“Ornament is music” (On the question of the sources of S.A. Yesenin’s article “Maria’s keys”)

UDC 82.161.1-4

https://doi.org/10.20339/PhS.5-22.155                                  

Shubnikova-Guseva Natalia I.,

Doctor of Philology, Сhief Researcher

Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

e-mail: shubnikova-gus@mail.ru

The presented work expands the source base of S.A. Esenin’s theoretical article “Maria’s Keys” (1918) at the expense of previously unknown philosophical sources. Along with the ideas of representatives of the mythological school in folklore studies and the anthroposophical ideas of R. Steiner, Andrei Bely, as well as the work of N.A. Klyuev, Esenin enters into a dialogue with the positions of famous philosophers and art theorists of different eras. The initial sentence of the article “Ornament is music” deserves special attention, combining various issues of art theory into a single conceptual node. It is concluded that it is a cliche of catch phrases expressing the attitude of philosophers to various branches of art, especially popular among the German philosophers of the XVIII century, including I.V. Goethe. Based on the data of Esenin’s personal library, it is shown that the poet, who tends to the symbolic justification of art, is particularly close to Goethe’s ideas about music as a lullaby of all art and about the birth of a creative picture of the world according to nature, which were embodied in the work of the Russian poet in the “nodal ovary of nature with the essence of man”. Taking into account the experience of philosophical thought and the role of ornament in everyday folk art, Esenin puts forward an original theory of national Russian art and gives the keys to understanding the peculiarities of his own poetics.

Keywords: S.A. Еsenin, article “Maria’s Keys” (1918), I.V. Goethe, ornament, music, art, nature.

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