“I saw your milky, baby hair...” A. Fet. Lesson summary on the topic “complex sentence with several subordinate clauses” I understood those torments

"Nature's idle spy..."

In 1843 in the magazine " Domestic notes"A poem by a then unknown 23-year-old poet appeared" I came to you with greetings...“, where he publicly named what he came to talk about in Russian poetry: about the joyful shine of a sunny morning and the passionate trembling of a young spring life, about a soul in love thirsting for happiness and an irrepressible song, ready to merge with the joy of the world. " We have never known such a lyrical spring feeling of nature in all Russian poetry!“- exclaimed then the critic Vasily Botkin, the author of one of the best articles about Fet’s work.

I came to you with greetings,
Tell me that the sun has risen
What is it with hot light
The sheets began to flutter;

Tell me that the forest has woken up,
All woke up, every branch,
Every bird was startled
And full of thirst in spring;

Tell me that with the same passion,
Like yesterday, I came again,
That the soul is still the same happiness
And I’m ready to serve you;

Tell me that from everywhere
It blows over me with joy,
That I myself don’t know what I will
Sing - but only the song is ripening.

If for Nekrasov nature is closely connected with human labor, with what it gives to man, then for Fet it is only a reason for expressing thoughts and feelings, only an object of artistic delight, aesthetic pleasure, and contemplation. The charm of these poems lies primarily in their emotionality.

Nature's idle spy,
I love you, having forgotten everything around you,
Watch out for the swallowtail
Over the evening pond...

Fet’s nature is exactly like on the first day of creation: thickets of trees, a light ribbon of a river, a nightingale singing. This is one of the most remarkable landscape poets.

The spruce covered my path with its sleeve.
Wind. Alone in the forest
Noisy, and creepy, and sad, and fun, -
I do not understand anything...

The peculiarity of Fetov's lyrics is in the organic fusion of the natural and human, spiritual world.

What a night! What bliss there is in everything!
Thank you, dear midnight land!
From the kingdom of ice, from the kingdom of blizzards and snow
How fresh and clean your May leaves!

What a night! Every single star
Warmly and meekly they look into the soul again,
And in the air behind the nightingale's song
Anxiety and love spread.

The birches are waiting. Their leaves are translucent
Shyly beckons and pleases the eye.
They are shaking. So to the newlywed virgin
Her attire is both joyful and alien.

No, never more tender and incorporeal
Your face, O night, could not torment me!
Again I come to you with an involuntary song,
Involuntary - and the last, perhaps.

The joy of suffering

Continuing traditions Zhukovsky And Tyutcheva Fet had a huge influence on the subsequent development of Russian poetry. It's like a bridge from Derzhavina And Batyushkova To Blok.
Blok took a lot from Fet. His famous line “Joy and suffering are one” from Gaetan's song (" Joy, oh joy-suffering, pain of unknown wounds") - this is Fet's “joy of suffering”: “ Where joy glimmers and suffering»:

Suffer! Everyone suffers, the dark beast suffers
Without hope, without consciousness;
But the door there is forever closed in front of him,
Where joy glimmers in suffering.

Blok I was struck by Fet’s idea that suffering also has its own subtle joy, this is what we later began to call catharsis.

Here's an opinion Lev Tolstoy about another of his poems: “ Your tiny poem is beautiful. This new, never before captured feeling of pain from beauty is expressed charmingly.”

In the haze of invisibility
The spring month has floated out,
Garden color breathes
Apple tree, cherry tree.
So he clings, kisses
Secretly and immodestly.
And aren't you sad?
And aren't you languid?

Tormented by the song
Nightingale without a rose.
The old stone is crying
Dropping tears into the pond.
Dropped my braids
Head involuntarily.
And aren't you languid?
And it doesn't hurt you?

Beauty in Fet's poems is always overcoming suffering, it is joy obtained from pain.

Ideal of beauty

Fet has always gravitated towards themes of so-called “pure art”: themes of nature and love. For him, art is connected only with the eternal ideal of beauty. In his articles he developed these ideas: “ the only task of art is to convey in all its completeness and purity the image that arose before the artist in a moment of delight, and art cannot have any other goal».

Whisper about something that makes your tongue go numb
Strengthen the fight of fearless hearts -
This is what only a select few singers possess,
This is his sign and crown!

Democratic criticism, of course, could not agree with this. Chernyshevsky wrote about Fet: “ Good poet, but writes nonsense" Fet objected: “ In our business, trifles are the true truth" And he argued that the main thing in poetry is not the author’s mind, but “ unconscious instinct (inspiration), the springs of which are hidden from us.”

Dream,
Awakening
The darkness is melting.
Like in spring
Above me
The heights are bright.

Inevitably,
Passionately, tenderly
Hope
Easily
With the splash of wings
fly in -

Into the world of aspirations
Obeisances
And prayers;
I feel joy,
I do not want
Your battles.

Nothing rude, cruel, vulgar, or ugly has access to the world of Fetov’s lyrics. She is woven only from beauty. " For every subject, writes Fet, - thousands of sides, but an artist values ​​only one side of objects: their beauty, just as a mathematician values ​​their outlines or numbers" This one-sidedness is the specificity of Fet’s lyrics, its weakness is that narrow outlook for which the critics of the sixties so sharply reproached him, but it also contains its strength - artistic charm, aesthetic charm. In these verses we truly encounter poetry itself, its pure substance, freed from ballast: it is a balloon from which sandbags have been dropped.
Fet saw this beauty in the most ordinary everyday objects. Ya. Polonsky recalled: “ Young Fet used to tell me: “why look for plots for poems: these plots are at every step - throw a woman’s dress on a chair or look at the two crows that perched on the fence, here are the plots for you.”
« The secret of poetry is hidden from the deaf, - wrote Fet, - the deaf are looking for “reproduction of life” in poetry; in the assessment of the average person, the poet is a madman. Meanwhile... whoever is not able to throw himself from the seventh floor upside down with an unshakable belief that he will soar through the air is not a lyricist!

I'm on fire and burning
I rush and soar
in the languor of extreme effort.
And I believe in my heart that they are growing
and will immediately be carried into the sky
my outstretched wings.

Lyrical audacity

In his images, Fet is sometimes surprisingly bold:

Why behind the melting violin
So my heart fluttered in my chest,
Like a familiar smile
Has the past suddenly smiled?

Lev Tolstoy wrote about Fet: “ And where does this good-natured, fat officer get such incomprehensible lyrical audacity, a characteristic of great poets?”

Everything around is tired: the color of heaven is tired too.
And the wind, and the river, and the month that was born...

Critics wondered: how can the color of heaven become tired? How can the past smile?
With this use of words, the main meaning of the word is obscured, and its emotional connotation comes to the fore. The epithet no longer characterizes the subject so much as it expresses the poet’s mood. The line between the outside world and mental life is blurred.
Contemporaries were amazed by such epithets of Fet as “ringing garden”, “milky voice”, “ruddy modesty”, “dead dreams”, “widowed azure”"... They caused bewilderment and ridicule. The editors wrote notes in the margins of his manuscripts: “I don’t understand,” “what does this mean?”, “nonsense!” And this misunderstanding accompanied Fet all his life. We, who have gone through the school of modern poetry, now understand what a “melting violin” or “ weeping grass", and yet even Polonsky in 1888 rejected " golden kuku».

Fet's aphorisms

Fet is not only a poet of feeling, but also a poet of thought. Many of the final lines of his poems are ready-made aphorisms, striking in their wisdom, precision of formulation and accuracy of observations:

« Only a song needs beauty, but beauty doesn’t need songs either.”
“It’s time not to be afraid of the future in advance, it’s time to learn to remember happiness.”
“Even though you have death in mind, you still need to live. And the word “live” means: to submit.”
“And the soul lies that it does not need everything, that it is deeply sorry.”
“And if life is God’s noisy bazaar, then only death is his immortal temple».

Fleeting

The peculiarities of Fet’s artistic style are in the desire to convey those feelings and insights that cannot be defined in an exact word, but only “ inspire the soul» reader. In the ability to grasp the elusive, to give a name to what before was only a vague, fleeting sensation of the human soul.

Only you, poet, winged words sound
grabs on the fly and secures suddenly
and the dark delirium of the soul, and the unclear smell of herbs...

This is a poet of vague dreams, unclear motives, unspoken vague feelings. Complete and intelligible sentences are alien to him, he values ​​more “ whisper, rustle, tremble, babble", his sounds are the quietest in our literature, and in general Fet, as someone said, is the whisper of Russian poetry. As if in a dream, he speaks in verse or recalls in verse what he dreamed. That’s why there’s like a thin veil over his poems, and they’re all “ as if the news had not arrived clearly».

With the sun bending over the dark earth,
With my gaze I take in the entire path I have traveled:
I see a deserted darkness without a trace
The day was extinguished and the night brought.

The only thing that’s scary is something flickering in a pattern:
Grief past as a secret reproach
In the confused course of unrealistic dreams
Millions of tears were shed there.

It's embarrassing and painful that it's so unclear
These foggy spots glow
As if the message had not arrived clearly...
I wish I could, oh, I could take everything with me!

Words for him are material and heavy: “ Human words are so rude, it’s embarrassing to even whisper them!“The theme “b” runs through all of Fet’s work unity of the word»: « Oh, if only it were possible to speak with one’s soul without a word!”

Poetry is thoughtless, like " language of love, flowers, night rays", close to " silent speech"of nature, is associated with dreams, with vague delirium. Words are approximate only. Oh, if only their unskillful mediation could be rejected! Silence, breathing, sighs, eyes that look into the eyes of others, a call conveyed by “ one ray from eye to eye, one smile from the lips of the dumb", the golden blinking of the stars - all this is much more eloquent than our pale speech, all these are clear and wonderful hints that are more desirable for Fet than the clarity of the defining word.

Not by us
powerlessness has been experienced by words to express desires.
Silent torments have affected people for centuries,
but it’s our turn, and the series of trials will end
not by us...

Music of the chest

Associated with lyrical audacity is such an irrational aspect of Fetov’s lyrics as its musicality. When the purpose of a poem is not a semantic message, but a conveyance of mood and feeling. Once in a letter to Leo Tolstoy, Fet, once again lamenting that nothing could be conveyed in words, wrote: “ Everything is understood by the music of the chest" Fet's musicality is the painful and sweet music of the chest, touching the reader's heart strings in order to extricate a response sound from them.
Chaikovsky wrote: " Fet, in his best moments, goes beyond the limits specified by poetry and boldly takes a step into our field. This is not just a poet, but a poet-musician" Fet responded: “ Tchaikovsky is right a thousand times over, since I was always drawn from a certain area of ​​words into an indefinite area of ​​music, into which I went as far as my strength was sufficient».

Through the forest we walked along the only path
At a late and dark hour.
I looked: the West with a mysterious trembling
Gus.

I wanted to say something goodbye -
No one understood the heart;
What can we say about his extinction?
What?

Do thoughts flutter anxiously and incoherently,
Is your heart crying in your chest?
Diamond stars will soon pour out,
Wait!

Fet combines questions and exclamations in such a way, builds a phrase in such a way that the rise and fall characteristic of the intonations of speech are combined into a kind of melody. Often the theme of a poem develops like a musical theme - an interweaving of repeating motifs. Such poems are on the border between poetry and music, while others are directly caused by musical impressions:

I understood those tears, I understood those torments,
Where the word is numb, where sounds reign,
Where you hear not a song, but the soul of the singer,
Where the spirit leaves the unnecessary body,
Where you hear that joy knows no bounds,
Where you believe that there will be no end to happiness.

Composers immediately felt the closeness of Fet’s “melodies.” In the 60s, Saltykov-Shchedrin stated that “ Almost all of Russia sings Feta's romances" Tchaikovsky wrote several romances based on his poems. One of the most famous and captivating: “ The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight...» Listen to him performed Oleg Pogudin: http://video.mail.ru/mail/likinas/621/309.html

"Again"

The story of how this poem came into being is interesting. Its heroine and addressee is Tatyana Bers, married Kuzminskaya, sister of Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy, who was, as you know, one of the prototypes of Natasha Rostova.

Tatyana Bers, sister of L. Tolstoy’s wife, recipient of several poems by A. Fet

She inspired one of Tolstoy's best chapters "War and Peace"", where he describes Natasha's amazing singing.
Once upon a time, in 1866, a 20-year-old Tatiana Kuzminskaya sang in Yasnaya Polyana in the presence of Fet, and he was deeply moved by her confidential and deep intonation. Later they wrote a poem dedicated to her “ Singer»:

Take my heart into the ringing distance,
Where, like a month behind the grove, there is sadness;
In these sounds your hot tears
The smile of love shines gently.

O child! how easy it is among the invisible swells
Trust me in your song:
Higher, higher I float on a silvery path,
Like a shaky shadow behind a wing.

Take my heart into the ringing distance,
Where is sadness as gentle as a smile,
And I’ll rush higher and higher along the silvery path
I am like a shaky shadow behind a wing.

11 years passed, and again in Yasnaya Polyana Kuzminskaya sang on a short summer night.

It was then that Fet’s famous poem “ The night was shining....”, which he originally called “ Again" Fet wrote it that night under the impression of Kuzminskaya’s singing and presented it to the singer in front of everyone in the morning. Everyone was delighted and somewhat shocked by this frank and passionate declaration of love - especially since the poet’s wife Maria Petrovna (Botkina) was present at this.
« The night was shining...” represents an undoubted parallel to Pushkin’s “ I remember a wonderful moment": both poems talk about two meetings, two strongest repeated impressions. The two performances of Kuzminskaya, experienced by Fet, gave in combination that poetic impulse in which the personality of the singer, her singing, which captivated the poet, turned out to be inseparable from the romance Fet loved, which sounded in her performance: “ and then you appeared again » - « and in the silence of the night I hear your voice again " This is how one of Fet’s most beautiful poems about love and music was born.
At my lecture, I demonstrated these poems and the romance on them against the background of this picture I. Kramskoy “Moonlit Night”", written at the same time as the poem - in 1877.

