The image that is the Black Man in Yesenin’s poem of the same name in many ways resembles something like conscience. Only as befits a hooligan and an alcoholic and Yesenin’s black conscience, which comes to read out his sins before leaving for another world.
In fact, the poem is more than symbolic and prophetic; it was written in the year of the death of the poet, who at that time felt an extreme decline in his own emotions, disappointment in many ways, despite his new wife, Sofya Tolstoy, who was distinguished by her affection for Sergei Alexandrovich.
In this poem, Yesenin does not seem to associate himself with his own personality; he distinguishes the external image of a “scoundrel and a drunkard,” which evokes “melancholy and fear” with his own internal identity. In a sense, the broken mirror at the end of this poem indicates the hero's refusal to accept the external image as something corresponding to the true state of affairs.
The individual facts cited by the black man, whose image is also described as a monk over the deceased, in connection with which the prophetic connotations of this poem are again observed, do not interest the lyrical hero. Yesenin is not interested in hearing about himself, he does not want to know again the story of a young poet and adventurer of the highest standard. The words of a black man are terrifying, the hero feels guilty of something, probably, this manifests some kind of internal guilt of Yesenin for his newfound fame and various benefits, just as any more or less accomplished and sincere person regularly asks himself whether he is worthy of all this, and here the poet simply proposes a similar question taken to the extreme.
The action of the poem takes place in the space of the lyrical hero’s room; he cannot sleep and is tormented by mental anguish at night. Memories are transferred to various episodes from his own biography, the figure of a black man brings additional confusion. The evil alter ego seeks to spread melancholy and sadness in the poet’s melancholy, but in many ways he himself is engaged in an ironic exposure of his own personality and profession, making fun of some of the characteristics of poets who can read “dead, languid lyrics” without any special need for this.
Of course, the poem for the most part looks like a self-confession. Yesenin managed to capture in it the sensations characteristic of the soul during a period of total decline.
Option 2
Confession is the most intimate action, the most secret and at the same time capable of lifting the soul to the heights. For a poet, confession is an almost continuous action, both personal and public. The poet confesses to himself and to the public because of the need to always remain pure and diligently wash his own soul for the sake of the opportunity to say something really worthwhile, to be something really worthwhile.
In the poem Black Man we see just such a confession by Yesenin. Night, he either stands or lies in front of the mirror, perhaps in a slight alcoholic delirium or an attack of an incipient severe hangover. In the mirror one sees a black man who comes to the poet, this man is himself, his conscience or some fatal guest.
Yesenin himself listens to his own confession, remembers some details of his biography. A forty-year-old woman is a memory of an affair with the actress Miklashevskaya, a slightly playful search for where the poet was from, “maybe in Kaluga, or maybe in Ryazan” - an indication of a rural childhood.
The content contains notes of heaviness and sadness. The poem was written in 1925, when Yesenin, according to a common version, hanged himself, although he was probably hanged by security officers. Therefore, the image of a black man here becomes an image of a premonition of something unkind, some kind of judge who appears and asks for various sins, reads sins from the book of life.
Yesenin treats these notations a little arrogantly and contemptuously.
What do I care about life?
Scandalous poet.
Please others
Read and tell
He looks with light cynicism at stories from a black conscience, although he also does not disdain self-irony and a high degree of reflection. These notes are observed in the description of poets as exhausted by sexual languor, in the understanding of how he can be looked at as a swindler who shamelessly robbed someone, and in the like.
As a result, the poet breaks the confusion, removes the induced illusion, breaking the mirror in which a black man appears. He returns to the normal world, but this world has become different, because “the night has become messed up.” He ends the night confession, just as a monk ends the night vigil.
Analysis of the poem Black Man according to plan
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Goals:
- Educational: formation of conscious skills and abilities to work with text;
- Developmental: development of skills to freely argue their thoughts, development of students’ communication abilities;
- Educating: to evoke sympathy for the tragic fate of the poet S. Yesenin.
Gives me no rest day and night
Sitting.
