As a genre, "peasant poetry" was formed in the middle of the 19th century. New peasant poetry

New peasant poets the term was introduced by V. Lvov-Rogachevsky in the book “Poetry new Russia. Poets of fields and city outskirts” (1919). These are N.A. Klyuev (1884-1937), S.A. Klychkov (1889-1937), S.A. Yesenin (1895-1925), A.L. Ganin ( 1893-1925), P.I. Karpov, A.V. Shiryaevets (1887-1924), P.V. Oreshin (1887-1938), as well as P.A. literary process in the 1920s and 30s, P.N. Vasiliev (1910-37). New peasant poets did not organize literary group, however, most of them are characterized by common civil, aesthetic positions, religious and philosophical searches, in which Christian, sometimes Old Believer ideals were synthesized with both pagan motives and sectarian temptations. So, Klyuev's book "Brotherly Songs" (1912) was perceived as Khlyst chants, the theme of Karpov's poetry is the snatching of Russia into the Khlyst circle. Central to the work of the New Peasant poets were the ideas of an earthly paradise and the chosenness of the peasant, which was one of the reasons for their interest in revolutionary movements. Expecting the transformation of peasant life into paradise, the New Peasant poets also created symbolic images of the messiah-wonderful guest, the prophet-shepherd.

In the February and October revolutions, the New Peasant poets saw the possibility of social revenge for the peasants and religious renewal. In the article "Red Horse" (1919), Klyuev wrote about how all the "Pudozh man's strength" flocks to the "red ringing of the Resurrection" (Klyuev N.). In the religious-revolutionary poems (1916-18) by Yesenin "Comrade", "Singing Call", "Father", "Oktoih", "Coming", "Transfiguration", "Country Book of Hours", "Inonia", "Jordanian dove", "Heavenly Drummer", "Pantocrator" - Russia was shown as a new Nazareth, and the February Revolution was interpreted as a revolution of an Old Believer peasant - a catcher of the universe, similar to a biblical shepherd. Some of the New Peasant poets saw in the revolution the mystery of universal forgiveness and harmony. The maximalist version of this theme was developed in the lyrics of Klyuev and Karpov: even the devil was reborn into a bearer of good, became a participant in the bright transformation of Russia. If the pre-revolutionary work of Karpov, Klyuev, Shiryaevets, Oreshin, Yesenin was mainly aimed at creating a harmonious earthly structure, then an existentialist tendency manifested itself in the work of Klychkov, he is a singer of "unprecedented sadness in the world" ("The carpet fields are golden ...", 1914). Both in the work of Klychkov and in the work of Ganin, existential moods were intensified by the First World War. Ganin wrote: “The face of man and God has been erased. Chaos again. Nobody and Nothing ”(“ Singing Brother, we are alone on the road ... ”, 1916). Shortly after victory October revolution Shiryaevets and the former World War II and pacifist-minded Klychkov took a position of removal, Ganin found himself in opposition, and by the beginning of the 1920s, relations between the New Peasant poets and the authorities had acquired an obvious conflict character.

Party criticism the work of the New Peasant poets was defined as not truly peasant and kulak. Ganin, Klychkov, Oreshin, Klyuev and Vasiliev were shot. The New Peasant poets saw the reason for the death of the peasant way of life not only in the policy of the Bolsheviks, but also in the peasant himself. In the works of Ganin, the theme of the inability of the people to recognize evil sounded, someone “wildly mocked” him, in Russia “Fiery eyes sparkle and the scourge of deaf Satan” (“Pursued by an invisible conscience ...”, 1917-18). In Klychkov's neo-mythological novels about the relationship between man and the devil - "Sugar German" (1925), "Chertukhinsky Balakir" (1926), "Prince of Peace" (1927), the theme of the peasant's powerlessness to preserve Divine harmony on earth is revealed. The same theme is heard in Klyuev's poem "Pogorelytsina" (1928), which tells about the death of peasant Russia: "pine cherubs" personifying the destructive power of the city of Herod's daughter carry Rublev's Savior; only a faint hope of overcoming evil and rebirth sounded in the poem Christian culture. One of the priority themes in the work of the New Peasant poets is the self-worth of the individual. Lyrical hero Klychkov’s poetic books “Home Songs” (1923), “A Wonderful Guest” (1923), “Visiting the Cranes” (1930) - a homeless Kalika, a poet not needed by the country: “And the soul to someone else’s shelter, Like a laborer lay down” (“ There is no hut, no cow…”, 1931). The tribal culture of a person, his uniqueness, family values, love, creativity are the themes of Klychkov’s poem “The Song of the Great Mother” (1929 or 30), the cycle “What Gray Cedars Noise About” (1930-32), etc. In Yesenin’s post-revolutionary poetry, the main became the lyrical content, the feelings of the poet. A man, as the New Peasant poets believed, belongs to God, himself and the world, and not to a class and not to power, therefore the leitmotif of Klyuev's poetry is the universality of Russia: herds of rhinoceroses roam in the Zaonezhye region described by him, a buffalo heifer is located in the Yaroslavl barn, parrots live in the taiga, in In Olonets poems, images of both Nubian and Slav women appear. The theme of the fate of the poet in an atheistic country also became a priority: Klyuev's poem "Lament for Sergei Yesenin" (1926) tells the story of the ruined poet. At the same time, the desire to understand and accept socialism is expressed in Oreshin's works, his position is conveyed in the title of the book "Under a happy sky" (1937).

