son char; ses gardes affliges Imitaient son silence autour de lui ranges; Il suivait tout pensif le chemin de Mycenes; Sa main sur les chevaux laissait flotter les renes; Ces superbes coursiers qu'on voyait autrefois, Pleins d'une ardeur si noble, obeir a sa voix, L'oeil morne maintenant, et la tete baissee, Semblaient se conformer a sa triste pensee. Un effroyable cri, sorti du fond des flots, Des airs en ce moment a trouble le repos; Et du sein de la terre une voix formidable Repond en gemissant a ce cri redoutable. Jusqu'au fond de nos coeurs notre sang s'est glace; Des coursiers attentifs le crin s'est herisse. Cependant sur le dos de la plaine liquide, S'eleve a gros bouillons une montagne humide; L'onde approche, se brise, et se vomit a nos yeux, Parmi des flots d'ecume, un monstre furieux. Son front large est arme de cornes menacantes; Tout son corps est couvert d'ecailles jaunissantes; Indomptable taureau, dragon impetueux, Sa croupe se recourbe en replis tortueux; Ses longs mugissements font trembler le rivage. Le ciel avec horreur voit ce monstre sauvage; La terre s'en emeut, l'air en est infecte; Le flot qui l'apporta recule epouvante. Tout fuit; et, sans s'armer d'un courage unutile, Dans le temple voisin chacun cherche un asile. Hippolyte lui seul, digne fils d'un heros, Arrete ses coursiers, saisit ses javelots, Pousse au monstre, et, d'un dard lance d'une main sure, Il lui fait dans le flanc une large blessure. De rage et de douleur le monstre bondissant Vient aux pieds des chevaux tomber en mugissant, Se roule, et leur presente une gueule enflammee Qui les couvre de feu, de sang et de fumee. La frayeur les emporte; et, sourds a cette fois, Ils ni connaissent plus ni le frein ni la voix; En efforts impuissants leur maitre se consume; Ils rougissent le mors d'une sanglante ecume. On dit qu'on a vu meme, en ce desordre affreux, Un dieu qui d'aiguillons pressait leur flanc poudreux. A travers les rochers la peur les precipite; L'essieu crie et se rompt: l'intrepide Hippolyte Voit voler en eclats tout son char fracasse; Dans les renes lui-meme, il tombe embarrasse. Excusez ma douleur: cette image cruelle Sera pour moi de pleurs une source eternelle; J'ai vu, seigneur, j'ai vu votre malheureux fils Traine par les chevaux que sa main a nourris. Il veut les rappeler, et sa voix les effraie; Ils courent: tout son corps n'est bientot qu'une plaie. De nos cris douloureux la plaine retentit: Ils s'arretent non loin de ses tombeaux antiques Ou des rois, ses aieux, sont les froides reliques. J'y cours en soupirant, et sa garde me suit: De son genereux sang la trace nous conduit; Les rochers en sont teints; les ronces degouttantes Portent de ses cheveux les depouilles sanglantes. J'arrive, je l'appelle; et, me tendant la main, Il ouvre un oeil mourant qu'il referme soudain: "Le ciel, dit-il, m'arrache une innocente vie. Prends soin apres ma mort de la triste Aricie. Cher ami, si mon pere, un jour desabuse, Pour apaiser mon sang et mon ombre plaintive, Dis-lui qu'avec douceur il traite sa captive; Qu'il lui rende..." A ce mot, ce heros expire N'a laisse dans mes bras qu'un corps defigure: Triste objet ou des dieux triomphe la colere, Et que meconnaitrait l'oeil meme de son pere. *** We'd barely left the gates of Trezene. He was on his chariot, his unhappy guards all around him, as silent as he. Pensively he set out along on the Mycenae road, his hand giving the horses free rein. I watched his noble hunters, always so proud and eager to obey his command, now with heads lowered and mournful eye appearing to match their gait to his own reverie. All of a sudden a horrible roar from the depths of the sea shocked the air and a loud voice from the earth's breast groaning replied to this fearsome voice. The blood froze in our veins, the hair of the horses' manes stood up; and then there rose, from the face of the sea, a boiling mountain of foam. The wave crashed onward, breaking up, spewing out before our eyes a monster in the foamy breakers, its huge head armed with menacing horns, its body covered in pale yellow scales, uncontrollable bull, raging dragon, its tail coiling and thrashing. Its prolonged roars shook the shore. The horrified sky watched this savage beast; the earth shifted, the thing infected the air, the wave that carried it recoiled in terror. Everyone ran, since resistance was pointless, and hid in the ruined shrine beside the beach. Hippolytus alone, worthy son of a hero, stopped his horses, seized his javelins, lanced one at the beast and his first shot opened a large wound in the monster's side. In pain