heating pipe. There are versions that the suicide was just a staging, covering up the brutal reprisal against the poet. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know for sure - whatever the truth, the thirty-year-old poet took it with him.

Brief biography of Sergei Yesenin

Occupation: Years of creativity: Direction: Art language: http://esenin.ru/ Works on the site Lib.ru in Wikisource.

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (September 21 (October 3) ( 18951003 ) , the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province - December 28, Leningrad) - Russian poet, one of the most popular and famous Russian poets of the 20th century.

Biography

early years

Born in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province, into a peasant family, father - Alexander Nikitich Yesenin (1875-1967), mother - Tatyana Fedorovna Titova (1875-1955). In 1904, Yesenin went to the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School, then began his studies at a closed church teacher's school.

In 1915-1917, Yesenin maintained friendly relations with the poet Leonid Kannegiser, who later killed the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky.

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

By 1918 - the beginning of the 1920s, Yesenin's acquaintance with Anatoly Mariengof and his active participation in the Moscow group of Imagists.

Doom

Posthumous photo of Yesenin

By official version, Yesenin, in a state of depression (a month after treatment in a psychoneurological hospital), committed suicide (hung himself). Neither contemporaries of the event, nor in the next few decades after the death of the poet, other versions of the event were expressed. In the 1970s and 1980s, mainly in nationalist circles, there were also versions about the murder of the poet, followed by a staged suicide: on the basis of jealousy, selfish motives, murder by the OGPU.

He was buried in Moscow at the Vagankovsky cemetery.

Poetry

see also

Notes

Links

• Classical: Yesenin Sergey Alexandrovich: Collected works in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• Sergey Yesenin. Collection of poems
• Sergei Yesenin in the Anthology of Russian Poetry
• Selected works of Sergei Yesenin in Russian and English Translation by A. S. Vagapov
• Yesenin on the Elements
• Yuri Prokushev. A word about Yesenin
• Galina Benislavskaya. Memories of Yesenin
• Viktor Kuznetsov.

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born in 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province (see). His parents were peasants, and in addition to Sergei had two daughters: Ekaterina and Alexandra.

In 1904, Sergei Yesenin entered the zemstvo school in his native village, and in 1909 he began his studies at the parochial school in Spas-Klepiki.

Having a quick-tempered and restless character, Yesenin arrived in Moscow on an autumn day in 1912 in search of happiness. First, he got a job in a butcher's shop, and then began working in the printing house of I.D. Sytin.

Since 1913, he became a volunteer at the University named after A. L. Shanyavsky and made friends with the poets of the Surikov literary and musical circle. I must say that this was of greater importance in the further formation of the personality of the future star in the horizon of Russian literature.

Special signs of Sergei Yesenin

The beginning of creativity

The first poems by Sergei Yesenin were published in the children's magazine Mirok in 1914.

This seriously influenced his biography, but after a few months he left for Petrograd, where he made important acquaintances with A. Blok, S. Gorodetsky, N. Klyuev and other outstanding poets of his time.

Yesenin reads his mother's poems

After a short time, a collection of poems called "Radunitsa" is published. Yesenin also collaborates with Socialist-Revolutionary magazines. The poems "Transfiguration", "Oktoih" and "Inonia" are printed in them.

After three years, that is, in 1918, the poet returns to, where, together with Anatoly Mariengof, he becomes one of the founders of the Imagists.

Starting to write the famous poem "Pugachev", he traveled to many significant and historical places: the Caucasus, Solovki, Crimea, and even got to where he stayed with his friend, the poet Alexander Shiryaevts.

It is believed that it was from Tashkent that his performances before the public at poetry evenings began.

It is difficult to fit all the adventures that happened to him during these travels into a short biography of Sergei Yesenin.

In 1921, a serious change took place in Yesenin's life, as he married the famous dancer Isadora Duncan.

After the wedding, the couple went on a trip to Europe and America. However, soon after returning from abroad, the marriage with Duncan broke up.

Yesenin's last days

The last few years of his life, the poet worked hard, as if foreseeing his imminent death. He traveled a lot around the country and went to the Caucasus three times.

In 1924, a trip took place to, and then to, where his works “The Poem of Twenty-Six”, “Anna Snegina”, “Persian Motifs” and the collection of poems “Red East” are being printed.

When the October Revolution took place, it gave the work of Sergei Yesenin a new, special force. Singing love for the motherland, he, one way or another, touches on the theme of revolution and freedom.

It is conventionally believed that in the post-revolutionary period there were two great poets: Sergei Yesenin and. During their lives, they were stubborn rivals, constantly competing in talent.

Although no one allowed himself to make mean statements about his opponent. The compilers of Yesenin's biography often quote his words:

“I am still Koltsov, and I love Blok. I am only learning from them and from Pushkin. What do you say. He knows how to write - that's true, but is it poetry, poetry? I don't love him. He has no order. Things are falling on things. From poetry, there should be order in life, but with Mayakovsky everything is like after an earthquake, and the corners of all things are so sharp that it hurts the eyes.

Yesenin's death

On December 28, 1925, Sergei Yesenin was found dead in the Angleterre Hotel in Leningrad. According to the official version, he hanged himself after being treated in a neuropsychiatric hospital for some time.

I must say that, given the long depression of the poet, such a death was not news to anyone.

However, at the end of the twentieth century, thanks to lovers of Yesenin's work, new data began to emerge from the biography and death of Yesenin.

Due to the prescription of time, it is difficult to establish the exact events of those days, but the version that Yesenin was killed, and then only staged suicide, looks quite reliable. As it was in fact, we will probably never know.

Yesenin's biography, like his poems, is filled with a deep experience of life and all its paradoxes. The poet managed to feel and convey on paper all the features of the Russian soul.

Undoubtedly, he can be safely attributed to the great Russian poets, called a fine connoisseur of Russian life, as well as an amazing artist of the word.

Posthumous photo of Yesenin

Yesenin's last verse

Goodbye my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined parting
Promises to meet in the future.

Goodbye, my friend, without a hand, without a word,
Do not be sad and do not sadness of the eyebrows, -
In this life, dying is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.

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Sergei Yesenin is a name known to every romantic. His poems are imbued with sincere love, which manifests itself from different sides: whether it is love for the Motherland, or unrequited love for a woman, inspiring, passionate, deep and free. This is what readers appreciate in the poet so far - his sincerity. Let's get to know Sergei Yesenin better and get to know him as a person, a poet and just a person with subtle feelings.

Serezha was born in 1895 in the Ryazan province, the village of Konstantinovo. Among his sisters Catherine and Alexandra, he was the eldest in the peasant family of Alexander Yesenin and Tatyana Titova.

Beginning in 1904, Sergei received elementary education in the zemstvo school, after studying in which he entered the parochial school in 1909, which is now a museum of Russian lyricists.

Youth and education

After graduating from school, Yesenin moved to Moscow, where he tried to work in a butcher's shop, and later - in the printing house of I.D. Sytin. In 1913 he became a volunteer at the Moscow City People's University. A.L. Shanyavsky Historical and Philosophical Department. This life period of Sergei can also be associated with the Surikov literary and musical circle.

creative path

Yesenin's first poems were published in Mirka, a magazine for children (1914). Already next year, he makes his way from Moscow to Petrograd, where Yesenin recites his works in front of A.A. Block, S.M. Gorodekiy and others. In 1916, the poet was called to war. Thanks to friends, he ends up in the Tsarskoye Selo military hospital train. But Sergey's creative path did not stop there: his first collections are published, for example, "Radunitsa". The poet also approaches a group of "new peasant poets", who later played an important role.

His creative work continues among the Imagists in the 1918-1920s. These include such works as the collections "Confessions of a Hooligan", "Poems of a Brawler", "Moscow Tavern", as well as the notorious poem "Pugachev".

For my short life(30 years old) Sergei Yesenin managed to see Central Asia, visit the Urals and the Orenburg region with his friend Yakov Blumkin. In Tashkent, in addition to walking around the city, he becomes a participant in poetry evenings.

The poet devoted more than a year to a trip to Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, Italy) and to the USA together with his newly-made Isadora Duncan. Upon Yesenin's arrival, the Izvestia newspaper published his notes about America under the title "Iron Mirgorod". In the 1920s, he was engaged in a bookstore on Bolshaya Nikitskaya.

