Fet’s poems delighted Leo Tolstoy: “And where does this good-natured fat officer get such incomprehensible lyrical audacity, a property of great poets?” One cannot help but feel in his exclamation the emotional excitement caused by Fet’s poetic talent and familiar to everyone who has at least once come into contact with Fet’s muse. It is noteworthy that this statement is in tune with the aesthetic consciousness of the poet himself. “We have always stood and will stand,” Fet wrote, “not only for all courage, but even audacity in the arts, as long as this audacity does not tastelessly and senselessly go beyond the boundaries of art.” In Tolstoy’s words, in addition to admiration, there is also sincere bewilderment: the appearance of a “good-natured fat officer” really does not really agree with the idea of “lyrical audacity.” In this sense, however, Russian poetry and Russian literature in general are a truly unique phenomenon. The combination of life and poetic destinies of Russian writers is often paradoxical. Let us remember Pushkin - chamber cadet of the court of His Imperial Majesty - “the sun of Russian poetry”; Lermontov - guards lieutenant and mournful rebellious lyricist; Tyutchev - an official-diplomat and censor, in whose work sophistication merged with the “powerful dominance of the spirit”; Innokenty Annensky - the zealous director of the gymnasium and the famous forerunner of the Russian symbolists. And Leo Tolstoy himself? - the count, without whom there would be no real man in literature. Afanasy Fet is one of them.
Within 72 years old, - Fet born in October or November 1820, and died November 21, 1892 - he sought to achieve practical life goal- material independence, so that, like other writers, he would not serve anywhere and be provided for, moreover, even rich, and at the same time he zealously defended and protected the ideal impulses of his soul.) In other words, Fet’s worldly sphere sharply diverged from the sphere art: in everyday life Fet followed tradition, in the poetic sphere he was on the side of “lyrical audacity.” “As much as in the matter of the liberal arts,” he asserted, “I value reason little in comparison with subconscious instinct (inspiration) ..., so in practical life I demand reasonable foundations, supported by experience.”
Fet called his songs “gifts of life.” In the preface to the third edition of “Evening Lights,” he wrote: “The hardships of life have forced us, for fifty years, from time to time to turn away from them and break through the everyday ice, so that at least for a moment we can breathe the clean and free air of poetry.”
Fet's will, with which he sought a strong place in society, his economic activities and at the same time his desperate contempt for everyday prose, as soon as he touched art, can hardly be explained outside the everyday and spiritual experience of the poet on the basis of the Russian reality of those years. This powerful will was not aroused by the ambitious pettiness of nature, but by a conscious principle social behavior. And to understand its essence, one must delve into its origins, full of drama and even tragedy.
Everyday life dealt Fet blow after blow, and apart from bitter memories, it left nothing in his heart. Fet admitted that from childhood he only endured “the intrigues of the servants, the stupidity of the teachers, the severity of his father, the defenselessness of his mother and training in fear every day.”
As a boy, he learned that he could not bear the name of his father, the retired captain and Oryol landowner Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin, because he married the poet’s mother, Charlotte Fet, after the birth of his son. By becoming an illegitimate child, Fet lost all noble privileges. The parents managed to get their first-born to be recognized as the son of Fet, Charlotte's former husband. The legality of Fet's birth was established, but now he was deprived of Russian citizenship, and with it his hereditary nobility and the right to his father's inheritance. Fet was forced out of Russian society and considered this event truly catastrophic; the very name “Fet” became for him a symbol of troubles and therefore “hateful”: “If you ask,” he wrote, “what is the name of all the suffering, all the sorrows of my life, then I will answer: their name is Fet...”
After graduating from a German boarding school in the city of Verro (now Võru, Estonian SSR), Fet entered the verbal department of the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow University in 1838. Here he enters the circle of talented youth. Among his friends are the later famous critic and gifted poet Apollo Grigoriev, the wonderful lyricist Yakov Polonsky, historian Sergei Solovyov, publicist Konstantin Kavelin and others. Fet enthusiastically devotes himself to poetic creativity. His early poems were noticed by M. P. Pogodin and favorably received by N. V. Gogol. In 1840, Fet released the first poetry collection“Lyrical Pantheon”, and a little later becomes an active participant in the leading literary and artistic magazines “Domestic Notes” and “Moskvityanin”. Fet's poems are praised by Belinsky, distinguishing the poet from countless poets. In the early 1840s, Fet, although not for long, became imbued with liberal sentiments.
In 1845, Fet completed his university education. Carrying out his “everyday program”, he began to serve in the army with the rank of non-commissioned officer and voluntarily imprisoned himself in the remote corners of remote provinces. Life in the provinces was boring and uninteresting. The poet received almost no help from his father. In these difficult conditions, Fet was supported by poetry - in the midst of vulgarity and boredom, his lyrical nature did not fade away. Fet prepared for publication a collection of poems, which was approved by censorship in 1847, but due to a lack of funds and direct connections with publishers, it was published only in 1850. By that time, Fet had become a cornet and a Russian citizen. However, his main hope was to receive, along with the officer rank, hereditary nobility- slipped away: hereditary nobility was now given not by the first officer rank, but by the rank of major (captain in the cavalry troops). Fet, however, did not give up. He continues to serve 1b, waiting for the rank of major. But life's surprises rain down on his head as if from a cornucopia. In 1856, shortly before Fet was promoted to the next rank, a new decree was issued, according to which the hereditary nobility was given the rank of colonel.
Due to poverty and an unsettled life, Fet could not marry for love, although his ardent feeling was answered by Maria Lazic, an educated, artistically gifted girl, a wonderful pianist. The love drama was aggravated by the fact that Maria Lazic, realizing the futility of hopes for marriage with Fet, according to the legend that has reached us, decided her fate sadly and cruelly: she deliberately dropped a lit match, which set her dress on fire. The tragic reflection of unhappy, hopeless love and the death of the human spirit in the flames of a fire will illuminate Fet’s life and work more than once.
In 1853, Fet managed to join the guard, and he could now visit St. Petersburg. Here he meets recognized writers - Nekrasov, Turgenev, Druzhinin, Goncharov, Annenkov, Grigorovich, Botkin, and later Leo Tolstoy, enters the Sovremennik magazine. In 1855, new friends, led by Turgenev, suggested that Fet publish a collection of his poems, which appeared in 1856.
From now on, Fet - famous poet, and his name is constantly mentioned in critical articles. The greatest writers and critics of that glorious era write about him. Of course, Fet was known before, but it was in the mid-1850s that recognition and poetic maturity came to him. Nevertheless, literary successes did not affect life. Fet, however, felt less constrained financially, but he could not count on literary income. In his private life, nothing improved: he did not become a hereditary nobleman, he suffered a complete failure in his military career, having risen within 11 years to the rank of lieutenant, the rank of colonel was no longer available to him, his love perished. It was necessary to choose a new path.
A change in Fet's intentions occurred immediately after the decree of 1856. In 1857, he married the critic V.P. Botkin’s sister, Maria Petrovna Botkina, and the following year he retired. Since 1860, Fet went into economic activity. A few years earlier, he left the Sovremennik magazine.
His persistence in achieving the rank of nobility and material goods Fet tried to justify it from an aesthetic point of view, believing that true culture is created by the nobles. He reproached writers from the nobility who forgot about their class interests. At a time when Russian society was indignant at the scant reform that abolished the shameful slavery, Fet attacked it for allegedly not sufficiently protecting the rights of landowners and only intensifying the discord between the nobles and peasants. In a word, in the raznochinsky era of Russian history, Fet showed himself to be a hopelessly belated, but persistent defender of noble culture, without separating the advanced in it from the caste.
Fet, a subtle lyricist, and Shenshin, a tight-fisted landowner, seem to be two different faces. But the fact of the matter is that Fet never allowed Shenshin into his poetry.
The starting premises of Fetov's understanding of art are inseparable from his rejection of social reality. It, according to the poet’s conviction, distorts a person, oppresses the highest, spiritual properties inherent in him by nature. Without allowing the vicious and unfair everyday life, where “nightingales peck butterflies,” to interfere in the poetry, Fet tore away from art everything “temporary”, transient, the very sociality that disfigured his own human destiny. Unlike the revolutionary democrats, Fet concluded not about the need to change the state and social structure, but, on the one hand, about “getting used to” the existing order, and on the other hand, about ignoring it. He “sat down” on the ground, but excluded political and other topical issues from the content of his art. The subject of poetry is “eternal” feelings. The artist's task is to break through to them and discover them in the most ordinary manifestations. In Fet's lyrics, he was attracted to aspects that are directly correlated with the natural, “ancestral” properties of a person. Here the soul speaks directly to the soul, to the entire universe, to the cosmos, to every grass and God’s creature. Here the world of creativity reigns, the flight of the spirit, beauty blooms. Fet does not at all run away from everyday life and does not shun it, but his human life is cleared of all social layers, material and selfish concerns. Fet ascends from him into the realm of spiritual life, but the spiritual appears only in everyday, real - visible, audible, filled with sounds and smells - signs. Having protected his poetry from the fundamental contradictions of the despicable way of life in Russia at that time, he demarcated the reserved zone of lyricism, where this way of life did not intrude. Fet wanted his lyrics not to be tainted by those institutions from which he himself suffered every minute.
Time moves towards the reform of 1861, and political division becomes a fact. Now Fet's poems no longer meet with the same unanimous sympathy that marked the mid and late 50s. In 1863, Fet published a two-volume collection of poems and almost stopped his literary work. He wrote few poems and published them reluctantly. In the 60s and 70s he was busy mainly organizing his local life. His energy, common sense, prudence bear fruit - Fet becomes rich, sells his former estate, buys another. Among his friends, he communicates with Leo Tolstoy, Yakov Polonsky, Vasily Botkin, and from the late 70s to last days with Nikolai Strakhov and Vladimir Solovyov. From 1883 to 1891, he published four collections of “Evening Lights”, was preparing a fifth, and was working on a collection of works, but death prevented him from realizing such extensive plans.
Contemporaries who knew Fet closely noted constant signs of melancholy and melancholy in him. They were shocked by Fet's indifference to life. It appeared in my youth and did not go away over the years. Apollo Grigoriev openly feared that Fet would commit suicide. In the end, Fet attempted suicide - he grabbed a steel stiletto and, when it was taken away by his secretary, rushed to the buffet where the knives lay, but then Death from a broken heart overtook him.
