Ideological and artistic program "Scythians". "Scythians" about Russia and the revolution. Reflection of the “Scythian” ideology in Yesenin’s first post-revolutionary poems. Analysis of works: “Comrade”, “Singing Call”, “Otchari”, “Octoechos”, “Advent”, “Transfiguration”, “Rural Book of Hours”, “Inonia”, “Jordan Dove”, “Heavenly Drummer”, “Pantocrator” . The unity of their poetics and ideological content. Yesenin's lyrics from the first revolutionary years. Yesenin's aesthetic views. Analysis of the poetic treatise "The Keys of Mary". Yesenin about the poetry of the futurists, poets of Proletkult, N. Klyuev, A. Blok, V. Mayakovsky.
1
Heterogeneous influences were most clearly revealed in the poetry of S. Yesenin in the first years of the revolution. He perceived the February and then October events as the implementation of the ideas of patriarchal socialism that were close to him and, understanding them this way, he enthusiastically rushed towards them.
The calm and smoothness of Yesenin’s verse was disrupted, intimate themes, sad tones and pictures of nature were relegated to the background, specific poetic images gave way to violent religious and mystical symbolism. Yesenin’s poetry acquired an energy and cosmism that was not previously characteristic of it, and rebellious and godless motives prevailed in it.
The poet's poems of these years are full of romance, the joy of transformation, bright hopes for the coming of the achievements eternally awaited by the Russian peasantry. In the name of affirming the aspirations of the patriarchal peasantry, the poet enthusiastically welcomes everything that contributes to the destruction of the world, which, in his opinion, interfered with the establishment of a “free and well-fed rural paradise.”
Yesenin's first response to the February Revolution was the poem "Comrade" (March 1917). Executed in a form unusual for early Yesenin’s poetics, ideologically it differs sharply from the poems of the previous period. The poem begins with an almost prosaic story:
He was the son of a simple worker, and the story about him is very short. The only thing about him was that his hair was like night and his eyes were blue and gentle. His father bent his back from morning to evening to feed the baby; But he had nothing to do. And he had comrades: Christ and a cat. (I - 263)
Prosaism here is felt both in the rhythmic pattern and in the absence of the exact rhyme characteristic of the poet, and in the intonation that is unusual for him. “The son of a simple worker” - Martin “lived and no one knew about him, and only sometimes over a boring dinner did his father teach him to sing the Marseillaise.” The revolution disrupts Martin’s peaceful life, and it introduces different rhythms into the poet’s calm verse:
The shafts are roaring, the thunderstorm is singing! From the blue darkness the eyes are burning. After a swing, a swing, Over a corpse, a corpse; Fear breaks its strong tooth. All rise and take off, All scream and shout! A spring flows into a bottomless mouth... (I - 264)
Already in these lines, the revolution seems to Yesenin to be a “bottomless mouth”, devouring “corpse after corpse,” cruel and irreconcilable, dispelling the fear of the “raised Russian people.” This “bottomless mouth” also swallowed Father Martin, who boldly and without timidity spoke out against the “power of the enemy’s eyes.”
This is one plan for perceiving the revolution as a struggle of working and poor people for their rights. And although the poet vaguely imagines the struggling forces and draws them abstractly (“But above the plank window, two winds flapped their wings”), he sympathizes with the struggle of Father Martin: “But believe me, he did not give up,” “His soul, as before, is fearless and strong."
The poet's sympathy, however, has its own and important nuance that characterizes his attitude towards the struggle of the working people. Continuing the story about Martin’s father, Yesenin creates the following lines:
It was not for nothing that he lived, It was not for nothing that he crushed flowers; But faded dreams are not like you... (I - 265)
It turns out that the true dreams of a revolution “throwing up under a plank window” are not like the dreams of a “simple worker.” Developing this idea, Yesenin forces Christ to come down from the icon and get up to work.
"...The father lies killed, But he did not fall like a coward. I hear him calling us, O my faithful Jesus. He calls us to help, Where the Russian people are fighting, Tells us to stand for freedom, For equality and labor! "And, tenderly accepting the sound of innocent speeches, Jesus descended to the ground from unwavering hands. They walk hand in hand, And the night is black, black!.. And the gray silence is puffed up with misfortune. Dreams bloom with hope About eternal, free fate. Both enjoy the February breeze. But suddenly the lights flashed... The copper weight barked. And the Baby Jesus fell, struck by a bullet. (I - 265, 266)
Just like Martin’s father, Christ dies in the struggle for the workers’ cause, and his death is inevitable, because the dream for which he goes into battle, according to the poet, is unrealizable. Having shot Christ, the poet solemnly proclaims:
Listen: No more Sunday! His body was buried: He lies on the Field of Mars. (I - 266)
In these unclear images, complicated by religious symbolism, the poet buried both the worker’s dream of revolution and the Christian faith, and buried him on the Champ de Mars without the right to “resurrection.” And over the fresh graves of these two corpses “the iron word calmly rings: Rre-es-pu-u-ublika!”
Christ turns out to be a “comrade” in the poem in the struggle for unrealistic dreams, as the poet thought then. Ten months after “Comrade,” A. Blok will write his poem “The Twelve” and put Christ at the head of the Red Guard patrol, illuminating in his name the rightness and high ideals of the workers’ cause, in Blok’s way. This is the difference between Blok’s Christ, who led the retribution, and Yesenin’s Christ.
And if in “Comrade” the perception of the February Revolution as a peasant revolution is not yet very clearly expressed (“under the plank window, two winds flapped their wings,” “the Russian people rushed up with the spring flood of water,” “eyes are burning from the blue darkness,” etc.) images), then in other works of this time Yesenin’s position becomes clearer.
In “The Singing Call”, “Father”, “Octoechos”, “Advent”, “Transfiguration”, “Inonia”, “Rural Book of Hours”, “Jordan Dove”, “Heavenly Drummer”, “Pantocrator” and some other works with the greatest Both the world of the poet’s new feelings and his deep break with concrete historical reality, which was a consequence of the constant distance of his poetry from the tasks of the liberation struggle, from the Russian proletarian movement, are clearly expressed.
Having no firm ideological convictions and having experienced a number of unfruitful influences before the revolution, S. Yesenin met her in a camp far from her. The poet’s spiritual closeness with Ivanov-Razumnik, N. Klyuev, A. Bely predetermined his ideological and artistic contacts in the first revolutionary years, and he turned out to be one of the active participants in the group that called themselves “Scythians” and “new peasants.”
Short-lived, heterogeneous in composition, these literary associations were based on the eclectic philosophy of Ivanov-Razumnik, the mystical theories of A. Bely, and Klyuev’s ideals of peasant socialism.
The “Scythians” presented the revolution as the implementation of religious dogmas, the ascension and transformation of the special Slavophile spirit of the Russian peasant. Behind the numerous and sophisticated terminology of the “Scythians” were visible old populist ideas about the special path of Russia, about its movement towards patriarchal socialism, about the revival of the ongoing revolution in the torment and suffering.
These ideas are embodied by Yesenin in complex poetic images, also saturated with biblical symbolism.
Yesenin greeted the October Revolution as enthusiastically as the February Revolution, but, while welcoming and praising it, admiring its scope and greatness, he did not notice its true content. Therefore, Yesenin’s first poetic responses to the two revolutions do not contain any significant ideological and artistic nuances. The poet pins his hopes on both February and October for the flourishing and strengthening of patriarchal socialism in the countryside.
Calling the revolution a peasant revolution: “In a peasant manger a flame was born for the peace of the whole world!” (“The Singing Call”, 1917, April), “I am knocking at the gates of heaven; swaddle the heifer - Rus'” with stars (“Transfiguration”, 1917, November), Yesenin deprived her of specific historical features, and this is equally noticeable in the absence real events, and in the absence of historical forces of revolution. They were overshadowed by abstract images of good and evil, biblical “villains” - Judas, Herod, and biblical “virtues” - Christ, Savior, John the Baptist and other saints and prophets.
In the poem “Otchar”, created in June 1917, Yesenin’s aspects of the perception of the revolution and the forms of its poetic expression were already quite clearly defined, which remained unchanged until “Inonia” (1918, January).
The poet personified the rebellious, “violent Rus'” in which the rebellious “Buslaev revelry” awoke and the “Volga, Caspian and Don” swirled to the roar of the Volga in the image of Otcharya - a mighty miracle worker, firmly holding the renewed and unkissed peasant patriarchal world on his gigantic shoulders. There is no hunger in it, in it “the entire Russian tribe is called to the tables,” there is no discord and enmity (“and red-haired Judas kisses Christ” and the ringing of his kiss “does not rattle with money”), there are no prisons and hard labor, equality and brotherhood reign, justice and love.
The poet also imagines the February Revolution in the poem “Octoichus”, in which its real appearance completely disappears, but there is a peasant’s paradise in which the poet sees his father’s land. This perception of the revolution is preserved in “The Advent”, in “Transfiguration”, in “Inonia”, created after the October Revolution.
In "The Jordan Dove" (1918) Yesenin calls himself a Bolshevik. However, he paints the same picture of Rus''s movement towards a patriarchal paradise. This paradise turns out to be that meadow Jordan, in which the poet sees “green fields”, “herds of dun horses”, among which the Apostle Andrew “wanders with a shepherd’s pipe”, and “Mother the Most Pure Virgin lashes a donkey with a rod.” This seems to be the goal of the revolution to Yesenin.
Of course, the poet’s religious and mystical perception of the revolution is far from its true appearance. And, of course, it indicates that he did not understand its real content at that time and did not enthusiastically accept what was actually happening. The poet accepted only the revolution that he himself created in his mind, and those goals of this revolution that were born in his own head under the influence of Scythian ideas.
Yesenin's understanding of the revolution was most clearly expressed in the collection "Transfiguration" and, in particular, in the poem "Inonia". In this poem, S. Yesenin acts as a consistent fighter against religious dogmas, overthrows all heavenly gods - both Christian and all others. But this is only the external side of the fight against God, the motives of which are heard very clearly in this poem.
The essence of the poem, however, is that, overthrowing the heavenly gods, Yesenin populates heaven and earth with his own peasant god and glorifies his own ideal city - Inonia, in which lives the deity of the living - the Cow God. Therefore, the atheistic motives that sound so strongly in the first part of the poem turn out to be not a struggle with God, but a replacement of one god, created by Christianity, with another - the god of the living, created by the poet’s imagination, but still a god.
I will pluck even God's beard with the baring of my teeth. I will grab him by the white mane and tell him in the voice of a blizzard: I will make you different, Lord, so that my verbal meadow may mature! I curse the breath of Kitezh and all the hollows of its roads. I want us to build a palace for ourselves on a bottomless stretch. With my tongue I will lick the faces of martyrs and saints on the icons. I promise you the city of Inonia, Where the deity of the living lives! (II - 37, 38)
S. Yesenin’s perception of the revolution is very well expressed in the very last stanza of this poem:
New in the sky Nazareth has matured. New on a mare Rides to the world Spas. Our faith is strong. Our truth is in us! (II - 44)
And in “Inonia” the ideal peasant life is created according to the models of patriarchal economy, patriarchal socialism.
