The theme of man and nature occupies a significant place in the lyrics of F. I. Tyutchev. Tyutchev's romantic poetry is aimed at the sphere of ideals. The poet knows how to convey with his poems the beauty of nature and the inner world of a person, to reveal what he loves, what delights him, what he worships, what his desires are directed towards.
Tyutchev's poetry contains a rich variety of aspirations, feelings and impressions. The poet tries to understand the life of nature and comprehend the secrets of the human soul. All his poems are imbued with romance, it is in the discovery of the unknown, in contrast to the ordinary, in the opposition of light and darkness, in the transformations of living beings and nature, in the clashes and struggles of natural elements and human feelings.
The romantic hero of Tyutchev's poems is the poet himself. His lyrical “I” expresses various aspects of the movement of a person’s inner life. The hero of the poems is a philosopher, a contemplator of nature or a lover, a dreamy young man.
Nature and man, according to Tyutchev, consist of two parts. One part is spiritual, animate, reasonable and harmonious, “daytime”. The other is the “abyss,” wild, uncontrollable, spontaneous, “night.”
His “poetry of the day” depicts the cosmos as a bright, eternally young, joyful, physical and spiritual world:
The blue sky laughs
Washed away by the night thunderstorm,
And it winds dewy between the mountains
The valley is a light stripe.
The poet hears the “eternal chorus” in nature, for him it is like a “brilliant cover”, nature glows from within, illuminated by the sun. Nature is not a mirage, it is the reality of the world, and it is its reality that attracts Tyutchev as a poet. In diverse images, he strives to capture its forms and colors, its existence in space and time. But the poet did not dissolve the images of nature in the poetic “I”; rather, on the contrary, his lyrical hero dissolves in the “life-giving ocean” of nature:
The game and sacrifices of private life!
Come, reject the deception of feelings,
And rush, cheerful, autocratic,
Into this life-giving ocean.
Another, “night” element in nature manifests itself as chaos, cataclysms, storms, and disasters. In a person, these are passions that also lead to disaster:
Oh, how murderously we love,
As in the violent blindness of passions
We are most likely to destroy,
What is dear to our hearts!
The night reveals this elemental, chaotic beginning:
The bright night has risen into the sky,
And a joyful day, a kind day,
She wove like a golden shroud,
A veil thrown over the abyss.
And, like a vision, the outside world left...
And the man is like a homeless orphan,
Now he stands, and is weak, and naked,
Face to face before the dark abyss
The unity of the human and natural souls is revealed to us only for a moment.
Tyutchev's poems are musical and picturesque. The seasons are world events that the poet loves so much. He created a whole cycle of poems about spring. “Spring Waters” is the beginning of the holiday of nature, its first messengers. It shows the movement in nature from April's stormy melting of snow to May's quiet, warm days. All this is accompanied by sounds, noises, voices, cheerful animation:
The snow is still white in the fields,
And in the spring the waters are noisy -
They run and wake up the sleepy shore,
They run and shine and shout.
They say all over:
"Spring is coming, spring is coming!
We are messengers of young spring,
She sent us ahead!"
The poet conveys the noises of nature through the very sound of the poems, using alliteration: “running,” “waking up,” “breg,” “shine,” “screaming,” “messengers,” “spring,” “sent,” “forward.”
And “Spring Storm” is a masterpiece glorifying nature: “I love the thunderstorm at the beginning of May...” Spring is followed by a thunderous summer: “How joyful is the roar of summer storms...”, “There is silence in the stuffy air...” A new action of nature - autumn:
There is in the initial autumn
A short but wonderful time...
The peculiarity of Tyutchev’s view of nature is attention to special minutes, hours, periods of her life.
The winter action of nature - in the poem "Enchanting - in winter..." To the music of the poems, the magical actions of the sorceress are imagined, who draws magic circles - rings, enchanting, hypnotizing, plunging into sleep.
Tyutchev often writes “about a double abyss,” “two infinities.” The living corporeal cosmos and the deadening incorporeal chaos are two powerful forces: night chaos absorbs the golden light of day, but solar fire disperses chaos:
But two or three moments will not pass,
The night will evaporate over the earth,
And in the full splendor of manifestations
Suddenly the world of daytime will embrace us...
