Works of Yesenin in different periods of creativity. Sergei Yesenin - biography and work of the poet. When is Sergei Yesenin's birthday? Religious poems by Yesenin

From his first collections of poetry (“Radunitsa”, 1916; “Rural Book of Hours”, 1918) he appeared as a subtle lyricist, a master of deeply psychologized landscape, a singer of peasant Rus', an expert on the folk language and the folk soul.

In 1919-1923 he was a member of the Imagist group. A tragic attitude and mental confusion are expressed in the cycles “Mare’s Ships” (1920), “Moscow Tavern” (1924), and the poem “The Black Man” (1925). In the poem “The Ballad of the Twenty-Six” (1924), dedicated to the Baku commissars, the collection “Soviet Rus'” (1925), and the poem “Anna Snegina” (1925), Yesenin sought to comprehend “the commune-raised Rus',” although he continued to feel like a poet of “Leaving Rus'” ", "golden log hut". Dramatic poem “Pugachev” (1921).

Subjects of works

From Yesenin's letters of 1911-1913, the complex life of the aspiring poet and his spiritual maturation emerge. All this was reflected in the poetic world of his lyrics of 1910-1913, when he wrote over 60 poems and poems. Here his love for all living things, for life, for his homeland is expressed. The surrounding nature especially sets the poet in this mood (“The scarlet light of dawn is woven on the lake...”, “Smoke-filled flood...”, “Birch,” “Spring Evening,” “Night,” “Sunrise,” “Winter Sings and Calls...” , “Stars”, “It’s dark at night, I can’t sleep...”, etc.).

From the very first verses, Yesenin’s poetry includes themes of homeland and revolution. Since January 1914, Yesenin’s poems have appeared in print (“Birch”, “Blacksmith”, etc.). “In December, he quits work and devotes himself entirely to poetry, writing all day long,” recalls Izryadnova. The poetic world becomes more complex, multidimensional, and biblical images and Christian motifs begin to occupy a significant place in it. In 1913, in a letter to Panfilov, he writes: “Grisha, I am currently reading the Gospel and am finding a lot that is new to me.” Later, the poet noted: “Religious doubts visited me early. As a child, I had very sharp transitions: sometimes a period of prayer, sometimes of extraordinary mischief, right up to blasphemy. And then there were such streaks in my work.”

In March 1915, Yesenin came to Petrograd, met with Blok, who highly appreciated the “fresh, pure, vociferous”, albeit “verbose” poems of the “talented peasant poet-nugget”, helped him, introduced him to writers and publishers. In a letter to Nikolai Klyuev, Yesenin said: “My poetry in St. Petersburg was successful. Out of 60, 51 were accepted.” In the same year, Yesenin joined the group of “peasant” poets “Krasa”.

Yesenin becomes famous, he is invited to poetry evenings and literary salons. M. Gorky wrote to R. Rolland: “The city greeted him with the same admiration as a glutton greets strawberries in January. His poems began to be praised, excessively and insincerely, as hypocrites and envious people can praise.”

At the beginning of 1916, Yesenin’s first book, “Radunitsa,” was published. In the title, the content of most of the poems (1910-1915) and in their selection, Yesenin’s dependence on the moods and tastes of the public is visible.

Yesenin’s work of 1914-1917 appears complex and contradictory (“Mikola”, “Egory”, “Rus”, “Martha Posadnitsa”, “Us”, “Baby Jesus”, “Dove” and other poems). These works present his poetic concept of the world and man. The basis of the Yesenin universe is the hut with all its attributes. In the book “The Keys of Mary” (1918), the poet wrote: “The hut of a commoner is a symbol of concepts and attitudes towards the world, developed even before him by his fathers and ancestors, who subjugated the intangible and distant world by comparing them to the things of their meek hearths.” The huts, surrounded by courtyards, fenced with fences and “connected” to each other by a road, form a village. And the village, limited by the outskirts, is Yesenin’s Rus', which is cut off from the big world by forests and swamps, “lost... in Mordva and Chud.” And further:

No end in sight,
Only blue sucks his eyes...

Yesenin later said: “I would ask readers to treat all my Jesuses, Mothers of God and Mykolas as something fabulous in poetry.” The hero of the lyrics prays to the “smoking earth”, “to the scarlet dawns”, “to the haystacks and haystacks”, he worships his homeland: “My lyrics,” Yesenin later said, “are alive with one great love, love for the homeland. The feeling of homeland is the main thing in my work.”

In the pre-revolutionary poetic world of Yesenin, Rus' has many faces: “thoughtful and tender,” humble and violent, poor and cheerful, celebrating “victorious holidays.” In the poem “You Didn’t Believe in My God...” (1916), the poet calls Rus', the “sleepy princess” located “on the foggy shore,” to the “cheerful faith” to which he himself is now committed. In the poem “Clouds from the Fall…” (1916), the poet seems to predict a revolution - the “transformation” of Russia through “torment and the cross”, and a civil war.

Both on earth and in heaven, Yesenin contrasts only the good and the evil, the “clean” and the “impure.” Along with God and his servants, heavenly and earthly, in Yesenin in 1914-1918 possible “evil spirits” were active: forest, water and domestic. Evil fate, as the poet thought, also touched his homeland and left its mark on its image:

You didn’t believe in my God,
Russia, my homeland!
You, like a sorceress, gave me a measure,
And I was like your stepson.

Songs based on poems by Sergei Yesenin

The lines of Sergei Yesenin’s poem “Letter to a Mother” (published in the spring of 1924 in the magazine “Krasnaya Nov”) also impressed the young composer Vasily Lipatov (1897-1965). Since then, the romance to Lipatov's music has been performed by Dmitry Gnatyuk, Yuri Gulyaev, Vadim Kozin, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Alexander Malinin, and other performers. Lipatov wrote this song in just one day. Lipatov also authored the first musical version of the poem “You are my fallen maple.”

