Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev is a brilliant Russian poet of the 19th century, one of the founders of philosophical poetry in Russian literature. The poet was born in 1803 in the village of Ovstug, where the family estate of the Tyutchev family was located. Like most nobles, Tyutchev received an excellent education. His first teacher, S.E. Raich, was a brilliant expert on ancient and medieval Italian poetry.
After graduating from Moscow University in 1821, Tyutchev was admitted to the College of Foreign Affairs and received a place in the diplomatic mission at the Bavarian court in Munich. At that time, Bavaria was the center of European enlightenment, where Tyutchev met his idol - the German thinker and philosopher Schelling. Fond of poetry since childhood, Tyutchev wrote a lot, and in 1836 his works fell into the hands of. Pushkin was delighted with the novelty of poetic techniques, and his poems were immediately published in the Sovremennik magazine. Tyutchev is truly unique for Russian literature of that time - his thoughts are deep and brief, but at the same time lyrical and complete. With the advent of Tyutchev, many poets tried to enclose their reflections in a small poetic form, but Tyutchev remains an unsurpassed master of miniature even today.
Fyodor Ivanovich was extremely amorous, and, despite his unprepossessing appearance, enjoyed the favor of women. This is how Kutuzov’s granddaughter recalled him: “... a small man with glasses, very ugly, but he talks well.” The poet repeatedly started affairs “on the side,” causing discontent and condemnation in society.
His affair with the girl Elena Deniseva caused a big scandal. She is a young, inexperienced young lady, Tyutchev is twenty years older, and was already in his second marriage. This relationship was painful for both; the doors of many noble houses were slammed in front of Deniseva. The “illegal union” lasted 14 years, but she remained a supported mistress, and their common children were illegitimate. Tyutchev understood that he had practically ruined her life, and his stories dedicated to their fatal passion were filled with tragedy and guilt. The last birth completely broke her health, already undermined by consumption. Denisyeva died, leaving Tyutchev three children.
Thanks to Denisyeva, a whole cycle of Tyutchev’s love lyrics appeared, which is called “Denisyevsky”. It contains the whole story of their relationship, from the first passionate days to the last, filled with pain and suffering.
At the same time, the poet made a very successful career, rising to the rank of state councilor. As a statesman, he was always concerned about the fate of Russia, about its role in world history. And he dedicated many short but thoughtful quatrains to his country:
These poor villages
This meager nature -
The native land of long-suffering,
You are the land of the Russian people.
And yet Tyutchev is more of a poet-thinker, a poet-philosopher. It is filled with poetic images of natural phenomena - thaws, thunderstorms, the onset of dusk, which are always compared with the spiritual mood. All his landscape lyrics are filled with reflections on the mystery of existence, on the inseparability of nature and man, on the brevity of life and the infinity of the world. He wrote his most famous poem in 1869, and today this brilliant creation is considered an example of a rhyming aphorism:
Nature is a sphinx. And the more faithful she is
His temptation destroys a person,
What may happen, no longer
There is no riddle and she never had one.
Until the end of his days, Tyutchev maintained clarity of mind and was keenly interested in the political life of Russia and Europe. He died in 1873 and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg.
There is no arguing about Tyutchev, who does not feel him,
thereby proving that he does not feel poetry.
I.S. Turgenev
Childhood
F.I. Tyutchev was born on December 5 (November 23), 1803 in the village of Ovstug, Oryol province (now Bryansk region) in the family of the hereditary Russian nobleman Ivan Nikolaevich Tyutchev. As a child, Fedenka (as his family affectionately called him) was the family’s favorite and darling. Of the three children, the poet’s mother, nee Tolstaya, especially singled out her son Fyodor. His extraordinary talent was revealed early: in his thirteenth year he was already successfully translating the odes of Horace, competing with his first teacher and friend, the poet Semyon Yegorovich Raich. The parents spared nothing for their son's education. Already in childhood, he knew the French language to its subtleties and later used it as his native language.
Adolescence. Moscow
As a teenager, Tyutchev and his parents moved to Moscow. In the capital, the future poet began attending lectures on the theory of poetry and the history of Russian literature by the then famous poet, critic and professor at Moscow University A.F. Merzlyakova. Exercises in poetry were considered at that time a natural part of humanities education. However, Fyodor Tyutchev's attempts at writing attracted the attention of his mentors. In 1818, his poem “The Nobleman (Imitation of Horace)” was read by Merzlyakov at the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, which became the poetic debut of the fourteen-year-old poet. Unfortunately, the text of this poem has been lost.
In 1919, Tyutchev entered the literature department of Moscow University, where he had been attending for two years as a volunteer student.
In November 1821, Tyutchev graduated from the university with a candidate's degree in literary sciences and was assigned to serve in the State Collegium of Foreign Affairs, located in St. Petersburg. At the family council, it was decided that Fedenka’s brilliant abilities could lead to a career as a diplomat. No one thought seriously about poetry...
