Starting to compose poetry, Klyuev corresponded for several years with Alexander Blok, who supported his poetic endeavors. The first collection of poems "Pine Chimes" was published in the fall of 1911 with a preface by V. Bryusov. In the same year, the second book "Brotherly Songs" was published. “Autumn gander is more sonorous than Glinka, Verlaine’s sturgeon milk is more tender, and grandmother’s yarn, stove paths are more radiant than glory and the sky is brighter ...”
“Chunky,” recalled Klyuev, the wife of the writer N.G. Garin. - Below average height. Colorless. With a face expressionless, I would say even stupid. With long, slicked back combed hair, speech with a slow and endlessly intertwined letter “o”, with a clear and strong accent on this letter, and a sharply minted letter “g”, which gave his whole speech a specific and original imprint and shade. In winter - in an old sheepskin coat, a shabby fur hat, unoiled boots, in summer - in an irreplaceable, also badly worn Armenian coat and the same unoiled boots. But all four seasons, just as invariably, he himself is all overgrown and overgrown, like his dense Olonets forest ... "
The poet G. Ivanov remembered Klyuev somewhat differently. “Well, Nikolai Alekseevich, how did you get settled in St. Petersburg” - “Glory to you, Lord, the Intercessor does not leave us sinners. I found a cell - how much do we need Come in, son, make you happy. I live on Morskaya around the corner. - The closet was a room of the Hotel de France with a solid carpet and a wide Turkish ottoman. Klyuev was sitting on the couch, with a collar and tie, and read Heine in the original. “A little passion fruit in Basurman,” he noticed my surprised look. - Passionate a little. Only the soul does not lie. Our nightingales are louder, oh, louder. Yes, what am I, - he got excited, - how I receive a dear guest. Sit down, son, sit down, dove. What to treat you order I don’t drink tea, I don’t smoke, I didn’t have a honey gingerbread. And then, - he winked, - if you're not in a hurry, we'll have an afternoon together. There is a tavern here. Master good man albeit a French one. Here, around the corner. The name is Albert." - I was in no hurry. - "Well, that's all right, well, that's wonderful - now I'll get dressed." - “Why do you need to change clothes” - “What are you, what are you - how can the guys laugh. Wait a minute - I'm in spirit. - From behind the screen, he came out in a vest, oiled boots and a crimson shirt "Well, that's better." - “Why, they won’t let you into a restaurant in this form.” - “In general, we don’t ask. Where are we, peasants, between the gentlemen Know, cricket, your hearth. And we are not in general, we are in a cell-room, that is, a separate one. We can go there too."
In the fall of 1917, Klyuev returned to Vytegra.
Possessing a strong natural mind, he carefully looked at people, at events, even joined the members of the RCP (b). In 1919, Klyuev's poem about Lenin appeared in the Znamya Truda magazine - the first, it seems, in Soviet poetry, an artistic depiction of the leader. However, communism, the Commune, as he himself said, Klyuev did not perceive at all in the same way as other members of the party. "I don't want a Commune without a couch..." he wrote. Old Russian literature, magnificent liturgical rituals, folklore miraculously interfered in his poems with momentary events. In the first post-revolutionary years, he wrote a lot, often published. In 1919, a large two-volume "Song Book" was published, followed by a collection of poems "The Copper Whale". In 1920 - "Song of the Sunbearer", "Pussy Songs". In 1922 - "Lion's Bread". In 1923 - the poems "The Fourth Rome" and "Mother Saturday". “Mayakovsky is dreaming of a whistle over the Winter Palace,” wrote Klyuev, “and for me, a crane flight and a cat on a couch. Is it for the songwriter to take care of the cranes .. "
“In 1919, Klyuev became one of the main employees of the local newspaper Zvezda Vytegra,” wrote K. Azadovsky, a researcher of his work. - He constantly prints his poems and prose works in it. But already in 1920, his participation in the affairs of the newspaper was reduced. The fact is that in March 1920, the Third District Conference of the RCP (b) in Vytegra discussed the possibility of Klyuev's continued stay in the ranks of the party; Speaking to the audience, Klyuev delivered a speech "The face of a communist." “With his inherent figurativeness and strength,” Zvezda Vytegra reported a few days later, “the speaker revealed an integral noble type of an ideal communard, in whom all the best precepts of humanity and universal humanity are embodied.” At the same time, Klyuev tried to prove to the assembly that “religious feelings must not be mocked, for there are too many points of contact in the teaching of the commune with the people’s faith in the triumph of best beginnings human soul." Klyuev's report was listened to "in eerie silence" and made a deep impression. By a majority of votes, the conference, "struck by Klyuev's arguments, by the dazzling red light splashing from every word of the poet, fraternally spoke out in favor of the value of the poet for the party." However, the Petrozavodsk Provincial Committee did not support the decision of the district conference. Klyuev was expelled from the Bolshevik Party ... ”Moreover, in the middle of 1923, the poet was arrested and escorted to Petrograd. The arrest, however, did not turn out to be long, but, having been released, Klyuev did not return to Vytegra. As a member of the All-Russian Union of Poets, he renewed his old acquaintances and devoted himself entirely to literary work. He wrote a lot, but a lot has changed in the country; now Klyuev's poems frankly annoyed him. The exaggerated attraction to patriarchal life caused rebuff, misunderstanding, the poet was accused of promoting kulak life. This is despite the fact that just in those years Klyuev created, perhaps, his best things - “Lament for Yesenin” and the poems “Pogorelshchina” and “Village”.
“I love the gypsy camps, the firelight and the neighing of foals. Under the moon, the trees and iron leaf fall are like ghosts... I love the uninhabited, frightening cosiness of the cemetery gatehouse, the distant ringing and the spoons with crosses, in whose carvings the spells live... Dawn silence, the harmonica in the dark, the smoke of the barn, the hemp in the dew. Distant descendants will marvel at my boundless "love" ... As for them Smiling eyes catch fairy tales with those rays. I love ostozhya, gray forty, near and far, grove and stream ... "
For life in a harsh country, turned upside down by the revolution, this love was no longer enough.
“In response to a request for self-criticism of my latest works and about my public behavior, I bring the following to the attention of the Union,” Klyuev wrote in January 1932 to the Board of the All-Russian Union of Soviet Writers. - My last poem is the poem "Village". It was published in one of the most prominent journals of the republic (Zvezda) and, having passed through an extremely strict analysis of several editorial boards, gave me a reason to accuse me of reactionary preaching and kulak moods. You can talk about this endlessly, but I, admitting that in this work there is a nebulousness and remoteness of images, well calculated by me as an artist, necessary for generating many comparisons and assumptions in the reader, I sincerely assure that the poem "Village", without thundering victorious copper , to the last depth is permeated with the pain of the pipes, sobbing in the Russian red wind, in the eternal cry to the sun of our fields and black forests. The flutes and pity of the "Village" were deliberately thickened by me and were born from the reasons that I will discuss below, and from the conviction that not only a solid "hurray" can convince the enemies of the working people of its truth and right, but also recognition by them of their greatest victims and innumerable plagues endured for the salvation of the world body of working humanity from the power of the yellow devil - capital. So a valiant warrior is not ashamed of his wounds and holes on his shield - his eagle eyes through blood and bile see “cherry huts on the Don, cedar boats in Siberia” ...
The inappropriate elevation of the tone of the poems of "The Village" will become clear if the Board of the Union takes into account the following with swollen legs, literally shedding tears, I, on the day of the creation of the ill-fated poem, for the first time in my life went out into the street with an outstretched hand for alms. Trying not to catch the eye of my countless acquaintances of writers, famous artists, artists and scientists, in the backyards of the Sitny market, softening my pain with images of a lost hut paradise, I laid down my "Village". My then being a hungry dog determined the corresponding consciousness. At the present time I am seriously ill, I have not left my corner for whole months, and my social behavior, if by it is meant non-participation in meetings, public performance etc., is explained by my severe morbid condition, sudden fainting spells and often severe dependence on someone else's bowl of soup and a piece of bread. I have reached the last degree of despair and I know that I am sinking to the bottom of the Sitny markets and the terrible world of rooming houses, but that is not my social behavior, but only illness and poverty. I enclose the attached document from the Bureau of Medical Examination and earnestly ask the Union (without trying to pity anyone) not to deprive me of the last joy of dying in unity with my art comrades, a member of the All-Russian Union of Soviet Writers ... "
Not the best role was played in the fate of Klyuev by the poet Pavel Vasilyev, the brother-in-law of the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, the well-known communist I.M. Gronsky. His words about some details of Klyuev's personal life outraged Gronsky so much that on the same day he called People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Genrikh Yagoda with a categorical demand to remove the "holy fool" from Moscow in twenty-four hours. “He (Yagoda) asked me “Arrest” - “No, just send me out.” After that, I informed I.V. Stalin about his order, and he sanctioned it ... "On February 2, 1934, Klyuev was arrested. The court sentenced him to a five-year exile to Siberia.
