Hebe and the thunderous goblet (about three texts of the “spring thunderstorm” by F. I. Tyutchev)
Outstanding literary texts, becoming pillars of national culture, are invariably simplified and schematized. They seem to be known to everyone, partly untouchable, and serious critical study of them is even contraindicated. In addition, any well-developed models, by definition, must be reduced synonyms. “Spring Thunderstorm” - Tyutchev’s exhibition poem - shared the fate of all traditionally textbook texts. Everyone knows the line “I love a thunderstorm at the beginning of May...”, but very few know about Hebe and the loudly boiling cup. Meanwhile, the last stanza of the poem was obviously precious for Tyutchev, since he transferred it without changes to the updated text rewritten many years later. Commentators on “The Spring Storm” (see, for example, Tyutchev’s recent six-volume work) carefully note difficult places and blind spots in the history of the text, but some important issues still remain in the shadows and seem to be non-existent.
What kind of questions are these? The first of them is associated with the need to take a close-up look, to understand the degree of significance, meaning and place in the body of Tyutchev’s lyrics of the early edition of “Spring Thunderstorm,” consisting of three stanzas. There is reason to talk about a change in the status of the poem (hereinafter - VG1), excluded from the corpus according to the generally accepted rules of textual criticism, when the latest edition cancels the previous one, but this may be a special case. Recognizing the usefulness of the text VG1, can be compared on equal terms in the second step VG1 with the classic text of “Spring Thunderstorm” (hereinafter referred to as VG2) and, since their differences are obvious, make a hypothetical reconstruction of the process of Tyutchev’s alteration of the original text of the poem: hacking, introducing a new stanza, adjusting the surrounding stanzas to it, assembling it in four quatrains with the transfer of Hebe with the thunder-boiling cup unchanged. Finally, the last question: what shifts and shifts have occurred in composition and meaning VG2 as a result of processing and how this affected the fate of the final mythological stanza.
Let's start with the state of things around VG1. The poem was published in the first issues of the magazine Galatea in 1829. The Tyutchev family archive contains a list that matches the text of Galatea. Thus, VG1 textologically provided more reliably than VG2, having neither an autograph nor a list and printed as if out of nowhere. Nevertheless, appearing a quarter of a century later VG2 became a classic text, and VG1 did not make it into the collection of Tyutchev’s lyrics, turning into something like a rough sketch. It is usually believed that the original version is always worse than the text finalized by a genius, and therefore VG1 accordingly certified by the most prominent Tyutchevists. So, K.V. Pigarev, comparing both poems, writes about VG1:“...how far these verses are (VG1. – Yu. Ch.) from the famous “Spring Thunderstorm” that is familiar to us! Reading them, we seem to see in front of us an imperfect sketch for a painting that is well known to us - a great master. (.) Comparing them shows how a poem, secondary in its artistic qualities, was transformed through reworking into one of the masterpieces of Russian poetry.”
The judgments of K.V. Pigarev are completely legitimate, because it is common to think so, because they are based on the ancient faith in progress and, finally, because they strengthen apologetic attitudes in our culture. However, unanimity was sometimes violated, and some of those who wrote about Tyutchev, implicitly and in various ways, made it clear that they disagreed with the general opinion. Let us note three such cases. In 1933–1934 G. P. Chulkov, commenting on Tyutchev’s collection of poems, actually gives preference to the original text of “Galatea” (VG1) before the 1854 edition, but was forced to publish the latter: “We do not dare to refute this traditional text due to lack of an autograph, although it does not coincide with the first printed text.” Noting that I. S. Turgenev, who edited Tyutchev’s collection of poems in 1854, would hardly have dared to compose an entire stanza that is not in “Galatea,” G. P. Chulkov concludes: “Nevertheless, attaching great importance to the first printed text, here, in a note, we give it in full.” A. A. Nikolaev in “The Poet's Library” (1987) expressed his attitude to the problem VG1 / VG2 the defiant absence of notes to the traditional edition, despite the fact that the commentary on his eccentric textual decisions is quite voluminous. For clarity, here is a commentary on VG2 entirely. It takes up at least two and a half lines: “G. 1829, No. 3. Print. according to C-3. Hebe(Greek myth.) - the goddess of eternal youth, who carried nectar to the gods. Zeus' eagle. The eagle was the symbol of the supreme god Zeus." This is all! In "Other editions and variants" VG1 presented as follows: stanzas are numbered 1, 2, 3 according to VG2, but stanza 2 is indicated by a large space, inside which we read: absent. A. A. Nikolaev’s manner is most likely explained by hidden polemics with K. V. Pigarev and implicit support of G. P. Chulkov.
Another indication of poetic features VG1 without any derogation of them we find in the article by M. L. Gasparov “Landscape Composition in Tyutchev” (1990), when he turns to the analysis of the text VG2. Distinguishing the structure of both editions, M. L. Gasparov writes about VG1, that it “was a picture of gradually increasing thunder and noise, crowned with a mythological ending,” “such a poem would not have survived the cutting off of the last stanza and would have collapsed.” Updated by a reissue (1994), G. P. Chulkov’s commentary closed his view of the texts VG1 And VG2 with later assessments by A. A. Nikolaev and M. L. Gasparov, thereby creating a precedent that allows us to more thoroughly return to the comparison of the two, or even three, texts considered VG.
Let's move on to the monographic description VG1. Here is the text printed in Galatea:
Spring thunderstorm
I love the storm in early May:
How fun is spring thunder
From one end to another
Rumbling in the blue sky.
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the talk of birds and the mountain spring -
Everything joyfully echoes the thunder!
You will say: windy Hebe,
Feeding Zeus's eagle,
A thunderous goblet from the sky,
Laughing, she spilled it on the ground.
Before us is a poem that reads like a standard of Tyutchev’s early poetics. He, along with others, is distinguished by “an amazing systematic construction.” It belongs to the so-called type. “dogmatic fragment”, small form in the monumental style of the 18th century. The text is structured in a three-part composition, organized by three stages of movement of the lyrical theme. Such constructions, odd and even, usually reveal the logical foundation of Tyutchev’s lyrical idiogenres. Formative trinity in the 1820s. met with many poets, and Tyutchev could well have been influenced by D. Venevitinov, S. Raich as his teacher and many others. etc. Tyutchev could also have been influenced by the three-fold train of thought characteristic of the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel.
One more thing about VG1. This is not a landscape painting, and least of all a description of a natural phenomenon, but a picturesque and sounding mythopoetic image of the universe at the moment of a rhythm-forming and life-giving shake-up. Not a thunderstorm, although a thunderstorm too, but “a sign of universal life.” The apparent coldness of the poem depends on its task, on the didactic-allegorical duality, “which always forces one to look for another row behind the images of nature.” Mythical animation is laid down in the depth of meaning from the first lines, it moves latently in the second number, and the more effective is its personification in the last stanza, where the thesis and antithesis of the previous two are resolved.
