My friend, my friend
I am very, very sick.
Is the wind whistling
Or, like a grove in September,
Showers brains with alcohol.
My head flaps its ears
Like the wings of a bird.
She has legs on her neck
Loom more unbearable.
Black man,
black, black,
Black man
He sits down on my bed,
Black man
Doesn't let me sleep all night.
Black man
Runs a finger over a vile book
And, sneering at me,
Like a monk over the dead
Reads my life
Some scoundrel and bastard,
Bringing sadness and fear to the soul.
Black man
Black, black…
"Listen, listen, -
He mumbles to me -
There are many wonderful things in the book.
Thoughts and plans.
This person
Lived in the country
the most disgusting
Thugs and charlatans.
In December in that country
The snow is pure as hell
And the blizzards start
Funny spinning wheels.
There was a man that adventurer
But the highest
And the best brand.
He was graceful
Besides, the poet
Even with a small
But with gripping strength,
And some woman
Forty plus years
Called me a bad girl
And my dear."
"Happiness," he said,
There is dexterity of mind and hands.
All the awkward souls
For the unfortunate are always known.
It's nothing,
What a lot of torment
Bring broken
And false gestures.
In thunderstorms, in storms
Into the hell of life
For severe loss
And when you're sad
To seem smiling and simple -
The highest art in the world."
"Black man!
You dare not!
You are not in service.
You live as a diver.
What do I care about life
Scandalous poet.
Please others
Read and tell."
Black man
He looks straight at me.
And the eyes are covered
Blue puke.
Like he wants to tell me
That I'm a crook and a thief
So shameless and brazen
Robbed someone.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
My friend, my friend
I am very, very sick.
I don't know where this pain came from.
Is the wind whistling
Over an empty and deserted field,
Or, like a grove in September,
Showers brains with alcohol.
Frosty night...
Quiet crossroads.
I'm alone at the window
I am not expecting a guest or a friend.
The whole plain is covered
Loose and soft lime,
And trees like riders
We gathered in our garden.
Somewhere crying
Night ominous bird.
wooden riders
They sow a hoof knock.
Here again this black
He sits on my chair,
Raising your top hat
And casually throwing back his coat.
"Listen, listen! -
He wheezes, looking into my face,
Himself getting closer
And leans closer.-
I didn't see anyone
Of scoundrels
So useless and stupid
Suffered from insomnia.
Ah, let's say I was wrong!
Because today is the moon.
What more do you need
To a world filled with slumber?
Maybe with thick thighs
Secretly "she" will come,
And you will read
Your dead languid lyrics?
Ah, I love poets!
Funny people.
I always find in them
History, familiar to the heart,
Like a pimply student
long haired freak
Talking about worlds
Sexual languor.
I don't know, I don't remember
In one village
Maybe in Kaluga,
Or maybe in Ryazan,
There lived a boy
In a simple peasant family,
yellow-haired,
With blue eyes…
And then he became an adult
Besides, the poet
Even with a small
But with gripping strength,
And some woman
Forty plus years
Called me a bad girl
And my dear."
"Black man!
You are a bad guest!
It's glory for a long time
It's spreading about you."
I'm furious, furious
And my cane flies
Straight to his face
Into the carry...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
... The month died,
Dawn shines through the window.
Oh you night!
What have you done, night?
I'm in a top hat.
Nobody is with me.
I am alone…
And a broken mirror...
Analysis of the poem "The Black Man" by Yesenin
The poem "The Black Man" is perhaps Yesenin's most gloomy and sinister work. The idea of the poem came to the poet during a trip abroad with A. Duncan. In 1923 he read the first version to his friends. They were struck by the hopelessness emanating from the poem. Yesenin worked on the text for a long time. The final version for publication was ready only by the end of 1925. Those who heard the original version claimed that it was longer and much more tragic and terrible.
From the very first lines, Yesenin declares his painful illness associated with alcohol. Given the circumstances of his life, this statement is quite natural. Immoderate drunkenness with violent antics seriously affected the poet. Psyche creative person especially sensitive to external stimuli.
Yesenin says with horror that every night he suffers from visits from a mysterious black man. It is known that the poet was repeatedly subjected to attacks of delirium tremens and even underwent a course of treatment. Probably, the image of a black man is generated by these bouts of a semi-crazy state. According to the book, he tells Yesenin all the circumstances of the crazy life of "some scoundrel and bastard." The stranger mentions not only negative things, he notes that the man was "moreover, a poet", full of "the most beautiful thoughts and plans." The book features "a woman of more than forty", in the image of which A. Duncan is guessed.
Tortured by the story lyrical hero starts screaming desperately, trying to drive the black person away and stop this torture with reading someone's useless life. But this does not help: the stranger stubbornly sits and does not tear his heavy gaze from him.
The next night the visit is repeated. The author tries to get rid of the unbearable vision and curses his insomnia. Yesenin begins to reminisce about his childhood, about a simple village boy "with blue eyes." Having reached in his memories to "a woman of more than forty years old", he realizes with sudden horror that the book that the black man is reading tells about himself. The enraged poet throws his cane right into the "face" of the stranger...
"The Black Man" is not just the ravings of a poet suffering from alcoholism. Yesenin was a genius. True talent is always regarded as a certain kind of madness. "The Black Man" is a merciless introspection of the author, caused by the desire to convey to the reader all the horror of his spiritual conflict.
The last years of Sergei Yesenin's life are haunted by fears and uncertainty. Whether the poet tried to drown them out with alcohol, or vice versa, they developed against the background of addiction to alcohol - this is a question. One way or another, against this background of inner uncertainty, fears and disappointment, Yesenin writes the poem "The Black Man", the analysis of which I offer.
The poem was written for a long time and completed shortly before the tragic death of Sergei. The original draft was much larger, but his poet's score is too complex to understand and has been almost halved. This did not make the lines less depressing, they literally feel fear and uncertainty about the future.
