We invite you to the opening of the exhibition about Yesenin, which we are preparing in cooperation with the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Ljubljana and the Celje-Center Gymnasium. The exhibition will be on display on the 1st floor until the end of November 2018.
Who was Sergei Yesenin?
Sergei Yesenin is considered the great Russian national poet of the 20th century. He worked on literature at the edge of a historical turning point and managed to capture the spirit of that tragic time with an unvarnished depiction of disagreements, hopes, contradictions and confusion in society.
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was born on October 3, 1895, in the village of Konstantinovo in the Ryazan region. The ancient village of Konstantinovo, which stretched along the hilly right bank of the Oka River, consisted of several hundred estates. Yesenin's parents married at an early age. His father, Alexander Nikitich, worked in a butcher's shop in Moscow, and his mother, Tatyana Fyodorovna, lived in his mother-in-law's house. The most important people for the poet were his grandfather Fyodor Andreevich Titov and grandmother Natalya Yevteyevna. "I grew up breathing the atmosphere of folk poetry," Yesenin later recalled. He himself said that he began to write poetry very young, at the tender age of eight or nine, and that he began to write poems about nature. In September 1904, the poet began to attend school in his village, where students studied reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, and religious education. One of his classmates remembered him as a man who was given a clear mind, who answered questions clearly and had a special talent for reciting poems. In May 1909, he graduated from school with special praise. His parents wanted him to become a village teacher and in September of that year they sent him to a teacher's college in the village of Spas-Klepiki in the Ryazan province. One of the teachers, EM Hitrov, stated: "His knowledge was more extensive than the curriculum." During this period, the poet also began to consciously create. It was then that the poem was written Stars (Звезды), which surprised all the teachers and showed that Jesenin had a real talent. From the same period we also know a manuscript collection of sixteen poems – Sick thoughts (Больные думы). From then on, the lyrical subject in Yesenin's works is the poet who loves his homeland and wishes it a good fate. At that time, poems were written about nature, such as It's already evening. Rosa…(Вот уже вечер. Роса…), Where there are cabbage beds (Там, где капустные грядки...) and others.
Towards the end of 1912, Yesenin moved to Moscow and a year later began working at the printing house of ID Sitin. It was his publishing house that published the publication Mirok, in which Yesenin first published his work, the poem Birch. Later, more than ten different works of his were published in this and other publications devoted to children's literature. Many poems were dedicated to the tragic situation in which the village found itself during the war and to the beauties of the homeland, for example To howl (Выть) and Be healthy, my native Russia (Гой ты, Русь, моя родная…). The most important work of this period is the poem Russia (Русь), in which he created a generalized image of the homeland and expressed his thoughts on its fate.
From March 1915, Yesenin lived in Petrograd, where he met Alexander Blok. The latter selected six of the young poet's poems for publication. Later, he met other famous writers, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Anna Akhmatova, and Maxim Gorky. According to the memoirs of a contemporary, Yesenin was spoken of in the salons of the time as a miraculous village boy and an excellent poet who unexpectedly appeared in St. Petersburg in a fur coat and grandfather's boots. The main event in Yesenin's life until his conscription was the publication of his first collection of poems, Radunica (Radunica). The poet included 33 poems in two sets: Russia (Русь) and Poppy Tales (Маковые побаски). The collection received very positive reviews from many literary critics. In 1916 he was drafted into the army and until mid-March 1917 he served on the Tsarskoye Selo medical supply train No. 143. He went to the front twice, participated in a concert of the infirmary for the wounded and performed a poem reading before Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
In 1916, his poems began to be published in major newspapers across the country. The themes became farewells to the past, bitter separations from their native lands, and the search for a new path. In 1916-1917, Yesenin became close to peasant poets who promoted the spiritual transformation of Russia. During these years, he wrote the poem Wake me up early in the morning (Разбуди меня затвра рано…), dedicated to the expectation of a new time. He enthusiastically awaited the revolution, and in one of his autobiographies he wrote: “During the revolution I was completely on the side of October, but I understood everything in my own way, with a peasant bias.” In 1917 he married Zinaida Reich, who bore him two children. Three years later the family broke up, which greatly depressed the poet. In 1917 he created a cycle of poems about the revolution, one after the other, which began with the poem Comrade (Comrade) and included works such as Inonia (Inonia), Transformation (Transfiguration) and Arrival (Пришествие). In 1920, a turning point occurred in his poetry, as he felt that the old village world was being destroyed. The poems of this period are filled with sadness and farewells – I am the last poet in this village. (I am the last poet of the village...), Prayer (Sorokoust). The greatest achievement of this period is the creation of great historical poetry Pugachev (Пугачёв), dedicated to the peasant uprising of 1773-1775, which encompassed a significant half of the Russian Empire.
