Traditional themes exam essay are as follows:
- The main motives of the lyrics of Tyutchev and Fet.
- Eternal themes in the lyrics of Tyutchev and Fet.
- Man and nature in the lyrics of Tyutchev and Fet.
Similar themes may cover the work of only one of these poets. In accordance with this, of course, the choice of literary material on which the work on the essay will be based will change.
Let's assume you have to cover the topics as stated above. In this case, one should turn to the lyrics of two great Russian poets, selecting works in which, firstly, their creative individuality was most clearly reflected, and secondly, the general direction of their creative searches was clearly manifested. However, one can understand the artistic credo of the “pure lyricists” only by having a good idea of the historical era of their time. Therefore, in the introductory part of the essay you can give general characteristics the main signs of the time of the 40-60s of the 19th century, touching on the ideological and political struggle, which to one degree or another influenced the work of each artist.
The heyday of the work of Tyutchev and Fet occurred in the 40-60s of the 19th century, which were marked by the growing popularity of revolutionary democratic ideology, entailing a social orientation in the lyrics of poets of democratic orientation, the brightest representative of which was Nekrasov. In Russia in the 60s, there was a demarcation of literary and social forces under the influence of new revolutionary “Bazarov” trends. When “pure art” was loudly rejected in the name of practical benefit, when the citizenship of poetry was declared, an emphasis was placed on a radical transformation of the entire political system of Russia, the result of which should be equality, freedom and social justice.
In this social atmosphere, Fet’s creative credo, defending “pure beauty”, which serves as free art, could not help but cause attacks from revolutionary-democratic criticism.
In his views, Fet was a conservative, believing that no social transformation cannot bring freedom and harmony into the world, because they can only exist in art. Fet's polemics with the "sixties", the struggle with the ideas of revolutionary democracy that were alien to him, a kind of "dispute with the century" continued until the end of the poet's life.
Tyutchev's political worldview largely coincides with Fetov's. Despite the fact that the revolutionary principle deeply “penetrated the public blood,” the poet saw in the revolution only the element of destruction. Tyutchev believed that salvation from the crisis engulfing Russia should be sought in the unity of the Slavs under the auspices of the Russian “all-Slavic” tsar. Such a “Christian empire,” he is convinced, will be able to resist the revolutionary and “anti-Christian” West.
However, actual historical reality made significant adjustments to Tyutchev’s worldview. The Crimean War lost by Russia revealed the powerlessness and insolvency of the government in the face of the trials that befell the country.
The reform of 1861 revealed sharp social contrasts: luxurious festivities and entertainment of secular society against the backdrop of hunger and poverty of the people. This could not but cause the indignation of the humanist poet, his pain and disappointment. Such sentiments contributed to the intensification of Tyutchev’s tragic perception of life. “The fate of Russia,” he wrote, “is likened to a ship that has run aground, which cannot be moved by any efforts of the crew, and only one tidal wave of people’s life is able to lift it and put it into motion.”
Despite the narrow subject matter of Tyutchev and Fet, or rather, their aspiration to eternal, timeless problems, contemporaries paid tribute to their powerful lyrical talent. Turgenev’s assessment is very indicative: “They don’t argue about Tyutchev; whoever doesn’t feel him, thereby proves that he doesn’t feel poetry ". Even condemning Fet for his civic passivity and indifference to social needs, Chernyshevsky called him “the most gifted of our current lyric poets” and believed that he should not embarrass his talent and write about what his soul is not in.
Saltykov-Shchedrin also gave Fet one of the prominent places in Russian literature, noting his sincerity and freshness with which he wins the hearts of readers, although he still considered him a minor poet, since he is “rather cramped, monotonous and limited.”
Even Nekrasov, who declaratively and straightforwardly affirmed the civic nature of lyricism, said that “a person who understands poetry and willingly opens his soul to its sensations will not find in any Russian author, after Pushkin, as much poetic pleasure as Mr. Fet will give him.”
