As a genre, "peasant poetry" was formed in the middle of the 19th century. Literary direction - new peasant poetry

New peasant poets the term was introduced by V. Lvov-Rogachevsky in the book “Poetry of 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 1920-30s P.N. Vasiliev (1910-37). New peasant poets did not organize a literary group, but 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 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 created and symbolic images messiah-wonderful guest, prophet-shepherd .. God's chosen peasant and mystical nature peasant world disclosed in poetic cycle Klyuev "Izbyanyye Songs" (1920).

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 the new Nazareth, and 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 the victory of the October Revolution, Shiryaevets and the past world war and the pacifist-minded Klychkov took a position of removal, Ganin turned out to be in opposition, and by the beginning of the 1920s, the relationship between the New Peasant poets and the authorities had acquired a clear 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 the revival of Christian culture sounded in the poem. One of the priority themes in the work of the New Peasant poets is the self-worth of the individual. The lyrical hero of Klychkov's poetry books "Home Songs" (1923), "The 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 man, his uniqueness, family values, love, creativity - 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 thing was the lyrical content, the poet's feelings. 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 they create new life"heroes of construction and labor" ("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 (

For literary process early 20th century characterized by an inclination towards democratization - the creative self-affirmation of the masses. Simultaneously with the activity of professional writers, the proletarian muse asserts itself, a new type of peasant poetry arises. Its decisive revival, and most importantly, its internal growth, was facilitated by the arrival in literature of talented people from different regions of peasant Russia: from Zaonezhye - Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev (1884-1937), from the Tver region - Sergey Antonovich Klychkov (Leshenkov) (1889-1941), with Ryazan Meshchera - Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895-1925), from the Lower Volga - Alexander Vasilyevich Shiryaevts (Abramov) (1887-1924) and Pyotr Vasilyevich Oreshin (1887-1943). Together they made up a galaxy of so-called new peasant poets. The nature of their poetry is complex. Rooted in the depths of the folk - pagan and Christian - poetic worldview, at the same time it turned out to be consonant with the spiritual quests of the first decades of the new century.

The next wave of populist passions among the intelligentsia of this period was dictated, as before, "by those altruistic moods that were then experienced by our advanced youth, who put on their banner" service to the people "", the desire "to merge with the working masses of the people, disenfranchised and oppressed, but which in the eyes of young people was the bearer of bright moral ideals. At the same time, the stubborn temptation of the creative intelligentsia to get in touch with the deepest feelings of the national spirit was also conditioned by other significant motives: firstly, by a premonition of inevitably impending historical cataclysms, and secondly, by the consciousness of the exhaustion of Western aesthetic trends, the limited resources of "bookish" culture. Because of this, the course of the new populism is changing decisively: people are no longer going to the people with the aim of enlightening the ignorant and downtrodden peasant, but, on the contrary, to join his seemingly harmonious world outlook. Noting the "fruitless weaving of verbal patterns" at a meeting of the Religious-Philosophical Society, R. V. Ivanov-Razumnik wrote: "And at the same time - a terrible thirst for soil, earth, living blood, the spirit of life." And further: "The people is, of course, the true Word of life, but only when they come close to it." The problem of the intelligentsia and the people becomes fundamental in the spiritual searches of A. Blok, he also tries to unravel the deep world of folk magic and spells, which turns out to be “the ore where the gold of genuine poetry shines; the gold that provides book "paper" poetry - right up to our days.

After the appearance of collections of poems by Klyuev, Klychkov, Yesenin, Shiryaevets and somewhat later by P. Oreshin they spoke of these poets as a fresh, highly artistic and universally significant phenomenon. Bryusov, who wrote the preface to Klyuev's first collection The Pines Chime, noted: "Among the genuine debutants, the first place belongs to Mr. N. Klyuev."

The interest in Klyuev Blok deserves special attention. In the poet-peasant, he saw his personified dream of the unity of the two Russias: mystical-patriarchal and peasant-rebellious; his diaries 1907–1912 full of references to Klyuev.

No less attention was paid to the appearance of Yesenin. Blok called him a talented peasant poet-nugget, and his poems "fresh, clean, vociferous." One of the magazines found in his poems “some kind of “saying” of words, a fusion of sound and meaning”; P. Sakulin emphasized "wonderful colors" - as a result of the deepest feeling of native nature.

With the active assistance of S. Gorodetsky, I. Yasinsky, Klyuev and Yesenin are included in St. Petersburg in the activities of the literary and artistic society "Krasa" (1915), and then "Strada" (1915–1917), which aimed to help identify talents from the people who dreamed about "the unity of the intelligentsia and the people on the paths of assimilation of "true Christian ideas" by them." I. Yasinsky later saw the main merit of the society in the fact that it nominated Klyuev, “with his Zaonezhsky majestically Russian, vigorous poetic sorcery”, and contributed to the deployment of Yesenin's talent. - "this brilliant young man."

The fundamental influence of Klyuev in this early period of the ascent of the new peasant galaxy was undeniable. Confessional correspondence with him is conducted by Shiryaevets and Yesenin, who in 1917 wrote about this time:

Then in the merry noise

Playful thoughts and forces

Gentle Apostle Klyuev

He carried us in his arms.

Later, Oreshin defended the Olonets poet from the attacks of the Imagists:

Klyuev is disgusting to you to the point of pain,

For me, he is superior to you,

And his songs about the Russian field

Drink more than once!

Immensely appreciated his younger brother Yesenin and Klyuev. They had complex personal relationships.

The new peasant poets preferred to trace their poetic genealogy along the family line, pointing either to the mother, or to the grandmother, or to the grandfather, seeing in them the carriers of the peasant worldview, as if directly introducing them to the hidden depths of the people's "singing precepts". Klyuev recalls the "sniff" of his grandfather, which "sorrows" in his songs, "sounds" in his heart, "dreams and harmonies." A huge influence on the spiritual upbringing of the poet was also exerted by his mother, an “epic” and “songwriter,” to whose memory he dedicates “Pussy Songs” (1914–1916). S. Klychkov also writes that "he owes his language to the forest grandmother Avdotya, the eloquent mother Fekla Alekseevna ...".

Awareness of deep kinship with the people's creative spirit contributed to the fact that it was in the "peasant" appearance of the "songs" they created that the poets saw their advantage over the poetry of the intelligentsia, "civilized". Instead of the miserable laments characteristic of their predecessors, the self-taught poets, they have a motive of belief in their social superiority. Klyuev is not flattered, as he wrote in one of his letters, that his “poor songs” are read by bored satin ladies, and gentlemen with cleaned nails and impeccable partings write (about them, - A. M.) choking articles in newspapers. With irony, Yesenin treated the salon hype about his "village" poems and charming appearance. In contrast to the arrogant noble pedigree, Klyuev extracts his own heraldry from the "depth of centuries": "My family tree is rooted in the time of Tsar Alexei, curled with branches in the wonderful Stroganov letters ..."; “My fathers for ancient Orthodoxy are commemorated in the book Russian Grapes for two centuries.”

