Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev is the greatest Russian poet of the 19th century, who clearly reflected in his work the burning themes relating to nature, love, harmony, and human feelings and natural phenomena are inextricably linked in his poems. At first glance, it may seem that his works are simple - and, in fact, at times in their lightness they resemble a babbling brook - but in fact they should be read, carefully thinking about every line.
In his poetry, Tyutchev reflected the problems of the time in which he lived, the complexity
And the realism of life, and all his poems are imbued with sharpness of thought and tension. It is not without reason that a thunderstorm occupies a significant place in Tyutchev’s works - a symbol of something alarming, to some extent even tragic. In general, one can see many symbolic images in his poems, although he was more inclined towards realism - researchers of his work establish connections between poems and events in the poet’s life, taking into account who this or that work was dedicated to.
In his early work, Tyutchev imitated Pushkin, but very soon his poems acquired a special individuality.
He usually wrote in iambic bimeter, which must be why the poems seem so easy. It was Pushkin who drew public attention to the then little-known poet by publishing his poems in his magazine Sovremennik. Tyutchev's poems immediately appealed to the public, his love lyrics were especially highly valued.
Turgenev noted that each poem of this budding poet began with a thought that appeared under the influence of a very strong feeling, which was ignited by a spark and spilled out onto paper. In addition, the poet’s thoughts were closely intertwined with nature and relentlessly followed it. The “Denisevsky cycle” became especially significant in his love work.
In Tyutchev's poems, contradictions and comparisons are also clearly visible: for example, he believed that man brings destruction to nature, and nature, without the intervention of a human hand, is a strong and powerful being. Man is weak in comparison with nature, but at the same time Tyutchev glorifies the extraordinary strength of the human spirit, his freedom of thought.
Now, many years later, reader interest in Tyutchev’s work does not fade: those who want to understand the mystery of the beautiful poetry of this poet turn again and again to his works. Some poems amaze only with the beauty of their descriptions of nature - for example, “Autumn Evening”, others are poems with deep philosophical overtones: “Vision”, “The Last Cataclysm”. But all the works of this great poet will have a place of honor in Russian literature for a long time.
Features of creativity
“Tyutchev was not prolific as a poet (his legacy is about 300 poems). Having started publishing early (from the age of 16), he was published rarely, in little-known almanacs, in the period 1837-47. wrote almost no poetry and generally cared little about his reputation as a poet.” (Mikhailovsky, 1939, p. 469.)
“Melancholy,” testified I.S. Aksakov, - constituted, as it were, the main tone of his poetry and his entire moral being... As often happens with poets, torment and pain became the strongest activators for Tyutchev. The poet, who had been silent for fourteen years, not only returned to literary activity, but it was after the death of E.A. Denisyeva, in his seventh decade, when poets finally run out of steam, created his best poems... He had no “creative ideas,” hours allotted for work, notebooks, drafts, preparations, in general, everything that is called creative work. He didn't pore over poetry. He wrote down his insights on invitations, napkins, postal sheets, in random notebooks, just on scraps of paper that came to hand. P.I. Kapnist testified: “Tyutchev, thoughtfully, wrote a sheet at a meeting of the censor board and left the meeting, leaving it on the table.” If Kapnist had not picked up what he wrote, they would never have known “No matter how difficult the last hour is...”. Unconsciousness, intuitiveness, improvisation are the key concepts for his work.” Garin, 1994, vol. 3, p. 324, 329, 336-337, 364.)
Although Tyutchev’s poetry is divided thematically into political, civil, landscape, love lyrics, it is often stipulated that this division is conditional: behind the different thematic layers there is a single principle of seeing the world - philosophical.
F. I. Tyutchev as a poet-philosopher
He has not only thinking poetry, but poetic thought; not a reasoning, thinking feeling - but a feeling and living thought. Because of this, the external artistic form is not put on his thought, like a glove on a hand, but has grown together with it, like a covering of skin with the body; it is the very flesh of thought. (I.S. Aksakov).
Each of his poems began with a thought, but a thought that, like a fiery point, flared up under the influence of a deep feeling or strong impression; as a result of this, Mr. Tyutchev’s thought never appears naked and abstract to the reader, but always merges with an image taken from the world of the soul or nature, is imbued with it, and itself penetrates it inseparably and inextricably. (I.S. Turgenev).
