ideology Soviet power Yesenin did not accept, like all sane people of that time.
The poems clearly reflect his contempt.
Empty fun, just talk.
Well, well, what did you take in return?
The same crooks came, the same thieves
And by the law of the revolution they were all taken prisoner.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
People honor customs as science,
Yes, but what is the meaning and use,
If many people blow their noses loudly into their hands,
Others must wear a handkerchief.
I'm disgusted to the devil
Both those and these.
I lost my balance...
And I know myself
Of course I'll be hung up
Someday to heaven.
Well, so what!
This is even better!
There you can light a cigarette about the stars ...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I'm not like that
How the cooks represent me.
I'm all blood
The brain and anger are all me.
My banditry is a special brand.
He is an awareness, not a profession.
Listen! I also once believed
In feelings:
In love, heroism and joy,
But now I understand at least
I realized that all this
Sheer crap.
For a long time I wallowed in hellish fever,
Wounded to the liver by a mockery of fate.
But... You know...
With the wisdom of his tavern
Everything burns alcohol with lamb ...
Now that cramp
Soul twisted
And the face is like a fading lantern in the fog,
I'm not building myself any scarecrow.
I only have -
To be naughty and hooligan...
To everyone who is poorer and less brained,
Who under the wind of fate was not poor and naked,
I leave to glorify cities and women,
And I will praise myself
Criminals and vagabonds.
Gangs! gangs!
Countrywide,
Wherever you look, wherever you go
You see how in space
on horseback
And no horses
Hardened bandits are jumping and walking.
It's all the same
Disillusioned like me...
And sometime, sometime...
cheerful guy,
Smelled to the bone
steppe grass,
I came to this city empty handed
But with a full heart
And not an empty head.
I believed... I burned...
I walked with the revolution
I thought that brotherhood is not a dream and not a dream,
That all will merge into one sea,
All hosts of nations,
Both races and tribes.
But to hell with it!
I am far from complaining.
Kohl began -
So let it begin...
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. A. Kuznetsov
Yesenin also gave an accurate assessment of the literature of that era.
“There was no more disgusting and filthy time in literary life than the time in which we live. The difficult state of the state over the years in the international struggle for its independence, by accidental circumstances, put forward revolutionary sergeant majors into the arena of literature, who have services to the proletariat, but not at all to art.
Having worked out for themselves the point of view of the common front, where every fog may seem to short-sighted eyes for a dangerous army, these types developed and strengthened Prishibey's morals in literature ... It has long become a clear fact, no matter how much Trotsky praised and recommended various Bezymyanskys, that proletarian art is worthless ... "
It was rightly noted, and no literary attempts of the "pompolitans" survived to posterity. Although previously they were imposed within the framework of school curriculum.
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. A. Treskin
Yesenin also spoke harshly about the works of the party's favorite and fighter against religious obscurantism Demyan Bedny (real name Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov).
... When I read in Pravda
The untruth about Christ of the lecherous Demyan.
I felt ashamed as if I had
Into the vomit vomited drunk...
No, you, Demyan, did not offend Christ,
You didn't hit him with your pen a lot.
There was a thief, Judas was.
You were just missing.
You are blood clots at the cross
He dug his nostril like a fat boar.
You only grunted at Christ,
Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov.
It should be noted that the "heroes" who launched the literary persecution of Yesenin in their time. Certainly loyal "fighters for the freedom of the people" (former criminals), editors of Moscow magazines: Lev Sosnovsky, one of the organizers of the execution royal family, and Boris Volin, the organizer of the mass executions of peasants. They acted together against Yesenin, but at the same time wrote denunciations against each other in the Central Committee of the party.
Here is such a typical face of the “heroes of the revolution”.
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. G. Ulybin
Yesenin in the Angleterre room. Rice. V. Shilov
January 1926, Leningrad
That evening the "pompolite" K* arrived in the fifth room of the Angleterre Hotel. After supper, Comrade K * sat down at his desk, wishing to work before going to bed. He was haunted by his party colleague. It was feared that he would pass Comrade K* up the party ladder very quickly. Comrade K * decided to act immediately, the fate of the competitor was decided ...
The hands on the clock showed midnight. Comrade K* felt an inexplicable piercing cold... Then someone's heavy footsteps were heard behind him, causing inexplicable horror in the "pompolitan"... The guest wanted to scream, but his voice did not obey... Comrade K* felt that his legs were getting cold and he could not move from place. The unknown person approached him and stopped... Obeying an unknown force, the "pompolit" slowly turned his head...
... Comrade K * was found on the floor of the room in the morning. When he came to his senses, he began to laugh hysterically, chatting some indistinct nonsense. An experienced party fighter kept talking about a ghost with a rope wound around his neck. The head of the hotel ordered that an ambulance brigade of the psychiatric hospital be immediately called so that the anti-Soviet propaganda of obscurantism, obsessively repeated by Comrade K*, would not embarrass respectable Soviet citizens.
The ghost of the Angleterre Hotel
Rumors about the ghost of the poet Yesenin began to appear immediately after his death. Of course, all stories about the supernatural were officially attributed to anti-Soviet obscurantism.
Photo of Yesenin a month before his death, November 1925
Now it is difficult to say exactly what he was. Judging by the photo, this is a kind person
In January 1926, at the request of Sofya Tolstaya, Yesenin's wife, the photographer Presnyakov took a photo of the hotel room where the poet's body was found.
In the photo you can see that the frills of the curtains are added with strokes by hand. If you look closely, you can see that the painted strokes hide the white silhouette of a human figure.
Curtain on the right with painted edges
You can, of course, explain it by a printing defect, but then why did the poet’s wife keep this particular low-quality photograph (the photographer must have taken several pictures)? And why were the edges of the curtains added?
“The souls of people forcibly killed do not soon leave the places of their death. The soul of a person who died here could appear in the photograph, ”one of the psychics expressed the opinion.
The old hotel building was destroyed in the 80s of the last century and rebuilt. Despite the fact that the Angleterre Hotel is a remake, there are still stories from guests about the ghost of a poet who roams the corridors. Ghosts are attached to the place of the tragic death, even if the house was demolished.
This is how the photo looked without the added edges
Facts are stubborn things
Yesenin himself feared murder.
"They want to kill me! I feel it like a beast!” he said.
The discrepancy between the facts in the version of suicide was noticed by forensic investigators who decided to look into the circumstances of the death of the poet decades later.
E.A. Khlystalov, senior investigator of the Main Department of Internal Affairs of Moscow (since 1963) notes:
“And no matter how much I peered into the photograph, I did not see signs of death from suffocation with a noose. There was no characteristically protruding tongue from the mouth, giving the face of the gallows a terrible expression ... "
“On the forehead of the corpse, just above the bridge of the nose, a lifetime injury is clearly visible. About such bodily injury, forensic experts conclude that it was caused by a blunt solid object and is classified as dangerous to human life and health ... ".
