Esenin’s Poem “Us”: Materials for Historical and Literary Commentary

Abstract

The article examines Esenin’s poem “Us” in the context of the poet’s works of 1914– 1917, first of all relating to the national history (“The Song of Yevpaty Kolovrat” and “Martha the Mayoress”). Special attention is paid to the historical sources of the “Us” poem in view of the wide range of Esenin’s readings in the mid-1910s and his classes in 1913–1915 at the History and Philology Department of the A.L. Shanyavsky Moscow State University. Esenin was able to familiarize himself with popular textbooks, songs of the Razin cycle as well as with historical works which pay considerable attention to Stepan T. Razin. At the same time Vasily R. Us was a rare and minor character in works devoted to Razin. One of the first addressed to the image of Us was Kamensky in his novel “Stenka Razin,” published in 1916. But if in Kamensky’s Us is an associate of Razin, in Esenin’s work he is an independent character, and the second central character is Us’ mother.