Class: 11
Target: to introduce students to S. Yesenin’s poetic works dedicated to Russia, to trace the evolution of feelings for the Motherland in the poet’s lyrics, how the poet’s worldview is connected with the figurative structure of his lyrics.
Tasks: explore the work of S. Yesenin; note the features of the depiction of native nature in poems; find out what place the theme of the Motherland occupies in Yesenin’s lyrics
Teacher's opening remarks:
It is impossible to understand Sergei Yesenin without talking about the theme of the homeland in his lyrics. There are bright and dark periods in every person's life. The poet perceives everything that surrounds him more keenly. Let's see how the poet's worldview is connected with the figurative structure of his lyrics. For this purpose, we will highlight five periods in Yesenin’s life.
1914 -1916 . Love-worship. Yesenin moves to Moscow, then to St. Petersburg. The abandoned and native expanses of Ryazan are dreamed of at night, giving rise to a bright longing for what is abandoned, but gives strength to live and create. During these years, the poet created his brightest poems.
1st block of poems. (Slides 1-9)
1917-1919 Love is a mirage. “Oh arable lands, arable lands, arable lands...”, “Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness...”, “The soul is sad about heaven.”
2nd block of poems (Slides 10-13)
1920 – 1921 A crisis. The poet sees how what is dear and close to him perishes. A tragic worldview gives birth to ugly images, “dark” metaphors determine the nature of poetry.
3rd block of poems: “Sorokoust”, “I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry...” (Slides 14-19)
1922-1924 Far from the Motherland.
4th block of poems: “Moscow Tavern”, “Country of Scoundrels”. (Slides 20-23)
1924-1925 Homecoming. Last years of life. The poet does not expect a gift from her; clouds are gathering over him. The artist does not fit into the Procrustean bed of a system that is gaining speed of the state machine. Too talented, too “direct”, too charming, too noisy - too much in everything.
5th block of poems. (Slides 28-32)
So, the first period is “light”, the second is dark, the third is...? This is the question you will have to answer in today's lesson. What was the poet’s attitude in the last years of his life? How does Yesenin’s lyrical hero of 1924–1925 appear?
Work in groups.
The class is divided into 5 groups. Each received the task of analyzing S. Yesenin’s poems of a certain period and identifying the features of the poet’s imaginative thinking during this period of time. At the end of the lesson, students in each group should format their observations in the form of a table:
Assignment to the first group:
Read the poems written by S. Yesenin in the first period of his creativity (see slides). Find the most striking lines, in your opinion, that reflect the poet’s attitude at this time (1914-1916). Place them as an epigraph above the table. Find the images that interest us in the given poetic texts and arrange them in the form of a table.
What is the image of the homeland and what is the poet’s attitude towards it? Write your answer to this question in the form of a short text or a few sentences, in which you use the images you wrote down to confirm your thoughts.
Assignment for the second group:
Read poems written by the poet in 1917-1919. In poems such as “I’m wandering through the first snow...”, “Oh arable lands, arable lands, arable lands...”, “Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness...”, “Here it is, stupid happiness... , “Oh muse, my flexible friend...”, “Now my love is not the same...”), “Green hairstyle...”, “This is the way it is...”, “Golden foliage began to spin.. .” and in a number of others, at first glance, there are few signs of the times. But the more we listen to their sound, the more clearly we perceive in them the poet’s new spiritual mood:
Oh, I believe, I believe, there is happiness!
The sun hasn't gone out yet.
....................................
Ring, ring, golden Rus',
Worry, restless wind!
(1917)
Select an epigraph for the table and write down in it the most characteristic images that reflect Yesenin’s worldview during this period of creativity.
How does the poet perceive the reality around him?
Tasks for the third group:
Analysis of the poem “Sorokoust”
In the early 20s. Yesenin was experiencing a deep spiritual crisis caused by a lack of understanding of revolutionary reality, and this leaves an imprint on his poetry: motifs of loneliness, mental fatigue and tragic hopelessness appear in it.