The new peasant direction of Russian literature was doomed to extinction. His younger generation is represented by the work of a native of the Semirechye Cossacks, Vasiliev, who made himself known in the poetry collections In Golden Intelligence (1930), People in the Taiga (1931). Having taken enough from the poetic skill of Klychkov and Klyuev, he went through an independent creative way, his talent was expressed in his own themes, not characteristic of the work of his predecessors. Expressive poetics corresponded to the author's maximalism, the heroes of his works - strong people. Vasiliev created the image of Siberia, where "heroes of construction and labor" are creating a new life ("Province - Periphery", 1931). At the same time, in the "Songs about the death of the Cossack army" (1928-32) and in other works, the themes of the tragedy of civil confrontation, violence against a person are developed. The new peasant poets of the 1910s and 1930s did not represent a single stream. Their work is a special branch of Russian modernism, it expressed the tendencies of both symbolism and post-symbolist poetry; their search in poetics contributed to the resuscitation art systems medieval literature and painting. The poetics of Klychkov, Klyuev, Yesenin are characterized by metaphor, symbolism, neo-mythological searches are clearly manifested in their work. In the 1920s, in opposition to the New Peasant poets, a mass literary movement of poets and prose writers from the peasants was initiated, who supported the policy of the party in the countryside with their work, the All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers was formed (

New peasant poetry

The so-called new peasant poetry. The literary direction, represented by the work of N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin, S. Klychkov, P. Karpov, A. Shiryaevts, developed and established itself in the middle. 1910s This is evidenced by the correspondence between Klyuev and Shiryaevets, which began in 1913. “Oh, mother desert! Paradise of the soul, paradise of the mind! America was not advancing on the blue-green dawn, on the chapel in the forest, on the hare by the haystack, on the fairy tale hut ... "(From a letter from Klyuev to Shiryaevets dated November 15, 1914).

The term first appeared in literary criticism at the turn of the 10-20s of the twentieth century in the articles of V.L. Lvov-Rogachevsky and I.I. Rozanov. This term was used to separate the poets of the "peasant merchant" (as defined by S. Yesenin) from the peasant poets of the 19th V.

The new peasant poets were united - for all the differences in creative style and measure of talent - with a sincere love for rural Russia (despite Russia "iron"), a desire to highlight the primordial values ​​of its beliefs and the morality of work and everyday life. Blood connection with the world of nature and oral creativity, adherence to myth, fairy tale determined the meaning and "sound" of the new peasant lyrics and epic; at the same time, their creators were clear and stylistic aspirations of "Russian modern". The synthesis of the ancient figurative word and the new poetics determined artistic originality their the best works, and communication with Blok, Bryusov, and other symbolists helped creative growth. The fate of the new peasant poets after October (at the time of their greatest achievements) was tragic: their idealization of village antiquity was considered "kulak". In the 1930s they were ousted from literature and became victims of repression.

The philosophy of the "hutted space", universal pathos, love for the motherland, the cult of labor morality, blood connection with their native nature, the blessing of the world of beauty and harmony native to their souls - these are the main common foundations that united the poets of the "new peasant" pleiad. In 1918, in the book "Keys of Mary", Yesenin, exploring the nature of the "angelic" image, formulated common features poetic world his and his fellows, creating, in fact, a theoretical substantiation of the poetic school of folk spiritual realism, embodying the eternal desire of the Russian soul to move in sound, paint, creation material world in eternal connection with heaven. “We would love the world of this hut with all the roosters on the shutters, the skates on the roofs and the doves on the princelings of the porch, not with the simple love of the eye and the sensual perception of the beautiful, but would love and would know the most truthful path of wisdom, on which every step of the verbal image is done in the same way. , as a nodal connection of nature itself ... The art of our time does not know this ovary, for the fact that she lived in Dante, Gebel, Shakespeare and other artists of the word, for his representatives from today passed like a dead shadow... The only wasteful and slovenly, but still the keeper of this secret, was a village half-broken down by seasonal work and factories. We will not hide the fact that this world of peasant life, which we visit with the mind of the heart through images, our eyes found, alas, along with the flourishing on the deathbed. "The spiritual mentor of the" peasant merchant "Klyuev understood too well the alienation of his brothers to the surrounding literary world. “My white dove,” he wrote to Yesenin, “after all, you know that you and I are goats in a literary garden and only by the grace of us are tolerated in it ... To be green in the grass, and gray on the stone - this is our program with you, so as not to perish ... I grow cold from the memory of those humiliations and patronizing caresses that I endured from the canine public ... I remember that Gorodetsky's wife in one meeting, where they praised me in every way, after waiting for a lull in the conversation, she rolled her eyes and then said: “Yes , it's good to be a peasant. "... You see, your spirit is unimportant, the immortal in you, but the only interesting thing is that you are a lackey and a boor-smerdyakov, spoke articulately ... ".

After 2 years, Yesenin will hone the same thought in his own way in a letter to Shiryaevets: “God bless them, these St. and they are all Romanians, brother, all Westerners, they need America, and in the Zhiguli we have a song and a fire of Stenka Razin.

Before the revolution, the “new peasant” poets made attempts to unite organizationally, either by creating the Krasa literary society, which held a poetic evening in the autumn of 1915, which received a large and far from benevolent press, or by taking part in the creation of the Strada literary and artistic society. But these societies did not last long and the connection of poets with each other has always remained more spiritual than organizational.

They accepted the revolution with a "peasant bias". It consisted primarily in the fact that the poets accepted the revolution as the realization of the people's dream of world justice, which for them coincided with social justice. This is not only the establishment of justice in the expanses of Russia, but also the brotherhood of the peoples of the whole earth. Such an interpretation had deep roots that go back to our history, in the 19th century, to the ideas of Pushkin and Dostoevsky about the "all-humanity" of the Russian character, to peculiar ideas about the cultural and historical unity that has developed in the work of Russian writers, in the idea of ​​​​Moscow - the third Rome , whose predecessor was Byzantium ... Dr. the theme in their poetry is the theme of peasant labor, its deep connections with everyday life, with folk art, with work ethic. The historical connection between "nature", "a piece of bread" and, finally, "the word" in its own way, to the best of its talent, was reflected by each of the poets of the "peasant merchant". "Prepare grits for grandfather, help hang nets, light a torch and, listening to a blizzard, how to doze off at a distant century in a fairy tale, turning into Sadko or into the prophetic Volga." These poems by Klyuev embody the idea of ​​labor as a creative act, consecrated by a thousand-year tradition, creating simultaneously with material and spiritual values, linking man, earth and space into a single whole. It is not for nothing that the poems of P. Radimov, defiantly called "Arable land", "Harvest", "Bread", "Sheep shearing", "Salting cucumbers", when reading are perceived not only as an image of the labor process, but also as a solemn aesthetic action that has a beneficial effect on human soul.

