(1812) O legt mich nicht ins dunkle Grab, Nicht unter die grune Erd' hinab! Soll ich begraben sein, Leig ich ins tiefe Gras hinein. .......... In Gras und Blumen lieg ich gern, Wenn eine Flote tont von fern, Und wenn hoch obenhin Die hellin Fruhlingswolken ziehn. *** Oh do not lay me in a dark coffin, nor under the green earth! When I must be buried, lie me in the dense grass. .......... I'd rather lie among the grass and flowers, a flute playing from far away, above me floating the light clouds of spring. Uhland's work shares some affinities with folk poetry. 89. 1832. Undoubtedly written on the death of Goethe (Mar. 22nd. 1832). 90. Early May, 1836. This octet formed part of the later poem, Napoleon [162]. In its early form, it is imbued with impressions gleaned from Heine's characterisation of the emperor in the second article of Franzosische Zustande/French Affairs in which Heine wrote: "Lafayette ... is not a genius as Napoleon was, in whose head the eagles of inspiration had nested, while in his heart the snakes of calculation writhed". (B:15iii, vol.3/95). Considering Napoleon a monstrous child of the French revolution, Chateaubriand (1768-1848) went further and played on the non-Frenchness of the emperor: "Each nation has its vices. Those of the French are not treason, blackheartedness, ingratitude. The murder of the Duke of Enghien... the war in Spain... reveal in Buonaparte a nature foreign to that of France". (B:8/70) The French author, secretary of the French embassy in Rome under Napoleon resigned on the execution of the Duke of Enghien. This "father of Romanticism" in French literature served the cause of the Bourbons in De Buonaparte, des Bourbons/About Bonaparte and the Bourbons (B:8) just one year before Napoleon's final defeat. Pushkin failed to have the poem published in Sovremennik/The Contemporary. Banning it, the censor concluded that "the author's thought was unclear and might well lead to a rather vague understanding". In 1849, Tyutchev included another part of the poem, On sam na rubezhe Rossii/And there you stood, and Russia stood before you [162], in the synopsis of Chapter 7 (Rossiya i Napoleon/Russia and Napoleon) of a treatise he would have entitled Rossiya i Zapad/Russia and the West, had he completed it. Akskov believes this section of the poem to have been written in 1840. The finished version can be dated NL March, 1850. Napoleon's influence as a symbol of change, of a titan bestriding two ages, cannot be underestimated in the works of more than one major author of the time. Tyutchev's final version owes more than a little to Manzoni [60]. Chateaubriand wrote of Napoleon: "Child of our revolution, he is strikingly similar to its mother ... Born largely in order to destroy, Buonaparte carries evil in his breast as a mother bears her fruit with joy and a kind of pride". (ibid./88-89) In the notes to Russia and the West, Tyutchev wrote: "All the rhetoric concerning Napoleon has pushed into the background what actually happened, the meaning of which has not been comprehended by poetry. It is a centaur, one half of whose body is Revolution". (A:1/220) The last words are interesting in that Tyutchev names poetic perception and not historical study as the means of comprehending the significance of Napoleon. In his Dnevnik pisatelya/Diary of a Writer (B:11iii,vol.24/312), Dostoevsky echoed Tyutchev's belief that politics is too important to be left to politicians: "Faithfulness to poetic truth can communicate incomparably more about our history than faithfulness to history alone". What fate has in store for her, let it come to pass: a quotation from Napoleon's command to his army at the crossing of the river Neman, June 22nd. 1812: "Russia is obsessed by fate: so, let it come to pass". another riddle: Tyutchev has in mind words uttered by Napoleon on St. Helena: "In fifty years, Europe will be either in the grip of revolution, or in the hands of the cossacks". at the East: by "East", Tyutchev means Russia. The Contemporary was for some time the favoured outlet of the radical intelligentsia, eventually losing many of its subscribers as more left-wing people, such as Chernyshevsky (1828-89) and Dobrolyubov (1836-61), became involved. After 1862 it became increasingly intolerant of anyone not representing extreme radical views. After Karakozov's attempt on the tsar's life in 1862, it was suspended. 91. Mid-January, 1833. This mildly ironic piece may have been inspired by the statement of a thinker for whom Tyutchev had scant respect. The italicised words support this. The notion of man eternally wondering how a stone falls down a mountain side would have amused Tyutchev, as the idea of the young man questioning the waves entertained Heine [32]. Before long Tyutchev was to state that spring "obeys her own laws" and is utterly unaware of man's thoughts or actions: Spring does not know us/us, our grief, our malice... Vesna/Spring [132]). 