The graceful figure of a woman in white against the backdrop of tall trees in the autumn Kuntsevo park is mysterious and romantic. The mood of this picture is very close to Fet’s poems. Many reviews of it wrote that the picture resembles a scene from a novel or a phrase from an old romance.

The night was shining. The garden was full of moonlight. were lying
Rays at our feet in a living room without lights.
The piano was all open, and the strings in it were trembling,
Just like our hearts follow your song.

You sang until dawn, exhausted in tears,
That you alone are love, that there is no other love,
And I wanted to live so much, so that without making a sound,
To love you, hug you and cry over you.

And many years have passed, tedious and boring,
And in the silence of the night I hear your voice again,
And it blows, as then, in these sonorous sighs,
That you are alone - all life, that you are alone - love,

That there are no insults from fate and burning torment in the heart,
But there is no end to life, and there is no other goal,
As soon as you believe in the sobbing sounds,
Love you, hug you and cry over you!

Between ecstasy and blues

Fet in his field is a poet of rare emotionality, a rare power of infectious feeling, and at the same time a bright, life-affirming feeling. The predominant mood of Fet's poetry is a state of elation. Intoxication with nature, love, art, feminine beauty, memories, dreams...

There is such a miracle in my hand! -
your hand
and on the grass there are two emeralds -
two fireflies.

***
Drink, surrender to the happy moments, -
a thrill of bliss will embrace the whole soul,
drink and don’t ask with inquisitive eyes,
How soon will the heart dry up and cool down?

Almost every poem by Fet gives the impression of a dizzying flight.

And the soul is ready to fly into the distant shine,
not with trepidation, but with joy,
as if this feeling is not new to her,
but it was once a sweet dream.

Lyrical ecstasy, poetic madness - this is what Fet valued most in lyric poetry. In a letter to Ya. Polonsky, he writes: “ The poet is a crazy and worthless person, babbling divine nonsense.”

When, under a cloud, it’s transparent and clean,
The dawn will tell you that the day of bad weather has passed, -
you won’t find a blade of grass and you won’t find a leaf,
so that he does not cry and does not shine with happiness.

But in life Fet was a completely different person than in poetry. Gloomy, unsociable, subject to bouts of gloomy blues. Turgenev wrote about him in a letter: “ I don't know a person who could compare with him in the ability to mope" Nowadays it is called depression.
Sharp transitions from ebullient energy to complete loss of strength, attacks of melancholy and melancholy were symptoms of mental illness, inherited by the poet from his sick mother. Fet's sisters, both brothers, and his sister's son were also mentally ill. He was very afraid of hereditary madness and swore to himself that at the first sign of it he would commit suicide. Apollon Grigoriev— a friend of Fet’s childhood and youth — wrote about him: “ I have never seen a person who was so stifled by melancholy, for whom I was more afraid of committing suicide. I was afraid for him, I often spent nights at his bedside, trying to do anything to dispel the terrible chaotic fermentation of the elements of his soul.”
This singer of love and nature was a gloomy hypochondriac. But you won’t see any of this in Fet’s poems. For this gloomy, embittered person who did not believe in people and in happiness, the act of poetic creativity was an act of liberation, overcoming the tragedy of life, was perceived as an outlet, as a way out of the world of sorrows and suffering into the world of bright joy.

What happiness: both the night and we are alone!
The river is like a mirror and everything sparkles with stars,
and there - throw your head back and take a look:
what depth and purity is above us!..

Believing atheist

Fet, already a first-year student, was an unshakably convinced atheist. For a young man of the 30s of the 19th century, a romantic poet who belonged to the circle of young people keen on idealistic philosophy, this position was unusual: there were painful doubts about religious truths, moods of fighting against God - but here there was a calm and firm denial. When Apollo Grigoriev, filled with religious zeal, bowed in the church, the atheist Fet, sitting next to him, whispered Mephistophelian sarcasms into his ear.
If Pushkin came to God at the end of his life, then Fet remained an adamant atheist until last days. When, shortly before his death, the doctor advised the poet’s wife to call a priest to give communion to the patient, she replied that “ Afanasy Afanasyevich does not recognize any rituals“And that she takes this sin (to remain without communion) upon herself. This fact is reported by Fet’s biographer B. Sadovsky, who gives the following explanation for these words: “ Fet was a convinced atheist. When he talked about religion with the believer Polonsky, he sometimes brought the latter, according to his family, to tears" The eldest son of Leo Tolstoy, Sergei, talks about Fet’s atheism and the disputes in which he refuted the dogmas of religion.
However, such a paradox: the atheist Fet has the smartest poems about God, at whose command the bright seraphim once “ a huge ball kindled over the universe" And, turning to the Creator of the world, man says:

No, You are powerful and incomprehensible to me
by the fact that I myself, powerless and instantaneous,
I carry it in my chest like that seraphim,
fire is stronger and brighter than the entire universe.

Meanwhile, I, the prey of vanity,
the playground of her inconstancy,
in me he is eternal, omnipresent, like You,
knows neither time nor space.

Fet has wonderful poems about Christ, about his temptation by Satan in the desert (“ When the Divine fled human speech. ..»).

I. Kramskoy. "Christ in the Desert"

Atheism is atheism, but Fet felt the world as the highest artistic creation and himself as a character in some grandiose plot, incomprehensible to reason.

The soul has already entered that circle,
where is the invisible darkness
she was captivated...

***
What I want? Or maybe
breathing old life,
move into someone else's delight
does the soul learn in advance?..

For Fet, the soul is a completely independent reality, a substance observed by the poet during all its transformations, wanderings, ordeals, and incarnations. And only a person imbued with faith, who lives by it and cannot live any other way, can see it. So, is Fet an atheist? Yes, still an atheist, but one who is not inferior in the sense of God to people imbued with a faith that is organic to them.
One day Fet, according to an eyewitness, jumped up during an argument, stood in front of the icon and, crossing himself, said with a feeling of ardent gratitude: “ Lord Jesus Christ, Mother Holy Mother of God, thank you that I am not a Christian!" However, as one religious thinker said, " the soul is by nature Christian " One might add: poems are by nature connected with the deity. After all, poetry arose as a prayer, a conspiracy, a spell. And no matter what the poet thinks, no matter what the poet says in life, in poetry he will never leave God. Such is the power of the poetic tradition, such is the language, such is the structure of our hearts, such is the reverence for life and gratitude that dictates poetry.

“Your young spirit lives in the melodies of old people”

Some poets, as they say, write themselves out at the end of their lives, exhaust their creative potential, begin to re-sing themselves, or fall silent altogether. But there are those who retain the freshness of their feelings and the inspiration of their creative impulses into old age. That was Fet. Shortly before his death, he published a collection of poems " Evening lights" - after 20 years of silence, and then, at intervals of 2-3 years - three more small collections under the same title. The fifth issue of "Evening Lights" was published after his death.
This was a very accurate name - it was lights, light at the end of life, a true miracle of rebirth: old Fet worked with the same inspiration as in his younger years, truly finding a new poetic breath.

Half-destroyed, half-tenant of the grave,
Why are you singing to us about the mysteries of love?
Why, where can’t the forces take you,
like a daring young man, are you the only one calling us?

I languish and sing. You listen and are thrilled;
Your young spirit lives in the melodies of the old.
So in the young choir “Oh, do you hear, do you understand?” —
The old gypsy woman is still singing.

And in Fet’s “senile” love poems there was still the same feeling of falling in love with life, with its eternal beauty, realized by the poet at the end of his years with even greater acuteness:

I still love, I still yearn
in front of universal beauty
and I will never deny it
from the caresses sent by you.

While on the earthly chest
although I will have difficulty breathing,
all the thrill of young life
I will be able to hear it from everywhere.

Submissive sun rays,
this is how the roots go deep into the grave
and there they seek strength until death
run towards the spring days.

The work of A. Fet is like a bush on which the same flowers bloom year after year.

Everything, everything is mine that is and was before,
in dreams and dreams there is no time of shackles,
the soul did not share blissful dreams:
there are no dreams of old age or youth.

Every day abroad
although for a moment it is joyful and light,
while the soul boils in the crucible of the body,
she flies wherever her wing takes her.

In a different guise, but in the same essence, Fet conveyed his soul to his last days, conveyed it untired, unexchanged, unfading. Fet, as an artist, was characterized by human integrity. And that’s why, even at the age of 70, he could publish this poem:

On the swing

And again in the half-light of the night
among the ropes stretched tight,
on this shaky board together
we stand and abandon each other.

And the closer to the top of the forest,
the more terrible it is to stand and hold on,
the more gratifying it is to fly above the ground
and approach the heavens alone.

True, this is a game, and besides
the game may turn out to be fatal,
but the two of us can also play with life -
this is happiness, my dear!

The feuilletonists mocked Fet, calling him a “mouse stallion.” " Poor Fet has no luck! At 68 years old, writing about dates and kisses - one sneered . “Imagine a wrinkled old woman who has not yet lost the ability to be excited - the Muse of Mr. Fet has an extremely unattractive appearance!”
"Imagine“,” another teased, “ this old man and his “darling”, “throwing each other” on a shaky board... Imagine that the “darling” corresponds in age to the “darling”, how can one not laugh at the old man’s play of the new Philemon and Baucis, how can one not be worried, that their game may end unfavorably for the old men who have played out"?

And here is what Fet himself wrote about this poem:
“Forty years ago I was swinging on a swing with a girl, standing on the board, and her dress was flapping in the wind, and forty years later she ended up in a poem, and the clowns are reproaching me, why am I swinging with Marya Petrovna".

You're amazed that I'm still singing
as if the former priestess were entering the temple,
and, fanning my song with something young,
then a swallow flashes, then a long eyelash.

I was not yet old, and life’s labors
the burden did not always fall on the shoulders:
in careless years, in view of the night feasts,
The muse made funny lights.

How gratifying it was to burn them then
in the circle of friends, in the eyes of the air fairy!
There were many of them, both bright and colorful, -
but slave labor interrupted the fun ventures.

And now, when, with my head bowed,
and looking from under your brows into the distance alone,
thought will come across with a heavy foot
and you hear a shot, it’s old charges.

Eternal citizen of the world

In the period 1882-1892, in his seventh and eighth decades, Fet wrote especially many love poems, and for almost the first time they talk about present, and not about past love, addressed to the now beloved, and not just to the image former lover. It would be possible to talk about Fet’s second love cycle if it were known to whom he was addressed, at least one woman or several who evoked a feeling of falling in love in the poet.

Only in the world is there something shady
Dormant maple tent.
Only in the world is there something radiant
Childishly thoughtful look.
Only in the world is there something fragrant
Sweet headdress.
Only in the world is there this pure
Parting to the left.

Everything is as it used to be, cheerful, happy,
I catch the twists of your ribbon,
The melting sounds drinking in the languor;
Let you fly, giving yourself to another.
Let you rush arrogantly, carelessly,
My heart is still tender,
The heart does not count, does not measure,
The heart still loves and believes.

There are poets who, in their rapid movement, resemble a multi-stage rocket. The second half of Fet’s life (after 1860) turned out to be like a new turn of the spiral. But the poet’s finest hour was in the past - the era of the 50s is gone forever. Latest issue " Evening lights"was released in a meager circulation of 600 copies and was not sold out until his death, that is, even for 20 years.
However, the question of the value of past writers is decided by time. And the one who during his lifetime was called one of the best “minor poets” is today considered great. Little read and revered during his lifetime, Fet is for us one of the most outstanding Russian lyricists, who has become part of the flesh and blood of our spiritual culture. Fet compared himself to faded stars (poem “ To the Faded Stars"), but many other stars have faded, and the star of Fet's poetry is burning brighter. And in his poems, along with his readiness to leave this life, one can hear Fet’s unique belief in the immortality of life.

Young men pass by with a smile in front of me,
And I hear their clear whisper:
What is he looking for here in the midst of young life?
With your incomprehensible melancholy?

Hurry, young men, to believe and love,
To taste both work and pleasure.
My time will come - and soon, perhaps,
My rebirth will come.

I will have a bright spring dream again
In the bosom of God alone,
And the young world is calm, reconciled
I will become a forever citizen.

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Poem by Fet A.A.
“I saw your milky, baby hair...”, “I’m waiting... Nightingale echo...”,

Poem by Fet A.A.
“I saw your milky, baby hair...”

I saw your milky, baby hair,
I heard your sweetly sighing voice -
And at the first dawn I felt the fervor;
Subject to the rush of spring gusts,
I breathed a stream of pure and passionate
A captive angel with blowing wings.

I understood those tears, I understood those torments,
Where the word is numb, where sounds reign,
Where you hear not a song, but the soul of the singer,
Where the spirit leaves the unnecessary body,
Where you hear that joy knows no bounds,
Where you believe that there will be no end to happiness.

1884, Fet Afanasy Afanasyevich

Poem by Fet A.A.
"I'm waiting... Nightingale echo..."

I'm waiting... Nightingale echo
Rushing from the shining river,
Grass under the moon in diamonds,
Fireflies burn on caraway seeds.

I'm waiting... Dark blue sky
In both small and large stars,
I can hear the heartbeat
And trembling in the hands and feet.

I'm waiting... There's a breeze from the south;
It’s warm for me to stand and walk;
The star rolled to the west...
Sorry, golden one, sorry!

1842, Fet Afanasy Afanasyevich

Poem by Fet A.A.
“I know, proud one, you love autocracy...”

