Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich. Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich Attitude to proletarian poetry

, THE USSR

Nikolay Alekseevich Klyuev(October 10 (22), Koshtugi village, Olonets province - between October 23 and 25, Tomsk) - Russian poet, representative of the so-called new peasant trend in Russian poetry of the 20th century.

Biography

Father, Alexei Timofeevich Klyuev (1842-1918) - constable, inmate in a wine shop. Mother, Praskovya Dmitrievna (1851-1913), was a storyteller and weeper. Klyuev studied at the city schools of Vytegra and Petrozavodsk. Among the ancestors were Old Believers, although his parents and himself (contrary to many of his stories) did not profess the Old Believers.

Klyuev's autobiographical notes "Loon's Fate" mention that in his youth he traveled a lot in Russia. Specific stories cannot be verified by sources, and such numerous autobiographical myths are part of his literary persona.

Klyuev tells how he novitiated in the monasteries on Solovki; how he was "King David ... white doves - Christ", but fled when they wanted to castrate him; how in the Caucasus I met the handsome Ali, who, according to Klyuev, “fell in love with me the way Kadra-night teaches, which costs more than a thousand months. This is a secret eastern teaching about marriage with an angel, which in Russian white Christianity is indicated by the words: finding Adam ... ", then Ali committed suicide from hopeless love for him; how he talked with Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana; how he met Rasputin; how he was in prison three times; how he became a famous poet, and "literary meetings, evenings, artistic feasts, the chambers of the Moscow nobility for two winters in a row grinded me with the motley millstones of fashion, curiosity and well-fed boredom" .

Literary fame

For the first time, Klyuev's poems appeared in print in 1904. At the turn of the 1900s and 1910s, Klyuev appeared in literature, and did not continue the standard for "poets from the people" tradition of descriptive minor poetry in the spirit of I. Z. Surikov, but boldly uses the techniques of symbolism, saturates the verses with religious imagery and dialect vocabulary . The first collection - "Pine Chime" - was published in 1911. Klyuev's work was received with great interest by Russian modernists; Alexander Blok (in correspondence with him in 1907; had a great personal and creative influence on Klyuev), Valery Bryusov and Nikolai Gumilyov spoke about him as a "harbinger of folk culture".

Nikolai Klyuev had a difficult relationship (at times friendly, at times tense) with Sergei Yesenin, who considered him his teacher. In 1915-1916, Klyuev and Yesenin often performed together with poetry in public, later on their paths (personal and poetic) converged and diverged several times.

Religiosity Klyuev

As A. I. Mikhailov points out, Alexander Blok repeatedly mentions Klyuev in his poems, notebooks and letters and perceives him as a symbol of the mysterious folk faith. In one of the letters, Blok even stated: “Christ is among us,” and S. M. Gorodetsky attributed these words to Nikolai Klyuev.

In his 1922 entry, Klyuev says:

... for me, Christ is an eternal, inexhaustible milking force, a member that cuts through the worlds in the vagina, and in our world cut through the trap - the material sun, continuously impregnating the cow and the woman, the fir and the bee with the golden seed, the world of air and the underworld - fiery.

The seed of Christ is the food of the faithful. It is said about this: “Take, eat ...” and “Whoever eats my flesh, he will not die ...”

It has not been revealed to our theologians that by the flesh Christ meant not the body, but the seed, which even among the people is called flesh.

This is what should cut through in the human mind, especially in our times, in the age of the shocked heart, and become a new law of morality...

Klyuev after the revolution

Klyuev’s poems at the turn of the 1910s and 1920s reflect the “peasant” and “religious” acceptance of revolutionary events, he sent his poems to Lenin (although a few years earlier, together with Yesenin, he spoke to the empress), became close to the Left SR literary group “Scythians ". In the Berlin publishing house "Scythians" in 1920-1922, three collections of Klyuev's poems were published.

After several years of hungry wandering around 1922, Klyuev reappeared in Petrograd and Moscow, his new books were sharply criticized and withdrawn from circulation.

Since 1923, Klyuev lived in Leningrad (in the early 1930s he moved to Moscow). The catastrophic situation of Klyuev, including the material one, did not improve after the publication of his collection of poems about Lenin (1924).

Soon, Nikolai Klyuev, like many new peasant poets, distanced himself from Soviet reality, which was destroying the traditional peasant world; in turn, Soviet criticism smashed him as an "ideologist of the kulaks." After the death of Yesenin, he wrote "Lament for Yesenin" (1926), which was soon withdrawn from free sale [ ] . In 1928, the last collection "The Hut and the Field" was published.

In 1929, Klyuev met the young artist Anatoly Kravchenko, to whom his love poems and letters of this time are addressed (there are 42 Klyuev's letters). The predominance of the chanting of male beauty over female beauty in Klyuev's poetry of all periods was studied in detail by the philologist A. I. Mikhailov.

At this pinnacle of human feeling, like clouds touching the dual Ararat, the heavenly swirls over the valley, the earthly. And this law is inevitable. Only now, on my days of the cross, is it, more than ever, becoming clearly perceptible to me. That's why it's harmful and wrong to tell you that you live in me just like the floor and that love goes away with sex and friendship is destroyed. Irresistible proof that the angelic side of your being has always eclipsed the floor - are my poems - shed at your feet. Look at them - is there a lot of floor there? Are all the feelings of these extraordinary and never repeatable runes connected with you as with a snowdrop, a seagull or a ray that has become a young man?

Arrests, exile and execution

On February 2, 1934, Klyuev was arrested on charges of “compiling and distributing counter-revolutionary literary works” (Article 58, Part 10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). The investigation was led by N. Kh. Shivarov. On March 5, after the trial of the Special Conference, he was exiled to the Narym Territory, to Kolpashevo. In the autumn of the same year, at the request of the artist N. A. Obukhova, S. A. Klychkov and, possibly, Gorky, he was transferred to Tomsk.