Personal life

The first serious love of the poet was Zinaida Reich, the secretary of the editorial office of the newspaper Delo Naroda. They had a complicated relationship. Sergey had bad habits: drinking parties, women, hooliganism, which caused conflicts with his wife. Subsequently, two children remained from their marriage - Tanya and Kostya, who were adopted by Vsevolod Meyerhold, her husband. But all her life she continued to love only one Sergei. On the literary evening"The Trial of the Imagists" the ardent poet meets Galina Benislavskaya. They soon become very close. But after some time, Isadora Duncan, with whom he went abroad, turned his head to Sergei. But after 1.5 years, having returned to his homeland, he returns to Benislavskaya. However, he saw in her only a friend, code how Galina loved him immensely. But in 1925 he married Sonechka Tolstaya.

Near the grave of Sergei Yesenin, Galina committed suicide. "Faithful Galina" - they wrote on the monument, burying her next to her beloved.

• The poet had 2 strange phobias: contracting syphilis and policemen.
• Sergei Yesenin swore a lot with Vladimir Mayakovsky, although they both recognized each other's talent.
• Yesenin's son was shot in 1937, as it turned out, on a false charge: that he was preparing an assassination attempt on Stalin.
• There was a period in Yesenin's life when he did not eat meat.
• At the age of 8, the boy Seryozha writes his first poem.

Last years

Last years Sergei dedicated his short life to travel: he traveled to the Caucasus three times, returned to Leningrad several times, and visited Konstantinovo seven times. In Azerbaijan (1924-25) he managed to grant freedom to the collection of poems "Red East". For a short period of time he lived in the suburbs of Baku - the village of Mardakan, where his house-museum and a memorial plaque are now located.

Beginning in 1924, a black streak came for the poet. For starters, he decides to leave the Imagists because of a rift with A.B. Mariengof, and therefore writes a letter with Ivan Gruzin about the dissolution of the society. During this difficult period for the poet, not at all positive articles about Yesenin began to be published in newspapers: that he was drinking, rowdy and, in general, leading a revelry lifestyle. Several criminal cases were opened against Sergei: he was charged with hooliganism. In 1925, Rakovsky wrote a letter to Dzerzhinsky, in which he asked to help Yesenin in connection with his state of health. Only those closest to him knew that the poet was entering the psycho-neurological clinic of Moscow University. But about a month later, Sergei is discharged from the clinic, cancels all powers of attorney in the State Publishing House, withdraws almost all the money from the savings book and leaves for Leningrad.

On December 28, 1925, Sergei Yesenin died. His body was found in his hotel room. The last thing he wrote was - "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye ..." - he wrote it with his own blood, because there was no ink at all.

There are two versions of the poet's death: the first is generally accepted, Yesenin arbitrarily said goodbye to life (hung himself), but many adhere to the second version of the turn of events - the poet was killed and then staged suicide. The death of Sergei Yesenin, a remarkable poet of the twentieth century, seems to remain an unsolved mystery for everyone.

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Introduction

There are names in Russian literature, next to which any epithets seem to be inaccurate, weak or banal grandiloquent. These names include the name of Sergei Yesenin.

Yesenin lived only thirty years. But the mark left by him in literature is so deep that it was not erased either by the prohibitions of his work by those in power, or by the deliberate smoothing over of the complexities of the creative path. The poetry of S. Yesenin has always lived in the heart and memory of our people, because it is rooted in the thickness of national life, has grown from its depths. “In Yesenin's poems,” the writer Yu. Mamleev rightly emphasized, “there is something elusive, but extremely significant, which makes his poetry an exceptional phenomenon, even going beyond the usual concept of genius. This "elusive" lies, in my opinion, in the fact that the whole ocean of Yesenin's poetry, figurative, sound, intonational, directly comes into contact with the deepest, primordial, age-old levels of the Russian soul ... "1.

Indeed, Yesenin's poetry is a symbol of national life and soul, which is why it has such an impact on a Russian person, regardless of age, worldview and political preferences.

Probably, each of us in our souls has our own image of Yesenin, a poet and a man, our favorite poems. But with all the selectivity of tastes and sympathies, we, the readers, are especially close and dear to what makes up the core of Yesenin's poetry - this is the sincere feeling of the Motherland, dear to him Russia, "the country of birch chintz".

“My lyrics,” Yesenin proudly admitted, “is alive with one great love - love for the Motherland. The feeling of the Motherland is the main thing in my work. Indeed, no matter what the poet wrote about both in the mournful and in the bright periods of his life, the image of the Motherland warmed his soul. The filial feeling of love and gratitude to the country dear to his heart “with the short name “Rus” binds together all his creations - both love lyrics, and poems about nature, and a cycle of poetic messages to relatives, and works with socio-political issues. Russia, Russia, Motherland, native land, native side - the most precious words and concepts for Yesenin, which are found in almost every of his works. In the sound of the word "Russia" he heard "dew", "strength", "blue". The pains and hardships, joys and hopes of peasant Russia - all this was cast by Yesenin into sincere and bright, mournful and angry, sad and joyful lines. What is happening in his native country, what awaits her tomorrow - these are the thoughts that haunted him throughout his short life. This is the core of his poetry.

Its second feature is the utmost sincerity, depth and “flood of feelings”. All Yesenin's work is a passionate diary of a naked and wounded heart. The poet himself admitted that he would like to "spill his whole soul into words." It is difficult to find another poet who would express himself in verse with such sincerity, turning them into a secret confession.

Yesenin's early work

S. Yesenin rose to the heights of creativity from the depths of rural folk life. On the vast map of Russia, near Ryazan, among the open spaces of the Oka, there is the ancient village of Konstantinovo. Here, on September 21 (October 3), 1895, the future great poet was born into a peasant family, here, in rural expanses, the roots of his work.

Because of a quarrel between his parents, Yesenin lived for some time in the house of his grandfather F. A. Titov, who knew many spiritual poems and folk songs, read the Bible to his grandson. Yesenin owes his acquaintance with Russian oral folk poetry to his grandmother Natalya Evteevna, who opened the magical world of fairy tales and legends to her grandson. The singing gift of his mother, Tatiana Feodorovna, as well as the whole atmosphere of peasant life, the nature of central Russia, contributed to the upbringing of the aesthetic taste of the future poet to a large extent.

The most important source of comprehending the power and beauty of the artistic word was Russian literature for Yesenin - the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Koltsov, which the future poet read while studying at the Zemstvo four-year school, and then at the Spas-Klepikovskaya church teacher school.

Yesenin, according to his confession, began to write poetry at the age of eight. The future poet, in expressing his thoughts and feelings, relied on the creative experience of Pushkin, Lermontov, Koltsov, the idol of the then youth of Nadson. At the same time, many of them already have their own vision of the rural world surrounding the teenager, in whose soul their own images and associations are born. Such is the 1910 poem “It’s already evening ...”, from which Yesenin counted his works:

It's already evening. Dew

Shines on nettles.

I'm standing by the road

Leaning against the willow.

Big light from the moon

Right on our roof.

Somewhere the nightingale's songs

In the distance I hear.

Good and warm

Like a stove in winter.

And the birches stand

Like big candles.

And far beyond the river

Apparently, behind the edge,

Sleepy watchman knocks

Dead mallet.

Before us is a picture of the world around us, seen with the eyes of an inexperienced child. Childish spontaneity is felt here both in repetitive comparisons, and in the absence of metaphors, and in the “stumbling” rhythm. It is rightly said that this work is "like the unsteady steps of a boy who has just begun to walk." However, the talent of an aspiring poet is already visible in him.

Yesenin is even more independent in the following short poem:

Where there are cabbage patches

Sunrise pours red water,

Little maple tree

Green udder sucks.

Here, the most important features of the poet's work are already clearly visible: vivid metaphor, the animation of nature, a close connection with oral folk poetry.

Love for folklore, of which he was a connoisseur and collector, Yesenin carried through his whole life. Proudly calling himself a "peasant's son", "singer and herald" of the village, he traced his poetic pedigree from nameless storytellers, harp players, harmonists, folk songwriters. “I began to write poetry, imitating ditties”, “Songs that I heard all around me settled down to the poems”, “The spoken word has always played a much greater role in my life than other sources,” Yesenin will emphasize more than once.

