The waves are thundering. The poem “How good you are, O night sea...” F.I. Tyutcheva. Perception, interpretation, evaluation. Analysis of Tyutchev’s poem “How good you are, O night sea...”
This work was written in 1865, when the poet’s emotional wound from the loss of his beloved woman was still too fresh. We are talking about Elena Aleksandrovna Denisyeva, Tyutchev’s affair with whom lasted 14 years. Tyutchev took the death of his beloved very hard. It is a known fact that during his lifetime he compared Elena to a sea wave. It is the address to the sea with “you” that gives reason to assume that the text of Tyutchev’s poem “How good you are, O night sea...” are words dedicated to the woman he loves. The sea is presented by the poet as a living creature, it breathes and walks. The word “swell,” which the author uses to describe the depths of the sea, gives the poem a note of hopelessness. He passionately desires to dissolve in this stormy element and drown his soul here. The poet contemplates the mysterious surface of the night sea and feels lost in this world.
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How good you are, O night sea, -
It’s radiant here, grey-dark there...
IN moonlight as if alive
It walks and breathes and shines...
In the endless, in the free space
Shine and movement, roar and thunder...
The sea is bathed in a dim glow,
How good it is, you are in the solitude of the night!
You are a great swell, you are a sea swell,
Whose holiday are you celebrating like this?
The waves rush, thundering and sparkling,
Sensitive stars look from above.
In this excitement, in this radiance,
All as if in a dream, I stand lost -
Oh, how willingly I would be in their charm
I would drown my entire soul...
Poem “How good you are, O night sea …
" was written by F.I. Tyutchev in 1865. There were several versions of the work. One of the last editions of the poem was handed over by the relatives of the poet I.S. Aksakov, who published them in the Den newspaper on January 22, 1865. However, the text of the work turned out to be distorted, which then caused Tyutchev’s indignation. In February the poet sent new edition poems for the magazine "Russian Bulletin". This option is considered final.
We can classify the poem as a landscape-meditative lyric, with elements of philosophical reflection. His style is romantic. The main theme is man and the natural elements. Genre – lyrical fragment.
In the first stanza, the lyrical hero turns to the sea, admiring the play of its colors:
The pronoun “you” is present here. refers to the sea as a living being, just like A.S. in his poem "To the Sea". However, then the hero seems to separate himself from the water element, conveying an impression from the outside. At the same time, he endows the sea with a “living soul”:
In the moonlight, as if alive,
It walks and breathes and shines...
The play of colors, light and shadow is given here in motion, in dynamics, it merges with a sound symphony. As researchers accurately note, in this poem Tyutchev does not have his usual opposition of sound and light, and the water element is presented not linearly, but as a surface (Gasparov M.).
In the endless, in the free space
Shine and movement, roar and thunder...
The sea is bathed in a dim glow,
How good you are in the solitude of the night!
Here we can also recall the poem by V.A. Zhukovsky "Sea". However, let us immediately note the difference in the worldview of the lyrical hero. As the researchers note, “Zhukovsky’s lyrical “I” acts as an interpreter of the meanings of nature; this interpretation turns out to be an extrapolation of the hero’s sense of self - the sea turns into his double.” In Tyutchev, the sea and the lyrical hero are not identical to each other. These are two different units of lyrical plot. We also note that in Tyutchev’s work there is no opposition between sea and sky, but rather the poet affirms their natural unity, harmonious coexistence:
You are a great swell, you are a sea swell,
Whose holiday are you celebrating like this?
The waves rush, thundering and sparkling,
Sensitive stars look from above
At the same time, Tyutchev’s lyrical hero is here part of the natural world. The sea enchants and hypnotizes him, immersing his soul in some mysterious dream. As if plunging into the sea of his feelings, he longs for complete merging with the great element:
In this excitement, in this radiance,
All as if in a dream, I stand lost -
Oh, how willingly I would be in their charm
I would drown my entire soul...
The same motif of a soul merged with the sea appears in the poem “You, my wave of the sea”:
Soul, soul I live
Buried at your bottom.
Researchers noted the metaphorical meaning of the poem, hinting at the poet’s address to his beloved woman, E. Denisyeva, in the first stanza (“How good are you...”). It is known that the poet compared his beloved to a sea wave (B.M. Kozyrev). With this interpretation of the poem, its ending sounds like the desire of the lyrical hero to completely dissolve in another being, to merge inextricably with him.
