Anna Snegina analysis of the work. Poems by S.A. Yesenin's “Anna Snegina” and “Black Man” are two contrasting poetic reflections of one era: ideological pathos, genre specificity, figurative system Anna Snegina as the image of Yesenin’s real beloved
S. Yesenin's poem "Anna Snegina" begins and ends with a lyrical chord - the author's memories of his early youth, about the "girl in a white cape." The plot develops in the first part of the poem: the hero returns to his native place after a three-year absence. The February Revolution took place, but the war continues, the peasants did not receive land. New terrible events are brewing. But the hero wants to stay away from them, relax in communion with nature, and remember his youth. However, events themselves burst into his life. He had just come from the war, threw down his rifle and “decided to fight only in poetry”:
* The war has eaten away at my entire soul.
* For someone else's interest
* I shot at a body close to me
* And he climbed onto his brother with his chest.
February 1917 shook the village. The former enmity between the residents of the village of Radovo and the village of Kriushi flared up with renewed vigor. Kriushi had his own leader - Pron Ogloblin. A former fellow villager, the hero of the poem, who arrived from St. Petersburg, was greeted by his fellow countrymen both with joy and “with curiosity.” He is now a “big shot”, a metropolitan poet, but still “one of our own, a peasant, ours.” They expect him to answer the most burning questions like this: “Tell me, will the arable land of the masters be given to the peasants without ransom?” However, other questions concern the hero. He is occupied by the memory of the “girl in a white cape.” Youthful love was unrequited, but the memories of it are light and joyful. Love, youth, nature, homeland - all this merged into a single whole for the poet. It's all in the past, and the past is beautiful and poetic. From his friend, an old miller, the hero learns that Anna, the daughter of the neighboring landowner Snegina, remembers him. The hero of the poem is not looking for a meeting with her. Everything has changed, they themselves have changed. He does not want to disturb that light poetic image that remains from his early youthful impressions.
Yes, now Anna Snegina is an important lady, the wife of a military officer. She finds the poet herself and almost directly says that she loves him. But the previous image of a young girl in white is more dear to him, he does not want to exchange it for a random love affair. There is no poetry in it. Life brings the poet even closer to the local peasants. He goes with them to the landowner Snegina to ask her to give them the land without ransom. But there is grief in the Onegins' house - the news came that Anna's husband had died at the front. The conflict between the poet and Anna ends in a break. “He died... But here you are,” she reproaches the hero of her short novel. The events of the October days again pit the narrator against Anna. The property of the landowner Snegina was confiscated, the miller brought the former mistresses to his place. The last meeting did not bring the former lovers closer. Anna is full of personal, intimate experiences, and the hero is overwhelmed by the storm of civil events. She asks to be forgiven for her involuntary insults, and he thinks about the redistribution of the landowners' lands.
So life intertwined, confused the personal and the public, separated these people forever. The hero rushed off to St. Petersburg, Anna went to distant and alien London. The last part of the poem is a description of the harsh times of the Civil War. And against this background - two letters. One from a miller with a message that Ogloblin Pron had been shot in Kriushi. Another letter is from London, from Anna Snegina. It was presented to the hero by a miller during his next visit to his homeland.
What remains of previous impressions and experiences? For Anna, who is homesick in a foreign land, now memories of her former love merge with memories of her homeland. Love, Motherland, nature - these are the true values that can warm a person’s soul. The poem “Anna Snegina” is written in poetic form, but its peculiarity is the merging of the epic and lyrical genres into a single inseparable whole. There is no end-to-end action in the poem, there is no sequential story about events. They are given in separate episodes; the author is interested in his own impressions and experiences from encountering these events. The lyrical hero of the poem acts both as a narrator, and as a hero of the work, and as a participant in the events of pre-revolutionary and revolutionary times.
Both in this manner of the author and in the plot itself, although the events take place in a completely different time, there are some echoes of Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”. Perhaps their female image and Russian soul are similar. I take the liberty of asserting that “Anna Onegina” is Yesenin’s novel in verse in terms of its coverage of events and richness of images.
Briefly:
In 1925, the poem “Anna Snegina” was written. It reflected impressions from trips to his native village of Konstantinovo in 1917 - 1918.
