Essays on Russian language and literature. Artistic analysis of Tyutchev F's poem
Nature also occupied an important place in the work of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev.
Tyutchev's poetry
Poet and diplomat, publicist and political figure F. I. Tyutchev was born in 1803, almost at the very peak of the era of romanticism. Already in early years the future lyricist studied classical languages, translated Horace's odes into Russian and showed interest in versification.Tyutchev had the opportunity to live not only in his homeland, but also in Germany and France. In 1821, he arrived in Munich as part of a diplomatic mission, and returned to Russia only 23 years later. Both abroad and at home, Fyodor Ivanovich was active in journalism and was interested in politics. Even his poems after returning to Russia began to be of a political nature, serving the interests of the state.
However, like any comprehensively developed and sensitive person, Tyutchev did not limit himself to just one topic. His “Denisyev cycle” is worthy of great attention, which consists of poems about love, filled with tragic experiences and fatalism. His philosophical lyrics are also an important component of the poet's legacy.
Each poem by Tyutchev is a compressed ode containing a deep thought, full of strong images, despite short form. These images move from poem to poem, therefore, in order to understand the poet, you need to consider his work as a whole, because a single work will not reveal the whole picture. It is noteworthy that the poet himself never saw himself as a professional writer, which is also important for the analysis of his work.
Many compare Tyutchev with Pushkin, but such a comparison is hardly correct, even though both poets respected each other’s work. If Pushkin describes a person living in real world, sometimes even busy with everyday problems, existing here and now, then Tyutchev’s man is outside this reality, he appears listening to the voice of nature and striving for the stars.
Poem Nature Sphinx
Nature - Sphinx. And the more faithful she is
His temptation destroys a person,
What may happen, no longer
There is no riddle and she never had one.
The history of the poem “Nature is a Sphinx” and its key features
The poem “Nature is a Sphinx” was written on the Ovstug family estate in August 1869. This was the last period of the poet’s work and one of the rather tense periods in his life. By that time, he was already in his seventh decade and increasingly thought about the meaninglessness of life. Realizing that the time allotted to him was nearing its end, the poet abandoned the search for truth and attempts to unravel the secrets of nature, as clearly evidenced by the poem “Nature is a Sphinx.” At this time, Fyodor Ivanovich held the position of Privy Councilor, that is, he stood at one of the highest levels of an official’s career. The work was first published only 17 years after it was written.
Features of the poem:
Form - quatrain;
meter - iambic pentameter;
disyllabic foot with stress on the second syllable;
encircling rhyme (abba).
The poem begins unexpectedly, immediately showing the reader strong image: “Nature is a sphinx.” The missing verb adds some firmness and unambiguity to it. Further lines explain the idea expressed in the first. By rhyming “man” in the second line with “century” in the third, the poet points to the global nature of the philosophical problem under consideration, and the open ending speaks of pessimism, the indifference of nature to man.
Sphinx image
Tyutchev uses this strong image already at the beginning of the poem. He tells us about greatness, tranquility, mystery, but also cruelty. Suffice it to recall the mythical sphinx, the evil offspring of Typhon and Echidna, a winged maiden who devoured young men.From ancient Greek, sphinx (sphinga) is translated as “strangler”. The monster was sent to Thebes to ask travelers the most difficult riddles. There is no need to remind you what a terrible fate awaited those who were not wise enough to find the right answer.
We immediately see two images: nature, which is in human consciousness is associated with the mother who gives life, and the sphinx is a cruel monster who takes it away. That is, the reader is presented with two radically opposite images, which nevertheless combine into one, preserving the features of both. However, they still have something in common - wisdom. The riddles of the Sphinx, the answer to which not everyone can find, can only be thought of by a truly wise creature who has lived in the world for centuries. As for the wisdom of nature, it is beyond doubt.
Destructive force
Nature in Tyutchev’s poems, as already mentioned, is one of the central themes. But she appears in a completely different light. Sometimes she seems worried human feelings: The poet describes her as “smiling” and “laughing” in the joyful moments of his life, but in difficult moments he presents her to us as “eternal meaninglessness.” Nature, like the mythical sphinx, constantly throws riddles at man, forcing his mind to rush around in search of the truth. No matter how much he searches for answers, he will never solve its main mystery: the mystery of life and death. We can explore the world around us, in theory even conquer the vastness of the Universe, but we will never defeat time.