In 1920, he wrote “Sorokoust” (Sorokoust - prayers for the deceased within forty days after the death of the Orthodox Church), in which he declares his rejection of the machine and the city. The poem opens with a premonition of a catastrophe approaching the village, which “pulls the fingers to the throats of the plains.” Nature very subtly senses the approach of a catastrophe: it is both a mill and a bull. The image of the enemy in the first part of the poem is not specified, but Yesenin points out its main signs. This is an iron creature, which means it is cold, soulless, artificial, alien to nature.
In the second part of the poem, the image of the enemy grows. This is someone who destroys and breaks everything, bringing a fatal disease called “steel fever” to the village. The poet sharply contrasts the “iron” qualities of the enemy with the insecurity of the old village, dear and dear to Yesenin’s heart.
In the third part of the poem, this conflict is presented as a duel between a foal and a cast-iron train, which the poor animal is trying to catch up with. The poetic lines are permeated with the bitter pain of the lyrical hero, who understands the meaninglessness of the animal’s act. The poet conveys a picture of the world that is changing dramatically before his eyes, a shift in values when an iron monster is bought for killed animals:
And for thousands of pounds of horse skin and meat
They are now buying a locomotive.
(1920)
The motif of violence against nature that appears in these lines is developed in the fourth part of the poem through the motif of death:
My head smashed against the fence,
The rowan berries are drenched in blood.
(1920)
The death of the Russian village is conveyed through the melodies of the Russian harmonica. At first, the harmonica cries pitifully, then the “grieving” appears as an inseparable quality of the Russian harmonica. The lyrical hero of this poem carries within himself all the tremendous pain and bitterness, experiencing the death of the old village and folk culture.
Tasks for the fourth group.
How does the theme of home appear?
Europe and America made a depressing impression on the poet. In one
from his letters he spoke of abroad as “the most terrible kingdom of philistinism...”, where “in terrible fashion is Mr. the dollar, not art... the highest is music hall.” S. Yesenin's views are changing. “There, from Moscow, it seemed to us that Europe was the most extensive market for the dissemination of our ideas in poetry, but now from here I see: my God! how beautiful and rich Russia is in this sense. It seems that there is no such country yet and there cannot be”
The period of his revival begins, very difficult, but fruitful. The poet saw with horror that he “found himself in a narrow gap,” that the Motherland, to which he dedicated his work, no longer needed him, that he had remained aloof from the life of the people, from him isolated himself, became a “stranger” to him. Yesenin strives to overcome this isolation and join the work rhythm of a new life.
Tasks for the fifth group.
Read poems written in the last years of the poet’s life. Write down the most characteristic images in the table, select an epigraph from poems of this period (1924 - 1925).
Make up 6-8 phrases or sentences that would characterize the attitude of the lyrical hero Yesenin in 1924-1925.
List of poems for analysis:
“Low house with blue shutters...”
“Now we are leaving little by little...”
“Uncomfortable liquid moon...”
“Unspeakable, blue, tender...”
“The feather grass is sleeping. The plain is dear...”
“Blue May. Glowing warmth.”
Possible epigraphs:
First group:
- “I meet everything, I accept everything, / I’m glad and happy to take out my soul...”
- “If the holy army shouts: / “Throw away Rus', live in paradise!” / I will say: “There is no need for paradise, / Give me my homeland.”
Second group:
- “Soon, soon the wooden clock will wheeze my twelfth hour!”
- “Hello, my black death, / I’m coming out to meet you!”
- “The world is mysterious, my ancient world, / You, like the wind, calmed down and sat down. /Here they squeezed the village by the neck/ Stone hands of the highway”
Fifth group:
- “And on this gloomy earth / Happy that I breathed and lived”
- “Rejoicing, raging and suffering, /Life is good in Rus'”
- “And this evening my whole life is sweet to me, / Like a pleasant memory of a friend”
Conclusion.
Yesenin is the only poet among the great Russian lyricists in whose work it is impossible to single out poems about the homeland, about Russia, in a special section, because everything he wrote was dictated and permeated with a “feeling of homeland.” This is not Tyutchev’s “faith”, not Lermontov’s “strange love”, and not even Blok’s passion-hate. This is precisely the “feeling of homeland”. In a certain sense, Yesenin is the artistic idea of Russia.
Yesenin deeply knew the life of peasant Russia, was closely connected with the life of the Russian peasantry - all this contributed to the fact that he was able to become a truly people's, national poet and in vivid works say his truthful poetic word about the main events of his era.
