V.V. Nabokov and F.I. Tyutchev: Double Being

Abstract

The article attempts to find common ground between the artistic systems divided by a century – the lyrics of the Russian poet and philosopher F. I. Tyutchev and prose of the outstanding Russian-American writer V. V. Nabokov. The first part of the article deals with the ideas of domestic and foreign researchers of the peculiarity of the Nabokov’s aesthetic system. Nabokov did not write a special article and did not publish a single lecture on Tyutchev’s lyrics, although he repeatedly turned to the work of the poet, in particular, while teaching in America, left excellent translations of his poems into English. The authors of the article show the common perception of life of nature and man for both authors. The inner closeness of Nabokov and Tyutchev is manifested not so much in direct statements as indirectly. This is an acknowledgement of the narrator in the General Ledger, Nabokov’s Other shores (“Pushkin and Tolstoy, Tyutchev, Gogol stood at the four corners of my world”); and accented by the intertextuality in the prose of the author with specific Tyutchen’s reminiscences, sometimes shocking-pun (short story “Cloud, lake, tower”); and focusing on the motifs of memory, gift, abyss (in Schellingian understanding); and Nabokov’s use of the key opposition “dream – chaos”, which runs through the entire lyrics of Tyutchev. The second part of the article is devoted to the analysis of Tyutchev’s poetry in the light of researches conducted by Russian philosophers and literary critics. The article notes the little-known fact that Nabokov and Tyutchev were related in kinship. You can find out at what point the kinship of the two great masters of the word crossed by reading the article.