The Poetics of Afanasy Fet

Copyright © 2002 by Emily Klenin

This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents.
Contents

Acknowledgments ....................................................................................... XI

A note on transliteration and names ..........................................................XIII

Preface ............................................................................................................1
Notes to the Preface ...................................................................................4

1 Afanasy Fet and his poetry ....................................................................5

1.1 Introduction..........................................................................................5
1.2 Fet’s education and the aesthetics of objectivity..................................9
1.2.1 Childhood, and Fet’s early reading and writing .........................10
1.2.2 Formal schooling ........................................................................12
1.2.3 What Fet took away from Werro................................................13
1.2.4 Poetry-writing in Werro .............................................................15
1.2.5 Schoolmates and later connections.............................................16
1.2.6 To Moscow.................................................................................16
1.2.7 Elective affinities: Fet and German literature in Moscow ..........17
1.2.8 “Diana”.......................................................................................22
1.3 Emotion, memory, and the photograph..............................................28
1.3.1 Fet’s evocation of consciousness, memory, and sense of time...29
1.3.2 “Leaning back in the armchair” and experiential metonymy .....32
1.3.3 Trauma and memory in Fet ........................................................34
1.3.4 Fet’s prose poetics and the nature of memory retrieval..............35
1.3.5 Photography in Fet’s prose .........................................................37
1.4 Pluralities of consciousness in the Fetian text....................................39
1.4.1 Two poems and their common autograph ..................................39
1.4.2 Dating Fet’s acquaintance with the works of Schopenhauer ......43
1.4.3 Epigraph and autograph..............................................................45
1.4.4 The Central Star: Fet, astronomy, and Professor Mädler ...........47
1.5 Fet and the sciences of mind ..............................................................52
1.5.1 What can Fet have known about psychiatry? .............................52
1.5.2 Fet’s experience of psychiatric pathology ..................................55
1.5.3 Fet’s psychology and his contemporaries...................................57
VIII

1.6 A preliminary note on chronology and periodization ........................58

Notes to Chapter One...............................................................................61

2 Seeing and knowing in Fet ................................................................101

2.1 Introduction......................................................................................101
2.2 Representing objects: women, icons, and substantives....................103
2.2.1 Three women and two paintings...............................................108
2.2.2 Alien raptures: Fet’s evasion of personality .............................116
2.2.3 Visual perception and Fet’s poetry of things ............................117
2.2.4 From motion to emotion in Fet’s poetry and poetics................123
2.2.5 Fet’s noun poems......................................................................128
2.3 Fet’s early hellenism and his poetics of architecture .......................136
2.3.1 From the Greek Anthology to Russian anthological poetry .....138
2.3.2 Sculptural thematics and Fet’s elegiac distich..........................139
2.3.3 Fet’s anthological poetry in the context of his oeuvre..............140
2.3.4 Two hellenizing poems.............................................................142
2.3.5 The senses and the imagination in Fet’s anthological poetry ...148
2.3.6 Fet’s doors and windows ..........................................................154
2.4 Representing subjects: observers, secrecy, and the idle spy ............158
2.4.1 The poetry of self-deception.....................................................167
2.4.2 Play and mindplay ....................................................................171
Notes to Chapter Two ............................................................................176

3 Verse form and language in Fet’s shorter poems ..............................190

3.1 Introduction: the cultural evolution of form.....................................190
3.2 Meter and rhythm.............................................................................203
3.2.1 Translating rhythm: From “Auf dem See” to “Последняя
любовь” ............................................................................................203
3.2.2 Russian meter and Fet’s meters ................................................212
3.2.3 Fet’s repertory of meters...........................................................221
3.2.4 Polymetric compositions ..........................................................237
3.2.5 Fet’s canon of short original verse ...........................................239
3.2.6 Chronology in Fet’s metrical repertory ....................................240
3.2.7 Fet’s use of metrical rhythm.....................................................250
3.2.8 Meter and rhythm: conclusions ................................................261
3.3 Rhyme and its absence .....................................................................262
3.4 Stanzaic structure and graphic form.................................................281
3.5 Some notes on vocabulary, syntax, closure, and emotion................307
3.5.1 Vocabulary: adjectival usage across time.................................307
3.5.2 Poetic form and little words......................................................313
Notes to Chapter Three ..........................................................................331
 IX

Postface ......................................................................................................353
Note to the Postface ...............................................................................356

Abbreviations .............................................................................................357

Sources .......................................................................................................359

Index of personal names .............................................................................386

Index of poems ...........................................................................................396

List of tables and charts ..............................................................................410

Acknowledgments

I would not have dreamed of writing this book without my husband, Dean
Worth. I mean this literally. He has known longer than I have that I would
write it, he has lived with it for years, and at every stage in its long gestation
he has encouraged and criticized. He has read the manuscript, in pieces and
in its entirety, and corrected lots. His faith in my project, and in my ability to
complete it, has been at times greater than mine, and his confidence has
helped the book and its author through some rough spots.
Nor have I lacked for less homey assistance. Many people and institu-
tions gave technical help. I do not know all their names, but I wish to thank
at least some of them, while apologizing to the others.
I am indebted to the UCLA Academic Senate, the UCLA Center for
European and Russian Studies, the Kennan Institute, the University of Vech-
ta, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for funding my research and
presentation of it at conferences. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft has
also funded publication of this book.
Many of the texts I write about were entered into computers for me by
Elise Niiler, Karen Robblee, and Stephen Weissman. Andrea Lanoux and
Sara Haraszti-Duarte imposed order on my filing cabinets.
My work was assisted by many librarians and archivists, most notably at
UCLA, Tartu University, the University of Illinois, the Library of Congress,
the Võru Regional Museum, the Dr. F. R. Kreutzwald Museum, the Ar-
chives of the Moravian Church (Herrnhut and Bethlehem), the Deutsche
Bücherei, the Estonian Academy of Sciences (Baltic Section), the Estonian
Historical Archive, the Estonian Literary Museum, the Estonian National
Museum, the Estonian Pedagogical Museum, the Frick Museum, and the
New York Public Library. In addition to locating archival materials at their
own institutions and obtaining materials from others, professional staff also
lent me books and materials from their personal archives, guided me through
cemeteries, deciphered spidery handwritings, introduced me and my work to
colleagues, and opened museums and archives at night and on holidays. I am
especially grateful for help from Claire Q. Bellanti, Leon Ferder, Edward
Kasinec, Ivi Laatsit, Rait Laatsit, E. Hampton Morgan, Paul Peucker, Lea
Raichmann, Donald Sloane, Maimu Telk, Theresa Tickle, Siiri Toomik, and
Esther von Ungern-Sternberg. Tiina Kikerpill’s pedagogical expertise en-
abled me to learn enough Estonian to read the scholarly works that came my
way in that language. I wish to thank Deborah Lefkowitz for professional
XII Acknowledgments

advice on photography. Marjorie Klenin gave me expert technical assistance

and boundless nontechnical support.
Madli Puhvel told me about modern Võru and translated for me part of a
history of the town. I am especially grateful to her and to Jaan Puhvel for
their kindness and hospitality in welcoming me into their home and to Esto-
nia. I also wish to thank Henning Andersen, Joachim Baer, Milica Banjanin,
Otto Dreydoppel, Jr., Erik Egeberg, Maurice Friedberg, Michael Heim, Vya-
cheslav Ivanov, Joachim Klein, Vladimir Markov, Vernon Nelson, Temira
Pachmuss, Rudolf Růžička, Marianne Shapiro, Veronica Shenshin, Tatyana
Skulacheva, Marina Tarlinskaya, and Romy Taylor, who variously sent me
offprints and references, commented on papers, lent me books, found mate-
rials, and informed me about ornithology, psalm translations, syntax, and
related matters. Omry and Irena Ronen have offered me their separate and
collective wisdom on many subjects, and I am especially indebted to Omry
Ronen for advice about the astral Fet. S. I. Gindin and A. K. Zholkovsky
read part of the book in its preliminary form and offered helpful comments
and suggestions. Eva Lilja and Barry Scherr read the entire manuscript and
offered helpful comments.
M. L. Gasparov read the manuscript and offered advice on, especially,
the situation of Fet’s verse form in the larger Russian context. I have learned
much from many people while writing this book, but it has been perhaps my
greatest privilege to draw on Mikhail Leonovich’s apparently inexhaustible
knowledge, methodological rigor, and inspiring approach to scholarly in-
quiry. He has been more than generous with his time and expertise, and his
kind help and encouragement have left me deeply grateful.
A. L. Ospovat read early versions of parts of the book, and then the
whole thing, and his erudite generosity – with references, with his personal
library, and with archival material – made it richer, and better documented,
than I could otherwise have hoped. He was a rare exemplar of collegiality,
kindness, and professionalism.
I am indebted especially to two of the editors of the series Bausteine zur
Slavischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte, Peter Thiergen and Roland
Marti. Their erudition and kind attention to detail greatly improved the book
in its final stages. Without Roland Marti’s generous interest in my work, and
his energetic and thoughtful editorial shepherding, my manuscript would
never have become a book.
One of the nice things about this project is that it has afforded me a
chance to get to know new things and new colleagues, and to renew and
deepen my acquaintance with others. If I had been able to make full use of
all the help so many people so generously gave me, this book would be
much better. The faults that remain are my own responsibility, and I thank
all who have tried to help there be fewer of them.
A note on transliteration and names

Russian poems and quotations from other Russian-language sources are in

Cyrillic, but I have transliterated bibliographic references to make uniform
alphabetization easier. Russian names in non-Russian contexts are also nor-
mally transliterated. The transliteration system used is a modified version of
the Library of Congress system, but when I quote already transliterated ma-
terial, I retain the system used in my source. I have sometimes simplified the
spelling of Russian names, for example Afanasy instead of Afanasii, and in
one or two instances I use a conventional Western form of a name when its
Slavic equivalent seemed to me to sound odd in the context of an English-
language exposition. Thus, the well-known encyclopaedia appears as the
“Brockhaus-Efron” encyclopaedia, not “Brokgauz-Efron”, while the name
of J. E. Purkinje (which appears in English in the term “Purkinje shift”) is
only parenthetically offered in its native Czech form (Purkyně). Names ap-
pear in the list of sources in their native dress (for example “Brokgauz-
Efron”), and notes mediate between the two usages.
Preface

In 1971, I happened on a then-new book of poems written, mostly, in the

1880s and 90s, and I found them deeply moving and beautiful. Their poetic
form interested me, and yet no amount of analysis seemed to offer a key to
explaining why they were, and are, so haunting. The poems were by Af-
anasy Fet, in Russian.1 I am not a native speaker of Russian (although I
learned my first Russian poems in childhood), and I am sure that poetry is
read differently by native and non-native readers. Yet these poems had an
immediacy for me that few others have had. My reading of them was only
made more satisfying by my recognition in them of experiences of poems I
had encountered before, not only in Russian but also – and in some ways
even more – in English and in French, both of which Fet knew but not inti-
mately and had relatively little connection with.2 I learned later how impor-
tant German literature was for him. It was not, at the time, important for me.
I have been reading the poems, and reading about them, ever since, and I
have been trying to answer a single question about them: how do they evoke
the responses they do, and have done, in generations of readers? The book
you have before you is my answer to that question. It will not tell you every-
thing you may wish to know about Fet or his poems. It is not a balanced
study of life and work. It examines selected aspects of his poetry, and back-
ground information I thought useful is mostly relegated to notes. The bibli-
ography at the end lists sources I have found helpful in studying Fet. It will
give you a fair idea of my approach, which I hope you will find congenial.
Within the limited scope of my work, an ancillary concern of mine has
been to discover how Fet’s poetry came to be the kind of poetry it is – for it
is, among other things, extremely diverse even while remaining within a
range in some ways narrow, it changes a great deal over time, although the
unity of Fet’s poetics is unmistakable, and, the better I came to know it, the
more was I convinced that reading it was somehow a different experience
from reading most Russian poetry I knew. It is these qualities in Fet’s po-
etry, or in my reading of it, that I came to explore most persistently, and, in
exploring them, I came to learn something about Fet’s personal background.
If there are writers whose parentage and education are irrelevant to their
work, Fet is not among them. In Chapter One we shall discuss Fet’s early
life in some detail. There, too, we take a first look at his poetry.
My tastes and interests have naturally affected what it occurred to me to
try to find out about Fet, and I have chosen what to write in response to my
sense of what I have learned about him that has not been known before. His
2 Preface

bilingualism, for example, I think is important, and his German early ed-
ucation, and these things are not widely appreciated. Also, the way his po-
etry changed over time has been only sketchily described, so I write about
that – although without exhausting the topic. I have found it helpful to
ground my understanding of Fet’s poetry in a detailed and fairly, although
not entirely, comprehensive analysis of its form, which has not been so thor-
oughly studied as many other poets’. In addition, since there has been I think
undue neglect of poems outside the canon that Fet created at the end of his
life, I base everything I say on a study of both all his original poetry and also
quite a few translations, which I compare with their source texts and, in one
case, with some other translations. A fairly detailed analysis of meter in
Fet’s poetry is presented in Chapter Three, where I also discuss, less system-
atically, other aspects of his verse form. I have also included some topics I
think are wrongly neglected, for example the length of Fet’s poems and their
graphic presentation, as well as which poems went together in which books.
I have often turned aside from comprehensive analysis of a broad topic to
look in more detail at some narrower one that seemed to me amenable to the
methods that I happen to know how to use and that are, I hope, illuminating
of Fet’s poetics. This is why the book contains a rather big section on little
words – words that are meaningful largely insofar as they articulate the
shapes of the poems they appear in. The results that emerge from my analy-
sis of the forms I have chosen suggest that a comprehensive overview of the
language and composition of Fet’s poetry should take into account some
things that have not yet been well studied, not only for Fet but also, so far as
I know, in general. I hope my analysis will be of use for a fuller and more
systematic description in the future, and may also suggest some new ways in
which the study of verse form and language may both be usefully enriched
by and, in turn, enrich our broader understanding of poetry in its biographi-
cal and social context.
It turns out that the history of verse form in Fet’s poetry is in part also the
history of his assimilation into the Russian poetic tradition. It is also the his-
tory of Fet’s poems not only as he wrote them but also as others, especially
his editors, read them and situated them in a literary culture that on the
whole they participated in more fully than he did. This social aspect to Fet’s
oeuvre has attracted little notice. Perhaps so few people have looked for it
because Fet’s poetics have nothing social about them. They are founded on
the primacy of the individual’s experiencing of the sensible world. This is
what I discuss in Chapter Two.
Chapter Two presents one aspect of Fet’s treatment of the senses: the
visuality characteristic of many, but not all, of his poems. I reluctantly turn
aside from other aspects of Fet’s work, many of equal interest. I do this in
some cases because these other topics are already well-treated, and I have
Preface 3

little to add. Some have never been discussed and require separate treatment,
longer than would fit naturally into the form the book has in the end chosen
for itself. And some are too hard for me. Fet’s renowned musicality tends for
a non-native reader, for me, to become, on one hand, metaphorical (as in
part it was for Fet), and, on the other hand, to lack the full range of associa-
tions that the sound of Fet’s poetry has for native readers. The reader will
find scattered throughout the book some reference to the sound of Fet’s po-
etry, and to his thematics of aural and other kinds of sensory experience, but
more should, someday, be said. Even though visuality in Fet’s poetry has
been well treated – notably by Richard Gustafson and M. L. Gasparov – it
still offers unexplored material for a study of Fet’s poetics. Scholars often
divide Fet’s poems between “rational” and “irrational” lines, and since vi-
sion is traditionally considered the sense closest to ratiocination, Fet’s visu-
ally oriented poetry has been treated, notably by B. Ia. Bukhshtab, as pre-
dominantly “rational”. As I try to show in Chapter Two, however, Fet, better
than many people of his day, understood the limits of the association be-
tween rational thought and vision. Even his most clearly “descriptive” verse
is poetry not so much for the eye as for the imagination. Psychologists con-
tinually come back to the study of vision both because it is well explored
and because there is so much that is still mysterious. This is also true of
visuality in Fet.
In this book, then, we shall start from a swift glance at what sort of po-
etry we are talking about and an attempt to contextualize the poetry in the
early life of the future poet. Then, in Chapter Two, we discuss selected as-
pects of Fet’s poetry that I think are especially important. We look at a few
texts in detail and trace some relationships among them. Finally, in Chapter
Three, we turn to an overview of all of Fet’s original poetry, and many of his
translations as well. We shall even there pause occasionally to examine a
single text more fully, but our focus will be on seeing the broad outlines of
Fet’s style and its changes, and we shall look individually at some of the
essential elements of his verse practice. Usually, technical description of
verse tends to come first, to be followed by analysis of non-versificational
aspects of a poem’s meaning and structure. My reason for doing the reverse
is that I think that the significance of Fet’s technical usage is opaque unless
we look at it with some understanding of his cultural background and of his
poetics in a broader, less technical sense. It is in Fet’s exploitation of poetic
and verse form, however, that we can see most explicit the artistic impor-
tance of his early life and of his experience of Russian literary culture.
4 Preface

Notes to the Preface

1
The book that so captivated me in 1971 was FET (1971), which I found in a book-
store (now gone) in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.
2
Fet published translations from French and English, but they are neither numerous
nor distinguished. His knowledge of both languages was criticized by contemporaries.
Turgenev complained of Fet’s inability to participate in French conversation in Paris in
1856 (TURGENEV 1961-68:3:42-43), although the problem was probably not only strictly
linguistic. An attack on Fet’s translation of Shakespeare hastened his withdrawal from
literary life (MIKHALOVSKII 1859). Both French and English were taught at the boarding
school Fet attended from 1835 through 1837. Fet mentions his French classes, and
correctly reports the name of the French teacher. He does not mention English lessons,
but his English teacher was Ferdinand Hultsch, whose main competence was in science
and mathematics (see Chapter One, note 78). Hultsch was a native speaker of German,
not English, who had, however, spent eight years in England (EISENSCHMIDT 1860:20-
21).
1 Afanasy Fet and his poetry

1.1 Introduction

Afanasy Fet was in the non-poetic world sometimes but not always known
as Afanasy Afanasyevich Shenshin.1 The nature of his oeuvre – the best of
which is short lyric poems in Russian – accounts for its being relatively little
appreciated outside his homeland, but it is surprising that, more than a cen-
tury after his death, and in spite of his unquestionable stature as one of Rus-
sia’s greatest poets, still, there is no complete collection of his works and no
full-scale biography of him.2, 3 During his lifetime, Fet’s poetry was less
widely appreciated than it deserved, and the identity of the man who wrote it
– more than ordinarily obscure. This is still true and always will be.4
Fet’s poems are numerous – excluding translations, there are over eight
hundred, dating from the mid- or latter-1830s (Fet was born in 1820), to
1892, the year he died – and most of them are short:5 most often just a dozen
lines, many poems a little more, others less.6 He wrote some longer poems
also, but I will have little to say about them. I will have occasion to refer in
passing to other things he wrote: his sometimes lengthy essays, some fiction,
a little unfinished drama,7 and his often rambling letters. I shall refer often,
in this chapter, to his memoirs.8 Their main interest for us is what the poet
chooses to report about his early childhood, and they are an invaluable re-
cord of how Fet presented himself in his last years. They are not transpar-
ently informative.9 Finally, of special interest to our enterprise – which is to
characterize the poetics represented in Fet’s shorter poems – are Fet’s many
verse translations.10 Some are very long, and their total volume far exceeds
that of his original verse. The translations are important because they are the
synapse across which Fet’s experience of non-Russian literatures was trans-
mitted to his Russian poetic world. Fet claimed to have been a translator
before he was an original poet, and his translations are an integral, albeit
special and in some ways especially experimental part of his poetic oeuvre.
He translated extensively from Latin (he won the Pushkin Prize on the basis
of those translations, and he was working on Latin translations at his death),
but it is his translations from his native German into his equally native Rus-
sian that will be most important for us: we shall see that it is German poetry
that he started from, even though he wrote scarcely any German verse.11
But Fet’s short original poems in Russian are what is essential in his life
work, and their size is a quality essential to them. It corresponds to, among
other things, the poet’s attitude toward language: words fail, knowledge
6 Chapter One

comes in other ways. Critics in the early twentieth century wrote especially
memorably about Fet’s attitude toward language,12 but its peculiarity was
recognized much earlier: Fet remembers I. S. Turgenev saying he expected
Fet eventually to write a poem the last stanza of which would consist en-
tirely of wordless lip movements.13 Fet’s attitude cannot fail to recall Tiu-
tchev’s exhortation to silence, but Tiutchev’s rhetoric only distantly illu-
minates Fet’s poetic practice. Fet’s poetry would be interesting, even if it
lacked all its other distinctions, for its play of language against anti-lang-
uage: language made into an object that represents, enables, and sometimes
propagandizes escape from language into a world of pure beauty.
The good fit between his poems’ size and his poetics is, however, charac-
teristic only of the later Fet. We learn in Chapter Three that his early poems
were not especially short, and they were not short enough for his mid-nine-
teenth-century editors. The editors, in the poet’s phrase, “amputated” the
endings of a number of his poems.14 The reasons for this are several, and the
consequences both significant and much discussed. Fet complains about how
one well-known poem nearly lost its ending on grounds of internal inconsis-
tency. “And yet,” the poet sighs, “it was seemingly easy to understand…”
Evidently not. The fact that such a knowledgeable editor as Turgenev could
chop off poems’ endings, and that a parodist could turn a Fet poem into an
“anti-Fet” poem that reads just as sensibly as the original, and differs only in
having the lines in reverse order:15 these things suggest that Fet was not al-
ways successful in convincing contemporary readers that his poetic forms
carried worthy meanings. The self-assuredness of the editors who sought to
help Fet clarify his thoughts has also given readers pause.
The clarity and meaningfulness of Fet’s poetry have always been con-
troversial. Some contemporaries who admired his work believed he was
careless in both word choice and use of meter.16 Modern admirers, too, have
sometimes conceded that his imagery is vague, his language imprecise.17
Some modern critics, however, have found it necessary to explain the alien
nineteenth-century mindset that found his work unclear,18 and Fet has even
been seen as a craftsman-poet whose work suffers from excessive, fili-
grain,19 refinement – a clarity greater than is justified by its semantic weight-
lessness. Others, in contrast, find meaning obtrusive in Fet’s poetry, unpo-
etic, bound up with ordinary things: they note a characteristic infiltration
into his poetic diction of the prose that ruled his age,20 while for yet others,
his reputed indifference to detail, what has been called his “German lack of
style” has been read as a sign of the freedom of spirit with which his poetry
is endowed.21 It is natural for different readers to have different readings,
and different evaluations, but I think that in Fet’s case sometimes the critics
have been thinking about different texts.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 7

One of the points that will recur in the details of Chapter Three is this: if
you want to read the poetry that Fet published in his lifetime in a form that
corresponds adequately to that in which he published it, you really should
read the original, now rare, editions. Even among Fet’s contemporaries,
most knew one or more of his earlier books and never saw the last ones, or
else they read the last books and thought the earlier ones superseded. Even
Fet himself thought that, until a few years before he died. Modern readers
are much worse off, since they usually are confronted with the products of
editorial practices that strongly favor homogenization and disfavor idio-
syncrasy. This is not to say that the modern editions of Fet’s work are bad. I
discuss some of them in Chapter Three, and clearly the best of them are ex-
cellent. But the complicated history of Fet’s texts, the complicated role of
Fet’s many distinguished but hardly self-effacing editors, the changes in
Fet’s own habits of mind, expectations, and attitudes toward his potential
readership: all these things make each of Fet’s books a little world of its
own, with its own norms and its own freedoms. Although Fet published
most of his poetry first in periodicals if he had the chance, he always re-
viewed his work when a new book was being prepared, and he at least par-
ticipated in decisions about how his work was being presented. Modern
norms are different and in all recent editions have been imposed on all Fet’s
poems that happen to be published between the same two covers – and now
without Fet’s acquiescence. Some consequences of this are discussed in
Chapter Three, where we see that the graphics of Fet’s publications are, on
one hand, meaningful, and, on the other, often ignored in modern editions.
As for the general problems of clarity and meaningfulness in Fet’s po-
etry, I think we shall find that his language, although probably clear enough,
is also probably no clearer than it has to be to create the impression the poet
had in mind. The early Fet, especially, was no seeker after le mot juste, and
when we turn to the formal development of Fet’s poetry, in Chapter Three,
and of his vocabulary and syntax, it will become apparent that his use of
words became in some ways more precise, albeit no less poetic, over time.
Beside this development may be set an increasing conservatism in meter and
rhyme. In his late correspondence he warns against experiments too much
against the grain of native tradition,22 and in his memoirs he goes so far as to
disclaim any memory for formal metrics.23 As for his practice, he usually
was not the first to try a new fashion, even if, once he had, it became identi-
fied with him.24 Yet, as we shall see, his usage was always a little out of
synch with its time, and it was constantly changing, not only in form but also
in its orientation. In his early poetry Fet can be seen enjoying and even
flaunting his German literary grounding, not only in his maiden volume but
also in the next one, apparently encouraged by his first known editor, Apol-
lon Grigor’ev.25 The next edition was Russified and updated – polished up,
8 Chapter One

as Turgenev would have it, for nice Russian ladies. A third Fet had scarcely
any poetic existence at all: he retreated to the countryside, scandalized his
colleagues and was eventually forgotten. And then the old Fet dusted off the
first two Fets. The old man’s was a poetry of reminiscence, in which he gave
himself a second chance at creating the poetry he had aspired to in his youth.
It had the vocabulary of the forties, the polish of the fifties, – and power be-
yond any he had shown before.
We have mentioned the freedoms he Клянитe нaс: нaм дoрoгa свoбoдa,
took in his poetry. It is a delicate И буйствуeт нe рaзум в нaс, a крoвь,
question, one of politics as well as В нaс вoпиeт всeсильнaя прирoдa,
poetics. Politically engaged con- И прoслaвлять мы будeм вeк любoвь.
temporaries attacked him because of В примeр сeбe пeвцoв вeсeнниx стaвим:
his opinions about Russian society, Кaкoй вoстoрг – тaк гoвoрить умeть!
but also because his poetry was, as Кaк мы живeм, тaк мы пoeм и слaвим,26
they saw it, so utterly self-indulgent, И тaк живeм, чтo нaм нeльзя нe пeть!
lacking in any political conscious-
ness at all.27 In the poet’s eyes, this lack of political involvement, and his
self-indulgence, derive from the individualism and separateness that are pre-
requisite to creative work.28 In Fet’s poetry, the word свобода appears
twenty-three times. It occurs from his first book onward, with a frequency
that grows until, in his last poems, it is more than twice as common as it was
in his earliest ones. Throughout that time, the poet used the word freedom to
mean exactly freedom of spirit, freedom of will. What he called Fate or Di-
vine Providence was for him the only delimiter.29 The tension between that
delimiter and willful defiance of it became a recurrent theme of his work,
associated especially in the end with his notion of poetic craft.
Embarking on a study of Fet’s poetry, we inevitably encounter the notion
of art for art’s sake, an aesthetic often attributed to Fet, with good cause.30
Yet it sometimes suggests a trivial attachment to form that was not charac-
teristic of him. The mature Fet did not cultivate form instead of content,
whatever that may be agreed to mean with respect to a lyric poem, and his
exploitation of verse form is rarely ostentatious. As for content, Fet’s view
of it was that the content of a poem is whatever it is, most particularly emo-
tion, that the poem leaves as an impression (впечатление) in the mind of its
reader – just as, Fet wrote, Chopin’s piano music has a content whose abun-
dance in no way suffers from the absence of words.31 Mental impression
supersedes the cause or occasion that evokes it. This orientation toward the
impression made by a work on the mind of a person experiencing it entailed
on Fet’s part, and I believe correspondingly on the part of any later analyst
who will avoid deforming his work, a holistic approach to the composition
and structure of his poems,32 and consideration of their affect. The meaning
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 9

of a work is the impression it makes. So then affect (he says) is what poems
are about. Including, we must think, his own.

1.2 Fet’s education and the aesthetics of objectivity

Я рaд, кoгдa с зeмнoгo лoнa, An essential problem in Fet’s poetics was

Вeсeннeй жaждe сoприсущ, how to give expression – form, quite lit-
К oгрaдe кaмeннoй бaлкoнa erally – to meanings not easily captured in
С утрa кудрявый лeзeт плющ. discrete lexical units. The way Fet gave
И рядoм, куст рoднoй смущaя, form to meanings having to do with emotion
И силясь и бoясь лeтaть, and mood was often by associating affect
Сeмья пичужeк мoлoдaя with sense perception: he embeds reference
Зoвeт зaбoтливую мaть. to affective states in contexts rich in percep-
Нe шeвeлюсь, нe бeспoкoю. tual vocabulary.33 His writings on aesthetics
Уж нe зaвидую ль тeбe? show that this was a deliberate technique.34
Вoт, вoт oнa здeсь, пoд рукoю, Constructive perceptual process engages the
Пищит нa кaмeннoм стoлбe. reader, whose involvement becomes at once
cognitive and affective. That perception
Я рaд: oнa нe oтличaeт
Мeня oт кaмня нa свeту, should thus evoke affect is even today a
Трeпeщeт крыльями, пoрxaeт somewhat mysterious fact of human psy-
И лoвит мoшeк нa лeту. chology, but a fact it is.35 We shall see in
Chapter Two that in Fet’s poetry there is
constant interplay between a more or less concrete object world and the dis-
embodied mind of an observer who endows it with perceived sentient life.
This is one source of Fet’s use of personification, for which he is well
known. Personification in Fet is sometimes associated with his innately
sympathetic response to nature, even with what has been characterised as
pantheism. Most often, however, the higher consciousness of some observer,
usually a figure of the poet, is the locus of perception of the textual world.
That world may include non-humans who also see the human observer, but
they lack his powers of recognition: in one poem, for example, he is indis-
tinguishable from a stone.36
Many of Fet’s poems, from the beginning to the end of his career, are en-
dowed with a presence so strong as to approximate physical weight and vol-
ume. The orientation toward material things that Fet took to be essential for
his poetry was evident from the start. His friend Ia. P. Polonskii recalls him
saying in their university days:
K чему искать сюжета для стихов; сюжеты эти на каждом шагу, – брось на стул
женское платье или погляди на двуx вoрoн, кoтoрыe усeлись нa зaбoрe, вoт тeбe
37
и сюжeты.
10 Chapter One

Polonskii’s memoir dates from half a century after the events he is describ-
ing, but his words are corroborated not only by the poetry itself and in Fet’s
essays but also, much more explicitly, in early critical response, in particular
an 1850 essay by Apollon Grigor’ev, in which Grigor’ev insists on this very
quality, which he calls Fet’s objectivity.38
Fet’s objectivity, as understood by Grigor’ev, is kin to the objective cor-
relative, familiar to anglophones from the writings of T. S. Eliot39 but more
germane to Fet in its apparently original context: the 1832 lectures of the
American artist and writer Washington Allston, who was a friend of Col-
eridge.40 René Wellek’s tracing of Eliot’s usage back to Allston brings us,
indirectly, to the historical context for Grigor’ev’s characterization of Fet’s
technique: German idealism and romanticism. Allston’s Lectures on Art
have been called “the only treatise on art in English during the Romantic
period which is based on the German idealist philosophy pervading the Ro-
mantic movement”,41 while Fet was early and lastingly the heir of romanti-
cism. He entered literary life at a period of reaction against romanticism’s
most luxuriant excesses, however, and some important characteristics of
romantic poetry, in particular the Byronic hero, have no place in his work.42
The value Fet placed on solitude, moreover, was different from Byronic
aloneness, and derives from a different notion of what it meant to be an indi-
vidual.43 When we consider where Fet can have gotten his sense of that, we
would be remiss in not taking into account his childhood circumstances and
his education.

1.2.1 Childhood, and Fet’s early reading and writing

Fet lived the first fourteen years of his life in the Mtsensk countryside, but
his mother was German, newly arrived in Russia at the age of twenty-two,
only shortly before he was born.44 According to every memory that Fet
writes about, he was from earliest childhood bilingual between Russian and
German. He quotes occasional German speech in his reminiscences of his
early years,45 for example, and says he not only learned to read German ear-
lier than Russian, but also for some years read it more easily. It was his
mother, according to Fet’s memoirs, who took charge of teaching him to
read German, while he began to read Russian, at the age of six or seven, un-
der the tutelage of a family cook.46 When he finally advanced beyond his
abc’s in Russian, he dived into a handwritten collection of poetry kept by a
neighbor,47 and he found that he memorized poems easily. Encouraged by a
fond uncle, who offered to pay him for it, Fet started by memorizing a size-
able piece of Raich’s translation of Jerusalem Delivered, which he then gave
up in favor of Pushkin: he learned by heart first The Prisoner of the Cauca-
sus and then The Fountain of Bakhchisarai.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 11

Fet’s early language skills were differentiated not only according to lan-
guage, but also by a disconnection between reading ability and writing.48 In
those days, a child of the Russian rural gentry could encounter a number of
kinds of handwriting, each with its own sociocultural associations,49 and Fet
reports that the adults in his life had differing opinions about what kind of
penmanship should be taught and when. He tells us, too, about the handwrit-
ing used in the manuscript he learned poetry from, about the enviable pen-
manship of his second cousins, and how the steward on the family estate
made particularly interesting use of commas.50 Paterfamilias Afanasy Neofi-
tovich Shenshin, according to Fet, believed that children should be taught to
write only relatively late, and that correct Russian writing entailed keeping
to an elaborate style. Even if Fet’s mother had been willing to teach him to
write Russian, it is unlikely she could have met her husband’s exacting and
apparently somewhat idiosyncratic standards, while there is no evidence that
the cook who taught the boy his first letters could write. The child’s first
presumably qualified teacher – a local seminarian – was hired when Fet was
about eight or nine,51 but neither this first teacher nor any of the others who
succeeded him in the Shenshin household stayed long enough or was tal-
ented enough to leave much of an impression.52 Fet did eventually learn to
write in Russian, of course, but his writing remained eccentric, in ways that
may perhaps be partly archaic: he often ran together words that contempo-
raries generally separated (his lines of verse are sometimes written with
spaces marking only breath groups), and his punctuation was the despair of
his editors.53 In his memoirs, Fet describes his first poetic creation in terms
that bring together all the complexity of childhood bilingualism and the gap
between his reading and writing: the first poem he remembers composing
was a Russian translation of a ten-line German children’s verse that he had
read for himself (he gives both the German text and his Russian version,
naming the German source),54 and he recalls memorizing his translation and
then running to his mother to write it down for him, since he could not do it
himself. Fet’s memoirs are not reliable when it comes to the outward facts of
this world, but they say a lot about Fet. At the very least, they tell us things
that he wanted people to believe about him: in this instance, that his first
active response to poetry was to translate it, that it was German poetry that
he read and Russian poetry that he created, before he knew how to write it
down. I see little reason to call these things untrue, and even less to think Fet
did not believe them.
The boy Fet remembers himself to have been experienced language idio-
syncratically. This may be connected with the unusual growth of other facul-
ties, in particular an unusually keen visual awareness: the poet remembers
himself enthralled with visual art from his earliest childhood, and he de-
scribes in detail a reproduction treasured by his mother, a Raphael Holy
12 Chapter One

Family.55 This claim to early visual awareness is important: much of his po-
etry is visual in orientation, an important part of his oeuvre is descriptive
poetry, and Fet’s ability to revisit visual perceptions at will, and to create
highly detailed imagery without any immediate external stimulation, is an
essential prerequisite for the objectivity that Grigor’ev claims for him. The
vividness of Fet’s visual imagination and, apparently, visual memory recalls
the extraordinary visual imagination cultivated by ancient rhetoricians, who
created elaborate mnemonic systems of ordered imagery.56 The ancients, of
course, could not create or call upon written notes nearly as easily as we do,
and it was partly for this reason that their memories had to be, and were,
capacious. We may wonder whether not being able to write in Russian may
not in similar fashion have encouraged, in his crucial childhood years, the
poet’s talent for remembering both verse and pictures. He claimed he could
never remember much of anything else. The complementarity of visu-
alization and aide-mémoire in Fet’s experience is suggested also by his hav-
ing composed practically no poetry in German, the language he learned first
to read and write, and the language in which he obtained his most substantial
formal education.57

1.2.2 Formal schooling

Around the time of Fet’s fourteenth birthday, A. N. Shenshin began to look

for a boarding school for him.58 One consideration had to have been this: he
knew that the boy, whom he had attempted to register as his son, was soon to
be legally and perforce declared the son of Fet’s mother’s first husband, a
German. This meant that Fet was a German national,59 albeit one born into a
Russian family and Russian cultural tradition, the bearer of a distinctly Rus-
sian first name and patronymic and baptized into Russian Orthodoxy. His
last name would not be Shenshin, he would not be heir to the Shenshin es-
tate. Although the family evidently hoped to provide him an inheritance
through other means,60 an appropriate education would be even more impor-
tant than if his family background had been simpler and his prospects better.
His mother’s family, too, seems to have interested itself in his education.61
From a well-connected neighbor (P. P. Novosil’tsev), A. N. Shenshin ob-
tained useful introductions first in Moscow and then in St. Petersburg, where
he was sent for advice to V. A. Zhukovskii. Zhukovskii sent him to J. Chr.
Moier, who in 1834 (the year of Shenshin’s inquiries) had just become rector
of Dorpat University.62 Evidently, by the time of his meeting with Moier in
Dorpat (Tartu), A. N. Shenshin had decided to prepare Fet for admission to
the university there. Although founded in the seventeenth century by the
Swedes, it had been by Fet’s day re-founded as a Russian university of Ger-
man tradition and norms,63 with German professors and German as the lan-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 13

guage of instruction – the only German university in the Russian empire.64

For a young man who would presumably spend his life as a German in Rus-
sia, the best conceivable foundation would be an education at Dorpat, and it
would presumably have been as preparation for entering Dorpat University
that Moier recommended a school in Werro (now Võru), a town some 69
kilometers south and a little east of Dorpat, not far from modern Estonia’s
Russian border. There were of course schools in Dorpat that would have
prepared Fet academically, but his family background was unusual (and
about to become even more unusual), while his academic preparation had
been in some ways quite odd. The school in Werro was a good choice partly
because it was a little outside the mould of official secondary schools, and,
while its academic program was excellent, the teachers were equally con-
cerned with the socialization of their charges and with their moral upbring-
ing.65 It had been founded only some two years before by Heinrich Caspar
Krümmer (1796-1873), a German pastor trained by the Unity of Brethren –
the so-called Herrnhuter movement, or, in the English-speaking world, Mo-
ravians.66 Alexander I had encouraged members of the Unity of Brethren to
come work in Russia, but the group’s standing there was something of a per-
sonal quirk of the tsar’s.67 Krümmer had come to Dorpat in 1825, in the
hope of getting a position in the school system there. He did not, but stayed
on as a private tutor.68 He applied for permission to start a school in Dor-
pat,69 and when this petition, too, was rejected, he moved on to smaller
towns in the region, eventually to establish his school in Werro.70 Krümmer
enjoyed the respect of the university faculty, and his pupils were successful
in gaining admission to Dorpat University.71
Had the complications of Fet’s family background no other significance,
they would still be important because they profoundly affected his educa-
tion. Much has been written about the “mystery” of Fet’s birth and about the
trauma inflicted on him when he learned that he would not, henceforth, be
for the world the person he had always taken for granted he was.72 Fet was at
school in Werro when he got the news,73 and his stay there had probably
been planned for him as the best environment in which he could become his
new self. He apparently accomplished that task with a thoroughness that
appalled even his friends in later life, perhaps most of all Apollon Grigor’ev,
who knew him from within a year of his leaving the Krümmer school.74 Fet
has harsh comments about all his other educational experiences,75 but his
memories of the school in Werro are approving and deeply grateful.76

1.2.3 What Fet took away from Werro

It was at the Krümmer school that Fet acquired virtually all the Latin on
which he afterward so prided himself,77 and he seems to have acquired a
14 Chapter One

solid background in science,78 as well as practical skills that were to be use-

ful for the rest of his life.79 Fet was usually the only Russian in his classes,
and Russian was taught, not well, only as a foreign language.80 Fet says he
did badly at it, because he could not bring himself to speak Russian for long
with his peers.81 They, according to other sources, typically hated studying
the language.82 German literature, however, was taught by a recent graduate
of the Weimar gymnasium and Jena university, and his curriculum was es-
pecially strong on Goethe and Schiller.83 It is likely that when Fet returned
to Moscow in 1838, he had already completed at least some of the transla-
tions that appeared in his first book, published in the autumn of 1840.84
Nearly a quarter of it consists of translations. Out of the thirteen translations,
six are of poems by Goethe, three others by Schiller, and two each are by
Horace and Lamartine.The Lamartine translations are Fet’s only known in-
cursions into Lamartine’s oeuvre, and he studied French the whole time he
was in Werro but never afterward. His classroom acquaintance with Goethe
and Schiller can be dated similarly. Since Fet seems to have begun in pre-
school childhood a life-long habit of translating his non-Russian reading into
Russian, it would seem likely that he composed translations in Werro –
along with the original poetry he was then just beginning to experiment with.
Fet says it was at school in Werro that he began, secretly, discovered only by
Krümmer, to try to write original poetry in Russian.85
Fet says he never knew how Krümmer discovered his attempts at writing
poetry, but it is evident that he found Krümmer’s response encouraging:
Krümmer said nothing to Fet directly, but occasionally teased him, letting
him know that he knew. Fet took it as a sign of confidence. His depiction of
the headmaster confirms other reports of Krümmer’s ability to encourage
and educate his pupils without being overbearing, and the portrait that
emerges from the testimonies about him, including Fet’s, suggests that he
must have been important to Fet’s development in his teenage years.86 A
man of remarkable calm and public self-possession, Krümmer worked inces-
santly and efficiently toward his goals, even in the most hostile circum-
stances. Perhaps unexpectedly in that context, the central point made in a
lengthy obituary of him was that the education Krümmer gave his pupils was
an education in self-discipline, self-abnegation, – and spiritual freedom:87
Nirgends drängte sich [Krümmer] mit seiner Person vor… Und doch war sein Auge
überall … In seltener Weise einte sich in ihm – und dies ist der Schlüssel für das
Geheimnis seiner Erfolge – Sinn für Zucht und für Freiheit. Lehrer wie Schüler hat er
ebenso zu binden, wie frei zu lassen gewusst.
The writer of the obituary emphasizes that Krümmer’s pupils in later life
were distinguished by their devotion to freedom of spirit, even when they
undertook careers in public service, as many of them did. Fet’s kind of devo-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 15

tion to freedom was unusual among the former pupils, but it can usefully be
seen in the context of a shared spiritual education.

1.2.4 Poetry-writing in Werro

Fet’s schoolboy experimentation with Russian verse was not only an extra-
curricular activity but also an activity removed from his public experience of
language: there was at the school hardly anyone except himself with whom
he communicated in Russian, and few who could have shared his love for
Russian poetry.88 He may well have been aware, however, that he was not
the only person at the school writing verse. Leaving aside the fact that one of
Krümmer’s close friends in Werro (and the school doctor) was Dr. Fr. R.
Kreutzwald (1803-1882), a founding father of Estonian national poetry, cer-
tainly the boys at the school are known to have engaged in this universal
pastime of young people everywhere. We even know about some of the re-
sults. One classmate, three years younger than Fet but in the same class, was
Jegór von Sivers (1823-1879), who later achieved prominence in his roles as
Baltic German landowner, collector of American flora and fauna, and, even-
tually, professor of agriculture at the Riga Polytechnicum. He also wrote
prolifically, in German.89 A biographer of von Sivers points out that his
school poetry was the fruit of the shared interest and activities of several
boys (she mentions in particular Carl von Stern), and a group of them after-
ward published some of their work in a collective volume.90 Some of von
Sivers’s early poetry is similar to the young Fet’s,91 in compositional tech-
niques, in habits of rhyme, and in some metrical tendencies. The similarities
derive from German usage, mainly Goethe’s. In Chapter Three I will argue
that when Fet began to publish his poetry, in the 1840s, he did not fully ap-
preciate the differences separating German from Russian norms and tastes.
At least some of his Germanisms were probably deliberate experiments,
which he must have hoped would meet with better understanding than they
did. We shall see that in meter, rhyme, and stanzaic organization Fet moves
rapidly away, in the 1850s, from his early, German-influenced, practices.
Yet they established Fet’s starting point, he constantly renewed his ties with
German literature through translation, and his early technical usage served as
a reminiscential device in the poetry of his last years. In some instances, a
technique that came to him naturally because of his German background
came to be perceived as personal idiosyncrasy, or was integrated into the
mainstream of Russian versificational practice. And although Russian must
over the years have become increasingly dominant in Fet’s language use,92
his bone-deep understanding of German literature remained with him all his
life.
16 Chapter One

1.2.5 Schoolmates and later connections

Some later traces of Fet’s school life are to be discovered in his continuing
relationships with classmates. Peter von Maydell, with whom he shared a
desk at school, was also in the army with him. As a doctor, von Maydell
treated A. N. Shenshin, and it was he who first offered Fet medical advice
about the treatment of his mentally ill sister Nadezhda.93 In later years, too,
Fet and von Maydell evidently held each other in high regard.94 On a more
literary note, Jegór von Sivers, inspired by K. A. Varnhagen von Ense,95
sought to acquaint German readers with the works of Germans in the Rus-
sian Empire, and in a “literary pocketbook of Germans in Russia”96 he in-
cluded one of the first German translations, perhaps the very first, of a poem
by Fet (“Люди спят: мой друг, пойдем в тенистый сад…”, a poem first
published 1854).97, 98 To judge by von Sivers’s including him in the volume,
Fet was apparently, for von Sivers, a bilingual German poet who wrote in
Russian. I will suggest in Chapter Three that it was only with the appearance
of Fet’s third collection of poetry, in 1856, that his usage becomes clearly
incompatible with such an evaluation. It was in the most literal sense accu-
rate during the time that Fet wrote not only his first book, but even about
half the poems in his second one.99 In his note to the translation of the Fet
poem, von Sivers refers to that second collection, published in 1850, but not
to the one that appeared in 1856.

1.2.6 To Moscow

Fet tells us that his educational aspirations were defeated when, in late De-
cember 1837, A. N. Shenshin removed him to Moscow and, in February,
enrolled him in M. P. Pogodin’s pension.100 There he was to prepare for en-
trance to Moscow University. Fet describes himself as taken completely by
surprise at this development, he does not say what motivated Shenshin’s
removing him from Krümmer’s school, and no one else seems to have won-
dered. A. N. Shenshin has generally been treated by scholars as a dark and
mysterious figure, whose ways can be assumed to have lacked rhyme or rea-
son. In this case, though, his actions were perfectly sensible, if he knew, as
he may well have, about administrative changes, and the threat of further
changes, that nullified any earlier intention of giving Fet a German univer-
sity education at Dorpat. In 1833, S. S. Uvarov had replaced Carl von Lieven
as the Minister for Education, and he took a special interest in the border
regions of the Russian Empire, including the Baltic. In 1836 and 1837 a se-
ries of official measures began to be taken, according to which Dorpat Uni-
versity was to be more clearly subordinated to the Ministry of Education and
the Russian Church Consistory: it lost its former autonomy in its appoint-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 17

ment of professors, admission of students, and other aspects of its admin-

istration, including the language of instruction and requirements bearing on
knowledge of Russian language and on religious institutions. Some of the
most radical orders were intended to be secret, but they soon became known.
Although they were not entirely enforceable, their effect was chilling. In ad-
dition, and at the same time as Russian-language education was being more
and more heavily promoted, new decrees were also establishing the Evan-
gelical Lutheran Church as the official Protestant church of the Russian Em-
pire. The privileges of the Unity of Brethren were further constrained, and
their educational and pastoral activities were viewed with increasing suspi-
cion, eventually amounting to near hysteria. Because the Krümmer school in
Werro had been founded and was staffed by members of the Unity of Breth-
ren it was by 1839 branded in St. Petersburg a “hotbed of mysticism”.101
Perhaps most important, it offered practically no teaching in Russian. Within
a few years, graduates began to fail admission to the university because of
the inadequacy of their Russian, the school could not find competent Rus-
sian teachers, several of the best teachers in other areas left.102 The number
of students continued for the moment to remain high, but they were drawn
from different strata of society, and some classes were no longer offered.103
Although Krümmer continued to be headmaster until 1849, and the school
itself survived until 1866,104 the ultimate fate of the school was guaranteed
by the end of 1837. A well-connected Russian family that learned of the de-
velopments at that time would have been wise to abandon any plan to make
an end-run around the Russian educational establishment. The Shenshins
were well connected. The same Novosil’tsev who had earlier sent Shenshin
to St. Petersburg and eventually to Zhukovskii now sent him to M. P. Po-
godin, and Pogodin advised him to send the boy to Pogodin’s own pension –
and why not?105 Fet seems to have been better educated than anyone else in
the establishment and his family was paying no less money.106 Sending Fet
to Moscow, to Pogodin, was good strategy. Fet says he learned little from
formal lessons at Pogodin’s school, but his acquaintance there with I. I.
Vvedenskii left a lasting impression on him – and, according to Fet, one so
strong at the time that it was one reason for A. N. Shenshin eventually mov-
ing him out of Pogodin’s household into Apollon Grigor’ev’s.107 When he
was admitted to Moscow University, Fet wrote Krümmer to let him know.108

1.2.7 Elective affinities: Fet and German literature in Moscow

In light of Fet’s background, it is unsurprising that he should have continued

his readings in German literature as a student in Moscow. He shared his pas-
sion for literature with Apollon Grigor’ev and other students, and it was fos-
tered also by S. P. Shevyrev, who was Fet’s professor. Shevyrev is credited
18 Chapter One

by Fet with influencing his reading more generally and introducing him to
Lermontov’s poetry as well as to Byron (Fet reports his enthusiasm for
Byron’s Cain).109 Shevyrev was a prominent figure in Goethe’s reception in
Russia.110 Goethe’s influence has been recognized in Fet’s work,111 but the
extent to which his adolescent education prepared him for a deep and life-
long appreciation of Goethe, and of German poetry and aesthetics generally,
has not been fully appreciated. Goethe’s appeal is a constant in Fet’s life: it
begins in Werro, is actively pursued in Fet’s early days in Moscow, and ends
only at his death.
Schiller, too, remained in Fet’s repertory throughout his life (his trans-
lation of Die Götter Griechenlands dates to 1878), although Schiller in Fet’s
later work is nearly always evoked in reminiscence, associated with youth.
Perhaps one reason was the relative brevity of Schiller’s life (1759-1805),
and the fact that Schiller’s work was correspondingly youthful. Schiller’s
political views would perhaps also have made him uncongenial to the later
Fet. In any event, Fet in his later writing makes it clear how important
Schiller was for him in his Moscow student days, and he mingles thoughts of
Schiller with recollections of his early days in Moscow, his friendship with
Grigor’ev, and his early hellenism. In his late essay “О поцелуе”, for exam-
ple, he quotes Grigor’ev’s translation of Schiller’s “Das Geheimnis der
Reminiszenz”, while, in the following passage, Fet looks back on the cul-
tural predilections of his university years:112
Пoмню, чтo oднaжды.. я встрeтил вeсьмa блaгooбрaзногo инoстрaнногo нeмeц-
когo грaфa, кoтoрый, вeрoятнo узнaв, чтo я гoвoрю пo-нeмeцки, нe взирaя нa
свoи пoчтeнные лeтa, пoдсeл кo мнe и с видимым удoвoльствиeм стaл нa чуж-
бинe гoвoрить o рoднoй литeрaтурe. Услыxaв мoи вoстoржeнныe oтзывы o
Шиллeрe, грaф скaзaл: ‘Впoлнe пoнимaю вaш вoстoрг, мoлoдoй чeлoвeк, нo
вспoмнитe мoи слoвa: придeт врeмя, кoгдa Шиллeр ужe нe будeт удoвлeтвoрять
вaс, и прeдмeтoм нeизмeнногo удивлeния и нaслaждeния стaнeт Гeтe’. Скoлькo
рaз пришлoсь мнe вспoминaть эти слoвa.
In those same university years, however, Fet’s interest in Goethe is well at-
tested. This is, for example, when he translated Hermann und Dorothea. The
choice was considered a mark of a rather special, and not typically Russian,
taste. As Apollon Grigor’ev puts it in a letter to a friend:113
Фет. Пишет, ленится, похабничает, переводит несносную «Герман и Доротея»,
которая только немцам может доставить наслаждение ...
The translation was not published until 1856,114 and by then both Fet’s
original poetry and his translational activities had taken other turns. Yet in
his memoirs, Fet looks back fondly on this early Goethe translation.
In Chapter Three, we examine the formal connections between Fet’s po-
etry and Goethe’s, but both Fet’s translations and his original poetry mani-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 19

fest a Goethean heritage not limited to verse form. The confluence of formal
and other aspects of Fet’s Goethean spirit during his student days is ex-
pressed with particular clarity in his hellenizing poetry, including, but not
restricted to, what he called anthological poems. This poetry is discussed in
some detail later, especially in Chapter Two. Much of it entered Fet’s canon
of mature work, and some was not even published until after Fet had left
Moscow for army service. One such poem is “Cон и Пазифая”, a lovely
erotic poem in elegiac distich. It was published only in 1851 but is a product
of Fet’s early years in Moscow – and its immediate inspiration was probably
not the Iliad, where Fet might have found the little episode, but rather a re-
view of Goethe’s Roman Elegies.115
Although Fet’s techniques, and even his poetics, of course changed, he
continued to return to Goethe. Fet in his later years often quotes from
Goethe in letters (we have no letters from his early years), he begins to be
interested in new parts of Goethe’s oeuvre, and his Goethe translations were
crowned in 1883 with his translation of both books of Faust.116 Moreover,
some of Goethe’s texts drew Fet back repeatedly. An example of Fet’s recur-
rent appeal to Goethean psychology is his turning several times to Goethe’s
“Auf dem See”, a text that has evoked comment for its psychological trajec-
tory. Fet takes lines from it as an epigraph in 1842 and then, in 1858 or
1859, translates it. In Chapter Three, I will argue that Fet’s interest in the
Goethe text has much later consequences in Fet’s original poetry.
More broadly, Fet’s psychologism, his tendency to end his poems in
turning away from the physical world to the world within, should be seen in
relation not only to the Russian tradition but also to the German one. It is
often seen as part of Fet’s debt to Heine. Fet added Heine to his repertory
while he was at the university, his Heine translations contributed greatly to
his early reputation, and modern work on Fet still emphasizes this connec-
tion of Fet’s with German literature. Yet Grigor’ev in 1850 says readers
should know that when Fet’s first book appeared, he was still unacquainted
with Heine.117 Too much is made of the Heine connection, says Grigor’ev,
while the influence of Goethe is unrecognized. In modern criticism, it is of-
ten noted that Fet, and the Russian public, misread Heine. They failed to
understand Heine’s wit and irony and were left with nothing except vague-
ness and inexplicit connections from one motif to another. According, how-
ever, to some,118 Heine’s German popularity after the 1837 re-publication of
Das Buch der Lieder was misguided in the same way – and this in turn sug-
gests that the German reading public, and after it the Russian one, was pre-
pared for exactly such a reading and for the kind of psychologism they
found. They read Heine in the way they knew how, and that must at least
partly have to do with the earlier literary tradition. In the construction of that
20 Chapter One

mind-set, and certainly of Fet’s psychologism, Goethe is of the first impor-

tance.
Fet was a more creative reader of poetry than of philosophy. In his phi-
losophical reading as in his reading of poetry, however, Fet’s German cul-
tural ties are evident, and they persisted throughout his life. The philosophi-
cal connections are in important ways less clearly defined than the literary
ones. Like the literary ones, they changed over time.
The classic work on Fet’s aesthetics deals nearly entirely with philo-
sophical views he made explicit in the writings of his later years, in no case
before 1859, while there is no comparable work on his earlier aesthetics.119
The obvious reason for this is that Fet’s early views on aesthetics are only
indirectly attested, through his poetry, through his later statements about
poetry and aesthetics, and through the writings of those, in particular
Grigor’ev, who can be taken to have best understood Fet’s work.120 One may
also expect that the aesthetics of the early and later Fet will largely coincide.
He was in his later years, by his own report and according to every other
evidence, profoundly retrospective, not only recollecting his youth with
pleasure but also returning in his late poetry to some of the habits he had
abandoned decades earlier. Yet there are important differences.
By the time Fet wrote his later essays and the letters in which he puts
forward his aesthetics, he was deeply involved in studying and translating
Schopenhauer. There is specific and convincing evidence of Schopen-
hauerian thought in Fet’s late poems and fiction, and even his life.121
Schopenhauer’s understanding of the conflict between consciousness and the
unconscious was obviously congenial to Fet, and in a later section of this
chapter we will discuss a text for which an understanding of some of
Schopenhauer’s writings is essential. It is natural, then, for discussion of
Fet’s aesthetics to have dwelt on his affinity for Schopenhauer’s ideas. Yet
Fet’s reading of Schopenhauer came significantly later than his earliest po-
etry. Although Schopenhauer’s magnum opus The World as Will and Repre-
sentation was begun in 1814, Fet, like nearly everyone else, came to know
the work well only in the 1860s.122 If, as Fet says and everyone else agrees,
he throughout his life held fast to what even in the 1850s were considered
his “antedeluvian ideas”,123 acquired before the end of the 1840s, then, if Fet
so welcomed Schopenhauer’s work, it must be that it served to clarify and
advance a way of thinking the basis of which had already been established.
In his student days, Fet reports special enthusiasm for Hegel (the de-
scription pertains most clearly to his situation in 1840),124 and he describes
watching his companions’ cheerful demonstrations of subjects battling ob-
jects.125 The interaction of subjective and objective worlds is, of course, at
the heart of Hegel’s psychology and therefore of his aesthetics:
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 21

We can distinguish…between a subjective and an objective ‘pathos’... Poets who in-

tend to move our personal feelings by touching scenes make special use of this [sub-
jective] kind of ‘pathos’. But however far in that case they may depict personal suf-
fering and fierce passion or an unreconciled inner discord of the soul, still the truly
human heart is less moved by this than by a ‘pathos’ in which something of objective
worth is developed at the same time… It does not matter how movingly the poet may
describe passion; this is no help; our hearts are only rent, and we turn away.126

In lyric… breadth of content… must look for its justification in the fact that it be-
comes alive in the poet’s subjective memory and gift for agile combination…What is
most completely lyrical… is a mood of the heart concentrated on a concrete situa-
tion.127
Fet’s was indeed a poetry of moods of the heart, concentrated on concrete
situations. In later years, Fet’s description of the Hegelianism of his erst-
while student friends is mocking, but he never denies its force. He does attri-
bute its excesses more to them than to himself. Thus, for example, in his late
narrative poem The Student, Fet distinguishes his activities from Apollon
Grigor’ev’s: Он долбил тетрадки / Да Гегеля читал; A я стихи / Кропал.
Indeed, as Fet recalls it, Grigor’ev so idolized Hegel that he kept a portrait of
him and was jokingly called Hegel by his uncle and even by his servant
Ivan, the latter usage an error induced by excessive alcohol consumption.128
Narrative in Fet’s memoirs so often glances off important things, into the
comic and grotesque, that comic treatment itself becomes diagnostic.129 Fet’s
prose rhetoric parodies the metonymy and occultatio of his verse. As for the
real Hegel, he gave the talks underlying his Lectures on Aesthetics during
the 1820s, but they were first published only posthumously, in 1835. It is
possible that Fet encountered the lectures at school; they would certainly
have fired the imagination of budding literati in Moscow four years later.
But Fet never says exactly what works of Hegel he read, or even if he him-
self read Hegel at all, as opposed to discussing Hegel, or helping his friends
get through the more hair-raising passages in German. No other philosopher
is mentioned in Fet’s recollection of his student years, and this by itself sug-
gests that, whereas Fet’s literary world was rich and differentiated, his
knowledge of philosophy was not. Not only Fet but also Grigor’ev refer to
Fet’s poetics being formed through his appreciation of, in particular, Goethe,
while Fet’s Hegelianism is vaguer, more something that was in the air.130
The difference between Fet’s response to Hegel on one hand and Schop-
enhauer on the other had as much to do with Fet’s personal situation when
he encountered the two philosophers as with the differences between
them.131 For Fet, The World as Will and Representation was the happy dis-
covery of a mature man with a career behind him – of a man, in fact, who
was widely believed to have given up writing poetry for good. He translated
Schopenhauer, to some extent, because he had the time to do so: he was not
22 Chapter One

writing much original poetry in those years. Hegel, in contrast, was an en-
thusiasm of Fet’s youth, when he was turning out one poem after the next in
an atmosphere of passionate discovery of the world of letters and ideas. In
his own later judgment, his self-consciousness was then just taking shape.
Although critics write about the opacity of the persona that Fet offers as
his earlier self, in fact his memoir of his early years is deeply concerned with
the growth of his self-awareness, in particular of his awareness of himself as
a poet. With respect to his years living with Apollon Grigor’ev, he writes:132
Oсуждaть всeгдa лeгкo, нo видeть и пoнимaть дaлeкo нe лeгкo. A тaк кaк дoм
Григoрьeвыx был истиннoю кoлыбeлью мoeгo умствeнногo я, тo пoзвoлю сeбe
oстaнoвиться нa нeкoтoрыx пoдрoбнoстяx в нaдeждe, чтo oни и мнe и читaтeлю
пoмoгут рaзъяснить пoлнoe мoe пeрeрoждeниe из бeссoзнaтeльногo в бoлee
сoзнaтeльнoe сущeствo.
Fet’s observations of rising self-consciousness are not only autobiographical
but also parceled out in representations of rising consciousness and self-
consciousness in his poems. In the context of Fet’s autobiography, these ob-
servations evoke Hegel metonymically: if we ask what of Hegel’s works Fet
and his friends can have been reading, we must certainly consider his phi-
losophy of mind.133 It is there, after all, that Hegel describes the ages of man
and the processes by which “the individual becomes somebody, an actual
presence”.134 If Fet remembered so gratefully the growth of his self-con-
sciousness during his years in the Grigor’ev household, this impeccably He-
gelian maturation may be linked not only to the general fact that young man-
hood is a natural time for such processes to occur but also to the more spe-
cific likelihood that Fet in those years was thinking about exactly those
processes in the context of the discussions about Hegel that he describes in
his memoirs: Fet’s memoirs are often structured metonymically, and it
would have been natural for him to link the subject matter of his philosophi-
cal discussions with the personal growth and the supportive environment of
the household he was living in at the time.135
Because of the younger Fet’s intellectual amorphousness (if we credit the
perception of the later Fet), Hegelian aesthetics were not so much something
he accepted or rejected as they were important in the philosophical context
that nourished his maturing personality and his early poetry, more narrowly
as Hegelian and more generally as a poetry informed by German idealism
and more broadly by romantic literature and thought.

1.2.8 “Diana”

An important trace of Hegelianism in Fet’s poetry is the quality of objectiv-

ity that Grigor’ev claims for it. Hegel’s aesthetics may also usefully serve as
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 23

a starting point for reading some of the poems that most clearly link the aes-
thetics of Fet’s lyric poetry with visual perception of the object world: this is
the descriptive poetry Fet wrote in the mid- to latter 1840s. One well-known
poem, “Diana” (1847), reads as if in answer to – but not illustration of – sec-
tions of Hegel’s lectures in which he compares aesthetic and non-aesthetic
response. Hegel writes:136
Spirit does not stop at the mere apprehension of the external world …; it makes it into
an object for its inner being which then is itself driven… to realize itself in things and
relates itself to them as desire. In this appetitive relation to the external world, man,
as a sensuous individual, confronts things as being individuals … Desire requires for
itself not merely the superficial appearance of external things, but the things them-
selves…With mere pictures…desire is not served…the person…caught up in the in-
dividual, restricted, and nugatory interests of his desire, is [not] free…Now this rela-
tion of desire is not the one in which man stands to the work of art. He leaves it free
as an object to exist on its own account; he relates himself to it without desire, as to
an object which is for the contemplative side of the spirit alone. Consequently the
work of art, though it has sensuous existence, does not require in this respect a sensu-
ously concrete being and a natural life; indeed it ought not to remain on this level,
seeing that it is meant to satisfy purely spiritual interests and exclude all desire from
itself. Hence it is true that practical desire rates organic and inorganic individual
things in nature, which can serve its purpose, higher than works of art which show
themselves useless to serve it and are enjoyable only by other forms of the spirit.

And even if art restricts itself to setting up pictures of passions for contemplation,
even if indeed it were to flatter them, still there is here already a power of mitigation,
since thereby a man is at least made aware of what otherwise he only immediately is.
For then the man contemplates his impulses and inclinations, and while previously
they carried him reflectionless away, he now sees them outside himself and already
begins to be free from them because they confront him as something objective. …Of
course we may often hear favourite phraseology about man’s duty to remain in im-
mediate unity with nature; but such unity, in its abstraction, is purely and simply
rudeness and ferocity, and by dissolving this unity for man, art lifts him with gentle
hands out of and above imprisonment in nature.
Fet’s neoclassical poems (we will discuss them more in Chapter Two) are
often studies in the relationship between aesthetic response and desire, and
among them are erotic poems with a power of sexual evocation far exceed-
ing that of his equally splendid but notably chaste love poetry.137 In one of
the neoclassical poems, however, Fet takes as his “object” a statue of the
goddess whose power is specifically not erotic but “virginal”, namely Diana,
presented as huntress and goddess of childbirth. “Diana” shows with special
brilliance how an aesthetic desire can be, even if not specifically sexual, no
less pathetic for the fictive observer in the text. Since the poem was one of
24 Chapter One

the most widely appreciated of all Fet’s poems in his own day, we use it as
an example here.

Диана
Бoгини дeвствeннoй oкруглыe чeрты
Вo всeм вeличии блeстящeй нaгoты
Я видeл мeж дeрeв нaд ясными вoдaми.
С прoдoлгoвaтыми, бeсцвeтными oчaми
Высoкo пoднялoсь oткрытoe чeлo, –
Eгo нeдвижнoстью внимaньe oблeглo,
И дeв мoлeнию в тяжeлыx мукax чрeвa
Внимaлa чуткaя и кaмeннaя дeвa.
Нo вeтeр нa зaрe мeжду листoв прoник, –
Кaчнулся нa вoдe бoгини ясный лик;
Я ждaл, – oнa пoйдeт с кoлчaнoм и стрeлaми,
Мoлoчнoй бeлизнoй мeлькaя мeж дрeвaми,
Взирaть нa сoнный Рим, нa вeчный слaвы грaд,
Нa жeлтoвoдный Тибр, нa группы кoлoннaд,
Нa стoгны длинныe... Нo мрaмoр нeдвижимый
Бeлeл пeрeдo мнoй крaсoй нeпoстижимoй.
“Diana” shows that, if the Fetian textual observer “leaves [the work of art]
free as an object to exist on its own account”,138 this is not for want of the
most profound “relation of desire” that connects him to the essence of that
object from which he is so grievously alienated. “Diana” begins with the
observer’s “apprehension of the external world” – “the rounded features of
the virginal goddess”, whose appearance is lovingly described: her nudity,
her eyes, how she holds her head, the expression on her face, how she listens
to her supplicants. The stirring of a breeze reminds the speaker of the possi-
bility of movement: he expects the goddess to move forward, and her failure
to do so tells him that she is indeed marble, reminds him that her beauty lies
beyond his ability to grasp and is not of his world. The conative gap is not
between aesthetic contemplation and erotic possession, but between sight
and association. Many critics have commented on “Diana” for its evocation
of the classical world, the play of sculptural and living beauty. But it is the
last distich of the poem that thrusts upon the reader an essential revaluation
of perceptual experience. The force of those two lines was first, and best,
described by F. M. Dostoevskii, struck by the “passionate vitality” (страст-
ная жизненность) and “yearning” (тоска) with which “the last two
lines…are filled”.139 The word тоска is important. Its use, according to a
recent analysis, is characterized by “the implication of emptiness caused by
the absence of someone or something of great value”, and the “intensity and
pervasiveness of the feeling”.140 It is persistently associated with “the idea of
a call coming to us from ‘beyond’, from another world, the contrast between
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 25

the world of here and now…and another, inaccessible world, which contains
a lost treasure”. The emotion of тоска is evoked only if we feel ourselves
separated from the object for which the emotion is felt. The object existed,
but not now, or it exists, but not here. Yearning would seem incompatible
with Hegelian aesthetic response: the “relation of desire is not the one in
which man stands to the work of art. He…relates himself to it without de-
sire”. True, “the work of art…does not require…a natural life”, but for the
observer in the text, this is not a source of Hegelian satisfaction: “it ought
not to remain on this level”. Rather, the problem is that the observer feels
that he “ought not to remain on this level” either, and his alienation from the
ideal – his inability to render his own level of consciousness adequate to an
understanding of ideal beauty – evokes in him profound regret. The adequate
comprehension of beauty is not what is not desired but rather, in the world of
the poem, what is desired – and beauty is what cannot be grasped in “the
world of here and now”.
In “Diana”, affect derives from contemplation of an object and involves
desire. The desire invoked, however, is assimilated to rather than conflicting
with aesthetic response, and this for several reasons. Some derive from what
Hegel termed “the power of mitigation”, as Fet employs it: the distancing of
the perceiver from his own, objectified, emotions. For one thing, the state-
ment about the statue’s gleaming with “непостижимой красотой” is itself
semantically a step removed from тоска, the emotional affect, or, in Fet’s
terms, the “impression” that the poem inspires. Second, the observer in the
poem is presumably the experiencer of that тоска the object of which is the
statue of Diana (or, more precisely, the beauty of the statue of Diana). The
reader’s emotion, if it is тоска at all, is still not the same emotion that the
textual speaker expresses: readers’ emotion is evoked by inviting them to
contemplate not the statue of Diana, or its beauty, but the situation of a
speaker who, in contemplating the statue of Diana, is led to ultimate recogni-
tion of his situation with respect to the ideal beauty that he sees. Although
readers may experience desire or yearning for ideal beauty as represented in
the poem, their emotional response derives from sympathy not with the inner
life that the textual speaker at first attributes to the statue, but rather with the
inner life with which the poet imbues the speaker in the text: the poet attrib-
utes to the speaker not merely his perceptions but more importantly an ulti-
mate consciousness of his true situation, namely the inadequacy of his con-
sciousness. At issue is not, ultimately, the lifelike appearance of the statue,
but the lively consciousness of the observer and the sympathies that this
evokes in the reader, whose mental state, like that of the observers in Plato’s
cave, need not be adequate to appreciate ideal beauty but only beauty in a
multiply filtered hypostasis. The expression of desire in the text is thus an
intermediate link between the object and its affect; the object that produces
26 Chapter One

readers’ affect is not the statue but the poem, isomorphic with speech attrib-
uted to the textual observer/speaker, who is also an experiencer of a dif-
ferent, text-internal affect. The way the poem works thus seems to rely on
linking object-perception with emotion by way of a particular experience of
desire. Linked but different emotions are distinguished in part through being
assigned to different bearers of consciousness (the textual speaker, on one
hand, and the reader, on the other) and in part by being channeled in such a
way that one sort of response is transformed into another in the process of
transmission from one bearer of consciousness to the next. Emotion is
generated in the text by a fairly elaborate system of staging, involving object
props and not just a single perceiver but rather an entire small cast of
situational participants.141
The reputation of “Diana” has had its ups and downs. Much praised in
the nineteenth century, it was scorned, as was Fet’s descriptive poetry
generally, by the great Soviet specialist on Fet, B. Ia. Bukhshtab. Aside from
the question of taste, the differences also correspond to different views of the
essence of Fet’s oeuvre. Bukhshtab points to the descriptive poetry as
outside the range of what is really Fet’s true genius. My feeling is that, on
the contrary, “Diana” well exemplifies many of Fet’s most characteristic
traits. True, “Diana” recalls the link between Fet and the Pushkinian
tradition, most specifically Pushkin’s “Nereida”,142 but also more broadly, in
the play of the potential of the statue for movement – and in a vivacity that
exceeds the observer’s merely human capacities.143 At the same time, its
presentation of emotion, ultimate revelation, and modes of consciousness
split between participants, – all this is quintessential Fet. We shall see later
that Fet’s crafting of links among multiple consciousness and modes of
consciousness in a text, and between consciousness and cognition, remains
characteristic of Fet’s poetry long after he abandoned the sculptural
thematics of the 1840s and 1850s. These associations help connect his
earlier Hegelian aesthetic context with his later Schopenhauerian one. We
will explore some of these attributes of his poetry in later chapters. Here, we
note only the resonance between the way the poem works on the reader and
Hegel’s characterization of the complex relationship between desire and
aesthetically inspired emotion.
In 1880, in a letter in which he argues with L. N. Tolstoi over religion,
Fet characteristically expresses his notion of the relationship between want-
ing to be alive and enjoying the external world,144 and he talks about what he
takes to be an essential link between the human spirit and the things of the
world, upon which, in his terms, a person “expands his being” so long as he
has the will to live. Although in the same letter Fet puts his thoughts in the
context of the teachings of Schopenhauer, Darwin, and Jesus Christ, Fet’s
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 27

essential idea of “expanding one’s being” is one that resonates with Hegelian
notions of human psychology. According to Hegel:
Man … has the impulse in whatever is directly given to him, in what is present to him
externally, to produce himself and therein equally to recognize himself. This aim he
achieves by altering external things whereon he impresses the seal of his inner being
and in which he now finds again his own characteristics. Man does this in order, as a
free subject, to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy in the
shape of things only an external realization of himself … 145
It was in expressing a kindred thought that Allston created the objective cor-
relative:
The mind…needs…as the condition of its manifestation, its objective correlative.
Hence the presence of some outward object, predetermined to correspond to the
preëxisting idea in its living power, is essential to the evolution of its proper end, –
the pleasurable emotion. We beg it may be noted that we do not say sensation. And
hence we hold ourself justified in speaking of such presence as simply the occasion,
or condition, and not, per se, the cause.146
In whatever terms it was expressed, the aesthetic psychology that Fet read
about in his student years, and still echoed at the end, is one in which inner
and outer worlds are distinct but yet needy of each other, and it is innerness
that dominates by its realization in outward form.
Form is from this point of view not so much suited to content as identical
with it. It is what the poet resorts to, the “outward object, predetermined to
correspond to the preёxisting idea in its living power”; the deeper content, or
meaning, is what is not said at all. While Allston’s notion of the objective
correlative arises in the context of a general psychological theory, Fet’s po-
etry is remarkable for the extent to which critics who knew the poet himself
very well, notably Apollon Grigor’ev at the beginning of Fet’s career and
Vladimir Solov’ev at the end, identified Fet’s “objectivity”, in this sense, as
characteristic of, specific to, his verse. To be sure, in an age of materialism,
prose, and scientism, it would not be surprising if Fet’s advocates should
have claimed for him a virtue that would win him broader sympathy, even if
it was a stretch; but if you read the whole body of his work with this in
mind, it is surprising how true it not only was for Grigor’ev or Solov’ev but
also remains for readers today. Even twentieth-century critics comment on
the concreteness of Fet’s poetry,147 his ability at the same time to persuade
us that the object he has put almost palpably before us is not there of itself,
but as an embodiment of a state of consciousness that has willed it into be-
ing. This is what most directly explains Fet’s attraction for Symbolist aes-
thetics and accounts for his sometimes being considered a seer.
The orientation of Fet’s poetics toward objectification contributes I think
to the impression of singleness that his poetry makes on many readers: the
28 Chapter One

concentration in a text on some singular thing, such as a statue, lends the text
at least thematic unity. To some extent, the singularity of the texts is a ro-
mantic cliché – every poem is unique, as every person is unique – while
unity of lyrical composition has been enjoined by writers from Aristotle to
Hegel. But Fet’s poems are sometimes described not only as compositionally
integral but also as though each one were inhabited by a single poetic soul: a
single thought, a single moment of time, a single object put before us for
contemplation. This is often untrue, but it corresponds to something impor-
tant. Although he has been occasionally, and sometimes lamely, praised for
metrical virtuosity, and his verse orchestration of sound is often wonderful,
yet the aspects of poetic form that are dominant in Fet’s work are those that
function compositionally on the level of the whole text, and are semantically
robust. One of the ways in which Fet renders singularity of experience sali-
ent is by constructing it in the course of the text, starting with uninterpreted
pluralities of sensory data and concluding with a unified and often un-
expected closural percept. Strong closure, for Fet, was all: “All [a poem’s]
strength should be concentrated in the last stanza, so that one feels not a
sound further can be added”.148 It is curious that he should have written this
at the end of his life, when he had begun to make closure in his poems less
salient than it had been earlier. Less salient, because more integrated, but not
because the underlying aesthetic had changed. Fet is, perhaps above all, a
master of poetic composition, and his compositional technique is modeled
on psychological experience.

1.3 Emotion, memory, and the photograph

Fet’s admirers and detractors appeal to the metaphorics of precious min-

erals, suggesting that his poems are to be appreciated like gemstones (dia-
monds, several critics have called them),149 or denigrated as the property of
that elite that acquires them instead of building schools or feeding the poor –
hence the term “filigrain” used deprecatingly, indicating something minute
and frivolous, but a lovely object nonetheless. Such an appreciation of Fet
well evokes its concreteness, its brilliant exploitation of the object world.
The metaphor of poem as gemstone, however, is not entirely successful:
Fet’s short poems sometimes threaten to evaporate as we look at them. Ob-
ject in Fet is only cue, not essence. The words Fet uses are often vague or
banal – love, sounds, tears, night, day – and it cannot be said that the poet
always invests his vocabulary with a highly specified semantics. While the
poet’s vocabulary is thus often vague, the events and states his texts seem to
memorialize are often ephemeral: a memory of a song, the contemplation of
a lover’s hair. A great deal has been written about the delicacy of the emo-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 29

tions that Fet’s poetry captures, and, for many of the poems, their small size
is perfectly adequate to their referential poverty.150 Fet’s usage varies in this
respect, but certainly the weight of emotion in his texts often contrasts
sharply with their slight referential semantics. This aspect of his work has
been inadequately connected with other characteristics that make the experi-
ence of reading the poetry what it is. The tension between the concreteness
of the poems and their emotional delicacy is I think one of the elements
close to the core of that experience.
Although Fet’s poetry sometimes presents strong and immediately recog-
nizable feelings, it is most remarkable for how it evokes liminal emotions,
often lacking names and by their anonymity made harder to recognize and
retain in consciousness. In spite of the perceptual richness of the poems,
moreover, they exploit outward experiences as pretexts: presented, explored,
brought to their full power, they are in the end cast away, leaving the gen-
eration and experience of mood and emotion to emerge as Fet’s ultimate
thematics. In a number of poems Fet presents a literal access of emotion,
through the sort of object-mediation we encountered in “Diana”. Emotion in
Fet, however, is inextricably bound up with not only perception, our focus in
“Diana”, but also self-awareness, which in “Diana” makes itself known in
the final crunch of the last lines. It is in the later poetry that self-awareness
becomes an especially important theme, but the relationship between em-
otion and self-awareness is a recurrent problem in Fetian poetics. It perme-
ates his verse and becomes a leitmotiv in his prose memoirs of youth. Fet
tends to present emotion and self-awareness in relation to carefully delin-
eated levels of alertness and attention. As we might expect, his favored
mode of consciousness is not ratiocination, but rather a state in which even
seemingly objective knowledge is imbued with emotional value.

1.3.1 Fet’s evocation of consciousness, memory, and sense of time

Fet is keenly aware of the emotional and perceptual effects of varying atten-
tion and alertness. A poem will contrast degrees of alertness, presented in a
single arc of rising consciousness. Sometimes the modalities of conscious-
ness become an explicit theme or serve as an organizing principle. The later
poems are sometimes meditations, in the sense in which the English meta-
physical poets have been considered meditative.151 At least as often, Fet’s
poetry reads more like pre-linguistic musings that have achieved linguistic
form before the speaker was prepared to take responsibility for them: “The
winged sounds swarm like midges at twilight, the heart does not feel like
parting with its beloved dream… Oh, if only the soul could speak out with-
out words”.
30 Chapter One

Although Fet’s poetry is often divided Кaк мoшки зaрeю,

into “rational” and “irrational” lines, and Крылaтыe звуки тoлпятся;
although his descriptive poetry of the С любимoй мeчтoю
1840s and 50s, for example, is often classi- Нe xoчeтся сeрдцу рaсстaться.
fied as belonging to the former type, yet
nearly all of Fet’s oeuvre, including his Нo цвeт вдoxнoвeнья
descriptive poetry, is marked by his pecu- Пeчaлeн срeдь буднишниx тeрний;
liar affinity for emotion and his ability to Былoe стрeмлeньe
imagine inner life. For all the concreteness Дaлeкo, кaк oтблeск вeчeрний.
and objectivity that has been attributed to
Нo пaмять былoгo
Fet’s poetry, the real stuff of which it is
Всe крaдeтся в сeрдцe трeвoжнo...
made is consciousness. Evocation and rep- O, eсли б бeз слoвa
resentation of consciousness, perception, Скaзaться душoй былo мoжнo!152
self-consciousness, and emotion together
comprise the rich and varying poetical nexus that supports his texts, no mat-
ter how concrete the fictive semantics that mediate between that nexus and
the reader.
The reader’s experience of a poem by Fet is, at its best, the pleasure of
dwelling within a profoundly sensuous experience and perceiving it from
within its own boundaries. Although the experiences that Fet’s poems evoke
are often fleeting,153 time is less crucial in his poetics than is timelessness, a
state of being outside of time. He has little to say about historical time or its
ravages, and many of his most famous poems entail the presentation of ex-
perience over significantly longer time-periods than just a single moment.
The crucial singularity in the texts is singularity of experience, or, more pre-
cisely, the singular illumination of experience, the experience itself often
repeated or re-lived.154 Fet’s poetry constantly deals with memory. It has
been said since ancient times (and Fet would certainly have known it):155 we
remember best what has moved us most deeply. Fet writes about the pleas-
ures of remembrance. In his poetry remembrance is allied with the emotional
impression that is his central concern.
In Fet’s reminiscential poetry, strongly affective personal memory is of-
ten evoked in the context of a low state of psychological arousal, in which
what is remembered is not so much recollected by the textual persona as
recognized among images that emerge without his volition from what Hegel
calls the featureless mine (ein bestimmungsloser Schacht) in which “all… is
preserved without existing”.156 These seem to be what Salaman (relying
heavily on Russian cultural traditions for her data) characterizes as involun-
tary memories, which are unsought vivid memories in which the object of
memory is perceived as the rememberer believes it once was. Memories of
this sort have been described in the psychological literature, according to
which, however, they are rarely veridical.157 Their interest lies in the clarity
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 31

of their construction, the power with which they are experienced, and the
confidence people have in them even when they should know them to be
false.
Time in Fet’s poems often has a doubled quality, corresponding to the
abnormal time perceptions typical of vivid memory: the real time of a mem-
ory experience may be a brief moment, but it may nonetheless afford the
experiencer a sense of evoking entire trains of thoughts and, especially,
memories, each of which at least seems to have its own temporal duration.
The self within a vivid memory has as if no knowledge of what will happen
afterward, although the person experiencing the memory is generally aware
of experiencing it differently from the way in which he experienced his now-
remembered perceptions. It is entirely unclear that the emotional force of an
experience is stored as part of our memory of the experience itself, instead
of being generated anew each time an affectively powerful memory is revis-
ited. Since, moreover, the perspective from which an experience is viewed in
memory is often different from the perspective that was part of the original
experience (we may see images of our earlier selves as participants, rather
than simply seeing the original participants through the eyes of the earlier
self), the generation of affect in memory would seem to share in the “power
of mitigation” that Hegel attributes to the work of art: we may experience a
distanced shadow of our own earlier emotion in something like the way we
may empathize with, but not entirely share, the yearning of the observer in,
for example, Fet’s poem “Diana”. It is from the difference between remem-
bering and experiencing that springs the sweetness and poignancy of even
unhappy vivid memories, as distinct from the distress more characteristic of
hallucinatory ones: there, the rememberer remembers the past but forgets
that it is past. The poet uses reminiscence as a way of changing psychologi-
cal perspective and, thereby, controlling the affect the poem engenders. Fet’s
ability to enable his readers’ sense of participating in vivid memory helps
account for the frequent critical response to Fet as a poet of gentle and
poignant emotion, even though his subject matter is often not gentle at all.
32 Chapter One

1.3.2 “Leaning back in the armchair” and experiential metonymy

Vivid memories are often evoked

Нa крeслe oтвaлясь, гляжу нa пoтoлoк,
metonymically, by the experi-
Гдe, нa зaдoр вooбрaжeнью,
Нaд лaмпoй тиxoю пoдвeшeнный кружoк
encer’s re-visiting the place
Вeртится призрaчнoю тeнью. where a striking event occurred,
by encountering (through sight,
Зaри oсeннeй слeд в мeрцaньи этoм eсть: hearing, smell, or taste) an object
Нaд крoвлeй, кaжeтся, и сaдoм, associated with such an event, or
Нe в силax улeтeть и нe рeшaясь сeсть,
even by being led by some quite
Грaчи кружaтся тeмным стaдoм...
different experience to be in the
Нeт, тo нe крыльeв шум, тo кoни у крыльцa! same emotional state as was as-
Я слышу трeпeтныe руки... sociated with the event that is
Кaк блeднoсть xoлoднa прeкрaснoгo лицa! thus evoked. Evocative meton-
Кaк шeпoт гoрeстeн рaзлуки!..
ymy is explicit in such “memory”
Мoлчу, пoтeрянный, нa дaльний путь глядя poems as “Leaning back in the
Из-зa тeмнeющeгo сaдa, – armchair” (1890): it is not merely
И кружится eщe, приютa нe нaйдя, the past that Fet shows us, but
Грaчeй встрeвoжeннoе стaдo. also the point of access to what is
past, more accurately, a chain of
associations. The speaker, to begin with, is in a striking physical pose, one
not likely to be associated with some ordinary, goal-directed action or even
thought on his part: he is leaning back in his armchair, gazing at the ceiling,
and the round shadow of the shade over the lamp is a “provocation to the
imagination”, which, in response to this “provocation” begins, almost liter-
ally, to take flight. In the second stanza, we move into the realm of contem-
plation, at first in terms that are, for Fet, high rhetoric: the “есть” of line 5 is
relatively infrequent in Fet’s poetry, and in his canonical short poetry is
nearly always in late, generally solemn poems. The setting is less clear than
before. Is the autumnal twilight glow a late dawn or an early dusk? The im-
age of the rooks, too, is not entirely rational, even though it seems more sub-
stantial than the mere shadow of the previous stanza: are the rooks really
visible both “above the roof” and “above the garden” from the speaker’s
place in his armchair? Are the rooks in the process of not settling for the
night, or not rising to fly away for the winter? Why should they be “не в
силах” to do the one, or unable to decide on the other?
These are no ordinary rooks, but rather a late, autumnal answer to the
“winged sounds” of the 1840s, that swarmed “like midges at twilight”.158 In
the 1840s, Fet’s rooks were vernal – more precisely, Fet’s rook. In the spring
rooks show up one at a time, seeking food for their young, often in culti-
vated fields. That is what they do in northern Europe,159 and that is what
they do in early Fet. His later work is different. He is often considered a na-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 33

ture poet, but the late Fet had small use for nature for its own sake. He used
it symbolically. Each of his favorite birds had a specific function, which is
presented as both literal and metaphorical, and, in the end the birds come to
stand for the poet himself or his thought. The depictions capture not a con-
stant aspect of the birds, but rather an essential and dynamic capacity, a po-
tential that lives within them: nightingales sing (and in the end the textual
speaker is a nightingale),160 swallows soar (and, asks the speaker, do I not do
the same?),161 and rooks flock. They flock, moreover, as in nature, in the
autumn. Rooks are a relatively small, gregarious sort of crow-like bird (the
nearest thing to crow people eat, apparently, in spite of the folk expression),
and the large flying mass (birds – and wolves – usually come in a “стая”,
and “стадо” is on the whole a more general word) makes a visual impression
almost of undifferentiated spots, much less individuated than, say, geese or
cranes flying, but rather making a single strong and yet unclear impression.
They do not really migrate, either, in the radar-like sense that geese or swans
do, but rather move away from snow-covered climes to more hospitable
ones, under pressure of starvation. Because their autumnal flocking is thus
undirected and unpredictable but carried out by an entire mass of unindi-
viduated forms, it assumes some of the abstract characteristics that Fet ear-
lier assigned to his midges, but now in the darker tonalities of autumn. The
flocks take on associations of shadow, spiritual shades, and memories. In the
third stanza, we complete the shift from sight to sound, a shift pointed out by
Richard Gustafson.162 In Fetian terms, of course, the rooks, by way of their
cousins the midges, really are sounds, but their sound is indistinct – we hear
only their wings, not their raucous voices. They come down to earth, they
are closer to the house, come up to the porch – so they must be steeds163 –
they enter the house – they are music, played by trembling hands – I see the
face, too! – but now I hear the farewell – the moment of vivid memory, the
chain of separate associations is breaking down. Has the speaker said his
farewell, or only the ghostly visitor? Too late: “I am silent, looking at the
distant path”, and the speaker is left alone to listen to the restless flock, the
rook-ghosts that may yet settle down, or perhaps fly away, against the
deathly winter.
The chain of memories in the poem is matched against a sequence of
changing spaces: the textual speaker is in the armchair, is in a room defined
by its ceiling, is beneath a roof over which flock the rooks, the rooks are
over the garden, something is coming up to the porch, we are back in the
room, we are now in the room but our senses are concentrated outside, look-
ing at the distant path and hearing the restless birds. This swelling and con-
straining of space is typical of Fet, who engages in it on several levels of
textual meaning and form. He is well known for his use of window motifs,164
as well as for his use of ring structures in the composition of his poems, and
34 Chapter One

he uses explicit boundaries and points of access to constrain and at the same
time reveal and emphasize the freedom and openness of the worlds that ap-
pear inside his rings and windows. One of his characteristic treatments of
memory is structured in the same way: the memory world opens up before
us and within us, and lies within, and at the same time escapes, the confines
of everyday – here, the confines of the armchair. Fet thus strengthens the
“power of mitigation” inherent in reminiscence as part of an entire battery of
apparently heterogeneous techniques and devices, all conspiring to the same
psychological end.

1.3.3 Trauma and memory in Fet

The relationship of vivid memory to trauma is still a subject of discussion.

According to some theories, trauma may fix in memory moments that would
otherwise have been lost,165 the traumatic origin of the memory (if recalled
at all) not necessarily making the act of remembering less pleasurable. Ac-
cording to some, what is recalled may be not the original trauma, but some
other, pleasurable, experience with which the trauma is linked. Fet’s mem-
oirs suggest he saw a connection between trauma and vivid memory. Insofar
as he chooses in old age to write about his early memories, including his first
memories of Russian poetry, he presents them as fixed by association with
traumatic events, and he shows himself to be aware that the association is
one that might speak to scientific opinion of the role of trauma in memory.
Thus, for example, his memoir of childhood opens with a memory of some-
thing he claimed frightened him, although the man he recalls turns out to
have been a maternal uncle he came to know and was fond of. The book be-
gins:
No matter how the pedagogues and physiologists may feel about what I say, I shall
insistently declare: the first impression preserved in my memory was that a man with
light brown curly hair … is tossing me up to the ceiling, and it was more frightening
for me than it was pleasant. The man’s actual facial features engraved themselves
firmly in my memory, so that I recognized him twenty years later, although in the
course of all that time I had not seen even a picture of him.166
In his three volumes of autobiography, Fet repeatedly remarks on having a
poor memory for everything except poetry and visual images, and he dis-
claims any memory for the chronology even of the events he remembered. In
all three volumes, an alert reader can often peg events to external signposts,
which sometimes, however, make the impression of having been put up by a
sabotage unit.167 Most of the signposts are in some degree inherent in the
material Fet elects to give his readers – the date in a letter, for example – and
only rarely does he allude to them to establish any more extensive chronol-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 35

ogy. A rare example of his doing so, from his childhood reminiscences, is
his first memory of learning about Russian versification – a memory associ-
ated with his mother’s illness: he recalls a poem by Zhukovskii because it
came in the mail on a day that Fet’s mother was suffering what Fet calls an
“attack of hysteria”. The poem provided the occasion for him to learn about
Russian meter from his mother’s German doctor – Dr. Weinreich – , who
was visiting her when the poem arrived. The doctor proclaimed: Итак,
твой гроб с мольбой объемлю. Das ist in Jamben.168 The future poet, the
future Fet – he was still Shenshin then – was about eight years old when he
learned about iambs and hysteria. He says he scanned iambic verse against
that line for the rest of his life.

1.3.4 Fet’s prose poetics and the nature of memory retrieval

The chronological ordering of events is obviously part of how we experience

personal memories, but it seems to be associated mainly with memory re-
trieval; that is, when we store memories we probably do not store them with
chronological tags, but rather reconstruct their temporal context when we
retrieve the memory later.169 The poverty of Fet’s chronological tagging of
his memories creates an impression of suppressing the recollective (retriev-
al) aspect of reminiscence and so presenting the remembered event in a less
reconstructed and therefore arguably more immediate form. At the same
time, even in the absence of explicit tags, the ordering of his autobiographies
is predominantly, even if roughly, chronological, and this, in turn, means
that one and the same participant in remembered events appears and re-
appears bewilderingly often and without connection from one episode to
another. Leitmotivs, such as Fet’s mother’s illnesses or his own education,
are not clearly privileged in the narrative. A remembered event presented as
singular is typically accompanied by some detail, sometimes dialogue,
sometimes visual imagery, but the events to which the details are attached
are often of a sort that may well have been repeated, even if they are men-
tioned as if they occurred only once, for example a doctor’s visit or a homily
at school. The effect is to highlight details and make their association with
their background seem arbitrary: it is sometimes hard to distinguish one
event from another except on the basis of the detail itself. Indeed, it is clear
from the psychological literature that background events and details may be
remembered separately and linked, correctly or not, as part of the construc-
tive process of recall.170 As with his treatment of chronology, Fet’s treatment
of detail seems to suggest that the aspects of memory that are impoverished
in his remembrance are those involved not in storing his experience but in
taking it out again and examining it – the difficulty seems to be that the
heart, as Fet’s poem tells us, is indeed reluctant to part with its dream. Con-
36 Chapter One

trary to Fet’s protestations, his memory was apparently excellent, insofar as

it entailed retaining mental impressions of experience; what he offers us,
however, is precisely a sequence of memories presented as impressions,
while the accretions associated with the process of retrieving the memories
are suppressed. This way of presenting autobiographical memory dominates
especially in the last volume of memoirs Fet wrote, in which he tells about
his childhood, adolescence, and early manhood. Here, his techniques for
reconstructing the events that he presents as autobiographical are similar to
the way he presents memory in his poems. Attention has repeatedly been
drawn to the differences between Fet’s poetry and his prose writing, and
these differences are obviously great. Yet it is of some interest for an under-
standing of his poetics that, in his memoirs of his early years, Fet appears
before us as a man who, as Tolstoi put it, “loved his memories”.171 His poet-
ics of both prose and poetry are situated in a tradition that embraces the spe-
cial genre of the childhood memoir.172
The traumatic events of Fet’s life were not limited to childhood. We have
mentioned the fundamental problem of personal and social identity that dog-
ged him from his adolescence onward. And his great love affair, when Fet
was a provincial army officer in the latter 1840s, ended when he told his
lover he would not marry her. He went back to his army post, and she died
soon after, probably a suicide: she apparently dropped a match on her dress,
and died of the burns she suffered.173 The poem “To Chopin”, which is one
of the best known of Fet’s poems presenting experience of vivid memory, is
widely considered one of a number of late Fet works that memorialize this
love. We examine the poem in detail in Chapter Three. Here we note merely
the name of the text and its association with past romance: music and love
are two themes that nearly everyone associates with Fet, and they are espe-
cially well-represented themes in the poems dealing explicitly with memory.
In Fet’s poetry, music is never performed by the persona of the poet. Instead,
his experience is that of a listener and often merely a hearer: music, musical
rapture, is as unchosen an experience for the poet as is being in love, and this
lack of volition is an essential characteristic of Fet’s treatment of musicality,
love and memory.
Fet writes about how volition, intention, and attention impinge on crea-
tive activity and states of mind. Will, he says, is at best irrelevant and at
worst inimical to creative thought. Although sleep and dreams recur in his
texts (we discuss this in the next section), Fet seldom refers to deliberate
alteration of states of consciousness. A state of mind conducive to poetic
creativity can to some extent be fostered – for example, Fet writes that he
cannot respond appropriately either to art or to nature unless he is alone, and
that he needs to be free to let his mind wander – but it cannot be compelled
or predicted. A similar combination of personal will and absence of will is
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 37

also characteristic of the process of remembering. In both poetry and prose,

Fet often summons memory, and he reviews and orders his past. Yet invol-
untary memory regularly overtakes intentional recollection.

1.3.5 Photography in Fet’s prose

Fet lived in the great age of photographic discovery, and in his later years he
several times refers to photography as a model for describing how memory
and attention work. Although he mentions photographs in his poetry, as well
as in letters, the most telling references, with respect to questions of time and
memory, are in his artistic prose. He never compares himself to a photo-
grapher. Rather, the mind is a camera that records its impressions when the
right conditions are met, and whether or not we notice what it is doing, while
memories are photographs that show events and circumstances independent
of what we had intended or were aware of when the photograph was taken.
In his last, autobiographical, story “Out of fashion” (1889),174 Fet makes his
elderly landlord-persona reflect on his receptivity toward the enjoyment of
nature. His wife would like to get him out walking on a regular schedule,
and he resists. He enjoys the out of doors, but only when he is in the right
mood: “нужно, чтобы фотографический снаряд был надлежащим обра-
зом подготовлен для восприятия живого образа”. Observation of the “liv-
ing image” depends not on will, but on a combination of disposition and the
preparation to experience it. The text continues:
В минуты подобного расположения Афанасий Иванович любовно смотрел на
елки, как они, развешивая кругом молодые побеги, точно напоказ выставляли
стройные руки в светло-зеленых перчатках. Иногда, присев у фонтана и следя
за алмазным преломлением его луча, он вдруг останавливал свой взор на
округлых извоях проплывающего облака, которого с окружающей его
воздушною синевою не в состоянии произвести никакая скульптура, никакая
живопись. “Вот оно, – думалось ему, – вечно новое, которого ты постоянно
жаждешь”.
As so often in Fet’s poetry, the person in the text has become passive, the
natural world active and animate, and, here, the mechanism of the camera
has become part of that inversion. The world is alive, but is perceptible as
such only to an observer who abjures his own personality in favor of pure
observation. The images the camera/observer sees are often fixations of ob-
jects that move: the refraction of light by the water in a fountain, the passing
clouds, the trees with their “hands” displaying their “gloves”.
The role of the camera in fixing an event is the subject of the opening
paragraphs of Fet’s first book of memoirs.175 The author reports that when
he was in the guards (in the 1850s), a photographer for the first time was
38 Chapter One

equipped with a camera fast enough to capture the moment when the entire
mass of assembled troops presented arms in greeting the Emperor. Indeed,
what was then deemed instantaneous photography was a new and thrilling
development in the 1850s, and in addition to its appeal simply as a novelty,
its social and scientific importance were well understood.176 Since the pho-
tograph Fet refers to was for its time unique, the heir to the throne, the future
Alexander II, sought out an opportunity to bring it to the attention of his fa-
ther. Nicholas’s response to the photograph was at least as instantaneous as
the snapshot: he immediately pointed out to Alexander that at the moment
the shot was taken, one unfortunate soldier was caught in the act of straight-
ening his helmet, which had been pushed down over his eyes by a practical
joker standing behind him. Fet’s interest in the story is twofold. First, the
story shows that we all see in the world around us whatever it is that we are
given by our natures to see. While Alexander was delighted with a new
technological development, Nicholas’s notorious obsession with petty regu-
larity led him to fasten immediately on what he took to be scandalous disor-
der in the ranks.177 The second point Fet makes is that looking at a picture of
a past reality permits the observer to see details that he never could have
seen when the past was still the present. Even Nicholas would not have seen
– indeed, had not seen – the incident that so struck him in the picture, al-
though it took place before his eyes. For Fet as autobiographer, the signifi-
cance of the story is that revisiting the past permits us to re-examine it out-
side the rush of time that limits our vision in daily life. For us, Fet’s readers,
there is at least a third point in the story, in which of course, there figure not
only Alexander and Nicholas but also Fet. He could have chosen any num-
ber of ways to introduce us to the story of his life, and the preface to the
autobiography goes on to discuss other issues. Yet what he begins with is a
photograph, and, not just any photograph, but one the main interest of which
is capturing – not some eternal reality, or an artistic achievement, or some
great man’s character in a portrait – capturing an event, motion, something
with a beginning that took place before the picture was taken and will have
its end afterward. The closure of many of Fet’s poems is clearly cinemato-
graphic, even puzzlingly so, since he died several years before cinematogra-
phy was born. In Fet’s prose we see this same modern juxtaposition of mo-
tion and stillness. In this, too, we can see a reconciliation of Fet’s constant
theoretical and even thematic appeals to musicality (largely metaphorical
appeals – he knew little about music, and his tastes were unsophisticated)
and the persistent visuality of his art. What music grants that, for example,
the sculpture of Fet’s day lacked, is, of course, both freedom from explicit
thematics and movement in time. The first attribute is connected to the
wordlessness that Turgenev took to be Fet’s poetic ideal; the second attribute
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 39

explains his turning to photography – and photography on the verge of be-

coming cinematography – in reviewing his life.178

1.4 Pluralities of consciousness in the Fetian text

In reading “Diana”, we saw that Fet’s poetry may exploit multiple con-
sciousness in building a nexus of object and affect. A single text often com-
pares or constrasts states of consciousness of different personae, or of one
persona at different moments: I am awake but you are asleep, he is asleep,
do not wake her at dawn, I am that dream. Such comparisons are typical of
Fet’s poetry from the beginning and also occur in his late memoirs and prose
fiction. At play are not only wakefulness and sleep but also intermediate,
trance-like states. Comparing modes of consciousness became an explicit
and central concern of Fet’s, and he connected it directly with the problem
of relating subjective to objective reality. I have suggested that Fet’s charac-
terization of his student years may draw on the poet’s memory of Hegelian
notions of consciousness. Fet’s interest in consciousness, however, outlived
his reported interest in Hegel, and is exhibited in stunning form in a poem
generally treated as an early example of Fet’s response to Schopenhauer.

1.4.1 Two poems and their common autograph

Modes of consciousness, and their relationships with one another and with
the physical world, are essential to the thematics and structure of the two
poems on the next page. The two poems were conceived as one. I give an
annotated transcription of the autograph immediately after the texts of the
two poems that Fet eventually published.179 The epigraph to the poems is
from Schopenhauer’s Parerga und Paralipomena,180 but its relationship to
the poems (written in the 1860s and published in 1883), has remained myste-
rious.181 Let us, then, leave the epigraph aside for the moment and inquire
instead about the relationship of the published and autograph texts.
40 Chapter One

Die Gleichmässigkeit des Laufes der Zeit

in allen Köpfen beweist mehr, als irgend etwas,
das wir A l l e in denselben Traum versenkt
sind, ja das es Ein Wesen ist, welches ihn
träumt.
Schopenhauer182
1
Измучeн жизнью, кoвaрствoм нaдeжды,
Кoгдa им в битвe душoй уступaю,
И днeм и нoчью смeжaю я вeжды
И кaк-тo стрaннo пoрoй прoзрeвaю.
Eщe тeмнee мрaк жизни всeднeвнoй,
Кaк пoслe яркoй oсeннeй зaрницы,
И тoлькo в нeбe, кaк зoв зaдушeвный,
Свeркaют звeзд зoлoтыe рeсницы.
И тaк прoзрaчнa oгнeй бeскoнeчнoсть,
И тaк дoступнa вся бeзднa эфирa,
Чтo прямo смoтрю я из врeмeни в вeчнoсть
И плaмя твoe узнaю, сoлнцe мирa.
И нeпoдвижнo нa oгнeнныx рoзax
Живoй aлтaрь мирoздaнья курится,
В eгo дыму, кaк в твoрчeскиx грeзax,
Вся силa дрoжит и вся вeчнoсть снится.
И всe, чтo мчится пo бeзднaм эфирa,
И кaждый луч, плoтскoй и бeсплoтный, –
Твoй тoлькo oтблeск, o сoлнцe мирa,
И тoлькo сoн, тoлькo сoн мимoлeтный.
И этиx грeз в мирoвoм дунoвeньи
Кaк дым нeсусь я и тaю нeвoльнo,
И в этoм прoзрeньи, и в этoм зaбвeньи
Лeгкo мнe жить и дышaть мнe нe бoльнo.

2
В тиши и мрaкe тaинствeннoй нoчи
Я вижу блeск привeтный и милый,
И в звeзднoм xoрe знaкoмыe oчи
Гoрят в стeпи нaд зaбытoй мoгилoй.
Трaвa пoблeклa, пустыня угрюмa,
И сoн сирoтлив oдинoкoй грoбницы,
И тoлькo в нeбe, кaк вeчнaя думa,
Свeркaют звeзд зoлoтыe рeсницы.
И снится мнe, чтo ты встaлa из грoбa,
Тaкoй жe, кaкoй ты с зeмли oтлeтeлa,
И снится, снится: мы мoлoды oбa,
И ты взглянулa, кaк прeждe глядeлa.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 41

[Autograph stanza 1 > final poem 1, stanza 1]

Измучeн жизнью, кoвaрствoм нaдeжды,
Кoгдa им в битвe душoй уступaю,
И днeм и нoчью смeжaю я вeжды
И кaк-тo стрaннo пoрoй прoзрeвaю.

[Autograph stanza 2 > final poem 2, stanza 1]

В тиши и мрaкe тaинствeннoй нoчи
Я вижу блeск привeтный и милый,
И в звeзднoм xoрe знaкoмыe oчи
Гoрят в стeпи нaд зaбытoй мoгилoй.

[Stanza new, partly from re-cycled materials, in revised version > poem 1, stanza 2]
Eщe тeмнee мрaк жизни всeднeвнoй,
Кaк пoслe яркoй oсeннeй зaрницы,
И тoлькo в нeбe, кaк зoв зaдушeвный,
Свeркaют звeзд зoлoтыe рeсницы.

[Autograph stanza 3 > final poem 2, stanza 2]

Трaвa пoблeклa, пустыня угрюмa,
И сoн сирoтлив oдинoкoй грoбницы,
И тoлькo в нeбe, кaк вeчнaя думa,
Свeркaют звeзд зoлoтыe рeсницы.

[Autograph stanza 4 > final poem 1, stanza 3]

И тaк прoзрaчнa oгнeй бeскoнeчнoсть,
И тaк дoступнa вся бeзднa эфирa,
Чтo прямo смoтрю я из врeмeни в вeчнoсть
И плaмя твoe узнaю, сoлнцe мирa.
[Autograph stanza 7 > final poem 2, stanza 3]
И снится ему [ > мнe], чтo ты встaлa из грoбa,
Тaкoй жe, кaкoй ты с зeмли oтлeтeлa,
И снится, снится: мы мoлoды oбa,
И ты взглянулa, кaк прeждe глядeлa.

[Autograph stanza 5 > final poem 1, stanza 4]

И нeпoдвижнo нa oгнeнныx рoзax
Живoй aлтaрь мирoздaнья курится,
В eгo дыму, кaк в твoрчeскиx грeзax,
Вся силa дрoжит и вся вeчнoсть снится.

[Autograph stanza 6 > final poem 1, stanza 5]

И всe, чтo мчится пo бeзднaм эфирa,
И кaждый луч, плoтскoй и бeсплoтный, –
Твoй тoлькo oтблeск, o сoлнцe мирa,
И тoлькo сoн, тoлькo сoн мимoлeтный.
[Stanza new in revised version > poem 1, stanza 6]
И этиx грeз в мирoвoм дунoвeньи
Кaк дым нeсусь я и тaю нeвoльнo,
И в этoм [сознанье > ] прoзрeньи, и в этoм зaбвeньи
Лeгкo мнe жить и дышaть мнe нe бoльнo.
42 Chapter One

What has happened in the revision?

Most obviously, Fet has created two poems instead of one. The three
stanzas of the second poem originated as, respectively, the second, third, and
final stanzas of the autograph, while the second and final stanzas of the first
poem are new, but its other stanzas appear in the autograph as stanzas one
and four through six. In creating two poems out of one text, Fet has, more-
over, modified the closure of each of the two daughter texts: he has written a
new stanza for the first poem and transformed the closure of the second
poem into first-person discourse. The published “And I dreamed…” in the
last stanza of the second poem is a revision of “And he dreamed…”, in the
autograph, where “he” lacks a grammatical antecedent. The significance of
this change is not immediately obvious.
The two daughter poems are differentiated thematically: in the first text,
the speaker presents himself contemplating the essence of the universe,
whereas, in the second poem, the speaker is led to think, and then dream,
about his personal loss of a beloved woman. Splitting the autograph into two
separate poems domesticates what became the second daughter poem, re-
moving it from the more cosmic problems of the autograph and the first
daughter poem. At the same time, one of the lines of the second text is re-
introduced into “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды, …”, namely the
vision of the stars as human eyes: the only entirely repeated line in the two
poems is “Сверкают звезд золотые ресницы”. The stars in this line are the
romantic stars of, notably, Friedrich Rückert, whose poetry Fet was translat-
ing at roughly the same time as he wrote the autograph text.183 We shall see
below, however, that the stars in our text also have a different meaning, with
Schopenhauerian connections. Splitting the text in two separates the differ-
ent kinds of astral association.
The differences between the two daughter poems are so great that some
editors have put them in separate places in collections of Fet’s poetry. In
such editions, the first text comes at the head of a section made up of late
contemplative poetry, while the second poem appears among Fet’s love po-
ems.184 The epigraph continues to be printed at the head of the first poem, so
that it appears to be, on one hand, unrelated to “В тиши и мраке таин-
ственной ночи…”, and, on the other, a general epigraph to a much larger
group of poems, consisting of Fet’s late philosophical verse.
Yet this was not how the poems were first published, in Fet’s 1883 Eve-
ning Lights. The structure of the 1883 book was carefully crafted,185 and it is
unwise to ignore it.186 There, the two poems appear together, each with its
own Roman numeral, in the section called “Элегии и думы”, which, how-
ever, they do not head. On the contrary, they follow immediately upon an-
other astral poem, called “Среди звезд”. The epigraph precedes the first
Roman numeral and belongs to exactly and only “Измучен жизнью,
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 43

коварством надежды, …” and “В тиши и мраке таинственной ночи…”.

The further separation of the two poems into different groups of texts oc-
curred only later, after Fet’s death. Had Fet and his editors kept the two po-
ems together only for text-historical reasons? Why did Fet split the poem
into two? Given their different thematics, how did he envision them as a
single poem in the first place? And what does the epigraph have to do with
either one of the two poems that finally emerged?

1.4.2 Dating Fet’s acquaintance with the works of Schopenhauer

To take the last question first, we should briefly consider the possibility that,
rather than inspiring the poems, the Schopenhauer text may have been dis-
covered by Fet only after he had written them. The apparent tenuousness of
the connection between epigraph and text might then derive from its being
historically adventitious. Others have considered this possibility, and for
good reason.187 “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды,…” and “В ти-
ши и мраке таинственной ночи …” were probably written around 1864,
according to Bukhshtab and others who have examined the place of the text
in Fet’s notebooks, but Fet is usually thought to have become interested in
Schopenhauer only from the autumn of 1869 on.188 I would suggest, how-
ever, that this latter date need not mark the beginning of Fet’s reading of
Schopenhauer, but only of his interest in The World as Will and Representa-
tion. An alternative history of Fet’s knowledge of Schopenhauer might be
reconstructed roughly as follows.
In a letter to Fet of August 30, 1869, L. N. Tolstoi paraphrases what he
presents as Fet’s opinion, with which Tolstoi disagrees, that Schopenhauer
was a relative lightweight who wrote “some things on philosophical sub-
jects”.189 The comment is generally considered negative and is taken to im-
ply that Fet’s serious reading of Schopenhauer began only at Tolstoi’s urg-
ing, no earlier than late summer or early autumn of 1869.190 If Fet had the
opinion Tolstoi attributes to him, however, this may have simply reflected
Fet’s response to Parerga und Paralipomena, which consists of relatively
short and often witty essays and aphorisms, rather than extended argu-
mentation. In any case, Tolstoi’s words are not entirely clear, and we have
no right to assume that Fet held the opinion they suggest, even if we are cor-
rect in thinking that Tolstoi attributed it to him. That Tolstoi earlier than Fet
expressed unconstrained enthusiasm for Schopenhauer may be partly a con-
sequence of the difference in the two men’s personalities. It says nothing
about the depth of either man’s knowledge of the subject.191
Fet himself published a letter from V. P. Botkin, who reports on January
1, 1865 that he has bought for Fet “without the least difficulty” (“без малей-
шего затруднения”) the Schopenhauer Fet wanted.192 The book was The
44 Chapter One

World as Will and Representation: Fet refers to a copy of that work that is
“my own bought by Botkin” in a letter to Tolstoi (March 19, 1880). Botkin’s
comment about buying the book without any difficulty reflects not only the
greater availability of books in St. Petersburg than on Fet’s estate Ste-
panovka but also the fact that when Schopenhauer began to be known in
Russia, he was published only selectively, because of censorship. It would
not have been unreasonable on Fet’s part to have been unsure if the book he
wanted would have made it to public sale. Why he would have wanted the
book just at this time is that, during the course of the preceding year, the first
translation of Schopenhauer into Russian had appeared, under the title
“Метафизика любви”. The article was a chapter of The World as Will and
Representation, pulled out of context and put into Russian.193 If the essay or
its title appealed to Fet, he might have sought out the German source text as
likely more readable than the translation. Finally, if we assume that Botkin
answered his mail fairly promptly, we may wonder if in December Fet
would not have been particularly well motivated in asking for a copy of
Schopenhauer, because of the appearance of an article on Schopenhauer in
The Russian Word.194 The article appeared not only à propos the Schop-
enhauer translation but also in lieu of a response to I. M. Sechenov’s “The
Reflexes of the Brain”, which had been very, very quietly published in The
Medical Courier the preceding year;195 in the article-response, Schopen-
hauer’s approach to mental processes was presented in opposition to the neu-
rology of the 1860s. In short, it is perfectly likely that Fet would have been
interested in obtaining a copy of The World as Will and Representation not
because he had not yet read Schopenhauer and knew nothing about him, but,
rather, because he, like much of the rest of the educated Russian public, had
just read some Schopenhauer, had read something about him, and wanted to
find out more. Botkin’s letter, then, is indirect evidence of exactly the sort it
looks like: Fet was somewhat familiar with Schopenhauer by the end of
1864, independent of Tolstoi.
Schopenhauer was certainly known in Russia even earlier. Leaving aside
isolated cases, the beginning of Schopenhauer’s renown there is now dated
to around the mid-1850s.196 Given that the January 1865 letter from Botkin
is the earliest known documentation for Fet’s interest in Schopenhauer, it
can of course be neither excluded nor proved that Fet read Schopenhauer’s
work earlier. His biography actually makes it likely that he would have been
among Schopenhauer’s earlier readers in Russia. Parerga und Paral-
ipomena, the last of Schopenhauer’s major works, is also the easiest to read,
and it was popular among German readers in the 1850s. During the Crimean
War, Fet served as an army officer for extended periods in Reval (Tallinn)
and Dorpat, and he was well received by Baltic German friends there.197 He
could have acquainted himself with the book then, and we shall see below
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 45

that his choice of acquaintances in Dorpat suggests he may even have taken
a special interest in certain aspects of Schopenhauer’s writings. The book
Parerga und Paralipomena was well-known in Germany and France in
1856, when Fet visited both Paris and several cities in Germany. If Fet, like
many other readers, knew Parerga und Paralipomena some years before he
became engaged in Schopenhauer’s more ponderous works, this would ex-
plain the problems in the chronology of his references to Schopenhauer. It
also casts in a different light the question of how, if at all, the epigraph of
“Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды…” and “В тиши и мраке
таинственной ночи…” is related to the two poems. In accepting Bukh-
shtab’s dating of the poem, we need not look on the epigraph as an after-
thought. In the next section, I will suggest that it actually points to a signifi-
cant connection between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and the origin of the
two poems.