Contacting a friend
In this poem, as in several other Yesenin works, there is an appeal to an unknown friend “My friend, my friend”, with the same lines the poem begins:
My friend, my friend
I am very, very sick.
What did Yesenin mean by illness? Most likely, a combination of mental and physical ailments. We do not forget that alcohol and depression more than once brought the poet to a mental hospital, he visited this institution shortly before his death, when, presumably, the final editing of the poem was going on.
In the last years of his life, the poet critically evaluates his path - he never managed to break away from the village, and he did not become a city one. Old friends are gone, new ones are not trusted. Some people love the poet's poems, others turn away because of them. Glory is illusory, and the meaning of life is lost.
Collective image
The poem talks about a black man many times, and only at the end is his secret revealed. The black man symbolizes all the problems of the author, all the troubles and hardships of fate are generated in him. Here and non-recognition, and butting with the authorities, and problems in his personal life, and alcohol.
The lines say about the spiritual loneliness of the poet at the time of work on the poem:
I'm alone at the window
I am not expecting a guest or a friend.
Nimbus of loneliness
Not only is he alone, but he does not wait for anyone. No, Yesenin, even in the last year of his life, had no shortage of comrades, especially in a tavern, but it was not that, it was "get it, but throw it away." In addition, in the process of working on the poem, Ganin is shot, and Yesenin's last wife Tolstaya is more a friend than a wife ....
In the lines, Yesenin also recalls Duncan:
And some woman
Forty plus years
Called me a bad girl
And my sweetheart.
And it repeats several times about insomnia, which comes against the background of alcohol and mental discord with oneself. The protagonist of the poem, in which Yesenin himself is guessed, the poet calls names more than once, either a scoundrel, or a thief .... This shows dissatisfaction with oneself against the background of a depressive state. Which proves that main character and there is Yesenin? At least these lines:
Maybe in Kaluga,
Or maybe in Ryazan,
There lived a boy
In a simple peasant family,
yellow-haired,
With blue eyes...
Let me remind you that Yesenin is “yellow-haired” with blue eyes, and was born in Konstantinovo near Ryazan.
black dialogue
The conversation with the black man at the end of the poem does not go well, the hero is dissatisfied with his truth and is furious, after which he grabs a cane and hits the guest in the “muzzle, in the bridge of the nose”.
In the last lines of the work, the hero finds himself in front of a broken mirror in a top hat, in which a black man was dressed. That is, there was no guest, a black man is Yesenin's second "I", his black side, which he tried to kill in himself ....
From the poem it is clearly seen that the last year is hard for the poet. External and internal obstacles literally prevent him from living. The poet does not give up, fights with them, but one killed fear gives birth to two others.
"The Black Man" is Yesenin's requiem for himself and one of the last attempts of the poet to free himself from the fetters that do not allow him to breathe deeply. The lines are full of pain, fear and depression, but they must be read in order to see Yesenin in full, without cuts and clippings.
My friend, my friend
I am very, very sick.
Is the wind whistling
Over an empty and deserted field,
Or, like a grove in September,
Showers brains with alcohol.
My head flaps its ears
Like the wings of a bird.
She has legs on her neck
Loom more unbearable.
Black man,
black, black,
Black man
He sits down on my bed,
Black man
Doesn't let me sleep all night.
Black man
Runs a finger over a vile book
And, sneering at me,
Like a monk over the dead
Reads my life
Some scoundrel and bastard,
Bringing sadness and fear to the soul.
Black man
Black, black...
"Listen, listen, -
He mumbles to me -
There are many wonderful things in the book.
Thoughts and plans.
This person
Lived in the country
the most disgusting
Thugs and charlatans.
In December in that country
The snow is pure as hell
And the blizzards start
Funny spinning wheels.
There was a man that adventurer
But the highest
And the best brand.
He was graceful
Besides, the poet
Even with a small
But with gripping strength,
And some woman
Forty plus years
Called me a bad girl
And my sweetheart."
"Happiness," he said,
There is dexterity of mind and hands.
All the awkward souls
For the unfortunate are always known.
It's nothing,
What a lot of torment
Bring broken
And false gestures.
In thunderstorms, in storms
Into the hell of life
For severe loss
And when you're sad
To seem smiling and simple -
The highest art in the world."
"Black man!
You dare not!
You are not in service.
You live as a diver.
What do I care about life
Scandalous poet.
Please others
Read and tell."
Black man
He looks straight at me.
And the eyes are covered
Blue puke.
Like he wants to tell me
That I'm a crook and a thief
So shameless and brazen
Robbed someone.
My friend, my friend
I am very, very sick.
I don't know where this pain came from.
Is the wind whistling
Over an empty and deserted field,
Or, like a grove in September,
Showers brains with alcohol.
Frosty night...
Quiet crossroads.
I'm alone at the window
I am not expecting a guest or a friend.
The whole plain is covered
Loose and soft lime,
And trees like riders
We gathered in our garden.
Somewhere crying
Night ominous bird.
wooden riders
They sow a hoof knock.
Here again this black
He sits on my chair,
Raising your top hat
And casually throwing back his coat.
"Listen, listen!-
He wheezes, looking into my face,
Himself getting closer
And leans closer.-
I didn't see anyone
Of scoundrels
So useless and stupid
Suffered from insomnia.
The work of Sergei Yesenin "The Black Man" is very often called by researchers and literary critics one of the most mysterious poems of the twentieth century in Russian literature. From the first lines, it intrigues, fascinates, immerses in the world of mysterious visions, spiritual searches, ghosts of the past, doubts that torment the author’s soul ... This is the path to Yesenin’s inner world, to the world of his life quests and aspirations to know the whole tragic essence of being. The poem is read in one breath, keeps you in suspense until the very end, and after reading it leaves more questions than answers.
It may seem that this poem, this frenzied cry of the soul, this powerful force of thought, was born on one night, on one evening, when everything that the poet wanted to tell us suddenly burst out of his soul and, like a hurricane whirlwind, instantly carried away behind you.