Let's move on to working on the main part of the essay. First of all, let’s carefully read the wording of the topics and try to identify their similarities and differences. To do this, you need to clarify, “decipher” their content. The main themes of the works of Tyutchev and Fet are nature, love, and philosophical reflections on the mysteries of existence. They, of course, are eternal themes, that is, not limited to a particular era. Thus, the first two formulations suggest a conversation about landscape, love, and philosophical lyrics of great poets.
The third theme focuses attention on the complex, subtle relationships between man and the natural world around him in their inconsistency and unity. This means that the disclosure of this topic involves turning to works that reflect a unique perception of nature, its influence on the spiritual world of a person, his thoughts, feelings, and moods. Thus, work on any of these topics can be based on general literary material.
In an effort to fully and deeply disclose the topic, it is necessary to pay attention to the general direction of the creative searches of poets and their individuality and originality.
Let us highlight their common features:
- unity of aesthetic views;
- common themes: love, nature, philosophical understanding of life;
- warehouse of lyrical talent: psychological depth, subtlety of feeling, grace of style, refinement of language, ultra-sensitive artistic perception of nature.
Poets of “pure art” are characterized by high culture, admiration for perfect examples of classical sculpture, painting, music, and an increased interest in art Ancient Greece and Rome, a romantic craving for the ideal of beauty, the desire to join the “other”, sublime world.
Let us consider how the lyrics of Tyutchev and Fet, with a common theme, reflected their artistic worldview in their own way.
The love lyrics of both great poets are permeated with a powerful dramatic, tragic sound, which is associated with the circumstances of their personal lives. Each of them experienced the death of a beloved woman, which left an unhealed wound in their souls. Masterpieces love lyrics Feta and Tyutcheva were born out of genuine pain, suffering, a sense of irreparable loss, a sense of guilt and repentance.
The highest achievement of F. I. Tyutchev’s love lyrics is the so-called “Denisevsky cycle,” dedicated to the love experienced by the poet “in his declining years” for Elena Alexandrovna Denisyeva. This amazing lyrical romance lasted 14 years, ending with Denisyeva’s death from consumption in 1864. But in the eyes of society it was a “lawless”, shameful relationship. Therefore, even after the death of his beloved woman, Tyutchev continued to blame himself for her suffering, for failing to protect her from “human judgment.”
Poems about the poet’s last love have no equal in Russian literature in terms of the depth of psychological disclosure of the topic:
Oh, how in our declining years
We love more tenderly and more superstitiously...
Shine, shine, farewell light
Last love, dawn of evening!
The enormous power of impact on the reader of these lines is rooted in the sincerity and artlessness of expressing a deep, hard-won thought about the transience of enormous, unique happiness, which can no longer be returned. Love in Tyutchev's view is a secret, the highest gift of fate. It's exciting, whimsical and out of control. A vague attraction lurking in the depths of the soul suddenly breaks through with an explosion of passion. Tenderness and self-sacrifice can unexpectedly turn into a “fatal duel”:
Love, love - says the legend -
Union of the soul with the dear soul -
Their union, combination,
And their fatal merger,
And... the fatal duel...
However, such a metamorphosis is still not capable of killing love; Moreover, a suffering person does not want to get rid of the torments of love, for it gives him a fullness and acuteness of perception of the world.
Even the death of a loved one cannot rid a person of this all-consuming feeling, forcing him to relive again and again, already in memories, unique moments of happiness, tinged with suffering.
The daughter of F.I. Tyutchev recalled in her Diary: “Elena Denisyeva died. I saw my father again in Germany. He was in a state close to insanity... He was chained with all the strength of his soul to that earthly passion, the subject of which was not became. And this grief, ever increasing, turned into despair, which was inaccessible to the consolations of religion..."
Selfless, passionate love for a young woman, the same age as his daughter, made Tyutchev forever her captive. Only a strong, deep, all-consuming feeling could result in such verses:
Oh, this South, oh, this Nice!..Oh, how their brilliance alarms me!