Photo of the murdered Yesenin on the sofa of the hotel. There is a dent on the forehead at the bridge of the nose from a blow.
Cuts on hand
Raises a question and the wound on Yesenin's hand. Supporters of the version of suicide claimed that the poet first cut his veins, and then changed his mind and decided to hang himself.
Criminalist E.A. Khlystalov writes about this:
“Having carefully studied the whole situation in the hotel room, I realized that this version does not stand up to criticism. Judge for yourself. The poet cuts his arm deep and waits for profuse bleeding to begin. Waiting. Consciousness does not lose. After some time, he decides to hang himself. Starts looking for rope. Finds. Unties from the suitcase. Then it climbs high under the ceiling (3 meters 80 centimeters) and begins to tie it to a vertical riser. To reach the top, the poet had to place an object with a fulcrum of about two meters. (His height is 168 centimeters). Moreover, with the obligatory condition that this item should stand next to the riser. There were no such objects near the place of the alleged hanging.”
Yesen's death mask. The dent from the impact on the forehead at the bridge of the nose is clearly visible
It is also surprising that the supposedly dying poem, written with blood from a cut vein. “While you write a line, you will bleed…”- notes the researcher E.A. Khlystalov.
It should be noted that the "suicide letter" was not examined by experts, no analysis was carried out - therefore, there is no evidence that it was written in Yesenin's blood.
A cut on Yesenin's right hand. He was not left-handed. If he wanted to cut his veins, he would cut left hand.
The text of the poem itself in meaning does not resemble a suicide note, the addressee of which he called by myself Wolf Ehrlich, who served in the OGPU. And it is strange that the dying lines were addressed precisely to the represented party spy.
Goodbye my friend, goodbye.
My dear, you are in my chest.
Destined parting
Promises to meet in the future.
Goodbye, my friend, without a hand, without a word,
Do not be sad and do not sadness of the eyebrows, -
In this life, dying is not new,
But to live, of course, is not newer.
Many years later, information appeared that these lines were written much earlier than December 1925. The poem is dedicated not to Wolf Erlich, but to Yesenin's friend who was shot, the poet Alexei Ganin.
Yesenin in the coffin. The face is heavily made up, but traces of beatings are visible
The version of suicide is clearly drawn. The only options left are:
- Yesenin was killed on the orders of the party leadership.
- Yesenin died during a brutal interrogation from beatings - and the executioners had to hastily create the appearance of suicide.
This is what the Angleterre hotel (the building on the left) looked like during Yesenin's time.
The new Angleterre Hotel today (my photos). By the way, it looks like the original was built.
Opinion of contemporaries
They whispered and wondered about the death of Yesenin. I did not believe in the version of suicide.
Even the famous poet of the revolution Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote:
"Why? For what? The misunderstanding was gone."
"Neither the noose nor the penknife will reveal to us the reasons for the loss."
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. V. Skorobeev
The poet Vasily Nasedkin (husband of Yesenin's sister, Catherine) said: “It doesn’t look like suicide ... Brains leaked out on my forehead ...”
One of the poet's friends, V. Knyazev, noticed that there were no traces of the rope, which usually remains on the neck of the gallows, on Yesenin's neck:
In a small dead room by the window -
Golden head on the chopping block:
The stripe on the neck is not visible -
Only blood turns black on the shirt ...
Yesenin's photo on the passport (1923)
The poet's friends, Nikolai Brown and Boris Lavrenev, refused to sign the protocol, which spoke of Yesenin's suicide.
The protocol was signed by the OGPU officer Wolf Ehrlich. Interestingly, those who saw Yesenin shortly before his death, and supposedly the poet's dying verses were dedicated to him.
Nikolai Brown reproached Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky, who also signed the protocol: “Seva, how could you subscribe to this! You didn’t see how Yesenin put a noose on himself!
He replied: “I was told that another signature is needed.”
Yesenin as Orpheus. Rice. ormona
Boris Lavrenev published an article "In memory of Yesenin" with the subtitle "Executed by degenerates" and epigraph "And you will not wash away the righteous blood with all your black blood of a poet."
The author spoke boldly: “And my moral duty requires me to tell the naked truth once in my life and call the executioners and murderers executioners and murderers, whose black blood will not wash away the blood stain on the shirt of the tortured poet.”
"He was tortured!"- recalled Nikolai Brown.
There was even an assumption that Yesenin was tortured in the dungeons of the OGPU, and an already dead body was brought to the hotel, after which they staged a suicide.
Former OGPU worker Pavel Luknitsky, who emigrated to Paris, wrote in his memoirs: “He was mutilated, there were traces of blood on his clothes, and his left eye was “missing.”
“Yesenin was a little like himself. During the autopsy, his face was corrected as best they could, but still ... in the upper corner of the right eye there is a nodule ... and the left eye is flat: it leaked out. There was no blueness in the face: it was pale, and only red spots and darkened abrasions stood out.
At first there was a cross on Yesenin's grave
Yesenin was buried in the church, and a cross was originally placed on the poet's grave. The Church does not bury suicides in a Christian way. Contemporaries understood the true cause of death, so the priest did not refuse to perform the ceremony and agreed to put a cross on the grave.
Yesenin and the power of the Bolsheviks
Yesenin did not accept the ideology of Soviet power, like all sane people of that time.
The poems clearly reflect his contempt.
Empty fun, just talk.
Well, well, what did you take in return?
The same crooks came, the same thieves
And by the law of the revolution they were all taken prisoner.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
People honor customs as science,
Yes, but what is the meaning and use,
If many people blow their noses loudly into their hands,
Others must wear a handkerchief.
I'm disgusted to the devil
Both those and these.
I lost my balance...
And I know myself
Of course I'll be hung up
Someday to heaven.
Well, so what!
This is even better!
There you can light a cigarette about the stars ...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I'm not like that
How the cooks represent me.
I'm all blood
The brain and anger are all me.
My banditry is a special brand.
He is an awareness, not a profession.
Listen! I also once believed
In feelings:
In love, heroism and joy,
But now I understand at least
I realized that all this
Sheer crap.
For a long time I wallowed in hellish fever,
Wounded to the liver by a mockery of fate.
But... You know...
With the wisdom of his tavern
Everything burns alcohol with lamb ...
Now that cramp
Soul twisted
And the face is like a fading lantern in the fog,
I'm not building myself any scarecrow.
I only have -
To be naughty and hooligan...
To everyone who is poorer and less brained,
Who under the wind of fate was not poor and naked,
I leave to glorify cities and women,
And I will praise myself
Criminals and vagabonds.
Gangs! gangs!
