home Convectors Yesenin foal and train analysis. Sorokoust

Yesenin foal and train analysis. Sorokoust

Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin

A. Mariengof

The horn of death blows, blows!
What should we do, what should we do now?
On the muddy thighs of the roads?
You lovers of song fleas,
Don't you want......

It’s full of meekness to celebrate,
Whether you like it or not, you know, take it.
It's good when twilight teases
And they pour it into our fat asses
The bloody broom of dawn.

Soon the freeze will whiten with lime
That village and these meadows.
There is nowhere for you to hide from death,
There is no escape from the enemy.
Here he is, here he is with an iron belly,
Pulls his fingers to the throats of the plains,

The old mill leads with its ear,
I sharpened my milling nose.
And the yard silent bull,
That he spilled all his brains on the heifers,
Wiping my tongue on the spindle,
I sensed trouble over the field.

Oh, isn't it just outside the village?
This is how the harmonica cries pitifully:
Tala-la-la, tili-li-gom
Hanging over a white window sill.
And the yellow wind of autumn
Isn’t that why, touching the blue ripples,
As if with a horse comb,
Strips leaves from maples.
He comes, he comes, a terrible messenger,
The fifth bulky thicket aches.
And the songs become more and more yearning
To the sound of a frog squeaking in the straw.
Oh electric sunrise
Belts and pipes have a tight grip,
Behold the ancient belly
Steel fever is shaking!

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?

And behind him
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?
Doesn't he really know that in the fields of lightless
His running will not bring back that time,
When a couple of beautiful steppe Russian women
Did you give Pechenegs for a horse?
Fate repainted it differently at the auction
Our reach, awakened by the grinding,
And for thousands of pounds of horse leather and meat
They are now buying a locomotive.

Damn you, nasty guest!
Our song won't work with you.
It's a pity that you didn't have to as a child
Drown like a bucket in a well.
It's good for them to stand and watch
To paint mouths with tin kisses, -
Only for me, as a psalm-reader, to sing
Hallelujah over our native land.
That's why on September morning
On dry and cold loam,
My head smashed against the fence,
The rowan berries are drenched in blood.
That's why the tension has grown in
In the bustle of the ringing talyanka.
And a man smelling of straw
He choked on the dashing moonshine.

The poem is dedicated to Mariengof, Yesenin’s comrade during the period of his passion for imagism (since 1918).

Sergei Yesenin (left) and Anatoly Borisovich Mariengof. Moscow, summer. Photo - 1919

The famous poetic text of 1920 often comes to the attention of researchers as a work that predetermined important trends in the development of Russian literature of the 20th century. The touching image of a foal trying to compete in speed with a train has gone down in history. The race serves as an expression of the confrontation between living and iron horses, the conflict between the natural world and human society, which has chosen a path that alienates people from the natural beginning.

The thanatological theme is set by the title of the poem and is supported by numerous reminiscences from the biblical Apocalypse. The alarming voice of the “destructive horn” indicated in the opening resembles the sound of a terrible orchestra of seven trumpets, sending misfortune to the earth and announcing the end of the world. The image of the train is endowed with the features of an apocalyptic beast, which makes a loud grinding sound and frightening snoring.

Prophetic intonations appear starting from the first episode: the subject of speech speaks with anxiety and bitterness about the imminent arrival of trouble. The source of danger is named - the enemy “with an iron belly”. Aggressive and fast, he has already identified his target and is preparing to attack. Pampered regulars of literary salons are unable to predict the danger. The indifference of the aesthetic public provokes shocking attacks from the lyrical “I,” who in anger promises society a bloody dawn. Only those who are accustomed to living according to the laws of nature foresee death.

The ominous atmosphere determines the character of the rural landscape presented in the second part: the pitiful cry of the harmonica, the whirlwinds of falling leaves, the melancholy accompaniment of folk songs, the squeak of a frog. An important element of the picture is the image of a maple tree, from which the wind is clearing away the leaves. In Yesenin’s figurative system, it is associated with the appearance of a person: in the poem “I left my native home...” the old maple is similar to the head of the lyrical hero. By including this detail in the general sketch, the author of the poem reports that the subject of speech belongs to the tragic fate of the Russian village.

