Feta love lyrics. Love lyrics by A.A. Fet. Metaphors and epithets

Square

Many students hardly distinguish Fet’s poetry from Tutchev’s creations - undoubtedly the fault of the teacher, who was unable to present the masterpieces of two meters of Russian literature correctly. I assure you, after this article about interesting facts from the life of Fet, you will learn how to distinguish the poetics of Afanasy Afanasevich from the work of Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev, I will try very briefly!

In Tyutchev's poetry, the world is represented by the cosmic, even the forces of nature come to life and become natural spirits surrounding a person. Motives in the work of Fet are closer to reality (down to earth). Before us is a description of real landscapes, images of real people, Fet's love - the same complex feeling, but earthly and accessible.

The mystery of the poet's name

As a child, A. Fet was shocked - he was stripped of his noble title and father's name. The real name of the writer is Shenshin, his father is a retired Russian captain, and his mother is the German beauty Charlotte Fet. Parents met in Germany, where they instantly began a whirlwind romance. Charlotte was married, but completely unhappy in her marriage, her husband loved to drink and often raised his hand to her. Faced with a noble Russian military, she fell desperately in love with him, and even motherly feelings did not prevent the reunion of two hearts - Charlotte had a daughter. Already at the seventh month of pregnancy, Charlotte escapes to Russia to Athanasius Shenshin. Later, Shenshin will write a letter to Charlotte’s husband, but will receive an obscene telegram in response. After all, lovers committed a non-Christian act.

The future poet was born in the Oryol province, in the metric book was recorded by Athanasius Shenshin. Charlotte and Shenshin were married only two years after the birth of a son. At the age of 14, Athanasius was recognized illegitimate, he was returned the name Fet and is called a “foreigner”. As a result, the boy loses his noble birth and inheritance of the father of the landowner. Later, he will restore his rights, but after many, many years.

Fet and Tolstoy

Lotman's works mention one unusual case in the life of two great writers. Everyone played card games in those days, especially he liked to partake (but now not about him). So, the game process was quite emotional, in a fit, the players tore and threw cards to the floor, money fell along with them. But raising this money was considered indecent, they remained lying on the floor until the end of the game, and then they were taken away by footmen in the form of tips.

Once secular persons (including Fet and Tolstoy) played a card game, and Fet bent down to raise a fallen banknote. Everyone was a little strange, but not Tolstoy, the writer bent down to his friend to light a candle. There is nothing shameful in this act, because Fet played with his last money, unlike his rivals.

Fet wrote and prose

In the 60s of the 19th century, Fet began work on prose, as a result two prose collections were published, consisting of essays and short story-sketches.

“We Can't Be Separated” - a story of unhappy love

The poet met Maria Lazich at a ball in the house of the famous officer Petkovich (this happened in 1848, when the sun ruthlessly burned on the border of the Kiev and Kherson provinces). Maria Lazic was charming - tall, slender, dark-skinned, with a shock of dark thick hair. Fet immediately realized that Mary was for him like Beatrice for Dante. Then Fet was 28 years old, and Maria - 24 years old, she had all the responsibility for the house and younger sisters, because she was the daughter of a poor Serbian general. Since then, all the writer's love lyrics are dedicated to this beautiful young lady.

According to contemporaries, Maria was not distinguished by incomparable beauty, but was pleasant and seductive. So Athanasius and Maria began to communicate, write letters to each other, spend joint evenings in the discussion of art. But once leafing through her diary (then all the girls had diaries in which they copied their favorite poems, quotes, attached photographs), Fet noticed musical notes, under which there was a signature - Ferenc Liszt. Ferenc, the famous composer of the time who toured Russia in the 1940s, met Maria and even dedicated a piece of music to her. At first, Fet was upset, jealousy surged over him, but then when he heard how great the melody sounds for Maria, he asked me to play it constantly.

But the marriage between Athanasius and Mary was impossible, he had no means of subsistence and title, and Maria even from a poor family, but from a noble family. The relatives of Lazic did not know about this and did not understand at all why Fet had been communicating with their daughter for two years, but had not made an offer. Naturally, rumors and speculations about Fet himself and the immorality of Mary went around the city. Then Athanasius told his beloved that their marriage was impossible, and the relationship should be urgently stopped. Mary asked Athanasius just to be near without marriage and money.

But in the spring of 1850 a terrible thing happened. In desperation, Mary sat in her room, trying to gather her thoughts on how to live on, how to achieve an eternal and indestructible union with her beloved. Suddenly she abruptly got up, why the lamp fell on a long muslin dress, in a matter of seconds the flame gripped the girl’s hair, she only managed to shout "Save the letters!" Relatives put out the fire of madness, but the number of burns on the body was incompatible with life, after four painful days, Mary died. Her last words were "He is not to blame, but I ..". There is speculation that it was a suicide, and not just an accidental death.

Marriage of convenience

Over the years, Fet will marry Maria Botkina, but not because of strong love, but by calculation. In his heart and poems, the image of the tall and black-haired Maria Lazic will forever remain.