At the end of his life, Fet found everything he desired: the surname Shenshin, hereditary nobility, chamberlain title and wealth. But this did not soften the blows of fate experienced in childhood, adolescence and youth, as a result of which the “ideal world,” as Fet wrote, was “destroyed long ago.” This is the bribe paid by Fet for his newfound prosperity.
Fet’s “mystery” seemed incomprehensible to his contemporaries, and those close to him at that. The writer of Amphitheaters saw in the “two Fetas” a pathological example of the combination of “humanity, cruelty social thought resembled a primitive barbarian" and "a poet of astonishing depth." Yakov Polonsky wrote to his friend Fet: “What kind of creature are you - I don’t understand...” He “suspected” that “inside” Fet “there sits another, unknown to anyone, and to us, sinners, an invisible person, surrounded by radiance, with eyes of azure and stars, and winged!” “You,” Polonsky noted, “have grown old, but he is young! You deny everything, but he believes!.. You despise life, and he, kneeling, is ready to sob in front of one of its incarnations...”
It was this hidden, deeply hidden and intense spiritual life, which was revealed only to a few “initiates” when Fet was alive, that became the content of his immortal lyrical confessions.
Fet's talent is exceptional. Nature rewarded him with beauty - from the often printed drawings one can form only a faint impression of it. But the Oryol Museum houses one little-known portrait, and, really, you can’t take your eyes off it. Fet could be unusually charming. He was famous for his subtle wit. When he spoke, the listeners turned into attention itself. Philosophy in its highest manifestations was accessible to him. He unmistakably captured the charm of folk poetry. As for the lyrics, Fet seemed to easily penetrate the spirit of ancient authors and poets of the East and West. In letters, especially to K.R. (Konstantin Romanov) and Yakov Polonsky, his most valuable notes on world poetry have been preserved. Fet linked his own poetic experience with the world literary process, and his apt observations of style were accompanied by deep generalizations. We can say that these letters comprehend the history of European poetry from Horace to Fet’s contemporaries. Unfortunately, all this wealth has not yet been published in full and has not been sufficiently appreciated.
Fet wrote at a time when literature was charged with direct intervention in everyday life and was expected to resolve complex social problems. Of course, literature, while reflecting reality, cannot avoid them. However, the connection between literature and life was often understood in a crude, straightforward manner. And this led to the fact that mediocre writers, exploiting a modern theme, rose to the occasion, while talented artists were subjected to undeserved attacks due to the alleged lack of living social content in their work. Thus, Fet has a poem “The First Furrow”, in the initial quatrain of which an ancient image appears:
From the green-gray steppe
The fog is rising
And Ceres still sticks out
The hated weed.
Confusion was expressed about this: why, they say, allegory intruded into the poem - it seemed inappropriate and violated the “true depiction of the beauties of nature.” The purpose of Fet's poem, however, is not to accurately capture peasant labor - the poet does not shy away from this, if necessary, and one cannot deny his ability:
The rusty plow is brightening up again!
Where the oxen, bending down, passed,
A velvet ribbon turns black
A block of cut earth,
They sparkle with something fresh and tender
The spring rays of the sun,
Following the diligent plowman
Greedy rooks are walking around.
In the poem “The First Furrow” we are talking about the harmony of man and nature, about the eternal, enduring value of labor and the ennobling role of man - it is in human creativity that Fet discovers a common meaning for all, a common content.
In the 1860s, accusations of the poet’s lack of attention to current socio-historical problems became common place. Fet really didn’t see it at that time social structure ideal of beauty and perfection. He considered attempts to change him a waste time, a useless activity for the artist. Fet's spiritual world rested on different foundations - his primary interest was in social feelings and human experiences (unlike politics, he did not eliminate them), including love for native land, the attitude of people to each other, “eternal” moral questions, the mysteries of life and death, the creative principle in man, the contradictions of flesh and spirit. Fet's lyrics have an undeniable social content, but not a specific socio-historical one, but primarily psychological and philosophical. In this capacity, it is not devoid of signs of time, attention to such deep foundations of the spiritual life of Russian people that could be revealed at a sharp historical turning point from one social formation to another. The old one is a thing of the past feudal Russia and the new order showed its face. This is an acute feeling of imminent changes, social catastrophes and cosmic shocks Fyodor Tyutchev had a presentiment, they excite Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, prompting them to look more closely not only at their contemporary reality, but also at human nature in general. The great discoveries made by Russian literature in that era are inseparable either from the comprehension of objective reality or from insight into the essence of man. Fet does not stand aside from this process; he focuses on the person, on his spiritual wealth. Having rejected the socially hostile world, he looked for the ideal person in the highest and “pure”, in his opinion, spheres of spiritual manifestations of people transformed by beauty and harmony
Explaining SVOR's understanding of art, Fet wrote: “The world in all its parts is equally beautiful. Beauty is scattered throughout the universe and, like all the gifts of nature, it influences even those who are not aware of it...” And again: “... The question arises, what benefit, other than the common one with all other organisms, does a person derive from the area of beauty? The whole world of art testifies to the fact that man, in addition to all material benefits, seeks something else in beauty for his needs.” There is no doubt that Fet here enters the realm of aesthetic questions that occupied the minds of Hegel and Goethe, Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy, revolutionary democrats and Plekhanov. The fet thinker diverges from the Russian materialistic aesthetics of the 50s and 60s. However, does this mean that Fet is leaving real ground altogether? Of course, Fet is wrong in asserting that the socio-political sphere is alien to art. But Fet is right in rightly protesting against the crudely utilitarian attitude towards art. For Fet, an artist is “a slave to his art,” and he has no other concern than to find and embody the beautiful, giving it eternal life. These thoughts partly bring Fet closer to Leo Tolstoy, who wrote: “I am an artist, and my whole life is spent looking for beauty.”
What is purely “Fetov’s” here is not so much in the transmission of hidden movement or plastic picture, but in the diffuse and at the same time tangible thrill of expectation, welded, in the words of Dostoevsky, with “painful sadness.” Fet usually ended his poems at the highest point of emotional tension, inseparably intertwining admiration and pain, without giving precedence to either suffering or joy. “Diana” also combines exultation in beauty and longing for the ideal of life, and, unexpressed, endless sorrow for the present.
In Fet's lyrics, man strives for primordial harmony and beauty, for unity with the world. “Life,” he wrote, “is a harmonious fusion of opposites and a constant struggle between them, a good villain, a brilliant madman, melting ice. With the cessation of the struggle and with the final victory of one of the opposing principles, life itself ceases as such.” It is this merging of opposites, the overflow from calm into anxiety, the transition from one state to another, their incessant struggle, from which grows harmony, beauty, revealing the creative power of man and filling with the delight of the inexhaustibility of being, Fet experiences deeply intimately, and not abstractly and abstractly . The struggle of opposites and the created harmony appear both objectively, in the natural world, and subjectively, in the soul of the poet.
Fet never ceases to praise beauty as a kind of eternal law. But beauty for him is instantaneous, fleeting, and does not appear in its rational essence, but only as the result of inspiration, a revelation that suddenly descended on the poet.
Any phenomenon is brief, according to Fet, because it is placed between real existence and non-existence. One must be able to capture beauty in a short moment of flowering, in its fullest expression: in an inadvertently thrown loving glance, in a suddenly flared feeling, in an indistinct babble, in an inexplicable emotional movement. However, beauty captured in words is more real than beauty perceived in life, because it no longer dies. This, according to Fet, is the meaning artistic creativity- to objectify beauty, preserve, perpetuate its living, reverent image.
The desire to express the “inexpressible” through an instant lyrical flash, to inspire the reader with the mood that has gripped the poet is one of the fundamental properties of Fet’s poetry. The lyrical experience in this case cannot be long-lasting, and Fet, as a rule, creates short poems of two, three or four stanzas . Comprehending beauty unexpectedly and perpetuating it, Fet goes beyond the boundaries of the objective meaning of the word and revives dormant emotional halos in it. The poet is unusually skillful in managing verbal resources and the wealth inherent in the word, speech, verse, stanza itself.
However, Fet is not only a cheerful singer of beauty, love, reciprocity, filling his soul with delight and happiness, infinitely brave and inventive in crossing joy and torment, but also a huge tragic poet, whose consciousness is philosophically courageous and vigilant. Fet, running away from human society with its vanity, self-interest, and anger, unexpectedly reaches out to him. In his soul there lives a tragic discord between the artist, who is making his way to an immaculate ideal, and the preacher, who obtains the truth in order to convey it to the very people whose life’s hardships seemed to not interest him at all.
Fet is afraid of appealing to “fearless hearts” and understands that this is his duty. Thus, in his work, Fet overcomes the narrowness of his own aesthetic declarations. It is noteworthy that the “airy”, “elusive”, “unsteady” Fet uses high and stern words here - “Intensify the battle of fearless hearts.” No matter how distant and romantic Fet’s position may be, his verse cannot help but recall Pushkin’s “With a verb, burn the hearts of people.” Hidden in the storeroom of his soul, Fet’s thought, perhaps, was to arouse an impulse towards him with the very sensually beautiful face of the harmonious world and in this way lead a person to the kingdom of truth and beauty. It was not for nothing that Fet constantly struggled with solving the great and eternal mysteries of existence and was constantly amazed by them. He recognized the objective value of beauty that existed apart from him, and he had an ineradicable need to comprehend it. He believed in his powerful creative abilities and doubted them. Fet, who did not rely on anything other than his spirit, opposed the outside world as a whole. For him, I and the Universe are two equal forces.
Let your hand touch my head, And you will erase me from the list of existence. But before my judgment, as long as my heart beats, We are equal forces,” and I triumph.
However, Fet is not equally afraid of either life or death. He is neither a pessimist nor an optimist. He experiences cold indifference towards death, and life is justified only by creative “fire”, commensurate with the “whole universe”:
The source of Fet's lyrical audacity, purity, sincerity, freshness and unfading youth of his poetry lies in the unquenchable and bright flame that almighty nature endowed him with.
A mortal man carries a “fire” in his chest even “stronger and brighter than the entire universe,” and neither time nor space has power over him.