On June 5, 1937, in Tomsk, Klyuev was arrested again and on October 13 of the same year, at a meeting of the troika of the NKVD of the Novosibirsk Region, he was sentenced to death in the case of the never-existing "cadet-monarchist rebel organization" Union for the Salvation of Russia "". At the end of October he was shot. As stated in the certificate of Klyuev's posthumous rehabilitation, he was shot in Tomsk on October 23-25, 1937. The vague date of the execution may be explained by the fact that from 01:00 on October 23 to 08:00 on October 25 there was no electricity in Tomsk due to the repair of the local thermal power plant. In such cases, the NKVD officers, who carried out sentences over two nights (October 23 and 24) using a “bat” lantern, could draw up documents retroactively for the entire party only after electric light appeared in the city (October 25) . Probably, the place of execution and the mass grave, where the poet rested, was one of the wastelands in the ravine (the so-called Terrible Ditch) between Kashtachnaya Gora and the transit prison (now SIZO-1 on Pushkin Street, 48) (See. Chestnut).

The investigator in the Klyuev case was the detective of the 3rd department of the Tomsk city department of the NKVD, junior lieutenant of state security Georgy Ivanovich Gorbenko).

Posthumous rehabilitation

Nikolai Klyuev was rehabilitated in 1957, but the first posthumous book in the USSR was published only in 1977.

Rarely large literary talent Klyuev, who is often ranked higher than Yesenin, grew out of folk peasant creativity and the centuries-old religiosity of the Russian people. Life, fed by the primordial strength of the peasantry and seeking poetic expression, was combined in him at first with an instinctive, and later with a politically conscious rejection of urban civilization and Bolshevik technocracy. At the same time, the form of his poems developed from closeness to folk - through the influence of symbolism - to more conscious independent structures.<…>Poems in the spirit of folk lamentations interspersed with verses consonant with biblical psalms, the style is very often ornamental. The richness of images reveals the fullness of the inner, sometimes visionary view of the world.

Residential addresses

Petrograd - Leningrad

• 1915-1923 - K. A. Rasshchepina's apartment in an apartment building - Fontanka River Embankment, 149, apt. 9;
• 1923-1932 - courtyard outbuilding - 45 Gertsen street, apt. 7.

Tomsk

Two houses have been preserved in Tomsk - per. Krasnogo Pozharnik, 12 and Mariinsky lane, 38 (now 40), in which the poet lived at different times.

The last refuge of the poet - house 13 on the street. Achinskaya. The poet himself described his dwelling (after his release from arrest on July 5, 1936) as follows:

They brought me and carried me out of the cart to my kennel. I'm lying... I'm lying. […] Behind the slanting window of my room is a gray Siberian downpour with a whistling wind. It’s already autumn here, it’s cold, the dirt is up to the collar, the guys are roaring behind the board fence, the red-haired woman curses them, from the terrible common tub under the washstand it carries a nauseating stench ...

The house was subsequently demolished. The memorial plaque installed on the house in 1999 was transferred to the literary museum of the Shishkov House (10 Shishkov St.), copies of documents on the Klyuev case, lifetime editions, articles from periodicals about his life and work are also kept there. October 21, 2016 on a building built on the site of a house on the street. Achinskaya, 13, a memorial plaque of the Last Address project was installed in memory of the repressed poet.

Bibliography

Lifetime editions

• Brotherly songs. (Songs of Calvary Christians). - M.: To the new earth, 1912. 16 p.
• Brotherly songs. (Book Two) / Intro. Art. V. Sventsitsky. - M.: Novaya Zemlya, 1912. XIV, 61 p.
• Forest were. - M.: 1912.
• Forest were. (Poems. Book 3rd). - M.: 1913. 76 p.
• Pine chime. / Foreword. V. Bryusov. - M.: 1912. 79 p.; 2nd ed. - M.: Ed. Nekrasova, 1913. 72 p.
• worldly thoughts. - Pg.: ed. Averyanova, 1916. 71 p.
• Songbook. Book. 1-2. - Pg.: 1919.
• Copper whale. (Poetry). - Pg.: Ed. Petrosovet, 1919. 116 p.; reprint reissue: M.: Stolitsa, 1990.
• Unfading color: Songbook. - Vytegra: 1920. 63 p.
• Whacky songs. - Berlin: Scythians, 1920. 30 p.
• Song of the Sun. Earth and iron. - Berlin: Scythians, 1920. 20 p.
• Lion bread. - M.: 1922. 102 p.
• Mother Saturday. (Poem). - Pg: Polar Star, 1922. 36 p.
• Fourth Rome. - Pg.: Epoch, 1922. 23 p.
• Lenin. Poetry. - M.-Pg.: 1924. 49 p. (3 editions)
• Klyuev N. A., Medvedev P. N. Sergey Yesenin. (Poems about him and an essay on his work). - L.: Surf, 1927. 85 p. (included Klyuev's poem "Lament for Sergei Yesenin").
• Hut and field. Selected Poems. - L.: Surf, 1928. 107 p.