Nature appears as a truly cruel, destructive force: it creates us subject to withering and inevitable death. By her grace, our body is created fragile, and our mind is not perfect enough to comprehend all her secrets. But nature constantly tempts an inquisitive mind, its mystery beckons and forces us to look for the meaning of our existence.
For centuries, humanity has not been able to answer the question of why it exists; it has not been able to achieve harmony with the world around us. The search for meaning, or rather the realization that there is no single correct answer to this question, destroys the human mind, makes him realize the meaninglessness of his existence, and feels like just a small grain of sand in the Universe.
Nature's indifference
The poet admits that the mysteries of nature that humanity has been struggling with for centuries do not exist. Nature didn’t “invent” anything specifically for us, we are not the crown of creation, we are no more important than an ant, a stone or any other of her creations, she doesn’t care what we do, how we live and die, she doesn’t care, we’ll find Are we the answer to the question of what awaits a person after death? Nature exists on its own. She has no questions for the person, no expectations, she does not need the person at all.Conclusion
If we consider Tyutchev’s lyrics as a whole (namely, this approach, as already mentioned, can be considered the most correct), then, on the one hand, we see nature as indifferent and detached, which is difficult for the poet to come to terms with; his poems are imbued with a feeling of hopelessness and pain. But, on the other hand, only nature can heal a person. Although this idea is as old as the world itself, in Tyutchev’s poems it takes on new colors. Such contradictions and extremes are, perhaps, the basis of his lyrics; the poet seems to constantly rush between admiration for the beauty and grandeur of nature and fear of its power. Of course, most of the poems dedicated to nature are imbued with delight; the poet selflessly contemplates its beauty. But in late period his work, to which “Nature the Sphinx” belongs, notes of tragedy and fatalism increasingly appear in his works.
The poet has always been characterized by a search for truth, an answer to the question of the meaning of existence, and unraveling the mysteries of existence. He was concerned about fundamental questions of the universe. As the years passed, he became more and more aware of the inevitability of decline. He understood that against the backdrop of the vast and eternal Universe, human life is nothing. The further he went, the more he began to worry about the meaninglessness of human existence. He comes to the conclusion that life is useless, each individual person simply exists, he does not have any special mission, he comes into this world just like a tree, an insect or a stone.
In the poem, nature appears as a great temptress who managed to deceive a person, forcing him to think about riddles that do not exist at all. According to Tyutchev, a person can only admit his defeat and come to terms with the fact that nature will never show him its true face, that he will never find answers to his questions. Here we again come across a contradiction: nature is both mysterious and has no mysteries at the same time. At least those that a person can solve. The poet no longer sees the Sphinx as a living monster; he has turned into a lifeless stone statue.
However, Tyutchev still has life-affirming poems, although less often. In them he calls to live in spite of those forces that want to destroy us. He practically does not think about death, for him it is something that happens instantly, he does not romanticize it, does not expect anything from it.
The skill of F.I. Tyutchev aroused admiration among his contemporaries, and continues to do so to this day. Each short poem contains a deep thought. Perhaps the diplomatic service taught him to convey his experiences so succinctly. It is unlikely that many would be able to select images so skillfully in order to express in one quatrain all the pain of realizing the meaninglessness of life and make the reader also feel it, think: is it worth trying to unravel the mysteries of existence at all?
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev
Nature - Sphinx. And the more faithful she is
His temptation destroys a person,
What may happen, no longer
There is no riddle and she never had one.
Fyodor Tyutchev is rightfully considered a master of short quatrains, which are endowed with deep philosophical meaning. And this is not surprising, since the diplomatic service taught the poet to clearly formulate his thoughts, and natural observation gave extensive food for thought and conclusions, which formed the basis of many works. Moreover, the author himself admitted that they were born spontaneously. Tyutchev pondered some thought or idea, and the answer to the question posed was born in poetic form.