In 1912, the poet met the famous dancer Isadora Duncan, with whom they traveled abroad together in May 1922, which lasted until August 1923. During this time, the poet managed to visit Germany, Belgium, France and Italy. From October 1, 1922 to February 1923, they lived in the United States. Regardless of various problems, the poet worked a lot there. He was engaged in publishing and published several political anthologies. He began writing poems that are part of the book Pub Moscow (Москва кабацкая), and poems Country of misfits (Страна негодяев) and Black man (Черный человек), in which he managed to convey his perspective on contemporary life and art.
After traveling abroad, the mood of his poetry changed. In his autobiography from 1924 we can read: "After my experience abroad, I look at my country and events in a different way." Most of the poems written in the last years of his life have a philosophical character. In the poems Soviet Russia (Soviet Russia), Outgoing Russia (Rus leaving), Homeless Russia (Русь бесприютная) He highlighted life's problems and asked the eternal question - where do our actions take us? These years are a premonition of the future, a prophetic farewell to peers who will say goodbye in the coming years. This motif can also be seen in the poem The answer of the golden grove "The golden grove answered...", written in Konstantinov in the summer of 1924. In the spring of 1924, the poet met Peter Chagin, editor of the magazine Baku worker (Бакинский рабочий), who invited him to the Caucasus. The poet visited Baku, Batumi and Tbilisi in Georgia. In his letters, Yesenin noted at the time: “It is rare in a poet’s life to create so fruitfully and with such ease…”. He signed an entire cycle of poems dedicated to a distant land, full of Eastern themes, permeated with a gentle, mildly sad memory of his native Russia, and called it Persian motifs (Persian motifs). In the Caucasus, the poet wrote over 100 diverse literary works, from poems to epic poems, including one of his finest - Anna Snegina (Анна Снегина). He also published several collections. In 1925, the artist began preparing a comprehensive collection of essays, which he was not destined to see published. The edition with a posthumous dedication to the author on the cover was published only in early 1926, when Sergei Yesenin was no longer among the living.
"My country is thoughtful and gentle..."
exhibition of works from the permanent collection
State Park – Museum of National Importance S.A. Yesenin
(Konstantinovo village, Ryazan region, RF)
Sergei Yesenin – one of the prominent representatives of the Silver Age of Russian literature, a genius of his time. Many literary theorists emphasized during the poet’s lifetime that his very name had become “nominal and symbolic, not only for Russian culture, but also for Russian history”. In the public consciousness, he is primarily a poet – a lyric poet, adored by millions and whose poetry does not leave many indifferent. It is surprising that Yesenin’s work, as a reflection of the soul of a Russian person who lived in a crucial period for Russia, when the preservation of ties with one’s roots and spiritual culture was considered the most important, aroused interest among poetry lovers from other countries. Already during his lifetime, Yesenin’s works were translated into more than 10 foreign languages, and today they have been translated into more than 150 world languages.
The memory of the Ryazan poet is carefully preserved by the State Park-Museum of SA Yesenin, located in the poet's birthplace, in the village of Konstantinovo in the Ryazan Region. Today, the museum is considered one of the largest scientific and memorial museum complexes in Russia and represents a system of museum exhibitions that, together with other historical monuments, form a single memorial space.
