Fifteen lyrics by Sergei Esenin, all from 1914 — the year the nineteen-year-old poet found his voice: a humble monk in a skufia setting out where birch milk flows over the plains, the Lord walking the roads as a beggar to test men in love, autumn as a red mare scratching her mane, the Mother of God walking the clouds, the warm clutter of a village hut, recruits singing their last days away, a shepherd whose palace is the open field, pilgrim women on the monastery road, an abandoned hamlet of five huts, a drought prayer-service in the fields, and — at the centre — "Goy ty, Rus', my native land," the great hymn that ends: no need of paradise, give me my native land.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The fifteen poems, in order: I Shall Go in a Skufia, a Humble Monk (Пойду в скуфье смиренным иноком); The Lord Walked to Test Men in Love (Шёл Господь пытать людей в любови); Autumn (Осень); It Is Not Winds That Strew the Groves (Не ветры осыпают пущи); In the Hut (В хате); Along the Village, by a Crooked Path (По селу тропинкой кривенькой); Hey, You, Rus', My Native Land (Гой ты, Русь, моя родная); I Am a Shepherd, My Chambers (Я пастух, мои палаты); My Little Land, My Little Land (Сторона ль моя, сторонка); The Thawed Clay Dries (Сохнет стаявшая глина); I Scent God's Radunitsa (Чую радуницу Божью); Pilgrim Women Walk Along the Road (По дороге идут богомолки); My Land, Abandoned Land (Край ты мой заброшенный); The Drought Has Stifled the Sown Fields (Заглушила засуха засевки); Black, and Then Reeking, the Plot! (Чёрная, потом пропахшая выть!). By Sergei Esenin, in new English verse translations made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.
KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.