Proclaiming revolution “on earth and in heaven” in “The Heavenly Drummer,” speaking with hatred and determination against the “white herd of gorillas,” Yesenin, in this most revolutionary poem, calls for “Inonia” to fight for the city. His cry against “churches and prisons”, for freedom and brotherhood, has a very definite purpose:
In that call, the Kalmyk and the Tatar will smell their hoped-for hail, And the black sky will ignite with their tails, With the tails of cows. (II - 73)
It is for the sake of this “anticipated hail” that the poet opposes the “white herd of gorillas” and calls for the whole world to unite in the fight.
The poems of 1917-1918, and especially “Inonia,” summed up not only the social quests of pre-revolutionary Yesenin, they were the poetic embodiment of the entire complex of ideological and artistic views of the poet, which were formalized in “The Keys of Mary.”
In "Inonia" and in "The Keys of Mary" the theme of hostility towards the city was loudly heard for the first time. The poet believed then that “only through the waters of free Ladoga will man’s existence be drilled”, that for a new life, for “green fields” cast iron is not needed, for free rivers - granite, that “the radiance of stars cannot be built with nail heads”, but with “fire fermentation” do not fill it with “steel ore lava” (II - 40, 41).
But this hostility is so far directed towards American industrialization, and the poet believes that it will bypass Russia.
The revolution introduced new themes into Yesenin's poetry that were of great historical significance, forced him to reflect on pressing social problems, filled his works with drama, and changed the calm rhythms and intimate intonations. In Yesenin's poetics there has been an increased desire for imagery. And although the very principle of creating an image has been preserved at its core (screen saver, extended metaphor), its quality has changed dramatically. Previously, the poet searched for and found colors in nature that were close to his mood, and with their help he expressed the innermost movements of the soul, the smallest shades of intimate feelings. Nowadays, biblical symbols are increasingly penetrating the basis of imagery, with the help of which complex metaphors are created that are designed to reveal ongoing historical events.
Being in contradiction with the real revolution, Yesenin’s symbolism fully corresponds to his ideas about it (“I see you, Inonia, with the golden caps of the mountains. I see your fields and huts, on the porch of your old mother,” II - 43).
In the light of this vision, many features of S. Yesenin’s poetics of the revolutionary years are understandable. By conventional and abstract means, he embodies equally conventional and abstract events for him in his own awareness of them.
In comparison with pre-revolutionary creativity, the composition of the vocabulary changes dramatically; a large layer of religious and biblical words stands out in it. Along with biblical and religious names and titles: Christ, Nazareth, Tabor, Herod, Judas, Salome, John, Sodom, Jordan, Joseph, Mary, etc. - the poet uses many other words from the clerical vocabulary: font, shepherd, wonderworker, two-fingered cross, Christmas, midday, prayer, God, father, eternal son, holy apostle, ever-virgin, trampling death, forerunner, devil, paradise, Lord, face, Mother of God, transfiguration, crucifixion.
There are especially many such words and concepts if we take them in phraseological turns, both Yesenin’s own and those borrowed: “A flame was born in a man’s manger,” “no, you will not let the truth be told to Christ in your manger,” “heavenly daughters are playing flint,” “the trumpet of God will trumpet”, “the eternal son floats on the cloud”, from the “golden cloud the hosts look”, “then the rooster crowed the third song”, “and your snows will calvary”, “we will sprinkle your cross”, “the sand is ringing about paradise” , “give me this day,” “the hour of transfiguration is ripening,” “the holy child of the earthly paradise,” “and I thought and read from the Bible of the winds,” “her body hangs on the cross,” “the prayer book of the dawn,” “the meadow Jordan.”
Religious expressions and combinations of words introduced by the poet into the text of poems often determine their rhythm and intonation:
“O Virgin Mary! - The heavens sing. - Shed a hair on the golden fields.” (I - 281) “Oh God, God, are you shaking the earth in dreams? The dust of constellations shines on our hair.” (I - 282)
Exclamatory intonations are characteristic of Yesenin’s verse in these two years. “Rejoice, the earth has appeared as a new font!”, “Perish, you English Judo, splash across the seas!”, “Dance, Salome, dance!” “O miracle worker! Wide-cheeked and red-faced...”, “O homeland, happy and never-ending hour!”, “O Rus', O steppe and winds...”, “Arise, see and see!”, “O land of rains and bad weather", "O Rus', flap your wings...", "Lord, I believe...!", "Look at the fields...", "O Hosts!", "Oh, I believe, I believe, - it will calve your east!”, “Appear over Olivet and the truth of our places!”, “Calm down the neighing of the storm and the sound of thunder!”, “O arable lands, arable lands, arable lands”, “O land of terrible floods”, “Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!”, “Ring, ring, golden Rus'!”
These exclamations emphasize the activity of Yesenin’s perception of the events taking place. The poet loudly declares himself, energetically bursts into what he proclaims and depicts. This activity is especially characteristic in “Inonia”.
Let us write down just a few phrases in which the author’s position in his attitude to the events taking place is clearly visible: I will not be afraid of death, I am not afraid of the clank of the whip, the body, I spit out the body of Christ from my mouth, I do not want to accept salvation, I have comprehended a different teaching, I have seen a different coming, I will shave the blue firmament, I will raise my hands to the month, I will crush it like a nut, I today with an elastic hand I am ready to turn the whole world upside down, now I lift you up onto the peaks of the stars, earth, I will bite through the milky cover, I will pluck out God’s beard, I will grab him by the white mane, I curse the breath of Kitezh, I will lead your people away from their hopes, I tell you - you will all perish, I tell you, I will drink all the air, I will cut horseshoes of torment from you.
There are many such affirmative, imperative forms of verbs and intonations in “Inonia”; they are not rare in other works of 1917-1918. The general enthusiastic nature of the poet’s perception of revolutionary events is also emphasized by new rhythms for him. “Violent Rus' dances before his eyes,” - this is how he perceived the February Revolution and this is how he depicted it after October:
The clouds are barking, the golden-toothed heights are roaring... I sing and cry: Lord, calve! (II - 13) Under the storm's plow the earth roars. The golden-fanged Omezh destroys the rocks. (II - 15) Quiet, wind, Don't bark, water glass. Milk will rain from heaven through red nets. (II - 16)
Jerky rhythms, lines of unequal sizes, imperative intonations change Yesenin’s pre-revolutionary verse beyond recognition. It includes not only biblical names and images, but also vocabulary and phrases that were previously unusual for the poet. In the quoted lines these combinations are underlined. Let us highlight just a few characteristic words and word formations often used by the poet in poems about the revolution: ozlatonivit, golden-fanged, rusty, silver-grassed, unsunset, golden-toothed, gilded, clawed, snow-horned, hair-starred, hoofed, thin-beaked.
All this changed the tone of Yesenin’s early poetry and created new material for his imagery, complicating it with ponderous metaphors, symbols and allegories. The mystical, Scythian perception of the revolution was most clearly reflected in the Rural Book of Hours. In vague, unclear images, aggravated with biblical symbolism, the poet welcomes the revolution that plunged Russia into the torment through which it must go in order to be reborn in its original form.
Snow, white snow - The cover of my homeland - They are tearing it apart. Her body hangs on the cross, The shins of the roads and hills are broken... The wind howls like a wolf from the west... The night, like a raven, Sharpens its beak on the eyes - lakes. And with the plank of the cross the dawn was nailed to the mountain: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. (II - 47, 48)
But in the crucifixion of the Motherland the poet sees its revival:
Your secret is great. Your death is the eternal font of the world. (II - 49) Perish, my land! Perish, my Rus', Writer of the Third Testament. ...Hail Earth! To your Virgin Rus' I announced the New Birth. She will give birth to a son for you... His name is Izramistil. (II - 50, 51)
The idea of supposedly inevitable torment for the healing of Russia lies at the heart of the “Jordanian Dove.” Addressing the Motherland, the poet writes:
For the sake of the universal Brotherhood of man, I rejoice in the song of your Death. Strong and strong, I have been ringing the blue bell for a month to your destruction. (II - 55)
We made this extract from that part of “The Jordanian Dove” in which the poet exclaims: “My mother is the Motherland. I am a Bolshevik,” and we did this deliberately to emphasize the naivety of straightforward interpretations of these lines, which, unfortunately, are often found in literature. A little lower, Yesenin reveals why he rejoices in the death and destruction of Russia:
I see you, green fields, with a herd of dun horses. The Apostle Andrew wanders in the willows with a shepherd's pipe. ...Don’t feel sorry for those who have left, Those who leave every hour, There on the lilies of the valley that bloom Better than in our fields. (II - 56)
Without perceiving the revolution specifically, without understanding its true goals and without seeing its driving forces, Yesenin could not embody it in specific poetic images. Therefore, she appears to him either as a bright guest, or as Nazareth, or as the Savior or the Father, and her ultimate goals are an earthly peasant paradise.
The wrath of the revolution turns either against the heavenly gods, or against dark and evil forces unknown to the poet, which hinder the establishment of peasant ideals. Even when the poet angrily speaks out against the “herd of white gorillas,” the meaning of the civil war unfolding in the country is not clear to him, its goals are not clear. They could only be realized in the light of a clear understanding of the nature of the proletarian revolution that took place in Russia. Yesenin did not have such an idea then, and he sang his own, far from reality, ideals of the revolution.
His poems and poems of 1917-1918 are of great importance as poetic documents, capturing in their own bright and truthful way the unfulfilled and unrealizable eternal hopes of the petty-bourgeois strata of Russian society, who harbored illusions of some kind of universal brotherhood, of deliverance from want and hardships without cruel class struggle, with the help of miracle workers, prophets, supernatural and extra-historical forces.
Yesenin's use of religious and biblical symbolism during the years of the revolution and civil war was fundamentally different from its use by Mayakovsky and Bedny. Drawing on biblical images and motifs that were understandable to wide layers of believers at the time, Mayakovsky and Bedny sought to use them to explain the meaning of the events taking place in the country and to inspire the warring people in their historical struggle. This is, for example, Mayakovsky's "Mystery-Buffe". Often in Bedny’s poetry, religious imagery is used for anti-religious propaganda, to expose the very foundations of religion.
And Yesenin’s cosmism is also unlike the cosmism of V. Bryusov and the proletkult poets. The monumental, abstract and universal imagery of the proletkult poets reflected their artistic weakness. Yesenin's cosmism reveals ideological weakness and is by its nature close to the religious and mystical quest of A. Bely, who saw in the revolution the “Messiah of the coming day.”