However, the logic of meaning, characteristic of Tyutchev’s classical style, does not appear openly: most often it is dissolved in the spatial patterns of his lyrics. The vertical dimension dominates the lyrical space. According to M. L. Gasparov, the vertical is predominantly directed “from top to bottom”, according to Yu. M. Lotman - “from bottom to top”, although counter and alternating directions are empirically observed, less often - horizontal, as well as moving away and approaching, changing points of view, angles their inclination, etc. B VG1 the vertical from top to bottom is so dominant that even the trivial arrangement of quatrains one below the other adapts to the pattern of a twice-repeated fall: the first time - from heaven to earth, the second - “from above heaven” (M. L. Gasparov), from where Hebe spills a thunderous goblet. At the same time, additional vectors are added to the vertical, which remains the axis of the text, creating a spatial volume. The poem begins with a rhetorical-emphatic figure (v. 1), and the gaze rushes upward, towards the thunderous action. The sky is open to the heights and distances, but its beginning. The beginning because it motivates the celestial game and responds to it, and in addition, it is a force majeure repetition of the situation, since an excess of elements collapses from top to bottom once again. It should be noted that rhetorical You'll say introduces an additional mode into poetic reality, giving it a shade of possibility, probability, and the hesitation of the “explanation” itself. However, this complication does not weaken the aesthetic onslaught of the poem with its emphatic leitmotif that sounds in every stanza: fun, joyful, laughing,– with its music of jubilant shock.
In conclusion of the analytical commentary on VG1 Let us repeat that this is not a descriptive-lyrical landscape. We read a poem in the “anthological ode” genre, where lyricism is mixed with rhetoric and monumental stylistics. The late Derzhavin and the poets of Derzhavin’s era wrote in this genre, but Tyutchev strengthened the lyrical concentration to a degree of classical conciseness, which can be called the minimalism of the 19th century. VG1 not a “sketch for a future masterpiece”, not a “minor poem” that you don’t mind disassembling into rough and rough outlines. VG1- a stylistically complete and impeccable poem, whose place is in the canonical collection of Tyutchev’s lyrics. We examined a text that was essentially declared non-existent.
Before moving on to the reconstruction of Tyutchev’s poetic actions in the process of processing VG1 V VG2, Let us dwell briefly on the general outlines of his re-turn to his own texts, as well as on the dating of the transformation of the original edition into the second. It is unlikely that Tyutchev, with rare exceptions, consciously and purposefully altered his texts. Most likely, on various occasions he rewrote or dictated poems from memory, and, naturally, changed some places. Time intervals did not matter: Tyutchev could reproduce his texts and poetic techniques both at close range and after many years. It seems that the lyrical principle worked continuously in Tyutchev’s subconscious; there was something like a matrix device, which, in particular, gave rise to doublet compositions. Tyutchev, as is known, had a rather limited range of motives, but their scale and multi-layered combinatorics contributed to their wide-ranging lyrical content. Tyutchev is like a chess player playing with himself: there are relatively few pieces, but their combinations are limitless, although the opening moves and the strategic development of the middle game can coincide in a general pattern. Thus, the lyrical trajectory of “A Glimpse” (1825) is repeated almost 40 years later in the ad hoc poem “As sometimes in summer...” (1863), where the same increasing intonation rise, reaching its highest point, suddenly falls shortly before the end. An interval of 30 years separates the early poem “Tears” (1823) from the classic VG2, in which Tyutchev resumes the spectacular syntactic pattern: I love... when... seemingly absent in VG1. On the other hand, the rhyme structure of the eight-line “Poetry” (1850) precedes a similar construction with a distant rhyme in the first decimal of the poem “The feast is over, the choirs have fallen silent...” (1850), written almost nearby. In this regard, there is a temptation to bring closer the time of transformation of VG1 into VG2, but other factors prevent this. In particular, the presence of new motifs in the second stanza written by Tyutchev: rain, flying dust, the sun - makes us think about the approach of VG2 to the time of writing the “thunderstorm” poem “Reluctantly and timidly...” (1849), most likely later than this date. We will return to further motivations later, but for now we will say that, perhaps, the alteration of VG1 into VG2 does not belong to those rare exceptions when Tyutchev rewrote a piece based on some guidelines. The work proceeded, as in most cases with poets, on the whole spontaneously. It is unlikely that Tyutchev could clearly answer why he changed this or that word, but we see purposefulness in his actions and will try to show it. Now let's move on to the hypothetical model of the author's reworking of "Spring Storm".
For the sake of clarity of our reconstruction, we did not just put two texts side by side, but depicted them as if in the process of processing that had already begun:
Spring Storm 1 (1829)
I love the storm in early May:
How fun is spring thunder
From one end to another
Rumbling in the blue sky!
Spring Storm 2 (1854)
I love the storm in early May,
When spring, the first thunder,
As if frolicking and playing,
Rumbling in the blue sky.
Young peals thunder,
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the talk of birds, and the mountain spring -
Everything joyfully echoes the thunder!
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the din of the forest and the noise of the mountains -
Everything cheerfully echoes the thunder.
You will say: windy Hebe,
Feeding the Zeus Eagle,
A thunderous goblet from the sky,
Laughing, she spilled it on the ground.
The proposed scheme for correlating two texts in itself, without additional commentary, clearly demonstrates several stages of transformation of one text into another. Tyutchev really caused a rift, one might say, of a tightly cemented structure, pushing in a new stanza, different in style, violating the logic of poetic thought and shifting the compositional balance. Then he transferred the last stanza to the updated text without any changes and scattered the text that was no longer needed separately. It is very difficult to talk about the reasons for such a radical intervention: one can only make a number of assumptions. Perhaps Tyutchev decided to reconsider older texts (for example, “Oleg’s Shield”) more carefully in connection with N.V. Sushkov’s intention to publish a collection of his poems. However, there is no “Spring Thunderstorm” in the Sushkovskaya Notebook. Perhaps the poet became interested in the thunderstorm theme, and he duplicated it twice in poems of this time (“Reluctantly and timidly...” and “How joyful is the roar of summer storms...” - 1849, 1851) in extremely effective variations. Or did he suddenly decide to test the strength of the completed three-part structure and, as an experiment, convert odd parity into even parity, likening VG2 the scheme of strophic composition of the 3 + 1 type that he worked out more than once? Or maybe he was spurred on by the desire to enrich the last stanza he carefully preserved with landscape details? Of course, other reasons are also possible.