The heart of the State Park – Museum of SA Jesenin is the poet's parents' farmhouse, located in the center of the village of Konstantinovo, opposite the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. The reconstructed premises and furnishings take us back to the beginning of the 20th century, to the time when the poet often came home. The windows of the Yeseninov farmhouse look towards the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, where the poet was baptized. In the center of the village is the only restored "Sunday" elementary school in Russia. Sergei Yesenin studied here between 1904 and 1909. The exhibition tells about the role of Sunday schools in the education and upbringing of peasant children, including the future poet. Not far from the farmhouse of SA Yesenin's parents and the Sunday school, surrounded by a park and trees, stands the "house with a mezzanine", which belonged to the landowner LI Kashina. On the 100th anniversary of SA Yesenin's birth, a Museum of the poem "Anna Snegina", which tells about the life of a landowner and her guests, among whom was SA Yesenin, about the creation of the poem Anna Snegina and about its main heroine, whose image researchers associate with the name of LI Kašina. The building of the scientific and cultural center houses an exhibition Literary Museum, where visitors can leaf through the pages of the poet's artistic biography. It was reconstructed in 2010 house of priest IJ SmirnovAn exhibition is organized there. The Poet and the Shepherd, which tells about the young years of SA Yesenin, about the beginning of his creative path and about the great role that the priest IJ Smirnov played in the personal development of the poet. Ninety kilometers from Konstantinov lies the town of Spas-Klepiki, where the building stands two-year teacher training schools, which has been preserved since the beginning of the 20th century. The museum exhibition in the school, which Yesenin graduated from in 1912, tells about the high humanistic traditions of Russian teaching and about the poet's creation of his first and unpublished collection. Today, restoration work is underway on the historical appearance of the entire village, and restoration work is being carried out on the Minakovs' house and the Dorozhkin house, where SA Yesenin lived. In these premises, the restored teahouse, which was located there at the beginning of the 20th century, and in the town of Spas-Klepiki they will restore elementary school.
Today, the S.A. Yesenin State Museum is one of the most visited literary museums in Russia. Every year, its exhibitions attract around 400,000 guests who want to see the birthplace of the Russian lyric poet and the interesting memorabilia from the permanent collection that are presented at the exhibition.
Scientific conferences are held in the museum premises: international scientific symposium »Sergei Yesenin: Personality. Work. Period", conference »Preservation of cultural and natural heritage: contemporary problems and solutions", various festivals and competitions: interregional festival of contemporary art »My place, thoughtful and gentle...", Yesenin Music and Poetry Festival-Competition for Children »The leaves rustle in autumn...", youth theater festival »Time does not erase that from me...".
The museum's permanent collection is regularly replenished with unique items of Yesenin's heritage: books, manuscripts, documents, objects - all this makes up a commemorative collection that presents the personality of Sergei Yesenin at the exhibition. Today, the museum's collection includes more than 30,000 items.
Exhibition »My place, thoughtful and gentle…", dedicated to the life and work of the great Russian poet, is designed to present to visitors Sergei Yesenin's love for his homeland and at the same time show how close his works are to every poetry lover, regardless of his age or ethnicity. Graphic works by VA Shestakov, GD Novozhilov, SL Ushakov, which became part of the exhibition, illustrate Yesenin's poems from different years. Next to them, a portrait of Sergei Yesenin, made by FD Konstantinov, hangs on the wall. Modern photographs give the visitor an insight into the beauty of the Ryazan expanses.
A special colorfulness is added by the things that were part of the interior decoration of Yesenin's birthplace in Konstantinovo: a towel, a spindle and an earthenware jug or "mahotka", as it was called in the village. Special attention should be paid to the souvenirs - glasses that belonged to the poet's mother, TF Yeseninova, and lace made by Tatyana Fyodorovna for the decoration of the house. The image of the poet during his life is illustrated by the jacket, inkwell and pen, as the poet devoted a lot of time to creation, conceptually sharpening each word and emphasizing each intonation in his poems.
The exhibition is complemented by photographs of the poet from different years, from 1909, when the first, today the most famous photograph of Yesenin was taken, to 1925. Particular attention is drawn to the publications of SA Yesenin, among which are Persian motifs (1925), Selected songs (1925), Pugachev (1922).
In addition to books, the showcases will also feature manuscripts of Sergei Yesenin's works dedicated to his homeland. Sergei Yesenin repeatedly said that for a poet there is nothing more precious than his homeland, so love for the homeland and the Russian people has always been the basis of his creativity. This is why Yesenin's poetry was and still is close to many people interested in Russian culture.
Translation: Nina Lazanski