F.I.Tyutchev: Fountain of Love or Torrent of Misery?
A.Charumati Ramdas
CIEFL,Hyderabad
In 1836 , when Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev wrote the poem Fountain,he probably did not know that this poem is going to depict the whole course of his life.Though, the poem indicated Tyutchev's psychological state at that point of time, strangely enough, his later life continued to follow the pattern of a fountain which rises up, shinihg in the Sun ,Scattering a damp smoke.Rising towards the sky,it touches the cherished peak-and is again destined to fall upon the earth like dust------,the poet wonders what is pushing it towards the Sun,how greedily it rushes to the sky,but an unseen-fatal hand breaks its stubborn ray and pushes it down from the height! 1But after every fall Tyutchev,the creator, like his creation,rose again and again to attain that blissful,fascinating height of love, but alas,he was not to stay there for ever---the fall----in the form of scattered drops---was imminent.
The year 1836,when this poem was written,was full of mixed feelings for the poet. Many good and bad incidents took place. His relationship with Ernestina Dyornberg, who was to become his second wife, was becoming the talk of the society. Unable to bear her husband's behaviour, his wife Eleonora attempted to end her life by hurting herself with a knife. The incident got wide publicity and Tyutchev had to explain to the authorities that it was due to the gushing of blood to her brain that she was forced to get rid of this "unbearable suffering" by making a wayout for the blood stream.Tyutchev wrote to the attache' of the Russian Diplomatic Mission in Munich,I.S. Gagarin on 3rd May 1836:
"Last evening while I was writing to you,I could not decide to tell you about the tragedy that has befallen me. However, considering carefully all the circumstances, I prefer to report to you about how it all happened,so that you don't give importance to false and exaggerated rumours. This is what happened:
My wife seemed to be improving after she stopped breast feeding her last child. The doctor, however, was apprehensive that her old physical ailment might revive again. And really, that morning, when it happened, it started with great convulsions.She was given bath, which eased the condition to some extent. Since she seemed alright by 4o'clock, I left to the town for lunch.I came back home,fully confident that all is well, and there I came to know about the unfortunate incident. I rushed to her room and found her lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Later, she herself told me that an hour after I left the house, she felt as if a strong stream of blood was gushing towards her head, all her thoughts got confused and she was left with a hazy feeling of grief and an inevitable desire to get rid of it. Unfortunately,her aunt had just left the house and her sister too was not in the room when it happened......looking into her cupboard, she suddenly caught hold of a little dagger which was lying there since last year's masquerade. She fetched it and struck into her chest many times with it. Fortunately, none of the strokes proved fatal. Bleeding and still feeling the same uneasiness, sheran down the stairs, started running on the street and fell down at about 300 steps away from the house. She was unconscious. People brought her home. Her life lay in danger for 24 hours and she regained consciousness only after the blood was released from her body by putting 40 leaches. Now she is out of danger but it will still take a long time for her to get normal.
Dear Gagarin, if somebody tries to present it in a romantic colour, please try to dispel teh false arguments.My love affair has demeaned itself so much that all the sane people would prefer to consider the "psychological ailment" as the cause behind the incident.2
May be Eleonora had been experiencing these "psychological symptoms" earlier as well, but she did not hurt herself so fatally. Why was it related to the year 1836, to the Ernestina-Tyutchev affair? Whatever was the real cause behind the tragic incident, one thing is clear that Eleonora was quite disturbed with these developements and Tyutchev probably felt that from the highest cherished height he was pushed down to the earth,scattered and broken like his Fountain.
But once again, he did not remain content with the situation. He rose again, again reached Zenith,to fall down again. This was his life-his lust for love! It was a soul which could not exist without being surrounded by love, without which he would die like a fish thrown out of water.
But this "eternal lover" was never satisfied with a single object of his love. He needed a wife at home - whom he loved intensely- and a beloved at the periphery whom he loved madly, who inspired him to create those immortal poems. He remained faithful to both of them and at the same time deceived them both. He always remained a soul on the "threshold".
