The significance of Yesenin’s creativity in our time. Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin. And the sheep in the fields

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin was born in 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province (see). His parents were peasants, and besides Sergei, they 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 parish school in Spas-Klepiki.

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

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

Special features of Sergei Yesenin

The beginning of creativity

Sergei Yesenin's first poems 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 poetry to his mother

After a short time, a collection of poems called “Radunitsa” was published. Yesenin also collaborates with Socialist Revolutionary magazines. The poems “Transfiguration”, “Octoechos” and “Inonia” are published in them.

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

Having started writing the famous poem “Pugachev,” he traveled to many significant and historical places: the Caucasus, Solovki, Crimea, and even got to Tashkent, where he stayed with his friend, the poet Alexander Shiryaevets.

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

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

In 1921, a serious change occurred 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 to Duncan broke up.

The last days of Yesenin

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

In 1924, he traveled to and then to Georgia, where his works “Poem of the Twenty-Six,” “Anna Snegina,” “Persian Motifs” and a collection of poems “Red East” were published.

When the October Revolution occurred, it gave the work of Sergei Yesenin a new, special strength. 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 lifetime, they were stubborn rivals, constantly competing in talent.

Although no one allowed themselves to make vile statements towards their opponent. Compilers of Yesenin’s biography often quote his words:

“I still love Koltsov, and I love Blok. I’m just learning from them and Pushkin. What can you say? He knows how to write - that’s true, but is this poetry, poetry? I don't love him. He has no order. Things climb 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.”

Death of Yesenin

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

It must be said that, given the poet’s long-term depression, 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 from the biography and death of Yesenin began to emerge.

Due to the length of time, it is difficult to establish the exact events of those days, but the version that Yesenin was killed and then only staged a suicide looks quite reliable. We will probably never know how it really happened.

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 classified as one of the great Russian poets, called a subtle connoisseur of Russian life, as well as an amazing artist of words.

Posthumous photo of Yesenin

Yesenin's last verse

Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined separation
Promises a meeting ahead.

Goodbye, my friend, without a hand, without a word,
Don’t be sad and don’t have sad eyebrows, -
Dying is nothing new in this life,
But life, of course, is not newer.

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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.

Sergei Yesenin with his parents and sisters

Another reason for discord in the family was that after his father moved to Moscow, the boy began to live with his own 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 Grandfather Yesenin’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, and 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-Row Girl" (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.”

Sergei Yesenin on the beach in Europe

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”.

Sergei Yesenin (center) in the Caucasus

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 his maternal grandfather Titov took care of him. 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.

Yesenin told one of the poets: “If I don’t write four lines of good poetry in a whole day, I can’t sleep.” And he advised another in a comradely manner: “And remember: work like a son of a bitch! Work until your last breath! I wish you well!”

Living with an open heart, ready to give everything to people, Yesenin was not as simple as it seemed to some of his contemporaries. Nikolai Nikitin very correctly noticed this character trait of Yesenin: “Yes, he was very sociable... But in this sociability there was at the same time restraint. In our opinion, Yesenin was not at all as simple as one might think. He was a man in his own way, both complex and simple. And to a certain extent reserved, strange as it may seem to talk about him, who lived his days among the noise.”

Is this why even those who were with the poet for a long time could not discover the “secret” of his magic? And, unfortunately, they overlooked what a pure human spring they were at, what a Promethean fire was raging next to them. It was then that all sorts of “legends” and “novels without lies” were written.

Of all the legends about Yesenin, perhaps the most enduring and most unfair is about the “Careless Talent”. And it’s a pity that it still exists in some places today.

And how many times have you read and listened in the past about Yesenin’s “pessimism”. But it’s hard to find such a lover of life as Yesenin was! He was endowed with the rare gift of a sense of beauty in the world around him. The beauty of life was completely revealed to him.

As for the motives of sadness and sad thoughts, Yesenin was deeply convinced: “A poet needs to think about death more often, and only by remembering it can a poet feel life especially keenly.” And then, we will add on our own behalf, the following verses are born in the poet’s heart:

Yesenin’s life and work occurred during one of the most difficult periods in the history of our country.

Russian literature has always been a vivid exponent of the socio-political sentiments of Russian society. In society, mainly among the intelligentsia, a reassessment of values ​​began at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The literature of the period of populism was deeply social and vividly realistic. She was imbued with the idea of ​​public service, the idea of ​​duty to the people. Content prevailed over form. For the intelligentsia, which had broken with revolutionary traditions, this literature became alien, incomprehensible and even hostile.

After realism came modernity and symbolism. This stage in the development of Russian poetry from 1890 to 1920 was called the “Silver Age”. During this period of time, Russia was experiencing the most severe upheavals in its life; the Russian-Japanese War, World War I, the revolutionary events of 1917, the civil war - all these events influenced the theme of the “Silver Age”. This was the reason why modernist movements in Russia had striking differences from Western modernity.

Modernity originated in the West; its founders, the “fathers of modernity,” are considered to be D. Joyce and F. Kafka, and it is significantly different from our Russian modernity, which acquired national features. Modernity in Russia gave rise to new trends unique to it: acmeism, imagism and egocentrism. Each movement had its own philosophical basis, the origins of which lay in the idea of ​​the Russian philosopher Solovyov about God-man, the ideal of the Renaissance. This theory was opposed to Nietzsche's theory of the superman, which defined the philosophy of Western modernity. But the main difference between Russian modernism was the shade of patriotism that it carried.

Each movement named the main theme in its poetry - the theme of the Motherland. It was present in every work of modernist poets.

But the most recent, noticeably sensational school in Russian poetry of the 20th century was imagism.

This direction was created in 1919 and existed for a very short time, about 2 years.

“Imagism” translated means “containing magic.” This movement originated in the west, and from there came to Russia. Just like symbolism and futurism, it differed significantly from the imagism of Western poets. He rejected all content and ideology in poetry, putting the image at the forefront.

“What is an image? - the shortest distance with the highest speed.” In the name of this “speed” of conveying artistic emotions, imagists, following the futurists, break the syntax - they do not use epithets, definitions, and put verbs in an indefinite direction. Among the outstanding representatives of this movement are R. Iveev, A. Kusikov, and A. Maringof.

Sergei Yesenin also joined the Imagist movement in 1919.

S. Yesenin's closeness with the Imagists had some purely literary grounds - their interest in the poetic image. At first, Yesenin did not notice the fundamental difference that he and his imagist friends had in relation to the image. However, over time, they parted ways.

These days, Yesenin’s poetic talent, the ideological and aesthetic significance of his works, the realistic spirit of Yesenin’s verse, the living blood connection of Yesenin’s work with folk poetic traditions and Russian classics are emerging more and more fully:

The realistic nature of Yesenin’s works is discussed in many articles about the poet. But the question naturally arises: what kind of realism is this: critical? Socialist or is it neorealism? Unfortunately, there is not a word about this in works about Yesenin. Meanwhile, if Yesenin’s early work fits relatively easily into the mainstream of critical realism, then such works as “Anna Snegina”, “The Ballad of Twenty-Six”, “Song of the Great March”, “Stanzas”, “Soviet Rus'” already can in no way be classified as critical realism.