Political lyrics by F. I. Tyutchev
The poet, without whom, according to Leo Tolstoy, “one cannot live,” until the end of his days was and recognized himself as a politician, diplomat, and historian. He was constantly at the center of the political and social life of Europe, the world, Russia, even on his deathbed he asked: “What political news has arrived?” He was a contemporary of the War of 1812, the Decembrist uprising, the “dark seven years” in Russia, the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 years in the West. The politician Tyutchev observed and assessed events, the poet spoke of his time as a fatal era.
Blessed is he who visited this world in its fatal moments!
"Cicero", 1830
At the same time, Tyutchev the poet does not have poems about specific historical events. There is a philosophical response to them, a detachment, a transcendental nature of their vision, the view not of a participant, but of a contemplator of events.
He was not a supporter of revolutions, any coups, and did not sympathize with the Decembrists:
O victims of reckless thought, You hoped, perhaps, That your blood would become scarce, To melt the eternal pole! Barely, smoking, she sparkled
On the centuries-old mass of ice, the iron winter died - and not a trace remained.
Perhaps the poet’s life itself, the eternal desire to combine opposite principles, determined his vision of the world. The idea of duality, the double existence of man and nature, the discord of the worlds lies at the heart of the philosophical lyrics and thoughts of Tyutchev the poet.
The feeling of a person being on the edge, on the border of two worlds, the expectation and feeling of catastrophe became the main theme of Tyutchev’s philosophical lyrics.
Landscape lyrics
Man and nature, Tyutchev believes, are united and inseparable, they live according to the general laws of existence.
Thought after thought; wave after wave -
Two manifestations of one element:
Whether in a cramped heart, or in a boundless sea,
Here - in captivity, there - in the open -
The same eternal surf and rebound,
The same ghost is still alarmingly empty.
“Wave and Thought”, 1851.
Man is a small part of nature, the universe, he is not free to live according to his own will, his freedom is an illusion, a ghost:
Only in our illusory freedom
We are aware of the discord.
“There is a melodiousness in the waves of the sea,” 1865.
Discord created by man himself leads to disharmony of his being, inner world, to discord between man and the outside world. Two opposing principles are created: one is the embodiment of darkness, chaos, night, abyss, death, the other is light, day, life. For example, in the poem “Day and Night,” the two-part composition correlates with the main motifs of the poem by alternating day and night, light and darkness, life and death.
But the day fades - night has come;
Came from the world of fate
Fabric of blessed cover,
Having torn it off, it throws it away
And the abyss is laid bare to us
With your fears and darkness,
And there are no barriers between her and us -
This is why the night is scary for us!
"Day and Night", 1839
Tyutchev's lyrical hero is constantly on the edge of worlds: day and night, light and darkness, life and death. He is afraid of the gloomy abyss, which at any moment can open before him and swallow him up.
And the man is like a homeless orphan,
Now he stands weak and naked,
Face to face before the dark abyss.
“The holy night has risen into the sky,” 1848-5s
During the day, even in the evening light, the world is calm, beautiful, harmonious. Many of Tyutchev’s landscape sketches are about this world. There are in the initial autumn
A short but wonderful time -
The whole day is like crystal,
And the evenings are radiant
1857
There are in the brightness of autumn evenings
Sweet, mysterious beauty
1830
At night the darkness comes and reveals itself
The horror of the abyss, death, tragedy
The vault of heaven, burning with the glory of the stars,
Looks mysteriously from the depths, -
And we are floating in a burning abyss
Surrounded on all sides.
“How the ocean envelops the globe,” 1830.
The theme of man as a small particle of the universe, which is unable to resist the power of universal darkness, fate, fate, originates from poetry
Lomonosov, Derzhavin, will be continued in the poems of poets of the early twentieth century..
Enchantress in winter
Bewitched, the forest stands -
And under the snow fringe,
motionless, mute
He shines with a wonderful life.
1852
Love lyrics. Addressees of love lyrics
Addressees of Tyutchev's love lyrics
The poet's first wife was Eleanor Peterson, née Countess Bothmer. From this marriage there were three daughters: Anna, Daria and Ekaterina.
Widowed, the poet married Ernestine Dernberg, née Baroness Pfeffel, in 1839. Maria and Dmitry were born to them in Munich, and their youngest son Ivan was born in Russia.
In 1851 (he was already familiar with Denisyeva), Tyutchev wrote to his wife Eleonora Fedorovna: “There is no creature in the world smarter than you. I have no one else to talk to... Me, who speaks to everyone.” And in another letter: “... although you love me four times less than before, you still love me ten times more than I am worth.”
Two years after the death of her husband, Eleanor Fedorovna accidentally found in her album a piece of paper signed in French: “For you (to sort it out in private).” Next came the poems written in the same 1851:
I don’t know if grace will touch
My painfully sinful soul,
Will she be able to rise up and rebel,
Will the spiritual fainting pass?