Another theme that unites the poets of the "new peasant" galaxy is the theme of the East, which is extremely important for Russian poetry, because the East was understood in it not as a geographical, but as a socio-philosophical concept, opposite to the bourgeois West. For the first time, Asia - "A blue country, painted with salt, sand and lime" - appeared in Yesenin's "Pugachev", as a beautiful, distant, inaccessible land ... A little later, it appears in "Moscow tavern" already as a memory of the outgoing peasant world, the symbol of which there again becomes a hut with a stove, which took the form of a brick camel and thereby united Russia and the East ... And then there were already memorable "Persian motives" for everyone. Klyuev made a daring attempt to organically fuse the wealth of the Vedas and the Mahabharata with pictures of the nature of the Olonets forests and revolutionary hymns. "White India" is an integral part of the "hack space" created by his creative imagination. And Karpov in the post-revolutionary years reached out with his soul to the fabulous ancestral home of the Slavs: "The mountains of the Caucasus, the Himalayas, have capsized like a house of cards, and we are going to the hiding place of the golden oaz for the ferocious sun ...". I also remember graceful lyrical miniatures in the style of ancient Eastern poetry by A. Shiryaevts, and V. Nasedkin's cycle "Sogdiana", filled with admiration for the nature and architecture of the East.

“Breaking with us, the Soviet government is breaking with the most tender, with the deepest in the people. You and I need to take this as a sign - for the Lion and the Dove will not forgive the power of her sin,” N. Klyuev wrote to S. Yesenin in 1922. the change of power for the poets - "new peasants" did not change anything for the better - they continued to be persecuted and poisoned with even greater bitterness. After the death of Yesenin by the end of the 20s, Klyuev, Klychkov, Oreshin and their younger comrades and followers Nasedkin, Pribludny were declared the ideologists of the “kulaks” to be demolished and spokesmen for the “kulak morality of the world-eaters”. The poets of the "peasant merchant" were alien and hateful to the Jewish godless authorities; all of them, except for Karpov, who actually disappeared from literature, were destroyed by the end of the 30s.

The personality of Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884-1937) attracted Blok back in 1907. Originally from the peasants of the Olonets region, Klyuev, who was taught the "song warehouse" by his mother, a storyteller and crying, became a sophisticated master of the poetic word, linking "oral" and "bookish" , subtly stylizing epics, folk songs, spiritual poems. In Klyuev, even the revolutionary motives that are present in the early lyrics are religiously colored, from the first book ("Pine Chime", 1912), the image of the people is seen in mystical and romantic tones (K. Azadovsky). Lyre epic based on folklore, the poetic re-creation of rural life expressed, starting with the collection "Forests" (1913), the new peasant trend. It is no coincidence that Klyuev rejected the negative image of the village by Bunin and appreciated Remizov, Vasnetsov, while in his own place he singled out "Plyaseya" and "Woman's Song", which praised prowess, vitality folk character. One of the top creations of Klyuev, the cycle "Izbyanye Songs" (1914-16), embodied the features of the worldview of the northern Russian peasantry, the poetry of its beliefs, rituals, connection with the earth, the centuries-old way of life and the "material" world. At the heart of Klyuev's dense imagery with her "folklore hyperbolism" (V. Bazanov) are the personifications of natural forces. The poet's language is peculiar, enriched with regional words and archaisms. In the pre-October verses, Klyuev developed the myth of God's chosenness of "hut Rus'", this "white India", and contrasted its life-giving principles - in the spirit of the ideas of the "Scythians" group - with the dead machine civilization of the West. Having initially accepted October, Klyuev soon felt the tragedy of what had happened, many of his prophetic pages did not see the light; in 1934 he was exiled, in 1937 he was shot.

If an ideologist and a preacher were felt in what Klyuev created, then the huge poetic gift of Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895-1925) conquered with the immediacy of self-expression, the sincerity of the song voice. The poet considered the main thing for himself "lyrical feeling" and "imagery", the origins of which he saw in the "nodal tie of nature with the essence of man", preserved only in the world of the village. Yesenin's entire metaphor is based on the mutual likening of man and nature (the beloved has "a sheaf of oatmeal hair", "seeds of eyes"; the dawn, "like a kitten, washes its mouth with its paw"). Yesenin, according to him, studied with Blok, Bely, Klyuev. Proximity to Klyuev - in the subject, figurative "screensavers", in a combination of pantheism and worship of Christian saints, in the romanticization of Rus' in the vein of new peasant poetry. However, Yesenin's image of the motherland is much more multifaceted and authentic than that of Klyuev. Features of the Klyuev monk, pilgrim, wanderer are inherent in the lyrical "I" of the early Yesenin (the first collection "Radunitsa", 1916). But already in the poem "Oh, Rus', flap your wings!" (1917) Yesenin opposes his "monastic" image of the teacher, "robbery", declares a dispute with the "secret of God", carries away the young. At the same time (in the poem "He danced, the spring rain wept") the poet realizes his recognition as doomed to the peasant flour of creativity. Yesenin's art reached its heights in the 1920s. But at the same time, a deep spiritual crisis led the poet to death.

Considering themselves "the voice of the people," the new peasant poets emphasized their peasant origin and poetic pedigree. In the autobiographical story "Loon's Fate" Nikolai Klyuev traces his family tree from his "bright mother", "epic" and "songwriter", highly appreciating her poetic talent. Sergei Klychkov admitted that "he owes his tongue to the forest grandmother Avdotya, the eloquent mother Fekla Alekseevna." Sergei Yesenin grew up in an atmosphere of folk poetry: "Songs that I heard all around me were arranged for poetry, and my father even composed them." The new peasants quite consciously valued their biography and did not abandon their family signs, which was expressed in their appearance and clothing. According to V.G. Bazanov, they "played a social vaudeville with dressing up", "turned both their way of life and their appearance into a visual means of agitation", the purpose of which is to assert the intrinsic value of the peasant world. The researcher emphasizes the awareness, demonstrativeness, and polemical sharpness of this "vaudeville", whose task is to "emphasize the importance of peasant poets in the social and literary movement", to oppose the Petersburg literary salons, which treated the countryside with disdain. However, the protest of the new peasants was not an end in itself, shocking. They wanted to be heard and therefore spoke in a language understandable to society. Seeing a "certain literary position" in such behavior of the new peasant poets, V.G. Bazanov enters it into the context of the culture of the early 20th century, which was characterized by "masquerade, stylization, mummery." The new peasant poets wanted to be natural in line with the cultural situation of the beginning of the century, when each literary movement "persistently emphasized its "significance", the priority of its worldview, but, in our opinion, they did not want to dissolve in a foreign environment. Hence the emphasized simplicity of N. Klyuev, "gaiters" - felt boots by S. Yesenin, etc. Deep kinship with the folk spirit, awareness of the inherent value of the peasant worldview, the new social situation contributed to the fact that, unlike their predecessors, the new peasant poets saw their support in the character of the Russian farmer.