Yesenin's lyrics turned into romances thanks to the composer, People's Artist of the USSR Grigory Ponomarenko (1921-1996). His works “The golden grove dissuaded”, “Don’t wander, don’t crush in the crimson bushes”, “Let you be drunk by others”, “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry”, “Weaved on the lake”, “You are my Shagane, Shagane” , “The Blue Fire Has Swept Up,” “To Kachalov’s Dog” were included in the repertoire of Joseph Kobzon, Vladimir Troshin, Arkady Severny, the ensemble “Radunitsa”, VIA “Orera” and others.

Alexander Vertinsky (“In the land where the yellow nettle is”, “Goodbye my friend, goodbye”), Ivan Kozlovsky (“You watered the horse”, “I’m on the first snow”), Muslim Magomayev (“Queen”) turned to Yesenin’s work ", "Goodbye, Baku"), Evgeny Martynov ("Birch"), Valery Obodzinsky ("Goodbye, my friend, goodbye"), Vladimir Vysotsky (an excerpt from the fairy tale "The Orphan" was preserved on an amateur film).

Songs based on Yesenin’s poems were included in the repertoire of Honored Artist of Russia Klavdia Khabarova. With the music of Alexei Karelin, the songs “Flowers Tell Me Goodbye”, “Scented Bird Cherry”, “Here it is - Stupid Happiness” and others became famous. Arkady Severny included in his performances the romances “You Don’t Love Me,” “White Scroll and Scarlet Sash,” “Evening Dark Eyebrows,” “Goodbye, My Friend, Goodbye,” and others. Alexey Pokrovsky performed “The Last Letter” and many other songs to the music of Alexander Vertinsky. Composer Sergei Sarychev and the group “Alfa” turned the song “I am a Moscow mischievous reveler” into an all-Union hit, and the tandem of composer Sergei Belyaev and performer Alexander Malinin made the song “Fun” popular.

Yesenin’s lines also found their resonance in the female performances of Lyudmila Zykina (“Hear, the sleigh is rushing”), Galina Nenasheva (“Birch”), Nina Panteleeva (“I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry”), Irina Ponarovskaya (“Drops”) , Nadezhda Babkina (“The golden grove dissuaded”) and others.

Sergei Yesenin's poems are closely intertwined with cinema. Romances were included in the creative evenings of the actors (“I lit my fire” to the music of Yuri Erikona performed by Nikolai Karachentsov, “Queen” in the television benefit performance of Larisa Golubkina). The songs were woven into the plot of the film (“You are my fallen maple” performed by singing teacher Andrei Popov with a guitar in the film of the same name). Original readings of famous songs are offered for feature films (“Under the window there is a month” to the music of Ian Frenkel for the film “The Crown of the Russian Empire, or Elusive Again”, “You are my fallen maple” performed by the group “Chaif” for the film “Beyond the Wolves” and others).

Yesenin's poems can also be heard in translation. Italian singer and composer Angelo Branduardi includes a song based on "Confessions of a Bully" on his 1975 album La luna. Polish pop singer and composer Krzysztof Krawczyk recorded a record in 1977, where Yesenin’s poems are translated by Vladislav Bronevsky. In 1979, a record based on Yesenin’s poems was recorded by the Bulgarian performer Nikolai Lyubenov.

The poems of Sergei Yesenin continue to be relevant: songs based on his poems are performed by Oleg Pogudin, Stas Mikhailov, Vika Tsyganova, Alexander Novikov, Valery Vlasov, Zemfira, Elena Vaenga, Nikita Dzhigurda, Zhenya Maksimova, Prokhor Chaliapin, the Relict trio, the Nightingale trio , the Mongol Shuudan group and many others. The soundtrack to the series “Yesenin” was released on Sergei Bezrukov’s album entitled “Hooligan”, in which the artist first acted as the author of the music.

Yesenin’s poems are heard in the rap genre - “Letter to a Woman” (Misha Mavashi) and “Letter to a Woman” performed by ST, pagan metal - “I won’t deceive myself” (group “Nevid”), indie folk - “Tossed around blue fire" (the group The Retuses), deathcore - "Goodbye, my friend, goodbye" (the group "Bring Me the Horizon"), the rock suite "Yesenin Sergei" was released by "Igor Kovalev's Workshop".

On January 10, 2012, the STS TV channel aired the concert show “Poetry Beat,” where rappers read poems by classic poets to their minuses. Rapper ST there read the poem “Letter to a Woman” under Nel’s minus, ST there caused stormy applause.

Love the book, it will make your life easier, it will help you sort out the colorful and stormy confusion of thoughts, feelings, events, it will teach you to respect people and yourself, it inspires your mind and heart with a feeling of love for the world, for people.

Maxim Gorky

Sergei Yesenin was, of course, a very talented person, but his nature was contradictory and rushing. His thoughts and experiences were clearly reflected in his poems.

Each poem by Yesenin conveys his sensations, experiences and feelings that were caused by the events taking place in Russia at the time when the poet happened to live. And, as you know, this was a difficult and contradictory time, so his poetry is the same: emotional, tragic, but overflowing with love for his homeland and the people living on his land.

If we talk separately about love lyrics, then, of course, Yesenin’s hero is largely autobiographical. He, just like Sergei, madly loves his country, nature, feels unity with it and cannot live without his native land. He admires the beauty of life in the village and his soul is constantly drawn to the land, to forests and rivers, to everything that surrounded the poet from birth, because he grew up in the village and was a simple peasant.