92. 1833. In this incredible lyric, the poet is lifted above reality and allowed a vision, divine or otherwise, but whatever the hallucinatory vision represents, reality fights back. Tyutchev was not a good sea-traveller and might well have had recourse to drugs to ease the discomfort he must have experienced during the storm, although as late as July 1847, on arriving in Berlin, he wrote to Ernestine: "... I was ... prey for the first time in my life to the distress of sea-sickness". The metre untypical, in Tyutchev, as well as some of the imagery, are too similar to lines from Schiller's William Tell to be coincidence and may suggest a source of this nonetheless truly striking poem. The German lines follows. Es donnern die Hohen, es zittert der Steg, Nicht grauet dem Schutzen auf schwindlichtem Weg, Er schreitet verwegen Auf Feldern von Eis, Da pranget kein Fruhling, Da grunet kein Reis; Und unter den Fu?en ein neblichtes Meer, Erkennt er die Stadte der Menschen nicht mehr, Durch de Ri? nur der Wolken Erblickt er die Welt, Tief unter den Wassern Das grunende Feld. .......... The heights are thundering, the bridge is trembling. Nothing terrifies the hunter on this giddy path. He paces unafraid over mountains of ice. Spring never blossoms there. No twig is ever green; and beneath his feet a foggy sea; and he does not recognise the cities of men. Only through tears in the cloud does he glimpse the world. Deep through the waters - the greening field. "The closeness of man and nature in every aspect of this play must be apparent to every reader. It is manifest throughout in two modes; equally in the way men are seen to belong to a natural environment, and in the human character of external nature itself." (B:36i/196) Whatever the inspiration behind Tyutchev's work, it is a wonder of rhythm and image. 93. NE 1833-NL April 1836. TR Beranger (1780-1857): Le Vieux Vagabond. Air: "Guide mes pas, O Providence!" Des "Deux Journees"/The Old Beggar. Tune: "Guide my steps, oh Providence!" From "Two Days". Dans ce fosse cessons de vivre. Je finis vieux, infirme et las. Les passants vont dire: il est ivre. Tant mieux! Ils ne me plaindront pas. J'en vois qui detournent la tete; D'autres me jettent quelques sous. Courez vite; allez a la fete. Vieux vagabond, je puis mourir sans vous. .......... Oui, je meurs ici de vieillesse Parce qu'on ne meurt pas de faim. J'esperais voir de ma detresse L'hopital adoucir la fin. Mais tout est plein dans chaque hospice, Tant le peuple est infortune. La rue, helas! fut ma nourrice. Vieux vagabond, mourons ou je suis ne. .......... Aux artisans, dans mon jeune age, J'ai dit: Qu'on m'enseigne un metier. Va, nous n'avons pas trop d'ouvrage, Repondaient-ils, va mendier. Riches, qui me disiez; Travaille, J'eus bien des os de vos repas; J'ai bien dormi sur votre paille. Vieux vagabond, je ne vous maudis pas. .......... J'aurais pu voler, moi, pauvre homme; mais non: mieux vaut tendre la main. Au plus, j'ai derobe la pomme Qui murit au bord du chemin. Vingt fois pourtant on me verrouille Dans les cachots, de par le roi. De mon seul bien on me depouille. Vieux vagabond, le soleil est a moi. .......... Le pauvre a-t-il une patrie? Que me font vos vins et vos bles, Votre gloire et votre industrie, Et vos orateurs assembles? Dans vos murs ouverts a ses armes, Lorsque l'etranger s'engraissait, Comme un sot j'ai verse des larmes, Vieux vagabond, sa main me nourissait. .......... Comme un insecte fait pour nuire, Hommes, que ne m'ecrasiez-vous? Ah! Plutot vous deviez m'instruire A travailler au bien de tous. Mis a l'abri du vent contraire, Le ver fut devenu fourmi; Je vous aurais cheris en frere. Vieux vagabond, je meurs votre ennemi. *** Let's give up living, in this ditch. I'll end up old, sick and weary. Passers-by will say, "He's drunk". Tough! They won't pity me. I see some turn their heads away; others throw small change. Run quickly; go on, have a good time. Old beggar, I can live without you. .......... Yes, I'm dying here of old age because no-one dies of hunger. I'd like to see my distress finally softened in a hospital. But every hospital is full, so unhappy are the people. The street, alas, fed me. Old beggar, let's die where I was born. .......... When I was young, I asked craftsmen to teach me a skill. "Be off! There's little enough work for us", was their reply. "Get off and beg". I've had some good sleep on your straw. Old beggar, I don't curse you. .......... I could have stolen, poor man that I am; but no, it's better to