Review of the Book: Seregina S.A. Nikolay Klyuev and Sergey Yesenin: A Dialogue with the Epoch / Ed. by S.I. Subbotin. Moscow: Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2024. 816 p

S. Seregina’s monograph is devoted to the creative dialogue between S. Yesenin and N. Klyuev, the convergence of their ideological values and differences in their perception of the era, understanding the religious meanings of social processes in the 1900s-1920s. The identification of the sources of the motives in the Yesenin’s and Klyuev’s poetry led to an appeal to a broad literary and philosophical context and a scrupulous comparative analysis. The monograph traces the intellectual and creative connections of the poets with their contemporaries - A. Blok, A. Dobrolyubov, R. Ivanov-Razumnik, V. Rozanov, L. Semenov, L. Tolstoy, D. Filosofov, and others. Considerable attention is paid to the ideology of the Socialist Revolutionaries, which influenced the formation of the axiology of both Yesenin and Klyuev, for example, the synthesis of their religious and social priorities. The monograph highlights their versions of the path to earthly paradise through blood sacrifice, their ideal of brotherhood, their ambiguous attitude to the teachings of the Church, and their role in voicing the goals of “Scythianism.” The deep analysis of the philosophy of sound and word in the interpretation of Klyuev and Yesenin is achieved through comparison with the linguistic and philosophical concepts of A. Besant, Andrei Bely, V. Ivanov. Vivid judgments of S.A. Seregina are noted for her novelty and reasonableness.