Russian poet Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet lived a long and very difficult life. During his lifetime, interest in his personality was not as high as after his death. Soon after the death of the poet, it became obvious that during his work he opened a new chapter in Russian poetry. It is his poems that can be considered the starting point of the poetry of the twentieth century. Therefore, today Fet is one of the most popular poets: his poems are included in the school curriculum, they are popular with people of different ages, scientists study his biography and work, finding new interesting facts.

The poet bore his mother's surname. Carolina Charlotte Fet, the mother of the poet, a German, having met the retired captain Shenshin, leaves for Russia. Some time later, already in the father's homeland, a boy is born. Shenshin adopts him, without taking Carolina as his wife. Fourteen years later, the boy's surname is taken away and recognized as illegitimately born. From a Russian nobleman, he turns into a foreigner Fet. For the boy, this event was a real tragedy, and he decides to do everything to return his father's surname. As a result, after almost twelve years, he achieves his goal.

He received an excellent education by the standards of his time.. From the age of fifteen, Fet was sent to a German boarding school in Germany. Already here he was stubbornly engaged in classical philology, studying literary criticism and trying to write poetry. Carried away by philology, he easily enters the verbal department at Moscow University, which he graduates with excellent results.

For the sake of returning the status of a nobleman, Fet leaves literature for several years.. After graduating from the university, he goes to serve in the infantry regiment, because the officer's rank gives the right to receive the nobility. He did not understand army life, but he was ready to endure any difficulties in order to achieve his goal.

In the sixties of the nineteenth century, Fet created prose. At this time, poetry faded into the background. There were periods in which Fet did not create a single poem. He is the author of two prose cycles, consisting of essays and short stories, which were published in the magazines of that time.

Fet was personally acquainted with Leo Tolstoy. In the seventies of the nineteenth century, he becomes close to Tolstoy and considers him a friend. They often meet, have conversations on philosophical and social topics, Fet reads his new works to Tolstoy, and they discuss them. Tolstoy emphasizes the strengths in many of them, and openly criticizes some works.

Fet translated a lot. He translated, both for himself and on paid orders, Schiller and Goethe, Shakespeare, Byron. Fet was fluent in German and English, and was interested in French.

Fet considered himself guilty of the death of his beloved. While still a student, Fet met a girl with whom he fell in love. She was a dowry. Years passed. The poet received a return declaration of love, but he never made an offer to his chosen one, since he was not rich and was embarrassed by his status. And, in his own words, he was not yet ready for such a serious step. A few years later, the poet's beloved burned to death on her own estate. Many researchers believe that she committed suicide without becoming the wife of the one she loved. This tragic story tormented the poet until his death.


Fet was married by convenience. Shortly after the death of his love, he goes on an unplanned vacation to Europe. Here, in the capital of France, he married Maria Botkina, the daughter of a wealthy tea seller. Most likely, it was a marriage of convenience, which the poet was thinking about. Friends and acquaintances quite often asked Fet about the reason for such an imminent wedding, but he was only silent. The poet had no children.

About eleven years old Fet worked as a justice of the peace. He resolved issues in the name he bought and estates nearby, for which all the landowners who lived in the neighborhood were grateful to him.

Fet had an ear for music, he knew how to play the piano. Perhaps that is why his poems are so melodic, and some of them have become romances. Tchaikovsky even called Fet more of a musician than a poet.

Fet was afraid of mental illness. This disease could have been inherited. His relatives were frequent patients in a psychiatric clinic. The poet often fell into depression, could not leave the room for several days. Fet could not talk to anyone for several weeks, devoting himself to creativity.

Fet died two days before his seventieth birthday. Fet was sick with asthma and had poor eyesight, but he felt decent. On the morning of November 21, 1892, he asked his wife to pour him a glass of champagne. The request was followed by a refusal, since the poet was still undergoing treatment. Fet demanded that his wife go to the doctor and come home with him for an examination, because, according to him, he wanted everyone to make sure that he had recovered and could drink alcohol. After the departure of his wife, he wanted to cut his veins. The secretary stopped him. Fet went to the closet to get something, but trying to open the closet door, he sighed heavily and fell unconscious on a chair next to him.

