Cigarette Pedlars
Cigarette Pedlars - meaning Summary
Urban Childhood as Survival
Yesenin sketches a bleak urban scene where ragged children hawk cigarettes to survive. The poem contrasts their playful, boisterous manner with the harsher reality of theft, drunkenness and longing. They occupy specific city spots, dream of distant New York and San Francisco, and return to the cold routine of vending. The tone mixes pity and resignation, portraying childhood reduced to street commerce and hardened by poverty and vice.
Read Complete AnalysesAvenues so wretched, snowbanks, bitter frost. Desperate little urchins with trays of cigarettes. Wandering dirty avenues, enjoying evil games - all of them are pickpockets, all are jolly thieves. That bunch takes Nikitskaya, this - Tverskaya Square. They stand, sombrely whistling, the livelong day out there. They dash to all the barrooms and, with some time to spare, they pore over Pinkerton out loud over a beer. Let the beer be bitter - beer or not, they're soused. All rave about New York, all dream of San Frantsisk... Then again, so wretchedly, they walk out in the frost - desperate little urchins with trays of cigarettes.
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