«The Complete Poems of Tyutchev In An English Translation by F.Jude»

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While certain of these works are very good renditions indeed, others do not
pretend to adhere to the sense of the source poem. It is difficult to regard
Pesn' skandinavskikh voinov/The Song of the Norse Warriors as a translation
of Herder's Morgengesang im Kriege/Morning Song in War Time, written in a
folk or pseudo-folk vein, for it doubles the German piece in length and
introduces material utterly foreign to the spirit and movement of Herder's
work, though the new material does owe a little to Russian folklore. On the
other hand, parts of Tyutchev's work are a direct translation or close copy
of the German. Tyutchev sticks closely to the original when he chooses to,
as in his translation of two short pieces from Shakespeare's A Midsummer's
Night's Dream, which he probably translated from a good German version, and
Hippolytus's death scene from Racine's Phedre. These are skilful renditions,
as are a number of shorter works from Heine and Goethe and sections of the
latter's Faust (Part 1). But where do we stand with the extract from Hugo's
Hernani? It is significantly and deliberately altered in some ways yet
retains very large sections of the original. Do we consider the lyric
entitled Sakontala to be a translation? It resembles only superficially the
originating scene from Kalidasa'splay and is not much like the Goethe
version often said to be its inspiration. Classical Sanskrit literature
being so popular in the nineteenth century through the work of such as A.
Schlegel (1767-1845), Tyutchev's Sakontala should probably be seen as one
more of many poems written on one of its themes. The question of what
motivated him to alter other works in the subtle ways he did remains, and is
beyond the scope of this book.
Because it can be so difficult to know exactly where to draw the line
between Tyutchev's original lyrics and his
translations/adaptations/paraphrases, I have considered each of his works as
part of the one evolving body of poetry without attempting to classify into
"lyric", "political" and "occasional", fully aware that I go against
standard practice in adopting this approach, although Liberman has recently
adopted the chronological manner of grouping the lyrics. (A:19) It has been
too common in the past to present the reader with the bulk of what all would
agree is his best lyric poetry, leaving other types of verse, for example
the political pieces, in what has sometimes amounted to an appendix.
A number of Tyutchev's "lyric" poems, if we follow Pigaryov's
categories, are mediocre and some of his political and, indeed, a handful of
the so-called "occasional" verses, including a few written in French, are
far from inferior. Five of his French poems are good and two are among this
reader's personal favourites.