and rage, the leaping monster fell howling at the horses' feet, rolled over, showed them its fiery mouth and enveloped them in flame, blood and smoke. They fled in panic, deafened, heeding neither reins nor voice, while their master vainly struggled to stop them and they reddened their bits with bloody froth. Some say they saw in all the dreadful chaos a god goading their dusty backs. Their terror drove them across rocks. The axle screamed and broke. The bold Hyppolytus saw his chariot explode in bright slivers. The unfortunate prince fell tangled in the reins. Forgive my grief. This cruel picture will be a constant source of tears. I saw your son, Lord, your unfortunate son dragged by the horses he had fed and trained. He tried to stop them but his voice scared them even more. On they ran. His body is soon one mass of scars. The plain echoed to our cries of sorrow. The horses stopped beside the ancient shrines where your kingly ancestors are the cold relics. Sighing, I ran to him, the soldiers following, led by the trail of his copious blood, the rocks stained with it, thorn-bushes dripping and bearing the bloody scraps of his scalp. I get to him, calling his name. Giving me his hand he looked up once, closed his eyes and said. "The heavens have taken my innocent life. Take care of poor Aricia when I'm dead. Dear friend, if my father ever realises his mistake, tell him to redeem my blood, appease my plaintive ghost by treating his captive with gentleness and by restoring ...." With these words the dead hero left only a disfigured corpse in my arms, a sad victim of the gods' angry triumph whom not even his father would recognise. Phedre is characterised by a sense of fatality which oppresses its players, who are surrounded by horror and cruelty as well as motivated by their own guilty feelings and instincts. (B:34/91) In Phedre the gods play with man, as they do in a later poem by Tyutchev, Dva golosa/Two Voices [179]. In addressing himself to this work, Tyutchev might well have been facing the cosmic fear which haunts so many of his lyrics, making a Pascalian choice by translating the death scene. It is interesting to note that Tyutchev, who may, of course, have translated more than the one extract of Racine's Phedre, chose from the French play a scene about the sea and the chaos which that particular element produced in his mind. It is clear throughout his oeuvre that the constant, turbulent unpredictability associated with the sea was an extremely potent poetic force. The notion of Fate is very Tyutchevian and recurs throughout the poems and letters. 62. Late 1820s-NE first third 1832. TR Goethe: Nachtgendanken/Night Thoughts (from Miscellaneous Poems, the early Weimar period, 1781). Euch bedaur' ich, ungluckselge Sterne, Die ihr schon seid und so herrlich scheinet, Dem bedrangten Schiffer gerne leuchtet, Unbelohnt von Gottern und von Menschen: Denn ihr liebt nicht, kanntet nie die Liebe! Unaufhaltsam fuhren ew'ge Stunden Eure Reihen durch den weiten Himmel. Welche Reise habt ihr schon vollendet Seit ich weilend in den Arm der Liebsten Euer und der Mitternacht vergessen! *** I pity you, unfortunate stars, so beautiful, shining so majestically, willingly lighting the way of distressed mariners, unrewarded by men and gods: because you do not love, you have never known love! .......... Never stopping, eternally the stars travel their ways across the wide heavens. What journeys you have already completed since in the arms of my beloved I have forgotten you and midnight. 63. Late 1820s-early 1830s. TR Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream. Theseus's words and Puck's song from Act V, Scenes I and II respectively. Both translations are faithful to the sense, rhyme and metre of the originals. 1. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. 2. Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task foredone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth its sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. 64. No later than early 1830. Quoting this work in an article about Tyutchev, the poet and editor Nekrasov (1821-78) wrote: "The final verses are amazing: reading them, you sense an involuntary shudder". (B:29, vol.9/212) 65. 