Yesenin about the revolution quotes. Sergei Yesenin is a poet of the October Revolution. Reflection of the revolutionary era in the poems of S. A. Yesenin
What changes took place in the poet’s attitude to the revolution and social ideas, the policies of the Bolsheviks? How did this affect your creativity?
In the first post-revolutionary months, the poet was full of enthusiasm, hoping that the peasant’s centuries-old dream of free, joyful patriarchal work on his land would now come true. In the spirit of the times, god-fighting and god-building motifs briefly entered his poems of 1918. The real development of the revolution resulted in the destruction of all the foundations of national life. All this led to changes in Yesenin’s political position. The mood of his poems became different in 1920-1921.
In the small poems “Sorokoust”, “Confession of a Hooligan”, poems of these years, the image of the “iron guest” appears, symbolizing the merciless destruction of the “dear, dear” living world.
In the poem “The Mysterious World, My Ancient World...” Yesenin reflects on the fate of the peasantry. The enemy wins, the peasant world is doomed:
The beast fell... and from the cloudy depths
Someone will pull the trigger now...
Suddenly a jump... and a two-legged enemy
Fangs are torn apart.
People's, peasant Russia resisted the forces of destruction to the end. In this poem, the poet talks about his blood, mortal unity with this world, unity in love and hate.
Oh, hello to you, my beloved beast!
You don't give yourself a knife for nothing.
Like you, I am persecuted from everywhere,
I pass among iron enemies.
Like you, I'm always ready,
And even though I hear the victory horn,
But he will taste the enemy's blood, My last, deadly leap.
Yesenin was a man of integral spiritual experience. And the state of his soul was determined primarily by the perception of what was happening in his native land. Lyrical and philosophical miniatures and poems of a different genre and style acquire a sad and elegiac sound:
I have now become more stingy in my desires,
My life, did I dream about you?
As if I rode on a pink horse in the echoing early spring.
("I do not regret, do not call, do not cry…")
The important image of this poem is consonant with the central one in “Sorokoust”: “pink horse” - “red-maned foal”. The fate of the homeland and the state of the poet’s soul are inseparable. He sang, “when My land was sick,” and could express unhealthy moods himself. But he did not lose his moral guidelines. And this allowed us to hope for understanding and forgiveness.
I want to last minute Ask those who will be with me -
So that for all my grave sins,
For disbelief in grace, they put me in a Russian shirt under icons to die.
(“I have only one fun left…”)
After returning from abroad, there was a short period in the poet’s life of reviving hopes for an end to the social storm. Not only the lyrical hero of Yesenin’s poems, but the entire people wanted peace and tranquility.
Trying to look into life new Russia, to comprehend one’s own place in it are reflected in the poems “Return to the Motherland”, “Letter to a Woman”, “Soviet Rus'”. Very contradictory feelings fill Yesenin's lyric poems in 1924-1925.
He is joyfully ready to capture the signs of a resurgent life: “Unspeakable, blue, tender... / My land is quiet after storms, after thunderstorms...” But the sad confidence grows stronger that there is no place for him in the new life.
One of the best in terms of the depth of feeling and the perfection of its poetic embodiment was the poem “The golden grove dissuaded...”. It is written in Yesenin’s traditional manner. The life of the soul of the lyrical hero
merged with the natural world. The rustle of fading leaves, the sound of the autumn wind, the cries of flying birds better than words talk about the state and experiences of the hero. He sees no consolation in his own past and present:
I'm full of thoughts about my cheerful youth,
But I don’t regret anything about the past.
And only the nature of the native land still gives peace to the tormented spirit, calls for understanding, forgiveness, farewell:
Like a tree silently shedding its leaves,
So I drop sad words.
And if time, swept away by the wind,
He will gather them all into one unnecessary lump... Say it this way... that the golden grove Dissuades you with a sweet tongue.
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- Yesenin's attitude to the revolution
- Yesenin's attitude to the revolution
The 20th century was fateful for our country, full of shocks and disappointments. Its beginning was scorched by the fire of revolutions that changed the course of all world history. It was in that era that S. A. Yesenin, the inimitable singer of Russia, a great patriot, had the opportunity to create, who with all his creativity sang “The sixth part of the earth // With the title Brief Rus'».
October 1917... These events could not leave the poet indifferent. They caused a storm of emotions, caused deep emotions and worries, and, of course, inspired the creation of works in which the poet mastered new themes and used new genres.
“During the years of the revolution, he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias,” writes Yesenin in his autobiography. Indeed, the first period of the revolution, which gave land to the peasants, was received favorably by the poet.
The first response to the October Revolution was the poem "Transfiguration", dated November 1917. The revolution is represented by the beginning of all things on Earth, the beginning of abundance and splendor: “the hour of transfiguration is ripening,” the poet is looking forward to the appearance of the “bright guest.” In the poem “The Jordan Dove,” written in 1918, the poet acknowledges his belonging to the revolution: “The sky is like a bell, // The month is a language, // My mother is my homeland, // I am a Bolshevik.” The peculiarity of these poems is that the image of the revolution is filled with mythological features: the biblical “dove” brings joyful news about the transformation of the world, the “bright guest” will lead the people to happiness. Welcoming the revolutionary news, Yesenin expected that it would bring prosperity and happiness to the peasants. This is precisely where he saw the meaning of the revolution, its purpose. She had to create a world where there are no “taxes for arable land”, where people rest “blessedly”, “wisely”, “in a round dance”.
The poem “Heavenly Drummer” (1919) is completely different, it is close to the inviting and accusatory lyrics of proletarian poets. This is a call to the fighters of the revolution to close ranks against the enemy - the “white herd of gorillas” threatening young socialist Russia: “Close together like a close wall! // Whoever hates fog, // With a clumsy hand, the sun will pluck // the golden drum.” The rebellious spirit, rollickingness and recklessness are evident in the dashing appeals: “Let’s sweep away all the clouds // Let’s mix up all the roads...”. The symbols of the revolution “freedom and brotherhood” appear in the poem. These lines are filled with pathos, an indomitable attraction to the “new shore.” Like a slogan, it sounds: “Long live the revolution // On earth and in heaven!” And again we see that the poet does not move away from his roots; church symbols appear more than once in the work, clothed in metaphors: “iconic saliva”, “...a candle at mass // Easter of the masses and communes.”
However, disappointment soon set in regarding the revolution. Yesenin began to look not into the future, but into the present. The revolution did not justify the poet’s aspirations for a nearby “peasant paradise,” but Yesenin unexpectedly saw other sides in it that he could not perceive positively. “What is happening is completely different from the socialism that I thought about... It is cramped for the living, closely building a bridge to the invisible world... for these bridges are being cut down and blown up from under the feet of future generations.” What is this foresight? Isn’t this what everyone saw and understood decades later? Indeed, “big things are seen from a distance.”
“My Rus', who are you?” - the poet asks in the early 20s, realizing that the revolution brought not grace to the village, but ruin. The attack of the city on the village began to be perceived as the death of all real, living things. It seemed to the poet that life, in which his native fields were resounding with the mechanical roar of an “iron horse,” contradicted the laws of nature and violated harmony. Yesenin writes the poem "Sorokoust". Next to the moving one railway forward by iron train A small funny foal, symbolizing village life, gallops with all its might, trying to keep up. But he inexorably loses speed: “Doesn’t he really know that the living horses // were defeated by the steel cavalry?”