Fet's personality is amazing: he simultaneously managed to be a romantic, dreaming of sincere love and care, and a businesslike, enterprising landowner living a real life. He is a poet who created sincere poems about nature, writing about children and for children. At the same time, he is an accurate publicist and prose writer, who often spent time translating, where one cannot go into thought and dream. He is a versatile person, and this is interesting to this day.

Birth history. Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet was born in November or December 1820 in the village. Novoselki Oryol province. The story of his birth is not quite usual. His father, Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin, a retired captain, belonged to an old noble family and was a wealthy landowner. While being treated in Germany, he married Charlotte Feth, whom he took to Russia from her living husband and daughter. Two months later, Charlotte gave birth to a boy named Athanasius and given the surname Shenshin.

Fourteen years later, the spiritual authorities of Orel discovered that the child was born before the wedding of his parents and Athanasius was deprived of the right to bear his father's surname and title of nobility and became a German subject. This event is a highly impressionable soul of a child, and Fet experienced the ambiguity of his position almost all his life. The special position in the family influenced the further fate of Afanasy Fet - he had to earn for himself the rights of the nobility, which the church deprived him of. Between the university and the army. Although the Shenshin family did not differ in a special culture, Fet received a good education.

From 1835 to 1837 he studied at a German Protestant boarding school in Verro (now Võru, Estonia). Here he enthusiastically studies classical philology and secretly begins to write poetry. Fet mastered the Latin language here, which helped him later translate ancient Roman poets. After Verro, Fet continued his education at the boarding school of Professor Pogodin to prepare for Moscow University, where he was enrolled in 1838 in the department of literature of the Faculty of Philosophy. During his university years, Fet became especially friends with the future famous critic and poet Apollon Grigoriev.

Together they discussed the poetic tests of the pen, which were included in the first poetic collection - "Lyric Pantheon" (1840): modest creatures, Will share Secret sufferings With my excited soul "These were imitative poems, and the poetry of Pushkin and Venediktov, to whom, as Fet recalled, he enthusiastically "howled" became the role models.

Within two or three years after the publication of the Lyric Pantheon, Fet publishes collections of poems on the pages of magazines, in particular Moskvitianin and Otechestvennye Zapiski, but they do not bring the expected wealth. With the hope of regaining his nobility, the young poet leaves Moscow and entered military service in a cuirassier regiment, stationed in the Kherson province. Subsequently, in his memoirs, Fet writes: “This imprisonment will continue for a long time - I don’t know, and in a moment various Gogol Wii climb into the eyes on a tablespoon, and you still need to smile ... I can compare my life with a dirty puddle.” But in 1858 A. Fet was forced to retire.

He never received noble rights - at that time the nobility gave only the rank of colonel, and he was the headquarters - captain. This made his further military career useless. Of course, military service was not in vain for Fet: these were the dawn years of his poetic activity. In 1850, "Poems" by A. Fet were published in Moscow, greeted by readers with delight. In St. Petersburg, he met Nekrasov, Panaev, Druzhinin, Goncharov, Yazykov. He later became friends with Leo Tolstoy. This friendship was long and necessary for both.

During the years of military service, Afanasy Fet experienced a tragic love that influenced all his work. It was love for the daughter of a poor landowner Maria Lazich, a fan of his poetry, a very talented and educated girl. She also fell in love with him, but they were both poor, and for this reason A. Fet did not dare to join his fate with his beloved girl. Soon Maria Lazich died under mysterious circumstances.

Until his death, the poet remembered his unhappy love; in many of his poems, her unfading breath is heard.
In 1856 a new book of the poet was published. Fulfillment of desires. After retiring, Fet married the sister of the critic Botkin, M. Botkin, who belonged to a wealthy Moscow merchant family. It was a marriage of convenience, and the poet sincerely confessed to the bride the secrets of his birth. With the money of his wife, Fet in 1860 buys the Stepanovka estate and becomes a landowner, where he lives for seventeen years, only occasionally visiting Moscow. Here he found his royal decree that the surname Shenshin, with all the rights associated with it, was finally approved for him. He became a nobleman.

