"Anna Snegina" is an autobiographical poem by Sergei Yesenin, completed by him before his death - by the end of January 1925. It is not only the fruit of the author's rethinking of the October Revolution and its consequences for the people, but also a demonstration of the poet's attitude to revolutionary events. He not only evaluates, but also experiences them from the position of an artist and a small person who has become a hostage of circumstances.
Russia in the first half of the twentieth century remained a country with low level literacy, which soon underwent significant changes. As a result of a series of revolutionary uprisings, the first political parties arose, thus, the people became a full participant in public life. In addition, global upheavals influenced the development of the fatherland: in 1914-1918. Russian empire was involved in the first world war, and 1918-1921, it was torn apart by the civil war. Therefore, the era during which the poem was written is already called the era of the "Soviet Republic". Yesenin showed this turning point in history on the example of the fate of a little man - himself in a lyrical image. The drama of the era is reflected even in the size of the verse: the three-foot amphibrach, which Nekrasov loved so much and used as a universal form for his accusatory civil lyrics. This meter corresponds more to the epic than to the light poems of Sergei Alexandrovich.
The action takes place on the Ryazan land during the spring from 1917 to 1923. The author shows the real space, describes the real Russian area: "The village, therefore, our Radovo ...". The use of toponyms in the book is not accidental. They are important for creating a metaphorical space. Radovo is a literary prototype of Konstantinovo, the place where Sergei Alexandrovich was born and raised. A specific artistic space not only "binds" the depicted world to certain topographic realities, but also actively influences the essence of the depicted. And the village of Kriusha also (Yesenin calls Kriushi in the poem) really exists in the Klepikovskiy district of the Ryazan region, which is located next to the Rybnovsky district, where the village of Konstantinovo is located.
"Anna Snegina" was written by S. Yesenin during his 2nd trip to the Caucasus in 1924-1925. This was the most intense creative period of the poet, when he wrote easily as never before. And he wrote this voluminous work in one gulp, the work brought him genuine joy. The result is an autobiographical lyrical epic poem. It contains the originality of the book, as it contains two types of literature at once: epic and lyric. Historical events are the epic beginning; the hero's love is lyrical.
What is the poem about?
Yesenin's work consists of 5 chapters, each of which reveals a certain stage in the life of the country. Composition in the poem "Anna Snegina" - cyclical: it begins and ends with the arrival of Sergei in his native village.
Yesenin, first of all, set priorities for himself: with what is he on the way? Analyzing the situation that has developed under the influence of social cataclysms, he chooses for himself the good old past, where there was no such frantic enmity between relatives and close people. Thus, the main idea of the work "Anna Snegina" is that the poet does not find a place for a person in the new aggressive and cruel reality. The struggle has poisoned minds and souls, brother goes against brother, and life is measured by the force of pressure or blow. Whatever ideals were behind this transformation, they are not worth it - this is the verdict of the author of post-revolutionary Russia. In the poem, the discord between the official party ideology and the philosophy of the creator was clearly indicated, and this discrepancy was never forgiven for Sergei Alexandrovich.
However, the author did not find himself in the emigrant share either. Showing disregard for Anna's letter, he marks the abyss between them, because he cannot accept her moral choice. Yesenin loves his homeland and cannot leave it, especially in this state. Snegina left irrevocably, as the past goes away, and for Russia the disappearance of the nobility is historical fact. Let the poet seem to new people a relic of the past with his snotty humanism, but he will remain in his native land alone with his nostalgia for yesterday, to which he is so devoted. This self-sacrifice expresses the idea of the poem "Anna Snegina", and in the image of a girl in a white cape, peaceful patriarchal Russia, with which he is still in love, appears in the mind's eye of the narrator.
Criticism
For the first time, fragments from the work "Anna Snegina" were published in 1925 in the magazine "City and Village", but the full-scale publication was only at the end of spring of this year in the newspaper "Bakinskiy Rabochiy". Yesenin himself put the book very highly and spoke of it like this: "In my opinion, this is the best thing that I wrote." This is confirmed in his memoirs by the poet V. F. Nasedkin: “To his literary friends, he most willingly read this poem then. It was evident that he liked it more than other poems.
Critics were afraid to cover such an eloquent reproach to the new government. Many avoided speaking about the new book in print, or responded with indifference. But the average reader, judging by the circulation of the newspaper, the poem aroused genuine interest.