Having passed away at the age of 30, S.A. Yesenin left us a wonderful and rich poetic legacy. And as long as the earth lives, Yesenin the poet is destined to live with us and “sing with all his being in the poet the sixth part of the earth with the short name “Rus”.
Homework.
- Write an essay on the topic “The evolution of the theme of the homeland in the lyrics of S.A. Yesenin”
Bibliography.
- Zankovskaya L.V. New Yesenin: The life and work of a poet without cuts and ideology. M., 1997.
- Prokushev Yu.L. Sergei Yesenin: Image. Poetry. Epoch.M., 1979.
- Educational practical work on literature. Ed. T.N. Andreeva. M., Bustard, 2005.
“Sergei Yesenin the poet” - A.A. Block. Hotel Angleterre. Find out the reasons for the popularity of Sergei Yesenin’s work. 1) I. A. Mussky “100 Great Idols of the 20th Century.” 2) Sergei Yesenin. Tatiana and Alexander Yesenin. Sergei Yesenin is a great poet of the 20th century. Yesenin 1915 Conclusion: And don’t teach me to pray. Birch. And your maple bowed its head...
“Yesenin’s Women” - Behind the mountains, behind the yellow valleys A trail of villages stretches. From May 1916 to September 1918 Friend of the poet's youth. And I myself have loved more than one... Sergei Yesenin. What happened to me? And there is hardly a woman who can tolerate such a husband for a long time. Augusta Miklashevskaya. Maria Parmenovna Balzamova. Or do you want to join the braid-branches? Are you a lunar comb?
“Yesenin Pugachev” - What is he grieving about? A word about the poet. “Pugachev” is a poem on a historical theme. The poems show more of modern Russia than the times of Catherine II. Yesenin - Sergei Alexandrovich (1895-1925), Russian poet. What is Pugachev talking about in Yesenin? Prepared by teacher of Russian language and literature Sudakova S.R.
“Lesson on Yesenin” - I rush like the wind on skates Along the forest edge... The border is the fringe of dawn. S. Yesenin “Birch”. As soon as they say - “Sergei Yesenin”, all of Russia’s features will appear... Station “Remember” S. Yesenin “Winter sings - it screams...”. Station "Think it out." Which phrase is missing? Why? pearl birch trees coral branches white snow.
“The Life of Sergei Yesenin” - Museums. The story of the famous love triangle. Look here Yesenin - Reich - Meyerhold. Zinaida Reich and Sergei Yesenin. Here you can get acquainted with unique materials about the death of the great poet. Check yourself. Here you can see photos. AND THERE... the beginning of the mystery... Biography of the poet. Yeseninsky places.
“Poems of Yesenin” - The poet’s parental home has survived to this day. From here an immense expanse of water meadows opens up. At the second-grade teacher's school, the poet received the title of “literacy teacher.” For the 90th anniversary of the birth of S. A. Yesenin, a second-grade teacher’s school was restored. The house with which many pages of the poet’s life and work are connected has also been preserved in Konstantinov.
There are a total of 35 presentations in the topic
The theme of the Motherland is the main one in the poetry of S.A. Yesenin. It is present not only in civil, but also in the poet’s love, landscape and philosophical lyrics. Undoubtedly, thanks to this, his poems became a unique phenomenon for the poetry of the Silver Age. S.A. Yesenin belonged to the “new peasant poets”. For him, the Motherland is, first of all, rural Rus'. “The poet of the golden log hut” - that’s what he called himself.
“Go you, Rus', my dear” is a poem dedicated to the theme of love for the Motherland. The lyrical hero, like a “passing pilgrim”, admires the beautiful landscape, the beauty of the village - “There is no end in sight, only the blue sucks the eyes.” It is worth noting that the color blue is very often found in the poet’s poems - it denotes something divine, heavenly.
For S.A. Yesenin, the Motherland is better than paradise (“No need for paradise, give me my Motherland!”).
The poem “Shagane, you are mine, Shagane” is an example of how love lyrics are combined with patriotic lyrics. The lyrical hero talks about love for a girl - Shagane. However, he remembers his Motherland and tells his beloved about it (“I’m ready to tell you about the field”). He misses his native place, the memories evoke melancholy and sadness (“Darling, joke, smile, just don’t wake up the memory in me”). Thus, in this poem the theme of the Motherland is revealed in a new way - the theme of love and the theme of separation from the Motherland are added to it.