Diplomatic service. Meeting German philosophers and poets
In mid-1822, Tyutchev entered the diplomatic service and left for Germany. In Munich, the young poet lived an intense spiritual life, zealously studying philosophy and being carried away by romantic art. Even then he became widely known as a versatile and extremely witty person. In Munich he became close friends with the romantic philosopher Friedrich Schiller and the freedom-loving poet Heinrich Heine.
Having become acquainted with Schelling's ideas in Russia, in Germany the poet could communicate with the philosopher himself, who argued that the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of spirit (history) are related to each other and that understanding of both is given through contemplation and art. Schelling's philosophy had a decisive influence on Tyutchev's worldview.
He spent a total of twenty-two years abroad (last years in Italy, in Turin). It is no coincidence that among Tyutchev’s first works there are so many translations (especially of German poets). Returning to Russia, Tyutchev served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was a censor and chairman of the Committee of Foreign Censorship. He did not pursue a career as a diplomat; only in 1828 he was given the position of junior secretary at the Russian mission. Tyutchev himself admits years later that he “didn’t know how to serve.” Not only did he not know how, but he also could not. For the simple reason that he was born a poet, not an official.
Publications in Sovremennik
Alas, during his life in Munich, Tyutchev was not known as a poet either among his compatriots or abroad. Published during these years in his homeland in Rajic's magazine "Galatea", his poems went unnoticed. So far, only Tyutchev’s close friends paid attention to them, and there were few of them...
Finally, in 1836, copies of some of Tyutchev’s poems, with the help of Zhukovsky and Vyazemsky, reached Pushkin, who, according to contemporaries, “was delighted.” Pushkin, in the third issue of his magazine Sovremennik, published (unheard of!) sixteen poems at once under the general title: “Poems sent from Germany” signed “F.T.” In the next fourth issue eight more poems were added. Tyutchev's poems continued to be published in Sovremennik after Pushkin's death until 1840. This publication, which can be considered an event in the literature of that time, passed by the consciousness of most compatriots.
Tyutchev himself was surprisingly indifferent to the fate of his poetic creations. He did not care about publishing them, and only through the efforts of his friends could his lyrical masterpieces see the light of day. Upon returning to Russia from Germany in the 40s, Tyutchev did not publish at all. And suddenly in 1850, the young poet Nikolai Nekrasov, publisher of the Sovremennik magazine, published an article in which he fully cited twenty-four of his old poems from Pushkin’s Sovremennik with an enthusiastic review! Four years later, the writer Ivan Turgenev took the trouble to publish a collection of poems by Fyodor Tyutchev and also wrote a laudable article about him. The first collection of a poet who is already over fifty! In the 19th century, this was perhaps the only case.
Poems about Russia
Tyutchev's poetic activity, which lasted half a century, from the 20s to the 70s, occurred at a time of major political events in Russia and Western Europe - violent revolutionary upheavals. Until the end of his days, the poet had hope for Russia (“You can only believe in Russia”), faith in its exceptional historical role, a dream of it as a country bringing the principles of unity and brotherhood to the world, a dream that now rests on trust in the people. Tyutchev, like Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, believed in the special moral consciousness of the Russian people. Many of Tyutchev’s poems are imbued with ardent love for the homeland and people.
Philosophical lyrics
And yet, Tyutchev’s deepest connection with the era, with its hot springs, was reflected not in responses to social problems, but in the poet’s philosophical thoughts about the worldview of contemporary man. In Russian literature, Tyutchev belongs to the poetry of thought. Its traditions were laid down in the 18th century in the philosophical odes of M.V. Lomonosov and G.R. Derzhavina. The poet and philosophical lyrics of Pushkin took into account. In Tyutchev’s lyrics, a person realizes a previously unimaginable and frightening freedom: he realized that there is no God above him, that he is alone with nature - the hope for “sympathy of heaven”, for personal immortality, has been lost. A person “longs for faith, but does not ask for it,” since “there is no point in prayer.” This consciousness gave rise to a mood of pessimism even among strong people (for example, Turgenev's Bazarov). And Tyutchev often mourns the fragility of the human race.
Poems: “The love of the earth and the beauty of the year...”, “Spring thunderstorm”, “I remember the golden time...”, “So, in life there are moments...”, “All day she lay in oblivion... ", "There is in the primordial autumn..."
Lyrics of nature and its connection with the inner world of man
Tyutchev constantly compares man with nature and often, it would seem, not in favor of the former: man is weak, vulnerable, he is always in torment for the past, in worries about the future - nature “does not know about the past”, she lives in all the fullness of the momentary, immediate life; a person is divided, contradictory - nature is characterized by internal harmony, “a calm order in everything.” But no one in Russian poetry feels the unity of world existence like Tyutchev.
Tyutchev’s nature helps a person understand himself, appreciate the significance of purely human qualities in himself: consciousness, will, individuality, and see that the elements of the soul depend on them. Consciousness itself seems to enhance a person’s “helplessness,” but the disharmony generated by thought does not humiliate, but elevates him. Thus, Tyutchev’s man suffers from the fact that he is not able to fully realize himself, from the contradiction between the plan and its implementation, feeling and word.
