Sergey Alexandrovich Yesenin. Biography
If the holy war cry:
“Thou art Rus, live in paradise!”
I will say: “No paradise,
Give my native land.”
Sergey Yesenin
According to popular belief, on the day when a man is born, a new star appears in the sky. The star of Sergei Esenin was destined to be ignited on September 21, 1895:
I was born with songs in a grass blanket,
Zory me veshnie in the rainbow wiggled.
The future famous lyricist was born in the ancient Russian village of Konstantinovo Kuzminsky volost of the Ryazan province. His father Alexander Nikitich Yesenin worked in a butcher’s shop in Moscow. Mother Tatyana Fyodorovna, having gone on earnings in a city, has given the two-year-old son on education to the parents. Esenin remembered the following about his childhood: “I grew up breathing the atmosphere of folk poetry.” The grandmother, who was very pampering me, was very devout, collecting beggars and cripples who sang
In 1904, Sergei Yesenin enrolled in the Constantine Zemstvo School, which graduated in five years with a commendable sheet. Wishing to arrange the future of his son, his parents sent him to the church and teachers’ school in the village of Spas-Klepik, where Yesenin studied from 1909 to 1912. But the career of the teacher of the parish school did not attract the young man at all, and in search of a better life in 1912 he went to Moscow. First he worked in the office of the same butcher’s shop as his father, then settled himself as a salesman in a bookstore, and later as a proofreader in a printing house. At the same time, he entered the historical and philosophical department of the People’s University
One of the first poems to which the Ryazan youth declared himself as a true poet was “Go, you, my native Russia…”: “
Goy you, my native Russia,
Khaty – in the image of the image…
Do not see the end and edge –
Only blue sucks eyes.
As a foreign worshiper,
I look at your fields.
And in the low outskirts of the
village poplar stagger.
It smells like apple and honey.
Your churches are mild Savior.
And hoots for the crony
In the meadows a cheerful dance.
Run along the mint stitch
On the privea of green lekh,
I meet like a catkins,
A girlish laughter.
If the holy war cry:
“Thou art Rus, live in paradise!”
I will say: “No paradise,
Give my native land.”
This poem will vividly mark the most important feature of the Yesenin lyric poetry – the leading place in it of the theme of the Motherland. He later will repeatedly emphasize: “The theme of the Motherland, Russia – the main in all my poems…”.
A significant role in Esenin’s life was played by the acquaintance with Alexander Blok, which took place in 1915 during his visit to Petrograd. Block noticed in the “charming peasant boy” spark of original talent. “Poems are fresh, clean, vociferous, verbose,” – this characteristic has long been recognized by the master gave creative experiments to the newly-born poet. It was Blok’s blessing that opened Yesenin’s door to the general public – his poems began to be printed in many editions.
One of his contemporaries said: “Yesenin was talked about as a miracle in the then literary salons, and usually this story boiled down to the fact that a curly village boy appeared in unexpectedly, like in a fairy tale, in St. Petersburg, in a sheepskin coat and grandfather’s felt boots, a super-talented poet… Yesenin was not told that he had arrived, although the railways were functioning properly. Esenin came on foot from the Ryazan village to Petrograd, as they used to go on a pilgrimage in the old days. tune in all. “
In 1916 he published the first collection of Yesenin’s poems – Radunitsa, which included 33 works. The name was given to him by the folk festival of the meeting of spring and the remembrance of the dead. The poetic lines of the collection captivated readers with their freshness and soulful depiction of nature. “Spring, but sad lyricism blows from Radunitsa,” wrote the subtle connoisseur of Russian literature, Professor P. Sakulin, “The glory of nature, the poetry of everyday life, the sparks of young love and prayer to God – this is the spectrum of this blossoming poetry.” Yesenin loves his native side and affectionately finds good, affectionate words for her… He turns everything into gold of poetry – and soot under the dampers, and the cat that sneaks to the fresh milk, and the hens, restlessly croaking over the plows of the plow… In Yesenin, the immediate feeling of the peasant,
Yesenin happened to live in times of tumultuous changes in the history of Russia. The First World War, several revolutions fell on its share. All this could not but affect the work. With the hope for changes for the better and inspiration, he met the events of the October Revolution of 1917. In his lyrics, a new theme emerged – two Russia, leaving and the Soviet one. Brightly embodied in many postrevolutionary works, she with special force sounded in the poems “Russ leaving”, “Soviet Russia”, the poem “Anna Snegina.”
In 1919, the artistic search led Yesenin to imagism, the literary trend that developed in Russia during the first years of Soviet power. Imagists argued that literary creativity boils down to words-images that have an independent meaning and are not connected with reality. Fascinated by imagism as a new art, crossing out the old rules and regulations, Yesenin quickly disappointed in him. The poet was never able to accept the aesthetics of literature detached from the people’s life, he argued for his work that the poetry should be connected with Russian folklore.
It was precisely from 1919 that a sharp change in Yesenin’s worldview began. He realizes that the bright hopes associated with the revolutionary transformation of Russia remain only hopes. Sensing the danger of destroying his native village world, the sunny at the beginning of his creative career, the lyricist turns to unhappy motives – the sadness of the past, irrevocably gone, the premature decline of life.
In 1921, Yesenin met with the famous American dancer Isadora Duncan, who later became his wife. After the wedding, the couple went on a foreign trip to Europe and the United States. The family life of two bright personalities was not easy. Far away from the Motherland, a feeling of loneliness and meditation about the meaninglessness of life flooded the poet. It is these motifs that sound in the poems written during the trip, which later became part of the Moscow Kabatsky cycle. The lyrical hero of the collection appears in the image of a hooligan and brawler, who challenges the world around him. The cycle caused controversial feedback, but his poems, especially in the author’s version, gained great popularity both in Russia and abroad.
In 1924-1925 Yesenin traveled to Georgia and Azerbaijan. In his plans a cycle “Persian motives” is born. Although Yesenin was never in Persia, he knew and loved the poetry of such great Persian lyricists as Saadi, Omar Khayyam, Firdausi. The exotic region, which they sang, had long engulfed the soul of the Russian poet, this passion was vividly impressed by the exotic nature and life of the Caucasus, from communication with the inhabitants of this magnificent land. They poured into lyric masterpieces that were popular with many readers. “Shagane, you are mine, Shagane”, “I asked the money-changers today…”, “I have never been on the Bosporus…”.
At the same time, the poet also created such famous poems as “The Letter of the Mother”, “The Dog of Kachalov”, “The Golden Grove Dissolved…”. The researchers of Yesenin’s works, referring to 1924-1925, call this period the most fruitful in his creative life. At the same time, they emphasize that the poet experienced a terrible spiritual crisis, a constant change of mood. He was even more keenly aware of the bitterness of loneliness than before. The fate of the great lyric poet, who so loudly announced himself to the world, was tragically cut off on the night of December 27-28, 1925, with circumstances unclear until the end…
In the poem “In Memory of Bryusov,” Yesenin prophetically predicted:
We die, We
go in silence and sadness,
But I know –
Russia will not forget us.
Both masters of the word are not really forgotten, the memory of them is alive and far beyond the homeland. The famous Russian poet Mikhail Dudin wrote about his compatriot: “Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin had a short life as a holiday of the Orioles in our birch forests, but his song was beautiful, both soulful and unusual, it remained in the very air of the immortal Russian language as a revelation, like the smell of a lungwort in a watered meadow before tomorrow’s haymaking. ” Let’s listen to the sonority of the Yesenin lyric poetry.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)