Some critics believe that Madness is about certain water seekers. Other literary scholars believe that this work is a kind of self-critical statement created against the natural philosophy of Schelling and his patrons. There is also a version that the lines of the poem indicate doubts present in the poet’s soul; he is unsure of his personal prophetic gift.
As with many pieces of common knowledge, the real idea lies somewhere in the middle. The grains of the main idea are drawn from all directions, they are scattered across various topics and variants of interpretation. That is why it would be wrong to deny one or another option proposed by critics.
The main idea of the poem "Madness"
The main theme of the work is hidden in the title itself - it is madness that will answer this question. The first third of the nineteenth century is distinguished by the presence of this trend among many poets of that time. This topic was revealed in completely different ways and had two main cardinal points of view.
Such a topic was perceived by some readers as a true manifestation of wisdom, which allows one to study the hidden secrets of real existence. Usually behind them were hidden various ailments, terrible tragedies that befell a constantly thinking person. Baratynsky also used this direction in his works, who wrote poems entitled “The Last Death” and “In Madness there is Thought.” Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin did not exclude such themes from his works. His world-famous masterpiece, called “God forbid I go crazy...”, reflects precisely the psychological instability at the time of writing, as well as hopelessness.
F.I. Tyutchev reveals the above-described topics in his own way, from a completely new side. In the work, the concept of madness is associated with a certain carelessness, overflowing with constant fun. Joyful moments are combined with a certain gift of foresight. Particularly interesting is the epithet indicating pity, as well as various contradictory characteristics that form a kind of unity of thought.
Where the earth is burnt
The vault of heaven merged like smoke -
There in cheerful carefree
Pathetic madness lives on.
Under the hot rays
Buried in the fiery sands,
It has glass eyes
Looking for something in the clouds.
Then suddenly he will stand up and, with a sensitive ear,
Crouching to the cracked ground,
He listens to something with greedy ears
With contentment secret on the brow.
And he thinks he hears boiling jets,
What does the current of underground water hear,
And their lullaby singing,
And a noisy exodus from the earth!..
Analysis of the work “Madness”
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev created the plot of the poem in a very unique way. It gives the reader answers to many questions. For example: “What really is this madness?”, “What is better – illness or happiness?”, “What leads people to madness?” and much more. Such questions will certainly be discernible to the reader after reading the first lines of the masterpiece.
The popular themes of the 19th century did not allow any poet of that time to pass by. Fyodor Tyutchev created truly unique lines that were significantly different from the thoughts of his contemporaries. The author notes that some people are frightened by the presence of insanity, and for other people, it is deprivation of reason due to certain reasons. This is the beginning of something new that will definitely lead to complete happiness and satisfaction.
If you look at the poem in more depth, the reader immediately gets an inexplicable feeling of understatement. It is completely incomprehensible to the reader why a person who has just crossed the thirty-year mark or is just approaching it writes works on such destructive topics. It should be noted that at the time of writing, namely in 1830, Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev was only 27 years old. The theme of madness belonged to a certain direction, indicating the poet’s state of mind, and therefore was widespread.
Direction in the form of madness was presented to the reader in the form of a kind of poetic thought, based on certain mystical qualities and intuition, not similar to natural. The fact that Tyutchev for some reason attributed the epithet “pathetic” to this is considered very strange. After reading the lines, the reader gets the feeling that the described lyrical hero recently experienced a kind of Apocalypse. This is especially indicated by the very beginning of the work, where the charred earth and the sky in smoke are described.
It is this approach used by Fyodor Ivanovich that gives the reader a clear idea of what is happening to the person who sees it with his own eyes. How the earth crumbles under his feet. A person simply has no choice but to perceive the universe exactly as it really is. At first glance, it seems to the reader that the lyrical hero is happy and does not experience any worries, but in reality everything is completely different. The madman, presented by Tyutchev, seems to be suffering a certain punishment that he received consciously. This fact is confirmed by the lines indicating that the hero is located under the hot rays, closing himself in the fiery sands.
The phrase used by the author of the work, “with glass eyes,” is very interesting. Here the question immediately arises: “What does the use of this metaphor lead to?” An expression indicating a glassy look shows that the lyrical hero is focused, frozen on a certain object or situation. This reaction occurs in a person after realizing some kind of shock and detachment from existing reality. The lyrical hero is immersed in himself and is thinking about an existing life problem.
The word “minds” also attracts attention. Thus, the author tries to express his attitude towards the madman, imbued with irony. According to the poet, the lyrical hero has an imaginary feeling that he is supposedly able to foresee something in the future. Many lines speak of this direction, for example, “secret contentment on the brow,” indicating initiation into certain secrets of existence, as well as the insanity of the human personality.
Features of F. I. Tyutchev’s creativity
A poem called “Madness” is considered, both in the 19th century and currently, to be the most mysterious work of the nineteenth century. Many critics are still trying to figure it out. It is still not really known what exactly the real thought used by the author is. Further complicating the solution are the words of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, who describe that the uttered thought is in fact a lie. There are many clues and everyone wants to find them.
It should be noted that six years after writing the poem “Madman,” Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev wrote a work called “Cicero.” The lines of this masterpiece evoke memories associated with the sensational work about a crazy lyrical hero.