1830. TR Victor Hugo (1802-85): Hernani, written from August to September, 1829, and set in the Spain of 1519. Don Carlos's monologue before the tomb of the Holy Roman emperor, Charles the Great (IV,2). At Aix-la-Chapelle, Don Carlos (Charles V) awaits news of the election of the new Emperor. Don Carlos, seul. Charlemagne, pardon! ces voutes solitaires Ne devraient repeter que paroles austeres. Tu t'indignes sans doute a ce bordonnement Que nos ambitions font sur ton monument. - Charlemagne est ici! Comment, sepulcre sombre, Peux-tu sans eclater contenir si grand ombre? Es-tu bien la, geant d'un monde createur, Et t'y peux-tu coucher de toute ta hauteur? - Ah! c'est un beau spectacle a ravir la pensee Que l'Europe ainsi faite et comme il l'a laisse! Un edifice, avec deux hommes au sommet, Deux chefs elus auxquels tout roi ne se soumet. Presque tous les etats, duches, fiefs militaires, Royaumes, marquisats, tous sont hereditaires; Mais le peuple a parfois son pape ou son cesar, Tout marche, et le hasard corrige le hasard. De la vient l'equilibre, et toujours l'ordre eclate. Electeurs de drap d'or, cardinaux d'ecarlate, Double senat sacre dont la terre s'emeut, Ne sont la qu'en parade, et Dieu veut ce qu'il veut. Qu'une idee, au besoin des temps, un jour eclose, Elle grandit, va, court, se mele a toute chose, Se fait homme, saisit les coeurs, creuse un sillon; Maint roi la foule aux pieds ou lui met un baillon; Mais qu'elle entre un matin a la Diete, au Conclave, Et tous les rois soudain verront l'idee esclave, Sur leurs tetes de rois que ses pieds courberont, Surgir, le globe en main ou la tiare au front. Le pape et l'empereur sont tout. Rien n'est sur terre Que pour eux et par eux. Un supreme mystere Vit en eux, et le ciel, dont ils ont tous les droits, Leur fait un grand festin des peuples et des rois, Et les tient sous sa nue, ou son tonnerre gronde, Seuls, assis a la table ou Dieu leur sert le monde. Tete a tete ils sont la, reglant et retranchant, Arrangeant l'univers comme un faucheur son champ. Tout se passe entre eux deux. Les rois sont a la porte, Respirant la vapeur des mets que l'on apporte, Regardant a la vitre, attentifs, ennuyes, Et se haussant, pour voir, sur la pointe des pieds. Le monde au-dessous d'eux s'echelonne et se groupe. Ils font et defont. L'un delie et l'autre coupe. L'un est la verite, l'autre est la force. Ils ont Leur raison en eux-meme, et sont parce qu'ils sont. Quand ils sortent, tous deux egaux, du sanctuaire, L'un dans sa pourpre, et l'autre avec son blanc suaire, L'univers ebloui contemple avec terreur Ces deux moities de Dieu, le pape et l'empereur. - L'empereur! l'empereur! etre empereur! - O rage, Ne pas l'etre!-et sentir son coeur plein de courage! - Qu'il fut heureux celui qui dort dans ce tombeau! Qu'il fut grand! De ce temps c'etait encor plus beau. Le pape et l'empereur! Ce n'etait plus deux hommes. Pierre et Cesar! en eux accouplant les deux Romes, Fecondant l'une et l'autre en un mystique hymen, Redonnant une forme, un ame au genre humain, Faisant refondre en bloc peuples et pele-mele Royaumes, pour en faire une Europe nouvelle, Et tous deux remettant au moule de leur main Le bronze qui restait du vieux monde romain! Oh! quel destin! - Pourtant cette tombe est la sienne! Tout est-il donc si peu que ce soit la qu'one vienne? Quoi donc! avoir ete prince, empereur et roi! Avoir ete l'epee, avoir ete la loi! Geant, pour piedestal avoir eu l'Allemagne! Quoi! pour titre Cesar et pour nom Charlemagne! Avoir ete plus grand qu'Annibal, qu'Attila, Aussi grand que le monde! ... - et que tout tienne la! Ah! briguez donc l'Empire, et voyez la poussiere Que fait un empereur! Couvrez la terre entiere De bruit et de tumulte; elevez, batissez Votre Empire, et jamais ne dites: C'est assez! Taillez a larges pans un edifice immense! Savez-vous ce qu'un jour il en reste? o demence! Cette pierre! Et du titre et du nom triomphants? Quelques lettres, a faire epeler des enfants! Si haut que soit le but ou votre orgueil aspire, Voila le dernier terme!... - Oh! l'Empire! l'Empire! Que m'importe! j'y touche, et le trouve a mon gre. Quelque chose me dit: Tu l'auras! - Je l'aurai. - Si je l'avais!... - O ciel! etre ce qui commence! Seul, debout, au plus haut de la spirale immense' D'une foule d'Etats l'un sur l'autre etages Etre la clef de voute, et voir sous soi ranges Les rois, et sur leur tete essuyer ses sandales; Voir au-dessous des rois les maisons feodales, Margraves, cardinaux, doges, ducs a fleurons; Puis eveques, abbes, chefs de clans, hauts barons; Puis clercs et soldats; puis, loin du faite ou nous sommes, Dans l'ombre, tout au fond de l'abime, - les hommes. - Les hommes! c'est a dire une foule, une mer, Un grand bruit, pleurs et cris, parfois un rire amer, Plainte qui, reveillant le terre qui s'effare, A travers tant d'echos nous arrive fanfare! Les hommes! - Des cites, des tours, un vaste essaim, - De hauts clochers d'eglise a sonner le