According to the newspaper "Izvestia" dated March 14, 1925, number 60, we can establish that at the meeting of a group of writers called "Pass" in the Herzen House, the first public reading of the poem "Anna Snegina" took place. The reaction of the listeners was negative or indifferent; during the emotional declaration of the poet, they were silent and showed no interest in any way. Some even tried to call the author to discuss the work, but he sharply rejected such requests and left the hall in frustrated feelings. He asked only Alexander Konstantinovich Voronsky (literary critic, editor of the Krasnaya Nov magazine) for an opinion on the work. “Yes, I like her,” he replied, maybe that's why the book is dedicated to him. Voronsky was a prominent member of the party, but fought for the freedom of art from state ideology. For this he was shot under Stalin.
Of course, Nekrasov's straightforwardness, simplicity of style and ornate content, so uncharacteristic of Yesenin, caused Soviet critics to assume that the poet had "written his name". They preferred to evaluate only the form and style of the scandalous work "Anna Snegina", without going into details in the form of details and images. A modern publicist, Alexander Tenenbaum, ironically remarks that "Sergey was condemned by critics, whose names have already been completely erased today."
There is a certain theory that the Chikists understood the anti-government subtext of the poem and dealt with Yesenin, staging a suicide driven to despair creative person. A phrase that is interpreted by some people as a praise to Lenin: “Tell me, Who is Lenin? I quietly answered: He is you, ”in fact, it means that the leader of the peoples is the leader of bandits and drunkards, like Pron Ogloblin, and a coward-turner, like his brother. After all, the poet does not praise the revolutionaries at all, but exposes them in a caricatured form.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!Sergei Yesenin's poem "Anna Snegina" is studied in the 11th grade at literature lessons. The author himself considered it his best work: he put all his skill into the poem, the most touching memories of his youth and a mature, slightly romantic look at past relationships. The story of the poet's unrequited love is not the main one in the work - it takes place against the backdrop of global events in Russian history - war and revolution. In our article you will find detailed analysis poems according to plan and many useful information when preparing for a lesson or test tasks.
Brief analysis
Year of writing- January 1925.
History of creation- written in the Caucasus in 1925 "in one breath", based on memories of the past and rethinking historical events 1917-1923.
Topic- the main themes are homeland, love, revolution and war.
Composition- consists of 5 chapters, each of which characterizes a certain period in the life of the country and a lyrical hero.
Genre- lyric epic poem (as defined by the author). Researchers of Yesenin's work call her a story in verse or a poetic short story.
Direction- an autobiographical work.
History of creation
The poem "Anna Snegina" was written by Yesenin in January 1925, shortly before his death. At that time he was in the Caucasus and wrote a lot. The work, according to the author, was written easily and quickly, in one breath. Yesenin himself was extremely pleased with himself, considered the poem his the best work. It rethinks the events of the revolution, military operations, political events and their consequences for Russia.
The poem is deeply autobiographical, the prototype of Anna Snegina was the poet's friend Lidia Ivanovna Kashina, who married a nobleman, a White Guard officer, became distant and alien. In their youth, they were inseparable, and at a more mature age, Yesenin accidentally met Lydia, and this was the impetus for writing a poem.
The meaning of the name quite simple: the author chose a fictitious name with the meaning of pure, white snow, the image of which appears several times in the work: through delirium during illness, in the poet's memoirs. Snegina remained pure, inaccessible and distant for the lyrical hero, which is why her image is so attractive and dear to him. Criticism and the public accepted the poem coldly: it was unlike other works, political issues and bold images frightened off acquaintances from comments and assessments. The poem is dedicated to Alexander Voronsky, a revolutionary and literary critic. AT full version it was published in 1925 in the journal Baku Rabochiy.
Topic
Intertwined in the work several main themes. A feature of the work is that it contains many personal experiences and images of the past. Homeland Theme, including the small homeland - the native village of the poet Konstantinovo (which is called Radovo in the narrative). The lyrical hero very subtly and touchingly describes his native places, their way of life and way of life, the mores and characters of the people living in the village.
Heroes of the poem very interesting, varied and varied. Love Theme revealed frankly in Yesenin's way: the lyrical hero sees in his beloved an image of the past, she became the wife of a stranger, but is still interesting, desirable, but far away. The thought that he, too, was loved warms the lyrical hero and becomes a consolation for him.