A trip abroad again forced the poet to rethink post-revolutionary reality. “Now on the Soviet side // I am the most furious fellow traveler,” writes the poet. However, mental anguish continues. The inconsistency of events causes inconsistency of feelings, there is a bleeding wound in the poet’s soul, he is unable to understand his feelings and thoughts. In the poem “Letter to a Woman,” Yesenin laments: “That’s why I’m tormented, // That I don’t understand - // Where the fate of events is taking us...”
In the poem “Departing Rus',” Yesenin exclaims with pain: “Friends! Friends! What a split in the country, //What sadness in the joyful ebullience!..” The poet could not decide between the two warring camps, or finally choose a side. This hides the drama of his situation: “What a scandal! What a big scandal! I found myself in a narrow gap...” On the one hand, he considers himself one of the “pets of Lenin’s victory,” and on the other, he declares that he is ready to “lift up his pants // Run after the Komsomol” with undisguised irony. In the poem “Leaving Rus',” Yesenin bitterly admits his uselessness of the new Russia: “My poetry is no longer needed here.” Nevertheless, he does not completely renounce his belonging to Soviet Russia: “I will give my whole soul to October and May...”, although he does not recognize himself as a singer of the revolution: “but I will not give up my dear lyre.”
The poet never found peace of mind, I couldn’t fully comprehend social processes, affecting Russia. Only one feeling never left his work - a feeling of sincere love for the Motherland. This is exactly what poetry teaches him. Like a spell, like a prayer, Yesenin’s call sounds in our hearts: “O Rus', flap your wings!”
Sergei Yesenin, without a doubt, is the most popular of all Russian poets of the 20th century, and perhaps of all Russian poets in general. For him, the words that the people needed him were never an empty phrase. Yesenin did not think of his poems outside of popular recognition. His talent received recognition early and was blasphemed just as early, but perhaps never fully blossomed, due to the tragic fate and tragic death of the poet, who did not even live to reach the age of Christ. Yesenin's fate was stormy and sad. A bright and hectic life greatly contributed to the popularity of his poems - sincere and musical, close and understandable to a wide variety of people. Even during the poet’s lifetime, legends began to take shape about her.
After the death of Sergei Yesenin and the publication of the posthumous collected works, a period of official oblivion of his work began. It was recognized as petty-bourgeois, kulak, and not in keeping with the great era. For several decades, Yesenin was a banned poet. But his poems were always loved by readers, and his life was covered in legends.
Yesenin lived only 30 years. But his generation suffered so many trials that it would have been more than enough for several centuries: Russo-Japanese War, revolution of 1905, imperialist war, February and October revolutions, Civil War, devastation and famine of the first post-revolutionary years.
How did the era influence Yesenin’s fate and his worldview, and how was it reflected in his work? In this work we will try to answer this question and at the same time try to penetrate the world of Yesenin’s poetry.
“I began to compose poems early,” Yesenin later writes in his biography. “My grandmother gave impetus to this. She told fairy tales. I didn’t like some fairy tales with bad endings, and I remade them in my own way. I began to write poetry, imitating ditties.” The grandmother managed to convey to her beloved grandson all the charm of folk oral and song speech. A pool of pink mists, the autumn gold of linden trees, the red poppy of sunset, Rus' - a raspberry field - Sergei Yesenin comprehended all this poetic picturesque alphabet in the blue of the Ryazan field and birch expanse, in the noise of reeds over river backwaters, in the family of his grandfather - a scribe, an expert on the lives of saints and Gospels, and grandmothers - singers.
The beauty of native nature and the Russian word, mother's songs and fairy tales, grandfather's Bible and spiritual poems of wanderers, village street and zemstvo school, Koltsov's songs and Lermontov's poems, ditties and books - all these sometimes extremely contradictory influences contributed to the early poetic awakening of Yesenin, whose mother was Nature has so generously endowed me with the precious gift of the song word.
Yesenin spent his childhood in the family of his maternal grandfather, a wealthy peasant. Therefore, Sergei, unlike many of his peers, did not have to worry about his daily bread, although, of course, he was taught how to do peasant labor in order to mow, sow, and care for horses. Perhaps it was precisely this seemingly purely everyday circumstance that helped him bring Russian nature with all its distances and colors into Russian poetry, already through this bright window, broken through to God, to see in the Ryazan village broken by latrine trade its poetic, ideal prototype - Blue Rus', Motherland with a capital letter.
In 1916, Yesenin’s first collection of poems, “Radunitsa,” appeared, combining poems depicting peasant life and interpreting religious subjects. At the end of 1915 - beginning of 1916. Yesenin's name appears on the pages of many publications next to the names of the most famous poets.
2. Revolution and poetry
She walked first World War. Conscription into the active army was avoided. Yesenin served in the Tsarskoye Selo military sanitary battalion. He read his poems in the hospital for the wounded in the presence of the Empress. This performance, like the performance a few months earlier in Moscow before Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fedorovna, caused indignation in St. Petersburg literary circles that were hostile towards the monarchy. However, it is difficult to speak definitely about that period of Yesenin’s life: the testimonies and memories of contemporaries are too contradictory.
In any case, it is reliably known that in Tsarskoe Selo Yesenin visited N. Gumilyov and A. Akhmatova and read them a poem that amazed Anna Andreevna with its last quatrain - it seemed prophetic to her.
I meet everything, I accept everything,
Glad and happy to take out my soul.
I came to this earth
To leave her quickly.
The imperialist war was perceived by Yesenin as a genuine tragedy of the people. The poem “Rus” (1914) conveys the alarming atmosphere of the misfortune that came to the village:
The black crows cawed:
There is wide scope for terrible troubles.
The whirlwind of the forest turns in all directions,
Foam from the lakes waves its shroud.
The sotskys told under the windows
The militias go to war.
The women of the suburbs began to gag,
Crying cut through the silence all around.
The poet later recalled: “The sharp difference with many St. Petersburg poets in that era was that they succumbed to militant patriotism, and I, with all my love for the Ryazan fields and for my compatriots, always had a sharp attitude towards the imperialist war and militant patriotism. I even got into trouble for not writing patriotic poems like “Roll the thunder of victory.”
Yesenin, together with other military orderlies, took the military oath only on January 14, 1917. And already at the end of February a revolution broke out, overthrowing the tsar. On March 17, Yesenin was sent from ambulance train No. 143 at the disposal of the Military Commission under the State Duma, and the poet received a certificate that there were no obstacles “to enrolling in the ensign school” for him. It is possible that the issue of sending him to the ensign school was decided before the revolution.
In his autobiography, the poet stated: “During the revolution, he left Kerensky’s army without permission and, living as a deserter, worked with the Socialist Revolutionaries not as a party member, but as a poet.
When the party split, I went with the left group and in October was in their fighting squad. He left Petrograd together with the Soviet regime."
At the end of March, having arrived in Petrograd, Yesenin immediately began to collaborate in Socialist Revolutionary publications edited by R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, in particular in two collections of the literary group “Scythians”. At best, he was listed in the combat squad, but did not take any part in the battles in October 1917. Ivanov-Razumnik extolled Yesenin and Klyuev as poet-prophets of the “Russia of the future.”
In his autobiography, Yesenin made a clear poetic exaggeration about his desertion. And even after the October Revolution, desertion was much more honorable than working under the Military Commission of the State Duma. Another thing is that in the conditions of the revolution Yesenin decided not to enter the ensign school, but preferred to collaborate in the Socialist Revolutionary newspapers. But no one was looking for him at that time as a deserter.