Tyutchev is a recognized master of lyrical landscape. But his landscape poems are difficult to separate from philosophical ones. He does not have purely descriptive sketches of a morning in the mountains or an autumn evening, although there are poems bearing such titles.
With two or three succinct strokes, he knows how to create a symbolic landscape, expressing both the inner life of nature and the important spiritual state of man.
Poems: “Not what you think, nature...”, “The earth still looks sad...”, “The stream has thickened and is getting dark...”, “Human tears, oh human tears...”
Love lyrics
The state of falling in love was as natural for Tyutchev as intense reflection on the problems of existence. Finding inner purity and clarity turns out to be very difficult. Chaotic, destructive forces are also revealed in the “liberated soul” - the principles of individualism and egoism. Tyutchev considered egoism to be the disease of the century, and he experienced its poisonous effect on himself. He wrote about this in a series of poems dedicated to Elena Alexandrovna Denisyeva, a woman with whom he had a long, passionate and “illegal” love, before whom he felt constant guilt.
Tyutchev’s “last love” lasted fourteen years. In 1864, his beloved died of consumption. Tyutchev blamed himself alone for her death: after all, without parting with his family, he put his beloved woman in an ambiguous position. The aristocratic circle to which Denisieva belonged turned away from her.
Tyutchev’s poems dedicated to Denisyeva entered the treasury of world love poetry and thus, as it were, rewarded this woman for her suffering.
last love
Oh, how in our declining years
We love more tenderly and more superstitiously...
Shine, shine, farewell light
Last love, dawn of evening!
Half the sky was covered in shadow,
Only there, in the west, does the radiance wander,
- Slow down, slow down, evening day,
Last, last, charm.
Let the blood in your veins run low,
But there is no shortage of tenderness in the heart...
O you, last love!
You are both bliss and hopelessness.
Between mid 1851 and early 1854
Tyutchev is not a singer of ideal love - he, like Nekrasov, writes about its “prose” and about the amazing metamorphoses of feelings: addiction to the most precious unexpectedly turns into torment, a “fatal duel.” But with his lyrics he affirms high standards of relationships: it is important to understand your loved one, to look at yourself through his eyes, to live up to the hopes awakened by love with your whole life, to be afraid of not only low, but even mediocre actions in relations with your loved one. All this is not only declared, but also revealed by the character of the heroine - a woman of rare courage and beauty, and by the amazing confession of the poet, who asks, as a benefactor, for the painful memory of a friend who died early:
Oh Lord, give me burning suffering
And dispel the deadness of my soul
You took it, but the torment of remembering it,
Deliver me living flour through it.
Tyutchev’s “Denisevsky cycle” precedes many twists and turns in the philosophical and psychological novels of F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy.
Poems: “To N.”, “No matter how furious the slander is...”, “Don’t say: he loves me as before...”.
Tyutchev's lyrics give rise to tension of feelings and thoughts; they captivate with sound recording in which the voices of life itself are heard: the rhythms and interruptions of the wind, waves, forest noise, and the disturbed human heart. Tyutchev's poetic style combines musical, melodic motives and oratorical and rhetorical techniques.
The structure of his speech is striking in its juxtaposition of Slavicisms, mythological images with unusual unexpected forms and phrases:
Here it is quietly, quietly,
As if carried by the wind,
Smoky-light, hazy-lily
Suddenly something fluttered out the window.
Tyutchev is especially close to our contemporaries with his belief in the endless possibilities of man - both as an individual person concealing “the whole world” in his soul, and as all of humanity, capable of creating a new nature.
Literature
L.M. Lotman. F.I. Tyutchev.// History of Russian literature. Volume three. Leningrad: Nauka, 1982. pp. 403–427.
D.N. Murin. Russian literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century. Thematic lesson planning for grade 10. St. Petersburg: Smio Press, 1998. pp. 57–58.
Nina Sukhova. Fedor Ivanovich Tyutchev // Encyclopedia for children “Avanta+”. Volume 9. Russian literature. Part one. M., 1999 pp. 505–514.
G.K. Shchennikov. F.I. Tyutchev // F.I. Tyutchev. Poems. Khabarovsk book publishing house, 1982. pp. 5–14.
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.
A talented lyricist and publicist, an excellent diplomat and statesman of Russia of the nineteenth century, author of the famous romance “I Met You.” Did you find out what we're talking about? This is Tyutchev. The biography of the poet, who glorified love and nature, is the history of the development of the classical tradition and the flowering of romanticism in Russian literature.
Tyutchev: biography briefly
Tyutchev's biography is familiar to all schoolchildren, since the name of this poet went down in the history of the formation and development of literature. Tyutchev's poems are included in the golden collection of Russian literature of the Romantic era. His lyrics combine odic traditions of the 18th century with romance experiments of lyricism of the mid-19th century.