“I am in the village of Kolpashevo in Narym,” Klyuev wrote to his old friend, singer N.F. Khristoforova. - This is a mound of clay, dotted with huts blackened from bad weather and disasters. A slanting half-blinded sun, perforated eternal clouds, an eternal wind and rains suddenly falling from thousands of miles of district swamps. Muddy peaty river Ob with low rusty banks flooded for thousands of years. The population - 80% of the exiles - Chinese, Sarts, exotic Caucasians, Ukrainians, urban punks, former officers, students and impersonal people from different parts of our country - all strangers to each other and even, and most often, hostile, all in search of food, which no, because Kolpashev - long ago became a gnawed bone. Here it is - the famous Narym! - I think. And here I am destined to spend five bestial dark years without my beloved and soul-refreshing nature, without greetings and dear people, breathing in the vapors of crime and hatred! And if it were not for the depths of the holy constellations and the streams of tears, then a miserable twisted corpse would have been added to the black bottomless pits of the near swamp. Today, under an ugly hollow pine tree, I found the first Narym flowers - some kind of bluish and thick yellow - I rushed to them with a sob, pressed them to my eyes, to my heart, as the only ones close and not cruel. But immeasurably orphanhood and homelessness, hunger and ferocious poverty, which I already feel behind me. The rags, the terrifying visions of suffering and human death do not touch anyone here. All this is a matter of everyday life and all too common. I would like to be the most contemptible creature among creatures than an exile in Kolpashevo. No wonder the Ostyaks say that the swamp devil gave birth to Narym with a hernia. But what frightens me most of all are people, some kind of half-dogs, fiercely hungry, graceless and crazy from misfortunes. Which side to stick to these humanoids, so as not to die .. "
But even in such conditions, Klyuev tried to work, wrote down individual stanzas, memorized them, then destroyed the records. Unfortunately, the large poem "Narym", on which he then, according to some evidence, worked, did not reach us.
“The sky is in tatters, slanting rains, a non-silent wind - this is called summer here, then a fierce 50-degree winter, and I'm naked. I don't have any outerwear, I don't have a hat, gloves or a coat. I'm wearing a blue cotton shirt without a belt, thin paper trousers, already dilapidated. The rest was stolen by the shalmans in the cell, where up to a hundred people were accommodated, arriving and leaving day and night. When I was traveling from Tomsk to Narym, someone, apparently recognizing me, sent me through the escort a short wadded jacket and yellow boots that hurt my legs, but for that I am warmly grateful ... "
For some time, Klyuev was still fighting for himself. He wrote to the Political Red Cross in Moscow, to Gorky, to the Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Writers, to old friends who were still at large, the poet Sergei Klychkov. Some of the appeals apparently worked at the end of 1934. Klyuev was allowed to serve the rest of his term in Tomsk. At the same time, they were sent to Tomsk not by stage, but by a special escort; in the official telegram received from Novosibirsk, it was indicated that the poet Klyuev should be delivered to Tomsk.
“On the feast of the Intercession, I was transferred from Kolpashev to Tomsk,” Klyuev wrote, “this is a thousand miles closer to Moscow. Such a transition should be accepted as mercy and indulgence, but, leaving the ship on a rainy and cold morning, I found myself for the second time in exile without a corner and a piece of bread. Dejectedly, with my bundle, I wandered along the immeasurably dusty streets of Tomsk. Here and there he sat down on a random bench at the gate, then on some kind of step; Wet to the bone, hungry and cold, I knocked on the first door of a crooked old house on the remote outskirts of the city - in the hope of asking for a lodging for the night for the sake of Christ. To my surprise, I was greeted by a middle-aged, pale, with curly hair and the same beard, a man with a greeting “Providence sends us a guest! Come in, take off your clothes, you are probably tired.” At these words, the man began to undress me, pulled up a chair, knelt down and pulled off my boots thickly caked with mud. Then he brought warm felt boots, a bed with a pillow, quickly set up an overnight stay for me in the corner of the room ... "
However, life in Tomsk turned out to be a little easier than Kolpashev's. “It is a deep winter in Tomsk,” the poet wrote, “the frost is below 40 degrees. I am without felt boots, and on market days I rarely manage to go out for alms. They serve potatoes, very rarely bread. With money - from two to three rubles - for almost a whole day - from 6 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, when the market is leaving. But it's not every Sunday when I go out for food. From what I have served, I sometimes make soup, in which I put all the bread crumbs, wild garlic, potatoes, turnips, even a little clover hay, if it gets in the peasant carts. I drink boiling water with lingonberries, but there is not enough bread, sugar is a great rarity. Ahead of frosts up to 60 degrees, I'm scared to die on the street. Ah, if it were warm by the stove! .. Where is my heart, where are my songs .. "
In 1936, already in Tomsk, Klyuev was again arrested in the case of the counter-revolutionary, church (as stated in the documents) "Union for the Salvation of Russia" provoked by the NKVD. For some time he was released from custody only because of illness - "paralysis of the left half of the body and senile dementia." But this was only a temporary reprieve.
“I want to talk to my dear friends,” the poet Khristoforova wrote in despair, “to listen to genuine music! Behind the plank fence from my closet - day and night there is a modern symphony - booze ... Fighting, cursing - the roar of women and children, and all this is blocked by a valiant radio ... I, poor, endure everything. On the second of February, three years of my unfitness will turn into members of the new society! Woe to me, the insatiable wolf! .. "
The bad premonitions soon came true. At a meeting of senior officials of the West Siberian Territory, the then head of the NKVD S.N. Mironov, speaking about the processes already planned and being developed by the Chekists, quite definitely demanded "Klyuev must be dragged along the line of the monarchist-fascist type, and not the right-wing Trotskyists, to go through this counter-revolutionary organization to an organization of the union type." It was said on a grand scale, indicating the importance of the work being done.
“A meeting of senior officials,” wrote Professor L.F. Pichurin (“The Last Days of Nikolai Klyuev”, Tomsk, 1995) - took place on March 25, 1937. And already in May, Klyuev was again taken into custody. Of course, the interrogations of the "accomplices" very soon gave full confirmation of all the conjectures of the investigators. For example, the arrested Golov testified: “The ideological inspirers and leaders of the organization are the poet Klyuev and the former princess Volkonskaya ... Klyuev is a pious person, for the king. Now he is writing poetry and a long poem about the atrocities and tyranny of the Bolsheviks. He has extensive connections and many like-minded people ... "A few days later, the same Golov added to what was said," Klyuev and Volkonskaya are great authorities among the monarchist elements in Russia and even abroad ... In the person of Klyuev, we have acquired a great ideological and authoritative leader who at the right moment he will raise the banner of active struggle against the tyranny of the Bolsheviks in Russia. Klyuev is very interested in which of the scientists of Tomsk universities has connections with foreign countries ... "And even this" Klyuev is serving a link in Tomsk for selling his writings against the Soviet regime to one of the capitalist states. Klyuev’s writings were published abroad and he was sent 10 thousand rubles for them ... "As a result, a quick investigation really came to the conclusion that" Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich is the leader and ideological inspirer of the counter-revolutionary, monarchist organization "Union of Salvation" existing in Tomsk Russia", in which he took an active part, grouping around himself a counter-revolutionary element, repressed by the Soviet power."
Strikingly, Pichurin noted, that the protocol of Klyuev's interrogation, except for the initial data, contains practically nothing, except for the following question and answer "Gorbenko (investigator)" Tell me why you were arrested in Moscow
and sentenced to exile in Western Siberia” Klyuev “While living in the city of Poltava, I wrote the poem “Pogorelshchina”, which was later recognized as kulak. I distributed it in literary circles in Leningrad and Moscow. In essence, this poem was with a reactionary anti-Soviet direction, reflecting the kulak ideology.
In October, a meeting of the troika of the NKVD Directorate of the Novosibirsk Region decided “Klyuev Nikolai Alekseevich to be shot. Confiscate his personal property." On October 23-25, 1937 (as indicated in the extract from the case), the decision of the troika was carried out.
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 quests, 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 also created symbolic images of the messiah-wonderful guest, the prophet-shepherd.
In the February and October revolutions, the New Peasant poets saw the possibility of social revenge for the peasants and religious renewal. In the article "Red Horse" (1919), Klyuev wrote about how all the "Pudozh man's strength" flocks to the "red ringing of the Resurrection" (Klyuev N.). In the religious-revolutionary poems (1916-18) by Yesenin "Comrade", "Singing Call", "Father", "Oktoih", "Coming", "Transfiguration", "Country Book of Hours", "Inonia", "Jordanian dove", "Heavenly Drummer", "Pantocrator" - Russia was shown as a new Nazareth, and the February Revolution was interpreted as a revolution of an Old Believer peasant - a catcher of the universe, similar to a biblical shepherd. Some of the New Peasant poets saw in the revolution the mystery of universal forgiveness and harmony. The maximalist version of this theme was developed in the lyrics of Klyuev and Karpov: even the devil was reborn into a bearer of good, became a participant in the bright transformation of Russia. If the pre-revolutionary work of Karpov, Klyuev, Shiryaevets, Oreshin, Yesenin was mainly aimed at creating a harmonious earthly structure, then an existentialist tendency manifested itself in the work of Klychkov, he is a singer of "unprecedented sadness in the world" ("The carpet fields are golden ...", 1914). Both in the work of Klychkov and in the work of Ganin, existential moods were intensified by the First World War. Ganin wrote: “The face of man and God has been erased. Chaos again. Nobody and Nothing ”(“ Singing Brother, we are alone on the road ... ”, 1916). Soon after the victory of the October Revolution, Shiryaevets and the former World War II and 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 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 a person, his uniqueness, family values, love, creativity are the themes of Klychkov's poem "The Song of the Great Mother" (1929 or 30), the cycle "What Gray Cedars Noise About" (1930-32), etc. In Yesenin's post-revolutionary poetry, the main became the lyrical content, the feelings of the poet. A man, as the New Peasant poets believed, belongs to God, himself and the world, and not to a class and not to power, therefore the leitmotif of Klyuev’s poetry is the universality of Russia: herds of rhinos 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, Vasilyev, who made himself known in the poetry collections In Golden Intelligence (1930) and 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 are strong people. Vasiliev created the image of Siberia, where "heroes of construction and labor" are creating a new life ("Province - Periphery", 1931). At the same time, in the "Songs about the death of the Cossack army" (1928-32) and in other works, the themes of the tragedy of civil confrontation, violence against a person are developed. The new peasant poets of the 1910s and 1930s did not represent a single stream. Their work is a special branch of Russian modernism, it expressed the tendencies of both symbolism and post-symbolist poetry; their searches in poetics contributed to the resuscitation of the artistic systems of 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 peasants was initiated, who supported the policy of the party in the countryside with their work, the All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers was formed ().