Life is like a shot bird
He wants to get up, but he can’t...
With the death of a beloved woman, life, dreams, desires went away, her previously bright colors faded. A painfully accurate comparison that likens a person to a bird with broken wings conveys a feeling of shock from bereavement, emptiness, and powerlessness:
You loved, and the way you love -
No, no one succeeded!
Oh Lord!.. and survive this...
And my heart didn’t break into pieces.
Tyutchev's "Denisevsky cycle" became a miraculous monument to his beloved. She, like Dante's Beatrice or Petrarch's Laura, gained immortality. Now these poems exist separately from tragic love stories, but they became the pinnacle of world love poetry because they were nourished by living life.
A. A. Fet's love lyrics are also inseparable from his fate, his personal drama, which explains the fact that in all his poems, sometimes growing stronger and sometimes weaker, a “desperate, sobbing note” sounds.
As a non-commissioned officer of the Cuirassier Regiment, Fet met Maria Lazich, the daughter of a poor Kherson landowner. They fell in love with each other, but the future poet did not dare to marry the girl, since he did not have sufficient funds. He wrote about this in March 1849 to a close friend, I. Borisov: “This creature would stand in front of me until the last minute of my consciousness - as the possibility of possible happiness for me and reconciliation with the disgusting reality. But she has nothing, and I have nothing. .." In addition, marriage would have forced Fet to put an end to all his plans. In 1851, Maria died: she was burned by a carelessly thrown match. It was even suggested that it was suicide. In any case, A. Fet could not forget Maria until the end of his days, experiencing a bitter feeling of guilt and remorse.
Many of the poet’s poems are dedicated to her: “Old Letters”, “Still Eyes, Crazy Eyes”, “A ray of sun between the linden trees...”, “For a long time I dreamed of the cries of your sobs” and many others.
In Fet's love poems there is almost always one addressee. He addresses the deceased girl with passionate, excited monologues, full of confusion and remorse.
The snow is still white in the fields,
And in the spring the waters are noisy -
They run and wake up the sleepy shore,
They run and shine and shout...
They say all over:
"Spring is coming, spring is coming!
We are messengers of young spring,
She sent us ahead!"
The poet perceives spring not only as a wonderful time of year, but also as the victory of life over death, as a hymn to youth and human renewal.
A. Fet, like F. Tyutchev, reached brilliant artistic heights in landscape lyricism, becoming a recognized singer of nature. Here his amazing visual acuity, loving, reverent attention to the smallest details of his native landscapes, and their unique, individual perception were revealed.
A.K. Tolstoy very subtly grasped Fetov’s unique quality - the ability to convey natural sensations in their organic unity, when “the smell turns into the color of mother-of-pearl, into the glow of a firefly, and moonlight or a ray of dawn shimmers into sound.” Fet's sense of nature is universal, for he has the richest capabilities of poetic “hearing” and “vision”. Examples of such a polyphonic perception of nature can be found in such poems as “The First Furrow”, “By the Fireplace”, “Over the Lake there is a Swan...”, “What an Evening!” and many others. Fet's landscape lyrics, like Tyutchev's, are inseparable from the human personality, his dreams, aspirations and impulses. His poem “Swallows” is typical in this regard:
So I rushed and drew -
And it's scary to smooth the glass
I didn’t grab hold of the alien element
Lightning wing.
And again the same boldness
And the same dark stream, -
Isn't that what inspiration is?
And human me?
The free flight of the bird evokes in the lyrical hero an involuntary association with the boldness and rebellion of the human spirit, striving to break into the unknown, to know the unknowable, and at the cost of life to come into contact with the highest secret of existence. Fet considered this ability to touch the unknown to be the destiny of the poet, the “chosen singer.” All his poetry is a takeoff, a leap, an attempt to look into another world. It is not surprising that, comparing himself to a swallow, he says that his highest goal is “to scoop up at least a drop of the alien, transcendental elements.” Fet expressed a similar thought in his poetic credo: “Whoever is not able to throw himself from the seventh floor headfirst with an unshakable belief that he will soar through the air is not a lyricist.”