This is exactly what happened with the short quatrain “Nature is a sphinx. And that makes it more true...”, the first line of which already contains an intriguing statement. Indeed, no one has yet managed to unravel the secrets of the universe, and Tyutchev was one of those who at one time tried to do this. The author knew firsthand that in disputes about how exactly this world works, it was broken huge amount copies However, even the poets of the 19th century were conventionally divided into romantics and philosophers. The first described the beauty of nature and sincerely admired it. The latter tried to find answers to their questions through trial and error. It is noteworthy that Tyutchev was at heart both a romantic and a philosopher, which is clearly evident from his works. However, he considered it unacceptable for himself to spend rhymes praising the world around him, trying not only to find the meaning of man’s earthly existence, but also to draw parallels between various events and phenomena.
Poem “Nature is a sphinx. And that makes it more true...” was written in 1869, when the poet was already in his seventh decade and understood perfectly well that his life was approaching logical conclusion. It was then that he gave up trying to comprehend the secrets of this world. But not because I lost faith in own strength or tired of looking for explanations for the inexplicable. The author considers nature itself to be a great temptress who has so cleverly misled humanity that it has no choice but to admit its own defeat. Meanwhile, Tyutchev does not exclude the possibility that “it may turn out that she hasn’t had any riddles since the ages.” It’s just that people themselves wanted to believe in miracles and convinced themselves that they really existed. Meanwhile, the poet himself is convinced that any phenomenon has its own logical explanation, but the world is not yet ready to receive answers to its questions.
Isn’t it true that behind these few lines the character is already clearly visible! The ability to create an image from just one detail allowed Larisa Vasilyeva to densely and effectively populate the relatively small area of her “Albion...”
There are paradoxes, the validity of which has been proven by history. These, in my opinion, include the statement that no book can claim longevity if it does not meet the requirements of its time. A similar observation also applies to them - that only a book that is vitally necessary for a certain generation is needed by the entire people.
Before “Albion and the Mystery of Time,” Larisa Vasilyeva’s peers did not have “their own” book about England. But she had to appear. It should have been, if only because the writer’s peers became participants in such historical events recently, such shifts in the socio-political life of our planet, such as, for example, the European Conference in Helsinki.
Larisa Vasilyeva's book meets the demand of the time - to create authentically within the framework of the so-called international theme works of art, expressing Lenin’s peace policy, steadily pursued by our party, our state.
Patiently studying Soviet statesmen opinions, positions of representatives of other countries, calmly and persistently seek opportunities for agreement, achieve agreements... And other authors of books written about other countries are limited in best case scenario only a statement of how different our social systems, and at worst - variations of the well-known “formula”: “And you hang blacks!” It is clear that the task of establishing the principles of peaceful coexistence does not remove the task of exposing capitalism. But not through arrogant, self-satisfied and often hypocritical edification, but through a truly artistic word. In “Albion...” many images are drawn that are essentially murderous for bourgeois society. But something else is very important...
Do we have books by writers who, while talking about capitalist countries, would continue to use fiction, so to speak, in its own way, in its own aspect, those gigantic efforts to establish relations on earth based on the principles of peaceful coexistence, which are being undertaken by the leaders of the party and government of the Soviet Union? There is, of course, but it’s still not enough. And Larisa Vasilyeva’s book is just such a book.
It contains a persistent search for what spiritual qualities, cultural values, global tasks, etc. can become the basis of friendship between peoples. And not just a search, but a statement of the found basis. The chapter “The Step of a Mechanical Beast” is very characteristic in this sense, with the most important lines for evaluating the entire book:
“I sat stunned and deaf at a concert of a popular pop group in London, surrounded by screaming, roaring, whistling teenagers.
Ugliness! - I want to scream at first. - Stop the disgrace!
These are children, so kind and gentle, so stubborn and persistent, so understandable and complex, so close to home just half an hour before the concert. Half an hour after the concert, having cooled and dried, they will become the same as we know and love them. Now in the moments of this scream, roar, frenzy, what motivates their impulses? I want to understand this, not to judge, but only to understand.”