In general, Yesenin accepted both the February and later the October Revolution. February Revolution dedicated to the 1917 poem “Comrade”:
But it rings calmly
Outside the window,
Then going out, then flaring up
Iron
“Rre-es-puu-publica!”
But it cannot be said that the revolution aroused in him the same stormy delight, poetic and human, as, say, in Mayakovsky. Yesenin experienced the revolution as a sharp and sudden renewal of life. The revolution provided rich material for his poetry, but hardly touched the poet’s soul. Socialist-Revolutionary - Yesenin was a “Martovsky”.
Nevertheless, the revolution in the poems of 1917 is presented as good news for the people:
Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!
The sun hasn't gone out yet.
Dawn with a red prayer book
Prophesies good news.
Ring, ring, golden Rus',
Worry, restless wind!
Blessed is he who celebrates with joy
Your shepherd's sadness.
“Shepherd sadness,” according to the poet, should be replaced by revolutionary joy.
In 1917, he called in a poem dedicated to Nikolai Klyuev:
Hide, perish, tribe
Stinking dreams and thoughts!
On the stone crown
We carry the star noise.
Enough to rot and whine,
And I hate to praise the takeoff -
Already washed it off, erased the tar
Resurgent Rus'.
Already moved its wings
Her mute fortress!
With other names
A different steppe is emerging.
The poet accepted the October Revolution, in his own words, “with a peasant bias.” In an effort to respond to revolutionary events, he turns to mythology and biblical legends, which is reflected in his atheistic and cosmic poems and short poems: “Transfiguration” (1917), “Inonia” (1918), “Dove of Jordan” (1918).
The poet does not hide his glee, observing the collapse of the old world, in a fit of joy he says goodbye to traditional religious beliefs, but at the same time widely uses religious vocabulary. Concrete reality, real events are burdened with surprises, metaphors, biblical images, and vague symbols. And at the same time, a “peasant bias” is clearly visible.
In 1917-1918, he felt the gift of a prophet in himself, created the “Yesenin Bible” of ten small poems: “Singing Call”, “Father”, “Octoechos”, “Advent”, “Transfiguration”, “Inonia”, “Rural Book of Hours” , ““Heavenly Drummer”, “Pantocrator”, where the birth with the revolution of the New World is compared with divine creation, the revolutionary transformation of life is expected as a blessing. For Yesenin, the revolution was something great and religious. The poet saw the revolution and the uprising of slaves both on earth and in heaven. In “Heavenly Drummer” Yesenin called:
Hey you slaves, slaves!
You are stuck to the ground with your belly.
Today the moon from the water
The horses drank.
The leaves of the star are pouring
Into the rivers in our fields.
Long live the revolution
On earth and in heaven!
We throw bombs at souls
Sowing a blizzard whistle.
What do we need iconic saliva for?
Through our gates to the heights?
Are generals strange to us?
White herd of gorillas?
The whirling cavalry is torn
Peace to a new shore.
In “Transfiguration,” dedicated to Ivanov the Razumnik, Yesenin painted a picture of the revolution as a universal, cosmic phenomenon, transforming both nature and the planet itself:
Hey Russians!
Catchers of the universe,
With a net of dawn, scooping up the sky, -
Blow the trumpets.
Under the storm's plow
The earth roars.
The golden-fanged one destroys rocks
New sower
Wanders through the fields
New grains
Throws into the furrows.
A bright guest in a car to you
Runs through the clouds
Mare.
Harness on a mare-
Bells on the harness
But even here there are already disturbing, disturbing lines that create a blasphemous image:
The clouds are barking
The golden-toothed heights roar
I sing and cry:
Lord, calve!
And in “Pantocrator” Yesenin appears before us as a rebel, glorifying the spontaneous impulse and ready to overthrow God himself from heaven:
Glory, my verse, who tears and rages,
Who buries melancholy in his shoulder,
Horse face of the month
Grab the bridle of the rays.
For thousands of years the same stars have been famous,
The flesh flows with the same honey.
Don't pray to yourself, but bark
You taught me, Lord.
Maybe to the gates of God
I'll bring myself.
On June 15, 1918, Yesenin’s programmatic poem “Inonia” appears in the magazine “Our Way”. Its name comes from Church Slavonic word“ino” meaning “okay, good.” In his last completed autobiography of 1925, Yesenin outlined the circumstances of the emergence of the poem as follows: “At the beginning of 1918, I firmly felt that the connection with the old world was broken, and wrote the poem “Inonia,” which received many sharp attacks, because of which I the nickname of a hooligan has become established.”
In this poem, Yesenin boldly assumes the prophetic rank:
I will not be afraid of death,
No spears, no arrows of rain, -
That's what he said in the Bible
Prophet Yesenin Sergei.
My time has come
I'm not afraid of the clang of the whip.
Body, Christ's body,
I spit it out of my mouth.
I don't want to wake up to salvation
Through his torment and the cross:
I learned a different lesson
Stars selling eternity.
I saw a different coming -
Where death does not dance over the truth.
In "Inonia" the poet stated:
The barking of bells over Russia is menacing -
The walls of the Kremlin are crying.
Now on the peaks of the stars
I lift you up, earth!
I curse the breath of Kitezh
And all the hollows of its roads.
I want it to be on a bottomless vent
We have built ourselves a palace.
I'll lick the icons with my tongue
Faces of martyrs and saints.
I promise you the city of Inonia,
Where the deity of the living lives.
Similar motives appeared in the “Jordan Dove” created in June 1918:
My golden land!
Autumn light temple!
Rushing towards the clouds.
The sky is like a bell
The month is a language
My mother is my homeland,
I am a Bolshevik.
Full of vitality and self-confidence, the poet “is ready to bend the whole world with an elastic hand.” It seemed that a little more effort - and the eternal dream of the Russian plowman about a golden age would come true.
But the life of revolutionary Russia unfolded more and more abruptly. It was during this difficult period of class battles that Yesenin’s peasant bias manifested itself most noticeably. This deviation primarily reflected those objective contradictions that were characteristic of the Russian peasantry during the period of the revolution.
Deep pain and irrepressible sorrow for the irretrievable, historically doomed old village were heard in the “Song of Bread” and in the poem “I am the last poet of the village.” And at the same time, what a soul-burning faith in the great future of Russia in this traditional song of the poet. How can one forget the romantic image of Yesenin’s foal? This image has a deep historical meaning:
Dear, dear, funny fool,
Well, where is he, where is he going?
Doesn't he really know that live horses
The steel cavalry won.
The passage of time, the course of history is inexorable. The poet feels this. “A steel horse defeated a living horse,” he notes with alarm and sadness in one of his letters. The poet rejoices at the good changes that are taking place in the life of the Russian peasantry. “You know,” Yesenin told one of his friends, “I’m now from the village and everyone is Lenin. He knew what word needed to be said to the village in order for it to move. What kind of power is there in him?
Yesenin tried more and more to understand and comprehend what was happening in these years in Russia. At this time, the horizons of his poetry expanded.
However, quite soon Yesenin began to understand: neither the cosmic revolution nor the peasant’s paradise was destined to come true. In one of the poet's letters from 1920. we read: “I am very sad now that history is going through a difficult era of the killing of the individual as a living person, because the socialism that is going on is completely different from what I thought. Close to the living in it.” According to one of the poet’s friends, Yesenin, when meeting him, “said that his, Yesenin’s, revolution had not yet come, that he was completely alone.”