How fet returned the title

The poet took several years of service in the infantry troops in order to obtain an officer rank and gain the nobility. He did not like the army way of life, Fet wanted to engage in literature, not war. But in order to regain his legal status, he was ready to endure any difficulties. After serving, Fetu had to work as a judge for 11 years, and only then did the writer become worthy to receive a noble title!

Suicide attempt

After receiving the noble title and patrimonial estate, Fet, who achieved his main goal in his life, under some pretext asked his wife to go visit someone. Himself November 21, 1892 closed in his office, drank a glass of champagne, called the secretary, dictating the last lines.

“I do not understand the conscious multiplication of inevitable suffering. I voluntarily go to the inevitable. November 21, Fet (Shenshin) "

He took out a stylet for cutting paper and brought his hand over his temple, the secretary managed to pull the stylet out of the hands of the writer. At that moment, Fet jumped out of the office into the dining room, tried to grab a knife, but fell right there. The secretary ran up to the dying writer, who said only one word "voluntarily" and died. The poet did not leave any heirs.

The highest achievement of late Fetov poetry - his love poems, undoubtedly the most unusual and most passionate love poems written by a seventy-year-old man. In them, Fet's method — to use only his own suppressed emotions in poetry — won a brilliant victory. They are so saturated that they look like the quintessence of passion. They are much more difficult to translate than his earlier tunes, and I hesitate to quote the examples cited by Professor Elton in his talk about Fet. But these verses belong to the most precious diamonds of our poetry. The love theme for Fet is especially significant. Fet considered her the main theme of poetry: "Elegant sympathy, established in its all-conquering attractiveness by nature itself in order to preserve species, will always remain the grain and center on which any poetic thread is wound" (letter to Polonsky). Meanwhile, Turgenev, a fine connoisseur of the poetry of Fet, wrote to him: “All your personal, lyrical, love, especially passionate poems are weaker than others: as if you composed them, and the subject of the poems did not exist.” What exactly does Turgenev mean? Apparently, with the subtle disclosure of emotional experiences, Fet does not give individual images of women. Fet portrays feelings, experiences, but not those who experience. However, this can be said not only about women, but also about men, primarily about the lyrical "I" of Fet's poems. This is a very generalized "I", almost without individual characteristics. We can say about the subject of Fet's poems that this is a man who passionately loves nature and art, is observant, knows how to find beauty in everyday manifestations of life, etc., but to give a more specific - psychological, biographical, social - characterization of him we do not we can.

In solitude will I sometimes be forgotten

Is the dream falling into my eyelashes like a dream -

You, you again in the distance are standing in front of me

My spring days are surrounded by radiance.

All that is destroyed but alive in a poor heart

That the gaping gap between us lies

Unable to hold on to the souls of my impulse,

And again I'm with you - and you have a light.

Not for you an idol volatile and perishable

In heart blindness from dust I create;

This distance is sweet to me: in it is a constant ghost

Again clean, bright, I stand before you.

Neither my children's tears, nor the torment of a sinless soul,

I can’t blame a woman’s weakness,

I seek their shrine with a longing inconsolable

And in horror of shame is your image of the shore.

This is one of the rare poems in Russian poetry written by a man on behalf of a woman. Consciousness of its sinlessness coexists in it with the consciousness of its shame. The brightest, irresistibly attracting to the memory of young days - this is what causes inconsolable anguish and horror of shame. The destroyed idol is recreated again and again and turns to dust again. Poems were written on behalf of a woman, but in their tone they are close to poems inspired by the memory of Lazic, and one might think that these verses were inspired by the poet with the same experiences. Bright, pure, sinless - these epithets are more natural on the lips of a man mourning a woman who has been ruined by him than on the lips of a woman who recalls her youth: here they would give away smugness, narcissism. If so - here is a creative experiment: Fet imagines Mary as a survivor, imagines those feelings that she would have experienced mentally turning to him. Something like this is in other poems:

Though the memory insists that between us is a grave,

When you are here, in front of me.

And I dream that you got up from the tomb

The same as you flew off the ground,

And dream, dream: we are both young,

And you looked as you looked before.

("In the silence and darkness of a mysterious night ...")

Let's look at the early poems of Fet, which contemporaries seemed "genius." Here is a poem, each of the three stanzas of which begins with the words: "I am waiting ...". Waiting, of course, for her beloved, but this is not directly said. At the end of the second stanza, expectation intensifies:

I can hear the heartbeat

And trembling in the arms and legs.

For another poet of that era, tension would be resolved by the arrival or non-arrival of the beloved; Fet has a different end:

The star has rolled west ...

Sorry, golden, sorry!

("I'm waiting ... Nightingale echo ...")

There was a sharp impression of fragmentation, deliberate ragging. Dreams of her beloved girlfriend are more than a common theme for a lyric poem. But how does Fet develop it?

Ah child, attached to you

I love gratuitous!

Today you are my baby

I dreamed of a star crown.

What a spark these stars are!

What a gentle radiance!

You yourself, my baby

What a bright creation!

The image of the queen of stars replaced the theme of “gratuitous” love and cut short the poem “in genius”.