“As we know and love them,” says soviet man looking at English teenagers. “Our children,” the Soviet mother thinks about the children of all peoples of the Earth...
In front of me on the desk is “Pravda” with a TASS article about L. I. Brezhnev’s reception of the heads of diplomatic missions.
“Taking this opportunity,” said Leonid Ilyich, “I ask you to convey to the heads of your states, the leaders of your countries the following: “In essence, there is no country and people in the world with which Soviet Union would not like to have a good relationship;
there is no such relevant international problem, to the solution of which the Soviet Union would not be ready to contribute;
there is no such source of military danger that the Soviet Union would not be interested in eliminating through peaceful means;
There is no such type of weapons, and above all weapons of mass destruction, that the Soviet Union would not be ready to limit, ban on a reciprocal basis, by agreement with other states, and then remove from arsenals.
The Soviet Union will always be an active participant in any negotiations, any international action aimed at developing peaceful cooperation and strengthening the security of peoples.”
Larisa Vasilyeva's book is a contribution to the implementation of these principles.
Ekaterina Sheveleva
Nature - sphinx. And the more faithful she is
with his temptation he destroys a man,
that, it may turn out, no longer
There is no riddle and she never had one.
F. I. Tyutchev
Albion…
(Instead of a foreword)
...I dream about my childhood: in a cramped kitchen, filled to the ceiling with the sickening smell of pork stew, I, half dressed, chew as I go. The windows are black, but it's morning. Hastily buttoning up my fur coat and wrapping myself in a scarf, I run out. Frost in the face. Ural winter. The smell of stew, slowly diminishing, curls behind me. I go around the house, run across the road - two lights are visible on the road in the distance: a car is approaching - and, stumbling, I dive into a very rough snow field. In the summer there was an unpaved road here, dug up by truck wheels, and now there are potholes - snowy mountains. One of them is the deepest, I try to pass it and keep falling into it. Here she is again! In frustration, I stamp my felt boots and look up. It seems to me that I am alone in the world at the bottom of a huge white bowl and above me there is only the bottomless blackness of the sky with a single star in it. The light of the star is white, prickly, mesmerizing. I want to look at her, thinking that when the war ends, the light will break, and in this light I am Cinderella, the princess, Vasilisa...
Hey, where are you?
Ritka is calling me. I climb out of the hole and we run to school together.
She is small and big-headed. And he never dreams of any nonsense. She will be a mathematician, because there is no problem in the second grade textbook that she cannot solve. Ritka smells faintly of the same pork stew, and I turn away from her - I hate this smell.
I wake up... At first it’s hard to understand where I am. Well, yes, England, London apartment, but why does it smell like stew, like in childhood? The whole room is filled with this smell. It was as if he had floated out of a dream with me. It turns out that my neighbor Mrs. Kenton simply fries an egg and a pork cutlet for breakfast for her husband; it smells exactly like those English canned goods of my wartime childhood. And at that very moment I suddenly understand that I will certainly write a book about England.
Several years in a foreign country. Not for a moment did I lose the consciousness that I was participating in some extraneous play. After all, somewhere at this very minute my drama or comedy is going on without me, in which the absence of a character is not felt.
How wonderful it is to come to England as a tourist, to see from the window of a bus the lace of Westminster and the marble of Trafalgar, to satisfy a passionate desire to stand on Waterloo Bridge, an unremarkable bridge associated in our memory with a sentimentally popular wartime film, to stand at the tombs of lords and mistresses, fingering pages of a history textbook refreshed in memory before the trip high school, marvel at the shopping streets; out of the corner of your ear, from a guide, to hear that the pound sterling has risen or fallen on the stock exchange, but not to pay almost any attention to this fact, because it does not concern you; watch on TV, having difficulty understanding the words, although I have studied this language throughout my entire adult life through school and university programs, an evening film about an abandoned haunted house, where a young couple arrives and where the young wife has to become a victim of black forces, but in the end, the courage of her husband everything is arranged; pause to walk across the slabs of Stratford, where Shakespeare supposedly lived, and, boarding a plane on the way back, know for sure that England is seen, understood, and even, if you read something at home regarding Politics, economics, culture, you can write an essay or even a series of essays - sort of lively sketches from nature with a good, solid title “At the level of the Greenwich Meridian”, or “British Changes”, or somewhat more romantic and broader - “Foggy Albion without Fog”.
