Dialogue of like-minded people: Letters from F.I. Tyutchev to E.F. Tyutcheva

Abstract

The aim of this study is to publish a letter from F.I. Tyutchev to his second wife E.F. Tyutcheva dated to September 24 (October 9), 1853. The article was written as a result of work with the translation of an autograph of the letter stored in the archive of the National Library of Russia. The letter contains the poem “Neman”. Correspondence with E.F. Tyutcheva is of great interest to the researcher, since the spouses touch upon not only family, personal, or secular topics, but also discuss historical events and social issues. F.I. Tyutchev manifests himself as a thinker turning to an equal interlocutor. Philosophical poetry of F.I. Tyutchev, dedicated to the historical events of 1812, correlates with the general aesthetic orientation of his work. Of particular importance is the fact that some of his poems with reflections on difficult phenomena of history, human being, and sensual world are either dedicated or addressed in letters to E.F. Pfeffel-Dörnberg (Tyutcheva). Poetics of lyrical fragments of F.I. Tyutchev is considered within the framework of the approach proposed by Yu.N. Tynyanov, relying on biographical materials indicated in the monographs of K.V. Pigarev and V.V. Kozhinova. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the autograph of the letter from September 24 (October 9), 1853 was deciphered and translated from French for the first time. The study revealed that the text of the letter containing the famous poem by F.I. Tyutchev “Neman” is significantly different from that published earlier, in 1914.

Keywords

• f.i. tyutchev
• philosophical lyrics
• lyrical fragment
• letters
• e.f. tyutcheva