Sergey Yesenin
"The road was thinking about the red evening..."
* * *
The road thought about the red evening,
Rowan bushes are more misty than the depths.
Hut-old woman jaw threshold
Chews the fragrant crumb of silence.
Autumn cold gently and meekly
Sneaks through the darkness towards the oat yard;
Through the blue glass a yellow-haired youth
He shines his eyes on the tick game.
Embracing the pipe, it sparkles across the air
Green ash from a pink stove.
Someone is missing and the thin-lipped wind
Whispers about someone who disappeared in the night.
Someone can no longer crush their heels through the groves
Chipped leaf and gold grass.
A drawn-out sigh, diving with a skinny ringing,
Kisses the beak of a tufted owl.
The gloom is getting thicker, there is peace and slumber in the stable,
The white road will pattern a slippery...
And the barley straw groans tenderly,
Hanging from the lips of nodding cows.
Read by R. Kleiner
Rafael Aleksandrovich Kleiner (born June 1, 1939, village of Rubezhnoye, Lugansk region, Ukrainian SSR, USSR) - Russian theater director, People's Artist of Russia (1995).
From 1967 to 1970 he was an actor at the Moscow Taganka Drama and Comedy Theater.
Yesenin Sergei Alexandrovich (1895-1925)
Yesenin was born into a peasant family. From 1904 to 1912 he studied at the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School and at the Spas-Klepikovsky School. During this time, he wrote more than 30 poems and compiled a handwritten collection “Sick Thoughts” (1912), which he tried to publish in Ryazan. The Russian village, the nature of central Russia, oral folk art, and most importantly, Russian classical literature had a strong influence on the formation of the young poet and guided his natural talent. Yesenin himself at different times named different sources that fed his work: songs, ditties, fairy tales, spiritual poems, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” the poetry of Lermontov, Koltsov, Nikitin and Nadson. Later he was influenced by Blok, Klyuev, Bely, Gogol, Pushkin.
From Yesenin's letters from 1911 to 1913, the complex life of the poet emerges. All this was reflected in the poetic world of his lyrics from 1910 to 1913, when he wrote more than 60 poems and poems. Yesenin's most significant works, which brought him fame as one of the best poets, were created in the 1920s.
Like any great poet, Yesenin is not a thoughtless singer of his feelings and experiences, but a poet and philosopher. Like all poetry, his lyrics are philosophical. Philosophical lyrics are poems in which the poet talks about the eternal problems of human existence, conducts a poetic dialogue with man, nature, earth, and the Universe. An example of the complete interpenetration of nature and man is the poem “Green Hairstyle” (1918). One develops in two planes: the birch tree - the girl. The reader will never know who this poem is about - a birch tree or a girl. Because the person here is likened to a tree - the beauty of the Russian forest, and she is like a person. The birch tree in Russian poetry is a symbol of beauty, harmony, and youth; she is bright and chaste.
The poetry of nature and the mythology of the ancient Slavs permeate such poems of 1918 as “Silver Road...”, “Songs, songs, what are you shouting about?”, “I left my home...”, “Golden leaves swirled...” etc.
Yesenin's poetry of the last, most tragic years (1922 - 1925) is marked by a desire for a harmonious worldview. Most often in the lyrics one feels a deep understanding of oneself and the Universe (“I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry...”, “The golden grove dissuaded...”, “Now we are leaving little by little...”, etc.)
The poem of values in Yesenin's poetry is one and indivisible; everything in it is interconnected, everything forms a single picture of the “beloved homeland” in all the variety of its shades. This is the highest ideal of the poet.
Having passed away at the age of 30, Yesenin left us a wonderful poetic legacy, and as long as the earth lives, Yesenin the poet is destined to live with us and “sing with all his being in the poet the sixth part of the earth with the short name “Rus”.
Mishchenko S.N.
S. Yesenin. Lyrics.
“Go you, Rus', my dear...”, “You are my fallen maple, icy maple...”,
“A low house with blue shutters”, “The hewn horns began to sing...”, “Song about a dog”, “Winter sings and howls”, “Beloved land! The heart dreams...", "Do not wander, do not crush in the crimson bushes...", "I left my home...", "The golden grove dissuaded me...", "The feather grass is sleeping. Dear plain...", "I'm walking through the valley. On the back of the head is a cap...", "Letter to Mother".
Features of Yesenin's artistic world.
