Nikolai Klyuev

Nikolai Alekseevich Klyuev Russian: Николай Алексеевич Клюев (occasionally transliterated from the Cyrillic alphabet as Kliuev, Kluev, Klyuyev, or Kluyev) (October 10, 1884 - between October 23 and 25, 1937), was a notable Russian poet. He was influenced by the symbolist movement, intense nationalism, and a love of Russian folklore.

Born in the village of Koshtugi near the town of Vytegra, Kluyev rose to prominence in the early twentieth century as the leader of the so-called "peasant poets". Kluyev was a close friend and mentor of Sergei Yesenin. Arrested in 1933 for contradicting Soviet ideology, he was shot in 1937 and rehabilitated posthumously in 1957.

Religion views

Kluyev, whose work is thoroughly inspired with Old Believers spirit, was the first in Russian literature who began to praise the innocence of a body. For him the Christ was homosexual. And his own homosexuality Kluyev explains, referring to the "Apostle of St. Paul," that «the love justify a multitude of sins, that the love — is mighty». Besides, Kluyev was close to the sect of khlysts proclaiming the Dionysian approach to knowledge of Christ, specifically: knowledge not through spirit, but through the flesh.

In his notes in 1922 Kluyev wrote:

Christ ... for me - the eternal milk yield inexhaustible force, penis, dissecting the worlds of the vagina, and in our world erupted with dick - real sun, the golden semen continuously fertilizing cow and woman, fir and bees, the airy world and flamy hell.

Semen of Christ - is the food of the faithful. About it was said, "Take, eat ..." and "He who eats my flesh, he's not die <...>"

(Our theologians does not discover that, under the flesh Christ means not the body, but the semen, which is called by the people the flesh.)

This is should erupt in the human consciousness, especially in our time, in a century of the shaken heart, and to become the new law of moral …

References

• Klyuev N.A. Slovesnoe drevo. Proza. (Poetry). Saint Petersburg, Russia: OOO «Rostok Publisher». 2003. p. 688.

Bibliography

• John MacKay, Inscription and Modernity: From Wordsworth to Mandelstam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006) ISBN 0-253-34749-1