Oral folk art became the foundation on which the openwork building of Yesenin's poetry grew. Yesenin especially often uses such folklore genres as song and ditty, creating his own works on their basis. So, in the poem “Tanyusha was good, there was no more beautiful in the village” (1911), the plot first unfolds as in folk songs about the betrayal of a loved one: a description of the heroes and their conversation, during which it turns out that he will marry another (“Do you forgive , my joy, I'm marrying another"). In folk songs, the girl in this situation either resigns herself or reproaches her lover for treason. Yesenin, on the other hand, supplements this situation with a tragic denouement: the beloved kills Tanyusha, who married another in revenge:

Not the cuckoos were sad - Tanya's relatives are crying,

There is a wound on Tanya's temple from a dashing brush.

Another early poem by Yesenin, "Imitation of the Song", was also inspired by oral folk art. The situation itself is folklore here: a meeting of a young girl at a well and a description of a sudden flare-up of feeling: “I wanted to flicker foamy jets / / Break a kiss from your scarlet lips with pain.”

Based on round dance and playing folk songs, Yesenin creates a poem “Under a wreath of forest chamomile ...” (1911), about how a fine fellow accidentally “dropped a cutie’s ring / / In a jet of foamy wave.” A ring or a ring in folk art symbolizes love. To lose them is to lose love. This is what determines the drama of Yesenin's poem, the hero of which decides, out of grief, to "marry / / With a chime wave."

The motifs of folk ritual poetry were also embodied in Yesenin's other early poems "Bachelorette party", "On azure fabrics", "Lights burn across the river", which also bear the stamp of a bright author's individuality.

Very widely in Yesenin's early work, the themes and poetics of folk ditties are also used. The ditty rhythm is clearly felt in his poems “Tanyusha was good” and “Under the wreath of forest chamomile”. A literary version of a ditty, consisting of several choruses, is the poem "Play, play talyanochka ..." (1912). From ditties here comes an appeal to a talyanochka and a request to a beautiful girl to go out on a date and listen to the choruses (“gadgets”) of the accordionist. And at the same time, the poet uses his individual means and techniques of figurativeness (“The heart shines with cornflowers, turquoise burns in it”), a ring composition of a romance type with a variable repetition of the initial lines at the end of the poem. Yesenin will also widely use the themes and rhythms of ditties in poems written in the mid-1910s: “On azure fabrics ...”, “Dancer”, “Lights burn across the river”, “Dare man” and others.

The aspiring poet's desire to expand his life experiences lead him to Moscow in 1912. Here he becomes a student at the private university of A. L. Shanyaevsky, where he attends classes at the Faculty of History and Philology for a year and a half, and also participates in meetings of the Surikov literary circle, which united writers from the peasant environment. His stay in Moscow marked the beginning of his friendly and creative relations with the poets N. Klyuev, P. Oreshin, F. Nasedkin.

However, in his frantic striving for creative improvement, Yesenin very soon comes to the conclusion that Moscow, in his words, "is not the engine of literary development, but it uses everything ready from St. Petersburg." Therefore, on March 9, 1915, Yesenin moved to St. Petersburg and went directly from the station to A. Blok. The author of "The Stranger" highly appreciated the work of the young poet, writing in his diary: "Poems are fresh, clean, vociferous, verbose language."

A. Blok introduced him to the poets S. Gorodetsky, L. Bely, P. Murashev, with whose assistance Yesenin actively enters the literary atmosphere of the capital.

Creativity of the 1910s

Since the mid-1910s, Yesenin's work has been experiencing an obvious rise: imagery is being improved, rhythm is enriched, and the poetic horizon is expanding. This is clearly seen, in particular, in the attitude of the poet to oral folk art.

If earlier Yesenin was attracted to folklore mainly by songs and ditties, now the range of interests is expanding: the poet uses fairy tales, legends, spiritual verses, epics. Based on the Russian fairy tale "Morozko", he creates the poem "The Orphan" - about the unfortunate orphan Masha, who was favored by Santa Claus for her suffering, honesty, kindness. A stylization of the epic was his poem “The Heroic Whistle” (1915), in which a simple peasant who went out to fight the enemy is depicted as an epic hero.

« Song about Evpaty Kolovrat»

In 1912, Yesenin created the first major work - the poem "The Song of Evpaty Kolovrat". Starting from historical legends and from the remarkable monument of ancient Russian literature "The Tale of the Devastation of Ryazan by Batu", permeated with folk poetic motifs, Yesenin creates an impressive image of the defender of the Russian land Evpaty Kolovrat.

Kolovrat in Yesenin's poem is not a princely combatant, but a blacksmith who raised the people to defend the Ryazan land. He is portrayed as a “good light”, an epic hero, as a “good fellow”, and his sworn enemy “Khan Batu in poverty”, is also, as in epics, vicious and treacherous, sheds rivers of blood, “haunts over the dead”.

The poem "The Song of Evpaty Kolovrat" can hardly be attributed to the author's creative successes. It is stretched and loosened in places in terms of composition. In an effort to convey the ancient and Ryazan flavor, the author sometimes abuses archaisms and dialectisms.

However, despite such flaws, Yesenin's first poem testifies to the poetic independence of the young author.

The poem is characterized by the lyrical coloring of events and the animation of nature: the poet vividly shows how the stars are worried (Shtoy something Rus swayed, / / ​​Al does not hear the clang of abusive language?), how the moon is horrified and coughs up blood from a “spring”, etc.

"Marfa Posadnitsa"

Yesenin's poem "Marfa Posadnitsa" (1914) is devoted to the theme of the struggle of the Novgorod boyars with the Moscow principality. The poet here is on the side of the Novgorodians - the defenders of liberty, although, as is known, in the history of the Russian state, their struggle against those who sought to unite the country was not at all progressive. The author was attracted “in this historical legend by the figure of a heroic woman, the widow of the Novgorod mayor Martha Boretsky, who leads and leads the struggle against the Moscow Tsar Ivan III.

Compared to the previous poem, "Marfa Posadnitsa" is distinguished by greater artistic maturity, which manifested itself, in particular, in the reproduction of everyday details and the language of the 16th century. For example, the scene of the gathering of archery regiments on a campaign against Novgorod, fanned by the breath of antiquity, is colorful. In this scene, the sonorous noise of bells and the neighing of horses, the tinkling of sabers and the sobs of women, the “voice of command” and the exclamations of archers merge together:

At the cathedrals of the Kremlin, the bells wept, archers gathered from distant settlements; Horses neighed, sabers clanged.

The women wiped away their tears with their skirts, -

Someone returns unharmed to the house?

To the accompaniment of a peppy march (“Tenkali peaks, stomping horses”), interrupted by the author’s thoughts about the soldiers going to battle, the Mokovsky tsar shares his sinister plans with the queen. Their conversation is described in a folklore style, and at the same time makes it possible to imagine the everyday atmosphere of that era, family relationships:

The king will say to his wife:

And there will be a feast on the red Braga

I sent to woo impolite families,

I will spread the pillows of their heads in the ravine.

You are my sovereign, - the wife shomons, -

May my mind judge the judgment of you! ..

Unlike the first poem, "Martha the Posadnitsa" is not overloaded with dialect and vernacular words, which makes her style clearer and more precise.

"Us"

The real historical person is also reproduced by Yesenin in the poem "Us" (1914). Ataman Us is least of all similar to Stepan Razin's associate, which he was in reality. Yesenin's hero is more like a character in folk robber songs. This daring young man is poeticized by the author:

On the steep mountain, near Kaluga, Us got married with a blue blizzard.

A poignantly lyrical note is also introduced into the narrative by the image of Usa's mother, whose son laid down his exuberant head at the hands of the boyars near distant Kaluga.

The decrepit widow was waiting for her son. Day and night grieving, sitting under the goddess. Here comes the second summer. Snow on the field again, but it's still gone.

She sat down and pressed herself, looking meekly, meekly ...

Who do you look like, bright-eyed lad? ..

- tears flashed over a withered mustache -

It is you, my son, who is watching with Jesus!”

