Собрание стихотворений Ф. Тютчева на английском языке, Тютчев Федор Иванович, Год: 2000

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The Complete Poems of Tyutchev In An English Translation by F.Jude
Nature, Love And Politics
—————————————————————
Copyright (c) F. Jude Durham, 2000
Email: fjude369(a)yahoo.co.uk
WWW: http://www.oriontyne.com
12 South Crescent, North End, DURHAM, DH1 2BH.
phone number +44(0)191 384 6985. —————————————————————
Illustrated by S. Razvi
Foreword by R. Lane (Lecturer in Russian at the University of Durham)
Copyright (c) F. Jude
Durham, 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Copyright owner.
The author welcomes orders, enquiries about and comments on this book at the publishing address:
62 Devonshire Road, Belmont, Durham, DH1 2BH, U.K.
DEDICATION
I dedicate this book to Dr. R. Lane of the University of Durham for sharing with me his great expertise and for his encouragement.
Imperturbable form is the outward sign of nature’s utter consonance. Only our spectral liberty imparts a sense of dissonance.
Whence this disharmony? How did it arise? In the general chorus, why this solo refrain? Why do our souls not sing like the sea and why must the thinking reed complain? (The sea is harmony. F. Tyutchev)
….. the great figures in imaginative literature are perpetually contemporary… they never become History. Ancient or modern, they live in the perpetual present of mankind, crowding it with an accumulation of life and a living variety of human experience.
(Essays in Literature and Society. E. Muir)
THE AUTHOR
A freelance teacher in the north east of England, having taught myself Russian I graduated from the University of Durham in 1972 with first class honours, following this with doctoral research in the work of Tyutchev, supervised by R. Lane. The research was never completed and I returned to it some four years ago, one result being this book.
THE ILLUSTRATOR
Shaheen Razvi is a freelance artist living in Scotland. She has done portraits, illustrated an Urdu text book and a multi-cultural collection of nursery rhymes. She has also contributed a series of oil paintings on an anti-racist theme to a major exhibition.
FOREWORD BY R. LANE TO THE 1983 EDITION
R. Lane
University of Durham, England
February, 1983
FOREWORD TO THIS EDITION
The poet Fyodor Tyutchev is known and appreciated by too few people outside of Russia, and yet his position as second to Pushkin (arguably only with the exception of Lermontov) has been acknowledged by generations of Russian/Soviet writers and critics. The reading public had always cherished his lyrics, although they did not always have sufficient access to them. Tyutchev can teach much of value about both how to savour the beauty of fleeting moments and how to face life’s adversities with spirit.
It is precisely these qualities which have, I believe, been caught admirably in Frank Jude’s translations. They transmit faithfully the feelings and the tone of the originals, sometimes with remarkable success. I believe that he has tackled sensibly the dilemma of the equation facing all translators of poetry — to what extent to reproduce the originals. It seems inevitable that some of the rhymes and the other formal features must be sacrificed to the need to reproduce the ‘feel’ of Tyutchev’s often amazing lyrics. Frank Jude has trod this tightrope with great sureness and Tyutchev’s distinctive style remains largely unsacrificed. Because he has known and loved the Master for so long, his translations have become consonant with the original poems. In this way they fill a real lacuna. For this collection is the first accurate translation in bulk by a British author. Its only forerunner was Charles Tomlinson’s slim volume of 1960. This contained poems of great distinction by an eminent poet, but there was more of Tomlinson in them than Tyutchev. What is more, Frank Jude has translated more poems than any other author, several for the first time into English, including some of the much neglected political pieces.
This book has been interestingly illustrated by Shaheen Razvi. Certain of the illustrations do not present the poems in the way in which some people might have visualised them, but they are nevertheless a bold break with the pretty-pretty presentation of anthological pieces hitherto dominant.
All in all, I believe that Frank Jude’s book is essential reading for students and other readers of Russian poetry and is to be warmly recommended.
Since R. Lane wrote his Foreword in 1983, only one edition of ‘quality’ translations of Tyutchev has appeared till now, Anatoly Liberman’s versions of 181 of the poems published in 1991. In calling them ‘quality’ translations, I make a deliberate value judgement, for his is not the only edition of selected poems to have appeared.
There are too many gaps in published Tyutchev scholarship for any one researcher to deal with. The present book is intended to be the first of several of various lengths and formats which I wish to produce as time allows and whose overall aim is to fill some of these gaps. I shall also continue to work at the translations of the poems. I am all too aware of the defects of several of my versions, although I hope they are at least accurately rendered, even if they do little justice to Tyutchev. Very little has been published in English about his personal letters. There has been no serious attempt to translate them in bulk, possibly because the task would be monumental. A satisfactory Russian version of all the poems has yet to appear. Russian editors still tend to favour splitting up the poems according to relative quality, a very subjective business, to say the least. A study of Tyutchev in the letters and memoirs of others would prove illuminating. His family, in particular two of his daughters, Anna and Ekaterina, deserve attention in their own right.
Studies carried out by Russian scholars during the late nineteenth century and the Soviet period, culminating in Pigaryov’s Lirika edition and his book on the poet’s life and work, Gregg’s study of the life and poetry, and Lane’s extensive research, represented by numerous articles, some of his contributions published in Literaturnoe nasledstvo (1988-89), now, it seems to me, need drawing together with the many other smaller contributions of the past twenty or thirty years into a single, new book in English on the writer, a thorough, critical re-appraisal of his work. Such a task will be for a new Tyutchev scholar of energy.
Frank Jude
Durham, England
January, 2000
CONTENTS
Foreword by R.C. Lane to the 1983 edition vi
Foreword to this edition vii
Contents 8
Preface 26
Note on transliteration 34
Acknowledgements 35
Introduction 36
The Poems 53
Notes 237
Selective Bibliography
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF TYUTCHEV’S POEMS
The title/first line of a known translation and the author’s name are given after the English title/first line. Some titles are in French or Latin. Where the first line is given in French, the poem was written in French. Italics are used for the first line of each untitled poem. Where the title is a proper name identical in the languages in question, it is given once only (e.g. Sakontala).
Title/first line Page
1. Lyubeznomu papen’ke 53
Dear Dad!
2. Na novyi 1816 god 53
New Year 1816
3. Dvum druz’yam 54
To Two Friends
4. Puskai ot zavisti serdtsa zoilov noyut 55
Let envy gnaw Zoilus’s heart
5. Poslanie Goratsiya k Metsenatu, v kotorom priglashaet ego k 55
sel’skomu obedu A Letter from Horace to Mecenatus Inviting him to Dinner in the Country
Tyrrhena progenies, tibi (Horace)
6. Vsesilen ya i vmeste rab 57
Omnipotent am I while weak
7. Uraniya 57
Urania
8. Nevernye preodolev puchiny 61
Inconstant, watery gulfs finally behind him
9. K ode Pushkina na Vol’nost’ 61
On Pushkin’s Ode to Freedom
10. Kharon i Kachenovsky 62
Charon and Kachenovsky
11. Odinochestvo 62
Solitude
L’Isolement (Lamartine)
12. Vesna (Posvyashchaetsya druz’yam) 63
Spring (Dedicated to my Friends)
13. A.N.M. 64
14. Gektor i Andromakha 64
Hector and Andromache
Hektor und Andromacha (Schiller)
15. Na kamen’ zhizni rokovoi 65
Along the fateful shore of life
16. ‘Ne dai nam dukhu prazdnoslov’ya!’ 65
‘Do not endow us with the spirit of idle gossip!’
17. Protivnikam vina 66
(Yako i vino veselit serdtse cheloveka)
To Wine’s Detractors
(For wine, indeed, brings joy to man’s heart)
18. Poslanie k A.V. Sheremetevu 67
An Epistle to A.V. Sheremetev
19. Pesn’ Radosti 67
Song of Joy
An die Freude (Schiller)
20. Slyozy 70
Tears
21. S chuzhoi storony 70
From a Foreign Land
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
22. Drug, otkroisya predo mnoyu 71
Be open with me, my love
Libeste, sollst mir heute sagen (Heine)
23. Druz’yam pri posylke Pesni Radosti — iz Shillera 71
To My Friends (On Sending them Schiller’s ‘Song of Joy’)
24. K N. 72
To N.
25. K Nise 72
To Nisa.
26. Pesn’ skandinavskikh voinov 72
The Song of the Norse Warriors
Morgengesang im Kriege (Herder)
27. Problesk 73
The Gleam
28. V al’bom druz’yam 74
In an Album for my Friends
Lines written in an Album at Malta (Byron)
29. Sakontala (Kalidasa/Goethe) 74
30. 14-oe dekabrya 1825 75
December 14th. 1825
31. Zakralas’ v serdtse grust’, — i smutno 75 Sadness stole into my heart and I vaguely
Das Herz ist mir bedruckt, und sehnlich (Heine)
32. Voprosy 75
Questions
33. Korablekrushenie 76
The Shipwrecked Man
Der Schiffbruchige (Heine)
34. Kak poroyu svetlyi mesyats 77
As the bright moon sometimes
Wie der Mond sich leuchtend dranget (Heine)
35. Privetstvie dukha 77
The Spirit’s Greeting
Geistesgruss (Goethe)
36. i Kto s khlebom slyoz svoikh ne el 78
He who has not eaten tears with his bread
Wer nie sein Brot mit Tranen a?
ii Kto khochet miru chuzhdym byt’
He who would be a stranger in the world
Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergiebt (Goethe)
37. Zapad, Nord i Yug v krushen’e 78
Hegira
Hegire (Goethe)
38. Vesennyaya groza 80
A Spring Storm
39. Mogila Napoleona 80
Napoleon’s Tomb
40. Cache-Cache 80
Hide and Seek
41. Letnii vecher 81
A Summer Evening
42. Olegov shchit 81
Oleg’s Shield
43. Videnie 82
A Vision
44. Bairon 82
Byron
Totenkranze (Zedlitz)
45. Sredstvo i tsel’ 86
The Means and the End
46. Imperatoru Nikolayu I 86
To the Emperor Nicholas I
Nicolaus das ist der Volksbesieger (Ludwig I of Bavaria)
47. Bessonnitsa 87
Insomnia
48. Utro v gorakh 88
Morning in the Mountains
49. Snezhnye gory 88
Snowy Mountains
50. Poslednii kataklizm 88
The Final Cataclysm
51. K N.N. 88
To N.N.
52. Eshchyo shumel vesyolyi den’ 89
The happy day was loud
53. Vecher 89
Evening
54. Polden’ 90
Midday
55. Lebed’ 90
The Swan
56. ‘Prekrasnyi budet den’, — skazal tovarischch 90
‘It’s going to be a nice day’, my friend said
Reisebilder (Heine)
57. Ty zrel ego v krugu bol’shogo sveta 92
You saw him in polite company
58. V tolpe lyudei, v neskromnom shume dnya 92
Among society’s gossips
59. i Zvuchit, kak drevle, pred toboyu 92
As in days gone by, before you is heard
Die Sonne tont nach alter Weise
ii Kto zval menya? — O strashnyi vid! —
‘Who called me? — ‘Oh, horrible sight!’
Wer ruft mir? — Schreckliches Gesicht!
iii Chego vy ot menya khotite?
What do you want of me
Was sucht ihr, machtig und gelind
iv Zachem gubit’ v unynii pustom
Why destroy in empty depression
Doch la? uns dieser Stunde schones Gut
v Zavetnyi kubok
The Cherished Cup
Es war ein Konig in Thule
vi Derzhavnyi dukh! Ty dal mne, dal mne vsyo
Almighty spirit, you have given me everything, everything
Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles (Goethe)
60. Vysokogo predchuvstviya 96
Lofty presentiment’s
Il cinque maggio (Manzoni)
61. Edva my vyshli iz tresenskikh vrat 97
We had just left the gates of Trezene
A peine nous sortions des portes de Trezene (Racine)
62. Nochnye mysli 99
Night Thoughts
Nachtgedanken (Goethe)
63. i lyubovniki, bezumtsy i poety 99
Lovers, madmen and poets
ii Zarevel golodnyi lev
The hungry lion has begun to roar (Shakespeare)
64. Kak okean ob»emlet shar zemnoi 100
Just as the ocean curls around earth’s shores
65. Velikii Karl, prosti! — Velikii, nezabvennyi! 100
Forgive me, Great Charles! Great, unforgotten!
Hernani (Hugo) HeHH
66. Kon’ morskoi 102
The Sea Horse
67. Pevets 102
The Singer
Der Sanger (Goethe)
68. Zdes’, gde tak vyalo svod nebesnyi 103
Here the sky stares inert
69. Uspokoenie (Groza proshla — eshchyo kuryas’, lezhal) 104
Peace (The storm has passed)
70. Dvum syostram 104
To Two Sisters
71. Sei den’, ya pomnyu 104
I recall that day
72. Tsitseron 104
Cicero
73. Osennii vecher 105
An Autumn Evening
74. List’ya 105
Leaves
75. Cherez livonskie ya proezzhal polya 106
Crossing Livonian fields
76. Pesok sypuchii po koleni 106
Sand gives softly. Hooves sink.
77. Strannik 106
The Wanderer
78. Bezumie 107
Madness
79. Al’py 107
The Alps
80. Mal’aria 108
Infected Air
81. Za nashim vekom my idyom 108
We walk behind our age
82. Vesennie vody 108
Vernal Waters
83. Silentium! 108
Stay Silent!
84. Kak nad goryacheyu zoloi 109
As a piece of paper
85. K*** (Usta s ulybkoyu privetnoi) 109
To… (Lips with a smile of greeting)
86. Kak doch’ rodnuyu na zaklan’e 110
Just as Agamenon brought his daughter
87. Vsyo beshenei burya, vsyo zlee i zlei 110
The storm howls more evilly, screaming its spite
88. Vesennee uspokoenie 111
Peace in Springtime
Fruhlingsruhe (Uhland)
89. Na dreve chelovechestva vysokom 111
You were the best leaf
90. Dva demona emu sluzhili 111
Two demons served him
91. Probleme 112
A Problem
92. Son na more 112
A Dream at Sea
93. Prishlosya konchit’ zhizn’ v ovrage 113
I’m ending my days in a ditch
94. Arfa skal’da 114
The Skald’s Harp
95. Ya lyuteran lyublyu bogosluzhen’e 114
I like the service of the Lutherans
96. V kotoruyu iz dvukh lyubit’sya 114
With which of the two has fate decreed
In welche soll ich mich verlieben (Heine)
97. Iz kraya v krai, iz grada v grad 115
From land to land, from town to town
Es treibt dich fort von Ort zu Ort (Heine)
98. Ya pomnyu vremya zolotoe 115
I remember a golden time
99. Dusha moya — elisium tenei 116
My soul, you’re an Elysium of shades
100. Kak sladko dremlet sad temnozelyonyi 116
How sweetly sleep lies on the green garden
101. Net, moego k tebe pristrast’ya 117
No, Mother-Earth, my tenderness for you
102. V dushnom vozdukha molchan’e 117
Silent air enwrapping
103. Chto ty klonish’ nad vodami 118
Willow, why do you lower
104. Vecher mglistyi i nenastnyi 118
Foul night, misty night
105. I grob opushchen uzh v mogilu 118
Into the grave the coffin’s lowered
106. Vostok belel. Lad’ya katilas’ 118
The east whitened.
107. Teni sizye smesilis’ 119
Blue-grey mingling
108. S polyany korshun podnyalsya 119
The kite lifts from the field
109. Kakoe dikoe ushchel’e 120
What a wild ravine!
110. Kak ptichka, ranneyu zaryoi 120
The whole world starts as sunlight streams
111. Tam, gde gory, ubegaya 120
Far into the shining distance
112. Nad vinogradnymi kholmami 121
Across vine-covered hillsides
113. O chyom ty voesh’, vetr nochnoi? 122
Why do you howl, night wind?
114. Potok sgustilsya i tuskneet 122
The stream has frozen and dulled
115. Sizhu zadumchiv i odin 122
I sit deep in thought and alone
116. Eshchyo zemli pechalen vid 123
Earth’s face is still a melancholy thing
117. Zima nedarom zlitsya 123
Winter’s spite is vain
118. Yarkii sneg siyal v doline 124
Brilliant snow shone in the valley
119. Fontan 124
The Fountain
120. Dusha khotela b byt’ zvezdoi 124
My soul would like to be a star
121. Ne to, chto mnite vy priroda 125
Nature is not what you think it is
122. I chuvstva net v tvoikh ochakh 125
There’s not a spark of feeling in your eyes
123. Lyublyu glaza tvoi, moi drug 125
I love your eyes, dear
124. Vchera, v mechtakh obvorozhyonnykh 126
Last night in enchanted dreams
125. 29-oe yanvarya 1837 126
January 29th. 1837
126. 1-oe dekabrya 1837 127
December 1st. 1837
127. Ital’yanskaya villa 127
The Italian Villa
128. Davno l’, davno l’, o Yug blazhennyi 128
Is it so long, blessed, blissful South
129. S kakoyu negoyu, s kakoi toskoi vlyublyonnoi 128
What gentle, tender joy, what enamoured pangs
130. Nous avons pu, tous deux, fatigues du voyage 129
Tired by travel, we made
131. Smotri, kak zapad razgorelsya 129
Watch the West flaming up
132. Vesna (Kak ni gnetyot ruka sud’biny) 129
Spring (No matter how oppressive the hand of fate)
133. Den’ i noch’ 130
Day and Night
134. Ne ver’, ne ver’ poetu, deva 130
Don’t believe the poet, girl!
135. Zhivym sochuvstviem priveta 131
With a lively, sympathetic greeting
136. K Ganke 132
To Hanka
137. Znamya i Slovo 133
The Banner and the Word
138. Ot russkogo, po prochtenii otryvkov lektsii g-na 133
139. Mitskevicha
From a Russian, Having Read Extracts from Mr.
Mickiewicz’s Lectures
139. Que l’homme est peu reel, qu’aisement il s’efface! 134
Unreal man’s so simple to efface
140. Glyadel ya, stoya nad Nevoi 134
I stood by the Neva, my gaze
141. Kolumb 134
Columbus
142. Un Reve 135
A Reverie
143. More i Utyos 136
The Sea and the Cliff
144. Un ciel lourd que la nuit bien avant l’heure assiege 136
A heavy sky which night has prematurely assailed
145. Eshchyo tomlyus’ toskoi zhelanii 137
Longing, desires still ravage
146. Ne znaesh’, chto lestnei dlya mudrosti lyudskoi 137
By which can human wisdom more surely be enhanced
147. Kak dymnyi stolp svetleet v vyshine 137
A cloud bank, bright and high
148. Russkoi zhenshchine 137
To Russian Woman
149. Russkaya Geografiya 137
A Russian Geography
150. Svyataya noch’ na nebosklon vzoshla 138
Holy night has climbed across the sky
151. Neokhotno i nesmelo 138
Timidly, unwillingly
152. Itak, opyat’ uvidelsya ya s vami 138
So once again we meet
153. Tikhoi noch’yu, pozdnim letom 139
Quiet evening, late in summer
154. Kogda v krugu ubiistvennykh zabot 139
When clinging, murderous cares
155. Slyozy lyudskie, o slyozy lyudskie 139
Tears of people, tears of people
156. Pochtenneishemu imeninniku Filippu Filippovichu Vigelyu 140
To the Most Honourable Filipp Filippovich Vigel
157. Po ravnine vod lazurnoi 140
Across an azure plain of water
158. Rassvet 140
Daybreak
159. Vnov’ tvoi ya vizhu ochi 141
Once again I see your eyes
160. Kak on lyubil rodnye eli 141
How he loved the native firs
161. Lamartine (La lyre d’Apollon, cet oracle des dieux) 142
Lamartine (Apollo’s lyre, oracle of the gods)
162. Napoleon 142
163. Comme en aimant le coeur devient pusillanime 143
The heart in love cowers
164. Poeziya 143
Poetry
165. Rim noch’yu 143
Rome at night
166. Venetsiya 143
Venice
167. Konchen pir, umolkli khory 144
Feating finished, choirs quiet
168. Prorochestvo 144
A Prophecy
169. Uzh tretii god besnuyutsya yazyki 145
For the third year now, the tribes have run amok
170. Net, karlik moi! trus besprimernyi 145
Your cowardice can’t be measured, you dwarf!
171. Poshli, Gospod’, svoyu otradu 146
Lord, send your comfort
172. Na Neve 146
On the Neva
173. Kak ni dyshit polden’ znoinyi 147
Midday breathes its hottest
174. Ne rassuzhdai, ne khlopochi! 147
Forget all cares, don’t reason deep
175. Pod dykhan’em nepogody 147
Swelling, darkening waters
176. Vous dont on voit briller, dans les nuits azurees 148
Unsullied gods of light
177. Obveyan veshcheyu dremotoi 148
Prophetic sleep enfolds
178. Grafine E.P. Rostopchinoi (V otvet na eyo pis’mo) 148
To Countess E.P. Rostopchina (In Reply to her Letter)
179. Dva golosa 149
Two Voices
180. Togda lish’ v polnom torzhestve 149
The desired structure
181. Pominki 150
The Wake
182. Smotri, kak na rechnom prostore 153
Across the river’s broad expanse you see
183. O, kak ubiistvenno my lyubim! 154
How we murder while we love!
184. Des premiers ans de votre vie 155
How I love to find again the source
185. Ne znayu ya, kosnyotsya l’ blagodat’ 155
I don’t know whether grace will touch
186. Pervyi list 155
The First Leaf
187. Ne raz ty slyshala priznan’e 156
You’ve often heard the admission
188. Nash vek 156
Our Age
189. Volna i duma 156
The Wave and the Thought
190. Ne ostyvshaya ot znoyu 156
Heat has not congealed
191. V razluke est’ vysokoe znachen’e 157
Separation has this lofty meaning
192. Ty znaesh’ krai, gde mirt i lavr rastyot 157
Do you know the land where the myrtle and laurel bloom
Kennst du das land, wo die Zitronen bluhn (Goethe) 157
193. Den’ vechereet, noch’ blizka 157
Day turns to evening. Night approaches.
194. Kak vesel grokhot letnikh bur’ 158
Summer thunder’s a happy ogre
195. S ozera veet prokhlada i nega 158
Coolness and comfort waft up from the lake
Es lachelt der See, er ladet zum Bade
196. Nedarom miloserdym Bogom 158
Not in vain has the gracious God
197. Predopredelenie 159
Predestination
198. Ne govori: menya on, kak i prezhde, lyubit 159
Don’t say he loves me as he used to
199. O, ne trevozh’ menya ukoroi spravedlivoi 160
200. Chemu molilas’ ty s lyubov’yu 160
What you guarded in your heart
201. Ya ochi znal — o eti ochi! 161
I knew a pair of eyes. Oh, what a sight!
202. Bliznetsy 161
The Twins
203. Ty, volna moya morskaya 161
Ocean-waves
204. Pamyati V.A. Zhukovskogo 162
To the Memory of V.A. Zhukovsky
205. Siyaet solntse, vody bleshchut 163
The sun is shining, waters glisten
206. Charodeikoyu zimoyu 163
The forest is entranced
207. Poslednyaya lyubov’ 163
Last Love HonhHd
208. Neman 164
The Nieman
209. Spiriticheskoe predskazanie 165
A Spiritualistic Prediction
210. A.S. Dolgorukoi 165
To A.S. Dolgorukaya
211. Leto 1854 165
Summer 1854
212. Uvy, chto nashego neznan’ya 165
What is more impotent and sad
213. Teper’ tebe ne do stikhov 165
You’re not in the mood for verses
214. De son crayon inimitable 166
To merit one word, one comma, one full stop
215. Po sluchayu priezda avstriiskogo ertsgertsoga na 166
Pokhorony imperatora Nikolaya
On the Occasion of the Arrival of the Austrian Archduke
at the Funeral of the Emperor Nicholas.
216. Plamya rdeet, plamya pyshet 166
Redness. Flaring.
217. Tak, v zhizni est’ mgnoven’ya 167
In life there are moments you cannot convey
218. Eti bednye selen’ya 167
These poor villages, this sorry nature!
219. Vot ot morya i do morya 167
From sea to sea the wire goes
220. Grafine Rostopchinoi (O, v eti dni — dni rokovye) 168
To Countess Rostopchina (Oh, in these days, these
fateful days)
221. 1856 (Stoim my slepo pred sud’boyu) 168
1856 (Blindly we face fate)
222. O veshchaya dusha moya! 168
Oh, my prophetic soul!
223. Molchi, proshu, ne smei menya budit’ 169
Be quiet, please! Don’t dare wake me!
224. Oui, le sommeil m’est doux! plus doux de n’etre pas! 169
Yes, sleep is sweet, but it’s sweeter not to have been!
225. Ne Bogu ty sluzhil i ne Rossii 169
To serve God and Russia was never your intention
226. Tomu, kto s veroi i lyubov’yu 169
For him who served his native land
227. Vsyo, chto sberech’ mne udalos’ 169
What I’ve managed to keep alive
228. Il faut qu’une porte 170
A door should be open or closed
229. N.F. Shcherbine 170
To N.F. Shcherbina
230. S vremenshchikom Fortuna v spore 170
Fortune had an argument with a favourite
Das Gluck und die Weisheit (Schiller)
231. Prekrasnyi den’ ego na Zapade ischez 170
His fine day has disappeared in the West
232. Nad etoi tyomnoyu tolpoi 170
Above this ignorant crowd
233. Est’ v oseni pervonachal’noi 171
There is a fleeting, wondrous moment
234. Smotri, kak roshcha zeleneet 171
Look at the coppice!
235. Kogda os’mnadtsat’ let tvoi 172
When your eighteen years
236. E.N. Annenkovoi (D’une fille du nord, chetive et 172
languissante)
To E.N. Annenkova (Are you trying to borrow the
features)
237. V chasy, kogda byvaet 172
At times when there is
238. Ona sidela na polu 173
She was sitting on the floor
239. Uspoloenie (Kogda, chto zvali my svoim) 173
Peace (When what we called our own)
240. Osennei pozdneyu poroyu 174
Late in autumn
241. Na vozvratnom puti 174
On the Journey Home
242. Est mnogo melkikh, bezymyannykh 175
There are many tiny, unnamed
243. Pour sa Majeste l’Imperatrice 176
For her Imperial Majesty
244. Pour Madame la Grande Duchesse Helene 176
For Grand Duchess Helen
245. Dekabr’skoe utro 176
A December Morning
246. E.N. Annenkovoi (I v nashei zhizni povsdnevnoi) 176
To E.N. Annenkova (Into daily life)
247. Iz Yakoba Byome 177
From Jacob Bohme
248. Kuda somnitelen mne tvoi 177
‘Sceptical’ sums up the way I feel
249. Prokhodya svoi put’ po svodu 177
Tracing its path across the sky
250. De ces frimas, de ces deserts 177
From these empty lands, from this wintry weather
251. Memento! 177
Remember!
252. Khot’ ya i svil gnezdo v doline 178
I have built my nest in a valley
253. La vieille Hecube, helas, trop longtemps eprouvee 178
Old Hecuba, alas, so long so sorely tried
254. Na yubilei knyazya Petra Andreevicha Vyazemskogo 179
On the Occasion of Prince Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky’s
Jubilee
255. Kogda-to ya byla maiorom 180
Once I was a major, many years ago
256. Aleksandru II 180
To Alexander II
257. Ya znal eyo eshchyo togda 180
I knew her even then
258. Nedarom russkie ty s detstva pomnil zvuki 181
Not for nothing have your remembered the sounds
259. Knyazyu P.A. Vyazemskomu (Teper’ ne to, chto za 181
polgoda)
To Prince P.A. Vyazemsky (It’s not the same now as it
was six months back)
260. Igrai, pokuda nad toboi 181
Play while above you
261. Pri posylke Novogo Zaveta 182
On Sending the New Testament
262. Oboim Nikolayam 182
To Both Nicholases
263. On prezhde mirnyi byl kazak 182
He used to be a gentle cossack
264. A.A. Fetu 182
To A.A. Fet
265. Inym dostalsya ot prirody 183
Nature has endowed some with a sense
266. Svyatye gory 183
The Sacred Mountains
267. Zateyu etogo rasskaza 184
For itself this story speaks
268. Uzhasnyi son otyagotel nad nami 184
We’ve been burdened by a horrible dream
269. Ego svetlosti A.A. Suvorovu 184
To his Grace Prince A.A. Suvorov
270. Kak letnei inogda poroyu 185
Just as now and then during summer
271. N.I. Krolyu 186
To N.I. Krol’
272. 19-oe fevralya 1864 (i tikhimi poslednimi shagami) 186
February 19th. 1864 (With his last quiet steps)
273. Ne vsyo dushe boleznennoe snitsya 187
Not always does the soul have sickly dreams
274. Utikhla biza…. Legche dyshit 187
the breeze has dropped and lighter is the breath
275. Ves’ den’ ona lezhala v zabyt’I 187
All day she lay oblivious
276. Kak nerazgadannaya taina 187
Like an unresolved mystery
277. O, etot Yug, o, eta Nitstsa! 188
Oh, this south, oh, this Nice!
278. Kto b ni byl ty, no vstretyas’ s nei 188
No matter who you are, just meeting her
279. Encyclica 188
An Encyclical
280. Knyazyu Gorchakovu (vam vypalo prizvan’e rokovoe) 188
To Prince Gorchakov (Yours has been a fateful calling)
281. Kak khorosho ty, o more nochnoe 189
Ocean-billows, night-surging
282. Kogda na to net Bozh’ego soglas’ya 189
When god has deferred assent
283. Otvet na adres 189
In Reply to an Address
284. Est’ i v moyom stradal’cheskom zastoe 190
In the martyrdom of my stagnation
285. On, umiraya, somnevalsya 190
Dying, he doubted
286. Syn tsarskii umiraet v Nitstse 191
In Nice the tsar’s son is dying
287. 12-oe aprelya 1865 191
April 12th. 1865
288. Kak verno zdravyi smysl naroda 192
How truly has the common sense of folk
289. Pevuchest’ est’ v morskikh volnakh 192
The sea is harmony
290. Drugu moemu Ya. P. Polonskomu 193
To my Friend, Ya. P. Polonsky
291. Veleli vy — khot’, mozhet byt’, i v shutku 193
You commanded, though, perhaps, in jest
292. Knyazyu Vyazemskomu (Est’ telegraf za neimen’em nog) 193
To Prince Vyazemsky (There’s the telegraph if you’ve go
no legs)
293. Bednyi Lazar’, Ir ubogoi 193
Poor Lazarus, wretched Iros
294. Segodnya, drug, pyatnadtsat’ let minulo 193
It’s fifteen years today, my friend
295. Molchit somnitel’no Vostok 194
The East is doubtful, silent
296. Nakanune godovshchiny 4-ogo avgusta 1864 g. 194
On the Eve of the Anniversary of August 4th. 1864
297. Kak neozhidanno i yarko 194
Unexpectedly and brightly
298. Nochnoe nebo tak ugryumo 195
Sad night creeps
299. Net dnya, chtoby dusha ne nyla 195
Not a day relievs the soul of pain
300. Kak ni besilosya zlorech’e 195
Let foul slander rage
301. Grafine A.D. Bludovoi 196
To Countess A.D. Bludova
302. Tak! On spasyon! Inache byt’ ne mozhet 196
So he’s saved! Could it turn out otherwise?
303. Kogda sochuvstvenno na nashe slovo 196
When what we have said is echoed far and wide
304. Knyazyu Suvorovu (Dva raznorodnye stremlen’ya) 196
To Prince Suvorov (Two disparate tendencies)
305. I v Bozh’em mire to zh byvaet 197
In God’s world it can happen
306. Kogda rasstroennyi kredit 197
When our disordered exchequer
307. Tikho v ozere struitsya 197
Lake’s still currents
308. Na grobovoi ego pokrov 197
On his funeral pall
309. Kogda dryakhleyushchie sily 197
When our decrepit energies turn traitor
310. Nebo blednogoluboe 198
The pale-blue sky
311. Umom Rossiyu ne ponyat’ 199
Russia is a thing of which
312. Na yubilei N.M. Karamzin 199
On the Jubilee of N.M. Karamzin
313. Ty l’dolgo budesh’ za tumanom 200
Russian star, will you always seek
314. V Rime 200
In Rome
315. Khotya b ona soshla s litsa zemnogo 201
Although it has slipped from the face of the earth
316. Ne v pervyi raz volnuetsya Vostok 201
It’s not the first time the East has been in turmoil.
317. Nad Rossiei rasprostyortoi 201
318. Kak etogo posmertnogo al’boma 201
How I love the cherished pages
319. I dym otechestva i sladok i priyaten 202
The smoke of the fatherland is sweet to smell!
320. Dym 202
Smoke
321. Slavyanam (Privet vam zadushevnyi, brat’ya) 203
To the Slavs (A heartfelt greeting to you, brethren)
322. Slavyanam (Oni krichat, oni grozyatsya) 204
To the Slavs (They shout, they threaten)
323. Pripiska 205
Postscript to the Poem Entitled To Hanka
324. Naprasnyi trud — net, ikh ne vrazumish’ 206
It’s a waste of time. You’ll not make them see sense
325. Na yubilei knyazya A.N. Gorchakova 206
On the Jubilee of Prince A.N. Gorchakov
326. Lorsqu’un noble prince en ces jours de demence 206
In these days of madness, if a noble prince sinks
327. Kak ni tyazhyol poslednii chas 206
However burdensome the end
328. Svershaetsya zasluzhennaya kara 207
A righteous punishment is being meted out
329. Po prochtenii depesh imperatorskogo kabineta, 207
napechatannykh v ‘Journal de St. Petersbourg’
On Reading the Imperial Despatches, Printed in the
Journal de St. Petersbourg
330. Opyat, stoyu ya nad Nevoi 207
Once more by the Neva I stand
331. Pozhary 208
Fires
332. V nebe tayut oblaka 208
Clouds melt in the sky
333. Mikhailu Petrovichu Pogodinu 209
To Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin
334. Pamyati E.P. Kovalevskogo 209
In Memory of E.P. Kovalevsky
335. Pechati russkoi dobrokhoty 209
The well-wishers of the Russian Press
336. Motiv Geine 210
A Heine Motif
Der Tod, das ist die kuhle Nacht (Heine)
337. Vy ne rodilus’ polyakom 210
You weren’t born a Pole
338. ‘Net, ne mogu ya videt vas….’ 210
339. Velikii den’ Kirillovoi konchiny 211
With which heartfelt, simple greeting
340. Nam ne dano predugadat’ 211
It’s not given us to foretell
341. Dve sily est’ — dve rokovye sily 211
There are two powers, two fateful powers
342. 11-oe maya 1869 (Nas vsekh, sobravshikhsya na obshchii 212
prazdnik snova)
May 11th. 1869 (The word of the Gospel has now taugh
us all)
343. Kak nasazhdeniya Petrova 212
Just as the trees
344. O.I. Orlovoi-Davydovoi 213
To O.I. Orlova-Davydova
345. Andreyu Nikolaevichu Murav’yovu (Tam, gde na vysote 213
obryva)
To Andrei Nikolaevich Murav’yov (There, on the summit
of an overhang)
346. V derevne 213
In the Country
347. Priroda — sfinks. I tem ona vernei 213
Nature is a sphinx.
348. Chekham ot moskovskikh slavyan 215
To the Czechs from the Moscow Slavs
349. Kak nas ni ugnetai razluka 216
No matter how we’re crushed by separation
350. Sovremennoe 216
Today’s News
351. A.F. Gil’ferdingu 218
To A.F. Hilferding
352. Yu. F. Abaze 219
To Yu F. Abaza
353. Krasnorechivuyu, zhivuyu 219
I read my rebuke
354. Tak providenie sudilo 219
Thus has providence judged
355. Radost’ i gore v zhivom upoen’e 219
Joy and grief in living ecstasy
Freudvoll (Goethe)
356. Gus na kostre 220
Hus at the Stake
357. Nad russkoi Vil’noi starodavnoi 221
Over ancient, Russian Vilnius
358. K.B. 221
359. Doekhal ispravno, ustalyi i tselyi 222
Tired and in one piece, I got here on time
360. Dva edinstva 222
Two Unities
361. Velen’yu vyshemy pokorny 222
Submissive to a high command
362. Chemu by zhizn’ nas ni uchila 222
Whatever life might have taught us
363. Da, vy derzhali vashe slovo 223
Yes, you have kept your word
364. Ah, quelle meprise 224
I’m bewildered and let me say
365. Brat, stol’ko let soputsvovavshii mne 224
Brother, you have been with me so long
366. S novym godom, s novym schast’em 224
Happy New Year, all the best
367. Davno izvestnaya vsem dura 224
A fool we’ve known for ages
368. Vprosonkakh slyshu ya — i ne mogu 224
I’m half asleep and I can’t
369. Chyornoe more 224
The Black Sea
370. Vatikanskaya godovshchina 226
The Vatican’s Anniversary
371. Ot zhizni toi, chto bushevala zdes’ 226
Of the life that raged here
372. Vrag otritsatel’nosti uzkoi 227
Enemy of narrow negativity
373. Pamyati M.K. Politkovskoi 227
To the Memory of M.K. Politkovskii
374. Den’ pravoslavnogo Vostoka 228
On this day of the Orthodox East
375. Mir i soglas’e mezhdu nas 229
There’s peace and harmony between us
376. Kak bestolkovy chisla eti 229
These dates are so illogical!
377. Tut tselyi mir, zhivoi, raznoobraznyi 229
Here’s a whole world, living, varied
378. Chertog tvoi, spasitel’, ya vizhu ukrashen 229
Saviour, I see your mansion decked out
379. Khotel by ya, chtoby v svoei mogile 229
In my grave I’d love to lie
380. Napoleon III 229
381. Tebe, bolyashchaya v dalyokoi storone 230
To you, ill in a distant land
382. Britanskii leopard 231
The British Leopard
383. Konechno, vredno pol’zam gosudarstva 232
Of course, it is harmful to the wellbeing of the state
384. Vo dni napastei i bedy 232
In days of misfortune and trouble
385. Vsyo otnyal ot menya kaznyashchii Bog 232
In punishment, God’s taken everything away
386. Ital’yanskaya vesna 233
Spring in Italy
387. My solntsu yuga ustupaem vas 233
We surrender you to the sun of the south.
388. Vot svezhie tebe svety 233
Here are some fresh blooms for you
389. April 17th. 1818 233
390. Imperatoru Aleksandru II 234
To his Imperial Majesty Alexander II
391. Bessonnitsa (nochnoi moment) 235
Insomnia (A Moment at Night)
392. Khot’ rodom on byl ne Slavyanin 235
Although he wasn’t born a Slav
393. Byvaet rokovye dni 235
Fate Sends Days
PREFACE
This book has two principal objectives: (a) to provide, for the first time in English, an annotated version of all of Tyutchev’s surviving poems, including his translations of other writers, which will be of use to the student of Russian, the Tyutchev researcher and anyone involved in the field of literary translation, (b) to serve as the first ever attempt to introduce Tyutchev the poet in full to the reader of literature who knows no Russian.
Most of the annotations deal with history, literary and political. I have incorporated almost all the notes from Pigaryov’s edition, (A:33ii) (1) which are a summary of many people’s findings, references to Aksakov’s biography and extracts from Tyutchev’s letters, as well as including comments by many researchers and myself.
The full version and my translation of every identifiable surviving foreign work Tyutchev translated permits readers to consider why he may have chosen particular material for translation in the first place and why he retained its sense or altered it as he did. My versions and, indeed, any translations necessarily afford only an approximate idea of this. The way he dealt with the work of others is in itself a fascinating feature of any research into the poet, for Tyutchev was not always a faithful translator. While certain of these works are very good renditions indeed, others do not pretend to adhere to the sense of the source poem. It is difficult to regard Pesn’ skandinavskikh voinov/The Song of the Norse Warriors as a translation of Herder’s Morgengesang im Kriege/Morning Song in War Time, written in a folk or pseudo-folk vein, for it doubles the German piece in length and introduces material utterly foreign to the spirit and movement of Herder’s work, though the new material does owe a little to Russian folklore. On the other hand, parts of Tyutchev’s work are a direct translation or close copy of the German. Tyutchev sticks closely to the original when he chooses to, as in his translation of two short pieces from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, which he probably translated from a good German version, and Hippolytus’s death scene from Racine’s Phedre. These are skilful renditions, as are a number of shorter works from Heine and Goethe and sections of the latter’s Faust (Part 1). But where do we stand with the extract from Hugo’s Hernani? It is significantly and deliberately altered in some ways yet retains very large sections of the original. Do we consider the lyric entitled Sakontala to be a translation? It resembles only superficially the originating scene from Kalidasa’splay and is not much like the Goethe version often said to be its inspiration. Classical Sanskrit literature being so popular in the nineteenth century through the work of such as A. Schlegel (1767-1845), Tyutchev’s Sakontala should probably be seen as one more of many poems written on one of its themes. The question of what motivated him to alter other works in the subtle ways he did remains, and is beyond the scope of this book.
Because it can be so difficult to know exactly where to draw the line between Tyutchev’s original lyrics and his translations/adaptations/paraphrases, I have considered each of his works as part of the one evolving body of poetry without attempting to classify into ‘lyric’, ‘political’ and ‘occasional’, fully aware that I go against standard practice in adopting this approach, although Liberman has recently adopted the chronological manner of grouping the lyrics. (A:19) It has been too common in the past to present the reader with the bulk of what all would agree is his best lyric poetry, leaving other types of verse, for example the political pieces, in what has sometimes amounted to an appendix.
A number of Tyutchev’s ‘lyric’ poems, if we follow Pigaryov’s categories, are mediocre and some of his political and, indeed, a handful of the so-called ‘occasional’ verses, including a few written in French, are far from inferior. Five of his French poems are good and two are among this reader’s personal favourites. To present an undiluted diet of lyric poetry written over roughly fifty years is to give an erroneous impression of Tyutchev. It would be equally misleading to produce a book of solely political verse. It is likely that Tyutchev wrote in these categories more or less simultaneously and we are probably on safe ground in asserting that there is no period of his creative life when he was not producing nature lyrics, political verse, love poetry, superficial occasional lines, philosophical statements and taking limerick-like swipes at people he did not like. Whatever spurred him to write a remarkable description of sunset (Letnii vecher/A Summer Evening [41]), occurred at the same time as the Russo-Turkish war (see Olegov shchit/Oleg’s Shield [42]) and coincided with an alluring young female turning his head to anything but poetry, as in the erotic, possibly adulterous K N.N./To N. N. [51]. Since poems of all categories were certainly fermenting at any one time, it seems logical to deduce that they all represent in some way the poet as he was at that time. The chronological approach does need to be reinforced. To this end I present Tyutchev’s work as I do.
While the exact chronology of the poems before 1847 will probably never be established, I have adhered to the best chronological sequence I can come up with at present. Works clearly showing someone else’s influence appear beside those considered truly original. Of course, while a large number of his early nature poems could be said to trace their genesis to German romanticism, a point made early this century by Tynyanov, and Tyutchev being very much a poet who saw the world through literary eyes, the best of them, while sharing imagery and themes with German lyrics, are uniquely characteristic of Tyutchev and often considerably more innovative than many of the works which may have inspired them.
It has often been said that there are cycles in Tyutchev. Poems written to his mistress, Elena Deniseva, are said to make up the so-called Deniseva Cycle. These were produced over several years and in no way constitute a cycle, let alone a ‘novel in verse’. (See A:20, vol.1/58) His relationship with Elena did not cramp his style when it came to writing to and about other women, including his first and second wives and Amalia Krudner, whose name and presence crop up at various stages of his life in letters and poems. Whether poems to women are in question, nature descriptions or lyrics with all the imagery of chaos so beloved of Tyutchev, he simply was not the poet to produce a cycle on any theme, being so unforgivably careless when it came to looking after his work once the interest of immediate inspiration had evaporated. Nodal themes and commonly recurring groups of images, such as the so-called ‘Holy Night’, do not suggest cycles any more than the lyrics addressed to his mistress. Heine’s Nordsee/North Sea, parts of which Tyutchev translated, is a cycle. The lyrics take a theme and present it from different angles and with different nuances, but however much each poem might differ from another, they are deliberately, artistically linked by the sea/abandonment theme, or whatever one might wish to call it.
It is not even useful to consider that he wrote lyrics loosely connected, as did Lamartine in his group of Meditations Poetiques/Poetic Meditations, number 1 of which Tyutchev translated, for all too often in Tyutchev spontaneity is of the first importance in the writing of his best works and spontaneity and cycles tend not to go hand in hand. The same applies, from a literary-historical point of view, to periods. Continuity is, as Liberman notes, a most important feature of Tyutchev’s style, so much so that ‘it is hardly possible to detect ‘periods’ in his creative life’, differences, when they do emerge, being ‘unrelated to the juxtaposition of romanticism and realism’. (A:19) Ultimately Tyutchev is unique in being a brilliant and great poet who, it could be argued, had absolutely no desire to be any kind of poet at all.
‘It is possible that nothing leads us closer to contemplation of the essence of literature than working at the translation of poetry, or at least thoughtfully appraising such work.’ (D:11/147) Translation can enjoy certain advantages over exegesis. Translators become acquainted with ‘their’ authors in a way not always permitted by the kind of interpretation which requires neutral objectivity, ever respectfully acknowledging the work of others, be that good, bad or indifferent. There are countless trenchant statements by countless clever translators concerning the problems inherent in the process of literary translation. Does the translator bring the author to the reader, the ‘domesticating method’, as one writer puts it, ‘an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing the author back home, or does he adopt the ‘foreignizing method …. an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad’. (D:25/20) Perhaps neither of these methods is applicable to Tyutchev, who, it could be said, was Russian by nationality only and possessed to no significant degree Russian cultural values. To translate one so cosmopolitan, even rootless, perhaps the domesticating and foreignizing methods are irrelevant.
Imitation, for all the following caveat, may be the best means of dealing with the source languages, the imitator having ‘not the slightest intention of bringing the two together — the writer of the original and the reader of the imitation — because he does not believe that an immediate relationship between them is possible, he only wants to give the latter an impression similar to that which the contemporaries of the original received from it’. (D:19/41) In my own translations I often strive to give such an impression, so perhaps I join Schleiermacher’s ranks of imitators, though while I accept that it is ‘foolish to argue for the exact reconstruction of a poem in another language when the building blocks at one’s disposal bear no resemblance to those of the original’, (D:27/107) I do feel that a more than adequate reconstruction is not beyond the grasp of the capable translator.
Concerning the reproduction of those formal aspects of a poem which set it apart from any other piece of writing, Jacquin allows the translator pretty well free play: ‘If rhymed verse becomes blank or free verse in translation (something which is sometimes prose in disguise …) the poet is betrayed and the reader led astray, for the translation deflects from their functions forms inscribed in tradition. But to preserve rhymes is to restrict one’s choice of terms, hindered moreover by lexical and grammatical restraints, to risk sacrificing the other values of the piece to the ornament of sound and thus to destroy its cohesive power’. (D:6/52-53)
I do not attempt to produce a lyric which reminds an English reader of what he likes in English poetry. Nor is my aim to achieve a general romantic or nineteenth-century ‘feel’, whatever that may be. I do not consider an adherence to formal characteristics to be of the first importance any more than I ignore them, for if they are present in a poem they are important, and if the translator chooses to sacrifice them, something else must take their place in order that the result be poetry and not prose. What is necessary, and it is the only thing that will work, is a juggling act, an ability to read between the lines, keeping one eye on the foreignness of the source and another on what is probably a desire on the reader’s part to be presented with something with which he feels comfortable. This idea of ‘comfortableness’ might be considered subjective, even vague, but it is important and can generally be achieved provided the translator can say, with a degree of confidence, ‘I am acquainted with the person who is that writer’.
It is certainly likely that in translating lyric poetry, ‘the translator will have chosen the poem himself, and even more likely that the task will be undertaken with empathy and a degree of personal commitment’. (D:20/631) This personal choice, this commitment on the translator’s part is of the first importance. The task might be likened to explaining to an outsider what a close relative or friend who has lost his voice is trying to say. Most emphatically, I am not a poet of any description. My target is simply to introduce the reader directly to Tyutchev.
Aware of the many well-researched conclusions reached by theorists in the field of translation studies, I believe three things are essential in the attainment of this target. The first and most obvious is a good knowledge of the target and source languages, the second, occasionally more controversial, is a degree of expertise in the manipulation of language, a most important willingness and ability to take risks at the expense of structural fidelity, even at the apparent expense of faithfulness to major images and poetic formulae, the third, not readily appreciated by all translators, is an acceptance of the importance of the writer’s life, not only his creative life, for on its own this is a thing in a vacuum, but his personal motivations, his social milieux and his political/historical environment. A close acquaintance with the writer can allow us to clear, at least in part, the hurdles posed by the untranslated words. While words cannot always be translated perfectly (2), once the various possible meanings and their nuances, taking into account the age in which they were written, have been listed, the emotions and thoughts which produced them can be coped with to some extent for, whether we be English or Russian, what makes us feel, think, believe the way we do is universal and, therefore, capable of being translated. The reproduction of the word is not, it follows, my ultimate aim, for the words lead us into the thing the writer is expressing. From the melting pot of my priorities emerges, it is hoped, a new creation which is an accurate statement about Tyutchev in a given lyric at a given time.
My translation methods correspond broadly with two of Nabokov’s three modes of translation, the ‘paraphrastic’ and the ‘literal’ (D:2, vol. 1/viii). From his early, relatively free translations, Nabokov became more and more dogmatic, even obsessive, scathingly attacking anything other than the purely literal (and by implication his own early, excellent renditions of Tyutchev), once claiming that his ideal translation would be a book of annotations with the corresponding line of verse every few pages: ‘I want translations in copious footnotes, footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers to the top of this or that page, so as to leave only the gleam of one textual line between commentary and eternity.’ (D:12/512) However tongue-in-cheek this comment may be, Nabokov began to work according to it, but such a method of translation is (surely) an extreme business unless translation is to be a purely scholarly exercise enjoyed by the few. Such is not the role of art. Concerning the art of translation, Nabokov wrote, ‘the person who desires to turn a literary masterpiece into another language, has only one duty to perform, and this is to produce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text. The term ‘literal’ translation is tautological since anything but that is not truly translation but an imitation, an adaptation or a parody’ (D:13/496-512) (3). Such an approach automatically distances the vast majority of readers from precisely what makes great literature enjoyable. Literalists all too often miss the point. I join those translators who are ready, where appropriate to sacrifice rhyme and assonance ‘to the silent counterpoint of poetic meaning’. (D:22/v)
While annotated literalness creates a gap between reader and writer, its structural cousin, the search for a different kind of literalness through the minefield of any attempt to adhere to formal characteristics such as rhyme, is an equally dangerous business and retention of a poem’s formal aspects should be considered only provided the sense and ‘feel’ of the poem remain intact. In producing a work accurate from the point of view of rhyme and metre, the translator will inevitably be stretching the target language, all too often in a contrived fashion, producing an unnatural effect not present in the source work. While the result might be clever, often very good, it cannot be denied that frequently too much will have been lost. Aiming at contextual literalness produces a ‘story line’ bereft of the music. By making formal fidelity one’s aim, one can easily lose sight of meaning in the search for shape. Sensitive, informed paraphrastic translation, it seems to me, is the only way forward.
My renderings are literally faithful where appropriate. This is the case with Tyutchev’s versions of other poets and with many of the political pieces. There is no point in treating 11-oe maya 1869/May 11th. 1869 [342] in any other than a rigidly literal manner. They are sometimes loosely ‘poetic’, as in Sovremennoe/Today’s Event [350], a political item ending in a more ‘poetic’ structure which Tyutchev uses more than once in his best work. I favour a form of rhythmic prose in poems such as [128], where there is a certain narrative feel. A number of poems are as they are because I am happy with them, others, I have to admit, leave me far from satisfied. In the translation of poetry, there is never a final word. There remain those versions which, were Nabokov still with us, would be savaged ruthlessly, works which, from the standpoint of imagery and/or structure I have offered in a deliberate, considered mistranslation, though if there results ‘a slightly wrong meaning’, there remains hopefully ‘a completely right feeling’. (D:24/12) Such a work is [200], my original imagery giving the best effect of which I was capable at the time, the priority being to reproduce the sense of seething, impotent anger and genuine sadness which motivated the poet to write it.
The celebrated Formalist, V. Shklovsky, rightly rejects ‘authomatisation’, for it ‘eats things, clothing, furniture, your wife and fear of war’. (D:12/11-12) Shklovsky believed that the artist is called upon to counteract routine by dealing with objects out of their habitual context, by getting rid of verbal cliches and their stock responses. I am in full agreement with Shklovsky on this matter. I would not at this stage undertake a serious translation of poems by Blok, Baudelaire or Holderlin, even enjoying these writers in their own languages, and certainly being able to translate the words and sentences which make up the elements of their works, for I could not approach them with the confidence with which I know a Tyutchev lyric. Given the often scanty information at hand and the abyss of time between us, I feel I have come to know him to some extent, his milieux, his family, the way he felt and thought and passed the time, whether observing his dog chasing ducks or wishing, on a boat trip, his friend was there with a gun for the shooting of fowl, moaning to all and sundry about his gout and rheumatism, complaining to the heavens that he is bored and lonely, irrespective of the heartache to which he subjects those close to him, pulling Schelling to pieces, cursing the British, the French, the Turks and the Vatican, irritating Pogodin with his intellectual arrogance, vilifying the tsar and his ministers for their crass ineptitude, or angry at his daughter for marrying a sailor who — sin of sins — spoke Russian in preference to French. Such proximity is essential in the production of a good translation, for it allows the translator to pull apart convention and rewrite the poet with confidence.
Shklovsky’s ‘making strange’, making form difficult, ‘seeing’ (videnie) as opposed to ‘recognising’ (uznavanie) (ibid.) should be born in mind as the reader approaches many of my translations. The much-anthologised good poem can lose one of its greatest qualities, that of newness, by being anthologised, whether in a book or in a particular, accepted format in the hands of translators, by being there, by looking more or less the same all the time. I believe that the translator must make the reader sit up and pay attention. He must not be the critic who, in Steiner’s words, ‘when he looks back … sees a eunuch’s shadow’ (D:7/21). The translator of any literature worth translating must attempt to be, in subtly different yet similar ways, as creative as the writer he is grappling with. From what I have said above, perhaps it follows that great literature needs retranslating every so often in order to make sense to different generations.
While the possessiveness of the committed translator who has ‘chosen’ his poet can allow an illuminating insight into the workings of the writer’s mind, it can, of course, work the other way and the good translator needs to ensure that he is producing the writer and not himself playing at being a poet. It is also very easy to become blase about one’s knowledge of a foreign language, for unless one is genuinely bilingual, as, indeed, Nabokov was, the brain, albeit translating quickly, nonetheless pauses to translate, and this pause indicates an inability, at times not very significant, to translate instinctively. This pause can also be a useful thing. I have often found, on rendering a poem into English, that an image in the Russian has struck forcefully home for the first time, despite having read the work in question many times. Students of foreign literature could do worse than attempt occasional translation if for no other reason than to satisfy themselves that they have indeed understood what the poet’s words actually mean, let alone what might be implied. They should certainly never be put off. If a translator can be so bold as to render Khlebnikov’s entertaining Zaklyatie smekhom/Incantation by Laughter into Scots, there is most assuredly hope for the youngest novice (D:4/89).
Where I have taken considerable liberties, there will, it goes without saying, be those who point out that I have altered the structure of the poem and, therefore, its meaning. Whatever the case may be, my target has remained throughout the accurate communication of what I believe Tyutchev was feeling, thinking then saying. I hope that more than a handful of educated Russian speakers now feel that they can enjoy the complete poems of this major writer as a result of my approach, despite it being ‘as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet’. (D:1/).
The reader unfamiliar with this author will find a story and a life unfolding from the earliest extant poem written on his father’s birthday, through truly wondrous nature lyrics, sharp, often hurtful love poems, occasional verse, chauvinistic political pronouncements on Pan-Slavism, philosophical and religious lines, to tormented protests in which an embittered, frightened poet of alienation faces inner turmoil, illness and encroaching death. In the Romantic age of Pushkin and Lermontov we find a seriously ‘modern’ poet, in the realistic age of Dostoevskian and Tolstoyan prose, a poet who would not be disowned by later existentialist writers will be discovered at a time when the reading public is less enthralled by poetry than by Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov.
My former supervisor, Dr. R.C. Lane, is a leading authority in the field of Tyutchev studies. Discussions with him have always proved invaluable. He has read the first section of my manuscript and the endnotes and I am grateful to him for his suggestions, encouragement and general assistance, as well as for kindly writing a foreword to the 1983 edition. I have chosen to retain this, for it says what I wish to have said about my approach and, I feel, could not be improved. His doctoral thesis and many subsequent publications represent, in my view, the fullest, most comprehensive study of the poet in English. He has produced articles and reports on various aspects of Tyutchev’s life, poetry and diplomatic work and on some of the philosophical influences in the lyrics in addition to a complete catalogue of works by and about the poet up to 1985. Since he first looked at the manuscript, I have amended certain sections. Any defects in the later or, indeed, earlier material are my responsibility alone.
R. Gregg’s book is a solid introduction offering interesting studies of the poems if often somewhat biased towards psychoanalysis. K. Pigaryov’s study and I. Aksakov’s biography are essential preliminary reading for the specialist, as are many Soviet contributions. The latter contain essential background information. Some deal intuitively with the inspiration behind the greatest poems and cleverly with their structure, notably Tynyanov’s famous article on the short lyric as a ‘fragment’ of the neo-classical ode. The point Tynyanov makes is that Tyutchev, wanting to retain the ‘monumental forms’ of the ‘dogmatic poem’ and of the ‘philosophical epistle’, realising that these had more or less disappeared since Derzhavin’s time, found his outlet in the artistic form of the ‘fragment’, the latter, he goes on to claim, realised in the west by the Romantics and canonised by Heine. Inevitably Soviet scholarship has suffered from a requirement to give prominence to approved themes. The so-called Tyutchev-Pushkin question is a case in point. On various somewhat spurious bases (e.g. Pushkin once ridiculed Raich, Tyutchev’s friend and tutor), an enmity between the two poets was created. Apart from the fact that such a matter is remarkably irrelevant, it is highly unlikely that there is a great deal of truth in it, if any. More important is the fact that since Tyutchev was never part of the mainstream literary scene in his country and famously made no effort to have his best work read by the public before 1836 (he may have deliberately destroyed some of it), such ‘professional’ hostility would probably never have existed. I have avoided any further reference to this matter or to any concerning a comparison of his talents with those of other writers.
Tyutchev has had several translators. Each one worthy of mention has tackled only a very small number of the better known lyrics, with the notable exception of Anatoly Liberman who has taken on the bulk of Tyutchev’s best work, sticking rigorously to the formal features, including rhymes. He is the first to have published such a large number of worthy translations of Tyutchev’s lyrics, preceded by an excellent introduction. He and I have different attitudes towards poetic translation. He informed me in one of many communications that when I decide not to reproduce Tyutchev’s rhyme schemes, the ‘general aura that okutyvaet’ (‘enwraps’) my renderings tends to make up for this. I am more than happy with this judgement.
Work in Europe and the USA, a relatively slow trickle of research, has laid the as yet extremely narrow foundations of the West’s understanding of Tyutchev. Considering the importance of his position in Russian literature, it is astonishing just how many students of western European literature have never even heard of this amazing writer. A lot of building remains. I hope this book will fill one of the gaps in the edifice.
FOOTNOTES
1. References to the Bibliography go as follows:
‘A’ is a main section, the following number is the item in the section, a Roman numeral is used where an author has more than one contribution, and page numbers come after solidus.
2. Certain commonly occurring words in Tyutchev make this point:
(1) dusha (= ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘darling’, ‘person’, ‘serf’),
(2) blago (= ‘blessing’, ‘boon’, ‘the good’),
(3) nega (‘sweetness’, ‘bliss’, ‘comfort’, ‘languor’),
(4) blagodat’ (= ‘paradise1’, ‘grace’, ‘abundance3’).
3. It is worth quoting in full the relevant section of Nabokov’s famous (and infamous) translator’s preface to his version of Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin. Nabokov writes, ‘Attempts to render a poem in another language fall into three categories:
(i) Paraphrastic: offering a free version of the original with omissions and additions prompted by the exigencies of form, the conventions attributed to the consumer, and the translator’s ignorance. Some paraphrases may possess the charm of stylish diction and idiomatic conciseness but no scholar should succumb to stylishness and no reader be fooled by it.
(ii) Lexical (or constructional): rendering the basic meaning of words (and their order). This a machine can do under the direction of an intelligent bilinguist.
(iii) Literal: rendering as closely as possible as the associative and syntactical capacities of the language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. Only this is true translation’. (D:2, vol. 1/vii-viii)
A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
In Russian the commonest ‘e’ sound is more or less the ‘ye’ of ‘yet’. However, due to the role played by stressed and unstressed syllables, the full ‘ye’ is not always heard. I transliterate both this and the second Russian ‘e’ simply as ‘e’. Foreign names beginning with ‘H’ tend to start with ‘G’ in Russian. I retain the ‘H’. I stick to general convention in the cases of certain names (e.g. Tolstoy, Alexander, Ernestine). I reproduce the soft and hard signs by ‘ and » respectively and represent the letter i kratkoe by ‘i’. I also tend to omit patronymic names. Where appropriate, the acute accent indicates the stressed syllable. This produces the occasional unfamiliar sound, such as ‘Sevastopol’, and not the ‘Sevastopol’ English speakers are used to.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to the following for their assistance:
1. Dr. P. J. Fitzpatrick (Department of Philosophy, University of Durham) for his translations of two of Horace’s Carmina and part of a poem by Ausonius.
2. Professor A. Liberman (University of Minneapolis) for his encouragement through several e-mails and for reading and commenting on a small selection of my work.
3. Mr. J. Norton (Director of the Centre for Turkish Studies, University of Durham) for assisting me with information on Mehmed Fuad Pasha.
4. Thanks are due to my former teachers at Durham. Professor W. Harrison showed me that History is important, as well as interesting and entertaining, and he, Mr. L.S.K. le Fleming and Mrs. S. le Fleming, together with Dr. R. Lane, helped a self-taught student with a somewhat chaotic mind to channel his energies and occasionally write something which made sense.
5. Should the anonymous translator of Manzoni’s Il cinque maggio ever recognise his/her work, I shall gladly acknowledge this in any future edition.
6. Mr. A. Stansfield (ITS Consultant, University of Durham) explained to me the essentials of web page design. Thanks to him I now have a web site on which parts of this book appear.
7. The manuscript, untidy and very faded in parts, was ably typed up by Miss Julie Bell of the Physics Department.
My book is very much a product of happy years as a student at St. Cuthbert’s Society in the University of Durham, a centre of learning with which I have never cut the ties and, hopefully, never shall.
* INTRODUCTION *
BIOGRAPHICAL
The Tyutchev family tradition, in line with general practice among Russian noble families which liked to link their genealogy with foreign immigrants, had it that a Venetian trader called Dudgi accompanied Marco Polo on his travels to China and, on the way home, settled in Russia. It would be surprising if Tyutchev had not at some time made a flippant quip at the Italian’s expense. When d’Anthes was exiled from Russia in perpetuity for slaying Pushkin in a duel, Tyutchev, who never liked living in Russia, remarked, ‘Well, I’m off to kill Zhukovsky’, the latter being the veteran poet and highly esteemed translator (1783-1852) (A:5). From the Niconian chronicle comes the equally attractive tale, impossible to link directly with Tyutchev’s family, of the shrewd Zakhary Tyutchev sent by Dmitrii Donskoi as ambassador to the Golden Horde on the eve of the crucial fourteenth-century Battle of Kulikovo. It is said that on receiving a demand for increased tribute to the Horde, the diplomat, on the way home, tore up the Mongol missive and sent the pieces back to the khan. After a great Russian victory, news reached the right quarters and Zakhary became the hero of the tale, Pro Mamaya bezbozhnogo/Concerning Mamai the Godless.
The second son of land-owning parents, (1) Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev was born on November 23rd. 1803 (2) in the village of Ovstug, about thirty kilometres north of Bryansk in what was then the Orlov province (C:15). The village of Ovstug was partly in the possession of the Tyutchevs and lies on the river Desna in a densely wooded part of south west Russia. The family would spend winters in Moscow. In August 1812 they moved temporarily to Yaroslavl on the eve of Napoleon’s taking of the capital. The boy was raised in a household where French was spoken almost exclusively, although serfs, servants, nannies and the local clergy used Russian. This made him effectively bilingual. Throughout his life he spoke French. His letters are overwhelmingly in French, as are his articles and a handful of verses.
In 1812 his education was entrusted to Semyon Raich, a conscientious and gifted student of Classical and Italian literature, enthusiastic poet and translator. Tyutchev went up to Moscow University in 1819, graduated and in 1822 entered government service in the Office of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg. In the stimulating atmosphere of the capital many would-be-poets made small contributions to Russian letters and played their part in the rapidly developing cultural life of the city. German writers and philosophers were being popularised, particularly Schelling, who referred to Tyutchev as ‘an excellent and most cultivated man with whom it is always a pleasure to converse’ (A:5, vol. 3/492). Tyutchev had a less flattering opinion of the German, as a famous conversation between the two men indicates A:1/319).
In attempting to reconcile Christian mystery with empirical investigation, Schelling fell foul of Tyutchev’s sharp mind, probably more than once. Karl Pfeffel (the brother of Tyutchev’s second wife) reports the two having several conversations ‘in the field of metaphysical speculation’ (ibid.). Tyutchev felt an instinctive impatience for any scientific system (a distrust which never altered throughout his life) and for anyone who attempted to explain man’s presence in the universe as no more than a gradual process of self-cognition. In Tyutchev’s view, what Nature allowed to happen simply happened, in her extreme indifference to man. The argument highlights Tyutchev’s insistence on blind faith in the scheme of things, despite being a less than devout person himself, but, of course, intellectual conviction can go hand in hand with daily practice which appears to contradict it. After all, Kant the philosopher was the sharpest critic of the Protestantism to which, in practice, he adhered passionately.
Tyutchev’s celebrated objection went along the following lines: ‘You’re attempting an impossible task … A philosophy which rejects the supernatural and wants to prove everything by reason must inevitably be diverted towards materialism in order to drown in atheism. The only philosophy compatible with Christianity is contained in its entirety in the catechism. You must believe what St. Paul believed, kneel before the Madness of the Cross or deny everything. The supernatural is fundamental to that which is most natural to man. It has roots in human consciousness which are far superior to what we call reason, this poor reason which allows only what it understands, in other words nothing’. (ibid.)
The section ending at ‘the Madness of the Cross’ (La Folie de la Croix) is as much as most commentators choose to quote. The lines following it, however, might be seen to indicate a nod in the direction of a more general sense of man being but a mote in God’s eye. The word ‘nothing’ returns us, perhaps, to the formlessness Schelling was striving from but which Christianity as well needed to escape by producing its own system. That Tyutchev actually adhered to his belief, at least publicly, is born out throughout his life in poetry, conversation and letters. Some of what he thought appears to have been passed on to his clever, influential daughter Ekaterina (‘Kitty’). Writing to the great statesman and proponent of conservative nationalism, K. Pobedonostsev (1827-1907), who considered Tyutchev’s daughter to be his closest friend, Ekaterina, around whom a significant literary circle often met in her aunt Darya’s house, complained of The Brothers Karamazov that Dostoevsky had ignored the fact that ‘there are deep streams which cannot, should not be touched by the word of man’ (B:11iii, vol. 15/495). This comment concerned worries expressed in her circle that Ivan Karamazov’s rebellion would be taken more seriously by more people than Zosima’s teaching. The comment certainly smacks of the public Tyutchev.
While Tyutchev studied at Moscow, a number of his friends enthusiastically experimented with the relatively untried medium of literary Russian, some as members of Merzlyakov’s ‘little academy’. During much of the eighteenth century Russian had tended to be an unwieldy tool for a generally tedious and imitative literature. At the turn of the century such writers as Derzhavin (1743-1816), Karamzin (1766-1826) and Lermontov (1814-41) and Batyushkov (1787-1855) were laying the groundwork of the new literature. Their efforts were crowned by the prolific genius of Pushkin (1799-1826), whose compositions secured Russian literature its rightful place in Europe.
In the year he obtained his first appointment, Tyutchev was offered a post in the Russian legation in Munich, thanks to the efforts of an uncle. Shortly after his return on leave to Russia in 1825, the Decembrists staged their revolt. After it the police arrested scores of young revolutionaries and idealists who had been no more than spiritual sympathisers with the instigators of the uprising. The ringleaders’ original sentence, quartering, was commuted to hanging (Russia had not seen the death penalty used for fifty years) and many others wasted their lives in the army in skirmishes with southern tribes or in exile in Siberia. The generally unrebellious Tyutchev produced an interesting work entitled 14-oe dekabrya 1825/December 14th. 1825 [30], in which the comparison between autocracy and a glacier is tempting for those seeking a revolutionary beneath a conservative veneer. He refers to the insurgents as misguided people. His sadness at their fate is real. The most accurate gauge of Tyutchev’s feelings about the Decembrists, if not of his intellectual conclusions, is the poem itself. As a polemical piece directed against would-be revolutionaries it is weak. As an early example of his better poetic imagery it is fairly effective, the glacier image hardly flatters the regime of Nicholas I. The poem is an indication of a growing, very public conservatism and nationalism which lasted all his life, as well as of his day-to-day view of Russia as a cold, undesirable place, both literally and figuratively. Tyutchev’s concern about the dangers of revolution, especially close to Russia’s borders, became a passion lasting until his death. He would interpret various western European policies as a series of efforts to deny Russia her geographical heritage to the advantage of the Turks. Tyutchev was obsessed by the Eastern Question.
Returning to Munich in 1826, he married Eleonore Peterson (nee von Bothmer), a twenty-six year old widow with three children. She had three more by him (3). Both were impractical people and experienced financial hardship. Little is documented about Darya, but Anna and Ekaterina are revealed in the memories of various people as intelligent, energetic and creative women in different ways. Indeed, Tolstoy himself showed more than a passing affection for Ekaterina. A selection of his comments from 1857 to 1858 gives some idea of the degree of interest he had in her:
‘Tyutcheva is nice’.
‘I’m beginning to like Tyutcheva in a quiet way’.
‘Tyutcheva. She occupies me persistently. It’s even a nuisance, especially since it’s not love, it doesn’t have love’s charm’.
‘Went to Tyutchev’s prepared to love her. She’s cold, petty, aristocratic’.
‘Alas, I was cold towards Tyutcheva’.
‘I’d almost be prepared to marry her impassively, without love, but she received me with studied coldness’. (B:39)
There are girlish hints in the sisters’ letters to each other about the possibility of marriage between the daughter of a celebrated poet and one of Russia’s greatest novelists, but Kitty once said she was so discriminating that the opposite sex would just have to put up with her never marrying. She never did. She did buy the Varvarino estate in 1873 and began the building of a clinic and a school, also writing children’s books and doing a children’s version of the Bible. Anna was Tyutchev’s favourite and wrote a fascinating diary of her life as lady-in-waiting to the empress (C:19). She married Ivan Aksakov, a major publicist, public figure in the field of Slavophilism, and the poet’s first biographer.
Tyutchev travelled through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, visited Paris and, his duties being far from onerous, enjoyed a full social life, returning for a short while to Russia in 1830. A number of poems written during these early years in Europe show the increasing importance of the beauties of west European nature in his life, while there is a tendency to employ images of bleakness when depicting the east European countryside. Coming back from a diplomatic mission to Greece in 1833, he decided to tidy up his desk. In 1836 he wrote to his friend, Gagarin: ‘What I have sent you is but the tiniest handful of the pile that time has amassed but which fate or some act of incomprehensible providence has dealt with. Having set about sorting my papers in the twilight, I consigned to the abyss the major part of my nocturnal, poetic imaginings, and did not notice this till much later. At first I was somewhat vexed, but soon consoled myself with the thought that the library at Alexandria had also burned. Incidentally, the translation of the entire first act of Part 2 of Faust was there. It’s possible that was better than all the rest’.