tocsin! - (Revant) Base de nations portant sur leurs epaules La pyramide enorme appuye aux deux poles, Flots vivants, qui toujours l'etreignant de leurs plis, La balancent, branlante a leur vaste roulis, Font tout changer de place et, sur ses hautes zones, Comme des escabeaux font chanceler les trones, Si bien que tous les rois, cessant leurs vains debats, Levent les yeux aux ciel... Rois! regardez en bas! - Ah! le peuple! - ocean! - onde sans cesse emue, Ou l'on ne jette rien sans que tout ne remue! Vague qui broie un trone et qui berce un tombeau! Miroir ou rarement un roi se voit en beau! Ah! si l'on regardait parfois dans ce flot sombre, On y verrait au fond des Empires sans nombre, Grands vaisseaux naufrages, que flux et reflux Roule, et qui le genaient, et qu'il ne connait plus! - Gouverner tout cela! - Monter, si l'on vous nomme, A ce faite! Y monter, sachant qu'on n'est qu'un homme! Avoir l'abime la!................... *** Forgive me, Charlemagne! These lonely vaults should echo only austere words. You must be annoyed at this buzzing that our ambitions make around your monument. - Charlemagne is here! How, sombre tomb, can you contain such a huge shade without exploding? Are you really there, giant of a creative world, and can you repose there from your great height? - Ah! It's a fine sight, enough to delight one's thought, Europe made thus and the way he has left it! And edifice with two men at the summit, two elected leaders to whom every king born submits. Almost all states, duchies, military fiefs kingdoms, marquisates, all are inherited; but sometimes the people has its pope and its caesar, everything goes on and chance corrects chance. Thence - balance, and order always bursts from it. Electors in gold cloth, cardinals in scarlet, the dual, sacred senate by which the earth trembles, are there only for show, and God does as he wishes. Should an idea, if the time requires it, be hatched, then it grows, walks, runs, mingles with everything, becomes human, seizes hearts, digs a furrow; many a king tramples it beneath his feet or gags it; but let it one morning walk into the diet, into the Conclave, and all kings will suddenly see the enslaved idea, on their kingly heads which its feet press down, expand, sceptre in hand or tiara on their brow. The pope and emperor are everything. Nothing exists on earth but for them and by them. A supreme mystery lives in them, and heaven, whence they take all their rights, spreads a great feast for them of peoples and of kings, and holds them under its skies where the thunder rumbles, alone, seated at the table, they are there, calculating and deducting, arranging their universe like a mower his field. Everything goes on between them. The kings are at the door, breathing in the aromas of the foodstuffs brought there, looking through the window, attentive, bored, straining up to see from tiptoe. The world beneath them is layered and in order of merit. They make and unmake. One unties, the other cuts. One is truth, the other is power. They are right in themselves, they are because they are. When, both equal, they leave the altar, one in his purple, the other in the white of the shroud, the blinded universe observes with terror these two halves of God, the pope and the emperor. - The emperor! The emperor! To be emperor! Oh, the madness not to be him! - and to feel one's heart full of courage! - How happy was he who sleeps in this tomb! How great he was! Even more beautiful in his time. Pope and emperor! They were no longer two men. Peter and Caesar! Linking both Romes within them. impregnating one another in a mysterious marriage, giving once more shape and a soul to humankind, remelting whole races of peoples and any old way kingdoms, in order to make of it all a new Europe, and both redoing in the mould of their hands the bronze which remained of the old Roman world! Oh, what a destiny! All the same this tomb is his! Is it all then so small that this is where he ends his days? What? To have been prince, emperor and king! To have been the swordsman, to have been the law! Giant, to have had Germany as your pedestal! What! With the title of Caesar and the name of Charlemagne! To have been greater than Hannibal, than Attila, as great as the world!... and that it's all held in there! Ah, covet the empires and see the dust that an emperor becomes! Cover the entire earth with noise and commotion; raise up, build your empire and never say, "That's enough!" Cut wide slabs for your huge building! Do you know what will remain of it one day? Oh, madness! This stone! And triumphant in