What was Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution? Yesenin’s attitude to the revolution: expectations, attitude, perception and reflection of events in the poet’s work. Sergei Yesenin on his deathbed

Yesenin and revolution

“There is no problem “Yesenin and the Revolution” as such,” writes the author of the Yesenin section in the reference book for students N. Zuev. According to his concept, Yesenin was neither a revolutionary nor a singer of the revolution. It’s just that when the world splits, the crack passes through the poet’s heart. “Attempts at naive faith and inevitable disappointments are declared the topic of a special conversation, which should not overshadow “the moral foundations of the poet’s personality, the search for God and himself in the world, which were directly reflected in his work” (8; 106). Without diminishing the significance of the last topic and sending the reader to the work of N. Zuev, who revealed the religious and folklore origins of Yesenin’s imagery (by the way, the latter are covered in a number of monographs and articles - 39; 4; 12), we still consider it necessary to highlight Yesenin’s attitude to the revolution, especially since this is obligatory not only the statements of the author himself, but also poetic images, the poet’s interest in Lenin’s personality.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, “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” (30; 1, 267).

Yesenin himself succinctly wrote in his autobiography: “During the years of the revolution he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias.” The last clause is not accidental, and it will make itself felt later. But the first period of the revolution, which gave land to the peasants, was indeed greeted sympathetically by the poet. Already in June 1918, “The Jordanian Dove” was written with the famous lines:

The sky is like a bell

The month is a language

My mother is my homeland,

I am a Bolshevik.

At the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. "Heavenly Drummer" was created:

The leaves of the stars are pouring

Into the rivers in our fields.

Long live the revolution

On earth and in heaven!...

In February 1919, Yesenin also admits that he is a Bolshevik and is “glad to rein in the land.”

In the unfinished poem “Walk in the Field” (it is symptomatic that it remained unfinished), Yesenin reflects on the mysterious power of the influence of Lenin’s ideas on the masses (“He is like a sphinx in front of me”). The poet is occupied with the question, which is not idle for him, “with what force he was able to shake the globe.”

But he shocked.

Make noise and veil!

Spin more fiercely, bad weather,

Wash it off the unfortunate people

The shame of the forts and churches.

As they say, you can’t erase words from a song.

Yesenin’s arrival to the Bolsheviks was perceived as an “ideological” step, and the poem “Inonia” was considered a clear indication of the sincerity of his godless and revolutionary passions. A.M. Mikeshin emphasized that the poet saw in the revolution an “angel of salvation” who appeared to the world of peasant life that was “on its deathbed”, perishing under the onslaught of the bourgeois Moloch (22:42).

As already noted in criticism, Yesenin’s poems “Inonia”, “Transfiguration”, “Dove of Jordan”, “Heavenly Drummer”, “Pantocrator” “burst into a poetic flurry of “ontological” rebellion, driven by the daring of a radical remake of the entire existing world order into a different system, to the “city of Inonia, Where the deity of the living lives.” Here we will meet many already familiar to us cosmic motifs of proletarian poetry, right down to the controlled Earth - a heavenly ship: “We give you a rainbow - an arc, the Arctic Circle - on a harness, Oh, take out our globe On a different track" ("Pantocrator"). The ideas of establishing a transformed status of being, bent by the revolutionary electricity of the era, acquire sharp features of god-fighting fury, purely human titanism, bringing these Yesenin's things closer to some of Mayakovsky's works of the late 10s. The transformation of the world is dreamed in images violence against it, sometimes reaching the point of real cosmic “hooliganism”: “I will raise my hands to the moon, I will crush it like a nut... Now I will rear you up onto the peaks of the stars, earth!.. I will bite through the cover of the milky. I will pluck even God’s beard with the baring of my teeth,” etc. (“Inonia”). It should be noted that such poetic frenzy quickly disappears (...) from Yesenin’s poetry.” (33; 276).

The most interesting in these poems are biblical and godless motifs, which again brings them closer to the works of Mayakovsky ("Mystery Bouffe", "Cloud in Pants"), but in Yesenin this is organically connected with folk culture, with the theme of "the sacrificial role of Russia, the chosenness of Russia for the salvation of the world, the theme of the death of Rus' for the atonement of universal sins." (12; 110).

Citing the lines from “The Jordanian Dove”: “My mother is my homeland, I am a Bolshevik,” A.M. Mikeshin emphasizes that in this case the poet “was wishful thinking” and was still far from genuine Bolshevism (22; 43). This is probably why disappointment soon set in regarding the revolution. Yesenin began to look not into the future, but into the present. “A new period was beginning in the poet’s ideological and creative evolution” (22; 54). The revolution was in no hurry to justify the poet’s hopes for a quick “peasant paradise,” but it revealed many things that Yesenin could not perceive positively. Already in 1920, he admitted in a letter to E. Livshits: “I am very sad now that history is going through a difficult era of the killing of the individual as a living person, because what is going on is completely different from the socialism that I thought about... It’s cramped for the living, cramped building a bridge to the invisible world, for they cut down and explode these bridges from under the feet of future generations. Of course, whoever opens it will then see these bridges already covered with mold, but it is always a pity that if a house is built, but no one lives in it. .." (10; 2, 338-339).

In this case, one cannot but be surprised by the power of foresight manifested in these words. They spent 70 years building a house called “socialism”, they sacrificed millions of human lives, a lot of time, effort, energy, and as a result they abandoned it and started building another one, not being completely sure that the people of the future would want to live in this too "home". History, as we see, repeats itself. And our era is probably somewhat similar to Yesenin’s.

Simultaneously with this letter, Yesenin writes the poem “Sorokoust”, the first part of which is filled with a premonition of impending disaster: “The fatal horn is blowing, blowing! What can we do, what can we do now?.. You can’t hide anywhere from death, You can’t escape anywhere from the enemy ... And the silent bull of the yard (...) sensed trouble over the field..." In the final 4th part of the poem, the premonition of trouble intensifies and takes on a tragic overtones:

That's why on September morning

On dry and cold loam,

My head smashed against the fence,

The rowan berries are drenched in blood...

The metaphorical participle crushed in combination with the blood of rowan berries evokes in the reader’s mind the image of a living being who contained doubts, torment, tragedy, the contradictions of the era and committed suicide because of their intractability.

Anxious sensations did not leave Yesenin for a long time. In 1924, while working on the poem “Walk in the Field,” he also wrote:

Russia! Dear land to the heart!

The soul shrinks from pain.

The field has not heard for many years

Cock crowing, dog barking.

How many years has our quiet life

Lost peaceful verbs.

Like smallpox, hoof pits

Pastures and valleys are dug up...

In the same 1924, in a short poem “Departing Rus',” Yesenin exclaimed with pain: “Friends! Friends! What a split in the country, What sadness in the joyful boiling!..” Envying those “who spent their lives in battle, who defended the great idea," the poet could not decide between the two warring camps or finally choose a side. This hides the drama of his situation: “What a scandal! What a big scandal! I found myself in a narrow gap...” Yesenin managed to convey his state and attitude of a man, restless, confused and tormented by doubts: “What did I see? I saw only a battle. Yes, instead of songs I heard cannonade..." The "Letter to a Woman" is about the same thing:

You didn't know

That I'm in complete smoke,

In a life torn apart by a storm

That's why I'm tormented because I don't understand -

Where does the fate of events take us...

The image of smoke in this case, according to V.I. Khazan, means “the cloudiness of the consciousness of the lyrical hero, the uncertainty of life’s path” (35; 25). From the tragic question “Where is the fate of events taking us?”, from mental torment, Yesenin, with his unstable mental organization, fled into a drunken stupor. The pain of his soul for Russia and the Russian people was drowned out and drowned in wine. The memoirs of his contemporaries say about this: “Yesenin, squatting, absentmindedly stirred the brands that were burning out with difficulty, and then, sullenly fixing his sightless eyes on one point, quietly began:

I was in the village. Everything is collapsing... You have to be from there yourself to understand... The end of everything (...)

Yesenin stood up and, clasping his head with both hands, as if wanting to squeeze out of it the thoughts that were tormenting him, said in a strange voice, unlike his own:

It makes noise like a mill, I can’t understand it myself. Drunk or what? Or it’s as simple as that..." (30; 1, 248-249).

Other memories also convince us that Yesenin’s drunkenness had complex and deep reasons:

“When I tried to ask him, in the name of various “good things,” not to drink so much and to take care of himself, he suddenly became terribly, especially agitated. “I can’t, well, don’t you understand, I can’t help but drink... If I didn’t drink, how could I have survived everything that happened?..” And he walked, confused, gesticulating wildly, around the room, sometimes stopping and grabbing my hand.

The more he drank, the more blackly and bitterly he spoke about the fact that everything he believed in was on the decline, that his “Yesenin” revolution had not yet come, that he was completely alone. And again, as in his youth, but now his fists clenched painfully, threatening invisible enemies and the world... And then, in an unbridled whirlwind, only one clear, repeated word swirled in the confusion of concepts:

Russia! You understand - Russia!..” (30; 1, 230).

In February 1923, returning from America to Europe, Yesenin wrote to Sandro Kusikov: “Sandro, Sandro! Mortal melancholy, unbearable, I feel like a stranger and unnecessary here, but as soon as I remember about Russia, I remember what awaits me there, I won’t go back.” I want to. If I were alone, if I didn’t have sisters, I would spit on everything and go to Africa or somewhere else. I’m sick of being a LEGITIMATE Russian son in my own state as a stepson. I’m tired of this f... condescending attitude of those in power , and it’s even more sickening to endure the sycophancy of my own brothers towards them. I can’t! By God I can’t. At least shout out the guard or take a knife and take the high road.

Now, when all that remains from the revolution is horseradish and a pipe (...), it has become obvious that you and I were and will be the bastard on which all dogs can be hanged (...).

And now, now an evil despondency comes over me. I cease to understand which revolution I belonged to. I see only one thing: neither to February nor to October, apparently. Some kind of November was and is hiding within us (...)" (16; 7, 74-75 - emphasis by me - P.Ch.).