Countrywide,
Wherever you look, wherever you go
You see how in space
on horseback
And no horses
Hardened bandits are jumping and walking.
It's all the same
Disillusioned like me...
And sometime, sometime...
cheerful guy,
Smelled to the bone
steppe grass,
I came to this city empty handed
But with a full heart
And not an empty head.
I believed... I burned...
I walked with the revolution
I thought that brotherhood is not a dream and not a dream,
That all will merge into one sea,
All hosts of nations,
Both races and tribes.
But to hell with it!
I am far from complaining.
Kohl began -
So let it begin...
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. A. Kuznetsov
Yesenin also gave an accurate assessment of the literature of that era.
“There was no more disgusting and filthy time in literary life than the time in which we live. The difficult state of the state over the years in the international struggle for its independence, by accidental circumstances, put forward revolutionary sergeant majors into the arena of literature, who have services to the proletariat, but not at all to art. Having worked out for themselves the point of view of the common front, where every fog may seem to short-sighted eyes for a dangerous army, these types developed and strengthened Prishibey's morals in literature ... It has long become a clear fact, no matter how much Trotsky praised and recommended various Bezymyanskys, that proletarian art is worthless ... "
It was rightly noted, and no literary attempts of the "pompolitans" survived to posterity. Although earlier they were imposed as part of the school curriculum.
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. A. Treskin
Yesenin also spoke harshly about the works of the party's favorite and fighter against religious obscurantism Demyan Bedny (real name Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov).
... When I read in Pravda
The untruth about Christ of the lecherous Demyan.
I felt ashamed as if I had
Into the vomit vomited drunk...
No, you, Demyan, did not offend Christ,
You didn't hit him with your pen a lot.
There was a thief, Judas was.
You were just missing.
You are blood clots at the cross
He dug his nostril like a fat boar.
You only grunted at Christ,
Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov.
It should be noted that the "heroes" who launched the literary persecution of Yesenin in their time. Of course, the faithful "fighters for the freedom of the people" (former criminals), editors of Moscow magazines: Lev Sosnovsky, one of the organizers of the execution of the royal family, and Boris Volin, the organizer of the mass executions of peasants. They acted together against Yesenin, but at the same time wrote denunciations against each other in the Central Committee of the party.
Here is such a typical face of the “heroes of the revolution”.
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. G. Ulybin
Motives for the murder
Perhaps the decision of the top leadership of the party is to remove the objectionable. Yesenin became an opponent of Soviet power, became uncomfortable. Those who "make a lot of noise" are usually disposed of.
Or perhaps a spontaneous decision of party spies. The Chekists feared that Yesenin would go abroad from Leningrad, in which case their head would be cut off. The poet's friend Nikolai Brown spoke about this motif.
Shot Aleksey Ganin, before his death, managed to hand over his articles to Yesenin, in which he calls the Soviet government the power of "fiends and sadists", and asked to publish them abroad.
The poet wrote to a friend in September “In order to get rid of some scandals ... I will wave abroad. There, dead lions are more beautiful than our live medical dogs.”
A special role could be played by the envy of colleagues in the pen, part-time employees of the OGPU. Yesenin was banned, but his poems were read, secretly passing books to each other, and romances on his texts were sung everywhere "from trustworthy living rooms to thieves' prisons." Spying poets favored by the authorities could not boast of people's love for their work. The situation is not new when a genius faces villains.
Portrait of Yesenin. Rice. V. Shilov
If they hide, then there are reasons
Access to the materials of Yesenin's case is still classified as "Secret".
Yesenin's relatives have not yet received permission for exhumation and examination. Even the area around Yesenin's grave was concreted.
Perhaps exhumation is impossible, because Yesenin's body is not in the grave.
The driver, who worked in the OGPU in the 1920s, later told “We took out Yesenin's coffin and handed it over to another group, which took it deep into the cemetery. And they themselves remained to put the grave in order.
S. Bezrukov as Yesenin
A documentary film about Yesenin based on unique archival materials “My dears! Good ones!" director Vladimir Parshikov, who received awards at film festivals, was not accepted for showing by federal channels.
The episode of the program “The Battle of Psychics”, dedicated to Yesenin, was greatly reduced. Svetlana Petrovna Yesenina, the poet's niece - the guest of the program, said that seven out of nine psychics confirmed the version of violent death. But with "skillful" editing, as a result, something indistinct came out on the air.
Postage stamps with Yesenin's portrait
If they are still trying to hide the circumstances of Yesenin's death, then this is beneficial to someone. Perhaps the threads of the "Yesenin case" somehow reached our era ...
As Yesenin's biographers note, the authorities made efforts to emphasize negative image poet: womanizer and alcoholic. Of course, the dead can no longer argue.
Graffiti with a portrait of Yesenin
Writer Leonid Leonov said:
- The greatest poet of our time...
- His songs are sung everywhere - from our trustworthy living rooms to the thieves' prison. Because he had a song talent in himself, he carried a great song power in himself ...
- He will no longer come and make noise, Yesenin ...
– He is an eternal rebel and seditious, a miracle of nature, a unique figure in the history of the twentieth century.
"Give me a paw, Jim, for good luck." Authors M. Bernatskaya and K. Patov
Thanks to the poet's relatives and researchers, we get the opportunity to get at least a grain of information about Yesenin's death, to understand how attracted the version of suicide is.
The poet's niece Svetlana Petrovna Yesenina notes in an interview:
“We only want to remove the stigma of the “suicide hanged man” from S. A. Yesenin. We want his moral rehabilitation in the eyes of the Russian and world community.”
How the Bolsheviks raised Yesenin
It is known that Lenin and Trotsky did not have much reverence for the poetry of Demyan Bedny. “Rough. He follows the reader, but you have to be ahead, ”the leader once said. Trotsky, too, although he sang his praises in the article "Literature and Revolution", did it not from a pure heart, but out of necessity.
Many people came to the revolution “from the plow”. Learned how to wield a saber. They also tried to take poetry by storm, as they recently took Perekop. So they wrote: "Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny / Rode on a frisky mare." Or: “I’ll torn my shirt like a sailor - / And I’ll shout: “Long live Trotsky!”
The young people were full of revolutionary enthusiasm, but is this really poetry? And until when could the farcical Demyan be considered the first proletarian poet?
“The face, I must say frankly, does not inspire sympathy, and the atmosphere around him is not fragrant ... He will be a lackey, but there are nameless older and younger ones for this.”
(Trotsky)
And whom, pray tell, will you order to caress and uplift? Blok with his "Twelve" - "the first poem about the revolution"? So this very revolution came out with something not very attractive, with some pogrom slogans:
Lock up the floors.
Today there will be robberies!
We are on the mountain to all bourgeois
Let's fan the world fire
World fire in the blood -
God! Bless!