The poems of the great poet are very emotional. It is noticeable that love is very important to him, but this feeling is often tragic and bitter. It is because of this that his lyrical hero spends a lot of time in taverns, trying to get away from his feelings that oppress him. This behavior of the heroes of the poems is also completely autobiographical, since Yesenin himself was rarely happy in love, drank a lot and was too emotional about all his losses on the love front.

The main distinguishing features of Yesenin's poetry are sincerity, inconsistency, depth of feelings, melancholy and sadness. But, despite this, the poems also contain a certain spiritual harmony, which the hero finds when he comprehends the basic meaning of human life.

1. The meaning of the theme of the Motherland in Yesenin’s works.
2. Early work of S. A. Yesenin.
3. The theme of the homeland and nature is the main one in the poet’s work.
4. Poetry of the 20s.
5. The ideal of the poet is Rus'.

I'm not a new person, what to hide.
I have one foot left in the past.
Trying to catch up with the steel army,
I slide and fall differently.
S. A. Yesenin

These lines of the talented Russian poet S. A. Yesenin, which sound bitter, are autobiographical. Having enthusiastically greeted the new post-revolutionary Russia, he could not understand and accept what was happening to the Russian village, nature and man as its integral part. Whatever the poet wrote about: about the revolution, about the personal, about the eternal, the feeling of the homeland, love for it, its significant role in Yesenin’s fate always ran as the leitmotif in his poetry. He himself often admitted: “My lyrics are alive with one great love, love for my homeland. The feeling of homeland is central to my work.”

S. A. Yesenin (1895-1925) was born into a simple peasant family in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province. During his studies at the Zemstvo School and the Spas-Klepikovskaya School, he wrote more than 30 poems and compiled a handwritten collection “Sick Thoughts” (1912). The Russian village, the nature of central Russia, oral folk art, and Russian classical literature had a strong influence on the formation of the young poet and nourished his natural talent. The feeling of homeland finds expression so far only in love for native nature, the landscape familiar from childhood: Compressed fields, the red-yellow fire of an autumn grove, the mirror surface of lakes. The poet feels like a part of nature and is ready to merge with it: “I would like to get lost in the greenery of your hundred-bellied greenery.” Another great master of the Silver Age, A. A. Blok, highly appreciated the “fresh, pure, vociferous,” albeit “verbose” poems of the nugget poet. At the beginning of 1916, Yesenin’s first collection of poems, “Radunitsa,” was published, which was imbued not only with freshness and lyricism, a lively perception of nature, but also with figurative brightness. In the pre-revolutionary poetic world of Yesenin, Rus' has many faces: “thoughtful and tender”, “humble and violent”, “poor and cheerful”. In the poem “You Didn’t Believe in My God” (1916), the poet calls on Rus', a “sleepy princess” located “on a foggy shore,” to “cheerful faith.” In the poem of the same year, “Clouds from the Ozereb...”, the poet seems to predict a revolution that will bring transformation to Russia “through torment and the cross.”

At the end of 1916, Yesenin was preparing a new collection of poems, “Dove,” which would be published after the revolution in 1918. There are already quite a few lyrical masterpieces here, both about bright love, painted in sensual tones, and about convict, beggarly love, which requires the renewal of Rus'. The lyrical hero also undergoes changes - he is either a “tender youth”, “a humble monk”, then a “sinner”, “a tramp and a thief”, “a robber with a flail”.

The poet greeted the October Revolution with enthusiasm. “I rejoice in the song of your death,” he addresses the old, obsolete world. It seemed to him that an era of great spiritual renewal and revaluation of values ​​was coming. At this time, he created a cycle of 10 small poems in which “violent Rus'” is glorified and the “red summer” is glorified (“Comrade” (1917), “The Singing Call” (1917), “The Coming” (1918), “Transfiguration "(1918), "Inonia" (1918), "Jordanian Dove" (1918), etc.). Yesenin expected from the revolution an improvement in the lives of ordinary peasants, which did not happen. He is experiencing a spiritual crisis, which is expressed in the following lines: “... I don’t understand where the fate of events is taking us.” The change in the face of Russia by Soviet power is now also incomprehensible to him. The poet associates transformations in the village with the invasion of a “hostile” “iron guest”, against whom the nature he praised from childhood is defenseless. Believing that a person negatively affects her integrity and beauty, he feels like “the last poet of the village.” A striking symbol of this performance is the image of a foal trying in vain to overtake a steam locomotive:

Dear, dear, funny fool,
But where is he, where is he going?
Doesn't he really know that live horses
Did the steel cavalry win?

Yesenin's most significant works, which brought him fame as one of the best poets in Russia, were created by him in the 20s of the 20th century. The poetry of the most tragic years (1922-1925) is marked by a desire for a harmonious worldview. During these years, he wrote his best creations: “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry...”, “The golden grove dissuaded...”, “We are now leaving little by little...”, etc. The poem also dates back to this time “Sorokoust” (1920), collections of poems “Treryadnitsa” (1920), “Confession of a Hooligan” (1921), “Poems of a Brawler” (1923), “Moscow Tavern” (1924), “Soviet Rus'” (1925), “Country Soviet" (1925), "Persian motives" (1925).

Most often in the lyrics of this period there are motifs of a deep understanding of the Universe, one’s place in the world, along with the awareness of lost hopes. Indicative in this regard is the poem “To Pushkin,” dated 1924:

Dreaming of a mighty gift
The one who became Russian destiny,
I'm standing on Tverskoy Boulevard.
I stand and talk to myself.
Blonde, almost whitish,
In legends it became like fog,
Oh, Alexander! You were a rake
What a hooligan I am today.
...But, doomed to persecution,
I will continue to sing for a long time...
So that my steppe singing
Managed to ring with bronze.