Only one hundred and fifty two lines of his translations of Goethe remain while one hundred and fifteen from Part 2 were lost. For whatever reason Tyutchev did throw out his work, we are facing a significant literary loss, though it seems to have bothered him little, for there will have been poems of the quality of the best ones still in our possession among the pile of papers he destroyed, and Act 1 of the second part of Faust contains the kind of description Tyutchev would have done superbly. While he was capable of getting rid of his work on purpose, we simply have no proof. What we do know is that his poetic eye was very much fixed on the universe around him and not on the scraps of paper for which he had the scantest respect. It is possible that, as Barabtarlo has pointed out [A:2/425], Tyutchev was in the habit of destroying rough drafts and, since his fair copies tend to look like his rough drafts, a genuine mistake must be considered. The flippant tone of this section of the letter is characteristic of his dismissive attitude towards his best work. He describes the lyrics in question as mere elucubrations poetiques/poetic imaginings (almost ‘ravings’). Such an attitude resulted in his being known as a poet of worth among only a handful of close friends and partly explains why he played no direct part in the Golden Age of Russian poetry.
The situation changed slightly in 1836 when, after constant cajoling, Gagarin finally persuaded his friend to send him some lyrics. Gagarin showed them to Zhukovsky, then to Pushkin, and in the same year sixteen Poems Sent from Germany appeared in Pushkin’s journal Sovremennik/The Contemporary, over the initials ‘F.T.’. More appeared later, but for a variety of reasons sparked off little interest in Russia. Tyutchev was not at this time a conspicuous member of the literary scene in his homeland, he was careless when it came to preserving his own lyrics and indifferent to their publication, and the age of realistic prose was on the way in. Tyutchev was ‘discovered’ in the 1890’s by such poets as Bryusov, at a time when the idea of pure art, or Art for Art’s Sake, was becoming popular. The late thirties and middle years of the century were the age of Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, for whom art had to be socially relevant. Belinsky was also the leading light in the westernising movement which was fundamentally opposed to Slavophilism, the latter to become of increasing importance to Tyutchev as he grew older and settled in Russia. Considering Belinsky’s great influence and the rise of the Russian novel, it is hardly surprising that Tyutchev’s poetry initially raised little interest.
In May 1838 fire swept the steamer Nicholas I on which Tyutchev’s wife and family were travelling to Germany. On board was the young novelist Ivan Turgenev (1818-83). He has given a frank account of the incident in Un Incendie en Mer/A Fire at Sea, describing the panic which swept the vessel and his own terror (B:40ii, vol. 14/186). It seems that Eleonore (‘Nelly’) Tyutcheva, encumbered by three small children and a nanny, showed great courage and was one of the last to leave the ship. The highly-strung woman who had attempted suicide (probably more of the call-for-help kind) in 1836, did not survive the ordeal and died in August of that year, household tensions having exacerbated her condition. Extreme grief did not prevent Tyutchev from flinging himself into the fast social whirl of Lake Como, at the time being visited by members of the Russian imperial family, and where he met and became friends with Zhukovsky.
In 1839 he married Ernestine von Dornberg. They had been lovers for six years and she was already having his child. Having been allowed to marry but refused leave of absence, he locked up the legation and left, losing secret documents in the process (A:18v). The couple settled in Munich. Tyutchev’s decision to take leave of his post despite his superior’s refusal of permission had left him jobless. Ernestine possessed a rather calmer personality, not to mention more personal capital, than Eleonore. In his memoirs, Meshchersky, editor of the Grazhdanin/The Citizen, wrote the following of the couple as he observed them in later years in the family seat of Ovstug: ‘The soul and heart of this family was Ernestine Fyodorovna … a poetic and sublime woman in whom the intelligence, the heart and the charm of a woman fused into one harmonious and graceful whole … Fyodor Ivanovich himself was some kind of visitor in spirit to this household … Life’s prose did not exist for him. He divided his life between poetic and political impressions.’ (C:15/65)
In the early 1840s the poet wrote a number of nationalistic poems and published his first political letter, the Lettre a M. le Docteur Gustave Kolb/Letter to Doctor Gustav Kolb (A:33i), attacking the German press which saw Russia as a threat to German unification. In it he also attempted to explain Russia’s role in relation to what he saw as the revolutionary West. This idea was to evolve into the later theme of the legitimacy of humble, peasant, Orthodox Russia opposed to the fundamentally illegitimate, anti-Christian Europe and recurred in two further articles written during the years 1848-50 (ibid.) and some political poems, the latter produced from 1844 to 1873, nearly half his surviving output in terms of lines written. At their worst they are tendentious, biased and turgid though, despite what some commentators have always thought, rarely anything less than sharply thought out and often cleverly expressed. At their best they possess a highly eloquent quality of indignation and frustration. The political verse was the only part of his poetical output he made any effort to publish. He was known to have taken such work along to an editor personally while he could scribble lyrics of worth on scraps of paper for others to find, dictate them, send them in letters, and generally not appear to care whether they ever saw the light of day. Gagarin’s insistence that he be allowed to get his friend’s poems published might well have been the kind of trigger annoying Tyutchev enough to make him throw them out in a fit of pique.
As a writer destined for a place in the history books, the odds were stacked against Tyutchev. Obviously when impelled as a poet to write, his interest lasted as long as his inspiration and afterwards he felt no need to take any trouble over the physical manifestations as the emotions in which they took their source had been replaced by others. His political writings answered a different need and were calculatedly produced to make influential people see things from his point of view, not to mention ultimately persuade his former employers to look favourably on him once more and, after his marriage, give him a job. This worked, and after Tyutchev settled in Russia in 1844, it was as an increasingly respected government official.
Although he and his family visited the West several times over the following years, Russia had become his permanent home. Several poems written from this point express longing for the blue skies, warmth and light of Western Europe, and on many occasions he refers to Russia in such unflattering terms it is difficult at first to understand his constantly passionate defence of that country. And, despite adoring nature, he spent most of his time in towns. Indeed, ‘this champion of Russia and its peculiarly eastern way of life was seldom happier than when he was leaving for the West, while Russia’s greatest nature poet was throughout his Russian years at least, a confirmed city-dweller’. (A:14/17)
In 1846 he met Elena Deniseva, over twenty years his junior. The ensuing love affair scandalised polite society and caused the partners intense emotional suffering and bitterness. Elena’s mother was Principal of the Smolny Institute, a girls’ school where Darya and Ekaterina were pupils. Elena more than cared passionately for him. She was neurotically convinced that she and she alone was the real Mrs. Tyutcheva and that only external circumstances prevented their marrying. She was known for irrational behaviour and tantrums, at least once throwing an object at her lover. He could not endure life without her. She bore them three children. Fully aware of all this, Ernestine remained stoically faithful, although once did suggest they separate for a while. As the affair became a major talking point, society shunned Elena, though Tyutchev remained in as much demand as ever in the salons of the capital. It caused displeasure at court level and resulted, peripherally, in old Mrs. Deniseva being forced to leave her post.
The love affair produced a small body of lyrics rightly considered to be among the finest love poems in Russian. Short, sometimes employing a dialogue technique in which the lyric-hero appears to be conversing with his lover, sometimes taking the form of monologues, and frequently characterised by a cogent, highly lyrical and profound sense of his own inadequacy and selfishness, the Deniseva poems bare the love affair like an open wound. In these and other works about love and his relationships with people close to him, there is often a quality of anger and open contempt for the opinions of a narrow-minded public ever ready to cast the first stone. Tyutchev’s deserved reputation as a great nature poet should never be allowed to eclipse his standing as portrayer of the love-hate relationship which accompanies an illicit love affair. He is a ruthless analyst of the anguish tormenting an individual in his blackest moments.
While he never ceased writing entirely, there is a hiatus from 1838 to 1847. In 1847 he began composing once more in quantity. He was reinstated in government service in 1845 and in 1848 became Senior Censor in the Russian Foreign Office and ultimately a fairly liberal Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Censorship. During 1848 he wrote La Russie et la Revolution/Russia and Revolution (A:33/i), an article dealing with the role of Orthodox Christians as saviours of their brother Slavs in the west. A third article, La Papaute et la Question Romaine/The Papacy and the Roman Question (ibid.), attacked the Catholic Church for the secularism which had, in Tyutchev’s mind, inevitably infected it since its break with Orthodoxy. From this point, these themes are frequently reinforced in the poetry.
Tyutchev remained till his death obsessively anxious about Russia’s historical destiny, characteristically never pulling his punches, certainly in his letters and often by hint and image in the lyrics, when it came to expressing disapproval of official Russian policy. He experienced genuine anger and grief at the Crimean debacle and never lost his capacity for berating the West, the Vatican and the waning Turkish empire. He maintained a steady, often impassioned interest in foreign affairs generally. His statements about politics, oral or written, are clever, frequently sarcastic, and constantly nationalistic, although, despite not trusting it politically, his love of the west never deserted him. His shock at the Russian defeat in the Crimea was repeated, if not so publicly, at France’s rout in the Franco-Prussian War.
His personal happiness was marred by several blows. Elena’s death of tuberculosis in 1864 shattered him. Family bereavement followed. Two of Elena’s children by him died, as well as his eldest son Dmitrii, his daughter Maria, and his brother. With that dark humour which never left him, Tyutchev compared his existence, rapidly emptying of those close to him, to the game of patience in which one by one cards vanish from the pack. All the same, till the end he was unable to resist the charms of a young, pretty woman, as a jocular album contribution tells us in 1872 [376]. It expresses doubt at what his senses tell him, in other words that a fine day (the woman) has arrived in November (his old age).
Increasing ill health and anguished thoughts of his own death tormented him during the final years, although a certain amount of probably harmless womanising was still possible. The widow Elena Bogdanova was his last fling and, while nothing is thought to have come of it, it showed the aged Tyutchev still capable of that selfishness which could all too easily be interpreted as lack of concern for his own family. Such difficulties and grief accompanied at this late stage a growing reputation as a poet. While the poetic output of the last half dozen years of his life is often considered mediocre, he composed several masterpieces during this period. They cover the common themes of personal suffering and ageing [284, 309], man’s relationship as an individual to Nature [289], nature description, sometimes with a clever political subtext [295, 297, 298], superbly indignant attacks on narrow-minded people [300] and the Vatican [370], epigrammatic profundities [311, 347, 385], and an astonishing, elegiac description of the gardens of Tsarskoe Selo [307]. Despite composing lyrics of genius, Tyutchev remained totally uninterested in his work.
In January 1873 the first of several strokes partly paralysed him and on July 15th. he died.
CRITICAL
Pantheism is a synthetic view of the universe, an outlook bringing together all facets of creation, making of all things one and not permitting any categorisation of existence into ‘nature’, ‘man’, ‘God’ or ‘gods’. Tyutchev certainly appears to be a pantheist. Whether there is ultimately a consensus of opinion about the question of his poetic attitude to nature, suffice it to say that many of his lyrics are so replete with sensation in the face of its beauties that ‘pantheistic’ is one of several labels which will endure over the years.
In short, often aphoristic lyrics written in simple, lucid Russian — despite a number of archaisms, which remain quite easy to cope with — he depicts nature as an ordered, palpable entity with which man is often at one. Equally there are lyrics expressing his sense of being cut off from nature, in which he is aware of currents of disorder. Tyutchev’s poetry — and Tyutchev the man, in many ways — are bipolar. Tyutchev’s poetic images for this order and disorder are ‘cosmos’ and ‘chaos’, and he employs a wide range of vocabulary to describe them. Chaos is frequently seen to be a result of man’s drawing back from the whole in order to observe existence, split it into separate phenomena and compartmentalise these. When Tyutchev writes of that aspect of existence we commonly refer to as ‘nature’, he indulges in no trite pathetic fallacies, his apostrophes to nature are deeply experienced statements of wonder and empathy. There is no vapid philosophising, drawing of predictable moral conclusions nor attempt to construct scientific or philosophical structures to explain things, his scenes represent his sense of man’s physical and mental oneness with the universe, the universe not only of space, but of time. ‘In Tyutchev’s poetry, the temporal epochs of human life, its past and its present fluctuate and vacillate in equal measure. The unstoppable current of time erodes the outline of the present.’ (A:20/487)
In sensing man’s position in the universe, Tyutchev produces in his best lyrics a feeling of genuine awe. The reader feels the movements of the air and the sea, the heat of the sun on peaks, warm rain from a spring sky, and such nature phenomena are there for their own sakes. When he describes mountain summits as bozhestva rodnye/gods who are our cousins [49], he does more than simply transplant classical deities into a given landscape after the fashion of the eighteenth century mimicking its Roman mentors. He is, indeed, behaving more like many classical authors themselves, for whom nature was literally peopled by gods.
Dealing with a world Tyutchev felt was teeming with its own kind of life leaves the reader with the impression that man, while observing nature, is himself one of its creations. In the best poems, the immediately accessible visual-audial-tactile level, the ‘feel’ of the poem, is more than merely a set of references to Hebe, Zeus, Pan or Atlas, ‘titanising’ nature, as Gregg puts it (A:14/78). In Tyutchev, mythologisation is a powerful poetic technique and involves an ability to animate a scene in such a way as to recall to us a common, ancient sense of belonging and oneness. To claim that simple ‘titanising’ is taking place is to demean this writer, whose poetic statements bear some resemblance to Vico’s. The latter’s ‘new science’ castigated ‘our civilised natures’ because by them ‘we … cannot at all imagine and can understand only by great toil the poetic nature of these first men’ (B:43/22). Tyutchev resurrects an ancestry scientific man had apparently forgotten. Natural objects and phenomena in his nature poems are portrayed in a manner strikingly innovative for the age, precisely because of this skilfully manipulated awareness that man is literally part of nature and not apart from it. ‘Myth’ in Tyutchev is neither toy nor pretty poetic game. Myth is a kind of truth every bit as valid as the scientific ‘truth’ he attacked in the early poem addressed to A. Muravyov, A.N.M. [13]. Myth is seen as ancient man’s way of explaining the universe and, years after Newton and Descartes, it remained as valid as ever to Tyutchev, despite, or perhaps because of being ‘unscientific’. In this sense Tyutchev fits into the broad Romantic mould of Lamartine and Hugo, who represented a revolt against the rationalism of the pre-Revolutionary years in France.
As for the difference in feel between the earlier ‘European’ nature poetry and the later ‘Russian’ lyrics, while his attitudes and emotions were subject to different ageing and environmental influences, I feel it is glib to consider that ‘the image of nature, which had been largely mythocentric in the early Munich years and anthropocentric in the following decade, is now very largely its own excuse for being.’ (A:14/193) Tyutchev’s attitude towards nature never changed. He was a floating particle in it, unable to comprehend it, unlike Pascal who believed he could understand it through reason, and whether we have in mind the lush, warm, bustling quality of the Munich years (Kozhinov rightly mentions the mnogolyud’e/populousness of the early years (A:17/352-353)), or the desertedness of the Russian works, the same awareness of being subservient to nature is evident. The changes affecting Tyutchev the man, the poet, the diplomat, the errant husband did not alter the sense of awe with which he dealt with the natural world around him.
Tyutchev produces some amazing results. Sometimes it is as if a mystery is about to unfold over the earth, as when nocturnal lightning-flashes tease the clouds, Kak demony glukhonemye/Vedut besedu mezh soboi/like deaf-mute ghouls/debating heatedly [298]. In Son na more/A Dream at Sea [92], and Kak okean ob»emlet shar zemnoi/Just as the ocean curls around Earth’s shores [64], the boundary between two kinds of reality, that of dream/hallucination and diurnal, observable existence is hazy. Man is often described as being abandoned and frighteningly alone in an incomprehensible, boundless universe, and when this is not stated it is implied. Behind the cosmos, the chaotic elements of the thing that is Tyutchev-in-nature are ever-present, part of an essential, inescapable reality, a Pascalian duality evident from the earliest poems, in his letters and refusing to leave him in peace even in his final years.
At first glance the western-nature lyrics are his most attractive works. They are certainly the most numerous and, even permanently settled back in Russia, he often wrote poems of reminiscence in which some of the magic of the European days raises its head. They are descriptions of sun-soaked lands, vernal and aestival days, warm nights by the Mediterranean beneath clear, star-filled skies. They are also, as a rule, skilfully anthropomorphic. When it comes to concreteness, incredible accuracy of detail and photographic precision in placing objects in a landscape, those poems describing Russia’s countryside are far superior and earn Tyutchev a special place in Russian letters as a poet who, despite his dislike of his native land, has produced among the finest verses possible about the bleaker aspects of that country, so much so that one questions the traditional approach whereby he is seen as a poet of the West who also wrote about Russia. The sharp-limned landscapes of the ‘Russian’ poems are almost entirely lacking in the ‘European’ ones, whose unbelievable landscapes are deceptive, for they are frequently vague. In them the reader feels heat but does not always see a great deal to suggest it to the eye. In the greatest Russian poems, things are generally ‘seen’.
In Russia it is not often the case that laughing, benign nature distracts him, makes him feel contented. He observes the harsh reality of his surroundings for what it is and depicts it with unerring sureness of touch. His Russian nature poems are not indicators of any sense of well-being. Many of them are ‘cold’ and it is in them that we discover some of the most wondrous visual effects of his entire oeuvre. In Na vozvratnom puti/On the Journey Home [241], ponderous clouds and stagnant pools make a feeble hearkening back to western blueness (11.14-16, pt.2) mediocre by comparison. The perfectly placed strand of spider-web across a furrow in Est’ v oseni pervonachal’noi/There is a fleeting, wondrous moment [233], is evidence of the poet’s huge talent in describing scenes, here implying, as Tolstoy noted, restfulness after hard work by the peasants in the fields by the careful positioning of a single, aptly chosen object. In these and others, heady mythologisations are supplanted by sad, bleak external reality. But the resulting poetry is astonishing.
This is not to say that there are no ‘warm’ poems describing the Russian countryside. The movement of Tikhoi noch’yu, pozdnim letom/Quiet evening late in summer [153], eight lines produced as if in a single exhalation, not even constituting a sentence, is not exceptional. In Neokhotno i nesmelo/Timidly, unwillingly [151], simple images culminate in a charming image of the sun shyly peaking down at a land ‘crumpled’ (smyatennaya) by a warm shower. There are others. While as descriptions they are better, there is, nonetheless, something missing, and it is something in the poet himself: quite simply, while geographically at home, in spirit he is not. This ability to create superb poetry about locations he does not enjoy living in is further evidence, if it were needed, of his gift.
When Tyutchev is at his best in those early years (1822-44) when he lived and worked in Western Europe, he is truly great. In one of his masterpieces, Letnii vecher/A Summer Evening [41], the almost magical sense of peace is achieved by transforming the earth into a giantess from whose head the setting sun rolls heavily, while stars become creatures physically hoisting up the sky and a nature-goddess sensually splashes her feet with cold water after a day of oppressive heat. There is in such works a sense of excitement and sensual delight, occasionally a hint of apprehension, in the presence of natural beauty which cumulatively produces skilful landscapes, remaining at once superb natural descriptions and indicators of the poet’s state of mind. The picture is wonderful, unparalleled in that era, and it is doubtful if any purely concrete treatment could improve upon it. In Snezhnye gory/Snowy Mountains [49], the earth is an enormous female expiring in the sun while youthful mountain peaks play games with the sky. By stark contrast one of the very few early Russian nature poems, Zdes’, gde tak vyalo svod nebesnyi/Here the sky stares inert [68], contains sparsely sprouting bushes and lichens, ugly creatures of nightmare, inmates of some fevered dream even before Tyutchev uses that smile (Kak likhoradochnye gryozy/like fevered dreams).
Tyutchev will always be best known for his nature poetry which has, perhaps, been anthologised at the expense of other kinds. His nature lyrics are extremely simple to read, relying on short, uncomplicated verses and generic language (in Tyutchev there are few birches, oaks or elms, there are many ‘trees’). As in the lyrics of Pasternak, it is often as if we are surveying a scene for the first time, objects and their surrounding phenomena appearing as they were ‘on the first day of creation’. (See [100].) Such poems as those described are, in addition, much more than a series of nature descriptions of genius.
His poems contain images so nodal that they become the lynchpins of whole poetic scenarios. Son translates both ‘sleep’ and ‘dream’. Tyutchev is a master at playing with this word. Dreams become part of diurnal life, linking man with his inner life. Nature sleeps and dreams change into young deities playing around woods and mountains. Sleep can be the erotic state of half-slumber or the nightmarish version of hell blazing from the night sky. In the form of half-sleep, or dozing, it forms part of daily life and we all readily daydream (his words for this kind of dreaming being gryozy and mechty). Dream, attained through sleep, may be a harking back to ancient memory, individual or collective. Son zheleznyi/iron sleep represents the atrophied intellects and hearts of the Russia of Nicholas I. Sleep can be the romantic escape route from daily reality into fantasy. From the very beginning, in such an early work as an adaption of Heine’s Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam/A spruce tree stands alone [21], he is mesmerised by the quality of dream, for ‘it… (Heine’s poem — FJ) is a dream-poem. Its melody soothes asleep the Argus-eye of common sense … And again, it is a poem about a dream, about the bitter sweetness of all passionate yearning for things so remote that only in dream can they be ours’. (C:23) Sleep/dream is tantalisingly multi-purpose. What is more, it does not develop through a series of stages as a poetic image. Rather, as part and parcel of life at any one moment, it is present from the start.
‘Night’, ‘Time’, ‘Space’ — these and others are concepts of the first importance to Tyutchev. His expression of what lies behind the facade of the universe and those dark elements within man’s inner being owes more than a little to Pascal, one of whose Pensees goes, ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me’ (B:31/233). Tyutchev once remarked in a letter to Ernestine (1858), ‘I don’t think anyone can ever have felt themselves as empty as I do faced by these two oppressors and tyrants of humanity: time and space’. Night in Tyutchev is the poetic image often covering economically and simply the vast notions of time and space as they affect man in his struggle through life. A given scene in Tyutchev has little to do with any Schellingian idea of some primordial blackness out of which we gradually move. Such an ‘evolution’ does not exist in Tyutchev. He is preoccupied with eternal night forever threatening man while ever aware of fullness, of man being part of a living nature, a result of its creative impulse. However he expresses his feelings about his universe of cosmos and chaos, whether Tyutchev/man is central or peripheral, Nature does not change.
There are too many strands to Tyutchev’s talent as a poet of nature to deal with in such a short introduction. There is lyrical position, the up-down movement of so many of his pieces, be it someone looking down at a river along which a steamer chugs [111], or as if flying and gazing down into a valley [48], staring up into the sky at star-deities looking down at him [167,176], or experiencing the sickly, hallucinogenic sensation of floating above a nightmare storm [92]. The use of a sudden flash from or into a different time, sometimes almost a different universe, is common, its earliest manifestation being Problesk/The Gleam [27]. Weaving natural phenomena into the very body of a woman, as in the raindrops image of [102,106] and the sky-woman picture of [257], is one of his most effective techniques, and the sense of some sound being almost out of earshot [100], are but a few of the different and powerful techniques Tyutchev brought to Russian poetry.
Tyutchev was renowned for the attentions he paid to women, not to an ideal, to some poetic notion of femininity, but to flesh-and-blood women. ‘Tyutchev knew the woman (zhenshchinu — FJ) (for depth of passion, no-one has yet matched him), but Femininity (Zhenstvennoe — FJ) was the field of Lermontov, Fet, Vladimir Solovyov, Blok’ (C:20, vol.1/217). There are many poems to many women and matching up verse and female can be an amusing guessing game. His lines vary from K Nise/To Nisa [25], apparently written in a fit of pique — he clearly did not always get his own way, sexual or otherwise — to K N. N./To N. N., a poetic masterpiece of lust [51], through the playfully lightweight Cache-cache/Hide and Seek [40], the mysterious, languorous Ital’yanskaya villa/An Italian Villa [127], dealing with his affair with Ernestine, the poems to Elena which show lovers’ arguments and recriminations, to his final old man’s reminiscences about past glories. Tyutchev the love poet does not allow of anything other than a woman’s full commitment to him, shows his irritation at Elena’s demands to be the one woman in his life, and treats of his awareness of his lifelong selfishness. There is a dramatic quality to some of these poems, even those with no other protagonist (for Tyutchev’s lyrics can be monologues, the audience before him and another character just off stage, listening). Equally, the love poems give space to the genuine and soft aspect of the emotion and to Ernestine’s strength.
Love in the lyrics is a mixture of deep, genuine, tender feeling and lust, fired, especially in the Deniseva years, by a sense of conflict. His love affair with Elena produced gems of poetic anger, as in Chemu molilas’ ty s lyubov’yu/What you guarded in your heart [200]:
Akh, esli by zhivye kryl’ya
Dushi, paryashchei nad tolpoi,
Eyo spasali ot nasil’ya
Bessmertnoi poshlosti lyudskoi.
***
God, if your soul had wings to leave your body,
to lift you by the nape
from the crudeness of the crowd,
to keep you safe
from man’s eternal rape!
Equally he can address himself with unconcealed cruelty, almost contempt:
I, zhalkii charodei, pered volshebnym mirom,
Mnoi sozdannym samim, bez very ya stoyu —
I samogo sebya, krasneya, soznayu
Zhivoi dushi tvoei bezzhiznennym kumirom
***
a weak magician in a little magic role
created by myself, and faithlessly I face it,
blushingly aware of my part,
the lifeless idol of your living soul [199].
In Ital’yanskaya villa/An Italian Villa [127], having taken the reader through a soothing description of the villa, its cypresses and babbling fountain, Tyutchev, there with his mistress, Baroness von Dornberg, while his family was in St. Petersburg, makes those very natural items voice the lustful sensations undoubtedly running through the lovers:
Vdrug vsyo smutilos’: sudorozhnyi trepet
Po vetvyam kiparisnym probezhal, —
Fontan zamolk — i nekii chudnyi lepet,
Kak by skvoz’ son, nevnyatno prosheptal
***
Suddenly — turmoil:
A spasm quivered through the branches.
The fountain fell silent,
yet from it some wondrous sound,
muffled, as if in sleep, shivered.
Admittedly the poem concludes as the poet openly wonders whether he and his mistress have crossed a ‘forbidden threshold’, suggesting that the life they are living right then is ‘wicked’, that their love is ‘turbulently hot’, but until that final stanza, love is in the hands of the nature surrounding them.
Spurred on by the possible marriage of Gorchakov to his niece and by the attendant gossip, Tyutchev attacked the scandal-mongers in an indignant work in which Nadezhda Akinfeva’s soul is ‘cloudless’, its ‘azure’ untroubled by wagging tongues. He concludes with a typical piece of cleverness:
K nei i pylinka ne pristala
Ot glupykh spletnei, zlykh rechei,
I dazhe kleveta ne smyala
Vozdushnyi shyolk eyo kudrei.
***
Not a speck of dusk adheres
when those nauseating churls
sow their stupid calumny
which cannot even crumple
the airy silk of her curls [300].
The physical attributes of the woman, dealt with in terms of the sky and the air around her (the speck of dust floating in it), become as important in this poem as the direct effect exerted on her by what society had to say about the affair. The superb music of Vostok belel. Lad’ya katilas’/The east whitened [106], with its liquid repetitions running through each stanza, bears a long with it a concrete, possibly sexual situation which is inseparable from the verbal expression of the coming of dawn.
There is a great deal of self-centredness in Tyutchev’s depiction of love. In a remarkable work on Elena’s final days [275], he produces one of his most characteristic types of poem, one in which nature and woman are somehow interlinked, nature remaining, as always, indifferent to human suffering:
Ves’ den’ ona lezhala v zabyt’i,
I vsyu eyo uzh teni pokryvali.
Lil tyoplyi letnii dozhd’ — ego strui
Po list’yam veselo zvuchali
***
All day she lay oblivious.
To lie across her body shadows came.
Outside the tepid rain of summer streamed,
splashing through the trees in happy games
As warm, summer rain falls through branches, gaily and loudly splashing, the dying woman comes to and mutters how much she had loved it all. Shadows, literally and figuratively, gather over her, yet Tyutchev saves his burst of anguish for the realisation that he will have to ‘survive’ her death. This is not the only example of a lyric in which he complains that he must survive someone else’s agony.
The image of love as the one thing Tyutchev could forever hold on to, despite the vicissitudes of a fate he so often reviled, stayed with him till his death. The very last word he wrote was ‘love’:
Voskresnet zhizn’, krov’ zastruitsya vnov,
I verit serdtse v pravdu i lyubov’
***
Life lives again, again blood flows
and my heart believes in truth and love. [393]
It remains to look at the political poems. They have never been seriously studied as poetry. Not all are tasteless. Some are even good. A few, perhaps, may be better than a small number of his non-political lyrics. In the quality of their indignation and the unswervingly accurate, clever sniping backed up by witty rhymes and memorable metres, they will have caused more than one pompous figure to wriggle uncomfortably. Some, of course, are dreadful, but Tyutchev was fully aware of this. Conscious all the time of his every line being the subject of scrutiny of the censors of whom he was, in later life, an influential member, he knew precisely what to say, to whom, when and how, although he did occasionally get it wrong and found his own works the target of the editing pencil. (See [39, 132, 370].)
Gregg (A:14/146) appears to see a flaw in Tyutchev’s personality which produces such apparent ravings as those lines from Russkaya Geografiya/A Russian Geography [149], in which the poet describes the Nile and the Ganges as elements of the Russian empire. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Tyutchev was an exceptionally intelligent and cunning writer and chose his themes and times carefully. It should not be forgotten that from the time he began writing till the year he died, Russia was embroiled in one ajor foreign-policy adventure or war after another, among them the Napoleonic invasion of 1812, the Russo-Turkish war (1828-9), three Polish uprisings (1830, 1846, 1863), the Crimean catastrophe (1853-6) and the Khivan campaign of 1873. Nationalism is a heady force, especially at times of war and depression, and, bearing in mind Russia’s eternal paranoia about invasion, borders and ice-free ports, Tyutchev’s nationalistic outpourings can easily be understood. It is inaccurate and misleading in the extreme to attribute these political works to some psychological aberration. To claim that the ideology of the political verse is ‘expounded with the repetitive rigidity of a child’s catechism, their realia .. the kings, swords, flags and altars of a boy’s adventure book … enunciating with obsessive regularity the themes of betrayal of Russia, punishment and the necessary submission to authority’ (A:14/146) is to misunderstand verse which, while taking the message seriously, in his heart of hearts Tyutchev must have cringed at. To continue by saying that if ‘ultra-nationalism is taken to represent an adult’s refusal to accept maturity, then it becomes (as in Tiutchev’s case) an infantile disorder’ (ibid.) is to make of relatively straightforward matters something complex and employ a totally inappropriate vocabulary to make the point. When it came to politics, Tyutchev always knew precisely what he was saying.
Frequently a mediocre political pronouncement starts or finishes powerfully, the poetic mediocrities reserved for the central ‘message’ part of the work. In [268] he begins thus:
Uzhasnyi son otyagotel nad nami,
Uzhasnyi, bezobraznyi son:
V krovi do pyat, my b’yomsya s mertvetsami,
Voskresshimi dlya novykh pokhoron.
***
We’ve been burdened by a horrible dream,
a horrible, ugly dream:
up to our ankles in blood, we’re fighting corpses
resurrected for fresh funerals.
The poem then develops quickly along overtly nationalistic, largely non-lyrical lines, culminating in a call to Russia to stand firm when faced with foreign hostility. There is a warm start and a gently eerie finish to [357]:
Nad russkoi Vil’noi starodavnoi
Rodnye teplyatsya kresty —
I zvonom medi pravoslavnoi
Vse oglasilis’ vysoty.
……….
……….
V tot chas, kak s neba mesyats skhodit,
V kholodnei, rannei polumgle,
Eshchyo kakoi-to prizrak brodit
Po ozhivayushchei zemle.
***
Over ancient, Russian Vilnius
kindred crosses glimmer.
Orthodoxy’s pealing bronze
makes all the heavens shudder.
……….
……….
and as the moon’s about to leave the sky,
in that early morning chill,
across the land just waking up
a spectral visitor wanders still
The opening of Gus na kostre/Hus at the Stake [356] parallels the lyric poem Pozhary/Fires [331]. The political piece begins:
Kostyor sooruzhyon, i rokovoe
Gotovo vspykhnut’ plamya, vsyo molchit —
Lish’ slyshen lyogkii tresk, i v nizhnem sloe
Kostra ogon’ predatel’ski skvozit.
***
The pyre has been built. The fateful
flame’s about to flare and all is silent,
save for gentle crackles as deep within the pyre
the treacherous fire filters.
The more lyrical of the two works is a treatment of the cunning, treacherous beast which is the fire:
Na pozharishche pechal’nom
Net ni iskry, dym odin, —
Gde zh ogon, zloi istrebitel’,
Polnomochnyi vlastelin?
***
On this sad, scorched site
no sparks, only smoke.
Where’s the fire, malicious destroyer,
omnipotent master?
Many of Tyutchev’s political poems are more complex than has often been thought. They have their genesis in the lyrical mind of the poet and, irrespective of their content, what is at times only a residual degree of lyricism often imbues them with a poetic quality which successfully reinforces their political message.
The three thematic groups, nature, love and politics, all too briefly dealt with above, sum up Tyutchev’s poetic preoccupations. This is not to say that he did not have other themes. There are justly famous religious and philosophical poems, but a number of the religious works are inextricably linked with politics and many of his philosophical lines are scattered through works which more properly belong in one of the other categories. One reaches a point in Tyutchev where it becomes impossible to classify accurately, for themes and imagery spill across borders. And just as his political works are not all bad, so many of his religious lyrics, far from being ‘flaccid little exercises in other people’s piety’ (A:14/137-9), are ‘inspired and noble’, possessing a ‘depth and sincerity’ which ‘cannot be doubted’ (A:18vii/328). His philosophical works are equally genuine. Tyutchev did not present a system of ideas in his lyrics, rather expressing ‘moods and problems which the leading thinkers were only beginning to tackle and of which others were not yet even aware’. (ibid./330-1) These moods and problems of which Lane speaks are dealt with, often subtly, certainly not always overtly, in poems of many kinds.
No matter how a reader reacts to Tyutchev’s oeuvre as a whole or to one or the other of his broad categories, the poet must ultimately be judged on his greatest lyrics. In the thirties, no Russian poet produced such a work as Letnii vecher/A Summer Evening [41]. Lines containing the echoing depression of Bessonnitsa/Insomnia [47] flowed from the pen of neither Pushkin nor Lermontov. There are many other examples of the uniqueness of this poet: the egocentric, strange detachment of a mind floating above a world which might be real or unreal, as in Eshchyo shumel vesyolyi den’/The happy day was loud [52], the almost sexually explicit final stanza of K N. N./ To N. N. [51], the slow, languorous movement and ominous imagery of fading and death of Osennii vecher/ An Autumn Evening [73], the Pascalian picture of man hanging lost in an abyss of Kak okean ob»emlet shar zemnoi/Just as the ocean curls around earth’s shore [64], and the pithy, philosophical comment made with impressive economy, as in Silentium!/Stay Silent! [83], containing his most famous line, Mysl’ izrechennaya est’ lozh’/A thought you’ve spoken is untrue.
Tyutchev’s existing poetic works consist of just under four hundred pieces. Approximately half of these are translations, occasional poems and the political verse. Of the remaining fifty per cent not all poems are of equal merit and his best works are very short. It is remarkable that on the basis of such an insignificant output in terms of lines written, over such a long period, Tyutchev should be considered at least the equal of Lermontov and by no means far behind Pushkin in the pantheon of Russian poets, although such a situation is not unique. After all, Kafka wrote little fiction. Tyutchev’s importance is attributable not only to the very high quality of poems written in a relatively new literary age, that which began in Russia at the end of the eighteenth century and developed apace throughout the ‘golden’ nineteenth, when Russia boasted scores of clever, talented poets whose work was by no means inferior to that of their Western counterparts. Ultimately, perhaps, we judge him on that originality, that sense of being different which is a characteristic of the voice out of place in its time, for Tyutchev’s most celebrated lyrics are brilliant, often troubling works which do not properly represent the first third of the nineteenth century. So many observations inspiring his lyrics triggered conflict in his mind. His scenes, even at their most idyllic, are parts of a larger picture of anxiety. Turmoil and brooding questioning are central to Tyutchev’s view of the universe and he expresses them with a very modern, uncompromising sharpness which appeals to our own age rather more, perhaps, than the florid, immense variety of Pushkin and Lermontov.
FOOTNOTES
1. Tyutchev’s parents were Ivan (1776-1846) and Ekaterina (nee Tolstaya, 1776-1866). He had a brother, Nikolay (1801-70) and a sister, Darya, (1806-79), married name Sushkova). Apart from these, Sergei, Dmitrii and Vasilii died in childbirth.
2. Prior to the decree of February 14th. 1918, Russia used the Julian calendar which was twelve days behind the Gregorian in use in the West. The two dating systems are referred to as Old and New Style and all dates in this book are Old Style.
3. His first wife was the widowed Eleonore Peterson (nee Countess von Bothmer, 1799-1838), four years older than he and with three children of her own. She had three daughters by Tyutchev, Anna (1829-89), Darya (1834-1903) and Ekaterina (1835-82). His children by his second wife, Baroness Ernestine von Dornberg (nee Pfeffel, 1810-94), also a widow, were Maria (1840-72), Dmitrii (1841-70) and Ivan (1846-1909). His mistress, Elena Deniseva (1826-64) bore him Elena (1851-65), Fyodor (1860-1916) and Nikolai (1851-65).
52
* THE POEMS *
1. DEAR DAD!
On this happy day, a sonТs tender feelings seek a gift for you, but what sort? A bunch of flowers? But the blooms are all over and meadows and valleys have lost their colours. Shall I ask the Muses for some verses? IТll ask my heart. HereТs what my heart has told me: embraced by your fortunate family, gentlest of men, father-philanthropist, true friend of good, protector of the poor, may your precious days flow in peace! Your loving children and subjects all around you, on every face you will see joy. Thus from on high, the sun looks down with smile upon flowers brought to life by its beams.
2. NEW YEAR, 1816
Already the heavensТ great luminary, pouring abundance and light from on high, has traced its yearly path around the sky, rising in grandeur in a new domain. Behold! Clothed in a glittering dawn, penetrating the whitening vault of these etherial regions, flying down with his fateful urn comes the SunТs new son, the New Year! His forerunner has vanished from the face of the earth and on the current of revolving ages, like a drop in the ocean, has drowned in eternity! This year will pass too. HeavenТs statute is sacred. Oh, Time! EternityТs mobile mirror! Everything disintegrates, falls beneath your hand. Your boundaries, your beginning are hidden from feeble, mortal eyes. ………. Aeons are born and disappear once again, one century erased by yet another. What can flee the wrath of malicious Chronos? What can stand its ground before this awesome god? A bleak wind whistles through ruined Babylon! Beasts graze where Memphis once prospered! Around TroyТs toppled stones stinging thorns are thickly entwined! ……….
And you, oh son of luxury, mortal voluptuary, your life of idle bliss and comfort rolls peacefully on! But youТve forgotten, unfortunate man, that we must all gaze at the shores of fearsome Cocytus. Your elevated rank, your flatterers, your gold will not save you from death! Can you really not have seen how frequently fire-winged lightning strikes the brows of towering cliffs? ………. Yet still your greedy hand has dared to snatch the daily bread from orphans and from widows, casting families into joyless exile! Blind man! The path of riches leads to ruin! The subterranean dwelling has opened before you. Oh, victim of Tartarus! Oh, victim of the Furies, the glitter of your splendour, vandal, will not enchant these dread goddesses! ………. There you will see the keen axe forever hanging by the finest hair above your head, your ulcerated flesh will be garbed not in purple cloth, but in a blanket of writhing worms! You will lay your torn members upon a bed not of the finest, softest down to sweetly lull them, but no, upon scorching sulphur, and you will piercingly, eternally howl! But what is this? This terrifying throng! These bloody shades maliciously grinning are hurrying towards you! They died of barbaric persecution, for this barbarity, await your just reward at their hands! Suffer, agonise, evil doer, victim of hellТs vengeance! Your forgotten grave is now covered by grass! The voice which flattered you up here has forever fallen completely silent!
3. TO TWO FRIENDS
On this blessed day, one of you adopted the name and virtue of that maiden who struggled in the name of sacred religion, nature conferred upon the other one existence. She engineered it that in both, feelings and deeds should constitute mutual joy, setting an example to the fair sex. ………. Separation oppresses you, oh true friends! The time will soon come, that pleasant, sweet, blissful time of meeting, and in an outpouring of your hearts youТll finally see her, forgetting past suffering! 4. Let envy gnaw ZoilusТs heart! Voltaire, he cannot harm you! The Muses protect their fostered ones: into eternityТs temple, Oh wondrous one, theyТll lead you.
5. A LETTER FROM HORACE TO MECENATUS INVITING HIM TO
DINNER IN THE COUNTRY (HORACE). Come, desired guest, my beauty, my joy! Come, the comradely goblet awaits you here, the rose garland, the sweetness of tender songs! Kindled not by the flattererТs hand, the aromas of anemones and lilies pour fragrantly onto the feast and baskets full of fruit gladden your eye and palate. Come, righteous man, protector of the people, true son of the fatherland, uncompromising friend of monarchs, fortunate foster child of the Castalian maidens, come into my humble abode! Let magnificent columns and the gilded masses of temples entice the greedy gaze of the unthinking crowd. Leave the careworn city for a while, recline in the shade of leafy groves. Peace awaits you here. Under the roof of the rural penates where everything is beautiful and breathes simplicity, where the cold glitter of purple and gold are alien, thatТs where the comradely goblet is sweet! The brow furrowed by thought looses its gloomy aspect here. In the dwelling of our fathers, everything pours joy onto us! Heavy-footed, heavenly Leo has already stepped into the regions of heat and along a flaming path flows across the bright skies! In a sacred, silvan coppice, where a strange haze fuses with coolness, where a trembling, quiet light glimmers through the leaves, a playful freshet barely moves, whispering in the dusk with the sedge along the banks. Here, at the hottest times, in front of a dense thicket, a shepherd and his flock sleep in the cool shade and in rose bushes gentle zephyrs sleep. And you, high devotee of Themis, protector of the defenceless, you spend your days burdened by cares, and our compatriotsТ happiness is the good and worthy fruit of your unremitting endeavours. On their behalf you would like to know what fate has in store, but the stern ruler of Earth, Heaven and Hell has wreathed the future in a dense, eternal mist. Be reverential, men born of earth! What? This earthly dust will dare to try to comprehend what is heavenly? Will it dare to tear the veil of mystery? The very fastest mind will numb in confusion and this turbulent sage will be the godsТ laughing stock! Wandering through this thorny wilderness, we can pluck one bloom, catch a fleeting moment. The future is for destiny, not us. So we leave it to the whim of the higher ones! What is time? A swift current rolling the crystal of sapphire waves through peaceful glades and along banks luxuriant in abundant swards. Across the ripplesТ silver, the sunТs golden light plays and slips, but give it an hour and, quickly tempestuous, forgetting its shores, forgetting its peaceful movement, itТs lost in the boundless sea, in the shoreless emptiness of vast waters! But wait: suddenly from louring storm-masses rain erupts from black depths. The water rises, roars, breaks its banks and a furious wind stirs up the waves! Blessed, a hundredfold blessed, is he who knows repose, gazing moved at the celestial Guide which flows to rest in NeptuneТs domains, who, overjoyed, can say to himself: I have lived! Tomorrow, through a leaden cloud, let the omnipotent god of thunder throw a crimson mantle to envelope the darkening air, or let sunlight once more scatter through the skies, for mortal man it makes no difference, and what the winged years have taken away with them from earthТs sad face into the repository of time not even the Father of Nature himself will alter. This world is the plaything of malicious fortune. She casts her conceited glance at the earth and shakes the entire universe through blind whim! Unfaithful, today she cast her shadow across me, she showers me with riches and honours, but tomorrow, suddenly spreading her wings, she will direct her flight at others. I am despised. I do not protest and, both sorrowful witness and victim of the fateful game, I offer her gifts and garb myself in virtue. Wreathed in storms, let the southern wind stir and raise the salty depths and fuse the black hills of the seaТs seething waters with thunder clouds, ripping fragile shipsТ rigging, destroying everything in its fury! Protected by the skies of my gentle homeland, I shall not burden the gods with prayers, but friendship and love, among the waves of life, will guide my bark unharmed into harbour.
6.
Omnipotent am I while weak, a ruler yet a slave. I lose no sleep if I do good or if I evil wreak. I give a lot, get little back, I answer to none but Number One, and if I want to beat someone, then IТm the one who gets the smack.
7. URANIA
It has been revealed! Is it not a dream? A new world! A new force, like a flame, has enfolded my ecstatic spirit! Who taught me, a youth, to soar like an eagle? Behold this priceless gift of the Muses! Behold these wings of inspiration! I fly and this world vanishes before me, this world, swaddled in a misty, constricting shroud of turmoil and vanity has gone! Like the sunТs golden beams, the ether has touched my eyes and blown earthly dust from them. I behold the dwellings of the all-highest ones whence, through open doors of mystery, by the good will of fate, MnemosyneТs daughters flow towards us, honour, joy, beauty for all races, for every age! ………. The measureless sea stretches under my feet, and in the blue light of the gentle waves the sky is aflame with burning stars, like the faces of gods in a pure heart. Expectation is like a quiet trembling. All around is sacred silence. ………. Behold! Like the moon emerging from clouds UraniaТs islet lifts from silvered foam. A steady light pours all around me born of the smile of goddesses. The sounds of lyres rise higher. The world drowns in enchantment! ………. Setting aside the shades of the ethereal cover and the CharitesТ magic belt, Urania has adopted her own image and a starry crown burns on the goddess! On earth, what captivated us as a dream presents itself up here as Truth. ………. Only here, under a clear sky, will lifeТs murky current brighten, only here, forgotten by Aquilon, it flows deep and bright! Only here is lifeТs genius fair, here, where roses of pure pleasure last forever, is PoetryТs garland eternally young! ………. Like Pharos for enlightened souls and minds, the temple of the Heavenly One has been erected and Wisdom invites those captivated by what is heavenly to taste the nourishing feast laid out up there. All around the beneficial one, in gold-blossoming dawns, on high thrones, in the radiance of gods, there sit in their splendour the saviours of mortals creators of good, of order, of cities. Behold eternally youthful Peace, with golden chains binding families, peoples, monarchs, Justice with its eternally unmoving scales, Fear of God, preserver of sacred altars, and you, Compassion, joy of those who suffer! You, Loyalty, your brow inclined against the anchor, Patriotism, the native landТs protection, and cold Valour with burning sword, you of the ever bright eyes, Patience, and Labour, you undeviating healer and minion. Thus do the highest powers hold counsel! ………. Among them, around them in sacred reverence, around the slopes of cloud-like mountains, flowing in mysterious circles, is the bright choir of the sciences and knowledge. Alone Urania, like a sun among the stars, preserves harmony and steers their paths. At a motion of her mighty staff the boon of enlightenment flows from land to land. Where formerly there was dark night, there is the phenomenon of radiant day, like a river of stars across the heavens reaching, she embraces the universe and pours lifeТs gifts onto the West, the East, the North and the South. Reveal yourself to me, universe of years which have flown by! Tell me, Urania where was your first temple, your throne, your people, teacher of all ages? The mysterious East! Your turn has been and gone! Your earliest day has flowed by! From nearby gates the Sun haughtily passes through the dwelling of its birth and flows on, languorous and doubting monarch. Where is Babylon here? Where Thebes? Where is my city? Where is illustrious Persepolis? Where is Memnon, my herald? They are not here! Its rays are lost in the steppes where they are sorrowfully met by the hunter or the ploughman, fruitlessly digging the burning sands or sadly, bashfully slipping across the mossy ribs of the pyramids. Hide yourself, gloomy aspect of frail glory! The sun hurries into the distance. On the shores of the Aegean the laurel has bowed a welcoming head to it, and on the hills of Hellas AtheneТs green myrtle has twined itself around its altar. The blind Singer called it to him in solemn song, horsemen and steeds, leaders and chariots, the assembly of gods who left Olympus, the mortal blows of AresТs hand, and the sweet songs of shepherds, Rome rose, and the thunder and sweet-sounding songs of Mars resounded a hundredfold across TiberТs hills, and the swan of Mantua, having ploughed up the ill-fated ashes of Troy, rose and poured his eternal light upon the seas! But what meets my gaze? Where, where have you hidden yourself, heavenly one? She flees, like a pale spectre in the dark. The worldТs morning star has set. Everywhere there is chaos and darkness! УNo! The light of the sciences is eternal It will not be embraced by the ungovernable gloom. Its fruit is imperishable and will not die!Ф Urania speaks and brandishes her sceptre, and from iron fetters, Italy liberates its pale, sore-covered head, tears the bonds of savage serpents, foot on the lionТs neck. Everything began here! The holy ground, valleys, the bowels of mountains, streams, woods and you, Vesuvius! You, fiery abyss, fearsome beauty of threatening nature! You have returned everything which, in insatiable fury, frenzied Saturn wanted to hide from us! The blossom of Hellas and of Rome has issued from the ashes! Once more the sun has begun to flow along its bountiful path. Nowhere will the ranks of dreadful battles nor spells, nor languid charms, nor massed hordes, nor malicious Hell, on his most sublime paths, forbid the eagle of Ferrara access: on fiery wings he has brought to the temple of Jerusalem victory and a crown. There the nymphs of the Tajo, there the waves of the Guadalquivir flow to meet you, young Singer, bringing to us songs from the shores of another world. But who are these two geniuses standing there? Like radiant seraphim, guardians of the gates of Eden and high priests of incomprehensible mysteries, one from BritainТs waters, the other from the Alps, they reach miracle-working hands to each other. Alien to what is earthly, they raise their eyes to the heavens in the heat of divine reveries! Why does the face of the watery depths burn? Where do the exultant waters of the Thames hurry? Why this sacred trembling, Alps, Appennines? Earth, be reverent! Lend your ears, people! The immortal singers promise you God: one, like the son of thunder, thunders about the Fall, the other, like grace, rings out salvation and the path which leads to the heavens. And behold, amid the snows of the deep land of midnight, beneath the glint of cold dawns, beneath the whistling of icy blizzards, he rose from Kholmogor, like a strong, high cedar, he stands, ascends and takes in everything around him with his strong boughs. Lifting to the clouds, his head glistens with immortal fruit and there, where gleaming metal is buried, there he digs through the soil with his deep roots. Thus the Russian Pindar arose! He raised his arms to the skies that he may block the path of flaming storms. With MinervaТs lance he struck the bowels of earth and golden treasures flowed forth. He stretched his imperial gaze across the sea and his light burns, like Castor and Pollux! ………. The singer, on the grave of the father, the hero-tsar, laid fresh laurels, and he has illuminated ElizabethТs priceless days of peace and bliss. Then, spilling out, light from the northern lights was reflected on the steep shores of the Araks and the geniuses reached their hands to gaze that way and a new Thebes gleamed red in the rays. There, there, in the land of the morning star, the singer of Felitsa arose! ………. He who keeps the secrets of destiny foresaw the hero-tsar in his cradle. He is now with us! He has flowed down from the heavens, The assembly of royal geniuses has flown down with him, has surrounded his throne, GodТs spirit reposes above him! The Muses have joyously sung the praises of You, oh tsar of our hearts — a Man on the throne! ………. By your all-powerful hand the gates of Janus have closed! You have protected us with silence. You are our glory, our beauty! Meekly bowing to your throne, storms sleep on high and in the vales. And here, where everything flows from your goodness, here, once again a genius of enlightenment, gleaming with the light of renewal, the happiness of his days is blessed! Here he swears sacred oaths that, constant, faithful, on his glittering height, following the behests and example of the monarch, he will rise, leaning on Faith, to his divine destination. 8. Inconstant, watery gulfs finally behind him, the swimmer attains the longed-for shores. In the harbour, his flight in the wilderness over, he re-acquaints himself with joy! Exulting, will he not then drape his mighty bark with flowers? Beneath their luxuriant, shining verdure will he not hide the scars of dark tempests and seas? ………. You too with fearless glory sundered the seasТ expanses with your rudder and today, my friend, stately in peace, rejoicing, you fly into your haven. Quicker to the shore, onto friendshipТs bosom incline your head, oh singer, that I might weave sprigs from ApolloТs tree into his foster-childТs hair!
9. ON PUSHKINТS ODE TO FREEDOM
Alight with the fire of freedom and drowning out the noise of chains, the spirit of Alcaeus has awoken in the lyre and slaveryТs dust has fled it. Sparks have scattered from the lyre and in a stream, like a divine flame, they have fallen onto the pale brows of tsars. ………. Happy is he who with a firm, bold voice, forgetting their rank, forgetting their thrones, is born to speak sacred truths to inveterate tyrants! And you, fostered by the muses, have been rewarded by this great lot! ………. Sing and with the power of euphony soften, touch, transform autocracyТs sold friends into friends of goodness and beauty! Singer, trouble not our civic calm, darken not the royal glitter! Beneath the kingly velvet, let your magic strumming soften hearts, without alarming!
10. CHARON AND KACHENOVSKY
Charon Are you really from the land of the living, brother? YouТre so dry and thin. In truth, IТm ready to swear here and now that your unclean spirit has long been languishing in Hades. Kachenovsky Well, friend Charon. IТm skinny and dry from books and — why hide it any longer? IТve been full of bile, vengeful and bad-tempered, my life as useless as a burned out match.
11. SOLITUDE (LAMARTINE)
Glancing from a craggy height, how often I sit pensive in the shade of dense thickets, eveningТs varied pictures unfolding before me. Here a river foams, the beauty of the valley, leaving me, fading in the dark distance, there the slumbering ripples of an azure pond are bright in deep silence. Through the dark foliage of trees I see duskТs last ray still wandering. The moon slowly rises from the north on a chariot of clouds and from a lone belfry drawn-out, indistinct peals are heard all around. The passer-by listens, and the distant bell fuses its voice with the dayТs final sounds. The world is beautiful! Yet rapture has no place in my withered heart! Like an orphaned shade I wander through a foreign land, dead, the light of the sun powerless to warm me. My gaze slips sadly from hill to hill, slowly extinguished in the fearsome void. Alas, where shall I meet that on which my gaze might rest? There is no happiness, for all natureТs beauty! And you, my fields, copses and valleys, you are dead! LifeТs spirit has flown away from you! What do you have for me now, joyless scenes? There is one missing from the world, and the whole world has emptied! Let day break, let nocturnal shades descend, both darkness and light are repellent to me. My fate knows no change and thereТs eternal grief in the deeps of my soul! But is the wanderer to languish long in his prison? When shall I abandon this earthly dust for a better world, that world where there are no orphans, where what you believe in comes to pass, where there are suns of truth in imperishable skies? Then, perhaps, there will shine through the saving object of my secret hopes, to which my soul here still strives, which it will embrace only there, in my native land. How brightly the assembly of stars burns above me, the divinityТs living thoughts! What a night has thickened upon the earth, and how dead this earth is in the sight of the heavens! A storm springs up and a wind, and a desolate leaf is eddied! And for me, me, like the dead leaf, it is time to leave lifeТs valley. Bear me away, tempestuous ones, carry off this orphan!
12. SPRING (DEDICATED TO MY FRIENDS)
Love of the earth, charm of the year, spring smells sweetly of us! Nature is throwing a feast for creation, a coming-together feast for its sons! ………. The spirit of life, strength and freedom rises, fans around us! Joy has poured into our hearts, like an echo of springТs celebration, like the life-creating voice of a god! ………. Where are you, sons of Harmony? Come, with bold fingers touch the slumbering strings, warmed by the bright rays of love, of ecstasy, of spring! ………. Just as in full, flaming bloom, at morningТs first, young light roses glisten and burn, as the zephyr in its joyous flight scatters their aroma, so do you, life-joy, pour yourself into everything. Singers, letТs follow you! Let our youth soar, friends, around the bright blooms of good fortune! ………. This feeble gift of grateful love is yours, this simple blossom, with little aroma. You, my mentors, will accept it with a gracious smile. Thus does a feeble child, as a token of its love, bring to its motherТs breast the flower it picked in a meadow!
13. A.N.M.
You have no faith in wondrous fancies. Reason has destroyed everything and, subjugating to constricting laws the air, the seas, the land, like prisoners, has laid them bare. It has dried to its depths that life which breathed a soul into the tree, gave body to the incorporeal! ………. Where are you, oh ancient peoples? Your world was a temple for all the gods, You read the book of Mother Nature clearly, without glasses! No, youТre not those ancient peoples! Our age, my friends, is not like theirs. ………. Oh slave of learned vanity, fettered by your science! Vainly, critic, you chase off their gold-winged dreams. Believe me — experience is all the proof you need the magic temple of good fairies even in a vision, is more joyful than, in waking life, languishing bored in your squalid shack!
14. HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE (SCHILLER)
Andromache Once more, Hector, do you hurl yourself into the storm of battle where, unapproachable with his sword of steel, the vengeful Pelides fights furiously? Who will look out for HectorТs son? Who will teach him his lordly duty, instil fear of the gods into the baby? Hector Am I to pine in burdensome peace? My heart thirsts for the coolness of battle, thirsts to avenge Pergamum, ancient dwelling of my fathers! If I fall, saviour of my homeland, I shall gaily go down to the shores of the Styx. Andromache In these halls of fame am I fated to see your sword idle and rusting? Are all of PriamТs kin condemned? Soon, where there is neither love nor light, where the dusky Lethe flows, soon your love will die! Hector All my soulТs hopes, all my impulses will be swallowed by the silent waters, but not HectorТs love! Do you hear? TheyТre rushing off… The flame of battle is burning! The hour has struck! My son, my wife, Troy! Endless is the love of Hector!
15.
Along the fateful shore of life, swept up and left by nature, a fiery and a lively youth played, unaware of danger. The Muse took in the orphaned boy and he became her family. She wore a rug of poetry, luxuriant and lovely. When heТd matured, nurtured by the MuseТs good example, a surplus of sensation led him off to FreedomТs temple. He made no gloomy offerings in the service of his idol, just proffering a fiery harp, just scattering some petals. There was one more priority, itТs worthy of a mention, for Cupid played around his head, demanding his attention. An arrow was the godТs kind gift. As soon as he was able, OrpheusТs wife became the subject of a fable. Reality was just a dream, his world was what he made it. Thus heТs attracted earthly fame, thus heaven will reward him. HeТs sharp of intellect and quick, of rich imagination, and only ever argued to defend his dissertation.
16.
Do not endow us with the spirit of idle gossip!Ф Okay. But from now on, we agree, by virtue of our agreement, donТt expect any prayers from me!
17. TO WINEТS DETRACTORS (FOR WINE, INDEED, BRINGS JOY TO MANТS HEART).
WeТre far too quick to criticise. WhatТs wrong with liking drink? Drinking wineТs a healthy joy no man of sense denies. ………. Curses and grief to those who dare to dispute whatТs so blatantly clear. I summon the heavens to the box to take the oath in this affair. ………. Our forebear took a bite — blame his wife or blame the snake — tasting the forbidden fruit. We know the rest. It served him right. ………. Well, I agree, it must be said, the old man was at fault, he knew he had the grape yet let an apple turn his head ………. Honour and glory has Noah earned, conducting himself with skill, becoming friendly with the wine when water he had spurned. ………. Neither quarrels nor reproaches could spoil his drinking pleasure, the juice of the grape he often poured into his cup at times of leisure. ………. All of his best efforts God himself has blessed. They both reached an agreement, divine good will to test: ………. Should any of his sons not learn to love to take a drink — the scoundrel! — Noah intervened: the blackguard was condemned to burn. ………. So let us stand and raise a glass letТs sup it out of piety, so that along with Noah through heavenТs gates weТll pass.
18. AN EPISTLE TO A.V. SHEREMETEV
Your good genius had difficulty getting you back home, my brother by blood and in sloth, away from manoeuvres and training, barracks, alarms, incarcerations, from your submissive, military existence. At home with your friends, in casual dress, reconciling peace with service, you have hung up your idle sabre in the hero-agronomistТs garden. Okay then. Free once more, could you ever be faithless to your favourite dream? Inactivity can spell trouble, friend, If youТve no-one to share it with. Take my friendly advice (the Oracle would speak in verse and always convinced its listeners): amongst the beauties of Moscow no doubt itТs easy to find a pretty girl of fifteen, whoТs bright, who has spirit and serfs. Leave for a while the plough of Tolstoy, forget chimerae and rank, get married and in the worldТs full sense be the aide-de-camp of your wife. Then weТll surrender to inspiration, Hymen will wake up the Muse. IТll sacrifice my sloth to her, just you overcome your own!
19. SONG OF JOY (SCHILLER)
Joy, first-born of creation, daughter of the great Father, as a glorifying offering we devote our hearts to you! Whatever the whim of the world has separated, your altar brings together once again, and the soul you have warmed drinks love in your rays! ………. Chorus Get into one circle, children of God! Your father is looking at you! His summoning voice is sacred and his reward is true!
………. Whoever has foreseen the sweetness of the heavens, who has loved on this earth, who has drawn joy from a dear glance, share our joy. Everything which one heart to anotherТs heart has echoed in a brotherТs breast, whoever cannot love, out of the circle with you, leave in tears! ………. Chorus Family of souls! Oh, heavenly ray! Almighty link! It leads to the heavens where the Unknown One dwells! ………. At the breasts of good nature everything which breathes drinks Joy! All creations, all nations are pulled along behind her. She has given us friends for times of unhappiness, the vine, the garlands of the Charities, sensuality to insects, to the angel — a place before God. ………. Chorus Hearts, what do you revere? Or is it the creator informing you? Here there are only shadows. The sun is there. Seek it above the stars! ………. Eternal joy feeds the soul of GodТs creation with the mysterious power of fermentation. The cup of life is ablaze. It has teased the grass up into the light, in suns it has developed chaos and in space, not subservient to the astronomer, it has poured it! ………. Chorus As worlds roll on one behind the other behind the ever-moving finger, we flow on to our destination bravely, like a hero to battle! ………. In the bright mirror of truth your image shines in our eyes, your jewel burns at the bottom of the bitter phial of experience. Like a cloud of coolness, you appear to us amidst difficulties, you shine like the morning of rebirth through the cracks in tombs! ………. Chorus Believe in the guiding hand! Our griefs, tears, sighs are preserved in it like a pledge and will be redeemed one hundredfold. ………. Who can comprehend providence? Who will indicate its path? In our heart let us seek revelation, the heart signifies the divinity! Away from the earth, enmity! Let soul be kin to soul! Let us sacrifice vengeance and buy friends, purple — with the price of sackcloth. ………. Chorus We have forgiven our foes. In the book of life there are no debts, there, in the sanctum of worlds, God judges how we have judged! ………. Joy swells the grape, joy fires the cups, softens the heart of the savage, enlivens the breast of the despairing! The foam sparkles up to the sky. Hearts are fuller. Friends, brothers — onto your knees! This cup is for the all-bountiful one! ………. Chorus You, whose thought gave birth to spirits, you, whose glance has burned worlds! Let us drink to you, great God! Life of worlds and luminary of souls! ………. To the weak — brotherly service, to the good — brotherly love, the loyalty of oaths — to friend and foe, as a tribute to duty — all the heartТs blood! The bold voice of the citizen to the council of earthly gods. Solemnise the sacred deed. Eternal shame to his enemies. ………. Chorus Our hand to yours, father, we stretch for all eternity! Give eternity to our oaths! Our oaths are the hymn of hearts!
20. TEARS
O lacrimarum fons…. Friends, I love to let my eyes caress the sparkling, deep red of the wine, or peer through the foliage at the scented ruby of the vine. ………. I love to watch creation deep in spring time in sweet fragrance when the world is slumbering sweetly and is smiling in its sleep! ………. I love the face of a pretty girl ablaze in the breeze of spring, her cheeks folding into dimples, the sensual silk of her curls. ………. But what are VenusТs delights, the juice of the grape and rosesТ aromas, compared to you, oh sacred well of tears, the dew of the godТs morning light! ………. Heavenly beams play upon them and, refracted in fiery showers, on the storm-clouds of existence they sketch rainbow-living colours. ………. And should the pupils of mortal man be brushed by the wings of the angel of tears, then the mist will vanish in tearful swirls and a sky of seraph faces will before our eyes unfurl.
21. FROM A FOREIGN LAND (HEINE)
In the gloomy north, on a bleak crag, a lone, white cedar stands in the snow and has fallen sweetly asleep in the frosty mist, and the blizzard lulls its sleep. ………. It dreams all the time of a young palm which, in the EastТs distant regions, beneath a burning sky, on a scorched hill, stands and blossoms, alone.
22. (HEINE)
Be open with me, my love: are you some spectre of the sort occasionally produced by the poetТs fiery mind? ………. No, I canТt believe that: the dear light of these cheeks, of these eyes, this little anlge mouth, no poety will conjure that up. ………. Basilisks and vampires, the winged horse and the toothed serpent, these are his idolТs dreams, this is what the poetТs good at dreaming up. ………. But you, your airy figure, the magic colour of your cheeks, this artfully submissive glance, no poet will come up with that.
23. TO MY FRIENDS (ON SENDING THEM SCHILLERТS SONG OF JOY)
Friends, what the divine one sang in a fiery outburst of freedom, in the full emotion of Existence, when to natureТs feast the Singer, her favoured son, called all nations into one circle, and with an exulting soul, in his eyes, a life-creating ray, from the foaming cup of Genius, drank the health of people! ………. Should I then sing this sacred hymn far from those close to my heart, in anguish which I cannot share, to sing of joy on my silent lyre? Gaiety has lost its voice in her, its playful strings are soaked by tears of sadness and torn by Separation! But, friends, youТre no stranger to inspiration! In a secondТs heartfelt ecstasy involuntarily IТd forgotten my lot (a transient, but sweet oblivion!) I flew in soul to what has taken its course and sang of joy while I thought about you.
24. TO N.
Your dear gaze, with innocent passion filled, the golden dawn of your heavenly feelings serve as a silent reproach to them, at propitiation it is unskilled. ………. These hearts in which there is no truth flee, my friend, as they would flee a judgement, fearing as they fear childhood memories the loving gaze of your youth. ………. What is good for me are your eyes, like the water of life, in the deeps of my being, your living gaze which lives in me — deep down I need it, like breath, like the sky. ………. Heavenly, shining only in the skies, such is the light of souls in bliss, During nights of sin, this pure flame burns in a fearsome abyss.
25. TO NISA
Nisa, Nisa, just get lost! My friendship means nothing to you. You played with me and then you tossed me away from those who admire you. ………. Indifferent and carefree, you gullible little tease, you do like laughing at me. My gift of true love couldnТt please. ………. Nisa, Nisa, IТd have been true, but you prefer to play the field. It seems my feelings just never appealed. Nisa, IТve just had enough of you!
26. THE SONG OF THE NORSE WARRIORS (HERDER)
Cold, bright, day has awakened. The early cock has shaken its wings. Warriors, leap up! Rise, oh friends! Brisker, brisker to the feast of swords, to the fight! ………. Our leader is before us! Be men, oh friends, and behind the mighty one let us strike like a storm! ………. We shall hurtle like a whirlwind through clouds and thunder, to the sun of victory following the eagle! ………. Where the battle is darkest, the warriors closer, where shields are spliced, where swords are woven together, there he will strike, the all-scattering Thor, and a fiery-starred path burning with blood he will slash through to his men in the iron night. After him, after him, into the ranks of the enemy, bolder, friends, after him! Like mountain masses, like a sea of ice, we shall tear through and constrain them! ………. Cold, bright, day has awakened. The early cock has shaken its wings. Warriors, leap up! ………. It is not a foaming cup of fragrant mead which the rosy morning hands to the heroes, nor does the love and conversation of voluptuous women warm your soul and enliven your life, but you, renewed by the coolness of sleep, will be carried up by the waves of bloody battle! ………. Warriors, leap up! Death or victory! To the fight!
27. THE GLEAM
Have you heard an Aeolian harp deep in the night carelessly brushing midnight, sleeping strings waking to trouble the silence, resounding, fading fast, as if a final cry of anguish had echoed there and died? The breezeТs every breath stings them to sorrow: perhaps a lyre fell to earth, playing dirges for lost bliss. Captive, our souls soar in immortal skies, gathering memories as we gather the dear shades of friends, clasping them tight against our breasts. How readily we believe with living faith, how glad and bright our hearts become: youТd think the sky had turned to ocean in our veins, had coursed and swept us through them! Such a lot cannot be ours. Strangers to the sky soon tire. We are common dust. We cannot breathe such fire. With a momentТs effort we barely manage a short-lived, troubled, trembling glance from the window of our daily dream, half-rising, staring round the sky. The sky is weighty on us. A single beam can blind us and weТll fall. Peaceful sleep does not await us. Exhausting dreams reclaim us.
28. IN MY ALBUM FOR MY FRIENDS (BYRON)
As the travellerТs attention tarries on cold tombstones, so let my friendsТ attention go to the writing of a familiar hand! ………. In many, many years it will remind them of a former friend: УHeТs no longer with you, but his heart is buried there!Ф
29. SAKONTALA (KALIDASA/GOETHE)
What the young year gives to flowers — their maidenly blush, what the mature year gives to fruit — their royal purple, what pampers and gladdens the glance, like a pearl, growing in the seas, what warms and enlivens the soul, like omnipotent nectar: the whole colour of the treasure box of dream, the whole, full colour of creation, and, in a word, a sky of beauty in rays of imagination, everything, everything Poetry has poured into you alone, Sakontala.
30. DECEMBER 14TH., 1825
Tyranny itself seduced you. Its sword has mown you like reeds. The Law is incorruptibly impartial. The LawТs infallible in word and deed. Disloyalty is shunned by our people. TheyТll scorn your names. Abuse will heap. Your sons will never know your exploit, hidden in time, a rotten carcass buried deep! ……….. Victims of foolish notions! Perhaps you had a youthful vision! Perhaps you thought you saw your thin blood trickling, covering the ice-caps as if alone it could thaw that age-old polar face. Why, it would scarce have time to sparkle when up thereТd gust a breath of iron winter to murder every tiny trace!
31. (HEINE)
Sadness stole into my heart and I vaguely recalled the past, everything was so cosy then, and people lived as in a dream. ………. Now itТs as if the world has disintegrated: everythingТs upside down, everyoneТs been knocked over. The Lord-God in his HeavenТs dead and SatanТs expired in Hell. ………. ItТs as if people live in the world reluctantly. Everywhere thereТs grumbling, everywhere thereТs dissent. Were it not for a crumb of love in a person, IТd have long ago left this world.
32. QUESTIONS (HEINE)
Above the sea, the wild northern sea, a young man stands, anguish in his breast, doubt in this mind, and gloomily he asks the waves, УOh settle lifeТs riddle for me, this agonisingly ancient riddle over which hundreds, thousands of heads in Egyptian, Chaldaean caps embroidered with hieroglyphs, in turbans, mitres and skull-caps, be-wigged and shaven, hosts of poor, human heads have spun and withered and sweated. Tell me, what is the significance of man?Ф Where is he from, where is he going, who lives above the starry vault? As they did before, the waves roar and grumble, and the wind blows, driving on the clouds, and the stars gleam cold and bright. The fool stands, waiting for his answer!