O,my prophetic soul!
O, my anxious heart,
Ah, how are you beating on the threshold of a dual existence!
So, you-the resident of the two worlds, your day is sick and fervent
Your sleep-prophetically hazy
Like the revelation of souls..... 3
It began with his fascination with Amalia Lerkhenfeld, whom he gifted his golden strap and from whom he received a silken one.
Fyodor Ivanovich first met Amalia in 1822 when she was just 14. Thw first meeting left an everlasting impression on him and he made it immortal in the poem Я помню время золотое (I remember the golden time......),which was written in the year 1830 when he had already married Eleonora.This is something peculiar of Tyutchev. He continues living in the past, while admiring the present.The distance in terms of time and space acted as a gravitational force on him,he was attracted to a particular point in time and space, where he was not present at the given moment. The past affairs remained fresh in his memory. During his last days when he was bedridden, Amalia paid him a visit. That was probably the indication of Fyodor Ivanovich's completing the full circle of his life, which was love life.
The affair( which was not at all serious) ended up in1825. A.S.Kryudener who was also in love with Amalia and waas a serious contender, called for a dual and Fyodor Ivanovich saw hisbeloved marrying Kryudener.
The fascination for Amalia gradually turned into friend, but there was always a feeling of affaction mingled with it.
Soon after Amalia's marriage Tyutchev marries Eleonora Peterson, who was a widow. She was a very beautiful, kind and affectionate person, who took care of Fyodor Ivanovich's household.
Fyodor Ivanovich was serving in the diplomatic mission and he spent a large part of his life outside Russia. He was never serious with his job and consequently did not get a desired hike either in his pay pay packet or in his position. This led to some frustration and economic hardship. Eleonora found it difficult to manage the household but some how she pulled on. During the eleven years that she lived with him, she always tried to make him happy and was ready to do anything for this.
In a poem written in 1858 i.e. twenty years after Eleonora's death, Tyutchev compares her love with the ray of Sun lighting his room:
Так мила-благодатноб
Воздушна и светла
Душе моей стократноб
Любовь твоя была.
But Tyutchev's restless soul could not remain content with this calm and pacifying love. He was destined to live a fiery, uncomfortable love life. This time the woman at the periphery was Ernestina Dyornberg whom he met in1833 at a carnival. She had come there along with her husband, who suddenly took ill and suggesting that Ernestina should stay back he left the place. While taking leave of Fyodor Ivanovich he said, "I entrust my wife to you" Uttered in a lighter vein, these words proved so significant later. Dyornberg died of pneumonia a few days later. But Tyutchev's fascination for Ernestina refused to die. It was in 1836 that this affair became the talk of the society. Eleonora wrote to her Russian relatives that "everthing was false and unpleasant" in Fyodor's behaviour, who was often getting "bored and irritated", was inciting her to go to Russia for the whole winter. This is when Eleonora tried to kill herself, but fortunately she survived the attempt. Tyutchev leaves Munich and gets posted in Turin.
While Eleonora along with her three daughters was travelling from Petersburg to Munich to join her husband, the ship met with a fire accident. Very courageously she saved her daughters but herself received severe burns. Eleonora died in Sept. 1838. Tyutchev was mourning. Ernestina's love enabled him to overcome this grief and inspired to live the life. On the fifth anniversary of Eleonora's death he wrote to her: "Today's date - 9th of Sept. - is a very sad date for me. It was the most horrible day of my life, and had it not been you - it could have probably been the last day of my life." 4 Fyodor Ivanovich loved Eleonora, he never forgot her, he always thought that she is still his. This is when he wrote the poem "ещё томлюсь тоской желаний........." (I still get tired of the grief of desire), where in he says that "your lovely profile is always before me, everywhere, unattainable, unchanging, like a star in the night sky......."
