Afanasy Fet
Afanasy Fet was born on the 5th of December 1820 to Afanasy Shenshin and Charlotte Becker. His father was a forty-four-year-old Russian landlord from Mtsensk while his mother was a twenty-two-year-old daughter of a German inn-keeper. The couple married in Germany but their union proved legally void within Russia fourteen years later. This legal failure forced young Afanasy to change his surname from Shenshin to Foeth, the name of his biological father Johann Foeth. The humiliation of this switch haunted him for decades as Johann refused to acknowledge him as his son back in Darmstadt. Scholars later identified this trauma as the root of a man who spent most of his life contemplating suicide. As an illegitimate child he fell to the bottom of the Russian social hierarchy according to Tatyana Kuzminskaya. She noted that his greatest grievance was being the out-of-wedlock son of Foeth rather than a legitimate Shenshin like his brothers.
In early 1845 Fet joined the Imperial Cuirassier regiment as a junior officer following family tradition. He hoped military service might help retrieve his lost surname and noble privileges. Life among the soldiers felt like being buried alive to him despite one aspect he enjoyed: discipline. He described his experience there as life amongst monsters where another Viy approached you every hour expecting a smile. In autumn 1848 Fet fell in love with twenty-year-old Maria Lazich but abandoned her due to poverty. Apollon Grigoriev wrote that no person had ever been so tormented by depressions as Fet. Yet poetry offered an escape from this misery. His first collection Lyric Pantheon appeared in 1840 signed only A.F. Professor Pyotr Kudryavtsev praised it in Otechestvennye Zapiski followed by Vissarion Belinsky who called him the most gifted living Russian poet. The poem Poseidon appeared in 1841 under his full name marking a significant transformation from Hesse-Darmstadt citizen to Russian poet.
Maria Lazich was a well-educated and intelligent girl who loved Fet back in autumn 1848. Seeing no way of marrying the penniless daughter of a poor Kherson landowner he chose to abandon her. In 1851 Maria died having set her dress on fire four days after the incident. Some suggested this might have been an accident while others saw it as the final statement of a proud and desperate girl who decided life was not worthwhile without the man she loved. Her last words allegedly were 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. The tragedy haunted him until his death at age seventy-one.
In 1857 Afanasy Fet married Maria Petrovna Botkina in Paris. She was described as exceptionally kind and sympathetic totally devoid of jealousy. A year later he retired from army service and returned to Moscow. He purchased the desolate Stepanovka khutor in the Mtsensk region of Oryol gubernia in 1859 before moving there in 1860. Over the next fourteen years he turned bare fertile land into a flourishing garden. He launched a horse-breeding farm built a mill and embarked upon agricultural ventures which proved successful and lucrative. Russky Vestnik started to publish his articles on agricultural commerce and economy in 1862. For eleven years from 1867 to 1877 Fet served as a local Justice of the peace. He became much respected both by peasants and by fellow landowners despite sharp criticism from Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin who called him one of those who had disappeared down into their earthly holes.
In 1873 Tsar Alexander II granted Fet the return of his stepfather's surname with all rights and privileges of Russian nobility. Turgenev greeted this disappearance of Fet and emergence of Shenshin with sarcasm while Leo Tolstoy praised his courage. That same year Fet bought a second village Vorobyovka nearby Kursk and returned to writing poetry. At Vorobyovka his muse awoke from many years of sleep starting to visit him as often as she used to at the dawn of his life according to a letter written to Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov on the 25th of August 1891. The result of this new surge were four books of the Evening Lights series released in 1883, 1885, 1888 and 1891. These volumes featured some of his finest work though they sold poorly. Only a circle of close friends including Leo Tolstoy Vladimir Solovyov Nikolay Strakhov Yakov Polonsky Aleksey K. Tolstoy and Pyotr Tchaikovsky expressed delight with his latter life poetry.
In October 1892 Fet moved from Vorobyovka to his Moscow house where he contracted severe bronchitis after catching cold visiting Countess Sophia Tolstaya. Early in the morning on the 21st of November Fet suddenly sent for champagne despite his wife's protest. He seemed to be in great agitation and haste ordering her to return quickly. As Maria left he told his secretary Come with me I will dictate to you. No came the reply when she asked if it was a letter. His secretary wrote: I see no reason for consciously prolonging my suffering. I willingly chose to do what would be inevitable anyway. He signed this document the 21st of November Fet Shenshin with a firm hand certainly not that of a dying man according to biographer Boris Sadovskoy. What followed was described as a kind of mental storm some people experience when facing death. Chased by his bleeding secretary Fet entered a dining-room approached the cabinet where table-knives were kept unsuccessfully tried to open it then fell on a chair lifeless. The cause of his death was later believed to be a heart attack.
Fet was the proponent of the romantic idea of the need for a poet to make a distinction between the ideal and real spheres. Only the ideal sphere gives one an opportunity to take a whiff of a higher life he asserted in his memoirs. This sphere encompassed beauty love moments of harmony between the human soul and infinite cosmos and Art as such. Longing for the Ideal was the driving force of Fet's poetry according to biographer Tarkhov. In his essay on Tytchev published by Russkoye Slovo in 1859 Fet maintained that only pure love pure art was supposed to serve. Osip Mandelstam considered Fet to be the greatest Russian poet of all time while Alexander Blok referred to him as his great teacher. Among those influenced by Fet were Sergey Yesenin and Boris Pasternak. Professor Pyotr Kudryavtsev argued that real poetry is self-sufficient and its sources won't dry out even in the most unfavorable times. Yet Fet was not a popular poet during his lifetime as Vasily Botkin remarked that general public treated these praises skeptically.
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Common questions
When was Afanasy Fet born and what were his parents' names?
Afanasy Fet was born on the 5th of December 1820 to Afanasy Shenshin and Charlotte Becker. His father was a forty-four-year-old Russian landlord from Mtsensk while his mother was a twenty-two-year-old daughter of a German inn-keeper.
Why did Afanasy Fet change his surname from Shenshin to Foeth?
The couple married in Germany but their union proved legally void within Russia fourteen years later. This legal failure forced young Afanasy to change his surname from Shenshin to Foeth, the name of his biological father Johann Foeth.
How did Maria Lazich die and how did it affect Afanasy Fet?
In 1851 Maria died having set her dress on fire four days after the incident. An immense feeling of remorse tormented Fet for the rest of his life until his death at age seventy-one.
What major life changes occurred for Afanasy Fet in 1873?
In 1873 Tsar Alexander II granted Fet the return of his stepfather's surname with all rights and privileges of Russian nobility. That same year Fet bought a second village Vorobyovka nearby Kursk and returned to writing poetry.
When did Afanasy Fet die and what were the circumstances surrounding his death?
Early in the morning on the 21st of November 1892 Fet suddenly sent for champagne despite his wife's protest. He signed this document the 21st of November Fet Shenshin before falling on a chair lifeless as the cause of his death was later believed to be a heart attack.