Then in Berlin in the early morning of March 2, 1923. drunken Yesenin will say to Alekseev and Gul: “I love my daughter (...) and I love Russia (...), and I love the revolution, I love the revolution very much” (16; 7, 76). But after reading the letter to Kusikov, the last part of the poet’s confession no longer inspires confidence. In any case, one gets the impression that he loved “some kind of November”, but not February or October...

"Moscow Tavern"

So, the poet’s mental crisis in the early 20s. largely due to his disappointment in the results of the revolution. This relationship becomes clear in the later poem “Letter to a Woman” (1924):

Earth is a ship!

But someone suddenly

For a new life, new glory

In the thick of storms and blizzards

He directed her majestically.

Well, which of us is the biggest on deck?

Didn’t fall, vomit or swear?

There are few of them, with an experienced soul,

Who remained strong in pitching.

Then I too

To the wild noise

But maturely knowing the work,

He went down into the ship's hold,

So as not to watch people vomit.

That hold was -

Russian tavern,

And I leaned over the glass,

So that, without suffering for anyone,

Ruin yourself

In a drunken stupor...

The fact that Yesenin’s turn to wine was a conscious step is also evidenced by other lines of poems, both included in “Tavern Moscow” and not included in this cycle:

And I myself, with my head bowed,

I pour wine into my eyes,

So as not to see the fatal face,

To think for a moment about something else.

(“They’re drinking here again, fighting and crying”).

I'm already ready. I'm timid.

Look at the army of bottles!

I collect traffic jams -

Shut up my soul.

(“Joy is given to the rude”).

In wine, the poet wanted to forget himself, “even for a moment” to escape from the questions that tormented him. This may not be the only reason, but it is one of the main ones. This is how Yesenin enters the tavern world with its suffocating atmosphere of drunken stupor, which later found vivid embodiment in the cycle “Moscow Tavern” (1923-1924).

An analogy with A.A. Blok, who in 1907-1913 also sounded: “I’m nailed to the tavern counter, I’ve been drunk for a long time, I don’t care,” or “And it didn’t matter which ones Kiss your lips, caress your shoulders...” Criticism in this page of Blok’s poetry sees the peculiarity of symbolism with its setting: “ Laughing at broken illusions, avenge them with moral failure" (Lurie). Obviously, this position became a characteristic feature of the poetry of the Silver Age, a certain stage of which is represented by the poetry of S. Yesenin.

In 1923, during a trip abroad in Berlin, Yesenin published the collection “Poems of a Brawler.” The book included 4 poems, united by one title “Moscow Tavern”. It included the poems “They’re drinking here again, fighting and crying,” “Rash, harmonica. Boredom... Boredom...”, “Sing, sing on the damned guitar,” “Yes! Now it’s decided without return.” They have already given them a succinct and objective assessment:

“The poems of this cycle are distinguished by deliberately vulgar phraseology (...) Hysterical intonations, monotonous motifs of drunken prowess, replaced by mortal melancholy - all this testified to noticeable losses in Yesenin’s artistic work. There was no longer in it the rainbow of colors that distinguished his previous poems , - they were replaced by dull landscapes of the night city, observed through the eyes of a lost person: crooked alleys, curved streets, tavern lanterns barely glowing in the fog... Heartfelt sincerity, deep emotionality of Yesenin’s lyric poems gave way to naked sensitivity, the plaintive melodiousness of a gypsy romance" ( 41; 64).

In a short preface to the collection “Poems of a Brawler,” the author wrote: “I feel like a master in Russian poetry and therefore I drag into poetic speech words of all shades, there are no impure words. There are only impure ideas. The embarrassment of the bold word I uttered does not lie with me, but on the reader or listener. Words are citizens. I am their commander, I lead them. I really like clumsy words. I put them in the ranks like recruits. Today they are clumsy, but tomorrow they will be in the speech ranks the same as the whole army "(27; 257).

A little later, the poet said: “They ask me why in my poems I sometimes use words that are not accepted in society - it’s so boring sometimes, so boring that suddenly you want to throw something out. But what are “indecent words”? is used by all of Russia, why not give them the right of citizenship in literature" (30; 2, 242).

And "citizenship" was given:

Rash, harmonica. Boredom... Boredom...

The accordionist's fingers flow like a wave.

Drink with me, you lousy bitch

Drink with me.

They loved you, they abused you -

Unbearable.

Why are you looking at those blue splashes like that?

Or do you want a punch in the face? (...)

Rash, harmonica. Rash, my frequent one.

Drink, otter, drink.

I'd rather have that busty one over there -

She's dumber.

I'm not the first among women...

Quite a few of you

But with someone like you, with a bitch

Only for the first time...

This poem has already marked a sharp change in intonation, vocabulary, the very style of addressing a woman, the entire structure and melody of the verse: “It’s as if we are looking at the lines of another poet. The twitching rhythm, recitative language, vulgar vocabulary, embittered cynicism - all this does not in any way resemble that tenderness, poetry, at times even fabulousness, which sounded in his previous poems about love" (41; 109).

Indeed, in all of Yesenin’s work, this is the only poem in which such a disrespectful, offensive attitude towards women was expressed. Unworthy epithets (“lousy bitch,” “otter,” “bitch”), addressed at the beginning to the girlfriend of the lyrical hero, by the end take on a generalized character and are addressed to all women: “pack of dogs.” And the more vulgar the content of the poem, the more surprising is its ending, where the hero suddenly begins to shed tears of sentimentality and asks for forgiveness:

To your pack of dogs

It's time to catch a cold.

Honey, I'm crying.

Sorry Sorry...

Here the transition from offensive intonation to a request for forgiveness is so quick and abrupt that the sincerity of the hero’s tears does not inspire complete confidence in us. I.S. Eventov sees the problem differently:

“Here love is trampled upon, reduced to a carnal feeling, the woman is disfigured, the hero himself is demoralized, and his melancholy, interrupted by violence, is only replaced at the very end by a note of pitiful repentance (...)

The thought involuntarily suggests itself about a certain deliberateness, demonstrativeness of the picture depicted by the poet (and the vocabulary he uses), that he seems to be flaunting all the abomination of the tavern whirlpool in which he plunged and which does not please him at all, does not console him, but on the contrary - burdens him "(41; 109).

Nevertheless, it should be noted that despite all the “reduced” vocabulary of this poem, it is far from the obscenity that has poured into the literary stream these days. And most importantly, the “salt” of the poem is not in “indecent words,” but in the hero’s awareness of guilt and pain.

An ambivalent attitude towards the “object” of love is also observed in the poem “Sing, Sing on the Damned Guitar”, where, on the one hand, the poet looks at the beautiful wrists of a woman and “her flowing silk shoulders”, looks for happiness in her, but finds death . The hero is ready to come to terms with the fact that she kisses another, calls her “young beautiful trash” and then: “Oh, wait. I don’t scold her. Oh, wait. I don’t curse her...” And the following beautiful lines: “ Let me play in my mind to this bass string” - reveal the inner state of a person, calmly, without straining, aware of his passion for a “subject” that is not worthy of his attention, but at the same time not rushing to conclusions, as if this situation does not bother him very much . But in the second part of the poem, the hero again slides into vulgar everyday life, flaunting the enumeration of his victories over women, reducing the meaning and purpose of life to the “bed level”: “Our life is a sheet and a bed, Our life is a kiss and a pool.” And despite the seemingly optimistic final line (“I will never die, my friend”), the poem leaves a painful impression. It becomes clear that in this “den” “there is no place for human joy, there is no hope for happiness. Love here is not a holiday of the heart, it brings death to a person, it destroys him like a plague” (41; 109-110).

In the poem "Yes! Now it's decided. No return..." the hero's spiritual emptiness is brought to the limit. The poetics of the verse are depressing with gloomy colors from the very beginning: the winged leaves of the poplar will no longer ring, the low house will stoop, the old dog has died... And as a natural development of the line of thickening of colors, already at the end of the second stanza a calmly stated assumption is born: “On the curved streets of Moscow To die , I know, God has judged me." Even the description of the month, as if sending its rays to the earth in abundance, seems to have been introduced into the poem only in order to better highlight the figure of a man walking with his head hanging down into a familiar tavern. And then in the poem we will not find a single glimmer of light; then everything is described in only black colors:

The noise and din in this terrible lair,

But all night long, until dawn,

I read poetry to prostitutes

And I fry alcohol with the bandits...

Not only is the awareness of the hero’s ongoing moral fall to the very “bottom” depressing, even the vocabulary itself is depressing: noise, din, lair, creepy, prostitutes, bandits, frying, alcohol... And the last confession of the lyrical hero sounds like the logical closure of the plot ring. in front of bandits and prostitutes: “I’m just like you, lost, I can’t go back now.” After this, even the second stanza, repeated at the end with a tragic prediction of one’s own death, probably intended to enhance the creepiness and horror of the verse, does not achieve its goal, since there is nothing to “strengthen”, the limit of the fall has already been indicated above.

Motives of hopelessness will also be heard in subsequent works of the cycle. So, in the verses “I’ve never been this tired before,” we again encounter pictures of a misguided life, endless drunken nights, rampant melancholy, a dark force accustomed to wine... It’s as if the poet doesn’t even have the strength to be amazed at such a dramatic situation. , he completely dispassionately, as if about something ordinary and familiar, admits something that is impossible for a sane person to admit without internal trembling:

I'm tired of torturing myself aimlessly,

And with a strange smile on his face

I fell in love with wearing a light body

Quiet light and peace of a dead man...

This is probably why A. Voronsky had reason to write about “Moscow Tavern” in the magazine “Krasnaya Nov”:

“For the first time in the history of Russian poetry, poems appear in which, with excellent imagery, realism, artistic truthfulness and sincerity, the tavern frenzy is elevated to the “pearl of creation,” to its apotheosis.” He called the poems of this cycle “gallows, finished, hopeless,” and argued that they clearly show “demagnetization, spiritual prostration, deep antisociality, everyday and personal breakdown, disintegration of personality” (27; 254).

V. Kirshon expressed sharp disagreement with this assessment: “Only an insensitive person can say that Yesenin raised this frenzy, this illness to its apotheosis... Read his poems carefully, and before you stands the figure (...) of a poet who is drunk intoxicated, and in the midst of a moonshine spill among schoolgirls and thieves, he suffers and suffers from this scum, is torn from life and abomination, regrets the forces so stupidly wasted (...) Only heaviness, only pain, which is inspired by drunken revelry, is hysterically expressed in these verses ".