beg. At the most I freed the tree of the ripening apple by the roadside. Twenty times I've been locked up in the king's prisons, deprived of the one thing that's mine. Old tramp, the sun is mine. .......... Has the poor man a native land? What are your vineyards and cornfields to me, your fame, your industry, your assemblies of orators? When the foreigner gorged himself within our walls he'd taken by force, like an idiot I cried. Old tramp, it was his hand which fed me. .......... Like an insect created to harm us, men, why did you not crush me? Ah, it would have been better had you educated me, showed me how to work for the good of others. Sheltered from the inimical wind, the worm could have become an ant; I'd have loved you like brothers. Old tramp, I die your enemy. A fervent admirer of Napoleon, Beranger's influence was significant in 1830 as the revolution of that year got under way. On his death, Napoleon III did not allow people to attend his funeral. His songs made him throughout his life an extremely popular, liberal man of the people, in direct contrast to the authoritarian emperor. An extract from his poem, Le cinq mai/The Fifth of May (1821), highlights the very elements encountered in writers from Manzoni to Tyutchev: Grand de genie et grand de caractere, Pourquoi de sceptre arma-t-il son orgueil? Bien au-dessus des trones de la terre Il apparait brillant sur cet eceuil Sa gloire est le comme le phare immense D'un nouveau monde et d'un monde trop vieux. Pauvre soldat, je reverrai la France: La main d'un fils me fermera les yeux. *** Great of genius, great of personality, why did he arm his pride with the sceptre? Far above the thrones of earth he appeared brilliant on this reef, his glory is there like a vast lighthouse, glory of a new world and of a world which is too old. Poor soldier, I shall see France once again: a son's hands will close my eyes. Ecueil (1.4) can also be a stumbling block and in this sense is reminiscent of Tyutchev's podvodnyi kamen' very/the hidden reef of faith from Napoleon [90]. Iros: a Homeric character forever running errands for the younger men. 94. April 21st. 1834. Triggered by the suggestion of a sound, for there is none, really, the strings having been "brushed" by the moon's rays, a door into the past appears. Such a technique, began in Problesk/The Gleam [27] and employed as late as a poem to E. Annenkov [246] is one of Tyutchev's favourites. Skald: a Scandinavian bard. 95. September, 1834. In this elegaic poem, the Tyutchev who would perhaps like to believe describes the trappings of belief sceptically. Like the scene it describes, the poem is simple, almost bleak. 96. NE 1834, NL April, 1836. TR Heine from New Poems. In der Fremde/In Foreign Lands. In welche soll ich mich verlieben, Da beide liebenswurdig sind? Ein schones Weib ist noch die Mutter, Die Tochter ist ein schones Kind. .......... Die wei?en, unerfahrnen Glieder, Sie so ruhrend anzusehn! Doch reizend sind geniale Augen, Die unsre Zartlichkeit verstehn. .......... Es gleicht mein Herz dem grauen Freunde, Der zwischen zwei Gebundel Heu Nachsinnlich grubelt, welch von beiden Das allerbeste Futter sei. *** Which one should I fall in love with? They're both very fanciable. The mother is still a pretty woman and the daughter is a lovely girl. .......... These white inexperienced limbs which look so touching! Charming, brilliant eyes comprehend affection! .......... My heart is like our grey friend which, standing between two bundles of hay, ponders deeply about which of the two will make the best meal. The French philosopher and scientist, Jean Buridan (1300-58), decided that, quantities and distances being equal, a dog placed between two bowls of meat would choose which to eat at random. In later years, the dog became "Buridan's ass". It is unlikely that Tyutchev would have copied the dog. The younger, fresher Klothilde would most assuredly have exerted a stronger pull on him than his wife. 97. NE 1834, NL April 1836. A variation on a theme from Heine from New Poems: In der Fremde): In Foreign Lands). Es treibt dich fort von Ort zu Ort, Du wei?t nicht mal warum; Im Winde klingt ein sanftes Wort, Schaust dich verwundert um. .......... Die Liebe, die dahinten blieb, Sie ruft dich sanft zuruck: O komm zuruck, ich hab dich lieb, Du bist mein einz'ges Gluck! .......... Doch weiter, weiter, sonder Rast, Du darfst nicht stille stehn. Was du so sehr geliebet hast Sollst du nicht wiedersehn. *** From place to place you're rushed away, not knowing the reason why; a gentle word rings out in the wind and astonished you look around. .......... That love which you left over there tenderly calls you back: "Oh come back, I love you, you are my only happiness!" .......... So on and on without resting, you must not stand still. What you love so much you will never see again. 