Let us now move from the general impression to the particulars and, first of all, to the consideration of the stanza embedded in the text, which became the second:
Young peals thunder,
The rain is splashing, the dust is flying,
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
The most noticeable new motifs are: rain, flying dust, wind(unnamed) Sun. The absence of clouds is amazing. The first three motives, together with the “young peals”, extremely enhance the dynamism of the lyrical plot, pedaling the vector of time and the kinetics of nature itself. At the same time, the rearrangement of natural phenomena noted by M. L. Gasparov attracts attention: first the rain splashes, and only then the dust flies. What if this inversion triggers time to reverse? In any case, with the participation of the sun, the last two lines slow down the run-up of the elements or even stop it. This clash of hemistiches is magnificent here, where direct naming (with the exception of the epithet) contrasts with a downright baroque and luxurious metaphor: precious pearls and golden threads into which drops and streams of rain turn. A sharp stylistic breakdown not only does not harm the integrity of the stanza and meaning, but, on the contrary, makes both of them multidimensional and unexplored, manifesting the world in its variability and inertia. In connection with this idea, the term was used above kinetics. Movement gives way to light, and everything is separate and one. Tyutchev's poetic effort almost reaches the depths of the oxymoronic nature of Being.
Naturally, the brilliant stanza with its non-classical style brought complete disruption to the compositional structure VG1 and really ruined the poem, which is clearly visible in the diagram. The stanza differed stylistically from the manner and tone of the first period. New motives arose, and old ones were recombined or removed, as always happens in the process of creativity, in the movement of culture and in many other areas. These innovations, by the way, once again indicate the estimated processing time VG1 V VG2(1850–1851). It is enough to quote the penultimate stanza from the poem “Reluctantly and timidly...” to see this:
More often than raindrops,
Dust flies like a whirlwind from the fields,
And thunderclaps
Getting angrier and bolder.
This is unusually similar to the draft of the second stanza VG, if we assume that the poem of 1849 precedes the revision. In the space of the first hemistich, every single motif is condensed, and even the inversion is preserved, where the rain and the whirlwind exchange places. And the motives of the sun and radiance conclude “Reluctantly and timidly...” in the same order and with the same pathos. Very similar to VG2 and a poem from 1851:
How cheerful is the roar of summer storms,
When, throwing up the flying dust,
A thunderstorm that has swept in like a cloud,
Confuses the blue sky.
At least five motifs are repeated here: fun, roar, flying dust, thunderstorm, sky blue. The picture is completed, again, by an unnamed whirlwind, rain hidden in the metonymy “rushing cloud”, summer instead of spring, the form When with a gerund. All this allows us to assert that thunderstorm images really dominated Tyutchev’s imagination at the turn of the 1850s. and even that the rewriting of “Spring Storm” took place between the poems of 1849 and 1851. or somewhere nearby.
The appearance of an extra stanza obliged Tyutchev to fit the broken quatrains to it, that is, to establish a different compositional order, to build stylistic bridges, linking the text into a new semantic unity. Particular concern was the coupling of the landscape triad with the mythological scene on Olympus. To do this, firstly, he had to strengthen the shadow presence of the mythological plane at the very beginning of the poem due to the increase in the volume of the text. Tyutchev reconstructed the entire first stanza, updating its entire rhetorical-syntactic figure. He used a stanza from the early poem “Tears” (1823), where this unforgettable triple syntactic move was already tested for the first time, I love - when - as it were, which set the increasing emphaticness of the introduction. This dramatically changed Art. 2, 3: How fun the spring thunder turned into When the first thunder of spring. Two words from the beginning were removed, while cheerfully went into the last verse of the third stanza, crowding out the word joyfully from the text; the word spring moved to the left along the line, and repeat weight - weight fell out. But the new word first with the sound r supported the motif of thunderstorm and thunder. The verse From one end to the other end disappeared completely, and in its place a significant participle copula appeared, as if frolicking and playing, preserving thunderous consonantism and compositionally and grammatically preceding the participial turn of the mythological stanza Feeding Zeus's eagle, which stands in the same position on the third verse from the end, and the gerund laughing in the final verse. Even more important, the personification of thunder already establishes the invisible presence of Hebe: it is she who frolics and plays. At the same time, the entire Olympic sky is, as it were, compressed into the word frolicking, since it is an anagram of Zeus, the Zeus eagle, and another sound-semantic layer of a ring mythologem arises, uniting the entire poem. Let us finally note the greater variety of iambic rhythm, compared with stanza VG1.
The third stanza (formerly the second) underwent an equally radical, although not so noticeable, edit. Leaving the verse unchanged The noise of birds does not stop in the forest (VG2- Art. 10), Tyutchev corrected one word at the beginning and end of the stanza (Articles 9, 12). The replacement is especially significant stream on flow. With the exception of rhyme and conjunctions “and,” the penultimate verse (11) has been completely updated. At first glance, despite the substitutions, it seems that the stanza VG1 hasn't changed much. While the imagery is preserved, slightly shifted, the intonation-syntactic pattern and the final rhetorical pressure remain the same. However, before us is another stanza. IN VG1 visible details of the landscape are given: Creek and his stunt double key,– the mountain massif has been brought to life twice in relief. Stanza VG2 more audible than visible. It is in this direction that Tyutchev’s work on the stanza needs to be explained. Commentary on the six-volume book, adding to the replacements birds talking, interprets them as follows: “In the second stanza, the figurative components were more specific (...). Generalized images were more consistent with the detached, elevated position of the author, who turned his gaze primarily to the sky, felt the divine-mythological basis of what was happening and seemed not inclined to look at particulars - “stream”, “birds”. What is said is true, even beautiful, but the formulation bypasses Tyutchev’s local tasks. She herself is detached and elevated above the text, being, rather, its interpretation, capturing a fragment of the poet’s worldview or a trait main myth Tyutchev (OMT), according to Yu. I. Levin. The explanation becomes a generalization.
Oddly enough, another generalized characteristic of Tyutchev’s work makes it easy to get to the real tasks of editing. L. V. Pumpyansky in the article “The Poetry of F. I. Tyutchev” (1928) convincingly argued the thesis that the poet indirectly assimilated the baroque tradition of German literature of the 17th century: “the phenomenon of acousticism, i.e. the interpretation of sound themes (thunder, roar, crackling, collapse, stomping, jumping, but also rustling, rustling, whispering, etc.).” Derzhavin became the mediating figure and “the greatest creator of Russian acousticism.” Tyutchev deeply absorbed Derzhavin’s acoustic heritage, and L. V. Pumpyansky draws on “Spring Thunderstorm” to confirm his thought. He writes: “A masterful acoustic work is presented by “Spring Storm”; Derzhavin himself did not create anything better than it.” If it were not for the fundamental inaccessibility of poetic impulses for discursive analysis, one could confidently say that the path to understanding Tyutchev’s intentions is open.