Evidence of the organic kinship of the new peasant poets with the working people is the fact of their participation in social protest. About the social views of Klychkov during the years of the first Russian revolution, one of his contemporaries writes: “The people, labor, creativity, equality, freedom - were for him concepts of the same series. He treated the socialist revolution sympathetically, as a historical right, as a great breakthrough into the people's future. For participation in the revolutionary movement in the same 1905, Shiryaevets was fired from his job, and he was forced to leave his native Volga. For Yesenin, as for unreliable in 1913, police surveillance was established in Moscow. The most active forms of social protest were shown by young Klyuev. In 1905, he became a propagandist for the revolutionary-minded Bureau of Assistance to the Peasant Union and was soon involved in the distribution of revolutionary proclamations. In 1906, Klyuev agitated the peasants not to pay taxes, not to obey the authorities, and this entailed a six-month imprisonment. During a search, Marx's "Capital" and "handwritten" works of "outrageous content" are confiscated from him. After serving his term (in August 1906), Klyuev maintains contact with the Bolsheviks, advocates for help to political exiles and prisoners.

Klyuev's publicistic speeches in defense of the peasantry are also known. In 1908, through Blok, he tried to convey to V. S. Mirolyubov, the former editor of the Journal for All (1898–1906), his article “From the Native Shore”, which testifies to the indestructible rebelliousness of the spirit in the bowels of the peasant masses. Emphasizing the difficult social and material situation of the Olonets village, the author draws attention to the independent character of the northern peasant, who dares to put forward his "peasant program": "... so that there are no taxes and bosses, so that the edible products are ours." In the peasant, Klyuev sees not only a powerful force, but also the highest moral authority, for "his scales are spiritual, a kind of purgatory, where everything false dies, everything that is just becomes immortal." And therefore, retribution is inevitable for all his "jailers". In the same year, Nashe Zhurnal published an anonymous article by Klyuev, “In Black Days. (From a letter from a peasant)”, which cost the magazine its existence. Objecting to those who, like the publicist M. A. Engelhardt, argued that the people "remained indifferent to the godfather victims of the revolutionary intelligentsia," Klyuev proves "the innate revolutionary nature of the depths of the peasantry." In both articles, one can feel the desire of the novice poet to speak not just about the peasantry,<…>spirit" of which he is well acquainted, but also on behalf of the peasantry itself.

And yet, the motive of social protest did not become dominant in the work of the new peasant poets. It is completely absent in the lyrics of Klychkov and is almost not felt in the poetry of early Yesenin. At Shiryaevets, it is extremely washed out by the romantic “Volga” jet. This motive comes through most realistically only in Oreshin's "songs" with their poor theme.

The motive of protest in Klyuev's poetry developed in an extremely complex way and bizarrely transformed. Undoubtedly, the poems of 1905-1906 are revolutionary, but they were not included in the first collection of the poet. And yet the entire "Pine Chimes" is imbued with the spirit of the tragic events of the first Russian revolution; much in it is inspired by the memory of the executed, exiled, condemned. Here even "Pines whisper about darkness and prison, About the twinkling of stars behind bars."

The idea of ​​atonement for suffering and torment heroically, but to no avail, fighting for the freedom of the people does not leave the poet in the next collection (“Brotherly Songs”). Based on the gospel idea of ​​communion with eternal joy and immortality only through torment and death, Klyuev likens the revolutionaries to the first Christians - the martyrs of the Colosseum. The “songs” of schismatic sects become a poetic form that embodies this idea into images, which could also oppose their persecutors only with unbending firmness of spirit and strength of conviction. In The Evening Song, the heroes perceive their doom in the world of persecution and evil as future incorruptibility in the ideal world of good and justice, where they will have

Behind the back are six lightweight wings,

On the curls are crowns of evening stars.

Klyuev's appeal to "sectarian" poetics is not accidental. Everyone who studied the Russian religious schism invariably emphasized the fact of the natural transition of social protest in the deep strata of the masses into protest against the state church, social quests into quests of a religious-utopian nature. A. S. Prugavin wrote about the brightly democratic nature of the schism, which is becoming "the religion of the enslaved and destitute masses." Investigating the movement of the so-called "non-payers", he emphasized that "they openly called the king the antichrist, and the officials, all those" who put on bright buttons "- the servants of the antichrist, his messengers." He explained this seemingly socio-religious paradox by the fact that “the more conscious part of the people does not separate religion from life, since in the eyes of these people religion is both morality, and philosophy, and ethics, and sociology.” The Bolshevik Vl. Bonch-Bruevich put a sign of identity between the "mystical" and "free-thinking" sects of Russia.

Ranking Klyuev precisely among this type of people's truth-seekers, V. G. Bazanov rightly writes about his special religiosity, "peasantly" combining "patriarchal survivals and hatred of official Orthodoxy." The names of the most famous schism teachers run through the entire centuries-old thickness of the Russian religious movement. Klyuev's attraction to the spiritual authority of one of them, to Archpriest Avvakum, is undeniable. V. G. Bazanov traces the commonality of these two distinctive figures of Russian culture, divided over the centuries, saying that both of them, having a sharply negative attitude towards the official church, inspiredly “opposed the destruction of those aesthetic and spiritual values ​​\u200b\u200bthat were created in the era of Ancient Rus' by the people themselves” . This also determines some similarity of their poetic systems, based on "a kind of folklore rethinking of Christian symbols and the language of ancient Russian literature." characteristic early biography Klyuev. By origin (his mother was from a schismatic family), he belonged to people of a “strong moral temper” (P. Sakulin). At the age of sixteen, having put on the chains, he goes to "be saved" in Solovki, then labors as the psalmist David in the schismatic "Ship", where he composes spiritual songs and prayers that are very popular with believers. Later, Klyuev would call Archpriest Avvakum his "great-grandfather". His heroic and tragic image will take its place in Klyuev's lyrics of the 1920s, intensely saturated with historical associations. ("Lion's Bread", 1922). The traditions of the Old Believer culture left a certain imprint on Yesenin's childhood, who was brought up in the house of a schismatic grandfather.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the entire worldview of these poets turned out to be saturated with religious symbols. In the halo of Christian martyrdom, they also perceived the image of Russia. They came to him from the apocrypha and utopias, the national essence of which Tyutchev summarized unusually boldly for his time in the form of the “king of heaven”, who proceeded, blessing his native land. Yesenin blesses her, passing "past villages and villages", the peasant intercessor "gracious Mikola", Oreshin's fate of the Russian plowman is watched "from shaggy clouds" by Christ, and "bright shadows" of angels walk along the dark peasant hut at a certain hour. Such images are absent from Klychkov, their place is occupied by characters of pagan mythology ("Leshy", "Lada", "Kupava"). Klyuev's poetry is especially rich in apocryphal characters. In it, he moved the entire synclite of saints and martyrs from hut and church icons, adding pagan patrons to them. However, this should not be seen as an emphasis on the religiosity of the poets. Church images were called upon to illuminate the utopian ideal of Russia, although the image of the latter appeared in them not only in mystical illumination.