What truth does Yesenin assert in these works, and why does he create them? How does it relate to the historical events it talks about, and, most importantly, what is the ideal of the poet? What does he strive for, what does he dream about?

On the vast map of Russia, somewhere near Ryazan, a barely noticeable point is lost - the ancient Prioksk village of Konstantinovo.

On that memorable day (October 2, 1965), people were walking and driving to Konstantinovo in the morning. Residents of Ryazan and Muscovites, southerners and Siberians, Leningraders and Gorky residents - they gathered in Yesenin’s homeland, from all over Russia, to open a museum of the great poet in a simple village hut.

Here on Ryazan soil, the poet’s childhood ended, his youth passed, here he wrote his first poems...

Until late in the evening, people walked to the “low house with blue shutters” to bow to the poet’s native hearth.

They will always go there, just as they go to Mikhailovskoye to Pushkin, to Tarkhany to Lermontov, to the Volga to Nekrasov...

Sergei Yesenin rose to the heights of poetry from the depths of people's life. “The Ryazan fields, where the men mowed, where they sowed their grain,” became the country of his childhood. The world of folk poetic images surrounded him from the first days of his life:

1And the fire of dawn, and the splash of a wave, and the silvery moon, and the rustle of reeds, and the immense blue, and the blue surface of the lake - all the beauty of the native land over the years has been poured into poems full of love for the Russian land:

No! It is no coincidence that in moments of revolutionary insight, the native Constantine sky appears to the poet in his poem “The sky is like a bell...” as a giant universal bell, and the month in the heavenly night blue as its ringing language...

Like Antey, every time it was especially difficult for Yesenin, he fell with his soul and heart to his native Ryazan land, again finding life-giving moral strength and energy for his immortal poems and poems about Russia.

From a young age, Russia sank into Yesenin’s heart, its sad and free songs, bright and youthful prowess, the rebellious Ryazan spirit and the shackling Siberian ringing, church bells and rural silence, cheerful girlish laughter and the grief of mothers who lost their sons in the war.

From heartfelt poems about the country of “birch calico”, the breadth of its steppe expanses, blue lakes, the noise of green oak forests to anxious thoughts about the fate of Russia in the “harsh menacing years”, each Yesenin’s line is warmed by a feeling of boundless love for the Motherland.

The pains and hardships of peasant Rus', its joys and hopes - all of this was poured into Yesenin’s sincere and bright, mournful and angry, sad and joyful stanzas.

No matter what the poet wrote about, even in the most difficult moments of loneliness, the bright image of the Motherland warmed his soul. What is happening, what is happening in his native Rus' today, what awaits it tomorrow - his thoughts constantly trouble him.

“My lyrics,” Yesenin said, not without pride, “are alive with one great love, love for the Motherland. The feeling of the Motherland is the main thing in my work.”

Let us remember his early poems: “My beloved land! The heart dreams...", "Go away, my dear Rus'...", "In the land where the yellow nettles..." and others. Let us remember “Rus,” written by a nineteen-year-old poet.

Among Yesenin's early works touching on the theme of war ("Patterns", "Belgium", and others), "Rus" is the most mature in ideological and artistic terms. In 1915, the poet published “Rus” in the journal “Northern Notes”. “With this poem,” recalls one of Yesenin’s contemporaries, “he gained fame and name for himself.”

The war was an irreparable disaster for peasant Rus'. How many Russian plowmen did not return to their homes from the war?! Millions of burial mounds - such was the bloody trace of the war on earth. “The war has eaten away my entire soul,” the poet will say later in “Anna Snegina.”

Severe, sad, truthful in “Rus”, the poet’s story about the Motherland in a time of great adversity. The atmosphere of anxious foreboding of impending disaster is already noticeable at the beginning of the poem:

But this Rus' is dear and close to the poet. He wants to believe that trouble, perhaps, will bypass his father’s land. And black clouds are already covering the horizon... War!

Black crows cawed: There is wide open space for terrible troubles. The whirlwind of the forest swirls in all directions, the foam from the lakes waves like a shroud.

Such lines can only be born in the heart of an artist, for whom war is an irreparable human grief. This is where the lyrical intensity of these lines comes from.

One after another, sad pictures of village life during the war unfold in “Rus”. The villages were empty. The huts were orphaned. Occasionally, unexpectedly, soldiers' news would come to the village:

With all his soul, with all his heart, the poet is with the people - both in short joyful moments and in long years of grief and sadness.

Waiting for gray-haired mothers... Even today it makes us think about many things, and many things make us relive the poet’s story about past military troubles on Russian soil.

The poem “Rus” is significant in all of Yesenin’s pre-October works. It is difficult to name another poem by Yesenin before 1917, where with such a definite social orientation, the poet’s feeling of love for the Motherland was so artistically fully revealed. “Rus” became, as it were, a kind of artistic credo of the young poet.

The image of the Motherland in “Rus,” as sometimes happened in Yesenin’s early poems, is not obscured by either religious symbolism or church “vocabulary.”

In “Rus” one can clearly hear one’s own poetic voice, one’s own song about the Motherland. And at the same time, this song seems to continue the heartfelt song about the Russian land; In terms of mood, “Rus” somehow echoes Blok’s mournful thoughts about the Motherland:

And perhaps most of all, it makes us remember the lines of the famous Nekrasov song “Rus”:

And although in Yesenin’s “Rus” one hears more the mournful voice of the “muse of sadness” than the “muse of revenge”, popular anger, one cannot help but see and feel the main thing - that at its core this work, written with the blood of the heart, is close in spirit to Nekrasov’s poetry.

Yesenin's lyrics are rooted in the real reality that surrounded the poet:

The poet’s heart is gnawed by a “weeping” thought: “Oh, you are not happy, my native land.”

Images of Russian people - workers are depicted in a number of Yesenin's early poems with filial concern for their fate, often unsettled and joyless. Here are the peasants, whose sowing has been drowned out by drought, the rye is drying up, and the oats are not sprouting, and a little girl, asking with tears for “a piece of black bread” at the window of a large mansion; here is “the old grandfather with his back bent, a clean trampled bale”; and an old mother whose son is fighting in a distant land; here are the village boys-recruits, who “before the recruitment were tormented by grief”; and a peasant girl whose lover was killed in the war. The poet's gaze notices the lonely huts of the villages, and the sandy road along which people in shackles walk. And it would be wrong, according to the old “tradition,” to see in Yesenin’s early poetry only the idealization and poeticization of patriarchal village antiquity.

