Yesenin admired the “slave uprising” that swept the entire country during the years of the revolution. He also considered it a phenomenon on a truly cosmic scale, in which everything old could be destroyed and new things could appear. The poet himself dreamed of becoming a prophet of the new world. But then his worldview changed dramatically.

Transformation of views

Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution was initially characterized by naivety, and it was determined more by the passions seething in his soul, rather than by any system of views on the upcoming reforms.

It will be very difficult to believe for every admirer of Yesenin as a glorifier of nature and the countryside that the following lines belong to his pen.

The sky is like a bell

The month is a language

My mother is my homeland,

I am a Bolshevik.

("Inonia")

This is how the theme of revolution sounds at the beginning, when the poet had not yet experienced disappointment from the innovations of the Soviet regime. However, already with the onset of 1920, the poet’s enthusiasm was replaced by bitter disappointment. And this tragedy is reflected in the poet’s short works: from the enthusiastic “Inonia” to the caustic “Country of Scoundrels.”

Changing the face of the country

Gradually, urban Rus' began to replace peasant Russia. New times were replacing the old way of life, which was so familiar to the poet. How did Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution change? The poet initially welcomed these changes and tried to adapt himself to them - after all, his worldview was formed precisely in peasant Rus'.

Socialism did not at all live up to the poet's hopes. Every living thing in it was “crowded.” Yesenin plunged into mortal longing for the destroyed village and its built-up streets. This seriously affected the poet’s mental state, which was not stable anyway.

How did the events affect the poet’s life?

Yesenin almost constantly disappeared into severe binges. He began to suffer from persecution mania. He constantly had outbursts of aggression, during which the poet started rows, broke furniture and beat his famous wife. She spoke many times about his madness and made attempts to treat Yesenin with professional American psychiatrists. But it was no use.

Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution is reflected in his lines:

That hurricane has passed. Few of us survived.

What is Motherland? Are these really dreams?

Comparison of the views of Mayakovsky and Yesenin

If we talk about Mayakovsky, then his work is directed to the future, and to some extent - to the present. Even if this future and present are somewhat idealized, they are real. The attitude towards the revolution of Mayakovsky and Yesenin differs in the direction of the perspective of their work. Socialism then was built on the expectation of a bright “tomorrow”: today we live poorly, but our children and grandchildren will be happy. Therefore, Mayakovsky lived in the future; all his work was imbued with faith in the success of the Soviet foundation. Even connected with the Soviet future. The poet is connected with a loving person not only by passion, but also by a common cause.

What was Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution, in contrast to Mayakovsky? Yesenin is all in the past. In it he was not abandoned, did not suffer from bitter loneliness. He is outside the new generation, but does not consider himself to be part of the old one:

The phrase “sad joy,” typical of the poet, takes on a slightly different meaning. Now Yesenin does not sincerely talk about his broken youth, but sadly states the fact of his loneliness.

After all, for almost everyone here I’m a gloomy pilgrim<…>And it's me! I, a citizen of a village that will only be famous for the fact that here a woman once gave birth to a Russian scandalous pet...

Wandering and alienation

The poet writes about complete alienation from society. In his works there are no longer any claims to socialist sentiments. And in the end, Yesenin himself answers any questions about his work:

My poetry is no longer needed here, and, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.

In the first place for Yesenin there was always a love for nature, for all living things. The poet’s nature is endowed with a soul; it feels human. Everything in the world is filled with a living spirit.

And Yesenin himself admits his own insolvency in the new Soviet system. He is rejected:

I sang when my region was sick.

The poet realizes that the world that was infinitely dear to his heart is now irretrievably lost. And motifs of wandering emerge in his work:

Yes! Now it's decided. No refund

I left my native fields...

Everything that happens begins to evoke deep protest and a feeling of disgust in him. Yesenin is trying to find fortifications in the bright memories of childhood, his home and the Rus' that he lost. But even here, anxiety haunts the poet. Yesenin comes to the conclusion that the reason for those changes that turned out to be unacceptable for him is in the revolution.

Village devastation and the poet's spiritual drama

Yesenin's attitude towards the revolution is filled with criticism and rejection. The poet himself sincerely repents that he held the opinion that her ideas were correct.

The poet's dramas in the final years of his life are associated with the coming political changes. And if Yesenin’s early poetry is filled with the acceptance of new orders and supports the slogan “Land for the peasants!”, then the late Yesenin sees all the devastation. The poet begins to reject the new order with all his might. Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution is expressed in such works as “Return to the Motherland”, “Letter to Mother” and others.

For example, in the work “Return to the Motherland” one can observe the impact the revolution had on the lives of rural residents. The lyrical hero, having returned to his native land, cannot recognize his relatives or his own home. He sadly realizes that his native land has now become foreign to him. The poetic world faces a suffocating reality:

I look around with sadness:

What an unfamiliar area to me!

This is the reason for the emotional drama. The same discord can be observed in the work “Uncomfortable Liquid Lunarity”, in the lines of which the poet expresses complete indifference to the world around him. This indifference terrifies the lyrical hero:

I became indifferent to the rays,

And the hearth fire is not dear to me.

But the poet does not put an end to Russia completely. It pains him to see that his country suffers poverty and humiliation. He calls her:

Field Russia! Enough

Dragging the plow across the fields.

Moods of the collection “Transfiguration”

Yesenin's first collection of poetry, which was released after the revolution, is called "Transfiguration". The title reflects the mood of the poet at that time: both the poet himself and the world around him are changing. The first work, called “Inonia,” writes about the joy of the coming of the Savior. New times are coming soon in the destinies of nations. Yesenin looks at himself as a prophet, his bold words are addressed to the biblical prophet Jeremiah. The lyrical hero enters into polemics with the canons of Christian morality.

I saw a different coming -

Where death does not dance over the truth.

The new religion must come to the people without suffering and the “cross”. Things must be different now. That is why the country of the future is called “Inonia”. The paradise that the poet dreams of is a completely rural, rustic paradise. There is a place in it for cornfields and fields, deep rivers and the gold of ripening wheat. Other works in this collection were also filled with this expectation.

How did the revolution turn out?

It would seem that the poet’s dreams are coming true. A profound revolution is occurring in the life of the country. And here one can expect delight on the part of the poet, but everything turns out to be much more painful and difficult for him. Instead of that “peasant paradise” that Sergei Alexandrovich was waiting for, the poet’s eyes see a state torn apart by wars, devastated by devastation. All this becomes unbearable for the singer of a peaceful, idyllic village life.

