Afanasy Fet - biography, personal life, photo

Afanasy Fet is an outstanding Russian poet, translator and memoirist, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. His poems are known and read not only in Russia, but also far beyond its borders.

There were many interesting facts in Fet’s biography, which we will discuss in this article.

So, here is a short biography of Fet.

Biography of Fet

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (real name Shenshin) was born on December 5, 1820 (some biographers believe that he was born on November 23).

Fet was born on the Novoselki estate in the Mtsensk district of the Oryol province. His father, Johann Feth, worked as an assessor, and his mother, Charlotte-Elisabeth Becker, was the daughter of a German burgher.

Childhood and youth

When Afanasy was still small, his parents divorced, and his mother married a wealthy Oryol landowner - local district judge Afanasy Shenshin.

A wonderful relationship developed between the boy and his stepfather. Fet Sr. took care of his stepson as if he were his own son, doing everything possible to give him the best education.

Over time, three more children were born into the Fet family, two of whom died at an early age.

During the biography period 1835-1837. Afanasy Fet was sent to study at the Krummer private boarding school. It is interesting that it was during these years that he began to write his first poems. He was a very inquisitive young man, as a result of which he could often be seen with a book in his hands.

Memoria. Afanasy Fet

The poet Afanasy Fet was born on December 5 (November 23), 1820

Private bussiness

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (Shenshin, 1820 - 1892) was born in the village of Novoselki, Mtsensk district, Oryol province. A few months before his birth, his mother Charlotte-Elisabeth Feth (née Becker) ran away from her husband, a judicial official in the city of Darmstadt Johann-Peter Feth, with the Russian landowner Afanasy Shenshin. Afanasy Shenshin and Charlotte-Elizabeth got married only in 1822. After birth, the boy was recorded as the legitimate son of Shenshin, however, when he was 14 years old, the Oryol spiritual consistory considered the father of Afanasy, who was born before marriage, the Hesse-Darmstadt subject Fet, and assigned him his father's surname.

Afanasy Fet received his primary education at home. Then, from 1835 to 1837, he studied at Krümmer’s German private boarding school in Verro (now the Estonian city of Võru). At this time he began to write poetry. He spent six months in Moscow preparing to enter the university at the boarding house of Professor Pogodin. In 1838 he entered the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, then moved to the historical and philological department of the Faculty of Philosophy. Fet spent six years as a student instead of the required four (“instead of zealously attending lectures, I wrote new poems almost every day”).

After graduating from the university in 1845, wishing to receive hereditary Russian nobility, Fet entered the cuirassier regiment of the Military Order, stationed in the Kherson province, as a non-commissioned officer. He expected to become a nobleman, rising to the rank of officer. On August 14, 1846, he received the rank of cornet, but shortly before this an imperial decree was issued (manifesto of June 11, 1845), according to which only officers from major and older received hereditary nobility. As a result, the total period of military service of Afanasy Fet was 12 years.

While serving in the Kherson province, a tragedy occurred in Fet's life. His beloved Maria Lazic, whom he did not dare to marry due to lack of funds, died in a fire.

In 1853, Fet joined the Uhlan Guards Regiment, stationed near the capital. During the Crimean War, his regiment was part of the troops guarding the Estonian coast. Having the opportunity to visit St. Petersburg, Fet became close to the new editors of Sovremennik - Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, Alexander Druzhinin, Vasily Botkin. He married Botkin's sister in 1854.

In 1856, Afanasy Fet retired from military service with the rank of headquarters captain of the guard, having never achieved hereditary nobility. Since 1860, he acquired an estate in Mtsensk district. In 1867 - 1877 he served as a justice of the peace. In 1873, he managed to achieve the return of the Shenshin surname and the nobility, leaving the Fet surname as a poetic pseudonym. In 1881 he moved to Moscow.

Afanasy Fet died in Moscow on November 21 (December 3), 1892.

What is he famous for?

An outstanding Russian lyricist, whose work, according to Boris Bukhshtab, represents “intoxication with nature, love, art, memories, dreams” and serves as “a kind of connecting link between the poetry of Zhukovsky and Blok.” In 1842 - 1843, Fet published more than eighty poems in Otechestvennye zapiski, which brought him well-deserved fame.