The Scythians were characterized by the pathos of destruction of the old world, the world of capitalism, the monarchy, and the religions that served them. This pathos fuels the articles of Ivanov-Razumnik, especially his article “Two Russias”, it permeates “The Twelve” by A. Blok, it found expression in A. Bely’s poem “Motherland”:
And you, element of fire, go mad, burning me, Russia, Russia, Russia, Messiah of the coming day! ("Scythians", 1918, No. 2, p. 36)
Covers of the almanac "Scythians" (1917)
Many of Yesenin’s poems about the revolution are a tribute to Scythianism, although they are filled with hatred of the old world and the pathos of its destruction. This pathos was akin to the sentiments of the revolutionary masses who fought under the slogan: “We will destroy the whole world of violence to the ground...”, but they proclaimed it in the name of building a world that was infinitely far from the ideals proclaimed by the poet. His enthusiastic hymns to the revolution were received sympathetically by his contemporaries; his understanding of its whole and the form of their poetic embodiment were approved only by the Scythians. Magazines of that time: “Gorn”, “Bulletin of Life”, “Book and Revolution” - condemned the poet for his passion for neo-populism, peasant philism, biblical symbolism, for the lack of clear and thoughtful social content in his poetry of those years, for the “foggy expectation of a foggy Messiah."
Ivanov-Razumnik gave a completely different assessment of the poetry of N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin, and P. Oreshin in his articles *.
* ("Gorn", 1919, No. 2-3, p. 115; "Bulletin of Life", 1918, No. 2, p. 31; "Book and Revolution", 1921, No. 7, p. 115. See articles by Ivanov-Razumnik "Poets and Revolution". "Scythians", 1918, No. 2, pp. 1-5; “Two Russias”, ibid., pp. 201-231.)
“Klyuev, Yesenin, Oreshin are folk poets not only in spirit, but also in origin.” Ivanov-Razumnik contrasted “people's poets” with all others, considering Klyuev and Yesenin to be prophets and the only exponents of the spirit of the Russian revolution. "...Only they had the authenticity of poetic experiences in the days of the great revolution. Through their lips, the people from the depths of Russia responded to the “roar of thunder.” Why were the lips of our great city poets closed at that moment, and if they were open, it was unbearable "Were they false? Is it not because it was not a great people who responded through these lips, but a petty bourgeois, an ordinary man?" *.
* (See Ivanov-Razumnik's article "Poets and Revolution". "Scythians", 1918, No. 2, pp. 1, 3.)
Already in the first poetic responses of S. Yesenin to the October events, the bias that he would write later in his autobiographies is quite noticeable: “I met the first period of the revolution sympathetically, but more spontaneously than consciously” (V - 17), “during the years of the revolution there was completely on the side of October, but accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias" (V - 23).
In the literature about Yesenin, the inconsistency of the form he chose for the poetic expression of the content of the revolutionary events taking place in the country was noted many times. In reality, the poet did not have such a gap between the content and the means of its poetic expression. The mystically understood revolution was clothed in equally mystical images.
In poems on other topics, Yesenin’s old melodies continued to sound and his characteristic manner of poetic embodiment was preserved. Let's name the following, for example, poems from 1917-1919: “The fields are compressed, the groves are bare”, “I am wandering through the first snow”, “Oh muse, my flexible friend”, “Green hairstyle”, “Here it is, stupid happiness”, “ I left my home”, “Golden foliage began to spin”, “It’s good in the autumn freshness”. They all contain the same Yesenin intonations, rhythms, and images familiar from pre-revolutionary works: “the quiet sun rolled down behind the blue mountains like a wheel,” “the red moon harnessed itself like a foal to our sleigh,” “the evening illuminated the star above my road with a blue candle,” “maybe , instead of winter in the fields, it was the swans who sat down in the meadow”, “the bare breasts of the birches”, “I just want to clasp my hands over the tree hips of the willows”, “the dawn wrapped the moon in its hem like a baby”, “the moon spread out like a golden frog on the still water”, “The boy-wind has lifted the hem of the birch tree up to his shoulders,” “The starry belfry is silently hooting.”
All these images are built according to the principle of likening various phenomena that is already familiar to us, so characteristic of the early Yesenin. There are many such images in poems and poems about the revolution.
Let's give just a few examples from “Inonia”: “the golden harvest will fly over your country forty years”, “and like squirrels, yellow springs will jump on the twigs of days”, “and the sun, like a cat, pulls the ball towards itself”, “drops a song drips from the mountains from an invisible candle,” “the moon pierced the clouds with its blue horn,” “strung a rainbow in the sky like a bow.” From “Transfiguration”: “about how the east covered the rye with its pink face”, “the moon will give birth to a golden puppy over the grove”, “milk will rain from the heavens through red nets”, “the sun, like a cat, from the heavenly willow touches my hair with its golden paw ", "the stars will prophesy a silver harvest", "like an egg, a word will drop to us with a hatched chick."
And even when the poet complicates his verse with religious and biblical symbolism, he does not deviate from the principle of constructing an image that he has learned. In "The Jordanian Dove" the "flock of noisy geese" is likened to transformed souls flying into the heavenly garden, and the cries of the geese are like the cry of departed Rus'; Russia - Jordan, over which, according to legend, a dove hovered during the baptism of Christ; revolution is in the wind. From these headpieces, using biblical symbols, the poet builds an image:
Here it is, here is the dove, perched on the hand of the wind. My meadow Jordan swirls again with the dawn. (II - 55)
Its meaning: in the revolution, Russia experiences a new baptism, and the dawn of a new faith rises over it, as at the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. The stanza is also composed:
The ancient shadow of Mauritius is related to our hills, Abraham visited us with rain on the golden fields. (II - 57)
From the examples it is clear that in his poems about the revolution, Yesenin remained faithful to the principle of constructing an image that developed in his early work. Therefore, the changes that occurred in his poetics of these years, firstly, cannot be extended to all works, and secondly, do not violate its foundations.
In the “Preface” to the collected works (January, 1924) Yesenin wrote: “I would ask readers to treat all my Jesuses, mothers of God and Mykolas as fabulous in poetry. I cannot deny this stage in myself by crossing out the same way as and all humanity cannot wash away the period of two thousand years of Christian culture, but all these proper church names must be accepted in the same way as the names that have become myths for us: Osiris, Oannes, Zeus, Aphrodite, Athena, etc.” (V - 78). And in his notes “About Me” (October 1925) he indicated: “I would gladly refuse many of my religious poems and poems, but they are of great importance as a poet’s path to the revolution” (V - 22).
But, refusing “proper church” names, Yesenin constantly took credit for the image he inherited from the past of the Russian people, which “lived in him organically just like passions and feelings,” and considered this a feature of his creativity, which he could study (V - 79).
2
The contradictions encountered in Yesenin’s poetry during the revolutionary years were not accidental, and were the result of the poet’s unclear and fuzzy ideological, aesthetic and socio-political views.
Even before February 1917, the poet’s general democratic mood acquired a “Scythian” coloring, which appeared so clearly in his poems about the revolution, in which he was unable to rise to the level of understanding the tasks of the Russian proletariat and the rural poor.
And even if we keep in mind that until the beginning of the eighteenth year our revolution had a general peasant character in the village and had not yet acquired that class differentiation that later determined its proletarian character in relation to the village, then these general peasant positions, expressed in the struggle of the entire peasantry for land against landowners, Yesenin’s poetry did not reflect in 1917-1918. The poet came close to this topic only in “Anna Snegina” in 1925, but during the years of the revolution it dropped out of his work.
In a speech on the anniversary of the revolution on November 6, 1918, V. I. Lenin defined the process of development of the proletarian revolution as follows:
“And so, comrades, asking ourselves the question of what we have done on a large scale this year, we must say that the following has been done: ... from the general peasant struggle for land, from the struggle of peasants with landowners, from a struggle that was national, bourgeois-democratic character, we came to the point that proletarian and semi-proletarian elements stood out in the village, those who work especially hard, those who are exploited stood out, rose to build a new life; the most oppressed part of the village entered into a struggle to the end with the bourgeoisie, in including with their village kulak bourgeoisie" *. “In October, we limited ourselves to the fact that the old century-old enemy of the peasants, the landowner-serf, the owner of the latifundia, was swept away immediately. It was a general peasant struggle. There was still no division within the peasantry between the proletariat, the semi-proletariat, the poorest part of the peasantry and the bourgeoisie. ...October The revolution of the cities for the countryside became a real October Revolution only in the summer and autumn of 1918." **.
* (V. I. Lenin. Full collection cit., vol. 37, p. 138.)
** (V. I. Lenin. Full collection cit., vol. 37, pp. 141-142.)
By this time and during this process, the reactionary content of Razumnikov’s philosophy became especially clear, and the discrepancy between Yesenin’s ideals and the historical process became more noticeable.
Under the influence of increasingly clearly identified events, Yesenin begins to understand this discrepancy. His “Inonia” is not only a sentence to God, but also a cry “about an impossible city,” a challenge to the forces opposing the poet’s illusions. It was written at the last limit, and its verse is full of spells, promises and calls to believe in something that the poet himself does not believe in in his soul, which is why he shouts so loudly, drowning out his own doubts. And next to “Inonia” there are completely different themes and moods.
Songs, songs, what are you shouting about? Or do you have nothing more to give? (II - 63) But your icy sigh is less frequent, False-classical Rus'. (II - 58)
The poet is no longer satisfied either with his own poetry * or with the still uncooled acmeistic passions and passions of the zealots of antiquity from the “Society for the Revival of Artistic Rus'”. A persistent and lengthy search for ideological, artistic and socio-political self-determination begins, a search not without miscalculations and mistakes.
* (Originally, the final lines of the poem "Songs, songs, what are you shouting about?" read like this: “There is misfortune in this world, although it is joyful to wear it, then it is misfortune to be born according to this and not love your own poems” (II - 276, 277).)
Unfortunately, in the armed civil and political struggle that unfolded in the country immediately after October, Yesenin tied himself not only to Scythianism. Imagist inclinations brought the poet into a group that contributed to an even greater separation of his poetry from the main tasks of Soviet literature.
And although the greatest permission to appoint Yesenin to the medical train “of her imperial name”, a year-long stay in Tsarskoe Selo surrounded by officials close to the reigning officials, the benefits provided for military service and Loman’s constant attention did not give the expected results, they nevertheless deepened the poet’s isolation from progressive trends in social life.
Having been sent to Mogilev on the eve of the February Revolution and caught on the way, Yesenin did not appear at Andreev’s disposal and thus found himself outside the army. In “Anna Snegina” he recalled it this way:
I threw away my rifle, bought myself a "linden" *, and with such and such preparation I met the year 17. ...Amid the roar and roar of mortars, I showed another kind of courage - I was the first deserter in the country. (III - 184, 185)
* (“Linden” is a forged document (note by S. A. Yesenin).)
Having completed his service in the medical train and deserted from the army, which had taken the oath to Kerensky, Yesenin entered into an alliance with the “Scythians”, and then with the Imagists.
The poet’s mood in the first post-revolutionary years took on Scythian-imagist forms, just at a time when the nature of the revolution was becoming increasingly clear.
October drew the final line in the political division of the Russian intelligentsia, including the Russian creative intelligentsia. A people fighting for life and death needed literature that could inspire the fight, reveal its goals, and often indicate everyday practical tasks.
The greatness of the events that took place, the radical disruption of centuries-old foundations, the unprecedented growth of self-awareness of the people who had experienced spiritual oppression for many centuries, the collapse of all and every illusion gave rise to deep psychological processes in the ranks of Russian writers.
Literature, far from the life of the people, was incapable of artistic embodiment of the highest turning point in their spiritual life. Many of the famous Russian writers did not understand the world-historical role of the events that took place and found themselves on the other side of the barricades or went into the realm of memories and illusions dear to their hearts.