The fate of the poet is inextricably linked with the fate of the country. Tyutchev came from an ancient family, the history of which began in the 13th century with an Italian of Tatar origin Dudzhi from Sugdea, a Crimean polis. This surname in the Russian phonetic version sounded like Tutche, and soon transformed into Tyutchev.
Scientists who tried to restore the origin of this surname and its meaning suggested that the roots should be sought in the Uyghur dialect, where there is the word tutaci, which meant ‘one who plays the shepherd’s horn’. It is possible that Fyodor Ivanovich’s ancestor also possessed musical and poetic talent, which manifested itself in the glorious heir of the family.
The Tyutchevs are a famous noble family that owned estates in the Yaroslavl, Moscow, Tambov, and Ryazan provinces. Ivan Nikolaevich, the writer’s father, owned a large estate in the Oryol province. It was the village of Ovstug, where in 1803 the future poet Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev was born. This happened in the last month of autumn, on the 23rd.
Fedor was not the only child in the family. Besides him, there was an eldest son, Kolya, and a younger sister, Daria. Children, as was customary in noble families, were educated at home. At first, they were raised and taught the basics of literacy by the former serf Nikolai Khlopov, an honest, pious and decent man.
Already at the age of seven, Fedor showed extraordinary mental and artistic inclinations. He became engrossed in the works of Vasily Zhukovsky and Mikhail Derzhavin. The metropolitan atmosphere of Moscow contributed to the development of his aesthetic tastes. Here the family bought a small house. However, Moscow soon had to be abandoned: Napoleonic troops entered the city.
The Tyutchevs waited out the time of the French occupation on their Yaroslavl estate, and upon returning to Moscow they hired an eminent and talented teacher who gave the children systematic knowledge and instilled a love of foreign languages - an important component of a good education for the nobles of that time.
This mission was entrusted to Semyon Raich. A talented writer, he encouraged Fyodor Tyutchev’s interest in the masterpieces of world literature, ancient poetry, and classical French literature.
Already at the age of 14, Fyodor Ivanovich had good knowledge, he was so versed in literature that the famous critic Alexei Merzlyakov not only took patronage over the young talent, but also made him his protégé in the world of literature.
Fyodor Tyutchev can rightfully be called a child prodigy, because at the age of 16 he became a student at the University of Moscow. The young man chose the philological path. The future poetry star completed his university course in two years. Within the walls of his alma mater, he became friends with wonderful men who created Russian literature of the 19th century - Mikhail Pogodin, Vladimir Odoevsky, Stepan Shevyrev.
At eighteen, Tyutchev became a diplomat. He is sent on a mission to Munich. At one of the social events, he met Amalia Lerchenfeld, the illegitimate daughter of the Prussian king. The girl had a delightful appearance and enormous demands, which the poor Fyodor Tyutchev could not satisfy. The young people separated.
A year after Amalia's marriage, the poet also married. His chosen one, Eleanor von Bothmer, homely, loving and sensitive, gave birth to the poet three daughters. However, she did not meet the intellectual needs of Fyodor Ivanovich, so he started affairs on the side.
One of his passions - Baroness Ernestine von Pfeffel, after Dernberg's first husband - consoled the poet after the sudden death of Eleanor in 1838. Tyutchev married this woman as soon as the period of official mourning ended.
It was during this period that his diplomatic mission was interrupted, but the poet delayed returning to his homeland for another five years. He receives the task from Nicholas I to create a favorable image of Russia for European politicians.
Returning home, Tyutchev heads the committee at the Russian diplomatic department, which was responsible for censorship. Soon he was awarded a high official rank - 4th. Fyodor Ivanovich is an active state councilor, the head of the censorship committee, which was in charge of foreign literature that came into Russia.
Having served his Fatherland faithfully until 1865, Tyutchev retired with the rank of Privy Councilor. And this is the highest rank in the hierarchy of government officials of that time.
At that time, Fyodor Ivanovich had lost interest in the royal service and was in a depressed state of mind. This was led to by a series of deaths of his loved ones (mother, brother and nephew, daughter Maria).
In the early 1870s, Tyutchev suffered an apoplexy, as a result of which his left arm was paralyzed. Soon a second attack occurred, which led to the poet’s death at the age of 70 in 1873. From Tsarskoye Selo Tyutchev’s body was transported to the Novodevichy cemetery.
Tyutchev: creative path
Poetry became a part of Fyodor Tyutchev's life in early childhood. Biographers date the poet's first attempts at writing differently: some claim that the first verse-epitaph was written by Fyodor Ivanovich at the age of four, while others call a more mature date - 12 years old, when the boy wrote a poem dedicated to his father.
Despite the fact that Tyutchev began to engage in literary creativity early and was already a member of the Society of Literature Lovers at the age of fourteen, he did not consider this activity to be his main one. Perhaps that is why the entire baggage of the poet’s lyrical works consists of three hundred texts, a third of which are translations.
All works of the classic can be grouped into three groups - landscape, civil and intimate lyrics. Let's talk about them in more detail:
- Landscape lyrics.