But if the soul could
Find peace here on earth,
You would be a blessing to me -
You, you, my earthly providence!..
Tyutchev's love for Elena Denisyeva brought the poet both great happiness and greatest sorrow. Tyutchev's feeling was subject to the laws of his existence and creativity. Love united life and death, happiness and sorrow, and was a roll call of worlds.
The “double existence” of the split human soul is most clearly expressed in Tyutchev’s love lyrics.
In 1850, 47-year-old Tyutchev met twenty-four-year-old Elena Alexandrovna Denisyeva, a friend of his daughters. Their union lasted for fourteen years, until Deniseva’s death, and three children were born. Tyutchev left a confession of his love in poetry.
“No one had created such a deep female image, endowed with individual psychological traits, in lyric poetry before Tyutchev,” says Lev Ozerov. “In its nature, this image echoes Nastasya Filippovna from Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.”
For fourteen years Tyutchev led a double life. Loving Denisieva, he could not part with his family.
In moments of passionate feeling for Denisyeva, he writes to his wife: “There is no creature in the world smarter than you and I have no one else to talk to.”
The sudden loss of Elena Alexandrovna, the series of losses that followed her death, aggravated the feelings of a milestone, the boundaries of worlds. Love for Denisyeva is death for Tyutchev, but also the highest fullness of being, “bliss and hopelessness,” a “fatal duel” of life and death:
Here I am wandering along the high road
In the quiet light of the fading day
It's hard for my legs to freeze
My dear friend, do you see me?
It's getting darker, darker above the ground -
The last light of the day has flown away
This is the world where you and I lived,
My angel, can you see me?
Genre originality of F. I. Tyutchev’s lyrics
Literary critic Yu. Tynyanov was the first to notice, and many researchers agreed with him, that F. Tyutchev’s lyrics are not characterized by the division of poems into genres. And the genre-forming role for him is played by the fragment, “the genre of an almost extra-literary passage.”
A fragment is a thought, as if snatched from a stream of thoughts, a feeling - from a surging experience, from a continuous flow of feelings, an action, an action - from a series of human deeds: “Yes, you kept your word,” “So, I saw you again,” “The same thing happens in God’s world.”
The shape of the fragment emphasizes the endless flow, movement of thought, feeling, life, history. But all of Tyutchev’s poetics reflects the idea of universal endless movement, the basis of the poem is often fleeting, instantaneous, fast-flowing in the life of man and nature:
And how, as a vision, the outside world left.
Century after century flew by.
How unexpected and bright
On the damp blue sky
Aerial arch erected
In your momentary triumph.
Features of the composition of lyrical poems
Tyutchev’s idea of confrontation and, at the same time, the unity of the worlds of nature and man, the external and internal worlds, is often embodied in the two-part composition of his poems: “Predestination”, “Cicero”, “The earth still looks sad” and many others.
Another compositional technique of the poet is a direct depiction of feelings - this is Denisyev’s cycle, some landscape sketches.
Sand flowing up to your knees
We eat - it's late - the day is fading,
And pine trees, along the road, shadows
The shadows have already merged into one.
Blacker and more often deep boron -
What sad places!
The night is gloomy, like a stoic animal,
Looks out from every bush!
Lyric style
Tyutchev's lyrics are characterized by extreme compression of the space of the verse, hence its aphorism.
You can't understand Russia with your mind,
The general arshin cannot be measured:
She will become special -
You can only believe in Russia.
November 28, 1866 Under the influence of the classic poets of the 18th century, Tyutchev’s lyrics contain many rhetorical questions and exclamations:
Oh, how many sad moments
Love and joy killed!
Where and how did the discord arise?
And why in the general choir
The soul doesn’t sing like the sea,
And the thinking reed murmurs?
Perhaps, under the impression of his studies with S. Raich, in his poems Tyutchev often refers to mythological, ancient images: “unconsciousness, like
Atlas, crushing the land...", windy Hebe, feeding Zeus' eagle"
When speaking about Tyutchev’s poetic style, the term “pure poetry” will later be used.
(Philosophical lyricism is a rather conventional concept. This is the name given to deep reflections in poetry about the meaning of existence, about the fate of man, the world, the universe, about the place of man in the world. Poems by Tyutchev, Fet, Baratynsky, Zabolotsky are usually classified as philosophical lyricism...)
