Analysis of the poem
1. The history of the creation of the work.
2. Characteristics of a work of the lyrical genre (type of lyrics, artistic method, genre).
3. Analysis of the content of the work (analysis of the plot, characteristics of the lyrical hero, motives and tonality).
4. Features of the composition of the work.
5. Analysis of means of artistic expression and versification (presence of tropes and stylistic figures, rhythm, meter, rhyme, stanza).
6. The meaning of the poem for the poet’s entire work.
The poem “Letter to Mother” was written by S.A. Yesenin in 1924. Its genre is indicated in the title - writing. The main theme is the theme of motherhood, home, filial love. The work is confessional in nature. The voice of the lyrical hero contains sad, repentant notes.
The poem opens with a rhetorical question, which smoothly flows into a sincere, frank conversation with the mother:
Are you still alive, my old lady?
I'm alive too. Hello, hello!
Let it flow over your hut
That evening unspeakable light...
The composition here fully corresponds to the genre. In the first stanza we see a kind of introduction. In the second stanza we have a development of the theme, here the motif of the road appears, which then turns into the motif of the hero’s life journey, wandering:
They write to me that you, harboring anxiety,
She was very sad about me,
That you often go on the road
The wandering of the lyrical hero, his homelessness, and sinful life are contrasted in the poem with the world of his home and all-forgiving maternal love. In the third stanza, the theme of maternal love and concern for her son is developed.
And to you in the evening blue darkness
We often see the same thing:
It's like someone is in a tavern fight with me
I stabbed a Finnish knife under my heart.
Yesenin's lyrical hero is deprived of spiritual integrity. He is a hooligan, a “Moscow mischievous reveler,” a rake, a tavern regular, full of “rebellious melancholy.” His internal state is conveyed in the poem by the epithets “evening”, “bitter”, “painful”, and the harsh verb “sadanul”. At the same time, tenderness, love for his mother, and sadness for his home live in his soul. Researchers noted in this work Yesenin’s development of the motifs of the biblical parable of the prodigal son. One of these motives is returning home from travels. It sounds in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas. And we are talking here not only about a meeting with the mother, with the parental home, but also about returning to the past, to one’s former self:
I'm still as gentle
And I only dream about
So that rather from rebellious melancholy,
Return to our old house.
In the parental home, the lyrical hero sees his salvation from life’s storms and adversities, from the melancholy of restlessness, from misfortunes, and painful thoughts. He remembers the past, and this past appears as the best time in life:
I'll be back when the branches spread out
Our white garden looks like spring.
Only you have me already at dawn
Don't be like eight years ago.
Then the hero reflects on his fate, his experiences, his unfulfilled hopes. His voice sounds bitter and tired. The plot deepens internally here:
Don't wake up what was dreamed of
Don't worry about what didn't come true -
Too early loss and fatigue
I have had the opportunity to experience this in my life.
The hero's feelings reach their climax in the penultimate stanza. He seems to be summing up his life, clearly realizing that he cannot bring back the past. At the same time, he turns to his mother’s love, hoping to find hope, spiritual harmony, and to heal from mental wounds. The hero’s address to his mother is climactic here:
And don’t teach me to pray. No need!
There is no going back to the old ways anymore.
You alone are my help and joy,
You alone are an unspeakable light to me.
The denouement is given in the last stanza. The lyrical hero here seems to forget about himself, about his adversities, fatigue, melancholy. In the center of the stanza here is the image of the mother. The topic closes with her son's concern about her. We see his sincere love and care:
So forget about your worries,
Don't be so sad about me.
Don't go on the road so often
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.
Compositionally, we can distinguish three parts in the work. The first part is the three initial stanzas. Here the poet outlines the image of a loved one to whom you can pour out your soul. The first part contains a question, a greeting and a detailed answer. The fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh stanzas are the second part of the poem. Here the lyrical hero appears before the reader. The last two stanzas again return us to the image of the mother.