In the 19th century, the Russian public admired lyrical descriptions of nature, and poetry dedicated to ladies of heart was especially popular. Most of Fyodor Ivanovich's poetic works embodied these two themes.
His stay in Germany - the country where romanticism was born, translations of texts by Goethe and Schiller, which were done by the young secretary of the Russian embassy in Munich, his personal acquaintance with Heine affected the formation of Fyodor Tyutchev's special poetic style. Literary scholars agreed that he canonized the lyrical branch of Russian poetry. His early works were created under the influence of the lyrics of Derzhavin and Lomonosov, German romantics.
The German period of Fyodor Ivanovich’s life was marked by the appearance of such famous works as: “I love a thunderstorm in early May” (“Spring Thunderstorm”), “Summer Evening”, “Morning in the Mountains”, “Awakening”, “How Quietly It Blows Over the Valley” and others. In them, the author sang the beauty of nature, its harmony and spirituality. Ideal and perfect nature was contrasted with the disharmony of society and the spiritual down-to-earthness of man.
During this period, Tyutchev is still under the influence of the classical tradition, which is modernized thanks to the romantic mood of poetic images.
- Civil lyrics.
The poet has works that reflect his civic position. So, in connection with the uprising on Senate Square in 1825, Fyodor Ivanovich wrote a poem “You have been corrupted by autocracy”.
The poet condemns the revolutionary impulse of the Decembrists. Tyutchev was a convinced monarchist. He believed that the basis of Russia was autocracy and Orthodoxy, and any democratic or liberal changes were the joys of Europe.
His early work was dominated by odic messages in praise of Emperor Nicholas I, glorification of ancient Rus', the legendary Scandinavians who gave the beginnings of statehood to the Russian lands, the first princes ( "Oleg's Shield", "Song of the Scandinavian Warriors" etc.).
While in the diplomatic service, Tyutchev implemented a plan to create a positive image of Russia in the eyes of European rulers, formed the image of a friendly and progressive society, a wise emperor. In the early 1840s. Tyutchev met the Czech philologist and poet Vaclav Hanka and, under his influence, became imbued with the ideas of Slavophilism.
In the 1860s. Tyutchev wrote the famous quatrain “You can’t understand Russia with your mind”, where he pointed out a special path of development of the Russian state, which defies rational and logical understanding. It is difficult for Western rulers to understand.
Most of the poetry that was written during Tyutchev’s diplomatic service was published only in 1836. They were published in Pushkin's almanac Sovremennik.
- Intimate lyrics.
The most popular among admirers of Tyutchev’s talent were his intimate lyrics. Let's talk about works that are associated with the poet's love adventures.
"I met you". The young diplomat dedicated this lyrical work to Amalia Lerchenfeld. A gentle and romantic person, she aroused the admiration of Alexander Pushkin and the Russian Emperor Nicholas I.
Theodor (Fedor) was the fleeting hobby of a secular young lady. Her origin obliged her to make an appropriate batch. Therefore, soon after meeting Tyutchev, Amalia married the influential Baron Krudener.
Of the outburst of passion, only one piece of evidence remains - a romantic poem, which the poet dedicated to his passion. It became a popular romance thanks to the music of Leonid Milashkin.
Poetry with cryptonym "K N." And "N" (“Your sweet gaze, full of innocent passion”, “You love, you know how to pretend”) dedicated to the first wife of Fyodor Tyutchev - Eleanor (Nora) von Bothmer - the widow of the Russian diplomat Peterson.
The author sings of a gentle and virtuous woman who charmed him and gave him her passionate love. The poetry has a theme of secrecy that hides their relationship. It is known that their marriage was secret from 1826 to 1829.
The poet was incredibly happy, but a premonition of trouble haunted him. He spoke about this in poetry "Silentium!". Indeed, after twelve years of a happy marriage, Eleanor dies. The cause of her early death was the woman's experience of a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, when the whole family was returning from Germany to Russia.
“I love your eyes, my friend”, “And there is no feeling in your eyes”, “Oh, if only you had dreamed then”- these lyrical revelations of Tyutchev are addressed to his second wife Ernestine Dernberg.
For her bright appearance, the woman, with the light hand of Ivan Turgenev, was called the “Mephistophelian Madonna.” In fact, she was a kind, sensitive and loving woman.
Their relationship with Tyutchev began in Germany, when Eleanor was alive. She, having learned about her husband’s affair, made an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Because of this affair, the poet was transferred to Russia. After Nora's death, 29-year-old Ernestina and 36-year-old Tyutchev got married.
The second wife was a real angel: she accepted the poet’s children from his first marriage, raised them as her own, gave birth to three more children for Fyodor Ivanovich, encouraged him to pursue literature because she was rich, and tolerated his relationship with Elena Denisyeva. The poetry that Tyutchev dedicated to Ernestine is full of love, adoration and repentance.
"Denisevsky cycle"(“Predestination”, “Send, Lord, your joy” “Oh, do not disturb me with a just reproach!”, Oh, how murderously we love”, “You loved, and love like you”, “More than once have you heard the confession » etc.) are love poems dedicated to Elena Deniseva.