"Твой милый образ, незабвенный,
он предо мной везде, всегда,
недостижимый, неизменный,
как ночью на небе звезда......."
But life goes on ......... it has to go on, and Tyutchev married Ernestina in July 1839. Ernestina accompanied the poet throughout his life. One would get shocked at the patience and the inner strength of this lady. The whole family was shocked by the "uncontrollable" behaviour of the poet, it caused misery to the numerous women he loved and to himself as well. His daughter Darya Fyodorovna wrote to her sister in 1873 that the circumstances of his old age fascinations "force me to wish that you do not always find yourself in papa's company. No matter how unwell he is, how much pity does he call for, it is better to maintain a sort of moral barrier between him and us .......... Excuse me for this remark, please! "5
But Ernestina did not leave him. She witnessed his affair with the foreigner Gortenzia Lappa in the 40's. Gortenzia brought up two of Tyutchev's sons. Ernestina, who was entitled for pension after the poet's death, gave it to Lapp, who continued receiving it for twenty long years. Ernestina was financially well off and Lapp was very poor. The pension helped Lapp and her children.
One would be amazed to think why did Ernestina not divorce Tyutchev, or why did she not create scenes on knowing about Tyutchev's affair of the 50's and 60's with E.A. Denisova. It was the saga of this love which enriched the Russian literature with beautiful, precious poems. It was the saga of selfless love,sacrifice and suffering leading to the untimely death of Denisova.
The man on the threshold met Elena Aleksandrovna Denisova (1826-1864) in 1846, who used to visit the poet's household along with her aunt, A.D. Deniseva, inspector of Smolnyi institute where poet's daughters were studying. Elena Aleksandrovna was also a student of the same institute. She was just 20 at that time, while Fyodor Ivanovich was about 42 years old. Deniseva belonged to an ancient but poor noble family. She lost her mother at a very early age and was brought up by her aunt. Tyutchev used to visit his daughters at the Institute and Elena Aleksandrovna as well. The fascination of Fyodor Ivanovich towards her grew up gradually, and at last he got "such a deep, such a self sacrificing, such an emotional and energetic love from her that she captured his hole existence and he,for ever remained her captive ......... ."6 In 1850 Tyutchev went on a trip with Deniseva and his daughter. On 15th JUly 1865 he remembered the day when Deniseva became his secret wife:
"Сегодня друг, пятнадцать лет минуло
С того блаженно - рокового дня,
Как душу свою она вдохнула
Как всю себя перелила в меня."
[Today, friend, fifteen years have passed since that blissful- fatal day, when she breathed in her soul and poured herself out into me.]
Very apt description of the day, which Tyutchev calls 'blissful - fatal'. It was "blissful" for him and "fatal for her!"
Their love affair acquired the dimensions of a scandal in the Petersburg society. Since Tyutchev was already married, he could not marry Deniseva, the society accused her, it ostracized her and not him. The doors of those houses, where she was always welcomed, were closed at her for ever. Her father renounced her. Her aunt was forced to leave the Smolnyi institute and stay in a private house along with her cousin.
The Tyutchev - Deniseva saga of love continued for 14 years, until she died. They had three children. Though they were registered as Tyutchevs in the record books, this did not help them from being branded as "illegal" children of the poet, nor did it give them any right on Tyutchev's property.
Shunned by all, because of this love affair, Deniseva became very religious, irritating, sick. She loved Fyodor Ivanovich with great passion, was very possessive about him and demanding too! This love brought a few happy and more unhappy moments into her life. In one of his letters to A.I. Georgevsky, written after Deniseva's death, Tyutchev describes her in the following way.
"You know, she, inspite of her highly poetic nature, or, better say, thanks to it, did not at all care for any poems, not even mine - she liked only those of mine, where my love towards her found an expression - where it was expressed loudly, so loudly that the whole world could hear it. This is what was precious to her, that the whole world knew what was she for me - this was the best happiness for her, this was the demand of her soul, the ambition of her life...