Fet fell in love with Maria Lazic, but neither the feeling nor the awareness that he met a woman who could understand him and lighten his life with his love could not defeat Fet's belief that he would die completely by marrying a dowry ... Love Feta retreated before the prosaic calculation. And was his love the love that was capable of giving true happiness to a lover and lover? Wasn't Fet even capable of only such love that disturbs the imagination and, sublimating itself, becomes obsolete in creativity?

Ile is a sick patient lied

And the night heat goes out in the song

The novel ended in separation, which was soon followed by the death of Lazic, burned out by a match inadvertently thrown by her. Perhaps it was a disguised suicide.

The memory of this tragic novel has not lost its sharpness for Fet, and a number of remarkable poems are associated with this memory.

The grass that is far away on your grave

Here on the heart, the older it is, the fresh ...

Words about the indifference that had come were forgotten forever. The image of Maria Lazic in the halo of trusting love and tragic fate for the rest of his life chained Fet's poetic feeling, to the death this image inspired him. Words of love, remorse, longing, often surprising in fearless frankness, came off his pen. In "Evening Lights" a whole cycle of poems appears (not formally highlighted in the cycle) dedicated to the tragically lost beloved youth of Fet Maria Lazic. Eternity, immutability, constancy of the poet’s love for her, his lively perception of a long-departed person appear in these poems as a form of overcoming time and death that separate people.

Long forgotten, under a light layer of dust,

Traits treasured, you again in front of me

And in an hour of anguish, they instantly resurrected

Everything that has long been lost by the soul.

Burning with fire of shame, eyes again meet

One trusting, hope and love,

And sincere words faded patterns

They drive blood from my heart to the Lanites.

I have condemned you, dumb witnesses

The springs of my soul and gloomy winter.

You are the same bright, holy, young

Like in that terrible hour when we said goodbye.

And I trusted the treacherous sound -

As if there is something in the world outside of love!

I boldly pushed the hand that wrote you

I condemned myself to eternal separation

And with a cold in his chest he set off on a long journey ...

("Old Letters")

You understood everything with the infant soul

To tell me secret power gave

And though life is destined for me to drag without you,

But you and I cannot be separated.

Those eyes are not - and I’m not afraid of coffins,

I am envious of your silence

And, judging neither dullness nor malice,

Hurry, hurry into your nonexistence!

("You have suffered, I still suffer ...")

For a long time I dreamed the cries of your sobs, -

For a long, long time I dreamed that joyful moment,

As I begged you - an unfortunate executioner.

You gave me a hand, asked: "Are you coming?"

A little in my eyes I noticed two drops of tears;

These sparks in my eyes and cold shiver

In sleepless nights, I endured.

("For a long time I dreamed the cries of your sobs ...")

Though the memory insists that between us is a grave,

Though every day raving languidly to another, -

I can’t believe you to forget me

When you are here, in front of me.

Does beauty flicker for a moment,

I wonder, just about, I recognize you;

And the tenderness of the past, I hear a breath

And shuddering, I sing.

("No, I have not changed. To a deep old age ...")

Fet's love lyrics are fed with more memories and dreams than immediate feelings. In most of Fet's love poems, verbs are used in the past tense. In the present tense or in the imperative mood ("Do not avoid; I do not pray ...", "Forgive - and forget everything in the cloudless hour ...", "Do not reproach that I am embarrassed ...", "Love me! As soon as your humble ... "and others) verbs are given mainly in love poems of the last decade. Between 1882 and 1892, at the seventh and eighth decade, Fet wrote especially many love poems, and they are almost the first time talking about present, and not about past love, turned to the beloved now, and not just to the image of the old lover. One could talk about the second love cycle of Fet, if it were known to whom he was addressed - at least to one woman or to several women that aroused a sense of love in the poet, even if only new experiences are fixed in these verses or old ones are creatively moved from the past. For some poems, the latter is difficult to accept — they vividly paint the ups and downs of love relationships — but Fet himself explained their origin in this way, and devoted several poems to the theme of a former young feeling preserved in the old man’s memory: “V. S. Solovyov ”(“ You are amazed that I still sing ... ”),“ Dilapidated, half-tenant of the grave ... ”,“ Everything, everything mine, which is before it was ... ”. The last poem begins like this:

Everything, everything mine, which was before,

In dreams and dreams there is no time of shackles;

The soul did not share blessed dreams:

There are no senile and youthful dreams.

As long as the earth’s chest

Although I’ll hardly breathe,

The whole thrill of life young

I will be intelligible from everywhere.

("Still love, still languishing ...")

E. V. Ermilova subtly remarks about Fet’s senile love poems: “... this is the same feeling of falling in love with life, in its eternal beauty, recognized by the poet at the end of the years with even greater acuteness”. In fact, Fet himself said the same thing:

Just meet your smile

Or I will catch your gratifying gaze, -

Do not you love song, I whine

And your beloved beauty

For Fet, love is the only content of human existence, the only faith. He himself loves nature - not together, but instead of man.