A.S. Pushkin “Mozart and Salieri”
Lesson progress
1. The teacher's word.
Slide 1. The mystery of the “black man”
The image of the “black man” is one of the most mysterious images of Russian and world literature. The most famous legend is that associated with the name of the Austrian composer Wolfgang Mozart. It says that shortly before his death, a man dressed all in black came to Mozart and ordered a requiem. A requiem is a piece of music performed in churches during a funeral service. The composer began composing music with enthusiasm, but the black man never came to pick up his order. And the great composer was struck by the thought that he was writing the requiem for himself.
“The Black Man” is one of the most mysterious, ambiguously perceived and understood works of Yesenin. The poet began working in 1922, and mostly it was written abroad; in February 1923, the first version of the poem was completed. The poem was finally completed in November 1925, 1.5 months before the poet’s death.
Slide 2-6. The history of the creation of the poem.
Yesenin worked on “The Black Man” for two years. This terrible lyrical confession required enormous tension and introspection from him.
In a top hat and with a cane in front of a large mirror with an indescribable inhuman grin, he talked with his double-reflection or silently watched himself and seemed to listen to himself.
You know that on the night of December 28, 1925, in the Leningrad Angleterre Hotel, Yesenin committed suicide.
Perhaps because we know the fatal circumstances of his death, this poem is now perceived as a kind of requiem for the poet.
Gives me no rest day and night
My black man. Follow me everywhere
He chases like a shadow. And now
It seems to me that he himself is with us - the third
Sitting.
“Who was it? And what does he have in me?” asks Mozart in Pushkin's tragedy. Let us ask ourselves this question too.
2. Expressive reading of the poem “Black Man”
Presentation of reading or video series and reading by Sergei Bezrukov.
Analysis of the poem is accompanied by presentation slides
In the introduction Let's say that you can't extract artistic meaning from a work before you understand its (the work's) genre nature. This is not about a generic feature of the genre, i.e., not about the fact that “The Black Man” is called a “poem” and, therefore, is associated with poetry. We are talking about a specific genre feature - about such a concept of the genre of a work when it answers the question: what is it for? With this understanding, the genre of a work is the essence of a thing, its self-sufficiency. Therefore, a genre should be judged by the problems that required this particular genre for its implementation. Carefully reading the poem, we see that “The Black Man” is an artistic confession of the poet, and, as befits it, a merciless confession, not sparing the pride of the hero of the poem confessing to the reader.
Yesenin's artistic confession.
1. The form of the poem.
a) “The Black Man” is written in the form of an address (letter) to a friend, to whom the hero (the poet himself?) immediately informs: “I am very, very sick” and, in particular, complains about insomnia, the culprit of which he considers a certain Black Man: “Black man/Keeps me awake all night”;
b) in the same form of a letter to a friend, two monologues of the Black Man addressed to the hero of the poem are reproduced. Despite the similarity of these monologues, they differ significantly from each other. The first is almost a panegyric to a certain poet (“albeit with a small / But grasping force”), an adventurer (“But of the highest / And the best brand”), the second contains an accusatory introduction to such a panegyric and the accusation refers to the interlocutor: “I did not see, so that someone / Of the scoundrels / So stupidly unnecessary / Suffers from insomnia”, “And will you read / Your dead, languid lyrics?”;
c) why such a discrepancy in monologues? From revealing from the very beginning different understandings of the life values of the hero and the Black man. Let us pay attention to the hero’s evaluative epithet: “The black man / Runs his finger over the vile book...” and to the attitude of the Black man to the same book: “There are many beautiful / Thoughts and plans in the book.” But we are talking, as it turns out, about the book of life lived by a certain poet, whom the hero of the poem calls “scandalous” and resolutely refuses to talk about him with the Black Man.
The feelings of the hero of the poem.
A subtype can be distinguished in them: premonition. But first, let's talk about feelings. What does the hero experience when listening to the first monologue of the Black Man? Indignation, a desire for him to leave him alone:
Black man! Don't you dare do this!
You're not in the service. You live as a diver.
What do I care about the life of the Scandalous Poet?
Please read and tell others.
What “diving” service is the hero talking about? Obviously, we are talking about the lowlands of the human spirit in which the Black man lives and from which he draws his information.