What is Yesenin observing now? Cold and cold, the sky is overcast. Now “evil October” reigns, which will soon devour the green groves. This is how the poet conveys the atmosphere of the current era. Social conflict becomes universal. Man falls away from nature. And the hero himself refuses to join the madness reigning around.

I won't go anywhere with people

It's better to die together with you,

How to raise the earth from your beloved

In the crazy neighbor a stone.

Yesenin’s attitude towards the revolution can be briefly described as follows: the poet does not seek to reject the current government - he simply cannot understand the Soviet way of life, he feels like a completely superfluous person. And she does not forgive such treatment: after Yesenin’s tragic death, his name and poems were banned. For the first time they began to remember him with kind words only at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, when it was stupid to deny Yesenin’s contribution to Russian poetry.

Reflection of the revolutionary era in the poems of S. A. Yesenin

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin lived in a difficult, turning-point time for the Russian state. His fate, like the fate of many people, was divided by the revolution into life “before” and “after”.

The poet's pre-revolutionary work is filled with love for his native Ryazan nature, for his father's home: Beloved land! The heart dreams of stacks of sun in the waters of the bosom. I would like to get lost in the greenery of your hundred-bellied greens. In nature, the poet found an inexhaustible source of inspiration for himself. He feels himself to be a small part of it, because his childhood and youth passed among the “morning and evening dawn,” “among the sky covered with thunderclouds,” “among the fields flaunting flowers and greenery”:

The bird cherry tree is pouring snow,

Greenery in bloom and dew.

In the field, leaning towards escape,

Rooks walk in the strip.

Yesenin greeted the revolution of 1917 with enthusiasm. He saw in it a real opportunity to change life for the better, primarily for the peasantry. The poet believed that the time had come for peasant happiness, for a well-fed, free life. This new attitude to life was reflected directly in Yesenin’s work.

The first post-revolutionary block of poems by the poet is called “Transfiguration”. This name is deeply symbolic: the whole world around the poet is transformed, and he himself is transformed. The first poem of the cycle “Inonia” talks about the joyful, new coming of the Savior. Yesenin connected the coming changes throughout the entire earth with his appearance. And he sees himself as a prophet and boldly objects to Christian canons:

I saw a different coming -

Where death does not dance over the truth.

A new faith for a person must come in a completely different way: without “cross and torment”:

I don't want to accept salvation

Through his torment and the cross:

I have learned a different teaching

Eternity-piercing stars.

And the new life should be completely different, unlike the previous one, which is why the poet calls the country of the future “Inonia.” The poems in this cycle are full of faith in future changes that will bring liberation and prosperity to the whole world; and for the native peasantry - a rural paradise, with fields and fields golden with grain:

I'm telling you, there will be time

The mouths of thunder will splash;

Carry out the blue crown

The ears of your bread.

And now, it seems, the poet’s dreams of a new life are beginning to come true. A radical turning point has occurred in the fate of Russia; everything is changing rapidly. But these long-awaited changes alarm Yesenin. Instead of the expected “peasant paradise”, instead of a free and well-fed life, a country torn apart by civil war and devastated by devastation appears before the poet’s eyes. The poet sees a difficult, unbearable sight instead of the promised paradise:

No, not rye! The cold gallops across the field,

The windows are broken, the doors are wide open.

Even the sun freezes like a puddle,

Which was bred by a gelding.

The poet feels that the end is coming to everything that he treasured so much, for which he felt deep affection. The old ancient way of life, the native rural land, is coming to an end:

The horn of death blows, blows!

What should we do, what should we do now?

On the muddy thighs of the roads?

In place of the thin-legged foal, an iron horse comes to the peasant fields, with which it is no longer useless to compete:

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?

In this iron battle with the city, Yesenin realizes the powerlessness of the village, it is doomed. And the poet, full of despair, sends curses to the iron horse:

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.

Yesenin feels like “the last poet of the village,” not because he does not hope that this topic will be of interest to a new generation of poets, but because he assumes the imminent death of the entire village way of life. The poet does not find a place for himself in this new life, his soul is full of pain and despair. He tries to find at least some way out for himself, and gets lost in “hooliganism.” The lyrical hero of this time “bawds and scandalizes,” trying to distract himself in drunken revelry:

I purposely go unkempt

With a head like a kerosene lamp on my shoulders...

I like it when the stones fight

They fly at me like hail of a burping thunderstorm...

The hero deliberately tries to look worse in the eyes of people than he really is. But in his soul he still remains the same village mischief-maker, painfully loving his land, his nature:

I love my homeland.

I love my homeland very much!..

I'm still the same.

I'm still the same in my heart.

Time passes, and the poet gradually calms down. His lyrics regain their ringing voice. Yesenin’s new collection is called “I Love Spring.” Spring is a time of renewal, a time of hope and, of course, love. And again this wonderful feeling opens up for the lyrical hero Yesenin. The author sets himself a new task:

...to comprehend in every moment

Commune raised Rus'.

Much has changed in the Soviet country, and the poet makes many discoveries for himself. The poor and unattractive village life has changed, the crosses have been removed from the bell knees:

Ah, dear land!

You are not the same

Not the one...

In the villages they no longer read prayer books, but Marx’s Capital and the works of revolutionary writers:

The peasant Komsomol is coming from the mountain,

And to the harmonica, playing zealously,

The propaganda of Poor Demyan is singing,

Announcing the valley with a cheerful cry.

Village youth live and think completely differently: they did not have a village, “but the whole earth” became their homeland. This mood has an infectious effect on the author himself; he feels within himself the desire to be not only a singer in his country, but also a sovereign citizen of it:

I accept everything.

I take everything as is.

Ready to follow the beaten tracks.

I will give my whole soul to October and May...

The poet takes a kind of oath to his renewed country:

But even then

When all over the planet

The tribal feud will pass,

Lies and sadness will disappear,

I will chant

With the whole being in the poet

Sixth of the land

With a short name “Rus”.

S. A. Yesenin tries to wholeheartedly accept all the changes that have occurred in the country. He believes that the time has finally come to develop the land. The poet is proud and happy to live in this era of renewal. Now even the city lights seem sweeter and more beautiful to him than the southern stars, he feels great love for Rodin in his heart. In the poem “Letter to a Woman,” S. A. Yesenin reveals the complex evolution of his perception of the new reality. At first, he could not understand what was happening in the country, and therefore tormented both himself and his beloved, being in a constant drunken stupor:

... in complete smoke,

In a life torn apart by a storm

That's why I'm suffering

What I don't understand

Where does the fate of events take us...