On November 23, 1820, in the village of Novoselki, located near Mtsensk, the great Russian poet Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet was born into the family of Carolina Charlotte Fet and Athanasius Neofitovich Shenshin. His parents got married without an Orthodox rite abroad (the poet’s mother was a Lutheran), because of which a marriage legalized in Germany was invalidated in Russia.

Deprivation of a noble title

Later, when the wedding was performed according to the Orthodox rite, Afanasy Afanasevich already lived under the name of his mother - Fet, being considered her illegitimate child. The boy was deprived, in addition to his father's name, and the noble title, Russian citizenship and inheritance rights. For a young man for many years, the most important life goal was to regain the name Shenshin and all the rights associated with it. Only in old age, he was able to achieve this by regaining the hereditary nobility.

Training

The future poet in 1838 entered the boarding house of Professor Pogodin in Moscow, and in August of the same year he was enrolled in the verbal department at Moscow University. In the family of his classmate and friend, he lived as a student. The friendship of young people contributed to the formation of common ideals and views on art.

The first samples of the pen

Afanasy Afanasevich begins to compose poetry, and in 1840 a poetry collection, published at his own expense, entitled The Lyrical Pantheon, was published. In these poems, the echoes of Yevgeny Baratynsky’s poetic art were distinctly heard, and since 1842 Afanasy Afanasyevich has been constantly published in the journal Domestic Notes. Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky already in 1843 writes that of all the poets living in Moscow, Fet is "more talented," and sets the verses of this author along with the works of Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov.

The need for a military career

Fet strove for literary activity with all his heart, however, the instability of his material and social situation compels the poet to change his fate. Afanasy Afanasevich in 1845 entered as a non-commissioned officer in one of the regiments located in the Kherson province in order to be able to obtain hereditary nobility (the right to which was given by the senior officer rank). Torn off from the literary environment and the life of the capital, he almost stops publishing, also because, due to the fall in demand for poetry, magazines show no interest in his poems.

The tragic event in the personal life of Fet

In the Kherson years, a tragic event that predetermined the poet’s personal life happened: his beloved, Maria Lazich, a girl-dweller who he did not dare to marry because of her poverty, died in a fire. After Fet's refusal, a strange incident happened to her: a dress lit up from a candle on Mary, she ran into the garden, but could not cope with putting out her clothes and suffocated in smoke. One could suspect this girl’s attempt to commit suicide, and echoes of this tragedy (for example, the poem "When you read the painful lines ...", 1887) will be heard in Fet's poems for a long time.

Admission to L ub Guard Ulan Regiment

In 1853 there was a sharp turn in the fate of the poet: he managed to enter the guard, in the Ulan regiment, which was stationed near the St. Petersburg Life Guards. Now Afanasy Afanasevich gets the opportunity to visit the capital, resumes his literary activity, begins to regularly publish verses in Sovremennik, Russian Herald, Fatherland Notes, and Reading Library. He draws close with Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Nekrasov, Vasily Botkin, Alexander Druzhinin - editors of Sovremennik. The name Feta, by then already half-forgotten, appears again in reviews, articles, chronicle of the magazine, and since 1854 his poems have also been printed. Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev became a mentor to the poet and even prepared a new edition of his works in 1856.

The fate of the poet in 1856-1877

In the service of Fetu was unlucky: each time the rules for obtaining hereditary nobility were tightened. In 1856, he left his military career, and did not achieve his main goal. In Paris in 1857, Afanasy Afanasevich married the daughter of a wealthy merchant, Maria Petrovna Botkina, and acquired an estate in Mtsensk district. At that time, he almost did not write poetry. Being a supporter of conservative views, Fet sharply negatively perceived the abolition of serfdom in Russia and, starting in 1862, began to regularly publish essays in the Russian Bulletin, denouncing post-reform landowner-landowner positions. In the years 1867-1877 he served as justice of the peace. In 1873, finally Afanasy Afanasyevich received hereditary nobility.

Fet's Fate in the 1880s

The poet returned to literature only in the 1880s, having moved to Moscow and got rich. In 1881, his old dream was realized - he created the translation of his beloved philosopher, "Peace as a Will and a Representation" created by him. In 1883, a translation of all the works of the poet Horace, published by Fet as a student, was published. The period from 1883 to 1991 includes the publication of four issues of the poetry collection "Evening Lights".

Fet's lyrics: general description

Poetry of Athanasius Afanasevich, romantic in its origins, is, as it were, a connecting link between the work of Vasily Zhukovsky and Alexander Blok. The poet's later poems gravitated towards the Tyutchev tradition. The main lyrics of Fet are love and landscape.

In the 1950s and 1960s, during the development of Athanasius Afanasevich as a poet, Nekrasov and his supporters, apologists singing public, civic ideals of poetry, almost completely dominated the literary milieu. Therefore, Afanasy Afanasevich with his work, we can say, made a little untimely. The features of Fet's lyrics did not allow him to join Nekrasov and his group. Indeed, according to representatives of civilian poetry, poetry must necessarily be topical, performing a propaganda and ideological task.

