The Soul and the Sea: The Functioning of a Lyrical Situation in Fyodor Tyutchev's Poetry of the 1850s-1860s

The article determines the connection of the soul and the sea as a lyrical situation in Tyutchev's poetry of the 1850s-1860s. This situation reflects the tendencies of the changes of the poet's attitude to the world. Poems of the 1850s ("You, my wave upon the ocean", "Peace") have a mythology-based motive of a merge of the soul and water. Water as an ambivalent element unites the beginning and the end, life and death and becomes an organic space for the soul. The merge of the soul and the womanly water element helps restore an important component of the meaning of the image of a wave in the poem "You, my wave upon the ocean", connected with "mermaid" motives (original signal words in this case are "wave", "soul", "ring", "secret charm"). It is possible to ascertain the formal similarity of the "mermaid" plot and the situation of the "burial of the soul" in the poem "You, my wave upon the ocean". The lyrical hero is admired by the beauty, fascinated by the murmur, attracted by the "secret charm" and gives the wave his soul. However, in Tyutchev's poem, the specified semantic complex fulfills the function of a symbolical aura of the final event, but does not motivate it. The dramatic form in which the motive of connection of soul and a wave is expressed ("In your depths not these I buried / But my heart") is interpreted not as the situation of a destruction of the soul, but as the statement of its "safety" in the marine world. The semantics of this lyrical situation changes significantly in Tyutchev's poetry of the 1860s when the merge of the soul and the sea turns to the impracticable possibility connected with the motive of a "dissonance" between the soul and the sea (in poems "Kak khorosho ty, o more nochnoe . . ." [How fine you are, the sea at night], "Pevuchest' est' v morskikh volnakh . . ." [There is melodiousness in marine waves], "November, 23rd, 1865"). In the poems of this period, images of a "drying" soul and a desert have a symbolical meaning. The latter has a fixed meaning in the Russian literature; it is connected with the Christian tradition: a desert is comprehended as a seat of test, deprivations, spiritual search, etc. One of the most indicative examples is Alexander Pushkin's poem "Prophet", in which transformation becomes a result of the way and the tests. In Tyutchev's poem, the possibility of transformation is also noted. In this sense, the poetic "parting with the sea" is a transitive stage at which the soul choose its way. The dynamics of the motive of the merge of the soul and the marine space is connected with changes in the attitude of the poet in the 1850s-1860. Undoubtedly, 1864 is critical for Tyutchev: his previous nature-philosophical views are reinterpreted, and the lyrical hero feels the loss of harmony with the world. As a result, the lyrical hero appears in the situation of a spiritual search that assumes a potential possibility of sharing Christian values.

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