Revolution Theme revealed very honestly, shown through the eyes of an independent eyewitness who is neutral in his views. He is not a fighter and not a warrior, cruelty and fanaticism are alien to him. The return home was reflected in the poem, each visit to his native village worried and upset the poet. The problem of devastation, mismanagement, the decline of the village, the troubles that were the result of the First World War and the revolution - all this is shown by the author through the eyes of a lyrical hero.
Issues works are diverse: cruelty, social inequality, a sense of duty, betrayal and cowardice, war and everything that accompanies it. Main thought or idea works is that life is changeable, and feelings and emotions remain in the soul forever. From this follows the conclusion: life is changeable and fleeting, but happiness is a very personal state that is not subject to any laws.
Composition
In the work “Anna Snegina”, it is advisable to carry out the analysis according to the principle “following the author”. The poem consists of five chapters, each of which refers to a certain life period of the poet. The composition has cyclicality- the arrival of the lyrical hero at home. In the first chapter we learn that main character returns to his homeland to rest, to be away from the city and the hype. Post-war devastation divided people, an army that demands everything big investments holding on to the village.
Second chapter tells about the past of the lyrical hero, about what kind of people live in the village and how the political situation in the country changes them. He meets with a former lover, they talk for a long time.
The third part- reveals the relationship between Snegina and the lyrical hero - mutual sympathy is felt, they are still close, although age and circumstances separate them more and more. The death of a spouse separates the heroes, Anna is broken, she condemns the lyrical hero for cowardice and desertion.
In the fourth part there is a rejection of property from the Snegins, she and her mother move to the house of the miller, speaks with her lover, reveals her fears to him. They are still close, but the turmoil and rapid flow of life require the author to return to the city.
In the fifth chapter describes a picture of poverty and horror civil war. Anna goes abroad, from where she sends news to the lyrical hero. The village is changing beyond recognition, only close people (especially the miller) remain the same relatives and friends, the rest have degraded, disappeared in scrapes and got lost in the existing vague orders.
Genre
The work covers fairly large-scale events, which makes it especially epic. The author himself defined the genre - "lyric poem", however, contemporary critics gave the genre a slightly different designation: a story in verse or a poetic short story.
The short story describes events with a sharp plot and a sharp ending, which is very typical for Yesenin's work. It should be noted that the author himself was not theoretically savvy in matters of literary criticism and genre specificity of works, so his definition is somewhat narrow. The artistic means used by the author are so diverse that their description requires separate consideration: vivid epithets, pictorial metaphors and comparisons, original personifications and other tropes create Yesenin's unique style.
Artwork test
Analysis Rating
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A major poem by Sergei Yesenin, the last of his great works. It reflected both the poet's memories of his love, and a critical understanding of the revolutionary events. The poem was written in 1925, shortly before Yesenin's death.
Plot. A young poet named Sergusha (in whom it is not difficult to recognize the image of Yesenin himself) returns to his native village from St. Petersburg, tired of the turbulent events of the revolution. The village changed markedly after the abolition of the tsarist regime. The hero meets with local residents, as well as with peasants from the neighboring village of Kriushi. Among them is Pron Ogloblin - a revolutionary, popular agitator and propagandist; Pyotr Mochalin, a native of the same village as Yesenin, a peasant who worked at a Kolomna plant, served as its prototype.
The peasants ask the hero about the latest events in the country and the capital, as well as who Lenin is. Anna Snegina also arrives - a young landowner, with whom the hero was in love in his youth. They communicate, remember the past. After some time, Sergusha arrives in Kriusha and becomes a participant in a riot: local peasants force Anna Snegina to give them land. In addition, information comes that Snegina's husband was killed in the war. The girl is offended by the poet, but she cannot do anything. The peasants take the land, and Anna leaves the village forever, while asking the poet for forgiveness. Sergusha returns to Petersburg and subsequently learns that Ogloblin was shot by the Whites. A letter also arrives from Anna Snegina from London.