In 1877, Afanasy Afanasyevich bought the village of Vorobyovka in the Kursk province, where he spent the rest of his life, only leaving for Moscow for the winter. These years, in contrast to the years spent in Stepanovka, are characterized by his return to literature. Beginning in 1883, he published a number of collections of lyrical poems, united by a common title - "Evening Lights" (first issue - 1883; second issue - 1885; third issue - 1888; fourth issue - 1891). In his poems, the poet refuses any abstraction, since mental states are difficult to analyze, and even more difficult to convey in words the subtle movements of the soul.

Creativity A. A. Fet. A. Fet's poems are pure poetry, in the context that there is not a drop of prose. Fet limited his poetry to three themes: love, nature, art. Usually he did not sing of hot feelings, despair, delight, lofty thoughts. No, he wrote about the simplest things - about pictures of nature, about rain, about snow, about the sea, about mountains, about forests, about stars, about the simplest movements of the soul, even about minute impressions. His poetry is joyful and bright, it has a sense of light and peace. Even about his ruined love, he writes lightly and calmly, although his feeling is deep and fresh, as in the first minutes. Until the end of his life, Fetu did not change the joy that pervaded almost all of his poems.

The beauty, naturalness, sincerity of his poetry reach complete perfection, his verse is amazingly expressive, figurative, musical. “This is not just a poet, but rather a poet-musician…” Tchaikovsky said about him. Many romances were written to Fet's poems, which quickly gained wide popularity.

Fet is a singer of Russian nature. Fet can be called a singer of Russian nature. The approach of spring and autumn withering, a fragrant summer night and a frosty day, a rye field stretching endlessly and without edge and a dense shady forest - he writes about all this in his poems. Fet's nature is always calm, hushed, as if frozen. And at the same time, it is surprisingly rich in sounds and colors, lives its own life, hidden from the inattentive eye:

"I came to you with greetings,
Say that the sun has risen
What is hot light
The sheets fluttered;
Tell that the forest woke up
All woke up, each branch,
Startled by every bird
And full of spring thirst ... "

Fet perfectly conveys the "fragrant freshness of feelings" inspired by nature, its beauty, charm. His poems are imbued with a bright, joyful mood, the happiness of love. The poet unusually subtly reveals the various shades of human experiences. He knows how to catch and clothe in bright, vivid images even fleeting spiritual movements that are difficult to identify and convey in words:

"Whisper, timid breath,
trill nightingale,
Silver and flutter
sleeping stream,
Night light, night shadows,
Shadows without end
A series of magical changes
sweet face,
In smoky clouds purple roses,
reflections of amber,
And kisses, and tears,
And dawn, dawn! .. »

Usually A. Fet in his poems dwells on one figure, on one turn of feelings, and at the same time, his poetry cannot be called monotonous, on the contrary, it strikes with diversity and a multitude of topics. The special charm of his poems, in addition to the content, is precisely in the nature of the moods of poetry. Muse Fet is light, airy, as if there is nothing earthly in her, although she tells us exactly about the earth. There is almost no action in his poetry, each of his verses is a whole kind of impressions, thoughts, joys and sorrows.

Take at least such of them as “Your Ray, flying far ...”, “Still eyes, Crazy eyes ...”, “The sun is a ray between lindens ...”, “I extend my hand to you in silence ...”, etc..
The poet sang beauty where he saw it, and he found it everywhere. He was an artist with an exceptionally developed sense of beauty. Perhaps that is why in his poems there are such wonderful pictures of nature that he accepted it as it is, not allowing any decorations of reality.

Love lyrics of the poet. Just as wonderful for Fet was the feeling of love, to which many of the poet's works are devoted. Love for him is protection, a safe haven "from the eternal splash and noise of life." Fet's love lyrics are rich in shades, tenderness, warmth coming from within the soul. “Fragrant honey of love joy and magical dreams” Fet depicted in his works in words of extreme freshness and transparency. Permeated now with light sadness, now with light joy, his love lyrics still warm the hearts of readers, “burning with eternal gold in singing.”

