Behind the short name of the poet, like a sigh, lies the secret of his birth and origin, love and the mysterious death of his beloved, the secret of an unchanging feeling for Maria Lazich until the last days of Afanasy Afanasievich Fet's life.

When Fet was under seventy and, in his own words, “evening lights” were already shining, this poetic confession was born:

No, I haven't changed. To deep old age

I'm the same devotee, I'm a slave to your love

And the old poison of chains, sweet and cruel,

Still burning in my blood

Though memory insists

that there is a grave between us,

Even though I wander every day

languidly to the other, -

I can't believe

so that you forget me

When you are here in front of me.

These verses are exactly one hundred and twenty years old, but they still amaze with the fiery power of love, overcoming everything, even time and death. Referring to a beloved woman who has long passed away, as if she were alive, the poet claims:

Love has words, those words won't die.

A special judgment awaits you and me;

He will be able to distinguish us immediately in the crowd,

And we will come together

we can't be separated!

These are lines from the poem "Alter ego", which means "second self" in Latin. So the ancient Romans called the most dear and close people to them. Fet considered his "second self", his "other half" - as they say in our people - the girl whom he met and lost in his youth. After the tragic death of her beloved, motifs and images associated with fire became stable in Fetov's lyrics, whether it be a blazing fire, a blazing fireplace or a quivering candle flame.

The coals are fading. In the twilight

Transparent twisted light.

So splashes on the crimson poppy

Winged azure moth.

Visions of colorful string

Gets up, tired look,

And unrevealed faces

They look from the gray ashes.

Gets up nice and friendly

Past happiness and sadness

And the soul lies that it does not need

All that is deeply regrettable.

The scorching summer of 1848 was drawing to a close. Afanasy Fet served in a cuirassier regiment stationed on the border of the Kyiv and Kherson provinces. The military encirclement in the Ukrainian wilderness weighed heavily on the poet: “Various Gogol Vii climb into your eyes, and you also need to smile.” The monotony of official everyday life was brightened up only by acquaintance with local landowners. Fet was invited to balls and amateur performances.

Once in the hospitable house of a former officer of the Order Regiment
M. I. Petkovich was given a ball. Light flocks of numerous young ladies, waltzing with officers, fluttered around the hall. In the large mirrors, the lights of candles trembled, the jewelry on the ladies mysteriously sparkled and flickered. And suddenly - as if a bright flash of lightning struck the poet: he noticed a slender girl who stood out among others with her tall stature and natural grace. Dark skin, a gentle blush, the luxury of black hair. With a heart trembling with excitement, Fet wished to be introduced to the stranger who struck his imagination. It was she - Maria Lazich, who from now on, like Beatrice for Dante or Laura for Petrarch, was to become the only heroine of Fetov's love lyrics. Year after year, until his death, he dedicated to her a shining constellation of his beautiful poems:

Where are you? Really, stunned,

Seeing nothing around

Frozen, whitened by a blizzard,

Knocking at your heart? ..

Maria was the niece of M. Petkovich and the daughter of a retired cavalry general of Serbian origin K. Lazich, an associate of Suvorov and Bagration. The retired general was not rich and burdened with an extensive family. Maria, his eldest daughter, shared all the economic and educational concerns of her father. By the time she met Fet, she was 24 years old, he was 28 years old.

Maria Lazich was not a dazzling beauty. It was admitted that she was "far inferior in face" to her younger married sister. However, Fet unmistakably recognized her as a kindred spirit. “I was waiting for a woman who would understand me - and I waited for her,” he wrote to his friend Ivan Petrovich Borisov, with whom he spent his childhood together in the Oryol province. The girl was superbly educated, literary and musically gifted. “Poetry and music are not only related, but inseparable,” Fet believed. Maria fully shared his convictions. It turned out that from an early age she fell in love with Fetov's poems, knew them all by heart. The poet, recalling the first moments of communication with Lazich, wrote: “Nothing brings people together like art, in general - poetry in the broadest sense of the word. Such intimate rapprochement is poetry in itself. People become sensitive and understand that for a full explanation of which no words are enough.

One day, sitting in Maria's living room, the poet leafed through her album. At that time, all the young ladies had such albums: they wrote down their favorite poems in them, placed drawings, asked their friends and acquaintances about the same. Everything is as usual in a girl's album. And suddenly one extraordinary page riveted Fet's attention: he read the farewell words, saw the musical signs and under them the signature - Franz Liszt.