The poem seems prophetic in many ways, with the exception of one point - he didn’t have long to “sing.”

The poem “Anna Snegina” (1925) became in many ways the final work in which the poet’s personal fate is intertwined with the fate of the entire Russian people. It is here that the image of a “black man” appears, pursuing the poet. His tragic death today is one of the unsolved mysteries of 20th century literature and dark pages in the history of the Soviet state. This foreboding of an impending tragedy, a reversal of fate - both personal and general - brought together many talented poets and writers of the “troubled” years of the early 20th century.

The system of motifs in Yesenin’s poetry forms a single picture of the “beloved homeland” in all the variety of its shades. This is the highest ideal of the poet, who throughout his short life subtly felt and glorified “the sixth part of the earth with a short name - Rus'.”

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin is a great Russian lyric poet. Most of his works are new peasant poetry and lyrics. Later creativity belongs to Izhanism, as it contains many used images and metaphors.

The date of birth of the literary genius is September 21, 1895. He comes from the Ryazan province, the village of Konstantinovka (Kuzminskaya volost). Therefore, many works are dedicated to love for Rus', there are a lot of new peasant lyrics. The financial condition of the future poet's family could not even be called tolerable, since his parents were quite poor.

All of them belonged to a peasant family, and therefore were forced to work a lot with physical labor. Sergei's father, Alexander Nikitich, also went through a long career. As a child, he was fond of singing in the church choir and had good vocal abilities. When he grew up, he went to work in a meat shop.

Chance helped him get a good position in Moscow. It was there that he became a clerk, and the family's income became higher. But this did not bring joy to his wife, Yesenin’s mother. She saw her husband less and less, which could not but affect their relationship.

Another reason for discord in the family was that after his father moved to Moscow, the boy began to live with his Old Believer grandfather, his mother’s father. It was there that he received a male upbringing, which his three uncles did in their own way. Since they did not have time to start their own families, they tried to pay a lot of attention to the boy.

All the uncles were unmarried sons of Yesenin’s grandfather’s grandmother, who were distinguished by their cheerful disposition and, to some extent, youthful mischief. They taught the boy to ride a horse in a very unusual way: they put him on a horse, which galloped. There was also training in swimming in the river, when little Yesenin was simply thrown naked from a boat directly into the water.

As for the poet’s mother, she was affected by the separation from her husband when he was on long service in Moscow. She got a job in Ryazan, where she fell in love with Ivan Razgulyaev. The woman left Alexander Nikitich and even gave birth to a second child from her new partner. Sergei's half-brother was named Alexander. Later, the parents finally got back together, Sergei had two sisters: Katya and Alexandra.

Education

After such home education, the family decided to send Seryozha to study at the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School. He studied there from nine to fourteen years old and was distinguished not only by his abilities, but also by his bad behavior. Therefore, in one year of study, by decision of the school administrator, he was left for the second year. But still, the final grades were exceptionally high.

At this time, the parents of the future genius decided to live together again. The boy began to come to his home more often during the holidays. Here he went to the local priest, who had an impressive library with books from various authors. He carefully studied many volumes, which could not but influence his creative development.

After graduating from the zemstvo school, he moved to the parish school, located in the village of Spas-Klepki. Already in 1909, after five years of study, Yesenin graduated from the Zemstvo School in Konstantinovka. His family's dream was for their grandson to become a teacher. He was able to realize it after studying at Spas-Klepiki.

It was there that he graduated from the second-class teacher's school. She also worked at the church parish, as was customary in those days. Now there is a museum dedicated to the work of this great poet. But after receiving his teaching education, Yesenin decided to go to Moscow.

In crowded Moscow, he had to work both in a butcher shop and in a printing house. His own father got him a job in the shop, since the young man had to ask him for help in finding a job. Then he got him a job in an office where Yesenin quickly became bored with the monotonous work.

When he served in the printing house as an assistant proofreader, he quickly became friends with poets who were part of Surikov’s literary and musical circle. Perhaps this influenced the fact that in 1913 he did not enter, but became a free student at the Moscow City People's University. There he attended lectures at the Faculty of History and Philosophy.

Creation

Yesenin’s passion for writing poetry was born in Spas-Klepiki, where he studied at a parish teacher’s school. Naturally, the works had a spiritual orientation and were not yet imbued with notes of lyrics. Such works include: “Stars”, “My Life”. When the poet was in Moscow (1912-1915), it was there that he began his more confident attempts at writing.

It is also very important that during this period in his works:

1. The poetic device of imagery was used. The works were replete with skillful metaphors, direct or figurative images.
2. During this period, new peasant imagery was also visible.
3. One could also notice Russian symbolism, since the genius loved creativity.

The first published work was the poem “Birch”. Historians note that when writing it, Yesenin was inspired by the works of A. Fet. Then he took the pseudonym Ariston, not daring to send the poem to print under his own name. It was published in 1914 by the Mirok magazine.

The first book “Radunitsa” was published in 1916. Russian modernism was also evident in it, as the young man moved to Petrograd and began to communicate with famous writers and poets:

• CM. Gorodetsky.
• D.V. Philosophers.
• A. A. Blok.

In “Radunitsa” there are notes of dialectism and numerous parallels drawn between the natural and the spiritual, since the name of the book is the day when the dead are venerated. At the same time, the arrival of spring occurs, in honor of which the peasants sing traditional songs. This is the connection with nature, its renewal and honoring those who have passed on.