title and names? A few letters children can spell! No matter how high your pride has aspired, here's where it ends! ... Oh, empire! Empire! What is it to me? I touch it and I find it to my taste. Something tells me, "You will have it!" - I shall have it. It only I had it! ... Oh, heaven! To be that which is beginning! Alone, upright, at the very top of the immense spiral! To be the key of the vaults of a mass of states, ranged one on another, and to see beneath me kings, and to dry my sandals on their heads; to see beneath me the kings of feudal houses, margraves, cardinas, doges, dukes with flowerets; then bishops, priests, leaders of clans, mighty barons; then clerks and soldiers; then, far from our summit, in the shade, at the bottom of the abyss - men. - Men! In other words, a crowd, a sea, a great noise, crying, shouting, sometimes bitter laugher, a complaint which, awaking the earth which is alarmed, arrives to us through so many echoes in a noisy fanfare! Men! - Cities, towers, a vast swarm, - sounding the alarm from the high bells of the churches! (Musing) Bearing the base of nations on their shoulders, the enormous pyramid resting at both poles, living waves, always gripping it with their folds, weighing it, shaking it with their vast rolling movement, making everything change place, and at the highest points, making thrones totter like step-ladders, so much so that every king, stopping their pointless debating, raises his eyes to heaven ... Kings! Look down! - Ah, the people! Ocean! Endlessly turbulent swell! Where no matter what you throw, something moves in response! A wave which crushes a throne and rocks a tomb! A mirror where a king is rarely reflected at his best! Ah! if at times you gaze into this dark sea, you will see on its bed empires without number, great, wrecked vessels, rolled around by its ebb and flow, getting in its way, and which it no longer knows! - To rule all that! Climb, if you are called, to this summit! To climb up there, knowing that you are but a man! To have the abyss there! ................... Hernani opened on February 25th., 1830. The theme of fatality runs through the play. In Tyutchev it is rarely far away, from the jocular lines of an early verse [6] to the haunting poem on the death of his brother [365]. One commentator says of Hernani: "... the way to light is blocked by some fatality, crouched and lying wait." (B:19/ii/81). Tyutchev certainly berates Destiny more than once and, indeed, must often have considered his life to be one of pitfalls. Writing to Ernestine, about to travel during December (1853), he works himself up into a state of near panic that she will not take care of herself: "And if you were to fall ill on the journey? And what if that were to be the trap which Fate had chosen for me as punishment for my dissipations?" In a letter to the widow Elena Bogdanova (1822-1900), with whom he enjoyed a probably Platonic affair in the final half dozen years of his life, he writes: "There are things in life which seem not to be the making of man ... fate itself, a very obvious fate ... With one blow a single word can kill the Past and the Present and you need some time to recover from such a shock". A number of images from Hernani recur in later poems, one of the most frequent being that of a sense of floating, or in some way being above the world of man. In a letter to Ernestine (Oct. 13th., 1842), we read: "The young princess made her entry the day before yesterday. I watched from Bouvreuil's window. It was a magnificent sight, Ludwig Street paved from one end to the other with people's heads, pressed so close together that they seemed motionless, and then, when the princess's carriage approached, they were set in motion, and there was something so strong and so stormy in this oscillating movement stamped upon the crowd, that I could not observe it without feeling giddy. I have never seen anything like it". Son na more/A Dream at Sea [92] remains the most famous example of this. 66. 1830. The repetitive, galloping rhythm, suggesting the awesome power of the stormy waters, is employed in such hypnotic sea-lyrics as [87,92,281]. 67. 