1.4.3 Epigraph and autograph

The epigraph has little to do with either of the two finished poems, taken
separately, but has everything to do with the relationship between them –
that is, with the poems viewed as a single text, as they originally were. To
see this clearly, we should read the epigraph in a fuller context. It comes
from near the end of a discussion about the ideal nature of time, which ac-
cording to Schopenhauer has no physical or objective reality, because it
causes no changes in physical bodies. Schopenhauer writes:
The fact that time generally and in all our heads passes in exactly the same way could
be easily grasped if it were something outward, objective, perceptible through the
senses, the way bodies are. But it is not: we can neither see nor touch it. Nor is it by
any means mere movement or other change in bodies: this occurs in time … If all
clocks stopped, if the sun itself stood still, if each and every movement or change
were to falter, yet would this not hinder for a single moment the passage of time,
which would carry on its regular progress and now elapse without the accompani-
ment of any changes. Withal it is, as has been said, nothing perceptible, nothing ex-
ternally given and acting upon us, thus nothing truly objective. So there remains noth-
ing else except that it lies within us, is our own, undisturbedly continuing mental
process … That regularity of the passage [of time] in all our heads indicates, more
than does anything else, that we are all sunk in the same dream, and that it is a single
Being that is dreaming it.198
Space, too, he goes on – “all the worlds, however many they are” – likewise
depends on each of us, and is realized in our own minds. Just as we have
difficulty imagining being truly outside of time, we can, he says, imagine a
space empty of every physical thing, but we cannot well imagine a place
empty of space itself. Because time and space are so abstract, they are often
46 Chapter One

misunderstood and this leads to other confusions. Eternity, Schopenhauer

says, is sometimes misconstrued as a kind of time without end, but it has
been better understood as the opposite of time, its absence or negation. The
future is on this view as real as the past, but its reality is comprehensible
only when it becomes the present.
If we compare Schopenhauer’s discussion with each of the two poems,
we find remarkably little connection. “Измучен жизнью, коварством на-
дежды…” shows no interesting passage of time, certainly no equal passage
of time in different heads, and no different heads, nor even a dream in any
ordinary sense. If we apply the epigraph to the second poem, “В тиши и
мраке таинственной ночи…”, we have, except for a clearer reference to
dreams, the same result: essentially nothing. If we consider the two poems
together, however, we get further. The shared idiosyncratic rhythm of the
two poems, roughly characterizable as logaoedic,199 suggests that something
in the way the texts work involves some notion of two different experiences
that are nonetheless shared across conventional boundaries. The different
experiences correspond to different vocabulary: the прозренье and грезы of
“Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды,…” on one hand and the сон of
“В тиши и мраке таинственной ночи…” on the other. The грезы of the
first poem is translatable as “reverie” or “daydream”, while the second
poem’s сон is either “dream” (basically, the kind of dream one has while
asleep) or simply “sleep”. Splitting the poem in two sharpens the delineation
of the two kinds of mental experience.
The word сон is very frequent in Fet, but no more so than in the work of
most other nineteenth-century poets, and it occurs with roughly equal fre-
quency across Fet’s oeuvre. The word грезы, in contrast, occurs occasion-
ally from 1842 onward, but is less evenly distributed. It does not occur at all
in Fet’s earliest book of poetry (1840), it occurs in the 1840s only in poetry
that he did not ultimately choose to include in his canon, and it becomes in-
creasingly frequent beginning only in the second half of the 1850s. On the
relatively rare occasions when сон and грезы appear in the same text, both
words usually refer to some single psychological state, generally not what
one would call a reverie but also definitely not a nighttime dream in its most
literal meaning. Typically сон in such contexts is used in some special way
(for example, “to sleep the last sleep”, that is, to die).200 Reverie is thus a
rather different phenomenon in Fet’s poetry from nighttime dreaming, the
two are distributed differently across his oeuvre, and they usually appear
separately, not to refer to different mental states in the same text.
In the present instance, the poet has filtered into two separate texts dif-
ferent states of consciousness originally presented in a single sequence,
while the original mix of first- and third-person reference to the experiencer
is distilled into first-person discourse. The result is to strengthen the pres-
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 47

ence in the text of an “I” who can plausibly be imagined to experience the
different mental states at different times. In the revised poems, the “I” who
sometimes, at night or by day, experiences “strange vision” (poem one), can
perfectly well, although not necessarily, be identified with an “I” who at
night, experiences a more conventional dream life (poem two). There is no
need to posit more than one mind to encompass the two different states.
The dream (сон) in the second of the two daughter poems is a very
physical and personal one: some known female addressee, who has died,
appears out of her “dreaming” grave, looking just the way she had when she
“flew away from the earth”, and he dreams and dreams: “we are both young
and you gave a look as you used to look”. The appearance of the dream in
“В тиши и мраке таинственной ночи…” is motivated, in some broad psy-
chological sense, by the speaker’s waking experience, namely his nighttime
contemplation of the sky: the speaker’s thoughts wander to the thought of
the night sky over the dead woman’s grave, and when he falls asleep his
mind continues to dwell on the beloved. This is very different from the
mind-set in “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды…”, even though the
visions presented there also develop out of contemplation of the sky. The
vision in “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды…” begins with the
speaker being worn out by life and convinced that hope is perfidious, “when
in my soul I yield to them in battle”. At such times, night or day, he closes
his eyes: he inaugurates his visionary experience, in other words, by shutting
out competing perceptions of the sensible world, and sinking instead into
reverie (грезы). The second of the two daughter poems is located in a par-
ticular time of day, but the first poem is not. The second poem shows the
speaker’s dream as a continuation of sensory experience; in the first poem,
he shuts out sensory experience to attain an experience that is opposed to it.
The two poems thus present two different states of mind. The autograph
commingles them.
The differentiation of two separate mind states and the referential simpli-
fication of their experiencers into a single “I” distances the text from its epi-
graph, according to which there should be multiple experiencers, who, how-
ever, share the same dream. The text the epigraph at first inspired was evi-
dently the autograph, to which it is more immediately relevant than it is to
the final poems. The complexity of the autograph detracted from its read-
ability as a poem, and this may have motivated the revision.201

1.4.4 The Central Star: Fet, astronomy, and Professor Mädler

One of the characteristics of the two poems we have been discussing is their
direct linkage of astral thematics and consciousness, specifically in relation
to the passage of time and escape from time. This connection between as-
48 Chapter One

tronomy and mind is already present in Schopenhauer’s writings. In discuss-

ing space, Schopenhauer refers in passing to astronomical space, specifically
what he calls the space between the fixed stars, such as our sun. Astronomy
had come up earlier in Schopenhauer’s writings, first in the second book of
volume one of The World as Will and Representation (“The objectification
of the will”,202 first published 1819), where he discusses the stability of the
solar system and an astronomical hypothesis well-known in the nineteenth
century, according to which our solar system is one of many, grouped ho-
mogeneously throughout space.203 That not only is the sun a star, which may
be expected to have the qualities and natural history of other stars, but that
other stars may correspondingly be expected to have their own solar sys-
tems: – this seems to have been a new thought in the seventeenth century,
apparently original with Descartes and made popular most of all by Bernard
de Fontenelle in the fifth chapter (or fifth conversation) of his Conversations
on the Plurality of Worlds, a work that continued popular throughout the
eighteenth century. The notion that the stars represent a plurality of worlds
comes up frequently ever afterward: it recurs in George Sand’s André
(1835), for example, and in Turgenev’s “Faust” (1856). Although such tex-
tual references to heavenly bodies may seem to evoke space more directly
than they do time, they of course really evoke both: the sun is, cosmologi-
cally speaking, less a place than the anchor for the solar system that revolves
around it, and it is not only the physical nature and location of heavenly bod-
ies that astronomy deals with but also their motion or fixedness.
The idea of an unmoving central star around which all the separate solar
systems turn, and which was thus the unmoving center of the entire moving
universe, was a simple and obvious extension of the idea of multiple solar
systems arrayed across a uniform space. This is presumably the scientific
origin of Fet’s “солнце мира”, which appears twice in “Измучен жизнью,
коварстом надежды …”: the eternal and unmoving central light source re-
flected in all that moves in the universe. The idea of a central sun of the uni-
verse was discussed from at least the middle of the eighteenth century, be-
ginning apparently with the work of Thomas Wright,204 while even so recent
a work as the turn-of-the-century Brockhaus-Efron article on cosmology,
under the title “Системы мира”, goes no further in its review of the subject
than to suggest that “most probable” is the opinion that there is no central
star.205 In the interval between Wright and the Brockhaus-Efron article, a
number of candidates for “central sun” were nominated. Kant proposed that
it was Sirius, while the Dorpat astronomer J. H. Mädler believed that the
central star was one of the Pleiades. The theory would have been of obvious
interest for Schopenhauer, and he discusses at some length the notion of the
fixed central star in the astronomical passage in The World as Will and Rep-
resentation.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 49

Schopenhauer does not give his sources, but Fet tells us something about
his. He got to hear about the central star when he was in Dorpat in the 1850s,
and he heard it from Professor Mädler.206 Mädler had published Die Cen-
tralsonne in 1846.207 Fet mentions the work, and he also describes the pro-
fessor discoursing during “long evening conversations, interrupted on my
part only by rare questions”. Fet says that Mädler astonished him with his
erudition in many areas, but that
the natural sciences in general and his specialty astronomy were his triumph. The
precision of the latter, constantly based on mathematics, gives its adepts such sim-
plicity in their dealings with it as it is hard to find in other scholars… I constantly
admired [Mädler’s] great ability to get down, with childlike simplicity, to my humble
level, and from it to show me the wondrous structure of the universe.208
The genre Fet evokes is, of course, one that goes back at least to de Fonten-
elle’s Conversations. Fet’s treatment of his conversations with Mädler sug-
gests that the word мир in the poem under discussion is to be understood not
as English “world”, in its usual first meaning, namely as the planet Earth but
rather as “universe”, in its etymological sense of “a single rotation”, that is,
all “matter in space and force in time”.209 The fact that Fet recalls himself
seeking out Mädler on the pretext of Fet’s own need for some (unspecified)
information about astronomy also reinforces the hypothesis, advanced
above, that Fet read the astral prose of Parerga und Paralipomena while he
was in Dorpat in the 1850s.
The final line of “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды …” –
“Легко мне жить и дышать мне не больно” – is very Fetian in its refer-
ence to breath and to freedom from pain in breathing. The poet as breath or
spirit recurs in Fet, even aside from such astral poems as “To the extin-
guished stars (the closing line: “К призракам звезд, буду призраком
вздоха!”), and sometimes the references to the difficulty of breathing must
have been meant literally; for example, Fet’s last poem, written to K.R. and
his wife on 23 October 1892, begins “Когда дыханье множит муки, И
было б сладко не дышать”. Yet the closing line in “Измучен жизнью,
коварством надежды …” has a special resonance in the context of Fet’s
allusion to the notion of the stars as potential suns for their own solar sys-
tems. This idea, when new, represented a challenge to conventional religious
views of God’s order of life in the universe, and it reduced the central place
of our own world and our own humankind in the greater scheme of things.
At the same time, the radical opening up of the heavenly vault, taken in the
right spirit, could also be immensely liberating for a spirit inclined to cele-
brate freedom, and this is the way de Fontenelle’s popular treatment of the
theory handles it. One of the peculiarities of de Fontenelle’s little book is its
lightheartedness: the proposal that the universe is comprised of infinitely
many solar systems is made part of a flirtatious dialogue between the learned
50 Chapter One

author and a charming marquise. She, on learning of the plurality of worlds

that the new astronomy has laid before her, expresses consternation, to
which the learned author replies:
As for me… this puts me at my ease. When the sky was only this blue vault, with the
stars nailed to it, the universe seemed small and narrow to me; I felt oppressed by it.
Now that they’ve given infinitely greater breadth and depth to this vault … it seems
to me that I breathe more freely, that I’m in a larger air.210
The reference to free breathing in Fet’s astral poetry can be associated with a
specific view of the stars, certainly not original with Fet but peculiar to the
modern world. The notion of a central sun has connotations that forge a link
with the notions of breath and breathing, important in Fet’s work as a whole.
The notion of a central sun was, then, generally available in Fet’s day
and had some resonance with other, more persistent elements in his poetic
world. It is not peculiarly Schopenhauerian nor even specific to the early
nineteenth century, when Schopenhauer was first writing, as opposed to
mid-century and later, when Fet read him. Fet tended to put into his poetry
elements transformed out of current reading, even when his immediate
sources had much older roots: even if the “sun of the world” was something
Fet read in Schopenhauer, his reading of Schopenhauer may have put him in
mind of something he already vaguely knew. Fet had to have had some
knowledge of popular astronomy beginning no later than his school days.
While Fet was a pupil at the Krümmer school, G. W. Struve, director of the
Dorpat observatory, made some of the earliest and most important ob-
servations of Halley’s Comet on its 1835-36 return – the first observations
anywhere in northern Europe.211 At school, according to Fet, his best sub-
jects were mathematics and science, and the science teacher, moreover, was
also responsible for supervising Fet’s activities outside of regular classes.
The school was so organized that the teacher in charge of a boy’s extracur-
ricular activities would seek out popular topics of the day in his own area of
expertise. It is inconceivable that Fet would not have learned something
about astronomy at that time.212
Fet’s continued interest in astronomy is attested in a number of astral po-
ems. Not every poem about stars need have a connection with astronomy, of
course, but even such a simple poem as “Звезды” (1842) opens with a ques-
tion that is, in essence, physical: “Отчего все звезды стали Неподвижною
чредой И, любуясь друг на друга, Не летят одна к другой?”213 Clearly
connected with modern science is his 1847 poem in honor of the discovery
of the planet Neptune, while his elegant “На стоге сена ночью южной...” is
built on nineteenth-century explorations of motion and illusions of motion.
(We discuss this in the next chapter.) His 1890 poem “To the extinguished
stars” is based on evident awareness of the speed of light.214 Even such
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 51

slight intermediary poems as “The Comet” (1874-1886?)215 show that scraps

of popular astronomy could occasionally invade a text that was not, on the
face of it, about anything scientific at all.
Fet need not have relied on Schopenhauerian astronomy for his evocation
of an unmoving and eternal central sun in “Измучен жизнью, коварством
надежды …” Nevertheless, his association of the network involving sleep
and dreaming with looking directly out of time into eternity (which is thus
precisely not “eternity as a long time” but “eternity as negation of time”) and
the reference to the sun as the timeless center around which “everything has-
tens across the abysses of the ether”: all this together sounds like a poet who
has been reading his Schopenhauer, specifically the Parerga und Parali-
pomena and the beginning – just the first two hundred pages or so – of The
World as Will and Representation.216
Still, if the poet wanted to signal Schopenhauer in his epigraph, why this
epigraph? The choice, I think, only makes sense if he chose the epigraph not
for the poems as we have them in Evening Lights, but for the autograph, in
which the two different states of consciousness are intermingled to the point
of illegibility: night dreams are combined with day dreams, and the night-
time dream experience is attributed in autograph stanza 2 to я and in auto-
graph stanza 7 to ему. Only in the autograph do we find boundaries of time
and consciousness effaced in a way that corresponds to Schopenhauer’s
dicta. Fet’s lack of interest in textual personality is well known. What re-
places it often is the textual play of different modes of consciousness, and
this is clearly an important part of how the autograph text, much more than
the final text, was organized. In the autograph, the central stanza (autograph
stanza 4) puts the “sun of the world”, and timeless eternity, right in the mid-
dle of the text, a motionless center out of which “I look straight out of time
into eternity” and around which everything else moves. The abnegation of
time is represented in the arrangement of thematic material around that un-
moving center.
The special status of that once-central stanza is also revealed by its loga-
oedic meter.217 The stress pattern of a logaoed (here, x´x´xx´xx´x) is one that
does not exactly fit any of the classical meters used in Russian verse, but is
repeated in each line or, some cases, group of lines. Repetition is essential to
how a logaoed works, but in Fet’s text it breaks down. The third line of the
third stanza of “Измучен жизнью ...” no longer shows the stress pattern
established by the earlier lines of the poem, but instead is a regular amphi-
brachic tetrameter (x´xx´xx´xx´x). A similar breakdown occurs in the other
daughter text: “В тиши и мраке таинственной ночи...” also begins with the
shared logaoedic line (x´x´xx´xx´x), but the second lines of stanza 2 and 3
are in amphibrachic tetrameter. The metrically varied lines of “В тиши и
мраке таинственной ночи ...” create a repeating rhythm for each of the
52 Chapter One

stanzas in which they appear: the logaoedic line established in the first
stanza is integrated into a stanza-level logaoed. In the autograph, however,
the stanzas of “В тиши и мраке таинственной ночи...” are integrated into a
larger text as the more “personal” of its two textual consciousnesses. The
less personal one, the consciousness that reaches outward toward universal
experience, subsumes the more specific, personal consciousness, and the text
as a whole – all seven of the original stanzas – finds its center in what be-
came the third stanza of “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды ...”. At
that center, the marking of time in the logaoedic meter breaks off: the am-
phibrachic tetrameter interrupting the flow of logaoeds looks “out of time”
into eternity. The structure of the autograph, supported by rhythmic pattern-
ing, thus expresses an important point in the Schopenhauer essay: escape
from time. The connection is suppressed in the re-working.

1.5 Fet and the sciences of mind

1.5.1 What can Fet have known about psychiatry?

“Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды,…” and its autograph show

Fet’s concern with juxtaposing what we might call alternative modes of con-
sciousness. Also notable in the original text is its delineation of the surrender
of will, and the association of lack of will with access to apparent memories
(including memories that are separated off as night-dreams in the final text)
and to insight that is not normally available, as well as the capacity for vivid
and highly creative sensory activity, with only an indeterminate relationship
to present stimuli. The overall effect – blending sleep, wakefulness, loss of
chronological anchoring of events, apparent possession of a special capacity
for vision, and lack of will – is reminiscent of trance conditions documented
in the practice of hypnotism.
Hypnotism was the central technique used in the study and therapeutics
of abnormal psychology during Fet’s lifetime, and the nature of Fet’s poetry
led in his own day, and has led since, to its being studied by readers inter-
ested in psychology. This aspect of Fet’s work has also been implicitly ac-
knowledged, for example when critics have observed that Fet names things
but leaves unexpressed the connections among them, and that the connec-
tions, when they can be made, are often irrational. Fet’s techniques for mov-
ing from one point to another in the development of his text regularly entail
affective metonymy, that is, the connecting of one thing to another not
through properties inherently shared by the linked elements but on the basis
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 53

of similarities in how the linked items have been experienced: the experience
may have been in similar circumstances, or when the experiencer simply
happened to be in a similar mood.218
Fet’s poetry may be presumed to represent and embody the biographical
poet’s experience and understanding of mind. Obviously, his poems need
not report on actual mental states: a poet can presumably write perfectly well
about events and conditions he has not experienced, and Fet in his letters
several times emphasizes that even his famous nature poetry often had little
to do with any direct experience of his own, as an observer of the natural
world.219 A poet cannot, however, write perfectly well about events and
conditions that he cannot imagine, and Fet’s capacity for imagining and ar-
ticulating models of inner life was prodigious. Although such imagination
was both a gift of God and the fortunate heir to an entire preceding literary
and philosophical tradition,220 it was nourished by other sources as well.
The great cultural war over science and materialism found in psychology
one of its chief battlegrounds, and, not only in Russia but also in Western
Europe, the second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a fundamental
change in educated people’s understanding of how human psychology
works. Fet’s situation was clear: he was what is generally thought of as a
Cartesian dualist who believed in the separation of mind and matter and in
the primacy and essential autonomy of the former. Profoundly conservative,
he continued, as he saw it, to hold throughout his life to the views he had
formed in his youth, and, though in some respects his ideas changed, the
new was always understood by Fet in a manner compatible with his earlier
beliefs. With respect to psychology, this naturally entailed on Fet’s part an
anti-physiological orientation. Not only does Fet say this, and not only does
his poetry attest to this way of viewing the mind and the world, but also in
his later years the poet found his editors and collaborators in the persons of
N. N. Strakhov – the author of among many other things a book devoted to
an exposition, from his dualistic perspective, of the relationship between
psychology and physiology221 – and Vl. S. Solov’ev. At the same time, Fet’s
writings show keen interest in the popular-scientific issues of his time: we
have already seen that he refers to current popular developments in astron-
omy and photography, and he also occasionally alludes to Darwin and The
Origin of Species. Contemporary work on visual perception also has some
resonance in Fet’s poetry, as we shall see in the next chapter. Although he
rejected physiologically grounded psychology, he certainly knew something
about its progress, which was in his day not only impressive in its own terms
but also a salient aspect of Russian culture and politics.222 Moreover, in spite
of the scientism of the nineteenth century, and the importance of physiology
for the development of a modern experimental approach to psychology, the
study of the brain developed along with, and without eclipsing, the study of
54 Chapter One

mind. Nascent dynamic psychiatry was developed by men often of impecca-

ble scientific credentials who nonetheless practiced psychotherapy as a very
personal art, and their practice both affected and was itself informed by the
broader culture of their time.223 In Moscow, where Fet lived both as a stu-
dent and again in his last years, we may note the rapid development of psy-
chiatric medical practice in the careers of A. Ia. Kozhevnikov, whose “main
achievement”, in the judgment of the anonymous author of the Brockhaus-
Efron article on him, was
his organization of an entire school of neuropathologists and psychiatrists in Mos-
cow… Under his leadership the Moscow Medical Faculty was for the first time pro-
vided with special clinics for mental (1887) and nervous (1890) diseases.224
The work of his pupil S. S. Korsakov, which came to include a well-known
psychiatric textbook published in 1893 but which is especially famous for
studies dealing with memory disorders induced by alcoholism, began to ap-
pear in Fet’s lifetime and is still referred to (as “Korsakoff syndrome”) in
modern work on memory and memory distortion.225
More distantly connected to Fet’s milieu is the psychiatric practice of Dr.
Jean-Martin Charcot (1835-93). Starting from early work in neurophysiol-
ogy, Charcot later moved to a study of consciousness viewed independently
of organic brain physiology. Contemporaries believed his greatest contrib-
utions to be in his understanding of hysteria, an illness that enjoyed an un-
fortunate vogue in the latter nineteenth century, and which was, as we have
seen, of some personal importance for Fet. Charcot’s work on hysteria dates
from 1870 onward, while his talk at the Academy of Sciences early in 1881
marked the Academy’s acceptance of hypnotism as a scientific phenomenon.
Charcot was a world-famous teacher, particularly renowned for his lectures
before large groups of students who came to the hospital he headed in Paris;
Freud was among those who heard him, and so (in 1888) was Fet’s brother-
in-law, the well-known epidemiologist S. P. Botkin, as well as a whole “cir-
cle” of Russian doctors.226 The anonymous article on Charcot in the Brock-
haus-Efron encyclopedic dictionary mentions Russian translations of Char-
cot’s works, beginning in 1876. A contemporary Russian doctor, A. Liubi-
mov, evaluated Charcot’s contribution in the following way: “By the posi-
tive results of his researches on the psychic functions of the brain in the
speech process (langue intérieure), and also by his study of memory, con-
sciousness, split personality (dédoublement de la personnalité) and the psy-
chic pathogenesis of nervous disorders, he led contemporary psychology out
of the realm of abstract, speculative science and put it on the soil of experi-
mental positivism”.227 The 1903 Brockhaus-Efron entry also mentions Char-
cot’s ground-breaking work on aphasia. Charcot’s stand on the soil of posi-
tivism is shakier than Liubimov could ever have realized
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 55

or Charcot admitted. He was sharply criticized on account of his personal-

ized and scientifically sometimes lax approach to psychotherapy. His most
famous results were achieved not in scientific laboratories but in interviews
with patients, whom he sought to cure case by case, and the concerns that
are mentioned by Liubimov are at the center not only of science in the nine-
teenth century but also of art and literature.
Charcot’s contributions to the study of psychology were considered to
represent some of the best science of their day, but they were accessible to
any interested and intelligent reader in Russia as elsewhere in Europe from
the 1870s onward.228 Nineteenth-century poets and writers of fiction often
availed themselves of current observations of mental processes, and Fet can
have known, and in some cases certainly did know, numerous works of lit-
erature reflecting contemporary psychiatric knowledge.229

1.5.2 Fet’s experience of psychiatric pathology

Fet’s memoirs strongly suggest that he read about new developments in psy-
chology, his reading perhaps inspired by his personal experience of emotion
and consciousness, as well as enforced personal observation: he more than
once in his memoirs refers to the opinions of psychiatrists – the word itself,
and what it meant, was new in Fet’s lifetime – whom he came to know over
a lifetime of experience with the ill health of three generations of family
members with whom he lived and whose deterioration he was forced to wit-
ness. The onset of each of these catastrophes took place when the afflicted
family member – his mother, his favorite and much younger sister, and his
sister’s only child, to name only the three cases that are both clearest and
closest to Fet’s personal experience – was in his or her mid-twenties, and a
psychological crisis seems to have afflicted Fet himself at about the same
age. Fet’s crisis is probably what is given fictional form in an autobiographi-
cal story by Apollon Grigor’ev.230 Fet’s memoirs, which give scant notice of
his own sufferings, record in some detail the symptoms of disease, the ad-
vice of doctors and of his wife’s family, and the changing medical assistance
available to each successive generation: his mother’s illnesses (both her
mental illness and her death of breast cancer) are reported on from 1828 to
1844 or 1845,231 his sister’s from 1856 to about 1870,232 her son’s from the
early 1880s to 1888.233 Fet calls chronology his enemy, and constantly dis-
claims responsibility for dates, but his undated statements about his family’s
illnesses locate them with chronological precision, and the major outlines of
his narrative are confirmed in other sources.234 Even when he is recalling
events from a distance of many years, Fet’s discussion of psychiatric issues,
such as his mother’s condition, owes more than a little to new attitudes to-
ward psychopathology that had begun to emerge in the very last years of his
56 Chapter One

life, while his matter-of-fact descriptions of mental illness read in part like a
rebuke to its stylishness in the literary culture of the early 1890s. In sum, the
early history and practice of psychiatry in Russia had very intimate meaning
for Fet.
Fet’s experience of psychopathology exemplifies one kind of connection
between Fet’s life and his poetry. The life is not visible in the poetry, but the
poetry can be seen, wings folded, in the corners of his life. Bitterly noting
the discrepancy between the poetic travails of Ophelia and his sister’s medi-
cal condition, the poet finds in literary and domestic psychopathology a clear
example of how different life is from art.235 Yet the discursiveness of Fet’s
memoirs evokes not only the flitting consciousness of recollection, the in-
formality of his often rambling personal letters, but also the crafty simula-
crum of free association in his poems, and their evasion of personality.
Fet jealously protected his art from his life, and he craved the privacy he
knew his art required.236 Privacy was not a salient quality of nineteenth-
century European culture and has never been characteristic of Russian life,
but Fet was constantly in search of it, or of surrogates for it: observing and
being observed, the nature of observation, and freedom from observation are
constant concerns in his writing. His private life was something he cultivated
in defiance of contemporaries’ fierce attacks not only on his art but also on
him personally and on a way of living that they abhorred and he laboriously
constructed.
Fet insisted on the separation of life from art, but the relationship was not
an easy one for Fet and it should not be easy for his readers.237 Although he
refused to make of his poems “illustrations of anything whatever”, as he
wrote in his memoirs, yet his poetry was often as ideological as that of his
socially-inspired enemies: Fet again and again expressed his commitment to
the belief that poets had, and could communicate, knowledge of mind – truth
– that would always be outside the realm describable by scientists. This pro-
grammatic and metapoetic aspect of his art has sometimes seemed inconsis-
tent to readers who, wrongly, look to Fet for experience of art independent
of any reality beyond the poetic text. Such an expectation unfairly trivializes
Fet’s poetics. His claim to knowledge inaccessible to scientific discovery,
made most explicitly in essays written in 1867, is a late echo of a romantic
tradition, exemplified by Wordsworth. There was for Fet, as for Words-
worth, no subject matter in principle excluded from poetry, only whatever
aspects of it that were deficient in beauty. The fact that Fet took his themat-
ics mainly from the traditional realms of love and nature does not mean that
he saw poetry as mere pastime, but rather that he had complete faith in the
strength of poetic intuition to illuminate and transform the most elemental
experiences in human life.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 57

1.5.3 Fet’s psychology and his contemporaries

Over the time that Fet wrote, there was a generational sea-change in people’s
understanding of the mind. The shift can be seen in friends’ and editors’ re-
sponses to Fet’s late work. For Ia. P. Polonskii, a year older than Fet and the
poet’s friend from their youth, the wonder of Fet’s last books is the return of
the Fet he had known before: “still the same”, Polonskii marvels, after all
those years! For N. N. Strakhov, too, eight years Fet’s junior, the poet re-
mains in his last books the poet he always was: melody, lightness, roses. For
Vladimir Solov’ev – thirty-three years Fet’s junior, the still-young “archi-
tect”, according to Fet, of his re-entry into public view in his 1883 book –
Fet is just as integral, but he is different from the poet characterized by
Strakhov or Polonskii. Rejecting the idea that Fet’s poetry is “subjective”,
Solov’ev goes beyond what Grigor’ev claimed in 1850 and declares Fet a
poet of objective reality, of an inner state that perfectly corresponds to the
outer world. Solov’ev writes,238
even the learned materialists begin, unexpectedly for themselves, to approach the
truth long known to the mystics … that the life of the wakeful consciousness, con-
nected with the brain, is only a part of our spiritual life, which has another, deeper
and fundamental region (connected, evidently, with the abdominal nervous system,
and also with the heart). This ‘nocturnal side’ of the soul, as the Germans call it, usu-
ally hidden from our waking consciousness and manifested in normal people only in
rare instances of significant dreams, forebodings, and so on, under conditions of the
violation of internal equilibrium in the organism breaks through in a more evident
and continuous series of phenomena and forms what, with incomplete precision, is
called a second, third, and so on personality. In normal circumstances there cannot be
any such distintegration, but sometimes there is very strongly felt not only the exis-
tence of another, hidden side of spiritual being, but also its influence on our overt
conscious life. This feeling is splendidly expressed by Fet.
To Solov’ev, recent advances both in physiology and in dynamic psychiatry,
in particular the current popularization of multiple-personality disorders,
show that the mystics were right all along. An older generation had wit-
nessed, and their careers had been marked by, the rise of the scientific and
materialistic discourse in which Solov’ev here participates. The older gen-
eration, including Fet, knew what materialism meant, but it was for them not
only antipathetic but also alien. Solov’ev had literally grown up with materi-
alism, and he speaks as someone with some knowledge of science, the realm
in which he originally intended to make his career. Moreover, the physio-
logical approach to psychology that Solov’ev here alludes to was, even as he
wrote, approaching a moment of crisis: Freud, only a few years younger than
Solov’ev, was reviewing the latest studies of hypnotism, and would soon
begin to separate himself from his neurological antecedents.
58 Chapter One

1.6 A preliminary note on chronology and periodization

Our discussion has shown some of the ways in which the chronological
situation, and therefore the chronological differentiation, of Fet’s poetry is
important for understanding it and for understanding his interactions with his
readers, especially those who were also his editors. The importance of the
connection has long been understood: interest in reconstructing early Fet and
understanding his relationship to the later Fet begins relatively soon after the
poet’s death in November 1892. Briusov’s attention to the specifics of the
young Fet is apparent in letters from 1895 (to P. P. Pertsov) and 1898 (to K.
D. Balmont),239 while Northern Flowers for 1902 included N. Chernogu-
bov’s early chronology of Fet’s poems. Although we do not have a precise
chronology for all of them, and never will have, we do know within at least a
few years the time of writing of most of them, while the last works were
generally dated by Fet’s secretary.240 His early texts were sometimes signifi-
cantly revised in the course of publication and re-publication, and their his-
tory has been well studied.241
What has not been well studied is the periodization of Fet’s poetry. The
tendency to view Fet’s poetry as all of a piece from beginning to end was
fostered by Fet and by the happenstance of how his texts were preserved and
published. At the same time, some aspects of his biography remain obscure.
Even the elementary facts of Fet’s German bilingualism and German educa-
tion have not been adequately taken into account, and in the Soviet period
they were gradually forgotten. Not, of course, that it is adequate simply to
divide up Fet’s work according to the external signposts of his biography,
even if we knew more about it: we cannot assume any particular relationship
between life and art, least of all in a poet who went out of his way to sepa-
rate the two. In Chapter Three I will sketch a periodization of Fet’s poetry,
based upon the evidence of the texts themselves.
This brings up another problem. If we want to read the chronological
subdivisions appropriate to the work from the disposition of the work itself
across time, then periodization is, as it is otherwise not, dependent on what
of Fet’s writing is being taken into consideration. If we look just at the po-
etry that Fet himself chose to include in his final collection of poetry – what
we will refer to as his canon – then his oeuvre will have a different chrono-
logy from if we were to look at everything he is known to have written, or
(more realistically) all the short poems. The question is further complicated
if we consider any longer poems or translations (as we shall), or variant texts
(which we shall), or if we differentiate (as we shall) among different types of
poems excluded from the canon.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 59

The problematics of Fet’s canon are illustrated in the history of the texto-
logical decisions made by B. Ia. Bukhshtab, who over a fifty-year span pro-
duced three major editions of Fet’s works.242 Bukhshtab wavered over the
problem of how to think of the texts of Fet’s poems, since so many of them
had been edited, by Turgenev in particular, into versions different from what
Fet had originally written. In his first collection of Fet’s work, in 1937,
Bukhshtab “restored” the “pre-Turgenev” versions, but, in his 1959 version,
he undid his “restorations”, motivated by the fact that Fet himself, in later
editions than those carried out by Turgenev, retained nearly all the changes
that Turgenev had made. Indeed, as M. L. Gasparov has recently noted, the
later Fet seems even to have internalized Turgenev’s practice and, according
to Gasparov’s analysis, himself performs the excisions earlier carried out by
his by then deceased former editor.243 Yet the much-vexed question of “Tur-
genev-editor-of-Fet” tends to ignore the fact that Turgenev was only one of
several influential editors of Fet’s poetry. Fet reports that his poems were
published in any given collection only if they met the approval of the editors
of that collection. They decided not only if a poem should enter the collec-
tion – and hence the canon – but also where in the collection the poem
should go. Thus, the Fet of Bukhshtab’s edition – and I would not suggest
that there is some other single Fet that should take his place – is Fet as edited
by not only Turgenev but also Apollon Grigor’ev, N. A. Nekrasov, Vl. S.
Solov’ev, and N. N. Strakhov, not to mention occasional other figures, in-
cluding of course Bukhshtab and the general editors of the series in which
Bukhshtab’s editions appeared. Few of those named can be regarded as lack-
ing their own ideological commitments, and those commitments were only
partly congruent with what we know of Fet. Hardly anyone has resisted the
urge to improve him. Just as Fet accepted Turgenev’s improvements as valid
not just for the 1856 volume that Turgenev edited, but for good, so, too,
Grigor’ev’s groupings of the poems for the 1850 volume became the basis
for all the later groupings,244 even though this resulted in some anomalies,
such as early and late “elegies” having nothing whatever to do with one an-
other. Not only is Fet’s personality elusive, but so is the Fetian text.
The fullest edition of his poems offers a canon of nearly exactly those
poems that Fet wished to include in his final collection of verse; a nearly
equal amount of poetry, however, appears in the same volume as work out-
side the canon. Some of Fet’s work outside the canon was intended only for
private reading, while other poems are exactly like the canonical poetry,
only, in someone’s view at some time between 1840 and 1892, not as good.
Most of these rejected poems are early works, and they share many of the
characteristics of the canonical poems of the same period. Yet if we array
the canon and the non-canon side by side across time, we see that the non-
canonical poetry participates less than the canonical works do in defining
60 Chapter One

what it is that is distinctively Fetian. To this we may add that modern edi-
tions of Fet typically separate Fet’s translations from his original poetry, and
it would be difficult to imagine doing otherwise; and yet Fet did not always
distinguish the two, and he certainly used his translating activity to make
statements about his own poetry and poetics. Thus, for all the care and accu-
racy of, in particular, Bukhshtab’s work, the Fetian text remains surprisingly
unstable. If the canon that Bukhshtab presents us with is justified by the fact
that it truly represents the author’s last known intentions, then we may ask:
given the difficult and complex history that underlies these texts, what
united them in the mind of the poet who claimed them as his oeuvre? Ac-
cording to all the evidence – his memoirs, other people’s memoirs, his fic-
tion, his letters, his selection of the canon itself – the poet believed that his
poems constituted, at the end, a coherent whole. What are we to make of the
text as Fet – inspired by whatever ideas, encouraged by whatever editors,
buffeted by whatever societal and personal winds – left it as the legacy he
chose, for himself and for us his readers?
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 61

Notes to Chapter One

1
The story of Fet’s name is somewhat complicated. The poet was born in 1820 (23
November, according to MV [2:275], according to other sources 29 November or 29 Oc-
tober [BLOK 1985:135]) into the aristocratic Shenshin family, but, in January 1835 (BLOK
1985:140), an investigation apparently instigated by local officials ended in his being
declared legally the son of his mother’s first husband, J. P. K W. Foeth (1789-1825).
Foeth, like the poet’s mother, was German. His background has been obscure, but GOLDT
(1998) goes far to remedy this situation, even discovering that Foeth was among other
things, in his day, a minor poet, who published enough to earn a mention in the lexicon of
literary figures of 19th-century Hessen (GOLDT 1998:79, 110). The surname Foeth was
Russianized as Fët, in its official form indeclinable and spelled with a diaeresis. This is
how Afanasy Fet’s name appears, for example, in two letters that Apollon Grigor’ev in
1843-44 wrote to university officials (GRIGOR’EV 1999:11, 12). The poet never published
under the name Fët. For his first book of poetry ([FET] 1840), as well as poems that came
out in the journal The Muscovite in 1841, he used the initials A. F., and he began to pub-
lish as Fet in 1842. On December 26, 1873, Emperor Alexander II issued a personal de-
cree to re-admit Fet into the Shenshin family (MV 2:282), but Fet continued to publish
under his former name, not only his poetry but also memoirs, stories, and even most of
the publicistic essays not signed with the pen-name “Country Dweller”.
Extensive literature, partly scholarly and partly not, treats Fet’s ancestry and what Fet
knew or believed it to be.
According to his memoirs (MV 2:275), Fet discovered relatively late in life that his
mother had married A. N. Shenshin in a Lutheran ceremony in Germany, and that the
reason he bore the name of his mother’s first husband – the reason he was officially not
A. N. Shenshin’s son – was that the Russian Orthodox Church did not accept the validity
of the Lutheran ceremony. It was this judgment of the church hierarchy that was reversed
by Alexander II, who acted, however, in the absence of documentation that the Lutheran
marriage had taken place, much less that the Russian Orthodox Church had not
recognized it. According to this account, Fet was the biological son of A. N. Shenshin,
and Alexander II simply returned to him the normal privileges of that parentage.
Some fifteen years before Alexander’s decree, and presumably before learning of the
Lutheran marriage ceremony, Fet put another version of his story into a letter he wrote
M. P. Botkina shortly before their marriage in 1857. The existence of the letter, dated 16
July, has long been known, but it was published only recently (ASLANOVA, ed. 1997).
Here Fet identifies A. N. Shenshin as his stepfather, and he calls Foeth his father: “Мать
моя была замужем за отцом моим, дармштадтским ученым и адвокатом, и родила
дочь Каролину – теперешнюю Матвееву в Киеве, и была беременна мной. В это
время приехал жить в Дармштадт отчим мой Шеншин, который увез мать мою от
Фета, и когда Шеншин приехал в деревню, то через несколько месяцев мать родила
меня. Через полгода или год затем Фет умер, и Шеншин женился на матери. Вот
история моего рождения”. The letter is not entirely accurate: Foeth was not “адвокатом
62 Chapter One

Notes
и ученым”, and he did not die within a year after Fet’s birth, but re-married, and he
agreed to “adopt” his own son, on condition that the boy’s financial inheritance, in the
event of A. N. Shenshin’s death, not be Foeth’s responsibility (BLOK 1985:136, see also
note 60). ASLANOVA (ed., 1997) says that Fet’s statement “всего лишь пересказывает
Марии Петровне официальную версию того, почему, рожденный в семье
Шеншиных, он носит другую фамилию”. But if Fet did not yet know the story of the
Lutheran ceremony, what, other than what he says in the letter, was he to believe? His
natural father was either Foeth or Shenshin, and in the absence of the re-marriage intro-
duced in the later story, both possibilities equally imply that his mother was unfaithful to
her first husband. If Fet thought the version he reports to Maria Petrovna was inaccurate,
why would he not have indicated as much? And although Fet may have thought that the
official story explained his use of his mother’s first husband’s last name, it does not: the
fact that the boy was not entitled to bear Shenshin’s name did not mean he could take
Foeth’s. If Foeth had died when Fet says he did (he actually died a few years later),
without giving permission for Fet to take his name, the poet would have had to be called
something else. Fet thus retells the official story to Maria Petrovna but re-casts it slightly,
perhaps not knowing the truth himself. There is no reason to think he disbelieved what he
wrote. The version in the letter also apparently corresponds to Fet’s mother’s attitude
(BLOK 1985:136). In a letter, she refers to A. N. Shenshin’s good will toward her baby,
whom she describes Shenshin caring for as if he were his own. She may not have
discussed Fet’s parentage with him, but there is no reason to think she told him his
biological father was Shenshin.
The apparent mystery of Fet’s parentage is odd, since Fet was in contact with his
German relatives throughout his life. Both J. P. K. W. Foeth and Fet’s mother died rather
early on, but their daughter Caroline (1819-75) came to Russia in 1841 for a prolonged
visit with her mother, and after Caroline’s marriage to a kinsman of A. N. Shenshin
(1844) she spent much of her life in Kiev, in later life corresponding with Fet in German,
both while in Kiev and from Germany (MATVEEVA 1999). Fet also visited with his
mother’s brother and other German relatives on various occasions in both Germany and
Russia. It is strange to imagine all these people communicating with one another, social-
izing, and carrying out family business without having a fairly good idea how they were
related. Given Fet’s prominence and the great interest his parentage has aroused, it is
unexpected that the records should not have been thoroughly researched long ago.
The clouded circumstances of the poet’s birth, matched by an equal mystery about his
death in 1892, have become part of his mythology. For further discussion of Fet’s
genealogy, see GOLDT (1998), which refers to and supersedes most of the earlier
literature, as well as presenting the fruits of new German archival research. Other impor-
tant literature on this subject includes RG, CHERNOGUBOV (1900), FEDÍNA (1915), BLOK
(1924, 1985), TRAUTMANN (1942), BUKHSHTAB (1974:4-12), KOZHINOV (1981),
GENERALOVA / AUER, edd. (1992), and SHENSHIN (1994). During Fet’s lifetime his
mother’s ancestry was widely believed to be Jewish. Fet’s close friend Ia. P. POLONSKII
(1986) speaks of her Jewish origin as a fact, and it has occasionally been so reported
more recently. Equally energetic have been the sporadic but timely denials: TRAUTMANN
(1942) is a worthy testament to the Zeitgeist that engendered it, and so is Iu. IUSHKIN’s
1990 (incomplete!) translation into Russian (also GOLLE 1992:299-301). For more on
Fet’s mother, see note 44. On Fet’s death see SADOVSKOI (1915), ASLANOVA, ed. (1994),
and note 121.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 63

Notes
2
The collections of Fet’s poetry that appeared during his lifetime are discussed in
Chapter Three. Several others appeared in the decades immediately following his death.
They include some work not reprinted later. Important Soviet-era scholarly editions of
Fet’s collected poetry appeared in 1937, 1959, 1971, and 1986, of which the fullest and
most authoritative is the edition of 1959, edited by B. Ia Bukhshtab. The 1971 edition is a
collection of the poetry Fet published during the 1880s and 90s, or which at the time of
Fet’s death in 1892 was in the process of being edited for publication.
Fet’s prose has never been collected and published in its entirety, but more of his
work is now being published, or reprinted, than in years past. FET (1982, Sochineniia)
was the first of several publications to include not only poetry but also fiction, essays,
and correspondence. The collection of fiction is nearly complete, and the stories chosen
are reprinted in full. Most of the essays are abridged. Those included are on aesthetics,
but, since then, others have also been reprinted, in whole or in part. Among these publica-
tions are agricultural essays (ASLANOVA, ed. 1992), other essays on social themes (e.g.
FET 1999), and journalistic notes from abroad (ASLANOVA, ed. 1999:235-69). The notes
from abroad and some of the fiction have been discussed by GOLDT (1998) in connection
with Fet’s status as a Russian German. The travel notes, moreover, are of interest not
only as journalism but also as sources for understanding Fet’s aesthetics. (LEBEDEVA /
JANUŠKEVIČ [2000] treat Fet’s travel notes from a Russian perspective.) They do not,
however, correspond directly to his activities while traveling in Western Europe. Fet’s
memoirs have been reprinted (FET 1992), and comparison of the notes from abroad with
corresponding sections of the memoirs (which often are identical, word for word) shows
changes in hotel (the memoirs put him in cheaper lodgings than the travel notes do), in
chronology, and in political sympathies. It is unfortunate that some of the most recent
publications of Fet’s prose works are unsatisfactory for scholarly purposes, and the same
is true of some of the abundant new publications of Fet’s correspondence.
Fet’s later correspondence has not fared well, a situation described by BUKHSHTAB
(1935) and only partly ameliorated, or ameliorable, afterward. Many letters seem to have
been lost during the Soviet period, some known because Fet published them in his mem-
oirs, and others – because they had been utilized and referred to in publications, for ex-
ample NIKOL’SKII (1917). Some of Fet’s letters have been published together with those
of his correspondents: L N. TOLSTOI (1978), I. S. TURGENEV (1986 – these are mostly
Turgenev’s letters, and only a few written by Fet), and recently K.R. (SMIRNOVA 1993,
KUZ’MINA 1994, K.R. 1999). Fet’s correspondence contains material useful for work on
Fet’s late poetics, and recent work makes use of it. Novinskaia and Rudnev, for example,
cite Fet’s letters to F. E. Korsh as evidence of Fet’s interest in Tiutchev’s verse experi-
ments (NOVINSKAIA / RUDNEV 1995:532, cf. KOSMOLINSKAIA 1993). One may also note
Fet’s correspondence with the minor author S. V. Engel’gardt (FET 1988, GENERALOVA,
ed. 1994), as well as his letters to A. V. Olsuf’ev (FET 1988), a knowledgeable enthusiast
of Latin literature who commented on Fet’s Latin translations. At the present time (early
2001) Fet’s correspondence with N. N. Strakhov and Vladimir Solov’ev is in the process
of being published. Letters of less direct interest for Fet’s poetics have also appeared, for
example AUER / GENERALOVA, edd. (1992), MARICHEVA (1992), MEDYNTSEVA (1994),
ABROSIMOVA, ed. (1996) and MATVEEVA, ed. (1999). Illuminating of both Fet’s personal
life and his art is ASLANOVA, ed. (1997): these letters from Fet to M. P. Botkina during
their engagement cast light on their relationship, on the story of Fet’s parentage (see note
64 Chapter One

Notes
1), on his health (see also notes 9 and 121), and on the place in his oeuvre of several po-
ems that Fet put into the letters.
Systematic analysis of Fet’s correspondence has yet to be carried out, and the interest
of such a project is suggested by how differently it is characterized by, for example,
MEDYNTSEVA (1994) on one hand and ABROSIMOVA (1996) on the other. On the basis of
the letters I have had occasion to work with, it would seem that Fet’s personality is as
elusive in letters as elsewhere, and in some respects more so. In cases where we know
something about Fet’s relationship with his correspondent, it is often clear that he
radically adjusted what he wrote to suit both what he must have judged to be his
correspondent’s expectations of him and what he wanted, or did not want, his
correspondent to know, or think he knew. Since modern readers of Fet’s letters often
must derive their notion of the relationship between the correspondents from the letters
themselves, interpreting what Fet says in them can be difficult.
3
Although sketches of Fet’s life appeared earlier, for example in encyclopaedia arti-
cles such as CHESHIKHIN (1903) and in connection with publications of his poetry
(STRAKHOV, “Biograficheskii ocherk” 1912), the first biography of the poet was under-
taken by G. P. BLOK, who in 1924 published a study of Fet’s early years. He also com-
pleted a brief Chronicle of the poet’s life, which, however, appeared in print only half a
century after its completion (BLOK 1985; cf. ASLANOVA 1994). The concise biographical
study by B. Ia. BUKHSHTAB (1974) continues to be authoritative, not only about Fet’s life
but also, as its title suggests, as a guide to Fet’s poetics. L. M. LOTMAN’s biographical
study (1976) focuses on Fet’s career from 1840 to 1856 and calls attention to Fet’s
earliest texts, which are often neglected. On Fet’s genealogy and early life, see sources
referred to in note 1. A new sketch of his university years is SHENSHIN (2000).
4
From the mid-1880s, in particular, until 1936, there is abundant and interesting
work on Fet. It was then long halted in the Soviet Union, and for some time rather little
was done anywhere else. KEIL’s 1955 dissertation is noteworthy, antedating as it does the
authoritative edition of Fet’s original poetry, which was published in 1959. Still, by 1961,
it was possible for a knowledgeable Russian scholar to say that it had then been decades
since anyone had said anything of the remotest interest about Fet (MARKOV 1994:33).
The decades since have seen something of a revival of interest in both Fet’s poetry
and its context. Besides the works mentioned in notes 2 and 3, other book-length studies
of Fet’s poetry include GUSTAFSON (1966), LAFERRIERE (1972), EGEBERG (1976), BUCK
(1978), CZYKWIN (1984), CHEREDNICHENKO (1986), KOZUBOVSKAIA (1994. A Fet), and
SHENSHIN (1994).
Newer Fet studies have tended to redress the characteristically Soviet defects of
earlier publications. At its worst, this tendency has entailed replacing the old clichés with
even older ones. At its best, it has encouraged publication of documentary materials such
as the more recent publications mentioned in notes 2 and 3. The new wave of documen-
tary publication is already noticeable in the 1980s, starting with FET (1982). SKATOV
(1985) includes the first publication of the chronicle of Fet’s life prepared by Georgii
Blok and edited for publication by B. Ia. Bukhshtab in the 1930s (see note 3). (SKATOV
[1985] also includes a previously unpublished poem [FRUMKINA 1985], while FET [1986]
shows something of a regression: important late epistles to members of the royal family
are omitted from what was to be a major new edition of Fet’s poetry.) ASLANOVA /
TARKHOV, edd. (1989) includes the first collection of contemporaries’ remarks about Fet.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 65

Notes
The collection addresses current interest in the documentary background of Fet’s work,
and it also represents another tendency in Fet studies: comparativism.
Any writer can be studied in relation to contemporaries, predecessors, and followers,
but Fet seems to be especially often viewed in such contexts. Turgenev’s role as Fet’s
editor has been especially well described (BUKHSHTAB 1935, see also note 14 below), as
has his connection with the life and work of L. N. Tolstoi (notably EIKHENBAUM 1960,
and recently ANDREEVA 1994). Fet has often been studied in relation to other poets, for
example Nekrasov (E. V. ERMILOVA 1971, M. LOTMAN 1988), Balmont (ALTHAUS-
SCHÖNBUCHER 1975) and especially Tiutchev (see references indexed on page 9), or,
more generally, as heir of the Golden Age and predecessor of the Symbolists. This com-
parativist line in Fet studies is well represented in work of the later Soviet and post-
Soviet period, for example, by several of the articles in SKATOV (1985), GOLLE (1992,
1994) and LEBEDEV (1999), as well as in such diverse works as the following: VAN TUYL
(1986), BOROWEC (1991), NEKRASOVA (1991), ALEKSEEVA (1993), BERNEVEGA (1995).
BEL’SKAIA (1995), EGEBERG (1998), and PACHMUSS (1993).
5
If we include the shorter translations from German and French, the number of short
poems jumps to about 930.
6
The average is just a bit over fourteen lines.
7
Fet had no talent for writing plays, and his interest in writing drama is attested only
in unfinished fragments, in short poems with speech embedded in them, in a dramatic
“idyll” (“Лизиас и Вакхида”, 1869), in two “dialogues” (“Эоловы арфы” and “Соловей
и роза”, both from the mid-1840s), and in a longish piece based on a nearly actionless
Indian drama (“Саконтала”). “Эоловы арфы” is evidently related to Goethe’s “Äolshar-
fen”. On “Соловей и роза” see MORITS (1978). A recent study of Sakuntala in the West
(especially Germany) and in Russia is FIGUEIRA (1991:11-34, 186-91). Her discussion of
the Russian Sakuntala focuses mainly on the 1914 Chamber Theater production based on
a text by Balmont. See also note 86. A recent study of Karamzin’s Sakuntala, with refer-
ences to earlier Russian literature, is GRINTSER (1998). On Sakuntala in the context of
Karamzin’s travels and thought, see ROTHE (1968:88).
Much better known than any of Fet’s attempts at writing drama is his decision to give
it up. According to Fet (MV 1:2-7), the decision (which he considers to have been entirely
correct) was made on Turgenev’s advice. (Fet later gave the same advice to L. N. Tol-
stoi.) This was probably on the occasion of what Turgenev writes was his first meeting
with Fet, in June 1853 (TURGENEV 1961-68:2:164-65). These meetings, according to Fet,
were arranged through the efforts of his younger sister Nadezhda.
In spite of his lack of talent as a playwright, Fet’s poems are sometimes dramatic in a
psychological, rather Victorian, sort of way, and, as we see in Chapter Two, his early
poetry often features fairly elaborate stage settings. GRIGOR’EV (1850) mentions the
dramatism of Fet’s early writing, with special reference to the poem “The cat sings…”,
discussed in Chapter Two, and Fet himself lists Byron’s Cain among the works he was
most entranced with in his student days (see note 109). Although Fet turned away from
drama in his original poetry, of course his late translation of all of Goethe’s Faust (he
translated the “Zueignung” in his youth) can be read as a return not only to Faust and to
drama in general but also to the Luciferic problematics of Cain.
8
Toward the end of his life, Fet wrote three volumes of memoirs: first two volumes
about his adult life (Мои воспоминания, abbreviated MV) and then a third one about the
66 Chapter One

Notes
years leading up the time covered by the earlier books (Ранние годы моей жизни, or
RG). RG appeared posthumously.
9
They leave out relevant information, such as Fet’s last meeting with his great love
Maria Lazich (cf. KLENIN 1991:141-47). Sometimes, as is discussed below, a great deal
of outside information is required to see what has been left out, let alone imagine why.
Sometimes the memoirs also contain mistakes in poetry that is quoted (KLENIN 1985:326-
27), misidentification of novels that Fet certainly knew (KLENIN 1991:157), and
misattributions of authorship (KLENIN 1991:139). Some of the omissions and distortions
are apparently self-interested, while some may be motivated by a wish to protect others’
privacy or, since the people mentioned are often dead, their memory (cf. Fet’s
memoiristic presentation of Lazich with the documentation in POKROVSKAIA 1922/23).
Sometimes, mistakes may simply demonstrate the truth of Fet’s claim that he had a bad
memory, presumably grown worse with age, or they may arise from the fact that his
memoirs were largely dictated, because of his by-then bad eyesight: the narrative is often
rambling, so that sometimes it is not clear which events are supposed to follow which.
Fet says that “being by nature at war with chronology” (MV 1:1), he can only estab-
lish the relative order of events, and he makes no claim to remembering when things
actually happened. Even so, his chronology – even his relative chronology – is remark-
able. Both MV and RV begin with events that Fet says he cannot locate in time, and the
second volume of MV begins with a precise date that cannot be correct, at least for either
of the two events that Fet seems to associate with it. The many letters, and excerpts from
letters, that appear in MV are generally dated, and they often serve to establish chronol-
ogy. Sometimes they are the only source for our knowledge of an epistolary exchange. It
has often been complained, however, that Fet’s excisions from the letters unfairly modify
the impression they create.
Sometimes it seems in the memoirs as though references to chronology are arbitrarily
spotted around in prominent locations in a text really organized on completely different
principles. According to the headings used, for example, it would seem that MV starts in
1848 and ends in 1889, but the coverage is fairly dense only from the 1850s up to 1881.
In fact, MV is framed in references to Fet’s acquaintance with I. S. Turgenev: two meet-
ings marking the beginning of Fet’s acquaintance with Turgenev are the focus of the first
part of the first chapter, and the death of Turgenev is one of the last points mentioned in
the last chapter. Yet Fet says he does not recall when either of the two early meetings he
talks about took place: apparently, he puts Turgenev first in his narrative because he was
important for Fet’s career, which is more or less what MV is about. To complicate matters
further, it seems that the first meeting with Turgenev takes place in the home of S. P.
Shevyrev, and Fet says he does not know when that would have been, except it must have
been after the appearance of Fet’s first book, in 1840.
This suggests that Shevyrev took an initial interest in Fet because he had read and
valued Fet’s first book. It is likely that this is not so, although Fet may have been un-
aware of another motivation, which may have been this: Shevyrev perhaps interested
himself in Fet in response to a plea in an emotional letter, the surviving fragment of
which reads: “[…] Если это невозможно, – то спасите, ради самого Спасителя, спа-
сите человека, который обещает так много своим талантом. Этот человек – Фет.
Ваши убеждения, Ваши советы могут спасти его от страшного греха самоубий-
ства.” The fragment is unsigned and undated. (It is now in the Manuscript and Rare Book
Section of the Russian National Library (Отдел рукописей и редкой книги Российской
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 67

Notes
Национальной Библиотеки), f. 850, No. 678, l. 20. I wish to thank A. L. Ospovat for
giving me a copy of the letter, which he found and which has apparently not been
published before. According to Apollon Grigor’ev and other sources, Fet in his youth
(and not only then) was inclined toward depression and friends feared he might commit
suicide, as, in fact, he eventually did. (See notes 121, 230, and, in Chapter Two, note 23.
For a recent summary of contemporaries’ comments on this subject, see MEDYNTSEVA
1994:64.) We return later to Fet’s experience of psychopathology and its significance for
his work. In our present context, the significance of the letter is that it shows that,
although Fet’s presence in Shevyrev’s household may have begun only after Fet’s book
had appeared, there is no reason to assume it did.
An interesting example of Fet’s chronology is how he describes his meetings with F.
I. Tiutchev. There is no known reason for Fet to have deliberately hidden the truth when
he said, as his memoirs do, that his last meeting with Tiutchev took place in 1864 (MV
2:3). Yet he certainly met with him, and was apparently pleased by the meeting, in Janu-
ary 1866. At least one meeting in January 1866 is documented in a letter Fet wrote to V.
P. Botkin immediately after the visit (OSPOVAT 1986), and, moreover, Fet’s own detailed
description of the 1864 meeting makes no sense as an amplification of his original ref-
erence to his “last meeting with F. I. Tiutchev”. (We discuss this in the next paragraph.) It
is possible that Fet forgot about the meeting that took place in 1866, or that he remem-
bered the meeting but forgot that it, and not the meeting of 1864, was the last one. The
later Fet, as is well known, worshiped Tiutchev, but the two poets seem not to have
known each other especially well. Although Fet’s memoir mentions only a few private
meetings with Tiutchev, it is quite possible that there were no others: in that case, Fet’s
memoir includes all his private meetings with Tiutchev, but in the wrong order. The con-
fusion leaves open the possibility of other, unrecorded, meetings – and therefore of closer
personal friendship than is otherwise attested.
The second volume of MV opens with the words “По поводу последнего моего сви-
дания с Ф. И. Тютчевым в январе 64 года…”, and the memory of a meeting with Tiut-
chev becomes a pretext, as Fet says himself, for him to “приветствовать в моем вос-
поминании тен[ь] одного из величайших лириков, существовавших на земле”: in
the course of about two and a half pages, Fet reminisces about not one but several occa-
sions when he met with Tiutchev, he mentions what other people have said about Tiu-
tchev, he praises Tiutchev and his poetry, and at last he bids him a final, posthumous
farewell. In short, the passage about Tiutchev amounts to a kind of dedication of the sec-
ond volume of the memoirs to Tiutchev’s memory (see note 109), roughly parallel with
Fet’s placing his acquaintance with Turgenev at the beginning of the previous volume.
(GENERALOVA [1994:37-38] has noted the similarity.) Moreover, a dedication normally
comes at the beginning of a work, the second volume of MV begins with 1864, Fet wants
to talk about a meeting with Tiutchev that apparently took place in 1864, he wants his
dedication to Tiutchev also to be a graceful farewell – so Fet’s farewell visit with Ti-
utchev is brought up as the first item under the rubric 1864. The association between
visiting Tiutchev and 1864 is based on the character of the 1864 visit, which because of
its emotional saliency assumed central importance in Fet’s memory of his relationship to
Tiutchev. (The visit is mentioned for example in Pigarev’s biography of Tiutchev
[PIGAREV 1962:169] and in Auer’s dictionary entry on Fet [AUER 1990:341]. Both Piga-
rev and Auer, however, seem to rely entirely on Fet’s memory.) It was occasioned by
Fet’s wish, which he indirectly made known to Tiutchev and to which Tiutchev then
68 Chapter One

Notes
responded, to pay his respects on the eve of Tiutchev’s departure for, as Fet reports it,
Italy – in fact Geneva and then Nice – immediately after the funeral of E. A. Denis’eva.
Tiutchev’s invitation to Fet, according to the latter, was specifically to join him in sitting
awhile on a sofa that had been hers. Fet recalls Tiutchev as haggard and wrapped up
against cold, which Fet takes to be a sign of Tiutchev’s bad state, since the room, he says,
was warm. Of course it was warm: Denis’eva died in August, and Tiutchev left
Petersburg for Geneva in the latter part of the same month (PIGAREV 1962:169). Fet’s
opening statement about his last visit to Tiutchev says that it took place in January (and,
apparently, so it did), but his condolence call cannot have taken place both in January and
during the interval between Denis’eva’s death and Tiutchev’s departure from St.
Petersburg. If a condolence call took place, it was in August, and it was not the last visit,
if that took place in January.
Yet Fet’s ordering of events has its own logic, namely, the logic of juxtaposition.
First, he refers to his “last meeting” with Tiutchev, in January, and then, after a lyrical
excursus on Tiutchev, the meetings he goes on to talk about are meetings that took place
in Moscow, about three times in a single week. Those meetings probably took place in
January 1866, when Fet spent three weeks in Moscow overlapping with the time that
Tiutchev was also in Moscow, for the wedding of one of his daughters (OSPOVAT 1986).
Only after saying “I remember my last meeting with Tiutchev in January” (the year is a
slip, maybe not even his – it is a difference of “6” versus “4” in the printed text) and “I
visited him in Moscow and am very grateful for his kindness” does he turn to the all-
important visit of 1864 (and the chapter is about the events of 1864), which must have
been in August, and in St. Petersburg, if the events described took place at all. When the
narrative in MV gets to January 1866, Fet mentions his three-week trip to Moscow only in
the most general terms “во избежание скучных повторений” (MV: 2:80). As for Janu-
ary of 1864 (which is dealt with in the same chapter as Tiutchev), Fet reports that he was
indeed in St. Petersburg, arriving just in time for the funeral of A. V. Druzhinin, who died
January 19th, and leaving again for Moscow almost immediately afterward.
Although Fet had asked for and received a photograph of Tiutchev in April 1862, MV
mentions no meeting between the two that need have taken place before 1864. Other than
his condolence call (perhaps his first private meeting with Tiutchev) and the meeting or
meetings in January (1866?), Fet also mentions Tiutchev’s presence at a dinner he
attended at V. P. Botkin’s home. The dinner cannot have occurred before 1865. Botkin
hired the servant who prepared it (D. K. Toboleev) during the spring of 1864 and took up
residence in the apartment where the dinner was served in September 1864. By then
Tiutchev had left Russia, to return only early the following year. Botkin died in 1869.
The personal acquaintance with Tiutchev memorialized in Fet’s memoirs would thus
seem to have included events that took place in August 1864 (the “last” visit, which took
place in the few days between Fet’s arrival in St. Petersburg and Tiutchev’s departure)
and January 1866 (the visit documented by Ospovat) and perhaps up to a few years later
(when Botkin died). If the January of MV is not the same as the one in the letter found by
Ospovat, then obviously there were warm personal meetings earlier – but I have not been
able to discover when this may have been. BLOK (1985:165-66), without indicating his
sources but most likely relying on Fet’s memoir, says that Fet visited Tiutchev in January
1864, but questions whether this was really their last meeting. Obviously, it cannot have
been, if Fet’s account of his condolence call is accurate. For all we know, it is.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 69

Notes
10
Fet also translated prose, most notably Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and
Representation. I will not discuss the prose translations.
11
The only surviving German poetry by Fet seems to be his translation of his 1874
poem on the silver wedding anniversary of E. P. Shchukina (FET 1959:785-86). The text
was intended to be read only by the poet’s family: the addressee is his wife’s sister, and
the translation was first published 1894. It is not excluded that Fet wrote other occasional
verse in German. For example, Fet recounts his memory of the arrival in Moscow (April
1841) of Princess Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste Sophie Marie of Hessen-Darmstadt
(1824-80), bride of the Russian heir to the throne Alexander Nikolaevich (RG 197). Fet’s
mother’s brother Ernst Becker accompanied the bridal party as adjutant of Prince
Alexander of Hessen, the brother of the bride. Fet had published his first book of poems
only months earlier, and his uncle, learning of Fet’s literary inclinations, invited him to
compose a poem of welcome for the bride. Fet did so, and he presented it in the Kremlin
to the Prince. Fet gives direct quotes, in Russian, from his conversation with his uncle,
but he also notes that Becker spoke no Russian and depended on Fet as a Russian-
German interpreter. Fet does not indicate what language he wrote his poem in, but, given
that the shared native language of Fet and the bridal party was German, it would seem at
least possible that the poem was in German. (Alexander of Hessen remained at the
Russian court until latter 1852 [TIUTCHEVA 1990:9]. Ernst Becker, however, had suffered
a stroke and returned to his home in Germany no later than summer 1844, when Fet
visited him there [RG 242, BLOK 1985:147].)
12
Cf. AIKHENVAL’D (1908).
13
Fet mentions Turgenev’s prediction in a letter to K.R. (October 8, 1888; FET 1982:
2:181). Fet’s abjuration of language should also be seen in the context of the con-
temporary perception (incorrect) that the range of Fet’s poetic vocabulary was smaller
than that of other well-known Russian poets: if Fet had a small vocabulary, then he can
be accused of favoring silence only because he did not know how to express himself. For
an attack on Fet along these lines, see Minaev’s “Liricheskoe khudosochie” (MINAEV
1863:24). Some of this may have been linked in critics’ minds with Fet’s non-Russian
background. In reality, Fet seems to have had pretty much the same words everybody else
had, he just used them differently. His vocabulary is discussed in Chapter Three.
14
Fet discusses the much-vexed question of the “amputation” of his poems (MV
1:127-28), referring to “О, не зови! Страстей твоих так звонок…”. Throughout his car-
eer, Fet made changes in his poems at the suggestion of editors and permitted editors to
eliminate what they took to be unsuccessful stanzas or lines (his editors in general did not
add, but subtract). The organization of his books and choice of poems in them was also
apparently the work of Fet’s editors. He makes a point of this in the preface to one of his
last collections (FET 1971:240) and in a letter to K.R. (FET 1982:2:177). His first “chief
editor” was Apollon Grigor’ev, who was responsible for many of the headings used to
group Fet’s poems throughout his career, and his last works were edited by N. N.
Strakhov and Vl. Solov’ev. His most famous editorial relationship, however, was with I.
S. Turgenev, whose role as Fet’s editor has been often discussed (BUKHSHTAB 1935,
1959:711, L. M. LOTMAN 1977, KLENIN 1997, and see Chapter Three).
15
The parody, by D. D. Minaev, is discussed in GASPAROV (1988). Numerous paro-
dies of Fet’s verse appeared in print, especially in the 1860s, after he began to publish
articles on the agrarian reforms. There are several examples by Minaev in the 1863 article
mentioned in note 13, and he published two similar articles the same year in the same
70 Chapter One

Notes
journal. Fet was susceptible to parody not only because his thematics – and his politics –
did not suit his enemies, however, but also because some of his formal choices were so
distinctive, for example, his using extremely short lines alternating with long ones, some-
thing that can evoke a comic tradition. The urge to parody such a text (see Chapter Three)
was not resisted by the then 18-year-old A. N. Apukhtin, who is unlikely to have been
parodying Fet for any political reason and who admired his poetry. Apukhtin’s parody
was published in 1858 (that is, prior to the journalistic attacks, which began in 1859),
probably, according to Shatseva, without the knowledge of the author (APUKHTIN 1991:
272 and note). See also M. Iu. LOTMAN (1988:116) and Michael WACHTEL (1998:14-15).
16
Comments about Fet’s indifference to detail are found, for example, in the writings
of his editor and near contemporary N. N. STRAKHOV (1912, “Zametki o Fete”), as well
as in those of the much younger Julii AIKHENVAL’D (1908).
17
For a recent characterization of Fet’s language as vague and imprecise, see TERRAS
(1991:314).
18
BUKHSHTAB (1959, 1974).
19
MEREZHKOVSKII (1914:260).
20
GINZBURG (1974:221) and AUER (1991) offer contrasting interpretations of Fet’s
prosaisms, and Auer, apparently like most readers, but unlike me, finds Fet’s prose
lacking any of the qualities of his poetry. The changing relationship of prose and poetry
in Russian literature has become a frequent object of critical discussion, and it is a leitmo-
tiv throughout the authoritative work on the history of Russian verse (GASPAROV 1984;
cf. also GASPAROV 1973, 1993:11-30). On the relationship between prose and poetry in
Fet’s time and the situation of his poetry in that context, see M. Iu. LOTMAN (1988:106-
108). Lotman’s work, comparing Fet with Nekrasov, connects the issue of the “prosi-
ness” of Fet’s language to the question of its relationship to contemporary poetry more
apparently informed by the social concerns of the time. On Fet and Nekrasov, and
discussion of this same issue, see E. V. ERMILOVA (1971).
21
MARKOV (1994). Markov’s characterization of freedom of spirit as the essence of
Fet’s poetry was unusual at the time his wrote his commentary, but it evokes a much
earlier tradition: “Фет является самым полным воплощением той свободы, той неза-
висимости от преходящих условий места и времени, о которой неоднократно упом-
инал Пушкин, ... как о драгоценном праве каждого носителя истинной поэзии”
(GOLENISHCHEV-KUTUZOV 1888). Some commentators have connected the freedom of
spirit evident in Fet’s poetry to his personal individualism and dislike of political life
(CHESHIKHIN 1903). Fet expressed his indifference to politics both in writings he intended
for publication (MV 1:40) and in private letters (AUER / GENERALOVA, edd. 1992). His
apolitical attitude did not entail indifference to social issues, and he dedicated the late
edition of his Horace translations to the memory of Alexander II as a hero of freedom in
Russia. (Alexander, still as crown prince, had been the patron of Fet’s guards regiment,
and the 1856 edition of Horace’s Odes was also dedicated to him.) Fet expressed his later
views on freedom also in letters, notably in a letter to Tolstoi dated January 1, 1870
(TOLSTOI 1978:1:395-96): “[И]з писем Тургенева я вижу, что он теперь выдумал
умное слово свобода, связывая его с знанием, то есть наукой.... Свободы прио-
брести нельзя, а можно с ней родиться. Дуб свободен, плющ не свободен, ему нуж-
на чужая подпорка, и тут ничем не поможешь – он плющ... Шиллер, величайший
певец свободы, не свободен – в нем прет немец и вся история, в Гете прет тот же
немец, но на этом немце, с его наукой и историей, едет Гете, потому-то немцы и
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 71

Notes
кричат, что он предатель и эгоист.... Как бы высоко ни забралась математика, ас-
трономия, это все дело рук человеческих – и всякий может туда взлезть, проглядеть
все до нитки, а в жизни ничего не увидишь – хоть умри – тут-то тайна и есть <…
[omission in published text] > Я могу признавать пользу и интерес статистических
данных. Но... владеть своим я по отношению к лошади, человеку, грамматике, фи-
зике, танцам – значит быть свободным, а выдумать какое-нибудь новое слово вроде
учиться, чтобы быть свободным... значит старый романс: Тебя забыть, искать сво-
боды! Но цепи я рожден носить... Вот почему Ваша интеллектуальная свобода так
мне дорога”. See also Chapter Three, note 78.
22
See note 31.
23
Fet says that he remembered not a word of D. L. Kriukov’s course on metrics, and
that he identified iambic tetrameter by scanning it against a Zhukhovskii text he had
memorized in childhood and had been told at the time was in iambic tetrameter (RG 31,
and cf. also page 9 and note 168).
24
For an example of Fet’s taking up a form and then becoming identified with it, see
KLENIN (1993).
25
The German spirit of the 1850 volume is evident in many ways, discussed in detail
in Chapter Three. It affected not only individual poems but also the composition of the
volume, which was Grigor’ev’s work. His organization of FET (1850) follows, as closely
as Fet’s material permits, Goethe’s choice of rubrics for his 1815 collection. For dis-
cussion, see note 17.
26
Unless otherwise noted all texts are quoted from Fet 1959. This poem was written
in 1891. In indicating dates, I have generally followed the datings established in Fet
1959, with a few later amendments, but I have not indicated the precision of the dating.
In Fet’s late poetry, this is often considerable, since his poems were transcribed by his
secretary E. V. Fedorova, who always noted the date (FET 1986:631), but earlier dates are
often very approximate. For fuller information, see FET (1959). I have not attempted to
provide translations of the poems I present. I adduce quotes from the poems in translation
when it seems helpful for the exposition. Fet has not, for the most part, been adequately
translated into English. For German translations, see references in notes 97 and 98.
27
Beginning in 1859, Fet was essentially ostracized from the pages of leading jour-
nals. The first attack was Mikhalovskii’s harsh critique of Fet’s translation of Shake-
speare’s Julius Caesar ([MIKHALOVSKII] 1859). Although correct in many of its judg-
ments about the translation (Fet’s English was not up to his task), the article was indecent
in exploiting privileged information about both Turgenev’s criticisms of Fet’s work as a
translator and Fet’s then still unpublished social views, which were, however, known to
his friends and colleagues. Mikhalovskii (writing under an assumed name) conflated
Fet’s then still recently formed allegiance to Tiutchev’s poetics with his view of Russian
society, even though Fet’s social views were in no way evident from the translation that
occasioned Mikhalovskii’s article. This conflation of politics and poetics continued
unabated in strength throughout the 1860s. Some of the most famous diatribes against
Fet, as poet, essayist, and human being, are by D. D. Minaev, who wrote, among many
other things, the following (MINAEV 1863): “В дeрeвeнскoй глуши Фeт видeл тoлькo
oдниx кoрoстeлeй и курoпaтoк, и дaжe нe прeдчувствoвaл, чтo тут живут люди, …
истрeбитeли eгo пшeницы … Feт явился бeссoзнaтeльным, нaивным пeвцoм
крeпoстнoгo прaвa”.
72 Chapter One

Notes
28
FET (1867:60-65) offers the author’s most extensive treatment of the relationship
between individualism and creativity, between scientific achievement and the arts and
humanities, and between creative control and freedom: “Ни ваять Киприду, ни писать
Фауста, ни сочинять сонату – нельзя вдвоем; даже воспринимать эти произведения
может каждый только для себя … Как бы высоко не развил я в себе музыкального
чувства, я не могу своего понимания Бетховена передать по наследству. Моему
наследнику предстоит самому проделать всю духовную гимнастику, которой
подвергался я сам, если он хочет стать в этом отношении на ту же высоту. Но
последнее слово науки передается по неоспоримому завещанию. В принципе …
наука также индивидуальна, но бесконечный, всеобъемлющий механизм ее настоя-
тельно требует разделения труда … каждый в своем деле необходим, каждый мож-
ет сказать в нем новое, небывалое слово и завещать его всему миру; без каждого из
отдельных тружеников не выйдет никакого ружья. Мало того, заставьте главного
сборщика … приготовить какую-либо мелкую часть ружья – и вероятно он
исполнит работу хуже специалиста … При разделении труда легко может быть, что
на отдаленном горном заводе первостатейный специалист по части рельсов – во
всю жизнь не увидит железной дороги и не имеет ясного понятия об общем ее
устройстве; это обстоятельство нисколько не мешает ему стоять на высшей сту-
пени своей специальности и даже двигать ее вперед … Но главный механик …
обязан знать … закон или законы всех механизмов … Находясь в … материальной
зависимости от подчиненных деятелей, жрец всемирной мысли является…ее моно-
полистом ... Только он один … свободен, все же остальные не свободны”.
29
Fet’s increasingly frequent references to freedom perhaps correspond to the in-
creasing centrality of freedom in his poetics, they may represent an increasing conscious-
ness of the problematics of freedom, or they may be a response to the continuing pres-
sures of his social situation. As is discussed below, Fet recalls his early fascination with
the work of Schiller (but see note 21) and of Hegel, for whom “the essential… feature of
mind is Liberty” (HEGEL 1971:15). But neither Schiller nor Hegel were the preferred
reading of his later years. His later metaphysics have been seen in the light of his adher-
ence to Schopenhauer’s philosophy (MAURER 1966, STAMMLER 1979, BAER 1980
[“Schopenhauer”], SEVERIKOVA 1992, 1995).
The question of freedom leads naturally to the poet’s view of free will and, more
generally, his religion and metaphysics.
Fet believed in a superordinate fate or force that laid waste human endeavors, and he
looked to his own life experience in justifying that attitude. In the preface to his 1890
memoirs, he explains his interest in examining his life story: it is the life he knows best,
and therefore the one that he can most readily refer to in contemplating the principle in
which he so strongly believed – namely, the subordination of human endeavor to a supe-
rior fate. He compares the human situation with that of Goethe’s Mephistopheles (“Ein
Teil von jener Kraft, Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft”, in Fet’s transla-
tion: “Той силы часть и вид, Что вечно хочет зла и век добро творит”) and adds:
“Мысль, о подчиненности нашей воли другой высшей, до того мне дорога, что я не
знаю духовного наслаждения превыше созерцания ее на жизненном потоке” (MV
1:v-vi).
Fet is generally agreed to have been an atheist throughout his adult life. This has been
questioned (SHENSHIN [1994:93-122], SHENSHIN [1999] and references therein), but a
recently published letter to A. F. Koni from K.R., citing a conversation with Fet’s widow,
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 73

Notes
re-confirms it. K.R. would not have sought to exaggerate Fet’s disregard for religion,
because, devout himself, he had the highest opinion of Fet and of the spiritual purity and
beauty of his poetry. It was thus “to [his] sincere regret” that he could not agree with
Koni’s protesting B. Sadovskoi’s reference to Fet’s “convinced atheism” (K. R.
1998:446, letter of 8 April 1915). On social behavior suggesting an unconventional atti-
tude toward religion, see note 222. In addition to religious thematics in Fet’s poetry
(noted by Shenshin, Piwowarska, and others), vague quotations of the Bible crop up in
Fet’s letters and in his late prose, in particular in his autobiographies; according to a letter
Fet wrote to Tolstoi (TOLSTOI 1978:2:98, September 28, 1880), he owned and read both
Slavonic and Russian Bibles, and he may well have also drawn on the culture of his
school experience, in which Biblical quotation was pervasive. Fet in his later years
obviously knew the Bible well enough for relevant verses to come to mind without his
looking them up. According to Fet himself (TOLSTOI 1978:2:24, letter of April 28, 1878),
his attitude toward official religion was established by his reading of D. F. Strauss’s Das
Leben Jesu (1835). Fet dates this reading to his university days. As is shown, however,
by his post-dating his experience of manual labor (a point I discuss elsewhere), he some-
times postdated modern attitudes that derived from his school experience, the religious
foundation of which he obscured. Even if the later dating is correct, Fet’s religious views
were formed by German theology published and read by Fet during the period when Fet
himself was a German national – albeit one baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church.
The relationship of Fet’s views to Tolstoi’s deserves further study.
30
Cf. RITZ (1989).
31
In a letter to K. R. (8 October 1888 [FET 1982:2:181]), Fet wrote: “в истинныx
xудoжeствeнныx прoизвeдeнияx я пoд сoдeржaниeм рaзумeю… прoизвoдимoe ими
впeчaтлeниe. Нeльзя жe скaзaть, чтo мaзурки Шoпeнa лишeны сoдeржaния – дaй
Бoг любым прoизвeдeниям слoвeснoсти пoдoбнoгo”.
The connection of Fet’s poetry with Chopin goes back to an anonymous review of his
1850 collection of poetry ([KUDRIAVTSEV] 1850:15). The review is now attributed to the
same P. N. Kudriavtsev who had favorably reviewed Fet’s first book in 1840
([KUDRIAVTSEV] 1840), although the reviewer seems almost to resist recognizing in the
author of 1850 (identified as “A. Fet”) the same poet who had published the 1840 collec-
tion (“A. F.”). References to Chopin in Fet’s own work are not abundant. The earliest is
in his poem “To Chopin”, probably written 1882, and the second is in the letter adduced
above. Although the 1882 poem (quoted in full in Chapter Three) is often read as a
reminiscence of a love affair of the late 1840s, it may at the same time attest to a more
narrowly professional poetic memory, of the poetry he wrote, published, and saw
favorably reviewed at about the same time. Other comments on the musicality of Fet’s
poetry abound, most famously in an exchange of letters involving Fet, P. I. Chaikovskii,
and K. R. In two letters he wrote in 1888 to K.R., Chaikovskii characterizes Fet’s poetry
as escaping from the realm of language into that of wordless music. Informed of
Chaikovskii’s comment, Fet said that he had “as if spied the artistic direction that has
constantly drawn me to it” (CHAIKOVSKII 1902:3:266-67, 272). Fet himself discusses
musicality in poetry in his essays (most notably FET 1867). Fet thus was, and is, often
characterized metaphorically as a musical poet, and he encouraged the metaphor. Many
of his poems have musical themes and there are many romances written to the words of
Fet’s music (G. K. IVANOV 1966). As for musicianship of a less metaphorical sort, Fet
was deficient. If he had had talent, he could have developed it, since his father
74 Chapter One

Notes
encouraged him to learn to play the violin, and later he was required to take piano lessons
at school. According to those familiar with the school, the musical training there was
excellent, but Fet says his ineptitude was so obvious, and so painful to the sensibilities of
the musically gifted teachers who heard him, that he was given a special exemption from
continuing his lessons (RG 93-94). On Fet and music, see also KLENIN (1985). Recent
work on the musicality of Fet’s poetry (MAKAROVA 1992) focuses on musical form, es-
pecially sonata form, as an important architectural principle underlying the cyclicization
of Fet’s Evening Lights. Here one must distinguish Fet the poet (who did little to impose
order on his books) from the editorial work of, in particular, Vladimir Solov’ev, who was
according to Fet the “architect” of the first volume of Evening Lights (FET 1971:636).
Solov’ev has been described as actually rather indifferent to music, gravitating to the
same light musical forms that Fet himself enjoyed (VELICHKO 1991:67-68).
32
Although it goes beyond the classical notion of decorum, Fet’s expressed attitude
toward form suggests how his own technical practices are connected to his evident fond-
ness for Horace’s Ars poetica.
33
This is similar, but roughly conversive, to an observation by M. L. GASPAROV
(1990:26): Fet replaces the logic of Tiutchev’s landscapes with landscape organized on
emotional principles. My point is slightly different, in that, for Fet, although landscape is
seen through the filter of the textual speaker’s emotion, the building up of a perception of
the landscape is also a pretext for generating emotion. GASPAROV (1990) not only studies
Tiutchev’s treatment of landscape spaces in detail but also, in so doing, contextualizes
Fet’s treatment of space in the tradition of both Pushkin and Lermontov. (Gasparov in
this connection quotes a key passage in PUMPIANSKII [1941].) What distinguishes Fet
from the earlier Russian tradition is not only the emotional tenor of his descriptions but
also the relationship he exploits between emotion and cognition. In this respect, he is
closer to the tradition represented by Hegel (discussed later in this chapter) and in
Schiller’s letters “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen” (cf. SCHILLER
1984:5:257-352, DÜSING 1981, ABRAMS 1971:350). In addition, developments in psy-
chology during Fet’s lifetime (discussed later in this chapter) enabled a poetics different
from Pushkin’s or even Lermontov’s.
34
Fet’s most explicit writing on objects as bearers of affect is FET (1859), although he
makes the same point elsewhere, for example FET (1867) and TOLSTOI (1978:2:100).
35
For some useful recent studies of emotion and perception, including some histori-
cal context, see NIEDENTHAL / KITAYAMA (1994). In spite of the directionality of the
subtitle (“emotional influences in perception”), several articles deal also with how
perception evokes emotion. Such studies are contributions to the larger and very active
field of cognitive emotion research. Useful recent overviews in that area include the fol-
lowing collectively authored volumes: PAPERMAN / OGIEN (1995), DALGLEISH / POWER
(1999), LANE / NADEL (2000), and EICH et al. (2000).
36
In commentary to the poem “Я рад, когда с земного лона…” (1879), BUKHSHTAB
(1974:115-16) observes that it is different from a number of Fet’s other philosophical
poems, in that it is not programmatic, even though it is imbued with the poet’s philoso-
phical views (see note 121). The play of different observers’ perceptions, and the
shimmering irreality of the distinction between alive and not-alive, is characteristic of
Fet’s poems both early and late.
37
POLONSKII (1986:424).
38
[GRIGOR’EV] 1850.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 75

Notes
39
T. S. Eliot’s use of the term “objective correlative” (in quotation marks but without
attribution) occurs in his essay “Hamlet” (ELIOT 1932:124).
40
WELLEK (1956: 418).
41
N. WRIGHT (1967: xiii).
42
It is cheating to attribute this to chronology: Fet’s first book of poetry was ap-
proved by the censor less than six weeks after Lermontov’s. Lermontov’s Stikhotvoreniia
was approved by the censor on 13 August 1840 (MANUILOV / LATYSHEV 1981:651), Fet’s
Liricheskii panteon – on 20 September ([FET] 1840).
43
Yet Fet’s distance from Byronic romanticism can be exaggerated, and it often is. “I
live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me; and to me / High mountains
are a feeling”: Byron’s lines (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 3:LXXII) will have been
congenial to Fet. He certainly read them. They are quoted in The World as Will and Rep-
resentation (SCHOPENHAUER 1999:1:333).
44
Fet’s mother’s background has been the object of considerable study (see note 1).
Born in Darmstadt in 1798, Charlotte Becker there married J. P. K. W. Foeth in 1818.
Together with A. N. Shenshin, she left Germany for Russia in September 1820. Fet
reports that his mother “gradually” learned to speak and write Russian, and that her
writing eventually became better than that of the other ladies in the neighborhood, but in
his early childhood she did not know Russian well enough to teach him to read and write,
whereas she did teach him to read German. (RG 15 ff.)
45
RG 31.
46
Evidently the same cook remained Fet’s personal servant at boarding school. The
servant is referred to in a letter written in 1913 by the wife of Georg von Oettingen (SAD-
OVSKOi 1916:169-70, reprinted with cuts in ASLANOVA / TARKHOV, edd. 1989:336): asked
about his memories of Fet, the servant is the only thing von Oettingen can remember. He
remembers the servant vividly: he was hired by the Oettingens to cook for them on a
special occasion, but turned up with an atrocious blanc-mange, which he served while
profoundly drunk. Fet is remembered describing the same man, and his attempts at
teaching, with disgust (EL’TSOVA 1991:148).
47
RG 34. He still had the manuscript at the end of his life. He describes it as the work
of two hands, one of the late eighteenth century, another writing no later than the 1820s.
He says the material shows a clear inclination toward romanticism.
48
For a status report on the differentiation of writing from other linguistic abilities,
see GAZZANIGA (1998).
49
REISER (1970:70-82).
50
The description of the manuscript from which he learned his first Russian poetry
required no great strength of memory, since he says he had it by him as he wrote his
memoirs (see note 47). In contrast, it is striking that he should have claimed to remember
the other details of handwriting, since this meant retaining visual detail over five or six
decades, and of handwriting that he cannot often have seen.
51
According to Andrew WACHTEL (1990), the Russian rural gentry usually began
formal instruction at about the age of eight. This corresponds both to Fet’s memory and
to the date of a letter in which A. N. Shenshin discusses Fet’s home instruction (April
1829, BLOK 1985:138).
52
Although one music teacher did steal the family silver (RG 57). BLOK (1985:138)
summarizes Fet’s childhood academic achievements, as reported in a letter by A. N.
76 Chapter One

Notes
Shenshin to his wife’s brother (see note 51). To judge from Fet’s reminiscences, A. N.
Shenshin was more than a little optimistic.
53
Turgenev once wrote to Fet (in a letter of 15 February 1860): “на меня находит
грусть, если я долго не вижу Ваш связно-красивый, поэтически-безалаберный и
кидающийся из пятого этажа почерк” (TURGENEV 1986:1:418). The reference to
throwing oneself out of an upper-storey window alludes to an essay (FET 1859:76) in
which Fet had taken the willingness to do so to be part of the essential make-up of a poet.
Unsurprisingly, the comment became a source of mockery for his enemies (it appears as
the epigraph to Mikhalovskii’s cruel essay [MIKHALOVSKII 1859:255]) and, as here,
gentle teasing by friends.
54
RG 17-18.
55
RG 18. On photography in Fet, see note 178. Visuality and motion in Fet’s poetry
are discussed in more detail in Chapter Two.
56
On mnemonics in the Western tradition, see YATES (1966).
57
On Fet’s German poetry, see note 11. There is a large and sometimes confusing –
even contradictory – literature on the differentiation of brain functions by bilinguals (e.g.
MACKEY, ed. 1982, PARADIS / LEBRUN, edd. 1983, GRZYBEK 1983, KOLERS 1995, SIGUAN
1996). Bilingualism is seldom if ever completely “symmetrical”, and researchers have
documented instances in which a native bilingual uses more creatively the language that
he is less able to analyze (BEAUJOUR 1989, V. V. IVANOV 1997:17). On functional
differentiation of languages by bilinguals see also GROSJEAN (1982), HAKUTA (1986),
ROMAINE (1989). For a non-neurologically oriented introduction to bilinguals’ choice of
language, see SPOLSKY (1988), which has especially useful references to the earlier
literature.
58
Fet describes the search for a school in RG 77-81. For more documentary details on
its context, and interpretation, see BLOK (1924, 1985). BUKHSHTAB (1974) interprets the
search for a school in Estonia as a consequence at least in part of the Shenshin family’s
need to deal with Fet’s soon-to-be-enforced German background.
59
Fet remained a German national until February 1846 (BLOK 1985:148, RG 342).
60
Fet reports that he believed he would inherit money from an unmarried uncle, but
that the money disappeared when his uncle died. He later described this as the greatest
catastrophe that had ever overtaken him (BUKHSHTAB 1974:25).
61
See note 36.
62
J. Chr. Moier (1786-1858), the son of a Dutch pastor in Tallinn (Reval), is most
famously for readers of Russian literature the man that M. A. Protasova married, instead
of V. A. Zhukovskii. He was also a distinguished member of the faculty at Dorpat
University. According to his official university biography (KOPYLOV 1903), he was foun-
der of the Dorpat surgical school, professor of surgery from 1814, and rector from 1834
to 1836 (according to PETUKHOV 1902:394 and HASELBLATT / OTTO 1889:7, to 1835). He
also participated in commissions meeting in St. Petersburg, involving modifications in
university governance. “Вообще М. пользовался всеобщею любовью за свою
приветливость и беспристрастное отношение к людям всех мнений. Он был в то же
время талантливый музыкант … Женатый на М. А. Протасовой, М. находился в
близких родственных отношениях с поэтом Жуковским, и его дом был центром
избранного общества.” (KOPYLOV 1903). When he resigned as rector, he retired from
the university to his daughter’s estate Bunino in Orel province, where he spent the
remaining twenty-two years of his life.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 77

Notes
63
The peculiar status of Dorpat University as a German university in Russia was
evident from its re-founding in 1802 and its establishment (on the basis of the
fundamental regulation of 1803) as an autonomous university, free essentially to run its
own affairs without interference from the Ministry of Education. Russians’ special inter-
est in Dorpat University is evident as early as 1820, when, according to the diary of M. P.
Pogodin, Tiutchev, then a classmate at Moscow University, was intending to go there
(KUZINA 1989:12). He did not.
64
On the nineteenth-century history of Dorpat University, see PETUKHOV (1902),
ENGELHARDT (1933), VUCINICH (1963:212 ff., 300ff.), SIILIVASK (1982), and WHITTAKER
(1984:199 ff.).
65
The educational spirit of the school is attested to by a variety of sources, including
memoirs: those of H. Eisenschmidt, who taught Fet and remembers him vividly (EISEN-
SCHMIDT 1860:47-48), and those of Peter Baron von MAYDELL (1885:2-3), whom Fet
himself remembers warmly and was in contact with in later years (MV 1:186). An
interesting aspect of Eisenschmidt’s memoir is his attention to the variety of pupils that
the school attracted, something which is less explicit in Fet’s memoirs but is corroborated
there. Aside from the fact that the school had a dual function (it not only prepared
students for the university but also prepared teachers for German-language elementary
schools, attended by Estonian as well as German rural children), the pupils included some
with psychological problems and learning disabilities. One pupil started his schooling
nearly unable to verbalize but with a remarkable intuition for dealing with animals.
Another, with a Russian family background, had apparently never acquired any one
language as a functionally independent system, speaking and writing in a combination of
Russian, German, and French. The teachers prided themselves on their knowledge of
modern pedagogical techniques, to which Eisenschmidt also devotes considerable space
in his memoir. As indicated below, the director of the school and many of its staff were
members of the Unity of Brethren, but it was not officially sectarian (by the time of its
founding in 1832 that would have been at least a mistake and possibly fatal), and it is
listed, for example, by GOERTZ (1932:203-204) among “Knabeninternate” and not under
the special heading of “Herrnhuteranstalten”. All the memoirs about the school indicate
that religious belief was firmly separated from the acquisition of academic and practical
skills (EISENSCHMIDT 1860, MAYDELL 1885, FET 1893; the memoirs of Georg von Oet-
tingen existed as a manuscript used by ENGELHARDT [1933], who provides further cor-
roboration), and the reports on at least one pupil suggested that his flights of religious
imagination impeded his educational progress (ENGELHARDT 1933:242, referring to the
future theologian Alexander von Oettingen [1827-1900]). Memoirs about the school, and
especially the anonymous obituary of its director, also emphasize that although it drew its
pupils from Baltic German noble families, it discouraged social hierarchy: pupils were
rewarded for their achievements, not their or their families’ place in society. Such an
environment was especially valuable for someone of Fet’s precarious social situation.
66
Krümmer was well known in educational circles in Russia and Estonia in his own
time, and he evidently made a strong impression on those who knew him.
His religious background is noted in the standard literature (DBL, 420) and is
documented in the Archive of the Unity of Brethren in Herrnhut. The archive holds re-
ports variously from or about Krümmer in the Protokoll der Unität Aeltesten Conferenz
for 1825 (I. 23, 207, 345, II. 74) and 1835 (III. 51-52). Krümmer’s communications with
the Unity of Brethren were all connected with school matters, and the archive contains
78 Chapter One

Notes
records not only of Krümmer’s own activities but also of the background of the two
teachers who were the mainstay of his staff, namely Joseph Mortimer, Jr., – himself the
son of the Moravian missionary who arranged Krümmer’s immigration into the Russian
Empire – and Ferdinand Hultsch (see notes 76 and 78; on Mortimer, see also PHILIPP
1974:281 and EISENSCHMIDt 1860, passim). The religious background of the staff was
well known to the pupils, according to one who sat side-by-side with Fet at the same
school desk (MAYDELL 1885: 2-3, MV 1:186). Fet conspicuously avoids mentioning the
Moravian background of his teachers or the Moravian orientation of its pedagogical and
administrative practices. He refers to the school simply as “Lutheran”, which in a sense it
was, since Moravians in Estonia were all members of the official Lutheran Church. Fet
mentions some features of the school that would identify it as Moravian to readers famil-
iar with Moravian practices – the celebration of the headmaster’s birthday, for example,
and the way teaching duties and the boys’ living arrangements were handled. See also
note 68.
Fet describes Krümmer’s effectiveness as a teacher, mentioning his creation of
“blind” maps, on which the pupils learned to recognize geographical phenomena by their
shape and location, without labeling. (This recalls the origins of the Moravian
pedagogical tradition in the works of Comenius, specifically his “Orbis pictus”.) In addi-
tion to geometry and penmanship, Krümmer taught religion classes (although presumably
not to Fet, who along with all the other Russian students – Fet remembers five in the
whole school [RG 99] – attended sessions run by an Orthodox priest), and his emphasis
on the Bible as the source of wisdom is sweetly illustrated in Eisenschmidt’s memoir
(Eisenschmidt 1860:18). Krümmer was also of course the pastor who conducted the
school’s prayer services, which evidently made a strong impression on Fet. He reports
enthusiastically on the music he heard at the school (singing and organ music), and he
includes in his memoir a very extensive paraphrase of a sermon that Krümmer gave, a
school-leaving speech (RG 114-15): there is nowhere else in Fet’s memoirs anything else
quite like his yielding the floor in this way to one of his protagonists. Although that
speech of Krümmer’s has not been independently preserved, another sermon, marking the
inauguration of the school year, has been, and its spirit is very similar to what Fet
presents: commonsensical, broadminded, and public-spirited, with a fine sense for the
importance of education not as an accumulation of information but as a habit of mind
(KRÜMMER 1832). To be sure, Fet, who must have had considerable experience of such
talks by Krümmer, suppressed one important aspect of them: the preserved talk of
Krümmer’s is replete with quotations from the Bible, a usage consistent with both his
religious background, in which the Bible plays a particularly important role as a guide for
living, and with the fact that he was speaking as a pastor, at once teacher and minister,
and gave his addresses in the school chapel. In his introduction to the published sermon,
Krümmer says that, if it meets with a favorable reception, he will publish a selection of
others “like it”, which he has given at the Sunday church services of the school. There is
no evidence that such a collection was made, but the proposal suggests that Krümmer
viewed school and church homilies as kindred outgrowths of his pastoral work. Other
publications by Krümmer include a book of arithmetic exercises intended for use in
German-language elementary schools (KRÜMMER 1830); he writes that although the
available textbook for arithmetic was excellent, local children (both German and
Estonian) were disadvantaged by not being able to make sense of the examples, which
used weights and measures unfamiliar to them. The book was published in many editions,
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 79

Notes
and became the standard book of its type, used in training elementary school teachers
(SIRK 1989:486). After Krümmer’s death, the government sought (whether successfully
or not I do not know) to obtain the publication rights (SPEER 1936: 161, 420), so that the
book could continue to be used in training teachers for Estonian elementary schools. The
only other published work by Krümmer I have been able to locate is a long essay on the
rural economy (KRÜMMER 1860). After retiring from the school, Krümmer moved for a
time to Riga but spent the end of his life in Werro, where he is buried. In 1877,
Krümmer’s longtime friend Dr. Fr. R. Kreutzwald wrote to F. A. Schiefner (1817-1879),
lamenting the decline in the town, which, as he saw it, had been given life and energy by
Krümmer (OTS 1976:19-20). That life and energy, however, had become a source of
contention by the 1840s, when townspeople started to blame the school for rises in prices:
housing and other services became more expensive, because they were more in demand
(EISENSCHMIDT 1860). By 1847 Krümmer was so discouraged that he wrote bitterly to
Moravian officials, reporting on his inimical surroundings (Herrnhut Archive, R 19 G aa
24 a 15). As for children of Krümmer’s, I have been able to discover one son, who en-
joyed a long and honorable career in Russia, combining public service and activity as a
pillar of the Lutheran Church (AE 194).
During Krümmer’s lifetime and on his death, there appeared appreciative and inform-
ative articles about him (ANONYMOUS 1839, 1874), apparently written by former
students, and Eisenschmidt’s, Fet’s, von Maydell’s, and G. von Oettingen’s memoirs con-
cur in their portrait of Krümmer as a remarkable person, whom they considered it a
privilege to have known and learned from. Fet, von Oettingen, J. von Sivers, and other
pupils kept in touch with him after they left the school, and apparently gave considerable
importance to their relationship with their former teacher.
The depiction of Krümmer by Georgii BLOK (1924) is uniquely negative, but the
documentation he cites with respect to the school does not provide any justification for
his attitude. Blok’s depiction of Krümmer derives from a stereotype of Moravians, as
depicted in the polemical literature of the Baltic region from the mid-nineteenth century
(e.g. HARNACK 1860, response in PLITT 1861; for a survey, see LAATSIT 1980:1-19).
Soviet anticlerical views may have reinforced this stereotype. A different stereotype, with
which Fet may well have been familiar, appears in Jean Paul’s Die unsichtbare Loge, first
published 1793 (JEAN PAUL 1981): on the advice of a Moravian woman, the young
Gustav is brought up for eight years underground, under the tutelage of a Moravian
teacher and with a poodle as his only other companion. Kept from both the corruption of
human society and the pleasures of nature, Gustav is taught to anticipate joyously his
emergence into the above-ground world, and the name he learns for this event is “death”.
67
The history of the Moravian Brethren in Estonia goes back to the eighteenth
century. The Moravian leader Chr. David visited Tallinn as early as 1730, and the publi-
cation of the first Estonian Bible in 1739 was promoted by Count Zinzendorf. In 1743,
however, Catherine II banned Moravians from Estonia and a warrant was issued for
Count Zinzendorf’s arrest (ILJA 1995). The second period of Moravian activity, beginning
with an 1817 decree of Alexander I, is surveyed in LAATSIT (1980), whose primary
interest, however, is in the developments peculiar to the South of Estonia, that is, the area
in the general vicinity of Võru (Werro). There exist many nineteenth-century treatments
of the relationship between the Moravian Brethren and the Evangelical Lutheran Church,
but they are often too partisan to be helpful. Both Ilja and Laatsit offer extensive
bibliography and historiography. With respect to the Krümmer school, it is important that
80 Chapter One

Notes
Moravians in Estonia from 1817 to 1832 enjoyed considerable privileges, and could read-
ily increase their membership through proselytising as well as by refreshing it from Ger-
many, whereas, beginning in 1832 – the year in which Krümmer founded his school in
Werro – the privileges of the Brethren were gradually revoked. Because of the new con-
straints, Krümmer had serious difficulty getting teachers. Aside from the specific
problem of Russification and the relative weakness of Russian instruction, it was taken
for granted in the school, as was indeed typical for Moravian schools everywhere in the
nineteenth century (HENRY 1859:170-93), that secondary school teaching, if properly
done, was so intensive that most teachers would devote only a few years of their lives to
it, and the turnover at a school would necessarily be great. As EISENSCHMIDT (1860)
reports, this was exactly the situation in Krümmer’s school, and both MAYDELL (1885)
and archival documents in Herrnhut indicate that Krümmer renewed his ranks from the
Moravian schools and seminaries of Germany. This entailed bringing foreigner after
foreigner into the Russian Empire, however, and it became a losing battle once the
government had decided that Moravians should be kept out altogether. Similarly, new
building required permits, and as of 1834 it was forbidden to build any new structures for
Moravian religious purposes without the permission of the Lutheran Consistory and the
Ministry of Internal Affairs; most Moravian houses of worship were built no later than
the early nineteenth century, not for lack of will to build them afterward, but because so
little building was allowed. As contact with Germany was cut off and fewer people could
be attracted into the Moravian Church, the membership may have become more inclined
toward mystical excesses, reports of which are common from the 1830s on. The reports
may have been slanderous, but there is no doubt that the membership of the church
changed, becoming older, richer (because poor people were typically prevented by the
authorities from joining), and predominantly female (LAATSIT 1980:39-59). The situation
of a more sophisticated person of the older generation, such as Krümmer, would thus
have become increasingly difficult.
68
According to the anonymous author of his obituary (1874), Krümmer’s rejection
for an official position was based on his membership in the Unity of Brethren, but I am
not aware of documentation for this claim. His tenure as a private tutor was in the home
of Professor of Mineralogy O. M. L. v. Engelhardt (1779-1842), whose son Moritz v.
Engelhardt (1826-1881) Krümmer educated. According to Moritz v. Engelhardt’s official
biography, “[д]ля поступления в университет Э. готовился в рационалистически-
благочестивом воспитательном заведении города Верро” [KVACHALA 1902]). He
became a well-known church historian. Like Fet’s memoirs, von Engelhardt’s biography
omits reference to the Moravian element in his schooling.
69
The reason given for not allowing Krümmer to start his school was that he was a
foreigner. The document in which his petition was refused was found by LIIM
(1989:444). Earlier descriptions made Krümmer’s career in Dorpat and his eventual set-
tlement in Werro seem almost a matter of personal convenience, whereas the documents
that have now been located in Tartu and Herrnhut clearly show a man who arrived in
Estonia with a well-defined goal, namely to promote secondary education along Mora-
vian lines in Estonia, and who pursued this goal in spite of serious obstacles and changes
of circumstance.
70
Since there was at the time no other such secondary school in Werro, the school
fulfilled a real need. Correspondingly, once Krümmer’s school was established, other
schools also began to operate there and were in part nourished through the Krümmer
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 81

Notes
establishment. A well-known school for girls, for example, is generally referred to as the
“Genge” school, after its best-known director; but Genge originally came to Werro as a
teacher in Krümmer’s school (EISENSCHMIDT 1860:20-21), where he taught music. He
took over a girls’ school (founded 1839) only in 1843 (EKA, 533), when Krümmer’s
school was already in deep decline.
71
By 1835, there were already four graduates of the school studying at Dorpat (TELK
1979: 61).
72
See note 1.
73
According to records found by BLOK (1985:140), final documents in the matter
were issued to A. N. Shenshin on January 21, 1835, that is within a month of his return
home after delivering Fet to his school in Werro. Blok says Fet must have learned about
his new status not much afterward, even though he “evidently”, according to Blok,
continued to be called “Shenshin” throughout his stay at the school. Fet recalls learning
of the change in his name (which he says was conveyed to him by A. N. Shenshin in a
letter “without further explanations”) toward the end of his first year (referring, probably,
to his first semester, that is late spring) at school (RG 95), after he had already gone
through the major adjustments of being the new boy in his class. (Among other things, he
found that his German was inadequate, or at least different from that of his classmates,
but he apparently soon caught up. He says that by the time he left his German composi-
tions were at the top of his class.) EISENSCHMIDT (1860), although he is too discreet to
mention Fet’s Russian name, says he was called by it throughout his school years.
Presumably both teachers and those of his schoolmates who cared must have learned one
way or another about both names, since Fet arrived at the school with one, but kept in
touch with them afterward under the other.
74
GRIGOR’EV (1980) presents a fictionalized portrait of Fet, in which he is depicted as
psychologically and spiritually deformed. See note 230.
75
On Fet’s evaluation of his Werro school and comparison with the teaching he ex-
perienced before going there, see note 76. His memoirs about his education after he left
Werro are dispiriting, and there exist various anecdotes about Fet’s negative view of
Moscow University. I have not been able to locate the text of a speech he gave before the
Obshchestvo Liubitelei Rossiiskoi Slovesnosti pri Moskovskom Universitete on October
7, 1859, “о значении Московского Университета в деле общественного образо-
вания” (OLRS, 100). The existence of the speech seems to have gone unremarked in
surveys of Fet’s writings. Fet became a member of the society on 11 February 1859.
76
Fet directly compares the work of his favorite teacher, F. E. F. Hultsch, to that of
his earlier teachers (RG 90; cf. also note 78): “Обрисовать в своем воспоминании поч-
тенную личность Гульча значит не только воспроизвести весь второй класс, но
указать отчасти и на те нравственные складки, которые сложились в душе моей под
руками этого незабвенного наставника. Это был совершенная противоположность
моих деревянных учителей – семинаристов. В своих уроках он, если можно так
выразиться, подвигался плечо в плечо с учеником, которому считал необходимым
помочь. При ответах ученика его не столько раздражало незнание, сколько
небрежность, мешавшая логически поискать темно сознаваемого ответа.”
In spite of his approval of the education he received at Krümmer’s school, Fet
concealed awkward aspects of it. We have already seen (note 66) that Fet’s describing the
school as Lutheran gives it an official character that it did not have. His account of the
school is deceptive in other ways as well. He hid, for example, the fact that the school
82 Chapter One

Notes
program encouraged handwork; EISENSCHMIDT (1860:47-48) describes Fet as having
special talent with tools of all sorts (note 79), and says that he and another boy made
chess sets, which they sold (one of them to Eisenschmidt, who proudly kept it). In later
years, Fet mentions his practical expertise in a letter to K.R. (SMIRNOVA, ed., 1993:77,
letter of 27 December 1886), but he attributes it not to his school experience but to the
period right after he had been in the army, where presumably this sort of hand labor
might seem more appropriate to a Russian gentleman. Similarly, it would be impossible
to learn from Fet’s comical portrait of Eisenschmidt that the latter was ever his teacher –
perhaps a modest act of revenge, since Fet cannot have been pleased at Eisenschmidt’s
portrait of him. Fet explicitly disclaims having heard of there being a school doctor,
although we know the doctor was Fr. R. Kreutzwald. Even Fet’s depiction of Krümmer
has a light moment that turns out to have a more painful association: he describes taking a
trip to St. Petersburg with Krümmer, in the course of which Krümmer attempts to speak
Russian but speaks it extremely badly. This is a little cruel, in that the school’s ultimate
downfall was its lack of an adequate Russian-language program. The anecdote may also
constitute a swipe, again, at poor Eisenschmidt, who in his memoir expresses his
admiration for Krümmer’s ability to teach virtually anything in the whole school
program, up to and including Russian language. Fet’s presentation of Eisenschmidt and
(on one occasion) Krümmer as comic figures is typical of Fet’s memoirs, where comedic
treatment is nearly always a marker for something serious that Fet has chosen to
suppress. Fet sometimes treats Apollon Grigor’ev similarly (see pages 9 ff.).
77
According to his memoirs (RG 82), Fet arrived at Krümmer’s school under the im-
pression that he already knew Latin, but, when teacher Joseph Mortimer interviewed him,
Fet realized he had not learned it at all thoroughly. He reports in some detail on his Latin
classes at the Krümmer school. He also says that the Latin teacher with whom he was
supposed to study at Pogodin’s school refused to attempt to teach him (RG 117). Fet
continued his Latin at the university (RG 210), where he got mixed grades. This attests
not to an imperfect command of the language but rather the opposite: an excellent
knowledge of Latin and boredom with his classes. Fet’s grades in his first two years were
mediocre (BLOK 1985:143), presumably a consequence of what he himself describes as
his very occasional appearances in his classes. In the same, second, year of his studies in
which he got a “3” in Latin and generally did so poorly that he had to repeat the entire
year’s coursework, he also published his first book of poetry, including two Latin
translations, approved by the censor only a few weeks after the decision not to permit him
to go on to the next class (BLOK 1985:143). The following year his grades improved
(BLOK 1985:144), and at the same time one of his Latin translations (Horace, Odes I.14 O
navis referent in mare te novi [“The ship of state”]) was read approvingly by his profes-
sor, D. L. Kriukov, not merely to his entire class but in front of the official university
warden Count S. G. Stroganov (RG 210-211).
In connection with this reading, Fet reports that Count Stroganov had learned of Fet’s
publishing poetry because Count Stroganov happened to be present when another of Fet’s
professors, I. I. Davydov, told the delinquent Fet: “I have your published work, but I
would like to get your written work as well”. Count Stroganov wanted to know what Fet
had published, and, on learning it was lyric verse, had nothing further to say. Count Stro-
ganov, and, for that matter, the rest of the university administration, was known to disap-
prove of students publishing things, and Fet quotes a satirical poem Polonskii wrote on
this subject (RG 210-211).
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 83

Notes
The Latin translations in the book Count Stroganov heard about (FET 1840) are both
Horatian odes, neither of them dealing with the ship of state (I.5, I.25), and one of which
(I.5) may have been a source of inspiration for one of Fet’s early love poems “Лозы мои
за окном разрослись живописно и даже …”, discussed in Chapter Two. On the univer-
sal appeal of Horace’s “To Pyrrha”, as it is often called, cf. STORRS (1959) and
HOFSTADTER’s (1997:13-14) commentary thereon. Fet’s translation of the poem is the
only Russian text STORRS (1959:185) includes in his survey.
78
The science teacher was Hultsch, to whom Fet devotes considerable space in his
memoirs (RG 90-93), and whose teaching he praises highly (see note 76). According to
records in the Herrnhut archives (his “Dienstblatt”), Franz Ernst Ferdinand Hultsch was
born April 9, 1803, in Neudietendorf, and in 1822 went to Gnadenfeld, a Moravian semi-
nary town, to study. In 1824 he became a teacher in a boys’ school in Neuwied and in
1827 went to Fulneck, England. The archive has no later record of him, but when
Eisenschmidt arrived at the Krümmer school, he found Hultsch already there, probably
arrived direct from England. EISENSCHMIDT (1860:20-21) considers Hultsch unusually
knowledgeable and even more than most of the teachers inclined to enrich his students’
extracurricular program with projects related to his specialization. Eisenschmidt describes
Hultsch’s character as especially simple and straightforward, his only defect a tendency
to be unusually demanding of his pupils. According to Eisenschmidt, Hultsch was led by
the collapse of Krümmer’s school to become a private tutor in St. Petersburg, where he
died of cholera within a few years. The archival record at Herrnhut confirms what
Eisenschmidt says about Hultsch’s early life, including both his having worked in
England and, perhaps most important, his Moravian training as a teacher: the archival
record shows that this was really so, and Eisenschmidt’s mention of it shows that the fact
was known to others at the school. Hultsch’s Moravian background adds force to the
contrast Fet makes between the Russian Orthodox seminarians who were his first teach-
ers and Hultsch, whose religious background Fet knew, but declines to mention.
79
It is unclear why AUER (1996) takes Fet’s special interest in school to have been
classical philology. Fet says he was good at Latin but terrible at Greek. He adds that he
would have needed a tutor at the start, because the verb system was too much for him. Fet
sadly compares his inability to learn Greek with the progress made by his classmates, but
really they were much better prepared: they started with good Latin, they had a better
background in German grammar, and Fet spoke natively a language with a completely
different verb system from the one assumed by his teachers and their grammar books. It
cannot have helped that he was beginning the serious study of Latin at the same time as
Greek, as well as studying German formally for the first time.
Fet says he was best at, and fondest of, geometry, math, and related subjects, taught
by Krümmer and Hultsch. He was also apparently good with tools (note 76) and is re-
membered by EISENSCHMIDT (1860:47-48) more for that, and for his aggressive Russian-
ness, than for his classroom successes. Attraction to non-verbal activity is consistent with
Fet’s portrait of himself as linguistically disadvantaged, compared to his classmates, at
the beginning of his school career: besides his problems with Greek and Latin, his Ger-
man writing and pronunciation were also substandard. Strange as it may seem, Fet’s be-
coming a poet, at least the kind of poet he was, may have continued an early tendency to
remove himself from the relatively hostile arena of verbal discourse.
80
EISENSCHMIDT (1860) discusses the Russian language program in detail.
81
RG 101.
84 Chapter One

Notes
82
EISENSCHMIDT (1860).
83
Eisenschmidt reports at length on his own education at Weimar and Jena, and on
his teaching in the classes in which Fet was his pupil. See also E. SPEHR (1933:3-4). Fet
says nothing at all about his German literature classes, and, as pointed out in note 76
above, he omits the fact that Eisenschmidt was his German literature teacher. In his
memoirs, Fet discusses his early literary tastes and enthusiasms – for Lamartine, for
Byron, for Benediktov, and for Lermontov – but, consistently, he presents his own chief
contribution to his friends’ literary discussions to have been his knowledge of German
literature, especially Goethe and Schiller (see page 9).
84
The Lamartine poems were from Méditations poétiques [1820] (“Le lac” [in Fet’s
translation, “Озеро”] and “Invocation” [“Призывание”]), and the Schiller poems in-
cluded “Hoffnung” (“Надежда”). The opening six lines of another Lamartine poem,
“Chant d’amour”, from Nouvelles Méditations poétiques, serve as the epigraph for The
Lyrical Pantheon: “Si tu pouvais jamais égaler, ô ma lyre! Le doux frémissement des
ailes du zéphire A travers les rameaux Ou l’onde qui murmure en caressant ses rives, Ou
le roucoulement des colombes plaintives Jouant aux bords des eaux”. Even Fet’s contem-
poraries assumed that Fet’s first published translations were of Heine, but there is no
Heine in The Lyrical Pantheon.
85
Fet mentions his attempts to write poetry only toward the end of his account of his
school years, in the context of what he was like at sixteen. This suggests that he remem-
bers the experience as belonging to 1837, say, rather than 1835 (RG 15). But Fet, in prose
as in poetry, has a special way with a coda: what comes at an endpoint is nearly always at
least a little startling, something unexpectedly important after a series of seemingly little
things that, in retrospect, serve to contextualize the point at the end. Very often, Fet’s
codas are not chronologically ordered with respect to what precedes them in the text, and
Fet’s comments about his writing poetry, which are connected with his extended reminis-
cence of Krümmer, should not be assumed to apply only to 1837, any more than are Fet’s
impressions of the headmaster. EISENSCHMIDT (1860:47-48) says he had not the slightest
idea Fet was writing poetry, even though he felt he knew him rather well in other re-
spects, and even though he was Fet’s teacher in a subject, namely German literature,
where that sort of interest might have made itself felt.
86
Cf. note 66.
87
[ANONYMOUS]1874.
88
Fet mentions that he remembers only a few other Russian boys at the school, and
school records confirm that the number was never large. Fet makes special mention of A.
F. Voeikov (1778-1839), whose son, Fet reports, was very briefly enrolled there (RG
105). Like Fet, Voeikov’s connection to the school was through Zhukovskii, whose
“Svetlana” was A. A. Protasova, later A. F. Voeikov’s wife. Fet claims to have endeared
himself to the unloveable elder Voeikov by reciting big chunks of Voeikov’s satirical
pamphlet The Madhouse, which was printed and reprinted in a number of forms from
1814 until 1838 and would have remained well-known to the first readers of Fet’s mem-
oirs (AL’TSHULLER / LOTMAN 1971:832-36), On Voeikov’s later fame cf. also the anony-
mous article about him in ESBE (12:832). Fet’s longing for a Russian-language environ-
ment apparently had its limits: his memories of Voeikov junior are at once vague and
entirely negative.
89
On one hand, Sivers’s interest as a German literary figure is suggested by the in-
clusion of brief bio-bibliographies of him in standard German literary encyclopaedias,
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 85

Notes
such as DLL (3:2739), which mentions his friendship with Eichendorff. On the other
hand, von Sivers’s modest status in the German tradition is suggested by the poverty of
the entries. For example, the bibliography in DLL misses not only the Russian literature
on Sivers, but also the fullest German-language biography of him (SPEHR 1933), which
contains a thorough list of his works and of works about him. The most recent study in
DLL is PETERSEN (1943). See also DBL 735-36 and ESBE (58:818), which refers to the
excellent obituary sketch by KIESERITZKY (1879).
90
SPEHR (1933:4), referring to [SIVE]R[S] et al. (1846).
91
The poems Sivers wrote in the 1840s are in [SIVE]R[S] et al. (1846:38-45) and
SIVERS (1847). Similarities between Fet and Sivers are especially noticeable in rhyme
(see Chapter Three, note 153) and composition (see Chapter Two, note 44). Both wrote
about their travels in the 1850s, and took a practical interest in agriculture in the 1860s
and 70s.
92
In addition to translating German literature and writing German in letters (includ-
ing letters to German family members), he also had occasion to speak German even in his
later years. MV (2:388-90) includes an episode in which Maksim Germanovich Kindler, a
German Latin teacher in Moscow, spent the summer of 1882 at Fet’s home, as a
consultant. Fet emphasizes how limited Kindler’s Russian was, and this suggests that
their working language was German.
93
MV (1:186).
94
Like Fet, von Maydell wrote memoirs at the end of his life, and he shares Fet’s
positive impressions of their school years. K.R. made von Maydell’s acquaintance after
Fet’s memoirs had started to appear, and in a letter to Fet (31 August 1890) he reports on
von Maydell’s enthusiastic reminiscences about his army days with Fet and Fet’s horse
(K.R. 1999:344).
95
According to the preface of SIVERS (1855).
96
(SIVERS 1858) was prepared for publication several years before it came out.
97
The translation is by Arnold von Tideböhl (SIVERS 1858:91), another former pupil
at Krümmer’s school. The volume was attacked (GROSEWSKI 1858) because of its
heterogeneous character. Indeed, although Fet can reasonably have been viewed as
German, the Fet translation stands cheek-by-jowl with von Tideböhl’s translations of
poems by Maikov, who cannot have been. It is easy to see how the volume grew out of
the editor’s interests: the extraneous materials were addenda to a core of work by
Germans in Russia, mainly in the Baltic region. Most of the work was by people von
Sivers knew, and whom he seems to have counted as part of his native cultural world.
Thus, in addition to the Maikov translation, the volume also includes Estonian folk verse.
The explanation is that it was collected by F. R. Kreutzwald, whom von Sivers knew
from his years in Werro, with whom he maintained contact afterward, and whose folklore
activity can be viewed in the context of work by such eminent German predecessors as
Herder or Goethe – cf. the “Finnisches Lied” in GOETHE (1815:157). The mixed ethnic
heritage Sivers took for granted was normal for the Baltic region. Kreutzwald discussed
Estonian subjects in German, as did his colleagues, even though they were Estonians
devoted to the promotion of the Estonian language. And von Sivers wrote a little book on
Herder in Riga. The presence of such marginal pieces in von Sivers’s book means that
Fet’s inclusion does not guarantee that von Sivers thought Fet was solidly German, but
the likeliest connection was, precisely, that von Sivers wanted to include Fet, got von
Tideböhl to translate a recent poem, and von Tideböhl tossed in Maikov.
86 Chapter One