Already in the works created by Yesenin shortly after the February events, the rumbles of the future ocean of peasant element, the rebellious alarm bell, are clearly audible:

This is how the Russian land now appears before the poet’s gaze - yesterday it was still sad, a “peaceful corner”, “a gentle homeland”, “a side of the feather grass forest”. The whole world for him is painted in light, rainbow colors. The Russian plowman, the Russian peasant, who until recently was so peaceful, turns into a brave hero - the giant Otcharya. Yesenin's man - Otchar is endowed with the "power of Anika", his "mighty shoulders are like granite - a mountain", he is "ineffable and wise", in his speeches there is "blue and song". There is something in this image from the heroic figures of the Russian epic epic. Otchari makes us remember, perhaps, first of all, the hero - the plowman Mikula Selyaninovich, who was subject to the great pull of the earth, and he playfully plowed the open field with his miracle plow.

October illuminated Yesenin’s poetry with a new light. “If it weren’t for the revolution,” he said, “I might have dried up on useless symbols.” True, at first the revolutionary theme was solved by Yesenin in a unique way. The new world appears in his poems in the form of the romantic “city of Ionia”, where the “deity of the living” lives and the “revolutionary” faith reigns:

But even now the main thing in his works is the awareness of the strength and freedom that October promised both to the poet and to peasant Rus'.

“Today the basis of the world is being revised,” said Vladimir Mayakovsky. “Revolutionary, keep your step!” - Alexander Blok called on the sons of the rebel Russia. Sergei Yesenin also foresaw great changes in the life of Russia:

Full of vitality and self-confidence, the poet “today is ready to turn the whole world with an elastic hand.” The poet resolutely discards the motives of humility and submission and enthusiastically proclaims:

He is increasingly captivated by the “vortex” principle, the universal, cosmic scope of events.

The poet Pyotr Oreshin, recalling his meetings with Yesenin during the revolution, emphasized:

“Yesenin accepted October with indescribable delight, and accepted it, of course, only because he was already internally prepared for it, that his entire inhuman temperament was in harmony with October...”

In those unforgettable days, clear, intense rhythms burst into his poems from the bad revolutionary reality:

This was in 1918. Later, Mayakovsky would say about these poems: “then I began to come across Yesenin’s lines and poems that I could not help but like...”

Yesenin felt: one cannot sing about Russia transformed by October in the old way. “Revolution, and he’s “out-of-touch songs...”

Punishment! The old man became quite heavy; - he said to one of the poets about Klyuev, and advised another in a letter: “Stop singing this stylized Klyuev Rus' with its non-existent Kitezh... Life, the real life of Rus' is much better than the frozen picture of the Old Believers.”

The breath of the revolutionary thunderstorm also touched Yesenin’s lyrical poems, full of love for the Motherland and the subtlest penetration into the world of Russian nature:

You are beautiful, oh white surface! A slight frost warms my blood! I just want to press the bare breasts of birches to my body.

The joy of renewing his native land captured the poet. O muse, my flexible friend,

It seemed that a little more effort, and the eternal dream of the Russian plowman about the “golden age” would come true.

But the life of revolutionary Rus' was unfolding more and more abruptly: the fire of civil war was blazing, the interventionists tormented the country, devastation and hunger were doing their dirty work.

It was during this difficult period of class battles that Yesenin’s “peasant deviation” manifested itself most noticeably. “During the years of the revolution,” the poet wrote in his autobiography, “he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias.” One should not think that the peasant deviation is a manifestation of only the subjective aspects of the poet’s worldview and creativity. In Yesenin’s works, this deviation, first of all, reflected those specific, objective contradictions that were characteristic of the Russian peasantry during the period of the revolution.

The harsh everyday life of war communism required iron discipline, the introduction of surplus appropriation, and the subordination of the entire life of the country to a single goal - to defeat the enemy, first external and then internal.

In this harsh, menacing time, the heart of the “last poet of the village” cannot stand it:

The question painfully arises before the poet: “Where is the fate of events taking us?” It was not easy to answer then. All around were visible traces of war and devastation: hungry, deserted villages, skinny unkempt fields, black webs of cracks in the drought-scorched, dead land...

It was then that the poet’s utopian dreams of the “City of Ionia, where the deity of the living lives,” collapsed. He composes his “Skoroost”:

Listen to the bleeding pain and irrepressible sorrow for the irrevocable, doomed old village that is heard in “Skoroost”, “Song of Bread”, “Confession of a Hooligan”, in the poems “The Mysterious World, the World of My Village...”, “I am the Last poet of the village,” and at the same time, what a soul-burning anxiety for the future of Russia in this tragic song of the poet!

How can one forget the romantic image of Yesenin’s “red-maned foal”! It has a deep historical meaning:

The passage of time, the course of history is inexorable. The poet feels this. “A steel horse defeated a living horse,” he notes with alarm and sadness in one of his letters.

This worries us in its own way today...

The poet strives to understand the meaning of what is happening:

During the years of the revolution, the poet's ideological and artistic development was also hampered by foreign influences on his work, especially since 1919, by the literary group of imagists.

The Imagists were aesthetes and snobs in their literary views. “Art is form. Content is one of the parts of form,” they said.

What brought the realist Yesenin into the world of the Imagists?

In the first years of the revolution, Yesenin showed special interest in identifying the nature of the organic, “objective” image, the relationship of poetry to life and other aesthetic problems.

The poet is very strict in evaluating both his poems and the work of other writers. “I have been sick a lot over the years,” he notes in one of his letters from that time, “I studied the language a lot and to my horror I saw that ... all of us, including me, do not know how to write poetry.”

Getting closer to the Imagists, Yesenin initially believed that his aesthetic principles were close to their creative aspirations. In fact, the formalistic delights of the Imagists were deeply alien to Yesenin’s poetry. The Imagists sometimes took him away to their winding lanes.

Yesenin's artistic authority was already high in those years. The Imagists, whose literary fame was often zero, tried with all their might to cling to Yesenin, while he felt more and more clearly the difference between his and their views on art. “It seems to my brothers,” Yesenin said in the spring of 1921 about the Imagists, “that art exists only as art. Outside of any influences of life and its way of life... But may my brothers forgive me if I tell them that this approach to art is too frivolous... My brothers do not have a sense of homeland in the broadest sense of the word, because they have such everything is inconsistent. That is why they love the dissonance that they have absorbed into themselves with the suffocating fumes of buffoonery for the sake of antics itself.”

Often, in order to better understand the present, an artist turns to those events of the past that, as it seems to him, are somehow consonant with his time.

This is how Yesenin’s “Pugachev” manifests itself. Having conceived his play as a lyrical drama, Yesenin does not give in it ethical pictures of a popular uprising. However, the national character of the drama lies in the author’s artistic disclosure of the social causes of the uprising, in showing that the action against the peasants and Cossacks, and the population of the royal outskirts, groaning “from the Russian bureaucratic bondage,” and the Ural workers, was historically inevitable:

In the original, daring figure of the leader of the peasant freemen - Pugachev, in his comrades - the rebel Khlopush, the daredevil Zarubin, remarkable traits of the Russian character are revealed: a lively mind and brave prowess, honesty and justice, hatred of slavery and oppression, loyalty to the common cause, love for the homeland. The central image of the work is Pugachev. “In addition to Pugachev,” the author himself notes, “

Almost no one repeats themselves in the tragedy: there are new faces in every scene. This gives more movement and brings forward the main role of Pugachev.”