One can agree with V. Kirshon that the poet really does not admire or admire either the pictures of tavern revelry or his own situation, that he deeply feels the tragedy of his fall, but at the same time, it would be wrong to completely reject Voronsky’s judgments as groundless. . Today it is important not only that the poet experienced “Tavern Moscow” (“I saw it, I experienced it in my own way”), but also that he rises above what he experienced and felt to a typical generalization (“I had to tell about it in verse"). Evidence of this is the cycle of poems “The Love of a Hooligan.”

"Hooligan's Love"

In July 1924, in Leningrad, Yesenin published a new collection of poems under the general title “Moscow Tavern,” which included four sections: poems as an introduction to “Moscow Tavern,” “Moscow Tavern” itself, “Love of a Hooligan,” and a poem as a conclusion.

The cycle “Love of a Hooligan” includes 7 poems written in the second half of 1923: “A blue fire has begun,” “You are as simple as everyone else,” “Let others drink you,” “Darling, let’s sit next to you,” “I’m sad.” look at you”, “Don’t torment me with coolness”, “The evening raised black eyebrows.” All of them were dedicated to the chamber theater actress Augusta Miklashevskaya, whom Yesenin met after returning from abroad. “Love for this woman is healing for the sick and devastated soul of the poet, it harmonizes, enlightens and elevates it, inspires the author to create, makes him believe again and in a new way in the significance of an ideal feeling” (28; 181).

It is no coincidence that Yesenin placed these two cycles in one collection one after the other; they continue, develop and complement each other. Thus, “The Love of a Hooligan” is not free from the motifs of “Moscow Tavern”. For example, in the poem “I’m sad to look at you,” we clearly feel the imprint of the “tavern” period:

It makes me sad to look at you

What a pain, what a pity!

Know, only willow copper

We stayed with you in September.

Someone else's lips were torn apart

Your warmth and trembling body.

It's like it's drizzling rain

From a soul that is a little deadened (...)

After all, I didn’t save myself either

For a quiet life, for smiles.

So few roads have been traveled

So many mistakes have been made...

And the poem “Don’t torment me with coolness” opens with the confession: “Obsessed by severe epilepsy, My soul has become like a yellow skeleton.” Further, the author, contrasting reality with childhood dreams, ironically shows the real embodiment of the dream of fame, popularity and love. The turning point in the reasoning begins with a loudly declared “Yes!”, and then follows a listing of “riches” (“...Only a shirtfront remains With a fashionable pair of beat-up boots”), fame is characterized (“My name terrifies, Like a rude swear word from a fence” ), love (“You kiss, but your lips are like tin”). But here again a turn of thought is outlined, associated with the desire to again “dream like a boy - into the smoke” “about something else, about something new,” the name of which the poet cannot yet express in words. Thus, from the consciousness of obsession with “severe epilepsy,” the poet comes to the desire for a dream, which gives the end of the poem a life-affirming mood (Yudkevich; 166). But optimistic notes were already observed in the previous cycle. Despite the all-consuming motives of melancholy and spiritual emptiness, in “Moscow Tavern” there are breakthroughs to the light, to the desire to break with the tavern disappearance. So, in the finale of the poem “I have never been this tired before,” greetings are sent to “sparrows and crows, and the owl sobbing into the night.” Here he shouts with all his might, as if regaining his power: “Dear birds, tremble in the blue, tell me that I made a scandal...”

In the poem “This street is familiar to me,” which Yesenin later included in “Tavern Moscow,” light colors, the poet’s favorite colors, are already beginning to predominate: “wire blue straw,” “country blue,” “blue speckles,” “green paws,” “ blue smoke"... The poem feels nostalgia for his native land, a state of peace, complete harmony of the hero’s inner world when remembering his parental home:

And now, as soon as I close my eyes,

I only see my parents' house.

I see a garden dotted with blue,

Quietly August lay down against the fence.

Holding linden trees in green paws

Bird noise and chirping...

If earlier the poet firmly and unequivocally declared: “Yes! Now it’s decided. I left my native fields without return...”, now he realizes with quiet sadness: “Only closer to my native land I would now like to turn.” And the poem ends with a blessing:

Peace be with you - the straw of the field,

Peace be with you - wooden house!

The motif of “passing hooliganism”, moreover, the renunciation of scandals, the regret that he was all “like a neglected garden”, were heard in the first poem of the cycle “A Blue Fire Has Swept Up”:

A blue fire began to sweep,

Forgotten relatives.

For the first time I refuse to make a scandal (...)

I would forget the taverns forever

And I would have given up writing poetry,

Just touch your thin hand

And your hair is the color of autumn.

I would follow you forever

Whether in your own or in someone else's...

For the first time I sang about love,

For the first time I refuse to make a scandal.

Here the lyrical hero unequivocally declares: “I stopped liking drinking and dancing and losing my life without looking back.” He sees the meaning of his existence in looking at his beloved, “seeing the golden-brown pool of eyes,” touching her thin hand and her hair, “the color of autumn.” It becomes important for the hero to prove to his beloved “how a bully knows how to love, how he knows how to be submissive.” For the sake of love, he not only renounces the past, he is ready to forget his “homeland” and abandon his poetic vocation. The hero feels the possibility of renewal under the influence of love, and in the poem this is expressed by the subjunctive mood “I would only look at you,” “I would forget the taverns forever,” “I would follow you forever” (1; 100-101).

The motive of “passing hooliganism” as an already accomplished fact is stated in the poem “Let others drink you”:

I never lie with my heart,

I can confidently say

That I say goodbye to hooliganism.

The poem is permeated with an “autumn” mood (“the eye is autumn fatigue”, “September knocked on the window with a crimson willow branch” in accordance with the age and state of mind of the poet. But autumn motifs in this case not only do not bring with them sad notes, they sound unusually fresh and young:

Oh, the age of autumn! He told me

More precious than youth and summer...

The hero finds in the “age of autumn” a unique charm, determined by the fact that his beloved “began to please the poet’s imagination doubly.” He comes to the realization that his loved one is the only one the hero needs; in his opinion, only she “could be the poet’s companion”, she alone is capable of influencing a change in an already established way of life:

What could I do for you alone?

Brought up in constancy,

Sing about the twilight of the roads

And the disappearing hooliganism.

The love line continues its development in the poem “You are as simple as everyone else,” where the portrait of the beloved appears to the lyrical hero as the stern icon face of the Mother of God. Love makes him feel the “crazy heart of a poet” in his chest, gives rise to creative inspiration: “And now suddenly the words of the most tender and meek songs grow.” But the climax is the central fourth stanza, in which the hero clearly refuses “zenith” (glory) in the name of love and where the name of Augustus is beautifully played out in relation to the August coolness:

I don't want to fly to the zenith.

The heart needs too much.

Why does your name ring like that?

Like the coolness of August?

In the next poem (“Darling, let’s sit next to each other”) the lyrical hero is happy to “listen to a sensual blizzard” (a wonderful metaphor for love!). Even the appearance of his beloved with her “gentle gaze” is perceived by him as “salvation”:

This is autumn gold

This strand of whitish hair -

Everything appeared as salvation

Restless rake...

From the memoirs of contemporaries it is known that the relationship between Yesenin and Miklashevskaya is consistently reflected in the poems of the cycle: from the first, “A blue fire began to sweep,” to the final, “The evening raised black eyebrows,” where the hero in the rhetorical question “Didn’t I stop loving you yesterday?” makes it clear that love has passed. It is characteristic that at the same time the text of the poem is again saturated with gloomy colors: the dark-browed evening, the soaked youth, the snoring belated troika, the hospital bed that can “calm down” the hero forever, the dark forces that tormented him, destroying him... and against this background of the deepening darkness, a spell of memory sounds bright lines addressed to the one who has fallen out of love:

The appearance is affectionate! Cute look!

The only one I won’t forget is you!

“By saying goodbye to youth and love, the poet retains faith in life and happiness. From hysterical questions and hopeless judgments (...) he comes to the conviction that this is not the end of life, but the completion of a certain stage of life - “former life” (1; 104).

After a long break in Yesenin’s work, the love theme sounded again in the cycle “The Love of a Hooligan” and, in comparison with the poems of his early youth, acquired mature strength. The poet will return to this theme in the very last period of his life and add to it with new poetic masterpieces: “I remember, my love, I remember,” “The blizzard is crying like a gypsy violin,” “Oh, such a blizzard, just damn it!” and etc.

Bibliography

1. Belskaya L.L. Song word. The poetic mastery of Sergei Yesenin. Book for teachers. - M., 1990.

2. Belyaev I. Genuine Yesenin. - Voronezh, 1927.

3. Vasilyeva M. The curve of truth // Literary review. - 1996. - No. 1.

4. Voronova O.E. Biblical images in the poetry of S. Yesenin // Current problems of modern literary criticism. - M., 1995.

5. Garina N. Memories of S.A. Yesenin and G.F. Ustinov // Zvezda. - 1995. - No. 9.

6. Gul R. Yesenin in Berlin // Russian Frontier. Specialist. Issue of the newspaper "Literary Russia". - 1990.

6a. Zhuravlev V. “Scorched by verbal fire” // Literature at school. - 1991. - No. 5.

7. Zaitsev P.N. From memories of meetings with the poet // Literary Review. - 1996. - No. 1.

8. Zuev N.N. Poetry of S.A. Yesenin. Folk origins. Philosophy of the world and man // Russian literature. XX century. Reference materials. - M., 1995.

9. Enisherlov V. Three years // Ogonyok.- 1985.- No. 40.

10. Yesenin S. Collection. Op. in 2 volumes - Minsk, 1992.

11. Ivanov G. Son of the “terrible years of Russia”. Russian frontier. Specialist. Issue of the newspaper "Literary Russia". - 1990.

11a. Ivanov G. Mayakovsky. Yesenin // Bulletin of Moscow State University. Ser. 9.- M., 1992.- No. 4.