The peculiarity of Yesenin’s artistic world is the animation of everything that exists in it: people, animals, plants, planets and objects are the children of the one mother Nature. That is why his main artistic technique is personification of various types: reviving everything inanimate - and the opposite technique to personification - endowing the image of a person with natural characteristics. All poets are able to humanize the world around them; this technique is called personification. And Yesenin felt like a tree, grass, a month. This is a unique phenomenon in poetry; researchers called this innovative technique “reverse personification.” Only Yesenin could say:
My head flies around
The bush of golden hair withers...
Yesenin even joked about his last name: “Autumn and ash live in me.”
The image of the Motherland in lyrics.
Early poems: “Hey you are Rus', my dear...”, “I smell God’s rainbow...”, “The road is thinking about the red evening...”, “The hewn horns are singing...”, “Birch”.
From mature lyrics - “A low house with blue shutters...”, “The golden grove dissuaded...”, “The feather grass is sleeping, the dear plain...”, “Unspeakable, blue, tender...”, “Uncomfortable liquid moonlight...”.
In the theme of the homeland, it is probably worth dwelling on the conflict “Departing Rus' - Soviet Rus'”, and in this case “Sorokoust”, “Return to the Motherland” are appropriate.
“My lyrics are alive with one great love for my homeland. The feeling of homeland is the main thing in my work,” wrote S. Yesenin.
This feeling merged all that was most dear to him: his family, the land, the life of the country, love for his mother, for “our little brothers.” This theme runs through the poet’s work. Its development is connected with the poet’s changing worldview, with the historical, political, and social processes that took place in the country.
S. Yesenin is the only poet among the great Russian lyricists in whose work it is impossible to separate poems about the Motherland into a special section. Everything he wrote is imbued with a “feeling of homeland.”
In the early poems of Yesenin (1910-1914) Rus - “blue”, peasant, folk, “country of birch chintz”. The poet blesses all living things, the key words are “love” and “believe.” The lyrical hero’s soul is “light.” “Beloved region! The heart dreams...” Here Yesenin humbly accepts life in a Christian way, continuing Pushkin’s traditions. Already at this time he created a metaphorical language. The metaphor is intended to emphasize the unity of all life on earth, so his “heart dreams
stacks of the sun”, “the willows ring the rosary”, “the swamp smokes like a cloud”.
Blue, heavenly, a color traditionally associated in artistic consciousness with the Mother of God, became the main one in Yesenin’s image of the village.
“The hewn horns began to sing…”
The hewn horns began to sing,
The plains and bushes are running.
Again chapels on the road
And funeral crosses.
Again I'm sick with warm sadness
From the oat breeze.
And on the limestone bell towers
The hand involuntarily crosses itself.
The poem "The hewn horns began to sing..." expressed the poet's intimate and religious feeling. In the first stanza, chapels and crosses are mentioned; “And on the mortar of the bell towers / A hand involuntarily crosses itself,” we read in the second stanza and further we see how the whole country acquires a temple, harmonious beginning, and the steppes are already ringing with “prayer feather grass” (metaphorical epithet). The artistic world in this poem is dynamic. Everything is in constant motion: the drays are singing, the plains and bushes are running, the steppes are ringing, the blue has capsized.
The road thought about the red evening,
Rowan bushes are more misty than the depths.
Hut-old woman jaw threshold
Chews the fragrant crumb of silence.
Autumn cold gently and meekly
Sneaks through the darkness towards the oat yard;
Through the blue glass a yellow-haired youth
He shines his eyes on the tick game.
Embracing the pipe, it sparkles across the air
Green ash from a pink stove.
Someone is missing and the thin-lipped wind
Whispers about someone who disappeared in the night.
Someone can no longer crush their heels through the groves
Chipped leaf and gold grass.
A drawn-out sigh, diving with a skinny ringing,
Kisses the beak of a tufted owl.
The gloom is getting thicker, there is peace and slumber in the stable,
The white road will pattern a slippery...
And the barley straw groans tenderly,
Hanging from the lips of nodding cows.
Road, rowan trees, hut, oven, groves, grass, straw- all this belongs either to peasant life or to the rural landscape.
He called the poem about the death of “blue” Rus' “ Sorokoust" - a word denoting a memorial service for the deceased within forty days of death. The theme of the tragic confrontation with the “Iron Age” is resolved allegorically. Here the city - an iron monster - is destroying nature - the “red-maned foal”.