Thus, we have a ring composition. At the beginning of the poem and at its finale, the image of a mother appears, framing the lyrical hero’s thoughts about his home and his confession. The lines “That you often go on the road In an old-fashioned shabby shushun” also ring the main part of the letter.
The poem is written in iambic pentameter, quatrains, and cross rhymes. The poet uses various means of artistic expression: epithets (“evening untold light”, “in... the blue darkness”, “I am a bitter drunkard”), metaphor (“light flows”), anaphora (“You are my only help and joy, You are my only unspeakable light"), rhetorical question ("Are you still alive, my old lady?"), inversion ("I'm not such a bitter drunkard"), colloquial expressions ("sadanul", "pretty much") alliteration ("I'm still like that gentle”), assonance (“Let it flow over your hut”).
“Letter to a Mother” is one of Yesenin’s best works. The poet's lyrical hero acquires his characteristic features in him. These poems are very melodious, musical, and a magnificent romance was created on their basis.
I don’t really like the poem “Letter to Mother.” It is Yesenin’s poetic message to the person dearest to him. Each line of this poem is full of restrained love and tenderness:
Are you still alive, my old lady?
Hello, hello!
Let it flow over your hut
That evening unspeakable light.
This stanza is filled with great meaning: it is warm here, and the time has passed since the last meeting between the son and mother, and the poverty of the old woman’s home; and the poet’s boundless love for his home.
Old, hunched over by years and constant worries about her unlucky son, she often goes out onto the road “in an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.” The words spoken to console the mother sound warm and tender:
Nothing, dear! Calm down,
This is just a painful nonsense.
I'm not such a bitter drunkard,
So that I can die without seeing you.
Over the long years of separation, the poet has not changed in his tender, caring attitude towards his mother:
I'm still as gentle
And I only dream about
So that rather from rebellious melancholy
Return to our low house.
In his thoughts, the poet already sees himself returning to his parents’ house, to a spring-white garden, which is akin to the spiritual mood of a poet who has experienced melancholy and fatigue. The filial feeling in this small work is conveyed with enormous artistic power:
You alone are my help and joy,
You alone are an unspeakable light to me.
Every line of this poem is warmed by the poet’s kind smile. It is written simply, without pompous phrases or lofty words. The whole soul of Sergei Yesenin is in him.
I love this poem for its truthfulness, sincerity, tenderness. You can feel the poet’s ardent love for his mother in it. Reading “A Letter to a Mother,” you involuntarily admire the tenderness and sincerity with which it was written. There is not a single word of falsehood in it. Maybe that’s why I love this poem, that’s why it’s so dear to me.
Poem by S.A. Yesenin “Letter to Mother”
Are you still alive, my old lady?
I'm alive too. Hello, hello!
Let it flow over your hut
That evening unspeakable light.
They write to me that you, harboring anxiety,
She was very sad about me,
That you often go on the road
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.
And to you in the evening blue darkness
We often see the same thing:
It's like someone is in a tavern fight with me
I stabbed a Finnish knife under my heart.
Nothing, dear! Calm down.
This is just a painful nonsense.
I'm not such a bitter drunkard,
So that I can die without seeing you.
I'm still as gentle
And I only dream about
So that rather from rebellious melancholy
Return to our low house.
I'll be back when the branches spread out
Our white garden looks like spring.
Only you have me already at dawn
Don't be like eight years ago.
Don't wake up what was noted
Don't worry about what didn't come true -
Too early loss and fatigue
I have had the opportunity to experience this in my life.
And don’t teach me to pray. No need!
There is no going back to the old ways anymore.
You alone are my help and joy,
You alone are an unspeakable light to me.
So forget about your worries,
Don't be so sad about me.
Don't go on the road so often
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.
Composition
Not every person reading this poem thinks about its composition or size. For what? You can perfectly perceive poetry without having special knowledge, without figuring out the peculiarities of compositional structure and rhythmic pattern.