You need to understand the history and meaning of the word holy fool. It was in Rus' that those people who had tendencies towards madness were called holy fools. Only such a person is able to truly feel happiness from everyday things, without realizing the frailty of simple earthly existence.
In the work “Crazy,” a person who is the arbiter of destinies is described as a blissful and crazy person. A person who has been a witness to certain high spectacles and, having experienced immortality, will have a certain opportunity to possess a specific prophetic gift, as well as a chronicler of great world events.
It must be noted that this specific burden is also a heavy burden. Not everyone is given the opportunity to create true history in a certain era of constant change, which can hardly be compared with serene fun and carefreeness. It is in this state that the main lyrical character of the poem finds himself, who pays for his actions with madness, described in the masterpiece as a certain pity.
Based on the above, we can conclude that Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev did not see much meaning in the described poetic madness. The author points out the fact that nowadays there are a huge number of madmen - they can be among both ordinary people and individuals who create and regulate the destinies of those around them. And such madness is not only pitiful or dangerous, it is scary.
Where the earth is burnt
The vault of heaven merged like smoke, -
There in cheerful carefree
Pathetic madness lives on.
Under the hot rays
Buried in the fiery sands,
It has glass eyes
Looking for something in the clouds.
Then suddenly he will stand up and, with a sensitive ear,
Crouching to the cracked ground,
He listens to something with greedy ears
With contentment secret on the brow.
And he thinks he hears boiling jets,
What does the current of underground water hear,
And their lullaby singing,
And a noisy exodus from the earth!
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E.I. Khudoshina
Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University
“Madness” F.I. Tyutchev: poetic text and its reception
In one of the recent articles dedicated to the anniversary of F.I. Tyutchev, his poetry is close, following [CorpSho^]1, to the philosophy of existentialism: “Tyutchev perceived as a catastrophe not only the collapse of the universe,<...>but also its existence, not only human death, but also life.<.>Tyutchev wrote with the feeling that humanity was hanging over an abyss, which was ready to swallow it up every moment.<...>A century before Jaspers, Tyutchev sensed the existential significance of borderline states, when impending death exacerbates a person’s perception of the world” [Baevsky, 2003, p. 4-6]. The characteristics of existential philosophy, as well as Tyutchev’s “apocalyptic” worldview, given in this article, could serve as an introduction to the analysis of Tyutchev’s “Madness.” And it appears at the end of the article, it is called one of “Tyutchev’s most important poems,” but is considered in a completely different way. In our opinion, this is not accidental: “Madness” is one of the typical examples when the perception of a work of art, for one reason or another, comes into conflict with its own “code.” This article is devoted precisely to this problem.
Where the vault of heaven merges with the scorched earth like smoke, There, in cheerful carefreeness, pathetic madness lives.
Under the hot rays, Buried in the fiery sands, It is looking for Something in the clouds with glass eyes.
Then he suddenly rises up and, with a sensitive ear, falling to the cracked earth, listens to something with greedy hearing With secret contentment on his brow.
And he imagines that he hears boiling streams, that he hears the flow of underground waters, and their lullaby singing, and a noisy exodus from the earth!..
1© E.I. Khudoshina, 2003
See: “F. Cornillot posed the problem of Tyutchev’s existentialism in full force in his monumental dissertation” [Baevsky, 2003, p. 6].
This poem is considered to be one of the most “mysterious” and “dark” by Tyutchev. V.S. Baevsky believes that he was not studied very much, that he was “unlucky”, that “in the extensive literature about Tyutchev it is either completely avoided, or is mentioned and considered cursorily” [Baevsky, 1992, p. 54; 2003, p. 8]1. In the last decade, however, it has repeatedly come to the attention of researchers, and two of them have devoted special articles to “Madness.”
P.N. Tolstoguzov explained the variety of “considerations” relating to this “truly mysterious” poem by the extraordinary polysemy of Tyutchev’s word, its special literary quality, and the ability to “simultaneously” actualize in the poetic formulas developed by the era of romanticism, “an extremely wide range of meanings for this tradition” [ Tolstogu-zov, 1998, p. 13]. Another modern researcher and translator of Tyutchev into English, A. Liberman, is that Tyutchev’s poems are generally dark, and this is their distinctive property. “Incomprehensible passages are found in a variety of authors.<...>Tyutchev is obscure in entire verses, and when it seems clear, it often turns out that we have interpreted him incorrectly, for he created his own world populated by mirages” [Liberman, 1998, p. 127]. A false impression of clarity arises when Tyutchev is perceived “in its entirety and immediately, and only later it turns out that the acceptance of his poems is almost unconscious and that the picture he painted is understandable the worse the closer we stand to it.<...>At least half of Tyutchev’s early landscapes and their apotheosis “Madness” are like this” [Liberman 1989, pp. 101, 103]2.
An unexpected confirmation of the idea that the poems of the “dark” Tyutchev, when examined close to the text, lose themselves as a whole, could be an article by P.N. Tolstoguzov, which turned out to be a kind of scientific experiment: in it the lexical series of “Madness” is closely analyzed against the background of the poetic vocabulary of the romantic era. The entire poem is examined, line by line, in order to identify “signal words” in it, as well as “metaphorical correspondences” and “similar lyrical plots” in Russian and German poetry (Schiller, Goethe, Schelling, F. Glinka, E. Baratynsky, S.P. Shevyrev, N.A. Polevoy, V.N. Shchastny, etc.), remarkable observations are made, but the detected “ambiguity” of the poem (or rather, lexemes, phraseological units, poetic cliches) is so great that the interpretation the poem turns out to be equal to its absence, not answering the “mysteries” of it as a whole, and “synthetism” and “polysemy” - eclecticism (for which Tyutchev is sometimes reproached in relation to his worldview).