New peasant poets
New peasant poetry is a well-established definition, but rather conditional and, in principle, does not express creative specificity (1893 - 1925), (1895 - 1925), (1887 - 1963), (1889 - 1937), (1884 - 1937), (1887 - 1938). ), (1887 - 1924), an artist and poet close to them (1887 - 1967), and also (1909 - 1937) - a poet of the younger generation1. The term was proposed by V. Lvov-Rogachevsky in the book “Poetry of New Russia. Poets of the Fields and the Outskirts of the City” (1919) and contained an indication of the difference between the peasant poets of the 20th century and those who preceded them, S. Drozhzhin, A. Koltsov, I. Surikov, and others.
Most of the poets were born into peasant families. Yesenin's father went to work, one grandfather was a headman, the other had barges, which, however, he lost, kept a worker and a worker. Klychkov came from an Old Believer family, his father was a village shoemaker, he supplied his products to Moscow; as Klychkov wrote: “The shoes have a golden edge / And, as if in a dance, a narrow nose ... / Around the swamp, swamp and forest, / We don’t wear these ourselves!” (“Everything is in a row in our district ...”, 1927). Klyuev is also from the Old Believer peasantry, his mother is from the family of Avvakum, and his uncle is a self-immolator. Ganin from horseless peasants, the family had five daughters and two sons, his bread was enough until the end of November, because his father sought additional income: he laid stoves, pitched rope, dressed leather, sewed boots; mother was a lace maker. Karpov's parents were landless Old Believers, he learned peasant labor from childhood. Shiryaevts's parents are from peasants, but assigned to the bourgeoisie. Oreshin's parents also no longer engaged in peasant labor: his mother was a seamstress, his father was a clerk in a textile shop. Vasiliev's parents were of a different social status: his father was a teacher from among the Cossacks, his mother was from the family of a Pavlodar merchant, a native of peasants. Thus, the poets' parents were working people, and thanks to their initiative and knowledge, most families still belonged to the peasant elite.
New peasant poets - provincials: Oreshin - Saratov, Ganin from the Vologda village of Konshino, Karpov from the village of Turki, Kursk province, Yesenin from the Ryazan village of Konstantinovo, Klychkov from the Tver village of Dubrovka, Klyuev from the village of Koshtugi, Vytegorsky district, Olonets province, Vasiliev from the Irtysh Cossacks, was born in Zaisan. Radimov was born in the Ryazan village of Khodyaynovo. Another, in our opinion, essential touch in the collective portrait of the “new peasants” is their education. Future poets were taught the way it was supposed to be among the common people. But they had the will to enlightenment, and some of them crossed the educational limit traditional for their class. If Oreshin studied at a four-year city school, then Ganin first studied at a two-year zemstvo school, then studied at the Vologda gymnasium and the Vologda medical school. If Karpov mastered the letter on his own, then Yesenin graduated from the Zemstvo four-year school, a teacher's school, attended classes at the historical and philosophical department of the People's University. Klychkov studied at a zemstvo school, then in Moscow at a real school, then at the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University, then switched to law, but was expelled for non-payment. Klyuev studied at the Vytegorsk parochial school, then at a two-year city school, then for a year at the Petrozavodsk paramedic school, and later, thanks to self-education, became an intellectual. Shiryaevets studied at the Zemstvo school, graduated from the parish. Vasiliev studied at the Omsk school and for a year at the Higher Courses of Oriental Languages in Vladivostok. Radimov studied at the Ryazan Theological Seminary, graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of Kazan University.
Since the 1910s, Yesenin, Klyuev, Klychkov and others have represented an established trend in the literary process. An essential role in the formation of these poets was played by their personal life experience. These were people who actively showed themselves and experienced everything that befell their generation. For example, the First World War. Oreshin was awarded two St. George's crosses. Ganin was mobilized in the summer of 1914, he served in the Nikolaev military hospital, was demobilized for health reasons in June 1916. In 1914, Karpov began military service in the first reserve infantry regiment in Okhta. Klychkov went through the entire war and was exposed to mortal danger more than once. Yesenin in March 1916 was drafted into a reserve battalion in Petrograd, then was assigned to the Tsarskoye Selo field military hospital train, was on the Southwestern Front.
They survived that war, revolutions, civil war, but their later life is an example of the tragic doom of a person, and not only because of the fatal manifestations of fate, but also because the state treated most of them as enemies of the people. In the Soviet era, these poets were in literature for a very short time, although they were in their creative and physical prime. Shiryaevets died of inflammation of the brain on May 15, 24. Karpov was forced to shut up, which saved himself. He died a natural death. There was nothing natural in the death of the majority. One way or another, but the death of Yesenin is the result of violence. “I am departing from the path of being for eternity" - this is a line from Ganin's poem "Departure". In fact, they were knocked out of this path. Ganin was arrested on 11/2/24 and shot on 03/30/25. Klyuev was arrested on February 2, 1934, a month later the OGPU collegium issued a decision to imprison him for five years in a labor camp and replace this punishment with a five-year exile in Western Siberia, in the city of Kolpashevo; later he was allowed to serve his term in Tomsk, where he was arrested on March 23, 1936, and released on July 4, 1936, because the case was suspended due to “paralysis of the left side of the body and senile dementia”2; On June 5, 1937, he was again arrested on charges of leading a unit of the Parisian Russian Combined Arms Union that allegedly existed in Tomsk, and in the same year he was shot. Vasiliev in 1935 was sent to a corrective labor colony in Elektrostal, then transferred to the Taganskaya prison, then to the Ryazansky domzak; he was released in March 1936, but arrested in February 1937 and shot in July. Klychkov was dealt with swiftly: he was arrested and shot two months later. This happened in 1937. Oreshin was arrested at the end of October 1937 and shot on March 15, 1938. What were they accused of? For example, Klychkova - in counter-revolutionary activities, in relations with the Trotskyists, Klyuev - in propaganda aimed at overthrowing or undermining Soviet power, in committing individual counter-revolutionary crimes. The spread of fascism in Europe gave reason to condemn Ganin for allegedly fascist positions; a few years before the execution, Klychkov was accused of fascist sentiments; Gorky, in his article "Literary Amusements" (1934, 1935), saw the danger of fascism in Vasiliev's behavior; In the case of Klyuev, a “fascist” theme was also heard: “Klyuev must be dragged precisely along the line of the monarchist-fascist type [...],” said the head of the NKVD department of Zapsibkrai3.
The fates of the new peasant poets testify to how dangerous the position of the writer was in the 1920s and 1930s. V. Khodasevich in his articles “About Yesenin” (1932) and “Bloody Food” (1932) connected Yesenin’s fate with a terrible pattern: the history of Russian literature is “the history of the extermination of Russian writers”, “it is difficult to find happy people in Russian literature”4.
Klyuev was a strong personality, he was talented, smart, artistic. His influence on poets, such as Yesenin or Shiryaevets, is undeniable. Klyuev left the "Workshop of Poets", because, due to his independence, he could not be in the "workshop" of N. Gumilyov, who appreciated him, he himself was able to teach and guide. The main reason for this. He met Yesenin at the beginning of October 1915. Klyuev corresponded with Shiryaevets from 1913, he strongly recommended him to read Klychkov, and Klychkov's poetry really captivated Shiryaevets. Apparently, it was impossible to treat Klyuev with indifference: he either attracted or repelled. Karpov became close friends with Klyuev and Yesenin in 1915-1916. He recalled with sufficient hostility the meeting with Klyuev in the 1910s at the dacha near: having found shelter in an empty outbuilding of the dacha, Karpov witnessed Sunday literary meetings, where he met Klyuev, who, addressing him, very condescendingly, even disapprovingly spoke about those present and urged to leave "from shame"; Karpov did not hide his irritation: “His hypocrisy jarred me […]”, he wrote about Klyuev’s imagery: “And it sounded false, fake. This is where Nikolai Klyuev stumbled. Klychkov met Klyuev at the end of 1915 in Petrograd, and it is clear from his letters that he did not want to follow Klyuev and was looking for his own style and mood in poetry. Klyuev, in turn, noted in his poems "strictness, simplicity and radiance"6. Ganin entered the circle of new peasant poets in 1916, when he met Yesenin, Klyuev, Karpov. Oreshin met Yesenin in the autumn of 1917.
