"The Black Man" by Sergei Yesenin: Motive-figurative Constants and Artistic Genealogy (Mystical Aspect)

Pisarenko Alena Yur'evna Graduate student, Department of History of Journalism and Literature, Moscow University named after A.S. Griboyedov 111024, Russia, Moscow, higway Entuziastov, 21 kadiya@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Sergey Yesenin's work attracts the attention of readers and researchers. The scale of the poet's talent allowed him to "outgrow" the framework of literary trends that define the culture of the turn of the century. There are many mysteries in his fate and work, which determines the relevance of research in this direction. This article examines the traditions of medieval mysticism in Yesenin's poetry by the example of the poem "The Black Man". The article is based on the works of O.E. Voronova ^[2], L.V. Sokolova ^[9] N.I. Solntseva ^{[10; 11; 12]} and M.A. Solovieva ^[13]. Also methodologically useful were scientific works devoted to trans-literary traditions in the poetry of Russian modernism, in particular, the studies of L.G. Kihney ^{[4; 5]} and A.M. Lamzina ^[6].

S.A. Yesenin's poem "The Black Man" has caused a lot of controversy and interpretation since its publication. The poem was first published in the first issue of the magazine "New World" in 1926, that is, almost immediately after the death of the poet. As a result, the work immediately began to be perceived as a kind of premonition, prediction, hidden message, opening the veil of secrecy over the circumstances of Yesenin's death. Accordingly, the question of the time of the actual creation of the poem is of paramount importance in this case, since it allows us to clarify how much the circumstances presented in the text relate to the real events of the last days of the poet's life.

It is assumed that the idea of the poem originated with the author long before the fateful year 1925. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Yesenin read the poem in August-September 1923, but no documentary evidence of this fact has been found. According to other sources, the idea of the work originated during the American trip. Relying on this assumption allowed literary critics to put forward a number of versions about the intertextual connections of the "Black Man" with the work of T. S. Eliot, in particular, the poem "The Barren Land" ^[8]. However, the very assumption about the continuity of images is based on a rather shaky basis – the memories of witnesses about the impressions that Yesenin shared with his friends after a trip to America. These memories, presented after the poet's death, that is, several years after the real events, may represent a distortion of reality.

The only reliable source that allows us to judge the content and meaning of the poem "The Black Man" is the text itself. However, there are many unresolved problematic issues regarding the text as well. For obvious reasons, the author could not carry out the final revision of the text before its publication. The question of the correct interpretation of the handwritten draft remains open, especially with regard to the "dark places" of the poem.

One of these "dark places" is the mysterious image of the neck of the leg:

My head is waving my ears,Like the wings of a bird.

Her feet are on her neck

It's impossible to loom anymore ^{[1, p. 288]}.

This image, although it can be interpreted in the context of the poetry of the era, is uncharacteristic of Yesenin's work. It has been repeatedly suggested that the manuscript has been misread, in which, due to the nature of the spelling of the letters g and h, the neck of the night is meant. However, convincing evidence of such a reading has not yet been presented, so the text of the poem is traditionally printed in the form in which it was presented in the first publication. Any of the images of the work can be considered as key to understanding the text. However, the central image is the image presented in the title and repeated many times in the text – the image of a Black Man.

An obvious allusion, which is obviously read in this image, is a reference to the "Little Tragedies" of A.S. Pushkin, to "Mozart and Salieri". The mysterious black man who ordered Mozart's Requiem and did not appear for the order, in the context of the composer's subsequent death, is perceived as a messenger of death, a guest from the other world. Although the plot of the work itself suggests an ambivalent interpretation, since in the Pushkin version Mozart's death was the result of poisoning arranged by the envious Salieri. The black man could be a figment of the imagination, the embodiment of dark premonitions, thoughts about the inevitability of the end. Nevertheless, the image of the creator-prophet, able to predict the future in his work, is presented in this work, as well as in Pushkin's work as a whole.

This image – the Poet-Prophet – was also close to Yesenin, especially with regard to the realization of connections with Pushkin's work. Yesenin's self-presentation in poetic creativity took place, as is known, due to the presentation of the image of the Poet-hooligan, taking the features of the concept. However, gradually the image of the Poet-Prophet appears in the artistic world of Yesenin, which also becomes conceptual. These two main image-concepts in the poetry of the twenties form a semantic opposition in the poet's work ^[9].