Major posthumous editions

• Klyuev N. A. Poems and poems / Compiled, prepared text and notes by L. K. Shvetsova. Intro. Art. V. G. Bazanova. - L.: Soviet writer, 1977. - 560 p. 2nd ed.: L.: Soviet writer, 1982.
• Klyuev N. A. Heart of the Unicorn: Poems and Poems / Foreword. N. N. Skatova, entry. Art. A. I. Mikhailova; comp., preparation of the text and notes by V. P. Garnin. - St. Petersburg. : RKhGI Publishing House, 1999. - 1072 p. - ISBN 5-88812-079-0.
• Klyuev N. A. Word Tree: Prose / Intro. Art. A. I. Mikhailova; comp., preparation of the text and notes by V. P. Garnin. - St. Petersburg. : Rostock, 2003. - 688 p. - ISBN 5-94668-012-9.
• Nikolay Klyuev. Letters to Alexander Blok: 1907-1915 / Publ., Entry. Art. and comm. K. M. Azadovsky. - M.: Progress-Pleyada, 2003. - 368 p.

Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich (1887-1937), poet.

Born on October 22, 1887 in the village of Koshtug, Vytegorsky district, Olonetsk province (now in Karelia) into a peasant family.

In 1893-1895. studied at the parochial school in the city of Vytegra (now in the Vologda region), then at the city school and at the medical assistant's school in Petrozavodsk (now the capital of Karelia).

At the beginning of the XX century. with fellow countrymen who sold fish and furs in the capital, he went to work in St. Petersburg.

At the same time, Klyuev began to write poetry in the tradition of "new peasant poetry": the mournful, indignant muse of the poet complains about the suffering of the tiller and sends curses to his enslavers (published in the collective collection New Poets, 1904).

Since 1905, under the impression of revolutionary events, Klyuev became involved in active political activity - he distributed proclamations of the All-Russian Peasant Union in Moscow and the Olonets province. Klyuev's works were born at the junction of two poetic cultures - oral folk art and avant-garde poetry. This predetermined the success of his first books "Pine Chime" and "Brotherly Songs" (both 1912) in the camp of the Symbolists, and then the Acmeists.

Klyuev traveled a lot in the Russian North, visited monasteries, memorized and wrote down folk tales, songs, legends, traditions.

The collection "Brotherly Songs" is in many ways a poetic arrangement of "overheard" and talentedly reproduced sectarian chants. In addition, Klyuev’s poetry clearly has its own lyrical themes: the conflict between Nature and Civilization (the peasant “hut paradise” suffers under the onslaught of the machine “iron” culture) and an attempt to “marry the religious with the revolutionary” (“The Fourth Rome”, 1921) .

Since the mid 20s. the position of the poet is rapidly deteriorating. He lives alternately in Vyborg and Leningrad, trying to establish contacts with local and central authorities.

He creates a poem about V. I. Lenin, joins the ranks of the Bolsheviks, from where he is soon expelled for religious views.

In 1934 Klyuev was arrested and exiled to Siberia for five years.

Comments

... accusations (of "anti-Soviet agitation" and "compiling and distributing counter-revolutionary literary works") were also brought against Klyuev in connection with his other works - "Gamayun's Song" and "If the demons of the plague, leprosy and cholera ...", which are part of the unfinished cycle " Ruin." In the last poem, for example, the White Sea-Baltic Canal is mentioned, built with the participation of a large number of dispossessed and prisoners:
That is the White Sea Death Canal,
Akimushka dug it,
From Vetluga Prov and aunt Fyokla.
Great Russia got wet
Under the red downpour to the bone
And hid tears from people
From the eyes of strangers into the deaf swamps ...
On June 5, 1937, he was arrested again and shot at Kashtachnaya Mountain at the end of October. Nikolai Klyuev was rehabilitated in 1957, but the first posthumous book in the USSR was published only in 1977.

The beginning of the 20th century, also called the Silver Age, was the heyday of Russian literature. New directions and trends appeared, the authors were not afraid to experiment and discover new genres and themes. One of these poets was Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich. He belonged to the new peasant poetic direction.

Biography

Nikolai Klyuev was born on October 10, 1884 in the village of Koshtugi, Vytegorsk district (Vologda region). The biography of the writer begins in the family of a simple constable Alexei Timofeevich. But most of all, Klyuev loved his mother, Praskovya Fedorovna, who was an excellent storyteller. She was also engaged in teaching her son, thanks to her Nikolai could read, write and learned the basics of the folk song warehouse.

In 1895 he graduated from the parochial school in Vytegra. Then he went to Petrozavodsk, where he studied at the medical assistant's school. After graduation, Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich, together with fellow countrymen who were engaged in the sale of fur and fish to the capital, leaves for St. Petersburg to work.

In the capital, he begins to write poetry as part of the direction of the new peasant poetry. In his works, the poetic muse complains about the torment and suffering of the tillers and curses their enslavers. Klyuev's first poems were published in the 1904 collection New Poets. However, soon Klyuev returned to his small homeland.

Impressed by the revolutionary events that had begun, the poet became involved in active political activity in 1905. Starts distributing proclamations. For this, Klyuev was arrested in 1906.

Klyuev and Blok

A significant event for the poet was his acquaintance with Alexander Blok. The correspondence of writers began in 1907. At first, Nikolai Klyuev is rather timid in his messages to the recognized poet, but gradually he becomes convinced that Blok himself is interested in their conversations. Gradually, Klyuev begins to talk about the spirit of protest that is brewing among the people, about social injustice. But writers are not only talking about politics. Nikolai Alekseevich notes the power of the poetic spirit, which is contained in the common people, but due to domestic reasons, it cannot be fully revealed.

Blok was greatly impressed by Klyuev's letters. He repeatedly quotes them in letters to friends and in his articles. Thanks to Blok's assistance, Beak's poems are published in Novaya Zemlya, The Golden Fleece, and many other literary magazines. Metropolitan writers pay attention to the works of the poet from the hinterland. Klyuev manages to get acquainted with many of them. Among them is Valery Bryusov.

creative success

In 1911, Nikolai Klyuev published his first collection "Pine Chime". The preface to the publication is written by Bryusov. The book was received with approval and interest in poetic and literary circles. Such poets as Nikolai Gumilyov and others spoke positively about her. The public was struck in Klyuev's works by their unusualness, the absence of a pronounced individuality, the orderliness of tropes, images, rhythms.