The central place of the third chapter is given to the episode of the unequal competition mentioned above. A series of rhetorical questions is followed by a philosophical conclusion: the system of values is determined by time, and each era reshapes them in its own way.

In the fourth part, the role of the hero is clearly defined: he is a prophet and psalm-reader, celebrating a memorial service for his dying homeland. The poem ends with short fragments from village life, in which dissonant notes reach a climax. The motif of blood returns the reader to the theme of retribution indicated in the beginning, and the final image of a drunkard man symbolizes the hopelessness of the future of the peasant world.

The poem "Sorokoust", according to some memoirists and according to a letter from Yesenin to E.I. Livshits dated August 11, 1920, was created in the Caucasus. The plot impetus was the episode that occurred on the Tikhoretskaya - Pyatigorsk section of the Kislovodsk - Batum train. This incident was described in detail by Yesenin in a letter to Livshits: “We were driving from Tikhoretskaya to Pyatigorsk, suddenly we heard screams, looked out the window, and what? We saw a small foal galloping behind the locomotive with all its might. It galloped so fast that it immediately became clear to us "that for some reason he decided to overtake him. He ran for a very long time, but in the end he began to get tired, and at some station he was caught. The episode is insignificant for someone, but for me it says a lot." 2

This episode formed the basis of the 3rd chapter of the poem, becoming a kind of plot epicenter. But it was not only the episode with the foal that became prototype. As Yesenin’s companion on this trip, Anatoly Mariengof, notes, two more life observations of the poet can be found in the poem:

“In Derbent,” writes A.B. Mariengof, “our guide, while collecting water from a well, missed a bucket.

Yesenin used it in his address to the iron guest in Sorokoust:<...>

In Petrovsky Port there was a whole train of malaria patients. We had to see seizures that were truly terrible. People jumped on their boards like rubber balls, gnashed their teeth, and sweated, sometimes icy, sometimes steaming like boiling water.

In "Sorokoust":

Behold the ancient belly
Steel fever is shaking!" 3

The Derbent episode with the drowned bucket became the compositional model of the poem, associatively correlated with the poet’s childhood impressions. In his “Autobiography” of 1924, Yesenin will remember them and tell how, in his adolescence, he was struck by the following picture at night:

“At night, in calm weather, the moon stands upright in the water. When the horses drank, it seemed to me that they were about to drink the moon, and I rejoiced when it floated away from their mouths along with the circles” (V, 226).

The episodes mentioned by Mariengof will be included in the chapters surrounding the narrative of the competition between the “red-maned colt” and the “train”: the 2nd chapter will be completed by the image of “steel fever”, and in the 4th the poet talks about the “bad guest”:

It's a pity that you didn't have to as a child
Drown like a bucket in a well. (11, 73)

Alla Marchenko has long noticed that the plots of Yesenin’s works are similar to the vegetative system, the “bud plot” 4 undergoes various transformations in its development. In the poem “Sorokoust”, the Pyatigorsk episode undoubtedly became such a “kidney plot”. The poem was published in its entirety in December 1920 in the collection “Imagists” (the title of the collection indicates the publication of 1921). 5

The poet not only published the poem in print, but also read it at poetry evenings of that time. One of the first readings took place in the fall of 1920 at the Domino cafe in Moscow. I.V. Gruzinov, a participant in the literary evening, notes that Yesenin was somewhat discouraged: he expected a violent reaction from the audience, but it did not come. The poet, writes Gruzinov, “felt awkward: he expected a fight and suddenly... no one protests.” 6 Yesenin will still enjoy the protests of listeners at other poetry evenings, and at this one, in the Domino cafe, the poet will hear for the first time a professional assessment of his new work. The assessment came from a person from whom Yesenin did not expect to hear it. Ivan Gruzinov, the author of the memoirs, recorded in his memory the following dialogue between Yesenin and Valery Bryusov, who was present at the evening at the Domino cafe:

“Are you giving birth, Sergei Alexandrovich?” Valery Bryusov asks, smiling.