For a long time I believed that a poem is not a diagram, not a drawing that can be broken down in detail into its component parts, but a single fruit of the poet’s thoughts and feelings. And only over time, from lesson to lesson, comprehending the unpleasant word “analysis”, I realized how much this work helps me understand the meaning of the poem, the depth of the author’s feelings.
Penetration into a poet's workshop always begins for me with the fact that I remember his life path, the years in which he created his work. Thus, S. Yesenin’s poem “Letter to Mother” was written by the poet in 1924, that is, at the end of his life. The last period of the author's work is the pinnacle of his poetry. This is the poetry of reconciliation and summing up. Many works written during this period were a sad statement of the fact that the old was gone forever, and the new was incomprehensible and not at all like what was dreamed of in the romantic days of October 1917.
* I'm not a new person! What to hide?
* I remain in the past with one foot,
* Striving to catch up with the steel army,
* I slide and fall differently.
It was during these years that S. Yesenin wrote the famous “Letter to his Mother,” which is perceived not only as an address to a specific addressee, but more broadly as a farewell to his homeland.
* You alone are my help and joy,
* You alone are an unspeakable light to me.
Reading Yesenin’s works, you see: the poet grew with time. The deepening of his understanding of the world led to the establishment in his poems of Pushkin's simplicity and classical clarity of artistic means. The influence of Pushkin’s works is increasingly felt in S. Yesenin’s lyrics in recent years. In difficult moments of sorrowful thoughts, the poet’s heart was drawn to his parents’ hearth, to his parents’ home. And, as if reviving the Pushkin tradition of poetic messages, S. Yesenin addresses a letter-poem to his mother. In Russian poetry, heartfelt words about mother have been heard more than once, but Yesenin’s works can perhaps be called the most touching declarations of love for the “sweet, dear old lady.” His lines are full of such piercing cordiality that they seem to not be perceived as poetry, as art, but as inescapable tenderness pouring out by itself.
*Are you still alive, my old lady? I'm alive too.
* Hello, hello!
* Let it flow over your hut
* That evening unspeakable sows.
Pushkin’s lyrics and his soulful poetic work “Nanny” come to mind again. It is also benevolent, imbued with a filial feeling of guilt for a long silence, recognition of how much trouble the poet caused to his loved one.
* Friend of my harsh days,
* My decrepit dove!
* Alone in the wilderness of pine forests
* You have been waiting for me for a long, long time.
But let’s turn to S. Yesenin’s poem “Letter to a Mother.” Isn't this the music of feeling itself? The poet seemed to embrace the “old woman” with his soul. He addresses her lovingly, using gentle, kind words. His poetic language is close to colloquial, even, rather, to folk (“old woman”, “hut”, “old-fashioned ramshackle shushun”, “very good”).
These words give a folkloric coloring to the image of the mother. She seems like a sweet, kind, warm-hearted old woman from a romantic fairy tale. Even S. Yesenin himself more than once pointed to the folklore sources of his poetry. And above all, on melody and musicality. It is no coincidence that songs based on Yesenin’s poems are still sung.
This is what N.V. Gogol said about the musicality of Russian verse: “I don’t know in what other literature poets showed such an endless variety of shades of sound. Each one has its own verse and its own ringing.” This special “ringing” is felt in the poetic work “Letter to Mother”. It gives the poem a sense of excitement. The vocabulary and expressions used by the poet recreate the picture of a dilapidated “hut” in which a mother is waiting for her son to return, conveying the inner state and feelings of a woman-mother.
The first stanza begins with a rhetorical question: “Are you still alive, my old lady?” In the context of the poem, the above line takes on a special meaning: when asking a question, the poet does not expect to hear the answer to it, he (the question) enhances the emotionality of the statement.