“Anna Snegina” combines epic, lyrical and dramatic elements into a single whole. The epic theme is presented in the poem in realistic traditions. The action of the poem takes place against a broad socio-historical background: revolution, civil war, stratification of the village, dispossession, lynching, death of noble nests, emigration of the Russian intelligentsia abroad. The author’s field of view includes people’s disasters - pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary (“peasant wars”, class hatred, Denikin’s raids, exorbitant taxes), people’s destinies (the Radovites, to whom “happiness is given”, and the Kriushans, who have one plow and “a couple of hackneyed nags "), folk characters (Pron Ogloblin, Ogloblin Labutya, miller, miller's wife and others).
The lyrical beginning - the failed love of the heroes - is determined by these epic events. Anna Snegina is a noblewoman, an aristocrat. Sergei is a peasant son. Both, in different ways, but equally well, know the life of Russia and selflessly love it. They are both class enemies and people connected by spiritual kinship; they are both Russian. Their romance takes place against the backdrop of revolutionary cataclysms and social upheavals, which ultimately determines the separation of the heroes. Anna leaves for London, having survived all the blows of fate (the ruin of the estate, peasant retribution, the death of her husband, the break with Sergei), but in a foreign land she retains tenderness for the hero and love for Russia. Sergei, swirling in a revolutionary whirlpool, lives with the problems of today, and the “girl in a white cape” becomes just a dear memory for him.
However, the drama of the situation is not limited to the fact that the revolution destroyed the personal happiness of the heroes; it radically undermined the traditional way of life of all Russian life that had been developing for centuries. Morally crippled, the village is dying, the strong economic Radovites and the poor Kriushans are fighting among themselves, the long-awaited freedom turns into permissiveness: murders, lynchings, the dominance of “villains... dashing”. A new type of leader appears in the village:
A bully, a brawler, a brute.
He is always angry with everyone
Drunk every morning for weeks.
The perspicacious Yesenin bitterly stated in “Anna Snegina” what his blue dream of another land and another country in the Bolshevik state had turned into.
Source: Student's Handbook: grades 5-11. - M.: AST-PRESS, 2000
More details:
The problematics of the poem “Anna Snegina” are inextricably linked with the semantic volume that Yesenin’s lyrics carry. One of the central aspects of the problems of his poetry as a whole is determined by the solution to the question of the relationship between the private time of the individual and the historical time of national life. Does a person have a certain sovereignty in relation to history, can he oppose the destructive and pernicious influence of the historical process (if this is how he perceives it) with his right to remain a private person, rejecting the encroachments of historical time on his personal life and destiny?
This problem is predetermined by two objects of the image, each of which corresponds to two storylines that develop in parallel in the poem. On the one hand, this is a private plot that tells the story of the relationship between the lyrical hero and Anna Snegina, telling about failed love. On the other hand, it is closely intertwined with a concrete historical plot, addressed to the events of the revolution and civil war, which capture the lives of peasants, residents of the village and farm where Yesenin’s hero takes refuge from the whirlwinds of historical time, and himself. Historical discord takes over the life of every person without exception and destroys the emerging love relationships in a private plot.
The exposition of the national historical plot is the story of the driver who opens the poem about the sudden enmity between two villages: Radovo and Kriushi. In the terrible fight for the forest between the men of two villages, the prologue of a civil war is seen, when the seeds of anger grow among people belonging to the same culture, the same nation, speaking the same language: “They are axed, so are we. / From the ringing and grinding of steel / A shiver rolled through the body.” Why, after this fight, does life in the once rich village of Radovo, without any apparent reason, decline? As the driver explains this situation: “Since then, we have been in trouble. / The reins rolled off happiness. / For almost three years in a row / We have either death or fire”?
The driver's story, which serves as a prologue to the national-historical plot of the poem, is replaced by the exposition of a private plot related to the fate of the lyrical hero, with the choice that he makes when deserting from the front of the imperialist war. What is the reason for this action? Is he motivated by the cowardice of the lyrical hero, the desire to save his life, or does he discover a strong position in life, an unwillingness to participate in the insane and destructive historical circumstances of the imperialist war, the goals of which are unknown and alien to the lyrical hero?
Desertion is a conscious choice of a hero who does not want to be a participant in a senseless massacre alien to the interests of the peoples: “The war has eaten away my entire soul. /For someone else’s interest /I shot at a body close to me /And climbed on my brother with my chest.” The February Revolution of 1917, when “Kerensky ruled over the country on a white horse,” did not change either the historical situation itself or the attitude of the lyrical hero to the war and to his participation in it:
But still I didn’t take the sword...