Bryusov’s smile is tense: he is trying to switch from an official tone to a sincere and affectionate tone.

Yes,” Yesenin answers indistinctly.

Give birth, give birth! - Bryusov continues affectionately. In this affectionateness of Bryusov one could feel the approval and encouragement of the meter towards the young poet." 7

Bryusov will definitely express his encouragement for Yesenin’s poem to the visitors of the Polytechnic Museum, who, unlike the visitors to the Domino cafe, greeted the beginning of Sorokoust with cries of protest. And then, according to the memoirs of I.N. Rozanova, “Bryusov stands up and says:

You have only heard the beginning and do not allow the poet to speak. I hope that those present will believe me that I understand something about poetry. And so I claim that this poem by Yesenin is the best of all that has appeared in Russian poetry over the past two or three years." 8

So, according to Bryusov, Yesenin’s Sorokoust is “the best of everything that appeared in Russian poetry” in those years. The assessment may be overestimated, but it is quite fair, because Yesenin in his poem will consolidate the conflict archetype of the 20th century, which in our days will be designated as ecological. [In terms of literary continuity, as A.V. correctly notes. Kulinich, Yesenin’s poem “undoubtedly goes back to the tradition of Baratynsky’s philosophical poetry, his thoughts about the “Iron Age” (AV. Kulinich. “Epiphany of the Wonderful Light” // Russian Philology. Ukrainian Bulletin. - 1995. - No. 2-3. -S 35).] All the upheavals of the 20th century - revolutionary-political, military, economic - will only accelerate this conflict. And if earlier Yesenin was an empiricist ecologist, now, as Professor G.V. Stadnitsky claims, “he saw and appreciated trampling on the law", the 9th law of the life of the biosphere. That is why the picture of the "mad races" of a foal and a steam locomotive has become a common symbol in art. Thus, in 1923, Alexei Ganin will complete his novel "Tomorrow" with a similar, but more harshly depicted, without Yesenin's sadness departing, scene:

"... Rushing sadly from the swamp mists:

E-i-goo-re... br-a-tts mo-o-o-y, I don’t know... How she saw along the cast iron, and he was getting closer, closer: I screamed at him: be kind. .. Turn around... And he, the bastard, whistled, but I don’t even remember what happened... It was me who woke up - I was lying under the slope, and next to me was a tail and a hoof, and that’s all, but there was no trace of him. Only smoke behind the forest." 10

In a modified form, the same conflict is presented in Artem Vesely’s novel “Russia, Washed in Blood,” only instead of a foal (horse), the writer depicted a worldly bull, named in the spirit of modern times, Anarchist:

“A grain train was scratching along the edge of the embankment going up. [We now know well how grain trains were formed in the era of military communism - food detachments swept away all the grain from the villages, dooming the inhabitants to starvation. Artem Vesely, like many beautiful-hearted utopians of that time, considered death villages as a normal thing.] The locomotive skidded, puffed tiredly, groaned and dragged its tail with such difficulty that it seemed to move no more than one fathom per minute. The anarchist whipped himself on the sides with a heavy tail like a rope with a fluffy tip at the end, throwing sand with his hooves and, bending his head to the ground, with a deadly roar, he quickly rushed to meet the locomotive and drove his mighty horns into the chest of the locomotive... The lanterns were already knocked down, the front was crushed, but the locomotive - black and snorting - was advancing: on the rise the driver could not stop " . The finale of the fight is the same as Yesenin’s; only more tragic: “Releasing his last strength with a terrible roar, he (the bull - E.M.) fell to his knees in front of the enemy, then slowly collapsed on his side and tiredly closed his eyes, stuck together with blood...