History of creation. Yesenin wrote the poem in the Caucasus, where he went "in search of creative inspiration." Inspiration, I must say, came, the poet had ideas and strength to work; before that, he wrote almost nothing for two years, although he traveled around Europe and America. AT last years Yesenin's life experienced a certain creative impulse. A number of works written at that time dealt with "oriental" motifs, as well as the revolution and the new Soviet reality. One of these works was the poem "Anna Snegina", in which, however, the assessment of the revolution and its consequences is not so unambiguous.
The prototype of Anna Snegina was Lydia Kashina (Kulakova), a friend and one of Yesenin's first listeners. She was the daughter of a wealthy merchant who bought an estate in the Yesenin village of Konstantinovo; The estate was inherited by her. After the revolution, the estate passed to the state, and Kashina got a job first as a clerk in the Red Army, and then in the Trud newspaper; the poet continued to communicate with her.
Heroes. Narrator, Anna Snegina, Pron Ogloblin, Labutya, Snegina's mother, miller.
Topic. The work touches upon the theme of the Motherland, love, war (revolution, war).
Issues. In his poem, Yesenin showed how revolutionary events affected the fate of individuals and how the new order influenced such realities as love, friendship between a man and a woman, and all “high” human attitudes. The revolution divided Sergusha, who stood on the side of the people, and Snegina, his friend and lover, but belonging to the upper class. Anna was angry and offended by the poet; then they reconciled, but the girl still could not stay with him in Russia.
Soviet critics spoke favorably of the poem, not noticing in it subtle criticism of the revolution and the new regime. The “Soviet people” are shown in it as a rude, dark and cruel bunch, while the noblewoman Snegina is a character that seems to be very positive. The main thing is that the rebellious peasants - and the revolution as a whole - destroyed love, and with it the dreams and all the bright aspirations of people. Sergusha (and Yesenin himself along with him) does not understand and does not accept the war.
The revolution, which began as a struggle for a lighter and just world, turned into an incomprehensible and bloody civil war in which everyone was against everyone. The poet does not accept violence and cruelty, even if they are carried out "in the name of justice." Therefore, the Kriush peasants are not depicted in positive colors. Pron Ogloblin himself is a rude, fighter and drunkard, always angry at everyone; his brother is the last coward and opportunist: at first he was loyal to the tsarist regime, and then he signed up for the revolutionaries, but when the village is captured by the whites, he hides, not wanting to defend his homeland.
One way or another, with the establishment of a new reality, everything changes. Even Anna Snegina. When she learns about the death of Bori, her husband, in the war, she begins to reproach Sergusha, with whom she had previously communicated peacefully and sincerely; now he is “a pathetic and low coward” for her, because he lives quietly and peacefully, while Boris “heroically” died in the war. It turns out that dear well-being of the nobility and happiness in the family nest is dear to her, but at the same time she does not notice the injustice happening around, including with her own hands: poor peasants are forced to cultivate her land. That is why Sergusha is sad, and the whole poem is sustained in sad tones. The hero seems to be at a crossroads. He categorically does not recognize the division of people into "masters" and "slaves", but he is not at all delighted with the behavior of the insurgent people.
Composition. The poem has five chapters. The first part tells about the events of the First World War. In the second part of the commentary on ongoing events. In the third chapter, events take place during the revolution (the relationship of the main characters). In the fourth culmination of events. In the fifth - the end of the Civil War and the result of everything that happened.
Genre of the work. Yesenin himself called "Anna Snegina" a lyric-epic poem. However, researchers give other definitions; the most correct, apparently, is to call it a story in verse. The similarity of the poem with "Eugene Onegin" was repeatedly noted, expressed even in the rhyming of its title with the title of Pushkin's novel in verse.
S. Yesenin's poem "Anna Snegina" begins and ends with a lyrical chord - the author's memories of early youth, of "a girl in a white cape." The plot develops in the first part of the poem: the hero returns to his native place after a three-year absence. The February Revolution was over, but the war continues, the peasants did not receive land. New terrible events are brewing. But the hero wants to stay away from them, to relax in communion with nature, to remember his youth. However, events themselves burst into his life. He had just returned from the war, threw down his rifle and “decided to fight only in poetry”:
* The war has eaten away my soul.
* For someone else's interest
* I shot at my close body
* And he climbed on his brother with his chest.