A. A. Fet keenly feels the beauty and harmony of nature in its fleetingness and variability.
There are many small details in his landscape lyrics real life nature, which correspond to the most diverse manifestations of the emotional experiences of the lyrical hero. For example, in the poem “It’s Still a May Night,” the charm of a spring night creates in the hero a state of excitement, expectation, longing, and involuntary expression of feelings:
What a night! Every single star
Warmly and meekly they look into the soul again,
And in the air behind the nightingale's song
Anxiety and love spread.
In each stanza of this poem, two opposing concepts are dialectically combined, which are in a state of eternal struggle, evoking a new mood each time. Thus, at the beginning of the poem, the cold north, the “kingdom of ice” is not only opposed to the warm spring, but also gives rise to it. And then two poles arise again: on one, warmth and meekness, and on the other, “anxiety and love,” that is, a state of anxiety, expectation, vague forebodings.
An even more complex associative contrast between natural phenomena and human perception of it is reflected in the poem “A fire blazes in the forest with the bright sun.” Here is a real, visible picture in which the bright colors are extremely contrasting: red blazing fire and black coal. But, besides this striking contrast, there is another, more complex one in the poem. On a dark night the landscape is bright and colorful:
A fire blazes in the forest with the bright sun,And, shrinking, the juniper cracks,
A choir crowded like drunken giants,
Flushed, the spruce tree staggers.
And the day, which should bring light and joy, is cold and boring for Fet; its dull colors are monotonous and unattractive:
And the lazily and sparingly flickering day
Nothing will indicate in the fog;
Cold ash has a bent stump
One will turn black in the clearing.
That is, Fet’s night is the time of poetic inspiration, it awakens the imagination and flights of fancy. And the realistic landscape suddenly loses its outlines, turning into a cosmic symbol of the fire of Life, opposing cold, impassive Death.
Perhaps the most Fetov-like poem, reflecting his creative individuality, is “Whisper, timid breathing...” It amazed the poet’s contemporaries and still continues to delight and enchant new generations of readers with its psychological richness with the maximum laconicism of expressive means. There is a complete lack of eventfulness in it, reinforced by the wordless listing of overly personal impressions. However, every expression here has become a picture; in the absence of action there is internal movement. And it lies in the semantic compositional development of the lyrical theme. First, these are the first discreet details of the night world:
Whisper, timid breathing,
The trill of a nightingale,
Silver and sway
Sleepy stream...
Then, more distant large details, more generalized and vague, foggy and vague, come into the poet’s field of vision:
Night light, night shadows,
Endless shadows
A series of magical changes
Sweet face.
In the final lines, both specific and generalized images of nature merge, forming a huge whole - the sky covered in dawn. And the internal state of a person is also included in this three-dimensional picture of the world as an organic part of it:
There are purple roses in the smoky clouds,
Amber reflection
And kisses and tears,
And dawn, dawn!..
That is, there is an evolution of human and natural plans here, although the analytical element is completely absent, only a recording of the poet’s feelings. There is no specific portrait of the heroine, only vague, elusive signs of her appearance in the subjective perception of the author. Thus, movement, the dynamics of the elusive, whimsical feelings convey the complex world of the individual, evoking a feeling of an organic fusion of natural and human life.
Philosophical thoughts occupy a significant place in A. Fet's lyrics. These are thoughts about the frailty of man, about his fear of the inexplicable mystery of death:
Run? Where? Where is the truth, where is the error?
Where is the support to stretch out your hands to it?
No matter the blossoming of life, no matter the smile, -
Death is already triumphant beneath them.