It is no coincidence that the hero of the poem is compared here with Christ: many of Yesenin's works of these years are saturated with religious symbols, Christian images and motifs. At the beginning of 1913, Yesenin wrote to his school friend G. Panfilov: “At the moment I am reading the Gospel and I find a lot of new things for me ... Christ is perfection for me, but I don’t believe in him like others. Do they believe out of fear of what happens after death? And I am pure and holy, as in a person gifted with a bright mind and a noble soul, as an example in following love for one's neighbor.

Religious poems by Yesenin

The idea of ​​the divine origin of the world and man, faith in Christ permeates many of S. Yesenin's poems of the 1910s.

I feel the rainbow of God

I didn't live in vain.

I bow to the roadside

I land on the grass.

The flame pours into the abyss of sight,

In the heart of the joy of children's dreams.

I believed from birth

To the Mother of God Intercession,-

the poet admits in the poem "I feel the rainbow of God ..." (1914). The author senses the “Holy Rainbow of God,” that is, he foresees the joy of the Most Bright Resurrection, the new coming of Christ into the world for the sake of saving people. And this paints his works in light major tones.

The images of Christ, the Mother of God, Saints Nicholas the Wonderworker, Egory, the praying women going “to bow to love and the cross” occupy one of the most important places in the figurative system of Yesenin’s poems, saturated with the author’s faith in God’s grace. In the world around, according to the poet, the Savior is invisibly present:

Between the pines, between the trees,

Between birch curly beads.

Under the wreath, in the ring of needles

I feel like Jesus

The feeling of the constant presence of Christ among the people, characteristic of the Orthodox tradition, gives Yesenin's poetic cosmos a meaningful spiritual vitality. Christ, according to the author, brings love into the world, and people respond to him in the same way. In the poem "The Lord Came to Torture People in Love..." (1914) old grandfather treats the poor beggar, not suspecting that Christ is in front of him:

The Lord approached, hiding sorrow and torment:

It can be seen, they say, you can’t wake their hearts ...

And the old man said, holding out his hand:

"Here, chew ... a little, you will be stronger."

In the person of this grandfather, the people whom the Lord went out to “torture in love” thus withstood the test of mercy and kindness.

The kenotic archetype of Yesenin's early poetry is the image of a wanderer who, seeking the city of God; walks "in a leisurely foot / / Through the villages, wastelands." The Savior himself is depicted in the same perspective. Christ in the poet's poems is humble, self-abased, having taken on the "specta of a slave", similar to the one that Tyutchev has in a "slave form", "came out, blessing" the entire Russian land. The external resemblance of Yesenin's wanderers and the Savior is so close that lyrical hero afraid of not recognizing Him, inadvertently passing by:

And in every wanderer wretched

I will go to find out with longing.

Is not anointed by God

It knocks with a birch stick.

And maybe I'll pass

And I will not notice in the secret hour.

That in the firs are the wings of a cherub,

And under the stump - the hungry Spas.

Many Yesenin's pictures of the surrounding world and peasant life are saturated with religious images. Nature in his works is sacralized. All earthly space is likened by the author to God's temple, where a continuous liturgy is performed, of which the lyrical hero is also a participant. “In the forest - the green church behind the mountain” - he “listens, as if at mass, the prayer of bird voices!”. The poet sees how “the groves were filled with smoke under the dew”, the dawn burns. His fields are “like saints”, “the dawn is a red prayer book / / Prophecies the good news”, peasant huts are “in the robes of an image”, “a black capercaillie calls for the vigil”, etc.

In the poem “The melted clay dries” (1914), the poet, by analogy with the gospel parable about the entry of Christ into Jerusalem “on a donkey”, paints a picture of the appearance of the Lord among the Central Russian expanses dear to the author:

Last year's leaf in the ravine

Among the bushes - like a pile of copper.

Someone in a sunny coat

He rides on a red donkey.

Christ is depicted here with a misty face (“his face is misty”), as if grieving over the sins of people. The awakening spring nature greets the Savior with jubilation: everything around will smell of willow and resin”, “at the forest lectern//Sparrow reads a psalter”, and pines and firs sing “Hosanna”. Russian nature for Yesenin is the abode of beauty and grace, being in it is tantamount to communion with the divine principle of life.

The liturgicalization of native nature, peasant life is one of the remarkable features of the problematics and poetics of S. Yesenin's works of the 1910s, associated with the messianic-eschatological desire to comprehend the spiritual path of Russia:

And we will come across the plains

To the truth of the sewn cross

By the light of a dove book

Drink your mouth.

("Scarlet darkness of the heavenly devil")

Poem "Rus"

Russia is seen by the poet as a “land dear to the heart”, where “everything is blessed and holy”, a country fraught with tremendous moral strength. In 1914, Yesenin creates a "small poem" "Rus", dedicated to the theme of the First World War. The poet shows how a tragic event historically inexorably invades the established life of the “meek homeland”:

Cell phones were placed under the windows

Militias go to war.

Sloboda women zagygykali.

A cry cut through the silence.

The idea of ​​unity and deep interconnection of natural and historical factors permeates the entire work. In Yesenin's understanding, the natural and social worlds mutually condition each other, forming a complete picture of national life. The poet shows how historical cataclysms (the outbreak of war) inevitably entail natural shocks:

Thunder rumbled, the cup of heaven was shattered.

Ragged clouds enshroud the forest.

On light gold pendants

The lamps of heaven swayed.

It is no coincidence that Yesenin saturates landscape paintings with temple symbols: he depicts the war as an action of demonic forces directed against the divine harmony of the world.

The Russian village appears in the poem in the image of the grieving Eternal Femininity, close to the Orthodox consciousness - the “wearied bride”, the “weeping wife”, the mother awaiting the return of her son. The poet penetrates into the deepest layers of people's life, conveys the feeling of unity of people before trouble, that communal, conciliar attitude that is characteristic of the Russian people. The peasants in the poem together escort the militias to the war, together they listen to the reading of letters from the front from the lips of the only literate peasant woman, “Chetnitsa Lusha”, jointly answer them: (“Then they brought everyone a letter”).

The events of the war give rise to the feeling of an impending Apocalypse: “The smell of incense seemed to be in the grove, / / ​​Knocking of bones blazed in the wind ...” And yet, both the author and his heroes firmly believe in the victory of good over the forces of evil, therefore yesterday’s peaceful plowmen, peasant sons, are portrayed by the author as epic "good fellows", creators and defenders of the Russian land, its reliable "support in a time of adversity." Lyricism is combined in the work with an epic beginning, the emotional subjectivity of the lyrical "I" of the narrator - with sketches of the life and life of a peasant village during the war. Ten years later, the experience of creating a small lyric-epic poem "Rus" will come in handy for Yesenin when working on one of his top works - the poem "Anna Snegina".

The poem "Rus" from beginning to end is permeated with the author's filial love for the motherland and its people:

Oh, Russia, my meek homeland.

Only for you I save love.

In such descriptions of meek, pious and dearly beloved Russia, there is so much sincerity and spontaneity that they often turn into passionate hymns to the glory of the Fatherland:

If the holy army clicks:

"Throw you Russia, live in paradise!"

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

Give me my country!"

(Goy you, my dear Russia)

The image of the native country is formed in Yesenin's poetry from pictures and details of village life ("In the House", 1914), from individual episodes of the historical past and modern life. But above all, Russia for Yesenin is its nature. And the fire of the dawn, and the splash of the Oka wave, and the silvery light, the moon, and the beauty of the flowering meadow - all this was cast into poems full of love and tenderness for the native land:

But most of all, love for the native land

I was tormented, tormented and burned, -

The poet confesses.

Nature in Yesenin's poems

Practically not a single poem by Yesenin is complete without pictures of nature. The poet’s sensitive eye, in love with the world around him, sees how “the bird cherry is throwing snow”, how “like a pine tree tied up with a white scarf”, how “the scarlet light of dawn wove itself on the lake”, and “a blizzard is spreading around the yard / / A silk carpet” .

The quivering, cordial love for the native nature in Yesenin's poems awakens high, bright feelings, sets the reader's soul on waves of mercy and kindness, makes you take a fresh look at the familiar and seemingly inconspicuous native places:

Beloved edge! Dreaming of the heart

Stacks of the sun about the waters of the womb.

I would like to get lost

In the greens of your bells.

The poet, as it were, tells us: break away from everyday bustle for at least a minute, look around, listen to the rustle of grass and flowers, to the songs of the wind, to the voice of the river wave, peer into the starry sky. And God's world will open before you in its complexity and enduring charm - a beautiful and fragile world of life that must be loved and protected.