A white bone splashed out from under the cast iron wheel. The train passed Khomutovo without stopping..." 11 In this picture, everything is symbolic, starting with the name of the village "Khomutovo", the rise of the railway, which the train with grain taken from the peasants overcomes, the driver who does not stop the train and, of course, the worldly bull with politicized nickname "Anarchist". In the late 20-30s, this conflict was stereotypically indicated by the images of a horse and a tractor. N.A. Zabolotsky did not escape this stereotype. In the poem "The Triumph of Agriculture" in the 5th chapter of "The Beginning of Science" the poet depicts the results of the victory of the “iron horse” over the living:

And the distance of the forest thundered
The dull sound of the letter A,
And the tractor came out, thundering,
Cutting through the eyelids with its muzzle.
And crowds of weak animals,
Falling in ashes and dust,
We looked with the eyes of the firstborn
To the renewed face of the earth. 12

Examples of the development in art of the collision “iron horse - living horse” can be multiplied; all of them (despite the variability) will demonstrate the formation of a neomyth about the power of mechanical progress over inert nature. [The Russian underground poet Leonid Gubanov, already in the 2nd half of the 20th century, using Yesenin’s motifs, wrote in the poem “Watercolor to Innocent Hearts”:

And in Rus' there is such grace!
...............................................
What can I say, and the horse is very rare there,
iron animals cast spells,
and they turned the best temple into a slaughterhouse,
the best temple there was turned into a pool,
and the children of Satan rejoice.(L. Gubanov. Angel in the snow: Poems. - M., 1994. - P. 41-42).

In 1918, in the poem “I Left My Home,” Yesenin deciphered the symbolism of the maple as follows:

And I know there is joy in it
To those who kiss the leaves of the rain,
Because that old maple
The head looks like me.(I, 168)

In "Sorokoust" the lines about the "yellow wind" combing the "leaves from the maples" can be understood as the sacrificial involvement of the lyrical hero with the death of the natural world. This motif will be continued in the 4th chapter of the poem: “Only for me, as a psalm-reader, to sing / Alleluia over my native country.”] And only Yesenin in 1920 tragically predicted the sad fate of the Russian village, which became the millionth victim of the establishment of a blissful utopia.

The poem is structured like a village Apocalypse; the theme of death, embodied in symbols, will determine the development of the lyrical plot and composition. The symbolism of death is already contained in the title. According to the Church Slavonic Dictionary, sorokoust is “the commemoration of the deceased for forty days, counting from the day of his death. This commemoration mainly consists of performing a liturgy in memory of the deceased, and litias are also sung about him.” 13 In this explanation, the words “liturgy” and “lithium” are important for us. Liturgy, as the same Church Slavonic dictionary explains, is a Greek word, “literally means a common cause, public service,” 14 and litia “is called prayer performed in the vestibule of the church or even completely outside it (in squares, fields, etc. ), so that all Orthodox Christians could take part in this prayer and so that it would thus be literally nationwide.” 15

“Sorokoust” was written in 1920, excerpts (parts 2 and 3) were published in issues 7-10 of the “Creativity” magazine. The entire poem was included in the collection “Confession of a Hooligan” (1921).

Sorokoust is a special church prayer held during 40 liturgies. At this time, the person being prayed for without being present in the church (usually due to serious illness) becomes a participant in the blood and flesh of Jesus. Sorokoust is also ordered for the dead, especially often for those who have recently died. So who is Yesenin’s poetic prayer about? Is it about the living or the dead?

The answer to the question can be found in one of Yesenin’s letters, in which he recalls how he saw a foal galloping after a steam locomotive and trying to overtake it. The foal ran for a very long time until he was caught. In the same letter, Yesenin explains how he understood this image of life: “A steel horse defeated a living horse.” The foal became for Yesenin “a visual, dear, endangered image of the village.”

The poem is dedicated to Mariengof, Yesenin’s comrade during the period of his passion for imagism (since 1918).

Literary direction and genre

Yesenin 1920 – a convinced imagist. The main goal of imagists is to create a bright and unusual, striking artistic image, mainly with the help of metaphors. Although "Sorokoust" is called a poem, formally it is too short for a poem and falls into a cycle of poems, united by one theme, shown in its development. But the poem corresponds to the idea of “Sorokoust” - a prayer of hope for the healing of a seriously ill person, his inclusion in the life of the people. This patient, almost dead, is the old life, the patriarchal way of life, Yesenin’s beloved village.