98. NE 1834, NL April, 1836. Addressed to Baroness Amalia von Krudner, nee Countess von Lerchenfeld (1808-88). Meeting her in 1822, Tyutchev retained a lifelong amitie amoureuse/loving friendship for this Bavarian girl descended from the aristocratic Lerchenfeld-Kofferings. Amalia's first husband, A. Krudner, was First Secretary in the Russian Mission in Munich whence in the spring of 1836 he was transferred to St. Petersburg. During the years 1836-44 Amalia is said to have had an affair of some sort with Nicholas I. Tyutchev writes in a letter to Gagarin (July 22nd. 1836): "Goodness, why did she have to become a constellation ... she was so lovely on this earth". (See [257]) 99. Mid-1830s. Such memories as expressed in this poem encompass his early love for Eleonore, the heady days of the first visit to the West, that sense of the world being perfect before, as Heine put it in [31], everything seemed to fall apart. From this point on Tyutchev is more than ever aware of growing up, in a sense, and his memories are there to haunt him in at times self-pitying, at times quietly regretful lines. Elysium: the abode of blissful souls in the after life. 100. 1830s. Written about the same time as he translated the two extracts from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tyutchev may well have been spurred by some of the lyrical lines of The Merchant of Venice (V,i) to produce the lushly lyrical poem: Lorenzo ............. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. 101. 1830s. Tyutchev sees Spring in the guise of the Earth-Mother, Spring as represented in [132], detached even from the transient joy which man finds in religion's consolations, love, May's bliss, golden dreams, all terms used superficially, bearing none of the sense of the profound, almost pagan sense of well-being the lyric hero finds in this moment. 102. 1830s. The sensuality of the moment is weakened in the second half of the poem by a transparent nature - woman comparison. Up till that point, Tyutchev has produced a characteristically condensed picture of a lightning-teased sky, nature's scents and sounds intensified in the silence before a storm. 103. 1830s. The debt owed to one of Horace's odes ([3], bk. 2) has been noted more than once. quo pinus ingens algaque populus umbram hospitalem consociare amant ramis? quid obliquo laborat lympha fugax trepidare rivo? *** Wherefore do the tall pine and the white poplar like to mingle their branches to give a hospitable shade? Why does the water flowing by seek to bicker against the curved bank? 104. 1830s. Tyutchev frequently depicts the moment just before dawn, the moon still supreme during those minutes before sunrise. In this rhythmic, hypnotic masterpiece, he holds night in place, as if in a freeze-frame, allowing the lark's song to reverberate like the voice of a lost soul, threatening madness to him who hears it at this time. 105. 1830s. As in [104] bird song represents Nature, here indifferent to the negatively described man-made scene below. Formal religion is depicted in terms of a body being lowered into one abyss (a hole in the ground) while the religion of nature, if religion it can be called, is seen in terms of the endless "abyss" (bezdna) of the sky. 106. 1830s. Tyutchev demonstrates his superb ability to employ repetition and assonance in this lyric in which one of this favourite devices comes into play, that of a woman's and the sky's changing moods in terms of each other. 107. 1830s. The ageing Tolstoy could not read this without tears, considering that it was one of the few true works of art which is of such quality that there is no yardstick with which to measure it. This wondrously muted, musical poem does, indeed, deserve such high praise. 108. 1830s. A similar, less inspired poem by A. Illichevsky (1798-1837), Oryol i chelovek/The Eagle and the Man, 1827) suggests a common source. 109. 1830s. The fast stream hurrying off to a house-warming conjures up noise below the observer while the latter climbs ever upward to seek the solitude of the peaks. In a later poem [234], the poet sits "above" roots and, even though he is at ground level, the same up-down movement is sensed. There is a similar sense of being alone, looking down on the world as water pours towards it in sweltering heat. 110. 