A new selection of poems by Sergei Yesenin
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Read the poems of Sergei Yesenin
Sergey Gorodetsky: about Sergey Yesenin
Yesenin subordinated his entire life to writing poetry.
For him, there were no values in life, except for his poems.
All his antics, bravado and frenzy were caused only by the desire to fill the void of life from one poem to another.
In this sense, he was not at all like the shepherdess with the village pipe, whom the memorial workers hurried to introduce to us.
Yesenin appeared in Petrograd in the spring of 1915.
He came to me with a note from Blok.
Both Blok and I were fond of the village at that time.
I am also a pan Slavist.
In the "First Almanac of Russian and Non — Slavic Writers" - "Veles", published shortly before, Klyuev's poems were already printed.
Blok still highly appreciated Klyuev at that time.
The fact of Yesenin's appearance was the realization of a long awaited miracle, and together with Klyuev and Shiryaevets, who also appeared around this time, Yesenin gave the opportunity to talk about a whole group of peasant poets.
He brought the poems tied in a village handkerchief.
From the very first lines, it was clear to me what joy came to Russian poetry.
Some kind of song festival has begun.
We kissed, and Sergunka read poetry again.
But no less than to read poetry, he was in a hurry to sing Ryazan "pribaski, ditches and sufferings" ...
A shy, happy smile did not leave his face.
He was charming with his sonorous, mischievous voice, with a lamb of curly flaxen hair— which he would later furiously smooth under his top hat blue eyed.
This is how I drew it in the very first days and hung it next to my beloved Apollo Purtalessky at that time, and then a terrible portrait of Klyuyev hung above the wardrobe by me.
Both portraits disappeared along with my archive, but Yesenin's portrait can be seen in Murashov's photo.
Yesenin settled with me and lived for some time.
With notes to all the familiar magazines, I made it easier for him to go through the ordeal.
What did I give him in this first, decisive period?
There is only one positive thing: the realization of the first success, recognition of his skill and the right to work, encouragement, affection and love of a friend.
There is a lot more negative: everything that the then St. Petersburg literature brought up in me: the aesthetics of the slave village, the beauty of decay and hopeless rebellion.
On the basis of my poetry, as well as Blok and Remizov, Yesenin could only establish himself in all the keys of "Radunitsa", which he had heard back in the village.
The junction of our St. Petersburg literary dreams with the voice born of the village seemed to us a justification for all our work and a celebration of some new populism.
The icons of Nesterov and Vasnetsov, the paintings of Bilibin and in general all the pictorial art of this period was poisoned by a very special approach to the earth, to Russia — an approach tinged with a kind of mysticism and a desire for stylization.
We loved the village very much, but we also looked at the" other world".
Many of us thought then that a poet should seek contact with the other world in each of his images.
In short, we had a mystical ideology of symbolism.
But there was another force that finally enveloped Yesenin with idealism.
This is Nikolai Klyuev.
By this time, he was already known in our circles.
Thanks to his talent, the religiously rustic idealism gave him the most terry clot.
Even the sober Bryusov was fascinated by him.
Klyuev came to St. Petersburg in the autumn (not for the first time).
Probably, he met Yesenin at my place.
And he bit into it.
I canot find another word for the beginning of their friendship.
The history of their relationship from that moment until Yesenin's last visit to Klyuev before his death is the topic of an entire book.
A wonderful poet, a cunning clever man, charming with his insidious humility, who closely adjoined the epics and spiritual poems of the north, Klyuev, of course, mastered the young Yesenin, as he mastered each of us at one time.
He was the best exponent of the idealistic system that we all carried.
But while for us this system was a literary search, for him it was a strong worldview, a way of life, a form of attitude to the world.
Being stronger than all of us, he mastered Yesenin the strongest of all.
All of us, after bouts of friendship with Klyuev, had bouts of hatred for him.
Yesenin also had bouts of hatred.
I remember how he said to me: "By God, I will stab Klyuev with a knife!"
Nevertheless, Klyuev remained the first in the group of peasant poets.
This group grew and grew stronger.