But now everything has fallen into place, everything has become different, but it is already clear - the poet realizes and accepts the renewed Russia:

Now in the Soviet side

I am the fiercest travel companion.

In the cycle of poems “Flowers” ​​S. A. Yesenin narrates the revolutionary events in different ways. People are flowers dying under the steel of October:

Flowers fought each other

And red was everyone's favorite color.

More of them fell under the blizzard,

But still with elastic power

They defeated the executioners.

The poet is sorry that he had to pay with the lives of many people for the expected new, bright life:

October! October!

I'm terribly sorry

Those red flowers that fell.

Time passes and not everything goes well with the new reality for the lyrical hero; he does not agree with the new government on everything:

I ran away from Moscow for a long time:

I'm not good at getting along with the police...

I have one foot left in the past,

Trying to catch up with the steel army,

I slide and fall differently.

There is a constant struggle in the poet’s soul - a struggle between acceptance and rejection of the established order in the state. On the one hand, he is trying with all his might to accept “Soviet Rus'”, but, on the other hand, he feels pain and resentment for the fact that he himself remains unclaimed by the new reality:

This is how the country is! Why the hell am I

Screamed in verse that I am friendly with the people?

My poetry is no longer needed here,

And, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.

But Yesenin finds the strength not to take the path of anger and resentment for lack of demand; he bequeaths the fate of his country to the young, not burdened with the burden of sins and mistakes:

Bloom young ones! And have a healthy body!

You have a different life, you have a different tune.

And I will go alone to unknown limits,

The rebellious soul has been pacified forever.

He welcomes and blesses new life, the happiness of others:

Bless every work, good luck!

And for himself he leaves the path “to unknown limits.”

Perhaps these lines of the poem are filled with bitter foreboding. Soon the poet, indeed, left this life “into another world.” His lyrics are varied, like his life itself. Love, joy, sadness, disappointment, disbelief, the desire to understand and accept the hitherto unknown - everything is reflected in the work of this great Russian poet. The life and work of S. A. Yesenin are complex and contradictory; he was mistaken and often made mistakes. But in one thing he was always true to himself - in his desire to comprehend the complex, difficult and often tragic life of his people.

to the singer of Russia, the great patriot, who with all his creativity sang “The sixth part of the earth // With a short name, Rus'.” October 1917...

The revolution is represented by the beginning of all things on Earth, the beginning of abundance and splendor: “the hour of transfiguration is ripening,” the poet is looking forward to the appearance of the “bright guest.” In the poem “The Jordan Dove,” written in 1918, the poet admits his belonging to the revolution:

month of language

My mother is my homeland,

I am a Bolshevik

The peculiarity of these poems is that the image of the revolution is filled with mythological features: the biblical “dove” brings joyful news about the transformation of the world, the “bright guest” will lead the people to happiness. Welcoming the revolutionary news, Yesenin expected that it would bring prosperity and happiness to the peasants. This is precisely where he saw the meaning of the revolution, its purpose. She had to create a world where there are no “taxes for arable land”, where people rest “blessedly”, “wisely”, “in a round dance”. The poem “Heavenly Drummer” (1919) is completely different, it is close to the inviting and accusatory lyrics of proletarian poets.

“peasant paradise,” but in her Yesenin unexpectedly saw other sides that he could not perceive positively. “The socialism that is going on is completely different from what I thought... It’s cramped for the living, closely building a bridge to the invisible world... for these bridges are being cut down and blown up from under the feet of future generations.” What is this foresight? Isn’t this what everyone saw and understood decades later? Indeed, “big things are seen from a distance.” “My Rus', who are you?” asks the poet in the early 20s, realizing that the revolution brought not grace, but ruin to the village. The attack of the city on the village began to be perceived as the death of all real, living things. It seemed to the poet that life, in which the native fields are resounding with the mechanical roar of the “iron horse,” contradicts the laws of nature and violates harmony. Yesenin writes the poem "Sorokoust".

Next to the iron train moving forward, a small funny foal, symbolizing village life, gallops with all its might, trying to keep up. But he inexorably loses speed. “Doesn’t he really know that the living horses // were defeated by the steel cavalry?” A trip abroad again forced the poet to rethink post-revolutionary reality.

Now in the Soviet side

I am the fiercest travel companion"

The poet writes.

“Letter to a Woman” Yesenin laments:

What I don't understand

Where does the fate of events take us..."

In the poem “Departing Rus',” Yesenin exclaims with pain: “Friends! Friends! What a split in the country, What sadness in the joyful boiling!..” The poet could not decide between the two warring camps, or finally choose a side. This hides the drama of his situation: “What a scandal! What a big scandal! I found myself in a narrow gap...” On the one hand, he considers himself one of the “pets of Lenin’s victory,” and on the other, he declares that he is ready to “lift up his pants // Run after the Komsomol” with undisguised irony.

“Leaving Rus'” Yesenin bitterly admits his uselessness of the new Russia: “My poetry is no longer needed here.” However, he does not completely renounce belonging to Soviet Russia: “I will give my whole soul to October and May...”, although he does not recognize himself as a singer of the revolution: “but I will not give up my dear lyre.” The poet never found peace of mind and was unable to fully comprehend the social processes that affected Russia. Only one feeling never left his work - the feeling of sincere love for the Motherland. This is exactly what poetry teaches him. Like a spell, like a prayer, Yesenin’s call sounds in our hearts: “O Rus', flap your wings!”

Yesenin and revolution

“There is no problem “Yesenin and the Revolution” as such,” writes the author of the Yesenin section in the reference book for students N. Zuev. According to his concept, Yesenin was neither a revolutionary nor a singer of the revolution. It’s just that when the world splits, the crack passes through the poet’s heart. “Attempts at naive faith and inevitable disappointments are declared the topic of a special conversation, which should not overshadow “the moral foundations of the poet’s personality, the search for God and himself in the world, which were directly reflected in his work” (8; 106). Without diminishing the significance of the last topic and sending the reader to the work of N. Zuev, who revealed the religious and folklore origins of Yesenin’s imagery (by the way, the latter are covered in a number of monographs and articles - 39; 4; 12), we still consider it necessary to highlight Yesenin’s attitude to the revolution, especially since this is obligatory not only the statements of the author himself, but also poetic images, the poet’s interest in Lenin’s personality.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, “Yesenin accepted October with indescribable delight; and accepted it, of course, only because he was already internally prepared for it, that his entire inhuman temperament was in harmony with October” (30; 1, 267).