Under the roar and roar of mortars
I showed another courage -
There was the first deserter in the country.
Show that such a choice is not easy for the lyrical hero, that he constantly returns to his action, finds more and more new emotional justifications: “No, no! / I won’t go forever. / Because some scum / Throws a crippled soldier / A nickel or a dime into the dirt.” Find other examples of similar self-justification.
Thus, the two storylines of the analyzed poem “Anna Snegina” by Yesenin correspond to two expositions, the correlation of which forms the problematic of the poem: is it possible, in the conditions of the historical reality of the 20th century, to hide from the fierce and destructive hurricanes of wars and revolutions, national discord, the prologue of which sounds in the story a driver, in his private world, in a shelter, on a miller’s farm, where the lyrical hero is heading? Could it be that the historical wind will pass by and not affect? Actually, the attempt to find such a shelter turns out to be the plot of the poem.
However, such attempts reveal their complete illusory nature. The internal discord of the peasant world with itself, the image of which is given in the enmity of the villages of Radovo and Kriushi, is becoming more and more obvious, involving more and more people. Refer to the hero's conversation with the old woman, the miller's wife. Show how she perceives the current state of the peasant world, what new facets her story adds to the history of the enmity between the Radovites and the Kriushans. Where does she see the reason for the discord between people?
The old woman puts the story of the enmity between the two villages (“The Radovites are beating the Kriushans, / The Radovians are beating the Kriushans”) in a broader national-historical context.
The first meeting with Anna Snegina forces the author to turn to the traditional plot of love lyrics of a meeting after many years of two people who once loved each other, then divorced by fate and time. Remember which poems by Pushkin, Tyutchev, Fet, Blok are addressed to a similar plot. This meeting makes it possible for Anna Snegina and the lyrical hero to return to their previous emotional state, to overcome the time of separation and the twists of fate that separated them: “And at least in my heart there is no former one, / In a strange way, I was full / With the influx of sixteen years.”
The private plot of the relationship between Anna Snegina and the lyrical hero develops in parallel with another storyline, the basis of which is the story of the friendship of the lyrical hero with Pron Ogloblin. It is these relationships that reveal the nature of the historical process taking place in the Russian village, developing before the eyes of the poet and requiring his direct participation. Pron Ogloblin is exactly the hero who forces him to come out of hiding at the mill, does not allow him to sit in the miller’s hayloft, and in every possible way shows the lyrical hero his need for the peasant world.
The climax of the poem, connecting two storylines, is the moment the lyrical hero appears with Pron on the Snegin estate, when Ogloblin, a spokesman for the interests of the peasantry, demands land from the landowner: “You give, they say, your land / Without any ransom from us.” The lyrical hero finds himself together with the peasant leader. When a direct class conflict arises, he, no longer able to ignore the challenge of history, makes a choice and takes the side of the peasantry. The development of the plot reveals the impossibility of hiding from historical time, from class contradictions in the village, by finding yourself on the side, sitting out on the miller’s farm. If he was able to desert from the front of the German war, choosing the life of a private person, then the hero cannot leave the peasant environment with which he is genetically connected: staying on the sidelines would mean betraying the village. So the choice is made: standing next to Pron, the lyrical hero loses his newfound love for Anna Snegina.
The development of the love conflict also ends because Snegina, shocked by the death of her husband-officer at the front, throws a terrible accusation in the poet’s face: “They killed... They killed Borya... / Leave it! /Go away! /You are a pathetic and low coward. /He died... /And you are here..."