Some researchers, feeling that Tyutchev “sings the wrong way,” divorce the “dark” Tyutchev from his era. “It is precisely the need for interpretation that makes Tyutchev different from his contemporaries.<...>The conviction of old critics that Tyutchev stands apart in Russian poetry of his time (i.e., a whole half century) was apparently correct,” says A. Lieberman, confirming his thought with reference to precedents in the history of poetry. After all, this very phenomenon - the confrontation between “light” and “dark” poetry - is not so rare: “the most famous case, already recognized by medieval aesthetics, is the trobar leu and trobar clus of the troubadours” [Liberman, 1989, p. 99; 101]. Let us also recall that L.V. Pumpyansky defined the “only” phenomenon in European poetry, “which is called
1 For a detailed overview of interpretations, see: [Liberman 1998, p. 127-135; Kasatkina, 2002; Tolstoguzov, 1998, p. 13].
2 About the “mysteries” of Tyutchev’s landscapes and about the inevitable “schoolboy” and non-schoolboy questions that arise in connection with this, see also: [Liberman, 1998, p. 127-128; 1992, p. 101].
named after Tyutchev” as “a combination of the incompatible: romance and baroque” [Pumpyansky, 2000, p. 256]. But usually Tyutchev’s poetic world is described using a purely romantic paradigm.
This in itself is not objectionable. It’s another matter when a separate text is deciphered using a romantic code. Here characteristic errors may arise, which reveal a problem of a more general nature: the relationship between poetic language and utterances in this language, meaning and sense, poetic semantics and its actualization in a specific text. When considering the romantic parallels to Tyutchev’s poems, sometimes the thesis that “the coincidence of descriptive systems themselves will not necessarily be relevant for the actual meaning (signifiance) of the text, since the descriptive system is nothing more than a semi-finished product of speech, and will be relevant only the way of using this system, its actual function in the text" [Riffaterre, p. 22]. In other words, a poet can use vocabulary, phraseology, motifs, imagery of the poetic language of his era, but the way of “connecting words”, i.e. elements of this language may turn out to be “not from this century.” This, in our opinion, is what determines a kind of “optical illusion” in the research reception of “Madness”. Let's try to explain what we mean.
From a general look at the history of the study and interpretation of this poem, it turns out that almost all researchers, with one exception, proceeded from the idea that “Madness” depicts a “desert” and someone “living” in it (a madman, a prophet, a water seeker , poet), who in the desert searches and finds, or “thinks” that he finds, water, which, translated into the language of German romantic metaphysics, means the search for hidden knowledge. At the same time, the word lives is understood directly (“It obviously lives in the desert (burnt earth, hot rays, fiery sands)” [Liberman, 1998, p. 128]; “The event of Pushkin’s poem takes place in the desert - Tyutchev also places his Madness in desert" [Baevsky, 2003, p. 9] "The "burnt earth" turns out to be both a place of judgment and a shelter, a refuge for "pathetic madness."<...>Madness buries itself in the sands<...>and lives in them, like a worm, while looking into the clouds and listening to underground sources" [Tolstoguzov, 1998, p. 6, 11] 1.
It is characteristic that here, as it were, the very possibility of allegorism, quite familiar to the poetic language of this time, is excluded in advance. (See, for example, in Zhukovsky: “Holy youth, where hope lived” - “Inexpressible”, 1819; in Pushkin: “Delight lives in your coffin!” / He gives us a Russian voice; He tells us about that time. ..” - “Before the Saint’s Tomb”, 1831).
The exception mentioned above is the cursory description of “Madness” in the famous article by L.V. Pumpyansky, where the scientist, developing the idea of the desire of romantic metaphysics “to embrace both nature and humanity with one grandiose myth”, mentioning the “scorching day” in the role of one of Tyutchev’s “metaphysical enemies”, the theme of which is interpreted by the poet with “persistent repetition of the main lexicological and phraseological features ", as well as
1 It should be noted, however, that S.L. Frank, building the concept of a “religious symphony” of Tyutchev’s lyrics and talking about the charm of “sin, darkness, passion, the dark principle in external-internal cosmic life”, about the opposition in it of day and night, light and dark and citing “characteristic places in which they are drawing closer to each other,” he put it differently: “A pitiful and at the same time prophetic madness reigns (our italics - E.Kh.) not in the world of night, as one would expect, but on the contrary, “under the hot rays,” in the “fiery sands” [ Frank, 1996, p. 330, 331]. See also N.Ya. Berkovsky: “The landscape of drought is described, menacing, bleak in every detail, rainlessness, calm, solar fire, a person is lost and crushed in the hot, drying sands” [Berkovsky, 1969, p. 38].
com, pursuing the concept of the rhetorical nature of Tyutchev’s poetic “philosophy”, writes: “The metaphysical understanding of it (the theme of the “scorching day” - E.Kh.) is expressed, among other things, in the fact that such long ago “asleep” phrases as “sunset fire” “, Tyutchev “realizes” and writes, for example: “Where with the burnt earth / The vault of heaven merged like smoke.” In general, for a romantic poet, “theory of literature” turns into natural philosophy, Scaliger into Schelling” [Pumpyansky, 2000, p. 224]. But this remark was not developed or taken into account.
