The Metaphors in Tiutchev's Philosophical Poems

THE METAPHORS INTIUTCHEV'S PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS Sidonte H. Safonov The poet Afanasii Fet, in his article about Tiutchev, has well characterized the beauty and depth of his countryman's poetry: Two years ago, on a quiet autumn night, I stood in a dark passage-way of the Colosseum and peered through one of the window spaces at the starry sky. The big stars looked intently and radiantly into my eyes, and as I gazed into the delicate, dark-blue firmament, other stars appeared before me and looked at me just as mysteriously and just as eloquently as the first. Behind them, in the depth, there twinkled even more delicate sparkles, and little by little they in tum revealed themselves. Framed by the dark masses of the walls, my eyes saw only a small part of the sky, but I felt that it was boundless and that there was no end to its beauty. With similar sensations I open the poems of F. Tiutchev.1 An important factor in the intensity and saturation of thoughts and images in Tiutchev's poetry is his use of metaphors. They enable the poet to project double images into his many-dimensional land and seascapes or into whatever other setting he would choose. Though Tiutchev's works include a number of exquisite love poems (his political verses are of lesser interest), it is in his poems about the mysteries of life that we find him at his best. Tiutchev's concept of life and his philosophical ideas are reflected in his poetry largely though metaphorical images. These are particularly effective in focusing a thought and establishing the relationship between two planes. I. A. Richards (in his book The Philosophy of Rhetoric) calls the metaphor "the omnipotent principle of language" which conveys two things in one— the "tenor" or underlying idea, and the "vehicle" or image. He introduces these two technical terms to assist in distmguishing the two parts of a metaphor—its plain meaning on the one hand, and the figure of speech used by the poet on the other. Richards defines the metaphor as "a borrowing between and intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts."2 Personification of nature is one of the most characteristic feautres of Tiutchev's poetry and reveals his attitude toward that plane. Thus he uses many animating verb metaphors, e.g., in the poem "Spring Waters" (Vesennie Vody),3 dated 1832, where the spring waters "run," "waken," and "walk." These underdeveloped metaphors are, of course, from the human domain. The same anthropomorphizing function is performed by the noun metaphor "heralds of spring" (gontsy vesny), by implication the spring waters. One of the best examples of personifying nature may be found in the fol1HuSSUMe slovo, February 1859, Section II, pp. 67-68. Quoted in Tiutchev, p. 29. 2I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, A Galaxy Book (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 94. 3F. I. Tiutchev, Stikhotvorerda, pisma (Moskva: Gosudarsrvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi Iiteratury, 1957), p. 71. Subsequent references to tins edition will appear in the text For the purpose of this literary analysis I have tried in all my translations of Tiutchev's poetry to stay as close to the literal meaning as possible. 55 56RMMLA BulletinJune 1972 lowing lines from "Nature isn't what you think it is" (Ne to, chto mnite vy, priroda), writen in 1836: Nature isn't what you think it is: Its face is neither blind nor soullessIt has a soul, it has its-freedom, It has its love, it has its speech ... (p. 121 ). Tiutchev here endows nature with a face, a soul, freedom, love, and speech. This poem may be regarded as the credo of Tiutchev's pantheism, since the presence or absence of freedom—according to the Kantian philosophy partly adopted by Tiutchev—is the criterion for humanity. The anthropomorphic features of nature in this poem, however, are not presented in the form of metaphors. Pantheistic thinking is metaphorically expressed in another poem, "You saw him in the circles of the glittering world" (Ty zrel ego ? krugu bol'shogo sveta, p. 59), written in the years 1829-30, where the moon is described as a "luminous god" (svetozarnyi bog...