Yesenin's landscapes amaze with the richness of flora and fauna. We will not find such a variety of flora and fauna in any poet as in Yesenin. It is estimated that more than twenty species of trees and the same number of species of flowers, about thirty species of birds and almost all wild and domestic animals of central Russia are included in his poems as full-fledged artistic images.

The natural world of the poet includes not only the earth, but also the heavens, the moon, the sun, the stars, dawns and sunsets, dews and fogs, winds and snowstorms; it is densely populated - from nettles and burdock to bird cherry and oak, from bees and mice to bears and cows.

The main feature of Yesenin's paintings and details of nature is their animation. Nature for him is a living being that feels and thinks, suffers and rejoices: “capercaillie are crying in the forest with bells”, “the moon butts a cloud with a horn”, “dark fir trees dream of the hubbub of mowers”, “like a blizzard bird cherry waves its sleeve”.

Sometimes, as can be seen, for example, in the poem “The Road Thoughts About the Red Evening” (1916), a similar technique underlies the lyrical plot of the entire work.

The poem is literally replete with living, animated images from the world of nature and village life: “The hut-old woman with the jaw of the threshold / / Chews the odorous crumb of silence”; “Autumn cold is gentle and meek / / Creeps in the darkness to the oat yard”; “Dawn on the roof, poppy kitten, washes his mouth with his paw”; “Hugging the chimney, it sparkles on the wind // Green ash from the pink stove”, “Thin-lipped wind//0 whispers to someone”, “Barley straw gently groans”, etc. Due to this, a voluminous, emotional picture of the living world is created.

Yesenin's nature is humanized, and man appears as a part of nature, so organically he is connected with the flora and fauna. The lyrical hero of his poems feels his unity with nature, is dissolved in it: “dawn springs twisted me into a rainbow”, “I melt like a white snowflake in the blue”. “It’s good with willows on the road / / To watch over dozing Russia,” Yesenin will say in the 1917 poem “Songs, songs, what are you shouting about ...”

This fusion of man and nature will become especially complete and organic in the mature work of the poet, but it takes its beginnings in his early poetry. Such a perception of life is not a poetic device, but the most important aspect of his worldview.

Philosophy in Yesenin's lyrics

Like any great poet, Yesenin was not just a singer of his feelings and experiences. His poetry is philosophical, for it illuminates the eternal problems of being.

Yesenin early developed his own philosophical and aesthetic concept of the world and man, the origins of which are rooted in folk mythology and the philosophy of Russian cosmism.

The central concept philosophical views the ancient Slavs had an image of a tree. This was convincingly written in his book “The Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature” (1868) by the outstanding Russian scientist A. N. Afanasyev (Yesenin searched for a long time and nevertheless acquired this book for his personal library).

The image of the tree personified world harmony, the unity of everything that exists on earth. Comprehending his concept of the world, S. Yesenin wrote in the article “Keys of Mary * (1918): “Everything from the tree is the religion of the thoughts of our people (...) and underwear, along with towels, are not a simple patterned character, this is a great significant epic of the outcome of the world and the destiny of man.

Yesenin's poetry from the very beginning was largely oriented towards this philosophy. That is why so often a person in his work is likened to a tree and vice versa.

Life in the philosophical concept of Yesenin should be like a garden - well-groomed, clean, bearing fruit. The garden is a co-creation of man and nature, embodying the harmony of life, therefore this image is one of the most beloved in Yesenin's poetry: “It’s good to shake off the soul-apple tree with the wind under the autumn freshness”, “Do anything to ring in the human garden”, “Let's make some noise as guests of the garden”, “A smart gardener cuts off - autumn / / A yellow bush of my head”, etc. and, “We are with you,” Yesenin wrote to N. Klyuev, “from the same garden - a garden of apple trees, rams, horses and wolves ... "

And this is not a declaration, this is a worldview, based on the conviction in the interconnection and interrelationship of the created world, the consubstantiality of world life. The whole universe, in the poet's view, is a single huge garden: "on a branch of a cloud, like a plum, / / ​​a ripe star is laden."

The world in Yesenin's poems is the world of living life, spiritualized and animated. Even plants feel pain, for they are, in his mind, living beings:

The sickle cuts heavy ears of corn.

How swans are slaughtered under the throat ...

L then them carefully, without anger.

They lay their heads on the ground

And flails little bones

Knocked out of thin bodies.

No one will get up in the head.

That straw is also flesh! ..

And the animals for the poet are “smaller brothers”. He calls them to come to him to share their grief: “Animals, animals, come to me,//Cry anger into the cups of my hands!”

The harmonious unity of man with the world, with the cosmos is the main meaning of many of Yesenin's poems, his philosophy of being. Yesenin is convinced that the world rests on love and brotherhood: "We are all close relatives."

Violation of this harmony - both in the natural and in the social spheres - leads to the destruction of the world and the human soul. Yesenin knows how to show this process through an everyday situation.

Poem "Song of the Dog"

One of the most dramatic poems in this regard is "The Song of the Dog", created in 1915. It became an event not only in Yesenin's work, but also in all Russian poetry. No one before Yesenin wrote about "our smaller brothers" with such tenderness and compassion, with such sincerity for drama. The poem tells how a mother dog was taken away and her puppies were drowned.

The “Song of the Dog” begins deliberately casually, like an everyday sketch, but this everydayness is poeticized: the poet informs about how the dog whelped seven red puppies in the morning, how “mats are golden”, on which the mother and her cubs lie, as “until the evening she their las to ala, / / ​​Combing the tongue.

And in the evening when the chickens

They sit around the pole

The owner came out gloomy,

He put all seven in a sack.

The poet does not describe how the man drowned the puppies. We only see how “for a long, long time the unfrozen surface of the water trembled.” The main attention is transferred to the image of a dog running after the owner through the snowdrifts in the vain hope of saving her children.

Human cruelty and indifference violate the harmony of life. Therefore, at the end of the poem, the action develops simultaneously in two plans, in two dimensions: concrete everyday and cosmic, because the harmony of the Universe is broken:

In the blue heights loudly

She looked, whimpering.

And the moon slid thin

And hiding behind the hill in the fields

And deaf, as from a handout,

When they throw a stone at her in laughter.

The eyes of a dog rolled

Golden stars in the snow.

The dog turns with his pain to the "blue heights", that is, to the entire Universe. A very capacious image of "looked staring."

The dog did not whine loudly, looking at the blue heights, but “looked loudly ... whining”: we seem to see “dog eyes”, pain frozen in them, equal to the highest tragedy _ after all, the mother was deprived of her beloved children. And this tragedy can only be wept into the Universe, addressing the whole world.

The poet is convinced that life rests not on cruelty and indifference, but on the ideals of Christian love, brotherhood and mercy: “People, my brothers people, / We did not come to destroy the world, but to love and believe!”

Yesenin was especially worried about the violent violation of harmony, the laws of being in the public sphere, as happened in October 1917.

Yesenin and the October Revolution

He expressed these moods in his works “Oktoih”, “Jordanian dove”, “Pantocrator”, “Inonia”, in which the Russian village is seen by him as a land of abundance, where “green fields*, “herds of buckskin horses”, where “with a shepherd’s bag Apostle Andrew wanders.

However, as the civil war and the Red Terror escalated, Yesenin's illusory hopes for a revolution that would establish heaven on earth began to thaw rapidly.

From messianic hopes, he moves on to a resolute denial of revolutionary violence, to bewildered questions: “Oh, who, who to sing / / In this frenzied glow of corpses?” With bitterness, the poet remarks about himself: “It can be seen that in laughter at myself / / I sang a song about a wonderful guest.” Tragic notes associated with a sharp opposition between the city and the countryside penetrate his work.

The revolutionary city, merciless in its attitude to the countryside, or rather, the new government, sending its emissaries from the city to requisition agricultural products, seems to the poet to be the worst enemy of the "country of birch calico" dear to his heart.

“Here he is, here he is with an iron belly, / / ​​Pulling his five to the throat of the plains,” Yesenin writes in the poem “Sorokoust” (19Z0), telling about the futile combat of a red-maned foal with a train merciless in its swift movement. An even more gloomy picture of the life of the village during the revolutionary period is drawn by the poet in the poem "Mysterious world, my ancient world ..." (1921):

Mysterious world, my ancient world,

You, like the wind, calmed down and sat down.

