Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (), later known as Shenshin (; – ), was a Russian poet regarded as the finest master of lyric verse in Russian literature.
Biography Afanasy Fet was born on 5 December 1820 to Afanasy Shenshin, a 44-year-old Russian landlord from Mtsensk, and Charlotte Becker, a 22-year-old daughter of Karl Becker, a German inn-keeper. While staying with them during his visit to Germany, Shenshin fell in love with Charlotte, who agreed to follow him to Russia. Pregnant with her second child, she divorced her husband Johann Foeth, a Darmstadt court official, and married her Russian suitor, but was forced to leave her one-year-old daughter Carolina behind.Later Carolina Foeth too came to Russia where she married Alexander Matveyev, the rector of Kiev University. In November, at Shenshin's Novosyolky estate, she gave birth to a boy who was christened Afanasy Afansyevich Shenshin.Tarkhov, A. A.A.Fet. Verses and Poems. Contemporaries on Fet. Moscow, Pravda Publishing house. 1988. A Foreword. "To Give Life a Breath..." pp. 5–16.
Fourteen years later, as Shenshin and Becker's marriage, registered in Germany, proved to be legally void in Russia, Afanasy had to change his surname from Shenshin to Foeth, that of his biological father. This proved to be an exceptionally traumatic experience for the boy, aggravated as it was by the fact that back in Darmstadt Johann Foeth refused to acknowledge him as his son.It was this humiliation, scholars later opined, that accounted for the idiosyncrasies of a man who spent most of his life contemplating suicide. This outcome, though, was not the worst of possible evils: as an illegitimate child he fell to the bottom of the Russian social hierarchy. According to Tatyana Kuzminskaya (Sophia Tolstaya's sister), Fet's "greatest grievance in life was that he was not a legitimate Shenshin like his brothers (who treated him as an equal) but the out-of-wedlock son of Foeth, a German Jew.There are several marginal theories as to Fet's parents' origins. According to one of them, advocated by the Russian women's magazine Sudarushka, Charlotte Becker descended from an "ancient aristocratic family based in East Germany" while Johann Foeth was an illegitimate son of Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse, which supposedly made Afanasy Fet a cousin of Maria Alexandrovna. But he couldn't bring himself to admit that the name Fet was so much superior to that of Shenshin, and that he himself had made it so through his poetry, a fact which Leo Tolstoy tried in vain to convince him of."Strakhov, Nikolai. A.A.Fet. Biographical sketch. Lyrical Poems, Vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1894. pp. 328–334.
Education and literary debut
At age 14 Afanasy Shenshin was sent to a German boarding school in Võru. It was there that he was informed in a letter that from then on his name would be Fet, not Shenshin, which made him feel, admittedly, "like a dog that had lost its master." In 1837 Afanasy Shenshin moved his stepson to a Moscow boarding school owned by the historian Mikhail Pogodin. In autumn 1838 Fet enrolled at Moscow University to study law and philology. In his first year he started writing poetry, later citing Goethe, Heine, and Yazykov as influences, and met Apollon Grigoriev, a fellow student and aspiring poet. The two became close friends and soon Afanasy moved into Grigoriev's house in Zamoskvoretchye and settled in a small room on the upper floor, often visited by two other friends, Yakov Polonsky and Sergey Solovyov. Apollon Grigoriev's ideas concerning poetry writing influenced young Fet too.
In the late 1830s Fet showed some of his poems to Pogodin, who sent them to Nikolay Gogol for an opinion. The writer's verdict ("undoubtedly gifted") encouraged Fet to publish his first collection, Lyric Pantheon (1840, signed "A.F."). It was praised first by professor Pyotr Kudryavtsev in Otechestvennye Zapiski, then by Vissarion Belinsky, who several years later maintained: "of the living Russian poets Fet is the most gifted."Belinsky, V.G. Vol. VII, pp. 636–637; Vol. VIII, p. 94"Otechestvennye Zapiski", 1840, Vol. 12, Sc. VI, pp. 40–42; Belinsky's letter to Vasily Botkin, 26 December 1840. The Complete V.G.Belinsky in 12 Volumes. Vol. XI. Moscow, p. 584. In 1841 the poem "Poseidon" appeared in Otechestvennye Zapiski; it was the first one to be published under the author's full name. Later scholars wondered if it hadn't been a mere typesetter mistake that caused the Russian ё (as in Foeth) to be turned into e (as in Fet). Regardless of this, according to biographer Tarkhov, "the transformation was significant: in one moment the surname of 'a Hesse-Darmstadt citizen' turned into the pseudonym of a Russian poet."
In 1842–1843 Fet's poems were regularly printed in Otechestvennye Zapiski and Moskvityanin, the latter's editor Stepan Shevyryov becoming his mentor. Some of his poems appeared in the collection The Best of Russian Poetry compiled by Aleksey Galakhov in 1843. "Don't wake her up at dawn..." (На заре ты её не буди) was set to music by Alexander Varlamov and become a popular Russian romance. Yet, in those years Fet was a miserable man: "Never in my life have I known a person so tormented by depressions… The possibility of him committing suicide horrifies me greatly," wrote Apollon Grigoriev in his autobiographical novella Ophelia.Apollon Grigoriev. Ophelia (fragment). A.A.Fet. Poems. Moscow, 1988. pp. 341–342.