Have you seen
How he runs across the steppes,
Hiding in the lake mists,
Snoring with an iron nostril,
A train on cast iron legs?
Through the big grass
Like at a festival of desperate racing,
Throwing thin legs to the head,
Red-maned colt galloping?
Dear, dear, funny fool,
Well, where is he, where is he going?
Doesn't he really know that live horses
Did the steel cavalry win?
"Sorokoust".
In 1920, he wrote Sorokoust, in which he declared his rejection of the machine and the city.
The poem opens with a premonition of a catastrophe approaching the village, which “pulls five fingers to the throats of the plains.” Nature very subtly senses the approach of a catastrophe: this is both a mill and a bull. The image of the enemy in the first part of the poem is not specified, but Yesenin points out its main signs. This is an iron creature, which means cold, soulless, artificial, alien to nature.
In the second part of the poem, the image of the enemy grows. This is someone who destroys and breaks everything, bringing a fatal disease called “steel fever” to the village. The poet sharply contrasts the “iron” qualities of the enemy with the insecurity of the old village, dear and sweet to the heart
In the third part of the poem, this conflict is presented as a duel between a foal and a cast-iron train, which the poor animal is trying to catch up with. The poetic lines are permeated with the bitter pain of the lyrical hero, who understands the meaninglessness of the animal’s act. The poet conveys a picture of the world that is changing dramatically before his eyes, a shift in values when an iron monster is bought for killed animals:
And for thousands of pounds of horse skin and meat
They are now buying a locomotive.
The motif of violence against nature that appears in these lines is developed in the fourth part of the poem through the motif of death:
My head smashed against the fence,
The rowan berries are drenched in blood.
The death of the Russian village is conveyed through the melodies of the Russian harmonica.
At first the harmonica cries pitifully, then the “grieving” appears as an inseparable quality of the Russian harmonica. The lyrical hero of this poem “carries within himself all the tremendous pain and bitterness, experiencing the death of the old village and folk culture
"Rus' is leaving." In 1924, the poet made an attempt to fit into the “commune-raised Rus'.” He wrote "The Passing Rus'", in which he recognized the victory of the new Russia.
“Uncomfortable liquid moonlight...”
Uncomfortable liquid lunarness
And the melancholy of endless plains, -
This is what I saw in my frisky youth,
That, while loving, not only one cursed.
There are withered willows along the roads
And the song of the cart wheels...
I would never want to now
So that I could listen to her.
I became indifferent to the shacks,
And the hearth fire is not dear to me,
Even the apple trees are in the spring blizzard
Because of the poverty of the fields, I stopped loving them.
I like something different now.
And in the consumptive light of the moon
Through stone and steel
I see the power of my native side.
Field Russia! Enough
Dragging the plow across the fields!
It hurts to see your poverty
And birches and poplars.
I don't know what will happen to me...
Maybe I'm not fit for a new life,
But I still want steel
See poor, beggarly Rus'
And, listening to the motor bark
In a host of blizzards, in a host of storms and thunderstorms,
I don't want anything now
Listen to the song of cart wheels.1925
“The feather grass is sleeping. Plain dear..."The hut is the center of existence, where natural and measured human life, which is part of nature, flows year after year, changing and renewing. Around the hut there is a mysterious, alien, outer world full of dangers. It is heard and is approaching from all sides: “the autumn cold... is creeping...”, the “gloom” is thickening, “the thin-lipped wind... is whispering about someone...”, the “drawling sighs” of an owl are heard. The house symbolizes the most native place on earth, with which every person associates the concept of “homeland”; finally, the village house, the “golden log hut,” occupies a central place in Yesenin’s poetic universe and has an important symbolic meaning.
Lyrics S.A. Yesenina
Sergei Yesenin lived and worked at the turn of two eras - old and new. The well-known saying that if the world splits in half, then the crack passes through the poet’s heart can entirely be attributed to Yesenin. Hence the dramatic feeling that fills his lyrics, his sincere sorrowful self-confession:
I'm not a new person, what to hide.
I have one foot left in the past.
Trying to catch up with the steel army,
I slide and fall differently.