In the first line, S. Yesenin shows anxiety and love for his mother. In the second, using an exclamation, he seems to be trying to assure his “old lady” once again that everything is fine with him, that he is “not such a bitter... drunkard that he would... die” without seeing his own mother. The stanza ends with a warm wish: “Let that unspeakable light flow.” In the second and third stanzas, S. Yesenin’s anxiety about his mother is felt. The poet realizes that she knows about his ruined life, about “tavern fights,” about binges. Her melancholy is so great, her forebodings are so joyless that they torment her, and she “often walks on the road.” The image of the road appears more than once in the poem. It symbolizes the poet’s life path, on which the mother always appears, wishing goodness and happiness for her son. But the poet, realizing the hopelessness of his situation, asks her not to worry, not to worry:
*Don't go on the road so often
* In an old-fashioned dilapidated shushun.
In the third stanza, Yesenin’s favorite epithet “blue” appears. This is the color of a cloudy sky, spring water, painted village shutters, forest flowers. It’s hard to imagine S. Yesenin without this color. The poet’s spiritual crisis is emphasized by the epithets “evening,” “decrepit,” and “painful.” It is no coincidence that the word “sadanul” was used; it also conveys the author’s thought about moving away from the eternal values of life. The harshness of this verb is softened in the fourth stanza with the exclamation “Nothing, dear!” and the affirmative sentence “Calm down.” Do you feel how the tonality of the verse changes? The climax is over and the action ends. Again, with sincere tenderness, S. Yesenin turns to his mother, writing that only near her, in his homeland, can he find spiritual rest. The following stanzas reflect the son’s desire to reassure his mother, to justify himself, and not to let her believe the gossip.
* Nothing, dear! Calm down.
* This is just a painful nonsense.
The fifth and sixth stanzas are written very romantically and sublimely, in which the poet dreams of returning home (but not to the past):
* I'm still as gentle
* And I only dream about
* So that rather from rebellious melancholy
* Return to our low house.
The image of a white garden is also characteristic, symbolizing the bright time of spring, the poet’s youth:
* I'll be back when the branches spread out
* Our white garden looks like spring.
* Only you me already at dawn
* Don't be like eight years ago.
In the last stanzas, restraint gives way to the intensity of emotions. The poet seems to finish a poetic work in one breath - “don’t wake up..,” “don’t worry...”, “didn’t come true...”, “don’t teach...”, “don’t...”, “don’t be sad...”, “don’t go...”
Such increased denial shows uncertainty in the soul of the lyrical hero. The ring composition gives completeness to the work, and the trochee pentameter and cross rhyme create a special rhythm of the entire poem, which carries the mental state of the lyrical hero. In the poems of S. Yesenin, sincere and frank in Russian, one can feel the beating of the poet’s restless, tender heart. It is not for nothing that his poetry was and remains close and understandable to many Russian people. After all, she has a “Russian spirit”, she “smells of Russia”. The poet's lyrics sound
The poem “Letter to Mother” was written by S.A. Yesenin in 1924. Its genre is indicated in the title - writing. The main theme is the theme of motherhood, home, filial love. The work is confessional in nature. The voice of the lyrical hero contains sad, repentant notes.
The poem opens with a rhetorical question, which smoothly flows into a sincere, frank conversation with the mother:
Are you still alive, my old lady?
I'm alive too. Hello, hello!
Let it flow over your hut
That evening unspeakable light...
The composition here fully corresponds to the genre. In the first stanza we see a kind of introduction. In the second stanza we have a development of the theme, here the motif of the road appears, which then turns into the motif of the hero’s life journey, wandering:
They write to me that you, harboring anxiety,
She was very sad about me,
That you often go on the road
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.
The wandering of the lyrical hero, his homelessness, and sinful life are contrasted in the poem with the world of his home and all-forgiving maternal love. In the third stanza, the theme of maternal love and concern for her son is developed.