12. Kaprusova M.N. Themes and motives of S. Yesenin's poem "The Jordanian Dove" // Russian classics of the 20th century: Limits of interpretation. Collection of scientific conference materials. - Stavropol, 1995.

14. Karpov A.S. Poems by Sergei Yesenin. - M., 1989.

15. Kornilov V. Victory over myth // Literary Review. - 1996. - 1.

16. Kunyaev S., Kunyaev S. “God’s pipe.” Biography of Sergei Yesenin // Our contemporary. - 1995. - N 3-9.

17. Lurie S. Self-instruction manual for the tragic game // Zvezda.- 1996.- N 5.

18. Maklakova G. Another solution to old problems // Russian language at school. - 1989. - No. 11.

20. Meksh E.B. Mythopoetic basis of S. Yesenin’s poem “The Black Man” // Eternal themes and images in Soviet literature. - Grozny, 1989.

21. Mikeshin A. On the aesthetic ideal of Yesenin’s poetry // From the history of Soviet literature of the 20s. - Ivanovo, 1963.

22. Mikeshin A.M. "Inonia" by S. Yesenin as a romantic poem // Genres in the literary process. - Vologda, 1986.

22a. Oh, Rus', flap your wings. Yesenin collection. - M., 1994.

23. Pastukhova L.N. The poet and the world. Lesson on the lyrics of Sergei Yesenin // Literature at school. - 1990. - No. 5

24. Perkhin V.V. The poetry of S.A. Yesenin in the assessment of D.A. Gorbov (On the pages of a forgotten article of 1934) // Philological Sciences. - 1996. - N 5.

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38. Khodasevich V. Yesenin // Russian frontier. Specialist. Issue of the newspaper "Literary Russia". - 1990.

39. Kharchevnikov V.I. The poetic style of Sergei Yesenin (1910-1916). - Stavropol, 1975.

40. Kholshevnikov V. “Shagane, you are mine, Shagane!..” Stylistic and poetic study // In the world of Yesenin. - M. - 1986.

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42. Yudkevich L.G. Singer and citizen. - Kazan, 1976.

Reflection of the revolutionary era in the poems of S. A. Yesenin

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin lived in a difficult, turning-point time for the Russian state. His fate, like the fate of many people, was divided into life “before” and “after” by the revolution.

The poet's pre-revolutionary work is filled with love for his native Ryazan nature, for his father's home: Beloved land! The heart dreams of stacks of sun in the waters of the bosom. I would like to get lost in the greenery of your hundred-bellied greens. In nature, the poet found an inexhaustible source of inspiration for himself. He feels himself to be a small part of it, because his childhood and youth passed among the “morning and evening dawn,” “among the sky covered with thunderclouds,” “among the fields flaunting flowers and greenery”:

The bird cherry tree is pouring snow,

Greenery in bloom and dew.

In the field, leaning towards escape,

Rooks walk in the strip.

Yesenin greeted the revolution of 1917 with enthusiasm. He saw in it a real opportunity to change life for the better, primarily for the peasantry. The poet believed that the time had come for peasant happiness, for a well-fed, free life. This new attitude to life was reflected directly in Yesenin’s work.

The first post-revolutionary block of poems by the poet is called “Transfiguration”. This name is deeply symbolic: the whole world around the poet is transformed, and he himself is transformed. The first poem of the cycle “Inonia” talks about the joyful, new coming of the Savior. Yesenin connected the coming changes throughout the entire earth with his appearance. And he sees himself as a prophet and boldly objects to Christian canons:

I saw a different coming -

Where death does not dance over the truth.

A new faith for a person must come in a completely different way: without “cross and torment”:

I don't want to accept salvation

Through his torment and the cross:

I have learned a different teaching

Eternity-piercing stars.

And the new life should be completely different, unlike the previous one, which is why the poet calls the country of the future “Inonia.” The poems in this cycle are full of faith in future changes that will bring liberation and prosperity to the whole world; and for the native peasantry - a rural paradise, with fields and fields golden with grain:

I'm telling you, there will be time

The mouths of thunder will splash;

Carry out the blue crown

The ears of your bread.

And now, it seems, the poet’s dreams of a new life are beginning to come true. A radical turning point has occurred in the fate of Russia; everything is changing rapidly. But these long-awaited changes alarm Yesenin. Instead of the expected “peasant paradise”, instead of a free and well-fed life, a country torn apart by civil war and devastated by devastation appears before the poet’s eyes. The poet sees a difficult, unbearable sight instead of the promised paradise:

No, not rye! The cold gallops across the field,

The windows are broken, the doors are wide open.

Even the sun freezes like a puddle,

Which was bred by a gelding.

The poet feels that the end is coming to everything that he treasured so much, for which he felt deep affection. The old ancient way of life, the native rural land, is coming to an end:

The horn of death blows, blows!

What should we do, what should we do now?

On the muddy thighs of the roads?

In place of the thin-legged foal, an iron horse comes to the peasant fields, with which it is no longer useless to compete:

Dear, dear, funny fool,

Well, where is he, where is he going?

Doesn't he really know that live horses

Did the steel cavalry win?

In this iron battle with the city, Yesenin realizes the powerlessness of the village, it is doomed. And the poet, full of despair, sends curses to the iron horse:

Damn you, nasty guest!

Our song won't work with you.

It's a pity that you didn't have to as a child

Drown like a bucket in a well.

Yesenin feels like “the last poet of the village,” not because he does not hope that this topic will be of interest to a new generation of poets, but because he assumes the imminent death of the entire village way of life. The poet does not find a place for himself in this new life, his soul is full of pain and despair. He tries to find at least some way out for himself, and gets lost in “hooliganism.” The lyrical hero of this time “bawds and scandalizes,” trying to distract himself in drunken revelry:

I purposely go unkempt

With a head like a kerosene lamp on my shoulders...

I like it when the stones fight

They fly at me like hail of a burping thunderstorm...

The hero deliberately tries to look worse in the eyes of people than he really is. But in his soul he still remains the same village mischief-maker, painfully loving his land, his nature:

I love my homeland.

I love my homeland very much!..

I'm still the same.

I'm still the same in my heart.

Time passes, and the poet gradually calms down. His lyrics regain their ringing voice. Yesenin’s new collection is called “I Love Spring.” Spring is a time of renewal, a time of hope and, of course, love. And again this wonderful feeling opens up for the lyrical hero Yesenin. The author sets himself a new task:

...to comprehend in every moment

Commune raised Rus'.

Much has changed in the Soviet country, and the poet makes many discoveries for himself. The poor and unattractive village life has changed, the crosses have been removed from the bell knees:

Ah, dear land!

You are not the same

Not the one...

In the villages they no longer read prayer books, but Marx’s Capital and the works of revolutionary writers:

The peasant Komsomol is coming from the mountain,

And to the harmonica, playing zealously,

The propaganda of Poor Demyan is singing,

Announcing the valley with a cheerful cry.

Village youth live and think completely differently: they did not have a village, “but the whole earth” became their homeland. This mood has an infectious effect on the author himself; he feels within himself the desire to be not only a singer in his country, but also a sovereign citizen of it:

I accept everything.

I take everything as is.

Ready to follow the beaten tracks.

I will give my whole soul to October and May...

The poet takes a kind of oath to his renewed country:

But even then

When all over the planet

The tribal feud will pass,

Lies and sadness will disappear,

I will chant

With the whole being in the poet

Sixth of the land

With a short name “Rus”.

S. A. Yesenin tries to wholeheartedly accept all the changes that have occurred in the country. He believes that the time has finally come to develop the land. The poet is proud and happy to live in this era of renewal. Now even the city lights seem sweeter and more beautiful to him than the southern stars, he feels great love for Rodin in his heart. In the poem “Letter to a Woman,” S. A. Yesenin reveals the complex evolution of his perception of the new reality. At first, he could not understand what was happening in the country, and therefore tormented both himself and his beloved, being in a constant drunken stupor:

... in complete smoke,

In a life torn apart by a storm

That's why I'm suffering

What I don't understand

Where does the fate of events take us...

But now everything has fallen into place, everything has become different, but it is already clear - the poet realizes and accepts the renewed Russia:

Now in the Soviet side

I am the fiercest travel companion.

In the cycle of poems “Flowers” ​​S. A. Yesenin narrates the revolutionary events in different ways. People are flowers dying under the steel of October:

Flowers fought each other

And red was everyone's favorite color.

More of them fell under the blizzard,

But still with elastic power

They defeated the executioners.

The poet is sorry that he had to pay with the lives of many people for the expected new, bright life:

October! October!

I'm terribly sorry

Those red flowers that fell.

Time passes and not everything goes well with the new reality for the lyrical hero; he does not agree with the new government on everything:

I ran away from Moscow for a long time:

I'm not good at getting along with the police...

I have one foot left in the past,

Trying to catch up with the steel army,

I slide and fall differently.

There is a constant struggle in the poet’s soul - a struggle between acceptance and rejection of the established order in the state. On the one hand, he is trying with all his might to accept “Soviet Rus'”, but, on the other hand, he feels pain and resentment for the fact that he himself remains unclaimed by the new reality:

This is how the country is! Why the hell am I

Screamed in verse that I am friendly with the people?

My poetry is no longer needed here,

And, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.

But Yesenin finds the strength not to take the path of anger and resentment for lack of demand; he bequeaths the fate of his country to the young, not burdened with the burden of sins and mistakes:

Bloom young ones! And have a healthy body!

You have a different life, you have a different tune.

And I will go alone to unknown limits,

The rebellious soul has been pacified forever.

He welcomes and blesses new life, the happiness of others:

Bless every work, good luck!

And for himself he leaves the path “to unknown limits.”

Perhaps these lines of the poem are filled with bitter foreboding. Soon the poet, indeed, left this life “into another world.” His lyrics are varied, like his life itself. Love, joy, sadness, disappointment, disbelief, the desire to understand and accept the hitherto unknown - everything is reflected in the work of this great Russian poet. The life and work of S. A. Yesenin are complex and contradictory; he was mistaken and often made mistakes. But in one thing he was always true to himself - in his desire to comprehend the complex, difficult and often tragic life of his people.