The first reading leaves an almost painful impression: the inflamed consciousness attempts to analyze itself, a split personality, alcoholic delirium. But in fact, work on the poem lasted a long time, "The Black Man" is not just a stream of thoughts that rushed overnight onto paper. The idea arose during Yesenin's foreign trips in 1922-1923, where he, who sincerely loved his native land, could not help but feel like a stranger and unnecessary. And the black melancholy, which more and more often overcame the poet by those days, strengthened this feeling and gave terrible inspiration. In his notes, Yesenin also mentioned that the influence on the creation this work provided Pushkin's "little tragedy" "Mozart and Salieri".
Yesenin foresaw his imminent death, anxious doubts did not leave him lately until his death. Like Mozart, he, Yesenin, also saw a sinister black man on the eve of his death. In November 1925, the poet reworks the poem to the end, leaving it the way we see it now. What does the bad Black Man torment the lyrical hero with?
The poem opens with an appeal, which the poet will repeat in his dying poem: “My friend, my friend,” the lyrical hero begins to confess, “I am very, very sick ...”. We understand that we are talking about mental suffering. The metaphor is expressive: the head is compared to a bird seeking to fly away, "It can no longer loom on its neck legs." What is going on? At the time of tormenting insomnia, the mystical Black Man comes to the hero and sits on the bed: 
Black man,
black, black,
Black man
He sits down on my bed,
Black man
Doesn't let me sleep all night.
Black man
Runs a finger over a vile book
And, sneering at me,
Like a monk over the dead
Reads my life
Some scoundrel and bastard,
Bringing sadness and fear to the soul.
Several times, as if in delirium, Yesenin repeats the color designation “black”, thickening the colors even more, reflecting the entire tragedy of the situation. From the above passage, a ghostly Black man is seen reading the "vile book" of life, as if scolding the lyrical hero for his sins, calling him "a scoundrel and a bastard." In the Bible, in the Revelation of John the Theologian, it is said that, reading the Book of Life, God judges each person according to his deeds. The letters in the hands of Yesenin's Black Man demonstrate that the devil is also closely following the fate of people.
It should be noted that the Black Man, as a manifestation of a diabolical, sinister force, reads only the most negative and gloomy moments from the book, trying to ridicule everything and turn it inside out.
We see the story of the Black Man about the life of Yesenin himself, written with deep self-irony, even self-disgust. In the face of the Black Man, the author bitterly ridicules himself for not being able to embody "many wonderful thoughts and plans", for his simplicity of soul, for openness, honesty, or even childish naivety, for grace ... The Black Man did not bypass the way of life in society, the system against which Yesenin spoke completely alone, trying to carry light, joy and love in his work:
This person
Lived in the country
the most disgusting
Thugs and charlatans.
And just below are the lines that have become a famous aphorism, which perfectly reflect the entire instruction for survival in the existing "order":
In thunderstorms, in storms
Into the hell of life
For severe loss
And when you're sad
To seem smiling and simple -
The highest art in the world."
The hero tries to drive the Black Man away:
“... What do I care about life
Scandalous poet.
Please others
Read and tell."
It is noteworthy that even in moments of tormenting the soul by a Black man, the poet is able to notice what is happening outside the window. This is “the wind that whistles over an empty and deserted field”, this is “riders - trees”, this is “the cry of a sinister night bird”. When reading the poem, one involuntarily recalls Pushkin's lines from the poem "Demons", which depict us with a similar tense situation: restless nature, blizzard, frost, gloomy and blurred outlines. Thin landscape sketches also convey the psychological state of the lyrical hero: loneliness is the cry of a bird (by the way, according to popular signs and beliefs, this has always been an unkind sign); anxiety - blizzard; anxiety, excitement - "the hooves of wooden horsemen." Even in the beloved Russian nature, the poet cannot find consolation for himself, it is, as it were, a reflection of his mental anguish.
The image of the night crossroads is reminiscent of the Christian symbolism of the cross, which connects all directions of space and time, and contains a pagan idea of the crossroads as a place of unclean conspiracies and charms. The word "window" is etymologically connected in Russian with the word "eye". This is the eye of the hut, through which light pours into it. The night window resembles a mirror where everyone sees their own reflection. So in the poem there is a hint of who this Black Man really is. Now the mockery of the night guest takes on a more concrete connotation: we are talking about a poet who was born “maybe in Ryazan” (Yesenin was born there), about a fair-haired peasant boy “with blue eyes”.
The composition of the work is similar to circles in a closed ring. The lyrical hero, whose soul is squeezed by the ring of despair, wanders inside him through the circles of the Black Man's torture. What are these circles? Twice he mentions "some woman in her forties", twice repeats the stanza beginning with the words "my friend, my friend .... I am very, very sick ...", twice "mutters" Black man "listen, listen ..." Thus, the hero rushes about, unable to find a way out not only from the circles of internal contradictions, but also from the outer ring of reality, he is also unable to escape.
The final answer to who the black man is is revealed to the reader only at the end of the poem, when the “enraged and enraged” hero throws his cane at the devil who tormented him and is left only alone with himself and a broken mirror. A broken mirror is not only a symbol of misfortune, imminent death. This is a rather multifaceted image that reflects both its own face and internal contradictions, it is a magical object that takes a person to another world, through the looking glass, and in fact, where there is witchcraft, there is also devilry.
In the January issue of Novy Mir magazine in 1926, a stunning
publication: S. Yesenin. "Black man". The text of the poem made a particularly strong impression against the backdrop of the recent tragic death of a young poet (as you know, on December 28, 1925, Yesenin was found dead in the Angleterre hotel in Leningrad). Contemporaries considered this work a kind of penitential confession of a "scandalous poet." And indeed, the Russian lyre did not know such a merciless and painful self-accusation as in this work. Let's bring it here summary.