Third stanza VG2 demanded from Tyutchev the maximum intensity of sound in comparison with the second stanza, quietly echoing the sky VG1. The poet achieved the acoustic effect in an original way: relying on the interconnection of lexical, phonetic and rhetorical factors, he avoided the intensification of thunderous poetics and even dispensed with two “rumbling” words (stream, joyfully). The large orchestra of mountains and forests is created primarily by lexical means, lexemes with the meaning of sound: din, noise, even flow makes a noise louder than a stream, although the sound images are supported phonetically. Combination the flow is nimble even introduces new alliteration. Epithet taken from stream, the meaning is not very suitable for the flow, but we are not given the opportunity to judge “from above the boot.” Particularly expressive in rhetorical drawing forest din: repetition-joint with the rearrangement of the epithet into postposition, replacing the quiet the talk of birds. With these changes, Tyutchev widened the space of the stanza, and thanks to its resonance, what was echoed in a low voice now thundered out fortissimo.
Tyutchev needed all this not so much for the stylistic correction of neighboring stanzas, but in order to give the previous stanza a new compositional function. IN VG1 space is cut vertically from top to bottom, from the sky to the ground. Accordingly, the lyrical plot, understood as the dynamic side of the composition, goes through two logical stages, creating a collision of thesis and antithesis. The grandiose thunder symphony, resonating in the sky “from one end to the other end,” is echoed by a more restrained suite of mountain and forest. The scale and volume are incomparably smaller. The stanza of Hebe, the third stage of the plot, again lifts us up, to an even higher point than before, in the sky, from where thunder, lightning and rain fall to the earth in mythical guise. There is an interesting parallel to the plot and compositional structure of “Spring Thunderstorm”-1. This is Pushkin’s poetic dramatic experience “The Miserly Knight”. There alternate upper, lower and middle points of view in space: tower, basement and palace. This is the same spatial movement, only rotated by 1800, and therefore the semantic paths of the drama are different than in “The Thunderstorm”. In the drama, the collision turns towards balance, albeit an imaginary one; in the poem, a one-sided aspiration takes over. From all this it follows that the second stanza VG1 is in a weaker logical, intonation and even rhythmic position, compared to the third stanza VG2, and it is not at all surprising that she echoes much more modestly. Its compositional place is different.
Now the third stanza VG2(formerly the second) occupies an important place in the four-part compositional structure 3 + 1. This means that the poem develops its meaning in three more or less even steps, sometimes slightly ascending, and then with a fourth energetic jerk it seems to reach an elevation that collects in itself previous efforts or switches them to another plane (see art. “Madness”, “And the coffin has already been lowered into the grave...”, “Look how in the river expanse...”, etc.). The fourth stanza is thus a kind of keystone holding up the entire vault. In a four-part compositional structure of this type, the third stanza acquires special importance, which should be the supporting one in preparing the last step, and therefore no reduction, loss of scale, loss of scale, energy of action, weakening of intonation, delay in particulars, etc. can be allowed in it. to trip over. Tyutchev's work went in this direction. By transferring the stanza about Hebe and the loud-boiling goblet without changes into his favorite form, Tyutchev wanted to introduce liveliness, new colorful shades and a luxurious frame for images dear to him. On this path, great creative success and considerable surprises awaited the poet.
However, this will become clear later. And now that we have completed the experience of reconstructing a filigree alteration VG, carried out by Tyutchev at the very beginning of the 1850s, it remains to take another look at the ending, untouched by him, for the sake of which, most likely, an entire stanza was incorporated into the text. It inevitably had to shift the previous meaning - and this happened. IN VG1 the appearance of Hebe connected the thesis and antithesis of heaven and earth. In the structure of the dogmatic fragment, the plot moved in two layers, and the mythical plan from the depths allegorically shone through natural scenes. IN VG2 the situation is different. Previously, Tyutchev could have thought that returning semantic waves over a short distance would associatively transport Hebe to the beginning of the poem, but in the later version the plot was lengthened by a whole stanza, and it was necessary to clearly indicate the implicit myth of Hebe. Or maybe he wanted to concentrate both the thunderous and mythical worlds around Hebe, to make her image, revitalizing, jubilant, young and passionate, the focus of the entire poem. To this end, Tyutchev scattered throughout the text signs of Hebe’s presence, revealed and hidden at the same time. What he built as parallel plans or even as following each other and only then combining (see, for example, “Silence in the stuffy air ...”, where, almost for the first time, the unfolding thunderstorm and the girl’s state are clearly compared as similarities) - V VG2 acquired the structure of a kind of two-sided identity, where thunderstorms and Hebe with a thunderous goblet are, in essence, one and the same. In creating this interpenetration, Tyutchev, as in other cases, used his entire poetic arsenal, from which we present only a lexical chain. Spring, frolicking and playing, in the blue sky, young peals,(unnamed wind- To windy Hebe), rain pearls(instead of raindrop in other poems) the sun gilds the threads, the stream is agile, the din, din and noise, fun– all of Hebe’s shadow presence is gathered in the finale with a creative phrase You'll say(this is auto-communication, not an address to the interlocutor!) into a relief-plastic panorama with the heroine in the center. As a result, Tyutchev, who did not change a single sign in the stanza about Hebe, extremely complicated the network of its dependencies on the rest of the text, enlarged and deepened the semantic valence of the finale. The “Spring Thunderstorm” became a clot of natural and cosmic elements, in which the human element, festive and catastrophic, was dissolved.
It would seem that it would be most convenient to end the review on this positive note. VG1 And VG2. However, our topic is not yet exhausted. The poetics of “The Spring Storm,” as it is known in its later version, makes an even more compelling impression because it has transcended its time, stepping straight into the 20th century. Features of multi-layered and complicated semantics, which it acquired after Tyutchev built into VG1 a new stanza, shifted the original logic of the text’s unfolding, dissolved the former connections, introduced non-linear relationships and aroused centrifugal forces in the structure. By increasing the dynamics at the beginning of a new stanza and then sharply slowing it down, Tyutchev shook the sequence of poetic images. If we add here the “displacement of the word, the tilt of its axis, the barely noticeable degeneration of semantic weight, characteristic of Tyutchev to an unprecedented degree,” or, as we would like to put it, the transformation of the basic meaning of the word into a tangle of fluctuating connotations, noted by L. V. Pumpyansky, then, rightly, , it can be said about Tyutchev that long before Mandelstam he already had a presentiment of his poetics. In any case, Mandelstam himself, 80 years later, followed the same paths: “Any word is a bundle, and the meaning sticks out of it in different directions, and does not rush to one official point.” If Tyutchev already knew this, then once again you will understand why the “inclinations” of his words were accepted and adopted by the symbolists.
