I first learned
of the Russian Symbolist/Romantic poet Fyodor
Ivanovich Tyutchev and of his
incredible works this previous June.
The imagery he employs is vivid, intense, full of vitality, and ruthlessly mesmerizing- very much the same way that Hilda Doolittle's works are. I love how he toys with and fills traditional forms (ballads, metronomes, rhyme schemes, etc) with these incredibly powerful and incredibly wooing images. The scope and depth of Tyutchev’s talent as a writer and a poet are remarkable.
If you haven’t read his works, especially if you enjoy poetry and good writing, you seriously don’t know the state of deprivation you’re in.
Along with another awesome poet, Christina Rossetti, Tyutchev was born on this day (Rossetti in 1830, Tyutchev in 1803).
The imagery he employs is vivid, intense, full of vitality, and ruthlessly mesmerizing- very much the same way that Hilda Doolittle's works are. I love how he toys with and fills traditional forms (ballads, metronomes, rhyme schemes, etc) with these incredibly powerful and incredibly wooing images. The scope and depth of Tyutchev’s talent as a writer and a poet are remarkable.
If you haven’t read his works, especially if you enjoy poetry and good writing, you seriously don’t know the state of deprivation you’re in.
Along with another awesome poet, Christina Rossetti, Tyutchev was born on this day (Rossetti in 1830, Tyutchev in 1803).
This work
of Tyutchev’s, translated by Vladimir Nabokov, is a little dark, but impressive
to say the least. Please, let me know what you think of it …
Dusk
Now the ashen shadows mingle,
Now the ashen shadows mingle,
tints
faded, sounds remote.
Life has
dwindled to a single
vague
reverberating note.
In the
dusk I hear the humming
of a moth
I cannot see.
Whence is
this oppression coming?
I’m in
all, and all’s in me.
Gloom so
dreamy, so lulling,
flow into
my deepest deep,
flow,
ambrosial and dulling,
steeping
everything in sleep.
With
oblivion’s obscuration
fill my
senses to the brim,
make me
taste obliteration,
in this
dimness let me dim.
Please, for the love of God ... let me know what you think.
3 comments:
I'm not sure that Tutchev is a symbolist poet. In fact am a Russian and can tell, that Tutchev has a spirit of true classic poetry of Pushkin, of nobleman poetry. He uses words sometimes archaic or too "poetical" for Russian ear. Tutchev thought himself not as a professional poet - just a Russian man, who writes poetry when he fancy. But still - of course - he is a great poet. (excuse my possibly illiterate English)
It did strike me at bit 'poetical'. I wondered if it was the translation.
Tyutchev is not a symbolist but he seems a precurser --was much praised by the proto-symbolist V. Soloviev. I do not know Russian but see him as a contemporary of Pushkin in language, as the Russian commentator notes, who nevertheless (owing to the time he spent in Munich) was influenced by the German Romanticism of the philosopher Schelling. I see: the 4 elements earth, air, fire, water; Nature personified;love and strife and ceaseless change which go back to pre-Socratic Greek philosophers Heraclitis and Empedocles. All of this can be found in Tyutchev.
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