The famous composer and pianist toured Russia exactly one year before Maria met Fet - in the summer and autumn of 1847. Liszt also visited Elisavetgrad, where he met Maria Lazich. She attended his concerts, the musician visited her, listened to Maria play the piano and highly appreciated her abilities in music. Did a mutual feeling flare up between them, or was the entry that Franz Liszt left in the girl's album before leaving was just a sign of friendly sympathy? Who knows? However, it was impossible not to notice that in the words of farewell, the genuine pain of the impending separation is seen, and the melody composed by the composer for Mary breathes with passion and tenderness.

Fet felt a pang of jealousy, but the painful feeling immediately passed when he heard Liszt's music: “How many times have I asked her to repeat this amazing phrase for me on the piano!” - the poet recalled.

I never get tired of thanking heaven for sending me a meeting with you, - Maria once admitted. - And yet I do not understand why you - a university educated person, a refined poet - decided to enter the military service, which, as I feel, is so burdensome for you?

Warming himself by the fireplace on that rainy winter evening, Fet shivered, as if from the cold. The question touched him to the core, touched upon the most important thing in his life and demanded secret confessions. After a pause, he told the girl a difficult, largely mysterious, romantic and at the same time painful story of his family.

His mother - a young pretty German woman Charlotte Feth (Foeth) - lived in Darmstadt and was married to an official of the city court, Johann-Peter Feth. The couple had a one-year-old daughter Caroline, but Charlotte did not feel happy in marriage. Her husband treated her rudely, preferring to spend time with a glass of beer with friends. Her soul languished and waited for deliverance. And at the beginning of 1820, he appeared - a stranger, courteous and wealthy Russian nobleman Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin. A descendant of an ancient illustrious family, a landowner from Mtsensk and a district leader of the nobility, a former officer, a participant in hostilities against Napoleon, he came to Germany on the waters. The Darmstadt hotel turned out to be overcrowded, and its owner placed a new guest in the house of his neighbor - Karl Becker, the father of Charlotte Vöth.
And even though the Russian nobleman was more than twenty years older, she saw in him her hero, whom she had dreamed about in her girlish dreams. A flash of passion scorched both: twenty-two-year-old Charlotte forgot about the duties of mother and wife and fled to Russia with her new lover, leaving her little daughter in the care of Fet. By that time, she was already expecting her second child. While kidnapping someone else's wife from Germany, Afanasy Shenshin left a letter to Charlotte's father asking him to forgive and bless their union. In the Oryol province - in the town of Mtsensk, hitherto unknown to Becker - a response flew, full of reproaches and threats: lovers who secretly fled from Germany committed an offense "which is prohibited by the laws of God and man, and the Christian religion considers among the greatest sins."

In the Mtsensk district, on the estate of Shenshin Novoselki, Charlotte Fet had a son, who was baptized according to the Orthodox rite and recorded in the birth register under the name Afanasy Shenshin. Two years after his birth, Charlotte converted to Orthodoxy, was named Elizaveta Petrovna and married to A.N. Shenshin. He was an extremely caring father for Fet. Elizaveta Petrovna wrote to her brother in Germany that her husband treats little Athanasius in such a way that "no one will notice that this is not his natural child." And suddenly a thunderbolt broke out from a clear sky. The Oryol diocesan authorities, having discovered that the boy was born before marriage, decided that "it is impossible to recognize the aforesaid Athanasius as the son of Mr. Captain Shenshin." So at the age of 14, the future poet learned that from now on he was no longer a full-fledged Russian nobleman, he had no right to be called Shenshin, but should bear the name of a person whom he had never seen in his life, and be called Afanasy Fet "born of foreigners."

After graduating from the verbal department of the philosophical faculty of Moscow University, Fet brilliantly showed his poetic talent, was successful in literary circles, but there was still no definite place in society. The title of nobility in those years could only be returned to him by military service. And Fet decided to enter the cuirassier regiment: one could count on an officer's rank after six months of service. However, fate seemed to laugh at him. Soon, Emperor Nicholas I issued a decree according to which it was possible to become a hereditary nobleman only by rising to the senior officer rank. For Fet, this meant that he would have to wait another 15-20 years.

He spoke about all this with pain on that distant December evening to his beloved.

Noisy midnight blizzard

In the forest and deaf side.

We sat next to each other,

The deadwood whistled on the fire.

And our two shadows of the bulk

Lying on the red floor

And in the heart there is not a spark of consolation,

And there is nothing to drive away this darkness!

Birches creak behind the wall,

Bough spruce cracking resin ...

Oh my friend, tell me what's wrong with you?

I know for a long time what's wrong with me!