The poet’s path to a new life was complex and difficult. Already in the early period of his creativity, the strongest side of Yesenin’s poetic talent becomes obvious - his ability to draw pictures of Russian nature. The strength of the poet's lyrics lies in the fact that in it the feeling of love for the Motherland is expressed not in the abstract, but concretely, in visible images, through pictures of the native landscape. The pictures are often not pleasing to the eye (“You are my abandoned land, you are my land, wasteland...”) (1914), but the stronger the love for the destitute Motherland. It acquires special strength with the beginning of the First World War - in this “time of adversity” (“Rus”) (1914). But Yesenin also sees the bright colors of Russian nature: in many of his poems about Russia, joyful tones play and shimmer - blue, azure, crimson...
Yesenin’s landscapes are not deserted paintings; a person is always “interspersed” in them - the poet himself, in love with his native land.
The image of man in close communication with nature is complemented by the poet’s special love for all living things - animals, birds and domestic animals (“Cow”, “Song of the Dog”, etc.).
And animals, like our smaller brothers,
Never hit me on the head.
Yesenin feels so tied to the village’s past that he perceives the need to part with it as his own doom. This gloomy theme gives rise to a decline in mental strength and pessimistic moods: the word “rock” appears more and more often in his poems, he imagines a “fatal misfortune”, he writes about the fate of the poet - “a fatal stamp on him.”
These sentiments were reflected in the cycle of poems “Moscow Tavern” (1924). Here we find the poet in a state of extreme loss of strength. Despair, indifference to life, an attempt to forget yourself in a drunken stupor are the main motives of this cycle.
But Yesenin found the strength to break out of this impasse. This was his great merit to himself and to the new time. Later he will say to one of his friends: “Listen! But I still left “Moscow Tavern”. Gone! It was really difficult." And in one of his poems he will once again confirm this idea:
My old wound has subsided,
Drunken delirium does not gnaw at my heart...
The tragedy of Yesenin’s farewell to the past left dramatic traces in his work. But the past did not swallow the poet; living modernity turned out to be much stronger.
His trip abroad played a certain role in Yesenin’s creative development.
Europe and America made a depressing impression on the poet. In one of his letters, he wrote: “What can I tell you about this most terrible kingdom of philistinism... In terrible fashion, Mr. Dollar, not art... the highest is music hall.” “There, from Moscow, it seemed to us that Europe was the most extensive market for the dissemination of our ideas in poetry, but now from here I see: my God! how beautiful and rich Russia is in this sense. It seems that there is no such country yet and there cannot be.”
Trying to break away from gloomy thoughts, Yesenin makes trips to the Caucasus (Baku, Batum, Tiflis). These trips were of great importance to him: they brought peace of mind, gave him the opportunity to concentrate, and created a favorable environment for creativity. There he created a wonderful cycle of lyric poems “Persian Motifs” (1924-1925).
Yesenin repeatedly intended to go to Persia, but he never managed to visit there. “Persian Motifs” reflected Caucasian impressions and impressions from Central Asia, where he spent some time. In addition, the poet was well acquainted with the work of medieval Persian lyricists (Omar Khayyam, Saadi, etc.). In his poems, the poet conveys the real atmosphere of the East, poetizes the feeling of love
The desire to think about life, about oneself begins to occupy a predominant position in Yesenin’s lyrics in 1925. He creates many works that are commonly called philosophical lyrics. This year Yesenin turned 30 years old. He considered this age significant for a lyric poet, a turning point, placing high demands on a person.
In the poem “My Way” (1925), he sums up his life: he recalls events in the country, his youth, talks about a new outlook on life, dreams of “so that the talkative soul would sing in a mature way.”
The poet seeks to understand more deeply “what happened, what happened in the country” (“Unspeakable, blue, tender...”) (1925). He wants to live, like other people, “under the cheerful burden of labor”; he does not separate himself from these people (“Bless every work, good luck...” (1925), “I walk through the valley...” (1925)). Not without regret, the poet says goodbye to his stormy youth, but at the same time he understands well the need for a more mature attitude towards life, higher demands on himself. In many ways, he critically evaluates his past, takes into account the experience of his past, and thinks about the future (“The feather grass sleeps, the dear plain...” (1925)). The poet speaks of his attachment to life, rejoices in it, feeling reborn: “Rejoicing, raging and tormenting, one lives well in Rus',” “I still fell in love with this life. I fell in love as much as if at first,” “Again I have come to life and again I hope, just as in childhood, for a better destiny.” Yesenin experiences a surge of fresh strength, a new creative upsurge.
