Page:Modern Russian Poetry.djvu/18

xii captive among the Scythians." The intensity of his passionate nature was governed by a sense of measure and harmony. His poetry has that quality of normalcy and health which render it educative, and to the foreigner—uninteresting. The latter may agree with Flaubert that the Russian master is "flat," and to suspect that his is the unexciting art whose motto is propria communia dicere.

Pushkin was surrounded by a Pleiad of lyricists, whose work was of a minor order, but was yet distinguished by a measure of originality. Of these the sombre Baratynsky is now perhaps best remembered. In a sense Tyutchev too belonged to this group. A contemporary of Pushkin, he was under his influence. Yet he survived the master by many years, and the more significant part of his unique contribution to Russian poetry was written much later. Of all the classicists, Tyutchev is most likely to find a way to the understanding and sympathy of the outside world. His is a deep and authentic voice. Through his poetry blows the wind of his thought, as a breeze bellies a sail to a certain shape. It is a pantheistic philosophy, instinct with the profound cosmic sympathies of a Chinese sage on his lonely mountain. His universe was the battleground of light and darkness. Both were native to him. He did not dismiss the "ancient chaos" with the facile gesture of tender-minded idealism, but rather saw in it the dark face of God.

The mantle of Pushkin fell, not upon Tyutchev, who wrote for posterity, but rather upon Lermontov. He was an ego-centric creature, with a romantic nostalgia for the supersensuous. His lyricism is informed with a