A striking question posed by several poets in their works, “In early autumn sweetly wistful…,” “Autumn,” and “The Poet,” is whether winter truly symbolizes death or merely a period of dormancy. The implication therein being the forthcoming awakening, with regards to Russia as a landscape and a country awaiting to potential glory. A time many view as a colorful prelude to dark, cold days of misery, Tyutchev marvels at autumn as “sweetly wistful” as though dreaming of and awaiting the future. In the second stanza, the stark images of death and abandonment, “empty fields…where sickles ravaged in the harvest’s ebb” both evokes the ebb and flow of time and the forthcoming bereavement of life in winter. But Tyutchev balances this image with the hopeful evidence of a single living spider. And in the face of flight-prone and fanciful birds that are “afraid of future shadows” (“In early autumn sweetly wistful…,” 9), the divine “heaven pours its azure, pure and warm, / on quietly resting fields and meadows…” (“In early autumn sweetly wistful…,” 11-12). Rather than this imminent and depressing death, the fields are simply restoring themselves in divine emptiness. Somehow hopeful, this poem does not disparage winter, long though Russia faces it, but glories in its peaceful rest and potential to be awoken.

Similarly, Pushkin does not dread the oncoming darkness and cold, but in his poem “Autumn,” he loves “the splendid fading of those days” (“Autumn”, VII:3). In this prolonged Russian winter, he “sleep[s] a lot and sometimes even eat[s]” (“Autumn,” VIII: 4) and yet finds himself awoken with passion and struck with creativity that causes frantic “fingers seek[ing] the pen, and pen–the sheets; /One moment–and the verses flow in time!” (“Autumn,” XI:3-4). Not only is he struck with creative genius, but it flows from him perfectly! Like the bard called forth by the Sun God, Apollo, “The poet’s dormant soul is stirred / And like a mighty eagle wakes.” (“The Poet,” 11-12). These two figures are both awoken with divine inspiration like an eagle soaring over the wonders of the land or a ship breaking the waves with the swiftness of its passage.

Do these poets hold the image of Russia in the backs of their minds, her long and barren winters often mistaken for lifeless? “Even sleeping you astonish me,” proclaims Blok (“Russia,” 1), but what will happen when she awakes?