Having learned about this decision, Tolstoy wrote to Fet (February 23, 1860): “Your letter made me terribly happy, dear friend Afanasy Afanasyevich! Our regiment will arrive, and an excellent soldier will arrive. I am sure that you will be an excellent host.” A period of special closeness began between the Stepanovsky farmer and the Yasnaya Polyana landowner. "What brought them together? Undoubtedly, first of all, the common living conditions in in a broad sense this word; here is a break with literary circles, and rejection of the activities of the revolutionary party, hostility towards liberals, and towards the bureaucratic elite, towards “reasoners”, and an apology for spontaneity, an artistically free attitude towards art. But there was something else that in the 60s especially made them related and brought them closer together - an unrelenting attraction to the literature they had abandoned" (S. A. Rozanova. Leo Tolstoy and Fet (The Story of a Friendship). - "Russian Literature", 1963, Ќ 2, p. 90.) The two “retired writers” developed a peculiar ritual: with the spring awakening of nature, Tolstoy expected a new spring poem from his friend - the “singer of spring”: “Your poetic yeast rises in the spring, but I have a receptiveness to poetry." "How did you accept this spring? - Tolstoy asks Fet in one letter from May 1866. - That's right, they wrote spring. Send." And Fet sent:
She came, and everything around melts,
Everything longs to give itself to life,
And the heart, a prisoner winter blizzards,
Suddenly I forgot how to squeeze.
It spoke, it bloomed
Everything that yesterday languished silently,
And the sky brought sighs
From the dissolved gates of Eden.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
You can't have petty worries
Although I won’t be ashamed for a moment,
You can't stand in front of eternal beauty
Don't sing, don't praise, don't pray.
Fet's spring poems were least of all the literary itch of a “dismissed writer” - they appeared as naturally and involuntarily as spring flowers from under the snow; It was not for nothing that Tolstoy called his friend’s lyrical creations “alive” and “beautifully born” and, precisely in connection with his spontaneous, inexhaustible, eternally young “lyrical instinct,” wrote to him: “I don’t know a person fresher and stronger than you.” Having once informed Fet that a new poem had moved him to tears, Tolstoy then confirmed his first impression: “I now remember it by heart and often tell it to myself.” Tolstoy learned many of Fetov’s poems by heart - and this is perhaps the most obvious evidence of his organic need for this lyricism: it truly nourished his soul and heart, moreover, it entered “the flesh and blood” of his own creativity.
The problem of creative connections between Tolstoy and Fet has been posed a long time ago. B. Eikhenbaum wrote: “Tolstoy became interested in Fet’s poems back in the 50s and at the same time noticed the peculiarities of his method... This “lyrical audacity,” capturing the subtle shades of mental life and intertwining them with a description of nature, attracts the attention of Tolstoy, who developed “ dialectic of the soul" in all its inconsistency and paradox. Acquaintance with Fet's poetry imparts to this "dialectic of the soul" a special lyrical tone that was previously absent" (B. Eikhenbaum. Leo Tolstoy. The Seventies. L., 1974, p. 182.). Following B. Eikhenbaum, N. Berkovsky noted the connection between Tolstoy’s prose and Fetov’s lyrics; saying that “Tolstoy’s novels are immensely rich in poetic episodes,” and referring to the episode of Levin’s Moscow morning in Anna Karenina, the researcher wrote: “Moscow morning, the wonders of this morning - a dove that “crackled its wings and flew away, shining in the sun between specks of snow trembling in the air,” a boy who ran up to a dove, a window in which cods sprinkled with flour were displayed - all this is like Fet’s lyrical poem...” (N. Ya. Berkovsky. On the global significance of Russian literature. L ... landowner Levin, deep in sorrowful thoughts about the fate of the landowning class in Russia... and rejection of the St. Petersburg-bureaucratic Karenin Russia"), summarizes the history of the closeness of Tolstoy and Fet: "The coincidence of some themes, situations, moods in the work of both writers in the 60s years are the result of a certain commonality of worldview: admiration for the elements of life, affirmation of the greatness, truth and wisdom of nature, skeptical distrust of reason, poetic illumination of certain aspects of the life of noble nests" (S. Rozanova. Decree. cit., p. 94.).
It is impossible not to see that the special rapprochement between Fet and Tolstoy occurred on the basis of their common “turn to the earth” in the late 50s. But it is equally obvious that the beginning of their divergence turned out to be directly related to the fact that in the lives of each of them this “agricultural period”, which made them so related, ended. Fet’s desire to give up all-consuming economic activity was even expressed in a complete change of “living space”: “I have started and am implementing a complete reform in my affairs. It’s time to concentrate and live for myself. Today there were two buyers for Stepanovka, and “cut the dust from your feet yours..." - Fet wrote to Tolstoy on October 16, 1876, and soon, having sold Stepanovka, he moved to the ancient Vorobyovka estate, acquired for a lot of money. Here began the last, "Vorobyovsky" period of Fet's literary activity - abundant, varied and famous for the powerful rise of his poetic genius - "Evening Lights". But, having achieved his life goal through hard work, becoming a strong landowner and a legitimate nobleman, Fet, although he left farming, continued his ideological work in this field, tirelessly developing and defending his favorite idea of creating in Russia " agricultural-noble-classical aristocracy" (as Turgenev put it). In June 1879, Tolstoy spent one day with Fet in Vorobyovka - and wrote to his wife: “I was so tired of Fet and his chatter that I couldn’t think of how to escape.” And this was not a manifestation of caprice or bad mood: it was the reaction of the new Tolstoy, who had also completed an entire period of his life and was in a state of painful search for a new path in life. A year earlier, Tolstoy wrote to Fet (April 6, 1878): “If you and I were pounded in the same mortar and then molded into a couple of people, we would have a nice couple. Otherwise, you have so much attachment to everyday things that, if somehow this everyday thing will end, you will feel bad; but I have such indifference to him that I have no interest in life...” This letter marks the point from which two friends (“kin in mind and heart” - Tolstoy’s words) begin sharply. disperse in different directions. The reason for the discrepancy is essentially indicated in the same letter. If earlier, in the person of Turgenev, Fet’s conservative pochvennichestvo was opposed by a convinced liberal Westerner, now Fet, in his “unshakable respect for the rule of law, personality and property,” came across the opposition of Tolstoy, who denied all this from the positions he had acquired of patriarchal-communal “peasant democracy” and "first gospel truth." Tolstoy abandoned all his previous values - both as a nobleman and as an artist; it is not surprising that Fet - as a thinker and poet - was no longer of value to him: this new attitude of Tolstoy towards Fet is symbolized by the latter’s letter dated May 27, 1880, which Tolstoy cut into strips and used as bookmarks. The correspondence of the two writers of this time is filled with philosophical and religious disputes - but they too soon end: in a short letter dated May 12, 1881, Tolstoy writes: “I have worked very hard and have grown very old this year; but it is not my fault for the change in my affection for you.” From this last of Tolstoy's famous letters to Fet, marking a moment of crisis in their relationship, one can draw a direct line to the reviews of 1889-1890, which represent the extreme point of Tolstoy's negative attitude towards Fet. Entries in Tolstoy’s diary on January 14, 1889: “Pitiful Fet on his anniversary. This is terrible! A child, but stingy and evil.” Tolstoy writes about the “pathetic” and “hopelessly lost” Feta in his diary again, and on December 20, 1890 he says to his friend Zhirkevich: “For fifty years the man wrote only basic nonsense, useless to anyone, and his anniversary was something like a bacchanalia : everyone tried to assure him that for fifty years he had been doing something very necessary, good..." (LN, vol. 37-78, book II, p. 420.)
Fet, for his part, invariably speaking about the enduring value of Tolstoy’s artistic creations, did not hide his sharply negative attitude towards “Tolstoy the Preacher”: “I will not yield to anyone in boundless amazement at the power of Leo Tolstoy’s talent; but this does not in the least hinder me from the greatest It is regretful to see that he has entered into the thorns of some useful moral teachings that are saving for humanity. The history of mankind presents a number of examples that instructions only led people to ugly madness and deplorable fanaticism...” (letter to Polonsky dated January 23, 1888) .
However, a certain connection between him and Tolstoy continued to exist, although they had long been “looking in different directions.” In a letter to S. Tolstoy dated September 14, 1891 (see letter No. 57), Fet tried to convey this feeling with the help of a peculiarly reinterpreted emblem of the Russian double-headed eagle: “... I feel like with him a single double-headed eagle, in whose heart the emblem of the fight against evil in the form of George with the dragon, with the difference that the heads looking apart have the opposite understanding of serving this idea: Lev Nikolaevich’s head holds a flask of oil in his paw, and my paw holds Aaron’s rod, our native stick.” In the same letter, Fet sent Tolstoy his “poetic offering” for her name day - a new poem “Again, the autumn shine of the morning star...”; S. Tolstoy’s answer is extremely interesting - she wrote to Fet on September 17, 1891 from Yasnaya Polyana: “What real poetic power must one have to say:
Trembling with deceptive fire.
