Chaadaev and Tiutchev

Abstract

Peter Chaadaev and Fedor Tiutchev were figures of a type: brilliant, aphoristic, melancholic, sceptical, comme il faut to a fault; moulded by their sojourns abroad, they struck their countrymen as "Russian ?migr?s from Europe" (I. Aksakov)1; superb speakers and writers of French, they produced what is perhaps the best prose in the language ever penned by a Russian hand; both suffered much, and in private: Chaadaev because of the Telescope affair and the consequent legend of his insanity, Tiutchev because of his passionate and doomed love affair with Elena Denis'eva. In the 1840s and 1850s Chaadaev and Tiutchev enjoyed a position of special prestige in their respective spheres: the former in the salons of Moscow, the latter in the Petersburg beau monde. Their impact went beyond the immediate circles of Westernisers and Slavophiles: Chaadaev and Tiutchev were socially fashionable, Tiutchev even more than the thinker. This was still an age when novel theories, strange dogmas and paradoxical principles were in great vogue among the significant section of high society that affected an interest in matters literary, philosophical and historical. Pushkin's biographer Pavel Annenkov speaks of "ideas [which] appeared like idols, with a genealogy that was obscure, demanding unconditional adulation"2; the advent of the thick journals marked the end of this period. The friendship between the thinker and the poet began upon the latter's return to Russia in 1844 after a 22-year absence3: thereafter Tiutchev made yearly visits to the old capital, where he would see Chaadaev; by 1846 we find the poet referring to him in a somewhat amused tone, not unlike the one employed by Viazemskii on similar occasions (letter to Madame Tiutchev of August 14):