February 1917 shook the village. The former enmity between the inhabitants of the village of Radovo and the village of Kriushi flared up with new force. Kriushi has his own leader - Pron Ogloblin. A former fellow villager who came from St. Petersburg, the hero of the poem, was greeted by fellow countrymen both with joy and "with curiosity." He is now a "big shot", a metropolitan poet, but still "his own, peasant, ours." He is expected to answer the most burning questions like this: “Tell me, will the peasants go away without redemption of the arable land of the masters?” However, other questions worry the hero. He is occupied with the memory of "the girl in the white cape." Youthful love was unrequited, but the memories of it are light, joyful. Love, youth, nature, homeland - all this merged into a single whole for the poet. It's all in the past, and the past is beautiful and poetic. From his friend, an old miller, the hero learns that Anna, the daughter of the neighboring landowner Snegina, remembers him. The hero of the poem is not looking for a meeting with her. Everything has changed, they have changed. He does not want to disturb that light poetic image that remains from his early youthful impressions.
Yes, now Anna Snegina is an important lady, the wife of a military officer. She herself finds the poet and almost directly says that she loves him. But past image a young girl in white is dearer to him, he does not want to change it for a random love affair. It has no poetry. Life brings the poet even closer to the local peasants. He goes with them to the landowner Snegina to ask her to give them the land without a ransom. But in the house of the Onegins, grief came - the news came that Anna's husband had died at the front. The conflict between the poet and Anna ends in a break. "He died ... But you are here," she reproaches the hero of her short novel. The events of the October days bring the narrator and Anna together again. The property of the landowner Snegina was confiscated, the miller brought the former hostesses to him. The last meeting did not bring the former lovers closer. Anna is full of personal, intimate experiences, and the hero is engulfed in a storm of civil events. She asks to be excused for her involuntary insults, and he thinks about the redistribution of the landlords' lands.
So life intertwined, confused the personal and the public, separated these people forever. The hero rushed off to St. Petersburg, Anna went to distant and alien London. The last part of the poem is a description of the harsh times of the civil war. Against this background - two letters. One from the miller with a message that Ogloblin Pron was shot in Kriushy. Another letter is from London, from Anna Snegina. It was handed over to the hero by a miller during his next visit to his homeland.
What is left of previous impressions and experiences? For Anna, yearning in a foreign land, now memories of her former love merge with memories of her homeland. Love, motherland, nature - these are the true values that can warm the soul of a person. The poem "Anna Snegina" is written in poetic form, but its peculiarity is the fusion of the epic and lyrical genres into a single inseparable whole. There is no through action in the poem, there is no consistent story about events. They are given in separate episodes, the author is interested in his own impressions and experiences from the encounter with these events. Lyrical hero of the poem acts both as a narrator, and as a hero of the work, and as a participant in the events of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary times.
And in this manner of the author, and in the plot itself, although the events take place at a completely different time, there are some echoes of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin". Perhaps their female image is related to the Russian soul. I take the liberty of asserting that "Anna Onegin" is Yesenin's novel in verse in terms of the scope of events and the richness of images.
...I understood what poetry is. Do not speak,..
that I stopped finishing poetry.
Not at all. On the contrary, I'm now in shape
became even more demanding. I just came to simplicity...
From a letter to Benislavskaya
(while writing a poem)
I think it's the best thing I've written.
S. Yesenin about the poem
Lyric plan of the poem. Name.
The image of Anna Snegina. The image of the main character - Poet
The poem is autobiographical, based on memories of youthful love. But in the poem, the personal fate of the hero is comprehended in connection with the fate of the people.
In the image of the hero - the poet Sergei - we guess Sergei Yesenin himself. The prototype of Anna is L.I. Kashin (1886-1937), who, however, did not leave Russia. In 1917, she gave her house in Konstantinov to the peasants, she herself lived in the estate on the White Yar on the Oka. Yesenin was there. In 1918 she moved to Moscow and worked as a typist and stenographer. Yesenin met with her in Moscow. But the prototype artistic image- things are different, and the artistic image is always richer; The richness of the poem, of course, is not limited to a specific biographical situation.
The poem "Anna Snegina" is lyric-epic. Its main theme is personal, but epic events are revealed through the fate of the poet and the main character. The title itself suggests that Anna is the central image of the poem. The name of the heroine sounds especially poetic and ambiguous. In this name - full sonority, the beauty of alliteration, the richness of associations. Snegina - a symbol of the purity of white snow, echoes the spring color of bird cherry, white as snow, this name is a symbol of lost youth. There are also many images familiar from Yesenin's poetry: "a girl in white", "thin birch", "snowy" bird cherry ...