The freshness of lyrical voices, the originality of the worldview, the orientation towards the original peasant word attracted the attention of the literary community, and in the mass of contradictory reviews, the high assessment of the poetry of the new peasants by A. Blok, N. Gumilyov, V. Bryusov, A. Bely, A. Akhmatova and others Its typological qualities were the orientation towards tradition and its duration, the well-known ritualism in the choice of heroes, a sharp, fresh sense of nature, the attitude towards peasant life as to a holistic and valuable world, etc.

The revolution of 1917, which tied the fate of the country, its future with the proletariat, significantly changed public opinion. Proletarian culture, seeking not only its own poetic language and ideology, but also a reader, has aggressively pushed the new peasant poets, who until recently were the voice of the people, into translators of popular culture. In the middle of 1917, the Proletcult movement took shape, which set itself the large-scale task of creating a proletarian culture. Proceeding from the absolute denial of the past, the proletarians are trying to create a new, revolutionary art from scratch, denying tradition as a restraining principle. The creator of a new culture, in their opinion, could only be the proletariat - a social stratum not rooted in the old way of life. The huge cultural layer, the spiritual experience of the people, which nourished the work of the new peasant poets, turned out to be not in demand in the new aesthetic situation. Thus, the model of culture proposed by the proletarians rejected peasant culture. The literary confrontation between the proletarians and the new peasants was destined to go beyond culture, since non-literary factors intervened in the controversy.

Since the 1920s, the negative attitude towards the new peasant poetry was determined by the dynamically changing political situation: first, the introduction of surplus appropriation, then individual taxation in the countryside, and later - the course towards industrialization and mass dispossession. New peasant poets pretty soon became the object of not only literary persecution and persecution. Their names have become synonymous with life-threatening definitions: "singers of the kulak village", "kulak poets", "bard of the kulak village" (O. Beskin about S. Klychkov). They were accused of nationalism, anti-Semitism, "reverent idealization of the past", "admiration for the patriarchal slave-owning Russia" (O. Beskin about S. Klychkov, V. Knyazev about N. Klyuev), hostility to the new, individualism, mysticism, reactionary idealization of nature , and sometimes directly enrolled in the category of class enemies (O. Beskin, L. Averbakh, P. Zamoisky, V. Knyazev). The idea of ​​the hopelessness of the new peasant poetry, its class alienation, was introduced into the minds of readers.

The political content of the accusations made was confirmed by the ban on creativity. In the late 1920s, a course was taken to excommunicate Klyuev, Klychkov, Oreshin, Yesenin (posthumously) from literature. The new peasants became the object of mocking articles and parodies. A. Bezymensky's attacks on N. Klyuev, the literary and political polemics of O. Beskin and S. Klychkov are known, but perhaps the most crushing blow was dealt to S. Yesenin by N. Bukharin's article "Evil Notes", published in 1927 in the newspaper "Is it true". The chief ideologist of the party, N. Bukharin, realizes that the target of his straightforward, feuilleton attacks is the greatest national poet, who cannot be destroyed by crude political caricature. Yesenin's poems are not amenable to falsification, ridicule even by such a polemicist as N. Bukharin. And so he goes to hell. He allegedly writes not so much about the poet Sergei Yesenin, but about "Yeseninism - the most harmful phenomenon that deserves real scourging" (41, 208). Cracking down on the deceased poet in the article, he aimed his condemning word at those who, even after the death of S. Yesenin, continued to think in terms of peasant culture. The desire to compromise not only the poet, but above all his poetry, worldview, social position was part of the state policy of depeasantization, the struggle against the peasant.

The 1930s was a period of creative silence and hushing up of new peasant writers: they write "on the table", they are engaged in translations (for example, S. Klychkov). Their original works are not published. The repressions that followed in 1937 erased the names of Nikolai Klyuev, Sergei Klychkov, Pyotr Oreshin and others from literary use for a long time.

Interest in the creative heritage of peasant poets resumed only in the 1960s and 80s with the return of the poetry of Sergei Yesenin. Works come out one after another dedicated to creativity poet, - E.I. Naumova, A. M. Marchenko, Yu.L. Prokusheva, B. C. Vykhodtseva, V.G. Bazanov and others.

Quite quickly, a "social order" is revealed, determined by the attitude of Soviet criticism towards the peasantry in the revolution. 1960s narrow the work of S. Yesenin to the consideration of one village theme. Yesenin is not immersed in the literary process of the first third of the 20th century, his work is presented as an illustration of political immaturity and provinciality, which S. Yesenin is gradually getting rid of (or cannot get rid of). Considering the poet in line with the idea of ​​revolutionizing the peasantry, literary critics of the 1960s. note his "passive social position" (E. Naumov, Yu. Prokushev, P. Yushin, A. Volkov). A serious obstacle to creating a coherent picture of the political growth of the poet was the religious motives of his work and suicide, the circumstances of which still cause a lot of speculation. In the 1980s, like a hundred years ago, there was renewed interest in peasant culture, in its mythological basis. In 1989, the work of M. Zabylin "The Russian people. Its customs, rituals, traditions, superstitions and poetry" was republished, the works of B.A. Rybakov "Paganism of the Ancient Slavs" (1981), "Paganism of Ancient Rus'" (1987), the works of A. Afanasyev return to research use, dictionaries, books on Slavic mythology. As at the end of the 19th century, social and cultural thought seeks to master the aesthetics of peasant life, comprehend peasant culture as a civilization, and see in folk experience the possibility of understanding contemporary problems.

List of used literature

1. Mikhailov A. Ways of development of new peasant poetry. M., 1990;

In the Russian democratic press of the last third of the 19th century. The volume of the village occupies an exceptionally important place. This theme was closely intertwined with the problem of the people and nationality. And the people at that time were primarily the multi-million Russian peasantry, which accounted for nine-tenths of the entire population of Russia.