Undoubtedly, the roots of Yesenin’s poetry are in the Ryazan village. That is why he spoke with such pride in poetry about his peasant birthright: “My father is a peasant, and I am a peasant’s son.” And it is no coincidence that in the revolutionary days of the seventeenth year Yesenin sees himself as a continuer of the Koltsovo traditions. But we should not forget or lose sight of another very important circumstance. Russia was a peasant country. Three Russian revolutions are revolutions in a peasant country. The peasant question has always worried the progressive minds of Russia. Let us remember Radishchev, Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leo Tolstoy. Accepting the social path of solving the “peasant question,” Yesenin felt in his heart that it would not be easy or simple for peasant Rus' to overcome it, as it seemed to some of his contemporaries.
And Yesenin was also overcome by longing for what was irretrievably gone with the revolution. This melancholy latently burned his soul, although the despair of the last years of his life was still far away:
It's good in this moonlit autumn
Wander through the grass alone
And collect ears of corn on the road
Into the impoverished soul-bag.
But by the end of 1918, having learned all the horrors of war communism, faced with devastation and hunger, Yesenin does not hide his anxiety about the fate of Blue Rus', but affirms his belief that it will survive thanks to nature itself, no matter what:
I left my home
Rus' left the blue one.
Three-star birch forest above the pond
The old mother feels sadness.
Golden frog moon
Spread out on the calm water.
Like apple blossom, gray hair
There was a spill in my father's beard.
I won't be back soon, not soon!
The blizzard will sing and ring for a long time.
Guards blue Rus'
Old maple tree on one leg
And I know there is joy in it
To those who kiss the leaves of the rain,
Because that old maple
The head looks like me.
The horrors and suffering of the civil war strengthened the poet in anticipation of the impending death of the village. In November 1920, Yesenin wrote the poem “Confession of a Hooligan,” which Klyuev and some others considered almost as a break with the peasant poets.
Poor, poor peasants!
You've probably become ugly
You also fear God and the depths of the swamp.
Oh, if you only understood
That your son is Russia
The best poet!
Didn’t you dedicate life to his heart?
When did he dip his bare feet in autumn puddles?
And now he wears a top hat
And patent leather shoes.
In general, the revolution became an important stage in Yesenin’s poetic revolution. He was imbued with the grandeur of the events taking place, acquired a universal, cosmic view of the village dear to his heart, of his native nature, but at the same time realized the inevitability of the departure of peasant “calico” Rus'. The foundations of the former measured life were crumbling, the poet immersed himself more and more in a bohemian environment, and the drunken sprees that began were aggravated by the fear of the advance of the “steel cavalry.”
4. Poem “Anna Snegina”
In the work of Sergei Yesenin, the poem “Anna Snegina,” published in March 1925, occupies a prominent place, reflecting both the poet’s lyrical memories and his foresight of the fate of the country and the revolution. The poem, which Yesenin considered the best of everything he wrote, is largely autobiographical in nature. Main character, on whose behalf the story is told and whose name, like the poet, is Sergei, travels to his native village - Radovo during the period between two revolutions of the 17th year - the February and October. He notes: “Then Kerensky reigned over the country on a white horse,” hinting that even at that time it was clear: the head of the Provisional Government was caliph for an hour. The driver introduces Sergei to the sad events in his native village. First, we see a picture of the former bliss, so close to Yesenin’s ideal:
We really don’t get involved in important things,
But still we are given happiness.
Our yards are covered with iron,
Everyone has a garden and a threshing floor.
Everyone has painted shutters,
On holidays, meat and kvass.
No wonder once a police officer
He loved to stay with us.
The Radovites knew how to get along with the previous government:
We paid the dues on time,
But - a formidable judge - foreman
Always added to the quitrent
According to flour and millet.
And to avoid misfortune,
We had the surplus without any hardship.
If they are the authorities, then they are the authorities,
And we are just simple people.
However, even before the revolution, the prosperity of the residents of Radov was disrupted by the peasants of the neighboring village of Kriushi, where “life was bad - almost the entire village was plowing with one plow on a pair of worn-out nags.” The leader of the Kriushans, Pron Ogloblin, killed the Radov foreman in one of the fights. According to the Radov driver:
Since then we have been in trouble.
The reins rolled off happiness.
Almost three years in a row
We either have a death or a fire.
The years of Radov's misfortunes coincide with the years of the First World War. And then the February Revolution broke out. And now Sergei comes to his native place. Here he learns that Pron Ogloblin has returned from hard labor and again became the leader of the Kriushans. Sergei is close to the aspirations of the peasants who demand “without ransoming the masters’ arable land,” although he retains in his heart love for the local landowner Anna Snegina. She and Pron come to Anna to ask to give the land to the peasants just at the moment when she receives the news of her husband’s death at the front. Although Pron rather rudely says to Snegina’s mother about the land: “Give it back!” I shouldn’t kiss your feet!”, he still has enough conscience to leave her behind at this tragic moment, agreeing with Sergei’s arguments: “Today they are not in the mood. Let’s go, Pron, to the tavern.” Pron is a rather reckless person. Sergei’s friend, the old miller, speaks of Ogloblin without sympathy: “A cobblestone, a brawler, a brute. He’s always angry with everyone, drunk every morning for weeks.” But the elemental strength of character attracts Sergei to Pron. After all, Ogloblin is a selfless person who cares for the interests of the people. After the Bolshevik coup, Pron promises: “I will be the first to set up a commune in my village right now.” In civilian life, he dies at the hands of the whites, and his brother Labutya comes to power in Kriushi:
Man - what is your fifth ace:
At every dangerous moment
A boaster and a devilish coward.
Of course, you have seen such people.
Fate rewarded them with chatter.
Before the revolution, he wore two royal medals and boasted of imaginary exploits in Japanese war. As Yesenin very accurately points out: “People like this are always in sight. They live without callouses on their hands.” And after the Labutya revolution
Of course, in the Council,
He hid the medals in the chest.
But with the same important posture,
Like some grizzled veteran,
wheezed over a fusel jar
About Nerchinsk and Turukhan:
“Yes, brother!
We have seen grief
But we were not intimidated by fear."
Medals, medals, medals
His words rang.
At one time, Labutya went first to describe the Snegins’ estate:
There is always speed in capture:
Give it! We'll figure it out later! –
The entire farm was taken into the volost
With housewives and livestock.
By the way, Yesenin deliberately exaggerated his colors. In fact, the estate of the prototype Snegina - Kashina was not destroyed, and it was Sergei Yesenin who, in the summer of 1918, managed to keep his fellow villagers from robbery, persuading him to preserve the estate for a school or hospital. And indeed, a year later, an outpatient clinic opened in the manor house, and the stables on the estate were converted into a club. But in the poem Yesenin chose to strengthen the motif of the peasant element.
When Denikin’s men shot Pron, Labutya hid safely in the straw. Yesenin felt that in the revolution and civil war it was people like Labutya who survived much more often than people like Pron; those who survived were cowards who were only accustomed to “plundering the loot” and acting on the principle: “Give it!” Then we’ll figure it out!” The poet was clearly worried that people like this play main role not only at the local level, but also in the party leadership. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Labutya spoke about his imaginary exile to the Turukhansk region, where Stalin was actually exiled before the revolution. Yesenin understood that under the rule of Labut, the peasants’ dreams of happiness along the lines of Radov’s would be completely buried. AND main character The poem, like Blok’s Stranger, personifying the beautiful, leaves Russia in the finale. Anna writes to Sergei:
I often go to the pier
And, either for joy or fear,
I look among the ships more and more closely
On the red Soviet flag.