That will squeeze the village by the neck

Stone arms of the highway.

City, city! You are in a fierce fight

He baptized us as carrion and scum.

The field freezes in melancholy.

Choking on telegraph poles.

Let it be hard for the heart,

This is a song of animal rights! ..

...So the hunters poison the wolf.

Clutching in a vise roundups.

Yesenin is horrified by the seas of blood, the class hatred of people, with whom he prefers communication with animals, because they are kinder and more merciful:

I won't go anywhere with people. It is better to die together with you, Than to raise the earth with your beloved into a crazy near stone.

Yesenin's work of the first revolutionary years can be called, without exaggeration, a poetic manifesto of the perishing Russian village.

The gloomy, depressed state of the poet led to the appearance during this period of such works as "I am the last poet of the village", "Mare's ships", "Hooligan", "Confessions of a hooligan", "Owl in autumn", "Moscow tavern", etc. In the center of them is the restless soul of Yesenin himself, who is in deep discord with the reality surrounding him.

They mainly develop two interrelated motives: a hostile, and sometimes hostile attitude towards revolutionary reality and a deep dissatisfaction with one's own fate. These motifs are embodied either in sad and dull tones (“My friend, my friend, the eyelids that have become clear//Only death closes”), then in hysterical bravado (“I am all this rusty dream,//I will squint my eyes and narrow”) and in an attempt to find oblivion in the intoxication of the tavern, for which the poet sometimes mercilessly castigates himself, calling himself a “bastard”, “rake”, “lost”, etc. Yesenin’s famous bully mask became a form of protest against revolutionary reality, an escape from it.

But no matter how strongly the feeling of bitterness possessed him, Yesenin never broke ties with the social environment from which he came out, did not lose interest in the life of the Russian peasantry, in its past and present. Evidence of this is the poem "Pugachev" (1922).

Yesenin's interest in Pugachev is due to his keen attention to peasant Russia, to the struggle of the Russian peasantry for "holy liberty." The main task of the author was to romanticize the peasant leader. The poet creates the image of a rebellious, ready for self-sacrifice, detached from everything petty and ordinary people's truth-seeker and truth-seeker. And this is his hope for the future.

Yesenin's work of the 20s

In the early 1920s, Yesenin's worldview and work underwent significant changes associated with the desire to abandon pessimism and gain a more stable view of the prospects for the revival of life in the country.

An important role in this evolution was played by the poet's trips abroad to Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and America. Yesenin was not at all seduced by the Western way of life, especially the American one. In the essay “Iron Mirgorod”, he writes about the poverty of the spiritual life of the country, concluding that the Americans are “a primitive people from the side of internal culture”, because “the dominance of the dollar has eaten away in them all the aspirations for any difficult issues.”

At the same time, he was struck by the industrial life of the West, technical progress, which he wanted to see in Russia. These moods were reflected in his poems "Stans", "Uncomfortable liquid moonlight", "Letter to a woman", etc.

Now I like something else

And in the consumptive moonlight

Through stone and steel

I see the power of my native country!

Field Russia! Enough

Heal with plow on fire!

It hurts to see your poverty

And birches and poplars.

I don't know what will happen to me...

Maybe in new life I'm not fit.

But still I want steel

See poor, impoverished Russia

The last two years of his life, Yesenin is experiencing an unprecedented creative jack. During the years 1924-1425 he created about a hundred works, twice as many as in the previous six years. At the same time, Yesenin's poetry becomes more psychological, artistically more perfect, smoothness and melody, deep penetrating lyricism are enhanced in it.

His poems are saturated with original epithets and comparisons, capacious, colorful metaphors taken from the natural world. Yesenin can be called a poet of metaphors, he sees the world metaphorically transformed.

The poet finds clear and vivid images, unexpected contrasts, designed to show complex psychological experiences, the beauty and richness of the human soul and the surrounding world: “Golden foliage swirled in pinkish water on a pond / / Like butterflies, a light flock flies with fading to a star”; “I am wandering through the first snow, / / ​​In the heart of lilies of the valley of flaring forces”; “And the golden autumn / / In the birches reduces the juice, / / ​​For all those whom he loved and abandoned, / / ​​The leaf howls on the sand.”

Yesenin comes in these years to that substantive aesthetic simplicity and capacity that is characteristic of Russian classical poetry. And during this period, in his poems, the motive of sadness, regret about the transience of youth and the impossibility of returning to it, often sounds. But still, despite the aching feeling of sadness, there is no despair and pessimism in them: they are warmed by faith in the spiritual strength of a person, in beloved Russia, the wise acceptance of the laws of life.

They contain not the former bitterly defiant bravado “I am left alone with fun / Fingers in my mouth and * a cheerful whistle”), not detachment from life (“Our life is kisses and into the pool”), but a deeply penetrating understanding of the perishability of everything earthly and the irreversibility of change generations. The opposition: “the immortality of nature” and “the finiteness of human life” is overcome by Yesenin by the thought of a single law of being, to which both nature and man inevitably obey.

Yesenin's works are in tune with the mood that A. S. Pushkin once expressed: "My sadness is bright ..."

“I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry,” Yesenin begins, one of his famous poems, in which the poet combined two of the most important traditions for all his work: folklore and mythological - a sense of the fusion of man with nature - and literary, especially Pushkin .

Pushkin's "luxurious withering of nature" and "forests clad in crimson and gold", erased from the frequent use of Yesenin's predecessors, he fused into a single and contrasting image of golden withering, which is comprehended simultaneously as a sign of autumn nature, and as a state of the external (hair color) and the inner appearance of the lyrical hero.

In Yesenin's poem, the epithet "white" also acquires an additional semantic connotation: the white color is both flowering apple trees and the personification of purity and freshness. The image of youth is recreated here in a very peculiar way - the central image of the elegy: "It's like I'm in the spring resonant early / / Ride on a pink horse."

Spring early is the beginning, the morning of life, pink horse- a symbolic embodiment of youthful hopes and impulses. Combining in this image realistic specifics with symbolism, the subjective with the objective, the poet achieves image plasticity and emotional expressiveness.

Rhetorical questions and appeals also convey vivid emotionality to the poem. “Wandering spirit, you are less and less…”, “My life, or you dreamed about me,” the poet exclaims, conveying the inexorable passage of time.

Just as perfect and original is another Yesenin masterpiece - "The Golden Grove Dissuaded". The image of a grove that speaks the cheerful language of birches is magnificent, but metaphor and animation here are not an end in itself, but a means of accurately realizing the idea: to reveal the complex psychological condition lyrical hero, his grief over the passing youth and the acceptance of the laws of life.

The images of cranes, the hemp plant, the month, the metaphor of the “fire of the mountain ash” that arise further give this sadness a cosmic character (“A hemp planter dreams of all the departed // With a wide moon over a young pond.” Sorrow and sadness are balanced by an understanding of the need and justification for a change of generations (“After all, everyone a wanderer in the world - // Passes by, enters and leaves the house again") and satisfaction with the fact that life has not been lived in vain:

Rowan brushes will not burn out,

Grass will not disappear from yellowness.

Similar thoughts, feelings and moods permeated other Yesenin's poems of this time: “Now we are leaving little by little ...”, “Blue May. Glowing warmth…”, “Kachalov’s dog”.

Significant changes are observed during these years in the love lyrics of the poet, which occupies a huge place in his work. In the works of this subject, Yesenin with magnificent skill embodied the finest nuances of the human soul: the joy of meeting, the longing of parting, impulse, sadness, despair, grief.

Love in the poetic world of Yesenin is a manifestation of natural forces in man, the son of nature. It clearly fits into the natural calendar: autumn, spring are paired with Yesenin with different psychological states of love.

Love is likened / to the processes of awakening, flourishing, flowering and withering / of Nature. It is primordial and inexhaustible, like nature itself. At the same time, love in Yesenin's understanding is far from simple. This primordial element is mysterious in its essence, shrouded in the highest mystery and "The one who invented your flexible figure and shoulders, / / ​​Put his mouth to the bright secret."

The poetic world of love created by Yesenin, however, was not stable. The development of this theme is marked by complex, contradictory, dramatic searches by the poet for the ideal of life and the harmony of spiritual values.