Tyutchev's daughters studied at the Smolny Institute. He visited them often and during one of his visits he met a beautiful pupil of this institution, the cheerful and intelligent Elena Denisyeva. He was 47 years old and she was 24 years old.
The girl was destined for the usual career of a court maid of honor and marriage to a worthy man. However, having fallen in love at first sight with the famous poet, she went against public opinion.
Their relationship lasted fourteen years. All this time, Tyutchev was married to Ernestine Dernberg and did not even think about divorce. Elena died of consumption in the arms of her beloved. After a while, two children died, whom Denisyeva gave birth to the poet.
The cycle of lyrical works, born under the influence of the greatest love in the lyricist’s life, is considered the pinnacle in his work. He sang the sacrifice of a loving woman, her dedication and courage.
Fyodor Tyutchev is one of the brightest and most original lyricists of 19th century literature. His works are a reflection of the poet’s personality, his beliefs, opinions, positions, and love experiences. A subtle lyricist, a great patriot, he became one of the symbols of Russian classical poetry.
Biography of Tyutchev.
Life and work of Tyutchev. Essay
From childhood, the poetry of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev enters our lives with the strange, bewitching purity of feeling, clarity and beauty of images:
I love the storm in early May,
When spring, the first thunder,
How to frolic and play,
Rumbling in the blue sky...
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev was born on November 23 / December 5, 1803 in the Ovstug estate of the Oryol province of the Bryansk district into a middle-landowner, old-noble family. Tyutchev received his initial education at home. Since 1813, his Russian language teacher was S. E. Raich, a young poet and translator. Raich introduced his student to works of Russian and world poetry and encouraged his first poetic experiments. “With what pleasure I remember those sweet hours,” Raich later said in his autobiography, “when, in the spring and summer, living in the Moscow region, F.I. and I would leave the house, stock up on Horace, or Virgil by someone else.” from domestic writers and, sitting down in a grove, on a hill, delved into reading and drowned in the pure pleasures of the beauties of brilliant works of poetry.” Speaking about the unusual abilities of his “naturally gifted” pupil, Raich mentions that “by the thirteenth year he was already translating Horace’s odes with remarkable success.” These translations from Horace 1815-1816 have not survived. But among the poet’s early poems there is an ode “For the New Year 1816”, in which one can see imitations of the Latin classic. It was read on February 22, 1818 by the poet and translator, professor at Moscow University A.F. Merzlyakov at the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. On March 30 of the same year, the young poet was elected as an employee of the Society, and a year later a free adaptation of Horace’s “Epistle of Horace to Maecenas” appeared in print.
In the fall of 1819, Tyutchev was admitted to Moscow University in the literature department. The diary of these years by Comrade Tyutchev, the future historian and writer M.P. Pogodin, testifies to the breadth of their interests. Pogodin began his diary in 1820, when he was still a university student, a passionate young man, open to the “impressions of life”, who dreamed of a “golden age”, that in a hundred, in a thousand years “there will be no rich people, everyone will be equal.” In Tyutchev he found that “wonderful young man”, everyone could check and trust their thoughts. They talked about the “future education” in Russia, about the “free noble spirit of thoughts”, about Pushkin’s ode “Liberty”... 3. The accusatory tyrant-fighting pathos of “Liberty” was sympathetically received by the young poet, and he responded with a poetic message to Pushkin (“To Pushkin’s Ode” to freedom"), in which he hailed him as an exposer of “obstinate tyrants.” However, the free-thinking of the young dreamers was of a fairly moderate nature: Tyutchev compares the “fire of freedom” with the “flame of God,” the sparks of which rain down on the “brows of pale kings,” but at the same time, welcoming the herald of “holy truths,” he calls on him “ roznizhuvaty”, “touch”, “soften” the hearts of kings - without eclipsing the “brilliance of the crown”.
In their youthful desire to comprehend the fullness of existence, university comrades turned to literature, history, philosophy, subjecting everything to their critical analysis. This is how their disputes and conversations arose about Russian, German and French literature, “the influence that the literature of one language has on the literature of another,” about the course of lectures on the history of Russian literature, which they listened to in the literature department.
Tyutchev’s early interest in the ideas of thinkers distant from each other reflected both the search for his own solutions and a sense of the complexity and ambiguity of these solutions. Tyutchev was looking for his own interpretation of the “book of nature,” as all his subsequent work convinces us of.
Tyutchev graduated from University in two years. In the spring of 1822, he was already enrolled in the service of the State Collegium of Foreign Affairs and appointed as a supernumerary official at the Russian diplomatic mission in Munich, and soon went abroad. For the first six years of his stay abroad, the poet was listed as “extra staff” at the Russian mission and only in 1828 received the position of second secretary. He held this position until 1837. More than once in letters to family and friends, Tyutchev jokingly wrote that his wait for a promotion had taken too long, and just as jokingly explained: “Because I never took the service seriously, it is fair that the service should also laugh at me.”