Nature and chaos are opposite to each other and, at the same time, they are united in world existence. This constitutes a mystery for the poet. But the result of this mysterious union is manifested in a man who turns out to be the son of the Earth, and, at the same time, he belongs to chaos.
Merging a person with harmonious nature is positive, merging with incorporeal chaos is scary and destructive.
Tyutchev emphasized the idea of the value of bodily existence and the independence of natural life:
Not what you think, nature:
Not a cast, not a soulless face -
She has a soul, she has freedom,
It has love, it has language...
The originality of Tyutchev’s romantic lyrics is that he sang the beauty of nature, the joy of bodily existence, which the poet sees as spiritual at the same time. His nature “breathes,” “sinks into sleep,” “trembles,” and in the morning “rejoices” and “laughs.” Nature can be full of love and bliss, it suffers like a person.
Tyutchev with special love pursues the idea of a harmonious union of man and nature.
1. The theme of nature in Tyutchev’s lyrics.
2. Symbolism of Tyutchev’s lyrics.
3. The need for human understanding of nature.
The theme of nature is one of the main and favorite themes in the work of the 19th century Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev. This man was a subtle lyricist who knew how to spy behind the scenes of nature the most intimate action and describe it vividly and with feeling.
When Tyutchev touches on the topic of nature, he shares with us his conviction that nature is animate, it lives in the same way as a person lives:
Not what you think, nature:
Not a cast, not
Soulless face -
She has a soul, she has freedom,
There is love in it. It has a language.
They don't see or hear
They live in this world as if in darkness,
For them, even the suns do not breathe,
And there is no life in the sea waves.
(“Not what you think, nature…”)
Tyutchev paints landscapes of nature, often turning to the image of spring. This is divine power, depicted by the poet in the image of a girl who proudly walks on the ground, scatters flowers and breathes freshness:
Her gaze shines with immortality,
And not a wrinkle on my forehead.
Your laws
Only obedient
At the appointed hour he flies to you,
Light, blissfully indifferent,
As befits a deity.
("Spring")
The poet associates spring time with blue skies, warm rain, thunder and thunder, as in the famous poem “I love a thunderstorm in early May...”. The mood of the spring season is special because, with its influence on a person, it disperses the heavy mood that may have remained after winter. In a special form - a poetic miniature - Tyutchev formulated an aphorism: “Not everything painful to the soul dreams of: spring has come and the sky will clear up.” Here we speak, of course, about spring not only as a time of year. Here spring also has a philosophical meaning - it is a renewal for the human soul.
Spring is not a lonely traveler; she is accompanied by a cheerful round dance of days, which creates a light image of young girls on a walk:
Spring is coming, spring is coming,
And quiet, warm May days
Ruddy, bright round dance
The crowd cheerfully follows her!
(“Spring Waters”)
Tyutchev depicts not only spring in his poems. The image of autumn is often found and carries the opposite mood to spring. This is the sadness that is evoked by the “ominous shine and variegation of trees,” fog and empty land:
Damage, exhaustion - and everything
That gentle smile of fading,
What in a rational being we call
Divine modesty of suffering.
("Autumn evening")
And yet Tyutchev admits that there is some kind of general “mysterious charm” in autumn, and autumn evenings sharpen a person’s premonition - a special gift that is so significant for the poet.
The landscape of his native lands gives rise to a feeling in the writer akin to reverence for the modest, and often meager-looking land of poor villages. Everything in these landscapes makes you think for a long time, peer into every feature; the human eye must not just “scan” the area. An observer of nature should look in local species for traces of the presence of higher powers - the blessing of God, which the Heavenly King spread across the earth as he passed through it. In this passage, Tyutchev could not help but touch upon an important problem for him - man’s inability to notice the mysteries of nature:
He won't understand or notice
Proud look of a foreigner,
What shines through and secretly shines
In your humble nakedness.
(“These poor villages...”)
A person is invisibly connected with the place where he lives. The “foreign gaze” looks at poor villages with contempt, but sees only the surface of things. The “native” person will not look arrogantly, but will try to penetrate into the essence of things, which is what the poet calls for.
The poet Fyodor Tyutchev paid great attention to the problem of interaction between man and nature. In his lyrics we find both admiration and tender feelings with which he himself treated the natural world. We also find reverence and awe for the natural elements. Tyutchev loved all seasons and often used their descriptions in his poems, subtly feeling the beautiful and majestic state of nature in each of them, especially spring joy and freshness.
