The First Handwritten Book by Sergei Yesenin Bolnye Dumy: Origins, Creative History, Poetics
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The article is devoted to little-known issues of the history of the first manuscript poetry collection by Yesenin Bolnye Dumy (The Painful Thoughts <1911–1912>). The results of the textological work carried out with the manuscript of the collection, which was restored in 2022 by the Department of Restoration of the Ryazan Kremlin, give reason to assume that all the autographs of the poems were written by the author at the same time. The poet’s desire for ideological and artistic unity is shown in the book already at an early stage of work. The history of the manuscript collection has been reconstructed for the first time. On the basis of the archival and textological work carried out, four stages of early work were identified: the first poetic experiments of 1904–1909, destroyed by Yesenin; student poems of the last years of study at the Spas-Klepikovskaya school in 1910–1912 with the reviews of a friend of his youth Panfilov; preparation of handwritten notebooks for his teacher Khitrov; writing and compiling the first collection. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the ideological and artistic unity of the collection. The 16 poems included in it are united by the image of lyrical hero — a suffering poet. The main motif of pain for all living things and for other people is already reflected in the title and emphasizes the poet’s worldview. Unity can be traced at the motive-plot, compositional, linguistic levels. The book contains motifs typical for Yesenin’s further work.
Author: Elizaveta Apalkova
Institution: Gorky Institute of World Literature
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4410955359