33. THE SHIPWRECKED MAN (HEINE)
Hope, love, everything, everything has perished! A pale, naked corpse thrown up by the angry sea, I lie on the shore, on the wild, bare shore! Before me is the watery wilderness, behind me, grief and misfortune, and above me the clouds indolently wander, the skyТs monstrous daughters! Into misty vessels they scoop the sea water and with their burden, tired, drag themselves into the distance and once again pour it into the sea! Joyless and endless labour, and vain, like my life! The sea roars, the sea bird moans! The past is wafted into my soul. Past dreams, extinguished visions rise, tormentedly joyful! A woman lives in the north! A beautiful image, regally beautiful! Her figure, shapely as a palmТs, is wrapped all around in white, voluptuous material, the dark billow of her luxuriant curls flows like a night of blissful gods from a head crowned with plaits and softly flutters in light ringlets around her pale, dear face, and from her dear, pale face her frank, fiery eyes shine like a black sun! Oh fiery black sun, oh how many, many times in your rays have I drunk the wild flame of ecstasy, drunk, grown number, shuddered, and with heavenly, dovelike meekness a smile has fanned across your lips, and your proudly dear mouth has breathed words as quiet as moonlight and as sweet as the fragrance of roses, and the spirit reviving in me has taken flight and soared like an eagle to the sun! Be silent, birds, stop roaring, sea. Everything has perished, happiness and hope, hope and love! IТm alone here, thrown up onto the desolate shore by the storm. I lie prostrate and with my glowing face I scrabble the wet sand of the seaТs depths!
34. (HEINE)
As the bright moon sometimes sails out from the clouds, so, alone in the night of the past, a joyous ray shines to me. ………. We were all sitting on deck, carried along by the Rhine, the green banks stretching out before us, ………. and at the feet of a charming lady I sat reflective, and on her dear, pale face the quiet breeze flamed. ………. Children sang, played tambourines, there was no end to the noise, and the sky became bluer, and the heart more spacious. ………. As in a dream, flying by went mountains and castles on hills and they shone, reflected in my dear companionТs eyes.
35. THE SPIRITТS GREETING (GOETHE)
On an old tower by a river the spirit of a knight stands
and as soon as he sees my boats, he sends them a greeting: ………. УBlood once boiled in this breast, my fist was made of lead, and there was a heroТs marrow in my bones, and I could knock the goblet back! ………. I stormed through half my life, and other half I wasted: and you sail on, sail on, little boat, wherever the current takes you!Ф
36. FROM WILHELM MEISTERТS APPRENTICESHIP (GOETHE)
1 He who has not eaten tears with his bread, who has not in life sat entire nights crying on his bed, is unfamiliar with the heavenly powers. ………. They lure us into existence, make a crime of weakness, and after it they torture us to death. No misdemeanour goes unpunished on this earth! 2 He who would be a stranger in the world will soon be one. Ah, people have someone to love, what are our needs to them! ………. So! What am I to you? WhatТs my misfortune to you? ItТs mine alone and IТll not be split from it! ………. As the lover steals hidden to his darling: УAnswer me, love, are you along?Ф so by night and day wandering around me goes anguish. Sadness is all around me! Ah, is it only in the grave that IТll manage to get away from them all? In the grave, in the damp earth, there theyТll throw me!
37. HEGIRA (GOETHE)
West, North and South are crumbling, thrones, kingdoms are being destroyed. Get yourself off to the distant East, drink the patriarchal air! In games, songs, feasting renew your existence! ………. There I shall penetrate in secret to the hidden sources of primeval generations which directly hear the voice of divine commands without racking their minds. ……….. Sanctifying the memory of our forebears, where foreign ways are sickened, where balance has been preserved in everything and thought is narrow, faith is spacious, where the strong, esteemed word is like a living revelation! ………. Now with shepherds beneath copses, now in the blossoming oasis I shall rest with a caravan, trading in aromatics. I shall keep an eye on all movements from the desert into the settlements. ………. The sacred songs of will sweeten the steep paths: their vociferous guide, singing in the pure firmament, awakens the late stars and irks the camelsТ steps. ………. Now I shall be intoxicated by indolence in baths, true to the teaching of : my lady friend tossing aside her veil, shaking ambergris from her curls, and the poetТs honeyed tones rouse desire in heavenТs maidens! ………. Do not impute this haughtiness to superstition, know that every word of the poet in a light swarm, greedy for light, knocks at the gates of paradise, imploring the gift of immortality!
38. A SPRING STORM
I love MayТs first storms: chuckling, sporting spring grumbles in mock anger, young thunder claps, a spatter of rain and flying dust and wet pearls hanging threaded by sun-gold, a speedy current scampers from the hills. Such a commotion in the woods! Noises cartwheel down the mountains. Every sound is echoed round the sky. YouТd think capricious Hebe, feeding the eagle of Zeus, had raised a thunder-foaming goblet, unable to restrain her mirth, and tipped it on the earth.
39. NAPOLEONТS TOMB
SpringТs soul brings nature back to life and everything shines, celebrating peace: the skiesТ azure, the blue sea, that wondrous tomb, the cliff! All around are trees in thick, new colour, their shadows, in the general silence, barely rippled by the breathing of the waves on the marble, warmed by spring. ………. A thunder of his victories long ago fell silent, but their echo still resounds. ………. A great shade has filled manТs mind, and his solitary shadow upon a wild shore, alien to everything, consoled by sea-birdsТ shrieks, listens to the oceanТs roar.
40. HIDE AND SEEK
ThereТs her harp in its usual corner. By the window, carnations and roses. On the floor a midday sunbeam dozes. TimeТs up. So whereТs she hiding? ………. WhoТll help me catch this teaser? Come on out, sylph! WhereТs your lair? I can feel your magical nearness abundantly poured into the air. ………
Carnations peak slyly, nestling beside more fragrant, warmer roses, but I know whoТs wrapped in your blossoms, I know who youТre trying to hide. …….. Was that your harp I heard? Do you think you can hide in its golden strings? YouТve brought the metal to life! I can feel it shuddering as it rings. ………. See the dust dancing in the sunТs shimmers, Like living sparks in kindred flames! Stop whirling, dear guest, magical being. How can I not know youТre there?
41. A SUMMER EVENING
Earth nods its head. A glowing sphere rolls into the ocean, which enfolds the calm, evening red. ………. Bright stars start rising, heads still moist. They take the sky and hoist it far over the horizon. ………. Sweetness shudders through the land as if, freed from the heat, natureТd scooped spring waters in her hand and splashed her burning feet.
42. OLEGТS SHIELD
УAllah, pour your light on us! Oh beauty and strength of the faithful! Terror of the two-faced heathens! Your prophet is Mohammed!Ф
………. УOh, our fortress and our bulwark! Great God, lead us now as once, from the desert, you led your chosen people!Ф ……….. Deep midnight! All is still! Suddenly from behind a cloud the moon shines down and there above the gates of Istanbul it lights up OlegТs shield!
43. A VISION
There is an hour at night when all the world is silent. Sights are seen. Miracles are done. The living horse and chariot of creation stampede the heavens in unbridled run. ………. Night draws in, thick Chaos heavy on the seas. Oblivion presses on the earth, like Atlas. Alone on the MusesТ virgin soul in seer-dreams the gods inflict unease.
44. BYRON (ZEDLITZ)
1 Come in with me — this dwelling is empty. The gods have let this house go to ruin. Their altar has been cold a long time and thereТs been no change for silence standing guard here. On the threshold the attendant does not meet us with a welcome. Only the walls echo our voices. Why, oh son of the Muse, most favoured son, you, endowed with the gift of the inextinguishably fiery word, why did you flee your own roof? Why did you betray your fatherТs hearth? Ah, and where, in untimely repose, did this tempest which carried you off, speed you? 2 So, a mighty dweller once lived here. Here he breathed song and his breathing did not seem like that of the playful babbling of the breeze in the fragrant bird-cherry. No, his song, more threatening than the thundering clouds, like divine anger, now brooding, now bursting into flame, hurtled across the misty firmament. Suddenly above a green cornfield or an unfading garden it tore off the rivets and spewed out darkness and ice and flame, scorched with fire and furrowed with hail. Only in those spots where the cloud had torn did the skyТs azure smile charmingly! 3 They say the frenzied singing of demons drove those who listened mad. Thus it was with him, like an unearthly force, it tore up all the depths of his souls and on the very bed it awakened crime. Breathing stopped, the heart ached and something constricted the breast. Like a layer of air, thinning all around, he sucked the living blood from our veins and in the struggle we ran out of strength and could not throw off the tyranny of the charm, while he himself, as if for a laugh, refused to wave his staff and break the fascination! 4 And is it any wonder that a memory of the sublime visited your soul with involuntary sadness! Fate did not create a swan of you, dipping its wing into the crimson waves when the sunset burns above the currents and it swims, admiring itself, between a dual dawn. You were an eagle and from your native crags where you wove your nest, and in it, as if in a cradle, storms and blizzards lulled you. You plunged into the skiesТ depths, inexhaustible, soared high above sea and earth, but your eye sought only corpses! 5 Ill-fated spirit! Like the glow of a conflagration was your bloodily-dull mirror, glittering in luxuriant, fresh bloom, so wildly reflecting the world and life! With the imprint of the sacred gift upon your brow and with the sceptre of power at this unearthly council in this confused world, you loved to send visions to trouble our mundane lives! In yourself, as if in an allegory, a menacing legend was resurrected for us, but our gaze cannot recognise you: are you a titan, whose heart is the food of the raven, or are you the raven, tearing the titan? 6 He abandoned the dwelling of his fathers, where their silent shades wander, where dear pledges have remained, and just as all day long the waves are stirred by the wings of the sea bird, dweller of bleak cliffs, so the gods decreed that he should pass along lifeТs road, nowhere finding a peaceful, bright haven! Vainly battling with people, with himself, he strove to grasp earthly happiness by force. Above him was Fate, inimical omnipotent! He followed it up to snowy summits, dropped down into dales, swam across sea-troughs! 7 Fugitive from his native land, the bard now hurtles to meet the sun, riding the tempestuous element, where Lisbon, glowing in the burning sky, is embraced by the golden crown of the azure bay, where the earth burns fragrantly and where fruits, ripening on dusty boughs, are yet more fragrant, fresher. Then he uttered a greeting to you, country of love, of heroism, of adventures, where even now their mellifluous genius seems fanned by the magic light of AlhambraТs patterned colonnades or the sweet-scented thickets of Granada! 8 Now laying out a devout funeral feast, surrounded by a swarm of departed spiritis, anguished he walks around that plain, where the world cast its die in glorious battle, where this fearsome, iron justice was meted out! This land, branded by fate, beneath the keen foot still trembles involuntarily even now, like a tundra of blood. Here, in dreadful torments, ranks of valiant hearts have been trodden into the ground and their ash lies layered around the plain. Enemies, they fell quiet together, some thirsting for, some thrilling in their vengeance! 9 The bard goes on and sees before him the grape-bearing, eternally youthful Rhine, and here and there, on vine-covered heights, a castle flashes, even today fanned by magic, mistily golden legends! And there in the distance, shining and cold, a massive titan has risen up, Switzerland! There, life is as if behind a fence. The horn blows, torrents sing more freely, in the mountains, as if in the chalice, lakes are deep, there is light on the hills, in the valleys cool shade and above it all icy heights, now pale, now fierily alive! 10 Then from the heights, where waters separate into the wide, southern plains, hurling their currents as if going to a feast, whence more than once, like glacial avalanches northern tribes have torn down into Italy, his own estate, he takes his inspiration. The heavenly spirit moves around this land of wonders, he rocks the high laurel and dark myrtle, he breathes beneath the vaults of bright mansions, takes away from blossoming breasts the scent of roses and rustles like a transparent blanket above the slumbering, ruined past! 11 But to the blossoming, deserted East the singer was drawn by an all-powerful passion, to his imaginationТs favourite land! Once more before his demise he saw this world of violence, indolence, voluptuousness, where life and destruction embraced in luxuriant desolation and like friends in the evening light mountain peaks grew, where once there lived happy brigandage. There, beyond the cliff, is the pirateТs white sail, here the horn of the moon, burning on a mosque, and the pure remains of the Parthenon against the virginal rosiness of the heavens. 12 But you annulled the union of this creation, spirit of freedom, immortal element! Battle flared up between Despair and Power! Blood flowed like spring waters and in the night the earth drank them without a twinge of conscience. Only a glowing, like a lamp above a grave, burned above it on high. And will it happen soon — only providence knows — will dawn come and will the tempestuous gloom disperse? But let the young day brighten with love on the spot where the spirit of the singer wanders, where in the gloaming of sickly hope death closed his earthly eyelids! 13 The singer faded away on the sacrificial altar of battle! But nowhere did his song fall silent, though from his breast, torn by passions, more than once it flowed bloodily, the magic staff never fell from his hand, but it moved only the powers of hell! At odds with the heavens the high divinity of suffering was for him a hostile riddle and, drinking to his fill from the healing cup, he thirsted for poison, not for healing. His eyes stared into the subterranean horror. He turned his back on the starry glory of the night! 14 Thus he was, mighty, majestic, exulting critic of creation! But is his lot worthy of envy? Like the parental gift of existence he acquired that which was conferred by fame! But was he, appropriated by this demon, either fortunate or at peace? The shining of the stars, the happy beam of the morning star only rarely blew away the gloom of his soul where storms howled. He has quietened now, a burned out volcano. And the late luminary of immortality sadly looks down on him from the night skies.
45. THE MEANS AND THE END
IТm in no hurry to receive garlands from you, though I am partial to your praises when I meet them along the way. ………. Although the ballast does not determine where and how the ship will float, it certainly alleviates its voyage.
46. TO THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I
Oh Nicholas, conqueror of peoples, you have justified your name! You have conquered! You, the warrior raised up by the Lord, have restrained the fury of his foes. The end of cruel trials has come, the end of unspeakable torments has come. Exult, Christians! Your God, the god of grace and battle, has wrenched the bloody sceptre from unclean hands. ………. It is to you, to you, the ambassador of his commands, to whom God Himself has entrusted His fearsome sword to lead his people from the shades of death and forever sever the age-old chain. Above your chosen head, oh tsar, grace has shone like a sun! Paling before you, the moon is wreathed in darkness. The Koran will not hold sway. ……….
Hearing your wrathful voice from far away, the Ottoman gates trembled. At the mere wave of your hand they will fall to the foot of the cross. Complete your work, the salvation of people. Say, УLet there be light!Ф and there will be light! Enough bloodshed, tears shed, enough beaten woman and children, enough has Mohammed cursed Christ! ………. Your soul does not thirst for earthly fame, your gaze is not fixed on the mundane. But He, oh tsar, by whom powers are kept in place, has pronounced sentence on your foes. He himself turns his face from them. Blood has long since washed away their evil power. Above their heads the angel of death patrols. Istanbul retreats. Constantinople rises once again.
47. INSOMNIA
Monotonous dying of the hours: midnight is telling a tedious tale in a foreign language we canТt fail to recognise as ours. ………. Who can claim it never befell him to hear timeТs muffled groans stab his soul at night, the drone, when allТs quiet, of a prescient farewell? ………. ItТs as if the world had been orphaned by irresistible fate chased and caught, and nature, after we had fought, had marooned us, each on his separate island. ………. Before us there stands our existence, a spectre on earthТs edge, and with our friends and with our age it pales into the distance. ………. While under the sun there is a birth, a new and youthful tribeТs begotten and it has long since been forgotten that we, our friends, our age, were ever on this earth! ………. At times, performing some gloomy rite, we can her metallic sighs bemoaning our demise in the silence of the night.
48. MORNING IN THE MOUNTAINS
Morning smiles blue across country refreshed by rainstorms over night. Dew-bespeckled, through the mountains a valleyТs a snail-track of light. Above it all the soaring summits are half in misty curtains caught, as if they were the airy ruins of castles sorcerers had wrought.
49. SNOWY MOUNTAINS
Midday soars. It pauses, now holds steady. It sears the grasslands, skims and scalds the rills. Its sheer rays strike dusky woods which spread beneath the haze. Below, there is a steel-bright mirror. Blue currents in the lake invite quick streams to leave the heat, to scamper by smooth boulders and plunge beneath the waters into kindred dreams. While in blissful, fragrant sweetness, spread-eagled in the sweltering haze, far overhead, like gods we know as cousins, above the land thatТs left to die, the mountainsТ icy peaks play with the fiery blueness of the sky.
50. THE FINAL CATACLYSM
When natureТs final hour strikes and earthly matter has disintegrated, the visible universe will be flooded. In the waters GodТs face will be reflected.
51. TO N. N.
You know how to love. YouТre such a good actress, and when weТre in a crowd (and they canТt see us!) and my leg touches yours, you answer me without a blush. You always look so absent and youТre callous. As your breasts move, as you glance around and smile, that hateful guardian of a husband admires your servile beauty! Thanks to people, thanks to fate youТve learned the cost of secret joys. YouТve learned about the world, that world which will betray us! Treason flatters you! VirginityТs first blush has left your youthful cheeks, as morning sunshine ravishes young roses of their sweet-smelling soul. So be it! In scorching summer heat our feelings are more flattered, our eyes more tempted by parting a vine in the shade and watching the grape, through dense, tight leaves, oozing its blood.
52.
The happy day was loud and streets shone with crowds and shadows, cast by evening cloud, flew across bright buildings. From time to time the noise would float to me, sounds of heavenly existence, theyТd merge into a single note, a hundred sounds, loud but muffled. The day moved on. I fell asleep. SpringТs languor exhausted me. Was my oblivion fleeting? Was it deep? More strange was the awakening. The hubbub in the streets had stilled. Silence reigned completely. On the walls, where evening shadows milled, something somnolent was glittering. Through my window panes there gleamed a pallid star which kept a secret, and as it peered at me it seemed it was a guardian of my slumber. It seemed to me as if IТd been abducted by some loving genie which craftily and quite unseen had sped me to a land of shadow.
53. EVENING
Melting in the air above the valley, distant bells are chiming like flocks of flapping cranes, dying away in the rustle of leaves, bright, like the swelling sea of spring, crystal-like, like day at a distance, while faster, quieter, shadow lies around the valley.
54. MIDDAY
Misty noon breathes idly. Idly waters play. Pure skies are sun-scorched. Cloud-wisps idly melt away. Clasped in hot embrace, nature drowns in sultry doze. Pan himself seeks calm, deep in the quiet of caves, deep in nymph-repose.
55. THE SWAN
Eagle, plumb the clouds, talk to lightning, drink sunlight into your motionless eyes, but envy the swan, the pure, white swan. In a dual abyss, the deity has clothed you in the pure element, that god which cherishes omniscient vision, so that the swan is captured, surrounded on all sides by the full, starry glory of the sky.
56. SCENES FROM A JOURNEY (HEINE)
УItТs going to be a nice dayФ, my friend said, glancing at the sky from the window of the carriage. Yes, itТll be a nice day, my praying heart repeated, and it shivered in sadness and bliss! It will be a nice day! The sun of freedom will burn more animatedly and hotly now than the aristocracy of nocturnal luminaries! And the happiest tribe will bloom, conceived in arbitrary embraces, not on the iron bed of coercion beneath the strict customs scrutiny of the spiritual police, and in these souls, free-born, there will flare boldly the purest fire of ideas and feelings incomprehensible to us, by nature slaves! ………. Thus I thought and climbed from my carriage and with a sincere, morning prayer stepped onto the dust, sanctified by immortality! As beneath a high, triumphal vault of vast clouds, the sun rose victorious, bold and bright, announcing a fine day to nature. But at the sight I was so melancholy, like the moon, still a visible shade pale in the sky. Poor moon! In the deep night, alone, orphaned, it completed its bitter path while the world slept and only owls, apparitions and bandits caroused. And today before the young day, rising in glory, rays ringing forth joy and shot through with the dawnТs purple, it runs off. Just one more glance at the luxuriant universal light and like a fine wisp of smoke it flies from the sky. ………. Ah, equally incomprehensible to them will be that night in which their fathers joylessly languished their entire lives and carried on a despairing battle, a cruel one, against foul owls and subterranean vampires, monstrous things begotten of Erebus! Ill-fated warriors, all the spiritТs strength, all the heartТs blood we have exhausted in battle, and pale, prematurely decrepit, the late day of victory will light us up! The fresh immortality of the young sun will not enliven exhausted hearts, will not bring fire once more to dulled cheeks! We shall hide before them, like the pale moon! I donТt know nor do I seek to foresee what the Muse has in store for me! The poetТs laurels may or may not grace my gravestone! Poetry was to my soul a childlike-divine toy and the judgement of others perturbed me little. But place a sword on my tomb, my friends! I was a warrior! I fought for freedom, and served her in truth and faith in her sacred battle all my life!
57.
You saw him in polite company, one moment happy, getting all his own way, then gloomy, absent, unsociable, full of mysterious thoughts. Such was the poet. You despised the poet! ………. Look at the moon: all day it seems exhausted, a pitiful wraithe. Wait till night falls, then you see this radiant god enfolding sleeping copses in its beams!
58.
Among societyТs gossips, in the pointless noise of day, at times my gaze, my movements, feelings, words just canТt be happy, donТt know what to say. Forgive me, love! Look, in daytime misty-white, the bright moon barely glimmers, but let night come: it pours into a clear mirror the fragrant, amber nectar of its light!
59. FROM FAUST, PART 1 (GOETHE)
1 As in days gone by, before you is heard the dayТs luminary in the system of the planets and along its predetermined course thundering, it completes its flight! Seraphs marvel at it, but till now who has comprehended it? As on the first day, incomprehensible are the deeds, Almighty, of your hands! ………. And swiftly, with miraculous swiftness, the earthТs globe turns, replacing the quiet light of the sky with the deep darkness of night. The waves roar over the seaТs abyss, gouging out its rocky shore, and the chasm of waters with its cliffs the earth in its fast flight bears away! ………. And incessantly storms howl, and fling the earth from region to region, and oppress the waters and plough up the air, and weave a mysterious chain. The precursor-destroyer has flared up, tearing itself from the clouds, thunder has roared, but we in the world, all-retainer, praise your day and sing peace. The seraphs are amazed at you! The heavensТ praise thunders to you! As on the first day, incomprehensible are the deeds, Lord, of your hands! 2 УWho called me?Ф УOh, horrible sight!Ф УWith a powerful and persistent charm you gnawed my magic circle and not in vain, and now …Ф УYour aspect benumbs me!Ф УWas that not you praying, like one in a frenzy, to see my face and hear my voice? I inclined myself to your persistent call and here I stand before you! What despicable fear has suddenly possessed your soul, titan? Is this the breast whose creative power created a world, nourished and cultivated it and, hoping for unterrestrial valour, with indefatigable effort strove to bring itself up to us, the spirits? Is this you, Faust? And was that your voice, pestering me with despairing prayer? You, Faust? This poor, helpless dust, imbued throughout with my breath, shuddering to the very depths of his soul?Ф УDo not dispirit my head with this fiery contempt! You will not turn it aside! Yes, spirit, I am Faust, I am like you, I am your equal!Ф УThe tempest of events and the swell of the fates I turn around, I raise up, I hover here, I hover there, high and low! Death and Birth, Will and Fate, waves in conflict, elements in dispute, life in its changes, the eternal, solitary current! Thus does the fateful fabric hum on my loom, weaving for God a living garment!Ф УWith what insuperable affinity, immortal spirit, you attract me to yourself!Ф УOnly to that nature you have dreamed up are you alike — not to me!Ф
3 УWhat do you want of me, what do you seek in my dust? Sacred voices, you sing out there, there, where hearts are both purer and more tender. I hear the news, but can I believe it? Oh faith, faith, kindred mother of miracles, shall I dare raise my glance there, whence the blissful message flies? Ah, but accustomed from childhood to it, this kindred sound, this masterful sound still entices me to existence! It would happen that the heavens would kiss me in the silence of Sunday. I heard the trembling of sacred bells in the depths of my soul, and the prayer was living sweetness to me! The soulТs urge to be one with heaven carried me off to woods and dales and, drenched in warm tears, I created a new world for myself. About happy youthТs game, about bright spring would this glad news be. Ah, and at that solemn hour the recollection of them would master my soul! Sing out, voices, play again, sacred hymn! My tear flees! Earth, I am yours once more!Ф 4 Why destroy in empty depression the blissful possession of this hour? See how evening shines and scatters around the huts with their greenery. The day is through, and to other skies the dayТs luminary brings life. Oh, where are the wings that I might fly after it, sticking close to its rays, following its path? A beautiful world lies at my feet and, eternally evening, laughs. All the heights glow, there is peace in every valley, a silvery brook flows down to golden rivers. Above a chain of untamed mountains, silvan lands, the god-like flight is wafted, and already in the distance you can see shining in its gulfs the ocean. But the bright divinity inclines its head to the waters and suddenly the mysterious might of its wing has come to life again and chases after the departing one and once more the soul drowns in currents of light. Day is in front of me, night behind. At my feet a plain of water, the sky above my head. Lovely dream! A vain one! Farewell! To match the wings of the soul soaring above the earth, weТll not find corporeal ones in a hurry. But this gust, this urge skywards and into the distance, is a natural inclination, all people have it in their breast and at times it comes to life in us, when, during spring, above our heads, the larkТs song tinkles from a cloud, when over a steep, wooded slope the eagle, spreading its wings, soars, when over lakes or the empty steppe the crane hurries home. 5 There was a king, so few they are now, faithful up to his death. As he died, his loved one gave him a goblet. ………. He valued it greatly and frequently drained it, his heart beating strongly in him the moment he picked it up. ………. When his turn came to quit this world, he divided out his possessions, but did not give away the cup. ………. And into the castle above the sea he summoned his friends and, taking his farewells of them, he sat there carousing. ………. When he drank for the last time the fiery liquid, he leaned out over the abyss and tossed the cup into the waters. ………. To the bottom of the sea the goblet sank, it sank and vanished from view, his heart began to beat the king had drunk his last drop! 6 Almighty spirit, you have given me everything, everything I prayed for! Not for nothing did your face lean radiant to me! You gave me all of nature to possess and showed me how to love it. You allowed me not to be a mere, idly-amazed guest at her feast, but admitted me into the very depths of her breast, as into the heart of a friend! The ranks of earth-born filed past me and you taught me, in a thicket, in the open, or on the seasТ bosom, to see brotherhood there and to love it! When a storm creaks and whistles through conifers, a giant pine smashes the neighbouring trees with a crack in a crash of falling boughs, indistinctly a rumble arises all around and, unsteady, the hillsides groan. You lead me into a peaceful cavern, and you present me to the eyes of my very soul and its world, its wondrous world, you reveal for me! Let the all-sweetening moon rise in its meek brilliance and to me there fly from craggy mountains, from the humid pine forest, the silver shades of past ages, and in the stern consolation of contemplation they soften me with their mysterious influence!
60. FROM THE FIFTH OF MAY (MANZONI)
Lofty presentimentТs urges and languor, the soul, thirsting for mastery, in its seething aspirations, the coming together of designs as unfeasible as dream, ………. all of this he experienced, happiness, victory, incarceration, and all the partiality of fate, and all the bitterness! Twice he was cast down into the dust, twice he gained the throne! ………. He appeared: two centuries in cruel conflict, seeing him, suddenly made peace, as they would before omnipotent destiny. He commanded them to be silent and sat between them in judgement! ……….
He disappeared and in exile saw out his incredible times, the object of a measureless envy, of measureless compassion, the object of frenzied enmity, of blind devotion! ………. Just as over the heads of the drowning, growing into a huge wall of foam, is the wave which at first played with them, and the longed for shore vainly visible to palpitating glances appears from above, ………. so memory above his soul, gathering, lies heavy! How often this soul desired to speak out and, stupefied, onto the sheet already begun, the hand suddenly fell! ………. How often before dayТs end, a day of joyless torment, lowering his lightning-flashing eyes, folding his arms across his breast, he would stand, letting the past possess him! ………. In his mindТs eye he saw the campaign tents, the plains of battle, the long glint of infantry ranks, currents of cavalry formations, an iron world breathing by one command alone! ………. Oh, beneath such a burden his heart lost its energy and his spirit sagged … but a powerful hand came down to him and, merciful, to heaven raised him!
61. FROM PHEDRE (RACINE)
We had just left the gates of Trezene. He sat on his chariot, surrounded by his bodyguard, as silent as he. He took the Mycaenas road, absently giving his horses free rein, these lively, fiery horses, so proud in their usual ardour, today heads down, gloomy, quiet, seeming to be in accord with him. Suddenly from the watery depths a cry came, troubling the airТs silence, and at that moment some fearsome voice from beneath the earth replied with a groan. EveryoneТs blood froze in their chests and the keen horsesТ manes stood up. But then, white above the watery plain, a wave rose, like a mountain of snow, growing, getting nearer, smashing into the shore and throwing up a monstrous beast. Its head was armed with horns, its spine covered with yellowish scales. A terrible bull, a frenzied dragon, in innumerable coils it came out. The shore, shaking, groaned from its roaring, the day, indignant, shone on it. The earth shifted. The wave which had tossed it out, as if fear-stricken, lapped back. Everyone hid, seeking salvation in flight. Only Hippolytus, true son of a hero, only Hippolytus, allowing fear no access, stopped the horses, seized his lance and, flinging the steel with his accurate arm, opened a deep gash in the monster. The beast howled, feeling the pain of the spear. Raging, it fell at the horsesТ feet and, scrabbling at the ground, from its bloody jaws poured stench and flame around them! Fear seized the horses. They sped off, not heeding the voice, not obeying the reins. The charioteer vainly tried to tame them, but off they flew, blood from their mouths staining the bridles. Some god, it is said, with his trident prodded their steaming flanks. They flew across rocks, patches of undergrowth. The axle creaked and broke. The fearless Hippolytus from his smashed, crushed chariot fell to earth, enmeshed in the reins. Forgive my tears! This mournful scene will forever call tears from me! I saw, alas, your son dragged by the horses he had reared, bloodied, crying to them, his shouts scaring them more. They ran, they flew with the ripped driver. Behind them I sprinted with the guards, his fresh blood marking our path, blood on the stones, in the prickly thorns bloody clots of hair hanging. Our maddened cries carried across the land! But finally the crazed steedsТ ardour calmed down. They stopped near where your forefathers lie at rest in ancient tombs! I ran up, I called. With enormous effort opening his eyes, he gave me his hand: УThe might of the heavens kills me off in my prime. Friend, do not abandon my Aricia! When that day comes when my parent, dissipating the gloom of fearsome slander, is finally convinced of his sonТs innocence, oh, to console a complaining shadow, let him alleviate his prisonerТs lot! Let him return to her.Ф The hero died at these words, and in my arms which held him there remained a corpse, savagely distorted, a sign of the horrible punishment of the gods, unrecognisable even by a fatherТs eyes!
62. NIGHT THOUGHTS (GOETHE)
I pity you, hapless stars! So beautifully, so brightly do you burn, willingly lighting the marinerТs way, unrewarded by God or man! You donТt know love. YouТve never known it! Unstoppable, the gods of time lead you through the skyТs limitless night! Oh, what a path you have traversed since the moment when, in my sweetheartТs arms, I sweetly turned off from midnight and you!
63. FROM A MIDSUMMERТS NIGHTТS DREAM (SHAKESPEARE)
1 Lovers, madmen and poets are forged from one and the same imagination! One sees demons which donТt even exist in Hell (the madman, that is), another is equally insane, the passionate lover, seeing, entranced, HelenТs beauty in a dark-skinned gypsy. The poetТs eye, in bright frenzy, turning round upon itself, sparkles and slips from sky to earth, from earth to sky, and, let his imagination but create forms for unknown creatures, then the poetТs wand transforms them into people and gives aerial shades a place and a name! 2 The hungry lion has begun to roar and the wolf has howled at the moon. Having got through a day of labour, the poor ploughman has fallen asleep. ………. The coals are going out on the fire, the eagle owl has begun to screech and to the invalid on his death-bed has predicted an early shroud. ………. All cemeteries at this time from yawning graves into the moonТs damp dusk send forth their dead!
64.
Just as the ocean curls around earthТs shores, our earthly lifeТs embraced by dreams. Night comes and brings the element and night intensifies its roars. ………. Now, thereТs its voice, persisting, pleading. The magic skiff is straining to be free. Now out it goes, its human cargo leading into the dark, immeasurable sea. ………. HeavenТs vaultТs aflame with starry glory. From every side, as long as weТre afloat, its mystery staring from the deeps, that fiery chasm engulfs our boat.
65. FROM HERNANI (HUGO)
Forgive me, great Charles! Great, unforgotten, this voice should not be troubling these walls, disturbing your immortal dust, oh giant, with the buzzing of passions living but a moment! This European world, the creation of your hand, how great it is, this world! What a possession! With two chosen leaders above it and the entire purple-born throng beneath their feet! All other powers, authorities, possessions are legacies and accidents of birth, but God Himself has given the pope and the caesar to the earth and through them, providence makes chance observations of us. Thus it reconciles order and freedom! All of you, in disgrace serving the people, you, electors, you, cardinals, the diet, the synod, youТre all nothing! The Lord decides, the Lord commands! Let a thought be born among the people, a thought conceived over the ages, first it grows in the shade and rustles in hearts, suddenly it has become flesh, enticing the people! Princes forge a chain for it and stop its mouth, but its day has arrived and boldly, majestically it has stridden into the diet, appeared at the conclave, and with a sceptre in its hands or a mitre on its head, has pressed all crowned heads to the ground. Thus are the pope and caesar all powerful — everything earthly happens only by and through them. Like a living mystery heaven appeared on their earth and the entire world, peoples and monarchs, was given to them as a feast! Their will organises the world and encloses the edifice, creates and destroys. This one decides, the other divides. This one is Justice, the other is Strength — in those two exists their own supreme law and there is no other for them! When both leave the altar, one in purple, the other in the white garb of the tomb, the world, benumbed, sees this pair in the radiance of their magnificence, these two aspects of the divinity! And to be one of them, one! Oh, a disgrace not to be him! And in the breast to feed this urge! Oh, how fortunate, resting in his tomb, was this hero! What a fate God sent him! What a destiny! And what then? This is his tomb, here. So this is where it ends, alas, everything there was of the law-giver, the leader, the governor, the hero, the titan, his head rising above all times, like the one who ruled the whole of Europe, whose title was Caesar, whose name was Charles the Great, the most famous of famous names even today, great, as great as the world, and itТs all contained in here! Seek out dominions and weigh the handful of dust of him who had everything, his power revered as much as GodТs. Fill with thunder the whole of earth, build, raise up your columns to the clouds, ever higher, height upon height, although your fame has touched the immortal stars, thatТs its limit! Oh monarchy, oh power, oh, what are you? All the same, do I too not seek power? A mysterious voice promises me: It is yours. Mine. Oh, if it were but mine! Will the prophecy come to pass, to stand on the height and enclose creation on high — alone — between heaven and earth and see the entire world in echelons below me: first monarchs, then — at various stages — the elders of inherited and masterly households, there are the doges, the dukes, the princes of the church, there the sacred family of knightly ranks, there the clergy, the armies, and there, in the misty distance, at the very bottom, the people, innumerable (INDEC), the seaТs deep abyss tearing at its shore, the hundred-sounded rumble, cries, lamentations, occasional bitter laughter, mysterious life, immortal movement, wherever you cast your glance across the deeps, theyТre all in movement, a threatening mirror for the consciences of monarchs, the opening where the throne perishes and the mausoleum floats to the surface! Oh, how many enigmas there are for us in your dark confines! Oh, how many monarchies lie on the bed, like the skeletons of huge vessels constricting the free depths, but you breathed on them and the freight sank to the bottom! And all this world is mine, and I shall fearlessly seize the rod of authority in this world! Who am I? The progeny of dust!
66. THE SEA HORSE
Ardent horse, sea-horse, pale-green maned, gentle, loving-tamed, raging, wild-playing, fed by violent storms in GodТs open plains! He taught and trained you to play, to leap at will. ………. I love you when you bound madly, arrogantly strong, tossing your thick mane, sweating, foaming, dashing fast storms against the shore, gaily neighing, galloping, drumming cliffs with your hooves, white-flecked, flying!
67. THE SINGER (GOETHE)
УWhat sounds are they in front of my house, what voices before my gates? Let the song ring out before us in our high tower!Ф The king spoke, the page runs, the page returned, the king speaks: УQuickly, admit the old man!Ф ……….
УPraise and honour to you, oh knights, adoration to you, my ladies! How can one count the stars in the sky? Who knows their names? Though my gaze is drawn to this paradise of wonders, look down. Now is not the time To idly entertain my eyes!Ф ………. The grey-haired singer shut his eyes and gaily struck the strings. The eyes of the bold were bolder still, while the ladies bowed bashful heads. The king was captivated by the playing. He sent for a golden chain with which to honour the grey-haired singer! ………. УDonТt give me any golden chain. I am not worthy of such a reward. Give it to your knights, fearless in battle. Give it to your scribes, adding to their other toils this golden burden! ………. I sing at GodТs will, like a bird in the sky, not seeking recompense for my songs, for the song is reward enough! IТd ask one boon of you, just one, and thatТs a golden goblet filled with bright wine!Ф ………. He took the cup and drank it dry and spoke with heat in his heart: УLet God bless such a household where this serves only as a meagre gift! Let him send his favours to you and let Him comfort you on this earth just as you have comforted me!Ф
68.
Here, the sky stares inert at the gaunt earth. Tired nature, sunk in slumber, lies, fettered, nightmare-girt. ……….
Here and there, pallid birches, grey moss, scanty bush, like dreams tormenting us in fever, trouble the deathly, peaceful hush.
69. PEACE
The storm has passed. Thunder-smitten, the tall oak is prostrate, smouldering still, boughs trickling blue smoke through the greenery, where, for a while now, louder, fuller, throughout the storm-refreshed copse, bird-song resounds, and a rainbow has settled the end of its arc among the green summits.
70. TO TWO SISTERS
I saw you both together and at once saw you in her: that quiet glance, tender voice, that charm of early morning wafting from your head! ………. As if in a magic mirror everything was clearly defined again: the joy, the sadness of past days, your youth, now wasted, my love, now dead!
71.
I recall that day. For me, it was the morning of lifeТs day: silently, she stood before me, her breasts rising like waves, cheeks reddening, like dawn, getting hotter, glowing, burning! Then suddenly, like a young sun, a golden world of love burst from her breast and I saw a new world!
72. CICERO
The Roman orator was speaking as citizens started to fight: УI rose late, and while I was walking was chased and captured by RomeТs nightФ. So be it! But making your farewells, you saw in grandeur and with awe, RomeТs bloody star go down. ………. Blessed is he who visits this life at its fateful moments of strife: the all-wise sent him an invitation to speak with them at their celebrations. HeТs the witness of high affairs, knows their councils, sits on them, and a living god while there, has drunk immortality with them.
73. AN AUTUMN EVENING
In the brightness of autumn evenings there is a touching, mysterious charm: an ominous glitter, motley trees, a light, languorous rustle of scarlet leaves, a hazy, quiet blueness across the sadly orphaned world and, presaging gathering storms, at times a gusty snap of wind. Loss. Exhaustion. And on it all there is that gentle smile of fading which, in a thinking creature, we should call the divine shame of suffering.
74. LEAVES
Let pines and firs jut out all winter, curled up and sleeping through snows and blizzards. Their meagre greens, like a hedgehogТs spines, might never yellow — theyТre never fresh. ………. But we, weТre a light tribe, blossoming, glittering such a short time, guests on our branches. All the fine summer weТre beautiful people, playing with sunbeams, bathing in dews. ………. The birds have stopped singing, flowers stopped blooming, sunbeams have paled, breezes have dropped. So why hang on? And why go yellow? Surely itТs better to fly away with them? ……… Faster, wild winds, faster, faster! Snatch us quickly from boring boughs. Tear us, hurl us away. We donТt want to wait. Fly, come fly and weТll fly with you!
75.
Crossing Livonian fields … Baltic emptiness, sand and the dull emptiness of this colourless land allowed my soul to yield to contemplation of its former sad plight, a dark and bloody state when its citizens, prostrate, kissed the spurs of invading knights. I stared at a deserted water-course. Along its length were silent spinneys. I thought, УYouТve had quite a journey, you peers of the past, youТve forced a path into our lives from the shores of another time and place!Ф So many questions! Such frustration! I strive for an answer, I try to tease just one. But nature names no names, smiling in her ambiguous, mysterious way, like an adolescent, by chance peeking in on night games and keeping his secret during the day.
76.
Sand gives softly. Hooves sink. We ride. ItТs late. Light starts to fade. The shadows of the pines along the roadside have merged into a single shade. The woodТs dark heart grows denser, blacker. ItТs such a melancholy place! Night scowls, a hundred-eyed wild creature. From every bush it leers and pokes its face!
77. THE WANDERER
Zeus is kind to the poor tramp. His patronage enables this exile from the cares of home to sit as a guest at HeavenТs table! ………. This wonderful creation of their hands, this world so varied in its every feature, unwinds before him as he goes, for him to love, for him to use, to be his teacher. ………. Through hamlets, fields and towns the brightening road extending, he wanders freely the entire earth. He sees it all, to God his praises sending!
78. MADNESS
Where the earth is seered, in the skyТs misty haze disappears, in carefree gaiety lives pitiful insanity. ………. Beneath rays which burn, digging into flaming sands, his glassy gaze is turned to seek things far above the land. ………. Suddenly heТll leap, wary as a beast, pressing his ear against the parched soil, avidly sure some sound will reward his toil. With mysterious pleasure his features are creased. ………. He thinks he hears currents bubbling their mirth as they course beneath the ground, and he thinks itТs a cradle-song heТs found as they noisily burst from the earth.
79. THE ALPS
Throughout blue nights glisten mountainsТ eyes, eyes of death, eyes of fright, by icy horror paralysed. Charmed by some spell till DawnТs first beams, in hazy menace they dream, like all those ancient kings who fell. ……….
But let the East begin to shine and the fatal charms are broken. High up and first in line the eldest brother has awoken. From the head of the next there rolls a stream onto the heads of all the others, till, glistening in crowns of gold, all the familyТs resurrected with the brothers!
80. INFECTED AIR
I love GodТs wrath, this Evil! Invisible, mysterious, poured through everything: in the flowers, in the glass-clear stream, in the rainbow-rays, in the very sky of Rome. The same high, cloudless sky, your breastТs same sweet breath, the same warm wind rustling tree-tops, the same scent of roses…. All of this is death! ………. Who knows, perhaps nature has her sounds, aromas, colours, voices presaging our final hour, sweetening our final torment, and as the fates encroach and call earthТs sons from this life, perhaps their messenger uses them, weaving a veil to hid his face and his fearsome approach!
81.
We walk behind our age as Creusa walked behind Aeneas. As we go a little way, we weaken, but if we hurry on, we fall behind.
82. VERNAL WATERS
Snow is still white in the fields but spring is in the waterТs voice. Running, the waters wake the sleepy banks. They run, they glisten, they rejoice. ………. УSpring is coming, spring is coming!Ф in every direction they shout. УWeТre the young springТs runners, with the news she has sent us out!Ф ………. Spring is coming, spring is coming! In a bright, rosy round-dance plays a frolicking, happy bustle of MayТs warm, quiet days.
83. STAY SILENT!
Stay silent, out of sight and hide your feelings and your dreams inside. Within your soulТs deep centre let them silently rise, let them set like stars in the night. DonТt be heard. Admire them, DonТt say a word. ………. How can your heart itself express? Can others understand or guess exactly what life means to you? A thought youТve spoken is untrue. You only cloud the streams youТve stirred. Be fed by them. DonТt say a word. ………. Making living in yourself your goal. There is a world within your soul where mystery-magic thoughts abound. By outer noise they will be drowned. TheyТll scatter as day is bestirred. Just heed their song. DonТt say a word!
84.
As a piece of paper smoulders, catches, burns on glowing embers, the flames indistinct and hidden at first, licking, eating words and lines, so life is sadly gnawed away, vanishing a little at a time, so am I snuffed out, a fraction every day — intolerable monotony! Oh, my dear Christ, let me once, just once range flame-like at will, not languishing, and not tormented, bursting into brilliance before — just going out!
85. TO….
Lips which greet me with a smile, a young girlТs rosy complexion, your gaze which is bright and which sparkles…. it all entices me to pleasure. ………. Ah, this gaze in passionТs fire on gossamer wings sends out desire, and with some magical power locks hearts in its fabulous tower!
86.
Just as Agamemnon brought this daughter as an offering to the gods, asking the indignant heavens for the breath of fair winds, so we, over woeful Warsaw, have struck a fateful blow, and at this bloody price weТll buy RussiaТs integrity and peace. ………. Away from us, inglorious wreath woven by a servile hand! Not for the koran of autocracy did Russian blood run like a river! No! We were animated in the fight not by any love of carnage, not as trained and bestial janissaries, and not because, as executioners, we must subdue! ………. A different thought, a different belief beat in RussiansТ hearts: we needed to maintain the integrity of authority by the saving storm of example, to gather under one Russian banner kindred generations of Slavs, to lead them in the campaign of enlightenment, all of one mind, like a host! ………. This higher consciousness led our valiant people. It boldly takes upon itself the vindication of heavenТs ways. It senses above its head a star in the invisible heights and unswervingly follows the star to its mysterious destination! ………. Pierced by your brotherТs arrow, fulfilling destinyТs pronouncement, you fell, single-tribed eagle, onto the purifying fire! Believe the word of the Russian people: your ashes will be preserved by us in sanctity, and our general freedom, like the phoenix, will be reborn in them!
87.
УThe storm howls more evilly, screaming its spite. Caress me, my lover, cling to me tight.Ф УOh darling, I fear the skiesТ vengeful power. DonТt talk of forbidden love at this hour.Ф УThe song of the storm is so sweet as it gusts and lulls us on our bed of lust.Ф УOh, remember the sea and the miserable sailors, gracious lord, shelter all of those wretches.Ф УIn the seaТs broad ravines let the waves roam at will. They wonТt breach our refuge nor shatter this still.Ф УOh darling, donТt say that, such talk is not right. DonТt you know who is out on the ocean this night?!Ф Lamenting and trembling, her voice fades away and silent and still in the darkness they lay. The storm went quiet. The tempest cleared. The clock on the wall was all they could hear, and silent and still in the darkness they lay, and over the pair a strange terror played. Fearsome and sudden, thunder crashed round and the building was shaken right down to its founds. The baby screamed out, despairing and wild, and the mother leaped straight to the source of the sound, but the moment she reached the bed of her child she crashed to the ground in a swoon. In the lightning flashes which sundered the gloom, the ghost of her husband was clearly seen where he sat by the cot at the end of the room.
88. PEACE IN SPRINGTIME (UHLAND)
Oh, do not bury me in the damp earth. Cover me, hide me in the thick grass! Let breezes breathe and rustle in the grass, let a distant pipe play songs, let bright, quiet clouds sail above me!
89.
You were the best leaf on humanityТs high tree, nourished by its purest sap, grown in the sunТs purest rays! ………. More harmonious than all you shook with its great soul, prophetically talking with storms, happily playing with breezes! ……….
Not a late wind, not late summer rain tore you from your native branch. Fairer than many, outliving so many, you simply fell, like a leaf from a garland.
90.
Two demons served him. Two forces merged wondrously within him: in his head, eagles soared, in his breast, serpents writhed, a daring eagle-flight of wide-spanned inspirations, and in the very riot of audacity there was a calculating serpent. But not sanctifying power, a force of which the mind cannot conceive, illuminated his soul nor stepped towards him. He was of earth, not GodТs flame. He proudly sailed, despised the sea, but on the hidden reef of faith his fragile boat was smashed.
91. A PROBLEM
After tumbling down the mountain, a stone lies in a valley. How did it fall away? Right now, no-one knows. Did it tear from the heights on its own? Or was it cast down by the will of another? Aeons have flowed by, yet no-one knows the reason why.
92. A DREAM AT SEA
Our boat was being tossed by the storm and the sea. I slept as each wave for its whim toyed with me. Deep within me two immensities met. Helpless, I lay by their playing beset. All around me, like cymbals, the rocks clashed strong, the waves called each other, the winds sang their song. By all this chaos of noise I lay drowned, but my dream was borne over the chaos of sound. Magically silent, painfully bright, it flew lightly above the thundering night. Through the rays of my fever its world could be seen: the ether shone bright. The world became green. There were labyrinth-gardens, pillars and halls, assemblies were massed there, in silence stood all, I thought all were strangers, but many I knew, I saw magic creatures. Mystery-birds flew, The heights of creation, a god, I bestrode. Far beneath me a motionless universe glowed. But I heard from below, like a sorcererТs wail, the sea-deeps my wanderings stormed and assailed, and into my silence of dreams burst the lash of tempests, of howls, of the seaТs frightful crash.
93. (BERANGER)
IТm ending of days in a ditch. IТm weak and old with no strength to go on! УHe drinks, canТt you see?Ф they say about the tramp. Just so long as they donТt pity me! Some, walking off, shrug their shoulders, some throw the beggar a copper! How a nice journey, friends! Damn you all! I can finish my days without you! ЕЕЕ. IТve laboured through, IТve coped with the years, clearly people donТt die of hunger. Perhaps, I thought, on a bed they will at least let me die, but their hospitals and gaols are all full! You canТt even force your way in! You were nourished on the open road. Where you lived and grew (INDEC), old man, there you will die. ………. I approached master craftsmen to start with, wanting a trade in order to eat. УWeТve barely work for ourselves! Pick up your bag. Get out and beg.Ф I dragged myself over to you, rich men, gnawing at bones from your table, sharing the scraps with your curs, but I, poor man, wish you no ill. ………. I could have gone stealing, I, a wretched tramp, but shame always fettered my hand. Only now and then on the open road did I pilfer wild fruits from the trees. Because among you I have been a beggar, you made me an orphan for life. More than once I sat in the lock-up, but who sold you the sunlight? ……….. What are you and your fame to me, your commerce, your liberties, your victories? You are all wrong in my eyes. The beggar has no native land! Once, the armed intruder came and captured our splendid town, and I, like an idiot cried in vexation, cursing the foe who fed me! ………. Why did you not crush me like some venomous reptile? Or why did you not teach me — — alas! — to be a useful bee? From your embraces, mortal folk, I was excluded from my earliest years. IТd have blessed you, brethren, I would. Instead, as he dies, the tramp curses you!
94. THE SKALDТS HARP
Skald-harp, long ago your poet-master left you to oblivion in this dusty room, but as soon as the moon, enchanting the gloom, splashes a ray in your corner, then your strings perform a magic tune, like troubled souls in delirious swoon. When it breathes on you, what life swirls in your heart as you recall past days? Memories of nights when voluptuous girls told old stories, sang sweet lays, or when, in these gardens still fair and green, seeking trysts, their light feet tripped unseen?
95.
I like the service of the Lutherans. Their worship is severe, simple yet imposing. I understand the lofty lessons in these bare walls, in this empty temple. ………. CanТt you see? Preparing to leave, faith presents itself to us for the final time: itТs barely crossed its threshold, yet already its house stands bare and empty. ………. ItТs barely crossed its threshold, the door not closed behind it, but here its hour has struck. Pray to God. ItТs the last time you will pray.
96. (HEINE)
With which of the two has fate decreed that I should fall in love?
Daughter and mother are fair indeed, like each other, each uniquely charming. ………. How her untried, youthful members sweetly agitate my mind! Yet the charm of those brilliant glances is omnipotent over my soul. ………. Flapping my ears in contemplation, I stand just as BuridanТs friend did, between two hay ricks, staring, wondering which of the two would be the sweeter?
97.
From land to land, from town to town like a whirlwind, Fate sweeps people on. It may suit you or it may not, why should it care? — Move on, move on! ………. A well-known sound is blown: the wind sings loveТs final farewell. So many tears are left behind. Ahead, thereТs mist. Ahead is the unknown! ………. УOh, wait, look back!Ф Where are you running? Why run at all? LoveТs dropped behind WhatТs better in the world than that? ………. LoveТs still falling back, in tears and in despair. Have pity on your pain, your bliss you should spare! ………. Bring to mind the bliss of so many, many days. All thatТs dear to your soul youТre abandoning along the way! ………. ItТs not the time to summon shades: that time is now dead dark. The shadows of departed souls are far more dread, the dearer they were. ……… From land to land, from town to town, a mighty whirlwind sweeping people on. It may suit you or it may not, why should it ask? — Move on, move on!
98.
I remember a golden time. I remember a country my heart loved well. Day became dusk. We were together. Below us in shadow the Danube sang. Where, white upon a hill, a ruined castle stared into the distance, you stood, young elfin creature, leaning on the mossy granite. Your young leg touched the age-old keepТs remains while the sun dallied in its farewells to the castle, the hill and to you. A quiet, passing breeze playing with your dress, and from wild apples, flower after flower strewn lightly around your shoulders… Without a care, you stared into the distance, the skyline dimmed in hazy beams. The day burned out, the song called louder from the river in its darkening banks. In carefree joy you spent the happy day. Sweetly the shade of swiftly-flowing life passed over us and flew away.
99.
My soul, youТre an Elysium of shades, silent shades, beautiful shades which shine and play in this stormy age no role, having no part in joy, in grief, in anything of their design. ………. Elysium of shades, yes, you my soul! Can you and life have my dealings, you, ghosts of all my best, now long-past days, estranged by poles from men who have no feelings?
100.
How sweetly sleep lies on the green garden taken by nightТs blue in blissful swoon, and through the apple-blossom-whitened boughs how sweetly filter rays from the golden moon! As on the first day of creation, with mystery the starry hosts burn in the shoreless sky, and there are heard the shouts of distant music, still louderТs the voice of the brook nearby. Across earthТs day thereТs been unfurled a curtain All movementТs been exhausted, energyТs consumed. Above the sleeping town, as if in forest-summits, a wondrous nightly humming is resumed. Where is it from, this noise beyond our comprehension? Has sleep let loose a spirit-world of thoughts,
the thoughts of men (we hear them yet see nothing) to crowd with them the chaos night has brought?
101.
No, Mother-Earth, my tenderness for you IТm powerless not to display! I do not thirst for pale delights of fleshless spirits. Your loyal son IТll stay. Compared to you what are the joys of heaven, or of spring, when love is in full stream, or the blissful world of May in flower, or the golden sun, or the glow of dreams? ………. IТd rather spend all day in deep inaction, springТs warm air drinking deep and true. At times, across the distant, pure skies sail cloud-wisps which my eyes would eagerly pursue. IТd wander aimless, doing nothing, and stumble inadvertently upon a lilacТs fresh aroma, or on a shining reverie.
102.
Silent air enwrapping me, storm-threatening, crickets louder singing, rosesТ aromas sharper rising …. ………. From behind a white, hazy cloud thunder rattles round the land. Lightning scampers round the sky, sewing for its waist a band. ……… Life-surplus overflowing, nectar pouring through the air, scorching, melting through my veins, burning … ………. Girl, what things excite the gauze across your breasts, darkening and troubling your eyesТ moist light? ………. Why do you turn so pale? What chases your maidenly blush? What presses onto your bosom? Why do your lips start to flush? ………. Through silken lashes tears form — are they early raindrops of the coming storm?
103.
Willow, why do you lower your head to the river, letting, like hungry mouths, your leaves a-quiver try to catch the fleeing stream? ………. All the longing, all the shuddering of every leaf above the stream! Still the river runs and glistens, basking in the sun and splashing, flowing by and mocking you.
104.
Foul night, misty night … Is that a skylarkТs voice, is that you, morningТs lovely guest, at this late, dead hour, pliant, playful, bright with song at this dead, late hour? Like the fearful laughter of the insane, it wrenched my soul. It caused me pain.
105.
Into the grave the coffinТs lowered. All around, the mourners press. They jostle, pushing, breathing heavy. Corruption presses on my breast. The grave is still uncovered. The pastor stands just where the coffin lay. He is dignified and learned. His funeral sermonТs under way. ManТs fragility he preaches, the Fall, the blood which Jesus shed. We hear this clever, worthy discourse. In different ways our thoughts are led. ………. Incorruptible, pure, boundless over all the earth — the sky! And birds! Their voices bursting loud, wheeling round the airy world, they scatter, sing and fly!
106.
The east whitened. We were scarcely moving. The canvas gaily flapped against the prow. As if the sky had been upturned, the sea beneath us trembled. ………. Dawn reddened and she had started praying. SheТd worn a veil. She took it from her brow. She breathed a prayer, and when she turned the sky within her eyes exulted. ………. Dawn flamed. Her head was slowly sinking. Her neck gleamed whitely, cowed, and down her youthful cheeks were burned the traces of her fiery tears.
107.
Blue-grey mingling. Colour darkening. Silence possesses sound. Life and movement have drowned in the rippling unrealness of dusk, in a distant hum. Unseen in the night, a moth sings. Longing seeks words. Anguish comes. Everything is me. I am everything. ………. Quiet twilight, sleeping twilight, pour into my being. Silent, aromatic languor, take the world, flowing, bring peace, bring still. Oblivion, haze. Sensation, take me, overfill my soul, give me void. In the worldТs sleep pour me, fold me, let me be destroyed!
108.
The kite lifts from the field. It heads towards the sky. Sharper it wheels, higher weaving flight. It strikes the sky-slope, dwindles, leaves my sight. Nature, you give such gifts! Strong wings! They pound with life, with force, unbridled power they lift! While on the dusty earth and in my sweat stand I — Earth-King! This king would leave his earth. This king would like to try!
109.
What a wild ravine! A spring runs at me, hurrying down to a house-warming. I stay up here where the pine stands. Now IТm higher still, sitting, joyful, quiet. Run to your valley. Go on, stream, see what itТs like among people!
110.
The whole world starts as sunlight streams to wake it, like a bird which shakes its feathers. Fine, fine! Beneficial dreams have passed my by while visiting the others. Despite the morning freshness wafting through my tousled hair, I feel a heavy weight upon me: yesterdayТs dust, yesterdayТs glare! ItТs all so piercing and savage and I detest in every way the shouts, the talk, the tumult, all the movement of the youthful, fiery day! Red rays falling seer my eyes. Night, night where are your covers, your dusky silence, dews, your cool moonrise? GenerationsТ ancient remnants, you who have outlived your age, how valid, yet without foundation, your grievances which fill a lengthy page! How sad to be a dusky shadow whose limbs and bones are tired and frail, to have to meet the sun and movement, behind new tribes to trail.
111.
Far into the shining distance, where the fleeing mountains go, famous river, river Danube, eternally your waters flow. ………. There of old, as goes the saying, during clear nights of blue, fairies weaved a round-dance, swaying under waters, on them too. ………. Waves would sing, the moon would listen. High on overhanging hills knightly castles stared down at them, watching them with fear-sweet thrills. ………. With an unterrestrial glimmer, captive, in a prison spurned, winks exchanging with the dancers, lights on ancient towers burned. ………. All the stars would hearken to them, wave of them succeeding wave. Quietly, one to the other words of conversation gave. ………. Fastened in ancestral armour, on the wall the warrior-guard, as if in sleep, in strange enchantment, to the tumult listened hard. ………. Should he almost fall a-slumbering, clearer the din would roll. With a prayer heТd quick awaken and continue his patrol. ………. Everything has gone. The years have seized it. Danube, fate has not missed you: now your lotТs to see the steamers chugging up your waters blue.
112.
Across vine-covered hillsides go sailing golden clouds. Below, its waters swelling greenly, the river darkens, calling loud. My gaze climbs slowly from the valley and bit by bit the peaks are found. Upon the very summit there is a temple, bright and round. ………. Into that unearthly dwelling mortal foot will never go. There is such light there. Desertedly so pure, air flows to silence sounds which reach the heights. ThereТs only nature-life up there, and something wafted, lightly festive, thatТs like a SundayТs silent air.
113.
Why do you howl, night wind? Why do you complain insanely? Your voice is strange. What does it mean? First muffled, pitiful, then loud? My heart understands your tongue, your tale of madness it canТt, and at times you uproot and plough up frenzied noises in your words! ………. DonТt sing these songs, these fearsome songs of ancient Chaos, kindred Chaos! How avidly the inner soul of night hears the beloved tale! It wants to burst from the breast, it wants to merge with the boundless. Oh, do not wake the sleeping storms — Chaos writhes beneath them!
114.
The stream has frozen and dulled, hiding beneath the hard ice. Colour has faded. Sound has died. Ice has fettered everything. Only the streamТs immortal life does not submit to winterТs omnipotent will: the water flows on and as it babbles it troubles the deadly still. ………. So in the orphaned breast, murdered by the winter of existence, happy youth no longer flows, and the stream no longer sports, although beneath the icy bark there is still life, thereТs still a murmur, and at times there can be heard the streamТs mysterious whisper.
115.
I sit deep in thought and alone, gazing at dying coals by tears blurred. Sadly thinking of past days, I look for ways to speak my gloom. I find no words. ………. The past — well, has there been a past? WhatТs now — will that forever last? It will go by. It will go by as everything will pass. Drowning in timeТs dark morass, each year will fly. ……… Year after year, age on age! Why does man presume to rage? Such chaff is man! HeТll wither very quickly too. Each summer, blossom, chaff anew is natureТs plan. ………. All that we knew once more weТll know. Once again will roses grow. Thorns will too. But you, my flower, pale, forlorn, in summer you wonТt be reborn. LifeТs not for you. ………. The hand that plucked you was my own. The bliss, the grief I felt is known only on high. Stay, then, upon my breast until all breath of love in it is stilled, the final sigh.
116.
EarthТs face is still a melancholy thing, although the air is breathing spring, and in a field a dead stalk shivers while foliage on the pine-trees quivers. As NatureТs waiting to revive, already through her thinning dreams she senses that spring is alive and, though unknowingly, she beams. ………. You slept too, my soul — What is it now exciting you, caressing and kissing your sleep and dressing your dreams in gold? Snow-blocks, melting, glisten, skies gleam bluely, blood is playing. Is this springТs tender, gentle bliss? Can this be female love IТm sensing?
117. WinterТs spite is vain
for its time has come at last. Knocking at the panes, spring has cast it out and everythingТs in turmoil, bustling Winter out, and skylarks in the blueness have taken up the shout. Winter is still fussing and grumbling at the spring. The latter laughs right in her face, her noise is louder still. The evil sorceress is wild. She grabs a pile of snow. She runs away and starts to throw it at the pretty child. That hardly causes Spring much grief: she washes in the snow, and just to spite her enemy, her cheeks begin to glow.
118.
Brilliant snow shone in the valley, has melted, has gone. Spring crops gleam in the valley. They will fade, they will go. Which century now stands before me on snow-summits, sparkling white? Now the morning light is sowing red, fresh roses on their heights.
119. THE FOUNTAIN
Look, a living cloud, the radiant fountain throws its flaming spray, scattering moist mist towards the sun, tossing rays up to the sky, touching forbidden heights and once again, a fire-coloured dust, is sentenced to fall back to earth. ………. Water-course of human thought, inexhaustible water-course! What incomprehensible law tosses and urges you up there? How greedily you reach out to the sky! But an invisible, fateful hand diffracts and pulls your stubborn stream in showers of spray back down to the land!
120.
My soul would like to be a star, but not when these bright things in midnight skies, like living eyes, shine, stare upon, gaze at our sleepy earth-world from afar. No, but during daytime when, as if theyТre hidden in a searing sunbeam-haze, in pure, unseen expanses, like deities, to burn more brightly they are bidden.
121.
Nature is not what you think it is: itТs not a mould, not a soulless face. It has a soul. It has freedom. It has love. It has a tongue. ………. You see a leaf and bloom on a tree: did some gardener glue them on? Or in a kindred womb did the fruit ripen by the play of outer, alien forces? ………. They donТt see and they are deaf, living in this world as if they were blind. Suns donТt breathe for them. The oceanТs waves possess no life. ………. Rays have never come down into their soul. Spring has never blossomed in their breast. Forests donТt talk in their presence and starry nights are dumb for them. ………. In unearthly tongues, agitating rivers and woods, theyТve never held discourse with a friendly storm! ………. The faultТs not theirs. Can a deaf-mute understand an organТs life? Alas for them, theyТd be unmoved by the voice of their own mother!
122.
ThereТs not a spark of feeling in your eyes. When you speak, your words are lies and thereТs no soul in you. Stand fast, my heart, right to the end: godless, creation has to fend, so prayingТs pointless too.
123.
I love your eyes, dear, their fiery-playful games, their sudden upward glances slowly looking all around like lightning-flames. ………. ThereТs a more potent spell: eyes lower. A mouth hungers. Lids almost close. Sullen arousal glows.
124.
Last night in enchanted dreams, the moonТs last ray languidly lit your lashes, while in late sleep you lay. Silence went quiet around you, shadows frowned darker, the even movements of your breast flowed louder through the air. Quiet-streaming, quiet-wafting, as if a breeze had borne it in, dimly lilac, hazily light through your bedroom came a fluttering, an invisible running across rugs which were glimmering, clutching the edge of the blankets and the sides of the bed, crawling, unfolding like a ribbon onto your bed like a writhing snake, teasing beneath your bed curtain until with a life-shining quiver it felt your young breasts, with a loud, rosy cry it opened your lashes, felt their silk …. caressed ….
125. JANUARY 29TH., 1837
Who fired the shot? Who stilled the life which quivered in the poetТs heart? In whose hands was the fragile phial shivered? Innocent or deserving blame, in the eyes of earthly justice and branded forever by heaven, Regicide will be his name. Into a dark, timeless deep you were suddenly swept from existence. Peace to you, poet! I wish you bright peace in your sleep. In spite of vain discourse, your lot has been divine and great. You were the godТs mouthpiece, but you lived. In your veins, warm blood coursed! This noble blood has silenced jeers staining honourТs name. Now in the sacred shade you rest, beneath the banner of our peopleТs tears. Let Him pass judgement! He can hear the flow of blood spilled. You will be first love in a youthful breast: in RussiaТs heart eternally dear!
126. DECEMBER 1ST., 1837
So, hereТs where weТre fated to say our final farewell, farewell to everything by which we lived, which killed your life, reducing it to ashes in your tormented breast! ………. Farewell. After many, many years youТll recall this land with a shudder, this coast, these hot noons, where eternal brightness, long blossoming reign, where, with the breath of late, pale roses, DecemberТs air is warmed.
127. THE ITALIAN VILLA
Bidding farewell to the days, leaving cares to sleep beneath the cypresses, blissfully joining the blessed dead, it slumbered in a blessed haze. Now, when many years have passed, guarded by magic sleep in its flowery keep, it submits to heavenТs desires. HeavenТs care is so loving! Warm southern winters, many a summer have wafted here in semi-slumber, their wings not even brushing … Then we came in … stepped into the trance. So dark, so peaceful for so long! The fountain sang a still and shapely song. Through a window a cypress cast us a glance. Suddenly — turmoil: a spasm quivered through the branches. The fountain fell silent, yet from it some wondrous sound, muffled, as if in sleep, shivered. What was it, love? Had something made that wicked life which coursed through our veins, turbulently hot, step over a forbidden threshold?
128.
Is it so long, blessed South since you and I stood face to face and, like a god unmasked, you revealed yourself to me, a new arrival, opening your ways to this visitor from the North? ItТs a long time — though without rapture, but with good reason moved by new feelings — since I have listened intently to the song of the great Mediterranean waves! And their song, as in times gone by, was full of harmony just as when, from a kindred bosom, the bright cypress rose in beauty. They have not changed today. As before, they glisten noisily and across their azure plain sacred spectres glide. But I have had to say farewell, called to the North once more. Across me once again there falls its endless leaden sky. there, at the worldТs frontier, in the golden, bright South, I see you again at a distance. You glisten, fairer still, brighter, fresher. More audible is your voice reaching out to my soul!
129.
What gentle, tender joy, what enamoured pangs are in your eyes, your passionate gaze alighting on him! Empty of thoughts, mute … mute as if stricken by heavenly fire! Suddenly, over-filled with sensation, from your heart being full, shuddering, crying, you threw yourself down … But soon good sleep, like a childТs, free of cares, visited the silk of your lashes, and your head lowered onto his arms, and more tenderly than a mother, he cared, he petted you … Your weeping died on your lips … your breathing was even, and your sleep was quiet and sweet. And now… Ah, if you could have dreamed what the future held for us both, as if stung, youТd have woken with a scream or passed into a different dream.
130.
Tired by travel, we made a stop and rested. Our brows felt the same shade. Our eyes lifted to the distant skyline. ………. Time climbs its slope, inflexibly. It pulls apart what it once tethered. Some power whips man on, invisibly. Sad, alone, through endless space he falls. Now, friend, have you ever sought to find again that life we spent together? What things befall a look, a tone of voice, debris of thoughts? That which exists no longer — did we dream it all?
131.
Watch the west flaming up in eveningТs dull glow, the east darkly clothing itself in a cold, blue-grey comb! Are they enemies? Or is the sun one for both? With its immovable wholeness dividing, does it unite them?
132. SPRING
No matter how oppressive is the hand of fate, is human deceit, no matter how deeply they furrow our brows, wound our hearts, no matter how severe are the trials to which we daily must succumb, what can resist the breath of and that first encounter with spring! ………. Spring does not know us, us, our grief, our malice … Her gaze shines with immortality. ThereТs not a wrinkle on her brow. She obeys her own laws. At the appropriate time she flies down, bright, blissfully indifferent, as befits a goddess. ………. She scatters blossoms on the earth. She is fresh, like the first spring. Was there another before? She doesnТt need to know. The sky is cloud-covered. These clouds are her own, leaving not a trace of the extinct life of former springs. ………. Roses do not sign about the past, nor do nightingales sing it. Dawn does not shed tears of fragrance for the past, and terror of the ineluctable end does not flow from trees and branches. Their life, like the boundless ocean, is entirely poured into the present. ………. All the game, the sacrifice of individual life! Come, throw off the deceit of feelings and throw yourself lustily, omnipotently into this life-creating ocean! Come on, in its ethereal stream wash your suffering breast and in this divinely all-peaceful life for just one moment be a guest!
133. DAY AND NIGHT
On to the secret world of spirits, across this nameless chasm, a cloth of gold has been draped by the high will of the gods. This glittering cover is day, day, which enlivens the earth-born, heals the suffering soul, friend of gods and man! ………. Day will fade. Night has come. ItТs here, and from the fated world it rips the cover of plenty and tosses it aside, revealing the abyss with all its mists and fearsome sights. No wall divides us from them, which is why weТre afraid of the night!
134.
DonТt believe the poet, girl! DonТt ever make the dread mistake of calling him your own, and, more than flames, and more than anger from above, be sure you fear the poetТs love! ………. DonТt think youТll win the poetТs heart with your little-girlish soul. The flames of lust you wonТt conceal behind a virginТs delicate veil. ………. Omnipotent and elemental, the poet hides an inner weakness: he may not want to harm you, girl, but his crown will scorch your maidenТs curls! ………. The rabble, never thinking, may praise or revile him, but they will soon see that he does not sting the heart like a snake, he sucks it like a bee. ………. The poetТs hand is pure: your sanctuary will be respected, but he might choke the life from you by chance, beyond the clouds you might well be abducted!
135.
With such a lovely, sympathetic greeting from an unattainable height I beg you not to confuse the poet, not to test his dream! ………. He spends his life forgotten in the crowd. At times their passions find him. I know the poetТs superstitious, but he rarely serves the powerful. ………. Before all earthly idols he walks and bows his head, or else he stands before them, confused and timorous, yet proud, ………. and should a living word fall suddenly from their lips,
should he, through earthly grandeur, see all the charms of a female flash, ………. and fully, humanly aware of their omnipotent beauty,
should wondrously refined features shine on him like a sudden dawn, ………. ah, how his heart takes fire! how he exults, how charming he becomes! He may be useless at serving, but he knows how to revere!
136. TO HANKA
Must we stay apart forever? IsnТt it time that we woke up, shaking hands with relatives and friends? ………. WeТve been blind for centuries and, like wretched blind men, have wandered directionless, lost, aimlessly. ………. When by chance we bumped into each other, more than once, bloody rivers flowed and swords tore kindred breasts. ………. The sea of this mad enmity bore fruit a hundredfold: more than once a tribe has perished, or ended up in exile. ………. Non-believers, foreign hate divided us, scattered us: the Germans stole the homes of some, the Turks preferred to violate. ………. Now in this dark night, here on the heights of Prague, the valiant warriorТs modest hand has lit a beacon in the gloom. ……… Oh, what rays have lit up all parts! Clearly now we see the face of this entire Slavonic land! ………. Mountains, steppes and coasts are illuminated by this miraculous day, from the Neva to Montenegro, from the Carpathians to the Urals. ………. Dawn breaks over Warsaw, Kiev has opened its eyes. Vysehrad has begun to speak with golden-domed Moscow! ………. The dialects of our brothers once again make sense. Now that theyТre awake, the grandsons see what they grandparents only dreamed of!