For many generations, Tyutchev’s lyrics have been included in the treasury of works that teach to love one’s native land and notice the beauty of the world around us, to seek harmony with it and try to reveal its secrets.
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Tyutchev's poetry is a reflection of his inner life, his thoughts and feelings. All this created an artistic image and acquired philosophical understanding.
It is not for nothing that Tyutchev is called the singer of nature. The beauty of Russian nature entered the poet’s heart from a young age. True, Tyutchev wrote his first poems about nature in Germany. There his “Spring Storm” was born. Every time he comes to his native places, the poet gifts us with beautiful poems about his homeland, creating a whole series of pictures of nature. This was also his poem “In the Enchantress in Winter...” And although everything around was covered with fluffy snow, there was an eerie silence, not a shadow of despondency could be heard in the poem. Even in the inclement season of autumn, despite the slush of washed-out Bryansk roads, the inconvenience of inns, dirt, bedbugs and flies, Tyutchev’s soul thaws at the sight of his native places. There is a need for a pencil and paper to express in poetic lines the feelings that fill the soul. This happened one day on the way to Moscow:
There is in the initial autumn
A short and wonderful time -
The whole day is like crystal,
And the evenings are radiant..."
The older the poet became, the more profound and philosophical his works about his native land acquired. Here is both the deification of nature and the desire to more accurately unravel its secrets.
In his poems, which glorified pictures and natural phenomena, there is no ordinary admiration. Nature forces the poet to think about the mysteries of the universe, about questions of human existence.
The idea of merging nature and man in Tyutchev’s lyrics is developed in two directions. He talks about the final merging of a person with chaos and joining it at night during sleep. This kind of fusion is scary, since it brings with it the loss of the bodily and conscious principles. The fusion of man with the nature of mother earth takes on a different character. The poet develops the idea of beneficial involvement in her bright, harmonious, beautiful life in many poems: “The East was white, the boat was rolling...”, “I have no passion for you...”, “In the stuffy air of silence...”
They express the experience of happiness of a person’s serene unity with her bright spring world. Other poems of the spring cycle - “The earth still looks sad”, “Spring” - show bliss, the kinship of man with nature and entry into its kingdom.
For Tyutchev, material nature is the mother for man, and chaos is native. The unity of man with nature brings happiness, spiritual merging with destructive chaos brings tragedy. But in Tyutchev’s poems there is not only a merging of man with nature, but also a discord with it. “There is melodiousness in the waves of the sea...” - the poet speaks of the discord between man and nature, which is unnatural. Discord is explained as something incomprehensible, inexplicable. The cause of the discord lies in the person himself. It is not she who rejects him, but he himself, immersed in “evil” passions, unable to accept her harmonious and blessed world into himself. Unity with her is presented as not an instantaneous state, but a more lasting one. Merger and discord replace each other. Following storms and thunderstorms comes “calm,” illuminated by sunshine and overshadowed by a rainbow. Storms and thunderstorms shake a person’s inner life, fill a person’s soul with various feelings, but sometimes leave behind pain and emptiness.
For Tyutchev, nature is the same living being as man:
She has a soul, she has freedom,
It has love, it has language.
Nature expresses thoughts, feelings, mood of a person, and sometimes conflict, the struggle between good and evil:
How can the heart express itself?
How can someone else understand you?
Will he understand what you live for?
The poet believes that it is impossible to comprehend the secrets of nature, you can only get closer to them, admire nature:
As the ocean envelops the globe,
Earthly life is all around us;
Night will come - and with sonorous waves
The element hits its shore.
A person strives to merge with nature, tries to feel like a part of it. But there is also a tragic difference between nature and man. Nature is eternal, unchangeable. Man passes, nature remains...
Tyutchev's perception of nature largely determines his understanding of man: man, especially in the early work of the poet, is almost not isolated from the natural world or is separated from it by the finest, easily surmountable boundaries. In the early Tyutchev you can find a poem whose lyrical plot is metamorphosis: the transformation of a beloved into the objects surrounding her: into flowers - carnations and roses, into dancing motes of dust, into the ringing of a harp, into a moth flying into the room:
Oh, who will help me find the minx,
Where, where is my sylph sheltered?
Magical closeness, like grace,
Spilled in the air, I feel it.
