Biography Yesenin Sergey Alexandrovich
(1895 – 1925)
Yesenin Sergey Alexandrovich (1895-1925) – a poet.
Yesenin was born into a peasant family. From 1904 to 1912 he studied at the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School and at the Spas-Klepikovo School. During this time, he wrote more than 30 poems, compiled a manuscript collection of “Sick Thinking” (1912), which he tried to publish in Ryazan. The Russian village, the nature of the middle Russia, oral folk art, and most importantly Russian classical literature had a strong influence on the formation of the young poet, directed his natural talent. Yesenin himself at different times called various sources, nourished his work: songs, ditties, fairy tales, spiritual verses, “The Lay of Igor’s Host”, the poetry of Lermontov, Koltsov, Nikitin and Nadson. Later, Blok, Klyuev, Bely, Gogol, and Pushkin influenced him.
From Yesenin’s letters of 1911-1913, the poet’s life is complicated. All this was reflected in the
From the very first verses, Esenin’s poetry includes the themes of the motherland and the revolution. The poetic world becomes more complex, multidimensional, a significant place in it begin to occupy biblical images, Christian motifs.
In 1915 Yesenin came to Petrograd, met with Blok, who appreciated the “fresh, clean, vociferous”, albeit “verbose” verses of the “talented peasant poet-nugget”, helped him, introduced him to writers and publishers.
Yesenin becomes famous, he is invited to poetry evenings and literary salons.
In the beginning of 1916 the
The hero of Esenin’s lyrics prays to the “smoking earth”, “to the azi dawns”, “to the stumps and haystacks”, he worships his homeland. Yesenin later admitted: “My lyrics are alive with one great love, love of the motherland. The feeling of the motherland is the main thing in my work. “
In the pre-revolutionary poetic world of Yesenin, Russia is many-sided: “pensive and tender”, humble and violent, impoverished and cheerful, celebrating “victorious holidays”. In the poem “You did not believe in my God” (1916), the poet calls Russia – “the princess of the sleepy”, who is “on the misty shore”, to the “gay faith”, which he now adheres to himself. In the poem “The clouds from the necklace..” ( 1916), the poet as if predicts a revolution – “transfiguration” of Russia “through torment and cross” and civil war.
But the poet believed that there would come a time when all people would become brothers. Hence the desire for universal harmony, for the unity of everything on earth. Therefore, one of the basic laws of the Yesenin world is universal metamorphism (which will later lead the poet to the Imagists). People, animals, plants, elements and objects-all this, according to Esenin, are children of the same mother nature. He humanizes nature. The first collection captivates not only freshness and lyricism, a living sense of nature, but also imaginative
brightness. The book is saturated with folklore poetics (song, spiritual verse), its language reveals a lot of regional, local words and expressions, which also makes up one of the features of Yesenin’s poetic style.
In the second half of 1916 the poet is preparing a new poetic collection “Goluben.” There are already a lot of genuine lyrical masterpieces in the new poems, such are his poems about light, tender love, painted in sensual tones, “Do not wander, do not crumple in the bushes of scarlet” (1916), “Saddlebirds sang” (1916). But the omens of another – hard labor Rus, through which “people in shackles” (“In that land where the yellow nettle” (1916), “The blue sky, the colored arc” (1916), are already distinctly appearing. “The Yesenin lyric poet is changing – he “a gentle boy”, a “humble monk”, a “sinner”, a “tramp and a thief”, “a robber with a kist”, etc. (“Our faith did not go out” (1915), “The Robber” (1915) I’m tired of living in my native land “(1916).
The events of 1917 caused a sharp change in the poet’s work, it seemed to him that an epoch of great spiritual renewal, “transformation” of life, revaluation of all values was coming. At this time he creates a cycle of 10 small poems; (1917), The Singing Call (1917), The Otchar (1917), The Oktoih (1918), The Coming (1918), The Adventure (1918) , “Transfiguration” (1918), “Inonia” (1918), “Jordan’s Dove” (1918).
In the spring of 1918 Yesenin moved from Petrograd to Moscow. There finally comes out a collection of “Goluben”, which absorbed the verses of 1916-1917. Then the poet releases collections of poems “Transfiguration” (1918), “Rural chapel” (1918). In 1919, the book “The Keys of Mary” was published, in which Yesenin formulated his view on art, its essence and goals. This work was adopted as a manifesto of the Imagists, the union of which occurred in 1918-1919.
Esenin’s most significant works, which brought him the fame of one of the best poets, were created in the 1920s.
Like every great poet, Yesenin is not a thoughtless singer of his feelings and experience, but a poet-philosopher. Like all poetry, his lyrics are philosophical. Philosophical lyrics are poems in which the poet talks about the eternal problems of human existence, leads a poetic dialogue with man, nature, earth, the universe. An example of a complete interpenetration of nature and man is the poem “The Green Hairstyle” (1918). It develops in two plans: a birch tree is a girl. The reader will never know who this poem is about – about a birch tree or a girl. Because a person here is likened to a tree – a beauty of a Russian forest, and she is a man. Birch in Russian poetry is a symbol of beauty, harmony, youth; she is bright and chaste.
Poetry of nature, the mythology of the ancient Slavs imbued with such poems in 1918 as the “Silver Road…”, “Songs, songs, what are you shouting about?”, “I left my dear home…”, “The golden foliage began to spin…” “, etc.
Yesenin’s poetry of the last, most tragic years (1922-1925) is marked by the desire for a harmonious worldview. Most often in the lyrics there is a deep comprehension of yourself and the Universe (“I do not regret, I do not call, I do not cry..”, “The golden grove has dissuaded…”, “We are now leaving a little…”, etc.).
“I do not regret, I do not call, I do not cry…” (1922) – one of the vertices of Yesenin poetry. This poem is permeated with lyricism, the utmost sincere openness, abounds with “earthly” images, written out brightly and juicyly. Surprisingly the neighborhood of the phrase from the poetic vocabulary of the XIX century (“about my lost freshness”) and the typical Yesenin, human-human “riot of eyes and flood of feelings.” The content of the poem is both concretely and conditionally at the same time. Next to the poetic details of the earthly world (“white apple-trees smoke,” “country of birch chintz”, “spring rumbling”) – the image of mythological, symbolic – the image of a pink horse. A pink horse is a symbol of sunrise, spring, joy, life… But a real peasant horse at dawn becomes pink in the rays of the rising sun.
The value system in Esenin’s poetry is one and indivisible; in it everything is interconnected, everything forms a single picture of the “homeland of the beloved” in all the diversity of its shades. This is the highest ideal of the poet.
The poet understood that the village close to his heart was “Rus leaving”. This is evidenced by his poem Soroko Ust (1920), collections of poems Tresryadnitsa (1920), Confessions of the Hooligan (1921), Poems of the Brawler (1923), Moscow Kabatsky (1924), Russ Soviet (1925), “The Soviet Country” (1925), “Persian Motives” (1925).
The poem “Anna Snegina” (1925) was largely a summary work in which the personal fate of the poet is comprehended with the fate of the people (see “Anna Onegina”).
Departing from life in 30 years, SA Yesenin left us a wonderful poetic legacy. And while the earth lives, Yesenin the poet is destined to live with us and “to sing the sixth part of the earth with the whole being in the poet with the short title” Rus “.
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