In the January issue of New World magazine in 1926, a stunning
publication: “C. Yesenin. "Black man". The text of the poem made a particularly strong impression on the background of the recent tragic death of the young poet (as you know, on December 28, 1925 Yesenin was found dead in the Leningrad Hotel Angleterre). Contemporaries considered this work a kind of penitential confession of the "scandalous poet." And indeed, the Russian lyre did not know such a ruthless and painful self-denunciation, as in this work. Here is a summary of it.
"Black Man": Yesenin alone with himself
The poem opens with a message that the poet will repeat in a dying poem: “My friend, my friend,” the lyrical hero begins to confess, “I am very, very sick ...”. We understand that we are talking about mental suffering. An expressive metaphor: the head is compared to a bird trying to fly away, “She has no more power to hang around her neck / loom”. What is going on? At the time of tormenting insomnia, a mystical Black man comes to bed and sits on the bed. Yesenin (analysis of the sources of the creation of the poem confirms this) appeals to some extent to Pushkin's work “Mozart and Salieri”. On the eve of his death, the great composer also saw a certain sinister black man. However, Yesenin interprets this figure in a completely different way. The black man is the poet’s Alter Ego, his other “I”. What tormentes the lyrical hero with the nasty Black Man?
Yesenin: analysis of the poet’s inner world on the eve of suicide
In the third stanza of the poem, the image of a book appears, in which all human life is stated to the smallest detail. The Bible, in the
Revelation of St. John the Evangelist, states that when he reads the Book of Life, God judges every person according to his deeds. The letters in the hands of Yesenin's Black Man demonstrate that the devil is closely watching the fate of people. In his records, however, is not a detailed history of the personality, but only its brief content. The black man (Yesenin emphasizes this) chose all the most unsightly and evil. He talks about the "scoundrel and bogeyman", about the adventurer of the "highest mark", about the "graceful poet" with "grasping power." He claims that happiness is only “dexterity of the mind and hands”, even if they bring “many torments ... broken ones / And false gestures”. Here it is worth mentioning the new-fangled theory developed in decadent circles of the beginning of the 20th century, about the special mission of sign language, whose adherent was Yesenin, and whose “queen” was the great dancer
Isadora Duncan. The marriage with her was short-lived and did not bring the poet a blessing. “To seem smiling and simple” at a time when anguish was
tearing his heart apart , he had to not only by the will of the then prevailing fashion. Only in this way could the poet hide from himself the gloom of impending hopelessness, connected not only with the internal contradictions of the individual, but also with the horrors of Bolshevism in Russia.
What lies at the bottom of the soul?
In the ninth stanza of the poem, we see how the lyrical hero refuses to speak with an intruder, he still wants to disown the terrible story that Black Man leads. Yesenin analysis of everyday troubles of "some" moral "rogue and thief" does not yet accept as a study of his own life, he resists this. However, he himself understands that in vain. The poet reproaches the black guest for daring to invade the depths and get something from the bottom, because he is "not in the service of ... a diver." This line is polemically addressed to the work of the French poet Alfred Musset, who in “December Night” uses the image of a diver wandering around the “precipice of oblivion”. The grammatical construction ("diver service") appeals to the morphological delights of Mayakovsky, who boldly broke down established forms in the language in a futuristic manner.
One at the window
The image of the night crossroads in the twelfth stanza recalls the Christian symbolism of the cross, connecting all directions of space and time, and contains a pagan view of the crossroads as a place of unclean conspiracies and charms. From childhood, both of these symbols were absorbed by the impressionable peasant youth Sergei Yesenin. The poems "Black Man" combine two opposing traditions, which is why fear and torment of the lyrical hero acquire a global metaphysical connotation. He is “alone at the window” ... The word “window” is etymologically connected in Russian with the word “eye”. This is the eye of the hut through which light pours into it. The night window resembles a mirror where everyone sees their reflection. So in the poem there is a hint of who this Black man really is. Now the mockery of the night guest takes on a more concrete connotation: we are talking about a poet who was born “maybe in Ryazan” (Yesenin was born there), about a fair-haired peasant boy “with blue eyes” ...
Killing a double
Unable to restrain rage and anger, the lyrical hero tries to destroy the damned double, throws a cane at him. This gesture - to throw something in a haunted line - is more than once found in literary works of Russian and foreign authors. After this, the Black Man disappears. Yesenin (analysis of the allegorical killing of a double in world literature proves this) is trying, as it were, to protect himself from the persecution of his other "I". But always such a finale is associated with suicide.
The poet, standing alone in front of a broken mirror, appears in the last stanza of the work. The symbolism of the mirror, as a conductor to other worlds, leading a person from reality to a deceived demonic world, strengthens the gloomy and significant ending of the poem.
Requiem for Hope
It is difficult, almost impossible, to scourge oneself in front of a huge audience as Yesenin does. His incredible sincerity, with which he reveals his pain to the world, make confession a reflection of the spiritual breakdown of all of Esenin's contemporaries. It is no coincidence that the writer who knew the poet, Veniamin Levin, spoke of the Black Man as a judicial investigator “for the affairs of our entire generation”, who fed a lot of “most beautiful thoughts and plans”. Levin noted that in this sense Yesenin’s voluntary burden is somewhat akin to the sacrifice of Christ, who "took weakness" and bore all human "diseases".