“The sound erects white churches in lands…”: Towards the Philosophy of the Sound and the Name in the Poetic Consciousness of S.A. Yesenin

Abstract

The article makes the first attempt to analyze the philosophy of the sound and the name in the poetic consciousness of S.A. Yesenin. The article argues that in Yesenin’s poem I will not be wandering about… the female image becomes the personification of the ideal prototype of the world, the carnal-symbolic embodiment of the ‘light mystery’: Yesenin gives the female principle a metaphysical status, so sound and name in their physical and material shell become elusive carriers of the superreal divine essence of the world. Another conclusion of the analysis is that one of the sources of the idea of sound as a carrier of the grace of God for Yesenin was N.A. Klyuev poetry. Through his mediation Yesenin accepted the concept of Imiaslavie (‘praising the name’) that sound and name can bring the traces of the divine. The work also compares two articles: Andrey Bely’s Aaron’s rod and Sergey Yesenin’s Father’s word. It concludes that the main opposition of Yesenin’s article (‘humpbacked word with a broken spine’ and a word as a ‘bailer’ to draw the water of life out of nothing) origins from Andrey Bely’s Aaron’s rod, as well as Yesenin’s idea of ‘unsigned word’.