A vague premonition of trouble, thoughts about the lack of funds for both overshadowed Fet's love. His poverty reached such an extent that the poet confessed: “I knew very well that it was impossible to appear in society in a uniform of thick cloth. When I asked how much a pair would cost, the tailor asked for seventy rubles, while I didn’t even have seven in my pocket. Not knowing what to do, and in the hope of friendly advice, Fet sends letters to the Mtsensk village of Fatyanovo, his childhood friend I.P. Borisov: “I met a girl - a wonderful home and education, I was not looking for her, she was me, but fate ... And we learned that we would be very happy after various worldly storms if we could live peacefully<…>but for this it is necessary somehow and somewhere ... My means are known to you, she also has nothing.

However, the poet still hoped that marriage would be possible if relatives would provide material support: “I cannot throw the last board of hope out of my hands and give my life without a fight. If I received from my brother<…>a thousand rubles a year, and from my sister - five hundred, then I could somehow exist. No financial assistance followed, friendly advice was also powerless. “If you are the wisest from Solomon,” writes Fet Borisov, “then you won’t come up with anything for me.”

Almost two years have passed since Maria Lazich met Fet. They used to look at him as a groom, but there was still no marriage proposal. Gossip and rumors spread. The girl's relatives tried to force Fet to explain his intentions.

Desperate, Fet decided to “burn the ships of mutual hopes at once”: “I gathered my courage and expressed my thoughts loudly about how I considered marriage impossible and selfish for myself.” With dead lips, Maria objected: “I communicated with you without any encroachment on your freedom, and I am completely indifferent to the judgments of people. If we stop seeing each other, my life will turn into a meaningless desert in which I will die, I will make an unnecessary sacrifice to anyone. From these words, the poet was completely at a loss.

Sorry! In the haze of memories

I remember all the evening alone, -

You alone in the silence

And your blazing fireplace.<…>

What kind of thinking is the goal?

Where has the madness gone?

In what wilds and blizzards

Did I take away your warmth?

“I will not marry Lazich,” he writes to Borisov, “and she knows this, but meanwhile she begs us not to interrupt our relationship, she is purer than snow in front of me. To interrupt - indelicately and not to interrupt - indelicately ... This unfortunate Gordian knot of love, which the more I unravel, the tighter I tighten it, and to cut it with a sword - I have no spirit and strength ... You know, I got involved in the service, and everything else only torments like a nightmare.

But even in the most terrible dreams, Fet could not imagine that this was only the eve of a nightmare. He decided on the final break.

The spring of 1850 came. Nature was awakened to life again. But Maria felt like she was in an icy desert. How to keep warm in this deadly cold penetrating the soul? Late in the evening in her bedroom, she stared at the light of the lamp for a long time. The quivering butterflies flocked to the flame and, dying, fell down, singeing fragile wings ... But what if this pain stops at once? her loose hair. Engulfed in flames, she ran out of the room into the night garden and instantly turned into a burning living torch. Burning, she screamed: "Au nom du ciel sauvez les lettres!" (“For heaven's sake, save the letters!”). Her torment continued for four more days. “Is it possible to suffer more on the cross than I do?” her lips fluttered. And just before her death, Mary managed to whisper the last words, largely mysterious, but they sent forgiveness to her beloved: “He is not to blame, but I ...” Human happiness and life itself were placed on the fiery altar of love.

Fet was shocked by this tragic news. Subsequently, he became a celebrated poet; married a rich merchant's daughter, Maria Petrovna Botkina - not very young and not very beautiful, who also survived a difficult romance. Fet became the owner of estates in the Oryol and Kursk provinces; in Mtsensk district he was elected a justice of the peace. Finally, he received the long-awaited nobility and the right to bear the surname Shenshin. And yet, in the heart of the poet who lived his life, not fading for more than four decades, the fire of his distant youthful love burned. Addressing Maria Lazich, Afanasy Fet wrote:

<…>You understood everything with the soul of a child,

What did the secret power give me to say,

And though life without you is destined

me to drag

But we are with you, we can not

separate.
____________
Alla Novikova

December 5 marks the 195th anniversary of Fet's birth. The date is vague. Nearby is a completely inconspicuous anniversary: ​​165 years since the death of the poet's muse - Maria Kozminichna Lazich.

In Fet's biography, the love story for Maria Lazich usually occupies two or three lines. Only now is the understanding coming to researchers that meeting this amazing, out of this world, girl is the main thing in Fet's life. The death of Mary in 1850 crossed out the entire former life of the poet, gave a tragic sound to all his poems, even the most joyful and bright.

It seems that the first who wrote deeply and convincingly about this was the monk Lazar, in the world Viktor Vasilievich Afanasiev, a literary critic who devoted his whole life to studying Russian poetry of the 19th century. Here is one of our last conversations recorded last winter.