We saw Pugachev both at the moment when the rebellion was just ripening, and after the first unsuccessful performances of the Cossacks, when some of them were already ready to flee to Turkey; and on the days when Pugachev decides to declare himself tsar (“It hurts, it hurts me to be Peter when Emelyanov’s blood and soul”); and, finally, in the difficult moments of the collapse of Pugachev’s plans.

“Pugachev” reflected Yesenin’s anxious thoughts about the future of peasant Rus', which so worried the poet at that time:

Maxim Gorky, to whom Yesenin read “Pugachev” during a meeting in Berlin, recalled later: “He excited me to the point of a spasm in my throat, I wanted to cry.”

The Russian land is generous with poets. The “young, unfamiliar” tribe, whose appearance was welcomed by A.S. Puki, inherited Pushkin’s admiration for the beauties of the Russian land and his love for the Russian word. This tribe includes such wonderful poets as Tyutchev, Koltsov, Lermontov, Fet, Nekrasov and S. Yesenin, who is very close to us.

S. Yesenin inherited Pushkin's poetic culture in a realistic description of his native nature. However, his landscape lyrics are essentially different from Pushkin’s. It has a much stronger influence of traditional Russian folklore and pagan mythology.

In Yesenin’s work one can strongly feel the ancient, pagan attitude towards nature. Full recognition of her independence and animation.

Yesenin comes to Pushkin's sense of the eternal flow of life, the inevitability of death as an immutable law of life.

In Yesenin’s poetry we are captivated and captured by the amazing harmony of feeling and word, thought and image. “In my subsidence,” the poet wrote in 1924, the reader should mainly pay attention to the lyrical feeling and the imagery that showed the path to many, many young poets and fiction writers. I didn’t invent this image, it was and is the basis of the Russian spirit and eye, but I was the first to develop it and put it as the main stone in my poems. He lives in me organically, just like my passions and feelings. This is my specialty, and this can be learned from me just as I can learn something else from others.”

The poet’s entire work is permeated with a lyrical feeling: his thoughts about the fate of his homeland, poems about his beloved, moving stories about his four-legged friends. Yesenin’s “green-spiked” birch tree is infinitely dear and close to us - the poet’s most favorite image; and his old maple “on one leg, guarding the “blue Rus'”, and the flowers, bowing their heads towards the poet on a spring evening.

In Yesenin’s poems, nature lives a unique poetic life. She is all in perpetual motion, in endless development and change. Like a person, she sings and whispers, is sad and happy. In depicting nature, Yesenin uses the rich experience of folk poetry.

He often resorts to the technique of personification. His bird cherry “sleeps in a white cape; the willows are crying, the poplars are whispering, the cloud has tied the lace in the grove,” “the girls were sad - they were eating,” “the dawn called out to another,” “a pine tree was tied up like a white scarf,” “quietly in the thicket of juniper along the cliff. Autumn is a red mare, scratching her mane.”

Yesenin's nature is multicolored, multicolored.

The poet's favorite colors are blue and light blue. These color tones enhance the feeling of the immensity of the steppe expanses of Russia (“only blue sucks the eyes”, “blue that fell into the river”, “blue evening, moonlit evening”, “predawn blue, early”, “blue May, glowing warmth”, “in blue summer evening"), express a feeling of tenderness and love (“blue jacket, blue eyes”, “blue-eyed guy”, “blue fire swept around”, etc.)

“Art for me,” Yesenin noted in 1924, “is not the intricacy of patterns, but the most necessary word of the language in which I want to express.” Reality and concreteness are characteristic of the poet. Let us recall, for example, the Yesenin month “a curly lamb - the month walks in the blue grass”; “The red moon was harnessed to ours like a foal”; “and the month, like a yellow raven... hovers over the earth.”

Yesenin’s nature is not a frozen landscape background: it lives, acts, reacts passionately to the destinies of people and the events of history. She is the poet's favorite hero. It is inseparable from a person, from his mood, from his thoughts and feelings.

Belinsky once noted that “the power of genius is based on the living, inextricable unity of man and poet.” It is this fusion of man and poet in Yesenin’s lyrics that makes our hearts beat faster, suffer and rejoice, love and be jealous, cry and laugh with the poet.

Yesenin is a bright, original, deep thinker. The confession of one of the poet’s contemporaries is characteristic: “It always seemed to the interlocutor... that Yesenin spoke at that moment to the very bottom, while in fact he never reached the very bottom of Yesenin’s thought, and no one could dive to the bottom!”

In Yesenin's poetry, feelings and thoughts are inseparably fused. It is enough to recall his poems such as “The golden grove dissuaded me...,” “Returning to my homeland,” “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry...”, “Letter to a woman” and many others.

Thanks to Pushkin, we stop in excitement and freeze before the beautiful picture of an autumn day or before the radiance of a winter road. And in the world of Yesenin’s poetic images, we begin to feel like brothers of a lonely birch, an old maple, a rowan bush, and various animals.

Living, vibrant pictures of nature in Yesenin’s poems not only teach to love and preserve the world of green beauty. They, like nature itself, contribute to the formation of our worldview.

The world of man and nature in Yesenin’s poetry are united and indivisible.

The poet is well aware that the removal of man from nature, and even more so the conflict with it, brings irreparable damage to society. That is why Yesenin so openly defends the red-maned foal in poetry. For him, he personifies the beauty and harmony of the world.

Poetry is highly dramatic and truthful, it is full of acute social conflicts and truly tragic moments.

“Skoroust” and “Anna Snegina”, “Pugachev” and “Song of the Great March”, “Departing Rus'” and “Captain of the Earth”, “Confession of a Hooligan” and “Stanzas”, “Moscow Tavern” and “Persian Motifs” - at first It’s hard to even imagine that all these poems were created by one person, and in such an incredibly short time.

And it is all the more annoying and upsetting that in the past, Yesenin’s works were viewed by many who wrote about the poet extremely one-sidedly. Contradictions in the poet’s views and work were most often explained by Yesenin’s individual character traits, the “duality” of his poetic personality.

The idea of ​​the “doubleness” of the lyrical hero of Yesenin’s poetry, the poet’s love for Russian patriarchal antiquity and “detachment” from revolutionary reality was especially emphasized when talking about such verses and poems as “Skoroust”, “Black Man”, “Confession of a Hooligan” , “I am the last poet of the village...” and some others.

At the same time, for a long time, another objective side of the poet’s life and work was lost sight of. The drama of Yesenin's poetry is generated, first of all, by the historical conditions in which the poet created his works. The contradictions in Yesenin’s views and creativity were deep and serious reflections of actual life events in his soul.

The need to understand the objective nature of Yesenin’s contradictions, to identify and trace the development of his poetry: to show why and how he comes from “Ionia” and “Skoroost” to “Anna Snegina”, “Soviet Rus'”, “Song of the Great March”.