1. The role of revolution in Yesenin’s work.
2. The meaning of the poem “Anna Snegina”
3. Heroes - antipodes: Proclus and Labutya.
4. Anna Snegina as a symbol of unnecessary, elusive beauty.
5. The poet’s ambivalent attitude towards the revolution.

The sky is like a bell
The month is a language
My mother is my homeland,
I am a Bolshevik.
A. A. Blok

The avalanche of revolution that swept across Russia left behind many memories. These memories and emotions - joyful, associated with hope for a new, bright future, and sad, associated with disappointment in it - remained with each participant and witness. Many poets and writers - contemporaries of the revolution - conveyed their feelings about it through their works, forever capturing the image of the revolution. There are such works in the works of S. A. Yesenin.

The poem “Anna Snegina” plays a special role in the poet’s work. It reflected both Yesenin’s personal experiences and his thoughts - forebodings about the future fate of post-revolutionary Russia. The author himself considered the poem programmatic, his best work. In many ways, the poem became biographical. The lyrical hero of the work, who received the same name as the author, Sergei, and on whose behalf the story is told, comes to his native village of Radovo in the interval between the two revolutions of 1917 - the February and October. He casually remarks: “Then Kerensky was caliph over the country on a white horse,” thereby letting the reader understand that Kerensky was caliph for an hour. The driver with whom Sergei returns home tells the hero about what happened in the village. The first picture he painted seems ideal:

We really don’t get into important things,
But still we are given happiness.
Our yards are covered with iron,
Everyone has a garden and a threshing floor.
Everyone has painted shutters,
On holidays, meat and kvass.
No wonder once a police officer
He loved to stay with us.

Residents of the village of Radovo, as the reader can learn from the same story, knew how to get along with the previous government:

We paid the dues on time,
But - a formidable judge - foreman
Always added to the quitrent
According to flour and millet.
And to avoid misfortune,
We had the surplus without any hardship.
If they are the authorities, then they are the authorities,
And we are just simple people.

However, the idyllic picture of the life of the Radov peasants was destroyed even before the revolution because of the inhabitants of the neighboring village of Krikushi, where “life... was bad - almost the entire village was plowing at a gallop with one plow on a pair of worn-out nags.” The chief among the screamers, Pron Ogloblin, in one of the meetings with the peasants of Radov, kills their chairman. The driver from Radov says the following about this:

Since then we have been in trouble.
The reins rolled off happiness.
Almost three years in a row
We either have a death or a fire.

It should be noted that the beginning of the poor life of the peasants occurred in the first years of the World War. And then came the great February Revolution. At this moment, Sergei, who arrived home, learns that Pron Ogloblin, having returned from hard labor, again became the ideological leader of the peasants from Krikushin.

The lyrical hero himself, reflecting on the theme “How beautiful the earth is and the people on it,” is close to the peasant people, their aspirations and problems are close, although love for the local landowner Anna Snegina is still alive in Sergei’s heart. Together with Pron, Sergei arrives at her estate at a bad time for the heroine - she receives news of the death of her husband. The purpose of the visit is to try to take away the land of the landowners in favor of the peasants. Moreover, if Pron demands it rather rudely: “Give it back!.. I shouldn’t kiss your feet!” - then Sergei has the courage to stop the shouter: “Today they are not in the mood... Let’s go, Pron, to the tavern...”.

Pron is a reckless person. Sergei’s friend, speaking about him, clearly does not have much sympathy for him: “A bully, a brawler, a brute. He’s always angry with everyone, drunk every morning for weeks.” But the character of this character still attracts Sergei, because Ogloblin is a selfless peasant who stands up for the interests of the people. After the coup that happened in the first revolution, Pron promises: “I will be the first to set up a commune in my village right now.” But during the civil war he dies and is replaced by his own brother Labutya:

...Man - what's your fifth ace:
At every dangerous moment
A boaster and a devilish coward.
Of course, you have seen such people.
Fate rewarded them with chatter.

Yesenin, with an author’s digression, characterized this hero as follows: “People like this are always in sight. They live without callouses on their hands.” Indeed, he wore two royal medals and constantly boasted of imperfect exploits in the war. With the advent of the revolution he

...Of course, in the Council.

I hid the medals in the chest,
But with the same important posture,
Like some grizzled veteran,
He wheezed under a fusel jar
About Nerchinsk and Turukhan:
“Yes, brother! We have seen grief
But we were not intimidated by fear...”
Medals, medals, medals
His words rang.

He is the first to begin an inventory of the Onegins' estate: There is always speed in capture: - Give it! We'll figure it out later! The entire farm was taken to the volost with the housewives and livestock.

The most important thing for understanding this hero is the fact that during the execution of the bat by the Bolsheviks, Labutya hides, instead of protecting him. The poet feels that during the revolutions it was precisely such Labutis who survived, and not the Prons; it was the cowards who survived, and not the rude, but brave people. The poet was also worried that it was precisely such characters who most often found themselves not only in people’s power, but also played the first roles in the leadership of parties and the state. It is no coincidence that Labutya talks about an imaginary exile to the Turukhansk region. This is the very place where Stalin served his exile. The author of the poem also understood that under the government headed by Labutya, the peasants’ dreams of happiness in the image of the village of Radova would never come true. And the heroine of the poem, whose image personifies beauty, leaves Russia. At the end of the work, from the London letter received by the hero from Anna, the reader learns:

I often go to the pier

And, either for joy or fear,

I look among the ships more and more closely

On the red Soviet flag.

Now we have achieved strength.

My path is clear...

But you are still dear to me
Like home and like spring.

In the new Russia, which has turned into poor screamers, there is no place for beauty.

It is worth noting that villages with such names actually existed in Yesenin’s native Konstantinovsky district. Only they were not adjacent to each other. And they were located far from each other. Most likely, the author was interested in the telling names: Radovo, associated with the word “joy”, and Krikushi, reminiscent of “klikushi”, “to shout”.

In August 1920, the poet writes: “...What is happening is not the kind of socialism that I thought about, but definite and deliberate, like some island of Helena, without glory and without dreams. It’s cramped in it for the living, cramped in building a bridge to the invisible world, for these bridges are being cut down and blown up from under the feet of future generations.” Most likely, Yesenin foresaw the fact that the Soviet government would not be able to satisfy the peasant needs, but, on the contrary, would squeeze all the already liquid juices out of them. Therefore, like his heroine, Yesenin looked at the red flag not only with hope, but also with fear.

Sergei Yesenin, without a doubt, is the most popular of all Russian poets of the 20th century, and perhaps of all Russian poets in general. For him, the words that the people needed him were never an empty phrase. Yesenin did not think of his poems outside of popular recognition. His talent received recognition early and was blasphemed just as early, but perhaps never fully blossomed, due to the tragic fate and tragic death of the poet, who did not even live to reach the age of Christ. Yesenin's fate was stormy and sad. A bright and hectic life greatly contributed to the popularity of his poems - sincere and musical, close and understandable to a wide variety of people. Even during the poet’s lifetime, legends began to take shape about her.

After the death of Sergei Yesenin and the publication of the posthumous collected works, a period of official oblivion of his work began. It was recognized as petty-bourgeois, kulak, and not in keeping with the great era. For several decades, Yesenin was a banned poet. But his poems were always loved by readers, and his life was covered in legends.

Yesenin lived only 30 years. But his generation faced so many trials that it would have been more than enough for several centuries: the Russian-Japanese War, the 1905 Revolution, the imperialist war, the February and October Revolutions, the Civil War, the devastation and famine of the first post-revolutionary years.

How did the era influence Yesenin’s fate and his worldview, and how was it reflected in his work? In this work we will try to answer this question and at the same time try to penetrate the world of Yesenin’s poetry.

“I began to compose poems early,” Yesenin later writes in his biography. “My grandmother gave impetus to this. She told fairy tales. I didn’t like some fairy tales with bad endings, and I remade them in my own way. I began to write poetry, imitating ditties.” The grandmother managed to convey to her beloved grandson all the charm of folk oral and song speech. A pool of pink mists, the autumn gold of linden trees, the red poppy of sunset, Rus' - a raspberry field - Sergei Yesenin comprehended all this poetic picturesque alphabet in the blue of the Ryazan field and birch expanse, in the noise of reeds over river backwaters, in the family of his grandfather - a scribe, an expert on the lives of saints and Gospels, and grandmothers - singers.

The beauty of native nature and the Russian word, mother's songs and fairy tales, grandfather's Bible and spiritual poems of wanderers, village street and zemstvo school, Koltsov's songs and Lermontov's poems, ditties and books - all these sometimes extremely contradictory influences contributed to the early poetic awakening of Yesenin, whose mother was Nature has so generously endowed me with the precious gift of the song word.

Yesenin spent his childhood in the family of his maternal grandfather, a wealthy peasant. Therefore, Sergei, unlike many of his peers, did not have to worry about his daily bread, although, of course, he was taught how to do peasant labor in order to mow, sow, and care for horses. Perhaps it was precisely this seemingly purely everyday circumstance that helped him bring Russian nature with all its distances and colors into Russian poetry, already through this bright window, broken through to God, to see in the Ryazan village broken by latrine trade its poetic, ideal prototype - Blue Rus', Motherland with a capital letter.

In 1916, Yesenin’s first collection of poems, “Radunitsa,” appeared, combining poems depicting peasant life and interpreting religious subjects. At the end of 1915 - beginning of 1916. Yesenin's name appears on the pages of many publications next to the names of the most famous poets.

2. Revolution and poetry

The First World War was going on. Conscription into the active army was avoided. Yesenin served in the Tsarskoye Selo military sanitary battalion. He read his poems in the hospital for the wounded in the presence of the Empress. This speech, like the speech a few months earlier in Moscow before the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, caused indignation in St. Petersburg literary circles hostile to the monarchy. However, it is difficult to speak definitely about that period of Yesenin’s life: the testimonies and memories of contemporaries are too contradictory.

In any case, it is reliably known that in Tsarskoe Selo Yesenin visited N. Gumilyov and A. Akhmatova and read them a poem that amazed Anna Andreevna with its last quatrain - it seemed prophetic to her.

I meet everything, I accept everything,

Glad and happy to take out my soul.

I came to this earth

To leave her quickly.