In the poetry of Klyuev, Yesenin and other poets of the peasant galaxy, the living and colorful features of rural life are fully reproduced. The use of such familiar attributes of peasant wretchedness as “sermyaga”, “bast”, “bast shoes”, etc., acquired an unusual aesthetic sound in their poetry. Klyuev's "Dawn in the motley and bast Rows a bough willow"; "The moon will shine with a splinter, The snowball will creak under the bast shoes." Yesenin admires the manifestation of the harmonious fullness of village life (poem "Bazaar"). The bazaar was poeticized by almost all Russian artists, like that festive interval between heavy peasant work, when everything cheerful and cheerful in folk life spills out. Yesenin's poem to some extent resembles the painting by B. Kustodiev "Fair" (1906), on foreground which the men's shirts, sundresses, scarves and ribbons of women and girls splash with their cheerful, sonorous multi-coloredness, and the eyes of children are fascinated by the painted world of toys. Whitewashed and painted walls and roofs of churches and bell towers reinforce this impression. And in the distance behind them, behind the gray roofs of the huts, the forest frowned and hid as the embodiment of long weeks and months of harsh peasant labor. The joyful figurativeness of the foreground is only a brief happy moment, and the artist does not spare his bright colors on it. With all its temperament and artistic structure, Yesenin's poem also seeks to capture a moment of peasant leisure and joy. And although the contrasting Kustodiev background is completely absent here, the short duration of fun is palpable both in the rapid rhythm of the lines and in the hasty change of visual and auditory impressions. The same generous, vibrant nature harmonizes with the colorful bazaar assortment. In the last stanza, the lyrical intensity reaches its limit: here both the delight in front of the merry folk Russia and the hidden joy of happy love merge together.

Are you, Rus', path-dear

Scattered al outfit?

Do not judge with a strict prayer

Heartfelt look!

No less significant is the poem "Recruits", also dedicated to the everyday phenomenon: the departure of recruits into the army. In it, the poet decisively deviates from the lamentations and “weepings” common in folklore and peasant poetry. Only one motive is taken here - the farewell of the peasant boys to the "other" days of their village life. All the attention of the poet is focused on establishing the connection between the recruits leaving the village and the peasant land that raised them. They are surrounded by the world of their native village, forever entering their memory, with its “curvy path”, “blue summer evening”, “stumps” in the neighboring “dark grove”, green hillocks and fields. The poem is aimed at revealing the feeling of homeland that recruits will take with them and which will help them endure the burden of military service.

The early Yesenin is characterized by a harmonious vision of the rural world. It is no coincidence that in the epithets embodying him, the poet uses a palette of pure, cheerful and some sonorous colors:

Brighter than a pink shirt

The dawns of spring are burning.

Gilded plaques

They speak with bells.

Nature also responds to this sonorous everyday color painting: “The forest rings with coniferous gilding”; "The twilight licks the gold of the sun, In the distant groves a ringing ringing ...".

Rural Rus' of "Radunitsa" (its first section is called "Rus") shines with the joy of agricultural labor and sprinkles with the fun of festive leisure with round dances, talyankas and sonorous chants of "sly girls". The poet notices the "stripes of grief", the orphanhood of the huts sheltered by the willows; in his poems, one can sometimes hear the exclamations of the “unfortunate” folk muse that have already become truisms: “You are my abandoned land, you are my wasteland!” However, they do not contain a social motive, they are rather lamentations about the primordial peasant poverty, the contemplation of which causes inevitable sadness. It is no coincidence that, emphasizing this, the poet uses the oxymoron structure of the image: aspens are skinny, but the leaves roll from them like apples; poplars are withering - “loudly”, etc.

Peasant labor is deeply poeticized in the works of the new peasant poets, and, above all, its carriers are simple village workers. At the same time, Klyuev likes to emphasize the elementary, ingenuous side of peasant labor. He is touched by laptevyaz, at whose hand the “glazed birch bark” creaks, the grandfather, who prepares his firewood “for merry frosts” - “like Noah's ark”. The philosophical and poetic apology of the worker-grandfather is developed in the cycle “The Ring of Lada” by Klychkov. Here a picture of the creative unity of human and natural forces unfolds: nature is represented by a mysterious, life-giving essence, and human activity is a clearly outlined calendar circle of agricultural concerns and deeds.

The idealization of rural life by the new peasant poets consisted in the fact that each of them acted in his work as a child of the people and saw in it what it was customary for the peasant himself to see. They were characterized by the desire to depict not so much the historical reality itself, but the popular ideal of harmonic and happy life. In this, a special romanticism of their work was manifested.

A. Shiryaevts should be recognized as the most complete romanticist on a folklore basis. His Rus' is Rus', already imprinted in a folk song. Songs and its heroes: desperate girls, barge haulers, robbers, Cossacks with a strong character, Stenka Razin with his hoard. The landscape is just as violent, drawing into the distance, to another life: these are high steeps, river distances, waves, dark nights and thunderstorms. None of the new peasant poets had a landscape endowed with historical features in the same way as that of Shiryaevets. Its sunset first resembles with its colorful diversity the Zaporizhian Sich, and then a messenger, under the cover of night penetrating into the fabulously rich Tsargrad (“Sunset”). The Volga, with the fury of its waves, wants to talk about the treasures sunk in it, to throw them out on the shore ("The Storm"). Multicolor and patterning are represented by objects of the past (weapons, goblets, carpets, tents, clothes). Patterned and developed mainly on the richness of dance motifs, the rhythm of his "sings".

In the intermountain lies -

Our village is in Zhiguli.

In life modern village Shiryaevets are attracted mainly by those sides in which, as it were, everything talented and sweeping spills out, which for the time being lurks in the bowels of the people (“Maslenitsa”, “Trinity”, “Dance pattern”).

The romantic aspiration of the new peasant poets is evidenced by their frequent appeal to heroic images. national history and folklore. The images of Stenka Razin and Kudeyar in Shiryaevets, Yevpaty Kolovrat and Marfa Posadnitsa in Yesenin, the plow-driver and robbers in Klyuev are connected, on the one hand, with the motives of the struggle for national independence, and on the other hand, with social protest, in both cases very romanticized . Klychkov was attracted by a more psychological type of national, mostly fairy-tale hero. He created cycles dedicated to Sadko and Bove. He shared his idea to write a book of “songs” about the old Russian epic heroes in 1911 in a letter to P. A. Zhurov: “And my second<книга>- heroic songs, songs about Russian heroes, about Ilya, Churil, Mikul, Bova, Sadko and Alyosha! Listen: Bova - love! Churilo is the sun, a white valiant face, which he covers with a sunflower so as not to tan, Mikula is the earth, spring plowing, Alyosha is a wild, autumn field and causeless, secret sweetness-sadness.

The attitude of the new peasant poets to nature is permeated with a reverent feeling. Klyuev's poetry is replete with realistic images of northern nature, in which either spring, or summer, or autumn "the reality of Obonezhie" is revealed in all its original freshness. She fascinates with her sunset sleeping behind the fir trees, foggy swaths, hay dawns, spring hollow water, during which “thoughts are clear like dawns”. But at the same time, there is an abundant touch of church imagery in it: “Dawn, having blown out its lights, Dims with an iconic halo”; "The currant shed a tear, Herbal listening to the psalm." White willows appear to the poet in the spring “in censer smoke”, and in the “pale” autumn air one senses “burnt incense”. The influence of religious figurativeness is also palpable in Yesenin's early lyrics (“I smell the rainbow of God ...”, etc.).