Meanwhile, the “sunset fire” metaphor, of course, is the main one in this poem; it is it that gives the meaning to the whole. More on this below, but now the question should be asked: where did the image of a poet or prophet in the desert come from as the main theme of “Madness”?
Once posed, this question does not seem particularly difficult. Answer: from the field of perception and its “psychology”, from the receptive sphere. There were many reasons for this:
1) The theme of the highest purpose of the poet and literature in general in its prophetic ministry was extremely popular in Russian culture of the 19th-20th centuries. At the same time, the egocentric concentration of the poet was taken for granted, and readers (critics), in connection with the high authority of science and philosophy, so energetically demanded that the poet be the bearer of “knowledge” (any: historical, social, mystical), that the prophetic theme could seem self-evident. As you know, Tyutchev did not escape it either, and in a complimentary poem to Fetu (1862), which is considered a “doublet” in relation to “Madness,” he mentions the poet’s prophetic ability to “hear the waters / And in the dark depths of the earth.”
2) The word “desert” and its derivatives are among the most commonly used in romantic poetry, including in its most authoritative, Pushkin’s expression, where the “desert of the world” can be an eastern harem, a Russian village, a social drawing room, or a ballroom hall, and a hermit's cave (desert). It should be emphasized that in romanticism the nuclear meaning of the associative chain “tied” to this image was determined not by “geography”, but by the etymology of the word “desert” itself (see the play with this seme in “The Tale of the Dead Princess”: “empty place” ), metonymically developing the theme of chosenness, the loneliness of the “desert” soul of the romantic hero and replacing the opposition between hero and crowd. The biblical connotations of this “eternal” topos as a place of trials and temptations provided its “philosophical” content, and Tyutchev’s reputation as a philosopher, and therefore a seeker of truth, sets the appropriate understanding of the search for Madness. At the same time, Tyutchev’s fully proven Schellingism can no longer help but support, clarifying, the theme of the search for truth in the spirit of German romanticism, where water is “per-vovlaga,” and “hearing” it means comprehending the secrets of mother nature [Toporov, 1990, p. . 67-69].
3) A self-evident branch of the “prophetic” theme was the motif of “sacred madness” in its various variations: the holy fool, “strange man”, “Don Quixote”, “Lear”, “Hamlet”, Chatsky (the extreme points of his “semantic counterpoint” indicated in [Tolstoguzov, 1998, p. 5]). Therefore, any character named or otherwise marked as "strange" or "wild" was to be suspected in this regard. Hence the popularity of the theme of madness. Having nothing to do with psychiatry or psychology, it was purely symbolic, and the image of a madman was drawn with the same standard features. These traits are pitifulness, strange gaiety (see Tyutchev’s “horrible laughter of madness”); a strange look, listening to something, impulsive, unexpected (“suddenly”) movements, some false or dubious “knowledge”, but symbolically hinting at something, strangely “clarified” thoughts. In the guise of Madness, he reproduces
den this symbolic standard, thereby confirming the title of the poem (and allowing one to join those who “believe” its title, see, for example: [Berkovsky, pp. 38-39], cf.: [Liberman 1998, p. 131 -132].
4) Finally, the echo of some moments of “Madness” with Pushkin’s “Prophet,” which Tyutchev’s readers probably always heard, was of utmost importance. There are several interesting explications of it in literary criticism.
In 1980 A.L. Ospovat, analyzing and dispelling the myth about Pushkin’s “enthusiastic” attitude towards Tyutchev’s poetry, wrote: “... few people were then aware of the whole background of Tyutchev’s publication in Sovremennik; however, this rather random episode (for both Pushkin and Tyutchev) served as the source of a whole literary legend about the farewell blessing that the great poet gave to his younger brother" [Ospovat, 1980, p. 26]. Considering, following A.I. Zhuravleva that “Silentium!” - “this is a polemic with Pushkin, the creator of the poetic language of his era, and a challenge posed to literature as a whole,” he adds: “There is a known example of an even more pointed polemic between Tyutchev and Pushkin on the same topic. HELL. Skaldin, in a forgotten article of 1919, compared Pushkin’s “Prophet”<.>with the final lines of Tyutchev’s “Madness.” And, citing Pushkin’s famous printed statement about Tyutchev, he summarizes: “Both poets “exchanged” such remarks around 1830.<.>Their paths diverged sharply” [Ospovat, 1980, p. 18-19]. It is characteristic that only the last stanza of “Madness” is mentioned here - it was this that most often served as the basis for interpretations and applications answering the questions of what exactly Madness is looking for and whether it found what it was looking for or only “thinks” it has found.