Military service and the Sovremennik years
In 1844 Fet graduated from the University. Later that year he lost his mother to cancer. In early 1845 he left the Novosyolky estate, went to Kherson, and in April, following the Shenshin family tradition, joined the Imperial Cuirassier regiment as a junior officer with the view of possibly retrieving his surname and all the privileges of nobility he'd lost with it. There was just one aspect of the army life that he enjoyed, discipline. Otherwise, he complained in letters of cultural isolation and feeling 'buried alive'. On one occasion he described his experience there as "life amongst monsters" when "once an hour another Viy approaches you, expecting you to smile back."Fet, А. Early Years of My Life (Rannye gody moyei zhizni). pp. 341, 318; "The Correspondence of Fet and I.P.Borisov". Literaturnaya Mysl. Book I. Petersburg, Mysl Publishers. 1922, pp. 214, 227–228."Literaturnaya Mysl", Book I, pp. 216, 220.
In autumn 1848 Fet fell in love with 20-year-old Maria Lazich, a well-educated and intelligent girl, who loved him too. Seeing no way of marrying the penniless daughter of a poor Kherson landowner, Fet abandoned her. In 1851 Maria died, having set her dress on fire. Some suggested this might have been an accident, others saw it as the final statement of "a proud and desperate girl who decided life was not worthwhile without the man she loved." Maria died from her burns four days later, her last words allegedly being: "Do not blame him for this." An immense feeling of remorse tormented Fet for the rest of his life. This incident and the image of Maria would frequently be evoked in his later verses.
In the late 1840s, after stopping for several years, Fet returned to writing. In 1850 a collection called Poems by A. Fet heralded his successful return to the Russian literary scene. In 1853 he was transferred to an uhlan regiment based in nearby Saint Petersburg. During the Crimean War he served with the troops guarding the Estonian coastline. In 1853 Nikolai Nekrasov invited Fet to join Sovremennik, where he re-joined his old friends Ivan Turgenev and Vasily Botkin. In Turgenev's house Fet met Leo Tolstoy, then a young officer fresh from the Crimean War, which resulted in lifelong friendship. Not only did Nekrasov actively promote Fet as a poet, he obviously preferred his work to that of others, his own included. "What the source of this miraculous poetic daring could be, the true characteristic of a great poet, coming from this good natured, plump officer, is beyond me," wondered Leo Tolstoy.
Poems by A.A. Fet came out in 1856 but proved to be little more than a re-worked and edited version of his 1850 book.Blagoy, Dmitry. From Russian Literature's Past. Turgenev and Fet. Publishing and Revolution magazine. 1923, Book 3, pp. 45–64. According to writer and memoirist Avdotya Panaeva, Fet gave Nekrasov and Turgenev carte blanche in compiling this anthology and while the former was against extensive editing, the latter insisted on drastic cuts and, in the end, his argument won out.Panayeva, Avdotya. From Memoirs (Iz vospominany). А.А.Fet. Verses and Poems. Moscow. Pravda. 1988. p. 351 In the preface to the book, Nekrasov wrote: "Not a single poet since Pushkin has managed to give such delight to those who understand poetry and readily open their soul to it, as Fet does. This does not mean to say both are equal: it's just that in his own field Fet is as superb as Pushkin was in his, much more vast and diverse one."
By 1856, when the poetry collections by Fet and Nekrasov came out almost simultaneously, their personal relations had already become strained due to ideological differences. In his 1859 essay on Fyodor Tyutchev Fet wrote: "The notion that poetry's social mission, moral value, or relevance could be superior to its artistic aspects, is nightmarish to me; I abandoned this notion long ago." The rift with the rest of the Sovremennik staff became apparent, and later that year Fet left the journal, now dominated by Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Nikolay Dobrolyubov.
Retirement from the army In 1857 in Paris Afanasy Fet married Maria Petrovna Botkina (the daughter of a rich tea-trader and sister of his good friend, literary critic Vasily Botkin), described as an exceptionally kind and sympathetic person, totally devoid of jealousy, who was perfectly happy to treat her husband "like a nanny treats a child".A.A. Fet. Poems. Moscow, 1988. Letters. р.414. In 1858 Fet retired from army service and returned to Moscow. A year later he purchased the desolate Stepanovka khutor in the Mtsensk region of Oryol gubernia, and in 1860 moved there. In the course of the next fourteen years he turned a piece of bare (even if fertile) land into a flourishing garden, launched a horse-breeding farm, built a mill and embarked upon agricultural ventures which proved successful and lucrative. In 1862 Russky Vestnik started to publish his articles on agricultural commerce and economy.Fet, А. My Memories. Part 2. p. 210. All this evoked sharp criticism from, among others, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. "One of those who have disappeared down into their earthly holes is now Fet who… in the moments of leisure produces by turns now a fine romance, next a misanthropic essay, then another romance, and more misanthropy," he wrote.The Works by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Moscow, 1968. Vol. 6. pp. 59–60). For eleven years (1867–1877) Fet served as a local Justice of the peace and became much respected both by peasants and by fellow landowners.