Klyuev sings of nature, the rural way of life, the people. At the same time, he believes that the godless culture that dominated the 19th century is dying, and it is being replaced by something new, alive and popular.

Gumilyov, in his review of the collection, predicts the future of Klyuev's poetry - he says that this is only the beginning of a new movement in literature. And he turns out to be right. Klyuev becomes one of the first representatives of the new peasant poetry.

Klyuev and Yesenin

Nikolai Klyuev for a long time alone defended the right of peasant poetry to life. But in 1915 he received a letter from a young poet from the Ryazan province. Yesenin's letter inspires Klyuev. Despite the fact that they are familiar in absentia, other writers who write within the framework of the peasant theme unite around these two poets.

In the poetry of Klyuev and Yesenin, there really were a lot of similarities, which is why they quickly found a common language and united. The year 1915 was the peak of their conscientious creative successes. Together they attended literary evenings, read their poems.

However, the union did not last long. Yesenin's gift was much wider than the new peasant poetry, and in 1917 the friendship of the two poets came to an end.

Attitude towards proletarian poetry

Nikolai Klyuev, whose poems were sung by the common Russian people, however, did not consider himself a proletarian poet. The revolution found the writer in his native places. Klyuev received her arrival with unprecedented enthusiasm. But he imagined it as an offensive "paradise for a man."

In 1918, Nikolai Klyuev joined the Bolshevik Party. Engaged in propaganda work, reads poetry about the revolution. However, at the same time, he remains a religious person, which is contrary to the new order. It becomes clear that he is promoting a completely different revolution. And in 1920 Klyuev was expelled from the party. Stop publishing his poems. He began to irritate the new government with his religiosity and disagreement with proletarian poets, calling their works propaganda fakes.

A difficult time began for the poet. He was in poverty, was persecuted, could not find a job. Despite this, he continued to openly oppose Soviet power.

The poet's struggle ended on February 2, 1934, when he was arrested for "compiling and distributing counter-revolutionary works." He was sentenced to exile in the Narym Territory. And in October 1937, Klyuev was shot on a fabricated case.

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884-1937) was born in the Olonets province in a village on the Vytegra River; his mother taught him "literacy, song structure and all verbal wisdom." He studied in Vytegra at the parochial school, then at the city school, he did not finish the medical assistant's school due to illness.

He began to publish in 1904, and in 1905 his poems appeared in the Moscow collective collections Surf and Wave. At the beginning of 1906, he was arrested for "inciting" the peasants and "agitating illegal ideas." I spent six months in Vytegorsk and then in Petrozavodsk prisons. Klyuev's rebellious ideas were based on a religious (close to sectarianism) basis: the revolution seemed to him the onset of the Kingdom of God, and this topic is the leitmotif of his early work.

After his release, he continued illegal activities, became close to the revolutionary populist intelligentsia (including the sister of the poet A. Dobrolyubov, Maria Dobrolyubova, the “Madonna of the Socialist-Revolutionaries”, and the poet L. D. Semenov). New acquaintances led him to the pages of the capital's journal "Working Way", which was soon banned for its anti-government orientation.

In the autumn of 1907, Klyuev was called up for military service, but, following his religious convictions, he refused to take up arms; under arrest, he is brought to St. Petersburg and placed in a hospital, where doctors find him unfit for military service, and he leaves for the village. At this time, he began a correspondence with A. Blok (the problem of relations between the intelligentsia and the people - from different poles - occupied both, and this communication was mutually important and significant).

Blok contributed to the appearance of Klyuev's poems in the Golden Fleece magazine, later Klyuev began to collaborate with other publications - Sovremennik, Niva, Zavetami, etc. Especially often in 1910-12. Klyuev is published in the Novaya Zemlya magazine, where they are trying to impose on him the role of the spokesman for the “new people's consciousness”, a preacher and prophet, almost a messiah.

In the autumn of 1911, Klyuev's first collection of poems, The Pines Chime, was published in Moscow, to which almost all influential critics responded, unanimously regarding the book as an event in literary life. At this time, Klyuev becomes known in literary (and even bohemian) circles, participates in meetings of the "Workshop of Poets" and in publications of acmeists, visits the literary and artistic cafe "Stray Dog"; around his name there is an atmosphere of increased curiosity, rush interest, and a variety of people are looking for acquaintance with him.

After the release of two collections - “Brotherly Songs”, 1912 (religious poems inspired by genuine “fraternal songs” of the whips), and “Forest were” (stylizations of folk songs), Klyuev returned to the Olonets province. His poems continue to appear in the capital's magazines and newspapers, he visits the capital from time to time.

In 1915, Klyuev met Yesenin, and a close relationship developed between them: for a year and a half they appeared together both in the press and at readings, Klyuev became the spiritual mentor of the young poet, patronizing him in every possible way. A circle of “new peasant” writers is gathering around them, but attempts to institutionalize the commonwealth do not lead to the creation of a durable and lasting association (the Krasa and Strada societies lasted only a few months).

In 1916, Klyuev's collection Worldly Thoughts was published, on the subject of which military events left their mark. Klyuev greeted the revolution enthusiastically (this was reflected in numerous poems of 1917-1918), regarding everything that was happening primarily as a religious and mystical event that should lead to the spiritual renewal of Russia.

In 1919 the books "The Copper Whale", the two-volume "Songbook" (selected from previous years and new poems) and in 1922 his best lifetime collection - "Lion's Bread" were published.