Notes
98
Friedrich BODENSTEDT (1866) also translated Fet into German fairly early. Several
of these poems also appear as the German texts of songs composed by Pauline Viardot
Garcia. The six “Lieder von Feth” are the following: “Schlaf’ nicht mehr! zwei junge
Rosen” (“Полно спать: тебе две розы …”), “Die Sterne” (“Ich starrte und stand
unbeweglich” – “Я долго стоял неподвижно…”), “Ruhige, heilige Nacht” (“Тихая,
звездная ночь…”), “Golden glühn der Berge Gipfel” (“Тихо вечер догорает…”),
“Flüstern, athemscheues Lauschen” (“Шепот, робкое дыханье…”), “Mitternächtige
Bilder erscheinen” (“Полуночные образы реют…”). The context of Bodenstedt’s
knowledge of Fet’s poetry was his knowledge of a whole range of Russian literary fig-
ures, particularly I. S. Turgenev, and this was part of his extensive activity as a translator
of poetry in many languages. This is completely different from von Sivers’s interest in
Fet, which was presumably sparked by von Sivers’s own situation as a German in Russia,
and as someone who had known Fet when the poet was also a German in Russia, albeit a
native speaker of Russian born in completely different circumstances from von Sivers’s. I
have found no survey of translations of Fet’s poetry into either German or English,
comparable for example to the survey of song settings in IVANOV (1966). Fet seems,
however, to have been relatively fortunate in his German translators, and the very early
translations noted above have been joined by recent ones, which not only are formal tours
de force but also give the Russian (FET 1990, 1996). English translations are not
abundant. FET (1982, “I have come to you…”), helpful for a first acquaintance with Fet,
offers a rather small number of translations and is so free as to give readers little sense of
the original (KLENIN 1984).
99
The second book was approved by the censor on December 14, 1847, and contains
some poems written no later than 1840. Fet became a Russian national in February 1846
(see note 59).
100
RG 115-116. Fet says his father appeared in Werro in December and immediately
took him to Pogodin’s pension. G. P. BLOK (1985) attributes the same events to the
beginning of 1838, and gives February 1 as the date of P. P. Novosil’tsev’s inquiry to
Pogodin asking for advice on Fet’s education. (See below, and note 105.)
101
PHILIPP 1974:281-82.
102
The situation is described, both in general outline, and with respect to the fate of
specific teachers, by EISENSCHMIDT (1860:74-79).
103
According to the figures in TELK (1979:60-61), there was up to 1845 rapid growth
in the number of students enrolled (an average of 68 students through 1838, an average of
83 from 1839 through 1845), after which the number declined sharply through the
remainder of the decade, while, according to other documents, the classes offered at the
school were sharply reduced for lack of teachers. During the fourteen years of rapid
increase, however, the number of pupils from families of the nobility or officialdom did
not increase, while there was a modest rise, from 1837 on, of pupils from other social
classes, for example artisans and merchants.
104
MELESK (1932: 47).
105
BLOK (1924:20; 1985:140-141). See above, note 100.
106
Fet characterizes his fellow students as a collection of blockheads (RG 119) and
Pogodin’s main goal in running the school – to spend as little money as possible (RG
118).
107
It is in that connection that Fet recalls his father referring to Vvedenskii’s bad
influence (RG 146). Fet’s relationship with Vvedenskii receives protracted attention in
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 87

Notes
BLOK (1924). Fet continued to live in Pogodin’s house after he was admitted to the
university and then transferred from the law faculty to literature, still in latter 1838. Fet
met Apollon Grigor’ev at around the same time and moved into his family’s house after
the two had formed a warm friendship. Fet recalls it as a special favor of Pogodin’s that
he was permitted to stay on in Pogodin’s house while at the university, but adds that
Pogodin said he should move out “in the New Year”. This suggests that, regardless of A.
N. Shenshin’s attitude toward Vvedenskii, Fet was required to move out by early 1839,
and that is the date that BLOK (1985:142) assigns to the move to Grigor’ev’s. However,
Fet puts an encounter with Gogol, the only one he ever had, into his narrative at a point
when both seem to be (although are not necessarily!) living in different parts of
Pogodin’s capacious house (RG 141). Gogol lived at Pogodin’s only from sometime in
September 1839 to October 26 the same year (RP 1:597). Vvedenskii left Pogodin’s
house, and Moscow, in 1840 (RP 1:400), according to BLOK (1985:143) in February.
108
RG 134. Continued contact with Krümmer was also guaranteed by the fact that
Fet’s younger brother Vasilii Shenshin (born 1828, according to BLOK 1985:138) had a
tutor evidently recommended by Krümmer and eventually was also sent to Krümmer for
his education. Like Fet, Vasilii was removed from the school for final preparation for
university entrance. He attended the university in Kiev, where he had relatives – Fet’s
older sister Caroline Foeth, daughter of their mother’s first husband, married to A. P.
Matveev (1816-82/3[?]), a relative of A. N. Shenshin (MATVEEVA 1999). This Vasilii
Shenshin was the second of Fet’s brothers of that name, the first having died in infancy.
109
MV 1:1, RG 192. On Shevyrev and Fet, see also note 9. Fet’s mentioning, of all
Byron’s work, specifically the drama Cain is of some interest both for the question of
Fet’s religious ideas and, more immediately, because of the great, even if generally
unremarked, importance of staging in his early poetry.
110
ZHIRMUNSKII (1932:527 ff.) and (1981, especially 140 ff.).
111
ZHIRMUNSKII (1981:341-47). The fullest and best discussion of this in Fet’s
lifetime is the anonymous review by GRIGOR’EV of Fet’s 1850 collection of poetry.
112
RG 214.
113
Letter to S. M. Solov’ev, December 20, 1842 (GRIGOR’EV 1999:6). Fet recalls
working on the translation at that time (RG 209).
114
It appeared in The Contemporary in 1856 (No. 7, 5-56).
115
Сон и Пазифая was published in The Muscovite (1851, No. 13) as a last-minute
substitution by Apollon Grigor’ev, after the censor objected to some poems by Mei
(GRIGOR’EV 1999:51, 346). Grigor’ev claimed to have inserted the poem simply because
he had it to hand. The 1842 date was posited by B. Ia. Bukhshtab on the basis of similari-
ties between the paper, handwriting, and signature of the autograph of Cон и Пазифая
and those of a cycle of poems some of which were published in No. 4 of The Muscovite
for 1842 (FET 1986: 660, 664, 688). Cон и Пазифая was not, however, actually part of
the cycle, and therefore may have been written slightly later than its “sister” poems,
hence after the appearance of the review (BELINSKII 1954:5:242), which appeared in the
August issue of Notes of the Fatherland.
116
GOETHE (1899).
117
As noted above (note 84), there are no Heine translations in Fet’s first book. Over
the course of his career, he translated a broader range of Heine’s poetry than is sometimes
realized, but his earliest translations were from Das Buch der Lieder. Since these poems
were originally published in 1827, they were in principle available to Fet during his
88 Chapter One

Notes
school days. They became popular even in Germany, however, only upon the appearance
of a second edition, in 1837, and Fet was transplanted to Moscow at the very beginning
of 1838. Das Buch der Lieder was reprinted again in 1841, after Fet’s first book was out.
118
MEID (1993:374).
119
The classic study of Fet’s aesthetics is BUKHSHTAB (1936), but see also note 120.
120
The most convincing characterization of Fet’s poetics remains an anonymous es-
say Grigor’ev published in Notes of the Fatherland as a review of Fet’s 1850 collection
([GRIGOR’EV] 1850). Although Grigor’ev acknowledged his authorship (GRIGOR’EV
1999:40, April 19, 1850 letter to F. A. Koni) and there is abundant evidence of it in the
essay itself, the authorship of the essay was not widely recognized. The earliest correct
attribution was apparently by B. Ia. Bukhshtab, acknowledged by V. M. Zhirmunskii, in
work originally dating from the 1930s, as his source (ZHIRMUNSKII 1981:522, n. 17).
Except for Zhirmunskii, even the best modern descriptions of the critical response to
Fet’s poetry – BUKHSHTAB (1959, 1974) and L. M. LOTMAN (1976) – have skated right
over the critical response to the 1850 edition of Fet’s poetry, leaping from reviews of
Fet’s youthful Lyrical Pantheon to the self-approval of the 1856 edition edited by the
circle associated with The Contemporary.
121
BUKHSHTAB (1936:39-41) describes Schopenhauerian elements in Fet’s writing
and definitively characterizes the role these elements played in the poet’s development:
according to Bukhshtab, Schopenhauer must have attracted Fet “прежде всего тем, что
считал искусство истинно совершенным познанием, – познанием, схватывающим
действительный образ мира в его сущности. Это познание, опирающееся на
интуицию, Шопенгауер противополагает “низшему”, рациональному, научному
познанию … Шопенгауер оформил и мотивировал эстетические воззрения Фета,
сложившиеся в основном еще до знакомства с ним. Взгляд на искусство как на
высшее познание … – это общеромантическое воззрение, в котором воспитывался
Фет в конце тридцатых – начале сороковых годов”. (A brief passage from Bukhshtab,
beginning with the first sentence above, is given in translation and without quotation
marks by HUGHES [1974:205], whose article shows that Fet’s late story “Cactus” is pro-
foundly Schopenhauerian. The passage from “Cactus” that Hughes adduces is the one
presented with reference to that point in BUKHSHTAB [1936:40]).
Fet’s educational experience of romanticism began even earlier, in his childhood
reading from his neighbors’ manuscript of poems (see page 9 and notes 47 and 50), and
at school, where he came to know the romantic literature of three national traditions.
Bukhshtab treats Fet’s Schopenhauerianism again (BUKHSHTAB 1959:66-69, 1974:112-
18), adding to his earlier observations about the Schopenhauerian cast of Fet’s story
“Cactus” also the contextualization in Schopenhauer’s work of certain passages in Fet’s
late poems. Creeping ivy, for example, in the poem “Я рад, когда с земного лона”, is
interpreted in the light of “Über den Willen in der Natur” (SCHOPENHAUER 1999:3:169-
321; see also note 36). Bukhshtab and others say that Fet does not take from
Schopenhauer the latter’s famous pessimism (MAURER 1966); this may be so, but it is a
claim that seems to require us to define pessimism differently for Schopenhauer than for
Fet. In any case, one theme treated extensively by Schopenhauer and important for Fet
was the theme of death, and, with it, suicide.
As has been pointed out by several scholars, a Schopenhauerian context is important
for reading Fet’s poem “Cмерти” ( 1884):
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 89

Notes

Я в жизни oбмирaл и чувствo этo знaю,

Гдe мукaм всeм кoнeц и слaдoк тoмный xмeль;
Вoт пoчeму я вaс бeз стрaxa oжидaю,
Нoчь бeзрaссвeтнaя и вeчнaя пoстeль!
Пусть гoлoвы мoeй рукa твoя кoснeтся
И ты сoтрeшь мeня сo спискa бытия,
Нo прeд мoим судoм, пoкудa сeрдцe бьeтся,
Мы силы рaвныe, и тoржeствую я.
Eщe ты кaждый миг мoeй пoкoрнa вoлe,
Ты тeнь у нoг мoиx, бeзличный призрaк ты;
Пoкудa я дышу – ты мысль мoя, нe бoлe,
Игрушкa шaткaя тoскующeй мeчты.
Adducing the last stanza of this poem in his more general discussion of Schopenhauerian
sources for Fet, BUKHSHTAB (1974:113) refers to Chapter 41 (“Über den Tod und sein
Verhältniss zur Unzerstörbarkeit unsers Wesens an sich”) in Part 2 of Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung (SCHOPENHAUER1999:2:536-91). The reference is not really very spe-
cific, however – Chapter 41 is long, – while the conclusion of Fet’s poem evokes even
more clearly yet other places in Schopenhauer’s works. Chapter 41 is intended to be read
as a supplement to an earlier section on death, Part 1 Book 4 par. 54 of the same work,
while the treatment in Fet may also remind the reader of both Part 1 Book 4 par. 69, on
suicide, and, even more obviously, Schopenhauer’s very succinct, and I think particularly
well-known, essay Über den Selbstmord in the second volume of his Parerga und
Paralipomena (SCHOPENHAUER 1999:5:275-77, see notes below). It is here that Schopen-
hauer presents death as experiment, as a question that one asks of nature: what are the
changes in being and cognition that we experience upon death? One can conceive of such
an experiment, the essayist wrily concludes, “Aber es ist ein ungeschicktes: denn es hebt
die Identität des Bewußtseyns, welches die Antwort zu vernehmen hätte, auf”. This reluc-
tant giving up of inquiry in the face of such an unarguable huis clos can be heard in Fet’s
poem. He insists, twice, that he is superior to death – so long as he is alive (покуда
сердце бьется … покуда я дышу). He is a force equal to death, and triumphant because
death is “each moment subject to my will”. This last claim evokes Schopenhauer’s dis-
cussion of the willful election of both death and its contemplation. Indeed, for
Schopenhauer, an elected death was generally a consequence not of weakness, but of an
excess of human will, of refusal to surrender to some unpleasant and otherwise
insurmountable circumstance. That the speaker in the poem is contemplating both death
and his own will to death is clear in the last line, in the reference to his “longing day-
dream”, in which death – so far, until the end really comes – is contained within his own
contemplation of it. The speaker in the poem is engaged in the same sort of mind game as
the philosopher. Both ask: what is death like? Whereas for the philosopher, the question
“what is death like?” is a question of ontology, epistemology, or even cognitive theory,
for the poet it is a matter of metaphors and naming: death is a plaything, a rival force, a
shadow, a thought, an artifact of his own desire.
Fet’s own death seems to have been either a masked suicide or an attempt at suicide,
thwarted by a natural death brought on by the (most likely deliberate) exertions of the
90 Chapter One

Notes
attempt. Whatever other motivations he may have had, there seems to be little doubt that
Fet had accomplished everything with his life he had set out to accomplish, he became
(by his own doing perhaps) very ill, he was depressed by (if by nothing else) at least his
own, nearly two months’, illness. His doctors and his brother-in-law advised his wife to
call a priest for his last confession; his wife refused to do so, because she was afraid of
distressing him. He himself became irritable and was waiting for the end; in the words of
his secretary E. V. KUDRIAVTSEVA: “Афан. Афан., замечая сам, что болезнь не
поддается лечению постепенно начал приходить в какое-то ожесточение: он и
здоровым всегда тяготился жизнью и не раз говорил, что от самоубийства
останавливает его только та мысль, что завещание будет недействительно; а иначе
его давно бы не было на свете” (ASLANOVA, ed. 1994:243). Fet was also, by every
account, a man of extraordinary will, and his beliefs about suicide were informed or at
least buttressed by Schopenhauer’s tolerant stance toward it. “Wenn in schweren,
grausenhaften Träumen die Beängstigung den höchsten Grad erreicht; so bringt eben sie
selbst uns zum Erwachen, durch welches alle jene Ungeheuer der Nacht verschwinden.
Das Selbe geschieht im Traume des Lebens, wann der höchste Grad der Beängstigung
uns nöthigt, ihn abzubrechen” (SCHOPENHAUER 1999:5:277). He sent his wife out on a
fool’s errand. “Diesen kostet er gar keine Selbstüberwindung: diese brauchen gar keinen
Anlauf dazu zu nehmen; sondern sobald der ihnen beigegebene Hüter sie auf zwei
Minuten allein läßt, machen sie rasch ihrem Leben ein Ende”. On early intimations of
suicide, see note 9. On Fet’s knowledge of Schopenhauer’s writings, see also below.
122
This in no way precludes Fet’s having read other work by Schopenhauer earlier.
See section “1.4.2 Dating Fet’s acquaintance with the works of Schopenhauer”, pages 9
ff.
123
The phrase is in a diary kept by A. V. Druzhinin (DRUZHININ 1989:232), and dates
to December 17, 1853: “Читали очень милую вещь Фета “Днепр в половодье” и
другую “Гораций и Лидия”. [Druzhinin obviously got the titles wrong, the works were
published soon after.] Но что за нелепый детина сам Фет, что за допотопные понятия
из старых журналов, что за восторги по поводу Санда, Гюго и Бенедиктова, что за
охота говорить – и говорить ерунду…В один из прошлых разов он объявил, что
готов…поджечь всю Англию и с радостью погибнуть”. Druzhinin’s words indicate
the impression created by Fet on St. Petersburg men of letters when he was newly arrived
in the capital after years spent in a provincial army unit in Ukraine (Fet continued to
serve as an officer until after the conclusion of the Crimean War), and it shows that Fet
was viewed as a wonderful poet but socially a diamond in the rough, intellectually rather
simple and unsophisticated. Sand and Benediktov had been all the rage when Fet had
been a student a decade or so earlier, but now he seemed hopelessly out of date. The fact
that Druzhinin himself was not only a critic but the author of a famous response to Sand,
namely his novel Polinka Saks, itself already some six years old, made Fet’s taste seem
even sillier. Yet although Fet explicitly rejects Sand’s politics in his late memoirs, he
claims even there to retain admiration for her writing, especially her depictions of the
countryside, and he remembers with unabashed fondness everything associated with the
Sand-ism of the young ladies he knew in the 1840s. Fet’s claim at the end of his life, that
he had remained faithful to everything that had mattered to him from the beginning, was
probably completely accurate. His rather simple decency in this regard seems to have
been one of the characteristics that endeared him to Tolstoi, before Tolstoi ceased finding
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 91

Notes
anything except himself endearing, and it cost him enormously in the eyes of the cruelly
dynamic society in which he lived.
124
Fet first lived in Moscow when he was brought there to attend Pogodin’s school.
According to BLOK (1985) he enrolled with Pogodin in early 1838. He was admitted to
the university August 27, 1838 and graduated June 21, 1844. Fet’s description of his
enthusiasm for Hegel places it during the time he was living with Apollon Grigor’ev but
before the appearance of his first book Lyrical Pantheon in the autumn of 1840.
125
RG 170.
126
G. W. F. HEGEL (1975: 1173).
127
G. W. F. HEGEL (1975: 1132-33).
128
RG 170, 193.
129
See note 76.
130
On the difficulties of associating philosophers with men of letters in a motivated
way, see THIERGEN (1986) and NOWAKOWSKI (1996).
131
In the contrast implicit in Fet’s memoir between his early Hegelianism and his
later Schopenhauerianism we may read also an autobiographical encapsulation of a
general trend in Russian response to German philosophy. On the replacement of Hegel by
Schopenhauer, see THIERGEN (1986).
132
RG 149.
133
Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness is put forward, in particular, in his
Philosophy of Spirit (Philosophie des Geistes) and Phenomenology (Phänomenologie des
Geistes), both available in Fet’s student days. HEGEL (1978) includes a facsimile of an
1830 text, with extensive notes and commentary, as well as translation into English. An
edition of the Philosophy that is in some ways more immediately accessible to the
English reader, but unsatisfactory in some other respects, is HEGEL (1971). Note also
REDDING (1999:127, 130) and HEGEL (1981). On earlier treatments of self-consciousness
in German idealist philosophy, in particular J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. v. Schelling, see
SIMPSON, ed., (1974:72, 119 ff.). Fichte and Schelling are not mentioned by Fet. For an
introduction to Hegel’s cognitive theory as represented in the Phenomenology, see
ROCKMORE (1997).
134
HEGEL (1978:2:97).
135
Fet’s autobiographical techniques are heavily metonymical, a point made earlier
with reference to Fet’s conversations with F. I. Tiutchev (note 9). He also adjusted his
memories in various ways, and his attribution of more intensive Hegelianism to
Grigor’ev than to himself is not necessarily reliable. There is no doubt, however, of the
Hegelian interests of the circle that frequented Grigor’ev’s and Fet’s rooms. For
additional memoiristic corroboration see TSCHIZEWSKIJ (1934).
136
HEGEL (1975:1:36-37).
137
A later, and cruder, reference to the problem of desire in relation to aesthetic re-
sponse is in a letter to Tolstoi (April 11, 1863, TOLSTOI 1978:1:363). The appellation
“chaste” is TERRAS’s (1991:314).
138
HEGEL (1975:1:36-37).
139
“Последние две строки этого стихотворения полны такой страстной жизнен-
ности, такой тоски, такого значения, что мы ничего не знаем более сильного, более
жизненного во всей нашей русской поэзии” (DOSTOEVSKII 1978:97).
140
WIERZBICKA (1992:169-74).
92 Chapter One

Notes
141
The staging aspects of emotion have received considerable attention in recent
cognitive studies. OATLEY (1992) concerns himself with plans, goals, and commu-
nicational aspects of emotion, following his and colleagues’ proposals that emotion en-
tails communication of individuals with themselves, a kind of communication necessi-
tated by the putative autonomy of parts of the cognitive system. His exposition draws on
works of nineteenth-century literature, such as Anna Karenina, and the connection of his
cognitive theory to nineteenth-century theories of mind is striking.
142
I am grateful to M. L. Gasparov for this observation.
143
On Pushkin’s statues, the classic work is JAKOBSON (1937).
144
“Чтобы человек мог любить хоть что-нибудь в мире, не только жену, детей, а
ну хоть старую рукопись или кофе, и в то же время говорить об отрицании жизни –
этого я не понимаю… Или для меня ничего нет, хоть сейчас пропади свет и я сам,
или же еще что-то осталось дорогое, в таком случае … все равно: человек ли это,
или любимая мысль, или ощущенье. Любить – значить расширять свое существо на
внешний объект, и почему лучше расширять его на опиум, водку, чем на человека,
кошку, гладкий фундамент под оранжереей?” Letter of September 28, 1880. (TOLSTOI
1978:2:100.)
145
G. W. F. HEGEL (1975:31).
146
ALLSTON (1850:15-16).
147
GINZBURG (1974:265).
148
SMIRNOVA, ed. (1993:79): “Стихотворение, подобно птице, пленяет или заду-
шевным пением, или блестящим хвостом, часто даже не собственным, а блестящим
хвостом сравнения. Во всяком случае вся его сила должна сосредоточиваться в
последнем куплете, чтобы чувствовалось, что далее нельзя присовокупить ни
звука”.
149
N. N. STRAKHOV (1912 “Zametki o Fete”:13). MIRSKY (1958:236).
150
The lack of referential weight in Fet’s poems has sometimes been confused with
lack of meaningfulness, and is one of the main sources of hostility to his poetry in the
1860s and 70s. For example, O. F. MILLER (1878:295) characterizes Fet’s poetry as
“беспредметное щебетание” – roughly, “abstract twittering”. At the time, Fet’s poetry
had so completely disappeared from public view that Miller could dispose of it in a single
footnote in his series of lectures on Russian literature, calling it completely outdated.
151
GUSTAFSON (1966:238).
152
The poem dates to about 1844.
153
SMIRNOV (1992) offers a brief analysis of the relationship of Fet’s treatment of
time and memory to the romantic tradition in Russian and, specifically, to Pushkin.
154
Singularity of experience as a phenomenon of readership underlies Fet’s otherwise
somewhat unexpected insistence on the importance of novelty in poetry. Writing to K.R.,
he says: “Поэзия непременно требует новизны, и ничего для нее нет убийственнее
повторения, а тем более самого себя … Под новизною я подразумеваю не новые
предметы, а новое их освещение волшебным фонарем искусства” (SMIRNOVA, ed.
1993:79).
155
The fullest treatment of memory in ancient rhetoric is found in Book III of the
anonymous treatise Ad Herennium (CAPLAN 1964). On affect and memory, see Book
III.xxiii.38-39. The author refers to Greek manuals on memory, but none are extant.
156
HEGEL (1978:2:216-19). He goes on to say: “It sometimes happens during ill-
nesses, that there is a reappearance of presentations and things known that have been
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 93

Notes
regarded as forgotten for years … yet they were within us throughout and continue to
reside there … [a] person who has once forgotten the things he has learnt can never know
the true extent of the knowledge he possesses; – these things are simply implicit in what
he is … This simple inwardness constitutes individuality, and it persists throughout all
the determinateness and mediation of consciousness” (HEGEL 1978:2:217). On
recognition, apparent recognition, and the phenomenon of déjà vu in Fet and other writers
of the nineteenth century in Russia, see SALAMAN (1970), L. Ia. ERMILOVA (1979).
157
There is a vast literature on the various sorts of naturally-occurring autobiograph-
ical memories and false memories, and on the connection between memory and both the
emotional context of remembered events and their congruence with the current mood of
the person remembering. Helpful readings include: NEISSER (1992 “Amnesia”, 1992
“Natural settings”), B. R. BUGELSKI (1996), SCHACHTER, ed. (1995), MORTON (1994), and
several of the contributions to DALGLEISH / POWER, edd. (1999) and EICH et al. (2000).
158
The rooks have been interpreted as perfectly real and “present” by some commen-
tators (GUSTAFSON 1966:80) and as completely imaginary – that is, as having been real
but only on some past occasion, out of which they are being recollected in memory – by
others (BUKHSHTAB 1974:119).
159
On the social behavior and flocking of rooks, see CRAMP (1994). The conditions
described there are, of course, current, and conditions for rooks have changed con-
siderably since Fet’s day. Nonetheless, his presentation of rooks corresponds to behavior
that he can plausibly be assumed to have witnessed.
160
“Зa гoрaми, пeскaми, мoрями – …” (1891).
161
“Ласточки” (“Природы праздный соглядатай …”, 1884).
162
GUSTAFSON (1966:80).
163
It was apparently Maiakovskii who first noticed that Fet’s horses are always steeds
(конь), and that the usual word for horse (лошадь) never appears. BUKHSHTAB (1974:98)
points out, however, that Fet also uses a variety of other, more specific, words for
different kinds of horses. In spite of the well-known haziness of Fet’s word choice, the
precision of his nature vocabulary has been commented on at least since FEDÍNA
(1915:89-109), who offers some wonderful tables comparing Fet’s nature vocabulary,
point for point, with Tiutchev’s. Maiakovskii actually says (in a statement tactfully
omitted by Bukhshtab) that “Поэт Фет сорок шесть раз упомянул в своих стихах
слово “конь” и ни разу не заметил, что вокруг него бегают и лошади” (MAIAKOVSKII
1959:12). FEDÍNA (1915:100) counts 26 occurrences of конь, not 46. My database gives
me 38 occurrences of конь and one of лошадь, counting translations. Both horses appear
in the first Hafis translation: “Коня увидала она [= звезда], проскакавшего в поле, И
лошади статной летучей красою пленилась.”
164
On window motifs, see ZHOLKOVSKY (1985). On the frequency of the word окно
in Fet, see EGEBERG (1976).
165
There is an extensive literature on the connection between trauma and memory.
For some recent work on this subject, see: RUBIN (1986, 1996), ROSS (1991), NIEDENTHAL
/ KITAYAMA (1994), STEIN et al. (1997), SCHACHTER, ed. (1995).
166
Как бы педагоги и физиологи ни отнеслись к словам моим, я буду настой-
чиво утверждать: первым впечатлением, сохранившимся в моей памяти, было, что
кудрявый, темнорусый мужчина, в светлосинем халате на черном калмыцком меху,
подбрасывает меня под потолок, и мне было более страшно, чем приятно. Самые
черты лица этого человека твердо врезались мне в память, так что я узнал его
94 Chapter One

Notes
двадцать лет спутся, хотя в течении всего этого времени не видал даже его
портрета.
167
For some examples of the dubious veridicality of Fet’s memoirs, see note 9.
168
RG 31. The poem “У гроба государыни императрицы Марии Феодоровны в
ночи накануне ее погребения” dates to November 1828 (ZHUKOVSKII 1902:72).
169
See LARSEN et al., 1996.
170
On the separation of background and detail, see SALAMAN (1970), BARCLAY
(1986). On the role of detail in distinguishing veridical memory from imagination, see
BREWER (1996), citing BRADLEY (1899).
171
TOLSTOI (1913:7).
172
Fet signals his awareness of the genre both in introducing his memoir, when he
says that Tolstoi encouraged him to write about his childhood, and in the opening of his
narrative, which clearly evokes S. T. Aksakov’s The Childhood Years of Bagrov-
Grandson. Also like Aksakov, Fet “went back” in time, rather than writing his memoirs
from the beginning down to the present. Yet, whereas Tolstoi and Aksakov in varying
degrees fictionalize their treatments of childhood, Fet presents his own as the very truth,
and in the course of his narrative he often deconstructs or turns on its head the norms of
the genre. On Russian autobiographies and “pseudo-autobiographies” dealing with
childhood, see Andrew WACHTEL (1990). Salaman, who is the author also of a special
study devoted to Aksakov, uses The Childhood Years of Bagrov-Grandson as one of the
principle texts in her remarkable 1970 study of personal memory.
173
There is extensive literature on the subject of Fet’s relationships with women (cf.
e.g. SADOVSKOI 1916:62-68, BLOK 1922, SUKHOTIN 1933), and the love affair mentioned
here (with Maria Lazich) is well documented and well studied. A recent study is KLENIN
(1991).
174
Вне моды (FET 1982:2:134).
175
MV (1: iii-iv).
176
Cf. GERNSHEIM (1988:73-115), DARIUS (1984:30-31, 36-37).
177
Fet’s scorn for Nicholas’s army is evident in his Tolstoyan story “Не те” (“The
wrong ones”, 1874), which presents the chaos underlying a royal review in which he
participated. Nicholas’s misplaced aestheticism in running the army was of course not
only Fet’s concern. It had cost the country dearly in the Crimean War, and Fet’s story
covertly celebrates the military reforms of 1874.
178
Fet had other sources than film for viewing pictures in motion; see Chapter Two.
Fet’s obsessive presentation of motion, and its connection with the rise of photography,
links his poetry with contemporary Russian painting, in a way that has not, to my knowl-
edge, been explored: we may compare Fet’s attempt to fix moments for eternity with
such dynamic portraits as I. N. Kramskoi’s 1879 portrait of E. A. Lavrovskaia, discussed
by KARPOVA (2000:38-39). She observes that an especially acute sense of the passage of
time and of the ephemeral nature of experience is increasingly characteristic of Russian
art of the 1880s and 90s, and she notes the importance of photography in this trend. In
this as in other respects, Fet’s poetics were at once individualistic and attuned to the soci-
ety in which he lived.
179
The text of the autograph is published in FET (1959:603) and additional variants
for it are in FET (1971:435). My layout is intended to show the eventual disposition of the
stanzas, and it does not correspond to any indentations or underlining in Fet’s autograph.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 95

Notes
180
The text of the epigraph appears in an extended discussion about time and our per-
ceptions of it, and of the relationship of time to space, on one hand, and to eternity, on the
other. Quoting Spinoza (“tempus non est affectio rerum, sed tantum merus modus cogi-
tandi”), Schopenhauer disputes the notion that shared perceptions of time can be taken as
evidence of its objective nature.
The only published photograph of the draft (FET 1959:99) does not show the epi-
graph, but no one has seriously proposed that the two came to be associated only as an
afterthought at the time of publication, since the poems themselves are generally consid-
ered “closely connected with Schopenhauer” (GUSTAFSON 1966:19). KURLIANDSKAIA
(1989:114-19) emphasizes the consonance between the poems and Schopenhauer’s
thought, but her analysis is weakened by her not discussing the latter with much reference
to specific texts. She also puts the poem in the wrong place in the book where it first
appeared, and treats the poem as one of Fet’s “late” poems, a category that seems oddly
undifferentiated in view of the roughly twenty years between the usual dating of the
autograph and the publication of the poem. Interestingly, Kurliandskaia sees connections
between the ideas of the text and Fet’s 1859 essay on Tiutchev, which she treats as pre-
Schopenhauerian. A subtler analysis is offered by BUCK (1978:152 ff., especially 209 ff.).
He discusses passages in Schopenhauer that may be related to Fet’s poems, but he also
emphasizes how difficult it is to make a precise connection. He notes that the epigraph
seems unexpectedly remote from the poem it appears with.
181
See note 180.
182
Inexact quotation from Parerga und Paralipomena (SCHOPENHAUER 1999:5:47),
called by Schopenhauer “vereinzelte jedoch systematisch geordnete Gedanken über
vielerlei Gegenstände”. In the epigraph, I have followed the format of Fet’s original
publication (FET 1883:13), because editors have handled the epigraph in various ways,
and the differences are, as we shall see, substantive. The 1883 edition shows somewhat
expanded letter spacing in lines 3 and 4, which perhaps may correspond to intended
emphasis. I have also followed the FET (1883) spelling, which differs slightly from the
edition of Schopenhauer I refer to and to the others I have compared on this point.
183
It would be difficult to see, however, how Fet can have known the full version of
Rückert’s “Kindertotenlieder”, with its famous transmogrification of children’s eyes into
“only stars”. The poem in question was published only in 1872. (Rückert died in 1866.)
We return to Fet’s astral poems in another connection later (cf. note 113).
184
Cf. FET (1901), an edition in many respects excellent. The same practice was
followed by others until Bukhshtab finally broke with the tradition (FET 1937). BUKH-
SHTAB (1935:584) discusses earlier editors’ treatment of the text.
185
KLENIN (1996).
186
The thematically unified groups in the 1883 volume are arranged in a roughly an-
nular structure, and the cycle “Элегии и думы” where our two poems appear also op-
poses internal to external poems. The center of the group of central texts is comprised of
three astral poems: “Среди звезд” and the two poems discussed here. After an
introductory poem, the next three texts memorialize dead loves: first, with the beloved
dead but made immortal because her eternal “pure light” will be carried forth by the
living poet, then, with the beloved dead and the speaker seeking to share in her state of
non-being, finally, with the speaker looking forward to arriving together with his beloved
at a final judgment. In the corresponding four texts that close the cycle, the speaker con-
templates his own ultimate non-being: the twelfth poem of the cycle is actually called
96 Chapter One

Notes
“Ничтожество”, and that poem is followed by one in which the speaker says that, al-
though mortal, he too carries within him an eternal “fire stronger and brighter than the
whole universe”. The next text expresses his abnegation of a life he now recognizes to be
burdensome. The cycle closes with a poem that both takes up the theme of the vanity of
life and introduces a comparison with winter snows. The internal poems are of three
sorts: first comes the most general and the most disturbing of the poems about death,
called simply “Смерть”, while poems 9 through 11 are memorials to male martyrs:
Pushkin, Alexander II, and Jesus. The astral poems fall in between (poems 6 through 8).
187
See note 180.
188
The epigraph under discussion is not the only problem if Fet is said to have been
reading Schopenhauer only from 1869 on, since Fet mentions Schopenhauer in his 1867
essays on education (FET 1867).
189
TOLSTOI (1978:1:391).
190
Cf. BLAGOI (1971:540).
191
On Tolstoi’s knowledge of Schopenhauer, see MAURER (1966:223-24, 298-99). In
her rich bibliography, Maurer refers to Eikhenbaum’s work, among others, but readers
interested in a cautious analysis of Tolstoy’s knowledge of Schopenhauer in relation to
that of Fet and other Russian readers should, still, consult EIKHENBAUM (1960).
192
MV (2:57).
193
MAURER (1966:12-13).
194
ZAITSEV (1864).
195
GELLERSTEIN (1965:113-114).
196
THIERGEN (1988:582). The earliest Russian knowledge of Schopenhauer attested
seems to be that of V. F. Odoevskii in the 1840s, and by 1858 Schopenhauer was
boasting in a letter that he had become so well known that he was getting visitors from
Moscow (GOLDT 1998:98). MAURER (1966:22, 30) also notices Russian awareness of
Schopenhauer in the latter 1850s. For a cautious response to claims for earlier acquain-
tance with Schopenhauer in Russia, see THIERGEN (1986). For a review of earlier work on
Schopenhauer in Russia, updated with reference to current Russian work, see KASACK
(2000).
197
Fet served in the Baltic region in the years 1854 – 1855. The first rush of attention
to Schopenhauer is widely dated to April 1853, the date of an English publication quickly
reprinted in Germany in a German translation. By 1856 (the year Fet made his tour of
Western Europe, including Germany) a prize was offered at Leipzig for work on Schop-
enhauer, and Schopenhauer was receiving notice also in France.
198
SCHOPENHAUER (1999:5:46-47), Parerga und Paralipomena 2.29. The translation
is mine, and I have added the emphasis on the words that Fet used as his epigraph.
199
ZHIRMUNSKII (1975:213) pointed out that the texts are not strictly speaking loga-
oedic, his comments expanded by SCHERR (1986:139). See also below.
200
An interesting case is represented by Fet’s poem “Грезы”, written 1857 and first
published 1859. In spite of its title, the word “грезы” was not used in the text of the first
of the two surviving autographs. In the final version of the text, “сон” refers to a dream in
which the dreamer is dead and sunk into “грезы” (“Мне снился сон, что сплю я
непробудно, Что умер я и в грезы погружен”). The poem thus represents a relatively
early instance of Fet intermingling the two mind states of cон and грезы, but here it is the
“cон” that encapsulates the “грезы”, whereas in the later poem it is the other way around.
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 97

Notes
201
On the weakening or severing of a subtextual relationship in the course of textual
revision, see RONEN (1978).
202
SCHOPENHAUER (1999:1:210).
203
There is also a chapter on “Physical Astronomy” in Schopenhauer’s The Will in
Nature, which is of some interest for Fet, but not immediately relevant to our present
discussion.
204
Reprinted in WRIGHT (1970).
205
SERAFIMOV (1900).
206
MV (1:98-101).
207
EELSALU (1982:211).
208
RV 1:99.
209
Dal’ attributes this definition to Khomiakov.
210
FONTENELLE (1990:63).
211
LANCASTER BROWN (1986:165-68).
212
On Fet’s science teacher, see notes 76 and 78 above.
213
The poem was published a little over a year before Apollon Grigor’ev’s “Комета”
(“Когда средь сонма здезд, размеренно и стройно...”), a poem with which it is
connected by its contrast between the regular motions of the stars and the irregular
trajectory of, in Grigor’ev’s poem, a comet or, in Fet’s poem, a falling star. The Fet
poem, however, is a partly-rhymed eight-liner in trochaic tetrameter, whereas Grigor’ev’s
is fourteen lines of iambic hexameter. The Grigor’ev poem has been connected with
Pushkin’s eight-line “Портрет”, but in both form and thematics it is much closer to
Benediktov’s elegant sonnet “Комета” (“Взгляни на небеса: там стройность
вековая.”… [BENEDIKTOV 1835:100]). On Fet’s enthusiastic response to Benediktov, see:
RG 153, SHIMKEVICH (1929), and note 83.
214
On Fet and astronomy, see RONEN (1991: 432-33).
215
The poem “Комета” is in its own way nearly as mysterious as “Измучен жизнью
…” Since its date is not known, and there were a number of important cometary events
during Fet’s lifetime, it is not clear what comet, if any, inspired the poem. Remarkable
here is the image of the comet writing with its “перо” (normally meaning “feather” or
“pen”), which of course here must refer to the comet’s tail: Этa – гляди-кa, вoн тaм, зa
рeкoю – С oгнeнным длинным пeрoм, Пишeт oнa, чтo ни нoчь, нaд зeмлeю,
Стрaшным пугaeт судoм. Apparently, “перо” could be used in hunters’ jargon to refer
to a dog’s (plumed?) tail (I owe this observation to Alexander Zholkovsky), and accord-
ing to Dal’ it could also be used to refer to a knife or dagger. The tails of comets, in turn,
have been given very fanciful depictions and descriptions since ancient times. They are
shown as dagger-blades in seventeenth-century pictures (Hevelius’ Cometographia,
1668, shown for example in YEOMANS 1991:88), while several nineteenth-century
drawings of famous comets show them looking very much like feathers (note in
particular the pictures of Donati’s comet of 1858, most famously as seen over Paris
(LANCASTER BROWN 1986:187) but also in a different view, from October 9, 1858, in
ALTER et al., [1974]:1440). Although Donati’s comet was the first to be photographed
(YEOMANS 1991:205), the first really well-known, and spectacular, photograph of a
comet was of the Great Daylight Comet of September 1882 (photograph in LANCASTER
BROWN 1986:212), and that famous photograph also certainly evokes comparison of a
cometary tail with a feather. Note also the work of F. A. Bredikhin, who is known in the
annals of astronomy especially for his extensive descriptions of comet tails. According to
98 Chapter One

Notes
ESBE (8:635), his “О хвостах комет” appeared in Moscow in 1862. It has been pointed
out to me by Alexander Zholkovsky that Fet’s reference to the comet’s writing with its
feather-tail is apparently picked up in Mandel’shtam’s “Звезды… пишут… свои
рапортички (“На полицейской бумаге верже”, MANDEL’SHTAM 1990:1:167).
216
Unless he borrowed somebody else’s book, Fet probably had not completed this
last qualification in 1864, the putative date of the poem, but he probably had done so by
early 1865. See note 122.
217
See note 199.
218
On affective metonymy in recent cognitive science, see GELERNTER (1994).
219
The best-known of these passages is in a letter to K.R. (1888): “В комнате пахнет
медом от принесенных цветов, и я воспеваю пчел, как они льнут к распустив-
шемуся жасмину; но это нисколько не значит, что я пасечник-пчеловод, который с
любовью станет огребать рой и подчищать мед, но никак не воспевать пчел, на
которых смотрит в сетке, а я – без сетки”.
220
Fet, characteristically, makes occasional mention of the literary tradition for the
representation of madness, but he never mentions the philosophical treatments, notably
Hegel’s. Hegel’s interest, like Fet’s, was to some degree personally motivated. For a
study of not only Hegel’s theory of madness but also its cultural-historical and
philosophical situation in its own time, see BERTHOLD-BOND (1995).
221
STRAKHOV (1886).
222
There may be some shadow of an interest in contemporary psychiatric and neuro-
logical studies in a little group of anecdotes that deal with the much-vexed question of
Fet’s atheism (cf. note 29). Several apparently independent sources report Fet, with
jocular and mischievous intent, expressing thanks to God that he, Fet, was an atheist (FET
1982:2:327, 449). These vignettes are oddly reminiscent of an example of split brain-
function presented in 1874 by the pioneer neurologist J. H. JACKSON (1958:135).
223
ELLENBERGER (1970).
224
ANONYMOUS (1895).
225
SCHACHTER (1995:7-8, 11).
226
Charcot’s nine large volumes of collected works constitute only a part of his
legacy; another is writings on the depiction of deformed people and demoniacs in art, as
well as his own memoirs and travel sketches, which he illustrated himself. The context
for Charcot’s accumulating travel sketches was that he was called as a therapist to heal
the mental disorders of clients all over Europe, and in the course of his career he traveled
twice to Russia, where his patients included members of the royal family. One of his
journeys to Russia was evidently undertaken immediately upon the assassination of
Alexander II, in the first week of March 1881. Although no full-scale biography of him
has been written, Ellenberger brought to light a book about him by a Russian doctor, A.
A. Liubimov, who knew Charcot for the last twenty years of Charcot’s life. It is
LIUBIMOV (1894) who describes the circle of Russian doctors around Charcot in Paris.
Botkin’s acquaintance with Charcot is mentioned both by Liubimov and by Botkin’s
biographer (BELOGOLOVYI 1892). My information about Charcot’s 1881 visit to Russia
comes from a dated page in his travel diary.
227
LIUBIMOV (1894:29). According to Liubimov, Charcot was a great Russophile,
considering Russians “the people of the future”. His Russian experience was evidently
either so prolonged or so intensive as to impress itself upon his family: his daughter
Afanasy Fet and his poetry 99

Notes
Jeanne learned to speak Russian fluently and read Pushkin and other Russian writers in
the original.
228
By 1928, “a group of Paris surrealists…decided to celebrate Charcot’s “discov-
ery” of hysteria, ‘the greatest poetic discovery of the end of the nineteenth century’”
(ELLENBERGER 1970:101).
229
ELLENBERGER (1970:158-330), cf. FAAS (1988).
230
GRIGOR’EV (1980:152-54). See also note 74. The figure in the story who is clearly
meant to be Fet is named “Вольдемар”. Although the identification is long established
(cf. EGOROV 1980:404), I have not seen any explanation of why Grigor’ev should have
used the name “Woldemar” for Fet. It seems to be taken from a story with that title, by K.
T. Körner (1791-1813). In the story, (KÖRNER 1893:2:408-19), Woldemar is a young
German officer quartered in wartime in the home of an Italian count. Woldemar falls in
love with the count’s daughter, Magdalene, and she with him. The war intrudes, and a
fiery young soldier in French uniform fights his way into the household. Woldemar with
great effort manages to kill him, but it turns out that the young “French” soldier is really
Camillo, the long-lost brother of Magdalene! She dies of shock when she finds her
brother dead, and their old father is in his turn devastated by his double loss. The events
are presented in the form of letters from Woldemar to his friend Gustav, to whom, in the
end, he writes: “Gustav, ich bin vernichtet! Das Glück dreier Engel hab’ ich gemordet”
(KÖRNER 1893:418), by which he refers to Magdalene, Camillo, and the count. The
Körner story was known to both Fet and Grigor’ev. Fet translated Körner’s sonnet
“Moskau” no later than early 1843. Körner’s works were extremely popular, not only
because their patriotic spirit appealed to contemporaries but also in part because of his
premature death as a war hero, and partly also because his works were collected and
published by his father, C. G. Körner, the well-known friend and editor of Schiller. There
were numerous re-publications of his collected works between 1815 and Fet’s student
days. There was a double reason for Grigor’ev to take the name of Körner’s protagonist
for Fet. At the time Grigor’ev was writing “Офелия”, Fet had just begun his long career
as an army officer, so that the picture of the young German officer was fitting. More
personally relevant, however, is that Grigor’ev’s story recounts an episode out of his and
Fet’s shared life, in which Fet and a young woman characterized as Grigor’ev’s
“крестовая сестра” fall in love, Grigor’ev also falls in love with her but finds himself
acting as an accomplice as she and Fet conduct an affair after her marriage to yet
someone else, whom she does not love. The picture of Fet that is presented in Grigor’ev’s
story is that of a man in whom emotion has been essentially misdirected. His actions lead
to the downfall of “Ophelia” and, of course, the psychological devastation of the narrator.
Thus, Körner’s young German officer who destroys, uncomprehendingly, both the
woman he loves and her brother, becomes Grigor’ev’s “Woldemar”, who devastates the
barely fictionalized Grigor’ev and his “sister”.
231
The date of Fet’s mother’s death is unclear. GOLDT (1998:114) meticulously notes
but cannot resolve the conflict between the proposals of BLOK (1985:147), who appar-
ently relies on Fet’s narrative, and CHERNOGUBOV (1900:532 [536?]), who reports on a
tombstone dated November 5, 1845.
232
Additional information about Fet’s sister’s illness is to be found in corres-
pondence, in particular that of her husband, I. P. Borisov. Borisov (in a letter to
Turgenev, 10 July 1863 [KHMELEVSKAIA 1968:378]) anticipates taking his wife to Würt-
temberg, to Dr “Ril” (Riehl?). This never took place, and it is not clear who the doctor
100 Chapter One

Notes
was to whom Borisov refers. Perhaps his reference bears some connection to an
institution of the sort advocated by the German clinician Johann Christian Reil, by then
however long deceased. During the summer of 1864 Borisov moved his wife to the St.
Petersburg hospital of Vsekh Skorbiashchikh (later known as the Forel hospital) where
she died in 1869 (MATVEEVA 1999:275) or 1870 (N. A. KHMELEVSKAIA 1968:386-90).
233
On the illness of P. I. Borisov, see MV (2:397-99), BLOK (1985:179). He died in
St. Petersburg.
234
The dating can be to some extent confirmed from other sources, such as the letters
of Fet’s brother-in-law I. P. Borisov, I. S. Turgenev, and L. N. Tolstoi.
235
MV (1:434).
236
On Fet’s separation of life from art as a feature distinguishing him from the ro-
mantics, see GINZBURG (1974:195, 221, 265).
237
The split between Fet’s life and his art has often been remarked on, first of all by
the poet himself and his contemporaries. Later analysts have looked at it many ways.
BUKHSHTAB (1974) seems to view it as a natural response to a particularly dreary life,
DARSKII (1916) finds that the real-world Shenshin and the poet Fet went through life side
by side without getting in each other’s way, and STAMMLER (1979) has suggested that
Fet’s autobiography is an ideologically informed documentation of the poet’s view of
what life inevitably was, without poetry.
238
SOLOV’EV (1890:219-220).
239
TRIFONOV (1991:1:102-104, 651).
240
See note 26.
241
BUKHSHTAB (1935).
242
I refer here to FET (1937, 1959, 1986). I am not counting FET (1956), also edited
by Bukhshtab.
243
GASPAROV (1998). Fet’s assimilation of Turgenev’s readership may have begun
during Turgenev’s lifetime, during the preparation of the 1863 edition. For example, we
do not know who proposed the shortening of the poem “The candle has guttered, the
portraits in shadow…”, discussed in the next chapter. Its autograph version has four stan-
zas, but the poem was first published with only three.
244
Cf. note 25.
2 Seeing and knowing in Fet

2.1 Introduction

In the preceding chapter, we noticed some of the ways in which Fet’s poetry
seems to be connected with his education and cultural background, including
not only his reading of poets and philosophers but also his acquaintance with
some of the popular technology and science of his time. In this chapter, we
shall emphasize more Fet’s own techniques in presenting consciousness in
his texts and, specifically, in presenting sensory perception.
Fet’s is a poetry of the senses, and Fet’s treatment of visuality provides
the fullest material for any discussion of his treatment of the senses in gen-
eral. Of course there are sounds and smells and taste and touch in Fet’s po-
ems, but just as vision is the sense best explored by modern scientists inter-
ested in perception, similarly, it is visual perception that is nearly ubiquitous
in Fet. The visual orientation of at least some of Fet’s poetry is well estab-
lished, and Fet’s presentation of spatial perception in landscapes has been
explored in the context of work on Tiutchev.1 There have remained mostly
unexplored, however, the implications and associations of Fet’s visuality for
his poetics. Visuality in Fet’s poetry should not be identified with its so-
called “rational” or descriptive side. According to the old hierarchy of the
senses, vision is indeed more “rational” than other sensory experience, but I
think that it is a mistake to think that the poetics even of Fet’s descriptive
poems greatly privilege rational thought. In particular, what Fet describes is
often put in terms of seeing, even when the seeing within the text is done
with a mind’s eye. As a consequence, what is presented as a visual experi-
ence within the text is often more fundamentally a combination of memory
and mindplay. I do not of course mean to say that memory and mindplay are
not part of “real” vision. On the contrary, Fet’s intuitive modernity in his
view of perception – his realization that we see with our brains, not with our
eyes – helps make his treatment of sense perception interesting for readers
today, at the same time as it evokes a Goethean tradition. Focusing on visu-
ality in Fet’s poetry will permit us to explore important aspects of his treat-
ment of memory and consciousness.
The mental, as distinct from strictly ocular, orientation of Fet’s visuality
has several interesting consequences. One is that the experience presented to
observers within Fet’s texts is more similar than might appear to the experi-
ence of a reader, in that readers of even a visually oriented poem do not
normally expect their reading to constitute a literally visual experience of the
102 Chapter Two

sort represented in the textual thematics. Fet played with this distinction, too,
however: we shall see, in both this chapter and the next one, that Fet evi-
dently attended in at least some of his poems to the details not only of the
visual experience within the text but also of visuality as an element of poetic
form. This mode of visuality is characteristic only of early Fet, although
there are perhaps shades of it also in some of his very late poetry.
In Fet’s later work, the mental nature of seeing takes an important turn.
Physical sight is replaced by vision in a sense that in some cultures is associ-
ated with religion or philosophy, and that the modern world treats as meta-
phorical. In poem after poem in Fet’s late work, vision is, literally, the ulti-
mate metaphor: it is the case not only that it is mind that sees, but also that
what the mind does becomes identified with, precisely, vision. Seeing is
knowing, and the end of vision, the ultimate mindplay, is the end of life.
This is well illustrated in one of Fet’s very last poems:

Бaрaшкoв буря шлeт свoиx,

Бaрaшкoв бeлыx в мoрe,
Рядaми вeтeр гoнит иx
И xлeщeт нa прoстoрe.

Мaлюткa, xoть твoя б oднa

Лaдья спaстись успeлa,
Пoкa всeй xляби глубинa,
Чeрнeя, нe вскипeлa!

Кaк жaль тeбя! Нo oб oднoм

Пoдумaть тaк oбиднo,
Чтo вoт зa мглoю и дoждeм
Тeбя нe стaнeт виднo.

26 августа 1892
Seeing and knowing 103

2.2 Representing objects: women, icons, and substantives

In the previous chapter, we noticed some ways in which Fet’s work is in-
formed by nineteenth-century ideas about the mind. Now we shall explore in
more detail Fet’s own modeling of consciousness. This will require our con-
necting Fet’s psychologism with that form of “objectivity” that Apollon
Grigor’ev, as we have seen, claimed for him in 1850. The vitality of
Grigor’ev’s analysis during Fet’s lifetime is attested by the fact that Vladi-
mir Solov’ev in 1890 repeats Grigor’ev’s claim, although arguing, as we
shall see, in a different way.2
For us, now, being “objective” tends in common parlance to mean not
making judgments on the basis of a person’s own narrow point of view. In
Grigor’ev’s usage, on the contrary, as well as Solov’ev’s, viewpoint and its
cousin poetic voice actually contribute to objectivity. In this chapter we shall
look at some aspects of viewpoint and voice in Fet’s work. These notions,
however, are not the whole story. Grigor’ev’s use of the term “objectivity”
should be understood in the context of notions of reification and objectiviza-
tion (Verdinglichung, Vergegenständlichung, to give the corresponding
Marxist terms) that derive from German romanticism: what is objective in
Fet is his ability to bond inner experience to sensory phenomena.
For us today, the constructive nature of sensory perception is a reason-
ably familiar, or at least comprehensible, notion: “in the visual field”, to
quote a popular work by a well-known scientist, “objects are not given to
you as such. Each object is not clearly and unambiguously marked for you.
Your brain has to use various clues to … group together those parts of the
visual scene that correspond to a single object. In the real world this is often
not easy.”3 It was not easy, either, for Fet’s contemporaries to get used to
this notion of perception, which makes it striking that it was something Fet
himself intuitively understood. Corresponding to the constructive nature of
sensory perception is the problem of the unitary, or not, consciousness that
does the seeing. In this section of our discussion, as well as the next one, we
shall find that poetic voice and viewpoint in Fet’s poetry are ancillary to the
poet’s more basic concern with the construction of consciousness and its
textual representation. It is his intuitive grasp of the fragile and multifarious
nature of consciousness that accounts for both his delicacy in representing
emotion (for which he has been much praised) and a certain indifference to
personality (for which he has been scolded). Fet’s poetry is remarkable not
only for the subtlety of its representation of mental states but also for the
different modes of attributing mental states to the text participants who ex-
perience them: presentation of modes of consciousness takes priority over
104 Chapter Two

presentation of their embodiment in textual experiencers. Some of the psy-

chological states in Fet’s poems are attributed to people who experience
them, some are attributed to the contemplative consciousness of a former or
occasional but not here-and-now experiencer, some are attributed to inani-
mate beings that in ordinary language have no capacity for experience, and
some poems are nearly pure metonyms of mind, in which mental state is all
that is presented of the experiencer, whose existence is presumably inferable
from the depiction of his consciousness. Here we will look at some of the
different ways in which Fet tethered consciousness to text participants.
The looseness of that connection is one of the main sources of the conta-
gion of emotion that Fet’s poetry carries. His frame of reference for many of
his texts is so clearly the mind, or some particular state of mind, with respect
to which everything within the text is oriented, that it is impossible to locate
the consciousness he presents us with as itself a part of some whole to
which, or to whom, it belongs. Who is thinking the poem is left unspecified,
and that unspecified “who” can easily become the reader: we only the more
readily undertake to model the mind in the poem because it has been left
there, as it were, unclaimed. The modeling process itself is similar to other
kinds of modeling of consciousness that may take place between interlocu-
tors who, for example, may imitate each other’s gestures and attitudes. Fet
elicits such involvement from his readers by not presenting them with any
clear personality within the text who is defined as its experiencer and with
whom readers would then have to compete for ownership of the text. Fet
leaves his readers free, apparently alone, in the spacious privacy of the po-
etic world he has created for them.
Solov’ev connects what he takes to be the non-subjectivity of Fet’s po-
etry with textual voice and viewpoint. He argues that Fet’s poetry is not pre-
dominantly subjective, because the poet creates models of consciousness
different from his own and presents experiences he cannot possibly have
had. For example, the speaker in the poem “I love him passionately: a tiger
in battle” (1847), expresses what Solov’ev calls “the love of an Arabian girl
a thousand years ago”, and, Solov’ev adds, “There is no reason at all for [a
poet] to be limited to the accidents of his own personal life; he is not obliged
to reproduce necessarily his own subjectivity, his own mood, when he can
appropriate someone else’s, can enter, so to speak, someone else’s soul”.
Solov’ev’s claim that such poetry is not subjective of course depends on
subjectivity being autobiographical, and his argument can be turned on its
head: every mind bodied forth in Fet’s poetry is something of Fet’s mind,
and if he convinced contemporary Russian readers of the verisimilitude of
his “Arabian girl a thousand years ago”, he might have had a harder time
persuading ancient female Arabians. It was extremely characteristic of Fet to
populate his texts with anti-autobiographical speakers, from women to but-
Seeing and knowing 105

Я люблю eгo жaркo: oн тигрoм в бoю terflies. He shared this

Нaпaдaeт нa xищныx врaгoв; predilection with many
Я люблю в нeм oтрaду, нaгрaду мoю poets who have exploited
И пoтoмкa вeликиx oтцoв. anti-autobiographical fig-
Ктo бы ни был ты – стрaнник прoстoй иль купeц – ures to present psycho-
Ни oвцы, ни вeрблюдa нe трoнь! logical states that readers
Oт кoбыл Мугaммeдa eгo жeрeбeц – otherwise may not accept
Чтo нeбeсный oгoнь этoт кoнь. or be willing to contem-
Тoлькo мирный пришлeц нaгибaйся в шaтeр plate. This has been well
И oдeжду дoрoжную скинь; discussed with respect to
Нa услугу и лaску oн лoвoк и скoр: the Victorian dramatic
Oн бaдья при кoлoдцe пустынь. monologue (sometimes al-
Будтo мeсяц нaд кeдрoм, бeлeeт чaлмa so called the psychologic-
У нeгo срeдь ширoкиx стeпeй. al monologue).4 Students
Я люблю, и никтo – ни Фaтимa сaмa – of the English Victorians
Нe любилa прoрoкa сильнeй! have also pointed to the
association of dramatic
monologue with poetic framing techniques and with the appearance of the
window as a motif, 5 and this cluster of features has strong parallels in Fet,
who is well known for his strong closural techniques, his ring compositional
devices (often really less ring than frame), and his fondness for window mo-
tifs. The connection between Fet and this contemporary body of English
work is more apparent if we realize that Fet’s initial, as it turned out false,
ambition was to write drama, and that he translated Shakespeare, the great
source of psychological monologue and read as such by the Victorians.
These interests of Fet’s make themselves especially strongly felt in some of
his earlier work. In any case, it would be an exaggeration to claim that the
poet does not recur as an autobiographical figure in the Fetian text: as we
shall see, he does, and Solov’ev’s editing of Fet’s later poetry enhanced the
status of the poet as a textual figure.
Still, if we abandon the terminological questions arising out of Solo-
v’ev’s analysis, we are left with a valid and interesting characterization of
Fet’s ability to model consciousness: the reader’s psychological involvement
in the Fetian text does not, generally speaking, rely on the biographical
poet’s having created any quasi-autobiographical poet-hero who reveals the
workings of his own mind or whose experiences are recorded across the bio-
graphical poet’s oeuvre. Much more characteristic for Fet is his attributing
inner life to a range of figures whose attributes are such as to impede the
imposition of an autobiographical interpretation upon them. His fondness for
such anti-autobiographical figures is evident from the very beginning of his
career, when his 1840 collection of poems has, as its opening “Lyrical
Poem”, a monologue called “Безумная” (“The Madwoman”, or, given the
106 Chapter Two

age of the protagonist, “The Mad Girl”). The figure of the young woman
crazed by the death of her lover is not particularly original, but the young
poet’s choice of a striking and agitated state of mind reinforces the psycho-
logical orientation of his poetry.
The 1840 madwoman and the “Arabian girl” are typical of Fet: many of
his anti-autobiographical protagonists are women, and his women often
speak. The “Arabian girl” is unusual, although not unique, in showing a
woman apparently addressing whoever might happen to hear her. More typi-
cally, Fet’s women are portrayed in a confined, generally domestic, situa-
tion, often involving windows or mirrors, and their speech tends to be situa-
tionally constrained: it is addressed not directly to the reader but to some
figure explicit or implicit in the text, and very often it lends itself to being
interpreted as internal musings, rather than as vocalized utterances.

Всю нoчь грeмeл oврaг сoсeдний,

The words in the poem “All night there
Ручeй, бурля, бeжaл к ручью, thundered the neighboring gorge…”
Вoскрeсшиx вoд нaпoр пoслeдний (1872) are attributed to a woman recalling
Пoбeду рaзглaшaл свoю. how she looked out her window at night,
while her textual addressee was sleeping.
Ты спaл. Oкнo я рaствoрилa, She questions her feelings, her impulse to
В стeпи кричaли журaвли, flight, “this momentary illness”, when she
И силa думы унoсилa has her addressee beside her. Not clear is
Зa рубeжи рoднoй зeмли, the sequence: in the last stanza, is the
speaker relating her past feelings to a real
Лeтeть к бeзбрeжью, бeздoрoжью,
Чeрeз лeсa, чeрeз пoля, –
hearer, or are these her thoughts as she
A пoдo мнoй вeсeннeй дрoжью speaks to a still-sleeping, hence presumab-
Xoдилa гулкaя зeмля. ly non-hearing, pseudo-addressee? In ei-
ther case her impulse is resolved in her
Кaк вeрить пeрeлeтнoй тeни? turning to her “friend tried by misfor-
К чeму мгнoвeнный сeй нeдуг, tunes”. The resolution of a female figure’s
Кoгдa ты здeсь, мoй дoбрый гeний, thoughts in contemplation of a male figure
Бeдaми искушeнный друг? is typical of those of Fet’s poems in which
women are endowed with interior life.
Although women speakers thus appear in Fet’s poems, and interestingly and
often enough for their presence to be remarked on in the literature,6 their
speech is often attenuated. The most obvious form of attenuation is lack of
vocalization. Another form of attentuation is to present women’s language
as an attribute of figures who appear in the second person: the female
speaker is, in the text as a whole, not “I” but “thou”, and control of view-
point shifts away from the speaker in the text (“thou”), with whom it might
be expected to reside, and belongs instead to the hearer who is the speaker of
the text (“I”).
Seeing and knowing 107

Нынe пeрвый мы слышaли грoм, In the poem “Today we heard the first
Вoт пoвeялo срaзу тeплoм, thunder…” (1883), a speaker (impli-
И пришлo мнe нa пaмять сeйчaс, citly, a man) repeats to the female ad-
Кaк вчeрa ты измучилa нaс. dressee her own earlier words. The
Цeлый дeнь, xoлoднa и блeднa, woman whose viewpoint and speech
Ты сидeлa бeзмoлвнo oднa; are embedded in the man’s text is as-
Вдруг ты встaлa, кo мнe пoдoшлa signed a second-person ‘thou’ status,
И скaзaлa, чтo всe пoнялa:
but her reported speech gives the fig-
Чтo нaпрaснo жaлeть o былoм,
Чтo нaм тeснo и тяжкo вдвoeм,
ure considerable psychological force,
Чтo любви зaтeрялaсь стeзя, perhaps not only because her words
Чтo тaк жить, чтo дышaть тaк нeльзя, are, indeed, given to us, but also be-
Чтo ты xoчeшь – рeшилaсь – и вдруг cause their transmission through the
Рaзрaзился вeсeнний нeдуг, male speaker narrows and focuses the
И, зaбывши o грoзныx слoвax, reader’s perceptual access to them. In-
Ты рaстaялa в жaркиx слeзax. stead of seeming distanced from the
reader, the words seem to gush forth
more powerfully, like a river gushing through a narrows: we hear the words
fly from one protagonist to the other, and both speaker and hearer (and both
protagonists are both speaker and hearer – monologue become dialogue) are
active and intense participants in their doubly shared speech situation. The
woman’s words, of course, are not presented as successful communication in
the little drama; rather, they come in a spate, between a long silent prelude
(“All day long, pale and cold, You sat wordless alone”) and a final burst of
“hot tears”. The male speaker never entirely surrenders control of textual
viewpoint, but the words are presented as having been hers. Even the rhythm
of speech mimics the spat-out quotation of a litany of stormy clichés, and
then the onset of linguistic breakdown (“You want – you’ve made up your
mind – and suddenly”). The language that is attributed to the woman is
clipped out of any possible referential, even fictively referential, context: in
what way is it impossible to live or breathe? What past does the woman
want not to regret? We need never know. The only meaning of the words is
to tell us, as it is to tell the fictive woman’s primary addressee, now our
speaker, how she feels, and most of all that she feels, and that she wants that
feeling to be shared. And shared it is, with all of us, albeit transformed by
the poet who allows us to hear her unhappy voice. Comparing a thunder-
storm with a human quarrel or tears is a cliché as traditional as the ones
voiced by our doublet of speakers, but the embodiment of the storm in the
woman animates both the connection and the poem itself.
108 Chapter Two

2.2.1 Three women and two paintings

Even when the female “thou” has no chance to vocalize her thoughts, inter-
ior monologue may still seem to guarantee her an inner life. How several
such poems work is illustrated in the well-known poem “The candle has gut-
tered. The portraits are in shadow…” (1862). The text proceeds by a system-
atic, step-by-step, linkage of the physical world with emotion.
We start with static phenomena presented as the degenerate product of
past process or activity: the candle has burnt to the point of producing a
waxy deposit, human faces have been fixed in paint, but the paint itself is
now obscured in shadow. Things are reaching an end. The second-person
addressee, too, is depicted in stasis, sitting, but physical activity begins to
infiltrate the world of the poem,
Свeчa нaгoрeлa. Пoртрeты в тeни. although the scene immediately
Сидишь прилeжнo и скрoмнo ты. before us still shows no actual
Стaрушкe зeвнулoсь. Пo oкнaм oгни motion: the sitter sits “industri-
Прoшли в тe дaльниe кoмнaты.
ously”, the old woman has had a
yawn, the “lights” (or “fires”?)
Никaк кoмaрa нe прoгoнишь ты прoчь, –
Пoeт и к свeту всe прoсится. have moved on “into those distant
Взглянуть ты нe смeeшь нa лунную нoчь, rooms”. The buzzing of a mos-
Кудa душa пeрeнoсится. quito is introduced by way of the
sitter’s inability to chase it away,
Пoдкрaлся, быть мoжeт, и смoтрит в oкнo? and that economical indirection
Увидит мaть – дoгaдaeтся; gives us at once both physical
Нeт, вeрнo, у стaрoгo клeнa дaвнo motion in the present and also a
Стoит в тeни, дoжидaeтся. suggestion of the addressee’s atti-
tude. The next two lines, the very center of the poem, commingle the mos-
quito’s spirit with the female addressee’s, as well as spirit with activity, or
its absence: the mosquito “sings” and “seeks the light”. The addressee, too,
is drawn to the light, but to the moonlight outdoors, and she does not dare
permit herself even a glance that would link her spiritual flight with any
physical sign of it. The linkage, however, is established for us by the poet
(and by that persistent mosquito), who tells us what the addressee would do
if she dared. The poem could end with this linkage of the nearly, but not
quite, static physical world and the emotion of the addressee. Obviously, it
does not, and the final stanza of the poem supplies the addressee’s fugitive
soul with an image of what it is fleeing to: thoughts and questions are not
addressed to, but evoke, a silent figure – as usual, a male figure – outside, in
known or specifically imagined alternative locations: “Maybe he’s stolen up
and is looking in the window? If Mother sees him, she’ll guess. No, proba-
bly he’s by the old maple, long since, standing in the shadow, he’s waiting”.
Seeing and knowing 109

According to a tradition mentioned by B. Ia. Bukhshtab,7 “The candle

has guttered…” was one of the poet’s favorites among his poems. Although
its form is unusual (we return to it when we discuss meter), it shares essen-
tial thematic elements with several other texts: a silent woman in a domestic
setting looks out or fails to look out and either thinks or is asked if she does
not think about someone who is outside. The person outside may be imag-
ined as either seeing or imagining her as she thinks about him. “The candle
has guttered…” first appeared in Fet’s 1863 collection of poetry, but the first
of the little group of poems that share these thematics appeared in the pre-
ceding, 1856, edition: “Yesterday, crowned in fragrant flowers…” (1855).
Вчeрa, увeнчaнa душистыми цвeтaми,
Смoтрeлa дoлгo ты в зeркaльнoe oкнo
Нa нeбo синee, гoрeвшee звeздaми,
В aллeю тoпoлeй с дрoжaщими листaми, –
В aллeю, гдe вдaли тaк стрaшнo и тeмнo.
Зaбылa, мoжeт быть, ты зa сoбoю в зaлe
И яркий блeск свeчeй, и нeжныe слoвa...
Кoгдa пoмчaлся вaльс и струны рoкoтaли, –
Я видeл – вся в цвeтax, испoлнeнa пeчaли,
К плeчу слeгкa твoя склoнилaсь гoлoвa.
Нe думaлa ли ты: “Вoн тaм, в бeсeдкe дaльнoй,
Нa мрaмoрнoй скaмьe тeпeрь oн ждeт мeня
Пoд сумрaкoм дeрeв, рeвнивый и пeчaльный;
Oн взoры утoмил, смoтря нa виxoрь бaльный,
И лoвит тeнь мoю в сиянии oгня”.
Although Fet has often been accused of repeating himself, no one seems to
have noticed that he engaged in repetition of such specific thematics and
compositional techniques, a mode of self-repetition observed in Tiutchev’s
oeuvre long ago.8 In this instance, Fet produced two similar poems within
probably less than a decade. Both poems build on Fet’s tendency to move in
the course of his poems from the outer, physical, world, to an inner, psycho-
logical, world. In most of Fet’s poetry, however, the locus of interiorization
is the mind of a textual speaker, whereas in “The candle has guttered…” and
“Yesterday crowned in fragrant flowers…”, it is the mind of the addressee.
Fet’s speakers’ interiorization is typically resolved in a newly acquired stage
of self-awareness, but in these poems we see that addressees’ interiorization
is different. The mind of the female addressee is more like a mirror, in which
the reader joins the addressee in catching a reflected glimpse of a male fig-
ure, to whom she, in turn, may or may not attribute emotion. The co-option
of alien minds through the creation of non-autobiographical female personae
becomes less an exploration of the alien (woman’s) mind than a means of
110 Chapter Two

objectifying and externalizing the corresponding male figure, to whom, in

turn, may be attributed an inward life of intentions and emotions: he waits,
he is jealous, he is sad. In the end, what is essential in the female figure is
her function as the object of the male figure’s attachment. The poetic tech-
nique is, surprisingly perhaps, rather similar to that in “Diana”, discussed in
the previous chapter: the poem seems to articulate the state of being of a
female who has captured the speaker’s attention, but, in the end, the reader is
left to contemplate the psychological state of a male figure. Characteristic of
these poems, too, is that the female in the text gazes into the distance, even
as a man watches her. This play of looks and gazes connects the psycholo-
gism of Fet’s poetry with its visuality. The connections are traditional,9 and
the neo-classically inspired “Diana” again provides an early model. A well-
known earlier antecedent for the motif of a woman gazing out her window is
found in the 1842 poem “Do not wake her at dawn…”:10
A вчeрa у oкнa ввeчeру
Дoлгo-дoлгo сидeлa oнa
И слeдилa пo тучaм игру,
Чтo, скoльзя, зaтeвaлa лунa.
But neither “Diana” nor “Do not wake her at dawn…” is endowed with the
whole set of thematic elements to be found in “Yesterday, crowned in fra-
grant flowers…”: the woman who is also addressee, the attentively-set scene
in which she is observed, the attribution to her of thoughts that link her to
someone she imagines is observing. We do not know why such a combina-
tion of features should have coalesced in, precisely, the mid-fifties, or why
Fet should have returned to it afterward. The poems evoke a well-known
romantic and post-romantic tradition represented, for example, in Heine’s
“Die Heimkehr”,11 which Fet certainly knew. Fet’s poems most strikingly,
however, evoke the romantic tradition of the female figures originating in
paintings by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).12 Friedrich, generally ac-
knowledged as the greatest of German romantic painters, was best known
for his landscapes. Also characteristic of his work, however, was his paint-
ing of figures often seen from the back, and, among these paintings, several
were, or probably were, paintings of his wife Caroline. One such painting
was his only painting showing a human figure indoors: the model is shown
in a bare, rather dark brown, room, looking out a window. Above her, a
much larger window, cut off at the top of the painting, shows a nearly empty
patch of pale sky, featureless except for a few white clouds, and demarcated
by the crossing frame of the four panes of glass in the window and by the
top of a mast, a lower portion of which shares the window below with a dis-
tant wood and the upper part of the figure of the woman, who leans so as
barely perceptibly to create only the slightest deviation from the vertical of
Seeing and knowing 111

the picture. Friedrich’s paintings were controversial, and his habit of show-
ing figures from the back was a mannerism that irritated many viewers. As
portraiture, obviously, such a mode of presentation is idiosyncratic, but in its
abnegation of personality it is characteristic of Friedrich’s aesthetics – and
of Fet’s. Friedrich’s work was at its height of popularity extremely well-
known, but the painter’s methods became a cliché. It is possible that Fet saw
the painting, but there is no evidence that he did. He is quite likely, however,
to have known of its existence. It was exhibited in 1822 in Dresden, and this
exhibition evoked the following sonnet from the prolific German Romantic
writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843):13
Sie steht, vom veilchenrothen Kleid umwallt,
Am Fenster, abgewendet von hier innen,
Und sieht hinaus, vertieft in ernstes Sinnen: –
Sanft bebt mein Geist mir, und mein Busen wallt
Wer zog mich her, durch magische Gewalt? –
Fast möcht’ ich fliehn; – und kann doch nicht von hinnen! –
Ich möcht’ ihr nah’n – zurück, o kühn Beginnen!
Erzürne nicht die herrliche Gestalt!
O wende du – nein, nein, o wende nicht
Zu mir, huldvolles Räthsel, dein Gesicht!
Laß mich nur still im seel’gen Ahnungsbangen.
Wär’s mindrer Reiz, wär’ dies mein Glück vergangen,
Und strahlt’ es wirklich, das ersehnte Licht,
Blieb’ rettungslos im Zauber ich gefangen!
Fouqué’s tribute was well known – so much so that modern art historians
consider it responsible for persistent later misinterpretations of Friedrich’s
painting. If Fet knew the poem, he would certainly have found it congenial,
as he would also have found Friedrich’s own aesthetics and techniques.
These were of course renowned, but in Fet’s day perhaps more in Russia
than in Germany. Friedrich in his later years was ill, painted little, and fell
from fashion in his homeland, a neglect that lasted until the very end of the
nineteenth century. According to obituaries of Friedrich, however, the age-
ing painter received a pension from Emperor Nicholas I,14 and Nicholas’s
help to Friedrich is the subject of correspondence between Nicholas and V.
A. Zhukovskii.15 Both Nicholas and Zhukovskii had visited Friedrich in his
studio years earlier, before Nicholas ascended the throne, and their apprecia-
tion of his work, and their concern for his personal welfare, continued to
find expression up to the end of the painter’s life. They and other Russians
(P. A. Viazemskii, for example) bought his works, and in the latter 1830s
some works painted much earlier were acquired by Russian collectors. In
1835, when Fet met Zhukovskii, Zhukovskii was engaged in correspondence
112 Chapter Two

with Friedrich.16 It is not a particularly daring leap of the imagination to

suppose that a Russian poet of Fet’s age, of German background and educa-
tion, is likely to have known about one of Friedrich’s best-known paintings,
celebrated in a German poem that was also well known. We do not know
why Fet’s poetry in this line should have started to appear in, precisely, the
mid-1850s. This was the period of Fet’s life when he was most closely in
touch with cultural interests in St. Petersburg, and it coincides with the pe-
riod right after the ceremonial opening of the Hermitage as a museum, in
February 1852. Perhaps, again, the connection lies through the renewal of
Fet’s Baltic German ties during the Crimean War, and may perhaps be con-
nected with his attempts to get permission to travel to Germany, as he finally
did, probably within a few months after writing “Yesterday, crowned in fra-
grant flowers…”. He sent back travel notes describing art exhibits in Berlin
and Dresden.
In both “Yesterday, crowned in fragrant flowers…” and “The candle has
guttered…”, a woman is engaged in some indoor activity, but looks out, or
wants to look out, into the natural world, and her thoughts are gradually pre-
sented by the poet: she imagines, or is asked if she on some occasion did not
imagine, the fate or the mind-set of a person she is invited to contemplate
outside. As with the speech in “Now we have heard the first thunder…”, the
woman’s inner world is housed within not only her outer world but also a
man’s imagination. An apparently similar text is Fet’s mysterious late poem
“When you were reading the agonizing lines…” (1887). The 1887 text is,
however, quite different.
Когда читала ты мучительные строки,
Гдe сeрдцa звучный пыл сияньe льeт кругoм
И стрaсти рoкoвoй вздымaются пoтoки, –
Нe вспoмнилa ль o чeм?
Я вeрить нe xoчу! кoгдa в стeпи, кaк дивo,
В пoлнoчнoй тeмнoтe бeзврeмeннo гoря,
Вдaли пeрeд тoбoй прoзрaчнo и крaсивo
Встaвaлa вдруг зaря
И в эту крaсoту нeвoльнo взoр тянулo,
В тoт вeличaвый блeск зa тeмный вeсь прeдeл, –
Ужeль ничтo тeбe в тo врeмя нe шeпнулo:
Тaм чeлoвeк сгoрeл!
From the very first line, the speaker’s intensely affective language invokes
both his and his addressee’s emotional involvement: “When you were read-
ing the agonizing lines, Where the heart’s resonant ardor pours its radiance
about, And there rise up fatal passion’s streams – Did you not remember
something?” The second stanza begins with the speaker’s passion, not the
Seeing and knowing 113

addressee’s (“I do not want to believe it!”) and the early unmasking of the
speaker’s emotions attaches to him, at least as much as to her, the affective
force of the subsequent description: “When in the plain, like a wonder,
Burning timelessly in the midnight darkness, In the distance before you
transparently and beautifully There arose the sudden dawn And into that
beauty unwilling the gaze was drawn, Into that majestic shining beyond all
the dark limit – Can it be that nothing then whispered to you: There a person
was consumed in fire!”
In “The candle has guttered…”, the speaker enters into the addressee’s
thoughts with all the automatic self-assurance of a householder entering his
own home after a day at work: the last stanza holds a timid question, but it is
the addressee’s question, not the speaker’s – and the addressee attributes no
inner life to the “I” in the text. In the earlier poem “Yesterday crowned in
fragrant flowers”, the speaker does not attribute thoughts quite so surely:
presenting his attribution as a negated question, he is not quite attributing the
thoughts, but only suggesting the possibility of attribution – a slight differ-
ence, but one characteristic of Fet’s poetics. Correspondingly, the addressee
– more daring than in the later poem, more independent – is presented imag-
ining inner life in the poem’s “I”. Finally, in the late poem “When you were
reading”, the speaker requires an intermediary between himself and his ad-
dressee, a psychic analogue to the “agonizing lines”: something should have
communicated the crucial final thought to the addressee. She is not sup-
posed, of herself, to have had such a thought, the addressee did not tell her
directly, but he is pained to contemplate the possibility that this thought, so
essential to him, should not have been communicated to her. The speaker
cannot bring himself not to attribute the thought to the addressee, but he
does not dare to attribute it to her, either. And what is that thought? It is not,
as in the earlier poems, about what the lover is doing as she might have
imagined him. It is about what has befallen someone in the dangerous pres-
ence of burning beauty. Is it a thought of his fate? A suggestion of her own
fate? Of human fate? And the thought itself is barely got out: first, the lexi-
cally unspecified там, next, the nearly equally unspecified but crucially
human человек. Finally, it comes out, a concentrated sharp blow: сгорел,
with all the finality of its grammatical aspect, in a verb the semantics of
which imply a process that once started goes ineluctably to an end that can-
not be gone past and can never be undone. We saw that in the two earlier
poems the interiorization that is in general characteristic of Fet is replaced
by a kind of reflection of interiorization, as a thought attributed to the female
persona is really a thought about the inner life of a male persona. In “When
you were reading…”, we see another form of pseudo-interiorization. The
closing line expresses a thought (там человек сгорел), but not one lodged in
the mind of speaker, addressee, or any other textual participant. Rather, the
114 Chapter Two

thought is framed inside a question, it hangs disembodied in the air, waiting

to be claimed. The poem has crystallized a mental state, independent of a
personality to experience it.
When we come to discuss the form and vocabulary of Fet’s poetry, we
shall see that in his last poems he often returned to the usage of his earliest
days, short-circuiting the development of his middle years. This was not
simply a matter of formal habits, either: he re-read poems abandoned dec-
ades earlier, shortened them, fixed them, supplied a new translation where
an old one no longer satisfied him. In short, as we shall discover, the last Fet
poetry often evokes the earliest Fet poetry – which almost none of his last
readers was acquainted with. In the case of “When you were reading the
agonizing lines…”, Fet’s return to his beginnings takes on a peculiar ghost-
liness, since the poem strikingly evokes not the young Fet, but a painting by
Caspar David Friedrich, from the period preceding the one we discussed in
connection with Fet’s poetry of the 1850s and 1860s.17 The painting has
several names. The authoritative one is “Frau vor der untergehenden Sonne”,
but until the mid-twentieth century it was usually read as a picture of a
woman watching the sun rise. The picture is well known but poorly docu-
mented, and although it has been identified with a “portrait” exhibited in
Prague in 1824, that identification is not authoritative.18 No other exhibition
of the painting is known before 1906. What the painting shows is a large
figure of a woman, seen from the back, her arms slightly extended and
pointing downwards, so that they continue the pattern made by the pink-
orange rays of a rising or setting sun. The rays seem to emanate from the
center of the figure, which blocks the sun from the viewer’s direct gaze. The
woman is standing alone in a vast plain that in the background gradually
yields to hills. A low bluish mountain marks the horizon. The woman is on a
path that comes to an end directly in front of her. Her hands point to rocks
on each side of the path. Friedrich did not paint from life, but rather
sketched, and then painted in a bare studio, relying on his mind’s eye. The
spiritual provenance of his work is immediately evident, and the painting I
have described is obviously symbolic. Although the details of its iconogra-
phy are disputed, the painting is generally read as a contemplation of death.
Since Fet is unlikely to have known this painting, the connection be-
tween it and his 1887 poem can best be described as one of those coinci-
dences that cultural and psychological affinities sometimes generate. Frie-
drich was, among German painters, a specifically northern one, by inheri-
tance and education. He was born in the Baltic coast region, in Greifswald,
which was under Swedish sovereignty from the end of the Thirty Years’
War until 1815. He studied in Copenhagen and worked in Dresden. Fet was,
among Russian poets, a German one – also by inheritance and education.19
Seeing and knowing 115

The poems we have been reading show how language and thought in
Fet’s poems are sometimes partly detached from their apparent experiencers.
The thoughts of women protagonists would seem to be at the heart of these
poems, but the textual trajectory leads not to the woman’s inner life, but to
an externalized perception of a male persona. The language attributed to the
women in these texts is, moreover, silent, unvocalized.
Lack of language is not negative in Fet’s poetics. Some of Fet’s textual
personae fail to manifest so much as a shadow of ability for language or ra-
tional thought – whether spoken aloud, silent, or comprehended – but their
absolute languagelessness is a positive feature, linking them with the natural
world and its superior intuitive and communicative abilities. Occasionally,
too, the natural world itself is presented as speaking, for example in Fet’s
late poem “Butterfly” (“Бабочка”), discussed in Chapter Three. There, how-
ever, I argue that the butterfly-
Oн eст, – a ты цвeтeшь нaпрaснoй крaсoтoю, speaker represents the poet.
Вo мглу тяжeлыx туч сoкрылaся любoвь, In the poem “He eats – and
И рaдoсть нaд твoeй прeлeстнoй гoлoвoю you bloom with vain beauty,…”,
Рoскoшнoю звeздoй нe зaгoрится внoвь. the speaker’s sympathy rests on a
textual persona lacking not only
И жeртвa зaвисти, и жeртвa кривoтoлкa, language but also explicit interior
Зa прeлeсть дeтскую пoгибнуть ты дoлжнa;
life. The poet presents not the
Тaк бьeтся, крылышки рaскинув, пeрeпeлкa,
addressee’s psychology but her
Рaздaвлeнa нoгoй жующeгo вoлa.
situation, her mute helplessness,
and he imagines psychological
states – love and happiness – as exterior attributes in the environs, or having
quit the environs, of the trampled victim. This insistent exteriority carries no
negative evaluation of the addressee.
Writers on Fet have noted that he personifies inanimate beings and reifies
people: he assigns activities, capacities, and feelings to the natural world and
motionlessness to human beings. The distinction between animate and in-
animate is nullified, and the poet redistributes the semantics of animacy
through the attribution of external and inner experience: all animate beings
are objects by virtue of their location in the external world, but all objects
can be imagined as having inner life. When he attributes speech, this is not
because the capacity for human language is highly valued in his poetics but
because it can be used as a simulacrum of human capacities in general. In
attributing language to women or to a butterfly, Fet projects consciousness
onto them, and he tends to make this alien consciousness into a textual fig-
ure whose viewpoint the reader inherits by default.
116 Chapter Two

2.2.2 Alien raptures: Fet’s evasion of personality

Fet also wrote poems in which the observer’s role is more salient than in
most of the poems we have been reading, and in which an observer’s emo-
tional states derive from the states he attributes to those he watches. Such
textual observers differ from the anti-autobiographical figures we have en-
countered so far, in that most are explicitly
Кoгдa трeпeщут эти звуки an “I” who seems to be a shadow of a poet.
И дрaзнит нoющий смычoк, In “When those sounds quiver…”, the
Слaгaя нa кoлeняx руки, speaker is an observer of what he takes to
Сaжусь в зaбытый угoлoк.
be others’ pleasures, and his soul “is learn-
И, кaк зaри румянeц дaльный
ing ahead of time to be transported into
Иль днeй былыx нeмaя рeчь, alien raptures” – is acquiring, in other
Мeня плeняeт виxoрь бaльный words, the poetic capacity that Solov’ev
И шeвeлит мeрцaньe свeч. saw in Fet’s creation of the “Arabian girl a
thousand years ago”. This capacity is one
O, кaк, ничeм нeукрoтимo, that Fet treated as essential to his poetics,
Унoсит к юнoсти былoй and he refers to it explicitly in corres-
Вблизи пoрxaющee мимo pondence with Tolstoi and K.R. In a letter
Кружeньe пaры мoлoдoй! to Fet’s widow after her husband’s death,
K.R. mentions it as characteristic of Fet.
Чeгo xoчу? Иль, мoжeт стaться,
Бывaлoй жизнию дышa,
We have now met some of the textual
В чужoй вoстoрг пeрeсeляться figures that experience the inner life in
Зaрaнe учится душa? Fet’s poems: an anti-autobiographical ex-
periencer, or else an observer who seems
more directly to serve as the poet’s surrogate. In other poems, however, the
poet’s surrogate is denied material form, and the biographical poet imagines
the poet as consciousness without a body. In a number of poems, from his
earliest to the very last, Fet presents his poetic “I” as breath, spirit, or a
sigh.20 This has, of course, a range of associations, from the spiritual to the
crudely biographical, and even to the anthropological: breath control is vital
to the development of both language and song. Fet’s self-representation as
“the ghost of a sigh” shows that the poet who animates the world may also
cast his own embodiment away. The texts in which the speaker is
disembodied are always imaginings of the continuity of his being after death
or after the end of his physical presence in relation to the person for whom
his spirit will live. Such poems obviously point to the poet’s concern with
his own immortality, but also with memory and selfhood: if the “I” is not the
body, and need not be imagined as in a body, then what is the “I”, and what
is it like to be “I”, how do I experience it? These poems show consciousness,
lapping over into self-consciousness, becoming an object for Fet, inde-
Seeing and knowing 117

Угасшим звездам pendent of any corporeal bearer.

Дoлгo ль впивaть мнe мeрцaниe вaшe, His ghostly transformations of self
Синeгo нeбa пытливыe oчи? into pure mentality are fully com-
Дoлгo ли чуять, чтo вышe и крaшe patible with his orientation toward
Вaс ничeгo нeт вo xрaминe нoчи? the affective exploitation of things.
For Fet, minds were things, the
Мoжeт быть, нeт вaс пoд тeми oгнями:
Дaвняя вaс пoгaсилa эпoxa, –
most real things in human ex-
Тaк и пo смeрти лeтeть к вaм стиxaми, perience, and just as he could slip
К призрaкaм звeзд, буду призрaкoм вздoxa. into the mind of a person of his
own imagining, he could equally
well “expand his essence”, as he put it, on a non-human, sometimes even an
inanimate, creature. Alien minds – a statue’s, an Arab girl’s, yours – are as
good as sensuous objects in becoming instruments by which Fet’s personal-
ity eludes his readers and is replaced by things.
The orientation of Fet’s poetry toward consciousness at the expense of
personality has often struck readers.21 In response to such criticism,
Grigor’ev defends this very quality in Fet’s poetry:22 after Lermontov, after
all the effusions of romanticism, the last thing Russian literature needed, he
said, was another artistic personality to contemplate – a comment made per-
haps more sharply because Grigor’ev knew Fet’s personality all too well. Fet
had an extraordinary ability to absent his personality from even self-wrought
public exposure, an ability remarked on from his early career down to the
present, and also characteristic of his autobiographies and even of many of
his private letters. Apparently it was a personal as well as professional trait,
and one that some people found chilling. This is Grigor’ev’s judgment –
presented, to be sure as fiction:
Он начал жить слишком рано внешнею жизнью, до того рано, что вовсе
позабыл о существовании иной, внутренней жизни. … В нем была способность
усыплять свое я и во время сна накидывать на него давно сброшенную
оболочку. В нем была способность обманывать себя, отрекаться от своего я,
переноситься в предметы…23
In daily life, Fet seems to have felt a profound need for privacy, in a society
where the notion, much less the practice, was little developed. As a poet,
Fet’s constant orientation toward the problem of reconciling innerness with
outward form resulted in a poetry both too unsocial and at the same time
psychologically too elusive for the popular taste of its day.

2.2.3 Visual perception and Fet’s poetry of things

Both Fet’s poems and his writings on poetry reveal the poet’s faith in the
objective validity of poetic intuition: poetic introspection, according to Fet’s
118 Chapter Two

explicit writings on the subject, reveals truths about the nature of human
experience. No matter how specifically poetic the appeal of his texts, more-
over, the human experience that interested him was not narrowly “poetic”,
but rather the elemental experiences that are shared albeit dumbly, privately,
even unconsciously, by all human beings. These experiences include emo-
tion and self-awareness (in which we might expect the poetic consciousness
to be especially rich), but also the activities and processes that culminate in
the formation of perception. The subtlety with which sense perception is
evoked in Fet’s poetry is one of its best known characteristics and I would
suggest that it derives from the same impulse toward psychological explora-
tion that gives us the Arabian girl, the contemplation of a statue, or the but-
terfly. Although well known for what is often called his “musical” poetry, in
which aural perceptions are salient, visuality, as we have already seen, is
highly developed throughout Fet’s oeuvre. The non-visual senses in Fet’s
poetry receive attention from critics because their evocation is more myste-
rious, the senses themselves considered less rational. Fet’s visuality is not
particularly rational either. If we consider that in his day even specialists
were only beginning to appreciate the mental complexity of visual percep-
tion, the psychological acuity of Fet’s vision-oriented texts is astonishing.
Visualization in Fet’s poetry takes a variety of forms. In such poems as
“The candle has guttered…”, what we might call overt inwardness – explicit
presentation of a textual persona’s inner thoughts – is expressed in
visualization, as the addressee’s thoughts turn out to involve her conceptu-
alizing a space within which she locates the male speaker. Another kind of
visualization in Fet’s poetry, characteristic of his early work, is to make of a
poem a picture of its thematic material. The visual orientation of Fet’s poem
“The Waterfall”, published in 1840 in his first book of poems, has been very
well discussed in the literature on Fet.24 The visual orientation of the poem
was carried further, however, than mere thematics: the poem seems to have
been designed to make the text actually look (and, apparently, sound) like a
waterfall. (Later editions of the poem differ slightly from the first one, which
is what I follow here.)25 It is quite possible that the young Fet was familiar
with waterfalls: he went by the one at Narva on his journey to his school in
Werro.26 At school, moreover, Fet probably heard about waterfalls from his
science teacher, since, as it happens, waterfalls were in the scientific news at
the time: they interested contemporaries as a locus of such unusual optical
effects as the illusion of upward motion – a subject of some interest for Fet’s
poetics.27 Aside from this, waterfalls figured much earlier, in literary and
artistic traditions that Fet certainly knew. For a long line of Russian poets of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the waterfall was a conventional
locus of visual description, exuberant onomatopoeia, and, most notably in
28
the romantic tradition, political symbolism and psychological reflection.
Seeing and knowing 119

Fet’s poem derives its imagery from its prede- Водопад

cessors: the Titan of the abyss is a transform of the Тaм, кaк срaжeнный
giant in F. N. Glinka’s Karelia, the branch or twig Титaн, прoстeрся
that goes over the edge to the tranquil pool is an Мeжду скaлaми,
inanimate counterpart to N. M. Iazykov’s drown- Oбрoсший мoxoм,
ing, but apparently unperturbed, swimmer. Fet also Сeдoй грaнит.
maintains the tradition of soundplay in waterfall И зaпeр прoпaсть.
poetry, especially in his use of к and ч at nearly Нo с дикoй стрaстью
double the frequency of his poetry overall.29 In its Стрeмится в бeздну
Чeрeз прeпoны
semantics, however, Fet’s poem differs from earlier
Пoтoк грeмучий,
treatments in its insistent focus on the natural
И мeчeт жeмчуг
world, without recurrence to his predecessors’ Шипучeй пeны
comparisons of the waterfall with the course of hu- Нa чeрный брeг.
man experience. The peaceful but dynamic closural
image is, I believe, unique in the tradition, and, in *
Смoтри, кaк быстрo
its shift in scale, from the huge but motionless Titan
Нeсeтся вeткa
of the beginning of the poem to the small, gently К кипучeй бeзднe,
swimming branch at the end, the poem’s develop- Кaк струйкa сильнo
ment is very characteristic of the poet throughout Ee кидaeт
his fifty-year career. С прoзрaчнoй мeли
Most of all, though, the poem is a visual one, a Нa oстрый кaмeнь. –
poem “for the eye” on two levels. One level is fic- Мeлькнулa! – Пoлнo!
tively referential: the language of the text, as Rich- Из чeрнoй бeздны
ard Gustafson noticed, seems to suggest that the Вoзврaтa нeт.
poet is pointing things out to some unknown com- *
panion. This referential visuality in general derives Слeжу глaзaми
from the earlier tradition, although it takes a differ- Зa быстрым тoкoм.
ent form from what we find in Derzhavin, for ex- Кaк присмирeл oн
ample: as Gustafson observes, Fet’s poem uniquely Тaм – в oтдaлeньи
situates the speaker and his implied textual ad- Кaк будтo нeбo
dressee in relation to the sights that they observe. В нeм xoчeт видeть
Свoю крaсу.
The second kind of visuality, however, is iconic:
Fet’s “Waterfall” is a long narrow poem, flowing in *
several slightly irregular stages down the page, just Смoтри: тa вeткa,
as a waterfall may appear in a high crevasse, disap- Чтo тaм исчeзлa
pear from view, and reappear in second and other В пучинe лютoй,
Плывeт тaк тиxo,
stages below. In the version of the poem published
Тaк бeзмятeжнo
in 1850, the flow was emphasized by eliminating
Пo вeчнoй влaгe.
all the white space and indentations of the earlier
publication, and the punctuation also suggests a less
restless, craggy reading: no hyphen after the second
“там”, for example. The waterfall imagery implicit
120 Chapter Two

in the shape of the poem is supported also by the phonic play already noted,
since the long sequence of consonant-heavy iambic dimeter lines helps cre-
ate the effect. In addition, the unrhymed, predominantly feminine-ending
lines are a versificational oddity for the Russian tradition, suggesting that Fet
was using a relatively free form to correspond to the rushing freedom of the
water, while the syntax mimics the Titan’s blocking of the path midway
through the first strophoid. So far as I am aware, the iconicity of Fet’s water-
fall is unique in the Russian tradition of waterfall poems. The poem, when
reprinted in his 1850 collection, appeared among the hellenizing poems
called anthological poems. We will discuss them separately. For now, how-
ever, we note that, although what was called anthological poetry in Russia
generally had rather little to do with the Greek Anthology, Fet’s waterfall
suggests the possibility of a fairly direct connection: the Anthology contains
figural poems,30 which had been published, and even imitated in German
poetry.31 Although Fet failed to learn Greek, he did study it with his class-
mates at school, and some poems from the Greek Anthology were a tradi-
tional part of school programs. It is thus possible that Fet was aware of the
figural poetry in the Greek Anthology, and his treating his “Waterfall” as
“anthological” may correspond to that, as well as to its descriptive nature. In
any event, his exploitation of iconicity in presenting the waterfall is espe-
cially apt, because a waterfall is, precisely, an object that is at once tempo-
rally persistent and constantly being formed anew. The technique of Fet’s
poem captures the double nature of the waterfall through a double evocation
of our perception of it: one perception developed across time, as we read the
poem from top to bottom, another perception waiting for us in space, to be
recognized in a flick of the eye.
One aspect of Fet’s poetics thus involved iconic representation, in which
his persistent attachment to things took the form of making a poem into a
picture of the object that its words describe.32 In Chapter Three, where we
deal with the form of Fet’s poems, we shall see that there are a number of
ways in which the young Fet (especially in his neo-classically inspired
work) permitted himself to use form, as he seldom did afterward, to repre-
sent his thematic material iconically: when he writes about jangling jewelry,
his consonants jangle, when he mentions excitement his rhyme becomes
uncharacteristically free. He put things directly in the way of his readers’
perceptions.
Seeing and knowing 121

Making an object of the motivic stuff of a poem was not something the
young Fet did only when the material so obviously lent itself to visual repre-
sentation. Although Fet’s first book of poems is sometimes treated as practi-
cally unrelated to what came later, the poetics of “The Waterfall” are ante-
cedent to those of other works of the 1840s. We will discuss below (page
163) one such poem, “Лозы мои за окном разрослись живописно и
даже…” (“My vines beyond the window have spread picturesquely, and
even…”),33 written about 1847. Another example is “Друг мой, бес-
сильны слова, – одни поцелуи всесильны…” (“My dear, words are pow-
erless, – only kisses are omnipotent …”) – a poem from about 1842, in
which the “caesura” of kissing lips adorns the caesura of a closural line of
elegiac distich.34 A slightly different, because not visually oriented, sort of
reification is afforded by
Кoгдa мoи мeчты зa грaнью прoшлыx днeй
the poem “Когда мои меч- Нaйдут тeбя oпять зa дымкoю тумaннoй,
ты за гранью прошлых Я плaчу слaдoстнo, кaк пeрвый иудeй
дней…” (“When my Нa рубeжe зeмли oбeтoвaннoй.
dreams beyond the limit of
past days…”, 1844). Here, Нe жaль мнe дeтскиx игр, нe жaль мнe тиxиx снoв,
Тoбoй тaк слaдoстнo и бoльнo вoзмущeнныx
the poet remembers “mean-
В тe дни, кaк пoстигaл я пeрвую любoвь
ingless words, sounding only
Пo бунту чувств нeугoмoнныx,
to us like passion’s echo”,
and the twelve lines of the Пo сжaтию руки, пo oтблeску oчeй,
text incorporate at least half Сoпрoвождaeмым тo вздoxaми, тo смexoм,
a dozen pairs of grammatical Пo рoпoту прoстыx, нeзнaчaщиx рeчeй,
and lexical repetitions. The Лишь нaм звучaвшиx стрaсти эxoм.
poem itself is an example of
“simple, meaningless words”, emptied of conventional semantics through re-
petition, “passion’s echo” after the redoubling mutuality of love: the clasp of
hands, the reflected gleam of eyes.35 The poem ends with the word “echo”.
The last rhyme of the poem is an echo rhyme. The poem echoes. The poem
not only refers to speech evoked “as an echo of passion” but also presents
itself as the speech of someone whose passion echoes in the verse. The poem
redoubles experience.
“When my dreams…” is an iconic evocation of an object lacking the
corporeality and temporal persistence of the waterfall – a photograph of a
ghost. Although there is an “I”, a speaker, who lays claim to emotion, on
another level the emotion is rendered as object independent of the speaker,
as experience unembodied, and the experience itself is thus represented dou-
bly: once as something we read about, line by line, and once as something
we perceive holistically as a property of the text, as something the poem is,
or at least is perceived to represent in a manner separate from that in which
its words effect their referential meaning. The poet’s technique is grounded
122 Chapter Two

in traditional usage; his peculiar contribution is that he represents so con-

cretely such a non-concrete object. The Greek Anthology, after all, contains
pictures of things: an altar, say, or an egg. Fet could make love just as palpa-
ble, even though readers complained he was no good at all at depicting lov-
ers. Lovers were never the point; the point was their feelings, their emotion-
ally colored perceptions, the inner life that made them lovers. Of course, in
the Anthology tradition, the things that were depicted were spiritually as
well as physically substantial, and Fet’s making objets d’art of things lack-
ing any weight except the psychic is really an extension of the figural tradi-
tion in its most profound aspect. He could not, of course, make of lovesick-
ness an object of so much spatial displacement as the anthological egg, but
he could and did grant them worldly persistence.
The doubled representation of things that we have noticed in “When my
dreams…” is characteristic, in its full-blown form, only of Fet’s early po-
etry, and it is especially characteristic of the neo-classically inspired poetry
that will be the main focus of the next section.36 His peculiar and sometimes
jarring blend of concreteness with psychologism, however, continued to be
typical of Fet throughout his career, even though the specific techniques
through which it is realized took different forms. Beyond this, perceptual,
specifically visual, orientation is an essential part of Fet’s poetry, even in
poems far removed from his descriptive verse.
“To a singer” (“Carry away my heart,…”, 1857), a well-known poem
from the middle of Fet’s career,
Певице differently reconciles his psycholo-
Унoси мoe сeрдцe в звeнящую дaль, gism with concreteness.37 The poem
Гдe кaк мeсяц зa рoщeй пeчaль; represents Fet in one of his more
В этиx звукax нa жaркиe слeзы твoи rhapsodic moments, and it has
Крoткo свeтит улыбкa любви. justly been characterized as an ex-
pression of the poet’s exuberant
O дитя! Кaк лeгкo срeдь нeзримыx зыбeй irrationality, here as often elsewhere
Дoвeряться мнe пeснe твoeй:
associated with the thematics of
Вышe, вышe плыву сeрeбристым путeм,
Будтo шaткaя тeнь зa крылoм.
musical performance. It has also
been noticed that the text consists of
Вдaлeкe зaмирaeт твoй гoлoс, гoря, a “curious interweaving of fragments
Слoвнo зa мoрeм нoчью зaря, – of scenery with emotions”, which,
И oткудa-тo вдруг, я пoнять нe мoгу, according to one writer, “reproduces
Грянeт звoнкий прилив жeмчугу. the flow of images that pass through
the mind while one is listening to
Унoси ж мoe сeрдцe в звeнящую дaль, music”.38 Be that as it may, the text
Гдe крoткa, кaк улыбкa, пeчaль, refers to both visual and aural (albeit
И всe вышe пoмчусь сeрeбристым путeм imaginary) experience. Fet’s psychic
Я, кaк шaткaя тeнь зa крылoм. repertory includes not only interior-
Seeing and knowing 123

ization tout court but also species of quasi-interiorization. Here conscious-

ness takes the form of an outdoor landscape, with all the complexity of loca-
tion, color, distance and motion. Visual perception is presented as an ex-
perience not of external visual stimuli, but as a visual response to “your
song” – a synaesthetic mix in which the predominant stimulus is aural and
visualization is the predominant response. Of course visuality is highly de-
veloped in Fet’s descriptive poetry but here we find it in one of the most
“musical” texts of this famously “musical” poet. Especially prominent is the
perception of aerial motion, a recurrent motif in Fet. Motion perception, ae-
rial or not, is intimately connected to visual perception (it has been claimed
that virtually all visual perception entails motion),39 and the two are also
closely related within Fet’s poetry.

2.2.4 From motion to emotion in Fet’s poetry and poetics

Motion is a salient element of Fet’s thematics and composition, and evoca-

tions of flight recur from the beginning of his work to the end. As we might
expect, flight is often associated with birds. An early ecstatic poem in free
dolniks, written in celebration of the 1846 discovery of the planet Neptune,
adopts the aquiline perspective of “Zeus’s high-soaring bird”, while one of
Fet’s most famous late poems, which we shall discuss in section 2.3, starts
from the swooping heights and descents of swallows; the arrowy flight of an
ancestor of that swallow is the object of one of the poems of Fet’s first book.
Yet “Carry away my heart…”, as we have seen, dispenses with all avian
vehicles. The ecstasy of flight in that poem has a precursor as early as 1843,
in “Если зимнее небо звездами горит…” (“If the winter sky burns with
stars…”). Both texts are in the same meter, which Fet had not otherwise
used for this thematic material. Decades after “Carry away my heart…”,
some of the most famous poems of Fet’s last years show the poet imagining
himself in flight, and flight is often related to a state of ecstasy. An example
of such a late text is “The Rocket”, written in 1888.
Ракета
Гoрeл нaпрaснo я душoй,
Нe oзaряя нoчи чeрнoй:
Я лишь вoзнeсся прeд тoбoй
Стeзeю шумнoй и прoвoрнoй.
Лeчу нa смeрть вoслeд мeчтe.
Знaть, мoй удeл – лeлeять грeзы
И тaм сo вздoxoм в высoтe
Рaссыпaть oгнeнныe слeзы.
124 Chapter Two

Fet writes quite a lot about his attitude toward motion in his memoirs, which
often deal with Fet’s poetics in disguise. One disguise Fet often enjoys is
comic inversion: although he was proud of having won a coveted prize as a
translator of Latin, for example, the memoirs elaborate on his failed attempts
to learn Greek, while he alludes to his fame as a musical poet by describing
his short-lived experience of the violin (he threw the bow at his cat). As for
motion: both Fet’s memoirs and his autobiographical fiction tell us he de-
tested having to move or be conveyed from one location to another. Discuss-
ing, for example, his misbegotten tour of Italy, Fet devotes considerable
space to his travel in uncomfortable coaches and on the back of an appar-
ently unsympathetic donkey. (Donkeys in general were all right; he owned a
pair, and named one of them Nekrasov. He had his photograph taken with
them and wrote a poem about them to his wife.) His strong interest in mo-
tion, whether positive or negative, was not, however, restricted either to its
thematic potential or its impingement on his personal comfort. On the con-
trary, the semantics of motion serve as an instrument of his compositional
technique. M. L. Gasparov has described Fet’s tendency to start from static
description and then, at closure, to put the scene he has drawn into motion.40
Of course, “Carry away my heart…” and “The rocket”, among other poems,
show clearly that motion is well represented in places other than at closure,
yet it is easy to see his fondness for closural motion, often incipient. The
butterfly we mentioned earlier, for example, announces, at the end of its
speech: “And I shall fly away”.
In his concern with motion, Fet was a child of his age. He grew up in an
era fascinated with visual perception, and with motion perception in particu-
lar. Thus, for example, in a series of publications in the 1820s and 1830s, the
Czech physiologist J. E. Purkinje [Purkyně] (1787-1869) commented on
such subjective perceptions as vertigo and giddiness, in which a person’s
actual movement in one direction corresponds to a perception that the world
around is moving in the opposite direction.41 Moreover, non-specialist inter-
est in the perception of motion was whetted by technological innovations
and the public’s experience of them. For example, after the first passenger-
carrying railway began operation in England in 1825, we find descriptions of
the illusory sense of movement experienced by observant passengers. This
was also the great era of optical parlor games. Kaleidoscopes were invented
in 1817, to be followed in the 1830s by other optical devices, aids in the
creation of motion perception: stereoscopes, phenikistoscopes (so called in
France and Belgium), stroboscopes (the same thing in anglophone coun-
tries), and the daedaleum (Horner’s stroboscope) – all date to this era.42
These were not, in origin, mere toys, but rather were created as mechanical
devices for the exploration of optical experience. Optical illusions of all
sorts were discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature of the
Seeing and knowing 125

1830s: in an 1832 publication L. A. Necker reported on his famous cube, in

which a given angle appears now to jut forward, now to be recessed from the
page, and in 1834 R. Addams, visiting Loch Ness, discovered the so-called
waterfall illusion. At school in the mid-1830s, Fet displayed, as noted in
Chapter One, a special affinity for artisanry and mechanical devices, and he
enjoyed an excellent basic education in science. Moreover, the teacher by
whom Fet claims to have been most strongly influenced was a mathematics
teacher who had spent eight years in England, and would have been particu-
larly likely to introduce such material to his students. He certainly used time
free from lessons to promote popular science projects.
Because of Fet’s access to such important and widely disseminated tech-
nical and scientific developments, we would be wrong to assume that exploi-
tation of motion in his poetics necessarily derives from his psychologism;
his psychologism is itself grounded in contemporary science, with its new
understanding of subjectivity in the formation of perceptions. At the same
time, it is obvious why a poet whose work was psychologically oriented
would have been interested in motion: if in poems such as “The Waterfall”
he was playing with readers’ perception of objects in space and time, surely
motion, entailing the manipulation of both space and time, had to be a cen-
tral issue.
“The Waterfall” presents contrasting sorts of motion: the perpetual re-
placement of the water in the waterfall itself, perceived as a linear moving
and yet static object, and the peaceful, and equally perpetual, floating of a
branch in the pool below. Because of its pictorial quality, however, “The
Waterfall” is in some ways a special case, not typical for his later work. In
later poetry, in which the poet’s gaze “out of time into eternity”, as he put it,
becomes ever more oriented toward the latter, the relationship of movement
and stasis took on cosmic meaning. Motion is also to be associated with sen-
tience, and increased motion also accompanies the rising consciousness that
is characteristic of Fet’s poems. His tendency to locate incipient motion clo-
surally is consistent with his tendency to move in his texts from sleep to
waking, from winter to spring, rather than the other way around: the process
of ending a poem entailed a return to the ordinary world, and its distinct
mode of consciousness, as distinct from the different kind of consciousness
involved in being absorbed in reading a text. Motion is, moreover, an essen-
tial element in the perception of figures as such, against their perceptual
ground; putting a text in motion is one way to promote its integrity, and so
to reinforce its closure. If making a poem about a waterfall also look like a
waterfall is a way of enabling the perception of the poem to jump the tempo-
ral track of line-by-line reading, similarly, ending a text by setting it in mo-
tion is a way of promoting a holistic response to it.
126 Chapter Two

Fet’s well-known early poem “Marvellous pic- Чуднaя кaртинa,

ture,…” (1842) is among other things an interesting Кaк ты мнe рoднa:
study in motion perception. The text shows us a land- Бeлaя рaвнинa,
scape, as perceived by a speaker who seems to be look- Пoлнaя лунa,
ing at a picture (either literal or metaphorical). The
Свeт нeбeс высoкиx,
speaker names one element of the picture after the next, И блeстящий снeг,
starting with a “white plain”, then a “full moon”, and И сaнeй дaлeкиx
ending with “the lonely running of a distant sleigh”. Oдинoкий бeг.
This last element, as M. L. Gasparov has observed,43
illustrates Fet’s tendency toward introducing motion, and emotion, at clo-
sure.44 The “running of the sleigh”, however, cannot actually be seen in the
picture in the same sense that the “white plain” can be seen. Really, the pic-
ture can only capture one point along an invisible arc of movement that the
sleigh describes; even if we think not of a picture, but of seeing the motion
of an object, it is clear that seeing the motion is not quite the same thing as
seeing a fixed object. But what about the “full moon” in line four? Presuma-
bly it is perceived as fixed at the moment we are seeing it, and it is certainly
fixed in the textual picture, but we know that the moon, not in a picture, will
move in our night sky, and the poem’s reference to the fullness of the moon
reminds us of its phases – and of its and our motion. The “light of the high
heavens” most certainly is phasal, and the phase is shorter, the movement
apparently faster, than in the preceding line. Indeed, the first movement per-
ceived is presented in the last line of text, but movement of which we are
unaware has been accelerating from the beginning: the snowy plain (the
snow appears and melts, seasonally), the moon (is full now, in a week will
be less full, in a month the phase is complete), the light of the sky (changes
in a daily cycle), the shining snow (glints here now, somewhere else in a
moment, as I move my eyes, as the moonlight shifts), finally – the sleigh.
We perceive it to be in motion, all else to be still, although we know that a
picture of a sleigh cannot, physically, be moving at all. The nominal form
бег captures the reference to motion and wraps it inside the grammar of ob-
jectification. The poem certainly is one in which motion and stasis are in
play, but so are physical and perceptual realities.
“Marvellous picture,…” is an obvious example of Fet’s treatment of vis-
ual perception, both because it claims to present us with a picture and be-
cause of how motion is presented within the picture. It is also an early ex-
ample of Fet’s characteristic treatment of objects and emotions: we start
from an object, a picture, and end with emotional involvement, expressed in
the characterization of the sleigh’s flight as lonely. Just as final motion per-
ception is prepared earlier in the poem, through the gradual acceleration of
natural cycles, similarly closural mention of affect is also prepared in the
poet’s increasingly refining the visual range of his epithets. The whiteness of
Seeing and knowing 127

the plain is “objective”, equally visible to all, the height of the heavens re-
quires an earth-bound perspective, but, still, it is a perspective shared by
everyone on earth. The distance of the sleigh is different: it requires a more
specific point against which distance is measured, an “I” who calls it distant.
And in that “I”, called up by the notion of distance, there is evoked an empa-
thetic response: the flight of the sleigh is a lonely flight. The attribution of
aloneness to the flight is an affectively charged restatement of the “objec-
tive” but perspectival observation of the sleigh as distant: if the sleigh is per-
ceived as far away in an otherwise empty landscape, then it is perceived as
alone. The sleigh does not feel lonely, and one need not even imagine a per-
son in the sleigh who feels lonely. The observer looks at the isolation of the
sleigh in the empty landscape. It is his characterization, and it is necessarily,
if not his consciousness of feeling lonely, nonetheless his consciousness of
loneliness, that is aroused. Fet evokes final affect out of perceptual and per-
spectival constraint.
In its simplicity, and in emotional tonality Кoт пoeт, глaзa прищуря,
as well, “Marvellous picture,…” is at one with Мaльчик дрeмлeт нa кoврe,
another poem written the same year and found Нa двoрe игрaeт буря,
right together with it in Fet’s collected poems: Вeтeр свищeт нa двoрe.
“The cat sings, eyes narrowed…”. According
to Fet, Apollon Grigor’ev particularly liked “Пoлнo тут тeбe вaляться,
Спрячь игрушки дa встaвaй!
“The cat sings,…”, and, in a review of Fet’s Пoдoйди кo мнe прoщaться,
1850 collection, Grigor’ev cites it as an exam- Дa и спaть сeбe ступaй”.
ple of the poet’s ability to invest things with
emotion. According to Grigor’ev, it is typical Мaльчик встaл. A кoт глaзaми
of Fet at first to seem to create human attach- Пoвoдил и всe пoeт;
ments, here, between the speaker in the text В oкнa снeг вaлит клoкaми,
and the figure of the boy, but, in the end, to Буря свищeт у вoрoт.
destroy the tentative emotional bond, leaving
the speaker profoundly alone. The same process can be seen in “Marvellous
picture,…”. There, we start from an exclaimed “How dear you are to me”,
where the word родна, although I have translated it as “dear”, more accu-
rately means “intimately connected with me and my home and family, not
alien”. The “I” thus feels he is intimately connected to a simple, homely ob-
ject, the picture. By the end of the poem, however, we see that what the poet
feels his connectedness with is not just any picture, but a picture of what he
himself presents as lack of connectedness – he feels kinship with loneliness,
and what he recognizes as lonely is not even another human being but only
the flight of the sleigh: if it is controlled by a human driver, he is kept out of
sight. The characteristic affect-linking that Grigor’ev so keenly describes in
“The cat sings,…” is realized more openly in “Marvellous picture,…”,
128 Chapter Two

where the linking of thing and emotion is presented without even the benefit,
or distraction, of supporting narrative.