The poet's style also changes, as he begins to dress a little more fabulously and more elegantly. This could also have been influenced by his guardian Klyuev, who supervised him from 1915 to 1917. The poems of the young genius were then listened to with attention by S.M. Gorodetsky, and the great Alexander Blok.

In 1915, the poem “Bird Cherry” was written, in which he endows nature and this tree with human qualities. The bird cherry seems to come to life and show its feelings. After being drafted into the war in 1916, Sergei began communicating with a group of new peasant poets.

Because of the released collection, including “Radunitsa,” Yesenin became more widely known. It even reached the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna herself. She often called Yesenin to Tsarskoe Selo so that he could read his works to her and her daughters.

In 1917, a revolution occurred, which was reflected in the works of the genius. He received a “second wind” and, inspired, decided to release a poem in 1917 called “Transfiguration.” It caused great resonance and even criticism, since it contained many slogans of the International. All of them were presented in a completely different way, in the style of the Old Testament.

The perception of the world and commitment to the church also changed. The poet even stated this openly in one of his poems. Then he began to focus on Andrei Bely and began communicating with the poetry group “Scythians”. Works from the late twenties include:

• Petrograd book “Dove” (1918).
• Second edition “Radunitsa” (1918).
• Series of collections of 1918-1920: Transfiguration and Rural Book of Hours.

The period of Imagism began in 1919. It means the use of a large number of images and metaphors. Sergei enlists the support of V.G. Shershenevich and founded his own group, which absorbed the traditions of futurism and style. An important difference was that the works were of a pop nature and involved open reading in front of the viewer.

This gave the group great fame against the backdrop of bright performances with the use. Then they wrote:

• "Sorokoust" (1920).
• Poem "Pugachev" (1921).
• Treatise “The Keys of Mary” (1919).

It is also known that in the early twenties Sergei began selling books and rented a shop to sell printed publications. It was located on Bolshaya Nikitskaya. This activity brought him income and distracted him a little from creativity.

After communicating and exchanging opinions and stylistic techniques with A. Mariengof Yesenin, the following were written:

• “Confession of a Hooligan” (1921), dedicated to the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya. Seven poems from one cycle were written in her honor.
• "The Three-Ridner" (1921).
• “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry” (1924).
• "Poems of a Brawler" (1923).
• “Moscow Tavern” (1924).
• "Letter to a Woman" (1924).
• “Letter to Mother” (1924), which is one of the best lyric poems. It was written before Yesenin’s arrival in his native village and dedicated to his mother.
• "Persian Motifs" (1924). In the collection you can see the famous poem “You are my Shagane, Shagane.”

After this, the poet began to travel frequently. His travel geography was not limited to Orenburg and the Urals alone; he even visited Central Asia, Tashkent and even Samarkand. In Urdy, he often visited local establishments (teahouses), traveled around the old city, and made new acquaintances. He was inspired by Uzbek poetry, oriental music, as well as the architecture of local streets.

After the marriage, numerous trips to Europe followed: Italy, France, Germany and other countries. Yesenin even lived in America for several months (1922-1923), after which notes were made with impressions of living in this country. They were published in Izvestia and called “Iron Mirgorod”.

In the mid-twenties, a trip to the Caucasus was also made. There is an assumption that it was in this area that the collection “Red East” was created. It was published in the Caucasus, after which the poem “Message to the Evangelist Demyan” was published in 1925. The period of imagism continued until the genius quarreled with A. B. Mariengof.

He was also considered a critic and well-known opponent of Yesenin. But at the same time, they did not show hostility publicly, although they were often pitted against each other. Everything was done with criticism and even respect for each other’s creativity.

After Sergei decided to break with imagism, he began to give frequent reasons for criticism of his behavior. For example, after 1924, various incriminating articles began to be published regularly about how he was seen drunk or causing rows and scandals in establishments.

But such behavior was just hooliganism. Due to the denunciations of ill-wishers, several criminal cases were immediately opened, which were later closed. The most notorious of them is the Case of the Four Poets, which included accusations of anti-Semitism. At this time, the health of the literary genius also began to deteriorate.

As for the attitude of the Soviet authorities, they were worried about the poet’s condition. There are letters indicating that Dzerzhinsky is being asked to help and save Yesenin. They say that a GPU employee should be assigned to Sergei to prevent him from drinking himself to death. Dzerzhinsky responded to the request and attracted his subordinate, who was never able to find Sergei.

Personal life

Yesenin's common-law wife was Anna Izryadnova. He met her when he worked as an assistant proofreader in a printing house. The result of this marriage was the birth of a son, Yuri. But the marriage did not last long, since already in 1917 Sergei married Zinaida Reich. During this time, they had two children at once - Konstantin and Tatyana. This union also turned out to be fleeting.

The poet entered into an official marriage with Isadora Duncan, who was a professional dancer. This love story was remembered by many, as their relationship was beautiful, romantic and partly public. The woman was a famous dancer in America, which fueled public interest in this marriage.

At the same time, Isadora was older than her husband, but the age difference did not bother them.

Sergei met Duncan in a private workshop in 1921. Then they began to travel together throughout Europe, and also lived for four months in America - the dancer’s homeland. But after returning from abroad, the marriage was dissolved. The next wife was Sofia Tolstaya, who was a relative of the famous classic; the union also broke up in less than a year.

Yesenin’s life was also connected with other women. For example, Galina Benislavskaya was his personal secretary. She was always by his side, partly dedicating her life to this man.

Illness and death

Yesenin had problems with alcohol, which were known not only to his friends, but also to Dzerzhinsky himself. In 1925, the great genius was hospitalized in a paid clinic in Moscow, specializing in psychoneurological disorders. But already on December 21, the treatment was completed or, possibly, interrupted at the request of Sergei himself.