Philosophical motives

Feta permeates all his work, reflected in landscape and in love poetry. Although Afanasy Afanasyevich was even friends with many poets of the Nekrasov circle, he argued that art should be interested in nothing but beauty. Only in love, nature and art itself (painting, music, sculpture) did he find lasting harmony. The philosophical lyrics of Fet tried to get as far away from reality as possible, contemplating the beauty that was not involved in the bustle and bitterness of everyday life. This led to the adoption of romantic philosophy by Afanasy Afanasyevich in the 1940s, and in the 1960s the so-called theory of pure art.

The prevailing mood in his works is a rapture by nature, beauty, art, memories, delight. These are the features of Fet's lyrics. Often the poet has a motive of flying from the earth away after the moonlight or enchanting music.

Metaphors and epithets

Everything that belongs to the category of sublime and beautiful is endowed with wings, primarily a love feeling and a song. Feta’s lyrics often use metaphors such as “winged dream”, “winged song”, “winged hour”, “winged words sound”, “inspired by delight”, etc.

Epithets in his works usually describe not the object itself, but the impression of the lyrical hero of what he saw. Therefore, they can be inexplicable logically and unexpected. For example, a violin might get the definition of melting. The epithets characteristic of Fet are “dead dreams”, “fragrant speeches”, “silver dreams”, “herbs in sobs”, “widowed azure”, etc.

Often a picture is drawn using visual associations. The poem Singer is a prime example. It shows the desire to translate the sensations created by the melody of the song into concrete images and sensations, of which Fet's lyrics are composed.

These verses are very unusual. So, “the distance rings”, and the smile of love shines “meekly”, the “voice burns” and freezes in the distance, like a “dawn over the sea”, to pearl the loud tide again. At that time, Russian poetry did not know such complex, bold images. They established themselves much later, only with the advent of the Symbolists.

Speaking about Fet’s creative manner, impressionism is also mentioned, which is based on the direct fixation of impressions of reality.

Nature in the work of the poet

Feta’s landscape lyrics are a source of divine beauty in eternal renewal and diversity. Many critics mentioned that nature was described by this author as if from the window of a landowner’s estate or from the perspective of a park, as if specially to evoke admiration. Feta’s landscape lyrics are a universal expression of the beauty of a world untouched by man.

Nature for Afanasy Afanasevich is part of his own “I”, a background for his experiences and feelings, a source of inspiration. The lyrics of Fet seem to blur the line between the external and internal world. Therefore, the human properties in his verses can be attributed to darkness, air, even color.

Very often, nature in Fet's lyrics is a night landscape, since it is at night when the daytime bustle calms down that it is easiest to enjoy a comprehensive, indestructible beauty. At this time of day, the poet has no glimpses of chaos that fascinated and frightened Tyutchev. Majestic harmony reigns hidden during the day. Not the wind and darkness, but the stars and the moon come first. According to the stars, Fet reads the "fiery book" of eternity (the poem "Among the Stars").

The themes of Fet's lyrics are not limited to describing nature. A special section of his work is poetry dedicated to love.

Feta Love Lyrics

Love for the poet is a whole sea of \u200b\u200bfeelings: timid languor, and enjoyment of spiritual closeness, and the apotheosis of passion, and the happiness of two souls. The poetic memory of this author knew no bounds, which allowed him to write poems dedicated to first love, even in his declining years, as if he were still impressed by a much-desired recent date.

Most often, the poet described the emergence of feelings, his most enlightened, romantic and reverent moments: the first touch of his hands, long glances, the first evening walk in the garden, giving rise to spiritual closeness, contemplation of the beauty of nature. The lyrical hero says that he values \u200b\u200bthe steps to it no less than happiness itself.

Feta's landscape and love lyrics constitute an inseparable unity. A heightened perception of nature is often caused by love experiences. A vivid example of this is the miniature "Whisper, timid breath ..." (1850). The fact that verbs are absent in the poem is not only an original device, but also a whole philosophy. There is no action because in fact only one moment or a whole series of moments, motionless and self-sufficient, is described. The image of the beloved, described by way of detail, seems to dissolve in the general gamut of feelings of the poet. There is no integral portrait of the heroine - it should complement and recreate the imagination of the reader.

Love in Fet's lyrics is often complemented by other motives. So, in the poem "The night shone. The garden was full of the moon ..." three feelings are united in a single impulse: admiration for music, an ecstatic night and inspired singing, developing into a love for the singer. The whole soul of the poet is dissolved in music and at the same time in the soul of the singing heroine, who is the living embodiment of this feeling.

This poem is difficult to unambiguously be attributed to love lyrics or poems about art. It would be more accurate to define it as a hymn to beauty, combining liveliness of experience, its charm with deep philosophical implication. Such a worldview is called aestheticism.

Afanasy Afanasevich, taking off on the wings of inspiration beyond the limits of earthly existence, feels himself a master, equal to the gods, overcoming the limitations of human capabilities by the power of his poetic genius.