Tyutchev was an opponent of serfdom and a supporter of a representative, established form of government - most of all, a constitutional monarchy. With great acuteness, Tyutchev realized the discrepancy between his idea of the monarchy and its actual embodiment in the Russian autocratic system. “In Russia there is an office and barracks,” “everything moves around the whip and rank,” - in such sarcastic aphorisms Tyutchev, who arrived in Russia in 1825, expressed his impressions of the Arakcheev regime in the last years of the reign of Alexander I.
Tyutchev spent more than twenty years abroad. There he continues to translate a lot. From Horace, Schiller, Lamartine, who attracted his attention back in Moscow, he turns to Goethe and the German romantics. Tyutchev was the first of the Russian poets to translate Heine’s poems, and, moreover, before the publication of “Travel Pictures” and “The Book of Songs”, they made the author’s name so popular in Germany. At one time he had friendly relations with Heine. In letters of 1828 to K. A. Farnhagen, von Ense Heine called the Tyutchev house in Munich (in 1826 Tyutchev married the widow of a Russian diplomat, Eleanor Peterson) “a wonderful oasis,” and the poet himself his best friend at that time.
Of course, Tyutchev’s poetic activity in these years was not limited to translations. In the 20-30s, he wrote such original poems, testifying to the maturity and originality of his talent.
In the spring of 1836, fulfilling the request of a former colleague at the Russian mission in Munich, Prince. I. S. Gagarin, Tyutchev sent several dozen poems to St. Petersburg. Through Vyazemsky and Zhukovsky, Pushkin met them, greeted them with “surprise” and “capture” - with surprise and delight at the “unexpected appearance” of poems, “full of depth of thoughts, brightness of colors, news and power of language.” Twenty-four poems under the general title “Poems sent from Germany” and signed “F. T. "appeared in the third and fourth volumes of Pushkin's Sovremennik. The printing of Tyutchev's poems on the pages of Sovremennik continued after Pushkin's death - until 1840. With some exceptions, they were selected by Pushkin himself.
In 1837, Tyutchev was appointed senior secretary of the Russian mission in Turin, and then soon - chargé d'affaires. Leaving his family in St. Petersburg for a while, in August 1837 Tyutchev left for the capital of the Sardinian kingdom and four and a half months after arriving in Turin he wrote to his parents: “Truly, I don’t like it here at all and only absolute necessity forces me to put up with such an existence. It is devoid of any kind of entertainment and seems to me a bad performance, all the more boring because it creates boredom, while its only merit was to amuse. This is exactly what existence is like in Turin.
On May 30/June 11, 1838, as the poet himself later said in a letter to his parents, they came to inform him that the Russian passenger steamer Nicholas I, which had left St. Petersburg, had burned down near Lubeck, off the coast of Prussia. Tyutchev knew that his wife and children were supposed to be on this ship, heading to Turin. He immediately left Turin, but only in Munich did he learn the details of what had happened.
The fire on the ship broke out on the night of 18/30 to 19/31 May. When the awakened passengers ran onto the deck, “two wide columns of smoke mixed with fire rose on both sides of the chimney and a terrible commotion began along the masts, which did not stop. The riots were unimaginable...” I recalled in his essay “Fire at Sea.” S. Turgenev, who was also on this ship.
During the disaster, Eleanor Tyutcheva showed complete self-control and presence of mind, but her already poor health was completely undermined by the experience of that terrible night. The death of his wife shocked the poet, overshadowing many years with the bitterness of memories:
Your sweet image, unforgettable,
He is in front of me everywhere, always,
Available, unchangeable,
Like a star in the sky at night...
On the five-year anniversary of Eleanor’s death, Tyutchev wrote to the one who helped bear the weight of loss and entered the poet’s life, by his own admission, as an “earthly ghost”: “Today’s date, September 9, is a sad date for me. It was the most terrible day in my life, and if it weren’t for you, it would probably have been my day too” (letter from Ernestina Fedorovna Tyutchev dated August 28 / September 9, 1843).
After entering into a second marriage with Ernestina Dernberg, Tyutchev was forced to resign due to unauthorized departure to Switzerland on the occasion of the wedding, which took place on July 17/29, 1839. Having resigned, in the fall of 1839 Tyutchev settled again in Munich. However, further stay in a foreign land, not due to his official position, became more and more difficult for the poet: “Although I am not used to living in Russia,” he wrote to his parents on March 18/30, 1843, “I think that it is impossible to be more privileged.” “connected to my country than I am, more constantly preoccupied with what belongs to it. And I am glad in advance that I will be there again.” At the end of September 1844, Tyutchev and his family returned to their homeland, and six months later he was re-enlisted in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The St. Petersburg period of the poet’s life was marked by a new rise in his lyrical creativity. In 1848-1849, he actually wrote poems: “Reluctantly and timidly...”, “When in a circle of murderous worries...”, “Human tears, oh human tears...”, “To a Russian woman,” “As a pillar of smoke brightens in the heights... "and others. In 1854, in the supplement to the March edition of Sovremennik, the first collection of Tyutchev's poems was published, and nineteen more poems appeared in the May book of the same magazine. In the same year, Tyutchev’s poems were published as a separate publication.