The blind search in vain for where the road is,
Trusting feelings to blind guides;
But if life is God's noisy bazaar,
Only death is his immortal temple.
The ending of the poem "Death" is unexpected and paradoxical, for it affirms the eternal life of the soul in death.
The poetic world of feta.
A. A. Fet is one of those Russian poets whose fame was not loud either during his life or after his death. He wrote in a non-poetic era, and, by the way, he himself never aspired to fame. In life he was interested in completely different problems: at the age of 14 he was declared illegitimate and deprived of his father's surname Shenshin, and at the same time of his inheritance, and therefore Fet the man devoted his entire life to being recognized as a nobleman. But over the years, Fet the artist created an amazing world of magical poetry, poetry for which he was repeatedly reproached by Russian criticism, which could not find in the poet’s lyrics the social motives that were so necessary for it. Indeed, A. Fet demonstratively opposed himself to his time, declared that he was not obliged to be a citizen, and lived contrary to the spirit of the times. Therefore, A. Fet’s work was branded with the label “art for art’s sake.” And for a long time no one wanted to see all the beauty of his work, which reflected the poet’s surprisingly hopeless views on life, because when asked about the mood of his soul, he always answered: “Desert!”
Back in 1850, A. Fet wrote: “My ideal world was destroyed long ago...” The place of this world was taken by everyday life. And the more the poet immersed himself in it, the more he strived to get out from under its power in his poems. In the latest, best, collection of poems by A. Fet, “Evening Lights,” where the contradictions between Fet the man and Fet the poet are most acutely reflected, the need to break out into the open space saturated with the air of poetry is clearly heard:
Effortless
With the splash of wings
fly in -
Into the world of aspirations
Obeisances
And prayers;
I feel joy,
I don't want
Your battles.
This desire is reminiscent of A. Fet’s famous statement: “Whoever is not able to throw himself from the seventh floor headfirst with an unshakable belief that he will soar through the air is not a lyricist...” A. Fet generally has many epithets “airy”, “winged”, verbs “fly”, “soar”, “take wings”.
Escaping the real world into a world created through art - characteristic feature romanticism. Indeed, Fet has a lot in common with the lyricist Zhukovsky. But there are also significant differences. In the ideal lyrical world of Fet, in contrast to V. Zhukovsky, there is nothing mystical or otherworldly. The eternal object of art, according to A. Fet, is beauty, which is inherent in reality itself and is therefore inescapable. “The world in all its parts is equally beautiful...” Nothing terrible, cruel, or ugly has access to the world of Fetov’s lyrics. Partly, perhaps, this is its one-sidedness: “reproduction not of an object, but only of its ideal.”
A. Fet's lyricism rings in unison with beauty. But A. Fet also attaches philosophical meaning to the concept of “beauty”. Poetry, after all, is penetration into “the innermost essence of the world,” which, say, science cannot do. Artistic knowledge consists in embracing an object in its entirety, and of all the arts, poetry offers the greatest opportunities for this.
A. Fet's lyrics are extremely moving. The poet makes all objects “wave, tremble, tremble.” His poetry is full of smells: nature and love are saturated with “fragrances”, “aromas”, “smells of herbs”, “fragrant nights”. Often sight and hearing merge: the distance rings, the sounds of a song become a silvery path, the singer’s voice turns into a month, dawn, sea. Music occupies a special place in A. Fet's lyrics. In the poem “The Night Was Shining...” the song personifies the image of a beloved woman. Music is nascent feelings, half-feelings, the subtlest shades. A. Fet's poems are unusually melodic; it is no coincidence that many of them formed the basis of romances.
With A. Fet, everything he depicts is unclear, vague, indefinite. He lacks words, he complains about the inferiority of language:
How poor is our language? - I want to, but I can’t. -
This cannot be conveyed to either friend or enemy,
What rages in the chest like a transparent wave...