And why does the second monologue of the Black Man drive the hero of the poem into a rage: “I am enraged, enraged, / And my cane flies / Straight to his face, / On the bridge of his nose...”? Apparently because the portrait that the Black man paints of his interlocutor is too recognizable:
I don't know, I don't remember
In one village,
Maybe in Kaluga,
Or maybe in Ryazan,
Once upon a time there lived a boy
In a simple peasant family,
Yellow-haired,
With blue eyes...
The hero simply cannot help but recognize himself here. He cannot say again: “What do I care about the life / of the Scandalous poet.” That is, if before he did not understand or pretended that he did not understand who he was talking about, now the Black man spoke out to the end - he completely clarified the situation: the “scandalous poet” is he, the Black man’s interlocutor.
As for the hero’s premonition, it is connected with the interpretation of the black man in folk tales and legends. The black man in folklore is a symbol of death. So in the hero’s first address to his friend: “I am very, very sick,” it is no coincidence that this escalation: “very, very,” the hero has a presentiment of death.
3. Black Man's Feelings.
The black man is not the opposite of the hero, as one might think at first. He acts as his other “I”, denouncing the first “I”. His position after the hero’s first rebuff to him is very characteristic:
Black man
He looks at me point blank.
And the eyes become covered
Blue vomit, -
As if he wants to tell me
That I'm a swindler and a thief,
So shameless and brazen
Robbed someone.
After all, the point is that the hero does not recognize himself in the verbal portrait that the Black Man draws for him. That's why - “blue vomit”, “Cheater and thief”, etc. - The black man does not believe the hero.
But the hero’s second rebuff to the Black Man reveals a very unexpected thing: it turns out that the hero of the poem was hallucinating: “I’m standing in a top hat. / There is no one with me.” The cane that the hero of the poem threw at the Black Man broke the mirror!
4. By introducing into the poem the image of a “nasty guest” - a Black man, Yesenin forced him to say the most unpleasant things about the hero. But if we consider that the Black Man is a mirror image of the hero, then we should pay tribute to the completeness of the poet’s confession, the fearlessness of his confession.
III. Pushkin once wrote about the incredible difficulty of public confession: “You don’t love anyone as much, you don’t know anyone as you know yourself... It’s possible not to lie; to be sincere is a physical impossibility...” Yesenin overcame this physical impossibility: his sincerity in the poem “The Black Man” is sustained to the end.
We write down the conclusions in a notebook (demonstrated on the screen):
Thus,
- Yesenin’s “disgusting guest” - the black man - is not only his personal enemy, he is the enemy of everything beautiful, the enemy of man. He personifies the black forces that live in everyone. And it is precisely in this that Yesenin’s black man is close to Pushkin’s image. The beginning and end of the last stanza are marked with ellipses. The end of the poet’s fate will be reached in 1.5 months. Researchers have not yet come to a consensus about the death of the poet.
The poem "Black Man" is deeply individual and lyrical, while the subject of the epic is traditionally considered to be large-scale historical events and generalizations. This is just human life.
S. Yesenin's hero is trying to comprehend his own life in the context of historical time. The structure of the poem is such that the human world is in the center. Hence the leading method of realizing the author's plan is lyrical confession.
The feeling of deep tragedy does not leave us from the first to the last pages of the poem; it is saturated with pain. There seems to be no way out.
This poem was destined to become Yesenin's last major poetic work. It expressed the mood of despair and horror in front of an incomprehensible reality. This lyrical expression of the torment of the soul, the poem is one of the mysteries of Yesenin’s work. The image of the “worst guest” - the black man - has several literary sources. Yesenin acknowledged the influence on his poem “Mozart and Salieri” by Pushkin, where a mysterious black man appears.
Drawing up an associative series with the word “black” (black envy, black rumor, black night, black soul, etc.)
Signs of a black person’s appearance (what is his voice, movements, clothes, appearance)
Is the image pleasing to the eye, the ear, or repulsive? There are no details of ugly appearance. Why didn't you like this image? Does the lyrical hero of the poem like this uninvited night guest? What feelings does the lyrical hero experience before the guest arrives? Find words in the text that convey his internal state.
Student answers.
Let's consider the sound and auditory subject range of the poem. This was your homework.
What do you think a person might experience while in such an atmosphere?
Do fear and loneliness increase or disappear with the appearance of a night guest?