Theme, main idea and composition

The theme of the poem is the collision of the outgoing world of the patriarchal village and the new iron world of the city and industry. Sorokoust for the old, seriously ill and even dying (or just died) world is sung by Yesenin. The main idea is the inevitability of the dying of the old world, but so dear to Yesenin. He himself defined the idea of the work in the same letter to Livshits: “What touches me... is only sadness for the departing dear dear animal and the unshakable power of the dead, mechanical.”

The poem consists of 4 parts. In the first part, Yesenin creates an image of a grandiose world transformation, the end of the world, which began with the sound of a disastrous horn, similar to the Archangel's. Nature awaits destruction, an enemy “with an iron belly”, to which the biblical image of the beast corresponds. The lyrical hero’s appeal to “song flea lovers” who do not want to see changes and enjoy the sentimental poems of the past, at one time outraged the first listeners and readers of the poem, as it contained rude words and curses.

In the second part, the onset of “steel fever” becomes more and more noticeable. The iron belly of the city, of civilization, is contrasted with the ancient belly of the huts, as if a mechanical thing were alive.

The third part is central to the poem. The train in it is likened to an iron monster that defeats a foal that embodies not only all living things, but also the past era.

The fourth part is addressed to a bad guest - progress, which most accept with joy, but the lyrical hero, the singer of the old world, sees his calling in his funeral service. On the side of the lyrical hero is nature and the villagers, mourning with him.

Heroes and images

Imagism images are bright, original metaphors that transform familiar objects and phenomena into rough or touching pictures. Rough and even abusive images include metaphors the muddy thighs of the roads, lovers of song fleas, which are celebrated by the meekness of their faces, which teasing twilight(personification) pour a bloody broom of dawn into fat asses.

Epithet bloodied itself has a tragic connotation and echoes the epithet of the first line: disastrous horn. The metaphorical meaning of the first metaphor in the opening is not completely clear. What is this disastrous horn that blew the lyrical hero? Is there a material embodiment of this sound, or is it just a symbolic beginning of the end of the world, the beginning of the death of all living things, man-made murder?

The next two stanzas contrast the usual living picture of the Russian village, the nature of which is personified ( the old mill leads the ear, sharpens the milling sense), And an enemy with an iron belly who pulls his fingers to the throats of the plains. This is urbanization, a technological revolution, an inevitable evil consuming the village and the meadows. The bull, whose work will also become unnecessary, is the prophet of a dying village who senses trouble.

The first part begins with a description of a global catastrophe, which by the end of the first part focuses on a specific village and meadows, even in a specific yard with a bull. In the second part, the lyrical hero’s gaze, on the contrary, turns from the particular to the general. Sound crying harmonica(personification) outside the village hangs over a white window sill in the house of the lyrical hero (metaphor). It would seem that the harmonica is habitually sad with the arrival of autumn, which, like a horse scraper(comparison), combs leaves from maple trees(a metaphor for old age, when a person loses his hair). The autumn wind is called yellow, this metaphorical epithet describes leaves flying in the wind and is contrasted with the stillness of the white window sill.

But this is not the reason why the accordion is crying. Her tears are about the terrible messenger with the cumbersome heel with which he breaks the thickets. The attentive reader will already see in this image a steam locomotive, presented here in the form of one of the angels of the apocalypse. Nature reacts as expected to the coming of the end of the world. The songs are yearning(personification, perhaps a metonymy, depicting increasingly sad people). The suffering of all animals is embodied in the image of the biblical animal that foreshadows disaster - frogs that squeak in terror.

The second part is very emotional, it has 2 interjections. In the last quatrain, the onset of the technical revolution terrifies not only all living things, but also the spiritualized, personified village. Metaphor electric sunrise, avatars the dull grip of belts and pipes, steel fever contrasted with the original, emphasized by the outdated se. This is the original - the personification and revitalization of the village - the log belly of the hut.