Even during the life of Nekrasov, self-taught peasant poets began to perform with their works, of which Ivan Zakharovich Surikov (1841-1880) stood out with the greatest talent. In 1871, he published the first collection of his poems, and two years later his epic "Sadko at the Sea Tsar" was published in Vestnik Evropy.

By the end of the 60s. a group of self-taught peasant writers united around Surikov, and with the active participation of Surikov himself, they managed to organize and publish in the early 70s. the collection "Dawn", which presented works (poetry and prose) of sixteen authors: poems by Surikov, stories and poems by S. Derunov, essays by I. Novoselov, ethnographic sketches by O. Matveev, etc. These works were united by a common theme : pictures from life, scenes from the life of peasants and the urban poor, as well as processing of epic stories and folk legends.

Following the first edition, the editors planned to release the second book of the collection, which was not implemented. Publication ceased after the first issue.

The significance of the collection "Dawn" was that for the first time not individual self-taught writers, but a whole group of them declared their existence, testifying to the awakening in the people of craving for creativity and the desire to tell about their own lives. But common culture authors was low. None of its participants, with the exception of Surikov, left any noticeable trace in literature.

Surikov - the singer of the poor, the heir of Koltsov and Nikitin, partly Shevchenko and Nekrasov, the author of the poems "Rowan" ("What are you making noise, swaying ...", 1864), "In the steppe" ("Snow and snow all around ...", 1869 ) and others that have become popular folk songs. The main theme of his songs and poems is the life of the post-reform village (“From grief”, “Quietly skinny horse ...”, “It is hard and sad ...”, “Childhood”, “Woe”, “On the road”, “At pond", etc.).

His heroes are a poor worker who struggles in poverty, whose hardships and troubles have no end, the peasant working women with their hard lot. A whole cycle is made up of poems dedicated to childhood memories, village children. There are also plot poems in Surikov, in which the author refers to everyday pictures folk life.

These are sad tales about the share of the toilers of the earth. He also refers to the plots of folk ballads and epics (“Dashing”, “Nemoch”, “Heroic Wife”, “Sadko at the Sea Tsar”, “Cornflower”, “The Execution of Stenka Razin”), Surikov sings of the work of the farmer (“Kosari”, "In the summer", "In the field", etc.). The city, city life is an unkind beginning, alien to the outlook of the peasant poet:

Noisy city, dusty city,

City full of poverty

Like a damp, grave crypt,

Cheerful spirit crush you!

(“Here is the steppe with its beauty...”, 1878)

Surikov dedicated many heartfelt lines to a working peasant woman, orphans, hired laborers:

I am not my own daughter

Hired girl;

Hired - so do it

Tired of not knowing.

Do it, kill yourself

They won't give you a slip...

You are hard, share,

Dolyushka laborer!

The self-taught poet addresses rustic theme not from outside, but from within life situations, the social drama itself. He is guided by the desire to touch on the hitherto poorly illuminated corners of folk life in poetry, to tell publicly the bitter truth about the "breadwinner" of the Russian land.

In Surikov's poems, one constantly feels the close proximity to nature of a village dweller, from an early age accustomed to the noise of the forest, the silence of the steppe, the expanse of fields, the fragrance of flowers and herbs:

You go, you go - the steppe and the sky,

There is definitely no end to them,

And stands above, above the steppe,

Silence is mute.

The edge of the distant sky

The whole dawn is doused,

By the glow of a fire

Shine and burn.

Go fire

Stripes in the river;

sad song somewhere

Flowing in the distance.

(See also: " Summer night”, “Morning in the village”, “On the road”, “From the shadow trees ...”, “In the night”, “In the fiery glow ...”, “On the river”, etc.). Many landscape sketches Surikov in verse are made with great love and warmth. By the nature of their attitude, they resemble the paintings of F. A. Vasiliev, fanned with light sadness.

Such poems by Surikov as "Grandfather Klim", "Winter" and others reflect a patriotic feeling; love for the native element. Despite the poverty and grief of the people around him, Surikov knew how to find in village life and its poetic side, to find poetry and beauty in peasant labor (“Kosari”, “In Summer”, “The dawn breaks, the sun sets ...”, “Morning in village”, “Dawn caught fire over the steppe...”).

In the "songs" of Surikov - "sobs of the soul", "woe and longing." “We have few funny songs. Most of our folk songs is distinguished by severe sadness, ”wrote N. A. Dobrolyubov in an article about Koltsov. And Surikov does not have “bright songs of love”. In terms of content and sad tone, they are close to Russian folk songs. The peasant poet often uses her vocabulary, her traditional images:

Was I in the field and not a grass,

Did I not grow green in the field;

They took me, grass, mowed,

Dried up in the sun in the field.

Oh, my grief, my goryushko!

Know, such is my share!

In Surikov's poems, a bitter complaint about the "villain-life", "villain-fate" constantly sounds. In them, the author consciously follows the tradition of folk songs (“What is not a river ...”, “What is not a burning nettle ...”, “It’s good for that and it’s fun ...”, “Kruchinushka”, “Reaper”, “Criminal” , “Farewell”, “Smooth road in the field ...”, etc.).

It should be noted the influence of Shevchenko on Surikov, direct appeals, rehashing of individual motives from Ukrainian folk songs (“There is no joy, fun ...”, “Widow. From T. Shevchenko”, “Thoughts. To Shevchenko’s motive”, “In the garden near the ford ...”, “I grew up as an orphan ...”, “And I dream that under the mountain ...”, “Orphan”, etc.).

Truthfulness, sincerity, ardent sympathy for the disadvantaged worker, simplicity and clarity of language and images characterize Surikov's best poems. P. I. Tchaikovsky (“Wasn’t I a grass in the field ...”, “The sun got tired ...”, “The dawn broke ...”, “In the garden near the ford ...”), C. Cui (“Lit up in the distance, the dawn lit up ...”), A. T. Grechaninov (“In the fiery glow ...”). The text of Surikov's epic "Sadko at the Sea Tsar" served as the basis for the plot of the opera of the same name by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov.

Surikov's poetry suffers from the monotony of motives, the limited range of observations, which is explained by the fate of the poet, the circumstances of his life. For the most part, he remains on the positions of life writing. Surikov rarely touches on the causes of the miserable existence of the working people, he does not inquire into the roots of social evil.