1830s. Young as he was, Tyutchev was already becoming obsessed with ageing and being left behind. His personal tragedy was that as he aged, his demon would not let him enjoy the emotional and intellectual peace which old age is said to bring. In a letter to Ernestine (Aug. 14th. 1846), he wrote: "Alas, is it really worth the trouble ageing if, with increasingly debilitating forces, you remain a prey to the same agitations". Writing to Nikolay Sushkov (1796-1871) with best wishes for the future with his new wife, Tyutchev's sister, Darya, the poet could not, it seems, resist the temptation to broach this subject: "For myself especially this thought would be a torment, as tormenting as a reproach". (July 3rd. 1836) He is referring to the fact that, the two brothers having left their parents, the latter would now have to see out their last years without any of their children. Such comments abound in Tyutchev's letters. 111. 1830s. A light-hearted comparison of an increasingly busy Danube with the river from times gone by, when mythical creatures reigned, is interestingly done from the vantage point of an observer far above it, although the narrator's position is not described as such. As in Utro v gorakh/Morning in the Mountains [48], the poet is almost airborne while the river snakes away below him, an interesting counterpoint to Po ravnine vod lazurnoi/Across a blue plain of water [157] in which he is on the deck of the ship being observed from above. 112. 1830s. The poem could be seen as a microcosm of Heine's Travel Scenes, the German describing his short escape from the unimaginative academic life of Gottingen to wander through the Harz mountains in a lengthy piece of prose, Tyutchev encapsulating the entire travel motif in two stanzas. As in Tyutchev, in stanza 3 of the introductory poem to the Harzreise/Harz Journey, Heine depicts the mountains as allowing the human spirit to breathe more easily: Auf die Berge will ich steigen, Wo die frommen Hutten stehen, Wo die Brust sich frei erschlie?et, Und die freien Lufte wehen. *** I want to climb the mountains where the huts of the pious stand, where one's breast opens up and the free air wafts. 113. 1830s. Such poems have given rise to a kind of Tyutchevian chaos theory. As poetry they are often far less effective than those containing the condensed images in which the poet presents the reader with a scene and makes no overt comment. 114. 1830s. This winter lyric is an effective description of an ice-bound stream, the parallel between it and human experience in stanza two skilfully retaining natural images, culminating in a faint hint of life existing still beneath the ice of Nature and life. It is paralleled in the last couplet he ever wrote [393]), evidence that the same few poetic preoccupations remained with him throughout his life. Writing to Bogdanova early in 1867, he says: "The cold is an abyss where our poor individuality is swallowed and obliterated". He finishes this short letter by wondering what it would be like to "swell out" (se dilater) in the sun, "perhaps in Havana". 115. 1830s. The addressee is not known, although she could be one of Tyutchev's conquests. The eternality and indifference of Nature are called in defence of his misdemeanour since, no matter how he behaves, Nature will go her own way in any case. One is reminded of Dmitry Karamazov's interest in learning that if there were no God anything would be allowed. 116. NL April, 1836. A hint of the later "Russian" nature poems is imparted by the simple image of the myortvyi stebl'/dead stalk among two eight-line stanzas more or less entirely devoted to vague, "European" nature images. 117. 1830s. There is a fairytale feel to this poem which could be Russian or western, although the "washing in snow" (umylasya v snegu) is definitely Russian. 118. NL April, 1836. This interesting poem mixes time-space imagery in the second stanza, the poet-observer asking which "age" is white upon the summits, noting that dawn sows red roses on them. 119. NL April, 1836. One of Tyutchev's less effective nature poems, the formal two-stanza form contributing to a lack of spontaneity. In Nochnoye nebo tak ugryumo/Sad night creeps [298] the same structure produces a wonder of uncontrived magic. 120. NL April, 1836. The idea of hiding in the light of day, in natural terms in the sky, is not unusual in Tyutchev. Here we have a version of two poems [57, 58] with the basic idea reversed yet the basic concept remaining the same. 121. NL April, 1836. Perhaps Tyutchev's pantheistic ideas were considered not in keeping with the Orthodox view of nature as an entity in which everything is subservient to the will of God, resulting in the censored sections. 122. NL April, 1836. Tyutchev was a master of the short poem and had a great command of the epigrammatic form. This not only cleverly brief, but profound, lacking only that flippancy we saw in the earlier [16]. 