I remember, once in Badene, while we were taking a stroll, she asked me to seriously take up the second edition of my poems, and with so much affection did she confess that she would be very happy if on the top of this edition appeared her name-not name, but she, she herself. And you know - instead of gratitude, instead of love and adoration, I, don't know why, disagreed with her, I thought that in this demand there was no greatness at all, and fully knowing how I, the whole lof mine, belonged to her, she should not require any printed declarations to that effect, which could have insulted other persons. This was followed by one of those scenes, which carried her more and more towards the Volkov grounds and me - towards what does not even have a name in any human language ........ Oh, how justified was she in her most critical demands, how well she knew for sure what is going to happen to her as a result of my ignorance of what constituted the essence of her life. How many times did she repeat that a time, time of horrible, merciless repentance will come in my life, but by that time it will be too late! I heard her - but did not understand. I, probably, thought that since her love knew no limits, the strength of her life is also endless - and how mean it was of me! - to all her sighs and tears - I answered with the foolish phrase - "You want the impossible ........ 7"
Some critics say that this love affair affected Tyutchev's career to a great extent. Some others opine that Tyutchev was never serious with his job and his social status too did not suffer because of Deniseva. While Deniseva was ostracized by the higher society, Tyutchev remained a welcome guest of the aristocratic drawing rooms. He did not desert his family as well. He could not ......... he needed two points of support - one at the centre and the other at the periphery of the circle. While the point at the periphery could move along any where, the centre i.e. his legal wife, his home, always remained fixed. This resulted in a painful, split personality. He felt guilty before both of them, hence there is pain, melancholy in his poetry.
The sufferings of Deniseva, this much talked about "secret love", left a very beautiful set of poems known as the Deniseva collection (Denisevsky Tsikl).
Examined in totality, they describe the Tyutchev - Deniseva affair step by step, its dramatic development, pshychological collisions, mental agony of characters which expressed the social collisions of his time, the evil of his time with great force.
The magic texture of these poems not only reflects the "desire", but also the limitations, obstacles that come in the way of lovers, mould their fate.
Deniseva collection depicts the tragedy of man, whose love depended not only on the desire of lovers but on the conditions over which they had no control.
The first among these poems appeared in 1850 and the last one in 1868 - four years after Deniseva's death.
In the first poem one can witness the tranquility which the poet feels while he is with her:
Как ни дышит полдень знойный
В растворенное окно,
В этой храмине спокойной,
Где всё тихо и темно",
.....................................
.....................................
И в мерцанье полусвета,
Тайной страстью занята,
Здесь влюбленного поэта
Веет легкая мечта.
[No matter how hot and humid the afternoon is, in this peaceful little temple everything is calm and dark. Here the cherished dream of the lover poet is fluttering with a secret desire.]
Obviously these were the first days of Tyutchev - Deniseva's love story. Everything is calm, tranquile.
But as mentioned earlier, he could not love her with the same passion as was shown by her and in response to her complaint he wrote:
O? не тревожь меня укорой справедливой!
Поверь, из нас из двух завидней часть твоя:
Ты любишь искренно и пламенно, а я -
Я на тебя гляжу с досадой ревнивой.
И жалкий чародей, перед волшебным миром,
Мной созданным самим, без веры я стою-
И самого себя, краснея, сознаю
Живой души твоей безжизненным кумиром.
[Please, don't excite me with your reasonable complaint!
Believe, out of the two, the enviable role is yours:
You love sincerely and ardently and me -
I look at you with a sad envy.
And the miserable charmer, in front of the magical world
Created by me, stand without any faith -
And with a red face,confess myself
As the lifeless owner of your lively soul.]
And at the same time he writes to Ernestina: "Ah, how much better you are then me, how high! How much dignity and seriousness is in your love, and how mean and miserable I find myself before you!"