Yesenin himself succinctly wrote in his autobiography: “During the years of the revolution he was entirely on the side of October, but he accepted everything in his own way, with a peasant bias.” The last clause is not accidental, and it will make itself felt later. But the first period of the revolution, which gave land to the peasants, was indeed greeted sympathetically by the poet. Already in June 1918, “The Jordanian Dove” was written with the famous lines:

The sky is like a bell

The month is a language

My mother is my homeland,

I am a Bolshevik.

At the end of 1918 - beginning of 1919. "Heavenly Drummer" was created:

The leaves of the stars are pouring

Into the rivers in our fields.

Long live the revolution

On earth and in heaven!...

In February 1919, Yesenin also admits that he is a Bolshevik and is “glad to rein in the land.”

In the unfinished poem “Walk in the Field” (it is symptomatic that it remained unfinished), Yesenin reflects on the mysterious power of the influence of Lenin’s ideas on the masses (“He is like a sphinx in front of me”). The poet is occupied with the question, which is not idle for him, “with what force he was able to shake the globe.”

But he shocked.

Make noise and veil!

Spin more fiercely, bad weather,

Wash it off the unfortunate people

The shame of the forts and churches.

As they say, you can’t erase words from a song.

Yesenin’s arrival to the Bolsheviks was perceived as an “ideological” step, and the poem “Inonia” was considered a clear indication of the sincerity of his godless and revolutionary passions. A.M. Mikeshin emphasized that the poet saw in the revolution an “angel of salvation” who appeared to the world of peasant life that was “on its deathbed”, perishing under the onslaught of the bourgeois Moloch (22:42).

As already noted in criticism, Yesenin’s poems “Inonia”, “Transfiguration”, “Dove of Jordan”, “Heavenly Drummer”, “Pantocrator” “burst into a poetic flurry of “ontological” rebellion, driven by the daring of a radical remake of the entire existing world order into a different system, to the “city of Inonia, Where the deity of the living lives.” Here we will meet many already familiar to us cosmic motifs of proletarian poetry, right down to the controlled Earth - a heavenly ship: “We give you a rainbow - an arc, the Arctic Circle - on a harness, Oh, take out our globe On a different track" ("Pantocrator"). The ideas of establishing a transformed status of being, bent by the revolutionary electricity of the era, acquire sharp features of god-fighting fury, purely human titanism, bringing these Yesenin's things closer to some of Mayakovsky's works of the late 10s. The transformation of the world is dreamed in images violence against it, sometimes reaching the point of real cosmic “hooliganism”: “I will raise my hands to the moon, I will crush it like a nut... Now I will rear you up onto the peaks of the stars, earth!.. I will bite through the cover of the milky. I will pluck even God’s beard with the baring of my teeth,” etc. (“Inonia”). It should be noted that such poetic frenzy quickly disappears (...) from Yesenin’s poetry.” (33; 276).

The most interesting in these poems are biblical and godless motifs, which again brings them closer to the works of Mayakovsky ("Mystery Bouffe", "Cloud in Pants"), but in Yesenin this is organically connected with folk culture, with the theme of "the sacrificial role of Russia, the chosenness of Russia for the salvation of the world, the theme of the death of Rus' for the atonement of universal sins." (12; 110).

Citing the lines from “The Jordanian Dove”: “My mother is my homeland, I am a Bolshevik,” A.M. Mikeshin emphasizes that in this case the poet “was wishful thinking” and was still far from genuine Bolshevism (22; 43). This is probably why disappointment soon set in regarding the revolution. Yesenin began to look not into the future, but into the present. “A new period was beginning in the poet’s ideological and creative evolution” (22; 54). The revolution was in no hurry to justify the poet’s hopes for a quick “peasant paradise,” but it revealed many things that Yesenin could not perceive positively. Already in 1920, he admitted in a letter to E. Livshits: “I am very sad now that history is going through a difficult era of the killing of the individual as a living person, because what is going on is completely different from the socialism that I thought about... It’s cramped for the living, cramped building a bridge to the invisible world, for they cut down and explode these bridges from under the feet of future generations. Of course, whoever opens it will then see these bridges already covered with mold, but it is always a pity that if a house is built, but no one lives in it. .." (10; 2, 338-339).

In this case, one cannot but be surprised by the power of foresight manifested in these words. They spent 70 years building a house called “socialism”, they sacrificed millions of human lives, a lot of time, effort, energy, and as a result they abandoned it and started building another one, not being completely sure that the people of the future would want to live in this too "home". History, as we see, repeats itself. And our era is probably somewhat similar to Yesenin’s.

Simultaneously with this letter, Yesenin writes the poem “Sorokoust”, the first part of which is filled with a premonition of impending disaster: “The fatal horn is blowing, blowing! What can we do, what can we do now?.. You can’t hide anywhere from death, You can’t escape anywhere from the enemy ... And the silent bull of the yard (...) sensed trouble over the field..." In the final 4th part of the poem, the premonition of trouble intensifies and takes on a tragic overtones:

That's why on September morning

On dry and cold loam,

My head smashed against the fence,

The rowan berries are drenched in blood...

The metaphorical participle crushed in combination with the blood of rowan berries evokes in the reader’s mind the image of a living being who contained doubts, torment, tragedy, the contradictions of the era and committed suicide because of their intractability.

Anxious sensations did not leave Yesenin for a long time. In 1924, while working on the poem “Walk in the Field,” he also wrote:

Russia! Dear land to the heart!

The soul shrinks from pain.

The field has not heard for many years

Cock crowing, dog barking.

How many years has our quiet life

Lost peaceful verbs.

Like smallpox, hoof pits

Pastures and valleys are dug up...

In the same 1924, in a short poem “Departing Rus',” Yesenin exclaimed with pain: “Friends! Friends! What a split in the country, What sadness in the joyful boiling!..” Envying those “who spent their lives in battle, who defended the great idea," the poet could not decide between the two warring camps or finally choose a side. This hides the drama of his situation: “What a scandal! What a big scandal! I found myself in a narrow gap...” Yesenin managed to convey his state and attitude of a man, restless, confused and tormented by doubts: “What did I see? I saw only a battle. Yes, instead of songs I heard cannonade..." The "Letter to a Woman" is about the same thing:

You didn't know

That I'm in complete smoke,

In a life torn apart by a storm

That's why I'm tormented because I don't understand -

Where does the fate of events take us...

