takes on its own special sound in Fet's lyrics and another traditional theme - purpose of the poet and poetry. In an article dedicated to the poems of F.I. Tyutchev, Fet emphasizes two necessary, in his opinion, properties of a true poet - “crazy, blind courage” and “the subtlest sense of proportion.” And then he writes lines that caused a very ironic reaction from critics, but fully correspond to Fet’s ideas about the purpose of the poet: “Whoever is not able to throw himself from the seventh floor upside down, with an unshakable belief that he will soar through the air, is not a lyricist "

The poet likens creativity to the elements, but it not only powerfully captures a person, but also has the ability to transform him, enlighten him, give him wings, lift him above the earth (“I am shocked when all around ...”, 1885). The power of creativity is called “unearthly”, “unspeakable verbs” - the whisper of the “bright angel” of God delivers. A creative person soars and “burns” at the same time:

I'm on fire and burning
I rush and soar
In the languor of extreme effort
And I believe in my heart that they are growing
And immediately they will take you to the sky
My wings spread.

Creativity is almost invariably conceptualized by Fet as a rise upward - a flight or ascent. This is also the daring of a person - his attempt to touch the world of the highest, alien to him, beyond. This idea was voiced in the poem “Swallows”, 1884. The swift flight of a swallow down to the “evening pond”, the light touch of its wing to the “alien element” is likened to a creative impulse, inspiration - an equally daring desire for the “forbidden path” and the readiness to “scoop up even a drop" of "an alien, transcendental element."

Creativity is also a burning, but a burning that requires the poet’s entire life. It is akin to the burning of dawn, but for this burning the poet gives his life. This idea was voiced in the poem of 1887 “When you read the painful lines...”:

When you read the painful lines,
Where the hearts of the sonorous ardor radiance pours all around
And streams of fatal passion rise, -
Didn't you remember anything?

I don't want to believe it! When in the steppe, how wonderful it is,
In the midnight darkness, untimely grief,
In the distance in front of you is transparent and beautiful
The dawn suddenly rose,

And my gaze was involuntarily drawn to this beauty,
Into that majestic brilliance beyond the entire dark limit, -
Did nothing really whisper to you at that time:
There's a man burned out there!

Amazingly expressed in this poem is the idea, so dear to Fet, that the source of the beauty of the world, its radiance and its poetic echo in the confessional lines is the “burning” of a person, the absolute dedication of the poet, service to both the world and poetry.

One of the characteristically Fetov motifs associated with the theme of the poet and poetry is the motif of the path with the holy banner (“Obrochnik”, “Looking anxiously at youth ...”). The hero's path passes through the forest, designed to symbolize the difficulty of creative quests, perhaps their danger. But the meaning of this path, i.e. The essence of the poet’s purpose, according to Fet, is not in lonely confrontation with the difficulties of life, but in showing the true path to other people. Following the poet, who knows the truth, which is symbolized by the “sacred banner,” comes the “living crowd.” In the poem the author uses outdated words: gums, forehead, allowing one to recall the lines of Pushkin’s “Prophet” and adding solemnity and grandeur to the experiences of Fetov’s hero:

Raising the sacred banner with his gum,
I’m walking, and a living crowd starts behind me,
And everyone stretched along the forest clearing,
And I am blessed and proud, chanting the shrine.
I sing - and my thoughts do not know the fear of childhood:
Let the animals answer my singing, -
With a shrine over the forehead and a song on the lips,
With difficulty, but I will reach the longed-for door!

The process of creativity itself is described in the poem “With one push to drive a living boat,” 1887. At the end of each of the first two quatrains, which describe the conditions of creative inspiration, a semicolon is placed, at the same time as if connecting the stanzas. Each stanza conveys one of the poetic experiences:

Drive away a living boat with one push
From sands smoothed by the tides,
Rise in one wave into another life,
Feel the wind from the flowering shores;

The dominance of verbs in this, as well as the two subsequent stanzas, and the absence of subjects is intended to emphasize the activity of the creative process itself, which rapidly captivates the poet, drawing him into his element, powerfully separating him from the familiar world - from the “sands smoothed by the tides.” It is interesting that swimming becomes a metaphor for creativity - a traditional symbol of both life and creativity in world and Russian poetry. This image is intended to present creativity as a process that separates a person from the usual elements, does not allow him to walk on familiar ground, but carries him into an unknown, unpredictable world. Water is a traditional symbol of life and death, birth and rebirth; immersion in water is a motif that carries the idea of ​​​​a person’s rebirth, his birth to a new life.