In 1850, a collection of Fet’s poems was published, followed six years later by a new edition. Poems written in the last years of his life were not published in magazines, but were published in separate issues under the title “Evening Lights” (1883 - 1891), with circulations of several hundred copies.

Afanasy Fet also did a lot of poetic translations. He owns translations into Russian of Goethe's Faust, all the poems of Horace, and the works of a number of other Latin poets. In prose, Fet translated the works of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who had a great influence on his worldview, “The World as Will and Idea” and “On the Fourfold Root of the Law of Sufficient Reason.”

What you need to know

Afanasy Fet

Fet's relations with contemporary writers were very uneven. Firstly, he disappeared from the literary process several times for long periods of time, the first time by going to military service, the second time by becoming a landowner. Living in the village, he preferred to engage in agriculture and philosophy.

Secondly, since the 1860s, Fet adhered to conservative views, and was, according to Turgenev, “an inveterate and frenzied serf owner and lieutenant of the ancient order.” He published essays in the reactionary Russky Vestnik denouncing the post-reform order in the countryside from the perspective of a landowner, and his article about Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?” was so harsh that even the Russian Messenger did not publish it. All this led to a break in relations with the Turgenevs and many other writers. In the 1860s - 1870s, of the famous writers, only Leo Tolstoy maintained a close relationship with Fet.

Direct speech

“One day, without further explanation, my father wrote to me that from now on I should bear the surname Fet, and the letter itself was addressed to me: Af. Af. Fetu. <...> No matter how bitter this unexpected news was to me, but convinced that my father had a sufficient reason for this, I considered the question so delicate that I never turned to anyone for permission. “Fet so Fet,” I thought, “apparently so be it. I will show my humility and forget Shenshin, whose name all my textbooks were inscribed.” Then in the first letter to my uncle I signed this name. A month later, I received my uncle’s answer to this letter: “I have nothing to say against the fact that perhaps you should sign a new name in your official papers; but who gave you the right to introduce official relations into our mutual blood affection? Having read the letter with your new signature, I tore it and trampled it under my feet, and you don’t dare sign letters to me with this name.” All this trouble could have remained in the family circle, since no one outside read my letters. But one day Krümmer, standing at the very door of the classroom, while I was sitting at the opposite end of it, saying: “Shenshin, this is for you,” handed a letter to someone nearby to give to me. At the same time, the unknown name Fet on the envelope aroused bewilderment and noise after the director left. - What it is? Do you have a double last name? Why isn't there another? Where are you from? What kind of person are you? etc., etc. All such exclamations and inexplicable questions further strengthened my determination to remain silent on this score, without demanding explanations from anyone at home...”

Afanasy Fet "Early years of my life"

“The desire to go beyond the limits of time and space is one of the constant motifs of Fet’s late lyrics. This motif expresses the poet’s “break” with nature and the godless, irreconcilable nature of his poetry of these years. The poet completely rejects the motif of liberation of the human spirit from earthly limitations through death, which is common in Christian religious ideas and traditional in poetry. Fet never tires of repeating that only life - and physical life, the life of the body - likens a person to a deity. Denying the power of time over himself, he affirms at the same time that the condition for boundless inner freedom is the unity of soul and body and their burning in creativity, thought and love. The poetic theme of free flight takes on the stable form of a philosophical dream about overcoming the power of time and space in the poems of these years. The limitation of human existence in space and time - a question that was the subject of his philosophical reflection throughout his life - now becomes the tragic leitmotif of his philosophical lyrics. “Native space”, his “circle”, his own sphere ceases to be a refuge for him at the end of the poet’s life; he grows cold towards it and leaves it not for the sake of familiarization with nature, but for the sake of proud domination over it in the sphere of the spirit. He is obsessed with the thirst for life and enjoying it. Developing in his reflective poems the idea of philosophy, wisdom, and knowledge as a way to overcome the fear of death, and therefore death itself, Fet saw and showed the relativity of this way out. His “pagan,” as N. Strakhov put it, love for life could not be overcome by speculation, and his love lyrics became the strongest means of fighting for happiness and life in the poet’s declining years.”