Of all the pre-revolutionary writers, the most prepared for the revolution were those who connected their work with the struggle of the Russian working class, those who hated the way of life swept away by the revolution. In the very first days of the revolution, the poetry of D. Bedny, a faithful companion of the street, barricade, positional-trench and rapid-offensive battles of the Workers' and Peasants' Army, sounded loudly. How V. Mayakovsky, A. Serafimovich greeted their revolution, A. Blok, V. Bryusov, A. Bely greeted it, although in different ways, S. Gorodetsky led the work in the ranks of the Red Army.
But the political division among writers did not determine the entire complexity of the life of national literature, which was faced with tasks of unprecedented difficulty.
The revolution radically changed the very concept of a “literary hero”, put other conflicts and processes, other moral and aesthetic criteria on the order of the day, it brought a new truth, affirmed new relationships in society and family. She contrasted the old abstract bourgeois humanism with the humanism of a struggling people, the age-old dream of the people's share with the liberation movement of the masses themselves, and the vague protest against the reality that existed in Russia with the everyday bloody and bloodless, but fierce struggle.
A truthful artistic embodiment of the moral and psychological processes caused by the revolution required from the artist a deep penetration into the events taking place, a close connection with the life of the people, a clear understanding of the laws of the historical process, and new artistic means capable of capturing the greatness and complexity of the forward movement of the revolution.
Intense ideological and artistic searches are typical at this time for all writers who embraced October. They filled the creative days of D. Bedny, A. Serafimovich, V. Mayakovsky, A. Blok, V. Bryusov, D. Furmanov, I. Babel.
Our Soviet literature was created in the complex ideological and psychological atmosphere of those days, and the process of its development was not easy. He demanded not only a rethinking of the personal creativity of writers, but also a rethinking of the entire artistic heritage and a new solution to the problem of tradition and innovation.
These days, S. Yesenin is intensely thinking about the paths of Soviet poetry, looking closely at the work of his fellow writers, trying to understand the many-sided literary movement of the revolutionary era. During the years of the revolution, the poet’s previously greatly weakened ties with Z. Gippius and D. Merezhkovsky, who emigrated along with many visitors to their salon, were finally severed.
By this time, Yesenin re-evaluated the work of N. Klyuev and a decisive departure from him; S. Yesenin perceived A. Blok, V. Mayakovsky, D. Bedny, poets of the proletkult, futurism, M. Gorky in a new way. He is interested in the national roots of poetry, its origins, he carefully studies folklore and in it looks for the answer to the questions that concern him.
Intense searches, an attempt to find the true paths in poetry are noticeable in poems and letters, in Yesenin’s literary connections and theoretical reflections dating back to the first post-revolutionary years. Already in the poem “O Rus', Flap Your Wings” (1917), Yesenin, following Ivanov-Razumnik, puts the poetry of peasant poets in first place in the literary work of the revolutionary years and in this poetry assigns himself a leading role. Paying tribute to the work of A. Koltsov and N. Klyuev, considering A. Koltsov the founder of this line of literature, and N. Klyuev his unsuccessful successor, S. Yesenin contrasts himself with N. Klyuev.
If Klyuev is “humble”, if “he is all in the carving of rumors” and Easter leaves his “hairless head”, then the poet paints himself as “curly-haired and robber”, conducting “a secret dispute even with the secret of God”, “knocking down the month with a stone”, "throwing a knife from its boot, hanging into the sky." Having debunked N. Klyuev and brought himself to the fore, the poet exclaims:
A ring of others follows me in an invisible swarm, And far through the villages their lively verse rings. We knit books from herbs, we shake words from two floors. (I - 291)
In the light of these lines, others are also understandable: “With other names another steppe arises.” This is not the monastic or humble Klyuev steppe, but a cheerful, cocky steppe awakened by the revolution, the poet considers himself the spokesman of whose aspirations, bringing “star noise” to replace “stinking dreams and thoughts.” In the lines “Enough to rot and whine, and to glorify the rise of the vile - the risen Rus' has already washed away, erased the tar” (I - 292) Yesenin declared other motives of creativity, different from the pathos of Klyuev’s poetry.
Since 1917, S. Yesenin has moved further and further away from N. Klyuev. In a letter to R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik (1918), he strongly objects to the characterization of N. Klyuev as “the first deep folk poet,” so named in “Scythians” No. 2 by Ivanov-Razumnik and A. Bely. “Klyuev, with the exception of “Hut Songs,” which I appreciate and recognize, has recently become my enemy,” writes Yesenin (V - 129). “He is all in the carving of rumors,” that is, in the retelling of what was said. Only an isographer, but not a discoverer" (V - 130).
In a letter to A. Shiryaevets (1920), Yesenin again states: “I have almost nothing with my old comrades, I broke up with Klyuev...” (V - 137). “And Klyuev, my dear, is a beast. Cunning, like a fox, and all this, you know, like this: for himself, for himself. Thank God that the horns are not given to a lively cow. He conceals great desires in himself, and strength -not enough. Very similar to his poems, just as clumsy, sloppy, simple in appearance, but inside he’s a devil.” “Then stop singing this stylized Klyuevskaya Rus' with its non-existent Kitezh and stupid old women, we are not like it all comes out in your poems. Life, the real life of our Rus' is much better than the frozen picture of the Old Believers. All this, brother, was, is included in a coffin, so why smell these rotten log remains? Let Klyuev smell it, it suits him, because he himself smells, but you don’t" (V - 138). In a letter to Ivanov-Razumnik (1920), Yesenin speaks negatively about the form of Klyuev’s creativity: “His poems during this time made a rather unpleasant impression on me. He, Razumnik Vasilyevich, is very weak in form and somehow does not want to grow. And the fact that it seems to him a form, nothing more nor less than a manner, and sometimes quite tiresome" (I - 142).
The same negative assessments of N. Klyuev’s creativity are contained in letters from S. Yesenin to R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik, dating back to 1921 (V - 145), to 1922 (V - 151), to N. Klyuev dated May 5, 1922 ( I - 154). In the poem “Now my love is not the same” (1918), Yesenin noted the winglessness of N. Klyuev’s poetry, its lack of spirituality:
You can't sing about the sun, You can't see heaven through the window. So the mill, flapping its wing, cannot fly away from the earth. (II - 76)
And in the poem “In the Caucasus” (1924) he called Klyuev “the Ladoga sexton.”
The deep ideological differences between S. Yesenin and N. Klyuev in the work itself do not, however, date back to 1917. They will arise much later, when Yesenin’s poetry is freed from that peasant bias that was characteristic of all poets of the Klyuev-Yesenin group. The high assessment given by Yesenin to N. Klyuev’s “Hut Songs” does not correspond to their objective value. They are devoid of acute social themes and they glorify the life of the old peasant hut, household items, and village utensils.
A pole is for a cat what a barn is for a priest, The cat's path to it will not die out; Ash is like a feather bed - lie down and rest, - You will dream of smelt, a millet loaf * .
* (N. Klyuev. Pesnoslov, book. II, p. 11.)
The “Hut Songs” of I. Klyuev are filled with hymns to the “fresh and fragrant carpet”, the tub and the broom, the stove and the stove pot. And, on the contrary, the work of Klyuev in the first post-revolutionary years, condemned by Yesenin, contains assessments and motives filled with great social meaning. Yesenin calls Klyuev’s “Red Song” “mediocre”. Meanwhile, it contains a perception of the revolution that is akin to both poets:
Light a candle for the peasant Savior! ...Kitezh-grad, the palm of the Sarov pines - This is our longed-for paradise, dear * , -
* (N. Klyuev. Pesnoslov, book. II, pp. 172-173.)
Klyuev exclaims in “The Red Song,” understanding will as “God’s gift,” and this exclamation is akin to Yesenin. Like S. Yesenin, N. Klyuev welcomes the revolution, seeing in it the fulfillment of a peasant’s dream.
Open up, eagle wings, Sound the alarm bell, and thunder, - The chains of violence have broken and the prison of life has been destroyed! Wide are the Black Sea steppes, the Buina Volga, the Ural gold mine, - Perish, bloody scaffold and chains, Casemate and unjust trial! For the Earth, for Freedom, for the Bread of labor We go to battle with the enemies - It’s enough for them to rule over us! To fight, to fight! *.
* (N. Klyuev. Pesnoslov, book. II, p. 171.)
The last four lines are a refrain in the song, and the call to battle has a specific social program: “There will be honey on the home edge, and there will be a bright pattern on the tablecloth,” “From Baikal to the warm Crimea, the rye ocean will splash…”, “The eye of Spasov cannot bear the darkness.” , the golden calf is hated."
The same motives are heard in the poem “The Sun of the Eighteenth Year”... “We are the helmsmen of the world, we are gods and children, in purple October we turned the steering wheels”, in the poems “Comrade”, “From basements, from dark corners”, “From red newspaper."
In the last of them, N. Klyuev angrily calls those whom he considered enemies of the people who rebelled “For the Earth, for Freedom, for the Bread of the working people,” among them are the White Guards, those who “hiss through the cathedrals, praying in a whisper for the Romanov House,” the Rasputins and “citizens” who sold “freedom for feces.” Unlike Yesenin, Klyuev is socially defined in his sympathies:
The whippersnappers in bowler hats and the mothers in cambric cambrics, With the bitty posture of the merchant family, My lyre is not for you, - in the thorny melodies Let death and the friend of the machine gun be glorified! *.
* (N. Klyuev. Pesnoslov, book. II, p. 190.)
The polemic between N. Klyuev and S. Yesenin is most often explained in our literature by ideological differences between the two poets. At the same time, it is argued that Yesenin went with the revolution, and Klyuev perceived it with hostility.
Here is what E. Naumov writes about this: “After the October Revolution, the distance between Yesenin and Klyuev increased more and more. Now their differences began to acquire a political connotation. Yesenin directly wrote that he “was entirely on the side of October.” Klyuev not only expressed nothing of the kind, but began to be more and more hostile towards Soviet power, which was then noticed by Yesenin" *.
* (E. Naumov. S. Yesenin. Life and creativity, p. 88.)
Like Yesenin, Klyuev saw in the revolution the fulfillment of an ideal peasant dream and sang of Kitezhnaya, paradisiacal Rus' without masters and taxes; he was the first to rebel in literature against mechanization, seeing in it the death of a village untouched by industrialization, and in this he had a bad influence on Yesenin. But he welcomed Soviet power and October, which gave the peasant land and freed him from the masters and the monarch.
The Klyuev revolution is more definite than Yesenin’s, it is earthly and historical forces are at work in it: “An iron factory, a steppe hut weaves banners from hurricanes,” “and the face of a fireman is blood-clear to us, in it are the dreams of factories, the thoughts of fields...”, “from the basements , from dark corners, from cars and fire-eyed stoves, we rose with mighty thunder to see the whole sky in diamonds" *.