Now they have reached strength.
My path is clear
But you are still dear to me
Like home and like spring.
In the new Russia there will be no place left for beauty, just as there has long been no place for Radov’s paradise. The country turned into beggars Kriushi. By the way, the prototype of Anna Snegina, Lidiya Ivanovna Kashina, never went abroad. In 1918, she moved not to London, but to Moscow, worked here as a translator, typist, stenographer, and although she died in the terrible year 1937, it was not from a KGB bullet, but by her own death. However, here the poet chose to enhance the contrast and break with his previous life, sending his ideal into an irrevocable distance. The poet, most likely, foresaw that the Soviet government, unlike the tsarist government, would not be satisfied with an extra measure of flour and millet, but, having achieved strength, would be able to squeeze the juices out of the peasants (this is what happened during collectivization, after the murder of Yesenin). That is why, like the heroine of the poem, he looks at the red flag not only with joy (Yesenin welcomed the revolution that gave land to the peasants), but also with ever-increasing fear.
5. Yesenin’s conflict with reality
In the 20s, Yesenin experienced the collapse of his revolutionary illusions. He concluded: real socialism, “without dreams,” kills all living things, including the individual. Utopias about the religious-revolutionary transformation of Russia disappeared from his work, motives for the flow away, withering of life, detachment from modernity appeared, and in the lyrical hero - “horse thief”, “robber and boor” - Yesenin’s internal opposition was identified.
In 1921, the poet, disillusioned with the revolution, turned to the image of a rebel and wrote the poem “Pugachev,” in which the theme of the peasant war was associated with post-revolutionary peasant unrest. A logical continuation of the theme of the conflict between the authorities and the peasantry was the poem “The Country of Scoundrels” (1922-1923), which expressed not only Yesenin’s oppositional sentiments, but also his understanding of his outcast in real socialism. In one of his letters in 1923, he wrote: “I cease to understand which revolution I belonged to. I see only one thing: neither for February nor for October, apparently, some kind of November was and is hiding within us.”
The poet became increasingly aware that mutual misunderstanding was growing between him and his fellow countrymen. On the one hand, he became increasingly separated from village life. On the other hand, Soviet realities appeared in the village, unfamiliar to Yesenin, to which his fellow countrymen had to adapt. Yesenin, unlike some other poets, could never say that he was born of a revolution or that this was his revolution. Yesenin accepted the revolution, but, as he admitted more than once, he accepted it in his own way, “with a peasant bias.” However, very soon the revolutionary snowstorms chilled to death the voice of the golden-haired singer of birch blue and white smoke of apple trees. The Russian village began to die long before the revolution. It cannot be said that in this respect the revolution awakened Yesenin’s talent; it only made the main theme of “the last singer of the village” more acute. But the first joy of the revolution passed very quickly. The poet saw that the Bolsheviks were not only not the saviors of the peasantry, but their true destroyers, and that freedom of creative expression frightened them even more than tsarist power.
He tried to enter Soviet life, to sing the new socialist reality, but he was not very successful. Yesenin suffered from this; he wanted to sing not the stars and the moon, but the emerging Soviet newness. In the Stanzas the poet insisted:
Write in rhyme
Perhaps anyone can -
About the girl, about the stars, about the moon
But I have a different feeling
The heart is gnawing
Other thoughts
They crush my skull.
I want to be a singer
And a citizen
So that everyone
Like pride and example, was real,
And not a stepson -
In the great states of the USSR.
But Yesenin was not given the opportunity to find harmony of will and power. In 1924 he wrote in Soviet Rus':
That hurricane has passed. Few of us survived.
There are no friendships at roll call for many.
The hurricane of revolution orphaned the village. The Yesenin generation was replaced by people with non-peasant thinking: “it’s no longer a village, but the whole earth is their mother.” Pushkin’s motif of the lyrical hero’s meeting with a “young, unfamiliar tribe”, its theme of harmony and natural succession of generations is resolved tragically by Yesenin: he is a foreigner in his own country and a “sullen pilgrim” in his native village, whose young men “sing different songs.” In “Soviet Rus',” the village building socialism rejected the poet: “I don’t find shelter in anyone’s eyes.”
Lyrical hero and he himself fences himself off from Bolshevik reality: he will not give her the “dear lyre”, he will continue to sing “The sixth part of the earth / With the short name “Rus””, despite the fact that he is inclined to perceive the image of the departed Rus' as dreams.
The village no longer seems to the poet to be an earthly paradise, bright colors The Russian landscape has faded, motifs of inferiority have appeared in the description of nature: “the maples wrinkle with the ears of their long branches,” the poplars have buried their “bare feet” in the ditches.
Yesenin found harmony in the acceptance, on the one hand, by the mind of the new generation, of “alien youth,” “a strong enemy,” and, on the other, by the heart, of the homeland of feather grass, wormwood, and a log hut. Yesenin’s compromise is expressed in the following lines:
Give me in my beloved homeland,
Loving everything, die in peace!
But behind the sincere desire to see a civilized beginning in the new Russia, one cannot help but notice the tragedy of the rogue hero:
I don't know what will happen to me.
Maybe in new life I'm no good.
Discord with reality and himself led the poet to a tragic end.
6. Death of a poet
Is there a mystery, a mystery in the death of Yesenin? As we can easily see, if there is, then it lies not in the circumstances of Yesenin’s death, as many people think, but only in the reasons that pushed the poet to take the fatal step.
One can also agree with Yuri Annenkov: “Yesenin hanged himself from despair, from lack of roads. The paths of Russian poetry were cut off in those years and were soon boarded up tightly. If here, in exile, the free Georgiy Ivanovs continued to create, then within Soviet Union More and more bureaucratic Demyan Poor were born and filled the printed pages.”
But Leon Trotsky, who, it would seem, should have been Yesenin’s ideological opponent, but was captivated by his poetry, probably said the most accurate thing about Yesenin’s suicide. On January 18, 1926, at an evening in memory of Yesenin at the Art Theater, Trotsky’s letter was read out. Lev Davydovich, in particular, wrote: “We have lost Yesenin - such a wonderful poet, so fresh, so real. And how tragically lost! He left on his own, saying goodbye in blood to an unidentified friend - perhaps to all of us. These last lines of his are amazing in their tenderness and softness. He left this life without a loud insult, without a pose of protest - not by slamming the door, but by quietly closing it with his hand, from which blood was oozing. In this gesture, Yesenin’s poetic and human image flashed with an unforgettable farewell light. Hiding behind a mask of mischief - and giving this mask an internal, therefore not accidental, tribute - Yesenin always, apparently, felt himself - not of this world.
Our time is a harsh time, perhaps one of the harshest in the history of so-called civilized humanity. The revolutionary born for these decades is obsessed with the frantic patriotism of his era, his fatherland in time. Yesenin was not a revolutionary. The author of “Pugachev” and “The Ballad of Twenty-Six” was a most intimate lyricist. Our era is not lyrical. In that main reason why Sergei Yesenin left us and his era without permission and so early.
Further, Trotsky argued: “His lyrical spring could unfold to the end only in the conditions of a harmonious, happy, singing society, where not struggle reigns, but friendship, love, tender participation. Such a time will come."