In the third stanza, another verb appears that conveys the state of inspiration - “to rise.” Creativity is both aspiration upward from earthly existence and at the same time the ability to truly soar above the earth. In this statement, so unusual for his contemporaries, Fet turned out to be strikingly close to the next poetic generation - the Russian symbolists:

Interrupt a dreary dream with a single sound,
To suddenly revel in the unknown, dear,
Give life a sigh, give sweetness to secret torments,
To instantly feel someone else’s as your own;

In this stanza, new aspects appear in Fetov’s description of the creative process. The melancholy dream, which the poet interrupts with a “single sound,” is a metaphor for earthly existence, traditionally, and not only by Fet, but also by many poets, likened to a dream. It is characteristic that another life is called both “unknown” and “native”: the ideal, comprehended world becomes the only one close to the poet. But the poet not only accepts the ideal, the other, but also transforms the past, returns life to life (“sigh”), and joy to suffering:

Whisper about something that makes your tongue go numb,
Strengthen the fight of fearless hearts -
This is something only a select few singers can master!
This is his sign and crown!

In the last stanza, the idea is even stronger that the poet’s transformation is a condition for the transformation of the world, and only his ability to “whisper” with his quiet word about the hidden essence of existence makes indifferent hearts beat and is recognized as a sign of his chosenness and as the true purpose of the poet.

Understanding the highest purpose of poetry makes Fet utter phrases about the uselessness of popularity for a true poet. In these phrases there is no bitter bravado of a poet who has more than once heard mockery of his sincere poems, but there is confidence in the inaccessibility of the “crowd” of high poetic pathos. So, in a letter to V.I. Fet assured Stein: “If I have anything in common with Horace and Schopenhauer, it is their boundless contempt for the intellectual rabble at all levels and functions.<...>It would be insulting to me if the majority understood and loved my poems: this would only be proof that they are base and bad.”

The same thought, the same conviction was voiced in the preface to the fourth issue “ Evening lights“, where Fet, having mentioned the “mutual indifference” of himself and “the masses of readers who establish so-called popularity,” recognized the absolute right of the “mass of readers” to such indifference. “We have nothing to look for from each other,” the poet believed.

The idea of ​​poetry - the language of the gods - was embodied in the characteristically Fetov image of the Muse-goddess, an unearthly, supreme being. Each poet, as you know, has his own image of the power that brings inspiration and its embodiment - the Muse. In Fet she never appeared as “slumbering”, as in Pushkin, or as a “sad companion of the sad poor”, which can be whipped with a whip, as in Nekrasov. She could not have appeared as a “beggar woman”, as much later - in the poems of A. Akhmatova. With Fet this is always a beautifully unearthly, sublime image. His appeals to the Muse resemble praises, inspired hymns:

Carefully preserving your freedom,
I didn’t invite the uninitiated to you,
And I please their slavish rampage
I did not desecrate your speeches.

Still the same you, cherished shrine,
On a cloud, invisible on the ground,
Crowned with stars, imperishable goddess,
With a thoughtful smile on his brow.

In the poems dedicated to the Muse (“Muse”, “Muse”, etc.), a “proud”, “heavenly” goddess appears, whose “mighty breaths” and “eternally virgin words” inspire reverent verses in the kneeling poet. The poet, presenting her as an imperishable goddess, gives her, however, an ideally feminine appearance, so reminiscent of the beautiful beloved, the lyrical heroine of Fetov’s poems:

Weighed down by a strand of fragrant hair
A wondrous head with a knot of heavy braids;
The last flowers in her hand trembled;
The abrupt speech was full of sadness,
And women's whims, and silvery dreams,
Unspoken torment and incomprehensible tears.

But, it is interesting to note that, creating the image of the Muse-goddess in poetry, the poet in his letters, speaking about his muse, clearly reduces this image. So, in a letter to Ya.P. On February 16, 1892, he confessed to Polonsky: “All this time, my Muse sat like a idiot and didn’t even spit out sunflower seeds, but yesterday and today she stumbled with two poems<...>».

One of the explanations for this contradiction may be the belief expressed more than once by Fet about the discrepancy between poetry and reality. For him, poetry is invariably the language of the gods, but in reality, it is not only impossible to realize ideals, but also not necessary. Fet states this, for example, in a letter to S.V. Engelhard in 1891, where he speaks out about the desire of L.N. Tolstoy to bring to life the truths he preached: “He himself serves as the best proof that ideals cannot be embodied in everyday life,” the poet wrote.

In my letters recent years, after the surname Shenshin was returned to him, the poet clearly separates Fet and Shenshin. Shenshin - landowner, owner of Vorobyovka, author of the letter; Fet is a poet and author of poems. Shenshin signs letters and sometimes complains about Fet the poet, talking about his poetic activities, but at the same time emphasizes in every possible way that Shenshin does not write poetry, this is Fet’s destiny. Well, this clear division makes it possible to explain the duality of the image of the Muse: for Feta the poet, she is an imperishable goddess, for Shenshin, the author of the letter, she is a fool.

