Afanasy Afanasevich Fet
1822-1892


Poems in this Collection

By life tormented, and by cunning hope.../Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды...
Never/Никогда
When you were reading those tormented lines.../Когда читала ты мучительные строки...
While lounging in a chair, I looked up at the ceiling.../На кресле отвалясь, гляжу на потолок...
My face turned upwards to the sky.../На стоге сена ночью южной...
I have come to you with greetings.../Я пришел к тебе с приветом...
What grief! The alley's end.../Какая грусть! Конец аллеи...

Timeline for A. A. Fet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1822
Born to Afanasy Shenshin and Charlotta Foeth, who left her husband Johann Foeth and married the Russian nobleman. Because their marriage was not official until 1822, Fet was not able to assume the name Shenshin, was denied the rights of nobility and was forced to become a raznochinets, a fact that rankled Fet his whole life

1838-44
After studying in a boarding school in Estonia, studies philology at Moscow University where he writes his first poems

1845
Enters military service in an attempt to reclaim his noble rights

1840
Publishes his first collection, The Lyrical Pantheon

1842-3
Eighty-five poems appear in Notes of the Fatherland and Muscovite

1850
Publishes his second collection, including love lyric "Whisper, timid breathing" which contained much of Fet's lifelong stylistic tropes: verse composed almost entirely of nouns and adjectives, limited and unconventional rhymes, natural, melodic rhythm, and an exceptional sense of mood - these qualities made him very popular among the later Symbolists like Bely, Ivanov, and Annensky

1853
Transferred to the guards, and given the opportunity to associate with writers in Petersburg, namely Turgenev

1856
Publishes his third collection, with an introduction by Turgenev; Writes "To Death" his first poem to make death seem attractive, the verse functions as a death wish (he writes another poem with this title in 1884)

1857
Marries the sister of Critic V.P. Botkin; writes "Upon a Haystack on a Southern Night" (Leo Tolstoy's favorite poem)

1859
Writes on Tyutchev in Russian Word, an essay that spells out Fet's philosophy on art, that is, that the artist's duty is only to serve the muse and the notion of beauty - ideology and social concerns were of no concern to him. This attitude brought the liberal critics Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev down upon him

1860
Settles on a country estate to live life of squire

1864
Writes "Tortured by life and the perfidy of hope," which contains the notion that all human experience is part of a dream; writes "Life flew by withut leaving a clear trace," which echoes Verlaine and contains the fallen leaf, a recurring Fet image

1873
Tsar Aleksandr II rectifies the situation of Fet's nobility and he is given the rights and privileges of a hereditary nobleman

1870's
Begins friendship with Tolstoy, who shared Fet's distaste with the liberal critics; later introduces Tolstoy to the works of Schopenhauer

1877
Buys a larger estate where he winters

1878
Writes "Death" another of his death wish poems

1881
Translates Schopenhauer into Russian

1889
Awarded the court title of Kammerherr, which went further in righting the wrongs of having his title denied him

1892
Dies in early winter