Trotsky was smart enough to silently pass Blok's poem, in which many (M. Gorky, K. Chukovsky and others) saw "satire and evil satire."
Yesenin also does not inspire confidence, you have to work and work with him. “Revolution, you see, destroys a person”, “My revolution has not yet come!” Just look, he will run away to the West, although he declares himself “to the left of the Bolsheviks”:
Now in the Soviet side
I am the most furious fellow traveler.
“How come, fellow traveler! To what station? - Trotsky clarified sarcastically.
No, Sergei Alexandrovich, we still have to make you a Bolshevik, but if we don’t, then we’ll break you! There is only Mayakovsky now, but who is not tired of the rumbling of a barrel on a cobbled pavement? After the roar of war and devastation, people want silence and sincerity, but he “yells, invents crooked words,” Lenin grumbles with displeasure. But one has to be content with such poetry!
Of course, on duty, it is more convenient for Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky to deal with the education and re-education of poets, but it was the right time to re-educate him. Bukharin was also unsuited for this purpose, although he was considered the main ideologist of Bolshevism. Trotsky, as the most educated Bolshevik leader, closely watched, directed and commanded in literature. And what came of it? All poets and writers silver age"left Bolshevik Russia, there were "unreliable", "unstable", "politically limited fellow travelers". Involuntarily, one had to sing praises to proletarian poets and publish green youth.
Trotsky did not stand on ceremony with poets:
"Joining neither polar star they won’t remove from the sky, they won’t invent soundless gunpowder. But they are useful, necessary - they will be used as manure for a new crop. And this is not so little at all ... We are very well aware of the political narrow-mindedness, instability, and unreliability of fellow travelers. But if we throw out Pilnyak with his "Naked Year", the serapions with Vsevolod Ivanov, Tikhonov and Polonskaya, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, then what, in fact, will remain, except for the still unpaid bills for future proletarian literature?
The field of art is not one where the party can command.
The words are correct, but one should not take them at face value - they were said when the party had already pronounced a verdict on all those who were "on their own." The “frantic communist” (as St. Kunyaev calls him), journalist and party leader Georgy Ustinov, published this decision in his 1923 article. In her peasant poets Yesenin, Klyuev, Klychkov and Oreshin were first called "psycho bandits", and the chapter of the article was called "Condemned to death".
“Do poets sense their doom? Certainly. Grandfather's Rus' is gone, and with it, with a melancholic song, its poets depart. “For me, Proletkult will not cry, / And Smolny will not cook kutya,” Nikolai Klyuev sighs melancholy. And Yesenin, the brightest, most gifted poet of the transitional era and the most incorrigible psycho bandit, echoes his brother: “I last poet villages."
Why was Yesenin not along the way with the Bolsheviks?
“Vardin is very good to me and very attentive. He is a wonderful, simple and warm person. Everything he does in literary politics he does as an honest communist. The only trouble is that he loves communism more than literature.”
Yesenin wrote this to his sister, but he knew that all his letters would become the property of well-known authorities. Galina Benislavskaya quotes these lines, and adds on her own behalf: “Vardin, despite the narrowness of his views, had a beneficial effect on Sergei Alexandrovich in the sense of determining his “political orientation” (...) “ Good attitude to Vardin he had forever. Even in a letter from the Caucasus to Katya, mentioning that he did not go along with Vardin, he spoke of Vardin as a wonderful person.
All the Bolsheviks who closely surrounded Yesenin - and Vardin, and Voronsky, and Berzin, and others - were undoubtedly good people but they loved communism more than literature.
Yesenin said definitely:“I will give my whole soul to October and May, but I won’t give up only the sweet lyre.” Albert Rhys tells Williams:“I met Yesenin shortly after his breakup with the dancer Isadora Duncan. Yesenin was looking for a spacious and comfortable apartment. But in overpopulated Moscow it was difficult to find such an apartment, and someone advised the poet to turn to Kalinin.
It doesn't matter, - Yesenin declared with all the self-confidence of youth, - he will be glad to see Pushkin of today's Russia, - and immediately added, - or any of his friends.
I must say that Yesenin did not have an apartment. No. For all the years of his stay in his beloved Moscow, he never had his own corner. Everyone has been writing about Yesenin's homelessness over the past two years. Here is a literally anecdotal episode: “The friend with whom Yesenin came asks him:“ Where are you going to spend the night? - “I don’t know,” the poet answers, “let’s go at least to you.” A. Nazarova told about the same: “Yesenin was terribly tormented, having no permanent shelter. On Bogoslovsky - Mariengof and Kolobov needed a room, on Nikitskaya - Galya and I lived in the same room. He either spent the night with us, then at Bogoslovsky, then somewhere else, like a stray dog, wandering around and being unable to either work in peace or live in peace ... His sister also huddled somewhere in Zamoskvorechye. Another sister was supposed to come from the village.”
The poet took the advice of his friends and went to Kalinin. What the conversation was between them, we probably will never know, but, apparently, Mikhail Ivanovich was not simple and advised Yesenin to leave for his village and live there for two years. In other words, he advised me to get out of Moscow and sit in the wilderness. Kalinin must have had reasons for such advice. Yesenin did not listen to Mikhil Ivanovich. And what immediately followed this disobedience? All hardships fell upon Yesenin: collections were not published, poems were not printed.
In one of his poems he wrote:
I am the rightful owner of the Russian country,
Like a stray dog roamed the earth.
The bookstore, from which he had some income, passed into other hands. The Pegasus Stall Cafe, where he was the owner on shares with others and received dividends, went bankrupt, it was also closed soon after.
Isadora sent a reassuring telegram:
“My work is brilliant. Trotsky was. He treated me amazingly. Thanks to his help, they now give me large funds for the publishing house.
But what is it really? Yesenin has always been difficult, but he has never had such a difficult time. Read the lines from the diary of Galina Benislavskaya, which have never been published:
“Understand,” the poet complained, “I am not the master in my house, I have to knock on my house, and they don’t open it for me.”
“Sometimes it seemed to him, and in fact it was, that he was rejected and rejected. After all, after all, the entire peasantry of the USSR is ideologically alien to the communist worldview, but we are drawing it into new construction.
We involve because it is a force, a large value. It was very hard for Sergei Alexandrovich that he was ignored in this regard as a person and as a social figure. The situation was created like this: either come to us with a ready-made worldview, or we don’t need you, you are a poisonous flower that can only poison the psyche of young people.
Sergei Alexandrovich suffered greatly from his inactivity.“They will not be forgiven for this, they will be avenged for this. Let me be a victim, I must be a victim for everyone who is "not allowed." They don't let me, they don't want to, well, we'll see. Everyone gets mad at me. This is not a pound of raisins for you. How else get angry. And we are all evil. You do not know how angry we are if we are offended. Don't touch it or it will be bad. I will scream, I will, I will be everywhere. Planted - let planted - it will be even worse. We always wait and endure for a long time. But don't touch! No need!"