Both Lev Nikolaevich and I gasped with pleasure when we read this verse, and the entire poem. No matter how much he denies everything - now it has become painful for him, this denial - but he dug into your poem, and will always dig into everything that is beauty, art and poetry - otherwise I could not love him, and you would not would recognize him as a single, double-headed eagle" (GBL.). S. Tolstaya speaks here of the same contradictory nature of her husband, which she so expressively described earlier in a letter to Fet dated June 10, 1887: "... one side lives passionately with all earthly blessings; I don’t know a person who could so passionately enjoy everything with his entire being: nature, music, fun, and everything, everything that is given for joy. And next to it is the other side, denying all this and painfully striving to kill all this, in the name of love for one’s neighbor and sharing benefits among everyone...” (Ibid.) Obviously, Fet also deeply comprehended this duality of Tolstoy’s nature, and therefore, calmly enduring Tolstoy’s “sermon against poetry,” he confidently spoke about the ineradicability of the artistic principle in him. During the years of greatest divergence with Tolstoy, he nevertheless wrote to him (in a letter supposedly dated June 7, 1884 - see letter No. 47): “You.” sit, sit, break yourself with all the means that depend on a person (I understand all this well), and suddenly your integral, powerful nature of an artist will pour out of you, like from a strained fur." Fet remembered one confession of Tolstoy, made in a letter to him in the summer of 1880, when Tolstoy was already setting out on his new path of stern moralism and denial of all “artificial needs”: “Now it’s summer, and a lovely summer, and I, as usual, am stunned by the joy of carnal life and forget my work. Current year I struggled for a long time, but the beauty of the world defeated me." And it was probably Fetov’s unshakable loyalty to the “beauty of the world” that led Tolstoy to finally extend the hand of reconciliation to his opponent. In October 1892, he asked his wife, who was going to visit him in Moscow sick Fet: “Tell him not to think, as he sometimes thinks, that we have separated...” In response to these words, the poet told S. Tolstoy that if Tolstoy had entered at that moment, he would have bowed to him feet - would bow to the great artist (Fet himself, at that time close to death, was shocked by the great truth of Tolstoy’s depiction of death. So, almost “on the edge of the grave,” the reconciliation of Fet and Tolstoy took place. But perhaps its most significant manifestation). turned out to be Tolstoy’s review of Fet, recorded by Gorky during his communication with the writer in Crimea at the end of 1901 - beginning of 1902. Tolstoy, who went through a complete denial of poetry, calling it “mental depravity,” now turns to Fet again: “Poetry is artless; when Fet wrote:
I don’t know what I will be
Sing, but only the song is ripening, -
with this he expressed a real, popular feeling of poetry. The man also doesn’t know what he’s singing - oh, yes-oh, yes-hey - but real poetry comes out, straight from the soul, like a bird” (M. Gorky. Leo Tolstoy. - In the book: “M. Gorky on literature." M., 1953, p. 179.) One has only to remember the long ideological path of "peasant democracy" traveled by Tolstoy, the exceptional importance of this criterion for him, so that the highest degree of appreciation of Fet's poetry in this Tolstoy statement, Tolstoy, as if from the other side, returned to his own assessment of Fet in 1857, when he saw in his “lyrical audacity” a sign of a great poet.
1 Nikolai Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1823-1860), brother of the writer, owner of the Nikolskoye estate (Chernsky district, Tula province).
2 Nadezhda Afanasyevna Borisova, Maria Petrovna Fet, Ivan Petrovich Borisov.
3 The publisher of the new magazine "Russian Word" was gr. G. Kushelev-Bezborodko, editors - Y. Polonsky and A. Grigoriev. Shakespeare's drama "Antony and Cleopatra" translated by Fet was published in the February issue of the magazine for 1859.
1 Writer D.V. Grigorovich and young landowner I. Raevsky (later close to L. Tolstoy).
1 In memory of N.N. Tolstoy (who died of consumption in Gier on September 20, 1860), L. Tolstoy ordered his bust from the sculptor Gifs in Brussels.
2 Nikolai Nikolaevich Turgenev (1795-1881) - the writer’s uncle, who managed Spassky in 1853-1867.
1 Epithalama - wedding song.
2 The dramatic poem “Don Juan” and the novel “Prince Silver” are works by Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875). “Lampachny” (according to S. Rozanova’s explanation) is the word formation of Feta: from German. "leim" - glue and "patch" - to sit in a puddle.
1 A.K. Tolstoy and F.M. Tolstoy are writers, namesakes of L. Tolstoy.
2 The novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by the American writer H. Beecher Stowe (1811-1898).
1 Mysterious ancient oriental spell expression; in Fet it means “incomprehensible to reason.”
2 In Tolstoy’s “Kholstomer” there is no “gypsy theme”. “Most likely... Fet is referring to the story Tolstoy heard from A. A. Stakhovich, which formed the basis of his story and which Fet could have known from Tolstoy. In this story, Kholstomer has to drive the gypsy Tanyusha” (“Correspondence”, vol. 1, p. 366).
1 Fet inaccurately quotes Goethe’s poem “The Four Seasons”: “Praise a child’s dolls so that he will throw away a penny for them; II Then you will become a god for merchants and children.” Translation by S. Solovyov (Goethe. Collected works in 13 volumes, vol. 1. GIHL, M., 1932, p. 237).
2 February 15, 1860 Tolstoy, assuring Fet that he “does not intend to write anything,” cited in his letter his humorous adaptation of E. Baratynsky’s poem “Don’t tempt me unnecessarily...”:
Don't tempt me unnecessarily
The frog of your invention.
As a teacher they are already alien to me
All works of former days.
3 Fet is referring to Turgenev, who wrote to him on June 15, 1866: “Tolstoy’s novel is bad not because he has also become infected with “reasoning”: he has nothing to fear from this misfortune; it is bad because the author has not studied anything, knows nothing and under the name of Kutuzov and Bagration he brings out to us some slavishly written-off, modern generals.”
4 Fet is referring to his memories of serving in the Uhlan regiment, which he began to write down in 1864 and which formed the beginning of his book “My Memories.”
1 Fet quotes (not entirely accurately) Goethe's poem "The Divine" "Be pure, man, merciful, kind! This alone distinguishes us from all creatures known to us" (translated by Nedovich).
2 Quote from G. Derzhavin’s (1743-1816) ode “To Felitsa” is one of Fet’s favorite sayings.
3 Turgenev’s novel, published in 1867.
4 D. Pisarev’s article “Bazarov”, published in Russkoye Slovo, did not contain any rejection of Turgenev’s novel - this was done in the Sovremennik article “Asmodeus of Our Time,” written by M. A. Antonovich.
5 Fet presents his polemically sharpened interpretation of Turgenev's novel.
1 Fet wrote an article about “War and Peace”, which was refused to be published first by “Russian Messenger”, and then by “Bulletin of Europe”; The article did not reach us.
2 This series of “types of female beauty” forms a complement to the one named by Fet in “My Memoirs” (Part II, p. 378): “...classical examples of female beauty, like Elena, Leda, Alceste, Eurydice, etc. .d."
1 Fet quotes Turgenev’s words from his “Memoirs of Belinsky.”
2 See the scene of Levin and Kitty’s declaration of love in the novel “Anna Karenina”.
1 Fedor Fedorovich Kaufman, former teacher of Petya Borisov, and then of Tolstoy’s children.
2 Nirvana - central concept religious philosophy of Buddhism: complete quenching of the thirst for existence, liberation from the vanity of the external world - and dissolution in some absolute blissful peace, which is the highest goal of human spiritual aspirations. The deceptive world of earthly existence, which generates in a person an endless chain of insatiable desires, drawing him into an endless wheel of suffering, is designated in Buddhism by the term “samsara”. The fact that for Tolstoy and Fet the concepts of “nirvana” and “samsara” were filled with a serious and vital meaning is evidenced, in particular, by Tolstoy’s letter to Fet dated April 28-29, 1876 (sent in response to a letter that has not reached us Fet, where he spoke about some threatening attack of illness that brought him to the brink of life and death): “... from one of last letters yours, in which I missed the phrase: I wanted to call you to watch me leave, written between thoughts about the horse’s feed, and which I understood only now - I was transported to your state, very understandable and close to me, and I felt sorry for you ( both according to Schopenhauer and according to our consciousness, compassion and love are one and the same) and I wanted to write to you. I thank you for the idea of calling me to watch you go when you thought you were close. I'll do the same when I get there, if I can think. The priests whom our wives will call at this moment will not help you and me; but at this moment I wouldn’t need anyone as much as you and my brother. Before death, communication with people who in this life look beyond its boundaries is dear and joyful, and you and those rare real people with whom I met in life, despite a healthy attitude towards life, always stand on the very edge and clearly see life only because they look first into nirvana, into infinity, the unknown, then into samsara - and this look into nirvana strengthens their vision. And everyday people - priests, etc., no matter how much they talk about God, are unpleasant to our brother and should be painful at the time of death, because they do not see what we see - precisely that God, more vague, more distant , but higher and more undoubted...
The God of Saba and his son, the god of the priests, is just as small and ugly, an impossible god, and even much more impossible than for the priests the god of flies would be, whom the flies would imagine as a huge fly, concerned only with the well-being and correction of the flies.
You are sick and thinking about death, but I am healthy and never stop thinking about the same thing and preparing for it. Let's see who comes first. But suddenly, from various imperceptible data, it became clear to me that your nature-soul is deeply related to me (especially in relation to death), that I suddenly appreciated our relationship and began to value it much more than before.”
3 In 1873, by royal decree, Fet was allowed to “adopt the surname of Captain A.N. Shenshin” - he received the rights of a hereditary nobleman and was included in the genealogical book of the Oryol nobility.
1 Trials of the 70s. over the populist revolutionaries.
2 Tolstoy sent Fet five poems by the aspiring poet A. Kulyabko.
1 In the March issue of the Russian Messenger for 1877, the chapters of the seventh part of Anna Karenina were published.
2 Komarovsky Leonid Alekseevich (1846-1912) and Aksakov Ivan Sergeevich (1823-1886) - active figures in the Slavic movement.
3 Levin's prayer during the birth of his wife ("Anna Karenina", part 7., chapter XIV).
1 The word “prelest” in Russian religious-dogmatic literature meant “sinful temptation.”
2 Rtishchev; see the poem dedicated to him (letter No. 62).
3 Fet refused to inherit his nephews O.V. Shenshina (with whom Fet quarreled) and V.A. Shenshin.
4 Dmitry Erofeevich Osten-Saken - commander of the cavalry corps, which included the cuirassier regiment of the Military Order.
5 Alexander Ivanovich Jost - manager of the Fet estates.
1 Spring is “the great sigh of nature”: this wonderful image belongs to Fet, but is a development of I. Panaev’s memorable expression for the poet (see letter No. 34, note 2).
2 Peter Borisov was the heir to both his mother’s estate (Novoselki) and his father’s (Fatyanovo). The estates provided very little income; and since Borisov did not intend to “raise the welfare of the hereditary nests” (and the sick Fet was not able to supervise them), it was decided to sell them.
3 It's about about the so-called “Root Fair” (once one of the richest and most famous in Russia, but in these years it was already falling into decline).
1 Gospel of Matthew, ch. 5, art. 3.
2 Panaev Ivan Ivanovich (1812-1862) - poet and prose writer, who since 1847 published (together with N. Nekrasov) the magazine Sovremennik, where Fet met him. In a letter to Fet dated March 5, 1862, Turgenev reported the death of this man, who “seemed to be health personified”; Fet writes in “My Memoirs” (Part 1, p. 394): “So,” I thought after reading the letter, “our good-natured and hospitable Panaev is gone... The thirst for all kinds of life was for him the direct source of all delight and torment experienced by him. More than once I remember him hitting himself with a semi-comical expression on the chest of his tightly starched shirt and exclaiming, as if in his own defense: “After all, I am a man with a sigh!” The very fact that he found this expression proves the justice of the latter.