The image of smoke in this case, according to V.I. Khazan, means “the cloudiness of the consciousness of the lyrical hero, the uncertainty of life’s path” (35; 25). From the tragic question “Where is the fate of events taking us?”, from mental torment, Yesenin, with his unstable mental organization, fled into a drunken stupor. The pain of his soul for Russia and the Russian people was drowned out and drowned in wine. The memoirs of his contemporaries say about this: “Yesenin, squatting, absentmindedly stirred the brands that were burning out with difficulty, and then, sullenly fixing his sightless eyes on one point, quietly began:

I was in the village. Everything is collapsing... You have to be from there yourself to understand... The end of everything (...)

Yesenin stood up and, clasping his head with both hands, as if wanting to squeeze out of it the thoughts that were tormenting him, said in a strange voice, unlike his own:

It makes noise like a mill, I can’t understand it myself. Drunk or what? Or it’s as simple as that..." (30; 1, 248-249).

Other memories also convince us that Yesenin’s drunkenness had complex and deep reasons:

“When I tried to ask him, in the name of various “good things,” not to drink so much and to take care of himself, he suddenly became terribly, especially agitated. “I can’t, well, don’t you understand, I can’t help but drink... If I didn’t drink, how could I have survived everything that happened?..” And he walked, confused, gesticulating wildly, around the room, sometimes stopping and grabbing my hand.

The more he drank, the more blackly and bitterly he spoke about the fact that everything he believed in was on the decline, that his “Yesenin” revolution had not yet come, that he was completely alone. And again, as in his youth, but now his fists clenched painfully, threatening invisible enemies and the world... And then, in an unbridled whirlwind, only one clear, repeated word swirled in the confusion of concepts:

Russia! You understand - Russia!..” (30; 1, 230).

In February 1923, returning from America to Europe, Yesenin wrote to Sandro Kusikov: “Sandro, Sandro! Mortal melancholy, unbearable, I feel like a stranger and unnecessary here, but as soon as I remember about Russia, I remember what awaits me there, I won’t go back.” I want to. If I were alone, if I didn’t have sisters, I would spit on everything and go to Africa or somewhere else. I’m sick of being a LEGITIMATE Russian son in my own state as a stepson. I’m tired of this f... condescending attitude of those in power , and it’s even more sickening to endure the sycophancy of my own brothers towards them. I can’t! By God I can’t. At least shout out the guard or take a knife and take the high road.

Now, when all that remains from the revolution is horseradish and a pipe (...), it has become obvious that you and I were and will be the bastard on which all dogs can be hanged (...).

And now, now an evil despondency comes over me. I cease to understand which revolution I belonged to. I see only one thing: neither to February nor to October, apparently. Some kind of November was and is hiding within us (...)" (16; 7, 74-75 - emphasis by me - P.Ch.).

Then in Berlin in the early morning of March 2, 1923. drunken Yesenin will say to Alekseev and Gul: “I love my daughter (...) and I love Russia (...), and I love the revolution, I love the revolution very much” (16; 7, 76). But after reading the letter to Kusikov, the last part of the poet’s confession no longer inspires confidence. In any case, one gets the impression that he loved “some kind of November”, but not February or October...

"Moscow tavern"

So, the poet’s mental crisis in the early 20s. largely due to his disappointment in the results of the revolution. This relationship becomes clear in the later poem “Letter to a Woman” (1924):

Earth is a ship!

But someone suddenly

For a new life, new glory

In the thick of storms and blizzards

He directed her majestically.

Well, which of us is the biggest on deck?

Didn’t fall, vomit or swear?

There are few of them, with an experienced soul,

Who remained strong in pitching.

Then I too

To the wild noise

But maturely knowing the work,

He went down into the ship's hold,

So as not to watch people vomit.

That hold was -

Russian tavern,

And I leaned over the glass,

So that, without suffering for anyone,

Ruin yourself

In a drunken stupor...

The fact that Yesenin’s turn to wine was a conscious step is also evidenced by other lines of poems, both included in “Tavern Moscow” and not included in this cycle:

And I myself, with my head bowed,

I pour wine into my eyes,

So as not to see the fatal face,

To think for a moment about something else.

(“They’re drinking here again, fighting and crying”).

I'm already ready. I'm timid.

Look at the army of bottles!

I collect traffic jams -

Shut up my soul.

(“Joy is given to the rude”).

In wine, the poet wanted to forget himself, “even for a moment” to escape from the questions that tormented him. This may not be the only reason, but it is one of the main ones. This is how Yesenin enters the tavern world with its suffocating atmosphere of drunken stupor, which later found vivid embodiment in the cycle “Moscow Tavern” (1923-1924).

An analogy with A.A. Blok, who in 1907-1913 also sounded: “I’m nailed to the tavern counter, I’ve been drunk for a long time, I don’t care,” or “And it didn’t matter which ones Kiss your lips, caress your shoulders...” Criticism in this page of Blok’s poetry sees the peculiarity of symbolism with its setting: “ Laughing at broken illusions, avenge them with moral failure" (Lurie). Obviously, this position became a characteristic feature of the poetry of the Silver Age, a certain stage of which is represented by the poetry of S. Yesenin.

In 1923, during a trip abroad in Berlin, Yesenin published the collection “Poems of a Brawler.” The book included 4 poems, united by one title “Moscow Tavern”. It included the poems “They’re drinking here again, fighting and crying,” “Rash, harmonica. Boredom... Boredom...”, “Sing, sing on the damned guitar,” “Yes! Now it’s decided without return.” They have already given them a succinct and objective assessment:

“The poems of this cycle are distinguished by deliberately vulgar phraseology (...) Hysterical intonations, monotonous motifs of drunken prowess, replaced by mortal melancholy - all this testified to noticeable losses in Yesenin’s artistic work. There was no longer in it the rainbow of colors that distinguished his previous poems , - they were replaced by dull landscapes of the night city, observed through the eyes of a lost person: crooked alleys, curved streets, tavern lanterns barely glowing in the fog... Heartfelt sincerity, deep emotionality of Yesenin’s lyric poems gave way to naked sensitivity, the plaintive melodiousness of a gypsy romance" ( 41; 64).