137. THE BANNER AND THE WORD
Into a bloody storm, through the flames of war, announcing salvation, the Russian Banner had led you to immortal victory. In memory of this sacred union, itТs not surprising that behind the Russian Banner the Russian Word has come to you in kinship.
138. FROM A RUSSIAN, HAVING READ EXTRACTS FROM MISTER
MICKIEWICZТS LECTURES. May the Heavenly King bless your happy enterprise, son of undoubted calling, son of reconciling love. ………. Not in vain have you boldly cast aside the tatters from your shoulders. God has conquered, your eyes are open. You were a poet, now you are a prophet. ………. We sense the approach of Light: your inspired Word, like a herald of the New Testament, has been heard throughout the Slavonic World. ………. We sense the Light, the Time is near, the final bulwark has crumbled. Rise up, scattered race, unite, merge into one People. ………. Leap up, not as Poland, not as Russia, rise up, you Slavonic Family! Throwing off your sleep, be the first to utter the words: СHere I am!Т ………. You, supernaturally able to heal all enmity in yourself, on your enlightened soul let GodТs Grace repose!
139.
Unreal manТs so simple to efface, such a trifle when heТs present, such a nothing when heТs absent. A single point is all his life can span. His absence is the whole of space!
140.
I stood by the Neva, my gaze fixed on the giant of St. IsaacТs. Its golden cupola was glinting through a murk of icy haze. ………. Timid clouds sailed onto winterТs night sky. Frozen in a deathly still beneath the ice, the current paled. ………. Sad, silent memories came of lands whose sun burns. At this very moment, GenoaТs luxuriant gulfТs aflame. ………. Wizard of northern lands, am I caught by your enchantment? Am I really held in fetters against you by your granite hand? ………. If only some spirit passing by, wafted through the misty evening, could swiftly carry me from here back to my sultry, southern skies!
141. COLUMBUS
A crown for you, Columbus! Boldly mapping the outlines of Earth and once for all fulfilling DestinyТs unfinished business, you rent the veil with your godlike hand and into GodТs light, from the limitless murk, you pulled a new world behind you, an unknown world, an unexpected one. ………. Thus are linked and united forever in a union of blood that reasoning genius of man and natureТs creative power. Let him but utter a secret word and nature, with a whole new world, is forever ready to respond to his kindred voice!
142. A REVERIE
УWhat gift can I make at the end of the year? WinterТs wind has killed the turf, flowers die and leaves have faded. At this dead time, no living things stir.Ф ………. Many a sweet and dear leaf was kept in your herbarium. Your loving fingers wake in fragrant pages a History of a love which slept, ………. a History of youthful, living recollections, a History which will never know oblivion, and on whose embers you blew for just a moment, glowing again in your faithful collection. ………. You suddenly found two flowers while leafing through dried remains, and by some secret magic in my hands they regained their colours. ………. Two flowers, both of them fair, living red, rare of scent, a shining rose, a glistening carnation. Perfume and flame bathed the pair. ………. And youТd like to see some meaning in this strange enigma. Need I explain it, my dear? You insist? Very well, I agree. ………. When a flower starts to wane, sadly losing colour, withering, and you bring it near a fire you will see it bloom again. ………. So it happens that when we face the fatal day, dreams and designs act thus: when memoriesТ pallor dulls our hearts, they bloom again in DeathТs embrace.
143. THE SEA AND THE CLIFF
Raging, seething, lashing, whistling, roaring, leaping for the skies, the unassailable skies … Is it hell, some hellish force beneath the boiling cauldron churning up the deeps, some hellish fire turning the sea-world upside down? ………. Frenzied wave-onslaught …. Nothing stops it, nothing can … Roars, whistles, screams, howls … Smashing cliffs along the coast … Peaceful, haughty, unmoved by the clowning sea, motionless, changeless, born at creation, you stand, our titan! ………. Battle-maddened, leaping into fateful struggle waves come howling back to beat against your granite face… The changeless stone dashes aside the noisy onslaught. Scattered waters fall apart. Impotent gusts fall grumbling away. ………. Stand, mighty cliff! Just wait awhile. The thundering waves will tire of warring with your foot. Exhausted by its spiteful game the sea will be subdued. Forget this howling affray. Beneath the foot of the titan, the waves will slink away.
144.
A heavy sky which night has prematurely assailed…. A monstrous river-floe, ice-dulled… Powder-snow is flailed around granite quays, threaded, pearled. The seaТs closed in. The living are hurled into retreat, the living, troubled world. In the dim dusk-glow lulled, the pole attracts: its faithful cityТs pulled.
145.
Longing, desires still ravage my soul which strives to reach you. In recollectionТs twilight I try to catch your image. I canТt forget your face. It is a lovely constellation, timeless, in every place, unreachable, not knowing fluctuation.
146.
By which can human wisdom more surely be enhanced: German unityТs Babylonian tower, or the sly republican structure of the outrages witnessed in France.
147.
A cloud bank, bright and high covers earth with fleeing shades. УThatТs our lifeФ, you sighed, Уnot the cloud lit up by rays, but that shadow running away.Ф
148. TO RUSSIAN WOMAN
Far from the sun and nature, far from light and art, far from life and love your youth flashes by. Living feelings deadened, dissipated dreams … Your life flows by invisibly in this deserted, nameless place on this unnoticed earth, as a misty cloud just disappears in the dull and hazy sky of endless autumnТs murk …
149. A RUSSIAN GEOGRAPHY
Moscow and PeterТs town, the city of Constantine, these are the cherished capitals of the Russian monarchy. But where is their limit? And where are their frontiers to the north, the east, the south and the setting sun? The Fates will reveal them to future generations. ………. Seven internal seas and seven great rivers from the Nile to the Neva, from the Elbe to China, from the Volga to the Euphrates, the Ganges to the Danube.
This is the Russian empire and it will never pass away, just as the Spirit foretold and Daniel prophesied.
150.
Holy night has climbed across the sky, joyful, dear day, a golden coverlet, is folded back, that cover cast across the chasm. Like a vision, the outer world has faded. Like an orphan, man stands impotent and naked, facing the dark abyss. Abandoned to himself, his intellect is obsolete, his thought is homeless. In a great ravine heТs immersed, in his soul, and from outside thereТs no support, no limit … Like a long-gone dream, that which was life-bright appears, and in the alien, in the unresolved, in the nocturnal, his birthright looms clear.
151.
Timidly, unwillingly sun looks at fields. Thunder rumbles in a cloud … Earth frowns. ………. Gusts of warm wind … Distant growls, spots of rain … Greening meadows greener under threat of storm. ………. Splitting a cloud — a blue lightning-streak … White, flying flame hems its edge. ………. More raindrops… Dust eddied up from fields. Thunder claps are bolder, angrier. ………. Once more peeks the sun askance at fields… Drowning in brilliance — the crumpled land.
152.
So once again we meet, unlovely relative, where I first thought, first felt. Now, misty-eyed in the light of fading day, my childhood looks at me. ………. Ah, feeble, poor, unclear spectre of forgotten, enigmatic happiness! Faithless, detached, I gaze at you, fleeting guest. YouТve become so alien to my gaze, like my little brother who died at birth. ………. No, it wasnТt here, my deserted land, my soul was never at home here. Not here did I celebrate the flowering of wonderful youthТs great feast. Oh, not in this earth did I bury everything by which I lived, everything I held so dear!
153.
Quiet evening, late in summer, as the stars glow in the heavens, as beneath their dusky glimmer slumbering cornfields ripen… in their silent, soothing radiance, in the stillness of the night, undulating, golden wavelets in the moonlight splashed with white…
154.
When clinging, murderous cares sicken us, when, like a pile of stones, life lies on us, it happens sometimes, God knows how, that something joyfully sudden warms our bones. The past embraces, fans around us. That fearsome burden briefly rises from us. …….. So sometimes, in the fall, when fields are empty, copses bare, skies are pale and duller are the dales, a warm, moist breeze can blow, and before it a dead leaf rolls. ItТs just as if spring had poured over our souls.
155.
Tears of people, tears of people, morning and evening you fall, pouring invisibly, poured in obscurity, never an end to you, flowing so constantly, flowing as rain in its torrents careers deep in the autumn, when night covers all.
156. TO THE MOST HONOURABLE FILIPP FILIPPOVICH VIGEL ON HIS
NAME DAY As a token of my love, accept this picture, understanding it, of course, and the value which we place on you, though donТt forget, if youТll forgive my saying, we like you a lot, though itТs not for your face.
157.
Across an azure plain of water, chugging on its trusty way, a fire-breathing, stormy-tempered sea-snake bore us all away. ………. From the sky the stars shone down, sparkling was the waterТs swell. Drops of sea-dust in a blizzard swirled and soared and round us fell. ………. On the deck we sat together, many overcome by sleep. Wheels were singing ever louder, stirring up the noisy deep. ……… Now our happy group fell silent, womenТs chatter, womenТs noise, and, supported by fair elbows, pleasant thoughts and dreams were poised. ………. On the river dreams are drifting, under the magic moon they play. On the quiet-breathing waters to a lullaby they sway!
158. DAYBREAK
Not for the first time is the cock crowing. ItТs crowing animatedly, briskly and boldly. In the sky the moon has gown paler. The Bosphorous waters have begun to glow red. The bells are still silent, but dawn is aglow in the east. Endless night has passed by. Soon there will come the bright day. ………. Russia, arise! Your time is at hand! Arise to serve Christ! Crossing yourself, has the time not arrived to strike the bell in the city of Tsargrad? ………. Ring out your good news. May it resound throughout the East! ItТs calling and awaking you. Be valiant, arise and gird yourselves for battle! ………. Clothe your breast in the armour of faith, and go with God, almighty giant! Oh Russia, the dawning day is great, the universal, Orthodox day!
159.
Once again I see your eyes. Your southern gaze alone has dissipated the slumberous cold of a sad, Cymmerian night. Before me rises up once more a different land, a native land, as if through the sins of their fathers itТs a paradise perished for the sons. ………. Stately laurels rustle, ripple the pale blue air. The quiet breathing of the sea wafts through summer heat. All day ripening in the sun — the golden vine. A fabulous past of ancient tales wafted from marble arcades. ………. Like an ugly dream the fateful north has vanished, the light, fair vault of the sky shines above me. Once again with avid eyes drinking in this bracing light, beneath those pure rays I recognise a magic land.
160.
How he loved the native firs of his beloved Savoy. How melodiously their boughs rustled above his head. With what sensual thought their majestically gloomy dark, wild, strange plaint entranced his mind.
161. LAMARTINE
ApolloТs lyre, oracle of the gods, in his hands is the harp of Aiolos, and his thoughts are winged, mellifluous, as they float in the air, lulled by his words.
162. NAPOLEON
1 RevolutionТs Son, with a fearsome mother fearlessly you entered battle, drained of your strength in the struggle. Your despotic genius could not overcome her! Impossible conflict, pointless labour! You carried it all in yourself. 2 Two demons served him. Two forces merged wondrously within him: in his head, eagles soared, in his breast, serpents writhed: a daring eagle-flight of wide-spanned inspirations: and in the very riot of audacity there was a calculating serpent. Yet no sanctifying power, a force of which the mind cannot conceive, illuminated his soul nor stepped towards him. He was of earth, not GodТs flame. He proudly sailed, despised the sea, but on the hidden reef of faith his fragile boat was smashed. 3 And there you stood, and Russia stood before you! Prescient sorcerer sensing battle, you yourself uttered the fateful words: СLet her destiny come about!Т Your oath was not in vain: Fate echoed your voice! But from exile you tossed another riddle at the fateful echo. Years have passed. Now back from cramped exile the corpse has returned to its native land. On the banks of the river you loved, turbulent spirit, youТve rested now, but you sleep lightly. Tormented during the night, sometimes you will rise. YouТll gaze at the East. Suddenly, alarmed, youТll flee, as if youТd sensed the breeze which ushers in the dawn.
163.
The loving heart cowers, admitting sadness, anguish, fear. I cry УStop!Ф to the fleeing hours. УThe moment could be here when a chasm yawns between usФ. ……… Frightful worry, implacable terror constrict my wearied heart. IТve lived too much for both of us. The past has weighed too heavy on my back. LetТs keep our love apart from memory. Let history never claim us.
164. POETRY
Through conflagration, through thunderТs roars, through seething passion, burning in elemental strife, she comes to us from on high, to earth-bound children, with her gaze, her clear eyes bright-shining, and across the mutinous seas a gentle oil of peace cups in her palm … and pours.
165. ROME AT NIGHT
Rome sleeps in the blue night. The moon has risen, taken possession. The city slumbers in unpeopled grandeur, its thoroughfares awash in glorious light. ………. How sweetly Rome lies slumbering in the rays. How akin is the moon with RomeТs ancient dust, as if the lunar world, the sleeping city, were one and the same: magic, theyТve outlived their days!
166. VENICE
The doge of free Venice, among its azure ripples, a groom porphyrogenitus, to great and wide acclaim, yearly wed his Adriatic. ………. Not for nothing did he cast his ring into these waters: entire aeons, not just years, (peoples marvelled at the wonder) did this magic warrior-ring bind them with its spell. ………. Loving, peaceful did the couple settle to a life of fame. Three centuries, or maybe four, mightier and wider growing, spreading out into the world, the shadow of the lionТs wing. ………. And now? Into oblivionТs waves so many rings were thrown! Generations came and went. These wedding rings have now become the links of heavy chains!
167.
Feasting finished, choirs quiet, wine-jugs drained, fruit-baskets scattered, glasses left with wine unfinished, crumpled party crowns on heads, only incense-sticks still smoking, in the bright, deserted chamber, having feasted, late in rising, stars were shining in the sky, night had reached its midway point. ………. Above the restless city, over courts and houses, thoroughfares and noisy clatter and the dull, red lighting, over sleepless crowds of people, over all this earthly tumult, in the high, too distant heavens pure stars were burning, answering the gaze of mortals with their uncorrupted shining.
168. PROPHECY
This is not the murmur of rumour in the land. This news was not just born for us. It is an ancient voice! A voice from on high: УThe fourth age comes to a close. It will come to pass and the hour will crash out!Ф ……… Then SofiaТs ancient vaults will once more house ChristТs altar in restored Byzantium. Fall before it, oh Tsar of Russia. Rise as Tsar of all the Slavs!
169.
For the third year now, the tribes have run amok. Spring has come. With every spring, like a flock of wild birds before a storm, the noise is more alarming. The cries become a Babel. ………. Princes and rulers weighed by heavy thoughts, fingers trembling on the reins, minds depressed by ominous anguish. PeopleТs dreams are wild as fever. ………. But God is with us! Tearing from its bed, a mad thing, full of threat and gloom, suddenly rushing at us is the abyss! ………. But your gaze did not darken! The wind screamed. But… УIt will not be so!Ф You spake, and once again the waters fell away.
170.
Your cowardice canТt be measured, you dwarf! Squirm and wriggle as much as you like, youТll not entice holy Russia with your sceptical soul. ………. Or will she renounce all her sacred hopes, using up all her convictions, that which is her calling, just for the likes of you? ………. Or are you so dear to providence, so friendly with it, at one with each other that, caring for your sloth, it suddenly stops dead? ………. Let whoever does not believe in holy Russia get on with it, as long as she believes in herself, and God will not postpone victories to please peopleТs cowardice. ………. What was promised her by the fates way back in her cradle, bequeathed by the ages, by the faith of all her tsars, ……… what OlegТs troops went out to achieve by the sword, what CatherineТs eagle covered with its wings: ………. the crown and sceptre of Byzantium, you wonТt deprive us of that! The universal fate of Russia, No! YouТll not block that off!
171.
Lord, send your comfort to him who, during summerТs scorching heat, like some poor beggar past a garden, along a hot road drags his weary feet, ………. who gazes in passing across a fence at the shades of trees, at valleysТ golden grain and at the inaccessible coolness of softly bright, luxuriant plains. ………. Not for him have forests woven a welcome with their boughts and fronds, not for him have fountains scattered a misty haze above their ponds. ………. A being made of mist, an azure grotto tries vain enticement at his gaze, his head cannot be cooled and freshened by the fountainТs dewy haze. ………. Lord, send your blessing to him who, trailing through lifeТs heat, like some poor beggar past a garden, along a dry road drags his blistered feet.
172. ON THE NEVA
Once again the river surges and the starlight seems to float, once again has love entrusted to the waves its secret boat. ………. Between the river and the starlight it slips, as if a dream befell in which this pair of spectres travelled far off across the riverТs swell. ………. Are they slothful children idling at the dead of night? Are they blissful spirits of this earth-world taking flight? ………. Flowing hugely, like the sea, luxuriantly, richly swelling, Neva, conceal the modest boat, its secret never telling!
173.
Midday breathes its hottest through my window opened wide into my peaceful bedroom. Everything is still and dark inside. ………. Sweet aromas live there, wandering in the dusky shade. In the sweet dusk of half-slumber rest yourself and fade. ………. A tireless fountain in the corner sings away the nights and days. Invisible dew it showers on the dark, enchanted haze. ………. In the glimmer of the half-light, by some secret passion seized, over an enamoured poet a reverie is lightly breezed.
174.
Forget all cares, donТt reason deep! ItТs mad to seek, a half-wit judges. YouТll heal your daily wounds with sleep. Take what tomorrow brings and bear no grudges. ………. Live life and live it stoically: live sadness, happiness and cares. DonТt wish, donТt pine regretfully. The dayТs lived through. Send God your prayers!
175.
Swelling, darkening waters turn leaden in inclement air. Through their severe lustre, rainbow hues stroke the eveningТs crimson glare. ………. It scatters golden sparks, it sows fiery roses and the current bears them down. Above the dark-azure river the tempestuous, fiery evening tears off its crown.
176.
Unsullied gods of light glow through azure nights. Glory, stars, glory to your splendid rays, glory to that which lasts without decay! EarthТs ephemeridae, the instant we are born we start to fail, watching, greeting as we pass you by: УThose about to die shout their immortal Hail!Ф
177.
Prophetic sleep enfolds sad, half-clad trees. Perhaps every hundredth summer leaf, glistening with autumn gold, still trembles in the breeze. ………. I share the scene, moved at the sight when, through storm-clouds breaking, suddenly on the mottled sheens of exhausted, faded leaves thereТs a lightning-splash of light. ………. How charming are fading powers! How delightful the sight when what once so lived and flowered is now so impotent and frail, smiling at its own last rites!
178. TO COUNTESS E. P. ROSTOPCHINA (IN REPLY TO HER LETTER)
Just as under a snow drift of sloth, as if enchanted by winter, I slept the sleep of some departed soul, interred, yet still alive! ………. And right above me I sense, neither awake nor yet asleep, that itТs as if spring has been wafted in, as if something sang of spring. ………. ThereТs a familiar voice, a wondrous voice, sometimes a lyreТs note, at times a womanТs sigh, but I, unwakeable sluggard, suddenly could not reply. ………. I slept fettered by burdensome sloth, during an eight-month winter, as the just souls of the dead slumber in the fateful Stygian murk. ………. But this semi-sepulchral sleep, no matter how it stretched above me, itself, omnipotent sorcerer, hastened to my assistance. ………. It caught for me expressions of old friendship and into musical visions it embodied the familiar voice. ………. Now I see, as if through a haze, a magic garden, a magic house, and in the castle of the Unsociable fairy suddenly the pair of us appeared together! ………. Together! And her song resounded and from the secret porch chased the brash braggard and the loathsome flatterer.
179. TWO VOICES
1 Be manly, my friends, in the fight do not tire. The struggleТs unequal, the conflict is dire! Silent above you — the stars in the sky. Beneath you are graves. Just as silent they lie. ………. Olympus leaves gods not a thing to desire. Eternally carefree, from work they donТt tire. Troubles and labours belong to mankind. Man cannot know victory. DeathТs all he finds. 2 Be manly, fight on, my brave friends. The battle is brutal, it seems without end. Stars revolve silently over your heads. Far below you — the mute, distant graves of the dead. ……… Let Olympus with envious eyes gaze down on this war of inflexible hearts. The fighter who falls beneath DestinyТs darts has torn from their grasp the victory-crown!
180.
The desired structure, the monolith of world Slavdom will be raised only when, in full solemnity, Russia and Poland can be at peace, and these two will be reconciled not in Petersburg, not in Moscow, but in Kiev and in Tsargrad.
181. THE WAKE
Regal Troy has fallen. PriamТs city has been destroyed and the Achaeans, preparing their homeward voyage, sat in their vessels along the shores of the Aegean, singing songs of praise, loudly glorifying all the gods. УRing out, victorious voices! Ships, wing yourselves to the shores of our native land, on the path home, along a trouble-free way!Ф ………. In a long line too there sat a sadly pale family, the wives and maidens of fallen Troy, complaining and crying in the great and general grief, crying for themselves, and with the victorious, wild shouts their wild lament was fused. УBitter captivity awaits us there, far off, in a foreign land. Farewell, native land! How the lot of the dead is to be envied!Ф ………. To make the sacrifice, Calchas, priest of offerings, got up, to sacrifice to the town-founding Pallas, praying to the town-destroyer, to the ominous strength of Poseidon who engirdles the world, and to you, aegis-bearer, Zeus, who darkens the ether! УToppled, annihilated is the great city of Ilion! The long, long quarrel has been resolved. The judgement of the gods is immutableФ. ………. Leader of dreadful hordes, the king of kings, the son of Atreus, cast his eye around the crowds of people, having kept intact the order of his ranks. With sudden anguish the royal gaze darkened: many of them had come to Troy, few had returned. УSo rise louder, voices of praise! Sing and be joyful a hundredfold. He who knows the golden return has not been carried off by hostile fate!Ф ………. But not all are judged by God to have a peaceful, joyful return: on the threshold of many homes does Murder stand guard. СAlive and well, returned from the battle, in his own temple he perished!Т Inspired by all-bountiful Athena, thus spoke inspired Odysseus. УOnly that home is steady and durable where the law of the family is sacred: the gullible way of women is disloyal and shamefulФ. ………. With his wife, snatched in battle, happy one more, Atreus puts his arm around her splendid waist, and his passionate looks are glad. A wicked end awaits that which is wicked Punishment follows dishonesty. In heaven, the godsТ court does not slumber! ZeusТs law rules. A wicked end to a wicked beginning! Zeus, governing by his rule of law, visits fearsome vengeance on the law-breaker, on him and his family. ………. УItТs good for fortuneТs favouritesФ, said AjaxТs younger brother, Уto honour with praise the despotism of the Olympians. Unsubservient to a higher power is fortune in her whims: Friend Patroclus is long in his grave and Thersites still lives! Destiny throws the dice with her capricious hand. Be happy and sing songs if the luminary warms you! ……….
Be consoled, my dear brother! Your memory is eternal! You are the indestructible bulwark of the Achaean children in their struggle! On that fearsome day, that bloody day, you alone stand for all of them! But it was not the powerful one, it was the cunning one who won the great revenge. Not by the victorious hand of the foe, but by your own did you fall. Ah, but itТs often the best of people who are destroyed by pernicious anger!Ф ………. And now to your masterly shade, valiant Pelides, your son, Pyrrhus, glorious warrior, prepares a libation. УMy parentФ, he pronounced, Уno-one but you has Zeus, the great designer, raised to such earthly stature.Ф On earth, where nothing is constant, there is no good higher than glory. The earth will take our mortal dust. The famous name is imperishable. ………. УAlthough about the fallen, the vanquished, the victorious cries say nothing, but among your far-off family, Hector, you will be great! Worthy of eternal memory, saving his country, honourable, brave warrior.Ф Thus the son of Tidaeus foretold. Honour to him who unquailing has lain down his life for his brothers! The conqueror may have conquered, but the fame of the fallen is more sacred! ………. Now old Nestor, venerable reveller, taking his cup, stands, and the vessel, wreathed in ivy, he gives to Hecuba: УMother, drink, this healing stream and forget your loss! The magic juice of Bacchus is powerful, it heals us miraculously! Mother, taste the healing stream and forget destinyТs law. It heals miraculously, this magic gift of Bacchus.Ф ………. And the power of ancient Niobe is oppressed by evil grief, but she drank the wondrous juice and was consoled. Just let the goblet at the table sparkle with paradisal wine and into the Lethe our grief will fall falling like a key to its bed. Yes, while in the cup there plays the all-powerful wine, grief is carried away to Lethe, our grief drowns in the Lethe! ………. And there rose at the farewell the soothsayer-wife, and she fulfilled a prophecy, an inspired one, taking one last time the burned out ruins of her home: СSmoke and steam is all our life is, immortality, oh gods, is for you alone!Т As the plumes of smoke waft away, so our days go by! Gods, only you are eternal, everything earthly goes by!Т
182.
Across the riverТs broad expanse you see, as the waters come back to life, floe following floe into the all-embracing sea. ………. Rainbow-glistening during the day, or sailing through the murk of night, ineluctably they thaw, in the same direction they float away, ………. all of them merging, large and small, shadows of their former selves, like the element uncaring, as into the fateful pit they fall! ………. Ah, human ego, you seduce the mind of man! Is this your only fate? Is this your only use?
183.
How we murder while we love! How, filled with passionТs blind fury, we are so consummately skilled at destroying what is closest to our hearts! ………. Was it long ago, proud of your gains, that you told herself, УSheТs mine!Ф? Not a year has passed. Now ask yourself, УWhatТs left of her?Ф ………. Where have the roses gone from your cheeks, the smile from your lips, the sparkle from your eyes? Tears have scorched every part of you, burning ruts with their fiery streams. ………. You remember the first day you met, that first, that fateful time, her magical gaze, the way she talked, her childlike, vivacious laugh? ………. WhatТs left? Where has it gone? And was the dream long-lived? Alas like summer up in the north, it was just a fleeting guest. ………. She served her time in FateТs dread gaol — your love did that for her — lying across her life like a shame she had never deserved. ………. A life of denial, a suffering life! In the depths of her soul she clung to those memories she could, though even they let her down! ……… And she was shunned on earth. All charm has passed her by. Flooding in, the crowd trampled hard into the mud whatever had bloomed in her soul. ………. From this long calvary what, like ash, has she managed to save? Pain, evil, bitter pain, pain without joy, without tears! ………. How we murder while we love! How, filled with passionТs blind fury, we are so consummately skilled at destroying what is closest to our hearts!
184.
How I love to find again the source of your lifeТs early years, listening, my heart entranced, to its unchanging narrative. What freshness! What mystery! Walking these happy banks once more, what a soft and tender light bathes this misty sky! What blossoms coloured the banks of this stream which flowed so purely! What beautiful reveries were reflected in its blueness! When you have spoken of your childhood, which I have incompletely understood, I have felt my body lifted in a breeze and floating like veiled spring.
185.
I donТt know whether grace will touch my sickly-sinful soul. Will it rise from the dead? Will this spiritual torpor pass? ………. If only my soul could find peace here, on this earth, that state of grace would be you, you, my earthly providence!
186. THE FIRST LEAF
Young leaves are turning green. See the youthful foliage where birches standed wafted, airily, hazily green, part-translucent, like mist. ………. TheyТve been dreaming of spring a long time, spring and golden summer, but now these living dreams, beneath the first blue sky, have burst upon the day. ………. What beauty in these new-born leaves washed in sunshine, casting their first shadows! And from their stirring we can hear
that in these thousands, through these shadowy masses, you will not find a single leaf thatТs dead!
187.
YouТve often heard the admission: СI am not worthy of your loveТ. She may be my creation, yet how poor I am before her! ………. Faced by your love, it hurts to think back about myself. I stand there, silently revering, and I bow my head to you. ………. When at times, so meekly, with such faith, with such prayer, involuntarily you kneel before that dear cradle, ………. where she sleeps, your creation, your unnamed cherub, remember my humility before your loving heart.
188.
Today itТs not the flesh — the spirit is laid bare. Man longs in desperation. He strives to leave the darkness for the light, protesting and rebelling once heТs there. ………. Through non-belief heТs dry and burned, he tolerates what man should never bear, aware at every step that he is ruined, not trying to attain that faith for which heТs always yearned. ………. The door stays closed though he may grieve. HeТll never offer prayers nor tears. HeТll never call, УMy God, admit me, for I do have faith! Come to my aid, for I cannot believe!Ф
189. THE WAVE AND THE THOUGHT
Thoughts and the smooth ebb and flow of the tides are simply one element having two sides. In the cramped heart, in the breadth of the ocean, in here they are captives, out there in free motion… Always the same flow and ebb of the seas, always that spectre of empty unease…
190.
Heat has not congealed this glittering night in July and above the dulling earth the storm-pregnant sky shimmers in summer lightning. ………. Like heavy eyelids lifting over earth, through scampering lightning threatening pupils flashing now and then…
191.
Separation has this lofty meaning: if love lasts years, if but a day it takes, loveТs just a dream and weТre a moment dreaming, and whether early, whether late the waking, the time must finally arrive when we awake.
192. (GOETHE)
Do you know the land where the myrtle and laurel bloom, where deep and pure is the azure vault of the sky, where the lemon flowers, and the golden orange burns like a fire beneath its dense foliage? Have you been there? There, there would I like to hide away with you, my love. ………. Do you know that summit with a path along its steep sides? The nag wanders across the misty snows. In mountain crevices there lives a family of snakes, the avalanche thunders and the waterfall roars. Have you been there? There, there with you lies our path. LetТs go away, my sovereign. ………. Do you know the house of marble columns? The hall shines and the cupola is radiant. Idols look out, sad and silent. УWhat is it with you, poor child?Ф Have you been there? There, there with you, letТs go away quickly, letТs go, my parent.
193.
Day turns to evening. Night approaches. Shadows lie longer down slopes. Clouds fade away as it becomes late and evening encroaches. ………. I do not fear the murk of night! Nor do I regret the fading day
as long as you, my magic spectre, as long as you donТt leave my sight! ………. Let your wings capture me, soothe the agitation in my heart, and the shade will be bliss indeed for a soul in rapture. ………. Who are you? Where are you from? How can I decide if youТre of heaven or of earth? Perhaps you live in heaven, but thereТs a passionate, female soul inside!
194.
Summer thunderТs a happy ogre eddying flying dust when a storm, welling darkly huge, troubles the blue of the sky, and when a sudden dart of madness pounces on a grove, making trees shudder wide-leaved and noisily. As if beneath some unseen foot, the woody giants bend their tops in anxious grumbles of a secret conference. Through the quick alarm not a single bird stops whistling, and somewhere in the middle of it all the first yellow leaf, tumbling along a road, announces fall.
195. FROM WILHELM TELL (SCHILLER)
Coolness and comfort waft up from the lake. The youth has dozed off, lulled on the shore. Blissful sounds he hears in his sleep, the faces of angels singing on high. ………. And now heТs come out of his heavenly slumber, embraced and caressed by the swell, and he hears a voice, like the thrumming of strings, УCome, handsome boy, into my embrace!Ф
196.
Not in vain has the gracious god made the little bird easily scared. To ensure it survives this life, itТs been created well and truly timid. ………. No good will come of it. The poor bird has to live with people, as part of the family of man, and the nearer to them, the nearer to Fate. ItТll come to no good in their hands. ………. Now hereТs a little bird which a girl, from its fledgling feathers, from the very nest, has nurtured, helped to grow neither regretting nor sparing caresses nor effort. ………. But despite all the love and concern you spend on it, love, the day will come, my girl, youТll not avoid it, when your careless ward will perish at your hands.
197. PREDESTINATION
Love, tradition states, is a union of kindred souls. They join together, they combine, fatefully they mingle and itТs a duel ordained by fate. ………. Whichever is the tenderer in this one-sided war of two hearts, more surely, ineluctably will find love and sad, numb delight … and pain as its exhausted, languid gain.
198.
DonТt tell me that he loves me as he used to, that, just as he used to, he places value on my life. DonТt! HeТs inhuman and heТs driving me to ruin, although his hand is shaking with the knife. ………. Indignant then in tears, depressed then angry, mad about him, stung to my very soul, I ache, I suffer, cannot live … Him, him alone I live by, but what a life! My heart just wants to break! ………. He measures out my air. He is so careful, meagre. Why, his worst enemy would get a bigger share. How painful now, how difficult my breathing, although I do still breathe — ItТs life I cannot bear!
103
53
199.
Don’t trouble me with your complaints, although you’re fully justified. Much more than me they’ll envy you, your love and passion side by side. I gaze in envy, angrily,
200.
What you guarded in your heart like a tiny, frightened beast, praying, protecting, fate has grabbed by the scruff and thrown into a lions’ feast. ………. The animals stormed the inner sanctum of your heart, and you were ashamed, you could not help yourself, at the secrets their claws ripped apart. ………. God, if your soul had wings to leave your body, to lift you by the nape from the crudeness of the crowd, to keep you safe from man’s eternal rape!
201.
I knew a pair of eyes. Oh, what a sight! God knows I loved them dearly! My soul could not be torn from their magic, passionate night! ………. Inscrutable was that gaze, where life was bared to its depths, such suffering I sensed there, and such a depth of passion! ………. Melancholy was their breathing, deep in their dense lashes’ shade, languid as pleasure, fateful as suffering. ………. And on such marvellous days, it never happened once that I would meet them unperturbed, without a tear springing to my eyes.
202. TWINS
There are twins. For the earthborn they are gods, Death and Sleep, like brother and sister wondrously akin, Death’s the gloomier, Sleep is gentler. ………. But there are two more twins: there are no finer twins in the world, and there’s no fascination more fearsome than he who’s surrendered his heart to them. ………. They’re no in-laws. Their union is one of blood, and only on days ordained by fate, with their unsolvable mystery do they charm us, enchant, fascinate, ………. and who, in an excess of sensation, when blood boils and freezes in his veins, can claim he’s never tasted your temptations, Suicide and Love?
203.
Mobile comme l’onde
Ocean-waves, self-willed waves, whether at rest or play, how full you are of wondrous life! ………. Laughing in the sun, tossing back the sky’s reflection, heaving, throwing breakers at the world in your watery, wild wilderness. ………. I find your quiet whisper sweet, caressing, love-filled, your restless murmuring I hear, your prescient moans. ………. In the wild element, gloomy or glad, in your quiet, blue night guard the secret you have taken. ………. Not a treasured ring-gift did I drop into your swell.
Not a precious stone did I bury in your deeps. ……… No, at a fateful moment, lured by mysterious delight, all my soul, my living soul, I buried on your bed.
204. TO THE MEMORY OF V.A. ZHUKOVSKY
I saw your evening. It was fair! Making my final farewell, admiring its clear serenity, utterly warmth-imbued … Oh, they burned and shone, your rays, poet, your farewell rays. Meanwhile, slowly we discerned his night’s first stars. ………. He knew no falsehood. His was a wholeness of spirit. In him, everything was in close harmony. With such benevolent cordiality, he read me those tales from Homer, blossoming, radiant tales from childhood’s early years. Meanwhile, the dusky, mysterious light of the stars crept over them. ………. In truth, he was whole and pure in spirit, dove-like, though not despising the serpent’s wisdom, he understood it. A pure dove’s spirit wafted through him and by this spiritual purity he was a man, strong, shining from within. His soul was elevated to a harmony. Harmoniously he lived, harmoniously he sang! ………. This lofty structure of his soul which gave him life, nourished his muse like the best fruit, like his greatest exploit, he bequeathed to an agitated world. Will the world realise it, evaluate the gift? Are we worthy of this token? Perhaps it was not about us that the divinity said, ‘Only those of pure heart see God’!
205.
The sun is shining, waters glisten. Everything smiles, everything lives. Forests rustle joyously, bathing in the blueness of the sky. ………. Trees are singing, waters glisten. Love has dissolved in the air and the blossoming world of nature is ecstatic in life’s abundance. ………. But in all this surplus of sensation no joy is more acute than a single smile of emotion from your tormented soul.
206.
The forest is entranced by Winter the Magician. Under velvet snow it’s mute, immobile, glistening wondrously with life, standing enchanted, neither dead nor alive, entranced by a magic dream, entirely covered, fettered by light links of snow. Should winter’s sun cast a sudden flare glancing across its summits, not a thing will shiver in it. It will sparkle and flame and be blindingly fair!
207. LAST LOVE
On the final slope of years our love’s more tender, more superstitious. Shine on, shine on, parting light! Shine on, last twilit love! ………. Half the sky is dark. Only in the west a glimmer prowls. Slow down, slow down, departing day, stay longer, longer, charm. ………. Should blood run thinner, tenderness is just as full. Ah, last love, bliss you are, and hopelessness!
208. THE NEMAN
Neman, majestic Neman, is it you, you flowing before me? You, so long, so gloriously guarding Russia faithfully? Once, only once, by the will of God, you let the Antichrist affront the sacred integrity of our Russian land and doing that, you made it firm forever! ………. Neman, do you remember the past, the day of that fateful year when he stood above you, he, that mighty southern demon, when you, as now, flowed on, surging under the bridges of the foe, when he caressed you with his eyes, with his wondrous eyes? ………. His companies knew victories, their banners gaily flapping, the sun picked out their bayonets, beneath the cannon bridges groaning, and from on high, just like a god, he seemed to soar above them, moving, watching over every item with his wondrous eyes. ……….. Just one thing he did not see, this wondrous warrior, did not see that there, upon the other bank, there stood Another. Stood. Waited. The companies went by with awesome, warlike faces. The inescapable Hand of Fate put its stamp on every one. ………. So, the companies had victories, their banners blowing in the wind. Their bayonets were like lightning, sparkling as their drums resounded … Oh, they were countless! Of this innumerable host marching by, not a tenth, not a tenth, escaped that fateful stamp!
209. A SPIRITUALISTIC PREDICTION
Days of battle and solemnity will come. Russia will regain the frontiers bequeathed to her and old Moscow will be the newest of the three capitals.
210. TO A. S. DOLGORUKAYA
In her there lives charm, a marvel of pure delicacy, a charm of mystery and melancholy, and her soft presence is like an obscure dream with which, without knowing how, the soul is filled.
211. SUMMER, 1854
What a summer! Such a season! It’s got to be pure magic. How, I wonder, have we earned this for no apparent reason? ………. In some alarm my eyes are meeting this glitter and this light. Is someone poking fun at us? Where is the source of such a greeting? ………. Ah, it’s like a youthful smile on a woman’s lips and in her eyes, not ravishing, not tempting us, disturbing our old age a while.
212.
What is more impotent and sad than not knowing? Who has the courage to say, ‘See you soon!’ across an abyss of two or three days?
213.
You’re not in the mood for verses, our kindred, Russian tongue! The harvest is ripe, the reaper is ready, an unearthly time has come to pass. ………. Lies have become steel incarnate. God has somehow allowed not a whole world to threaten you with calamity, but an entire hell to threaten your downfall! ………. Every blasphemous mind and every-God-reviling race has dredged up monarchies of murk in the name of light and freedom! ………. Preparing a cell for you, they foretell your ignominy, yours, the Word, life, enlightenment of better days to come! ………. Oh, in this stern trial, in this final, fateful struggle, be faithful to yourself, justify your deeds to God.
214.
To merit one word, one comma, one full stop of his inimitable pencil, a devil would be converted, an angle would offer itself to the devil.
215. ON THE OCCASION OF THE ARRIVAL OF THE AUSTRIAN ARCHDUKE AT THE
FUNERAL OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS
No, there’s a limit to one’s patience, there’s also a limit to shamelessness! I swear by his imperial shade, not everything can be endured! ……… No matter how loudly all around people send up wails of anguish, get this Austrian Judas away, away from his royal tomb! ……… Away with their traitor’s kiss, and let all their breed of apostles be branded by one name: Iscariot, Iscariot!
216.
Redness. Flaring. Sparks spurt and fly. Over the water there’s a dark orchard. From its copses coolness sighs. Dusk. Heat. Shouting. There’s a dream I’m wandering through. There’s one thing I keenly sense: you’re in me while I’m with you. ………. Crackle after crackle. Endless smoke. A naked, protruding pall. In inviolable peace, leaves waft and rustle. I’m fanned by their breath. I catch your passionate words. Thank God that I’m with you. Being with you is paradise to me.
217.
In life there are moments you cannot convey, the earthly paradise of selflessness. Tree-tops rustle high above me and only heavenly birds talk to me. All that is vile and false becomes so distant. All that is so touchingly-impossible so near and so light. Then I feel good and things are sweet. There’s peace within my soul. Fanned by drowsiness, I say, ‘Time, please wait!’
218.
These poor villages, this sorry nature! Long suffering is native to you, land of our Russian people! The proud foreign glance cannot comprehend — would not even notice! — what shines secretly through your humble nakedness. Burdened by his cross, throughout your length and breadth, in the rags of a slave, the Heavenly King has walked, blessing you, my native land!
219.
From sea to sea the wire goes, a slippery thread of iron. Fame and grief are in abundance at times along its path. ………. Following it with his eyes, the traveller will note at times prescient birds which perch along the grapevine. ………. From the plain a raven rises, blackly sitting on the line, sitting, cawing, gaily flapping wings. ………. And it shouts and it exults and it wheels above the wire. Does the raven sense the blood of news from Sevastopol?
220. TO COUNTESS ROSTOPCHINA
Oh, in these days, these fateful days, of trials and of losses, let her return be a joyful one to those places dear to her heart! ……… Let the good spirit speed her on to meet that handful of friends still living, so many dear, dear shades!
221. 1856
Blindly we face Fate. It’s not our task to tear away its cover. These words are not my own, but the prophetic rambling of spirits. ………. We’re a long away from our aim. A storm is howling, a storm is growing, and there you have it, in an iron cradle the New Year’s born in thunder. ………. It’s features are fearsomely stern and there’s blood on its hands and its brow, but it’s brought to man on his earth more than alarms of war. ………. It’ll be more than just a warrior, for it administers the punishments of God. Like a late avenger, it will strike a blow long thought out. ………. It’s sent for battles and reprisals, it bears two swords: one, the bloody sword of war, the executioner’s axe is the other. ………. But for whom? For one neck along? Is our entire nation doomed? The fateful words are muffled. Sleep beyond the grave is never clear.
222.
Oh, my prophetic soul! Oh heart filled with alarm! You’d think you beat upon the threshold of a twofold existence. ………. Yes, you inhabit two worlds: your day is sickly, passionate, your night prophetically unclear, like the revelations of spirits. ………. Let the suffering breast be agitated by fateful passions. The soul is ready, just like Mary, to cling eternally to the feet of Christ.
223.
Be quiet, please! Don’t dare wake me! Oh, in this criminal, shameful age, not to live, not to feel is a lot to be envied. It’s a pleasure to sleep, more pleasurable to be a stone.
224.
Yes, sleep is sweet, but it’s sweeter not to have been! In these times of misfortune and supreme shame seeing nothing, feeling nothing, is indeed a high pleasure! Don’t dare wake me… I beg you, speak quietly!
225.
To serve God and Russia was never your intention. Your conceit alone deserved your full attention. Whether good whether bad, your every task was nothing but spectral, false invention. You had no throne — you wore an actor’s mask!
226.
For him who served his native land with faith and love, served with thought and blood, served with the word, served with his soul, and whom providence has placed, not without good reason, on the path of new generations, a path of many difficulties, and raised among the ranks of reliable warriors…
227.
What I’ve managed to keep alive of hope, faith and love has merged into one prayer: survive, survive!
228.
A door should be open or closed. You’re starting to annoy me, dear, so why don’t you go to Hell!
229. TO N. F. SHCHERBINA
I fully understand the meaning of your sickly dream, your struggle, your striving, your alarmed service before the ideal of beauty. ………. Like an imprisoned Hellene sinking into sleep out in the steppes, beneath blizzard-filled Scythian skies, who hallucinates about golden freedom and the sky of his native Greece.
230. (SCHILLER)
Fortune had an argument with a favourite and flew off to poor Wisdom: ‘Sister, give me your hand and my grief will be lightened by your friendship. ………. With my best gifts have I showered him, like his mother, and what does he do? Never satisfied, he dares to call me mean! ………. Sofia, believe me, let’s be friends! Look, here are piles of silver. Throw aside your spade. You no longer need it. I’ll be enough for you, dear sister.’ ………. ‘Fly off!’ Wisdom answered her. ‘Don’t you hear me? Your friend curses life — save the madman from the knife, but I’ve no need of Fortune.’
231.
His fine day has disappeared in the West, having embraced half the sky with an immortal twilight, and he, from the depths of northern skies, he himself looks down on us like a prophetic star.
232.
Above this ignorant crowd of people not yet awake, will you ever rise, Freedom, will your golden rays gleam? ………. Your ray will shine and revive them, chasing sleep and mists, but old, rotten wounds, the weals of abuse and contempt, ………. the decaying of souls and the void that gnaws the mind and pains the heart, what can heal that, what can cover it up? Only you, Christ’s pure image.
233.
There is a fleeting, wondrous moment during autumn’s early days: time stands motionless, time’s a crystal, evenings bathe in brilliant rays. ………. Where sickles swung and crops were toppled, there’s just an empty wasteland now. A strand of glittering web is all you notice across an idle track cut by a plough. ………. The air has emptied. Birds no longer chatter, though there’s some time to wait for winter’s snow and rain, and pure and warm, a gentle blue is flowing across the resting plains.
234.
Look at the coppice! Foliage awash in scorching sun, wafting sweet comfort around me, from every bough and leaf it runs! ………. Let’s go inside and sit above the roots of trees fed by that rill, where trees waft in their thousands the stream which whispers in the dusky still. ………. Delirium runs her fingers through the leafy summits suspended in the midday heat and every now and then an eagle screeches, from very far away.
235.
When your eighteen years will be a dream for you as well, with love, with quiet tenderness, remember it, remember us.
236. TO E. N. ANNENKOVA
Are you trying to borrow the features of a northern girl, a frail, languishing creature born amid the gloom of forests, you, laughing, shining songstress? I cannot help it, forgive me, but it seems to me, on seeing this picture, that an orange-blossom bathed in light is trying to mimic a birch-tree.
237.
At times when there is depression in our breasts, when the heart is tormented, when ahead there is only mist, when, powerless and static, we’re so crushed that even our dear friends’ consolations cease to amuse us, suddenly a sun-ray greets us, stealing stealthily up, fire-colouredly splashing in a stream across the walls, and from the benevolent sky, from the blue heights, a sudden fragrance flutters into our window ………. Admonitions and advice are not what it brings and it will not save us from fate’s calumny, but we sense its power, hear the bliss in it, and we feel less anguish, and it’s easier to breathe. Just as wonderfully paradisal, aerial, bright — — but a hundredfold! — your love has been to me!
238.
She was sitting on the floor sorting letters which were old, holding them before she threw them out like ash gone cold. ………. Her look was strange while she held those pages she knew so well, as if she were a soul which peered down at its abandoned shell. ………. So many irreversible events, such life fulfilled and filled with minutes of love and joy across the years! How many grief-packed minutes killed! ………. Silent, I stood to one side and my knees were ready to bend as a fearful sadness crept into my heart, as if at the ghost of a dear, old friend!
239. PEACE
When what we called our own has left us forever and, as if we lay in our grave, there’s a heavy weight upon us, ………. we can always cast a fleeting glance across the waters’ slope where streams flow headlong, wherever the current leads. ………. Jostling each other, the currents run, hurry to some fateful summons they’ve heard in the distance. ………. Vainly we observe them. They’ll never return, but the longer we watch, the easier we breathe. ………. Tears spring to our eyes and through them we see,
excitedly bubbling, everything more swiftly born away. ………. The soul becomes oblivious and feels right then that it too is borne away by omnipotent waters.
240.
Late in autumn I love the park of Tsarskoe Selo, when a still half-dusk seems to drown it in slumber and winged visions of white in the lake’s dull glass, voluptuously mute, hang limply in the dusk. ……… On the royal steps of Catherine’s halls lie twilight shadows of early October evenings. Like thickets of oaks, the gardens darken. Like a reflection of a glorious past, out of the murk with the stars a golden cupola emerges.
241. ON THE JOURNEY HOME
1. Dismal hour, dismal sight … Speeding onwards through the night … Look, a phantom rising from the dead, the moon has risen in the misty air, lighting up the wastes ahead … There’s far to go — do not despair! ………. As we ride, into my mind steals the place I’ve left behind … Its moon’s alive and it delights in breathing Lake Leman’s cool air. Wondrous country, wondrous sights! There’s far to go — on through the night! 2. I was born here, where giant snow-clouds list and let faint hints of blue filter down to touch dark woods muffled in late autumn mist. ………. No life at all here … Boundless silence, dull and bare … The scene’s drab greyness broken only where stagnant pools, touched by first ice, are glinting here and there. ………. Not a sound here, nor colour, movement — life’s a drying stream. Submissive to his fate, in an oblivion of exhaustion man exists but in a dream. His eyes are dulled like fading day. Although he’s only just been there, he can’t believe in lands where lakes reflect blue mountains caught in golden rays.
242.
There are many tiny, unnamed constellations in the lofty sky, indistinguishable one from the other to our weak, hazy eyes. ………. No matter how they shine, it’s not for us to judge their glitter. Only the telescope’s wondrous power may be able to reach them. ………. But there are different constellations, sending different rays: like fiery-living suns they shine to us at night. ………. Their bracing, joy-bearing beacon is a boon to our souls everywhere, on land and sea. We see it everywhere before us. ………. Delight of this earthly world, they are the beauty of the kindred heavens, and for these stars you don’t need glasses. You can see them if you’re myopic.
243. FOR HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY
Glamour, illusion, magic and fable: all render homage and fall at your feet. One feels, wherever you appear, that Truth is the one adorable feat.
244. FOR GRAND DUCHESS HELENE
In this palace, whatever takes place, nothing is unlikely and everything is in its place: faery is always at home here, for that is the way things are done here.
245. A DECEMBER MORNING
The moon’s still out. Night has still not budged, just ruling, unaware that day is coming to, albeit lazily and timidly. Ray after ray creeps out of cloud, though night in majesty still shines across the sky. Just give it three or four more moments and night will dissipate, while in its blinding fullness day will show itself and claim the earth.
246. TO E.N. ANNENKOVA
Into daily life come radiant dreams by which we’re suddenly whisked off to unfamiliar lands, to magic worlds, alien, yet worlds our soul knows well, ………. and from the light-blue sky we see, in an unearthly radiance wafting down, a different nature, having neither dawn nor sunset. Another sun is shining there. ………. Everything is better, brighter, larger, so far from what is earthly, so different to everything we’re used to and in the pure, flaming sky the soul is so light-heartedly at home. ………. We’ve woken up. The vision ends. We’ve no means to restrain it. Beneath a dull, still shadow, life grabs us back again, condemns us to our cell. ………. Persisting, there’s a sound we barely hear, ringing out above us, before our soul, tormented, longing, that irresistible glance remains, that very smile we glimpsed in dreams.
247. FROM JAKOB BOHME
Whoever has combined in himself Time and Eternity, has protected himself from every grief.
248.
‘Sceptical’ sums up the way I feel, Holy Russia, about your worldly affairs: once you were a peasant shack. You now have a corner under the stairs!
249.
Tracing its path across the sky, does the sun know that it alone pours life into nature with its golden brilliance, ………. that with its rays God draws tracery on blossoms, gives the gift of fruit to the farmer and scatters pearls around the river? ………. You, casting (your dear) glance around, do you know that all my life and strength are in your fiery gaze?
250.
From these empty lands, from this wintry weather, go to that land where the sea always shines, go with a greeting, my feeble lines, go on with you, greet my daughter.
251. REMEMBER
(Vevey 1859 — Geneva 1860) I recall her final glances at this land, this lake, these mountains luxuriantly glorious in the west’s last beams. As if through the mist of a laboured illness, she tried at times to catch a wondrous spectre. She was so in sympathy with this entire world. ………. How in their dim outlines she loved these mountains, waves and stars, loved with her keen, loving soul. And in dissolution’s approaching strife, what tender feelings lived in her before this ever-youthful life. ………. The Alps gleamed, the lake breathed. It was here, through tears, that we came to understand that whoever’s soul is regally bright, whoever has kept it alive to the end, at the terrible, fateful moment, will always be as they were.
252.
Though I’ve built my nest in valley, still there are times when I know that somewhere far above me, life-pulsing aerial currents flow. At times like that I’d leave this stifling world, towards those heights impelled, when everything which suffocates I desperately need to repel! ………. I can gaze for many hours at inaccessible massifs which pour their coolness, rain such showers noisily towards me! In sudden iridescence bursts into light the virgin snow. That’s when I see the traces on the summits where unseen angels go.
253.
Old Hecuba, alas, so long so sorely tried, after many reverses and disasters, finds refuge in your youthful goodness, rested and washed by your side.
254. ON THE OCCASION OF PRINCE PYOTR ANDREEVICH VYAZEMSKY’S JUBILEE.
The Muse has catholic tastes, unequal in her generosity, one hundredfold more godlike than good fortune, but equally capricious. ………. Some she’ll foster at daybreak, kissing their young curls’ silk, but should the breeze blow warmer she will flee as they awake. ………. Others, in a hidden meadow, by a brook, she’ll visit unexpectedly, delight with a chance smile, but she’ll make her first tryst her last! ………. That didn’t happen to you: catching you in youth with perfect timing, she loved you with passion in her soul gazing long and hard at you. ………. She didn’t pass you by. With time to spare she nourished, caressed, cared tenderly for your talent. Her love became more tender year by year. ………. Just as with the years the strength and fire of the noble vine develops, so in your goblet hotter, brighter, inspiration poured. ………. Never did such wine as now crown your cup of fame. In honour of the goddess, prince, let’s raise the foaming vessel! ………. In honour of the goddess who nobly preserved the sacred legacy of the soul, our native tongue. Let her grow freely and fulfil her great task! ………. Then, reverently silent, we’ll hold a sacred repast for the dead, a triple libation to three unforgettably dear ones. ………. There is no echo to the voice that calls them, but on this bright festival of your saints-day is there anyone who cannot feel their presence, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Karamzin! ………. We believe right now that these invisible guests leave their celestial world to hover lovingly among us, sanctifying our feast. ………. In the name of your Muse, we follow with a goblet to drink a toast. Let the wine in this bright cup sparkle and foam for years!
255.
Once I was a major, many years ago. You promised me a future: the glitter of a general’s epaulettes. What rank I have now beats me, but as your batman, it’s time to go, Field Marshall of the Russian intellect.
256. TO ALEXANDER II
You seized your day, marked out in this age by the lord’s great grace. He displaced the form of slavery from man, returned the younger brother to the family.
257.
I knew her even then, in those fabulous years when, before the morning ray of the earliest days, a star already drowns in the blue sky, and she was as she’d always been, filled with that fresh charm of pre-dawn darkness when, unheard and unseen, dew touches flowers. At that time her life was so complete, so whole so alien to things of earth, you’d think she too had travelled far, hiding in the sky just like the star.
258.
Not for nothing have your remembered the sounds of Russian from childhood, caring for them within yourself with lively sympathy. Now, at the height of your science and between two worlds, you stand as a universal mediator.
259. TO PRINCE P.A. VYAZEMSKY
It’s not the same now as it was six months back. There’s no longer that close circle of friends. Great nature herself celebrates your jubilee. See to what lengths she has gone to prepare this feast for you, all this shoreline, this sea, this whole wondrous world of summer. With its foot on the last step and with light poured over it, this magnificent day says farewell to its poet. Fountains quietly waft and plash, the garden breathes in slumberous coolness, and Peter’s limes rustle so jubilantly above you.
260.
Play while above you the sky is still cloudless. Play with people, play with fate, you — life destined for battle, you — heart greedy for storms. ………. How often, tormented by sad dreams, I look at you in anguish, my gaze clouding with tears. Why? What have we in common? You’re going to live, I’m going away. ………. I’ve sensed the morning dreams of the barely woken day, but late, living storms, passions’ outbursts, passions’ tears, no, none of this is for me! ………. But perhaps in summer heat you’ll recall your spring. Oh, remember this time too as we would a vague dream escaping us as dawn approaches.
261. ON SENDING THE NEW TESTAMENT
Fate did not select for you an easy nor a happy lot, and very early on you entered into unequal combat with merciless life. ………. You fought with rare courage and in this fateful struggle every fibre of your soul endured the very harshest trials. ………. No, life did not defeat you and in the hopeless fight not once, my dear, not once did you betray the truth in your heart, nor yourself. ………. But earthly powers are feeble: malicious life will suddenly rage insanely and, as if about to be buried, we will suddenly feel such depression. ………. At such times, remember this book with love, let all your soul incline to it and rest, the way you’d sink into your pillow.
262. TO BOTH NICHOLASES
We wish all the very best to both Nicholases and greet them with heartfelt sincerity.
263.
He used to be a gentle cossack. The fool now tries to administrate. He’s Philip’s son, I suppose, but still he’s no Alexander the Great.
264. TO A.A. FET
My heartfelt greeting to you, and, such as it is, here’s my portrait. Sympathetic poet, let it tell you, silently at least, how dear your greeting was to me, how touched my soul was by it.
265.
Nature has endowed some with a sense which is prophetically sightless from its birth. They feel with it, they hear waters dark-flowing in the deeps of earth. ………. You are beloved of the great Earth-Mother: more coveted by far your lot has been, for often, through the surface cover, into her very eyes you’ve seen!
266. THE SACRED MOUNTAINS
Quietly, softly over Ukraine, the July night lies like a fascinating secret. The sky has gone in so deeply on itself, the stars burn so high and the Donets glistens in the dark. ………. Sweet hour of peace! The peeling of bells, the prayers, the psalms of Svyatogor are silenced. Beneath the walls of their dwelling, illuminated by the moon, the monks sleep in peace. ………. A gigantic outcrop, wondrously white, the cliff stands above the Donets, raising its cross to Heaven like an eternal sentry guarding the monks. ………. It is said that in its womb, locked away, as if in a grave, a wondrous monk lived in severe abnegation for many a year, shedding so many tears before God, lavishing so much faith! ………. It’s for that that at night, with a strength that lives even today, above the Donets the cliff stands, and, with this sacred place of prayer,
abundant in grace even today, it enlivens the sleeping world.
267.
For itself this story speaks, the plot’s not hard to unravel: our dirty Russian pub has travelled right up to the Caucasian peaks.
268.
We’ve been burdened by a horrible dream, a horrible, ugly dream: up to our ankles in blood, we’re fighting corpses resurrected for fresh funerals. ……… These battles have already lasted eight months, this heroic ardour, the treachery and lies, a den of thieves in a house of prayer, crucifix and dagger in the same hand. ………. The entire world seems drunk on falsehood. There’s every form and trick of wickedness! No, never has God’s justice been so insolently called to battle by the injustice of man! ………. This cry of blind sympathy, a universal summons to frenzied conflict, the depravity of minds, the distortion of the word, it’s all risen up and threatens you, ………. oh native land! Such a call to arms has not been heard since the earliest times. Russia, it seems you have a great significance! Be valiant, stand firm, be strong and overcome!
269. TO HIS GRACE PRINCE A.A. SUVOROV
Humane grandson of a martial grandfather, forgive us, nice prince, for honouring the Russian cannibal, we Russians not having asked Europe’s permission! ………. How on earth can we excuse this cheek to you? How can we justify agreeing with someone who stood up for and saved the integrity of Russia, sacrificing everything to his calling, ……….
who took upon himself, in desperate conflict, all the responsibility, all the labour, all the burden, and who, raising it to life, shouldered the entire, poor, tormented tribe, ………. who, chosen to be the bull’s-eye of all sedition, stood and stands, peaceful, unharmed, in spite of foes, their lies and evil-mouthing, in spite, alas, of his own people’s banalities? ………. So let this letter to him from us, his friends, be a shameful piece of testimony! What we need, prince, is your great grandfather. At least he’d have signed it himself!
270.
Just as now and then during summer a bird will flutter into the room, bringing with it life and light, announcing, illuminating, pulling after it into our nook the blossoming world of nature, green woods, living waters and the gleam of a blue sky, so did our guest pay a transient, aerial visit to our stuck-up stifling world, shaking us all from sleep. Warmed by her presence, life shook its feathers anew, and even Peter’s summer thought of thawing out when she arrived. While she was here, old age became young again and experience became an apprentice. She twisted this diplomatic milieu around her little finger. It was as if our entire house came to life, choosing her as its inhabitant, and already we were less troubled by the tireless telegraph. But all charms are short-lived. It’s not their lot to stay with us, so now we’ve had to say goodbye, though we’ll not forget for a long, long time those unexpectedly charming impressions, those dimples on rosy cheeks, those comfortably stately movements, and that upright figure, and hearty laugh and resonant voice, the semi-cunning light of her eyes, and that long, fine hair which even fairies’ fingers couldn’t hold.
271. TO N.I. KROL
Cold September rages. Russet leaves fall from trees. Dimming day is a haze. Night falls. Mist rises. In my heart and to my sight — everything so colourlessly cold, unresponsively sad. A sudden song bursts out and by some charm the mist curls up and flies away, the sky is blue once more, clothing itself in radiance, and everything is green again, everything turns into spring. This fantasy stayed with me all the time your little bird was singing.
272. FEBRUARY 19TH., 1864
With his last, quiet steps he approached the window. Evening was coming and with rays as pure as grace it shone and burned in the west. He recalled that year of renewal, that great day, that day born of the New Testament, and the shade preceding death shone from his face, emotion-filled. ………. Two cherished, kindred images which he bore in his heart like a sacrament, appeared to him: the tsar and Russia, and he blessed them both and with all his heart. He lowered his head to his pillow, the final struggle accomplished.
Then with love did the saviour himself release his true, obedient servant.
273.
Not always does the soul have sickly dreams: spring’s arrived, once more the sun will beam.
274.
The breeze has dropped and lighter is the breath of the blue assembly of Geneva’s waters. A boat rows across it again. Another swan ripples it. The sun burns all day as if it were summer. Trees sparkle in motley hues, their frail showiness lulled by the air’s caressing billow. And there, peacefully solemn, disrobed since early morning, Mont Blanc is shining like some unearthly revelation. My heart could forget everything here, could forget all its torment, If only back home there were one grave less.
275.
All day she lay oblivious. To lie across her body shadows came. Outside the tepid rain of summer streamed, splashing through the trees in happy games. ………. She lay for quite some time absorbed as slowly she came round, consciously immersed in thought, beginning to listen to the sounds. ………. As if conversing with herself, she said, and she was fully aware, (I was with her, crushed, but still alive,) ‘Oh, I loved it all so much out there!’ ………. You love — at loving as you could, no-one’s yet arrived. Oh Christ, without my heart exploding, to have this to survive!
276.
Like an unresolved mystery, living charm breathes in her. We note with a tremor of alarm the quiet life of her eyes. ………. Is this charm terrestrial in any way? Is it some earthly grace? My soul would like to pray but my heart strives to adore
277.
Oh, this south, oh, this Nice! How their glitter troubles me. Life’s like a bird that’s been shot and wants to rise but cannot. It wants to spread its wings, it wants to fly again but they just hang, feeble, broken things, and it grips the ground and shivers in impotent pain.
278.
No matter who you are, just meeting her, with pure or illicit thoughts, you will suddenly feel more acutely that there’s a better world, a spiritual one.
279. AN ENCYCLICAL
Once, the hammer of the justice of the Lord smashed and destroyed the primal temple where the high priest gasped his last, impaled upon his own sword. ………. More fearsome, more implacable, God demands that he atone on these days of heavenly judgement in apostate Rome, and capital sentence will be passed on that Pretender to Christ’s throne! ………. Passing centuries disguise black deeds and lying rumours, but God in his justice cannot pardon this latest in a string of lies. ………. No human being will win the right to kill this earthly ruler, living by the sword of man so long himself. He will be destroyed by his own fateful words: ‘Think for yourself and you sin!’
280. TO PRINCE GORCHAKOV
Yours has been a fateful calling, but whoever summoned you will be observing. All that is best in Russia, anything with life in it, is watching you, believing, waiting. You saved the honour of deceived, insulted Russia. Nothing deserves more praise. Today you’re faced with other feats of bravery. Stand up for the thought, save the spirit.
281.
Ocean-billows, night-surging, here radiant, there blue-grey, living creature, washed in moon-rays, breathing, striding, glimmering… The water-world has no skyline. Bare but for sparkling movement, growling thunder. The sea is shot with dull light. How good it is in the unpeopled night! Sea-flanks swell above, monstrous currents under. Whose feast is this? What celebration? Waves rush, thunder, glisten. Stars sense them, gaze, listen. in this shining, in this agitation, in a dream I am lost. Into this world I would sink whole, I would stand up to my soul immersed, ocean-tossed.
282.
When God has deferred assent, no matter how the loving soul suffers, its suffering will never win it joy, though it might come to realise itself. ………. Soul, my soul, you gave yourself wholly to cherished love alone, breathing by it, suffering by it. May the Lord bless you, soul! ………. He, the charitable, the omnipotent, He, warming with his rays luxuriant flowers blossoming in the air, and the pure pearl on the bed of the sea!
283. IN REPLY TO AN ADDRESS
Friends, you’re behaving like boors, to native Russia delivering your snub.
You think you’re members of the English Commons? You’re only members of the English Club!
284.
In the martyrdom of my stagnation are hours and days which intensify the pain. Their weight is crushing, fatal’s their oppression. Verse can’t endure it, verse cannot explain. ……… Everything dies. Tears and affection close their doors! So empty and dark all around. The past no longer wafts its clear shadow: like a corpse, it lies beneath the ground. ………. Above it, in bright reality, loveless, where sun-rays never fall, there’s an impassive, soulless world which neither knows, nor can remember her at all. ………. I’m alone in my submissive tedium. I want to know myself, to be aware, I can’t, a shattered boat thrown up by breakers upon a nameless shore that’s wild and bare. ………. Lord, let me burn with suffering. Dispel the deathliness cramping my soul. You’ve taken her, but all the living torment, the painful memory of her leave whole. ………. Let me remember her, life’s task fulfilling, fighting her final conflict of despair, loving with love so fierce and so burning, facing fate and people’s slander unafraid, ………. her, her who, never defeating fate, vowed all the same that fate would never win, her, her who till the end was able to bear such pain, to pray, believe — to love!
285.
Dying, he doubted, tormented by an ominous thought, but not for nothing had God spoken in him. God is loyal to His chosen ones. ………. One hundred years of toil and woe have passed and now, more manly with each passing day, our Native Speech, given full play, celebrates his wake. ………. No longer ensnared, freed from former fetters, in all its intellectual freedom it pays its compliments to him. ………. And we, grateful grandsons, for all his good deeds, in the name of Truth and Learning, sing Eternal Memory. ………. Yes, his significance is great, true to the Russian mind he fought for Enlightenment for us, not enslaving us to it. ………. Like that Old Testament fighter who struggled till dawn with an unearthly Power and survived the nocturnal battle.
286.
In Nice the tsar’s son is dying. They’ll forge shackles for us out of this. ‘It’s God’s vengeance for the Poles’ — that’s what they’re saying here in the capital. ………. Whose crazy, narrow brain could give birth to such ideas? Whose? Some Polish priest’s? Or one of Russia’s minister’s? ……… Oh, all these fateful rumours, this criminal, wild mumbling of our native land’s black sheep will not be heeded by Russia! ………. Learn your lesson! Let’s not hear that fearful cry resound, as in the past: ‘Treason’s abroad! The tsar’s been taken!’ Russia won’t save him then!
287. APRIL 12TH., 1865
It’s all been decided and he is at peace, he, enduring till the end, though it seems he was worthy before God of a different, better crown, ………. another, better inheritance, the inheritance of his god, he, our joy since childhood, he wasn’t ours, he was His. ………. But between him and us there are bonds stronger than nature: with every heart in Russia now he prays for her, ………. for her, whose sorrow and trials are understood and gauged only by the one who, sanctifying herself through suffering, stood crying by the cross.
288.
How truly has the common sense of folk defined the sense of words: not for nothing, it’s clear, from ‘caring’ has it derived the term ‘to croak’.
289.
Est in arundineis modulatio musica ripis. The sea is harmony. Shapely in debate, all elements cohere. Rustling in the river’s reeds, musical designs inhere. ………. Imperturbable form is the outward sign of nature’s utter consonance. Only our spectral liberty imparts a sense of dissonance. ………. Whence this disharmony? How did it arise? In the general chorus, why this solo refrain? Why do our souls not sing like the sea and why must the thinking reed complain? ……… And why, from earth to the farthest stars (even today there’s no reply)
do we hear a protest in the void, the soul’s despairing cry?
290. TO MY FRIEND YA. P. POLONSKY
Living sparks no longer answer friendly banter. There’s deepest night in me. Dawn it will not see. Soon there’ll fly into the gloom, unnoticed, The dying fire’s thin smoke, the last there’ll ever be.
291.
You commanded, though, perhaps, in jest, and I shall carry out your orders. This is no place for hesitation, nor for reason, and even wisdom is crazy about you, ………. and even he, your glorious grandfather, though he’d out-argue all of Europe, gave in in the unequal battle and sued for peace at your feet.
292. TO PRINCE VYAZEMSKY
There’s the telegraph if you’ve got no legs. Let it bear to you my partly ailing verse. May God preserve you in his goodness from all kinds of squabbles, alarms, troubles, as well as from insomnia at night.
293.
Poor Lazarus, wretched Iros, with effort and in turmoil I write to you, getting up from my sick bed, and let my lame greeting be given wings by the telegraph. ………. Let it hasten it on, playing, to that wonderful, bright corner where all day, never silent, it’s as if a rain storm sings in green copses.
294.
It’s fifteen years today, my friend, since that blissful fateful day when she breathed all her soul into me, poured her whole being into me. ………. It’s already a year now, uncomplaining, not reproaching, everything lost, that I greet my fate: to be so frightfully alone until I die, as alone as when beneath the earth I’ll lie.
295.
The East is doubtful, silent. Everything is keenly quiet. What is it? Dream or expectation? Is day distant or near? The mountains’ napes are barely white. Mist still lies on woods and dales. Towns sleep. Hamlets doze, but just look up … ………. Look: see the band of light which seems to glow with hidden passion. Brighter, more alive, burning right through … Another moment — across the boundless skies a universal pealing heralds the sun’s triumphant rising.
296. ON THE EVE OF THE ANNIVERSARY OF AUGUST 4TH., 1864
Wandering along the highway as daylight quietly dies… Depressed. My legs don’t want to move. My darling, can you see me? ………. It’s getting darker, darker over all the earth. Day’s last glimmer flying off… That’s the world I shared with you. Angel, can you see me? ………. Tomorrow we pray and grieve. Tomorrow we recall that fateful day. My angel, wherever souls go, My angel, can you see me?
297.
Unexpectedly and brightly, moist across the blueness of the sky, an airy arc has been erected. Triumphant, it will soon pass by. One arm has plunged into the forest. Beyond the clouds the other sweeps. Half the sky it has encompassed. It’s reached its highest point and sleeps. ……….
This iridescent vision is pure delight for human eyes. It’s given us for just a moment, so catch it. In your grasp it lies! Look again. It’s paling. One second more its colours glow. It’s gone. It’s vanished just as surely as what you breathe and live by goes.
298.
Sad night creeps across an earth beset neither by thought nor threat but by joyless, sluggish sleep. Lightning brightens the scowls, winking intermittently like deaf-mute ghouls debating heatedly. ………. A sign has been agreed: the sky’s alight. A sudden surge snaps from the murk with sudden speed and fields and distant woods emerge. Then again they’re under shrouds. You sense it all go darkly still up there, and if in camera some high affair they’d ratified above the clouds.
299.