A genius is a genius. Does this mean that when analyzing his things we are left with nothing but delight? Of course not. A critical look is also necessary here, because Tyutchev, when creating the deafening poetics of his masterpiece, did not use small and unfinished sketches, but cracked an excellent text with a stable, strong and balanced structure. One involuntarily thinks about the costs and consequences of the experiment, about the price paid for obvious success. The stylistic diversity, dynamics, color and radiance of the new second stanza, the extrapolation of its enriched poetics on both sides, the consolidation of the triptych into a panorama of rumbling nature - this is the splendor, luxury of poetic means, their richness and excess tilted to some extent the compositional assembly of the entire four-part poem. Without touching this overcomplicated structure, which, in fact, was mentioned above, we expose only the most important thing - the displacement of the composition VG2.
The second stanza turned out to be too significant a component in the movement of the lyrical plot from beginning to end. It did not fit into the sequence of links leading to the final ending, where it was necessary to submit to the progressive flow of the poem. It is enough to turn to the second stanzas of Tyutchev’s four-part idiogenres, built according to the example of 3 + 1 (“Madness”, “And the coffin has already been lowered into the grave...”, “Look, how on the river expanse...”, etc.) to see the difference. Second stanza VG2, leaving behind itself a certain amount of autonomy and self-sufficiency, it now claims to be the second compositional center, attracting the surrounding stanzas and thereby weakening the position of the finale with Hebe and the thunder-boiling cup. The finale, of course, retains the function of an architectonic support and ending, but an extra floor is built above it, which slightly tilts the entire building. Under the influence of the second stanza, the “strengthened” third stanza diverts part of the semantic beam aimed at the finale, trying to slip past the goal. There is a struggle between opposing forces within compositional centers, the distance between which is too small. It seems that the rhetorical energy and pathos of rising intonation ends in verse Everything cheerfully echoes the thunder, and the finale inevitably sounds in the lower key of a summarizing mythological judgment. As a result, we observe the compositional imbalance of the thing and, as a consequence, the tendency of the stanza about Hebe and the thunderous goblet to peel away from the thunderous triptych. Whether Tyutchev himself realized the danger of compositional tilt or neglected it, we do not know. Perhaps, as in many other cases, he committed a brilliant violation of the rules, and, as always, it turned out well. “Spring Thunderstorm” became like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But did Tyutchev imagine that he personally provoked future editors to repeatedly cut off his favorite stanza?
Until now, we have relied on the hypothesis according to which Tyutchev, for the sake of the final stanza about Hebe, lengthened and embellished the old poem, having previously broken it down and composed a new stanza. However, one can assume an inversion of Tyutchev’s poetic thought: he wrote the stanza, being prone to thematic doublets, and then for the sake of this stanza, which was not specifically intended for any text, he built it into an old poem. However, for one purpose or another, Tyutchev used the same move: he converted the three-part structure into a four-part one. The consequences were also the same, and two alternating compositional centers pulled the remaining stanzas onto themselves. The new stanza was luckier, and the situation we described arose. Due to the weakening of the final position VG2 and by incompletely connecting it to the previous text, we intend here to consider the third, “editorial” version of “Spring Thunderstorm” (VG3), putting aside for a while the unacceptable interference and, due to this, aesthetic damage.
The artistic existence of “Spring Thunderstorm” consists of three stages. At first VG1(“Galatea”, 1829). Then this text is actually canceled (or so we think) by Tyutchev himself, and VG2(“Contemporary”, 1854). Even later, the “editorial” text appears VG3, which operates in parallel with VG2 and in the minds of the mass reader, in turn, partially cancels it too. Thus, we have three texts from “Spring Thunderstorm”, each of which claims to have a real presence in different segments of poetic culture. We will try to understand this difficult situation and put identifying marks of value over the texts in the common cultural space.
For a long time I didn’t want to admit VG3. In a recent work, we named as many as seven reasons for the “desecration” of a masterpiece, but then we realized that the presence VG3- this is the price paid by Tyutchev for his extreme step. In addition, we realized that a masterpiece on the way to becoming a cult sign is often adapted to the tastes of an undemanding public, and we resigned ourselves. Let's quote this well-known text:
Spring thunderstorm
I love the storm in early May,
When the first thunder of spring
As if frolicking and playing,
Rumbling in the blue sky.
Young peals thunder,
The rain is splashing, the dust is flying,
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the din of the forest and the noise of the mountains -
Everything cheerfully echoes the thunder.
We will avoid a detailed description of this text. We have exhausted it when describing the second stanza and its reflexes into the neighboring ones. We only note that cutting off the last stanza VG2 not only deprived the poem of the genre of an anthological ode, turning it into a landscape composition, but discarded the switch to the Olympic scene and tore out the entire mythological layer from the subtext. The impression, frankly speaking, is bleak, and the loss of meaning is irreversible. However, everything is not so simple, so for the final decision we will turn to two reputable experts.
M. L. Gasparov in the article “Landscape Composition in Tyutchev” by the title itself shows which aspects of the text will attract his attention. Therefore, three stanzas from VG2 he considers first. In the composition of M. L. Gasparov, he is interested in its dynamic side (this can be called the lyrical plot). Movement is added to the composure of the text and its mirror symmetry. It is expressed by the motif of rain. Tyutchev introduces the motive only in the new second stanza, but at the same time a whole plot is built (thus, we are talking all the time about VG3): before the rain, rain, stopping the rain. Speaking about the features of this motif, M. L. Gasparov notes its uncertainty, because the rain begins to fall, and then slows down only in the second stanza, and in the third the movement occurs in other forms. At first, he still admits that “the splashes of rain are replaced by a continuous stream,” but then he still says that the moment ““after the rain” (...) cannot be proven (...).”
From the side of composition as such, that is, the inertia of a thing, M. L. Gasparov saw a mirror-symmetrical structure created by Tyutchev when introducing a new stanza into the text. First, a sound is heard (thunder rumbles), then movement occurs (rain, wind), then the movement stops (pearls and threads hanging), then the movement resumes (the flow is swift), and everything ends with sound (everything echoes the thunder cheerfully, and before that hubbub And noise). The result was a scheme that tightly united three stanzas (VG3): sound - movement - motionless radiance - movement - sound. Such elegant mirroring!