The imperialist war was perceived by Yesenin as a genuine tragedy of the people. The poem “Rus” (1914) conveys the alarming atmosphere of the misfortune that came to the village:

The black crows cawed:

There is wide scope for terrible troubles.

The whirlwind of the forest turns in all directions,

Foam from the lakes waves its shroud.

The sotskys told under the windows

The militias go to war.

The women of the suburbs began to gag,

Crying cut through the silence all around.

The poet later recalled: “The sharp difference with many St. Petersburg poets in that era was that they succumbed to militant patriotism, and I, with all my love for the Ryazan fields and for my compatriots, always had a sharp attitude towards the imperialist war and militant patriotism. I even got into trouble for not writing patriotic poems like “Roll the thunder of victory.”

Yesenin, together with other military orderlies, took the military oath only on January 14, 1917. And already at the end of February a revolution broke out, overthrowing the tsar. On March 17, Yesenin was sent from hospital train No. 143 to the disposal of the Military Commission under the State Duma, and the poet received a certificate that there were no obstacles “to enrolling in the ensign school” for him. It is possible that the issue of sending him to the ensign school was decided before the revolution.

In his autobiography, the poet stated: “During the revolution, he left Kerensky’s army without permission and, living as a deserter, worked with the Socialist Revolutionaries not as a party member, but as a poet.

When the party split, I went with the left group and in October was in their fighting squad. He left Petrograd together with the Soviet regime."

At the end of March, having arrived in Petrograd, Yesenin immediately began to collaborate in Socialist Revolutionary publications edited by R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, in particular in two collections of the literary group “Scythians”. At best, he was listed in the combat squad, but did not take any part in the battles in October 1917. Ivanov-Razumnik extolled Yesenin and Klyuev as poet-prophets of the “Russia of the future.”

In his autobiography, Yesenin made a clear poetic exaggeration about his desertion. And even after the October Revolution, desertion was much more honorable than working under the Military Commission of the State Duma. Another thing is that in the conditions of the revolution, Yesenin decided not to enter the school of ensigns, but preferred to collaborate in the Socialist Revolutionary newspapers. But no one was looking for him at that time as a deserter.

In general, Yesenin accepted both the February and later the October Revolution. The 1917 poem “Comrade” is dedicated to the February Revolution:

But it rings calmly

Outside the window,

Then going out, then flaring up

Iron

“Rre-es-puu-publica!”

But it cannot be said that the revolution aroused in him the same stormy delight, poetic and human, as, say, in Mayakovsky. Yesenin experienced the revolution as a sharp and sudden renewal of life. The revolution provided rich material for his poetry, but hardly touched the poet’s soul. Socialist-Revolutionary - Yesenin was a “Martovsky”.

Nevertheless, the revolution in the poems of 1917 is presented as good news for the people:

Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!

The sun hasn't gone out yet.

Dawn with a red prayer book

Prophesies good news.

Ring, ring, golden Rus',

Worry, restless wind!

Blessed is he who celebrates with joy

Your shepherd's sadness.

“Shepherd sadness,” according to the poet, should be replaced by revolutionary joy.

In 1917, he called in a poem dedicated to Nikolai Klyuev:

Hide, perish, tribe

Stinking dreams and thoughts!

On the stone crown

We carry the star noise.

Enough to rot and whine,

And I hate to praise the takeoff -

Already washed it off, erased the tar

Resurgent Rus'.

Already moved its wings

Her mute fortress!

With other names

A different steppe is emerging.

The poet accepted the October Revolution, in his own words, “with a peasant bias.” In an effort to respond to revolutionary events, he turns to mythology and biblical legends, which is reflected in his atheistic and cosmic poems and short poems: “Transfiguration” (1917), “Inonia” (1918), “Dove of Jordan” (1918).

The poet does not hide his glee, observing the collapse of the old world, in a fit of joy he says goodbye to traditional religious beliefs, but at the same time widely uses religious vocabulary. Concrete reality, real events are burdened with surprises, metaphors, biblical images, and vague symbols. And at the same time, a “peasant bias” is clearly visible.

In 1917-1918, he felt the gift of a prophet in himself, created the “Yesenin Bible” of ten small poems: “Singing Call”, “Father”, “Octoechos”, “Advent”, “Transfiguration”, “Inonia”, “Rural Book of Hours” , ““Heavenly Drummer”, “Pantocrator”, where the birth with the revolution of the New World is compared with divine creation, the revolutionary transformation of life is expected as a blessing. For Yesenin, the revolution was something great and religious. The poet saw the revolution and the uprising of slaves both on earth and in heaven. In “Heavenly Drummer” Yesenin called:

Hey you slaves, slaves!

You are stuck to the ground with your belly.

Today the moon from the water

The horses drank.

The leaves of the star are pouring

Into the rivers in our fields.

Long live the revolution

On earth and in heaven!

We throw bombs at souls

Sowing a blizzard whistle.

What do we need iconic saliva for?

Through our gates to the heights?

Are generals strange to us?

White herd of gorillas?

The whirling cavalry is torn

Peace to a new shore.

In “Transfiguration,” dedicated to Ivanov the Razumnik, Yesenin painted a picture of the revolution as a universal, cosmic phenomenon, transforming both nature and the planet itself:

Hey Russians!

Catchers of the universe,

With a net of dawn, scooping up the sky, -

Blow the trumpets.

Under the storm's plow

The earth roars.

The golden-fanged one destroys rocks

New sower

Wanders through the fields

New grains

Throws into the furrows.

A bright guest in a car to you

Runs through the clouds

Mare.

Harness on a mare-

Bells on the harness

But even here there are already disturbing, disturbing lines that create a blasphemous image:

The clouds are barking

The golden-toothed heights roar

I sing and cry:

Lord, calve!

And in “Pantocrator” Yesenin appears before us as a rebel, glorifying the spontaneous impulse and ready to overthrow God himself from heaven:

Glory, my verse, who tears and rages,

Who buries melancholy in his shoulder,

Horse face of the month

Grab the bridle of the rays.

For thousands of years the same stars have been famous,

The flesh flows with the same honey.

Don't pray to yourself, but bark

You taught me, Lord.

Maybe to the gates of God

I'll bring myself.

On June 15, 1918, Yesenin’s programmatic poem “Inonia” appears in the magazine “Our Way”. Its name comes from the Church Slavonic word “ino”, meaning “okay, good”. In his last completed autobiography of 1925, Yesenin outlined the circumstances of the emergence of the poem as follows: “At the beginning of 1918, I firmly felt that the connection with the old world was broken, and wrote the poem “Inonia,” which received many sharp attacks, because of which I the nickname of a hooligan has become established.”

In this poem, Yesenin boldly assumes the prophetic rank:

I will not be afraid of death,

No spears, no arrows of rain, -

That's what he said in the Bible

Prophet Yesenin Sergei.

My time has come

I'm not afraid of the clang of the whip.

Body, Christ's body,

I spit it out of my mouth.

I don't want to wake up to salvation

Through his torment and the cross:

I learned a different lesson

Stars selling eternity.

I saw a different coming -

Where death does not dance over the truth.

In "Inonia" the poet stated:

The barking of bells over Russia is menacing -

The walls of the Kremlin are crying.

Now on the peaks of the stars

I lift you up, earth!

I curse the breath of Kitezh

And all the hollows of its roads.

I want it to be on a bottomless vent

We have built ourselves a palace.

I'll lick the icons with my tongue

Faces of martyrs and saints.

I promise you the city of Inonia,

Where the deity of the living lives.

Similar motives appeared in the “Jordan Dove” created in June 1918:

My golden land!

Autumn light temple!

Rushing towards the clouds.

The sky is like a bell

The month is a language

My mother is my homeland,

I am a Bolshevik.

Full of vitality and self-confidence, the poet “is ready to bend the whole world with an elastic hand.” It seemed that a little more effort - and the eternal dream of the Russian plowman about a golden age would come true.

But the life of revolutionary Russia unfolded more and more abruptly. It was during this difficult period of class battles that Yesenin’s peasant bias manifested itself most noticeably. This deviation primarily reflected those objective contradictions that were characteristic of the Russian peasantry during the period of the revolution.

Deep pain and irrepressible sorrow for the irretrievable, historically doomed old village were heard in the “Song of Bread” and in the poem “I am the last poet of the village.” And at the same time, what a soul-burning faith in the great future of Russia in this traditional song of the poet. How can one forget the romantic image of Yesenin’s foal? This image has a deep historical meaning:

Dear, dear, funny fool,

Well, where is he, where is he going?

Doesn't he really know that live horses

The steel cavalry won.

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. The poet rejoices at the good changes that are taking place in the life of the Russian peasantry. “You know,” Yesenin told one of his friends, “I’m now from the village and everyone is 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?

Yesenin tried more and more to understand and comprehend what was happening in these years in Russia. At this time, the horizons of his poetry expanded.

However, quite soon Yesenin began to understand: neither the cosmic revolution nor the peasant’s paradise was destined to come true. In one of the poet's letters from 1920. we read: “I am very sad now that history is going through a difficult era of the killing of the individual as a living person, because the socialism that is going on is completely different from what I thought. Close to the living in it.” According to one of the poet’s friends, Yesenin, when meeting him, “said that his, Yesenin’s, revolution had not yet come, that he was completely alone.”

Undoubtedly, the roots of Yesenin’s poetry are in the Ryazan village. That is why he spoke with such pride in poetry about his peasant birthright: “My father is a peasant, and I am a peasant’s son.” And it is no coincidence that in the revolutionary days of the seventeenth year Yesenin sees himself as a continuer of the Koltsovo traditions. But we should not forget or lose sight of another very important circumstance. Russia was a peasant country. Three Russian revolutions are revolutions in a peasant country. The peasant question has always worried the progressive minds of Russia. Let us remember Radishchev, Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leo Tolstoy. Accepting the social path of solving the “peasant question,” Yesenin felt in his heart that it would not be easy or simple for peasant Rus' to overcome it, as it seemed to some of his contemporaries.

And Yesenin was also overcome by longing for what was irretrievably gone with the revolution. This melancholy latently burned his soul, although the despair of the last years of his life was still far away:

It's good in this moonlit autumn

Wander through the grass alone

And collect ears of corn on the road

Into the impoverished soul-bag.