No wonder the carnations look sly,
No wonder, O roses, on your leaves
Hotter blush, fresh scent:
I realized who had disappeared, buried himself in the flowers!
<...>How dust particles dance in the midday rays,
Like living sparks in a birthplace fire!
I saw this flame in familiar eyes,
His rapture is known to me too.
A moth flew in, and from a flower to another,
Feigningly carefree, he began to flutter.
Oh, my dear guest is completely spinning!
How can I, airy one, not recognize you!
The “wonderful closeness” of this poem to the ancient motif of transformations and metamorphoses is obvious. This motif in ancient literature (for example, in the famous “Metamorphoses” of Ovid) was not interpreted as a literary device: it was based on the belief in the inseparability of man and nature.
In Tyutchev's poems, images from the natural and human world seem to replace each other, primarily because human life, according to Tyutchev, is subject to the same laws as the life of the universe, the existence of which is determined by the movement of the sun: morning gives way to afternoon, day to evening, evening - at night, sunrise - sunset. So human life moves from morning - childhood, to evening - old age.
This metaphor: morning is youth, evening is old age, takes on special significance in Tyutchev’s lyrics. Moreover, poems where the poet uses this image represent the unfolding of natural images and turn into a landscape sketch. So, remembering Zhukovsky, Tyutchev writes:
I saw your evening. He was wonderful!
Saying goodbye to you for the last time,
I admired him: both quiet and clear,
And they will be completely imbued with warmth...
Oh, how they warmed and shone -
Yours, poet, farewell rays...
Meanwhile, they performed noticeably
The stars are the first in his night.
Here, human old age appears as a picture of a beautiful evening: with the slowly setting sun, quietly warming with its rays. Another Tyutchev metaphor: man - the morning star - also unfolds into a description of life - the predawn hour of nature:
I knew her back then
In those fabulous years
Like before the morning sun
Star of the original days
Already drowning in the blue sky...
And she was still there
Full of that fresh charm,
That pre-dawn darkness
When, invisible, inaudible,
Dew falls on the flowers...
It's interesting to note that in the poem “You are my wave of the sea”, where researchers see a symbolic portrait of Tyutchev’s last love - E.A. Deniseva, the metaphor of a woman - an ever-changing wave - also unfolds into a holistic picture of nature, at the same time symbolizing the inner appearance of the beloved. The image of the beloved is dominated by those features that for Tyutchev and in the natural world were signs of the highest fullness of life: laughter, eternal variability, love of play:
You are my wave of the sea,
wayward wave,
How, resting or playing,
You are full of wonderful life!
Are you laughing in the sun?
Reflecting the sky's vault,
Or are you hesitating and fighting?
In the wild abyss of waters, -
Your quiet whisper is sweet to me,
Full of affection and love;
I can also hear the violent murmur,
Your prophetic moans<...>
Much later, when assessing Tyutchev's poetic discoveries, poets of subsequent generations - symbolists - would especially note Tyutchev's understanding of man as a restless, dual being, full of contradictions. Contradictions are both a source of human drama and, at the same time, an opportunity to understand a world full of the same contradictions. One of the main contradictions that make up the human soul is its equal belonging to the present and the eternal, the earthly and the heavenly. This duality of the human soul makes a person dream of higher ideals, but it also makes a person forget about these ideals and rush towards “fatal passions”:
O my prophetic soul,
O heart full of anxiety -
Oh, how you beat on the threshold
As if double existence!..
So you are a resident of two worlds,
Your day is painful and passionate.
Your dream is prophetically unclear,
Like a revelation of spirits...
Let the suffering chest
Fatal passions excite -
The soul is ready, like Mary,
To cling to the feet of Christ forever.
Tyutchev was one of the first Russian poets to turn to a description of the mysterious life of the soul, so contradictory, so different - day and night, just as the world itself is different - night and day. The nocturnal soul is agitated by passions and temptations, the daytime soul thirsts for cleansing and redemption of sinful nocturnal aspirations.
One of the stable images accompanying Tyutchev’s thinking about the human soul and human life are the images of the “stream”, “key”, “spring”. These images accurately convey Tyutchev’s understanding of the complex life of the soul: the key symbolizes the deeply hidden, invisible, mysterious work of the soul, the hidden beginning of which makes a person related to the depths of the earth and natural elements. In the poem “The stream has thickened and dimmed...” the mysterious life of the soul is likened to a winter stream that “has thickened and dimmed, and hides under solid ice.” But the “omnipotent cold” cannot fetter the “immortal life of the key.” So the human soul, “killed by the cold of existence,” freezes for a moment, but:
<...>under the icy crust
There is still life, there is still murmur -
And sometimes you can hear clearly
The key of the mysterious whisper!