* ()
N. Klyuev does not see social stratification in the village, for him it is one, and the common enemy for it was, in his opinion, the capitalist city, which oppressed both the worker and the peasant:
The city-devil beat with its hooves, Frightening us with a stone jaw. At the warm, suffering graves We got engaged with fiery anger. Anger led us to prisons, palaces, Where chains were forged in truth... Do not forget how fathers said goodbye to their children And said goodbye to their sweet bride... The pavements will tell about us, The stones know the bloody ones... * .
* (N. Klyuev. Pesnoslov, book. II, pp. 181, 182, 183.)
Hatred for the capitalist city with prisons and palaces was transferred by N. Klyuev to the socialist city. He dreamed of seeing a renovated village without iron and chimney smoke: “An iron skyscraper, a factory chimney, yours, oh homeland, secret destiny!” And this was also not a disagreement between Yesenin and Klyuev, at least until 1921.
For all his commitment to antiquity, N. Klyuev was a consistent and implacable enemy of the Romanovs, called Nicholas II a “wrapper”, and even before the revolution he resolutely refused (in a letter to Loman) to compose poems in honor of the royal family.
In the poem by N. Klyuev “Dwellers of the Coffins, Wake Up” there are the following lines:
Your black white guards will die for spitting on the Red God. Because they sprinkle the nail wounds of Russia with crushed glass. Kuteya snakes hiss through the cathedrals, Praying in whispers for the Romanov house. For the grimy Rasputin to dance on icons and spit into the cup again... With a coffee pot, the table is like a feather bed, cozy For citizens who sold their freedom for feces *.
* (N. Klyuev. Pesnoslov, book. II, p. 189.)
In any case, there were no deep social reasons for such a sharp divergence between the close and previously inseparable poets. The words of R. Ivanov-Razumnik and A. Bely about Klyuev “the first deep folk poet,” as well as “Song of the Sun-Bearer” by N. Klyuev, negatively assessed by S. Yesenin, did not give grounds to call Klyuev an enemy, and it was this word that Yesenin used .
In turn, for the poem “Elushki-sisters”, dedicated to S. Yesenin, N. Klyuev took as an epigraph the words “You, sir, have a new necklace...”, and compared Yesenin with Kitovras.
The fragile association “Scythians” disintegrated soon after the revolution, having managed to publish two collections. For some time, Yesenin gravitated towards Ivanov-Razumnik and published his works in other Socialist-Revolutionary publications, but, as in his connections with Klyuev, in his relations with Ivanov-Razumnik there was no longer the former closeness and spiritual unity. Scythianism left in Yesenin's poetry tangible traces of religious and mystical illusions and equally vague poetic images in which these illusions were embodied.
In "The Keys of Mary" (1918), in the reviews "The Father's Word" (about Andrei Bely's novel "Kotik Letaev" (1918), "On the Glow" by P. Oreshin (1918), "On Proletarian Writers" (1918) and in In a number of letters dating back to this time, Yesenin intensively reflects on the ways of development of Russian Soviet poetry.In response to the nihilistic slogans of futurists and proletcult theorists, he looks for the origins of poetry in folk art and in ancient Russian literature.
Exploring the national ornament, symbolic signs of peasant life, his oral verbal creativity, Yesenin tries to understand the innermost meaning of Russian art, its eternal roots, the meaning of the organic image in it.
The poet sees this meaning in the merging of the earthly with the heavenly, “in populating the sky surrounding man with earthly objects, in baptizing the air with the names of objects close to us.”
Considering ornament, “the first and main branch of Russian art” as the melody of one eternal song before the universe, Yesenin writes: “But no one has merged with it so beautifully, putting all their life, all their heart and all their mind into it, like our ancient Rus', where Almost every thing, through every sound, tells us with signs that here we are only on the way, that here we are just a “hut convoy”, that somewhere in the distance, under the ice of our muscular sensations, a heavenly siren is singing to us and that behind the squall of our the shore of earthly events is not far away" (V - 27).
In the signs of Russian ornament, embroidery on towels, pillowcases, sheets, Yesenin sees an expression of the spirit of the people, feeling and realizing themselves as a “child of the tree,” as a family of the “universal oak.” “Everything is from the tree - this is the religion of thought of our people” (V - 31). “The thought of this origin from the tree gave birth, along with music, to a mythical epic” (V - 31).
But if the leaves on the towels reminded ancient man of his origins from the tree, then the images of verbal creativity testify to his desire to understand the world around him, to reconcile its mysterious eternity with everyday life on earth. In this knowledge, S. Yesenin assigns a primary role to the representation of celestial objects by earthly ones.
“Living, moving and worrying, a man of ancient times could not help but ask himself the question, where is he from, what is the sun and, in general, what is his surrounding life? Looking for an answer in everything, he seemed to be looking for his inner reconciliation with himself and the world. And unwinding a tangle of movements on earth, finding a name for every object and situation, having learned to protect himself from every offensive phenomenon, he decided by the same means to reconcile himself with the disobedience of the elements and the irresponsibility of space. This reconciliation consisted in the fact that around him he made, so to speak, accessible to his understanding the arrangement. The sun, for example, became like a wheel, a calf and many other positions, the clouds roared like wolves, etc. With such an arrangement, he clearly and distinctly determined every position in the movement above" (V - 37).
The screensaver was thus the second stage in the developing consciousness of the people, the second letter of the poetic literacy they created to understand the world. All nations have passed this stage: “The idea of the air world cannot do without the means of the earthly environment, the earth is the same all around, what the Persian sees, the Chukot sees, therefore the letter is the same, and it is impossible to read it and write on it, avoiding identity almost completely" (V - 38).
Yesenin sees the “independence of the lines” of the art of each individual people in the aspiration of their spirit, in the difference in their everyday situation. “The aspiration is not the same, depending on this, of course, the means are not the same” (V - 38).
S. Yesenin considers the patriarchal Russian village to be the keeper of ancient poetic traditions, and even in it they are forgotten and are on their deathbed due to its capitalization. The poet considers the revival of patriarchal relations in the village to be one of the conditions for the flourishing of genuine creativity and, seeing in this the role of the revolution, which “appeared like an angel of salvation to the dying,” he welcomes and glorifies it.
“Future art will blossom in its possibilities of achievements as a kind of universal heliport, where people will rest blissfully and wisely in a round dance under the shady branches of one enormous tree, whose name is socialism, or paradise, for paradise was imagined in peasant creativity, where there are no taxes for arable land, where “new huts, covered with cypress planks,” where decrepit time, wandering through the meadows, calls all tribes and peoples to the world table and surrounds them, giving each a golden ladle and raspberry mash. But the road to this light of art, in addition to the washed-away obstacles in the world of external life, also has entire groves of thorny rose hips and buckthorn bushes in the perception of thought and image. People must learn to read the signs they have forgotten."(V - 43, 44). The underlined lines also contain another condition for the future flourishing of creativity, as the poet thought.
But it would be wrong to say that S. Yesenin calls for a simple repetition of the path traversed by art. Highlighting in folk art organic image seeing in him nodal ovary art and essentials for the artist poetic attitude, he strongly objects to the use in poetry everyday life erased by the revolution. “The means of imprinting an image with the letters of old usage must die altogether. They must either hatch their chicks on the eggs of their words or sink like a ringing stream into the sea of years" (V - 52).
This is the ideological and artistic program of S. Yesenin in the first years of the revolution. Both its social and aesthetic aspects are realized in poems and poems of 1917-1918, in articles and notes on literature dating back to this time. Let us note here that in Yesenin’s discussions about the poetic image, much is borrowed from Andrei Bely’s articles on poetics, in particular from his work “The Rod of Aaron” (“Scythians”, 1917, No. 1).
Highlighting a metaphorical image in oral folk art, Yesenin makes it the basis of his poetics, based on which he evaluates contemporary poetry.
“The Keys of Mary”, letters and notes of this time contain sharply negative assessments of the work of N. Klyuev, whom S. Yesenin accuses of ornateness, stylization, of using screensavers of “everyday life erased by the revolution”, of misunderstanding the tasks of art “in such sacred days of renewal human spirit" (V - 52). “It blew a lifeless, lacy wind upon us.” “His heart did not unravel the secrets of the images that filled it” (V - 47).
Yesenin does not accept futurism either and resolutely rejects it as alien to the very spirit of national creativity. “Following Klyuev, stupid futurism also broke his neck on his road... He grouped in his heart all the garbage of feelings and reason and threw this fetid bouquet, like “passing in the night,” into our window of art, with the olive branch of Noah’s dove.” (V - 48, 49). S. Yesenin identifies V. Mayakovsky and D. Bur Luke in “The Keys of Mary” and calls them “the echoes of the freak Marinetti.”
S. Yesenin resolutely rebels against the theoretical principles of proletkult. The poet, who traced the lineage of his poetics from time immemorial, was organically alien to the nihilism of the futurists and proletcult theorists, who denied the past culture in which Yesenin sought the sources of national creativity. “...We must shout that all these proletcults are the same rods of human creativity according to the old model. We must snatch this little body of our new era from their bestial hands before they spot it” (V - 51). “The human soul is too complex to be chained to a certain circle of sounds of any one life melody or sonata” (V - 51).
In “The Keys of Mary” Yesenin does not see the difference between the proletkult and Marxist understanding of the nature of art and its role in society, and transfers his hostility to the attitudes of the proletkults to Marxism.
“That is why we are so disgusted by the raised hands of Marxist tutelage in the ideology of the essence of the arts. She is building a monument to Marx with the hands of the workers, and the peasants want to erect it to a cow” (V - 52).
While affirming complete freedom of creativity, Yesenin at this time denied the class character of art, opposing it to universal human consciousness. According to Yesenin, class art, like “unclean vapors,” will have “no place in the ark” of the future; the future belongs to “the image, the wings of which are welded together by human faith not from class awareness, but from awareness of the situation his temple of eternity" (V - 54).
In notes on collections of proletarian writers, S. Yesenin notes the poetic helplessness of the proletarian poets, calling them “weak students of the roads traveled,” “detractors of the old foundations,” unable to create anything in poetry other than “muteness and dull stuttering.”
Of all the poets included in the collections, Yesenin singles out M. Gerasimov, whose work promises, in his opinion, “a poet of very, very average magnitude.” But Yesenin’s planned rapprochement with the poets of the Proletcult did not take place, although “Cantata” and “Calling Dawns” were written in collaboration with Gerasimov.
* ("Cantata" - S. Yesenin, S. Klychkov, M. Gerasimov; “Calling Dawns” - S. Yesenin, S. Klychkov, M. Gerasimov, N. Pavlovich.)
It should be noted here that the significance of Yesenin’s short-term collaboration with the proletkult poets cannot be exaggerated, as is done in other articles and monographs. For Yesenin, 1918 was a difficult year. By this time, his disputes with N. Klyuev had reached their highest tension, there was a move away from Scythianism, and a general drying up of the poet’s creative connections occurred as a result of a sharp separation from literary circles hostile to the revolution and the people, with whom he had previously had close contacts.
Unlike many other proletarian and other poets, whose work Yesenin had a negative attitude, in the poems of M. Gerasimov he found thoughts and images close to his own, such as:
On the square of star clusters lies the cold corpse of the moon, And like rusty nails, hundreds of pipes pierced the sky...