"Pure poetry"
In all poets, next to direct creativity, one hears doing, processing. Tyutchev has nothing done: everything is created. That is why some kind of external negligence is often visible in his poems: there are words that are outdated, out of use, there are incorrect rhymes, which, with the slightest external finishing, could easily be replaced by others.
This determines and partly limits his significance as a poet. But this also gives his poetry a special charm of sincerity and personal sincerity. Khomyakov - himself a lyric poet - said and, in our opinion, rightly, that he does not know any other poems, except Tyutchev's, that would serve as the best image of the purest poetry, which would be so thoroughly, durch und durch, imbued with poetry. I.S. Aksakov.
Characteristics of Tyutchev's creativity, Tyutchev's creativity, features of Tyutchev's creativity, Tyutchev's creativity
The work of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev is strong in its philosophical component. It had a beneficial effect on the development of Russian poetry. Tyutchev's works belong to the best creations of the Russian spirit. Everything written by the poet Tyutchev bears the stamp of true and beautiful talent, original, graceful, full of thought and genuine feeling.
The beginning of poetic activity
A collection consisting of three hundred poems, a third of which are translated, a number of letters, and several articles - this is Tyutchev’s creative baggage. Centuries pass, but the author’s works remain in demand and beloved by readers.
The creative destiny of F.I. Tyutchev was unusual. Quite early, the poet begins to publish his poems, but they go unnoticed for a long time. In the nineteenth century, it was believed that his lyrical monologues, inspired by pictures of nature, were beautiful. But the Russian public also found descriptions of nature in Eugene Onegin, the author of which responded to everything that worried modern readers.
Thus, the stormy year of 1825 gave rise to two interesting poems from Tyutchev. In one, addressing the Decembrists, he noted:
“O victims of reckless thought,
Maybe you hoped
That your blood will become scarce,
To melt the eternal pole.
As soon as it smoked, it sparkled,
On a centuries-old mass of ice;
The iron winter has died -
And there were no traces left."
In another poem, he talks about how “sad it is to go towards the sun and follow the movement of a new tribe,” how for him “this noise, movement, talk, screams of a young fiery day are piercing and wild.”
"Night, night, oh, where are your covers,
Your quiet darkness and dew?..”
This was written at a time when Pushkin, with an encouraging word of greeting, addressed himself “to the depths of the Siberian ores” and exclaimed: “Long live the sun, may the darkness disappear.”
Years will pass and only then will contemporaries discern Tyutchev’s incomparable verbal painting.
In 1836, A.S. Pushkin founded a new magazine, Sovremennik. From the third volume, poems began to appear in Sovremennik, in which there was so much originality of thought and charm of presentation that it seemed that only the publisher of the magazine himself could be their author. But under them the letters “F.T” were very clearly displayed. They bore one common title: “Poems sent from Germany” (Tyutchev then lived in Germany). They were from Germany, but there was no doubt that their author was Russian: they were all written in pure and beautiful language and many bore the living imprint of the Russian mind, the Russian soul.
Since 1841, this name no longer appeared in Sovremennik, it also did not appear in other magazines, and, one might say, from that time on it completely disappeared from Russian literature. Meanwhile, the poems of Mr. F.T. belonged to the few brilliant phenomena in the field of Russian poetry.
Only in 1850 did fortune smile - in the Sovremennik magazine N.A. Nekrasov spoke flatteringly about the Russian poet Tyutchev, and they started talking about him loudly.
Spiritualization of nature in Tyutchev’s poetry
Tyutchev’s “night soul” is looking for silence. When night descends on the earth and everything takes on chaotically unclear forms, his muse in “prophetic dreams is disturbed by the gods.” “Night” and “chaos” are constantly mentioned in Tyutchev’s poems of the 20-30s of the nineteenth century. His “soul would like to be a star,” but only invisible to the “sleepy earthly world” and it would burn “in the pure and invisible ether.” In the poem “Swan,” the poet says that he is not attracted by the proud flight of an eagle towards the sun.
“But there is no more enviable destiny,
O pure swan, yours!
And dressed as clean as you yourself
You are the element of deity.
She, between the double abyss,
Cherishes your all-seeing dream,
And the full glory of the starry firmament
You are surrounded from everywhere."
.
And here is the same picture of night beauty. The War of 1829 and the capture of Warsaw found a quiet response in Tyutchev’s soul.
"My soul, Elysium of shadows,
What do life and you have in common?”
So the poet asks himself. In the marble-cold and beautiful poem “Silentium” (translated from Latin as “Silence”), Tyutchev repeats the word “be silent.”
“Be silent, hide and conceal
And your feelings and dreams!