That is why he likes to contrast the “rude” human words with the language of flowers, the “clearly speaking” silence of the night (the poem “Incense, Blessed Night...”). The poetry of silence - one of Fet’s favorite techniques - conveys the power of feeling much stronger than a scream (“I won’t tell you anything...”). And at the same time A. Fet achieves the enormous musicality of the verse:
The rye is ripening over the hot fields,
And from the field to the field
The whimsical wind blows
Golden shimmers.
A. Fet was often pointed out to grammatical errors, but sometimes he himself manages to triumph over grammar: in the poem “Whisper, timid breathing...”, for example, there is not a single verb.
Although Fet’s world is equally beautiful in all its manifestations, it still comes down to three main components: nature, love, music, which are closely related, intertwined and form a single artistic world. A. Fet's description of nature takes on a romantic sound, and one of the properties of the poet's lyricism is the ability to voice silent nature.
The basis of most of A. Fet’s love poems is the recognition of a dear female image:
I'll just meet your smile,
Or I’ll catch your joyful glance, -
It is not for you that I sing a song of love,
And your beauty is indescribable!
The true subject of A. Fet’s poems is not what touches the heart at a given moment, but those feelings of falling in love with beauty that are evoked by this.
Fet’s world can be called the world of “unity of opposites,” their harmonious fusion. The main word in the lyrics of Afanasy Fet can be called the word “mad”. But in this madness, in this fusion of music, nature and love, there is the highest expression of the poetry of the world, the reflection of earthly beauty in the mirror of art:
I won't tell you anything
I won't alarm you at all
And what I silently repeat,
I don't dare hint at anything.
Themes of nature in the lyrics of Fet and Tyutchev.
Fet's nature:
Fet’s natural lyricism is also marked with a special stamp of genius, embodied in such poems as “I came to you with greetings”, “Whisper. Timid breathing”, “What sadness! The end of the alley”, “This morning, this joy” and others. For Fet, nature is first and foremost a temple. The temple where love lives. In Fet's lyrics, nature plays the role of special luxurious scenery, against the background of which a subtle feeling of love develops. Nature is also a temple in which inspiration reigns, a place - or even a state of mind - in which you want to forget about everything and pray to the beauty reigning in it.
Beauty and harmony for Fet are the highest reality. F is a magnificent landscape painter. His landscapes are distinguished by their concreteness and ability to convey the subtlest changes in nature during the day. He is not interested in statics, there is subtle dynamics. This applies to poems dedicated to the seasons. Fet's nature is unusually humanized, it seems to dissolve in the feeling of the lyricist. Unlike Tyutchev, the hero F perceives his relationship to nature harmoniously. He knows nothing of chaos, the abyss, or orphanhood. On the contrary, the beauty of nature infuses the soul with a feeling of completeness and joy of being. 1848 – poem “Spring Thoughts”; 1854 – verse “bees”; 1866 – verse “She came, and everything around melts”; 1884 – “The garden is all in bloom.” In landscape lyricism, a certain Fetovian universe of beauty (philosophy) is born: “on a haystack at night in the south...”. The image of the universe is majestic and close to man. In familiarization with the beauty of the universe, salvation for the hero’s lyrics: “Exhausted by life, by the treachery of hope.” F’s natural phenomena are more detailed and specific than those of his predecessors. Strives to record natural phenomena. F mainly uses natural colors and shades. It is important for him to capture moments. Favorite time of year is spring, i.e. it's not static. He loves to describe the evening/morning landscape. The ability to “voice” even silent nature is a remarkable property of Fet’s lyricist muses: in his poems she not only shines with beauty, but also sings with it.
Nature in Tyutchev:
Tyutchev is the most natural-philosophical of all Russian poets: approximately five-sixths of his creative heritage are poems dedicated to nature. The most important theme introduced by the poet into Russian artistic consciousness is chaos contained in the depths of the universe, an eerie, incomprehensible secret that nature hides from man (“What are you howling about, night wind...”; “The evening is hazy and stormy...” .", ; "Day and Night", )