“That’s why,” Yesenin wrote in the article “On Proletarian Writers” in 1918, “Mikhail Gerasimov, who stands out from this entire proletarian group, is such a nice bright link...” (V - 72).
Interest in the work of M. Gerasimov, in his images, and not the general ideological and aesthetic program and practice of proletarian writers, pushed Yesenin to collaborate. A significant role was played here by hopes, albeit weak, to realize his views on artistic creativity within the framework of this literary organization and to bring into its poetry the experience of a mature master, as Yesenin considered himself against the background of the “muteness and stupid stuttering” of the “detractors of the old foundations.”
These dreams of Yesenin turned out to be unrealizable, however, and did not lead to deep creative contacts even within a small group of proletkult poets. “The Keys of Mary” and notes on proletarian writers contained such deep and fundamental differences between Yesenin and the ideological and artistic program of the proletkults that they could not make cooperation with them lasting.
In a letter to R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik (1921), S. Yesenin speaks negatively about the poetry of A. Blok, considering him “by misunderstanding Russian,” “formless,” “not feeling the figurativeness of our language” (V - 146), and about the poetry of the Scythians, “who do not know how to wield a bow and the mysteries of their language” (V - 149).
Among the best contemporary poets, S. Yesenin counts S. Klychkov and L. Beleso, whose work corresponded to his poetic views of this period.
Having critically assessed the schools, groups and movements of his time, Yesenin did not find in them the attitude that interested him in those years towards a metaphorical image that had deep roots in patriarchal antiquity. This was one of the important reasons for the emergence of a new literary movement in Russian literature - imagism, in which Yesenin took an active part.
He was the son of a simple worker,
And the story about him is very short.
The only thing about him was that his hair was like night
Yes, the eyes are blue, meek.
His father from morning to evening
He bent his back to feed the baby;
But he had nothing to do
And he had comrades: Christ and a cat.
The cat was old, deaf,
I didn’t hear any mice or flies,
And Christ sat in his mother's arms
And he looked from the icon at the doves under the roof.
Martin lived and no one knew about him.
The days pounded sadly, like rain on iron.
And only sometimes over a meager lunch
His father taught him to sing the Marseillaise.
“When you grow up,” he said, “you will understand...
You’ll figure out why we’re so poor!”
And his chipped knife trembled dully
Over a stale crust of daily food.
But here under the plank
Window -
Two winds waved
Wing;
Then with the spring flood
Waters
Russian shot up
People...
The shafts are roaring,
The thunderstorm is singing!
From the blue haze
Eyes are burning.
After a swing, a swing,
Above the corpse is a corpse;
Breaks fear
Your strong tooth.
Everything takes off and takes off,
Everyone screams and screams!
Into the bottomless mouth
The spring is flowing...
And then he punched someone
Last, sad hour...
But believe me, he didn't give up
Before the power of the enemy's eyes!
His soul, as before,
Fearless and strong
And reaches for hope
Bloodless hand.
He didn't live in vain
No wonder he crushed the flowers;
But they don't look like you
Faded dreams...
Accidentally, unexpectedly
From the porch
Got it to Martin
Father's last cry.
With dull eyes,
With timid blue lips,
He fell to his knees
Hugging a cold corpse.
But then he raised his eyebrows,
He rubbed his hand over his eyes,
Ran back into the house
And he stood under the image.
"Jesus, Jesus, do you hear?
You see? I am alone.
Calls you and calls you
Your comrade Martin!
Father lies dead
But he did not fall like a coward.
I hear him calling us
O my faithful Jesus.
He calls us for help,
Where do the Russian people fight?
Orders to stand for freedom,
For equality and work!..”
And, tenderly accepting
The sound of innocent speeches
Jesus came down to earth
From unwavering hands.
They go hand in hand,
And the night is black, black!..
And puffed up with misfortune
Gray silence.
Dreams bloom with hope
About eternal, free rock.
Both are undead
February breeze.
But suddenly the lights sparkled...
The copper weight barked.
And fell, struck by a bullet,
Baby Jesus.
Listen:
No more Sunday!
His body was buried
He lies
On Mars
Field.
And where the mother remained,
Where should he not be?
Bole,
Sits by the window
old cat
Catching the moon with his paw...
Martin crawls on the floor:
"You are my falcons, falcons,
You are in captivity
In captivity!"
His voice is getting dimmer and dimmer,
Someone is crushing him, someone is strangling him,
Burns with fire.
But it rings calmly
Outside the window,
Then going out, then flaring up
Again,
Iron
Word:
"Rre-es-puu-publica!"
Notes
It lies on the Field of Mars - on March 23, 1917, on the Field of Mars in Petrograd, a funeral was held for the fighters who died during the February Revolution.
About eternal, free rock.
Both are undead
February breeze.
But suddenly the lights sparkled...
The copper weight barked.
And fell, struck by a bullet,
Baby Jesus.
Listen:
No more Sunday!
His body was buried:
He lies
On Mars
Field.
And where the mother remained,
Where should he not be?
Bole,
Sits by the window
old cat
Catching the moon with his paw...
Martin crawls on the floor:
“You are my falcons, falcons,
You are in captivity
In captivity!"
But it rings calmly
Outside the window,
Then going out, then flaring up
Again,
Iron
Word:
“Rre-es-pu-u-ublika!”
1917
* * *
It was not in vain that the winds blew,
It was not in vain that the storm came.
Someone secret in a quiet light
Gave my eyes water.
From someone's outward affection
I was sad in the blue darkness
About beautiful, but unearthly,
Unsolved land.
The silent milkiness does not oppress,
Don't worry about star fear.
I fell in love with the world and eternity,
Like a parental center.
Everything about them is good and holy,
Everything alarming is light.
The sunset red poppy splashes
On lake glass.
And unwittingly in a sea of bread
The image is torn from the tongue:
Calving sky
Licks a red chick.
1917
* * *
O Rus', flap your wings,
Put up another support!
With other names
A different steppe is emerging.
Along the blue valley
Between heifers and cows,
Walks in a golden row
Yours, Alexey Koltsov.
In my hands - a crust of bread,
Usta – cherry juice.
And the sky starred
Shepherd's horn.
Behind him, from the snow and wind,
From the monastery gates,
Walks dressed in light
His middle brother.
From Vetegra to Shuya
He littered the entire region
And he chose a nickname - Klyuev,
Humble Mikolay.
The monks are wise and affectionate,
He's all in the thread of rumors,
And Easter passes quietly
From a hairless head.
And there, behind the tar hills,
I'm walking, following the path,
Curly and cheerful,
I'm such a robber.
Long, steep road,
The slopes of the mountains are countless;
But even with the mystery of God
I'm having a secret argument.
I knock down the month with a stone
And to a silent trembling
I throw it, hanging into the sky,
A knife from the boot.
An invisible swarm behind me
There is a ring of others,
And far away in the villages
Their lively verse rings.
We knit books from herbs,
We shake words from both floors.
And our relative, Chapygin,
Singing like snow and valley.
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
Its silent support!
With other names
A different steppe is emerging.
1917
* * *
Wake me up early tomorrow
O my patient mother!
I'll go for the road mound
Welcome dear guest.
Today I saw in Pushcha
Wide wheel tracks in the meadow.
The wind flutters under the cloud cover
His golden arc.
At dawn he will rush by tomorrow,
Bent the moon hat under a bush,
And the mare will wave playfully
Above the plain there is a red tail.
Wake me up early tomorrow
Shine a light in our upper room.
They say I'll soon be
Famous Russian poet.
I will sing to you and the guest,
Our stove, rooster and blood...
And it will spill over my songs
The milk of your red cows.
1917
* * *
The fields are compressed, the groves are bare,
Water causes fog and dampness.
Wheel behind the blue mountains
The sun went down quietly.
The dug-up road sleeps.
Today she dreamed
Which is very, very little
We have to wait for the gray winter.
Oh, and I myself am in the ringing thicket
I saw this in the fog yesterday:
Red moon as a foal
He harnessed himself to our sleigh.
1917
* * *
Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!
The sun hasn't gone out yet.
Dawn with a red prayer book
Prophesies good news.
Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness.
Ring, ring, golden Rus',
Worry, restless wind!
Blessed is he who celebrates with joy
Your shepherd's sadness.
Ring, ring, golden Rus'!
I love the murmur of wild waters
And on the wave of the star shine.
Blessed suffering
Blessing people.
I love the murmur of wild waters.
1917
INONIA
Prophet Jeremiah
1
I will not be afraid of death,
No spears, no arrows of rain, -
That's what the Bible says
Prophet Yesenin Sergei.
My time has come
I'm not afraid of the clang of the whip.
Body, body of Christ,
I spit it out of my mouth.
I don't want to accept salvation
Through his torment and the cross:
I have learned a different teaching
Eternity-piercing stars.
I saw a different coming -
Where death does not dance over the truth.
Like a sheep from filthy wool, I
I will shave the blue firmament.
I will raise my hands by the month,
I'll crush him like a nut.
I don't want heaven without stairs
I don't want it to snow.
I don’t want to skillfully frown
The face of dawn on the lakes.
Today I went crazy like a chicken
Golden word egg.
Today I have an elastic hand
Ready to turn the world...
Thunderstorm splashed with a blizzard
There are eight wings from my shoulders.
2
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 will reach out to the invisible city,
I will bite through the milky cover.
I'll pluck even God's beard
The baring of my teeth.
I'll grab him by the white mane
And I will tell him in the voice of a blizzard:
I will make you different, Lord,
So that my verbal meadow matures!
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 does the Deity of the living live?
Cry and howl, Muscovy!
New Indicoplov has arrived.
All the prayers in your book of hours are mine
I will peck words with my beak.
I will lead your people away from their hope,
I will give him faith and strength,
So that he plows in the early dawns
Opened up the night with the sun.
So that his verbal field
Grown grains with beehives,
So that grains under the roof of heaven
They brightened the darkness like bees.
I curse you, Radonezh,
Your heels and all your footprints!
You are a golden fire deposit
I loosened the water with a pick.
A flock of your clouds, barking like a wolf,
Like a pack of angry wolves,
All those who call and all those who dare
Pierced her fangs with a spear.
Your sun with clawed paws
It clawed into the soul like a knife.
We cried on the rivers of Babylon,
And the bloody rain drenched us.
I'm telling you, you will all die,
All of you will be smothered by the moss of your faith.
In a different way over our arch
God flared up like an invisible cow.
And in vain they settle in caves
Those who hate the roar.
All the same - he will calve differently
The sun into our Russian shelter.
It doesn’t matter - he’ll burn with flesh,
What forged the river bank.
They will unravel the world's boiling
His golden horns.
A new one will do Olympius
Draw his new face.
I'm telling you, I'll drink all the air
And I’ll stretch out my tongue like a comet.
I'll stretch my legs to Egypt,
I will strip you of horseshoes of torment...
Snowhorns to both poles
I scream with pincers of my hands.
I'll press the equator with my knee
And, under the storm and whirlwind, crying,
In half our mother earth
I will break it like a golden roll.
And into the hole, shadowed by the abyss,
So that the whole world can hear that crash,
I head my hair-star
I'll stick it through like sunshine.
