The hens cluck restlessly over the shafts of the plow. Sergey Yesenin - In the hut: Verse

22.03.2024 | Secondary education

“In the hut” Sergei Yesenin

It smells like loose hogweed;
There's kvass in the bowl at the doorstep,
Over chiseled stoves
Cockroaches crawl into the groove.

Soot curls over the damper,
There are threads of Popelitz in the stove,
And on the bench behind the salt shaker -
Raw egg husks.

Mother won't cope with her grips,
Bends low
An old cat sneaks up to the makhotka
For fresh milk.

Restless chickens cluck
Above the shafts of the plow,
There is a harmonious mass in the yard
The roosters are crowing.

And in the window on the canopy there are slopes,
From the timid noise,
From the corners the puppies are shaggy
They crawl into the clamps.

Analysis of Yesenin’s poem “In the Hut”

The poem “In the Hut,” written in 1914, is an excellent example of an everyday sketch about village life. This work was appreciated by many critics, Yesenin’s contemporaries, immediately after it was published. Bukharova noted that the lines fascinate primarily with their spontaneity. In her opinion, Sergei Alexandrovich found new themes, words, pictures. The dialectisms found in the text seemed to her more “accurate, colorful and apt” than the “vulgar pretentious word formations” of Severyanin, Mayakovsky and other similar authors. Vengerov wrote that Yesenin managed to turn the simplest things into “the gold of poetry.”

As mentioned above, the poem presents peasant life. Sergei Alexandrovich paints a realistic picture filled with interesting details. The poet acts as an attentive observer who is able to notice and convey even the smallest details. The hut and the yard are a place of harmonious coexistence of people and animals. First, the lyrical hero draws the readers' attention to perhaps the main person in a peasant house - the mistress (mother). Then he moves on to the most important inhabitant of the house, if we talk about pets, the old cat. Next, the action moves to the courtyard. There, too, life is in full swing - the chickens are clucking, “the roosters are singing a slender mass,” “the shaggy puppies are crawling into the collars.” The poem shows with what love and tenderness Yesenin treats the simple village people. In the house depicted in the text, there live people who are not rich, but hardworking, who know the true price of bread and know how to earn money for it.

The creation of a rustic flavor is not least facilitated by the use of dialectisms. To find out the meaning of some of them, the modern reader will have to consult a dictionary. For example, a dezhka is a tub for dough, kvass; dracheny – baked flatbreads made from potatoes or wheat porridge; popelitsa - ash; makhotka – a pot in which kvass or milk is stored.

Yesenin turned to the theme of the village throughout his entire creative career. Its development is especially interesting in the context of the poet’s perception of the October Revolution. At first, Sergei Alexandrovich rejoiced at the Bolsheviks coming to power. He sincerely believed that the overthrow of the emperor would lead to the final liberation of the peasants from the oppression of the rich. After some time, Yesenin realized his mistake. The poet was never able to accept industrialization, which was sweeping across the country by leaps and bounds.

It smells like loose hogweed;
There's kvass in the bowl at the doorstep,
Over chiseled stoves
Cockroaches crawl into the groove.

Soot curls over the damper,
There are threads of Popelitz in the stove,
And on the bench behind the salt shaker -
Raw egg husks.

Mother won't cope with her grips,
Bends low
An old cat sneaks up to the makhotka
For fresh milk.

Restless chickens cluck
Above the shafts of the plow,
There is a harmonious mass in the yard
The roosters are crowing.

And in the window on the canopy there are slopes,
From the timid noise,
From the corners the puppies are shaggy
They crawl into the clamps.

Analysis of the poem “In the Hut” by Yesenin

Yesenin very quickly gained recognition in the literary circles of Moscow and Petrograd thanks to his “village lyrics”. In 1914, he wrote the poem “In the Hut,” which he loved to read at literary evenings. The poet's original reading style made a great impression on his listeners. Even more unusual and attractive was Yesenin’s appeal to the image of the village. At that time, representatives of the poetic bohemia had absolutely no idea about the most elementary folk subjects. The common Russian language was less understandable than the foreign language. Contemporaries recalled that after reading the work “In the Hut,” Yesenin had to explain the meaning of many words and expressions.