How did the meeting between Athanasius and Mary take place?

It was like this: after university, Fet entered the military service. He ended up in the garrison near Kherson and met a girl on a neighboring estate, the daughter of an impoverished retired general. Mary was then twenty-two years old. She was a very sensitive and cultured young lady.

Did Maria know that the young officer was a talented poet?

Certainly! From childhood, she loved Fet's poems - after all, he had been publishing them in periodicals for ten years already, he already had a book. Maria knew both Russian and world poetry very well.

Fet's most famous poem is "Whisper, timid breath..." Does it have anything to do with Lazic?

The most direct. It was written on the best days of their relationship. Fet then wrote to his friend: "I was waiting for a woman who would understand me, and I waited for her." So they fell in love with each other. But Fet did not dare to marry. With his indecision, he tortured both Mary and himself.

The situation is quite modern. Now young people are justified by the need to "stand on their feet": to save up for an apartment, to make a career. What justified Fet?

Roughly the same. He really was poor, and Lazic was not rich. And now Fet went to a complete break. If only he knew what despair he had brought Mary to! She felt that her whole life was slipping away from her. She begged a lot, begged him not to cut off the correspondence, and finally realized that it was all over. And in the fall of 1850, Fet was struck by terrible news: Maria had died.

What happened?

Her muslin dress accidentally flared up. Maria, all on fire, ran through the enfilade of rooms, opened the balcony door - from the fresh air the fire flared up even more and engulfed her head. She covered her face with her hands and shouted to her sister: "For Heaven's sake, save the letters!" Maria was referring to Fet's letters, since pieces of the dress that had fallen off were burning everywhere. The girl rushed up the steps into the garden and fell down there. At the cries of the sister, people came running, who carried Maria, all burnt, to the bedroom. Four days later, in incredible agony, she died with the words: "He is not to blame, but I ..."

Supposed portrait of Maria Lazich.

What happened to Fet after this news?

It was a completely different Fet. He realized that he had lost the woman he loved with all the strength of his soul. Lost the happiness of my life. Then he acquired everything: he became a wealthy landowner, a local nobleman, a chamberlain of the imperial court. But Mary could not be returned. And Fet spent the rest of his life tormented by the fact that he left her, blaming himself for the death of the girl.

This history, it seems to me, belongs not only and not so much to the history of literature. It contains an eternal reminder to us of how fragile the first feeling is, how fragile and tender the vessel of life is in general...

Fet reverently saved in his soul everything that was connected with Maria Lazich. In another poem, it seems, it is not there, but it only seems to be. Everything is there - the music of the word, the colors of nature, and the feeling of the poet - everything is about her. The poems dedicated to Lazich are not invented, not "composed", no, the poet pays with his life for the memory of his heart. "Where are you? Really, stunned, / / ​​Seeing nothing around, / / ​​Frozen, whitened by a blizzard, / / ​​Knocking at your heart? .." Fet was confessional, all open ...

But not everyone felt and understood this.

Who could then understand what it is, about what and why? Even Fet's friends did not understand why, in his advanced years, he continued to write about love. Konstantin Leontiev, writer and philosopher, was on friendly terms with Fet. He read "Evening Lights" and was so angry that he decided to write a letter to Fet "with friendly advice about love to be silent." Elder Ambrose, confessor of Leontiev, found out about this intention and forbade writing such a letter.

Was the elder familiar with Fet?

Only based on Leontiev's stories or Fet's poems. But that was enough for him. Elder Ambrose had an all-penetrating intuition. So he said, "Don't." He realized that Leontiev had the wrong opinion about Fet.

The soul of Maria Lazich did not leave Fet all his life: the last poem dedicated to her was written in 1892, the year of the poet's death...

Regarding the poem "On the Swing", Burenin slandered: "Imagine a seventy-year-old old man and his" dear "thrown each other" on a shaky board ... How not to worry that their game may end unfavorably for the old people who have played out! That's the extent of the criticism.

Fet could not understand how people came up with such a thing.

After all, everything is pure to the pure.

That's it! Afanasy Afanasyevich wrote to Polonsky about this poem - only twelve lines! - and rising newspaper persecution: "Forty years ago I was swinging with a girl, standing on a board, and her dress crackled from the wind, and forty years later she got into a poem, and pea jesters reproach me ..."

But still, "Evening Lights" brought fame to Fet ...

Glory? "Evening Lights" was printed in the amount of 700-800 copies and was not sold out for many years.

It turns out that Fet cannot be understood without the tragic story of his love?