2.2.5 Fet’s noun poems

The lack of narrative elements in “Marvellous picture,…” corresponds to

one of its best-known characteristics: it is one of several poems by Fet in
which personal verb forms either do not occur or are evidently avoided,
while nominal forms abound. Besides “Marvellous picture”, three other po-
ems are included by M. L. Gasparov in his analysis of Fet’s “verbless” po-
ems – “Whispers, timid breathing,…” (1850), “This morning, this joy,…”
(1881), and “Only in the world…” (1883) – and Thomas Eekman has drawn
attention to two other poems that disfavor verbal constructions: “Storm in
the evening sky,…” (1842) and “Quasi una fantasia” (1889).45 Obviously,
we expect the semantics of narrative, change, and motion to most naturally
be carried by verb forms, but, as “Marvellous picture,…” demonstrates, a
text can show us a world of motion, real and perceived, without them.
Commentators have suggested that Fet’s avoidance of verb forms in fa-
vor of nominal ones corresponds to the orientation of Fet’s poetry toward
images, as opposed to events: Fet, critics have said, puts things before us,
and expects us to make the connections among them for ourselves. Even
though nominality might seem to promote concreteness, the avoidance of
overt predication in favor of substantival expressions in Fet has often created
in readers an impression of subjectivity and psychologism.46 Evidently, the
predominance of substantival imagery imposes a mode of readership that
may be less fully and less rationally determined by the text than convention
led Fet’s readers to be entirely comfortable with. His technique has been
compared to the impressions left by dreams: although often highly corpo-
real, dreams have nonetheless the reputation of being wispily subjective.
Contemporaries read Fet’s poems in somewhat the same way.
To be sure, the extent to which predication is absent from Fet’s texts
should not be exaggerated. Verb and noun forms are used about as fre-
quently in Fet’s canonical poetry as in Lermontov’s shorter poems, for ex-
ample, while, if we count up all the forms in all of Fet’s verse (excluding
only the long German translations, such as Faust, and his Latin translations),
we encounter proportionately a few more verb forms, and correspondingly
fewer substantives, although the difference is not great. Relative lack of
overt verb forms is thus not a general characteristic of Fet’s poetry, but is
confined to certain poems. Presumably, then, Fet’s exploitation of nominal
syntax and avoidance of verbs must have corresponded in some way to the
meaning he wanted particular poems to express.
Seeing and knowing 129

When we examine the small body of so-called verbless poems, more-

over, they turn out not really to be lacking predication, or even verbs, and
they vary greatly in the extent to which they lack reference to the activity or
dynamism we associate with verbal semantics. The “verbless” texts repre-
sent both early and late Fet; I am unaware of any such poems from the mid-
to latter 1850s, when Fet was most susceptible to the editorial advice of I. S.
Turgenev, or from the purgatory years of the 1860s and 70s. The early po-
ems of this group display characteristic features of the younger Fet, while
the later ones are quite different, and have the general features of the poetry
Fet was writing in the early 1880s.
“Marvellous picture,…” has been treated as an example of Fet’s psy-
chologism, in which the lack of personal verb forms permits the poet to di-
rect his readers’ attention first to one image and then the next, where the
overall dynamic is one of interiorization. Interiorization is a general charac-
teristic of Fet’s poetry, but the outer-to-inner dynamic of “Marvellous pic-
ture,…” follows a pattern more typical of Fet’s early poems than of his later
ones. The development from outer to inner worlds really gets underway only
in the third of the poem’s eight lines, since the first two lines constitute a
kind of superordinate stage-setting, in which, although there is no overt verb,
there certainly is a predication: “Marvellous picture, how dear you are to
me”. (The “are” is unexpressed not because of any special Fetian magic, but
as a regular consequence of Russian grammar.) As we shall see in more de-
tail in section two of this chapter, it is characteristic of the young Fet to be-
gin a poem with just such an explicit setting. In the case of “Marvellous pic-
ture,…”, we are not merely told what the textual consciousness thinks as he
contemplates the picture, we are told beforehand that he is contemplating a
picture, and we are given a general statement summarizing his response to it
(“How dear you are to me”) before we see the details: “white plain, full
moon, the light of the high heavens, a distant sleigh’s lonely flight”. If we
interpret the relationship of the stage-setting and the following lines natural-
istically, we find that the noun-phrase syntax of the expressions in lines
three through eight is what we might expect of a person in the situation that
has been presented in lines one and two. The speaker is musing in front of a
picture – or of a scene he calls a picture – , and it is either itself well-known
to him or it reminds him of something dear to his heart. He is apparently
relaxed, not particularly focused on interpreting great art, but simply noting
whatever happens to come to mind as his gaze wanders over what is in front
of him, perhaps as he looks up idly from some more focused task in the pri-
vacy of his own home. The string of verbless constructions is motivated as a
poetic approximation of the language you might use in talking to yourself.
We may compare “Marvellous picture,…” to the great sculptural poems
such as “Diana”: the speaker in both poems contemplates a work of art and
130 Chapter Two

reports on his response to it. The verblessness of the “Marvellous pic-

ture,…”, as distinct from the periodic syntax of “Diana”, is motivated by the
distinct mode of the speaker’s contemplation: he is not in the presence of the
otherness of the divine, or of the great art that divinity inspires, but rather
looking at a picture whose great virtue is said to be the sense of intimacy
that it evokes in the poet. In this earliest example, Fet’s avoidance of verbs is
attributed to a textual consciousness in a specific, low-key situation. The
“verblessness” of the text is, on one hand, a kind of formal tour de force in a
poem the semantics of which are so dependent on the representation of mo-
tion, and, on the other hand, a rationally motivated choice for a poem repre-
senting a specific state of mind.
The motivation for verblessness that is made so explicit in “Marvellous
picture,…” is drastically altered in the most famous of all the “verbless”
poems – “Whispers, timid breathing,…” Here, there is no generalizing pref-
ace, and nothing like the straightforward, albeit formally null, predication of
“Marvellous picture,…”. In fact, there is neither overt “I” nor overt “thou”
(the only “I” or “thou” to be mentioned overtly in any of our texts are the
lone pair at the beginning of “Marvellous picture,…” – where “thou” is the
Шeпoт, рoбкoe дыxaньe,
picture itself): the whispers and breathing are
Трeли сoлoвья, surely heard by someone in the text, but that
Сeрeбрo и кoлыxaньe someone makes no distinction between the
Сoннoгo ручья. behavior of his own body and his lover’s. To
the extent there is any textual poet-figure who
Свeт нoчнoй, нoчныe тeни,
is speaking to us, he (or she) is lost not in
Тeни бeз кoнцa,
Ряд вoлшeбныx измeнeний contemplation, but in love. In general, by
Милoгo лицa, 1850 the poet was much less inclined to
“stage” his poems than in the early 1840s,
В дымныx тучкax пурпур рoзы, and “Whispers, timid breathing,…” illustrates
Oтблeск янтaря,
that. It illustrates also the poet’s growing so-
И лoбзaния, и слeзы,
И зaря, зaря!..
phistication in representing sense perception.
Instead of directing our attention steadily to-
ward either human behavior or the natural world, the poet moves between
the two, in a rhythm that mimics the adjustment of a lens, or the breathing
from which the poem begins. This perceptual rhythm in the semantic organi-
zation of the text corresponds to the fact that, compared with the earlier text,
this one in general integrates motion and potential change more smoothly.
Change takes several textual guises. Time passes, as “nocturnal light, noc-
turnal shadows” give way to dawn, and the mention of dawn in the final line
itself encourages observers to be conscious of the passage of time, as dawn
is perceived as end of night and prelude to day. References to physical
things – a face, a stream – refer to the changes and motion perceived in
them. Although the proportion of nouns to the total number of words is
Seeing and knowing 131

higher in this text than in the earlier “verbless” text, the nouns themselves
are remarkably dynamic. Four of them are derived from verbs, by a regular
process: breathing from the verb to breathe, changes from to change, and so
on. Two other nouns are analyzable either as derived from a verbal root
(whisper from the root of the verb to whisper) or as having an action or ac-
tivity rather than a physical object as their semantic core (the warble of a
nightingale): the concreteness of the 1842 poem, expressed in its plains,
sleighs, and pictures, gives way in the 1850 poem to a semantics of mutabil-
ity and nascence that the speaker is apparently trying to ensnare in the lan-
guage of objects – an enterprise fully appropriate for a rapturous lover des-
perate for one night-long moment to last forever.
After an absence of some three decades, “verbless” poems reappear in
Fet’s work at the beginning of the great outpouring of poetry that marked his
last years. The re-emergence of “verbless” poems shows how early and late
Fet sometimes correspond in ways alien to his poetry in the intervening pe-
riod.47 In their specifics, however, the late poems differ markedly from the
early ones. Gone now are not only the motivating stage-setting of the first
poem but also the ecstatic eroticism of the second.
Этo утрo, рaдoсть этa, Like “Marvellous picture,…” but unlike “Whis-
Этa мoщь и дня и свeтa,
pers, timid breathing”, the lack of overt verb
Этoт синий свoд,
Этoт крик и вeрeницы, forms in “This morning, this joy,…” is rational-
Эти стaи, эти птицы, ized: the first seventeen of the poem’s eighteen
Этoт гoвoр вoд, lines are a list, summed up at last in the generali-
zation that “All this is spring”, the verblessness of
Эти ивы и бeрeзы,
which in Russian derives, as in “Marvellous pic-
Эти кaпли – эти слeзы,
Этoт пуx – нe лист,
ture,…”, from the norms of ordinary grammar.
Эти гoры, эти дoлы, Whereas, however, the motivation for the list in
Эти мoшки, эти пчeлы, “Marvellous picture,…” is presented first, in “This
Этoт зык и свист, morning, this joy,…” the sequence is reversed: we
are offered impression after impression, starting
Эти зoри бeз зaтмeнья,
with a temporal beginning (morning) and an un-
Этoт вздox нoчнoй сeлeнья,
Этa нoчь бeз снa,
analyzed emotion (joy), ranging through specific
Этa мглa и жaр пoстeли, physical realia (the sky, the sound of water, birch
Этa дрoбь и эти трeли, trees, dawn), broadening again (the generalization,
Этo всe – вeснa. now, of night, not morning), ending at last in the
name “spring”. This is a mannerism typical of the
later Fet: to give a name at the end of a poem to a perception or emotion that
he has been building for us, without a name, from the beginning.
Unlike the list of objects in “Marvellous picture,…”, the one in “This
morning, this joy,…” corresponds to another characteristic mannerism of
Fet’s: the whole list at first reading seems to approximate something like an
artistic stutter. The general line of development – naming things that are
132 Chapter Two

associated with or parts of the essential whole, but finally naming the essen-
tial thing, the over-arching concept, only just at the end of the poem – is a
form of rhetorical climax. The particular form that it takes here, though,
starts from an asyndetic offspring of hendiadys: in Fet’s poem, the joy is not
matutinal, nor the morning joyous, but morning comes to mind first and joy
is right there, too. Such parcelling out of meaning does not obviously pro-
mote the classical ascent up the rungs of a ladder to ever greater persuasive-
ness and emotional power, but suggests something more like a rhetoric of
amnesia. The speaker keeps seeking names and finding only periphrasis:
“those … rows – those flocks – birds” comprises one series, “these drops –
these tears”, “this down – not a leaf” are others. What, exactly, is being re-
ferred to in each of these strings? Fet had a rather large poetic vocabulary for
bird species, for example, and his calling them simply birds is a more gen-
eral level of categorization than is typical for him. It is also not clear that
“these drops – these tears” are literal teardrops and not another and differ-
ently, because metaphorically, failed attempt to identify liquid drops associ-
ated with willows and birches. Dew? Sap? Sometimes Fet is said in his po-
etry to abjure rhetorical devices. This is not really so. Climax and preterition
(as well as metonymy, metaphor, apostrophe, litotes, and personification – to
mention only the semantically most robust) are pervasive elements of his
verse, and he used figures of speech with both force and elegance.48 Yet
Fet’s technique of delayed naming, while it can pack a considerable rhetori-
cal punch, can also serve to reinforce and apparently embody the poet’s in-
sistence on the difficulty of putting things into words.
Fet’s piling up of nouns in his “verbless” poems does not result in the
creation of unordered lists, and, in spite of the association of nouniness with
concreteness, in fact the “verbless” poems are rich in motion, in change, and
in psychological development. “This morning, this joy,…” illustrates the
same pattern, but in a different way from the earlier poems. Like “Marvel-
lous picture,…”, “This morning, this joy,…” represents apparent movement,
but the most explicit reference to an object perceived in motion comes not at
the end of the text (like the flight of the sleigh in “Marvellous picture,…”)
but at the beginning: the flock of birds, which must be in motion or they
would not be in the sky. The presentation of the moving flock of birds is
striking for its faithfulness to how an observer might actually experience
such a perception in the natural world.49 We start by looking at the sky.50
Then comes the warning sound that prepares the impingement on our senses
of the sight of something, still unidentified, which moves in the sky and into
our visual range. (We become aware of the fact of motion through a differ-
ent perceptual process than the one by which we become aware of the iden-
tity of the thing that is moving.) Next Fet identifies the moving object as a
formation, a group of objects, finally he reveals it to be a formation of indi-
Seeing and knowing 133

vidual birds. Every separate stage of perceptual recognition is given its own
due, if suitably brief, expression. The three lines in which the flock passes
through our readers’ consciousness together comprise the history of a per-
ceptual event: a perception of motion. Motion, of course, is implicit in the
rest of the text: the midges and bees are unlikely to be sitting still, and the
noises mentioned in the text all imply motion as their source; the explicitly
established and larger-scale motion of the flock of birds at the beginning of
the text establishes the perceptual framework for the midges, bees, and all
the rest. This is the older, masterful poet: if “Marvellous picture,…” lists
mostly physical objects, and “Whispering, timid breathing” gives us dy-
namic activities, in “This morning, this joy,…” the poet merely points,
waves his magic wand, and what he points at is no longer, say, bedding or
breathing, but the quality of the bedding, its heat. No longer does he specify
the motion of the moving object – the running of the sleigh – he can make
the birds move merely by putting them in the sky and pointing them out.
It helps a lot with language if you point at things. Certainly, the repetitive
это meaning this or that, in “This morning, this joy,…” points expansively
at the riches the poet is sharing with us. While the poem is atypical in the
extent to which it is built on demonstrative pronouns, it is less atypical for
Fet’s later poetry than it would be in a poem written earlier. During the rela-
tively restrained 1850s, Fet not only wrote no “verbless” poems, but he also
made very little use of demonstrative pointers. The two phenomena evi-
dently reinforce each other: Fet’s poetic exploitation of the demonstrative
pronoun has an expressive function that was supressed during the period
during which his verbless poetry was banished. In his late poems, Fet uses
demonstratives more than he had in his youth, and the presence of demon-
stratives in this later “verbless” poem is thus characteristic of Fet’s later
style. The quintessentially Fetian “This morning, this joy,…” starts from
what is characteristic and intensifies it.
Both admirers and detractors have understood the quintessentially Fetian
quality of the “verbless” poems. How characteristic they are is clear not only
in their “verblessness” but also, conversely, in their “nouniness” and in the
specific choices of nouns in the texts. The substantives in the “verbless”
texts do not represent particularly well the nouns that Fet uses most often
(what may be called Fet’s “theme” nouns), but they represent much better
the nouns that he uses significantly more often than other poets with whom
he has been compared (his “key” nouns). There are nineteen Fetian “key”
nouns, and 42% of them occur in the “verbless” poems; if we look at Fet’s
commonest nineteen nouns, we find only 26% of them in our texts. The
“verbless” poems are not a common type of text in Fet’s oeuvre – he did not
write dozens of such poems, as you might expect, given the abundant dis-
cussion of his avoidance of verbs in his poetry – but they well represent his
134 Chapter Two

most characteristic choice of words. This evidence reinforces the more gen-
eral impression that the “verbless” poems stand in a central place in Fet’s
poetics and are especially characteristic of his work.
As for a more specific characterization of the semantics of the nouns in
the “verbless” texts, several features stand out. One is the extent to which
the nouns are intended to refer to things, not people or other animate beings:
73 of the 77 nouns in the verbless texts are inanimate. The extent to which
the “nouniness” is under the control of a human mind, however – the extent
to which it actually represents objectification of a textual consciousness –
can be seen in a variety of ways.
First, the animate nouns. There is no mention of humans except (once!)
the speaker, and only four substantives in the texts refer to animate beings.
Those four, however, are a very Fetian selection: two birds (one nightingale,
one plural “birds”), one “bees” (plural), and one “midges”. Birds, midges,
and bees all play significant symbolic roles in Fet’s poetry. The birds are
often discussed in the literature on Fet, and we will return to them. The
midges swarm, as we saw in a famous poem quoted in Chapter One, in the
evocation of “winged sounds”. Elsewhere in Fet, bees also swarm. In his
poem “Bees” (1854), they “sing” while entering lilac flowers, and even per-
secute the languorous speaker under a tree.

Пчелы
Прoпaду oт тoски я и лeни,
Oдинoкaя жизнь нe милa,
Сeрдцe нoeт, слaбeют кoлeни,
В кaждый гвoздик душистoй сирeни,
Рaспeвaя, впoлзaeт пчeлa.
Дaй xoть выйду я в чистoe пoлe
Иль сoвсeм пoтeряюсь в лeсу....
С кaждым шaгoм нe лeгчe нa вoлe,
Сeрдцe пышeт всe бoлe и бoлe
Тoчнo угoль в груди я нeсу.
Нeт, пoстoй жe! С тoскoю мoeю
Здeсь рaсстaнусь. Чeрeмуxa спит.
Ax, oпять эти пчeлы пoд нeю!
И никaк я пoнять нe умeю,
Нa цвeтax ли, в ушax ли звeнит.
In “Пчелы”, the poet cannot locate the buzzing of the bees, and his ears are
no different from the flowers. The connection of poet and bee is even closer
in Fet’s best-known “bee” poem: in “He desired my madness who
closed,…” (1887), he is the bee, and all the buzzing zh, z, s sounds (Russian
buzzing is жужжание) that are associated with swarming midges and bees
Seeing and knowing 135

in the other poems (зуки, звенит, каждый гвоздик, с каждым шагом, рас-
певая вползает…) are now fully integrated into the utterance of the poet,
speaking in his own, apiarian, voice.51
Мoeгo тoт бeзумствa жeлaл, ктo смeжaл
Этoй рoзы зaвóи, и блeстки, и рoсы;
Мoeгo тoт бeзумствa жeлaл, ктo свивaл
Эти тяжким узлoм нaбeжaвшиe кoсы.
Злaя стaрoсть xoтя бы всю рaдoсть взялa,
A душa мoя тaк жe прeд сaмым зaкaтoм
Прилeтeлa б сo стoнoм сюдa, кaк пчeлa,
Oxмeлeть, упивaясь тaким aрoмaтoм.
И, сoзнaниe счaстья нa сeрдцe xрaня,
Стaну буйствa я жизни живым oтгoлoскoм.
Этoт мeд блaгoвoнный – oн мoй, для мeня,
Пусть другим oн oстaнeтся тoпким лишь вoскoм!
Although midges and bees are unusual in the “verbless” texts in that they are
animate, they are typical of them in referring to the natural world. Most of
the things mentioned in the texts can be seen, some are heard, a few are tac-
tile. A few nouns, roughly one in seven, refer to an action or activity, many
more (roughly a third) refer to states or changes of state. About a sixth of the
nouns refer to abstractions or groups, such as flocks. The presence of the
speaker is nearly entirely presupposed rather than overt. The reader is in-
vited not to see a human figure in the text, but rather to situate himself
within the speaker’s consciousness – to see with his eyes, touch what he
touches, hear what he hears. What he experiences in this way is mainly na-
ture in various states and changes of state. The “nouniness” of our texts, and
even the predominance in them of inanimate nouns, does not correspond to
lack of “happening” or “being alive”, but more to a lack of narrative: there
are no recounted events and there no explicit human event participants, but
rather the experience of events that themselves lie outside the domain of the
poems’ verbal expression.
The three kinds of poems we have been reading – the poems of alien
consciousness with which we began, the iconic poems such as “The Water-
fall” and “When my dreams…”, and the “verbless” poems – all show differ-
ent ways in which Fet exploits experience of the physical world to fix emo-
tional experience. His texts nest consciousness within consciousness,
thoughts and words may belong at once to several minds and speakers. The
changing and ephemeral – a waterfall, a passion – is made to persist. “Carry
away my heart …” paints an inner world that is a simulacrum of the external
world, while the “verbless” poems model the constructive psychological
processes by which the outer world is experienced. In every instance, object
136 Chapter Two

is linked with emotion. Fet’s repertory of objects, however, is broad enough

to include the insubstantiality of echoes, and shadows of sighs. It is emotion
more than object that has impressed itself on Fet’s readers. This is what the
poet said he wanted.52

2.3 Fet’s early hellenism and his poetics of architecture

The first two decades of Fet’s career ended in debacle: a vicious campaign
against him made his professional life intolerable, and he retreated to the
restoration and management of a newly-bought country estate. When he re-
turned to active literary life decades later, although he may have been “the
same” for many readers (and he emphasized the continuity), yet he was
changed in many ways. One of them was the nearly complete disappearance
from his later work of explicit hellenism, which had been a prominent fea-
ture of it in its first twenty years. Indeed, hellenism in the younger Fet’s po-
etry was part of a cultural fashion that Fet contributed to shaping.
By hellenism I mean aesthetic orientation toward ancient Greece. The
word is not entirely satisfactory for describing Fet’s classically inspired po-
etry, because it may seem too strongly to link him to an artistic and intellec-
tual tendency represented only very partially in his works, but other possible
terms all have other connotations, which I prefer to avoid. In some ways
“neo-classicism” would be better, but that has specific connections to West-
ern art that are of little direct importance for Fet and neglects the specificity
of his orientation.53 The usual characterization of Fet’s classicizing poetry as
“anthological” risks misleading anglophones, and, with respect to Fet, it is
sometimes inconsistently applied even by Russian scholars, for whom it is
the most usual term for one part of the work I have in mind. We return to
anthological poetry shortly, and we will use the term to refer to specific po-
ems grouped under this name in Fet’s books. Similar quandaries have re-
sulted in the use of such terms as “romantic classicism” 54 and “aesthetic
paganism”,55 both of which would be quite appropriate, but they have the
disadvantages of being relatively little known and, at the same time, of hav-
ing already been attached to specific cultural phenomena in Germany. And
of course paganism, aesthetic or otherwise, could hope to find little public
expression in nineteenth-century Russia. In any case, I do not mean to in-
clude here only poems on classical Greek themes, or poems inspired in any
very immediate way by Greek culture.
Fet was not especially well-travelled (he never visited modern Greece),
and he did not read Greek at all well.56 Those of his works that are ulti-
mately inspired by Greek or even Latin culture often had a more direct mod-
ern source. Fet himself was a mediator of classical culture for Russian read-
Seeing and knowing 137

ers, in his Latin translations, of course, but not only there. Fet also translated
hellenizing poetry from both French and German, most notably Schiller’s
Die Götter Griechenlandes (second version), his translation of which Fet
included in his first volume of Evening Lights (1883).57 The translation was
apparently made in 1878, well after the time when Fet was writing original
hellenizing poetry and well after the height of the Russian popularity of
Schiller’s text. The most obvious case of classicism blurring together with
neo-classicism in Fet’s work also involves a translation: his translation from
André Chénier’s French of a poem Fet called “Подражание XVI идилии
Биона”.58 Fet included the poem in a group of his neo-classical works. As
Fet’s title suggests, Chénier’s poem was an imitation of a Greek text, and
Fet labeled its Greek origin but skipped over Chénier.59 There is nothing
perfidious about this: both in the 1840s and then again at the end of his life
Fet included a few, unidentified, translations in with his original verse, ap-
parently flattering the reader who was supposed to recognize the texts. Cer-
tainly no one thought he was claiming authorship when he failed to identify
poems by Goethe.60 The inclusion of the poem among his own neo-classical
verse does, however, show that Fet associated his hellenizing poetry with
not only ancient but also more recent models.
Another example of Fet’s mediated hellenism is the meter of his early
“elegies”: they seem to be classically inspired, but the poems are un-
doubtedly modeled on Goethe’s Roman Elegies. Similarly, his choice of
classical thematics suggests post-classical sources. We have noted, for ex-
ample, that although “Сон и Пазифая” might have come from the Iliad, Fet
surely read about them in Notes of the Fatherland.61 The link of Fet’s
“Diana” with Pushkin’s “Nereida” has already been mentioned (Chapter
One), and his “Телемак у Калипсы” presents a motif lacking in the Odys-
sey, but popular in Western Europe in the wake of Fénelon’s Télémaque
(1699).62 Finally, a descriptive poem sometimes mistakenly classed together
with his so-called anthological verse is “Зевс” (“Шум и гам, – хохочут
девы,…”, 1859). It presents a scene out of the infancy of Zeus, hidden from
his malevolent father Kronos, but hate-filled and screaming for revenge. The
infancy of Zeus was an obscure theme in the ancient world.63 It first became
popular during the later Renaissance as part of painted cycles often found
decorating walls and ceilings of Italian palaces.64 It then became common as
a kind of pagan nativity scene, since it allowed painters to use the same
props that they needed for painting the birth of Christ and, for that matter,
baby Dionysos.65 Fet’s text is remarkable in making the baby angry, and I
have been unable to find a prototype for an angry baby Zeus. The poem al-
most surely derives from a painting, or from several different paintings, that
he saw on his Western tour of 1856-57,66 although by the time he wrote the
138 Chapter Two

poem the thematics of self-protective hiding probably had autobiographical

meaning for him.67
By the time of Fet’s literary debut in 1840, hellenism in Russia had led to
the development of the peculiar phenomenon known as anthological poetry,
and it was anthological poems – such as “Diana”, which we read in Chapter
One – for which the early Fet was probably most widely appreciated by con-
temporary critics. The name of course evokes the Greek Anthology,68 but we
should only indirectly connect the Greek Anthology – or even earlier Rus-
sian anthological poetry – with the anthological poetry that Fet, and others,
wrote in the 1840s and 50s.69

2.3.1 From the Greek Anthology to Russian anthological poetry

Russian interest in the Greek Anthology seems not to antedate the late eight-
eenth century, when acquaintance with it could be made through various
printed sources or from French or German versions of some of the poems.70
The earliest Russian renditions of any texts of the Greek Anthology follow
upon the appearance in 1794 of the first volumes of the first edition of Frie-
drich Jacobs,71 and a sharp spurt of interest in the Anthology seems to follow
immediately upon the appearance in 1813-17 of the second edition. In his
1820 essay “О греческой антологии”, S. S. Uvarov remarks that few in
Russia know the Greek Anthology and adds that even in Germany, that
“cradle of philology”, no one “помышлял о красотах и достойнстве оной
[i.e., the Anthology]” prior to Herder72 – a statement that fails to do justice
to a much longer, if exiguous, tradition.73 Uvarov is apparently also ignorant
of both the early French anthological tradition and its more recent revival,
mentioning only the rather dubious, if renowned, contribution of Voltaire.74
Uvarov’s essay is correct, however, in noting that Voltaire and Herder were
important intermediaries in the reception of the Greek Anthology in Russia.
The anthological epigrams with which modern readers became familiar
came to be divided into two types. The so-called pointed epigram, by way of
a French (“Voltairean”) tradition, became the source of the Russian epigram,
known simply as эпиграмма. The Russian anthological tradition, in con-
trast, can claim among its ancestors the naive epigram, as it was convention-
ally called. This sort of short poem followed the tradition of parts of the
Greek Anthology as it was promoted by J. G. Herder.
Herder’s “Blumen, aus der Griechischen Anthologie gesammlet”,75 as he
called them, acquainted German readers in the 1780s with a fairly large
sample of texts from the anthology (324 out of some 3700), presented, more-
over, in a meter intended to render that of the original Greek distichs.76 Her-
der’s presenting an entire large group of texts instead of isolated examples
was a novelty that changed modern perceptions of the Anthology.77 At the
Seeing and knowing 139

same time, as Herder himself says in his introduction to the texts, and as Pe-
cherin noted for Russian readers as early as 1838,78 Herder’s renditions of
poems from the Greek Anthology were not really translations: he adapted
his texts to what he regarded as contemporary taste, often at the expense of
faithfulness to the Greek. His choice of texts also corresponded to Herder’s
own notions of the ideal ancient world. His metrical usage, however, was
crucial. Although his attempt at elegiac distich was not the first of its kind,
the sheer quantity of text that Herder rendered made a unique impression,
decisive not only for the German epigrammatic tradition but also for the tra-
dition of Russian anthological poetry. Fet’s anthological cycle includes sev-
eral poems that belong to this German metrical tradition.
The promotion of the Greek Anthology coincided also with the further
development of the body of original Russian poetry with ties to the minor
classical Greek genres – the “light poetry” associated with such poets as
Theocritus and Simonides, represented in the Greek Anthology. Especially
for those unable to read the Greek Anthology itself, there could be no sig-
nificant boundary between it and other “light poetry” that seemed to be
based on a hellenizing model, and what was called anthological poetry in
Russia often has its sources far from the Greek Anthology. Such a mélange
of Greek Anthology and poésie légère is illustrated, for example, by Fet’s
two poems called “Вакханка”, both reasonably described as anthological in
the literature and both also said in the literature to have had Batiushkov’s
poem of the same name as an important inspiration; yet Batiushkov’s
“Вакханка” has nothing directly to do with any Greek source, but is a ren-
dering of a text by Parny. Russian “light poetry” was associated with spe-
cific qualities of language and tone – “movement, strength, and clarity”, in
Batiushkov’s phrase – but also with relative brevity and with a limited the-
matic range. Besides the ubiquitous erotic texts, the Palatine Anthology
(which was arranged in large part thematically) is also notable for its two
books of poems on sculptural themes, and sculptural thematics acquired cen-
tral importance in what came to be called Russian anthological poetry, in
particular among the later poems of Fet’s anthological cycle.

2.3.2 Sculptural thematics and Fet’s elegiac distich

Sculptural thematics enter the tradition of Russian anthological poetry no

later than 1820, with two sculptural poems by Del’vig.79 Северные цветы
на 1832 г. also included a section called “Анфологические эпиграммы”,
containing four texts by Pushkin, headed by “Царскосельская статуя”. In
1836 Pushkin published the two four-line sculptural poems “На статую
играющего в свайки” and “На статую играющего в бабки”, and other sta-
tuary poetry began to appear afterward. The posthumous (1841) publication
140 Chapter Two

of Pushkin’s “Художнику” (along with “Юношу, горько рыдая, ревнивая

дева бранила”) reflected and furthered interest in the anthological genre.
Fet’s oeuvre in the 1840s clearly reflects his assimilation of the 1841 Push-
kin (we return to this below), and he refers to “Художнику” as late as
1866.80
By the time of Del’vig’s sculptural poems, Russian hexameter had been
pioneered and assimilated into the repertory of Russian meters in poems of
“antique” thematics, and both Del’vig and Pushkin after him associated their
sculptural thematics with a quasi-antique metrical form: elegiac distich.81
Fet, however, made this association only in one of the earlier of the sculp-
tural poems in his anthological cycle, namely “Кусок мрамора”(1847). As
we have already seen, Fet did write sculptural poetry, but mostly not in ele-
giac distich. He also wrote rather abundant elegiac distich, but mostly in his
hellenizing erotic poems, in the tradition not of Del’vig and Pushkin but
rather of Goethe’s Roman Elegies, and these poems were not published un-
der the rubric of “Антологческие стихотворения”. The reasons why Fet
declined the Del’vig-Pushkin tradition can have been several. One may have
been the special vivacity, for him, of the Goethean tradition of hellenizing
erotic poetry. Another contributing factor can have been that, for him, the
sculptural tradition may have been more specifically French, and therefore
outside the sphere of his German-based elegiac distich. To the extent that his
reading of the “French line” in hellenizing poetry really was Voltairean, he
would have encountered sculptural thematics there to a greater extent than in
his reading – probably broader in any case – of German hellenizing poetry,
where sculptural thematics were not especially prominent.82 In Chapter
Three I argue that Fet’s formal usage in the 1840s reflects his German edu-
cational background, on virtually every level, and that the Russian tradition
was not especially privileged over the German one. The same seems to be
true, specifically, of German and Russian as the sources of alternative se-
mantics for elegiac distich in the 1840s. Later, as he assimilated to the Rus-
sian tradition, the semantically “weakened” elegiac distich faded out of the
metrical repertory he used in original poems – although not his translations.
The displacement to translation of techniques and forms marginal in Russian
was a general phenomenon of Fet’s middle years.

2.3.3 Fet’s anthological poetry in the context of his oeuvre

Fet’s first collection of verse, published in 1840, contained a number of

works of an anthological character, although no special section was set aside
for them. Four of these poems, including “Водопад”, which we discussed
earlier, were included in his 1850 collection, and they were the only poems,
original or translated, that were.83 Moreover, two of these same poems are
Seeing and knowing 141

the only poems out of his entire first collection to have been included by Fet
in the canon he compiled at the end of his life, in 1892, and they are corre-
spondingly the only poems in the standard modern editions that represent
both the earliest published Fet and the self-acknowledged Fet of more than
fifty years later. Thus, although Fet ceased writing anthological poems after
1859, and this poetry has been less well known in the twentieth century than
some of his other work, still, the anthological poetry was a part – indeed,
except for translations, the part – of the youngest published Fet that his old-
est self uniquely chose to recognize. Questions naturally arise. Was there
anything about the poetics of these poems that connects them to the rest of
Fet’s oeuvre? And, if there was, then is there any reason for the poet to have
stopped writing such poems? Most often, the aesthetics of Russian antho-
logical poetry, on one hand, and Fet, on the other, are described in such a
way as to suggest the two were ill-suited to each other, and it has been said
that Fet stopped writing anthological poetry because his real gifts lay else-
where.84 I find this explanation unsatisfying, because it is hard to know what
Fet’s gifts may have been except on the basis of how he used them, and
there is no doubt that, whatever we may think of his hellenistic verse, Fet’s
contemporaries on the whole liked it better than anything else he did. An-
other explanation is that “anthological poetry” was simply something poets
wrote in Russia between 1800 and 1860, and then they stopped. Fet, on this
theory, stopped because everyone else did. This, however, contradicts every-
thing we know about his stubborn character: he was not unaware of current
fashion, and if he had wanted to write according to his sense of what his
times called for, it is not only his anthological poetry that would have come
to a standstill. Moreover, as we shall see in Chapter Three especially, Fet’s
usage was always a tad out of line, compared with his contemporaries’.
There is no indication that he took his lonely situation, in that respect, as
anything but a badge of honor. I would suggest something else: for nearly
twenty years, Fet wrote what his contemporaries accepted as superb antho-
logical poetry because that is what he was, then, very good at doing. He
stopped not because this early poetry was an aberration unsuited to his natu-
ral talents and not because his contemporaries’ tastes had changed, but be-
cause he had changed. Anthological poetry in the 1840s was an archaizing
phenomenon, but it was often written by young men. In Fet’s case, the ap-
peal of this sort of poetry was not founded on any special knowledge of, or
even interest in, ancient Greece. The appeal can only have been the kind of
poetry it was. Its technical subtlety corresponds well, in Fet’s work, to all
sorts of technical displays in other early poems.
142 Chapter Two

The literature on Fet abounds in praise of the joyous quality of his early
poetry. A related element, often overlooked, is its playfulness, its delight in
the poet’s accomplishments. Fet, as a biographical figure, was not a joyful
sort of person, and critics, especially Soviet ones, have tended to exaggerate
the happy life-affirming qualities of his poetry. The enthusiasm that over-
flows even his early love poetry evinces not so much love of life as delight
in capturing those rare bits of it that make the rest bearable: “in the words
you uttered to find even one enigmatic trait, to… correct the bygone phrases
of my speech… to rouse nocturnal darkness”. Because Fet’s poetry often
deals with everyday objects and ordinary themes, it is sometimes mistaken
for a celebration of quotidian
experience. Yet experience in- O, дoлгo буду я, в мoлчaньи нoчи тaйнoй,
heres, in Fet’s poetics, not in Кoвaрный лeпeт твoй, улыбку, взoр случaйный,
the object but in the experi- Пeрстaм пoслушную вoлoс густую прядь
Из мыслeй изгoнять и снoвa призывaть;
encer, and his poetry, early Дышa пoрывистo, oдин, никeм нe зримый,
and late, celebrates experi- Дoсaды и стыдa румянaми пaлимый,
ences that are on the whole too Искaть xoтя oднoй зaгaдoчнoй чeрты
rare.85 It also, early and late, В слoвax, кoтoрыe прoизнoсилa ты;
celebrates the poet’s ability to Шeптaть и пoпрaвлять былыe вырaжeнья
summon forth such experi- Рeчeй мoиx с тoбoй, испoлнeнныx смущeнья,
ences at will. In his early po- И в oпьянeнии, нaпeрeкoр уму,
etry, his celebration was less Зaвeтным имeнeм будить нoчную тьму.
constrained – more youthful –
than it would be later. The difference may have been just age or the artist’s
modeling of age, or partly it may have been the fading of his earliest star –
the Goethe of, for example, “Wie herrlich leuchtet … ” – and Fet’s as-
similation to a different taste. The sound play that B. Ia. Bukhshtab, for ex-
ample, suggests may have been too obtrusive for Russian taste,86 the water-
fall poem that looks like a waterfall, the “stage director’s” tendency that led
him to make of his poems little dramas87 – all of this technical exuberance
found its finest expression in his hellenizing poetry, but it is characteristic of
other early work as well.
If we examine a few of his hellenizing poems in detail, and compare
them with a few poems that are not hellenizing, I think we will see that Fet’s
anthological poems were not really against the grain of his other work at the
time that he wrote them, and that their disappearance from his oeuvre fol-
lowed naturally on the changing and deepening of his poetics.

2.3.4 Two hellenizing poems

Let us begin by returning to the two hellenizing poems that were included
both in Fet’s 1840 book, The Lyrical Pantheon, and in his self-chosen final
Seeing and knowing 143

canon. In spite of their shared beginnings and ultimate fate, they had differ-
ent intermediate histories. One of the two was the only poem Fet wrote that
was published in four collections during the poet’s lifetime – 1840, 1850,
1856, and 1863 – while the other represents a rare instance of Fet restoring
to his canon a poem that editors had rejected for the volume he published in
1856. Characteristically, the poem that was kept in the 1856 edition was a
hellenizing poem in the “French” line, while the one that Fet restored, al-
most literally over Turgenev’s dead body, was an imitation of Goethe.

We look first at a poem called “Греция”. In his review of The Lyrical Pan-
theon, P. N. Kudriavtsev singled it out for special praise:88 the poem is
“strongly permeated by the artistic spirit of ancient Greek poetry”, and is a
“finished” work that shows its author’s superiority over other aspiring po-
ets. In Fet’s second book (1850), “Греция” became the introductory work
of the group called “Антологические стихотворения”, again it was
praised,89 and when it was reprinted unchanged in his two subsequent collec-
tions, it was praised again.90 It is missing from the books of his last years,
Evening Lights, only because he excluded all his early poetry, except for
some important translations, work that he had substantially revised, and, for
his third edition of Evening Lights, a few poems not reprinted since 1850.

Греция

Тaм, пoд oливaми, близ шумнoгo кaскaдa

Гдe сoчнaя трaвa унизaнa рoсoй,
Гдe рaдoстнo кричит вeсeлaя цикaдa
И рoзa южнaя гoрдится крaсoтoй,
Гдe xрaм oстaвлeнный пoдъял свoй купoл бeлый
И пo кoлoннaм ввeрx кудрявый плющ бeжит, –
Мнe грустнo: мир бoгoв, тeпeрь oсирoтeлый,
Рукa нeвeжeствa зaбвeниeм клeймит.
Вoтщe... В пoлнóчь, кaк сoлoвeй вoстoчный
Свистaл, a я брoдил нeзримый зa стeнoй,
Я видeл: Грaции сбирaлись в чaс урoчный
В былoй приют зaрoсшeю трoпoй.
Нo в пляскax вeтрeныx бoгини нe блистaли
Мoлoчнoй пeнoй фoрм при зoлoтoй лунe;
Нeт, – стaвши в тeсный круг, крaсaвицы шeптaли...
“Эллaдa!” – слышaлoсь мнe чaстo в тишинe.
144 Chapter Two

The other poem retained by Fet from the Кoгдa пeтуx,

first book is “Когда петух,…”. It was Удaрив три рaзa
mildly criticized by Grigor’ev as too imi- Крылoм зoлoтистым,
tative of Goethe,91 Turgenev rejected it Прoтяжнoю пeснью
from the 1856 collection, and Fet restored it Встрeчaeт зaрю
to his canon, not with other poems that he И ты, чeлoвeк,
resurrected for the third edition of Evening Впивaeшь пoслeднюю
Слaдкую влaгу
Lights, but only in 1892, when he was pre-
Снa нa зaрe,
paring his list of works for re-publication in Тoгдa пoэт...
a final collection. Нeт! Спи, утoмлeнный
There are good reasons for the different Зaбoтaми дня,
reception of the two poems. They are for- Зeмнoй стрaдaлeц!
mally different, and, in addition, “Когда пе- Ты нe пoймeшь,
тух,…” shares neither the specifically “an- Зaчeм я бoдрствую
tique” thematics of “Греция” nor its struc- В тaинствeннoм xрaмe
tural limpidity. The differences between Прoxлaднoй нoчи.
them are consistent and certainly inten- Чу! слышу, вздox
tional. The most obvious differences are Кo мнe нeсeтся
formal ones. “Греция” was written in an С мягкoгo лoжa,
unobtrusively idiosyncratic combination of Гдe при сeрeбрянoй
iambic hexameter and pentameter (a metri- Лунe бeлeют
cal choice discussed in Chapter Three). It is Млaдыe лaниты,
in four rhymed quatrains, not however sep- Пoкрытыe пeрвым
Шeлкoвым пуxoм,
arated graphically even in The Lyrical Pan-
И гдe в бeспoрядкe
theon, which generally supported stanzaic Рaссыпaны кудри.
divisions visually.92 The graphics thus ap- A! слышу, слышу, –
proximate the norm for pair-rhymed iambic Ты тaкжe нe спишь,
verse, the usual Russian choice for repre- Нeсчaстный влюблeнный!
senting the French hellenizing tradition. In
Пoслушaй, чтo нынe
contrast, the German source for the form of Я слышaл нoчью
“Когда петух,…” is unmistakable, and it is Oт чaд Сaтурнa:
associated not only with Goethe, as Grigo- Oни мнe вeлeли
r’ev’s comment suggests, but also with the В зeмныx стрaдaньяx
broader German hellenizing tradition, as Искaть исцeлeнья
promoted (but not in its Goethean, amatory, У Вaкxa. Нaпoлним
mode) by Herder. The meter, in modern Стaкaны – и oбa
terms structurally a dolnik,93 of course imi- Зaснeм пoутру,
tates classical prosody. In the nineteenth- Кoгдa другиe
Пoйдут трудиться.
century Russian tradition, however, it was
analyzed as combinations of dactyls and
trochees in a single line,94 and it would have
been striking, from Russian readers’ point
Seeing and knowing 145

of view, for its weak regulation of unstressed syllables. The meter of the
poem is supported by its lack of rhyme (conventional in both classical and
German-hellenizing verse traditions) and by its being divided into segments
of uneven length. The overall form of the text is one that rejects the orderli-
ness and regularity of form that “Греция” exemplifies. It fits the conven-
tions of German hellenism, however, and it also suits the “irrational” psy-
chologism evident in its thematic organization.
The difference in psychological orientation of the two poems is evident
as soon as we start to read them. The title of “Греция” tells us exactly where
the poem is taking us, while the lack of a title for “Когда петух,…” says
that we will find out when we get there. Untitledness is a meaningful choice,
because it contrasts with the titledness of the majority of poems in the 1840
volume.95 “Когда петух,…”, however, goes even further in toying with the
reader’s sense of his ultimate destination: the poem makes a false start, be-
ginning a never-to-be-finished sentence with a lengthily descriptive setting
of the scene: “When the cock, having struck three times with its golden
wing, greets the dawn with its drawn-out song and you, man, are drinking in
the last sweet moisture of sleep at dawn, then the poet…”. Here, eleven lines
into the poem, the sentence breaks off in a speech to the sleeping addressee,
“No, sleep, earthly sufferer, worn out by the concerns of the day! You won’t
understand why I am awake in the mysterious temple of cool night”. The “I”
of the poem, a Poet, having somewhat unceremoniously entered the text,
now says (to whom?) “Hark! I hear, a sigh is borne to me from a soft bed,
where in the silvery moon young cheeks appear white, covered with the first
silken down, and where curls cascade in disorder. Ah! I hear, I hear – you
also cannot sleep, unhappy man in love!”, after which the poem concludes
with the Poet suggesting that he and his restless companion drink away the
remainder of the night and fall asleep as others set out for work in the morn-
ing. The appeal at the end of the poem in effect completes the action begun
in the initial sentence: when the rooster crows and you are clinging to your
last sleep before getting up and going off to work, then the Poet, who has
been up all night drinking, finally drops off. In the course of the poem, how-
ever, the discourse has switched from a third-person description (“then the
poet …”) to first-person perceptions: I hear a sigh, I see something in the
moonlight, in the moonlight cheeks look white, curls are in disarray. I hear
you, I know you for who you are, unhappy lover! The poet-figure, having so
insistently established himself as a sentient character in the text, then rouses
the sleeper to join him in consciousness, to be followed by unconsciousness,
in his proposal that they drink together and then go to sleep at dawn.
In spite of a few peculiarities, such as the mythological allusions and the
reference to drinking (unusual for Fet), the development of the text is per-
meated with essentials of what would be Fet’s poetics for the rest of his life.
146 Chapter Two

One such Fetian characteristic of the text is that the progression of ideas is
governed by the fictive consciousness of a poetic ego and presents his con-
struction of reality out of fragmented sensory perceptions: he extrapolates
that a young man is not sleeping because he hears a sigh, when he then looks
he sees familiar cheeks and curls, out of which he reconstructs the whole
young man. The metonymic construction of the text is thus in the service of
its dominant perceptual orientation. Second, the consciousness controlling
the text is presented in an irrational mode. Connections from one idea to the
next are tenuous or even explicitly cut off; for example, there is nothing in
the poem to tell us whether the addressee at the end of the poem is the same
as the one at the beginning. Third, the end of the poem, in “completing” the
initial “fragment” that the poet has rejected, revisits the beginning of our
text, creating a kind of conceptual ring structure. Fet was was famous for his
use of ring structures, although the notion of a ring usually involves verbal
repetition, little in evidence here. At the same time, and this is our fourth
point, the structure of the poem demonstrates Fet’s general predilection for
building his poems on a trajectory of rising consciousness. The text “re-
jected” at the beginning of the poem started with a cockcrow and a man
asleep but on the verge of waking, and it was approaching, when it was cut
off, an ending in which the Poet would fall asleep. The rejected text is “re-
placed” by another text, the first element of which is the rejected poem, now
situated within the consciousness of the Poet. The rejection thus introduces
both a new layer of consciousness, which generates and then rejects the ini-
tial poem and then generates increasingly “rational” sensory observations
(hearing first, then seeing – we return to this below). The Poet then goes on
to evoke a yet more alert consciousness, calling on the addressee to rouse
himself and respond to his proposal. After painting their future activity, he
refers to their going to sleep at dawn, but he stops not with that, but with
other people’s engaging in conscious daily life. The poem thus combines a
rising curve of consciousness with profoundly Fetian indifference to whose
consciousness it is. The poem is the earliest of Fet’s canonical texts to com-
pare different levels of consciousness, and its approach, in which conscious-
ness is split not only between wakeful poet and sleeping friend but between
“now present” and “imagined future” textual figures, anticipates Fet’s later
treatments of imagined time. The poem is clearly situated in the context of
both the playfulness of his early iconic poems and his more lasting interest
in consciousness, even at the expense of personality.
In the opinion of its nineteenth-century readers, “Когда петух,…” was
not a successful poem. Fet tells us that he never published a poem that the
editors of his books disliked, so, in 1856, “Когда петух,…” was gone. What
was better about “Греция”?
Seeing and knowing 147

We have already seen that it was formally much more approachable than
“Когда петух,…”, but it also had the advantage of not mentioning roosters
(Fet’s characteristically prosaic vocabulary is here in evidence), and of hav-
ing as its title, its setting, its topic, and more or less its whole raison d’être,
the very Greece that young poets were supposed to be inspired by in 1840:
white, ruined, covered with ivy, and inhabited by sad Graces.
Another thematic characteristic less obviously in favor of “Греция”, and
less clearly distinguishing it from “Когда петух,…” is that it is virtually
devoid of even a distant hint of eroticism. The eroticism of Fet’s early hel-
lenizing poems is one of their most striking attributes, and one that clearly
links them to Goethe’s Roman Elegies. It is well illustrated in “Сон и
Пазифая”:
Яркo блeстящaя пряжкa нaд бeлoю пoлнoю грудью
Дeвы-xaриты млaдoй – ризы вязaлa кoнцы,
Свeжий вeнoк прилeгaл к высoкo пoдвязaнным кoсaм,
Сeрьги с пoдвeскoй трoйнoй с блeскoм кaчaлись в ушax,
Сзaди вились пo плeчaм, умaщeнныe слaдкoю aмбрoй,
Зaпax дaлeкo лия вoлны кудрeй зoлoтыx.
Тиxo ступaлa нoгa круглoбeдрaя. Тaк Пaзифaю
Юнoшa Сoн увидaл, пoлoн жeлaнья любви.
Крeпкoй oбвитa рукoй, пoкрaснeлa xaритa млaдaя,
Нo вoзрaстaющий жaр вeжды прeкрaсный сoмкнул,
И, в упoeньи любви нa цвeты oпускaяся, дeвa,
Члeны рaскинув, с кудрeй свoй урoнилa вeнoк.
It was presumably because of the connection between the Roman Elegies
and Fet’s amorous neo-classical poems that Apollon Grigor’ev, when he
edited Fet’s poetry, placed in a special group called “Элегии” all the hel-
lenizing poems in which a first-person fictive lover is presented con-
templating or conversing with his beloved. This left as anthological poems
only those hellenizing texts in which love or desire is lacking or attenuated,
or is attributed to someone other than the poet.96 This division of the poetry,
new in the 1850 edition, left “Когда петух,…” stranded. It is not close en-
ough to a love poem to fit in the “Elegies”, but among the “Антологические
стихотворения”, where it appears, it stands out among other reasons be-
cause of the dramatic and emotional activity of the poetic persona. “Грец-
ия”, in this respect, had more in common with Fet’s “Водопад”, as well as
more recent poems in the 1850 “anthological” group, for example “Diana”,
or the roughly contemporary thanatopsis “Moist bed abandoned, Phoebus
gold-curled directed…”.
Влaжнoe лoжe пoкинувши, Фeб злaтoкудрый нaпрaвил
Быстрыx кoнeй, фaэтoнoву гибeль, зa рoзoвoй эoс;
Крутo нaпрягши брaзды, oн кругoм oзирaлся, и тoтчaс
Бoйкиe взoры eгo устрeмились нa бeрeг пустынный.
148 Chapter Two

Тaм вoскурялся тумaн блaгoвoннoю жeртвoю; мoрe

Тиxo у жeлтыx пeскoв пoчивaлo; рaзбитaя лoдкa,
Днoм oпрoкинутa ввeрx, пoлoвинoй в вoдe, пoлoвинoй
В утрeннeм вoздуxe, тeмнoй смoлoю чeрнeлa – и тут жe,
Влeвo, рaзбрoсaны были oблoмки eлoвыe вeсeл,
Кoжaный щит и шeлoм oпрoкинутый, пoлныe тины.
Дaльшe, кoгдa пoрaссeялись вoлны тумaнa сeдoгo,
Oн увидaл нa трaвe, пoд зeлeным нaвeсoм кaштaнa
(Трижды eгo oбeжaвши, лoзa oкружaлa кистями), –
Юнoшу oн нa трaвe увидaл: бeлoснeжныe члeны
Были рaскинуты, прaвoй рукoю кaк будтo тeснил oн
Грудь, и нa нeй-тo прeкрaснoe тeлo нeдвижнo лeжaлo,
Лeвaя нaвзничь упaлa, и бeлыe фoрмы нa тeмнoй
Зeлeни трaв блaгoвoнныx вo всeй пoлнoтe рисoвaлись;
Вeсь был рaзoдрaн xитoн, oкруглeнныe бeдрa бeлeли,
Будтo бы мрaмoр, приявший изгибы oт рук Прaкситeля,
Нoги кaзaли свoи пoкрoвeнныe прaxoм пoдoшвы,
Свeтлыe кудри чeлa упaдaли нa грудь, oсeняя
Мeртвую силу лицa и глубoкo-смeртeльную язву.

2.3.5 The senses and the imagination in Fet’s anthological poetry

“Греция” and “Когда петух,...”, like most other anthological poems of the
1840s, share a strong visual orientation, but they differ in how visuality is
represented and exploited. Like “Водопад”, “Греция” begins with an ex-
plicit setting and an expression of place (там): the poet is in a remarkable
location, the details of which he points out to others as he watches. The
poem is a mainly visual exploration of space, in which readers are invited to
rely on a textual speaker as their guide. In contrast, the Poet-observer in
“Когда петух,…” extrapolates from partial details to the external physical
whole to which they pertain. Although “Когда петух,…” exploits visual
signals (the cheeks and curls), they are merely signals from which the Poet
reconstitutes the person they represent. The evolution of perceptions in
“Когда петух,…” establishes the pattern still used decades later, in “This
morning, this joy”, discussed in the previous section: it is sound that first
draws the Poet’s attention, and only then does he gradually make out the
visual object that is the source. Sounds are less readily localized than are
visual stimuli, and tend to lack temporal persistence, and for this reason
were for Fet, as for virtually all other writers in the Western tradition, less
rational, more “subjective”, and less accessible to “objectivization” (that is,
systematic association with external sources) than vision.97 In Fet’s repre-
sentation of dawning awareness, the more elusive and liminal awareness of
sound comes first, followed by increasingly lucid stages of visual awareness.
Seeing and knowing 149

It has been traditional in the Western tradition since Plato to privilege,

first, sight and, second, hearing as the senses preeminently suited to aesthetic
response.98 Vision has typically been perceived as the least primitive of the
senses, and descriptive poetry is normally thought of as visualizing. Yet very
little of Fet’s hellenizing poetry relies on visualization alone. The two poems
we have been discussing both use sound, and the difference in the way they
do is important for the overall tenor of the poems. Elsewhere in his helleniz-
ing poems, Fet uses the sound of speech to heighten drama: lovers quarrel in
“Амимона”, women shout and laugh in “Даки”, the poet regularly ad-
dresses his mistress and his male acquaintances. When the poems are silent,
silence is meaningful. The poem “Сон и Смерть” (1858-59) exploits sound-
lessness as an expressive device uniquely suited to its thematics, while the
silence of “Сон и Пазифая” lends the text gravity and contributes to its ex-
plicitly visual quality (“так Пазифаю Юноша Сон увидал”).99 Pasithea’s
footsteps are seen rather than heard, perhaps because the person perceiving
them is Sleep. And yet Pasithea captures the fancy of Sleep partly by the fra-
grance of ambergris, and smell is perhaps the most primitive sense of all.
The olfactory cortex is the oldest part of the brain’s limbic system, and it is
intimately connected with such elemental characteristics as memory and –
what is relevant here – sexual stimulation. The sensory richness of Fet’s po-
etry is well known, but in the hellenizing poetry it is striking also how per-
fectly motivated each sensory evocation seems to be.
Fet not only exploited the more primitive senses but also presented sen-
sory perceptions in a way that commingled them. In “Сон и Пазифая”, for
example, the smell of ambergris is rendered visually, in the hair that has
been anointed and in the distance that the perfume travels. The highly devel-
oped visuality of the poem makes it seem picture-like, but there is no reason
to believe that “Сон и Пазифая” was a response to any work of visual art.
The scent of ambergris guarantees that, even if there was a pictorial source,
the verbal text evokes non-pictorial stimuli. In fact, ekphrasis at its most
classical may describe a sight that has never been seen and even, for that
matter, a sight that could not possibly be seen, not only because what is de-
scribed is fictional but also because of the limits of pictorial art: the usual
examples here are the shields of Achilles and Aeneas.100 In Fet’s anthologi-
cal poetry, seeing is often with the mind’s eye. This is evident in the illu-
sionism of “Diana”, for example, but it is even clearer in some poems that
are entirely devoted to the presentation of objects that in principle cannot be
seen.
An obvious example is “Кусок мрамора” (1847), in which the speak-
er’s gaze “wanders vainly”, “vainly [his] inquiring thought wants to solve
the riddle” of what will emerge from a piece of marble on which work has
only begun.
150 Chapter Two

Кусок мрамора
Тщeтнo блуждaeт мoй взoр, измeряя твoй мрaмoр нaчaтый,
Тщeтнo пытливaя мысль xoчeт зaгaдку рeшить:
Чтo oдeвaeт кoрa грубo изрублeннoй мaссы?
Яснoe ль Титa чeлo, Фaвнa ль измeнчивый лик,
Змeй примиритeля – жeзл, крылья и стaн быстрoнoгий,
Или стыдливoсти дeв с тoнким пeрстoм нa устax?
We have noticed that this is the only one of Fet’s poems to combine elegiac
distich with sculptural thematics. The setting is presumably a sculptor’s stu-
dio, a theme that recalls Pushkin’s “Художнику” and, through that text,
Del’vig. As in Pushkin’s poem, someone essential is missing, but here it is
not the companion-poet, but the sculptor: it is his unfinished work that the
speaker contemplates. The sculptural use of elegiac distich is in this poem
specifically motivated within the Russian anthological tradition. At the same
time, Fet’s thematics are not quite sculptural, since the sculptures are only
imaginary. The poem has an element of subjective fantasy that connects it
with Fet’s elegiac distich love poems. That link is also to be discerned in
Fet’s “Сон и смерть” (1858/59).

Сон и Смерть
Бoгoм свeтa пoкинутa, дoчь Грoмoвeржцa нeмaя,
Нoчь Гeлиoсу вoслeд вoдит вoзлюблeнныx чaд.
Oбa и в мaть и в oтцa зaрoдились бeссмeртныe бoги,
Тoлькo нeсxoдны вo всeм мeжду сoбoй близнeцы:
Смуглoликий, кaк мaть, твoрeц, кaк всeзрящий рoдитeль,
Сoн и вo мрaкe никaк дня нe умeeт зaбыть;
Нo прoсвeтлeннaя дoчь лучeзaрнoгo Фeбa, дыxaньeм
Нoчи бeзмoлвнoй пoлнa, нeвoзмутимaя Смeрть,
Увeнчaвши свoe чeлo нeпoдвижнoй звeздoю,
Нe узнaeт ни oтцa, ни бeзутeшную мaть.
This is one of Fet’s last anthological poems, and also one of his few original
elegiac distich texts written after 1847. It shares with “Кусок мрамора” the
trait of visualizing the invisible, and it is a splendid reification of the final
nothingness that Fet elsewhere said death is. The thematics of “Сон и
смерть” are classical,101 but Fet’s poem represents no Greek perception of
death, nor even pretends to. The figure of death, “as a person, hardly rises to
the level of a mythological figure” among the Greeks,102 and the myth of
Death as the brother of Sleep was probably more valued by the Germans.
Following the German tradition, Fet appropriates from Greek culture a vehi-
cle for his own sensibility. Fet would later write, “Ты только отрицанье
Всего, что чувствовать, что мне узнать дано” (“Ничтожество”, 1880),
and here each of the attributes of Death is a kind of negation: she is filled
Seeing and knowing 151

with the breath of a night that does not speak, she is imperturbable, her star
never moves, she does not recognize her parents, her mother cannot be con-
soled. Even the image of the mother inconsolable before death is denied its
usual force, since Fet transmutes a causal relationship into pure metonymy:
Night mourns her loss, but her emotion, the only emotion in the poem, is not
inspired by Death. Death responds to nothing and causes no response. This
objectification of the figure of death, which distinguishes death in “Сон и
смерть” from its representation elsewhere in Fet’s poetry, unites the poem
not with any classical body of literature or art representing death but rather
with Fet’s anthological poems on other themes. It is not the theme of death
that characterizes the place of the poem in Fet’s oeuvre, but its success in
turning death into a visible object, a beautiful object whose beauty but not
whose objecthood is reflected in Fet’s later characterization of death as
“игрушка…моей тоскующей мечты” (“Смерти” [“Я в жизни обмирал и
чувство это знаю,…”], 1884). It was only in his later work that Fet really
came to serious consideration of the nothingness of death, but in this, the
closing work of his anthological poems, its vacuity is expressed by sensory
restriction: the mother Night is “немая”, and so is the poem.
“Сон и смерть” is not, however, really typical of Fet’s anthological po-
etry, any more than it is typical of the thematics of his elegiac distich. It is
one of seven poems added to the cycle now called “anthological poems”
after the compilation of the edition of 1856.103 Like such descriptive poems
as “Зевс” and “К Сикстинской Мадонне”, mentioned earlier, these poems
were written in the wake of Fet’s European tour of 1856-57, when he had an
opportunity, unique in his experience, to visit a number of important Euro-
pean museums at his leisure. Together, the new poems comprise nearly a
third of the anthological cycle in the standard editions. All the new antho-
logical poems refer to subject matter that belongs one way or another to the
ancient world – an exclusivity not previously characteristic of Fet’s antho-
logical poetry.104 At the same time, the new poems differ from Fet’s earlier
ones in accentuating the mediated quality of modern perceptions of mythol-
ogy and the antique. Four of the seven poems refer directly to known works
of art which are identified in the titles or subtitles of the poems. “Даки”
shows the poet encountering a Roman statue of a Dacian and being led to
meditate on the Western response to the Slavs throughout history. The mod-
ern artistic reference of two of the poems is established by subtitles: we
learn that “Нимфа и молодой сатир” presents us not with just any nymph
and satyr but with the “Группа Ставассера”, and that “Диана, Эндимион и
сатир” not only captures an episode out of Greek mythology but also de-
scribes a Russian painting (“Картина Брюллова”). “Венера Милосская”
needed no subtitle. Although the sculpture referred to is an ancient one (not
so ancient as Fet must have thought), it was at the time Fet saw it, in the
152 Chapter Two

Louvre, at the height of its modern popularity, having been much touted by
the French for reasons having as much to do with nationalism as with aes-
thetics.105 This new quality of mediated antiquity imbues even the three
texts, including “Сон и смерть”, that do not refer directly to the plastic and
pictorial arts: they promote not the “naive” spontaneity praised by Botkin so
much as the sophistication of a modern perception informed by knowledge
of multiple sources. This is when Fet wrote his “Телемак у Калипсы”, re-
ferred to earlier (and discussed again in Chapter Three), and this is when he
wrote “Золотой век”, which evokes numerous earlier treatments; Schiller is
quoted in the epigraph. “Сон и смерть” fits well in this context, in that it
reads not only like a characterization of Death and Sleep but also like a de-
scription of an ancient memorial for a dead person.106 It is less a visualiza-
tion of the invisible than a description of a visual work of art that the poet
cannot have seen.
Poetry with a clear visual orientation may stretch the limits of physical
seeing, and promote “mind’s eye” seeing instead. On the whole, Fet’s
visuality is rationally motivated: both “Греция” and “Когда петух,…” are
set at night, and both poems refer to moonlight that permits the poetic “I” to
see. Whereas, however, the nighttime setting of “Когда петух,…” motivates
privileging sound over sight, as well as the fragmentary nature of the visual
impressions presented, the moonlight in “Греция” rationalizes the poem’s
dominant visuality. Here, just as in other respects, the two poems share an
important element, namely their moonlit setting, but differ in how it
functions, and, as in other respects, it is “Греция” that promotes the
“higher” visual perceptions. Yet even “Греция” is characteristic of early Fet,
and this in several ways.
To start with, there is the night setting. In and of itself, Fet’s nocturnal-
ism, although recurrent in his work, is not particularly distinctive. It does,
however, serve to rationalize what is usually taken to be the subjectivity or
irrationality of the poetry in which it is in evidence. Commenting on the
associations of nighttime with irrational phenomena, Kudriavtsev points out
that the night setting has the special value for Fet of promoting synaesthesia,
which the reviewer associates with sensory deprivation: in the absence of
competition from the “objective” coloration of daylight, the poet’s sensory
memory joins visual and auditory sensations in “subjective” ways. If we
hear canary song, we may be reminded of canaries, including of what they
look like. If we see a canary, even if it is not singing, it will presumably
remind us of the sound of canary song, and it will presumably be less likely
to bring to mind other, unrelated sounds. In Kudriavtsev’s analysis, sounds
in Fet are “golden” and “silver” at night because there is little possibility of
anything else being of any immediately perceptible color at all, while sounds
cannot be localized in a way that corresponds to an “objective” visualization
Seeing and knowing 153

of their source, which might in memory have some other associations. What
the reviewer explicitly admires as the poet’s subjective creativity he at the
same time analyzes in terms of a rational theory of sense perception and
memory. The tension of rationalization and irrational perception is
sometimes stronger in Fet’s poetry, sometimes weaker, but it makes itself
felt in nearly every text.
Second, no matter how prominent the description of the ancient temple,
still, the first-person experiencer, here presented as the Observer of a hidden
ancient world, is nonetheless placed at the center of the poem, and his feel-
ing sad is the main predication, indeed the whole experiential nexus of the
work. The Observer in “Греция” and the Poet of “Когда петух,…” are ob-
viously similar: a first-person figure watches others, and it is his perceptions
and experience that control or filter the textual reality. More broadly, the
presence of an explicit “I” who identifies himself as such in the poem is
characteristic of the younger Fet, for whom it was also characteristic that
this “I” should explicitly reveal his own emotions. Fet’s emotional effusions
sometimes jarred his readers, and one of Turgenev’s most consistent efforts
in editing the 1856 collection was restraining them. The clarity, rationality,
and restraint that Turgenev and other colleagues are generally agreed to have
promoted are sometimes characterized, in shorthand, as the typically “antho-
logical” tendencies of Fet’s work in the 1850s, but this equation does justice
neither to the rich variety and sometimes pronounced irrationality of Fet’s
anthological poetry, nor to the deep and far-reaching effect that Turgenev’s
views had on Fet’s work. In particular, during the period when Turgenev
was editing Fet’s poetry, there disappeared from it not only the emotional
effusions that he disliked but also the persona who experienced them: there
is practically no explicit reference to an “I” in Fet’s poetry of the 1850s. If
we look just at the so-called anthological poems, in the form they take in the
modern canon, it turns out that, although the quantity of text is almost iden-
tical, a first-person pronoun form occurs 23 times in texts written before
1850, and only 8 times in texts written afterward. The distribution is skewed
in the same direction, although not so severely, for the whole oeuvre, ca-
nonical or not, regardless of whether we view the poems in their initial or
later variant forms. In later Fet, the “I” reappears, but he is never again so
frequent or so emotionally effusive. This is not to say, by any means, that
the perceptual filter of an observer, even an explicit Observer persona, is
necessarily lacking after 1849; quite the contrary. But he conceals himself
more effectively than does the Observer in “Греция”.
And how does the Observer hide in “Греция”? Partly in ways remi-
niscent of “Водопад”: iconically. The lines of the poem are wrapped fore
and aft around his first appearance, and in two of his appearances he lurks in
an oblique case subordinated to his predicate rather than controlling it
154 Chapter Two

through grammatical agreement. In the poetic world of the text, the Observer
hides with all the subtlety of Pyramus as played by Nick Bottom the
Weaver: behind a Wall. Walls are, indeed, a stock element of stage settings,
and they are characteristic of Fet’s work only in his early years, when he
was still attempting to write plays. There, however, they are abundant. There
is even an early poem called “Стена” (1842), in which the wall is the main
figure in the text: it “hearkens to every sound” of nature and “answers with
an echo”. Fet used the word cтена more than twice as often in poetry from
the first two years of his career than in all the poetry of his last three dec-
ades. Fet’s early walls are associated with often playful hiding. In “Греция”,
the wall is an explicit means of assuring that the Observer will not become
the Observed, and in this respect it is superior to those other great architec-
tural apertures, the door and, most important, the window. All three ele-
ments are significant in Fet’s work.

2.3.6 Fet’s doors and windows

The door is the least frequent of the three main architectural elements, and
the only one more typical of late than early Fet. Whereas, in his early poetry,
doors shows up only together with windows, later they play a more inde-
pendent role and appear in varied thematic contexts: love (“Говорили в
древнем Риме…”, 1883), nature and the passages of life (“Ты пoмнишь,
чтo былo тoгдa…”, 1885), and the poet’s role (“Муза” [“Ты xoчeшь
прoклинaть, рыдaя и стeня...”, 1887], “Оброчник” [“Xoругвь свящeнную
пoдъяв свoeй дeснoй,…”, 1889]). Doors are usually closed, although the
one leading out of Paradise has been left ajar. The door is a barrier, but for
the older Fet a venerable one. It separates and also protects the sacred from
the profane.
Fet has a special affinity for windows, but, like walls, they are explicit
mostly in his early verse: over half the occurrences of the word окно are in
poems written no later than 1847. Fet uses окно roughly twice as often as
стена, and much more often than other nineteenth-century poets. His usage
has been treated as an antecedent
of Pasternak’s.107 Of all Fet’s Оброчник
architecture, it is his windows Xoругвь свящeнную пoдъяв свoeй дeснoй,
that have the broadest functions, Иду – и трoнулaсь зa мнoй тoлпa живaя,
sometimes overlapping with the И пoтянулись всe пo прoсeкe лeснoй,
functions of other architectural И я блaжeн и гoрд, святыню вoспeвaя.
elements. The wall in “Греция”, Пoю – и пoмыслaм нeвeдoм дeтский стрax:
indeed, functions less like most Пускaй нa пeньe мнe oтвeтят вoeм звeри, –
of Fet’s other walls than like his С святынeй нaд чeлoм и пeснью нa устax,
windows: it separates observer С трудoм, нo я дoйду дo вoждeлeннoй двeри.
Seeing and knowing 155

from observed while constraining their mutual perception. The main differ-
ence between the wall in “Греция” and the typical window is that the wall
enables the Observer to hide, whereas one usually thinks of a window as
transparent – visually penetrable in both directions. As we see in “Греция”,
however, walls can be visually penetrated, whether by peering around or
looking through a chink, while Fet’s windowpanes are often enough not
penetrable or seem to function unidirectionally.
In Fet’s early poetry, windows are usually transparent but often frame
things. The poet may look out through the window (“Печальная береза…”,
1842), or he may want to catch a glimpse of someone indoors (“Ее окно”,
1842). As we have seen, women personae are often presented as confined
Пeчaльнaя бeрeзa within Fet’s texts, and they are often to be found
У мoeгo oкнa, looking out from the windows that the poet has
И приxoтью мoрoзa provided for them. One of the best known of Fet’s
Рaзубрaнa oнa.
early poems (because it became a popular song) is
Кaк грoздья винoгрaдa,
Вeтвeй кoнцы висят, – “На заре ты ее не буди...” (1842), in which the
И рaдoстeн для взглядa heroine is sleeping after having sat “for a long,
Вeсь трaурный нaряд. long time” by the window, watching the play of
Люблю игру дeнницы clouds covering the moon. In nearly all cases,
Я зaмeчaть нa нeй, windows can be seen through, although, by the
И жaль мнe, eсли птицы
mid- to latter 1840s, closing a window can also
Стряxнут крaсу вeтвeй.
keep the outside world from intruding (“Змей”,
1847). In “Лозы мои за окном разрослись живописно и даже…” (1847),
discussed below (page 163), the native penetrability of windows has been
altered by vines so as to create privacy for those inside. Windows in early
Fet occur in all sorts of poems, including his romances, ballads, and antho-
logical poetry.
We have seen that, in a few poems beginning in his middle years, Fet as-
sociated the window with a specific thematics with its own pictorial tradition
going back to C. D. Friedrich. Around the time he began writing these po-
ems, windows in general become less frequent, rather as though their new
more specialized context was incompatible with Fet’s older usage. In his
later poetry, windows if mentioned at all tend to be presented not as things
to look through, but as barriers. In “Всю нoчь грeмeл oврaг сoсeдний, …”
(1872), a window is opened to let “the strength of musings” carry someone
“beyond the border of my native land”. In “Блaгoвoннaя нoчь, блaгoдaтнaя
нoчь,…” (1887) a window, “shuddering slightly”, bursts open “to glance in-
to the silvery night”:
Блaгoвoннaя нoчь, блaгoдaтнaя нoчь,
Рaздрaжeньe нeдужнoй души!
Всe бы слушaл тeбя – и мoлчaть мнe нeвмoчь
В гoвoрящeй тaк яснo тиши.
156 Chapter Two

Ширoкo рaскидaлaсь лaзурнaя высь,

И oгни зoлoтыe гoрят;
Эти звeзды кругoм тoчнo всe сoбрaлись,
Нe мигaя, смoтрeть в этoт сaд.
A уж мeсяц, чтo всплыл нaд зубцaми aллeй
И в лицo прямo смoтрит, – oн жгуч;
В нeдaлeкoй тeни нeпрoглядныx вeтвeй
И свeркaeт, и плeщeтся ключ.
И мeняeтся звукoв oтдeльный удaр;
Тaк лaскaтeльнo шeпчут струи,
Слoвнo рoбкиe струны вoркуют гитaр,
Нaпeвaя призывы любви.
Слoвнo всe и гoрит и звeнит зaoднo,
Чтoб мeчтe нeвoзмoжнoй пoмoчь;
Слoвнo, дрoгнув слeгкa, рaспaxнeтся oкнo
Пoглядeть в сeрeбристую нoчь.

Elsewhere, the closed window is itself an object of perception. A man reads

the future of his love in the frost of the windowpane (“У окна” [“К окну
приникнув головой…”, 1871]). Windows are shuttered (“Окна в решет-
ках, и сумрачны лица…”, 1882).
As this summary shows, early walls may take on the penetrability of win-
dows, and windows (especially the rarely-mentioned late windows), may be
barriers, like walls. Chronological characteristics cut across architectural
ones: early architecture usually helps Observers see others, whereas late ar-
chitecture tends to function as a barrier. Architecture, moreover, is relatively
infrequent in the later poetry, and it is often specially motivated. For exam-
ple, poems with doors and windows serve as the introductions to three of the
four editions of Evening Lights: “Окна в решетках, и сумрачны лица…” is
the introduction to the first volume, “Муза” – to the third volume, and
“Оброчник” – to the fourth. Architecture in the later poetry goes un-
mentioned even where textual perspective is consistent with what might be
seen at a window. For example, in a poem of the 1860s, “Какая грусть! Ко-
нец аллеи…”, the speaker may well be describing what he sees looking out
from his closed window (it is the dead of winter, but the speaker’s emotion
centers on sorrow, not frostbite), but the window is not in the text. The in-
frequency of the word “window” in the later poetry may be attributable not
only to the transmutation of the object into a less typical, because more bar-
rier-like, kind of window, but also to the redundancy of the stage-set archi-
tecture in early Fet. The window that is not redundant is the barrier-window,
while non-barrier windows have become infinitely transparent. The reduc-
tion of architecture in the later poems corresponds to a reduction in staging.
Seeing and knowing 157

There are fewer things in Fet’s late poetry than there were before, and those
things are essential, both in the sense of being needed and in the sense of
being unalloyed essence – the symbolic rooks, for example, that we noticed
in Chapter One. This reduction in stage props, in inessential things, is the
semantic correspondence to a formal trait that we shall discuss further in our
last chapter: the brevity of Fet’s last poems.
It also corresponds to something else. We have remarked on the sensu-
ousness of Fet’s hellenizing poetry, and of his early poetry generally. He
exploited the perceptions of all the senses, but, in his hellenizing poetry,
visuality is especially highly developed. This entails presenting objects in
the poems, but they were there not for their own sake, but to express subjec-
tive emotion, invoked through the reconstruction of, especially, visual per-
ceptions. M. L. Gasparov, contrasting Fet’s way of building a landscape
with Tiutchev’s, has emphasized the great-
er role played by verticality in Tiutchev, Кaкaя грусть! кoнeц aллeи
and the primacy of distance, and distances, Oпять с утрa исчeз в пыли,
in Fet.108 Yet with age, as most of us dis- Oпять сeрeбряныe змeи
cover, the eye loses its ability to refocus Чeрeз сугрoбы пoпoлзли.
rapidly, to look quickly now closer and Нa нeбe ни клoчкa лaзури,
now further away, and perhaps the desire В стeпи всe глaдкo, всe бeлo,
for re-focusing, as for other things, also Oдин лишь вoрoн прoтив бури
lessens. Fet was always a master of Крылaми мaшeт тяжeлo.
changes of scale and focus, but in his last И нa душe нe рaссвeтaeт,
years he was nearly blind, and his gaze was В нeй тoт жe xoлoд, чтo кругoм,
fixed. Whereas Fet at twenty-two would Лeнивo думa зaсыпaeт
mention seeing both the sad birchtree and Нaд умирaющим трудoм.
the window through which he could ob- A всe нaдeждa в сeрдцe тлeeт,
serve it, the older Fet watched either the Чтo, мoжeт быть, xoть нeвзнaчaй,
window-pane or what lay beyond. In much Oпять душa пoмoлoдeeт,
of his poetry, including “Какая грусть! Oпять рoднoй увидит крaй,
Конец аллеи…”, the split in focus is not
Гдe бури прoлeтaют мимo,
between two degrees of physical distance, Гдe думa стрaстнaя чистa, –
but between a vision of the world he saw И пoсвящeнным тoлькo зримo
before him and a vision of the world he Цвeтeт вeснa и крaсoтa.
saw within, farther away than any eye
could see.
158 Chapter Two

2.4 Representing subjects: observers, secrecy, and the idle spy

Fet’s is a poetry of translation: of self into alien things, and of things into
appurtenances of poetic mind. Sensory experience and memory are at the
core of his poetics, and an experiencing or remembering mind within the
texts often overtly or covertly mediates between the reader and the experi-
ence that the poet induces in him. Although Fet’s poetry evokes all five
senses, vision is often where it begins and ends. In his later poetry espe-
cially, visuality is often metaphorical. Seeing becomes a mode of under-
standing and, ultimately, of vicarious being. In the context of such efflores-
cent visuality, the traditional figure of the textual observer takes up perma-
nent residence in Fet’s poetry. By an ob-
109
server in the text I mean someone whose
А. А. Фету attention is actively engaged in looking at
Иным дoстaлся oт прирoды objects in it, as distinct from an unreflecting
Инстинкт прoрoчeски-слeпoй – experiencer of them. One can, in fact, di-
Oни им чуют, слышaт вoды vide Fet’s poems into those in which an
И в тeмнoй глубинe зeмнoй… observer is present, and those in which
Вeликoй Мaтeрью любимый,
there is none, and the difference will
Стoкрaт зaвиднeй твoй удeл – roughly correspond to the differentiation
Нe рaз пoд oбoлoчкoй зримoй that is often made between, on one hand,
Ты сaмoe ee узрeл… his “gushingly lyrical” ecstatic line of
verse,110 and, on the other, his descriptive
Ф. И. Тютчев poems. The correlation is not perfect, and,
14 апреля 1862
in general, I think it may be more helpful to
think of the conventional dichotomy not as
a division into two groups but more as two
poles toward which Fet’s poems are more or less attracted. I draw attention
to the correlation of the kinds of Fet’s poetry with the presence in them of
observers because it is asymmetrical. An essential characteristic of Fet’s
ecstatic verse – “Шeпот, робкое дыханье,…”, for example – is the presen-
tation of experience unmediated by the personality of any textual observer
distinct from the unreflecting experiencer. The presence of an observer,
however, is not limited to what is typically viewed as Fet’s descriptive verse.
The “personalitylessness” that is widely considered a quality of Fet’s poetry
in general, and not only of his descriptive poems, often derives not from the
texts being uninhabited, but rather from their being peopled by strangers.
In Fet’s early poetry, as we have seen, people watch from windows, they
watch from behind walls. They will also look in mirrors, in water, down
from clouds, and out from doors. The young poet’s bent for the possibilities
of observation meant also that he greatly developed such related motifs as
invisibility, while, in later poetry, observers are especially likely to come out
Seeing and knowing 159

from behind the architecture, and watch nature face to face. The mood and
mindset of the watcher differ in different parts of the oeuvre, the watcher
may be a man or a woman, nosy neighbors, or the stars above. There are
endless variations in what it is that the watcher sees, and often there are sev-
eral of them, watching one another. Often the poems with observers are ele-
gant in their use of perspective and lines of sight, but Fet’s observers are not
mere bearers of perspective or imagined speech or even psychic activity, nor
are they by any means always the poetic “I” or the speaker in the text. They
function not only as textual devices through which the poet controls poetic
form and structure, but also as figures of considerable semantic weight: their
presence is essential to what the texts are about. Some kinds of observation
are to be feared, hidden from. Most often, this is the spying of the ignorant,
the dangerous crowd, and there are a few other malevolent watchers as well:
an ironic “antedeluvian dandy” in the early poem “Прекрасная, она стояла
тихо…”, and the powerful father in “Зевс”. Most observers in Fet, however,
are remarkably benevolent participants in the lives of those who are aware of
their presence. They are witnesses to life and legitimators of it. They know
others’ secrets and protect intimacy. They animate the objects they observe
and participate in the vitality of the objects they have animated.
Descriptive texts have an obvious role for observers: I/he looked at thus-
and-so, and here is what I/he saw. Since the anthological poetry that Fet
wrote in the latter 1840s and 1850s tends toward ekphrasis, it is natural that
it should be full of observers, if only to control textual viewpoint. Even here,
however, the sights are most of all before the mind’s eye. Beside a sleeping
lake, the observer watches mermaids rustle weeds on the water. In a sculp-
tor’s studio, he idly wonders about the figures that might emerge from a
block of marble. Seeing a young boy, he observes not only his features of
the moment – his “lively gaze, tender cheeks” – but also “outbursts of
friendship, indignation, wrath”, and finally he looks forward to the boy’s
future successes – presented in the classically Fetian terms of how he will be
observed by ghostly others: “Everything in him promises a favorite of keen-
eyed maids”. We have already seen how, in “Diana”, a speaker-observer
watches a lifelike statue of the goddess apparently herself observing her city;
this purest of descriptive texts, however, is also one in which the textual “I”
is so drawn into the world of the text by his psychological involvement with
the statue-goddess that he is anguished by the eventual termination of his
relationship with her.
As we have seen, Fet’s poetry at the end of the 1840s moves away from
using the pronoun “I”, and the first-person observer is also less in evidence.
He is to some extent replaced by other, third-person, figures: Sleep watching
Pasithea, for example, and Helios, as he contemplates the corpse of
160
Телемак у Калипсы
Сoлнцe низкo. Лeгкoй мглoю
Вeчeр дoлы нaпoяeт.
Вxoд в пeщeру рaззoлoчeн.
С нaклoнeннoй гoлoвoю
Стaрый Мeнтoр зaсыпaeт.
Сын Улиссa oзaбoчeн.
Смoлкли нимфы. Тиxo дышит
Мoрe, пaр пoдъяв тумaнный.
Всe бeзмoлвствуют упoрнo.
Нимфa Эxo яснo слышит,
Кaк смoлы блaгoуxaннoй
Нa жaрoвнe прыщут зeрнa.
Пoлны слaдкoгo Лиeя,
Ждут рaскрытыe aмфoры;
Нo зaбыл густую влaгу
Сын прeкрaсный Oдиссeя;
Oн пoднять нe смeeт взoры,
Oн ступить нe смeeт шaгу.
Нa душe и стыд, и гoрe:
Кaк oсмeлиться бoгинe
Рaсскaзaть свoю кручину?
“Нeужeли, злoe мoрe,
Зaвтрa я в твoeй пустынe
Всe зaбуду, чтo пoкину?”
Рaзгoрaясь в блeскe aлoм
Oтлeтaющeй Aврoры,
Нo бeзмoлвнa, кaк рaбыня,
Грудь прикрылa oпaxaлoм
И, склoня к любимцу взoры,
Нe нaсмoтрится бoгиня.
O Зeвeс! Зaчeм жe лирa
Тaк бeссильнa – дaр, любимый
Злaтoвлaсым Aпoллoнoм?
Иль зaчeм, влaдыкa мирa,
Взгляд тaкoй нeвырaзимый
Ты дaeшь влюблeнным жeнaм?
Chapter Two
Phaethon. In both instances, the third-
person observer controls not only read-
ers’ visual perspective but also their
sympathies.
A wonderful treatment of third-per-
son observation is “Телемак у Калип-
сы”, written in the 1850s: Telemachus,
ashamed he intends to abandon Calypso,
“does not dare lift his gaze”, while she,
in the penultimate stanza, “cannot get
her fill of looking” at her favorite. Yet
the last stanza continues Calypso’s
watching by telling us not what she saw,
but how she looked. Her implied obser-
ver speaks in classical allusions (“O
Zeus! Why is the lyre so powerless, the
gift favored by golden-haired Apollo?”),
but his emotional appeal is pure Fet: “Or
why, lord of the world, do you give such
an ineffable gaze to women in love?”
One of Fet’s last anthological poems,
“Telemachus and Calypso” betrays its
relatively late origins in emotional tenor
and thematics. Its intertwining of multi-
ple observers, however, unites it with
such earlier and later poems as, for ex-
ample, “Я знаю, гордая, ты любишь
самовластье…” (1847),111 or the late
poem “Говорили в древнем Риме…”
(1883), discussed in the next chapter.
The multiple observers in these texts be-
long more or less to the same world,
something that differentiates them from
“Греция”. In that respect, “Греция” is
one of the more successful of a number
of mostly very early poems in which ob-
servers, and observation, cross the boun-
daries of the natural or rational world,
and an observer is privileged to see what
ordinary people cannot. Such poems
include “Тайна” (“Почти ребенком я
была. …”, 1842), for example, in which
Seeing and knowing 161

a madwoman tells us about her banished lover, who visits her at will, saying:
“Не бойся, друг, я для других незрим”. Sometimes, as in “К лешему”,
published in Fet’s 1840 collection, the treatment is quasi-folkloric. Fet’s
treatment of folklore was always distanced – he furnished “К лешему” with
an explanatory footnote – and most observers found it unsuccessful. Invisi-
bility in other modalities – for example, in “Прекрасная, она стояла тихо”
(1847) – turned out to be no more successful, and the thematics of super-
natural appearances and invisibility themselves become nearly invisible in
Fet’s later work. The thematics of seeing what is normally invisible crosses
into the realms of dreaming and the supernatural, and these poems were not
congenial to the version of Fet that was edited by Turgenev and his
colleagues in the 1850s. (One vaguely necrophiliac poem, “Давно ль под
волшебные звуки…” [1842]), was the only poem Turgenev excised that Fet
restored as early as 1863.) The disappearance of early Fetian Gothic is thus
one consequence of Turgenev’s editorial practices – and mostly the poems
were not worth saving.
They did not, however, disappear without trace. The poet throughout his
career makes reference to his own imagined transformation into insub-
stantiality, sometimes communicating with the spirits of other human be-
ings, sometimes silent. In one of his very last poems, even the folkloric vi-
sion returns, as the speaker experiences the nocturnal presence of a mute
dark spirit incapable of sight, before whom the speaker suffers “тоск[a] ду-
ши”.112 As was usual throughout Fet’s work, and as remains true even at the
end, the poem comes to rest not in his vision of ultimate darkness, but in his
response to the light of day. It also ends in silence.
The young Fet often links watching and being watched with playful evo-
cations of the limitations of seeing, and he
rings many changes on this theme: “you think Тяжeлo в нoчнoй тиши
I don’t know you are watching that young Вынoсить тoску души
man, but I see you, and him as well”, “things Прeд бeзглaзым дoмoвым,
may be invisible to you but not to me”, “I Тeмным призрaкoм нeмым,
may be invisible to you but here I am”, “I am Кaк стиxийнaя вoлнa
invisible and my being here is our secret”. Нaд душoй oднa вoльнa.
Much of this early work was unsuccessful, Нo зaтo люблю я днeм,
but it is out of this interplay of watching and Кaк зaмoлкнeт всe кругoм,
hiding that there emerges a nexus of poetic Рaзличaть, рaздумья пoлн,
meaning that underlies some of the poet’s fine Тиxий плeск житeйскиx вoлн.
late works. Нe мeня гнeтeт вoлнa,
Hiddenness is an importance source of the Мысль свeжa, душa вoльнa;
variety in Fet’s treatment of observers. The Кaждый миг скaзaть xoчу:
greatest density of allusions to people hiding “Этo я!” Нo я мoлчу.
and to the secrets they protect is in the early 15 сентября 1892
162 Chapter Two

anthological elegies. Secrecy may envelope the poetic ego and his lover,
who conceal their love from others, or, as in a poem of 1842, the speaker
may also be a detective who reads a person’s secret love life in the tracks her
little shoe has left in the snow.
Знaю я, чтo ты, мaлюткa,
Луннoй нoчью нe рoбкa:
Я нa снeгe вижу утрoм
Лeгкий oттиск бaшмaчкa.
Прaвдa, нoчь при свeтe луннoм
Xoлoднa, тиxa, яснa;
Прaвдa, ты нeдaрoм, друг мoй,
Пoкидaeшь лoжe снa:
Бриллиaнты в свeтe луннoм,
Бриллиaнты в нeбeсax,
Бриллиaнты нa дeрeвьяx,
Бриллиaнты нa снeгax.
Нo бoюсь я, друг мoй милый,
Кaк бы в виxрe дуx нoчнoй
Нe зaвeял бы трoпинку,
Прoлoжeнную тoбoй.
The hidden love affair is not the only form of hiddenness in these poems,
however. In an 1847 poem, for example, “the world does not know” about
the just-budding maturity that the poet-figure observes in a girl on the edge
of adolescence: the nearly-a-woman girl is the observer’s secret.
Ee нe знaeт свeт, – oнa eщe рeбeнoк;
Нo oчeрк гoлoвы у нeй тaк чист и тoнoк,
И стoлькo тoмнoсти вo взглядe крoткиx глaз,
Чтo дeтствa мирнoгo пoслeдний близoк чaс.
Дoxнeт тeплo любви, – млaдeнчeскoe oкo
Лaзурным плaмeнeм зaсвeтится глубoкo,
И грeбeнь, лaскoвo-рaзбoрчив, будтo сaм
Пoйдeт мeдлитeльнeй пo пышным вoлoсaм,
Пeрсты румяныe, блeднeя, пoдлиннeют...
Блaжeн, ктo зaмeчaл, кaк пoстeпeннo зрeют
Злaтыe грoздия, и знaл, чтo, винoгрaд
Сбирaя, oн вoпьeт иx слaдкий aрoмaт!
Even when what is hidden from the world at large does involve a pair of
lovers, the aura of secrecy and hiding does not always unite the lovers
against outsiders. Some of the finest texts exploit the vocabulary of hiding
and discovery to characterize the poetic ego in relation not so much to the
beloved as to his memories of her: “When my dreams beyond the border of
Seeing and knowing 163

past days find you again beyond the misty haze, I weep sweetly like the first
Jew at the border of the Promised Land”. “O, long will I in the silence of
secret night chase your crafty babbling…from my thoughts and again recall
it…seen by no one I will seek even a single mysterious trait in the words
you uttered…and I will rouse nocturnal darkness with the sacred name”. A
love “hidden” in early Fet may thus be hidden not from the outside world
and not by walls or windows but rather from the lover, behind the wall of
memory.
The young Fet is preoccupied with memory in his erotic poetry. This is
shown not only in his original verse from the 1840s but also, and earliest, in
his choice of poems to translate. One of the two Horatian odes in The Lyri-
cal Pantheon is from Book I, Ode 25 (“Parcius iunctas quatiunt fen-
estras…”), which begins, in Fet’s translation: “Юноши буйные в ставни
закрытые Реже к тебе уж стучатся теперь: Крик их твой сон не прервет
и забытая Заперта дверь”. The time of the poem looks back, comparing the
present to both the boisterious past (“Реже и реже тебе: “Спишь ли ты,
Лидия – в ночь, как я сетую Страстью объят!”) and the cold future, in
which Lydia “горько заплаче[т] в передней пустой, Пуще Фракийского
ветра, что бесится С каждой луной”.
The very early “Греция” is something of a rarity among Fet’s poems in
that the observer there is mostly a filter for textual viewpoint. Even later in
the 1840s, most of his observers of what is hidden are somewhat more than
that, even if, or especially if, their presence in the text is greatly reduced:
their participation is nonetheless semantically robust. In Fet’s poem “Зевс”
(1859), for example, the malevolent father of the hidden infant Zeus is not
even mentioned; the only reason for keeping the baby hidden, however, is
that he might otherwise be seen by his father – who would then devour him.
Even a dozen years earlier, Fet puts into his texts observers explicit but ab-
sent except as part of the textual consciousness. These are the neighbors, for
example, in a wonderful poem from around 1847. The speaker knows what
they will say: “She was secretly in his room”.
Лoзы мoи зa oкнoм рaзрoслись живoписнo и дaжe
Свeт oтнимaют. Смoтри, вoт пoлoвинa oкнa
Вeрxняя тeмнoю зeлeнью листьeв пoкрытa; мeж ними,
Будтo нaрoчнo, в oкнe кисть нaчинaeт жeлтeть.
Милaя, пoлнo, нe трoгaй!.. К чeму этoт дуx рaзрушeнья!
Ты дoстaвaть винoгрaд высунeшь руку нa двoр, –
Бeлую, пoлную ручку лeгкo рaспoзнaют сoсeди,
Скaжут: oнa у нeгo в кoмнaтe тaйнo былa.
164 Chapter Two

This poem has the Goethean dramatism of early Fet. It also exhibits a kind
of iconic play that is not characteristic of Fet later. In its combination of
amorous thematics, formal delicacy, and exploitation of the iconic powers of
poetic form, it is close to the even earlier poem “Друг мой, бессильны
слова, одни поцелуи всесильны…”. But nowhere else I am aware of does
Fet so blatantly engage in the mosaic of word-placement found here, in the
lover’s hand, mingling with grapes, escaping from inner to outer worlds. It
would seem unwise to dismiss the idea that Fet thought of a Horatian model,
the ode often called “To Pyrrha” (I.v: “Quis multa gracilis te puer in
rosa…”). He published a translation of it in The Lyrical Pantheon, and he
reprinted it in his complete works of Horace. Nothing remains, in Fet’s
translation, of Horace’s enclosure of the “thou” of his text in the roses, in the
embrace of the slender youth. In Fet’s original poem, he created his own
enclosure, and his own escape.
In another poem from about the same time, the neighbors are not just un-
seen, but have even gone to bed. Yet “every sound of footsteps…the rustling
of a shadow on a wall” is enough to make observers present to the lover’s
mind.
Эx, шуткa-мoлoдoсть! Кaк нoвый, рaнний снeг
Всeгдa и чист и свeж! Цaрицa тaйныx нeг,
Лунa зeркaльнaя нaд дрeвнeю Мoсквoю
Oдну вывoдит нoчь блeстящeй зa другoю.
Чтo, всe ли улeглись, уснули? нe пoрa ль?..
Нa сeрдцe жaр любви, и трeпeт, и пeчaль!..
Бeгу! Дaлeкиe, кaк бы в вoзнaгрaждeньe,
Шлют звeзды в инee свoe изoбрaжeньe.
В сияньи пoлнoчи бeзмoлвeн сoн Крeмля.
Пoд быстрoю стoпoй прoмeрзлaя зeмля
Звучит, и пo крутoй, xoтя нeдaвнeй стужe
Дoxoдит бoй чaсoв пoрывистeй и тужe.
Бeгу! Нигдe oгня, – сoсeди пoлeгли,
И кaждый звук шaгoв, рaздaвшийся вдaли,
Иль тeни нa стeнe блeстящeй кoлыxaньe
Мнe нaпрягaeт слуx, прeрвaв мoe дыxaньe.
Hiddenness in Fet is not always of the sort we think of as secrecy. The text-
ual consciousness may also imagine events not so much secret as too inti-
mate to sanction the presence of an observer. In Fet’s very early “К
красавцу” (1841), for example, readers are invited to watch as, “When dark-
ness cloaks their bed, their mouths, opening, crave yours”. The description
imaginatively invades fictive figures’ fictive privacy, and gains much of its
force from the second-person address, which makes all of us into voyeurs.
Seeing and knowing 165

К крaсaвцу
Прирoды бaлoвeнь, кaк счaстлив ты судьбoй!
Всeм нрaвятся твoй рoст, и гoрдый oблик твoй,
И кудри пышныe, бeспeчнoстью зaвиты,
И блeднoe чeлo, и нeжныe лaниты,
Припoднятaя грудь, жeмчужный ряд зубoв,
И oгнeнный зрaчoк, и бaрxaтнaя брoвь;
A дeвы юныe, укрaдкoй oт нaдзoрa,
Тoлкуют твoй oтвeт и вырaжeньe взoрa,
И пoслe кaждaя, вздoxнув нaeдинe,
Прoмoлвит: “Дa, oн мoй – eгo oтдaйтe мнe!”
Кaк сoн млaдeнчeствa, кaк пeрвыe лoбзaнья
С oтрaвoй слaдкoю бeзумнoгo жeлaнья,
Ты пoлoн прeлeсти в иx пaмяти живeшь,
Улыбкaм учишь иx и к зeркaлу зoвeшь;
Нe для тeбя ль oни, при фaкeлe Aврoры,
Нaxoдят нoвый взгляд и нoвыe убoры?
Кoгдa жe лoжe иx oдeнeт тeмнoтa,
Aлкaют уст твoиx, рaскрывшись, иx устa.
Over time Fet’s poetry shows increasing psychological complexity and
range in the presentation of textual observers. In some of Fet’s descriptive
poems of the later 1840s and 50s, for example, figures in the text not only
imagine the presence of someone absent but also imagine, about a presence,
that it is an observer. In “Diana”, for example, the statue seems to be not
only alive but also engaged in observing the world before her. Fet also
greatly expands and deepens the observer role of the stars and other natural
phenomena. From the beginning, they are alive and communicating with the
figure of the poet – for example, in his well-known poem of 1843 “Я долго
стоял неподвижно…”, – and he continues this theme in some half dozen
major poems from the 1850s through the 1870s, as well as in other later po-
ems, in which the theme is less central to the text.113 In late poetry, on the
whole, the stars do not communicate as expansively as they once did, no
“secret bond” arises between the speaker and the stars, and, while the
speaker may confide in them (“Я всю ночь им рассказывать рад”), they
have little to say themselves. This is particularly striking in the last poems in
the cycle “Вечера и ночи”, where (in the poem “Молятся звезды,
мерцают и рдеют,…” [1883]) the stars pray and sparkle, and do indeed see
– but are silent: “Видны им наши томленья и горе, Видны страстей
неподсильные битвы, Слезы в алмазном трепещут их взоре – Все же
безмолвно горят их молитвы”. The stage-setting of Fet’s early poetry has
been transmuted into a kind of “theatrum mundi” in which human activities
are watched by the stars. In the last poem of “Вечера и ночи”, the stars see
the things that are kept secret from human beings: “From the lights, from the
166 Chapter Two

merciless crowd, Unnoticed we fled away, Only the two of us here in the
cool shade, The third one with us – the azure night”. Since celestial observ-
ers are acknowledged as such only by select individuals, they, or their true
natures, are hidden, even though they are otherwise the least hidden things in
the world.
In the text of “From the lights, Oт oгнeй, oт тoлпы бeспoщaднoй
from the merciless crowd”, it is the Нeзaмeтнo бeжaли мы прoчь;
good fortune of the “two of us here Лишь вдвoeм мы в тeни здeсь прoxлaднoй,
in the cool shade” that the crowd, Трeтья с нaми лaзурнaя нoчь.
although merciless, yet is neither Сeрдцe рoбкoe бьeтся трeвoжнo,
all-seeing nor all-powerful: “it is Жaждeт счaстьe и дaть и xрaнить;
possible to hide from people”, and Oт людeй утaиться вoзмoжнo,
the couple have not only run away Нo oт звeзд ничeгo нe сoкрыть.
but also managed to flee “unno- И бeзмoлвнa, крoткa, сeрeбристa,
ticed”. In an antithesis extending Этa пoлнoчь зa дымкoй сквoзнoй
over the entire poem, the blind mal- Видит тoлькo, чтo вeчнo и чистo,
ice of the crowd contrasts with the Чтo нaвeянo eю сaмoй.
benevolent sightedness of the natu-
ral world: “from the stars nothing is to be hidden”. Midnight has its own
selectivity of vision: it sees “beyond the transparent haze only what is eter-
nal and pure”. The virtues of the night are characteristically Fetian: it is
“wordless, gentle, silvery”, and the purity it sees is what it itself has
wrought. The poem thus distinguishes two fundamentally different kinds of
hiddenness. In the world of “From the lights, from the merciless crowd”, it is
neither good nor necessary to be unobserved; observation by the stars is in-
escapable and at the same time beneficent: it is the night that “wafts” the
purity and eternity of the experiences it witnesses. The need to run away is
provoked by fear of intimacy’s threatened violation, by consciousness that
that one imagined observer, the crowd, is “merciless”: secrecy is the special
hiddenness that protects from malice, itself associated with poverty of vi-
sion. Both secrecy and the need for it are evoked by the anticipated hostility
of human society, whereas what is eternal and pure is what is granted by
benevolent and all-seeing nature. Night, in witnessing the human experience
in the poem, also validates it as pure and eternal, as those who live it experi-
ence it as being.
“From the lights, from the merciless crowd” was written in 1889, and it
testifies to the poet’s highly evolved consciousness of what is at stake in
watching, witnessing, and hiding. People’s need to keep secrets is presented
here as a response to anticipated hostility, a socially induced condition con-
trasting with the openness that connects human experience and the natural
world. The social provocation to secrecy is a theme in Fet’s poetry from the
beginning, but it is not at first clearly evaluated as good or bad, as distinct
Seeing and knowing 167

from being merely inconvenient for lovers. Nosy (but fortunately sleeping)
neighbors are characteristic of the tonality of secrecy in the early Fet’s amo-
rous poetry. Numerous poems of the 1840s treat secrecy as a sweet burden
imposed by love, and, as we have seen, the link between secrecy and love is
often playful. Secrecy is the normal human condition for the young Fet, and
the image of a supernatural being from whom there are no secrets is not, at
this point in his work, especially positive: whereas his early poem about
“Мой ангел” depicts him as beautiful and loving, but with no particular
cognitive advantages, the matching portrait of a personal demon, in the
poem “Добрый день”, shows a being distinguished most of all by his per-
fect knowledge, at least about the speaker. “From the lights, from the merci-
less crowd” moves omniscience from the supernatural to the natural world,
and secrecy from the ordinary condition of the human heart to a condition
associated with malice and disindividuation. It continues the tradition of
linking secrecy with love, but the connection in its mature form has become
a much more serious one: the petty neighbors are replaced by vaguer but
more menacing outsiders, and the secret to be protected is no longer pre-
sented as having even a possibly neutral valuation (“she was in his room”)
but has come to be “what is eternal and pure” in the eyes not just of the
lover, but of heaven.

2.4.1 The poetry of self-deception

Somewhere between Fet’s poetry of the 1840s and such late work as “From
the lights, from the merciless crowd”, secrets in Fet’s poetry are changed
from private joys to cramped impositions by hostile outsiders, while perfect
knowledge becomes newly benign. Along with the character of the secrecy,
the identities of the keeper of secrets and of the inimical outsider also
change as the poet matures, and love is no longer the predominant context,
as it is at the beginning and the end of Fet’s career. Secrecy in the mid- to
latter 1850s sometimes involves menace, as in the 1859 poem “Зевс”. A few
years before that, we see in Fet’s thematics a new kind of secrecy, which
fades imperceptibly into lying: the secrecy of self-deception. The outsider
who has to be kept from knowing is the conscious self. Who keeps the secret
is the unconscious. The threat that creates the need for secrecy – for “life-
lies” – is the threat that unconscious knowledge presents to the fragile peace
of the conscious mind.114
The notion of self-deception is a difficult one, and paradoxical: deception
would seem to involve persuading someone that something is true even
though you yourself believe it to be false (or the reverse), but then how can
you get yourself into the state of both believing and disbelieving some-
thing?115 The question of how you can will a belief is of obvious religious
168 Chapter Two

importance, and discussion of it in a Christian context goes back at least to

Pascal. One of the ways that analysts in more recent times have tried, not
very successfully, to resolve the difficulty is by putting the belief and the
disbelief in different compartments of the mind. Fet does this too. A notion
of the division of the mind, of self as if not a community then at least a soci-
ety of multiple agencies, persists from the very beginning of Fet’s writing to
the end, and, far from being rejected in the “rational” period of the 1850s
receives there one of its finest poetic realizations.
Fet’s early notions about the multiplicity of mind derive from the roman-
tic philosophy current in his youth,116 and it is represented in nascent form in
some of his best-known early poetry. Thus, his depiction of the intuitive poet
whose conscious mind has no control over his own creative invention ap-
pears in the famous 1843 poem that concludes: “I do not know myself what I
shall sing, but only that a song is ripening”. The speaker reports on his con-
scious awareness of his intuition much as he reports on activities and move-
ment in the natural world. The activities in the outward world of nature and
Я пришeл к тeбe с привeтoм, in unknown regions of mind both, and in
Рaсскaзaть, чтo сoлнцe встaлo, parallel, have their natural fruition, a paral-
Чтo oнo гoрячим свeтoм lelism evocative of Schellingesque Natur-
Пo листaм зaтрeпeтaлo; philosophie.117 He has “come to tell” about
the delights of nature, he “will sing” what-
Рaсскaзaть, чтo лeс прoснулся,
Вeсь прoснулся, вeткoй кaждoй,
ever song springs to his lips. In spite of not
Кaждoй птицeй встрeпeнулся fully identifying either with nature or with
И вeсeннeй пoлoн жaждoй; his own intuition, yet he is sufficiently in
harmony with both to report on their happy
Рaсскaзaть, чтo с тoй жe стрaстью,
awakening, to be the faithful ambassador
Кaк вчeрa, пришeл я снoвa,
of the “soul [that] is ready to serve happi-
Чтo душa всe тaк жe счaстью
И тeбe служить гoтoвa; ness and you”, the addressee.
A baker’s dozen years go by, and the
Рaсскaзaть, чтo oтoвсюду conscious mind represented in Fet’s poetry
Нa мeня вeсeльeм вeeт, has learned that the fruits of unconscious-
Чтo нe знaю сaм, чтo буду
ness may not be picked so easily. The
Пeть, – нo тoлькo пeсня зрeeт.
speaker is no longer at large in the world
of nature but confined in an arbitrary domestic space, in front of a fireplace.
The poem “By the fireplace” was written in Rome in 1856, and its gene-
sis is probably alluded to in his description of himself and his sister N. A.
Shenshina (later Borisova) in a Paris hotel room in the autumn of that
year.118 The earlier textual speaker’s easy mediation between outward and
inward nature is now replaced by a delicately graduated movement, not only
from outward to inward phenomena but also from an unfocused, passive
mode of consciousness to the final recognition and revelation of the essential
and in the end still ineffable truth.
Seeing and knowing 169

Although the poem starts visually (and so У камина

is apparently oriented outward) and ends Тускнeют угли. В пoлумрaкe
with a psychological, inward-looking, state- Прoзрaчный вьeтся oгoнeк.
ment, it does not leap from visual to psych- Тaк плeщeт нa бaгрянoм мaкe
ological, but rather seems as if to cling to Крылoм лaзурным мoтылeк.
visualization, a kind of guy wire for psy-
Видeний пeстрыx вeрeницa
chological experience. The first line localizes Влeчeт, устaлый тeшa взгляд,
the scene so that the speaker-observer can И нeрaзгaдaнныe лицa
only be by the eponymous fireplace, facing Из пeплa сeрoгo глядят.
the hearth: “The coals grow dim. A transpar-
ent flame curls in the half-light”. When the Встaeт лaскaтeльнo и дружнo
Былoe счaстьe и пeчaль,
speaker goes on to compare the flame with a
И лжeт душa, чтo eй нe нужнo
moth, his description continues strictly vis- Всeгo, чeгo глубoкo жaль.
ual: “So a moth laps its azure wing on a
crimson poppy”. Although the speaker has moved from the sight in front of
him to the realm of imagination, what is conjured up and overlaid out of
multiple and kaledioscopic memories is more vividly seen than what is pre-
sented in the text as the actual half-light of the speaker’s “real” surround-
ings. Visuality continues to dominate even when, in the next stanza, the
speaker no longer uses the language of simile, but makes direct statements
about the visions, like the moth constructed from memory but now perceived
as arising from the present hearth, where he must therefore still be located:
“A line of motley visions attracts, diverting the weary gaze, and inscrutable
faces gaze out of the grey ash”. The poem continues its visual and fully lo-
calized representation even when the imaginary faces are replaced by ab-
stractions: “There rise up caressingly, harmoniously, past happiness and sor-
row”. The sight of happiness and sorrow rising from the hearth pushes visu-
alization to its absolute limit. Finally, in the last two lines, there emerges
from the text something not susceptible of visualization: “And the soul tells
the lie that it has no need of everything that is so deeply regretted”. We have
been seduced into the world of memory by the beauty of memories, and we
did not make our escape in time: we have unwittingly sprung a trap, and are
ensnared in understanding.
The psychological twist of the ending is typical of Fet. Typical, too, al-
though differently, is Fet’s near-obsessive tendency toward preterition, here
in the form of implication replacing assertion: we are never told that the soul
profoundly regrets this, that, or the other, but only that when it denies its
regrets it lies. Moreover, in spite of the evident psychologism of the ending,
the text at no point actually mentions an “I”, only a surrogate for it, the lying
soul. The word “soul” on first glance may seem to be a metonym for the
poetic consciousness, “my soul” standing for the “I” that is the conscious-
ness and speaker in the text. Yet the “soul” turns out not really to stand in
170 Chapter Two

place of the whole psychic “I” of the speaker, but only of the part of it that
knows the truth and lies. The soul is a part; there is no whole. But yet again,
the insistently visual orientation of the text up to its final lines implies the
existence of the observer whose vision is represented, until, ultimately, the
observer’s realm of observation has been at last disconnected from sense
perceptions either present or remembered. The apparently neutral observa-
tion of the beginning of the poem has taken on the additional semantic
weight of hiddenness, secrecy, and urgent need of a sensuous foundation for
being.
In the course of “By the fireplace”, hiddenness itself emerges only
gradually. The dying embers are not actively hiding anything, and the
speaker in the poem is not actively seeking anything in them. Their ability to
evoke responses involving living beings and things outside themselves is
revealed in the simile of the moth, but to say that the moth is hidden in the
embers would be merely a weak figure of speech. The moth, however, in its
non-localizability at the fireside, encourages corresponding psychological
motility: the moth plays the same role as Fet’s earlier midges and later
rooks. The speaker’s imagination wanders more freely in its contemplation
of moth-like fragile beauty, and the inscrutible faces – equally fragile and by
implication also beautiful – actively attract the speaker’s thoughts, which
seem willessly to follow. Inscrutability, however, suggests a level of mean-
ing still to be deciphered, and the attraction that the inscrutable faces hold
suggests attraction to something beyond the present situation. At this point,
the poem clearly evokes the notion of a barrier between what is seen and
known, on one hand, and what is still to be understood, on the other. The
notion of concealment, of actual willed hiding, however, is made explicit
only in the poem’s last two lines: what is hidden is what the “soul” lies
about.
The possibility of the soul knowing more than it cares to admit, and of
there being correspondingly diverse levels of self-understanding, is recurrent
in Fet and is recurrently part of his representation of observation and hiding:
ultimate secrecy is what the mind engages in, where both what is in hiding
and what seeks it out are conscious and unconscious, or subconscious,
within a single mind. Although Fet regularly uses the word “soul” to refer to
the conflicted mind, and uses terms such as “consciousness” or “uncon-
scious” (never “subconscious”) mainly in prose and, when in poetry, gener-
ally not in their more modern meanings, yet the interaction of consciousness
and the unconscious is nonetheless a clear preoccupation. As for the poet’s
using the old-fashioned terminology of the “soul”, it is partly a reflection of
poetic tradition, partly a lack of an available modern terminology (the Rus-
sian vocabulary of unconsciousness – “бессознательность” – is evidently
first registered only in the mid- to latter-nineteenth century, relatively late in
Seeing and knowing 171

the formation of Fet’s poetic vocabulary),119 and partly apparent indiffer-

ence. His usage may be compared to that of his editor Strakhov, who, in his
book on psychology, points out that his use of the term “soul” does not im-
ply any belief in small immortal persons with wings who inhabit mortal bod-
ies. Strakhov argues for the appropriateness of translating Descartes’s
“mens” with the Russian word душа, on the ground that Descartes explicitly
intends his notion of mind to include not only rational thought processes but
also all other psychic activity, including in particular emotion.