123. NL April, 1836. Nature is here called upon to reinforce an openly sexual poem. Masculine physical desire is described, framed by a quick flash of lightning around the skies. The downward-movement and sultry images of stanza 2 make of this a marvel of brief sexual exultation. 124. Early 1836. Tyutchev's poem has something in common with a V. Benediktov (1807-73) verse, Prekrasna deva molodaya/The young girl is beautiful. In comparison with Benediktov's less subtle offering (considered "vulgar" and "cliche-ridden" by Terras, C:1/233), Tyutchev's is cleverly visual and erotic. 125. May-July, 1837. On the death of Pushkin and influenced by the gossip which the poet's misfortunes aroused in polite society. 126. Dec. 1st. 1837. Inspired by a meeting in Genoa with Ernestine von Dornberg, who became his second wife on July 17th. 1839. She had been his mistress since early 1833. 127. December 1837. Probably linked with meeting Ernestine in Genoa. 128. December, 1837. On returning from Genoa to Turin where Tyutchev was serving in the Russian diplomatic mission. the poem is an early example of the north-south contrast. Here the Russian winter is an "omnipotent sorceror" and lives "beyond this blizzard-kingdom". As a rule Tyutchev is less kind and there is generally no hint of a pleasant fairytale in "this interminable tunnel of a Russian winter". (LET.ERN. Aug. 16th. 1852) 129. Late 1837. Probably connected with his departure from Genoa and Ernestine, whom he thought he would never see again. However, in October 1837 Tyutchev arrived in Turin to take up his post as First Secretary. He served as Charge d'Affaires from August 1838 to July 1839 before leaving without permission in order to marry Ernestine (A:18v). 130. April 4th. 1838. Addressed to the minor German poet, Baron Apollon von Maltitz (1795-1870), married to Eleonore's sister, Klothilde. Maltitz replaced Tyutchev as First Secretary in the Munich mission in 1837. Maltitz was Tyutchev's first translator. The poem is the first evidence that the French verse, while not as inspired as his greatest lines in Russian, can be readable, occasionally containing some of that profundity we associate with the Russian poems. 131. Early 1838. The political subtext may be too strong to resist. The contrast between eastern and western Europe certainly emerges more strongly from now on. 132. NL 1838. Tyutchev's wife had died, partly as a result of a disaster at sea, in the summer of this year. With her daughters and nanny she had been on her way to meet him in Munich. While he is reported to have been grief-stricken, there appears to be no clearly discernible change in the "feel" of his poetry from here on, although it might be considered that a certain lightheartedness disappears. Considering Tyutchev's obsession with ageing, however, this would be understandable. He continues to write in his uniquely pantheistic mode and did not alter his social behaviour in any way. A year later he had married the woman he had already made pregnant, and lost his job. The novelist Turgenev published an essay in 1883 entitled Un Incendie en Mer/A Fire at Sea, in which he mentions his acquaintance, Eleonore Tyutcheva. Having described in graphic detail the fire on board, baring, after many years, his own panic, he wrote: "Among those ladies who escaped the wreck, there was one, a Mrs. T..., extremely pretty and extremely nice, but burdened by her four little girls and their maids". (There was only one maid - FJ). Turgenev describes her on the beach, barefoot, with her shoulders barely covered (B:40, vol.14/201;509) Schapiro claims that while on board Turgenev formed a romantic attachment to Nelly and goes on to point out that the novelist's correspondence with his mother "suggests that he was in love with her, or fancied himself to be so". (B:40i/18) Nicholas I sent money to all the survivors of the tragedy. Eleonore died only four months after receiving her money from the tsar. 133. NL early 1839. It is as if between the impulsion to produce spontaneous and brilliant nature poems Tyutchev felt the need to deliberately contrive a poem based quite clearly on some woolly Schellingian premise. It is unfortunate that in doing so, a school of thought making him celebrated for a "cycle" of "Holy Night" poems should have sprung up. 134. NL early 1839. Whatever the motivation and whoever the addressee, there can be no doubting the reality of the physical feeling. 135. October, 1840. Addressed to Grand Princess Maria (1819-76), daughter of Nicholas I. Tyutchev met her during the autumn of 1840 at Tegernsee, near Munich. 