In a different way, an intimate connection with nature is established in Klychkov's lyrics, in which church imagery plays no role. The poet is looking for, first of all, its bewitching, detaching from the everyday bustle of influence: that from which the body feels a healing, beneficial power, the soul - peace, and thoughts - the ability to aspire to the sublime and eternal ("Garden", "Childhood", etc.). Many paintings of Klychkov's landscape breathe with the depth of their fantastic otherness: spring twilight is ready to thicken into the unsteady image of Leshy, which is no longer there - dissolved in the colors and sounds of forest charm. The forest approaching the porch of the parental hut turns the life of a village boy into a fairy tale and then becomes his “secret garden”. peace of mind. The intertwined branches of trees lost in the wilderness of the forest appear to the shepherd who ran there along the “unreturnable paths” as the thoughts of his “former ancestors”, and in the rustle of their leaves he hears the “whisper of human lips”.

In the depiction of nature by the new peasant poets, attention is drawn not so much to its “village” as to the fact that it was perceived precisely by the peasant, through “ magic crystal» village life.

Oh, and I myself am often ringing

I saw yesterday in the fog:

Red month foal

Harnessed to our sleigh.

Such an intimate vision of nature contributed to the emergence of an original figurative system based on a metaphor, as if domesticating the world. Everything incomprehensible and far from a person in the universe, which can inspire him with “star fear”, the poet, as it were, brings him closer to himself, warming him with his “parental hearth”, “baptizing the air with the names of objects close to us” (Yesenin). This perception of the world is palpable in Klyuev's desire to present the entire cosmos as nothing more than a peasant farmstead with all the land adjacent to it, as if fanned by a domestic spirit. Everything is close, everything is yours, everything is blessed: “Like a woman, a gray river was woven in a row in a day.” Yesenin follows in his footsteps, who tries to substantiate such a vision of the world and imagery already theoretically in the aesthetic treatise “Keys of Mary” (1918, published in 1920).

Skill in conveying the extraordinary physicality of the images of nature sometimes reached sophistication with Klyuev. His metaphorical epithet is extremely rich and juicy. Klyuevskaya color painting seemed to have arisen from the thickly foaming patriarchal life and northern nature. In his poetry, "Sunset fades into the piebald depths"; "The yard is an owl's wing, All in a big-eyed pattern"; “In the hut, a wall was observed, Like a robe with pockmarked gilding”; "Swollen, thawed the ice on the river, Became piebald, rusty-gold." Rarely in any of the Russian poets did a color or tactile epithet reach such sensual power (“Adam's barley nakedness”, “the willow skin of a girl's elbows”, “grainy light”). The poet's ear is no less sophisticated, subtly recognizing the sound of life, ranging from the "drowsy splashes of the evening bells" to the "ringing of straws" or the "rustling of the baptismal fee" secretly audible in the straw. Klyuev himself considered himself one of those rare, but still sought out people "with a soulful ear", who can hear, "like a grain of wheat<…>strives to break through to the sun from his native cell. “Whoever has ears not from an oak tub, he even learns a stream, how he sings a song in his streaming language.” Klyuev's gustatory and olfactory epithets are also richly saturated: "It smelled of tar honey From birch woods"; "And in every sheaf is the fragrance of the Baby's Apple Heel." The brilliance and richness of Klyuev's palette was immediately noted by the first critics of the poet: “Bright, golden colors burn like heat, like a golden dome in the sun,” wrote P. Sakulin. “This is the Russian “gold flower”, which is so to the liking of our people.”

The lyrics of Klychkov's nature are imbued with a folklore-peasant attitude. Her whole world seems to be seen in a lubok dimension, arranging heterogeneous phenomena in one row.

The meadow is dressed up in fogs,

A month was born in the sky

And lay like a sickle at the boundary ...

Images of such a naive worldview permeate all of the poet's early lyrics. Here, even the cosmos appears at home close:

Low month! The sun is low!

And reddens at the window,

And blushes at the gate ...

This not always obvious presence of a folklore element explains the well-known charm of Klychkov's lyrics, as if reconstructing the poetic thinking of the patriarchal peasantry. “If you want to hear how Rus' of the sixteenth century speaks, listen to him,” - with these words he introduced Sergey Klychkov to K. Zelinsky in the 20s. A. Voronsky.

The motive of the unity of man and nature is dominant for all of Klychkov's lyrics. To this end, he not only turns to pagan folklore, where this motive lies, one might say, on the surface, but tries to find the same thing in book images. So, in the cycle "Bova" the poet is most of all fascinated by the fact that after the death of the hero "a wide wave" of his curls "lies in the valleys between the grass", "an oak grew from the heart ...".

Rhythmically, especially the first two collections of Klychkov follow the folklore tradition. Their cycles are richly patterned, interspersed with incantatory appeals to the elements, which have long become children's sentences (“Rainbow-vereya, Golden patterns! Point across the meadow, guide through the forest, Where to get faster, Where can I find a friend!”), Round dance exclamations (“Oh , beauty, wait! ..”), ritual proverbs. As for the development of figurative thought, Klychkov follows the path of subtle stylization, striving to achieve aesthetic contact with the past in contemporary art. Close to the symbol, the condensation of figurative meaning here aims to show the unity of the human and natural principles. So, according to the plot, the poem "The Bride" is an image of a seemingly ordinary village wedding:

Convoys will sing at the feast

Through the birch forest...

The picture of the expected wedding feast ends with the dots of the last verse, being absorbed by the landscape. It is said about the guests that they will "come in large numbers" "without a way, without a road - byl". Further, their image is even more dissolved in nature. They “scatter” their “caftans” and “sermyags”

What is one hollow on the ravines,

And the other through the forest, through the moss ...

The groom himself is named by the month.

Do not be proud, Honeymoon,

Brides of my fiance!

In folk poetic symbolism, the month most often acts as an idealizing metaphor for the goodness of the young man, the groom. Using this poetic representation, Klychkov rearranges the components of the symbol, making the image of the month primary, and bringing the “groom” to it only as an appendix. But in this case, the picture of the wedding can be read in a completely different way - as an image of autumn, when a new month is born with a snowy first-time. But autumn is the time of weddings, and therefore the month is the groom.

In an effort to reveal the diversity of the folklore motif, Klychkov sometimes falls into stylization. Such, for example, is the appearance of the sea princess, as if merging with the image of the wave itself.

The princess has shoulders in foam,

White knees in foam

Becoming her waves slimmer

And the fog floats behind her ...

This is how the stencil vignette of the artist of the early 20th century is seen. The impression of stylization is further enhanced by the static nature of most of Klychkov's folklore images. Often this or that episode from the life of a fairy-tale hero turns into a landscape picture and freezes in it. Similarly, I. Ya. Bilibin turned the events of a Russian fairy tale into a series of frozen ornamented drawings. In general, in the first collections of Klychkov, the folklore world appears as if filtered through the poet's dream of ideal world utopian past, the world of fabulous, “ghostly Rus'”, where, as in a “secret garden”, he tries to penetrate “folklore” paths.