In all the works of A. Fet, he is impeccably faithful in descriptions or feelings, then the nature of their small risks, shades, moods. It is thanks to this that the poet created amazing works that have been striking us for so many years with filigree psychological accuracy. Among them are such poetic masterpieces as "Whisper, timid breath...", "I came to you with greetings...", "At dawn you don't wake her...", "The dawn says goodbye to the earth... ".

Fet's poetry is the poetry of allusions, conjectures, omissions, his poems for the most part do not have a plot, they are lyrical miniatures, the purpose of which is not so much to convey thoughts and feelings to the reader, but rather the "flying" mood of the poet. He was far from spiritual storms and anxieties. The poet wrote:

"The language of mental storm
Was incomprehensible to me."

Fet was deeply convinced that beauty is a real important element in building the world, which provides it with harmonious balance and integrity. Therefore, he sought and found beauty in everything: in fallen leaves, in a rose that surprisingly smiled “on the day of fleeting September”, in the colors of “native sky”. The poet distinguished between the "mind of the mind" and the "mind of the heart." He believed that only the “mind of the heart” could penetrate the outer shell of the beautiful essence of being. Fet's heartfelt lyrics have no access to anything terrible, ugly, disharmonious.

In 1892, the poet died of an asthma attack, two days before the age of 72. Before that, he tried to commit suicide. He was buried in the village of Kleymenovo, the Shenshin family estate, 25 versts from Orel.

Fet's work had a significant influence on the Symbolist poets of the early twentieth century - V. Bryusov, A. Blok, A. Bely, and then - S. Yesenin, B. Pasternak and others.
Conclusion. Analyzing the works of the poet, one can state with full confidence that the Russian school of pure art not only was not inferior to the French one, but perhaps even surpassed it in some way. Unlike the representatives of the French school of "pure art", who in their poems paid attention primarily to the rhythm of the verse, repetitions, the alternation of letters in words, the creation of verses - symbols, Russian poets were masters of "musical verses" that were easy to read. The images created in the poems were light, permeated with light, appealed to the best feelings of a person, taught beauty, taught to find and love beauty in every manifestation of nature, or a feeling of love.

The poems of the representatives of the Russian school of "pure art" are more understandable to the reader, since their poems are not burdened with a large number of symbolic images. An interesting feature of Russian poets is that they not only sang of nature, but also treated it as something outstanding, amazing, which could become the meaning of life. It is in nature, love for a woman or a man that a person should find inspiration for life, work, creativity, love for the motherland. In my opinion, the Russian poets of the “pure art” school sang of nature in their poems through their special attitude towards it, while the French poets simply believed that it was worthy to preserve for centuries only poems about the eternal, something sublime, not ordinary. That is why nature reigned in the verses of the French.

Therefore, I am more impressed by the lyrics of the poets Fet and F. Tyutchev, which, through all its dissimilarity, fascinates with its beauty, subtle sense of the “soul of nature” and the desire to reflect it in all its manifestations.

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Russian poet (real name Shenshin), corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1886). Lyrics of nature saturated with specific signs, fleeting moods of the human soul, musicality: "Evening Lights" (collections 1 4, 1883 91). Many of the poems have been set to music.

Biography

Born in October or November in the village of Novoselki, Oryol province. His father was a wealthy landowner A. Shenshin, his mother was Caroline Charlotte Föth, who came from Germany. The parents were not married. The boy was recorded as the son of Shenshin, but when he was 14 years old, the legal illegality of this record was discovered, which deprived him of the privileges given to hereditary nobles. From now on, he had to bear the surname Fet, a rich heir suddenly turned into a "man without a name", the son of an unknown foreigner of dubious origin. Fet took it as a disgrace. To return the lost position became an obsession that determined his entire life path.