The manner of narration in the third part changes. The lyrical hero asks several rhetorical questions, no longer addressed to enemies or opponents, but to like-minded people with whom he shares his secrets. The locomotive symbolizes the beast of the apocalypse, which snores with an iron nostril and runs on cast-iron paws. The red-maned foal is contrasted with the train. This is not only the opposition of old and new, mechanical and living, natural and technical. This is a cry for dying beauty, for changing aesthetics - the sense of beauty. Beauty for the lyrical hero lies in the absurdity of the irrational movement of the foal, throwing its thin legs towards its head, in the meaninglessness of its existence.

At the end of the third part, the lyrical hero tries rationally, but with bitterness, to explain to like-minded people and to himself the inevitability of the passing of the old and victory steel cavalry(metaphor for the victory of technical progress). Yesenin calls fields over which horses do not gallop lightless, and the value of horses is turned into the value of their skin and meat, that is, they are valued only when dead, and even then not very much.

The fourth part is an appeal to technical progress, which is called a bad guest. The lyrical hero rudely sends him to hell and regrets that he did not drown him in childhood. This is a common personification - the recognition by the lyrical hero of the process of urbanization as a living forward movement, as a living being. The lyrical hero sees life in everything, even in iron.

The following lines show that the lyrical hero still distinguishes between mechanical, automatic and real life. “They” appear, who “stand and watch,” accepting all the changes, painting their mouths “with tin kisses.” This prophecy is still relevant today, when even love becomes automatic and mechanical.

The lyrical hero contrasts himself with the others, calling himself a psalm-reader, singing the glory of his native country. As in the second part, Russian nature and peasants become his like-minded people. They also understand the inevitability of what is happening and each joins the funeral service in their own way. The rowan tree, around which red berries are scattered in the fall, reminds the lyrical hero of a man who smashed his head against a fence and poured his blood on the dry and cold loam. Man, like nature, yearns, performing the usual ritual actions for him: pouring out the “suffering” in the sounds of talyanka or drinking to death with dashing moonshine (metaphorical epithet). People of the past, like nature, seem to be hastening their own death in order to make way for the advancing progress. Melancholy is emphasized by the natural dying of autumn nature.

Artistic originality

Yesenin widely uses the author's neologisms, often metaphorical: to celebrate, autumn, trevenchaty (from the word tree according to the word-formation model log), tuzhil (noun from tug), bessyanny, sklen. Formally, the last word is a dialectal adverb and means “pour into the container flush with the edges.” But in the poem it is a noun, apparently meaning rainy, wet weather.

Meter and rhyme

The poem is written with a dolnik with a different number of syllables in the first and third parts and with a three-stressed dolnik in the second and fourth. Dolnik is characteristic of folk poetry.
The rhyme is mostly cross, female rhyme alternates with male rhyme. In the first part, dactylic rhyme alternates with masculine rhyme, and the rhyme is varied. If in the second (full) five-line the cross rhyme is combined with an adjacent one (AbAAb), then the next quatrain has a cross rhyme (BgBg), and in the last two there is a cross rhyme with the loss of one line remaining unrhymed: DeJzIZI. At the same time, it is not the quatrains that have semantic completeness, but the five- and six-verses, which gives the first part a recitative quality, similar to rhythmic prose.

Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin was born in September 1895 in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan province, into a family of wealthy peasants. In 1904, Yesenin was sent to the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo four-year school, and in 1909 he was sent to continue his studies at the second-grade church-teacher school Spas-Klepikovsky. In 1912, after graduating from school, he left for Moscow with the firm intention of devoting himself to poetry. In 1913, Yesenin got a job at Sytin's printing house - first as a loader, and then as a proofreader.

At the end of December 1925 Yesenin arrives from Moscow to Leningrad. On the night of December 28, he was found dead at the Angleterre Hotel. He was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow.

In August 1920, the poet wrote poems about the death of his native village world “Sorokoust”. The title of the poem is very symbolic, as it means a church service for the deceased, which is performed within forty days from the date of death.