"Black Man": Yesenin alone with himself
The poem opens with an appeal, which the poet will repeat in his dying poem: “My friend, my friend,” the lyrical hero begins to confess, “I am very, very sick ...”. We understand that we are talking about mental suffering. The metaphor is expressive: the head is compared to a bird seeking to fly away, “She has legs on her neck / she can no longer loom”. What is going on? At the time of tormenting insomnia, the mystical Black Man comes to the hero and sits on the bed. Yesenin (an analysis of the sources for the creation of the poem confirms this) appeals to some extent to Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri. on the eve of death, a certain sinister black man was also seen. However, Yesenin interprets this figure in a completely different way. The black man is the alter ego of the poet, his other "I". What does the bad Black Man torment the lyrical hero with?
Yesenin: analysis of the poet's inner world on the eve of suicide
In the third stanza of the poem, the image of a book arises, in which all human life is described to the smallest detail. The Bible says that when reading the Book of Life, God judges each person according to his deeds. The letters in the hands of Yesenin's Black Man demonstrate that the devil is also closely following the fate of people. True, his notes do not contain a detailed history of the personality, but only a brief summary of it. The black man (Yesenin emphasizes this) chose all the most unattractive and evil. He talks about "a scoundrel and a bastard", about an adventurer "of the highest brand", about a "graceful poet" with "grasping strength". He argues that happiness is only "sleight of mind and hands", even if they bring "a lot of torment ... broken / And deceitful gestures." Here it is worth mentioning the newfangled theory that developed in the decadent circles of the early 20th century, about the special mission of sign language, to which Yesenin was an adherent, and the “queen” of which was the great dancer. Marriage with her was short-lived and did not bring blessings to the poet. “To seem smiling and simple” at a time when melancholy, he had to do not only at the behest of the then prevailing fashion. Only in this way could the poet hide from himself the darkness of impending hopelessness, connected not only with the internal contradictions of the personality, but also with the horrors of Bolshevism in Russia.
What lies at the bottom of the soul?
In the ninth stanza of the poem, we see how the lyrical hero refuses to speak with the intruder, he still wants to disown the terrible story that the Black Man is leading. Yesenin does not yet accept the analysis of everyday troubles of "some" moral "swindler and thief" as a study own life, resists it. However, he himself already understands that it is in vain. The poet reproaches the black guest for daring to invade the depths and get something from the very bottom, because he is "not in the service of ... diving." This line is polemically addressed to the work of Alfred Musset, who in "December Night" uses the image of a diver wandering along the "chasm of oblivion". The grammatical construction (“diving service”) appeals to the morphological delights of Mayakovsky, who boldly broke the established forms in the language in a futuristic way.
One by the window
The image of the night crossroads in the twelfth stanza is reminiscent of the Christian symbolism of the cross, which connects all directions of space and time, and contains a pagan idea of the crossroads as a place of unclean conspiracies and charms. Both of these symbols were absorbed by the impressionable peasant youth Sergei Yesenin from childhood. The poems "The Black Man" combine two opposite traditions, which is why the fear and torment of the lyrical hero acquire a global metaphysical connotation. He is “alone at the window”... The word “window” is etymologically connected in Russian with the word “eye”. This is the eye of the hut, through which light pours into it. The night window resembles a mirror where everyone sees their own reflection. So in the poem there is a hint of who this Black Man really is. Now the mockery of the night guest takes on a more concrete tone: we are talking about a poet who was born “maybe in Ryazan” (Yesenin was born there), about a fair-haired peasant boy “with blue eyes” ...
Doppelgänger murder
Unable to restrain his rage and anger, the lyrical hero tries to destroy the damned double, throws a cane at him. This gesture - to throw something at a dreaming devil - is found more than once in the literary works of Russian and foreign authors. After that, the Black Man disappears. Yesenin (an analysis of the allegorical murder of a double in world literature proves this) is trying, as it were, to protect himself from the persecution of his other "I". But such an ending is always associated with suicide.
The poet standing alone in front appears in the last stanza of the work. The symbolism of the mirror, as a guide to other worlds, leading a person away from reality into a deceitful demonic world, enhances the gloomy and meaningful ending of the poem.
Requiem for Hope
It is difficult, almost impossible, to castigate oneself in front of a huge audience, as Yesenin does. His incredible sincerity, with which he reveals his pain to the world, makes confession a reflection of the spiritual breakdown of all Yesenin's contemporaries. It is no coincidence that the writer Veniamin Levin, who knew the poet, spoke of the Black Man as an investigating judge "on the affairs of our entire generation," who had many "the most beautiful thoughts and plans." Levin noted that in this sense, Yesenin's voluntary burden is somewhat akin to the sacrifice of Christ, who "took infirmities" upon himself and bore all human "diseases."
4. A word to a young scientist
SYSTEMIC PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
POEMS S.A. Yesenin "BLACK MAN"
Komarov R.V.,
MGPU, Moscow
The article provides a psychological analysis of one of the famous poems of S.A. Yesenin from the standpoint of an interdisciplinary approach.
SYSTEM-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE POEM BY S. YESENIN "THE BLACK MAN"
Komarov R.V.,
MCPU, Moscow
In this article the system-psychological analysis of one of the known poem by S.A. Yesenin is discussed from the positions of the interdisciplinary approach.
The "neck of the leg" in "The Black Man" is an amazing artistic image that has turned for Yesenin scholars into a Gordian knot on the rope of the poem, which, like in competitions, is pulled in opposite directions (who will pull it); of course, each with a good intention in such a way to untie him.
What comes out of this was clearly shown by the international scientific symposium "Sergey Yesenin: Dialogue with the XXI century." Through the eyes of the audience, the conclusion that suggests itself after the report of V.A. Drozdkova: reconciliation "rope-fighters" only dream, and this dream is clearly from the category of nightmarish. Until his own Macedonian appears, whose fate is destined to raise the sword in order to cut the Gordian knot with one blow, it is not difficult to predict what awaits the image-mystery in the future.
In my opinion, an interdisciplinary approach can claim the role of such (Macedonian). Namely: a working alliance of sciences - philology with psychology. The psychologist has an important advantage: like a child in the well-known fairy tale by H.K. Andersen, who exclaimed “The king is naked!”, he, due to philological inexperience, can look at the problem that has become a stumbling block with an open mind, with pure naive surprise, noticing details visible only to him.