Conclusion

The whole life and work of this poet is a search for beauty in love, nature, even death. Could he find her? Only one who truly understands the creative heritage of this author can answer this question: he heard the music of his works, saw landscape paintings, felt the beauty of poetic lines and learned to find harmony in the world around him.

We examined the main motives of the lyrics of Fet, the characteristic features of the work of this great writer. So, for example, like any poet, Afanasy Afanasyevich writes about the eternal theme of life and death. Neither death nor life frightens him ("Poems of Death"). By his physical demise, the poet experiences only cold indifference, and terrestrial existence is justified by Athanasius Afanasyevich Fet only with creative fire, commensurate in his view with the "whole universe." Ancient motifs (for example, "Diana") and Christian motifs ("Ave Maria", "Madonna") also sound in verses.

You can find more information about Fet’s work in school books on Russian literature, in which the lyrics of Afanasy Afanasevich are considered in detail.

From the section "Love Poetry of Poets of All Times and Generations".

*.....*
...*

Athanasius Fet
(1820-1892)

If you love like me endlessly
  If you live in love and breathe
  Put your hand on my chest nonchalantly:
  You hear the beating hearts under it.

Oh don't count them! in them, by the power of magic
  Every impulse is filled with you;
  So in the spring for a stream of healing
  Spins moisture with a hot stream.

Drink, give yourself happy minutes, -
  The thrill of bliss embraces the whole soul;
  Drink - and do not ask with your eyes inquisitive,
  Soon the heart will run dry, cool.

*.....*
...*
  Athanasius Fet

The night shone. The moon was full of garden. Lay
  The rays at our feet in the living room without lights.
  The piano was all open, and the strings in it trembled,
  Like our hearts for your song.

You sang before dawn, exhausted in tears,
  That you alone are love, that there is no other love
  And so I wanted to live so that without dropping the sound,
  Love you, hug and cry over you.

And many years have passed, languid and boring,
  And in the silence of the night your voice I hear again
  And it blows, as then, in the sighs of these sonorous ones,
  That you are alone - all life, that you alone - love,

That there is no resentment of fate and heart of burning flour,
  And life has no end, and there is no other purpose,
  As soon as you believe in sobbing sounds,
  Love you, hug and cry over you!

*.....*
...*

Athanasius Fet

What a blessing: night and we are alone!
  The river is like a mirror and the whole star glitters;
  And then ... throw your head and look:
  What a depth and purity above us!

Oh call me crazy! Name
  Whatever you want; at this moment I am weakening my mind
  And in my heart I feel such a surge of love
  That I can’t be silent, I won’t, I don’t know how!

I'm sick, I'm in love but tormented and loving -
  Oh listen! understand! - I do not hide passion
  And I want to say that I love you -
  Thee, I love you and I wish you!

*.....*
...*
  Athanasius Fet

Do not avoid; i don't pray
  No tears, no hearts of secret pain
  I want my will
  And repeat to you: "I love."

I want to rush to you, fly
  Like waves across a plain of water,
  Kiss the granite cold
  Kiss - and die!

*.....*
...*

Athanasius Fet

No, I have not changed. To a deep old age
  I am the same devotee, I am a slave to your love
  And the old poison of chains, rejoicing and cruel,
   Still burning in my blood.

Though the memory insists that between us is a grave,
  Though every day raving languidly to another, -
  I can’t believe you to forget me
   When you are here, in front of me.

Does beauty flicker for a moment,
  I wonder, about to recognize you;
  And the tenderness of the past, I hear a breath
   And shuddering, I sing.

Athanasius Fet

Just meet your smile
  Or I will catch your gratifying gaze, -
I don’t sing you a love song
  And your beauty is beloved.

About the singer in the dawn they say
  Like a rose in love with a trill
  He is glad to praise incessantly
  Over her fragrant cradle.

But silent, magnificently pure
  Young lady of the garden:
  Only a song needs beauty
  Beauty doesn’t need songs either.

*.....*
...*

Athanasius Fet

I came to you with greetings
  Tell the sun has risen
  What is it hot light
  The sheets fluttered;

Tell that the forest woke up
  All woke up, each branch,
  Each bird started
  And spring is full of thirst;

Tell that with the same passion
  Like yesterday, I came again
  That soul is still happy
  And I’m ready to serve you;

Tell that from everywhere
  It blows at me with fun
  That I don’t know myself, that I will
  Sing - but only the song is ripening.

*.....*
...*

Athanasius Fet

Cheeks redden with red heat
  The sable is covered with hoarfrost,
  And breathing light steam
  From your nostrils flies.

Cheeky curl in punishment
  He turned gray at sixteen ...
  Isn't it time for us to ride? -
  Heat and light await at home -

And start talking
  Until dawn, about love? ..
  And frost your patterns
  On the glass will write again.

*.....*
...*
  Athanasius Fet

You tell me: I'm sorry!
  I say goodbye!
  You say: do not be sad!
  I'm plotting a confession.

It was wonderful evening yesterday!
  For a long time he will be in sight;
  Everyone - only we do not have time;
  The flame pales in the fireplace.

Well - why this look?
  Where is my stinging cold?
  Am I glad of your sadness?
  Know I'm arrogant and young?