New peasant poets were published quite actively - both before the revolution and in the early 1920s. Klychkov's first book "Songs. Sadness-Joy. - Lada. - Bova" was released in 1910, although 1911 was on the title, then "The Secret Garden" (1913), "Oakwood" (1918), "Ring of Lada" (1919), "Wonderful Guest" (1923) appeared ), "Home Songs" (1923), "Talisman" (1927), "Visiting the Cranes" (1930), the novels "Sugar German" (1925), "Chertukhinsky Balakir" (1926), "The Prince of Peace" (1928 ). Klyuev’s first poetic book, The Pines Chime (1911), came out a few months after Klychkov’s Songs, followed by Brotherly Songs (1912), Forest Songs (1913), Worldly Thoughts (1916), Songbook "(1919), "Copper Whale" (1919), "Fadeless Color" (1920), "The Fourth Rome" (1922), "Lion's Bread" (1922), "Mother Saturday" (1922), "Lenin" ( 1924), "Hut and field" (1928). Karpov at first declared himself as a publicist with the book “The Dawn Talk”, it was published before the appearance of the first books by Klychkov and Klyuev - in 1909 and was approved, the following year his brochures “At the Plow”, “Smart Russian Peasants”, appeared in 1913 - a novel with scandalous fame "Flame", and the author of one of the reviews was A. Blok. In his fictionalized memoirs From the Depths (1956, 1991), Karpov wrote: “Draft copies of the novel Flame were hanging in my knapsack. I processed them - on the benches of the boulevards, on the window sills of the stations, wherever I could stick with a pencil and paper. In the 1920s, his poetic books The Russian Ark and The Star appeared, and a collection of short stories The Trumpet Voice (1920) was also published. In 1933, the autobiographical prose “Riding the Sun” appeared, containing many mystified fragments, and in 1956, its expanded version, “From the Depths” (1956). Yesenin's first book "Radunitsa" was published in 1916, then there were "Dove" (1918), "Transfiguration", "Rural Book of Hours", "Treryadnitsa" (1920), "Confession of a bully" (1921), "Poems of a brawler "(1923), "Moscow Tavern" (1924), "Soviet Russia" (1925), "Soviet Country" (1925), "Persian Motives" (1925), after his death a four-volume collection of works was published (1926 - 192, successful and in the creative fate of Shiryaevets: his poetic book "Zapevka" appeared. True, the collective collection "Early Twilight" was published back in 1911, in which, in addition to Shiryaevts's poems, there were texts by L. Poroshin and I. Porshakov, and in 1915. The book "Bogatyr" was published, "Singing" was followed by "Scarlet Poppies" (1917), "On Music and Love" (1917), "The Tale of Ivan, the Peasant's Son" (1919), "The Land of the Sun and Chimbet" (1919 ), a children's poetic book "Patterns" (1923), "The Peasant" (1923), three months before his death - a book of poems and songs "Expansion" (1924). Before this last book, Shiryaevets was little known to the reader, because most of his collections were published in Tashkent. Oreshin's books began to appear after the revolution, they were "Glow" (1918), "Red Russia" (1918), "Duleika" (1919), "Nabat" (1920), "Birch" (1920), "We" ( 1921), "Scarlet Temple" (1922), "Rainbow" (1922), "Rye Sun" (1923), "Straw Block" (1925), "Sikhi for the Village" (1927), "Spring" (1927), "Frank Lyre" (1928), "Poems" (1929), "Second Grass" (1933), "Under a Happy Sky" (1937). Only after the revolution did Ganin's books appear, from 1920 to 1923 "Star Ship", "Singing Coast", "Kiburaba", "Red Hour", "Uninhibited World", "Evening", "Holy Cry" were published , "In Fire and Glory", "The Barn", "Golden Desert", "A Bag of Diamonds". Moreover, the poet published some collections in a lithographic way, with his own hand cut out the text on the boards. His last book of poems and poems is The Epic Field (1924). As Ivanov-Razumnik noted in Writer's Fates (1942-1943), Star Ship (1920) already discovered in the poet a growing master. Radimov's first books were "Field Psalms" (1912), "Earthly Robe" (1914), in Soviet times "Village" (1922), "Popiada" (1922), "Earthly" (1927), several collections were published in 1950 -e. Vasiliev failed to publish a single collection of lyrics. Only in 1934 was the poem "Salt Riot" (1932 - 1933) published as a separate edition. The poets were not bound by any manifestos. In fact, there was no school of Klyuev or Yesenin. Philosophical and artistic preferences were both similar and fundamentally different.
New peasant poets are believers, and they remained so after the October Revolution. Their lyrics are permeated with religious feeling, and Klyuev's with religious thought. In the 1910s, Klyuev, falling away from the Old Believers, acted almost as a David of the whips, eunuchs, Calvary Christians. He taught Shiryaevets in a letter dated June 28, 2014: faith in man must be learned from the Doukhobors, Khlysts, eunuchs. In the 1920s - 1930s, being in opposition to the Bolsheviks, he showed the Old Believer strictness and conservatism. If in the Bolsheviks he saw the cause of the death of the peasantry, then in Nikonianism he saw the beginning of the destruction of the foundations: “The church is in a hare coat / In the hearts of Nikon the male, / From him in a grimy log house / A creaky aphid started up!” ("Zaozerye", 1926). The religiosity of Klyuev, who was involved in the secret Church, was passionate. She was defiant towards state atheism. In March 1928, he told V. Manuilov about his summer wanderings to the Pechora “Old Believers, to sectarians who until last year lived so secluded that they had not even heard of Soviet power, of Lenin,” and Manuilov wrote: “Nikolai Alekseevich was one of the few who knew how to get to the remote northern sketes along secret paths, finding the way along the notches on the centuries-old trunks”8. The wife of the poet S. Garin was close to the truth: “Klyuev was a fanatically religious person - he saw in every grass, in every bird, in every goosebump “the providence of God” ... "9.
In Yesenin there was no religious enlightenment and zealousness of Klyuev, in the lyrics he expressed his religious intuition. His path was also marked by falling away from church orthodoxy. For example, in his youth, judging by his letters, he was close to the ideas of the late Tolstoy. Or, even before the appearance of Blok's "Twelve", he wrote the poem "Comrade" (1917) - about the baby Jesus, who went under bullets along with the rebels and died in the struggle "for freedom, for equality, for work" without Sunday, which was replaced by "Rre-es-puu-public!". But at the same time, the poet saw God's will in the revolution. His "Lord, calve!" ("Transfiguration", 1917), as a whole, his religious interpretation of the revolution, even received a response in literary circles. In V. Khlebnikov's poem "Moscow of a rattletrap" (1920) we read: "Moscow of a rattletrap, / There are two adults in it. / Golgotha Mariengof. / City / Rasporot. / Resurrection / Yesenin. / Lord, calve / In a fur coat of foxes! With obvious humor in relation to the two "imagos", that is, the Imagists - the author of "Magdalena" (1919) A. Mariengof, the author of "Transfiguration" Yesenin, and imago – to those who are associated with insects during the development of wings and the ability to reproduce, Khlebnikov’s lines also sounded a serious conclusion, which B. Lönnqvist drew attention to: if Yesenin’s name correlates with the theme of resurrection, then Mariengof - with the theme of death, Yesenin’s name even phonetically connected by Khlebnikov with the resurrection (“Sunday Yeseni e Yeseni on 10. The following remark is also fair: “[...] Yesenin has a reverse transformation - the spirit of the Lord is reified”, heavenly milk “gives not eternal life, but earthly wealth”11. But we note that the theme of the carnal Christ is also characteristic of Klyuev. Why shouldn’t the Lord calve, if we also read in Klyuev about the “warm animal Lord”, who took him in His palm, gave him His saliva to drink, licked him “with a kind native tongue, like a cow licks a newborn calf”12?
Like Yesenin, Klychkov was outside the church, which did not detract from his lyrical, intimate appeal to God, his fear of being left by God. But, describing the deified nature, he drew spiritual and creative forces and from Slavic pagan mythology. Karpov was a believer, but a believer in a Khlysty way, painfully and destructively. Perhaps Vasiliev did not have a religious understanding of life.
The poetry of the “new peasants” addresses eternal philosophical questions. The perceptive understood its mental and emotional depth already at an early stage, when others saw in the poets only mummers Lelya. For example, Yesenin “Marfa Posadnitsa” (1914) stunned Tsvetaeva: “Yesenin reads Marfa Posadnitsa, accepted by Gorky in the Chronicle and forbidden by censorship. I remember gray clouds of doves and black clouds of people's anger. - "How the Moscow Tsar - on a bloody spree - sold his soul - to the Antichrist" ... I listen with all the roots of my hair. Is it really this cherub, this Milchgesicht, this operatic “Open! Unlock!” - this one is wrote? Felt it? (With Yesenin, I never stopped marveling at this)"13. Even the first steps of the "new peasants" cannot be explained only by the stylization of folklore. For them it was fundamentally important that they were not considered imitators of folk poetry. In a 1922 review of Radimov's "Village", Klychkov emphasized that the poet avoided stylization.
As for the ethical stylization like peasant clothes, this was the manifestation of the carnival tradition of the Silver Age. Klyuev confessed to Shiryaevets in a letter dated May 3, 2014: “Didn’t I lead the Stray Dog by the nose, didn’t I have masks“ for the public ”14. Masquerade was the public life of the Symbolists, Futurists, and later the Imagists and Oberiuts. In the 1920s, Yesenin was “dressed like a dandy in London,” and Klyuev wore boots. Tsvetaeva noticed well: the poet who calls with “a top hat or onuchs” is an actor, like Byron was, who called with “tame leopards”15; in her diary entries we read: “I’m not talking about Yesenin’s top hat and plush trousers, because it’s a masquerade<…>"sixteen. The mask was a game for poets, but it also served psychological protection. However, in poetry, they extremely openly expressed their understanding of contemporary events and the world order in general, in many respects the opposite of the generally accepted one.
Most of the new peasant poets developed the idea of universalism, Christian, pantheistic or natural philosophical. In the dewdrop they saw the image of the universe, the village was likened to space. We read from Klyuev: “Look, a whale is splashing in a pail with dough, / The moon dives like a dolphin in a drop of sweat” (“In the factory backyards, where is the coal hell ...”, 1921). He perceived his own flesh in accordance with the primary myth of the creation of man from the earth's firmament and created something like anthropography, and extremely naturalistic: “The nuclei are Matochkin Shar, the navel is the beluga Vaigach” (“Volga flowed from a birch vein ...”, 1921, 1922), “There is a coast of nipples, an island of sultry buttocks, / A valley of groins, a plateau of knees”, “Under the flute of a triton on the thighs of a swamp / Rinse the goblin and the spirits of the earth” (“The Fourth Rome”, 1921). By the way, I will quote from the memoirs of S. Lipkin:
“I don’t remember - before or after reading“ Pogorelshchina - the conversation turned to philosophers. Klyuev said:
– I was reading Kritik der reinen Vernuft (Critique of Pure Reason) to Kant. The mind is deep, fruitful. Not like Feuerbach (so he said). For him, the foolish one, Christ is not a God-man, but a man-god. Small German.