Fet cannot be understood outside of Maria Lazich. Earthly immortality does not exist, but as long as, by the grace of God, our world stands, while people read poetry, the memory of Maria Lazich will live on earth. The image of a young sufferer who suffered a lot for her love, like an angel flies over Russian fields. If it were not for her, there would not be that Fet, who forever remained in Russian poetry.

But someone will ask: why didn’t he go to the temple with his repentance?

Fet was in the church. When he lived in Moscow on Plyushchikha, he attended services at the Novodevichy Convent. But after forty years, he developed asthma, and then they did not know how to treat it. Afanasy Afanasyevich lived in the summer in his Vorobyovka, often not even having the strength to go out onto the terrace. He was barely breathing.

In general, I must say: he bit himself too much. Answering a home questionnaire in the Tolstoy house to the question: “How long would you like to live?”, He writes: “Least long.”

Friends did not understand why he wrote love poems even in his old age.

In many memoirs of contemporaries, one can find caustic and mocking reviews of Fet as a stingy and rude old man.

Yes, until his very old age he struggled with the sins of his poor youth: ambition and avarice. But these sins did not kill the poet in Fet, they did not destroy the huge gift of love. And that our human courts ... After all, not everything about Fet is open to us.

AFANASIY FET AND MARIA LAZICH A tragic romance with Maria Lazich left a deep mark on Fet's poetry. She was the daughter of a retired general, a small landowner, a Russified Serb. Fet was 28 when he met her, she was 24. In March 1849, Fet wrote to a childhood friend that he had met a creature that he loves and deeply respects, "the ideal of happiness and reconciliation possible for me with vile reality. But she has nothing and nothing to me..." The love of a homeless woman and an officer without a fortune could only aggravate the situation of the two poor people. This would mean for him to bury the future forever in a miserable garrison life with a bunch of children and a prematurely withered wife. And Fet's love receded before the prosaic calculation. Later, he would write an autobiographical poem, The Dream of Lieutenant Losev, in which their romance with Lazich is depicted with realistic concreteness. At first, the comically presented question "to take or not to take the devil's gold coins?" - turns out to be the most important issue in choosing a future life path. How Lieutenant Losev acted remains unknown in the poem. But we know what Lieutenant Fet did. In his memoirs, he writes: "In order to burn the ships of our mutual hopes at once, I gathered my courage and loudly expressed my thoughts about how much I considered marriage impossible and selfish for myself." She replied: "I love to talk with you without any encroachment on your freedom." Maria understood everything and did not condemn Fet. She loved him the way he was, she loved him disinterestedly, recklessly and selflessly. Love was everything for her, while he prudently and stubbornly went towards his goal: obtaining the nobility, achieving material well-being ... In order not to compromise the girl, Fet had to part with her. “I am not marrying Lazic,” he writes to a friend, “and she knows this, but meanwhile she begs not to interrupt our relationship. She is purer than snow in front of me ... "" This unfortunate Gordian knot of love, or whatever you want to call it, which the more I unravel, the tighter I tighten it, and I don’t have the spirit and strength to cut it with a sword. May Fet leaves for maneuvers, and in the fall, under the already ripened fruits, the regimental adjutant Fet heard an astonished question about Maria: “How! You don’t know anything?!” The interlocutor, the poet writes, looked at him with a wild look. And, after a pause, seeing his stagnant bewilderment, he added: “But she’s not there! She died! And, my God, how terrible!" It's really hard to imagine a more terrible death: a young woman burned to death. Alive. .. It was like that. The father, an old general, did not allow his daughters to smoke, and Maria did it furtively, remaining alone. “So, for the last time she lay down in a white muslin dress and, lighting a cigarette, threw a match on the floor, concentrating on the book, which she considered extinguished. But the match, which continued to burn, lit the dress that had fallen to the floor, and the girl only then noticed that lit when the entire right side was on fire. Confused, she rushed through the rooms to the balcony door, and the burning pieces of the dress, torn off, fell on the parquet. Thinking to find relief in the fresh air, Maria ran out to the balcony, but a jet of wind fanned the flame even more that rose above the head ... "Fet listened without interrupting, without blood in his face. After 40 years, he will reproduce this terrible story word for word, completing, in fact, his memoirs. But there is another version of what happened. Soon after the fatal explanation with Fet, Maria, wearing a white dress - his favorite, lit a hundred candles in the room. The room was ablaze with light, like an Easter temple. Crossing herself, the girl dropped a burning match on her dress. She was ready to become a mistress, a concubine, a dishwasher - anyone! - just not to part with Fet. But he resolutely declared that he would never marry a dowry. As the poet admitted, he "did not take into account the female nature." "It is assumed that it was suicide," E. Vinokurov wrote already in the 20th century. Was it suicide? If so, then she killed herself in such a way as not to complicate the life of her beloved, not to burden his conscience in any way - so that a lit match could seem accidental. Burning, Maria shouted: "In the name of heaven, take care of the letters!" and died with the words: "He is not to blame, I am to blame." The letters that she begged to keep were Fetov's letters, the most precious thing she had... The letters were not preserved. Fet's poems have been preserved, which, better than any letters, immortalized their love. Tediously invitingly and in vain, your pure ray burned before me, it woke up a mute delight autocratically, but did not overcome the twilight all around. Let them curse, worrying and arguing, let them say: this is the delirium of a sick soul, but I walk on the shaky foam of the sea with a brave, unsinking foot. I will carry your light through earthly life, it is mine - and with it you gave double being, and I - I triumph, even for a moment, your immortality. What he lost - Fet understood much later, then he only paid tribute to grief - the guard shone for him, other worries, goals loomed before him ... But the time will come - and the sad shadow will imperiously take everything that was denied to the living Maria Lazich. For a