Goethe's 'Werther' and Schelling's transcendental idealism in the poetry of Fedor Ivanovich Tiutchev: Subtexts and influences (Russia, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schelling)

This study examines the poetry of Fedor Ivanovich Tiutchev in relation to the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling and the first novel of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther.; Tiutchev is often assumed to have integrated Schelling's transcendental idealism into his poetry. Tiutchev's residence in Munich at the same time as Schelling, his acquaintance with Moscow followers of Schelling and the "philosophical" nature of his verse all contribute to this interpretation. However, Tiutchev's biography offers little evidence that he pursued Schelling's thought. In this dissertation, Tiutchev's biography is investigated with close attention paid to his years at Moscow University during which he demonstrated a great interest in German literature and little interest in philosophy. Documents of nineteenth-century contemporaries are examined to show that Tiutchev demonstrated neither in Moscow nor in Munich a great interest in pursuing the ideas of Schelling but rather lived a life contrary to one formed by notions of appropriate "poetic" behavior. Tiutchev's behavior is contrasted with that of other poets and with contemporaries who did pursue Schelling's teachings. Further, when Schelling's transcendental idealism is closely examined and compared to ideas in Tiutchev's poetry, it becomes clear that Tiutchev and Schelling disagree on several fundamental issues, namely, the nature of dualism in the universe, the nature of history, man's relationship to the natural world, and the importance of the artist.; A more suitable subtext to Tiutchev's verse is Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther, in which the paralyzed and self-destructive narrator's attitudes toward nature and women closely parallel images and themes in Tiutchev's poetry. A close textual analysis of the similarities between Goethe's novel and Tiutchev's verse indicates that Goethe's sentimental novel stands as a much more likely source for ideas and imagery in Tiutchev's verse than Schelling's complex philosophy. The main areas of overlap between Tiutchev's verse and Goethe's novel are the nature of desire, the creation of a paralyzed narrator-voyeur, and the doubling of the object of desire.