These details reveal themselves if one does not lose the context in which they exist: firstly, the context of a holistic work and, secondly, an even wider context of the poet's biography, capable of shedding light on the personal determinants of the creative process. Thus, at the level of a specific creative person, the psychological law is refracted, which in December 1924, in a report made at a meeting of the Kant Society, was voiced by Albert Einstein's close friend Max Wertheimer. “There are connections,” he said, “in which, not from individual pieces and their combination, what happens in the “whole” is derived, but on the contrary, what happens in one of the parts of the “whole” is determined by the internal laws of the structure of this whole. I gave you the formula. Gestalt theory is just that, nothing more and nothing less. Today, this formula, when applied to various aspects of reality (often very different), acts as a solution to the problem.
The consistent implementation of such systemic logic makes one doubt: is it really such a “leg neck” - “absurdity” (V.A. Vdovin) and “logical nonsense plus a complete lack of image” (S.P. Zlobin) or is this “tasteless and incomprehensible image ”(V.A. Drozdkov) is actually one of the most dramatic and psychologically very accurate Yesenin’s finds, which, due to a misunderstanding, they dare to destroy, replacing the helpless “neck of the night”. So, where did the “neck of the leg” come from.
According to Yesenin himself, "The Black Man" is the best thing he has ever done. A thing that creeps eerily, reflective, extremely autobiographical, which, of course, does not detract from either its philosophical or aesthetic content.
“This terrible lyrical confession,” recalled V.F. Nasedkin, - demanded from him [Yesenin] tremendous tension and self-observation. I twice found him drunk in a top hat and with a cane in front of a large mirror with an indescribable inhuman grin, talking to his double-reflection or silently observing himself and, as it were, listening to himself.
By a mystical irony of fate, the final edits to the poem, after two years of painstaking work, were made on the night of November 13-14, 1925 - on Friday the 13th - a month and a half before the suicide and exactly a month before last letter, which Yesenin sent to the beginning poet Ya.E. Zeitlin. This letter turned out to be symbolic in many respects, because it crowns the limit of the development of the poet's views on the nature of art, without which the mysterious image - the "neck of the leg" - will not be unraveled.
On June 20, 1924, Yesenin wrote in his autobiography: “First of all, I love revealing the organic. Art for me is not the intricacy of patterns, but the most necessary word of the language in which I want to express myself.
He came up with this idea earlier:<…>It's not about comparisons, but about the most organic, ”he remarked in Zhelezny Mirgorod.
It is understandable. Comparison is only a tool in the hands of the master, a kind of connection in the system between the elements. The building is built of bricks and cement with the help of a trowel, but the building itself is not cement, not a trowel or a pile of bricks. Where there is a whole, it is not just the sum of the parts that make it up. Something different from the sum appears - a system-forming function or - as a special case of it - the φ-phenomenon, discovered by psychology back in 1912. Yesenin felt it well: by the birth of the φ-phenomenon, one can judge the birth of the organic in art.
“Volodya read good poetry today. BUT? How are you? Did you like it? Yesenin asked V. Erlich a question. - Very good poetry! Did you see how he drives word for word? Well done!<…>Very good poems ... One forgets! Yes, he is not alone! They all think like this: here is the rhyme, here is the size, here is the image, and the trick is in the bag. Master. The trait of a bald man is a master! You can teach this to a mare! Do you remember "Pugachev"? What are the rhymes? All in a thread! How polished shoes shine! This doesn't surprise me. And you know how to smile in verse, take off your hat, sit down - then you are a master! .. "
That is, poetry is the birth of a miracle. And the thought of the poet is extremely transparent: it is not the craft that colors creativity. Craft is just a tool of creativity. Therefore last years Yesenin spoke disapprovingly of technique in poetry and even treated it with hostility: “We know all these things. They think that all these formal tricks and tricks are unknown to us. We understand them no less and in due time we learned enough about all this.
By the end of 1924, Yesenin's thought about organic art finds its development in an idea that sooner or later illuminates every major creative person.
In a letter to George Sand, Frederic Chopin wrote: "Simplicity comes last". With regard to theatrical art, the talented student K.S. Stanislavsky Mikhail Chekhov concluded: "Four qualities are inherent in a true work of art: lightness, form, integrity (completeness) and beauty."
Yesenin also comes to simplicity (lightness) as a criterion of organic art. “Writing should be as simple as possible. It’s more difficult,” he said to A.K. Voronsky.
For not understanding the essence of art revealed to him, he reprimanded Gala Benislavskaya in a letter from Batumi: “Only one thing lives in me now. I feel enlightened, I don't need this stupid noisy fame, I don't need line-by-line success. I understood what poetry is.
Do not tell me rash words that I have stopped finishing poetry. Not at all. On the contrary, I have now become even more demanding of the form. Only I came to simplicity and calmly say: “Why? After all, we are naked. From now on, I will take verbs into rhymes.
Not everyone is entitled to this. Pushkin, whom he quotes, had. Now he has. Comrade Ya.E. There is no Zeitlin yet, because it stands only at the origins creative way, on the occasion of which Yesenin gives him a creative instruction: “Your talent is unconditional, warm and captivating with its simplicity.Just do not miss the feelings, but also strictly follow the arrangement of words.
Do not take and do not use hackneyed expressions. They can be taken out<ельно>after a big school, then in a skillful frame, in the hands of a skillful master, they look different.
On the face in the context of the poet's fate is an obvious dialectical spiral. By the end of Yesenin's life creative development made a serious natural turn: his first poems were stereotyped and dependent in the sense of imitation. They had to be overcome. He has overcome (transition into the opposite). He fled especially vehemently from stereotypedness when he was an imaginist and sincerely appreciated V. Bryusov for innovation in the fight against stereotypedness. Now Yesenin dialectically - double negation - returns to stereotypedness, provided that it, as a part, exists organically in the structure of the whole. In this state, she not only does not kill the miracle called Poetry; on the contrary, it only contributes to its birth.