long time I dreamed of the cries of your suffering - that was the voice of resentment, impotence, crying; for a long, long time I dreamed of that joyful moment, as I begged you - the unfortunate executioner. Years passed, we knew how to love, a smile blossomed, sadness saddened; years passed by - and I had to leave: it took me to an unknown distance. You gave me your hand, asked: "Are you going?" Just in my eyes I noticed two drops of tears; these sparks in my eyes and cold shivering I have endured forever in sleepless nights. Forty years after these events, a sick, suffocating old man, on a sleepless night, thinks about what that calm farewell cost a 20-year-old girl: “You gave me your hand. A vision flares up again and again: a flaming figure runs, lights up like a torch and melts lines that are to be included in textbooks: Didn’t anything whisper to you at that time: a man was burned there? a dream - there are too many tears in it ... "And further, brilliant:" It's not a pity for life with a weary breath, that life and death! and it’s a pity for that fire ... "And these," rocket "reaching us: I'm flying to death following a dream. To know, my destiny is to cherish dreams and there, with a sigh, scatter fiery tears in height. So the love that once burned out then, in the wilderness of Kherson, the life of a practical army officer burned. You suffered, I still suffer. I am destined to breathe with doubt. And I tremble, and my heart avoids looking for what cannot be understood. And there was a dawn! I remember, I remember the language of love, flowers, night rays, - how can the all-seeing May not bloom at the native gleam of such eyes! Those eyes do not exist - and I am not afraid of coffins, I am envious of your silence. dedicated to the most poignant lines of the famous "Evening Lights", this swan song by A. Fet. And I dream that you got up from the coffin, the same as you flew off the ground. And I dream, I dream: we are both young, and you looked at how As for the letters that disappeared without a trace, Fet, as we know, knew how to return about taken by fate: he regained his name, his fortune, and returned the lost letters. For what, if not letters to a girl from the Kherson steppes, these poetic messages written in the declining years? The sun's ray between the lindens was both burning and high, before the bench you drew shining sand, I completely surrendered to golden dreams, - you didn’t answer me anything. I guessed for a long time that we are kindred in the heart, that you gave your happiness for me, I was torn, I kept repeating about not our fault, - you didn’t answer me anything. I prayed, repeated that it was impossible for us to love, that we must forget the past days, that in the future all the rights of beauty bloom, - even here you did not answer me. I was unable to take my eyes off the dead one, I wanted to read the whole extinguished secret. And did your features forgive me your face? - Nothing, you didn't answer anything! The power of feelings is such that the poet does not believe in death, does not believe in separation, he talks like a Dante with his Beatrice, as if he were alive. Sorry! in the haze of recollection all evening I remember alone - you alone in the midst of silence and your flaming fireplace. Looking into the fire, I forgot, the magic circle tormented me, and an excess of happiness and strength resounded with something bitter. What kind of thinking is the goal? Where has the madness gone? In what wilds and blizzards did I carry your warmth? Where are you? Really, stunned, seeing nothing around, frozen, whitened by a blizzard, am I knocking at your heart? .. Words of love, repentance, longing, often striking in their fearless frankness, broke from his pen. Long forgotten, under a light layer of dust, cherished features, you are again in front of me, and in the hour of mental anguish, you instantly resurrected everything that had long been lost by the soul. Burning with the fire of shame, the eyes again meet one credulity, hope and love, and sincere words faded patterns from my heart to the cheeks drive blood. I am condemned by you, witnesses of the mute spring of my soul and the gloomy winter. You are the same bright, holy, young, as in that terrible hour when we said goodbye. All his life, until the end of his days, Fet could not forget her. The image of Maria Lazich in an aura of trusting love and tragic fate inspired him until his death. The life drama from within, like an underground key, nourished his lyrics, gave his poems that pressure, sharpness and drama that had not existed before. His poems are monologues to the deceased, passionate, sobbing, filled with repentance and spiritual confusion. My fingers opened the pages again, I am again touched and ready to tremble, so that the wind or someone else's hand does not drop the withered flowers, known to me alone. Oh, how insignificant everything is! From the sacrifice of a whole life, from these ardent sacrifices and exploits of the saints, there is only a secret longing in the orphaned soul and pale shadows near the dry petals. But my memory cherishes them; without them, the whole past is one cruel delirium, without them - one reproach, without them - one torment, and there is no forgiveness, and there is no reconciliation! After the death of M. Lazich, Fet writes to his sister's husband Borisov: “So, my ideal world is destroyed. I am looking for a hostess with whom we will live without understanding each other. And one was soon found. In 1857, Fet took a year off, having traveled around Europe with the accumulated literary fee, and there in Paris he married the daughter of the richest Moscow tea merchant V. P. Botkin - Maria Petrovna. As is often the case when love does not interfere in marriage, their union turned out to be long and, if not happy, then successful. Fet, on the dowry of his wife, became a large landowner and satisfied his class claims by economic means. But it wasn't much fun for him. In vain! Wherever I look, I meet failure everywhere, And it is painful to my heart that I am obliged to lie all the time; I smile at you, but inwardly I cry bitterly, In vain. Parting! What torment the human soul endures! And often only a sound is enough to hint at them. I stand like a madman, I have not yet comprehended the expression: Separation. Date! Break this cup: a drop of hope lurks in it. She will prolong and she will intensify the suffering, And in a vague life everything will be a deceptive dream Date. It is not by us that Powerlessness has known words for expressing desires. Silent torments have affected people for centuries, But it is our turn, and the series of trials will end Not by us. But it hurts, That the lot of life is hostile to holy impulses; In the chest of a man, it would be quite enough to get to them ... No! snatch and throw; those ulcers, perhaps, healing - But it hurts.