He decided to temporarily move to Leningrad. Before this, he interrupted his work with Gosizdat and withdrew all his funds that were in government accounts. In Leningrad, he lived in a hotel and often communicated with various writers: V. I. Erlich, G. F. Ustinov, N. N. Nikitin.

Death overtook this great poet unexpectedly on December 28, 1928. The circumstances under which Yesenin passed away, as well as the cause of death itself, have not yet been clarified. This happened on December 28, 1925, and the funeral itself took place in Moscow, where the genius’s grave is still located.

On the night of December 28, an almost prophetic farewell poem was written. Therefore, some historians suggest that the genius committed suicide, but this is not a proven fact.

In 2005, the Russian film “Yesenin” was shot, in which he played the main role. Also before this, the series “The Poet” was filmed. Both works are dedicated to the great Russian genius and received positive reviews.

1. Little Sergei was unofficially an orphan for five years, as he was looked after by his maternal grandfather Titov. The woman simply sent the father funds to support his son. My father was working in Moscow at that time.
2. At the age of five the boy already knew how to read.
3. At school, Yesenin was given the nickname “the atheist,” since his grandfather once renounced the church craft.
4. In 1915, military service began, followed by a deferment. Then Sergei again found himself on military lavas, but as a nurse.

Introduction

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

Field Russia! Enough

Dragging the plow across the fields!

It hurts to see your poverty

And birches and poplars.

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

The feather grass is sleeping. Plain dear,

And the leaden freshness of wormwood.

No other homeland

It will not pour my warmth into my chest.

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

§1. The poet’s childhood and youth

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born on September 21, 1895. in the village of Konstantinov, Ryazan province, on the banks of the Oka. Born into a peasant family. From the age of two, due to his father’s poverty and large family, he was given to be raised by a fairly wealthy grandfather. My grandfather was an Old Believer, a man of strict religious rules, and knew the Holy Scriptures well. He loved his grandson very much. On Saturdays and Sundays he told him the Bible and sacred history. But already in childhood, a broader influence made itself felt very noticeably - the element of folk art in which the boy grew up. In addition to his grandfather, his grandmother also introduced the boy to folk art. She told stories. He didn’t like some fairy tales with bad endings, and he remade them in his own way. Thus, the boy’s spiritual life took shape under the influence of sacred history and folk poetry. The boy lived freely and carefree. He was not familiar with the early hardships of peasant labor. He was rarely at home, especially in the spring and summer; he grew up in the bosom of the abundant Ryazan nature. I caught fish and spent whole days with the boys on the river bank. My childhood was spent among fields and steppes. Here arose that great love for his native nature, which later fed his poetic imagination. Even in early childhood, Yesenin developed a sincere and heartfelt pity for all living things. His love for animals remained with him throughout his life. When it was time to study, the boy was sent to Konstantinovskaya elementary school. Yesenin found teaching easy. The school completion certificate stated: “Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin in May of this year, 1909, successfully completed a course at the Konstantinovsky 4-year Zemstvo School.” Then he entered the Spas-Klepikovsky School. Those who graduated had the right to teach in the primary grades of secondary schools and serve in civil institutions.

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

§2.Literary debut

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

This is wrong. At first, Yesenin’s poems were pale, inexpressive, imitative, like, for example, these

The red dawn lit up

In the dark blue sky,

The lane appeared clear

In its golden shine.

But despite all the primitiveness of such lines, they came from what they saw and experienced. Only two years pass, and the poet’s feeling, having acquired depth, spills out in Yesenin’s own, unearthly verse: “The scarlet light of dawn was woven on the lake...” In Russian, boldly, sweepingly, mischievously shaking his golden curls, he entered the chamber of Russian poetry, to stay there forever. Having composed poetry since childhood (mainly in imitation of A.V. Koltsov, I.S. Nikitin, S.D. Drozhnik), Yesenin finds like-minded people in the Surikov Literary and Musical Circle. The circle was quite diverse in its composition. The circle took shape organizationally in 1905. Yesenin was brought to the Surikov Circle at the beginning of 1914 by his Moscow acquaintance S.N. Koshkarov. Yesenin was accepted into the circle. The aspiring young poet now has a literary environment. Exhibitions of literary works were organized, literary collections were published, and the literary and social magazine “Friend of the People” was published. Yesenin quickly became accustomed to the atmosphere that reigned in the circle. The young man was quite captivated by the socio-political activities of the Surikovites. Yesenin's new position, naturally, gave rise to new thoughts and moods. Back in 1912, he tried to write a poetic declaration, which he gave the programmatic name “Poet”.

The poet who destroys enemies

Whose native truth is the mother,

Who loves people like brothers?

And I’m ready to suffer for them.

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

“Birch”, “Birch cherry”, “Powder” - these are the titles of Yesenin’s poems of 1914. In the spring of 1915, Yesenin came to Petrograd, where he met A.A. Blok, S.M. Gorodetsky, A.M. Remisov and others, becomes close to N.A. Klyuev, who had a significant influence on him. Their joint performances with poems and ditties, stylized in a “peasant”, “folk” manner (Yesenin appears to the public as a golden-haired young man in an embroidered shirt and morocco boots), were a great success.

§3. Collection Radunitsa

The poet was only twenty years old when the first book of his poems appeared. The collection “Radunitsa” was published in early 1916. “Radunitsa” is enthusiastically welcomed by critics, who discovered a fresh spirit in it, noting the youthful spontaneity and natural taste of the author.

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

I see - in the titmouse cloth,

On light-winged clouds

Beloved mother is coming

With a pure son in his arms...