Gradually, the theme of separation is replaced by the theme of returning to one’s native places, for example, in the poem “Soviet Rus'” and in the poem “I am walking through the valley. On the back of the head is a cap.” Despite the fact that the works have a common motive, their moods are different. In the poem, the lyrical hero returns to his village and realizes that he is a stranger here. Now a new era has come in which he has no place, he does not feel connected with the people, with his native places (“I myself am not needed here either”). On the contrary, the poem “I walk through the valley. On the back of the cap" is filled with optimism. The lyrical hero “exchanges” his feather for a braid. He returns to his roots, true values, and feels in his place.
Thus, the poems about the Motherland by S.A. Yesenin are filled with endless love. Even in separation, even feeling like a stranger in his native village, he does not stop loving her. For him, the Motherland is a village, with its own traditions and rules, it is nature - fields and forests, it is simple people. Yesenin reveals the theme of the Motherland in a special way, thanks to which his poetry is original and unique.
Yesenin's lyrics are imbued with love for the Motherland, which is expressed in patriotic poems about Russia and vivid descriptions of its nature. The slide presentation posted here reveals this topic in organizing active cognitive activity in a school literature lesson. Visual materials provide visual information on the topic and instructions for performing educational activities:
Epigraph to the lesson and description of the objectives of the lesson,
Tasks for working in groups,
- “Wood motifs” in Yesenin’s lyrics,
Color painting as one of the characteristic features of the poet’s poems,
Comparisons and metaphors that reveal the life of nature,
Comparative analysis of poems,
Quiz on Yesenin's works.
The 66 slides of the show contain Yesenin's poems and quotes from his autobiography, supplemented by rich illustrative material - photographs, hand-drawn portraits of Yesenin and images of nature, and other thematic pictures.
The presentation will provide an excellent basis for a planned lesson, which will include gaining new knowledge on the topic and consolidating it. Its elements can become a source of information when preparing students for an essay or oral response.
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Presentation on the topic: Theme of the Motherland in Yesenin's lyrics
Slide no. 1
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Slide no. 2
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In all centuries, artists, reflecting on the beauty and wretchedness of Russia, the love of freedom of its life and spiritual slavery, faith and unbelief, sought to create a unique and individual image of the Motherland. For Yesenin, his native land, homeland is central Russia, the village of Konstantinovo is rural Rus' with its traditions, fairy tales and songs, with dialect words that convey the originality of village dialect with the colorful world of nature. The Russian village, the nature of central Russia, oral folk art, and most importantly, Russian classical literature had a strong influence on the formation of the young poet and guided his natural talent. From the very first verses, Yesenin’s poetry includes the theme of the homeland. Sergei later admitted: “My lyrics are alive with one great love, love for the homeland. The feeling of the homeland is the main thing in my work.”
Slide no. 3
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Even in his early, youthful poems, the author appears before us as a fiery patriot. Yesenin’s homeland is the village of Konstantinovo, where he was born, in the immediate vicinity of the village. “The Ryazan fields, where the men mowed, where they sowed their grain,” became his reliable launching pad, the cradle of his poetry. In his soul there is still no idea of his homeland as a social, political, cultural environment. His sense of homeland finds expression in him so far only in love for his native nature. On the pages of Yesenin’s early lyrics we see a modest, but beautiful, majestic and dear to the poet’s heart landscape of the Central Russian strip: compressed fields, a red-yellow fire of an autumn grove, the mirror surface of lakes. The poet feels like a part of his native nature and is ready to merge with it forever: “I would like to get lost in the greenery of your hundred-bellied greenery.” Earthly beauty captured the poet’s young heart. His best early poems smell of spring, youth, full of charming enthusiasm and fun: “It’s a dark night, I can’t sleep, I’ll go out to the meadow by the river. Lightning loosened the belt in foamy streams. On a hill there is a birch-candle, In silver moon feathers. Come out, my heart, listen to the songs of the guslar!” (1911)
Slide no. 4
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Love for Russia is not just a feeling, but also a philosophy of life, fundamental to Yesenin’s worldview. The nature of Russia for Yesenin is something spiritual, living. “I see a garden in blue specks, August quietly lay down against the fence. The linden trees are held in their green paws, Bird noise and chirping.” For a poet, his homeland is everything he sees, feels, everything that surrounds him. That is why it is so difficult and sometimes impossible to separate this topic from others. Yesenin’s feelings for the Motherland are intertwined with feelings for women, nature, and life. Let us remember Yesenin’s poem about a woman, so visibly framed by the autumn landscape: “Even though you have been drunk by others, But what is left for me, what is left for me is Your hair, glassy smoke And the eyes of autumn fatigue.” For Yesenin, nature is a living being, endowed with an equally defenseless soul. Therefore, his poems about women, trees, and animals are equally tender.