The image of the Poet-Prophet is connected in Yesenin's mind with the Pushkin tradition, with the awareness of himself as part of the literary national tradition. In this case, we can talk about continuity in Russian poetry. This continuity is realized primarily in the concrete features of the poetic picture of the world. However, the picture of the world presented in Yesenin's work is characterized by complexity and ambiguity.

Sergey Yesenin appears in portraits as a cheerful Russian handsome man with a shock of golden hair. He grew up in a peasant family, which did not prevent Yesenin from subtly feeling the world and reacting to the slightest changes. Yesenin is known as the "Moscow naughty reveller", a drunkard and a rowdy. At the same time, in a real assessment of the poet's personality, it is difficult to separate truth from fiction. Indeed, there were scandals and problems with the police, but in conversations, real incidents became overgrown with rumors, as well as the medical history.

Against the background of the diversity of trends and associations in Russian poetry at the beginning of the twentieth century, one can single out the main thing – the desire to realize the special mission of Russia in world history and culture. Yesenin's work was influenced by both symbolists and avant–gardists, since it was impossible to exist outside the poetic atmosphere. However, Sergey Yesenin, having embraced the traditions of the literary environment, managed to create his own poetic space.

The analysis of Yesenin's work began in the pre-revolutionary period, when the high spirituality of his poems was noted. The poet was actively accepted by Slavophiles, calling him "the people's golden flower". In the poems of the young poet, critics saw the image of the Russian village in its ideal embodiment and nature as a temple of pantheistic beliefs.

After the revolution, the attitude towards Yesenin was no longer so unambiguous. Proletkult members, among whom were V. Lvov-Rogachevsky and N. Aseev, sharply opposed religious motives in Yesenin's poems, reproaching both him and the Novokrestyan poets close to him for reactionality.

This trend worsened after Yesenin's death. His poems began to be perceived as a symbol of Kulak ideology, rural backwardness, obduracy, stubbornly opposed to progress.

Russian Russian expatriates, at the same time, appear works in which the work of Yesenin is considered on a par with the Russian classics. If emigrant literary circles welcomed the religiosity of Yesenin's poems, then in Soviet Russia, on the contrary, they advocated a departure from ecclesiasticism to the real world.

The image of the Prophet in the Pushkin tradition is religious in its justification. However, the representation of the motive of prophecy inevitably brings to life the motive of false prophecy. If a Prophet speaks in words that are put into his mouth by a Higher power, then a false prophet speaks on behalf of the opposite power.

Yesenin's poetry as a whole is characterized by the representation of a binary opposition: "one's own" and "someone else's" space. At the same time, the theme of space exploration arises when "someone else's" is perceived as one's own. Accordingly, the lyrical hero faces the problem of separation, differentiation of spaces. "Moscow Kabatskaya" is the space of a hooligan Poet. While the Poet-prophet exists in a different space – the quiet peace of nature. The break with "his" space and existence in an "alien" world characterize the hero as a tramp, a reveller, a tomboy.

All manifestations of nature belong to their own space. These are fields, forests, wind, grass, blizzard. Someone else's space is a city. These are cast iron and steel, highways and telegraphs. But the city also has elements of its own space: animals. Accordingly, the surrounding people act as representatives of a hostile alien space. But a man, a poet, is forced to live among people. This explains why it is doomed to exist in an alien hostile space. Its own space, the space of nature has not only a horizontal, but also a vertical perspective. Trees tend to the sky like people, stoop and straighten up at home.

The poem "The Black Man" confirms that the problem of distinguishing "one's own" and "someone else's" space was not unambiguously solved by the lyrical hero. Both images – the Poet-prophet and the Poet-Hooligan – were equally close and peculiar to him. However, their influence and perception were different.

Traditionally, in literary studies, it is customary to associate the image of the Prophet, represented in images of nature, with the traditions of Russian spiritual culture. But these traditions in Yesenin's work were represented not only by folklore components. The poet fully embodied in his work the originality of the spiritual Russian culture, which was not unambiguous.

First of all, Russian spirituality is characterized by a dual faith: the Christian tradition is firmly established in the context of Slavic paganism. The traditions of dualism are manifested in the elements of peasant ritual culture characteristic of Yesenin's early poetry. However, in the poem "The Black Man" they are also present – in the phytomorphic images of trees, which are partly manifested in the image of the lyrical hero.

