The Tragedy on Water
In May 1838 a steamer “Nickolai I“ cruised from St.Petersburg to German port Lubek. At the beginning of the voyage everything went well, but not far from Lubeck the unforeseen accident has happened – a fire broke out in the hold of a streamer. All the efforts of officers and crew to put out burning coal in the hold were in vain: a deck planking began burning. The people suffocated in the puffs of pungent smoke. Fright and embarrassment seized passengers.
The captain took a decision to change a course and forward the blazing steamer to the nearest coast. Then the command followed: lower ship boats on water, start rescue work. Frightened people flung in panic, leaving the burning vessel as soon as possible.
I.S. Turgenev was among the passengers of the voyage. He went to Germany after graduating from the University. Later on he will describe this accident in his essay “Fire on the Sea”. Among the passengers of this steamer were the wife and three little daughters of the Russian poet and diplomat Theodor Ivanovich Tjutchev.
Charming delicate beauty Eleonora Tjutcheva showed surprising courage. She managed to get in a ship boat under conditions of bustle, and together with three children reached the land. But having escaped the death in fire on water they appeared on the uninhabited shore in a very great distress. Cold wind transpierced soaked and half-dressed people. There, on the uninhabited shore the Tjutchevs’ family was rendered unexpected assistance: one of the passengers gave up his street-clothes to trembling with cold girls and then helped the family to start to Lubek on peasant wagon. That was young I.S. Turgenev.
Nervous shock suffered during the fire and severe cold undermined E. Tutchev’s vitality. Soon she died in the poet’s arms in Italy. The poet`s sorry was boundless.
In 1841 Tutchev returned home. He often visited his patrimony in Ovstrug. He, probably, observed disastrous forest fires that became the basis of his two poems, “Fires” and “Smoke”. The malicious and merciless element of forest fire when the flame and “abyss” of smoke hang over the “Earth” surpressing human will is reproduced in his poem “Fires”.
The same theme sounds in the poem “Smoke” where cheerful symphony of spring forest full of “visions” and “miracles” perishes in the merciless fire. But in the final strophe of his poem the poet says that blind element can’t annihilate for ever this alive force of nature.
UNIT 2
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