Listen to the poem by Fet A.A.
“I know, proud one, you love autocracy”

I know, proud one, you love autocracy;
In a jealous dream, you are tormented by someone else's happiness;
Freedom's bold face and languid gaze of love
Your desires beckon.
Through the whole crowd of slaves at the magnificent chariot
I am your sly look under the velvet eyelashes
I read it a long time ago, a long time ago - and have figured it out since then,
Where your gaze chooses a new victim.
Unhappy young man! It's been a long time, full of fun,
Was his shuttle gliding, pushing aside the waves?
Look how happy he is, how free... he is nobody's;
The wind kisses one fleece of his curls.
The hand, strengthened in monotonous work,
I passed the shores, alluring with temptation.
But woe! you sing; on unsteady glass
The oar was lost from the weakened hands;
He is chained, - you sing, you shine with beauty,
For the eyes of the deity - a siren under water.

July 1847, Fet Afanasy Afanasyevich

“I saw your milky, baby hair...” Afanasy Fet

I saw your milky, baby hair,
I heard your sweetly sighing voice -
And at the first dawn I felt the fervor;
Subject to the rush of spring gusts,
I breathed a stream of pure and passionate
A captive angel with blowing wings.

I understood those tears, I understood those torments,
Where the word is numb, where sounds reign,

Where the spirit leaves the unnecessary body,
Where you hear that joy knows no bounds,
Where you believe that there will be no end to happiness.

Analysis of Fet’s poem “I saw your milky, baby hair...”

Already an elderly man, Fet did not stop writing about love. Moreover, his late intimate lyrics are in no way inferior in strength, passion, and sincerity in expressing feelings to the works of young talented poets. At the same time, Afanasy Afanasievich did not have any novels in his old age. His poems are memories of a relationship that ended long ago; the memories are very vivid, filled with the smallest details. Among the greatest examples of Fet’s love poetry, written at the end of his life, is “I saw your milky, baby hair...” (1884). And if his early intimate lyrics were often chamber in nature, then the work in question sounds powerful, large-scale and even somewhat solemn.

Fet's poetry is surprisingly musical - both literary scholars and ordinary readers have long noticed this. In an effort to express the inexpressible in words, Afanasy Afanasievich often resorted to images for which there is no need to seek a literal interpretation - they must be perceived only in their entirety, like a chord consisting of different sounds. The poet himself said that music and lyrics are “not only related, but also inseparable.” Art gave Fet the opportunity to hide from prosaic reality, from commercialism, pettiness, and everyday everyday problems. However, we should not forget that Afanasy Afanasievich, having regained his nobility, became a strong business executive, whose estate flourished and brought in a good income. The duality of his nature (on the one hand - poetry and music, on the other - accounts and wise business decisions) often caused ridicule from his contemporaries.

In the poem “I saw your milky, baby hair...” antithesis plays an important role - boring reality is contrasted with the higher world:
...Where the word is numb, where sounds reign,
Where you hear not a song, but the soul of the singer,
Where the spirit leaves the unnecessary body...
These three lines quite accurately convey the character of a significant part of Fetov's lyrics. The inexpressible is easier to express through music than through words. A well-performed song really fades into the background, bringing the soul of the singer to the fore. The body is a mortal shell, necessary in order to enjoy all the benefits of earthly life, but in the unreal world it is of no use. According to the poem “I saw your milky, baby hair...”, the easiest way to this blessed upper world- Love. She was the one who helped to the lyrical hero get off the ground, believe that “there will be no end to happiness.”

In 1887, Fet wrote two poems - “How poor our language is! - I want and can’t...” and “With one push to drive away a living boat...”, dedicated to the poet’s chosenness. Both poems, distinguished by their programmatic character, acquired particular fame; they are now included in school curricula on Russian literature. Let's try to analyze them using the "slow reading" procedure.

So, the first of two works.

“How poor our language is! - I want and I can’t...”

* * *
How poor is our language! “I want to but I can’t,”
This cannot be conveyed to either friend or enemy,
What rages in the chest like a transparent wave.
In vain is the eternal languor of hearts,
And the venerable sage bows his head
Before this fatal lie.

Only you, poet, have a winged sound
Grabs on the fly and fastens suddenly
And the dark delirium of the soul and the vague smell of herbs;
So, for the boundless, leaving the meager valley,
An eagle flies beyond the clouds of Jupiter,
Carrying an instant sheaf of lightning in faithful paws.

This text was first published as part of Fet’s lifetime collection of poetry “Evening Lights”. (Third edition of unpublished poems by A. Fet. M., 1888). When published in the collection, the poem was placed eighth of the sixty-one texts that make up the book. The motive of poetry, the high purpose of the poet, expressed in this poem, is key and cross-cutting in the collection. The third issue of "Evening Lights" opens with the poem "Muse" ("You want to curse, sobbing and groaning..."), equipped with a programmatic epigraph from Pushkin's "The Poet and the Crowd" ("We were born for inspiration, / for sweet sounds and prayers. Pushkin" ) and calling the purpose of poetry “high pleasure” and “healing from torment.” The seventh text, which precedes the poem “How poor our language is! – I want and cannot,” is the dedication “E<го>And<мператорскому в<ысочеству>Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich", the author of poetic works, as stated in the last lines of Fet, who mentions the laurel crown of the august recipient: “From under the crown of the sovereign family / The imperishable ivy grows green.” The collection ends with two poems in memory of writers and critics - connoisseurs and adherents "pure art": "On the death of Alexander Vasilyevich Druzhinin on January 19, 1864" (1864) and "In memory of Vasily Petrovich Botkin on October 16, 1869" (1869). A. V. Druzhinin and V. P. Botkin, authors of reviews of the collection 1856, Feta-lyrics were highly rated.

Composition. Motive structure

The poem consists of two stanzas - six lines, which use paired rhyming (the first two lines in one and the other stanzas, respectively) and a ring or encircling rhyme (the third - sixth and fourth - fifth lines in one and the other stanzas).

The poem opens with a saying about the poverty of language; the second half of the first line is an incomplete sentence in which the structure of the verbal predicate is destroyed (it should be: I want and cannot do something, a verb in an indefinite form is needed) and the necessary complement is missing (I want and cannot say something). This sentence structure at the syntactic level conveys the motive of the impossibility of expressing deep-seated experiences in words (“What rages in the chest like a transparent wave”).

In the three initial lines, the motif of the inexpressible is related to human language in general (“our language” is not Russian, but any language), including, at first glance, to the poet’s word, since the author talks about his own inability to express deep meanings and feelings . In the three final verses of the first six-line, the impossibility of self-expression for any person is stated (“In vain is the eternal languor of hearts”), then, somewhat unexpectedly, a “wise man” is mentioned, humbled (“bowing his head”) “before this fatal lie.” “Fatal lie” is a human word and the thought it tries in vain to express; the expression goes back to the maxim of F.I. Tyutchev from the poem "Silentium!" (“Silence”, lat.): “How can the heart express itself? / How can another understand you”, “A spoken thought is a lie.”

The mention of the “sage” is perceived as strengthening the thought already expressed at the beginning of the stanza: no one, not even such a “sage,” is able to express himself.

However, in the second stanza, contrasted with the first, there is an unexpected change of emphasis: it turns out that there is only one being - a poet, capable of expressing hidden and vague experiences (“dark delirium of the soul”), and capturing the subtle beauty of being, flowing life (“the unclear smell of grass”) "). The poet is contrasted with the “sage”-philosopher: “Fet directly compares the mute sage with all his profundity and the poet who can express everything in the world in complete naivety” (Nikolsky B.V. The main elements of Fet’s lyrics // Complete collection of poems by A.A. Fet / With an introductory article by N.N. Strakhov and B.V. Nikolsky and with a portrait of A.A. Fet / Supplement to the magazine "Niva" for 1912. St. Petersburg, 1912. T. 1. P. 28).

This interpretation is dominant, but not the only one. N.V. Nedobrovo (Nedobrovo N. Vremeborets (Fet) // Nedobrovo N. Sweet voice: Selected works / Comp., afterword and notes by M. Kralin. Tomsk, 2001. P. 208-209), and after him V.S. . Fedina (Fedina V.S. A.A. Fet (Shenshin): Materials for characterization. Pg., 1915. P. 76) drew attention to the statement in the first stanza about the impossibility of any person (in their opinion, including the poet ) express the depths of your soul: “The eternal languor of hearts is in vain.” At first glance, its contrast is the statement in the second stanza about the poet’s gift. But both interpreters believe that through the particle “only” the “poverty” of the language of a philosopher or an ordinary person is not at all opposed to the “winged word sound” of a poet; the poet is also not able to express all the secrets of his soul. The meaning of the second stanza, from the point of view of N.V. Nedobrovo and V.S. Fedina, another. The poet “grabs on the fly” the impression of being, and the eagle, compared with the poet, carries “in its faithful paws” an “instant”, capable of soon disappearing, but kept for divine eternity “behind the clouds” “a sheaf of lightning”. This means: the poet is able to stop a moment, to preserve the transient, short-term ("dark delirium of the soul", "an unclear smell of herbs", "a sheaf of lightning") in the world of eternity, "behind the clouds."

This interpretation is interesting, but controversial. In this case, the distinct contrast indicated by the particle “only” turns out to be unjustified: after all, it turns out that the second stanza does not contain a contrasting, but a completely new thought in comparison with the first. In addition, the feeling raging in the chest, which is spoken of in the first stanza, is the same “dark delirium of the soul”, which is spoken of in the second six-line.

Natural bewilderment: how then can we explain the combination of the statement about the impossibility of any person, including the lyrical “I,” to express himself (“I want and cannot. – I cannot convey this to either friend or enemy...”) with the idea of ​​the omnipotence of the poet’s word? In my opinion, in the first stanza the lyrical “I” is presented not as a poet, but as a speaker of “prosaic”, “ordinary language” - not his own, but common to people - “ours”. The “winged word sound”, poetic “sound speech” is completely different: it is precisely capable of conveying both the intimate and the fleeting.

The idea of ​​the poet’s ability to “stop a moment” only accompanies the main idea of ​​the poem.

The motif of the inability to express deep-seated experiences goes back in Russian poetry to the idea of ​​​​the inexpressibility of higher states of the soul and the meaning of being, clearly presented in the famous poem by V.A. Zhukovsky “The Inexpressible”: “What is our earthly language compared to wondrous nature?”; “Is the inexpressible subject to expression?”; “We want to give a name to the unnamed - / And art is exhausted and silent.”

It is generally accepted that the idea of ​​the poem “The Inexpressible” was influenced by the writings of German romantics - F.V.J. Shellinga, V.G. Wackenroder, L. Tick; V.N. Toporov (Toporov V.N. From studies in the field of Zhukovsky’s poetics // Slavica Hierosolymitana. Slavic Studies of the Hebrew University. Jerusalem, 1977. Vol. 1. R. 40-50) called sources V.A. Zhukovsky “The Heartfelt Outpourings of a Hermit – a Lover of the Elegant” and “Fantasies about Art for Friends of Art” by V.G. Wackenroder with sketches “On two amazing languages ​​and their mysterious connection and “Colors” (the author of this sketch is L. Tick). However, perhaps the idea of ​​​​the “Ineffable” has a pre-Romantic origin; according to V.E. Vatsuro, V.A. Zhukovsky, it goes back to the works of F. Schiller (Vatsuro V.E. Lyrics of Pushkin's era: "Elegiac School". St. Petersburg, 1994. pp. 65-66).

F.I. Tyutchev, although in a slightly different meaning, in the poem “Silentium!” this thought was repeated; in Tyutchev’s text it already has a distinct romantic character. “Following Zhukovsky and Tyutchev (with all the difference between their poetic declarations), Fet, already in his early poems, affirms the inexpressibility of God’s world and the inner world of man in the word” (Sobolev L.I. Fet’s life and poetry // Literature. 2004. No. 38. Quoted from the electronic version: http://lit.1september.ru/2004/38/12.htm).

The thought of the inexpressibility of experiences and thoughts in inert everyday words occupied Fet even in his youth. So, he wrote to his friend I.I. Vvedensky December 22, 1840 “When I sit down to write to you, there is such a rush of the brightest thoughts, the warmest feelings that these waves are necessarily mixed, crushed against the clumsy stones of my prosaic eloquence, and shower the paper with the gray sand of vile handwriting. I could tell you a lot, a lot, and these words are as Mickiewicz says:

While they penetrate your ears and your heart
They freeze in the air, they freeze in my mouth.”

As the publisher of the letter, G.P., wrote. Blok, “two verses from Mickiewicz are quoted by Fet in his own translation. The translation of the entire play (poem - A.R.) (“Oh dear maiden”) was published only thirty years later. Its main motive - the powerlessness of the word - is so characteristic of the old Fet, apparently worried him even in his youth: in 1841, in another poem (“My friend, words are powerless”), he independently worked on the topic raised by Mickiewicz” (Blok G. The Birth of a Poet: The Tale of Fet’s Youth: Based on unpublished materials. L., 1924. S. 71-72). This poem “O dear maiden, why should we, why should we talk?..” (1840 (?), published in 1853) is a translation of the poem by the Polish poet A. Mickiewicz “Rozmova” (“Conversation”).

However, if V.A. Zhukovsky spoke about the powerlessness of art, words in front of the mystery and beauty of existence (however, at the same time trying to resolve the insoluble, to express the inexpressible), and F.I. Tyutchev calls any thought, a verbally formulated meaning “a lie,” while Fet claims that the poet is able to convey in a word (“winged word sound”) everything – both what is happening in the depths of the soul and what exists in the world around.

But the motive of the inexpressible is presented in Fet’s poetry and in the traditional interpretation: “In my silent and stubborn verse / In vain I want to express / The impulse of the soul...” (untitled poem, 1842). In this example, it is very important that the failure of self-expression is associated with the “silence” of the verse: a subtle and deep meaning can be expressed only through sound or with its decisive participation. Other examples: “Not by us / We have experienced the powerlessness of words to express desires. / Silent torments have affected people for centuries, / But it’s our turn, and the series of trials will end / Not by us” (“In vain!”, 1852), “How the chest breathes freshly and capaciously - / Words will not express anyone! (“Spring is Outside,” 1855), “I can’t find words for the song of my heart” (“Sonnet,” 1857), “But what’s burning in my chest - / I can’t tell you. // All this night at your feet / He will be resurrected in the sounds of singing, / But the secret of happiness in this moment / I will carry away without expression" ("How bright is the full moon...", 1859 (?)), "And in the heart, like a captive bird, A wingless song languishes" ("How is clarity cloudless night...", 1862), "And what your gaze alone expresses, / That the poet cannot depict" ("Who has a crown: the goddess of beauty...", 1865), "I am not given floridity: not for me / Deliberate babble of coherent words !" (“Look into my eyes at least for a moment...”, 1890), “But the silence of exhausted beauty / There (in the land of fragrant flowers. - A.R.) leaves a stamp on everything” (“Beyond the mountains, sands, seas...”, 1891).