Yesenin’s trip to Europe and America played an important role in this decisive turn. Back in 1922, Yesenin noted: “Only abroad did I understand quite clearly how great the merit of the Russian revolution was, which saved the world from hopeless philistinism.” In his letters abroad, the poet writes about the harmful influence of “Mr. Dollar” on European life and art. “Coming from Moscow, it seemed to us that Europe is the most extensive market for the dissemination of ideas and poetry, but now from here I see: my God! How beautiful and rich Russia is in this sense. It seems that there is no such country yet and there cannot be.”

In his essay about America, published in August 1923, after returning from abroad, in the newspaper Izvestia, Yesenin gave a sharp contrast between industrial power, the maturity of technical thought, the scope of construction in the country and the poverty of America's internal culture. “The strength of reinforced concrete, the enormity of buildings,” notes Yesenin, “has constricted the Americans’ brains and narrowed their vision.”

Characterizing the range of vital and cultural interests of Americans, Yesenin notes that “the dominion of the dollar ate away their aspirations for any complex issues. The American is completely immersed in business and doesn’t want to know the rest.” At the same time, seeing the high development of technology in European countries, the poet felt even more acutely the inevitability of the end of the field poverty of Rus'. “On the way from Europe to America, I remembered the smoke of the fatherland, about our village, where almost every peasant sleeps in his hut a calf on straw or a pig with piglets, I remembered after the Belgian and German highways our impassable roads and began to scold everyone clinging to “Rus”, as in dirt and lice. From that moment on, I fell out of love with poor Russia... From that day on, I fell even more in love with communist construction.”

But, of course, the decisive and determining factor in the turning point of Yesenin’s sentiments were the enormous revolutionary and social changes that took place in the poet’s homeland. Soviet Rus' was healing the wounds of war and devastation. Many of the contradictions that until recently seemed insoluble have become a thing of the past.

The poet rejoices at the good changes that took place in the life of the Russian peasantry. “You know,” Yesenin told Yuri Lebedinsky, “I’m now from the village... And that’s all Lenin! He knew what word needed to be said to the village in order for it to move. What kind of power is there in him, huh?”

Yesenin is increasingly trying to understand, to comprehend philosophically everything that is happening in these years in Russia and throughout the world. The horizons and scope of his poetry are expanding.

The “maturely knowledgeable” poet at this time wrote most of his widely known poems: “Soviet Rus'”, “Departing Rus'”, “Return to the Homeland”, more than sixty lyric poems. All this in two years! At the same time, Yesenin wrote his famous historical and revolutionary poems: “Song of the Great March”, “Anna Onegin”, “Poem of 36”, “Ballad of Twenty-Six”.

The era of Peter and the era of October - the poet’s attention is focused on them in two parts of the “Song of the Great March”.

The main idea of ​​the first part lies in the image of the “working people” who built a city among the fogs and swamps. Those who built it died “tight granite lay on their bones.” But the great Peter is afraid of popular retribution. At night he hears the angry voice of those who died:

The St. Petersburg workers who rose to defend the city of the revolution are the main characters of the second part:

If in “Song of the Great March” much attention is paid to the story of those historical prerequisites that led to the collapse of the autocracy, then in “Anna Snegina” the main theme is October in the countryside. The poem is full of dramatic events related to the fate of the people and, above all, the peasant masses in the revolution.

Here the poet uses genuine historical events to show revolutionary events. The fate of the main characters of the poem is closely connected with these events: the landowner Anna Snegina, the entire farm, which during the revolution the peasants “took into the volost”; the poor peasant Ogloblin Pron, who takes on the power of the Soviets and dreams of quickly eliminating communism in his village; old miller; the narrator-poet, fellow countryman Pron, involved in “peasant affairs.” The attitude of the author of the poem towards his characters is imbued with understanding and concern for their destinies.

“Anna Snegina” is also full of deeply historical meaning and the author’s thoughts about the severe irreparable troubles that the World War brought to the people:

Unlike his first works, which glorified the transformed peasant Rus' as a single whole, in “Anna Snegina” the poet showed different “men”: peasant workers, especially the rural poor, warmly welcome Soviet power and follow Lenin; There are also some among the peasants who “still need to be cooked”; there are inveterate owners; there are loudmouths and slackers marching in the “easy life” revolution.

It was sometimes customary, especially in the past, to talk about “Anna Snegina” only as a lyric poem, although it is obvious that it is also an epic poem.

From the utopian “peasant paradise” on earth in “Ionia,” Yesenin came in “Anna Snegina” to a realistic depiction of the difficult path of the Russian peasantry in the revolution, and managed to create bright dramatic characters.

In the poems written by Yesenin in 1924 - 1925, especially in the Caucasus, the new takes precedence over the old. The poet is all in motion. He feels in the wave of new life.

Many of Yesenin’s poems of that time - “My Path”, “Letter to Mother”, “Letter to a Woman”, “Letter to Sister”, “Letter to Grandfather”, “To Kachalov’s Dog”, and others, where he seems to look back on his past way, are largely autobiographical: this is an honest confession of the poet. Truly artistic

they contain images without which it is impossible to imagine Yesenin’s work. And above all, the image of the mother. In the most difficult moments of his life, the poet turns to his mother as to a true friend:

In the Caucasus, Yesenin wrote a wonderful cycle of poems “Persian Motifs”. There is so much beautiful purity in the poet’s attitude towards “my dear walk.”

The beauty of eastern nature, a pleasant southern wind, but thoughts about the homeland do not leave the poet here either, his native land attracts him to itself:

“Persian Motifs” show how tender and bright the poet’s love was.

In the spring of 1925, Yesenin returned to Moscow. It was with a heavy foreboding that he left his new friends, for whom he had worked so well:

Arriving in Moscow, Yesenin intended to break off relations with bohemia. He speaks about this desire in another of his Caucasian letters. “When I arrive in the spring, I won’t let anyone get close to me anymore... All this was a farewell to my youth. It won't be like that now." In the poem “My Way” the poet says:

But this position did not suit Yesenin’s loyal friends. Behind his back and in front of him, they said that the “real” poet is not in “Soviet Rus'”, but in “Tavern Moscow”. Voices were heard that many of Yesenin’s Caucasian poems were mediocre and that it was perhaps too early for Yesenin to write about Marx and Lenin.

The poet, a humanist, whose heart is filled with mercy for people, could not remain indifferent to the tragic fate of his compatriots, who, due to class, estate and other reasons, found themselves after the revolution on a foreign shore, people without a homeland.

Yesenin felt the bitter and inevitable end of their fate at a time when many Russian emigrants still believed that soon everything in their homeland would return to its place, that the Bolsheviks were about to “fall.”

The complex feelings in the poet’s soul and his poems reflected in their own way the drama of post-revolutionary reality and, in particular, the fate of Russian people who found themselves in a foreign land. All this echoed more than one sad note in Yesenin’s poetry, filled with kindness, compassion, mercy for people and all living things on earth.

The poems that were written by the poet abroad are especially bitterly true. Four poems: “Boredom... Boredom”, “Sing, sing. On the damn guitar...", "Yes! Now it's decided. No return..." - were first published by Yesenin as a kind of "small poem". It was published in Berlin in 1923.