“For how many years our authorities hid these ingenuous lines of a person close to the poet. And all in order to hide the truth about the persecution of Yesenin by the leaders of the Bolsheviks for political reasons. - said Eduard Khlystalov.
Evdokimov's memoirs also testify to how the Bolsheviks "educated" Yesenin (chapter "On a wooden sofa").
“In August, the Literary and Art Department was transferred along the same corridor to the very end. In two small rooms, cluttered with cupboards and tables with bad archaic heating, with overcrowding of the rooms with service personnel and the visiting public, it was heavy and stuffy. And brought: do not smoke in the rooms.
In the corridor at the door they put a small, for three, wooden sofa. On this sofa, perhaps, a rare contemporary writers did not spend a few minutes of his life.
And almost every visit to Yesenin also began with this sofa. He came, lit a cigarette - and went out into the corridor.
Throughout the autumn he visited quite often. And somehow it happened that most often I met him on the couch, noticing from a distance in the corridor a familiar figure ...
Usually, monthly payments of a thousand rubles had to be issued by power of attorney to Yesenin either to his wife or to his cousin Ilya Yesenin. Before the poet's marriage to SL. Tolstoy received money from his sister, EL. Yesenin.
In order to: save money, when the poet came for them in a state of intoxication, we considered it our duty not to give him money.
Under a plausible pretext, I quickly went to the lower floor, to the financial sector, warned our workmates not to give money to Yesenin at the cash desk, or took an already issued warrant from the cash desk. In cases of the poet's persistence, the issuance was delayed until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, then they gave him a check to the bank, when operations were already stopped there that day. In the latter case, there was hope that the poet would sober up in the morning and the money would not go to waste.
It must be said that not only Yesenin was brought up by the Bolshevik government in this way. They remember, for example, how Vladimir Mayakovsky tap-danced in the office of the chief accountant with a promise that he would not leave until all the money was on the table. From all the offices, employees and employees came to watch and admire this spectacle. Mayakovsky knew how to get his way.
Yesenin did not have such a stranglehold. He was delicate, and if he left empty-handed, he did not look into his eyes. He was ashamed of the people. And Evdokimov remembered all his life this guilt before Yesenin.
Suppose that Yesenin, "educating", was deprived of money for the purpose of "prevention", but in the same way, Benislavskaya or sister Katya had to travel many times, "and often there was not even a tram." Did this also contribute to a “sober existence” or, on the contrary, pushed you to the taverns with a desire to drown out the insult?
Even on the last day, leaving Moscow for good, he failed to receive money, despite the fact that he came from the hospital three days before departure, warning about this.
The warrant has been issued, - said Evdokimov, - but you came too early.
Yesenin did not receive either in the morning, or after two, or after four. And he left for Leningrad without money.
After leaving Isadora, as you know, Yesenin lived with G. Benislavskaya. She recalls:
“The three of us had to live (I am Katya and Sergey Alexandrovich) in one small room, and in the autumn of 1924 a fourth was added - Shurka. And spending the night in our apartment is generally something indescribable. In my room - I, Sergey Alexandrovich, Klyuev, Ganin and someone else, and in the next small, cold room, on a broken camp bed - one of Sergey Alexandrovich's companions or Katya. Later, in 1925, the picture changed somewhat: in one room - Sergei Alexandrovich, Sakharov, Muran, Boldovkin, nearby in the same little room in which her mistress lived by that time - the owner of the room herself was on the bed, and on the floor, at the window - her sister, all the space between the wall and the bed was given to us - me, Shura and Katya, and the last of us slept half under the bed.
Well, how difficult it was for Sergei Alexandrovich with money - this cannot be described in words. "Projector", "Krasnaya Niva" and "Spark" paid carefully. But only new poems were handed over to the magazines, and this money could not be enough.
"Krasnaya nov" paid a nightmare. Almost every other day I had to go there (and often there was no tram) in order to finally catch the moment when the cashier had money. In addition, more than once they gave out in parts, at 30 rubles, and in the meantime debts accumulated, the money was needed in the village, often Sergei Alexandrovich asked to be sent. The situation was such that sometimes my salary personally saved us, and I received a little, 70 rubles. In total, there were four permanent “dependents” (mother, father and two sisters), and they lived in different places, parents in the village, sisters in Moscow, and Sergei Alexandrovich himself throughout the USSR.
(...) Never in my life before and after that I did not know the value of money and did not appreciate all the charm of receiving a certain salary, when, in essence, you depend only on the calendar.
5. Bolsheviks The plant has been working for more than a year, and people kept coming and coming to Pechatkino. No one knew or counted how many people had gathered here; some said - five, others - eight thousand. In a short time, four drinking houses lined up in one row near the entrance of the plant
CHAPTER XX STALIN, MEN, AND BOLSHEVIKS The Father of Nations first appeared in Prishvin's Diary in 1924: “Stalin issued a pamphlet against Trotsky 'Trotskyism or Leninism' - it is impossible to pronounce it, while Kamenev called his pamphlet 'Leninism or Trotskyism' - it is pronounceable.
CHAPTER 15 STALIN, BOLSHEVIKS AND MEN The father of peoples first appeared in Prishvin's Diary in 1924: “Stalin published a pamphlet against Trotsky “Trotskyism or Leninism” - it is impossible to pronounce it, and Kamenev called his pamphlet “Leninism or Trotskyism” - it is pronounceable.