The lyrics of those years reflect the complex experiences of the poet - the painful belief that all suffering will be redeemed by the onset of "brotherhood", "peasant's paradise", longing for dying Rus', crying for the disappearing, murdered village.

In 1928, Klyuev's last collection, "The Hut in the Field", was published, compiled from poems already published, everything that was written by him in the 30s did not get into print.

In 1934 Klyuev was arrested in Moscow and deported to Tomsk; in June 1937 he was arrested a second time, imprisoned in Tomsk and shot.

Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich - poet. Father is a constable who received the position of inmate of a state-owned wine shop in the village. Zhelvachevo, Mokachevo volost, Vytegorsk district, where the family moved in the 1890s. Mother is from an Old Believer family, a zealous guardian of the traditions of “ancient piety”. According to the memoirs of village old-timers, “there were many old printed and handwritten books in the Klyuevs’ house, icons of old pre-Nikon writing hung in the upper rooms, lamps burned in front of them. This house was often visited by wanderers, God's people ”(A. Gruntov). From his mother, the future poet (according to his “autobiographies” performed in the hagiographical genre) also receives a kind of home education: “My mother taught me to read and write from the Chasovnik (...). I didn’t know the letters yet, I didn’t know how to read, but I look at the Clockwork and sing the prayers that I knew from memory, and leaf through the Clockwork, as if I was reading. And the deceased mother will come and praise me: “Here, she says, my child is growing up, it will be like John Chrysostom” (“Loon Fate” // Sever. - 1992. - No. 6), To the mother, according to the poet, not only the origins of the religious and moral foundations of his personality, but also his poetic gift go back. She was, as he wrote immediately after her death in 1913 to V. Bryusov and V. Mirolyubov, a “songwriter” and “epic writer”, i.e. kind of spontaneous poetess. Later, this talent of hers, not without a polemical sight, was even elevated to an ideal: “Thousands of poems, whether mine or those poets whom I know in Russia, are not worth one chanter of my bright mother” (“Loon Destiny”). Klyuev studied at the parochial school (1893-1895), then at the Vytegorsk city school (1896-1897); in 1898 he entered the Petrozavodsk paramedic school, from which he left after studying for a year. According to the “autobiography”, at the age of 16, at the insistence of his mother, he goes to Solovki “to save himself” and puts on “nine-pound chains” there, then sets off from there to wander around the sketes and shelters of secret mystical sects in Russia. In one of the schismatic communities of the Samara Territory, he becomes "King David", i.e. composer of "songs" for the needs of the local Khlyst "ship". This is the beginning of Klyuev's poetic path in the semi-mythical version of his autobiography. The historically reliable beginning is the poems published in the little-known St. Petersburg almanac "New Poets" (1904) and then in two Moscow collections. "Waves" and "Surf" (1905), published by the "people's" circle of P.A. Travin, of which Klyuev was a member.

Having taken part in the revolution of 1905 as an agitator from the Peasant Union and paid for it with a six-month prison sentence, Klyuev sets out on the path of intense spiritual quest and creative self-determination, paving his way to great poetry. A. Blok is chosen as a guide to its heights. Klyuev entered into a correspondence with Blok in 1907, which continued for a long time. Klyuev adheres to two goals: firstly, to introduce himself, “dark and beggar, whom any symbolist would shun on the street” (from a letter to Blok on November 5, 1910), to the elite of the priests of modern art; and secondly, to enlighten these priests themselves, cut off from the national element of life and true culture, with the spirit of goodness and beauty emanating from the hidden people's Russia, the messenger of which he realizes himself. Blok also takes him for such, including fragments of Klyuev's letters in his articles, and calling a personal meeting with him in October 1911 "a big event" in his "autumn life" (Diary. - 1911. - October 17). In a letter to one of his correspondents, Blok even admits: “My sister, Christ is among us. This is Nikolai Klyuev ”(Alexander Blok in the memoirs of his contemporaries. - M., 1980. - T.1. - P.338). Klyuev resolutely enters the circle of the metropolitan literary elite and already in 1908 is published in the luxuriously published magazine of the symbolists "Golden Fleece". At the end of 1911 (with an indication - 1912) the first book of his poems "Pine Chimes" was published. V. Bryusov's preface said that "Klyuev's poetry is alive with inner fire", flashing "suddenly in front of the reader with an unexpected and dazzling light", that Klyuev "has lines that amaze". In the verses of the book, the echo of the recent revolution is palpable. In the exalted appearance of the heroine of a kind of lyrical novel (the only one in Klyuev with a female addressee), the traits of a revolutionary and at the same time a nun were guessed full of sacrifice.

In 1912, the second book of Klyuev's poems, "Brotherly Songs", was published, compiled, according to the author, from texts composed by him when he was still a young "Tsar David". The release of this book accompanies Klyuev’s rapprochement with the “Golgotha ​​Christians” (a revolutionary-minded part of the clergy who called for personal, like Christ, responsibility for the evil of the world and published their magazines New Life, then New Wine). The "Golgotha ​​Christians" relied on Klyuev as their prophet. However, having not justified their hopes, Klyuev departs from the religious and prophetic path, he chooses the path of a poet. In 1913 he publishes a new book of poems, "The Forests were." It depicts “pagan”, folk Rus', rejoicing, riotous, yearning, expressing itself with an almost natural (in fact, skillfully stylized) voice of folk songs (“Love”, “Kabatskaya”, “Ostrozhnaya”). Considering this turn of Klyuev from the religious dominant of his first books, V. Khodasevich was ironic about the failed claims of the “mystics” from Novaya Zhizn to Klyuev as a prophet of a “new religious revelation”; he emphasized that the content of "Forest Tales" is "erotica, quite strong, expressed in sonorous and bright verses" (Alcyone. - M., 1914. - Book 1. - P. 211).