One of the poet's best early poems on this subject is "Do not wander, do not crush in the crimson bushes ..." (1916). The image of the beloved is fanned here by the gentle beauty of Nature, created in best traditions oral folk art.

In essence, the whole poem is a portrait of the beloved, reflected in the pure mirror of nature, complexly woven against the background of the colors of a village evening from the purity and whiteness of snow, from the scarlet juice of berries, from grains of ears and honeycombs:

With scarlet berry juice on the skin,

Tender, beautiful

You look like a pink sunset

And, like snow, radiant and white.

During the creation of the “Moscow Tavern”, the poet’s dramatic, depressed state also left its mark on the coverage of the theme of love: Yesenin in the poems of this period depicts not a spiritual feeling, but an erotic passion, giving this a very specific explanation: “Is it possible to love now, / / ​​When in heart erase the beast. As Yesenin emerges from a critical state, his love lyrics again acquire light, sublime intonations and colors.

In the turning point for the poet in 1923, he writes poems: “A blue fire swept up ...”, “Honey, let's sit next to each other”, in which he again sings of true, deep, pure love. Now, more and more often, the appearance of his beloved is accompanied by Yesenin's epithets "dear", "sweetheart", the attitude towards her becomes respectful, sublime.

Defiant intonations and the rude words and expressions associated with them disappear from the poems. The world of new, high feelings experienced by the lyrical hero is embodied in soft, penetrating tones:

I will forget the dark forces.

That tormented me, ruining.

Sweet look! Cute look!

Only one I will not forget you.

("Evening black eyebrows frowned")

Cycle of poems "Persian motifs"

This new state of the poet with great force was reflected in the cycle of his poems "Persian Motives" (1924-1925), which were created under the impression of his stay in the Caucasus.

There is not a trace of naturalistic details here, which reduced the artistic value of the Moscow Tavern cycle. Poeticization of a bright feeling of love - the most important feature"Persian motives":

Sweet hands - a pair of swans -

Dive into the gold of my hair.

Everything in this world of people

The song of love is sung and repeated.

Singing and I were once far away

And now I sing about the same thing again.

That's why I breathe deeply

Tenderness impregnated word.

But Yesenin in this cycle is characterized not only by a different - chaste - embodiment of the theme of love, but also by its convergence with another, main theme for him: the theme of the Motherland. The author of "Persian Motives" is convinced of the incompleteness of happiness away from his native land:

No matter how beautiful Shiraz is,

It is no better than Ryazan expanses.

Love in all its manifestations - for the Motherland, for mother, for woman, for nature - is the core of the poet's moral and aesthetic ideal. It is comprehended by Yesenin as the fundamental principle of life, as a system of spiritual values ​​by which a person should live.

"Anna Snegina"

Yesenin's largest work of the 1920s is the poem "Anna Snegina" (1925), which organically combined the epic coverage of a sharp turning point in the life of the village with a heartfelt lyrical theme of love. The action of the poem takes place in the countryside expanses dear to the poet, where “the moon with golden powder / / Showered the distance of the villages”, where “the sundew gives off smoke / / On white apple trees in the garden”.

The basis of the work is a lyrical plot connected with the memories of the lyrical hero about his youthful love for the daughter of the landowner Anna Snegina. The image of a sixteen-year-old “girl in a white cloak, personifying youth and the beauty of life, illuminates the whole work with a gentle light. as a chronicler of stormy and controversial events in the countryside during the October Revolution.

One of the main themes of the poem is the theme of war. The war is condemned by the entire artistic structure of the poem, its various situations and characters: the miller and his wife, the driver, two tragedies in the life of Anna Snegina (the death of her husband-officer and her departure abroad), the lyrical hero himself, a lover of life and a humanist, convinced that that “the earth is beautiful,//And on it is a man.” An eyewitness and participant in the war, he hates fratricidal slaughter:

The war has eaten away my soul.

For someone else's interest

I shot at my close body

And he climbed on his brother with his chest.

The unwillingness to be a toy in the hands of others (“I realized that I was a toy”) prompted the hero to desert from the front.

With the return to the places of his childhood and youth, he regains peace of mind. But not for long. The revolution disrupted the usual course of life, exacerbated many problems.

The peasant Pron Ogloblin is the herald of the revolutionary idea in the poem. Many researchers traditionally tend to consider him a positive hero, a spokesman for the sentiments of the peasant masses and the poet himself. However, this is not quite true.

Pron evokes sympathy from the author because his life was cut short absurdly and cruelly: he was killed by the White Guards in 1920, and any terror, regardless of its color, caused Yesenin a sharp rejection. Pron Ogloblin is the type of revolutionary who stands not with the people, but above them. And the revolution only contributed to the development of this leader's psychology in him. Here is how he addresses the peasants, urging them to take away the landed estates:

Ogloblin stands at the gate

And drunk in the liver and soul

The impoverished people are dying.

Hey you!

Cockroach brat!

All to Snegina!..

R - time and kvass!

Give, they say, your land

Without any ransom from us!

And then when you see me,

Reducing grumpy agility,

He said in genuine resentment:

The peasants still need to be boiled.”

With even greater sarcasm, Pron's brother Labutya, also a type of village "leader", is depicted. With the victory of the revolution, he ended up in a senior position, in the village council, and "with an important posture" lives "not a corn of the hands."

Pron and Labute are opposed in the poem by a miller. This is the embodiment of kindness, mercy and humanity. His image is permeated with lyricism and is dear to the author as a bearer of bright folk principles. It is no coincidence that the miller in the poem constantly connects people. Anna Snegina treats him with confidence, the lyrical hero loves and remembers him, and the peasants respect him.

The events of the revolution, therefore, receive ambiguous coverage in the poem. On the one hand, the revolution contributes to the growth of the miller's self-awareness. On the other hand, it gives power to people like Labutya and determines the tragedy of people like Anna. The daughter of a landowner, revolutionary Russia did not need her. Her letter from emigration is permeated with acute nostalgic pain for the forever lost homeland.

In the lyrical context of the poem, the separation of the lyrical hero from Anna is a separation from youth, separation from the purest and brightest that a person has in the morning dawn of his life. But the bright memories of youth remain with a person forever as a memory, like the light of a distant star:

Far away, they were cute! ..

That image in me has not faded away.

We all loved during these years,

But that means they loved us too.

Like Yesenin's other works of the 1920s, the poem is distinguished by a careful selection of figurative and expressive means. Along with metaphors, comparisons, epithets, the author makes extensive use of colloquial folk speech, vernacular, very natural in the mouths of his peasant heroes: “houses, read, two hundred”, “cobblestone”, “eat your drawbar”, etc.

Yesenin color painting

Mature Yesenin is a virtuoso master of art form. Yesenin's color painting is rich and multifaceted. Yesenin uses color not only in its direct, but also in a metaphorical sense, contributing to the figurative illumination of his philosophical and aesthetic concept of life.

Blue and blue colors are especially common in Yesenin's poetry. This is not just the poet's individual attachment to such colors. Blue and blue is the color earth's atmosphere and water, it prevails in nature, regardless of the season. "Warm blue heights", "blue groves", "plain blue" - these are the frequent signs of nature in Yesenin's poems. But the poet is not limited to a simple reproduction of the colors of nature.

These colors turn under his pen into capacious metaphors. Blue for him is the color of peace and quiet. Therefore, it is so often found when the poet depicts morning and evening: “blue evening”, “blue dusk”, “blue evening light”.

The blue color in Yesenin's poetics serves to designate space, breadth: "blue arable land", "blue space", "blue Russia". Blue and blue in their combination serve to create a romantic mood in the reader. “May is my blue! June blue! - exclaims the poet, and we feel that here are not just the names of the months, here are thoughts about youth.

Quite often, scarlet, pink and red colors are found in Yesenin. The first two symbolize youth, purity, chastity, youthful impulses and hopes: “You yearn for the pink sky”, “I burn with pink fire”, “It’s like I’m a spring echoing early,// I rode on a pink horse”, “With scarlet berry juice on my skin // She was tender, beautiful, ”etc.