Already at the very beginning of the 20th century, Fet was called the "singer of silence", "singer of the inaudible", the new reader listened with rapture to Fet's lines that "they move" with an "air foot", "barely uttered." "All the world's joy and sweetness of love dissolved into the most refined element and fills its pages with fragrant vapors; that's why his poems make your heart skip a beat, your head spins, "wrote the famous literary critic K. Aikhenwald.

In the spring of 1845, Afanasy Fet served as a non-commissioned officer of the cuirassier regiment, which was located in southern Russia, in the Kherson province. Here Fet, a great connoisseur of beautiful ladies, met and became friends with the Lazich sisters, Elena and Maria. The eldest was married, and the courtship of the regimental adjutant for a woman who sincerely loves her husband did not lead to anything.

Maria Lazich is a fan of Fet's 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. A tragedy soon occurred to Maria: she burned down in a fire that broke out in her room from a carelessly left cigarette. The girl's white muslin dress caught fire, she ran out onto the balcony, then rushed into the garden. But the fresh wind only fanned the flames ... Dying, Maria seemed to be asking to keep him, Fet, letters. And she also asked that he not be blamed for anything ... But the feeling of guilt constantly haunted Fet throughout his life.

In the memoirs of the poet, Maria Lazich appeared as a tall “slender brunette” with “extraordinary luxury of black hair with a bluish tint”. In memory of past feelings, Fet wrote a poem. Some sounds are rushing And cling to my headboard. They are full of languid separation, Trembling with unprecedented love. It would seem, so what? The last gentle caress resounded, The dust ran along the street, The postal carriage disappeared... And only... But the song of parting Unrealizable teases with love, And bright sounds rush And cling to my headboard.

Until the end of his days, Fet could not forget Maria Lazich, the life drama, like a key, nourished his lyrics, gave his poems a special sound. It is assumed that his love lines had one addressee, these are the poet's monologues to the deceased Mary, full of remorse, passionate. Her image was revived more than once in Fetov's lyrics.

A few years later, after the death of Maria, Afanasy Fet connected his life with a legal marriage with the daughter of the tea merchant Botkin. He showed himself to be a good master, increased his wife's fortune, and in his sixties he achieved the highest command and returned the name of his father Shenshin with all the rights belonging to his family and rank.