I don't want to seem original, but for me Klyuev is not a narrow country poet, or rather, not only a village poet, but the greatest, after Tyutchev, pantheist in Russian poetry. He taught:
To lure the constructive Sound to the ears,
What knits, like a thread, a tear with the moon,
And the creak of the cradle - with the abyss of the sea"17.
Lipkin quoted "White India" (between 1916 and 1918).
Despite the clear manifestation of passeism in the work of the new peasant poets and the description of the established folk mentality, they were still not inclined to a static-patriarchal contemplation of reality. For the majority, a creative attitude to reality was characteristic. Some wrote about the religious and almost cosmic transformation of Russia, others about the socialist one. The task of creativity was also in the denial of the Bolshevik model of life.
At the same time, vitalism manifested itself in the poetry of Yesenin and Vasiliev. In their images, intonations, phonetics, there is a huge Vital energy, which in Yesenin's lyrics, in particular, was expressed in the motive of intimate attraction to nature, and in Vasiliev's lyrics - in the motive of attraction to life-generation, to the renewal of reality. The indomitable thirst for life in the lines of Vasilyev: “For the time being, your Vertinsky is not afraid of us - / Damn flyer, wolf's satiety. / We still knew Nekrasov, / We still sang “Kalinushka”, / We have not yet begun to live” (“Poems in honor of Natalia”, 1934). There is great earthly power in his poems. As Mandelstam said about him: “His words grow from the soil, mix with it, become soil”18. Vasiliev wrote about himself - “boiling with strength”, about August - “a storm in hops”, about clouds - “for a long well-fed roar / Clouds of earth”, about the country - “And for a country where a million households / Gives birth and nurtures fair-haired children” ("August", 1932). Vasiliev’s world is extremely expressive, his hero is courageous, like that of J. London: “In the steppes, uncrumpled snow is smoking, / But I can’t get lost in blizzards, / I’ll put my hand in a mitten / Hot, like a wolf’s mouth” (“In the steppes, uncreased snow is smoking …”, 1933). Perhaps there are not so many poets with such a gambling reception and masculine energy.
Despite the fact that in the 1920s and 1930s Klyuev wrote, especially in his poems, about the death of the Russian village, his work is an example of philosophical and poetic hedonism. Most of his works capture admiration, spiritual delight from the contemplated world, and even Renaissance philautia, adoration of one's own I am, your body. He himself is a source of joy, poeticized love for earthly and heavenly things. In "October overtook me broad-shouldered ..." (1933) there are lines:
October overtook me broad-shouldered,
Like ash, with a golden mustache,
Eyes - two drakes on the stretch,
Volosya - mop in hayfield,
Where the sun dropped the rake.
Klychkov and Ganin, on the contrary, appear to be existentialists, their fascination with the world is overshadowed by anxieties, experiences of loneliness, defenselessness, homelessness, and finally, doom: there is no force that opposes evil. There is a lot of sorrow and meekness in the work of both. As Ganin wrote in The Bag of Diamonds , with the finger of fate, he, in the "yoke of a slave", was sent to a feast "to gnaw on crusts."
The new peasant poets were different both in their intellectual and sensual attitude to reality. Someone sang of life, someone created the idea of life. Immediacy is valuable in Yesenin's or Klychkov's lyrics; these poets are, first of all, singers of living life. Young Yesenin was looking for the purpose of existence; He wrote to G. Panfilov in April 1913 that Christ did not reveal this goal to him, and on April 23, 13 he already wrote that he had found the truth; undoubtedly, communication with Klyuev gave him more than one truth, but in the end all goals and truths came down to the fact that you just need to live. With the exception of epic poems, Yesenin's poetry is indeed a "flood of feelings." The essence of Klychkov's poetry comes down to lyrical contemplation, experiences, sensations. So was Shiryaevets. Karpov needed to express his passion in poetry. On the contrary, Oreshin's figurativeness is based on the idea of renewing reality. Ganin is a wise man, he wrote poems like parables and extracted thoughtful maxims from small things. The bookkeeper Klyuev was aimed at comprehending deep meanings being. The Old Believers have "Pomor Answers". Much of Klyuev's poetry is the answer to philosophical questions. He, unlike Yesenin, was a master of epic poetry. correctly formulated the conclusion about the specifics of his work: “Having finished the epic theme with Pugachev, Yesenin went completely into his fate, into lyrics and showed the inevitable death of an enthusiastic personality. Klyuev, however, remained in the spiritual epic, and here he rose to the level of the Apocalyptic!”19 Vasiliev also turned to epic poetry, but did not attempt to explain life and agreed that the world was unknowable.
But despite the differences both in the religious and philosophical understanding, and in the emotional sensation of life, all the new peasant poets (or almost all) were mythologists. Their poetry is an example of the neo-mythology of the 20th century, both cosmogonic, religious, social, historical, and anthropological. The utopias of the revolutionary era were replaced by dystopias in their poetry of the 1920s and 1930s. Karpov and Klyuev created revolutionary neo-myths, but Klyuev's late poetry is permeated with social dystopia. Departed from his myth about Inonia Yesenin. Oreshin and Vasiliev created romantic neo-myths about socialist construction. Creatively fruitful was Klyuev's religious mythology and Klychkov's natural-philosophical one. Finally, the Eurasian - Vasilyev.
In parallel with the national image of the world, a beautiful Klyuev mythology was born about the kinship of all tribes, about interethnic universalism. He portrayed the Russian space as a receptacle for the entire created world. Easier, more familiar was the theme of the penetration of national cultures, sounded by Yesenin: "Golden drowsy Asia / Rested on the domes" ("Yes! Now it's decided. No return ...", 1922 - 1923) or "You, my scattering ... Ras ... scattering ... / Asian side! (“They drink here again, fight and cry…”, 1923). Vasilyeva, on the other hand, depicted the Eurasian, spiritual and emotional space, native to the poet. As she wrote, his imagination was oversaturated with oriental, in particular Kyrgyz, motifs, so much so that, carried away by N. Gerasimova, the wife of a famous poet, Vasiliev called her a Mongol princess20. This refers to the lines from "Again together ..." (1934): "Again together, / But really, / I'm drunk with wine of other people's speeches, / You love blown up beds, / My Mongolian princess!" He is a Russian Asian: “I grew up among your steppes”, “A simple steppe girl / In her native village she will meet us”, “We will drink thick and drunken / Raging koumiss in bags” (“Asian”, 1928), “I like Kirghiz with slanted eyes” (“Rurik Ivnev”, 1926).
Thanks to their mythological consciousness, the new peasant poets created metaphorical canvases, including metaphorical pictures of the organic world. Their mythology was not inferior to Khlebnikov's. The metaphor revealed the multidimensional space and the interdependence of everything that exists, it was also an intimate path. Metaphors in the poetry of the new peasants created the impression of both purposefully invented, created, and accidentally, by the way, dropped, as, for example, by Vasilyev: “You still remember a hot day, / Raspberry dawn covered, fox fur coat” (“August”, 1932), “In the black sky, a gray wolf” (“Song”, 1932)
Neomyths in the poetry of Klychkov and Klyuev in the 1920s were fertile ground for the birth of Russian magical realism. He especially manifested himself in Klychkov's prose. Note that the novel "Sugar German" appeared in 1925, and in the same year the book by F. Roo "Post-expressionism. magical realism. In the works of both Klyuev and Klychkov, the properties of European, as well as Latin American magical realism that subsequently manifested themselves were identified: the dialogue of mythological, mystical, realistic consciousnesses, the interpenetration of primary and hidden realities (which K. Castaneda calls special reality21), the distortion of spatial lifelikeness and the subjectivity of time while generally maintaining the realistic principle of lifelikeness, national spiritual and everyday experience, the synthesis of archaic myths and neomyths, anti-utopia, anti-pragmatism; in Klychkov's work, such features of magical realism as the author's existentialist sense of the world and the infantilism of the hero's consciousness appeared. Klychkov did not hide the influence on his creative method of prose, but undoubtedly the influence on Russian magical realism of ancient Russian fantasy, folklore22, especially the poetics of the fairy tale.
But we will not exclude from the aesthetic context of the new peasant neo-mythologism and the concept of Vyach. Ivanov, who formulated the idea of realistic symbolism - the perception of "mystical knowledge of being, more essential than the essence itself", "the mystical vision of a single, objective essence for all"23. However, let us note: Ivanov spoke about the symbol as the goal of the artistic disclosure of the world and any thing that “is already a symbol”24. Klychkov and Klyuev did not see the goal either in the symbol or in the myth - their goal was to comprehend the essential truths through the myth and everyday specifics, in which the universality of being was revealed. Ivanov talked about the general, conciliar vision of essence; Klychkov and Klyuev sought to express a personal attitude to reality, although it was largely based on tribal experience. Much more fruitful for the formation of the aesthetics of magical realism is, in our opinion, Ivanov’s idea that “realistic symbolism follows the path of a symbol to myth”, that “myth is already contained in a symbol, it is immanent to it; the contemplation of a symbol reveals in the symbol myth" that "myth-making arises on the basis of realistic symbolism", for myth is "a reflection of realities", a new myth "is a new revelation of the same realities"25. The interest of the new peasant poets in the ideas of A. Bely and in the poetics of his works is known. Bely's perception of Gogol's method plays an important role in understanding the Russian aesthetic soil of magical realism. “I don’t know who Gogol is: a realist, a symbolist, a romantic or a classic,”26 wrote Bely and showed how everyday specifics in Gogol’s texts acquire a mystical status. It is noteworthy that Bely complained that Gogol did not study J. Boehme, did not study the Eastern mystics. Bely named just those spiritual teachers whom Klyuev adopted, including for the purpose of becoming, asserting his own style.