In his memoirs, A.K. Voronsky for Yesenin noted this: “His“ simple ”skill was high. Yesenin's poetic lexicon at first glance is unpretentious and even poor, but follow what he does in his poems with bird cherry, with a garden, with a birch: they are always ours, relatives and always look different. Even the hackneyed, stereotyped and stenciled was refreshed in him by the pressure of feelings and captivating sincerity.
A striking example of organic stereotypes in Yesenin's work is the comparison in The Black Man, which is located next to the "neck of the leg" and leads to its solution:
My head flaps its ears
Like the wings of a bird
The image of a bird in literature and music is an extremely hackneyed template. Recall at least the song "The Beatles" "Freeas a Bird" or the lines of Margarita Pushkina performed by the group "Aria":
I am free,
Like a bird in the sky
Not to mention the school-filled "setting point" of consciousness from "Thunderstorm" by A.N. Ostrovsky: "Why don't people fly like birds?"
It would seem that in the first place it would be worth refusing some kind of comparison, so this is the image of a bird flapping its wings. The Imaginists would have done just that, at best. At worst, they would abuse him, as Vadim Shershenevich once compared people with sparrows swarming in litter. But Yesenin consciously takes a risky step and uses a stereotypical association, because his aesthetic sense, the sense of a true artist, whose vision has an internal criterion quality, tells him: it is in this place that the image of a bird is most welcome, because it is organic.
This organicity is of two kinds. Strategically, the image of the bird paves the bridge of anxiety to the second part of the poem, where, transforming, it once again declares itself - the cry of a large sinister bird. Tactically, being born in a natural way - by analogy (association by similarity), it serves as an organic continuation of another organic image - a head that flaps its ears.
But why the ears suddenly turned into wings, the reason this time lies in a different plane. Here, too, association by similarity comes into its own, but the primary stimulus for its birth lies not outside, but inside - in interoreceptive sensations.
You should not write off the fact that both the birth of the idea of the poem and the work on The Black Man proceeded against the backdrop of the poet's alcohol addiction. The latter, one way or another, thematically permeates the later work of the poet.
Hands twirled on the face of the clock.
Sleepy nurses leaned over me.
They leaned over and wheezed: “Oh, you, golden-headed,
You have poisoned yourself with bitter poison.
We don't know if your end is near or far.
Your blue eyes got wet in the taverns.
* * *
I bloomed, I don't know where. In drunkenness, right? Is it in glory?
I liked it when I was young, but now they've left it.
The alcoholic motive does not forget to declare itself in The Black Man as a possible cause (in fact, a consequence) of the protagonist's "illness":
My friend, my friend
I am very, very sick.
I don't know where this pain came from.
Is the wind whistling
Over an empty and deserted field,
Or, like a grove in September,
Showers brains with alcohol.
It is logical to draw a connection between Yesenin's alcoholism and the image of a head waving its ears. And this dependence is very obvious. Least of all it should be taken out directly. To do so is vulgar and primitive. Although, alas, there were and are those who follow the path of least resistance, reducing talent to “madness” and turning a blind eye to the well-known fact that Yesenin never wrote drunk. Moreover, in The Black Man, every word is the fruit of deep reflection and awareness. Yesenin gave himself a full account: what the poem is about; for what it was written; what to do with it and what not to do. Not without reason, passing the manuscript of the poem to his sister - Katya, he punished: "Shura does not need to read this thing."
How, then, in the "Black Man" is there a connection between "waving ears" and the poet's alcoholism? Its presence is veiled or (which is the same) indirectly.
To feel its origin, it is enough to do a simple experiment accessible to everyone. You have to sit down and bow your head on your chest. In less than a minute, sensations of heat and pulsation will arise in the head, radiating to the temples and ears. Provoked by the rush of blood, these sensations organically give rise to an association that chooses the beaten path and leads to a stereotyped image of flapping wings. At the same time, the basis for the similarity between them is the commonality of the impulse to action: there is a certain cyclicity in the strokes, and there is also a cyclical rhythm in the pulsation of the blood. This experiment can be completed. It is better to recreate its further continuation with the help of imagination, imagining that this is a pulsation after exposure to alcohol, dilating blood vessels and thereby leading to increased blood flow, and in addition, when this is all aggravated by headaches ...
Unfortunately, such states were familiar to Yesenin firsthand. Towards the end of his life, more and more often it sounded about him: "Dead drunk." One poor Galya Benislavskaya had to endure so much on this occasion. What is the pitiful phrase of Sergei in one of the drinking parties worth: “I have to go home. Otherwise, the brain will end, it will end here, ”and he pointed to his head.
Anatoly Mariengof, upon Yesenin’s return from abroad, also described the sad scene: “On the cab driver, halfway to the house, Yesenin dropped his head on my shoulder, as if not his own, as unnecessary, like a cold bone ball.
And into the room on Bogoslovsky Street, with the help of a stranger, a stranger, he brought a heavy, brittle, disobedient body. Rolled whites sparkled from the drooping, earthy eyelids. Saliva on the lips. It was as if he had just greedily and sloppily eaten a cake and smeared his mouth with sweet, sticky cream. And the cheeks are completely white. Like a sheet of Whatman paper".
After meeting such Yesenin, it is difficult to disagree with A. Nikolsky, who in the poem "The Black Man" among all other possible meanings of the word "loom" in relation to the head
She has legs on her neck
Looming more unbearable
stops on the meaning of “move in the air, dangle” from the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” by V.I. Dahl.
And in the end, already from the first lines of the poem, given its autobiographical nature, a very depressing picture emerges. The protagonist (in whose person Yesenin himself is represented) sits drunk in front of the mirror with his head bowed. She - weak, weakened, exhausted - dangles approximately the same way as Yesenin writes about her in the spring of 1925:
The nightingale has one good song -
The song is a dirge for my little head.