Another motive due to the connection with spiritual culture is pilgrimage. In the concept of the duality, the discovery of the line between the Prophet and the bully, the wanderer becomes a tramp whose purpose is not defined. But this vagrancy has a close connection with another spiritual image – the image of the unrecognized Christ ^[2]. A meeting on the way can bring good and evil, which will determine the essence of the tramp. Yesenin in his creative development comes to a certain interpretation of the image of a hooligan-vagrant as a prodigal son, which in the context of archetypal connections activates the motive of repentance ^[2].

However, this repentance poses the problem of the addressee to the lyrical hero. The very nature of Yesenin's poetry and the accepted tradition of public performance of poems suggest the interpretation of repentance as a demonstrative act in which a lost reveller repents before the people. However, the poem "The Black Man" offers a different way of understanding this process. The return and repentance of the prodigal son is an attempt to face himself. But finding yourself is a difficult path. This spiritual path is represented in poetic texts through the motive of the transition from the image of the hooligan Poet to the image of the Prophet Poet. Such a transition is associated with the acceptance of the Prophet's share, readiness for service.

The theme of prophetic ministry has a biblical justification. The actualization of this theme in the poetry of the beginning of the century is due to the eschatological moods characteristic of the spiritual quest of the end of the previous century: the quest that defined the philosophical context of the Silver Age. The images of the prophets associated with the eschatological motif of the end of the world combine New Testament and Old Testament motifs ^[13]. The motif of the end of the world itself has a strict chronological correlation: this theme is related to the beginning of the twentieth century with the period of a thousand years ago, that is, the early Middle Ages. In this case, the historical and cultural conditionality is determined not so much by the Russian as by the European tradition.

The beginning of the second millennium is the period of the establishment of Christianity in Russia. The new spiritual tradition has not yet taken a leading position in the public consciousness. In addition, the differences in chronology did not imply a sacred perception of the new era. Eschatological moods in this period were characteristic of European culture. Accordingly, the tradition of such perception of reality is rooted in medieval European culture, moreover, in its mystical sphere.

The widespread spread of eschatological attitudes in society at the turn of the century suggested an appeal to an experience that only European culture could imagine, in which every change of the century caused a surge of prophecies and anxious expectations. The poets of the Silver Age, in search of answers, turned to the cultural tradition that most closely interacted with the mystical cultural experience – romanticism. Spiritual and philosophical search explains the appeal of the symbolist to Lermontov, and Yesenin and Mayakovsky to Pushkin.

However, Russian poets were not romantics in their worldviews. The romantic cultural tradition was fully realized in the mystical works of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and A. Pogorelsky. And this tradition was borrowed from English and German Romanticism, the basis of which is the perception of reality in the light of romantic duality.

The manifestation of the duality is the image of a Double, which also appears in the texts of Russian literature. But he is most fully represented in the key image of German Romanticism as a Doppelganger double, a manifestation of a dark essence. The same Black man who distorts all the plans and actions of the original, giving them a sinister shade and destructive meaning. One of the incarnations of the Doppelganger in German Romanticism is Hoffmann's Baby Tsaches, who appropriates all the achievements of others. In an ugly transformation, the talents of the Creators turn out to be the inherently pernicious virtues of the freak.

The same motif appears in Yesenin's poem. His black man distorts the meaning of poetic talent, represents the beauty of the world in a distorted, painful way. There is a talented person – and there is a scoundrel who has appropriated other people's merits and uses the fruits of other people's talents. The lyrical hero, endowed with a poetic gift, considers himself a talented creator. However, the Black Man sows doubts in his soul: perhaps he is just a Doppelganger, wearing a mask of someone else's talent:

As if he wants to tell me,That I'm a crook and a thief,

So shameless and brazen

Robbed someone ^{[1, p. 290]}.

The motive of duality in its traditional sense implies a confrontation between antagonistic heroes. However, in the Russian literary tradition, duality appears as a reinterpretation of the romantic model, which takes on the features of parody. Doubles are often linked by parody relationships, which they, nevertheless, are unable to break. In Russian literature, the duality motif acts as a representation of the archetypal model of the struggle of the Cosmos and Chaos, which occurs in the soul of an individual ^[3].

It is this kind of interaction that is presented in the poem, and the element of parody is realized at the verbal level. The use of deliberately rude vocabulary and images contributes to the desacralization of the presented plot. However, the technique of desacralization is at the same time used as a weapon of the Black Man-antagonist. He ridicules the very process of creativity, and therefore the prophetic gift of the Poet.:

Secretly, "she" will come,And you will read

Your dead languid lyrics?

Ah, I love poets!