But it is characteristic that even this paradoxical duality of Fet - poet and man - a decade after his death began to be perceived by poets of subsequent generations, primarily symbolists, as a kind of primordial contradiction, a kind of universal law that marks, in essence, every person.

Fet dies in 1892, exhausted serious illness hearts, but being in the prime of creative powers. The four editions of “Evening Lights” prepared by him, volumes of memoirs, and translations of Roman poets are evidence of this extraordinary rise of the creative spirit.

Questions about the work of A.A. Feta

  1. What, according to Fet, is the beauty of the world?
  2. What is unique about Fetov’s landscapes?
  3. How do you understand the words of A.A. Feta: “Everything that is eternal is human”?
  4. How does a person appear in Fet’s poetic world?
  5. What does the poet see as the meaning of human existence? What images and motives convey Fetov’s ideal of man?
  6. What does the poet see as the meaning of love? What features does Fet give to the lyrical heroine? What poetic ideas bring Fet closer to Russian symbolists?
  7. What definitions of a true poet are characteristic of Fet's lyrics?
  8. What, according to Fet, is the meaning of poetic creativity? With the help of what motives and images is this idea embodied?
  9. What features does the poet give to his Muse?

Verification work based on the works of A.A. Feta, 10th grade

“Of all the poets living in MoscowMr. Fet is more talented.”V. G. Belinsky

The works of Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet rightfully belong to the masterpieces of Russian classical poetry.A. Fet said about his contemporary, the amazing lyricist and thinker F. Tyutchev, or rather, about the just published volume of his poems:“This book is small / Volumes are heavier than many” . The same can be said about the work of Fet himself, whose lyrical masterpieces were not lost among the incalculable wealth of Russian poetry of both the 19th and 20th centuries. On the contrary, in every new era they reveal to the reader a special meaning, novelty of content and form.

1. Features of A.A.’s creativity Feta

a) expressiveness and intensity d) space coverage with specific

verse with realistic detail

b) extraordinary melody

c) high citizenship e) life-affirming principle in the lyrics

2. Poems written by A.A. Fet

a) “It’s not what you think, nature...” d) “The night was shining. The garden was full of the moon..."

b) “This morning, this joy...” e) “How good you are, O night sea...”

c) “Whisper, timid breathing...” f) “More fragrant spring bliss...”

3. The main poetic device in the excerpt from the poem by A.A. Feta _____________

“What a night! How clean the air is

Like a silver leaf slumbering,

Like the shadow of the coastal willows is black"

4. Write the title of Fet's poems

    1. Tell me that with the same passion,
      Like yesterday, I came again,
      That the soul is still the same happiness
      And I’m ready to serve you;
      Tell me that from everywhere
      It blows over me with joy,
      That I don’t know myself that I will
      Sing - but only the song is ripening.

    1. And more and more mysterious, more immeasurable

Their shadow grows, grows like a dream;

How subtle at dawn

Their light essay is exalted!

As if sensing a double life

And she is doubly fanned, -

And they feel native land

And they ask for the sky.

    1. These willows and birches,

These drops - these tears,

This fluff is not a leaf,

These mountains, these valleys,

These midges, these bees,

This noise and whistle,

These dawns without eclipse,

This sigh of the night village,

This night without sleep

This darkness and heat of the bed,

This fraction and these trills,

It's all spring.

    What A.A. Does Fet consider it an eternal source of beauty?

    What art in the poems of A. A. Fet is close to verbal art and ensures the dynamism of the poet’s verbless poems?
    These willows and birches,
    These drops - these tears,
    This fluff is not a leaf,
    These mountains, these valleys,
    These midges, these bees,
    This sound and whistle...

    What is the name in literary criticism for the type of description with which A. A. Fet creates a poetic picture of nature?
    Far away, in the twilight, with bows
    The river runs to the west.
    Having burned with golden borders,
    The clouds scattered like smoke.

    Which artistic technique uses A. A. Fet in the poem “Evening”, depicting “sighing day”, “breathing night”, “running river”, “scattering clouds” as independently acting living beings?

    What is the name of the product? artistic expression, based on the transfer of the properties of one object or phenomenon to others (for example, the “golden edges” of clouds in A. A. Fet’s poem “Evening”?)

    What is the name of the combination of poetic lines, held together by a common rhyme and intonation, for example, in the poem by A. A. Fet “Learn from them - from the oak, from the birch ...”?
    But trust in spring. A genius will rush past her,
    Breathing warmth and life again.
    For clear days, for new revelations
    The grieving soul will get over it.