The poet describes the ingenuous atmosphere of simple village life. Almost all the action takes place in the house. The enormous warmth and tenderness of the lyrical hero in relation to his native hut immediately catches the eye.

Khata is presented in the image of a small self-sufficient world in which special laws apply. Everything that happens in it has its own secret meaning. Even “cockroaches crawling into the groove” do not cause disgust, since they are an obligatory detail of the situation. By listing ordinary peasant household items (flap, grips, shafts), Yesenin raises their significance and allows the reader to feel the attractiveness of village life.

The image of one’s own mother—the keeper of the hearth—has a special meaning. The physical load on a peasant woman was not much different from that of a man. In addition to general work, she had to take care of feeding the whole family and raising children. The mother in the poem “can’t cope with the grips.” Yesenin only hints that the eldest woman in the family got up long before dawn, spending the whole day in worries.

Yesenin was very fond of animals, especially domestic ones. He believed that peasants, spending their entire lives side by side with our “little brothers,” were much closer to learning all the secrets of nature compared to city dwellers. Communication with animals makes a person cleaner and kinder. The second half of the poem is entirely devoted to the numerous peasant fauna.

The “old cat” has long become a full-fledged member of the family, feeling like the master of the house. The clucking of many chickens does not stop in the yard. The lyrical hero generally compares the crowing of roosters with a religious image (“harmonious mass”). In this rich world, life is in full swing: “from the corners, shaggy puppies crawl into the collars.”

In the finale, the author uses a very vivid image - “fearful noise”. Many contemporaries noted that it is central to the entire work. Literary critic I. Rozanov, after the next public reading of Yesenin, recalled that he could not sleep for a long time, continuing to admire the “fearful noise” from memory.

It smells like loose pucker,
There's kvass in the bowl at the doorstep,
Over chiseled stoves
Cockroaches crawl into the groove.

Soot curls over the damper,
There are threads of Popelitz in the stove,
And on the bench behind the salt shaker -
Raw egg husks.

Mother won't cope with her grips,
Bends low
An old cat sneaks up to the makhotka
For fresh milk.

Restless chickens cluck
Above the shafts of the plow,
There is a harmonious mass in the yard
The roosters are crowing.

And in the window on the canopy there are slopes,
From the timid noise,
From the corners the puppies are shaggy
They crawl into the clamps.

Read by R. Kleiner

Rafael Aleksandrovich Kleiner (born June 1, 1939, village of Rubezhnoye, Lugansk region, Ukrainian SSR, USSR) - Russian theater director, People's Artist of Russia (1995).
From 1967 to 1970 he was an actor at the Moscow Taganka Drama and Comedy Theater.

People's Artist of the Russian Federation (1995), Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1989), Laureate of artist-reader competitions (1975, 1980). Member of the artistic council of the Literary and Reading Association of the Moscow State Academic Philharmonic, member of the board of the Moscow Philharmonic, member of the board of the Central House of Artists. In 1980-1982 was Chairman of the Board of the Moscow Reader's Club. Since 1999, he has been the permanent director of the school-studio “The Word of Pushkin” at the State Literary Museum of A. S. Pushkin, professor of the department of oral and stage speech at the Moscow State University of Culture and Art (MGUKI) and the Institute of Humanitarian Education (IGUMO). In 2000, he became the first reader laureate of the Moscow Prize in the field of literature and art, laureate of the international festival (2002) “Socrates and World Culture”, as well as the Fourth International Festival of Monocle Performances (2003). For about 20 years, the author and director of Raphael Kleiner’s programs was the poet David Samoilov. Has two sons: Alexander Rafaelevich Kleiner, 20 years old, Vladimir Rafaelevich Kleiner, 13 years old. Currently director and screenwriter of the Moscow Philharmonic

