In this week’s reading, I found it very helpful to historically situate the works of Russian poet Sergei Esenin, as I feel that chronological context allows for a deeper textual extrapolation of his rhetorical choices, such as his frequent use of the passive voice. In fact, I noticed that he often omits verbs altogether. After some historical analysis, I found that using passive voice to describe a series of images (rather than the traditional succinct narrative connected by tasteful verbs we often see in Russian Romantic works) is indicative of Russian Imaginism— the literary movement that Esenin himself helped found, alongside scholars Anatoly Marienhof and Vadim Shershenevich (Hirsch, A Poet’s Glossary, 2014). This movement quickly followed the Revolution of 1917— the fall of Emperor Nicholas II, and the rise of The Soviet Union. At this sensitive time juncture, there formed workers’ councils— called soviets—that protected workers’ rights and attempted to give power back to the newfound proletariat. (Klein, “Soviet”,1920).
Throughout all this research, I often found the word “grassroots” repeated over and over, referencing not only the soviets and their constituents, but also referencing the general public’s re-adaption to subsistence agriculture (Carmichael, A Short History of the Russian Revolution, 1964). Reading about subsistence agriculture, or farming focused entirely on the goal of self-sufficiency, revealed various aspects of Esenin’s pieces that I had not originally noticed. For example, most of his selected poems deal with pastoral themes regarding Russian countryside. Many of them begin and end with stream-of-consciousness depictions of desolate farmland. I think that each of these scenes tells a different story, and it is the overall negation of verbs that depicts the void of emotion that poor farmers felt due to economical and agricultural strife during this chronological tipping point.
To begin, I think that “Land of mine in dire neglect…” perfectly introduces us to the superimposed, verb-less phrases used by Imaginist writers when documenting Russian countryside at the onset of the Revolution of 1917. Purposefully trite remarks about a “country run to waste,/ Fields of hay unmown as yet,/ Monastery, estate” (Esenin 2-4) offers the reader a sense of the sad, barren countryside. The sun’s rays are deduced to “foam as shadows fall,” and bright sunset becomes a “tinge,/ Mould of dove-grey hue” (8, 11-12). It seems to me that there is a strong sense of vapidness and desolation described here, despite the lively depictions of “crows” weaving past “windows” (14). There is something backwards here—(much like the backwards syntax, i.e. “crows past windows weave”): despite the liveliness of the crow scene, there is still a large sense of disjointedness that is complemented by Esenin’s truncated, unusual images and their awkward, forced juxtaposition.
Furthermore, it is at the end of this poem that the connection between Russian life and a “fairytale,/ A legend of the past” (17-18). What I take from this ending (up for interpretation) is that the economical and agricultural strife that I mentioned before, along with the constant degradation of the farming class during the 1910s, resulted in a sense of desolation and anguish across Russian farmland/countryside. The quotation “a legend of the past” leads me to think that Esenin attempts to perhaps suggest a nostalgia for the past, i.e. an agriculturally and economically easier time in Russia. I think that it could be the impending revolution and the grassroots dialogue has caused a vacant and distraught environment for not only Russian farm-country, but more generally, the Russian working class.
If I had more space in this blog post, I would love to comment on various other sentiments communicated through the unusual series of images in Esenin’s “Song about a Dog,” “The Hooligan,” “It can’t be dispelled…,” and “The disquiet of vaporous moonshine…” Still, this shorter poem “Land of mine…,” along with our analysis, nonetheless shows how that even though subject matter can denote a certain narrative, the methods that the author takes to express that narrative can potentially alter (or perhaps even reverse) the greater meaning of the text. Weaving crows and a lively snowstorm were both utilized in “Land of mine in dire neglect…” however the overall sentiment achieved in this piece was sad and desolate, due mostly to the sentence structure. In fact, restating this example reminds me of our class discussion on Tuesday about Russian writer Turgenev, and how his elongated sentence structure in “Forest and Steppe,” for example, expresses a long and fluid movement through the Russian countryside. In each of these pieces from both last class and today, meaning follows form, whether that is the sad, barren pre-revolutionary countryside, or the long fluid depiction of the thriving agriculture of Russia nearly seventy-five years before Esenin and his pieces. Each moment in history can be complimented effectively through not just the literary works produced during that time i.e. Russian Imaginism, but more importantly, as a product of the modes and styles in and through which those works were crafted!
Please let me know if you noticed any other interesting literary techniques evolving throughout our selected pieces. Perhaps, it would be interesting to see if there is any simultaneous historical context that could potentially strengthen our textual analyses. Would love to hear from you!