136. September 6th. 1841. Prague. Dedicated to the Czech patriot, scholar and teacher, Vaclav Hanka (1791-1861), whom Tyutchev met in Prague in 1841. Hanka believed in closer links between Czechoslovakia (then Bohemia) and Russia and went a long way to acquainting his compatriots with Russian literature. In 1819 he published the so-called Kraledvorsky manuscript, presenting it as a collection of the epic and lyrical songs of the Czech people. It turned out that he had written them himself, having studied legends and chronicles. Nonetheless, the book played its part in the development of Czech national consciousness. In 1867, Tyutchev wrote a postscript to the poem [323]. 137. July 7th. 1842. Dedicated to the German writer and pamphleteer Karl-August Varnhagen von Ense (1775-1858). Von Ense served in the Russian army during the Napoleonic wars. He contributed through his translations to a greater awareness of Russian literature in Germany. Tyutchev visited him in Berlin en route to Munich. He had known the German since the late 1820s. Von Ense was probably the most knowledgeable German of the time when it came to Russian culture. 138. September, 1842. The Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), was the first professor of Slavic literature at the College de France, where he gave a series of lectures on the history and literature of the Slav peoples. On receiving copies of extracts of the lectures from Turgenev, Tyutchev wrote and sent this poem to him. Mickiewicz meant as much to Poles as Pushkin did to Russians. Exiled to Russia in 1824 for Polish patriotic agitation, he reached poetic maturity there, later becoming a Catholic mystic and spending much of his life in Paris. It is ironic that Tyutchev should have sent his poem to a man who believed that among all nations Poland had a messianic role to play, and who wished to lead a Polish legion against Russia during the Crimean war. 139. October, 1842. In letters to Ernestine, Tyutchev returns constantly to the theme of separation. Images of absence and space abound, whether as references to his separation from those close to him, something he always found hard to cope with, or as images of the geographical vastness and emptiness of his native land. In 1843 he wrote to her of "the tremendous plain, the Scythian plain, which so often shocked you on my relief map, where it forms an enormous sheet, no nicer there than it is in reality". In July 1847 he had technology to thank for protecting him in some measure from the emptiness of Russia's plains: "Ah, let's not curse the railway, especially now that the network is joining up and closing in on all sides. What is particularly beneficent for me is that it reassures my imagination against my most terrible enemy - space - this odious space which, on ordinary roads, drowns and annihilates you, body and soul". Absence is geographical emptiness and distance between him and loved ones. He begins and ends one virulent letter of 1851 thus: "To be sure, I protest against your absence. I neither want to nor can tolerate it ... With your company there disappears all... continuity in my life ..." Is there anything in the world more ridiculous, more irritating and less satisfying than writing? It's of use only to people who get used to absence and resign themselves to this abyss. Ah, I just can't put up with any of that!" 140. Late September, 1844, when Tyutchev resettled in St. Petersburg. There is undoubtedly a culture shock here. Still, the first two stanzas show the poet of Russia malgre lui beginning to produce some of his most brilliant work. The remainder of the poem is as insipid as his feeble hearkening back to the west in the superb Na vozvratnom puti/The Return Journey [241]. 141. 1844. A variation on the concluding lines of Schiller's Kolumbus/Columbus (probably 1795) from Poems (1804). Steure mutiger Segler! Es mag der Witz dich verhohnen, Und der Schiffer am Steu'r senken die lassige Hand. Immer, immer nach West! Dort mu? die Kuste sich zeigen, Liegt sie doch deutlich und liegt schimmernd vor deinem Verstand. Traue dem leitenden Gott und folge dem schweigenden Weltmeer, War' sie noch nicht, sie stieg jetzt aus den Fluten empor. Mit dem Genius steht die Natur in ewigem Bunde, Was der eine verspricht, leistet die andre gewi?. *** Steer on, courageous sailor! Wit may mock you and the sailor's weary hand may sink onto the helm. Onwards, ever westwards! There must the shoreline appear, clearly visible, gleaming before your reasoning mind. Trust in God who leads you and in the silent ocean. Hidden till now, see a new world emerge from the waves. Genius and nature are in eternal union, The promises of one will be honoured by the other. 142. October, 1847. To Ernestine. The first four lines are her words. In a fairly paltry French poem, the opposite of the dead leaf/myortvogo lista [186] appears, dead flowers, in a possible burst of wish-fulfilment, coming back to life. 143. 