And four suns from the clouds,
Like four barrels from a mountain,
Golden hoops scattered,
Rolling down, they will shake up the worlds.
3
And I tell you, America,
The broken half of the earth, -
Fear the seas of unbelief
Iron ships to launch!
Don't be overwhelmed by the cast iron rainbow
Niv and granite - rivers.
Only the waters of free Ladoga
Man will drill into existence!
Don't drive in with blue hands
Into the wasteland the ceiling of heaven:
Don't build with nail heads
The shine of distant stars.
Do not pour fire fermentation
Lava steel ore.
New ascension
I will leave footprints on the ground.
I'll hang from the clouds with my heels,
I'll dig through the clouds like a moose;
Wheels of the sun and the month
I'll put it on the earth's axis.
I'm telling you - don't sing prayers
To your wire rays.
They will not illuminate the coming,
A sheep running through the mountains!
There is still a shooter in you
Shoot an arrow into his chest.
Like a flame from his white wool
Warm blood will splash into the darkness.
Star-shaped golden hooves
They will roll down, plowing through the night.
And again the knitting needles flash
There is black rain over her stocking.
Then I'll rattle my wheels
The sun and moon are like thunder;
Like a fire, I'll mark my hair
And I will cover my face with my wing.
I'll shake the mountains by the ears,
I will pull out the feather grass with spears.
All the walls are yours, all the fences
I'll sweep it away by the handful, like dust.
And I will plow the black cheeks
Thy fields with a new plow;
Golden will fly by like a magpie
The harvest is over your country.
He will drop a new one to the residents
The wings are ringing.
And, like golden poles, it will stretch
The sun's rays on the valley.
New pine trees will grow
On the palms of your fields.
And like squirrels, yellow springs
They will jump on the branches of days.
The rivers will dawn blue,
Having drilled through all the obstacles of the blocks.
And the dawn, lowering its eyelids,
There will be star fish to catch fish in them.
I'm telling you, there will be time
The mouths of thunder will splash;
They will pierce the blue crown
The ears of your bread.
And above the world from an invisible staircase,
Announcing the fields and meadow,
Having pecked from the heart of the month,
The rooster crows and takes off.
4
I walk through the clouds, as if through a field,
Hanging head down.
I hear the splash of blue rain
And a thin-beaked whistle shone.
I’m reflected in the blue backwaters
My distant lakes.
I see you, Inonia,
With golden mountain caps.
I see your fields and huts,
There is an old mother on the porch;
Fingers ray of sunset
She's trying to catch it.
Pinches him at the window,
He will grab it on his hump, -
And the sun is like a cat
He pulls the ball towards himself.
And quietly under the whisper of the river,
Coastal echo in the hem,
Drops of an invisible candle
A song drips from the mountains:
"Gloria,
And there is peace on earth!
Blue horn moon
The clouds broke through.
Someone brought out a goose
From a star's egg -
Bright Jesus
Peck the tracks.
Someone with new faith
Without cross and torment,
Stretched on the sky
Rainbow like an onion.
Rejoice, Zion,
Shine your light!
New in the sky
Nazareth has matured.
New on a mare
The Savior is coming to the world.
Our faith is strong.
Our truth is in us!”
1918
JORDAN BLUEBERTIE
1
My golden land!
Autumn light temple!
Flock of noisy geese
Rushing towards the clouds.
Those are the souls of the transformed
Countless army,
Rising from the sleepy lakes,
Flies to the heavenly garden.
And ahead of them is a swan,
There is sadness in the eyes, like a grove.
Aren't you the one crying in the sky?
Departed Rus'?
Fly, fly, don't fight,
There is an hour and a start for everything.
The winds flow into song,
And the song will fade into obscurity.
2
The sky is like a bell
The month is a language
My mother is my homeland,
I am a Bolshevik.
For the sake of the universe
Brotherhood of Man
I rejoice in the song
Your death.
Sturdy and strong
To your death
The bell is blue
I've been hitting for a month.
Lay brothers
My song to you.
I hear in the fog
Good news.
3
Here it is, here is the dove,
Shrouded in the wind's hand.
The dawn is swirling again
My meadow Jordan.
I praise you, blue one,
Star-filled heights.
Back to heaven again
My hands went up.
I see you, green fields,
With a herd of dun horses.
With a shepherd's pipe in the willows
Apostle Andrew wanders.
And full of pain and anger,
There, on the outskirts of the village,
Mother the Most Pure Virgin
A donkey is whipped with a rod.
4
My brothers, people, people!
All of us, all of us someday
We will be in those good villages,
Where the Milky Way is trodden.
Don’t feel sorry for those who have left,
Leaving every hour, -
There on the lilies of the valley blooming
Better than in our fields.
The guardian of love is fate the bribe-taker -
Happiness does not last forever.
Who was today's favorite?
Tomorrow is a beggar.
5
Oh new, new, new,
A day that cut through the clouds!
The sun-headed youth
Sit under the fence with me.
Give me your hair
Comb the moon with a comb.
By this custom of the guest
We have learned to meet.
Ancient shadow of Mauritius
Akin to our hills,
Rain in the golden fields
Abraham visited us.
Sit on my porch
Quietly lean on your shoulder.
Blue star with a candle
I'll shine in front of you.
I will pray to you
Praise your Jordan...
Here it is, here is the dove,
Shrouded in the wind's hand.
* * *
L. I. Kashina
Green hairstyle,
Girlish breasts,
O thin birch tree,
Why did you look into the pond?
What does the wind whisper to you?
What is the sand ringing about?
Or do you want to braid branches
Are you a moon comb?
Open up, tell me the secret
of your woody thoughts,
I fell in love with sad
Your pre-autumn noise.
And the birch tree answered me:
"Oh curious friend,
Tonight is starry
Here the shepherd shed tears.
The moon cast shadows
The greenery shone.
For bare knees
He hugged me.
And so, taking a deep breath,
He said to the sound of branches:
"Goodbye, my dove,
Until new cranes."
1918
CANTATA
Sleep, beloved brothers.
Native land again
Unshakable army
Moves under the walls of the Kremlin.
New conceptions in the world,
The glow of red lightning...
Sleep, beloved brothers,
In the light of imperishable tombs.
The sun with a golden seal
The guard stands at the gate...
Sleep, beloved brothers,
A army is moving past you
To the dawn of the universal people.
1918
HEAVENLY DRUMMER
L. N. Stark
1
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 stars 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 we afraid of generals?
White herd of gorillas?
The whirling cavalry is torn
Peace to a new shore.
2
If it's the sun
In conspiracy with them, -
We are his whole army
We'll raise it with bayonets.
If this month
Friend of their black power, -
We are from the azure
Stones to the back of the head.
Let's clear away all the clouds,
We will mix all the roads.
We ring the earth with a bell
We'll hang it on the rainbow.
You call, call us,
Mother earth is raw,
About fields and groves
Blue edge.
3
Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers -
A sparkling scourge over a tornado.
Who wants freedom and brotherhood,
He doesn't care about dying.
Close yourself with a tight wall,
Who hates fog?
That sun with a clumsy hand
Will rip on the golden drum.
Will break off and go along the roads
To pour out a call over the lakes of strength -
In the shadows of churches and forts,
To the white herd of gorillas.
In that call there is a Kalmyk and a Tatar
They will smell their expected hail,
And the black sky with tails,
They will set the cows' tails on fire.
4
Believe, victory is ours!
The new coast is not far away.
Waves of white claws
Golden sand scraped.
Soon, soon the last wave
A million moons will sprinkle.
The heart is a candle at mass
Easter masses and communes.
A dark army, a friendly army
We are going to unite the whole world.
We go, and the dust of the blizzard
The gorilla cloud is melting.
We go, and there, behind the thicket,
Through the whiteness and fog
Our heavenly drummer
Beats the sun-drum.
1918
* * *
Klyuev
Now my love is not the same.
Oh, I know you're pushing, pushing
About the fact that the moon broom
Poems were not splashed by puddles.
Sad and happy star,
Falling on your eyebrows,
You poured out your heart from the hut,
But he didn’t build a house in his heart.
And the one you were waiting for in the night,
He passed, as before, past the shelter.
Oh friend, who needs your keys?
Have you gilded the singing word?
You can't sing about the sun.
You can't see heaven through the window.
So the mill, flapping its wings,
It cannot fly away from the ground.
1918
* * *
Golden leaves swirled
In the pinkish water of the pond,
Like a light flock of butterflies
Freezingly, he flies towards the star.
I'm in love this evening,
The yellowing valley is close to my heart.
The wind boy up to his shoulders
The hem of the birch tree was stripped.
Both in the soul and in the valley there is coolness,
The blue twilight is like a flock of sheep.
Behind the gate of the silent garden
The bell will ring and die.
I've never been thrifty before
So did not listen to rational flesh.
It would be nice, like willow branches,
To capsize into the pink waters.
It would be nice, smiling at the haystack,
The muzzle of the month chews hay...
Where are you, where is my quiet joy -
Loving everything, wanting nothing?
1918
* * *
An owl calls in autumn
Over the expanse of road wounds.
My head flies around
The bush of golden hair withers.
Field, steppe "ku-gu"
Hello, Mother Blue Aspen!
Soon it will be a month, swimming in the snow,
Will sit in his son's sparse curls.
Soon I will feel cold without leaves,
The ringing of stars fills your ears.
The young men will sing without me,
The elders will not listen to me.
A new poet will come from the field,
The new forest will be filled with whistling sounds.
The wind blows like autumn,
The leaves whisper like autumn.
1920
SOROKUST
A. Mariengof
1
The horn of death blows, blows!
What should we do, what should we do now?
On the muddy thighs of the roads?
You lovers of song fleas,
Don't you want to? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It’s full of meekness to celebrate,
Whether you like it or not, you know, take it.
It's good when twilight teases
And they pour it into our fat asses
The bloody broom of dawn.
Soon the freeze will whiten with lime
That village and these meadows.
There is nowhere for you to hide from death,
There is no escape from the enemy.
Here he is, here he is with an iron belly,
Pulls his fingers to the throats of the plains,
The old mill leads with its ear,
I sharpened my milling nose.
And the yard silent bull,
That he spilled all his brains on chicks,
Wiping my tongue on the spindle,
I sensed trouble over the field.
2
Oh, isn't it just outside the village?
This is how the harmonica cries pitifully:
Tala-la-la, tili-li-gom
Hanging over a white window sill.
And the yellow wind of autumn
Isn’t that why, touching the blue ripples,
As if with a horse comb,
Strips leaves from maples.
He comes, he comes, a terrible messenger,
The fifth bulky thicket aches.
And the songs become more and more melancholy
To the sound of a frog squeaking in the straw.
Oh electric sunrise
Belts and pipes have a tight grip,
Behold the ancient belly
Steel fever is shaking!
3
Have you seen
How he runs across the steppes,
Hiding in the lake mists,
Snoring with an iron nostril,
A train on cast iron legs?
And behind him
Through the big grass
Like at a festival of desperate racing,
Throwing thin legs to the head,
Red-maned colt galloping?