The poem “Anna Snegina” is rightly considered one of Yesenin’s largest creations in terms of significance and scale, a final work in which the poet’s personal fate is comprehended in connection with the people’s fate
The poem was written in Batumi in the autumn and winter of 1924-1925, and Yesenin, in letters to G. Benislavskaya and P. Chagin, spoke of it as the best of all that he had written, and defined its genre as Lisichanskaya. But the question of the genre of the poem in Soviet literary criticism has become controversial. V. I. Khazan in the book “Problems of S. A. Yesenin’s poetics” (Moscow - Grozny, 1988) presents a number of researchers who adhere to the idea that the epic content prevails in the poem (A. Z. Zhavoronkov, A. T. Vasilkovsky - the latter’s point of view evolved over time towards classifying the poem as a lyrical-narrative genre), and their opponents, who recognize the lyrical principle as dominant in the poem (E. B. Meksh, E. Naumov). Scientists V. I. Khazan are also contrasted on another basis: those who believe that the epic and lyrical themes in the poem develop side by side, colliding only at times (E. Naumov, F. N. Pitskel), and those who see “organicity” and fusion" of both lines of the poem (P. F. Yushin, A. Volkov). The author himself agrees with A. T. Vasilkovsky, which, using the example of a specific analysis of the text, shows how “interconnected and interacting, the lyrical and epic images of the artistic representation of life organically alternate in it. In the epic fragments, lyrical “motives” and “images” arise, which, in turn, are internally prepared by the emotional-lyrical state of the author-hero, and this mutual transition of the epic into the lyrical and vice versa, deeply motivated by the general poetic content of the poem, represents its main ideological and compositional principle" (35; 162).
The poem was based on events before and after the revolution in Russia, which added an epic scope to the work, and the story about the relationship between the lyrical hero and the “girl in a white cap” provides the poem with heartfelt lyricism. These two interpenetrating principles become decisive in the plot of the poem, accordingly affecting the style and intonation of the work:
“Having conveyed the feeling of tenderness that the author put to the test for a person he had never loved, talking about everything that he experienced “under the influx of sixteen years,” he gave an objective and logical resolution to the lyrical theme. “Anna Snegina” is both “an explanation with a woman” and "explanation with the era", and the first is clearly subordinated to the second, because at the heart of the poem, contrary to its local, personal title, lies a story about the revolutionary break-up in the village. With the unrelenting sound of the lyrical theme, a wide scale of depiction of the people's struggle and deep penetration into human characters" (41; 93).
But in today's controversy about "Anna Snegina" it is not theoretical problems that come to the fore, but the question of the modern interpretation of the characters. And here the pendulum of assessments swung to the other extreme: from a rural activist, Pron turns into a criminal and a murderer:
"... Pron is a criminal and a murderer in the eyes of not only the miller's wife, but also, as it seems to me, any morally healthy person. He, devoid of regret for the old Snegina, who lost her son-in-law in the war, is disrespectful towards his fellow villagers, considering him a “brat of cockroaches” ". But to his insignificant fact that they have lost their elementary pride, his brothers are surprisingly benevolent and allow him into the Rada. Is it the integrity of the “leader of the masses,” especially in the village, where every step is visible?" (18; 32)
The starting point for such interpretations of the image of Pron Ogloblin is the impartial response of the miller’s wife about him as a bully, a brawler, a brute, and then the subjective thought of the old woman is reduced to the rank of objective truth. The miller's wife is often considered "the embodiment of the healthy peasant spirit, with whom it is impossible to argue" (16; 8, 138). However, this is not quite true. After all, if you believe her words, then all Kriushans, without exception, are “thieves’ souls” and “they should be sent to prison after prison.” There is a clear exaggeration in her assessments, especially since most often she judges not after what she saw with her own eyes, but according to the words of “parishioners.”
As for Pron’s murder of the foreman, apparently there were good reasons for this. The author does not unfold the episode into a detailed scene and does not explain the motives for Pron’s perpetration, but the witness who took place - the cab driver - notes: “The scandal smells of murder, both ours and theirs.” And, speaking of Pron as a killer, we probably shouldn’t forget that he himself was shot by Denikin’s men “in the year 1920,” which provides his image with a dramatic nuance. And the statement about “strange goodwill” towards brother Labute must be recognized as a complete misunderstanding, because Pron tested completely different feelings regarding him, and this is clearly stated in the poem: “He pulled out Pron’s nerves, And Pron did not swear with judgment.” And the poem does not mention any “admitted” Labuti to the Rada
It must be said that the new interpretation of Pron’s image is independent of stereotypes, it contains indisputable and irrefutable observations, but unnecessary polemical harshness prevents us from judging the character soberly and calmly, as he deserves. This is especially evident in generalizations, which can also hardly be considered justified: “... The victory of the revolution attracts Pron with the prospect of new reprisals, but not against one foreman, but against “everyone” (18; 32).