THE BOLSHEVIKS The changes that took place in the country changed the face of the once prim capital of the empire. The daughter of the British ambassador, Miri-el Buchanan, saw revolutionary Petrograd like this: “Dirty red flags now fluttered over winter palace, fortress and government
Chapter thirty-six. BOLSHEVIK AGAINST BOLSHEVIK The Cheka was almost abolished a year after its creation! Of course, it would not have come to this, but at one time it seemed so. Far from everyone in the Bolshevik
Chapter sixteen. Bolsheviks in power I was returning to the front. The trains were terribly crowded, but, fortunately, I managed to get a seat in a first-class carriage. In Molodechno, I reported on the arrival to the commander of the 10th Army, General Valuev, and dined at his headquarters, along with
Chapter 3 Esenin's Posthumous Sin I have an irony... If you want to know, Heine is my teacher. (Yesenin about himself. From the memoirs of Erlich) In the memoirs of P. Chagin, Yesenin mentions the name of Heinrich Heine next to the name of Karl Marx. Meanwhile, Yesenin assured that "under no weather"
19 Evening at the Polytechnic Museum. Yesenin's student Augusta Miklashevskaya. What happened after Yesenin's death Re-registration of the "Association" Some critics and literary critics were convinced that Yesenin's article "Life and Art" began a break with the Imagists. The same
20 Yesenin's quarrel with Mariengof. "Masculine" act. An incident in a pub. Trial of 4 poets. Yesenin's suspicious environment In the same October 1923, Sergei met Kozhebatkin, went with him to some cafe. Alexander Melentievich told Yesenin why they didn’t pay
24 Yesenin's triumph in the Union of Poets. Prototypes of Yesenin's heroines. Who is the northerner in "Persian Motifs"? End of the Freethinker. Explanations of Vsevolod Ivanov The beginning of Yesenin's evening in the club of poets was scheduled at nine o'clock, but even earlier the club was crowded with members of the Union
25 Yesenin and Mariengof in the Mouse Hole. Yesenin's marriage to S. A. Tolstoy. Esenin's speech at the Press House We called our new cafe on the corner of Kuznetsky Most "Mouse Hole". On the wall near the buffet counter, Borya Erdman mounted a spectacular showcase on a wooden shield
Chapter 8. Yesenin's son comes from America to his father's grave "... it's not worth living more days anyway ..." When Nadezhda and Osip Mandelstam came to Leningrad, they stayed at the house of Nadezhda Volpin. Once the mistress's little son was asked, pointing to Osip Emilievich:
CHAPTER FIVE The Second Congress of the R.S.D.R.P. Abroad and the Split in the Party. - Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. - Bronstein-Trotsky, Plekhanov and Lenin In November 1902, having finished my term of exile, I returned to Nikolaev. There, I soon had to plunge headlong into the affairs of the local Social Democratic
Chapter 5 The Bolsheviks are in power The Bolsheviks are in power, but the vast majority of the noble-bourgeois St. Petersburg treats this fact extremely superficially: "Is it conceivable? A coming phenomenon! Somehow it will end, and, obviously, very soon ..." But how and why "is obvious ", none
How children were raised in the families of Pushkin and Solzhenitsyn ... It is impossible to raise children well if you yourself are bad. Leo Tolstoy Natalya Pushkina-Lanskaya Thoughts on marriage From the letters of N. N. Pushkina-Lanskaya to P. P. Lansky. "Our Heritage", No. 3, 1990 ... And now I return to your
Chapter eight. Bolsheviks 1. The persecution of religion, which began immediately after the Bolshevik coup, surprised the naive VA Platonova: she could not understand why the government, which declared itself to be the people, acts against the traditional folk beliefs. Alexei
High School Program
We will gather at a common table, where different social strata of society, different political parties of the early 20th century will meet face to face: Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, revolutionary Kombediks and kulaks, class-conscious proletarians and backward peasants, poets of the Proletkult and representatives of the “decaying” bourgeois literature.
In our debate, we will touch on many topics of the pre- and post-revolutionary period. Here are some of them:
- "Screaming" slogans of the new government and the poetic rise of S.A. Yesenin.
- "Civil war in the countryside" and the resistance of the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik opposition in the Soviets.
- “There can only be two parties: one in power, the other in prison” (A.N. Bukharin). The role of the Soviets in the poet's creative life.
- “Put the bourgeoisie on an eighth ... and give the proletariat bread” (V.I. Lenin). population decline Soviet Russia and the critical situation of villages, on the example of Konstantinovo.
- The long-awaited "Decree on Land" as a counteraction to Lenin's decree "On Emergency Powers ...".
- Vera S.A. Yesenin to a renewed Russia (“Heavenly Drummer”, “Transfiguration”, “Inonia” and unconscious concern for its future (“Country Book of Hours”, “Country of Scoundrels”)
- Imagism as "clownish antics for the sake of antics" and folk art as a standard of true figurativeness.
- Duplicity, betrayal, permissiveness of the new "friends" of the poet (Blyumkin, Ustinov, Trotsky, Kamenev) and Yesenin's departure from the galaxy of peasant poets.
The program is accompanied by reading poems by S.A. Yesenin, a story about his personal life.
The duration of the program with a tour of the museum is 1 hour 30 minutes.
Yesenin is equally loved by both communists and anti-communists. Yesenin's work is not homogeneous: he has works both for the Soviet government and against it.
With Yesenin, not everything is clear ...
In fact, on the one hand, the poet once wrote a statement with a request to be admitted to the Bolshevik Party, and on the other, as V.F. Khodasevich, “Drunken Yesenin ... shouted at the whole restaurant ... “Beat the Communists, save Russia” ... So to cover the Bolsheviks, as Yesenin publicly did, could not have occurred to anyone in Soviet Russia.”
I will not cite memoirs, I will even try to reason as little as possible, I will simply cite excerpts from the poet's works. Let the reader decide for himself who Yesenin was - a Bolshevik or an anti-Bolshevik.
Part one
Yesenin is a Bolshevik.
1. Early poems
Come down, appear to us, red horse!
Harness yourself to the lands of the shafts.
We got bitter milk
Under this dilapidated roof.
Spill, spill over the water for us
Your muffled whining
And a bell-star
Cold glow.
We are a rainbow to you - an arc,
The Arctic Circle - on the harness.
Oh, take out our globe
On a different track.
(“Pantocrator”, 1919).
Stars are shedding leaves
In the rivers in our fields
Long live the revolution
On earth and in heaven! ("Heavenly Drummer", 1918-19).
The sky is like a bell
The month is the language
My mother is the motherland
I am a Bolshevik. (“Jordan Dove”, 1918)
2. Song of the Great Campaign, 1924
Here is how Yesenin writes about whites:
If they press harder
You scream harder.
One man:
They wouldn't trample the rye.
And how did she go
Here is the army of Denikin -
Lies hundreds of miles away
She's straight to hell.
Over such trouble
In the camp of the whites they neigh.
Rural livestock being felled
And they drink vodka.
They crush peasant wives,
The girls are pawing.
"So you need
Sivopaws!
You, man, are a scoundrel!
Bastard, bastard!
Repay us
For estates."
Now for the reds:
But the strongest
Those are worried
That they don't sleep at night
In leather jackets
Who is the poor people
Happy to live and die
Who doesn't want to give up
Free St. Petersburg.
3. About Lenin
Lines from the poem "Letter to a Woman" (1924):
Now the years have passed.
I'm at a different age.
I feel and think differently.
And I say over the festive wine:
Praise and glory to the helmsman!
Lines from the poem "Stans" (1924):
I see everything.
And I clearly understand
What a new era -
Not a pound of raisins for us
What is the name of Lenin
Noisy, like the wind on the edge,
Giving thought a go
Like mill wings.
Lines from The Ballad of Twenty-Six (1924):
Communism -
The banner of all freedoms.
Boiled like a hurricane
People.
Embarked on an empire
In a row
And the peasant
And the proletariat.
There, in Russia,
Noble scourge
Our father was strict
Ilyich.