Lydia Lo

“From Fet’s poems, first of all, it is clear that he is a poet who has abandoned the word. No writer expresses his dissatisfaction with human words as often as he does. They are material and heavy for him; “human words are so rude” and never correspond to the “ineffable verbs” of the spirit, which in a moment of inspiration arise in sacred silence. Words are approximate only. Oh, if only their unskillful mediation could be rejected! Oh, if only it were possible to speak with one’s soul without words! Silence, breathing, sighs; eyes that look into the eyes of others; a call conveyed by “one ray from eye to eye, one smile from the lips of the dumb”; the golden blinking of friendly stars - all this is much more eloquent than our pale speech; all of these are understandable and wonderful hints, which are generally more desirable for Fet than the hateful and imaginary clarity of an overly clever, defining word. After all, the fragrant soul of flowers speaks in the wordless language of its fragrance; “every color is already a hint,” and, heeding the “fading flowers’ call,” the loving couple understands it so sensitively, and so confidently does she understand all the modulations, the whole silent gamut of these fragrant revelations. Flowers speak more eloquently than people. And Fet, perhaps because he himself is eternally in love, wants to compensate for the paucity of words with aromas; hence his “fragrant rhyme”, “fragrant speech”. But you can’t do without words. It is only natural that our poet uses them very little, as little as possible, and each of his characteristic poems is concise and short. Fet would not be at all befitting of verbosity. Four verses are ready in my heart, I whispered all four verses - and that’s enough. After all, a poem is a prayer, and the meaning of a prayer is that it is short: it does not need more than one word, and its pathos, its deep soul must be concentrated in one word. The whole difficulty is to find it; it will be the word of the world mystery.”

Yuri Aikhenvald

11 facts about Afanasy Fet

Initially, the poet’s surname was supposed to be written as Fet, but when the poems were published in 1842 in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski, it was typed as “Fet.” Since then, this spelling has been maintained in all subsequent publications.
Before the restoration of Russian citizenship, the poet had to sign official papers like this: “The foreigner Afanasy Fet had a hand in this.”
Dmitry Minaev wrote several parodies of Fet's poems. In one of them, he simply rewrote the lines of Fetov’s poem in reverse order. Some parodies were signed by Minaev Θet (the real name of Afanasy Fet was written with fert, not fita).
Fet is the author of the famous palindrome “And the rose fell on Azor’s paw.”
In 1840, Fet, at his own expense, published the book “The Lyrical Pantheon” (“You never know what 19-year-old boys dream about!” By the way, I was sure that if I had the opportunity to publish my first collection of poetry, which I called “The Lyrical Pantheon,” then I will immediately gain great fame, and the money spent on the publication will immediately return a hundredfold"), but at that time Fet’s poems were for the most part an imitation of the work of Vladimir Venediktov, Evgeny Baratynsky, Vasily Zhukovsky. The collection was not successful, and later Fet, every time he came across this book from second-hand booksellers, purchased it and destroyed it. Now “The Lyrical Pantheon” is considered a bibliographic rarity.
At the end of his life, a seriously ill Fet left a note to his wife: “I don’t understand the deliberate increase in inevitable suffering. I voluntarily go towards the inevitable,” tried to commit suicide. Soon after the secretary took the knife from him, Fet died of a heart attack.
The editor of the 1856 edition of Fet's poems was Ivan Turgenev. He eliminated approximately half of the poems from the previous edition (1850), and reworked two-thirds of the remaining ones. Subsequently, Fet stated that “the edition from Turgenev’s editorship came out as cleaned as it was mutilated,” but made no attempt to return to the old texts.
From his military service, Fet brought back not only a love of horses (later he was involved in horse breeding), but also the conviction that “military beauty is a great thing.” He wrote: “Whoever does not understand the pleasure of harmony, no matter what it manifests itself in: in the movements of a well-seasoned and trained army, or in the combined efforts of barge haulers pulling a line to the calculatedly monotonous sounds of the “willow”, he will not understand the significance of Amphion, who created Thebes with the sounds of the lyre."
In the last years of his life, Fet, when he happened to drive past the building of Moscow University, always ordered the coachman to stop, got out and spat in the direction of the university. Yuri Kuznetsov dedicated a poem to this custom of the poet.

Materials about Afanasy Fet

Article about Afanasy Fet in Russian Wikipedia

Afanasy Fet in the Moshkov library

Afanasy Fet in the Around the World encyclopedia

M. L. Gasparov “Verbless Fet”

Fet's creativity

In 1837, when one of Fet’s favorite poets, Alexander Pushkin, died, the young man went to Moscow.