A. Karpov’s assessment is more balanced and does not conflict with the text: Pron’s appearance in the poem “is not that reduced, but, so to speak, a little inhabited. The millwoman says about the poor leader: “A bully, a brawler, a brute. He is always embittered by everything, drunk every morning for weeks." But the poet also prefers the unadorned truth to icon paintings: Pron is "drunk in the liver and bones the impoverished people in the soul," he speaks, without hiding his "grumpy dexterity," his speeches are met words and expressions that can jar the ear - he is a master of “swearing not with judgment...” (14; 79).
Lenin's lines of the poem also became controversial. Because of their inherent peremptory nature, the Kunyaevi fathers and sons accuse literary scholarship of lack of insight into deciphering the content of the peasants’ question “Who is Lenin?” and the response of the lyrical heroes “He is you.” The authors of the biography of S. Yesenin shift the question to another plane: “The poet admits that Lenin is the leader of the masses, flesh of their flesh. But what they are, these masses in the poem - it never occurred to anyone: lowlifes, drunkards, lumpens, participants collective murder of the foreman, “dashing villains,” “thieves’ souls.” “They should be in prison after prison.” Then the sharply negative characterization of Pron and Labuti is repeated and the conclusion is drawn: “This is the picture that emerges for us upon careful reading, and if we remember the quiet the phrase of the hero of the poem about Lenin: “He is you!”, then it becomes clear that we, as they say, simply did not see all the depth and all the drama inherent in it” (16; 8, 137).
It cannot be said that such a solution to the problem (a literal reading of the metaphor) is distinguished by profundity; on the contrary, it is too flat and primitive to resemble the truth. Kunyaevi intentionally or unknowingly replaces the “-” sign in the hero’s response with the “=" sign, and everything turns out very simply: since there is an equal sign between Lenin and the peasants, it means that all the negative epithets addressed to the peasants are mechanically transferred to the image of the leader. But this “simplicity” is “worse than theft.” We remind you that the poem was written from November 1924 to January 1925. Yesenin, as you know, was not listed among the “state” poets and, naturally, no one could force him, having specially left the hospital, to spend several hours in Lenin’s coffins, but then in the unfinished poem “Gulyai-Pole” write sincere lines:
And so he died...
From copper-barking hulks
The last salute is given, given.
The one who saved us is no more.
In the same excerpt from the poem “Gulyai-Polye,” Yesenin characterizes Lenin as a “severe genius,” which again does not fit into the interpretation of the image of the leader proposed by the Kunyaevs. Moreover, on January 17, 1925, that is, at the time of the completion of “Anna Snegina,” Yesenin creates “Captain of the Earth,” in which he describes, “How a modest boy from Simbirsk became the helmsman of his country.” The poet, with all the sincerity that is beyond doubt, admits that he is happy because “with the same feelings” he “breathed and lived” with him.
And now, if we assume that Kunyaevi is right in interpreting the image of Lenin in Anna Snegina, it means that in Gulyai-Pole Yesenin sincerely lied to the reader, in Anna Snegina he told a camouflaged truth (to put it simply, he showed the lump in his pocket) , and in “Captain of the Earth” he deceived again in print. Who to believe: Yesenin or Kunyaevim? We admit that Yesenin inspires much more confidence and, it seems, he was not disingenuous in any of the three works about Lenin. And the hero’s answer to the peasants “He is you!” means nothing more than Lenin - the personification of your hopes and expectations. This very reading is dictated, in our opinion, by poetics: a detailed presentation of the circumstances of the conversation (“burdened with thoughts,” “under the ringing of the head,” “quietly answered”) indicate a sincere and benevolent answer. And in general, it is impossible to imagine that the hero of the poem could look into the face of the peasants (“And everyone with a gloomy smile Looked into my face and eyes”) and say that Lenin is the same scoundrel as they themselves, as it turns out in Kunyaevi. A decade later, one can come to the conclusion that Yesenin’s Lenin bears the stamp of that era, but it is impossible to distort the appearance of the author and his lyrical hero to please political topicality
Some modern interpretations of the image of Anna Snegina do not stand up to any criticism: “The girl in the white top” (...) changes for the worse, expressively flirts with him”; “The woman, not accepting his feelings, seems to justify herself for not going that far far away, as we would like..."; "As if finally understanding that they speak different languages, live in different times and different feelings, the heroine acts as befits a woman disappointed in her expectations..." (16; 8 , 139).
We join the position of those who believe that the image of Anna was painted by Yesenin in the best traditions of Russian classics; it is deep, devoid of schematism and unambiguity. “The heroine appears before us as an earthly woman, beautiful, contradictory in her own way, good-natured even at the moment of losing her lands (...)