The work was based on an episode described by Yesenin in a letter to E.I. Livshits dated August 11-12, 1920: “We were driving from Tikhoretskaya to Pyatigorsk, suddenly we heard screams, looked out the window, and what? We see a small foal galloping as fast as he can behind the locomotive. He gallops so much that it immediately became clear to us that for some reason he decided to overtake him. He ran for a very long time, but in the end he began to get tired, and at some station he was caught. An episode may be insignificant for someone, but for me it says a lot. A steel horse defeated a living horse. And this little foal was for me a visual, dear, endangered image of the village...”

The poet announces the tragic death of all living things, defenseless in the face of an unequal battle with the advancing iron guest. Yesenin correlates and contrasts an iron train and a living horse: the train has an iron nostril, the train runs - the foal gallops, across the steppes - through large grass, cast iron paws - thin legs. An unexpected and hopeless epithet - “radiant” fields. The life of the author today, the technological progress advancing in all spheres devalues everything natural, truly living.

“Sorokoust” is a retreat according to the traditional way of folk life. The “terrible messenger” with an “iron belly” and a “bulky” heel tightly squeezes and strangles the “throats of the plains.” Steel fever is shaking the village. Now, when the industrial attack on nature, the pollution of rivers and reservoirs, and deforestation continues, we are beginning to understand these poems of Yesenin not as backward patriarchal, but as a real threat to all humanity.

Vasily Shukshin “The Sun, the Old Man and the Girl”

"Sorokoust" Sergei Yesenin

A. Mariengof

The horn of death blows, blows!
What should we do, what should we do now?
On the muddy thighs of the roads?
You lovers of song fleas,
Don't you want......

It’s full of meekness to celebrate,
Whether you like it or not, you know, take it.
It's good when twilight teases
And they pour it into our fat asses
The bloody broom of dawn.

Soon the freeze will whiten with lime
That village and these meadows.
There is nowhere for you to hide from death,
There is no escape from the enemy.
Here he is, here he is with an iron belly,
Pulls his fingers to the throats of the plains,

The old mill leads with its ear,
I sharpened my milling nose.
And the yard silent bull,
That he spilled all his brains on the heifers,
Wiping my tongue on the spindle,
I sensed trouble over the field.

Oh, isn't it just outside the village?
This is how the harmonica cries pitifully:
Tala-la-la, tili-li-gom
Hanging over a white window sill.
And the yellow wind of autumn
Isn’t that why, touching the blue ripples,
As if with a horse comb,
Strips leaves from maples.
He comes, he comes, a terrible messenger,
The fifth bulky thicket aches.
And the songs become more and more yearning
To the sound of a frog squeaking in the straw.
Oh electric sunrise
Belts and pipes have a tight grip,
Behold the ancient belly
Steel fever is shaking!

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?

And behind him
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?
Doesn't he really know that in the fields of lightless
His running will not bring back that time,
When a couple of beautiful steppe Russian women
Did you give Pechenegs for a horse?
Fate repainted it differently at the auction
Our reach, awakened by the grinding,
And for thousands of pounds of horse leather and meat
They are now buying a locomotive.

Damn you, nasty guest!
Our song won't work with you.
It's a pity that you didn't have to as a child
Drown like a bucket in a well.
It's good for them to stand and watch
Painting mouths with tin kisses, -
Only for me, as a psalm-reader, to sing
Hallelujah over our native land.
That's why on September morning
On dry and cold loam,
My head smashed against the fence,
The rowan berries are drenched in blood.
That's why the tension has grown in
In the bustle of the ringing talyanka.
And a man smelling of straw
He choked on the dashing moonshine.

Analysis of Yesenin’s poem “Sorokoust”

The ominous atmosphere determines the character of the rural landscape presented in the second part: the pitiful cry of the harmonica, the whirlwinds of falling leaves, the melancholy accompaniment of folk songs, the squeak of a frog. An important element of the picture is the image of a maple tree, from which the wind is clearing away the leaves. In Yesenin’s figurative system, it is associated with the appearance of a person: in the poem “”, the old maple tree is similar to the head of the lyrical hero. By including this detail in the general sketch, the author of the poem reports that the subject of speech belongs to the tragic fate of the Russian village.