By this time, Klyuev had already been recognized on the national Olympus. N. Gumilyov in literary reviews defines the main pathos of his poetry as “the pathos of the one who found”, as “the Slavic feeling of the bright equality of all people and the Byzantine consciousness of the golden hierarchy at the thought of God”, calls the poet himself “the herald of a new force, folk culture”, and his poems "impeccable" (Letters on Russian poetry. - M., 1990. - P. 136, 137, 149). In Klyuev's poetry, acmeists are impressed by the verbal weight, multi-coloredness and sonority of the patriarchal peasant world depicted in it. O. Mandelstam in his “Letter on Russian Poetry” (1922) will call this world “the majestic Olonets, where Russian life and Russian peasant speech rest in Hellenic importance and simplicity” (Word and Culture. - M., 1987. - P. 175) . Acmeists readily rank Klyuev in their guild group: “A sigh of relief swept from his books. Symbolism reacted sluggishly to him. Acmeism joyfully welcomed him ”(Gorodetsky S. Some trends in modern Russian poetry // Apollo. - 1913. - Book 1. - P. 47). During his visits from Vytegra to St. Petersburg in 1911-1913. Klyuev attends meetings of acmeists. His poems are published in the almanac "Apollo" and "Hyperborea".

Since 1913, Klyuev became the center of attraction for "poets from the people", who soon formed the core of the new peasant poetry - A. Shiryaevets, S. Klychkov, S. Yesenin. In the latter, immediately upon first meeting him, he saw “the most beautiful of the sons of the baptized kingdom” and perceived him as a kind of messiah of deep Russian poetry, in relation to whom he was ready to define himself only as a forerunner.

In 1916, the fourth book of Klyuev's poems, Worldly Thoughts, was published; in the middle of the 10s. a cycle dedicated to the death of his mother "Izbyanye Songs" is being created, Klyuev's pinnacle achievement in this period.

The landscape played a special role in Klyuev's poetry. Perfectly developed by the poetry of the XIX century. the realistic landscape image is spiritualized in him by an unusually vivid vision of Holy Rus' in it, which he calls “bottomless Russia”, “Rublevskaya Russia”, Russia of “birch bark paradise”. In painting, a similar insight into the spiritual, religiously intimate image of Russia to its natural incarnation was made by the "singer of the religious North" M. Nesterov.

The poet, who usually began realistically recreating nature, then harmoniously switches to the plan of its mystical perception - through the worldview and spiritual vision of Christian and Orthodox culture. In this case, nature begins to acquire a certain thrill of mysterious otherness, there is an element of churchness in its perception: “The ice on the river thawed, / Became piebald, rusty-gold ... , the ice on the river thawed...”, 1912). The aesthetic perception of nature is combined in Klyuev's landscape lyrics with a sense of divine grace. "A deep religious feeling and no less deep sense of nature" is not accidental, by definition, he met with Klyuev at the turn of the 20-30s. Ettore Lo Gatto, are the fundamental principles of his personality (My meetings with Russia. - M., 1992. - P. 86).

At the same time, the poet subtly brings together both poetic “mothers” (nature and Orthodox spirituality, the temple) at the points of their greatest, for example, color, correspondences: the first spring leaves-candles, the whiteness of birch trunks - the pallor of the faces of monastic youths and nuns, the gilding of the iconostasis - the yellowness of autumn forests, cinnabar on the icon is the dawn, the blue color on it is heavenly blue, human life is a candle burning in front of the icon, but together with km also “in front of the face of the forests”.

Klyuev accepts the revolution of 1917 enthusiastically at first, erroneously assuming in it a force capable of contributing to the historical embodiment of that Rus', which was outlined in Klyuev's poetry as a "birch-bark paradise", "sak" peasant kingdom ". Along with A. Bely, A. Remizov, E. Zamyatin, M. Prishvin, S. Yesenin and others, he is included in the lit. the Scythians group, whose members adhered to the idea of ​​peasant socialism, understood in the spirit of Christian utopia (R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik and others). Klyuev generously advances the revolution with fiery lines of poetry glorifying Lenin as a kind of abbot of peasant-schismatic Russia (the cycle of poems "Lenin", 1918) and "homely Soviet authorities." In 1918, his book of poems "The Copper Whale" was published, representing mainly the face of the revolutionary Klyuev muse. When soon the poet’s hopes that he “will love the stormy Lenin / Motley Klyuevsky verse” (“Motherland, I am a sinner, a sinner ...”, 1919) are not justified, he loses all interest in the leader of the world proletariat. Klyuev contrasts his ideals with those of Lenin: “We believe in brothers with many eyes, / And Lenin in iron and in a red mind” (“We believe in brothers with many eyes ...”, 1919).