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

The Lord came to torture people in love,

He went out to the kuluzhka as a beggar.

An old grandfather on a dry stump in an oak grove,

He chewed a stale crumpet with his gums.

After all, this is not so much Christian as purely human morality. The old man shows human kindness, and the image of Christ only sets it off and emphasizes the humanistic idea. What comes first is not the idea of ​​God, but the idea of ​​humanity. The words of Yesenin and his Isusakh and Mikolakh were spoken by him after the revolution, but this was not a belated attempt to justify himself to Soviet readers. Even when Yesenin wrote poetry with a religious overtone, he was possessed by moods that were far from religious. Religiosity in Yesenin’s poems manifests itself differently in different periods of his creative activity. If in verse 1914 Yesenin’s ironic attitude towards religion is quite easily captured, but later, in 1915-1916, the poet creates many works in which the religious theme is taken, so to speak, seriously. The victory of real life over religious legends is very noticeable in “Radunitsa”. A significant part of this collection are poems that come from life, from knowledge of peasant life. The main place in them is occupied by a realistic depiction of rural life. Unremarkable peasant everyday life in the hut proceeds peacefully. But he shows the village only from one side, the everyday side, without touching on the social processes taking place in the peasant environment. Yesenin was undoubtedly familiar with the social life of the village. And it cannot be said that he did not make attempts to reflect it in his poems. But material of this kind did not lend itself to truly poetic embodiment. It is enough to cite the following verses, for example:

It's hard and sad for me to see

How my brother dies.

And I try to hate everyone

Who is at enmity with his silence.

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

If the holy army shouts:

“Throw away Rus', live in paradise!”

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

Give me my homeland."

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

“I pray for the red dawns,

I take communion by the stream.”

§4. The Great October Revolution in the works of S.A. Yesenina

The Great October... Yesenin saw in it the events that began a new era. (“Second year of the first century” - this is how he designated the release date of his three books - 1918). Already on the eve of it - after the February Revolution - the poet was full of joyful forebodings.

O Rus', O steppe and winds,

And you are my stepfather's house!

On the golden path

Spring thunder nests, -

He exclaimed enthusiastically.

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

The poet rejoices, he is all delighted, admiring. His thoughts are about the happy and never-ending hour of his homeland.

To you, your fogs

And the sheep in the fields

I carry it like a sheaf of oats,

I am the sun in my arms...

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

A few days after the October Uprising, Yesenin attends a rally “intelligentsia and people”, listens to the speech of A.V. Lunacharsky. Looking around the crowded hall, he smiles:

Yes, this is the audience!

Meetings with Alexander Blok, whom he met upon his arrival in Petrograd (March 1915), become more frequent. Despite all the differences in their paths to the revolution, their worldview, the poets were brought together by thoughts about the fate of Russia and faith in its great future. The fact that Blok and Yesenin sided with the rebellious people immediately dissociated many bourgeois writers from them. “Yesenin called and talked about yesterday’s “morning of Russia” in the Tenishev Hall. Newspapers and the crowd shouted at him, A. Bely and mine: “traitors.” They don’t shake hands,” Blok writes in his notebook on January 22, 1918 and adds: “Gentlemen, you never knew Russia and never loved it!”

Yesenin could have addressed the same words to the “gentlemen.” He, a peasant son, was pleased to feel close to people who had broken the shackles of slavery. “My mother is my homeland, I am a Bolshevik.” Let this statement sound too categorical from Yesenin’s mouth, but he did not compromise the truth of his feelings one iota. It seemed to him that the revolution, having destroyed the old world, would immediately erect the “desired city”, the country of Inonia (from the word - okay, good), a peasant paradise. In this country there are no taxes for arable land, all the land is peasant land, “God’s”, there are no landowners, officials, priests, free cultivators live in prosperity, professing their “free” religion, worshiping their “cow god”. Yes, the king and all his henchmen were expelled, the land became peasant land, the people became free. But the “earthly paradise”, as it was depicted in Yesenin’s works, did not come. Economic devastation. Hunger. Lack of fuel. The offensive of the interventionists, the revelry of the White Guard and anarchist gangs...

"Who is this? My Rus', who are you? Who? - the poet asked in confusion, peering into the face of his native land disfigured by war and deprivation.

Oh, who, who to sing

In this mad glow of corpses?

And above this terrible vision, as in times of troubles and misfortunes, “a fatal horn blows, blows”... The city, extending its hand to the village, appears to the poet as an iron monster, a “terrible messenger,” a soulless enemy of meadows and arable lands, of all living things. Yesenin’s poems “Mare’s Ships”, “Sorokoust”, “Mysterious World, My Ancient World...” are filled with anxious, difficult feelings and thoughts.

The field is freezing in the long-eyed melancholy,

Choking on telegraph poles, -

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

I love my homeland

I love my homeland very much.

The answer to the question: “Where is the fate of events taking us?” – he should have been prompted by life itself and this feeling – stored in the heart, inescapable.

And so it happened.

5.Meeting with Isadora Duncan

Travel abroad

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

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

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

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

Far from his homeland, Yesenin felt sad and lonely. Following Europe, Yesenin visited America. It seemed cramped, uncomfortable and soulless to him. Yesenin stayed in America for four months. Soon after their arrival in America, troubles began related to Duncan’s performances. Duncan gave her performances a propaganda character: each time she performed the “International” dance, which she developed in Moscow, which sometimes ended in police intervention. Yesenin defined this entire complex political operation in simple words, saying in a letter that he and Duncan were “asked back.”

