His father Ivan Nikolaevich Tyutchev (1768—1846) was a court councillor who served in the Kremlin Expedition that managed all building and restoration works of Moscow palaces.

After graduating he joined the Foreign Office and in 1822 accompanied his relative, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy, to Munich to take up a post as trainee diplomat at the Russian legation.

Tyutchev's poem Tears or Slyozy (Liubliu, druz'ya, laskat' ochami...) coincides with one of their meetings, and is most likely dedicated to Amalie (or Amélie, as she was usually known).

Amélie was coerced by her relatives into marrying the much older Krüdener, but she and Tyutchev continued to be friends and frequented the same diplomatic society in Munich.

(Ia vstretil vas — i vsio biloe), long accepted on dubious evidence as addressed to Amélie, is now thought much more likely to refer to Tyutchev's sister-in-law Clotilde (or Klothilde) von Bothmer.

The next day, Tyutchev wrote to his daughter Daria: Yesterday I felt a moment of burning emotion due to my meeting with... my dear Amalie Krüdener who wished to see me for the last time in this world and came to take her leave of me.

In 1836, a young former colleague at the Munich legation, Prince Ivan Gagarin, obtained Tyutchev's permission to publish his selected poems in Sovremennik, a literary journal edited by Pushkin.

Instead, he turned his attention to publishing political articles in Western periodicals such as the Revue des Deux Mondes outlining his strongly held views on Russia's role in the world (see below).

It was later discovered that Tyutchev had actually abandoned his post as chargé d'affaires in Turin without official permission to marry in Switzerland, and he was dismissed from the Foreign Service as a result.

His daughter Kitty caused a sensation, and the novelist Leo Tolstoy wooed her, "almost prepared to marry her impassively, without love, but she received me with studied coldness", as he remarked in a diary.

Not long after his return to Russia, Tyutchev was reinstated in government service as a censor, rising eventually to become Chairman of the Foreign Censorship Committee and a Privy Councillor.

Permeated with a sublime feeling of subdued despair, the so-called "Denisyeva Cycle" has been variously described by critics as "a novel in verse", "a human document, shattering in the force of its emotion", and "a few songs without comparison in Russian, perhaps even in world poetry".

Both in his work as a censor and in his writings, he promoted the ideal of freedom of expression, frequently incurring the wrath of his superiors as a result, even under the more relaxed regime of Alexander II.

The 200 or so lyric pieces which represent the core of his poetic genius, whether describing a scene of nature or passions of love, put a premium on metaphysics.

Tyutchev's idea of night, for example, was defined by critics as "the poetic image often covering economically and simply the vast notions of time and space as they affect man in his struggle through life".

Unsurprisingly, it was not until the late 19th and early 20th century that Tyutchev was rediscovered and hailed as a great poet by the Russian Symbolists such as Vladimir Solovyov, Andrey Bely and Alexander Blok.

While the title of Nikolai Myaskovsky's 1910 tone poem, "Silence", may have been borrowed from Tyutchev, the inspiration is credited to one of Edgar Allan Poe's tales.

[24] The Ukrainian[25] composer, Valentyn Sylvestrov (born 1937), has made a memorable setting of 'Last Love', recorded by Alexi Lubimov and Jana Ivanilova on the album 'Stufen'.