Why did you sigh? Blossom -
  The purpose of centuries of creation;
  You tell me: I'm sorry!
  I say goodbye!

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

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

No, I have not changed. To a deep old age

I am the same devotee, I am a slave to your love

And the old poison of chains, rejoicing and cruel,

Still burning in my blood.

Though memory repeats

that there is a grave between us

Though every day I go crazy

languid to another, -

I can't believe

so you forget me

When you are here, in front of me.

These verses are exactly one hundred and twenty years old, but still they strike with the fiery force of love, overcoming everything, even time and death. Turning to his beloved woman long gone, as a living, the poet claims:

Love has words, those words will not die.

You and I are awaiting a special court;

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

And we will come together

we cannot be separated!

These are lines from the poem “Alter ego”, which is translated from Latin as “second self”. So the ancient Romans called the most dear and close to them people. His “second self,” his “second half,” as our people say, Fet considered a girl whom he met and lost as early as his youth. After the lover’s tragic death in Fetov’s lyrics, motives and images associated with fire became stable, whether it be a blazing fire, a burning fireplace or a fluttering candle flame.

Coals grow dull. In the twilight

Transparent twinkling light.

So splashing on a crimson poppy

Wing azure moth.

Visions variegated string

He gets up, tired looking at her eyes,

And unsolved faces

From the ashes of gray look.

Gets up affectionately and amicably

Past happiness and sadness

And the soul lies that she does not need

All that deeply sorry.

At the end was the scorching summer of 1848. Athanasius Fet served in a cuirassier regiment, stationed on the border of Kiev and Kherson provinces. The military environment in the Ukrainian steppe wilderness weighed on the poet: "different Gogol Wii crawl over his eyes, but still need to smile." The monotony of workdays only brightened up acquaintance with local landowners. Feta was invited to balls and amateur performances.

Once in the hospitable home 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. Candlelight quivered in the large mirrors, sparkled mysteriously and the ornaments on the ladies 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, delicate blush, luxury of black hair. With a sinking heart from excitement, Fet wished to be presented to a stranger who had struck his imagination. It was she - Maria Lazic, 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 the radiant constellation of his beautiful verses to her:

Where are you? Really stunned

Seeing nothing around

Frozen, blizzard whitened,

Knocking at your heart? ..

Maria was the niece of M. Petkovich and the daughter of a retired cavalry general of Serbian origin K. Lazic, an associate of Suvorov and Bagration. The retired general was not rich and burdened by a vast 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 Lazic was not a dazzling beauty. Recognized that she is "far inferior in face" to her younger married sister. However, Fet accurately recognized her soul mate. “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 in the Oryol province. The girl was superbly educated, literary and musically gifted. “Poetry and music are not only related, but inseparable,” said Fet. Mary fully shared his beliefs. It turned out that from an early age she fell in love with fetov's verses, knew them all by heart. The poet, recalling the first moments of communication with Lazic, wrote: “Nothing brings together like art, in general - poetry in the broad sense of the word. Such intimate rapprochement itself is poetry. People become sensitive and understand that for a full explanation of which no words are enough. ”

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

The famous composer and pianist toured Russia exactly one year before Maria and Fet met in the summer and fall of 1847. Liszt also visited Elisavetgrad, where he met Maria Lazic. She attended his concerts, the musician was visiting her, listened to Maria’s playing the piano and praised her ability to music. Did a mutual feeling flare up between them, or was the record that Franz Liszt left in the girl’s album before leaving just a sign of friendly sympathy? Who knows? However, it was impossible not to notice that the words of farewell show through the genuine pain of the impending separation, and the melody composed by the composer for Mary breathes passion and tenderness.

Fet felt a prick of jealousy, but the painful feeling immediately passed when he heard List's music: “How many times did I ask 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 admitted once. “And yet I do not understand why you — a university-educated person, a refined poet — have decided to enter the military service, which, as I feel, is so burdensome for you?”

Basking by the fireplace that winter rainy evening, Fet cringed, as if from a cold. The question touched him for the living, touched on the most important in his fate and demanded secret confessions. After a pause, he told the girl the difficult, largely mysterious, romantic and at the same time painful story of his family.

His mother, a young, pretty German woman, Charlotte Foeth, lived in Darmstadt and was married to a city court official, Johann-Peter Föth. The couple had a one-year-old daughter, Carolina, but Charlotte did not feel happy in marriage. The husband treated her rudely, preferring to spend time with a beer with friends. Her soul was languishing and waiting for deliverance. And at the beginning of 1820 he appeared - a stranger, courteous and wealthy Russian nobleman Athanasius Neofitovich Shenshin. A descendant of an ancient illustrious family, the Mtsensk landowner and the county leader of the nobility, a former officer, a participant in the hostilities against Napoleon, he came to Germany to the waters. The Darmstadt hotel was overcrowded, and its owner placed a new guest in the house of his neighbor Karl Becker, father of Charlotte Föt.
  And although the Russian nobleman was more than twenty years older, she saw in him her hero, whom she dreamed of in her maiden dreams. A flash of passion singed both: twenty-two-year-old Charlotte forgot about the duties of her mother and wife and fled to Russia with her new lover, leaving her little daughter in the care of Fetu. By that time, she was already waiting for her second child. Abducting another man’s wife from Germany, Athanasius Shenshin left a letter to Charlotte’s father asking him to forgive and bless their union. An answer full of reproaches and threats flew to Oryol province - to the town of Mtsensk, which had not been known to Becker before: secretly escaped from Germany, the lovers committed an offense “which the laws of God and the people forbid, and the Christian religion considers it to be one of the greatest sins.”