Peasant poets continued, on the one hand, the traditions of Nekrasov poetry, and on the other, they followed Koltsov, Nikitin, and Shevchenko.

After the death of Surikov, new groups of self-taught poets arose. So, in 1889, a collection of the Moscow circle of writers from the people “Native Sounds” was published, which included poems by S. Derunov, I. Belousov, M. Leonov and others. around M. Leonov, a large group has already united. In 1903, it received the name of the Surikov Literary and Musical Circle.

Spiridon Dmitrievich Drozhzhin (1848-1930), who went through a difficult life school, belonged to the older generation of self-taught writers. For twelve years he was a serf. Long and hard he searched for his place in life, changed more than one profession. His muse "was born in a peasant's hut" ("My Muse", 1875).

His work is dedicated to the Russian village, the life of a rural worker. The reader constantly feels that this is how an author can write, for whom the phenomena he describes, the mournful pictures of people's life, are his native element. Drozhzhin's poems are written simply, without embellishment and exaggeration, they amaze with the bareness of the harsh truth:

It's cold in the hut

Little children huddle.

Hoarfrost silvery

Fired up the windows.

Mold covered

ceiling and walls,

Not a piece of bread

There is no firewood.

Children huddle, cry,

And no one knows

What is their mother with a bag

Collects around the world

That the father is on the bench

Sleeping in a pine coffin

Covered with head

Canvas shroud.

Sleeping soundly, and the wind

The shutters are knocking

And in the hut it's sad

Winter day looks.

("Winter Day", 1892)

(It should be noted the freshness and immediacy of impressions, the author’s observation, his love for characteristic details: the peasant’s hat “shining with white hoarfrost”, “his mustache and beard frozen in the cold”, “blizzard crumbling with snow dust” outside the hut window, “gray-haired grandmother” behind a spinning wheel, threatening with a "bony hand" crying children ("Two Pores", 1876). In poems of this kind - the author's inclination to convexity, visibility, picturesqueness. He, as it were, paints the details of folk life.

They also express the concreteness of life situations: a peasant wandering barefoot behind a plow (“In his native village”, 1891), his heavy thoughts about how to live, feed his family: “a quitrent for whole year not paid, the fist takes the last cow out of the yard for the debt” (“Into the Drought”, 1897). Even from the point of view of the dictionary, the texture of the language, Drozhzhin’s poetry is all saturated with the Russian village: “rural temple”, “thatched huts by the river”, “plow”, “cart”, “thick rye”, etc.

Drozhzhin sings of the nature of the motherland, rural freedom, "forest wilderness and expanse of boundless fields", "gray smoke across the river" and "rural customs simplicity", the peasant's rest.

In the rural landscape of Drozhzhin, the sounds of folk songs are often heard, “human torments” are heard (“Evening Song”, 1886). His songs are called upon “to console the poor in the midst of grief and labor” (“I don’t need wealth ...”, 1893).

The work goes well with the song, it is easier to live with the song, it not only consoles, but also inspires hope (“Do not be sad about that ...”, 1902). Drozhzhin consciously follows the folk song both in subject matter, and in style and vocabulary (“Evil Share”, 1874; “Ah, I’m so young, baby ...”, 1875; “You are good, the soul is beautiful girl”, 1876 ). “The connection between Drozhzhin’s heritage and oral poetry is so deep,” rightly notes L. Ilyin, “that it is sometimes impossible to distinguish where folklore ends and where the work of the poet himself begins.”

Sometimes Drozhzhin manages to create original poems that are close, akin to folk tunes; in them, he continues the Koltsovo, Nikitin, Surikov line (“Like a leaf torn off ...”, 1877; “What is not a killer whale singing ...”, 1885; “My strawberries ...”, 1909; “Do not wormwood with dodder grass", 1894). Sometimes his poems leave the impression of stylization, imitation of a folk song, rehashing of folk motives (for example, "Kalinka, Kalinka ...", 1911).

Drozhzhin and other peasant poets did not rise to social denunciation. Their thought was not connected with the thought of the revolutionary-minded peasantry. Sympathy for the workers of the village and the city is expressed by Drozhzhin and in the 80s. and at the beginning of the 20th century. in the most general form. His social ideal is reflected in the lines:

I do not need the blessings of the rich,

Nor the honors of mighty rulers;

Give me the peace of the fields

.................

So that I can see the people contented and happy

Without bitter grief, without painful need ...

Peasant poets passionately loved Russia, were singers of labor and national grief. They turned to topics that had previously remained outside the realm of poetry. Significant was their role in the democratization of literature, enriching it with new layers of life observations.

The poems and songs of Surikov and Drozhzhin, in their best examples, constitute a remarkable page in the history of Russian democratic poetry. In its depths, as an organic link in the development of its labor motives, a working theme arose, the rudiments of which had previously been found in folklore. The appearance of this theme is connected with the process of proletarianization of the countryside.

In developing the theme of the city, the peasant poets had their own specific aspect. Drozhzhin showed the city as a whole, factory life through the perception of a villager who ended up in a huge factory among the machines:

And knocking, and noise, and thunder;

As from a big iron chest,

Sometimes from them from all sides

There is a heavy groan.

In Drozhzhin's poems "In the Capital" (1884) and "From the Poem" Night "" (1887), ardent sympathy is expressed for the workers living in "suffocating dwellings", in basements and attics, in the struggle against "eternal need". Working theme among peasant poets, this is an organic part of the general theme of the “working people”.

The most sensitive of the poets of the end of the century felt the “pre-stormy” breath, the growth of a new wave of the liberation movement.

In this atmosphere, the first shoots of proletarian poetry were born, the poems of the worker poets E. Nechaev, F. Shkulev, A. Nozdrin, and others. The Russian proletariat entered the historical arena as an organized social force. “The 1970s,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “affected the very insignificant tops of the working class.

Its foremost workers had already shown themselves at that time as great leaders in workers' democracy, but the masses were still asleep. Only at the beginning of the 1990s did its awakening begin, and at the same time a new and more glorious period began in the history of all Russian democracy.

The early proletarian poetry, based on workers' folklore and the revolutionary poetry of the populists, reflected the hard fate of the working people, their dreams of a better life, the beginning of the emerging protest.