Lines from the poem "Walking Field":
Monarchy! An ominous stench!
For centuries there were feast after feast,
And sold the power to an aristocrat
industrialists and bankers.
The people groaned, and in this horror
The country was waiting for someone...
And he came.
He is a powerful word
He led us all to new beginnings.
He told us: “To end the torment,
Take everything into working hands.
There is no more salvation for you -
Like your power and your Council."
And we went under the screech of a snowstorm,
Where did his eyes look?
Let's go where he saw
Liberation of all tribes...
And then he died...
Crying is annoying.
Muses do not praise the voice of troubles.
Of the coppery hulks
The last salute is given, given.
THE ONE WHO SAVE US is no more.
Lines from the poem "Answer" (1924):
But this wickedness
Cold planet!
Her and the Sun-Lenin
Until melted!
From these passages it is clear that Yesenin clearly sympathizes with Lenin.
Part two
Yesenin-anti-Bolshevik
The Bolshevik government demanded from people who lived in revolutionary times that they obey the laws of this time. This worldview was clearly defined by the poet E. Bagritsky. Speaking about the revolutionary century in which he and Yesenin happened to live, he wrote:
But if he [the century] says:
"Lie" - lie,
But if he says:
"Kill" - kill ...
Sergei Yesenin from childhood was brought up on Christian, Orthodox values, so he preached otherwise. In one of his youthful letters to his friend G. Panfilov, Yesenin said: “Yes, Grisha, love and pity people - criminals, scoundrels, liars, sufferers, and righteous people: you could and can be any of them. Love the oppressors too, and do not stigmatize, but reveal with caress the vital illnesses of people.
1. Yesenin against inhumanity
I am not a villain and I did not rob the forest,
He did not shoot the unfortunate in dungeons,
I'm just a street rake
Smiling at the people he meets (“I won’t deceive myself”, 1922)
In 1919, in the short poem "Mare Ships", the poet, referring to the animals, which, in his opinion, became better people, speaks:
I won't go anywhere with people
It's better to die together with you,
Than from your beloved to raise the earth
Into the crazy passing stone.
In the same poem there are also such lines that speak of his attitude towards the revolutionaries:
With oars of severed hands
You are rowing into the land of the future.
In "Letter to a Woman" (1924), the poet wrote:
You didn't know
That I'm in solid smoke
In a life torn apart by a storm
That's why I suffer that I do not understand -
Where the rock of events takes us.
Having failed to understand the events, the poet himself removed himself from them. From the same letter:
And I bent over the glass
So that, without suffering for anyone,
destroy yourself
In a frenzy drunk.
Does Yesenin like what is happening? Most likely no:
Friends! Friends!
What a split in the country
What sadness in a merry boil!
Know that's why I want so much
Pull up your pants
Run after the Komsomol. ("Rus' is leaving", 1924).
Yesenin (for the first time after his foreign trip) spent several days in his native village.
The poet's encounter with the countryside is described in his poem "Return to the Homeland" (1924). Here is an excerpt from this piece:
"Good, my grandson,
It’s good that you didn’t recognize your grandfather! .. "
"Oh, grandfather, is it really you?"
And a sad conversation flowed
Tears warm on dusty flowers.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"You'll probably be thirty soon...
And I'm ninety...
Soon to the coffin.
It's high time to go back."
He speaks, while he wrinkles his forehead.
"Yes!.. Time!..
Are you not a communist?"
"No!.."
"And the sisters became members of the Komsomol.
Such disgusting! Just choke!
Yesterday the icons were thrown from the shelf,
On the church, the commissioner removed the cross.
Now there is nowhere for God to pray.
Now I'm stealthily walking into the forest,
I pray to donkeys...
Might be useful...
Go home -
You will see for yourself."
And we go, trampling the border of the puppetry.
I smile at arable land and forests,
And grandfather looks longingly at the bell tower.
Yesenin repents of his former revolutionary moods, which he writes about in the poem "Snowstorm" (1924):
And the first
I need to hang
Crossing my arms behind my back
For the fact that the song
hoarse and sick
I interfered with sleep
Native country.
2. "Capital"
About "Capital", a book revered by the Bolsheviks, Yesenin wrote repeatedly, and without much respect.
And here the sister breeds,
Having opened, like the Bible, pot-bellied "Capital",
About Marx,
Engels...
Under no weather
I haven't read these books, of course. ("Homecoming" 1924)
Turn around, darlings!
A promise is promised to you.
I am your nephew
You are all my uncles.
Come on Sergey
We will quietly sit down for Marx,
Smell the wisdom
Boring lines. ("Stans", 1924).
And, himself
Stroking on the neck
I speak:
"Our time has come,
Come on Sergey
We will quietly sit down for Marx,
To unravel
The wisdom of boring lines. ("Stans", 1924).
And say out loud:
"Here's a freak!
He is in life
Rumbled a lot...
But I couldn't overcome
five pages
From Capital. ("Snowstorm", 1924).
Earth, earth!
You are not metal
Metal after all
Doesn't bud.
Enough to hit
On the line
And suddenly -
Understand Capital. ("Spring", 1924).
3. "Country of scoundrels."
In 1923, in a letter to A. Kusikov, Sergei Alexandrovich wrote: “I cease to understand to which revolution I belonged. I see only one thing, that neither for February, nor for October ... "
Why so - he explained in the poem "Country of Scoundrels":
Gangs! Gangs!
Countrywide.
Wherever you look, wherever you go,
You see how in space
on horseback
And no horses
Hardened bandits are jumping and walking.
It's all the same
Disillusioned like me...
And sometime, sometime...
cheerful guy,
Smelled to the bone
steppe grass,
I came to this city empty handed
But with a full heart
And not an empty head.
I believed... I burned...
I walked with the revolution
I thought that brotherhood is not a dream and not a dream,
That all will merge into one sea -
All hosts of nations,
Both races and tribes.
Empty fun.
Some conversations!
So what?
Well, what did we take in return?
The same crooks came, the same thieves
And with the revolution
Everyone was taken prisoner...
This is Nomah's monologue. Nomah is a bandit. It is not difficult to guess that Nestor Makhno is hiding under the name of Nomakh.
Here is what Nomah says about the Bolsheviks:
All of you wear sheepskins,
And the butcher shepherds knives for you.
You are all herd!
Herd! Herd!
Can not you see? You won't understand
That such equality is not necessary?
Your equality is a deceit and a lie.
Old ugly hurdy-gurdy
This world of ideological deeds and words.
For fools - a good bait,
Scoundrels - a decent catch.
Here is another passage:
I have an idea
About the Russian coup
If only we were firmly united,
As before in our work.
I don't aim to play the king
And I don’t climb into the rulers either,
But I want to take a walk
And under gunpowder, and under iron.
I want to call those
That they get fat on Marx like the Yankees.