Afanasy Fet in his youth

Soon he successfully passed the exams at Moscow University at the Faculty of Law, but then transferred to the verbal department of the Faculty of Philosophy.

At the university, the student became friends with the famous writer and journalist Mikhail Pogodin.

While studying at the university, Afanasy Fet did not stop composing new poems. One day he wanted to know Pogodin’s opinion regarding his work.

He responded positively to his poems and even decided to show them to Nikolai Gogol (see interesting facts about Gogol).

Imagine Fet’s surprise when he learned that his works made an excellent impression on the famous writer. Gogol called the young poet “an undoubted talent.”

Fet's works

Inspired by praise, in 1840 Afanasy Fet published a poetry collection “Lyrical Pantheon”, which turned out to be the first in his creative biography. Since that time, his poems began to appear in various Moscow publications.

A few years later, serious changes occurred in Fet’s life. In 1844, his mother and beloved uncle passed away.

It is worth noting that after his uncle’s death, he expected to receive an inheritance from him. However, for some unknown reason, the money disappeared.

As a result, Afanasy Afanasyevich was left practically without a livelihood. To make a fortune, he decided to become a cavalryman and rise to the rank of officer.

In 1850, Afanasy Fet’s second collection was published, which aroused great interest among critics and ordinary readers. 6 years later, a third collection appeared, edited by Ivan Turgenev (see interesting facts about Turgenev).

In 1863, Fet published a two-volume collection of his own poems. It contained many lyrical works in which he perfectly described nature and human qualities. In addition to poetry, he was also fond of writing elegies and ballads.

It is worth noting that Afanasy Fet gained great popularity as a translator. During his biography, he managed to translate both parts of Goethe's Faust and many works of Latin poets, including Horace, Juvenal, Ovid and Virgil.

An interesting fact is that at one time Fet wanted to translate the Bible into Russian, since he considered the Synodal translation unsatisfactory. He also planned to translate Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. However, these plans were never destined to come true.

Personal life

By nature, Afanasy Fet was a rather extraordinary person. Many saw him as a serious and thoughtful person.

As a result, his admirers could not understand how such a closed personality managed to vividly, vividly and easily describe nature and human feelings.

Creation

While still studying at the boarding school, Afanasy wrote his first poems and began to be interested in classical philology.

When Fet was studying at the university in Moscow, he made a friend Apollo Grigoriev, who helped Afanasy release his first collection of poetry called “Lyrical Pantheon.” This book did not bring success among readers to the author, but journalists paid attention to the young talent; Belinsky spoke especially well of Afanasy.

Since 1842, Fet's poetry began to be published in the newspapers Otechestvennye zapiski and Moskvityanin.

In 1850, a second book with his poems was published, which was already criticized positively in the Sovremennik magazine, some even admired Fet’s work. After this collection, the author was accepted into the circle of famous Russian writers, which included Druzhinin, Nekrasov, Botkin, Turgenev. Literary earnings improved Fet's financial situation, and he went to travel abroad.

The poet was a romantic; three main lines were clearly visible in his poems - love, art and nature. The following collections of his poems were published in 1856 (edited by I. S. Turgenev) and in 1863 (a two-volume collection of works).

Despite the fact that Fet was such a sophisticated lyricist, he managed to perfectly manage business affairs, buy and sell estates, and slowly make a financial fortune.

In 1860, Afanasy bought the Stepanovka farm, began to manage it, lived there constantly, only appearing briefly in Moscow in the winter.

In 1877 he bought the Vorobyovka estate in the Kursk province. In 1881, Afanasy bought a house in Moscow and came to Vorobyovka only for the summer dacha period. Now he again took up creativity, wrote memoirs, made translations and released another lyrical collection of poems, “Evening Lights.”

The most popular poems of Afanasy Fet:

“I came to you with greetings”;
"Mother! Look out the window";
“How brightly the full moon silvered this roof”;
“I still love, I still yearn”;
“Wonderful picture”;
“Don’t wake her up at dawn”;
“Whisper, timid breathing...”;
"Storm";
"Death";
"I won't tell you anything."