It included, in addition to Klyuev and Yesenin, Sergey Klychkov and Alexander Shiryaevets.
Everyone was talented, everyone was united by a love for Russian antiquity, for oral poetry, for folk songs and epic images.
Besides me, Alexey Remizov was the leader in this group, and Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was very sympathetic to Yesenin, and the artist Roerich were not strangers.
The bloc was alien to this association.
Even now I canot blame this group for its leavened patriotism, but we all had a keen interest in Russian antiquity, in the folk origins of poetry, in the epic and the ditto.
I named the whole company and the publishing house it was supposed to be — "Krasa".
We had only one general performance: an evening of "Beauty"at the Tenishevsky School.
Remizov, Klyuev, Yesenin and I performed.
Yesenin read his poems, and in addition, he sang ditties to the accordion and together with Klyuev — suffering.
This was Yesenin's first public success, not counting the previous closed readings in literary meetings.
The collection "Krasa" was announced with the participation of the entire group.
In the unfulfilled publishing house "Krasa", Yesenin's first books were announced: "Ryazan pobaski, kana vushki and suffering" and "Radunitsa".
"Krasa" did not last long.
Klyuev was pulling Yesenin away from me more and more.
It seems that at this time he was friends with the Merezhkovskys — my "enemies".
Yesenin probably also visited there.
In the spring and summer of 1916, I saw little of Klyuev and Yesenin.
The heat of the war was passing, it was getting stuffy in St. Petersburg, and in the autumn of the 16th year I went to the Turkish army to the front.
At the very moment of departure, when I had already packed my things, Klyuev and Yesenin entered.
I lived on the Nikolaevskaya Embankment, the door went straight to the street, the cabman was waiting for me, the date was short.
The most unpleasant impression I have left from this meeting.
Both poets were in chic jackets, with ancient crosses on their chests, very smart and self satisfied.
Nevertheless, I was glad to see them, we kissed and after Klyuev's mellifluous words said goodbye.
As it turned out, for a long time.
With Yesenin — until the 21st year, and with Klyuev — even more...
In the fierce, windy and snowless winter of 1921, I came to Moscow for a permanent job.
For two weeks we lived in a cozy and warm car, but on distant rails.
On the first day from there, on foot through the deserted, icy Moscow, I came to Tverskaya.
The day was spent in turnouts at the place of service.
It was already dark when I reached the "Cafe of Poets".
Loneliness held me down.
Blok and Verkhoustinsky died.
The only close person in Moscow was Yesenin.
I went in and, as I was in my greatcoat, sat down on a bench.
Some poetess was reading poetry.
Suddenly Yesenin came out on the stage.
The room is small, there are not many people, my costume stood out.
Yesenin said something, and I see that he saw me.
Surprise, verification of the impression (a telegram about my death had just been printed), and an unspeakable tenderness flooded his face.
He took off from the stage, I met him and we hugged, as in the first days.
The care with which he spread out all the "luxury" of his cafe in front of me is unforgettable.
All the ice of the 16th year has melted.
Sergey was burning with a desire to warm me with his heart and food.
He sat me down at the most cozy table.
He put out a whole plate of cakes — a blueberry patch on the sole of a potato: "Eat everything, and there will be more."
Acorn coffee with milk — "as much as you want".
With wonderful naivety, he scattered his generosity.
And then, between sips, he hurried to tell everything about himself at once — that he was already a famous poet, that he had written a theoretical book, that he was the owner of a bookstore, that it was absolutely necessary to arrange an evening of my poems, that I would receive at least eight thousand, that he had a wonderful friend, Marienhof.
He warmed me up and touched me.
He was very similar to the old one.
Only the cupid's pinkness has disappeared.
He struck me with the skill with which he learned to read his poems.
During these two weeks that I lived in the car and ran around the institutions, I saw him often.
The next day, probably, I was at his store on Nikitskaya Street.
The small table was littered with wads of paper money.
He was a good trader.
Immediately he collected all his books and made the most tender inscriptions: on his favorite book at that time, "The Keys of Mary" — "with strong and eternal love"; on the "Treryadnitsa" — "to my mentor and lover".