One of the characteristic features of Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century. - deep interest in myth and national folklore. On the "paths of myth" in the first decade of the century intersect creative search such dissimilar artists of the word as A. A. Blok, A. Bely, V. I. Ivanov, K. D. Balmont, S. M. Gorodetsky, A. M. Remizov and others. Orientation towards folk poetic forms of artistic thinking , the desire to know the present through the prism of the nationally colored "old times" is of fundamental importance for Russian culture. The interest of the literary and artistic intelligentsia in ancient Russian art, literature, the poetic world of ancient folk legends, and Slavic mythology became even more acute during the years of the World War. Under these conditions, the work of peasant poets attracts special attention.
Organizational peasant writers - N. A. Klyuev, S. L. Yesenin, S. L. Klychkov, A. A. Ganin, A. V. Shiryaevets, P. V. Oreshin and who entered literature already in the 1920s. P. N. Vasiliev and Ivan Pribludny (Ya. P. Ovcharenko) did not represent a clearly defined literary trend with a strict ideological and theoretical program. They did not make declarations and did not theoretically substantiate their literary and artistic principles, however, their group is distinguished by a bright literary originality and social and ideological unity, which makes it possible to distinguish them from the general stream of neo-populist literature of the 20th century. The commonality of literary and human destinies and genetic roots, the closeness of ideological and aesthetic aspirations, a similar formation and similar ways of developing creativity, a system of artistic and expressive means that coincide in many of its features - all this fully allows us to talk about the typological commonality of the work of peasant poets.
So, S. A. Yesenin, having discovered in the poetry of N. A. Klyuev an already mature expression of a poetic worldview close to him, in April 1915 he addressed Klyuev with a letter: “Vamp and I have a lot in common. I am also a peasant and write the same like you, but only in your Ryazan language".
In October-November 1915, a literary and artistic group "Krasa" was created, headed by S. M. Gorodetsky and which included peasant poets. The members of the group were united by their love for Russian antiquity, oral poetry, folk song and epic images. However, "Krasa", like the "Strada" that came to replace it, did not last long and soon disintegrated.
The first books of peasant poets were published in the 1910s. These are poetry collections:
- - N. A. Klyueva "Pine chimes" (1911), "Brotherly dogs" (1912), "Forest were" (1913), "Worldly thoughts" (1916), "Copper whale" (1918);
- - With A. Klychkov "Songs" (1911), "The Secret Garden" (1913), "Dubravna" (1918), "Ring of Lada" (1919);
- - S. A. Yesenin "Radunitsa" (1916), published in 1918 by his "Dove", "Transfiguration" and "Rural Hours".
In general, peasant writers were characterized by a Christian consciousness (cf. S. A. Yesenin: "Light from a pink icon / On my golden eyelashes"), however, it was intricately intertwined (especially in the 1910s) with elements of paganism, and N. A. Klyuev also had Khlystism. Indomitable pagan love of life - distinguishing feature lyrical hero A. V. Shiryaevts:
The choir praises the Almighty Lord. Akathists, canons, troparia, But I hear the exclamations of the Kupala night, And in the altar - the dance of the playful dawn!
("The choir praises the almighty ruler...")
The political sympathies of the majority of peasant writers during the years of the revolution were on the side of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Singing the peasantry as the main creative force, they saw in the revolution not only the peasant, but also the Christian principle. Their work is eschatological: many of their works are dedicated to the last destinies of the world and man. As R.V. Ivanov-Razumnik rightly noted in the article "Two Russias" (1917), they were "genuine eschatologists, not armchair, but earthy, deep, folk."
In the work of peasant writers, the influence of the artistic and stylistic quests of contemporary Silver Age literature, including modernist trends, is noticeable. The connection between peasant literature and symbolism is undeniable. It is no coincidence that Nikolai Klyuev, undoubtedly the most colorful figure among the new peasants, had such a profound influence on A. A. Blok, the formation of his populist views at one time. The early poetry of S. A. Klychkov is associated with symbolism, his poems were published by the symbolist publishing houses "Alcyone" and "Musaget".
The first collection of N. A. Klyuev comes out with a preface by V. Ya. Bryusov, who highly appreciated the talent of the poet. In the printed organ of the acmeists - the Apollo magazine (1912, No. 1) N. S. Gumilyov publishes a favorable review of the collection, and in his critical studies "Letters on Russian Poetry" devotes many pages to the analysis of Klyuev's work, noting the clarity of Klyuev's verse, his fullness and richness of content.
Klyuev is a connoisseur of the Russian word of such a high level that to analyze his artistic skills, extensive erudition is needed, not only literary, but also cultural: in the field of theology, philosophy, Slavic mythology, ethnography; knowledge of Russian history, folk art, icon painting, history of religion and church, ancient Russian literature is required. He easily "turns" with such layers of culture, which Russian literature did not suspect before. "Bookishness" is a distinctive feature of Klyuev's creativity. The metaphorical character of his poetry, which he himself is well aware of ("I am the first of a hundred million / The maker of golden-horned words"), is also inexhaustible because his metaphors, as a rule, are not isolated, but, forming a whole metaphorical series, stand in the context of a solid wall. One of the main artistic merits of the poet is the use of the experience of Russian icon painting as the quintessence of peasant culture. By this, he, no doubt, opened a new direction in Russian poetry.
Klyuev learned the ability to "speak red" and write from Zaonezhsky folk storytellers and was excellent at all forms of folklore art: verbal, theatrical and ritual, musical. In his own words, "selfish and caustic word, gestures and facial expressions" I learned at fairs from buffoons. He felt himself to be the bearer of a certain theatrical and folklore tradition, a trusted envoy to intellectual circles from the "subterranean" Russia deep hidden from the eyes, unknown, unknown: "I am initiated from the people, / I have a great seal." Klyuev called himself the "burning offspring" of the famous Avvakum, and even if this is just a metaphor, his character really resembles in many ways - zealousness, fearlessness, perseverance, uncompromisingness, readiness to go to the end and "suffer" for his convictions - the character of the archpriest: "Get ready for the fire early in the morning!" - / Thundered my great-grandfather Avvakum.
The literature of the Silver Age was distinguished by sharp controversy between representatives of various trends. Peasant poets argued simultaneously with the Symbolists and Acmeists. Klyuev's program poem "You promised us gardens ..." (1912), dedicated to K. D. Balmont, is built on the opposition of "you - we": you - symbolists, preachers of vaguely unrealizable ideals, we - poets from the people.
Your patterned garden flew around, Streams flowed like poison.
After the aliens in the end We go unknown We, - Our aroma is resinous and eater, We are a refreshing winter.
The gorges of the subsoil fed us, The sky filled with rains. We are boulders, gray cedars, Forest springs and pines ringing.
The consciousness of the greatest intrinsic value of "peasant" perception dictated to peasant writers a sense of their inner superiority over representatives of intellectual circles, unfamiliar with the unique world of folk culture.
“The secret culture of the people, which, at the height of its learning, our so-called educated society does not even suspect,” notes N. A. Klyuev in the article “Gem Blood” (1919), “does not cease to radiate to this hour.”
Klyuev's peasant costume, which seemed masquerade to many, speech and demeanor, and above all, of course, creativity, performed the most important function: to draw the attention of the intelligentsia, which had long "break away" from the people, to peasant Russia, to show how beautiful it is, how everything in it is fine and wise arranged, and that only in it is the guarantee of the moral health of the nation. Klyuev does not seem to speak, he shouts to the "brothers of educated writers": where are you going? stop! repent! change your mind!
The peasant environment itself shaped the features of the artistic thinking of the new peasants, organically close to the folk one. Never before has the world of peasant life, depicted taking into account local features of life, dialect, folklore traditions (Klyuev recreates the ethnographic and linguistic flavor of Zaonezhye, Yesenin - Ryazan region, Klychkov - Tver province, Shiryaevets models the Volga region), did not find such an adequate expression in Russian literature. In the work of the new peasants, the worldview of a person close to the earth and nature was fully expressed, the outgoing world of Russian peasant life with its culture and philosophy was reflected, and since the concepts of "peasantry" and "people" were equivalent for them, then the deep world of Russian national identity . Rural Russia is the main source of the poetic worldview of peasant poets. S. A. Yesenin emphasized his initial connection with her - the very biographical circumstances of her birth among nature, in a field or in a forest ("Mother went to the bathing suit through the forest ..."). This theme is continued by S. A. Klychkov in a poem with a folklore-song opening "There was a valley above the river ...", in which the animated forces of nature act as successors and first nannies of a newborn baby. Hence, the motive of "returning to their homeland" arises in their work.
"I've been longing in the city, for three whole years now, along the hare paths, along the doves, willows, and my mother's miraculous spinning wheel," admits N. A. Klyuev.
In the poetry of Sergei Antonovich Klychkov (1889-1937), this motive is one of the main ones:
In a foreign land, far from my homeland, I remember my garden and home. Currants are blooming there now And under the windows - bird sodom ...<...>
I meet this time of spring, early Lonely in the distance... Ah, I would snuggle, listen to the breath, Look into the glowing glow of Dear mother - native land!
("In a foreign land far from home...")
In the mythopoetics of the new peasants, their holistic mythopoetic model of the world, the myth of an earthly paradise, embodied through biblical imagery, is central. The leitmotifs here are the motives of the garden (according to Klychkov - "secret garden"), the garden; symbols associated with the harvest, harvesting (Klyuev: "We are the reapers of the universal field ..."). The mythologeme of the shepherd, which goes back to the image of the gospel shepherd, holds together the creativity of each of them. The new peasants called themselves shepherds (Yesenin: "I am a shepherd, my chambers are / Between unsteady fields"), and poetic creativity was likened to shepherds (Klyuev: "My golden deer, / herds of tunes and thoughts").