In 1919, Klyuev's two-volume "Songbook" was published, which includes both new works and poems of previous books in a revised and supplemented form. The dominant idea of ​​the Songbook is related to the Christian idea that “the world lies nearby” and that only through its spiritual “transformation” can universal liberation from existing suffering and imperfection, peace and prosperity be achieved. But if at first such a “transforming force” for Klyuev was entirely the teaching of Christ itself, now the natural and agricultural world is coming to the fore (without displacing, however, Christ) - as a kind of universal cosmos of human existence, as the “flesh” and “spirit” of the national life. The world of darkness and evil is presented here to a large extent by infernal images - from completely harmless "furnace imps" to the very "master" of hell, the seven-horned "Son of the Abyss" as the embodiment of both social evil and moral torment of the soul. But still, the most extreme evil that threatens the "birch-bark paradise", "hut" Rus', is here the technical progress and urbanization of all life, which bring spiritual and physical impoverishment to the "organic man", and death to nature. In a letter to A. Shiryaevts (November, 1913), Klyuev conjured: “Oh, mother desert! Spiritual paradise, mental paradise! How hateful and black the whole so-called Civilized world seems, and what would it give, whatever cross, whatever Golgotha ​​would bear - so that America would not advance on the gray-feathered dawn, on the chapel in the forest, on the hare by the haystack, on the fairy tale hut ... " (Coll. - T.1. - P.190). In the verses “He called the silence wilderness...” (mid-10s), the forces of evil that bring death to the “birch-bark paradise” are personified in a rather concrete, albeit faceless image of a certain “jacket”-city dweller, “son of iron and stone boredom”: “I breathed a cigarette into coniferous incense / And burned a forget-me-not with a spit ...” One of the few opens K. in the poetry of the 20th century. the topic of environmental danger: “A plant spews into Svetloyar / Blast furnace belching - slag” (“Rus-Kitezh”, 1918); later he will note that both “the swell of the Aral Sea is in the dead mud ...”, and “The blue Volga is shallowing ...” (“Devastation”, 1933 or 1934).

In the center of the artistic world of "Songs" is a peasant hut, deepened and expanded to the limits of a certain "hut space", in which everything is poeticized: "Find out now: there is a ridge on the roof / There is a silent sign that our path is far" ("There is a bitter sandy loam, deaf chernozem...”, 1916). But the cosmic purpose of the hut, according to Klyuev, is only the unraveled part of its incomprehensible fate, its many secrets: “The hut is the sanctuary of the earth / With a baking secret and paradise ...” (“To the poet Sergei Yesenin”, 1916-1917); “... a forest hut / Looks into the centuries, dark as fate ...” (“The day shuns the oven darkness ...”, 1912 or 1913); the misfortune awaiting her: “There is in the hut, in the cricket memorial service / the Wailing Wall, the Sacrificial Resentment” (“Nila Sorskogo voice ...”, 1918).

In 1922, a new Sat. Klyuev's poems "Lion's Bread", reflecting the turning point in his worldview from the illusions of 1917-1918. to the tragic motifs of the poetry of the 20s. The controversy with urban poets (Mayakovsky and Proletkultists) alternates with gloomy pictures of the death of Russia and his own (“For me, Proletkult will not cry ...”, 1919; “I am being buried, they are burying ...”, 1921). In the same 1922, the poem "Mother Saturday" was published as a separate edition, dedicated to the mysticism of the creation of peasant bread. The author himself then explained the essence of the poem: “The Christmas of bread is its slaughter, burial and resurrection from the dead, which the Russian people long for as beauty, and are told in my Blue Saturday. (...) A plowman, a little less than the angels, will redeem the world with rye blood. (...) “Mother Saturday” is a hackneyed ecclesiast, the Gospel of bread, where the Face of the Son of Man is among the animals ... ”(“ Blue Saturday ”, 1923. - RO IRLI).

In September 1922, in Pravda (No. 224), L. Trotsky's article about Klyuev appeared (one of several under the general title "Extra-October Literature"), in which the author, having paid tribute to the poet's "large" individuality, "pessimistically" generalized: “The spiritual isolation and aesthetic identity of the village (...) is clearly at a loss. It seems that Klyuev is also at a loss ”(Literature and Revolution. - M., 1991. - P. 62). In the same year, in a review of Klyuev’s poem “The Fourth Rome” (1922), N. Pavlovich (pseudonym Mikhail Pavlov) wrote: “For his songs about this dark forest element, we should be grateful to Klyuev - you need to know the enemy and look him right in the face "(Book and revolution. - 1922. - No. 4). With the special purpose of exposing the mysticism of Klyuev's "arable ideology", V. Knyazev's book "The Rye Apostles (Klyuev and Klyuevshchina)" was published in 1924. Knowing in advance about the work on it, Klyuev, in a letter to Yesenin on January 28, 1922, writes about it: “... breaking with us, the Soviet government breaks with the most tender, with the deepest in the people” (Questions of Literature. - 1988. - No. 2).

In the mid 20s. Klyuev makes some attempt to adjust his muse to “new songs” (“Bogatyrka”, 1925; “Leningrad”, 1925 or 1926), however, in parallel with them, “new songs” are also created, in which the motive of Russia’s “departure” from alien modernity sounds : “The page conceals along the river / Swan flying cry. / Flies off Rus flies away (“I won’t write from the heart ...”, 1925) and curses to the “iron”: “The iron cattle gored / Kolyada, a warm jacket, a sleigh” (“Our Russian truth perished ...”, 1928). With special epic force, the idea of ​​the death of Russia is developed by K. in the poems "The Village" (1927), "Solovki" (1926-1928), "Pogorelshchina" (1928), "The Song of the Great Mother" (1931), which are the tragic epic of the end Russia and the swan song of her last rhapsod. They are joined by the poems “Lament for Sergei Yesenin” (1926) and “Zaozerye (1927). In "Pogorelshchina", calling himself "the songwriter Nikolai", the poet takes on the mission of testifying to distant descendants about the unique beauty of the "Miracle Russia" burnt by the "human rabble". Responding on January 20, 1932, to the proposal of the Board of the Writers' Union to subject “self-criticism of his last works, K. expresses himself; “If Mediterranean harps live for centuries, if the songs of poor, snow-covered Norway are carried around the world on the wings of polar gulls, then is it fair to take the birch bark Sirin of Scythia, whose only fault is its many-colored witch pipes. I accept both the finca and the machine gun if they serve the Sirin-art ”(Rereading again. - L., 1989. - P. 216.

Only “Lament for Sergei Yesenin”, “Village” and “Zaozerye” are published during the life of the poet, all the rest of the poems will appear in print in his homeland only after more than fifty years.