In a short preface to the collection “Poems of a Brawler,” the author wrote: “I feel like a master in Russian poetry and therefore I drag into poetic speech words of all shades, there are no impure words. There are only impure ideas. The embarrassment of the bold word I uttered does not lie with me, but on the reader or listener. Words are citizens. I am their commander, I lead them. I really like clumsy words. I put them in the ranks like recruits. Today they are clumsy, but tomorrow they will be in the speech ranks the same as the whole army "(27; 257).

A little later, the poet said: “They ask me why in my poems I sometimes use words that are not accepted in society - it’s so boring sometimes, so boring that suddenly you want to throw something out. But what are “indecent words”? is used by all of Russia, why not give them the right of citizenship in literature" (30; 2, 242).

And "citizenship" was given:

Rash, harmonica. Boredom... Boredom...

The accordionist's fingers flow like a wave.

Drink with me, you lousy bitch

Drink with me.

They loved you, they abused you -

Unbearable.

Why are you looking at those blue splashes like that?

Or do you want a punch in the face? (...)

Rash, harmonica. Rash, my frequent one.

Drink, otter, drink.

I'd rather have that busty one over there -

She's dumber.

I'm not the first among women...

Quite a few of you

But with someone like you, with a bitch

Only for the first time...

This poem has already marked a sharp change in intonation, vocabulary, the very style of addressing a woman, the entire structure and melody of the verse: “It’s as if we are looking at the lines of another poet. The twitching rhythm, recitative language, vulgar vocabulary, embittered cynicism - all this does not in any way resemble that tenderness, poetry, at times even fabulousness, which sounded in his previous poems about love" (41; 109).

Indeed, in all of Yesenin’s work, this is the only poem in which such a disrespectful, offensive attitude towards women was expressed. Unworthy epithets (“lousy bitch,” “otter,” “bitch”), addressed at the beginning to the girlfriend of the lyrical hero, by the end take on a generalized character and are addressed to all women: “pack of dogs.” And the more vulgar the content of the poem, the more surprising is its ending, where the hero suddenly begins to shed tears of sentimentality and asks for forgiveness:

To your pack of dogs

It's time to catch a cold.

Honey, I'm crying.

Sorry Sorry...

Here the transition from offensive intonation to a request for forgiveness is so quick and abrupt that the sincerity of the hero’s tears does not inspire complete confidence in us. I.S. Eventov sees the problem differently:

“Here love is trampled upon, reduced to a carnal feeling, the woman is disfigured, the hero himself is demoralized, and his melancholy, interrupted by violence, is only replaced at the very end by a note of pitiful repentance (...)

The thought involuntarily suggests itself about a certain deliberateness, demonstrativeness of the picture depicted by the poet (and the vocabulary he uses), that he seems to be flaunting all the abomination of the tavern whirlpool in which he plunged and which does not please him at all, does not console him, but on the contrary - burdens him "(41; 109).

Nevertheless, it should be noted that despite all the “reduced” vocabulary of this poem, it is far from the obscenity that has poured into the literary stream these days. And most importantly, the “salt” of the poem is not in “indecent words,” but in the hero’s awareness of guilt and pain.

An ambivalent attitude towards the “object” of love is also observed in the poem “Sing, Sing on the Damned Guitar”, where, on the one hand, the poet looks at the beautiful wrists of a woman and “her flowing silk shoulders”, looks for happiness in her, but finds death . The hero is ready to come to terms with the fact that she kisses another, calls her “young beautiful trash” and then: “Oh, wait. I don’t scold her. Oh, wait. I don’t curse her...” And the following beautiful lines: “ Let me play in my mind to this bass string” - reveal the inner state of a person, calmly, without straining, aware of his passion for a “subject” that is not worthy of his attention, but at the same time not rushing to conclusions, as if this situation does not bother him very much . But in the second part of the poem, the hero again slides into vulgar everyday life, flaunting the enumeration of his victories over women, reducing the meaning and purpose of life to the “bed level”: “Our life is a sheet and a bed, Our life is a kiss and a pool.” And despite the seemingly optimistic final line (“I will never die, my friend”), the poem leaves a painful impression. It becomes clear that in this “den” “there is no place for human joy, there is no hope for happiness. Love here is not a holiday of the heart, it brings death to a person, it destroys him like a plague” (41; 109-110).

In the poem "Yes! Now it's decided. No return..." the hero's spiritual emptiness is brought to the limit. The poetics of the verse are depressing with gloomy colors from the very beginning: the winged leaves of the poplar will no longer ring, the low house will stoop, the old dog has died... And as a natural development of the line of thickening of colors, already at the end of the second stanza a calmly stated assumption is born: “On the curved streets of Moscow To die , I know, God has judged me." Even the description of the month, as if sending its rays to the earth in abundance, seems to have been introduced into the poem only in order to better highlight the figure of a man walking with his head hanging down into a familiar tavern. And then in the poem we will not find a single glimmer of light; then everything is described in only black colors:

The noise and din in this terrible lair,

But all night long, until dawn,

I read poetry to prostitutes

And I fry alcohol with the bandits...

Not only is the awareness of the hero’s ongoing moral fall to the very “bottom” depressing, even the vocabulary itself is depressing: noise, din, lair, creepy, prostitutes, bandits, frying, alcohol... And the last confession of the lyrical hero sounds like the logical closure of the plot ring. in front of bandits and prostitutes: “I’m just like you, lost, I can’t go back now.” After this, even the second stanza, repeated at the end with a tragic prediction of one’s own death, probably intended to enhance the creepiness and horror of the verse, does not achieve its goal, since there is nothing to “strengthen”, the limit of the fall has already been indicated above.

Motives of hopelessness will also be heard in subsequent works of the cycle. So, in the verses “I’ve never been this tired before,” we again encounter pictures of a misguided life, endless drunken nights, rampant melancholy, a dark force accustomed to wine... It’s as if the poet doesn’t even have the strength to be amazed at such a dramatic situation. , he completely dispassionately, as if about something ordinary and familiar, admits something that is impossible for a sane person to admit without internal trembling:

I'm tired of torturing myself aimlessly,

And with a strange smile on his face

I fell in love with wearing a light body

Quiet light and peace of a dead man...

This is probably why A. Voronsky had reason to write about “Moscow Tavern” in the magazine “Krasnaya Nov”:

“For the first time in the history of Russian poetry, poems appear in which, with excellent imagery, realism, artistic truthfulness and sincerity, the tavern frenzy is elevated to the “pearl of creation,” to its apotheosis.” He called the poems of this cycle “gallows, finished, hopeless,” and argued that they clearly show “demagnetization, spiritual prostration, deep antisociality, everyday and personal breakdown, disintegration of personality” (27; 254).