Popular Christian ideas about the cyclical nature of life and death can be found in the work of each of the new peasants. For Klychkov and his characters, who feel like a particle of a single Mother Nature, who are in a harmonious relationship with her, death is something natural, like the change of seasons or the melting of "hoarfrost in the spring," as Klyuev defined death. According to Klychkov, to die means "to go into the undead, like roots into the ground." In his work, death is presented not in the literary and traditional way of a disgusting old woman with a stick, but an attractive peasant worker:
Tired of the day's troubles, How good is a hollow shirt To brush off hardworking sweat, Move closer to the cup ...<...>
It's good to be in a family.
Where the son is the groom, and the daughter is the bride,
Not enough on the bench
Under the old goddess of the place...
Then, having overcome fate, like everyone else,
It is not surprising to meet death in the evening,
Like a reaper in a young oat
With a sickle slung over his shoulders.
("Tired of the day's troubles...")
In 1914-1917. Klyuev creates a cycle of 15 poems "Khut Songs" dedicated to the memory of his dead mother. The plot itself: the death of the mother, her burial, funeral rites, the crying of her son, the mother's visit to her home, her help to the peasant world - reflects the harmony of the earthly and heavenly. (Compare with Yesenin: "I know: with other eyes / The dead smell the living.") The cyclicity of life and death is also emphasized in composition: after the ninth chapter (corresponding to the ninth memorial day), the Easter holiday comes - sorrow is overcome.
The poetic practice of the new peasants already at an early stage made it possible to single out such common moments in their work as the poeticization of peasant labor (Klyuev: "Bow to you, work and sweat!") And village life; zoo-, floro- and anthropomorphism (anthropomorphization of natural phenomena is one of the characteristic features of thinking in folklore categories); a keen sense of one's inseparable connection with the living world:
The cry of a child across the field and the river, The cry of a rooster, like pain, for miles, And the gait of spiders, like longing, I hear through the growths of the scab.
(I AM. A. Klyuev, "The cry of a child across the field and the river...")
Peasant poets were the first in domestic literature raised village life to a previously inaccessible level of philosophical understanding of the national foundations of being, and a simple village hut in the highest degree beauty and harmony. Izba likened to the Universe, and its architectural details are associated with the Milky Way:
Conversational hut - a semblance of the universe: In it sholom - heaven, half - the Milky Way, Where the helmsman's mind, the soul of the lamentable Under the spindle clergy can rest comfortably.
(I AM. A. Klyuev, "Where it smells of kumach - there are women's gatherings ...")
They poetized her living soul:
The hero's hut, The carved kokoshnik, The window, like an eye-socket, Summed up with antimony.
(N. A. Klyuev, "The hut-bogatyr...")
Klyuevsky's "hut space" is not something abstract: he is closed in the circle of hourly peasant worries, where everything is achieved by labor and sweat. The stove-bed is its indispensable attribute, and like all Klyuev's images, it should not be understood unambiguously in a simplified way. The stove, like the hut itself, like everything in the hut, is endowed with a soul (the epithet "spirit seer" is not accidental) and equated, along with Kitovras and the carpet, with the "golden pillars of Russia" ("At sixteen - curls and gatherings ...") . Klyuevsky's image of the hut receives further transformation in the author's creative polemics with proletarian poets and Lefites (in particular, with Mayakovsky). Sometimes it is an outlandish huge beast: "On heavy log legs / My hut danced" ("They bury me, they bury ..."). In other cases, this is no longer just a dwelling of a tiller, but a prophetic Izba - a prophet, an oracle: "Simple, like a lowing, and a cloud in the trousers of the case / Russia will not become - this is how the Izba broadcasts" ("Mayakovsky dreams of a whistle over the Winter ... ") .
Yesenin proclaimed himself a poet of the "golden log hut" (see "The feather grass is sleeping. Dear plain ..."). Poeticizes a peasant hut in Klychkov's "Home Songs". Klyuev in the cycle "To the Poet Sergei Yesenin" persistently reminds his "younger brother" of his origins: "The hut - the writer of words - / She raised you not in vain ..." The only exception here is Pyotr Vasilyevich Oreshin (1887-1938) with his interest in social motives , continuing the Nekrasov theme of the destitute Russian peasant in peasant poetry (the epigraph from N. A. Nekrasov to his collection "Red Russia" is not accidental). Oreshinsky "huts covered with straw" are a picture of extreme poverty and desolation, while in the work of Yesenin, for example, this image is also aestheticized: you are my abandoned..."). Almost for the first time, the aestheticized image of a peasant hut, appearing in Oreshin's work, is associated with a premonition / accomplishment of the revolution: "Like arrows, the dawns whistle / Above the Solar Hut."
For the peasant farmer and the peasant poet, such concepts as the mother of the land, the hut, the economy are the concepts of one ethical and aesthetic series, one moral root. The original folk ideas about physical labor as the basis of the foundations of peasant life are affirmed in the famous poem by S. A. Yesenin "I'm going through the valley ...":
To hell, I'm taking off my English suit. Well, give me a scythe, I'll show you - Am I not your own, am I not close to you, Am I not cherishing the memory of the village?
For N. A. Klyuev there is:
Joy to see the first stack, The first sheaf from the native strip. There is a pudding cake Pa mezhe, in the shade of a birch ...
("Joy to see the first haystack...")
The cornerstone of the worldview of the new peasant poets is their view of peasant civilization as the spiritual cosmos of the nation. Having been outlined in Klyuev's collection "Forest were" (1913), strengthened in his book "Worldly Thoughts" (1916) and the cycle "To the Poet Sergei Yesenin" (1916-1917), he appears with his various facets in the two-volume "Songbook" (1919), and subsequently reaches the peak of sharpness and turns into an inconsolable funeral lament for the crucified, desecrated Russia in Klyuev's late work, approaching Remizov's "Word about the destruction of the Russian land." This dominant of Klyuev's creativity is embodied through the motif dual world: combination, and more often opposition to each other, two layers, real and perfect, where the ideal world is patriarchal antiquity, the world of virgin nature, remote from the destructive breath of the city, or the world of Beauty. Commitment to the ideal of Beauty, rooted in the depths of folk art, peasant poets emphasize in all their milestone works. "Not with iron, but with Beauty, Russian joy will be bought" - N. A. Klyuev does not get tired of repeating after F. M. Dostoevsky.
One of the most important features of the work of the new peasants is that the theme of nature in their works carries the most important not only semantic, but conceptual load, revealing itself through the universal multifaceted antithesis "Nature - Civilization" with its numerous specific oppositions: "people - intelligentsia", "village - town", " natural man- city dweller", "patriarchal past - modernity", "earth - iron", "feeling - reason", etc.
It is noteworthy that in Esenin's work there are no urban landscapes. Their fragments - "skeletons of houses", "a chilled lantern", "curved Moscow streets" - are single, random and do not add up to a whole picture. "Moscow's mischievous reveler", running up and down "the entire Tver neighborhood", does not find words to describe the month in the city sky: "And when the moon shines at night, / When it shines ... the devil knows how!" ("Yes! Now it's decided. No return...").
Alexander Shiryaevets (Alexander Vasilyevich Abramov, 1887-1924) acts as a consistent aptiurbanist in his work:
I am in Zhiguli, in Mordovia, on Vytegra! .. I listen to epic streams! .. Let the city's best confectioners pour Easter cakes in sugar -
I will not stay in a stone lair! I'm cold in the heat of his palaces! To the fields! to Bryn! to the cursed tracts! To the legends of grandfathers - wise simpletons!
("I am in Zhiguli, in Mordovia, on Vytegra! ..")
In the work of the new peasants, the image Cities acquires the qualities of an archetype. In his multi-page treatise "The Stone-Iron Monster" (i.e. City), completed by 1920 and still not fully published, A. Shiryaevets most fully and comprehensively expressed the target setting of the new peasant poetry: to return literature "to miraculous keys Mother Earth." The treatise begins with an apocryphal legend about the demonic origin of the City, then replaced by a fairy tale-allegory about the young Town (then - the City), the son of the Silly Villager and the ventilated Man, who, in order to please the devil, strictly fulfills the parent's dying order "multiply!", so that the devil "dances and grunts in joy, mocking the defiled earth. The demonic origin of the City is emphasized by N. A. Klyuev: "The city-devil beat with its hooves, / Frightening us with a stone mouth ..." ("From cellars, from dark corners ..."). A. S. Klychkov in the novel "Sugar German" (1925), continuing the same idea, affirms the dead end, the futility of the path that the City is following - there is no place for the Dream in it:
"City, city! Beneath you, the earth does not look like earth ... Satan killed, rammed it with a cast-iron hoof, rolled it with an iron back, rolling on it, like a horse rides in a meadow in a mine..."
Distinct anti-urban motifs are also visible in Klyuev's ideal of Beauty, which originates in folk art, put forward by the poet as a link between the past and the future. In the present, in the realities of the Iron Age, Beauty is trampled and desecrated ("A deadly theft has been accomplished, / Mother Beauty has been debunked!"), and therefore the links of the past and the future have been unraveled. But faith in the messianic role of Russia pervades all the work of N. A. Klyuev:
In the ninety-ninth summer The cursed castle will creak And the gems of dazzling prophetic lines will churn in the river.
The melodious foam will overwhelm Kholmogorye and Tselebey, The vein of silver words-crucians will be caught with a sieve!
("I know songs will be born...")
It was the new peasant poets at the beginning of the 20th century. loudly proclaimed: nature is in itself the greatest aesthetic value. On a national basis, S. A. Klychkov managed to build a vivid metaphorical system of natural balance, organically going into the depths of folk poetic thinking.