Yes, the past weighed heavily on the poet; he himself admitted: “I have one foot left in the past.” But there is something else in his work, the main thing is his passionate desire to understand the new time. No matter how controversial Yesenin’s poetry may be, it is impossible to deny the fact that the poet’s deep faith in the present and future of Russia forms the basis of his work.
But the life he led for ten years left a heavy mark. These years were overloaded with too rapid changes in events, impressions, and moods. The poet's extraordinary impressionability deepened the consequences of this: often random circumstances pushed him to rash actions and decisions. But Yesenin is still trying to cope with himself, he moves to Leningrad, taking his manuscripts with him, and is looking for a room to settle in this city, where his literary fame began. But on the night of December 27-28, 1925, Yesenin passed away.
Sergei Yesenin lived only thirty years, but his creative legacy contains great artistic wealth. Yesenin's lyrics are based on Russian folk poetry. The poet constantly turns to Russian nature when he expresses his most intimate thoughts about himself, about his place in life, about his past, present and future. “On my soul there is the lemon light of sunset and the blue rustle of lilacs,” Yesenin wrote in moments of calm. “Soon I will be cold without leaves,” “The bad weather will lick the path I have lived with its tongue,” he said in an hour of bitter reflection. Depicting one’s own experiences through pictures of Russian nature naturally led to what we call the humanization of nature: “The golden grove dissuaded with a cheerful tongue of birch,” “A bird cherry tree is sleeping in a white cape,” “Somewhere in a clearing a maple tree is dancing drunk,” “Green-browed, in A birch tree stands over a pond in a white skirt...” This principle of depiction brings nature closer to man and makes him especially fall in love with it.
Yesenin also borrowed many of the colors of his poetry from Russian nature. He doesn’t just copy from, each paint has its own meaning and content.
Blue and cyan - these colors are most often found in Russian nature, this is the color of the sky and water. In Yesenin’s poetry, the blue color symbolizes peace and quiet, a person’s mental balance: “Unspeakable, blue, tender...”, “My land is quiet after storms, after thunderstorms.” The blue color conveys a joyful feeling of space and freedom: “blue field”, “blue doors of the day”, “blue star”, “blue Russia...”
“The scarlet color is dear to the whole world,” says a popular saying. This favorite color of Yesenin always signifies in his poetry virgin purity, spotlessness and purity of feeling (“The scarlet light of dawn was woven on the lake...”). The pink color symbolizes youth, “fresh rosy cheeks”, “thoughts of rosy days...” Yesenin’s “pink horse” is unforgettable.
These paint-symbols are characteristic of the romantic poet, who uses colors not so much in a direct, but in a conventional meaning. One of the reasons for the emotional impact of Yesenin’s lyrics lies in the color display of thoughts and feelings.
“My lyrics are alive with one great love, love for the Motherland. The feeling of the Motherland is fundamental in my work,” said Yesenin. This love and these feelings were clearly imprinted not only in the content of his lyrics, but also in his very poetics, associated with the poetics of the people.
Unprecedented sincerity of tone, a rare gift of direct vision of the world, the ability to look at phenomena and things with an unbiased look, to unexpectedly extract beauty and joy from objects that have long been erased by everyday life, a special ability to express human feelings, both simple and complex - this is what characterizes Yesenin the poet .
“The road thought about the red evening...” Yesenina S.A.
S.A. Yesenin is a recognized master of creating a Central Russian landscape, a characteristic feature of which is the organic connection of the natural world with peasant life. This feature is clearly manifested in the poem “,” where already in the first stanza a memorable image of an old woman’s hut appears.
In the works of the new peasant poets (except for S.A. Yesenin, N. Klyueva, S. Klychkova and a number of other authors also belong to this poetic movement), the hut appears as a special and, perhaps, the most important symbol of the peasant way of life. There is even the concept of “hut space”, in which the meaning of the center of the universe is associated with the image of the hut. Since ancient times, in the life of a village person, the hut occupied a fundamental place, around which all other life values revolved.
In Yesenin's poem, the image of the hut is spiritualized. This is emphasized by the metaphor: “The old hut with the jaws of the threshold Chews the odorous crumb of silence.” It also reveals another important image of peasant life - the image of bread, since the word “crumb” is associatively connected with it. It seems that the hut smells of fresh bread.