Let it be in the depths of your soul
And they rise and set
Like stars clear in the night:
Admire them - and be silent."
In many poets we find indications of these torments of the word, powerless to fully and truthfully express a thought, so that the “thought expressed” is not a lie and does not “disturb the keys” of moral feeling. Silence could not be a salvation from this condition. Tyutchev was silent only about those thoughts that were inspired by the “violent times” of our time, but with all the greater “predilection” he was given the impression of nocturnal and truthful nature. Contemplating the southern sky, remembering his native north, he breaks free from the power of the beauty of nature surrounding him and comes to love for the entire Universe. When looking at the kite soaring high into the sky, the poet becomes offended that man, “the king of the earth, has become rooted to the earth.”
You need to understand, love all of nature, find meaning in it, deify it.
“Not what you think, nature -
Not a cast, not a soulless face:
She has a soul, she has freedom,
It has love, it has language.”
Even the destructive forces of nature do not repel the poet. He begins his poem “Mal’aria” with the lines:
“I love this God’s wrath, I love this, invisibly
There is a mysterious evil spilled throughout everything...”
The poem “Twilight” expresses the awareness of the poet’s closeness to dying nature:
“An hour of unspeakable melancholy!
Everything is in me - and I am in everything..."
The poet turns to the “quiet, sleepy” twilight, calls it “deep into his soul”:
"Let me taste destruction,
Mix with the slumbering world."
The poet speaks everywhere about nature as something living. For him, “winter grumbles at spring,” and “she laughs in her eyes”; spring waters “run and wake up the sleepy shore,” nature smiles at spring through its sleep; spring thunder “frolics and plays”; a thunderstorm “will suddenly and recklessly rush into the oak grove”; “the gloomy night, like a stern-eyed beast, looks out from every bush,” etc. (“Spring”, “Spring waters”, “The earth still looks sad”, “Spring thunderstorm”, “How cheerful is the roar of summer storms”, “Flowing sand up to the knees”).
The poet does not distinguish the highest manifestations of the human spirit from all other natural phenomena.
“Thought after thought, wave after wave -
Two manifestations of one element.”
We find the development of the same thought in the wonderful poem “Columbus”:
“So connected, connected from eternity
Union of consanguinity
Intelligent human genius
With the creative power of nature.
Say the cherished word -
And a new world of nature
Always ready to respond
A voice akin to his.”
At this point, Tyutchev’s worldview came into contact with Goethe’s, and it was not for nothing that the relationship between the two poets, who met during Tyutchev’s life abroad, was so close.
Tyutchev's landscape lyrics come from those four seasons that nature gives us. In the poetry of Fyodor Ivanovich there is no dividing line between man and nature, they are of the same element.
Tyutchev's love lyrics do not close on themselves, although they are largely autobiographical. It is much broader, more universally human. Tyutchev's love lyrics are an example of tenderness and soulfulness.
“I still strive for you with my soul -
And in the twilight of memories
I still catch your image...
Your sweet image, unforgettable,
He is in front of me everywhere, always,
Unattainable, unchangeable,
Like a star in the sky at night..."
Tyutchev's work is filled with deep philosophical meaning. His lyrical reflections, as a rule, are not abstract; they are closely related to the realities of life.
According to the lyricist, it is impossible to lift the curtain on the secrets of the universe, but this can happen for a person who is on the verge of day and night:
"Happy is he who has visited this world
His moments are fatal!
The all-good ones called him,
As an interlocutor at a feast..."
"Cicero"
Do you need to leave behind a great creative legacy in order to become great? Using the example of the fate of F.I. Tyutchev, we can say: “No.” It is enough to write a few brilliant creations - and your descendants will not forget about you.
Text adaptation: Iris Review
A prominent representative of the golden age of Russian poetry, Fyodor Tyutchev skillfully encapsulated his thoughts, desires and feelings in the rhythm of iambic tetrameter, allowing readers to feel the complexity and inconsistency of the reality around them. To this day, the whole world reads the poet’s poems.
Childhood and youth
The future poet was born on November 23, 1803 in the village of Ovstug, Bryansk district, Oryol province. Fedor is the middle child in the family. In addition to him, Ivan Nikolaevich and his wife Ekaterina Lvovna had two more children: the eldest son, Nikolai (1801–1870), and the youngest daughter, Daria (1806–1879).
The writer grew up in a calm, benevolent atmosphere. From his mother he inherited a subtle mental organization, lyricism and a developed imagination. In essence, the entire old noble patriarchal family of the Tyutchevs had a high level of spirituality.
