Fyodor Tyutchev - Poetry

Poetry

Tyutchev is one of the most memorized and quoted Russian poets. Occasional pieces, translations and political poems constitute about a half of his overall poetical output.

The 200 or so lyric pieces which represent the core of his poetic genius, whether describing a scene of nature or passions of love, put a premium on metaphysics. Tyutchev's world is bipolar. He commonly operates with such categories as night and day, north and south, dream and reality, cosmos and chaos, still world of winter and spring teeming with life. Each of these images is imbued with specific meaning. Tyutchev's idea of night, for example, was defined by critics as "the poetic image often covering economically and simply the vast notions of time and space as they affect man in his struggle through life". In the chaotic and fathomless world of "night", "winter", or "north" man feels himself tragically abandoned and lonely. Hence, a modernist sense of frightening anxiety permeates his poetry. Unsurprisingly, it was not until the late 19th and early 20th century that Tyutchev was rediscovered and hailed as a great poet by the Russian Symbolists such as Vladimir Solovyov, Andrey Bely and Alexander Blok.

Read more about this topic:  Fyodor Tyutchev

Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.
    Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)

    Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing
    with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring
    with replacing the noun. It is doing that always
    doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.
    Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and
    pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is
    what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no
    matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a
    great many kinds of poetry.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)