You cover me, spicy,

Shrouded blue.

I love your melodious rumble

And your princess!

With the exception of such fabulous and other semi-mythical characters, Klychkov's early lyrics are deserted. Yes, the poet does not yearn to meet people in his bright loneliness in the midst of nature, where it is easy for him to wander along the road "behind his shoulders with a purse, With his lonely thought ..." and it is not difficult to find shelter "among a family of talkative aspens." Refined, imposingly detached from everything worldly, the poet of dreams, the "enchanted wanderer", Lelya - he knows only novels with mermaids, sea princesses and frets during this period, happily protecting him in the bosom of nature from mistakes and disappointments real life.

With all the real, rural concreteness of the images of nature and life, the lyrics of the new peasant poets were directed towards some ineffable mystery of human existence. Not only the first reviewers of Klyuev spoke about “a string of vague pre-dawn sensations, prophecies, promises, hopes”, this is also noted by the modern researcher of his poetry V. G. Bazanov. The title of Klychkov’s collection “The Secret Garden” was perceived as a symbol of all new peasant poetry: “They are constantly trying to show the “secret garden” of their dreams behind the visible green garden,” wrote V. Lvov-Rogachevsky.

The lyrical subject of the early lyrics of the new peasant poets often appears in the form of a shepherd, with whom almost all of them identify themselves. “I am a shepherd, my chambers are between unsteady fields,” says Yesenin (“Shepherd”); Klychkov sees his “songs” as a herd of sheep, which the poet-shepherd grazes “in the early fog by the river” (“I sing everything - after all, I am a singer ...”). Yesenin explains this craving of poets for the symbolic image of a shepherd: “In ancient times, no one disposed of time as freely as shepherds. They were the first thinkers and poets, as evidenced by the testimony of the Bible and Apocrypha.<…>All pagan faith in the transmigration of souls, music, song, and the philosophy of life on earth as thin as lace is the fruit of transparent shepherd thoughts.

Even more widespread in this poetry was the image of a wanderer, a vagabond, a pilgrim, a monk. The very image of “gave” became a symbol of wandering in it (“Look into the deciduous wanderer distance” - Klyuev; “In the eyes of distant lands, In my hands there is a birch ...” - Klychkov; “Faces are dusty, tanned, Eyelids gnawed out the distance ...” - Yesenin) .

All these images testify to the aspiration of individual poets to a certain "otherworldly", "unsolved land", which at first glance (for example, in Yesenin's lyrics) seems to be something akin to the Platonic ancestral home of the soul. There, "in the mute darkness of eternity", in his timeless "starry" element, the poet himself leaves earthly reality, where he is "an accidental guest". But then it turns out that he still cannot renounce this reality; he needs to become a particle of eternity, with its “non-sunset eyes” in order to eagerly look down on the same earth (“Where the mystery forever slumbers ...”). Trusting his "phantom star", the poet goes to the "unknown", but does he "leave" if he is accompanied on the way by all the same "mowers", "apples of the dawn", "furrows ringing with rye"? Communion of the highest grace (“with a smile of joyful happiness”), he prays all the same “mop and haystacks” of his native peasant land.

The “hidden” world of the new peasant poets turns out to be nothing but the same rural Russia with all its peasant attributes, but only, as it were, raised to an immeasurable spiritual height. This is Rus', identified with the fate of the legendary Kitezh-grad, Rus', becoming "hackneyed India", "hackneyed" space. At this highest stage in the development of the image of peasant Rus', its everyday realities are already beginning to shine with an “imperishable”, ideal light: “So that a corn bast shoe, a grimy pot, Inflame the eyes - a living light” (“White India” by Klyuev); “And in the corner of a plow with a harrow They also dream - they shine in the corner” (“The Wonderful Guest” by Klychkov).

The main material for the embodiment of this patterned-deep world similar to the fabulous Kitezh was an original, living peasant and gem-archaic word. Such material was not at the disposal of self-taught writers. Their poems about Russian nature are full of obvious borrowings from someone else's dictionary: “Yellow tunics removed birch trees from their shoulders” (S. Fomin); “I dreamed of a fragrant garden, a grotto under a curly linden tree” (G. Deev-Khomyakovsky). At the same time, the specific expressiveness of the poetic image of the new peasant poets, their lively vernacular does not create the impression of ethnographicism that needs special decoding. The dialecticisms of Klyuev, Yesenin, less often Klychkov and Shiryaevets, pulsate with emotional and figurative energy, not to mention their national root transparency. These are poetic dialectisms, regardless of whether they are taken from the verbal repertoire of village old women or were composed by the poets themselves. Klyuev: “The dawn went out”; “I jumped a little light into my eyes”; "will forever regret"; Klychkov: “in a dark cloud in the evening”; from Yesenin: “dawn and spend half a day at the bush”; "wanderer of ugly", "from fearful noise"; "in the hooting of foamy jets", "swirling freedom",

cows talk to me

In cursive language.

Spirited oak trees

They call branches to the river.

The impression was created that the poet introduces the reader into a cache of poetic images unknown to him. And since the words-images themselves definitely correlated with the elements of peasant speech and worldview, the world revealed by the lyrics of these poets, with all its freshness, seemed primordial, although half-forgotten. Trying to determine this deep connection between the poetic word and the people's worldview, A. Bely, in an article devoted to Klyuev's poetics, wrote: "The root folk power of the snake sound is transparent to the poet, rooted in this folk wisdom."

Another inalienable generic feature of the new-peasant poetry is song, which naturally flows into it from folklore sources. Close to folk love lyrics are many of Yesenin's "songs", filled with a heady young feeling ("Play, play, talyanochka ...", "The scarlet light of dawn wove over the lake ..."). The prowess of the Volga freemen emanates from Shiryaevets’s “sings”. Klychkov's early poetry is all song. However, the degree of folklore of these "songs" is not the same even in the work of the same poet. So, in "Songs from Zaonezhye" by Klyuev, the folklore material is barely touched by the creative individuality of the poet, but as for "Izbyanye Songs", here Klyuev, proceeding from the folklore basis, reaches the pinnacle of its poetic interpretation.

The cycle of these “songs” dedicated to the death of the mother, in their genre aspiration, is repelled from the funeral tale recorded in the last century by E. V. Barsov from I. A. Fedosova in the poet’s homeland, in the Olonets province. According to the collector, Fedosova was not just a prisoner, but an interpreter of someone else's grief. The fellow countryman of the famous folk poet pursues a different goal. If usually all eight consecutive episodes of funeral lamentation aimed at the ultimate dramatization of the experience, psychophysiologically resolved by catharsis, then Klyuev, in his “lament” for his mother, enters into a poetic combat with death. Relying on mystical intuition and even more on the miraculous gift of poetic incarnation, he tries to "resurrect" the deceased, or rather to convince her of her transition from real life to another spiritual existence. The whole cycle can be considered as a poetic suite of reincarnation in the death of a peasant woman, whose whole life was organically merged with her native nature, and the whole “hut” world surrounding her, even after the death of her mistress, continues to keep the warmth of her soul, the high mood and harmony of her worries and affairs. It is significant that from the very first lines of the image of the funeral rite, on the one hand, a domestic theme begins to develop, on the other hand, nature, which will have to intersect and merge into one in conclusion: “Four widows came to the deceased ... Shouting cranes furrowed the azure ... ".