In 1928, Klyuev's last collection of poems, The Hut and the Field, was published, entirely compiled from previously published. However, the next five years are the period of the most intense and even, as it were, “desperate” creativity. In addition to the tragic epic of “flying away” Russia, a significant layer of lyrics is being created, united by the name of Anatoly Yar-Kravchenko, the hero of his last lyrical novel (“I Remember You and Don’t Remember ...”, 1929; “To My Friend Anatoly Yar”, “From Death Songs” , "A Tale of Sorrow" - 1933), as well as a large cycle of poems "What are the gray cedars rustling about", marked by the drama of personal life (loneliness) and the conflicting confrontation of modernity.

Invariably emphasizing his spiritual (and even genetic) affinity with the "fiery name" of the unbending archpriest Avvakum, Klyuev does not intend to give up his positions in an unequal struggle. In "Pogorelshchina", under the guise of historically ancient, legendary enemies of Rus', the Polovtsians and Saracens, the image of the current destroyers of its spirituality and beauty is drawn. He not only fiercely defends his own "birch-bark Sirin", but in a passionate invective "Slanderers of Art" (1932) he takes under protection from the pogromists of Russian poetry the most persecuted by them S. Klychkov, S. Yesenin, A. Akhmatova, P. Vasiliev. At the end of 1933 or the beginning of 1934, Klyuev created the “Ruin” cycle, which was already openly directed against the atrocities of the existing regime, from the pages of which a stunning picture of people’s suffering arises: hunger, mass deaths of dispossessed Ukrainians taken to the Vologda region, digging the infamous canal: “That is the White Sea death -channel, / Akimushka dug it, / From Vetluga Prov and aunt Fekla, / Great Russia got wet / Under a red downpour to the bones / And hid tears from people, / From the eyes of strangers into the deaf swamps. In all these works, filled with pain and anger for everything that is happening in Russia, the poet's voice sounds firm and fearless. And only in his dreams (K. told them to his relatives, they were preserved in their records) - prophetic forebodings of his own death. Many lines from “Ruin” turned out to be prophetic, in particular about future Russia (unfortunately, about real Russia): “She must lead the black ones, the horse from Karabakh ...”

February 2, 1934 Klyuev (at that time he lives in Moscow) is arrested for anti-Soviet agitation. During interrogations, he does not hide his resolute rejection of "the policy of the Communist Party and Soviet power aimed at the socialist reorganization of the country", which he considers "as the state's violence against the people, bleeding and fiery pain." The October Revolution, he says, "plunged the country into an abyss of suffering and disaster and made it the most miserable in the world." “I believe that the policy of industrialization is destroying the basis and beauty of Russian folk life, and this destruction is accompanied by the suffering and death of millions of Russian people ...” (Spark. - 1989. - No. 43). Exiled at first in the village. Kolpashevo (West Siberia), Klyuev was soon transferred to Tomsk, where in the spring of 1937 contact with him was lost, giving way to versions and legends about his end. And only in 1989, from the materials of the Tomsk NKVD that became available, the true picture of his death was revealed: on July 5, 1937, he, already completing his term of exile, was arrested for the second time as an active, “close to the leadership” member of the “monarcho-cadet” rebel organization " Union for the Salvation of Russia" (never existed); sentenced to the highest measure of "social protection", he was shot on one of three days - October 23-25, 1937.

The last of Klyuev's famous works is the poem "There are two countries: one is the Hospital ...". Sent with the last letter to A. Yar-Kravchenko (March 25, 1937), it testifies that, despite all the suffering and disasters, the creative forces did not leave the poet.

Works: Works: In 2 volumes - Munich, 1969; Poems and poems. - L., 1977; Forefathers // Literary Review. - 1987. - No. 8; Letters to S. Klychkov and V. Gorbacheva // New World. - 1988. - No. 8; Songbook. - Petrozavodsk, 1990; Poems and poems. - M., 1991; Song of the Great Mother // Banner. - 1991. - No. 11; Dreams // New Journal (Leningrad). - 1991. - No. 4; Loon fate. From letters of 1919 // Sever. - 1992. - No. 6; Letters to A. Yar-Kravchenko // Sever. - 1993. - No. 10; Letters to N.F. Khristoforova-Sadomova // North. - 1994. - No. 9.

Lit .: Filippov B. Nikolay Klyuev; Materials for the biography // Klyuev N. Soch. - Munich, 1969. - V.1; Gruntov A. Materials for the biography of N.A. Klyueva // Russian literature. - 1973. - No. 1; Azadovsky K. Nikolai Klyuev: The path of the poet. - L., 1990; Bazanov V.G. From the native shore: On the poetry of Nikolai Klyuev. - L., 1990; Subbotin S. Kostin K. Return of the Pesnoslov // Klyuev N. Pesnoslov. - Petrozavodsk, 1990; Kravchenko B. Through my life // Our heritage. - 1991. - No. 1; Kiseleva L. Christianity of the Russian Village in the Poetry of Nikolai Klyuev // Orthodoxy and Culture. - Kyiv, 1993. - No. 1; Mikhailov A. History and fate in the mirror of dreams (according to the dreams of Nikolai Klyuev) // Measure. - 1994. - No. 2; Meksh E. The image of the Great Mother: Religious and mythological traditions in the epic work of Nikolai Klyuev. - Daugavpils, 1995; Pichurin L. The last days of Nikolai Klyuev. – Tomsk, 1995; Mikhailov A. "Cranes Caught in a Blizzard..." (N. Klyuev and S. Yesenin) // Sever. - 1995. - No. 11-12; Nikolay Klyuev. Research and materials. - M., 1997.