    What artistic technique allowed A. A. Fet to compare birch trees with the bride in the poem “Another May Night...”?
    The birches are waiting. Their leaves are translucent
    Shyly beckons and pleases the eye.
    They are shaking. So to the newlywed virgin
    Her attire is both joyful and alien.

    Determine the poetic size of A. A. Fet’s poem “Another May Night...”.
    No, never more tender and incorporeal
    Your face, O night, could not torment me!
    Again I come to you with an involuntary song,
    Involuntary - and the last, perhaps.

    Name the subject of description in the poem by A. A. Fet “Dawn bids farewell to the earth...”.
    Dawn says goodbye to the earth,
    Steam lies at the bottom of the valleys,
    I look at the forest covered in darkness,
    And to the lights of its peaks.
    How imperceptibly they go out
    The rays go out at the end!
    With what bliss they bathe in them
    The trees are their lush crown!

    Determine the theme of A. A. Fet’s poem “The Night Was Shining. The garden was full of the moon..."
    The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. were lying
    Rays at our feet in a living room without lights.
    The piano was all open, and the strings in it were trembling,
    Just like our hearts follow your song.

    You sang until dawn, exhausted in tears,
    That you alone are love, that there is no other love,
    And I wanted to live so much, so that without making a sound,
    To love you, hug you and cry over you.

    Give a detailed answer to the question. What was the value of A. A. Fet’s poetry?

Answers:

1.B, G, D,

2.B, C, D, E

3. Anaphora

4. 1) “I came to you with greetings...”

2) “Dawn bids farewell to the earth”

3) “This morning, this joy...”

5. Nature

6. Music

7. Landscape

8. Personification

9. Metaphor

10. Stanza

11. Comparison

12. Iambic

13. Sunset

14. Love

By the middle of the 19th century, two directions were clearly identified in Russian poetry and, polarized, developed: democratic and the so-called “pure art”, which was Fet. The poets of “pure art” believed that the purpose of art is art; they did not allow any possibility of deriving practical benefit from poetry.

Pisarev also spoke about Fet’s complete inconsistency with the “spirit of the times,” arguing that “a wonderful poet responds to the interests of the century not out of duty of citizenship, but out of involuntary attraction, out of natural responsiveness.” Fet not only did not take into account the “spirit of the times” and sang in his own way, but he decisively and extremely demonstratively opposed himself to the democratic trend of Russian literature of the 19th century century. After the great tragedy that Fet experienced in his youth, after the death of the poet’s beloved Maria Lazic, Fet consciously divides life into two spheres: real and ideal. And he transfers only the ideal sphere into his poetry. Poetry and reality now have nothing in common for him; they turn out to be two different, diametrically opposed, incompatible worlds. The contrast between these two worlds: the world of Fet the man, his worldview, his everyday practice, social behavior and the world of Fet’s lyrics, in relation to which the first world was an anti-world for Fet, was a mystery for most contemporaries and remains a mystery for modern researchers.

Poetry was for Fet the only way to escape reality and everyday life and feel free and happy. " Fet believed that a real poet in his poems should sing first of all of beauty, that is, according to Fet, nature and love. However, the poet understood that beauty is very fleeting and that moments of beauty are rare and brief. Therefore, in his poems, Fet always tries to convey these moments, to capture a momentary phenomenon of beauty. Fet was able to remember any transient, momentary states of nature and then reproduce them in his poems. This is the impressionism of Fet's poetry. Fet never describes a feeling as a whole, but only states, certain shades of feeling. Fet's poetry is irrational, sensual, impulsive. The images of his poems are vague, vague; Fet often conveys his feelings, impressions of objects, and not their image. In the poem “Evening” we read: It sounded over a clear river, It rang in a darkened meadow, It rolled over a silent grove, It lit up on the other bank... And what “sounded”, “ringed”, “rolled” and “lit” is unknown. On the hill it is either damp or hot, The sighs of the day are in the breath of the night, - But the lightning already glows brightly with blue and green fire... This is only one moment in nature, a momentary state of nature, which Fet managed to convey in his poem. Fet is a poet of detail, of a separate image, so in his poems we will not find a complete, holistic landscape. Fet has no conflict between nature and man; the lyrical hero of Fet's poetry is always in harmony with nature. Nature is a reflection of human feelings, it is humanized: Gently at night, a soft haze falls from the brow; In the poem " Bright light a fire is burning in the forest…” the narrative unfolds in parallel on two levels: externally landscape and internally psychological. These two plans merge, and by the end of the poem, only through nature does it become possible for Fet to talk about his internal state lyrical hero. A special feature of Fet's lyrics in terms of phonics and intonation is its musicality. Along with the traditional genres of elegies, thoughts, and messages, Fet actively uses the romance-song genre. This genre determines the structure of almost the majority of Fetov’s poems. For each romance, Fet created his own poetic melody, unique to him. The famous 19th century critic N. N. Strakhov wrote: “Fet’s verse has a magical musicality, and at the same time constantly varied; The poet has his own melody for every mood of the soul, and in terms of the richness of melodies no one can equal him.” Fet achieves the musicality of his poetry both by the compositional structure of the verse: a ring composition, constant repetitions (for example, as in the poem “At dawn, don’t wake me up...”), and by an extraordinary variety of strophic and rhythmic forms. Fet especially often uses the technique of alternating short and long lines: Dreams and shadows, Dreams, tremulously alluring into the darkness, All stages of Asleep pass in a light swarm... Fet considered music the highest of the arts. For Fet, the musical mood was an integral part of inspiration. The poetry of “pure art” saved Fet’s poetry from political and civil ideas and gave Fet the opportunity to make real discoveries in the field of poetic language. Not only was Fet’s ingenuity in strophic composition and rhythm, his experiments in the field of grammatical structure of poetry were bold (the poem “Whisper. Timid Breathing...” is written in only nominal sentences, there is not a single verb in it), in the field of metaphorics (to Fet’s contemporaries who perceived his poems literally, it was very difficult to understand, for example, the metaphor of “grass in weeping” or “spring and night covered the valley”).