At the age of 4, Nikolai Afanasyevich Khlopov (1770–1826), a peasant who bought himself out of serfdom and voluntarily entered the service of the noble couple, was assigned to Fedor.
A competent, pious man not only gained the respect of his masters, but also became a friend and comrade for the future publicist. Khlopov witnessed the awakening of the literary genius of Tyutchev. This happened in 1809, when Fyodor was barely six years old: while walking in a grove near a rural cemetery, he came across a dead turtle dove. An impressionable boy gave the bird a funeral and composed an epitaph in verse in its honor.
In the winter of 1810, the head of the family fulfilled his wife’s cherished dream by purchasing a spacious mansion in Moscow. The Tyutchevs went there during the winter cold. Seven-year-old Fyodor really liked his cozy, bright room, where no one bothered him from morning to night reading poetry by Dmitriev and Derzhavin.
In 1812, the peaceful routine of the Moscow nobility was disrupted by the Patriotic War. Like many representatives of the intelligentsia, the Tyutchevs immediately left the capital and went to Yaroslavl. The family remained there until the end of hostilities.
Upon returning to Moscow, Ivan Nikolaevich and Ekaterina Lvovna decided to hire a teacher who could not only teach their children the basics of grammar, arithmetic and geography, but also instill in the restless children a love of foreign languages. Under the strict guidance of the poet and translator Semyon Yegorovich Raich, Fedor studied the exact sciences and became acquainted with the masterpieces of world literature, showing a genuine interest in ancient poetry.
In 1817, the future publicist attended lectures by the eminent literary critic Alexei Fedorovich Merzlyakov as a volunteer. The professor noticed his extraordinary talent and on February 22, 1818, at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, he read out Tyutchev’s ode “For the New Year 1816.” On March 30 of the same year, the fourteen-year-old poet was awarded the title of member of the Society, and a year later his poem “Horace’s Epistle to Maecenas” appeared in print.
In the fall of 1819, the promising young man was enrolled in the Faculty of Literature at Moscow University. There he became friends with young Vladimir Odoevsky, Stepan Shevyrev and Mikhail Pogodin. Tyutchev graduated from the University three years ahead of schedule and graduated from the educational institution with a candidate's degree.
On February 5, 1822, his father brought Fedor to St. Petersburg, and already on February 24, eighteen-year-old Tyutchev was enlisted in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs with the rank of provincial secretary. In the Northern capital, he lived in the house of his relative Count Osterman-Tolstoy, who subsequently procured for him the position of freelance attaché of the Russian diplomatic mission in Bavaria.
Literature
In the capital of Bavaria, Tyutchev not only studied romantic poetry and German philosophy, but also translated works and works into Russian. Fyodor Ivanovich published his own poems in the Russian magazine “Galatea” and the almanac “Northern Lyre”.
In the first decade of his life in Munich (from 1820 to 1830), Tyutchev wrote his most famous poems: “Spring Thunderstorm” (1828), “Silentium!” (1830), “As the ocean envelops the globe...” (1830), “Fountain” (1836), “Winter is not angry for nothing...” (1836), “Not what you think, nature... "(1836), "What are you howling about, night wind?.." (1836).
Fame came to the poet in 1836, when 16 of his works were published in the Sovremennik magazine under the title “Poems sent from Germany.” In 1841, Tyutchev met Vaclav Hanka, a figure in the Czech national revival, who had a great influence on the poet. After this acquaintance, the ideas of Slavophilism were clearly reflected in the journalism and political lyrics of Fyodor Ivanovich.
Since 1848, Fyodor Ivanovich held the position of senior censor. The lack of poetic publications did not prevent him from becoming a prominent figure in the St. Petersburg literary society. Thus, Nekrasov spoke enthusiastically about the work of Fyodor Ivanovich and put him on a par with the best contemporary poets, and Fet used Tyutchev’s works as evidence of the existence of “philosophical poetry.”
In 1854, the writer published his first collection, which included both old poems from the 1820s and 1830s, as well as new creations by the writer. Poetry of the 1850s was dedicated to Tyutchev’s young lover, Elena Deniseva.
In 1864, Fyodor Ivanovich’s muse died. The publicist experienced this loss very painfully. He found salvation in creativity. Poems of the “Denisevsky cycle” (“All day she lay in oblivion ...”, “There is also in my suffering stagnation ...”, “On the eve of the anniversary of August 4, 1865”, “Oh, this South, oh, this Nice! ..”, “There is in the primordial autumn...”) – the pinnacle of the poet’s love lyrics.