Dear, dear, funny fool,
Well, where is he, where is he going?
Doesn't he really know that live horses
Did the steel cavalry win?
Doesn't he really know what's in the fields?
helpless
His running will not bring back that time,
When a couple of beautiful steppe Russian women
Did you give Pechenegs for a horse?
Fate repainted it differently at the auction
Our reach, awakened by the grinding,
And for thousands of pounds of horse leather and meat
They are now buying a locomotive.
4
Damn you, nasty guest!
Our song won't work with you.
It's a pity that you didn't have to as a child
Drown like a bucket in a well.
It's good for them to stand and watch
Painting mouths with tin kisses, -
Only for me, as a psalm-reader, to sing
Hallelujah over our native country.
That's why on September morning
On dry and cold loam,
My head smashed against the fence,
The rowan berries are drenched in blood.
That's why the tension has grown in
In the bustle of the ringing talyanka.
And a man smelling of straw
He choked on the dashing moonshine.
1920
* * *
Mariengof
I am the last poet of the village,
The plank bridge is modest in its songs.
At the farewell mass I stand
Birch trees burning with leaves.
Will burn out with a golden flame
A candle made of flesh wax,
And the moon clock is wooden
They will wheeze my twelfth hour.
On the blue field path
The Iron Guest will be out soon.
Oatmeal, spilled by dawn,
A black handful will collect it.
Not living, alien palms,
These songs will not live with you!
There will only be ears of corn
To grieve about the old owner.
The wind will suck their neighing,
Funeral dance celebrating.
Soon, soon wooden clock
They will wheeze my twelfth hour!
1920
HOOLIGAN
The rain cleans with wet brooms
Willow droppings in the meadows.
Spit, wind, with armfuls of leaves, -
I'm just like you, bully.
I love it when the blue thickets
Like oxen with a heavy gait,
Belly, leaves wheezing,
The trunks are getting dirty on the knees.
Here it is, my red herd!
Who could sing it better?
I see, I see how the twilight licks
Traces of human feet.
My Rus', wooden Rus'!
I am your only singer and herald.
My animal poems are sad
I fed mignonette and mint.
Breathe, midnight, moon jug
Scoop up the birch milk!
As if he wants to strangle someone
With the hands of the crosses the churchyard!
A black horror roams the hills,
The thief's anger flows into our garden,
Only I myself am a robber and a boor
And by blood a steppe horse thief.
Who has seen how it boils in the night?
A army of boiled bird cherries?
I would like a night in the blue steppe
Stand somewhere with a flail.
Ah, the bush of my head has withered,
I was sucked into song captivity.
I am condemned to hard labor of feelings
Turning the millstone of poems.
But don't be afraid, crazy wind,
Spit calmly leaves across the meadows.
The nickname “poet” will not erase me,
I'm like you in songs, hooligan.
1920
CONFESSION OF A HULIGAN
Not everyone can sing
Not everyone has an apple
Fall at someone else's feet.
This is the greatest confession,
Which the bully confesses.
I purposely go unkempt
With his head like a kerosene lamp on his shoulders.
Your souls leafless autumn
I like to provide light in the dark.
I like it when the stones fight
They fly at me like a hail of burping thunderstorms,
I just shake my hands tighter then
My hair is a swaying bubble.
It’s so good for me to remember then
An overgrown pond and the hoarse ringing of alder trees,
That my father and mother live somewhere,
Who don't care about all my poems,
To whom I am dear, like a field and like flesh,
Like the rain that loosens the greenery in spring.
They would come to stab you with pitchforks
For every cry you threw at me.
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 in Russia
The best poet.
Didn’t you lose his heart for his life?
When did he dip his bare feet in autumn puddles?
And now he wears a top hat
And patent leather shoes.
But the enthusiasm of the previous amendment lives in him
Village mischief maker.
To every cow on the butcher shop sign
He bows from afar.
And, meeting cab drivers on the square,
Remembering the smell of manure from native fields,
He is ready to carry the tail of every horse,
Like a wedding dress train.
I love my homeland.
I love my homeland very much!
At least there is sad willow rust in it.
I like the dirty faces of pigs
And in the silence of the night the ringing voice of toads.
I am tenderly sick of childhood memories,
April evenings I dream of gloom
and raw materials.
It's like squatting to warm up
Our maple tree sat down in front of the fire of dawn.
Oh, how many eggs from crows' nests I have on it,
Climbing the branches, he stole!
Is he still the same now, with the top
green?
Is its bark still strong?
And you, my love,
Faithful piebald dog?!
From old age you have become shrill and blind
And you wander around the yard, dragging your drooping tail,
Having forgotten by instinct where the doors are and where the stable is.
Oh, how dear all those pranks are to me,
When, having stolen a crust of bread from my mother,
You and I bit her once,
Without burying each other one bit.
I'm still the same.
I'm still the same in my heart.
Like cornflowers in the rye, the eyes bloom in the face.
A stele of verses with golden mats,
I want to say something tender to you.
Good night!
Good night to all of you!
The scythe rang across the grass at dusk...
Today I really want
From the window the moon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Blue light, so blue light!
It’s not even a pity to die in this blue.
Well, why do I seem like a cynic?
With a flashlight attached to his butt!
Good old hackneyed Pegasus,
Do I need your soft trot?
I came as a stern master,
Sing and glorify the rats.
My head is like August
Wine flows from the stormy hair.
I want to be a yellow sail
To the country where we are sailing.
1920
* * *
Every living thing is special
Celebrated from an early age.
If I weren't a poet,
He was probably a swindler and a thief.
Thin and short,
There is always a hero among boys,
Often, often with a broken nose
I came to my home.
And towards the frightened mother
I muttered through my bloody mouth:
It will all heal by tomorrow.”
And now, when I caught a cold
These days are boiling water,
Restless, defiant force
It spilled over my poems.
Golden word pile
And above each line without end
The old prowess is reflected
Bullies and tomboys.
As then, I am brave and proud,
Only newness splashes my step...
If earlier they hit me in the face,
Now my soul is covered in blood.
And I’m not already telling my mother,
And into the alien and laughing rabble:
"Nothing! I tripped over a stone
It will all heal by tomorrow.”
1922
* * *
I do not regret, do not call, do not cry,
End of free trial
He calls us for help,
Where do the Russian people fight?
Orders to stand for freedom,
For equality and work!..”
And, tenderly accepting
The sound of innocent speeches
Jesus came down to earth
From unwavering hands.
They go hand in hand
And the night is black, black!..
And puffed up with misfortune
Gray silence.
Dreams bloom with hope
About eternal, free rock.
Both are undead
February breeze.
But suddenly the lights sparkled...
The copper weight barked.
And fell, struck by a bullet,
Baby Jesus.
Listen:
No more Sunday!
His body was buried:
On Mars
And where the mother remained,
Where should he not be?
Sits by the window
old cat
Catching the moon with his paw...
Martin crawls on the floor:
“You are my falcons, falcons,
Someone is crushing him, someone is strangling him,
Burns with fire.
But it rings calmly
Outside the window,
Then going out, then flaring up
Iron
“Rre-es-pu-u-ublika!”
* * *
It was not in vain that the winds blew,
It was not in vain that the storm came.
Someone secret in a quiet light
Gave my eyes water.
From someone's outward affection
I was sad in the blue darkness
About beautiful, but unearthly,
Unsolved land.
The silent milkiness does not oppress,
Don't worry about star fear.
I fell in love with the world and eternity,
Like a parental center.
Everything about them is good and holy,
Everything alarming is light.
The sunset red poppy splashes
On lake glass.
And unwittingly in a sea of bread
The image is torn from the tongue:
Calving sky
Licks a red chick.
* * *
O Rus', flap your wings,
Put up another support!
With other names
A different steppe is emerging.
Along the blue valley
Between heifers and cows,
Walks in a golden row
Yours, Alexey Koltsov.
In my hands - a crust of bread,
Usta – cherry juice.
And the sky starred
Shepherd's horn.
Behind him, from the snow and wind,
From the monastery gates,
Walks dressed in light
His middle brother.
From Vetegra to Shuya
He littered the entire region
And he chose a nickname - Klyuev,
Humble Mikolay.
The monks are wise and affectionate,
He's all in the thread of rumors,
And Easter passes quietly
From a hairless head.
And there, behind the tar hills,
I'm walking, following the path,
Curly and cheerful,
I'm such a robber.
Long, steep road,
The slopes of the mountains are countless;
But even with the mystery of God
I'm having a secret argument.
I knock down the month with a stone
And to a silent trembling
I throw it, hanging into the sky,
A knife from the boot.
An invisible swarm behind me
There is a ring of others,
And far away in the villages
Their lively verse rings.
We knit books from herbs,
We shake words from both floors.
And our relative, Chapygin,
Singing like snow and valley.
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
Its silent support!
With other names
A different steppe is emerging.
* * *
Wake me up early tomorrow
O my patient mother!
I'll go for the road mound
Welcome dear guest.
Today I saw in Pushcha
Wide wheel tracks in the meadow.
The wind flutters under the cloud cover
His golden arc.
At dawn he will rush by tomorrow,
Bent the moon hat under a bush,
And the mare will wave playfully
Above the plain there is a red tail.
Wake me up early tomorrow
Shine a light in our upper room.
They say I'll soon be
Famous Russian poet.
I will sing to you and the guest,
Our stove, rooster and blood...
And it will spill over my songs
The milk of your red cows.
* * *
The fields are compressed, the groves are bare,
Water causes fog and dampness.
Wheel behind the blue mountains
The sun went down quietly.
The dug-up road sleeps.
Today she dreamed
Which is very, very little
We have to wait for the gray winter.
Oh, and I myself am in the ringing thicket
I saw this in the fog yesterday:
Red moon as a foal
He harnessed himself to our sleigh.
* * *
Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!
The sun hasn't gone out yet.
Dawn with a red prayer book
Prophesies good news.
Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness.
Ring, ring, golden Rus',
Worry, restless wind!
Blessed is he who celebrates with joy
Your shepherd's sadness.
Ring, ring, golden Rus'!
I love the murmur of wild waters
And on the wave of the star shine.
Blessed suffering
Blessing people.
I love the murmur of wild waters.
INONIA
Prophet Jeremiah
1
I will not be afraid of death,
No spears, no arrows of rain, -
That's what the Bible says
Prophet Yesenin Sergei.
My time has come
I'm not afraid of the clang of the whip.
Body, body of Christ,
I spit it out of my mouth.
I don't want to accept salvation
Through his torment and the cross:
I have learned a different teaching
Eternity-piercing stars.
I saw a different coming -
Where death does not dance over the truth.
Like a sheep from filthy wool, I
I will shave the blue firmament.
I will raise my hands by the month,
I'll crush him like a nut.
I don't want heaven without stairs
I don't want it to snow.
I don’t want to skillfully frown
The face of dawn on the lakes.
Today I went crazy like a chicken
Golden word egg.
Today I have an elastic hand
Ready to turn the world...
Thunderstorm splashed with a blizzard
There are eight wings from my shoulders.
2
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 will reach out to the invisible city,
I will bite through the milky cover.
I'll pluck even God's beard
The baring of my teeth.