V.S. is much less cautious in his conclusions. Baevsky, who directly connected these two poems. In 1830, he writes, Tyutchev, having arrived in Russia, could not help but become acquainted with Pushkin’s programmatic poem “The Prophet”, as well as with his article “Dennitsa”. “Here Tyutchev read the following phrase: “Of the young poets of the German school, Mr. Kireyevsky mentions Shevyrev, Khomyakov and Tyutchev. The true talent of the first two is undeniable.” And Tyutchev writes “Madness” as an objection to “The Prophet” [Baevsky, 2003, p. 8]. He writes, the researcher believes, because he experienced not only admiration, which “is indicated by the desire to use the images of this poem,” but also active rejection, because “they understood somewhat differently the essence of poetry in general and the path of Russian poetry” [Ibid]. By comparing these two works, the scientist finds something in common between them. This is “desert”, as well as “sight” and then “hearing” mentioned by poets. But if in Pushkin they were touched by the seraphim, and they became “prophetic,” “then Tyutchev objects: “...your hermit is a madman, and nothing more, a monster with a meaningless look. You do not have and cannot have any gift to hear the universe and the transcendental world. In self-deception, a madman only thinks. that he has the gift of hearing what is hidden from him. God is unattainably far from a madman. Monumental miniature. Tyutchev contrasted Pushkin’s spiritual ode with his own fragment, full of hopeless existential pessimism” [Baevsky, 2003, p. 9]. It is not very clear what is meant: doubts about the very possibility of the prophetic gift or about the ability of the poet (Pushkin?) to be a prophet. Be that as it may, in this arrangement “Madness” turns out to be either a satire or a mocking remark of the “little man” offended by the inattention of the “master”. The scientist noted that a similar concept had already been expressed once: “In A. Bitov’s ironic, grotesque novel “Pushkin House” there is an insert essay “Three Prophets.” In a whimsical and subjective manner, thoughts are presented there that are partly similar to those stated above. Bitov or his hero is associated with Pushkin’s “Prophet” and Tyutchev’s “Madness” and Lermontov’s “Prophet” [Ibid]. Here, of course, it's all a matter of "or". A. Bitov, indeed, is not without irony
nii, or rather, with sympathetic mockery, he depicted the activities of a literary critic, “reading” himself into other people’s texts. The “author” of this novel, who has more than once emphasized the “difference” between himself and his hero, is well aware of why Leva Odoevtsev is so attracted to the theme of the poet-prophet. It's all about the character of the hero, the dreams and complexes of the Soviet "sixties", forced in the 19th century to look for both idols and comrades in misfortune. Hence the apology for Pushkin, and the unusually subtle “penetration” into the mysterious “psychological depths” of the poems of Lermontov and Tyutchev, which, says the “author,” were so “decisively and figuratively dealt with by Leva (denying himself, we add in parentheses)” [ Bitov, 1990, p. 235]. One cannot help but see how decisively the author “deals” with his hero here. But if we agree not to notice the indicated distance and read the article outside the ironic mode, we will agree: “... the idea that “Madness” is a hint, or even a libel, about a specific person is unattractive.<...>Disguised polemics were absolutely alien to Tyutchev, and one can be sure that “Madness,” even if it is to some extent inspired by scenes from “The Prophet,” is not about Pushkin” [Liberman, 1998, p. 134].
Nevertheless, there really is something in common between the two poems, although even here the convergence may turn out to be false. This commonality is given by biblical connotations that connect two, at first glance, different motives: “water” and “spiritual thirst.” After all, you can search not only for truth in the philosophical sense. In the symbolism of the Old and New Testaments, water is a condition of life and its fullness here on earth, and it is also a prototype of the Holy Spirit, the water of salvation: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. This he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in Him were about to receive” [John. 7.39]1, whoever trusts in the Lord “will be like a tree planted by the waters and puts out its roots by the stream” [Jer. 17.8], “like a vine planted by the water” [Ezek. 19.10]; God promises His faithful “rains of blessing” [Ezek. 34.26]. Water is a symbol of the mercy of God, who forgives sinners2 and an image of the Wisdom of God (“I said: I will water my garden and water my ridges, and behold, my channel has become a river and my river has become a sea” [Sir. 24.33-34]. Particular attention should be paid on the Book of Isaiah (which is known to be the source of “The Prophet”), especially on chapter 35, where there are many parallels to “Madness.”3
Do they provide evidence of a connection between this poem and The Prophet? No, they only show that Tyutchev’s symbolic language includes, along with natural philosophical ones, biblical meanings. Nor are they the key to “Madness”4. The key, as we have already said, can only be the text itself, its
1 See: “Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; and whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life” [John. 4.13-14]; “And he showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb” [Rev. 21.1]; “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end; to the thirsty I will give freely from the fountain of living water" [Rev. 21.6]; “Let him who is thirsty come, and let him who desires take the water of life freely” [Rev. 22.17].
2 “Thirsty! Go, all of you, to the waters; even you who have no silver" [Isa. 55.1]
3 See: “Behold your God, vengeance will come, God’s recompense; He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap up like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will sing; For waters will break out in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. And the ghost of waters will turn into a lake, and the thirsty earth into springs of waters<.. .>And the redeemed of the Lord will return, they will come to Zion with joyful shouting; and everlasting joy will be upon their heads; they will find joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing will be removed” [Isa. 35.4-7.10].
4 But still, thanks to these parallels, something becomes clear: it is not the water seeker, but the thirsty one that shines through in the figure of Madness (the water seeker should be much calmer); thirsty, surrounded on all sides by the absolute absence of moisture - but not a desert in the general romantic sense. V.N. Toporov saw here a “cosmological” background and color, “bright signs of the “chaotization” of the world, threats to it that would look unlikely
structure. We will turn to its consideration.