In a brief introduction to the collection, Yesenin emphasized: “I feel like a master in Russian poetry and therefore I drag words of all shades into poetic speech, there are no impure words...

Words are citizens. I am their commander. I'm leading them."

Yesenin returned from a trip abroad when the NEP was in full swing in the country, with all its characteristic gains and losses. It so happened that the mood of hopelessness, melancholy and disappointment, loss of self-confidence and recklessly lived life, so characteristic of the “hero” of “Moscow Tavern,” turned out to be something close in its own way during the NEP years, firstly, than, who else hoped for a revival of the old bourgeois order in Russia, secondly, among young people, especially students, who were clearly at a loss before the inevitable events and contradictions of the reality of those years.

There were also people at that time who hated Soviet power, but they hid for the time being.

As for Yesenin, what is important for the humanist poet is not so much the moral “fall” of his lyrical hero in “Moscow Tavern”, but rather his spiritual revival, the awakening in his soul and heart of a again bright feeling of love and hope.

This is how the second, central part of the book “Moscow Tavern” appeared - the cycle of poems “The Love of a Hooligan.” It was created by Yesenin in the second half of 1923. The poet dedicated it to the Chamber Theater actress Augusta Mikalashevskaya, whom he met after returning from abroad.

“The Love of a Hooligan” includes such now widely known lyrical poems by Sergei Yesenin, such as “A blue fire began to sweep ...”, “You are as simple as everyone else ...”, “Let others drink you ...”, “ Dear, let’s sit next to you...”, “Don’t torment me with the coolness...”.

The poet, as it were, forces the “hero” of “Tavern Moscow” to go through one after another the circles of a kind of Dante’s hell, through which he, in the end, persistently overcoming everything alien in his soul, rises to that spiritual height from which the essence of human existence, life is revealed and death, good and evil, eternity and immortality...

All of us, all of us in this world are perishable, Copper quietly flows from the maple leaves... May you be blessed forever, That came to flourish and die.

It is with this poem that Yesenin concludes the book “Moscow Tavern,” published in the summer of 1924.

Thinking about the moral, humanistic meaning of “Moscow Tavern”, thinking again and again about the difficult fate of its lyrical hero, about the beautiful light of love falling on his heart, warming his soul, about the rebirth of man in him - you begin to remember Dostoevsky and many of his heroes , their falls to the bottom of life, suffering and repentance, spiritual rebirth.

And not only Dostoevsky...

You think about the humanism of Maxim Gorky and, in particular, about his world-famous play “At the Depths”, with Satin’s magnificent monologue: “Man - this sounds proud”; you think about the “Walking Through Torment” of the heroes of Alexei Tolstoy; Dasha and Katya, Telegina and Rodina, whom love helps to rediscover a seemingly forever lost sense of homeland.

Of course, each of the heroes mentioned above had their own path in life, their own sometimes far from simple fate, their own ups and downs. But each of them was uniquely, in his own way, moved towards goodness, towards the light of hope by love!

Sergei Yesenin was destined by history, by time, together with the pioneers of Soviet poetry - Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Blok - to talk about the birth and establishment on earth of a man of a new, revolutionary world, and at the same time to say a decisive “no” to the “black man” - the black forces of evil and lack of spirituality.

“The Black Man” - the idea for the poem arose from Yesenin during his years of travel abroad.

“Sergei Yesenin,” reported in the eighth issue of the magazine “Russia” in 1923, “has returned from New York... He wrote a cycle of lyrical poems “Land of Scoundrels” and “Black Man in a Black Glove.” According to the testimony of contemporaries A. Mariengof, V. Shershnevich and others, Yesenin read the first version of the poem, much more dramatic and larger in size, after returning to his homeland in 1923.

Back at the end of 1955, the poet’s wife Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya-Yesenina, showing her preserved autograph of the final lines of the poem, remarked with obvious chagrin: “Strange as it may seem, I heard and even read from someone that “The Black Man” was written in a state of intoxication, almost delirious. What nonsense this is! Take another look at this draft autograph. What a pity that it was not completely preserved. After all, Yesenin gave a lot of effort to the “Black Man”! I wrote several versions of the poem. The latter was created before my eyes, in November of '25. Two days of hard work. Yesenin hardly slept. I finished it and read it to me right away. It was scary. It seemed like my heart would break. And what a shame that “The Black Man” has not been revealed by criticism... and yet I wrote about this in my comments. The idea for the poem originated with Yesenin in America. He was shocked by the cynicism, the inhumanity of what he saw, the insecurity of man from the black forces of evil.”

“The Black Man” is a kind of poet’s requiem.

With tragic sincerity, Yesenin told us about his poetic confession about the “black” that darkened his soul, that increasingly worried his heart. But this is only one facet, one side of the poem,

since it is now especially obvious that its artistic, philosophical and social content is undoubtedly much deeper.

With his poem, Yesenin so fiercely “hit” the “black man”, so fearlessly exposed his soul that the need for a harsh, merciless fight against the black forces of evil became even more obvious. This is the second facet, the second side of the poem.

The works of a truly national artist excite and attract not only his compatriots, but inevitably evoke a warm response in the minds and hearts of other countries and nations.

In many European countries, readers became acquainted with Yesenin’s works during the poet’s lifetime. In 1930, when a volume of Yesenin’s poems was published in distant Japan, his poems were already known in Paris and Rome, Warsaw and Prague, Sofia and Brussels, New York and Madrid, London and Berlin.

Writers from Slavic countries, where back in the 20s, Yesenin’s poems became widely known, show especially great interest in Yesenin’s work. Writers whose work was connected with folk life are among the first to turn to Yesenin’s poetry here.

In Slovakia in 1936, a book of Yesenin’s poems was published, translated by the classic of Slovak poetry Janko Yesensky, who, while in Russia in 1918, became acquainted with Yesenin’s work. The outstanding German poet Johannes Becher considered Yesenin one of the most remarkable lyric poets of his time, a brilliant master of verse. He dedicated one of his poems to Yesenin.

The enormous attractive power of Yesenin’s lyrics is recognized today throughout the world.

Having passed away at the age of 30, Yesenin left us a wonderful poetic legacy. His talent was revealed especially brightly and originally in the lyrics.

“We have lost a great Russian poet,” wrote Maxim Gorky, shocked by Yesenin’s death.

Later, recalling the January days of 1926, when Moscow buried Yesenin, the writer Yu. Lebedinsky said: “before taking Yesenin to the Vagankovskoye cemetery, we surrounded the coffin with his body around the monument to Pushkin. We knew what we were doing - it was a worthy successor to Pushkin’s glory.”

“Over time, the Koltsov Russian land did not produce anything more radical, natural, appropriate and generic than Sergei Yesenin... At the same time, Yesenin was a living, beating lump of that artistry, which, following Pushkin, we call the highest Mozartian principle, Mozartian element,” - this is how the poet Boris Pasternak perceived Yesenin’s poems, with whom Yesenin repeatedly heatedly argued. Another poet - Yesenin's contemporary - Nikolai Tikhonov rightly stated:

Many poets, whose lyre began to sound after Yesenin, experienced the joy of the first meeting with his poems, each of them has “their own Yesenin” in their soul, each of them said his own living, excited word about the great poet of Russia.