These lines convey the charm of a quiet country evening, the unique comfort of rural housing. The hut, courtyard, and barn are surrounded by an atmosphere of peace and slumber, but the central theme in the poem is not admiring the beauty of the landscape, although S.A. Yesenin certainly creates a poetic picture of evening nature. However, the image of the red evening here also emphasizes another theme - the theme of a person’s departure to another world (“Someone is gone, and the thin-lipped wind is whispering about someone who has disappeared in the night,” “Someone can no longer crush the chipped leaf and gold of grass"). At the same time, the author writes about the departed vaguely, veiledly. Perhaps, in this case, this is a kind of technique for creating typification, because “everyone in the world is a wanderer” (as S.A. Yesenin would write eight years later in the poem “The Golden Grove Dissuaded... (1924)”). In this regard, the image of the white road acquires a broad symbolic meaning of the life path of each person, as darkness thickens around him, and at the end of the person awaits that same slippery ditch. This image emphasizes the precarious boundary between life and death. It is no coincidence that in the fourth stanza the image of an owl appears (according to ancient beliefs, this is a harbinger of death).
The peaceful picture thus turns out to be deceptive. Autumn cold and evening foreshadow the imminent decline of life. This red evening looks all the more expensive and unique in Yesenin’s worldview. The definition of “red,” in addition to the color image of a sunset, has the additional meaning of “beautiful.”
S.A. Yesenin was extremely fond of color epithets, and in this poem they become the central visual and expressive means (“red evening”, “blue glass”, “yellow-haired youth”, “green ash from a pink oven”, “gold of grass” and, finally, “ the road is white"). The poet involuntarily admires this whole kaleidoscope of life and compares himself with the yellow-haired youth, remembering his childish naive view of the world.
Fog, cold, “the fragrant crumb of silence” - all these images create a unique artistic effect of perceiving the picture of the world, in which almost all senses are involved (vision, hearing, smell, touch). This technique creates a unique effect of immersion in the artistic space of the poem.
At the same time, all the details of the landscape are deified in a pagan way, endowed with soul and character: the road is thoughtful, the hut chews the “fragrant crumb of silence,” the cold creeps in, the ash from the stove hugs the chimney, the barley straw gently groans. And against the backdrop of all this original life, a drawn-out sigh is suddenly heard. Maybe this is the cry of an owl, but rather a sad sigh of the lyrical hero himself, thinking about the frailty of everything living in this beautiful and harmonious world.
The artistic space in this poem is presented from different angles: the lyrical hero either looks at the peasant farm from the outside, or, together with the yellow-haired youth, tries to see the “daw game” from the inside through the blue glass.
The poem “The road was thinking about the red evening...” has a careful sound organization. It contains beautiful alliteration (“Through the blue of glass...” (c), “Green ash from a pink oven...” (h)) and assonances (“Rowan bushes of foggy depths..” (u)).
The road thought about the red evening,
Rowan bushes are more misty than the depths.
Hut-old woman jaw threshold
Chews the fragrant crumb of silence.
Autumn cold gently and meekly
Sneaks through the darkness towards the oat yard;
Through the blue glass a yellow-haired youth
He shines his eyes on the tick game.
Embracing the pipe, it sparkles across the air
Green ash from a pink stove.
Someone is missing and the thin-lipped wind
Whispers about someone who disappeared in the night.
Someone can no longer crush their heels through the groves
Chipped leaf and gold grass.
A drawn-out sigh, diving with a skinny ringing,
Kisses the beak of a tufted owl.
The gloom is getting thicker, there is peace and slumber in the stable,
The white road will pattern a slippery ditch...
And the barley straw groans tenderly,
Hanging from the lips of nodding cows.
Analysis of the poem “The Road Thought About the Red Evening” by Yesenin
Yesenin was an unsurpassed master in the artistic description of the rural landscape. His poems about his native nature are considered classics of landscape poetry. The poem “The Road Thought About the Red Evening...” (1916) once again confirmed Yesenin’s enormous talent. It combines a lyrical depiction of nature with the poet’s personal experiences.
Yesenin's poetry is characterized by the spiritualization of all nature. He achieves this by using unusual similes and metaphors, enhanced by colorful epithets. In the work, the entire rural world surrounding the observer comes to life (“the road is lost in thought,” “the old woman’s hut... is chewing,” “the autumn cold... is sneaking”). The author notes that nature lives its own life in the absence of humans. Only a child can solve and understand this mystery.