Perhaps Vl summed up the results of Yesenin’s life and work more clearly than others. Khodasevich: “The beautiful and beneficial thing about Yesenin is that he was infinitely truthful in his work and before his conscience, that he reached the end in everything, that, not being afraid to create mistakes, he took upon himself what others tempted him to do,” and he wanted to pay a terrible price for everything. His truth is love for his homeland, albeit blind, but great. He confessed it even in the guise of a hooligan:
I love my homeland
I love my homeland very much!
His grief was that he could not name it: he sang of log Rus', and peasant Russia, and socialist Inonia, and Asian Scattering, he even tried to accept the USSR - only one correct name did not come to his lips: Russia. This was his main delusion, not ill will, but a bitter mistake. Here is both the beginning and the denouement of his tragedy.”
CONCLUSION
In this work, we tried to consider how the era in which Yesenin had to live influenced his fate and was reflected in his work.
Then, when Yesenin first gained fame as a poet, Russia was waiting for a revolution. During his years mature creativity the country reaped the fruits of the revolution. The revolution unleashed spontaneous forces, and spontaneity as such corresponded to the nature of Yesenin’s creativity. The poet was carried away by the spirit of freedom, but by the end of the civil war he realized that the “steel cavalry” would destroy the peasantry.
Yesenin called himself the last poet villages, the doom of which in the industrial-urban era I felt with all my heart. This circumstance largely predetermined the tragedy of his work.
Although Yesenin lived most of his adult life in the city, he never became a real city dweller. In recent years, he was haunted by the fear of writing himself out, the fear of finally losing his peasant roots, without which Yesenin could not imagine himself as a poet. All this led to a tragic outcome.
SERGEY ESENIN, 1918
REVOLUTION IN THE WORK OF SERGEY ESENIN http://esenin-poetry.ru/ref/351-2.html
About S. Yesenin, Blok wrote: “Sergei Yesenin appeared in Russian literature suddenly, like comets appear in the sky.” And indeed, this subtle lyricist, singer of Russian nature quickly and easily took a special place in literature, many of his works were set to music and became songs.
The Russian land appears before the poet as a sad “peaceful corner”, “a gentle homeland”, “a side of the feather grass forest”. The whole world for him is painted in light, rainbow colors. The Russian plowman, the Russian peasant, who until recently was so earthly and peaceful, turns into a brave, proud-spirited hero - the giant Otcharya, who holds the “unkissed world” on his shoulders. Yesenin's man - Otchar is endowed with "the strength of Anika", his "mighty shoulders are like a granite mountain", he is "ineffable and wise", in his speeches there is "blue and song." There is something in this image from the legendary heroic figures of the Russian epic epic. Otcharya makes us remember, first of all, the epic image of the heroic plowman Mikula Selyaninovich, who was subject to the great “thrust of the earth”, who playfully plowed the “open field” with his miracle plow. “Otchari” is one of Yesenin’s first poetic responses to the events of the February Revolution of 1917. This poem was written by Yesenin in the summer of 1917 during his stay in his native village. In September, "Otchar" is published by one of the Petrograd newspapers. In this poem, as well as in “The Singing Call” and “Octo-Ikha” written somewhat earlier, in Petrograd, the theme of the revolutionary renewal of the country is revealed in images that are most often of a cosmic, planetary nature. Hence the prophetic meaning of these poems, their oratorical and polemical rhythmic structure.
Rejoice!
The earth appeared
New font!
Burned out
Blue blizzards,
And the earth has lost
Sting.
In the men's nursery
A flame was born
To the peace of the whole world!
This is how Yesenin begins his “Singing Call”. In "Octoechos" this junction of the "earthly" with the cosmic receives its further development:
We shake the sky with our shoulders,
We shake the darkness with our hands
And into a skinny ear of bread
Inhale star grass.
O Rus', O steppe and winds,
And you, my father's house!
In "Octoechos", as well as in "The Singing Call" and "The Father", mythological images and biblical legends are filled with new, revolutionary and rebellious content. They are reinterpreted by the poet in a very original way and transformed in verse into pictures of a “peasant paradise” on earth. The civic pathos of these poems finds its figurative expression in the poet’s romantic dream of the harmony of the world, renewed by the revolutionary storm: “We did not come to destroy the world, but to love and believe!” The desire for equality and brotherhood of people is the main thing for the poet. And one more thing: already the February events give rise to a completely different social mood in Yesenin’s lyrical poems. He joyfully welcomes the arrival of a new day of freedom. He expresses this state of mind with enormous poetic power in the beautiful poem “Wake me up early tomorrow...”. S. Tolstaya-Yesenina says that “according to Yesenin, this poem was his first response to the February Revolution.” Yesenin now connects his future poetic destiny with the revolutionary renewal of Russia.
Wake me up early tomorrow
Shine a light in our upper room.
They say I'll soon be
Famous Russian poet.
The feeling that now he, the son of peasant Rus', is called upon to become an exponent of the thoughts, aspirations and aspirations of the rebellious people, Yesenin conveys with great pathos in the poem “O Rus', flap your wings...”. In his poetic manifesto, Yesenin puts forward a noble, democratic idea: to show revolutionary Rus' in all its beauty and strength. The poet strives to expand his artistic horizon and deepen the social issues of his works. One should especially highlight Yesenin’s “little poem” “Comrade”, written by him hot on the heels of the February events in Petrograd.
Yesenin was one of those Russian writers who, from the first days of October, openly sided with the rebel people. “During the years of the revolution,” Yesenin wrote, “he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias.” Everything that happened in Russia during the October Revolution was unusual, unique, and incomparable with anything. “Today the basis of the world is being revised,” stated Vladimir Mayakovsky. “Keep your revolutionary step!” Alexander Blok called on the sons of insurgent Russia. Sergei Yesenin also foresaw great changes in the life of Russia:
Come down and appear to us, red horse!
Harness yourself to the earth's shafts.
We give you a rainbow - an arc,
The Arctic Circle is on harness.
Oh, take out our globe
On a different track.
More and more Yesenin is captured by the “vortex” principle, the universal, cosmic scope of events. The poet Pyotr Oreshin, recalling his meetings with Yesenin during the years of the revolution, emphasized: “Yesenin accepted October with indescribable delight, and accepted it, of course, only because he was already internally prepared for it, that his entire inhuman temperament was in harmony with October ...". However, he, naturally, was not immediately able to deeply and consciously comprehend the full significance of the historical and social changes in the life of the people, especially the Russian village, associated with the struggle for the triumph of the ideas of the Great October Revolution.
At first, the poet perceives the period of military communism one-sidedly; it is still difficult for him to understand that the contradictions of this time will be quickly overcome by the development of the new reality itself. It was during this difficult period of class battles, which required the artist to have a particularly clear and precise ideological position, that Yesenin’s “peasant deviation” manifested itself most noticeably. One should not think that this “bias” is a consequence only of the subjective aspects of the poet’s worldview and creativity. In fact, there was no “peasant deviation” at all. Yesenin’s works primarily reflect those specific, objective contradictions that were characteristic of Russian society during the period of the proletarian revolution, which in fact did not please the ideologists of the “iron discipline”, this was main conflict poet and "revolution".
Russia!
Dear land to the heart!
The soul shrinks from pain.
“I am very sad now,” writes Yesenin in 1920, “that history is going through a difficult era of the killing of the individual as a living person, because the socialism that is going on is completely different from what I thought...” The poet’s utopian dreams of socialism as a "peasant's paradise" on earth, recently so inspiredly sung by him in "Inonia".