The designation of poetic speech through the lexeme “sound” is not accidental. For Fet, a paradoxical way to express the inexpressible is, first of all, either silence, unspoken speech or the “natural languages” of love, flowers, or precisely sound: music and the musical principle in poetic language. The music of the word, sound as a more precise expression of emotions than the word, is a favorite motif of Fetov’s poetry: “I understood those tears, I understood those torments, / Where the word goes numb, where sounds reign, / Where you hear not a song, but the soul of the singer, / Where the spirit leaves an unnecessary body, / Where you hear that joy knows no bounds, / Where you believe that there will be no end to happiness” (“I saw your milky, baby hair...”, 1884), “I will know<…>naked familiar<…>And when I listen to this song, / Inspired by delight, I don’t lie, / That I understand everything without speech” (“Scattering with the laughter of a child...”, 1892).

As summarized by B.Ya. Bukhshtab, “the inaccessibility of feeling to consciousness and its inexpressibility in words is constantly declared (“I was looking for bliss that has no name”, “Inexpressible verbs”, “Inexpressible by anything”, “But what burns in my chest - I can’t tell you”, “Oh, if it were possible to speak with the soul without a word”, “It is not us who have experienced the powerlessness of words to express desires”, etc.)” (Accounting staff B.Ya. A.A. Fet // Fet A.A. Complete collection of poems. L ., 1959. P. 41). It is no coincidence that the poet perceives the child’s speech, full of fullness of feeling and life, not as a word, but as a sound (“ringing”): “I hear the ringing of your speeches” (“To a Child,” 1886). “Sound” is the name given to both the unspoken love confession and the poem being born: “And the sounds are filled with the torment of bliss, / In which you so want to express happiness” (“In the suffering of bliss I stand before you...”, 1882). Suffering comes from the inability to fully express feelings.

About the sound in which the poet reveals himself to the “musical” reader, Fet wrote to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich: “They say that people whose voice exactly matches the tone emitted by a glass when rubbing its wet edge are able not only to make it echo this sound, but also break it, intensifying the sound. Of course, in this case there may be one identical sound. The poet’s job is to find the sound with which he wants to touch a certain string of our soul. If he found it, our soul will sing in response to him; if he did not hit in tone, then new searches in the same poem will only harm the matter" (letter from K.R. dated December 27, 1886).

Fet’s letter, included by A.A., is very eloquent in this regard. Grigoriev in the story “Another of Many” (published in 1847); in the story, the author of the letter is captain Zarnitsyn, whose prototype was the poet: “Music would be needed here, because this art alone has the ability to convey thoughts and feelings not separately, not sequentially, but at once, so to speak - in a cascade. Away with transitional states like if they weren't intelligent; yes, away! they don't exist<…>".

The song for Fet is the most complete expression of all states of the soul: “To convey its thoughts, the human mind is content with colloquial and rapid speech, and any singing is already an unnecessary decoration, which in the end takes over the matter of mutual communication to the point that, abolishing the primitive center of gravity, which consisted in transmission of thought, creates a new center for the transmission of feelings. This magical, but urgent replacement of one with another occurs incessantly in the life of not only humans, but even songbirds. They sing over a newborn, they sing at the apogee of its development, at a wedding, they sing at its burial; they sing, walking from a hard day's work, soldiers sing, returning from a hot exercise, and sometimes going on an assault. The reality of the song lies not in the truth of unspoken thoughts, but in the truth of expressed feelings. If the song hits the heart string of the listener, then it is true and right . Otherwise, it is an unnecessary ceremonial form of everyday thought. This is what we can say in defense of poetry" (article "Response to the "New Time"", 1891).

In the article “Two Letters on the Significance of Ancient Languages ​​in Our Education,” 1867, Fet stated: “Seeking to recreate the harmonic truth, the artist’s soul itself comes into the appropriate musical order. There is nothing to argue or bicker about here - it is as undoubted, an inevitable fact as the rising of the sun. No sun - no day. No musical mood - no work of art.<…>When an excited soul, filled with deep impressions, seeks to speak out, and the ordinary human word becomes rigid, it involuntarily resorts to the language of the gods and sings. In such a case, not only the very act of singing, but also its very structure of rhymes do not depend on the arbitrariness of the artist, but are due to necessity.”

A poet and a musician are akin to each other, musicality, sensitivity to sounds are the properties of any true person: “A powerless word will numb you. - Be comforted! There is a language of the gods - mysterious, incomprehensible, but clear to the point of transparency. Just be a poet! We are all poets, true poets to the extent that we are true people. Listen carefully to this Beethoven sonata, just manage to listen to it properly - and you, so to speak, will see with your own eyes the whole secret that was told to him."

This interpretation of music and sound has a romantic origin: “The Romantics are musical impressionists; it’s not for nothing that their heroes, counts or tramps, are inconceivable without a harp or mandolin, be they in Italy or Iceland.” The language clearly abandoned its physicality and resolved itself into a breath, expressed by A.V. Schlegel on Tick; the word seems to be unpronounced and sounds softer than singing"<…>.

Sonorous words of uncertain meaning produce the same impression as music, says Novalis; in the life of the soul, certain thoughts and feelings are consonants, vague feelings are vowel sounds. “Music is superior to other arts because it is impossible to understand anything in it, because it, so to speak, puts us in direct relation to world life<…>; the essence of the new art could be defined this way: it strives to ennoble poetry to the heights of music (Zachary Werner in a letter of 1803). L. Tick, the author of original verbal symphonies, “strove to express thoughts with sounds and music with thoughts and words.” Early German romantics argued: “All arts turn to music, without which they have no salvation, because it is the last breath of the soul, more subtle than words, perhaps even more tender than thoughts.” Also indicative are Novalis’s statement, “Should the content of a poem be exhausted by the content,” and the “impressionistic technique of word combination”, which is related to Fetov’s, conditioned by this idea (quotes from the works of German romantics are given from the book: Zhirmunsky V.M. German Romanticism and Modern Mysticism / Preface . and commentary by A.G. Astvatsaturov. St. Petersburg, 1996. P. 31, 32, here is a characteristic of Novalis’s style).

For E.T.A. Hoffmann's music is the most romantic of all arts; its object is the infinite, this is the proto-language of nature, in which alone one can understand the song of the song of trees and flowers, stones and waters" (quoted from the book: Veselovsky A.N. V.A. Zhukovsky. Poetry of feeling and “heartfelt imagination” / Scientific ed., preface, translations by A.E. Makhov. M., 1999. P. 377).

L. Tieck repeatedly writes about the transformative meaning and special expressiveness of music in the novel “The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald”: “Every time, I feel, music elevates the soul, and the jubilant sounds are like angels<…>drive away earthly lusts and desires. If we believe that in purgatory the soul is cleansed by torment, then music, on the contrary, is the threshold of paradise, where the soul is cleansed by painful pleasure" (Part 1, Book 2, Chapter 1). Or: "When you play the harp , you try with your fingers to extract sounds akin to your dreams, so that sounds and dreams recognize each other and, embracing, as if on the wings of jubilation, they rise higher and higher to heaven" (Part 2, Book 1, Chapter 6). To the poet , notes L. Tick, “given<…>to extract hitherto unheard sounds from an invisible harp, and on the wings of these sounds angels and gentle spirits descend and greet the listener in a brotherly manner<…>. Often, oppression of the spirit is precisely what precedes the artist’s entry onto new untrodden paths - as soon as he follows the sound of a song flowing from the unknown distance" (Tick L. The Wanderings of Franz Sternbald / Ed. prepared by S.S. Belokrinitskaya, V.B. Mikushevich , A.V. Mikhailov. M., 1987 (series “Literary monuments”). P. 109, 153, 36).

For V.A. Zhukovsky "it was not for nothing that music was<…>something “divine”, insignificant, beckoning to memories, revealing that “unknown land” from where “the star of hope shines from afar joyfully, brightly” (Veselovsky A.N. V.A. Zhukovsky. Poetry of feeling and “heartfelt imagination ". P. 385, the poem by V.A. Zhukovsky "Striving" is quoted. V.A. Zhukovsky wrote to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna on May 1/13, 1840: "A strange, incomprehensible charm in sounds: they have nothing significant, but the past lives and resurrects in them."

The metaphor of creativity for Fet is a song and the sound synonymous with it. So, he writes: “A song in the heart, a song in the field” (“Spring in the South”, 1847); “I will rise again and sing” (“March 9, 1863”, 1863), “Like a lily looks into a mountain stream, / You stood over my first song” (“Alter ego” [“Second self. – lat. – A. R. .], 1878), “And my chants will begin to murmur” (“The day will wake up - and people’s speeches...”, 1884); “And, shuddering, I sing” (“No, I have not changed. Until deep old age...”, 1887, thirty-sixth poem from the third issue of “Evening Lights”); “Interrupt a dreary dream with a single sound” (“With one push to drive away a living boat...”, 1887); “I fly in to sing and love” (“Over the mountains, sands, seas...”, 1891, poems - from the perspective of a spring bird, but symbolizing the lyrical “I”).

This metaphor is not necessarily inspired specifically by the German romantics. For example, A.S. Pushkin resorted to it in his poem “Autumn”: “The soul is embarrassed by lyrical excitement, / Trembles and sounds”; in the poem "Poet" the poet, overshadowed by inspiration, "sounds<…>full".

It is very significant that Fet’s visual and tactile impressions are often “translated” into sound ones, becoming part of the sound code, the perception of the world in sounds: “chorus of clouds” (“City of the Air”, 1846); “I hear trembling hands” (“To Chopin”, 1882), the line is repeated in the poem “Lounging on an armchair, I look at the ceiling...”, 1890); “I want to hear your caresses” (“The dawn is fading in oblivion, half asleep”, 1888). Sounds can act as an “accompaniment” to the main theme: “And behind you is a lagging swarm, swayed by movement, / Of unclear sounds” (“In a Dream,” 1890).

There is no need to understand the word sound in its narrow meaning: “What does it mean to bring sound to the soul?” Selection of sounds, onomatopoeia? Not only that. Fet’s word “sound” has a broad meaning; here it is not particular features that are meant, but the principle of poetic creativity in general. "Rational" poetry is contrasted with "song", the logical principle - with "musical".

Fet considers a sign of a song to be such changes in the meaning and purpose of a word in which it becomes an exponent not of thought, but of feeling" (Bukhshtab B.Ya. A.A. Fet. P. 42).

Poetic declarations of Fet, who declares about his poems - “sounds”: “Like a child, I listen to them, / What was said in them - I don’t know, / And I don’t need it” (“No, don’t expect a passionate song...”, 1858), desire “Oh, if only without a word / It were possible to speak with the soul!” (“Like midges the dawn…”, 1844), the conviction of the superiority of “speeches without words” over ordinary speech (the poem “Student”, 1884) are reminiscent of the demand of the Russian poet’s younger contemporary, the French poet P. Verlaine: “Music first of all!” (“The Art of Poetry”; the title of his book of poetry “Romances Without Words” is expressive). In a letter to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, Fet admitted: “...The late Turgenev used to say that he expected from me a poem in which the final verse would have to be conveyed by a silent movement of the lips....I was drawn from a certain area of ​​words into an indefinite area of ​​music, into which I went as far as "My strength was enough. Therefore, in true works of art, by content I do not mean moral teaching, instruction or conclusion, but the impression they make. It cannot be said that Chopin's mazurkas are devoid of content; God forbid any works of literature of this kind" (letter dated October 8, 1888 .). P.I. spoke wonderfully about this. Tchaikovsky in a letter to K.R. dated August 22, 1888: “Fet, in his best moments, goes beyond the limits indicated by poetry and boldly takes a step into our area.<…>Like Beethoven, he was given the power to touch such strings of our souls that are inaccessible to artists, even powerful ones, but limited by the limits of the word. This is not just a poet, but rather a poet-musician."

Literary critic Yu.I. Aikhenvald noted: “Fet’s poems, first of all, indicate that he is a poet who has abandoned the word. Not a single writer expresses his dissatisfaction with human words as often as he does” (Aikhenvald Yu. Silhouettes of Russian Writers. M., 1908. Issue 2. P. 51).

But in Fet’s lyrics, according to the right thought of I.N. Sukhikh, after all, “it is not “music first”, but the music of meaning that shapes Fetov’s lyrics” (Sukhikh I.N. Shenshin and Fet: life and poetry // Fet A. Poems / Introductory article by I.N. Sukhikh; Compiled and noted by A.V. Uspenskaya, St. Petersburg, 2001 (“New Library of the Poet. Small Series”), p. 54). B.Ya definitely said this even earlier. Bukhshtab: “Of course, the word “music” here is only a metaphor: the poet cannot leave the realm of words. But for Fet in poetry, everything that is close to the means of musical influence has a special value: the selection of sounds, the rhythm, the melody of the verse.” Musicality is manifested in an emphasis on associativity, on the emotional shades of the word: “Rational poetry is opposed by “song”, the logical principle is opposed by “musical”” (Bukhshtab B.Ya. Fet // History of Russian Literature. M.; Leningrad, 1956. T. 8. Literature of the sixties, part 2, p. 258).