In the famous poem "Silentium!"(1830) symbolic images of the human soul - underground springs and the night universe. The mention of the boundless mysterious depth and heaven of the soul is intended to emphasize the infinity of the world of the soul. The image of the underground keys of the soul allows us to express the idea of the hidden eternal natural sources of the soul and its mysterious relationship with the “key of life”:
Be silent, hide and hide
And your feelings and dreams -
Let it be in the depths of your soul
They get up and go in
Silently, like stars in the night, -
Admire them - and be silent.
How can the heart express itself?
How can someone else understand you?
Will he understand what you live for?
A spoken thought is a lie.
Exploding, you will disturb the keys, -
Feed on them - and be silent.
Just know how to live within yourself -
There is a whole world in your soul
Mysteriously magical thoughts;
They will be deafened by the outside noise,
Daylight rays will disperse, -
Listen to their singing - and be silent!..
The soul in this poem is a “world” structured like the universe, based on the same primary elements that make up the universe. Epithets also affirm the same idea of kinship between the soul and the universe, man and Nature. Calling human thoughts “mysteriously magical”, i.e. Using the same epithets that are invariably present in descriptions of nature, the poet thereby emphasizes the idea of the incomprehensibility of human thoughts, their subjection to the great witchcraft spells that determine the life of nature.
Researchers call the idea of human kinship with the mysterious cosmic elements one of the fundamental ones for the poet. This idea was clearly embodied in poem “What are you howling about, night wind?”(early 1830s):
What are you howling about, night wind?
Why are you complaining so madly?..
What does your strange voice mean?
Either dull and plaintive, or noisy?
In a language understandable to the heart
You talk about incomprehensible torment -
And you dig and explode in it
Sometimes frantic sounds!..
ABOUT! Don't sing these scary songs
About ancient chaos, about my dear!
How greedily the world of the soul is at night
Hears the story of his beloved!
It tears from mortal breasts,
He longs to merge with the infinite!..
ABOUT! don’t wake up sleeping storms -
Chaos is stirring beneath them!..
This poem affirms the idea of the unity of the human soul and the world. The metaphor “the world of the soul at night” simultaneously refers to both man and the universe, revealed at night to the “strange voice” and “crazy lamentations” of the night wind. Calling chaos “ancient” and “dear,” the poet emphasizes the idea of man’s kinship with the fundamental principles of existence - that Chaos, which was deified by the ancient Greeks and revered as the father of all things on earth. But, noting the power of chaos in the human soul, understanding the full power of this native chaos and even affirming love for it, the poet still sees the human ideal not in painful duality, but in “order,” in integrity, in the ability to defeat chaos and find harmony.
Tyutchev's ideal of man is high. Reflecting on a person, the poet demands from him purity and sincerity and readiness for selfless service to the fatherland. This ideal of a person is clearly reflected, for example, in the poem “N<иколаю>P<авловичу>", addressed to the Russian emperor:
You did not serve God and not Russia,
He served only his vanity,
And all your deeds, both good and evil, -
Everything was a lie in you, all the ghosts were empty:
You were not a king, but a performer.
The ideal person for Tyutchev seems to be V.A. Zhukovsky. In a poem written in memory of Zhukovsky, Tyutchev speaks of his inner harmony and sincerity (“There were no lies or divisions in him - / He reconciled and combined everything in himself”). It is important that the ideality of a person is determined by the presence of “order” in him, which, according to Tyutchev, constitutes the beauty of the universe:
Truly, like a dove, pure and whole
He was a spirit; at least the wisdom of the serpent
I didn’t despise her, I knew how to understand her,
But the spirit of a pure dove was in him.
And with this spiritual purity
He matured, became stronger and brightened.
His soul rose to the level:
He lived harmoniously, he sang harmoniously...