V. Kirshon expressed sharp disagreement with this assessment: “Only an insensitive person can say that Yesenin raised this frenzy, this illness to its apotheosis... Read his poems carefully, and before you stands the figure (...) of a poet who is drunk intoxicated, and in the midst of a moonshine spill among schoolgirls and thieves, he suffers and suffers from this scum, is torn from life and abomination, regrets the forces so stupidly wasted (...) Only heaviness, only pain, which is inspired by drunken revelry, is hysterically expressed in these verses ".

One can agree with V. Kirshon that the poet really does not admire or admire either the pictures of tavern revelry or his own situation, that he deeply feels the tragedy of his fall, but at the same time, it would be wrong to completely reject Voronsky’s judgments as groundless. . Today it is important not only that the poet experienced “Tavern Moscow” (“I saw it, I experienced it in my own way”), but also that he rises above what he experienced and felt to a typical generalization (“I had to tell about it in verse"). Evidence of this is the cycle of poems “The Love of a Hooligan.”

"Hooligan's Love"

In July 1924, in Leningrad, Yesenin published a new collection of poems under the general title “Moscow Tavern,” which included four sections: poems as an introduction to “Moscow Tavern,” “Moscow Tavern” itself, “Love of a Hooligan,” and a poem as a conclusion.

The cycle “Love of a Hooligan” includes 7 poems written in the second half of 1923: “A blue fire has begun,” “You are as simple as everyone else,” “Let others drink you,” “Darling, let’s sit next to you,” “I’m sad.” look at you”, “Don’t torment me with coolness”, “The evening raised black eyebrows.” All of them were dedicated to the chamber theater actress Augusta Miklashevskaya, whom Yesenin met after returning from abroad. “Love for this woman is healing for the sick and devastated soul of the poet, it harmonizes, enlightens and elevates it, inspires the author to create, makes him believe again and in a new way in the significance of an ideal feeling” (28; 181).

It is no coincidence that Yesenin placed these two cycles in one collection one after the other; they continue, develop and complement each other. Thus, “The Love of a Hooligan” is not free from the motifs of “Moscow Tavern”. For example, in the poem “I’m sad to look at you,” we clearly feel the imprint of the “tavern” period:

It makes me sad to look at you

What a pain, what a pity!

Know, only willow copper

We stayed with you in September.

Someone else's lips were torn apart

Your warmth and trembling body.

It's like it's drizzling rain

From a soul that is a little deadened (...)

After all, I didn’t save myself either

For a quiet life, for smiles.

So few roads have been traveled

So many mistakes have been made...

And the poem “Don’t torment me with coolness” opens with the confession: “Obsessed by severe epilepsy, My soul has become like a yellow skeleton.” Further, the author, contrasting reality with childhood dreams, ironically shows the real embodiment of the dream of fame, popularity and love. The turning point in the reasoning begins with a loudly declared “Yes!”, and then follows a listing of “riches” (“...Only a shirtfront remains With a fashionable pair of beat-up boots”), fame is characterized (“My name terrifies, Like a rude swear word from a fence” ), love (“You kiss, but your lips are like tin”). But here again a turn of thought is outlined, associated with the desire to again “dream like a boy - into the smoke” “about something else, about something new,” the name of which the poet cannot yet express in words. Thus, from the consciousness of obsession with “severe epilepsy,” the poet comes to the desire for a dream, which gives the end of the poem a life-affirming mood (Yudkevich; 166). But optimistic notes were already observed in the previous cycle. Despite the all-consuming motives of melancholy and spiritual emptiness, in “Moscow Tavern” there are breakthroughs to the light, to the desire to break with the tavern disappearance. So, in the finale of the poem “I have never been this tired before,” greetings are sent to “sparrows and crows, and the owl sobbing into the night.” Here he shouts with all his might, as if regaining his power: “Dear birds, tremble in the blue, tell me that I made a scandal...”

In the poem “This street is familiar to me,” which Yesenin later included in “Tavern Moscow,” light colors, the poet’s favorite colors, are already beginning to predominate: “wire blue straw,” “country blue,” “blue speckles,” “green paws,” “ blue smoke"... The poem feels nostalgia for his native land, a state of peace, complete harmony of the hero’s inner world when remembering his parental home:

And now, as soon as I close my eyes,

I only see my parents' house.

I see a garden dotted with blue,

Quietly August lay down against the fence.

Holding linden trees in green paws

Bird noise and chirping...

If earlier the poet firmly and unequivocally declared: “Yes! Now it’s decided. I left my native fields without return...”, now he realizes with quiet sadness: “Only closer to my native land I would now like to turn.” And the poem ends with a blessing:

Peace be with you - the straw of the field,

Peace be with you - wooden house!

The motif of “passing hooliganism”, moreover, the renunciation of scandals, the regret that he was all “like a neglected garden”, were heard in the first poem of the cycle “A Blue Fire Has Swept Up”:

A blue fire began to sweep,

Forgotten relatives.

For the first time I refuse to make a scandal (...)

I would forget the taverns forever

And I would have given up writing poetry,

Just touch your thin hand

And your hair is the color of autumn.

I would follow you forever

Whether in your own or in someone else's...

For the first time I sang about love,

For the first time I refuse to make a scandal.

Here the lyrical hero unequivocally declares: “I stopped liking drinking and dancing and losing my life without looking back.” He sees the meaning of his existence in looking at his beloved, “seeing the golden-brown pool of eyes,” touching her thin hand and her hair, “the color of autumn.” It becomes important for the hero to prove to his beloved “how a bully knows how to love, how he knows how to be submissive.” For the sake of love, he not only renounces the past, he is ready to forget his “homeland” and abandon his poetic vocation. The hero feels the possibility of renewal under the influence of love, and in the poem this is expressed by the subjunctive mood “I would only look at you,” “I would forget the taverns forever,” “I would follow you forever” (1; 100-101).

The motive of “passing hooliganism” as an already accomplished fact is stated in the poem “Let others drink you”:

I never lie with my heart,

I can confidently say

That I say goodbye to hooliganism.

The poem is permeated with an “autumn” mood (“the eye is autumn fatigue”, “September knocked on the window with a crimson willow branch” in accordance with the age and state of mind of the poet. But autumn motifs in this case not only do not bring with them sad notes, they sound unusually fresh and young:

Oh, the age of autumn! He told me

More precious than youth and summer...