Not a day relieves the soul of pain, of pain about the past, seeking words, not finding them, drying, drying with every day, ………. just like the anguish-burning exile, bemoaning his lost land, discovering on the bed of the sea that it’s buried in the sand.
300.
Let foul slander rage, labour to crush her with lies. Every demand quails before the candour of her eyes. ………. Sincere and lovely, of wondrous form,
her cloudless soul’s a sky untroubled by storms. ……… Not a speck of dust adheres when those nauseating churls sow their stupid calumny which cannot even crumple the airy silk of her curls!
301. TO COUNTESS A.D. BLUDOVA
However meagre life becomes, however much we’re forced to come to terms with what is clearer every day in any case, that just surviving isn’t living, ………. in the name of a dear past, in the name of your father, let’s promise one another never to betray ourselves.
302.
So he’s saved! Could it turn out otherwise? A sense of joy has flooded Russia. But amidst the prayers, amidst our grateful tears, one thought persists and gnaws our hearts: ………. with just one shot, everything in us has been insulted, and there seems no escape from this slap in Russia’s face. It lies, alas, a despicable blot on all the history of the Russian race!
303.
When what we have said is echoed far and wide by a soul sympathetic to its sense, we need no other recompense — we’re satisfied, we’re satisfied.
304. TO PRINCE SUVOROV
Two disparate tendencies join in you, you holy fool who cannot save his soul, you clown without a scrap of wit. ………. It seems that Nature’s grand design was creating then condemning you to deeds you needn’t answer for, to words that go unpunished.
305.
In God’s world it can happen that snow will fall in May, but Spring doesn’t grieve, knowing her time will come. ……… Despite its raging, this untimely fool is powerless. Blizzards and storms have already abated, summer storms are on their way.
306.
When our disordered exchequer doesn’t simply thresh around, but runs itself aground, just sitting like a crab, who will come to save her, well who, if not a sailor?
307.
Lake’s still currents, gold-glinting roofs, past glories in abundance in the lake. Life plays. Sun burns. Under both, here, a wonder-wafting past, wafted by its own enchantment. Golden sun glints, lake-currents glimmer. Here the great past seems to breathe oblivion, slumbering sweetly, carefree, unworried, unalarmed in wondrous dreams by the momentary tremor of swan-voices.
308.
On his funeral pall, instead of wreaths, we’ve inscribed some simple words: ‘Oh Russia, were it not for yours. he’d have had no enemies at all’.
309.
When our decrepit energies turn traitor, when, like former tenants, we let our house to the young, save us then, good spirit, from faint-hearted reproaches, from slander, from animosity at our changing life, from feelings of suppressed spite at the world which is being renewed, where new guests sit at the feast prepared for them, at the bitter, galling awareness that the current no longer bears our boat, that there are other vocations, that others have been called forward, from everything that (the more ardently — the deeper) we have concealed so long, because more shameful than ageing, aged love is an old man’s peevish passion.
310.
The pale, blue sky breathes warmth and light and greets Peter’s city with an unheard of September. ………. A warm, moist fullness in the air waters fresh foliage and quietly ripples through the stately pennants. ………. The sun sows glittering heat along the deeps of the Neva. Everything gleams and wafts like the south and life is like a dream. ………. More free and easy, more welcoming is the vanishing day, and the shade of autumn evenings is heated by summer comfort. ………. At night, multi-coloured lights flame… enchanted nights, enchanted days. ………. It’s as if nature’s strict rules had been relaxed in favour of the spirit of life and freedom, of the inspirations of love. ………. It’s as if, eternally indestructible, the eternal order had been destroyed by the loving and loved human soul. ………. In this caressing radiance, in this blue sky there’s a smile, there’s an awareness, there’s a sympathetic reception. ………. And sacred emotion with the gift of pure tears has come to us like a revelation and echoed through everything. ………. What was unprecedented till now our knowing people has understood, and the week of Dagmar will cross the generations.
311.
Russia is a thing of which the intellect cannot conceive. Hers is no common yardstick. You measure her uniquely: in Russia you believe!
312. ON THE JUBILEE OF N.M. KARAMZIN
On Karamzin’s great day, at this fraternal funeral feast in his memory, what should we have to say before the fatherland, what, that she could respond to? ………. With what reverent praise, with what living sympathy shall we honour this glorious day, this national, family festival? ………. What respects shall we send you, you, our good, pure genius, amidst the perturbations and doubts of these much-troubled years ………. with their ugly mixture of impotent justice and glaring lies, so hateful to a soul which is high, passionate about goodness, ………. a soul, such as yours was when it still fought on here, but which headed irrepressibly for God’s invocatory voice? ………. We shall say, be a guide to us, be an inspiring star, illuminate our fateful dusk, wholesome, free, wise spirit, ………. able to bring all together into an unbreakable, whole structure, everything humanly good, reinforcing it with Russian feeling, ………. able, your neck unbending before the crown’s charms, to be a friend of the tsar to the end and a true subject of Russia.
313.
Russian star, will you always seek mists to stay concealed, or like an optical illusion will you forever be revealed? ………. Will you really be to avid eyes which seek your glow at night an empty, mocking meteor aimlessly scattering its light? ………. Murk thickens. Grief deepens. Disaster’s slipped its tether. See whose flag is sinking in the ocean. Wake up, wake now, or drown forever!
314. IN ROME
An edifice was raised in ancient Rome, Neron building himself a golden palace. At the very granite foot of the palace a blade of grass engaged the caesar in a dispute: ‘I’ll not give in to you, you know that, earthly ruler, and I cast aside your hateful burden.’ ‘What, not give in to me? The world groans beneath me!’ ‘The whole world is your servant, but my servant is Time.’
315.
Although it has slipped from the face of the earth there remains in the souls of tsars a retreat for truth. Who has not heard the solemn word? Age passes it on to age. ………. And what now? Alas, what do we see? Who will give shelter to, who will look after the divine guest? Lies, evil lies have corrupted all minds, and the whole world has become lie incarnate! ………. Once again the East is smoking with fresh blood, there’s carnage once again, everywhere there’s wailing and weeping, and again the feasting executioner is in the right, and the victims are given up to slander! Oh, this age, nurtured on dissension, soulless age with a malicious intellect, in the squares, in palaces, on thrones, everywhere it’s become the personal foe of truth! ………. But there remains one powerful retreat, one sacred altar left for truth: in your soul, our Orthodox tsar, our good-hearted, honourable Russian tsar!
316 .
It’s not the first time the East has been in turmoil, not the first time they’ve crucified Christ there, and with their shield the powers protect the pallid horn of the moon from ‘the cross’. A cry goes up: ‘Crucify him, crucify him! Give them over once more to slavery and to torment!’ Oh Russia, surely you can’t hear these sounds and, like Pilate, wash your hands. Don’t you see, it’s your heart that’s bleeding!
317.
Above prostrate Russia there arose in a sudden storm Peter, nicknamed the Fourth, Arakcheev the Second.
318.
How I love the cherished pages of this posthumous album, how everything about them is so kindred and close, how full it all is of spiritual warmth! ……….
How the sympathetic strength of these lines has fanned me with the past! The temple has emptied, the thurible’s fire has gone out, but the sacrificial smoke still rises.
319.
‘The smoke of the fatherland is sweet to smell!’ Thus a former age, poetically, would speak. But ours forever seeks sunspots as well and smuts our fatherland with smoke that reeks!
320. SMOKE
Once there stood a mighty, beautiful wood here, it rustled greenly, this magical forest, but not really a forest, rather an entire world of variety, filled with visions and wonders. ………. Sunlight filtered through, shadows shimmered, the racket of birds would not be stilled, swift deer flashed through thickets and the hunter’s horn resounded now and then. ………. At the cross-roads, chatting and greeting, meeting us from the silvan half-light, entranced by a kind of wondrous light, swarms of familiar faces. ………. What life, what charm, what a luxuriant, bright feast for the soul! Unearthly creations there seemed to be to us, but this marvellous world was close to us. ………. And once again to the mysterious forest we have come in our former love. But where is it? Who has brought down the curtain, dropped it from the sky to the earth? ………. What’s this? A spectre, spells of some sort? Where are we? Can we believe our eyes? All that’s here is smoke, like the fifth element, smoke, joyless, endless smoke! ………. Here and there ugly stumps stick through where the fire’s left it bare,
and white flames run across the burned boughs with an ominous crackling. ………. No, it’s a dream! No, the breeze will spring up and bear away the spectre of smoke and once more our wood will be green, as it was, magic, kindred.
321. TO THE SLAVS
A heartfelt greeting to you, brethren, from all corners of Slavdom, greetings to you all, without exception! A family feast is prepared for you all! Not for nothing has Russia called you to a festival of peace and love, but you must realise, dear guests, that here you’re more than guests — you’re family! ………. You’re at home here, and more at home than in your own native land, here where the rule of foreign powers is unknown, here where there is but one tongue for all of us, rulers and ruled, and where Slavdom is not held accountable for the grave original sin. ………. Although we’ve been split apart by inimical fate, we’re still one race, the scions of a single mother! That’s why they hate us! You’ll not be forgiven for Russia nor Russia forgiven for you! ………. They’re worried to death by the fact that the Slavonic family is telling friend and foe to their faces for the first time, ‘Here I am!’ At the memory which will not go away of a long chain of evil deeds, Slav self-consciousness, like divine retribution, will terrify them! ………. Long ago on European soil, where falsehood grew so luxuriantly, long ago with the learning of the Pharisee, a dual truth was created: for them — law and justice, for us — violation and deceit, and antiquity reinforced them, as the inheritance of the Slavs. And that which lasted centuries has not dried up today, and weighing down on us, above us, gathered here … Still smarting from old pains is all our modern times … The field of Kosovo has not been touched, the White Mountain not levelled to the ground! And among us — no small shame — in the Slav medium kindred to all, the only one who’s walked away from their disgrace and has not succumbed to their enmity is he who for his own kind everywhere and always has been the foremost miscreant: they will only honour our Judas with their kiss. ………. Shamefully conciliatory tribe, when will you become a race? When will your time of differences and adversity become redundant, and when will a cry ring out for unity and bring down that which divides us? We’ll wait and trust in providence which knows the day and the hour. And this faith in God’s justice will no longer die in our breasts, though many sacrifices and much sorrow will still be met by us on the way … It lives — this supreme achiever — and its judgement is not meagre, and the word liberator-tsar will reach out beyond the Russian border.
322. TO THE SLAVS
Man mu? die Slaven an die Mauer drucken. They shout, they threaten: ‘Watch, we’ll squeeze the Slavs to the wall!’ Well, let’s hope they don’t burst apart during their ardent onslaught! ………. Yes, there’s a wall, all right, but it’s a big one and it’s not hard to push you against it. But what benefit would come from it? That’s what I can’t figure out. ………. That wall is fearfully resilient, although it’s a granite cliff. One sixth part of the globe it long ago encompassed. ………. More than once it’s been stormed, here and there a couple of stones have been broken off, but after that the warriors retreated with bruised foreheads. ………. It stands as it has always stood, watching, a martial fastness. It’s not so much that it’s threatening, but… every stone in it is alive. ………. So let the frenzied attempts of the Germans constrict and press you to its embrasures and its shutters, Let’s just see what they get hold of! ………. No matter how blind enmity rages, no matter how their violence threatens, this kindred wall will not give you up, it will not repulse its own people. ………. It will part before you and, like a living bulwark for you, will stand between you and the enemy and move closer to them.
323. POSTSCRIPT TO THE POEM ENTITLED TO HANKA
Thus I appealed, thus I spoke. That was thirty years ago. Efforts are more determined. Evil is nastier. ………. You, standing now before God, man of justice, sacred shade, let all your life be a guarantee that the desired day will come. ………. For all your constancy in the battle which has still not ended, let the first All Slav festival be an offering to you!
324.
It’s a waste of time. You’ll not make them see sense. The more liberal they are, the coarser they are. Civilisation is a fetish to them, but its idea is inaccessible to them. ………. However much you grovel to it, gentlemen, you’ll not gain recognition from Europe: in her eyes you will forever be not the servants of enlightenment, rather its serfs.
325. ON THE JUBILEE OF PRINCE A.M. GORCHAKOV
In these bloodily fateful days when, calling a halt to its fighting, Russia has sheathed her sword, her sword, pitted in battle, he was summoned by the will of authority to stand guard, and he stood, and he conducted on his own with Europe a valiant, unequal struggle. ………. For twelve years now this obstinate dual has lasted. The world of foreigners wonders. Russia alone can understand him. He it was who first guessed what the problem was, and he it was who first boldly recognised the Russian spirit as the union of strength, and this crown is his just reward.
326.
In these days of madness, if a noble prince sinks to decorate Christ’s torturer with his own hand, if we recall the saying, perhaps you’ll understand: ‘Evil be to him who evil thinks’.
327.
However burdensome the end, that thing we’ll never comprehend, our mortal suffering’s exhaustion, more horror in our souls is roused
by watching one by one being doused our every cherished recollection.
328.
A righteous punishment is being meted out for a grievous sin, a thousand-year old sin. There will be no appeal, the blow will not be deflected, and God’s justice will be seen by everyone. ………. It’s the righteous punishment of divine justice and whoever you might call to for support, judgement will be passed and the papal tiara will for the last time be bathed in blood. ………. And you, its innocent bearer, let God save you and bring you to your senses. Pray to Him, that your grey hair be not dirtied by spilled blood.
329. ON READING THE IMPERIAL DESPATCHES, PRINTED IN THE JOURNAL DE ST. PETERSBOURG.
When expiation is accomplished and once more dawn illuminates the East, oh, how they’ll then understand the meaning of these magnificent lines! ………. How the first bright ray of daybreak, touching, will bring brilliant flame, gilding and making sacred these prophetic pages! ………. And in an outpouring of national sentiment, like pure, divine dew, a tear of gratitude from free peoples will start to gleam on them! ………. In them is written a whole story about what was and what is. Having unmasked Europe’s conscience, they have saved Russia’s honour!
330.
Once more by the Neva I stand. Once more, as in the past, as I were alive, I stare at these sleeping waters. ……….
There’s not a spark in the sky’s blue. Everything’s stilled in pale enchantment. Alone along the pensive Neva currents of moonlight stream. ………. Am I dreaming all this, or am I really seeing what we saw by this very moon when we were both still alive?
331. FIRES
As far as the eye can see, horizon-wide, massive, threatening cloud, column upon column, a chasm of smoke hanging over the land. Dead bushes spreading out, grasses smouldering, unburning, a row of charred firs thinned out on the horizon. On this sad, scorched site no sparks, only smoke. Where’s the fire, malicious destroyer, omnipotent master? Stealthily here and there, like some red beast crawling through the undergrowth, the living fire runs! Let twilight come Smoke and darkness merge. With consoling flames the beast illuminates his camp. Before the might of this elemental enmity, silent, arms drooping, stands sad man, stands a helpless child.
332.
Clouds melt in the sky. Beaming in the heat, the river runs, sparkling like a steel mirror. ………. It’s hotter by the hour. Shadows retreat to silent oak thickets.
From whitening fields wafts honey-scent. ………. What a wondrous day! Centuries will pass and in the same eternal order and river will sparkle and flow and meadows will breathe in the sun.
333. TO MIKHAIL PETROVICH POGODIN
Here’s an unsightly list of my verses. Without glancing at them, I present them to you, not controlling my sloth enough to take at least a quick look through them. ………. In our age verses live a second or two, born in the morning, dying towards evening. Why make a fuss? The hand of oblivion will carry out its editorial task with precision.
334. IN MEMORY OF E.P. KOVALEVSKY
In the ranks of the fatherland’s forces yet another bold warrior’s fallen and yet again all honest, Russian hearts will sigh at their grievous loss. ………. This living soul was valiantly true to himself, always and everywhere, this living flame, often smoking as it burned in suffocating milieux. ………. Unembarrassed, he believed in truth and all life long he battled the vulgar and the petty. He fought, not once giving up. He was a rare man in Russia. ……… Not only will Russia lament his passing: he was dear in that alien land, and where blood flows joylessly there too will flow tears of recognition.
335.
The well-wishers of the Russian press, as do all of you, gentlemen, make her feel sick, but the trouble is that she doesn’t actually throw up.
336. A HEINE MOTIF (HEINE)
If death is night, if life is day, ah, you mottled day, you’ve exhausted me! Shadows thicken above my bed. Drowsiness attracts my head. ………. Impotent, I yield to it. But through the mute murk a dream persists, somewhere there, above, the clear day’s glistening and an invisible choir sings of love.
337.
You weren’t born a Pole, though you still feel you’re one of the szlachta, and you’re Russian, you must be aware, only in the estimation of the Third Section. ………. Slave of influential gentlemen, with what noble valour your freedom of speech allows you to fulminate against all those whom you’ve muzzled! ………. Not in vain have you served with your pen the aristocracy. In which servants’ quarters did you acquire this knightly manner?
338.
‘No, I can’t see you…’ Thus indeed I spoke not once but a hundred times, while you, you wouldn’t believe it. ……… In one thing my informer is wrong, if he really has decided to inform, why, interrupting me, did he not bother finishing what he was saying? ………. And now he pesters me, this course, insolent-joker, putting aside his notion, to re-establish my literal text. ………. Yes, I said, and more than once — it wasn’t an isolated incident — We still can’t see you — without that sympathetically deep, ………. heartfelt and holy love, with which — how can one not be aware of this? — the whole of Russia has become accustomed to admire its best star?
339.
With which heartfelt, simple greeting shall we commemorate the holy memory of the thousandth anniversary of this great day marking Cyril’s death? ………. What words can we impress upon this day, if not words uttered by him, when, bidding farewell to his brother and friends, he reluctantly abandoned your dust, Rome? ………. Participating in his work, over a whole span of ages, across so many generations, we too furrowed for him, amidst temptations and doubts. ………. Like him, we in our turn, not finishing our work, we too will leave it and, recalling his sacred words, then we’ll call them out: ‘Don’t betray yourself, great Russia!’ ………. Don’t believe foreigners, motherland, their duplicitous wisdom or their insolent deceits, and, like blessed Cyril, you too must not reject your great service to the Slavs.’
340.
It’s not given us to foretell how our words will echo through the ages, but sympathy is given us as grace is given us.
341.
There are two powers, two fateful powers. We spend our lives under their ban. From cradle to grave our lives are never ours. They are Death and the Judgement of Man. ………. You don’t resist them, you just kneel and they don’t answer for their deeds. They show no mercy. They don’t heed our protests. Their verdicts allow no appeal. ……….
Death’s a gentleman who does not dissemble. Unmoved by all considerations, he’s of single mind. He reaps his brethren, struggling or submitting blind when beneath his scythe as equals they assemble. ………. Society is different: disharmony and strife this jealous leader will not tolerate. He will not cut you honest and straight but by the roots will rive your life. ………. And woe to him, alas, twofold woe to that youthful, energetic pride which with smiling gaze and decisive stride into that unequal battle dares to go. ………. When, fatefully aware of all his rights, with the blossoming courage which beauty has planted in him, unflinching, by his task enchanted, he encounters slander and he fights, ………. no mask covers his eyes He’ll not be humbled, beaten, pushed. See, from his brow he’s brushed abuse and menaces: ‘Let them criticise!’ ………. Yes, woe to him: the more artless, the more guilty he’ll appear. Such is the World: it plays the brute where the guilt’s more humanly sincere.
342. MAY 11TH., 1869
The word of the Gospel has now taught us all in its sacred simplicity, all of us gathered here once again at this general celebration: ‘Standing on its rocky summit, the City will not conceal itself from the gaze of man.’ ………. Let this proclamation not be in vain, let it be our behest, and we, fraternally celebrating this great day, let us place our union on such a summit so that all may see it, all the fraternal tribes.
343.
Just as the trees in Peter’s plantations have grown splendidly in Catherine’s valley, so may the living Russian word, now sown here, send down deeper roots and grow.
344. TO O.I. ORLOVA-DAVYDOVA
Here, where destiny’s gifts are illuminated by spirit, justified by philanthropy, involuntarily man is reconciled with fate, the soul consciously makes friends with Providence.
345. TO ANDREY NIKOLAEVICH MURAVYOV
There, on the summit of an overhang an aerial, iridescent temple goes off into the skies, a wonder to the eyes, as if soaring to heaven, where the First-Named Andrey’s cross still shines today, white against the skies of Kiev, sacred observer of these places, ………. reverently leaning your dwelling against its feet, you live there, no idle dweller, at the decline of the working day. And who without humility could not revere in you today the union of life and aspiration and steadfast firmness in the battle? ………. Yes, many, many tribulations have you endured and overcome. Live, then, not in vain awareness of your deserts and good deeds, but for love, for example, so that people might be convinced by you of what can be accomplished by effective faith and the constant structure of thought.
346. IN THE COUNTRY
What’s all this desperate yelling, racket and flapping of wings? Such bedlam’s somewhat out of place. Who’s responsible for such things? Geese by the river, a flock of ducks, suddenly frightened, scatter. Where to? Do they know themselves? They’re like lunatics with their clatter. ……… What sudden alarm makes all these voices go at once? It’s not a dog, it’s a four-legged devil. A demon-dog has burst into the farm. Self-confident to a fault, this riotous fellow who loves to brag has totally ruined the regal peace and chased all the birds for a gag. ……… As if he’d like to follow them, just to rub it in, he shows that he has nerves of steel as his wings he tries to win. Why all this movement? Where’s the sense? Such waste of energy cannot be right! What is it that instils such fear that it puts the geese and ducks to flight? ………. Ah, but there’s a purpose, to it all, you see: someone noticed a stagnant creek and for the sake of progress swift action was the decree. So, benevolent Providence slipped the urchin from his chain so that the purpose of their wings they should never forget again. ………. Though in much that happens today there doesn’t seem much sense, that very genius of the age is ready to explain it all away. Some of you might think he’s merely barking, but there’s a higher role that he’s fulfilling: he wants to understand and then release the logical faculty of ducks and geese.
347.
Nature is a sphinx. The truer she kills you with her eternal riddle, it’s more than likely, for centuries, the truer she has fooled you.
348. TO THE CZECHS FROM THE MOSCOW SLAVS
Brethren, to your festivals, meeting you in your exultation, Moscow comes to meet you with reverent hope. ………. In the midst of ecstatic turmoil, in the heat of great agitation, she brings to you a guarantee, a guarantee of love and union. ………. Take from her hands that which once was yours, that which the old Czech family bought for itself at such a price, ………. such a fearful price that even today the memory is your best sanctuary, your life blood. ………. Take the Cup! Like a star in the night of fates it has shone to you, and it has raised your impotence above the world of man. ………. Oh, remember what a beloved sign it was to you, and that it was in the inextinguishable fire that it was acquired. ………. And of this great payment, the property of great fathers, for all their hard labours, for all their sacrifices and sufferings, ………. you allow yourself to be deprived by foreign, audacious falsehood, you allow it, alas, to smear the honour of your fathers and God’s truth! ………. And are you condemned for long to bear this heaviest of sentences, this spiritual captivity, oh Czech people of one blood? ………. No, no, not in vain did your forefathers call down grace upon you, and it will be given to you to understand that there is no salvation for you without the Cup. ………. It alone will finally solve for you the riddle of your people: in it there is spiritual freedom and the crown of union. ……… Approach this wondrous Cup, gained by your best blood, approach, step closer to it with hope, faith and love.
349.
No matter how we’re crushed by separation, it compels us to succumb. The heart has another tormentor, harder to tolerate, more painful still. ………. The moment of separation has passed. All we’re left with in our hands is a single cover that we can only half see through. ………. We know that underneath this gauze lies everything which pains our soul. Like some strange, invisible being it hides from us, stays silent. …….. What’s the point of such trials? The soul can’t help being confused. On the wheel of bewilderment it cannot stop being whirled. ………. The moment of separation has passed and we don’t dare, when the time is ripe, touch then pull aside this cover we find so hateful!
350. TODAY’S EVENT
Pennants on the Dardanelles, festive cannon thundering. Skies are clear, bright waters swell. Tsargrad is exulting ………. with every reason to rejoice, for all along enchanted coasts, the jolly-hearted pasha has invited guests to merry toasts. ………. He regales them all most handsomely, his dear allies from the West. He’d pawn his whole authority to give them nothing but the best. ………. From the very sagest reaches in their Frankish ships they spill. Can you blame them, can you really, when Mohammed foots the bill? ………. Thunder of cannon, crash of music! All of Europe’s come to berth, every power in the world enjoys this carnival of mirth. ………. See this lively western orgy — frenzied, shouting, in it pours, shares the secrets of the harem, bursting open secret doors. ………. Against the luscious backdrop of wondrous mountains and two seas this Christian princes’ congress with Islam is extremely pleased. ………. No end to their embraces. They cannot overdo their praise. Stars glow in the West, oh, behold their joyous rays! ………. All the dearer, brighter yet one shines bright while they carouse, the fairy in her coronet, the daughter born of Rome, his spouse. ………. Notorious in her theatre of elegance and ploys,
a second Cleopatra, royal privilege enjoys. ………. A joy to all, she means no harm, appearing in the East, and every head was bowed to her the sun has risen from the West! ………. Only where the shadows wander through the mountains, through the vales, far from all this noise and racket, only where the shadows wander in the night, from fresh-hewn weals, slashed by scores of heathen swords, Christian blood still freely pours.
351. TO A.F. HILFERDING
Your failure’s such a glittering success I cannot wait to offer my congratulations, and it has brought you yet more honour, a source of edification to the rest. ………. The whole world has already heard precisely how you’ve served our country — apart, that is, from native Germans- across the years with the Russian word. ………. Ah no, they really know what you’ve achieved, in this inimical Slavonic world, and as I’ve said, the whole world knows the credit’s yours alone, and this is why they’re peeved. ………. Throughout this whole enormous place they’ve met you more than once: the Balkans, with the Czechs, and on the Danube, everywhere they’ve met you face to face. ………. Without going back on what they said — — most valiant until this moment — how can they let you in their secret citadel, through the walls of their ivory tower tread, ………. this place the Russian Treasury underwrites for the sake of these glorious defences,
admit you, you, this brave German garrison, never having lost a fight?
352. TO YU. F. ABAZA
Harmony has power over souls, a boundless reach. All living people love to hear the notes of its dusky, kindred speech. ………. Something groans within them, violently heaving, a spirit-prisoner in chains pleading for freedom, struggling. It will be heard. It begs for birth. It strains. ………. It’s not like that when you are singing: different feelings rise. In your song there is full freedom, an end to strife, an end to everything that ties. ………. Bursting from this prison of pain it grasps the links which held it, severs, rends. Wild-willed the soul exults, its sentence at an end. ………. This infinitely mighty summons causes light and dark to roll apart and from within we hear no music — we hear your living soul.
353.
I read my rebuke, which was eloquent and lively. I said it all so nicely, I’m satisfied, so I approve.
354.
Thus has providence judged: the imminent grandeur of the great Slavonic tsar shall be proclaimed to the universe not by almighty thunder’s drumming, but by a mosquito’s noisy humming.
355. FROM EGMONT (GOETHE)
Joy and grief in living ecstasy, thoughts and the heart in eternal agitation, exulting in the sky, languishing on earth, passionately exulting, passionately pining, life knows bliss in love alone.
356. HUS AT THE STAKE
The pyre has been built. The fateful flame’s about to flare and all is silent, save for gentle crackles as deep within the pyre the treacherous fire filters. ………. Crowding closer, people fanned by darting smoke. All are here, uneducated folk, here the oppressed and the oppressor, violence and falsehood: knights and clergy, ………. here the treacherous kaiser, here the high assembly of imperial and spiritual princes, and he himself, the hierarchy of Rome, sinful in infallibility. ………. She’s here too, simple old woman, unforgotten since those times, crossing herself and sighing, bringing, like a penny, her kindling to the pyre. ………. Like a sacrificial offering, your great and righteous man before us all, already fanned by fiery brilliance, praying, voice untrembling, ………. this sacred teacher of the Czechs unwavering witness to Christ, stern exposer of Vatican lies in all his high simplicity, ………. betraying neither god nor his own people, undefeated, battling on for holy truth and for His freedom, for everything which Rome called heresy. ………. In spirit he’s in Heaven, in family love he’s here still, among his people, shining, knowing that it was his blood which flowed defending the blood of Christ. ……….
Oh country of the Czechs, born of one stock! Do not renounce his legacy! Oh, finish off his spiritual feat, celebrate this union of brothers! ………. Severing the chains with which that holy fool, that Rome oppressed you for so long, on Hus’s inextinguishable pyre melt the final link!
357.
Over ancient, Russian Vilnius kindred crosses glimmer. Orthodoxy’s pealing bronze makes all the heavens shudder. ………. Fearsome deeds forgotten. Gone the ages of temptation. Heavenly lilies blossom across the blight of desolation. ………. Sacred ways are coming back, traditions fine of early days. Only the most recent past has dropped into the realm of shades, ………. whence, as in a hazy dream, before the world’s awake, our very peace of mind this past still wants to shake, ………. and as the moon’s about to leave the sky, in that early morning chill, across the land just waking up a spectral visitor wanders still.
358. K.B.
I met you and the past came back to life in my dead heart. Remembering a golden time, my heart became so warm. ………. Just as in late autumn there are days, the transient hour, when suddenly spring wafts again and something stirs within us, ………. so, winnowed within by the breath of fullness my soul knew in those years, with a rapture I thought I’d forgotten, I stare into your dear face. ………. As if we’d been apart for ages I stare at you and think I’m dreaming, and suddenly sounds unsilenced in me could be heard within me, but louder! ………. That was more than reminiscence: my life began to talk once more, as did in you that very same charm, as did in my soul that very same love!
359.
Tired and in one piece, I got here on time, today I say farewell to the white hat, but parting with you — that didn’t go well.
360. TWO UNITIES
Blood’s pouring over the brim of the cup filled to overflowing by the wrath of God, and the West is drowning in it. The blood is spattering you, my friends, my brothers! Slavonic world, pull closer together! ………. ‘Unity’, an oracle of our century has said, ‘can only be welded by iron and blood.’ Well, we’ll try welding it with love. Let’s see which lasts the longer.
361.
Submissive to a high command standing guard over thought, we haven’t been too diligent, despite the carbine in our hand. ………. We didn’t want the job at all. We rarely threatened and chose to be a mere guard of honour rather than have the warder’s key.
362.
Whatever life might have taught us, still the heart believes in wonders: there is a strength which never wanes, there is untainted beauty, ………. and earthly fading will not touch unearthly flowers, and in the midday heat the dew on them will not dry up, ………. and this faith will not deceive whoever lives by it alone. Not everything which has flowered here will wither. Not all that has been will pass by! ………. But the grace of this faith for the few is accessible only to those who in life’s stern trials, like you, still loving, were able to suffer, ………. have been able to cure others’ ailments by their suffering, who have laid down their soul for their friends and endured everything to the end.
363.
Yes, you have kept your word: moving not a cannon, not a rouble, our native Russian land once more exercises its rights, ………. and the sea bequeathed to us, once more with its free billows, forgetting the short-lived shame, kisses its native shore. ………. Fortunate is he today who gains a victory not by blood but by the intellect, happy he who can find in himself Archimedes’s centre of gravity, ………. who, full of brisk patience, has combined calculation with valour, he it is who has stuck to his aspirations, who has dared at the apt moment. ………. But is the confrontation over? And how will your mighty lever strengthen stubbornness in clever folk and lack of awareness in fools? ……….
364.
I’m bewildered, and let me say I find it incredible, most profound: My daughter, blushing-red and blond, Wants to become a sister in grey!
365.
Brother, you have been with me so long. Now you’ve departed to our common goal, leaving me where everything is bare, a solitary figure on a solitary knoll. ………. Must I wait here long on my own? Give it a day or a year and I’ll vacate this spot from which I gaze into the evening murk, not knowing what will be my fate. ………. Non-being is so simple! Nothing leaves a trace. With or without me, whom does it concern? Snows will sweep the steppes. The gloom will be the same and everything will stay precisely in its place! ………. You can’t count losses. Someone’s counted every day. That vibrant life’s already far behind. Ahead, there’s absolutely nothing and I, just as I am, along the fateful queue pick out my way.
366.
Happy New Year, all the best, and constant success to you. That’s a greeting from a loving dog, take it with all my sympathy.
367.
A fool we’ve known for ages, the bustlesome old censor feeds any old way on our flesh, God bless him!
368.
I’m half asleep and I can’t work out this combination: I hear the whistle of runners on the snow and the chirruping of spring swallows.
369. THE BLACK SEA
Fifteen years have passed since then. A whole gamut of events has come to pass, but faith has not deceived us, and we hear the last rattle of Sevastopol rumbling. ………. The last, thunderous shot suddenly rang out, life-creating. The last word in the cruel battle has only now been spoken. It is the word of the Russian tsar. ………. And everything which till so recently had been raised up by blind hostility, so insolently, so arbitrarily, has crumpled in on itself before his authoritative honour ………. And there you have it: free element, as our national poet would have said, you roar as you did in days of yore, and your blue waves roll on and you sparkle in proud beauty! ………. Fifteen years you spent in forced confinement in the west. You didn’t give in, you didn’t complain, but the hour struck and the violation ended. It fell like a key to the sea bed. ………. Once again your importunate billows call on your kindred Russia, and into this feud, reasoned out by God, great Sevastopol awakes from its enchanted sleep. ……… And that which you, in days of old, hid from martial inclemency in your sympathetic breast you’ll give us back, without casualties — the immortal Black Sea fleet. ………. Yes, in the heart of the Russian people this day will be consecrated, it is our external freedom, it will illuminate the grave’s shadows of the St. Peter and Paul vault.
370. THE VATICAN’S ANNIVERSARY
There was a day of judgement and censure, that fateful, irrevocable day, when to ensure a long fall, he stepped onto the highest rung ………. and, constricted by God’s design, and driven to that height, with his infallible foot he stepped into the bottomless emptiness, ………. when, obeying others’ passions, the plaything and victim of dark forces, so blasphemously-equably he proclaimed himself a divinity. ………. Suddenly a parable was created and appeared about the new Man-God and to sacrilegious tutelage Christ’s church was betrayed. ………. Oh, how much dissension and turmoil since then has that infallible one caused, and how beneath the storms of these debates blasphemy ripens and temptation grows. ………. In fear seeking God’s truth, suddenly coming to are all these tribes, and as with the thousand-year old lie it’s finally poisoned for them. ………. And it is powerless to overcome this poison, flowing in their veins, in their most treasured veins, and will it flow long, and where will it end? ………. But no, however stubbornly you fight, falsehood will surrender, the reverie will dissipate, and the Vatican Dalai-Lama will not be summoned to be the vicar of Christ.
371.
Of the life that raged here, of bloody rivers that stained the ground what’s survived whole, what has come down to us? You can see them now, a couple of mounds. ………. Two or three oaks have taken root, spreading wide, bold and fair, rustling leaves, and they don’t care whose dust, whose memory they uproot. ………. Ignorant of her past, nature seems. Alien to her are our spectral years. We are vaguely aware that we exist as shadows in her dreams. ………. Completing life’s useless game, one by one her children she devours in her peace-making abyss, welcoming, treating every one the same.
372.
Enemy of narrow negativity, he always kept up with the age: as a man he was a Russian, he was a man before a sage.
373. TO THE MEMORY OF M.K. POLITKOVSKAYA
Elle a ete douce devant la mort. The meaningful word has once more been vindicated by you: in the destruction of everything earthly, you were meekness and love. ………. At the very portals of sepulchral gloom, at the last, there was no lack of abundant love in your soul, there was an inexhaustible supply. ………. And that very loving power with which, not betraying yourself, you endured till the end all life’s labour, all the day’s malice, ………. that rejoicing power of benevolence and love, not giving way, made a home for your last hours. ………. And you, humble and obedient, defeating all death’s fears,
went placidly to meet it, as if at your father’s summons. ………. Oh, how many souls who loved you, oh, how many familiar hearts, hearts, living by your life, will be stricken by your untimely end! ………. It was late when I met you on my path through life, but with sincere anguish I say ‘Farewell’ to you. ………. In these days of desperate doubt, these days, suffering from lack of faith, when denser all around the shadows press onto the ruined earthly world, ………. oh, if in this fearsome division in which we’re destined to live, there’s still one revelation, there’s an unbroken link ………. with the great mystery of death, then this, we see and believe, is the exit of a soul like you, their exit from our darkness.
374.
On this day of the Orthodox East, this sacred, sacred great day, spread wide across the whole world your peals and clothe all Russia in them! ………. But do not limit your summons to the frontiers of Holy Russia. Let it be heard throughout the world, let it overflow its brim, ………. with its distant wave embracing that vale where my own child fights with wicked sickness, ………. that bright land, where in exile fate drew her, where the breathing of the southern sky she drinks as she would a medicine. ………. Oh, cure this ailing girl, pour joy into her soul, so that in Christ’s resurrection her whole life would itself be resurrected.
375.
There’s peace and harmony between us, that was clear from the word go Let’s greet each other, then, making the sign of the cross, you with me, me with you.
376.
These dates are so illogical! What a mess this calendar is! Outside it’s winter, as far as I remember, and yet in fullest bloom, as charming as only she can be, I’m greeting spring in late November!
377.
Here’s a whole world, living, varied, of magic sounds and magic dreams! Oh, this world, so youthfully handsome, is worth a thousand other worlds!
378.
Saviour, I see your mansion decked out, but I have no clothes to enter it.
379.
In my grave I’d love to lie as now upon my bed I lie. Silently, eternally I’d hear you as centuries passed by. ………. The following poems were written during the last six months of Tyutchev’s final illness. During this period he suffered a number of strokes.
380. NAPOLEON III
You too have completed your fateful campaign, duplicitous inheritor of great powers, man not of the fates but of blind chance. You’re a sphinx whose riddle the coarse crowd solved but, the irresistible preacher of God’s justice, not of earth’s, you demonstrated to the world indeed how unsteady everything is if there’s none of this truth there: you spent twenty stormy years pointlessly agitating the world, you sowed a lot of lies in the world and started a lot of tempests, and you scattered what was left and wasted what had been built up! The people who laid the crown upon you became dissolute thanks to you, and perished: and, true to your calling, stirring up the terrified world with your game, like a stupid child you gave it over to a long period of instability. There’s no salvation in lies and violence, however you might boldly arm yourself with them, not for man’s soul nor for his affairs. Listen while you celebrate, whoever he might now be, armed to the teeth with violence and deceit, your turn will come, and sooner or later you’ll be defeated by it! But in expatiation of dark deeds you bequeathed to the world one great lesson: let people and lords make sense of it and each one who would compete with you, only there, only in that native family, where a living link with a higher power is sensed and where it’s reinforced by mutual faith and a free conscience, where all its conditions are sacred and the people take heart in it, whether he stands by the throne or stands vigil at the head of the death bed, where the tsar’s son lay, and all the people recently stood around that bed in Orthodox prayer. Oh, there’s no place for treason here, or for various kinds of cunning, and extremely pitiful would be he who would insult this people by either slander or suspicion.
381.
To you, ill in a distant land, it occurred to me, also suffering and in torment, to send you this verse, so that together with the happily splashing sea it would fly into your window, a distant echo of your native waters, and the Russian word, though for only a moment, would interrupt the singing of the Mediterranean. From that company, far from foreign, in which you were the soul and the love, where today with concentrated attention they keep an eye on your illness with sincere compassion, let him be closer than ever before, part of your soul, that best of men, that purest of souls, your dear, good, unforgettable husband! The soul, with which yours was fused, preserving you from harm’s temptations, with which you spent all your life as one, fulfilling honourably your difficult task, that of an exemplary, Christian widow! ………. Greetings to you from that shade, dear and blessed to us both, who spent so little time among us, suffered bravely and loved hotly, rushing away from this vale of tears, where she succeeded in nothing, alas, in her long, heavy, exhausting struggle, forgiving people and fate for everything. And her native land she loved so much, that, being no warrior, she still offered her life to her country. She could not have parted with it in time, if another life could have saved it.
382.
British leopard, why get so riled at us? Why do you wave your tail and growl so vexedly? Where’s the source of this sudden alarm? What have we done wrong? Is it because, having penetrated deep into the central Asian steppes, our northern bear, our all-Russian man of the land refused to surrender his rights to defend himself, even biting back? To show his friends that he means business, he’s not about to let the world see him as some hermit-fakir. He’s not willing to let the world, right in public view, see him offer his body as a meal to all the snakes and creatures of the steppes. ‘No, that’s not the way it will be!’ — and he raised his paw. The leopard was so cross at this: ‘Ah, scoundrel! You bounder!’ our lion roared in anger. ‘How dare this simple bear defend itself in my presence, raising its paw, even snapping at me! You’ll see, it’ll come to such a pass that he’ll start to think he has the same rights as me, the radiant lion. We cannot tolerate such mischief!’
383.
Of course, it is harmful to the well-being of the state to form a particular monarchy within it, but it’s not compatible with the needs of the subjects to awaken in the Khanate an individual Khanate, to renew the traces and accords of long gone years and, pushing to one side all today’s accords, set up a new structure and self-appointed, whimsically, suddenly in many-throned Moscow intellectually eclipsed, in God knows what intellectual gloom, suddenly to declare yourself a revived baskak of a non-existent Horde.
384.
In days of misfortune and trouble when from the Golden Horde baskaks were sent to Moscow, I’m sure that even they would choose to despatch to the capital their more civil Tartars, as far as these two words can be compatible, but certainly the best they had at their disposal, and they wouldn’t have sent Durnovo, though perhaps it’s all much ado about nothing.
385.
In punishment, God’s taken everything away: my health, my strength of will, the air, my sleep. No, you’re the only thing he’s let me keep, a guarantee that I’ll still pray.
386. SPRING IN ITALY
Fragrant and bright, even since February spring has been entering gardens, and here the almond has suddenly come into bloom and its whiteness has infused all the greenery.
387.
We surrender you to the sun of the south. It alone, we must admit, can love you more warmly than our own, although while here you have a tsar and winters, we wouldn’t swap these places with any other countries. Here your heart stays with us. Go then, leave with God, but — your heart on it as a token — say you’ll quickly return to us. And when you leave, from all sides, even from the wretched bed of suffering, let prayers and good wishes hurry after you, the solemn wishes of all Russian souls.
388.
Here are some fresh blooms for you in honour of your name day. I spread more blossoms and myself, I wither so fast. I’d love to pick a handful of days, to weave one more garland with them for my name-day girl.
389. APRIL 17TH., 1818
In the first dawn of my days, it was early morning in the Kremlin, it was in the Chudovoy monastery, I was in a quiet, modest cell, the unforgettable Zhukovsky lived there. I awaited him, and, while waiting, I heard the moaning of the Kremlin bells. I paid close heed to the bronze storm which arose in the cloudless sky, suddenly replaced by a salvo of cannon. Everyone shuddered, comprehending this howl. Festive Moscow burned so with irridescent blue banners on this first azure-golden spring day. Here for the first time I understood the news that in the world there was a new dweller and a new royal guest in the Kremlin. At that moment you were endowed to the earth. From that moment this recollection has been burned into my soul dearly, like grace. Over many years that has not changed, it’s accompanied me loyally all my life, and now, in early morning, it’s as dear to me and has illuminated my sad sick-bed and proclaimed a celebration of grace. I always imagined that the very hour of this early event would be a good omen in my life and I wasn’t mistaken: my whole life has passed under this gentle, beneficent influence. Good fortune was allotted me by gracious fate, and all my age I (above myself) saw the one constellation, his constellation, and let it be till the end my single star, and many, many times let it give joy to this day and this world and us.
390. TO HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY ALEXANDER II
Good-hearted tsar, tsar with an evangelistic soul, with a sacred love to what is close to you, favour us, powerful one, by accepting this hymn of simple gratitude! You, embracing with your love not hundreds, but thousands of people, have with its wings benevolently covered my wretched self today, I have not declared myself in any way, and can have no claim to the tsar’s attention other than that of my own suffering! You have deigned to look after me with your beneficent attention and, my spirits having risen, you have calmed me. Oh, be a renowned and praised tsar but not as a tsar, rather as God’s vicar, lending your ear not only to the bright legions of your chosen ones, your heavenly servants, but also to the isolated, cut-off groans of beings lost on this earth, listening to their worshipful praise. What shall we wish for you, tsar? Loud celebrations and victories? You find no joy in them! We’ll wish something better, like this: in proportion as you are summoned by sacred fate to act here, in this sad vale of tears, that you will be recognised more and more for what you are, a friend who does not dissemble, a friend of good. This is your just and loyal image, this is the best glory and honour for us!
391. INSOMNIA (A MOMENT AT NIGHT)
At night in a deserted town there’s an anguish-laden time when darkness grips streets tight and mist reigns in every corner. There’s quiet calm. The moon has risen and the moon’s blue-grey glimmer picks out a few churches lost in the distance. The glint of gilded heads, a sad, dull yawn, strikes bleakly at unsleeping eyes. Our heart is an orphan-child, lamenting and crying, despairingly moaning over love and life, vainly praying, bemoaning. All around is empty murk! My pitiful groans last an hour or so but, weakening, finally go.
392.
Although he wasn’t born a Slav, Slavdom’s taken him to its heart and all his life he’s served it honourably. He’s done a lot, though he’s lived little, and the initiative of much is down to him, and he has proved, alone and in the field, that he can be a warrior of valour.
393.
Fate sends days to wrack and twist my body, to turn its fearsome fingers in my soul. Life presses down, a choking nightmare. Happy am I when on such days the all-merciful God sends me the best of priceless gifts, a friend’s sympathetic hand, a warm, living hand which, touching me only lightly, dissipates numbness, scatters the fearsome nightmare from above and turns the tables on Fate’s cruel blows. Life lives again, again blood flows and my heart believes in truth and love.
* NOTES *
These notes comprise information gleaned from a wide variety of sources. Tyutchev’s translations of other poets appear in the main body of the text. All Russian, German and French sources are in my own translations. The English versions of works in Latin and Italian are referred to in the Acknowledgements and Bibliography. All poems not written by Tyutchev are given in full below with literal translations. Titles are given in the first instance in their original languages, Russian being transliterated, subsequently translated and where appropriate abbreviated, e.g. Herder’s Ideen zur Geschichte der Philosophie der Menschheit becoming Ideas.
I have relied on the dating established by such Russian scholars as Chulkov and Pigaryov and I rarely differ from their generally accepted conclusions. When I do I make this clear. We know the dates of most poems written after 1849, but many of the earlier ones are notoriously difficult to pinpoint. We can often rely on nothing other than Tyutchev’s handwriting, inconsistent throughout his life, although a certain spidery, ‘Gothic’ scrawl does appear to be a favourite style. Sometimes a sheet of paper on which he has scribbled a few lines bears a dated watermark, though that proves little. Marginally more reliable is the fact that the censor’s stamp had to appear on any work to be published, but this simply indicates the latest possible date. His friends and relatives sometimes tell us when poems were produced. Post-1847 lyrics sometimes appear in letters. These, therefore, are generally more easily datable, though not always definitely so. Tyutchev’s letters and those written by members of his family and close friends are an extremely important source of information. We can be fairly sure about the dates of poems written for special occasions and those with a political theme. He was especially keen on having the latter published, for they are often statements intended for the authorities and the reading public. Style is of minimal help. Once Tyutchev casts aside the neo-classical medium, his style and limited vocabulary change little. As a reader comes to know this writer, intuition begins to play a large part, but, of course, one commentator’s intuition is different to another’s. It is, ultimately, probably true to say that there is a consensus about the chronology established by Soviet scholarship.
With the broadest range of readers in mind, not all of whom will have a knowledge of European history and literature nor of the Classics, I offer and explain a wide variety of literary and historical references. My possibly unattainable aim is to satisfy both specialists in various fields and the educated reader with a love of Russian literature but no knowledge of its language. I rarely delve into the intricacies of rhyme, metre and structural characteristics. In any case, such a job has recently been done by A. Liberman (A:19) I completed the best of my work and published a small portion of it early in 1983 and neither he nor I came into contact with each other till early in 1998. I have attempted to include as much material of interest as space will allow in order to give the widest possible picture of Tyutchev and his background. Clearly this is a bottomless pit and if certain matters seem to be dealt with skimpily, it is only to make room for others which seem to me more important or interesting.
The first entry in each note is the date or postulated date of the Tyutchev poem. A number in square brackets after the name of a work is its number in the collection I have used, e.g. Pascal’s Pensees [163], and, in the case of a Tyutchev poem, its number in this book. Extracts from letters are followed by the date of the letter.
ABBREVIATIONS
NE Written no earlier than
NL Written no later than
LET.DAR Letter to Darya
LET.ERN. Letter to Ernestine
(INDEC)/(…) Indecipherable/doubtful word or phrase
TR A translation of
Months are generally abbreviated, and other abbreviations are of the standard type (i.e. ‘vol.’ for ‘volume’).
1. Probably 1813 or 1814. The poet’s father, Ivan (1776-1846), was ‘a reasoning man with a calm, common sense approach to things … unusually good-hearted, mild-mannered and placid with a rare moral sense … neither intellectually sharp nor talented’. (A:1/19)
2. Late Dec. 1815-early Jan. 1816. The twelve-year old Tyutchev experiments by adapting Horace (65-8 BC), by whom he was much influenced at this early stage of his writing life. Quintus Horatius Flaccus, born in Venusia in south-eastern Italy, having unwisely sided with Brutus, escaped the rout of Philippi. His poetry earned him the attention of Vergil among others and he was introduced to the great arts patron, Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, who admitted the young writer to his circle of friends in 38 BC. Maecenas and Horace became friends and the former gave the poet the small country estate he had always craved. Horace worked about ten years before producing the first three books of his eighty eight carmina/odes.
This poem will be the same as one entitled Vel’mozha. Podrazhanie Goratsiyu/The Grandee. An Imitation of Horace and read by A. Merzlyakov (1778-1830) at a session of the Society of Lovers of Russian Letters on February 22nd. 1818. Professor Merzlyakov was one of a generation of imitative writers of meagre talent whose contribution to the development of Russian literature in this period it would be uncharitable to ignore, for he genuinely loved poetry and, if forgotten now, enthused many young writers with his own passion for writing. Together with heavy neo-classical works he wrote skilful songs in a folk style. A large proportion of Tyutchev’s poem deals with the unmasking of a shamelessly hard-hearted noble, this theme elbowing aside the new year one. The poem contains echoes of a whole range of Russian poets of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as M. Lomonosov (1711-1765), N. Gnedich (1784-1838) and Merzlyakov, as well as some of the more innovative and important ones, for example G. Derzhavin (1743-1816) and N. Karamzin (1766-1826).
Tyutchev was taught Latin by his tutor, Semyon Raich (1792-1855), and his reading of Horace and other Roman poets is evident in certain works.
Chronos: the youngest son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Mother Earth). Often mistakenly regarded as Time personified.
Memphis: the Egyptian city named in honour of this daughter of Nilus, god of the Nile.
Ilion: Troy.
Cocytus: one of the rivers of Hell, extremely cold and running parallel to the Styx. It formed part of the expanse of water to be crossed by the souls of the dead on the path to Hades.
Eumenides: the Furies.
3. Dec. 4th. 1816. Addressee unknown. The reference in l.2 is to the martyr St. Barbara, on whose day the poem appears to have been written. The konets/end of l.14 is probably intended to be nakonets/at last.
4. May 8th. 1818. Tyutchev possessed a copy of Abbe Jacques Delille’s two-volume translation of the Aeneid, in which Delille levels unflattering criticism at Voltaire’s Henriade (published 1805). Reworking some verses of I. Dmitriev (1760-1837) addressed to M. Kheraskov (1733-1807), Tyutchev appears to accuse Delille of envy. The lines are written on a copy of the Henriade.
Kheraskov wrote two vast epics, Rossiada/The Rossiad and Vladimir the former modelled on La Henriade and dealing with the taking of Kazan by Ivan IV (‘The Terrible’), the latter with Prince, later Saint Vladimir’s introduction of Christianity into Russia. Both were immensely popular at the time. Dmitriev was a Karamzinian, writing elegant verse and rejecting the epic norm. One of the founders of the Russian Sentimental school, he translated and adapted French poets. He wrote several Nadpisi/Inscriptions to accompany portraits and the following is clearly the inspiration for Tyutchev’s epigram:
Puskai ot zavisti serdtsa zoilov noyut,
Kheraskovu oni vreda ne nanesut: Vladimir, Ioann shchitom yego pokroyut I v khram bessmert’ya provedut. *** Let the hearts of zoiluses be tormented by envy, they’ll do no harm to Kheraskov. Vladimir and John (Ivan IV — FJ) will protect him with their shield and lead him into immortality’s temple.
Zoilus: a Greek grammarian who, thanks to his attacks on Homer, gave his name to carping, bitter criticism.
5. NL Feb. 1819. TR Horace. A variation on a theme of Ode 29 (Book III). Tyrrhena regum progenies, tibi non ante verso lene merum cado cum flore, Maecenas, rosarum et pressa tuis balanus capillis. ………. iamdudum apud me est. eripe te morae, nec semper udum Tibur et Aefulae declive contempleris arvum et Telegoni iuga parricidae. ………. fastidiosam desere copiam et molem propinquam nubibus arduis, omitte mirari beatae fumum et opes strepitumque Romae. ………. Plerumque gratae divitibus vices mundaeque parvo sub lare pauperum cenae sine aulaei et ostro sollicitam explicuere frontem. ………. iam clarus occultum Andromedae pater ostendit ignem, iam Procyon furit et stella vesani Leonis, sole dies referente siccos: ………. iam pastor umbras cum grege languido rivumque fessus quaerit et horridi dumeta Silvani, caretque ripa vagis taciturna ventis. ………. tu civitatem quis deceat status curas et Urbi sollicitus times quid Seres et regnata Cyro Bactra parent Tanaisque discors. ………. prudens futuri temporis exitum caliginosa nocte premit deus, ridetque si mortalis ultra fas trepidat. quod adest memento ………. componere aequus, cetera fluminis ritu feruntur, nunc medio alvio cum pace delabentis Etruscum in mare, nunc lapides adesos ………. stirpesque raptas et pecus et domos volventis una non sine montium clamore vicinaeque silvae, cum fera diluvies quietos ………. irritat amnis. ille potens sui laetusque deget, cui licet in diem dixisse ‘vixi: cras vel atra nube polum Pater occupato ………. vel sole puro, non tamen irritum, quodcumque retro est, efficiet neque diffinget infectumque reddet, quod fugiens semel hora vexit.’ ………. Fortuna saeva laeta negotio et ludum insolentem ludere pertinax transmutat incertos honores, nunc mihi, nunc alii benigna. ………. laudo manentem, si celeris quatit pennas, resigno quae dedit et mea virtute me involvo probamque pauperiem sine dote quaero. ………. non est meum, si mugiat Africis malus procellis, ad miseras preces decurrere et votis pacisci ne Cypriae Tyriaeque merces ………. addant avaro divitias mari. tunc me biremis praesidio scaphae tutum per Aegaeos tumultus aura feret geminusque Pollux. *** Tyrrhenian offspring of kings, for thee there is mellow wine in an unbroached cask, with the flower of roses, Maecenas, and pressed-out unguent for your hair. ………. Now for a while with me. Snatch yourself from delaying, neither be gazing always at Tibur the well-watered, nor at Aefula’s sloping field, and the hill of the parricide, Telegonus. ………. Leave abundance, the bringer of weariness, and your mass (of masonry) approaching the steep clouds. Cease to marvel at the smoke and riches and noise of blessed Rome. ………. For the rich, a change is often pleasant, and neat suppers in the small house of the poor, without drapes of purple, have smoothed their anxious brow. ………. Now the bright father of Andromeda shows his hidden fire, now Procyon rages and the star of the furious lion, as the sun brings on the dry days. ………. Now the tired shepherd with his languid flock seeks the shade, and the stream, and shaggy Silvanus’s grove, and the silent river-bank lacks wandering breezes. ………. You are concerned for what condition may best suit the state, and on the city’s behalf you are anxious what the Seres are preparing, and Bactria ruled over (once) by Cyrus, and the factious Tanais. ………. The prudent god keeps Don in dark night, the outcome of future time, and he laughs if a mortal is anxious beyond measure. That which is present, remember to govern properly. ………. The rest in a river’s manner is carried along, which at one time peacefully slips down in the midst of its channel to the Etruscan sea, at another time ………. rolling along water-smoothed stones and tree-trunks it has scratched away and beasts and houses, not without noise (echoed) from the mountains and the neighbouring wood when the wild flood ………. excites the great river. That man rules himself and lives happy who can say each day ‘I have lived: tomorrow, let the Father occupy the pole with a black cloud ………. or with the bright sun, he will make not make to be in rain what lies behind, nor will he undo or render unreal what the fleeting hour once brought along’. ………. Fortune is happy in her cruel work and persists in playing (her) insolent game. She transforms uncertain honours, and now to me, now to another is kind. ………. I praise her while she stays. If she flaps her swift wings, I surrender what she gave me, and in my virtue I wrap myself, and an honest poverty I seek that has no dowry. ………. It is not my way, if the mast creaks with African gales, to fly to wretched prayers and to make bargains with vows, lest (my) Cyprian or Tyrian cargo ………. should add riches to the greedy sea. (Even) then, the breeze and the Heavenly Twins will bear me, with the help of a two-oared boat, safe through the tumults of the Aegean Sea.
Castalian maidens: the Muses.
Penates: the household gods of a Roman family.
Cyrus: once ruled Bactria, near the Aral Sea.
6. Probably 1815-20. The manuscript bears the words, ‘A translation by F.T…v’. The source has yet to be located. Tyutchev’s lines are early evidence of his knack of being able to produce snappy, limerick-like verses, a talent which stood him in good stead during his years as a government official whenever he felt the need to deliver poetic slaps to the faces of those in power who incensed him by their stupidity. In its tongue-in-cheek, colloquial tone it joins a handful of early works such as [10,16,17], which owe little to the predominantly neo-classical, odic style of these years and are evidence of the poet’s sense of humour.
7. NL June 1820. The influences are too numerous to mention. It is characteristic of poems of the time which were read aloud at solemn university gatherings. Most were poetically unremarkable. Merzlyakov’s Khod i uspekhi izyashchnykh iskusstv/The Progress and Successes of the Fine Arts is a good example. There are echoes of Karamzin’s Poeziya/Poetry, M. Muravyov’s (1796-1866) Khram Marsa/The Temple of Mars and Schiller’s (1759-1805) Die Kunstler/The Artists. On the other hand, brief lyrical interludes lighten the turgid bulk of this work, early hints of the more intimate, succinct Tyutchev soon to emerge.
Urania: one of the nine Muses, sometimes called ‘Pierides’. Normally the muse of astronomy, here she is divine beauty incarnate.
Mnemosyne: mother of the nine muses.
Charites: The Graces, goddesses of feminine beauty who also bestowed a love of nature upon human and divine hearts.
Aquilon: god of the northern wind.
Pharos: the lighthouse on the island of Pharos near Alexandria. Pharos was also the boatman who brought Helen and Mecenatus back from Troy. He died of a snakebite on the island of a Nile estuary which bore his name.
Persepolis: the ancient capital of Persia. Perseus was the son either of Odysseus and Musicaa or of Telemachus and Polycaste, daughter of Nestor.
Memnon: son of Eo (Dawn). Through the gigantic statue, one of those raised by Amenhotep III, Memnon is said to have greeted his mother with harmonious sounds each morning.
Pallas: also Athene and various others. The myrtle was, in fact, dedicated to Aphrodite, goddess of love, whose other plant was the rose.
the blind singer: Homer,
Ares: the Greek god of war.
the swan of Mantua: the Roman poet Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 BC) was born in Mantua.
the eagle of Ferrara: the Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544-1595). He spent several happy years at the court of Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara. His masterpiece was Gerusalemme liberata/Jerusalem Liberated, a heroic epic in twenty cantos. Afflicted by a persecution mania which resulted in seven miserable years in gaol, he ended his days a wreck of a man. In European literature he became a symbol of misunderstood genius. Like other literary and historical figures of interest to Tyutchev, he bestrode two ages, in his case that of the high Italian Renaissance shortly before the Council of Trent (1554-63) convened to combat the Reformation and, in his mature years, the period of the Counter Reformation.
Tajo and Guadalquivir: Spanish rivers.
the young singer: the Portuguese poet, Luiz Vaz de Camoes (1524[?]-1579/80). Camoes wrote Os Lusiadas/The Men of Portugal, a heroic, nationalistic epic extolling the exploits of the young Portuguese nation, based on the Aeneid. Portugal was at the time of the poem conscious of its aspirations to taking a substantial share of maritime trade.
the two geniuses: John Milton (1608-74) and the German poet Friedrich Klopstock (1724-1803). Klopstock wrote Der Messias/The Messiah. He was influenced by Horace, Milton and Edward Young (1683-1765).
the Russian Pinder: Mikhail Lomonosov (see [285]). Lomonosov was a pioneer in the techniques of analytical chemistry and a founder of and professor at Moscow university. He also wrote on the subject of Russian grammar, contributing to the simplification of Russian. His Russian grammar appeared in 1775. He conducted astronomical observations and, while not officially credited with the discovery, which like much of his scientific work went unnoticed, was the first to announce, on May 26th. 1761, that Venus had an atmosphere. He wrote neo-classical poetry and was one of Russia’s first serious, modern intellectuals. One of his greatest achievements was his contribution to the development of a new, more supple Russian language. He defined the relationship between Old Church Slavonic and Russian, rid the language of many barbarisms, yet used foreign words where they were useful. In 1739 he wrote, ‘I cannot rejoice enough at the fact that our Russian language is not only not inferior to the Greek, the Latin and German in vigour and heroic sonority but also like them is capable of versification, but with its own natural and peculiar genius’. (B:24/164)
father and hero-tsar: Peter I (‘The Great’).
the singer of Felitsa: Gavriil Derzhavin. Derzhavin was the first major Russian poet to break away from the imitative neo-classical eighteenth century and bridge the gap between it and the early days of the golden age of Russian literature.
Lines 172-195: a glorification of Alexander I. The expression na trone chelovek/(Be) a man on the throne is borrowed from Derzhavin’s Na rozhdenie v severe porfirorodnogo otroka/On the Birth of a Youth Born in Purple in the North (1779):
Bud’ strastei tvoikh vladitel’,
Bud’ na trone Chelovek!
***
Be the master of your passions,
on the throne be a Man!
Janus: Jupiter’s equal in Rome. During times of war, the doors to his temple remained open, closing in peace time. The reference here is to the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812 and to the campaigns which Russia subsequently carried on beyond her borders up till 1814.
8. Sept. 14th. 1820. Addressed to Tyutchev’s close friend and tutor, the poet-translator, Semyon Raich (born Amfiteatrov). This poem refers to Raich’s completion of his translation of Vergil’s Georgics (Virgilevy Georgiki. Perevod A.R., published 1821). For a long time Tyutchev was the only one allowed to read Raich’s work on the Roman poet. Another of Tyutchev’s friends, M. Pogodin (1800-75), wrote unkindly of Raich: ‘Tyutchev possesses rare and brilliant talents, but sometimes takes a lot on himself and makes extremely badly founded and biased judgements, for example, he says that Raich translates Vergil’s Eclogues better than Merzlyakov does. Every single one of Raich’s verses is constructed around the same metre. There is no nuance. They are all identical. He would be better translating not Vergil but Delille. That would be a more suitable task for him’. (A:20, vol. 2/13)
Apollo’s tree: the laurel.
9. Nov. 1820. Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) wrote Vol’nost’. Oda/Freedom. An Ode in 1817 shortly after leaving school, a youthfully uncompromising poem in comparison with Tyutchev’s rather lame plea to would-be revolutionaries to soften their approach. Here we encounter Tyutchev’s inability to accept fundamental upheaval when discussion and diplomacy might always work. The reader will encounter many images suggesting that change in any shape or form perturbs Tyutchev. Stanza 1 of Pushkin’s work contains the following lines:
Pridi, sorvi s menya venok,
Razbei iznezhennuyu liru…
Khochu vospet’ Svobody liru,
Na tronakh porazit’ porok.
***
Come, tear the garland from me,
smash my effeminate lyre.
I want to sing on the lyre of Freedom,
to strike the shame which sits on thrones.
In the odes of the Greek poet Alcaeus (fl. 600 BC) there are many anti-tyranny motifs. He was a rebel and terrorist and the source of some of Horace’s political odes.
The writer and historian, M. Pogodin, a student friend of the poet, mentions in his diary that he and Tyutchev discussed Pushkin, ‘… his ode, Freedom, the free, noble spirit of the thought which for some time now has made itself known to us’. (Nov. 1st. 1820)
10. Nov. 1820. Tyutchev was a renowned scribbler and is alleged to have produced several epigrams during Kachenovsky’s lectures at Moscow University. Gregg points out that Tyutchev’s constant chatter once drew a ‘baleful stare’ from the professor. (A:14) Unfortunately only this epigram has survived. The Professor of Archaeology and the Theory of Fine Arts was an opponent of anything new and sharply criticised Pushkin in the pages of Vestnik Evropy/The Messenger of Europe, which he edited at the time. The epigram may have been prompted by Kachenovsky’s attack on Pushkin’s newly published poem, Ruslan i Lyudmila/Ruslan and Lyudmila. It is easy to imagine several such epigrams aimed at the lecturer by his students. Pushkin wrote the following in 1821:
Klevetnik bez darovan’ya,
Palok ishchet on chut’yom,
I dnevnogo propitan’ya
Ezhemesyachnym vran’yom.
***
A talentless slanderer,
he seeks out the cane by scent,
and his daily nourishment
by his monthly lies.
The ‘monthly lies’ refers to The Messenger of Europe.
Charon: the ferryman responsible for the transfer of souls from the land of the living to Hades.
11. NE 1820-NL first half of March 1822. TR Lamartine (1790-1869): L’Isolement/Solitude, [1] of Meditations Poetiques/Poetic Meditations (1820).
Souvent sur la montagne, a l’ombre du vieux chene,
Au coucher du soleil, tristement je m’assieds,
Je promene au hasard mes regards sur la plaine,
Dont le tableau changeant se deroule a mes pieds.
……….
Ici, gronde le fleuve aux vagues ecumantes,
Il serpente, et s’enfonce en un lointain obscur,
La, le lac immobile etend ses eaux dormantes
Ou l’etoile du soir se leve dans l’azure.
……….
Au sommet de ces monts couronnes de bois sombres,
Le crepuscule encor jette un dernier rayon,
Et le char vaporeux de la reine des ombres
Monte, et blanchit deja les bords de l’horizon.
……….
Cependant, s’elancant de la fleche gothique,
Un son religieux se repand dans les airs,
Le voyageur s’arrete, et la cloche rustique
Aux derniers bruits du jour mele de saints concerts.
……….
Mais a ces doux tableaux mon ame indifferente
N’eprouve devant eux ni charme, ni transports,
Je contemple la terre, ainsi qu’une ombre errante:
Le soleil des vivants n’echauffe plus les morts.
……….
De colline en colline en vain portant ma vue,
Du sud a l’aquilon, de l’aurore au couchant,
Je parcours tous les points de l’immense etendue,
Et je dis: Nulle part le bonheur ne m’attend.
………
Que me font ces vallons, ces palais, ces chaumieres?
Vains objets dont pour moi le charme est envole,
Fleuves, rochers, forets, solitudes si cheres,
Un seul etre vous manque, et tout est depeuple.
……….
Que le tour du soleil ou commence ou s’acheve,
D’un oeil indifferent je le suis dans son cours,
En un ciel sombre ou pur qu’il se couche ou se leve,
Qu’importe le soleil? Je n’attends rien des jours.
……….
Quand je pourrais le suivre en sa vaste carriere,
Mes yeux verraient partout le vide et les deserts,
Je ne desire rien de tout ce qu’il eclaire,
Je ne demande rien a l’immense univers.
……….
Mais peut-etre au-dela des bornes de sa sphere,
Lieux ou le vrai soleil eclaire d’autres cieux,
Si je pouvais laisser ma depouille a la terre,
Ce que j’ai tant reve paraitrait a mes yeux?
……….
La, je m’enivrerais a la source ou j’aspire,
La, je retrouverais et l’espoir et l’amour,
Et ce bien ideal que toute ame desire,
Et qui n’a pas de nom au terrestre sejour!
……….
Que ne puis-je, porte sur le char de l’aurore,
Vague objet de mes voeux, m’elancer jusqu’a toi,
Sur la terre d’exil pourquoi reste-je encore?
Il n’est rien de commun entre la terre et moi.
……….
Quand la feuille des bois tombe dans la prairie,
Le vent du soir s’eleve et l’arrache aux vallons,
Et moi, je suis semblable a la feuille fletrie:
Emportez-moi comme elle, orageux aquilons!
***
Often on a mountain, in the shade of an old oak,
at sunset, I sit sadly down,
I let my gaze wander across the plain,
whose changing picture unfolds at my feet.
……….
Here the river’s foaming waves growl.
It meanders, drowning in the dark distance,
there, the motionless lake extends its sleeping waters
where the evening star rises in the blueness.
……….
On these peaks, crowned with dark woods,
dusk still throws a final ray,
and the misty chariot of the queen of shadows
rises, already whitening the horizon’s edge.
……….
However, leaping from the gothic spire,
a sacred sound spills into the air.
The traveller stops, and the village bell
mingles its sacred sounds with the day’s final noise.
……….
But my soul remains indifferent to these soft images,
experiencing neither charm nor delight.
I contemplate the land, as would a wandering shade:
the sun of the living no longer warms the dead.
……….
Vainly glancing from hill to hill,
from south to north, from dawn to sunset,
I cover all points of the immense expanse,
and I say, ‘Happiness awaits me nowhere’.
……….
What are these valleys, palaces, thatched cottages to me?
Pointless things whose charm for me has vanished,
rivers, rocks, forests, dear places of solitude,
it takes only one person to be absent, and the whole world
is depopulated.
……….
Let the sun start or finish its path,
I follow it indifferently across the sky,
whether it sets or rises in a clear or dark sky,
what’s the sun to me? I expect nothing of the days.
……….
If I could follow it on its immense journey,
everywhere my eyes would see emptiness and deserts,
I ask nothing of anything it illuminates
I ask nothing of the vast universe.
……….
But perhaps beyond the boundaries of its orbit,
places where the true sun lights up other skies,
if I could leave my shell here on earth,
what I’ve dreamed of so much would appear to my eyes?
……….
there, I should be intoxicated at the spring where I breathe,
there I should find once more hope and love,
and this fine ideal which every soul desires,
and which has no name on its earthly sojourn!
……….
Why can I not, born on dawn’s chariot,
indistinct object of my desires, impel myself to you?
Why do I remain on this land of exile?
Earth and I have nothing in common.
……….
When the leaf from the woods falls onto the plain,
evening’s wind rises and swirls it off to the valleys.
I am just like that withered leaf.
Bear me off as you go, stormy northern winds!
One of the leading French Romantic writers of the 1820s, Alphonse de Lamartine became an influential politician, heading the Provisional Government after the 1848 revolution. The religious and sentimental character of the Poetic Meditations made the small group of poems extremely popular during a period in France when intuition was ousting reason as a means to self-knowledge. There is a strong pantheistic streak in the work of many writers of the time. The first major treatment of Tyutchev’s links with French literature is (A:32, 111/148-167), in which Surina points out that images in some of Tyutchev’s original poems can be traced to Solitude.
12. NL Apr. 1821. Tyutchev’s vocabulary changes little over the years. A significant number of words, formulae and images in this mediocre poem are repeated in later lyrics of genius. Examples are the favourite obveyat’/to winnow, fan, pri pervom … svete/at (the) first light, and the child at the end of the poem who also appears, in adolescent guise, in [75].