The mother has died, but everything around her is filled with her immortal essence.

Like a spruce under a saw, the hut sighed,

A group of shadows whispered in the corner,

An elk heifer thrashed in the barn,

And swelled like a sail on the bed of a handkerchief ...

A similar metamorphosis occurs in the last stanza with nature: a “sunset-golden man” inaudibly enters the blushing window, bestowing a farewell light on the deceased (“For thoughts at dawn, for a tale in the evening”), then “poop”, “robin” are connected to the rite and "granddaughter-star". The second poem (“The couch is waiting for the cat ...”) is completely dedicated to the “hut” world, which, as it were, keeps the seal of the deceased. At the same time, the “hut creature” does not passively imprint on itself the memory of the hostess. She is possessed by a complex range of moods - from hopeless despondency to hope and joy just about ready to be resurrected.

From the middle of the poem, the poet introduces into his “lament” the world of nature, which even more affirms the triumph of life over death. However, comfort is still not easy. Let magpies distract from mournful thoughts, bullfinches and returning cranes please - right in their own way, both crosses on the churchyard and the “frowning” hut. A person who has suffered an irreparable loss will inevitably have to drink the cup of bitter truth. The third poem of the suite is dedicated to her (““ Mom died ” - two rustling words ...”). Here the poet tries to torture the mystery of death in the same way as the mystery of life: "Who is she?" The answer and a picture of an even greater triumph of life over death unfold in the next poem (“A hearth for a cat, what a barn for a priest ...”). Returns to the cycle of their usual affairs, having changed herself with the departure of the hostess, the “hut creature”: “The mother-stove has one thing in mind: to save Warmth, but to snore in the semi-darkness ...”. Faithful to her unstoppable routine, she also draws the desperate poet into the usual circle of life balance: “It’s not for nothing that in a deaf, glowing hut, Like a sail in a bucket, you are drowsy.” There is a break in his soul; in reconciliation with what happened, a new source of consolation opens up: “In the beaten paradise and in the calm of the threshing floor To cry honey that there will be“ she ”.” That's how it happens. In a dream or in a poetic daydream, a picture of the mystical transformation of the hut is revealed to him, which at the cherished hour is visited by the spirit of the mother who has returned "from beyond the seas". Her blessing is accompanied by images of natural generosity, healing power. Now, when the consciousness is sufficiently accustomed to the loss, the poet dares to take a more sober look at his surroundings (“It’s good in the evening with the lamp …”). And an untied stocking, and a sleeping tub, and a hushed broom - alas, cannot help with anything, except for a mean and impassive reminder of a departed person. And therefore the poem ends with a deep sigh: "Oh, God - Tomorrow is a year, like a native in a coffin!"

In a number of subsequent poems, as if reproducing an unstoppable series of natural phenomena and domestic, peasant troubles and deeds, the image of the mother gradually recedes, only occasionally flashing with an “amber needle” of a burning ray, then reminding herself of herself with “crosses of blessed peaks” surrounded by a forest hut. The mighty, healing expanse of the dense forest region emanates from last verses"Suites", in which "From the twilight to the stars and from the stars to the dawn Bell birch bark, swell of needles and amber resin." The lines that have returned to peace and tranquility are permeated with lines indicating that the life of the peasant hut continues its unstoppable course as before.

With its originality, deep connection with the national spirit, the creativity of the new peasant pleiad was unanimously opposed by criticism of the “bookish”, intellectual production of art. A. Bely contrasts Klyuev's intuitive knowledge of the secrets of the poetic craft with the school of aesthetes, where "metaphors are artificially boiled and equipped with the salt of artificial sounds." B. Sadovskoy, in turn, writes: “After the soulless pseudo-poetry of the aesthetes from Apollo (meaning the acmeists, - A. M.) and the impudent bacchanalia of futurism, you rest your soul on the inspirations of folk poets, pure as forest dawns.” Klyuev picks up the idea of ​​opposing his poetry as a direct voice of nature, as a revelation of the people's soul - to the handicraft verses of urban erudite. In the cycle “To the Poet Sergei Yesenin” (1916–1917), he denounces the superficial artisanal attitude to poetry (this is “paper hell”, “linear flame”, “cigarette hearts”) and, conversely, the images of his own and Yesenin’s poetry are completely combined with natural element ("Because in my eyes blue, That I am the son of the Great Lakes", "I murmured forest streams And Forest Were sung").

In your eyes, the smoke from the huts,

Deep sleep of river silt,

Ryazan, poppy sunset, -

Your melodious ink.

But with all the deep orientation to folklore sources, to the original peasant word, Klyuev, Klychkov, Yesenin were still not alien to the influence of symbolist poetry, which attracted them with its high culture. The most noticeable was the influence of Blok, whose images and intonations are not uncommon in the early Klyuev: “In the snowy blue nights ...”, “Joy<…>With a thin hand, Dawn will kindle an unsunseting flame. This is not contradicted by Klyuev's admission that not everything in Blok's poetry is dear to him, but only "some kind of lark's tremors." Undoubtedly, both Klyuev and Yesenin developed the Blok theme of Russia in their own way, but Blok himself went towards his Russia, I think, not without the influence of Klyuev.

It should be noted that, mastering the high poetic culture of the Symbolists, the new peasant poets did not abandon the unpretentious traditional verse and completely followed the rut of folklore and classical versification, to the extent of diversifying it only with new rhythmic moves that came into wide use, for example, dolniks.

New peasant poets created their own image of peasant Rus', which, for all its aesthetic and philosophical richness, was ahistorical. The timelessness of this radiant "ghostly Rus'" was also emphasized by the poets themselves. “My tear, my sigh about my native Kitezh,” Klyuev wrote about his “mother Rus'”. Klychkov has a "secret garden" lost in the reserved land, where there is no longer "the road to a friend, nor the path to the enemy." For Yesenin, this is the “Russian land”, along which they roam, blessing him, either the peasant intercessor Nikola the Merciful, or the Apostle Andrei “with a shepherd's pipe”. Most noticeable in this image were the features of the patriarchal village, in its mythical or very recent past, the village about which V. I. Lenin wrote in the article “Leo Tolstoy, as a mirror of the Russian revolution”: “The old foundations of the peasant economy and peasant life , the foundations that really held out for centuries were demolished with extraordinary speed. It is precisely because of this that the ideal image of peasant Rus' was accompanied by two tragic motifs among the named poets: longing for the past (“I’m passing through the night village” by Klyuev, “On the troika” by Shiryaevets) and the rejection of urban civilization. In the latter, with its automation of life and the spiritual impersonality of man, the new peasant poets saw a real threat to the aesthetically original, humanly fragile world of the village.