So, in his poetry, Fet continues the transformations in the field of poetic language begun by the Russian romantics early XIX century. All his experiments turn out to be very successful, they continue and are consolidated in the poetry of A. Blok, A. Bely, L. Pasternak. The variety of forms of poems is combined with a variety of feelings and experiences conveyed by Fet in his poetry. Despite the fact that Fet considered poetry to be an ideal sphere of life, the feelings and moods described in Fet's poems are real. Fet's poems do not become outdated to this day, since every reader can find in them moods similar to the state of his soul at the moment.

Afanasy Fet (1820 – 1892)

Fet was the greatest poet“pure art”, who also left behind the theoretical principles of this direction. He stated: “I have never been able to understand that art is interested in anything other than beauty.”

The poets of “pure art” opposed citizenship, ignored the social content of art, preached purely individualism, withdrawing into the world of experiences. The intimate theme was developed in a special way. The intimate world obscured reality from them. For the lyrical hero, love was the goal and meaning of life. Moving away from reality, the poets of “pure art” sought to sing the eternal norms of beauty. Beauty, as a mood, is the main theme of their lyrics.

Fet admired Arthur Schopenhauer. Fet denies the importance of reason in art. The poet speaks directly about this: In the matter of the liberal arts, I value reason little in comparison with instinct, the causes of which are hidden from us.”

Fet believed that one must create according to intuition and inspiration. Nature, love, beauty... - objects of art.

Fet flaunted his disregard for social issues, real facts public life. In the 60s of the 19th century, Fet acted as a publicist and sang of a contented and prosperous life on the bed of nature. In poetry, Fet hiccuped “the only refuge from all sorrows, including civil ones.”

However, Fet’s work was broader than poetic theories: The poet in his lyrics captured the feelings and experiences of a person of the 19th century, created pictures of nature, and went down in the history of Russian poetry as a lyric poet, a master of lyrical miniatures.

Fet's poems amaze with the brightness and richness of colors, great emotional intensity, the ability to convey a specific detail, capable of causing a strong impression, a changing flow of feelings. Fetov's poetry is dominated by light colors. His pictures of nature play with all the colors of the rainbow, breathe all the smells. Fet's poetry is musical, in the truest sense of the word. It is impossible to classify Fet's poems by themes and genres. Love lyrics occupy a large, main place.

The work of Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (1820 - 1892) is one of the pinnacles of Russian poetry. Fet is a great poet, a genius poet. Now there is not a person in Russia who does not know Fet’s poems. Well, at least “I came to you with greetings” or “Don’t wake her up at dawn...” At the same time, many have no real idea of ​​the scale of this poet. The idea of ​​Fet is distorted, even starting with his appearance. Someone maliciously constantly replicates those portraits of Fet that were made during his dying illness, where his face is terribly distorted, his eyes are swollen - an old man in a state of agony. Meanwhile, Fet, as can be seen from the portraits made during his heyday, both human and poetic, was the most beautiful of the Russian poets.

The drama is connected with the mystery of Fet's birth. In the fall of 1820, his father Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin took the wife of the official Karl Föt from Germany to his family estate. A month later the child was born and was registered as the son of A.N. Shenshina. The illegality of this recording was discovered when the boy was 14 years old. He received the surname Fet and in documents began to be called the son of a foreign subject. A. A. Fet spent a lot of effort trying to return the name of Shenshin and the rights of a hereditary nobleman. The mystery of his birth has not yet been fully solved. If he is the son of Fet, then his father I. Fet was the great-uncle of the last Russian empress.