Compositionally, we can distinguish two parts in the work. In the first part, the poet creates an image of the sea element (stanzas 1–3), the second part is a description of the feelings of the lyrical hero (4th stanza). We also note the parallelism of the motives of the beginning and ending of the poem. In the first stanza, the lyrical hero speaks about his feelings (to the sea or to his beloved creature): “How good you are, oh night sea...”). In the finale we also have a lyrical confession: “Oh, how willingly I would drown my entire soul in their charm...”. The landscape also has similar features. In the first and fourth stanzas the sea is depicted in “moonlight”. In this regard, we can talk about a ring composition.
The poem is written in dactyl tetrameter, quatrains, and cross rhymes. The poet uses various means artistic expression: epithets (“with a dim radiance”, “in the open space”, “sensitive stars”), metaphor and inversion (“Oh, how willingly I would drown my entire soul in their charm...”), personification (“Walks and breathes , and it shines...", "Sensitive stars look from above"), comparison ("as if alive"), rhetorical appeal and a rhetorical question in which the poet deliberately resorts to tautology ("You great swell, you sea swell, Whose holiday is this Is this how you celebrate?”), polyunion (“It walks, and breathes, and shines...”). Color epithets (“radiant”, bluish-dark) create a picturesque picture of the night sea, shimmering in the radiance of the moon and stars. “High vocabulary” (“shine”, “radiantly”) gives speech a solemn intonation. Analyzing the phonetic structure of the work, we note the assonance (“How good are you, O night sea...”) and alliteration (“It’s radiant here, there it’s bluish-dark...”).
Thus, the lyrical fragment “How good you are, O night sea...” conveys the relationship between man and nature. As the critic notes, “to become so imbued with physical self-awareness as to feel like an inseparable part of nature—that’s what Tyutchev managed to do more than anyone else. This feeling fuels his wonderful “descriptions” of nature, or rather, its reflections in the poet’s soul.”
How good you are, O night sea, -
It’s radiant here, grey-dark there...
In the moonlight, as if alive,
It walks and breathes and shines...In the endless, in the free space
Shine and movement, roar and thunder...
How good it is, you are in the solitude of the night!You are a great swell, you are a sea swell,
Whose holiday are you celebrating like this?
The waves rush, thundering and sparkling,
Sensitive stars look from above.In this excitement, in this radiance,
All as if in a dream, I stand lost -
Oh, how willingly I would be in their charm
I would drown my entire soul...
Analysis of Tyutchev’s poem “How good you are, O night sea...”
The first version of the poem appeared on the pages of the literary and political newspaper Den in 1865. After publication, Tyutchev expressed dissatisfaction. According to him, the editors published the text of the work with a number of distortions. This is how the second version of the poem arose, which became the main one. Readers became acquainted with her in the same 1865 thanks to the magazine “Russian Messenger”.
The work is dedicated to the memory of Elena Alexandrovna Denisyeva, Tyutchev’s beloved, who died in August 1864 from tuberculosis. The death of the beloved woman, with whom the affair lasted for fourteen years, was extremely difficult for the poet. According to contemporaries, he did not try to hide the severe pain of loss from those around him. Moreover, Fyodor Ivanovich was constantly looking for interlocutors with whom he could talk about Denisyeva. According to some literary scholars, it is the dedication to Elena Alexandrovna that explains the lyrical hero’s address to the sea as “you” in the first quatrain. Known fact- the poet compared his beloved woman to a sea wave.
The poem is divided into two parts. First Tyutchev draws a seascape. The sea in his depiction, like nature in general, appears animated, spiritual. To describe the picture opening before the lyrical hero, personifications are used: the sea walks and breathes, the waves rush, the stars look. The second part of the work is very short. In the last quatrain, the poet talks about the feelings experienced by the lyrical hero. He dreams of merging with nature, completely immersing himself in it. This desire is largely due to Tyutchev’s passion for the ideas of the German thinker Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854). The philosopher affirmed the animation of nature and believed that it has a “world soul.”
The works of Fyodor Ivanovich, dedicated to nature, in most cases represent a declaration of love for it. It seems to the poet an unspeakable pleasure to have the opportunity to observe its various manifestations. Tyutchev equally enjoys admiring a June night, a May thunderstorm, a snow-covered forest, and so on. He often expresses his attitude towards nature using exclamatory sentences expressing delight. This can be seen in the poem in question:
The sea is bathed in a dim glow,
How good you are in the solitude of the night!