Slide no. 5
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I see how, “reflecting, the birch trees broke in the pond,” how “the fir trees, like spears, rested against the sky.” The expanses of fields, the blue of the native sky with floating clouds, the smooth surface of lakes and rivers, “weeping willows”, “green-haired beauties of birches”, “swamps and swamps”, “scarlet light of dawn” - in all this Yesenin saw the beauty of his native land. Yesenin's early poetry captures the image of peasant Rus' on the eve of the Great October Revolution. The poet saw Rus' as meek, sad, and the hard life of the Motherland was reflected in his work: “You are my abandoned land. You are my land, wasteland, uncut hayfield, forest and monastery.” But the sadder these pictures were, the stronger the boundless sound sounded in the poet’s poems. attachment to the Motherland: “Cold grief cannot be measured. You are on a foggy shore, But I cannot learn not to love you, not to believe.”
Slide no. 6
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In the early 20s, Yesenin made long trips abroad. As a result, he felt especially keenly what the Motherland is for a person, and for a Russian person, probably, in particular. Yesenin perceived America as a crazy world of cleanliness and spiritual poverty. And now he is trying to see differently the new Russia he left and cursed: “Now I put up with a lot without coercion, without loss. Rus' seems different to me, Cemeteries and huts seem different.” The poet tries to justify and accept the new Bolshevik Russia: “But Russia... this is a block... If only it were Soviet Power!.. “He wants to believe that Soviet power, socialism will elevate man, that everything is done in his name and for him. It seems to Yesenin that, far from his native land, “the darkness in his heart has finally cleared up.” “I am learning to comprehend in every step / the Commune-raised Rus',” writes the poet. Let's remember "The Ballad of Twenty-Six". The author’s people are “both peasants and proletariat.” The people have one goal: “Communism is the banner of all freedoms.” The poet wanted to find himself in the new Russia, accept it and believe in it. About this - “Song of the Great March”, “Stanzas”, “Anna Snegina”. I have become indifferent to shacks. Now I like something else... Through stone and steel I see the power of my native side.
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The fate of the homeland, the people, especially the multi-million masses of the Russian peasantry in the revolutionary turbulent era - this is what worries the poet, this is what mainly determines the ideological and artistic originality of the poems and poems he wrote in 1917-1918 (“Transfiguration”), “Inonia” , “Jordanian Dove” Here the new world appears either in the form of utopian pictures of a peasant “paradise” on earth, or in the form of a romantic “city of Inonia”, “where the deity of the living lives” and the “revolutionary” faith prevails: “The new one on a mare rides to the world Saved. Our faith is strong. Our truth is in us!” (1918)
Slide no. 8
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Yesenin was in the Caucasus, where he wrote a cycle of lyric poems. The beauty of eastern nature is captivating, the wind is gentle, the poet’s heart is light with his beloved, but thoughts about the Motherland do not leave him here either. They always drag him home. The poet recalls the melancholy of the endless plains, familiar to him from his youth, the song of iron wheels, willows along the roads, barren fields and miserable shacks. This is how a picture of an old village arises, which does not please the eye, but now it evokes in the poet; a ardent feeling of protest and a thirst for renewal of the Motherland: “Field Russia! Enough of dragging the plow across the fields! It hurts both birches and poplars to see your poverty.” The strength and charm of Yesenin’s lyrics lies in its truthfulness, sincerity and sincerity. His heartfelt poems capture pictures of his native nature, his Russian soul and deep love for the Motherland.
