Tyutchev - Tyutchev (English notation) / Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev

A Russian poet. Born into a distinguished aristocratic family. He showed precocious talent while studying at Moscow University. After graduating, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1821) and worked as a diplomat in Munich and Turin for 17 years, spending 22 years abroad. As a result, he had little contact with the literary world of his home country, and even after returning to Russia, he worked as a foreign documents censor, so he never had a strong sense of himself as a poet. In the secular world, he was known as a sharp-tongued socialite and a Slavophile who advocated pan-Slavism. His full-fledged appearance on the poetic scene was in 1836 with 24 pieces titled "Poems sent from Germany" published in the magazine "Contemporaries," edited by Pushkin, but he did not attract the attention of the literary world until Nekrasov noticed him in 1850. Turgenev's first collection of short poems, published in 1954, only gained a small following, and it was only after his death, with the emergence of the fin de siècle Symbolists who saw Tyutchev as their progenitor, that he was finally recognized as a great poet on a par with Pushkin. Most of his works are short poems, some of which are just a few lines long, and are close to aphorisms, such as "Russia cannot be understood with the mind, it can only be believed in." Many of his masterpieces are on the themes of love and nature, and they strongly reflect the ego of modern people who lost their faith after the French Revolution, became abnormally bloated, and became corrupt, suffering from the divisions and contradictions of their own selves. His poems, which revolve around dualistic polarities such as an inner storm likened to the raging power of nature, the shadow of death already lurking in spring, hopeless love that leads to a duel rather than a union of hearts, and the dazzling younger generation moving forward in the reality of midday while the older generation takes refuge in the darkness of night, are markedly influenced by German idealist philosophy and uniquely reflect the introspective romantic tendencies of Russian intellectuals of the time who had acquired dialectical thinking. Tyutchev can be said to have formed a new school of poetry that was established by assimilating grandiose images into fragmentary forms and "ideological and philosophical images" that were not suited to lyric poetry.

[Yo Shimada]

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

ロシアの詩人。由緒ある貴族の家柄に生まれる。モスクワ大学在学中から早熟な才能を示す。卒業後外務省に入り（1821）、外交官としてミュンヘン、トリノで17年間勤務し、外国滞在は22年に上った。したがって祖国の文壇との接触が少なく、帰国後も外国文書検閲官の職にあったので、終生詩人としての意識は希薄で、世俗的には社交界の毒舌家、汎(はん)スラブ主義を掲げるスラブ主義者として聞こえた。詩壇への本格的登場は、1836年プーシキンの主宰する『同時代人』誌に「ドイツから送付された詩」と題して発表された24編の作品によるが、50年ネクラーソフが注目するまで文壇の関心をひかなかった。54年に出たツルゲーネフ編集の最初の小詩集も少数の理解者を得たにとどまり、結局プーシキンに並ぶ大詩人と認められるに至ったのは詩人の死後、自らの始祖をチュッチェフにみいだした世紀末のシンボリストの出現によってである。作品はほとんどが短詩であり、極端なものは数行を出ず、「ロシアは頭ではわからない、信ずることができるだけだ」のようにアフォリズムに近い。恋や自然をテーマとする作品に秀作が多く、そこにはフランス革命後、信仰を失って異常肥大し、堕落した近代人の分裂と矛盾に悩む自我が色濃く投影している。荒れ狂う自然の猛威に擬せられる内面の嵐(あらし)、春にすでに潜む死の影、心が結び合うのではなく決闘する絶望的な恋、真昼の現実を進む若い世代がまぶしく、夜の闇(やみ)に避難する老いの世代といった二元的対極構造を軸に展開する詩は、ドイツ観念論哲学の影響が著しく、弁証法的思考方法を身につけた当時のロシア知識人の内省的ロマン主義的傾向を独自に反映したものである。チュッチェフは、断片的形式に壮大な形象、叙情詩になじまぬ「思想的・哲学的形象」を消化吸収して成立した新たな流派を形成したといえよう。

［島田　陽］

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