But by the end of 1918, having learned all the horrors of war communism, faced with devastation and hunger, Yesenin does not hide his anxiety about the fate of Blue Rus', but affirms his belief that it will survive thanks to nature itself, no matter what:

I left my home

Rus' left the blue one.

Three-star birch forest above the pond

The old mother feels sadness.

Golden frog moon

Spread out on the calm water.

Like apple blossom, gray hair

There was a spill in my father's beard.

I won't be back soon, not soon!

The blizzard will sing and ring for a long time.

Guards blue Rus'

Old maple tree on one leg

And I know there is joy in it

To those who kiss the leaves of the rain,

Because that old maple

The head looks like me.

The horrors and suffering of the civil war strengthened the poet in anticipation of the impending death of the village. In November 1920, Yesenin wrote the poem “Confession of a Hooligan,” which Klyuev and some others considered almost as a break with the peasant poets.

Poor, poor peasants!

You've probably become ugly

You also fear God and the depths of the swamp.

Oh, if you only understood

That your son is Russia

The best poet!

Didn’t you dedicate life to his heart?

When did he dip his bare feet in autumn puddles?

And now he wears a top hat

And patent leather shoes.

In general, the revolution became an important stage in Yesenin’s poetic revolution. He was imbued with the grandeur of the events taking place, acquired a universal, cosmic view of the village dear to his heart, of his native nature, but at the same time realized the inevitability of the departure of peasant “calico” Rus'. The foundations of the former measured life were crumbling, the poet immersed himself more and more in a bohemian environment, and the drunken sprees that began were aggravated by the fear of the advance of the “steel cavalry.”

4. Poem “Anna Snegina”

In the work of Sergei Yesenin, the poem “Anna Snegina,” published in March 1925, occupies a prominent place, reflecting both the poet’s lyrical memories and his foresight of the fate of the country and the revolution. The poem, which Yesenin considered the best of everything he wrote, is largely autobiographical in nature. The main character, on whose behalf the story is told and whose name, like the poet, is Sergei, travels to his native village - Radovo during the period between two revolutions of the 17th year - the February and October. He notes: “Then Kerensky reigned over the country on a white horse,” hinting that even at that time it was clear: the head of the Provisional Government was caliph for an hour. The driver introduces Sergei to the sad events in his native village. First, we see a picture of the former bliss, so close to Yesenin’s ideal:

We really don’t get into important things,

But still we are given happiness.

Our yards are covered with iron,

Everyone has a garden and a threshing floor.

Everyone has painted shutters,

On holidays, meat and kvass.

No wonder once a police officer

He loved to stay with us.

The Radovites knew how to get along with the previous government:

We paid the dues on time,

But - a formidable judge - foreman

Always added to the quitrent

According to flour and millet.

And to avoid misfortune,

We had the surplus without any hardship.

If they are the authorities, then they are the authorities,

And we are just simple people.

However, even before the revolution, the prosperity of the residents of Radov was disrupted by the peasants of the neighboring village of Kriushi, where “life was bad - almost the entire village was plowing with one plow on a pair of worn-out nags.” The leader of the Kriushans, Pron Ogloblin, killed the Radov foreman in one of the fights. According to the Radov driver:

Since then we have been in trouble.

The reins rolled off happiness.

Almost three years in a row

We either have a death or a fire.

The years of Radov's misfortunes coincide with the years of the First World War. And then the February Revolution broke out. And now Sergei comes to his native place. Here he learns that Pron Ogloblin has returned from hard labor and again became the leader of the Kriushans. Sergei is close to the aspirations of the peasants who demand “without ransoming the masters’ arable land,” although he retains in his heart love for the local landowner Anna Snegina. She and Pron come to Anna to ask to give the land to the peasants just at the moment when she receives the news of her husband’s death at the front. Although Pron rather rudely says to Snegina’s mother about the land: “Give it back!” I shouldn’t kiss your feet!”, he still has enough conscience to leave her behind at this tragic moment, agreeing with Sergei’s arguments: “Today they are not in the mood. Let’s go, Pron, to the tavern.” Pron is a rather reckless person. Sergei’s friend, the old miller, speaks of Ogloblin without sympathy: “A cobblestone, a brawler, a brute. He’s always angry with everyone, drunk every morning for weeks.” But the elemental strength of character attracts Sergei to Pron. After all, Ogloblin is a selfless person who cares for the interests of the people. After the Bolshevik coup, Pron promises: “I will be the first to set up a commune in my village right now.” In civilian life, he dies at the hands of the whites, and his brother Labutya comes to power in Kriushi:

Man - what is your fifth ace:

At every dangerous moment

A boaster and a devilish coward.

Of course, you have seen such people.

Fate rewarded them with chatter.

Before the revolution, he wore two royal medals and boasted of supposed exploits in the Japanese war. As Yesenin very accurately points out: “People like this are always in sight. They live without callouses on their hands.” And after the Labutya revolution

Of course, in the Council,

He hid the medals in the chest.

But with the same important posture,

Like some grizzled veteran,

wheezed over a fusel jar

About Nerchinsk and Turukhan:

“Yes, brother!

We have seen grief

But we were not intimidated by fear."

Medals, medals, medals

His words rang.

At one time, Labutya went first to describe the Snegins’ estate:

There is always speed in capture:

Give it! We'll figure it out later! –

The entire farm was taken into the volost

With housewives and livestock.

By the way, Yesenin deliberately exaggerated his colors. In fact, the estate of the prototype Snegina - Kashina was not destroyed, and it was Sergei Yesenin who, in the summer of 1918, managed to keep his fellow villagers from robbery, persuading him to preserve the estate for a school or hospital. And indeed, a year later, an outpatient clinic opened in the manor house, and the stables on the estate were converted into a club. But in the poem Yesenin chose to strengthen the motif of the peasant element.

When Denikin’s men shot Pron, Labutya hid safely in the straw. Yesenin felt that in the revolution and civil war it was people like Labutya who survived much more often than people like Pron; those who survived were cowards who were only accustomed to “plundering the loot” and acting on the principle: “Give it!” Then we’ll figure it out!” The poet was clearly concerned that such people played a major role not only at the local level, but also in the leadership of the party. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Labutya spoke about his imaginary exile to the Turukhansk region, where Stalin was actually exiled before the revolution. Yesenin understood that under the rule of Labut, the peasants’ dreams of happiness along the lines of Radov’s would be completely buried. And the main character of the poem, like Blok’s Stranger, personifying beauty, leaves Russia in the finale. Anna writes to Sergei:

I often go to the pier

And, either for joy or fear,

I look among the ships more and more closely

On the red Soviet flag.

Now they have reached strength.

My path is clear

But you are still dear to me

Like home and like spring.

In the new Russia there will be no place left for beauty, just as there has long been no place for Radov’s paradise. The country turned into beggars Kriushi. By the way, the prototype of Anna Snegina, Lidiya Ivanovna Kashina, never went abroad. In 1918, she moved not to London, but to Moscow, worked here as a translator, typist, stenographer, and although she died in the terrible year 1937, it was not from a KGB bullet, but by her own death. However, here the poet chose to enhance the contrast and break with his previous life, sending his ideal into an irrevocable distance. The poet, most likely, foresaw that the Soviet government, unlike the tsarist government, would not be satisfied with an extra measure of flour and millet, but, having achieved strength, would be able to squeeze the juices out of the peasants (this is what happened during collectivization, after the murder of Yesenin). That is why, like the heroine of the poem, he looks at the red flag not only with joy (Yesenin welcomed the revolution that gave land to the peasants), but also with ever-increasing fear.

5. Yesenin’s conflict with reality

In the 20s, Yesenin experienced the collapse of his revolutionary illusions. He concluded: real socialism, “without dreams,” kills all living things, including the individual. Utopias about the religious-revolutionary transformation of Russia disappeared from his work, motives for the flow away, withering of life, detachment from modernity appeared, and in the lyrical hero - “horse thief”, “robber and boor” - Yesenin’s internal opposition was identified.

In 1921, the poet, disillusioned with the revolution, turned to the image of a rebel and wrote the poem “Pugachev,” in which the theme of the peasant war was associated with post-revolutionary peasant unrest. A logical continuation of the theme of the conflict between the authorities and the peasantry was the poem “The Country of Scoundrels” (1922-1923), which expressed not only Yesenin’s oppositional sentiments, but also his understanding of his outcast in real socialism. In one of his letters in 1923, he wrote: “I cease to understand which revolution I belonged to. I see only one thing: neither for February nor for October, apparently, some kind of November was and is hiding within us.”

The poet became increasingly aware that mutual misunderstanding was growing between him and his fellow countrymen. On the one hand, he became increasingly separated from village life. On the other hand, Soviet realities appeared in the village, unfamiliar to Yesenin, to which his fellow countrymen had to adapt. Yesenin, unlike some other poets, could never say that he was born of a revolution or that this was his revolution. Yesenin accepted the revolution, but, as he admitted more than once, he accepted it in his own way, “with a peasant bias.” However, very soon the revolutionary snowstorms chilled to death the voice of the golden-haired singer of birch blue and white smoke of apple trees. The Russian village began to die long before the revolution. It cannot be said that in this respect the revolution awakened Yesenin’s talent; it only made the main theme of “the last singer of the village” more acute. But the first joy of the revolution passed very quickly. The poet saw that the Bolsheviks were not only not the saviors of the peasantry, but their true destroyers, and that freedom of creative expression frightened them even more than tsarist power.

He tried to enter Soviet life, to sing the new socialist reality, but he was not very successful. Yesenin suffered from this; he wanted to sing not the stars and the moon, but the emerging Soviet newness. In the Stanzas the poet insisted:

Write in rhyme

Perhaps anyone can -

About the girl, about the stars, about the moon

But I have a different feeling

The heart is gnawing

Other thoughts

They crush my skull.

I want to be a singer

And a citizen

So that everyone

Like pride and example, was real,

And not a stepson -

In the great states of the USSR.

But Yesenin was not given the opportunity to find harmony of will and power. In 1924 he wrote in Soviet Rus':

That hurricane has passed. Few of us survived.

There are no friendships at roll call for many.