The lyrical plot - the story of the heroes' failed love - is barely outlined in the poem, and it develops as a series of fragments. The failed romance of the heroes of the poem takes place against the backdrop of a bloody and uncompromising class war. The characters' relationships are romantic, unclear, and their feelings and moods are impressionistic and intuitive. The revolution led the heroes to part, the heroine ended up in exile - in England, from where she writes a letter to the hero of the poem. But time, the revolution did not take away the memory of love from the heroes. The fact that Anna Snegina ended up far from Soviet Russia is a sad pattern, a tragedy for many Russian people of that time. And Yesenin's merit is that he was the first to show this. But this is not the main point of the poem.
The poet - the hero of the poem - constantly emphasizes that his soul is already largely closed to better feelings and wonderful impulses:
Nothing broke into my soul, Nothing confused me. Sweet smells flowed, And there was a drunken fog in my thoughts ... Now I would have a good romance with a beautiful soldier.And even at the end of the poem, after reading a letter from this woman forever lost to him, he seems to remain as cold and almost cynical as before: "A letter is like a letter. No reason. I would not write such a life."
And only in the finale a bright chord sounds - a memory of the most beautiful and forever, forever lost. Separation from Anna in the lyrical context of the poem is the poet's separation from youth, separation from the purest and most holy that a person has at the dawn of life. But - and this is the main thing in the poem - everything humanly beautiful, bright and holy lives in the hero, remains with him forever as a memory, as a "living life":
I'm walking through an overgrown garden, my face touches the lilac. So dear to my flashing glances Hunched wattle fence. Once at that gate over there I was sixteen years old, And a girl in a white cloak Said to me affectionately: "No!" They were far, dear!.. That image did not die out in me. We all loved in these years, But, therefore, they loved us too.epic plan. The attitude of the hero to the world and fratricidal civil war; images of peasants (Pron Ogloblin, Labuti Ogloblin, miller)
The main part of the poem (four chapters out of five) reproduces the events of 1917 on the Ryazan land. The fifth chapter contains a sketch of rural post-revolutionary Russia - the action in the poem ends in 1923. The events are given in sketches, and it is not the events themselves that are important to us, but the attitude of the author towards them, - after all, the poem is primarily lyrical. Yesenin's poem is both about time and about what remains unchanged at all times.
One of the main themes of the poem is the theme of the imperialist and fratricidal civil war. In the village during the revolution and the civil war, it is restless:
We are now restless here. Everything blossomed with sweat. Solid peasant wars - They fight village against village.These peasant wars are symbolic; they are the prototype of a great fratricidal war, a national tragedy, from which, according to the miller's wife, Raseya almost "disappeared." The condemnation of the war - imperialist and civil - is one of the main themes of the poem. The war is condemned by various characters in the poem and by the author himself, who is not afraid to call himself "the country's first deserter."
I think: How beautiful is the Earth And on it is a man. And how many unfortunate Freaks are now crippled with the war! And how many are buried in the pits! And how many more will be buried! And I feel in my stubborn cheekbones A cruel spasm of cheeks...Refusal to participate in the bloody massacre is not a pose, but a deep, hard-won conviction.
Yesenin, despite the fact that the basis folk life he sees in the working peasantry, he does not idealize the Russian peasantry. The words that representatives of different intellectual strata called the peasant sound sarcastically:
Fefela! Breadwinner! Iris! Owner of land and livestock, For a couple of scruffy "katek" He will let himself be torn out with a whip.Yesenin foresees the tragedy of the peasantry of 1929-1933, observing and experiencing the origins of this tragedy. Yesenin is worried that the Russian peasant is ceasing to be a master and worker on his land, that he is looking for an easy life, striving for profit at any cost.
For Yesenin, the main thing is the moral qualities of people, and in his poem he draws a number of colorful peasant types of the post-revolutionary era.
Revolutionary freedom poisoned the peasants with permissiveness, awakened moral vices in them. The poem, for example, does not romanticize the revolutionary nature of Pron Ogloblin: Pron for Yesenin is a new manifestation of the national character. He is a Russian traditional rebel of a new formation. People like him either go into the depths of people's life, or again break out to the surface in the years of "crazy action."