Widowed, deprived of a mortgage, forced to leave her homeland, Anna does not test the peasants who ruined her, neither anger nor hatred. Emigration also does not embitter her: she is able to rejoice at the successes of her distant homeland and, with a feeling of light sadness, mention the poet and the entire irretrievable past. Anna's "unreasonable" letter is full of the longing of a lonely person for his lost homeland. It is “above-class,” and behind the excited words it is a sin to try to discern only “the daughter of a landowner” (18; 33).
One cannot but agree with those literary scholars who consider “Anna Snegina” one of Yesenin’s most soulful creations. It is marked by monumentality, epic majesty and lyrical insight. The leitmotif runs through the entire poem with lyrical lines about youth, a spring dawn, which remains forever in a person’s memory; The novel with Anna is written in Yesenin's subtle and gentle way, and the stories flow with the will that is inherent in the epic, which recreates nothing in the flow that is compressed by life (14; 76-90).
Analysis of S. A. Yesenin’s poem “The Black Man”
“The Black Man” is one of the most mysterious, ambiguously perceived and understood works of Yesenin. It expressed the mood of despair and horror in front of an incomprehensible reality. Its solution is primarily related to the interpretation of the image of a black man. His image has several literary sources. Yesenin acknowledged the influence on his poem “Mozart and Salieri” by Pushkin, where a mysterious black man appears. The “black man” is the poet’s double; he has chosen in himself everything that the poet himself considers negative and vile in himself. This theme - the theme of a painful soul, a split personality - is traditional for Russian classical literature. It was embodied in Dostoevsky’s “Double” and Chekhov’s “Black Monk”. But none of the works where such an image is found carries such a heavy burden of loneliness as Yesenin’s “Black Man”. The tragedy of the lyrical hero’s sense of self lies in the understanding of his own doom: all the best and brightest is in the past, the future is seen as frightening and gloomily hopeless. Reading the poem, you involuntarily ask the question: a black man is a mortally dangerous opponent of the poet or part of that force that always wants evil and always does good. The “duel” with a black man, whatever his nature, served as a kind of spiritual test for the lyrical hero, a reason for merciless introspection. However, in a literary work it is important not only what is written, but also how. The theme of duality is expressed at the compositional level. Before us are two images - a pure soul and a black man, and the flow of the lyrical hero’s monologue into a dialogue with his double is a poetic expression of the subconscious. The relationship between monologue and dialogic speech is revealed in the rhythmic and intonation structure of the poem. The harsh rhythm of the dactyl enhances the dark intonations of the black man's monologue, and the agitated trochee contributes to the expression of the dialogic form of thought and narration. The metaphor of a broken mirror can be read as an allegory of a ruined life. Here, a piercing longing for the passing of youth, and an awareness of one’s uselessness, and a feeling of the vulgarity of life are expressed. However, this “too early fatigue” is still overcome: at the end of the poem, night gives way to morning - a saving time of sobering up from the nightmares of darkness. A night conversation with a “disgusting guest” helps the poet penetrate into the depths of his soul and painfully remove the dark layers from it. Perhaps, the lyrical hero hopes, this will lead to purification.
Analysis of the poem "Anna Snegina"
Already in the very title of Yesenin’s poem “Anna Snegina” there is a hint of plot similarity with the novel “Eugene Onegin”. As in Pushkin’s work, the heroes of the love story meet her years later and remember their youth, regretting that they ever parted. By this time, the lyrical heroine is already becoming a married woman.
The main character of the work is a poet. His name, like the author’s, is Sergei. After a long absence, he returns to his native place. The hero took part in the First World War, but soon realized that it was being fought “for someone else’s interest,” and deserted, buying himself a forged document. The plot of the poem contains autobiographical features. It is inspired by memories of S.A.’s feelings. Yesenin to the landowner JI. Kashina, with whom he was in love in his youth.
In addition to the love line, the poem gives a broad outline of the poet’s contemporary social reality, including both pictures of peaceful village life and echoes of wars and revolutionary events. The poem is written in a lively colloquial language, full of dialogues, gentle humor and deep nostalgic feelings.
The poet’s patriotic feeling is embodied in the subtlety of the Central Russian landscape he created, a detailed story about the traditional peasant way of life that exists in the prosperous village of Radovo. The very name of this place is symbolic. The men in the village live prosperously. Everything here is done in a proper and thorough manner.