13. Dec. 13th. 1831. Dedicated to A. Muravyov (1806-74). A former pupil of Raich. Muravyov’s earlier years were characterised by rationalist views, giving way in later life to an adherence to Orthodoxy and church ritual. (See [345]). Tyutchev’s thoughts echo those of Raich as expressed in the latter’s thesis on didactic poetry. Expounding his theory of ancient man, Raich wrote that the ancients ‘observed nature at a distance which favoured the imagination and through the veil which covered it, today, people study it close at hand and, as it were, armed with spectacles. Certain of them, describing objects, present us with living, laughing, attractive scenes, and still more often with statues, other draw landscapes which are often dead. The most pleasant location without living beings, especially man, can afford us no lasting pleasure, we want to see ourselves in everything and everywhere. The ancients did not like a soulless nature, and their imagination often peoples it with living creatures. In brooks they saw Naiads, beneath the bark of a tree beat the heart of a Dryad, in valleys, Nymphs weaved round-dances. This is why the ancients’ descriptions are always short, living. They had no need to seek innumerable nuances to describe an object, all they had to do was personify it and the reader saw before him breathing imagines, spirantia signa (B:33/250-251).
Raich might well be describing the best of Tyutchev’s nature lyrics here, where an undoubted sense of living nature contains the conviction that any rationalist view of nature, such as Pascal’s ‘Par la pensee, je le comprehends’ is misguided.
14. Jun. 1822. TR Schiller: Hektors Abschied/Hector’s Farewell from Gedichte/Poems (pt. 1, 1804). An earlier edition was entitled Abschied Andromachas und Hektors/The Farewell of Andromache and Hector. A slightly different version is sung by Amalia in the drama Die Rauber/The Robbers, II, 2 (1781).
Andromache
Will sich Hektor ewig von mir wenden,
Wo Achill mit den unnahbar’n Handen
Dem Patroklus schrecklich Opfer bringt?
Wer wird kunftig deinen Kleinen Lehren
Speere werfen und die Gotter ehren,
wenn der finstre Orkus dich verschlingt?
Hektor
Teures Weib gebiete deinen Tranen,
Nach der Feldschlacht ist mein feurig Sehnen,
Diese Arme schutzen Pergamus.
Kampfend fur den heil’gen Herd der Gotter
Fall ich, und des Vaterlandes Retter
Steig’ ich nieder zu dem styg’schen Flu?.
Andromache
Nimmer lausch’ ich deiner Waffen Schalle,
Mu?ig liegt dein Eisen in der Halle,
Priams gro?er Heldenstramm verdirbt.
Du wirst hingeh’n wo kein Tag mehr scheinet,
Der Cocytus durch die Wusten weinet,
Deine Libe in dem Lethe stirbt.
Hektor
All mein Sehnen will ich, all mein Denken,
In des Lethe stillen Strom versenken,
Aber meine Liebe nicht.
Horch! der Wilde tobt schon an den Mauern,
Gurte mir das Schwert um, la? das Trauern,
Hektors Liebe stirbt im Lethe nicht.
***
Andromache
Does Hector want to turn away from me forever,
where the unapproachable hands of Achilles
make a terrible sacrifice to Patroclus?
Who in the future will teach the little one
to throw the javelin and honour the gods
if the dark Orkus devours you?
Hector
Dear wife, control your tears,
my fiery longing is for the field of battle.
These arms protect Pergamum.
Fighting at the hearth of the gods
I fall, and, saviour of the fatherland,
I will go down to the river Styx.
Andromache
Never more shall I hear the sound of your weapons
as the iron lies idly in your hall.
Priam’s great line will be ruined.
You must go where day no longer shines.
The Cocytus sobs in its desolation.
Your love will perish in the Lethe.
Hector
All my longing, all my thoughts
will I drown in the Lethe’s still waters
but not my love.
Listen! The maniac is raging at the walls.
Strap on my sword, leave your tears.
Hector’s love will not die in the Lethe.
Schiller was renowned for his sense of high seriousness and his belief that literature was a civilising force with a capacity to alter the ways of individuals and societies. The above poem comes from a play in which Karl Moor indulges in what appears to be indiscriminate brigandage and murder as he leads a band of friends against tyrants, for personal and social reasons.
Pergamum: Troy.
the little one: Astyanax.
the maniac: Achilles.
15. The 1820s. Raich defended his master’s degree on April 29th. 1822. The date of the poem has been postulated by Pigaryov as 1822. Korolyova considered 1827-28 more likely as at this time Raich published his translation of Jerusalem Liberated. Raich’s balladic metre created heated argument. Tyutchev’s poem imitates this metre and he could have been firmly on his friend’s side in the debate although, equally, he was his own man when he felt like being so.
16. Early 1820s. A quotation from a Lenten prayer by Efrem Sirim (Ephraim the Syrian, c. 306-378). Ephraim’s mystical and poetical works are used in the Syrian liturgy.
17. Early 1820s. Tyutchev’s hedonistic views of this period are in good company with this and the previous [16] humorous lines of the free-thinking, extremely confident and self-possessed young man whose belief in himself and the comfortable world around him had yet to be shaken.
18. Jan. 1823. Dedicated to Tyutchev’s first cousin, Aleksei. Sheremetev served as lifeguard in the horse artillery. He proceeded to an appointment as aide-de-camp to Count P. Tolstoy who commanded the Fifth Infantry Corps, billeted in Moscow where Sheremetev’s mother and sister were in residence.
…who has spirit and serfs: Tyutchev employs an untranslatable pun on dusha, one of his favourite words, which can mean ‘soul’, ‘heart’, ‘feeling’, as well as ‘serf’. In this line he uses two difference cases of the same noun to suggest the liveliness and ‘spirit’ of the young girl as well as the ‘serfs’ who would come with her estate. The most famous use of the noun in this sense is, of course, in Gogol’s (1809-52) Myortvye dushi/Dead Souls. The word dusha takes on a predominantly spiritual sense in a number of later poems.
Nadezhda Sheremeteva (1775-1850) was Tyutchev’s aunt. She corresponded with Gogol and Zhukovksy. Her son-in-law, I. Yakushkin, was sentenced to twenty years hard labour for his open involvement in the Decembrist movement.
The hero-agronomist is Count Pyotr Tolstoi, one of the foremost figures of the Moscow Agricultural Society.
19. Feb. 1823. TR Schiller: An die Freude/To Joy, from Part 2 of the Poems.
Freude, schoner Gotterfunken, Tochter aus Elisium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, dein Heiligtum. Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng geteilt, Alle Menschen werden Bruder, Wo dein sanfter Flugel weilt. Chor Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Ku? der ganzen Welt! Bruder — uberm Sternenzelt Mu? ein lieber Vater wohnen. ………. Wem der gro?e Wurf gelungen, Eines Freundes Freund zu sein, Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, Mische seinene Jubel ein! Ja — wer auch nur eine Seele Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund! Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle Weinend sich aus diesem Bund! Chor Was den gro?en Ring bewohnet Huldige der Simpathie! Zu de Sternen leitet sie, Wo der Unbekannte thronet. ………. Freude trinken alle Wesen An den Brusten der Natur, Alle Guten, alle Bosen Folgen ihrer Rosenspur. Kusse gab sie uns and Reben, Einen Freund, gepruft im Tod, Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben, Und der Cherub steht vor Gott. Chor Ihr sturzt nieder, Millionen? Ahndest du den Schopfer, Welt? Such ihn uberm Sternenzelt, Uber Sternen mu? er wohnen. ………. Freude hei?t die starke Feder In der ewigen Natur. Freude, Freude treibt die Rader In der gro?en Weltenuhr. Blumen lockt sie aus den Keimen, Sonnen aus dem Firmament, Spharen rollt sie in den Raumen, Die des Sehers Rohr nicht kennt! Chor Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen, Durch des Himmels pracht’gen Plan, Laufet Bruder eure Bahn, Freudig wie ein Held zum siegen. ………. Aus der Wahrheit Feuerspiegel Lachelt sie den Forscher an. Zu der Tugend steilem Hugel Leitet sie des Dulders Bahn. Auf des Glaubens Sonnenberge Sieht man ihre Fahnen wehn, Durch den Ri? gesprengster Sarge Sie im Chor der Engel stehn. Chor Duldet mutig Millionen! Duldet fur die bess’re Welt! Droben uberm Sternenzelt Wird ein gro?er Gott belohnen. ………. Gottern kann man nicht vergelten, Schon ist’s ihnen gleich zu sein. Gram und Armut soll sich melden, Mit den Frohen sich erfreun. Groll und Rache sei vergessen, Unserm Todfeind sei verziehn. Keine Trane soll ihn pressen, Keine Reue nage ihn. Chor Unser Schuldbuch sei vernichtet! Ausgesohnt die ganze Welt! Bruder — uberm Sternenzelt Richtet Gott, wie wir gerichtet. ………. Freude sprudelt in Pokalen, In der Traube gold’nem Blut Trinken Sanftmut Kannibalen, Die verzweiflung Heldenmut — Bruder fliegt von euren Sitzen, Wenn der volle Romer kreist, La?t den Schaum zum Himmel spritzen: Dieses Glas dem guten Geist! Chor Den der Sterne Wirbel loben, Den des Seraphs Hymne preist, Dieses Glas dem guten Geist, Uberm Sternenzelt dort oben! ………. Festen Mut in schwerem Leiden, Hulfe, wo die Unschuld weint, Ewigkeit geschwor’nen Eiden, Wahrheit gegen Freund und Feind, Mannerstolz vor Konigsthronen — Bruder, galt’ es Gut and Blut — Dem Verdienste seine Kronen, Untergang der Lugenbrut. Chor Schlie?t den heil’gen Zirkel dichter, Schwort bei diesem goldnen Wein: Dem Gelubde treu zu sein, Schwort es bei dem Sternenrichter! *** Oh, Joy, you beautiful, divine spark, daughter of Elysium, drunk with excitement, we enter your shrine, oh heavenly one. Your magic reunites whatever convention has divided. Under your soft wings, all men become brothers. Chorus Millions, embrace! I want to kiss the whole world! Brothers, above the firmament a dear father must dwell. ………. Let those who have the good fortune to be a friend, those who have won a lovely woman, join in the exultation! Yes, whoever can call one soul on earth his own! Those who have never managed this skulk away in tears. Chorus Let all who inhabit the universe pay homage to sympathy! It leads to the stars where the Unknown has his throne. ………. All brings drink joy from the breasts of nature, all, be they good or bad, follow its trail of roses. Joy gave us kisses and the vine, a friend proving friendship through death. Even a worm can feel lust and cherubs enjoy the presence of God. Chorus Are you prostrating yourselves, oh millions? Oh world, do you know your Creator? Look for him above the firmament, he must dwell above the stars. ………. Joy is the powerful force behind eternal nature. It is joy that moves the cogs of the universe’s great clock. It entices the flowers out of their buds and the suns from the firmament. It spins heavenly bodies in spaces never plumbed by the astronomer’s telescope. Chorus If you want to fly happily like its suns across the sky’s magnificent plain, brothers, go your way, full of joy, like a hero going to victory. ………. From the fiery mirror of truth it smiles at the investigator and it leads those who are patient to the steep hill of virtue. On the sunny mountain of faith its banners are seen billowing Through the cracks in broken coffins you see it standing in the choir of angels. Chorus Millions, suffer with courage! Suffer for the better world! Up there above the firmament a great God will reward you. ………. One cannot avenge oneself on gods. It’s good to be like them. Sorrow and poverty shall come and rejoice together with gladness. Let’s forget grudges and revenge, let’s forgive our deadly enemies, so that they may not have to shed tears and be consumed by remorse. Chorus Let’s wipe the slate clean! Let the world be at peace! Brothers, above the firmament God will judge the way we’ve judged. ………. Joy bubbles in goblets, in the grape’s golden blood cannibals drink gentleness and despair — heroism. Brothers, fly from your seats, when the full glass is passed around let the foam spray sky-high: raise this glass to the good spirit. Chorus Raise this glass to the good spirit there above the firmament, who is praised by the swirling stars and by the hymns of the seraphs! ………. Let’s have staunch courage in heavy suffering, help for innocence in tears. oaths kept forever, truth when dealing with friend or foe, manly pride when facing royal thrones, should it cost us our possessions and lives, may virtue be rewarded and evil perish! Chorus Gather closer in the circle, swear on this golden wine to keep the oath, swear it by the judge of the stars! /home/moshkow/bin/KOI: Can’t reopen pipe to command substitution (fd 4): No child processes
In st. 4, as in Die Gotter Griechenlands/The Gods of Greece (1788), we encounter Schiller’s theme of imagination being threatened by rationality, an important notion recurring through Tyutchev’s mature lyrics and given informal, if in places pedestrian treatment in Ne to, chto mnite vy, priroda/Nature is not what you think it is [121].
20. Jul. 21st. 1823. The epigraph is from Thomas Gray’s (1716-1771) Alcaic Fragment: O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros/Oh fountain of tears which have their (1738):
O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo, quater
Felix! in imo qui scatentem
Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit!
***
Oh fountain of tears which have their sacred
sources in the sensitive soul! Four times
fortunate is he who has felt
thee bubbling up, holy nymph,
from the depths of his heart!
the Pafian queen: Aphrodite, whose temple was in the town of Pafos, on Cyprus.
21. 1823-24. TR Heine [33] of the collection entitled Tragodien nebst einem lyrischen Intermedzzo/Tragedies with a Lyrical Intermezzo (Apr. 1823), one of several sections which make up the German poet’s Buch der Lieder/Book of Songs (1827).
Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Hoh’.
Ihn schlafert, mit wei?er Decke
Umhullen ihn Eis und Schnee.
……….
Er traumt von einer Palme,
Die, fern im Morgenland,
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennender Felsenwand.
***
A spruce tree stands alone
in the north, on a bare hill.
It is sleepy. With a white blanket
Ice and snow cover it.
……….
It dreams of a palm
which, far off in the east,
grieves, lonely and silent
on a burning cliff.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a complex figure whose work abounds in images of love, nature and revolution. History is of the greatest importance in his work. Heine one claimed that everything he had ever written had taken its inspiration from one great gottfreudige Fruhlingsidee/Good-joyful spring-idea.
He and Tyutchev were good friends, although there is little documented evidence. In a letter of 1828, Heine writes, ‘By the way, you know Count Bothmer’s daughters in Stuttgart, where you have often been? One of the same, no longer exactly young, but infinitely charming and secretly wed to the best friend I have here, a young Russian diplomat called Tyutchev, and the still very young, wonderfully pretty sister are the two ladies with whom I have the most comfortable, easily relations. These two, my friend Tyutchev, and I often make up a foursome to eat together at lunchtime and in the evening, where I find a few more beauties, chatter to my heart’s content, mostly ghost stories, and generally believe that I have discovered a beautiful oasis in life’s desert’.
Tyanyanov (C:4iii/16) considers that the poems by Heine which Tyutchev translated were ‘not so much those close to Tyutchev in theme, as those that are characteristic of Heine’s manner’. This is partly true, but a close study of the translations invariably throws up favourite themes.
All Tyutchev’s extant translations from Heine are from the Book of Songs.
22. NE Apr. 1822 and NL Dec. 1830. TR Heine: [16] of Tragedies with a Lyrical Intermezzo.
Liebste, sollst mir heute sagen:
Bist du nicht ein Traumgebild,
Wie’s in schwulen Sommertagen
Aus dem Hirn des Dichters quillt?
……….
Aber nein, ein sollches Mundchen,
Solcher Augen Zauberlicht,
Solch ein liebes, su?es Kindchen,
Das erschafft der Dichter nicht.
……….
Basilisken und Vampire,
Lindenwurm and Ungeheur,
Solche schlimme Fabeltiere,
Die erschafft des Dichters Feur.
……….
Aber dich und deine Tucke,
Und dein holdes Angesicht,
und die falschen, frommen Blicke —
Das erschafft der Dichter nicht.
***
Darling, you must tell me today,
are you not a dream-picture
of the kind which on hot summer days
springs from the brain of the poet?
……….
But no, such a mouth,
such magic light in the eyes,
such a dear, sweet child,
the poet will not create that.
……….
Basilisks and vampires,
green dragons and monsters,
such dreadful creatures of fable
are what the poet’s fire produces.
……….
But you and your spite
and your sweet face,
and your false sanctimonious look,
the poet can’t create that.
Tyutchev’s ending is less unkind than Heine’s, probably evidence of different attachments.
23. 1823-4, probably shortly after he went abroad. The theme of separation is now making itself felt, Tyutchev returns to this idea of being away from friends and family throughout his work and in numerous letters. The first stanza does not, strictly speaking, make sense, but this is not an unusual thing in Tyutchev, who seemed impatient with grammar on more than one occasion.
24. Nov. 23rd. 1824, the poet’s twenty-first birthday. Addressee unknown, though Nisa [25] is a possibility. Tyutchev cleverly mixes images of a young girl’s ‘gaze’ living within him, both physically and spiritually. It becomes as essential as the sky, always an important idea of freedom and security, and as breath itself. In a later superb poem, Ya znal eyo eshchyo togda/I knew her even then [257], a woman and the sky become indistinguishable images.
25. NL autumn 1825. Addressee unknown, but if it is the young woman of [24] it indicates a dramatic change of attitude.
26. NL autumn 1825. A variation on a theme of Herder based on the poem Morgengesang im Kriege/Morning Song in War Time, [17] of the Volkslieder/Folk Songs, subtitled Skaldisch/Norse (bk. 2, pt. 1).
Tag bricht an!
Es kraht der Hahn,
Schwingt’s gefieder,
Auf, ihr Bruder!
Ist Zeit zur Schlacht!
Erwacht, erwacht!
Unverdrossen
Der unsern Fuhrer!
Des hohen Adils
Kampfgenossen,
Erwacht, erwacht!
……….
Har, mit der Faust hart,
Rolf, der Schutze,
Manner im Blitze,
Die nimmer fliehn!
Zum Weingelage,
Zum Weibsgekose
Weck’ ich euch nicht,
Zu harter Schlacht
Erwacht, erwacht!
***
Day breaks!
The cock crows,
shaking its feathers.
Up, brothers!
It’s time for battle!
Wake up, wake up!
……….
Untiring
Our leader!
Comrades in battle
of the great aedile,
wake up, wake up!
Har of the strong fist,
Rolf the protector,
men in lightning flashes
who never flee!
To the wine feast,
to women’s kisses
I do not awake you:
to hard battle
awake, awake!
The writer and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was influential in the fields of folklore and philology. He knew Goethe and exerted a significant influence on his development. In essays forming part of Von deutscher Art und Kunst/On German Character and Art, he attempted to demonstrate that folk song was the source of all literature. He believed in the close relationship between nature, i.e. man’s physical environment, and the cultural evolution of the human race. Herder was also convinced that nation states ought to be independent, equal and brotherly. This idea of self-determination went down well with those Slav states less powerful than their vast eastern neighbour, but this warm-hearted man’s ideas evoked little sympathy in authoritarian states such as Russia. His Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit/Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind and Folk Songs served to convince many Slav patriots that they, indeed, carried the future in their hands. Karamzin introduced Herder into Russia, as he did so many writers.
The source of the Herder poem is the Heimskringla/The Circle of the World, a cycle of sixteen medieval Icelandic sagas. This poem concerns the final battle of the great hero-king Hrolf kraki, told by his great champion, Biarki.
Har: Har the hard-gripping, a warrior.
aedile: a Roman officer.
27. NL autumn 1825. R. Brandt considers the possibility that Raich’s Aeolian harp was the poem’s inspiration, though Pigaryov points out that during Tyutchev’s stay in Russia in 1825 Raich was not in Moscow. The presence or absence of such an instrument is probably unimportant, though Tyutchev did often write on the spur of the moment, so could well have heard such a harp or something which reminded him of it.
The techniques of using a sound or object out of place is common in Tyutchev’s work. As here, where the harp perturbs the listener, so a lark’s voice at night [104] and the chirruping of swallows [368] when snow still lies are two examples of many which make him question the evidence of his senses.
28. NL mid-1826. TR Byron Lines Written in an Album at Malta. (Sept. 14th. 1809), one of his occasional pieces from 1807-24.
As o’er the cold, sepulchral stone
Some name arrests the passer-by, Thus, when thou views’t this page alone, May mine attract thy pensive eye! ………. And when by thee that name is read, Perchance in some succeeding year, Reflect on me as on the dead, And think my heart is buried here.
Byron addresses his poem to a woman, Tyutchev to his friends.
Despite huge popularity in Europe, Byron (1788-1824) exercised little if any direct influence on Tyutchev, although his involvement in the Greek struggle for independence would certainly have interested Tyutchev, for whom the Eastern Question became an obsession.
29. NL mid-1826. A loose adaptation of Goethe’s quatrain from
Nachlese/Late Harvest (1791).
Will ich die Blumen des fruhen, die Fruchte des spateren Jahres,
Will ich, was reizt und entzuckt, will ich, was sattigt und nahrt, Will ich den Himmel, die Erde mit einem Namen begreifen, Nenn ich Sakontala dich und so ist alles gesagt. *** The early year’s blossoms, the late year’s fruits, that which stimulates and delights, which satiates and nurtures, Heaven and earth, all this I want to give a name to. I name you Sakontala, and that’s enough said.
Goethe (1749-1832) is arguably the greatest German writer. His works exhibit an incredible variety of form, theme and style. Throughout his life he wrote poetry, prose, drama, scientific essays and autobiography. Even the profundities of his conversations were recorded by his young secretary, Eckermann, among others.
Popular in the eighteenth century, the original was written by the Indian poet Kalidasa (fl. 400 AD?) whose work is characterised by long, lyrical, descriptive passages inbued with delicate sentiment. The Sanskrit was translated by the Englishman William Jones in 1789 and into German by G. Forster in 1791. Karamzin translated sections into Russian for the Moskovskii zhurnal/The Moscow Journal. Tyutchev’s poem contains echoes of Act II, in which the king, enamoured of the hermit’s daughter,Shakuntala attempts to express his feelings to Vidusaka the clown, who suggests that he ‘has lost his relish for dates and longs for the (sour) tamarind’.
King You have not seen her, and, therefore, you speak thus. Vidusaka That indeed must be charming, which excites even your admiration. King Friend, what need is there of many words? ………. ………. This immaculate beauty is like a flower not yet smelt, a delicate shoot not torn by the nails, an unperforated diamond, or fresh honey whose sweetness is yet untasted, or the full reward of meritorious deeds. I know not whom Destiny will approach as the enjoyer here (of this form).
Goethe’s lyric is but one of many works of the time on a classical Sanskrit theme, and while similar to Tyutchev’s poem in some ways, cannot be said to be the direct source of it. Referring to Goethe’s poem, C.V. Devadhar was written that he ‘blends together the young year’s blossoms and the fruits of its decline’, combining ‘heaven and earth in one’. According to Goethe, Devadhar continues, ‘Shakuntala contains the history of development — the development of flower into fruit, of earth into heaven, of matter into spirit’. (B: 20/xxiv).
30. Second half of 1826. Written after sentence had been passed on the Decembrists. The latter were a group of disaffected young officers who attempted a coup in 1825, primarily in St. Petersburg, hoping to secure various reforms. Nicholas I was not a listening tsar. The ringleaders were hanged and others exiled for long periods.
31. NE May 1826 — NL 1830. TR Heine from Die Heimkehr/The Homecoming
Das Herz ist mir bedruckt, und sehnlich
Gedenke ich der alten Zeit,
Die Welt war damals noch so wohnlich,
Und ruhig lebten hin die Leut’.
……….
Doch jetzt ist alles wie verschoben,
Das ist ein Drangen! eine Not!
Gestorben ist der Herrgott oben,
Und unten ist der Teufel tot.
……….
Und alles schaut so gramlich trube,
So krausverwirrt und morsch und kalt,
Und ware nicht das bischen Liebe,
So gab’ es nirgends einen Halt.
***
My heart is oppressed and longingly
I think about the old days,
then the world was still so pleasant to live in
and people lived their lives peacefully.
……….
Now, it’s as if everything is dislocated.
There’s such hurrying, such distress!
Up there the Lord God has died,
and down below the devil is dead.
……….
And everything looks so sullenly dreary,
so tangled, confused, rotten and cold,
and were it not for a little bit of love,
there would be nothing to hold on to.
32. NE April 1827, NL December 1830. TR Heine: Fragen/Questions, [71] of the second cycle of Nordsee/The North Sea.
Am Meer, am wusten, nachtlichten Meer,
Steht ein Jungling-Mann,
Die Brust voll Wehmut, das Haupt voll Zweifel,
Und mit dustern Lippen fragt er die Wogen:
……….
‘O lost mir das Ratsel des Lebens,
Das qualvoll uralte Ratsel,
Woruber schon manche Haupter gegrubelt,
Haupter in Hieroglypohenmutzen,
Haupter in Turban und schwarzem Barett,
Peruckenhaupter und tausend andre
Arme, schwitzende Menschenhaupter —
Sagt mir, was bedeutet der Mensch?
Woher ist er kommen? Wo geht er hin?
Wer wohnt dort oben auf goldenen Sternen?’
……….
Es murmeln die Wogen ihr ew’ges Gemurmel,
Es wehet der Wind, es fliehen die Wolken,
Es blinken die Sterne, gleichgultig und kalt,
Und ein Narr wartet auf Antwort.
***
By the sea, by the bleak night sea
there stands a young man,
his breast full of melancholy, of great doubts,
and with thirsty lips he asks the waves:
……….
‘Oh, solve for me the riddle of life,
the painful, ancient riddle
over which so many heads have brooded,
heads in caps which hieroglyphs,
heads in turbans, heads in berets,
bewigged heads and a thousand other
poor, sweating human heads,
tell me, what is the meaning of man?
Where is he from? Where is he going?
Who lives up there beyond the stars?
The waves murmur their eternal murmuring,
the wind blows, the clouds flee,
the stars win, indifferent and cold,
and a fool awaits his answer.
A current of scepticism permeates the atmospheric North Sea cycle. In Abenddammerung/Dusk [2], the principal theme is that of nature’s power ‘to liberate the poetic imagination from convention’. (B:15ii/118)
33. NE April 1827, NL 1830. TR Heine Der Schiffbruchige/The Shipwrecked Man, [3,pt.2] of North Sea.
Hoffnung und Liebe! Alles zertrummert!
Und ich selber, gleich einer Leiche,
Die grollend ausgeworfen das Meer,
Leig ich am Strande,
Am oden, kahlen Strande.
Vor mir woget die Wasserwuste,
Hinter mir liegt nur Kummer und Elend,
Und uber mich hin ziehen die Wolken,
Die formlos grauen Tochter der Luft,
Die aus dem Meer, in Nebeleimern,
Das Wasser schopfen,
Und es muhsam schleppen und schleppen,
Und es wieder verschutten ins Meer,
Ein trubes, langweil’ges Geschaft,
Und nutzlos, wie mein eignes Leben.
……….
Die Wogen murmeln, die Mowen schrillen,
Alte Erinnrungen wehen mich an,
Vergessene Traume, erloschene Bilder,
Qualvoll su?e, tauchen hervor!
Es lebt ein Weib im Norden,
Ein schones Weib, koniglich schon.
Die schlanke Zypressengestalt
Umschlie?t ein lustern wei?es Gewand,
Die dunkle Lockenfulle,
Wie eine selige Nacht,
Von dem flechtengekronten Haupt sich ergie?end,
Ringelt sich traumerisch su?
Um das su?e, blasse Antlitz,
Und aus dem su?en, blassen Antlitz,
Gro? und gewaltig, strahlt ein Auge,
Wie eine schwarze Sonne.
……….
Oh, du schwarze Sonne, wie oft
Entzuckend oft, trank ich aus dir
Die wilden Begeistrungsflammen,
Und stand und taumelte, feuerberauscht —
Dann schwebte ein taubenmildes Lacheln
Um die hochgeschurzten, stolzen Lippen,
Und die hochgeschurzten, stolzen Lippen
Hauchten Worte, su? wie Mondlicht,
Und zart wie der Duft der Rose —
Und meine Seele erhob sich
Und flog, wie ein Aar, hinauf in dem Himmel!
………..
Schweigt, ihr Wogen und Mowen!
Voruber is alles, Gluck und Hoffnung,
Hoffnung und Liebe! Ich liege am Boden,
Ein oder, schiffbruchiger Mann,
Und drucke mein gluhendes Antlitz
In den feuchtend Sand.
***
Hope and Love! Everything’s smashed!
And I am alone, like a corpse,
thrown up by the rumbling sea,
lying on the beach,
on the god-forsaken, barren beach.
Before me the watery wastes surge,
behind me there is misery and grief
and above me flee the clouds,
the shapeless, gruesome daughters of the air,
which from the sea in water-buckets
scoop the sea,
and arduously drag and drag
and once again spill it into the sea,
a gloomy, boring business,
and as useless as my own life.
……….
The waves rumble, the gulls shriek,
past memories waft back to me,
forgotten dreams, lost images,
painfully sweet, dragged out.
……….
There lives in the north a woman,
a beautiful woman, regally beautiful,
her cypresslike form
covered all around by a sensual, white garment
her dark locks,
like a sacred night,
poured from her plait-crowned head,
sweet as a dream, framing
her sweet, pale face
and from her sweet, pale face,
and amazing, open look beamed
like a black sun.
……….
Oh, you black sun, how often,
excitingly often, have I drunk from you
the wild flame of inspiration
and stood, giddily, intoxicated
while a dovelike, gentle smile played
on your haughty, deeply loving lips,
and your haughty, deeply loving lips,
breathed words as sweet as moonlight,
and as tender as the scent of roses —
and my soul rose up
and flew like an eagle far up into the heavens.
……….
Be silent, you waves and gulls!
Everything is over, happiness and hope,
hope and love! I lie on the ground,
a wasted, shipwrecked man,
rubbing my glowing face
into the damp sand.
The sea was an endless source of inspiration for the Romantics. On a sea journey to Nantes from Riga in 1769, Herder was shipwrecked. He wrote the following about his impressions, which haunted him for some time after: ‘Have you ever, my friend, on cold, dark nights, after a dangerous, grey, awe-filled midnight … hoped for the first red ray of morning, sensed the living spirit of the early day, a breath of God! A spirit of Heaven sinks down and moves across the waters! … And behold! This rapture, this nameless feeling of morning, how it seems to thrill all things! To lie across all of nature!… Woe to that feelingless person who has not seen these pictures and not sensed God! (B:16, VI, 136, 259).
34. NE 1827, NL 1829. TR Heine: [40] of The Homecoming.
Wie der Mond sich leuchtend dranget,
Durch den dunkeln Wolkenflor,
Also taucht aus dunkeln Zeiten
Mir ein lichtes Bild hervor.
………
Sa?en all auf dem Verdecke,
Fuhren stolz hinab den Rhein,
Und die Sommergrunen Ufer
gluhn im Abendsonnenschein.
……….
Sinnend sa? ich zu den Fu?en
Einer Dame, schon und hold,
In ihr liebes, bleiches Antlitz
Spielt’ das rote Sonnengold.
……….
Lauten klangen, Bubeb sangen,
Wunderbare Frohlichkeit!
Und der Himmel wurde blauer,
Und die Seele wurde weit
……….
Mahrchenhaft voruberzogen
Berg’ und Burgen,Wald und Au’,
Und das Alles sah ich glanzen
In dem Aug’ der schonen Frau.
***
We were all sitting on the deck,
sailing proudly down the Rhine,
and the summer-green banks
glowed in the evening sun.
……….
Pensively I sat at the feet
of a beautiful, charming lady.
The red gold of the sun played
on her dear, pale face.
……….
Lutes were strumming, boys were singing —
wonderful joyfulness!
And the sky became bluer
and the soul opened out.
……….
Passing by as if in a fairytale
were hills and castles, forests and meadows,
and I saw it all shining
in the beautiful women’s eyes.
35. 1827-29. TR Goethe: Geistesgruss/The Spirit’s Greeting (1774), a ballad from Vermischte Gedichte/Miscellaneous Poems from the Sturm und Drang/Storm and Stress movement.
Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht
Des Helden edler Geist,
Der, wie das Schiff vorubergeht,
Es wohl zu fahren hei?t.
……….
‘Sieh, diese Senne war so stark,
Dies Herz so fest und wild,
Die Knochen vol von Rittermark,
Der Becher angefullt,
……….
Mein halbes Leben sturmt ich fort,
Verdehnt’ die Halft’ in Ruh.
Und du, du Menschen-Schifflein dort,
Fahr immer, immer zu!’
***
High on the old tower stands
the ghost of a noble warrior
who, as a ship passes by,
wishes it well.
……….
‘See, these sinews were so strong,
This heart so solid and wild,
these bones so full of knightly marrow,
the goblet often filled.
……….
I stormed through half my life,
(spent) the other half in peace.
And you, little ship of humans, down there,
go ever, ever on!’
The Storm and Stress movement took shape in 1770 and lasted about eight years. It was characterised by a new way of looking at history and society, new attitudes towards thinking, religion and nature. What was also closely questioned by young writers was despotism, political and religious. Poetry was of the first importance during these years.
36. 1827-9. TR Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre/Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (bk.2, ch.13). The first and second songs of the harpist.
1.
Wer nie sein Brot mit Tranen a?,
Wer nie die kummervollen Nachte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sa?,
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Machte.
……….
Ihr fuhrt ins Leben uns hinein,
Ihr la?t den Armen schuldig werden,
Dann uberla?t ihr ihn der Pein:
Danna alle Schuld racht sich auf Erden.
***
He who has never eaten tears with his bread,
who has never through grief-filled nights
sat crying on his bed,
he does not know you, heavenly powers
……….
They drag us into life,
they leave the poor feeling guilty,
then they leave us only pain,
all evil deeds are avenged on earth.
2.
Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergiebt,
Ach! der ist bald allein,
Ein jeder lebt, ein jeder liebt,
Und la?t ihn seiner Pein.
Ja! la?t mich meiner Qual!
Und kann ich nur einmal
Recht einsam sein,
Dann bin ich nicht allein.
……….
Es schleicht ein Liebender lauschend sacht,
Ob seine Freundin allein?
So uberschleicht bei Tag and Nacht
Mich Einsamen die Pein,
Mich Einsamen die Qual.
Ach, werd’ ich erst einmal
Einsam in Grabe sein,
Da la?t sie mich allein!
***
Whoever yields to loneliness,
ah, he will soon be on his own,
one lives, one loves,
and leaves him to his pain.
Yes! Leave me to my misery!
And can I just once
really be on my own,
then I’m really not alone.
……….
A lover creeps softly, eavesdropping:
wanting to know if his loved one is alone,
so by day and night there creeps over me
when I’m alone, pain,
when I’m alone, misery.
Ah, if I could just
be in my grave,
then I’d be truly alone!
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship is in the form of the picaresque novel and was published in instalments during the last decade of the eighteenth century. Many great German novels of later years model their depiction of the intellectual and spiritual development of the hero’s life (the Bildungsroman) on this important work.
37. 1827-30. TR Goethe: Hegire/Hegira (1819), with which his West-Ostlicher Divan/West-East Divan opens.
Nord und West und Sud zersplittern,
Throne bersten, Reiche zittern,
Fluchte du, im reinen Osten
Patriarchenluft zu kosten,
Unter Lieben, Trinken, Singen,
Soll ich Chisers Quell verjungen.
……….
Dort, im Reinen und im Rechten,
Will ich menschlichen Geschlechten
In des Ursprungs Tiefe dringen,
Wo sie noch von Gott empfingen
Himmelslehr’ in Erdesprachen,
Und sich nicht den Kopf zerbrachen.
……….
Wo sie Vater hoch verehrten,
Jeden fremden Dienst verwehrten,
Will mich freun der Jugendschranke:
Glaube weit, eng der Gedanke,
Wie das Wort so wichtig dort war,
Weil es ein gesprochen Wort war.
……….
Will mich unter Hirten mischen,
An Oasen mich erfrischen,
Wenn mit Caravanen wandle,
Schwal, Caffee und Mochus handle.
Jeden Pfad will ich betreten
Von der Wuste zu den Stadten.
……….
Bosen Felsweg auf und nieder
Trosten Hafis deine Lieder,
Wenn der Fuhrer mit Entzucken,
Von des Maulthiers hohem Rucken,
Singt, die Sterne zu erwecken,
Und die Rauber zu erschrecken.
……….
Will in Badern und in Schenken,
Heil’ger Hafis dein gedenken,
Wenn den Schleyer Liebchen luftet
Schuttlend Ambralocken duftet.
Ja des Dichters Lieberflustern
Mache selbst die Huris lustern.
……….
Wolltet ihr ihm dies beneiden,
Oder etwa gar verleiden,
Wisset nur, da? Dichterworte
Um des Paradieses Pforte
Immer leise klopfend schweben,
Sich erbittend ew’ges Leben.
***
North, South and East shattered,
thrones cracking, empires trembling
escape to the pure east
to taste the air of the patriarchs,
in love, drinking, singing
shall I return your youth at Chizr’s spring.
……….
There, where it is pure and right,
I want to penetrate to the source
of the human race.
where from God they still received
heavenly teaching in the languages of earth,
their brains not racked by the labour.
……….
Where they deeply admire the fathers,
denying foreign beliefs any say,
I want to be happy within the limits of youth:
faith is spacious, thought is narrow,
the word was so important there
because it was a spoken word.
……….
I want to mix with the herdsmen,
refresh myself at oases,
stroll with caravans
trade in shawls, coffee and musk,
I’ll tread every path
from the deserts to the towns.
……….
Up and down steep rocks
your songs, Hafiz, comfort me,
when the leader with delight
from the mules’ high backs,
sings, the stars awake,
brigands are terrified.
……….
I want in baths and in inns,
sacred Hafiz, your thought,
when the veils of pretty women are lifted,
and ambergris wafts from their hair.
Yes, the loving whispers of the poet
make the huris desire.
……….
If you were to begrudge him this
or even try to spoil his whim,
know only that the poet’s word
knocks at Paradise’s door,
softly hovering,
beseeching eternal life for itself.
The Persian poet Hafiz (c.1320-1390) produced brilliant ghazels and divans, the former a series of couplets linked symbolically rather than by any strict logic of ideas. The divan is often characterised by a special rhyme scheme running through the alphabet. ‘Hegira’ means ‘flight’, originally the flight of Mohammed from Mecca in 622 A.D., from which is dated the Mohammedan era.
Goethe was approaching seventy when he wrote these exuberant poems, many in the Persian style.
Khizr: an Islamic deity associated with water.
38. NL spring 1828. Hebe, goddess of eternal youth, appears throughout nineteenth-century art and literature. Tyutchev replaces her cup of nectar, with which she is often seen feeding Zeus’s eagle, with one overflowing with thunder, as if ‘she had transferred to herself the functions of the eagle, often represented with lightening grasped on its talons’. (A:33/ii,vol.1/338).
Tyutchev’s poem is fresh and joyful, along the same lines as Vesennie vody/Vernal Waters [82], one of his favourite techniques, that of an up-down movement between nature and the observer, finding its first expression.
39. NL 1828 and reworked in the 1850s. In 1840 Napoleon’s remains were transferred to Paris from their original resting place, the island of St. Helena, where he died on May 5th. 1821.
40. NL 1828. Possibly written in 1826 in Munich and addressed to Eleonore during the first year of their marriage in Munich.
Nahe/Nearness (1809), by the Romantic poet and philologist Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862), is a clear source of this poem (A:15vi/48):
Ich tret’ in deinen Garten,
Wo, su?e, weilst du heut’?
Nur Schmetterlinge flattern
Durch diese Einsamkeit.
……….
Doch wie in bunter Fulle
Hier deine Beete stehn!
Und mit denn Blumenduften
Die Weste mich umwehn!
……….
Ich fuhle dich mich nahe,
Die Einsamkeit belebt,
Wie uber seinen Welten
Der unsichbare schwebt.
***
I step into your garden.
Where are you today, sweetheart?
Only butterflies flutter
through this solitude.
……….
How colourfully full
are your flowerbeds.
How the zephyrs waft
colourful aromas around me!
……….
I feel you near to me,
feel the solitude come to life.
It’s like the Invisible One
hovers over his worlds.
Sylph: a being made of air, the creation of the eccentric Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) who exercised some influence on Bohme. (See [247].)
41. NL 1828. The image of the setting sun swallowed by the ocean or rolling from the earth is one of the commonplaces of Romantic poetry. In Heine’s Sonnenuntergang/Sunset, [3] of North Sea, we read:
Die gluhend rote Sonne steigt
Hinab ins weitaufschauernde,
Silbergraue Weltmeer.
***
The glowing, red sun sets
into the far-heaving,
silver-grey ocean.
Without detracting from Heine’s lyric. Tyutchev’s shorter, more intense poem makes the reader actually sense the natural repleteness of the moment. Tyutchev’s work is a marvel of sensation and physical wellbeing.
42. NL first half of 1829 in connection with the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-9. In support of the Greek struggle for independence, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in April of this year. In June the Russian army crossed the Danube, in October it took Varna and in June the following year opened a route to the Balkan mountains after the victory at Kulevcha. The Treaty of Adrianople (Sept. 14th. 1829) assured Russian domination over the entire Black Sea coast, a situation making the western powers uneasy and reversed by the Paris Peace Accord after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War.
The legendary shield of the title is described in the chronicles as having been posted by Prince Oleg of Kiev at the gates of Constantinople after his successful campaign against the Byzantine city in 907.
43. NL first half of 1829. One of the first overt ‘chaos’/’night’ poems, it nonetheless contains little more than a hint of that frisson of excitement which characterises such lyrics as Bessonnitsa/Insomnia [47], and Kak okean ob’emlet shar zemnoi/Just as the ocean curls around earth’s shores [64].
44. 1828-9. T.R. Zedlitz (1790-1862): Totenkranze/Garlands for the Dead.
So wie die grausen Lieder der Damonen
Zum Wahnsinn trieben, durch die wilden Klange,
So fuhlen wir das tiefste Mark erbeben,
Vernimmt das Ohr die furchtbaren Gesange,
Und wie in den verdunnten Regionen
Des hochsten Luftraum’s, denen, die d’rin schweben,
Oft Athem stockt und Leben,
Und Blut entquillet den gepre?ten Lungen:
So strebt die Seele, angstvoll, zu entrinnen
Dem Zauberliede, mit betaubten Sinnen,
Bis da? der Magus, der den Kries geschlungen,
Wenn’s ihm genehm ist Eure Angst zu enden,
Hohnlachend hebt den Stab, den Bahn zu wenden!
……….
Wohl loft der Schmerz sich in gerechte Klagen,
Wenn uns’re Seele weilt vor solchem Bilde!
Nicht ein sangreicher Schwann, der uber Auen
Hinschwebt, und grune, lachende Gesilde,
Seh’n wir durch heit’re Lufte dich getragen,
Gleich dem einsamen Aar bist due zu schauen
In oder Wuste Grauen,
Der sich vom Fels, auf dem er horstet, schwinget,
Und hoch und hoher steigt, bis unser’n Blicken
Die weitgedehnten Flugel ihn entrucken,
Hin, wo das Auge, das ihm folgt, nicht dringet!
Doch nicht die Sonne strebt er zu erreichen,
Er spaht’ mit scharfem Blick umher — nach Leichen!
……….
Ungluckliches Gemut, dess’ truber Spiegel
So gra? entstrellt die Bilder wiederstrahlet,
Die Leben und Natur, mit holden Zeichen,
In hellen Farben lieblich hat gemalet! —
Wohl auf der Stirne glanzt das Meistersiegel,
Dem Macht gegeben in den Geisterreichen,
Doch freut es dich, im bleichen,
Unsichern Schein die Seele zu beirren! —
Nicht mehr dich selbst vermag ich zu erkennen!
Prometheus Bild scheint vor dem Bild zu brennen,
Doch seltsam wechselnd, seh’ ich’s sich verwirren!
Bist du Prometheus, der die Wunden fuhlet? —
Bist du der Geier, der sein Herz durchwuhlet? —
……….
Aus Newstead Abbey war Er ausgezogen,
Aus seiner Ahnen altem stillen, Hause,
Wo teure Pfander ihm zuruckgeblieben,
Der Mowe gleich, die unstat im Gebrause
Das Sturm’s den Schaum abstreifet von den Wogen!
Wie Ahasverus ward er fortgetrieben
Vom Dache seiner Lieben!
Wie diesem, war ihm nicht vergonnt zu rasten! —
Vergebens irrt er durch die weite Erde,
Das Gluck im Kampf zu suchen und Gefahrde,
Der dunkle Bann bleibt auf der Seele lasten,
Mag dicht am Abgrund er den Fels erklimmen,
Die kalte Flut des Hellesponts durchschwimmen!
……….
Und bald am goldbespulten Tajostrande,
Bald an der felsumragten Uferspitz,
Wo das Atlantenmeer, als Landerscheide,
Europa trennend von der Mauren Si?e,
Dem Mittelmeer sich eint mit schmalen Bande,
Wo dann, vermischt, hinrauschen stolz, voll Freude,
Die Nachbarfluten beide,
Bald auf den Phrena’n, den sonnenhellen,
Zu deren Hohen aus dem Baskentale
Der Felsensteg, der unwegsame, schmale,
Hinauf sich schlingt, dort, wo die jungen Wellen
Ausstromet der Adour — sieht man ihn ziehen,
Und vor sich selbst, so scheint’s, voll Unruh’ fliehen! —
……….
Bald mit den Toten, die im Kugelregen,
Auf jenem blutgetrankten Feld in Flandern,
Fur goldne Meining, und fur Ehr’ und Treue
Berhaucht die Seelen, sehen wir ihn wandern! —
Ein Weh’n der Geister sauselt mir entgegen!
O teure Erde, Platz der Todesweihe,
Mit frommer, heil’ger Scheue
Tritt dich der Fu?! Dich, mit dem edlen Staube
Gemischt, von jenen tausend, tausend Herzen,
Die hier verblutet in dem Brand der Schmerzen,
Dem Schwert der Schlachten, dem Gescho? zum Raube!
Von Gluten wurdiger Begeist’rung trunken,
Sind sie in freud’gem Glauben hingesunken!
……….
Bald auf der Gletscher Scheitel steht er sinnend,
Wo Wasserfalle tobend niedersausen,
Zum Abgrund, den der Blick nur kann erreichen,
Inde? das Ohr kaum mehr das ferne Brausen
Des Strom’s vernimmt, dem engen Tahl entrinnend! —
So seh’n von Land zu Land wir ihn entweichen,
Bis wo das bleiche Zeichen
Des Halbmond’s schimmert von den Minaretten,
Jetzt in des Bosphorus treulose Wellen
Sturzt er, durchschwimmt den Pa? der Dardanellen
Zu Asiens Kuste — sucht die alten Statten
Verschwund’ner Gro?’ — und sieht aus edlen Trummern
Athen, Akrokorint, Mycena schimmern
……….
Bis er erreicht die Burg, die wallumturmte,
Fern an der Schwelle vom Helenenlande,
Aus jenes Inselmeer’s Lagunen steigend.
Ach! wuster Schutt, zerstort von Mord und Brande,
ist nun die hohe, hundert Mal Versturmte,
Ihr edles Haupt gesenkt zur Erde neigend! —
Es schweben, ernst und schweigend,
In dustern Nachtgrau’n bleiche Geisterscharen
Gefall’ner Helden, Kummer in den Mienen,
Un die geweihten, heiligen Ruinen,
Den ew’gen Lorber in den blut’gen Haaren! —
Hier fand sein Ziel des edlen Sangers Leben,
Kein wurd’ger Grab konnt’ ihm das Schicksal geben! —
……….
Und uberall, im gleichen wusten Tone,
Ergie?t die sinst’re Brust sich wohl in Lieder,
Der Zauberstab haucht Leben in Gestalten,
Doch nur Damonen steigen furchtbar nieder
In trotz’ger Bildheit, die mit kaltem hohne
Ruchlos die Herzen qualen und zerspalten!
Die seligen Gewalten,
Die durch die Schmerzen reinen und belohnen,
Sind fremd dem Manne, dessen Zauberworte
Den Vorhang heben von dem grausen Orte,
Wo die Verdammni? und das Laster wohnen!
Und nirgends blinkt ein Strahl von Friedenslichte,
Und Holl’ ist nur, kein Himmel in Gedichte! —
……….
Und jenen Wiederschein von Qual und Gluten,
Hat ihn die Brust des Glucklichen geboren?
War’s ein beseligt Herz, in dessen Grunde
So lebentotende Gebilde gohren?
Wann gab, getrankt von milder Sehnsucht Fluten,
Es je von Lieb’ und Vaterfreuden Kunde,
Von segenvollem Bunde
Begluckter Hauslichkeit, von Gott und Frieden?
Wann sang es Trost, wann sang es edle Schmerzen?
Zermalmt hat es — wann hob es and’re Herzen? —
Beneid’ es, wenn du kannst! — und doch beschieden
War jenem Mann der Kranz! Wohlan, bekenne,
Ob man in Wahrheit wohl ihn glucklich nenne? —
***
As the wild sounds of the cruel songs
of demons drove men crazy, so we feel
shaken to the marrow of our bones when
we hear the horrible chants. And as
those who hover in rarified regions of
the highest space often run out of
breath and die, with their blood
draining from compressed lungs, so the
soul strives, full of fear, to get away
in a daze from the magic song, until
the magician who cast the magic circle
laughing with derision, raises his wand.
……….
When we look at such a picture our
pain will find release in justified
complaints. We do not see you carried
through the clear air as a swan full of
song that hovers above the meadows and
green, laughing fields. You can be seen
in the horror of the bleak desert like
a lonely eagle soaring from the rock on
which he has his nest and rising higher
and higher until his wings spread out
wide, carry him out of our sight, away,
where he can no long be reached by
the eye that follows him. Yet he is not
trying to reach the sun. His keen eye
searches around — for corpses!
……….
Unhappy soul whose clouded mirror so
horribly distorts the pictures it
reflects that were painted by life and
nature, with love, in bright colours
and beautiful symbols. Although upon
your forehead may glitter the seal of
the master granted the power in the
kingdom of the spirits, yet it gives
you pleasure to confuse the soul in the
pale, uncertain gloom. I can no longer
recognise you yourself. The picture of
Prometheus seems to be glowing in my
eyes, yet I see it changing strangely
and becoming confused. Are you the
Prometheus who feels the wounds, or are
you the vulture burrowing in his heart?
……….
He went from Newstead Abbey, the old,
quiet house of his ancestors where he
left dear pledges, like the seagull
that, unsteady in the roaring storm,
skims the foam from the
crests of the waves. He was driven away
like Ahasuerus from the home of those
he loved. Like Ahasuerus, he was not to
rest! He is straying aimlessly all over
the globe, looking for good fortune and
danger in a battle. The dark spell
weighs upon his soul, even if he climbs
the rock closely to the abyss or swims
across the cold waters of the Hellespont.
……….
And one can see him rove and, so it
seems, run away from himself. How he is
on the banks of the Tagus, rinsed with
gold, now on the tip of the shore
surrounded by rocks, where the Atlantic
as a border between continents joins
the Mediterranean as a narrow ribbon
dividing Europe from the land of the
Moors, whence then the neighbouring
waters mingle and dash away proudly
and full of joy, now in the Pyrenees
lit up by the sun, the peaks of which
are reached from the valley of the
Basques by an impassable, narrow,
winding, rocky path, where the Adour springs from.
……….
And now we see him wandering with the
dead who fell on that battlefield in
Flanders for golden ideals and for
honour and loyalty. I feel the breath
of spirits moving towards me. Oh
precious soil, the place of doom! My
foot treads upon you with devotion and
awe, upon you that was mixed with the
noble dust of those thousands upon
thousands of hearts who bled to death
here in searing pain and, intoxicated
by noble enthusiasm, fell happy in
their beliefs, victims of the sword and the bullet.
……….
Now he is standing immersed in thought
upon the crest of the glaciers, where
turbulent waterfalls dash down into
the abyss, reached only by the eye,
while the ear can only hear the distant
roaring of the stream escaping from the
narrow valley. Thus we can see him
escaping from country to country until
he reaches the pale sign of the
crescent glittering on top of the
minarets. Now he throws himself into
the treacherous waters of the
Bosphorous, swims across the
Dardanelles over to the coast of Asia —
looks for the old places of vanished
glory and sees Athens, Acrocorinth and
Mycenae glimmering from noble ruins.
……….
Then he reaches the castle surrounded
by walls, far away on the doorstep of
the land of the Hellenes, rising from
a sea of islands. Oh, the noble city,
attacked a hundred times, is now
destroyed by murder and fire. It is
now reduced to rubble and it lowers its
noble head to the ground. Pale crowds
of spirits of falled heroes with grief
on their faces hover earnestly and
silently in the gloomy twilight around
the hallowed ruins, with the eternal
laurel in their hair, covered with
blood. Here the life of the noble poet
found its destiny. Fate could not give
him a more worthy grave.
……….
And everywhere the gloomy feelings pour
themselves out in wild poetry. The
magic wand endows the shapes with life,
and yet only the demons descend, full
of horror, defiant and wild. With their
cold derision they wickedly torment and
break hearts. The blessed powers that
lead to salvation through suffering are
alien to the man whose magic words
reveal the inside of the terrible place
where the curse and the sin live. And
nowhere is there a glimmer of the light
of peace, and the poetry is full of
hell and not of heaven.
……….
And was that reflection of torment and
passion born from the breast of a
happy man? Was it a blissful heart at
the bottom of which such deadly images
were seething? When did it, steeped in
the waters of mild longing, sing of
love and the joys of fatherhood? Of
the blissful union of happy family
life? Of God and peace? When did it
sing of comfort, when of noble pain?
It has destroyed other hearts, but
when did it give them an uplift? Envy
it if you can. And yet it was
the fate of this man to wear a poet’s
garland. Well, admit it: can he
truthfully be called happy?
Joseph Zedlitz was an Austrian who wrote Die Nachtliche Heerschau/The Nocturnal Review, a poem dealing with the Napoleonic legend (adapted by Zhukovsky in 1836: nochnoi smotr). His Totenkranze is a cycle of 134 poems in canzone form (the canzone being songs or airs of a madrigal type, as well as, more generally, stanzas of poetry) reviewing some of the famous dead of history. He published Poems in 1832 and translated Byron’s Childe Harold (Ritter Harolds Pilgerfahrt). Tyutchev translated Cantos 80-93 of Garlands for the Dead.
Ahasuerus: an Old Testament king of Persia (historically Xerxes, 488-465 BC).
Newstead Abbey: the estate on which Byron was born. In 1816 Byron left England for good.
45. NL first half of 1829. Tyutchev could be seen as the traveller in the air balloon, most certainly taking advantage of situations as they occurred. His tragedy, or perhaps that of both his wives and his mistress, was precisely that he did tend to ‘float’, not always with any clear sense of direction.
46. Early October, 1829. TR King Ludwig I of Bavaria: Nicolaus, das ist der Volksbesieger/Nicholas is the Defeater of Peoples.
Ludwig was unable to work with the new liberal powers gaining more influence in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century and was eventually forced to abdicate in favour of his son. He was in his own mind a liberal enough monarch and one of the first to establish an arts policy, amounting in real terms to subsidies to arts ventures in Bavaria. Tyutchev would have been acting in character by translating such verses in order to bring to himself the attention of the Russian authorities as employers. The world ‘Nicholas’ is written in italics by both Tyutchev and Ludwig.
I have yet to read Ludwig’s poem.
47. NL 1829. This is one of Tyutchev’s most disturbing visions of nocturnal and universal loneliness. His best poems give an impression of having being effortlessly composed. There is nothing contrived, nothing overtly ‘poetic’. It is a profoundly aching, very personal vision to which he returned in a poem of the same title [391] on his death bed in 1873. Already, still in his twenties, the comforting warmth and security of the existence he had known is showing cracks. In later years, he frequently complains of sleeplessness for a different reason. Rheumatism and gout plagued him.
48. NL 1829. Such a light, magically vernal poem indicates Tyutchev’s ability to treat the diurnal side of existence at the same time and just as skilfully as its blacker side with no apparent inconsistency. From a bird’s-eye view in stanza 1, the poet returns us to the ground whence we observe mountain peaks swathed in mist as if they were magic castles. The images themselves are not unusual for the time, but the sense of motion, of floating above the scene then looking up at a different part of it is very Tyutchevian.
49. NL 1829. Oppressive heat and the feel of perspiration opposite coolness and light make of this lyric a playful and sensual wonder. One is reminded of Baudelaire’s La Geante/The Giantess, if not thematically, then in the languishing feeling of succumbing to heat. (B:3/97) Gregg’s point that in this period Nature is before it starts to mean may simply be looking at the same nature from two different angles. In vecher/Evening [53], Tyutchev effectively scraps the ‘meaning’ aspect of Solitude [11] to produce a simple, very much condensed version, a scene which says nothing, which does not need man to try to interpret it. In [53], Nature most certainly is. However, the poem par excellence which seems to present a Tyutchevian philosophy of Nature. Ne to, chto mnite vy, priroda/Nature is not what you think it is [121], actually states the opposite of Gregg’s point: Nature cannot be the object of empirical investigation and, therefore, cannot be said to mean anything. In this and the many nature poems of later periods, Nature remains a thing which is. While Tyutchev, like any poet, will exploit a given scene in order to make a poetic point, fundamentally he does not use Nature as an entity or a concept on which to build any philosophical, or even personal, ordered system of ‘meaning’.
50. NL 1829. These philosophical lines reverse the biblical creation myth, the universe collapsing after waters have once more covered it and the original divine breath/image has appeared. ‘In equating the Divine Will with the dissolution of the ladder (Schelling’s evolutionary steps towards perfection — FJ) and a regression toward unconsciousness, the poet has (if we insist on looking at things from Schelling’s viewpoint) ‘perverted’ the philosopher’s thought, which is a roundabout way of saying that he has preserved his own’. (A:14)
I have to agree that Schelling, together with so many thinkers and writers, was a sounding board for Tyutchev. Once assimilated, he became more or less irrelevant.
51. NL 1829. Tyutchev revels in the idea of adulterous sex, his final vine image leaving little to the imagination. The poem is imbued with an utterly amoral sense of delight in the forbidden. It is one of several such images, although few of the others are quite so suggestive.
52. The first two drafts, entitled Probuzhdenie/The Awakening, can probably be dated NL 1829. The final version is from the late forties to the first half of 1851. As in Son na more/A Dream at Sea [92], the lyric-hero is seen asleep or, at least, supine and in a state of half-sleep, while a mixture of real and hallucinatory ‘events’ takes place around him.
53. NL late 1820s. Tyutchev’s short lyric is reminiscent of his translation of Lamartine [11], taking the essence of a simple theme and dealing with it in simple language. Having read the longer Lamartine adaptation, the reader is struck by Tyutchev’s decision to repeat the experience and the inspiration of the French post while omitting anything no longer necessary to him, as well as retaining what the French poet writes and condensing and altering it to suit his own poetic needs. (See A:32/165.)
54. NL late 1820s. One is tempted to see here a youthful, light-hearted precursor of Kak ni dyshit polden’ znoinyi/Midday breathes its hottest [173].
55. Late 1820s. The symbolism of the confrontational roles of the eagle and the swan (the latter also part of the Bavarian emblem) ‘was much favoured in European poetry, for in this symbolic contest, the eagle is victor’. (C:4ii/363-364) In Tyutchev’s poem, the swan is victorious. In verse by Lamartine, Hugo, Schlegel and Zedlitz, the eagle represents battle and revolution, while the swan is a symbol of peace and contemplation.
56. December, 1829-early 1830. TR Heine: from Reisebilder/Travel Scenes (chap. 31, pt.3).
‘Ich bin gut russich’ — sagte ich auf dem
Schlachtfelde von Marengo, und stieg fur einige
Minuten aus dem Wagen, um meine Morgenandacht zu halten.
Wie unter einem Triumphbogen von kolossalen
Wolkenmassen zog die Sonne herauf, siegreich, heiter,
sicher, einen schonen Tag verhei?end. Mir aber war
zumute wie dem armen Monde, der verbleichend noch am
Himmel stand. Er hatte seine einsame Laufbahn
durchwandelt, in oder Nachtzeit, wo das Gluck schlief
und nur Gespenster, Eulen und Sunder ihr Wesen
trieben, und jetzt, wo der junge Tag hervorstieg, mit
jubelnden Strahlen und flatterndem Morgenrot, jetzt
mu?te er von dannen — noch ein wehmuhtiger Blick
nach dem gro?en Weltlicht, und er verschwand wie
duftiger Neble.
‘Es wird ein schoner Tag werden!’ reif mein
Reisegefahrte aus dem Wagen mir zu. Ja, es wird ein
schoner Tag werden, wiederholte leise mein betendes
Herz, und zitterte vor Wehmut und Freude. Ja, es wird
ein schoner Tag werden, die Freiheitssonne wird die
Erde glucklicher warmen, als die Aristokratie
sammtlicher Sterne, emporbluhen wird ein neues
Geschlecht, das erzeugt worden in freier
Wahlumarmung, nicht in Zwangsbette und unter der
Kontrolle geistlicher Zollner, mit der freien Geburt
werden auch in den Menschen freie Gedanken und
Gefuhle zur Welt kommen, wovon wir geborenen Knechte
keine Ahnung haben — O! sie werden ebensowenig ahnen,
wie entsetzlich die Nacht war, in deren Dunkel wir
leben mu?ten, und wie grauenhaft wir zu kampfen
hatten, mit ha?lichen Gespenstern, dumpfen Eulen und
scheinheiligen Sundern! O wir armen Kampfer! die wir
unsre Lebenszeit in solchem Kampfer vergeuden mu?ten,
und mude und bleich sind, wenn der Siegestag
hervorstrahlt! Die Glut des Sonnenaufgangs wird unsre
Wangen nicht mehr roten und unsre Herzen nicht mehr
warmen konnen, wir sterben dahin wie der scheidende
Mond — allzu kurz gemessen ist des Menschen
Wanderbahn, an deren Ende das unerbittliche Grab.
Ich wei? wirklich nicht, ob ich es verdiene, da? man
mir einst mit einem Lorbeerkranze den Sarg verziere.
Die Poesie, wie sehr ich sie auch liebte, war immer
nur heiliges Spielzeug, oder geweihtes Mittel fur
himmlische Zwecke. Ich habe nie gro?en Wert gelegt
auf Dichterruhm, und ob man meiner Lieder preiset
oder tadelt, es kummert mich wenig. Aber ein Schwert
sollt ihr mir auf den Sarg legen, denn ich war ein
braver Soldat in Befreiungskriege der Menscheit.
***
‘I am a good Russian’, I said on the battlefield of
Marengo, and stepped out of my carriage for a few
minutes to say my morning prayers.
As through a triumphal arch of colossal cloud-
masses, the sun rose, victoriously, cheerfully, in
certainty, promising a fine day. But I felt sad, as
does the poor moon which, faded, still hangs in the
sky. It has travelled its lonely journey in the dreary
night time where happiness sleeps and only spectres,
owls and sinners revel, and now, where the young day
is about to rise, with jubilant rays and flapping
morning red, now it has to leave — sending a wistful
glance at the great world-light, and it has
disappeared like a gossamer cloud.
‘It’s going to be a nice day’, my travelling
companion called to me from the carriage. Yes, it will
be a nice day, my praying heart repeated softly, and
trembled with melancholy and joy. Yes, it will be a
nice day, on which the suns of freedom will happily
warm the earth, more gladly than the aristocracy of
all the stars, A new race will rise, born in a free
embrace and not constrained to marriage, not watched
by clerical tax-collectors. Together with free birth,
freer thoughts and feelings will come into the world
— of which we, who were born in servitude, have no
conception. Ah, they will not understand how horrible
was the night in whose darkness we were compelled to
live, how bitterly we had to fight with frightful
ghosts, stupid owls and sanctimonious sinners! Alas,
we poor warriors who have had to squander our lives
in such combat, and are weary and spent, now that the
victory is at hand! The sunrise glow can no longer
flush our checks and warm our hearts. We perish like
the waning moon. All too brief is man’s allotted
course, and his end is the implacable grave!
Truly, I do not know whether I deserve that a laurel
wreath be placed on my bier: Poetry, much as I loved
it, has always been to me only a sacred plaything, or,
at best, a consecrated means to a heavenly end. I
have never laid great store by poetic glory, and
whether my songs are praised or blamed matters
little to me. But lay a sword on my bier, for I have
been a good soldier in the wars of human liberation.
Tyutchev chooses blank verse for his relatively faithful translation, although he does change the order of the sections, beginning with Heine’s third paragraph (‘It’s going to be a nice day’), continuing with his first, though omitting ‘I am a good Russian’ and simply beginning, ‘Thus I thought ….’, and retaining the final third in its right place’ (‘Truly I do not know….’).
Heine wrote his Travel Sketches over the years 1824-1830. In late 1824, he set off on a walking tour of the north German mountains and climbed in the Harz. The sketches are a colourful depiction of bodily and spiritual freedom after the stuffy academicism of Gottingen.
Erebus: the dark cavern between Earth and Hades.
57. Late 1829-early 1830. Addressee unknown. The Romantic image of the poet in the first few lines is widespread and appears more than once in Pushkin. Here, as in [58], it is likely to be autobiographical.
58. Late 1829-early 1850. Addressee unknown. Tyutchev uses the noun dusha ambiguously. On one level he could be addressing a woman. On the other, it could be an early indication of dusha used in the more spiritual sense of ‘soul’.
59. Probably late 1820s. TR Goethe, from Faust (pt.1). This section immediately follows the Zueignung/Dedication and the Vorspiel auf dem Theater/Prologue in the Theatre. The Lord, the heavenly hosts, then Mephistopheles are present. The opening lines are spoken by the three archangels as they step forward.
1. (Prolog im Himmel)
Raphael
Die Sonne tont, nach alter Weise,
In Bruderspharen Wettgesang,
Und ihre vorgeschriebne Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Starke,
Wenn keiner sie ergrunden mag.
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.
Gabriel
Und schnell und unbegreiflich schnelle
Dreht sich umher der Erde Pracht,
Es wechselt Paradieses-Helle
Mit tiefer, schauervoller Nacht,
Es schaumt das Meer im breiten Flussen
Am tiefen Grund der Felsen auf,
Und Fels und Meer wird fortgerissen
In ewig schnellem Spharenlauf.
Michael
Und Sturme brausen um die Wette
Vom Meer aufs Land, vom Land aufs Meer,
Und bilden wutend eine Kette
Der tiefsten Wirkung rings umher.
Da flammt ein blitzendes Verheeren
Dem Pfade vor des Donnerschlags.
Doch deine Boten, Herr, verehren
Das sanfte Wandeln deines Tags.
Zu Drei
Der Anblick gibt den Engein Starke
Da keiner dich ergrunden mag,
Und alle deine hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.
2. In his study, Faust has been perusing a book written by Nostradamus. As he pronounces the symbol of the earth spirit, the spirit appears in a reddish flame.
(Nacht)
Geist Wer ruft mir?
Faust (abgewendet) Schreckliches Gesicht!
Geist Du hast mich machtig angezogen,
An meiner Sphare lang’ gesogen,
Und nun —
Faust Weh! ich ertrag’ dich nicht!
Geist Du flehst eratmend, mich zu schauen,
Meine Stimme zu horen, mein Antlitz zu sehn,
Mich neigt dein machtig Seelenflehn,
Da bin ich! — Welch erbarmlich Grauen
Fa?t Ubermenschen dich! Wo ist der Seele Ruf?
Wo ist die Brust? die eine Welt in sich erschuf,
Und trug und hegte, die mit Freudebeben
Erschwoll, sich uns, den Geistern, gleich zu heben?
Wo bist du, Faust, des Stimme mir erklang,
Der sich an mich mit allen Kraften drang?
Bist du es, der, von meinem Hauch umwittert,
In allen Lebenstiefen zittert,
Ein furchtsam weggekrummter Wurm?
Faust Soll ich dir, Flammenbildung, weichen?
Ich bin’s, bin Faust, bin deines gleichen!
Geist In Lebensfluten, im Tatensturm
Wall’ ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her!
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein gluhend Leben,
So schaff’ ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit,
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.
Faust Der du die weite Welt umschweifst,
Geschaftiger Geist, wie nah fuhl’ ich mich dir!
Geist Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst,
Nicht mir! (verschwindet)
3. At the close of this scene, Faust hears heavenly choirs.
(Nacht)
Faust. Was sucht ihr, machtig und gelind,
Ihr Himmelstone mich am Staube?
Klingt dort umher, wo weiche Menschen sind.
Die Botschaft hor’ ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube,
Das Wunder ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind.
Zu jenen Spharen wag’ ich nicht zu streben,
Woher die holde Nachricht tont,
Und doch, an diesen Klang von Jugend auf gewohnt,
Ruft er auf jetzt zuruck mich in das Leben.
Sonst sturzte sich der Himmelsliebe Ku?
Auf mich herab, in ernster Sabatstille,
Da klang so ahnungsvoll des Glockentones Fulle,
Und ein Gebet war brunstiger Genu?,
Ein unbegreiflich holdes Sehnen
Trieb mich, durch Wald und Wiesen hinzugehn,
Und, unter tausend hei?en Tranen,
Fuhlt’ ich mir eine Welt entstehn.
Dies Lied verkundete der Jugend muntre Spiele,
Der Fruhlingsfeier freies Gluck,
Erinnrung halt mich nun, mit kindlichem Gefuhle,
Vom letzten, ernsten Schritt zuruck.
O tonet fort, ihr su?en Himmelslieder!
Die Trane quillt, die Erde hat mich wieder!
4. Citizens are walking out of the city gates. Faust is with Wagner.
(Vor dem Tor)
(Faust)
Doch la? uns dieser Stunde schones Gut,
Durch solchen Trubsinn, nicht verkummern!
Betrachte, wie in Abendsonneglut
Die grunumgebnen Hutten schimmern.
Sie ruckt und weicht, der Tag ist uberlebt,
Dort eilt die hin und fordert neues Leben.
O! da? kein Flugel mich vom Boden hebt,
Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben!
Ich sah’ im ewigen Abendstrahl
Die stille Welt zu meinen Fu?en,
Entzundet alle Hohn, beruhigt jedes Tal,
Den Silberbach in goldne Strome flie?en.
Nicht hemmte dann den gottergleichen Lauf
Der wilde Berg mit allen seinen Schluchten,
Schon tut das Meer sich mit erwarmten Buchten
Vor den erstaunten Augen auf.
Doch scheint die Gottin endlich wegzusinken,
Allein der neue Trieb erwacht,
Ich eile fort, ihr ew’ges Licht zu trinken,
Vor mir den Tag, und hinter nir Nacht,
Den Himmel uber mir und unter mir die Wellen.
Ein schoner Traum, indessen sie entweicht.
Ach! zu des Geistes Flugeln wird so leicht
Kein korperlicher Flugel sich gesellen.
Doch ist es jedem eingeboren,
Da? sein Gefuhl hinauf und vorwarts dringt,
Wenn uber uns, im blauen Raum verloren,
Ihr schmetternd Lied die Lerche singt,
Wenn uber schroffen Fichtenhohen
Der Adler ausgebreitet schwebt,
Und uber Flachen, uber Seen,
Der Kranich nach der Heimat strebt.
5. With Mephisto, Faust visits Margrethe’s room unseen by her. Her song was also published separately in Balladen/Ballads.
(Abend)
Es war ein Konig in Thule
Gar treu bis und das grab,
Dem sterbend seine Buhle
Einen goldnen Becher gab.
…….
Es ging ihm nachts daruber,
Er leert’ ihn jeden Schmaus,
Die Augen gingen ihm uber,
So oft er trank daraus.
……….
Und als er kam zu sterben,
Zahlt’ er seine Stadt’ im Reich,
Gonnt’ alles seinem Erben,
Den Becher nicht zugleich.
……….
Er sa? beim Konigsmahle,
Die Ritter um ihn her,
Auf hohem Vatersale,
Dort auf dem Schlo? am Meer.
……….
Dort stand der alte Zecher,
Trank letzte Lebensglut,
Und warf den heiligen Becher
Hinunter in die Flut.
……….
Er sah ihn sturzen, trinken
Und sinken tief ins Meer,
Die Augen taten ihm sinken,
Trank nie einen Tropfen mehr.
