Reviews

Poems Of Night And Day by Fyodor Tyutchev

kingofspain93's review against another edition

5.0

Tyutchev’s reliance on religious imagery means that several of his poems resolve falsely, with more interesting interrogations of topics like beauty and pain rendered inaccessible by the big brainless blah that is Christianity. however when he writes about the women in his life and the unlit parts of the mind his voice resounds:

Two alien worlds are yours by fate:

Your day - a fierce distempered feeling;

Your dream at night - a vague revealing

Of life divine and ultimate.

in the later poems Tyutchev seems much sadder and lonelier, and more aware of his isolated position within his own mind. while I don't connect to his nature poetry, I think that his descriptions of how nature entices and comforts (or at times fails to comfort) him deepen when undertaken in this somber mood. gone is the panacea of faith; here is a world that outlives us, where it is 

dreadful for the soul to see

That its best memories are dying out.

or where:

Our phantom years are vain in Nature’s scheme,

And all the same - all one - our living past.

We vaguely feel we are ourselves her dream,

Illusions all, - in emptiness conceived.

Tyutchev understood that it was possible to be alone in one's own mind and still to be stricken with visions and in love with the world.

Kayden’s translation is a little formal; for contrast, try Nabokov’s translation of Silentium! I hope I get the chance to read other, less grandiose translations of Tyutchev’s work into English in the future. 

passion's review against another edition

dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

5.0