Yesenin believes that his move to Moscow is not so important, because he always feels a mental connection with the homeland he left behind. Much more important is the fact that the poet has matured and can no longer relate to life with childish spontaneity. Therefore, the sad motif of irretrievable loss appears in the poem. The poet is very sorry for the quickly flashing childhood years. He deliberately talks about himself in the third person (“there is no one”, “about someone”, “to someone”). Thus, Yesenin emphasizes that as a person grows up, he becomes completely different. He may feel like his old self, but even nature does not recognize him as a child.
The author understands that he has become a stranger to his native place. The past cannot be returned. At the end of the poem, he no longer mentions himself, giving space to eternal and unchanging nature. People are born and die, but the “white road” remains the same as it was hundreds of years ago. “Nodding cows” do not pay any attention to human vanity. Being in “rest and slumber,” they came much closer than people to understanding the eternal law of the universe.
In the poem “The Road Thought About the Red Evening...” Yesenin reflects on the frailty of human life. The poet has already achieved fame and fame, has accomplished a lot in life, but at the same time realizes that he has lost something more valuable. All his efforts will not be able to return the happiest time. The native land forgot about the young village poet. His peace is not disturbed by anything. Even the death of the author will not in any way affect the measured flow of village life.
“The road thought about the red evening...” Sergei Yesenin
The road thought about the red evening,
Rowan bushes are more misty than the depths.
Hut-old woman jaw threshold
Chews the fragrant crumb of silence.Autumn cold gently and meekly
Sneaks through the darkness towards the oat yard;
Through the blue glass a yellow-haired youth
He shines his eyes on the tick game.Embracing the pipe, it sparkles across the air
Green ash from a pink stove.
Someone is missing and the thin-lipped wind
Whispers about someone who disappeared in the night.Someone can no longer crush their heels through the groves
Chipped leaf and gold grass.
A drawn-out sigh, diving with a skinny ringing,
Kisses the beak of a tufted owl.The gloom is getting thicker, there is peace and slumber in the stable,
The white road will pattern a slippery ditch...
And the barley straw groans tenderly,
Hanging from the lips of nodding cows.
Analysis of Yesenin’s poem “The road thought about the red evening...”
A master of landscape poetry, Sergei Yesenin has always identified himself with nature, believing that he is an integral part of it. That is why in his poems dedicated to his native land, images of places he loved from childhood are closely intertwined with personal experiences. Having left the village of Konstantinovo early, where he spent his childhood, the poet returns there mentally throughout his entire life, and his memories are reflected in very vivid and imaginative poems.
In 1916, Yesenin wrote the poem “The Road Thought About the Red Evening...”, which added to the author’s collection of works dedicated to his native land. The poet, with his characteristic imagery and romanticism, managed to capture the change of seasons and show how the beautiful autumn comes with silent steps. It is unhurried and refined in its perfection, and with every moment the world around us literally transforms, filling the evening silence with new sounds. “The autumn cold gently and meekly creeps through the darkness towards the oat yard,” the poet notes, admiring the twilight falling on the ground, which gives unusual freshness and coolness. The days are still warm like summer, but the evenings bring with them the first smells of autumn. “Embracing the chimney, green ash from the pink stove sparkles across the street,” this line indicates that the nights are already cold, and the peasants are forced to heat their huts.
Meanwhile, life in the village goes on as usual, and few people remember that fair-haired boy who once loved to sit in front of the window on long autumn evenings and watch the “daw game”. However, the tomboy himself, who has long since turned into a famous poet, not only remembers that happy time, but also regrets that he can no longer return anything. “Someone can no longer crush the chipped leaves and golden grass with their heels through the groves,” Yesenin states sadly, realizing that childhood has passed, and adult life turned out to be not at all as joyful as yesterday’s rural boy pictured it for himself.
However, what depresses Yesenin most of all is the fact that in his absence, life in Konstantinovo continues to flow measuredly and calmly, as if nothing had happened. Still “the barley straw groans tenderly, hanging from the lips of nodding cows,” and in the forest “a drawn-out sigh, diving with a thin ringing, kisses the beak of a tufted owl.” But no one cares about the golden-haired boy, who loved to rhyme words and was known as the first bully in the village. Only “the thin-lipped wind whispers about someone who has disappeared in the night,” and this whisper echoes with pain in the poet’s soul.