However, while showing the poetics of a stormy landscape, M. L. Gasparov does not forget Hebe with the cup. Here a small gap creeps into his judgment. Commenting positively on what we called VG3, he writes that without the fourth stanza, the poem loses its most “sweeping vertical.” It's worth remembering. M. L. Gasparov also names a continuous motif of gaiety that permeates the entire poem: frolicking And playing - having fun - laughing. He then notes that “the ending comparison echoes the previous stanzas not only with the thunder from the epithet “boiling loudly,” but also with the ambiguity of the word “windy.” Here M. L. Gasparov speaks even more categorically about the consequences of cutting off the fourth stanza: “When in the anthologies “Spring Storm” is usually printed without the last stanza, this takes away not only the second mythological plan, but also the exquisite discrepancy of the figurative (“threads hung. “) and stylistic climaxes” (“boiling loudly.” – YU. Ch.). Having expressed his “yes” and “no,” M. L. Gasparov returns to his original provisions: “Nevertheless, the poem retains artistic effectiveness and completeness, thanks to the strict symmetry of the three remaining stanzas.”
Let’s finish presenting the views of M. L. Gasparov with an excerpt, part of which we have already cited: “Such a poem (we are talking about VG1. - YU. Ch.) would not have survived the cutting off of the last stanza and would have collapsed. From here the semantic culminating role of the completed stanza II is once again clear - with its counter vertical movements and its merging of heaven and earth.” M. L. Gasparov, in our opinion, in his cursory remarks touched upon almost all the issues that were developed and explicated here in detail. In essence, what we called above are slight gaps in its characteristics VG2, in fact there are no gaps. His judgments are connected with the controversies that Tyutchev himself put into the altered text. M.L. Gasparov’s task was to study the dynamics of Tyutchev’s landscape, and he deliberately did not touch upon issues that could lead him astray. All the more valuable is the circle of his incidental comments, which imply a certain autonomy of the text VG3.
Another evidence of VG2 left to us by the brilliant writer, poet and theorist Andrei Bely. Guided by the reader's sensitive perception, he read VG2 as follows: “The first three stanzas are an empirical description of the May thunderstorm, the last one turns the effect of the thunderstorm into a mythological symbol.” Then he talks about the semantic charge of the image of nature with the properties of an animate being. One might be surprised at the obvious aberration of perception in a reader like A. Bely, but it is unlikely to be similar to a trivial reaction to the text. Most likely, A. Bely’s intuition captured the discrepancy between the thunderstorm triptych and the mythological finale, the compositional dissonance introduced by the complex reconstruction of the text. It follows from this that A. Bely indirectly confirmed the possibility of understanding VG3 as a self-organized text, which, as it happens, restores its integrity, despite violent truncation.
As an example of the formation of lost meaning, let us turn to the participial phrase frolicking and playing. The remaining residual features of the mythological plane no longer allow us to notice the implicit presence of Hebe: she will not appear in the text. But, instead of Hebe, the same words frolicking and playing can serve as a guide to Heraclitus’s saying: “Eternity is a playing child!” Ancient philosophy, replacing ancient mythology, will still guide VG3 to the natural-cosmic plan, without which Tyutchev could hardly imagine his text. But he himself could no longer correct it; the poem did this by reconfiguring its semantic intentions.
Our analytical commentary has come to an end. It remains to summarize the solutions to the problems posed and name further prospects for analytics. Some of them have already been implied in the previous description.
Tyutchev’s “Spring Storm” is presented here in three equally worthy texts. The first one (VG1) is a kind of prologue to the definitive text (VG2), and the third (VG3) arose, in addition to Tyutchev, as an adapted version that paved the way VG2 the path to cult status in Russian poetic classics. Such a statement of the problem excludes the study of the so-called creative plan, does not raise the question of transforming an imperfect text into a perfect one, does not condemn “blasphemous interference” in the author’s will, but has the goal of comparing texts in a compositional and functional plan, where shifts and shifts in the structural interior are recorded. In short, everything that is added, subtracted, or looks different.
Tyutchev most likely rewrote VG1 for some reason around 1850-1851. He did not need to finalize the perfect and balanced structure of the poem, but the desire to write something spontaneously arose. A new stanza took shape, with which he made room in the middle of the piece. However, it could have been different: the poem ejected the stanza from itself, being excited by the author’s acute creativity, his personal and transpersonal tension, radiation from the nearby poetic context, etc. After this, Tyutchev had to more consciously solve the given problems.
The result of the excess was the emergence of a virtually new text, capable of extensive self-expansion of meaning. VG2 does not cancel the previous text, does not turn it into a set of rough lines, does not take its place in 1829. Tyutchev redesigned VG1 from a three-part to a four-part text, correcting some things, and translated the mythological stanza without changes from one poetics to another. He left VG in its classical completeness and did not include the poem in his collections only because it was not accepted then. However, in our time, when different versions of the text are quietly published side by side (for example, by Mandelstam, etc.), there is no reason, observing outdated rules, to impoverish Tyutchev’s corpus of lyrics, depriving it of complicating correspondences. The two “Spring Thunderstorms” are doublets, and doubletness, as is known, is a fundamental quality of Tyutchev’s poetics. Both poems should be published together in the poet's collections, VG1 under 1829, and VG2 under 1854. This must be done as quickly as possible, in the first authoritative edition.
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I love the storm in early May,
When spring, the first thunder,
as if frolicking and playing,
Rumbling in the blue sky.
Young peals thunder,
The rain is splashing, the dust is flying,
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the din of the forest and the noise of the mountains -
Everything cheerfully echoes the thunder.
You will say: windy Hebe,
Feeding Zeus's eagle,
A thunderous goblet from the sky,
Laughing, she spilled it on the ground.
Analysis of the poem “Spring Thunderstorm” by Tyutchev
Tyutchev is rightfully considered one of the best Russian poets who sang nature in his works. His lyrical poems are characterized by amazing melody. Romantic admiration for the beauty of nature, the ability to notice the most insignificant details - these are the main qualities of Tyutchev’s landscape lyrics.
The work was created in 1828 abroad, but in the mid-50s. has undergone significant author's revision.
The poem “Spring Thunderstorm” is an enthusiastic monologue of the lyrical hero. This is an example of an artistic description of a natural phenomenon. For many poets, spring is the happiest time of the year. It is associated with the revival of new hopes and the awakening of creative forces. In a general sense, a thunderstorm is a dangerous phenomenon associated with the fear of being struck by lightning. But many people are waiting for the first spring thunderstorm, which is associated with the final victory over winter. Tyutchev was able to perfectly describe this long-awaited event. A formidable natural element appears before the reader as a cheerful and joyful phenomenon, carrying within itself a renewal of nature.
Spring rain washes away not only the dirt left after a harsh winter. It cleanses human souls of all negative emotions. Probably everyone in childhood wanted to get caught in the first rain.
The first thunderstorm is accompanied by “spring... thunder”, echoing in the mind of the lyrical hero with beautiful music. The sound of a natural symphony is complemented by the babbling of streams and the singing of birds. All flora and fauna triumph at these sounds. A person also cannot remain indifferent. His soul merges with nature in a single world harmony.