1830. TR Goethe: Der Sanger/The Singer, from Balladen und Romanzen/Ballads and Romances (1800). An earlier edition appeared in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. "Was hor' ich drau?en vor dem Tor, Was auf der Brucke schallen? La? den Gesang vor unserm Ohr Im Saale widerhallen!" Der Konig sprach's, der Page lief; Der Knabe kam, der Konig rief: "La?t mir herein den Alten!" .......... "Gegru?et seid mir, edle Herrn, Gegru?t ihr, schone Damen! Welch reicher Himmel! Stern bei Stern! Wer kennet ihre Namen? Im saal voll Pracht und Herrlichkeit Schlie?t, Augen, euch; hier ist nicht Zeit, Sich staunend zu ergotzen." .......... Der Sanger druckt' die Augen ein Und schlung in vollen Tonen; Die Ritter schauten mutig drein Und in den Scho? die Schonen. Der Konig, dem es wohlgefiel, Lie?, ihn zu ehren fur sein Spiel, Eine goldne Kette holen. .......... "Die goldne Kette gib mir nicht, Die Kette gib den Rittern, Vor deren kuhnem Angesicht Der Feinde Lanzen splittern! Gib sie dem Kanzier, den du hast, Und la? ihn noch die goldne Last Zu andern Lasten tragen!" .......... Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt, Der in den Zweigen wohnet; Das Lied, das aus der Kehle dringt, Ist Lohn, der reichlich lohnet. Doch darf ich bitten, bitt' ich eins: La? mir den besten Becher Weins In purem Golde reichen!" .......... Er setzt' ihn an, er trank ihn aus: "O, Trank voll su?er Labe! O, wohl dem hochbegluckten Haus, Wo das ist kleine Gabe! Ergeht's Euch wohl, so denkt an mich, Und danket Gott so warm, als ich Fur diesen Trunk euch danke." *** "What do I hear outside the gates, what sounds on the bridge? Let the song before our ears resound around the hall." The king speaks, the page leaped off; the page came, the king called: "Bring the old one to me!" .......... "Greetings to you, noble gentlemen, Greetings, pretty ladies! What a rich sky! Stars upon stars! Who knows their names? In this hall full of splendour and magnificence, close, eyes, this is not the time to stand in amazed delight." .......... The singer lowers his eyes and loudly struck loud notes; the knights looked more courageous, the ladies lowered their heads. The king, pleased by the song, commanded, to honour him for his playing, that they bring a golden chain. .......... "Don't give me a golden chain, give the chain to your knights for their bravery, for splitting lances with the enemy! Give it to your clerks, add it to their other burdens. .......... I sing as the bird sings living in the trees; the song which leaves my throat is reward enough for me. Well, if I must ask, so be it: Tell them to pass me your best wine in a pure, gold goblet!" .......... He raises it, he drank it down: "Oh, what sweet refreshment! Oh let this house be highly blessed where this counts as a meagre gift! Stay healthy and remember me, and thank God as warmly as I thank you for this drink." 68. Late May, 1830. The poem reflects Tyutchev's impressions of part of a return journey home. He left Munich on May 16th. Writing to Ernestine in 1847, he says, "...it's a great consolation, after three long years of plains and bogs ... to see lovely, big, real mountains which don't become clouds on the horizon when you look more closely at them." Nonetheless, the Russian poems are brilliant examples of negative nature description. 69. 1830. The natural elements in many of Tyutchev's short nature lyrics can be actors, each having a small, clearly defined role in a poem. In this lyric, the storm, the oak, the smoke "running" (bezhal), as it does through Hus's pyre [356]), then the "fuller", "more resonant" singing of the birds and finally the rainbow restfully leaning its arc in the heights of the trees constitute a marvellous, simple picture of peace, a precisely chosen title. 70. 1830. Addressees unknown. Possibly inspired by renewing old Petersburg acquaintanceships during the summer of 1830, it could equally be addressed to his wife's sister, Klothilde. Klothilde was living with Tyutchev and Eleonore at about the time the poem was written and by then, as Gregg rightly points out, "Nelly, four years her husband's senior and mother of three (and perhaps four), was crowding thirty, whereas, Clothilde, a full ten years younger than her sister, was a lovely girl in her late teens. As for Tyutchev, his conjugal ardour had already cooled enough to allow extramarital attachments." (A:14) 71. 1830. Addressee unknown. Tyutchev may well have in mind a youthful "crush". I cannot accept Gregg's "erotic attachment to the prospect of female suffering" (A:14/64) While Tyutchev was in some ways a very selfish man, Gregg's psychoanalytical statement is too sweeping. 