Time leaves its mark on our thoughts, feelings, and mode of action. We are all children of our time. It is only important, no matter how difficult and sometimes tragic that time was, to see from your time with hope and faith in tomorrow. There is so much bright hope and faith in the future of Rus' in the poems of Sergei Yesenin, how much humanity and mercy towards people they contain.

These lines by Yesenin, filled with pride, joy, and pain for man, his fate, imbued with undisguised anxiety for the future of all humanity, our entire planet, could rightfully become an epigraph to all Yesenin’s verses and poems. And one more thing: they are extremely modern. There is a feeling that they were written in our days, when from cosmic heights, in a blue halo, the Earth is seen as especially beautiful and when the real threat of thermonuclear and environmental catastrophe, the possible death of humanity, unites all these people of good will. Such is the power of the insight of a brilliant poet.

A poet of genius is always popular and modern. No matter what aspects of his work we touch upon, no matter what his poems and poems we turn to.

It would seem that everything that Yesenin talks about in poetry, he talks about himself. But all this deeply worries each of us. Behind the personal fate of the poet stands his time, his era. And not only his time, his era. And not

only his time, but also our time. From his twenties, he invisibly stepped towards us, into today, and further into the future...

The movement of time is inseparable. One generation replaces another. The world has entered the 21st century...

The world of poetry moves and lives according to its own laws. New poetic stars and asterisks are constantly being born and sparkling in this wonderful world. Some burn out and fade away forever during their lifetime, the light from others reaches us over the course of decades, and only a few, very few warm the people’s “living soul” for centuries, flaring up brighter and brighter over time. The name of one of these stars in the immortal poetic constellation of Russia is Sergei Yesenin. It is eternal...

Since childhood, I have created poems about Yesenin, but I can’t wait to shatter some established prosaic opinions to smithereens, to express what has not been said:

Yesenin! Golden name. Murdered youth. Genius of the Russian land! None of the Poets who came into this world had such spiritual strength, enchanting, omnipotent, soul-grabbing childish openness, moral purity, deep pain-love for the Fatherland! So many tears were shed over his poems, so many human souls sympathized and empathized with every Yesenin line, that if it were counted, Sergei Yesenin’s poetry would outweigh any and much more! But this method of assessment is not available to earthlings. Although from Parnassus one could see that the people have never loved anyone so much! With Yesenin’s poems they went into battle in the Patriotic War, for his poems they went to Solovki, his poetry stirred souls like no one else’s: Only the Lord knows about this holy love of the people for their son. Yesenin’s portrait is squeezed into family wall photo frames and placed on the shrine along with the icons:

In remote villages, I was shown notebooks made of tissue paper with his poems, carefully copied at the behest of the soul by those who “in any weather” had never read other poets. This is the power of poetry that has survived time, real poetry, and not artificially grown or artificially raised for several years on a false pedestal.

And not a single Poet in Russia has ever been exterminated or banned with such frenzy and tenacity as Yesenin! And they banned, and kept silent, and belittled, and threw mud at them - and they are still doing this. It is impossible to understand why?

Take, for example, Mariengof’s book “A Novel Without Lies” - a complete lie. And this is the man to whom Yesenin, as a friend, dedicated so many poems (who would have known about him without Yesenin!) and who shamelessly lived at the expense of the Poet. Should he really blame Yesenin for stinginess? Usually in the restaurant Yesenin paid for the entire crowd, including Mariengof. Betrayal after murder. Yesenin: “Oh, Tolya, Tolya, are you, are you?..”; "You were the best for me:"

What I mean by all this, dear boys and girls, is that Yesenin still has quite a few such “friends”, and quite a lot of similar things have already been published about Yesenin, in order to erase his work. Time has shown: the higher Poetry is in its secret lordship, the more embittered the envious losers are, and the more imitators there are,

And also these constant executions! Many poets were killed: Nikolai Gumilev was shot on August 25, 1921; after him, all the peasant poets of Yesenin’s circle were methodically destroyed: Next, Sergei Klychkov was shot on October 8, 1937; Nikolai Klyuev was shot in Tomsk between October 23 and 25, 1937; Osip Mandelstam died in a transit prison on December 27, 1938. In the present time: when the bells of Epiphany frost were ringing, on the night of January 19, 1971, Nikolai Rubtsov was killed. And on February 17, 1988, when a blizzard howled about bells, Alexander Bashlachov died strangely: And next to everyone: offensive persecution, hooting, lies and slander. Ah, earthlings! Apparently, this is a special topic: But something common unites them all, innocently killed: Yesenin: “And the guns beat, / And the bells cry. / You, of course, understand, / What does this mean?”

Another great gift from God about Yesenin - he read his poems as uniquely as he created them. They sounded like that in his soul! All that remained was to say it. Everyone was shocked by his reading. Note that great Poets have always been able to read their poems uniquely and by heart - Pushkin and Lermontov: Blok and Gumilyov: Yesenin and Klyuev: Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam: So, young gentlemen, a poet mumbling his lines on a piece of paper from the stage is not a Poet, but an amateur: A poet may not be able to do many things in his life, but not this!

More about Yesenin. Wasn't "decadent". He completely lacked this pseudo-intellectual trait. Not decadent - but knowledgeable and honest in the peasant question: he foresaw the death of the peasantry, devastation, ruin of villages, desolation of the land. He was the first to understand what a black abyss of hopelessness we were going into without God in our souls! “I’m ashamed that I believed in God. / It’s bitter for me that I don’t believe now.” He believed, truly believed! Like all the peasantry, I used to live with faith in my soul! And now Russia - with bitterness in a devastated soul, and even with shame for the faith taken away!

It was precisely for this pure honesty in poetry (“peasant bias”, “religious symbolism”), for the bright power of insight that he was feared by the dark forces, and was physically destroyed along with all the Poets, as “a brake to a bright future.” Well, where did you fly without “brakes”?

I consider the common assertion incorrect that Yesenin stepped into the present with one foot, while the other remained in the past and thereby tormented and ruined himself. No, all his poetry speaks of something else: Yesenin was in the present, but stepped into the future with one foot and was horrified by his insight. Yesenin in 1920: “I am very sad now that history is going through a difficult era of the killing of the individual as a living thing, because what is going on is absolutely not the socialism that I thought about: Closely in it is the living, closely building a bridge to the invisible world, for they are cutting down and exploding these bridges from under the feet of future generations."

Based on the above, one should not criminally simplify Yesenin to a “pipe” shepherdess: what he “screamed” about in 1920 began to be whispered only in 1990. And the spiritual shifts that Yesenin “screams” about now will only be whispered in the Future.

The true assessment of Sergei Yesenin’s work has been greatly distorted by the years of socialism. To this I will add about the “scoops”. I think that a “scoop” is not one whose youth coincided with the years of “socialism,” but an individual of any time who is fanatically limited by the ideology of a certain group of people, like a children’s sandbox. "Soviet" people like to judge their neighbors by lynching.