6. Faust has fled in order not to ruin Margrethe’s life. He is alone as he begins this monologue.
(Wald and Hohle)
Faust (allein).
Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles,
Warum ich bat. Du hast mir nicht umsonst
Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet.
Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum Konigreich,
Kraft, sie zu fuhlen, zu genie?en. Nicht
Kalt staunenden Besuch erlaubst du nur,
Vergonnest mir in ihre tiefe Brust,
Wie in den Busen eines Freunds, zu schauen.
Du fuhrst die Reihe der Lebendigen
Vor mir vorbei, und lehrst mich meine Bruder
Im stillen Busch, in Luft und Wasser kennen.
Und wenn der Sturm im Walde braust und knarrt,
Die Riesenfichte, sturzend, Nachbaraste
Und Nachbarstamme, quetschend, niederstreift,
Und ihrem Fall dumpf hohl der Hugel donnert,
Dann fuhrst du mich zur sichern Hohle, zeigst
Mich dann mir selbst, und meiner eignen Brust
Geheime tiefe Wunder offnen sich.
Und steigt vor meinem Blick der reine Mond
Besanftigend heruber, schweben mir
Von Felsenwanden, aus dem feuchten Busch,
Der Vorwelt silberne Gestalten auf,
Und lindern der Betrachtung strenge Lust.
***
1.
Raphael
The sun rings out in the ancient way,
competing in song with its brother’s spheres,
thunderously completing
its predestined journey.
The sight of it gives strength to the angels,
though none can fathom it,
the inexplicably lofty works
are as magnificent as on the first day.
Gabriel
Swiftly, incomprehensibly swiftly
earth revolves in its magnificence.
Paradise which had embraced the sky
is replaced by deep, horror-filled night.
The sea’s broad waters foam
against the cliff’s deep base,
the sea and cliffs are carried off
by the eternally swift race of the spheres.
Michael
And storms roar in competition
from sea to land, from land to sea,
and in rage they chain
everything over which they had any influence.
Flaming, devastating lightning
seers the path of the thunder claps,
yet thy heralds still worship, o Lord,
the gentle progress of thy day.
All Three
The sight of it gives strength to the angels,
sine none can fathom you,
and all your lofty works
are as magnificent as on the first day.
2.
Spirit. Who calls me?
Faust. (turning away) Hideous apparition!
Spirit. You conjured me up so mightily,
having sucked at my sphere so long,
and now —
Faust. I cannot bear the sight of you!
Spirit. Breathless, you implore me to appear before
you,
to speak to you, to show my face.
I’m here! What pitiful terror,
drains you, superman! Where is your soul’s cry?
Where is the breast which created a whole world
within it
and bore and cared for it, which in joyful trembling
rose to be the equal of us spirits?
Where are you, Faust, whose voice summoned me
with such mad power?
Are you the one who, wafted by my breath,
tremble at the edge of life’s abyss
like a worm writhing in life’s abyss
like a worm writhing in frightful torments?
Faust. Should I retreat before you, fiery vision?
I am that one, I’m Faust. I am like you.
Spirit. In life’s floods, in storms of energy
I ebb and flow,
weaving away and back,
an eternal sea,
a changing pattern,
a glowing life,
thus I create at time’s humming loom,
weaving the divinity’s living garment.
Faust. Busy Spirit, present throughout the world,
how near I feel myself to thee!
Spirit. You resemble what you comprehend,
Not me! (disappears)
3.
Faust. Why do you seek me, powerful, gentle
sounds of heaven, in the dust?
Ring there, where men are milder.
I hear your message, all that
lacks in me is belief
Miracles are the fondest child of faith.
I dare not strive towards those spheres
where such sacred news rings out.
Used to hearing this call since my youth,
I’m now called back to life.
Once loving Heaven would kiss me
in the grave stillness of the Sabbath.
The bells, full of premonition, rang out
and a prayer was a sensual pleasure.
A sacred longing I could not comprehend
impelled me through wood and meadow
and beneath a thousand hot tears
I sensed a world come into being.
This song announced to lively youth
the free joy of the festival of spring.
That memory fills me with a child’s sensation
and pulls me back from that final, grave step.
Ring out strong, you songs of heaven!
Tears pour, I belong to Earth once more.
4.
Faust
Yet let us not destroy the beauty
of this hour with such gloom.
Look closer, see in the heat of the evening sun
the huts, all-shimmering in green.
The sun retreats and fades, the day is over,
it hurries on to produce new life elsewhere.
Oh, if wings could lift me from the ground
to strive and ever follow it!
I would see in the eternal rays of evening
the silent world at my feet,
blazing summits, peaceful valleys,
the silver stream pouring along in golden currents.
My god-like flight would not be held up
by wild mountains with their gorges,
already the glistening bays of the ocean
spread out before my astonished eyes.
The goddess’s final shining sinks away,
only my own urge is awake.
I hurry on to drink your eternal light,
before me day, behind me night,
Heaven above me, the sea below.
A beautiful dream in which it escapes.
Ah, no mortal wing can easily join
onto those incorporeal wings.
Yet it comes naturally to us all
to press onwards and everywhere,
when above us, lost in the blue expanse
ithe lark trills its song,
when above the spruce’s sharp tops
the eagle soars wide-winged,
the cranes point homewards.
5.
There was a king in Thule,
true till the day he died.
His dying mistress
gave him a golden goblet.
……….
He kept it in safe keeping
to use when he wanted a drink.
He was close to tears
whenever he drank from it.
……….
And when he was on his deathbed,
he counted up the towns in his kingdom,
left everything to his heir
but kept the cup.
……….
He sat at the royal feast,
his knights all around him
in the high hall of his fathers,
in the castle by the sea.
……….
The old drinker stood there,
he drank life’s last heat,
he threw the sacred goblet
down into the waves.
……….
He watched it fall
and sink deep into the sea.
His eyes lost their energy,
He never drank again.
6.
Faust. (alone)
Powerful spirit, you have given me
everything I asked for. Not in vain
you turned your face to me in fire.
You gave me splendid Nature as my kingdom,
and the strength to feel and enjoy her.
Nor did you allow me only a cold, wondering visit.
You granted me to see into her deepest breast
as in the bosom of a dear friend.
You paraded rows of living things
before me, teaching me to recognise
my brothers in the quiet bush, the air, the water.
And when the storm roared through the creaking
forest,
hurling down the giant spruce’s neighbouring boughs,
bruising the trunks standing close together
until their fall thundered dully around the hills,
you led me to the safety of a cave,
when I was alone, showed me myself, my own soul
and let the pure moon rise before my eyes,
sailing soothingly, and there appeared to me
from cliff walls, from the damp bush
the silver forms of a prehistoric time
to ease the severe desire of contemplation.
Goethe began Faust as a young man and completed it in 1831, just one year before he died.
60. Late 1820s. TR Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873): Il cinque maggio. Ode/The Fifth of May. An Ode from Odi e Frammento di Canzone/Odes and Song Fragments.
La procellosa e trepida
Gioia d’un gran disegno,
L’ansia d’un cor che indocile
Serve, pensando al regno,
E il giunge, e tiene un premio
Ch’era follia sperar,
……….
Tutto ei provo: la gloria
Maggior dopo il periglio,
La fuga e la vittoria,
La reggia e il tristo esiglio:
Due volte nella polvere,
Due volte sull’altar.
……….
Ei si nomo: due secoli,
L’un contro l’altro armato,
Sommessi a lui si volsero,
Come aspettando il fato,
Ei fe’ silenzio, ed arbitro
S’assise in mezzo a lor.
……….
E sparve, e i di nell’ozio
Chiuse in si breve sponda,
Segno d’immensa invidia
E di pieta profonda,
D’inestiguibil odio
E d’indomato amor.
……….
Come sul capo al naufrago
L’onda s’avvolve e pesa,
L’onda su cui del misero,
Alta pur dianzi e tesa,
Scorrea la vista a scernere
Prode remote invan,
……….
Tal su quell’alma il cumulo
Delle memorie scese!
Oh quante volte ai posteri
Narrar se stesso imprese,
E sull’eterne pagine
Cadde la stanca man!
……….
Oh quante volte, al tacito
Morir d’un giorno inerte,
Chianti i rai fulminei,
Le braccia al sen conserte,
Stette, e dei di che furono
L’assalse il sovvenir!
……….
E ripenso le mobili
Tende, e i percossi valli,
E il lampo de’ manipoli,
E l’onda dei cavalli,
E il concitato imperio,
E il celere ubbidir.
……….
Ahi! forse a tanto strazio
Cadde lo spirto anelo,
E dispero, ma valida
Venne una man dal cielo
E in piu spirabil aere
Pietosa il trasporto,
……….
E l’avvio, pei floridi
Sentier della speranza,
Ai campi eterni, al premio
Che i desideri avanza,
Dov’e silenzio e tenebre
La gloria che passo.
……….
Bella Immortal! benefica
Fede ai trionfi avvezza!
Scrivi ancor questo, allegrati,
Che piu superba altezza
Al disonor de Golgota
Giammai non si chino.
……….
Tu dalle stanche ceneri
Sperdi ogni ria parola,
Il Dio che atterra e suscita,
Che affanna e che consola,
Sulla deserta coltrice
Accanto a lui poso.
***
The impetuous and fearful
joy of a great design,
the anxiety of a heart that unsubserviently
serves, aspiring to the crown,
and attains the design and receives a prize
that it was madness to hope for.
……….
Everything he experienced, the greatest
glory, after the peril.
Retreat and victory,
government and sad exile,
twice in the dust,
twice at the altar.
……….
He proclaimed himself, two centuries,
both at war with each other,
wished to submit to him,
as before the hand of Fate.
He bade them be silent,
and sat down amidst them as a judge.
……….
He disappeared, — and his days in idleness
closed on such a small shore,
a symbol of great envy
and of deep pity,
of inextinguishable hate
and indomitable love.
……….
As over the head of the shipwrecked man
a wave arches over and hangs,
the wave from which
a moment before the wretch’s
sight, as he was borne high on it,
in vain sought the remote shore,
……….
it was upon that soul the heap
of accumulated memories fall!
Oh, how often to posterity
he tried to tell his tale,
and upon the eternal pages, tired,
this weary hand fell.
……….
How often at the silent fall
of a dreary day,
lowering the flashing rays of his eyes,
with his arms folded on his breast,
he stood, and the memories of days gone by
besieged him.
……….
And he recalled the mobile
tents, the resounding valley,
the flashes of the infantry,
the waves of horses,
the excited command,
and the quick obedience.
……….
Oh, perhaps after such toil
his breathless spirit fell
and despaired, but steadfast
came a hand from heaven
and full of pity
bore him to more breathable air.
……….
And bore him away along the flowery
paths of hope
to the eternal field, to the prize
that excels all desire,
when the glory that was
is but silence and darkness.
The ode was dedicated to Napoleon. As far as we know, Tyutchev translated only stanzas 7-18.
On the appearance of this poem in 1821, Goethe immediately published a German translation in his review Uber Kunst und Altertum/On Art and Antiquity. Manzoni was a Christian for whom Providence had much to do with history, whose great protagonists are guided by it. A theme of his poetry is the ephemeralness of human activity. He was fascinated by Napoleon and certain images in the above work are reminiscent of Tyutchev’s poem Napoleon [162]. The idea of a colossus such as Napoleon straddling two centuries, ‘like a symbol of a superior Will, though self-appointed, to settle chaotic turmoils’ (B:25i/52) was the intellectual commonplace of the day and is not unknown in Tyutchev. In a letter written in 1865 to E. De Amicis, Manzoni wrote: ‘Religion and Fatherland are two great truths, in fact, in varying degrees, two holy truths’. (ibid.). Such words smack of Tyutchev the political poet.
61. Late 1820s. TR Racine (1639-99): Theramene’s monologue from Phedre (V,6). Possibly late 1820s.
A peine nous sortions des portes de Trezene,
Il etait sur 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 (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,
whitened by the moon.
It seems to me that the kak simply moves the action on, as is often the case in folk poetry, the idea being that on a quiet night, something is happening, with no emphasis, no full stop, not even a full sentence.
154. October 22nd. 1849. Such a sense of depression cannot be alleviated, despite the poet’s attempts, by a sense of spring being wafted over his soul, for the ubiquitous dead leaf, like the pied piper, mockingly runs before him all the way.
155. Autumn 1849. Aksakov recalls the circumstances of this composition. Noting that it was only after Tyutchev’s daughters were grown up and Ernestine had learned some Russian, he quotes an example of their need to write down what Tyutchev sometimes dictated: ‘…once, one rainy, autumn evening, being driven home by cab, almost soaked to the skin, he said to his daughter who had come to meet him, ‘I’ve made up a few verses’. While they helped him out of his clothes, he dictated the following charming poem’. (A:1/84-5)
156. 1849. Addressed to F. Vigel (1786-1856), the author of the well known Zapiski/Notes written as if by Pyotr Chaadaev (1794 [?]-1856). The latter was the strange, neurotic writer of the Lettres philosophiques addressees a une dame/Philosophical Letters Addressed to a Lady which, criticised Russia from a Roman Catholic point of view. In Chaadaev’s bitter denunciation of Russia, he accused the country, among other things, of being somewhere between the west and the east, sharing neither the ideas nor the education of either. His work brought upon him society’s vitriolic condemnation. He was not the only writer of his age to condemn things Russian, but unlike Gogol, who got away with it because he was seen as a comic writer, his attacks were all too openly serious.
In 1847 Chaadaev had lithographed portraits of himself commissioned in Paris and sent to various people. Receiving a dozen to distribute, Tyutchev wrote these verses on one and sent it to Vigel, a stranger to both of them. Vigel wrote a puzzled, grateful letter to Chaadaev who wrote to the writer and music critic V. Odoevsky (Jan. 15th. 1850): ‘Some stupid prankster has thought to send him my lithographed portrait on his name-day, accompanying it with Russian verses which he attributes to me… It’s a matter of urgency to make sure there are absolutely no consequences’.
The prankster was never uncovered, so Tyutchev and Chaadaev did not fall out. In a letter of the same year to his sister, Tyutchev quipped: ‘By the way, tell Chaadaev to get some more copies of his lithograph ordered. All the print shops are besieged by crowds, and I can only guess that their having to wait so long might be the cause of some agitation in this mass, and we could do with avoiding that’.
157. 1849. There are times when it appears that Tyutchev forgets he is an original poet and reproduces, if not verbatim, then subtly plagiaristically someone else’s poem. Here, of course, it is his version of Heine, [34].
158. November, 1849. On the first manuscript there is in brackets the dedication ‘to Fuad-Efendi’, the latter a Turkish administrator in the Danube region, poet and pamphleteer, Mehmed Fuad-Pasha (1815-1869). While there are no hard facts relating to the reason Tyutchev wrote this, the political events of the time make his motivation fairly clear. This enlightened, liberal doctor of medicine, grammarian, interpreter, diplomat, commander and minister was dispatched as a special envoy to the Tsar in October 1849 as a result of Russia’s insistence on the extradition of Hungarian and Polish nationalists and Turkey’s refusal to acquiesce. War was imminent. Fuad-Pasha was instrumental in reaching a peaceful settlement. Tyutchev may well have met him, for the Turk had talks with various Russian officials during his visit to the capital. Both men were fluent French-speakers, the Turk a supporter of the Europeanisation of his country and a civilising influence in many ways in his circle, one of his ambitions being the emancipation of women. Had it not been for their mutual paranoia, Russia’s on account of what she saw as an aggressive western Europe siding with the infidel against Orthodox Christianity, Turkey’s resulting from her equally paranoid perception of Europe as a military and political power expanding at her own expense, the two educated, intelligent diplomats could well have been friends. While as liberal as one in his position could be, Fuad Pasha was a foreign minister who, when sent to the Lebanon to deal with internecine fighting between Maronites and Druzes, employed savage methods to restore order. (See [326] and C:28.)
159. 1849. Addressee unknown. The ‘southern glance’ could refer to one of many women he will have known on his trips to Southern Europe, in addition to being used in symbolic contrast to the ‘ugly dream’ of the ‘fateful north’ of the final stanza.
Cimmerian night: the joyless night of Homer’s Odyssey. The Cimmerii were a tribe fabled to have lived in perpetual darkness.
A different land….: Italy.
160. 1848 or 1849. Korolyova was the first to establish that this poem was influenced by Lamartine’s Les confidences/Confidences. (B:22) Larmartine’s description of his home was echoed by Tyutchev. The Frenchman wrote: ‘As for the garden itself, almost all that’s left is the name. It could count only as a garden in those primitive days when Homer described the modest holding of Laertes and the seven fields belonging to the old man. Eight squares of vegetables lined by fruit trees at right angles to each other and separated by rows of fodder grass and yellow sand, at the end of these rows, to the north, eight tortuous-trunked old arbours on a bench of wood’.
Writing to Ernestine (Aug. 31st. 1846), Tyutchev produced an unidealised, though fundamentally fond description of his own home. His obsession with his own ageing comes through: ‘The room I’m writing to you from is my father’s study, the very room he died in. To one side there is his bedroom, where he no longer went. Behind me is the settee, making up the corner where he laid down never to rise again. All around the room are old, well-known portraits from my childhood and which, indeed, have aged less than I. Opposite me is that old relic of a house which we once lived in and of which there remains the body of the dwelling which my father had maintained religiously so that one day, on returning to the country, there would be some trace, some scrap of our former existence for me to find… Indeed, that first moment I arrived, I had a very vivid memory as if it were a revelation of that enchanted world of childhood, destroyed and annihilated for such a long time now. The former garden, 4 large limes, very well known in those parts, a fairly puny alley about a hundred paces long which to me seemed immeasurable, all this magnificent universe of my childhood, so full of life, so varied — all of that is enclosed within an area of several square feet’.
Lamartine was born in Savoy.
161. Possibly 1849. In such an insignificant poem written in French, the Tyutchevian idea of something significant being poured into the air comes across.
162. Final version NL early 1850. See note [90].
163. Late 1840s-early 1850s. Lane was the first to deal in detail with the Pascalian character of some of Tyutchev’s French poems, (A:18vii/321), mentioning in particular [130, 139, 163, 176]. He begins his treatment of these poems with [130], pointing out that ‘the first seven lines of the following piece communicate anxiety and terror of the abyss of time’.
164. NL early 1850. this rather stilted poem is reminiscent of parts of Uraniya [7].
165. NL early 1850. The coldness of the moonlight, the desertedness of the scene, the absolute sense of man’s being alone and in an unwelcoming environment all come across forcefully in this ‘western’ poem.
166. NL early 1850.
The first two stanzas refer to the annual symbolic betrothal of the doges of Venice with the Adriatic sea, a tradition lasting up till the late eighteenth century.
Three centuries, perhaps four: the republic of Venice blossomed between the 12th. and 15th. centuries.
The shadow of the lion’s wing: a reference to the emblem of St. Mark, the protector of Venice.
The links of heavy chains: From 1814 up to 1866 Venice was under Austrian rule.
167. NL early 1850. This is untypical of Tyutchev. Nonetheless, it shares with Vous, dont on voit briller, dans les nuits azurees/Unsullied gods of light [176] a sense of warmth, even security. Night, in so many of Tyutchev’s spontaneous poems, is a comforting thing. Only in the more formal, so-called ‘Holy Night’ lyrics is night perceived to be a fearsome entity.
168. March 1st. 1850. The tsar considered this poem, unpublished until the Crimean War had broken out, ‘untimely’ and censored it himself.
the fourth age: a reference to the 400th. anniversary of the fall of the Byzantine empire (1453-1853).
The ancient vaults of Sofia: Aia-Sofia is now a mosque in Istanbul.
169. March 1st.-6th. 1850. The words in italics are taken from an imperial manifesto of March 14th. 1848, on the revolutionary events in Austria and Prussia.
170. May, 1850. Addressed to the Austrophil chancellor, Karl Nesselrode (1780-1862). Nesselrode was of the old Holy Alliance school.
171. July, 1850. This comfortingly warm poem, dealing with the same theme as his translation of Beranger’s cynical work [93], shows, perhaps, a Tyutchev pining for security, despite being in Russia with his family, and equally expressing a conservative attitude to the beggar, asking god to help him through life while accepting from the outsider’s point of view that his unenviable lot is a holy one.
172. July, 1850. The up-down movement of the river and apparent sky-movement is typical of Tyutchev’s poetic refusal to separate phenomena.
173. July, 1850. This is the first poem about his mistress, Elena Deniseva. Elena inspired some of the sharpest, most touching love poetry in nineteenth-century Russian literature.
174. July, 1850. His epigrammatic style comes across yet again. As in [16] and [122], there are times when Tyutchev seems to sit back and simply let God get on with it, provided he, the poet, is not pestered.
175. August, 1850. In this incredible poem, as in [118], nature is an entity in which space and time merge.
176. August 23rd. 1850. A nocturnal walk with Ernestine is the subject. This excellent work is yet another example of the warmth of a Russian night-poem. (See [177].)
177. September 15th. 1850. Concerning death, as did the earlier [80], hidden among luxuriant, colourful images.
178. 1850. St. Petersburg. A polite compliment to his sister-in-law, the poetess, Evdokiya Rostopchina (nee Sushkova, 1811-1858), some of whose popular love lyrics were set to music. She also wrote about the emptiness of upper-class life. Tyutchev is said to have had a low opinion of her work.
179. 1850. One of the favourites of the poet Alexander Blok (1880-1921), with what he referred to as its ‘Hellenic, pre-Christian sense of Fate’, this enigmatic poem seems relatively mediocre, far from possessing any of the pre-Christian, Hellenic freshness Blok and his peers were often looking out for in the poetry of previous years. It is untypical and difficult to date. It could well have been written considerably earlier than the fifties, though there is no hard evidence. Any reference to the Greeks immediately suggests political undertones. The theme of Fate and the indifference of the gods to man is Tyutchevian, but the general layout of the poem most certainly is not. It could well be a translation or adaptation. Indeed, Kozyrev (A:20,vol.1/88) considers Goethe’s Symbolum/Symbol to be the undisputed source although, despite his claim, he was not the first to notice the link. (ibid., vol. 2, 47/129) The relevant lines from Goethe (taken from stanza 3) are as follows:
………………..Stille
Ruhn oben die Sterne
Und unten die Graber.
***
………………..Peacefully
the stars rest above
and the graves below.
There are other references in Goethe’s poem to the basic theme of toiling man and carefree gods.
No self-respecting Soviet commentator could have resisted the temptation to deal with this poem. Tvardovskaya (ibid., vol. 1/163) writes as follows about the first stanza: ‘The lines… seem to have been written about those and for those who, at a time when there was no widespread, national movement, began single-handed their struggle with autocracy’.
Atheistic existentialism is brought into the picture by Kozyrev. I cannot agree with his finding that there are two creative periods in Tyutchev’s work, a point he makes more than once forcefully, any more than I accept his philosophical links with Sartre and Heidegger in his discussion of Two Voices: ‘The crucial moment between Tyutchev’s two creative periods and, from a certain point of view, perhaps, the height of his poetry, is represented by ‘Two Voices’. Here you have the break with the ‘beneficent’ gods of nature, there — a majestic attempt to confirm man’s dignity in himself, as in the highest being in the Universe, but in a solitary being thrown into the Universe, where Fate conquers, where everything is subservient to death. The spirit of this poem is akin, in all likelihood, not only — and not so much — to the tragic feel of the ancients, as much as to the ethical concepts of the atheistic existentialism of Sartre or Heidegger’. (ibid., vol. 1/92)
An echo of like minds (pereklichka golosov/an exchange of voices) is postulated by A. Neusykhin (ibid. vol.2/542-547) in an unfinished report in which a link is seen between this poem and Holderlin’s Hyperions Schicksalslied/Hyperion’s Song of Fate. The idea that the gods live in eternal serenity and bliss, far from human toil and sorrow is, of course, ancient and in his study of the Classics, the young Tyutchev will have encountered it in Homer. I do, however, feel that Neusykhin was over-cautious in stating that Holderlin’s poem exerted no direct influence on Tyutchev. The song is from the novel Hyperion, which deals with the on-going Russo-Turkish conflict and was one of the few works by Holderlin relatively well known in his lifetime. The German text follows:
Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
Auf weichem Boden, seelige Genien! Glanzende Gotterlufte Ruhren euch leicht, Wie die Finger der Kunstlerin Heilige Saiten. ………. Schiksaallos, wie der schlafende Saugling, atmen die Himmlischen, Keusch bewahrt In bescheidener Knospe, Bluhet ewig Ihnen der Geist, Und die seeligen Augen Bliken in stiller Ewiger Klarheit. ………. Doch uns ist gegeben, Auf keiner Statte zu ruhn, Es schwinden, es fallen Die leidenden Menschen Blindlings von einer Stunde zur andern, Wie Wasser von Klippe Zu Klippe geworfen, Jahr lang ins Ungewisse hinab. *** You wander above in the light on soft ground, blessed spirits! Gleaming, divine breezes touch you gently like the artist’s fingers on sacred strings. ………. Without Fate, like the sleeping infant, the heavenly ones breathe. Chastly preserved in the modest bud bloom eternally their minds, and their blessed eyes gaze in calm, eternal clarity. ………. But to us it is given nowhere to rest. Dizzy and falling is suffering mankind blindly from one hour to the next, like water from one ledge to another ledge drops, year after year into uncertainty.
Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) merged Christian and Classical themes in German verse which attempted to naturalise Classical Greek poetry. He saw the gods of Greece as real, living forces in natural manifestations. The novel Hyperion is the story of a disillusioned Greek freedom-fighter. In his poem Die Heimat/Home, Holderlin wrote: ‘For they who lend us the heavenly fire, the Gods, give us sacred sorrow too. Let it be so. A son of earth I seem, born to love and to suffer’.
Fundamentally, Tyutchev’s poem is probably another example of his eclecticism. All great literature owes much to what has gone before and the truly great writer is capable of using, borrowing as opposed to stealing, in T.S. Elliot’s words, other people’s work to his own original ends. As with his choice of Schiller’s Das Siegesfest/The Victory Celebration [181], a connection with the Eastern Question can never be ruled out.
180. 1850. The two major political problems facing Tyutchev tended to be the relationship between the Slavonic world friendly to Russia and Poland, and the age-old question of the position of Constantinople, occupied by the Turks.
181. Probably 1850-early 1851. TR Schiller: Das Siegesfest/The Victory Celebration (1803) from Poems.
Priams Feste war gesunken,
Troja lag in Schutt und Staub, Und die Griechen, siegestrunken, Reich beladen mit dem Raub, Sa?en auf den hohen Schiffen Langs des Hellespontos Strand, Auf der frohen Fahrt begriffen Nach dem schonen Griechenland. Stimmet an die frohen Lieder, Denn dem vaterlichen Herd Sind die Schiffe zugekehrt, Und zur Heimat geht es wieder. ………. Und in lagen Reihen, klagend, Sa? der Trojerinnen Schar, Schmerzvoll an die Bruste schlagend, Bleich mit aufgelostem Haar. In das wilde Fest der Freuden Mischten sie den Wehgesang, Weinend um das eigne Leiden In des Reiches Untergang. Lebe wohl geliebter Boden! Von der su?en Heimat fern Folgen wir dem fremden Herrn, Ach wie glucklich sind die Toten! ………. Und den hohen Gottern zundet Kalchas jetzt das Opfer an. Pallas, die die Stadte grundet Und zertrummert, ruft er an, Und Neptun, der um die Lander Seinen Wogengurtel schlingt, Und den Zeus, den Schreckensender, Der die Aegis grausend schwingt. Ausgestritten, ausgerungen Ist der lange schwere Streit, Ausgefullt der Kreis der Zeit, Und die gro?e Stadt bezwungen. ………. Attreus Sohn, der Furst der Scharen, Ubersah der Volker Zahl, Die mit ihm gezogen waren Einst in des Scamanders Tal. Und des Kummers finstre Wolke Zog sich um des Konigs Blick, Von dem hergefuhrten Volke Bracht’ er wen’ge nur zuruck. Drum erhebe frohe Lieder Wer die Heimat wieder sieht, Wem noch frisch das Leben bluht, Denn nicht alle kehren wieder! ………. Alle nicht, die wieder kehren, Mogen sich des Heimzugs freun, An den hauslichen Altaren Kann der Mord bereitet sein. Mancher fiel durch Freundes Tucke, Den die blut’ge Schlacht verfehlt, Sprachs Uly? mit Warnungs Blicke, Von Athenens Geist beseelt. Glucklich wem der Gattin Treue Rein und keusch das Haus bewahrt, Denn das Weib ist falscher Art, Und die Arge liebt das Neue! ………. Und des frisch erkampften Weibes Freut sich der Atrid und strickt Um den Reiz des schonen Leibes Seine Arme hoch begluckt. Boses Werk mu? untergehen, Rache folgt der Freveltat, Denn gerecht in Himmels Hohen Waltet des Chroniden Rat! Boses mu? mit Bosem enden, An dem frevelnden Geschlecht Rachet Zeus das Gastesrecht, Wagend mit gerechten Handen. ………. Wohl dem Glucklichen mags ziemen, Ruft Oileus tapfrer Sohn, Die Regierenden zu ruhmen Auf dem hohen Himmelsthron! Ohne Wahl verteilt die Gaben, Ohne Billigkeit das Gluck, Denn Patroklus liegt begraben, Und Thersites kommt zuruck! Weil das Gluck aus seiner Tonnen Die Geschicke blind verstreut, Freue sich und jauchze heut, Wer das Lebenslos gewonnen! ………. Ja der Krieg verschilingt die Besten! Ewig werde dein gedacht, Bruder, bei der Griechen Festen Der ein Turm war in der Schlacht. Da der Griechen Schiffe brannten, War in deinem Arm das Heil, Doch dem Schlauen, Vielgewandten Ward der schone Preis zu Teil! Friede deinen heilgen Resten! Nicht der Feind hat dich entrafft, Ajax fiel durch Ajax Kraft, Ach der Zorn verderbt die Besten! ………. Dem Erzeuger jetzt, dem gro?en, Gie?t Neoptolem des Weins: Unter allen ird’schen Losen Hoher Vater, preis’ich deins. von des Lebens Gutern allen Ist der Ruhm das hochste doch, Wenn der Leib in Staub zerfallen, Lebt der gro?e Name noch. Tapfrer, deines Ruhmes Schimmer Wird unsterblich sein im Lied, Denn das ird’sche Leben flieht, Und die Toten dauern immer. ………. Weil des Liedes Stimmen schweigen Von dem uberwundnen Mann, So will ich fur Hektorn zeugen, Hub der Sohn des Tydeus an, — Der fur seine Hausaltare Kampfend ein Beschirmer fiel — Kront den Sieger gro?e Ehre, Ehret ihn das schonre Ziel! Der fur sein Hausaltare Kampfend sank, ein Schirm und Hort, Auch in Feindes Munde fort Lebt ihm seines Namens Ehre. ………. Nestor jetzt, der alte Zecher, Der drei Menschenalter sah, Reicht den laubumkranzten Becher Der betranten Hekuba, Trink ihn aus den Trank der Labe, Und vergi? den gro?en Schmerz, Wundervoll ist Bacchus Gabe, Balsam furs zerri?ne Herz! Trink ihn aus den Trank der Labe Und vergi? den gro?en Schmerz, Balsam furs zerri?ne Herz, Wundervoll ist Bacchus Gabe. ………. Denn auch Niobe, dem schweren Zorn der Himmlischen ein Ziel, Kostete die Frucht der Ahren, Und bezwang das Schmerzgefuhl. Denn so lang die Lebensquelle Schaumet an der Lippen Rand, Tief versenkt und festgebannt! Denn so lang die Lebensquelle An der Lippen Rande schaumt, Ist der Jammer weggetraumt, Fortgespult in Lethes Welle. ………. Und von ihrem Gott ergriffen Hub sich jetzt die Seherin, Blickte von den hohen Schiffen Nach dem Rauch der Heimat hin. Rauch ist alles ird’sche Wesen, Wie des Dampfes Saule weht, Schwinden alle Erder gro?en, Nur die Gotter bleiben stat. Um das Ro? des Reiters schweben, Um das Schiff die Sorgen her, Morgen konnen wirs nicht mehr, Darum la?t uns heute leben! *** The fortress of Priam fell, Troy was lying in ruins and dust and the Greeks, drunk with victory, richly loaded with their spoils, sat on their high boats, travelling happily along the coast of Hellespont to beautiful Greece.
‘Let us sing joyful songs for the ships are making for their fatherland, returning to their homeland’. ………. And in long rows, lamenting, sat a crowd of Trojan women, beating their breasts with grief, pale, with their hair undone. They mingled their plaintive wailing with the wild celebration full of joy, bemoaning their own suffering caused by the fall of the empire. ‘Goodbye, our cherished land! We are following the foreign master far away from our sweet homeland, oh, how lucky are those who are dead!’ ………. And now Calchas is lighting a sacrifice to the gods above. He addresses Pallas, who founds and destroys cities, and Neptune, who casts his girdle of waves around lands, and Zeus, who induces fear and wields the aegis. ‘The long, hard war is now fought out and over. The circle of time has been completed and the great city has been conquered’. ………. The son of Atreus, warlord of the troops, looked at the numbers of people who once upon a time went with him to the valley of Scamander, and the dark cloud of sorrow gathered upon his brow. He was bringing back only a few of those who had followed him here. ‘Therefore let those who are going to see their native land again and whose lives are still in bloom, sing a happy song, for not all are going back’. ………. ‘Not all of those who are on their way home may rejoice about their homecoming, because even his own home could be stalked by murder. Many survivors of bloody battles fell through friends’ treachery’, Ulysses said with a warning look, inspired by Athena. ‘Happy are those whose homes are pure and chaste, protected by their wives’ loyalty, for a woman’s nature is treacherous and the bad ones like novelty’. ………. And the son of Atreus rejoices about the woman he has only just won in the war and, full of happiness, he puts his arms around her beautiful body’s charms. ‘Evil doings must perish and any outrage is followed by revenge, because the council of Zeus rules with justice in the high heavens’. ‘Evil begets evil and those who offend against the law of hospitality are punished by the just hand of Zeus.’ ………. ‘It may be fitting for those who are fortunate’, Oileus’s courageous son exclaims, ‘to praise the rulers on the heavenly throne. However, their gifts are shared unequally, and good fortune is not for Patroclus, in his grave while Thersites is returning! Because luck tips destinies blindly from its barrel. Let those who won their lives in the lottery be glad and shout for joy. ………. Yes, war devours the best. You, brother, who were a tower in the battle, will be forever remembered by the Greeks on festive occasions. It was your arm that offered salvation when the ships of the Greeks were burning, and yet the beautiful prize went to him who was cunning and smart. May your sacred ashes rest in peace! You were not snatched away by the enemy. Ajax fell through his own strength Oh, anger destroys the best of men!’ ………. Now Neoptolem pours out wine for his great father: ‘Of all human destinies, exalted father, I consider yours to be best. After all, glory is the greatest thing one can possess and the great name lives on after the body has turned to ash. ‘Brave man, the brilliance of your glory will be immortal in song, because earthly life flees and the dead last forever.’ ………. ‘Since the vanquished are not mentioned in the song, I shall testify on Hector’s behalf’, the son of Tydeus began, ‘he who fell protecting his country and home while the victor has gained greatest honour, he is honoured, because he fell for a worthier cause. The honour of the names of the fallen protecting their home will live forever in the memory of their enemies, who will pay tribute to them.’ ………. Now Nestor, the old reveller, who saw three generations, passes the garlanded cup to the tearful Hecuba: ‘Drink this refreshing drink and forget the great pain. The gift of Bacchus is wonderful, a balm for the torn heart. Drink up this refreshing drink and forget the great pain. The gift of Bacchus is wonderful, a balm for a torn heart! ………. For Niobe, who was the object of the gods’ heavy anger, also tasted the fruit of the vine and overcame the feeling of pain. For as long as the source of life is bubbling at the lips, the pain is submerged deeply in Lethe’s waters and held there. For as long as the spring of life is bubbling at the lips, woes are dreamt away, washed away in Lethe’s water.’ ………. And now the prophetess rose, inspired by her god, and looked from the tall ships towards the smoke of her native land: ‘All that is earthly is smoke, all that is great on earth, vanishes like a column of smoke and only the gods are permanent. The horse of the rider, the ship are surrounded by cares, therefore
let us live today, because tomorrow we’ll not be able to.’
182. NL Spring, 1851. From the point of view of man’s thought being a transient insignificance, as expressed in Vesna/Spring [132], this is one of several very un-Pascalian poems.
183. NL first months of 1851. Tyutchev ironically compares a woman’s beauty with the brief northern summer, clearly borrowed from Pushkin’s lines from Evgeny Onegin (chap. 4, canto XL):
No nashe severnoe leto,
Karikatura yuzhnykh zim, Mel’knyot it net …. *** But our northern summer, a caricature of southern winters, flashes and is gone already.
The poem begins in deadly earnest, the poet exclaiming that as we age, we love ‘more murderously’, more surely ‘ruining’ what is dear to us, yet already in the second stanza, then rapidly as the poem progresses, a lighter, no less regretful tone appears, reminiscent of some of the earlier poems with their ‘cheeks’…roses’, ‘magical voice’ and ‘youthfully lively laughter’.
184. April 12th. 1851. Addressed to Ernestine. Less inspired than the previous poem, in these lines Tyutchev allows himself to float as it were on the memory of childhood as recounted by his wife. (See A:20, vol.2/99-103.)
185. 1851. Addressed to Ernestine. Written during the second year of his love for Elena (she had been pregnant since September 1850), the poem stayed in a herbarium album, undiscovered by his wife until May 1875. On first reading this poem, Aksakov wrote to Tyutchev’s daughter, Ekaterina, in 1875: ‘These verses are remarkable not so much as poetry, as for the fact that they throw some light on the most treasured, intimate ferment his heart sensed for his wife… But what is especially striking and what grips the heart so is the circumstance… that she had not the faintest idea that these Russian verses existed… In 1851… she did not know enough Russian to be able to understand Russian verse nor to decipher the Russian writing of F.(yodor) I. (vanovich)… What must have been her surprise, her joy and her grief on reading this greeting from beyond the grave, such a greeting, such an act of gratitude for her work as a wife, her acts of love!’ (See A:33ii/149-150)
186. May, 1851. Trees dream, even hallucinate about spring in an image which recurs throughout the poetry.
187. 1851. Addressed to Elena shortly after the birth of their eldest daughter, Elena (May 20th. 1851-May 2nd. 1865).
Your unnamed cherub: could refer either to the fact that the poem was written before the child’s christening (the opinion of E. Kazanovich) or that the baby was illegitimate (G. Chulkov), a fact that the poem was writen before the child’s christening (the opinion of E. Kazanovich) or that the baby was illegitimate (G. Chulkov), a fact weighing heavily on the mother.
188. June 30th. 1851.
Let me in….! A paraphrase of Mark IX, 24.
189. July 14th. 1851. The image of ebb and flow is common in Tyutchev, whether it be the literal forward-retreating movement of the sea ([143]) or the figurative incursion-exiting movement of different levels of reality constructed around a sea-image [92].
190. July 14th. 1851. En route from Moscow to St. Petersburg. This poem is cleverly constructed to allow a superb image of a Jly, star-filled sky to merge with a sense of threat, hinting back at a poem about a woman’s eyes as she is kissed ([123]).
191. August 6th. 1851. In this cynical comparison of love with a brief dream, Tyutchev employs his epigrammatic style to great effect. There is, of course, more to any poem employing any form or interpretation of the nodal son/sleep, dream, as the opening of a letter to his wife (1852) demonstrates: ‘… I had expected a letter from you today to give myself just a tiny bit of a sense of reality. For it often happens that I perceive my real life as a dream’.
192. NL October 27th. 1851. TR Goethe: Mignon from Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (bk.3). First edition 1795, published separately in Ballads and Romances (1800).
Mignon
Kennst du das Land? wo die Zitronen bluhn, Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen gluhn, Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht, Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin Mocht’ ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter ziehn. ………. Kennst du das Haus? Auf Saulen ruht sein Dach, Es glanzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach, Und Marmorbilder stehn und sehn mich an: Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan? Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin Mocht’ ich mit dir, o mein Beschutzer, ziehn. ………. Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg? Das Maultier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg, In Hohlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut, Es sturzt der Fels und uber ihn die Flut. Kennst du ihn wohl? Dahin! Dahin Geht unser Weg! O Vater, la? uns ziehn! *** Do you know that land were the lemons bloom, Gold-orange glows in dark leaves, a gentle wind wafts from a blue sky, The myrtle stands quietly, the laurel stands high! Perhaps you know it? There, there would I go with you, my darling. ………. Do you know that house? Its roof rests on columns, its hall gleams, its chamber shimmers and mosaics look down upon me: poor child, what have they done to you? Perhaps you know it? There, there would I go with you, my protector. ………. Do you know the mountain and its high footbridge? The mule seeks its way in the clouds, in caves a brood of serpents lives, rocks fall and over them pour waters! Perhaps you know it? There, there lies our path! Oh father, let us go!
Tyutchev alters Goethe’s stanza order for some reason, interchanging 2 and 3.
193. November 1st. 1851. The third stanza was quoted by Turgenev in his story entitled Faust/Faust (1856) as well as by Chernyshevsky in his Povesti v Povesti/Tales within in a Tale, which he wrote in the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1863.
194. 1851. There are many echoes of the earlier Vesenyaya groza/A Spring Storm [38], the chief difference being the yellow (i.e. dying) leaf image.
195. 1851. TR Schiller: Wilhelm Tell/William Tell (1805). The song of the fisherman’s son (I,1). The play begins with these lines.
Fischerknabe singt im Kahn. Melodie des Kuhreihens. Es lachelt der See, er ladet zum Bade, Der Knabe schlief ein am grunen Gestade, Da hort er ein Klingen, Wie floten so su?, Wie Stimmen der Engel, Im Paradise. ………. Und wie er erwachtet in seliger Lust, Da spulen die Wasser ihm um die Brust, Und es ruft aus den Tiefen: Lieb Knabe, bist mein! Ich locke den Schlafer, Ich zieh ihn herein. *** The fisher boy sings in a boat. Cowherd’s melody. The sea laughs, summoning to swim in her, the young man has fallen asleep on the green bank. There he hears the ringing floating so sweetly, like the voices of angels in paradise. ………. And as he awakes in blessed pleasure, the water splashes onto his chest, and from the deeps comes a call: Dear youth, be mine! I lure the sleeper, I draw him here.
William Tell contains scenes of the natural beauty of Switzerland, rebellion and two lake storms which help the fugitives to escape. There is a strongly expressed ‘bond between man and nature, nature both within him and around him’. (B:36i/196) 196. 1851. Addressed to one of his daughters who had accidentally crushed a canary. Tyutchev cannot resist a certain black humour at the arbitrariness of Fate.
197. 1851 early 1852. His love for Elena is once again seen as a duel.
198. 1851-early 1852. Written from Elena’s point of view. An interesting treatment of this and the following poem deals with Tyutchev’s adoption of Elena’s persona, a ‘gender shift’. Pratt sees the lyric as ‘a struggle between entropy — the terrifying tendency towards emotional inertness caused by the impending loss of the beloved — and energy, the cohering force supplied by the person’s single-minded devotion to the love relationship’. (C:21/228)
Discussing [199], she continues: ‘As opposed to the sense of fragmentation created by the alternately halting and rushing speech of his female counterpart. Tyutchev’s male persona exudes a sense of coherence and control as he uses each line to express a complete thought smoothly and rationally. His is the rhetoric of logic, hers the rhetoric of passion’. (ibid./231)
Irrespective of one’s reaction to psychoanalytical interpretations of Tyutchev’s work, Pratt’s treatment of the dramatic qualities of this and the following poem is excellent.
199. 1851-early 1852. See [198].
200. 1851-early 1852. While my imagery is different, though, I feel, not alien to that employed by Tyutchev, I believe it conveys adequately the sense of anger and frustration experienced by him at society’s shunning of his mistress.
201. NL early 1852. Chulkov considers the use of the past tense throughout to suggest that the poem might not be addressed to Elena. There is indeed a hint of light-heartedness, almost flippancy, which characterises none of Tyuchev’s poems to his mistress. This poem is far more likely to be addressed to an old flame or possibly his wife or former wife.
202. NL early 1852. Various interpretations could easily flow from this poem where Death is equated with Sleep and Suicide with Love, though in the case of the latter pair, while Tyutchev himself would experience the love, the idea of suicide would most likely be transferred to Elena, most of the suffering having been hers.
203. April, 1852. The image of something precious being buried on the bed of the sea is not unusual in the poems, from his translations of Hernani [65] and Sakontala [29], through Venetsiya/Venice [166] to Net dnya, chtoby dusha ne nyla/Not a day relieves the soul of pain [299].
204. End of June, 1852. En route from Oryol to Moscow.
Only those …. a paraphrase of Matthew, V, 8.
205. July 28th. 1852. Stone Island (Kamennyi Ostrov). Tyutchev lived there from early June to the end of September. All his letters of this period are franked ‘Stone Island’. It was renamed ‘Workers Island’ after the Revolution and is one of the island areas of St. Petersburg. In Tyutchev’s day, the wealthy had country homes there.
206. December 31st. 1852. Ovstug. One of many superb ‘Russian’ nature poems, the favourite sleep-dream formula appears in the central stanza, Tyutchev’s preoccupation with the limbo world between external reality and his own inner reality never being far from the surface.
It is interesting that in proportion as her husband disliked the Russian countryside, or often had people believe he disliked it, in July of this year Ernestine could write the following: ‘I love the Russian countryside, these vast plains swelling like wide seas, this limitless expanse which the glance cannot take in, all this is full of grandeur and endless sadness. My husband drowns in melancholy when he’s here. I, however, feel at peace and trouble-free right out here. I always have something to think about or, rather, something to remember (…) I’d willingly spend winter in the country, but my husband has announced categorically that he will never agree to this, and I still don’t know what we’ll decide’.
207. NE first half 1852-NL early 1854. Connected with his love for Elena. In such a nostalgic and tender love poem, an image of the last glow appearing in the western sky cannot fail to be interpreted as a symbol of his equally strong love for western Europe. Lane describes the reason for this journey abroad. (A:18, vol.2/464-470) Acting almost as a secret agent, Tyutchev is described thus by the French ambassador to St. Petersburg: ‘The Russian Cabinet senses the need to combat the English, French and German press, which have crushed her with unanimous reprobation. As a result … it has sent to Paris one Mr. Tyutchev… so that he may meddle in the French press! He’s some poor diplomat, though attached to the Russian Chancellery, and a pedantic and Romantic literary type … Keep an eye on Mr. Tyutchev, no matter how harmless his empty dreams may be!’
In a later communication, it was decided that Tyutchev was not particularly hostile to France and was ‘as un-Russian as he could possibly be’.
208. Sept. 5th.-7th. 1853. Crossing at Kovno (present-day Kaunas). Written en route from the west to Petersburg. On the evening of September 2nd. Tyutchev left Warsaw. The ‘fatigue and horrible boredom’ experienced by him during forty eight house in a stage-coach forced him to spend two and a half days in Kaunas. Sending the poem to his wife, Tyutchev wrote: ‘These verses I told you about are entirely imbued with the Neman. In order to understand them, you would have to re-read Segur’s page from his history of 1812 where he talks about the crossing of the river by Napoleon’s army, or at least remember the pictures depicting this event so often seen in coaching inns’.
southern demon: a reference to Napoleon’s Corsican origins.
Philippe Paul Segur (1780-1873) was one of Napoleon’s generals and a writer on military matters. His Histoire de Napoleon et de la Grande Armee pendant l’annee 1812/History of Napoleon and the Great Army during the Year of 1812 (vols. 1-2) is referred to in Tyutchev’s letter.
209. Autumn 1852-Spring 1854. Tyutchev hopes for a speedy, victorious outcome to the Crimean War. Russia declared war on Turkey on November 1st. 1853, Turkey reciprocating on October 4th. Nicholas I took war to the British-French-Turkish alliance on April 23rd. 1854. The war manifesto of Nicholas I reads like one of Tyutchev’s political poems: ‘Is Orthodox Russia to fear such threats? Ready to confound the audacity of the enemy, shall she deviate from the sacred aim assigned to her by almighty Providence? No! Russia has not forgotten God! It is not for worldly interests that she has taken up arms, she fights for the Christian faith, and for the defence of her co-religionists oppressed by implacable enemies’. (C:5/539)
210. Early 1854. On February 13th. 1854 Darya Tyutcheva wrote to her friend, O. Smirnova: ‘If I had any poetic talent, I’d have written you something in the spirit of this charming verse my father sent to Alex(andra) Dolg(orukaya)’.
Darya then quoted this. Alexandra Dolgorukaya was eighteen, and, like Darya, was a maid of honour to the heir to the throne, Maria Alexandrovna. Tyutchev frequently met Alexandra at his daughter’s house. In his diary, Tyutchev described Alexandra as being ‘irresistibly fascinating’, mentioning her ‘intelligence and grace’ and, above all, the surprising ‘enigmatic’ quality of her nature. Years later, Anna wrote: ‘At first glance, this tall, thin girl, with her awkward gait and somewhat rounded shoulders, whose face was leaden-pale, with colourless, glassy eyes which looked at you from heavy lids, produced an impression of repellent ugliness. But as soon as she became animated by conversation, dancing or a game, the most complete transformation was affected throughout her being. Her slender build straightened up, her movements became more rounded and acquired the magnificent, almost feline grace of the young tiger, her face glowing with tender rosiness, her glances and smile taking on a thousand tender charms, crafty and insinulating. Her entire being was imbued with elusive, truly mysterious charm’.
Alexandra was, in addition, extremely intelligent, sharply witty with a fine sense of irony. Anna Tyutcheva, however, concludes by adding that beneath this trenchant charm there was sometimes something ‘predatory’. She describes her friend as going out of her way to attract the tsar (C:19/83) and clearly a liaison of some sort did take place. Having met the novelist Turgenev, Alexandra served as the prototype for the heroin of Dym/Smoke, Irina Ratmirova.
211. About August 11th. 1854. On August 5th. he wrote to his wife: ‘What days! What nights! What a wondrous summer! You feel it, breathe it, are penetrated by it and can scarcely believe it yourself. What strikes me as being particularly wonderful is the way these lovely days are just going on and on, inspiring a kind of confidence, what’s called success in a game. Has the good lord really abolished bad weather just for our sakes?’
212. September 11th. 1854. An epigrammatic profundity, the simple act of saying good bye becomes an ‘abyss’ (bezdna).
213. December, 1854. The poem fell foul of censor for its ‘vague thought’ and ‘a certain sharpness of tone’. Addressed to G. Popova, one of Tyutchev’s acquaintances.
214. 1855-59. Late 1850s. The Jeu de secretaire/Secretary’s Game was fashionable in the St. Petersburg salons. This quatrain was written in a book of questions and answers used in the game and might be a quotation from something else. It seems to be a reply to the question put to Tyutchev: A quoi bon un crayon?/What’s a pencil for?
215. March 1st. 1855. The Austrian archduke was in St. Petersburg on February 27th. 1855. Austria had refused to declare its neutrality during the Crimean War.
216. July 10th. 1855. Addressed to Elena. There are echoes of many poems here: billow after billow flow on as do thoughts and waves in Volna i duma/The Wave and the Thought [189], in Teni sizye smesilis’/Blue-grey mingling [107], sounds, shapes, colours and aromas merge synaesthetically to produce a dreamlike existence in which the poet can pour himself, as happens when smoke from the fire engulfs him and his mistress, more ominously, in Gus na kostre/Hus at the Stake [356], flame crackles and spreads like an animal through the kindling.
217. Probably July, 1855. Tyutchev forgets himself and whatever problems life has created for him, or that he has created for himself, the exhortation to time to wait containing a hint of pathos made all the more powerful by the reference to that which is vile and false, for the less pleasant aspects of life in St. Petersburg high society were Elena’s daily social lot and, while after this moment Tyutchev must return to them, he was never shunned for his part in the illicit romance. Unlike Elena he could escape the vile and false at any time.
218. August 13th. 1855. Roslavl in the Smolensk province. One of Tyutchev’s most oft-quoted poems, it lends itself to easy interpretation by commentators of various persuasions. From being a spontaneous reaction to the sight of the down-trodden serfs, observed by Tyutchev more than once on his own estate, to a reflection on the courage of the ordinary privates of the serf-army defending Sevastopol, it was notably quoted by Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, the section called The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. (B:11iii, vol.14/226).
Ivan Karamazov’s strange prose poem concerns the re-appearance of Christ during the Inquisition, a Christ who had finally heeded man’s prayers and in his immeasurable compassion once more come down to offer succour to suffering humankind. The inquisitor informs Christ that he is to be burned the next day, although after a lengthy justification of his decision, relents and finally releases him, warning him that he must never return. The contradiction inherent in the existence of a Church which is Christian but which, like any ruling political party, needs to stay in power to survive, is one of many aspects of the problem of faith and religion brilliantly exploited by Dostoevsky. Tyutchev’s meaning may be more ambiguous.
219. August 13th. 1855. Roslavl. Inspired by the poet’s gloomy presentiments during the siege of Sevastopol. The fall of the town overwhelmed and stunned Tyutchev. In her diary Anna wrote: ‘My father had just returned from the country, not suspecting anything of the fall of Sevastopol. Knowing his passionate patriotic feelings, I was very much afraid of the first explosion of his anger, and it was a great relief to see him not irritated, only, from his eyes, quietly, great tears rolled, he was deeply moved, when I told him that only the second day after receiving the dreadful news of this blow which had befallen us, the tsar and the tsarina had wanted to go out to the people to raise their spirits’. (C:19/49-50)
The Crimean defeat had more than the straightforward effect of wounded national pride on Tyutchev. ‘The deafening collapse of the imaginary granite structure made the poet glance around him, look at Russia not only from the window of the high-society salon’. (A:20, vol.1,fn.9/166) While it did not, as Soviet commentators have sometimes tried to demonstrate, make him in any way anti-monarchist, it reinforced that contempt he had always felt for inefficiency among those whose role was to rule.
220. October 16th. 1855. The poetess Rostopchina, about whose return to Petersburg the poem is written, published her ballad Nasil’nyi brak/The Forced Marriage, a portrayal of Russo-Polish relations. It incurred the displeasure of Nicholas, who forbade her to appear in St. Petersburg. She returned to the city only after the tsar’s death. Tyutchev was constantly involved in the works of other poets. Two days after writing this verse, he was appointed to a committee whose brief was an examination of those of Zhukovsky’s works unpublished during his lifetime.
221. December 31st. 1855. St. Petersburg. Concerning the war and the then fashionable spiritualism, ironically referred to as Stoloverchenie/table-turning, Anna wrote (ibid./147-8): ‘July 10. Yum the table-turner has arrived. Seance in the great hall in the company of twelve of the emperor’s entourage…. We were all sitting around a large table, hands on the table, the magician sat between the empress and Grand Duke Konstantin. Suddenly from various corners of the room there came knocks, produced by spirits and corresponding to the letters of the alphabet’.
The spirits decided they did not like Anna and asked for her to be banished to the neighbouring room, from which she heard all the goings on, including the table being raised into the air.
222. 1855. Tyutchev being the literary magpie he was, line 1 is taken straight from Hamlet (1,v).
223. 1855. TR Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).
Caro m’e ‘l sonno, e piu l’esser di sasso,
mentre che’l danno e la vergogna dura,
non veder, non sentir m’e gran ventura,
Pero non mi destar, deh, parla basso. (B:27i)
***
Sleep is dear to me and being of stone is dearer,
as long as injury and shame endure,
not to see or hear is a great boon to me,
therefore, do not wake me — pray, speak softly.
Michelangelo’s destiny, that of a brilliant artist dependent on powerful masters, might well have struck sympathetic chords in Tyutchev. In writing this quatrain, the Italian probably had in mind the loss of freedom of Florence, in the designing of whose defences he played a part. In a letter of 1870, Tyutchev, incensed at the stupidity of Russia’s rulers, quoted lines 2-3 of Michelangelo’s poem.
The quatrain is a reply to some verses by Strozzi, inspired by the famous sculpture of Night on the sarcophagus of Julian de Medici in Florence. Enraptured by Michelangelo’s work of genius, Strozzi wrote that if Night could be awoken she would begin to speak:
La Note che tu vedi in si dolci atti dormir, fu da un Angelo scolpita in questo sasso e, perche dorme, ha vita: destala, se nol credi, e parleratti. *** The Night that you see sleeping in such a graceful attitude, was sculpted by an Angel in this stone, and since she sleeps, she must have life,
wake her, if you don’t believe it, and she’ll speak to you. (B:27ii/419)
Filippo Strozzi (1489-1538) was a merchant banker and speculator who basked in the glow of the favours abounding at the court of the De Medicis.
224. 1855. This French version of [223] is more faithful to the original.
225. 1855. An epigrammatic epitaph for Nicholas I, who died on February 18th. of this year, undoubtedly inspired by the fall of Sevastopol. Tyutchev wrote to Ernestine: ‘in order to create such a desperate position, you’d need the monstrous stupidity of this ill-starred man’. (Sept. 17th. 1855)
226. January 4th. 1856. St. Petersburg. Sent to Abram Norov (1795-1869), an education minister from 1854 up till 1858. Norov was wounded during the Napoleonic wars at the battle of Borodino.
227. April 8th. 1856. Addressed to Ernestine on her birthday. ‘Survive’ could well have been Tyutchev’s catchword.
228. November, 1856. Written from the standpoint of Darya, who had been persuaded to take part in an amateur production of Alfred de Musset’s (1810-1857) comedie-proverbe/proverb-comedy, Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermee/A door should be open or closed. De Musset was extremely good at what he called le spectacle du fauteuil/armchair theatre. These popular comedies were written to be read. They tended to involve a couple of people, no external events, sentimental dialogue and the kind of theme which would go down well at soirees, ‘a scene with people of wit, in a real-life situation, and presented as faithfully as to suggest nature itself’. (B:28/1127)
This particular comedie-proverbe was first published in La Revue des Deux Mondes/The Journal of Two Worlds, November 1st. 1845.
229. February 04th 1857. St. Petersburg. Nikolay Shcherbina (1821-69) was a talented poet who grew up in Taganrog on the Black Sea in a Greek community of a Greek mother. Nature and classical themes are predominant in his imagist work. There are a few parallels between his poetic preoccupations and Tyutchev’s. He wrote contrasting verses about western blueness and eastern European bleakness, some fairly mediocre philosophical and some poor civic poetry. He was an ultra-conservative minister without portfolio to the Associate Minister of Education and Tyutchev’s great friend, the poet P. Vyazemsky. In the 1860s, a period of demands for socially relevant literature, he unashamedly proclaimed the lofty mission of the poet. He died of a throat tumour.
E. Petrova (A:20, vol.1/33) considers this to be a ‘very characteristic, very ‘Tyutchevian’ poem’. She goes on to say that ‘the poetic world of Shcherbina, this talented poet who tried to feel, to think like the harmonious person of Hellas, is seen by Tyutchev as an attempt to escape the over-burdensome impressions of existence, the ‘Scythian blizzard’, to see refuge in a country where ‘golden freedom’ reigns in a land of reverie. But it’s a ‘sickly’ ‘dream’.
Petrova rightly, I believe, takes Freiburg to task. Tyutchev is not rebuking Shcherbina’s ‘honeyed antiquity’ (ibid.), rather showing awareness of a need to escape in fantasy.
230. NL April 2nd. 1857. TR Schiller: Das Gluck und die Weisheit/Fortune and Wisdom (Poems, 1805).
Entzweit mit einem Favoriten
Flog einst Fortun’ der Weisheit zu: ‘Ich will dir meine Schatze bieten, Sei meine Freundin du! ………. Mit meinen reichsten schonsten Gaben Beschenkt’ ich ihn so mutterlich, Und sieh, er will noch immer haben, Und nennt noch geizig mich. ………. Komm, Schwester, la? uns Freundschaft schlie?en, Du marterst dich an deinem Pflug. In deinen Scho? will ich sie gie?en, hier ist fur dich und mich genug’. ………. Sophia lachelt diesen Worten, Und wischt den Schwei? vom Angesicht, Dort eilt dein Freund — sich zu ermorden, ‘Versohnet euch, ich brauch’ dich nicht’. *** Fortune with a favourite once flew to Wisdom. ‘I’ll offer you my riches, just you be my friend. ………. I’ve poured my wealth liberally over this spendthrift, into his lap like a mother! And look! He’s just as greedy and keeps on calling me stingy. ………. Come, Sister, let’s be friends. You puff and pant so hard at your plough. I’ll reward you richly. Follow me. You have enough’. ………. Wisdom laughs at these words and wipes the sweat from her brow. ‘Your friend’s coming on over — make up, you two, for I’ve no need of you.’
231. April 11th. 1857. Written on the fly-leaf of Volume 10 of Zhukovsky’s works and presented to Darya.
232. August, 15th. 1857. Ovstug. Written on the Feast of the Assumption. Tyutchev also had in mind the impending reform of serfdom. He expressed a reservation about Alexander II’s reform programme in a letter of September 28th. 1857, to A. Bludova, considering the system of serfdom ready to be taken over by another system in reality even more despotic, for it will be invested with the outward form of Law’.
233. August 22nd. 1857. En route from Ovstug to Moscow. One of the most anthologised poems, beloved of Tolstoy, this wonderful scene suggests restfulness after a day of hard labour.
234. End of August, 1857. On leaving Ovstug for Moscow. This is a less frivolous, equally happy and sensation-replete version of the earlier Polden’/Midday [54].
235. February 23rd. 1858. On Maria’s eighteenth birthday.
236. March, 1858. Dedicated to Elizaveta Annenkova (1840-1886).
237. NL April, 1858. Dedicated to the memory of Eleonore. Despite his philandering, Tyutchev was capable on more than one occasion of writing poems to Eleonore and Ernestine which demonstrate his genuine affection. It should not, of course, be forgotten that in so many, if not all of his love poems, he thinks primarily about himself. He does not say anything about the positive effect of his love on a woman, rather of the way the relationship made him feel.
238. NL April, 1858. Possibly in memory of Eleonore. Gregg’s mistranslation is unfortunate. The souls in question look down on the corpse they have abandoned, not ‘from a height at a body they themselves have hurled down’. (A:14/171) Discussing the Russian eschatological sermon, Fedotov points out that ‘The last striking image, familiar in Russian poetry from the religious folksongs to Tyutchev, originates in Plato’. He is referring to the following: ‘….. with a terrible pain the soul will issue from the body, as someone who has taken off his vestment and stands looking at it’. (C:31) The poem contains echoes of Heine’s Wiedersehen/Meeting Again [13] of the Lazarus poems, which Tyutchev will have read as Heine died in 1856 and these poems were published in 1851:
Die Gei?blattlaube — Ein Sommerabend —
Wir sa?en wieder wie eh’mals am Fenster — Der Mond ging auf, belebend und labend — Wir aber waren wie zwei Gespenster. ………. Zwolf Jahre schwanden, seitdem wir beisammen Zum letzten Male hier gesessen, Die zartlichen Gluten, die gro?en Flamme, Sie waren erloschen unterdessen. ………. Einsilbig sa? ich. Die Plaudertasche, Das Weib hingegen schurte bestandig Herum in der alten Liebesasche. Jedoch kein Funkchen ward wider lebendig. ………. Und sie erzahlte: wie sie die bosen Gedanken bekampft, eine lange Geschichte, Wie wackelig schon ihre Tugend gewesen — Ich machte dazu ein dummes Gesichte. ………. Als ich nach Hause ritt, da liefen Die Baume vorbei in der Mondenhelle, Wie Geister. Wehmutige Stimmen riefen — Doch ich und die Toten, wir ritten schnelle. *** The honeysuckle — a summer evening — We sat at the window as before. The moon, enlivening and leavening, Rose, but two ghosts was all we were. ………. Since we last sat together here, Twelve years subsided into Time: Affectionate embers, the whole great flare, Extinguished in the interim. ………. I sat, laconic. She, loquacious, The woman, poked and poked about Persistently in the old love’s ashes. But not a spark was still alight. ………. She told a long tale — how she’s won Her fight against bad thoughts — some fight! How very shaky her virtue had been — At which I kept my face quite straight. ………. As I rode home, the moonlight trees Seemed in the brilliance to run past Like spirits — a sense of mournful cries —
But we, the dead and I, ride fast.
239. August 15th. 1858. A variation on a theme from Lenau’s Blick in den Strom/A Glance into the River (Lyrische Nachlese/Lyrical Late Harvest, 1844).
Sahst du ein Gluck vorubergehn, Das nie sich wiederfindet, Ists gut in einen Strom zu sehn, Wo alles wogt und schwindet. ………. O! starre nur hinein, hinein, Du wirst es leichter missen, Was dir, und solls dein Liebstes sein, Vom Herzen ward gerissen. ………. Blick unverwandt hinab zum Flu?, Bis deine Tranen fallen, Und sieh durch ihren warmen Gu? Die Flut hinunterwallen. ………. Hintraumend wird Vergessenheit Des Herzens Wunde schlie?en, Die Seele sieht mit ihrem Leid Sich selbst voruberflie?en. *** If fortune passes you by it will never return. It’s good, then, to glance into the river where everything moves on and fades away. ………. Oh, just stare into it, you’ll then do without it more easily, what was torn from your heart, even if it was the thing dearest to you. ………. Stare hard into the stream till your tears become a warm downpour pouring into a flood. ………. Oblivion, dreaming, will close up the heart’s wound, with your grief, the soul sees itself fly by.
240. October 22nd. 1858. Tsarskoe Selo. ‘Tsarskoe’ has three vowels: tsar-sko-ye (first syllable stressed). Sye-lo is end-stressed.
241. October, 1859. En route from Konigsberg to St. Petersburg. This superbly descriptive, lyric work is so typical of the brilliant Russian-nature poems of this period which go hand in hand with his constant dislike of the bleaker aspects of eastern Europe, that ‘sad thing’ which is ‘a country where there are only clouds to simulate mountains’. (LET.ERN. Sept. 14th. 1853) One commentator considers it to be a political poem and writes of Tyutchev’s ‘total inability to create in his political verse a living image of his ‘chere patrie’ — except in the most superficial sense, i.e. the externals of Russian imperial power’. (A:9/64) To consider a nature poem to be political because it was written in Russia as Conant appears to do, is strange enough. To miss the wondrous qualities of this poem is unforgivable.
Tyutchev began a short letter to Darya with the poem, concluding: ‘Here are a few poor verses, my dear daughter, which helped me pass the time on this dreadfully boring journey… To be fair, however, I ought to tell you that right now there’s a lovely sun shining, not on rose bushes and orange blossom, true, but on fresh, newly blossoming icicles’.
242. December 20th. 1859. On December 20th 1859, Tyutchev received a packet containing some spectacles and bearing the words, ‘To His Excellency Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev from Grand Prince the Admiral-General for the coming ball’. Puzzled, Tyutchev finally assumed that this was by way of a reproach for not having paid his compliments to Grand Prince Konstantin Nikolaevich at the Annenkovs’ ball two days previously. Irritated, he sent the verses to the prince, his daughter Maria hoping nothing would come of this. Tyutchev discovered that at a forthcoming fancy-dress ball in the Mikhailovsky Palace, he and the prince were to appear in identical costumes, a domino (a long cloak of silk with a hood). Being short-sighted and not wanting to be immediately recognised by his spectacles, the prince had sent a whole variety of guests spectacles to wear at the ball. The poem was interpreted positively by the prince, clearly considering that stanza 1 did not refer to him, but that lines 18-19 were obviously directed at him.
243. Late 1850s. Addressed to the wife of Alexander II, the Empress Maria Alexandrovna (1824-80). Aksakov wrote, ‘It is hard to imagine any courtier smacking less of the court than Tyutchev’. (A:1/261) As a chamberlain, it fell within Tyutchev’s duties to attend court and other social gatherings. As a result of his dreadful writing, something to which he referred frequently, he was once mistaken by ‘some stupid Englishmen’ who saw his entry in a hotel register as the tsar himself, on the strength of ‘Emperor of Russia’ being written after the word ‘chamberlain’ and his name, the latter indecipherable. (LET. DAR. 1862) This and the following quatrain, composed on the occasion of ‘living pictures’ at the Winter and Mikhailovsky palaces, are characterised by the refined courtesy and courtly gallantry of the French madrigal. ‘Living pictures’ (Zhivye kartiny) were minor amateur theatricals. (See [255].)
244. Late 1850s. See previous note. Addressed to Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (1806-73), wife of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, the uncle of Alexander II. Elena Pavlovna, nee Princess Frederika-Charlotta-Maria von Wurttemberg, was one of the founders of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross community of the Sisters of Mercy and the Russian Musical Society. She was patron of a variety of educational and medical institutions, used great initiative to put into practice the Reforms on her own estate and extended her patronage to many liberal thinkers and writers.
In a letter to his wife (July 25th. 1851), Tyutchev describes spending ‘a good hour tete-a-tete with her on her balcony on Stone Island’. He refers to her as a woman of grace and ‘imperishable charm’ with an open, flexible nature and inner joy and serenity. He dined with her more than once on this ‘poetic balcony’ and the two clearly had a good, friendly relationship.
245. December, 1859. A note on the manuscript reads: ‘December. 8 a.m.’. The image of the moon, unaware of the early sun, and the spider-like, timid groping over the horizon of the sun’s first rays impart a hint of apprehension to this lyric before the joy of sunrise.
246. 1859. Dedicated to Elizaveta Annenkova.
247. 1860-64. TR Jakob Bohme (1575-1624).
Wem Zeit ist wie Ewigkeit
Und Ewigkeit wie Zeit,
Der ist befreit
Von allem Streit.
***
He for whom Time is like Eternity
and Eternity like Time
is free
of all conflict.
Tyutchev finishes a letter to D. Bludov (written between 1860 and 1864) with this poem. Bludov had asked Tyutchev, as a master of the short poem, to translate this verse of the great, self-taught German philosopher. Tyutchev held Bohme in high esteem, considering him ‘one of the greatest minds ever to cross our world … standing at an intersection point between the two opposed doctrines of Christianity and Pantheism. You could call him the Christian Pantheist, if these two words did not shriek at being put together. To reproduce his ideas in Russian, in true Russian, you’d have to acquire that language, so idiomatic and so profoundly expressive, of certain members of our sects’.
Bohme’s view of God’s ways is often considered idiosyncratic and his writings can be considered confused, even chaotic. There is a striving in his work to reconcile the dualities of Good and Evil to produce harmony. He believed that they were equally important in God’s universe. His work is also pantheistic. Interest in the philosopher, which flagged after his death, was revived during the Romantic movement. This poem served as Bohme’s motto and the theosophist would write it in friends’ albums. (B:5/10)
Bludov (1785-1864) was an important state and literary figure, President of the Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers. He and the Tyutchevs were very close.
248. Possibly 1850s, possibly early sixties. Pigaryov does not consider that it was written during this period, although Tyutchev had serious misgivings about these reforms (A:33ii, vol.2/370). The latter were complex in structure and, far from revolutionary, the result of a long thought-out process. Indeed, Nicholas I had set up secret committees to look into the whole matter of serfdom well before it was finally abolished. The Crimean disaster played a significant part, highlighting Russia’s economic and technological backwardness, related to her military ineptitude.
249. 1860s. There is some small doubt as to the authorship of this poem, but there are enough indicators to suggest that it was written by Tyutchev, possibly to Gorchakov’s niece, N. Akinfeva. The manuscript bears the initials ‘O.T.’ Pigaryov points out that in the pre-revolutionary orthography, the Russian ‘F’ was ‘(‘ and, this being very similar to ‘O’, a copying error could well be possible. He further considers that the poem’s ‘rhythmic-stylistic characteristics allow one to attribute it to Tyutchev’. (ibid./434)
250. March, 1860. St. Petersburg. Sent to Darya in Geneva.
251. October 20th.-29rd. 1860. On the death of the widow of Nicholas I, the Empress Alexandra. Tyutchev recalls meeting her in Vevey on Lake Leman in September of the previous year.
