Mirror of the Soul A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev

Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-73) was a contemporary of Pushkin and is widely considered his equal as a lyric poet. This new biography tells the story of a fascinating life and personality as reflected in the poems, presented here in the author's own verse translations. In his own country his literary status has never been in doubt. He was the favourite poet of Leo Tolstoy, who declared: 'One cannot live without him.' For Dostoyevsky he was 'our great poet', for Turgenev (who published his first volume of verse) 'one of our most remarkable poets'. Afanasy Fet considered him 'one of the greatest lyric poets ever to have existed on this earth'. Yet outside Russia Tyutchev's name remains curiously unknown. John Dewey's biography - the first in English, and one of the most comprehensive to date in any language - provides a long overdue introduction to this major figure.