In 1919-1921, the poet experienced the revolutionary breakdown of the old, patriarchal foundations of the Russian village especially hard, and at times tragically. In "Sorokoust" the story of how a steam locomotive overtook a thin-legged foal has a deep inner meaning. It is in this scene that the poem reaches its climax:
Let us remember one of the most heartfelt and humane lyrical poems - “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry...”, written by him in 1921. How philosophically wise are Yesenin’s thoughts about the days of fast-flowing life, with what artistic power he expresses his love for people, for all living things on earth!
Wandering spirit, you are less and less often
You stir up the flame of your lips.
Oh my lost freshness
A riot of eyes and a flood of feelings.
When you read the late Yesenin, you are amazed that, it turns out, almost everything that we have just now spoken about out loud after seventy years of silence - almost all of it has already been said and foreseen by the brilliant poet. With stunning power, Yesenin captured the “new” that was forcibly introduced into the life of the village by visiting emissaries, exploded it from the inside and now led to a well-known state.
“I was in the village. Everything is collapsing... You have to be from there yourself to understand... The end of everything” - these were Yesenin’s impressions of those years. They are supplemented by the memories of the poet’s sister Alexandra Yesenina: “I remember the famine that came. Scary time. Bread was baked with chaff, husks, sorrel, nettles, and quinoa. There was no salt, matches, soap, and there was no need to think about the rest... Along with honest people, “Labutis” with long arms climbed into power. These people lived quite well..."
June 1, 1924 Yesenin writes “Return to the Homeland.” The image of desolation, but not the Chekhov-Bunin type, in which poetry was, but some kind of hysterical, hopeless, foreshadowing “the end of everything,” meets us at the very beginning of this little poem. “A bell tower without a cross,” cemetery crosses, crosses that are an image of the civil war! - “as if the dead were in hand-to-hand combat, frozen with outstretched arms.” The wretched life of a village devastated by years of internecine strife, “calendar Lenin” instead of the icons thrown away by the Komsomol sisters, “Capital” instead of the Bible... A grandson who did not recognize his grandfather, another image of a symbol of the era, another terrible insight of the future . How does this contrast with Pushkin’s: “my grandson... will remember me”!..
The poet sums up the tragic outcome of all this in his poem of the same days, “Soviet Rus'”:
This is how the country is!
Why the hell am I
Screamed in verse that I am friendly with the people?
My poetry is no longer needed here
And, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.
I accept everything
I take everything as is.
Ready to follow the beaten tracks.
I will give my whole soul to October and May,
But I won’t give the lyre to my dear one.
Yesenin foresaw much of what happened in the country. in his lyrics of the summer of 1924 and in the poem “Anna Snegina”, conceived at the same time. The poem is closely connected with all of Yesenin’s lyrics, it has absorbed many of its motifs and images. If we talk about traditions, then in the year of completion of work on the poem - 1925 - Yesenin wrote: “In the sense of formal development, now everything pulls me more to Pushkin." And the Pushkin tradition, of course, is present in the poem. It seems more fruitful to talk about Pushkin’s beginning in a broad sense, which, by the way, Yesenin himself referred to in the above statement. First of all, it is a nationality. Yesenin, having gone through the temptation of an exquisite metaphor, came to such an understanding of art, which is determined by the artist’s loyalty to “simplicity, goodness, truth.” These guidelines are expressed in the language of the poem, or more precisely - in all the richness of colloquial folk speech, which catches the eye from the first lines. In Yesenin’s poem, the characters “self-reproduce” through speech and therefore immediately acquire plastically visible living facial features. Everyone’s speech is so individual that we well remember the driver, and the miller, and the old woman, and Anna, and even her mother, who utters only one phrase, but is defined by it, and Pron, and Labutya, and, of course, the main character himself.
The fact that Anna Snegina found herself far from Soviet Russia is, of course, a sad pattern, a tragedy for many Russian people of that time. Separation from Anna Snegina in the lyrical context of the poem is the poet’s separation from his youth, separation from the purest and most holy thing that happens to a person at the dawn of life. But - and this is the main thing in the poem - everything that is humanly beautiful, bright and holy lives in the hero, remains with him forever - like memory, like “living life”, like the light of a distant star showing the way in the night:
They were distant and dear!…
That image has not faded away in me
We all loved during these years,
But that means
They loved us too.
This epilogue was very important for Yesenin - the poet and the man: after all, it all helped him to live, to fight within himself with his “black man”, and also to withstand the inhuman struggle with the haters of Russia and the Russian poet. The theme of the homeland and the theme of time in the poem are closely related. In a narrow chronological sense, the epic basis of the poem is as follows: the main part is the Ryazan land of 1917. In the fifth chapter - a sketch of the fate of one of the corners of large rural Rus' during the period of terrible upheavals, witnessed by the poet and hero of "Anna Snegina" (action in the poem ends in 1923). Of course, behind the fate of one of the corners of the Russian land one can guess the fate of the country and the people, but all this, I repeat, is given in sketches, albeit with rather characteristic poetic pictures. After the lines about the time of the revolution, when “the grimy rabble! Played pianos in the courtyards! Tambov fox-mouthed cows,” follow verses of a different tonality:
The years went by
Sweeping, ardent...
The grain grower's lot was dying out.
Yesenin seemed to have foreseen the time when the lot of the grain grower would result in the tragedy of 1929-1933. The words used by representatives of different intellectual strata to refer to the peasant sound sarcastically in the poem:
Phefela! Breadwinner! Iris!
Owner of land and livestock,
For a couple of shabby "kateki"
He will allow himself to be torn out with a whip.
Yesenin himself does not idealize the Russian peasantry; he sees in it heterogeneity, sees in him the miller and his old woman, and the driver from the beginning of the poem, and Prone, and Labute, and the man clasping his hands from profit... At the same time, we must not forget that positive principles, a kind of basis of life the poet sees in the working peasantry, whose fate is the epic basis of the poem. This fate is sad, as is clear from the words of the old miller’s wife:
We're uneasy here now.
Everything bloomed with perspiration.
Solid peasant wars -
They fight village to village.
These peasant wars are symbolic; they are a prototype of a great fratricidal war, a real tragedy, from which, in the words of the miller’s wife, almost “Raseya disappeared”... A similarity with this appears at the end of the poem in the miller’s letter:
Race...
She's a fool.
Believe it or not believe your ears -
One day Denikin's squad
Came upon the Kriushans.
This is where the fun started...
For such fun - to die -
With gnashing and laughter
The Cossack whip crackled...
Such “fun” is of no benefit to anyone, except perhaps Labute, who demands the “red order” for himself... Condemnation of the war - imperialist and fratricidal - is one of the main topics. The war is condemned by the entire course of the poem, by its various characters and situations: the miller and his old woman, the driver, the two main tragedies of Anna Snegina’s life. Moreover, sometimes the voice of the character merges with the voice of the author, as, for example, in the words of a letter from a miller, the poet once speaks directly from himself:
And how many unfortunates are there due to the war?
Freaks and cripples now!
And how many are buried in the pits!
And how many more will they bury!
And I feel in my stubborn cheekbones
A severe spasm of the cheeks...
The soul-shattering humanity of Russian classical literature, its “soul-nurturing humanity” lives in Yesenin’s poem.
In January 1925, while in the Caucasus, Yesenin completed his last and main poem. The breadth of the historical space of the poem, the openness acquired by the hero at the end to life’s impressions, the best movements of the soul, directly corresponds to the people’s ideals, the exponent of which was and remains in his best works the great Russian poet S.A. Yesenin - “the poetic heart of Russia.” And as long as the earth lives, Yesenin the poet is destined to live with us and “sing with all his being in the poet the sixth part of the earth with the short name “Rus”.