Fet's life is also mysterious. They say about him that in life he was much more prosaic than in poetry. But this is due to the fact that he was a wonderful owner. Wrote a small volume of articles on economics. From a ruined estate he managed to create a model farm with a magnificent stud farm. And even in Moscow on Plyushchikha, in his house there was a vegetable garden and a greenhouse; in January, vegetables and fruits ripened, which the poet loved to treat his guests to.

In this regard, they like to talk about Fet as a prosaic person. But in fact, his origin is mysterious and romantic, and his death is mysterious: this death was and was not suicide. Fet, tormented by illness, finally decided to commit suicide. Sent my wife away, left her suicide note, grabbed the knife. The secretary prevented him from using it. And the poet died - died of shock.

The biography of a poet is, first of all, his poems. Fet's poetry is multifaceted, its main genre is lyric poem. Classical genres include elegies, thoughts, ballads, and epistles. “Melodies” - poems that represent a response to musical impressions - can be considered as the “original Fetov genre”.

One of Fet’s early and most popular poems is “I came to you with greetings”:

I came to you with greetings,

Tell me that the sun has risen, that it is a hot light

The sheets began to flutter;

Tell me that the forest has woken up,

All woke up, every branch,

Every bird was startled

And full of thirst in spring...

The poem is written on the theme of love. The theme is old, eternal, and Fet’s poems emanate freshness and novelty. It doesn't look like anything we know. This is generally characteristic of Fet and corresponds to his conscious poetic attitudes. Fet wrote: “Poetry certainly requires novelty, and for it there is nothing more deadly than repetition, and especially oneself... By novelty I do not mean new objects, but their new illumination by the magic lantern of art.”

The very beginning of the poem is unusual - unusual in comparison with the then accepted norm in poetry. In particular, the Pushkin norm, which required extreme precision in words and in combinations of words. Meanwhile, the initial phrase of Fetov’s poem is not at all accurate and not even entirely “correct”: “I came to you with greetings, to tell you...”. Would Pushkin or any of the poets of Pushkin’s time allow himself to say so? At that time, these lines were seen as poetic audacity. Fet was aware of the inaccuracy of his poetic word, its closeness to living, sometimes seeming not entirely correct, but that made it especially bright and expressive speech. He called his poems jokingly (but not without pride) poems “in a disheveled manner.” But what is the artistic meaning in poetry of the “disheveled kind”?

Inaccurate words and seemingly sloppy, “disheveled” expressions in Fet’s poems create not only unexpected, but also bright, exciting images. One gets the impression that the poet doesn’t seem to deliberately think about the words; they came to him on their own. He speaks with the very first, unintentional words. The poem is distinguished by its amazing integrity. This is an important virtue in poetry. Fet wrote: “The task of a lyricist is not in the harmony of the reproduction of objects, but in the harmony of tone.” In this poem there is both harmony of objects and harmony of tone. Everything in the poem is internally connected to each other, everything is unidirectional, it is said in a single impulse of feeling, as if in one breath.

Another early poem is the lyrical play “Whisper, timid breathing...”:

Whisper, timid breathing,

The trill of a nightingale,

Silver and sway

Sleepy stream,

Night light, night shadows,

Endless shadows

A series of magical changes

Sweet face...

The poem was written in the late 40s. It is built on nominative sentences alone. Not a single verb. Only objects and phenomena that are named one after another: whispers - timid breathing - trills of a nightingale, etc.

But despite all this, the poem cannot be called objective and material. This is the most amazing and unexpected thing. Fet's objects are non-objective. They do not exist on their own, but as signs of feelings and states. They glow a little, flicker. By naming this or that thing, the poet evokes in the reader not a direct idea of ​​the thing itself, but those associations that can usually be associated with it. The main semantic field of a poem is between the words, behind the words.

“Behind the Words” the main theme of the poem develops: feelings of love. The most subtle feeling, inexpressible in words, inexpressibly strong, No one had ever written about love like this before Fet.

Fet liked the reality of life, and this was reflected in his poems. Nevertheless, it is difficult to call Fet simply a realist, noticing how in poetry he gravitates toward dreams, dreams, and intuitive movements of the soul. Fet wrote about the beauty diffused in all the diversity of reality. Aesthetic realism in Fet's poems in the 40s and 50s was really aimed at the everyday and the most ordinary.