What feelings does the lyrical hero experience after the arrival of the night guest (confirm with text)?
The lyrical hero does not want to see or hear a black person. He is unpleasant, scary, disgusting to him. Why?
How many times a night does a black man come? Why is he so intrusive? What does he want from the lyrical hero? The purpose of his visit? What is he accusing? And does he accuse? Or is he hinting?
Teacher: Be that as it may, it is very important that after our conversation with you, everyone has their own Yesenin in their soul. For some he is a hooligan, but for others he is a “singer of a log cabin.”
Homework: A written answer to the question: “What, in your opinion, is hidden behind the image of the “black man”?”
“Black Man” by Yesenina S.A.
History of creation The poem "" says a lot about the work. According to some contemporaries, the original version was longer and even more tragic. The poet’s wife, Sofia Tolstaya-Yesenina, spoke about how he read the poem immediately after writing: “It seemed like his heart would break.” It is unknown what prompted Yesenin to destroy the rough sketches and leave the shortened version, however, it is striking in its depressive power.
The first reading leaves an almost painful impression: attempts by an inflamed consciousness to analyze itself, a split personality, alcoholic delirium. But the work on the poem lasted a long time; “The Black Man” is not a stream of thoughts that poured onto paper overnight. The idea arose during Yesenin’s foreign trips, where he, who loved his native land to the point of frenzy, could not help but feel alien and unnecessary. And the black melancholy, which by those days was increasingly overpowering the poet, intensified this feeling and gave terrible inspiration.
The year the poem was completed - 1925 - is the last year of Yesenin’s life. Such sincere introspection, frightening in its gloominess, cannot be found in Russian poetry, and only the premonition of the end of life’s journey can give such depressing colors to a work.
At the beginning of the poem there is an appeal "My friend, my friend", the same as in his last poem, created before his death. And the reader immediately, even in the introduction, finds himself drawn into the action of the poem, as if actually listening to the confession of a friend. The hero of the poem does not spare himself and from the first lines admits that the cause of mental illness, the arrival "black man" maybe alcohol, but then it speaks of one’s own promiscuity and self-deception. And this is not a picture of repentance, but a simple confession that makes you sincerely feel sorry for such a person.
Painful metaphor "The head flaps its ears like a bird's wings", and to her “I can’t bear to have my legs hanging on my neck anymore”, refers to suicidal thoughts, and the next one is refrain "black man" pumps up the mood to the limit, preparing for its appearance. That's it, I've arrived! He sits down on the bed... and then - a scattering of unpleasant words that reinforce the gloomy mood: "vile", "nasally", "deceased","yearning", "fear".
Direct speech "black man", this frightening second “I” of the hero of the poem, are perceived as a revelation, a confession of what the soul is trying to hide from itself. Not only reproach, but also praise: "adventurer of the best brand", "a poet with tenacious strength"... and then the caustic mockery - oh “a woman of over forty years old, a bad girl, his sweetheart”. The hero listens without interrupting, and the black man explains the poet’s life and reveals her self-deception: in melancholy and despondency, he tries his best to appear smiling and simple, and tries to pass it off as happiness. Here his speech is still interrupted: the lyrical hero refuses to recognize himself in the eerie portrait! And the black man, looking point blank, wants to call him a swindler and a thief, but - pause, the terrible guest disappears.
The second part of the poem begins with a repetition of the initial melancholy stanza, but the further description is quite calm. A quiet winter landscape, night, the hero is not waiting for anyone, standing at the window... And suddenly horror creeps up again: "sinister bird", "wooden horsemen", And - “again this black guy sits on my chair”, now described more clearly, in a top hat and frock coat. The denunciation of the hero is repeated, a scattering of words "scoundrel", "no need", "stupid", "dead languid lyrics". At the climax of the poem, the black man attacks what is most important, the essence of inspiration and poetry. “Like a pimply student, a long-haired freak talks about the worlds, his sexual languor is expiring.”, is a direct insult and humiliation! And so that there is no doubt about who the uninvited guest is referring to, an exact description follows: “a boy in a simple peasant family, yellow-haired, with blue eyes... he became an adult, and also a poet”. And the hero can’t stand it: enraged, enraged, he throws his cane “straight to his face, on the bridge of his nose”…
Next - short and dramatic denouement, upon first reading it strikes the reader as a surprise. “What have you done, night? I'm standing in a top hat. There is no one with me. I’m alone... And a broken mirror..." Two parts: the cylinder that was put on "black man", and the mirror undoubtedly indicate that the hero was having a terrible conversation with himself. And immediately the picture of exposure and censure becomes even more tragic: how, aware of all this and diligently hiding it from oneself, was it possible not to go crazy and continue to write?!