The meter of the verse is iambic tetrameter with cross rhyme. Tyutchev uses a variety of expressive means. Epithets express bright and joyful feelings (“first”, “blue”, “agile”). Verbs and gerunds enhance the dynamics of what is happening and are often personifications (“frolic and playing”, “the stream is running”). The poem as a whole is characterized by a large number of verbs of movement or action.
In the finale, the poet turns to ancient Greek mythology. This emphasizes the romantic orientation of Tyutchev’s work. The use of the epithet of the “high” style (“boiling loudly”) becomes the final solemn chord in a natural musical work.
The poem “Spring Thunderstorm” has become a classic, and its first line “I love thunderstorms at the beginning of May” is often used as a catchphrase.
In the history of a familiar poem, it turns out, there are little-known pages.
Spring thunderstorm
I love the storm in early May,
When spring, the first thunder,
As if frolicking and playing,
Rumbling in the blue sky.
Young peals thunder...
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the din of the forest and the noise of the mountains -
Everything cheerfully echoes the thunder.
You will say: windy Hebe,
Feeding Zeus's eagle,
A thunderous goblet from the sky,
Laughing, she spilled it on the ground.
Fedor Tyutchev
Spring 1828
These lines, and especially the first stanza, are synonymous with Russian poetic classics. In the spring we simply echo these lines.
I love thunderstorms... - Mom will say thoughtfully.
In the beginning of May! - the son will respond cheerfully.
The kid may not have read Tyutchev yet, but the lines about the thunderstorm already live mysteriously in him.
And it is strange to learn that “The Spring Storm” took on the textbook form familiar to us from childhood only a quarter of a century after it was written, in the 1854 edition.
But when it was first published in the journal Galatea in 1829, the poem looked different. There was no second stanza at all, and the well-known first one looked like this:
I love the storm in early May:
How fun is spring thunder
From one end to another
Rumbling in the blue sky!
It was in this version that “Spring Thunderstorm”, written by 25-year-old Tyutchev, was familiar to A.S. Pushkin. I don’t dare to guess what Alexander Sergeevich would say if he compared the two editions of the first stanza, but the earlier one is closer to me.
Yes, in the later version the skill is obvious, but in the early version - what spontaneity of feeling! Not only can you hear thunderstorms there; there, behind the clouds, a rainbow can already be discerned - “from one end to the other end.” And if you scroll forward a couple of pages from Tyutchev’s volume, then here it is, the rainbow - in the poem “Calmness,” which begins with the words “The storm has passed...” and written, perhaps, in the same 1828:
...And the rainbow at the end of its arc
I ran into green peaks.
In the early edition of “Spring Storm,” the first stanza soared so high and said so much that subsequent stanzas seemed “trailer” and unnecessary. And it is obvious that the last two stanzas were written when the thunderstorm had long gone beyond the horizon, and the first enthusiastic feeling from contemplating the elements had faded.
In the 1854 edition, this unevenness is smoothed out by the second stanza that suddenly appeared.
Young peals thunder...
The rain is splashing, the dust is flying,
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
The stanza is brilliant in its own way, but only the first and last lines remain from the first. The enthusiastically half-childish “how fun...” disappeared, the “edges” of the earth, between which the thunder roared, disappeared. In their place came an ordinary line for a romantic poet: “As if frolicking and playing...” Tyutchev compares thunder with a naughty child, there is nothing to complain about, but: oh, this is “as if”! If Fyodor Ivanovich and Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, who collected his book in 1854, knew how tired we would be of this verbal virus in the 21st century (that’s what philologists call the ill-fated “as if”), they would not have bothered to edit the first stanza.
But you never know what to expect from your descendants.
The author gave the title “Spring Thunderstorm” to his poem, but readers like to identify it precisely by the first line. No wonder. It is with rains, thunderstorms, and floods that the time of year comes that is associated with rebirth.
Tyutchev very subtly sensed all the changes in nature, its mood, and could describe it interestingly. The poet loved spring; he devoted many of his lyrical poetic creations to this topic. For the poet-philosopher, spring symbolizes youth and youth, beauty and charm, renewal and freshness. Therefore, his poem “Spring Storm” is a work that shows that hope and love can be reborn with a new, unknown force, with a force capable of more than just renewal.
A little about the poet
It is known that the poet-philosopher was born in November 1803 in Ovstug, where he spent his childhood. But the entire youth of the popular poet was spent in the capital. At first he received only home education, and then successfully passed the exams at the capital’s institute, where he studied well, and then graduated with a candidate’s degree in literary sciences. At the same time, in his youth, Fyodor Tyutchev began to become interested in literature and began making his first experiments in writing.
The diplomat was fascinated by his interest in poetry and literary life for the rest of his life. Despite the fact that Tyutchev lived far outside his homeland for 22 long years, he wrote poetry only in Russian. Fyodor Ivanovich for a long time held one of the official positions in the diplomatic mission, which at that time was in Munich. But this did not stop the lyricist from describing Russian nature in his poetic works. And when the reader delves into each of Tyutchev’s poems, he understands that this was written by a man who, with all his soul and heart, is always with his homeland, despite the kilometers.
Throughout his life, the poet wrote about four hundred poetic works. He was not only a diplomat and a poet. Fyodor Ivanovich translated works of poets and writers from Germany absolutely free of charge. Any of his works, whether his own or translated, struck me every time with its harmony and integrity. Each time, with his works, the author argued that man should always remember that he is also a part of nature.
The history of writing Tyutchev’s poem “I love a thunderstorm in early May...”
Tyutchev's poem “I love a thunderstorm in early May...” has several options. So, its first version was written by the poet in 1828, when he lived in Germany. Russian nature was constantly before the eyes of the most subtle lyricist, so he could not help but write about it.
And when spring began in Germany, according to the author himself, not much different from spring in his native places, he began to compare the climate and weather, and all this resulted in poetry. The lyricist recalled the sweetest details: the murmuring of a stream, which was attractive to a person who was far from his native land, heavy torrential rain, after which puddles formed on the roads, and, of course, a rainbow after the rain, which appeared with the first rays of the sun. Rainbow as a symbol of rebirth and victory.
When the lyric poet first wrote the spring poem “I Love a Thunderstorm in Early May...”, it was published in the small magazine “Galatea” already this year. But something confused the poet, and so he returned to him again after twenty-six years. He slightly changes the first poetic stanza, and also adds the second stanza. Therefore, in our time, it is the second edition of Tyutchev’s poem that is popular.
I love the storm in early May,
When spring, the first thunder,
as if frolicking and playing,
Rumbling in the blue sky.