The character and tension of Fet's lyrical experience depend on the state of nature. The change of seasons occurs in a circle - from spring to spring. Fet’s feelings move in the same kind of circle: not from the past to the future, but from spring to spring, with its necessary, inevitable return. In the collection (1850), the cycle “Snow” is given first place. Fet's winter cycle is multi-motivated: he also sings about sad birch in winter attire, about how “the night is bright, the frost shines,” and “the frost has drawn patterns on the double glass.” Snowy plains attract the poet:

Wonderful picture,

How dear you are to me:

White plain,

Full moon,

The light of the high heavens,

And shining snow

And distant sleighs

Lonely running.

Fet confesses his love for the winter landscape. In Fet's poems, shining winter prevails, in the brilliance of the prickly sun, in the diamonds of snowflakes and snow sparks, in the crystal of icicles, in the silvery fluff of frosty eyelashes. The associative series in this lyric does not go beyond the boundaries of nature itself; here is its own beauty, which does not need human spirituality. Rather, it itself spiritualizes and enlightens the personality. It was Fet, following Pushkin, who sang the Russian winter, only he managed to reveal its aesthetic meaning in such a multifaceted way. Fet introduced rural landscapes and scenes of folk life into his poems; he appeared in his poems as “a bearded grandfather,” he “groans and crosses himself,” or a daring coachman in a troika.

Feta has always attracted me poetic theme evenings and nights. The poet early developed a special aesthetic attitude towards night, the onset of darkness. At the new stage of his creativity, he already began to call entire collections “Evening Lights”, they seem to contain a special, Fetov philosophy of the night.

Fet’s “night poetry” reveals a complex of associations: night - abyss - shadows - sleep - visions - secret, intimate - love - the unity of the “night soul” of a person with the night element. This image receives philosophical deepening and a new second meaning in his poems; a symbolic second plane appears in the content of the poem. His association “night-abyss” takes on a philosophical and poetic perspective. She begins to get closer to human life. The abyss is an airy road - the path of human life.

MAY NIGHT

Lagging clouds fly over us

The last crowd.

Their transparent segment softly melts

At the crescent moon

A mysterious power reigns in spring

With stars on the forehead. -

You, tender! You promised me happiness

On a vain land.

Where is the happiness? Not here, in a wretched environment,

And there it is - like smoke

Follow him! follow him! by air -

And we'll fly away into eternity.

The May night promises happiness, a person flies through life in pursuit of happiness, the night is an abyss, a person flies into the abyss, into eternity.

Further development this association: night - human existence - the essence of being.

Fet imagines the night hours as revealing the secrets of the universe. The poet's nocturnal insight allows him to look "from time to eternity", he sees the "living altar of the universe."

Tolstoy wrote to Fet: “The poem is one of those rare ones in which it is impossible to add, subtract or change a word; it is alive and charming. It is so good that, it seems to me, it is not random poem, but that this is the first jet of a long-delayed flow."

The association night - abyss - human existence, developing in Fet's poetry, absorbs the ideas of Schopenhauer. However, the closeness of the poet Fet to the philosopher is very conditional and relative. The ideas of the world as a representation, man as a contemplator of existence, thoughts about intuitive insights, apparently, were close to Fet.

The idea of ​​death is woven into the figurative association of Fet’s poems about the night and human existence (the poem “Sleep and Death,” written in 1858). Sleep is full of the bustle of the day, death is full of majestic peace. Fet gives preference to death, draws its image as the embodiment of a peculiar beauty.

In general, Fet’s “night poetry” is deeply unique. His night is as beautiful as the day, maybe even more beautiful. Fetov's night is full of life, the poet feels the "breath of the immaculate night." Fetov's night gives a person happiness:

What a night! The transparent air is constrained;

The aroma swirls above the ground.

Oh now I'm happy, I'm excited

Oh, now I'm glad to speak! ...

Fet's nocturnal nature and man are full of expectation of the innermost, which turns out to be accessible to all living things only at night. Night, love, communication with the elemental life of the universe, knowledge of happiness and higher truths in his poems, as a rule, are combined.

Fet's work represents the apotheosis of the night. For Feta the philosopher, night represents the basis of world existence, it is the source of life and the keeper of the secret of “double existence”, the kinship of man with the universe, for him it is the knot of all living and spiritual connections.

Now Fet can no longer be called just a poet of sensations. His contemplation of nature is full of philosophical profundity, his poetic insights are aimed at discovering the secrets of existence.

Poetry was the main work of Fet’s life, a calling to which he gave everything: soul, vigilance, sophistication of hearing, wealth of imagination, depth of mind, skill of hard work and inspiration.

In 1889, Strakhov wrote in the article “Anniversary of Fet’s Poetry”: “He is the only poet of his kind, incomparable, giving us the purest and truest poetic delight, true diamonds of poetry... Fet is a true touchstone for the ability to understand poetry...”