The quatrain, written at the end of his life, is filled with deep philosophical meaning. Realizing that he earthly path comes to its logical end, Tyutchev abandoned his attempt to learn the secrets of the universe. He thinks: perhaps there are no mysteries?
Maybe everything is extremely simple? A person comes into this world to simply walk his path and fulfill his destiny. At the same time for many years The diplomatic service taught him to express his opinions in neat, veiled phrases. In one short, laconic quatrain, Tyutchev was able to fit all his thoughts about the meaning of existence. And at the same time, he was able to show the eternal problem of the meaning of existence in a fairly expanded form with a complete phrase.
Written in iambic pentameter, two-syllable foot and encircling rhyme.
For readers captivated by Tyutchev’s work, it is not surprising that all the poet’s works are woven from contrasts. So here, on the one hand, nature is a sphinx, cruel and merciless, mysterious and incomprehensible. On the other hand - There is no riddle and she never had one.
It is inexplicable how two such things could coexist in a poet at the same time. different people. One admired nature, admired the unique beauty of the world. This is especially eloquently evidenced by his early landscape lyrics. The other was filled with a feeling of bitterness and incomprehensible tragedy, especially at the end of his life’s journey.
What gave rise to such thoughts? Perhaps his personal, unsuccessful life left such an imprint on Tyutchev’s work. But, deprived of the support of his beloved woman, the poet over time began to think more and more about the frailty of existence. Against the background of the majesty of nature, a person’s life no longer seems so significant to him, he no longer attaches such colossal importance to it. It's amazing how personal circumstances influence the creativity of talented people.
Analysis of the poem Nature is the Sphinx. And the more faithful it is... according to plan
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Nature is a sphinx. And the more faithful she is
His temptation destroys a person,
What may happen, no longer
There is no riddle and she never had one.
Analysis of the poem “Nature is the Sphinx” by Tyutchev
Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev is a master of short and succinct works, both in content and in color. His poems can easily be described by the saying “Brevity is the sister of talent,” since in a few lines the author displays deep philosophical thoughts, which cannot always be clearly expressed even in long treatises. The poem "Nature is a Sphinx" is an excellent example of the poet's ability to express a clear and complete thought in just four lines.
Tyutchev raises in his work the problem of philosophical existence, the meaning of life, the meaning of man in the world around him. The poets of his time were divided into philosophers and romantics, smashing the spears of their truth against each other. Fyodor Ivanovich was both a romantic and a philosopher, uniting the irreconcilable aspects of the thoughts of his contemporaries. He did not consider it necessary to spend the already short human life to praise the world around him, but believed that it was necessary to understand this world, to look for the meaning of earthly existence.
“Nature is a Sphinx” was written when Tyutchev’s life was already approaching sunset. This is that period in everyone’s life when it is worth looking back at what has been lived and accomplished, to comprehend whether the person left some kind of trace or did he “inherit it.” He refuses to try to comprehend the secrets of the world and the universe not because he has lost faith in the possibility of doing this. The reason for his refusal to search is completely different - the author assumes that man invented all the wonders of nature for himself and believed in them, but in fact “it may turn out that there is no mystery.” Everything can be solved logically, but humanity stubbornly continues to believe in some unsolved miracles, which, in fact, it invented for itself. The poet’s age also affects the mood of the work - nature seems like an eternity, but an eternity is meaningless, just like thinking about it.
The poem belongs to the genre philosophical lyrics. Written in iambic pentameter, disyllabic foot with stress on the second syllable, encircling rhyme. The peculiarity of the composition is contained in the first line - short strong phrase with a missing verb. It is also a beautiful metaphor - comparing nature with mythological creature posing unsolvable riddles to the travelers they meet. At the same time, nature does not need man and his research, just as the sphinx in her life does not need riddles for anyone. He lives his life, wise and calm.
Nature does not give man clues, since it is independent of him, and the world around us still remains the same sphinx.