“Madness” is one of the most striking examples in Tyutchev’s poetry of the combination of two styles, baroque and romanticism (L.V. Pumpyansky insisted that Tyutchev’s poetry is “a fusion of these two “elements”)1. In it the features characteristic of poetry of the 18th century are clearly visible. emblematic thinking. They were more than known to Tyutchev (as well as to the culture of his time in general): firstly, because he knew this poetry well; secondly, - both in Russia and especially in Germany, emblems surrounded him on all sides: in architecture, painting, in decorations and insignia, in the organization of holidays and carnivals, in official poetry aimed at “glorification of secular and spiritual authorities” [Morozov, Sofronova, 1979, p. 13]; as a diplomat, he had to know heraldry, see: [Lotman, 1999, p. 299-300]. By the end of the 19th century, when Tyutchev’s poems became relatively widely known and people began to write about them, the situation changed. “In the fate of emblems, the complete oblivion (so complete that it even resembles some kind of “repression”), which befell it from the very first decades of the 19th century, is strangely combined with its equally undoubted presence in art, literature, the appearance of the city and the estate.” - writes researcher of this genre A.E. Makhov. “Russian poetry for a long time, even in the era of Pushkin, existed in this emblematic space, without, of course, caring at all about any conscious use of emblems or their conscious avoidance.” But in Russian literature of the early 19th century. there was “one very special case when the emblem was consciously and systematically introduced by the poet into the composition of a poetic book” [see: Makhov, 2000, p. 18-19]. This is the case of Derzhavin, Tyutchev’s predecessor in many respects, but above all in “programmatic-philosophical poetry” [Pumpyansky, 2000, p. 241]. The point is not whether Tyutchev knew about Derzhavin’s plan, but that Derzhavin considered the language of emblems quite interesting and understandable for a person of that time. Perhaps Tyutchev’s work is the same “special case”, and it makes sense to ask whether the “dogmatic fragment” genre, so characteristic of his work, does not go back to the genre of the emblem, just as in the Baroque era its structure “serves as a model for the creation lyrical, meditative, didactic poems" [Morozov, Sofronova, 1979, p. 31].
In any case, “Madness” can be analyzed based on its laws: the “triad” (image, motto, signature) that makes up the structure of the emblem is clearly distinguishable in it. Let us recall: “The image offered the viewer an object or combination of objects (usually no more than three).<.>Above the image. a motto or short saying was placed. The signature consisted of a short poem written for this occasion, or a poetic quotation” [Morozov, Sofronova, 1979, p. 18], “A verbal emblematic work replaces the missing image with its description or simple naming, focusing on traditional ideas” [Morozov, 1978, p. 41]; see also: [Makhov, 2003, p. 10-11]. The most important semantic feature of the emblem is its mystery (it is generally related to the riddle genre). Already the author of the “impreza,” the proto-genre of the emblem, knew: “It should not be so dark that the Sibyl is required to interpret it, but also not so obvious that every plebeian could understand it,” see: [Morozov, Sofronova, 1979, With. 13].2 In the emblem, as in
justified in the case of real “water seekers” [Toporov, 1990, p. 68-69].
"See: “...the more significant any phenomenon under study, the more paradoxical is the meeting of those elements that, having been neutralized, formed it. The purest and deepest ringing is given by those alloys whose constituent metals are borrowed from cultures that are most distant from one another.” And then - an imaginary parallel to the Tyutchev phenomenon: Novalis, brought up on the poetry of the “unprecedented”, i.e. the genius (which he was not) Opits [Pumpyansky, 2000, pp. 252, 256].
2 In case there was no signature (in Russia the book “Emblems and Symbols” was published
“symbol” in the original meaning of the word, its three parts: image, inscription and signature - had to “fit” one another. “The meaning and significance of the emblem arose not from the image or inscription, but through the interaction of the image, inscription and signature,” forming a metaphorized “mental image,” the boundaries of which “depended on the richness and nature of the associative plan”1 [Morozov, Sofronova, 1979, p. 22]. The combination of unambiguousness and polysemanticism is the whole “focus” of the emblem. Its “objects” (and they could be any “things existing under the sun”, see: [Makhov, 2000, p. 9]) “are interpreted unambiguously.<.>But unambiguity is symbolically revealed in the polysemy of the meaning itself” [Lotman, 1999, p. 289].2 It is these design features that we see in Tyutchev’s poem.
Let's start with the title. It plays an essential role: it names an “object” that is subject to unambiguous interpretation (otherwise the emblem cannot be deciphered) and puts it in the center (this is the “emblem” in the original meaning of the word), so that it can “signify” something.