It should be especially noted the extreme one-sidedness of the view of the new peasant poets on the city. They saw neither revolutionary, proletarian forces, nor spiritual progress in it, concentrating their attention only on bourgeois immorality and the costs of technical progress. “There is nowhere else to run. A sawmill puffs in the forest, a telegraph wire sings in the gorges, and the green eye of a semaphore bulges,” Klyuev wrote to Bryusov in the early 1910s. It's not so much real city, how much is a symbol of capitalist evil. In a letter to Shiryaevets, the same Klyuev conjures: “How hateful and black the whole so-called civilized world seems, and what would it give, what cross, what Golgotha ​​would bear, so that America would not advance on the gray-feathered dawn, on the chapel in the forest, on the hare at the haystack, at the hut-fairy tale ... ". Many poems by Klyuev and Shiryaevets are filled with a complaint about the destructive influence of the city. In contrast to Blok (“New America”), the new peasant poets think of the future of Russia only as the future of a peasant utopian paradise, the expanse of which will not be covered with the soot of industrial skies. In Klyuev's impressionist sketch "The Old and the New" (1911), this finds expression in two symbolic sketches: the urban present and the agricultural future. The first is characterized by such signs as "a sharp, reminiscent of the ringing of shackles, the clanging of a tram", pedestals and signs on which the "seal of the Antichrist" is indelibly blackened. Of the second it is said: “Thousands of years have passed. Our fields are fragrant and dewy<…>Do you remember? here was what people called the City<…>The ears are full of honey, and the seraphim brothers go around the human booths. “Iron skyscraper, factory chimney, Yours, oh homeland, secret fate!” - the poet exclaimed, addressing Russia at the beginning of 1917.

The image of a city dweller is also conditional in Klyuev's poems. This is a kind of “jacket man” devoid of a sense of beauty and reverence for nature, stale in his lack of spirituality, who, declaring in a “birch-tree paradise”, “breathed a cigarette into coniferous incense And burned a forget-me-not with a spit.”

Bird cherry twisted her hands,

An ermine confuses a trace to a mink ...

Son of iron and stone boredom

Trampling birch bark paradise.

The soulless attitude to nature, the rupture of life-giving ties with it, is put forward by the poets of the new peasant pleiad as the main sign of the spiritual impoverishment of man. Intensively developing by the end of the 1910s. the motif of dissonance between man and nature, with inevitable regularity, introduces people into Klychkov's "deserted", as already noted, poetry. The image of her lyrical hero as if ejected into life from the captivity of folklore melody and mythological dreams, which betrothed him with unsteady images of mermaids and frets, as a result of which the poet’s dream of a “secret garden” of “ghostly Rus'” was born. Being distracted even for a moment from his intoxication with nature, he is not in vain interested in: how do the "surroundings" relate to it? Observations are disappointing:

Today in your village

Fight, swear, drink -

It is not heard how the birds of the princess

They sing in the village forest.

If in the first two collections of Klychkov the harmoniously bright, spiritualized world of nature reigns supreme, then the subsequent ones are overshadowed by the thought of the tragic discord with it of a person. There is a motive for the “withdrawal” of rural Rus', which no longer has a place in the urbanizing reality, where soon “The shepherd’s bagpipes will fall silent, the factory whistle will pour out”, into its mythical past. The poet perceives her death as his own: "Melt, soul, before separation Into the native expanse, to the native distance! ..". Yes, and nature itself seems to tend to its own detriment. "Farewell radiance", "Premonition" - these are the sections of the collection "Dubravna". For some reason, "the willows began to think", the birch trees gathered on an unknown long journey, "And the fog thickened over the fields Unprecedented sadness in the world ...".

The October Revolution was enthusiastically received by the new peasant poets, because it seemed to them that “golden lever of the universe” that would “turn towards the sun of truth” (Klyuev, “From the Native Shore”), which the peasantry had long dreamed of. Klyuev joins the RCP (b) even in 1918. “I am a communist, a red man, a igniter, a bannerman, machine-gun eyes,” he assures himself and others of his revolutionary spirit. His speeches as an agitator and poet impress with their pathos and figurative power. His poem “Spread your wings, eagle wings” is gaining textbook fame. In the poems of the first revolutionary years, Klyuev, indeed, conveys the general pathos of the revolution as a popular resurrection: “We<…>Let us raise the red sun with millions of hands over the World of sorrow and torment. Yesenin greets the revolution with no less joyful pathos, and also as a celebration of some universal renewal. On a cosmic scale, although with a greater emphasis on the social aspect, the revolution was also perceived by Oreshin in the 1918 poems “I, Lord” and “The Way of the Cross”.

Since 1918, creative divergences of the poets of the new peasant "merchant" begin. Having accepted the revolution, Klyuev continues to hold on to his ideal of patriarchal Rus'; Yesenin resolutely departs from following him. This leads to a significant disagreement between the poets. Oreshin goes even further, who, trying to renounce "patriarchalism", sometimes even falls into the sin of proletarian hobbies. Klychkov moves from the lyrics of nature to more complex worldly-philosophical motifs. The poetry of Shiryaevets is saturated with epic. The special drama of the relationship of these poets with revolutionary novelty was accompanied by a crisis in the initial foundations of their early poetic work.

Concept " peasant poetry", included in the historical and literary bypass, unites the poets conditionally and reflects only some common features inherent in their worldview and poetic manner. creative school with a single ideological and poetic program, they did not form. How the genre of "peasant poetry" was formed by 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

Imagism (from Latin imago - image) is a literary trend in Russian poetry of the 20th century, whose representatives stated 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.

Imagism as a poetic movement arose in 1918, when the "Order of Imagists" was founded in Moscow. The creators of the "Order" were Anatoly Mariengof, who came from Penza, the former futurist Vadim Shershenevich, and Sergei Yesenin, who was previously a member of the group of new peasant poets. Features of the characteristic metaphorical style were contained in more early work Shershenevich and Yesenin, and Mariengof organized a literary group of Imagists back in hometown. The Imagist Declaration, published on January 30, 1919 in the Voronezh magazine Sirena (and on February 10 also in the newspaper Sovetskaya Strana, whose editorial board included Yesenin), was also signed by the poet Rurik Ivnev and the artists Boris Erdman and Georgy Yakulov. On January 29, 1919, the first literary evening imaginists. Poets Ivan Gruzinov, Matvey Roizman, Alexander Kusikov, Nikolai Erdman, Lev Monoszon also joined Imagism.

In 1919-1925. Imagism was the most organized poetic movement in Moscow; they organized popular creative evenings in artistic cafes, published many author's and collective collections, the magazine "Hotel for Travelers in the Beautiful" (1922-1924, 4 issues were published), for which the publishing houses Imagists, Pleiada, Chihi- Pikha" and "Sandro" (the last two were led by A. Kusikov). In 1919, the Imagists entered the literary section of the Literary Train. A. Lunacharsky, which gave them the opportunity to travel and perform throughout the country and in many ways contributed to the growth of their popularity. In September 1919, Yesenin and Mariengof developed and registered with the Moscow Council the charter of the Association of Freethinkers, the official structure of the Order of the Imagists. The charter was signed by other members of the group and approved by the People's Commissar of Education A. Lunacharsky. On February 20, 1920, Yesenin was elected chairman of the "Association".