After the Crimean War, Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov became the new Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia. A representative of the political elite respected Tyutchev for his insightful mind. Friendship with the chancellor allowed Fyodor Ivanovich to influence Russian foreign policy.
Fyodor Ivanovich's Slavophil views continued to strengthen. True, after the defeat in the Crimean War in the quatrain “Russia cannot be understood with the mind...” (1866), Tyutchev began to call on the people not for political, but for spiritual unification.
Personal life
People who do not know Tyutchev’s biography, having briefly familiarized themselves with his life and work, will consider that the Russian poet was a flighty nature, and will be absolutely right in their conclusion. In the literary salons of that time, legends were made about the amorous adventures of the publicist.
Amalia Lerchenfeld, first love of Fyodor Tyutchev The writer's first love was the illegitimate daughter of the Prussian king Frederick William III, Amalia Lerchenfeld. The beauty of the girl was admired by both, and Count Benckendorff. She was 14 years old when she met Tyutchev and became very interested in him. Mutual sympathy turned out to be not enough.
The young man, living on his parents’ money, could not satisfy all the demands of the demanding young lady. Amalia chose material well-being over love and in 1825 she married Baron Krudner. The news of Lerchenfeld's wedding shocked Fyodor so much that the envoy Vorontsov-Dashkov, in order to avoid a duel, sent the would-be gentleman on vacation.
And although Tyutchev submitted to fate, the soul of the lyricist throughout his life languished from an unquenchable thirst for love. For a short period of time, his first wife Eleanor managed to extinguish the fire raging inside the poet.
The family grew, daughters were born one after another: Anna, Daria, Ekaterina. There was a catastrophic lack of money. For all his intelligence and insight, Tyutchev was devoid of rationality and coldness, which is why his career advancement proceeded by leaps and bounds. Fyodor Ivanovich was burdened by family life. He preferred noisy companies of friends and social affairs with ladies from high society to the company of his children and wife.
Ernestine von Pfeffel, second wife of Fyodor Tyutchev In 1833, at a ball, Tyutchev was introduced to the wayward Baroness Ernestine von Pfeffel. The entire literary elite was talking about their romance. During another quarrel, the wife, tormented by jealousy, in a fit of despair, grabbed a dagger and hit herself in the chest area. Fortunately, the wound was not fatal.
Despite the scandal that erupted in the press and general censure from the public, the writer was unable to part with his mistress, and only the death of his legal wife put everything in its place. 10 months after the death of Eleanor, the poet legalized his relationship with Ernestina.
Fate played a cruel joke on the baroness: the woman who destroyed her family shared her legal husband with her young mistress, Elena Alexandrovna Denisyeva, for 14 years.
Death
In the mid-60s and early 70s, Tyutchev rightly began to lose ground: in 1864, the writer’s beloved, Elena Aleksandrovna Denisyeva, died, two years later the creator’s mother, Ekaterina Lvovna, died, in 1870, the writer’s beloved brother Nikolai and his son Dmitry, and three years later the daughter of the publicist Maria went to another world.
The string of deaths had a negative impact on the poet’s health. After the first stroke of paralysis (January 1, 1873), Fyodor Ivanovich almost never got out of bed, after the second, he lived for several weeks in excruciating suffering and died on July 27, 1873. The coffin with the body of the lyricist was transported from Tsarskoye Selo to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent in St. Petersburg.
The literary heritage of the legend of the golden age of Russian poetry has been preserved in collections of poems. Among other things, in 2003, based on Vadim Kozhinov’s book “The Prophet in His Fatherland Fyodor Tyutchev,” the series “The Love and Truth of Fyodor Tyutchev” was filmed. The film was directed by the daughter. She is familiar to Russian audiences from her role in the film “Solaris”.
Bibliography
- "Scald's Harp" (1834);
- “Spring Storm” (1828);
- "Day and Night" (1839);
- “How unexpected and bright...” (1865);
- “Reply to the Address” (1865);
- "Italian villa" (1837);
- “I Knew Her Even Then” (1861);
- “Morning in the Mountains” (1830);
- "Fires" (1868);
- “Look how the grove turns green...” (1857);
- "Madness" (1829);
- "Dream at Sea" (1830);
- "Calm" (1829);
- Encyclica (1864);
- "Rome at Night" (1850);
- “The feast is over, the choirs have fallen silent...” (1850).
Russian poet, master of landscape, psychological, philosophical and patriotic lyrics, Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev comes from an ancient noble family. The future poet was born in the Oryol province, on the family estate of Ovstug (today it is the territory of the Bryansk region), on November 23, 1803. In terms of his era, Tyutchev is practically a contemporary of Pushkin, and, according to biographers, it is to Pushkin that he owes his unexpected fame as a poet, since due to the nature of his main activity he was not closely connected with the world of art.