Probably, a big escapade took place on the same day.
He took me along with Klychkov and someone else to Konenkov.
There they drank, sang and danced in a frozen workshop.
From there, at five o'clock in the morning, to Prechistenka to "Tweety" (as he jokingly called Duncan), which he already told me about as a fact that everyone knows.
I will say in advance that according to all my later impressions, it was a deep mutual love.
Of course, Yesenin was as much in love with Duncan as with her fame, but he was no less in love than he could have been in love at all.
Women did not play a big role in his life.
I recall another visit by Isadora Yesenin to me when he was ill.
She arrived in a headscarf, alarmed, with a bundle of food and an orange, wrapped Yesenin with her red handkerchief.
I drew him this way, he called this drawing -" in a Tweety scarf".
In this homely everyday meeting, their love somehow especially became clear to me.
It was in Bogoslovsky Lane, where Yesenin lived with Marienhof.
I visited him there several times, and I need to tell you about one.
I once found Yesenin on the floor, over a scattering of small notes.
Without getting up from the floor, he began to explain to me his idea of a "machine of images".
On each piece of paper was written some word the name of the object, bird or quality.
He randomly picked up a handful of notes, threw them up and then grabbed the first ones that came to hand.
Sometimes bright two and three step imagist combinations of images were obtained.
I treated I was skeptical about this idea, but Yesenin then really believed in the possibility of such a "machine".
I will not talk about my evening of poems, about the meeting with Bryusov in the "Cafe of Poets" and a friend — this is now a third party.
From all the conversations I had with him at that time, from the insistent reminders — "Read the Keys of Mary" — I had a firm opinion that he loved this book and considered it important for himself.
This is how it will remain in the literary legacy of Yesenin.
It was not given to him without difficulty.
In this book, he tried to formalize and realize his literary searches and ideas.
Here he definitely says that the poet should look for images that would connect him with some invisible world.
In a word, in this book he comes close to all the ideas of pre revolutionary St. Petersburg.
But at the same time, when he formed his ideas, he created a movement that played a big role for him.
This movement is known as imagism.
In an impassioned article in Krasnaya Gazeta, Boris Lavrenev attacked the then company of Yesenin, the imagists, calling them "degenerates", and Yesenin "executed" by them.1 This is not a completely correct concept, and even completely wrong.
Of course, both the then (and later) Yesenin's life played a role in his premature death.
It is short sighted to see in imagism and imagists only a destructive way of life.
Imagism played a much larger role in the development of Yesenin.
For Yesenin, imagism was a kind of university that he built for himself.
He could not stand it when they called him a shepherd boy, Lel, when they made an exclusively peasant poet out of him.
I perfectly remember his rage with which he spoke to me in 1921 about such an interpretation of him.
He wanted to be a European.
In short, his talent did not fit within the limits of the village shepherd's song.
Even then, he was consciously going to be the first Russian poet.
And in imagism, he just found an antidote against the village, against shepherding, against the aspects of village life that reduce the poet's personality.
In imagism, there was another side for Yesenin, no less important: everyday life.
Everyone who sees only cafes, revelry and mischief here brands themselves with the stigma of stupidity.
Yesenin needed the life of imagism more than the young Mayakovsky needed a yellow jacket.
It was a way out of his pastoral life, from a peasant, from a poddevka with an accordion.
It was his revolution, his liberation.
There was a kind of Wildness here.
With this top hat, his mischief, his hatred for the village curls, Yesenin raised himself above Klyuev and above all the other poets of the village.
When I, not understanding his friendship with Marienhof, asked him about the reason for it, he replied: "Donot you understand that I need a shadow."
But in fact, in everyday life, he was a shadow of the dandy Marienhof, he copied him and very easily learned all the simple wisdom of external dandyism even before the European trip.
And the cunning Klyuev understood very well the significance of all these eccentricities for Yesenin's inner growth.
Read what sincere anger his poems breathe to Yesenin in "The Fourth Rome".
