The article raises the issue of the interaction between literature and painting and analyzes two original interpretations of Sergei Yesenin’s poem “Spring Evening” by students of the F. A. Modorov Institute of Lacquer Miniature Painting in Mstera. In both cases, the young artists do not literally follow Yesenin’s imagery or illustrate the poetic text but rather create their own world that grows out of Yesenin’s. On E. S. Larina’s plate with the same title as S. A. Esenin’s poem, a depicted landscape represents the harmony between man and nature, the external and the internal; the man of labor, the plowman, and the man of art, the artist, are in harmony, both of them are merged with the world and organically integrated into it. Departing from the text of the poem, the artist changes the color scheme, relying on the context of the poet’s work; by introducing the image of the road, which is implicitly present in Esenin’s work, she signifies the connection with her native land. The temple on the mountain, which seems to dissolve into the golden sky and sets the spatial verticality of the work, is symbolic (this is in the tradition of Mstera lacquer miniature painting, which has its roots in icon painting) and prototypical (the adaptation of the plot to the local landscape is also in the tradition of this school, which is the Holy Epiphany Monastery of the Murom Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church). The figure of the man on the right (the artist painting the landscape) is quite recognizable as Yesenin: a man with a mop of slightly curly golden hair the color of ripe wheat. Thus, the landscape poet, who could see the beauty of his native nature in detail, becomes an artist himself in the interpretation of E. S. Larina. In the center of A. V. Kuznetsov’s plate, where the idyllic landscape is imbued with peace and harmony, there is a meeting between a ploughman and his wife after a day of hard work in the field. The image of the beautiful wife in a golden dress and an elegant, embroidered apron is idealized and turned towards the aesthetics of fairy tales, just like the elegant painted house with carved shutters and a fence, and the exotic white-maned horse. The plate is given a fairy-tale quality by the rich palette and decorative style of the Mstera lacquer miniature, which is related to the ancient Russian iconographic canon. The white shirt of the ploughman, the bay horse, the golden dress of the wife, and the white church form a regular triangle. This distribution of light spots in the composition highlights the conceptually important silhouettes and sets the spiritual vector for interpreting the work. The non-random nature of the color symbolism (a golden hue) in the miniatures is associated with the poet’s chosenness and his belonging to the heavenly world. Additionally, yellow is the poet’s favorite color in his life story. In Vasnetsov’s painting “The Poet Sergei Yesenin in a Costume for a Ball in Tsarskoye Selo” (1916), the poet is depicted in a golden brocade caftan, silver trousers, red boots, and a fur-trimmed hat, holding a balalaika. He symbolizes the beloved folk singer Bayan or Sadko, a legendary hero, and has become a national symbol.
Елена Сафронова (Wed,) studied this question.