1848, the Year of Revolutions. Tyutchev was not the only Russian writer to see Russia as a monolithic entity, unshakeable despite the West's constant, subversive attempts to breach its defences. Zhukovsky's Russkomu velikanu/To the Russian Giant was published shortly before. Tyutchev's poem is a wonder of image and movement. Zhukovsky's is more openly allegorical. 144. November, 1848. In Russian or French this would be a superb poem. Tyutchev yet again shows that he can describe with rare genius what he really does not like in the least, that is his own native land in winter. He uses the same French verb (assieger/to besiege) in a letter to Ernestine (Oct. 15th. 1852), describing Ovstug, where she was staying with her thee daughters, as a "horrible hole to which rain and snow lay siege". 145. Early January, 1849. Dedicated to Eleonore, whose death in 1838 had devastated him. In a letter to Zhukovksy, he wrote: "There are horrible periods in human existence... To survive everything by which we lived - lived for a whole twelve years... What is more normal than such a fate - and what is more horrible? To survive and, all the same, to live!". 146. 1848. Concerning the revolutions of that year. 147. 1848-9. The invisible interlocutor pointing to life's shade, and the poet-observer positioned between the shades of earth, here equated with death, make of this characteristically short lyric, with its underlying imagery of distance, a masterpiece of personal profundity. 148. 1848-9. Dobrolyubov quoted this poem in his article Kogda pridyot nastoyashchii den'?/When will the real day come? (B:10, vol.6/137), describing it as the "hopelessly sad, soul-tearing premonition of a poet so constantly and mercilessly justifying itself over the best, the elite natures of Russia". The social-critical nature of the poem may have caused a change of title to Moei zemlyachke/To My Countrywoman in the first edition. Dobrolyubov had no time for anything poetic for its own sake. He was a critic in the worst sense, once commenting that Tyuchev "is far from being a first-rank poet, but I like his descriptions of nature very much, that is of certain moments of its life". (ibid., vol.9/17) 149. 1848 or 1849. Similar in content to his unfinished Russia and the West, on which he was working at this time. Peter's town: Rome. ll.9-10: A hint at the biblical prophecy about the kingdom which "will never fall". (The Book of Daniel, II, 44) 150. 1848-9 (final draft, 1850). In the face of night (about which there is nothing "holy", Tyutchev's Svyataya/holy being a Romantic cliche), "thought" itself has been "abolished", a straightforward repetition of his earlier feelings about the universe as expressed in A. N. M. [13]. 151. June 6th. 1849. En route from Moscow to his birthplace, Ovstug. This superb "Russian" nature poem employs the best-known techniques of the "western" nature lyrics. The "crumpled", "frowning" earth, like that of a new-born baby's face, under the threat of storm is a striking scene, as is that containing the colour-intensifier, the greening field becoming greener still as the thunder storm gathers. It is, in this reader's opinion, impossible to find anything in a single "western" nature poem better, lighter, more joyful in any way than the picture portrayed in this lyric. 152. June 13, 1849. Written during his second stay in Ovstug after returning to Russia. In a letter to his wife (Aug. 31st. 1846), on his first visit to his birthplace, he writes: "... during those first moments after arriving, the enchanted world of childhood came vividly back to me, as if it had been revealed, this world which had disintegrated and vanished long ago... In a word, for several moments I experienced what thousands before me had experienced in those very circumstances, what many who follow me will experience and what, in the final analysis, is of value only for whoever has lived through it all and then only as long as he is under its spell". In another letter to Ernestine in 1846, sent shortly before visiting Ovstug, he writes: "My life began later, and everything which preceded that life is as foreign to me as the day before I was born. The reference to the later life is the period after he left his birthplace for the West (1822). 153. July 23rd. 1849. Ovstug. The incredibly warm, comforting feel of this superb lyric is shared by others depicting nocturnal scenes. (See, for example, [167, 176]). I cannot accept Gregg's translation. He interprets kak/how, like as an exclamation: On a quiet night in the late summer, how the stars in the sky glow red; how beneath their dusky light, the sleeping cornfields ripen... Drowsily silent, how in the nocturnal stillness their gilded waves shine,