"I donot want to cover the horns of the forest devil with a top hat!"
"I donot want to plug a hole in the soul barge with a top hat and shoes!"
"I donot want to be a lacquered poet with monkey glory on my forehead!"
2. Yesenin's top hat was therefore scarier than a bug for Klyuev, because this top hat was a symbol of Yesenin's departure from the redneck to world fame.
My mistake and the mistake of all the criticism, which, however, almost did not exist then, is that the "Keys of Mary" were not taken seriously enough.
If some sensible person not even a Marxist, but just a materialist had broken the imagist, idealistic system of this book, Yesenin's work could have taken a different direction.
He has been frantically searching for this other channel for the last few years.
Within the framework of a lyrical poem, he was already cramped.
Lyrics are allowed either in the theater or in the epic.
Yesenin took both ways.
He made the experience of going to the theater in "Pugachev".
This book does not say whether it is a drama or a poem in dialogue.
Most likely, Yesenin did not fully think through the form when he wrote "Pugachev".
But I remember how fond he was of it.
Many times I have heard his magnificent recitation of passages from the drama.
With broad gestures, an ecstatic whisper: "You're crazy, you're crazy..."
He especially liked to read the end.
And he had the same imperious demand for a response, as well as for the "Keys of Mary".
This time I gave him the same full sounding response as when he first came to me.
With its pathos of dark rebellion, "Pugachev" captured me.
I told Yesenin the same thing that I wrote in No. 75 of the "Labor" (22): "Criticism sleeps.
Only this can explain that the major phenomena of our literature remain unnoticed.
This is the best thing of Yesenin.
It will enter the treasury of our proletarian literature."
However, "Pugachev" was not noticed in the general press, it was not put on stage, it was printed only in a thousand copies.
Yesenin did not receive a proper response to his first large scale work.
Having not seen "Pugachev" on the stage, he no longer returned to dramatic creativity.
And he had all the data to work in this direction.
There was still a way to the epic.
The next work was "The Country of Scoundrels".
Yesenin was as fond of it as he was of Pugachev, and spoke to me about it as about his decisive work.
I remember three of the last meetings.
The first one was at the funeral of a Shiryaevets.
We all felt this death keenly.
After burying a friend, they gathered in a dirty room of Herzen's House, at a dirty table without a tablecloth, over some unfortunate bottles.
But it didnot drink.
Crushed, with a ball in their throat, they read poems about Shiryaevets.
When I read my own, Sergey convulsively grabbed my hand.
He started saying something: "It's you... wonderful ... "
And tears blurred his eyes.
Yesenin did not believe that the Shiryaevets died of an abscess in the brain.
He assured that the Shiryaevets was poisoned by some Volga root, from which such a death happens.
And he admired that a stormy argument in speeches over the grave of a Shiryaevite ended with a ringing and long song of a nightingale that suddenly flew in.
The second meeting is a dinner in the same House of Herzen, already in the painted and cleaned basement, in October, probably, or even in November.
We came together, Yesenin was already there.
He soon joined us, sat down next to us.
They remembered the old days.
He was quiet, sweet, sad.
He started singing ditties.
He sang with Sakharov his songs to us, then in response Vera Dukhovskaya sang her own.
His voice was already hoarse, his face was erased, and through this appearance of his, as through the fog of years, I saw an early, spring Sergunka.
Then he, all somehow distorted, began to read "The Black Man".
Through the skill of reading, some kind of internal spasm broke through.
I couldnot finish it — I forgot.
I could see by his excitement that there was something important for him here again.
The challenge of despair was in him.
And one more meeting, the last one, at the corner of Sovetskaya Square and Tverskaya.
He was with Tolstoy, on his arm.
Introduced me.
He looked bad.
"You need to rest."
- "I'm going to the sanatorium.
I'm going to the State Pension to receive money."
We kissed, and he could not return the next kiss to me.
Yesenin's entire work was only a brilliant beginning.
If he had heard a fraction of what is now being said and written about him during his lifetime, perhaps this beginning would have had the same continuation.
But his stormy work did not find its Belinsky.
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