Funny people.

I always find in them

A story familiar to the heart,

Like a pimply student

Long-haired freak

Talking about worlds,

Sexual bleeding with languor ^{[1, p. 291]}.

In this plot lies the possibility of a different interpretation, the defining moment of which is the self-perception, self-evaluation of the lyrical hero. If he is a Poet–prophet, then a Black person questioning a poetic Word is an enemy, a representative of a dark essence. However, if the lyrical hero speaks on behalf of a prodigal hooligan, then his antagonist uses strong means of influence to achieve repentance. In fact, this is the way of redemption.

In this context, the main problem becomes the knowledge of the essence – both the lyrical hero-Poet and the Black Man. Images become a way of such knowledge in a poetic text. These are primarily coloristic images peculiar to the artistic world of Yesenin as a whole. From this point of view, the Black Man acts as a representative of the dark world. However, the black / white juxtaposition as a symbolism of the diabolical / The divine cannot be interpreted unambiguously, since there is a marking of a different correlation in the text itself:

In December in that countryThe snow is pure to the devil ^{[1, p. 289]}.

In its contradictions, the world is one, black and white, Space and Chaos are interdependent and difficult to separate. However, the need for such a separation is obvious for the lyrical hero of the poem. Hence arises the motive of searching for answers, manifestation, personalization of the Black Man as a bearer of sacred knowledge.

The motive of summoning the Devil as a bearer of knowledge is characteristic of the art of the Silver Age. The technology of turning to the dark force is described in Bryusov's novel "The Fiery Angel" and is borrowed from medieval texts. This is an ancient motif of the Black Mass, which is a mirror image of traditional Catholic worship. Spatial correlation becomes an element of the search motive:

Quiet peace of the intersection ^{[1, p. 290]}

Silence and peace in Yesenin's poetry are characteristics of the world of native nature, the space to which the hero–reveller seeks to return in search of peace of mind and the source of poetic talent. However, the crossroads is not a stable world, but a symbol of the boundary between worlds. The crossroads is a traditional meeting place with the Devil, a venue for black places. Here, on the edge of the worlds, there is a meeting with the otherworldly. Here, all the symbols have a dual conditionality: a peaceful day bird becomes a sinister night bird, and the trees in the garden are gloomy horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The realities of native nature, which have always served as a guide for the lyrical hero, are also subject to duality, they can be interpreted in different ways. The need for knowledge increases many times, especially since the hero is already near the intersection. In fact, at a crossroads.

But the motive of the search for an answer is also ambiguously solved in the poem. The very presence of the lyrical hero at the crossroads in the night indicates that the initiative of meeting with a Black man belongs to him. It was he who used the elements of the ritual of summoning an otherworldly force. However, the plot outline of the work indicates a completely opposite state of affairs – this is a Black man looking for a meeting, he is actively going to rapprochement. An allusion to Pushkin's lines about a constantly pursuing black man who exists only in imagination runs through the plot like a red thread.

Yesenin's Black Man is constantly in action, his presence is aggressive and intrusive so much that the hero is forced to get rid of him decisively – in order to discover that he opposed his mirror image. The motif of the mirror as a boundary between worlds is also born in the culture of Romanticism, and also has a long history. The struggle with one's own double, with reflection, is a mirror image of the motive of self–destruction, self-torture, which is a manifestation of the struggle with the dark principle in one's own soul. The experience of self-torture in medieval monastic culture was part of the exorcist practice. The monks, rooting out their own vices and base passions, saw in them a manifestation of diabolical power. And, being carried away by the struggle with diabolical manifestations, they gradually began to see the devil in themselves ^[7]. Hence arose the postulate of medieval theology that the most important enemy of man is himself. Physicality and spirituality are separated in this understanding, but it is possible to draw a boundary only by separating the spirit and the body. The natural divider is physical death, but during life such a separation can be achieved either by a righteous life or by magical practices. An echo of this practice is present in the poem "The Black Man".

The plot embodiment, the implementation of such a practice is a special genre of medieval art – mystery. The mystery dramatizes the plots of the Old and New Testaments and there is certainly a comic component marking the dual nature of the world in which the sacred and profane are one. The rhythm of the magical mystery is marked in the text of the poem, where the main characteristic of the antagonist hero "black" is used exactly 13 times.

The composition of S.A. Yesenin's poem "The Black Man" presents elements of the mystery, which in its original understanding acts as a means of implementing magical practices of the Middle Ages.