The prosperous Radov is contrasted in the poem with the village of Kriushi, where poverty and squalor reign. The peasants have rotten huts. It is symbolic that no dogs are kept in the village; apparently, there is nothing to steal from houses. But the villagers themselves, exhausted by their painful fate, steal the forest in Radov. All this gives rise to conflicts and civil strife. It is noteworthy that the display in the poem of various types of peasant life was an artistic innovation in the literature of that time, since in general there was a perception of the peasantry as a single social-class community with the same level of income and socio-political views. Gradually, the once calm and prosperous Radovo is drawn into a series of troubles.
An important feature of the poem is its anti-war orientation. Looking at the bright spring landscape, at the blooming gardens of his native land, the hero feels even more acutely the horror and injustice that war brings with it. In theory, the heroes of the poem should have been happy, having spent it together among these beautiful gardens, forests and fields of their native land. But fate decreed differently.
Sergei is visiting an old miller. Here, thanks to the simple realities of rural life, the hero is immersed in memories of his youthful love. Happy to meet his native places, the hero dreams of starting an affair. Lilac becomes a symbol of love in the poem.
The figure of the miller himself, the hospitable owner of the house, and his busy wife, who strives to feed Sergei more deliciously, is also important in the work. Sergei’s conversation with the old woman conveys the popular perception of the author’s contemporary era: ordinary people, spending their lives in work, live for today and feel how much more current everyday worries they have. In addition to the First World War, for which soldiers were taken to villages and hamlets, the peasants are plagued by local conflicts that worsened during the era of anarchy. And even an ordinary village old woman is able to see the reasons for these social unrest. S.A. Yesenin shows how a disruption in the usual course of events, the very revolutionary transformations that were carried out in the name of the people, actually turned into a series of new problems and anxieties.
It is symbolic that it is the miller’s wife who first characterizes Pron Ogloblin, the hero who embodies the image of a revolutionary-minded peasant in the poem. Yesenin convincingly shows that dissatisfaction with the tsarist regime and the desire for social change, even at the cost of cruelty and fratricidal massacre, was born primarily among those peasants who had a penchant for drunkenness and theft. It was people like Ogloblin who willingly went to share the landowners' property.
Sergei falls ill, and Anna Snegina comes to visit him herself. Autobiographical motifs are again heard in their conversation. The hero reads poems to Anna about tavern Rus'. And Yesenin himself, as you know, has a poetry collection “Moscow Tavern”. Romantic feelings flare up in the hearts of the heroes, and soon Sergei finds out that Anna is widowed. In folk tradition, there is a belief that when a woman is waiting for her husband or groom to return from war, her love becomes a kind of amulet for him and keeps him in battle. Anna's arrival to Sergei and attempt to continue romantic communication with him are perceived in this case as betrayal. Thus, Anna becomes indirectly responsible for the death of her husband and realizes this.
At the end of the poem, Sergei receives a letter from Anna, from which he learns how hard she is experiencing separation from her homeland and everything that she once loved. From a romantic heroine, Anna turns into an earthly suffering woman who goes to the pier to meet ships that have sailed from distant Russia. Thus, the heroes are separated not only by the circumstances of their personal lives, but also by profound historical changes.
Sergei Yesenin’s poem “Anna Snegina” is studied in 11th grade during literature lessons. The author himself considered it his best work: he put all his skill, the most touching memories of his youth and a mature, slightly romantic look at past relationships into the poem. The story of the poet's unrequited love is not the main one in the work - it takes place against the backdrop of global events in Russian history - war and revolution. In our article you will find a detailed analysis of the poem according to plan and a lot of useful information when preparing for a lesson or test tasks.
Brief Analysis
Year of writing– January 1925.
History of creation- written in the Caucasus in 1925 “in one breath,” based on memories of the past and rethinking of historical events of 1917-1923.
Subject– the main themes are homeland, love, revolution and war.
Composition– consists of 5 chapters, each of which characterizes a certain period in the life of the country and the lyrical hero.
Genre- lyric epic poem (as defined by the author). Researchers of Yesenin's work call it a story in verse or a poetic short story.
Direction- an autobiographical work.