The appearance of Tyutchev's collection of poems was a great event in literary life at that time. In Sovremennik, I. S. Turgenev published the article “A few words about the poems of F. I. Tyutchev.” “... We could not help but be sincerely pleased,” wrote Turgenev, “to collect together the hitherto scattered poems of one of our most remarkable poets, like Pushkin’s greetings and approval conveyed to us.” In 1859, the magazine “Russian Word” published an article by A. A. Fet “On the poems of F. Tyutchev,” which spoke of him as an original “lord” of poetic thought, who is able to combine the “lyrical courage” of the poet with the constant “ sense of proportion." In the same 1859, Dobrolyubov’s famous article “The Dark Kingdom” appeared, in which, among judgments about art, there is an assessment of the features of Tyutchev’s poetry, its “burning passion” and “severe energy”, “deep thought, excited not only by spontaneous phenomena, but also by questions moral, interests of public life.”
In a number of the poet’s new creations, poems remarkable in their psychological depth stand out: “Oh, how murderously we love...”, “Predestination”, “Don’t say: he loves me, as before...”, “Last Love” and some others . Supplemented in subsequent years with such poetic masterpieces as “All day she lay in oblivion ...”, “There is also in my suffering stagnation ...”, “Today, friend, fifteen years have passed. . “,” “On the eve of the anniversary of August 4, 1864,” “There is not a day when the soul does not ache...” - they compiled the so-called “Denisovo cycle.” This cycle of poems represents, as it were, a lyrical story about the love experienced by the poet “in his declining years” - about his love for Elena Alexandrovna Denisova. Their “lawless” relationship in the eyes of society lasted for fourteen years. In 1864, Denisova died of consumption. Having failed to protect his beloved woman from “human judgment,” Tyutchev blames himself first of all for the suffering caused to her by her ambiguous position in society.
Tyutchev's political worldview mainly took shape towards the end of the 40s. A few months before his return to his homeland, he published in Munich a brochure in French, “Letter to Mr. Dr. Gustav Kolbe” (later reprinted under the title “Russia and Germany”). In this work, dedicated to the relationship between Tsarist Russia and the German states, Tyutchev, in contrast to Western Europe, puts forward Eastern Europe as a special world living its own unique life, where “Russia has at all times served as the soul and driving force.” Under the impression of the Western European revolutionary events of 1848, Tyutchev conceived a large philosophical and journalistic treatise, “Russia and the West.” Only a general plan of this plan has been preserved, two chapters, processed in the form of independent articles in French (“Russia and the Revolution”, “The Papacy and the Roman Question” - published in 1849, 1850), and sketches of other sections.
As these articles, as well as Tyutchev’s letters, testify, he is convinced that the “Europe of treatises of 1815” has already ceased to exist and the revolutionary principle has deeply “penetrated into the public blood.” Seeing in the revolution only the element of destruction, Tyutchev is looking for the result of that crisis, which is shaking the world, in the reactionary utopia of Pan-Slavism, refracted in his poetic imagination as the idea of unity of the Slavs under the auspices of the Russian - “all-Slavic” tsar.
In Tyutchev's poetry of the 50-60s, the tragedy of the perception of life intensifies. And the reason for this is not only in the drama he experienced associated with his love for E. A. Denisova and her death. In his poems, generalized images of a desert region, “poor villages,” and “poor beggar” appear. The sharp, merciless and cruel contrast of wealth and poverty, luxury and deprivation is reflected in the poem “Send, Lord, your joy...”. The poem “To a Russian Woman” was written with “hopelessly sad, soul-tearing predictions of the poet.” The ominous image of an inhuman “light” that destroys everything better with slander, the image of a light-crowd, appears in the verses “There are two forces - two fatal forces ...” and “What did you pray with love ...”.
In 1858, he was appointed chairman of the Foreign Censorship Committee; Tyutchev more than once acted as a deputy for publications subject to censorship punishment and under threat of persecution. The poet was deeply convinced that “one cannot impose unconditional and too long-lasting compression and oppression on the minds without significant harm to the entire social organism,” that the government’s task should not be to suppress, but to “direct” the press. Reality equally constantly indicated that for the government of Alexander II, as well as for the government of Nicholas I, the only acceptable method of “directing” the press was the method of police persecution.
Although Tyutchev held the position of chairman of the Foreign Censorship Committee until the end of his days (the poet died on July 15/27, 1873), both the service and the court-bureaucratic environment burdened him. The environment to which Tyutchev belonged was far from him; more than once from court ceremonies he endured a feeling of annoyance, deep dissatisfaction with himself and everyone around him. Therefore, almost all of Tyutchev’s letters are permeated with a feeling of melancholy, loneliness, and disappointment. “I love him,” wrote L. Tolstoy, “and I consider him one of those unfortunate people who are immeasurably higher than the crowd among whom they live, and therefore are always alone.”