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983

The concept of "peasant poetry", which has become part of historical and literary use, unites poets conditionally and reflects only some common features inherent in their worldview and poetic manner. They did not form a single creative school with a single ideological and poetic program. As a genre, "peasant poetry" was formed in the middle of the 19th century. Its largest representatives were Alexey Vasilyevich Koltsov, Ivan Savvich Nikitin and Ivan Zakharovich Surikov. They wrote about the work and life of the peasant, about the dramatic and tragic collisions of his life. Their work reflected both the joy of merging workers with the natural world, and a feeling of dislike for the life of a stuffy, noisy city alien to wildlife. The most famous peasant poets of the period Silver Age were: Spiridon Drozhzhin, Nikolai Klyuev, Pyotr Oreshin, Sergey Klychkov. Sergei Yesenin also joined this trend.

Imagism

The Imagists claimed that the purpose of creativity is to create an image. Main means of expression Imagists - a metaphor, often metaphorical chains, comparing the various elements of two images - direct and figurative. The creative practice of the Imagists is characterized by outrageous, anarchist motives. The style and general behavior of Imagism was influenced by Russian Futurism. The founders of Imagism are Anatoly Mariengof, Vadim Shershenevich and Sergei Yesenin. Rurik Ivnev and Nikolai Erdman also joined Imagism.

Russian ballet and Russian folk theater

By the beginning of the 20th century permanent ballet companies worked in Denmark and France, but the choreographic theater reached its true heyday only in Russia. Soon the ballet began to spread from Russia to Europe, the Americas, Asia and around the world. In the middle of the century, a remarkable feature of its development was the extraordinary variety of styles: each choreographer or artistic director of the troupe offered his own approach.

Political and social shifts in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. affected the ballet. MM Fokin, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Theater School, closely associated with the Mariinsky Theatre, met during the first tour of Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) in Russia in 1904-1905 with her dance, natural and infinitely changeable. However, even before that, he had doubts about the inviolability of the strict rules and conventions that guided M. Petipa in his productions. Fokin became close to the artists striving for change Mariinsky Theater, as well as with a group of artists associated with S.P. Diaghilev (1872-1929), which included A.N. Benois and L.S. Bakst. In their magazine World of Art, these artists presented innovative artistic ideas. They were committed equally to the national Russian art, in particular its folk forms, and the academic direction, such as the music of Tchaikovsky. Although the dancers of the Mariinsky Theater and the Moscow Bolshoi Theater and earlier they traveled outside the country, yet Western Europe received a complete picture of their art and the rare brilliance of Russian performances only in 1909, thanks to the Parisian “Russian Season” organized by S.P. Diaghilev. Over the next 20 years, the Diaghilev Ballets Russes troupe performed primarily in Western Europe, sometimes in North and South America; its influence on world ballet art is enormous.

The dancers of the Russian Ballet troupe came from the Mariinsky Theater and the Bolshoi Theatre: Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky, Adolf Bolm (1884-1951) and others. Artists from Diaghilev's entourage composed the libretto, created scenery and costumes, and at the same time wrote new music .

First World War and the October Revolution deprived Diaghilev of the opportunity to return to his homeland. On the other hand, his ties with artistic circles in Europe, as well as with emigrants from Russia, became closer and closer. His troupe included artists trained in studios in Paris and London.

Anna Pavlova participated in Diaghilev's first ballet "Russian Season", then founded her own company, based in London, but traveling all over the world and visiting even those distant countries where Diaghilev's troupe did not reach. This great artist and woman of rare charm amazed thousands of spectators with her performance of Fokine's Dying Swan (1907, to the music of C. Saint-Saens), which became the emblem of her penetrating art.

The first theater, called "Comedy Mansion", was built only in the 17th century by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, who could boldly build and not look at the churchmen. When Aleksey Mikhailovich died, as is the custom of all tsars, the mansion was finally broken. However, the offensive of the theater, as in its time the great migration of peoples, could not be stopped.
Under the son of Alexei Mikhailovich, Peter the Great, many foreign guest performers began to come to Russia. The need to create national theater became clear to the fool. But Peter the Great was not a fool and was not interested in the theater, but built ships and cut the beards of the boyars.
The godfather of the Russian theater can be safely considered the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm, who in 1659 founded the world's first cadet corps. That's where everything started. The Prussian cadet corps, however, had nothing to do with the theater, but they did have Russian ones. Almost a hundred years later, the idea of ​​​​creating cadet corps was brought to Russia by the Russian envoy to Prussia, the cabinet-secretary of Empress Anna, P. I. Yaguzhinsky, who was obviously familiar with Friedrich, but for some reason delayed his arrival. And as soon as he brought her, as soon as it was customary to create acting troupes at the cadet corps, and to teach the nobles of the cadets acting. In this regard, both Yaguzhinsky and Tsarina Anna can rightfully be attributed to those who stood at the origins of the Russian professional theater. And since the First Cadet Corps - aka the Shlyakhetsky - was located in 1731 in the former palace of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov on Vasilyevsky Island, it would not be a sin to rank Alexander Danilovich among the fathers of the Russian stage, although he had died by that time, and they say that had nothing to do with it. But if from a pie merchant to an assistant tsar is one step, then Alexander Danilovich could well take another half a step to the father of the Russian theater. As you can see, he did it, although after death.
The troupe of the gentry corps, however, did not become the first Russian theater, because 25 years later the first Russian theater decided to found the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. She ordered the troupe of the merchant Fyodor Volkov from Yaroslavl, but just in case, she was sent to the same gentry corps. Since then, firstly, Yaroslavl merchants began to come to St. theater school, from the walls of which the entire first Russian theater later came out in full force, as well as the famous playwrights A.P. Sumarokov and V.A. Ozerov, and Sumarokov immediately went into civilian life, and Ozerov died as a major general - but later.
Yuri Kruzhnov.