History of creation
The poem “Anna Snegina” was written by Yesenin in January 1925, shortly before his death. At that time he was in the Caucasus and wrote a lot. The work, according to the author, was written easily and quickly, in one breath. Yesenin himself was extremely pleased with himself and considered the poem his best work. It reconsiders the events of the revolution, military actions, political events and their consequences for Russia.
The poem is deeply autobiographical, the prototype of Anna Snegina was the poet’s acquaintance Lydia Ivanovna Kashina, who married a nobleman, a White Guard officer, and became distant and a stranger. In their youth they were inseparable, and in adulthood Yesenin accidentally met Lydia, and this became the impetus for writing the poem.
Meaning of the name is quite simple: the author chose a fictitious name with the meaning of pure, white snow, the image of which appears several times in the work: through delirium during illness, in the poet’s memories. Snegina remained pure, inaccessible and distant for the lyrical hero, which is why her image is so attractive and sweet to him. Critics and the public received the poem coldly: it was unlike other works, political issues and bold images scared away acquaintances from commenting and evaluating. The poem is dedicated to Alexander Voronsky, a revolutionary and literary critic. It was published in full in 1925 in the magazine “Baku Worker”.
Subject
The work intertwines several main topics. The peculiarity of the work is that it contains many personal experiences and images of the past. Homeland theme, including his small homeland - the poet’s native village of Konstantinovo (which is called Radovo in the story). The lyrical hero very subtly and touchingly describes his native places, their way of life and way of life, the morals and characters of the people living in the village.
Heroes of the poem very interesting, varied and diverse. Love theme is revealed frankly in Yesenin's style: the lyrical hero sees in his beloved an image of the past, she has become the wife of a stranger, but is still interesting, desirable, but distant. The thought that he, too, was loved warms the lyrical hero and becomes a consolation for him.
Revolution theme revealed very honestly, shown through the eyes of an independent eyewitness who is neutral in his views. He is not a fighter or warrior; cruelty and fanaticism are alien to him. The return home was reflected in the poem; every visit to his native village worried and upset the poet. The problem of devastation, mismanagement, decline of the village, troubles that were the result of the First World War and revolution - all this is shown by the author through the eyes of the lyrical hero.
Issues The works are diverse: cruelty, social inequality, sense of duty, betrayal and cowardice, war and everything that accompanies it. Main idea or idea The work is that life is changeable, but feelings and emotions remain in the soul forever. This leads to the conclusion: life is changeable and fleeting, but happiness is a very personal state that is not subject to any laws.
Composition
In the work “Anna Snegina”, it is advisable to carry out the analysis according to the principle “following the author”. The poem consists of five chapters, each of which relates to a specific period of the poet’s life. The composition contains cyclicality- the arrival of the lyrical hero to his homeland. In the first chapter we learn that the main character returns to his homeland to relax, to be away from the city and the noise. The post-war devastation has divided people; the army, requiring ever greater investments, is based on the countryside.
Chapter two tells about the past of the lyrical hero, about what kind of people live in the village and how the political situation in the country changes them. He meets his ex-lover and they talk for a long time.
The third part- reveals the relationship between Snegina and the lyrical hero - mutual sympathy is felt, they are still close, although age and circumstances separate them more and more. The death of her husband separates the heroes, Anna is broken, she condemns the lyrical hero for cowardice and desertion.
In the fourth part the Snegins' property is seized, she and her mother move into the miller's house, talk to her lover, and reveal her fears to him. They are still close, but the turmoil and fast pace of life requires the author to return to the city.
In the fifth chapter describes a picture of poverty and the horrors of the civil war. Anna goes abroad, from where she sends news to the lyrical hero. The village is changing beyond recognition, only close people (especially the miller) remain the same family and friends, the rest have degraded, disappeared in scrapes and are lost in the existing vague order.
Genre
The work covers quite large-scale events, which makes it especially epic. The author himself defined the genre - “lyric epic poem”, however, contemporary critics gave the genre a slightly different designation: a story in verse or a poetic short story.
The novella describes events with a sharp plot and an abrupt ending, which is very typical for Yesenin’s work. It should be noted that the author himself was not theoretically versed in issues of literary criticism and the genre specificity of his works, so his definition is somewhat narrow. The artistic means used by the author are so diverse that their description requires separate consideration: vivid epithets, pictorial metaphors and comparisons, original personifications and other tropes create a unique Yesenin style.
Work test
Rating analysis
Average rating: 4.2. Total ratings received: 157.