It seems to us that in the world we are the only ones standing on our feet, and everything else is either crawling in front of us on our belly, or standing like a dumb pillar, while in reality it’s not at all like that! ..<...>There is only one secret in the world: there is nothing inanimate in it! .. Therefore, love and caress flowers, trees, different fish, feel sorry for the wild beast and better get around the poisonous reptile! .. "- writes S. A. Klychkov in the novel" Chertukhinsky balakir" (1926).
But if in the poems of the Klyuev collection "Lion's Bread" the offensive of "iron" pa wildlife- a premonition that has not yet become a terrible reality, a premonition ("I would have to get away from hearsay / About the iron ns-lug!"), then in the images of his "Village", "Pogorelshchina", "Songs about the Great Mother" - this is already tragic for peasant poets reality. In the approach to this topic, the differentiation of the creativity of the new peasants is clearly visible. S. L. Yesenin and P. V. Oreshin, although not easy, painfully, through the pain of II blood, were ready to see the future of Russia, in Yesenin's words, "through stone and steel." For II. A. Klyuev, A. S. Klychkov, A. Shiryaevts, who were dominated by the concept of "peasant's paradise", the idea of the future was fully embodied by the patriarchal past, Russian gray antiquity with its fairy tales, legends, beliefs.
“I don’t like the accursed modernity, destroying the fairy tale,” A. Shiryaevets admitted in a letter to V. F. Khodasevich (1917), “and without a fairy tale, what is life in the world?”
For N. A. Klyuev, the destruction of a fairy tale, a legend, the destruction of a host of mythological characters is an irreparable loss:
Like a squirrel, a handkerchief on the eyebrow, Where there is a forest darkness, From the headboards of the bench The fairy tale has gone inaudibly. Brownies, undead, mavki - Only rubbish, hardened dust ...
("Village")
New peasant poets defended their spiritual values, the ideal of primordial harmony with the natural world in polemics with proletarian theories of technization and mechanization of the world. The industrial landscapes of "stated nightingales", in which, according to Klyuev, "fire is replaced by folding and consonance - by a factory whistle", contrasted sharply with the lyrics of nature created by peasant poets.
“Concrete and turbine-driven people find it difficult to understand me, they get stuck in my straw, they feel ugly from my hut, porridge and carpet worlds,” wrote N. S. Klyuev in a letter to S. M. Gorodetsky in 1920.
Representatives of the Iron Age rejected everything "old": "Old Russia is hanged, / And we are its executioners ..." (V. D. Aleksandrovsky); "We are the pedlars of a new faith, / beauty setting an iron tone. / So that the squares are not defiled by frail nature, / we shy reinforced concrete into the sky" (V. V. Mayakovsky). For their part, the new Christians, who saw the main cause of evil in isolation from natural roots, people's worldview, and national culture, came to the defense of this "old" one. Proletarian poets, while defending the collective, denied the individual human, everything that makes a person unique; ridiculed such categories as soul, heart; declared: "We will take everything, we will know everything, / We will penetrate the depth to the bottom ..." (MP Gerasimov, "We"). Peasant poets argued the opposite: "To know everything, to take nothing / A poet came into this world" (S. A. Yesenin, "Mare Ships"). The conflict between "nature" and "hardware" ended in victory for the latter. In the final poem "A Field Sown with Bones..." from the collection "Lion's Bread" N. A. Klyuev gives a terrible, truly apocalyptic panorama of the "Iron Age", repeatedly defining it through the epithet "faceless": "Over the dead steppe, a faceless something then / gave birth to madness, darkness, emptiness ... " Dreaming of a time in which "it will not be carried with a hammer, about an unseeing flywheel" ("A caravan with saffron will come ..."), Klyuev expressed his secret, prophetic: "It will strike hour, and to the peasant lyre / Proletarian children will fall.
By the beginning of the XX century. Russia approached the country of peasant agriculture, based on more than a thousand years of traditional culture, polished in its spiritual and moral content to perfection. In the 1920s the way of Russian peasant life, infinitely dear to peasant poets, began to crumble before their eyes. Pain for the waning origins of life is permeated with the letters of S. A. Yesenin related to this time, a careful reading of which is still to be done by researchers; works by N. A. Klyuev, novels by S. A. Klychkov. The tragic worldview, characteristic of the early lyrics of this "singer of unprecedented sadness" ("The carpet fields are golden ..."), which intensified by the 1920s, reaches its peak in his last novels - "Sugar German", "Chertukhinsky Balakir", "Prince of Peace ". These works, which show the absolute uniqueness of human existence, are called existential by many researchers.
The revolution promised to fulfill the age-old dream of the peasants: to give them land. The peasant community, in which the poets saw the basis of the foundations of harmonious being, on a short time was reanimated, peasant gatherings rustled through the villages:
Here I see: Sunday villagers At the volost, as in a church, gathered. With clumsy, unwashed speeches, they discuss their "zhis".
(S. A. Yesenin, "Soviet Russia")
However, already in the summer of 1918, the systematic destruction of the foundations of the peasant community began, food detachments were sent to the village, and from the beginning of 1919 a system of surplus appropriations was introduced. Millions of peasants perish as a result of hostilities, famine and epidemics. Direct terror against the peasantry begins - a policy of depeasantization, which eventually brought terrible results: the age-old foundations of Russian peasant management were destroyed. The peasants violently rebelled against exorbitant exactions: the Tambov (Antonov) uprising, Veshenskoye on the Don, the uprising of the Voronezh peasants, hundreds of similar, but smaller peasant uprisings - the country was going through another tragic period in its history. Spiritual and moral ideals, accumulated by hundreds of generations of ancestors and seemed unshakable, were undermined. Back in 1920, at a teachers' congress in Vytegra, Klyuev spoke hopefully about folk art:
"We must be more attentive to all these values, and then it will become clear that in Soviet Russia, where the truth must become a fact of life, they must recognize the great importance of culture generated by the craving for heaven ..." ("A Word to Teachers on the Values of Folk Art" , 1920).
However, by 1922 the illusions were dispelled. Convinced that the poetry of the people, embodied in the work of peasant poets, “under democracy should occupy the most honorable place,” he sees with bitterness that everything turns out differently:
“Breaking with us, the Soviet government breaks the most tender, with the deepest among the people. You and I need to take this as a sign - for the Lion and the Dove will not forgive the power of its sin,” N. L. Klyuev wrote to S. L. Yesenin in 1922
As a result of social experiments, in the eyes of peasant poets involved in a tragic conflict with the era, an unprecedented collapse of the most dear to them began - traditional peasant culture, folk foundations of life and national consciousness. Writers receive the label "kulak", while one of the main slogans of the life of the country becomes the slogan "Liquidation of the kulaks as a class." Slandered and slandered, the resistance poets continue to work, and it is no coincidence that one of Klyuev's central poems of 1932, with its transparent metaphorical symbolism, addressed to the leaders of the country's literary life, is called "Slanderers of Art":
I am angry with you and scold you bitterly,
What is ten years old for a melodious horse,
A diamond bridle, hooves made of gold,
The blanket is embroidered with consonances,
You didn't even give me a handful of oats
And they were not allowed into the meadow, where the drunken dew
I would freshen the broken wings of a swan ...
In the coming millennium, we are destined to read the works of the new peasant writers in a new way, because they reflect the spiritual, moral, philosophical, and social aspects of the national consciousness of the first half of the 20th century. They contain true spiritual values and truly high morality; in them there is a breath of the spirit of high freedom - from power, from dogma. They affirm a careful attitude to the human person, defend the connection with national origins, folk art as the only fruitful path of the artist's creative evolution.
New peasant poetry (Klyuev, Yesenin, Klychkov, Shiryaevtsev)
New peasant poetry is a trend of poets who came out of the people's milieu. They relied on the folklore tradition and the literary tradition of the 19th century (Nekrasov, Koltsov, Nikitin, Surikov). The main motives village life, nature, relationship of village life with the life of nature. Main problems - city/village opposition and tragic contradictions within the village itself.
First wavepeasant poetry - 1903-1905. (Drozhzhin, Leonov, Shkulev) They united within the Surikov literary and musical circle, published collections, collaborated with proletarian poets.
Second wave– 1910s (Klyuev, Yesenin, Klychkov, Shiryaevtsev, Oreshin). In 1916 Yesenin's collection "Radunitsa" was published. They were greeted as messengers of the new Russian village. The group was heterogeneous: different fates, different ideologies, different approaches to mastering the poetic tradition. Therefore, this name, although traditional, is rather conditional.
New peasant poets experienced influence of symbolism and acmeism. Symbolists were interested in them because of the tendencies inherent in them in the years preceding the First World War: nationalist sentiments, reflections on the "people's element", the fate of Russia, and interest in Slavic mythology. The same tendencies were observed in the religious and philosophical searches of the Russian intelligentsia.
Another representative of the new peasant poetry - Sergei Klychkov. The main theme of his collections (" Songs», « hidden garden”) - rural nature. The influence of Blok, Gorodetsky and Klychkov is obvious. Thus, we can talk about the synthesis of symbolism, acmeism and folk tradition.
His landscapes are conditional, decorative, in the images of Slavic mythology. He ignores reality as such. Most of his poems are an adaptation of Slavic myths: about the goddess of spring and fertility Lada, about her sister Kupava, about Grandfather, who rules the natural world.
Unlike Klychkov, whose leitmotif was "sadness-sorrow", creativity Alexander Shiryaevts was imbued with life-affirming pathos. The sincerity and immediacy of the poetic feeling makes him related to Yesenin, and Slavic mythology and folklore themes (Vanka the Key) with Klychkov. But in his poems there are more feelings than in Klychkov (love for the Motherland, for the will, for life).