Yesenin admired the “slave uprising” that swept the entire country during the years of the revolution. He also considered it a phenomenon on a truly cosmic scale, in which everything old could be destroyed and new things could appear. The poet himself dreamed of becoming a prophet of the new world. But then his worldview changed dramatically.
Transformation of views
Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution was initially characterized by naivety, and it was determined more by the passions seething in his soul, rather than by any system of views on the upcoming reforms.
It will be very difficult to believe for every admirer of Yesenin as a glorifier of nature and the countryside that the following lines belong to his pen.
The sky is like a bell
The month is a language
My mother is my homeland,
I am a Bolshevik.
("Jordan Dove")
This is how the theme of revolution sounds at the beginning, when the poet had not yet experienced disappointment from the innovations of the Soviet regime. However, already with the onset of 1920, the poet’s enthusiasm was replaced by bitter disappointment. And this tragedy is reflected in the poet’s short works: from the enthusiastic “Jordan Dove” to the caustic “Land of Scoundrels.”
Changing the face of the country
Gradually, urban Russia began to replace peasant Rus'. New times were replacing the old way of life, which was so familiar to the poet. How did Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution change? The poet initially welcomed these changes and tried to adapt himself to them - after all, his worldview was formed precisely in peasant Rus'.
Socialism did not at all live up to the poet's hopes. Every living thing in it was “crowded.” Yesenin plunged into mortal longing for the destroyed village and its built-up streets. This seriously affected the poet’s mental state, which was not stable anyway.
How did the events affect the poet’s life?
Yesenin almost constantly disappeared into severe binges. He began to suffer from persecution mania. He constantly had outbursts of aggression, during which the poet started rows, broke furniture and beat his famous wife. She spoke many times about his madness and made attempts to treat Yesenin with professional American psychiatrists. But it was no use.
Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution is reflected in his lines:
That hurricane has passed. Few of us survived.
What is Motherland? Are these really dreams?
Comparison of the views of Mayakovsky and Yesenin
If we talk about Mayakovsky, then his work is directed to the future, and to some extent - to the present. Even if this future and present are somewhat idealized, they are real. The attitude towards the revolution of Mayakovsky and Yesenin differs in the direction of the perspective of their work. Socialism then was built on the expectation of a bright “tomorrow”: today we live poorly, but our children and grandchildren will be happy. Therefore, Mayakovsky lived in the future; all his work was imbued with faith in the success of the Soviet foundation. Even connected with the Soviet future. The poet is connected with a loving person not only by passion, but also by a common cause.
What was Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution, in contrast to Mayakovsky? Yesenin is all in the past. In it he was not abandoned, did not suffer from bitter loneliness. He is outside the new generation, but does not consider himself to be part of the old one:
The phrase “sad joy,” typical of the poet, takes on a slightly different meaning. Now Yesenin does not sincerely talk about his broken youth, but sadly states the fact of his loneliness.
After all, for almost everyone here I’m a gloomy pilgrim<…>And it's me! I, a citizen of a village that will only be famous for the fact that here a woman once gave birth to a Russian scandalous pet...
Wandering and alienation
The poet writes about complete alienation from society. In his works there are no longer any claims to socialist sentiments. And in the end, Yesenin himself answers any questions about his work:
My poetry is no longer needed here, and, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.
In the first place for Yesenin there was always a love for nature, for all living things. The poet’s nature is endowed with a soul; it feels human. Everything in the world is filled with a living spirit.
And Yesenin himself admits his own insolvency in the new Soviet system. He is rejected:
I sang when my region was sick.
The poet realizes that the world that was infinitely dear to his heart is now irretrievably lost. And motifs of wandering emerge in his work:
Yes! Now it's decided. No refund
I left my native fields...
Everything that happens begins to evoke deep protest and a feeling of disgust in him. Yesenin is trying to find fortifications in the bright memories of childhood, his home and the Rus' that he lost. But even here, anxiety haunts the poet. Yesenin comes to the conclusion that the reason for those changes that turned out to be unacceptable for him is in the revolution.
Village devastation and the poet's spiritual drama
Yesenin's attitude towards the revolution is filled with criticism and rejection. The poet himself sincerely repents that he held the opinion that her ideas were correct.
The poet's dramas in the final years of his life are associated with the coming political changes. And if Yesenin’s early poetry is filled with the acceptance of new orders and supports the slogan “Land to the peasants!”, then late Yesenin sees all the devastation. The poet begins to reject the new order with all his might. Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution is expressed in such works as “Return to the Motherland”, “Letter to Mother” and others.
For example, in the work “Return to the Motherland” one can observe the impact the revolution had on the lives of rural residents. The lyrical hero, having returned to his native land, cannot recognize his relatives or his own home. He sadly realizes that his native land has now become foreign to him. Poetic world faces a suffocating reality:
I look around with sadness:
What an unfamiliar area to me!
This is the reason for the emotional drama. The same discord can be observed in the work “Uncomfortable Liquid Lunarity”, in the lines of which the poet expresses complete indifference to the world around him. This indifference terrifies the lyrical hero:
I became indifferent to the rays,
And the hearth fire is not dear to me.
But the poet does not put an end to Russia completely. It pains him to see that his country suffers poverty and humiliation. He calls her:
Field Russia! Enough
Dragging the plow across the fields.
Moods of the collection “Transfiguration”
Yesenin's first collection of poetry, which was released after the revolution, is called "Transfiguration". The title reflects the mood of the poet at that time: both the poet himself and the world around him are changing. The first work, called “Inonia,” writes about the joy of the coming of the Savior. New times are coming soon in the destinies of nations. Yesenin looks at himself as a prophet, his bold words addressed to the biblical prophet Jeremiah. The lyrical hero enters into polemics with the canons of Christian morality.
I saw a different coming -
Where death does not dance over the truth.
The new religion must come to the people without torment and the “cross”. Things must be different now. That is why the country of the future is called “Inonia”. The paradise that the poet dreams of is a completely rural, rustic paradise. There is a place in it for cornfields and fields, deep rivers and the gold of ripening wheat. Other works in this collection were also filled with this expectation.
How did the revolution turn out?
It would seem that the poet’s dreams are coming true. A profound revolution is occurring in the life of the country. And here one can expect delight on the part of the poet, but everything turns out to be much more painful and difficult for him. Instead of that “peasant paradise” that Sergei Alexandrovich was waiting for, the poet’s eyes see a state torn apart by wars, devastated by devastation. All this becomes unbearable for the singer of a peaceful, idyllic village life.
What is Yesenin observing now? Cold and cold, the sky is overcast. Now “evil October” reigns, which will soon devour the green groves. This is how the poet conveys the atmosphere of the current era. Social conflict becomes universal. Man falls away from nature. And the hero himself refuses to join the madness reigning around.
I won't go anywhere with people
It's better to die together with you,
How to raise the earth from your beloved
In the crazy neighbor a stone.
Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution can be briefly described as follows: the poet does not seek to reject the current government - he simply cannot understand the Soviet way of life, he feels like a completely superfluous person. And she does not forgive such treatment: after Yesenin’s tragic death, his name and poems were banned. For the first time they began to remember him with kind words only at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, when it was stupid to deny Yesenin’s contribution to Russian poetry.