Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (Shenshin)
(1820–1892)

Outstanding Russian lyric poet, translator, and memoirist.

Fet is often called an impressionist in poetry: he had a gift for conveying not the object itself but the fleeting impression it left, barely perceptible moods and sensations. A classic example is the poem “Whisper, Timid Breath…”, which contains not a single verb. Fet's poetry is extraordinarily melodious. Many of his poems became the basis of famous romances: “Do Not Wake Her at Dawn” by A. Varlamov and “I Will Say Nothing to You” by P. Tchaikovsky.

Connection to Russian Cosmism

Fet's connection to cosmism is not direct, but one of worldview and poetics: he created no philosophical systems of his own. Still, in his lyric poetry he intuitively anticipated many of the motifs that cosmists would later develop.

There was also a personal connection: Fet held the personality and ideas of Nikolai Fyodorov in high regard. A letter from him to the philosopher survives, dated 1887.

All-Unity and Pantheism. In Fet's poems, the boundary between the lyrical “I” and nature often dissolves. The lyrical hero feels himself dissolved into the Universe, part of a single cosmic whole, merging with the stars, the sea, and the earth. This is the poetic expression of the idea of all-unity, central to the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov.

Cosmic Consciousness. In Fet's “stellar” and “nocturnal” poems (“On a Haystack on a Southern Night…”, “Among the Stars”, “To Dimmed Stars”), the lyrical hero goes beyond the bounds of earthly existence. His soul feels kinship not with the mortal Earth, but with the entire Universe, with the “choir of heavenly bodies”.

Influence on Philosophers. Fet and Vladimir Solovyov were joined by a friendship of many years. Solovyov deeply valued the poet's metaphysical lyricism and devoted to it an article, “On Lyrical Poetry” (1890). Solovyov himself became one of the chief philosophical forerunners of cosmism.

Interesting Fact

Fet suffered painfully all his life over his ambiguous status. He was the son of the Oryol landowner Afanasy Shenshin and Charlotte Foeth, who had come to him from Germany. His mother and father were married in an Orthodox ceremony only after the child was born. As a result, in 1834, when the boy was fourteen, the ecclesiastical consistory ruled the record of his birth illegitimate. He was re-registered as the son of his mother's first husband, the Darmstadt official Johann Foeth. Along with the surname Shenshin, he lost his nobility and his Russian citizenship. To regain his noble status, Fet served for many years in the army, but during that time the rank that conferred hereditary nobility was raised several times over. His father's surname and his noble rights were not restored to him until 1873, when the poet was already fifty-three.