Blossomed - tambourine, grew - knife,
And now suddenly hung down, as if inanimate.
The head is really upside down. Here comes the hero. At this moment, he experiences terrible pain and anxiety. He fails to identify their cause. It is clear that the pain is partly of alcoholic origin. But it is no less clear that this is just an excuse to find an excuse for her. It's not about the alcohol. The true cause is deeper - beyond the physiological processes.
Here the hero raises his eyes and sees his reflection in the mirror. This is him and at the same time not him, because the reflection is distorted ... in front of him is a Black Man:
Black man
He sits down on my bed,
Black man
Doesn't let me sleep all night.
From the draft editions of the poem, it is known that in its early versions there were lines that were later crossed out:
My friend, my friend
I know it's bullshit.
The pain will pass
Brad will go out, forgotten.
But only from a month
Sparkling silver light
I get another blue
Another in the fog seems to me.
The point, one wonders, was to destroy them, because it sounds harmonious and thanks to these lines, much that follows the meeting of the protagonist with the Black Man seems to fall into place, right down to the broken mirror.
An no. Yesenin meaningfully refuses to recognize delirium. Psychologically, this is a very wise move. The logic here is indisputable.
If all the action unfolding in the poem is nonsense, then the Black Man is a hallucination. The essence of the latter is that the one experiencing it sees something that does not really exist. Therefore, the Black Man is an object that does not exist in reality. This alignment definitely does not suit Yesenin, because recognizing the Black Man as a hallucination means giving an unambiguous answer to the question posed at the beginning of the poem. Question: where did the main character get the disease? Answer: the main character is delirious. With one stroke, the intrigue is completely killed. The mysterious uncertainty that created the artistic effect dissipates.
To admit nonsense ... then the entire ideological context of the work will collapse. Do not recognize ... then the problem - the disease of the protagonist - must be looked at from a different angle. It is already of a moral order; somewhere in the realm of the spiritual and creative; it is in the system of values to which the hero held a reference point; in the way of life that he led; in the actions and deeds that he performed.
Thus, if the poet left the crossed out lines, he would thereby leave no reason for doubt, and anyone who read the poem even superficially would come to the conclusion that I.B. Galant without knowledge of these lines.
“The poem “The Black Man,” wrote the psychiatrist, “gives us<…>a clear typical picture of the alcoholic psychosis that Yesenin suffered from. This is a typical alcoholic delirium with visual and auditory hallucinations, with severe states of fear and anguish, with painful insomnia, with severe remorse and suicidal tendencies. This severe alcoholic psychosis led Yesenin to the suicide with which he ended his sad life as an unfortunate poet on December 28, 1925.
You sincerely envy such psychiatrists: genius ... mediocrity ... indiscriminately ... the answer is almost ready for everything. Yesenin was much more difficult. When he was working on the poem, it was fundamentally important for him to show that the Black Man was not a hallucination. To delete nonsense from the poem is a meaningful, measured action, which was aimed at taking the protagonist out of the field of psychopathology, because the Black Man exists objectively. This is the second reality. Perceptible. He is material. He is the main character. He is an alienated part of him. And therefore, meeting with a Black man is an illusion, that is, a distorted perception of reality, which is often found in the norm, for example, in the syndrome of loss.
Yes, of course, such an illusion - the illusion of embodied awareness (the feeling that someone is supposedly nearby) - borders on a hallucination. Like a disturbing harbinger of delirium, it also needs an eye and an eye. However, she is not yet a hallucination. And whether there is a dangerous transition from one to the other or not, the intrigue remains.
This intrigue has its purpose. Blurring of boundaries, when it is not clear where is fiction and where is truth; where is reality, and where is vision, painfully resembles one phenomenon in which the border with reality is blurred. Yes, yes, we are talking about dreaming.
In the poem, he is given a special place, dramatic in intensity, because the main character suffers from insomnia. Insomnia tormented him. And the illusion in the situation of the latter, as it were, takes on the function of a substitute for a dream, becomes a kind of its surrogate, built (constituted) according to all the laws and mechanisms of a dream.
Now the most important thing: the basic mechanism of dreaming is the key to unraveling the tenth line. This hypothesis is the same sword raised above the Gordian knot.
The matter, in fact, remains small: in order to consistently trace the genesis of the “leg neck” image, one must find that through line in Yesenin’s life, which will be akin to the place where a stone thrown into the water falls. No matter how you throw it, it still ends up in the center of the circle. If one were to appear, it would immediately become clear: where does Yesenin's alcoholism come from; and the concept of the "Black Man"; and illusions of the protagonist of the poem; etc.
Fortunately, there is such a line. We find its concentrated expression in a common phrase familiar to everyone and everyone in everyday life: “ Everything turned upside down". Yesenin's life from early childhood is a series of such upheavals.
First: in the village, all children are like children, whether it is bad or poor, their parents love them; he grew up as an orphan while his father and mother were alive.
The second coup: by nature, Yesenin is feminine - soft and gentle. Among the boys, one has to defend oneself with the methods of a bully and a tomboy alien to the inside.
The third coup (this is already youth): life is a constant “headstand”. No matter how you fight with your mind, there is no point in life. Dear, beloved, full of strength and good intentions, friend Grisha would live and live, but fate took him away. Love is a feeling in which those who love each other are absolutely open, but the beloved (Masha Balzamova) abused his spiritual openness and laughed at him. "People", instead of reassuring him at least a little, "bring offense".
Further: the mentor (Nikolai Klyuev), whom he idealized, whom he looked up to in terms of creativity, turned out to be just an insidious craftsman with a cunning who subordinated the creative to the mundane. A few years was enough to repay in full: the student outgrew the teacher.
Then: best friend- Anatoly Mariengof - swore eternal creative friendship, and the result of the oaths: he betrayed - he exchanged for a woman. Changed the way all women change.
Another coup: about himself and Duncan, disappointed, Yesenin will succinctly say:
I was looking for happiness in this woman,
And accidentally found death.
About the people and Russia:
That's the country!