The poem becomes extremely valuable - Yesenin’s frank confession, and he himself becomes close and understandable. And even his tragic death appears in a different light after reading “The Black Man” - requiem poet to himself.
Sergei Yesenin’s work “The Black Man” is often called by researchers and literary scholars one of the most mysterious poems of the twentieth century in Russian literature. Already from the first lines, it intrigues, bewitches, immerses you in the world of mysterious visions, spiritual quests, ghosts of the past, doubts that torment the author’s soul... This is the path into Yesenin’s inner world, into the world of his life’s quests and aspirations to know the whole tragic essence of existence. The poem is read in one breath, keeps you in suspense until the very end and after reading leaves more questions than answers.
It may seem that this poem, this ecstatic cry of the soul, this powerful force of thought, was born in one night, in one evening, when everything that the poet wanted to express to us suddenly suddenly burst out of his soul and, like a hurricane whirlwind, instantly carried away behind you.
The first reading leaves an almost painful impression: attempts by an inflamed consciousness to analyze itself, a split personality, alcoholic delirium. But in fact, the work on the poem lasted a long time; “The Black Man” is not just a stream of thoughts that poured onto paper overnight. The idea arose during Yesenin’s foreign trips in 1922-1923, where he, who sincerely loved his native land, could not help but feel alien and unnecessary. And the black melancholy, which by those days was increasingly overpowering the poet, intensified this feeling and gave terrible inspiration. In his notes, Yesenin also mentioned that the creation of this work was influenced by Pushkin’s “little tragedy” “Mozart and Salieri”.
Yesenin had a presentiment of his imminent death; anxious doubts did not leave him until his death. Like Mozart, he, Yesenin, also saw a certain ominous black man on the eve of his death. In November 1925, the poet reworked the poem to the end, leaving it as we see it now. How does the bad Black man torment the lyrical hero?
The poem opens with an appeal that the poet will repeat in his 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. The metaphor is expressive: the head is compared to a bird trying to fly away, “It can no longer bear to loom its legs on its neck.” What's going on? During a time of tormenting insomnia, a mystical Black man comes to the hero and sits on his bed: 
Black man
Black, black,
Black man
He sits on my bed,
Black man
Doesn't let me sleep all night.
Black man
Runs his finger over the disgusting book
And, nasal at me,
Like a monk over the deceased,
Reads my life
Some kind of scoundrel and drunkard,
Causing melancholy and fear into the soul.
Several times, as if in delirium, Yesenin repeats the color designation “black,” thickening the colors even more, reflecting the entire tragedy of the situation. From the above passage one can see a ghostly Black man reading the “vile book” of life, as if scolding the lyrical hero for his sins, calling him a “scoundrel and a bogeyman.” The Bible, in the Revelation of John the Theologian, says that, reading the Book of Life, God judges each person according to his deeds. The letters in the hands of Yesenin’s Black Man demonstrate that the devil also closely monitors the destinies of people.
It should be noted that the Black Man, as a manifestation of a devilish, sinister force, reads only the most negative and gloomy moments from the book, trying to ridicule everything and turn it inside out.
We see the Black Man's story about the life of Yesenin himself, written with deep self-irony, even self-disgust. In the person of the Black Man, the author bitterly ridicules himself for the fact that he could not realize “many wonderful thoughts and plans”, for his simplicity of soul, for openness, honesty, or even childish naivety, for grace... The Black Man did not bypass the way of life in society, the system that Yesenin opposed completely alone, trying to bring light, joy and love in his work:
This man
Lived in the country
The most disgusting
Thugs and charlatans.
And just below follow the lines that have become a famous aphorism, which perfectly reflect the entire instructions for survival in the existing “order”:
In thunderstorms, in storms,
Into everyday shame,
In case of bereavement
And when you're sad
Seem smiling and simple -
The highest art in the world."