He studied at a German boarding school in the city of Verro (now Võru, Estonia), then at the boarding school of Professor Pogodin, historian, writer, journalist, where he entered Moscow University for training. In 1844 he graduated from the verbal department of the philosophical faculty of the university, where he became friends with Grigoriev, his peer, a friend in the passion for poetry. "Blessing" for a serious literary work Fet was given by Gogol, who said: "This is an undoubted talent." Fet's first collection of poems, The Lyrical Pantheon, was published in 1840 and was approved by Belinsky, which inspired him to continue his work. His poems have appeared in many publications.

In order to achieve his goal to return the title of nobility in 1845 he left Moscow and entered the military service in one of the provincial regiments in the south. He continued to write poetry.

Only eight years later, while serving in the Guards Life Lancers Regiment, he got the opportunity to live near St. Petersburg.

In 1850, in the journal Sovremennik, owned by Nekrasov, Fet's poems are published, which are admired by critics of all directions. He was received among the most famous writers (Nekrasov and Turgenev, Botkin and Druzhinin, etc.), thanks to literary earnings, he improved his financial situation, which gave him the opportunity to travel around Europe. In 1857 in Paris he married the daughter of the richest tea merchant and the sister of his admirer V. Botkin M. Botkina.

In 1858, Fet retired, settled in Moscow and vigorously engaged in literary work, demanding from publishers an "unheard of price" for their works.

A difficult life path developed in him a gloomy outlook on life and society. His heart was hardened by the blows of fate, and his desire to compensate for his social attacks made him a difficult person to communicate with. Fet almost stopped writing, became a real landowner, working on his estate; he is elected justice of the peace in Vorobyovka. This went on for almost 20 years.

In the late 1870s, Fet began to write poetry with renewed vigor. The sixty-three-year-old poet gave the name "Evening Lights" to the collection of poems. (More than three hundred poems are included in five editions, four of which were published in 1883, 1885, 1888, 1891. The poet prepared the fifth edition, but did not manage to publish it.)

In 1888, in connection with the "fiftieth anniversary of his muse", Fet managed to achieve the court rank of chamberlain; he considered the day on which this happened to be the day when the surname "Shenshin" was returned to him, "one of the happiest days of his life."

Brief biography of Athanasius Fet

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet is a Russian poet of German origin, memoirist, translator, and since 1886 a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Fet was born on December 5, 1820 in the Novoselki estate (Oryol province). The writer's father was a wealthy German-born landowner named Fet. Mother Athanasius remarried Afanasy Shenshin, who became the official father for the writer and gave him his last name.

When the boy was 14 years old, the legal illegality of this record was discovered, and Afanasy was forced to take the surname Fet again, which was akin to shame for him. Subsequently, he tried all his life to regain the name Shenshin. Fet received his education in a German private boarding school. Around 1835 he began to write poetry and take an interest in literature. After leaving school, he entered Moscow University, where he studied for 6 years at the verbal department of the Faculty of Philosophy.

In 1840, a collection of poems by the poet "Lyrical Pantheon" appeared. At the beginning of his literary career, he was supported by his friend and colleague Apollon Grigoriev. In 1845, Fet entered the service and a year later received his first officer rank. A few years later, the second collection of the writer appeared, which received a positive assessment from critics. At the same time, the beloved of the poet Marich Lazic died, to whom many poems from the collection were dedicated. Among them, "Talisman" and "Old Letters".

Fet often visited St. Petersburg, where he talked with Turgenev, Goncharov and other writers. There he collaborated with the editors of the Sovremennik magazine. The third collection of poems appeared in 1856, edited by Turgenev. Soon the poet married Maria Botkina. After retiring, the writer settled in Moscow. In 1863, a two-volume collection of his poems appeared. In 1867 he was awarded the title of justice of the peace, and in 1873 he was finally able to return to his former surname and title of nobility. The writer died of a heart attack on November 21, 1892 in Moscow. He was buried in Kleymenovo, now the Oryol region, the ancestral village of the Shenshins.

In the Novoselki estate near the city of Mtsensk, Oryol province (now Mtsensk district, Oryol region).