Priest P.A. Florensky, reflecting on the poem “How poor our language is! – I want and can’t...”, noted: “The melody almost precedes the word, the poet almost sings. Almost... But the fact of the matter is that one is looking for a word, the word, or - something similar to him. This is the torment that the poet’s musicality is the musicality of an articulate word, and not sounds in general, poetry, and not pure music, why even Fet is still a poet, and not a musician. the difficulty that one wants not to sing, but rather to express the unsaid. That’s the question: speech cannot help but be thought of as omnipotent, omnispeaking, omniexpressive, and Fet, who was tormented by the inability to embody in words, nevertheless embodied elusive emotions, and precisely in words<…>"(At the watersheds of thought. Thought and language. 3. Antinomies of language // Florensky P.A. Works: In 2 vols. M., 1990. T. 2.. P. 169; further quoted is the poem “How poor is our language…").

Fet does not trust the logical word of the philosopher; he, who wrote “I don’t know what I will / Sing, but only the song is ripening” (“I came to you with greetings...”, 1843), was ready to share the thought of I.-V. Goethe: “I sing as a bird sings” (from the poem “The Singer”, 1783). The poet’s irrational, intuitive gift to comprehend the essence of existence is undeniable for him, while the thinker, limited by the framework of the rational, logical word, fails in this. Sounds that exist before meaning or in some pre-meaning are closer than a word burdened with a logical meaning to the secret of life. Musical and song principles, rhythm organize the cosmos: "<…>the essence of objects is accessible to the human spirit from two sides. In the form of abstract stillness and in the form of its vital vibration, harmonious singing, inherent beauty. Let us remember the singing of the spheres" (Article "Two letters on the meaning of ancient languages ​​in our education", 1867).

I.S. Turgenev wrote to Fet: "<…>Your disgust for the mind in an artist has driven you to the most refined speculations and feelings that you are so concerned about” and further: “You amaze the mind with ostracism - and see in works of art only the unconscious babble of a sleeper” (letter dated January 23 (February 4), 1862 G.

The poem ends with a motif of flight, symbolizing the poet’s desire to enter the higher world of beauty, away from the mortal earth. The same motive is embodied in another program poem about the poet and poetry - “With one push, drive away a living boat...”.

According to the observation of D.D. Blagogo, the motif of flight and the vocabulary associated with it are characteristic of the editions of the collection “Evening Lights”, which include both poems: “So often there are epithets: airy, winged, verbs: fly, soar, take wings, rush on an air boat, soar over earth, to rise into another life" (Blagoy D.D. The World as Beauty (About "Evening Lights" by A. Fet) // Fet A.A. Evening Lights. M., 1979 (series "Literary Monuments"). P. 559 ).

There are numerous examples of the motif of flight or the desire to fly in Fet’s lyrics from different times. Here are just a few: “And in the heart, like a captive bird, / A wingless song languishes” (“Like the clarity of a cloudless night...”, 1862 (?)); “But the flight of the poor heart ends / With one powerless languor” (“How difficult it is to repeat living beauty...”, 1888); “Without effort / With the splash of wings / To fly - // Into the world of aspirations, adorations and prayers” (“Quasi una fantasia”, 1889); “So even after death I will fly to you in poetry, / To the ghosts of the stars I will be the ghost of a sigh” (“To the Faded Stars”, 1890). Wed. also: “But if on the wings of pride / You dare to know like a god, / Do not bring into the world the shrine / Your slave anxieties. // Bet, all-seeing and all-powerful” (“Good and Evil”, 1884).

Figurative structure

The key word in the poem is the metaphorical epithet “winged” (“winged word sound”). This is a traditional image, the banality of which did not frighten Fet. Among the parallels, for example, is the poem by V.A. Zhukovsky from F. Schiller's "Desire": Ah! Why don't I have wings? / I would fly to the hills. // There the lyres sing in agreement; There is an abode of silence; / The zephyrs are rushing towards me from here / The incense of spring; / There the golden fruits shine / On the shady trees; / No evil whirlwinds are heard there / On the hills, in the meadows.”

This epithet indicates the motive of poetic flight and precedes the appearance of the image of “Jupiter's eagle”. Metaphorical or objective, but endowed with figurative meanings, wings and wings are Fet’s favorite images: “Like midges dawning, / Winged sounds crowd” (“Like midges dawning...”, 1844); “There is someone beckoning you to follow him - / But he doesn’t give you wings to fly!..” (“Aerial City”, 1846); “And in the heart, like a captive bird, a wingless song languishes” (“Like the clarity of a cloudless night...”, 1862 (?)). “All my velvet with its living blinking / Only two wings” (“Butterfly”, 1884); “... when the time was ripe, / You spread your wings from the nest / And, boldly trusting their flaps, / Spreading across the sky, you swam” (“Free Falcon”, 1884, the twenty-first poem of the second issue of “Evening Lights”); “The bird’s wing trembled” (“At Dawn”, 1886, the seventeenth poem of the third issue of “Evening Lights”); “And I believe in my heart that they are growing / And immediately they will carry me into the sky / My outstretched wings” (“I am shocked when all around ...”, 1885, twenty-sixth poem from the third issue of “Evening Lights”), “While the soul boils in the crucible of the body, / She flies wherever her wing carries” (“Everything, everything that is mine, that is and was before...”, 1887, the forty-eighth poem from the third issue of “Evening Lights”); “Sweetly, flying, freezing after you” (“The dawn is going out, - into oblivion, half asleep ...”, 1888); “And the singer will rush across the sky / Swan wings will all be” (“On the anniversary of A.N. Maykov on April 30, 1888”, 1888), “Winged dreams rose in swarms” (“Winged dreams rose in swarms...”, 1889); “winged dreams” (“To Her Majesty the Queen of the Hellenes”, 1888); “And when I listen to this song, / Inspired by delight, I don’t lie” (“Scattering with the laughter of a child...”, 1892). Winged song: “with a winged song / We will love forever and clearly” (“They forbade you to go out…”, 1890).

This is how Feta B.Ya explained the nature of this metaphor. Bukhshtab: “The sharp separation of everyday, everyday life from the world of inspiration, art and beauty is one of the main sources of Fet’s metaphors. Poetic delight, contemplation of nature, enjoyment of art, the ecstasy of love rise above the “world of boredom and labor.” Hence the themes of ascent and flight. Soul, thought, heart, spirit, dreams, sounds, dreams rise, fly, rush, soar, soar, carry away...” (Bukhshtab B.Ya. A.A. Fet: Essay on Life and Creativity. L., 1974. P. 119, analysis of examples - on pp. 119-121).

The image denoting the natural world is grass, their “unclear smell.” Grass as a sign of nature (obviously with the implied opposition of the earthly world to the heavenly one), its states are found several times in Fet’s poems: “The north was blowing. in sobbing" ("In the Moonlight", 1885, fifteenth poem from the third issue of "Evening Lights").

The perception of nature through its smells, in the olfactory code, is also present in other poems by Fet: “I have long wanted with you / To speak in odorous rhyme” (“The Language of Flowers”, 1847); “I will only name the flower that the hand plucks, / The muse will open both the heart and the smell of the flower” (“E.D. D-”, 1888).

The image of an eagle, with which the poet is compared, introduces into the text shades of meaning ‘royalty, chosenness of the poet’. The eagle is a royal heraldic bird and a servant of the supreme Roman god, the thunderer Jupiter. Among the parallels of the poet’s likening to an eagle are Pushkin’s “The eyes of the prophet opened, like those of a frightened eagle” (“The Prophet”) and “The poet’s soul will perk up like an awakened eagle” (“The Poet”). A contrasting parallel, disputed by Fet: the lines “Why from the mountains and past the towers / An eagle flies, heavy and terrible, / On a stunted stump?”, included in the poem “Yezersky” and the story “Egyptian Nights”. At A.S. Pushkin’s eagle, descending onto an insignificant stump from royal heights, symbolizes the poet’s freedom - including the freedom to be like everyone else. Fetov’s interpretation of the poet’s purpose is ultra-romantic: creativity is associated only with the heavenly and divine world.

The true poet is also associated with the eagle in Fet’s poem “To the Pseudo-poet” (1866): “You did not ascend in prayer (pseudo-poet - A.R.) / You into that refreshing darkness, / Where selflessly only freely / Free song and the eagle."

Lightning, the divine striking fire, denotes an inspired poetic word. In a letter to Count L.N. To Tolstoy on April 16, 1878, Fet defined poetic inspiration as “lightning that comes and goes.”

Meter. Syntax. Melodica

The poem is written in iambic hexameter, which at the beginning of the 19th century. iambic hexameter begins to be used in philosophical lyrics (see about this: M.L. Essay on the history of Russian verse: Metrics. Rhythm. Rhyme. Strophic. M., 1984. P. 111). Therefore, writing “How poor our language is! – I want and cannot...” - a philosophical poem - is natural in iambic hexameter. Metrical scheme of iambic hexameter: 01/01/01/01/01/01 (for the third, sixth, ninth and twelfth lines in Fet’s poem, which have a feminine rhyme: 01/01/01/01/01/01/0). "0" denotes unstressed syllables, "1" - stressed syllables. This meter is characterized by a mandatory caesura after the sixth syllable, dividing the verse into two equal three-foot hemistiches. Fet also has it: “How white is our tongue! – / I want and I can’t” (6 + 6 syllables) or: “What is raging in the chest / like a transparent wave” (6 + 7 syllables).

The poem is characterized by the use of transference: “the winged word sound / Grabs”; the subject and predicate are highlighted by means of an interverse pause, due to which a special semantic emphasis falls on the lexeme “sound”. A change in the usual word order is also used: “fatal lie”, and not: fatal lie; “winged word sound” instead of the usual: winged sound of a word (when perceiving the poem by ear, a single “word sound” is formed), “carrying an instant sheaf of lightning in faithful paws” instead of the correct one: carrying a sheaf of lightning in faithful paws. (The grammatical correct word would be "lightning".)

Melodically, the poem, unlike most of Fet’s other lyrical works, is distinguished not by a melodious, but by a declamatory intonation, and is oriented towards an oratorical attitude. Such melody is dictated by the peculiarities of the syntax (breaking the first verse into two sentences, common sentences moving from line to line, rhetorical appeal to the singer, inter-verse transfer).

The unusual word order recalls the high syllable, the odic poetry in which it was common. This gives the poem additional solemnity.

Sound system

The sounds “r” and “l” are emphasized - not only due to their phonetic properties (actually sonority), but also because both are found in the key words of the text: “cannot convey”, “in the chest”, “transparent”, “wave” ", "languishing", "hearts", "lies", "fatal", "delirium", herbs", "Jupiter", "eagle", "lightning", etc.

It is significant that the first line, speaking about the poverty of the language, is devoid of these rich, vibrant sounds.

Now let's turn to another poem by Fet - "With one push, drive away a living boat...".

"With one push, drive away a living boat..."

* * *
Drive away a living boat with one push
From sands smoothed by the tides,
Rise in one wave into another life,
Feel the wind from the flowering shores,

Interrupt a dreary dream with a single sound,
Suddenly revel in the unknown, dear,
Give life a sigh, give sweetness to secret torments,
Instantly feel someone else’s as your own,

Whisper about something that makes your tongue go numb
Strengthen the fight of fearless hearts -
This is what only a select few singers possess,
This is his sign and crown!

The poem was first published in the magazine "Russian Bulletin", 1888, No. 1, p. 106. With the change (seventh line “Give life a sigh, give sweetness to secret torments” instead of the original version: “Give life to the heart, give sweetness to secret torments”, it is included in Fet’s lifetime collection of poetry: Evening lights. Issue four of A. Fet’s unpublished poems M., 1891. As part of the fourth issue of “Evening Lights”, the poem “With one push to drive away a living boat...”, the fourth in a row, is included in a kind of formally not distinguished “cycle” or layer of poems devoted to the theme of the vocation of a poet and poetry. three poetic texts in the issue also include the poem “To the Poets” (1890), which immediately precedes it (coming third in the collection), “On the fiftieth anniversary of the muse” (1888), “On the fiftieth anniversary of the muse. January 29, 1889” (1889), partly "To His Imperial Highness V.K. Konstantin Konstantinovich" (1890), "On the anniversary of A.N. Maykov. April 30, 1888" (1888), "Quasi una fantasia" (1889), (forty-third poem in the collection) , complimentary-friendly “Ya.P. Polonsky" (1890). The development of the theme in the composition of the collection is dynamic: from the programmatic and declarative "To the Poets" and "With one push to drive away a living boat..." - a kind of literary manifesto of Fet to deeply personal poems for his own fifth anniversary, the first of which is colored with tragic foreboding and anticipation of imminent death (“We are being buried,” “Punish and reward the living, / And for us at the grave entrance, - / Oh, muse! Nature tells us, / Forever humbling ourselves, to remain silent”), and the second is joyful, major key; then complimentary dedications to two to the poets - Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich (K.R.) and A.N. Maikov, towards the end of the collection - again a programmatic poem affirming the principles of “pure art” (“I sense the joy, / I don’t want / your battles) “Quasi una fantasia." And at the end - a decrease in the intensity of the topic in a poetic address to a friend - the poem "Ya.P. Polonsky".

The running motif of a number of these poems is aspiration upward, into the sky, flight: “In your palaces my spirit took wing” (“To the Poets”); “To rise with one wave into another life” (“With one push to drive away a living boat...”); “And the singer will all be flying across the sky / Swan wings” (“On the anniversary of A.N. Maykov. April 30, 1888”); “Without effort / With the splash of wings / To fly - // Into the world of aspirations, / Adorations / And prayers” (“Quasi una fantasia”). The motif of the poet’s involvement in eternity, sounding in “With one push to drive away a living boat...”, is even more distinct in the poem “To the Poets”: This leaf, which withered and fell, / Burns with eternal gold in song. // Only you have fleeting dreams / They look like old friends to the soul, / Only you have fragrant roses / Always sparkling with tears of delight.”

In the plan for the unrealized new edition compiled by Fet in 1892, “With one push to drive a living boat…” is included (along with, for example, the poem “To the Poets” in the section “Elegies and Thoughts,” which emphasizes its philosophical character; as part of the section, the poem , of course, refers to “thoughts”.

Composition. Motive structure

The poem, like most of Fet’s strophic lyrical works, consists of three stanzas, each of which is united by a cross rhyme: ABAB. The boundaries of stanzas do not coincide with the boundaries of large syntactic units - periods. The poem consists of nine infinitive sentences ("do/feel something" constructions) and two final explanatory sentences of the traditional "subject + predicate" structure, introduced by the twice-repeated particle "here." (In the second of them, the linking verb is omitted: “This is his sign and crown!”) The two final lines sound like an explanation and generalization of what was said before. The first quatrain has three sentences, the second has five, and the third has four. Thanks to this construction of the text, the effect of acceleration and faster tempo is created. The first sentence takes up two whole lines (“With one push to drive a living boat / From the sands smoothed by the tides”), as if expressing the inertia, the inertia of non-poetic existence, which the poet overcomes with some effort; The poet’s transforming, creative gift is highlighted in the third line of the second stanza, which includes two whole sentences (“Give life a sigh, give sweetness to secret torments”). In the third stanza, where the boundaries of the sentences coincide with the boundaries of the lines, there seems to be a harmonization and ordering of the ecstatic poetic impulse.

The first stanza is distinguished from the next two by its conditional, metaphorical “objectivity”: it contains an allegorical picture (a boat, seashores - “this” and “another”). In the next two, “objectivity,” even metaphorical, disappears, disembodied: the poet’s spirit seems to have already become detached from everything earthly.

I.S. Turgenev called Fet “a priest of pure art” (letter to Fet dated November 5-7, 1860). The poem “With one push to drive away a living boat...” is one of the most impressive confirmations of this characteristic. Everyday life, non-poetic existence in Fetov’s work is assessed as a “dreary dream”, as an earthly existence opposed to a higher, heavenly world, which acquires an almost religious meaning (this is “another life” into which, like into heaven, one must “rise”). Everyday life is boring and monotonous, its metaphorical designation is: “sands smoothed” (smooth, expressionless) by “ebb tides”; the world of poetry is fruitful, its metaphorical sign is “blooming shores.”

The metaphorical name for poetry, as in other works of Fet, is “sound”, which has a miraculous effect, capable of dispelling the “dreary dream” of everyday life. The poet belongs to two worlds - the real and the ideal. It is this idea that gives rise to a statement built on a logical contradiction, on an oxymoron: “Suddenly revel in the unknown, the dear.” As an earthly being, the poet is alien to the ideal world, which is “unknown” to him (this, as it is said two lines below, is “foreign”); but as a genius, a spirit born in a higher, ideal being, he knows or remembers the eternal essences of things, the ideal “native” for him.

The poet’s aesthetic principles, “affirming the service of beauty as the highest goal of free art, made it possible for Fet to isolate poetic creativity from practical activity. And this was always the case, from the beginning to the end of the path. Fet’s ideological and artistic evolution, the enrichment of his lyrics with philosophical issues, new discoveries in the field of poetic language took place within the same aesthetic system" (Rozenblum L.M. A.A. Fet and the aesthetics of “pure art” // Questions of literature. 2003. No. 2. Quoted from the electronic version: http://magazines.russ .ru/voplit/2003/2/ros.html).

For Fet, art was invariably the embodiment of the ideal. So, he wrote to Count L.N. To Tolstoy April 11, 1863: “I<…>against the lack of ideal cleanliness. Venus, which excites lust, is bad. She should only sing beauty in marble. The stench itself should be fragrant, passing into durch den Labirint der Brust [through the labyrinth of the heart; German – A.R.]". The same idea is persistently expressed in the article "From Abroad. Travel impressions (Excerpt)": "When, in a moment of delight, an image appears before the artist, smiling joyfully, an image that gently warms the chest, filling the soul with a sweet thrill, let him concentrate his strength only on conveying it in all its fullness and purity, sooner or later they will respond to him too late. Art cannot have any other purpose, for the same reason that there cannot be two lives in one organism, two ideas in one idea.” It is also heard in the article “On the Poems of F. Tyutchev” (1859): “Poetry , as art in general, is a pure reproduction not of an object, but only of its one-sided ideal<…>".

The non-poetic, characteristic of the “dreary dream” of everyday life, is, according to Fet, firstly, ideological, practical, utilitarian - everything from which poetry should turn away: “...I will add from myself that questions: about the rights of citizenship of poetry among other human activities, about its moral significance, about modernity in a given era, etc. I consider them simply nightmares, from which I got rid of long ago and forever" ("On the poems of F. Tyutchev", 1859). Secondly, these are everyday worries, everyday life. N.N. Strakhov recalled about Fet: “He said that poetry and reality have nothing in common with each other, that as a person he is one thing, and as a poet another. Because of his love for the sharp and paradoxical expressions with which his conversation constantly shone, he took this thought even to its extreme; he said that poetry is a lie, and that a poet who does not start lying without looking back from the very first word is no good" ("Notes about Fet by N.N. Strakhov. III. More a few words in memory of Fet" // Strakhov N.N. Literary criticism: Collection of articles / Introductory article and composition by N.N. Skatov, commentary by V.A. Kotelnikov. St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 427]).

Shortly before his death, on March 17, 1891, Fet wrote to the aspiring poet P.P. Pertsov: “It is this instinct that distinguishes what is due from what is not, poetry from prose, that everyone should handle with extreme care. Whoever grabs a deck of cards with unclean hands does not notice the extra stain, and in the end he plays with dirty cards.”

Those character traits of Fet that were expressively captured by a friend of his youth A.A. Grigoriev, who described young Fet under the name Voldemar in the story “Ophelia. One of Vitalin’s memories. Continuation of the story without beginning, without end, and especially without morality” (1846), were generated by alienation from life, awareness of the tragic gap between the ideal and the real world. Here is this, perhaps subjective, but in the main, apparently accurate psychological portrait: “He was an artist, in the full sense of the word: the ability to create was present in him to a high degree...

Creations - but not births - creations from rough materials, though not external, but products from within (so! - A.R.) of one’s own creations.

He did not know the pain of birth of ideas.

With the ability to create, indifference grew in him.

Indifference - to everything except the ability to create - to God's world, as soon as its objects ceased to be reflected in his creative ability, to himself, as soon as he ceased to be an artist.
<…>

This man had to either kill himself, or become what he became... Broad needs were given to him by fate, but, set in motion too early, they had to either choke him with their fermentation, or fall asleep like waves fall asleep, forming an even and smooth a surface in which everything around is reflected lightly and clearly.”

In general, the “dream” of ordinary life is all unpoetic. The motif of alienation from everyday life had a special meaning for Fet, who was not appreciated and understood as a poet; towards the end of his life, the misunderstanding of his poems by readers increased. “Evening Lights” was published when the 1863 edition was still not sold out; they were perceived, according to a contemporary, only “as a new version of the young poems of their author” (Pertsov P.P. Literary Memoirs. 1890-1902 / Preface by B.F. Porshnev (M., Leningrad, 1933, p. 99). Philosopher, literary critic and poet V.S. Soloviev wrote to Fet in the spring of 1883: "<…>I am bitter, and offended, and ashamed of Russian society, which is still<…>"Nothing was said about "Evening Lights" in the press."

The poet’s word seems to be capable of giving life, giving it a “breath” (without which life is simply impossible), and even giving life to the inanimate (the statement “Intensify the fight of fearless”, that is, not beating, “hearts” based on an oxymoron). In a sense, sweat is endowed with divine or demiurgic power: it bestows life. “Increasing the battle of fearless hearts” is impossible from the point of view of formal logic; but according to Fet, the poet is the bearer of high madness. The attempt may be futile and unsuccessful, but it only testifies to the greatness of the poet.

Fet’s interpretation of the poet’s purpose is romantic: the true poet is the chosen one (“singer<…>chosen"), creativity is self-sufficient (“crown” - a wreath - a metaphor for reward - this is his gift itself). This motif goes back to Pushkin’s interpretation of the poetic gift and service (“To the Poet”, “The Poet and the Crowd”, “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands... "). The poem “I have erected a monument to myself not made by hands...” ends - contrary to the poetic tradition dating back to Horace’s ode “To Melpomene” - with an appeal to the Muse not to demand a “crown” - a reward. Fetov’s poet has a “crown” from the very beginning: it is his gift .

In Fet’s poem, unlike Pushkin’s, the “chosen singer” and the author’s “I” are not directly identified, but the author’s belonging to the “chosen ones” is implied. Fet assessed his place in contemporary Russian poetry very highly: “You’d have to be a complete ass not to know that in terms of the power of lyrical talent, all modern poets in the world are crickets before me” (letter to N.N. Strakhov dated May 27, 1879 ).

It is significant that Fet proposed to include in the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his poetic activity the presentation of a laurel wreath by Countess A.A. Olsufieva, leading a group of Moscow ladies.
Fetov’s poem also contains the motif of the purifying meaning of poetry as a means of expressing torment, painful feelings - and thereby freeing oneself from them: “to give sweetness to secret torments.” There is in it, although it occupies a peripheral place, Fet’s favorite motif of the inexpressible; “the chosen singer” is able to “whisper about something before which the tongue becomes numb.” The verb “whisper” in the meaning of ‘to express, to inspire certain subtle meanings and feelings’ probably goes back to the poetry of V.A. Zhukovsky; cf.: “The seasoned man whispered hello to the soul” (“Song” (“The charm of days gone by…”).

Figurative structure

The figurative structure of the poem is characterized by antitheses and oxymorons. The key antithesis is “the ideal world - the earthly world”, embodied through contrasting metaphorical images of “this” (its signs are “sands smoothed by the tides”, denoting monotony, fragility and sterility; “low tide” as spiritual decline) and other worlds - “shores” ( its features are belonging to the “height”, “blooming”, “wind”, symbolizing the trend of the poetic spirit). The image of a “living boat” probably goes back to the lyrics of F.I. Tyutchev: this is the line “Already in the magical harbor the boat has come to life” from the poem “As the ocean embraces the globe...”. These metaphorical images anticipate the imagery of Russian symbolism, in particular the symbolism of the boat and shores in “Poems about the Beautiful Lady” by A.A. Blok.

Oxymorons or “half-oxymorons”, designed to express the paradox of poetry that exists in earthly space, but is involved in eternity: “Suddenly revel in the unknown, dear,” “Whisper about something before which the tongue goes numb,” “Intensify the battle of fearless hearts,” and in some degree “Give life a sigh” (from the point of view of logic, if life exists, it is already endowed with a “sigh”).

The poetic vocabulary of the poem is distinctly and deliberately archaic; it resembles the poetic vocabulary of the era of V.A. Zhukovsky and A.S. Pushkin: “dream” as a metaphor for life, “sweetness”, “singer” in the meaning of “poet”, “crown” in the meaning of “wreath”. The poetic “wind” is deliberately archaic instead of the ordinary “wind”; shades of meaning in this poetic concept (concept) in Fet’s poem go back to the poetry of V.A. Zhukovsky with its semantics of “wind”; the semi-metaphorical “wind” is also found in Fet himself: (“Oh, how it smelled of spring, / It’s probably you!” - “I’m waiting, anxiously embraced...", 1886). The oxymoron "unknown, dear" resembles the "semi-oxymoron" of V.A. Zhukovsky, also composed of substantivized adjectives and participles (adjectives and participles in the function of nouns) "about the sweet, sweet and sorrowful of antiquity" ("Inexpressible" ), “And under the airy veil the sad sighed” (“Vadim”), “hello from long ago”, “beautiful, outdated”, “And Faithful was invisibly with us” (“The Color of the Testament”). Fet’s orientation towards the poetic vocabulary of this tradition gives The style of the poem has special shades of meaning: both “classical” (meaning correlation with recognized poetic texts) and “romantic” (V.A. Zhukovsky is significant for Fet precisely as a romantic, a singer of the “inexpressible”).

Meter and rhythm. Syntactic structure. Rhyme

The poem is written in iambic pentameter with alternating feminine and masculine verse endings. In Fetov’s time, iambic pentameter was mainly used in lyrics with “elegiac and related themes” (Gasparov M.L. Essay on the history of Russian verse: Metrics. Rhythm. Rhyme. Strophic. M., 1984. P. 167). But little remains of the elegy in Fetov’s poem - the motives of the melancholy of everyday existence and alienation from life, the revaluation of what has been lived.

Metrical scheme of iambic pentameter: 01/01/01/01/01 (in the odd lines of Fet’s poem, the last, fifth foot is followed by an increment in the form of an unstressed syllable).

Distinctive features of the poem's syntax are repetitions of initial words in several lines (anaphors), elements of syntactic parallelism, a series of infinitive sentences - B.M. Eikhenbaum explains Fet’s focus on the musicality of the verse: “It is natural to expect that with his tendencies to construct musical periods based on non-melodic growth, Fet should avoid ordinary logical forms and strive to form (intonation. - A. R.) rise<…>only with the help of a system of repetitions and parallelisms." In this poem, "the increase is created by continuous syntactic parallelism, the repetition of the form "infinitive + its complement" in a simple form and complicated by other members." As the researcher notes, "strong odd lines ("O dn and with a push... One wave...") alternate with weaker even ones. The second line especially stands out for its comparative weakness, occupied by secondary members and therefore only adjacent to the first as its continuation.<…>In the first and third stanzas we have complete syntactic parallelism (to drive with one push - to rise with one wave); in the fourth the infinitive is already put in first place. The next stanza does not have anaphors in even lines and is not divided into two periods - it forms<…>type of promotion to the third line."

Diversity is introduced into the syntactic parallelism thanks to the inversion in the second line compared to the first: “With one push, to drive the lady y u u - t o c l i v y s o interrupt the single sound." In the second stanza, “one gets the impression of a return to the initial form (contained in the first line of the first stanza. - A.R.), but at the same time, the inversion makes the first line of the second stanza more intense and realizes an intonation rise. In the second stanza we find another inversion - and exactly where it is necessary to create an intonation apogee: “to give life a breath - to give sweetness to secret torment” (асb – abc).”

The originality of the syntactic pattern of the poem is created primarily due to fluctuations in the position of infinitives in lines - with the gradual approval of indefinite forms of verbs in a strong position - at the beginning of lines (Eikhenbaum B. Melodics of Russian lyric verse. Petersburg, 1922. pp. 190-193).

Was Fet a romantic?

As already mentioned, both poems by Fet are considered to be poetic manifestos of Fet the Romantic. Fet's characterization as a romantic poet is almost universally accepted. But there is another opinion: “The widespread ideas about the fundamentally romantic nature of Fet’s lyrics seem dubious. Being such in terms of psychological prerequisites (repulsion from the prose of life), it is opposite to romanticism in result, in terms of the realized ideal. Fet has practically no motives characteristic of romanticism alienation, departure, flight, contrasting “natural life with the artificial existence of civilized cities", etc. Fetov’s beauty (unlike, say, Zhukovsky and, subsequently, from Blok) is completely earthly, this-worldly. He simply leaves one of the oppositions of the usual romantic conflict for the border of your world.<…>

Fet's artistic world is homogeneous" (Sukhikh I.N. Shenshin and Fet: life and poetry. P. 40-41]. When characterizing antitheses, oppositions expressing the idea of ​​two worlds, as a sign of romanticism, I.N. Sukhikh refers to the book by Yu. V. Mann "Dynamics of Russian Romanticism" (Moscow, 1995). Meanwhile, the distinction between the ideal world and the real world in poetry classified as romantic does not necessarily have the character of a rigid antithesis; thus, the unity of the ideal world and the real world was emphasized by the early German romantics (cf.: Zhirmunsky V.M. German romanticism and modern mysticism. P. 146-147).

The idea of ​​the absence of disharmony and discord in Fet’s poetry, of its major tone, is widespread, although usually those who attest the poet in this way do not draw from this the conclusion that he is alien to romanticism. According to V.L. Korovin, “Fet’s poetry is jubilant, festive. Even his tragic poems carry some kind of liberation. Hardly any other poet has so much “light” and “happiness” - the inexplicable and causeless happiness that Fet’s bees experience, which makes them cry and the leaves and blades of grass shine. “The agonizing trembling of insane happiness” - these words from one early poem indicate the prevailing mood in his lyrics, right up to the very latest poems" (Korovin V.L. Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (1820-1892): an essay on the life and creativity //).

This is a “common place” in the literature about Fet, who is usually called “one of the brightest” Russian poets” (Lotman L.M. A.A. Fet // History of Russian literature: In 4 vols. L., 1982. Vol. 3. P. 425). However, unlike many others who have written and are writing about Fet, the researcher makes several very important clarifications: the motifs of the harmony of the natural world and man are characteristic of the lyrics of the 1850s, while in the 1840s. conflicts in nature and in the human soul are depicted in the lyrics of the late 1850s - 1860s. The harmony of nature is opposed by the disharmony of the experiences of the “I”; in the lyrics of the 1870s, the motif of discord grows and the theme of death prevails; in works of 1880 – early 1890s. “The poet opposes low reality and life’s struggle not with art and unity with nature, but with reason and knowledge” (Ibid. p. 443). This periodization (as, strictly speaking, any other) can be reproached for being schematic and subjective, but it rightly corrects the idea of ​​Fet as a singer of the joy of life.

Back in 1919, the poet A.V. Tufanov spoke of Fet’s poetry as a “cheerful hymn to the delight and enlightenment of the spirit” of the artist (thesis of the report “Lyricism and Futurism”; quoted from the article: Krusanov A. A. V. Tufanov: the Arkhangelsk period (1918-1919) // New Literary Review. 1998. No. 30). According to D.D. Blagoy, “nothing terrible, cruel, ugly has access to the world of Fetov’s lyrics: it is woven only from beauty” (Blagoy D. Afanasy Fet - poet and person // A. Fet. Memoirs / Preface by D. Blagoy; Comp. and notes A. Tarkhova, M., 1983, p. 20). But: Fet's poetry for D.D. Blagogo, unlike I.N. Sukhikh, nevertheless “romantic in pathos and method”, as a “romantic version” of Pushkin’s “poetry of reality” (Ibid. p. 19).

A.E. Tarkhov interpreted the poem “I came to you with greetings...” (1843) as the quintessence of the motifs of Fetov’s work: “In four of his stanzas, with four repetitions of the verb “tell”, Fet seemed to publicly name everything that he came to tell about in Russian poetry, about the joyful shine of a sunny morning and the passionate thrill of a young, spring life, about a soul in love thirsting for happiness and an irrepressible song, ready to merge with the joy of the world" (Tarkhov A. Lyricist Afanasy Fet // Fet A.A. Poems. Poems. Translations M., 1985. P. 3).

In another article, the researcher, based on the text of this poem, gives a unique list of repeating, unchanging motifs of Fet’s poetry: “In first place let’s put the expression beloved by critics: “fragrant freshness” - it denoted Fet’s unique “feeling of spring.”

Fet's inclination to find poetry in the circle of the most simple, ordinary, domestic objects can be defined as “intimate domesticity.”

The feeling of love in Fet's poetry was presented to many critics as “passionate sensuality.”

The completeness and primordial nature of human nature in Fetov’s poetry is its “primitive naturalness.”

And finally, Fetov’s characteristic motif of “fun”<…>can be called “joyful festivity”" (Tarkhov A.E. “Music of the chest” (On the life and poetry of Afanasy Fet) // Fet A.A. Works: In 2 vols. M., 1982. T. 1. P. 10 ).

However, A.E. Tarkhov stipulates that such a characteristic can be attributed primarily to the 1850s - to the time of the “highest rise” of Fet’s “poetic fame” (Ibid. p. 6). As a turning point, a crisis for the poet A.E. Tarkhov names the year 1859, when he wrote the alarming “A fire burns in the forest like a bright sun…” and the joyless one, containing motives of gracelessness and melancholy of life and aging, “Quails are screaming, corncrakes are crackling...” (see: Ibid. pp. 34-37) . It should, however, be taken into account that 1859 is the time of publication of both poems; when they were written is not known exactly; see Bukhshtab B.Ya. Notes // Fet A.A. Complete collection of poems. L., 1959. S. 740, 766).

But the opinion of A.S. Kushner: “Perhaps no one else, except perhaps the early Pasternak, expressed with such frank, almost shameless force this emotional outburst, delight in the joy and miracle of life - in the first line of the poem: “How rich I am in crazy verses!” ", "What a night! There is such bliss in everything!..”, “Oh, this rural day and its beautiful shine...”, etc.

And the saddest motives are still accompanied by this fullness of feelings, hot breath: “What sadness! The end of the alley...”, “What a cold autumn!..”, “Forgive me! In the darkness of memory...” (Kushner A.S. Sigh poetry // Kushner A. Apollo in the grass: Essays/poems. M., 2005. pp. 8-9). One can also recall the conventionally common impressionistic definition of the properties of Fet’s poetry, given and generally accepted by M.L. Gasparov: “The World Feta is a night, a fragrant garden, a divinely flowing melody and a heart overflowing with love..." (Gasparov M.L. Verbless feta: Composition of space, feelings and words // Gasparov M.L. Selected articles. M., 1995. P. 281 However, these properties of Fet's poetry do not prevent the researcher from classifying him as a romantic (see: Ibid. pp. 287, 389; cf. p. 296). The movement of meaning in Fet's poems from the depiction of the external world to the expression of the internal world, to empathizing with the nature surrounding the lyrical “I” - “the dominant principle of romantic lyrics” (Ibid. p. 176).

This idea is not new; it was expressed at the beginning of the last century by D.S. Darsky in the book “The Joy of the Earth”. Study of Fet's lyrics (Moscow, 1916). B.V. Nikolsky described the emotional world of Fetov’s lyrics this way: “All the integrity and enthusiasm of his swift mind was most clearly reflected precisely in the cult of beauty”; “a cheerful hymn of an artist-pantheist, unshakably closed in his vocation (believing in the divine essence, the animation of nature. - A.R.) to the graceful delight and enlightenment of the spirit in the midst of a beautiful world - this is what Fet’s poetry is in its philosophical content”; but at the same time, the background of Fet’s joy is suffering as an unchanging law of existence: “The trembling fullness of being, delight and inspiration - this is what suffering is comprehended by, this is where the artist and the person are reconciled” (Nikolsky B.V. The main elements of Fet’s lyrics. S. 48, 52, 41).

The first critics wrote about this, but they knew only Fet’s early poetry. So, V.P. Botkin noted: “But we also forgot to point out the special character of Mr. Fet’s works: they contain a sound that had not been heard before in Russian poetry - this is the sound of a bright festive feeling of life” (Botkin V.P. Poems by A.A. Feta (1857) // Library of Russian criticism / Criticism of the 50s of the 19th century. M., 2003. P. 332).

This assessment of Fetov’s poetry is very inaccurate and largely incorrect. To some extent, Fet begins to look the same as in the perception of D.I. Pisarev and other radical critics, but only with a plus sign. First of all, in Fet’s view, happiness is “mad,” that is, impossible and perceptible only by a madman; This interpretation is definitely romantic. Indicative, for example, is a poem that begins like this: “How rich I am in crazy verses!..” (1887). The lines look ultra-romantic: “And the sounds are the same and the same fragrances, / And I feel that my head is on fire, / And I whisper crazy desires, / And I whisper crazy words!..” (“Yesterday I walked through the illuminated hall...”, 1858 ).

D.D. Blagoy pointed out that “...the epithet “mad” is one of the most frequently repeated in his love poems: crazy love, crazy dream, crazy dreams, crazy desires, crazy happiness, crazy days, crazy words, crazy poems” (Blagoy D .D. The world as beauty (About “Evening Lights” by A. Fet) // Fet A.A. Evening Lights. M., 1979. P. 608).

As S.G. writes Bocharov about the poem “He wished for my madness, who combined / This rose’s curls (curls. - A.R.), and sparkles, and dew...” (1887), “aesthetic extremism of such a degree and such quality (“The Crazy Whim of a Singer” ),<…>rooted in historical despair" (Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian literature. M., 1999. P. 326).

Fet could have drawn the idea of ​​“madness” as the true state of an inspired poet from the ancient tradition. Plato's dialogue Ion says: "All are good<…>poets lay down their<…>poems not thanks to art, but only in a state of inspiration and obsession<…>they create these beautiful chants in a frenzy; they are mastered by harmony and rhythm, and they become<…>obsessed.<…>A poet can create only when he becomes inspired and frantic and there is no longer any reason in him; and while a person has this gift, he is not able to create and prophesy.<…>...For this reason, God takes away their reason and makes them his servants, divine broadcasters and prophets, so that we, listening to them, know that it is not they, devoid of reason, who speak such precious words, but God himself speaks and through them gives us his voice" (533e-534d, trans. Ya.M. Borovsky) (Plato. Works: In 3 volumes / Under the general editorship of A.F. Losev and V.F. Asmus. M., 1968. Vol. 1 . pp. 138-139). This idea is also found in other ancient Greek philosophers, for example in Democritus. However, in the romantic era, the motif of poetic madness sounded with new and greater force - already in belles-lettres, and Fet could not help but perceive it outside of this new romantic aura.

The cult of beauty and love is a protective screen not only from the grimaces of history, but also from the horror of life and non-existence. B.Ya. The Bukhshtab noted: "<…>The major tone of Fet's poetry, the joyful feeling and theme of enjoying life that predominates in it do not at all indicate an optimistic worldview. Behind the “beautiful” poetry is a deeply pessimistic worldview. It is not for nothing that Fet was fascinated by the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer (Arthur Schopenhauer, German thinker, 1788-1860, whose main work “The World as Will and Idea” was translated by Fet. - A. R.). Life is sad, art is joyful - this is Fet’s usual thought" (Bukhshtab B.Ya. Fet // History of Russian Literature. M.; Leningrad, 1956. T. 8. Literature of the sixties. Part 2. P. 254).

The opposition is not at all alien to Feta’s lyrics, the antithesis of boring everyday life and the higher world - dreams, beauty, love: “But the color of inspiration / Is sad among everyday thorns” (“Like midges I dawn...”, 1844). The earthly, material world and the heavenly, eternal, spiritual world are contrastingly divided: “I understood those tears, I understood those torments, / Where the word goes numb, where sounds reign, / Where you hear not a song, but the soul of the singer, / Where the spirit leaves an unnecessary body "("I saw your milky, baby hair...", 1884). Contrasted with each other are the happy sky and the sad earth (“The stars pray, twinkle and blush…”, 1883), the earthly, the carnal – and the spiritual (“I understood those tears, I understood those torments, / Where the word is numb, where sounds reign, / Where you hear not a song, but the soul of the singer, / Where the spirit leaves an unnecessary body" - "I saw your milky, baby hair...", 1884).

Glimpses of the highest ideal are visible, for example, in the beautiful eyes of a girl: “And the secrets of the heavenly ether / They are visible in the living azure” (“She”, 1889).

Fet repeatedly declares his commitment to the romantic dual world: “Where is happiness? Not here, in a wretched environment, / But there it is, like smoke. / Behind it! behind it! on the airy road - / And we’ll fly away into eternity!” (“May Night”, 1870 (?)); “My spirit, oh night! Like a fallen seraphim (seraphim is an angelic “rank” - A.R.), / Recognized a kinship with the imperishable life of the stars” (“How tender are you, silver night...”, 1865). The purpose of a dream is “towards the invisible, to the unknown” (“Winged dreams rose in swarms…”, 1889). The poet is a messenger of the higher world: “I am with a speech that is not here, I am with a message from paradise,” and a beautiful woman is a revelation of an unearthly existence: “<…>a young soul looks into my eyes, / I stand, enveloped in another life”; this moment of bliss is “not earthly”, this meeting is contrasted with “everyday thunderstorms” (“In the suffering of bliss I stand before you...”, 1882).