Pron is the embodiment of the Pugachev principle. Let us recall that Pugachev, who declared himself tsar, stood above the people, was a despot and a murderer (see, for example, Pushkin's "History of Pugachev" with a huge list of Pugachev's victims attached to it). Pron Ogloblin also stands above the people:
Ogloblin is standing at the gate And drunk in the liver and in the soul The impoverished people are dying. "Hey, you! Cockroach offspring! All to Snegina! .. R-time and kvass! You give, they say, your land Without any ransom from us!" And then, seeing me, Lowering his grumpy agility, He said in genuine insult: "The peasants still need to be cooked."Pron Ogloblin, in the words of an old miller's woman, is "a brawler, a rude man" who "is drunk for weeks in the morning...". For the old miller's woman, Pron is a destroyer, a killer. And the poet himself Pron evokes sympathy only where it is said about his death. In general, the author is far from Pron, there is some kind of uncertainty between them. Later, a similar type of turning point will be encountered by M. Sholokhov in Virgin Soil Upturned (Makar Nagulnov). Having seized power, such people think that they are doing everything for the good of the people, justifying any bloody crimes. The tragedy of depeasantization in the poem is only foreseen, but the very type of leader standing above the people is correctly noticed. Pron is opposed in Yesenin's poem by a different type of popular leader, about whom the people can be said: "He is you" (about Lenin). Yesenin claims that the people and Lenin are united in spirit, they are twin brothers. The peasants ask the Poet:
"Tell me, who is Lenin?" I quietly replied, "He is you.""You" - that is, the people whose aspirations were embodied in the leader. The leader and the people are united in a common faith, a fanatical faith in a quick reorganization of life, in another tower of Babel, the construction of which ended in another moral and psychological breakdown. Not opportunistic considerations forced Yesenin to turn to Lenin, but faith, perhaps, more precisely, the desire for faith. Because the soul of the poet was divided, conflicting feelings in relation to the new world fought in it.
Another character, also correctly noticed by Yesenin, the peasant type of the transitional era, Labutya Ogloblin, does not need special comments. Next to Pron, Labutya "... with an important posture, like some gray-haired veteran", turned out to be "in the Council" and lives "not a corn on his hands." He is a necessary companion for Pron Ogloblin. But if the fate of Pron, for all his negative aspects, takes on a tragic sound in the finale, then Labuti's life is a pathetic, disgusting farce (and a much more pathetic farce than, for example, the life of Sholokhov's grandfather Shchukar, who can be pitied in some way). It is indicative that it was Labutya who "went first to describe Snegin's house" and arrested all its inhabitants, who were later saved from a speedy trial by a kind miller. Labuti's principle is to live "not a corn of the hands", he is "a boaster and a devilish coward." It is no coincidence that Pron and Labutya are brothers.
Pron had a brother Labutya, Man - what is your fifth ace: At every dangerous moment, Khvalbishka and a devilish coward. Of course, you have seen these. Their rock was rewarded with chatter ... Such people are always in mind, They live without calluses on their hands ...Another peasant type in the poem - the miller - is the embodiment of kindness, closeness to nature, humanity. All this makes the miller one of the main characters of the poem. His image is lyrical and dear to the author as one of the brightest and most popular beginnings. It is no coincidence that in the poem the miller constantly connects people. His proverb is also significant: "For a sweet soul!" He, perhaps, most of all embodies this whole, kind-hearted Russian soul, personifies the Russian national character in its ideal version.
The language of the poem
A distinctive feature of the poem is its nationality. Yesenin abandoned refined metaphor and turned to rich colloquial folk speech. In the poem, the speech of the characters is individualized: the miller, and Anna, and the old miller's woman, and Pron, and Labuti, and the hero himself. The poem is distinguished by polyphony, and this corresponds to the spirit of the reproduced era, the struggle of the polar forces.
The epic theme of the poem is sustained in the realistic Nekrasov traditions. There is a focus on national disasters, and a story about a national leader, and images of peasants with individual characters and destinies, and a story about the villages of Radovo and Kriushi, and a skaz style, and lexical and stylistic features of the speech of peasants, and a free transition from one language culture to another. It is no coincidence that in one of Yesenin's contemporary articles, the idea of a novel-poem with its polyphony and versatility of depicting life was voiced.