Yesenin Sergei Alexandrovich (1895-1925)
Yesenin was born into a peasant family. From 1904 to 1912 he studied at the Konstantinovsky Zemstvo School and at the Spas-Klepikovsky School. During this time, he wrote more than 30 poems and compiled a handwritten collection “Sick Thoughts” (1912), which he tried to publish in Ryazan. The Russian village, the nature of central Russia, oral folk art, and most importantly, Russian classical literature had a strong influence on the formation of the young poet and guided his natural talent. Yesenin himself at different times named different sources that fed his work: songs, ditties, fairy tales, spiritual poems, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” the poetry of Lermontov, Koltsov, Nikitin and Nadson. Later he was influenced by Blok, Klyuev, Bely, Gogol, Pushkin.
From Yesenin's letters from 1911 to 1913, the complex life of the poet emerges. All this was reflected in the poetic world of his lyrics from 1910 to 1913, when he wrote more than 60 poems and poems. Here his love for all living things, for life, for his homeland is expressed (“The scarlet light of dawn was woven on the lake...”, “Flood filled with smoke...”, “Birch,” “Spring Evening,” “Night,” “Sunrise.” ”, “Winter is singing - it’s calling...”, “Stars”, “Dark night, I can’t sleep...”, etc.)
Yesenin's most significant works, which brought him fame as one of the best poets, were created in the 1920s.
Like any great poet, Yesenin is not a thoughtless singer of his feelings and experiences, but a poet and philosopher. Like all poetry, his lyrics are philosophical. Philosophical lyrics are poems in which the poet talks about the eternal problems of human existence, conducts a poetic dialogue with man, nature, earth, and the Universe. An example of the complete interpenetration of nature and man is the poem “Green Hairstyle” (1918). One develops in two planes: the birch tree - the girl. The reader will never know who this poem is about - a birch tree or a girl. Because the person here is likened to a tree - the beauty of the Russian forest, and she is like a person. The birch tree in Russian poetry is a symbol of beauty, harmony, and youth; she is bright and chaste.
The poetry of nature and the mythology of the ancient Slavs permeate such poems of 1918 as “The Silver Road...”, “Songs, songs, what are you shouting about?”, “I left my native home...”, “The golden foliage began to spin...” etc.
Yesenin's poetry of the last, most tragic years (1922 - 1925) is marked by a desire for a harmonious worldview. Most often in the lyrics one feels a deep understanding of oneself and the Universe (“I don’t regret, I don’t call, I don’t cry...”, “The golden grove dissuaded...”, “Now we are leaving little by little...”, etc.)
The poem of values in Yesenin’s poetry is one and indivisible; everything in it is interconnected, everything forms a single picture of the “beloved homeland” in all the variety of its shades. This is the highest ideal of the poet.
Having passed away at the age of 30, Yesenin left us a wonderful poetic legacy, and as long as the earth lives, Yesenin the poet is destined to live with us and “sing with all his being in the poet the sixth part of the earth with the short name “Rus”.

Reading the poem “In the Hut” by Yesenin is like suddenly finding yourself in a Russian village at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yesenin’s images are juicy and fleshy, they are three-dimensional: it seems that you can touch them with your hands, inhale the smell of the old wood from which a peasant’s house is built, feel the scorching warmth of the oven in which the fragrant bread is already ripening. With what love, with what tenderness Yesenin resurrects in his memory all the details of his native life. With aching melancholy, through Yesenin’s gaze, a whole picture from the poet’s past is revealed to us. Look, through the unnecessary tears that well up in your eyes due to an excess of kindness and love in your soul, look... Here are the shaggy, fat, clumsy puppies amusingly climbing on top of each other, squealing, biting, wagging their short tails in a funny way. In the yard you can hear the cackling of chickens, and an important rooster, like a hussar, has flown up onto the fence and clears his throat to be the first to notify the world that the sun has risen. A thievish cat sneaks towards the fresh milk. And the mother still can’t cope with the grip. She probably curses under her breath, and then, ashamed, she secretly crosses her mouth, forgive me, Lord. “In the hut” the verse is simply overflowing with images. So alive, so real...

The poem was written by Yesenin in 1914 and immediately attracted the attention of critics to the young poet.

Read the full text of Yesenin’s poem “In the Hut” on our website.