72. NL 1830. A possible inspiration is the July revolution in France in 1830, with its tragic Polish repercussions. Poland suffered three partitions (1772, 1793 and 1795), effectively ceasing to exist as a nation-state until 1918 as Russia, Austria and Prussia split her up among themselves. Following the French example, the Poles governed by Russia rebelled in 1830 and Russia reacted with brutality. Tyutchev was interested in Cicero (106-43 BC). The Roman orator, philosopher and statesman took cultural and intellectual values to the rest of Europe. In Tyutchev's book collection was an edition of the Roman's letters in a German translation. Lines 3-4 are a paraphrase from Cicero's Brutus, sive dialogus de claris oratoribus/Brutus, or a Dialogue about Famous Orators, XCVI/330): "I'm sad that, stepping for the first time onto life's road, somewhat late, I was plunged into this republican night." 73. 1830. This depiction of the Russian countryside, while replete with warm, almost comforting images, is nonetheless about death. Lane has indicated Tyutchev's progression from the religion of Horace (hedonism) to an acceptance that suffering can be a fine thing. (A:18viii). 74. 1830. The image of autumnal leaves is repeated in a later poem, the emphasis reversed. Here, as autumn closes, leaves flee it in an image of a light-hearted and youthful desire to flee death. In [194] summer storms repeat the happiness of earlier lyrics yet, even though summer reigns, Tyutchev cannot resist the temptation to refer to the first dead leaf. 75. 1830. Written on the journey from Petersburg to Munich. Livonia: the medieval term for the territory of present-day Latvia and Estonia. ....The bloody time: the period when the German Order of the Knights of the Sword governed (1202-1562). 76. October, 1830, returning to Munich. The last two lines are a variation of lines 7-8, st. 1, from Goethe's Willkomm und Abschied/A Welcome and a Farewell, from Miscellaneous Poems (1763-4). Es schlug mein Herz, geschwind zu Pferde! Es war getan fast eh gedacht. Der Abend wiegte schon die Erde, Und an den Bergen hing die Nacht; Schon stand im Nebelkleid die Eiche, Ein aufgeturmter Riese, da, Wo Finsternis aus dem Gestrauche Mit hundert schwarzen Augen sah. *** My heart beat, the horse sped me on, it was done faster than thought. Already evening weighed down upon the earth and night hung in the mountains; the oak already stood dressed in cloud, a towering giant standing there, where darkness looked from the bushes looked out with a hundred black eyes. Describing such a ride, involving several dark, eerie elements of a nocturnal landscape, Goethe wrote, "what fortune it is to have a light, free heart!" (Letter of June 27th. 1770). (B:13v, vol.1/14) Tyutchev's attitude to the dark side of nature, especially when associated with Russia, was quite the opposite. 77. 1830. The beneficent gods of this deceptively simple poem and of Tsitseron/Cicero [72] offer man a share in nature and history. They do not always act so, as in Dva golosa/Two Voices [179]. 78. 1830. N. Berkovsky considers the poem to be aimed at Schelling and his followers, for whom dowsers were "sacred people, entrusted by nature herself". (A:3/37-39) 79. 1830. The imagery reflects that of the lyric on the Decembrists [30], its slightly singsong rhythm setting it apart as a political poem under the guise of a nonetheless accurate description of dawn breaking over the Alps. 80. 1830. Influenced by the description of the environs of Rome in Mme. de Stael's novel, Corinne, ou l'Italie/Corinna, or Italy (B:38, pt.V,ch.3/124). She writes, "In a manner of speaking, this bad air lays siege to Rome; each year it advances by a few steps and people are forced to abandon the most charming places to its empire; undoubtedly the absence of trees in the countryside surrounding the town is one of the causes of the pollution of the air, and it may be due to that that the ancient Romans had dedicated the woods to goddesses, so that the people should be made to respect them. The bad air is a scourge of Rome's inhabitants, threatening the town with complete depopulation... The maleficent influence is not observable through any external sign; you breath an air which appears very pleasant; the land laughs in its fertility; during evenings, a sweet freshness offers you repose from the burning day, and all of this is death!" Mme. de Stael was the influential Swiss writer credited with coining the term "Romanticism". 81. NL 1830. Creusa, the wife of Aeneas, was not destined to leave Troy. Falling ever farther behind her husband, she was taken back by Aphrodite, Aeneas's mother. When Aeneas returned to find her, he was met by her ghost. 