2.4.2 Play and mindplay

“By the fireplace” is a particularly obvious site for exploring the psychology
of Fet’s poetic world. It represents not only the mature Fet’s approach to the
compartmentalization of mind but also his affinity for mindplay, that is, the
exploration of mind without ulterior goal or intent. I have tried to show that
play and playfulness were important elements of Fet’s early poetics, and that
the dramatism – play-like-ness – of some of his early poems involves play in
the broader sense of the word as well. The two notions of play eventually
split in Fet’s work, so that playing both literal and metaphorical in the late
poem “На качелях” (1890) is divorced from the cosmic stage of “Oт oгнeй,
oт тoлпы бeспoщaднoй…” Like play in general and like com-
partmentalization of mind, mindplay is part of Fet’s poetics from the be-
ginning. Consider, for example, the poet’s game of banishing his love from
mind and then recalling it, in poetry of the early 1840s. The young Fet asso-
ciated hiddenness most of all with eroticism, but even then it was not only
the obvious sort of hiding – hiding the lovers or their relationship from the
outside world – but also the more intimate hiding and discovery of love
within the minds of the lovers. As for
the large body of specifically contem- На качелях
plative poetry, “By the fireplace” is but
И oпять в пoлусвeтe нoчнoм
a single example, and the character of
Срeдь вeрeвoк, нaтянутыx тугo,
his contemplative poetry is too varied Нa дoскe этoй шaткoй вдвoeм
for any one poem to be completely rep- Мы стoим и брoсaeм друг другa.
resentative. Since we have by now had
a look at early poetry with an observer И чeм ближe к вeршинe лeснoй,
hidden from others, and another, Чeм стрaшнee стoять и дeржaться,
Тeм oтрaднeй взлeтaть нaд зeмлeй
somewhat later, poem in which an ob- И oдним к нeбeсaм приближaться.
serving figure is partly hidden from
himself, we may well turn now to a late Прaвдa, этo игрa, и притoм
poem, one that in a way celebrates the Мoжeт выйти игрa рoкoвaя,
beginning of the last period in Fet’s Нo и жизнью игрaть нaм вдвoeм –
Этo счaстьe, мoя дoрoгaя!
poetry. Here an observer, once again
172 Chapter Two

explicitly calling himself “I”, is unobserved but not hidden, and is watching,
ultimately, his own most essential being. He is the “idle spy of nature” in
Fet’s poem “Swallows” (1884).
Birds are prominent in Fet’s work: night-
Ласточки
ingales sing of love, mother birds protect
Прирoды прaздный сoглядaтaй, their young, the cries of game birds evoke
Люблю, зaбывши всe кругoм, the seasons, a small bird huddles hardly
Слeдить зa лaстoчкoй стрeльчaтoй visible against a storm. More than this, the
Нaд вeчeрeющим прудoм.
poet several times identifies himself with
Вoт пoнeслaсь и зaчeртилa – birds: in his youth, he echoes Goethe in
И стрaшнo, чтoбы глaдь стeклa saying he “sings as the bird sings”, and in
Стиxиeй чуждoй нe сxвaтилa praising a prose text sent him by L. N.
Мoлниeвиднoгo крылa. Tolstoi he adopts for himself the image of
И снoвa тo жe дeрзнoвeньe a falcon. In “Ласточки”, however, Fet
И тa жe тeмнaя струя, – identifies the poetic “I” not with the swal-
Нe тaкoвo ли вдoxнoвeньe low in general, but (as indeed he had in
И чeлoвeчeскoгo я? one of his very first poems)120 with its
Нe тaк ли я, сoсуд скудeльный, characteristic flight.
Дeрзaю нa зaпрeтный путь,
Стиxии чуждoй, зaпрeдeльнoй, Known for the grace of their ascents and
Стрeмясь xoть кaплю зaчeрпнуть? stoops, swallows fly so rapidly that they
feed on insects caught in flight. The feet of
the riparian swallows of Russia are so small as to be ill-adapted for walking
on the ground, and the birds hunt flying headlong upon their insect prey
barely over the surface of the water.121 The feeding swallow’s apparent defi-
ance of the limits of its natural environment is seized upon by the poet in his
own creative flight. Where, however, the daring of the swallow is to swoop
over the smooth surface of the pond without being caught by it, the poet un-
dertakes a “forbidden” road, and tries to take for himself some of the alien
element, lying beyond the limits of the glassy surface.
The swallows of the title are plural, but that must count the kindred poet.
Overtly, the text holds only one: the “arrowy swallow” that the textual “I”,
the “idle spy of nature… forgetting all around”, loves to follow “above the
twilight pond”. In the second stanza, we move from generalization (“I love
to watch a swallow”) to a specific moment, one just an instant after the bird
has taken flight: “There, it has taken wing and started to trace its path – ”. As
always with Fet, we have to imagine what has just this moment happened
and what might happen, while in the present between there is only emotional
experience: “And it is terrifying, lest the smooth surface of glass, alien ele-
ment, seize the lightning-like wing”. The past and the possible future belong
to nature, the present is inward, albeit all concentrated on external evocation.
The speaker’s psyche moves in strict correspondence with the physical mo-
Seeing and knowing 173

tion of the swallow. The third stanza moves from single instant to repetition
to renewed generalization, now linking human psychic experience with the
swallow’s path in a simile, in characteristically Fetian interrogatory form:
“And again the same daring, and the same dark stream – Is not like this the
inspiration Of the human I?”. Finally, the last stanza, while continuing the
simile, returns once again from generalization to individual instantiation:
“Do I not so, weak vessel, venture upon a forbidden road, Of the alien ele-
ment, transliminal, Striving to get at least a drop?”
The semantic rhythm that swings from man to bird to man and from gen-
eral to individual to general and back again takes on all the regularity of
sweeping flight. We have by now seen many examples of Fet’s visual be-
ginnings and psychological endings, and this poem, starting with the bird
and proceeding on to the extended “fall” of the closural simile, evoking first
the human spirit and ultimately the figure of the poet himself, shows the
master performing with consummate technical ease what he has been doing
over and over for nearly all his life – “again the same daring”. But this poem
is different. The image it begins with, the “idle spy of nature”, is unique. The
noun is unusual, and the epithet “idle” appears in other of Fet’s poems, but
never with these associations. Although he presented in many of his poems
the passive mental state conducive to creative imagination, only now does he
represent it in a single word. The late poem articulates prefigured knowledge
in much the same way as the ends of Fet’s later poems themselves often ar-
ticulate thoughts latent much earlier in their texts. The speaker is also an
interesting figure: the “I” is the self-aware mature poet, but he is identified
mainly by the repeated “daring” that has been his life, and which he shares
with the bird. For all the many kinds of flora and fauna in Fet’s poetry, and
although swallows are mentioned not only here, yet the single-minded con-
centration on just one bird, and its visualization above the dusk-darkening
pond, is I think unique even in Fet’s late poetry.
The poem is not about a swallow. Or at least the swallow that it is about
is a symbolic swallow flying above a symbolic pond. The bird is not re-
placed in the text by the man, but rather becomes the man, at the moment in
the second stanza when the physical motion of the one is joined to the psy-
chological emotion of the other.122 By the third stanza, the swallow has been
assigned an anthropomorphic trait, the “daring” the speaker sees in its be-
havior. Before the third-stanza simile has even been introduced, the bird-
soul and the poet-soul have been joined, and, in the end, not only is the po-
et’s “alien element” called by the same phrase he has already used for the
pond, but also what he strives to achieve is presented in his watery dipping
out a drop.
At the beginning of Chapter One, I emphasized the distance between
Fet’s poetics and Tiutchev’s, and I have tried to show the importance for
174 Chapter Two

Fet’s work of his early reading of German poetry, especially Goethe. I have
suggested elsewhere,123 however, that “У камина” bears clear traces of a
fascination with Tiutchev new after 1854. The younger poet’s near-worship
of the older one endured. Specific connections between Fet’s late poems and
Tiutchev texts have been especially well, if succinctly, characterized by B.
Ia. Bukhshtab,124 who points to the clarity of the relationship between the
third stanza of “Ласточки” and the fourth one of Tiutchev’s “Смотри, как
на речном просторе,…”, first published in 1851. The theme of individual
evanescence that the Tiutchev poem expresses is one that Fet well knew and
found congenial. Of course he knew the Tiutchev poem. But Fet’s poem
evokes the Tiutchev one in a way that, far from echoing it, responds in the
voice of an understanding interlocutor with, however, a different point of
view.
Tiutchev evokes evanescence of form both explicitly (“Всe вмeстe, …
Утрaтив прeжний oбрaз свoй,…Сoльются с бeзднoй рoкoвoй!..”) and in
his choice of imagery: ice, no matter how massive, is easily conceived as
accidental in shape and prone to change. Tiutchev’s watery abyss is bor-
rowed into Fet’s text, but becomes, there, not the eternity that erodes form,
but the eternity toward which the “frail vessel” of humanity seeks to hurl
itself – with all the longing for beauty that Dostoevskii read in Fet’s
“Diana”, the “longing dream” and “longing of the soul” of Fet’s mindplay
with Death. Fet elects for himself in his poem no immortal figure, but only a
small creature of nature, which so long as it lives is distinguished by the
form of its flight, and, so long as it lives, strives through its use of the form
inherent in its being to impinge upon the very eternity that threatens to seize
its “wing of lightning aspect”. Bukhshtab Смoтри, кaк нa рeчнoм прoстoрe,
is correct in characterizing the Fetian Пo склoнe внoвь oжившиx вoд,
stanza in “Ласточки” as an “imitation” Вo всeoбъeмлющee мoрe
of the stanza Tiutchev uses in “Смoтри, Зa льдинoй льдинa вслeд плывeт.
125
кaк нa рeчнoм прoстoрe,…” – and Нa сoлнцe ль рaдужнo блистaя,
even the number of stanzas is significant, Иль нoчью в пoзднeй тeмнoтe,
since this is, for late Fet, a remarkably Нo всe, нeизбeжимo тaя,
long poem – , but the function of the imi- Oни плывут к oднoй мeтe.
tation is to emphasize the difference in Всe вмeстe – мaлыe, бoльшиe,
the two poets’ attitude.126 When Утрaтив прeжний oбрaз свoй,
“Ласточки” was written, one edition of Всe – бeзрaзличны, кaк стиxия, –
Сoльются с бeзднoй рoкoвoй!..
Evening Lights had already appeared, but
it contained a backlog of poems much O, нaшeй мысли oбoльщeньe,
older. The second edition of Evening Ты, чeлoвeчeскoe Я,
Нe тaкoвo ль твoe знaчeньe,
Lights, where “Ласточки” was pub-
Нe тaкoвa ль судьбa твoя?
Seeing and knowing 175

lished, was a demonstration of the poet’s continuing power, which would

continue for a good half dozen years more. Fet’s sense of this is evident in
the thematics and rhetoric of “Ласточки” and his exploitation in it of his
Tiutchev subtext.
The observer-poet in “Ласточки” no longer hides behind a wall, nor does
he have any other stage-props pointing to societal or domestic connections.
He would seem to be, as Grigor’ev predicted he would be, alone, observing
without being observed. And yet: he is not completely alone, any more than
the stars are alone when they observe the lovers of “From the lights, from
the merciless crowd…”. Rather, the presence of the swallow becomes the
occasion of such complete inwardness that the outer world can be ignored
(“I love to watch, having forgotten everything around me”). The swallow is
depicted as neither aware nor unaware of the presence of another creature.
The speaker, in his empathy with the swallow, shares his condition.
“Ласточки” celebrates the beginning of Fet’s last period of creative ac-
tivity. Fet also marked the end. We mentioned earlier that although Fet at
last returns to first-person pronouns, they are not as abundant as in his earli-
est work, and when they are there, the speaker in the poem is generally more
fully specified than before. The absence of a speaker who is an “I” in the
text does not mean that there is no “eye” from whose perspective the world
of the text is viewed. In “Всe, чтo вoлшeбнo тaк мaнилo,…”, where the “I”
is suppressed, we are presented with a landscape of the spirit. We have seen
that architecture is rare in later Fet. Here, in a text in which all other refer-
ences in the poem are abstract or pronominalized into nonspecificity, the
view is dominated by a towering simile, which the reader is implicitly in-
vited to observe. Not only in its thematics but also in its brevity of form,
“Всe, чтo вoлшeбнo тaк мaнилo,…” is characteristic of the last Fet. We
turn to poetic form in the next chapter.

Всe, чтo вoлшeбнo тaк мaнилo,

Из-зa чeгo вeсь вeк жилoсь,
Сo днями зимними oстылo
И нeпрoбуднo улeглoсь.
Нeт ни нaдeжд, ни сил для битвы –
Лишь, пoсрeди ничтoжныx смут,
Кaк гoрдoсть дум, кaк xрaм мoлитвы,
Стрaдaнья в прoшлoм вoсстaют.

28 февраля 1892
176 Chapter Two

Notes to Chapter Two

1
Cf. GUSTAFSON (1966:44, 119-66), GASPAROV (1990), and Chapter One, note 33.
2
Vl. SOLOV’EV (1890/1991:399-425).
3
CRICK (1994:35).
4
FAAS (1988), and references therein. See also Chapter One, notes 7 and 109.
5
JOSEPH (1978).
6
BUKHSHTAB (1959:39, 1974:86). Bukhshtab’s 1959 analysis of the poem “Хоть
нельзя говорить, хоть и взор мой поник...” is especially interesting, as it also suc-
cinctly outlines the construction of the poem, which is built not on visual perception of
flowers, but on scent, while comprehension of what the poem is about comes only at the
end of the reading – a construction that imposes a kind of instant re-reading, or even
back-to-front deciphering of the text.
7
FET (1986:651-52).
8
PUMPIANSKII (1928).
9
For an analysis of this tradition, see GANDELMAN (1986).
10
It is well known that the window is a frequent motif in Fet. In section 2.3.6 below,
we see that the window is characteristic only of early Fet. The fact that the poems show-
ing women contemplating a possible male figure outside begin only in Fet’s middle years
distinguishes these poems from other “window motif” poems.
11
Cf. “Die Nacht ist feucht und stürmisch…”:
Die Nacht ist feucht und stürmisch,
Der Himmel sternenleer;
Im Wald, unter rauschenden Bäumen,
Wandle ich schweigend einher.

Es flimmert fern ein Lichtchen

Aus dem einsamen Jägerhaus;
Es soll mich nicht hin verlocken,
Dort sieht es verdriesslich aus.

Die blinde Grossmutter sitzt ja

Im ledernen Lehnstuhl dort,
Unheimlich und starr, wie ein Steinbild,
Und spricht kein einziges Wort.

Fluchend geht auf und nieder

Des Försters rotköpfiger Sohn
Und wirft an die Wand die Büchse,
Und lacht vor Wut und Hohn.

Die schöne Spinnerin weinet

Und feuchtet mit Tränen den Flachs;
Wimmernd zu ihren Füssen
Schmiegt sich des Vaters Dachs.
Seeing and knowing 177

Notes
12
The Friedrich paintings referred to below are listed in BÖRSCH-SUPAN / JÄHNIG
(1973) as follows: (1) “Frau am Fenster” (1822), kat. 293, (2) “Frau vor der
untergehenden Sonne” (1818), kat. 249 (BÖRSCH-SUPAN / JÄHNIG 1973: 97, 375-76, 81,
348-49).
13
Quoted (preserving all punctuation!) from BÖRSCH-SUPAN / JÄHNIG (1973:99), who
quote the text from Friedrich and Caroline de la Motte Fouqué’s Reise-Erinnerungen
(Dresden 1823), 1:206-09. Fouqué was not alone in writing poetry about or dedicated to
Friedrich’s paintings. For example, Th. Körner, whose work Fet knew and translated, did
the same, and Körner’s 1815 sonnets have been considered the first sign of a contempo-
rary’s recognizing the symbolic nature of Friedrich’s painting (BÖRSCH-SUPAN / JÄHNIG
1973:54).
14
Extensive material from obituaries is quoted in the chronologically-ordered biblio-
graphy in BÖRSCH-SUPAN / JÄHNIG (1973:62-210). Although the copyright of BÖRSCH-
SUPAN / JÄHNIG is 1973, the last bibliographic item is from 1974, and is Russian.
15
For Zhukovskii’s correspondence with the court about Friedrich, see BÖRSCH-
SUPAN / JÄHNIG (1973:188-89).
16
For publications of Friedrich’s correspondence with Zhukovskii, see BÖRSCH-
SUPAN / JÄHNIG (1973:42, 169, 203).
17
On other German subtextual connions of this poem and its sun-conflagration im-
agery, see Chapter Three, note 230. The poem may also be connected, in the opposite
chronological order, with N. N. Ge’s portrait of N. I. Petrunkevich (1892-93). This paint-
ing, which shows a woman standing in profile by an open window and reading a book,
has been called “the most mysterious, most magical” and least susceptible to verbal char-
acterization of all Ge’s works (KARPOVA 2000:164).
18
BÖRSCH-SUPAN / JÄHNIG (1973:102-03, 438-49).
19
Fet even had a slender connection with Rügen, the inspiration for some well-
known paintings by Friedrich: his maternal grandmother’s family, the von Gagens, came
from there.
20
Breath and breathing are recurrent in Fet’s poetry. In addition to poems mentioned
in this section and in Chapter One, section 3, cf. also “Расстались мы, ты странствуешь
далече…”, in which the speaker is a dream that rustles the lover’s bedclothes and carries
her off on its wings. The thematics of breath and the control of breathing (which had a
biographical source in Fet’s susceptibility to respiratory disease) may be related to Fet’s
treatment of the problem of language, which originates in controlled breathing. His
emphasis on himself as ghost or dream also is a kind of counterpoint to his near-
obsession with concreteness and outerness in his poetry.
21
ANONYMOUS (1850:3).
22
GRIGOR’EV (1850:56).
23
Quoted from GRIGOR’EV (1980:152). Compare Hegel’s distinction between inner
and outer selves, quoted in note 116. Compare also the following (GRIGOR'EV 1980:93):
“Да – есть связи на жизнь и смерть... Я и он – мы можем смело и гордо сознаться,...
что никогда родные братья не любили так друг друга. Если я спас его для жизни и
искусства – он спас меня еще более, для великой веры в душу человека”.
24
GUSTAFSON (1966:39-45).
25
The poem here appears with the textual divisions as in FET (1840:66-67), where,
however it runs over two pages.
178 Chapter Two

Notes
26
The falls had previously appeared in poetry and prose by Bestuzhev-Marlinskii.
They are included in the Brockhaus-Efron as one of the most outstanding examples of a
waterfall in the Russian Empire.
27
ADDAMS (1834).
28
ČIŽEVSKIJ (1957).
29
The choice of exactly which consonants are prominent in the onomatopoeia of
waterfall poetry seems to differ from one poet to the next. Fet, in particular, actually
seems to be avoiding the “ш” assimilated into the tradition through Derzhavin’s line
“Шуми, шуми, о водопад!” later quoted by Baratynskii.
30
Book 15, №№ 21 and 24-27 (BECKBY 1957-59:4:270-81).
31
A brief list of such poetry is in BECKBY (1957-59:4:256-57). None is from the
eighteenth or early nineteenth century.
32
For a discussion of the different meanings and uses given to the notions of icon and
iconicity in semiotics, see NÖTH (1990:121-27).
33
Up to this point, I have referred to Fet’s poems by a title or first line in English,
since that is the language of my exposition. Since Fet’s poems are all but unknown in
English, however, there is no standard way to refer to them except by their Russian title
or first line. Since, from this point forward, the number of texts referred to is at times
rather large and not all the references will be matched by an example on the page, I will
use mainly the Russian forms, to make it easier for readers to identify the corresponding
texts. I have not attempted to be entirely consistent, but have used whichever style of
reference seemed to me to be clearer.
34
This poem is discussed by Michael WACHTEL (1998:92-93).
35
The use of the word “отблеск” here is very Fetian, even though it is not a common
word in his usage. It seems never to have been used at all by either Pushkin or
Lermontov. Tiutchev uses it five times, to refer to a gleam of reflected light in the physi-
cal world: rooftops, cupolas, and so on. Fet uses it only six times, never in that way. Re-
flected light for him is the light usually of love (twice of eyes), and once – the light of the
“sun of the world”, discussed in the previous chapter.
36
This is not to say that doubleness is not characteristic of Fet in other ways, a point
made in great detail by LAFERRIERE (1972). Fet’s oeuvre is replete with examples – “Al-
ter ego”, to name only the most obvious.
37
The poem “Певице” has been extensively commented on from many points of
view. An excellent summary of earlier discussion is included in BUCK (1978:67-93). His
very far-ranging analysis of the poem is interesting, among other reasons, for his
observations of the relationship between “Певице” and Fet’s treatment of spatial
perception in earlier poems, including “Diana”.
38
L. M. LOTMAN (1976:121).
39
This view, as put forward in the work of James J. Gibson, is discussed extensively
throughout WADE / SWANSTON (1991). Cf. also CRICK (1994:45), IARBUS (1965).
40
M. L. GASPAROV (1988).
41
BORING (1942:568). On the study of visual perception in the nineteenth century,
see BORING and WADE / SWANSTON and references therein. A useful source especially for
developments in Russia are the articles on vision and the senses in ESBE, in particular
those by Tarkhanov and Lapshin.
42
The workings of these archaic instruments unfortunately cannot be described here,
but good pictures of some of these things are to be found in introductory works on per-
Seeing and knowing 179

Notes
ception (for a phenakistoscope, for example, see WADE / SWANSTON 1991:142). A sur-
prising number of such contraptions are to be found in museums. UCLA Special Collec-
tions kindly permitted me to give its phenakistoscope a whirl (literally), while stereo-
scopes are sometimes housed in museums dealing with the history of photography. For a
picture of a stereoscope, see e.g. GERNSHEIM (1982:179).
43
M. L. GASPAROV (1991).
44
Fet’s technique of initially “painting” a scene and then animating it is shared with
his schoolmate J. von Sivers. “Чудная картина” may be compared in this respect with
von Sivers’s group of six poems called Bilder. The six Bilder present a sequence of
developing moods and emotions. Each poem begins with a little scene and ends in motion
or emotion of some sort. There are numerous other similarities between Sivers’s Bilder
and Fet’s earliest poetry: his sometimes painfully obvious antitheses, his careful setting
of his poems as “hier” or “dort”. But probably most striking is the ending of the second
poem, Neu-Laitzen von Oppekaln aus (SIVERS [1847:59]):
Weit über Feld und Wiese
Dahin das Auge strebt,
Wo sanft die grüne Höhe
Ins Thal hernieder schwebt.

Dort von dem Berge raget

Ein stolzes Herrenschloss,
Das rings das Land der Bäume
In grüne Rahmen schloss.

Und an dem Fuss des Berges

In friedlich stillem Glanz
Zieht durch des Sees Fluthen
Ein Kahn mit leichtem Tanz.
The dancing boat at the end of von Sivers’s poem is a counterpart to Fet’s lonely winter
sleigh. As in Fet’s poem, too, there is play on the ideas of motion, activity, and stasis
throughout the poem: the eye of the opening line “strives” toward the horizon, the green
heights “float” over the valley, the castle “rises up”, and the trees “enclose” the domain in
“green frames”. The play of motion and stillness in the poem reads rather like a school
exercise, which it may in fact have been.
45
See EEKMAN (1997).
46
The association of nominal syntax with particular styles and literary tendencies is a
much discussed topic, and not only with respect to Russian literature. Cf. e.g. MILES
(1957), SPITZER (1928), V. V. IVANOV (1981). EEKMAN (1997) points out that some of the
generalizations are vitiated by their failure to account for the widespread use of nominal
syntax in many different kinds of poetry. Another problem is what is meant by nominal
syntax, and whether it has the same value in languages that may vary greatly in their
normal repertory for expressing predication.
47
I owe to M. L. Gasparov the observation that “This morning, this joy…” may look
back to Fet’s youth specifically in its syntax, which develops the ecstatic lists in Goethe’s
180 Chapter Two

Notes
“Mailied” (“Wie herrlich leuchtet…”), discussed in Chapter Three. Fet’s translation of
the poem is one of the earliest of his translations known to us.
48
GASPAROV (1991) includes a fuller analysis of the poem’s rhetoric.
49
On a similar ordering of the presentation of perceptions in Lermontov’s “Белеет
парус одинокий…”, see PUMPIANSKII (1941:406-07). In his memoirs, Fet recalls his
early fascination with Lermontov, but he is unspecific about what in Lermontov’s writing
appealed to him.
50
The “blue vault” is not a striking metaphor, except for the fact that it is left to hang
in mid-air until its weight forces us really to see the sky – and in Fet’s poetry we more
than once do see the sky, and not just the clouds or heavenly bodies that inhabit it – and
we see it for the colored vault, in another poem the blue prison, that, in Fet’s eyes, it truly
is. He was right, of course: “there is nothing lightweight about our atmosphere”, since it
weighs 5,000 trillion tons (ACKERMAN 1990:236).
51
This poem is the object of an extended special study by VENCLOVA (1985). See
also TOPOROV (1987:216-21).
52
The most important essay in this connection is FET (1859).
53
Fet’s differentiation of Greek and Roman worlds followed the conventions of his
time. Although Fet’s Rome and, more broadly, his Italy are worth independent study, I
deal with them only in the special context of a few poems that appear in a group called
anthological poems.
54
GIEDION (1922).
55
HATFIELD (1964).
56
His lack of Greek was apparently not a result of not trying to acquire it. He was
forced to make repeated attempts to learn, first at his school, where classical Greek was
well taught, and again at Moscow University. Fet describes his experiences with Greek in
his memoirs. See note 79.
57
In spite of Fet's pride in having translated the poem “almost literally”, and his
criticism of Benediktov's translation (FET 1971:686), several lines in Fet's translation,
including the ending, are more characteristically Fetian than Schiller ever was.
58
FET (1850:103). As noted by BUKHSHTAB (1937:765), Fet’s title misrepresents
Chénier’s (“Elégie XIII imité de la XI-e Idylle de Bion”), but the change in numbering is
likely to be a typographical error. (The edition is marred by several errors in Roman nu-
merals.) Also according to BUKHSHTAB (1937:765), Fet noted in a copy of the 1856 edi-
tion of his poetry that the text should be moved to the section of translations in the next
edition of his work. But this was not done.
59
Although a Russian tradition for the appreciation of Chénier goes back at least to
Pushkin, there is no reason to believe that Fet in the early 1840s was aware of Chénier as
a hellenist. Chénier seems never to have been mentioned in early Russian discussions of
modern transmission of the Greek Anthology, even though he knew the Anthology well
and was, beyond this, so accomplished a hellenist as to have been called by one modern
scholar “the chosen vessel of eighteenth-century Hellenism. All that was Greek was
native to him” (HUTTON 1946:579). Fet's three Chénier translations date not from the
earliest period of his work, but only from, at earliest, the mid- to latter forties, and two of
them, from 1857-58, postdate his tour of Western Europe in 1856-57, when he first vis-
ited Paris, then in the midst of a neo-classicist revival (PEYRE 1932:59-60). In his article
on Tiutchev (FET 1859), Fet praises a Chénier poem as a “triumph of art”.
Seeing and knowing 181

Notes
60
The third volume of Evening Lights includes Fet’s translations of Goethe’s “Der
Fischer” and “Harzreise im Winter” (FET 1888:52-56), and they are nowhere identified as
anything other than “Рыбак” and “Зимняя поездка на Гарц”. This same volume is the
beginning of a final period of intense review of early poetry, and immediately after the
two Goethe translations there follows a section of poems newly restored to Fet’s canon,
from the collection of 1850. That collection had also integrated some translations into the
groups of original poetry. The restored poems are given their own rubric in the 1888
edition (“Из издания 1850 г.”), but the rubric appears only in the table of contents, not in
the body of the text.
61
See note 115.
62
The subject is well represented in eighteenth-century painting, including at least
one work in Russia by C.-J. Natoire (PIGLER 1956:2:329).
63
LOSEV (1987).
64
Several cycles showing the life of Zeus, including his infancy, are to be found in
Florence, for example in the Pitti Palace and in the Palazzo Vecchio. The one in the Pa-
lazzo Vecchio, unlike most others I have seen, exactly fits the description in Fet’s poem,
in which the goat is suckling the infant Zeus. In most other portrayals, her milk is brought
to him in a vessel.
65
BADT (1969).
66
The association is reinforced by the fact that in his last plan for a collection of his
works he places “Зевс” together with “К Сикстинской Мадонне”, a response to his
seeing Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in Dresden in 1856. Fet may have had in mind the
Poussin Infancy of Zeus then, as now, on display in Berlin, where Fet almost certainly
saw it, but Poussin’s infant, like those in many other representations, is shown being
given a drink from a vessel, not imbibing from his capral nurse. (See note 64.) Poussin’s
Zeus is not obviously angry, either, but he looks arguably less placid than many of his
cousins. Perhaps Fet made the baby angry because he thought it was appropriate to the
baby’s situation. In that case, Fet’s own personal situation, and his mood, in November
1859, may be relevant to the twist he put into the thematics of the poem (see note 67).
Another possibility is that Fet mistook for a painting of the Infancy of Zeus what was
really a painting showing the infant Dionysos. Since the two thematics were often treated
with the same props, misidentification of one of these themes for the other occurs even in
museum catalogues, and the infant Dionysos is often depicted, not really angry, but at
least boisterous. Fet may also have lifted the emotional tone of his poem from a different
work, namely Rembrandt’s Ganymed, which Fet saw in Dresden. In his travel memoir,
Fet devotes considerable attention to the emotion of the captured Ganymed.
The GEMÄLDEGALERIE ALTE MEISTER, DRESDEN: KATALOG DER AUSGESTELLTEN
WERKE lists no work that fits the poem, but this is only the modern guide to the current
displays of a single museum. The collections have been considerably reorganized since
Fet saw them, and he also visited many museums not only in Germany but also in Paris
and in Italy. What he saw in Italy is especially obscure, because his travel notes on that
part of the trip were apparently never published and seem to have been lost. The extant
travel memoirs (FET 1856-57) are unreliable. Fet in his later memoirs not only contradicts
his earlier self but is explicit about doing so, and Turgenev’s letters show that it is the
later Fet who is closer to the truth as others perceived it at the time. For example, his
choice of companions and his choice of hotels in Paris turn out to have been considerably
doctored in the travel notes, while the possible political connotations of his experiences
182 Chapter Two

Notes
are presented entirely differently in the two texts. In spite of the unreliability of the travel
memoirs, however, they do seem to report on at least part of Fet’s actual touristic activi-
ties, some of which he apparently undertook unwillingly. (He says he hated looking at
things under supervision or duress, and he hated having to move from one physical loca-
tion to another – a pair of complaints of some interest for his poetics.)
67
The poem is from November 1859, and so only very slightly postdates the last
poems of the “anthological” cycle in Fet’s works. It was written after the catastrophic
journalistic attacks on him, and after he had embarked on his plan of retiring to the
country. The tenor of the poem can be compared with that of his poem “Тополь”, written
a few weeks earlier.
68
USPENSKAIA (1988) makes a strong case for deep connection between Fet’s
original poetry and the Greek Anthology, carefully pointing out, however, numerous
intermediary sources that would have been available to Fet.
69
The name “anthology” etymologically derives from the Greek word for bouquet,
and the Greek Anthology is a Byzantine compendium of some 3700 short poems (called
epigrams) by Greek poets from the classical period onwards. It first became known in
Western Europe in a version compiled by the monk Planudes around 1300 and
transmitted to Italy by Byzantine teachers. Selections from this Planudean Anthology
were used in schools, and the text was first printed as early as 1494. Thousands of Latin
translations of individual poems, as well as quotations from translations, are found in
sixteenth-century humanist writings (HUTTON 1946:26), in addition to translations from
both Greek and Latin into the European vernaculars. The entire Greek Anthology, as then
known, was translated into Latin by Grotius in the mid-seventeenth century. Thanks in
considerable measure to Grotius’s Latin translations, the Planudean Greek Anthology
swept Europe, even though access to it was restricted by the vicissitudes of Greek
education coupled with incomplete publication of Grotius’s Latin translations. Grotius’s
work included, besides the entire Planudean Anthology, other sources, including a very
few epigrams from a much fuller version of the Greek Anthology, namely the Palatine
Anthology. The Palatine Anthology, compiled in the late tenth century from earlier
Byzantine sources, had remained unknown to Western hellenic traditions until found in a
single manuscript in Heidelberg (in the Count Palatine’s library) and recopied in 1606 by
Claude Saumaise (Salmasius). This larger and thematically more appealing version of the
Anthology soon became known through excerpts, but it was published in full only in
1772-76, by Philipp Brunck.
The end of the eighteenth century saw a new stage in the modern history of the Greek
Anthology: the publication of important works previously only imperfectly known.
Grotius’s Latin translations were published in full for the first time in an edition by De
Bosch (1795-1822), and nearly simultaneously a better edition of the Palatine Anthology,
by Friedrich Jacobs, first appeared in thirteen volumes (1794-1814) and was immediately
reprinted with revisions in a more convenient three-volume format (1813-17). Jacobs’s
second edition was popularized through the appearance of a cheaper reprint in 1829
(BECKBY 1957-58:1:100), and the Palatine Anthology has replaced the Planudean
Anthology in the modern conciousness. At the same time as the texts of the Greek An-
thology were thus being published and modern notions of it formed, it was also entering
the main stream of West European culture through such intermediaries as Voltaire and
Herder.
Seeing and knowing 183

Notes
70
On the early history of Russian interest in the Greek Anthology, and Russian hel-
lenism more generally, see KIBAL’NIK (1990).
71
It is not entirely clear what the source was for what seems to be the first original
“аnthological” poem in Russian verse, namely Derzhavin’s “Спящий Эрот” (1795,
published 1796). The first part is according to Derzhavin his translation of a text by
Plato; in fact it comes (along with the Platonic attribution) from the Planudian Anthology
(DERZHAVIN 1864:679-81). After this “anthological” part, however, the poem concludes
with eight lines apparently inspired by Anacreon. The anthological source was first
correctly identified by Pecherin, whose discussion of the problem is quoted extensively
by Grot in his commentary to the text. Derzhavin’s apparent combination of anthological
and other sources, along with the publication of “Спящий Эрот” among Derzhavin’s
Анакреонтические песни (1804), shows how from the very beginning anthological
verse in the Russian tradition was intimately connected with, if not identical to, a
tradition of “light verse” and commingled the epigrams of the Greek Anthology with
other short poems in the classical tradition, here anacreontic. On Derzhavin’s
anthological poems, see KIBAL’NIK (1990:47-52), who also discusses the Russian
tradition of Russian short poems “в духе древних”. I. I. Dmitriev's versions of poems
from the Greek Anthology were noted favorably by Uvarov and then by Belinskii. A. Kh.
Vostokov produced the first equimetrical translations into Russian of poems from the
Anthology (OSHEROV 1980:453); they helped acquaint Russian readers not only with the
thematics but also, for the first time, with the actual form of the poems of the Greek
Anthology, independently of Latin, French, or German intermediaries. Somewhat
similarly, Merzliakov’s versions of Greek poetry were also in part metrical experiments,
and his 1807 volume called Eklogi Publii Vergiliia Marona included (along with his
translation of Vergil’s Eclogues and other poems) at least one translation of a text found
in the Greek Anthology; since the text was well known in Western Europe and had been
frequently translated (BECKBY 1958:3:799), the translation points to no special
knowledge of or interest in the Greek Anthology. K. N. Batiushkov published one Greek
Anthology poem (a translation of the very free rendition by Voltaire, according to L. N.
Maikov and later editors of Batiushkov [BATIUSHKOV 1934:569, 1977:581]) as early as
1810, but far better known and more central to the history of the Greek Anthology in
Russia are the translations he published ten years later, as a supplement to Uvarov's
brochure.
72
BATIUSHKOV (1834:2:238). Uvarov’s essay appeared as an anonymous brochure
(published in only seventy copies [BATIUSHKOV 1934:540, 1977:573]), and in the nine-
teenth century it was sometimes incorrectly attributed to Konstantin Batiushkov, whose
translations into Russian from Uvarov's French are appended to the essay. References are
to the text, incorporating Batiushkov's translations and excluding Uvarov's, reprinted in
BATIUSHKOV (1834: 2: 233-57). On the circumstances of the original publication, see
BATIUSHKOV (1934:539-42). Lengthy extracts from the essay, including the references to
Voltaire and Herder, were almost immediately reprinted in the article “Эпиграмма” in
Ostolopov’s dictionary of 1821, and would therefore have been well known to a whole
generation of Russians who grew up with Ostolopov's work. Uvarov’s essay was
reprinted in its entirety in Batiushkov's collected works of 1834 and was further
promoted by the references to it in Belinskii’s 1841 essay on Goethe's Roman Elegies.
The essay is also referred to in PECHERIN (1838), the publication of which, remarkable in
several ways, marks a new stage of maturity in Russian awareness of the Greek Anthol-
184 Chapter Two

Notes
ogy and the aesthetics it represented. The article for the first time offers the Russian
reader a brief but nuanced review of the composition and aesthetic nature of the Greek
Anthology, as well as a good summary of its modern history. In contrast with Uvarov,
Pecherin prefers the edition of Jacobs over the earlier Brunck edition, and he offers a
summary of his views on earlier translations into Latin, German, and Russian, including
those in the 1820 brochure, whose authorship, to judge by his comments, he probably
knew or suspected. The attribution to Batiushkov had been recently canonized by the
publication of the essay in BATIUSHKOV (1834), and Belinskii, for example, in 1841
refers to the essay as Batiushkov’s. Pecherin, however, notes that the “издатели
пожелали остаться неизвестными”, suggesting that he was aware there was more than
one person involved (the essay had been published under two sets of initials, neither of
them directly attributable to the actual authors), and that he does not consider the
principal author to have been Batiushkov. The turn of phrase also seems calculatedly to
avoid saying that the authors of the brochure were successful in remaining unknown to
Pecherin – who had at one time been Uvarov’s protégé, even, in Pecherin’s own words,
his “любимец” (KISELEVA-SERGENINA 1972).
73
Even at the time when Uvarov was writing, awareness of the Greek Anthology can
be found in the writings of Russian poets. They popularized the aesthetics of the Greek
Anthology through translations and quasi-translations of the Greek texts and through
experimentation with anthologically inspired themes and forms in original Russian
poetry. Batiushkov was not linguistically equipped to translate Greek Anthology poems
except with the aid of French or Russian intermediaries or the advice of collaborators,
and his translations were mildly criticized by Pecherin as departing too far from the
Greek. His translations from the Anthology are nonetheless important, because of the
circumstances in which they appeared: he began them in 1817, that is to say as soon as
the three-volume Jacobs edition of the anthology appeared, and their readership was
ultimately strengthened by their association with the 1820 essay, together with which
they were reprinted, notably by Ostolopov. In 1825 D. V. Dashkov contributed his
“Цветы, выбранные из греческой антологии” variously to the almanachs Полярная
звезда на 1825 г. (ARKHIPOV et al. 1960:653-59, 908-09) and Северные цветы на 1825
г. (PECHERIN 1838:88, VATSURO 1978:16-17, 281). Other translations, these by V. S.
Pecherin, appeared in almanachs in 1832, and were reprinted with corrections in
PECHERIN (1838).
74
Voltaire’s main contribution to the reception of the Anthology is the essay “Épi-
gramme” in his Dictionnaire philosophique (1771), in which he offers some illustrative
examples of Anthology texts, in French (VOLTAIRE 1785). The examples Voltaire se-
lected, however, were less representative of the Greek Anthology than they were inadver-
tently predictive of the future of anthological poetry in Russia: of the six texts, two are
poems on statuary and two are love poems, of which one is not in fact from the Anthol-
ogy but instead derives from Martial – a selection that has led specialists to conclude that
Voltaire did not translate the texts himself or know the Anthology well (if at all), but
rather drew on earlier translations (HUTTON 1946:541-46). Consequently, when I. I.
Dmitriev and K. N. Batiushkov among others drew on Voltaire for their anthological
translations, they were also establishing Voltaire's article as a conduit for a specific
French taste: Voltaire's essay made accessible to the Russians not the Greek Anthology
but a specific French reading of it.
Seeing and knowing 185

Notes
75
The translations were published in two editions of Zerstreute Blätter, the earlier in
1785.
76
HERDER (1990:761-66 and commentary 1422-36). Unfortunately, even this edition
does not contain all Herder’s “anthological flowers”, and his choice of text and his
treatment of the texts he selected would, according to editor Ulrich Gaier, still require
separate study.
77
HERDER (1990:1422-28).
78
PECHERIN (1838). Uvarov praises the accuracy of Herder’s translations (BATIUSH-
KOV 1834:2:239), although he may have in mind only the meter.
79
DEL'VIG (1959:134-35, 298-99).
80
FET (1866).
81
On elegiac distich in its Russian context, see Michael WACHTEL (1998:171-205).
His discussion includes two very helpful pages on Fet’s elegiac distich up to 1847 (1998:
192-93). Several of Fet’s later elegiac distich poems (“Сон и смерть”, from the late
1850s, and “Юноша, взором блестя, ты видишь все прелести девы…”, from
sometime after 1874, are discussed in the body of Chapter Two and in Chapter Three
below.
82
We do not know if Fet knew Hölderlin, for example. See note 223.
83
The Horace translations of The Lyrical Pantheon were, however, included in Fet’s
later publications of Horace’s Odes.
84
This is essentially Bukhshtab’s view, as well as the view expressed by SUKHOVA
(1981). It derives from the traditional division of Fet’s poetry into two distinct lines, the
“rational” and “irrational” (to continue, as above, using Bukhshtab’s terms). The idea
goes back to Grigor’ev, and is invariably brought up in discussions of Fet’s anthological
poetry, even where his poetry itself is scarcely discussed (e.g. KIBAL'NIK 1990). The view
is obviously not without justice, but has been in my opinion too rigidly applied. At the
same time, both Bukhshtab and, more effectively, GUSTAFSON (1966) maintain the
existence of two lines while seeing in the anthological poetry an early form of a tendency
that was to remain part of Fet’s work even later.
85
And apparently daily life was even more of a burden for Fet than for other people.
Those who knew him well often comment on his difficult character and his pathological
inability to enjoy life. His brother-in-law I. P. Borisov wrote of him, for example: “Он до
того привык исчислять будущие бедствия, что решительно не может остановиться
на хорошей минуте настоящего” (KHMELEVSKAIA 1969:490). In a recently discovered
letter to Fet, his close friend Apollon Grigor’ev, writing after Fet had refused him money,
says: “Я... не называю этого скупостью, а скорее пугливостью перед жизнию – тем
сжимающим началом, которое есть в тебе и как в полунемце и как в дите
орловской Украины” (GRIGOR'EV 1999:189). Although being turned down for a loan is
not an occasion likely to have elicited Grigor’ev’s most positive evaluation of Fet’s
character, his comment is no more negative than what he has to say about Fet elsewhere.
On one hand, Fet’s ability to “переноситься в предметы” (GRIGOR'EV 1980:152, see
page 9 above) was an essential element of his art, but on the other hand, his need to do so
was associated with black moods that horrified those closest to him and led Grigor’ev to
anticipate that Fet would try to kill himself. After his death, his devoted secretary ob-
served of Fet that “он и здоровым всегда тяготился жизнью” (see page 9). On Fet’s
psychological instability and intimations of suicide, see also Chapter One, notes 9 and
121. On Fet’s family’s tragic psychiatric history, see pages 9 ff.
186 Chapter Two

Notes
86
BUKHSHTAB (1937:673).
87
Cf. Zhirmunskii’s observations on the compositional similarities between Fet’s
erotic elegies and Goethe’s Roman Elegies (ZHIRMUNSKII 1981:345).
88
[KUDRIAVTSEV] (1840).
89
[MEI] (1850).
90
LONGINOV (1856) points out that this “incomparable” poem was one of very few to
have been reprinted from the 1840 collection in the collection of 1856.
91
Kudriavtsev notices a German inspiration underlying “Греция” as well, but the
verse form was, except perhaps for the anisometry of its third stanza (which we compare
below with Schiller’s usage in “Amalia”), not at all “German”.
92
The Bukhshtab editions impose stanza breaks on the text. On the graphic marking
of stanzas in Fet’s work, see Chapter Three.
93
Further discussion is in Chapter Three.
94
For both ends of the chronological spectrum of nineteenth-century school metrics,
see Arkhimandrit APOLLOS (1812:16-17), and GORNFEL’D / LIATSKIi (1901:662).
95
In later work, it was relatively unusual for Fet’s poetry to appear with any name
more specific than one of the general names given to groups used in his collections, such
as “Мелодии”, or, for poetry written for special occasions, a brief annotation of the
occasion or the name of the addressee.
96
There is another group of poems in the 1850 edition that Fet later refers to as an-
thological, in a letter to K. R.: these are the poems of the cycle “Вечера и ночи”, a group
of poems distinguished by their metrical and rhythmic freedoms, clearly inspired by
Goethe. We discuss these poems in Chapter Three.
97
Latin sources on memory, referred to in the previous chapter, promote visualization
as a memory aid because of the superior status of vision among all the senses. The same
ranking persists in modern times. For Russian literature on the subject, see for example,
TARKHANOV’s dictionary entries “Ощущение” and “Слух”, in which he assigns vision
pride of place on a scale of “objectivity” and ranks the other senses lower. From “Слух”
(449): “Слух мы всeгдa ищeм в кoлeбaниях, пoлучaeмых извнe … Этa чeртa в сфeрe
С. вырaжeнa гoрaздo слaбee нeжeли в сфeрe зритeльных oщущeний, oтличaющихся
свoeй oбъeктивнoстью и стрoгoй прoстрaнствeннoй лoкaлизaциeй и, вeрoятнo,
приoбрeтaeтся тaкжe путeм дoлгoгo oпытa и кoнтрoля других чувств. При
слухoвых oщущeниях, спoсoбнoсть к прoeцирoвaнию нe мoжeт дoстигнуть стoль
высoких стeпeнeй, кaк при зритeльных oщущeнияx”.
98
See WIMSATT / BROOKS (1957:128, 257).
99
Other "soundless" poems include: “Вакханка” (“Под тенью сладостной полу-
денного сада…”, 1843), “Диана”, “Влажное ложе покинувши, Феб златокудрый на-
правил …” (1847), “Кусок мрамора” (1847), “С корзиной, полною цветов, на голо-
ве…” (1847), “В златом сиянии лампады полусонной…” (1843), “Венера Ми-
лосская” (1856), “Нимфа и молодой сатир” (1858).
100
On the theory and tradition of ekphrasis see KRIEGER (1992).
101
The personification of death arose out of a German hellenophile tradition
originating with Winckelmann and Lessing’s discovery of Greek iconography of death
(HATFIELD 1964:24-32, HONOUR 1977:146-59), although in German representations
death is a beautiful boy, whereas in “Сон и смерть” it becomes the resplendent sister,
rather than the brother, of sleep. (The word for death is masculine in both Greek and
German but feminine in Russian.) Death is depicted together with Sleep on Greek grave-
Seeing and knowing 187

Notes
stones, is described as the brother of Sleep in the Iliad (14.231, 16.671 ff.), and is the
child of Night, according to Hesiod (Theogonia 212).
102
ROSE (1970).
103
The poems are: “Диaнa, Эндимиoн и сaтир”, “Зoлoтoй вeк”, “Дaки”, “Тeлeмaк
у Кaлипсы”, “Вeнeрa Милoсскaя”, “Нимфa и мoлoдoй сaтир”, and “Сoн и смeрть”.
Also from the same period is Fet’s “Aполлон Бельведерский”.
104
Since all the new poems except the last two were written and first published in
1856-57 and all were republished as part of the anthological cycle in Fet’s collected
works of 1863, it turns out that at more or less the same moment when V. P. BOTKIN
(1984) was proclaiming the inutility of mythological and antiquarian subject matter in
creating good anthological poetry, Fet was increasingly associating the anthological
genre with a narrow range of classical subjects.
105
CHILVERS (1990:487-88).
106
See note 101.
107
ZHOLKOVSKY (1985). An earlier study dealing with Pasternak and a literary
tradition with roots in Fet’s usage is NILSSON (1976).
108
GASPAROV (1990).
109
Tiutchev’s poetry is cited from TIUTCHEV (1965). Pigarev says that the idea ex-
pressed in this poem is more applicable to Tiutchev’s poetry than to Fet’s. It would seem
that the only Fet Tiutchev can have had in mind in this poem was the Fet who wrote the
poems of Evening Lights, from 1883 onward – but the poem dates to 1862, when Fet was
writing practically nothing original and had behind him most obviously the poetry of the
1856 collection, which is mostly not of the sort that one would associate with Tiutchev’s
characterization in the poem. And Tiutchev’s death in 1873 antedates all of late Fet.
Perhaps the reference to seeing the Great Mother beneath her external appearances refers
not to Fet’s original poetry, but to the tradition evoked by his Goethe translations of the
1850s. The situation is reminiscent of Grigor’ev’s prescience about Fet’s work (see note
2) and with Fet’s internalization of Turgenev’s criticism of him: Fet worshiped Tiutchev
(“мой обожаемый поэт”), he evidently felt that he had benefited greatly from his last
conversations with him (in 1866! – see Chapter One, note 9), and his last work is no-
ticeably more “Tiutchevan” in rhetoric than before. Perhaps Tiutchev’s praise became
Fet’s aspiration.
110
The phrase is from ZHOLKOVSKY (1994:254), who however applies it to Fet’s
“poetic personality”, not to a subdivision of his poems.
111
The classical roots of “Я знаю, гордая, ты любишь самовластье...” are laid bare
in USPENSKAIA (1988:145-46).
112
The poem dates from a period of severe and chronic illness, and Fet writes to K.R.
that he spends his nights sitting up in a chair, since it is too uncomfortable to lie down.
The poem closes his “Разные стихотворения” in Bukhshtab’s editions.
113
A nice collection of parodies on “Я долго стоял неподвижно…” appears in
BUCK (1978:195), in the context of a discussion of a series of Fet’s major communing-
with-the-stars poems. Besides “Я долго стоял неподвижно…”, Buck includes here the
following important texts: “На стоге сена ночью южной…” (1857), “Среди звезд”
(1876), and of course “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды,…”. BUCK (1978:203)
also analyzes Fet’s “Шиллеру” (published 1857), which is otherwise unjustly neglected
in this connection. It would be necessary to deal separately with the poems in which the
stars are associated specifically with a lost love, as in “В тиши и мраке таинственной
188 Chapter Two

Notes
ночи …”, but in other poems as well (see KLENIN 1991). Among Fet’s late poems may
be mentioned, in particular, “Одна звезда меж всеми дышит…” (1883) and “Светил
нам день, будя огонь в крови,…” (1887).
114
The phrase is Ibsen’s, but I take it from BOK (1982:60).
115
FINGARETTE (1969), GUTTENPLAN (1994).
116
HEGEL (1978) passim. Note in particular section 405 (HEGEL 1978:2:220ff.). The
following statement (HEGEL 1978:2:238-39) is especially evocative in a discussion of
Fet’s psychology: “Ich bin nämlich ein Zweifaches in mir, – einerseits Das, als was ich
mich nach meinem äußerlichen Leben und nach meinen allgemeinen Vorstellungen weiß,
– und andererseits Das, was ich in meinem auf besondere Weise bestimmten Inneren
bin”. On the psychology of German romantic philosophers more generally, see
ELLENBERGER (1970:199-253) and BERTHOLD-BOND (1995). On German romanticism in
relation to the English tradition, see ABRAMS (1958:201-13).
117
For a sobering review of the evidence for knowledge of Schelling among Rus-
sians, see NOWAKOWSKI (1996), writing with special reference to Tiutchev.
118
MV (1:167). The passage is of some interest for its contradiction of what Fet had
written about his visit to Paris in the travel notes that he had published at the time. For
example, in the travel notes, he depicted himself as staying in a much more expensive
hotel than the one that he really did, whereas the expensive hotel of the travel notes was
in the memoirs changed to be where his sister lived. In the memoirs, Fet emphasizes how
deeply depressed both he and his sister were. The contrast (as well as a number of others,
some of political interest) is particularly interesting because for long passages Fet
borrows from his travel notes word for word, and the changes that he makes are therefore
significant. The notes of his experience in France should also be compared with,
especially, Turgenev’s letters dealing with this subject.
119
Slovar’ (543-44).
120
The poem is “Ласточка” in The Lyrical Pantheon: “Я люблю пoсмoтрeть, /
Кoгдa лaстoчкa / Вьeтся ввeрx иль стрeлoй / Пo рву стeлeтся. // Тoчнo мoлoдoсть!
Всe / В нeбo прoсится, / И зeмля xoрoшa – / Нe рaсстaлся б с нeй!” The earlier poem
is interesting in relation to the later one, because, as has been mentioned above and as is
discussed in some detail in Chapter Three, the pair illustrates a broader tendency for the
older Fet to return to interests, and poems, that belonged to his youth. In this instance, the
connection is not only in the motif of the swallow and its flight, but also in the form of
the poems. Both poems open with the figure of a first-person observer who says he
“likes” to watch the swallow. Both poems are “falling similes”, in which the image of the
swallow is introduced before the comparison with human life. And both poems are, in
different ways, iconic. In the earlier poem, the rise and fall of the flight is represented in
the anapestic meter, the even lines ending in dactylic clausulae. The later poem, matches
the famously doubled tail of the swallow with a doubled ending – see note 126.
121
IVANOV / SHTEGMAN (1964:302-305).
122
We have seen this trick before: cf. the slip from mosquito to addressee in “Свеча
нагорела, портреты в тени ...”. There is by no means always a “knot” in mid-poem
where psyche and physical vehicle are joined, but often there is one.
123
KLENIN (1997).
124
BUKHSHTAB (1974:114-155).
125
TIUTCHEV (1965:1:130).
Seeing and knowing 189

Notes
126
We shall see in Chapter Three, section three, that, in late Fet, the fourth stanza of a
four-stanza poem needs some special motivation, typically as a coda, which in
“Ласточки” the last stanza indeed is. In fact, it is a coda of a sort particularly characteris-
tic of the late Fet: literally, it makes a “tail”, a term he uses explicitly in talking about
closure in a letter to K. R. (See note 148.) Indeed, the fourth stanza, with its parallel of
the rhetorical question of the preceding stanza, constitutes a kind of doublet tail – exactly
the sort of tail that a poet-swallow might wish to display.
3 Verse form and language in Fet’s shorter poems

3.1 Introduction: the cultural evolution of form

Fet’s oeuvre has struck many readers more by its stability than by its de-
velopment. Cagey and vague, Fet cultivated a persona that evades temporal
definition. In his late work he returns to earlier themes and usages. He re-
prints and occasionally re-writes work of forty years past. Old and new
blend together without obvious mediative development. I have tried to indi-
cate ways I believe Fet’s poetics are unified from early to late, but of course
his practice could not but change over the more than half century in which
he was writing. One of the unifying principles of Fet’s poetics was his orien-
tation toward the mind of his reader, and he well knew that his reader in
1890 was different from the reader of 1840. He also knew, as we cannot,
how much of his readership had not changed, or changed only in that its re-
sponse was no longer face to face, but from the grave.
Fet outlived many of his generation. Apollon Grigor’ev was the most im-
portant editor of his first books, who also set the record straight on crucial
aspects of their interpretation. He did not live to express his opinions about
the last of them. No one ever again, in Fet’s lifetime or afterward, wrote
about Fet with anything like the insight of Grigor’ev’s 1850 essay. It was of
course only the early Fet that Grigor’ev could describe there, but he seems to
divine the poetry Fet would write decades later. By then Fet had no one left,
alive, with that gift or knowledge. Recalled so often in Fet’s late prose – his
memoirs, with the letter from Grigor’ev that Fet published there, The Cac-
tus, The Kiss, The Early Years of My Life – and in the long poem The Stu-
dent (1884), the young Grigor’ev in the old Fet’s mind had become a kind of
ghost reader,1 and in that one letter even a writer. It may be this, and not
only Grigor’ev’s prescience, that connects the criticism of 1850 with the
poems of Evening Lights.2 I have suggested a similar kind of effect on Fet of
Tiutchev’s poetics, and something like this has been said about I. S. Tur-
genev. Turgenev’s editorial activities had enormous impact on the Fetian
text of the 1850s and early 60s, but that role had ended long before Tur-
genev died in 1883. Yet it has been suggested in the literature that Fet inter-
nalized Turgenev’s critical response to his poetry and re-interpreted it in his
own way.3
And he lacked at the end not only his finest critics. Dead too were most
of the friends and relations whose loyalty to Fet was all the more dependable
for its lack of professional self-interest, even when they advanced his.
Verse form and language 191

Among the most noteworthy: his early love and later inspiration Maria
Lazich, his sister Nadezhda (who, at least as Fet remembered it, plotted his
early acquaintance with Turgenev), and Nadezhda Afanas’evna’s devoted
and ill-starred husband, I. P. Borisov.4 Borisov died last of the three, in
1871, at the nadir of Fet’s career. Fet lived, for his time, a rather long life,
but not so long as to have made it inevitable that practically no one except
ghosts at the end of his career had any real understanding of its beginnings.5
Since his last poetry was so deeply retrospective, the absence of living wit-
nesses also brings into question the older Fet’s readership, and even his legi-
bility.
This disjunction of beginning and end is an important context for the
words of Ia. P. Polonskii, one of only four people, according to Fet, to whom
he said ты,6 one of the very few people whom Fet had known in his student
days and with whom he could still claim, re-claim, or re-accept, friendship
in his last years.7 Polonskii’s repeated declarations of how Fet’s poetry in
Evening Lights was “the same”, “the same” are the assurances of a long-
absent friend who assures you you haven’t changed a bit, no not a bit, he
sees the you of twenty years ago.8 He does, and so do you. Here Fet is re-
markable. From the beginning, his work had entailed the cultivation of self-
knowledge, the exploration of mind and memory. In his last years this spe-
cial talent conspired with the universal processes of ageing in such a way
that the poet more than most was able to revisit his earlier self and ap-
parently in some ways become him. As a consequence, there is much about
the late Fet that is quite like the early Fet and is apparently ignorant of the
Fet that lived between. This has led some who have thought about the his-
tory of his poetry to proclaim his middle years an aberration: they see in
much of his poetry of the 1850s an alien aesthetic of cold description and
reserve that was imposed on Fet by well-meaning critics and editors but that
Fet never thrived in, and, after that, a terrible period of silence. Ostracized
by the literary community, largely forgotten by the reading public, Fet is
isolated from even that small, select audience that nourished his youthful in-
spiration. Without readers and ground down by daily life, he writes scarcely
one or two poems in a year. Then, in old age, the poet finds his youthful
voice, strengthened of course by the wisdom of his years. It makes a good
story. Partly true.9
The mystery of stability in flux, the juxtaposition of motion and stillness,
revelatory perceptual shifts that seem to change everything suddenly, but
which emerge, somehow, from a process that the poet has both dominated
and left free: from these oppositions Fet built much of his work. Built on
antithesis yet with all the self-similarity of the physical world, Fet’s oeuvre
looks unexpectedly like the poems that comprise it. The question of how his
work is unified, and how it changes, has not yet found a satisfactory reso-
192 Chapter Three

lution, although it is an old question in the literature on Fet and one that has
been with us from the start of our inquiry. We began by looking at Fet’s po-
etics in the fluid context of his life story, and then, reading some of his po-
ems, we saw that texts that are intuitively related nonetheless manifest a dif-
ferent poetic practice depending on when they were written. Now, like Fet,
we will put aside reading in favor of remembering,10 looking not at indi-
vidual texts but at individual habits, at gestures recurrent in Fet’s oeuvre.
The relevant text, for the moment, is no longer what a reader of, say, Eve-
ning Lights saw before him on a single page in 1883, but rather what Fet, by
the time of his death in 1892, claimed, or could consider claiming to have
done. Like Fet at the end of his life, we, in this last part of our inquiry, can
re-shuffle fragmented memories and re-combine them. Fet’s memory, I have
suggested, was not at all as poor as he liked to claim, only highly con-
structive and unrobotic in its visits to the past. It was not a “good” memory,
it was not well behaved, but a lifetime of persistent idiosyncrasy and cul-
tivation had made it very rich. Our own memory of Fet’s poems will be less
rich, unfortunately, but robotically more sound, since it will really be a
memory collaborative between our personal one most fallible and that of a
machine that houses his works. You may not welcome our friend the com-
puter, but computers are reliable, when they do their work at all, and ours is
a dedicated one.
Examining the Fetian text more or less entire helps us frame more pre-
cisely than we have done so far such questions as what is typical of Fet,
what he does often, what rarely, what more or less than other poets. Such es-
sentially computational problems derive from an impulse that, in other con-
texts, promotes simile and synecdoche: we compare things, selectively atten-
tive to some part in all of them. Generalization flattens, a little, tumescent
meanings. In compensation, we survey at once and as a complex relational
system something approximating the whole of Fet’s oeuvre. This is not only
a much larger whole than that miniature one, the short – sometimes very
short – poem, with which we began, but also a whole quite different in kind.
It is not just a matter of having a broader range of material, more infor-
mation. It helps us see what Fet can have meant, for example, when he chose
a particular form, if we know when else, or if, he otherwise employed it.
This is a different way of thinking about the poet’s activity: did Fet write a
thousand texts, or did he finally write one? He was not, after all, a man the
ending of whose life work caught him unawares or unwilling to leave, and
his orientation toward the ends of things is manifest in both art and life. He
accomplished apparently every goal he had set for himself, he lived and
wrote over a long period of time, he died in an attempt to take his own life,
and he left behind a fairly clear accounting of what, of all his work, he con-
Verse form and language 193

sidered central to it. If ever a poet believed he was creating, and had created,
an oeuvre, surely Fet was he.
Mediating between the little poems and the single oeuvre were the books
in which Fet’s poems were collected. Not that the books were the only way
Fet’s poetry was known, of course: he published first in journals when he
had the chance, and many of his poems were set to music and became well
known in song form. Beginning in 1856, Fet also published entire books of
translated poetry.11 But it is the books containing his original verse that are
the great milestones of his career: the neophyte “A. F.”, author of The Lyr-
ical Pantheon, yields to the mature young “A. Fet” of the 1850 Collection,
and he, in turn, is taken in hand and given a new style – an up-to-date Rus-
sian style – by the editors of The Contemporary, especially I. S. Turgenev,
who supervised the Collection published in 1856.
The 1850 edition is generally viewed as the poet’s first mature work, as
against the juvenilia of The Lyrical Pantheon. It is useful to recall, however,
that the earliest poems published in 1840 may have been written as early as
1837 and that the book published in 1850 was actually approved by the cen-
sor in 1847. There is thus a gap of up to nine or ten years from each edition
to the next, and the 1850 book represents work roughly equidistant chrono-
logically between its predecessor and successor volumes. The half-life of
each of the three editions was considerable, even that of The Lyrical Pan-
theon. Several of the anthological poems first published there were reprinted
in 1850, and Fet put two of them in his final canon. In addition, the Horace
translations first published in 1840 were reprinted in Fet’s complete Horace
in 1883, while he re-translated in later life one of the Goethe poems his first
version of which appears in The Lyrical Pantheon.12 As for the two editions
of the 1850s: the 1856 collection formed even Fet’s own ideas of what his
canon was, up until the 1880s, while the 1850 edition, which was at first
evidently superseded by the 1856 text, finally, at the end of his life, re-
claimed the attention of the poet himself, of his last editors, and of readers in
younger generations.13
The differences between the editions of 1850 and 1856 are striking and
have several times been described.14 The 1856 edition has become well
known for its promotion of the “anthological” Fet, for pruning the lyrical ex-
cesses of the 1850 edition and for simply eliminating many poems and parts
of poems that seemed to the editors to be blemished.15 They also, as we shall
see, promoted what might seem the very antithesis of the “anthological” Fet,
namely the Fet of the ring-structure romance form. This new “song-form”
Fet was, already, a poet of nostalgia, the writer of “oldies but goodies”,
many of whose “oldies” were no longer good enough to make the grade,
much less the charts. When he urged the new edition upon a Fet worried
about spending the money on it (it was Fet’s money), Turgenev explained
194 Chapter Three

that he wanted to do it up nicely, pretty in form and elegant of content, the

sort of book, he said, that could rest on ladies’ table-tops.16
The 1840 and 1850 volumes attest loudly to Fet’s German education, and
perhaps also to his lack of much of a Russian one. The Lyrical Pantheon,
like Fet’s collections of 1850, 1863, and 1883, included a relatively large
number of poems Fet had translated from German and Latin, as well as, in
the earlier books, French. At this beginning stage of his career, however,
Fet’s wide reading not only informed but also complicated the connection, in
any case labile, between the young Fet’s practice and his knowledge of po-
etic tradition. Since he was so fully bilingual, there was no natural barrier to
assimilating both Russian and German models, but his awareness of them
was asymmetrical: prior to his university training (which he claims he never
learned much from), his knowledge of the Russian tradition was broad but
largely self-taught, and what was taught him by others was mostly German.
Even if there was no interference between one of his two languages and the
other, the two different poetic traditions, each with differently complicated
relationships to its linguistic sources, cannot have been easily disentangled,
nor would the need to separate them necessarily have been clear. Fet’s early
work has been called eclectic. It was eclectic across two literatures, both at-
tached to languages of which the poet had a native command.
In his characterizations of Fet and his poetry, Apollon Grigor’ev emphas-
izes how much Fet owed, especially, to Goethe, pointing to one of Fet’s earl-
iest anthological poems (“Когда петух,…”, one of the poems from The
Lyrical Pantheon) as too much an imitation of Goethe and too little original
in its inspiration. Grigor’ev supplied the rubrics under which the poems of
the 1850 edition were grouped – and these rubrics, and the graphics of the
stanzaic divisions of the poetry, are reminiscent of Goethe’s 1815 collec-
tion.17 Fet, to be sure, had only one of Goethe’s four seasons, but he makes a
nationally-tinged virtue of necessity, putting his “winter” poems into a group
called “Снега” that comes first in the volume and leads off with a poem that
starts “I am a Russian”. But Fet’s early “elegies” are elegies as Goethe knew
them, and hardly anyone else, his “Melodies” are not only Heine’s but also
Goethe’s “Lieder”,18 his sonnets and ballads each have their own heading,
and so does his so-Goethean anthological verse. The Goethean source for “Я
полон дум, когда закрывши вежды…” has been mentioned in the litera-
ture.19 Perhaps most Goethean of all, though, are the poems under a rubric
lacking an analogue in any collection of Goethe’s: “Вечера и ночи”. Most
of the poems in this group in the 1850 collection first appeared as a group in
1842 under a shared epigraph from Goethe’s “Auf dem See”. These were,
Grigor’ev said, some of the most splendid poems in Fet’s oeuvre, and their
appeal derives at least in part from their exploitation of a verse form that,
borrowed from German, approximates to a Russian ear practically unregu-
Verse form and language 195

lated free verse.20 The form remained well outside the norms of nineteenth-
century Russian poetry (Fet himself wrote little poetry of this type after the
1840s), but in such poems as “Я люблю многое, близкое сердцу,…” the
apparently free sweep of the lines is perfectly expressive of the textual
speaker’s acute and labile experience of the natural world.
Я люблю мнoгoe, близкoe сeрдцу,
Тoлькo рeдкo люблю я...
Чaщe всeгo мнe приятнo скoльзить пo зaливу
Тaк – зaбывaясь
Пoд звучную мeру вeслa,
Oмoчeннoгo пeнoй шипучeй, –
Дa смoтрeть, мнoгo ль oтъexaл
И мнoгo ль oстaлoсь,
Дa нe видaть ли зaрницы...
Изo всex oстрoвкoв,
Нa кoтoрыx рeдкo мeрцaют
Oгни рыбaкoв зaпoздaлыx,
Мил мнe oдин прeдпoчтитeльнo...
Крaснoглaзый крoлик
Любит eгo;
Гoрдый лeбeдь кaждoй вeснoю
С прoтянутoй шeeй лeтaeт вoкруг
И сaдится с рaзмaxa
Нa тиxиe вoды.
Нaд oбрывoм утeсa
Рaстeт, пoмaвaя вeтвями,
Ширoкoлиствeнный дуб.
Скoлькo уж лeт тут живeт сoлoвeй!
Oн пoeт пo зaрям,
Дa и пoзднeю нoчью, кoгдa
Мeсяц oбмaнчивым свeтoм
Сeрeбрит и вoлны и листья,
Oн нe мoлкнeт, пoeт
Всe грoмчe и грoмчe.
Стрaнныe мысли
Приxoдят тoгдa мнe нa ум:
Чтo этo – жизнь или сoн?
Счaстлив я или тoлькo oбмaнут?
Нeт oтвeтa...
Мeлкиe вoлны чтo-тo шeпчут с кoрмoю,
Вeслo нeдвижимo,
И нa нeбe яснoм высoкo свeркaeт зaрницa.

Fet’s Germanness shows up in little ways,21 some of them of course shared

with other Russian poets but others more idiosyncratic. His poetic celebra-
tion of science, as in his poem honoring the newly discovered planet Nep-
196 Chapter Three

tune, may be an echo of the Goethean tradition, as is certainly the form of

the poem. This is how it begins:
Птицeй,
Быстрo пaрящeй птицeй Зeвeсa
Быть мнe судьбoю дaнo всeoбъeмлющeй.
Нынe, крылья рaскинув нaд бeзднoй
Твeрди, – нынe нaд высью я
Гoрнoй, тaм, гдe у нoг мoиx
Вoды,
Вeчнo нeсущиe бeлую пeну,
Стoнут и стaрый трeзубeц Нeптунa
В тeмныx рукax пoвeлитeля стрoгoгo блeщeт.
Нeт прeдeлoв
Квeрxу и нeт прeдeлoв
Книзу.
His “ballad” called “Геро [originally Гера] и Леандр” has been linked to a
poem of the same name by Schiller, and Fet not only translated both Schiller
and Heine, as well as Goethe, but also imitated them in his early original
poetry.22 His early metrical repertory, we shall see, was apparently influ-
enced by his knowledge of German poetry, and his formal usage shows
some lapses that can be attributed to his being accustomed to German verse.
For example, in masculine rhymes ending in vowels, the young Fet regularly
violates Russian (but not German) norms, according to which the “support-
ing consonants” to the left of the rhyme vowel must be identical: Fet at first
rhymes voiced consonants with their voiceless counterparts, using such pairs
as пути ~ груди, or глаза ~ волоса.23 His first use of stanzas in which some,
but not all, lines are rhymed is to be found in Goethe translations in The
Lyrical Pantheon. The younger Fet made extensive use of such stanzas, be-
fore they were common in Russian, and his original verse follows Goethe’s
practice in tolerating “casual” rhymes in the lines that are not obligatorily
rhymed. Similarly, people have said that, even if leaving the odd-number
lines of a quatrain unrhymed is German-borrowed – in Fet’s case, first from
Goethe’s “Mailied” (“Wie herrlich leuchtet…”), more often allegedly from
Heine – , yet leaving the even lines unrhymed, and so ending a stanza with
an unrhymed line, was his own invention; but his first book includes a trans-
lation of Goethe’s “Der Sänger”, in which the last line of each stanza, in
original and translation, is orphaned. His rhythmic habits, also, were rela-
tively accommodating of irregularities acceptable in German verse, but not,
then, in Russian: the original second stanza of “Тихая, звездная ночь…”,
for example, begins with the line “Дева – радость любви!”, in which the
first dactyl is truncated, to poignant effect. It now would be called a dolnik
line, and it is similar to a rhythm Fet also used in his Heine translations.
Verse form and language 197

Fet’s translations often anticipate the poet’s later usage, and it is in Fet’s
translations that we find most prominent, even exaggerated, traits that were
generally characteristic of his poetry. We have mentioned this with respect
to rhyme, but there were other things. Stanzas combining lines of more than
one meter, for example, comprise a larger proportion of his translated poetry
than of his original verse, and a much larger proportion of the lines in his
translated poetry are either very short or very long. Fet was known for stan-
zas combining shorter and longer lines, and especially for the centrifugal
character of his line length, but these habits appealed to him first in German.
What the connection is between Fet’s German sources and his original
poetry is sometimes elusive. A single poem seems often to have appealed to
him for a variety of reasons and at different times, and it shows up in his
work accordingly. The translations are thus valuable not only as such, but
also because the poems that Fet translated were poems he liked and returned
to. For example, he translated Goethe’s “Auf dem See” in the 1850s, but its
metrical complexity, I will argue, is important for Fet’s original poetry at the
very end of his life. Similarly, Fet translated Goethe’s “Mailied” and found
in it a source of an unusual type of rhyme patterning. We will discuss “Auf
dem See” in some detail in the next section, and will return to “Mailied” in
discussing rhyme. But both “Auf dem See” and “Mailied” have other con-
nections. Both poems have attracted attention, among writers on Goethe, for
their psychological orientation, and this, too, is something that becomes very
characteristic of Fet’s own poetry. The psychological structure of “Auf dem
See”, as we shall see, offers a model for Fet’s tendency to move from obser-
vation of the natural world to the world within. “Mailied”, in contrast, pre-
sents the psychology of youth, of ecstasy, and is a kind of poem not typical
of Goethe even slightly later. One form of expression that this takes is syn-
tactic, a tendency to point at things with nominal exclamations, rather than
integrating reference into explicit predications: “O Erd’! o Sonne! O Glück!
o Lust!”. Fet was famous for his nominal syntax. Was his late return to nom-
inal poetry, in, precisely, its ecstatic form, not also a return to Goethe’s
“Mailied”?24 The versificational connections carry with them others, more
elusive.
Much has been made of Fet’s anxiety about his national origin, about the
fact that his 1850 book begins by announcing his Russianness. Even his
early teachers, good and well-meaning Germans, were struck by his insis-
tence on being Russian. But Grigor’ev was right: the inspiration for Fet’s
poetry was not Russian, or at least not nearly only that, and Fet’s ex-
ploitation of his German sources – and of non-Russian sources in general –
was not shy, not, at first, intended to be hidden. On the contrary, his declara-
tion of Russianness can be read not only as self-affirmation but as an aes-
thetic claim, on the order of Horace’s pride in being the first to show how a
198 Chapter Three

variety of Greek meters could be well wrought in Latin.25 In the 1850 vol-
ume, Fet showcases his acquaintance with non-Russian poetry and flaunts a
romantic breed of multicultural exoticism: in addition to his Heine transla-
tions, he includes a translation of one of Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, a trans-
lation of a Moore poem called, in the original, a Venetian song, and a French
evocation of ancient Greece. The original poems by Fet in his 1850 book
include a miniature version of Sakuntala and a lovers’ dialogue set in Kash-
mir. Putting his claim of Russianness at the head of the book that contains
all of these other works suggests less anxiety than pride and delight in the
richness of the world. Translating was part of that exhibition of mastery and
pleasure.
Fet’s German translations were more experimental than his original po-
etry, and he clearly selected for translation German poems that appealed to
him by their form. The form sometimes turned out to be adaptable to Rus-
sian, sometimes not. But Fet’s love of translating was no mere pastime, not
something on the side. His translated poetry was also poetry, with the caveat
that for Fet the poetry resided not in the translation as an independent text –
for him, it was not an independent text – but in its perennial evocation of its
source, which came alive for him, incorrigible bilingual, at every reading of
the translation.26
The German substratum that is so evident in early Fet is systematically
effaced in the 1856 edition, and so is the poet’s declaration of his Russian-
ness. The cycle “Cнега” is moved, the poem beginning “I am a Russian”
now begins with something else. Both “Я полон дум, когда, закрывши
вежды…” and “Гера и Леандр” disappear for thirty-some years. The num-
ber of translations is greatly reduced, the few left are submerged into the
main body of poetry, and only the translation of Heine’s “Poseidon” is for-
mally in any way unusual. Dolnik is replaced with lines of classical meters.
Inexact rhymes (пути ~ груди) are eliminated, sometimes along with the po-
ems that gave rise to them. Fet also used a few approximate rhymes in the
1850 poems – люблю я rhymes with удалую, for example. Approximate
rhymes (albeit usually not rhymes opposing unstressed /u/ and /a/) were al-
ready acceptable in the Russian tradition, and these rhymes are left un-
touched in the 1856 volume, even though they are so little characteristic of
Fet’s own usage afterwards that it has been argued that approximate rhymes
are, for Fet, not rhymes at all.27 The changes in the 1856 volume even in-
clude some linguistic corrections that seem to go beyond questions of style
and taste. As Bukhshtab was the first to notice, the lines “губки и белые
ручки Так холодны, что нельзя не согреть их своими устами” represent
a correction of an aspectual usage impossible to a Russian ear: “губки и
белые ручки Так холодны, что нельзя не согреть их подолгу устами”,28
while some changes in orchestration and vocabulary seem to have been
Verse form and language 199

based on Turgenev’s sense that Fet’s choices were the result of not only au-
thorial inexperience but also a limited sense for the nuances of Russian. The
poems of “Вечера и ночи” are mostly retained, albeit with some minor
changes. They had been praised in reviews of the 1850 edition, and sheer
beauty seems to have been the grounds for awarding them citizenship. It has
often been noted in the literature on Fet that the 1850s were the time when
Fet had the greatest hope of making his way in Russian literary life, of be-
coming a respected literary professional building his career within the circle
of men of letters. A comparison of the 1850 and 1856 collections of his po-
etry shows this stage of Fet’s career not in external, biographical terms, but
rather through the poems themselves, through their assimilation to the aes-
thetic norms and national tradition of which Fet’s editors were the increas-
ingly powerful guardians.
There is no doubt that the change in Fet was deliberate and controlled, or
that it was recognized by some readers for exactly what it was: the russifica-
tion of a German poet. In its earlier stages, Fet’s de-germanicization is re-
marked on by bibliographer and literary historian G. N. Gennadi. He wrote,
in February of 1854:
Вторая книжка «Современника» вышла 4-го числа и также очень хороша, как
первая. Стихи Фета – прелесть.29 Это совсем другой Фет, не тот безалаберный,
причудливый и иногда непонятный воспитанник Гейне и русский немец, каков
он был прежде. Какое наивное, теплое чувство, какие верные черты русской
природы и иногда какие неожиданно приятные стихи.30
On the appearance, two years later, of Fet’s 1856 book, A. V. Druzhinin
regrets to find that the poet has “not yet entirely abjured” his germanisms.31
The same Grigor’ev who in 1842 had said that Fet’s translating Hermann
und Dorothea was an activity that only a German could enjoy,32 – that same
Grigor’ev, in 1858, in a mode presented as more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger
rebukes Fet as a “half German”.33 This might be taken, if one did not know,
as a figure of speech. But one did know. It was a literal (if not always sim-
ple) truth, and the “half” that was German was with all good intention but
nonetheless ruthlessly sifted out, put aside as chaff – in a word, suppressed –
during the 1850s, 60s, and 70s. This was the difference in taste, and the act-
ing upon it, that distinguished Turgenev and the circle of The Contemporary
as Fet’s editors. It is perhaps a response to this process as well as this taste
that led Fet to review, at the end, the poetry that Turgenev had discarded,
and it may also help explain Fet’s publishing a single letter from Grigor’ev,
a letter unflattering to Fet: in it, in 1858, Grigor’ev refers to the “несчастное
издание” that Turgenev had, then recently, edited.34 Grigor’ev had known
and loved the “half German”, and had known from the beginning what po-
etry he could write. Had it been necessary to push what Grigor’ev knew
aside? Had it really been necessary to deracinate Fet’s art?
200 Chapter Three

The de-germanicization of Fet’s poetry was not a unique event in the his-
tory of Russian verse. We may recall the sorry fate of German-schooled Lo-
monosov’s fully stressed lines, and of his judgment that iambs and anapests
mixed in a line were quite pleasing. We may look ahead, too, to the history
of the Russian dolnik (those very iambs and anapests mixed, from another
point of view, and re-imported from Germany), and to its eventual regular-
ization and its settling into the same medium-length line of the Russian clas-
sical meters before it. And if the binary meters are the historical core of Rus-
sian versification, then the core of rhythm in that verse regulates line-length
fiercely, but is – in principle if not in practice – indifferent to destressing
except at line-end, where stress marks a boundary, just as it does in many
syllabic systems. Russian poetry, for all the free stress of the language out of
which it is made, has traditionally made its choices in the direction of syl-
lable-counting, to an extent quite ear-catching for anyone whose native lan-
guage is Germanic. Not for nothing did Russian syllabic verse persist as
long as it did.35 As it happened, Turgenev’s French cultural orientation made
him a particularly keen purifier, mentor, and russifier of Fet, the provincial
near-German. Or provincial German tout court – by ancestry, and by the
education his ancestry, once revealed, had made it prudent to acquire.
The 1856 volume, and with it Fet’s ultimate russification, was arguably
the great turning point in his work, with consequences for his writing at least
as important as any that arose from his famous ostracism in the 1860s and
70s. Certainly the latter was crucial to Fet’s biography, and we cannot but
think the poverty of his output in those years a consequence, at least in part,
of his personal and professional isolation. Fet’s unhappy situation must also
have contributed to the relative joylessness of what little original poetry he
wrote then. Yet the consequences of the editorial control and aesthetic men-
torship exercised by Turgenev in the 1850s persisted across that great per-
sonal divide, even more markedly after Turgenev had died. M. L. Gasparov
has pointed out that Fet habitually, himself, at the end, rejected too-final
stanzas in his poems just as Turgenev, albeit for different reasons, had re-
jected them decades earlier, and when Fet returned to his earlier poems and
republished them, he was not averse to cutting them too. Over the years of
his ostracism, Fet went on translating and experimenting, and he says that
the 1856 edition of his poetry became for him his notion of what sort of poet
he was, for more than thirty years. Some of his early techniques that were in
origin German – his use of partly rhymed stanzas, for example – became
part of the Russian tradition, and Fet himself abandoned them as no longer
interesting. Other early techniques, such as his inexact rhyme, mostly fell by
the wayside, or he would at the end return to them,36 but subtly, in moder-
ation, embedded almost nostalgically in an otherwise perfect little text. Re-
gardless of the details, Fet was proud of never having compromised his aes-
Verse form and language 201

thetic convictions, and, more than convictions, his intuition. Perhaps the
most poignant aspect of what happened to Fet in the 1860s was that the poet
who was rejected and abused and forgotten was in fact a poet who stood on
the verge of his greatest achievements – where he would not have stood had
he not had the benefit of Turgenev’s reading and responding to his poems.
Eventually, the ostracism was over. The poetry went on, and, as it went on,
it integrated what Fet had learned from his editors in the 1850s into the po-
etic impulse that had been so evident, in some ways more evident, before.
Another edition of Fet’s poetry appeared in 1863. Besides poems written
after the previous edition had been published, it was also distinguished by
the inclusion of many more translations. Generally speaking, though, the
1863 edition perpetuates the editorial practices of the 1856 volume: in only
one instance did Fet in 1863 reinstate a poem excluded in 1856, and in only
one other did he restore a text to the form it had had before Turgenev’s edit-
ing.37
As we shall see, the poems that are new in the 1863 collection continue
formal trends introduced in the previous edition. It was only in his last series
of four books, published 1883-1891 under the shared title Evening Lights,
that we see a substantial new development in Fet’s work. It was in this pe-
riod that Fet began to review his early poetry, questioning for the first time
the exclusion of some poems from his canon and re-working both original
texts and translations that he had published or put aside decades before. The
first volume of Evening Lights covers a broad chronological range, partly
because, after twenty years, there was so much catching up to do, but its
reminiscentiality, in some respects quite marked,38 does not extend to the
resurrection of the texts published in 1850. Introducing the third volume of
Evening Lights, published in 1888, Fet explains that he has now for the first
time been re-reading the edition of 1850, and he includes, sometimes in
newly revised form, some poetry that had not since then been reprinted. His
introduction to the third volume of Evening Lights also reviews the roles
played by his earlier editors. It is evident that Fet saw the 1888 Evening
Lights as his parting word, and the fourth and final edition (1891) is clearly a
kind of postscript (“мы только желаем сказать друзьям, что всегда рады
их встретить и что за нашим окном Вечерние Огни еще не погасли
окончательно”).39 Yet Fet apparently continued his reappraisal of his early
work up until nearly the moment of his death in 1892. In the end, he left in-
complete two collections of original poetry: one was a fifth book of Evening
Lights, the other – a final selection from among all the poems he had written
in the course of his adult life.
In discussing how Fet’s poetic practices changed, we will be looking at
his oeuvre in two different ways, one oriented toward Fet’s poetry as it ap-
peared to readers at different points in its development and the other – as Fet
202 Chapter Three

left it at his death. Referring to specific books, we will always be referring to

the texts of poems in the form that they took in that book. Other than that,
when we exploit material beyond the generally authoritative 1959 edition of
Fet, it will mostly be to include a few more translations that Fet himself in-
cluded in the major collections of his poetry.40
Yet analyzing Fet’s books, we cannot get a complete view of how his
practice changed over time. The collections are chronologically too dispar-
ate, and there are many poems that never appeared in any of the collections
made during Fet’s lifetime. In the abstract, we would like to be able to trace
the changes in Fet’s work according to the time when each poem was com-
posed, but there are at least two obvious hindrances.
First, for many of the poems, we do not have an exact date of composi-
tion. This is not an insuperable obstacle to establishing an approximate chro-
nology, since we can date nearly all the poems to within a few years, and
some, especially the late poems, much more precisely. The collections them-
selves serve as termini for texts we otherwise would know little about, and
can suggest which poems may reasonably be treated as roughly contempo-
rary with one another.
The second problem for our chronology is more daunting, and that is de-
ciding what to include. Since many of the early poems that came to be in-
cluded in the canon took several forms, it is tempting to treat each form of
the poem as evidence of Fet’s practice at the time it was produced. Doing
this, though, greatly distorts the sheer quantity of text, and it levels differ-
ences among variants that for both Fet and his editors enjoyed different
status. It is not clear how one can evaluate and include all the variants con-
sistently and in a way both appropriate to their textological role and satisfac-
tory for a reader. Something like such an attempt underlay B. Ia.
Bukhshtab’s earliest edition of Fet – but Bukhshtab, in the preface to that
edition and even more clearly afterward, concluded that his results were not
entirely satisfactory, partly because of the peculiarities of how Fet himself
seems to have viewed the creative process. Bukhshtab noticed that Fet’s
rough drafts tended to contain few corrections. The poet sent off his texts as
they came to him, but then he not only acceded willingly to editors’ requests
for change but also took for granted the centrality of the role of his cherished
reader-editors in the creation of a poem: poems were really not finished for
Fet until someone else had read them, and once he had made changes at his
chosen readers’ request, he hardly ever changed anything back. The readerly
orientation of Fet’s poetry was no mere abstraction for its author.
Nor should it be for us. It is easy enough to compare multiple variants of
a single poem, and even to compare Fet’s books with one another. But when
we think about the oeuvre as a whole, we can appropriately reduce textual
multiplicity to something more manageable – something unified, readable.
Verse form and language 203

And it is useful to do this with Fet’s poetry because it is what Fet himself at
the end sought to do. Because of these considerations, and since a goodly
proportion of the most important variants are taken into account when Fet’s
chronology is viewed in relation to his volumes of collected verse, I have not
considered it necessary to take them into account in describing the oeuvre in
relation to date of composition. That is, by “date of composition” I will
mean the date at which a given text first took a form then considered final,
but that date does not necessarily correspond to when Fet completed the ver-
sion he authorized for publication in his final collection. A text of 1843, in
other words, is one that Fet wrote in 1843 but may have revised later, and
the form in which the poet in the end chose to include it in his canon (and it
is the early canonical texts, mainly, that exist in so many forms) is the form
that is included in this part of our analysis. Throughout, when I refer to po-
ems in the context not of particular publications but of the oeuvre as a
whole, that oeuvre will be viewed in the form that Fet ultimately chose for it,
and the texts of his poems will be as he left them at his death. By combining
this approach to the chronology of Fet’s poetry with one that takes into ac-
count the multiplicity of forms that the poems sometimes took, I hope to
capture some of the interplay between temporal flux and resistance to it that
are, as is evident in fact and I believe in deepest truth, characteristic of Fet
and his poetry.

3.2 Meter and rhythm

3.2.1 Translating rhythm: From “Auf dem See” to “Последняя любовь”

What is most interesting about Fet’s use of meter and rhythm is how he
found his way back and forth between them. I believe that this is one of the
aspects of Fet’s work in which you see most clearly the ways in which his
mixed cultural heritage informed his work. Fet’s experimentation in meter
and rhythm is attested in both early and later work (although seldom in be-
tween), and in both translations and original poetry. And these things are not
kept separate. What struck him in a German poem might, for example, ap-
pear as some idiosyncrasy in the way he translated it, and a formal choice
made in the translation might later show up in an original poem. Also, Fet’s
translations can often be usefully compared to other translator-poets’ ap-
proaches to the same texts. As an example, we trace Fet’s response to
Goethe’s poem “Auf dem See” and compare his translation of it with the
two Russian translations that had been published earlier.
204 Chapter Three

As we have seen, an early response to “Auf dem See” appears in Fet’s

work in 1842, when he published a group of poems under the title “Вечера
и ночи”: the cycle appeared with an epigraph consisting of the first quatrain
of “Auf dem See”, without, however, naming it.41 When the cycle was re-
printed as a section of Fet’s 1850 collection of poetry, the epigraph was re-
moved. In the context of the 1850 collection, it was superfluous to empha-
size Fet’s orientation toward Goethe’s work in general terms, while the spe-
cific connection between Fet’s cycle and “Auf dem See” was probably ob-
scure for many readers. In a review, Apollon Grigor’ev, emphasizing
Goethe’s relevance to Fet’s work, gives special attention to “Auf dem See”.
Goethe, according to Grigor’ev, was Fet’s great model, and “Auf dem See”
was the apogee of Goethe’s art: “never,” writes Grigor’ev, “have thought
and feeling taken on a more poetic covering than in this poem”.42 The poems
of “Вечера и ночи”, says Grigor’ev, are Fet’s best work, and it is here that
Goethe’s importance for Fet is most obvious.
In the context of his 1850 discussion of Fet’s poetry, Grigor’ev presents a
translation of “Auf dem See”. It was the second known translation of the
poem into Russian, following by twelve years one published by K. S. Aksa-
kov.43 The third translation was Fet’s, written in 1858 or 1859. By then,
Fet’s own formal habits had considerably altered, and although “Вечера и
ночи” survived Turgenev’s culling, Fet had ceased writing such metrically
daring poems. In that context, what he achieved in his translation of “Auf
dem See” is especially interesting. To appreciate what he did, we should
compare his translation with the earlier ones, as well as with the original
text. The poem and its three translations appear on the next page.44
Goethe wrote his poem under the immediate impression of a visit to the
Lake of Zürich in 1775,45 but the locale is not made explicit. In fact, the
whole poem is luxuriantly egocentric, and its form, as well as its thematics,
is driven by the psychology of the textual speaker. We are never told how
many are the “we” in the boat, or who “we” are, and the metrical patterning
shifts with the mental state of the speaker. For eight lines, the oars of “our”
boat keep a regular iambic beat (Die Wélle wíeget únsern Káhn / Im
Rúdertàkt hináuf) as the speaker contemplates his joyful excursion in the
“free world” of benevolent Nature.46 Then the rhythm shifts, and, as the
speaker’s eyelids droop, four lines are rendered as a “falling”, heavy tro-
chaic meter. Finally, the last eight lines become a little less regular, a little
more idiosyncratic, as the speaker contemplates the wind’s rippling of the
reflections mirrored in the surface of the lake.47
Verse form and language
Auf dem See
Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut
Saug’ ich aus freier Welt;
Wie ist Natur so hold und gut,
Die mich am Busen hält!
Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn
Im Rudertakt hinauf,
Und Berge, wolkig himmelan,
Begegnen unserm Lauf.
Aug’, mein Aug’, was sinkst du nieder?
Goldne Träume, kommt ihr wieder?
Weg, du Traum! so Gold du bist;
Hier auch Lieb’ und Leben ist.
Auf der Welle blinken
Tausend schwebende Sterne;
Weiche Nebel trinken
Rings die thürmende Ferne;
Morgenwind umflügelt
Die beschattete Bucht,
Und im See bespiegelt
Sich die reifende Frucht.
Grigor’ev’s translation:
И пищу свежую и кровь
Из вольной жизни пью.
Природа мать! ты вся любовь,
Сосу я грудь твою.
И мерно челн качает мой
То вниз, то вверх волна,
И горы, в облаках главой,
Встречают бег судна.
Что ты, что поникло, око?
Ты ли снова, сон далекий?
Славный сон: ты лишний здесь...
Здесь любовь, и жизнь здесь есть!
На волнах сверкают
Тысяча звездочек вдруг,
Облака впивают
Даль немую вокруг.
Утренний ветр обвевает
Дремлющий тихо залив.
Озера зыбь отражает
Много зреющих слив.
205
Aksakov’s translation:
Как освежается душа
И кровь течет быстрей!
О, как природа хороша!
Я на груди у ней!
Качает наш челнок волна,
В лад с нею весла бьют,
И горы в мшистых пеленах
На встречу нам встают.
Что же, мой взор, опускаешься ты?
Вы ли опять, золотые мечты?
О, прочь мечтанье, хоть сладко оно!
Здесь все так любовью и жизнью полно!
Светлою толпою
Звезды в волнах глядятся,
Туманы грядою
На дальних высях ложатся;
Ветер утра качает
Деревья над зеркалом вод,
Тихо отражает
Озеро спеющий плод.
Fet’s translation:
И силу в грудь, и свeжeсть в крoвь
Дыxaньeм вoльным лью.
Кaк слaдкo, мaть-прирoдa, внoвь
Упaсть нa грудь твoю!
Вoлнa лaдью в рaзмeр вeслa
Кaчaeт и нeсeт,
И вышниx гoр сырaя мглa
Нaвстрeчу нaм плывeт.
Взoр мoй, взoр, зaчeм склoняться?
Или сны злaтыe снятся?
Прoчь ты сoн, xoть зoлoтoй, –
Здeсь любoвь и жизнь сo мнoй!
Нa вoлнax свeркaют
Тысячи звeзд сoтрясeнныx,
В дымнoм нeбe тaют
Призрaки гoр oтдaлeнныx.
Вeтeрoк струится
Нaд рaвнинoю вoд,
И в зaлив глядится
Дoзрeвaющий плoд.
206 Chapter Three

In the first, third, fifth, and seventh lines of the last strophoid of the
poem, the rhythm still alternates stressed and unstressed syllables more or
less one-to-one, a recognizable trochaic trimeter, but the other lines now
have sometimes one and sometimes two unstressed syllables in between the
second and third strong positions. The long lines also differ in the presence
or absence of a final unstressed syllable, and in the noticeably decreasing
stress at onset in the longer lines (Táusend schwébende Stérne vs. Dìe
bescháttete Bucht, Sìch die réifende Frucht). The rhythm of the last eight
lines can be correlated with a schema only if it is one that spreads over two
lines rather than one. Moreover, it on one hand has a variable number of
unstressed syllables and, on the other, is less fully stressed than before: the
last three lines have only two fully stressed syllables apiece, and no com-
pounds or other forms that might motivate a clear secondary stress. The boat
is no longer propelled along by the oars, but rocks a little on the water. As a
final idiosyncrasy, the reflexive pronoun is broken off from its verb in a
striking enjambement (bespiegelt / Sich). The rhythmic development is one
of gradual deceleration and satiation, as the poem finally comes to rest in the
tempting image of its final line.
Goethe’s metrical freedom was innovatory in German, but fit into a tradi-
tion pioneered by F. G. Klopstock, whose ode “Der Zürchersee” Goethe’s
poem responded to.48 There was no such tradition in Russian verse, and
translators had therefore to decide how, if at all, they would present
Goethe’s form to Russian readers so as to show its expressive value and not
simply baffle an unaccustomed audience.
All three translators elected to keep close to the form of the German text,
but they did it in different ways. Goethe’s first eight-line strophoid is in iam-
bic tetrameter alternating with trimeter, and all three of the translators retain
that meter. When the meter changes in the second strophoid, the fact of the
change is also marked in all three translations, but Aksakov changes not to
Goethe’s trochaic tetrameter but to a metrical scheme with, apparently, two
unstressed syllables in each foot. In Aksakov’s translation, the rhythm of the
second half of the stanza differs from that of the first half, but to no clear
purpose. The overall effect is greatly to attenuate the iconic force of the fal-
ling trochaic feet in Goethe’s text, corresponding to the speaker’s drooping
eyelids, and to eliminate the contrast between the dozing first half of the
stanza and the energetic second half. Aksakov in fact introduces a slight ir-
regularity here, since line 12 in his translation is clearly amphibrachic, as
distinct from the clearly dactylic meter with which the strophoid begins, but
such a combination of ternary feet would have been, while unusual, still ac-
ceptable even in original Russian poetry of the time. A little stranger is his
line 11, which can be fitted into a dactylic metrical scheme, but is more nat-
urally read with the sort of variation in foot-length found later on in the
Verse form and language 207

original poem. On this reading, Aksakov’s line is “missing” one unstressed

syllable, between the first and second beats:
x ´ x ´ xx ´ xx ´.
This sort of variation (which, following modern usage, we will from now on
refer to as dolnik)49 was common enough in German poetry, and Russian
readers familiar with German poetry would have recognized it. It was not
acceptable, however, in original Russian poems of the time. In Russian
translations, as we see here, the presence of a dolnik line did not necessarily
correspond to dolnik in the original German text, but only to the fact that
there indeed was a German text underlying the Russian one.
In contrast with Aksakov, both Fet and Grigor’ev are faithful to the meter
of the original second strophoid, and, also unlike Aksakov, they both retain
the clausula pattern: Goethe’s text had masculine line-ends (albeit one pho-
nologically destressed) throughout the first strophoid, and introduces a femi-
nine clausula only together with the generally “falling” rhythm of his sec-
ond, trochaic, strophoid. Grigor’ev, however, in one respect follows Aksa-
kov’s lead in giving his translation a very slight German accent: his rhymes
are, according to strictly Pushkinian standards, just a trifle free, although not
markedly so. German rhyme, including Goethe’s, generally permitted
phonic divergences that in Russian were unacceptable liberties, but the
rhyme in “Auf dem See” is completely normative. So is Fet’s.
Aksakov and Grigor’ev thus use formal traits that signal German taste,
but, in another respect, their usage in the lines already described is more
canonically Russian than Fet’s is. That is in the rhythm of the poem’s open-
ing lines. In the classical Russian tradition, binary lines – iambs and trochees
– are given variety by permitting the metrically strong positions of the line
to be occupied by unstressed syllables, and certain patterns of destressing are
particularly characteristic. In the nineteenth century, the favorite rhythmic
form of iambic tetrameter had not four but only three stresses, which occu-
pied the first, second, and last strong positions of the line:
x ´ x ´ x x x ´ (x).
In a poem like “Auf dem See”, where iambic tetrameter alternates with tri-
meter, the usual rhythmic norms did not apply, and, in any case, metrical
rhythm, unlike meter, was not a matter of hard-and-fast rules, but only of
general tendencies. Yet both Aksakov and Grigor’ev start out with exemp-
lary “Russian” iambic tetrameter lines, and, throughout the two iambic quat-
rains, both translators repeatedly under-stress, compared with the usage of
the original. Fet’s lines instead follow Goethe’s in being fully stressed.
Thus, Fet does nothing to mark the “Germanness” of his text in any way
that stretches the limits of acceptable Russian usage, and in this respect he
differs from the other two translators. But where the natural German rhythm,
208 Chapter Three

and Goethe’s usage, is different from what is most typically Russian, – in

these cases, Fet follows the German original, where the other two translators
do not. Their translations mark the translated text as a little exotic, but they
succeed in making it fundamentally Russian. Fet does not treat the German
text as exotic, and his success is in precisely conveying an essential aspect of
its form.
The really difficult part of the poem, however, is the last strophoid. As
already noted, the classical Russian tradition did not countenance dolnik –
and what it did not countenance it could hardly regulate. Yet Goethe’s final
strophoid not only contains dolnik lines but also puts them in regular alterna-
tion with trochaic trimeter. Both Aksakov and Grigor’ev opt for representing
the dolnik, and ignore the quasi-stanzaic patterning, with the same result as
in the preceding strophoid: the translations have “German” dolnik where the
original German text does not.
Fet does something entirely different. The translations he made from
German in the 1840s show no aversion to dolnik, but here, at the end of the
1850s, he is more cautious. He follows Goethe’s differentiation of odd and
even lines and retains the trochaic trimeter of the odd lines. Each of the even
lines, taken individually, fits into the mould of the classic Russian repertory
of meters: lines 2 and 4 of the strophoid are dactylic trimeter, while lines 6
and 8 are anapestic dimeter. An alternation of trochaic lines with dactyls and
anapests is outside Russian norms, and present-day readers will doubtless
read the eight lines as dolnik. Fet has not conveyed Goethe’s metrics ex-
actly, and he has fragmented the final strophoid into quatrains. But in terms
of the metrics of Fet’s day, unusual as the stanzaic pattern may have been,
he has managed to create two successive quatrains, each one consisting of
alternating lines in classically acceptable meters. While thus keeping within
the classical Russian metrical repertory, he reproduces, line by line, the
number and even the approximate strength of stresses throughout the whole
original text, as well as the locations of nearly all the word boundaries. Syn-
tactic parallelism reinforces the alternation, in the fourth quatrain, between
odd and even lines, and the gradual reduction of the weight of the lines fol-
lows Goethe’s model and culminates in the limpid asymmetry of a long first
and monosyllabic second word of the final line of the poem. Fet also follows
Goethe in gradually returning from the trochaic rhythm introduced in the
center of the poem to the rising feet at the end, symmetrical with the begin-
ning. It is in the last two quatrains that Fet’s rhythmic virtuosity is most
striking, precisely because it does not rely on imitating the original meter.
He has not had recourse to any specifically “German accented” verse forms,
and at the same time he has represented faithfully the rhythmic shifts of the
German. Although the other translators are quite prepared to use dolnik
Verse form and language 209

lines, the semantics of their dolnik have little to do with its function in the
original text.
The formal precision of Fet’s translation is striking, especially in com-
parison with the others. Fet’s stresses, regardless of meter, fall nearly exactly
where they are motivated by the original text, and nowhere else. His luscious
“Дозревающий плод” is about as close as Russian could ever come to the
last line of the German text. True, Fet does not even attempt to reproduce
Goethe’s enjambement “bespiegelt / Sich” – it would have been all but im-
possible in nineteenth-century Russian – but the rhythmic destabilization
that it effects is at least mildly echoed in the closural assymetry. The other
translators – both of them knowledgeable writers of poetry and readers of
German – seem not to have been conscious of the rhythmic development of
the German text – and this in a poem where rhythm plays an essential sem-
antic role.
Fet is often accused of undue literalism in his translations. In “Auf dem
See”, he shows a unique sensitivity to the sound of the German text – surely
an area of poetic creation elusive for anyone but a native speaker. Con-
veying the rhythm of the original overrides the formal goal of metrical ex-
actness, and yet he keeps the classical Russian constraints on the form of the
line and avoids any unmotivated Germanisms, such as the “spontaneous”
dolnik found in the other translations. At the same time, his translation is
lexically precise: reading his “Прочь ты сон, хоть золотой, – Здесь лю-
бовь и жизнь со мной!”, for example, it is hard to understand how his pred-
ecessors could have come up with anything else. As with Fet’s preference
for rhythmic over metric faithfulness, his lexical translation is at times also
striking for his sense of what is essential to the original and where liberties
are possible. It has been noticed, for example, that Goethe’s landscape is
remarkably lacking in color, but showers the speaker’s dreams with gold.50
Aksakov reduces the presence of the gold, Grigor’ev banishes it altogether,
Fet retains it exactly. Conversely, both Aksakov and, even more, Grigor’ev
are much readier than Fet to add motifs and epithets unknown to Goethe,
while Fet is inclined, if anything, to reduce motivic material. One of the im-
portant aspects of “Auf dem See” in relation to the Klopstock poem that it
responds to is precisely that the Klopstock text is full of all kinds of details
both about the scenery and about the friendly group with whom the lake ex-
cursion was undertaken.51 (The Klopstock text is generally read as a poem in
praise of friendship.) Goethe empties out all the social and touristic detail,
and this semantic emptiness is largely respected by Fet. The obvious vio-
lations of this general pattern are at the beginning of the poem, where Fet
has the speaker address “Mother Nature” directly and fall on her breast
“again”. These violations are not random, however, but are allusions to the
opening stanza of the Klopstock subtext of the poem:
210 Chapter Three

Schön ist, Mutter Natur, deiner Erfindung Pracht

Auf die Fluren verstreut, schöner ein froh Gesicht,
Das den grossen Gedanken
Deiner Schöpfung noch einmal denkt.
Fet’s sensitivity to the German text exceeds his predecessors’, and it is not
only formal but also semantic. The text moves from the natural “free world”
of the lake at large to the drowsy eye, which, in the end, is the agent perceiv-
ing that same natural world, now experienced closer to, in the image of fruit,
the ripening of which silently echoes the physical activity presented earlier.
Goethe presents individual perceptions, and in a form that has no existence
outside his text, no function except to express what that text means. The
shift in the final stanza from a distant landscape to an image of something
that must be read as close by would have been very appealing to Fet, since
his original poems often end the same way.52 Perhaps the tenderness of his
lexical and rhythmic response to Goethe’s text derives from the extent to
which its poetics were his own. Perhaps his poetics were as they were be-
cause he understood Goethe’s.
Fet’s translation of “Auf dem See” seems not to have been the end of his
experience of the poem. Instead, the translation evidently provided a model
for one of his best-known late metrical experiments: his poem “Давно в
любви отрады мало:…”, written 24 June 1891.
Дaвнo в любви oтрaды мaлo:
Бeз oтзывa вздoxи, бeз рaдoсти слeзы;
Чтo былo слaдкo, – гoрькo стaлo,
Oсыпaлись рoзы, рaссeялись грeзы.
Oстaвь мeня, смeшaй с тoлпoю!
Нo ты oтвeрнулaсь, a сeтуeшь, виднo,
И всe eщe бoльнa ты мнoю ...
O, кaк жe мнe тяжкo и кaк мнe oбиднo!
The text combines lines of the same nominal length (tetrameter) but com-
pletely different line types (iambic and amphibrachic) and, therefore, differ-
ent “real” lengths, as counted in syllables (nine vs. twelve). Since the iambic
lines are fully stressed, the meter of the poem can be defined accentually, as
four beats to the line. The rhythmic alternation of stressed and unstressed
syllables repeats exactly in each distich. The metrical structure of each line,
taken individually, is entirely classical, but the stanzaic structure is not. In
the nineteenth century, trochaic lines were generally followed by more tro-
chaic lines, iambic lines by iambic ones, and binary and ternary meters were
not normally combined. So it was, and is, normal for an iambic tetrameter
line to be followed by, say, iambic trimeter, but not amphibrachic tetrameter,
as it is in “Дaвнo в любви oтрaды мaлo:…”.
Verse form and language 211

“Long since has love but little joy…” dates from a time when Fet was re-
viewing his works, and when he was also engaged in epistolary discussions
about the nature of the Russian verse tradition and experiments in it. The
formal experiments of his mature works are unobtrusive, and “Long since
has love but little joy …” is probably the most strikingly experimental of all
his later poems. It has been associated in the scholarly literature with Ti-
utchev’s “Последняя любовь”,53 and both poems have been treated as at-
tempts to russify dolnik.
Since dolnik lines can have the same number of unstressed syllables be-
tween strong positions as either ternary or binary lines, they can in principle
be considered relatives of either binary or ternary meters. The context of
German dolnik form is mainly iambic, but Russian dolnik is generally
agreed to have been based on ternary forms.54 This view corresponds to the
structural resemblance of dolnik and ternary rhythms,55 to the historical
status and structural limitations of ternary meters, to which dolnik can be
seen as a response,56 and to the fact that the distribution of stressed and un-
stressed syllables in Russian dolnik is closer to the norms of a ternary meter
than to those of a binary one.57 But in “Последняя любовь” the dolnik lines
seem to represent an iambic base form yielding, as it were, to something
quasi-ternary in syllable-count but with rhythmically “binary” (that is, de-
stressable) strong positions. In this respect “Последняя любовь” lies out-
side the mainstream of the rise of Russian dolnik: its dolnik lines, if that is
what they are conceded to be, are much more striking than they are in, say,
Fet’s Heine translations, where dolnik appears in a ternary context.
Novinskaia and Rudnev have pointed to correspondence indicating Fet’s
interest in Tiutchev’s formal experimentation at the time that he wrote
“Дaвнo в любви oтрaды мaлo:…”, and we have already seen, in discussing
“Ласточки”, that the late Fet did in-
deed imitate Tiutchev’s form. His re- Последняя любовь
sponse to “Последняя любовь”, how- О, как на склоне наших лет
ever, was not to imitate its delicate Нежней мы любим и суеверней…
rhythmic pattern, but rather to general- Сияй, сияй, прощальный свет
ize the ternary leanings evident in its Любви последней, зари вечерней!
first stanza: both the Fet and Tiutchev Полнеба обхватила тень,
poems alternate iambic even lines with Лишь там, на западе бродит сиянье, –
dolnik (in Tiutchev) or ternary (in Fet) Помедли, помедли, вечерний день,
odd ones. Instead of “overt” dolnik, on Продлись, продлись, очарованье.
the level of the line, Fet distributes the
Пускай скудеет в жилах кровь,
ternary and binary potential of the dol-
Но в сердце не скудеет нежность…
nik line across the distich. Irregularity О ты, последняя любовь!
– dolnik – is both presented as reg- Ты и блаженство и безнадежность.
ularity on the level of the line (the
212 Chapter Three

regular alternation of “ordinary” binary and ternary lines), and transferred,

as it typically is in Fet’s work, from the level of the line to that of the stanza.
Since, moreover, all the lines in Fet’s poem have four stresses, the text is an
example of the rhythm of a poem – here, a fully-stressed tetrameter – be-
coming independent of the metrical schema with which it is associated.58
Dolnik here seems to occupy a position somewhere between the schemata of
meter and rhythmic impulse. The alternation of different types of line in
“Дaвнo в любви oтрaды мaлo:…” arises as a consequence of regularizing
what would otherwise be rhythmic irregularity on the line level – a level
where the later Fet avoids innovation. I would suggest that the alternation of
metrically different kinds of line in “Давно в любви отрады мало:…” is
not itself the innovation that accounts for its unusual form, but rather is the
means through which is manifested an early and experimental stage of an
underlying rhythmic innovation. That innovation is the separation of dolnik
from its original German base.
In the last part of “Auf dem See”, Fet represented dolnik rhythm by al-
ternating binary and ternary lines. Thirty years later, he adopted that ap-
proach in an original Russian poem without any German source. It was not
without reason that V. M. Zhirmunskii names Fet as one of only a few Rus-
sian poets influenced by Goethe (and he was surely the greatest of them)
who “retained throughout their entire development their faithfulness to the
ideology that had nurtured them”.59 Fet took on his metrical debt to Goethe
in the 1830s, under Mr. Eisenschmidt’s tutelage. He repaid it in 1891.

3.2.2 Russian meter and Fet’s meters

Overview
Almost every reader of poetry senses the traditions associated with at least
some meters. Metrical rhythm, too – the waves of prosodic force, and its ebb
– although it gives a poem much of its individuality, is nonetheless informed
by poets’ awareness of tradition. Fet’s metrical usage manifests his changing
relationship to the Russian literary tradition, as well as his editors’ role in
shaping his artistic evolution. In the last section, we saw how his formal
choices in translating a single poem compare with those of other poet-
translators, and how his translational activity fits in with his unusual know-
ledge of German and with his later verse experiments. In this section, we
take a more systematic approach, surveying his use of different meters.60 In
later sections, we shall focus on his exploitation of metrical rhythm and on
the changes in his metrical and rhythmic practice.
Verse form and language 213

Table 1: Summary of Fet's Metrical Usage

Texts Lines Texts Lines

Monometric poems
Classical meters
Used independently 716 11811 77.16% 73.40%
Used anisometrically 163 2925 17.56% 18.30%
Sum: classical meters 879 14736 94.72% 91.70%

Nonclassical meters
Used independently 34 727 3.66% 4.50%
Used anisometrically 12 385 1.29% 2.30%
Sum: non-classical meters 46 1112 4.96% 6.80%

Sum: independent 750 12538 80.82% 77.90%

Sum: anisometrical 175 3310 18.86% 20.60%
Sum: monometric 925 15848 99.68% 98.50%

Polymetric poems
Classical meters
Used independently 168 1.04%
Used anisometrically 64 .40%
Sum: classical meters 232 1.44%

Nonclassical meters
Used independently 4 0.025%
Used anisometrically 4 0.025%
Sum: non-classical meters 8 0.05%

Sum: independent 172 1.07%

Sum: anisometrical 68 .43%
Sum: polymetric 3 240 0.32% 1.50%

Sum: independent 12710 78.97%

Sum: anisometric 3378 21.03%

Sum of all texts and lines 928 16088 100.0% 100.0%

Table 1 presents an overview of Fet’s use of meter in all the poetry in my

corpus, defined in the introduction to this chapter.61 Table 1 also shows the
basic taxonomy used throughout my analysis. Although it might seem that
meters ought to be divided first according to the types of line they represent,
in fact different meters function differently and have different rhythmic
characteristics depending on their context, for example on whether or not
they are the sole meter used in a text. For this reason, the first metrical divi-
214 Chapter Three

sion represented in the table divides Fet’s work into different kinds of texts.
I separate his verse into two categories, of which the second, much smaller
one includes all his polymetric poems: these are poems with metrically dis-
tinct sections. I include here two dramatic “dialogues”, as well as his transla-
tion of “Auf dem See” (“Hа озере”). Table 1 does not count the numbers of
texts in the subdivisions of polymetric poems, since each polymetric poem
would be counted in several categories. All poems that are not polymetric I
call “monometric”. The term is well established but unfortunate: it has noth-
ing to do with “monometer”, which is a line consisting of just one foot.
Table 1 further divides the metrical repertory according to criteria by
now conventional in metrical analysis.62 The first division separates out
verse written in meters that belong to the “classical” (that is, syllabotonic)
Russian repertory of meters. These are the meters that regulate both the
number of (tonic) stresses that a line of poetry can have and the number of
syllables between these possible stresses. Table 1 shows every other kind of
meter as simply “nonclassical”, but we shall make further differentiations
below (pages 225 ff.). Since, as we have already noted, the classical meters
are associated with different rhythmic properties depending on whether they
appear alone (“independently”) or mixed in with other meters, I have sepa-
rated out those texts and lines in which a given meter is used by itself. This
leaves those poems in which lines of different meters are combined in a sin-
gle stanza or text, whether in a single section of a polymetric text or in text
lacking such divisions. I have called this usage “anisometric”, a term I am
using here to include both texts in which the mixing of different kinds of line
is regulated (for example, the odd lines are trochaic tetrameter and the even
lines are trochaic trimeter) and where it is unregulated (these are the meters
typically called “free” or “variable”). The reason for this is that it is almost
entirely predictable whether Fet’s anisometry will be free or regulated, de-
pending on the meter. Unregulated variation is practically unrepresented in
Fet’s syllabotonic verse, and listing it separately in Table 1 would have pro-
liferated empty categories. Similarly, in the nonclassical meters, as we shall
see, Fet’s anisometry is nearly always predictable, in one type unregulated
(“free”) and in the others logaoedic. There are a few exceptions, and they
will be discussed when we discuss anisometry in more detail (pages 232 ff.).
More significantly, nonclassical lines are not as readily classified as syl-
labotonic ones, and it is not always clear whether a text should be considered
isometric or not. For this reason, the subdivisions of non-classical lines in
Table 1 should be taken as a preliminary characterization, the function of
which is mainly heuristic.
As already noted, Fet’s usage, when surveyed en masse, is not particular-
ly revealing. To be sure, his polymetric verse is represented, and it is clear
that he ventures outside the classical repertory more than, say, Tiutchev,
Verse form and language 215

63
whose use of non-classical forms accounts for less than 1% of his poetry.
However, the table does not represent other metrical peculiarities intuitively
obvious both to readers now and to his contemporaries – for example, his
fondness for using lines of uneven length.64 Overall, about 79% of Fet’s
verse lines occur independently, 21% in (mostly regulated) anisometric us-
age. In comparison, the proportion for Tiutchev is about 70% vs. 30%. Yet
Tiutchev is known for favoring lines of equal length in his poetry, whereas
Fet was known for his idiosyncratic anisometry. The difference is not one of
general usage, but of the role that anisometry played in their respective rep-
ertories. Practically all Tiutchev’s regulated anisometry (and a good part of
his “free” anisometry) is to be found in just one class of lines, namely his
iambs, and nearly all the rest in translations in non-classical meters. In Fet’s
repertory, in contrast, (regulated) anisometry was pervasive. To put these
features into relief, we need to examine Fet’s metrical repertory in greater
detail.

The main groups of meters in Fet’s repertory

Table 2 shows the distribution in Fet’s work of the five meters that consti-
tute the Russian syllabotonic repertory. As shown in row A of Table 2, over
half of Fet’s poetry is iambic, a little less than a fifth is trochaic, and about
the same share is split among the three ternary meters, with amphibrachs
slightly more numerous than anapests or dactyls.65
This distribution is similar to that of other Russian poets of his time. The
overall distribution of meters in Fet’s work most closely resembles the dis-
tribution in Russian poetry as a whole in the 1840s, the decade when he be-
gan writing,66 and it least resembles the norm for Russian poetry in the
1860s and 70s. This was when Fet wrote least, so that his oeuvre makes its
slightest contribution to making the norms what they are.
Panchronically, the proportion of iambs in Fet is a little higher, and the
proportion of trochees a little lower, than for Russian poetry generally, and
these figures are roughly the same no matter whether we count the number
of texts or the number of lines. The high proportion of iambic lines is a con-
sequence partly of Fet’s overall practice during the “anthological” 1850s,
and partly it derives from the heavy representation in his later oeuvre of
epistles and occasional verse, both of which tend to be iambic, as does the
late philosophical poetry included in his “Элегии и думы”. Among the po-
ems not included in the canon of short original works, all five of Fet’s long
narrative poems are iambic, and the non-canonical occasional poetry, frag-
ments, and the like are predominantly so.
216 Chapter Three

Table 2: Distribution of the main groups of classical meters used by Fet

Metric Im Tx Da Am An Total
Groups
A. 56.8% 18.3% 5.2% 7.1% 5.8% 93.1%
B.
(1) 7563 2153 626 820 649 11811
(2) 16 40 0 60 52 168
(3) 1555 744 204 255 237 2995
(4) 9134 2937 830 1135 938 14974
C.
(1) 82.8% 73.3% 75.4% 72.2% 69.2% 78.9%
(2) 0.2% 1.4% 0.0% 5.3% 5.5% 1.1%
(3) 17.0% 25.3% 24.6% 22.5% 25.3% 20.0%
(4) 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Notes to Table 2:
A: % of entire corpus (# of lines) represented by each metric group.
The remainder of the corpus is in non-classical meters (1120 lines).
The lines are counted slightly differently from the way they count in
Table 1, because lines in mixed anisometrical texts are here counted
according to the metric group of the individual line.In Table 1, all lines
of non-classical-meter (monometric) texts were treated as non-
classical.
B: Number of lines of each group in each type of text. (1) Isometric
monometric, (2) Isometric polymetric, (3) anisometric, (4) Sum of (1) –
(3).
C. Percent of lines in each metrical type (=B4) that occurs in each type
of text.

Nearly 7% of all the lines Fet wrote are in poems that at least in part fall
outside the range of the classical metrical repertory. This figure is a little
high, and we expect it to be, because of the metrical adventurousness of his
early work and of his translations. If we restrict our survey just to the short
original poems included in Fet’s canon, the proportion of nonclassical me-
ters drops to only about 5% of the total, the proportion of ternary meters
rises to close to a quarter of the whole, and anapests outrank amphibrachs
(as we would expect in a corpus that over-represents his later work).67 In
contrast, roughly 19% of the lines in Fet’s translations are in poems that con-
tain at least some lines in non-classical meters – about the same proportion
of lines as are in poems written entirely in classical ternary meters. Rows B
(3) and C (3) of Table 2 show that Fet’s anisometric usage accounts for a
substantial proportion of every group of meters.
The metrical repertory of Fet’s translations is presented in Table 3. The
translations differ from Fet's original poetry with respect to the distribution
of the main types of meters: compared to the roughly 56% of his entire oeu-
vre, and of his canon, that is in iambs, only about half that proportion is
Verse form and language 217

Table 3. Metrical Repertory in Fet’s Translations

Monometric Polymetric Sum
Isometric Anisometric Isometric Anisometric
Meter
Im2 36 1.6% 6 0.3% 42 1.9%
Im3 52 2.3% 72 3.2% 4 0.2% 128 5.7%
Im4 64 2.8% 66 2.9% 4 0.2% 134 5.9%
Im5 135 6.0% 16 0.7% 151 6.7%
Im6 134 5.9% 60 2.7% 194 8.6%
Im 421 18.7% 220 9.8% 0 0 8 0.4% 649 28.8%
Tx1 3 0.1% 3 0.1%
Tx2 4 0.2% 4 0.2%
Tx3 28 1.2% 2 0.1% 2 0.1% 32 1.4%
Tx4 373 16.5% 47 2.1% 4 0.2% 424 18.8%
Tx5 107 4.7% 112 5.0% 219 9.7%
Tx6 36 1.6% 36 1.6%
Tx 516 22.9% 194 8.6% 6 0.3% 2 0.1% 718 31.8%
Da1 1 0.0% 1 0.0%
Da2 16 0.7% 8 0.4% 24 1.1%
Da3 37 1.6% 5 0.2% 2 0.1% 44 2.0%
Da4 27 1.2% 27 1.2%
Da5 1 0.0% 1 0.0%
Da 53 2.3% 42 1.9% 2 0.1% 0 0 97 4.3%
Am3 184 8.2% 22 1.0% 206 9.1%
Am4 26 1.2% 22 1.0% 48 2.1%
Am5 30 1.3% 30 1.3%
Am 240 10.6% 44 2.0% 0 0 0 0 284 12.6%
An2 2 0.1% 2 0.1%
An3 28 1.2% 28 1.2%
An4 14 0.6% 28 1.2% 42 1.9%
An 14 0.6% 56 2.5% 0 0 2 0.1% 72 3.2%

All cl 1244 55.1% 556 24.6% 8 0.4% 12 0.5% 1820 80.7%

DaElg 76 3.4% 76 3.4%

Other DaTx 104 4.6% 104 4.6%
DaTx 76 3.4% 104 4.6% 0 0 0 0 180 8.0%
Other ncl 157 7.0% 99 4.4% 0 0 0 0 256 11.3%

All ncl 233 10.3% 203 9.0% 0 0 0 0 436 19.3%

SUM 1477 65.5% 759 33.6% 8 0.4% 12 0.5% 2256 100.0%

iambic in his translations. About 31% of the lines in his translations are tro-
chaic – which means that trochaic lines slightly outnumber iambic ones in
his translations. Again, Fet’s usage can be compared with Tiutchev’s. Both
poets use more trochaic meters in translations than in original verse, and
fewer iambs. The extent to which Fet avoids iambic translation, however, is
far greater.68 We will mention below some specifics of his translations.
218 Chapter Three

Line structure and length

Russian verse has tended to regulate the number of syllables in a verse line
more than English or German poetry does. A corollary of this is that classi-
cal (syllabotonic) meters in Russian are not so free to add or subtract sylla-
bles at beginnings of lines (that is, before the first strong position). If we
read, for example, the word “прости” at the beginning of a line, we expect
the rest of the line to continue in the same way: either iambic (“Прости – я
помню то мгновенье”) or amphibrachic (“Прости, золотая, прости”). In
ternary meters (ones in which a foot has three syllables), it is easy to locate
the strong positions not only by counting off syllables (which does not al-
ways work) but also by their stress: strong positions in ternary meters
throughout nineteenth-century Russian poetry were nearly always filled with
stressed syllables. In binary meters (iambs and trochees), the last strong po-
sition had to be stressed,69 but the other strong positions might or might not
be. Typically, a syllable in strong position carries a stress at least as promi-
nent as the stress on its neighbors, but the exact degree of prominence – de-
pending on not only word stress but also morphology and syntax – is vari-
able, and this helps give the line its individual shape.
The beginning of the line is special, as can be seen in several ways. First,
a line-initial syllable can be stressed or not, regardless of the meter. For ex-
ample, “Дул север, плакала трава” is perfect iambic tetrameter in spite of
the initial verb, while “И paздается из них “Свят, свят, свят!” is perfectly
good, if not instantly recognizable, dactylic tetrameter. Second, although
unstressed syllables at the beginning of the line (anacrusis) will “count” in
classical Russian verse, even nineteenth-century poets occasionally varied
the length of anacrusis, mostly in ternary meters.70 Poems with a variable-
length anacrusis are regularly treated as non-classical, and, conversely, one
of the distinguishing characteristics of non-classical meters is free anacru-
sis.71
The ends of lines are also special. The last strong position in a line is al-
ways stressed in classical Russian verse, unlike German and English, so the
line end is clearly demarcated. The last strong position in a line is also the
last one that must be filled by any syllable, and the number of syllables that
follow it is regulated not by constraints on the line but vertically, by con-
straints on how lines are combined in a stanza or in the text overall. This
means that nominally identical-length lines – anapestic tetrameter and dac-
tylic tetrameter, for example – differ slightly in their minimum length,
measured in syllables: the shortest anapestic tetrameter has twelve syllables
(“У любви есть слова, те слова не умрут”), the shortest dactylic tetrameter
– only ten (“Всё бы, ах, всё бы с собою унесть!”).
Verse form and language 219

The status of lines of different lengths varies from one meter to another.
We will classify as medium-length lines both binary tetrameters and ternary
trimeters, that is, typically a line of somewhere between seven and eleven
syllables and lacking any regular syntactic break (specifically, caesura)
within it.72 Fet was known for choosing longer and shorter than normal lines,
and for combining lines of different lengths. His usage may reflect his
knowledge of German poetry, which is less rigid in controlling line length,
as measured in syllables. His usage is summarized in Table 4.

Table 4. Long, Medium, and Short Syllabotonic Lines

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Line Line Isometric Anisometric Col. (4) /
Type Length Col. (3)
Im short 3.2% 26.4% 8.3
medium 44.1% 26.6% 0.6
long 52.7% 46.9% 0.9
Tx short 8.6% 34.7% 4.0
medium 75.1% 49.5% 0.7
long 16.3% 15.8% 1.0
Da short 8.8% 25.0% 2.8
medium 27.2% 23.5% 0.9
long 64.0% 51.5% 0.8
Am short 8.2% 14.1% 1.7
medium 65.9% 44.3% 0.7
long 26.0% 41.6% 1.6
An short 4.6% 18.8% 4.1
medium 69.5% 40.0% 0.6
long 25.9% 41.2% 1.6
All short 6.7% 23.8% 3.6
All medium 56.4% 36.8% 0.7
All long 37.0% 39.4% 1.1

The length of lines in Fet’s poetry is varied, far more than in Tiutchev’s.73
Since we count only one line of each type as medium length, anisometry
promotes the use of long and short, rather than medium-length, lines: even if
the medium-length line is the basic one in a poem, it must alternate with
some line that is either long or short. Fet’s anisometry, however, tends to
promote short lines much more than long ones: the proportion of lines of
each type of classical meter that consists of short lines is, on average, less
than 7% for isometric verse, and over 3.5 times that for anisometric verse. In
contrast, long lines comprise about 37% of all lines in Fet’s isometric verse,
and about 39% of anisometric verse. Long lines tend to occur independently
in Fet’s poetry much more often than short lines do, while short lines tend to
occur together with other line lengths. This corresponds to the appearance in
Fet’s work of monometers unique to the anisometric poetry, as distinct from
220 Chapter Three

the appearance there of, say, heptameters, which is theoretically just as pos-
sible and in fact occurs in the work of other poets, for example Tiutchev and
Polonskii.74 Fet’s predilection for anisometric short lines was recognized by
contemporaries, as is shown by that fact that it is exploited for example in
Apukhtin’s parody, quoted on page 340.
Each type of meter has its own characteristic distribution of line lengths,
which generally corresponds to what we know about the distribution of dif-
ferent meters in the practice of Russian poets throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury. For example, in Fet’s work, no other type of line is so concentrated in
medium-length lines as are trochees: 75% of isometric trochaic lines and
49% of anisometric ones are tetrameters. Since trochaic tetrameter, along
with tetrameter combined with trimeter, is at the core of the trochaic reper-
tory, its prevalence in Fet’s work is unsurprising, but it is notably less domi-
nant among Fet’s trochaic meters than among, for example, Tiutchev’s. The
distribution of Fet’s dactylic lines is similar. They are more often long than
medium-length, a difference even more marked in isometric than in aniso-
metric poetry. This is to be expected, since we know that dactylic trimeter
tends to be less independent a meter than are dactylic tetrameter, pentameter,
and hexameter. More noteworthy is the fact that a third to a half of Fet’s
dactylic lines are not long, whereas all the dactylic lines in Tiutchev’s origi-
nal poetry are. The prevalence of anisometric short lines in Fet’s work is
especially noticeable in the iambic meters, where short lines seldom occur
independently: short iambic lines are proportionately eight times more fre-
quent anisometrically than isometrically in Fet’s work. At the same time, it
is noteworthy that iambic dimeter occurs at all as an independent meter. It is
not found in Fet’s canonical poetry. Finally, we note that only among Fet’s
amphibrachic meters is the degree of independence of short and long lines
about the same, while the proportion of short anapestic lines used independ-
ently is nearly as small as the proportion of short iambic ones.
Fet’s preferences in line length show a significant difference between
original and translated poems, so much so that it appears almost as though
the poet had set out in his translations to counter every metrical tendency in
his original poetry. Iambic tetrameter sinks to an insignificant proportion of
iambic lines, there are no long dactylic lines in translated isometric texts,
and 28% of his isometric trochaic lines, and 58% of the anisometric ones,
are long. It has been said that Tiutchev used his translations as a kind of
“laboratory” of formal experimentation – but the line length of his translated
and original poetry is nearly identical.75 If Tiutchev’s translations can indeed
be taken to represent his formal interests, we can say that line length did not
especially interest him. In Fet’s poetry, on the contrary, we can see that his
practice as a translator confirms the evidence afforded by his original verse:
line length was an important element of his formal experimentation.
Verse form and language 221

3.2.3 Fet’s repertory of meters

Meters used independently

Classical meters
Table 5 (page 224) shows the meters that appear independently in Fet’s po-
ems, that is, not combined with any other meter. These meters include every
length trochee and iamb from dimeter to hexameter, all possible ternary lines
from dimeter to pentameter, plus dactylic hexameter and anapestic mono-
meter.76 We discuss Fet’s monometers separately below. Most of them are
used only together with other lines. More striking in his repertory of meters
used independently is his use of two long lines, amphibrachic and anapestic
pentameter. Both meters were rare in the nineteenth century.
None of Fet’s amphibrachic pentameter poems is canonical: one (with
one dolnik line) appeared in The Lyrical Pantheon, two are translations, and
three of the four were written no later than 1847. The early date of Fet’s am-
phibrachic pentameter is a corollary of the fact that Russian amphibrachs
were most popular during the first half of the nineteenth century, and am-
phibrachic pentameter seems to reach a kind of peak during the 1840s.77 His
two anapestic pentameter poems, in contrast, belong to his later work. Ana-
pestic meters were especially popular in the latter part of the century, and by
then Fet had attained his full mastery of poetic form. Both of his poems in
anapestic pentameter are very well known: “Истрепалися сосен мохнатые
ветви от бури…”, written in the latter 1860s and published in 1883, and the
following poem, written in 1886 and perhaps best known for Aleksandr
Blok’s quotation from it:78

Памяти Н. Я. Данилевского
Eсли жить суждeнo и нa свeт нe рoдиться нeльзя,
Кaк зaвиднa, o стрaнник пoчивший, твoя мнe стeзя! –
Oтдaвaяся мысли ширoкoй, дoступнoй всeму,
Ты успeл oглядeть, пoлюбить гoлубую тюрьму.
Пoстигaя, чтo мир тoлькo прaвo живущим xoрoш,
Ты вoстoргoв oпaсныx стaрaлся oбуздывaть лoжь;
И у южнoгo мoря, зa вeчнoй oгрaдoю скaл,
Ты мeстeчкo нa oтдыx в цвeтущeм сaду oтыскaл.
As for the remaining ternary pentameter, the dactyl (and we mean here only
the classical Russian dactyl, not dactylo-trochaic forms derived from ancient
222 Chapter Three

models), Fet turned to it for the first time in the 1850s. Of his seven poems
in dactylic pentameter, four were written between 1883 and 1888. In con-
trast, his only dactylic hexameter poem, “Влажное ложе покинувшись,
Феб златокудрый направил…”, was written in the mid-1840s and first
published in the 1850 collection.
Roughly a quarter of all Fet’s poetry, and of his canon, is written in iam-
bic tetrameter. Iambic tetrameter became the dominant meter in Pushkin’s
day and has remained one of the most prominent Russian meters ever since.
Fet’s usage is statistically typical: in texts written in lines of a single meter
(isometric non-polymetric texts), iambic tetrameter comprises about 42% of
all his iambic lines, which is the norm for Russian nineteenth-century po-
etry.79 Only about 15% of the comparable material in Fet’s translated poetry
is iambic tetrameter.
The next most popular meter in Fet’s work is, in lines, iambic penta-
meter. This is the meter of four of his five narrative poems, and of an early
(fragmentary) attempt at drama. Iambic pentameter is the most frequent me-
ter in The Lyrical Pantheon, where it is not used in any very long poems, but
is, however, the meter of the five-poem cycle “Хандра”. Overall, Fet wrote
many more lines in iambic pentameter than in trochaic tetrameter, for ex-
ample, but fewer poems, and only about 30% of his iambic pentameter is
found in the canon of his short original poetry, significantly less than the
average of about 47% of lines for each meter. Iambic pentameter is some-
times characterized as a meter of speech and ordinary language, because of
its association with, especially, drama. Its marginality in Fet’s oeuvre, in
spite of its frequency, corresponds to such a characterization.
Trochaic tetrameter and iambic hexameter are about equally well repre-
sented in Fet’s total corpus, and together comprise another quarter of his
work, but whereas iambic hexameter is even better represented in the canon
than in his work overall, Fet’s trochaic tetrameter is slightly under-represen-
ted in the canon.
Trailing after the four meters just mentioned, amphibrachic and anapestic
trimeter together comprise about 8% of his work and 11% of his canon. As
we would expect, the amphibrachic line is commoner in the larger corpus,
the anapestic one – in the canon. Whereas, moreover, amphibrachic trimeter
is represented in the canon roughly to the same extent as it is in Fet’s work
in general, over four fifths of his anapestic trimeter is in the canon. Nearly
all Fet’s anapestic and long dactylic lines are found in his canon of short
original poetry, and no other meters are nearly so strongly associated with
the canon. Fet is often thought of as a poet of song forms and, hence, ternary
meters. One way in which this intuition is borne out is in the unique cluster-
ing of Fet’s ternary meters in the canon – that is, in the poetry that Fet him-
self took to be his best and most characteristic work. Conversely, for modern
Verse form and language 223

readers, the intuition itself derives from their reading of, most of all, the ca-
nonical texts.
In Fet’s translations, trochaic tetrameter is vastly more frequent than any
iambic meter, and iambic tetrameter is outstripped by iambic pentameter,
iambic hexameter, and trochaic pentameter as well. In anisometric translated
texts, moreover, trochaic pentameter is nearly two and a half times as fre-
quent as trochaic tetrameter. Amphibrachic trimeter is by far the most popu-
lar of the ternary meters, while elegiac distich and a non-classical meter with
amphibrachic base are both well represented.
In nearly every way, the distribution of meters in Fet’s translations dif-
fers significantly from that of the rest of his work. Moreover, whereas the
distribution of the core meters in Fet’s repertory corresponds roughly to the
norms of his day, his translations do not. We have already noticed that some
of the metrically most unusual forms, sometimes represented just once in his
canonical verse, are to be found, usually earlier, in Fet’s translations from
German. We also know that Fet’s early original poetry, up until the time
when his work began to be edited by Turgenev, sometimes admitted forms
acceptable in German but not Russian verse. From that time on, Fet and his
editors fairly consistently separated his translations from his original poetry,
and the two began to appear in separate books: his first volume of Horace
appeared in 1856, as did his third collection of original poetry. When Fet
began his enforced retreat from active literary life in the latter 1850s, col-
leagues noticed a growing predilection on his part for writing translations,
which were often poorly received. The incident that is usually said to have
marked the beginning of Fet’s ostracism from literary circles in 1859 was
connected with Fet’s translating: it took the form of a harsh review of a
Shakespeare translation Fet had published. Well before that, though, friends
and colleagues commented that Fet seemed to be writing little interesting
new poetry, and they had negative things to say about his translations.
Throughout the whole period when Fet was writing little original poetry, he
kept on writing translations. In this context, it appears that translations for
Fet served as a creative outlet for a poet who in his original poetry no longer
had a use for the formal techniques that were second nature to him but alien
to his intended audience. Thanks to Turgenev and his circle, he had come to
recognize that he could not introduce into the mainstream of Russian verse
the forms he found, himself, so easy to borrow from German. Instead, his
experiments went into his translations, which became, not a laboratory for
technical experiment – because it must have been less conscious and more
intuitive than “laboratory” implies – but a kind of root cellar, where he
stored what he would use later, in his abundant winter feasts.
224 Chapter Three

Table 5: Meters used independently in monometric poems

Meter Texts Lines Texts Lines
Im2 5 89 0.7% 0.7%
Im3 10 154 1.3% 1.2%
Im4 227 3338 30.3% 26.6%
Im5 96 2510 12.8% 20.0%
Im6 86 1472 11.5% 11.7%
Sum: all iambs 424 7563 56.5% 60.3%
Tx2 1 18 0.1% 0.1%
Tx3 11 168 1.5% 1.3%
Tx4 99 1612 13.2% 12.9%
Tx5 15 307 2.0% 2.4%
Tx6 4 48 0.5% 0.4%
Sum: all trochees 130 2153 17.3% 17.2%
Da2 2 54 0.3% 0.4%
Da3 14 179 1.9% 1.4%
Da4 21 234 2.8% 1.9%
Da5 7 66 0.9% 0.5%
Da6 7 93 0.9% 0.7%
Sum: all dactyls 51 626 6.8% 5.0%
Am2 3 67 0.4% 0.5%
Am3 38 540 5.1% 4.3%
Am4 13 153 1.7% 1.2%
Am5 4 60 0.5% 0.5%
Sum: all amphibrachs 58 820 7.7% 6.5%
An1 1 18 0.1% 0.1%
An2 1 12 0.1% 0.1%
An3 36 451 4.8% 3.6%
An4 13 148 1.7% 1.2%
An5 2 20 0.3% 0.2%
Sum: all anapests 53 649 7.1% 5.2%
Sum: all classical meters 716 11811 95.5% 94.2%
Elegiac distich 15 234 2.0% 1.9%
Hexameter 3 183 .4% 1.5%
Other 16 310 2.1% 2.5%
Sum: non-classical meters 34 727 4.5% 5.8%
Total 750 12538 100.0% 100.0%
Verse form and language 225

Fet’s non-classical repertory

Proto-dolnik
Especially often in his earliest poetry, and in his translations, Fet went out-
side the classical system. Most of this poetry is written in lines that fit the
structural description of what has come to be called dolnik. We encountered
dolnik in our earlier discussion, but did not stop to define it. Dolnik lines
have either one or two weak positions between the strong ones, and the line
may begin with one or two weak positions, or may start with the first strong.
The notion of dolnik is conventionally used in a narrow sense, to character-
ize Russian verse in a late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century context. Since
we are dealing here, though, with an earlier time, I will take the liberty of
using the word “dolnik” to refer to any line that meets the structural descrip-
tion. Since every line in a classical binary or ternary meter trivially satisfies
the definition of dolnik, we must add that a dolnik line that can be recog-
nized as such will show some variation in the number of weak positions in-
terspersed between strong ones, and strong and weak positions can normally
(although not always) be recognized by the presence of stress (in strong po-
sitions) or its absence (in weak positions).
Like any other kind of line, dolnik can be of different lengths, and differ-
ent-length lines can be combined in a single text or stanza. Although differ-
ent kinds of “proto-dolnik” existed in Russian poetry from the eighteenth
century onward, dolnik rhythm in Fet’s lifetime was felt to be distinct from
the rhythmic patterns afforded by the classical repertory. The difference ob-
viously entails loosening the syllable-counting constraints on the Russian
line and depending more on stress as an element of meter, as distinct from
rhythm. Dolnik lines hold the promise of greater freedom than classical me-
ters, most obviously in line length (as counted in syllables) but also in stan-
zaic structure: since both binary and ternary lines are trivially also dolnik, a
dolnik stanza can potentially combine lines homonymous with all five types
of classical lines, even those that traditionally do not occur together. This, in
essence, is what Fet did in “Давно в любви отрады мало:…”, discussed
above (page 210 ff.). Russian verse has tended, however, not to exploit the
most extreme possibilities that dolnik affords, and this is true for both line
length and stanzaic structure.
Proto-dolnik is represented in Fet’s work by a number of different lines,
but they fall mainly into two classes: roughly speaking, we may treat them
as, on one hand, “amphibrachic based” and, on the other hand, “dactyl
based” or “dactylo-trochaic”. Fet used both amphibrach-based and dactyl-
based dolnik from the beginning, and less often as time went on.
226 Chapter Three

Proto-dolnik with amphibrachic base

We have already encountered the proto-dolnik most closely connected with
the Russian dolnik tradition of the early twentieth century. (Its rhythmic
form, however, is not exactly the same as any of the favored twentieth-
century dolnik lines.) Structurally, the line is usually based on amphibrachs:
it tends to have a one-syllable anacrusis and its strong positions are sepa-
rated by a pair of weak positions, of which one is optional. Fet’s favorite
rhythmic form for this sort of dolnik is of the type “И я проснулся, и
долго”, in which there are three strong beats, and the first of the two inter-
vals between them has only one unstressed syllable:
x ´ x ´ xx ´ x.
Fet also, rarely, employs four-beat dolnik lines, usually of the same general
type (“И так доступна вся бездна эфира” [ x´ x ´ xx ´ xx ´ x ] – but note
also “Твой только отблеск, о солнце мира” [´ xx ´ xx ´ x ´ x]),80 and he
also has a single dolnik line in the anapestic trimeter poem “Эоловы арфы”.
The title and form of the poem evoke Goethe’s “Äolsharfen. Gespräch”, and
its single dolnik line also seems to evoke a German model. Here it is, in its
immediate context within the “dialogue” of a pair of harps (the speaker is
“he”, the protodolnik is line 6):
Я нa всякиe звуки гoтoв,
Нo нe сaм гoвoрю я струнoй:
Тoлькo фoрмы вoздушныx пeрстoв
Oбливaю звoнчaтoй вoлнoй.
Oттoгo-тo в рaзлукe с тoбoй
Слышу я бeззвучную дрoжь,
Oттoгo-тo и ты узнaeшь
Всe, чтo здeсь сoвeршится сo мнoй
The anapest-based dolnik line differs from Fet’s three-beat amphibrachic
dolnik only in anacrusis, and both lines follow the same general rhythmic
pattern. We may thus generalize Fet’s three-beat dolnik scheme as follows:
(x) x ´ x ´ xx ´ (x).
An example more typical of the young Fet’s dolnik is found in this early
variant of a poem later well known with a different second stanza:
Тиxaя, звeзднaя нoчь,
Трeпeтнo свeтит лунa;
Слaдки устa крaсoты
В тиxую, звeздную нoчь.
Дeвa – рaдoсть любви!
Звeзды чтo oчи твoи:
В нeбe лунa и в вoдe
Будтo пeчaль и любoвь.
Verse form and language 227

Друг мoй, я звeзды люблю –

И oт пeчaли нe прoчь...
Ты жe eщe мнe милeй
В тиxую, звeздную нoчь.
The dolnik line is the first one in the middle stanza, remarkable not only for
its rhythm but also for its unusual rhyme pattern.81 The effect is to define a
clear interlude between the two outer stanzas, which are much more homo-
geneous. The dolnik marks the onset of that interlude with an expressiveness
and near-physicality reminiscent of dance.
Except for the single anapestic line, and for a logaoedic line that alter-
nates with anapests (see page 234), Fet’s amphibrachic dolnik lines are com-
bined in stanzas with pure amphibrachs, usually trimeter, although amphi-
brachic trimeter is otherwise rare in Fet’s poetry after 1850. Sometimes a
given kind of amphibrachic dolnik line, with exactly the same rhythm, is
repeated systematically throughout a poem. This kind of individual but re-
peated rhythm has been termed “logaoedic”.82
Up to the very end of the nineteenth century, amphibrach-based dolnik
was marginal in Russian verse. It is associated with translation from Ger-
man, which had an essentially non-syllable-counting national tradition going
back to the Middle Ages, and which had renewed that tradition in the rela-
tively recent period of national revival.

Hexameter and elegiac distich

Besides amphibrachic-based dolnik, Fet also approximates dolnik in a mix
of apparent dactyls and trochees, as in these, the opening, lines of “Sakon-
tala”, written in a meter called simply “hexameter”:
Сaкoнтaлa, из всex цaриц, укрaшавшиx индийский
Трoн, нaрoду любeзнaя, милaя сeрдцу супругa –
Мудрого государя Викрамы, встречала однажды
Праздничный день своего рожденья общим весельем.
Радость кругом разлилась по чертогам и хижинам царства;
Только живей и нежнее ее раздавалися звуки
В сердце каждого. Лик царицы был тих и прекрасен, ...
In our corpus, there is relatively little hexameter, and it is all fairly early. Fet
would have encountered this sort of near-dolnik, like the other, in German
poetry, but it is modeled on classical, in origin Greek, metrical forms. An
important sort of rhythmic variation may be introduced in connection with
caesura, that is, as the term is used in Russian, with a word boundary that
appears in a fixed place in some longer lines. Even the brief passage given
here shows that Fet did not follow a rigidly fixed caesural pattern, and the
freedoms he took correspond neither to any Greek or Latin model nor even
228 Chapter Three

to his own later practice in his Latin translations. In particular, the dactylic
caesura of line 2 (Трон, народу любéзная) is impossible in both Latin and
Greek, and tolerating it in the structure of the hexameter lines correspond-
ingly fosters the assimilation of the line to an ordinary Russian dactylic hex-
ameter.83
As our illustration shows, apparent trochees in hexameter are not bound
to caesura, but in another kind of dactylo-trochaic form, namely elegiac dis-
tich, they are. The historical reason for the difference is that Russian elegiac
distich and Russian dactylo-trochaic hexameter were modeled on different
dactylic lines used in Greek and Latin (and brought into Russian largely
through German intermediaries).84 We encountered Fet’s elegiac distich in
Chapter Two, but for convenience we may refer to the following little text,
presented here in its salacious entirety:
Юнoшa, взoрoм блeстя, ты видишь всe прeлeсти дeвы;
Взoр прeклoнивши, oнa видит твoю крaсoту.
In the first line of the distich, the caesura splits the syllables of a foot, the
truncation of which yields an apparent trochee (“блестя | ты”).85 The sec-
ond line is similarly split, but with more radical truncation (two syllables
instead of one), from which emerges a completely symmetrical pair of hem-
istichs, within which each has three stresses separated each from the next by
two unstressed syllables: взор преклонивши она | видит твою красоту.
The middle of the line has a characteristic “clash” of two stresses, where the
caesura has gobbled up the unstressed syllables. Although Russian classical
meters never require the loss of a syllable at caesura, the possibility of trun-
cation is not specifically nonclassical, and Fet’s long dactylic lines regularly
show caesura with truncation of one or more syllables. Interpolation of extra
syllables also occurs in some long lines, both in Russian poetry in general
and in Fet in particular, but this is less common: it makes a long line even
longer, and for most of its history Russian line length tends to be centripetal.
Dactylo-trochaic hexameter (that is, “hexameter”) is the meter of some
important long Fet translations, notably of Goethe’s Hermann und Doro-
thea, outside our present corpus, while dacylo-trochaic elegiac distich is the
meter used in fourteen poems in Fet’s canon, and in half a dozen other po-
ems, including three shorter translations. His use of hexameter in our corpus
is much more limited: only three poems in all. The only poem in Fet’s canon
that arguably belongs to this category is “Рaд я дoждю... От него тучнеет
мягкое поле,…” (from “Вечера и ночи”, 1842). Out of its seventeen lines,
however, fourteen are “normal” syllabotonic dactylic hexameter (albeit with
caesural truncation), while one of the other three is “short” a foot: the poem
seems on one hand as if ready to join the Russian classical tradition, on the
other – ready to leap out of hexameter into free verse. The longest hexameter
Verse form and language 229

poem in our corpus is “Sаkontаlа”, quoted above.86 It was published in Fet’s

1850 collection, but does not appear in other collections published during
Fet’s lifetime.
The small number of hexameter texts in our corpus, seen in comparison
with the greater number of poems in the more rigid pattern of the elegiac
distich, suggests that Fet was inclined to exploit highly regular metrical
forms even outside the norms of classical Russian. His affinity for elegiac
distich is also part of his general tendency to organize the rhythm of his po-
ems in distichs, rather than lines. We discuss this more when we turn to stan-
zaic structure.
An interesting case is represented by Fet’s only non-dactylo-trochaic
dactylic hexameter poem, “Влажное ложе покинувши, Феб златокудрый
направил…”. The classical orientation of the poem is marked not only by
its thematics and by its dactylic form, but also by the fact that it is unrhymed
– but in the version published in 1850, in fact, there was a pair of lines that
did rhyme, and Turgenev, insisting on their being re-written for inclusion in
the 1856 collection, reminded Fet that “hexameters” were not to be rhymed.
We will look at rhyme later (pages 262 ff.). In our present context Tur-
genev’s reference to “hexameters” is interesting because it suggests that he
did not differentiate, any more than Fet did, between those that were purely
dactylic (in this poem, there are no “trochees”, unless we count the feminine
– that is, trochaic – clausula) and those that were dactylo-trochaic, as in
“Саконтала”: the meter that fits into the Russian syllabotonic canon is
viewed as a special case of the meter that does not.87
Dactylo-trochaic meters are not usually considered dolnik: they are too
marginal in the Russian tradition, and also, in the case of elegiac distich, the
structure of the line is too rigidly fixed. Still, dactylo-trochaic hexameter has
as long an independent history in Russian as the dactyl on which it seems to
be based,88 and, as is suggested by Turgenev’s response to “Влажное ложе
покинувши, Феб златокудрый направил…”, it is the syllabotonic dactylic
hexameter that is at least arguably derived from dactylo-trochaic hexameter,
rather than the other way around.
In addition to elegiac distich and hexameter, Fet also uses dactylo-
trochaic lines of other lengths, including dimeter, and in this he is generally
agreed to have been following Goethe. This is the beginning of Fet’s transla-
tion of Goethe’s “Grenzen der Menschheit”:89
Кoгдa стaрoдaвний
Святoй oтeц
Рукoй спoкoйнoй
Из туч грeмящиx
Мoлнии сeeт
В aлчную зeмлю, –
230 Chapter Three

Крaй eгo ризы

Нижний цeлую
С трeпeтoм дeтским
В вeрнoй груди.
It has been argued that these short dactylo-trochaic lines derive from Fet’s
own elegiac distich,90 but they function independently. Whereas elegiac dis-
tich is, on the face of it, one of the rhythmically most rigid of Fet’s metrical
forms, he uses the shorter dactylo-trochaic lines en route to creating, if not
“free” verse, then at least what in some traditions is called “freed” verse, in
this instance essentially a stress-based dimeter. In fact, dactylo-trochaic
verse is the only part of Fet’s metrical repertory where anisometry is typ-
ically unregulated.
We noted in the introduction to this chapter how, in a poem such as
“Нептуну Леверрье” or “Я люблю многое, близкое сердцу...”, Fet’s me-
ter begins to approximate free verse.91 Even a few lines are enough to hear
the effect: “Я люблю мнoгoe, близкoe сeрдцу, / Тoлькo рeдкo люблю
я...”. The model is clearly German free verse derived from Klopstock and,
especially, in Fet’s case, Goethe. Generally in Russian verse, stress is unsta-
ble in line-initial syllables, and the attenuated initial stress of Fet’s dactylo-
trochaic lines is in principle normal. Moreover, as we have already seen,
anacrusis of ternary lines could vary, as it can in dolnik. If, however, neither
the length of the line nor its onset are controlled, the combined effect is a
considerable relaxation of the constraints that nineteenth-century Russian
readers were accustomed to. To the extent that the number of stresses in
such a line is regulated, a “freed” dolnik approaches accentual verse. Exam-
ples of this are Fet’s early “Кoгдa пeтуx,…”, discussed in Chapter Two, or
his much later dolnik dimeter translation of Goethe’s “Grenzen der Mensch-
heit”, quoted above. Among the small number of Fet’s poems that in one
way or another seem to approach an accentually-regulated kind of meter,
there are both rhymed and unrhymed texts.92
We can now see that the impulse toward “freed” verse is typologically
relatable to Fet’s more general impulse toward anisometry: in each case, he
combines lines of different length, but whereas he combines classically de-
finable meters in classically regulated stanzas, he combines different-length
dactylo-trochaic lines in more idiosyncratic strophoids. In both instances,
Fet’s preference for varying the length of the lines in his texts brings his
taste close to the German tradition, and, in his contemporaries’ opinion, his
usage stood out sharply against the norms of Russian versification.
Verse form and language 231

The third penton (пятисложник)

Finally, the last non-classical meter to be mentioned is the form known as
5+5 or, in Russian, пятисложник. The 5+5, also analyzable as a duple third
penton, is recognizable for its constant pattern of five-syllable hemistichs,
each with a strong third syllable. It is analyzable as a kind of trochaic line,
but it has not only a specific rhythm but also, usually, folkloric associations
of its own.93 The only poem in which Fet uses this meter is “Первая
потеря”, in The Lyrical Pantheon. The poem is Fet’s unrhymed rendition of
Goethe’s “Erster Verlust”. Its first line (“Kто воротит мне дни бла-
женные”) is enough to illustrate the metrical pattern. The text has no asso-
ciation with folklore, but presumably Fet was aware of its status as a popular
song.94

Meters used together with other meters

Monometers
In addition to a poet’s independent meters, there may be others that he uses
only in combination with other meters. In Fet’s classical repertory, these
contextually invoked lines are all monometers, and Fet uses all the mono-
meters that the classical repertory affords. Several of them are homonymous,
but it is usually clear what meter they represent, since they occur in poems
with longer lines of, presumably, the same metrical type. In the following
stanza, for example, we assume that the line “Гас” is dactylic and not tro-
chaic: 95
Лeсoм мы шли пo трoпинкe eдинствeннoй
В пoздний и сумрaчный чaс.
Я пoсмoтрeл: зaпaд с дрoжью тaинствeннoй
Гaс.
Fet wrote one poem, however, in which the even lines are either anapestic
monometer or (less likely) trochaic dimeter, and the choice is unclear, be-
cause the other lines of the poem are a unique logaoedic form (see below,
page 234).
As Table 6 shows, Fet’s anisometric monometers combine with other
short lines and with long lines. Of the ten texts with unambiguously mono-
meter lines, however, “Лeсoм мы шли пo трoпинкe eдинствeннoй” is the
only one that is both syllabotonic and has any medium-length lines. The
monometer poems are generally unrepresentative of our corpus: the ani-
sometry of four of the poems is unregulated, which corresponds to the fact
that three of the ten are translations from German. Only three of the poems
are in Fet’s canon of short original lyric works. Nearly every one of the ten
232 Chapter Three

Table 6: Anisometric poems containing monometer lines

Date Poem Location in oeuvre Line Stanza Lines Rhyme /

type Structure Clausula
1840 Ласточка (“Я люблю Лирический An 2121 8 xX'xX'
посмотреть ...”) Пантеон
1842 Моя Ундина (“Она non-canonical Im 21…21 16 aBaBc-
резва ...”) lyrical verse DcDe-
FeFgHgH
1847 Hептуну Леверрье Антологические dolnik none 37 none
стихотворения
1852 Напрасно! Разные стихо- Am 15551 25 ABABA
творения
1857 Epilog (Die Nordsee) Heine translation ternary none 22 none
1858 “Лесом мы шли по non-canonical Da 4341 12 A'bA'b
тропинке един- lyrical verse
ственной ...”
1865 „Götter! keine Rückert translation Tx 3131331 14 A'X'A'B'C
frostige...“ 3232332 'C'B'D'eD'
eF'F'e
1879 Крысы (“К хозяину non-canonical Im none 36 AabbCC
в день стачки…”) lyrical verse dd...nn
1883 “Ты так любишь Разные стихо- An 221221 24 aaBccB
гулять ...” творения
1885 Harzreise im Winter Goethe translation dolnik none 88 none

texts is formally different. Characteristic of Fet is that one of the few line-
length combinations to repeat (anapestic dimeter/monometer) is found first
in The Lyrical Pantheon and finds its next application in a late poem (1883).

Anisometry: regulated and free

Fet’s poetry is known for anisometric meters, just as Tiutchev’s is known for
avoiding them.96 It is not in the overall frequency of these meters that the
two poets differ so much as in the pervasiveness of anisometry throughout
their repertories. Fet’s usage also differs from Tiutchev’s in his preference
for regulated anisometry. As we shall see, Fet’s exploitation of iambic ani-
sometry is most characteristic of his very earliest work, and it can plausibly
be associated with German influence.97
Table 7 (page 236) lists the meters Fet uses together (anisometrically) in
the same (monometric) text. All his anisometry is regulated, with the follow-
ing exceptions. First, anisometry in dactylo-trochaic meters is unregulated.
(Elegiac distich is not included in the table, and other non-classical anisome-
try is either logaoedic or close to logaoedic.) Second, Fet uses some unregu-
lated iambic and dactylic lines. Asterisks are used in the table to indicate un-
Verse form and language 233

regulated anisometry in syllabotonic meters: each asterisk corresponds to

one unregulated anisometric text in a given meter. Fet’s unregulated syl-
labotonic anisometry can be summarized as follows. First, The Lyrical Pan-
theon contains three poems in free iambs, including a translation of La-
martine’s “Invocation”. Fet later returned to free iambs in a fable (“Крысы”,
1879). All the free iambs together make up 83 lines of the corpus. Second,
the poem listed as “Da 5/1” is an unregulated dolnik translation of Heine, the
“Epilog” from the Second Cycle of Die Nordsee (see page 252 ff.).
If we compare Table 7 with Table 5, we see that non-classical meters are
slightly better represented among anisometric lines than among isometric
ones. As is discussed in the next section, however, the distinction between
isometric and anisometric lines sometimes becomes blurred in the non-
classical repertory. Fet’s elegiac distich, for example, is only marginally iso-
metric, since it is rhythmically a two-line logaoed, in which, although the
lines are usually the same length, the distribution of stresses is always sig-
nificantly different. If we count Fet’s 234 lines of elegiac distich as logaedic,
instead of as work in an isometric non-classical meter, the role of non-
classical meters in Fet’s anisometric usage appears much greater, as is
shown in Table 8 (page 237). This shows how crucial is the relatively small
amount of elegiac distich in evaluating Fet’s metrical usage, and it also
shows one of the ways that Fet’s use of anisometry is correlated with his use
of non-classical forms.
In his syllabotonic repertory, Fet combines lines of practically any length
with lines of any other length, even though some lines tend to prefer one or
another specific partner. Least productive of anisometric meters is the ana-
pest, which occurs nearly entirely in combinations of trimeter with tetrame-
ter. A comparison of Table 7 with Table 5, however, reveals that, in spite of
its narrow range, the anapest, like the other ternary meters, is slightly over-
represented in Fet’s anisometric usage, compared with its share in Fet’s
work overall. Iambs, in contrast, are underrepresented – a profile different
from Tiutchev’s, for example. Tiutchev’s anisometry is, in general, found
mostly in translations.98 This is not true of Fet, but Fet’s translations are
more anisometric than his original poetry: fully a third of the lines are in
anisometric texts, only two thirds – in isometric ones.99 Anisometry is so
prevalent in Fet’s translations that his classical metrical repertory is reduced
to only fourteen independent meters, compared with 24 in his work overall,
while nineteen classical meters are represented in the anisometric transla-
tions, as compared with 25 in the overall corpus. They constitute an espe-
cially significant part of his small corpus of unregulated anisometry.
234 Chapter Three

Variable and fixed line length in non-classical meters

Variability and non-variability of line-length has interesting ramifications in
the non-classical repertory. Variable-length dolnik with variable anacrusis
assimilates poetry to free verse, while, if line length is kept stable, the same
sort of dolnik line promotes stress-based versification.
Many of Fet’s excursions outside the standard metrical repertory are
technically isometric: that is, all the lines of a given stanza are nominally at
least the same length, as measured by the number of strong positions in each
line. Occasional use of a variable but regulated anacrusis in ternary lines
produced a ternary trimeter in which dactyls alternate with amphibrachs (“В
пене несется поток / Ладью обгоняют буруны…” [1860s]) or with
anapests (“Только в мире и есть, что тенистый / Дремлющих кленов
шатер…” [1883]),100 while a pair of poems that originated as a single text is
written mostly in a logaoedic line based on amphibrachic tetrameter.101 In
translations, especially but not only the Heine translations, a ternary, typi-
cally amphibrachic, base may appear with a dolnik variant in one line or at
intervals throughout a poem. But among lines nominally of the same length,
surely the least expected of bedfellows is the combination of lines found in
“Дaвнo в любви oтрaды мaлo:…”, discussed earlier. Overall, Fet’s recur-
rent use of metrically different kinds of line united by their having the same
number of strong beats is evidence of a greater orientation toward stress than
was typical of Russian poetry of his day. It is, of course, characteristic of the
German tradition.
Free dolnik occurs only in texts of the 1840s, but like his classical me-
ters, dolnik does occur in combinations of every line length from monometer
to hexameter. It is seldom that a text with lines of mixed length employ ei-
ther logaoedic forms or amphibrach-based dolnik.

Mixed non-classical and classical anisometry

A few of Fet’s experiments entail mixing a classical line with a non-classical
one. He uses a unique form in the following poem, each stanza of which
alternates a logaoedic line with an apparent dactylic-clausula anapestic
monometer (or trochaic dimeter):102
Вeтeр злoй, вeтр крутoй в пoлe
Зaливaeтся,
A сугрoб нa стeпнoй вoлe
Зaвивaeтся.
При лунe нa вeрстe мoрoз –
Oгoнeчкaми.
Прo живыx вeтeр вeсть прoнeс
С пoзвoнoчкaми.
Verse form and language 235

Под дубoвым крeстoм свистит,

Рaздувaeтся.
Сeрый зaяц стeпнoй xрустит,
Нe пугaeтся.

In two poems, he combines a dolnik line based on amphibrachic trimeter

with pure amphibrachic tetrameter. As is so often true of Fet’s experiments,
the first example is in a translated poem, in this instance his translation of
Schiller’s “Hoffnung”.103 It appears in The Lyrical Pantheon and begins as
follows:
Нaдeются люди, мeчтaют свoй вeк
Судьбу пoкoрить рoкoвую.
И xoчeт пoстaвить сeбe чeлoвeк
Цeль счaстья, цeль зoлoтую.
Зa днями нeсчaстий дни счaстья идут;
A люди всe лучшeгo, лучшeгo ждут.
The dolnik line “replaces” an “expected” amphibrachic trimeter, yielding a
regular stanzaic pattern of “434344”. The stanza is a fairly precise replica of
Schiller’s, while the dolnik fourth line is a reminiscence of the unregulated
dolnik that runs throughout the German original.
Then, in the 1860s, Fet again writes a poem in which dolnik/amphibrach-
ic trimeter alternates with pure amphibrachic tetrameter: “Свeчa нaгoрeлa.
Пoртрeты в тeни.…”, discussed in Chapter Two. Except for line-end, the
rhythm of the dolnik line is the same in the two poems (it is the only three-
stress dolnik line Fet ever uses) and in both poems it is distributed regularly
across the text. There is a crucial difference, however. The later poem is
written in a much simpler stanza: pair-rhymed quatrains, with tetrameter and
trimeter lines alternating. All the trimeter lines are dolnik, none of the te-
trameter are. Stresses are distributed identically across each of the six dis-
tichs.
236 Chapter Three

Table 7: Anisometric Meters in Monometric Texts

Meter # Texts # Lines

Im2/1 1 16 0.5% 0.6%
Im4/2 10 158 4.8% 5.7%
Im4/3 13 278 8.4% 7.4%
Im5/2 7 117 3.5% 4.0%
Im5/3 11 160 4.8% 6.3%
Im5/4 4 52 1.6% 2.3%
Im6/1* 1 36 1.1% 0.6%
Im6/3 6 143 4.3% 3.4%
Im6/4 23 435 13.1% 13.1%
Im6/5 7 88 2.7% 4.0%
Im6/5/4** 4 55 1.7% 2.3%
Im6/5/4/3* 1 9 0.3% 0.6%
All iambs 88 1547 46.7% 50.3%
Tx3/1 1 14 0.4% 0.6%
Tx4/2 5 98 3.0% 2.9%
Tx4/3 25 452 13.7% 14.3%
Tx5/4 2 136 4.1% 1.1%
All trochees 33 700 21.1% 18.9%
Da3/2 1 12 0.4% 0.6%
Da4/2 5 82 2.5% 2.9%
Da4/3 5 76 2.3% 2.9%
Da4/3/1 1 12 0.4% 0.6%
Da5/1* 1 22 0.7% 0.6%
All dactyls 13 204 6.2% 7.4%
Am3/2 4 52 1.6% 2.3%
Am4/3 9 154 4.7% 5.1%
Am5/1 1 25 0.8% 0.6%
Am5/3 1 12 0.4% 0.6%
All amphibrachs 15 243 7.3% 8.6%
An2/1 2 32 1.0% 1.1%
An4/3 11 199 6.0% 6.3%
All anapests 13 231 7.0% 7.4%

All classical 162 2925 88.4% 92.6%

Dactylo-trochaic 5 188 5.7% 2.9%

Other non-classical 8 197 6.0% 4.6%

All non-classical 13 385 11.6% 7.4%

Total 175 3310 100.0% 100.0%

Note: The numbers separated by a slash indicate the range of line length. Asterisks
indicate unregulated anisometry in syllabotonic meters (see pages 232 ff.).
Verse form and language 237

Table 8: Non-classical lines as a proportion of all isometric and

anisometric lines, counting elegiac distich as an anisometric
logaoed

Isometric Verse
All classical meters 11811 96.0%
Hexameter 183 1.5%
Other 310 2.5%
All non-classical meters 494 4.0%
Total 12305 100.0%
Anisometric Verse
All classical meters 2925 82.5%
Elegiac Distich 234 6.6%
Dactylo-trochaic 188 5.3%
Other non-classical 197 5.6%
All non-classical meters 619 17.5%
Total 3544 100.0%

3.2.4 Polymetric compositions

Fet’s metrical practice and its connection with German models can be noted
in his rare excursions into polymetric verse – that is, poetry in which differ-
ent meters appear not combined in a single stanza or segment of the text, but
in distinct parts of it. So far as I am aware, Fet’s oeuvre contains only two
original polymetric compositions, both of them probably written around the
same time and first published in his 1850 collection of poetry: “Эоловы
арфы”, a stanza of which appears on page 226, and the much longer work
“Соловей и роза”. The polymetric structure of “Соловей и роза” is similar
to that of “Эоловы арфы”, in that it also takes the form of a dialogue, and
change of meter is associated with speakers’ turns. Its Orientalism is of a
peculiarly German cast, and its aesthetics have been linked with those of
Novalis.104 “Эоловы арфы” disappeared from Fet’s canon and never re-
turned, but “Соловей и роза” was resurrected by Fet in his third edition of
Evening Lights, where he evaluates the poem as technically flawed, but even
so the best single representative of the spirit of his early work. Before Fet
wrote either “Эоловы арфы” or “Соловей и роза”, however, he clearly had
become intrigued by Goethe’s “Auf dem See”, a short polymetric poem dis-
cussed above (pages 203 ff.). When Fet translated “Auf dem See”, he pre-
served and even accentuated the sharpness of its internal metrical bounda-
ries. He sharpened, too, the rhythmic irregularities of the poem’s ending,
and, as suggested above, he exploited the technique he used to capture its
rhythm in his later original poetry. Although polymetric verse is only a small
238 Chapter Three

part of Fet’s oeuvre, he seems to have been especially attached to two of the
works he wrote or translated in this form.
It has been said that Fet’s experiments in non-classical forms, although
numerous, are less striking than, for example, Tiutchev’s.105 The reason for
this is not so much that Fet’s innovations are structurally less innovative, as
that Fet so thoroughly assimilates his innovations to poetic context. Fet gen-
erally tends toward the assimilation of innovation to prior tradition, as we
see for example in his taking refuge in well-worn and banal rhymes. Early
Fet, especially, was not at all disinclined toward formal innovation, but
again and again he tries to legitimate his choice of form by appealing to
readers’ assumed knowledge of classical Greek and Latin poetry and of
German and Russian imitations of it: this is what he does with the 1842 po-
ems of “Вечера и ночи”, for example, and what he does in “Нептуну Ле-
веррье”.106 In his mature poetry, Fet tends to seek his artistic grandfathers in
a more specifically Russian context, preferring to innovate in traditions
sanctioned by such Russian predecessors as Zhukovskii – in using logaoedic
forms, for example, or a stressed line-end – ,107 or Lermontov, for example,
in using ternary lines with variable anacrusis. We mentioned in Chapter Two
the later Fet’s formal allusions to Tiutchev.
Fet also tends to assimilate metrical innovation by supporting it structur-
ally in the poem in which it occurs. In “Свeчa нaгoрeлa. Пoртрeты в
тeни.…” Fet assimilates dolnik lines to the Russian tradition by treating
them as logaoedic. The poem is written in alternating lines of not only dif-
ferent length but also different metrical status, and yet the nonclassical line
is easy to perceive as a variant of a classical one. In “Только в мире и есть,
что тенистый …”, the acceptable irregularity of variable anacrusis is regu-
larized in a way both innovative and traditional: variable anacrusis renders
up a poem in alternating anapests and dactyls. In each case, a stanzaic pat-
tern based on alternation between two metrical forms serves to assimilate
non-classical to classical metrics. It is most striking to alternate lines of di-
vergent metrical character, however, when the lines involved are both classi-
cally correct, but one of them is binary, the other – ternary. This is what we
saw in “Давно в любви отрады мало…”. In effect, irregularity is so framed
for the reader as to make it both salient and unambiguous. Readers may like
or dislike the choice of form. They will not think it an accident.
The context of innovation in Fet’s poetry is thus partly defined by poetic
tradition, partly by Fet’s own usage in the text itself. This last kind of ante-
cedence, of course, entails not only less diachronic depth of interpretation
but also promotion of synchronic over diachronic perceptions of the poem in
which innovation appears: if a dolnik line is repeated systematically all
through a text, our appreciation of it at the end of our reading encourages us
to attach our response not to the last occurrence of the unusual line but to the
Verse form and language 239

unusual line in its overall context, which is the small set of lines comprising
the text immediately before us. In this respect, Fet’s later metrical innova-
tion rather “jumps the tracks”, from meter to larger-scale poetic form, in a
way consonant with everything else we know about his aesthetics. The poem
may emerge across time, as we read, but its full effect takes hold in a mo-
ment of revelation that can only occur after we have read the poem, and
when we not so much re-read as hold it all in memory.

3.2.5 Fet’s canon of short original verse

Throughout our discussion, we have noted differences in different parts of

Fet’s work, and have presented, for example, the metrical repertory of his
translations separately. Another special part of Fet’s work is his canon of
short original poems. These are the short original poems that Fet himself, at
the end of his life, wished to include in a final collection, and these poems in
the twentieth century came to be at the heart of the Fet who is known even to
avid readers. Because of the disjunction in Fet’s work between early and
late, the canon plays a special role in our understanding of the poet’s self-
presentation in his later years, and we have several times encountered the
significance of Fet’s choices. The Fet canon naturally favors later work over
juvenilia, but the poet’s selection was more personal than just that. In the
next section, we discuss the specifically chronological differentiation of
Fet’s work. Here, we give some basic information about the canon (Table 9)
and show some of the differences between it and Fet’s work as a whole (Ta-
ble 10).
Table 9. Fet’s canon of short original verse: overview
Texts Lines
Monometric
Isometric 459 83.3% 5751 77.0%
Anisometric 91 16.5% 1582 21.2%
Polymetric 1 0.2% 140 1.9%
Sum: canon 551 100.0% 7473 100.0%

Table 10. Proportion of syllabotonic and DaElg lines in canonical short original
poems, as a percentage of all Fet’s lines in each meter (overall: 47.5%)
Im6 55.7% Tx4 40.2% Am4 47.9% Da4 78.1%
Im5 29.9% Tx3 60.6% Am3 45.6% Da3 49.3%
Im4 53.5% Tx2 55.2% Am2 32.3% Da2 23.8%
Im3 38.9% An2 85.0% Am1 100.0% DaElg 57.3%
Im2 32.6% An1 88.9% Da6 84.9%
Tx5 19.3% Am5 22.1% Da5 98.5%
240 Chapter Three

3.2.6 Chronology in Fet’s metrical repertory

We have already had occasion to note some of the ways in which Fet’s us-
age changed over time, and now we shall consider some of the changes in
more detail. Over Fet’s career, there was a broad shift in which meters were
most widely used, and his habits helped create these trends. Fet’s usage dif-
fers in each of his major collections, and the differences in metrical reper-
tory among the first three of his books show a process by which Fet gradu-
ally assimilated his metrical practice to that of contemporary Russian verse
norms. Soon afterward, though, he sharply reduced the amount of original
poetry he wrote, and translation became a larger part of his work. His origi-
nal verse during that time is sometimes experimental, but the quantity is
small. At the end of his life, Fet in at least some aspects of his versificational
practice, as in other ways, reverted to his earlier self.
The young Fet’s distance from the mainstream of Russian verse is evi-
dent from the metrical repertory of The Lyrical Pantheon, and so are his
idiosyncrasies.
For starters, some two fifths of all the lines in The Lyrical Pantheon are
in poems that have at least some non-classical lines (including here not only
dolnik lines, but also possibly defective ones). The poetry of A. F. was quite
weakly attached to syllabotonic metrics. Then again, even discounting his
“free” iambic verse (characteristic of Fet’s first book, but gone from his later
ones), about 31% of the lines in Fet’s first book are in poems that are aniso-
metric, and so are 41% of his iambs – a figure beside which his later usage
pales. More than half his anapests and dactyls are anisometric, but none of
his amphibrachic lines. Since Fet’s early iambic repertory is thus unusually
given to anisometry, one is curious if it may not have been the young poet’s
private approach to russifying German dolnik: since German poetry has a
congenital affinity for iambic meters, iambic verse would have been at least
as acceptable to Fet from the German as from the Russian perspective, but
Russian-style isometric iambic verse may have seemed boring, compared
with the greater freedom of German iambs. In any event, this tendency to-
ward iambic anisometry is one of the traits that was thoroughly effaced from
Fet’s mature work.
Iambic anisometry is particularly noticeable because half the lines in The
Lyrical Pantheon are, in fact, iambic. Surprisingly, though, by far the lead-
ing iambic meter is pentameter: 42% of all iambic lines, and the most fre-
quent of any meter in the book. Iambic pentameter is associated with Eng-
lish and, thence, German tradition, borrowed into Russian by Zhukovskii but
never even a distant rival to iambic tetrameter. Nearly 12% of all the lines in
The Lyrical Pantheon are in iambic pentameter, and iambic pentameter also
participates in anisometric combinations with dimeter, tetrameter, and hex-
Verse form and language 241

ameter, as well as in free iambic verse. Although iambic pentameter contin-

ues to be important in Fet’s repertory afterward, it was functionally differ-
ent, since it occurs mostly in long narrative texts. As for The Lyrical Pan-
theon, iambic pentameter is used in some of the shortest poems in the book,
and the 52 lines of mixed iambic hexameter and pentameter are spread over
five poems.
In other ways, Fet’s usage in The Lyrical Pantheon is perhaps not so
much idiosyncratic or German as it is old-fashioned. His repertory of ternary
meters constitutes 15% of all lines, and amphibrach lines are half of that.
This is roughly what would be expected for the time.108 Among ternary me-
ters, however, dactyls outdistance anapests, and the only ternary trimeter is
anapestic trimeter occurring in combination with tetrameter. Overall, the
commonest isometric meters are, by far, iambic pentameter and trochaic
tetrameter.
Everyone agrees that The Lyrical Pantheon is the work of an immature
beginner, and although it was not badly received at the time, people reading
his 1850 collection of poetry failed to see in it any continuation of the earlier
work.109 The 1850 book moves closer to the Russian mainstream, but it took
the editorial labor of Turgenev and his colleagues to complete the transfor-
mation, realized in the collection of 1856. The difference between the metri-
cal repertory of the 1850 and 1856 volumes is striking, the more so when we
realize how much they overlap. The 1850 book contained 182 poems, of
which 87 were dropped from the later one, while 48 newer poems were
added. The 95 poems that appeared in both collections often were revised
for the later one: collectively, the repeated poems turn up shorter by 74 lines.
The 1856 volume is, in lines, about a third shorter than its predecessor.

Table 11: Fet’s books: 1840-1856 (percent of lines and of texts

written in the commonest meters in each book).

Meter Texts % Lines % cum. sum

The Lyrical Pantheon

Im5 11 16.9% 150 11.9% 11.9%
Tx4 8 12.3% 132 10.4% 22.3%
Im4/3 4 6.2% 84 6.6% 29.0%
Im4 5 7.7% 70 5.5% 34.5%
Tx5 2 3.1% 67 5.3% 39.8%
Im6/3 1 1.5% 64 5.1% 44.9%
Tx4/3 1 1.5% 54 4.3% 49.1%
242 Chapter Three

Meter Texts % Lines % cum. sum

Im6/5 5 7.7% 52 4.1% 53.2%

1850 Collection
Tx4 39 19.6% 682 19.5% 19.5%
Im5 13 6.5% 368 10.5% 30.1%
Am3 22 11.1% 316 9.0% 39.1%
Im6 19 9.5% 263 7.5% 46.6%
Tx4/3 16 8.0% 248 7.1% 53.8%

1856 Collection
Im6 27 18.4% 434 18.2% 18.2%
Tx4 19 12.9% 282 11.8% 30.0%
DaElg 12 8.2% 216 9.1% 39.1%
Im5 10 6.8% 164 6.9% 46.0%
Am3 10 6.8% 140 5.9% 51.8%

Table 11 shows the most frequent meters in Fet’s first three books.110 The
last column indicates what percentage of all Fet’s lines of each book are in-
cluded in the count: it takes eight meters to account for half the lines in The
Lyrical Pantheon, as against five meters in each of the later books – and half
of the favored meters are anisometric. The relatively short 1840 volume thus
appears to have been a showpiece of metrical diversity, while by 1850 – ac-
tually, by 1847, when the 1850 book was approved by the censor – the poet
had already developed a predilection for certain meters that he used repeat-
edly. What those meters were, however, is quite different in each of the two
later volumes. Iambic hexameter is far more prominent in the repertory of
the 1856 book than in the 1850 collection, elegiac distich is now one of the
most extensively used meters in the repertory (it was ranked just below that
group in the 1850 collection), while amphibrachic trimeter, which had been
missing altogether from The Lyrical Pantheon, has a brief moment of glory
in 1850 before sinking down again in 1856. Trochaic tetrameter is notably
less prominent, and tetrameter mixed with trimeter fades from view.
Other changes are not evident from the table alone. For example, at the
same time as elegiac distich takes its place among the commonest meters in
the 1856 collection, the less traditional non-classical meters are now repre-
sented by only five poems, as compared with thirteen before. The only new
anisometric forms are based on long iambic lines (iambic hexameter alter-
nating with either pentameter or tetrameter) while short lines, in both iso-
metric and anisometric forms, are eliminated. About thirty percent of the
isometric lines eliminated in 1856 are iambic (mostly in a few long iambic
Verse form and language 243

pentameter poems), compared with 64% of those added, and Fet removes
five times as many trochaic lines as he adds. All these changes testify to the
anthological tendency of the 1856 edition, as compared with that of 1850.
Fet’s most obvious idiosyncrasies and deviations from the Russian metri-
cal norm, clear for all to see in The Lyrical Pantheon, are in the collection of
1856 variously suppressed or eliminated. Yet his usage remained curiously
out of phase with that of his contemporaries. If we compare the usage of
Fet’s 1840, 1850, and 1856 volumes (Table 11) with the core metrical reper-
tory of the 1840s and 50s (Table 12), we find that none of the volumes is
entirely typical of its time.111
Table 12: Core Metrical Usage in Russian Verse (proportion
of all texts in each decade)
1840s 1850s
Im4 .198 Im4 .222
Im6 .119 Im6 .118
Im5 .114 Im5 .077
Tx4 .110 Tx4 .127
ImAnis .073 ImAnis .061
ImFree .042 ImFree .029
Am3 .041 Am3 .031
An3 .035 An3 .060
TxAnis .031 Tx3 .030
Most obviously, the predominant meter of the 1840s and 50s, iambic te-
trameter, is missing from the list of Fet’s most-used meters at the time. Ul-
timately, iambic tetrameter accounts for 24% of all the texts, and all the
lines, in Fet’s canon, and nearly that amount in his poetry overall. In the
1840s, however, – and the 1850 collection was written in the 1840s – iambic
tetrameter comprised less than 2% of Fet’s texts and only about 1% of his
verse lines. In the 1850s, his iambic tetrameter actually exceeded the norm
(26.7% of his texts, only slightly less in lines), but since it is used inten-
sively only beginning in 1856, its prevalence is not fully reflected in the
1856 collection. Similarly, the prevalence of elegiac distich in Fet’s 1856
book reflects his earlier usage. He wrote little original elegiac distich after
1847. The other differences between Fet’s usage and that of his contempo-
raries can be seen from the tables themselves or are mentioned in earlier dis-
cussion.
There are thus clear discrepancies between the usage in the collections of
poetry and the norm for Fet’s time, and it is sometimes hard to correlate the
books with either the norm or the chronology of Fet’s own usage. The diffi-
culties become greater in analyzing Fet’s later books, because the time of
writing of the poetry is more diverse. For this reason, we will conclude our
survey of the chronology of Fet’s metrical repertory with a brief glance at
244 Chapter Three

his poetry by approximate time of writing, rather than in relation to the col-
lections of poetry he published.
The chronological distribution of meters in Fet’s canonical poetry, and in
his work overall, is summarized in Tables 13 and 14 (pages 246 ff.) respec-
tively. The isometric meters of each type are grouped together, and rows
summarizing them are labeled with “(1)”. Anisometric meters are summa-
rized in the rows labeled “(2)”. For a list of abbreviations, see pages 356 ff.
The chronological divisions in the tables are those that come closest to di-
viding the material into groups of equal size, without separating poems that
were probably written in the same year. Within each period, the left column
shows absolute figures, and the right column – percentages, relative to all
lines of the same period. Table 14 excludes lines from poems that cannot be
reliably dated within one or another period.
In some ways – for example, the gradual expansion in his anapestic rep-
ertory – Fet’s poetry changes along with everyone else’s in the nineteenth
century. In some respects, such as the concentration of non-classical lines in
his early work, Fet’s usage is known to us, but the details are new. As we
would expect, syllabotonic meters occupy a smaller part of Fet’s work up to
1842 than later, but the real break comes after he had finished the poetry of
the 1850 edition. Also characteristic of Fet’s earliest work is a relatively
high proportion of dactylic lines, something that is not reflected in the reper-
tory of individual meters of his early books (Table 11). His use of dactyls
declines in his middle years, but rises again in his last work. A striking char-
acteristic of his second period (1842-47) is that trochaic meters are, collec-
tively, more frequent than iambic ones. After iambs regain their dominance
in the third period, trochees decline so much that the commonest iambic me-
ters are more frequent in his work than are all the trochaic meters combined.
From 1848 to 1856, Fet wrote three quarters of his poetry in iambs, gradu-
ally declining afterward to only about half of his poetry. It is only in his last
years (1885 to 1892) that any of the ternaries supersedes the trochaic meters
in second place among line types, however: anapests account for about 15%
of his last poetry. His anapestic meters had been in evidence from the begin-
ning, occupying about 2% of his earliest lines, and become somewhat more
frequent thereafter. It is generally characteristic of nineteenth-century Rus-
sian poetry that anapests replace amphibrachs in the ternary repertoire, but
Fet’s amphibrachic meters do not decline evenly. Although isometric am-
phibrachs decline, they are partly replaced by anisometric ones. Overall, the
proportion of amphibrachs dips sharply in the period after his 1850 book,
and rises sharply after 1884. The distribution of dactylic and amphibrachic
lines in Fet’s poetry reinforces our impression that he often evoked his own
earlier practice in his late verse form. The statistical distribution of Fet’s
metrical repertory sometimes belies the impressions we may have from read-
Verse form and language 245

ing just his best-known work. In such poems as “Моего тот безумства
желал, кто смежал …”, Fet made an essential contribution to the anapestic
repertory – but meanwhile, he was writing fewer anapestic lines, and more
amphibrachs and dactyls, proportionately, than his contemporaries. An es-
sential part of the older Fet’s practice was wrapping himself in old-fash-
ionedness, venturing out when it pleased him.
In his canonical original short poems, Fet’s use of iambic hexameter is
about as intensive in the 1840s as in the norm for the time, but it exceeds the
norm during Fet’s “anthological” 1850s. It drops sharply in frequency after-
ward, and Fet does not participate in the great burst of iambic hexameter in
the 1880s. That burst, however, along with the taste of Fet’s editors in the
1850s, may have played some role in the fact that Fet’s early iambic hex-
ameter fared particularly well in relation to Fet’s canon: the young Fet’s use
of iambic hexameter was overall well below the norm for the time, and was
not so well represented in Fet’s early writing as it might seem, if our notion
of that early writing is taken from the canon alone. Fet’s usage in his last
years, in fact, nearly exactly reproduces the frequency with which he turned
to iambic hexameter in the mid-1840s. Here, as in other ways, Fet’s late us-
age was more nostalgic and self-referential than it was fashionable – and
except, as it turns out, for the period when his work was being pruned and
polished by Turgenev, that very lack of fashionableness, that reliance on his
own intuitions, was one of Fet’s enduring characteristics.
Fet’s tendency to return at the end to his early practice is evident in other
ways. His late variable-length dactylo-trochaic meter is all in a single trans-
lation: in 1885 Fet returned to Goethe, this time translating the “Harzreise
im Winter”. We have seen he also re-translated in later life a Goethe poem
he had first translated and included in The Lyrical Pantheon, and I have ar-
gued above that “Давно в любви отрады мало…” is a return to “Auf dem
See”.
Finally, Table 15 (page 249) presents the same metrical repertory as Ta-
ble 14, but shows only individual meters instead of groups, and it is arranged
to show all the meters that, within each chronological period, occupy more
than 1% of Fet’s corpus. The meters are arranged in descending order of
frequency. The most striking aspect of Table 15 is its ragged edges: the
number of meters Fet uses is different at different times. To some extent,
this is an artifact of the slightly different sizes of each of our six subcorpora:
we expect more variety in a larger corpus than in a smaller one. The differ-
ences are nonetheless noticeable. Through 1842, Fet’s favored meters ac-
count for only about two thirds of his poetry, and no meter covers more than
14% of his lines. This early diversity was suggested by our survey of the
metrics of The Lyrical Pantheon, but only the top-ranked two meters listed
in Table 15 are the same. Obviously, Fet was moving rapidly from one ex-
246 Chapter Three

periment to the next – and, as suggested earlier, the 1840 date of publication
of The Lyrical Pantheon cannot be taken to be the date when the poems in it
were written. From the mid-1840s onward, Fet’s favored meters (those cov-
ering more than 1% of the corpus) together cover about 80% of his poetry,
but, there continues to be considerable elasticity in the number of meters that
cover more than 1% of his lines. The shrinking of Fet’s repertory is greatest
under Turgenev’s tutelage: nine meters, the top three all iambic.
Some aspects of Fet’s usage are clearer when viewed in terms of ranks,
rather than in absolute numbers. Thus, his beloved elegiac distich is usually
thought of as characteristic only of early Fet, but Table 15 shows that, while
it is not abundant in the 1850s, it continues to linger in his repertory. Simi-
larly, although Fet switches nearly entirely from dactylo-trochaic to amphi-
brachic dolnik lines, still, his Goethe translations keep the earlier type of line
active in Fet’s later oeuvre. It is only in the 1870s and early 1880s that there
are no dactylo-trochaic meters in his active repertory. Overall, we see a
gradual narrowing of the non-classical repertory, from an early practice ex-
ploiting elegiac distich, hexameter, and other dactylo-trochaic forms, and
then a tendency to promote elegiac distich. Finally, that disappears, and the
poet at the end revives not elegiac distich, but the freer forms of dactylo-tro-
chaic meters. The later Fet also uses anisometrical forms with monometers,
and he returns to anisometric iambic lines, which had been especially char-
acteristic of his earliest work. Thus, in the details of metrical repertory as in
other ways, we can see that the older Fet often evokes the early Fet and turns
away from his usage in the intervening years. At the same time, Fet’s usage
shows a persistent interest in the rhythmic periphery, in his use of non-
classical meters and in his recurrence to relatively unusual anisometric
forms, such as those with very short lines. These characteristics of Fet’s met-
rical usage suggest that it was not, perhaps, meter as such that was at the
heart of Fet’s notion of poetic form, but rather meter as the essential struc-
tural element in manipulating rhythms and larger verse forms.

Table 13: Lines of each meter in the canonical short poems, by chronological period
1840s 1850s 1860-83 1884-92
% all % all No. % all No. % all
Meter No. lines lines No. lines lines lines lines lines lines
Im3 28 1.46
Im4 24 1.25 521 25.59 563 37.43 683 33.95
Im5 72 3.75 250 12.28 290 19.28 116 5.77
Im6 234 12.18 335 16.45 78 5.19 148 7.36
sum: Im (1) 358 18.64 1106 54.32 931 61.90 947 47.07
sum:Im (2) 132 6.87 367 18.03 80 5.32 248 12.33
Iambs 490 25.51 1473 72.35 1011 67.22 1195 59.39
Verse form and language 247

1840s 1850s 1860-83 1884-92

% all % all No. % all No. % all
Meter No. lines lines No. lines lines lines lines lines lines
Tx3 88 4.58 20 0.98 16 1.06 18 0.89
Tx4 332 17.28 148 7.27 69 4.59 91 4.52
Tx5 32 1.67 16 0.79 22 1.46 12 0.60
Tx6 12 0.59
sum: Tx (1) 452 23.53 196 9.63 107 7.11 121 6.01
sum: Tx (2) 180 9.37 60 2.95 48 3.19 18 0.89
Trochees 632 32.90 256 12.57 155 10.31 139 6.91
Da3 32 1.67 50 2.49
Da4 20 1.04 28 1.38 84 5.59 92 4.57
Da5 24 1.18 20 1.33 22 1.09
Da6 79 4.11
sum: Da (1) 131 6.82 52 2.55 104 6.91 164 8.15
sum: Da (2) 36 1.87 0 0.00 16 1.06 36 1.79
Dactyls 167 8.69 52 2.55 120 7.98 200 9.94
Am2 16 0.83
Am3 180 9.37 12 0.59 12 0.80 68 3.38
Am4 24 1.25 15 0.74 12 0.80 24 1.19
sum: Am (1) 220 11.45 27 1.33 24 1.60 92 4.57
sum: Am (2) 48 2.50 45 2.21 0 0.00 42 2.09
Amphibrachs 268 13.95 72 3.54 24 1.60 134 6.66
An1 18 0.89
An2 12 0.60
An3 86 4.48 87 4.27 86 5.72 180 8.95
An4 16 1.06 78 3.88
An5 12 0.80 8 0.40
sum:An (1) 86 4.48 87 4.27 114 7.58 296 14.71
sum: An (2) 40 2.08 36 1.77 24 1.60 40 1.99
Anapests 126 6.56 123 6.04 138 9.18 336 16.70
Cl 1683 87.61 1976 97.05 1448 96.28 2004 99.60
DaElg 74 3.85 60 2.95
DaTx6 17 0.88
Other
DaTx/Acc 147 7.65 0 0.00 0 0.00 0 0.00
Other Ncl 0 0.00 0 0.00 56 3.72 8 0.40
Ncl 238 12.39 60 2.95 56 3.72 8 0.40
sum:All 1921 100.00 2036 100.00 1504 100.00 2012 100.00
248 Chapter Three

Table 14. Meters of lines of all datable poems, by chronological periods (15945 lines)

to 1842 1843-47 1848-56 1857-67 1869-84 1885-92

Meter No. % all No. % all No. % all No. % all No. % all No. % all
lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines
Im2 75 2.63 14 0.54
Im3 74 2.59 24 0.89 56 1.89
Im4 86 3.01 258 9.61 401 17.12 1070 36.17 659 25.39 864 34.41
Im5 404 14.16 208 7.75 782 33.39 286 9.67 615 23.70 108 4.30
Im6 160 5.61 215 8.01 332 14.18 314 10.62 255 9.83 196 7.81
Im(1) 799 28.00 705 26.26 1515 64.69 1726 58.35 1543 59.46 1168 46.52
Im(2) 424 14.86 88 3.28 267 11.40 332 11.22 188 7.24 256 10.20
Im 1223 42.85 793 29.53 1782 76.09 2058 69.57 1731 66.71 1424 56.71
Tx2 18 0.69
Tx3 16 0.56 80 2.98 36 1.54 12 0.41 16 0.62 26 1.04
Tx4 348 12.19 606 22.57 178 7.60 196 6.63 171 6.59 145 5.77
Tx5 67 2.35 102 3.80 16 0.68 62 2.10 70 2.70 20 0.80
Tx6 12 0.51 32 1.08 8 0.31
Tx(1) 431 15.10 788 29.35 242 10.33 302 10.21 283 10.91 191 7.61
Tx(2) 118 4.13 232 8.64 12 0.51 86 2.91 234 9.02 30 1.19
Tx 549 19.24 1020 37.99 254 10.85 388 13.12 517 19.92 221 8.80
Da2 38 1.33 16 0.64
Da3 56 1.96 16 0.60 37 1.25 8 0.31 50 1.99
Da4 8 0.28 12 0.45 40 1.35 72 2.77 102 4.06
Da5 24 1.02 12 0.41 14 0.54 16 0.64
Da6 26 0.91 53 1.97 14 0.60
Da(1) 128 4.48 81 3.02 38 1.62 89 3.01 94 3.62 184 7.33
Da(2) 98 3.43 0 0.00 0 0.00 50 1.69 32 1.23 24 0.96
Da 226 7.92 81 3.02 38 1.62 139 4.70 126 4.86 208 8.28
Am2 51 1.79 16 0.60
Am3 172 6.03 196 7.30 36 1.54 80 2.70 8 0.31 108 4.30
Am4 44 1.54 48 1.79 25 0.85 24 0.92 12 0.48
Am5 34 1.19 14 0.52 12 0.41
Am(1) 301 10.55 274 10.20 36 1.54 117 3.96 32 1.23 120 4.78
Am(2) 28 0.98 92 3.43 57 2.43 0 0.00 0 0.00 78 3.11
Am 329 11.53 366 13.63 93 3.97 117 3.96 32 1.23 198 7.89
An1 18 0.72
An2 64 2.47 12 0.48
An3 20 0.70 90 3.35 75 3.20 42 1.42 38 1.46 212 8.44
An4 36 1.26 74 2.95
An5 12 0.41 8 0.32
An(1) 56 1.96 90 3.35 75 3.20 54 1.83 102 3.93 324 12.90
An(2) 91 3.19 40 1.49 0 0.00 36 1.22 24 0.92 40 1.59
An 147 5.15 130 4.84 75 3.20 90 3.04 126 4.86 364 14.50
Cl 2474 86.69 2390 89.01 2242 95.73 2792 94.39 2532 97.57 2415 96.18
Verse form and language 249

to 1842 1843-47 1848-56 1857-67 1869-84 1885-92

Meter No. % all No. % all No. % all No. % all No. % all No. % all
lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines lines
DaElg 36 1.26 62 2.31 92 3.93 40 1.35 2 0.08
DaTx6 39 1.37 144 5.36
DTA 279 9.78 53 1.97 8 0.34 4 0.14 41 1.58 88 3.50
5+5 8 0.28
Other 18 0.63 36 1.34 0 0.00 122 4.12 20 0.77 8 0.32
NCl 380 13.31 295 10.99 100 4.27 166 5.61 63 2.43 96 3.82
Sum 2854 100.00 2685 100.00 2342 100.00 2958 100.00 2595 100.00 2511 100.00

Table 15. Commonest Meters in Fet's Repertory, over time

to 1842 1843-47 1848-56 1857-67 1869-84 1885-92
Meter % all Meter % all Meter % all Meter % all Meter % all Meter % all
lines lines lines lines lines lines
Im5 0.14 Tx4 0.23 Im5 0.33 Im4 0.36 Im4 0.25 Im4 0.34
Tx4 0.12 Im4 0.10 Im4 0.17 Im6 0.11 Im5 0.24 An3 0.08
Am3 0.06 Im6 0.08 Im6 0.14 Im5 0.10 Im6 0.10 Im6 0.08
Im6 0.06 Im5 0.08 Tx4 0.08 Tx4 0.07 Tx4 0.07 Tx4 0.06
Im4 0.03 Am3 0.07 DaElg 0.04 Am3 0.03 Da4 0.03 Im5 0.04
An4/3 0.03 DaTx6 0.05 An3 0.03 Tx5 0.02 Tx5 0.03 Am3 0.04
Im2 0.03 Tx5 0.04 Am3 0.02 Im3 0.02 Im2/1 0.03 Da4 0.04
Im3 0.03 An3 0.03 Tx3 0.02 An3 0.01 An3 0.02 DaTx 4/1 0.04
Da4/2 0.02 Tx3 0.03 Da5 0.01 Im4/2 0.01 An4 0.01 An4 0.03
Tx5 0.02 DaElg 0.02 Sum 0.84 DaElg 0.01 Tx4/2 0.01 Am4/3 0.03
Da3 0.02 Da6 0.02 Da4 0.01 Sum 0.79 Da3 0.02
Am2 0.02 Am4/3 0.02 Da3 0.01 An4/3 0.02
Am4 0.02 Am4 0.02 An4/3 0.01 Im4/2 0.01
DaTx6 0.01 An4/3 0.01 Tx3/1 0.01 Tx3 0.01
Da2 0.01 Am3/2 0.01 Tx6 0.01 Sum 0.84
DaElg 0.01 Sum 0.82 Sum 0.80
An4 0.01
DaTx2 0.01
Am5 0.01
Am4/3 0.01
Sum 0.68
250 Chapter Three

3.2.7 Fet’s use of metrical rhythm

All of classical Russian poetry can be, and very nearly has been, described
in terms of a limited number of metrical schemes. The term “metrical
rhythm” is used to refer to how the positions of a metrical scheme corre-
spond to phonic prominence. Prominence can be defined only in relation to a
less-prominent context, but we will not discuss how phonic prominence is
achieved, except to note that it is not dependent only on word stress, but also
on other factors, such as intonation, the structure and stress pattern of the
phrase, and the boundaries between words, phrases, and sentences. Even
among metrically strong positions, some are traditionally more likely to
achieve a high degree of prominence than others.112 In Russian classical me-
ters, as already noted, the last strong position in the line is obligatorily
stressed, and over time the Russian verse system has tended to develop a
regressive binary structure that differentiates not only strong positions from
weak ones but also strong positions from the nearest competing strong ones:
the first strong position to the left of the last one in the line is the “weakest-
of-the-strong”, the second one stronger again, and so on. Conversely, going
from the left of the line, the first strong position to the right of the first weak
position is relatively strong, the next one weaker, the next stronger again,
and so on. Obviously, the two tendencies can conflict, they have different
force at different times in different metrical contexts, and they interact also
with the extent to which the weak line positions may also be relatively more
or less weak.
Rhythm is not created the same way for all meters, and its creation, al-
though a matter partly of structural possibilities, depends at least as much on
cultural tradition. For example, in the line “Жди ясного на завтра дня” a
normally stressed monosyllable (жди) occurs in a metrically weak position,
and an unstressed syllable (the third one of ясного) appears in a strong posi-
tion. The first type of mismatch is available in Russian ternary as well as
binary meters, but the second type is not: initial line-position is always open
to negotiation, but in ternary meters in nineteenth-century Russian poems,
mid-line strong positions are nearly always filled by stressed syllables. Even
in weak positions,113 ternary mismatches occur less frequently than one
might expect, and they tend to be mismatches between weak positions and
syllables that would even in ordinary speech be only lightly stressed, not
really “competitors” to the stress in their metrically strong neighbor sylla-
bles. In ternary meters, then, stress and metrical strength begin to fall to-
gether. The dolnik line can be considered something like a ternary line, into
which variety has been introduced in one of the few ways available: if the
“tonic” part of a syllabotonic system is fixed, the main thing left to vary is
the number of syllables.114
Verse form and language 251

Although rhythms may be viewed as variants of meters, hearers have al-

ways to interpret rhythms as meters and not the other way around. Since, as
already noted, phonic prominence can be greater or less and can be realized
in various ways, interpreting rhythm metrically is not always easy. Corre-
spondingly, it is not only acoustic information that hearers use to interpret
rhythms but also their knowledge of literary tradition. What natives hear is
very much a matter of what they are used to. For example, Pushkin’s
anapests tend to have line-initial stress: “Пью за здравие Мери, / Милой
Мери моей. / Тихо запер я двери / И один без гостей / Пью за здравие
Мери. // Можно краше быть Мери, / Краше Мери моей, / Этой
маленькой пери; / Но нельзя быть милей / Резвой, ласковой Мери”.
Since stress on the third syllable of each line is constant, the near-constancy
of initial stress results in a rhythm that reads no differently from a line com-
prised of trochee plus dactyl plus trochee. If you had nothing except these
few lines, and no knowledge of the tradition out of which they come and
into which they return, then you could just as well attribute their rhythm to a
dolnik meter as to an anapestic one.
We know that a tradition may develop and expand its rhythmic repertory
as it comes to be used by more accustomed practitioners and readers. Simi-
larly, participants in the literary tradition will more or less associate rhythms
with appropriate meters, depending on their previous experience. Someone
with less sophistication may “hear” a meter only in relatively few rhythmic
forms, and someone who hears only one rhythm for a given meter has no
distinction between the two. The relationship between meter and rhythm is
thus not entirely stable and depends on users’ knowledge of their literary
tradition. We have already seen one example of how Fet’s sense of the
rhythm of a German poem affected his translation of it. That translation,
however, represents only one aspect of the connection between his German
and Russian sense of verse, and it came at a relatively late stage in his accul-
turation to the Russian tradition. There are also other connections between
German and Russian “lines” in Fet’s changing practice, and, regardless of
the cultural-historical or psychological basis for it, his sense of rhythm is in
some ways quite idiosyncratic.
As is true of his metrical experimentation, Fet also experimented with
rhythm in translations more than in his original poetry. Although his line-
initial dactyls are often unstressed, for example, he did not usually put an
unstressed syllable in a strong metrical position in the middle of dactylic
lines. In translations, he did just that, and apparently fairly consistently. For
example, he destresses the dactylic rhythm in the opening of his translation
of Hermann und Dorothea, written in the early 1840s.115 Although this is
genuinely experimental in Russian, at the same time, it is well motivated by
the German text Fet was translating. As we can see, the “understressed”
252 Chapter Three

выморочный in line 2 can be read as otherwise a fairly precise replacement

for Goethe’s “ausgestorben”, and it occupies the corresponding spot in a line
weakened but still recognizably the same dactylic hexameter as the original.

Я не видал, чтобы площадь и улицы были так пусты!

Город – шаром покати, будто выморочный: и полсотни,
Кажется мне, изо всех обывателей в нем не осталось.
Hab ich den Markt und die Strassen doch nie so einsam gesehen!
Ist doch die Stadt wie gekehrt! wie ausgestorben! Nicht funfzig,
Deucht mir, blieben zurück von allen unsern Bewohnern.
Written probably more than a decade later, Fet’s translation of the Epilogue
to the Second Cycle of Heine’s Nordsee develops his earlier practice.116
Here, the light dactyl replaces a dolnik. The Heine text begins as follows:
Wie auf dem Felde die Weizenhalmen,
So wachsen und wogen im Menschengeist
Die Gedanken.
Aber die zarten Gedanken der Liebe
Sind wie lustig dazwischenblühende,
Rot und blaue Blumen.
Rot und blaue Blumen!
Der mürrische Schnitter verwirft euch als nutzlos,
Hölzerne Flegel zerdreschen euch höhnend,
Sogar der hablose Wanderer,
Den eur Anblick ergötzt und erquickt,
Schüttelt das Haupt,
Und nennt euch schönes Unkraut.
The Fet text regularizes the intervals between strong positions – but retains
something of the irregularity of the original in that, if these were “normal”
dactylic lines, the strong positions would have to be stressed. The repeated
line “Алые да голубые цветы!” in the translation below is not rhythmically
“normal”, and the irregularity has emotional force:
Будтo нa нивe кoлoсья
Зрeют, кoлeблясь, в душe чeлoвeкa
Пoмыслы;
Нo мeжду ниx прoрывaются яркo
Пoмыслы нeжнo-любoвныe, слoвнo
Aлыe дa гoлубыe цвeты.
Aлыe дa гoлубыe цвeты!
Брeзгaют вaми жнeцы, кaк трaвoй бeспoлeзнoй,
Нaглo зaтeм вaс мoлoтят дубины,
Дaжe бeздoмный прoxoжий
Verse form and language 253

Вдoвoль нaсытит и взoры и сeрдцe,

Дa, пoкaчaв гoлoвoй,
Дaст вaм нaзвaниe плeвeл прeкрaсныx.
The relationship of Fet’s translation to the Heine poem can be compared to
the relationship between his nearly contemporary translation of “Auf dem
See” and the original Goethe. In both instances, Fet uses rhythm (as well as,
in “Auf dem See”, meter) in a way motivated by the German original, which
he follows, rhythmically as in every other way, line by line. He does not
generalize, to use freely the liberties the German system permits, nor does he
decorate his text with Germanisms. Rather, he could have said of his rhyth-
mic treatment of German texts, as he once did write about his lexical
choices, that if his results did or did not seem poetic enough was not the
point; his goal was to transmit what was in the original.
I will not try to describe the changes across time of the different rhythmic
forms of each meter. Some meters are poorly attested, while others that are
abundant enough to be studied, for example iambic tetrameter and trochaic
tetrameter, show relatively little change and, at that, conform to the expec-
tations for Russian nineteenth-century verse as a whole. Also, some aspects
of Fet’s rhythmic practice are interesting mainly in the context of his stan-
zaic practices, and for this reason we defer our analysis of them until we
look at Fet’s stanzas. There are, however, two meters that warrant special
attention here: iambic pentameter and iambic hexameter.
As we have seen, iambic pentameter in Fet’s mature oeuvre is largely the
meter of longer poems. In The Lyrical Pantheon, in contrast, Fet uses iambic
pentameter freely for short poems, and iambic pentameter lines occur there
not only independently, but also in variable-length lines and in a variety of
anisometric combinations. I suggested earlier in this chapter that the pre-
valence of iambic pentameter in short poems in The Lyrical Pantheon may
reflect Fet’s acquaintance with a German (and thence English) metrical tra-
dition. This idea receives some modest corroboration from a certain rhyth-
mic peculiarity in some of Fet’s early texts that seem to be intended to be
isometric iambic pentameter: this is his apparent willingness to expand the
number of syllables in the pentameter line. With a single exception, the ex-
pansion cannot be considered dolnik, for reasons that will become clear, nor
should they be treated either as unregulated (“free”) iambic line length or as
anisometry. The “expanded” lines are formally iambic hexameter, nearly
always with dactylic caesura, but I would suggest that functionally the lines,
although homonymous with iambic hexameter, are a kind of link to iambic
pentameter lines, expanded by two syllables at the caesura.
Fet’s intermingling of iambic hexameter lines with his iambic pentameter
is not unique, or even the earliest, in the history of Russian iambic pentame-
ter. It has been found in early Russian drama, and examples occur in at least
254 Chapter Three

one early play by Narezhnyi.117 A few examples have also been noticed in
Pushkin’s iambic pentameter,118 usually in pentameter without caesura but
also in Boris Godunov (that is, in a text with caesura), where caesura of the
“stray” line is, as it usually is in Fet, dactylic: “У Вишневецкого, что на
одре болезни”. More similar to Fet’s usage is Lermontov’s play
“Испанцы”, written predominantly in iambic pentameter but with as much
as 20% deviation into iambic tetrameter and, more interestingly, iambic hex-
ameter.119 Although unpublished until 1857 and so not a model for Fet’s
usage, “Испанцы” was written at the end of the 1830s, that is, contempora-
neously with Fet’s irregular pentameter. Mixing iambic pentameter and hex-
ameter has been said to represent a German form of the variable iamb in
Russian poetry,120 presumably because of the (Anglo-)German origin of
iambic pentameter itself. German versification supports a close connection
between pentameter and hexameter: since the last strong position of German
lines, unlike Russian ones, need not be stressed, the German dactylic-
clausula pentameter can be homonymous with masculine-clausula hexame-
ter. Again, examples of destressed final positions in iambic hexameter can
be found in Fet’s translation of Goethe’s Faust.121 The appearance of “stray”
or unregulated iambic hexameter in pentameter texts is not, however, char-
acteristic of Fet’s mature original poetry.
In any case, the appearance of dactylic-caesura iambic hexameter lines in
Fet’s early iambic pentameter poems illustrates once more that the young
Fet tended to introduce variety in the number of syllables in the lines of his
texts, and that he was at least as inclined to do this in iambic lines as in any
others. What, then, is the rhythm of iambic pentameter in The Lyrical Pan-
theon?
Actually, it falls into two distinct types, both of which have a moderately
regular use of a caesura after the fourth syllable. The difference in rhythm,
however, separates shorter poems (on average, less than 9 lines long) from
somewhat longer ones (on average, about 20 or 21 lines).
Of the eleven iambic-pentameter poems, seven (62 lines) are written in a
form of iambic pentameter sometimes called the “French” pattern, in which
the number of stresses rises from the first strong position (85% stressed in
Fet) to the second one (94%). Stress remains just as strong in the third strong
position but drops precipitously in the following one, to only 42%. This
“Gallic” iambic pentameter apparently follows the structure of a French
decasyllable, and was in use in Russian poetry by 1820. In light of Fet’s
memories of his childhood reading, it is quite possible that he was familiar if
not with French then at least with Russian poetry of this sort before he went
away to school, while, in his obligatory French literature classes at Werro,
he would have encountered the same rhythmic pattern in French.
Verse form and language 255

It is the other type of line (4 poems, 82 lines) that is more unusual. The
first three strong positions are practically equally heavily stressed (89% -
91% - 89%), and caesura is slightly more frequent than in the first type of
line (90% instead of 84%).122 These are the four poems, moreover, in which
we find the extra-long lines mentioned above. Since a strong caesura is one
that not only is closer to ubiquitous but also may condition the appearance of
either truncation or expansion of the metrical positions adjacent to it, the
extra-long lines in texts written in this second type of pentameter are struc-
turally ambiguous between “natively” six-foot iambs and a “derived” six-
footer created by caesural expansion. I do not mean to suggest that Fet be-
lieved that the long lines were iambic pentameter, but I do wish to suggest
that he found them a good rhythmic fit. The extra-long lines generally ap-
pear in contexts that seem to motivate the “overflow” of the pentameter syn-
tactically and semantically. This is illustrated in the following stanza (it is
the third line that is long):
Гoрят дрoвa в кaминe прeдo мнoй,
Кругoм зoлa гoрячaя сeрeeт.
Свeтлo – a xoлoднo! Дaй, oбeрнусь спинoй
И сяду ближe. Нo xaлaт чaдeeт.
И вoт тoчь-в-тoчь искусств oгoнь святoй:
Ты ближe – жжeт, oтдвинeшься – нe грeeт!
Эx, мудрeцы! кoгдa б мнe кто пoмoг
И сдeлaл тaк, чтoбы oгoнь нe жeг!
Lines such as the third line above may, of course, be simply the mistakes of
an inexperienced poet. Although interpolating extra syllables at a caesura is
an accepted part of classical metrics, still, it was very unusual in Russian in
Fet’s day and it has never been widespread in iambic pentameter,123 for good
reason: the result, as we see, is a line that reads just like an isolated iambic
hexameter interpolated into an otherwise pentameter text. Even if it was
done deliberately, it still looks like a mistake. Yet the rhythmic peculiarity of
the “real” iambic pentameter lines in the poems that have such isolated long
lines, the fact that the poems themselves tend to be a little longer and the-
matically a little different (more dramatic, more mundane, a little chattier),
the fact that the long lines are so rare as to make an impression less of vari-
able line length than of some sort of defect, the fact that the poet in his dac-
tylo-trochaic hexameter poetry so strongly associates variation in syllable-
count with caesura: all this suggests that Fet may have been writing some-
thing that he recognized was at the rhythmic edge of iambic pentameter.124
There is in any case something wonderfully characteristic about these
lines. Here, as in other ways, the young Fet shows a certain indifference to,
perhaps unawareness of, Russian syllabocentricism, and it is precisely his
iambic verse that tends toward variation and syllabic indeterminacy. As we
256 Chapter Three

have seen, the Russian norm was to introduce syllabic indeterminacy, in the
form of dolnik, in ternary forms, perhaps compensating for the rigidity of
classical ternary rhythm. In German poetry, however, dolnik is embedded in
binary rhythm. Fet’s earliest iambic pentameter was written by a young man
who knew German poetry, and not by someone fully and exclusively formed
by and committed to the Russian tradition. For the young Fet, the choice in
iambic-pentameter rhythms, as in so much else, was between French and
German models. The French one was already quite at home in Russia, and
Fet’s usage may well have derived from Russian sources. But he did not stay
within that model, but veered off occasionally into a more expansive, more
German, line.
Fet’s iambic hexameter is interesting for different but related reasons.
The rhythm of Russian iambic hexameter depends crucially on the
strength of a caesura that normally occurs after the third strong position in
the line and divides it into two hemistichs. It occurs in two main rhythmic
variants, called “symmetrical” and “asymmetrical”. The difference is this.
As we know, not all metrically strong positions are equally strong, and we
expect, in an iambic line with an even number of strong positions, that the
strongest strong positions will be the even-numbered ones, with their
strength gradually declining right-to-left, but in all cases remaining stronger
than the odd-number strong positions. We also expect the greatest difference
between adjacent strong positions to be between the rightmost pair, the least
difference – between the leftmost. If we use subscripts to number the strong
positions left to right across the line, and use superscripts to mark their rela-
tive strength (with “1” as the strongest, and “6” as the weakest rank), then
we would expect that the six strong positions might be identifiable as fol-
lows:
S14 S23 S35 S42 S56 S61 .
This is not what we find. The problem is the caesura: although caesuras need
be nothing more than word boundaries, and need not be associated with
pause or any other distinguishing features, yet they tend to take on the char-
acteristics of line-end markers and therefore (since strong positions are
maximally strong at line-end), the strong position at the end of the hemistich
tends to be strengthened. For this reason, the strong positions in the second
hemistich do tend to run “strong-weak-strong”, as expected, but the first
hemistich, instead of being “weak-strong-weak” tends to turn out “strong-
weak-strong” as well. This rhythmic pattern, in which the caesura dominates
the structure of the line, is what is called the symmetrical pattern of iambic
hexameter. In the other, asymmetrical, pattern, caesura is less important (in
some twentieth-century poetry its effect is altogether weakened), and the
third strong position is correspondingly less likely to be stressed, while the
second ictus is correspondingly stronger. Both kinds of rhythm are wide-
Verse form and language 257

spread in nineteenth-century poetry, but they are associated with different

thematics: meditative and anthological kinds of poetry tend to take the
asymmetrical form of iambic hexameter, while civic poetry tends to take the
symmetrical form. According to Gasparov, poetry evocative of the Russian
romance tends to be intermediate, pulled toward asymmetry by elegiac tradi-
tion and toward symmetry by the regularity of the musical beat.125 Fet ex-
ploits the rhythmic possibilities of the iambic hexameter in different ways
throughout his career, from a practically caesura-free early poem, through
elegant symmetries, and occasionally an expressive violation of all the
norms: the poem that begins “Полуразрушенный, полужилец могилы…”
(1888) starts with just such a violation of rhythmic norms, and the rhythmic
play that follows is a rebuke to the imaginary speaker of the poem’s opening
lines:
Пoлурaзрушeнный, пoлужилeц мoгилы,
O тaинствax любви зaчeм ты нaм пoeшь?
Зaчeм, кудa тeбя дoмчaть нe мoгут силы,
Кaк дeрзкий юнoшa, oдин ты нaс зoвeшь?

– Toмлюся и пoю. Ты слушaeшь и млeeшь;

В нaпeвax стaрчeскиx твoй юный дуx живeт.
Тaк в xoрe мoлoдoм: ax, слышишь, рaзумeeшь: –
Цыгaнкa стaрaя oднa eщe пoeт.
Fet’s usage overall is intermediate, with the asymmetrical type winning: the
second strong position is a little heavier than the third, but the difference is
slightly less than the norm for the asymmetrical type generally. The number
of stresses in each of the six strong positions is shown in Table 16, with ab-
solute figures above, followed first by the corresponding percentages and
then the percentages for the norm for all of Russian nineteenth-century po-
etry.126
258 Chapter Three

Table 16. Stress in Im6: Fet and the 19th-century norm

Лирический пантеон 20 17 10 20 6 20
1850 Collection 235 203 160 242 79 263
1856 Collection 378 317 279 400 157 434
Poems New in 1856 187 142 145 194 79 210
1857-92 703 565 584 751 332 811
Canon 705 569 527 742 290 795
All 1287 1052 1005 1362 569 1472

Лирический пантеон 100% 85% 50% 100% 30% 100%

1850 Collection 89% 77% 61% 92% 30% 100%
1856 Collection 87% 73% 64% 92% 36% 100%
Poems New in 1856 89% 68% 69% 92% 38% 100%
1857-92 87% 70% 72% 93% 41% 100%
Canon 89% 72% 66% 93% 36% 100%
All 87% 71% 68% 93% 39% 100%
Asymmetrical Norm 90% 70% 64% 95% 38% 100%
Symmetrical Norm 91% 65% 76% 94% 40% 100%

According to the table, Fet’s canon is more clearly asymmetrical than is his
usage overall, but his canon, unusually, does not correspond to his later
practice. Beginning with the new poems included in the 1856 edition, Fet’s
iambic-hexameter rhythm shifts very slightly into the range of the sym-
metrical type, and both the third and the fifth strong positions are more and
more heavily stressed. Correspondingly, if we look back in time from the
1856 edition, we find that there is nothing intermediate at all in Fet’s earliest
iambic-hexameter rhythm: all three early volumes of poetry are distinctly
asymmetrical, and the earliest book (which includes, to be sure, only a tiny
amount of text) is the most clearly asymmetric of all. Over Fet’s career, the
second position in his iambic hexameter gets lighter and lighter, while the
third and fifth positions become heavier. The new pull toward symmetry
beginning in the 1856 volume corresponds to a tendency we noticed earlier:
not only is the book more “anthological” than its predecessors, but it also,
and at the same time, reinforces the association of Fet’s poetry with the
closed, symmetrical forms of the Russian romance. In The Lyrical Pantheon,
in contrast, the poet seems, in his two iambic hexameter poems, to be nearly
oblivious to the force of the caesura: he always maintains it, as a word break,
but its presence has little rhythmic value. The porosity of the caesura, its
failure to break the regressive alternation of strong and weak, is slightly less
thoroughgoing in the volume of 1850 than in The Lyrical Pantheon, but the
strength of the second strong position still greatly exceeds that of the third –
Verse form and language 259

77% to 61%. We noted above that in The Lyrical Pantheon Fet’s abundant
iambic pentameter occasionally has a line or two of a sort that can be read as
iambic hexameter or as iambic pentameter with a couple of extra syllables at
the caesura – we cannot tell the difference. We now see that his earliest iam-
bic hexameter, rare as it is, tends to be rhythmically quite like those interpo-
lated lines. On one hand, we may conclude that the “long lines” in Fet’s
early iambic pentameter are, indeed, hexameter – or perhaps we should con-
clude that iambic pentameter and hexameter were more similar to each other
in the young Fet’s work than in the Russian tradition generally. In other
words, the textual distribution and rhythmic structure of Fet’s iambic pen-
tameter and hexameter suggest that the poet in his earliest published work
did not differentiate the two meters as fully as he later did. So far as I am
aware, no one has ever devised a metric for characterizing the distance be-
tween one meter and another in the Russian repertory. In the absence of such
a formal characterization, we can only suggest that it is at least possible for
poets to acquire some forms of a meter while still developing a sense of how
the meter may be different from and related to others, and how it may func-
tion in the verse system. The history of Fet’s iambic pentameter and hex-
ameter would seem to illustrate such a situation.
The foregoing discussion casts a new light on a poem we examined from
a different viewpoint earlier: Fet’s “Греция”. We paid no attention to its
meter in our earlier discussion, observing only that “Греция” clearly in-
clines toward the French, as distinct from the German, model for Fet’s an-
thological poetry. The “French” anthological model is based on the alexan-
drine, but in “Греция” there are two lines (the first and last in the penulti-
mate quatrain) that are iambic pentameter instead of the expected iambic
hexameter. The entire quatrain is italicized here.

Греция
Тaм, пoд oливaми, близ шумнoгo кaскaдa
Гдe сoчнaя трaвa унизaнa рoсoй,
Гдe рaдoстнo кричит вeсeлaя цикaдa
И рoзa южнaя гoрдится крaсoтoй,
Гдe xрaм oстaвлeнный пoдъял свoй купoл бeлый
И пo кoлoннaм ввeрx кудрявый плющ бeжит, –
Мнe грустнo: мир бoгoв, тeпeрь oсирoтeлый,
Рукa нeвeжeствa зaбвeниeм клeймит.
Вoтщe... В пoлнoчь, кaк сoлoвeй вoстoчный
Свистaл, a я брoдил нeзримый зa стeнoй,
Я видeл: Грaции сбирaлись в чaс урoчный
В былoй приют зaрoсшeю трoпoй.
Нo в пляскax вeтрeныx бoгини нe блистaли
260 Chapter Three

Мoлoчнoй пeнoй фoрм при зoлoтoй лунe;

Нeт, – стaвши в тeсный круг, крaсaвицы шeптaли...
“Эллaдa!” – слышaлoсь мнe чaстo в тишинe.
As so often in Fet, irregularity is constrained within regularity: the lines of
the quatrain vary in length, but they are symmetrically arranged, to make a
pattern “5665”. The short stanza-final line follows a general tendency for
short lines to occur, if anywhere, then there, while the short line at the be-
ginning of the stanza quite prettily marks its missing foot as a pause. Since
the quatrains were not separated graphically in their original publication
(and, for this reason, are shown here written straight through without separa-
tion), the little metrical frame around one stanza nicely articulates it. The
third stanza of a four-stanza poem is a fine place to locate such complexity:
the meter has been established, closure is at hand.127
But is this what Fet has given us? The lines in each stanza are arranged
symmetrically according to their rhythm: just as the pentameter is wrapped
around the hexameter in stanza 3, the outer lines in stanzas 1, 2, and 4 have a
dactylic caesura, while the inner lines in those stanzas have a masculine one.
That is, the outer lines have a “´xx” stress pattern at the end of the first
hemistich (под оливами, южная, оставленный, невежества, ветреных,
слышалось), while, in contrast, the corresponding inner-line hemistichs end
on a stressed syllable: трава, кричит, верх, богов, форм, круг. The rhythm
of the iambic-hexameter outer lines is the same as that of the metrically am-
biguous lines interpolated among Fet’s iambic pentameters. All four quat-
rains in “Греция” tend toward rhythmic differentiation of outer from inner
lines. In the third quatrain the rhythmic impulse attains metrical realization.
We saw in earlier chapters that the youngest Fet loved formal games,
and, even as he got older, he still loved anisometry. Judging from what we
have seen of his exploitation of meter and rhythm elsewhere, it seems not
unreasonable to suggest that, for him, in 1840, rhythmic ambiguities were
quite acceptable, even prized. Just as he was too natively at home in German
poetry not to be bored with Russian syllabotonic lines all of the same length,
he may similarly have been experimenting, in “Греция”, with approximat-
ing French isosyllabism through Russian anisometry, enriched with a Lati-
nate understanding of caesural truncation. In that context, the short outer
lines of the third stanza gently evoke the rhythmic kinship of two different
meters, and the symmetry of the poem, discussed in different terms earlier,
is extended even to the poem’s metrical form. Fet’s exploitation of rhythm is
more than idiosyncratic. His early rhythmic usage shows us a poet still in the
process of clarifying for himself how meter works, how he wants it to work,
and how he will connect it with the rhythms he hears. We have throughout
our discussion had occasion to notice the connections between Fet’s choices
and the German verse repertory, and we shall see more of this below, when
Verse form and language 261

we discuss rhyme and stanzaic structure. I would suggest that some of the
peculiarities and indeterminacies in Fet’s usage derive from his knowledge
of German, not only in the sense that some of them are borrowed but also,
perhaps, on another level: rhythmic ambiguities and indeterminacies were
perhaps more interesting to the young Fet than they might otherwise have
been because he was still making his way within, and between, two not en-
tirely congruent systems. Just as he had always enjoyed, and always would,
the process of turning German poems into Russian ones, he also was en-
gaged in turning an entire perceived system of German verse forms into a
Russian one that he could use actively. His famed carelessness of form, his
willingness to let his selected readers tell him what was good: these attrib-
utes may derive from the breadth of his own formal intuitions, and his grow-
ing awareness of how jarring his freedoms could be for a readership more
constrained. If the later, canonical Fet seems relatively little inclined toward
formal experiment, this may reflect not only the natural conservatism that
comes with age and dignity, but also the fact that his experimentation and
play – even a certain early preciosity – had never been only a game, but rep-
resented a more active search for form than a culturally more centered poet
would have felt impelled to undertake.

3.2.8 Meter and rhythm: conclusions

We have now seen something of how Fet’s metrical and rhythmic practices
correspond to the norms of his time, how they change, and how they differ
in different parts of his oeuvre. We have still to consider Fet’s use of meter
and rhythm in the broader context of stanzaic and text structure. Fet’s met-
rical repertory varies greatly over time, with some meters clearly emerging
or being discarded in response to editorial advice, some developments simp-
ly following, or helping shape, the trends of the day, and others, in Fet’s late
poetry, deriving from the reminiscential orientation of the poet in his last
years. We have also corroborated in some detail an idea put forward earlier:
Fet’s German education profoundly influenced his early verse form, both in
his choice of meter and in his exploitation of rhythm, and it may have en-
couraged him to conflate rhythmically meters that in Russian have quite dif-
ferent associations. His well-known predilection for anisometry, and for us-
ing both long and short lines extensively, was not merely a quirk of personal
taste, but was a reflex of the same impulse that also led him to use a wide
repertory of non-classical forms and to innovate, within the classical Russian
repertory, forms corresponding to dolnik and a precursor of free verse. Fet
tended to contextualize irregularity within regularity, a habit that attenuates
the force of his experiments. I have suggested that in adapting his often
German-inspired innovations to the Russian repertory, he often transfers
262 Chapter Three

metrical innovation to other, less rigidly canonized, elements of verse form.

On one hand, in “Давно в любви отрады мало:…” we saw how metric ir-
regularity is replaced by an innovatory stanzaic form, while, on the other
hand, Fet also sometimes used rhythm as a surrogate for meter, for example
in his translation of the Epilogue to Heine’s Nordsee. He also approximates
accentual verse, not only in non-classical meters but also in “Давно в
любви отрады мало:…”, the lines of which, individually, are entirely
within the classical Russian repertory. Fet’s translations played an essential
role in the development of his metrical practice. They are more experimental
than his other poems, and he exploited the fruits of some of his most suc-
cessful experiments when writing his later poetry. In that sense, although
Fet’s russification, as it were, was completed by Turgenev for the edition of
1856, it is nonetheless true that even the poetry of Fet’s last years was still
informed by his experience of German culture. In the early poetry, the con-
nection was so overt and striking as to be sometimes a boast and other times
a source of ambiguity and confusion. In his last poetry, Fet appears before
his readers as one of the few survivors from before the great age of prose, as
the bearer of the Russian poetic tradition, who links the immediate post-
Romantic era with the first glimmer of the Silver Age. From a certain point
of view, though, he was nothing of the sort. In that earlier time, his poetry
had not yet assimilated itself to the national tradition he so vigorously came
to represent. The reminiscentiality of Fet’s last writing is itself a peculiar
work of art.

3.3 Rhyme and its absence

Although not essential, rhyme is widespread and persistent in Russian po-

etry, and experimental retreats from it have usually ended in what anglo-
phones would consider modest recalibration of its norms. In rhyming the far
greater part of his original verse, Fet was conforming to readers’ expecta-
tions, which, in mid-career, he came to share. In his early poetry, Fet’s
rhyme is technically idiosyncratic, and sometimes quite striking.
Rhyme is born out of parallelism and homoeoteleuton. We often think of
rhyme in terms of phonic likeness, but likeness is not so easy to define. For
example, the Russian words бить and быть are a perfect, and perfectly tradi-
tional, rhyme in Russian, although the vowel sounds are quite different, and
so, obviously, is the way they are spelled. The linguistic basis of the similar-
ity, in this instance, is on the level of not phonetics but rather the phonologi-
cal system, where the vowel sound of быть is a variant of the same phono-
logical /i/ more obvious in the word бить. Conversely, it is on the basis of
phonetic similarity that призывать, for example, rhymes with прядь: the
Verse form and language 263

phonological status of the voiceless [t’] is not the same in the two words,
nor, again, is the spelling.128
Deciding if two things rhyme or not is, in the end, a matter not of pro-
nunciation or even of phonology, but of convention. The conventions
change, but their function is rather stable: parallelisms are used, differently
by different poets, to set off semantic oppositions. Rhyme has been said “by
highlighting individual words” to “strengthen, and in some instances create,
an affinity between them”.129 Rhyme, on this view, is, or at least can be,
connected with the meanings of words, including not only lexical semantics
but also grammatical meaning. This hook that rhyme has into the semantics
of a poem is much more substantial than the more ghostly semantics of me-
ter and rhythm, and a poet who wishes to do so can use that hook not only to
add force to a particular word association but also to help shape the entire
poem or, as we shall see, even to differentiate textual speakers. Convention-
ally exploited as an element of stanzaic structure, well-chosen rhymes, even
when they are not individually attention-getters, can nonetheless help dis-
tribute the weight and thrust of a poem, punctuate it, and give it point. It is
most of all as an organizing force that Fet’s rhyme is interesting, and it is
this that I will focus on below. I will also suggest that both this, essentially
quasi-stanzaic, aspect of his rhyme and other aspects, having to do more
with the sound structure, follow a pattern we noticed in Fet’s use of meter
and rhythm: some of his usage seems to have emanated from a German
starting point, it comes then to take a form more fully consonant with the
Russian tradition of the time, and, at the end, it bends a little again, as the
poet re-visits his earlier work.
Rhyme need not be restricted to the ends of lines, but that is the only
kind of rhyme I will discuss. If two or more lines participate in a canonical
rhyme, then the vowel at the center of the final stressed syllable of each line
must be able to pass for the same. That much is usually true for rhymed po-
etry in Russian even today. In the early nineteenth century, everything fol-
lowing the stressed rhyme vowel was also supposed to match, and if the
stressed rhyme vowel was the last sound in the line, then the consonant pre-
ceding it (called a supporting consonant) was expected to correspond:
освети and улети rhymed, освети and говори did not. Beyond this bare
minimum, different generations variously cultivated, or failed to cultivate,
“rich” rhyme, in which additional elements immediately to the left of
rhymes also match. Coming on the scene after the cult of rich rhyme had
faded, Fet used rhymes about as rich as Pushkin’s, much less rich than Ler-
montov’s, and very little richer than Nekrasov’s.130
During Fet’s lifetime, poets began to make regular use of rhymes of the
type “худо ~ буду”: feminine rhymes with mismatched vowels in the sylla-
ble following the stress.131 This kind of rhyme is called “approximate”. It is
264 Chapter Three

common to treat approximate rhyme in terms of vowel letters (that is,

graphically),132 and to count among approximate rhymes even those mis-
matches in which the “mismatched” post-tonic vowel sounds may very well
have been the same or close to the same:133 the criterion is simply whether or
not a given mismatch, however defined, did or did not occur without con-
straint in poets’ usage at any point in the Russian tradition.134 For example,
post-tonic matches of “a” and “o” (много ~ Бога) were not acceptable as
late as Pushkin’s time, and they are counted as approximate rhymes, even
for poets for whom their pronunciation must have been the same.135 Meas-
ured in graphic terms, approximate rhyme accounts for only 6% of all Fet’s
feminine rhymes, a very conservative figure for his day.136 His conservatism
is even more evident when we realize that, except for his earliest poetry, the
great bulk of Fet’s “approximate” rhymes are phonically exact and many
more must have been nearly so. For example, rhymes involving unstressed
“a” and “o” account for some 69% of all his approximate feminine rhymes,
and matches between post-tonic “е” and “и” (нужен ~ жемчужин) – an-
other 20%.137 The innocuous “е ~ и” rhymes are commoner in later Fet than
in his earlier poems,138 while more phonically striking rhymes such as post-
tonic “а” matched with “ы” or with “у” are, although always rare, somewhat
more characteristic of his earliest work. The only rhyme of “у” and “a” from
any poetry later than 1842, for example, is in a poem from the early 1880s,
written for his little nephew: “Митя крoшкa, / Пoнeмнoжку / Пoджидaй, /
Дa с Пoкрoвки / К Вoрoбьeвкe / Пoдъeзжaй”.
Mismatches of post-tonic vowels were considered, in Fet’s day, rela-
tively unobtrusive. Mismatches of consonants (краса ~ глаза) were another
matter. Eighteenth-century poets had exploited them, but the practice (now
called “inexact” rhyme) was, with the exception of only a few special types,
abjured throughout most of the nineteenth century. In his mature work Fet
makes little use of even the most fully acceptable technical “inexactness”.
Still, within the gamut that he permits himself, Fet’s usage is of interest not
so much for the history of rhyme but as part of the history of Fet’s taste: in
almost every detail, what little inexactness occurs in Fet tends to be in his
early poetry, most often in poems later excluded from his canon. Fet uses,
for example, feminine rhymes differing only by the presence or absence of a
/j/ following the post-tonic vowel (полный ~ волны). This was a fully ac-
ceptable practice, canonized by Zhukovskii.139 Fet’s short poems show such
usage 34 times, 32 in poems that can be dated at least roughly. Of these 32
rhymes, 19 are in texts from the 1840s, and only 6 are from the 1880s and
90s. Similarly, Fet very occasionally rhymes resonants mismatched for pala-
talization, usually /v/ (следов ~ любовь) but also /n/ (раздольной ~
колокольней, сосен ~ осень). Of a mere nine such rhymes, six are in po-
ems from the 1840s.
Verse form and language 265

For many poets, the most widespread inexactness was the slight mis-
match entailed in rhyming a supporting consonant /j/ with a supporting pala-
talized consonant, for example in the pair “любви ~ мои”. Even in Push-
kin’s generation, about 7.5% of open masculine rhymes are of this type,140
and afterwards it was sanctioned especially by Lermontov’s usage. It occurs
only some dozen times in Fet’s poetry – about 1% of all his open masculine
rhymes. It is especially rare in his later poems: there are four examples from
poems written in the 1840s and five in the 1850s, but after that only two, in
poems from 1887 and 1890. Quite out of step with contemporaries, Fet
makes just as much use of a different kind of mismatch: voicing mis-
matches, especially, but not only, in masculine open rhymes with supporting
/s/ ~ /z/ (небеса ~ глаза). In the 1840s Fet uses the /s/~/z/ match five times,
and voicing mismatches a total of eight times. Such rhymes were not un-
precedented (they can be found in Pushkin’s repertory), but they do not usu-
ally occur more often in a poet’s work than the mismatches in /j/.141 In the
1850s, when Fet’s poetry was in many respects on its best behavior, voicing
mismatches disappear, while mismatches in /j/ persist. In his late poetry,
however, he again uses voicing mismatches, albeit only four times. Even
though the numbers are small, their chronology suggests that Fet’s idiosyn-
cratic recurrence to voicing mismatches in the 1840s may have been, or may
have been perceived as being, connected to his education in the German tra-
dition (in which supporting consonants are not required), and to his own
bilingualism. The usage was repressed in the 1850s, and when he revived it
later he must have been fully conscious of the place of such mismatches in
the Russian tradition.
A similar question arises in considering the source of the only other re-
current inexactness in Fet’s usage: his rhyming of word-final /g/, /k/, and /x/.
All three consonants, word-finally, are traditionally accepted rhymes –
жених rhymes with миг rhymes with воротник – but they are not equal
partners. The usual rhyme was of word-final /g/ with /k/, while the less usual
rhyme of /g/ with /x/ elicits special comment as a “customary inexact-
ness”.142 Pairing /k/ with /x/ is of course yet more unusual.143 In contrast
with this norm, Fet usually rhymes final /g/ not with /k/ but with /x/, and in
The Lyrical Pantheon he pairs /k/ with /g/ in non-final position (тревога ~
жестоко).
In two early poems, Fet rhymes word-final /x/ and /k/. The first example
is in The Lyrical Pantheon, where the errant rhyme brings to its exclamatory
end Fet’s translation of Lamartine’s Le lac (Чтoб свeжий вeтeрoк
дыxaньeм aрoмaтным, / И дaжe шeлeстoм тaинствeнным трoстник, – /
Всe б гoвoрилo здeсь мoлчaниeм пoнятным: / “Любoвь, зaплaчь o
ниx!”). The inexact rhyme lacks any direct correlate in the original text,144
but perhaps it is motivated by the high emotional pitch of the lines, some-
266 Chapter Three

what as inexact rhyme sometimes seems to burst out from Derzhavin’s odes.
Strange as this connection may seem, it finds support in the context of Fet’s
other inexact and approximate rhymes, specifically, in “The Nightingale and
the Rose” (1847?). Fet in his last years expressed special, albeit slightly em-
barrassed, affection, for “The Nightingale and the Rose”, and it is easy to see
why. His Rose (“she”) – but not the Nightingale (“he”)! – has a poetic dic-
tion all her own, speaking in elegantly orchestrated “broken” and “echo”
rhymes (нa зaрe вeсны ~ зaрeвыe сны; дрeмлю я ~ пoцeлуя), but also fal-
ling into occasional slight mismatches (“e” ~ “и”, /ja/ ~ /n’a/). The techni-
cally exact but lexically “broken” or “echo” rhymes are found early in the
Rose’s part of the dialogue, as is illustrated by her first speech:
Полночь мать моя родная,
Незаметно расцвела я
На заре весны;
Для тебя ж у бедной розы
Аромат, краса и слезы,
Заревые сны.
In contrast, the inexact and approximate rhymes appear in the Rose’s final,
12-line speech. In poems of three quatrains Fet most often makes the central
one climactic, and here the Rose goes so far as to rhyme /k/ and /x/, after
which she subsides into a closural quatrain that is the first of the three to
consist entirely of completely exact rhymes:
Я дрeмлю, нo слышит
Рoзa сoлoвья;
Вeтeрoк кoлышeт
Сoнную мeня.
Звуки oстaются
Всe в мoиx листкax;
Слышу, – a прoснуться
Нe мoгу никaк.
Зaрeвыe слeзы,
Нaклoняясь, лью.
Пoй у сoннoй рoзы
145
Прo любoвь мoю!
Fet seldom uses non-canonical rhymes in isolation. Rather, as is illustrated
in “The Nightingale and the Rose” and in his poem to his nephew, quoted
above, several examples usually occur together in a single short text, and the
appearance of the odd rhymes usually corresponds to some aspect of textual
semantics. In “The Nightingale and the Rose”, the Rose’s unusual rhyme
characterize her as distinct from the Nightingale, and, in addition, her initial
elegant display yields in a thematically motivated fashion to transgressive
ecstasy. Her verbal portrait is charmingly clear, and it suggests the fol-
Verse form and language 267

lowing: even though Fet rarely used inexact rhyme, still, it was not a lapse,
but a statement, a tour de force that he turned away from in the 1850s. Why
he did so may be suggested in Zhirmunskii’s comments on /g/ ~ /k/ ~ /x/
rhyming: “a similar phenomenon”, he says, “is observed in German poet-
ry”.146 German usage is not in fact entirely parallel with Russian, but exam-
ples are to be found in German poems translated by the young Fet him-
self:147 “Es dringen Blüten Aus jedem Zweig, Und tausend Stimmen Aus
dem Gesträuch” (Goethe, “Mailied”). In his early poetry Fet enjoyed – ap-
parently quite literally – a freedom most likely suggested to him by German
usage. He suppressed it, apparently when he understood that most Russian
readers did not respond to it as he did, and then he assimilated Russian
norms wholeheartedly. He makes almost no use even of such forms of inex-
actness as were acceptable in mid-nineteenth-century Russian poetry.
Russian poetry has generally moved away from the easy rhyming of verb
with verb in favor of greater grammatical contrast. In Fet’s day, this ten-
dency showed little advancement beyond Pushkinian norms, and Fet himself
does not avoid grammatical rhymes. Nor does he shrink from banal ones.
His recurrence to pairs of the type слезы ~ розы or очи ~ ночи (which oc-
cur twelve and eighteen times, respectively) illustrates both points. Yet a
subtle shift in Fet’s usage is indicated by the fact that although слезы ~
розы and очи ~ ночи appear throughout his work, they occur only twice
each in his poems from the 1880s and 90s, while his use of “broken” or
compound rhymes (калиф мой ~ рифмой) expands across time, and is es-
pecially characteristic of the later works.
Fet’s light verse, written for a private audience, was his preferred context
for exotic rhymes: foreign words, proper names, and unprintable words. His
private verse epistles, for example, are sometimes signed, three times by Fet
(rhymes with привет) and once by Shenshin (rhymes with кручин). The let-
ter signed by Shenshin was an affectionate and humorous one, written for
his nephew P. I. Borisov in 1876. According to a letter Fet sent to Turge-
nev,148 it was most of all to establish his relationship to the children who
were his wards that Fet carried to the end his struggle to restore his name.
Neither Fet nor Shenshin signs any poem that either of them chose to pub-
lish.
In both sound and semantics, Fet kept his published rhyme unobtrusive
from the 1850s on. In the 1840s, he comes close to making a display of its
absence. His beloved Rose illustrates one of the ways in which Fet’s rhyme
tends to disappear: it dissolves into phonic inexactness and approximation.
Another form of evanescence is structural: Fet wrote unrhymed and partly
rhymed poetry, and, like his phonic liberties, most of his non-rhyme and par-
tial rhyme dates from the 1840s. In the rest of this chapter, we will look at
268 Chapter Three

how Fet’s use of non-rhyme and partial rhyme fits with other aspects of his
poetics and versificational technique.
In Chapter Two, we noticed the playfulness and even staginess typical of
early Fet, and we saw that it later subsides. And so it is with rhyme: in early
Fet, non-rhyme and partial rhyme tend to conspire, or compete, with overall
texture of sound – that is, with what is technically known as orchestration. In
early Fet, rhyme is structurally and phonically weak, and his non-rhyme or-
chestration – rich. The combination makes for an unconventional and rather
attention-getting phonic texture. In later Fet, the exuberance of orchestration
is more restrained, pruned back into the more structured forms accommo-
dated by rhyme – which in these same texts is nearly entirely conventional.
Purely phonically, there is more rhyme in later Fet – more of his work is
fully rhymed, while fewer of his rhymes are defective from the perspective
of the rhyme canon – but it is more predictable and so less salient than ear-
lier and it participates in an overall sound texture that is much more trans-
parent and less salient than before. To some extent, of course, the kind of
orchestration and rhyme Fet used always depended on what kind of poetry
he was writing, but this, too, changed somewhat across time. I have dis-
cussed elsewhere the correlations between Fet’s rhyme and particular kinds
of poetry,149 and here I will focus mainly on the temporal perspective and
only secondarily on the synchronic differentiation of his oeuvre.
About 5% of Fet’s original poems are unrhymed. This is more than in
Lermontov’s or Nekrasov’s work, but less than in Pushkin’s.150 Out of a to-
tal of 36 unrhymed original poems, he wrote 30 before 1848, four are from
the 1850s (about 2.8% of his original poetry of that time), and only two were
written later, in the 1870s. The chronology of the partly rhymed poems is
roughly similar: of 47 original partially rhymed texts, 36 were written before
1848. Unrhymed and partly rhymed texts comprise a very significant pro-
portion of Fet’s early work: about a quarter of all the original texts in The
Lyrical Pantheon, 37% of all Fet’s original texts dated to 1842, and a quarter
of all his original short poems up to 1847. Including translated poetry, 31%
of poems in The Lyrical Pantheon and 29% of those in the 1850 collection
are either unrhymed or partly rhymed. About half the translations in these
volumes are unrhymed or partly rhymed, including not only Fet’s Heine
translations (in the 1850 volume) but also, in the earlier book, unrhymed and
partly rhymed translations of poems by Goethe, Schiller, and Horace. (It
might be expected that Latin translations would be unrhymed, but Fet used
rhyme, as he put it, to present the poems without antiquarian dust.)151 Since
much has been made of Heine as a model for Russian partly rhymed verse,
and since Fet was famous for his Heine translations, it is useful to note that
the first partly rhymed translation Fet published was of Goethe’s “Mailied”
(or “Maifest”). The translation is in The Lyrical Pantheon. Fet’s treatment of
Verse form and language 269

rhyme in “Mailied” shows his characteristic fidelity to the form of Goethe’s

poetry. In the German text, all the stanzas are partly rhymed except the third,
which is fully rhymed. Fet, correspondingly, half-rhymes his translation, but
makes one stanza (the fifth, instead of the third) fully rhymed. In several of
his early original poems, Fet rhymes, usually weakly, all the lines in one
stanza of an otherwise partly rhymed text, and “Mailied” seems to have been
the model for this usage. I do not know how widespread this type of partial
rhyme is in German poetry. It occurs a few times in Heine’s partly rhymed
poetry, sometimes with clear comic effect.152 It also occurs several times in
the smaller body of early poetry by Fet’s schoolmate Jegór von Sivers.153
The first five stanzas of “Mailied” and Fet’s translation of it go like this:

Wie herrlich leuchtet Всe нeжит взoры,

Mir die Natur! Всe нeжит слуx,
Wie glänzt die Sonne! Блистaeт сoлнцe,
Wie lacht die Flur! Смeeтся луг.
Es dringen Blüten Я вижу, вeтви
Aus jedem Zweig Пoлны цвeтoв;
Und tausend Stimmen Я слышу птичeк
Aus dem Gesträuch. Из-зa кустoв;
Und Freud’ und Wonne Вoстoрг и нeгa
Aus jeder Brust. Тeснятся в грудь..,
O Erd’! o Sonne! O, счaстьe, счaстьe,
O Glück! o Lust! Прoдлись, пoбудь!
O Lieb’! o Liebe! Нe ты ли этo,
So golden-schön, Любoвь, любoвь,
Wie Morgenwolken Oдeлa жизнью
Auf jenen Höhn Прирoду внoвь,
Du segnest herrlich Блaгoслoвилa
Das frische Feld, Луг мoлoдoй
Im Blütendampfe И рaсцвeтилa
Die volle Welt. Весь круг земной?
The prevalence of unrhymed and partly rhymed poetry in early Fet is ob-
scured for modern readers, who seldom see his books in the same form his
contemporaries did. After the 1850 collection appeared, Fet wrote fewer
unrhymed or partly rhymed poems, and he and his editors removed from his
canon a number of such poems it contained. In twentieth-century collections,
Fet’s translated poems are seldom intermingled with original ones, as they
were in some of his early books, and the widespread rhymelessness of the
translations is so made less salient for the reader of Fet’s canonical verse.
270 Chapter Three

Although both partly rhymed and unrhymed verse are characteristic of

the younger Fet and are later rare, their histories are not exactly parallel. The
Lyrical Pantheon contains eight unrhymed original poems, compared with
only two or three partly rhymed ones,154 and yet only two years later it is
partly rhymed texts that are more numerous. Whereas Fet wrote no more
original unrhymed verse after 1876, he wrote four new partly-rhymed poems
during the years 1882-84 (8.5% of his original poetry in those years), as well
as revising two early partly rhymed poems.155 The chronological distribution
of the partly rhymed verse fits a more general pattern: usage characteristic of
early Fet recedes in the 1860s and 70s only to re-appear later. As for his un-
rhymed verse, it took a detour into some of his later translations.
Although most canonical Russian verse is traditionally rhymed, there are
also some traditionally unrhymed kinds.156 The only general type well repre-
sented in Fet’s mature work is imitations of classical verse, as mediated in
particular by German. Such poetry is unrhymed because the models were.157
Most of Fet’s unrhymed poetry, and all that he produced in his later years,
was translated from German or Latin.158 Partly rhymed verse is also associ-
ated with German models, but different ones: song and lighter genres.
Zhukovskii and some other poets before Fet had made considerable use of
partly rhymed stanzas, but Fet’s practice is noteworthy in that, in his original
poetry, he exploits partial rhyme more often than complete rhymelessness,
although it was generally much less usual. In Fet’s mature oeuvre, non-
rhyme and partial rhyme are associated with what B. Ia. Bukhshtab consid-
ered its two separate streams: rational and irrational verse. Because the rhy-
melessness of unrhymed poetry derives from classical tradition, it marks the
formal pedigree of the verse and the sophistication, and the “rational” con-
trol, of the poet. In poetry belonging to the “irrational” line, partial rhyme
marks the poet’s rejection of craft in favor of unconstrained intuition: he
represents himself as careless in every way. Lack of rhyme, and especially
the flagrant inconsistency of having some lines rhyme and others not, be-
comes an aspect of the poet’s self-proclaimed heedlessness.159
Since Fet’s mature practice preserves a traditional distinction between
unrhymed and partly rhymed verse, it is striking that in The Lyrical Pan-
theon and his 1850 Poems, rhymed, partly rhymed, and unrhymed poems
appear sometimes cheek by jowl. They share themes and meters, and the
choice to rhyme or not to rhyme sometimes appears to lack clear motivation,
other than, perhaps, experimentation for its own sake. The Lyrical Pantheon,
for example, contains two poems in alternating dactylic tetrameter and dime-
ter: the amorous “Солнце потухло, плавает запах” is unrhymed, while the
lugubrious Арабеск (“Черную урну с прахом поэта”) is in quatrains with
rhyming even-numbered lines. In translating two well-known amatory odes
of Horace, Fet turns one (I.v: “Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa…”) into
Verse form and language 271

unrhymed amphibrachic tetrameter, the other (I.xxv: “Parcius iunctas quati-

unt fenestras…”) into dactylic quatrains with alternating rhymes. The origi-
nal Latin texts are, of course, unrhymed. We have already noticed that,
among the Goethe poems in The Lyrical Pantheon, we find “Mailied” (“Wie
herrlich leuchtet”) and “Erster Verlust”, both published among Goethe’s
“Lieder”. We also have seen that, in translating “Mailied”, Fet imitates
Goethe’s treatment of rhyme. “Erster Verlust”, in contrast, which is mostly
rhymed (and is especially well known as a Schubert song), is translated by
Fet without rhyme, in the “5+5” trochaic tetrameter popularized by Kol’tsov
and normally associated with folk metrics.160 The unrhymed translation of
“Erster Verlust” shows that in addition to the classical tradition of unrhymed
poetry Fet also experimented with non-rhyme in poems intended to evoke
song form. His sources of non-rhyme included not only German literary
verse but also Russian song, either folksong or its literary imitations.
The young Fet seems, then, to have chosen in a rather unconstrained way
among rhymed, rhymeless, and partially rhymed forms. A similar lack of
differentiation is evident in his phonic treatment of unrhymed line-ends in
unrhymed and partly rhymed verse. In unrhymed poetry that imitates a clas-
sical form, it is important that rhymelessness be perceived as deliberate
choice. Yet Fet had already written most of his original unrhymed verse
when, in the 1850s, he was called on by Turgenev, as mentioned earlier, to
eliminate a rhyme from what had been intended as an unrhymed poem, first
published in Fet’s 1850 collection.161 Nor was that accidental rhyme the only
one in Fet’s early work. In some poems, rhyme seems to arise out of an
overabundance of orchestration, invading line-ends from the left. An exam-
ple of this is the closural four lines of “Уж, сeрпы нa плeчa взлoжив,
устaлыe жницы…”, published in The Lyrical Pantheon:
Вoт мaлюткa-рукa трeт бeлую нoжку-мaлютку,
И пoд нeю в ключe | тaкaя ж кaчaeтся нoжкa.
Дeвa, пoмeдли! – нo нeт: | вспoрxнулa рeзвaя крoшкa, –
Тoлькo кустaрник вдaли ee сaрaфaнчик цeлуeт.
The rhyme of ножка and крошка is “incorrect” in a supposedly unrhymed
poem, but it is contextually motivated insofar as it participates in sound play
found throughout the four lines. These same four lines show other parallels
at end position, albeit assonantial ones rather than full-blown rhyme: final
целует does not rhyme with малютку, but it echoes it assonantially. In the
two lines matched by their end-rhyme, a final stressed “е” in the syllable
preceding caesura (which I have marked above), matches their first hemis-
tichs as well, while the consonantism of the post-caesural hemistichs fairly
jangles: такая ж качается ножка ~ вспорхнула резвая крошка. So richly
272 Chapter Three

are the lines orchestrated that the closural rhyme seems a natural continua-
tion of their exuberant play of sound.
Fet himself refers to the technical imperfections of his earliest work, and
the appearance of rhymes in what are intended as unrhymed poems can
surely be taken as examples. Yet the imperfections apparently derive not
only from the poet’s failure to master a classical pattern but also, more posi-
tively, from his own apparent attempts to pattern rhymeless orchestration.
The lines above illustrate how assonance can occasionally cast up a super-
fluous rhyme, and also suggest that Fet tended to pattern his assonance in a
kind of shadow of an ordinary rhymed quatrain. The same tendency can be
seen elsewhere. For example, the first four lines of the six-line “Кусок
мрамора” end in alternating feminine/masculine assonances (начатый,
решить, массы, лик), but the final distich steps aside from the earlier pat-
tern. Assonance is displaced from line-final position to the caesura (жезл ~
дев), where it articulates the division of the lines into hemistichs and unites
the distich internally:
Кусок мрамора
Тщeтнo блуждaeт мoй взoр, измeряя твoй мрaмoр нaчaтый,
Тщeтнo пытливaя мысль xoчeт зaгaдку рeшить:
Чтo oдeвaeт кoрa грубo изрублeннoй мaссы?
Яснoe ль Титa чeлo, Фaвнa ль измeнчивый лик,
Змeй примиритeля – жeзл, крылья и стaн быстрoнoгий,
Или стыдливoсти дeв с тoнким пeрстoм нa устax?
An even earlier instance of near-rhyme yielding to a defeat of rhyme appears
in the following short poem, first published in 1842 (I mark caesura and “ё”
to make the phonic patterning more obvious):
Скучнo мнe вeчнo бoлтaть | o тoм, чтo высoкo, прeкрaснo;
Всe эти тoлки мeня | тoлькo к зeвoтe вeдут...
Брoсив пeдaнтoв, бeгу | с тoбoй пoбeсeдoвaть, друг мoй;
Знaю, чтo в этиx глaзax, | чeрныx и умныx глaзax,
Бoльшe прeкрaснoгo, чeм | в нeскoлькиx стax фoлиaнтax,
Знaю, чтo слaдкую жизнь | пью с этиx рoзoвыx губ.
Тoлькo пчeлa узнaёт | в цвeткe зaтaeнную слaдoсть,
Тoлькo xудoжник нa всём | чуeт прeкрaснoгo слeд.
Verse form and language 273

The stressed [é] of the final “след” breaks a string of lines in which the last
metrically strong position is filled with stressed [á] or [ú], but the most strik-
ing aspect of the orchestration of the poem is not the amount of euphony that
is piled up (in the absence of a clear norm, this is hard to measure), but in
the way the orchestration is structured and made to stand in for rhyme: al-
though the poem is in elegiac distich, the near-rhyme in the poem binds the
first half of the poem into a kind of pseudo-quatrain. The assonantial linkage
among the first three lines is reinforced by switching assonance from /a/ to
/u/ not at line-end but at caesura (болтать || прекрасно ~ меня || ведут ~
бегу || друг мой), while the doubled глазах of line 4 marks off the end of
the first half of the poem. In phonic counterpoise, the choice of stressed
vowel in the pseudo-quatrain is separate from the choice of masculine or
feminine line-end (feminine in stressed “a” ~ masculine in stressed “у” ~
feminine in stressed “у” ~ masculine in stressed “а”).
The second half of the poem consists of two distichs, of which the first
continues the /a/ ~ /u/ patterning of the quatrain. The last distich pulls away
from the earlier pattern, and, as in our previous example, assonantial vowels
tie the lines together by the waist. The final след rings a variation on the
preceding two lines’ сладкую and сладость, and as a bonus participates in
framing the final line, and final distich, in dental consonantism. The final /e/
of след also represents a promotion into a salient closural position of a
vowel that had been pre-figured both in less
prominent stressed positions and in stressed Пoмню я: стaрушкa няня
and unstressed morphological roots from the Мнe в рoждeствeнскoй нoчи
very beginning of the text.162 The poem seems Прo судьбу мoю гaдaлa
on the verge of breaking out in rhyme, but При мeрцaнии свeчи,
never does, while line-initial sound-play, И нa кaртax выxoдили
wound tighter and tighter as the poem ap- Интeрeсы дa пoчeт.
proaches closure (бросив ~ больше, знаю ~ Няня, няня! Ты oшиблaсь,
знаю, только ~ только), finally becomes just Oбмaнул тeбя рaсчeт;
as prominent as the play at the ends of lines. Нo зaтo я тaк влюбился,
Fet’s early unrhymed poetry thus leaves Чтo приxoдится нeвмoчь...
rhyme behind as if reluctantly, offering the Пoгaдaй мнe, друг мoй няня,
reader surrogates. His early partly rhymed Нынчe святoчнaя нoчь.
poems show a similar ambivalence. Asso-
Чтo, – нe будeт ли свидaнья,
nance haunts the odd-numbered lines of Рaзгoвoрoв иль письмa?
“Помню я: старушка няня …” (1842), for Выйдeт пикoвaя дaмa
example, and in the end generates a fully Иль бубнoвaя сaмa?
rhymed stanza. Thus, just as superfluous
rhyme is occasionally generated in an “un- Няня дoбрaя гaдaeт,
rhymed” text, similarly, proximate assonance Грустнo гoлoву склoня;
Свeчкa тиxo нaгoрaeт,
and near-rhyme sometimes seem to generate a Сeрдцe бьeтся у мeня.
274 Chapter Three

fully rhymed stanza in poems with partial rhyme: the phonics of line-end
creep up on rhyme where we cannot expect it or weaken rhyme where struc-
turally it seems to belong. “Помню я: старушка няня” is one of the poems
Fet called Гадания, and in this group, as well as in certain other early po-
ems, the so-called Баллады, the ambivalence of Fet’s partial rhyme is es-
pecially obvious: even lines rhyme and odd lines need not, but occasionally
do – and, even when they do not, they often come perilously close.
Conversely, the rhymed lines in Fet’s partly rhymed poems, including
the translation of “Mailied”, often show ostentatiously easy rhymes, banal
either lexically or because they are built on grammatical identity – or the
rhymes may be weaker than Fet typically permits himself. Given the phonic
richness of the unrhymed lines and the impoverishment of the rhymed ones,
it is not always obvious how to tell one from the other. The following stanza
is from a poem “Змей” (1847), published as one of Fet’s “баллады”:
И шумит всe ближe, ближe,
И нaд вдoвьиным двoрoм,
Нaд сoлoмeннoю крышeй
Рaссыпaeтся oгнeм.
It seems safe to say that the first and third lines are, in the context of Fet’s
usage, unrhymed: on one hand, the rest of the stanzas of the poem rhyme
only the even-number lines and, on the other, Fet never in any other poem
rhymes words with both a voicing mismatch between /š/ and /ž/ and a mis-
match between /j/ and null. Yet, in the rhymed lines of another partly
rhymed text, “коса” rhymes with “глаза”:163
Пeрлы вoстoчныe – зубы у нeй,
Шeлк шeмaxaнский – кoсa;
Мягкo и яркo, чтo утрo вeснoй,
Свeтят бoльшиe глaзa.
The poem has twelve lines in all, and the even lines rhyme throughout. The
pattern leads us to accept the /s/ ~ /z/ rhyme, which also occurs elsewhere in
Fet. Yet rhyming “глаза” and “коса” is really not much “better”, as canoni-
cal rhymes go, than the non-rhyming “ближе” and “крышей”, while the
ends of the unrhymed lines of the stanza (зубы у ней ~ утро весной) sur-
round their dissonant final vowels with consonance. The difference is small,
really. It turns out that the rhymed and unrhymed lines of Fet’s partly
rhymed poems may be equally unprepossessing, only falling by a hairs-
breadth on opposite sides of the rhyme canon. In a number of such texts,
instead of rhyme being consistently opposed to non-rhyme, an overall pat-
tern of fuzzily indeterminate near-rhyme imbues the whole text. In “Вдали
огонек за рекою,…” (1842), “рекою” seems to rhyme with “удалое”, but it
would not have been perceived as a good rhyme by contemporary readers:
Verse form and language 275

Вдaли oгoнeк зa рeкoю,

Вся в блeсткax струится рeкa,
Нa лoдкe вeслo удaлoe,
Нa цeпи нe виднo зaмкa.

Никтo мнe нe скaжeт: “Кудa ты

Пoexaл, кудa зaгaдaл?”
Шeвeлись жe, вeслo, шeвeлися!
A бeрeг вo мрaкe прoпaл.

Дa чтo жe? Зaчeм бы нe exaть?

Дoждeшься ль вeчeрнeй пoрoй
Oпять и жeлaнья, и лoдки,
Вeслa, и oгня зa рeкoй?..
The neutral description is to say the poem has three parallel, partly rhymed,
stanzas. And yet, Fet’s practice does not permit us to exclude the possibility
of a fully rhymed quatrain in an otherwise partially rhymed poem. We are
thrown back on the lines themselves and how they compare with the rest of
Fet’s usage. And here again we meet with indeterminacy. Although pairs
such as удалое ~ рекою are very unusual in Fet’s work overall, they do oc-
cur occasionally in other poems of the early 1840s, in some instances in
fully rhymed poems. In, for example,“Вoт утрo сeвeрa – сoнливoe, скупoe
– …” (1842), the pairing люблю я ~ удалую is motivated by the emotional
force of the lines, much as in the examples we discussed earlier. The mar-
ginal or non-rhyme in “Вoт утрo сeвeрa – сoнливoe, скупoe – …” may
perhaps also be a response to the unrhymed closure in Pushkin’s “Зима. Что
делать нам в деревне? Я встречаю...”, a text that thematically underlies
Fet’s. (We return to both poems in discussing Fet’s syntax.) Perhaps the
word удалой just seemed to have enough semantic punch to encourage a bit
of formal daring to go with it.
Fet’s use of rhyme in “Вдали огонек за рекою,…” has an unexpected
echo in his late poem “Перепел” (1884):

Перепел
Глупый пeрeпeл, глядико,
Рядoм тут живeт синичкa:
Кaк с жeлeзнoй клeткoй тиxo
И умнo сжилaся птичкa!
Всe ты рвeшься нa свoбoду,
Гoлoвoй тoлкaясь в клeтку,
Вoт, нa мeстo стeн жeлeзныx,
Нaтянули тугo сeтку.
276 Chapter Three

Уж дaвнo пoeт синичкa,

Нe стрaшaсь жeлeзныx игoл,
Ты жe всe нe нa свoбoдe,
Тoлькo лысину нaпрыгaл.
By the standards of the time, the first and third lines seem to be unrhymed.
Fet had not used /k/ ~ /x/ as a rhyme since the 1840s, and the pairing in
“Перепел” may be taken as humorous. The odd-number lines in the other
stanzas are clearly unrhymed. And yet: the “non-pair” of гляди-ка and тихо
is fairly showy sound-play, and it is underscored by the spelling глядико in
the original publication.164
We saw earlier that Fet follows Goethe’s usage not only in translating
“Mailied” as partly rhymed, but also in fully rhyming one of the nine quat-
rains in the poem. The even-numbered lines in “Mailied” are thus obligato-
rily rhymed, while the odd-numbered lines are not obligatorily either
rhymed or unrhymed. We have now seen that Fet’s original partly rhymed
verse also tolerates rhyme in places where it is structurally not called for. I
have suggested, on the basis of Fet’s translation of Goethe’s “Der Sänger” as
well as “Mailied”, that it was Goethe and not Heine, who was Fet’s earliest
model for partly rhymed stanzas. Fet’s introduction of fully, albeit almost
always marginally, rhymed stanzas in such poems also follows Goethe. Fet’s
virtuosity in partial rhyme thus rests on poetry he discovered not in the
1840s in Moscow, but in the 1830s in Werro. More generally, we can con-
clude that the poetics of heedlessness characteristic of partial rhyme is real-
ized in Fet’s work both compositionally (in the apparent inconsistency of
rhyming some lines and not others, and in rhyming some lines obligatorily
and others only optionally) and also phonically (in the lack of clarity with
which the sounds of rhyme and non-rhyme are differentiated). At the same
time, rich orchestration of unrhymed lines characterizes both Fet’s early un-
rhymed poetry and his partly rhymed poetry, even if his practice is moti-
vated differently in the two types of verse. In both compositional and phonic
choices, the young Fet blurs the edges of rhyme, and, both compositionally
and phonically, the poet’s early usage and taste were clearly formed by
German models, in particular Goethe’s lyric poetry.
From the beginning, Fet used rhyme and lack of rhyme compositionally.
In The Lyrical Pantheon, rhyme promotes closure, for example, in “Две ро-
зы”, a poem that wanders along for forty-seven unrhymed lines of iambic
trimeter before coming to rest in the final rhyme of кровь with любовь.
Conversely, “Ночь и день” ends in an orphaned short ninth line (“И мне
милее день…”), while “Безмолвные поля оделись темнотою…” (1842)
concludes with a hemistich, stanzaically orphaned but rhymed with the pre-
ceding line. None of these poems belongs to Fet’s canon. The only canonical
poem comparable in its use of a closural non-rhyming line is “On the Dnepr
Verse form and language 277

at spring flood” (“На Днепре в половодье”, 1853). Like the non-canonical

poems just mentioned, it is not a partly rhymed poem in the usual sense. It is
a rhymed poem with a stanza unfinished.
Нa Днeпрe в пoлoвoдьe
(A. Я. П[aнaeв]oй)

Свeтaлo. Вeтeр гнул упругoe стeклo

Днeпрa, eщe в вoлнax нe прoбуждaя звукa.
Стaрик oтчaливaл, oпeршись нa вeслo,
A мeжду тeм вoрчaл нa внукa.
Oт вeсeл к бeрeгу кудрявый слeд бeжaл;
Струи пoд лoдкoй зaкипeли;
Нaш пaрус, мeдлeннo нaдувшись, зaдрoжaл,
И мы кaк птицa пoлeтeли.
И ярким зoлoтoм и чистым сeрeбрoм
Змeились oблaкoв прoзрaчныx oчeртaнья;
Нaд рaзыгрaвшимся, кaзaлoся, Днeпрoм
Струилися oт вoлн и трaв блaгoуxaнья.
Зa нaми мeльницa eдвa-eдвa виднa
И бeрeг пoсинeл зeлeный...
И вoт пoд лoдкoю вздрoгнувшeй быстринa
Свeркaeт стaлью вoрoнeнoй...
A тaм зaтoплeнный нaвстрeчу лeс лeтeл...
В нeгo зeркaльныe врывaлися зaливы;
Нaд сoннoй влaгoю тaм тoпoль зeлeнeл,
Бeлeли яблoни и трeпeтaли ивы.
И пoд лoбзaния нeмoлкнущeй струи
Пeвцы, кoтoрым лeс дa вoлны лишь внимaли,
С кaкoй-тo нeгoю зaдoрнoй сoлoвьи
Пустынный вoздуx рaздрaжaли.
Вoт изумрудный луг, вoт жeлтыe пeски
Гoрят в сияньи зoлoтистoм;
Вoн уткa крaдeтся в трoстник, вoн кулики
Бeспeчнo бeгaют сo свистoм...
Oстaлся б здeсь дышaть, смoтрeть и слушaть вeк...

“On the Dnepr” is one of the few poems that Fet talks about at some length
in his memoirs. It was written much later than the non-canonical poems just
mentioned, but apparently in belated remembrance of a much earlier experi-
ence. It represents his crowning achievement in the use of an early technique
exploiting rhyme to help create or nullify textual closure.
278 Chapter Three

Fet’s masterpiece of partial rhyme is “Говорили в древнем Риме,…”

(1883). M. L. Gasparov has pointed out that the stanzaic structure of “Го-
ворили в древнем Риме,…” exploits rhyme as an elegant closural device,
as entire strings of unrhymed lines, or lines that have not yet achieved
rhyme, come to rest in a long-deferred rhyme word. Both stanzaic form and
the syntax it supports are calculated to heighten the tension: reading the first
stanza for the first time, we cannot expect up until the very end that either
the sentence or the stanza will end as, and when, it does – we cannot know
that, in fact, there will be any rhyme anywhere in the text. The first stanza is,
like Fet’s early partly rhymed texts, rich in line-end assonance (Риме ~
Сивилла, тёмной ~ [живёт] ~ боги ~ [свод]), but once the rhyme pattern is
established in the opening stanza, assonance recedes. No longer do we have
the provocative hit-or-miss sound structure of the early partly rhymed texts.
Rather, the poem seems truly to alternate, as those earlier texts did not, the
aesthetics and associations of rhymelessness and of rhyme, not only through
the treatment of line-end but also through the thematics of the corresponding
lines: first, before the rhyme is established, an evocation of a priestess in a
classical world and, then, in closing, a modern priestess of a different cult. In
this late poem, the partial rhyme is exploited compositionally as never be-
fore – but at the same time, and for the first time, partial rhyme is situated in
a context of neoclassical rhymelessness.
Compositionally, the ancestor of “Гов-
орили в древнем Риме,…” is none of Fet’s Гoвoрили в дрeвнeм Римe,
earlier partly rhymed poems, but rather a Чтo в гoрax, в пeщeрe тeмнoй,
rhymed poem, also in trochaic tetrameter, Бoгoрaвнaя Сивиллa
published among his anthological poems: Вeчнo-юнaя живeт,
Чтo eй всe oткрыли бoги,
“Телемак у Калипсы” (1857), discussed Чтo в груди чужoй сoкрытo,
earlier from another viewpoint (page 160). Чтo тaит нeбeсный свoд.
“Телемак у Калипсы”, like “Говорили в
древнем Риме,…”, presents a female figure Тoлькo избрaнным дoступнo,
first as classical goddess and then, at the Xoть нe сaмую бoгиню,
A свящeннoe жилищe
end of the poem, as a modern woman, and,
Чaрoдeйки сoзeрцaть.
in both poems, the woman is seen from sev- В яснoм зeркaлe ты мoжeшь,
eral perspectives and at several degrees of Взoр в глaзa свoи впeряя,
distance. In “Телемак у Калипсы…”, the Ту бoгиню увидaть.
process of transformation from classical to
modern is situated in a richly described Нeпoдвижнa и бeзмoлвнa,
Для тeбя eдинoй зримa
scene of the sort characteristic of the young- Нa пoрoгe чeрнoй двeри –
er Fet, whereas in “Говорили в древнем Нa нee тoгдa смoтри!
Риме …”, the motivic structure is reduced, Нo кoгдa зaслышишь пeсню,
as it often is in Fet’s later work. Just as the Вдoxнoвeнную тoбoю, –
difference in motivic structure attests to the Эту двeрь мнe oтoпри.
Verse form and language 279

evolution of Fet’s poetics, so do the similarities and differences in his treat-

ment of rhyme in the two poems. In both, rhyme is introduced gradually. In
the earlier one, a relatively long stanza (six lines) is rhymed only with delay
(the first rhyme comes at line four), while in the later poem we at first are
given assonance, as we have already noticed, instead of rhyme. In “Телемак
у Калипсы”, the semantic differentiation of the rhyme words in the first
stanza is weakened by their grammatical congruence: мглoю ~ гoлoвoю,
нaпoяeт ~ зaсыпaeт, рaззoлoчeн ~ oзaбoчeн. The closural rhymes in
“Говорили в древнем Риме,…” are also grammatically paired, but the final
rhyme derives semantic force from the imperative. In the earlier poem, too,
rhyme adds force to the poem’s closure, but it works differently. The poem
ends on a rising emotional wave of questions, in which we move swiftly
from the classical world to a generalized and very modern view of the faces
of women in love, while the lexical and grammatical contrasts inherent in
the last rhyme of the text – Аполлоном rhymed with женам – correspond to
and encapsulate the poet’s stripping away of mythological dress. Russian
poems in the anthological genre, to which the earlier poem somewhat ten-
uously belongs, could be either rhymed or unrhymed. The later poem evokes
Fet’s anthological poetry both in its selection and treatment of motifs and in
its incorporation of rhyme and non-rhyme.
For all the elegance of “Говорили в древнем Риме,…”, it is the only
one of Fet’s late poems in which partial rhyme can be seen as a serious de-
velopment of his earlier practice. In Fet’s early years, his partial rhyme was
innovative, but by 1865, as Gasparov observes, it had turned into a wide-
spread mannerism that Minaev, for one, was parodying. Fet moved on to
other things, and in his later work he returns to partial rhyme in only three
original poems besides “Говорили в древнем Риме…”. One poem is in
three-line stanzas of which the unrhymed first line can be read as the first
hemistich of a dactylic tetrameter. The second hemistich (the second line of
the stanza) rhymes with the stanza-final line: “Сад весь в цвету, Вечер в
огне, Так освежительно-радостно мне!” The other two poems are sardoni-
cally humorous. The poem “Перепел” (“Глупый перепел, глядико…”),
quoted earlier, is a humorous parable about misunderstanding the nature of
freedom, while “Заиграли на рояли…” celebrates a toy used in a parlor
game and suggests its similarity to epigonic poets.

Зaигрaли нa рoяли,
И пoд звoн чужиx нaпeвoв
Зaвeртeлись, зaплясaли
Изумитeльныe куклы.
Блeск нaрядoв иx чудeсeн –
Шeлк и звeзды зoлoтыe.
280 Chapter Three

Чтo зa чуткoсть к ритму пeсeн:

Тaм игрaют – здeсь трeпeщут.
Вид приличeн и нeрoбoк,
A нaряды – зaглядeньe;
Тoлькo жaль, у милыx прoбoк
Тaк тeлa прямoлинeйны!
Нo крaсoй сияют вящeй
Иx рoскoшныe oдeжды...
Чтo б тaкoй убoр блeстящий
Нaстoящeму пoэту!
The labile phonics typical of partial rhyme here make a comic effect and
contribute to the mocking tone of both poems. The first stanza of “Перепел”
and the penultimate one of “Заиграли на рояли…” are both on the verge of
being fully rhymed (Перепел: “Глупый пeрeпeл, глядико, Рядoм тут жив-
eт синичкa: Кaк с жeлeзнoй клeткoй тиxo И умнo сжилaся птичкa”;
Заиграли на рояли: “Вид приличeн и нeрoбoк, A нaряды – зaглядeньe;
Тoлькo жaль, у милыx прoбoк Тaк тeлa прямoлинeйны!”), but both “fail”
with an inexactitude Fet would abhor in a serious rhymed text – and a near-
ness to rhyme he eventually found unsuited to an unrhymed one. The mar-
ginal rhyme of “Перепел” helps lower its stylistic register, while the spe-
cifically Fetian pattern of rhyming odd instead of even lines in “Заиграли на
рояли” (brought into relief by rhyme internal to the first line of the poem,
and between the odd lines of its last stanza) points a finger at those who
would ape, and so cheapen into comedy, a device that in Fet’s original usage
had had no comic overtones at all: “Кaк яснoсть бeзoблaчнoй нoчи, Кaк
юнo-нeтлeнныe звeзды, Твoи зaгoрaются oчи Всeсильным, тaинствeн-
ным счaстьeм” (1862).
As for the two partly rhymed poems that Fet reworked at the end of his
life: his revisions were fully rhymed. Particularly interesting is the text he
was reworking evidently just days before he died.165 In its original form, the
poem (“На дворе не слышно вьюги,…”, 1842) had been one of his
“баллады”, a relatively long poem (six four-line stanzas) in trochaic tetra-
meter. Although characteristic of Fet’s early style, partial rhyme in that con-
text was not idiosyncratic. The poem was evidently considered successful,
since it was reprinted not only in his 1850 collection but also in the collec-
tions of 1856 and 1863. In his revising (and we do not know that the revi-
sion was intended as final, or even whether Fet intended his revised text to
replace the original one), Fet ended up with a poem (“Бедный мальчик”)
consisting of nothing but the closing two stanzas of his earlier work, rewrit-
ten with perfect and unremarkable rhymes. The new text, written half a cen-
tury after the first version, has been culled from the tradition of the early
Verse form and language 281

“Баллады” to take new breath, its rhyming tamed, in Fet’s last and most
lapidary style.

Бедный мальчик
“Дaй-кa нянe ручки-крoшки, –
Пoглядeть нa ниx пeрсты, –
Чтo, нa кoнчикax дoрoжки
Нe кружкaми ль зaвиты?
Ax, пoслeдний дaжe пaльчик
Бeз кружкa, дитя мoe!..”
Вoт зaплaкaлa – и мaльчик
Плaчeт, глядя нa нee...

3.4 Stanzaic structure and graphic form

Stanzas can integrate verse elements to give a poem form on a large scale.
We will look at Fet’s stanzaic structure from two points of view: the make-
up of the stanza out of different elements, and how the stanzaic organization
of a poem helps make reading it the sort of experience it is.
We already know something about how Fet exploits verse form in his
stanzas. Sometimes, as we saw in the last section, he creates new stanzas by
dislocating line-ends.166 An idiosyncratic six-line stanza, for example,
Сны и тени,
Сновиденья,
В сумрак трепетно манящие,
Все ступени
Усыпленья
Легким роем преходящие,
can readily be derived from a quatrain with alternating (abab) rhyme.167 Fet
did not write the following quatrain:
Сны и тени, сновиденья,
В сумрак трепетно манящие,
Все ступени усыпленья
Легким роем преходящие,…
The metrical device of dislocating line-ends is thus one of the ways that Fet
ended up with those stanzas of different-length lines that were such an out-
standing characteristic of his work. More typical than the preceding stanza,
however, is the following one:
282 Chapter Three

О, не зови! Страстей твоих так звонок

Родной язык.
Ему внимать и плакать, как ребенок,
Я так привык!
The way in which this stanza is more typical, not only of Fet but of most
poetry in anisometric stanzas, is that the shorter of the alternating-length
lines comes at the end. That Fet wrote several poems the other way round, as
in “Сны и тени…”, is thanks in part to his creative approach to the caesura
of long lines.
Some aspects of stanzaic structure also came up when we talked about
rhyme. As we have seen, Fet’s partly-rhymed quatrains are unusual: they are
unusually frequent in his work, they are unusually diverse, and they were
structurally innovative. The unrhymed lines in these stanzas are in principle
not so much “unrhymed” as “not necessarily rhymed”, and, unlike most
Russian poets’ partly rhymed stanzas, Fet’s could end rhymeless:
Кaк яснoсть бeзoблaчнoй нoчи,
Кaк юнo-нeтлeнныe звeзды,
Твoи зaгoрaются oчи
Всeсильным, тaинствeнным счaстьeм.
Fet thus reversed conventional stanzaic organization with respect to both the
length of lines and the presence in them of rhyme. It may not have been en-
tirely by chance that D. D. Minaev thought to construct a parody of Fet by
taking one of his texts and simply reversing the order of the lines.168 Upside-
down-ness seems to have been a genuinely Fetian trait, perhaps related to his
astronomical proclivities and his positive attitude toward poets’ jumping out
of upper-story windows.169 The commoner orderings of rhymed-line and
short-line last are, both of them, generally agreed to correspond to the satis-
factions of good poetic closure. Fet’s willingness to reverse the order sug-
gests that, in spite of his famed use of ring structures, he understood the po-
etics of open-ended forms. Formal openness, in turn, may be linked to an
important aspect of the thematic development of his poetry: this is his habit,
discussed in earlier chapters, of animating his closural lines, and setting in
motion the objects of his contemplation. In the openness of their closing,
Fet’s poems are sometimes like the novels of his Russian contemporaries.
The scale is smaller.
Fet’s idiosyncrasies of meter and rhyme conspire. His different exper-
iments work to the same poetic end and together become one source of the
variety his stanzaic repertory has been praised for: compared with other
nineteenth-century Russian poets, Fet’s work contains more stanzas that are
his alone, unshared by others, and he is disinclined to re-use the same stan-
zaic form in more than one poem.170 In the words of B. Ia. Bukhshtab: “in
Verse form and language 283

nineteenth-century Russian literature there is no other poet … with such a

variety of stanzaic forms. … The greater part of the stanzas he uses appear
in his poetry once”.171
Let us put this in perspective. As we know, Fet was a master – for a time
practically Russia’s only master – of the short lyric poem, and nearly all the
original poems that he wrote over some fifty-five years were indeed short:
the corpus we have been talking about consists of some 950 poems, of which
only five are what are conventionally considered long poems (поэмы), with
a few others that might also be classed with them (for example, “Sakontala”
and “The Nightingale and the Rose”). If Fet has more “individual” stanzas
than, say, Lermontov (whose stanzas are actually quite varied), then at least
some of the difference can be attributed to differences in the two poets’ lon-
gevity and degree of specialization in shorter poems, not to mention the
variation induced by the changes in metrical norms over the course of Fet’s
career.
And saying that Fet’s stanzas were more inventive than other nineteenth-
century poets’ is not high praise: stanzaic structure in Fet’s time was not
especially rich. Most stanzas were quatrains, usually with alternating rhyme,
and so are Fet’s:172 out of 765 poems of more than one stanza,173 two thirds
(507 poems) are written in abab quatrains.174 Stanzaic structure became
even less varied in the course of the nineteenth century, and so did Fet’s: out
of the same 765 poems, 58% of the earlier ones (1840-1858) are written in
abab quatrains, but 74% of the later ones (1859-1892).
Of the same group of 765 poems, only twenty-five are in stanzas longer
than six lines, and, not counted among the 765, Fet also wrote a dozen son-
nets, mostly in the 1840s. The only sonnet form he used more than once is
“aBaB aBaB ccD eeD”: it accounts for three iambic pentameter poems, all
from 1842-44. In his sonnets, as in other ways, we see the young Fet in the
old Fet’s arms: his first and last sonnets, from about 1840 and 1880 respec-
tively, are the only ones in iambic hexameter – a metrical gallicism with a
long Russian lineage.
“Говорили в древнем Риме…” (1883) is built out of the only seven-line
stanzas in Fet’s non-translated verse. Seven-line stanzas are unusual in the
German tradition, too,175 but four of Fet’s translations from German (from
about 1840 to 1865) are of poems in stanzas of seven lines, and a seven-line
stanza is also found in medieval Latin – perhaps relevant to “Говорили в
древнем Риме …”, because of its thematics.176 In any event, here as in other
ways, Fet in his late poetry exploited an unusual form he was attracted to
earlier, when he selected poems for translation.
The longest stanzas Fet uses with any frequency have six or five lines,
and in each instance he eventually adopts just one favored rhyme pattern.
The two patterns have different status and history, in Fet’s work, as in gen-
284 Chapter Three

eral, but he uses both in the construction of strong verse closure and, often,
ring forms. Since Fet’s preferred six-line stanza is often considered a “song”
stanza, its association with such forms is especially natural. The five-liner
lacks such a strong tradition.
Six-line stanzas are generally common, and Fet used them throughout his
career: in all, there are 71 such poems in my corpus, of which 30 are in the
canon, and 20 are one-stanza poems (8 canonical). The difference between
one-stanza poems and non-stanzaic poems is not always easy to draw. Fet’s
six-line poems with a regulated pattern of rhymes and clausulae favor struc-
tures atypical of his poems with repeating stanzas: eight of them are based
entirely on pair rhyme, for example, and seven are based on only one or two
rhymes. Because they are noticeably different from the other poems, I ex-
clude one-stanza texts from further consideration. Among the others, the
commonest rhyme pattern is “AAbCCb” (26 poems, 15 canonical).177 It oc-
curs in a variety of meters, but 14 of the poems are trochaic, six of them
feminine tetrameter alternating with masculine trimeter. Three other poems
are in ternary meters. These metrical patterns support the association of the
“AAbCCb” stanza with song forms. Yet the commonest single meter for
“AAbCCb” poems is the neutral iambic tetrameter: seven texts from 1849 to
1887. Five of the seven are from the 1850s, and, unlike the trochaic poems,
none of them belongs to Fet’s “Мелодии” or “Баллады”.
We have seen that the usage of The Lyrical Pantheon is in many ways
sui generis, and so is its lone “AAbCCb” poem, called “Утешение”
(“Вспорхнул твой ветреник, уж нет его с тобою!…”). It is Fet’s only
“AAbCCb” poem in iambic hexameter, and it is syntactically unique.
“AAbCCb” stanzas tend to divide syntactically into AAb+CCb, and in Fet’s
usage the break between the two halves of the stanza is sharp. “Утешение”
maintains the 3+3 line division in the first of its two stanzas, but the syntax
of the second one, uniquely in Fet’s work, reinforces the 2+4 rhyme pattern,
and thereby the link of the stanzaic form with an underlying abba quatrain.
Fet’s use of such quatrains is at its height in The Lyrical Pantheon.
All five of Fet’s “AAbCCb” poems from the 1840s are in two stanzas,
whereas later ones are mostly in three. Since the three-stanza form is, like
the stanzaic pattern itself, associated with song, the shift from two- to three-
stanza “AAbCCb” poems shows Fet’s usage aligning itself with song-form
convention. The correlation becomes strongest in the 1880s, when the three-
stanza form is re-united with his early proclivity for using the “AAbCCb”
rhyme pattern with ternary and trochaic meters: all but one of the seven
“AAbCCb” poems of the 1880s is ternary or trochaic, and all are in three
stanzas. The last two “AAbCCb” poems are from 1890 and 1891 respec-
tively. Both are trochaic,178 and both are in two stanzas, like the poems of
Verse form and language 285

the 1840s. One of the late poems is “В молодые тоже годы”, a translation
of Heine’s “Habe auch, in jungen Jahren…”. The other one is this:
Я нe знaю, нe скaжу я,
Oттoгo ли, чтo гляжу я
Нa тeбя, я всe пoю,
И зaдoрнoe вeсeльe
Ты, кaк лeгкoe пoxмeльe,
Прoливaeшь в пeснь мoю,
Иль – eщe тoгo чудeснeй –
Зa мoeй дрoжaщeй пeснeй
Тaeт дум нeвoльныx мглa,
И зa тo ли, oттoгo ли
Дo тoмлeния, дo бoли
Ты привeтливo свeтлa?
As we shall see later, it is characteristic of Fet’s very last work that he be-
gins to write more poems in two stanzas. The switch is especially striking in
poems with stanzaic structures associated with ternary song form.
In addition to his favorite “AAbCCb” stanza and its relatives, Fet also
uses other six-line stanzaic forms that we will not look at here, for example
the “ABCABC” pattern of “Телемак у Калипсы”. We will, however, dis-
cuss his masterpiece six-liner “To Chopin” (“Шопену” [“Ты мелькнула,
ты предстала…”], 1882), found on page 286. “To Chopin” and “Говорили
в древнем Риме…” were most likely written within six months of each
other,179 and if “Говорили в древнем Риме…” is a masterpiece of suspense,
“To Chopin” is a masterpiece of suspension.
The last line of each stanza looks orphaned – in the style of “Der Sänger”
– until we find its partner in the succeeding (or preceding) stanza. The clo-
sural triplets of rhymes in the first and last stanzas serve to enclose the poem
in a traditional Fetian ring: звуки ~ муки ~ руки is echoed in муки ~
разлуки ~ звуки, but, at closure, the triplet rhyme calls up reinforcements:
this is the great triumph of the final “near orphan” rhyme, based on the same
stressed /ú/ plus velar as the final triplet rhyme. The near orphan suddenly
gains a force we never expected, but it is stopped in its tracks, suspended
forever without that matching unstressed /i/.
Fet once wrote to K.R. that a poem should end when one cannot add a
single sound more, and the ending of “To Chopin” is a literal exemplifica-
tion of his advice. The reader turns out to have been invited to a mazurka,
that always slightly off-balance dance that starts, and ends, in mid-measure –
“разорвется вдруг”. The rhythm of the trochaic lines mimics a dotted-
rhythm three-beat dance, while rich consonantism gives the term orchestra-
tion something as close to its literal meaning as a printed line of verse af-
fords.
286 Chapter Three

Шoпeну “To Chopin” is a poem not only of musical-

Ты мeлькнулa, ты прeдстaлa, ity but also of vivid memory: it is one of the
Снoвa сeрдцe зaдрoжaлo, texts said to evoke Fet’s romance with
Пoд чaрующиe звуки Maria Lazich in the 1840s. The sudden
Тo жe счaстьe, тe жe муки, emergence of the scene out of nowhere, and
Слышу трeпeтныe руки – its sudden interruption, are thematically and
Ты eщe сo мнoй! psychologically motivated. The brilliance of
Чaс блaжeнный, чaс пeчaльный, a long-ago dance is captured in verse form.
Чaс пoслeдний, чaс прoщaльный, Five-line stanzas are much less common
Тe жe лeгкиe oдeжды, than six-line stanzas in Fet’s work: 31 po-
Ты стoишь, склoняя вeжды, – ems (20 canonical), of which five are sin-
И нe нужнo мнe нaдeжды: gle-stanza texts (none canonical). Most of
Этoт чaс – oн мoй! Fet’s five-liners are iambic. Many of them
Ты руки мoeй кoснулaсь, date from 1852-1859,180 but four (including
Рaзoм сeрдцe встрeпeнулoсь; two one-stanza poems) are in The Lyrical
Нe тудa, в тo гoрe злoe, Pantheon, and five are from the the last
Я нeсусь в мoe былoe, – decade of Fet’s life.
Я нa всe, нa всe инoe The five-liner most used by Fet, and the
Oтпылaл, пoтуx! only one from 1874 on, is “AbAAb” (17
Этoй пeснe чудoтвoрнoй poems), a form used earlier, for example by
Тaк пoкoрeн мир упoрнoй; V. V. Kapnist181 and by Pushkin.182 Fet’s
Пусть жe сeрдцe, пoлнo муки, abaab poems also include the form
Тoржeствуeт чaс рaзлуки, “aBaaB” (two poems) and the correspon-
И кoгдa зaгaснут звуки – ding all-feminine and all-masculine stanzas
Рaзoрвeтся вдруг! (one poem each). The abaab pattern is the
only kind of five-liner used by Pushkin, it
was the form most used by Tiutchev,183 and it is now among the commonest
five-liners in Russian.184 In spite of this, and in spite of its eventual pre-
dominance in Fet’s work, however, it is not especially favored in his early
poems. Fet wrote only one “AbAAb” poem during the 1840s, and every one
of his seven five-liners from before 1847 (this includes one-stanza poems)
shows a somewhat different arrangement of line-ends and a slightly different
meter. Not one of the seven came to rest in his canon. The diversity of Fet’s
early five-liners may be compared with Lermontov’s practice (he seems to
have written only seven five-liners in all, each one different)185 and also with
the relatively weak status of the “AbAAb” pattern in the German tradition of
Fet’s day. “AbAAb” stanzas are found in German verse only beginning
about 1770, and they are not especially common in nineteenth-century Ger-
man poetry, although they were used by among others K. Th. Körner.186 Af-
terwards, the “AbAAb” stanza was to become the commonest twentieth-
century five-liner in German verse, where its modern prominence does in-
deed bespeak a German-Russian connection:187 the key seems to have been
Verse form and language 287

Rainer Maria Rilke’s Stundenbuch (1905), a work rooted in the poet’s Rus-
sian experience of 1899-1900.188
The history of five-liners in Fet’s oeuvre suggests that the poet was not
always secure in his mastery of the form. The earliest five-liner in his canon
is also his first iambic “AbAAb” poem: “Тебе в молчании я простираю
руку…”. It appeared Fet’s 1850 collection (where it was the only five-liner),
was rejected by the editors of his 1856 collection, and was reprinted in the
third volume of Evening Lights (1888). The same 1856 volume from which
“Тебе в молчании я простираю руку…” was excluded nonetheless pre-
sents the iambic-hexameter children of that poem (“О друг, не мучь меня
жестоким приговором!…” and “Вчера, увенчана душистыми цвета-
ми…”) and other AbAAb poems as well: “Еще весны душистой нега …”,
“Пчелы” (“Пропаду от тоски я и лени…”), and “Ласточки пропали…”.
Although Fet wrote five-liners throughout his career, the only important
such poem in his late work is “Ночь и я, мы оба дышим…” (1891).
The reason for the brief flowering of the five-line stanza in Fet’s oeuvre
may lie in a certain incompatibility between five-liners and Fet’s usual prac-
tices. Five-line stanzas can be as symmetrical as any other – an ababa rhyme
scheme, a syntax dividing the lines “2+1+2” – but they are usually asymmet-
ric, in Fet’s work nearly always so. They resemble abab quatrains drawn out
with an extra line,189 not only with respect to the rhyme scheme but also syn-
tactically. The sense that the typical five-line form is somehow drawn-out,
extended beyond the norm, makes for at least the perception of a slow read,
and this perception correlates nicely with the mostly sober thematics of Fet’s
five-liners: his little repertory of them includes such lugubrious titles as
“Epitaph” (in The Lyrical Pantheon) and “To Death” (“Когда измучен
жаждой счастья…”, 1856-57) – a thematics consistent with Pushkin’s
“Прощание” and most of Körner’s lyrics. The somber thematics correlate
also with the limited metrical repertory of Fet’s five-line stanzas – mostly
iambic tetrameter, with forays into longer lines (rarely shorter ones) and
only occasionally into trochees or ternary meters. “Ночь и я, мы оба
дышим…” (1891) is the unique trochaic five-liner among Fet’s late poetry,
and it belongs, I would suggest, less to the tradition of romance typical of
trochaic tetrameter than to the tradition of songs of the spirit.
Нoчь и я, мы oбa дышим,
Цвeтoм липы вoздуx пьян,
И, бeзмoлвныe, мы слышим,
Чтo, струeй свoeй кoлышим,
Нaпeвaeт нaм фoнтaн.
– Я, и крoвь, и мысль, и тeлo –
Мы пoслушныe рaбы:
Дo извeстнoгo прeдeлa
288 Chapter Three

Всe вoзнoсимся мы смeлo

Пoд дaвлeниeм судьбы.
Мысль нeсeтся, сeрдцe бьeтся,
Мглe мeрцaньeм нe пoмoчь;
К сeрдцу крoвь oпять вeрнeтся,
В вoдoeм мoй луч прoльeтся,
И зaря пoтушит нoчь.
In the nineteenth century, German AbAAb trochaic tetrameter came to be
associated with the thematics of nature and night, and we should also note
Eichendorff’s “Gebet”, a trochaic-tetrameter poem in abaab stanzas.190 As
for Russian, there were a few psalm renditions in five-line trochaic stanzas,
for example the one by Trediakovskii beginning “О! не ярости во время,
Господи, мя обличи; Зол же всех за тяжко бремя И за многое тех племя
Не во гневе к казни повлачи”.191
In spite of their asymmetry of rhyme and, often, syntax, the semantics
and overall shape of AbAAb poems tend rather to promote global symmetry
of form, and strong closure. Often, the central, third, line of one of the stan-
zas of an AbAAb poem is semantically privileged. In “Ночь и я, мы оба
дышим…”, the middle line of the middle stanza points to the midpoint of a
trajectory or cycle. Setting off the middle stanza need not, of course, deprive
the poem of its final point, and the last stanza of “Ночь и я, мы оба
дышим…” illustrates that. The last line of the poem is remarkably vivid and
even oxymoronic: Fet’s poems are, not entirely correctly, said to end on
dawn, not night, but how can night – as distinct from its stars – be extin-
guished? It also is the deferred key to understanding, in particular, the line it
rhymes with.192
Special focus on the third line of an AbAAb stanza is not especially
characteristic of mid-poem stanzas. It occurs at least as often in initial or
final stanzas and can take the form of an especially vivid image, as in this
opening stanza:
O друг, нe мучь мeня жeстoким пригoвoрoм!
Я oскoрбить тeбя минувшим нe xoчу.
Oнo плeнитeльным прoмчaлoсь мeтeoрoм...
С твoим я встрeтиться рoбeл и жaждaл взoрoм
И приxoдил мoлчaть. Я и тeпeрь мoлчу.
or of an emotional outburst (as in the last stanza of “Пчелы”):
Нeт, пoстoй жe! С тoскoю мoeю
Здeсь рaсстaнусь. Чeрeмуxa спит.
Ax, oпять эти пчeлы пoд нeю!
И никaк я пoнять нe умeю,
Нa цвeтax ли, в ушax ли звeнит.
Verse form and language 289

By the 1850s, Fet’s AbAAb poems are mostly in three stanzas, and although
most of the later poems are shorter, they are also much slighter works. Fet’s
five-liners regularly exploit ring-structure lexical repetitions marking the
outer stanzas, while a first-person perception may be buried deep inside: in a
fifteen-line text the eighth or ninth line may begin “Вижу” (“Утес”, 1842)
or “Я вижу” (“О друг, не мучь меня жестоким приговором …”, 1855) or
“Я видел” (“Вчера, увенчана душистыми цветами…”, 1855). This device
(a special case of privileging the middle line of the mid-poem stanza) is
commoner in early poems than in later ones.
The young Fet also uses meter as an “enclosing” device. We may recall
that several poems in The Lyrical Нe плaчь, мoя душa: вeдь сeрдцу нe лeгкo
Pantheon mix iambic hexameter Смoтрeть, кaк бoрeшься ты с лютoю тoскoю!
and pentameter, and in one Утeшься, милaя: xoть eду дaлeкo,
poem, “Греция”, the pentameter Нo скoрo вoзврaщусь нeждaннoю пoрoю
lines encircle the hexameter И снoвa пoд руку пoйду гулять с тoбoю.
lines. A similar pattern of enclo- В твoи глaзa с улыбкoй пoгляжу,
sure marks the central of the Вкруг стaнa oбoвью трeпeщущиe руки
three stanzas in the otherwise И всe, и всe тeбe пoдрoбнo рaсскaжу
iambic-hexameter five-liner po- Прo дни вeсeлия, прo дни нeснoснoй муки,
em “Не плачь, моя душа! Ведь Прo злую грусть тoмитeльнoй рaзлуки,
сердцу не легко…”, also pub-
Прo сны, чтo снились мнe oт милoй дaлeкo.
lished in The Lyrical Pantheon. Прoщaй – и, укрeпясь смeющeйся мeчтoю,
The mixing of iambic hexa- Нe плaчь, мoя душa: вeдь сeрдцу нe лeгкo
meter and pentameter in other Смoтрeть, кaк бoрeшься ты с лютoю тoскoю,
poems is rhythmically or syntac- Склoнясь нa лoкoтoк пeчaльнoй гoлoвoю!
tically motived, but here the
switch to iambic pentameter serves only to demarcate the emotionally in-
tense inner stanza.
Sometimes, especially in early Fet, the play of symmetry and asymmetry
seems to have no goal except making the texture of a poem more interesting.
The 1850s, however, also saw the appearance of texts in which the tension
inherent in an asymmetric rhyme pattern collaborates with the poem’s the-
matics. Such poems include “Еще весны душистой нега …” (1854),
“Вчера, увенчана душистыми цветами …” (1855), and, a few years later,
“На корабле” (“Летим! Туманною чертою …”, 1857). All these poems
are three-stanza works, in the elegant style Fet cultivated in the 1850s, and
all of them have elements of strong, annular closure. Yet all of them also are
semantically “back-loaded”, and the third stanza gains special force in lead-
ing the reader into an unexpectedly different world from that of the previous
two. In each of the three poems, the five-line stanza is used at once to delay
a final point and to draw the reader onward until it is reached. The fact that
the pair-rhyme “extension” of the quatrain comes later rather than earlier,
290 Chapter Three

but is nonetheless enclosed within the embrace of the “b” lines, corresponds
perfectly to the shape of the poem overall. Fet’s usage in the 1850s is well
illustrated in his poem “На корабле”.
The poem is markedly annular. The text is divided into three stanzas, and
its beginning and end are lexically reinforced in the repetition of “земля”
and of “туманною чертою ~ в тумане”. The “стихия чуждая” of the first
stanza evidently refers to water,193 but the “воздушн[ый] океан” of the third
stanza does not, and the pair of crossed references reaches over the poem
from start to finish. Again, if the flight of the opening “летим” is metaphori-
cal because the flight is not in the air but over the water, the closural
“помчусь” is invested with an aerial specificity not proper to it. And if mid-
nineteenth-century readers were modern-scientific enough to face with
equanimity the notion that it is not literally the earth, in the first stanza, that
“бежит”, all the more must we recognize in the last stanza that only for true
believers is it the “земля” that will “исчезать”. As in earlier poems, the an-
nularity of “На корабле” is echoed even in the stunning climactic stanza: in
the generally overwhelming world that the soul imagines, it is the image of
me, myself, hastening in the aerial ocean, that evokes the very peak of our
emotional involvement, it is the focal point from which I establish that it is
indeed I that lose sight of the earth – and that it is indeed my whole known
world that I am losing sight of. This intensity is felt in the poem overall. The
physical world – that alien element – shakes and so (crossing the first stan-
zaic boundary) does the heart. We have moved, from one stanza to the next,
from the seen (“вскипая белою грядою”) outer world to the inner, unseen
world. But the heart, though unseen, is a real organ, located in a real, if emo-
tional, breast. It is within, but it is physical, it is capable of shaking as any-
Нa кoрaблe
thing else in the world might be, even if its
vicissitudes are felt by me alone. The real
Лeтим! Тумaннoю чeртoю heart of the poem, though, is not there, but
Зeмля oт глaз мoиx бeжит. elsewhere, exactly where a reader of Fet’s
Пoд нeпривычнoю стoпoю, earlier five-liners expects it: in line eight.
Вскипaя бeлoю грядoю,
Wrapped up inside all the closure the poet
Стиxия чуждaя дрoжит.
can provide, we read our way down into a
Дрoжит и сeрдцe, грудь зaнылa; center that cannot be contained: the soul has
Нaпрaснo мoря дaль свeтлa, already entered into that circle to which an
Душa в тoт круг ужe вступилa, unseen force has born it unwilling away,
Кудa нeвидимaя силa
and we ourselves can only guess at what
Ee нeвoлeй унeслa.
compels it (“невидимая сила”) and at its
Eй будтo чудится зaрaнe response (“ей будто чудится заране”).
Тoт дeнь, кoгдa бeз кoрaбля That bearing away into that other circle is
Пoмчусь в вoздушнoм oкeaнe what we are made to feel as we are pro-
И будeт исчeзaть в тумaнe pelled from one line to the next, rhyme
Зa мнoй рoдимaя зeмля.
Verse form and language 291

scheme suspended and syntax first enjambed and then relentlessly moving
forward, from line three to line four, from line four to line five, and then for
a look back from the shaking heart of stanza two to the shaking element of
stanza one. Boundaries just cannot hold us anymore, horizons are comfort-
less: “Напрасно моря даль светла”. The five-line stanza has become an
instrument of psychology and metaphysics.
It is quatrains that are far and away the commonest stanzas in Fet’s po-
etry. Quatrains are usually built with two rhymes, and there are three ways
to combine them: abab (alternating rhyme), abba (enclosing rhyme), and
aabb (pair rhyme). Not only is alternating rhyme the commonest pattern, but
its appearance is also limited nearly entirely to stanzas of exactly four lines.
Longer alternating patterns, rare in most poets’ work, occur in only three
poems by Fet, each one consisting of a single stanza. The earliest example,
written about 1856, is the mysterious six-liner “Снился берег мне
скалистый …”. Of the two eight-liners, the first is a humorous occasional
poem (“Наш шеф – владыка полусвета …”, 1874), and the second is this
well-known poem, from 1883:

Тoлькo в мирe и eсть, чтo тeнистый

Дрeмлющиx клeнoв шaтeр.
Тoлькo в мирe и eсть, чтo лучистый
Дeтски зaдумчивый взoр.
Тoлькo в мирe и eсть, чтo душистый
Милoй гoлoвки убoр.
Тoлькo в мирe и eсть этoт чистый
Влeвo бeгущий прoбoр.

If abab is the pattern most frequent in Fet’s quatrains, it is pair-rhyme

(aabb…) that is least typically associated with four-line stanzas. In contrast
to his 25 four-line poems in alternating rhymes, Fet never wrote a single
four-line aabb poem: his shortest pair-rhymed poem has six lines, and 34 of
his 72 pair-rhymed poems are in multiples of six lines. Forty-six are in mul-
tiples of four, but only sixteen are in graphically demarcated quatrains.194
Fet uses pair-rhyme quatrains in translations during the 1840s and 1850s,
but his first original poem among the sixteen texts in demarcated quatrains
was written in the mid-1850s: “Певице” (“Уноси мое сердце в звенящую
даль...”). In spite of Fet’s frequent use of anisometric forms, the anisometric
(An4/3) stanza of “Певице” makes it unique among Fet’s pair-rhymed quat-
rains. All fourteen remaining pair-rhyme quatrains date to the period from
1878 to 1892.
It is at first blush obvious why aabb quatrains are relatively infrequent:
the rhyme pattern tends to split quatrains in two, creating a pair of distichs.
At second blush, the naturalness of avoiding pair-rhyme quatrains would
292 Chapter Three

seem to founder on the shoals of reality: German poetry finds pair-rhyme

quatrains congenial, and when made up entirely of iambic-tetrameter mascu-
line-clausula lines, these are the most frequent quatrains in German po-
etry.195 Fet’s pair-rhyme quatrains are, indeed, almost all in masculine lines,
but rarely iambic. Instead, his preference is for dactylic tetrameter (five po-
ems) and anapests (never amphibrachs). Fet pair-rhymes mainly long lines:
both dactylic and anapestic pentameter are found here, and the only iambic
lines are pentameter and hexameter. The feminine-clausula relative of the
most popular German form may perhaps also be relevant to the late appear-
ance of pair-rhyme quatrains in Fet’s work: it is associated with the themat-
ics of old age and the grave,196 and may perhaps, in spite of the refractory
clausula, lie somewhere among the network of formal associations evoked,
for example, by Fet’s last pair-rhyme quatrains, in “Ночь лазурная смотрит
на скошенный луг”. It was written in June 1892, only months before the
poet’s death.
Нoчь лaзурнaя смoтрит нa скoшeнный луг.
Зaпax рoз пoд бaлкoнoм и сeнa вoкруг;
Нo зaтo ль, чтo oтрaды нe жду впeрeди, –
Блaгoдaрнoсти нeт в истoмлeннoй груди.
Всe дaлeкий, дaвнишний мнe чудится сaд, –
Тaм и звeзды крупнeй, и сильнeй aрoмaт,
И нoчныx блaгoвoний живaя вoлнa
Тaм дoxoдит дo сeрдцa, истoмы пoлнa.
Тoчнo в нeжнoм дыxaньи трaвы и цвeтoв
С aрoмaтoм знaкoмым дoнoсится зoв,
И кaк будтo вoт-вoт ктo-тo милый oпять
O вoстoргe свидaнья гoтoв прoшeптaть.

It has been said that poets counter the distintegrative tendency of pair-rhyme
quatrains by avoiding syntactic breaks that might reinforce it. Fet does noth-
ing of the sort. On the contrary, his pair-rhyme quatrains often do seem to
split into distichs. This can be clearly seen in “Нoчь лaзурнaя смoтрит нa
скoшeнный луг…”, and even more famously in his 1878 poem “Alter ego”.
Alter ego
Кaк лилeя глядится в нaгoрный ручeй,
Ты стoялa нaд пeрвoю пeснeй мoeй,
И былa ли при этoм пoбeдa, и чья, –
У ручья ль oт цвeткa, у цвeткa ль oт ручья?
Ты душoю млaдeнчeскoй всe пoнялa,
Чтo мнe выскaзaть тaйнaя силa дaлa,
И xoть жизнь бeз тeбя суждeнo мнe влaчить,
Нo мы вмeстe с тoбoй, нaс нeльзя рaзлучить.
Тa трaвa, чтo вдaли нa мoгилe твoeй,
Verse form and language 293

Здeсь нa сeрдцe, чeм стaрe oнo, тeм свeжeй,

И я знaю, взглянувши нa звeзды пoрoй,
Чтo взирaли нa ниx мы кaк бoги с тoбoй.
У любви eсть слoвa, тe слoвa нe умрут.
Нaс с тoбoй oжидaeт oсoбeнный суд;
Oн сумeeт нaс срaзу в тoлпe рaзличить,
И мы вмeстe придeм, нaс нeльзя рaзлучить!
The aabb pattern works especially well in “Alter ego”, of course, because it
mimics the pairings expressed in the textual thematics: the inseparable pairs
of the lily and her reflection, the long-ago figure of the addressee and the
speaker’s first “song”, and, finally, the speaker himself together with his
addressee, faced with the “special judgment” of eternity. The bundling of
“two by two” lines into quatrains corresponds also to the larger formal struc-
ture of the doubled pair of stanzas, each pair ending with the same hemi-
stich, while the quadruplet of stanzas matches the tetrameter lines. To be
sure, the meter of the line is a ternary one, but it is anapestic, the kind of ter-
nary meter most assimilable, in Fet’s usage, to binarism. Early anapestic
rhythms tended toward a heavy line onset, and in his non-stanzaic poem “На
смерть Бражникова” (1845):
Нa смeрть Брaжникoвa
Взвoд, впeрeд, спрaвa пo три, нe плaчь!
Мaрш мoгильный игрaй, штaб-трубaч!
Слoвнo яснaя тучкa зaрeй,
Ты пoгaснул, сoбрaт мoлoдoй!
Кaк пeчaль нaм утeшить свoю,
Чтo ты с нaми нe будeшь в стрoю?
Грeбeнь кaски нa грoбe вeдь нaш,
Гдe с нoжнaми скрeстился пaлaш.
Лишь тeбя нaм с пути нe вeрнуть!
Нe вздoxнeт мoлoдeцкaя грудь,
И рукa, цeпeнeя кaк лeд,
Нa прoщaньe ничьeй нe пoжмeт.
Нo, бeзмoлвный крaсaвeц, в грoбу
Ты дрoжaщую слышишь трубу,
И тeбe и в зeмлe нe зaбыть,
Кaк тeбя мы привыкли любить.
Взвoд, впeрeд, спрaвa пo три, нe плaчь!
Мaрш мoгильный игрaй, штaб-трубaч!
Fet manages to make masculine pair-rhymed anapestic lines evoke some-
thing as unambiguously binary as a march, the ternary meter effectively
slowing the procession and joining with the repetitive trill of the [r] to pro-
duce something like the flourish of the drums heard at the military funeral
294 Chapter Three

for which Fet says that the poem was written.197 “Alter ego” takes the sol-
emn procession beyond the moment of death, beyond the funeral and its
memorialization of loss, to reunification for eternity.
I have suggested that the rise of aabb stanzas in later Fet should be seen
in the context of Fet’s knowledge of German poetry. More generally, he had
throughout his life a strong affinity for unrhymed and partly-rhymed distichs
of non-Russian origin, and the tendency of pair-rhyme to split into distichs
can be viewed, among other ways, as a kind of naturalization of these exotic
forms. I refer most obviously to Fet’s beloved elegiac distich, but also his
translations of G. F. Daumer’s renditions of Persian ghasels (in form aa ba
ca … na), which Fet mistakenly believed were translations of poems by
Hafis. If we include elegiac distich (which except for translations is found
mostly in early Fet) and ghasels (which date from 1859 to 1863), then we
see that Fet wrote poems in distichs throughout his career, although he
turned to rhymed distichs fairly late. We have also noted a tendency in Fet’s
poetry to use anisometric metrical forms and logaoedic rhythms that tend to
organize his poems into pairs of lines. His attraction to distichs is of some
interest in view of the generally small size of his poems, which became even
smaller as time went on. Nearly all Fet’s little poems are made up of propor-
tionately little stanzas, that is, of quatrains, which themselves eventually
tend to disintegrate.
Fet’s oeuvre also includes twenty-one texts based on the general type
abba, including three poems consisting of only one stanza. Whereas aabb
quatrains come into their own only in Fet’s later work, ten of the abba po-
ems – nearly half – had been written by the end of 1847. Five are in The
Lyrical Pantheon. Obviously, the abba pattern is more specifically a quat-
rain form than abab or aabb, since unlike the other two it cannot be added to
at the end, to create a stanza of six lines with the same pattern. The abba
pattern is thus inherently more tightly closed than are the other quatrains,
and this is something Fet’s usage exploits: his abba stanzas have a special
affinity for ring structure.198 For example, an opening line or lines of an
abba poem may be repeated at the end either of the poem (“Мы нравимся
уездам и столицам…”) or of the stanza (“Свеж и душист твой
роскошный венок…”). The abba form is used in poems representing
songs-within-songs (“Утро в степи”) or quoted speech in the inner stanzas
(“В обширном саду, испещренном…”). The outer lines of the stanzas may
be rhythmically heavier than the inner lines (“Свежеет ветер, меркнет
ночь…”). Both the first and last poems in The Lyrical Pantheon are in abba
stanzas. Curiously, the divisions between abba stanzas are not demarcated in
the two poems framing The Lyrical Pantheon. The divisions between abba
stanzas are otherwise nearly always graphically marked in all his books,
even in the edition of 1850, in which most other stanzas are not graphically
Verse form and language 295

divided. In the edition of 1856, the abba ring-structure poem “Свеж и

душист твой роскошный венок” closes the “Мелодии” section, noted in
that collection for its especially marked annularity, while one of his few late
abba poems appears as the introduction to his second volume of Evening
Lights. Since abba poems thus tend to be associated with ring structures, and
since Fet’s tendency to write three-stanza poems has been connected with
his ring-structure compositional technique, it is unexpected that only five of
the abba poems consist of three stanzas, compared with seven in two stanzas
and five in four stanzas. This is particularly striking, since three-stanza po-
ems far outnumber any other kind of poem in Fet’s work. Corresponding to
this unexpectedly negative correlation is another observation: the only late
three-stanza abba poem in Fet’s work is the retrospective and strongly clo-
sural poem that he wrote in celebration of his golden jubilee (“На
пятидесятилетие Музы” [“Нас отпевают. В этот день …”], 1888), while
three of the seven two-stanza abba poems date to the 1880s, when two-
stanza poems had become generally more characteristic of Fet’s writing than
they had been earlier – and abba poems rarer. We know both that Fet’s po-
ems became shorter over time and that one of his habits in his later work
was to truncate poems so as to create an effect of a text broken off, left
open.199 His use of the “closural” abba stanza in his late two-stanza poems
may be one of the ways in which he reinforced this type of composition: a
ring form is established, hinted, but then not closed. The appearance of the
eight-line “Не смейся, не дивися мне…” as the introduction to the second
volume of Evening Lights in this context acquires special poignancy: the
abba shape of the stanza alludes to the early ring forms characteristic of the
young Fet, while the poem’s brevity corresponds to and anticipates the la-
conism, and the thematics of silence, that mark his senescence.
Up to this point, we have been describing Fet’s stanzas largely in terms
of structures by which types of stanzas are defined: number of lines, their
meter, and the arrangement in them of line-ends and rhymes. Yet this sort of
analysis only tells us about general classes of stanzaic forms, the structure of
which can be emphasized or attenuated in many ways: through rhythmic
variation of the poem’s metrical scheme, through semantic and syntactic
cues of all sorts, and through graphic representation of the boundaries be-
tween stanzas.200 In the best case, of course, stanzaic structures are not only
articulated in all these different ways but also motivated by the same textual
semantics as motivates each of these other formal elements. Stanzaic struc-
tures are abstractions, and their vitality and grace depend not only on their
ingenious conception but also on their expressiveness and the details of their
execution.
We have noticed that Fet sometimes frames stanzas rhythmically,201 oc-
casionally supporting a “ring” pattern found on other levels in the poem.
296 Chapter Three

This is a rather old-fashioned sort of rhythmic pattern, since nineteenth-

century stanzas tend to start with a heavy metrical rhythm, and then get
lighter.202 The general pattern, however, competes with other rhythmic ten-
dencies. For example, lines tend to be heavily stressed when they occur
combined with lines of other lengths or meters, and Fet’s anisometric stan-
zas are often heavy from beginning to end. Rhythm is also known to change
depending on thematics, on syntax (which may of course be correlated with
thematics as well as with meter), and on rhyme patterning. And of course a
poet’s usage may change across time. In Fet’s poetry, the tendency for a
stanza to get gradually lighter is borne out mainly in the context of specific
meters, for example amphibrachic trimeter and iambic tetrameter.203 Al-
though Fet’s iambic hexameter follows the general tendency, the extent to
which this is true, and the precise rhythmic shape of a stanza, varies accord-
ing to other criteria. Thus, for example, the overall stressing of strong posi-
tions is generally stable in Fet’s Im6 lines, but there is some tendency for
lines to be more fully stressed in stanzaic contexts that are a little less wide-
spread, and where, consequently, it may be natural to demarcate the metrical
pattern more fully. His abab quatrains show an overall stressing of only 72%
of all strong positions, compared with a general proportion of 77%. Iambic
hexameter is particularly strongly associated with pair rhyme, whether stan-
zaic or not, and pair-rhyme iambic-hexameter stressing is a mere 70%.
Moreover, pair-rhyme iambic-hexameter rhythm is internally differentiated:
odd-number lines start heavier but the third foot is much lighter than in
even-number lines. The first line of the distich is thus markedly asymmetric,
but the second line is not. The overall stressing of the two lines is about the
same. Finally, if we compare abab quatrains, in poems of two to four stan-
zas, we find that the only stanzas that really move from “heavy to light”
across the stanza are the outer stanzas of three-stanza poems and the last
stanza of poems in four stanzas. The sixteen two-stanza poems show little
consistent stanzaic patterning. From these limited statistics it would appear
that Fet exploits at least some aspects of the rhythmic patterning of stanzas
not to modulate the rhythm of the stanza as such but rather to shape the en-
tire poem.204
Stanzas not only articulate the form of a poem but also express its expe-
riential trajectory: a poem of two stanzas should correspond to “a bipartite
experience”,205 and one in three stanzas – to an experience that is somehow
ternary. We have already noticed that different stanzaic forms at different
times are associated with poems of different lengths, and that the rhythm of
iambic hexameter in a three-stanza poem differs from that in a poem of two
stanzas or four. Fet was always inclined to use odd numbers of stanzas, the
great bulk of his work was written in poems of two, three, or four stanzas,
Verse form and language 297

and his favorite number of stanzas was always three. Yet his usage changed
considerably across time, and some aspects of this are shown in Chart 1.206
The chart shows only the canon of Fet’s shorter poems (“стихотворе-
ния”), since I wanted to avoid including poems whose stanza shape might
either have been borrowed (in translations) or not definitively established
(for texts unpublished in Fet’s lifetime). Including non-canonical works,
especially Fet’s occasional poems, would have substantially increased the
number of both longer-than-average and shorter-than-average texts, but the
overall tendencies would be similar. 207

Chart 1. Chronological change in the number of stanzas per poem in Fet’s canonical
shorter poems.

100%
0.05
0.16
90%
0.27 0.28 0.15
80%

70% 0.29
0.19
60% 0.25

50%
0.53
40%
0.36 0.40
30%
0.41
20%
0.28
10% 0.18 0.16
0.06
0%
1840-1847 1848-1859 1860-1883 1884-1892

2 stanzas 3 stanzas 4 stanzas 5 or more stanzas

298 Chapter Three

We can see from Chart 1 that Fet’s early usage favored three-stanza
forms, but other stanza lengths were well represented, and the three-stanza
form is not so clearly dominant as it later became. Because non-canonical
poems have been excluded, The Lyrical Pantheon is nearly unrepresented,
but its inclusion would make the diversity of Fet’s earliest work even more
obvious. Three-stanza poems are more typical of the edition of 1850 than of
The Lyrical Pantheon. Medium-length poems predominate in the 1850s:
together, 3- and 4-stanza poems have come to account for about two thirds
of his canon, as they will for the rest of Fet’s career. In addition, the number
of 2-stanza poems has shrunk. In the third period distinguished in the chart,
Fet’s poems come to be written in a dramatically smaller number of stanzas.
For the first time, the number of poems with more than four stanzas begins
to shrink and the number of two-stanza poems – to expand.
In the last period distinguished in the chart, there is sharp reduction in the
number of “longer shorter” poems, of more than three stanzas. The number
of three-stanza poems expands at the expense of longer ones, while 28% of
all his poems are in two stanzas. Since, in the same period, Fet was even
more inclined to write in quatrains than earlier, it turns out that over a quar-
ter of all his late poems were only eight lines long, and of such short poems,
for the first time a sizeable proportion is in aabb stanzas. Our study of iam-
bic hexameter rhythm, as well as what we know about the nature of aabb
stanzas, suggests that the role of the stanza as an organizer of Fet’s late po-
etry is rather limited. On the contrary, as we shall see especially when we
discuss certain aspects of Fet’s syntax, eight-line poems tend to be demar-
cated by distichs. The rise of two-stanza poems in Fet’s late work is a natu-
ral development of his practice both in the immediately preceding period
and in his earliest writing.
Turgenev’s “amputation” of stanzas for the 1856 edition of Fet’s poetry
has been much discussed, but, during the time when his influence was great-
est, Fet had little recourse to two-stanza poems. For all of his famous cut-
ting, Turgenev’s editorship resulted in fewer very short texts. From a non-
formal perspective, this is not so strange: what Turgenev was snipping was
Fet’s psychologism, its lack of rotund articulation of poetic ideas. The late
poems in two stanzas could hardly have been pruned back, since there was
little to prune, but their psychologism, instead of being confined to closure,
now suffuses whole poems and transmogrifies their imagery into symbol-
ism.
The last aspect of stanzaic structure that we shall deal with is one little
discussed with respect to nineteenth-century Russian poetry: the graphic dis-
position of the text. It may seem trivial, and certainly, for Fet’s poetry as for
that of his literary colleagues, few aspects of a poem’s form are more obvi-
ous than how it is set on a printed page. In modern scholarly editions of Fet,
Verse form and language 299

stanzas are generally separated by white Ich singe wie ein Vogel singt
space, and the presence or absence of Der in den Zweigen wohnet
white space provides little information Göthe
beyond the narrowly versificational:
elegiac distich, for example, is never
separated by white space (although it is Нaд мoрeм спит кoсмaтый бoр;
usually demarcated by indents), quat- Тaм чaстo слушaл я
rains other than pair-rhymed ones nearly Прибрeжныx вoлн мятeжный спoр
И пeсни сoлoвья.
always are, and so on.208 In editions
published during Fet’s lifetime, the use *
of white space is not like that, and it is Бывaлo тaм внизу шумят
different in different books. Вeтрилa кoрaблeй,
The Lyrical Pantheon defends its Нa вeтрe снaсти шeлeстят
versificational boundaries with special И гoрдый цaрь зыбeй
energy: stanza breaks (or breaks be- Нeсeтся; – с пaлубы крутoй
tween irregular strophoids) are often Дaлeкo пeснь звучит.
identified with asterisks, while, if a A сoлoвeй вo тьмe лeснoй
poem ends in mid-page or so, pictures Нeслышимый грустит.
of swans, gargoyles, and the like fill it
*
up and mark the poem’s end. To get the
point across even more clearly, each
new graphically demarcated stanza begins with a line indent, like a prose
paragraph.209 As is demonstrated by the layout of “Не плачь, моя душа!
ведь сердцу не легко …” (page 289), even enjambement across a stanzaic
boundary is not always enough to keep the printed lines of different stanzas
together. The nine poems lacking graphic demarcation of stanzas are mostly
unusual in some other way as well.210 An interesting example of the usage
represented in The Lyrical Pantheon is “Над морем спит косматый
бор…”, which is often mentioned in the literature on Fet, because of its epi-
graph, which is taken (slightly misquoted) from Goethe’s “Der Sänger”. The
poem alternates iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines, in three abab quatrains.
The second and third quatrains are enjambed (a syntactic usage characteris-
tic of Fet only in his early poems). In the volume of 1850, alternating line-
length in a poem practically guarantees that its quatrains will not be graphi-
cally demarcated, and syntactic enjambement would completely exclude
such divisions. In 1840, however, we have a different choice: the enjambed
stanzas of “Над морем спит косматый бор...” are not graphically sepa-
rated, while the first two stanzas, not enjambed, are demarcated graphically,
with space and an asterisk. The graphics follow the syntax, which is differ-
ent at each of the two stanza boundaries.
Such a resolution of the issue is I believe unique in Fet’s practice, but it
is well motivated not only syntactically but, one might say, contextually. The
300 Chapter Three

Lyrical Pantheon contains several poems comprised not of regularly re-

peated stanzas but rather of irregular strophoids. “Над морем спит
косматый бор…” produces a similar visual impression even though the
stanzas as such are perfectly regular. Since Fet’s irregular strophoids imitate
mainly Goethean free verse, and since “Над морем спит косматый бор…”
has a Goethean epigraph, the possibility arises of Fet’s having chosen the
unusual graphic form not only for syntactic reasons (which, after all, permit-
ted a different resolution) but also as another way of alluding to his
Goethean model. It also suggests that Fet’s interest in verse experimentation
had a visual component – something not really expected in its day, but con-
sonant with Fet’s own recollection of his unusual visual sense, with the ex-
tent to which his poems are organized by visual impressions, and with his
interest in free verse. The poem is shown here in its original layout (although
I omit some details of the original orthography). Its Goethean character is
semantically not really pronounced: that Fet likens his poetry to the sponta-
neous outpouring of the bird in the branches is all very well, but the image
of the hidden and unheard singer-poet has little to do with Goethe’s poetics.
It predicts an important strand in Fet’s.
Of the four poems reproduced in 1850 from The Lyrical Pantheon, two
preserve the original graphic divisions (white space, no stars or swans), one
poem, “Греция”, lacks them in both 1840 and 1850, and one poem,
“Водопад”, loses them in 1850, only to regain them when Fet had died. As
for the poems that were new in the edition of 1850, white space appears far
more sparingly than in the 1840 volume. The most consistent breaks are in
the six sonnets (all of them presented as “4+4+6” lines), as well as in some
translated poems,211 where the use of space may (or may not) correspond to
the form in which the source poem was known to Fet. Poems without regular
stanzaic structure may or may not show internal graphic divisions: “Когда
петух…” does, but not the poems of “Вечера и ночи” or “Нептуну”. In
“Когда петух…” the white spaces correspond to temporal or psychological
breaks: the poet first is working on a poem, then is interrupted when he
hears his friend stirring in his sleep (“Чу! слышу вздох”), and finally, real-
izing the sleep is feigned, addresses him directly (“Послушай, что ныне / Я
слышал ночью”). As is generally true in Fet’s work, however, most of the
1850 poems are in quatrains, and quatrains are graphically demarcated only
in certain kinds of poems, namely those that seem to be related one way or
another to song. If in The Lyrical Pantheon it was the absence of stanzaic
demarcation that was special, in the 1850 volume it was the other way
around.
The graphic disposition of the poems in the 1850 edition generally weak-
ens the perceptibility of stanzaic organization. Since the great majority of
Fet’s poems are relatively short, the choice had the advantage of making the
Verse form and language 301

shape of the poem more coherent: white space means the end of something,
not a temporary respite. Avoiding visual breaks contributed to the experien-
tial coherence of Fet’s poems for his early readers. The special treatment of
“songs” is motivated by their association with performance and therefore
with extension in time. Another possible contributing factor to the graphic
form of the 1850 edition may have been the Goethe lyrics that, apparently,
inspired Grigor’ev’s division of the book into groupings. Although Goethe’s
lyrics were published with graphically demarcated stanzas, the demarcations
were meaningful and far from the nearly automatic insertion of white space
characteristic of The Lyrical Pantheon and to which Soviet publication prac-
tice, in its different and more thoroughgoing way, has inured Fet’s modern
readers. A poem’s rhyme pattern falling into quatrains in no way implies, in
Goethe’s usage, that the poem is divided visually into four-line stanzas.
Fet’s practice in demarcating stanzas in The Lyrical Pantheon was con-
sistent with other aspects of its composition and with his exploitation of vis-
ual markers to make boundaries clear. Thus, his punctuation in The Lyrical
Pantheon is more emphatic than in later publications. We have already seen
this in connection with his poem “Водопад” (page 119), which was pub-
lished in 1840 and again, but with different punctuation, in 1850. In addi-
tion, The Lyrical Pantheon begins with a graphically distinctive dedicatory
poem and ends in a poem with an epigraph (from Hugo) “Amis! un dernier
mot!”. Evidently, the young poet liked to emphasize his boundaries, and he
exploited graphics to help him out. By the time of the 1850 edition, he ap-
parently no longer wanted to announce “The End” every time he got to the
last word in a stanza, and he, or his editors, began to use white space in a
more meaningful way.
In the 1850 edition of Fet’s poetry, white space is typically used in song
poems to demarcate an inner, second, quatrain from the outer first and third
quatrain of a three-quatrain poem. The inner stanza in these texts often dif-
fers from the outer ones in semantics or rhythmic properties. This is some-
times more evident in the original versions of the poems than in later ones,
for example in the rejected middle stanza of “Тихая, звездная ночь…”
(page 226). The 1856 edition of Fet’s poems strengthens the association be-
tween song and the graphic demarcation of stanzas, but only within the
group of poems that in both collections is called “Мелодии”.
The eighteen “Мелодии” in the 1856 edition were selected from among
the thirty-five poems of the corresponding group in the edition of 1850. Six
of the eighteen are broken into graphically defined stanzas, an innovation in
three of the poems. One poem, “Недвижные очи, безумные очи …” is
written not in quatrains but in two stanzas of six lines. A line had been miss-
ing in both preceding publications of the poem (printed without space be-
tween the stanzas), and the reason for creating a graphic break, as well as
302 Chapter Three

adding indentation for the rhyming third and sixth lines of each stanza, may
have been to make the form easier to recognize. The musically allusive
“Nocturno” (so spelled) consists of four quatrains, and had been written with
space between the stanzas even in the 1850 edition. The four other poems
that are graphically subdivided into stanzas in 1856 are all twelve-line,
three-quatrain texts with a closural ring or refrain. Two of them, “Не отходи
от меня… ” and “Тихая, звездная ночь …” are the first two poems in the
1856 section of “Мелодии”, while the poems that opened the 1850 “Мело-
дии” have been eliminated. The 1856 group also closes with a ring-structure
poem, “Свеж и душист твой роскошный венок …” – again, a 12-line
poem divided visually into three stanzas. All three of the ring-structure po-
ems used at the opening and close of the 1856 group had already become
song lyrics, while the opening and closural poems that were eliminated had
not.212 The editors of the 1856 volume thus gave a distinctive shape and ori-
entation to the “Мелодии” group. Song forms were evoked with clearly
marked quatrains, as well as through the prominent inclusion of texts that
had actually been set to music. At the same time, the group took on the
closed form of some of the texts comprising it. Perceiving the shape is made
easier by the editors’ having reduced the size of the group, somewhat as the
small size of Fet’s poems sharpens their form. It is not that the 1856 edition
contained no new poems by Fet that could have fit into a group called
“Мелодии”. Rather, the “Мелодии” were left as a selection from among
Fet’s older poems – most of them were written and first published by 1844,
when Fet was still a student – while poems that might have been called
“Мелодии” but that Fet had written after the 1850 volume appeared were
put at the end, under “Разные стихотворения”. It has been objected that
Fet’s 1856 editors weakened the grouping originally conceived by Grigor’ev
for the 1850 edition – “Мелодии”-like poems now occur both as
“Мелодии” and elsewhere,213 – but the criticism is not entirely fair: the
1856 “Мелодии” were all poems that had been in that group in 1850, a
number of them would have in the meantime become known to readers ei-
ther as poems or as songs, and the grouping thus acquired a reminiscential
value that gave it added coherence. It may be noted that Turgenev’s editorial
practice in adding new “Мелодии”-like poems not to the section of that
name but to a section of “Разные стихотворения” was not peculiar to him.
It was essentially what Goethe did when he re-organized the poems of his
1815 collection for his edition of 1827 – an edition very likely to have been
known to Fet’s editors. In any case, although the structure of the 1856 vol-
ume was certainly not what Grigor’ev had had in mind – and he evidently
despised the upstart edition – still, the purpose of making a new edition of
Fet’s work was to present it in a different, up-dated context, not to preserve
the older frame of reference. The editors of the 1856 volume succeeded in
Verse form and language 303

polishing and giving a new point to the “Мелодии” grouping. Reinforcing

the boundaries between the quatrains in these poems was part of a broader
change in how Fet’s work was presented to his readers.
Although the 1856 edition reinforced stanzaic structure in a few of Fet’s
earlier poems, in particular the “Мелодии”, it more often left them un-
changed. Even more recent poems incorporated into older groups other than
the “Мелодии” were also presented without space between stanzas –
“Шепот, робкое дыханье…”, for example. In contrast, newer poems in
“Разные стихотворения” appear for the most with their stanzas graphically
articulated – a manifestation of the tendency in the 1856 edition to sharpen
form, to clarify. The editors did not, however, extend this particular mode of
clarification to older texts or groups of texts, where visual emphasis on the
quatrain was left as a mark of “song” poetry – that is, poetry associated at
least potentially with performance and therefore with extension in time, em-
phasized graphically in the representation of successive stanzas.214
With few exceptions, quatrains are separated by white space in all the
books of Evening Lights. The poems there appear essentially as in modern
editions. This usage is also a natural continuation of how Fet’s then newer
poetry was presented in the 1856 section of “Разные стихотворения”. In
the first volume of Evening Lights, the generalization of graphic stanzaic
demarcation is accompanied, as I have suggested elsewhere,215 by a global
compositional technique that reinforces the ring structure of many of Fet’s
best-known poems, especially the poems associated with song. By 1883, of
course, the Fetian proclivity for ring form was so well known that its ap-
pearance in new work had a reminiscential value, and the decision to print
poems with quatrains separated fits into that tradition.
A very few poems in Evening Lights appear without white space between
stanzas. One of them is “Бабоч-
Бабочка ка”, first published in the second
Ты прaв. Oдним вoздушным oчeртaньeм (1885) volume of Evening Lights.
Я тaк милa. As has been pointed out in the
Вeсь бaрxaт мoй с eгo живым мигaньeм – scholarly literature,216 the themat-
Лишь двa крылa. ics and unusual metrical form of
Нe спрaшивaй: oткудa пoявилaсь?
the text evoke a poem by Victor
Hugo: “La pauvre fleur disait au
Кудa спeшу?
papillon céleste…”, from Les
Здeсь нa цвeтoк я лeгкий oпустилaсь
chants du crépuscule. Since the
И вoт – дышу.
book is a companion to the collec-
Нaдoлгo ли, бeз цeли, бeз усилья, tion from which Fet had taken the
Дышaть xoчу? epigraph for the final poem of The
Вoт-вoт сeйчaс, свeркнув, рaскину крылья Lyrical Pantheon, his allusion to
И улeчу. the Hugo text carries with it the
304 Chapter Three

suggestion that he is also returning to his own early work and the sources
that inspired it. The symbol of the transient butterfly takes on added poi-
gnancy in this retrospective context.
The Hugo poem touches on several themes close to Fet, in particular (in
the “Envoi” attached to the poem) the theme of those who have been sepa-
rated in life being reunited in death. In Hugo, the Butterfly is the motile
lover separated from his earthbound love, the “poor flower” identified in the
“Envoi” as the Rose. The relevance of this to Fet’s poem is suggested by
where “Бабочка” appears in Evening Lights: the next poem is dedicated to a
book of Tiutchev’s poetry, and other dedicated epistolary poems follow.
“Бабочка” is secretly dedicated to a lost love, and the allusiveness of Fet’s
poem is not only to the freedom of the Butterfly in Hugo’s poem, but also to
his relationship to the earth-bound Rose. Fet in his last years, as we have
seen, made purely symbolical use of nature, and he joined his new sym-
bolism with his renewed first-person experiencing of poetic events. Instead
of, for example, merely hearing bees, he speaks like a bee, and in “За
горами, песками, морями – …”, the speaker is both poet and nightingale.
In pairing the Butterfly with “the poor flower” who is a Rose, the poet
adopts the Butterfly as an image akin to his nightingale – the nightingale of
“The Nightingale and the Rose” but also of “За горами, песками, морями –
…” – and to his bee. The association of poet and butterfly may also bespeak
a memory of Derzhavin’s Anacreontic poem “Бабочка”,217 in which the
butterfly “На цветы с цветов летая…Не тоскуя, не вздыхая, Сладкий
мед один с них пьет. Что счастливее сей доли, Как бы бабочкою быть,
На своей всегда жить воле И любви лишь сладость пить? Я бы пил – и
Зa гoрaми, пeскaми, мoрями – вновь влюбляясь Лишь в весельи дни
Вeчный крaй блaгoвoнныx цвeтoв, провел И, с духами сочетаясь, Был не-
Гдe, oвeяны яркими снaми, тления символ”.
Дрeмлют рoзы, нe знaя снeгoв. Hugo’s poem, although metrically not
Нo крaсы истoмлeннoй мoлчaньe
too distant from Fet’s “Бабочка”, is, how-
Тaм нa всe нaлaгaeт пeчaть, ever, written in quatrains that are graphi-
И пaлящeгo сoлнцa лoбзaньe cally separated in the editions of the poem
Призывaeт нe пeть, a дышaть. that I have been able to find. It is, of
course, possible that Fet had an edition
Вoсприяв oпьянeния дoлю
Зaдрeмaвшиx лeсoв и пoлeй,
with different graphics, or that he ignored
Гдe жe вырвaться птичкe нa вoлю the graphics. But, if the latter, then why?
С зaтaeннoю пeснью свoeй? The usage is strikingly different from that
found elsewhere in Evening Lights.
И сюдa я, гдe сумрaк кoрoчe, I would suggest considering this possi-
Гдe зaря любит зорю будить,
bility: that the form that Fet and his edi-
В xoлoдoк вaшeй сeвeрнoй нoчи
Прилeтaю и пeть и любить.
tors used for “Бабочка” underscores the
identification of the Butterfly-speaker
Verse form and language 305

with the poet and of the addressee in the text with the reader. In Fet’s
“Бабочка”, I would suggest, the “I” who speaks is made present before the
reader, for whom the speaker in the text is then associated with the text it-
self. If we read Fet’s “Бабочка” in the form in which it first appeared – the
stanzas drawn together, but internally diffused by the short lines intercalated
among the longer ones, all generously and evenly spaced – we see, not, per-
haps, a picture of wings, but at least a suggestion, a whisper, mitigated by
the in-and-out breathing (“И вот – дышу”) of the butterfly. A vision of that
whisper was in front of the eyes of anyone who read the new Evening Lights
in 1885: the “airy outline” referred to in the first line of the poem is on the
page, and the “symbol of incorruption” that for Derzhavin was a butterfly
becomes in Fet’s work both butterfly and poem. Perhaps for good reason is
“Бабочка” located, as Bukhshtab reconstructs it, immediately before “C
бородою седою верховный я жрец,…” in his last collection of poems.218
We may recall that figural poetry seems to have been an interest of Fet’s
in his youth, and related to a more general tendency to connect the form of a
poem very directly with its meaning. We have discussed his “Водопад”, in
particular, but there are other examples. The most boyish one is probably
“Одалиска” (standing only five long lines high, she is short and buxom, but
she has a nice pentameter waist). Fet had not, of course, created any figural
poetry since his early anthology days, of the 1840s, but, as we have seen
again and again, his late work often returns, precisely, to what he had written
earliest.
Also, Fet’s inclination to turn toward figural poetry was, if unique in
Russia, in tune with the times in Germany. So far as I can tell, there is no
tradition of German figural poetry in the nineteenth century, although there
were a few signs of special interest in graphic layout.219 During the 1880s,
however, there was a revival of interest in the figural poems of the Greek
Anthology.220 In this context we may associate Fet’s butterfly with the
“Wings of Eros”, by Simmias of Rhodes (fl. ca. 300 B.C.). In it, the speaker
is, somewhat bizarrely, an instantiation of Eros who claims to rule the world
and warns his hearers not to be shocked at his bearded cheeks, a natural con-
sequence of his age. He adds that he has never ruled by force, but only by
the power of sweet persuasion. Simmias’s poem is interesting for Fet, who
in his late poetry often enough refers to his own aged self (and, in “C боро-
дою седою верховный я жрец,…”, even to his beard) and to his continuing
capacity for love and delight in amorous persuasion. What is especially in-
teresting, however, is that Simmias’s poem is a shaped poem – in the shape
of a pair of wings – that appears in the Greek Anthology.
306 Chapter Three

The new German scholarly in- Oder dem Adler gleich, der lange,
terest in figural poems would have lange, starr in Abgründe blickt,
been known to Friedrich Nietzsche, in seine Abgründe…
until 1879 a professor of classical – o wie sie sich hier hinab, –
philology. And nearly exactly con- hinunter, hinein,
in immer tiefere Tiefen ringeln! –
temporaneously with Fet’s “Бабоч- Dann,
ка”, Nietzsche wrote his poem “Nur plötzlich,
Narr! Nur Dichter!”. The poem is geraden Flugs
usually quoted in the context of his gezückten Flugs
“Dionysos-Dithyramben”, published auf Lämmer stoßen,
in 1888. The text was written, how- jach hinab, heißhungrig,
ever, in 1884 and first appeared in nach Lämmern lüstern,
the fourth part of Thus Spake gram allen Lamms-Seelen,
Zarathustra. 221 (There the poem is grimmig-gram allem, was blickt
the song of a magician, so its form schafmäßig, lammäugig, krauswollig,
grau, mit Lamms-Schafs-Wohlwollen!
takes on magical value.) The section
I am thinking of here is the middle Also
part, which I quote (the poem is too adlerhaft, pantherhaft
long to be quoted in full). Since the sind des Dichters Sehnsüchte,
fourth part of Zarathustra was sind deine Sehnsüchte unter tausend Larven,
du Narr! du Dichter!
printed privately and distributed in a
handful of copies among friends, so far as I can tell only in 1885,222 I do not
see how it can have been known to Fet.223 Nonetheless, the confluence of
Nietzsche’s visual poem, the revival of interest in the figural poems of the
Greek Anthology, and the appearance of Fet’s “Бабочка” is striking.
If Fet was indeed interested in the iconic value of his butterfly, this
would motivate (as can nothing else I know of) the very unusual choice of
“stanza-free” layout in the original publication of “Бабочка”. Such an inter-
est fits into the history of classical philology during the period in which the
poem was written – which is also a period in which Fet was interested in
classical philology – , and it corresponds to a similar sudden pictorial im-
pulse in the work of a contemporary German writer whose philosophy is
connected to Fet via Schopenhauer. It also fits with the reminiscential value
of the poem, already evident in its evocation of Hugo, since there are exactly
such “visual” texts among Fet’s very earliest works, notably the poem
“Водопад”. The butterfly need not be a picture, however, for us to read the
“you” in the poem as only the reader, not the “poet”, and the “I” in the
poem, the butterfly, as the figure that the poet has taken for himself. I would
thus suggest that the “I” is more truly a textual surrogate of the poet than one
might at first suppose, and that the conditional wishfulness of Derzhavin’s
poem has become, in Fet’s text, a here-and-now. Here-and-now is very
much the stuff of Fet’s late poetics, as has been amply shown in the work of
Verse form and language 307

B. Ia. Bukhshtab. Equally characteristic is his co-opting for himself the

smaller creatures of the world.

3.5 Some notes on vocabulary, syntax, closure, and emotion

Scholars have described Fet’s vocabulary from several different points of

view,224 and there is at least one classical work on his syntax.225 Aspects of
Fet’s rhetoric are widely discussed,226 and Fet’s poetry is often exploited as
a source of examples in discussions of poetic language. In the earlier chap-
ters of this book, we, too, have discussed some aspects of Fet’s use of lan-
guage, and have mentioned something of what has been said about it: its
delicacy praised, its idiosyncracy corrected, and its banality excoriated. We
have touched on the awkward situation of language in a poetics of silence, as
well as on some of the things Fet’s poetry is especially well known for men-
tioning – windows for example – and we have looked at how Fet refers to
such things, or not, at different places in his oeuvre. We have not attempted
to discuss Fet’s language use comprehensively or even systematically, but
rather to situate what Fet does with words in the context of his poetics – his
understanding of, among other things, what words were for. We here con-
clude our more or less formal description of Fet’s poetry by returning to cer-
tain points of vocabulary and syntax that are interesting in connection with
aspects of Fet’s work introduced, from a different perspective, in Chapters
One and Two. To a great extent, we shall focus on chronology, comparing
Fet’s habits at different stages of his career. In the details of his language as
in other respects, Fet’s practice changed over time, sometimes clearly re-
flecting the peculiarities of his own cultural and linguistic experiences. The
habits of his poetry at the end of his life often involved revisiting his earliest
practices and modifying them to accord with the technique he had mean-
while acquired. Throughout, he was inclined to subordinate his extraordi-
nary talent for detail and miniature to his sense of the whole emotional ex-
perience he sought to evoke in readers’ minds.227

3.5.1 Vocabulary: adjectival usage across time

I will start with the overall distribution of some of the words Fet uses most
often.228 Fet’s usage is generally felt to be more or less typically post-
Romantic, and this has been substantiated in detailed statistical studies by
Erik Egeberg and Geir Kjetsaa, who compare Fet’s vocabulary with that of
poets of the Golden Age. Yet Fet was not a poet of the Golden Age, and he
308 Chapter Three

wrote poetry for something like fifty-five years. Here, we will see something
of how Fet’s vocabulary changed across time.
The history of Fet’s vocabulary follows the pattern we have seen in his
meter and verse form: his early usage differs substantially from that of his
middle years, while his last poetry evokes his earlier style. In order to define
“early”, “middle”, and “late” in a way that is based on the actual poetry and
not on an a priori categorization according to external circumstances, I have
divided the work into chronologically defined groups of at least roughly the
same size. For purposes of analyzing the vocabulary, this means establishing
groups of the same number of word forms. A preliminary periodization
emerges in Table 17, in which each row I through V covers about a fifth of
Fet’s work. Column B takes into account all the poetry in my corpus, while
the corresponding divisions for his canonical short poetry is in column C.
Table 17 shows that about a fifth of all the word forms in Fet’s poetry are in
texts from the four-year period 1856-59. This is slightly more than would be
expected from the proportion of lines from those years (17.3% of the total),
so presumably the lines of that period are a little longer than usual. In the
canonical poetry, the last six years of Fet’s life are especially productive (a
fifth of the total is from 1887 to 1892!) – but even in the canon, about a
quarter of all Fet’s word forms are in texts from no later than 1847.

Table 17: Preliminary Table 18: Number of Table 19: Number of

framework for the periodi- adjectival word forms adjectives, by chrono-
zation of Fet’s complete (col. C) in each period logical period, in
corpus (col. B) and of the of Fet’s work canonical short poems
canon (col. C), based on only.
frequency of word forms.
А B C А B C А B C
I 1838-43 to 1845/47 I 1838-1844 2378 I 1840-47 1217
II 1844-55 1845/47-56 II 1845-1854 2206 II 1848-58 1241
III 1856-59 1857-66 III 1855-1859 2513 III 1859-83 1202
IV 1860-83 1867-86 IV 1860-1883 2161 IV 1884-92 1270
V 1884-92 1887-92 V 1884-1892 2215

Word forms of different parts of speech are distributed roughly alike across
different chronological periods. Here, we will deal only with adjectives,
which for most poets constitute one of the most interesting and individual
parts of their vocabulary. The number of adjectives in each of the five
chronological periods into which we have divided Fet’s lexicon is shown in
Table 18 (column C). Because it is impossible to date many of Fet’s poems
exactly, especially poems from the 1840s, it is important not to make
chronological definitions too narrow. In order to keep together those of the
canonical shorter poems that were most likely written at about the same
time, I have been able to divide the canonical texts only into four groups.
Verse form and language 309

The division of the adjectives in the canonical shorter poems is shown in

Table 19 (column C).
The remainder of our analysis will be based on the material counted in
Table 19, that is, the canonical shorter poetry. In Table 20, we show the rank
and the frequency of occurrence of each of the commonest adjectives in the
canonical corpus. Our results are roughly comparable to those obtained in
earlier analyses, notably the one by Erik Egeberg. They nonetheless differ in
some respects, because we do not include here word forms homonymous
with short-form neuter adjectives, but used adverbially, for example “тихо”
in the line “Тихо вечер догорает”. In Table 20, column A shows the rank of
each of the adjectives, column B shows the number of occurrences, and col-
umn C gives the dictionary form of the adjective.
Table 21 shows the same adjectives as Table 20. The difference is that
this time we list the rank (not the frequency) of the adjective for each of the
four chronological periods distinguished in Table 19. The roman numerals at
the head of each column correspond to the dates in Table 19. It is easy to see
that adjectives usually do not keep even approximately the same rank from
beginning to end of Fet’s career. Among those that do are (20) легкий and
(1) молодой, which changes its rank, but not by much.

Table 20: Adjectives by rank and frequency

A B C A B C A B C
1 54 молодой 18 30 вечный 32 22 прекрасный
2 53 полный 19 29 ясный 35 21 рад
3 52 чистый 20 28 легкий 35 21 весенний
4 48 светлый 21 26 готовый 35 21 безмолвный
5 46 живой 22 25 старый 35 21 немой
6 43 милый 22 25 первый 35 21 земной
7 40 яркий 24 24 вешний 40 20 бледный
7 40 нежный 24 24 белый 40 20 свежий
7 40 ночной 24 24 холодный 42 19 далекий
10 38 последний 24 24 тайный 42 19 новый
11 37 больной 28 23 бизкий 44 18 благовонный
12 34 золотой 28 23 пышный 44 18 блаженный
13 33 душистый 28 23 вечерний 44 18 былой
14 32 темный 28 23 святой 44 18 веселый
14 32 тихий 32 22 прозрачный 48 17 теплый
16 31 родной 32 22 безумный 48 17 дальний
16 31 сладкий 48 17 тяжелый
310 Chapter Three

It is common for a word to be highly ranked in early Fet and low ranked
later, or else the reverse. The word (2) полный, for example, is very wide-
spread in early Fet and also in his second period. (It usually takes the short
form, as in “Я полон дум, когда закрывши вежды”, or “Я образ твой
ловлю перед разлукой, я, полон им, и млею, и дрожу [“Anruf an die
Geliebte Бетховена”]), but then becomes much less frequent. The words
(13) душистый and, especially, (24) белый share a similar fate, while (40)
бледный and (48) теплый become rare from the 1850s on. The adjective
(19) ясный disappears gradually, but (28) святой more suddenly: it is rather
frequent even into the third period of Fet’s work, even though he uses it sig-
nificantly less than other nineteenth-century poets. Corresponding to the
decline in frequency of the adjectives already mentioned, there are naturally
others that are much more frequent in Fet’s late poetry than they were ear-
lier: (5) живой and (11) больной both rise gradually through the ranks,
while (18) вечный declines in the 1850s before rising in the second half of
the corpus.
Table 21: Adjectives by rank at different times
I II III IV I II III IV
1 молодой 6 7 3 2 24 холодный 75 54 14 14
2 полный 1 1 14 24 24 тайный 40 54 9 36
3 чистый 19 3 1 6 28 близкий 6 128 73 36
4 светлый 3 9 12 6 28 пышный 24 54 112 10
5 живой 33 13 6 1 28 вечерний 24 13 27 126
6 милый 6 5 27 4 28 святой 11 128 19 83
7 яркий 19 9 2 24 32 прозрачный 75 13 27 36
7 нежный 16 4 6 17 32 безумный 24 6 112 126
7 ночной 8 9 5 17 32 прекрасный 14 27 24
10 последний 40 1 4 51 35 рад 53 54 27 17
11 больной 24 19 14 3 35 весенний 120 27 19 24
12 золотой 16 9 27 10 35 безмолвный 40 13 53 51
13 душистый 8 8 27 36 35 немой 75 19 43 24
14 темный 19 27 14 10 35 земной 53 77 9 51
14 тихий 2 77 112 17 40 бледный 11 54 112 83
16 родной 24 13 12 17 40 свежий 14 77 112 36
16 сладкий 11 27 73 6 42 далекий 24 54 53 51
18 вечный 40 128 6 4 42 новый 40 54 53 24
19 ясный 5 27 43 51 44 благовонный 53 77 112 14
20 легкий 19 19 19 24 44 блаженный 75 77 43 17
21 готовый 120 27 14 10 44 былой 53 54 27 51
22 старый 53 13 9 83 44 веселый 53 47 27 83
22 первый 33 19 19 36 48 теплый 16 54 112 126
24 вешний 40 221 19 6 48 дальний 75 47 43 51
24 белый 8 19 73 126 48 тяжелый 120 27 43 51
Verse form and language 311

All of this shows that adjective vocabulary is different in early and later
Fet. At the same time, there are similarities that unite our groups I and IV
and set them apart from the intervening groups. The late Fet revives some
words that had served him well in his youth: (6) милый, (14) тихий, (16)
сладкий. Other words – (10) последний, (22) старый – , rare in the early
Fet but afterward rather frequent, once again fall into desuetude.
If we now look at the adjectives not by rank, but according to how much
their rank changes, we can see that shifts in rank may proceed in larger or
smaller steps. We can rank the different ranks achieved by a word in each of
the four chronological periods: the highest rank achieved in any of the four
periods will be “1”, the lowest rank “4”, the intermediate ranks “2” and “3”.
For example, the word молодой achieves its top rank (2) in period IV and
its bottom rank (7) in period II. The four successive periods for молодой
can then be read as “3421”. At the bottom of the list, the ranks for тяжелый
are “4123”. All the adjective rankings are presented according to this pattern
in Table 22. From Table 22 we see that changes in the rank of a given adjec-
tive from one period to the next are usually minimal, that is, no more than
(+/-) 1. If we exclude instances where ranks repeat from one period to the
next, then half of all the theoretically possible intervals should be minimal.
What we in fact see is that 32 out of 50 cases the change from period I to
period II is minimal, and in 30 out of 50 cases from III to IV. Between II and
III the number of minimal shifts is very slightly less (28), and is even less
from I to III (18) and from II to IV (14).

Table 22. Ranks of each chronological period in rankings of each adjective

1 молодой 3 4 2 1 24холодный 2 3 1 1
2 полный 1 1 3 4 24тайный 3 4 1 2
3 чистый 4 2 1 3 28бизкий 1 4 3 2
4 светлый 1 3 4 2 28пышный 2 3 4 1
5 живой 4 3 2 1 28вечерний 2 1 3 4
6 милый 3 2 4 1 28святой 1 4 2 3
7 яркий 3 2 1 4 32прозрачный 4 1 2 3
7 нежный 3 1 2 4 32безумный 2 1 3 4
7 ночной 2 3 1 4 32прекрасный 1 3 4 2
10 последний 3 1 2 4 35рад 3 4 2 1
11 больной 4 3 2 1 35весенний 4 3 1 2
12 золотой 3 1 4 2 35безмолвный 2 1 4 3
13 душистый 1 1 3 4 35немой 4 1 3 2
14 темный 3 4 2 1 35земной 3 4 1 2
14 тихий 1 3 4 2 40бледный 1 2 4 3
16 родной 4 2 1 3 40свежий 1 3 4 3
16 сладкий 2 3 4 1 42далекий 1 4 3 2
18 вечный 3 4 2 1 42новый 2 4 3 1
19 ясный 1 2 3 4 44благовонный 2 3 4 1
20 легкий 1 1 1 4 44блаженный 3 4 2 1
21 готовый 4 3 2 1 44былой 3 4 1 2
312 Chapter Three

22 старый 3 2 1 4 44веселый 3 2 1 4
22 первый 3 1 1 4 48теплый 1 2 3 4
24 вешний 3 4 2 1 48дальний 4 2 1 3
24 белый 1 2 3 4 48тяжелый 4 1 2 3

By the criterion of the Table 22 ranks, the connection between the first and
last periods is closer (26 minimal shifts) than between either the first and
third groups or the last and the second. The connection between the third and
last periods is less close than between the first and second, but the last group
is more closely linked with the first than with the second. The most frequent
model “3421” occurs six times, and it illustrates the general tendencies: two
changes in rank are minimal, and the third one separates groups II and III. In
addition, the group IV rank is maximal, and it is closer to the first period of
Fet’s poetry than to the second. No other model occurs more than three
times, and there are three models that never occur: 1324, 4231, 2413.
Our results show that even the most frequent adjectives in Fet tend to be
associated with specific periods of his work, and his usage in his late poetry
is variously connected both with the immediately preceding period and with
his much earlier vocabulary.
We can now return to the question of how Fet’s vocabulary is related to
that of other poets, whose work may be somewhat arbitrarily referred to as
the “norm”. The words that a poet uses significantly more often than the
norm are called his “key” words, and, as mentioned above, Fet’s “key”
words have been calculated in studies by Egeberg and Kjetsaa. In Table 23
are listed the adjectives from our Table 20 that Egeberg and Kjetsaa consider
“key” words for Fet. I list the words in the order of how “characteristic” of
Fet they are, according to Egeberg and Kjetsaa’s metric.

Table 23: Key adjectives in Fet (statistics from Kjetsaa and Egeberg)

1 вешний 6 прозрачный 11 белый 16 холодный

2 больной 7 готовый 12 близкий 17 безмолвный
3 яркий 8 душистый 13 нежный 18 темный
4 рад 9 старый 14 пышный 19 чистый
4 весенний 10 теплый 15 молодой 20 ночной

If we take the adjectives in Table 23 and look at their rankings, as listed in

Table 21, we see that 8 out of the 10 most “characteristically” Fetian adjec-
tives (and all of the top 5) are relatively infrequent in early Fet: that is, they
occur, but less often than elsewhere in Fet’s work. In no other chronological
group do we find such a lower frequency of Fet’s key words, especially of
those that are most characteristic of him. By this metric, then, his earliest
work is less idiosyncratic and closer to the norm than is his work overall. In
contrast, the most “Fetian” and least “normative” group is III. All the most
Verse form and language 313

characteristic words occur there no less frequently than elsewhere in Fet, and
we find relatively low frequencies beginning only with the eighth-ranked
душистый.
It is hardly surprising that the young Fet should be especially close to the
Golden Age norm. This was a period when he was still seeking his own way
and presumably most likely to imitate his predecessors. And this is the pe-
riod of his work that is closest in time to the period when the poetry of the
norm was written. In relation to Fet, the norm retreats further and further
into the past, while his own work continues to develop. The “norm” in rela-
tion to Fet is not a synchronic norm, but an historical starting point.
The chronological limits of Kjetsaa’s Golden Age norm cannot, however,
explain why Fet’s distance from the norm should grow in the intermediate
periods of Fet’s work but then, in group IV, retreat. This partly must have to
do with the changing tastes of the time: period IV begins only in 1884. It
must also have to do with Fet’s own taste for reminiscentiality, which we
have already encountered in other aspects of his work. Yet the older Fet’s
embracing of his memories of the 1840s did not lead him to any mechanical
borrowing of vocabulary. The commonest words of his late poetry are not
quite the same as the commonest words of his earliest work. In his last years,
Fet to a great extent lived in the past, but he lived there differently from the
way he had lived there the first time. His vocabulary is not what it was then,
but it is more closely tied than it had been in the intervening years to the
vocabulary of the Golden Age.

3.5.2 Poetic form and little words

Early Fet is well known for strong closure, sometimes realized clumsily,
in a sudden twist that readers felt disrupted the compositional harmony of
the text. Strong closure continues to be characteristic of his work even at the
end, but the psychological weight of Fet’s poems tends either to shift for-
ward or, if it occurs at the end, to be specially motivated, usually as a clearly
marked coda. The four-stanza form of “Ласточки”, for example, is unusu-
ally long for the late Fet, and it evokes a subtext in Tiutchev. Fet uses the
“extra” last stanza both to specify and protract his first rhetorical appeal and
to exemplify the repeated activity he refers to in characterizing the swallows
– and he also creates a doubled swallow-“tail” for the poem.
Strong closure in late Fet is not always at the very end of the poem. Even
within the strong last stanza of “Ласточки”, it is not the last line that is the
high point. In the two-stanza “Давно в любви отрады мало:…”, it is nei-
ther the beginning of the final stanza nor the last line that is strongest, but
the last distich, and the overall “falling” rhythm of the poem – trochaic and
314 Chapter Three

A. Л. Бржeскoй amphibrachic feet, distichs drop-

ping from specific statements to
Дaлeкий друг, пoйми мoи рыдaнья, generalized mutterings – is cop-
Ты мнe прoсти бoлeзнeнный мoй крик. ied in miniature in the last two
С тoбoй цвeтут в душe вoспoминaнья
lines.
И дoрoжить тoбoй я нe oтвык.
An interesting case is that of
Ктo скaжeт нaм, чтo жить мы нe умeли, Fet’s verse epistle addressed to
Бeздушныe и прaздныe умы, A. L. Brzheskaia, “Далекий
Чтo в нaс дoбрo и нeжнoсть нe гoрeли друг, пойми мои рыданья,…”
И крaсoтe нe жeртвoвaли мы?
(1879). It is characteristic of late
Гдe ж этo всe? eщe душa пылaeт, Fet, in that its length is specially
Пo-прeжнeму гoтoвa мир oбъять. motivated, and so is its strong
Нaпрaсный жaр. Никтo нe oтвeчaeт; final stanza. The motivation for
Вoскрeснут звуки, и зaмрут oпять. both features is that this is a let-
Лишь ты oднa! Высoкoe вoлнeньe ter to a friend and the text fol-
Издaлeкa мнe гoлoс твoй принeс. lows the letter-writing norms
В лaнитax крoвь, и в сeрдцe вдoxнoвeньe. – laid out in a contemporary book
Прoчь этoт сoн, – в нeм слишкoм мнoгo слeз! of etiquette.229 According to the
Нe жизни жaль с тoмитeльным дыxaньeм, book, friendly letters are sup-
Чтo жизнь и смeрть? A жaль тoгo oгня, posed to be long, and the struc-
Чтo прoсиял нaд цeлым мирoздaньeм, ture of the text is formulaic. The
И в нoчь идeт, и плaчeт уxoдя. opening (the first stanza) con-
tains the greeting and then the
so-called “приступ”, an appeal to accept the writer’s good wishes or an apo-
logy for burdening the addressee with the letter (Fet originally wrote
“прими”, not “пойми”). Stanzas two and three are the main body of the
text, while stanza four is the closing, which consists, as it should, of expres-
sions of devotion and respect (“Лишь ты одна!”). The last stanza fits the
etiquette book’s description of a postscript, a part of the letter appropriate
only in correspondence between intimates: it says something that the writer
finds essential, but decides to say only after the rest of the letter is finished.
The emotional force of the fifth stanza the poem to Brzheskaia does indeed
correspond to what is essential in the poem, and it is located in the only
place in the letter where such an outburst was strictly comme il faut.230
Elegant composition, of the sort that we find in “Ласточки” or the epistle
to Brzheskaia, is uncharacteristic of early Fet. One of the ways that his tech-
nique becomes more polished is in his sense for locating words so that they
most effectively weight and point the text as a whole. Some words develop
affinities for particular places in Fet’s poems.231 For example, жаль can oc-
cur anywhere in Fet’s earlier poetry, but in his later work moves into clo-
sural position. The distribution of слеза, or слезы, is similar. In each case,
emotional weight comes at the end. Compositional patterning is found not
Verse form and language 315

only with nouns, adjectives, and verbs, but also with words that have only
the most abstract lexical value.
Little words, such as ли and но, share some characteristics of autoseman-
tic ones, but they are also different in some ways. Like autosemantic words,
they sometimes cluster in specific parts of the text and in so doing may lend
emotional force to certain parts of the poem in relation to others. Emotion-
ally charged forms – not only lexical items but also interrogatory and ex-
clamatory sentence patterns – help create the characteristic intonation of
Fet’s poetry,232 and the emotional tenor of Fet’s poetry was different at dif-
ferent periods in his work. The distribution of a few of Fet’s little words re-
flects this: же and бы, for example, are both disproportionately rare in the
‘rational’ 1850s, while бы (but not же) is especially frequent in Fet’s late
poetry. Such an association of word choice with particular periods in Fet’s
oeuvre is, however, unusual for his vocabulary of little words. Within Fet’s
later poetry, his choice of autosemantic words often expresses reminiscential
values, even if his compositional exploitation of this vocabulary has
changed. In his choice of little words, such a direct association of reminis-
cential force with vocabulary is less evident, a difference corresponding to
the dominant compositional function of the vocabulary in question. The
main changes in Fet’s use of little words over the course of his career have
to do with changes in his compositional techniques. In my discussion below,
I will look at a few of the little words used by Fet, describing mostly their
compositional roles and how they changed over time.

ли
The particle ли clings to the beginnings of eight- and sixteen-line poems,
and to the outer stanzas of twelve-line poems. It also occurs disproportion-
ately often in early Fet, and a little less than normal during the 1850s. It
might seem that such a distribution is natural for the particle that is, after all,
a question marker. Actually, though, ли functions in Fet’s poetry not only as
a simple-sentence question marker, but also in several other ways, and the
general tendencies of its distribution are roughly the same for all these dif-
ferent uses. Several contexts for ли do, however, call for special comment.
A context for ли characteristic of Fet is in preposed subordinate clauses,
when it is used to mean “if, when, whenever”. Examples of this appear in
the first stanza of the poem “Встречу ль яркую в небе зарю…” (1882):
316 Chapter Three

Встрeчу ль яркую в нeбe зaрю,

Eй прo тaйну мoю гoвoрю,
Пoдoйду ли к лeснoму ключу,
И eму я прo тaйну шeпчу.
A кaк звeзды в нoчи зaдрoжaт,
Я всю нoчь им рaсскaзывaть рaд;
Лишь кoгдa нa тeбя я гляжу,
Ни зa чтo ничeгo нe скaжу.
This use of ли tends to occur in the same parts of the poem as those already
noted, but it is not especially typical of early Fet. On the contrary, he regu-
larly used если in this meaning in his early poetry, and turns to ли after
1857, when he wrote his translation of Heine’s “Hör’ ich das Liedchen
klingen…” (“Слышу ли песенки звуки …”), where his usage corresponds
to the German original. Words that might be considered competitors of ли
seem not to share the distributional traits of the particle.
Negated questions in ли are another special case. Early Fet loved them.
The opening line of “Не здесь ли ты легкою тенью…” (1842), is fairly
typical, although Fet’s negated questions are not especially attracted to the
beginnings of poems, or to outer stanzas. They also seem often not to be
very meaningful, and the meaning they have may or may not be what was
wanted. The question “Нe зaвтрa ль oзaрить тeбя вeкoв свeтилo?” is not,
for example, an entirely transparent rendering of Lamartine’s “Vas-tu revoir
demain l’éternelle lumière?” Fet’s negative questions in his early poetry of-
ten serve as expressions of general wonderment, for example in his transla-
tion of Goethe’s “Maifest”, in which “O Lieb’, o Liebe! / So golden-schön, /
Wie Morgenwolken / Auf jenen Höhn” becomes “Нe ты ли этo, / Любoвь,
любoвь, / Oдeлa жизнью / Прирoду внoвь”. These examples are from
translations in The Lyrical Pantheon, and negated questions are especially
abundant there – even though they are not abundant in the texts Fet was
translating. Negated questions are extremely common in Fet’s earliest origi-
nal poetry as well, but then become rare until the 1880s, when they reappear
frequently and effectively in such masterworks as “Ласточки”.
Finally, when there is more than one occurrence of ли in a poem, the re-
peated ли-questions are usually located in key spots in the text: the general
tendency for ли to occur early (in eight-line poems) or in outer stanzas (in
twelve-line poems) is sharper in these poems than for ли as a whole. The
examples are, overall, late. When several occurrences of ли occur in a single
poem but not in such a compositional pattern, however, the occurrences are
early. For example, of the few poems in which ли appears in the second of
three stanzas, all but one is from the 1840s, and the remaining one – from
1857.
Verse form and language 317

Textual compression and clarity: который, что, and если

We have been focusing on just one aspect of little words, namely their
emotional value. A second aspect to Fet’s use of such words – in fact, of any
words – is his near-obsession with using as few as possible – indeed, as
would emerge from his correspondence with K.R., as few sounds as possi-
ble. Anything that served to compact his semantics was, in Fet’s later poet-
ics, to the good. Thus, for example, he tells K.R. he used to waste a lot of
space on который but finally learned to replace it with что – and the statis-
tics bear him out: который occurs disproportionately often in Fet’s earliest
poetry, and hardly ever in his last works, although relative clauses continue
to abound there. Apparently, ли in its meaning of “if, when(ever)” had a
similar appeal for Fet, since, once he started to use it, he almost never used
если in this meaning again. The single exception is his translation of
Goethe’s “Grenzen der Menschheit”, where the initial contrastive pair если
… если ж effectively marks an opposition and maintains Goethe’s initial
stress: “Hebt er sich aufwärts… Steht er mit festen, Markigen Knochen”.
(Overall, Fet uses если much more often in translations than in his original
poetry.) In Fet’s later work, the use of если has been constrained, limited to
just a few meanings, and the relative phonic heaviness of the word – its ca-
pacity to bear stress, its two-syllable length – corresponds to the semantic
weight that если carries in the poem.
The replacement of который by что is an example of Fet’s deliberate
and systematic compression of meaning in his poetry, and it also shows one
possible consequence: lack of specification. The form что is of course not
restricted to being used as a synonym for который, and, when it is, it does
not express, for example, grammatical gender. As a result, a reader faced
with an occurrence of что needs to work harder to figure out what it means,
and there are times when one simply cannot say for sure. Yet, in some ways,
Fet’s language is more precise in his late poetry than it was earlier, even
though the precision is specifically poetic. To take если as an example, it
occurs mainly in contexts where either если occurs with б(ы), and the con-
trary-to-fact status of a situation is itself a focus of emotion (as in the clo-
sural “О, если б без слова / Сказаться душой было можно!”), or where
the situation in the если-protasis is emphasized, presented with special
vigor, while the poet lies in wait with some striking consequence in the apo-
dosis, often imperative:
Eсли рaдуeт утрo тeбя,
Eсли в пышную вeришь примeту, –
Xoть нa врeмя, нa миг пoлюбя,
Пoдaри эту рoзу пoэту.
But in the early poetry, it was often used more broadly, as it is here:
318 Chapter Three

Нe oтxoди oт мeня,
Друг мoй, oстaнься сo мнoй!
Нe oтxoди oт мeня:
Мнe тaк oтрaднo с тoбoй ...
Ближe друг к другу, чeм мы, –
Ближe нeльзя нaм и быть;
Чищe, живee, сильнeй
Мы нe умeeм любить.
Eсли жe ты – прeдo мнoй,
Грустнo гoлoвку склoня, –
Мнe тaк oтрaднo с тoбoй:
Нe oтxoди oт мeня!
As Bukhshtab long ago pointed out, the poem is a good example of Fet’s
lifetime antithetical tendencies, here reflected in the “грустно” of the ad-
dressee juxtaposed with the “отрадно” with which the speaker characterizes
himself. Clearly, the effect of the poem is not dependent on ordinary logic,
and it is doubtful that anyone reading the poem will stumble over exactly
what если means. Indeed, it scarcely has to mean anything, since only the
sound of the text would be disturbed if it were taken out and the resulting
hole left unfilled. The syntax, actually, would be tidier, since “с тобой” in
the penultimate line would be less obviously superfluous. In Fet’s later po-
etry, this sort of usage is virtually eliminated.

но
The word но would seem to fit readily into contexts of semantic opposi-
tion:233 if we have a sentence of the sort “X но Y”, we usually think that
something about Y is not what we would normally have expected, if we take
X as given. We might, then, expect но to have some connection with an-
tithesis. Antithesis, the author of the ad Herennium tells us, can be a figure
of diction or of thought. As a figure of diction, it consists in a “rapid opposi-
tion of words”234 the semantics of which are not evidently congruent: night
is (contrary to normal expectation) bright, day which might be thought to be
bright) is dim, dawn (which might be thought of as fiery) extinguishes night.
In antithesis as a figure of thought, “opposing thoughts… meet in a compari-
son”: we shall sleep when others are working, the leaves move but the god-
dess stands still, the bird is at home in the south but sings in the north, it is
cold and snowy now but spring will come, when young gypsies sing in the
choir it is the old gypsy’s voice that rings out most hauntingly. In studying
either sort of antithesis (and all the examples are from Fet’s poems), the play
of lexical semantics is essential, but in the second type it is sometimes hard
to identify the larger domain across which the antithesis operates. In Fet’s
verse, antithesis is pervasive and varied, and, I would like to suggest, what is
Verse form and language 319

often striking about it is not so much the lexical semantics of the opposition,
but the domain over which the opposition functions. It is by controlling the
domain of the opposition that Fet exploits но to articulate the composition of
poems.
About 5% of the lines in Fet’s original shorter verse contain an occur-
rence of но, as compared with about 3% of all the lines in his poetry. The
smaller figure is nearly identical to the frequency of но in Pushkin’s poetry,
and also in Tiutchev’s. Fet’s greater use of но in his shorter works suggests
that но may serve poetic functions there that are less salient in his longer
poems, although the similar frequency of но in the work of Pushkin, Fet, and
Tiutchev, in spite of the differences in the character of their respective oeu-
vres, suggests that the variation in Fet’s poetry may be idiosyncratic. About
a third of Fet’s shorter poems contain at least one occurrence of но, but the
proportion varies a little across time. It is lowest in Fet’s poems written in
the 1840s but after The Lyrical Pantheon (28%). It is higher in The Lyrical
Pantheon (36%), in the 1850s (40%), and in his late poetry (39% for poems
from after 1882).
Another way of looking at the distribution of но is to compare its fre-
quency with that of its nearest competitor, a, in the work of several poets.
The available word counts do not consistently differentiate the various
meanings of either но or a. Still, if we add up all the appearances of both
forms and see what proportion of the total is made up of occurrences of но,
it would seem that Fet uses но, relative to a, about as much as Pushkin (.60
vs. Pushkin’s .63), but less than Tiutchev (.75), Lermontov (.80) or Baratyn-
skii (.81).235 A preliminary look at Tiutchev’s poetry suggests that his use of
но was significantly different from Fet’s.236
Like other words in Fet’s poetry, the word но has its favorite spots. It
nearly always comes at the beginning of a line, but it usually occurs in short
poems only once. Typically, it is used at the beginning of the last stanza in a
poem: in poems of twelve lines, it is most often the ninth that begins with
но, and in sixteen-line poems, it is most often line 13. Fet always made
some use of this structure, but it is especially characteristic of his work in his
middle years, beginning in the 1850s, when more of his poems included но
than at other times. Since но usually occurs just once in a poem and some-
where toward the end, it would seem to be, in effect, dividing the thought in
a poem in two (X но Y) and also looking forward to impending closure.
To see how Fet’s usage changed, I divided all his twelve-line (three-quat-
rain) poems into four groups of roughly equal size, and I compared which
lines in each group are most hospitable to line-initial но. The results are
shown in Charts 2 through 5, on page 322.
Fet’s usage in the 1840s is as diverse in this as in other respects: we find
но beginning nine of the twelve possible lines, but no one line accounts for
320 Chapter Three

more than four occurrences, two lines show three, and three have two. The
word но mostly stays in the second half of the text, and nearly half the lines
beginning in но are in the third (final) quatrain, but the exact line number
varies.
In the second chronological group, но is just about as likely as in the
1840s to occur in the last stanza, but the relative share of the first line of the
stanza is much greater than before, and the mid-point of the stanza also has a
relatively large proportion of но. The mid-point of the poem (like the mid-
point of the final stanza) attracts но, and now но appears not so clearly in
either line 7 or 8 but rather ranges across lines 6, 7, or 8, while the last line
of the first stanza also attracts но a little more than neighboring lines do. The
conjunction seems to reinforce the stanzaic structure and divisions of the
poem.
In the third group of poems, occurrences of но become even more clearly
attached to strategic lines: the exact mid-point of the poem takes on greater
prominence as a host for но and line 8 surrenders its claim entirely. While
но continues to occur most in the last stanza, it is the initial line of that
stanza that accounts more than ever for the great bulk of data. Again, the
center of gravity shifts: the strong lines are still 7, 9, and 11, with the middle
one strongest, but now 7 is stronger than 11.
The shift to mid-poem is in the end decisive: in the last group of texts, it
is the middle quatrain that hosts но more than any other – half of all occur-
rences – , and the first line of the second stanza is as hospitable to но as line
9 of the text had been before. Over the course of the five decades repre-
sented in the four charts, the mid-point of the text serves as a pivot around
which the lines in но congregate, at first later in the poem and in the end
earlier. Lines beginning with но start out as text-closural, refine their func-
tion in the 1850s in relation to the stanzaic structure of the poem, but, after
that, но begins to work its way back toward the beginning of the poem.
There is no reason why closure has to include entire stanzas, but the fact
of the matter is that in Fet’s three-stanza poems но prefers stanza onset. The
second line in the stanza hardly ever begins with но, nor does но much oc-
cur in the last line of a stanza – and it occurs there even less often if the
stanza is the last one in the poem. In contrast, the mid-point of any quatrain
– not only the middle one – is relatively favorable to но.
In Fet’s short original poetry, most markedly in his later poetry and in the
poetry that ended up in his canon, three-quatrain poems distribute lines be-
ginning in но in a kind of overlay of binary waves: not counting line 1 be-
cause it very rarely begins in но (Fet has two poems that do), the lines form
pairs of even lines “weak” in potential for adversative conjunction followed
by odd lines that are “strong”, and these “weak” vs. “strong” pairs them-
selves form pairs, of which the strong element of the second “even/odd” pair
Verse form and language 321

is the stronger. For both the earliest and the late poetry (but not in between!),
we thus get weaker 3 vs. stronger 5, weaker 7 vs. stronger 9. In early Fet,
line 9 was stronger than line 5, but in later Fet – the reverse. The vertical
structuring in the three-quatrain poems is of some interest because of its re-
lation to the tendency we noticed earlier, for stanzas in Fet’s poems to break
into distichs. Now we see that in at least one respect Fet’s three-stanza po-
ems seem to privilege odd-number lines over their neighbors, and although
stanza-initial position is more privileged than mid-stanza, the third line of
the quatrain mimics stanzaic onset. We can also see here, as in so many
other respects, a tendency in the last poetry to return to earlier usage, but to
make it more polished and elegant.
As for his poems in eight lines, the behavior of но shows the same ten-
dency even more sharply. We might expect that in a two-stanza poem, there
would be some tendency for the two stanzas to stand in opposition to each
other. In fact, however, insofar as this opposition is expressed by но, this is
not the case. Instead, the location of но in two-stanza poems corresponds to
its location in three-stanza poems: in both instances, но occurs mostly in
odd-number lines and rarely in even-number ones, and this correlation be-
comes sharper over time. Also as in three-stanza poems, но occurs in late
poems in earlier lines than it does in early poems, and on the whole но is not
much used to divide the text at mid-point, even though it quite often divides
stanzas in half. In the late eight-line poems, но occurs slightly more often in
line 3 than in line 7, and less than that in line 5. The division of the 8-line
poems by но is thus not particularly sensitive to stanzaic structure, and is
progressively less so across time. We noticed earlier that the stanzaic struc-
ture of Fet’s late eight-line poems is weak, and the behavior of но tends to
fit with our earlier observation.
There are 27 short poems by Fet in which но occurs twice, and one in
which it occurs three times. So far the only functions we have considered
associating with но are expressing antithesis and announcing textual closure.
Presumably it would be unexpected for но to appear twice – or three times –
in either of these functions in the course of a dozen or so lines. We also re-
call that но appears a few times as the first word in a poem – also not what
we might expect from what has been said so far. We should really consider
more closely what values но has in Fet’s texts.
322 Chapter Three

10 10

9 1840 - 49 9 1850 - 73
8 8

7 7

# 6 6

5 5

T 4 4
e 3 3
x 2
2
t 1 1
s 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Line # Line #

10 10

9 1874 - 85 9 1886 - 92
8 8

7 7

# 6
6

5 5
T 4 4
e 3
3
x 2
2
t 1
1
s 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Line # Line #

Charts 2 – 5: Location of но in 12-line poems, across time

There is an extensive linguistic literature on the meaning of но, and some

recent work illuminates Fet’s usage. Fougeron has shown that clauses that
begin in но generally enjoy considerable intonational, as well as semantic,
independence from their predecessor-clause. She further distinguishes two
possible sorts of но, one of them (“external”) more independent than the
other (“internal”): external но does not begin the second clause in a com-
pound sentence, but rather begins a new sentence of its own.
Fet’s но is nearly always external: its line-initial position usually corres-
ponds to the beginning of a sentence. This onset position is supported graph-
ically, by lineation, capitalization, and punctuation, and, when it is stanza-
initial, но is usually set off by white space: the edition of Fet’s that makes
least use of white space to set off stanzas (the edition of 1850) is also the one
that has relatively few occurrences of stanza-initial но. The syntactic and
graphic characteristics correspond to phonological ones, since Fet’s но near-
ly always follows syntactically and versificationally motivated pause. As we
have seen, the association of но with “strong” positions in the stanzas of
Verse form and language 323

three-quatrain poems increases over time in Fet’s work. Since these posi-
tions entail more of an intonational and semantic break than other positions
in the text, then either Fet’s но was becoming, as it were, more and more
external or the poet was using the external но more and more to reinforce
rhythmic tendencies inherent in the stanza.
Fet’s но is thus a form that signals not only possible contrast but also
new onset. Etymologically, the Indoeuropean ancestor of но was a marker
of, precisely, new onset, as distinct from an unmarked continuation, and it
lacked any clear semantics of contradiction. Although the value of contra-
diction that is associated with modern Russian но arises naturally out of its
value as a marker of new onset or “no mere continuation”, the “new onset”
value itself is still sometimes dominant. This tends to happen when но is
triggered by situational abruption, for example in the question “Но что за
шум?”, which occurs at the start of the fifth of eight stanzas in Fet’s
“Золотой Век” (1856), an extract of which follows:
И чудится: зa тeм кустoм кoлючим
Румяныx рoз, гдe лaврoв тeнь лeглa,
Дыxaньeм дня рaспaлeнa гoрючим,
Лoбзaниям тo дoлгим, тo лeтучим
Мeнaдa грудь и плeчи прeдaлa.
Нo чтo зa шум? Зa дeвoй смуглoлицeй
Вoслeд тoлпa. Всe прaздничнo кругoм.
И гибкий тигр с пушистoю тигрицeй,
Нeслышныe, в ярмe прeд кoлeсницeй
Идут, мaxaя вeсeлo xвoстoм.
The text illustrates the combination of но with an interrogative pronoun. Fet
often makes the sense of но clearer by accompanying it with other markers,
which promote the semantics either of contrast (for example, но may be
paired with не, нет, or есть) or of new onset. Markers of new onset are es-
pecially frequent in his poems from the 1850s. In marking it, he may pair но
with an interrogative form, as in the text above, or with вот, which occurs in
the construction но вот 13 times in Fet’s work, and 8 times from 1855-59.
Questions are, of course, motivated by someone’s being presented with a
new situation, but, even aside from this, Fet’s sentences in но are very hos-
pitable to questions, to imperatives, to exclamations and to emotionally
charged expressions of all sorts, and the но sentence may depart from the
mood and the level of emotion established in preceding text. For example, In
the early poem “Вот утро севера – сонливое, скупое…”, но is followed by
an exclamatory upsurge of excitement and activity:
Вoт утрo сeвeрa – сoнливoe, скупoe –
Лeнивo смoтрится в oкнo вoлoкoвoe;
В пeчи трeщит oгoнь – и сeрый дым кoврoм
324 Chapter Three

Тиxoнькo стeлeтся нaд крoвлeю с кoнькoм.

Пeтуx зaбoтливый, кoпaясь нa дoрoгe,
Кричит... A дeдушкa брaдaтый нa пoрoгe
Кряxтит и крeстится сxвaтившись зa кoльцo,
И xлoпья бeлыe лeтят eму в лицo.
И пoлдeнь нaстaeт. Нo, бoжe, кaк люблю я,
Кaк трoйкoю ямщик кибитку удaлую
Прoмчит – и скрoeтся... И дoлгo, мнится мнe,
Звук кoлoкoльчикa трeпeщeт в тишинe.
Fet’s poem reads almost like a miniature version of Pushkin’s “Зима. Что
делать нам в деревне? Я встречаю ...”, and his placement of но is not so
different from Pushkin’s: about three-quarters of the way through, marking
an upsurge of excitement. The exclamation beginning with но shifts the
whole orientation of what is said. Fet’s text up to но is descriptive: the
speaker describes a fragment of a fictive external world. The mood he
evokes derives from his choice of what to describe (slow-moving smoke, a
slow-moving peasant), from the leisurely progress of the text (eight and a
half lines of a dull morning), and from evaluative lexicon (сонливое,
скупое, лениво), that tells readers what mood the scene evokes in the
speaker. His psychological state, however, is not itself an object presented
directly in the text, up until his exclamation in но. At that point, his mood
dominates in his presentation of the speeding carriage and even over his
characterization of himself: he does not merely say “I like to see…”, he
jumps out of his description with an exclamation, and he even, in his enthu-
siasm, uses an approximate rhyme (люблю я ~ удалую) – an almost un-
heard-of liberty. The use of но thus stands at a division not between two
incompatible statements, but between utterances of different sorts, on two
different levels. Moreover, the break marked by но is not between the но-
sentence and the sentence before it, but between it and the whole preceding
text: the speeding coach is a break from the slow pace of the whole morning.
There is nothing in the presentation of the coach or the speaker’s response to
it that is directly contradictory to the sentence “И полдень настает” – the
two sentences have nothing directly to do with each other except the switch
in mood and the force that the speaker uses to impose it.
Fet’s но may thus signal a shift in both mood and in the way the speaker
in the text experiences and presents his situation. The poem “Пароход”
(1854) affords a slightly different example, as, in lines 7 through 10, но
marks a switch from eager plea to disappointment: Пoгoди, прoщaнья
слeзы / Вдoxнoвeнныe прoдли! // Нo нaпрaснo... Кoнь мoрскoй, /Ты
пoнeсся быстрoй птицeй. The pre-но and post-но segments are contrastive,
but the contrast is not between incompatible statements but between differ-
ent levels of text. Но напрасно… is a comment that the speaker makes look-
Verse form and language 325

ing back to his own prior utterance: X (=Пoгoди, прoщaнья слeзы

Вдoxнoвeнныe прoдли!) но Y (=[my saying “X” did not have the desired
consequence, so it was] напрасно), and so (or as is shown by) Z (= Кoнь
мoрскoй, / Ты пoнeсся быстрoй птицeй).
The word но in Fet thus seems to be a compact way of marking juxtapo-
sition, but there are few if any constraints on what is juxtaposed. Juxtaposed
utterances need not be just one sentence long, they need not share the same
modality or sentence type, and the exact force of the но between them may
be vague. If но stands at a point of contrast, the contrast may reach across
levels of text and between the surface of the text and the psychological state
that the reader is, by the presence of но, encouraged to impute to the
speaker. The force of но in Fet’s poetry is thus quite arbitrary, at the beck
and call of the poet-speaker. It is exploited most often to express no objec-
tive incongruities but rather the speaker’s psychological lability. The но-of-
poetic-mood is especially evident in texts where но occurs several times, as
in “Как мошки зарею,…” (page 30).
The semantic arbitrariness of но means that it is contextually little con-
strained and so is all the more available for the sort of compositional pattern-
ing that we noticed earlier. In fact, this patterning is clearest with respect to
semantically “free” occurrences of но, rather than those that are most clearly
bound to the semantics of opposition between statements. If we look, for
example, at the instances of но that are accompanied by не or other explicit
markers of incongruity between the sentence containing но and the one pre-
ceding it, we find that, although such explicitly oppositional uses of но tend
to be closural and to some extent at least quatrain-initial, the pattern is un-
clear. The compositional patterning of но would thus seem to be directly
related to the semantic value characteristic of it in Fet’s poetry.
Shift in mood and the situational abruption discussed earlier are both
forms of Fet’s но as the но of new beginnings. Making a new beginning
tends to be a relatively vigorous process, and in Fet’s poetry the relative
vigor of the portion of text that begins with но is usually evident in a verbal
semantics evoking action or high emotional intensity. Usually, too, the se-
mantics of the part of the text that begins with но entails a certain amount of
volition and control: languages tend to package volition and action together.
Emotion, physical action and control are all illustrated in “Вот утро севера
– сонливое, скупое…”, in which, as we have seen, the poet-speaker ex-
presses his emotional response to the sight and sound of the coachman urg-
ing on his horses. The parcelling out of emotion and physical activity
(physical action to the horses, control to the coachman, emotion to the ob-
server-speaker) is rather typical of Fet, and it is significantly different from
the norms of “ordinary language” use, in which the grammatical subject in a
но clause tends to attract emotional intensity, physical activity, and con-
326 Chapter Three

trol.237 The poem was written very early in Fet’s career, and its usage ex-
ploits the semantics of но in the simplest and clearest way, of which the se-
mantics of the later poems can be viewed as a further development, often
more complicated. For example, although willful action is typical for con-
structions in но, sometimes willfulness seems to be imputed even to lack of
action. This is shown in this poem from the 1870s:
Тoлькo встрeчу улыбку твoю
Или взгляд улoвлю твoй oтрaдный, –
Нe тeбe пeснь любви я пoю,
A твoeй крaсoтe нeнaгляднoй.
Прo пeвцa пo зaрям гoвoрят,
Будтo рoзу влюблeннoю трeлью
Вoсxвaлять нeумoлчнo oн рaд
Нaд душистoй ee кoлыбeлью.
Нo бeзмoлвствуeт, пышнo-чистa,
Мoлoдaя влaдычицa сaдa:
Тoлькo пeснe нужнa крaсoтa,
Крaсoтe жe и пeсeн нe нaдo.
Personification arises both frequently and naturally in text prefaced by но,
and, correspondingly, it is characteristic that the inanimate rose should be
presented as “ruler of the garden”: insofar as the activities typical of this part
of the text are volitional, the performers of those activities must be sentient,
and, in a world with a very small cast of human characters, personification
of elements of the natural world is pervasive. The late poem “Осень” (1883)
is a fine illustration of Fet’s later usage. The stanza beginning in но intro-
duces action, emotion, and personification of nature: autumn seeks burning
gazes and the torrid caprices of love in the blood running through the veins
of golden leaves. The poem is characteristic
Осень
of Fet’s later usage also in putting но in line
5, a choice that has the happy consequence of Кaк грустны сумрaчныe дни
locating the full force of activity right in the Бeззвучнoй oсeни и xлaднoй!
center of the poem. Fet generally favors put- Кaкoй истoмoй бeзoтрaднoй
ting heightened activity in the center of a К нaм в душу прoсятся oни!
three-stanza poem (notice, for example, the Нo eсть и дни, кoгдa в крoви
busy crepuscular singer in the central stanza Зoлoтoлиствeнныx убoрoв
of “Тoлькo встрeчу улыбку твoю…”), but to Гoрящиx oсeнь ищeт взoрoв
some extent that tendency was offset in his И знoйныx приxoтeй любви.
earlier poems in но by the force of the final Мoлчит стыдливaя пeчaль,
stanza, which но most often initiated. In “Ос- Лишь вызывaющee слышнo,
ень”, in contrast, the final stanza is a con- И, зaмирaющeй тaк пышнo,
tinuation of the previous one, not only the- Eй ничeгo ужe нe жaль.
Verse form and language 327

matically (stanza 1 presents gloomy days, stanzas 2 and 3 – the others) but
also rhetorically. The personification introduced in stanza 2 is continued in
the figure of “bashful sorrow”, and whether it is she or autumn that is “dying
away so luxuriantly”, the reference to dying away makes a gentle rounding
off of the life force evident earlier, the final жаль, also characteristic only of
the mature Fet, here breathing out a small puff of still-living renunciation.
We have seen that, in very late Fet (from 1886 on), но tends to move to
an earlier point in three-stanza texts than the one it had previously occupied.
I have suggested that this may be seen as a tendency to strengthen the mid-
dle stanza of three-stanza poems. “Стрaницы милыe oпять пeрсты
рaскрыли;…” (1884) was written just before that shift, and can serve as an
example of a late poem in which но is right where it customarily had been,
in line 9. This would seem to be the но of contradiction, of something unex-
pected: the speaker treasures what in the previous line have been named as
the (mere) “тени бледные у лепестков сухих”, presumably referred to by
“ими” in line 9. Yet “treasuring” can be viewed as unexpected only in the
context of the negatively evaluative language of the second stanza (“О, как
ничтожно все!”, “лишь”); но divides the third stanza from the second, but
the division has little informational force: we have known since the first
stanza that the dried petals are treasured, and we can hardly expect the pale
shades they evoke to be less
Стрaницы милыe oпять пeрсты рaскрыли; valued than the flowers. For
Я снoвa умилeн и трeпeтaть гoтoв, но to be understood contras-
Чтoб вeтeр иль рукa чужaя нe срoнили
tively, we have to take a push-
Зaсoxшиx, oднoму мнe вeдoмыx цвeтoв.
down storage approach to ex-
O, кaк ничтoжнo всe! Oт жeртвы жизни цeлoй, periencing the text: we are no
Oт этиx пылкиx жeртв и пoдвигoв святыx – longer thinking about what we
Лишь тaйнaя тoскa в душe oсирoтeлoй knew in stanza one because it
Дa тeни блeдныe у лeпeсткoв суxиx.
was superseded in stanza two.
Нo ими дoрoжит мoe вoспoминaньe; This is the logic of free asso-
Бeз ниx всe прoшлoe – oдин жeстoкий брeд, ciation, and of most of Fet’s
Бeз ниx – oдин укoр, бeз ниx – oднo тeрзaньe, poetry. Psychological mood
И нeт прoщeния, и примирeнья нeт! floats freely until a perception
nails it down.
“Стрaницы милыe oпять пeрсты рaскрыли;…” is built on an underly-
ing contradiction, but the contrast lies not between two different values as-
signed to relics or ghosts of the past – because the relics and ghosts are not
assigned different values – , but in juxtaposing the “всё”, the “жертвы
жизни целой”, on one hand, and, on the other, the fragile private longing –
“тайная тоска в душе осиротелой” – that is all that is really left. The reli-
quary flowers serve as point of access to the lost world, by way of dreadful
emotion. The gulf between “the secret longing of the orphaned soul” and the
328 Chapter Three

sacrifices and exploits from which the soul has been separated occupies the
central lines of the text. We may recall from Chapter One the critical role in
Fet’s poetry of тоска, the word that so peculiarly captures that terrible sense
of absence.238 It is this that lies at the heart of the poem and motivates its
plangent ending.
Only superficially is the last stanza incongruous with what has preceded.
More fundamentally, it both arises from the opposition in the stanza imme-
diately before it and returns to the speaker’s original thought, expressed in
the first stanza and now, in the third, become bitter and self-recriminatory.
The third stanza presents not so much new thought as new emotion, a cres-
cendo emanating from psychological depths newly revealed, perhaps newly
discovered by the speaker. The final stanza is thus the point of highest emo-
tional pitch, an emotional “tail” evocative of a much younger Fet.
It is, however, the second stanza of the poem, not the third, that starts
with an emotional exclamation and then descends gradually, down to the
“dried petals” of line 8, while the third stanza leads up just as gradually to its
final climax. In this curve, the но of line 9 marks a taking of breath, a new
attack after pause, but the strength of the attack is not yet felt. On the con-
trary, the opening of the third stanza seems to promise a return not only to
the thematics of the first stanza, but also to its rhetoric and emotional tenor –
a hint of the ring structures for which Fet’s poetry is famous. The phrase
“мое воспоминанье” at first seems the same sort of metonymical reference
as the “персты” in the first line, and as the “рука чужая” of the third. But of
course it is entirely different: in the first stanza, putting fingers and, then, an
alien hand into the picture helps us see the dried flowers in front of us, close
to – a rhetorical and nearly photographic technique characteristic of Fet. The
apparent metonyms of the second and third stanza are disembodied and
therefore work somewhat differently. The soul of the second stanza is no
mere part or attribute of a more fundamental or controlling “I”. It is itself the
fundamental and controlling “I”, and constitutes the whole to which the ex-
perience of тоска is relevant: тоска, if it is viewed as contained within any-
thing, must surely then lie in the soul. As for the third stanza, it is not мое
воспоминанье that treasures either the dried petals or the pale shades linger-
ing among them. Rather, the petals and the pale shades they evoke are what
the “I” treasures because through them he regains in memory his experience
of the living antecedents of the shades, and of the hallowed exploits that
permit him to attain forgiveness and reconciliation; in short, it is not that
“my remembrance” treasures “them”, but that I treasure my remembrance, I
treasure my remembering them (the pale shades, or what they were before
they were pale shades), I treasure them (the flowers) because they permit me
to remember them (the people and things that are now pale shades). Again
and again in the third stanza, the poet refers back to the treasures mentioned
Verse form and language 329

in the second stanza (“ими”, “без них”, “без них”, “без них”), and in this
way he joins the two together. At the same time, the new onset marked by
но in line 9 is really the beginning of an onslaught of self-referentiality: I
treasure my remembrance, without which my past is but a cruel delirium that
I have experienced, without which there is only self-rebuke, self-torment,
and I find no forgiveness (of me by myself or others), I cannot be reconciled
– with what I have done with my life? with the person from whom I have
become estranged? The semantic burden of “Стрaницы милыe oпять пeр-
сты рaскрыли;…”, is clearly expressed at the mid-point of the poem, but its
emotional weight carries the poem forward for another four lines – and the
final poetic truth of the poem lies not in the generalizations, the statements,
of stanza two, but in the revelatory cri de coeur of line 12: there is no for-
giveness, and no reconciliation. The ending of the poem returns the reader,
and the speaker, to the world that does not even know about the flowers. The
form но introduces this climactic coda, and encapsulates the contrast be-
tween the secret world of the “страницы милые” and the larger world, in
which they have no place.
Fet’s use of но carries closural force, but also tends to announce a new,
last attack on the poetic matter at hand. A section of text beginning with но
has a certain vigor and tends to be dominated by the poet-speaker’s changing
psychological states, rather than by contrasts inherent in the fictive external
reality in the world of the text. Even when the presence of но corresponds to
such an opposition, we often can discover what is opposed only by looking
at large blocks of meaning, rather than individual words or phrases. Fet’s
sentences in но are not much constrained by the grammar or semantics of
the sentence that comes immediately before them. They tend to mark the
beginnings of passages of high emotional pitch and characterized by a se-
mantics of strong volition and intensive activity. Even though the use of но
might seem to be based in a rhetoric of logical argumentation, it nonetheless
becomes in Fet’s work an instrument of emotional expression even at the
same time as it helps shape the text. This corroborates Bukhshtab’s view,
according to which Fet’s tendency toward antithesis is an outgrowth of his
irrational aesthetics. Here, as with earlier examples of Fetian rhetoric, we are
reminded of the ancient roots of the rhetorical art, which aimed to persuade
and move, not to demonstrate logical connections. We have also seen that in
both twelve-line and eight-line poems there is a marked tendency to move
the occurrence of но forward in the text and, with it, the center of emotional
force in the poems in which it occurs. In twelve-line poems, this shift can be
associated with the reinforcement of an annular stanzaic structure that had
always been characteristic of Fet, but in eight-liners, the “front-loading” of
emotion is not associated with stanzaic form. Rather, it seems to correspond
330 Chapter Three

to a general tendency in late Fet to move away from the orientation of his
early poems toward a strong final point.
The little words in Fet’s poetry thus have a somewhat different history
from the semantic kingpins like nouns and adjectives. Fet’s adjectival usage
tends to revert, at the end of his life, to his usage in poetry he wrote much
earlier. Grammatical words tend not to do that. In most instances, the
changes in Fet’s use of these little words entail focusing their compositional
function and their semantics, or replacing a longer word by a shorter one.
The blurring and shifting of meanings characteristic of Fet’s autosemantic
vocabulary is going on in a different, and newly taut, linguistic frame.
Verse form and language 331

Notes to Chapter Three

1
On a related phenomenon, see NEDOBROVO (1990 [1914]), ZHOLKOVSKY (1996).
2
Grigor’ev’s idiosyncratic appreciation of artistic potential has been noticed with
respect to other poets, notably Sluchevskii. Cf. A. V. FEDOROV (1962:7-8).
3
GASPAROV (1998).
4
Borisov’s life was extremely difficult. When he was still a young boy, his father
was murdered, not without provocation, by his serfs. He served in the military, where he
saw his entire unit killed in battle around him. He was repeatedly rejected by N. A.
Shenshin, before she finally agreed to marry him, and she agreed apparently because her
doctor persuaded Fet, who persuaded her, that marriage would cure her “hysteria”. Her
mental illness went its course, and it was, naturally, Borisov who had to place her in an
institution, where she died. Borisov died not long afterward, and so was spared knowing
that their son would eventually share Nadezhda Afanas’evna’s tragic fate. Through Fet,
Borisov also entered into the lives of L. N. Tolstoi, with whom he was friendly in the
1860s (TOLSTOI 1978:1:373-74), and, more significantly, I. S. Turgenev. Borisov cor-
responded extensively with Turgenev (E. M. KHMELEVSKAIA 1967, N. A. KHMELEV-
SKAIA 1968), who evinced warm concern for Borisov’s well-being in his last days (MV
2:228-29). He appears frequently in all three volumes of Fet’s autobiography. In Fet’s
childhood memoirs, Borisov is first mentioned as the sixth, by order of age, of the
children in a neighboring family (RG 25), and he re-appears frequently throughout the
volume. A somewhat fuller characterization of Borisov appears in the first volume of
Fet’s memoirs (MV 1:13-15). Borisov’s year of birth is variously given as 1832 (KHME-
LEVSKAIA 1967:335, TOLSTOI 1978:2:429, TURGENEV 1986:2:493), 1822 (FET 1982:2:
395), and February 11, 1824 (BLOK 1985:136).
5
A rare instance of an early friendship that continued through Fet’s later life was his
relationship, in later years largely epistolary, with A. L. Brzheskaia. BLOK (1922:106-23)
describes Fet’s correspondence with Brzheskaia in considerable detail, but the letters
have remained unpublished.
6
Letter from Fet to Polonskii, December 26, 1887 (FET 1982:2:334).
7
From late 1874 to 1887 Fet’s friendship with Polonskii suffered a long and hostile
interruption: gossip in a letter from Polonskii, and confirmed from other sources, was
cited by Turgenev as the stimulus for his breaking off relations with Fet (TURGENEV,
1960-68: Pis’ma 10:334), and Fet in his turn broke off relations with Polonskii. His
reconciliation with Polonskii was urged upon him by N. N. Strakhov, who conveyed to
him Polonskii’s own expressed eagerness to renew their friendship, as well as Polonskii’s
denial of the words attributed to him by Turgenev (who had died in 1883). Fet wrote to
Polonskii (December 26, 1887) asking his forgiveness: “Но теперь мне остается только
пожалеть о моем доверии к его [Тургенева] словам и попросить у тебя великодуш-
ного прощения за утраченные мною, вне наших дружеских сношений, годы”. A
week later, answering Polonskii’s response to his letter, Fet expresses his relief in terms
that bring together his personal friendship with Polonskii and his belief in their shared
faithfulness to the poetic muse. Fet makes the connection through a characteristically
imprecise quotation from Matthew 5.23: “Жрецу муз прежде всех следует помнить
слова: ‘если несешь дар к алтарю, и брат твой имеет нечто на тебя, то иди
примирись с братом твоим’ ” (FET 1982:2:334-35).
332 Chapter Three

Notes
8
From Polonskii’s poem “А. А Фет”, written shortly after the two poets’ reconcilia-
tion, and soon after Polonskii received, as a present from Fet, a copy of the third edition
of Evening Lights: “Там – те же соловьи и с ними тот же Фет …Все тот же огонек,
что мы зажгли когда-то, Не гаснет для него и в сумерках заката, Он видит призраки
ночные, что ведут Свой шепотливый спор в лесу у перевала, Там мириады звезд
плывут без покрывала, И те же соловьи рыдают и поют”. Polonskii also wrote an-
other poem, dedicated to Fet in response to the publication of Evening Lights (“Вечерние
огни. Посвящено А. А. Фету” [“Уходит пестрый день и, теша смертных очи …”],
POLONSKII 1885:452). On Fet and Polonskii, see note 7 and NIKOL’SKII (1917).
9
In addition to the reminiscentiality of his prose writings, the return of the older Fet
to the poetry of his youth can be seen in two ways: first, his incorporation into his late
practice of earlier techniques and themes and, second, his review of his own earlier writ-
ings. Fet’s most important twentieth-century editor, B. Ia. Bukhshtab, brought to modern
readers’ attention the fact that, although the practice of Fet’s editors in the 1850s and 60s
was arguably at odds with Fet’s own aesthetic tendencies, nonetheless the poet himself in
later years retained most of the changes made in his texts at that time. Yet this is only part
of the story: if Fet accepted changes made within individual poems, still, in the preface to
the third edition of his Evening Lights (published 1888), Fet announces that he has, at the
urging of his later editors, re-discovered his own 1850 volume of poetry, the poems of
which had provided the greater part of the material that was re-edited so drastically for
the 1856 volume. Still other poems, not reprinted in Evening Lights, were included in the
list of poems that at his death in 1892 Fet was preparing for a final collection of his
works, and, in a few cases, we know that Fet was revising texts very shortly before he
died. In brief, although the texts that had been re-edited for the 1856 collection were gen-
erally left in their later form, yet now, in the 1880s and early 90s, Fet himself returned to
those of the poems of the 1850 volume that had actually been excluded from the 1856
volume and had therefore not been re-edited by Turgenev. We see here a typical example
of Fet’s behavior: he readily acceded to, and adopted, suggestions for changes on a rela-
tively local level, but he so retained, or recovered, his view of the global integrity of his
work that he did not, in the end, accede to his earlier editors’ attempt to remove substan-
tial parts of it from his canon. Just as he was more oriented toward the text overall than to
details within it, similarly, at the end of his life, his interest was directed toward the text
not of individual poems but of his oeuvre, and he clearly sought to ensure that the final
shape of that oeuvre would correspond to his own poetic goals and practices.
10
“По болезни глаз ищу спасения в перелистывании собственной жизни,
нимало не заботясь о времени появления автобиографии, которая, быть может,
появится после моей смерти, если не погибнет” (letter to Polonskii, 1 January 1888,
FET 1982:2:335).
11
Fet’s translations of Horace’s Odes appeared in 1856, first in Notes of the
Fatherland and then as a separate volume (FET 1937:759). On Fet’s Horace translations,
see BUSCH (1964:191-96). Fet’s books of translated poetry have not been reprinted, al-
though selections from the Latin authors have been included in some scholarly editions of
his work (see below).
12
The poem is “Die schöne Nacht” (“Прекрасная ночь”).
13
Already in letters of 1895-98, we see in Briusov’s response to Fet a differentiation
among different editions, and his delight in, especially, his discovery of the 1850 edition
(TRIFONOV 1991:1:102-104, 651). Cf. also a response to the non-canonical Fet in I. A.
Verse form and language 333

Notes
Bunin’s 1944 story “Холодная осень”, a connection first remarked on in FET
(1986:692).
14
See especially BUKHSHTAB (1935, 1937:670-77) and L. M. LOTMAN (1976:74-86,
1977).
15
The 1850 edition suffers from numerous defects, and Fet in his memoirs
emphasizes the difficult circumstances of its publication. Problems include misspellings,
misnumbering of sequences of poems, lack of correspondence between the titles of
poems in the table of contents and in the body of the text, and, worst of all (because
impossible to correct without reference to other editions), several missing lines (at least
one of which was missing in the same poem in its earlier printing). In addition, the text
was printed with each poem immediately following its predecessor, without any attempt
to avoid orphaned stanzas or even lines. In this respect, the layout of both the 1840 and
the 1856 edition showed greater care, and perhaps a more lavish budget. The layout of
the 1850 and 1856 editions is compared more fully below.
16
“Так как Вы пишете о значительном улучшении Ваших финансов … то мы
предлагаем поручить нам новое издание Ваших стихотворений, которые за-
служивают самой ревностной очистки и красивого издания, для того, чтобы им
лежать на столике всякой прелестной женщины”. Letter of Turgenev to Fet, 8 (20)
February – 6 (18) April 1855. Peterburg. Quoted from: I. S. TURGENEV (1960-68: Pis’ma.
2: 268-69). The original letter is unknown, and the source for the text is MV I, 104. The
collection of Turgenev’s letters, unlike the publications of Fet’s memoirs, are provided
with helpful annotations to the letter, known only in fragmentary form, and it is for this
reason that I quote the letter from the Turgenev edition.
17
Although it is impossible to tell for sure whether Fet and Grigor’ev were dealing
with Goethe’s 1815 collection or with that of 1827, certain details point to the earlier
work. First, in composing FET (1850), Grigor’ev did not use the groupings of Goethe’s
poetry that were new in the 1827 edition (even, for example, the simple “Lyrisches”, not
to mention more arcane headings), whereas he did use headings (notably “Разные
стихотворения”, from “Vermischte Gedichte”) found in the earlier collection but not the
later one. Second, Fet’s early acquaintance with the 1815 collection is suggested by his
choice of material for translation. I have not been able to identify any Fet translations of
poems that first appeared in the 1827 edition of Goethe. Although the young Fet was
oriented toward Goethe’s poetics and the later Fet – toward Tiutchev’s, in each case, the
orientation can be specified a little more closely: early Fet seems to have been inspired
by, especially, the younger Goethe, and later Fet – by the older Tiutchev, and, although
the orientation toward Goethe is less pronounced in later Fet, the Goethe represented in
Fet’s last works included also more of the older Goethe. See also Chapter One, especially
note 25.
18
We may wonder how the question of “Goethe or Heine” is intertwined with the
rumors, apparently false, of Fet’s Jewish origins. The 1850 volume contained a large
section of translations of poems by the first Jew to become a major German poet – and
also, as Fet’s unique translation from English, a poem from Byron’s Hebrew Melodies.
19
The Goethe text is “Nähe des Geliebten” (“Ich denke dein, wenn mir der Sonne
Schimmer…”). The connection seems to have been first noticed by ZHIRMUNSKII
(1981:347). See also EIKHENBAUM (1969:464), who refers to Zhirmunskii. GORLIN
(1933:327), also adduces this poem in his brief treatment of Fet’s response to Goethe.
334 Chapter Three

Notes
20
The “Russian ear” is that of GASPAROV 1984 (Ocherk):180. Fet himself, in his late
correspondence with K.R., refers to the poems as “anthological poems”, a rubric gen-
erally associated with formal subtlety and, for Fet, with Goethe’s influence.
21
Fet’s German origin showed up in his early years in one particularly small way: his
spelling of his name with a diaeresis over the vowel letter. He never published poetry
with that form of his name, but it appears, for example, in Grigor’ev’s official letters to
the university, in which he authorizes Fet to act in Grigor’ev’s behalf.
22
Some of Fet’s Goethe and Schiller translations seem to be very early and are sel-
dom reprinted. Somewhat surprisingly, not all of Fet’s translations of short poems by
major German poets are included in the generally authoritative Fet (1959), although
nearly all are printed in FET (1937). Because of the limited attention, and space in
collections, given to Fet’s translations, there remain some chronological puzzles
connected with them. One such puzzle is the date of Fet’s translation (evidently the first
translation into Russian) of Heine’s “Das gelbe Laub erzittert… ” (LEVINTON 1958:412),
sometimes published under the title “Der scheidende Sommer”. It is part of a group
“Kitty”, in a supplement to Heine’s “Neue Gedichte”. In Heine’s lifetime, the poem was
published in 1835 and 1847 (HEINE 1983:791, 794). Fet’s translation was first published
in 1856, the year of Heine’s death. Bukhshtab does not explain why he dates the
translation to about 1847, the same date he assigns to the Heine translations published in
Fet’s 1850 collection (FET 1959:660). In FET (1937) the translation is undated. The poem
seems not to be mentioned by GORDON (1982:127-45).
23
Comparable usage appears, but very rarely, in Russian poetry before Fet
(ZHIRMUNSKII 1923:150). It has been characterized as “rare … but systematic” in the
poetry of N. A. Nekrasov (GASPAROV 1984 [Ocherk]:194). Fet did not derive his usage
from Nekrasov’s work, since it is represented most extensively in his 1840 book, and half
of all the examples are in poetry written by 1843. They disappear entirely in poetry
written after 1847, to return in the 1880s. None of the examples occur in Fet’s
translations. Zhirmunskii points out that the practice of rhyming velar fricative and non-
fricative (г/к/х) also has a parallel in German usage, and occurs independent of the
known pronunciation of velars by a given poet. Early Fet uses such rhymes freely, and
they become noticeably less frequent in his poetry from the 1850s. It is possible that the
consonantism in Fet’s early rhymes was unacceptable to his editors not only because they
knew the norms of Russian verse, but also because they knew or believed they knew
something about Fet’s personal background. Fet’s rhyme is discussed more fully in
section 3.3.
24
See pages 9 ff. and Chapter Two, note 47.
25
A related point is made by USPENSKAIA (1988:143), who also emphasizes the role
of Horace’s Odes as a means of transmission of Greek forms to Rome: Fet’s love of
Horace is more an expression of love for the Greek tradition, albeit mediated by Horace,
than for the Roman one. Fet’s view of the two cultures was conventional for his time.
26
In discussing Fet’s attitude toward translation, it is useful to differentiate his work
in the two languages from which he made most of his translations: Latin and German.
His goals were somewhat different in the two cases, partly because of the different
connections of Russian culture with Latin, on one hand, and German on the other. And
obviously Fet’s German was native, his Latin not. At the same time, Fet seems to have
chosen for translation both Latin and German poetry that presented interesting formal
problems. We will have little to say about his Latin translations, for our purposes notable
Verse form and language 335

Notes
mainly for the extent to which they have been adapted to Russian versificational
practices. As for his German translations, they were, on one hand, oriented toward a
readership that had some knowledge of the originals, and, on the other, very literal. He
viewed his role, as he described it in a letter to Polonskii, as that of a “carpet, along
which the triumphal carriage of the original enters into a new language” (FET 1937:761).
On Fet’s Heine translations, see FEDOROV (1929). A collection of Fet’s observations on
translation is GESSEN (1960).
27
GASPAROV 1984 (“Evoliutsiia”):8.
28
BUKHSHTAB (1937:674). The lines are in “Рад я дождю…От него тучнеет мягкое
поле…”, published in the cycle “Вечера и ночи”.
29
Fet’s “Пчелы” appeared in The Contemporary, No. 2. His “Люди спят; мой друг,
пойдем в тенистый сад” had appeared in No. 1. “Люди спят; мой друг, пойдем в
тенистый сад” is the poem translated by Arnold von Tideböhl and included by Sivers in
his “handbook of German poets in Russia” (see Chapter One, note 97).
30
The notes are held in the Manuscript and Rare Book Section of the Russian
National Library (Отдел рукописей и редкой книги Российской Национальной Биб-
лиотеки), f. 179. № 8. l. 20. I have the note on Fet through the kindness of A. L.
Ospovat.
31
DRUZHININ (1983:99).
32
See Chapter One, note 113.
33
GRIGOR’EV (1999:189).
34
MV (1:223).
35
On the success, relatively long survival, and flexibility of Russian syllabic verse,
see GASPAROV 1984 (Ocherk):29-31.
36
There is some ambiguity about what is meant by “at the end”. Because Fet wrote
little original poetry during the 1860s and 70s, it might seem that usage from the 1840s
that recurs only in the 1880s might not have been found a decade earlier only because the
body of work from that time is so small. For that reason, I have grouped the poems
chronologically into (roughly) same-size sub-corpora for purposes of statistical analysis,
and when I say that something is absent from Fet’s middle period but returns in his late
poetry, I am referring to four successive groups of about equal size, and I am comparing
the middle groups (in which inexact rhyme does not appear) with an early group and a
final group (where it does). For details, see below.
37
The reinstated poem was “Давно ль под волшебные звуки…”. The last two stan-
zas of “Я пришел к тебе с приветом…” were also restored, apparently on the basis of
V. P. Botkin’s criticism of the cut (FET 1986:667).
38
On the composition of the first edition of Evening Lights, see KLENIN (1996).
39
FET (1971:315).
40
Our corpus also includes one occasional poem that has come to light since the 1959
edition appeared (FRUMKINA 1985), but it is the translations that, for reasons by now
apparent, are the most interesting additional material, just as it is they that have least been
available to modern readers. Indeed, the range of Fet’s work generally tends to be
perceived as narrower than it is, because of its publication history. We have seen some of
the peculiarities of how Fet’s books were edited during his lifetime, and posthumous
editing has also had its quirks. The collections that appeared between Fet’s death and the
Revolution, whatever their defects, had one considerable advantage over other editions
before or since: they offer readers a uniquely extensive range of Fet’s work, including
336 Chapter Three

Notes
translations and early works that had been weeded out from the canon. The first such
edition appeared in 1894, and the three-volume 1901 edition is noteworthy not only for
its fullness but also for its appendices, including a chronological index. Besides Fet’s
shorter translations, the edition also contains such relatively long ones as, for example,
Hermann und Dorothea. The first major Soviet edition, FET (1937), was also the first of
three by the great specialist B. Ia. Bukhshtab. In addition to presenting previously
unpublished original poems, it continues the pre-Soviet practice of including virtually all
of the short translated poems Fet published (I have encountered only one short lyric
translation not included in any of the collections of Fet’s work, a poem by Lenau
reprinted in RATGAUZ [1974:246-47]), and it offers extensive information about the
history of Fet’s translating activity. This was a natural choice, in light of the attention the
editor gives to the work of the younger Fet and to the confrontation between Fet’s early
poetics and those of the editors of FET (1856). The edition suffers from certain problems,
of which all but the inevitable ones were corrected in FET (1959). That edition offers very
nearly all Fet’s original poetry, but it is less rich in translations and variant texts. In
addition, although the commentary to Fet (1959) is invaluable, it does not entirely replace
the commentary to FET (1937). The 1986 edition, published after Bukhshtab’s death, is
less useful. It offers much less of the non-canonical original poetry than does FET (1959),
fewer translations than FET (1937), and leaves out a substantial part of Fet’s canon. Its
notes to what poetry it includes are occasionally updated (for example, its reference to the
Bunin story mentioned above, as well as a few matters of chronology). Like its predeces-
sors, its illustrations include autographs, not all reprinted from earlier editions: one is a
dedication by Turgenev to Fet of a gift edition of Mörike (the dedication was not previ-
ously published in full), and another is a rough draft from a private collection. Its modest
title corresponds to its modest accomplishment, although what it is the “third edition” of
is thereby obscured. The only other scholarly editions of Fet’s poetry are FET (1971) and
FET (2001). FET (1971) has a helpful presentation of each of the volumes of Evening
Lights, including a reconstruction of the unpublished fifth one. It was reprinted in 1979.
41
FET (1842:183). The epigraph was identified simply as “Goethe”.
42
GRIGOR’EV (1850:53).
43
AKSAKOV (1838), GRIGOR’EV (1850).
44
The text of the Goethe follows the capitalization of GOETHE (1988:51), which is
the same as in GOETHE (1815:78), but differs from some other editions. I am grateful to
V. F. Markov for pointing out the difficulty of the orthography. Since, as I have sug-
gested elsewhere, the 1815 edition is in all likelihood the one in which Fet first
encountered Goethe, I have followed its usage also with respect to indentation and
spelling, although here GOETHE (1988) naturally follows the principles of modernization
established for the edition as a whole (GOETHE 1988:888-89).
45
The version translated into Russian is one published 1789 and later.
46
For an analysis of stress and metrical rhythm in “Auf dem See”, see ARNDT
(1971:226-28).
47
The shimmering reflection in the lake may have attracted Fet to the poem. His own
poetry, in an extension of the same poetics that yielded his many poems with windows
and watchers, is rich in water reflections. His “Диана” is an example of this. See
BUKHSHTAB (1974:101).
48
“Der Zürchersee” was written and first published 1750. A revised edition was pub-
lished in 1771 and repeatedly thereafter.
Verse form and language 337

Notes
49
A structural description of dolnik, with more attention to technical detail, is found
in the next section.
50
GOETHE (1987:893).
51
Cf. LYON (1882).
52
BEISSNER (1952) treats closural “close-up” and associated interiorization as charac-
teristic of Goethe’s poetics, and as something that distinguishes it from Klopstock’s.
53
The idea seems first to have appeared in print in RUDNEV (1968:136), and is devel-
oped at some length by NOVINSKAIA / RUDNEV (1995).
54
On dolnik on a binary base, see BAILEY (1969), GASPAROV (1993:136-39).
55
Dolnik, like ternary meters, tends to fill metrically strong positions with stressed
syllables. In binary meters, as we have already noted, metrical rhythm derives primarily
from destressed strong positions.
56
Because ternary meters tend to identify metrical strength with actual stress, they
are rhythmically less flexible than binary meters, and, statistically, dolnik tends to replace
ternary meters and not binary ones in the poetic repertory.
57
On the ternary basis of dolnik see GASPAROV (1974:53), who cites a 1914 work of
S. P. Bobrov as an early observer and analyst of the phenomenon. For systematic and far-
reaching comparison of German, Russian, and English dolnik in relation to their
corresponding non-dolnik forms, see TARLINSKAJA (1993), especially 25-63.
58
Compare here V. V. IVANOV’s 1968 analysis of meter and rhythm in Tsvetaeva.
BUKHSHTAB (1974) characterizes “Давно в любви отрады мало…” as an early
experiment in accentual verse, because of its consistent four-beat rhythm.
59
ZHIRMUNSKII (1981:341).
60
The statistics on Fet are my own. Where I compare Fet with other poets, I often
rely on the work of others, as indicated, and I have attempted to insure that such
comparative statistics are based on comparable data and methods of collection. The meter
and rhythm of Russian poetry have been extremely well studied, and several scholars
have worked extensively on Fet. On the development of metrical indices of the most
important Russian poets of the nineteenth century, see GASPAROV et al., edd. (1979, espe-
cially 3-11), who has published the fundamental studies of Russian meter and its histori-
cal development (GASPAROV 1974:39-75 et passim, 1984). Statistical analyses of Fet’s
metrics have been carried out by RUDNEV (1968), some of whose work in otherwise
unavailable summary form is found in M. Iu. LOTMAN (1988), and by EGEBERG (1976). A
study unavailable to me is the Viennese dissertation Zur Verstechnik A. A. Fets, by D. N.
FEICHTINGER (1965). Since so much has been done, the question arises why I should
nevertheless have gathered my own data. The answer is that much of the work on Fet has
been unavailable or available only in part, while some other work is outdated. I am not
aware of anyone before me having collected data about as much of the poetry as I wanted
to include in the present study, and much of the information has been collected or pub-
lished in such a way that, for technical reasons, it could not be exploited to yield answers
to the questions I ask here.
61
In some of the tables below, including Table 1, there are some columns that seem
not to add up properly. This is an artifact of rounding.
62
For models of such analysis, along with detailed discussions of the categorizations
used, see GASPAROV, ed. (1979).
63
NOVINSKAIA (1979:358).
338 Chapter Three

Notes
64
NOVINSKAIA (1979:373) surveys Tiutchev’s use of meters independently and in
regulated and unregulated anisometric verse.
65
This is slightly different from the distribution reported by UNBEGAUN (1956:47).
66
GASPAROV (1974:51).
67
My figures in any event slightly overstate the proportion of non-classical meters,
compared with the figures used by Gasparov and others, because I included among non-
classical texts all the poems that have any lines that violate classical norms. The more
conventional cut-off point requires that a text contain 25% nonclassical lines to count as
nonclassical. This is a cut-off point that will be functionally somewhat different for
anisometric than for isometric poems, since it means that if a poem has alternating lines
of two different meters, fully half the lines of one of the two meters (or a quarter of each)
must be nonclassical, which seems inherently somewhat different from finding deviations
in one quarter of lines that are otherwise uniform. Anisometric poetry plays such an
important role in Fet’s poetry that this possible functional difference seemed to me
important. In any case, since Fet was obviously interested in combining different kinds of
line in his text, I took as part of the purpose of my study the question of how and to what
degree Fet combined classical and nonclassical lines in a given poem. For this reason, I
preferred to put into a single category all the poems in which he evidently was
experimenting with non-classical lines, regardless of what proportion of the text the non-
classical lines comprise.
68
On the difference between Fet’s Tx4 when it occurs in translation, as distinct from
his original verse, see LIAPIN (2000:35-37), who exploits this material as a basis for es-
tablishing the parameters of a rhythmic verse norm.
69
But for violations of this rule, see note 117.
70
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:65-66, 70-72) discusses the nondifferentiation of ternary
meters in 18th-century Russian verse.
71
For a taxonomy of non-classical meters, see GASPAROV (1974:45).
72
Binary pentameters without caesura would belong here as well, but, in Fet’s usage,
pentameters did show caesura. In any event, the definition we will be using is convenient
for a technical reason: it was established by B. I. Iarkho and is followed in studies of
some other poets with whom Fet may usefully be compared. Especially relevant here is
NOVINSKAIA (1979), on Tiutchev.
73
On line length in Tiutchev, see NOVINSKAIA (1979:364-65).
74
NOVINSKAIA (1979), ORLOVA (1979).
75
NOVINSKAIA / RUDNEV (1995:529): “именно переводы являлись для Тютчева
творческой лабораторией в области метрического новаторства”. NOVINSKAIA
(1979:365): “В оригинальных стихотворениях … преобладают средние стихи, в пе-
реводных их немного опережают длинные … Эта разница порождается почти ис-
ключительно разницей в распределении оригинального и переводного ямба …
Остальные метры в оригинальных и переводных стихах ведут себя единообразно”.
76
The following statistics do not include Fet’s longer translations.
77
GASPAROV (1974: 47, 62-67).
78
“Так я хочу. Если лирик потеряет этот лозунг ... он перестанет быть лириком
... Вся свобода и все рабство его в этом лозунге: в нем его свободная воля, в нем же
его замкнутость в стенах мира – «голубой тюрьмы»” (BLOK 1962:133).
79
GASPAROV (1974:56).
Verse form and language 339

Notes
80
Both lines are from “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды ...”, discussed in
Chapter One. As noted there, the poem is sometimes considered logaoedic, but actually
the rhythm is not uniform throughout.
81
The revised stanza is: “Друг мой! в сияньи ночном, Как мне печаль превоз-
мочь?…Ты же светла, как любовь, В тихую, звездную ночь.” Both texts combine a
rhymed and unrhymed line pair in each stanza, but the later version is based entirely on a
single rhyme, and each stanza ends on a rhymed line. In the earlier version, the outer
stanzas are based on the same rhyme and both stanzas (and the poem) still end on a
rhyme, but the middle stanza introduces a new rhyme as a pair-rhyme, followed by two
unrhymed lines: a clearly differentiated inner stanza between the more-similar outer ones,
a stanza of greater complexity and tension than its later replacement.
82
I am here using the term “logaoedic” as in SCHERR (1986:134): “verse in which the
ictuses [my “strong positions”] always fall on the same syllables [from one line to the
next]…, while the number of syllables between ictuses [within the line] varies”. Loga-
oedic rhythm entails repetition within the poem or stanza, as opposed to a fixed form
such as for example Fet’s elegiac distich. On the repetitive regularity of logaoeds, see
Zhirmunskii (1975:213).
83
GASPAROV (1997, “Russkii geksametr”):254-57.
84
In the process of borrowing, ancient quantitative prosody was reinterpreted in the
only terms available in Russian, namely stress. The privilege of occurrence of the
apparent trochees of Russian hexameter corresponds to that of the spondees of, in Fet’s
case, a Latin dactylic hexameter line, where all but the fifth foot can normally be
spondaic. (The line-end is disyllabic and indifferent to quantity in the ancient models.)
85
The feminine line-end also creates a trochee, not counted in the metrical scheme.
86
The poem is apparently neither a translation nor a translation-of-a-translation. Fet
does not always indicate his translations as such, and later editors do not always take note
of intermediaries. I have not, however, been able to locate any source close enough to the
Fet text to justify treating it as a translation. The Kalidasa drama was first translated into
a European language – English – in 1789, by Sir William Jones, into German in 1791,
and into French in 1803. The Russian version by N. M. Karamzin was written in 1792
and selected scenes from it were published in the Moscow Journal for 1802, but they
seem not to be closely related to Fet’s poem. Neither does any later “Sakuntala” source I
have been able to find. See also Chapter One, note 7.
87
UNBEGAUN (1956:47-48, 99-100) concisely describes the use of dactylic hexameter
and Russian hexameter to imitate classical models, and he comments helpfully both on
the different aspects of the German tradition that were known to Russian poets and on the
changing form of the hexameter. A full-length study is BURGI (1954). See also note 88.
88
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:70-72) discusses the rise of dactylo-trochaic hexameter
in the context of Russian metrical experimentation in the eighteenth century.
89
The translation dates to 1877 and was first published the following year in a collec-
tion of Goethe’s works in Russian translation.
90
ZHOVTIS (1970:304).
91
There is an extensive literature on the problem of defining free verse and the
Russian tradition of free verse. For recent views, see GASPAROV / SKULACHEVA (1993)
and SKULACHEVA (1998). In relation to Fet, see ZHOVTIS (1970). For a new typology of
free verse in the European tradition, see LILJA (2001).
92
On defining accentual verse, see SCHERR (1986:169-78).
340 Chapter Three

Notes
93
On the “5+5” meter, see BAILEY (1970, 1993), BEZZUBOV (1978).
94
The poem is included by Goethe among his “Lieder”. Schubert’s (Op.5 No. 4)
setting of “Erster Verlust” (“Ach! wer bringt die schönen Tage, …”) is dated July 5,
1815, and was published 1821. Another non-folkloric “5+5” in a Russian version of a
German “song” poem has been pointed out to me by M. L. Gasparov: Tiutchev’s Heine
“motif” “Если смерть есть ночь, если жизнь есть день”, which is a response (in
rhymed “5+5”) to “Der Tod das ist die kühle Nacht”, from the section Die Heimkehr in
Das Buch der Lieder. Tiutchev’s poem was written in 1868 or 1869. A motivation for
Tiutchev’s “5+5”, lacking in Fet’s, is the rhythmic and grammatical regularity of the first
two lines of the source poem: Der Tod das ist | die kühle Nacht / Das Leben ist | der
schwüle Tag.
95
“Лесом мы шли по тропинке единственной” is probably the best-known of Fet’s
poems with dactylic-monometer lines. It was the appearance of this poem in The Russian
Herald that evoked Apukhtin’s parody:
Боже, в каком я теперь упоении
С Вестником Русским в руках.
Что за прелестные стихотворения,
Ах!
Там Данилевский и А. П. таинственный,
М[айко]в – наш флюгер-поэт,
Лучше же всех несравненный единственный –
Фет.
96
NOVINSKAIA (1979:359) states: “пристрастие Тютчева к равностопным кон-
струкциям – характернейшая черта метрического репертуара его оригинальной
поэзии”.
97
GASPAROV (1974:54).
98
NOVINSKAIA (1979:359).
99
My purpose in including translations in my analysis is to be able to compare Fet as
poet-translator with the Fet who created the short lyrics with which our study is mainly
concerned. Correspondingly, the translations I include are most of the short texts that Fet
is known to have translated from German, French, or English. They are, however, only a
sample of the enormous body of translations that Fet wrote. Specifically, I have included
all and only the translations that either are found in the authoritative 1959 edition of Fet’s
work or were published in one of his early collections of poetry (1840, 1850, 1856). After
1856, Fet tended to publish his translations separately from his original poems, and I
have not taken these volumes of translations into account. I have thus excluded nearly all
Fet’s Latin translation as well as all his translations of long poems, regardless of lan-
guage. In all, the corpus contains 2256 lines of translated poetry, as compared with 7473
lines in the canon of short original works, and 16088 in the total corpus.
100
Fet restricted his unregulated variable anacrusis nearly entirely to translations
from German. An exception is the non-canonical poem “Мой ангел” (“Как он
прекрасен…”), published in 1847. Evidently Fet’s use of variable anacrusis followed the
same pattern as other formal aspects of his work: an early free use of an experimental
pattern borrowed from German yields to a later more constrained usage.
Verse form and language 341

Notes
101
The poems are “Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды…” and “В тиши и
мраке таинственной ночи …”, discussed in Chapter One. Scherr’s commentary on
“Измучен жизнью, коварством надежды …” points out both the breakdown of the
logaoedic line in the course of the text and the importance of this poem, and by implica-
tion, its “twin”, as a harbinger of four-stress dolnik (SCHERR 1986:139).
102
“Ветер злой, ветр крутой в поле …” is analyzed by GASPAROV
(1984[Ocherk]:179, who also traces the historical background of Fet’s form. BAILEY
(1999) discusses the 8-syllable line in Russian folk poetry.
103
This is Schiller’s text (SCHILLER [1984]:199):
Es reden und träumen die Menschen viel
Von bessern künftigen Tagen,
Nach einem glücklichen goldenen Ziel
Sieht man sie rennen und jagen;
Die Welt wird alt und wird wieder jung,
Doch der Mensch hofft immer Verbesserung.

Die Hoffnung führt ihn ins Leben ein,

Sie umflattert den fröhlichen Knaben,
Den Jüngling locket ihr Zauberschein,
Sie wird mit dem Greis nicht begraben;
Denn beschliesst er im Grabe den müden Lauf,
Noch am Grabe pflanzt er – die Hoffnung auf.

Es ist kein leerer schmeichelnder Wahn,

Erzeugt im Gehirne des Toren,
Im Herzen kündet es laut sich an:
Zu was Besserm sind wir geboren.
Und was die innere Stimme spricht,
Das täuscht die hoffende Seele nicht.
104
The connection with Novalis was proposed by MORITS (1978:74). The question is
interesting, among other reasons, because of the possibility that Fet in the 1840s may
have been influenced by the tastes of his Moravian teachers. All reports of Fet’s school in
Werro stress the absence there of mysticism and narrow religiosity, but certainly that
strain has been important and recurrent in Herrnhut Pietism from Zinzendorf’s time
onward, and is an essential part of Novalis’s world view. Fet’s well-known areligiosity
need not have been incompatible with romantic mysticism, and Morits proposed that the
role played by the rose in Fet should be seen in, among other contexts, the context of
Novalis’s “blaue Blume”. However, on knowledge of Novalis in nineteenth-century
Russia, see Michael WACHTEL (1994:113-27).
105
RUDNEV (1968:137).
106
On innovation and tradition in Fet’s metrical repertory, see RUDNEV (1968) and
M. Iu. LOTMAN (1988).
107
On the early use of variable anacrusis in Russian poetry, see ZHIRMUNSKII
(1975:124-27). On Zhukovskii’s logaoedic and related forms, see MATIASH (1987:88),
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:123-24). We discuss Fet’s logaoedic forms above.
342 Chapter Three

Notes
108
GASPAROV (1974:51).
109
The 1850 book was the first volume published under Fet’s name, as distinct from
just his initials. Grigor’ev in his 1850 review in Notes of the Fatherland points out that
the connection was apparently unnoticed even by P. N. Kudriavtsev, who was well-
disposed toward Fet and had actually reviewed both volumes.
110
The number of texts is slightly deceptive (and different from the count used else-
where), since for this purpose I have counted as separate texts each metrically distinct
part of polymetric compositions, as well as sections published under a single title but
separated by subheadings, including numerals.
111
The table is based in statistics from GASPAROV (1974:48).
112
The regressive and progressive binary “waves” characteristic of Russian nine-
teenth-century verse were discovered and analyzed in detail by TARANOVSKY (1953).
Analysis of ternary meters as representative of binary structure is found in BOGO-
RODITSKII (1930). On hierarchical line structure in prosody, see KIPARSKY (1975, 1977).
113
GASPAROV (1974:126-219).
114
This of course oversimplifies, in that it ignores all the syntactic sources of rhythm,
including word and other boundaries, some of which are fully systematized in meter, in
the form, most notably, of caesura.
115
See note 113.
116
Fet translated the Epilogue probably around 1857. He published it only in 1859,
when the bloom had faded from his collaboration with Turgenev, and he began publish-
ing a large number of translations, including his ill-fated Shakespeare translations and his
(also widely disliked) translations, through German, of Hafis.
117
I do not know how widespread the phenomenon is in Narezhnyi. The play I have
collected examples from is “Кровавая ночь, или Конечное падение дому Кадмова”,
published 1800 and reprinted in NAREZHNYI (1964). Fet’s intermingling of hexameter
with apparent pentameter is found, outside of The Lyrical Pantheon, in a fragment of a
play that he never published.
Beyond its genre, Fet’s fragment shares with Narezhnyi’s usage also the fact that
both seem to permit not only non-pentameter “surrogates” in what seem to be pentameter
lines, but also final destressed iambic metrical positions. The destressed final metrical
position evokes non-Russian traditions, since both German and English permit such de-
stressing. Narezhnyi’s play is probably a translation from an unknown German source.
Final de-stressing – but not variation in line length – is also to be found also in Plet-
nev’s translation of Romeo and Juliet, which appeared in Ceверные цветы for 1830 and
would thus have been easily accessible to Fet. (I owe this observation to M. L.
Gasparov.) I am not aware of a foreign source for the Fet dramatic fragment.
In the following lines, quoted from FET (1959:548), the fourth line is the “stray”
hexameter, and the third line has a final “stressed” conjunction и:
O бoжe, бoжe! всe нaрoды мнe
Пoкoрны, кaк-тo – Азия, Eврoпa,
Aмeрикa и Aфрикa и... и...
И Пoлинeзия. – Нa мoрe и нa сушe
Нaйдeтся ли eдиный чeлoвeк,
Кoтoрый бы бeстрeпeтнo дeрзнул
Стaть прeд мoими свeтлыми oчaми?
Verse form and language 343

Notes
It is metrically similar to Narezhnyi’s text, which I quote with indentations as in my
source edition (NAREZHNYI 1964:156):
Клокочет Тартар в сей груди. – Враг может
Сразить – и эта смерть прелестна для героя.
Но пасть бунтовщиком, пасть извергом,
Дерзнувшим стать против отечества, –
Пасть от Полиника – и больно и
Бесчестно. – О друзья мои, поверьте,
Поверьте воплям – я отец, но я
И гражданин, – поверьте – посмотрите
На грудь его – и на широку рану:
Она получена от хищника; –
На кровь запекшуюсь: она пролита
От хищника. – Неужли вы еще
Не чувствуете, фивяне, обиды?
Неужли вы позволите лить кровь –
Кем? – кем? убийцей, возмутителем?
О! нет, друзья мои! нет! нет! да не
Смеются нам враги, да не поносят
Нас слабыми детьми или женами,
Что только воплем и слезами мстят!
118
TOMASHEVSKII (1923/1970:175).
119
VISHNEVSKII (1981:543).
120
VISHNEVSKII (1981:543).
121
On Fet’s Faust translation, see GASPAROV (1997[“Russkii trimetr”]:223-224) and
also note 117.
122
The more frequent caesura is thus associated with slightly less stress in the
adjacent strong positions. This is mildly surprising, since a stronger caesura is usually
associated with more stress, not less, but the difference is insignificant in so small a
corpus.
123
On hypercatalectic caesura, see ZHIRMUNSKII (1975:136-42) and UNBEGAUN
(1956:66-68,70). On its rarity in iambic pentameter, see GASPAROV (1993:81).
124
According to M. L. Gasparov, the second half of the nineteenth century saw
general expansion of the use of a mixture of an “approximate” iambic hexameter with
pentameter lines (in the works of e.g. Sluchevskii and Apukhtin). Fet’s usage in Греция
can perhaps be considered an early example of this trend – but the mature Fet did not
participate in it.
125
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:185).
126
The statistics for the norm are those collected by Gasparov, here cited from
SCHERR (1986:63). The statistics for the years “1857-92” also include two poems written
in 1856 but not included in the collection of 1856. “Poems new in 1856” refers to poems
in the 1856 collection that were not in the 1850 collection.
127
The third-stanza mingling of pentameter and hexameter in a four-stanza text is
reminiscent of Schiller’s “Amalia” (1805), where two Tx lines appear in the third stanza
of an otherwise Tx poem (SCHILLER 1992:227-28). The poem is in origin written as a
344 Chapter Three

Notes
song, and in its earlier form had more Tx lines, less regularly arranged. The longer lines
in “Amalia” appear at the emotional climax of the poem (“Stürzten, flogen, schmolzen
Geist und Geist zusammen, / Lippen, Wangen brannten, zitterten, / Seele ran in Seele –
Erd und Himmel schwammen / Wie zerronnen um die Liebenden!”).
128
For succinct coverage of the literature dealing with the level at which rhyme is to
be defined, and for argumentation over the role of spelling, grammatical meaning, pho-
nology, and morphophonemics in rhyme, see WORTH (1977). Throughout this chapter, I
variously employ modern Russian orthography and phonological notation, depending on
the nature of the pairing that seems to be at issue for a given rhyme. My notation is thus
“inconsistent” in that it follows the equally “inconsistent” basis of rhyme convention.
129
SCHERR (1986:195).
130
GASPAROV 1984 [“Evoliutsiia”]:35. I will not treat here the varieties of ways that
Russian strengthens rhyme, for example so-called “deep” rhyme, or “vertical enrich-
ment”. For discussion of these and related topics, see SCHERR (1986).
131
GASPAROV 1984 [Ocherk]:192-94.
132
Even the graphics of rhyme can be less than obvious. Modern editions of course
generally level such distinctions as those between the pre-Revolutionary letter “jat’” and
the “e” letter, which was generally pronounced just like it. However, in some
morphological positions, notably nominal endings, there were some differences. In the
prepositional case, jat’ represented for some speakers at some times a different reduced
vowel from the vowel spelled with a “e” letter in the nominative and accusative cases.
The pronunciation of jat’ in such instances was closer to the vowel generally spelled “и”,
and when approximate rhyme came to sanction the leveling of rhyming distinctions be-
tween post-tonic vowels (see below), jat’ and “и” fall together more readily than do “е”
and “и”. (On nineteenth-century norms for the pronunciation of unstressed vowels, in-
cluding analysis of the usage of, among others, both A. S. Pushkin and L. N. Tolstoi, see
PANOV 1990:235-240, 270-85.) On Fet’s “е” ~ “и” rhymes, see note 137. On modern
printing practices that actually create graphic mismatches where older norms had none,
see note 134.
133
On eye-rhyme in Russian poetry, see GASPAROV (1984 [Ocherk]:144).
134
Since “и” and “ы”, as we have seen, were always perfectly acceptable as a rhyme
pair even under stress, their appearance in post-tonic position does not in itself constitute
an example of approximate rhyme – but the mismatch between the paired post-tonic con-
sonants that precede them would be an example of inexactness in rhyme, as is described
below. Modern printing practices sometimes create graphic mismatches where, in older
orthography, there were none – for example, spellings of the masculine nominative sin-
gular adjectival ending “-ый”, which formerly could be spelled, as it was pronounced,
with a reduced /o/: “милый ~ унылой”. Orthographic identity seems, conversely, to have
promoted toleration of slight discrepancies in the pronunciation of post-tonic vowels
(GASPAROV 1984[Ocherk]:192).
135
On the phonetics of “o” ~ “a” rhyming in the context of contemporary Russian
speech, see PANOV (1990:232-33). A very full survey of the problems in analyzing “o” ~
“a” rhymes is to be found in SHAW (1989). One very interesting aspect of “o” ~ “a”
rhymes is that they tend on the whole to be found in pairs of rhyme-words that are gram-
matically differentiated (e.g., adverb “сладко” ~ nominative-singular feminine noun
“лихорадка”), which means that the growth of the unconstrained appearance of such
rhymes carries with it an increase in the “anti-grammaticality” of Russian rhyme. This
Verse form and language 345

Notes
fact is exploited in the controversial analysis by Jakobson ([1961]; cf. the response in
WORTH [1977]).
136
On the contemporary norm, see GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:144, 1984/1997:321).
137
Post-tonic “e” ~ “и” rhymes may be further differentiated, although the number of
examples in Fet’s work is so small that it is not very helpful to do so. For details, see note
138.
138
Out of 38 examples that I have encountered, 16 are from poems dated from 1887
or later, 8 are from the 1840s, 5 – from the 1850s, the remainder – from 1863 to 1881.
Among these examples are six rhymes that match third-person first- and second-
conjugation verbs (“колышет” ~ “слышит”): the earliest example is from 1847, there are
two from the 1850s, and two are from 1891. Rhymes of this type were in Fet’s day
widely used and were probably not even phonetically mismatched; all but one of the
examples are in his canonical short poems. The spelling in the edition of 1850 shows the
/et/ ~ /it/ mismatch as such, but the third-person “дышет” is so spelled there, as well as in
the edition of 1856 and in Evening Lights. Also found from early to late, but only five
times in all, are rhymes in which the post-tonic vowel is followed by jot (“здешней” ~
“вешний”). Only one example occurs in a non-canonical text. In contrast, we find early
non-canonical poetry the six rhymes in which the post-tonic vowel is followed by “л” or
“н”: “псарен” ~ “барин”, for example. Fet makes practically no use of rhymes between
prepositional-case endings spelled with jat’, on one hand, and, on the other, the “e” of
nominative- or accusative-case neuter nouns. Similarly, endings spelled in “и” in Fet’s
poetry are very seldom rhymed with inflexional endings that are spelled in “я” and were
probably pronounced with a schwa – I have found fewer than a half-dozen examples.
139
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:143).
140
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:143).
141
GASPAROV (1984 [Ocherk]:193-94).
142
ZHIRMUNSKII (1970:142), cf. also SAMOILOV (1982:105-06).
143
ZHIRMUNSKII (1970:144), citing earlier literature on the subject, adduces examples
from Lermontov, Grigor’ev, the young Pushkin, and Derzhavin, who is said to use such
rhymes “неоднократно”.
144
The original poem concludes: “Que le vent qui gémit, le roseau qui soupire / Que
les parfums légers de ton air embaumé, / Que tout ce qu’on entend, l’on voit ou l’on re-
spire, / Tout dise: Ils ont aimé!”
145
I follow the graphics of the 1850 edition, in which the speeches are run straight
on, without any graphic demarcation of the quatrains.
146
ZHIRMUNSKII (1970:145).
147
German generally permits rhymes in g ~ k but not k ~ ch. Goethe, as our example
shows, also permits g ~ ch, but this was dialectal, not a general norm. On the verse norm
and its dialectal base up to about 1750, see NEUMANN (1920:289-95)..
148
GENERALOVA / AUER (1992).
149
KLENIN (1987, 1988).
150
VISHNEVSKII / GASPAROV (1981:545).
151
FET (1856 [“Otvet”]:29). The relevant passage is reprinted in GESSEN (1960:328),
which, however, silently abbreviates it.
152
Cf. Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen: Caput VII.89-92, VIII.57-60, XI.21-24.
153
Cf. the poems “Marienburg vom Teufelsberge” and “Einst und Jetzt” in [SIVE]R[S]
et al. (1846: 44-45, 75-76), and “Entre deux” in VON SIVERS (1847:79). Of the fifty po-
346 Chapter Three

Notes
ems von Sivers published in the 1840s, 26 are partly rhymed. Besides the inclusion of
fully rhymed stanzas among the partly rhymed ones, von Sivers’s partial rhyme is also
similar to Fet’s in other ways. Like Fet, von Sivers did not restrict partial rhyme to XaXa
stanzas, and in von Sivers’s stanzas, as in Fet’s, the unrhymed lines of partly rhymed
stanzas were sometimes so heavily assonantial as to approximate rhyme.
154
The indecisive count derives from the status of “Two roses” (Две розы),
discussed later in this chapter.
155
The partly rhymed texts Fet revised at the end of his life were “Офелия гибла и
пела…” and “Бедный мальчик” (“На дворе не слышно вьюги …”).
156
Scherr (1986:221-24).
157
But see GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:70-71).
158
One of the oddities of the Russian hexameter tradition is the rise of rhymed
hexameter (GASPAROV 1974:191-92).
159
Fet’s Hafis poems, translations from the German, in a way represent both
traditions.They clearly belong to the “irrational” line of Fet’s love poetry, but at the same
time their exotic and sometimes elaborate patterning of rhymed and unrhymed lines (Fet
follows his German source) is reminiscent of the elegance of Fet’s unrhymed verse. The
Hafis poems are discussed in the next chapter, since they are interesting mainly as
experiments in stanzaic structure.
160
SCHERR (1986:27). BAILEY (1970, 1993).
161
FET (1986:659). In response to a comment from Turgenev, who pointed out the in-
appropriateness of a chance rhyme in the poem “Влажное ложе покинувши, Феб
златокудрый направил …”, Fet changed the text for inclusion in the 1856 edition of his
work. On Pushkin’s rhyme in an elegiac distich see SHAW (1993:270-72). On rhymed
hexameter, see also note 158.
162
LILLY (1995:53-80) includes helpful statistics on Fet’s usage in his statistical
analysis of the distribution of stressed vowels in rhyme as distinct from other positions in
Russian verse. In spite of the extraordinary wealth and precision of the correlations Lilly
establishes (he shows, for example, that the distribution of rhyme vowels differs sharply
in different meters), his statistics are unfortunately difficult to apply in the present
instance because for our purposes one would need to analyze separately the line-end and
non-line-end vowels of unrhymed poetry, and, indeed, one would need to analyze also
the effect of caesura and, at least arguably, the different choices Fet seems to have made
in different kinds of unrhymed and partly rhymed poetry written at different points in his
career. Once fully differentiated in this way, however, the material left to analyze is so
small that statistics based on it become rather dubious.
163
“Пeрлы вoстoчныe – зубы у нeй,…” (first published 1842).
164
I follow the spelling in FET (1885:38). It is modernized to “гляди-ка” in FET
(1937, 1959, 1986), and to “гляди-ко” in FET (1971).
165
Only a few days before his death, Fet was apparently revising his poem “На дворе
не слышно вьюги,…”, in preparation for his final collection of Evening Lights, which
remained unpublished at his death. The revision was first published by Nikol’skii (FET
1901:2:206), under the title “Бедный мальчик” (FET 1971:769-770 and references
therein). The revision is quoted here from FET (1912:1:392).
166
One poem (“Сад весь в цвету,…”) is quoted in the previous section. Another,
“Ветер злой, ветр крутой в поле …”, is a particularly spectacular example, discussed
by GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:179). In fact there are many examples of Fet’s adjusting
Verse form and language 347

Notes
line-ends. Another very clear example is “Тень” (1856): “Башня лежит, Все уступы
сочтешь. Только ту башню Ничем не сметешь. Солнце ее Не успеет угнать,–
Смотришь, луна Положила опять.” The poem is in a two-foot ternary meter, with vari-
able anacrusis, but it is easy to see the completely regular dactylic tetrameter line under-
lying each successive pair of short lines: a masculine clausula is followed by an anapestic
anacrusis, a feminine clausula – by an amphibrach.
167
To indicate a rhyme pattern without specification of clausula type, I use lower-
case letters in italic bold face.
168
See MINAEV (1863) and the discussion in GASPAROV (1988).
169
Verticality in Fet has been discussed by GASPAROV (1997), who views it as sub-
ordinate to Fet’s orientation on distance viewed horizontally.
170
VISHNEVSKII (1981:544-45).
171
BUKHSHTAB (1974:104).
172
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:200).
173
I include here 16 poems in elegiac distich but exclude medium-length or long pair-
rhyme poems (over eight lines) in which division into stanzas is not graphically
indicated; the solution is not entirely satisfactory, since of course the paired rhyme serves
to mark textual division into distichs in Fet’s hellenizing poetry modeled on the French
pattern. It is thus functionally parallel to the unrhymed elegiac distich that I do count as a
stanza form. Pair-rhyme stanzas are in some respects a special case, and they are
discussed separately later in this chapter, as are Fet’s distichs. Short pair-rhyme poems
are treated as poems in one stanza, as are all other short poems with regular but non-
repeating distribution of rhyme, and with no internal graphic divisions. For the present
purpose, I count sonnets as poems of one stanza, although Fet published them with quat-
rains and tercets separated graphically. Conversely, if a poem is in a repeating regular
rhyme pattern but was not graphically divided in publications during Fet’s lifetime, I
consider, for the present purpose, the number of stanzas to be the same as the number of
times the pattern repeats (which typically corresponds to the graphic divisions in
Bukhshtab’s 1959 edition of Fet’s poetry). Graphic organization is discussed later in the
chapter.
174
This does not include poems in eight-line stanzas that are printed without division
between quatrains in Bukhshtab’s 1959 edition of Fet, nor does it include poems that
contain both abab quatrains and other stanzaic units.
175
For discussion, see FRANK (1993:525-27) and literature therein.
176
On medieval Latin seven-liners, see BLÄNSDORF (2002)
177
This does not include the following, related, types of stanzas: “aaBccB” (5
poems), “aabccb” (1 poem), “AABCCB” (no poems), “AAbAAb” (2 poems), “aaBaaB”
(1 poem), “AABAAB” (no poems), “aabaab” (no poems). These counts exclude the
single-stanza poems of all these types. The only one of these groups of any significant
size is, of course, the first, but it lacks any real unity. Here belong the wonderful “Жизнь
пронеслась без явного следа…” and the completely different “Ты так любишь гулять;
…”, as well as the following poems: “Я потрясен, когда кругом…” (1885), “Дитя
покорная любви…” (1847), “Безумная” (“Ах, не плачь и не тужи…”) from The
Lyrical Pantheon. In addition, there is a one-stanza poem in this pattern: “Пускай мой
старческий портрет…”, addressed to T. A. Kuzminskaia.
348 Chapter Three

Notes
178
One of the two, Heine’s “Habe auch, in jungen Jahren…” (“В молодые тоже
годы…”), is only predominantly trochaic, since lines 5 and 8 both read: “Ma foi! и в
добрый час!”
179
“Шопену” was probably one of the last poems written for the first volume of
Evening Lights, where it appears in the supplementary section at the end. The book was
approved by the censor in December 1882 and appeared in March 1883. “Говорили в
древнем Риме…” is preserved in an autograph dated April 3, 1883.
180
13 poems, including a single-stanza Hafis translation.
181
“Другу моему” (“Взгляни, как снегом покровенны …”), written in the early
1800s.
182
“Паж, или пятнадцатый год” (“Пятнадцать лет мне скоро минет …”) and
“Прощание” (“В последний раз твой образ милый…”), both from 1830. On Pushkin’s
five-line stanzas and his predecessors, including Kapnist, see TOMASHEVSKII (1959:245-
46).
183
For a complete survey of Tiutchev’s stanzaic structures, see NOVINSKAIA (1979:
398-406).
184
SCHERR (1986).
185
VISHNEVSKII (1981).
186
See note 230.
187
FRANK (1993:404-05).
188
Rilke used other five-liners earlier, and it is not clear what led him to take up the
“AbAAb” form after his trips to Russia.
189
This corresponds to the way the internal pair-rhyme of abba stanzas function. For
a comparison of such stanzas with the more usual alternating-rhyme pattern, see Lilly
(1995).
190
FRANK (1993:391-94).
191
“Oда VIII. Парафразис Псалма 6” (TREDIAKOVSKII 1963:184-85).
192
The second line in the stanza was written by Fet to substitute for another one,
which was apparently beyond the comprehension of even the good-willed Polonskii. The
new line, however, is almost senseless without the last one.
193
Cf. “Ласточки” (1884).
194
We shall see that “being in” graphically demarcated quatrains is not so straight-
forward in Fet’s work, since most of his early work was published without demarcation
and most of his later work – with it. Modern editions homogenize in favor of
demarcation, but the meagre count of demarcated aabb-quatrain poems is based on FET
(1986). The poems written in a number of lines divisible by four includes such
anthological poems as “Диана” or “О, долго буду я, в молчаньи ночи тайной...”, but
so far as I can tell no one has ever divided up the quatrains of these poems graphically.
195
FRANK (1993:208).
196
FRANK (1993:245).
197
The first printing of the poem is in Fet’s late autobiography (RG 298-99).
198
TOMASHEVSKII (1959:226) says that Pushkin’s (rare!) abba quatrains are peculiar
in a partly similar way.
199
M. L. GASPAROV, paper read at the American Association for the Advancement of
Slavic Studies, 1998.
200
There are a number of ways to describe the internal organization of stanzas and
stanza-like forms. For a recent survey, see SCHERR (1999).
Verse form and language 349

Notes
201
On rhythmic “framing” of stanzas in Fet’s poetry, note our discussion of iambic
hexameter mixed with pentameter and of abba stanzas.
202
GASPAROV (1984[Ocherk]:150).
203
GASPAROV (1989 [Stroficheskii ritm]).
204
This observation may be related to the repertory of devices for relating structures
within a stanza to the global structure of the poem, as described in FERRELL (1966). This
is the earliest work I know of that analyzes this problem in any detail.
205
FUSSELL (1979:155-56).
206
In these calculations, I do not count elegiac distich as a stanza (and so exclude the
20 elegiac-distich poems), and I exclude not only clearly non-stanzaic poems but also
poems in exactly one stanza. I have not treated separately stanzas that were, and were
not, graphically demarcated in the 1850 edition, but have followed the usage in
Bukhshtab’s 1959 edition.
207
Poems written in the 1840s and then changed for republication are counted in their
earlier published form, but stanzas are counted regardless of whether or not they are set
off with white space. The twice-changed “Я пришел к тебе с приветом…” is counted
with all its stanzas in place, which is how it was first published and finally restored.
208
In none of the editions of Fet’s poetry that I have found is there any attempt to
demarcate non-initial stanzas that begin a new page, for example by indentation. For this
reason, we sometimes cannot tell whether the separation of stanzas in a poem is more
than an artifact of publishing practice.
209
This practice is still followed in at least some editions of German poetry, and it
has the advantage of making clear whether or not a set of lines beginning a new page
continues the stanza of the previous page. I have no idea how widespread this practice is.
210
The poems in question are the following ones: a nine-line poem with an idiosyn-
cratic stanzaic pattern (a succession of iambic pentameter, pentameter, hexameter, te-
trameter) and an orphaned last line (this is “Ночь и день”, mentioned above), two narra-
tive poems (the eighteen-quatrain four-part “ballad” сalled “Замок Рауфенбах” and the
six-quatrain miniature narrative called “Серенада” [“Плывет луна по высоте,…”]), two
stanzaic poems in an anthological style (“Греция” and “Ласточка” – other “anthologi-
cal” poems are non-stanzaic), and the only original two-stanza poems with stanzas longer
than the quatrain (“Утешение”, mentioned above for its unusual syntax, and the ten-line
“Она легка, как тонкий пар…”).
211
“Дозор”, for example, which is Mickiewicz’s “Czaty. Ballada ukraińska”, and
some of the many Heine translations found in the 1850 volume.
212
The setting of “Не отходи от меня…” was by A. E. Varlamov (1849, evidently a
posthumous publication), the one of “Тихая, звездная ночь…” – by K. G. Paufler
(1853), the one of “Cвеж и душист твой роскошный венок...” – by V. G. Kastrioto-
Skanderbek (1851). I have been unable to obtain copies of the original publications, and
my dating follows G. K. IVANOV (1966:363-73), who here, as elsewhere, gives the date
of approval by the censor. (Publication information on sheet music is often incomplete.)
213
L. M. LOTMAN (1976).
214
Generally, there is one poem per page in the edition of 1856, whereas the edition
of 1850 runs poems on one after the next and has several poems per page. It is possible
that publishing costs may have made a difference.
215
KLENIN (1996).
216
LERNER (1922).
350 Chapter Three

Notes
217
Fet was definitely reading or remembering Derzhavin not long after he wrote
“Бабочка” (see note 220), because a quote from Derzhavin’s “Бог” appears as an epi-
graph (“Дух всюду сущий и единый”) on a poem “Я потрясен, когда кругом…”, writ-
ten 29 August 1885. I believe this is the only epigraph from Derzhavin in Fet’s poetry.
218
The poems seem to be out of chronological order, which is mildly unusual for Fet.
219
The best-known example of idiosyncratic graphics is probably Hölderlin’s usage,
but one may also note the layout of Goethe’s “Zigeunerlied” in the 1815 edition of his
works (GOETHE 1815:1:158-59). The first line of each stanza is indented, and this works
with the centering of the three-line refrain to create an impression of a text that has all its
lines centered horizontally. The effect is not reproduced in the modern editions I have
been able to find.
220
To be sure, Fet can have written “Бабочка” no later than 25 October 1884, when
the second volume of Evening Lights was approved by the censor, whereas the earliest
major publication on the figural anthology poems I have found cited in the modern litera-
ture on the Anthology is the dissertation by C. Haeberlin, which is called “De figuratis
carminibus Graecis” and appeared in Germany in 1886. I have not, however, attempted to
discover earlier mentions of Haeberlin’s work while it was still ongoing, or, more
generally, to search the scholarly literature of the time for work on or references to the
figural poems of the Anthology.
221
GRUNDLEHNER (1986:184-99). I quote the passage from Nietzsche as presented by
GRUNDLEHNER (1986:187-88). All versions I have seen preserve the visual form.
222
GRUNDLEHNER (1986:184) seems to attribute the publication of the fourth part of
Zarathustra to the year 1884, but he does not say why. I have found no other source that
gives so early a date. Obviously, Zarathustra would have been of enormous interest for
Fet, and since his translation of The World As Will and Representation had appeared in
1881, he may have been kept more aware of neo-Schopenhauerian currents, such as
Nietzsche’s work, than can be traced through the chronology of Nietzsche’s “public”
publications. However, I am unaware of any evidence that Fet read or was even aware of
Nietzsche’s works.
223
A knowledge of German poets with an attachment to the classical tradition may,
generally, have inclined Fet toward noticing visual poetic form. One must think here,
specifically, of Hölderlin, who seems to have been generally unknown in Russia during
Fet’s lifetime, but some of whose work was always available even in school editions in
Germany (ENGEL-BRAUNSCHMIDT 1973:197).
224
On Fet’s vocabulary: FEDÍNA (1915), EGEBERG (1976), GRIGOR’EVA (1985).
225
EIKHENBAUM (1922).
226
See e.g. BUKHSHTAB (1974, passim), GRIGOR’EVA (1985), GASPAROV (1991).
227
See also (KLENIN 1998).
228
A Russian-language version of the following discussion is in press.
229
I reproduce the poem here with the orthography of FET (1883:98). The poem first
appeared in 1879, but in a slightly different form. The orthography has been controversial
and is different in different editions. None of the modern ones entirely follows either the
edition of 1883 or any of the other proposals discussed by Fet and his editors at the time.
The etiquette book is IUR’EV et al. (1889:271).
230
Fet’s editor N. N. Strakhov considered the last stanza of the poem difficult, and
proposed alternative punctuation to clarify it (FET 1971:677-78). Strakhov also objects to
the idea of the “fire” that “weeps”, to which Fet responds that “Не говорят ли – солнце
Verse form and language 351

Notes
на закате плачет. А что оно, как не огонь” (Fet 1971:678), but gives no more specific
source. For Fet, the association of the sun with a fire or flame was automatic, but not for
Strakhov – a difference that may perhaps be attributable to differences in cultural ground-
ing, since the semantic network of sun/flame/cry is apparently more German than Rus-
sian. Vaguely related metaphors involving the sun are quoted in several places by
Schopenhauer (on sun imagery in Schopenhauer in relation to Sologub’s writings, see
ŠEMJATOVA 1997:174-89) but the metaphor may be one that goes back into German folk
imagery (BELLMANN 1980:36, referring to the Grimm brothers’ stories). The only text I
have found in which the sun is directly called a flame that cries is in Heine’s
Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (Kaput XIV), throughout which the phrase “Sonne, du
klagende Flamme!” recurs as a refrain evoking a murder ballad (BELLMAN 1980:36). The
words are presented as the Schlussreim des alten Lieds, / Das oft meine Amme gesungen.
... // Es kommt im Lied ein Mörder vor, / Der lebt’ in Lust und Freude; / Man findet ihn
endlich im Walde gehenkt, / An einer grauen Weide. / Des Mörders Todesurteil war /
Genagelt am Weidenstamme; / Das haben die Rächer der Ferne getan – / Sonne, du
klagende Flamme! // Die Sonne war Kläger, sie hatte bewirkt, / Daß man den Mörder
verdamme. / Otilie hatte sterbend geschrien: / „Sonne, du klagende Flamme“. The word
огонь has broader meanings than just a flame, but Fet often uses it in that meaning.
Similarly, the semantics of “klagen” are not the same as those of плакать, which is more
associated with tearfulness and less with complaint, but the two come together in wail
and lament, the former in what in English is the Wailing Wall and the latter in music:
“klagend” apppears as an equivalent of “dolente” or “lacrimoso”, most famously,
according to The Grove Dictionary of Music, in Beethoven’s usage in the finale of his
second-to-last piano sonata (Op. 110). The text of Fet’s poem is filled with rebuke and
accusation, and this accusatory force may indeed color the distress of Fet’s sun. On one
hand, his poem rails against the petty minds that have spoken against “us”, and, on the
other hand, it is addressed to the only living witness to his love affair with Maria Lazich,
who died violently, by fire, soon after her rejection by Fet. He associates their love, and
his ending of it, with physical and spiritual violence, for example in “С бородою седою
верховный я жрец...” (1884). In any event, Fet has introduced into his text a sun-flame-
motif explicitly associated by Heine with violent death and the eventual death of the
murderer – and Fet certainly knew the Heine poem.
Given the importance of fire motifs in Fet, and their association not only in this poem
but also in, notably “Когда читала ты мучительные строки”, with both love and violent
death, it would be useful to collect major German subtexts for Fet’s usage, both in poetry
and in painting. (See page 9.) BELLMANN (1980:36-37) discusses subtexts for the Heine
passage, including Chamisso’s “Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag” (1827). The sentiment
Fet expresses, in the epistle to Brzheskaia and in his other late “fire imagery” poems, has
of course other connections. To give one more example from within the realm of the
German literature that Fet certainly knew, we may note here Goethe’s “Selige Sehnsucht”
from the West-Östlicher Divan (“Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen, / Weil die Menge
gleich verhöhnet, / Das Lebend’ge will ich preisen, / Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet…
Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig, / Kommst geflogen und gebannt, / Und zuletzt, des
Lichts begierig, / Bist du Schmetterling verbrannt. // Und so lang du das nicht hast, /
Dieses: Stirb und werde! / Bist du nur ein trüber Gast / Auf der dunklen Erde.”).
352 Chapter Three

Notes
231
In my further discussion, I will focus only on Fet’s shorter poems, including trans-
lations but leaving out his “поэмы” and the undated and unfinished play included in the
1959 BUKHSHTAB edition of Fet.
232
This is central to Eikhenbaum’s study, mentioned above.
233
Cf. KLENIN 2000.
234
ad Herennium, IV xlv 58 (376-77).
235
I base my statistics for poets other than Fet on counts published in frequency dic-
tionaries and concordances: for Tiutchev – BILOKUR (1975), for Baratynskii – SHAW
(1975), for Pushkin – SHAW (1984), for Lermontov – BORODIN-SHAIKEVICH (1981).
236
On но in Tiutchev, cf. TYNIANOV (1977:44). So far as I am aware, no one has
returned to this question. One would welcome a systematic comparison of Tiutchev’s
language and rhetoric with Fet’s.
237
PADUCHEVA (1997) proposes that volition on the part of the subject-referent in the
но clause is crucial to the choice of но or ‘а’ in otherwise parallel constructions.
238
See Chapter One (pages 9 ff. and note 140).
Postface

We started with a question: how does Fet’s poetry come to have the effect it
does? We have seen that it has had very different effects on different read-
ers, and Fet himself, when he embarked on his career, evidently mis-
calculated how Russian readers would respond to it. The diverse usage of his
first book, The Lyrical Pantheon, can be read as a sign of youth. The book
also, however, shows unmistakable signs of its author’s native connection
with two literatures, as well as of his unconstrained response to his experi-
ence of several other literatures as well. Even though his next book opened
with the statement that “I am a Russian”, its Germanness was no less pro-
nounced, although it was, certainly, more refined than it had been in 1840.
The acculturation of Fet to the Russian literary tradition was given form, and
urgency, by the editors who shaped Fet’s third book of poems. Fet’s early
delight in and openness to poetic experimentation gave way to an extreme
consciousness of constraint, and to formal conservatism, in which, however,
he demonstrated a unique ability to move between German and Russian po-
etics and verse form, and to enrich his original poems with his experience as
a native reader of German poetry.
Readers complained of the psychological orientation of his poetry, and
they seem to have believed Fet took it from Heine. They believed this be-
cause Fet’s translations from Heine were an especially salient part of his
work: he published Heine translations in periodicals, and he devoted a large
section of his second book to them. A Russian reader did not even have to
take the trouble to read Heine in the original in order to notice Fet’s con-
nection with him, since Fet’s translations were right there to be seen.
Fet translated Heine’s poetry for nearly fifty years. He even used some of
Heine’s themes and techniques. But Fet did not take his poetics from Heine,
and, in detail, his usage is quite different – a difference that is emphasized,
for example, by B. Ia. Bukhshtab, who offers, however, no alternative view
of the origins of Fet’s psychological orientation. Probably Fet did not “take”
his poetics from anyone, but he did absorb from his earliest reading the ori-
entation and view of poetry that emanates from, especially, Goethe, but also
a German cultural tradition more generally. In the context of that tradition, it
is much more natural than otherwise that Fet should have taken the orienta-
tion he did, toward the workings of the mind in states other than ordinary
ratiocinative ones. Fet wrote a great variety of different sorts of poems, but
practically all of it shares that orientation, and it does not attest to any neat
cleft between his “rational” verse – he has practically none – and a com-
354 Postface

pletely separate “irrational” line of poetry. The infusion of Fet’s poetics by

an awareness of the psychology of perception is evident, in particular, in his
early hellenizing verse.
He was a child of his time, and of time as it was measured not only in
Russia but also in Western Europe: he admired efficiency, he was practical,
he carried out his plans and purposes, he was good with his hands, he knew
something about the popular technological developments of his day. And he
believed that poetry enabled a different kind of knowledge, without which
the rest was only a burden. Poetry for him meant the knowledge that granted
freedom, and that knowledge could only be grasped by each person for him-
self, alone. The psychological core of Fet’s poetry and poetics was ab-
solutely consistent with his view of the role of poetry in human culture and
society. His radical individualism separated Fet from Russian contemp-
oraries and, in the worst times, from practically the whole of Russian cul-
tural life. His retreat from original poetry in the inimical 1860s and 70s sug-
gests that he held to that core of his poetics because it was essential to what
he knew that poetry is. As, in a different context, he wrote to Tolstoi: “Ich
kann nicht anders. Gott, helf mir”.1
The history of form in Fet’s poetry shows both radical experiment and
gradual evolution. He more than once changed his metrical repertory, and he
nearly entirely dropped such characteristic habits as, for example, his use of
partial rhyme. But change also was taking place slowly and almost imper-
ceptibly, in very basic matters: in his metrical rhythm, in the length of his
poems, and in where he located the emotional center of a text. These things
are harder than metrical repertory for an editor to capture, these things are
form not as convention but as the stuff conventions are built of. With respect
to these things, Fet’s poetic form matured and changed and grew, even over
the years when it was seldom manifested. This organic quality in the devel-
opment of his verse form is all the more striking because of the famed dis-
ruption of his middle years, as well as his final reminiscentiality. Critics
have noticed the integrity of each singular work that Fet, at his best, created.
The history of form in his work shows self-similar integrity.
His early poetry was cluttered and full of stage props, his final work al-
most empty. His early poetry is appropriately youthful and shows all the
perceptual agility of a young man delighting in the use of his senses. The
late poetry lacks such keen sensuality. In it Fet emerges as a master poet of
old age, and as such he had few peers in the Russian tradition. His choice of
allusions and models also shifts. Late allusions to Schiller almost all point to
the past and to deliberate reminiscence, often associated with hellenism. Tiu-
tchev, in contrast, seems to have become Fet’s guiding star – but no earlier
than the mid-1850s, and increasingly thereafter. Yet, for all the change, Fet
considered it a point of honor that his poetics at the end had remained faith-
Postface 355

ful to the muse who had inspired them. The reminiscentiality characteristic
of late Fet represents the stock-taking of someone come to the end of his
life, but it was enabled by the profound consistency of his aesthetic aims and
poetic usage. That consistency is a reason why Fet’s early years, and the
beginnings of his career, are so important in understanding his oeuvre as a
whole. There is every evidence that Fet, at the very end of his life, was try-
ing to reclaim his earliest work. He never explicitly rejects the neater poetics
of Turgenev’s inspiration – the poetry for the ladies of whom he was, after
all, so fond. But he permits himself, in his memoirs, to quote Grigor’ev’s
letter with its outrage over what Turgenev has done, and, most important, he
goes back to read again the poems he had at Turgenev’s insistence rejected,
to read again even his first translations, and he re-makes them as the work of
the poet he had at such cost become. This late integration of the earliest Fet
into the poetics of the last Fet had to have been a private matter: there was,
as we have seen, no one left alive who knew, at the end, the route he had
come, and his memoirs would not, in this respect, have left the readers of
them much the wiser for their effort. Fet’s poetry was autologous at both
start and finish. He began writing Russian poetry at a school practically
closed down because no one else there knew Russian, and he wrote it hap-
pily, on a slate he kept wiping clean. Of course he wanted readers, and his
editors, understanding each in his own way the beauty in his poems, wanted
him to have them. Each of the editors did his part to bring Fet closer to one
or another sort of reader, and each of them, in so doing, had his effect on the
way Fet wrote. But Fet’s activities in his last years show that he did not
write for readers, any more than oysters set out to make pearls for those
same ladies on whose tables the books he wrote presumably in at least a few
copies sometimes came to rest.
So much has been written about the split between Fet’s work and his life,
the incongruity of the officer-farmer-poet. Yet the split was not so much be-
tween life and art as between the inevitable constraints of a societal carapace
and an inner life of private intuition that for over five decades again and
again took public form in all those hundreds of little texts. So much has been
written about dualisms in Fet: Fet the poet versus Shenshin the social
climber, Fet the ecstatic poet versus Fet the anthological poet, and now, if
you will, we have Fet the Russian and Fet the German. Yet I do not think it
was like that. What I think it was like is what this book has been about.
356 Postface

Note to the Postface

1
The German is quoted from Tolstoi (1978:2:25), where it appears at the end of a let-
ter (April 28, 1878) discussing views of the historical Jesus. The words evoke Martin
Luther at the 1521 Diet of Worms. The words usually attributed to him, themselves ap-
parently not historically correct, are slightly different: “Hier stehe ich! Ich kann nicht
anders, Gott helfe mir! Amen”. Fet’s letter has been pubished several times, so far as I
know always as I give it above.
Abbreviations

X/Y = length ranging from X to Y. Indicates limits of the range of lengths taken by
verse lines of a given type, e.g. “Im 6/4” is “iambic lines ranging in length from 4
to 6 feet”.
1, 2, … = –meter. With names of metrical types, numbers indicate line length in feet,
e.g. “Im4” is “iambic tetrameter”. Used independently, numbers indicate stanza
structure, e.g. “2121” is alternating dimeter and monometer.
A, a, A' = clausula: upper-case for feminine ( ´ x), lower-case for masculine ( ´ ),
upper-case followed by a single straight quotation mark for dactylic ( ´ x x ).
Acc = accentual
AE = Album Estonorum, 4th ed. Tallinn: Estländische Druckerei, 1939.
Am = amphibrach(s), amphibrachic (x ´ x )
An = anapest(s), anapestic ( x x ´ )
AN = Akademiia Nauk
Anis = anisometric (regulated)
BP = Biblioteka poeta, bol’shaia seriia
BS = Biograficheskii slovar’ professorov i prepodavatelei imperatorskogo Iur’ev-
skogo, byvshego Derptskogo, universiteta za sto let ego sushchestvovaniia (1802-
1902), ed. G. V. Levitskii. Iur’ev: Matthiesen. I (1902) - II (1903).
CEP = Concise Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd ed. edd. Raymond J. Corsini and
Alan J. Auerbach. NY: Wiley and Sons, 1996.
cl = classical (meters: iambic, trochaic, dactylic, amphibrachic, and anapestic)
cum.= cumulative
Da = dactyl(s), dactylic ( ´ x x )
DaElg = elegiac distich
DBL = Deutschbaltisches biographisches Lexikon 1710-1960. Im Auftrage der
Baltischen Historischen Kommission begonnen von Olaf Welding und unter
Mitarbeit von Erik Amburger und Georg von Krusenstjern, herausgegeben von
Wilhelm Lenz. Köln - Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 1970.
DLL = Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon. Biographisches und bibliographisches Hand-
buch von Wilhelm Kosch. Zweite, vollständig neubearbeitete und stark erweiterte
Auflage. Bern: A. Francke AG. 1947 - 1958.
DTA = dactylo-trochaic and/or accentual
ed., edd. = editor(s), edited by, edition.
EKA = Eesti Kooli Ajalugu. