Afanasy Fet was born in 1820 in the village of Novoselki near the city of Mtsensk, Oryol province. Until the age of 14, he bore the surname of his father, the wealthy landowner Athanasius Shenshin. As it turned out later, Shenshin's marriage to Charlotte Fet was illegal in Russia, since they got married only after the birth of their son, which the Orthodox Church categorically did not accept. Because of this, the young man was deprived of the privileges of a hereditary nobleman. He began to bear the name of his mother's first husband, Johann Fet.
Athanasius was educated at home. Basically, he was taught literacy and the alphabet not by professional teachers, but by valets, cooks, courtyards, and seminarians. But Fet absorbed most of his knowledge from the surrounding nature, the peasant way of life and rural life. He liked to communicate for a long time with the maids, who shared news, told tales and legends.
At the age of 14, the boy was sent to the German boarding school Krummer in the Estonian city of Vyru. It was there that he fell in love with the poetry of Alexander Pushkin . In 1837, young Fet arrived in Moscow, where he continued his studies at the boarding school of Professor of World History Mikhail Pogodin.
In quiet moments of complete carelessness, I seemed to feel the underwater rotation of flower spirals, trying to bring the flower to the surface; but in the end it turned out that only spirals of stems were striving outward, on which there were no flowers. I drew some verses on my slate board and erased them again, finding them meaningless. From the memoirs of Afanasy Fet
In 1838, Fet entered the law faculty of Moscow University , but soon switched to the historical and philological department. From the first year he wrote poems that interested classmates. The young man decided to show them to Professor Pogodin, and he to the writer Nikolai Gogol . Soon Pogodin conveyed a review of the famous classic: "Gogol said that this is an undoubted talent . " The works of Fet and his friends were approved - the translator Irinarkh Vvedensky and the poet Apollon Grigoriev, to whom Fet moved from Pogodin's house. He recalled that "the house of the Grigorievs was the true cradle of my mental self." The two poets supported each other in their work and life.
In 1840, Fet's first collection of poems, Lyrical Pantheon, was published. It was published under the initials "A. F." It included ballads and elegies, idylls and epitaphs. The collection was liked by critics: Vissarion Belinsky , Pyotr Kudryavtsev and the poet Yevgeny Baratynsky . A year later, Fet's poems were regularly published by Pogodin's magazine Moskvityanin, and later by the magazine Domestic Notes. In the last year, 85 Fetov's poems were published.
The idea to return the title of nobility did not leave Afanasy Fet, and he decided to enter the military service: the officer rank gave the right to hereditary nobility. In 1845, he was accepted as a non-commissioned officer in the Order's cuirassier regiment in the Chersonese province. A year later, Fet was promoted to cornet.
In 1850, bypassing all the censorship committees, Fet released a second collection of poems, which was praised on the pages of major Russian magazines. By this time, he was transferred to the rank of lieutenant and quartered closer to the capital. In the Baltic port, Afanasy Fet participated in the Crimean campaign, whose troops guarded the Estonian coast.
In 1854, in St. Petersburg, the poet entered the literary circle of Sovremennik , where he met writers Nikolai Nekrasov , Ivan Goncharov and Ivan Turgenev , critics Alexander Druzhinin and Vasily Botkin. Soon Fet's poems began to be printed by Sovremennik.
... We consider Mr. Fet not only a true poetic talent, but a rare phenomenon in our time, because true poetic talent, to whatever extent it manifests itself, is always a rare phenomenon: for this you need many special, happy, natural conditions. Vasily Botkin
Under the supervision of Turgenev, the second collection of Fetov's poems was carefully revised, and in 1856 they published “Poems by A.A. Feta. The poet, although he accepted the corrections of the famous writer, later admitted that "the edition from Turgenev's editorial board came out as cleared as it was mutilated."
Encouraged by success, Fet began to write whole poems, stories in verse, fiction, as well as travel essays and critical articles. In addition, he translated the works of Heinrich Heine, Johann Goethe, Andre Chenier, Adam Mickiewicz and other poets.
“We can safely say that a person who understands poetry and willingly opens his soul to its sensations will not draw as much poetic pleasure from any Russian author, after Pushkin, as Mr. Fet gives him.” Nikolai Nekrasov
In 1857, Afanasy Fet married the younger sister of Vasily Botkin, Maria, the heiress of a wealthy merchant family. The following year, with the rank of guards staff captain, he retired, without having achieved the nobility. The couple settled first in Moscow , and in 1860 in the Stepanovka estate, which they bought in the Mtsensk district of the Oryol province - in the writer's homeland.
As Ivan Turgenev said, “he [Fet] has now become an agronomist-owner to the point of desperation, let his beard down to his loins, doesn’t want to hear about literature, and drove the Muse away from behind ...”. Fet devoted himself to rural care and household chores: he grew crops, designed a stud farm, kept cows, sheep, poultry, bred bees, and fish. From Stepanovka, Fet made an exemplary estate: the yields from his fields raised the statistics of the province, and Fet's apple marshmallow was delivered directly to the imperial court.
However, in 1863 the poet published another book - a two-volume set of his poems. Some critics greeted the book with joy, noting the "wonderful lyrical talent" of the writer, while others attacked him with harsh articles and parodies. Fet was accused of being a "serf landowner" and hiding under the guise of a lyric poet.
Afanasy Fet regularly published in the journals Russky Vestnik, Literary Library and Zarya. His essays on the post-reform state of agriculture were published there. They were published under the editorial titles Notes on Freelance Labor, From the Village, and On the Question of Hiring Workers. In 1867, Afanasy Fet was elected a justice of the peace. This largely influenced the fact that 10 years later, by imperial decree, the surname Shenshin was finally approved for him and the title of nobility was returned. But the writer continued to sign his works with the surname Fet.
In 1877, Fet sold Stepanovka in order to buy a house in Moscow, and in the Kursk province the old estate Vorobyovka. Despite the fact that many new concerns fell on the landowner Shenshin, he did not abandon literature. After a 20-year break, in 1883 a new book of poetry, Evening Lights, was published. By this time, Fet had come to terms with the fact that his works were "for the few". “People don’t need my literature, and I don’t need fools ,” he said. In turn, the readers responded to the poet in the same way.
“When I began to re-read these three little pieces [“ Departed ”,“ Death ”,“ Alter ego ”] - I was terribly struck by their connection, and that terrible despondency that is hidden under this energetic, bright speech. Poor Fet! .. Alone everywhere, and in his magnificent Vorobyovka! From a letter from Nikolai Strakhov to Leo Tolstoy , 1879
In the last years of his life, Fet received public recognition. In 1884, for the translation of Horace's works, he became the first recipient of the full Pushkin Prize of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Two years later, the poet was elected its corresponding member. In 1888, Athanasius Fet was personally introduced to Emperor Alexander III and awarded the court title of chamberlain.
While still in Stepanovka, Fet began to write the book “My Memoirs”, where he talked about his life as a landowner. The memoirs cover the period from 1848 to 1889. The book was published in two volumes in 1890.
On December 3, 1892, Fet asked his wife to call a doctor, and in the meantime he dictated to his secretary: “I don’t understand the conscious increase in inevitable suffering. I voluntarily go to the inevitable" and signed "Fet (Shenshin)". The writer died of a heart attack, but it is known that at first he tried to commit suicide by rushing after a steel stiletto. Afanasy Fet was buried in the village of Kleymenovo, the Shenshin family estate.
I was offended to see how indifferently the sad news was received even by those whom it most of all should have touched. How selfish we are! <...> He was a strong man, fought all his life and achieved everything he wanted: he won a name, wealth, literary celebrity and a place in high society, even at court. He appreciated all this and enjoyed everything, but I am sure that his poems were dearest to him in the world and that he knew that their charm is incomparable, the very heights of poetry. The further, the more others will understand it. From a letter from Nikolai Strakhov to Sofya Tolstoy, 1892
Already after the death of the writer, in 1893, the last volume of memoirs "The Early Years of My Life" was published. Fet also did not have time to release the volume that completes the cycle of poems “Evening Lights”. The works for this poetic book were included in the two-volume "Lyric Poems", which was published in 1894 by Nikolai Strakhov and Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov.