Deniseva's first child was born in 1851. Probably she strived hard to possess Fyodor Ivanovich, this feeling is expressed in this poem:
О как убийственно мы любим,
Как в буйной слепоте страстей
Мы то всего вернее губим,
Что сердцу нашему милей!
Давно ль, гордясь своей победой,
Ты говорил: Она моя ............
Год не прошёл - спроси и сведай,
Что уцелело от нея?
Куда ланит девались розы,
Улыбка уст и блеск очей?
Все опалили, выжгли слёзы
Горючей влагой своей.
Ты помнишь ли, при нашей встрече,
При первой встрече роковой,
Её волшебный взор, и речи
И смех младенческий - живой?
И что же теперь? И где всё это?
И долговечен ли был сон?
Увы, как северное лето,
Был мимолетным гостем он!
Судьбы ужасным приговором
Твоя любовь для ней была,
И незаслуженным позором
На жизнь её она легла!
Жизнь отреченья, жизнь страдания!
В её душевной глубине
Ей оставались вспоминанья...
Но изменили и оне.
И на земле ей дико стало,
Очарование ушло ......
Толпа, нахлынув, в грязь втоптала
То, что в душе её цвело.
И что ж от долгого мученья,
Как пелл, сберечь ей удалось?
Боль, злую боль ожесточенья
Боль без отрады и без слёз
О, как убийственно мы любим
Как в буйной слепоте страстей
Мы то всего вернее губим
Что сердцу нашему милей!..........."
[O how deadly we love and how in this blindness of stormy desires we kill all that is so dear to our heart!
Was it long back that I was proud of my victory over her, I said - she is mine, but hardly a year passed - look and ask yourself what is left of her?
Where has the smile of her rosy lips, the shine of the eyes, the dampness of her tears gone?
Do you remember the magic in her eyes, her smile - innocent like a child - during that first, fatal meeting with her?
And what is left now? Where has all that gone? The dream passed away like the northern summer, like a passing guest! Your love proved like a death sentence for her.
Living an isolated, miserable life, she was left only with memories, but even they have deserted her.
It became unbearable to live on the earth, the charm gone, the crowd trampled all that was blooming in her heart:
And what could she save from this long suffering was only a joyless,tearless pain like ashes.]
Deniseva died in Aug. 1864. Remembering her last days Tyutchev wrote in Oct. -Nov. 1864:
Весь день она лежала в забытьи
И всю её уж тени покрывали.
Лил теплый летний дождь - его струи
По листьям весело звучали.
И медленно опомнилась она,
И начала прислушиваться к шуму,
И долго слушала - увлечена
Погружена в сознательную думу ........
И вот, как бы беседуя с собой,
Сознательно она проговорила
(Я был при ней, убитый, но живой):
"О, как всё это я любила!"
Любила ты, и так, как ты, любить -
Нет, никому ещё не удавалось!
О господи! ....... и это пережить ....
И сердце на клочки не разорвалось....."
[Whole day she was lying in drowsiness, but the shadows were already covering her whole existence, the warm rain was happily striking the leaves.
Slowly she regained consciousness, and started listening to the noise,listened for a long time,And slowly said (I was by her side, dead, but still alive):"Oh, how I loved all this."
You loved, and loved, as no one else could ever love! O God! - To bear even this.......And my heart did not tear into pieces .........]
Yes, she loved the world, she loved him and whenever there were doubts about his love she would argue:
Не говори: меня он, как и прежде любит,
Мной, как и прежде дорожит.......
О нет! Он жизнь бесчеловечно губит,
Хоть, вижу нож в руке его дрожит.
То в гневе, то в слезах, тоскуя, негодуя,
Увлечена, в душе уязавлена,
И стражду, не живу ....... им, им Одним живу я -
Но эта жизнь! ..... О, как горька она!
Он мерит воздух мне так бережно и скудно.......
Не мерят так и лютому врагу.......
Ох, я дышу ещё болезненно и трудно.
Могу дышать, но жить уж не могу.