And to you in the evening blue darkness
We often see the same thing:
It's like someone is in a tavern fight with me
I stabbed a Finnish knife under my heart.
Yesenin's lyrical hero is deprived of spiritual integrity. He is a hooligan, a “Moscow mischievous reveler,” a rake, a tavern regular, full of “rebellious melancholy.” His internal state is conveyed in the poem by the epithets “evening”, “bitter”, “painful”, and the harsh verb “sadanul”. At the same time, tenderness, love for his mother, and sadness for his home live in his soul. Researchers noted in this work Yesenin’s development of the motifs of the biblical parable of the prodigal son. One of these motives is returning home from travels. It sounds in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas. And we are talking here not only about a meeting with the mother, with the parental home, but also about returning to the past, to one’s former self:
I'm still as gentle
And I only dream about
So that rather from rebellious melancholy,
Return to our old house.
In the parental home, the lyrical hero sees his salvation from life’s storms and adversities, from the melancholy of restlessness, from misfortunes, and painful thoughts. He remembers the past, and this past appears as the best time in life:
I'll be back when the branches spread out
Our white garden looks like spring.
Only you have me already at dawn
Don't be like eight years ago.
Then the hero reflects on his fate, his experiences, his unfulfilled hopes. His voice sounds bitter and tired. The plot deepens internally here:
Don't wake up what was dreamed of
Don't worry about what didn't come true -
Too early loss and fatigue
I have had the opportunity to experience this in my life.
The hero's feelings reach their climax in the penultimate stanza. He seems to be summing up his life, clearly realizing that he cannot bring back the past. At the same time, he turns to his mother’s love, hoping to find hope, spiritual harmony, and to heal from mental wounds. The hero’s address to his mother is climactic here:
And don’t teach me to pray. No need!
There is no going back to the old ways anymore.
You alone are my help and joy,
You alone are an unspeakable light to me.
The denouement is given in the last stanza. The lyrical hero here seems to forget about himself, about his adversities, fatigue, melancholy. In the center of the stanza here is the image of the mother. The topic closes with her son's concern about her. We see his sincere love and care:
So forget about your worries,
Don't be so sad about me.
Don't go on the road so often
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.
Compositionally, we can distinguish three parts in the work. The first part is the three initial stanzas. Here the poet outlines the image of a loved one to whom you can pour out your soul. The first part contains a question, a greeting and a detailed answer. The fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh stanzas are the second part of the poem. Here the lyrical hero appears before the reader. The last two stanzas again return us to the image of the mother.
Thus, we have a ring composition. At the beginning of the poem and at its finale, the image of a mother appears, framing the lyrical hero’s thoughts about his home and his confession. The lines “That you often go on the road In an old-fashioned shabby shushun” also ring the main part of the letter.
The poem is written in iambic pentameter, quatrains, and cross rhymes. The poet uses various means of artistic expression: epithets (“evening untold light”, “in... the blue darkness”, “I am a bitter drunkard”), metaphor (“light flows”), anaphora (“You are my only help and joy, You are my only unspeakable light"), rhetorical question ("Are you still alive, my old lady?"), inversion ("I'm not such a bitter drunkard"), colloquial expressions ("sadanul", "pretty much") alliteration ("I'm still like that gentle”), assonance (“Let it flow over your hut”).
“Letter to a Mother” is one of Yesenin’s best works. The poet's lyrical hero acquires his characteristic features in him. These poems are very melodious, musical, and a magnificent romance was created on their basis.
“Letter to Mother” Sergei Yesenin
Are you still alive, my old lady?
I'm alive too. Hello, hello!
Let it flow over your hut
That evening unspeakable light.They write to me that you, harboring anxiety,
She was very sad about me,
That you often go on the road
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.And to you in the evening blue darkness
We often see the same thing:
It's like someone is in a tavern fight with me
I stabbed a Finnish knife under my heart.Nothing, dear! Calm down.
This is just a painful nonsense.