The hurricane of revolution orphaned the village. The Yesenin generation was replaced by people with non-peasant thinking: “it’s no longer a village, but the whole earth is their mother.” Pushkin’s motif of the lyrical hero’s meeting with a “young, unfamiliar tribe”, its theme of harmony and natural succession of generations is resolved tragically by Yesenin: he is a foreigner in his own country and a “sullen pilgrim” in his native village, whose young men “sing different songs.” In “Soviet Rus',” the village building socialism rejected the poet: “I don’t find shelter in anyone’s eyes.”

The lyrical hero himself fences himself off from Bolshevik reality: he will not give her the “dear lyre”, he will continue to sing “The sixth part of the earth / With the short name “Rus””, despite the fact that he is inclined to perceive the image of the departed Rus' as dreams .

The village no longer seems to the poet to be an earthly paradise, the bright colors of the Russian landscape have faded, motifs of inferiority have appeared in the description of nature: “the maples wrinkle with the ears of their long branches,” the poplars have buried their “bare feet” in the ditches.

Yesenin found harmony in the acceptance, on the one hand, by the mind of the new generation, of “alien youth,” “a strong enemy,” and, on the other, by the heart, of the homeland of feather grass, wormwood, and a log hut. Yesenin’s compromise is expressed in the following lines:

Give me in my beloved homeland,

Loving everything, die in peace!

But behind the sincere desire to see a civilized beginning in the new Russia, one cannot help but notice the tragedy of the rogue hero:

I don't know what will happen to me.

Maybe I’m not fit for this new life.

Discord with reality and himself led the poet to a tragic end.

6. Death of a poet

Is there a mystery, a mystery in the death of Yesenin? As we can easily see, if there is, then it lies not in the circumstances of Yesenin’s death, as many people think, but only in the reasons that pushed the poet to take the fatal step.

One can also agree with Yuri Annenkov: “Yesenin hanged himself from despair, from lack of roads. The paths of Russian poetry were cut off in those years and were soon boarded up tightly. If here, in exile, the free Georgiy Ivanovs continued to create, then within the Soviet Union more and more bureaucratic Demyan Poors were born and filled the printed pages.”

But Leon Trotsky, who, it would seem, should have been Yesenin’s ideological opponent, but was captivated by his poetry, probably said the most accurate thing about Yesenin’s suicide. On January 18, 1926, at an evening in memory of Yesenin at the Art Theater, Trotsky’s letter was read out. Lev Davydovich, in particular, wrote: “We have lost Yesenin - such a wonderful poet, so fresh, so real. And how tragically lost! He left on his own, saying goodbye in blood to an unidentified friend - perhaps to all of us. These last lines of his are amazing in their tenderness and softness. He left this life without a loud insult, without a pose of protest - not by slamming the door, but by quietly closing it with his hand, from which blood was oozing. In this gesture, Yesenin’s poetic and human image flashed with an unforgettable farewell light. Hiding behind a mask of mischief - and giving this mask an internal, therefore not accidental, tribute - Yesenin always, apparently, felt himself - not of this world.

Our time is a harsh time, perhaps one of the harshest in the history of so-called civilized humanity. The revolutionary born for these decades is obsessed with the frantic patriotism of his era, his fatherland in time. Yesenin was not a revolutionary. The author of “Pugachev” and “The Ballad of Twenty-Six” was a most intimate lyricist. Our era is not lyrical. This is the main reason why Sergei Yesenin left us and his era without permission and so early.

Further, Trotsky argued: “His lyrical spring could unfold to the end only in the conditions of a harmonious, happy, singing society, where not struggle reigns, but friendship, love, tender participation. Such a time will come."

Perhaps Vl summed up the results of Yesenin’s life and work more clearly than others. Khodasevich: “The beautiful and beneficial thing about Yesenin is that he was infinitely truthful in his work and before his conscience, that he reached the end in everything, that, not being afraid to create mistakes, he took upon himself what others tempted him to do,” and he wanted to pay a terrible price for everything. His truth is love for his homeland, albeit blind, but great. He confessed it even in the guise of a hooligan:

I love my homeland

I love my homeland very much!

His grief was that he could not name it: he sang of log Rus', and peasant Russia, and socialist Inonia, and Asian Scattering, he even tried to accept the USSR - only one correct name did not come to his lips: Russia. This was his main delusion, not ill will, but a bitter mistake. Here is both the beginning and the denouement of his tragedy.”

CONCLUSION

In this work, we tried to consider how the era in which Yesenin had to live influenced his fate and was reflected in his work.

Then, when Yesenin first gained fame as a poet, Russia was waiting for a revolution. During the years of his mature creativity, the country reaped the fruits of the revolution. The revolution unleashed spontaneous forces, and spontaneity as such corresponded to the nature of Yesenin’s creativity. The poet was carried away by the spirit of freedom, but by the end of the civil war he realized that the “steel cavalry” would destroy the peasantry.

Yesenin called himself the last poet of the village, whose doom in the industrial-urban era he felt with all his heart. This circumstance largely predetermined the tragedy of his work.

Although Yesenin lived most of his adult life in the city, he never became a real city dweller. In recent years, he was haunted by the fear of writing himself out, the fear of finally losing his peasant roots, without which Yesenin could not imagine himself as a poet. All this led to a tragic outcome.

The 20th century was fateful for our country, full of shocks and disappointments. Its beginning was scorched by the fire of revolutions that changed the course of all world history. It was in that era that S. A. Yesenin, the inimitable singer of Russia, a great patriot, had the opportunity to create, who with all his creativity sang “The sixth part of the earth // With a short name, Rus'.”

October 1917... These events could not leave the poet indifferent. They caused a storm of emotions, caused deep emotions and worries, and, of course, inspired the creation of works in which the poet mastered new themes and used new genres.

“During the years of the revolution, he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias,” writes Yesenin in his autobiography. Indeed, the first period of the revolution, which gave land to the peasants, was received favorably by the poet.

The first response to the October Revolution was the poem "Transfiguration", dated November 1917. The revolution is represented by the beginning of all things on Earth, the beginning of abundance and splendor: “the hour of transfiguration is ripening,” the poet is looking forward to the appearance of the “bright guest.” In the poem “The Jordan Dove,” written in 1918, the poet acknowledges his belonging to the revolution: “The sky is like a bell, // The month is a language, // My mother is my homeland, // I am a Bolshevik.” The peculiarity of these poems is that the image of the revolution is filled with mythological features: the biblical “dove” brings joyful news about the transformation of the world, the “bright guest” will lead the people to happiness. Welcoming the revolutionary news, Yesenin expected that it would bring prosperity and happiness to the peasants. This is precisely where he saw the meaning of the revolution, its purpose. She had to create a world where there are no “taxes for arable land”, where people rest “blessedly”, “wisely”, “in a round dance”.

The poem “Heavenly Drummer” (1919) is completely different, it is close to the inviting and accusatory lyrics of proletarian poets. This is a call to the fighters of the revolution to close ranks against the enemy - the “white herd of gorillas” threatening young socialist Russia: “Close together like a close wall! // Whoever hates fog, // With a clumsy hand, the sun will pluck // the golden drum.” The rebellious spirit, rollickingness and recklessness are evident in the dashing appeals: “Let’s sweep away all the clouds // Let’s mix up all the roads...”. The symbols of the revolution “freedom and brotherhood” appear in the poem. These lines are filled with pathos, an indomitable attraction to the “new shore.” Like a slogan, it sounds: “Long live the revolution // On earth and in heaven!” And again we see that the poet does not move away from his roots; church symbols appear more than once in the work, clothed in metaphors: “iconic saliva”, “...a candle at mass // Easter of the masses and communes.”

However, disappointment soon set in regarding the revolution. Yesenin began to look not into the future, but into the present. The revolution did not justify the poet’s aspirations for a nearby “peasant paradise,” but Yesenin unexpectedly saw other sides in it that he could not perceive positively. “What is happening is completely different from the socialism that I thought about... It is cramped for the living, closely building a bridge to the invisible world... for these bridges are being cut down and blown up from under the feet of future generations.” What is this foresight? Isn’t this what everyone saw and understood decades later? Indeed, “big things are seen from a distance.”

“My Rus', who are you?” - the poet asks in the early 20s, realizing that the revolution brought not grace to the village, but ruin. The attack of the city on the village began to be perceived as the death of all real, living things. It seemed to the poet that life, in which his native fields were resounding with the mechanical roar of an “iron horse,” contradicted the laws of nature and violated harmony. Yesenin writes the poem "Sorokoust". Next to the iron train moving forward, a small funny foal, symbolizing village life, gallops with all its might, trying to keep up. But he inexorably loses speed: “Doesn’t he really know that the living horses // were defeated by the steel cavalry?”

A trip abroad again forced the poet to rethink post-revolutionary reality. “Now on the Soviet side // I am the most furious fellow traveler,” writes the poet. However, mental anguish continues. The inconsistency of events causes inconsistency of feelings, there is a bleeding wound in the poet’s soul, he is unable to understand his feelings and thoughts. In the poem “Letter to a Woman,” Yesenin laments: “That’s why I’m tormented, // That I don’t understand - // Where the fate of events is taking us...”

In the poem “Departing Rus',” Yesenin exclaims with pain: “Friends! Friends! What a split in the country, //What sadness in the joyful ebullience!..” The poet could not decide between the two warring camps, or finally choose a side. This hides the drama of his situation: “What a scandal! What a big scandal! I found myself in a narrow gap...” On the one hand, he considers himself one of the “pets of Lenin’s victory,” and on the other, he declares that he is ready to “lift up his pants // Run after the Komsomol” with undisguised irony. In the poem “Leaving Rus',” Yesenin bitterly admits his uselessness of the new Russia: “My poetry is no longer needed here.” Nevertheless, he does not completely renounce his belonging to Soviet Russia: “I will give my whole soul to October and May...”, although he does not recognize himself as a singer of the revolution: “but I will not give up my dear lyre.”

The poet never found peace of mind and was unable to fully comprehend the social processes that affected Russia. Only one feeling never left his work - a feeling of sincere love for the Motherland. This is exactly what poetry teaches him. Like a spell, like a prayer, Yesenin’s call sounds in our hearts: “O Rus', flap your wings!”