I reject another common assertion. Yesenin never idealized hut Rus', he loved it, but this is completely different: The idealization of the countryside is not typical for peasants, it is usually idealized by urban people or “going to the people,” but not by those coming from the people. People who were born rather than raised in the countryside and collectors of folklore are also sometimes idealized: maybe this is not bad for them. Such demands (idealized or not?) should be approached to the Minister of Agriculture, and not to poets.

Yes, Yesenin created Birch virtuality and attracted many with him, but rare Poets succeed in creating their own virtual world. The vast majority of poets describe already created worlds, without knowing how to create their own: they are not creators. There was even a trend in literature and culture: “based on” alien worlds.

Yesenin had another gift - peasant intelligence and a thirst for survival. But let them not envy - this gift was given dearly to the peasants, it was paid for by the early death of many who preceded it, death due to reckless gullibility and benevolent openness to everyone.

So the bright, tender-hearted youth rushed, wading through the swamp to the illuminated, elite shore, so that his lyre would sound throughout all of Rus'. The Lomonosov path is a stone's throw to Moscow. Here you even have to put on special bast shoes - it’s easier to walk. And he reached the illuminated shore, but realized that it was not so illuminated.

Why did you go? Ridiculous question. In villages it is not customary to babysit, nurture, or admire such people; on the contrary - tragic rejection by everyone, an attempt to break, to direct "on the true path." It’s as if they are subconsciously and cruelly pushing a nugget out of their environment. This early on pushes us to a spiritual search for some illuminated shore, even though dispatches are coming from it - don’t listen, don’t issue passports, and so on: Therefore (if we talk about the past tense), keenly loving the village, fleeing from it at a certain period of formation is Lomonosov’s way of salvation native talent. And the assurance of the bigots (who are powerfully and densely settled in the city) that talent should remain with the earth forever - like gentle advice for suicide.

But for a talent from the people, the city is forever alien. A different way of life, different human relationships: arrogance, cynicism, carnal sensuality, shamelessness, corruption, the ability to snatch a piece from your neighbor’s throat, and so on: Life is life, where can you get away from it? Talent is a morally established personality, cannot adapt, only somehow pretends to adapt. It's painful. Yesenin: “If earlier they hit me in the face, Now my soul is covered in blood!” This is where the hated Black man appears, an inevitable tragic split that helps to exist in an alien environment, but at the same time awakens a merciless feeling of guilt: “This man lived in a country of the most disgusting thugs and charlatans!”

Yesenin’s life was left unsettled, for all his strength was devoted to achieving a high spiritual goal. For those around them, such personalities are an incomprehensible mystery. Such a talent, out of desperation and with God’s help, breaks out with its brilliant spiritual impulses into the unknown, high inosphere: Lermontov (in absentia!) about Yesenin: “He was not created for people:”

And this is something that some people cannot forgive. And Yesenin was killed on December 28, 1925 at the Angleterre Hotel, killed on New Year’s Eve, for his invincible strength, insight, and song genius. Yesenin is surprised by the label of suicide and smiles sadly: “I’m not such a bitter drunkard:”

And he knew, saw how the circle was narrowing, rushed about, felt surveillance: “This is how hunters poison the wolf, / Clutching them in the grip of raids:” Read this Yesenin poem “The Mysterious World:” He foresaw everything, like the great Poets before him.

The last poem, “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye:” is another secret of the Poet. In the same year, 1925, there are other lines: “You don’t know that life in the world is worth living!”

Yes, in the deserted city alleys, not only stray dogs, “lesser brothers,” but also big enemies listened to Yesenin’s light gait. Again I break from prose to my poetry:

And Bukharin is playing around the corner! Ax doesn’t care: What is Yesenin, what is Makhno, What is a million peasants, What is the chime of churches! He raised the ax -

Perhaps this is one of the most famous poetic names in Russia of the 20th century. In his short thirty years, the poet reflected in his work the most dramatic and turning points in the life of peasant Russia, which is why the red line in his work is a kind of tragic worldview and at the same time a surprisingly subtle vision of the nature of his vast homeland. This peculiarity of creativity can be explained by the fact that he was born and lived at the junction of two eras - the outgoing Russian Empire and the birth of a new state, a new world, where the old orders and foundations had no place. , the First World War, the February and October revolutions, difficult - all these events tormented the long-suffering country and its people, leading to the collapse of the old world. The poet, better than anyone, felt the tragedy of this situation, reflecting it in his work. However, one of the most bitter confessions sounds in his poem “I am the last poet of the village.” This work reveals the deep pain of the beginning of the death of that peasant life, whose singer he was throughout his life. , of which he was a supporter, did not bring freedom and prosperity to the life of the village, but, on the contrary, aggravated its situation, making the peasants even more powerless than in tsarist times. The premonition of the future death of the village is best reflected in these lines:

On the blue field path

The Iron Guest will be out soon.

Oatmeal, spilled by dawn,

A black handful will collect it.

The poet says goodbye to the village that is beginning to die and at the same time feels that his time has also passed. This is especially heard in such bitter lines:

Soon, soon wooden clock

They will wheeze my twelfth hour!

Yesenin became the last poet to glorify the past peasant Russia, which now remains forever in that old era. He has a conflict with the new Soviet Russia, where the poet feels like an absolute stranger here. Moreover, he does not know where future events are leading the country, and especially his beloved village, which he idolized so much. Such a work, where the poet forever says goodbye to his old life and rural Russia, was the poem - “Yes! Now it's decided! No return...", where he bitterly writes that he "left his native fields" and now he is destined to die on the "crooked streets of Moscow." Afterwards, the poet no longer refers to the village and peasant life in his works. And in the poems of the last years of his life there are mainly love lyrics and amazing poetic praise of nature, where, however, there is the bitterness of memories of that past happy life.

The poems of 1925, the last year of the poet’s life, are imbued with a special tragedy. Sergei Alexandrovich seems to feel his imminent death, so he writes “A Letter to his Sister,” where he turns to his past life and already says goodbye to his close relatives, admitting that he is ready to leave forever. But, perhaps, the feeling of imminent death was most clearly reflected in the poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye...”, where the poet says goodbye to an unknown friend and at the end utters the phrase: “In this life, dying is not new, But living, of course, not newer.” On December 28, 1925, he died in Leningrad, leaving behind a trail of unsolvable mysteries with his passing. He was the last poet of a bygone era with its peasant patriarchal way of life and careful attitude towards nature, which he deified. And the Yesenin village was replaced by a new way of life, which the poet was so afraid of, which completely changed the life of the peasants.

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 of 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 tsar 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) was of Irish descent, 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. By the time they met, Duncan was almost twice Yesenin’s age. 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 and was 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 (“Red-maned foal” and “a cast-iron train on its paws”), outlined in the poem “Sorokoous”, 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, becomes more deeply aware of Soviet reality, 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 walk away.

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 beliefs 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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