Young peals thunder,
The rain is splashing, the dust is flying,
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the din of the forest and the noise of the mountains -
Everything cheerfully echoes the thunder.
You will say: windy Hebe,
Feeding Zeus's eagle,
A thunderous goblet from the sky,
Laughing, she spilled it on the ground.
The plot of Tyutchev's poem “I love a thunderstorm in early May...”
The author chooses a thunderstorm, which often happens in the spring, as the main theme of his poem. For the lyricist, it is associated with a certain movement forward, the transformation of life, its changes, the birth of something new and long-awaited, new and unexpected thoughts and views. Now there is no room for stagnation and decline.
The poet-philosopher does not go only into the natural world, since this unusual and beautiful world is always interconnected with man, they cannot exist without each other. Tyutchev finds many common provisions in these two worlds - human and nature. For the poet, spring is a flight of feelings, emotions, and the whole general mood of a person. These feelings are trembling and incredibly beautiful, because for the author spring is youth and strength, it is youth and necessary renewal. This is openly stated by the poet, who shows how sweetly the birds sing, how wonderfully thunder rumbles, how magnificently the rain makes noise. In the same way, a person grows up who, growing up, enters adulthood and openly and boldly declares himself.
That is why Tyutchev’s images are so bright and rich:
➥ Water.
➥ Sky.
➥ Sun.
The poet needs them in order to more fully show the idea of the unity of man with the world around him. All natural phenomena are shown by Fyodor Ivanovich as if they were people. The lyricist attributes to them traits that are usually inherent only to people. This is how the talented and original lyricist demonstrates the unity of man, who is the divine principle, with the natural world. Thus, the author in his works compares thunder with a baby who plays briskly and makes noise. The cloud also has fun and laughs, especially when it spills water and makes it rain. Tyutchev’s poem is also interesting in that it represents a kind of monologue of the main character, the composition of which consists of four stanzas. The story begins with an easy and relaxed description of a spring thunderstorm, and only then a detailed description of all the main events is given. At the end of his monologue, the author also turns to the mythology of Ancient Greece, which allows him to unite nature and man, showing that nature and human life have their own life cycle.
Artistic and expressive means of Tyutchev's poem
In his simple poem, the poet uses iambic tetrameter and pyrrhic, which convey all the melody. The lyricist uses cross rhyme, which helps to give expressiveness to the entire work. Male and female rhyme alternate in Tyutchev's poem. To more fully reveal the created poetic image, the author uses a wide variety of artistic means of speech.
The lyricist uses alliteration for the melodic and sonorous structure of his work, since he often sounds “r” and “r”. In addition, a huge number of sonorant consonants are used. It is also noteworthy that the poet resorts to gerunds and personal verbs, which help to show the movement and how it gradually develops. The author manages to achieve that the reader sees a rapid change of frames, where the thunderstorm is presented in its most varied manifestations. All this is achieved by the skillful use of metaphors, epithets, inversion and personification.
All this gives expressiveness and brightness to Tyutchev’s entire work.
Analysis of Tyutchev’s poem “I love a thunderstorm in early May...”
It is best to consider Tyutchev's poem from a philosophical point of view. The author tried to accurately depict one of life’s moments, of which there are countless in the life of nature and man. The lyricist made him not discouraged, but very cheerful and full of energy.
The poet shows only one spring day in May, when there is a downpour and a thunderstorm rumbles. But this is only a superficial perception of Tyutchev’s work. After all, in it the lyricist showed the entire emotional palette and sensuality of what is happening in nature. A thunderstorm is not just a natural phenomenon, but also the state of a person who strives for freedom, tries to hurry to live, strives forward, where new and unknown horizons open up for him. If it rains, it cleanses the earth, awakens it from hibernation and renews it. Not everything in life goes away forever; much comes back, such as the May thunderstorm, the sound of rain and streams of water that will always appear in the spring.
Some young people will now be replaced by others who are just as brave and open. They do not yet know the bitterness of suffering and disappointment and dream of conquering the whole world. This inner freedom is very similar to a thunderstorm.
The sensual world of Tyutchev's poem
This work contains a huge sensory and emotional world. The author's thunder is like a young man who, with his shoulders squared, is rushing towards freedom. Just recently he was dependent on his parents, but now a new life and new feelings are taking him into a completely different world. A stream of water quickly runs down the mountain, and the poet-philosopher compares it with young people who already understand what awaits them in life, their goal is high, and they strive for it. Now they will always stubbornly go to her.
But someday, youth will pass, and the time will come to remember, think, and rethink. The author is already at the age when he regrets some of the actions of his youth, but for him this time, free and bright, rich in its emotional terms, always remains the best. Tyutchev's poem is a small work that has deep meaning and emotional richness.
You can very easily paint a picture of a rainy May day in your imagination if you read the poem “Spring Thunderstorm” by Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev. The poet wrote this work in 1828, while he was in Germany, and then, in 1854, corrected it. The main attention in the poem is paid to an ordinary natural phenomenon - a thunderstorm, but the author managed to reproduce all its details so accurately and expressively that this poem still evokes admiration among readers.
Spring was the poet's favorite time of year. It symbolized for him the beginning of a new life, the awakening of nature. Comparing each season with a period of human life, Tyutchev perceived spring as youth. He describes natural phenomena using human characteristics. Tyutchev's thunder frolics and plays like a child, he calls its peals young, and a thundercloud laughs, spilling water on the ground. Spring thunder is like a young man who is taking his first steps into independent adult life. He is also cheerful and carefree, and his life flies like a stormy stream, without knowing any obstacles. Despite the cheerful mood, there is a slight sadness in the poem. The poet seems to regret those times when he himself was young and carefree.
The last quatrain of the poem turns the reader to ancient Greek mythology. The poet draws an invisible line connecting an ordinary natural phenomenon with the divine principle. From a philosophical point of view, Tyutchev emphasizes that in this world everything repeats itself, and just as spring thunder thundered hundreds of years ago, it will thunder in exactly the same way hundreds of years after us. To conduct a literature lesson in the classroom, you can download here the text of Tyutchev’s poem “Spring Thunderstorm” in full. You can also learn this piece by heart online.
I love the storm in early May,
When spring, the first thunder,
as if frolicking and playing,
Rumbling in the blue sky.
Young peals thunder,
The rain is splashing, the dust is flying,
Rain pearls hung,
And the sun gilds the threads.
A swift stream runs down the mountain,
The noise of birds is never silent in the forest,
And the din of the forest and the noise of the mountains -
Everything cheerfully echoes the thunder.
You will say: windy Hebe,
Feeding Zeus's eagle,
A thunderous goblet from the sky,
Laughing, she spilled it on the ground.