In Mtsensk County, in the Shenshin estate of Novoselki, a son was born near Charlotte Fet, who was baptized in the Orthodox rite and recorded in a metric book under the name Athanasius Shenshin. Two years after his birth, Charlotte converted to Orthodoxy, was named Elizabeth Petrovna and was married to A.N. Shenshin. He was for Fet an unusually caring father. 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 blood child”. And suddenly a bolt of thunder broke out in the clear sky. The Oryol diocesan authorities, having discovered that the boy was born before marriage, decided that "it is impossible to recognize Athanasius as the son of Mr. Captain Shenshin." So, at the age of 14, the future poet learned that from now on he is not a full-fledged Russian nobleman, he does not have the right to be called Shenshin, but must bear the name of a man whom he had never seen in his life and be called Athanasius Fet “a native of foreigners”.

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

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

Noisy midnight blizzard

In the forest and deaf side.

We sat next to each other with her,

The deadwood tree whistled on fire.

And our two shadows of the community

Lying on the red floor

And not a spark of joy in my heart,

And there is nothing to drive away this haze!

Birch trees creak behind the wall

The bough of spruce is cracking tar ...

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

I know for a long time that with me!

A vague premonition of trouble, thoughts of a lack of funds for both overshadowed Fet's love. His poverty reached such an extent that the poet admitted: “I knew very well that in society it is impossible to appear in a uniform made of thick cloth. To my question, how much will a couple cost, the tailor requested seventy rubles, while I didn’t 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 to a childhood friend, I.P. Borisov: “I met a girl - a beautiful home and education, I did not look for her, she - me, but fate ... And we learned that we would be very happy after various everyday storms, if we could live peacefully<…>  but for this it is necessary somehow and somewhere ... You know my means, she also has nothing. ”

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

Almost two years have passed since the day Mary Lazic met Fet. They used to look at him like a groom, but there was still no marriage proposal. Gossip and rumors spread. Relatives of the girl tried to get Fet to explain about his intentions.

Desperate, Fet decided to “burn the ships of mutual hope at once”: “I took courage and expressed my thoughts loudly about how much I considered marriage impossible and selfish”. With dead lips, Maria objected: “I spoke with you without any encroachment on your freedom, and I am completely indifferent to people's judgments. 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 darkness of memory

I remember all evening alone

You alone in silence

And your flaming fireplace.<…>

What kind of thinking is the goal?

Where did the madness entice?

What wilds and blizzards

Did I blow your heat?

“I will not marry Lazic,” he writes to Borisov, “and she knows this, but at the same time begs her not to interrupt our relations, she is purer than snow before me. To interrupt is not delicate and not to interrupt is not delicate ... This unfortunate Gordian knot of love, which the more I unravel, the harder I tighten, and I do not have the spirit and strength to cut it with a sword ... You know, I got involved in the service, and the other only languishes like a nightmare. ”

But even in the worst dreams, Fet could not have imagined that this was just the eve of a nightmare. He decided on a final break.

The spring of 1850 came. Nature awoke again. But Mary felt as if in an icy desert. How to keep warm in this soul-piercing dying cold? Late in the evening in her bedroom, she looked at the light of the lamp for a long time. Quivering butterflies flocked to the flame and, falling silent, fell down, singing fragile wings ... But what if this pain was stopped at once? .. The girl stood impetuously, the lamp fell to the floor, the fire spread to Maria’s white muslin dress, the tongues of flame ran up to her loose hair. Surrounded by flames, she ran out of the room into the night garden and instantly turned into a burning living torch. Burning, she shouted: “Au nom du ciel sauvez les lettres!” (“Save the letters in the name of heaven!”). Four more days her torment lasted. “Is it possible to suffer on the cross more than me?” Her lips rustled. And just before her death, Mary managed to whisper the last words, largely mysterious, but they sent a pardon to her beloved: “He is not to blame, but I ...” Human happiness and life itself were entrusted to the fiery altar of love.

Fet was shocked by this tragic news. Subsequently, he became a renowned poet; he married the rich merchant daughter of 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 magistrate. Finally, he received the long-awaited nobility and the right to bear the name Shenshin. And yet, in the heart of the poet's life, who did not die out for more than four decades, the fire of his distant youthful love burned. Addressing Maria Lazic, Athanasius Fet wrote:

<…>  You understood everything with the infant soul

What did the secret power give me

And though life is destined without you

eke me out

But we are with you, we cannot

to separate.
____________
Alla Novikova