The first stanza can be read as a “motto”, an inscription above the drawing, deliberately mysterious. It is structured as a riddle, because the answer to the question of where Madness “lives” is not as simple as it seems. The answer to the first couplet: where the day3 has just “burned out”, that is, it seems, in the night. This is the first "drawing" of the poem, drawn with one color: a black "page". But the third verse, which begins, as it may (and should) seem, with a simple anaphora, transfers the point of view “there”, to the line where the day has just passed and where it continues to “burn.” This cannot be immediately understood, because the change of point of view is disguised as a rhetorical repetition, so characteristic of romantic rhetoric, such as “There, there!”, “There, there!” - which is why deception is so easy to succeed. In addition, the reader learns about the transfer of point of view in hindsight, looking at the second image: the meaning of the “motto”, as expected, is not revealed from it itself, it must be deciphered using “pictures” and “signatures”. The second drawing is “developed” in the three subsequent stanzas. This is a grandiose, apocalyptic4 picture of an evening “fire”, a fire that is motionless blazing and at the same time boiling, pouring and exploding, as in the mouth of a volcano. In its creation
it was in this form) that the emblem turned into an “impreza” (“symbol”), the meaning of which was very difficult to guess without special knowledge. A.E. Makhov in his “Commentary” restored some signatures from the set of Renaissance emblems “Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI und XVII Jahrhunderts, hrsg. von A. Henkel und A. Schone. - Stuttgart, 1978. See: [Makhov, 2000, pp. 282-299].
1 It is important to emphasize that “the same image acquired different meanings with different mottos and even with the same motto< .. .>what can be learned from the explanatory caption” [Morozov, Sofronova, 1979, p. 22-23].
Let us explain: Yu.M. Lotman speaks here about Tyutchev, that the realities in his poetry are “not symbols, but emblems.”
Wed. in O. Mandelstam’s poem “Oh, sky, sky! I will dream about you.”, clearly referring to Tyutchev: “And the day burned like a white page: / A little smoke and a little ash.”
4 Of the closest parallels, it is enough to name “The Inexpressible” by V. A. Zhukovsky (1819), which depicts “the majestic hour of the Evening Land of Transfiguration.” The pictures of evening nature are filled with hints of the infinite, the author says: “This flame of clouds, / Flying across the quiet sky, / This trembling of shining waters, / These pictures of the shores / In the fire of a magnificent sunset.” The second example is “A Walk at Twilight, or Evening Instruction to Zoram” by S. Bobrov (1785), where “It shone fieryly” and “its dying evening ray” is a reminder that “one day the trembling Earth will drown in the flaming waves / And the mortal the creature, burned by fire, will groan / Yes, it will come out of its bark, casting down the dust,” then the moon, “In vain will the convulsive death and the sigh of the red neighbor, / Itself will begin to turn purple and reveal thick smoke.” See also: [Tolstoguzov, 1998, p. 5-7].
not only hot rays are involved, but also boiling jets and water breaking out from underground: audio and video images in poetry are metaphorically interchangeable; what the ear of Madness hears, the eye of the artist sees. Clouds, hot rays and sands paint the image of a motionless, stopped, “absolute” flame, and “water” - its life, movement, “madness” of being itself, as if exploding with red-hot lava.
This is how the place where Madness “lives” is identified. This is the horizon, “the edge of the earth,” a mysterious feature, it is there and it is not, you cannot get closer to it, but it is easy for the imagination to move there1. Literally and metaphorically, this is a line that connects the incompatible: day and night, past and future, ecstatically flaming and extinguished, life and death - the line set by Creation, the threshold of “as if double existence.” Researchers of poetic tropes emphasize the connection of metaphor “with logic, on the one hand, and mythology, on the other” [Arutyunova, 1990, p. 6]. Tyutchev’s periphrase “Where.”, creating a mythological “geography”, the image of the horizon - the edge of the earth - the last line, can also denote a logical mode and chronotope, in which the expressions are semantically equal: “where”, “then when”, “in the event that” - denoting a certain obligatory condition, and not the place of action: it takes place at one of the points of the metaphysical picture of the world, inside a stopped “fatal” moment.
This is a single-valued answer to the question: where? The metaphor of the “fatal trait” is constructed from the interaction of “objects” that make up the “visible image”. To do this, from polyvalent metaphors - world symbols, such as sky, earth, fire, smoke (and then water) - you should extract only those features that allow you to construct another (completely different!) symbol.
Everything else needed to understand this "metaphysical fragment" is found in the "signature" - the interpretation of the strange behavior of the central figure. It is given in the last stanza. It turns out that Madness is cheerful and carefree, because it mistakes one thing for another, “thinks” that it has found water in the fire. The reader could attribute the “cheerful carefreeness” to the picturesqueness of the depicted landscape and its metaphorical transformations: sunset - fire - fire - a cheerful “fire dance”. But the charred, smoking earth, cracked like burnt skin, hot rays pouring from the sky, from which it is impossible to hide, burrowing into the fiery sands, introduce a different emotional note, contrasting Tyutchev’s “abundance of life” or Schiller’s Joy, creating an image of Madness - an allegory of the desperate “ combustion." Readers of romantic poetry are familiar with this image. The theme is like Blok’s: Rose and Cross, Joy - Suffering. Or from Pushkin: “There is rapture in battle / And a dark abyss on the edge.”3. But the assessment is different. The ecstatic experience of the proximity of death can be the “key to immortality” in
1 On the special constructive role of the border in Tyutchev’s poetic consciousness, see: [Lotman, 1990, p. 128].
2 “... Absolutely everything can be allegorized. This is the basis for the infinity of meaning in Greek mythology. But the general is contained here only as a possibility. Its existence in itself is not allegorical or schematic, it is the absolute indistinguishability of both - symbolic. (Even)... personifikata ...for example, Eris (discord), are understood not only as beings that should mean something, but as real beings, which at the same time are what they mean" [Schelling , 1966, p. 109].