We will see their courage and laughter,
When our tanks move.
One gets the impression that Yesenin is on the side of Nomakh and puts his own innermost thoughts into the mouth of the bandit ...
The Jewish communist is shown quite differently with speaking surname Chekists.
Here is what Chekistov says about the Russian people:
Your mother in this-your!
Wind like a crazy miller
Turns the millstones of the clouds
Day and night...
Day and night...
And your people are sitting, loafer,
And he doesn't want to help himself.
There is no mediocrity and hypocrisy,
Than your Russian lowland man!
Kohl lives in the Ryazan province,
So he doesn’t want to grieve about Tulskaya.
Is it Europe?
There you don’t have these huts,
Which, like stupid chickens,
Heads need a long time under the ax ...
I am a citizen from Weimar
And I didn't come here as a Jew,
And as one with a gift
To tame fools and beasts.
I swear and I will stubbornly
curse you though thousands years,
Because...
Because I want to go to the bathroom
And there are no latrines in Russia.
Strange and funny you people!
Lived all their life as beggars
And they built temples of God...
Yes I used them a long time ago
Rebuilt into latrines.
Haha!
What do you say, Zamarashkin?
Well?
Or are you offended
What's wrong with your country?
Poor! Poor Zamarashkin...
4. "Message to the "evangelist" Demyan."
In April-May 1925, when ten issues of the Pravda newspaper published one of the most anti-Christian opuses of Demyan Bedny - the poem " New Testament flawless Evangelist Demyan", Yesenin was the only poet at that time who openly stood up for Christ, writing the poetic "Message to the Evangelist Demyan".
I want to quote this piece in its entirety:
I often wondered why he was executed,
Why did he sacrifice his head?
For the fact that, the enemy of Saturdays,
He is against all rot
Bravely raised your voice?
Is it because the proconsul Pilate is in the country,
Where the cult of Caesar is full of both light and shadow,
He is with a bunch of fishermen from the local villages
For Caesar recognized only the power of gold?
For the fact that, having torn apart only yourself,
He was merciful and sensitive to the grief of everyone
And he blessed everyone, painfully loving
And small children and dirty prostitutes?
I do not know, Demyan, in your "Gospel"
I didn't find the right answer.
It has a lot of bold words,
Oh, how many there are in it,
But there is no word, a worthy poet.
I'm not one of those who recognize the priests,
Who implicitly believes in God,
Who is ready to break his forehead,
Praying at every church threshold.
I don't like slave religion
Submissive from century to century,
And my faith in the miraculous is weak -
I believe in the knowledge and power of man.
I know that, striving along a wonderful path,
Here, on earth, without parting with the body,
Not us, so someone must come after all
Truly to the divine limits.
And yet, when I read in Pravda
The untruth about Christ of the lecherous Demyan,
I felt ashamed as if I had
Into vomit, vomit drunk.
May Buddha, Moses, Confucius and Christ -
Distant myth, we understand it
But still it is impossible, like a one-year-old dog,
To choke on everything and everything with barking.
Christ - the son of a carpenter - was once executed,
(Let it be a myth), but still, when a passerby
I asked him: "Who are you?" - He answered him
"Son of man," not said, "Son of God."
May the myth be Christ, may the myth be Socrates,
And He was not in the country of Pilate,
So, from this it is necessary in a row
Spit on everything that is sacred in a person?
You experienced, Demyan, only one arrest,
And you whine: "Oh, the cross fell to me fierce"!
And what if they would give you a Calvary cross
Or a bowl of caustic hemlock?
Would you have had greatness until the end
For the last time, following their example, too,
Bless the whole world under the crown of thorns
And about immortality to teach on the deathbed?
No, you, Demyan, did not offend Christ,
You didn't touch him with your pen in the least.
There was a robber, Judas was,
You just weren't enough.
You are blood clots at the cross
He dug his nostril like a fat boar.
You only grunted at Christ,
Efim Lakeevich Pridvorov.
But you committed a double and grave sin
With your cheap farce nonsense:
You insulted the poets free shop
And he covered his small talent with great disgrace.
After all, there, abroad, reading your "poems",
Probably Russian hysterics are gloating:
"Another plate of Demyanova's fish soup,
Neighbor, my light, please take a bite!"
And the Russian peasant, reading "Poor",
Where exemplary fornication was printed in doublet,
More desperately drawn to Christ
And the communists will send a checkmate at the same time.
It seems to me that there is no need to comment on this work: Yesenin's position is clear without comment.
5. Shepherd Petya
Yesenin, despite all his seriousness, had a good sense of humor. This is confirmed by such a work of the poet as "THE TALE OF THE SHEPHERD PET, HIS COMMISSION AND THE KINGDOM OF THE COW". It tells how the shepherd Petya becomes a commissar, however, he does not cope with his duties and again goes to work as a shepherd. Yesenin's tale ends with the following apt lines:
It's hard on the light
Be an example for everyone.
Be better, Petya,
Formerly a pioneer.
To kids in awe,
On a wet autumn day
Wrote that story
I am Sergei Yesenin.
The fairy tale was written two and a half months before the death of the poet.
6. Yesenin's inconsistency
Yesenin sincerely tried to understand what was happening in the country:
Nice publisher! In this book
I indulge in new feelings
Learning to comprehend in every moment
Commune rearing Rus'. (“Glorious publisher! In this book…”, 1924).
Yesenin did not want to be an outcast in the Soviet state:
I want to be a singer
And a citizen
So that everyone
As pride and example
Was real
Not a step-son
In the great states of the USSR. ("Stans", 1924).
And at the same time, Yesenin was dissatisfied with the Bolsheviks.
Whether the poet wanted it or not, the notes of discontent penetrated into his work:
So sad on earth
As if in an apartment
In which the year did not wash, do not grind.
Some bullshit in this world
The Bolsheviks deliberately started.
("Dawn of the East", 1924).
And although in this work we are talking simply about the Soviet edition, it is felt that the criticism is also directed at the Soviet government itself.
It should be noted that Yesenin was not afraid to openly express his negative opinion about political literature. So at a meeting of proletarian writers in 1921 in the People's Commissariat of Education, the poet said: “Here they talked about literature with a Marxist approach. No other literature is allowed. It's been three years already! Three years you write your Marxist nonsense! We have been silent for three years! How much longer will you shut our throats? And... who needs your Marxist approach? Maybe tomorrow your Marx will die...”.
Conclusion
No wonder G. Ivanov called Yesenin's poetry "an antidote against godlessness." It was religiosity that helped Yesenin save a human face, did not allow him to degrade spiritually ....
Was Yesenin a Bolshevik or not? Probably not.
But in any case, Yesenin was a patriot of his homeland, which is confirmed by his wonderful lines:
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 earth
With a short name "Rus".