252. Possibly October 1860 in Geneva. Pigaryov casts doubt on 1861, postulated earlier, as Tyutchev was in St. Petersburg then. It is, of course, perfectly possible that having visited Switzerland the previous year, Tyutchev was reliving a favourite experience in imagination, that of being among his beloved mountains and lakes.
253. Feb. 23rd. 1861. Addressed to Maria, whose dog, Hecuba, seems to have enjoyed a special wash and brush-up.
254. About February 25th. (re-worked early March 1861). Prince P. Vyazemsky (1792-1878) and Tyuchev were old friends. P. Pletnyov, having re-read Vyazemsky’s work with Tyutchev one day, wrote to Vyazemsky that he and Tyutchev agreed that in proportion as the burden of his days became heavier, so his verse became younger and more playful. While Tyutchev did not always see eye to eye with Vyazemsky, he placed great value on their friendship. Whether or not, as Mirsky suggests, Vyazemsky ‘grew into an irritating reactionary who heartily detested anyone born after 1810’, (C:2/82) Vyazemsky was his own man and unafraid to speak out. His verse was somewhat along the lines of Batyushkov’s, sometimes convoluted. In later life, he produced some very mature poetry.
255. Early March, 1861. Tyuchev’s son, Ivan, confirms that this was written as if by Maria, in connection with Vyazemsky’s fiftieth jubilee. In December 1853 Maria played the role of a major in an amateur production of the sort known as ‘living pictures’. A propos of this, Vyazemsky wrote a verse for her: Lyubezneishii maior, teper’ ty chinom mal /My very dearest major, right now you’re of lowly rank. Later on Maria’s engagement to N. Birilev (February 05. 1865), Vyazemsky recalled the event in Ya znal maiorom vas kogda-to/I knew you as a major then. Vyazemsky’s poem follows:
Lyubezneishii maior, teper’ ty chinom mal,
No poterpi, i budet povyshen’e,
V glazakh tvoikh chitayu uveren’e
Chto budesh’ ty, v stroyu krasavits, general,
A v ozhidanii pobed svoikh i balov
Uchis’, trudis’, — i um, i serdtse prosveshchai,
Chtob posle ne popast’, maior moi, nevznachai,
V razryad bezgramotnykh, khot’ vidnykh generalov.
***
Dearest major, you’re now of lowly rank
but, if you’re patient, promotion will come along.
I see in your eyes that confidence
that, among all the beautiful women, you will be a general.
In anticipation of your successes and of balls,
study and work hard, enlightening your heart and mind,
to ensure, dear major, that you do not end up unexpectedly
among the ranks of illiterate, though conspicuous generals.
256. March 25th. 1861. In connection with the abolition of serfdom.
257. March 27th. 1861. Addressee unknown. This work is a gentle masterpiece. The final stanza could be no more than a belated Romantic cliche were it not for the remarkable music of the entire poem (as Kozyrev points out in A:20, vol.1/122). Tyutchev alternates on ‘a’ rhyme with other rhymes in the first two stanzas, the final stanza’s five lines all ending in a stressed ‘a’. There is throughout the poem an almost imperceptible merging of the woman with the sky making of the two entities one being, the rhyme reinforcing this. Kozyrev rightly sees a truly superb effect, Tyutchev’s ‘linguistic freshness’ playing an equally important role. He indicates Tyutchev’s uses of dorassvetnyi in place of the more usual predrassvetnyi, both meaning ‘occurring before dawn’. (ibid.) The nuance is not possible to translate into English.
Tyutchev knew many women, the exact degree of intimacy not always known to us. Kozyrev claims that the poem is written in memory of ‘some pretty girl who died young’. (ibid.) Pigaryov considers the addressee to be unknown. (A:33ii, vol.1/416) However, in a letter to Gagarin (July 22nd. 1836) Tyutchev refers to Amalia Krudner as having become a ‘constellation’ when she used to be ‘so beautiful on earth’, a reference to her affair with Nicholas I, imagery suggestive of this poem. It is impossible to be sure about the identity of the woman in question, but I feel Amalia is a strong contender.
258. March, 1861. Addressed to the German journalist, Wilhelm Wolfson, invited by the Academy of Sciences to attend Vyazemsky’s jubilee celebrations. Wolfson was a Jew from Odessa who went some way to acquainting the western European reader with Russian literature.
259. 1861. The first two lines relate to the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Vyazemsky’s literary career. The celebrations took place on March 2nd. 1861.
260. July 25th. 1861. Addressee unknown. The poem is replete with dream-forgetfulness imagery and the addressee would certainly seem to be a woman who has appeared in more than one lyric up till now.
261. 1861. Addressed to his eldest daughter, Anna, whose work as lady-in-waiting and tutor in the royal household is described, stripped of any idealisation, in her diary and notes, Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov/At the Court of Two Emperors (C:19). Anna was an honest, devout woman of strong mind and her own opinions. In her diary entry for May 19th. 1855 she writes: ‘The courtier’s profession is not at all as easy as people think, and to do it properly one needs a talent not possessed by everyone. You need to know how to find the point of departure of support, so that you actually want to play with dignity the role of friend and lackey, so that you can easily and gaily go from the living room to the servants’ area, always ready to listen to the most intimate confidences of the lord and carry his coat and boots for him. Pascal’s words, applied to man in general, are applicable to the courtier’. She then quotes Pascal’s pensee [163]:
S’il se vante, je l’abaisse
S’il s’abaisse, je le vante
Et je contredis toujours
Jusqu’a ce qu’il comprenne
Qu’il est un monstre incomprehensible.
***
If he boasts, I put him down,
if he puts himself down, I build him up,
and I always contradict
until he understands
that he is an incomprehensible monster.
262. December 6th. 1861. A telegram sent to his brother, Nikolay, and brother-in-law, Nikolay Sushkov (1796-1871), on their name day.
263. 1861. Aimed at Grigory Fillipson (1809-1883), the administrator of the St. Petersburg education authority and written on account of his measures against students during the unrest of 1861. Filippson had been a cossack chieftain.
A pun on the literal translation of the German name, Fillipson, into Russian Syn Filippa/Son of Phillip. Alexander the Great was the son of Phillip of Macedonia.
264. April 14th. 1862. This and the following poem were sent to Fet on the latter’s request that Tyutchev send him a portrait. Afanasy Fet (1820-92) had a great deal of respect for Tyutchev and the two were good friends. Of this champion of the rights of pure poetry whose melodic nature lyrics and imagist style and classical themes gave way, in his later years, to more philosophical and metaphysical verse, Mirsky writes: ‘The highest summits of Fet’s later poetry are reached in his love poems, certainly the most extraordinary and concentratedly passionate love poems ever written by a man of seventy (not excepting Goethe)’. (C:2/236)
265. April 14th. 1862. See previous note. The poem would be better understood if directed at Tyutchev himself. Fet’s talent notwithstanding, this should be seen as a polite, certainly sincere compliment, but one which perhaps over-states Fet’s abilities as poet of nature.
266. May, 1862. Tyutchev re-works verses by his daughter, Anna. The Holy Mountains are a monastery on the northern Donets in the Izyumsky uezd (an administrative region) of the Kharkov province. Anna was rather unhappy with her father’s meddling in her own poetic attempts. Writing to her sister, Ekaterina, she says, ‘I’m sending you some new verses which I wrote about the Holy Mountains and which dad has re-worked in his own style. It goes without saying that his are incomparably better than mine, however, he has not put across my thoughts exactly as I understood them’. Her poem follows.
Tikho, myagko, noch’ Ukrainy,
Polna prelesti i tainy,
Nad dubravoyu lezhit.
Tyomno nebo tak gluboko,
Zvyozdy svetyat tak vysoko,
I vo t’me Donets blestit.
……….
Za obitel’skoi stenoi
Psalmopen’e, zvon svyatoi
Do zautreni molchat
Pod ogradoyu tolpoi,
Osvyashchyonnye lunoi,
Bogomol’tsy mirno spyat.
……….
I s krestom tam na chele
Belym prizrakom vo t’me
Nad Dontsom utyos stoit.
I, kak dukh minuvshikh dnei,
On molitvoyu svoyei
Bogomol’tsev storozhit.
……….
Vo skale toi svyashchenoi
Iskoni chernets smirennyi
Podvig very sovershal,
I v dukhovnom sozertsan’e
Skol’ko slyoz i vozdykhanii
Pered Bogom izlival.
……….
Ottogo, kak dukh blazhennyi,
Velichavyi i smirennyi
Nad Dontsom ytyos stoit,
I v tishi poroi nochnoi
On molitvoi vekovoi
Spyashchii mir zhivotvorit.
***
Quietly, softly the Ukranian night,
full of charm and mystery,
lies upon the leafy grove.
The dark night is so deep,
the stars shine so high,
and the Donets glistens in the mist.
……….
Behind the walls of their dwelling
psalm-singing and sacred ringing
are silent until prime.
Crowding together behind their enclosure,
illuminated by the moon,
the holy monks sleep peacefully.
……….
And there with the cross on its brow
like a poor spectre in the mist
above the Donets the cliff stands.
And, like a spirit of bygone days,
with its prayer
it stands guard over the monks.
……….
In this sacred mountain
since time immemorial a humble monk
carried out his task,
and in spiritual contemplation
so many tears and lamentations
did he pour out before God.
……….
This is why, like a sacred spirit,
majestic and humble
the cliff stands above the Donets
and in the still of the night
with its eternal prayer
revives the sleeping world.
267. February, 1863. The epigram is aimed at Tolstoy’s story, Kazaki/The Cossacks. The writer, Evgeniya Tur, while acknowledging the story’s artistic mertis, nonetheless saw in it a poeticisation of ‘drunkenness, brigandage, thieving, blood lust’. Tyutchev’s epigram appears to echo her feelings.
Tur was a writer of prose and literary criticism, a journalist and was best known as a writer of children’s stories. Her work is very much along Christian moralistic lines. Among her many tutors was Raich.
268. August, 1863. Moscow. The verse is a reaction to the combined diplomatic move on the part of England, France and Austria in connection with the Polish uprising.
Stanza 3 contains a hint at the part played by the Catholic clergy in the uprising.
269. November 12th. 1863. Dedicated to the St. Petersburg Governor-General, Prince A. Suvorov (1804-1882), grandson of the famous commander. Suvorov was a relatively liberal administrator. While this earned him the sympathies of the St. Petersburg population, it gained him the animosity of the more conservative elements in society. The poem was written on account of Suvorov’s refusal to sign the welcoming address to the Governor-General of the north-western region, M. Muravyov, renowned for his savage reprisals against Polish and Lithuanian insurgents. His Draconian tactics earned him the sobriquet Veshatel’/Hangman. Tyutchev and other Pan-Slavists supported Muravyov’s measures.
270. Possibly 1863 and probably written to N. Akinfeva. The poem hints at A. Gorchakov’s feelings for N. Akinfeva.
271. Possibly some time after 1863. Nikolay Krol’ (1823-71) was a minor poet and dramatist and, with Polonsky, one of the few people who were linked with democratic cricles with whom Tyutchev had any dealings.
272. February, 19th.-21st. 1864. On the death of Count Dmitry Bludov, February 19th. the third anniversary of the publication of the manifesto on the reform of serfdom.
273. April 12th. 1864. Sent to Darya on her birthday.
274. October, 1864. Geneva. As so often, Tyutchev encompasses many of his poetic themes in one very short poem. Here, within the natural framework, there is the sea-movement of Na Neve/On the Neva [172], the lush, leaf-rustling, sunny feel of so many, and the anguish of the memory of Elena’s death.
…. one grave less: a reference to Elena.
275. Late 1864. Nice. Dedicated to the memory of Elena’s final hours.
276. November 3rd. 1864. Nice. Dedicated to the Empress, Maria Alexandrovna.
277. November 21st. 1864. Tyutchev lived in Nice from October 18th. of this year to March 4th. 1865. Leaving the town in the spring of 1865, Tyutchev wrote to Anna: ‘Italy has played a strange role in my life… Twice it has appeared before me like some fateful vision, after the two greatest sorrows I have ever been fated to experience… There are countries where they wear the mourning of bright flowers. Obviously, this is my lot ….’
The two sorrows were the deaths of Eleonore and Elena. His characteristic impatience with anything which prevented him from being among people is described in a letter Anna wrote to her sister, Ekaterina (Dec. 4th. 1864): ‘Just imagine what poor dad is like when the weather’s like this. When it’s raining in Nice, no-one goes out, social life comes to a halt, the cabs vanish, the streets become impassable. Poor dad is thoroughly down-hearted’.
278. November, 1864. Nice. Inspired by his meeting with the Empress.
279. November, 1864. Written in connection with the promulgation of the encyclical of Pius IX, condemning, among other ‘aberrations of the age’, freedom of conscience.
Stanza 1 contains a reference to the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D.
280. 1864. Addressed to Prince Alexander Gorchakov (1798-1883), a conspicuous figure in government, from 1856 occupying the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. He replaced the Austrophil, Count K. Nesselrode (1780-1862). While Tyutchev considered it his duty to support the nationalist motives behind Gorchakov’s policies, to which numerous letters and verses bear witness, nonetheless he caustically mocked the man’s ambition and self-love, calling him ‘the narcissus of his own inkwell’. Gorchakov was inordinately proud of his prose style. His vanity even came to the attention of Bismarck, who once remarked that Gorchakov was ‘incapable of stepping over a puddle without examining his own reflection in it’. (C:7/43)
There is an allusion here to Gorchakov’s diplomatic activity during the Polish uprising and to the rebuff thrown him by the foreign powers.
Aksakov points to the veiled suggestion that ‘new constraints are threatening the Russian press’. (A:1/281)
281. January, 1865. The poem was distorted when Darya copied it and it appeared in print in such a manner that Tyutchev was extremely annoyed, claiming they had published without informing him and presented the poem ‘in its ugliest form’. He further complained to the editorial board in February: ‘God knows, I place very little value on my verses, even less now than ever before, but I see no reason to take responsibility for poetry which does not belong to me’.
282. January 12th. 1865. Dedicated to Darya. The text ends with the following words: ‘My dear daughter, keep this in memory of yesterday’s stroll and our conversation, but don’t show it to anyone. Let it be meaningful only to us two…. I embrace and bless you with all my heart. F.T.’
We do not know what they talked about, although the first stanza does appear to have something in common with the following lines from a letter he wrote to Darya in September, 1864: ‘ …. if there were anything which could lift my spirits, could create at least an outward appearance of life, then it is to preserve myself for you, to dedicate myself to you, my poor, sweet child, you, so loving and so alone, outwardly so apparently lacking in sense and so deeply sincere, to you I have, perhaps, bequeathed this frightful capacity which has no name, which destroys all equilibrium in life, this thirst for love which in you, my poor child, has remained unassuaged’.
283. January, 1865. Written on account of the address to Alexander II by the Moscow nobility concerning the convocation of the Zemskaya duma (a representative district council in Russia in the last half of the century up till the Revolution). Tyutchev’s frequent reactionary outbursts must have irritated many less capable of expressing their feelings than he. However, on this occasion, he appears to have got almost as good as he gave, as the following anonymous reply to his epigram demonstrates:
Vy oshibaetesya grubo,
I v vashei Nitstse dorogoi Slozhili, vidno, vmeste s shuboi Vy pamyat’ o zemle rodnoi. V rayu terpenie umestno, Politike tam mesta net, Tam vsyo umno, soglasno, chestno, Tam net zimy, tam vechnyi svet. No kak zhe byt’ v strane unyloi, Gde nyne pravit Konstantin I gdye slilis’ v odno svetilo, Valuev, Reitern, Golovnin? Net, nam parlamenta ne nuzhno, No pochemu zh nas proklinat’ Za to, chto my derznuli druzhno I gromko karaul krichat’? *** You made a coarse mistake, and in your dear Nice you’ve buried, together with your fur coat, the very memory of your native land. Patience is appropriate in paradise, there’s no place for politics there. Everything’s clever, harmonious, honourable. There’s no winter there, just eternal light. But how about in a sad land where right now Constantine rules and where, into one luminary, there have merged Valuev, Reitern and Golovnin? No, we don’t need a parliament, but why curse us for daring in a friendly manner to loudly sound the alarm?
The references are to Grand Duke Konstantin, from 1865 Chairman of the State Council, Pyotr Valuev (1816-1890), home affairs minister, finance minister, Mikhail Reytern (1826-1886) and education minister, Alexander Golovnin (1821-1886).
In the exclusive English club, high-ranking civil servants and those with whom it was important to be seen would gather to play cards and billiards, converse and take part in readings. Tyutchev’s brother, Nikolay was in the club when he died suddenly on December 8th. 1870. He suffered from a heart condition.
284. Late March, 1865. Petersburg. Dedicated to the memory of Elena. Lines from Tyutchev’s letter of October 1864 to her brother-in-law, A. Georgievsky (1830-1911), are his epistolary variant of this poem: ‘I just can’t get on with life…. I can’t get on… The wound is festering and won’t heal. Call it faint-heartedness, call it impotence, I don’t care. Only in her company and for her was I an individual, only in her love, in her limitless love for me was I aware of myself… Now I’m some sort of unthinking living thing, some living, tormented nothing…’.
285. Early April, 1865. Written on the occasion of the 100th. anniversary of the death of Lomonosov, marked on April 4th. of that year. Sending the first draft of his poem to A. Maykov, Tyutchev wrote: ‘Here, my friend … are a few poor rhymes for our festival. I can manage nothing better thanks to my present disposition’. While Maykov took part in the proceedings, Tyutchev’s verses were not read out for some reason.
On his death bed, Lomonosov feared that all his ‘useful intentions’ would die with him. (See Note on Lomonosov in [7]).
Jacob is obviously referred to at the end of the poem, understanding at dawn that his night-long struggle had been with God. (Genesis, XXXII, 24-32).
286. April 8th. 1865. St. Petersburg. The eldest son of Alexander II, Nikolay (1843-1865), died on April 12th.
287. April 12th. 1865. On the death of Grand Duke Nikolay.
288. April 30th. 1865. The epigram is directed at Count Sergei Stroganov, entrusted with the care of the heir to the throne, and refers to rumours that the count’s ukhod/care might have been the ukhod/ruin of the young man. The verb ukhodit’ can mean ‘to wear out’ and colloquially ‘to do in’. In a diary entry (April 17th. 1865), A. Nikitenko tells us that Tyutchev was convinced that the heir had been ‘worn out by the ridiculous education he had received, especially by the kind that Stroganov had imposed on him in recent years. His physical condition was completely ignored, they exhausted him dreadfully by forcing him to study and perform beyond his capacity and by ignoring the salutary warnings of certain level-headed doctors…. The Emperor was kept in complete ignorance of his condition. So not until several days before the heir’s death did the Emperor learn accidentally from a state messenger about the imminent tragedy’. (C:24/297)
289. May 11th. 1865. When Aksakov wrote that he did not like the barbarism protest in the final stanza, Tyutchev deleted the entire stanza. Tyutchev, as is well known, tended to lose sight all together of his best lyrics once he had written them. Since the immediate inspiration was of the first importance in the composition of so many of his poems, I have chosen to reinstate the final stanza. The epigraph comes from the Epistolarum liber/Book of Letters (B:1/282) of the Roman poet Ausonius (4th. Century BC):
est et harundineis modulatio musica ripis
cumque suis loquitur tremulum coma pinea uentis.
***
There is musical harmony in the reeds along river banks
and the hair (i.e. leaves) of pine trees speaks tremulously to its winds.
The epigraph shows a clear parallel with the poem on Goethe’s death [89].
… the thinking reed: le roseau pensant of Pascal’s famous aphorism, ‘Man is no more than the weakest reed in nature — but he is a thinking reed’. (Pensees [231])
290. May 30th. 1865. Yakov Polonsky (1819-98) was a poet and friend of Tyutchev, with whom he served on the censorship committee. He shared with many poets the distinction of having his lyrics rubbished by Belinsky for lack of civic feeling.
291. June 5th. 1865. Dedicated to N. Akinfeva and written at her request to compose something for her album.
292. June 28th. 1865. A greetings telegram sent to Vyazemsky on his name-day. Appended are the words, ‘Here are some fairly bad verses to please the recipient’.
293. June 29th. 1865. Tyutchev writes on the verses, ‘These are better, but they’re too long for a telegram’. Addressed to Vyazemsky.
294. July 15th. 1865. While the first stanza recalls Elena, we are not sure as to the poem’s addressee. Alexander Georgievsky (1829-1911), Elena’s brother-in-law, is a possibility.
295. July 25th. or 29th. 1865. Once again, allegorical interpretations are hard to resist, though the poem is superb on a literal level.
296. August 3rd. 1865, the eve of the anniversary of Elena’s death.
297. August 5th. 1865. This and Molchit somnitel’no Vostok/The east is doubtful, silent [295] share structure with the following poem [298], though each, like Fontan/ The Fountain [119], is too clearly aiming at a philosophical or political statement.
298. August 18th. 1865. The previous day Tyutchev had left Ovstug for Dyad’kovo, returning the following day. The poem was written en route.
299. November 23rd. 1865. The old separation theme returns in a striking image. Tyutchev’s anguish about the past is rarely absent throughout his life.
300. December 21st. 1865. This clearly concerns Nadezhda Akinfeva (1839-91), nee Annenkova, the great-niece of Prince A. Gorchakov, and was inspired by gossip caused by her divorce and proposed marriage to her uncle.
301. March 1st. 1866. Dedicated to Countess A. Bludova, daughter of Count D. Bludov.
302. Written after the abortive attempt by Dmitry Karakozov on the life of Alexander II (April 4th. 1866). The terrorist was a young, neurotic member of a tiny group calling itself Hell. Karakozov shot at and missed the tsar, was interviewed by him in person and hanged.
303. April 12th. 1866. St. Petersburg. The previous poem may have elicited some official reaction and these lines could be a response to that.
304. April, 1866. Addressed to A. Suvorov. The relatively liberal Suvorov was held partly responsible for the attempt on the Tsar’s life and was removed from office. The sharp tone of Tyutchev’s poem reflects the dislike felt for the prince among the more conservative St. Petersburg circles.
305. May 11th. 1866. In connection with the intention of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to suspend the journal Moskovskie vedomosti/Moscow News for three months. Tyutchev was close to the editorial board at the time.
306. June 3rd. 1866. When Samuil Greig (1827-87), who had once served in the horse guards, was moved from the Admiralty to become deputy finance minister, Tyutchev pointed that that if they had given Reitern, the finance minister, command of a regiment of horse guards, Russia would be shaken to its foundations by the howls of protest, despite the fact that administering the finances of the Russian Empire was somewhat more difficult than commanding a regiment.
307. July 1866. Tsarskoe Selo. Time and the physical presence of swan voices are joined as reflections in water.
308. September 2nd. 1866. Count Mikhail Muravyov died on August 31st.
309. September 1st.-3rd. 1866. Vyazemsky’s satirical poems, Vospominaniya iz Bualo/Recollections from Boileau and Khlestakov/Khlestakov, were directed at the editor of the Russkii vestnik/The Russian Herald and The Moscow News. The openly nationalistic editor, M. Katkov believed in lecturing the authorities, a trait Vyazemsky hated. Tyutchev’s poem appears to be a defence of Kakov. It is also an oblique attack on Vyazemsky’s dislike of anything new. Tyutchev once compared Vyazemsky’s attitude to the younger generation to that of the ‘prejudiced, hostile explorer first stepping foot on foreign soil of which he has no knowledge. (LET. ERN., Jan. 3rd. 1869). In order to maintain an old friendship intact, Tyutchev asked for the poem not to be published.
310. September 17th. 1866. Petersburg. On the occasion of the arrival in St. Petersburg of the Danish Princess Dagmar (1847-1928), bride of the heir to the throne, the future Alexander III. Dagmar, later Maria Fyodorovna, had, in fact, been the fiancee of Alexander’s elder brother, Nikolay Alexandrovich. (See [286].)
311. November 28th. 1866. The poem encapsulates the idea of many Slavists (indeed, of many Russians through the ages up till the present) that Russia was a land with a way of life all its own, significantly different to European states.
314. Late December, 1866. TR of a French poem which I have yet to locate.
315. July 1867. Connected with the Cretan rebellion of 1866. Marya mentions Lady Georgina Eliza Buchanan, wife of the British Ambassador, Sir Andrew Buchanan (1807-82, Ambassador Extraordinary to Russia), making a quip about un bal pour les cretins/a ball for cretins, instead of for chretiens/Christians. Such British aristocratic arrogance cannot have failed to anger Tyutchev. On the other hand, Lady Buchanan’s father, 11th. baron of Blantyre, had been killed by a stray bullet during an insurrection in Brussels in September 1830, so her attitude towards revolutionary movements would have been somewhat coloured. She was the third daughter of Robert Walter Stuart and the second wife of the ambassador. Andrew Buchanan had been a paid attache in St. Petersburg in the late 1830s and Tyutchev might have met him. Buchanan’s first diplomatic duties took him to Constantinople. (See [326].)
Ironically, some years earlier, Tyutchev himself had played with the French word cretins, as Anna mentions in a letter to Vyazemsky (1854): ‘Dad is now like an animal throwing itself around its cage. He is extremely disheartened at the way events have turned and finds that people are pretty stupid and the world is absurd. He says that this is a war of scoundrels against cretins (c’est la guerre des gredins contre les cretins — FJ)’.
316. Summer, 1867. In 1897, a book was published entitled Bratskaya pomoshch’ postradavshim v Turtsii/armyanam Armenii/Fraternal Aid to the Armenians Suffering in Turkey. Tyutchev’s poem appeared on p.128 (A:20, vol.1/179-181).
317. 1866-67. Directed at Prince Pyotr Shuvalov (1827-1889). Chief of police and head of the Third Section (the political police), Shuvalov was nicknamed ‘Alexander IV’ and ‘Arakcheev II’. Arakcheev was a petty noble who rose to high rank under Paul I (reigned 1796-1801), finding favour with the tsar by relentless drilling of his troops and various ruthless measures taken against dissidents.
318. March 1st. Addressed to Countess A. Bludova.
319. April, 1867. On Tyutchev’s first reading of Turgenev’s novel, Dym/Smoke. The novel was considered ‘lamentable’ by many and considered to be the beginning of the decline of the novelist’s artistic career. Tyutchev was extremely displeased with it, especially its ‘moral feel’ and the absence of any ‘national feeling’: ‘Smoke is still being read, and people have not yet formed an opinion on it. Yesterday, I visited F.I. Tyutchev, he had just read it and was very displeased. While admitting the skill with which the main character was depicted, he deplored bitterly the ethical mood pervading the novella and the total lack of patriotic sentiment’. (A:2/420-430)
320. May, 1867. The main image of the poem compares the ‘mighty and beautiful’, ‘magic, kindred’ forest of the 1850s, i.e. Turgenev’s earlier novels, with his later work, whose title suggests that the educated and intellectuals of Russia are so much smoke. Tyutchev genuinely respected Turgenev’s earlier work and felt let down by his later novel.
321. Early May, 1867. Read at a banquet at the Slavonic Congress.
Kosovo (‘Blackbirds’) Field: this topical location marks the place of the battle at which the Turks, led by Murad II, defeated the Serbs in 1389. The Serbian Prince Lazar was killed. At that time the Turks were advancing rapidly through the Balkans. The battle is one of those in any country’s history which takes on symbolic importance to its people, here the Serbs.
White Mountain: a hilly area near Prague. The defeat of the Czechs by the German Emperor Ferdinand II on November 8th. 1620 led to the loss of Czech political independence. After that point Bavarian Catholic elements took over from the former Protestant German and Czech nobility and employed terror to attempt to oust Protestantism.
322. May 11th. 1867. The epigraph is the words of the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Friedrich von Beust, who conducted an anti-Slav policy (‘The Slavs must be pressed against the wall’). At the Slav Congress of this year, the poem was read twice to rapturous applause.
323. 1867. In this postscript to the earlier poem, K Ganke/To Hanka [136], Tyutchev refers to the first so-called All-Slav festival, having in mind the Slavonic Congress which took place in 1867. It followed on from an Ethnographic Exhibition in Moscow, there being a Slavonic section. In May 1867, eighty one representatives of various Slav nations arrived at the exhibition and celebrations followed in St. Petersburg from May 8th. to May 15th. and in Moscow for a further twelve days. Petrovich (C:26) points out that this ‘congress’ (s»ezd) was more a get-together than a real congress. Despite the aspirations of the guests, such conferences and celebrations had no hard political significance.
324. May, 1867. St. Petersburg. Tyutchev was ever irritated by what he saw as a haughty lack of nationalist feeling on the part of the powers that be and a polite society which followed fashionable fawning after Europe.
325. June 13th. 1867. On the fiftieth anniversary of A. Gorchakov’s entry into public life.
326. Mid-July, 1867. On the occasion of Queen Victoria’s acceptance of the Sultan as her guest. Sent to Lady Buchanan. (See [315].) In a letter to Aksakov (Aug. 23rd. 1867), Tyutchev continues sniping at Turkey: ‘Fuad Pasha’s embassy to Levadeia (a major town in eastern Greece — FJ) Livadia was confined to an exchange of banalities, and the order they awarded him — going against Prince Gorchakov’s view — was no more than routine ritual, significant only in the sense that such absurdity demonstrates how little today’s mood is understood, or how little value is placed on it’.
Having unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Turks to return Crete to Greece, although union was, indeed, vetoed by Britain, Alexander II saw fit, nonetheless, to award Mehmet Fuad Pasha the Order of Alexander Nevsky. Tyutchev was characteristically incensed by the entire affair, not least by what he perceived as the constant stupidity of Russian diplomacy.
327. October 14th. 1867. During a session of the Chief Council of the Management of Press Affairs, Count P. Kapnist (1830-98) noticed that Tyutchev ‘was extremely vacant-looking and was scribbling or drawing something on a sheet of paper on the table in front of him’. (A:33/ii, vol.1/430) After the meeting he left, looking very thoughtful, leaving the paper. Kapnist retrieved the paper ‘with which to remember a favourite poet’.
328. October 27th. 1867. On the struggle between Garibaldi’s patriots and the papal forces, the result being the unification of Italy in 1870.
… and whoever…. a reference to the assistance the French gave the Pope.
Lines 9-12 are addressed to Pius IX (1792-1878).
329. December 5th. 1867. In connection with Russia’s refusal to agree to the guaranteed integrity of the Turkish Empire. Tyutchev’s hope that the Slav peoples would rise against the Turks came to nothing. The Journal de St. Petersbourg was the organ of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
330. June, 1868.
… with you: a reference to Elena.
331. July 16th. 1868. During that summer there were forest fires in the St. Petersburg vicinity. Writing to Ekaterina, Tyutchev describes with some humour the situation in which ‘… I’m choking not only from the suffocating heat of the town (Staraya Russa — FJ), but as well from the smoke of the fire which, for several miles all around, envelops all of Petersburg, thanks to the burning peat which is being allowed to burn quite quietly…. They tell us it will make excellent soil. Well, let’s suffer for the sake of the future’.
332. August 2nd.1868. On a farmstead at Gostilovka, near Ovstug.
333. Late August, 1868. Pogodin was an undergraduate friend of Tyutchev and the two remained close throughout their lives.
334. September 21st. 1868. Egor Kovalevsky was a student of the Middle East.
335. Mid-April, 1868. Tyutchev expressed a similar view in a letter to his brother, Nikolay (April 13th. 1868), claiming that all the officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were ‘more or less a set of rogues and looking at them is enough to make you feel sick, though our trouble is that this nausea never actually comes to throwing up’.
336. 1868-early 1869. A variation on a theme from Heine’s The Homecoming [87].
Der Tod, das is die kuhle Nacht,
Das Leben ist der schwule Tag.
Es dunkelt schon, mich schlafert,
Der Tag hat mich mud’ gemacht.
……….
Uber mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum,
Drin singt die junge Nachtigall,
Sie singt von lauter Liebe,
Ich hor’ es sogar im Traum.
***
Death is the cool night,
Life is the hot day.
It’s dark already. I’m tired.
Day has exhausted me.
……….
A tree rises up above my bed
and the young nightingale sings in it,
singing about honourable love,
I hear it as if in a dream.
337. Mid-January, 1869. Aimed at Vladimir Skaryatin, the ultra-reactionary, anti-Slavophile editor of the aristocratic, short-lived newspaper Vest’/The News. Line 8 is a reference to the closure of Aksakov’s Moskva/Moscow in 1868, after which the Slavophils had no separate voice in the press.
szlachta: the Polish petty nobility.
338. February 5th. 1869. To A. Gorchakov.
339. 1869. First printed in the pamphlet entitled Prazdnovanie tysyacheletnei pamyati pervosvyatitelya slavyan sv. Kirilla 14 fevralya 1869 g. v S.-Peterburge i Moskve/A Celebration of the One Thousandth Anniversary of the High Prelate of the Slavs, the Great Saint Cyril, April 14th. 1869, in St. Petersburg and Moscow. St. Cyril was one of the teachers and converters of the Slavs, the conversion of whom, in the south, took real form in the 9th. century. He and St. Methodius are credited with giving the Slavs their Cyrillic alphabet.
340. February 27th. 1869. If further evidence were needed of Tyutchev’s ability to say a lot in a very small space, this poem provides it. One of his favourite ideas, that of blagodat’/grace (also ‘abundance’), seen as something which ‘comes naturally’ to us (dayotsya), is joined with sochuvstvie/sympathy, but there is no evidence as to what or to whom the ‘sympathy’ might refer.
341. March, 1869. This is a longer, more considered poem than the shorter ones in which Tyutchev take Elena’s side against society’s gossips.
342. May 11th. 1869. (See Note 339.)
Lines 4-5 are from Matthew (V,14).
343. May, 1869. The reference is to the gardens laid out by Peter I around the Ekaterinintal palace, built by him near Tallin.
344. July 11th. 1869. Otrada, Serpukhov uezd, Moscow province. Addressed to the wife of a well known public figure, Count V. Orlov-Davydov. Tyutchev visited the family at their estate, Otrada, famous for its fine collection of rare books (C:15/247) and was there on his hostess’s name day. Aksakov describes Orlova-Davydova as a ‘curious phenomenon and remarkable character’ (A:20, vol.1/181) who spent most of her time in the country, had a hospital built on their estate, opened schools for peasant women and did a very great deal to alleviate the situation of the Otrada peasants.
In their own way, many aristocrats and members of the petty nobility acted philanthropically, vaguely aware of the condition of the vast masses of peasants in their country. Tyutchev, of course, could not resist the temptation to look cynically at their efforts, while enjoying the results. In the winter of 1867-8 famine struck parts of northern and central Russia. He wrote to Anna (February 1868), ‘Right now we’re up to our ears in festivals, balls and concerts … thanks to the famine… This method of showing how to be charitable towards people is the equivalent of an amusing task dreamed up for the teaching of children, and the result is the same. It’s unbelievable to what point people can be so lacking in seriousness.
And in the midst of all this hubbub of dancing charity and this display of making subscriptions, what will never be established, even as a warning for the future, is the part played by the administration’s lack of foresight and negligence in the disaster striking the country’.
With such words Tyutchev shows yet again his genuine anger at administrative ineptitude, his contempt for the society of which he was a member, and his equally strong desire to be a conspicuous part of that society.
345. August, 1869. Written after a meeting in Kiev with Andrey Muravyov. (See [13].) In a letter of August 16th. 1869, Muravyov thanks Tyutchev for his verses, quoting some lines from Schiller:
Die Konige und die Poeten
Wohnen auf Menschen-Hohen.
***
Kings and poets
live on humanity’s heights.
The temple is the Andreevsky cathedral in Kiev, built in the eighteenth century according to a Rastrelli design.
346. August 16th. 1869. Written on one his last visits to the village of Ovstug. The dog is Romp, the family pet, who, true to his breed, swam backwards and forwards chasing fowl during a walk.
347. August, 1869. Ovstug. The absence of a riddle is, perhaps, the absence of any kind of faith.
348. August, 1869. On the five-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the reforming Czech preacher and martyr, Jan Hus (1369-1415), a patriot and religious leader who led his people in a revolt against Papal and German domination. Some considered Hus to have been put to death by anti-Slavic, anti-Greek elements. The verses accompanied a golden cup sent to Prague.
Lines 13-16 refer to Hus’s execution. See [356].
349. October 14th. 1869.
350. First half of October, 1869. On the celebrations in Egypt following the opening of the Suez Canal. The shrewd Khedive Ismail succeeded in staging a major public relations exercise by touring Europe and inviting as many countries as possible to attend the opening. From General Ignatiev of Russia (ambassador to The Porte) to Henrik Ibsen of Norway, representatives flocked to Egypt. The festival described by Tyutchev took place over several weeks, including trips up the Nile to Assuan for selected celebrities. While Tyutchev attacks the ‘pasha’ for spilling Christian blood, the Khedive, technically a vassal of The Porte, was exploiting the waning influence of Turkey in Egypt and, aiming at eventual Egyptian independence, was somewhat more in charge of events than Tyutchev gives him credit for.
The poem is remarkable for the final two stanzas, a favourite formula Tol’ko tam, gde…/Only there, where …., contrasting two locations, one of riotous happiness, the other of horror and fear. In [111] Tyutchev employs the same structure to refer to mountains disappearing into the distance in a light-hearted poem with a fairytale feel to it. The same structure used here imparts an eerie, nocturnal atmosphere of dread.
351. December 17th. 1869. Addressed to the renowned Jewish Slavist philologist, ethnographer and compiler of legends from the Onega region, Alexander Hilferding (1831-1871). Chosen as a junior member of the second section of the Academy of Sciences, a meeting of the conference failed to elect him a full member. It was said that the German members of the academy considered him a renegade, having renounced his German roots to become a Russian. His family had moved from Germany in the early eighteenth century. Hilferding and Tyutchev were good friends.
352. December 22nd. 1869. Dedicated to the musician and singer Yulia Abaza, nee Stubbe. She was friendly with Gounod and Liszt and participated in the foundation of the Russian Musical Society.
353. The 1860s. Nothing is known about the theme nor the addressee.
354. Possibly November 27th. 1869. Although Ernestine has written ‘Hilferding’ on the manuscript, Pigaryov has his doubts in view of the high esteem in which Tyutchev held this scholar.
355. February, 1870. TR Goethe: Clarchen’s song from Egmont (III,2).
Freudvoll
Und leidvoll,
Gedankenvoll sein,
Langen
Und bangen
In schwebender Pein,
Himmelhoch jauchzend,
Zum Tode betrubt,
Glucklich allein
Ist die Seele, die Liebt.
***
To be full of joy
and full of sorrow
and of thought,
to get by
and to fear
in hovering agony,
rejoicing to the skies,
depressed to death,
happily alone
is the soul which loves.
Egmont was written over about seven years during the 1780s and is a drama of revolutionary nationalism set in the Netherlands in 1566-8 on the eve of the country’s rebellion against Phillip II of Spain. Egmont is a charismatic count.
356. March, 1870. Composed to be read at an evening with ‘living pictures’ in aid of the Slavonic Charitable Committee.
The perfidious kaisar was the German Emperor, Sigismund. When Hus was summoned to the church council in Constanz, Sigismund gave him a safe-conduct pass but, under pressure from the council, declared it null and void.
According to legend, one old lady threw a handful of brushwood onto the pyre, calling forth the words, Sancta simplicitas!/Holy simplicity! from Hus.
357. Early July, 1870. Written as he was travelling to take the baths at Karlsbad via Vilnius, just south east of Kaunas on the Neman. In a letter written from the spa, he complained bitterly to Elena Bogdanova that the waters were only making him feel worse. Bogdanova (1823-1900) was a widow (nee Baroness Uslar, Frolova by her first marriage) with whom Tyutchev engaged in a affair of some sort during the last six years of his life, much to the annoyance of his patient family and long-suffering wife.
The Polish uprising of 1863 is referred to here.
358. July 26th. 1870. According to Polonsky, the reversed initials (‘K.B.’) stand for ‘Baroness Krudner’, whom Tyutchev met in Karlsbad with her second husband, Count N. Adlerberg. More recently, however, Lane and Nikolaev have established that the addressee is more probably Tyutchev’s sister-in-law, Klothilde. (A:24)
359. A telegram sent to Ernestine on September 14th. 1870, en route from Ovstug to Moscow.
360. Late September, 1870. This poem deals with the Franco-Prussian War. While Tyutchev believed that Germany had right on her side, he could not help but experience ‘a pang of anguish’ (Letter to Bogdanova, August) at the ‘final collapse of this great and beautiful France, whose name has been so glorious in the history of the world’.
Unity….: Bismarck’s words.
361. October 27th. 1870. Written into the album of Platon Vakar (1820-99), a member of the Foreign Censorship Committee.
362. NL early November, 1870. Dedicated to Alexandra Pletnyova (nee Shchetinina, 1826-1901). Her husband, the minor poet and critic, P. Pletnyov (1792-1865), had been a friend of Pushkin and was an editor of the latter’s magazine, The Contemporary. Nekrasov and Panaev (1812-62), both men of Belinsky’s party, bought the magazine in 1864. Princess Shchetinina, Pletnyov’s second wife, was ‘a woman of rare spiritual qualities. She is somewhat like Tyutchev’s poetry, in which there is depth and original charm’. (C:20, vol.1/77)
363. November, 1870. Provoked by the promulgation of State Chancellor Prince N. Gorchakov’s declaration that the 13th. been abrogated. Following Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War, Article XIII of the Peace Treaty of Paris (March 30th. 1856), stated: ‘The Black Sea being neutralised according to the terms of Article XI, the maintenance or establishment upon its Coast of Military-Maritime Arsenals becomes unnecessary and purposeless, in consequence, His Majesty the Emperor of All the Russia’s, and His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, engage not to establish or to maintain upon that Coast any Military-Maritime Arsenal…’ (C:5, vol./606)
The content of the final stanza can be clarified by a letter Tyutchev wrote to Aksakov on the 22nd., in which he contrasts the ‘hard, worthy stance of the cabinet’ to the ‘pitiful and even loathsome behaviour of the Petersburg salons’, ingratiating themselves into the favour of the foreigners.
364. November-early December, 1870. Inspired by Maria’s desire to work as a Sister of Mercy in the Georgievsky commune.
365. December 11th. 1870. Dedicated to the memory of Tyutchev’s brother, Nikolay (1801-1870), who had died three days earlier. According to Aksakov, Nikolay was the ‘one friend of Fyodor Ivanovich, a man who had many ‘friends’ outside his family, but who would not share his heart’s thoughts and secrets with any one of them in particular, who would not choose any one of them for that exclusively close relationship of sincere friendship. Nikolay Ivanovich Tyutchev loved his brother not only with fraternal, but with paternal tenderness, and with no-one else was Fyodor Ivanovich so intimate, so closely linked by his own personal fate from his very childhood’. (A:1/307)
Tyutchev and his brother fell out more than once but always remained the friends Aksakov said they were. Sending this verse to Ekaterina on December 31st. Tyutchev wrote of ‘this terrible year’ (in July his son Dmitry died) and in particular of ‘one image… odious and horrible: It is seeing him fallen, on the premises of this club I know so well, him, so frail and fearful, who had always been afraid of this fall, lying on the ground, injured, fatally stricken and asking people to get him up’.
As a P.S. to the letter, Tyutchev mentions that the poem was written in a state of ‘half-sleep’ on the way back from Moscow after the funeral.
366. Late December, 1870. The only extant text is engraved on a silver serviette ring in the shape of a dog’s collar, probably Romp’s.
367. 1870. Written into Vakar’s album.
368. End of January-early February, 1871. Darya wrote to her sister, on sending the verses: ‘Here’s a quatrain which dad composed the other day. He’d gone to sleep and, waking up, heard me saying something to mum’.
369. Early March, 1871. The lines in italics are from Pushkin’s poem, K moryu/To the Sea, written on leaving Odessa in 1825:
Proshchai, svobodnaya stikhiya!
V poslednii raz peredo mnoi
Ty katish’ volny golubye
I bleshchesh’ gordoyu krasoy.
***
Farewell, free element!
Before me, one last time,
you roll your blue waves
and glitter in proud beauty.
Lines 39-40: the grave of Nicholas I.
370. Early July, 1871. On the anniversary of the proclamation of papal infallibility (1st. Vatican Council, 1869-70, Pius IX).
371. Second half of August, 1871. Tyutchev records his reflections during a visit to Vshchizh, a former princedom where barrows may still be seen. Bloody legends are associated with the area’s history.
372. December 29th. 1871. Dedicated to M. Pogodin.
373. NL March 3rd. 1872. Written on the death of the authoress and translator, M. Politkovskaya.
374. April 16th. 1872 (Easter Sunday). Sent to Tyutchev’s youngest daughter, Maria, who was dying of tuberculosis in Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria.
375. April 21st. 1872. Sent to Anna on her birthday, which coincided with the poet’s name day, hence the final verse of this telegram.
376. November 23rd 1872. Written in the album of Maria Peterson, married to Count Montgelas and the grand-daughter of Tyutchev’s first wife.
377. NL 1872. A social compliment to Ekaterina Zybina (1845-1923) one of whose minor poems was at the time a popular romance, L’yot livmya dozhd’, nesutsya tuchi/The rain is pouring down, clouds are scurrying.
378. NL 1872. The couplet is the start of an arrangement of the Orthodox canticle, sung at matins on the first three days of the seventh week of Lent.
379. Possibly December, 1872. At this time, Tyutchev was ‘nailed to his bed by illness’. An improvisation addressed to Bogdanova.
380. December 30th. 1872. On the death of Napoleon III. Dictated to his wife, though having suffered his first stroke on December 4th. it cost him great effort. The poem copied by Ernestine was so incomplete that A. Maikov edited it at the request of the editor of the Grazhdanin/Citizen. According to Aksakov, ‘There is no doubt that Fyodor Ivanovich would have corrected it quite differently’. As it is, we are not sure how much of the poem we are left with is actually Tyutchev’s.
One of Napoleon III’s priorities had been to release France from what he saw as the restrictions imposed upon her by the Congress of Vienna. Tsar Nicholas was incensed when the French ruler took on the title Emperor. Napoleon was authoritarian and anti-parliamentarian, though certainly shrewd enough to realise that his universal plebiscite would keep the largely rural, anti-republican vote in his camp.
381. January, 1873. Dedicated to Evgeniya Shenshina (1833-1873), nee Arseneva.
382. Late January, 1873. Tyutchev based this verse on an article published on January 23rd. in the Journal de St. Petersbourg. It dealt with the Russian campaign to take the central Asiatic town of Khiva. From the khanate of Khiva, sorties to capture Russian workers on the eastern coast of the Caspian sea and use them as slaves had long irritated Russia. Characteristically agitated by Russian foreign policy, Tyutchev followed the news in the papers from the beginning. The entire matter of the Great Game, the cat-and-mouse play between Russia and Britain in that part of Asia, could not fail to spur him to the series of abrasive swipes at Britain encountered in the poem. Russia established a base on the eastern shores of the Caspian in 1869 and from there proceeded to subjugate much of Transcaucasia, ultimately pushing across to the Pacific. The insane Paul I had nursed grandiose plans to join up an army with the French and head via Khiva and other khanates for India, thereby undermining the British position on the sub-continent. The project remained a wild dream.
383. January 30th. 1873. The governor of Moscow, Pyotr Durnovo, and the head of the Moscow council, Ivan Lyamin, inspired this amusing piece. It seems that Durnovo was so incensed that Lyamin had visited him in tails rather than in full dress uniform, that throughout the visit he treated his guest as subservient. Tyutchev wrote to Anna: ‘I’d like you to let me have further details of this incident. I can’t imagine what good it does a government to be represented by badly brought up people’.
From the middle of the XIII to the early XIV centuries, the baskaks collected the Golden Horde’s taxes.
384. January 30th. 1873. There is a play on words here. Tyutchev says, ‘Of course, they would not have sent Durnovo’, which sounds the same as saying, ‘… they wouldn’t have sent a fool’ (both words pronounced durnovo).
385. 1873. Addressed to Ernestine. On his death bed, Tyutchev is characteristically economical with his language. God has, he complains, taken away his ‘health’, which prevents him from enjoying the ‘air’ (that which for him is ‘a condition of life’, he tells Bogdanova in 1870), his ‘will power’, which he never had a great deal of to begin with, so perhaps there is a macabre joke here, and his ‘sleep’ and ability to ‘dream’. Of course, the most important thing remains, ‘love’, embodied by his wife, allowing him to cling on to the faith he played with all his life.
386. February, 1873. Tyutchev offers a final combination of observation and, in the title, wish-fulfilment.
387. March 1st. 1873. The Empress Maria left for Sorrento on this day.
388. March 19th. 1873. On Darya’s name-day. Gregg (A:14/205) points out that this poem, one of several he refers to as senilia, demonstrates a return to the childhood style of Lyubeznomu papen’ke/Dear Dad! [1].
389. April 17th. 1873. On the 55th. anniversary of the birth of Alexander II. Tyutchev recalls how he and his father were visiting Zhukovsky in Moscow at the time.
390. April, 1873. Alexander II intended visiting the Tyutchevs, never having been to their house before, and, on hearing of it, Tyutchev characteristically noted that it would be extremely indelicate if, the very day after such a visit, he did not make a point of dying. It is not certain whether or not the visit actually took place.
391. April, 1873. Despite an inevitable looseness of structure as a result of Tyutchev’s illness, this poem retains much power.
392. May 5th. 1873. Dedicated to the memory of A. Hilferding.
393. 1873. The last verses known to have been written by Tyutchev and sent to Alexander Nikitenko, professor of Russian literature at the University of St. Petersburg and a member of the censorship committee. Written after the text are the words: ‘When shall I see you, my friend, I’m frightfully depressed and sad’.
341
* SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY *
TYUTCHEV’S LETTERS
No complete edition of Tyutchev’s letters has yet appeared, although before his death Pigaryov was working on such a project. To date, in the region of 1,330 letters written have been located. When referring to them I give only dates and addressees.
ABBREVIATIONS
AN SSSR Akademiya nauk SSSR KL Khudozhestvennaya literature L Leningrad M Moscow ML Moscow-Leningrad RAN Rossiiskaya akademiya nauk RL Russkaya literatura PS Polnoe sobranie SS Sobranie sochinenii SSt. Sobranie stikhotvorenii SP Sovetskii pisatel’ TR Translated by UP University Press
In the case of anthologies and collections, the first name after the title is that of the editor-in-chief or principal contributor. Titles not given in English are of works which, to the best of my knowledge, have not been translated into English.
A. WORKS BY AND WHOLLY OR SUBSTANTIALLY ABOUT TYUTCHEV
Most works about Tyutchev are in the form of the thesis, article or essay. Far from being exhaustive, Section A contains materials I have either quoted from or consulted for this book.
1. Aksakov, I.
Biografiya Fyodora Ivanovicha Tyutcheva. M, 1886.
2. Barabtarlo, G.
Tjutcev’s Poem ‘Zdes’, nekogda, moguchii I prekrasnyi’: Textology and Exegesis of the Bogatyrev Manuscript. SEEJ, No.3, 1986. (pp.420-430)
3. Berkovsky, L.
Stikhotvoreniya. BP, ML, 1962.
4. Bilokur, D.
A Concordance to the Russian Poetry of Fedor I. Tiutchev. Providence, 1975.
5. Bryusov, V.
F.I. Tyutchev: Letopis’ ego zhizni. Russkii arkhiv 3 (1903, 1906).
6. Bukhshtab, B.
Russkie poety: Tyutchev, Fet, Kozma Prutkov, Dobrolyubov. KL, L, 1970 (pp.9-75)
7. Chulkov, G.
Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva F. I. Tyutcheva. ML, 1933.
8. Coates, W.
Tiutchev and Germany: the Relationship of his Poetry to German Literature and Culture. Ph.D. Harvard, 1950.
9. Conant, R.
The Political Poetry and Ideology of F.I. Tiutchev. Ardis Essay Series, No. 6. Adis. Ann. Arbor, 1983.
10. Elzon, M.
i. ‘My molodoi vesny gontsy’. RL, 3, 1997. (p.198)
ii F. I. Tyutchev v komitete tsensury inostrannoi: novye materialy. RL, 1, 1997. (pp.239-243)
11. Eikhenbaum, B.
i. O poezii. SP, L, 1969.
ii. Russkaya poeziya XIX v. ‘Academia’, L, 1929. (With Yu. Tynyanov).
12. F. Wigzell
Fet on Tiutchev in Russian Writers on Russian Writers, Berg, 1994.
13. Ginzburg, L.
O lirike. SP, ML, 1964.
14. Gregg, R.
Fedor Tiutchev: The Evolution of a Poet. Columbia University Press, 1965.
15. Grekhnyov, V.
Vremya v kompozitsii stikhotvorenii Tyutcheva. AN SSSR, Seriya literatury i yazyka, t.32, vyp.6, M, 1973. (p.487)
16. Kozlik, I.
17. Kozhinov, V.
Tyutchev. M, ‘Molodaya gvardiya’. 1988.
18. Lane, R.
i. An index and synopsis of diplomatic documents relating to Tyutchev’s period in Turin (October 1837 — October 1839). New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1989- 90.
ii. Bibliography of works by and about F.I. Tyutchev to 1985. Astra Press, 1987.
iii. Diplomatic Documents Concerning F.I. Tyutchev in Turin, 1838-1839. Oxford Slavonic Papers. New Series. Vol. XX, 1987. (pp.94-100).
iv. F.L. Tyutchev’s Diplomatic Career in Munich (1822-37). Irish Slavonic Studies, 15, 1994. (pp.17-43).
v. F.I. Tyutchev’s Service Absenteeism and Second Marriage in the Light of Unpublished Documents (1839). Irish Slavonic Studies, No. 8, 1987. (pp.6- 13).
vi. Hunting Tyutchev’s Literary Sources in Poetry, Prose and Public Opinion. In Memory of Nikolay Andreyev. Ed. W. Harrison. Avebury Publishing Company, 1984. (pp.43-68).
vii. Pascalian and Christian Existential Elements in Tyutchev’s Letters and Poems. Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol. XVIII, No.4, October 1982.
viii. The Life and Work of F.I. Tyutchev. Ph.D. Cambridge, 1970.
ix. Tyutchev in the 1820s-1840s. An Unpublished Correspondence of 1874-5. Irish Slavonic Studies, No.3, 1982. (pp.2-13).
x. Tjutcev’s Mission to Greece (1833) According to Diplomatic Documents. Russian Literature XXIII. North-Holland, 1988. (pp.265-280).
xi. Zagranichnaya poezdka Tyutcheva v 1853 g. LN, vol.97: Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, bk.2, ‘Nauka’, 1988. (pp.464-470)
19. Liberman, A.
On the Heights of Creation: The Lyrics of Fedor Tyutchev. JAI Inc. Russian & European Studies, vol. 2, 1991.
20. Literaturnoe nasledstvo. T.97: Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, ‘Nauka’, 1988.
21. Maimin, E.
Russkaya filosofskaya poeziya: poety-lyubomudry, A.S. Pushkin, F.I. Tyutchev. AN SSSR, ‘Nauka’, 1976. (pp.143-184)
22. Matlaw, R.
The Polyphony of Tyutchev’s ‘Son na more’. Slavic Review, 1957, 36 (pp. 198-204)
23. Murtagh, F.
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev: Translations and Adaptations, Durham, 1983. Self-publication.
24. Nikolaev, A.
Zagadka ‘K.B.’. ‘Neva’, No.5. 1985. This article was actually co-written by R. Lane.
25. Ozerov, L.
Poeziya Tyutcheva. M, 1975.
26. Pigaryov, K.
Zhizn’ i tvorchestva F. I. Tyutcheva. AN SSSR, M, 1962, republished in 1978 as F. I Tyutchev i ego vremya..
27. Pratt, S.
Russian Metaphysical Romanticism: The Poetry of Tiutchev and Boratynskii. Studies of the Russian Institute, Columbia University, Stanford University Press, 1984.
28. Sagner, O.
The Semantics of Chaos in Tjutcev. Slavistische Beitrage, 171, Munich, 1983.
29. Savodnik, V.
Chuvstvo prirody v poezii Pushkina, Lermontova i Tyutcheva. M, 1911.
30. Slavica Hierosolymitana. Slavic Studies of the Hebrew University. The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1979. (pp.36-69)
31. Stremooukhoff, D.
La Poesie et l’ideologie de Tiouttchev. Dissertation. Paris, 1937.
32. Surina, N.
Tyutchev i Lamartin. ‘Poetika’ 1-5. Heraus. von Dmitrij Tschizevskij. B. 104. Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Munchen, 1970.
33. Tyutchev, F.
i. La Papaute et la Question Romaine, La Russie et la Revolution, Lettre a M. le Docteur Gustave Kolb, Redacteur de la ‘Gazette Universelle’, Lettre sur la Censure en Russie in F.I. Tyutchev, 1913 in F. I. Tyutchev: PSS, P. Bykov, SPb, 1913. (pp.333-369)
ii. Lirika. Izd. K. V. Pigaryov. ‘Nauka’, M, 1965.
iii. Tyutcheviana. Chulkov, G. M, 1922.
B. WORKS BY AND ABOUT OTHER WRITERS
1. Ausonius
Decimi Magni Ausonii Burdigalensis Opuscula. Ed. Sextus Prete. BSB BG. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1978.
2. Batyushkov
PSSt. N. Fridman, ML, 1964.
3. Baudelaire
Oeuvres Completes. Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Texte etabli et annote par Y.- G. le Dantec. Librairie Gallimard, 1954.
4. Beranger
One Hundred Songs of Pierre-Jean de Beranger with Translations by William Young. Chapman & Hall. London, 1847.
5. Bohme
Jacob Bohme (1575-1624): Studies in his Life and Teaching. H. Martensen. Translated by T. Rhys Evans. Notes and Appendices by S. Hobhouse. Rockliff, London, 1949.
6. Byron
Lord Byron. The Complete Poetical Works. Ed. J.J. McGann. Oxford, 1980.
7. Chaadaev, 1989.
8. Chateaubriand
Grands ecrits politiques. T.I. Presentation et notes par Jean-Paul Clement. Imprimerie nationale Editions, 1993.
9. Derzhavin
Stikhotvoreniya. SP, L, 1957.
10. Dobrolyubov
SS. v 9 tomakh. M, 1952.
11. Dostoevsky
i. Dostoevskii o Tyutcheve (k atributsii odnoi stat’i v ‘Grazhdanine’. RL, 1975, No. 1. (pp.172-6)
ii. Dostoevskii — chelovek, pisatel’ i mify: Dostoevskii i ego ‘Dnevnik pisatelya’. D. Grishin, Melbourne University, 1971.
iii. F.M. Dostoevsky. PSS v 30 tomakh. Brat’ya Karamazovy (t.14), ‘Nauka’, L, 1976.
12. , 1963.
13. Goethe
i. Essays on Goethe. Ed. W. Rose. Cassell & Co. Ltd. 1949.
ii. Goethe: A Critical Introduction. R. Gray. Cambridge University Press, 1967.
iii. Goethe: The Poet and the Age. Vol. 1 The Poetry of Desire (1749-1790). N. Boyle. Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1991.
iv. Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Samtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebucher and Gesprache. Vierzig Bande. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Heraus von Hendrik Birus et al. Frankfurt am Main, 1987.
v. Notes to Goethe’s Poems. J. Boyd. Blackwell, Oxford. (2 vols.: 1749-86, 1786-1832).
14. Gray
The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray. Ed. H.W. Starr & J.R. Hendrickson. Oxford, 1966.
15. Heine
i. Briefe in 6 Bande. F. Hirth. Florian Kupperberg Verlag. Mainz, 1950. B.1. (p.353)
ii. Heinrich Heine: Poetry and Politics. N. Reeves. OUP, 1974.
iii. Samtliche Werke. 5 Banden. Winkler Verlag Munchen, 1969-72.
16. Herder
i. Johann Gottfried Herder. Samtliche Werke. Heraus. von B. Suphan. Georg Ulms Verlagsbuchhandlung. Hildesheim, 1968.
ii. Johann Gottfried Herder. Werke in zehn Banden. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, 1990. B.3 Volkslieder, Ubertragungen, Dichtungen.
iii. Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas. I. Berlin. The Hogarth Press, London, 1976.
17. Holderlin, F.
i. Samtliche Werke und Briefe. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Frankfurt am Main, 1992.
ii. Holderlin. D. Constantine. Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1988.
18. Horace
The Odes of Horace. Translated by James Michie. Penguin Books, 1964.
19. Hugo
i. Theatre complet de Victor Hugo. I. Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Purnal, Thierry, Meleze. Editions Gallimard, 1963. (pp.1262-1265)
ii. The Perilous Quest: Image, Myth and Prophecy in the Narratives of Victor Hugo. R.B. Grant. Duke University Press, 1968.
20. Kalidasa
Dramas of Kalidasa. Ed. C.R. Devadhar. Motilal Banarsidass. Delhi, 1966.
21. , 1966.
22. Lamartine
i. Alphonse de Lamartine: A Political Biography. W. Fortescue. Croom Helm. London & Canberra, 1983.
ii. Oeuvres de Lamartine. Les Confidences. Libraire Hachette. Paris, 1924. Livre IV, 5. (pp67-72).
iii. Oeuvres poetiques completes de Lamartine. Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Marius-Francois Guyard, 1963.
23. Lenau
Werke und Briefe. Heraus. von Antal Madl. Deuticke Klett-Cotta. Wien, 1995.
24. Lomonosov
i. Izbrannye proizvedeniya. A. Morozov, SP, 1965.
ii. , 1961.
iii. Russia’s Lomonosov. Boris N. Menshutkin. Princeton, New Jersey, 1952.
25. Manzoni
i. Manzoni, Alessandro. Gian Piero Barricelli. Twayne Publishers. Boston. 1976.
ii. Tutte le opere di Alessandro Manzoni. Alberto Chiari. Arnolod Mondadori Editore, 1957.
26. , 1958.
27. Michelangelo Buonarroti
i. Rime. G. Testori & E. Barelli. Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. Milano, 1975.
ii. The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation. J. Saslow. Yale University Press, 1991.
28. de Musset.
Theatre complet. Edition etablie par Simon Jeune. Editions Gallimard, 1990.
29. Nekrasov
SS v 8 tomakh: Russkie vtorostepennye poety, (t.7), KL, M,1967.
30. Norse
Old Norse Poems: the Most Important Non-Skaldic Verse not Included in the Poetic Edda. L. Hollander. New York, Columbia UP, 1936. (chap.1: The Old Lay of Biarki, pp.3-11)
31. Pascal
Pensees precedees des principaux opuscules. G. Lewis. La Bonne Compagnie. Paris, 1947.
32. Pushkin
SS v 10 tomakh. KL, M, 1975.
33. Raich
Rassuzhdenie o didakticheskoi poezii. ‘Vestnik Evropy’, 1822, Nos.7-8. (pp.190-208, 242-283).
34. Racine
i. Classical Voices: Studies of Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Mme. Lafayette. P. Nurse. George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1971.
ii. Oeuvres completes. I. Theatre-poesies. Presentation et commentaires par Raymond Picard. Editions Gallimard, 1950. (pp. 799-800).
35. Schelling
i. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature as Introduction to the Study of this Science. Trans. E. Harris & P. Heath. Intro. R. Stern. CUP, 1988.
ii. Schellings Einflu? in der russischen Literature der 20er und 30er des XIX Jahrhunderts. W. Setschkareff. Leipzig, 1939.
iii. Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature. J.S. Esposito. Associated University Presses, 1977.
36. Schiller
i. Schiller’s Drama: Talent and Integrity. I. Graham. Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, 1974. (chap.4: Health: Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit.
ii. Werke und Briefe. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1992.
37. Shakespeare
The Complete Works. Ed. C.J. Sisson. Odhams Press Ltd., London, 1954.
38. de Stael
i. Corinne, ou l’Italie. Londres, chez Dulau et Comp., Libraires, 1834.
ii. The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Stael’s ‘De l’Allemagne’, 1810-1813. J.C. Isbell. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
39. Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s Diaries. Edited and translated by R. Christian. Vol. 1. The Athlone Press, London, 1985.
40. Turgenev
i. Turgenev: His Life and Times. L. Schapiro. Oxford UP, 1978.
ii. PSS i pisem v 20 tomakh., 1960-68. Un Incendie en mer: vol.14, p.186
41. Uhland
Werke. (Samtliche Gedichte: B.1). Winkler Verlag Munchen, 1980.
42. Vergil
The Pastoral Poems. Translated by E.V. Rieu. Penguin Classics, 1972. (pp.14-15).
43. Vico
The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Translated by T. Bergin & M. Fisch. Cornell University Press, 1968.
C. THE LITERARY, PHILOSOPHICAL, RELIGIOUS AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
1. A Handbook of Russian Literature. Ed. V. Terras. Yale University Press, 1985.
2. A History of Russian Literature from its Beginnings to 1900. D.S. Mirsky. Ed. F.J. Whitfield. Vintage Books. New York, 1958.
3. Anglo-Russian Rivalry in Central Asia 1810-1895. Gerlad Morgan, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1981.
4. Arkhaisty I novatory. Slavische Propylaen. Yu. Tynyanov. Heraus. von D. Tschizewskij. B. 31. Wilhelm Fink Verlag Munchen, 1967.
i. Vopros o Tyutcheve. (pp.367-385).
ii. Pushkin i Tyutchev. (pp.330-366).
iii. Tyutchev i Geine. (pp.386-398).
5. A Source Book of Russian History. From Early Times to 1917. Ed. G. Vernadsky. New Haven & London. Yale University Press, 1972.
6. Barricades and Borders. Europe 1800-1914. R. Gildea. OUP, 1987.
7. Bismarck: The White Revolutionary. Vol. 2. 1871-1898. L. Gall. Allen & Unwin. London, 1986.
8. Du romantisme au symbolisme: l’age des decouvertes et des innovations. 1790-1914. H. Lemaitre. Pierre Bordas et fils, 1982.
9. Essays in Literature and Society. E. Muir. The Hogarth Press, London, 1965.
10. F. I. Tyutchev: Kto prav? Romany, povesti, rasskazy. G. V. Chagin, ‘Sovremennik’, M, 1985.
11. German Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. E. Stahl & W. Yuill. The Cresset Press. London, 1970.
12. History of Nineteenth Century Russian Literature. D. Chizhevsky. Translated by R. Porter. Vanderbilt UP, 1974. (pp.150-157).
13.
14. Latin Literature: A History. Gian Biagio Conte. Translated by J. Solodow. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
15. Mir russkoi usad’by. RAN, ‘Nauka’, M, 1995. (p.61-78).
16. Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought. R. Byrnes. Indiana UP, 1968.
17. Poet as Nature. Oxford German Studies, No.15, 1984 16.
18.
19. Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov. Dnevnik 1855-1882. A. F. Tyutcheva. Izd. M. i S Sabashnikovykh, 1929.
20. Rossiiskii arkhiv’: Istoriya Otchestva v svidetel’stvakh I dokumentakh XVIII-XX vv. Studiya ‘Trite’, ‘Rossiiskii arkhiv’, M, 1991.
21. Russian Literature and Psychoanalysis. Ed. D. Rancour-Laferriere. John Benjamin’s Publishing Company. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. 1989. (pp.225- 244).
22. The Crimean War: A Diplomatic History. D. Wetzel. East European Monographs. Boulder. Distributed by CUP. New York, 1985.
23. The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal. F. Lucas. Cambridge, 1936.
24. The Diary of a Russian Censor. Alexander Nikitenko. Abridged, edited and translated by Helen Saltz Jacobsen. University of Massachusetts Press, 1975.
25. The Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. L. Stephen & S. Lee. OUP, 1917- 1964.
26. The Emergence of Russian Pan-Slavism 1856-1870. MN.B. Petrovich. CUP. New York, 1958.
27. The Mind of the European Romantics: An Essay in Cultural History. H. Schenk. Constable, London, 1966.
28. The Ottoman Empire and its Successors. 1801-1927. W. Miller. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1966.
29. The Russian Idea. N., Berdyaev. The Centenary Press, 1947. (chap. 3).
30. The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861. T. Emons. CUP, 1968.
31. The Russian Religious Mind. G. Fedotov. Harvard UP, 1946. (vol. 1).
D. WORKS ON THE QUESTION OF TRANSLATION
1. A Defence of Poetry in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose. D. Reiman & S. Powers, W. W. Norton & Co., New York/London, 1977. (pp.)
2. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse. Translated from the Russian, with a Commentary, by V. Nabokov. 4 vols. Bollingen Series LXXII. Pantheon Books. New York & London, 1964.
3. Five Russian Poems: Exercises in a Theory of Poetry. D. Laferriere. (Subjectivity and Symbolism in Tyutcev’s ‘Son na more’, pp78-88). Transworld Publishers, Englewood. New Jersey, 1977.
4. Four Poems Translated from the Russian into Scots. E. Morgan. Scottish Slavonic Review, 16, Spring 1991. (p.89).
5. Friedrich Holderlin: Poems and Fragments. TR Michael Hamburger. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966.
6. La traduction plurielle. (Le texte reflechi: quelques reflexions sur la traduction de la poesie, D. Jacquin, pp.). Ed. Michel Ballard. Presses universitaires de Lille, 1990.
7. Language and Silence. G. Steiner. Faber & Faber, London, 1967.
8. Linguistics and Literary Style. Ed. D. Freeman. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., New York, 1970.
9. Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov’s Russian and English Prose. J. Grayson. OUP, 1977.
10. No Passion Spent, G. Steiner. Faber and Faber, London, 1996.
11. O poetakh I poezii. V. Veidle. YMCA-Press. Paris, 1973.
12. O teorii prozy. V. Shklovsky. ‘Krug’, M-L, 1925.
13. On Translation. Various contributors. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. Harvard University Press, 1959.
14. Poems of Paul Celan. TR Michael Hamburger. Anvil Press Poetry, London, 1988.
15. Problems of Translation: Onegin in English. Partisan Review, No. 22. New York, 1955. (pp.496-512).
16. . Brown UP, 1971.
17. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics & the Study of Literature. J. Culler. Routledge & Kegan Paul. London, 1975.
18. The Complete Poems of Cavafy. TR R. Dalven. The Hogarth Press Ltd., London, 1961.
19. The Craft of Translation. J. Biguenet & R. Schultz. Chicago UP, 1989.
20. The footnote as a Literary Getre: Nabokov’s Commentaries to Lermontov Pushkin’. SEES, No. 2, 1986, N. Warner (pp.167-182)
21. The French Connection: Nabokov and Alfred de Musset. Ideas and Practices of Translation. J. Grayson. S.E.E.R., vol. 73, 1995.
22. The North Sea by Heinrich Heine. TR H. Mumford Jones. The Open Court Publishing Company, La Salle, Illinois, 1916.
23. The Poetical Works of Federico Garcia Lorca. C. Maurer. Vol. 2 of Collected Poems. Farrar Strauss giroux, New York, 1991.
24. The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice, W. Barnstone. Yale University Press, 1993.
25. The Translations of Ezra Pound. H. Kenner. Faber & Faber, London, 1953.
26. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. L. Venuti. London & New York, 1995.
27. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Ed. R. Schulte and J. Biguenet. The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
28. Translating Poetry: The Double Labyrinth. Ed. D. Weissbort. University of Iowa Press, 1989.
29. Translation and the Nature of Philosophy: A New Theory of Words. A. Benjamin. Routledge, New York & London, 1989.
30. Translation/History/Culture. A Sourcebook. Ed. A. Lefevere. London & New York, 1992.
31. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings. Vol. 1, 1913-26. M. Bullock & M. Jennings. The Bellknap of Harvard University, 1996. (The task of the Translator, pp.253-263).
32. Where Did the Narrator Go? Towards a Grammar of Translation. R. May, SEEJ, No.1, 1994. (pp.33-46).
Тютчев Федор Иванович
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