What the hell am I
Shouted in verse that I am friendly with the people?
My poetry is no longer needed here
And, perhaps, I myself am not needed here either.
These are just some of the "upside down" coups - offhand. However, there are enough of them to feel why Yesenin would write in April 1925:
Let them caress me with a gentle word,
Let the evil tongue be sharper than a razor.
I live for a long time ready for anything,
To everything ruthlessly accustomed.
These heights chill my soul,
There is no heat from star fire.
Those whom I loved have abandoned
What I lived - forgot about me.
So, by the time of the birth of the concept of the "Black Man" in Yesenin's life, "everything has already been turned upside down." Is that the only thing left to pray to God not to die soul and love for art. Life and art - between them for a long time there is an equal sign. However, by the end of 1925 this identity is overturned.
Serezha, why are you drinking? Did you drink less before? - E.A. asked two days before the suicide. Ustinov.
Yesenin replied:
“Ah, aunt, if you knew how I lived these years!” I'm so bored now!
- Well, what about your work?
- Boring work! He stopped, smiling embarrassedly, almost apologetically. “I don’t need anyone or anything—I don’t want anything! Champagne, here it amuses, invigorates. Then I love everyone and ... myself!
All the joy remained that - alcohol. It is clear that this is not an end, but a means. compensation tool. All that has happened; that way of life killed inspiration. He confesses to W. Erlich: “Listen… I am a finished man… I am very sick… First of all, cowardice” and will complain “I have lost the gift”; “What do I have left in this life? Glory? Oh my God! After all, I'm not a boy! Poetry? Is that ... No! And she's leaving me."
After all, alcohol is a compensation for the worst. On December 6, 1925, he will mention in a letter to I.V. Evdokimov: “Now I don’t know what life smells like.”
On the face of a classic existential vacuum - the loss of the meaning of life, where the distorted being gave rise to a distorted consciousness. Naturally, the poet endows the protagonist of the poem with his own spiritual discord, for whom everything is also turned upside down:
"Happiness," he said,
There is dexterity of mind and hands.
All the awkward souls
For the unfortunate are always known.
It's nothing,
What a lot of torment
Bring broken
And false gestures.
In thunderstorms, in storms
Into the hell of life
For severe loss
And when you're sad
To seem smiling and simple -
The highest art in the world".
Instead of being himself, the scandalous poet of the poem plays himself; the natural and organic (one's own self) is replaced by pretense with a tortured one (a false social role).
But once, when he was in his youth, Yesenin was not an example of the hero of the poem " firmly on his feet", he was " head on", him " the head was on the shoulders". So they usually say about a person who actively builds himself and his career, develops creatively, in whose life there are goals, “a lot of the most beautiful thoughts and plans”, who soberly (literally and figuratively) looks at life, for whom everything is stable and stable. Yesenin had it all. His " head was in place.».
And where is it on site? On the neck.
Of course, it is no coincidence that I cited all these turns. The intention of their appearance is to show two kinship relationships: the first is the neck to the head, the second is the legs to the body and the person as a whole. Both there and there have a common thing - the support function. At the same time, the “head on the neck” correlates with the “man on the legs” as a part and a whole.
Now, when the preparations have been made, the moment has come to connect the correlation found with the dream-like state of illusory perception of reality by the main character of the poem and, accordingly, with the psychological mechanism through which the dream work is performed.
Word to Z. Freud: “<…>We have studied the relations between the elements of the dream and its own [content], and in doing so have established four such basic relations: parts to the whole; approximation, or hint; symbolic relationship and visual representation of the word.<…>
The first achievement of the dream work is thickening(Verdichtung). By this we mean the fact that the manifest dream contains less than the latent dream, i.e., is a kind of abbreviated translation of the latter. Sometimes thickening may be absent, however, as a rule, it is present and very often even excessive. But the opposite never happens, i.e., that the manifest dream is greater than the hidden one in scope and content. Condensation occurs due to the fact that: 1) certain hidden elements are generally omitted; 2) only a part of certain latent dream complexes pass into an explicit dream; 3) hidden elements that have something in common, in an explicit dream are combined, merged into one.
If you like, you can keep the name "condensation" for this last process only.
We want. And we see that in a dream-like state, thanks to the work of condensation, the “leg” and “neck” can easily form a single gestalt due to functional similarity. In turn, this gives the right, in relation to a person in whose life everything is normal (“everything is in its place”), who “stands firmly on his feet” and who has “a head on his shoulders”, without any visible difficulties to use the image “ leg-neck" or, which is the same, "leg of the neck".
However, that Yesenin himself by the end of his life, that his direct projection - the main character of the poem - did not differ in stability:
Oh, and now I myself have become somewhat unstable
Moreover, in the life of both everything turned upside down exactly the opposite: it turned upside down. So, after that, the “leg of the neck” should turn over.
Yesenin once did something similar. I remember that in the spring of 1920, the poet gave the mother of one of his children a book with a dedicatory inscription: "Nadezhda Volpin with hope." And after about six months on another book, he accidentally repeated it.
“I should remain silent,” Nadezhda wrote, “after all, repetition only strengthened the meaning. But I could not resist and, as if seeing in the new inscription only a cheap play on words, and even completely devalued by repetition, I said:
- You already made such an inscription for me last time.
- Give me a book! - Yesenin demanded with a heart and entered, squeezing in front of the signature, an additional line. Now you could read:
Nadezhda Volpin
with hope,
that she would no longer be hope.
Sergey Yesenin.
- How would you like to understand this? - I asked.
Yesenin with a challenge:
- I took it and turned it out.
The twist is a very good move. The game of contrasts was generally characteristic of the Imagists, whoever you take. Especially for Mariengof. Yesenin also used contrasts in different ways.
So the “leg of the neck” turns over. In the sixth list of the poem, made by S.A. Tolstoy-Yesenina, “in line 10 it was originally written: “On her neck-leg”, then the hyphen is crossed out and in the word “leg” “e” is corrected to “and”