82. NL 1830. This lyric, so imbued with rapture at spring's approach, was described by Nekrasov as "one of the best pictures" ever to come from Tyutchev's pen. (B:29/208) It certainly shows Tyutchev able to take an incredibly joyful scene and depict it in extremely simple terms. Elzon (A:10/198) considers that Turgenev's (1818-83) epigraph to his story Veshnie vody/Vernal Waters (B:40ii, vol.11/7) is influenced by lines from Tyutchev's poem. The epigraph is as follows: Vesyolye vody, Cheerful waters, Schastlivye dni- happy days - Kak veshnie vody like vernal waters Promchalis' oni. they have flashed by. 83. Probably no later than 1830. One of Tyutchev's best-known poems (the Latin title his own) and Tolstoy's favourite. While tending to adhere to traditional metrical patterns, Tyutchev occasionally broke with tradition, in this case displeasing Turgenev (the editor). The first stanza is as follows (the acute accent indicating the stressed syllable): Molchi, skryvaysya i tai - ? - ? - ? - ? i chuvstva i mechty svoi - - ? - ? - ? - ? puskay v dushevnoy glubine - ? - ? - ? - ? vstayut i zakhodyat one - ? - - ? - - ? bezmolvno kak zvyozdy v nochi, - - ? - - ? - - ? lyubuysya imi i molchi. - ? - ? - ? - ? Disliking the change from iambs in lines 4 and 5, Turgenev amended as follows: I vskhodyat i zaydut one, - ? - ? - ? - ? kak zvyozdy yasnye v nochi. - ? - ? - ? - ? Tyutchev's rhythm is wonderfully unexpected. While he began his writing career as a poet, Turgenev did not possess a natural talent in this field, although he was ready nonetheless to take a similar liberty with Kak ptichka, ranneyu zaryoyu/The whole world starts as sunlight streams [110], replacing Tyutchev's striking O noch', noch', gde tvoi pokrovy - ? ? ? - ? - ? - with the bland iambic pentameters of Noch', noch', o gde tvoi pokrovy? - ? - ? - ? - ? - 84. NL 1830. This fine precursor of his later work shares images common to two such different lyrics as Dym/Smoke [320] and Gus na kostre/Hus at the Stake [356] as well as the contemporary Sizhu zadumchiv i odin/I sit deep in thought and alone [115]. At the age of 27, the awareness of the ephemerality of life and the speeding up of time is appearing in his work more frequently. 85. NE 1830-NL early 1833. Addressee unknown. The poem's beginning is similar to lines from Priznanie/A Declaration by A. Khomyakov (1804-60): Usta s privetnoyu ulybkoi Rumyanets barkhatnykh lanit *** Lips with a smile of greeting, the red of velvet lashes. Khomyakov was the best known Slavophil, a poet, philosopher of history and theologian. 86. Possibly September, 1831. On August 26th., 1831, Russian troops took Warsaw. In connection with this, an anti-Russian campaign had been conducted in the Bavarian press. The Polish seim (the diet) had declared its Revolution on December 20th., 1830. In the Aeneid, having angered the goddess Artemides, Agamemnon was told to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia. His readiness to proceed with this sacrifice earned him fair winds for Troy and placated the goddess, who spared the daughter and took her away to be a priestess in the land of the Taurians (present-day Crimea). The janissaries were elite Turkish soldiers, originally renegade slaves and Christian children taken in tribute. 87. Date unknown. Tyutchev undertook a sea voyage in the second half of 1833 when he was despatched from Munich to Greece on diplomatic business. This very effective poem, one of several which are never anthologised with more famous works yet which show his talents as a master of metre, rhyme and humour (see [346, 350]), may reflect his impressions of an enforced stop on the Dalmatian coast. Son na more/A Dream at Sea [92] deals with a similar subject, sharing the storm setting and unexpected metrical changes, the latter in [87] first noted by Lane (A:18viii). Tyutchev was conventional when it came to a poem's layout and generally narrow in his choice of themes, so these similarities are too much of a coincidence. Could he have made this up, or did he have an old story in his mind during the storm? Perhaps he heard or half-heard a tale. He was, after all, forever dozing off or daydreaming and waking to half-hear something. Lane feels instinctively that it is a translation or a poem on a theme of another poet and I tend to agree. A:18x/275 is a discussion of this mission to Greece which, while it produced one of the most famous poems, [92], did his career no good at all. Indeed, Tyutchev the diplomat "acquired and retained the reputation of being a failure - a judgement with which he heartily agreed". The Bavarian Prince Otto was the first king of the newly independent Greece (reigned 1833-62). Persistently inept, he was finally ejected after an insurrection in 1862. 88. NL early 1832. TR Uhland: Fruhlingsruhe/Peace in Springtime, [3] of the Lieder/Songs