The hero tries to drive away the Black man:
“...What do I care about life?
Scandalous poet.
Please others
Read and tell."
It is noteworthy that even in moments of torment of the soul of the Black Man, the poet is able to notice what is happening outside the window. This is “the wind that whistles over an empty and deserted field”, this is “horses are trees”, this is “the cry of an ominous night bird”. When reading the poem, one involuntarily recalls Pushkin’s lines from the poem “Demons”, depicting a similar tense situation for us: restless nature, blizzard, frost, gloomy and blurry outlines. Subtle landscape sketches also convey the psychological state of the lyrical hero: loneliness - the cry of a bird (by the way, according to popular superstitions and beliefs, this has always been an unkind sign); anxiety - blizzard; anxiety, excitement - “the hoofbeat of wooden horsemen.” Even in his beloved Russian nature, the poet cannot find consolation for himself; it seems to be a reflection of his mental torment.
The image of a night crossroads is reminiscent of the Christian symbolism of the cross, connecting all directions of space and time, and contains the pagan idea of the crossroads as a place of unclean conspiracies and enchantments. The word “window” is etymologically connected in Russian with the word “oko”. This is the eye of the hut through which light pours into it. The night window resembles a mirror where everyone sees their own 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 specific 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.”
The composition of the work is similar to circles in a closed ring. The lyrical hero, whose soul is squeezed by the ring of despair, wanders inside him in the circles of torture of the Black man. What are these circles? Twice he mentions “some woman of over forty years old”, twice the stanza beginning with the words “my friend, my friend….I am very, very sick…” is repeated twice, the Black man “mumbles” twice “listen, listen...” Thus, the hero rushes about, unable to find a way out not only from the circles of internal contradictions, but also from the outer ring of reality, he is also unable to escape.
The final answer to who the black man is is revealed to the reader only at the end of the poem, when the “furious and enraged” hero throws his cane at the devil who was tormenting him and is left alone with himself and the broken mirror. A broken mirror is not only a symbol of misfortune and imminent death. This is a rather multifaceted image, reflecting both one’s own face and internal contradictions, it is a magical object that takes a person to another world, through the looking glass, but where there is witchcraft, there is also devilry.
Some time after the death of S. Yesenin, his last work was published - the poem “The Black Man”. It's no secret that the poet had a presentiment of his death several years in advance, which he often mentioned in his poems. And this monumental work was no exception: in it the author prophesies death and the spiritual crisis that became its forerunner.
Yesenin began working on this poem back in 1923, but, according to his contemporaries, it turned out to be too big and gloomy. What prompted the author to shorten it remains a mystery, but even in its simplified version, the work is shocking with its depressiveness and depth of suffering. The history of the creation of the poem “The Black Man” is closely intertwined with its plot. At that time, the poet already had problems with alcohol, which were also reflected in the text. His loved ones were seriously worried about him, because every day the internal discord became more obvious, the work became darker, and the creator himself behaved more and more nervously and restlessly.
Work on the creation of the work began during the American tour, after which a continuous black streak began in the poet’s life. He felt that the new government was alien to him, that Soviet Russia did not need him, that everyone was waiting for the subtle lyricism of his poetry to replace revolutionary marches. In addition, there was a bitter aftertaste from the breakup with Isadora Duncan. All these events and moods formed the basis of the poem. In 1925, “The Black Man” was completed, and was published for the first time in the magazine “New World” for January 1926.
Genre, size and composition
The creation is an appeal, a message from the lyrical hero to a friend, to whom he informs from the very beginning that he is “very sick.” The monologues of the man in black are written in the same form, in which he addresses the author of the letter. Using this method, Yesenin shows the attitude to life of two characters. The composition in the poem “The Black Man” is dialogical, reminiscent of a play - it represents a conversation between two characters, in which the poet’s remarks are interspersed, indicating what should happen on stage during the conversation. There is also a prologue and an epilogue: an introduction (address to a friend) and a conclusion (the disappearance of the guest and the debunking of the mirage). The main part is divided into two actions.