I'm not such a bitter drunkard,
So that I can die without seeing you.I'm still as gentle
And I only dream about
So that rather from rebellious melancholy
Return to our low house.I'll be back when the branches spread out
Our white garden looks like spring.
Only you have me already at dawn
Don't be like eight years ago.Don't wake up what was noted
Don't worry about what didn't come true -
Too early loss and fatigue
I have had the opportunity to experience this in my life.And don’t teach me to pray. No need!
There is no going back to the old ways anymore.
You alone are my help and joy,
You alone are an unspeakable light to me.So forget about your worries,
Don't be so sad about me.
Don't go on the road so often
In an old-fashioned, shabby shushun.
Analysis of Yesenin’s poem “Letter to Mother”
In 1924, after an 8-year separation, Sergei Yesenin decided to visit his native village of Konstantinovo and meet his loved ones. On the eve of leaving Moscow for his homeland, the poet wrote a heartfelt and very touching “Letter to his Mother,” which today is a program poem and one of the most striking examples of Yesenin’s lyricism.
The work of this poet is very multifaceted and extraordinary. However, a distinctive feature of most of Sergei Yesenin’s works is that in them he is extremely honest and frank. Therefore, from his poems one can easily trace the poet’s entire life path, his ups and downs, mental anguish and dreams. “Letter to a Mother” is no exception in this sense. This is the confession of the prodigal son, full of tenderness and repentance, in which, meanwhile, the author directly states that he is not going to change his life, which by that time he considers ruined.
Literary fame came to Yesenin quite quickly, and even before the revolution he was quite well known to readers thanks to numerous publications and collections of lyrical poems, striking in their beauty and grace. Nevertheless, the poet never for a moment forgot where he came from and what role the people close to him played in his life - his mother, father, older sisters. However, circumstances were such that for eight long years the public’s favorite, leading a bohemian lifestyle, did not have the opportunity to visit his native village. He returned there as a literary celebrity, but in the poem “Letter to a Mother” there is no hint of poetic achievement. On the contrary, Sergei Yesenin is worried that his mother has probably heard rumors about his drunken brawls, numerous affairs and unsuccessful marriages. Despite his fame in literary circles, the poet realizes that he could not live up to the expectations of his mother, who first of all dreamed of seeing her son as a good and decent person. Repenting of his misdeeds to the person closest to him, the poet, nevertheless, refuses help and asks his mother for only one thing - “don’t wake up what you dreamed of.”
For Yesenin, mother is not only the dearest person who can understand and forgive everything, but also an executor, a kind of guardian angel, whose image protects the poet in the most difficult moments of his life. However, he is well aware that he will never be the same as before - the bohemian lifestyle has deprived him of spiritual purity, faith in sincerity and devotion. Therefore, Sergei Yesenin, with hidden sadness, turns to his mother with the words: “You alone are my help and joy, you alone are my untold light.” What lies behind this warm and gentle phrase? The bitterness of disappointment and the realization that life has not turned out at all as we would like, and it is too late to change anything - the burden of mistakes is too heavy, which cannot be corrected. Therefore, anticipating a meeting with his mother, who is destined to become the last in the poet’s life, Sergei Yesenin intuitively understands that for his family he is practically a stranger, a cut-off piece. However, for his mother, he still remains the only son, dissolute and left his father’s house too early, where they are still waiting for him, no matter what.
Realizing that even in his native village, where everything is familiar, close and understandable since childhood, he is unlikely to be able to find peace of mind, Sergei Yesenin is sure that the upcoming meeting will be short-lived and will not be able to heal his emotional wounds. The author feels that he is moving away from his family, but is ready to accept this blow of fate with his characteristic fatalism. He worries not so much for himself as for his mother, who is worried about her son, so he asks her: “Don’t be so sad about me.” This line contains a premonition of his own death and an attempt to somehow console the one for whom he will always remain the best, dearest and most beloved person.