The hero finds in the “age of autumn” a unique charm, determined by the fact that his beloved “began to please the poet’s imagination doubly.” He comes to the realization that his loved one is the only one the hero needs; in his opinion, only she “could be the poet’s companion”, she alone is capable of influencing a change in an already established way of life:

What could I do for you alone?

Brought up in constancy,

Sing about the twilight of the roads

And the disappearing hooliganism.

The love line continues its development in the poem “You are as simple as everyone else,” where the portrait of the beloved appears to the lyrical hero as the stern icon face of the Mother of God. Love makes him feel the “crazy heart of a poet” in his chest, gives rise to creative inspiration: “And now suddenly the words of the most tender and meek songs grow.” But the climax is the central fourth stanza, in which the hero clearly refuses “zenith” (glory) in the name of love and where the name of Augustus is beautifully played out in relation to the August coolness:

I don't want to fly to the zenith.

The heart needs too much.

Why does your name ring like that?

Like the coolness of August?

In the next poem (“Darling, let’s sit next to each other”) the lyrical hero is happy to “listen to a sensual blizzard” (a wonderful metaphor for love!). Even the appearance of his beloved with her “gentle gaze” is perceived by him as “salvation”:

This is autumn gold

This strand of whitish hair -

Everything appeared as salvation

Restless rake...

From the memoirs of contemporaries it is known that the relationship between Yesenin and Miklashevskaya is consistently reflected in the poems of the cycle: from the first, “A blue fire began to sweep,” to the final, “The evening raised black eyebrows,” where the hero in the rhetorical question “Didn’t I stop loving you yesterday?” makes it clear that love has passed. It is characteristic that at the same time the text of the poem is again saturated with gloomy colors: the dark-browed evening, the soaked youth, the snoring belated troika, the hospital bed that can “calm down” the hero forever, the dark forces that tormented him, destroying him... and against this background of the deepening darkness, a spell of memory sounds bright lines addressed to the one who has fallen out of love:

The appearance is affectionate! Cute look!

The only one I won’t forget is you!

“By saying goodbye to youth and love, the poet retains faith in life and happiness. From hysterical questions and hopeless judgments (...) he comes to the conviction that this is not the end of life, but the completion of a certain stage of life - “former life” (1; 104).

After a long break in Yesenin’s work, the love theme sounded again in the cycle “The Love of a Hooligan” and, in comparison with the poems of his early youth, acquired mature strength. The poet will return to this theme in the very last period of his life and add to it with new poetic masterpieces: “I remember, my love, I remember,” “The blizzard is crying like a gypsy violin,” “Oh, such a blizzard, just damn it!” and etc.

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The time of Yesenin’s creativity is an era of sharp turns in the history of Russia. One of the important milestones for any writer that affected creativity was the revolution, which turned the entire way of life upside down. Yesenin wrote in his autobiography: “I accepted the revolution, but with a peasant bias.” It couldn't have been any other way. Yesenin is not just a lyricist, he is a poet of great intelligence and deep philosophical reflection. The drama of his worldview, his intense search for truth, mistakes and weaknesses - all these are facets of enormous talent, but, studying his creative path, we can safely say that Yesenin was always true to himself in the main thing - in the desire to comprehend the difficult fate of his people. Yesenin responded to the revolution with poems “Little Post-Revolutionary Poems,” among which the following works can be named: “Comrade” (1917), “Jordanian Blue” (1919). With the help of allegorical images, Yesenin tries to comprehend the revolutionary events, to understand what the revolution will lead to. The poems have a high proportion of the conditional, which allows Yesenin to convey the general atmosphere of the first revolutionary years.
The poem "Comrade" recreates the power of the revolutionary explosion. Yesenin's last poetic work is the tragic poem "The Black Man". The year and a half the poet spent abroad was an exceptional period in his life: he did not write poetry, nothing inspired the poet far from his native land. It was there that the idea for the tragic poem “The Black Man” arose. Only abroad Yesenin realized what tremendous changes were taking place in his homeland. He notes in his diary that perhaps the Russian revolution will save the world from hopeless philistinism. After returning from abroad, Yesenin visits his native land. He is sad, it seems to him that the people do not remember him, that huge changes have taken place in the village, but in what direction, he could not determine. The poet writes:
This is how the country is! Why the hell am I yelling that I am friendly with the people.
My poetry is no longer needed here, And I myself am not needed here one bit. A peasant Komsomol comes from the mountain, zealously playing the accordion, singing Poor Demyan's propaganda, filling the valley with a cheerful cry.
These lines sound the motive of the uselessness of the “singer of the village” in the post-revolutionary years. As if the poet felt his future lack of demand. Indeed, in the years following his death, Yesenin’s lyrics were not included in school textbooks, falsely accusing him of lack of ideas. The best poets were erased from literature. Even earlier, in the poem “I’m tired of living in my native land,” he predicts his future:
I'm tired of living in my native land
Longing for the buckwheat expanses,
I will leave my hut,
I'll leave as a vagabond and a thief...
And the month will float and float,
Dropping oars across the lakes,
And Rus' will still live the same way,
Dance and cry at the fence.
In the poetry of subsequent years, the motif of sadness and regret for wasted forces is increasingly heard; his poetry emanates a kind of hopelessness. In “The Black Man” he writes tragic lines:
My friend, I am very, very sick,
I don’t know where this pain came from,
The wind is rustling in an open field,
Like a grove in September, alcohol burns your brain.
So, in Yesenin’s post-revolutionary work the theme of the Motherland and the fate of the artist is revealed. In Yesenin’s poetry, initially love for the Motherland was love-pain because the centuries-old traditions that formed the root of Russia were being destroyed.
The poet’s desire to accept the new reality, post-revolutionary Russia, was reflected in the 1925 poem “Uncomfortable liquid moonlight...”. In this work, the poet writes about his new mood. On the one hand, he admires the new, stone and steel, powerful country:
Now I like something else... And in the consumptive light of the moon, Through stone and steel, I see the power of my native country.
But at the same time, the image of poor and impoverished Rus' appears in the poem, which the poet cannot look at calmly:
Field Russia! Enough of dragging the plow across the fields! It hurts both birches and poplars to see your poverty.
Yesenin is a poet who did not stop loving his country and did not abandon it. He tried to accept the new world, although he did not experience such enthusiasm for revolutionary changes as, say, Mayakovsky. But Yesenin failed. Patriarchal Russia was too close to him.