Akin to scarlet and pink, red has a special semantic connotation in Yesenin's poetics. This is an alarming, restless color, it seems to feel the expectation of the unknown. If the scarlet color is associated with the morning dawn, symbolizing the morning of life, then red hints at its near sunset: “the road is thinking about the red evening”, “the red wings of the sunset are dying out”.

When Yesenin was dominated by a heavy and gloomy mood, black color invaded his works: “The Black Man” - this is the name of his most tragic work.

The rich and capacious Yesenin color painting, in addition to the picturesqueness and deepening of the philosophical nature of his lyrics, in many ways helps to enhance the musicality of the verse. S. Yesenin is one of the great Russian poets who developed a wonderful and peculiar tradition of Russian verse - melodiousness. His lyrics are permeated with song elements. “Song captivity sucked me in,” the poet admitted.

The melodiousness of Yesenin's lyrics

It is no coincidence that many of his poems were set to music and became romances. He makes extensive use of sound in his works. Yesenin's sound painting, generous and rich, reflects a complex, polyphonic picture of the surrounding world.

Most of the sounds in the poet's poems are called words. These are: the screech of a blizzard and the chirping of birds, the pounding of hooves and the cry of ducks, the clatter of cart wheels and the loud peasant hubbub. In his works, we clearly hear how “a blizzard with a furious roar / / Knocks on the shutters hung” and “a titmouse is slithering between forest curls”.

Yesenin often uses metonymy, that is, he calls not the sound, but the object for which it is characteristic: “Outside the window, the harmonica and the radiance of the month.” It is clear that here we are not talking about the harmonica as an instrument, but about its melody. Often, metonymy is complicated by a metaphor that conveys the nature of the movement and sound of an object. For example, in the poem "Burn, my star, do not fall," the fall autumn leaves conveyed by the word "weeping":

And golden autumn

In birch trees it reduces juice,

For all those who loved and abandoned,

Foliage cries on the sand.

The nature of sounds in Yesenin's poetry correlates with the seasons. In spring and summer, the sounds are loud, jubilant, joyful: “In the blessing of the wind, a drunken spring”, “And with the choir of a bird prayer / / They sing the anthem of the bell.” In autumn, the sounds fade sadly: “The owl owes in autumn, the leaves whisper in autumn,” “the forest froze without sadness and noise.”

Yesenin's verse is rich in instrumentation. The poet willingly uses assonances and alliterations, which not only give musicality to his works, but also emphasize their meaning more clearly.

Yesenin's sound images help convey the psychological state of the lyrical hero. With the sounds of spring, the poet associates youth, a young perception of life, a “flood of feelings”: “Spring sings in the soul.”

The bitterness of loss, mental fatigue and disappointment emphasize the sad sounds of autumn and bad weather. Often, Esenin’s sounds merge with color, forming complex metaphorical images: “ringing marble of white stairs”, “blue star ringing”, “blue clang of horseshoes”, etc. And as a result of such sound and color associations, it appears again and again in his the image of the Motherland and the hope associated with it for the triumph of the bright beginnings of life: "Ring, ring, golden Russia."

Rhythm contributes a lot to the smoothness and melodiousness of Yesenin's verse. The poet began his creative path by trying all the syllabo-tonic sizes and opted for the chorea.

Russian classical poetry XIX century was predominantly iambic: iambs are used in 60-80% of the works of Russian poets. Yesenin chooses a trochee, moreover, a trochaic pentameter, elegiac, imparting thoughtfulness, smoothness, and philosophical depth to the verse.

The melodiousness of Yesenin's chorea is created by the abundance of pyrrhic and various methods melodicizations - anaphoras, repetitions, enumerations. He also actively uses the principle of the ring composition of poems, that is, the roll call and the coincidence of beginnings and endings. The ring composition, characteristic of the romance genre, was widely used by Fet, Polonsky, Blok, and Yesenin continues this tradition.

Until the end of his life, Yesenin continued to worry about the question of "what happened, what happened in the country."

Back in August 1920, the poet wrote to his correspondent Yevgenia Lifshitz: "... Socialism is completely different from what I thought about ... It is crowded in it alive."

As time went on, this belief grew stronger. About what happened in Russia after October 1917, Yesenin figuratively said in the 1925 poem “Unspeakable, blue, tender ...”:

Like a trio of frenzied horses

Rolled all over the country.

Many of Yesenin's poems of the last years of his life are evidence of his painful thoughts about the results of the revolution, the desire to understand "where the rock of events is taking us." Either he is skeptical of the Soviet government, or “for the banner of liberty and bright labor / / Ready to go even as far as the English Channel.” Either for him “even Lenin is not an icon,” or he calls him “the captain of the Earth.” Either he claims that he "remained in the past ... with one foot", then he is not averse to "pulling up his pants,//Running after the Komsomol."

"Return to the Motherland", "Soviet Russia", "Homeless Russia" and "Departing Russia"

In summer and autumn, Yesenin creates his “little tetralogy” - the poems “Return to the Motherland”, “Soviet Russia”, “Homeless Russia” and “Departing Russia”.

In them, with his characteristic ruthless sincerity, he shows mournful pictures of a devastated village, the collapse of the fundamental foundations of the Russian way of life.

In "Return to the Motherland" it is "a bell tower without a cross" ("the commissar removed the cross"); rotted cemetery crosses, which “as if in hand-to-hand dead men, / / ​​Frozen with outstretched arms”; discarded icons; "Capital" on the table instead of the Bible.

The poem is a poetic parallel to Pushkin's "I visited again": both here and there - returning home. But how different is this return. Pushkin has an image of the connection of times, the continuity of ancestral and historical memory (“the grandson will remember me”). Yesenin has a tragic gap in the relationship between generations: the grandson does not recognize his own grandfather.

The same motive sounds in the poem "Soviet Russia". “In his native village, in the land of an orphan,” the lyrical hero feels lonely, forgotten, unnecessary: ​​“My poetry is no longer needed here, / / ​​Yes, and, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.”

“In my country, I am like a foreigner,” Yesenin perceived his place in post-revolutionary Russia. In this regard, the testimony of the émigré writer Roman Gul is interesting.

Recalling one of his meetings with Yesenin in Berlin, Gul writes: “The three of us left the house of German pilots. It was five in the morning ... Yesenin suddenly muttered: “I won’t go to Moscow. I will not go there as long as Leiba Bronstein rules Russia,” that is, L. Trotsky.

The poet recreated the ominous appearance of Leon Trotsky in 1923 in a poetic drama under the characteristic title "Country of Scoundrels". Trotsky is depicted here under the name of an employee of the red counterintelligence Chekistov, who declares with hatred: “There is no mediocrity and hypocrisy, / / ​​Than your Russian lowland peasant ... I swear and I will stubbornly / / Curse you for at least a thousand years.

The brilliant singer of Russia, the defender and guardian of its national way of life and spirit, Yesenin, with his work, entered into a tragic collision with the policy of depeasantization, and in fact - the destruction of the country. He himself understood this very well.

In February 1923, on his way from America, he wrote to the poet A. Kusikov in Paris: “It is sickening for me, the legitimate son of Russia, to be a stepson in my state. I can't, by God, I can't! At least the guards shout. Now that the revolution has left a hell of a pipe, it became clear that you and I were and will be that bastard on which you can hang all the dogs.

Yesenin interfered, he had to be removed. He was persecuted, threatened with prison and even murder.

The mood of the poet in the last months of his life was reflected in the poem "The Black Man" (1925), inspired by Pushkin's drama "Mozart and Salieri". The poem tells how a black man began to appear to the poet at night, who lived in the country of the most disgusting thugs and charlatans. He laughs at the poet, mocks at his poems. Fear and longing take possession of the hero, he is unable to resist the black man.

Yesenin's death

Life in Moscow is becoming more and more dangerous for Yesenin. December 23, 1925, trying to break away from his pursuers, the poet secretly leaves for Leningrad. Here, late in the evening of December 27, at the Angleterre Hotel, he was killed under mysterious circumstances. His corpse, in order to simulate suicide, was hung high under the ceiling on a belt from a suitcase.

The murder of the poet did not prevent the popularity of his works among readers. And then the ideologists of the new government made an attempt to distort and then ban his work.

The unattractive image of the poet began to be intensively introduced into the mass consciousness: a drunkard, a libertine, a brawler, a mediocre versifier, etc. N. Bukharin, the "favorite of the party," was especially zealous.