§6. Return to Russia

In August 1923, Yesenin returned to Moscow. “I am most pleased with the fact that I have returned to Soviet Russia,” he wrote shortly after his arrival from abroad. Everyone who at that time had to meet Yesenin saw how the poet now looked especially closely at life, at the transformations that took place in his native land during his travels abroad. From America, as Mayakovsky noted, Yesenin returned “with a clear desire for something new.” The poet lost much of his former literary connections of interest. “It seems to me,” wrote one of the poet’s contemporaries, “that Yesenin, having traveled throughout Europe and America, began to suffocate in a narrow circle. Yesenin is increasingly trying to understand and comprehend what is happening these years in Russia and throughout the world. The horizons and scope of his poetry are expanding. Yesenin now speaks with joy in poetry about his “epiphany”, about that great historical truth that is now increasingly revealed to him:

I see everything

I understand clearly

What a new era -

Not a pound of raisins for you.

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

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

Not the skies of someone else's homeland -

I composed songs for my homeland!

Such a “song to the homeland,” Soviet Russia, was the monologue of Commissar Rassvetov from the unfinished dramatic poem “Country of Scoundrels,” sketched in America. In “Steel” America, capitalism has devastated the human soul, placing a dollar on everyone, profit. The world of money-grubbing and greed has given rise to enterprising dealers and businessmen.

These people are rotten fish

All of America is a greedy maw.

But Russia... This is a block.....

If only it were Soviet power.

In “steel” Russia, Soviet power and socialism will elevate man, because in the name of his happiness a new life is being built - “in the republic there will be what anyone needs.” The poet clearly likes Commissar Rassvetov, a convinced communist, a collected, strong-willed person who knows what he stands for and what he fights for. He liked that his “formers” considered him a “Bolshevik agent,” a “Red propagandist,” and a “Cheka employee.” A decisive step was taken abroad to drive away the “black man.” Drive away the ominous generation of “tavern Moscow”, spiritual turmoil, tragic delusions. Thinking about his native land, his life, his “heart was drunk with sobering mash.” The first words he said at home were: “I am most pleased with the fact that I returned to Soviet Russia.” Lyrics are the strongest side of Yesenin’s talent.

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

Sing, sing. On a damn guitar.

Your fingers dance in a semicircle.

I would choke in this frenzy,

My last, only friend.

By the beginning of 1923, Yesenin’s desire to get out of the crisis state in which he found himself became noticeable. Gradually he finds more and more solid ground, understands Soviet reality more deeply, and begins to feel not like an adopted son, but a native son of Soviet Russia. This was strongly reflected not only in political, but also in love lyrics.

His poems date back to 1923, in which he first writes about true, deep love, pure, bright and truly human.

A blue fire began to sweep,

Forgotten relatives.

For the first time I'm talking about love,

For the first time I refuse to make a scandal.

You can't help but pay attention to the line:

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

Don't call this ardor fate

A frivolous hot-tempered connection, -

How I met you by chance,

I will smile calmly and disperse.

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

I asked the money changer today,

What does a ruble give for half a fog?

How to tell me for a beautiful lady

Tender “I love” in Persian..?

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

Green hairstyle,

Girlish breasts,

O thin birch tree,

Why did you look into the pond?

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

“Again I have come to life and again I hope

Just like in childhood, for a better destiny,”

“I still loved this life,

I fell in love as much as if at first,”

“And the earth becomes dearer to me every day.”

§7. Death of the poet

The most dangerous thing was that, as a result of constant overexertion of forces, signs of Yesenin’s mental imbalance began to appear. Extreme suspiciousness began to develop in him: he constantly feels the threat of neurasthenia, angina pectoris, transient consumption, it seems to him that they are watching him, even making an attempt on his life, he begins to have morbid fantasies. In a medical report from the psychiatric clinic of Moscow University dated March 24, 1924. it was said that he "suffers from a severe neuropsychiatric illness, expressed in severe attacks of mood disorders and obsessive thoughts and compulsions." Benislavskaya became a close person, friend, comrade, assistant for Yesenin. Benislavskaya’s participation in Yesenin’s fate especially increased in 1924–1925. During Yesenin’s frequent absences from Moscow, Benislavskaya was in charge of all his literary affairs: she published his works in periodicals. Benislavskaya treated each new work of Yesenin with great interest and expressed her opinions about them to him. Her assessments were impartial, and Yesenin took them into account. During his departures from Moscow, Yesenin learned all the literary news mainly from Benislavskaya, who was interested in modern literature and was well versed in it. He travels to the Caucasus three times, goes to Leningrad several times, and Konstantinovo seven times. Nature, dearly loved by the poet, for which he always found bright, joyful colors and tones, increasingly becomes gloomy, sad and ominous in his poems:

Snowy plain, white moon,

Our side is covered with savannah.

And birches in white cry through the forests

Who died here? Died? Isn't it me?

Thoughts appear that the creative time has ended, the poetic powers have dried up, the poet begins to feel that “Talyanka has lost her voice, having forgotten how to carry on a conversation.” Lack of faith in one’s own strength was the worst thing for Yesenin. But even in this difficult state, Yesenin still struggled with himself. In moments of enlightenment, he expressed hope that he would cope with the situation in which he found himself. Trying to break out of the darkness that surrounded him, he tried to turn the tide of events, to decisively turn his life around.

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

The poet's tragic death was certainly associated with his unbalanced state of mind. It occurred during one of the most severe attacks of melancholy and pessimism.

Conclusion

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

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

Bibliography

1. Selected poems - M.: “Ogonyok”, 1925

2. “Birch chintz” - M.:, GIZ, 1925

3. S. Yesenin. Image, poems, era – 1979

4. S. Yesenin. Poems and Poems – 1988

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

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