Fet's lyrics are thematically extremely poor: the beauty of nature and female love - that's the whole theme. But what great power Fet achieves within these narrow limits. The later poems of Fet, in the 1990s, are amazing. Elderly in life, in poetry, he turns into a hot young man, all of whose thoughts are about one thing - about love, about the riot of life, about the thrill of youth ("No, I did not change", "He wanted my madness", "Love me! As soon as your humble", "I still love, I still languish"). What happiness: both the night and we are alone! The river is like a mirror and all glitters with stars; And there ... throw your head back and take a look: What depth and purity are above us! Oh, call me crazy! Call it what you want; at this moment, my mind is weakening And in my heart I feel such a surge of love, That I can’t be silent, I won’t, I can’t! I'm sick, I'm in love but, tormented and loving - Oh, listen! oh understand! - I do not hide my passion, And I want to say that I love you - You, I love you alone and wish! 1854

Researchers of the poet's work suggest that Fet's death is suicide. Knowing how destructive alcohol is for him, he, seriously ill, sends his wife for champagne, and after her departure he quickly dictates to his secretary: “I don’t understand the conscious increase in suffering, I voluntarily go to the inevitable.” He grabs a heavy stiletto for cutting paper, they take it away, but the corpulent and purple-faced old man, out of breath, runs into the dining room. Halfway through, he suddenly collapses onto a chair and dies ... Fet died in 1892 and was buried near the church in the village of Kleimenov.

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet is a famous Russian poet. The first collection of his poems, Lyrical Pantheon, was published in 1840. By the beginning of the 1860s, when the social forces associated with the revolutionary situation disengaged in Russia, Fet advocated the rights of the landowners. He wrote little during this time. Only in his declining years did the poet return to creativity, releasing four collections of poems under the general title "Evening Lights". In his work, he is a supporter of the doctrine of "pure art", which avoided appeal to social reality, a direct answer to the burning questions of our time. At the same time, his poetry - in a broader sense - has a solid ground of life. The poet managed to masterfully convey the material reality of the world, given to man in his direct perception. The peculiarity of Fet's poetry lies in the fact that for the first time he recreated fleeting spiritual moods and states in lyrics. His poetry is musical, melodic. The poet prefers to deal not with meaning, but with sound - a particularly malleable material for expressing a momentary mood. In the lyrics of A. A. Fet, the main theme is love. Possessing a great gift and special talent, the poet writes beautiful poems. The tragic love of Fet had a great influence on creativity. The poet passionately fell in love with the talented and educated girl Maria Lazich. She inspired the young poet. But high and huge love ended in tragedy. Under mysterious circumstances, Maria dies, and Feta is constantly haunted by his own guilt throughout his life. Experiences about the loss of his beloved are reflected in the world of Fet's lyrical experiences, moods, feelings, embodied in poems. Only in poetry Fet did not feel lonely, only here next to him was his beloved girl, Muse - an inspirer. And there was no longer any force that could separate them - they were together again:

And though life without you

I am destined to drag

But we are with you

We cannot be separated.

The poet never forgot his beloved, he constantly felt spiritual closeness with her:

You suffered, I still suffer...

In the silence and darkness of the mysterious night...

Fet created a moral ideal for himself and strove for it all his life in the hope of reuniting with him. This ideal was Maria Lazich. Fet's love lyrics are filled not only with a sense of hope and hope, but also with tragedy. Love is not only joy, quivering memories, it also brings mental anguish and suffering.

In the poem “At dawn, you don’t wake her up,” a quiet dream of a girl is shown, but then anxiety appears:

And her pillow is hot

And hot tiring sleep.

Over time, Fet's love did not fade away. Forty years have passed since the death of a beloved woman, and Fet continues to write about her: “Forty years ago, I was swinging with a girl, standing on a board, and her dress was trembling from the wind.”

In his poems, he relives love feelings, memories.

Mental upheavals, the loss of a loved one opened the way for A. Fet into poetry, where he was able to express his feelings and experiences.

There is not a drop of prose in his poems, it is pure poetry. Whatever Fet wrote about: about pictures of nature, about rain, about the sea, about mountains, about forests, about stars, about the simplest movements of the soul, even about momentary impressions - everywhere there was a feeling of joy and light, peace.

His poetic language is natural, expressive, musical. “This is not just a poet, but rather a poet-musician…” Tchaikovsky said about him. Many romances were written to Fet's verses. They quickly gained wide popularity.

The poems of A. A. Fet are also loved by many people. They reveal the beauty of the surrounding world, affect the human soul. Love lyrics Fet allows you to penetrate and understand the views of the poet.

Reading his poems, you are more and more convinced that love is really an extraordinary force that works wonders: “All ages are submissive to love.”

Love is a wonderful feeling and every person wants to love and be loved.