Life and service
He spent most of his childhood in Moscow, where the family moved when Fedor was 7 years old. The boy studied at home, under the guidance of a home teacher, famous poet and translator, Semyon Raich. The teacher instilled in his ward a love of literature and noted his gift for poetic creativity, but the parents intended their son to have a more serious occupation. Since Fyodor had a gift for languages (from the age of 12 he knew Latin and translated ancient Roman poetry), at the age of 14 he began attending lectures by literature students at Moscow University. At the age of 15, he enrolled in a course in the Literature Department and joined the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. Linguistic education and a candidate's degree in literary sciences allow Tyutchev to move in his career along the diplomatic line - at the beginning of 1822, Tyutchev entered the State College of Foreign Affairs and almost forever became an official diplomat.
Tyutchev spends the next 23 years of his life serving as part of the Russian diplomatic mission in Germany. He writes poetry and translates German authors exclusively “for the soul”; he has almost nothing to do with his literary career. Semyon Raich continues to maintain contact with his former student; he publishes several of Tyutchev’s poems in his magazine, but they do not find an enthusiastic response from the reading public. Contemporaries considered Tyutchev's lyrics somewhat old-fashioned, since they felt the sentimental influence of poets of the late 18th century. Meanwhile, today these first poems - “Summer Evening”, “Insomnia”, “Vision” - are considered one of the most successful in Tyutchev’s lyrics; they testify to his already accomplished poetic talent.
Poetic creativity
Alexander Pushkin brought Tyutchev his first fame in 1836. He selected 16 poems by an unknown author for publication in his collection. There is evidence that Pushkin meant the author to be a young aspiring poet and predicted a future for him in poetry, not suspecting that he had considerable experience.
His work becomes the poetic source of Tyutchev's civic poetry - the diplomat is too well aware of the price of peaceful relations between countries, as he witnesses the building of these relations. In 1848-49, the poet, having acutely felt the events of political life, created the poems “To a Russian Woman”, “Reluctantly and timidly...” and others.
The poetic source of love lyrics is largely a tragic personal life. Tyutchev first married at the age of 23, in 1826, to Countess Eleanor Peterson. Tyutchev did not love, but respected his wife, and she idolized him like no one else. The marriage, which lasted 12 years, produced three daughters. Once on a trip, the family had a disaster at sea - the couple were rescued from the icy water, and Eleanor caught a bad cold. After being ill for a year, the wife died.
Tyutchev married again a year later to Ernestine Dernberg, in 1844 the family returned to Russia, where Tyutchev again began climbing the career ladder - the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the position of Privy Councilor. But he dedicated the real pearls of his creativity not to his wife, but to a girl, the same age as his first daughter, who was brought together by a fatal passion with a 50-year-old man. The poems “Oh, how murderously we love...”, “All day she lay in oblivion...” are dedicated to Elena Denisyeva and compiled into the so-called “Denisyev cycle.” The girl, caught having an affair with a married old man, was rejected by both society and her own family; she bore Tyutchev three children. Unfortunately, both Denisyeva and two of their children died of consumption in the same year.
In 1854, Tyutchev was published for the first time in a separate collection, as an appendix to the issue of Sovremennik. Turgenev, Fet, Nekrasov begin to comment on his work.
62-year-old Tyutchev retired. He thinks a lot, walks around the estate, writes a lot of landscape and philosophical lyrics, is published by Nekrasov in the collection “Russian Minor Poets”, gains fame and genuine recognition.
However, the poet is crushed by losses - in the 1860s, his mother, brother, eldest son, eldest daughter, children from Denisyeva and herself died. At the end of his life, the poet philosophizes a lot, writes about the role of the Russian Empire in the world, about the possibility of building international relations on mutual respect and observance of religious laws.
The poet died after a serious stroke that affected the right side of his body on July 15, 1873. He died in Tsarskoe Selo, before his death he accidentally met his first love, Amalia Lerchenfeld, and dedicated one of his most famous poems, “I Met You,” to her.
Tyutchev’s poetic heritage is usually divided into stages:
1810-20 - the beginning of his creative path. The influence of sentimentalists and classical poetry is obvious in the lyrics.
1820-30 - the formation of handwriting, the influence of romanticism is noted.
1850-73 - brilliant, polished political poems, deep philosophical lyrics, “Denisevsky cycle” - an example of love and intimate lyrics.