The theatrical composition is not typical for this kind of work, because the genre chosen by Yesenin is the lyric epic poem. It shows not only the internal state of the narrator, but also depicts his story, that is, a very specific plot appears.
The work is written using a tonic versification system based on an equal number of stresses in a line. The size of the poem “Black Man” is dolniks.
Issues
- Disappointment. The main question that the author raises is a critical look from the outside at his own insignificance. A kind of summing up of life. The man in the top hat is not the personification of death; he does not want to harm the lyrical hero. With the help of his image, the poet wants to look at himself from the outside, to realize how he lives. The poem became Yesenin’s full-scale confession before his death. Accordingly, the main problem of “The Black Man” is revealed to us - disappointment in oneself.
- Alcoholism. In the epilogue, the author dispelled dark fantasies; his judge turned out to be a leading man, an alcoholic nightmare. He very self-critically notes that he was at war with the mirror, that is, the black man is his alter ego, which exposed itself. Other thoughts come to him under the influence of alcohol, and it is obvious that the effect of hallucination completely took over the narrator for some time. And he himself admits that he is already sick of it.
- Debunking love. “The nasty girl of over forty” is Isadora Duncan, a dancer with whom Yesenin had an affair. It ended, and the poet realized that he was mistaken in his feelings, and, perhaps, in his beloved. In any case, he sarcastically mocks his passion, showing the contrast between who he imagined and who he really was with.
- Disappointment in creativity. The author calls his lyrics “dead and languid,” emphasizing that they only serve to seduce pimply female students.
What's the point?
By introducing a double into the book, who, according to the writer’s idea, says the most terrible things about the lyrical hero, the poet exposes all his vices. A.S. Pushkin once wrote about the difficulty of confessing in public, and I would like to say that Yesenin managed to fully express his sincerity in this matter, despite the difficulty. He spared neither love, nor creativity, nor himself. The meaning of the poem “Black Man” is an attempt to ease the soul before death. The author believed in only one god - art, so he presented his final repentance to him.
His soul was scorched like the field that he wanted to tell Shagana. He takes turns to violate everything that is dear to him and devastates his heart, he does not want to feel pain and disappointment anymore. His creativity dried up, his stormy life burned him out, because he lived for three people - there were so many impressions in his life. But he did not leave without a trace; in the last lines he breathed his entire essence, giving it immortality.
Means of expression
The poet actively uses such means of artistic expression as metaphors: “Alcohol showers the brain.” This is how he depicts the autumn of his own life, the withering and death of body and soul. The suicidal comparison also remains not indifferent, as if the author was already thinking about hanging:
My head is waving my ears,
Like a bird with wings.
She can no longer bear the presence of her legs on her neck.And, nasal at me,
Like a monk over the deceasedEpithets evoking melancholy and fear are also presented in abundance in the work: “sinister bird”, “broken and deceitful gestures”. Also, there were personifications that interpret nature in unison with the poet’s gloomy worldview: “wooden horsemen”, “What have you screwed up, night?” In addition, jargon is striking, which adds drama and frankness to the narrative: “crook”, “muzzle”, “scoundrel”, etc.
But the kings of the means of artistic expression in the poem “The Black Man” are repetitions, not only lexical, but also compositional (the first and second parts begin with the words “my friend, my friend...”). For example: “listen, listen”, “black man, black man”, etc.
Black Man - Yesenin's Requiem
The poem became the most merciless self-accusation in Russian literature. Many compare this creation with Mozart's Requiem, the last work of the great composer, in which he expressed the abyss of his despair. Yesenin did the same in “The Black Man,” which is why the book is so attractive to his biographers.
In every line one feels the inevitability of what is happening; from the very beginning he talks about his poor health, and not physical, but mental. At the end, a secret is revealed to us: the man in coal gloves is the lyrical hero. He realizes the bitterness of the situation from which there is no way out. Endless self-deception, hypocrisy in public, designed to demonstrate to everyone that everything is fine - all this led him to a dead end. Pride did not allow me to complain or seek leniency. The narrator carefully hid the drama of his soul, no one helped him cope with it, and now he doesn’t even have the strength to ask for friendly participation, he never finished his message, because phantoms overcome him. “The greatest art in the world” turned into the greatest suffering in the world, which he could only express posthumously.
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