The earthly world with its anxieties is a dream, the lyrical “I” is directed towards the eternal:

Dream
Awakening
The darkness is melting.
Like in spring
Above me
The heights are bright.

Inevitably,
Passionately, tenderly
Hope
Easily
With the splash of wings
Fly in –

Into the world of aspirations
Obeisances
And prayers...

("Quasi una fantasia", 1889)

More examples: “Give, let / Me rush / With you to a distant light” (“Dreams and Shadows...”, 1859); “To this miraculous song / So the stubborn world is subjugated; / Let the heart, full of torment, / The hour of separation triumph, / And when the sounds fade away - / Suddenly burst!” ("To Chopin", 1882).

The poet is like a demigod; At first, Fet gives the poet the advice “But don’t be a deity of thought,” but then he instructs:

But if on the wings of pride
You dare to know, like God,
Don’t bring shrines into the world
Your worries and worries.

Pari, all-seeing and all-powerful,
And from unsullied heights
Good and evil are like grave dust,
Will disappear into the crowds of people

("Good and Evil", 1884)

Thus, the daring demigod is opposed to the “crowd” and the earthly world itself, subject to the distinction of good and evil; he is above this difference, like God.

An ultra-romantic interpretation of the purpose of poetry is expressed in the speech of the Muse:

Cherishing captivating dreams in reality,
By your divine power
I call for high pleasure
And to human happiness.

("Muse", 1887)

Dreams, “daydreams” are higher than low reality, the power of poetry is sacred and called “divine”.

Of course, this is “a stable literary device that marks (marks, endows. - A.R.) the figure of the poet<…>signs of divine inspiration, involvement in heavenly mysteries", is characteristic of the ancient tradition, and has been found in Russian poetry since the first third of the 18th century" (Peskov A.M. "Russian idea" and "Russian soul": Essays on Russian historiosophy. M., 2007. P. 10). However, it is precisely in the romantic era that it receives a special resonance due to its serious philosophical and aesthetic justification.

Characteristic as a reflection of Fet's romantic ideas are statements in letters and articles. Here is one of them: “Whoever unfolds my poems will see a man with dull eyes, with crazy words and foam on his lips, running over stones and thorns in tattered clothes” (Ya.P. Polonsky, quote given in Fet’s letter to K.R. dated June 22, 1888).

And here’s another: “Whoever is not able to throw himself from the seventh floor headfirst, with an unshakable belief that he will soar through the air, is not a lyricist” (“On the Poems of F. Tyutchev,” 1859). However, this scandalous statement is adjacent to the remark that the poet should also have the opposite quality - “the greatest caution (the greatest sense of proportion).”

Romantic disdain for the crowd that does not understand true poetry is evident in the preface to the fourth issue of the collection “Evening Lights”: “A man who does not curtain his illuminated windows in the evening gives access to all the indifferent, and perhaps hostile, gazes from the street; but it was It would be unfair to conclude that he illuminates the rooms not for his friends, but in anticipation of the gaze of the crowd. After the touching and highly significant sympathy of friends for the fiftieth anniversary of our muse, it is obviously impossible for us to complain about their indifference. As for the mass of readers, establishing the so-called popularity, then this mass is absolutely right in sharing mutual indifference with us. We have nothing to look for from each other." The confession, couched in romantic categories, to a friend of I.P. is also indicative. Borisov (letter dated April 22, 1849) about his behavior as a catastrophe for a romantic - about “the rape of idealism into a vulgar life.” Or such ultra-romantic remarks: "<…>People don’t need my literature, and I don’t need fools" (letter to N.N. Strakhov, November 1877); "we care little about the verdict of the majority, confident that out of a thousand people who do not understand the matter, it is impossible to create even one expert "; "It would be insulting to me if the majority knew and understood my poems" (letter to V.I. Stein dated October 12, 1887).

I.N. Sukhikh notes about these statements: “In theoretical statements and nakedly programmatic poetic texts, Fet shares the romantic idea of ​​​​an artist obsessed with inspiration, far from practical life, serving the god of beauty and imbued with the spirit of music” (Sukhikh I.N. Shenshin and Fet: life and poems, p. 51). But these motives, contrary to the researcher’s assertion, permeate Fet’s poetic work itself.

Fet’s romantic ideas have a philosophical basis: “The philosophical root of Fet’s grain is deep. “I sing not a song of love to you, / But to your beloved beauty” (Hereinafter the poem “Only I will meet your smile...” (1873 (?)) is quoted. - A.R.). These two lines are immersed in the centuries-old history of philosophical idealism, Platonic in the broad sense, in a tradition that has deeply penetrated Christian philosophy. The separation of an enduring essence and a transitory phenomenon is a constant figure in Fet’s poetry. They are separated - beauty as such and its appearance, manifestation - beauty and beauty, beauty and art: “Beauty doesn’t even need songs.” But in the same way, the eternal fire in the chest is separated from life and death” (Bocharov S.G. Plots of Russian Literature. M., 1999. pp. 330-331).
To those given by S.G. You can add the following lines to Bocharov’s quotes: “It is impossible in front of eternal beauty / Not to sing, not to praise, not to pray” (“She came, and everything around melts…”, 1866) and a statement from a letter to Count L.N. Tolstoy on October 19, 1862: “Eh, Lev Nikolaevich, try, if possible, to open a window into the world of art. There is paradise, there the possibilities of things are ideals.” But, on the other hand, Fet also has a motive for the ephemerality of beauty, at least in its earthly manifestation: “This leaf, which withered and fell, / Burns with eternal gold in song” (“To Poets”, 1890) - just a word the poet gives eternal existence to things; Also indicative is the poem about the fragility of beauty - “Butterfly” (1884): “With one airy outline / I am so sweet”; “For how long, without a goal, without effort / I want to breathe.” The same are the clouds “...impossibly, undoubtedly / Permeated with golden fire, / With the sunset instantly / The smoke of the bright palaces melts away” (“Today is your day of enlightenment...”, 1887). Moreover, not only a butterfly, which appeared in the world for a brief moment, or an air cloud, are ephemeral, but also the stars, usually associated with eternity: “Why did all the stars become / A motionless string / And, admiring each other, / Do not fly to one another? / / Spark to spark furrow / Sometimes it will rush by, / But know that it will not live long: / That is a shooting star" ("Stars", 1842). The beauty of a woman is “aerial” (ephemeral), mobile and involved in time, not eternity: “How difficult it is to repeat the living beauty / of Your airy outlines; / Where do I have the strength to grab them on the fly / Amidst continuous fluctuations” (1888).

In a letter to V.S. To Solovyov on July 26, 1889, Fet expressed thoughts about spirituality and beauty, far from their Platonic understanding: “I understand the word spiritual in the sense not of an intelligible, but of a vital experiential nature, and, of course, in its visible expression, physicality there will be beauty that changes its face with a change in character. The handsome drunken Silenus is not like Hercules' Doris. Take this body away from spirituality, and you will not outline it in any way." Apparently, it is impossible to strictly connect Fet’s understanding of beauty with one specific philosophical tradition. As noted by V.S. Fedin, “Fet’s poems indeed provide very fertile material for heated debates on a wide variety of issues, where a successful selection of quotes makes it easy to defend opposing opinions.” The reason is “in the flexibility and richness of his nature” (Fedina V.S. A.A. Fet (Shenshin): Materials for characterization. P. 60).

V.Ya. wrote long ago about the Platonic idealistic basis of Fetov’s poetry. Bryusov: “Fet’s thought distinguished between the world of phenomena and the world of essences<…>. He said about the first that it is “only a dream, only a fleeting dream”, that it is “instant ice”, under which there is a “bottomless ocean” of death. He personified the second in the image of the “sun of the world.” He branded that human life, which is completely immersed in a “fleeting dream” and does not look for anything else, with the name “market”, “bazaar”<…>But Fet did not consider us hopelessly locked in the world of phenomena, in this “blue prison,” as he once said. He believed that for us there are exits to freedom, there are clearings... He found such clearings in ecstasy, in supersensible intuition, in inspiration. He himself talks about moments when “he somehow strangely begins to see clearly” (Bryusov V.Ya. Distant and Close. M., 1912. P. 20-21).

In poetry, the same interpretation of Fetov’s work was expressed by another symbolist poet, V.I. Ivanov:

Secret of the Night, gentle Tyutchev,
The spirit is voluptuous and rebellious,
Whose wonderful light is so magical;
And gasping Fet
Before hopeless eternity,
In the wilderness there is a snow-white lily of the valley,
Under the landslide there is a blossoming flower;
And a spirit seer, across the boundless
A poet yearning for love -
Vladimir Soloviev; there are three of them,
In the earthly those who have seen the unearthly
And those who showed us the way.
Like their native constellation
Should I not be remembered as a saint?
("Roman Diary of 1944. October. 3", 1944).

(In the poem, Fet is called “choking” because he suffered from asthma.)

In general, the impact of Fetov’s poetry on the work of the Symbolists - neo-romantics is indicative: “In Russian literature of the 1880s, there are definitely layers that are objectively close to the “new art” of the next decade and that attracted the attention of the Symbolists, who<…>can be united by the concept of "pre-symbolism". These are the lyrics of the Fet school<…>"(Mints Z.G. Selected works: In 3 books.<Кн. 2>. Poetics of Russian symbolism: Blok and Russian symbolism. St. Petersburg, 2004. P. 163).. Back in 1914 V.M. Zhirmunsky built a succession line: “German romantics - V.A. Zhukovsky - F.I. Tyutchev - Fet - poet and philosopher V.S. Solovyov - symbolists” (see: Zhirmunsky V.M. German romanticism and modern mysticism / Preface .and commentary by A.G. Astvatsaturov. St. Petersburg, 1996. P. 205, note 61; cf.: Bukhshtab B.Ya. Fet // History of Russian literature. M.; Leningrad, 1956. T. 8. Literature of the sixties, part 2, p. 260).

Ultimately, the solution to the question of the degree of philosophicalness of Fet's poetry and of Fet's closeness to the Platonic dual world, so significant for the romantics, depends largely on the position of the researcher, whether to interpret Fet's poetic concepts of "eternity" and "eternal beauty" as a kind of philosophical categories reflecting the author’s worldview, or to see in them only conventional images inspired by tradition. Despite the similarity of the poetics of V.A. Zhukovsky and Fet, in general we can agree with the statement of D.D. Blagogo: “In the ideal world of Fet’s lyrics, in contrast to Zhukovsky, there is nothing mystical and otherworldly. The eternal object of art, Fet believes, is beauty. But this beauty is not “news” from some otherworldly world, it is not a subjective embellishment, aesthetic poeticization reality - it is inherent in itself" (Blagoy D.D. The World as Beauty (About "Evening Lights" by A. Fet). P. 550-560).

As for the opinion about the absence of tragedy and romantic discord in Fetov’s poetry, it is relatively fair - but with very significant reservations - only for the lyrics of the 1940-1850s. We can agree with this statement: “In the second period of creativity (1870s), the image of the lyrical hero changes. The life-affirming dominant in his mood disappears, the disharmony between ideal beauty and the earthly “crazy” world is acutely felt.”<…>"(Buslakova T.P. Russian literature of the 19th century: Educational minimum for applicants. M., 2005. P. 239. But the opinion of T.P. Buslakova is that "in the 1880s again, on a new basis, the harmonic the worldview of the lyrical hero Fet" (Ibid. p. 241) seems unfounded: in all four collections of "Evening Lights" (1883-1891) published during the poet's lifetime, there are tragic and even completely hopeless poems. Only one example is a poem from the 1880s years - a response to the celebration of the anniversary (!) of Fet's poetic activity, to the solemn honoring: "We are being buried. On this day / No one will approach with blasphemy / Everyone with favorable praise / A silent shadow will see off" ("On the fiftieth anniversary of the muse", 1888). But For strict conclusions, statistical calculations of key words endowed with such meanings or shades of meaning as “joy”, “optimism” and, conversely, “sorrow”, “grief”, “despair”, “pessimism” are necessary.

Fet's romantic self-awareness was fueled by the situation - the readers' rejection of him, the sharp rejection by most of society of the poet's conservative views. N.N. Strakhov wrote to Count L.N. Tolstoy: Fet “explained to me both then and the next day that he felt completely alone with his thoughts about the ugliness of the entire course of our lives” (letter of 1879).

Finally, it is not at all necessary to look for signs of romanticism only in the sphere of ideas and/or motives. Fet’s poetic style, with its emphasis on metaphorical and semi-metaphorical shades of meaning and on melodically sounding words, is akin to the style of such an author, traditionally classified as a romantic, as V.A. Zhukovsky.

And one last thing. The very concept of “romanticism” and the idea of ​​the “standard” of a romantic poem are very conditional. According to the American cultural historian A. Lovejoy, romanticism is one of the “isms that are fraught with misunderstandings and often vague definitions (so that some want to completely erase them from the dictionary of both philosophers and historians)”, which “are designations of complexes, not something then whole<…>"(Lovejoy A. The Great Chain of Being: The History of an Idea / Translated from English by V. Sofronova-Antomoni. M., 2001. P. 11).

So, the same V.A. Zhukovsky, usually classified as a romantic, can also be understood as a sentimentalist (see: Veselovsky A.N. V.A. Zhukovsky. Poetry of feeling and “heartfelt imagination” / Scientific ed., preface, translations by A.E. Makhov. M., 1999), and as a pre-romanticist (see: Vatsuro V.E. Lyrics of Pushkin’s era: “Elegiac School”. St. Petersburg, 1994). And yet, if we do not refuse to use the term “romanticism,” it is hardly justified to deny the romantic foundations and nature of the poetics of the author of “Evening Lights.”