“Where the cabbage beds are...” Sergei Yesenin
Where the cabbage beds are
The sunrise pours red water,
Little maple baby to the uterus
The green udder sucks.
Analysis of Yesenin’s poem “Where the cabbage beds are...”
The originality and mature skill manifested in Yesenin's miniature of 1910 force some literary scholars to suggest that the work was written much later and skillfully stylized by the author as early lyrics. Doubts are added to by the testimony of contemporaries, in conversations with whom the poet varied information about the date of creation of the poem. Yesenin attributed it either to childhood or to adolescence.
The author's intentions to “rejuvenate” the miniature do not detract from the artistic merits of the text. The subject of the latter’s image is a sunrise scene, gradually illuminating very prosaic village details: vegetable beds and a couple of trees. What is important here is a special angle of view that transforms the artistic space and enlivens it. The author's picture of the world is based on the peculiarities of peasant consciousness, rooted in the pagan past. Simple, but sanctified by ancient wisdom, folk philosophy is one of the sources of originality of Yesenin’s style: the author manages to capture in the everyday high natural harmony, without which human happiness is unthinkable.
The structure of the main images of the poem is created according to the principles of anthropomorphism, characteristic of folklore works. The images of the sunrise, large and small maples are so personified that they can be called characters. The actions of the main characters resemble meaningful human manipulations or the behavior of mammals obeying instinct. The sources that served as the starting point for the detailed metaphorical construction are obvious: the gardener watering the beds and observing livestock, among which there are young animals fed by female mothers.
Two color epithets add harmony to the composition: “red water” and “green udder”. The appearance of the first is inspired by the reflection of the rising sun, the second - by the decoration of the trees. One cannot ignore the author's occasionalism, which has become a classic - the “maple baby,” the tender and touching baby of a caring mother.
The key to the further development of the end-to-end image of the maple was the metaphorical nature of perception characteristic of Yesenin’s poetics. Guardian of “blue Rus'”, noticeable, full of strength or old, rotten, icy, devoid of foliage - the fate of the many-faced maple is dramatic and connected with the life vicissitudes of the lyrical hero.
As you know, Yesenin was a poet from a peasant environment, which gave the main ideas and directions in his poetic activity, since most of the poems are dedicated to this dull, but very sensual environment, the environment that raised this talented person.
In his poem, he shows all the beauty of village life and its original way of life, which immerses us in this wonderful world, a world that the poet loved very much. This work of the poet belongs to the late period of his work, but Yesenin himself argued that these are early works.
The poem is completely permeated with love, but also with a very large number of conventional images that accompany the poet all the time: maple, early autumn and golden foliage. It is these images that are constantly present in his works, which give us a chance to enjoy the mysterious nature that surrounded the poet since childhood.
The very title of this work tells us that we will be talking about a village. The poem contains a category that defines morning, and it is a conventional symbol of birth, faith in a new, better life, which will come very soon.
Our hero, all his life, sang of this beautiful world, he was very much in love with it and could not betray it, because otherwise, he would have betrayed his native land, his parents and loved ones, but new revolutionary trends forced him to accept the poet's rather uninformed decisions.
Picture for the poem Where the cabbage beds are
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The text of this poem was dictated in 1925 by the author S.A. Tolstaya-Yesenina.
Sergey Yesenin
Where the cabbage beds are
The sunrise pours red water,
Little maple baby to the uterus
The green udder sucks.
Read by R. Kleiner
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, the lyrics convey 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.
The poem “Anna Snegina” (1915) became in many ways the final work, in which the poet’s personal fate was interpreted with the fate of the people.
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”.
