About the author:
Svetlana A. Seregina, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, А. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 а, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1695-5464
E-mail:
Abstract:
The article analyzes the works of A. A. Block, which became the source of Esenin’s lyrics, as well as his treatise “The Keys of Mary”. At the center of the analysis is the cycle of the Block “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” and his journalism, which was published in the left-wing Socialist-Revolutionary edition “Znamya Truda”. The article reveals the main Block’s ideas, images and motifs creatively perceived by Esenin (the image of the way, ideas about art as a force transforming the world etc.). The author of the article makes a first attempt to briefly analyze the stages of Esenin’s assimilation of the idea of eternal femininity: the author reveals textual links between Esenin’s early lyrics (“To My Princess”, “Dream”) and Block’s works; considers the poem “She Grew up beyond the Distant Mountains...” as the source of “Do not Wander, Do not Crumple in the Рurple Bushes...”. It is proved that the dialogue of meanings and images in both works is a vivid and significant example of literary continuity. A special place in the article is occupied by the topic “N. V. Gogol Тhrough the Еyes of Block” in the perception of Esenin, which previously did not become the subject of special analysis.