In addition to Moscow ("Order of the Imagists" and "Association of Freethinkers") centers of Imagism existed in the provinces (for example, in Kazan, Saransk, in the Ukrainian city of Alexandria, where the Imagist group was created by the poet Leonid Chernov), as well as in Petrograd-Leningrad. The emergence of the Petrograd "Order of Militant Imagists" was announced in 1922 in the "Manifesto of Innovators", signed by Alexei Zolotnitsky, Semyon Polotsky, Grigory Shmerelson and Vlad. Royal. Then, instead of the departed Zolotnitsky and Korolevich, Ivan Afanasiev-Soloviev and Vladimir Richiotti joined the Petrograd imagists, and in 1924 Wolf Erlich.

Some of the poets-Imagists spoke with theoretical treatises ("Keys of Mary" by Yesenin, "Buyan-Island" by Mariengof, "2x2 = 5" by Shershenevich, "Major Imagism" by Gruzinov). The Imagists also gained notoriety for their shocking antics, such as "renaming" Moscow streets, "trials" of literature, painting the walls of the Strastnoy Monastery with anti-religious inscriptions.

Imagism actually collapsed in 1925: in 1922 Alexander Kusikov emigrated, in 1924 Sergei Yesenin and Ivan Gruzinov announced the dissolution of the "Order", other Imagists were forced to move away from poetry, turning to prose, dramaturgy, cinema, largely for the sake of earning money. Imagism was criticized in the Soviet press. Yesenin was found dead in the Angleterre Hotel, Nikolai Erdman was repressed.

The activities of the "Order of Militant Imagists" ceased in 1926, and in the summer of 1927 the liquidation of the "Order of Imagists" was announced. The relationship and actions of the Imagists were then described in detail in the memoirs of Mariengof, Shershenevich, Roizman.

The so-called new peasant poetry became an original phenomenon in literature. 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 century.

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 the artistic originality of their best works, and communication with Blok, Bryusov, and other symbolists helped their 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 the general features of the poetic world of his and his fellows, creating, in fact, a theoretical justification for the poetic school of folk spiritual realism, embodying the eternal desire of the Russian soul to move in sound, paint, the creation of the material world in eternal connection with the heavenly. “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 labor morality. 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. No wonder the poems of P. Radimov, defiantly called "Arable land", "Harvest", "Bread", "Sheep shearing", "Salting cucumbers", when reading are perceived not just as an image labor process but also as a solemn aesthetic act that has a beneficial effect on the human soul.

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"New peasant" poetry can rightly be considered an integral part of creative heritage Russian Silver Age. It is significant that the peasant spiritual field turned out to be much more fruitful than the proletarian ideological soil for bright creative personalities.
The term "new peasant" in modern literary criticism is used to separate the representatives of the new formation - modernists, who updated Russian poetry, based on folk art, - from the traditionalists, imitators and epigones of the poetry of Nikitin, Koltsov, Nekrasov, who stamped poetic sketches of rural landscapes in the lubok-patriarchal style.

The poets belonging to this category developed the traditions of peasant poetry, and did not become isolated in them. The poeticization of rural life, simple peasant crafts and rural nature were the main themes of their poems.

The main features of the new peasant poetry:

Love for the "small Motherland";
following the age-old folk customs and moral traditions;
usage religious symbols, Christian motives, pagan beliefs;
appeal to folklore plots and images, introduction to poetic use folk songs and ditties;
denial of the "vicious" urban culture, resistance to the cult of machines and iron.

IN late XIX centuries from among the peasants did not move any major poets. However, the authors who then came to literature in many ways paved the way for the creativity of their especially gifted followers. Theme of love for native nature, attention to folk life And national character determined the style and direction of the poetry of the new time, and reflections on the meaning of human existence through the images of folk life became leading in this lyrics.

Following the folk poetic tradition was inherent in all the new peasant poets. But each of them also had a particularly acute feeling for small homeland in its poignant, unique concreteness. Awareness of her own role in her fate helped her find her way to reproducing the poetic spirit of the nation.

The formation of the new peasant poetic school was greatly influenced by the work of the Symbolists, primarily Blok and Andrei Bely, who contributed to the development in the poetry of Klyuev, Yesenin and Klychkov of romantic motifs and literary devices characteristic of modernist poetry.

The core of the new trend was made up of the most talented natives of the woody hinterland - N. Klyuev, S. Yesenin, S. Kychkov, P. Oreshin. Soon they were joined by A. Shiryaevets and A. Ganin. In the autumn of 1915, largely thanks to the efforts of S. Gorodetsky and the writer A. Remizov, who took care of young poets, the literary group “Krasa” was created; On October 25, a literary and artistic evening was held in the concert hall of the Tenishevsky School in Petrograd, where, as Gorodetsky later wrote, “Yesenin read his poems, and in addition, he sang ditties to the harmonica and, together with Klyuev, suffering ... ". The organization of the publishing house of the same name was also announced there (it ceased to exist after the release of the first collection).

And although the listed authors were part of the Krasa group, and then the Strada literary and artistic society (1915-1917), which became the first association of poets (by Yesenin’s definition) of the “peasant merchant”, and let some of them participate in “ Scythians” (an almanac of the Left SR direction, 1917-1918), but at the same time, for the majority of the “new peasants”, the very word “collective” was only a hated cliché, a verbal cliché. They were more connected by personal communication, correspondence and common poetic actions.

Therefore, as S. Semenova points out in her study, “it would be more correct to speak of new peasant poets as a whole poetic galaxy, expressing, taking into account individual worldviews, a different vision than that of proletarian poets, a vision of the structure of national life, its highest values ​​and ideals - a different feeling and understanding of the Russian idea.

All poetic currents of the early 20th century had one common feature: their formation and development took place in conditions of struggle and rivalry, as if the presence of an object of controversy was a prerequisite for the existence of the current itself. This cup has not passed and the poets of the "peasant merchant". Their ideological opponents were the so-called "proletarian poets".

Having become the organizer of the literary process after the revolution, the Bolshevik Party sought to ensure that the work of poets was as close as possible to the masses. The most important condition for the formation of new literary works, which was put forward and supported by the party part, was the principle of "spiritualization" of the revolutionary struggle. “The poets of the revolution are inexorable critics of everything old and call forward, to the struggle for a bright future... They vigilantly notice all the characteristic phenomena of our time and paint with sweeping, but deeply truthful colors... In their creations, much has not yet been polished to the end, .. but a certain bright mood is clearly expressed with deep feeling and peculiar energy.

The severity of social conflicts, the inevitability of a clash of opposing class forces became the main themes of proletarian poetry, finding expression in the decisive opposition of two hostile camps, two worlds: "the obsolete world of evil and untruth" and "rising young Rus'." Terrible denunciations grew into passionate romantic appeals, exclamatory intonations dominated many verses (“Rage, tyrants! ..”, “Out on the street!”, etc.). A specific feature of proletarian poetry (the core motives of labor, struggle, urbanism, collectivism) was the reflection in the poems of the current struggle, the combat and political tasks of the proletariat.

Proletarian poets, defending the collective, denied everything individually human, everything that makes a person unique, ridiculed such categories as the soul, etc. Peasant poets, in contrast to them, saw main reason evil in isolation from natural roots, from the people's worldview, which is reflected in everyday life, the very way of peasant life, folklore, folk traditions, national culture.