According to other sources, Fet's date of birth is November 10 (October 29, old style) or December 11 (November 29, old style), 1820.

The future poet was born into the family of a landowner, retired captain Afanasy Shenshin, who in 1820 allegedly married abroad according to the Lutheran rite with Charlotte Fet, the daughter of Ober-Kriegs Commissar Karl Becker, who bore the surname Fet after her first husband. This marriage had no legal force in Russia. Until the age of 14, the boy bore the surname Shenshin, and then was forced to take the surname of his mother, as it turned out that the Orthodox wedding of his parents was performed after the birth of the child.

This deprived Fet of all noble privileges.

Until the age of 14, the boy lived and studied at home, and then was sent to a German boarding school in Verro, Livonia province (now the city of Vyru in Estonia).

In 1837, Afanasy Fet arrived in Moscow, spent half a year in the boarding house of Professor Mikhail Pogodin and entered Moscow University, where he studied in 1838-1844, first at the law department, then at the verbal department.

In 1840, the first collection of poems was published under the title "Lyrical Pantheon", the author took refuge behind the initials A.F. From the end of 1841, Fet's poems regularly appeared on the pages of the Moskvityanin magazine published by Pogodin. Since 1842, Fet has been published in the liberal Western journal Otechestvennye Zapiski.

In order to obtain the title of nobility, Fet decided to enter the military service. In 1845 he was accepted into a cuirassier regiment; in 1853 he moved to the Lancers Guards Regiment; in the Crimean campaign was part of the troops guarding the Estonian coast; in 1858 he retired as a staff captain, having not served the nobility.

During the years of military service, Afanasy Fet was in love with a relative of his provincial acquaintances, Maria Lazich, who influenced all his work. In 1850, Lazich died in a fire. Researchers single out a special cycle of Fet's poems related to Lazich.

In 1850, the second collection of Fet's poems, entitled "Poems", was published in Moscow. In 1854, while in St. Petersburg, Afanasy Fet became close to the literary circle of the Sovremennik magazine - Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Druzhinin, Vasily Botkin, and others. His poems began to be published in the magazine. In 1856, a new collection of "Poems by A.A. Fet" was published, reprinted in 1863 in two volumes, and the second included translations.

In 1860, Fet bought the Stepanovka farm in the Mtsensk district of the Oryol province, took care of the household, and lived there all the time. In 1867-1877 he was a justice of the peace. In 1873, the surname Shenshin with all the rights associated with it was approved for Fet. In 1877, he sold Stepanovka, which he had arranged well, bought a house in Moscow and the picturesque estate Vorobyovka in the Shchigrovsky district of the Kursk province.

From 1862 to 1871, in the journals Russky Vestnik, Literary Library, and Zarya, Fet's essays were published under the editorial titles Notes on Volunteer Labor, From the Village, and On the Question of Hiring Workers.

In Stepanovka, Fet began work on the memoirs "My Memoirs", covering the period from 1848 to 1889, they were published in 1890 in two volumes, and the volume "The Early Years of My Life" was published after his death - in 1893.

A lot at this time, Fet was engaged in translations, completed mainly in the 1880s. Fet is known as a translator of Horace, Ovid, Goethe, Heine and other ancient and modern poets.

In 1883-1891, four issues of Fet's collection of poems "Evening Lights" were published. The fifth he did not sing to release. The poems intended for him were partly and in a different order included in the two-volume Lyrical Poems (1894), published after his death, prepared by his admirers, the critic Nikolai Strakhov and the poet K.R. (Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov).

Fet's last years were marked by signs of external recognition. In 1884, for the complete translation of the works of Horace, he received the Pushkin Prize of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, in 1886, for the totality of his works, he was elected its corresponding member.

In 1888, Fet received the court rank of chamberlain, personally introduced himself to Emperor Alexander III.

Afanasy Fet died on December 3 (November 21, old style) 1892 in Moscow. The poet was buried in the village of Kleymenovo, the Shenshin family estate.

Afanasy Fet was married to the sister of the literary critic Vasily Botkin, Maria Botkina.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources