Afanasy Fet - Legacy

Legacy

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet is regarded as the greatest lyric poet of Russia. His verses were highly esteemed by the Belinsky, who ranked him on par with the Mikhail Lermontov. Fet's lyrical poetry, extremely sensual and melancholic, were imbued with tints of sadness and tragedy. "Such lyrical insight into the very core of the Spring and human emotion risen by it was hitherto unknown in Russian poetry", wrote critic Vasily Botkin in 1843. Osip Mandelstam considered him to be the greatest Russian poet of all time. Fet had a profound influence on the Russian Symbolists, especially Innokenty Annensky and Alexander Blok, who declared Fet his "great teacher". Fet's poetry greatly influenced Sergey Yesenin and Boris Pasternak. Tchaikovsky wrote:

Fet is an exceptional phenomenon. There is no use to compare him to other first class poets, or try and seek for common streaks with Pushkin, Lermontov, Al. Tolstoy or Tyutchev... For, in his best moments, Fet leaves poetry boundaries altogether and ventures boldly into our field. That is why, when I think of Fet, often Beethoven comes to mind... Like Beethoven, he has this power to touch those strings of our soul which would be out of reach for artists, no matter how strong, who rely on words only. Rather than just a poet, he is a musician-poet.

Professor Pavel Kudryavtsev argued that the poet had "his very special way of producing verse, the latter having been driven not necessarily by rational thought”, but by melody. “It is of musical nature and... is being realized musically, straight into melody", the critic wrote. With his poetry, "quite unique in terms of aesthetics", Fet has proven that "that the self-sufficient spring of real verse won't ever dry out, not even in the less favourable times", Kudryvtsev wrote.

Yet Fet was never a popular poet during his lifetime. Critic Vasily Botkin remarked that while in the 1860s reviewers generally lauded Fet's poetry, "the general public looked at these praises with incredulity, refusing to see any virtues in Fet's poetry. In other words, he's success is but literary and we think the reason lies in the very nature of his talent", Botkin concluded. Others thought it was Fet's unwillingness to change. "The reason was in his being totally foreign to the spirit of times. Unlike Nekrasov, who expressed this spirit perfectly, always going with the flow, Fet never did, refusing to 're-tune his lyre’s strings', wrote Soviet scholar Dmitry Blagoy.