3 Fet quotes his translation from Hafiz - “The star of midnight rolled into a golden arc”...
1 Tolstoy and Fet discussed the book by E. Renan (1823-1892) “The Life of Jesus,” which was banned in Russia.
2 Fet is referring to the German pantheist philosopher D. Strauss (1808-1874), author of the book “The Life of Jesus, Critically Revised” (1835-1836), where the content of the New Testament is analyzed from the standpoint of historical criticism.
1 In August 1878, Fet in Yasnaya Polyana read to Tolstoy and Strakhov the drafts of his article entitled “On the modern mental state and its relation to our mental well-being.” Fet was advised to revise the article; he worked on it until the end of the year, “expanded and organically connected” and gave a new name, “Our Intelligentsia.”
Having revised the article, Fet again presented it to Tolstoy and Strakhov for trial - and met their unanimous and decisive condemnation. The manuscript of the article has been preserved (twenty-five large-format sheets, located in the Fet fund in the Department of Manuscripts of the GBL); acquaintance with it leaves no doubt that the work was worthy of criticism. The article “Our Intelligentsia” represents, in essence, the “wrong side” of Fet’s fundamental journalistic work - the essays “From the Village”: if there some “reactionary extremes” looked only like details against the backdrop of a sound and deep sense of life and a convinced defense of one’s position, then here, on the contrary, many of Fet’s previous ideas turned out to be devalued, crushed by that feuilleton malice, that “swearing” that the author put at the forefront. The failure of Fetov's new journalistic speech clearly reflected in the style of work, in which the sharp originality characteristic of Fet was ugly one-sidedness, and the bright paradox was brought to the point of absurdity. Fetu Strakhov wrote about all this in a letter dated December 31, 1878 from Yasnaya Polyana: “It was strange for me to remember all the brilliance, all the expressiveness and energy of your speeches both in Polyana and in Vorobyovka and to see how all this went out, distorted and weakened in your paper. Even your amazing language, your incomparable gift of bright and concise expression, betrays you. below your strength."
1 We are talking about the poem “Never”, sent by Fet to Tolstoy for review (see Correspondence, vol. 2, pp. 42-43).
1 Fet inaccurately quotes Schiller’s poem “The Secret of Memories”: “Don’t they strive... // The powers of the spirit in quick succession // A bridge across lives, so that with you // they can live one life?” (translated by A. Grigoriev).
2 In the magazine "Ogonyok", where some of Fet's poems were published, Polonsky (a poem dedicated to N.A. Griboedova, - 1879, No. 10) and Maikov ("About the glorious Haiduk Radaits" - 1879, No. 7) were also published.
3 N. Kishinsky, appointed by Turgenev to manage Spassky in the hope that he would increase the income from his estate, turned out to be a plunderer and destroyer of the estate.
1 “I try to be brief, but I become incomprehensible” - verse 25 of “The Art of Poetry” by Horace.
2 We are talking about the works of A. Schopenhauer.
3 Alexander Nikitich Shenshin is the husband of Lyubov Afanasyevna, Fet’s sister.
4 Having agreed to the sale of the ancestral Novoseloki and Fatyanov, P. Borisov, however, “indulged in the most rosy dreams of buying land somewhere near us,” writes Fet in “My Memoirs” (Part II, p. 381). In Shchigrovsky district, a suitable estate was purchased, which belonged to gr. de Balmain - Olkhovatka. Fet took an active part in the construction of this estate; but in 1888 P. Borisov died of an incurable mental illness.
5 Mirza-Shafi (pseudonym Vazekh; 1796-1852) - Azerbaijani poet. His songs were recorded and published in German translation by F. Bodenstedt.
1 Part of the text of this letter has been lost - the letter was cut into strips by Tolstoy and used as bookmarks.
2 With these words, L. Tolstoy approached Fet at a masquerade in Moscow in January 1862 after a short quarrel between them (see Fet’s letter to Turgenev dated January 12, 1875).
1 Fet quotes French translation the book “Deontology, or the Science of Morality” by the English sociologist, founder of the ethics of utilitarianism, I. Bentham (1748-1832).
2 Tolstoy was busy studying and interpreting the New Testament ("Connection and Translation of the Four Gospels").
3 Schopenhauer’s book “The World as Will and Representation,” translated by Fet, was published in St. Petersburg in 1881.
4 Having received this letter from Fet, Tolstoy wrote him an answer - the largest of all the letters that he had to write to the poet. Belova’s text of this “rebuke to Fet” has not survived; S. Rozanova published a draft written in the hand of Tolstoy's copyist - with his amendments (see Correspondence, vol. II, pp. 102-106).
45
1 ????? - logos (ancient Greek); “a term of ancient Greek philosophy, meaning both “word” (or “sentence”, “utterance”, “speech”) and “meaning” (or “concept”, “judgment”, “ground”).<...>
Logos is an immediately and objectively given content, in which the mind must “give an account”, and this “reporting” activity of the mind itself, and, finally, the end-to-end semantic ordering of being and consciousness; this is the opposite of everything unaccountable and wordless, unresponsive and irresponsible, meaningless and formless in the world and man.<...>For Christianity, the meaning of the term “logos” has already been defined initial words Gospel of John - “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was God”: the entire history of the earthly life of Jesus Christ is interpreted as the incarnation and “incarnation” of the Logos, who brought revelation to people and was himself this revelation, the “word of life”..." ( S.S. Averintsev).
2 Very significant for understanding Fet’s position are his words from a letter to Tolstoy dated July 31, 1879: “I don’t remember if I wrote to you about the proverb I heard and memorized for my whole life from Pyotr Botkin: “God forbid to give, but God forbid to take.” ". This proverb contains the meaning of all Christianity and all moral life. The giver accepts the role and feelings of the deity, the taker is a slave, because he feels that he is doing a duty and becomes dependent on the giver<...>Giving<...>lives in the kingdom of freedom, in the kingdom of grace, for he gives by virtue of his own (and not someone else’s) love, and only the words of the apostle can be applied to it: “For the free there is no law.”<...>But are there really many such vessels of love? Can a flock of ten sheep and a thousand goats be called sheep? Or call people who ask only material questions Christians?
It is for them that the law exists and must exist, just as the rod exists for those children on whom other motives are powerless. Many conditions are needed for a person to really feel... what God forbid to give, and that this giving in the kingdom of grace cannot eo ipso be obligatory, that is, legalized, for then it loses the meaning of grace and passes into the kingdom of law, destroying the entire kingdom of grace ".
1 Fet quotes Goethe's Faust in his own translation.
1 Inaccurate quote from Lermontov's poem "Sky and Stars".
2 Wed. words of S.A. Tolstoy in a letter to Fet dated December 24, 1890: “...And let L.N. deny poetry, music, and all poetry - he will not take it out of himself and will not convince me; only and a life illuminated by art is possible, otherwise the hands would fall away from everything - and it would be impossible to live" (GBL).
S. A. TOLSTOY
Among Fet's many addressees there were many women. Unfortunately, those of these letters that would have been most valuable to us have disappeared forever: letters to Maria Lazic and Alexandra Brzeska. Nevertheless, there is a very significant fund of Fetov’s letters addressed to women. Among them are letters to two Tolstoys, who were both Sophia Andreevnas and both wives of writers: one was the wife of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, and the other was Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. Before talking about Fet’s letters to S.A. Tolstoy, let’s cite one letter to S.A. Tolstoy-Miller: this confessional letter (presumably dated February 10, 1880) gives a very expressive self-characteristic of Fet at precisely the time when his friendship with the wife of L. N. Tolstoy. Here are extracts from this lengthy letter (we quote from the text published in Vestnik Evropy, 1908, No. 1, pp. 218-221), sent by Fet to the widow of A.K. Tolstoy in St. Petersburg, where he had recently met her: in the letter, Fet talks about his current situation in life, about the recently acquired Vorobyovka estate, about his literary pursuits (translation of Goethe's "Faust").
“Dear Countess! Yesterday I was deeply delighted by your kind, sympathetic letter of February 7. I allowed myself to be carried away by the thought that his expressions were guided by more than just the habit of a brilliant woman to charm everyone who approaches her “fragrant circle,” as my friend Horace said. I heard in him is the sympathy that brings together adherents of the same cult. My thoughts about the late Alexei Konstantinovich were, are and will be such a heartfelt cult. I have already written to you that I have his most friendly and so flattering letter. similar words could only be said by a person filled with sympathy for me.<...>I started talking about this again only in connection with my explanation of the inner meaning of your kind letter - I have been trying all my life to know myself. And I know that in my expressions I always look for the strongest, sometimes reaching the point of ugly exaggeration; but at the same time I am a sworn enemy of the phrase; I call it a phrase - a sophistical manipulation of concepts with the aim of passing off a lie as the truth. I didn’t come to you precisely because of a certain scrupulousness and fear of phrases. It turns out that I am the one being punished. - Who, besides me, in the whole of Russia (this is hardly an exaggeration) could be so in need of an oral conversation with you, a conversation in which so much is explained in a nutshell, for which volumes are needed in writing. With the exception of Leo Tolstoy, I do not know in Rus' a person of writing, not to say thought, who would be in conditions similar to mine of almost absolute loneliness. But Tolstoy, incomparably more than I, enjoys spiritual communication, which, due to the sudden turn of Tolstoy himself in his true direction, I am completely deprived of, with the exception of one Strakhov, who pleases me, a guest in my village in the summer for several days and even weeks.<...>Isn’t it sad that a person who needs spiritual help more than anyone else passes by an exceptionally talented doctor?<...>You kindly promised to lend me a helping hand in relation to Faust. But you don’t know who you have to help. Although you will celebrate “Faust,” I will have to help. Who am I? Despite the exclusively intuitive nature of my poetic techniques, the school of life, which kept me under a tight rein all the time, developed reflection in me to the extreme. In life I do not allow myself to take a step thoughtlessly, which did not stop me, however, from foolishly walking past your door.
I built my mental and material life one brick at a time. Financially, I want nothing more than to maintain the status quo.
Three years ago, I finally realized my ideal of living in a solid stone manor, perfectly tidy, over the water, surrounded by considerable vegetation. Then have a simple, but tasty and neat table and neat servants without a fusel smell. Strakhov can tell you that I have all this, and everything is gradually improving. At the same time, I have a secluded office with excellent views from the windows, a billiards table in the next room, and a blooming greenhouse in winter. My field farming is going as well as our economic misfortunes allow. As for my mental life, constantly trying to expand my horizons, I came to the conscious feeling that all sighs about my past youth were not only useless, but also unfounded. According to the laws of spiritual mechanics, what is lost in intuition is gained in reflection, and a person, instead of resembling a flying rocket that someone set on fire, resembles an electrified projectile, the charge of which no one sees or suspects until it is touched. I came to the conviction that without a general worldview, whatever it may be, all the words and actions of a person who has descended from an unconscious quasi-instinctive path are only confusion and a series of contradictions. When I talk about an electric projectile, I'm talking about myself. In my exclusively intuitive youth there could not have been even a shadow of those diverse civil, economic, philosophical interests that now secretly excite and fill me..."
This vivid “epistolary self-portrait” of Fet dates back to the time when his close communication began - and then intimate correspondence - with L. Tolstoy’s wife Sofia Andreevna (1844-1919). The correspondence continued for a decade and a half (the poet’s letters are stored in the State Museum of Art; twelve letters from Fet are printed from autographs from this collection). They had known each other for a long time, but “she developed a personal relationship with Fet only after Tolstoy, absorbed in his new way of life and thought, his new affairs, concerns, interests and friends, left him. Now, through Sofya Andreevna, and how the spiritual connection of both writers continued. She invites Fet and his wife to her evenings, visits them herself, sends him Tolstoy’s works that she published, introduces him to her husband’s creative life and at the same time introduces the latter to the poet’s new poems..." (S. A. Rozanova. Leo Tolstoy and Fet (The Story of a Friendship). - "Russian Literature", 1963, No. 2, p. 106.) This stage of the relationship between Fet and S. Tolstoy was preceded by twenty years of acquaintance. Soon after his marriage, Tolstoy introduced Fet to his wife; in a letter dated November 19, 1862, the poet wrote to his friend: “What about dear Countess Sofya Andreevna? Convey to her my deepest sympathy. Tell her that no stranger values her more than I do. What a meek, lovely woman, like an evening star between the branches of a weeping birch.” . The following year there was a “story with fireflies”, which S. Tolstaya described in her “Autobiography” (“Beginnings”, 1921, No. 1) as follows: “Fet visited us quite often... When he visited us on his way to Moscow and back to his estate, often with his kind wife Maria Petrovna, he filled the whole house with his loud, brilliant, often witty and sometimes flattering speech. In 1863, he was in Yasnaya Polyana in the early summer, while Lev Nikolaevich was terribly carried away. bees and spent whole days in the bee yard, where I sometimes ran to him with breakfast. In the evening we all decided to drink tea in the bee yard. Lev Nikolaevich took two of them and, jokingly, said: “I promised you emerald earrings, what’s better than these?” When Fet left, he wrote me a letter with poems that ended like this:
Your hand is in my hand,
What a miracle!
And there are two fireflies on the ground,
Two emeralds."
S. Tolstaya speaks of Fetov’s poem “I repeated: “When I will...” - the first (and, perhaps, the best) of those addressed to her; in subsequent years they were dedicated to her: “When I so tenderly squandered...” ( 1866), “When the foot is slightly tired...” (1884), “And here is the portrait! Both similar and dissimilar..." (1885), "I am not with you, I am deprived..." (1886), "It's time! by moisture around the world..." (1889).
These “poems for chance” did not belong to lyrical masterpieces - and all of them, taken together, are outweighed by another significant fact: having written the poem “Alter ego”, Fet sent it in a letter to Tolstoy on January 19, 1878, accompanying it with the following words: “... according to custom, I am sending a poem, I don’t know how it was written, but which I ask you to read to Countess Sofya Andreevna, since, in my opinion, of the living, it most suits her.” This fact of the highest “lyrical dedication” confirms the seriousness of that assessment of Sofia Andreevna’s personality, which we find in Fet’s letter to Tolstoy dated March 31, 1878: “What a lucky woman your lovely wife is, my constant, unchanging ideal.” Fet repeated these last words many times - including in letters to S. Tolstoy herself - and they were neither a secular compliment nor a poetic exaggeration. You can even accurately name that one distinctive feature the personality of S. Tolstoy, which for Fet determined her “ideality”: it was a rare organic combination of “poetic nature” with “practical instinct”. In a letter to S. Tolstoy dated June 12, 1887, Fet wrote about it this way: “If you, with your aesthetic aspirations, out of innate energy demand material cares and labors, then I, a sinner, can only envy...” Concluding this letter, Fet said: “Now you have every right to ask what motive made me send you this boring and incoherent chatter?
Leo Tolstoy met A. A. Fet in the mid-fifties, arriving in St. Petersburg after participating in the defense of Sevastopol. Of all the St. Petersburg writers who warmly greeted Tolstoy as a new talented author and hero of the Crimean War (Nekrasov, Goncharov, Grigorovich, Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Aksakovs, Chernyshevsky), Fet turned out to be closest to Tolstoy. They carried their friendship throughout their lives. Fet and his wife (M. P. Botkina) often visited Yasnaya Polyana, the Tolstoys visited Fet. There was intense correspondence between the writers, the main part of which was the discussion of creative ideas.
When you read Fet’s lyrics, you are struck by the deeply felt and conveyed atmosphere of Yasnaya Polyana. So, famous poem“The night was shining. The garden was full of the moon...” was inspired by the singing of Tolstoy’s sister-in-law, Tatyana Andreevna Bers. The special musical atmosphere of Yasnaya Polyana has always been akin to Fet, who drew inspiration from it. Music for Fet and for Tolstoy is not just a favorite form of art. Despite famous words Tolstoy that music is indifferent to ethics, neither moral nor immoral, but immoral, Tolstoy resorts to some special, “musical” characteristics of his favorite heroes, and not only at the time of writing “War and Peace.” Speaking
that Petya Rostov was as musical as Natasha, and more than Nikolai, Tolstoy gives not only a description of the musical abilities of the brothers and sister, but also a holistic description of their inner world, the ability, as Fet said, to “love” and “cry.” Petya's music, which he hears in his magical dream, is a premonition of harmony and love throughout the world. The same is the music, “quiet”, “whispering”, as if breaking through from another world, in the dying visions and sensations of Andrei Bolkonsky.
Tolstoy's favorite heroes highest degree are gifted with this super-musicality, even regardless of whether they can sing or play the musical instruments. It is significant to compare Prince Andrei, who reacts painfully to Lisa’s false secular behavior, with a musician who hears a false note. Bolkonsky’s mood, listening to Natasha’s singing, completely coincides with the feelings expressed in Fetov’s famous “The Night Was Shining...”. In more late work, “The Living Corpse,” Tolstoy shows Fedya Protasov, in love with gypsy singing, as a person for whom the consciousness of falsehood in his relationships with his wife and others is intolerable. In Russian poetry, Fet was one of the most musical poets, a “poet-musician.” When Turgenev said that he expected a poem from Fet, last lines which will have to be conveyed “by the silent movement of the lips,” he was not exaggerating. Words in Fet's poetry really turn into notes. It is not for nothing that romances and “melodies” are so common among Fet’s poems.
It was not only the musical perception of the world that brought Fet and Tolstoy together. They were also united by a special sense of nature. In spring, Fet always felt especially keenly the awakening of the vital forces of nature, his spring poems They don’t just convey admiration for the beauty of the world, they are a kind of prayer to the creative forces of nature. Unlike Pushkin's autumn motifs, Fet's spring moods are perhaps less philosophical, but more vivid and spontaneous. Fet greets the Christian holiday of March 9 (the day of the Forty Martyrs) with very non-Christian sentiments:
What a delight!
We've already arrived
You, evangelists of flowers,
I hear trills in the sky
Above the white tablecloth of snow...
And the Forty Martyrs themselves
I will be the envy of heaven.
Leo Tolstoy and Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya especially loved this poem. Every spring, Fet and Tolstoy had a lively correspondence discussion of observations of the signs of the spring resurrection of nature. Tolstoy was waiting for Fet to send new poems. “May Night”, “The willow is all fluffy...” Tolstoy could not read without tears. The accuracy and vigilance of Fet's poetic vision invariably aroused Tolstoy's admiration. And of course, not only Tolstoy’s letters are filled with responses to Fet’s lyrics, but also “War and Peace,” written at the time of the closest communication with
poet. Tolstoy's heroes, who are most sensitive to music, are also endowed with an extraordinary sense of nature or a religious feeling. Such are Prince Andrei, Natasha, and PRINCESS Marya.
The parallel between such poems as “Lonely Oak”, “Learn from them - from the oak, from the birch”, and the description of the spring oak in “War and Peace” suggests itself. And the conclusions of the writers are similar - a person draws energy from nature, learns from it to endure the storms and cold of life. Natasha’s expressed desire to fly resulted in a feeling of looseness and even some loss of “ground under her feet” - she took the fatal step of becoming carried away by Anatole. But without the landscape of a moonlit night in Otradnoye, “War and Peace” is impossible to imagine, just as it is impossible to imagine Fet’s poetry without the feeling of flight, without the light of the moon and stars.
On a haystack at night in the south
I lay facing the firmament
And the choir shone, lively and friendly,
Spread over me, trembling...
This is the feeling of Natasha ready to fly away to the stars, these are the dreams of Prince Andrei on the field of Austerlitz. Let us also remember Pierre in captivity, feeling that no one is able to set a limit to his immortal soul. In the poem “To Faded Stars,” Fet says:
Maybe you are not under those lights,
The ancient era extinguished you,
So after death I will fly to you in poetry,
To the ghosts of the stars I will be a ghost of a sigh.
For Fet, poetry is the “ghost of a sigh,” and the human soul is immortal, but not in a Christian way, but rather pantheistically dissolves in all that exists. This was also the idea of Tolstoy’s soul, at least close to it. After all, Christian philosophers found the death of Prince Andrey insufficiently Christian, calling Bolkonsky’s ideas vague “philosophical pantheism” (K. Leontyev). Be that as it may, the noted parallels can be multiplied, and about the lyrics of Fet, Tyutchev, and partly Nekrasov, we can say that they are all imbued with the motifs of the Russian novel, or rather, they are all the inspiration for the beautiful lyrical pages of Russian novelism of the second half of the 19th century.
Chapter I. The history of acquaintance and the nature of the relationship between L.N. Tolstoy and
Chapter II. The aesthetic views of L.N. Tolstoy and A.A. Fet are the basis of their creative interactions.
Chapter III. L. Tolstoy is the “editor” of A. Fet’s poems.
Chapter IV. Poetry of A. Fet in the creative workshop of the prose writer
L. Tolstoy.
Introduction of the dissertation 2002, abstract on philology, Matveeva, Nelli Nikolaevna
It is well known that A.A. Fet and L.N. Tolstoy were on friendly terms. The content of these relationships was studied in most detail by S.A. Rozanova1. She was the first to draw attention to the importance for literature of the personal and creative relationships of two writers of the second half of the 19th century and showed in her work the chronological history of their long-term friendship. She also touched upon the creative connections of writers.
E.A. Maimin also worked on this topic for a long time. In his article “A.A. Fet and L.N. Tolstoy”2 he explains the reasons for the emergence of mutual human sympathy between people who were different in many ways. A significant place in this work is given to the correspondence between Fet and Tolstoy - a wonderful monument to their friendship and creative interaction. E.A. Maimin was the first to pay so much attention to the correspondence of writers.
Other researchers of their work also wrote about the creative interactions between Fet and Tolstoy in their works3. So, in PhD thesis L.I. Cheremisinova4 explores the interaction of writers in the context of the historical and literary movement, reveals the epic tendencies of Fet’s work, their connection with Tolstoy’s aesthetic system. The author examines the interpenetration of the artistic worlds of Fet and Tolstoy. The work is the first to analyze Fet's agricultural program, which became one of the sources of Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina.
Meanwhile, the question of creative interactions between two writers deserves further study.
The relevance of this dissertation research is due to the interest in studying the creative interactions of writers, the characteristics of their writing style, the possibilities of changes made by the authors under the direct influence of the recommendations of contemporaries - opponents (“editors”) in the texts of works created during a period of particularly close personal and creative interaction, as well as to the use by contemporary writers of each other’s creative discoveries when creating their own works.
The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time mutual influence two writers of the second half of the 19th century are considered systematically. We tried to bring together all the observations of our predecessors and look at this process as bidirectional.
The work makes an attempt to identify the maximum number of both real examples of interaction and its forms. A specific typology of these forms is outlined.
The scientific novelty of the work is also determined by the study of one of the features of Fet’s creative style, which is the poet’s use of friends and iterators as “editors” of his works, primarily L.N. Tolstoy, with whom the poet maintained an intensive correspondence in the 60s. e and 70s.
For the first time, a number of archival materials are introduced into scientific circulation, in particular, Tolstoy’s notes on books of Fet’s poems.
All of the above allows us to formulate the goal of this study: to explore the mechanism of creative interaction between writers, taking into account the facts of their long-term friendly communication.
The following tasks serve to achieve this goal:
1) trace the chronology of the relationship between A. Fet and L. Tolstoy, establish the reasons for their rapprochement and rupture;
2) compare the aesthetic views of artists;
3) determine Tolstoy’s place as the “editor” of Fet’s poems, consider his role in the creation and revision of specific works;
4) identify the forms of influence of Fet’s poetry on Tolstoy’s prose, determine the range of themes, motifs and images characteristic of the work of both artists;
5) outline a typology of the identified creative interaction of writers with each other.
When solving the assigned problems, biographical, comparative-historical, and textual research methods were used. Archival materials are also used in the work.
The subject of the study was the work of two writers of the second half of the 19th century, considered in various forms of interaction. From the huge number of poems by Fet, we highlight those that were created during the period of the most active creative collaboration between Fet and Tolstoy, that is, in the 60-70s. From Tolstoy’s works we will consider the novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” written in the same years, in which the influence of Fet’s lyrics was especially obvious.
Particular attention was paid to the study of text edits and notes in them, as well as to archival materials. Great importance for the work, they had direct evidence from writers (epistolary heritage, memoir sources), which made it possible to establish the role of advice, recommendations, and comments expressed by Tolstoy and Fet to each other. Journalistic articles, memoirs and reviews of contemporaries and biographers of writers are also used.
The nature of the material being studied determines the structure of the work. It consists of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion.
The first chapter of the work examines the history of acquaintance and the nature of personal relationships between two writers, which are difficult to separate from creative ones.
The second chapter compares the views of the poet and prose writer on literature and art, especially on the art of poetry and poetic usage. Many statements by Tolstoy and Fet help to explain the similarities and differences in their creative styles, to understand the evaluation criteria and requirements that writers place on each other’s works.
The third chapter examines Tolstoy's influence on Fet, the role of Lev Nikolaevich in editing Fet's texts.
The history of the texts of Fet’s poems is described in most detail in the work of B.Ya. Bukhshtab, then in his comments to the poems of A.A. Fet5. A well-known fetologist examines the “peculiar need of Fet’s creative personality” for “outside instructions.” B.Ya. Bukhshtab mentions all the famous “editors” of the poet’s poems, evaluates the role of the main ones - I.S. Turgenev and N.N. Strakhov.
Turgenev's editing of the collection of poems of 1856 is also examined in detail by D.D. Blagoy6.
Recently, a new view on the edition of Fet’s poems was presented by M.J1. Gus Parov7, who analyzed in detail the results of Turgenev’s edits to the endings of Fetov’s poems. M.L. Gasparov came to the conclusion that in most cases such edits had “a result opposite to Turgenev’s intentions.” However, until recently, the role of Tolstoy as a “co-author” of Fet’s lyrics has received insufficient attention. Our work is intended to fill this gap to some extent.
The third chapter analyzes the poet’s poems, which were finalized taking into account Tolstoy’s advice or comments. Of no less interest are such comments, which in the work are conventionally called edits “in the spirit of Tolstoy.” In addition, the study involves Fet’s poems, for which Tolstoy’s direct responses are unknown to us. However, these poems also have significant edits. It is assumed that Fet, while working on them, one way or another (perhaps unconsciously) took into account Tolstoy’s comments made about other poems.
The study of different editions of Fetov’s texts clearly shows Tolstoy’s influence on the poet’s creative process and allows us to evaluate special place the writer among other advisers - editors and, in addition, allows you to see the differences between his comments and the demands of other contemporaries.
The fourth chapter examines the reverse process - specific forms of influence of Fet's lyrics on Tolstoy's prose. To do this, it seemed necessary to us to compare individual poems by the poet and excerpts from Tolstoy’s novel, which overlap thematically and figuratively.
The comparison confirms that the creative interaction between Fet and Tolstoy was carried out in line with the peculiarities of the literary era, primarily in the fact that poetry of the 1880s played a large role in the formation of the novel. It was at this time that the importance of poetry was reassessed and at the same time the method of Russian psychological prose was born. The role of poetry turned out to be invaluable in revealing the spiritual life of the heroes.
A comparative analysis of intertextual connections allows us to conclude that the work of both artists is saturated with similar life realities, motives, echoes, figurative structure, general sentiments. In the poetry of Fet and the novels of Tolstoy, the “dialectic of the soul” penetrates into the images of nature; both writers attach great importance to the connections between the feelings and experiences of man and nature.
The main conclusion we came to is that as a result of the personal and creative interaction of writers, a process of creative enrichment of each other occurs. Moreover, it does not matter how this process occurs: consciously or unconsciously. Variety different shapes the creative interaction of A. Fet and L. Tolstoy helps us understand the features of the real literary process of the second half of the 19th century, and through them - the patterns common to this process.
The practical significance of the work lies in the fact that the direct observations made in it can be used in a university lecture course on the history of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century, in practical exercises and seminars, in teaching literature in a school course, in a secondary educational institution ( pedagogical college), directly when analyzing poetic texts.
The main provisions and results were reflected in five publications and speeches at three conferences (“L.N. Tolstoy as an editor of Fetov’s texts”, Second Maimin Readings, Pskov, 1998; “A.A. Fet and L.N. Tolstoy (to the problem parallels and interactions of lyrics and prose)", Third Maimin Readings, Pskov, 2000; "Contemporary Writers in the Creative Process of A. Fet", Second. international Conference“Literary text: problems and research methods”, Tver, 1998; “On the history of Fetov’s texts”, Dergachev readings - 98. International scientific conference, Yekaterinburg, 1998; “Sevastopol Brotherly Cemetery” by A. Fet and “ Sevastopol stories"L. Tolstoy", Dergachev readings - 2000. International scientific conference, Yekaterinburg, 2000).
NOTES
1. Rozanova S.A. Leo Tolstoy and Fet (The Story of a Friendship) // Russian Literature. - 1963. - No. 2. - P.86-107.
3. See about this: Ozerov L.A. A.A. Fet (On the skill of the poet). - M.: Knowledge, 1970; Gromov P.P. About the style of Leo Tolstoy. The formation of the “dialectics of the soul.” -L.: Artist. lit., 1971; Gromov P.P. About the style of Leo Tolstoy. "Dialectics of the Soul" in "War and Peace". - L.: Artist. lit., 1977; Eikhenbaum B.M. Lev Tolstoy. Seventies. - L.: Artist. lit., 1974; Berkovsky N.Ya. On the global significance of Russian literature. - L.: Nauka, 1975; Kozhinov V.V. Book about Russian lyric poetry XIX century Development of style and genre. - M.: Sovremennik, 1978; Babaev E.G. Essays on the aesthetics and creativity of Leo Tolstoy. - M.: Publishing house Mosk. Univ., 1981; Skatov N.N. Lyrics of Afanasy Fet (Origins, method, evolution) // Skatov N.N. Far and near. Literary critical essays. - M.: Sovremennik, 1981. - P. 119-149; Bukhshtab B.Ya. A.A.Fet. Essay on life and creativity. - L.: Science, 1990.
4. Cheremisinova L.I. A.A. Fet and L.N. Tolstoy. Creative connections. - L., 1989.
5. Bukhshtab B.Ya. The fate of A.A. Fet’s literary heritage // Literary heritage. - M., 1935. - T. 22-24. - pp. 564-581; Bukhshtab B.Ya. A.A.Fet // Complete collection of poems. - L.: Sov. writer, 1937. - S. V-XXV; Bukhshtab B.Ya. A.A. Fet // Complete collection of poems. - L.: Sov. writer, 1959.-S. 5-78.
6. Blagoy D.D. From the past of Russian literature. Turgenev - editor of Fet // Print and revolution. - 1923. - Book. 3. - pp. 45-64; Blagoy D.D. The world as beauty (About “Evening Lights” by A. Fet) // Fet A.A. Evening lights. - M.: Nauka, 1979.
7. Gasparov M.L. Composition of lyrical poems // Theory of literature. In 4 volumes. T. 2. Work. - M.; Heritage, in press.
Conclusion of scientific work dissertation on the topic "L. Tolstoy and A. Fet"
The results of the study show that the artistic worlds of contemporary writers are interpenetrable. They are mutually permeable even when there are no direct creative contacts, but only indirect influence occurs (for example, this was the case with edits “in the spirit of Tolstoy”). This, we believe, is the theoretical meaning of our research, which goes beyond the historical and literary aspect in understanding the contact between two writers.
CONCLUSION
In this work, using the example of two outstanding writers of the last century, we tried to show what the study of creative interactions between a prose writer and a poet gives, how poetry and prose actually interact in literature, how poetry influences prose and vice versa.
As a result of the study, it seems possible to us to talk about the typology of the literary influence of writers who lived at the same time on each other.
We highlight the following forms of such interaction:
1) Direct personal communication between writers.
It is known that Fet and Tolstoy knew each other and were friends for more than twenty years, in the 60-70s years XIX centuries were repeatedly met in Yasnaya Polyana, Moscow, Novoselki, Vorobyovka. They came to visit each other. We assume that Fet’s decision to become a landowner, engage in agriculture, and create village sketches was not least the result of this direct communication. Thus, Tolstoy advised Fet on how best to conduct “plowing.” In the 60s, Tolstoy was temporarily fascinated by the same thing.
An example of this form of interaction is the creation by Fet, inspired by the singing of T.A. Kuzminskaya, of the poem “The night was shining. The garden was full of the moon."
2) Correspondence of writers.
Fet and Tolstoy maintained an active correspondence for many years, from 1858 to 1881. We know of 171 letters from Tolstoy to Fet and 139 letters from Fet. Since 1881, S.A. Tolstaya took over the correspondence function. However, Fet knew that his letters would also be read by L.N. Tolstoy. The bulk of this correspondence took place in the 1980s.
An example of creative contacts through correspondence is the process of creating mountain songs that we analyzed. Tolstoy did not have such contact with other poets. Tolstoy, in a letter dated October 26, 1875, provides a prose translation of the songs of the mountaineers. Fet translated these translations into poetry, sent them to Tolstoy, and then published them under the title “Songs of the Caucasian Highlanders.”
3) Appeal to a single external source that shapes the aesthetic views of writers (in particular, to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer).
As a result of communication, Fet and Tolstoy had a common literary idea to translate the works of Schopenhauer. However, each writer solved this problem in his own way.
4) Interaction of aesthetic concepts.
Tolstoy and Fet repeatedly expressed their views on art and literature. We were convinced that in many respects their views coincided, especially in early period creativity. There are statements both in their articles and in letters. It can be said with some certainty that they read each other's articles and made own conclusions. One way or another, we find reflections of their views and ideas in their creativity.
An example of such interaction is Fet’s article “On the Poems of F. Tyutchev,” published in February 1859, and L. Tolstoy’s oral speech in defense of “pure art,” which is close in spirit to Fet’s.
5) Criticism of each other.
Both Fet and Tolstoy often spoke out about each other's works. There are critical reviews both in letters and in the direct statements of writers.
An example of this form of interaction is the discussion of Fet’s article “Our Intelligentsia.” Fet read the article to Tolstoy in August 1878 in Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy, in a letter to Fet, recommended straightening out connections individual parts articles. After such advice, Fet divided it into 17 chapters.
6) “Editing” of Fet’s poems by Tolstoy.
Editing" was both direct (Tolstoy made comments about individual expressions, lines, stanzas) and indirect (Fet made changes to the texts under the influence of Tolstoy’s requirements for them).
7) The similarity of motives, themes, images of Fet’s poems and the corresponding passages from the novels “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina” by Tolstoy.
An example of such creative interaction is Fet’s poem “Lonely Oak” and the scene of Andrei Bolkonsky’s meeting with an oak tree in the novel “War and Peace,” as well as the poem “Hound Hunt” and the hunting scene from the same novel.
8) Use of commonplaces in the works of both writers romantic poetry(poeticisms), such as “black canopy of the night” - “starry canopy of the night”, the epithet “silver” and the verb “silver”, “vault of heaven” - “vault of the sky”, “clean air” - “clean morning air” and etc.
9) Direct influence of works and borrowings from them.
An example is Fet’s creation of the poem “Sevastopol Brotherhood Cemetery,” written under the clear impression of reading Tolstoy’s “Sevastopol Stories.”
An example of creative contact through correspondence is the metaphorically expressed idea about the screw that is in every person, expressed first in Fet’s letter to Tolstoy, and then used by Tolstoy in his novels.
Having analyzed the role of Tolstoy as the “editor” of Fet’s poems and Fet’s poetry as the basis for the creation of Tolstoy’s psychological novels, we come to the conclusion that each of the writers used images from each other’s works at the level of borrowing and figurative overlap.
In the case of Tolstoy and Fet, one can see all forms of direct creative interaction, both direct (for example, Tolstoy as the “editor” of Fet’s poems) and indirect (the similarity of motives, themes, images in Fet’s poems and excerpts from the novels “War and Peace”, "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy).
Thus, we saw that two independent writers living at the same time, in the same country, among the same culture, could not be independent of each other. Their creative interaction through various forms continued for more than twenty years, even when they separated.
The poet and prose writer followed each other’s work and read each other’s works. Tolstoy continued to read Fet's poems even after his death, and never ceased to admire them, despite his changed views. The communication between Fet and Tolstoy was direct. In their friendship and creative contacts one can see all forms of interaction.
Using the example of the interaction of two artists, we can draw conclusions about other artists living in the same era. For example, the creative interaction of Goethe and Schiller, who communicated, corresponded, and wrote together. In this sense, the case of Fet and Tolstoy can be considered typical.
List of scientific literature Matveeva, Nelli Nikolaevna, dissertation on the topic "Russian literature"
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E. A. MAYMIN
1. According to Fet’s memoirs, it is known that Pushkin’s poems came to him back in early youth. They became his first poetic joys. Uncle Fet Pyotr Neofitovich Shenshin once asked him literary lesson: learn by heart Tasso’s poem “Liberated Jerusalem” in the Russian translation by Rajic. The translation manuscript was enclosed in a book, which was handed to Fet. In the book, next to Tasso’s poem, there also happened to be Pushkin’s poems rewritten by someone’s hand “ Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "Bakhchisarai Fountain".
Fet learned only one song from Tasso's poem. Very soon all his attention and interest switched to Pushkin. Pushkin's poems were a true revelation for Fet, and he remembered them from the first to the last word. “Oh, what a pleasure,” Fet later recalled, “I felt repeating the sweet poems of the great poet.”
2. However, your creative path The fet lyricist did not begin as a student and successor of Pushkin. The style of early Fet, as A.V. Chicherin noted, “did not so much embody Pushkin’s traditions as foreshadow new times.”
The Pushkin norm imposed on poetic word the requirement of accuracy, precision, balance between meaning and expression. Meanwhile, in Fet’s lyrical poetic system, approximate and seemingly random words came to the fore, impromptu and seemingly unintentional words, and at the same time attractive for their freshness and poetic audacity. Fet's principle of word usage and artistic thinking is well defined by the words of Pasternak, who undoubtedly experienced the influence of Fet in his poetry:
- And the more random, the more true
Poems are composed sobbingly
In his early lyric poems, Fet was fundamentally different from Pushkin. He looked for his own paths, walked his own special path in poetry, and his path was also beneficial and promising for the destinies of the Russian poetic word.
3. Already in the early period of his work (and even more so later), Fet was not uniform and unidirectional in his poetic repertoire. Along with lyrical poems he also created poems of a different kind - anthological ones. In the anthological kind, Fet created genuine artistic masterpieces, for example, “Diana”. And what is even more remarkable and extremely significant is that in these poems Fet did not overcome Pushkin, but continued him. In the anthological poems, Fet was precise and concretely material in Pushkin's way, musical in Pushkin's way, harmonious and clear in Pushkin's way.
Thus, young Fet had an ambivalent attitude towards the Pushkin tradition in his work. In pure lyricism he moves away from it, searches for something new, and creates new artistic values. In the genre of anthological poems, which expressed the epic principle in Fet, Pushkin continued, was his faithful and very gifted student.
4. Completing his creative path, Fet came to Pushkin in his lyrics. As an example (by no means the only one), I will cite the famous poem of 1877 “The Night Was Shining. The garden was full of moonlight. They were lying" This poem is significantly reminiscent of Pushkin. Specifically the poem “I remember wonderful moment »
Fet's poem is reminiscent of Pushkin in its style. It is even more reminiscent of its composition. And its general character, and plot twists and moves.
So, in Pushkin’s poem “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” there are two main parts: about what happened at the first meeting with the heroine and what happened at the second. It’s similar with Fet. He also talks about two meetings, although the second meeting was not necessarily real, but could be a living and strong memory.
Both poems say the same thing about what happened between the meetings, how and what both poets felt. For both these were days of loneliness and melancholy. And this loneliness and melancholy are said very similarly, close in meaning and in their emotional coloring words.
5. As already mentioned, closeness to Pushkin is revealed not only in this late poem by Fet. It seems that in the last period of his creative work Fet the lyricist increasingly turns to Pushkin both in his individual poems and in his artistic consciousness as a whole. When Fet was just starting out, in his lyrical works he followed not Pushkin, but from Pushkin: a different path than Pushkin. Now the path of Feta the lyricist has closed with Pushkin’s. It is not for nothing that in the last years of his life Fet especially often remembers the name of Pushkin.
In a letter to Konstantin Romanov on May 25, 1890, he writes about Pushkin as the most related and closest poet: “Thank God that Pushkin and I are both anciently playful and anciently strict.” And a few days later, on June 12, in a letter to the same addressee, he cites Pushkin’s poem as the most indisputable, most undoubted proof of the eternity of works of art: “the trout that Pushkin talks about.