3 L.V. Pumpyansky connected “Madness” with the idea of the decomposition of “romantic dogmatism”, which led Tyutchev “to the themes of not only nihilism, but also decadence”: “It is very possible that Tyutchev was the first in all of Europe to see this new world of poetry. Is it possible to interpret Mal "aria (1830) as the first fleur du mal of European poetry? What does the mysterious “Madness” mean? Should it be understood as a decadent theme of fatal silence? All this is unclear until the origins of Baudelaireanism are unraveled by science" [Pumpyansky, 2000 , pp. 238239].
as a lyrical experience, from the inside. In "Madness" this feeling is depicted reflectively. But from the outside, “in reality,” it may turn out to be a pathetic seduction of consciousness, a dying euphoria: for what do glass eyes see - melted by despair, glassy with horror? As befits emblematic, rhetorical metaphysics, it is slightly didactic and calls for application.
Reflecting on the “religious symphony” of Tyutchev’s lyrics, S.L. Frank wrote: “The path leading to merging with the infinite is a tragic path: it goes through passion and darkness.<...>The horror of the abyss... is the first form through which the infinite is revealed; and only immersion in this abyss, only death and destruction lead to true life” [Frank, 1996, p. 329-330]. But the horror of the abyss is not yet the truth, evil and sin are only steps to goodness and holiness, since passion underlies both principles. “The justification of all life, the perception of its all-pervading Divine nature is impossible for a being wholly immersed in life and imbued with its passions: it is possible only for pure contemplation, detached from life itself.” [Ibid., p. 338]. “Madness” depicts the culminating moment of “tragedy”: not yet death, but no longer life, or life standing “at the edge of the earth,” on the last line that cannot be crossed and on which one cannot stay, one can only turn existence inside out , flip it over in a mirror, feel the fall down as a breakthrough and victory, and then death will seem like life, a stream of hot rays will seem like rain.
But this is not a myth about a dying and rising god, not a story about a prophet in the desert or about youths in a fiery furnace, although indirectly it can be correlated with stories about passion-bearers joyfully accepting torment, and even with the mystery of the Cross. This is a myth about the natural rejection of suffering and the human, “too human” way out of it into the world of mirages, imaginaries and utopias. Its form is: where all hopes have burned out, there despair blazes and pathetic Madness creates its mirages.
So, by means of emblematic thinking in “Madness” a myth is created about “threshold” states of being. At the center of this myth is an anthropomorphic character, artistically analogous to the great Pan of the Midday or the windy Hebe of the Thunderstorm, as well as any other mythological characters when they are told about them through the means of art. The place where he is, and everything that happens to him, is a landscape and a plot of metaphysical thought, deployed in space and time, but in fact not having these characteristics. Or in other words: the place where everything is connected to everything, Aion and Chronos, see: [Nadtochiy, 2002, p. 103, etc.]). In terms of genre, this is also a combination of “everything with everything”: it is at the same time a landscape poem, an anthological ode and a “dogmatic fragment”.
Literature
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Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev
Where the earth is burnt
The vault of heaven merged like smoke, -
There in cheerful carefree
Pathetic madness lives on.
Under the hot rays
Buried in the fiery sands,
It has glass eyes
Looking for something in the clouds.
Then suddenly he will stand up and, with a sensitive ear,
Crouching to the cracked ground,
He listens to something with greedy ears
With contentment secret on the brow.
And he thinks he hears boiling jets,
What does the current of underground water hear,
And their lullaby singing,
And a noisy exodus from the earth!
“Madness” is considered one of Tyutchev’s most mysterious poems. To this day, there is no generally accepted interpretation among literary scholars. According to some researchers of the poet’s work, the work is about water seekers. Others argue that Fyodor Ivanovich in the text opposed the natural philosophy of Schelling and its adherents. There is also a version that the poem is a self-critical statement, through which Tyutchev expressed doubts about his own prophetic gift. Probably, as is often the case, the truth is somewhere in the middle and its grains are scattered across all the most well-known interpretations, so you should not completely deny any of them.
The key theme of the poem is stated in its title - madness. In the first third of the nineteenth century, poets often turned to it. It was revealed from two radically different points of view. Madness was perceived either as a real manifestation of wisdom, allowing one to comprehend the innermost secrets of existence, or as a serious illness, a terrible tragedy for a thinking person. The first interpretation is found in Baratynsky’s poem “The Last Death”: “... Reason borders on madness.” Pushkin adhered to the second point of view, which was reflected in the famous work “God forbid I go crazy...”. Tyutchev presents the topic in a new way. He associates madness with cheerful carelessness and the gift of foresight. In addition, the poet gives him the epithet “pathetic.” On the one hand, contradictory characteristics are listed, on the other, they still form a unity.
The action of the poem "Madness" takes place in the desert. This image in the lyrics of Tyutchev’s era had several main interpretations. The desert was seen as a place of philosophical solitude, a refuge for hermits and prophets. It also acted as the space where the final judgment was carried out. It was often perceived as a metaphor for life as a vale. In the analyzed text, the desert is both the place of the final judgment (it is not without reason that the first lines contain hints of the apocalypse that has occurred) and a refuge found by madness.
Tyutchev returned to one of the key motives of the poem - the motive of the prophetic gift inherent in the poet - in his late lyrical statement - “Others got it from nature...” (1862). A small work, consisting of only eight lines, is dedicated to Fet.