) – typical example a poet leading a double life. During his student years, he, like all his peers, was expansive and open to generous ideal feelings; but later he accustomed himself to a cautious reserve that might seem (not unreasonably) to be a calculated callousness. In life, he was deliberately selfish, secretive and cynical in his judgments about the ideal impulses of those around him. He tried not to mix real life with the ideal life of a poet. Hence the strange discrepancy that amazed his contemporaries between the abstract, immaterial nature of his poems about nature and his prosaic acquisition; between his measured and orderly life in his old years and his later lyrics, imbued with passion, built on the complete and disinterested exploitation of suppressed and sublimated emotions.

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (1820 - 1892). Portrait by I. Repin, 1882

“Impossible,” he says in the preface to one of the volumes Evening lights, – to remain for a long time in the rarefied air of the mountain heights of poetry.” Fet erected an impenetrable partition between his two hypostases. The real one is present in some odes written to his august friends, in some second-rate epigrams - but above all in the wonderful, unusually unrevealing and yet exciting memoirs: early years of my life And My memories. Least sincere, they are one of the most carefully thought out masks ever worn by a poet fearing the stings of vulgar reality. They don't give any idea about it inner life, but are full of interesting, albeit very processed, information about others. His poetry is completely free from this superficial hypostasis.

Afanasy Fet. Poetry and fate

In art, Fet was, above all, an uncompromising defender of pure poetry. There was nothing in him eclecticism, and the main thing for him was to find an accurate expression of his poetic experience, in full agreement with the best of his contemporaries, but against the grain of the leaders of “progressive” critical thought. He rejected compromise with these latter for the sake of pure poetry. For him, poetry was the purest essence, something like rarefied air on mountain peaks - not a human home, but a sanctuary.

Among his early works there are also purely “figurative” poems written on classical subjects, which are better than poetry Maykova or Shcherbina, but not enough to call Fet the greatest poet of “art for art’s sake” of his era. The real early Fet is in the wonderful lyrics about nature and in the “melodies” that he could hardly have learned from anyone. They are very reminiscent Verlaine, except that Fet’s healthy pantheism is completely different from the painful sensitivity of the French poet. Fet developed his own style unusually early: one of his most perfect and most characteristic melodies appeared in 1842:

Storm in the evening sky
The sea of ​​angry noise -
Storm at sea and thoughts,
Many painful thoughts -
Storm at sea and thoughts,
Chorus of rising thoughts -
Black cloud after cloud,
The sea is angry noise.

Such poems, which deliberately exclude everything except the music of emotions and associations, do not seem out of the ordinary to us today. But to Russian critics of the mid-nineteenth century (not to creative artists like Turgenev, Tolstoy or Nekrasov, who were all ardent admirers of Fet) they seemed pure nonsense. Not all of Fet's early poems are as short and purely musical as Storm. There are longer, more complex and figurative dream poems, such as the amazing Fantasy(until 1847). There are also more austere, less melodious poems about a clearly Russian village landscape, and pantheistic visions, such as that wonderful poem where, lying “on a haystack at night in the south,” he looks at the stars and “... like the first inhabitant of paradise, alone in I saw the face at night.” But no description can convey the pure poetry of these poems. These poems are easier to translate than most works of Russian poetry, for the effect here is created not so much by the elusive overtones of Russian words, but by the rhythm and music of the images.

After 1863 and especially in the 80s, Fet became more metaphysical. He began to take on philosophical subjects more often and reflect on the eternal questions of artistic perception and expression. Its syntax becomes more complex and condensed, sometimes even dark, like the syntax of Shakespeare's sonnets. Highest Achievement late Fetov poetry - his love poems are undoubtedly the most extraordinary and most passionate love poems written by a seventy-year-old man (not excluding Goethe). In them, Fet's method - using only his own suppressed emotions in poetry - won a brilliant victory. They are so intense that they look like the quintessence of passion. Fet's late poems, collected in four editions Evening lights(1883–1891), are less musical than his earlier songs, but more intense, more condensed and more thoughtful. The ideal of pure poetry is achieved here by methods reminiscent of Mallarmé And Fields Valerie. These works belong to the most precious diamonds of Russian poetry. They are pure gold, without the slightest impurity. The short poems, usually no more than three stanzas, are full of poetic significance, and although their theme is passion, they really talk about creative process, extracting the pure essence of poetry from emotional raw materials.

Fet was highly valued by those who do not measure poetry on the scale of progressive citizenship. But his principles late creativity were truly assimilated and accepted only by the Symbolists, who from the very beginning recognized Fet as one of their greatest teachers.