The same concept - “system” - constitutes for Tyutchev the true greatness of another older contemporary - N.M. Karamzin, author of “History of the Russian State.” “System” is a harmonious combination of internal contradictions, their subordination to the “human good.” In a poem dedicated to the memory of the poet, writer, historian, Tyutchev states:
We will say: be a guide for us,
Be an inspirational star -
Shine into our fatal darkness,
The spirit is chaste and free,
He knew how to put everything together
In unbreakable, full order,
Everything humanly good,
And consolidate with Russian feeling<...>
The main features of the poet's lyrics are the identity of the phenomena of the external world and the states of the human soul, the universal spirituality of nature. This determined not only the philosophical content, but also the artistic features of Tyutchev’s poetry. Involving images of nature for comparison with different periods of human life is one of the main artistic techniques in the poet’s poems. Tyutchev’s favorite technique is personification (“the shadows mixed,” “the sound fell asleep”). L.Ya. Ginzburg wrote: “The details of the picture of nature drawn by the poet are not descriptive details of the landscape, but philosophical symbols of the unity and animation of nature.”
It would be more accurate to call Tyutchev’s landscape lyrics landscape-philosophical. The image of nature and the thought of nature are fused together in it. Nature, according to Tyutchev, led a more “honest” life before and without man than after man appeared in it.
The poet discovers greatness and splendor in the surrounding world, the natural world. She is spiritualized, personifies that very “living life for which a person yearns”: “Not what you imagine, nature, // Not a cast, not a soulless face, // She has a soul, she has freedom, // In it has love, it has language...” Nature in Tyutchev’s lyrics has two faces - chaotic and harmonious, and it depends on a person whether he is able to hear, see and understand this world. Striving for harmony, the human soul turns to nature as God’s creation as salvation, for it is eternal, natural, and full of spirituality.
For Tyutchev, the natural world is a living being endowed with a soul. The night wind “in a language understandable to the heart” repeats to the poet about “incomprehensible torment”; the poet has access to the “melody of sea waves” and the harmony of “spontaneous disputes.” But where is the good? In the harmony of nature or in the chaos underlying it? Tyutchev did not find an answer. His “prophetic soul” was forever beating “on the threshold of a kind of double existence.”
The poet strives for wholeness, for unity between the natural world and the human “I”. “Everything is in me, and I am in everything,” exclaims the poet. Tyutchev, like Goethe, was one of the first to raise the banner of the struggle for a holistic sense of the world. Rationalism reduced nature to a dead principle. The mystery has gone from nature, the feeling of kinship between man and elemental forces has gone from the world. Tyutchev passionately desired to merge with nature.
And when the poet manages to understand the language of nature, its soul, he achieves a feeling of connection with the whole world: “Everything is in me, and I am in everything.”
For the poet, in depicting nature, the splendor of southern colors, the magic of mountain ranges, and the “sad places” of central Russia are attractive. But the poet is especially partial to the water element. Almost a third of the poems are about water, sea, ocean, fountain, rain, thunderstorm, fog, rainbow. The restlessness and movement of water jets is akin to the nature of the human soul, living with strong passions and overwhelmed by lofty thoughts:
How good you are, O night sea, -
It’s radiant here, grey-dark there...
In the moonlight, as if alive,
It walks and breathes and shines...
In this excitement, in this radiance,
All as if in a dream, I stand lost -
Oh, how willingly I would be in their charm
I would drown my entire soul...
("How good you are, O night sea...")
Admiring the sea, admiring its splendor, the author emphasizes the closeness of the elemental life of the sea and the incomprehensible depths of the human soul. The comparison “as in a dream” conveys man’s admiration for the greatness of nature, life, and eternity.
Nature and man live by the same laws. As the life of nature fades, so does human life. The poem “Autumn Evening” depicts not only the “evening of the year,” but also the “meek” and therefore “bright” withering of human life:
...and on everything
That gentle smile of fading,
What in a rational being we call
Divine modesty of suffering!
("Autumn evening")
The poet says:
There are in the brightness of autumn evenings
A touching, mysterious charm...
("Autumn evening")
The “lightness” of the evening gradually, turning into twilight, into night, dissolves the world in darkness, into which it disappears from human visual perception:
The gray shadows mixed,
The color has faded...
("The gray shadows mixed...")
But life did not freeze, but only hid, dozed off. Dusk, shadows, silence - these are the conditions in which a person’s spiritual powers awaken. A person remains alone with the whole world, absorbs it into himself, merges with it. The moment of unity with the life of nature, dissolution in it is the highest bliss available to man on earth.