The core of the group of new peasant poets were N.A. Klyuev (I884-1937), S.A. Yesenin (1885-1925), P. V. Oreshin (1887-1938), S. A. Klychkov (1889-1937). The group also included P. Karpov, A. Shiryaevets, A. Ganin, P. Radimov, V. Nasedkin, I. Pribludny. With all the difference creative individuals they were brought together by a peasant origin, rejection of urban life and the intelligentsia, the idealization of the countryside, antiquity, the patriarchal way of life, the desire to "refresh" the Russian language on a folklore basis. S. Yesenin and N. Klyuev attempted to unite with "urban" writers, who, in their opinion, were sympathetic to "folk" literature (A. M. Remizov. I. I. Yasinsky and others). The literary and artistic societies “Krasa” and then “Strada”, created by them in 1915, existed for several months. After the revolution, most of the new peasant poets turned out to be unclaimed in life and literature with their poetization of the connection between man and the world of wildlife, they had to witness the breaking of traditional peasant foundations. Klyuev, Klychkov, Oreshin were repressed and shot as kulak poets.

So, the "new peasant group" did not last long, it broke up shortly after the October Revolution. Poets originally from the village - S. Klychkov, N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin and others - wrote about their "small" homeland with love and pain, tried to turn everyone to their sweet heart, the patriarchal, rural way of life. Researchers note the consonance of moods in the work of Klychkov and Yesenin, while S. Klychkov is considered the predecessor of S. Yesenin.

Below are the biography and work of two famous new peasant poets - Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev and Sergei Antonovich Klychkov.

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev

Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich (1884-1937) was the most mature representative of the new peasant poetry. S. Yesenin once said about Klyuev: "He was the best exponent of that idealistic system that we all carried."

The future poet was born in a peasant family. His father served as a constable, his mother, Praskovya Dmitrievna, came from a family of Old Believers. She, “an epic, songwriter”, taught her son “literacy, song structure and all kinds of verbal wisdom.

N. Klyuev began to print in 1904; since 1905, he joined the revolutionary activities, distributed the proclamations of the All-Russian Peasant Union in the Moscow and Olonets provinces. He was arrested, after his release he returned to illegal activities. The revolutionary ideals of N. Klyuev were closely connected with the ideas of Christian sacrifice, the thirst for suffering for "sisters" and "brothers" "with a silently affectionate face." In 1907, N. Klyuev began to correspond with A. Blok, who played a significant role in the fate of the beginning poet.

A. Blok was interested in the relationship between the intelligentsia and the people, obviously, therefore he was interested in the peasant poet (as well as in S. Yesenin), introduced him to modern literature, contributed to the publication of his poems in the magazines "Golden Fleece", "Cheerful Word", etc. N.A. Klyuev studied the ideas of theorists of Russian symbolism - A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanov, D. Merezhkovsky about " folk soul”, “new religious consciousness”, “myth-making” and, as it were, responded to neo-populist searches, took on the role of a “people's” poet, a singer of “beauty and fate” of Russia.

In 1911, the first collection of his poems "Pine Chimes" was published with a dedication to A. Blok and with a preface by V.Ya. Bryusov. The poems of this collection were highly appreciated by S. Gorodetsky, V. Bryusov; N. Gumilyov. The highest value for a poet is the people. Heroes are people close to nature, to God. The poet writes with pain about the suffering of a peasant.

Speaking on behalf of the people, Nikolai Alekseevich branded the intelligentsia, predicted the emergence of new forces that would replace the collapsing culture. In the verses of N.A. Klyuev main topic- the exaltation of Nature and the denunciation of the "iron civilization", the "city" (as in S. Yesenin's poem "Sorokoust") and "people who are unnecessary and scientists" ("You promised us gardens"). Connoisseur and collector of folklore. N. Klyuev was one of the first who made an attempt to switch in verses to the stylized language of folk poetry, using such genres as song, epic. The collection of N. Klyuev "Forest were" consisted mainly of stylizations of folk songs ("Wedding", "Ostrozhnaya", "Posadskaya", etc.). Following him, S. Yesenin wrote the collection "Radunitsa".

N. Klyuev welcomed the overthrow of the autocracy. In the poem "Red Song" he rejoiced over this event.

In the spring of 1917, together with S.A. Yesenin, he spoke at revolutionary rallies and meetings. After the October Revolution, N. Klyuev glorified Soviet power, "martyrs and Red Army soldiers" and even ... red terror: "The red killer is the holy chalice ...". It seemed to him that the revolution had taken place in the interests of the peasantry, that a "peasant's paradise" would come.

In the 1920s, the poet was at a loss ... He then sang, then mourned the "burnt", forever fading "fairy tale village" (the poems "Zaozerye", "Village", "Pogorelshchina").

The poem "Pogorelshchina" depicts the era of Andrei Rublev, but modern rhythms and phrases for N. Klyuev also penetrated into the work. The lyrical hero meets both historical and non-historical images. In the lines dedicated to his contemporary village, pain and suffering sound, the poet notes the loss of spiritual values, the collapse of the Russian village.

In 1934, Klyuev was arrested, and in 1937 he was shot.

Sergei Antonovich Klychkov

Klychkov Sergey Antonovich (1889-1937) was born in the Tver province, in an Old Believer family. S. Klychkov was connected with the revolutionary youth, in the December uprising of 1905 he took the side of the proletariat. The collection "The Secret Garden" brought him his first poetic success. In his early poetry, the romantic worldview of the village and the peasant poet's rejection of the "industrial" civilization are noted. The poet's refuge is the fabulous "secret garden", the time of action is relegated to the distant patriarchal past - to the "golden age". The image of the village that the poet paints is unstable, reality turns into fantasy.

The anticipation of change fills his poems with sadness. Klychkov was called the singer of the mysterious: his nature is animated, inhabited by mermaids, goblin, sorceresses and other fairy-tale characters.

It is easy to feel the connection of S. Klychkov's poetry with folk songs, especially lyrical and ritual ones. The reviewers of his first books compared the work of Klychkov with the work of N. Klyuev. However, Klychkov's attitude was different, so there were no revolutionary-rebellious moods in his works; there were practically no sharp attacks on the "city", "intelligentsia", which was typical for the new peasant poetry. Homeland, Russia in Klychkov's poetry is bright, fabulous, romantic.

The last collection of the poet was called "Visiting the cranes." S. Klychkov was engaged in translations of Georgian poets, Kyrgyz epics. In the 1930s, he was called the ideologist of the "kulaks". In 1937 he was repressed and shot.

Used book materials: Literature: uch. for stud. avg. prof. textbook institutions / ed. G.A. Obernikhina. M.: "Academy", 2010