[Don't tell me: he loves me as before,protects me as before. Oh, no! he is killing me inhumanly, I can see a knife trembling in his hands.
Though irritated, in tears, in grief, attracted to him, with a wounded soul,suffering, I don't live .........I live only by him -but this life!..... Oh, how bitter it is!
He measures the air to me so carefully, so stingily ....One does not measure even the most hated enemy like that.Oh, I am still breathing, sickly and with difficulty, I can breath, but am no longer able to live].
Tyutchev was grief stricken, he repented, the feeling of having done injustice did not leave him for a long time, but in 1870, when Amalia Kryudener visited him, his heart again remembered the "Golden Time".
Я встретил вас - и всё былое
В отжившем сердце ожило,
Я вспомнил время золотое -
И сердцу стало тепло .........
Как поздней осени порою
Бывают дни, бывает час,
Когда повеет вдруг весною
И что-то встрепенется в нас,-
Так весь обвеян дуновеньем
Тех лет душевной полноты
С давно забытым упоеньем
Смотрю на милые черты.....
Как после вековой разлуки,
Гляжу на вас, как бы во сне,
И вот - слышнее стали звуки,
Не умолкавшие во мне.........
Тут не одно воспоминанье,
Тут жизнь заговорила вновь, -
И то же в вас очарованье,
И та же в дуще моей любовь.
Though Tyutchev had a habit of being constantly in love - having an affair not acceptable to the society, an affair which brought only misery to the beloved, - he always found himself under the stress of a guilt. Probably it is this grief that has given such a precious treasure to the Russian literature.
Notes
- Tyutchev F.I, Sochineniya, vol. 1, M. 1984, p. 99.
- Ibid. vol. 2. pp. 15-16.
- Ibid. vol. I.P. 173.
- Pigarev K. F.I. Tyutchev I evo vremya, M. 1978 p. 102-103.
- Chulkov George, Poslednyaya Lyubov Tyutcheva, L. 1928, pp 64-65.
- Pigarev K. F.I. Tyutchev I evo vremya. M. 1978, p. 155.
- Tyutchev F.I. Sochineniya vol. 2, M. 1984, pp. 274-275.
Bibliography
- Tyutchev F.I. Sochineniya, vols. 1&2, M. 1984, p. 99.
- Pigarev K. F.I. Tyutchev I evo vremya, M. 1978, pp. 102-103.
- Chulkov George, Poslednyaya Lyubov Tyutcheva, L. 1928, pp 64-65.
- Pigarev K. F.I. Tyutchev I evo vremya, M. 1978, p. 155.
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F.I. TYUTCHEV: FOUNTAIN OF LOVE OR FOUNTAIN OF MISERY?
A.Charumati Ramdas
F.I. Tyutchev, who has left a deep imprint on Russian poetry, who was the favourite of stalwarts like I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy, A.S. Pushkin, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky and others, could easily be called a “Fountain of Love”. It was the depiction of emotions and feelings that made his poetry so near and dear to each heart. The depth, the beauty, the simplicity of depiction is marvelous in Tyutchev’s poems.
Tyutchev’s love poems could be termed autobiographical. His was a heart, which always needed to love. In addition to “a legal wife” at any point of time, he always had “someone at the periphery”, who could not enter into his “legal” world, who inspired him to create masterpieces.
About six women influenced Tyutchev’s life, two of whom were his legal wives. But the love affair that was instrumental in the creation of immortal “Deniseva Collection” was with E.A. Deniseva. Tyutchev loved each of these women with the same sincerity and affection. Love was the necessity of his existence. He lived and loved, but what did that love bring to the objects of his love except misery and sufferings?
In this paper an attempt is being made to look at some of the masterpieces of F.I. Tyutchev and get a glimpse of the psyche of the poet at that point of time.
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कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें
टिप्पणी: केवल इस ब्लॉग का सदस्य टिप्पणी भेज सकता है.