The spiritually intense philosophical poetry of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev conveys tragic sensation of contradictory existence. Symbolical parallelism and cosmic motives appear in his poems about nature’s living. Well-known are his love lyrics (including the poems of “Denisievsky cycle” dedicated to his mistress Elena Alexadnrovna Deniiseva. In his essays he was drawn towards panslavism.

Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873) was born on December, 5th, 1803 into an ancient noble family in Ovstyug Estate of Bryansk District of the Oryol Province.

Fyodor Tyutchev spent his young years in Moscow. The boy got his basic education at home, with the tuition of the poet and translator S.E.Raich. In 1821 he graduated from the Philology Faculty of Moscow University. Soon he started working in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and in 1822 went abroad, having been assigned to a modest post in the Russian Embassy in Munich – the capital of the then Bavarian kingdom. He also served in Turin (Sardinia).

Fyodor Tyutchev started writing poems when a teenager yet, but he rarely appeared in press and was not noticed by critics or readers. The poet made his true debut in 1836: his poetry notebook forwarded from Germany found itself in the hands of Alexander Pushkin, who became delighted with Tyutchev’s poems and published them in his journal Sovremennik. However, Tyutchev attained wide recognition and popularity much later, after his coming back to Russia in the 1850s, when poets Nekrasov, Turgenev, Fet, and Nikolai Chernyshevsky responded delightfully about him and an independent collection of his poems was published in 1854.

Nevertheless, Fyodor Tyutchev never became a professional writer - till the end of his life he remained in public service. In 1858 he was appointed Chairman of the Foreign Censorship Committee and held this post till his death. The poet died on July, 15th, 1873 in Tsarskoye Selo and was laid to rest at a cemetery in Petersburg.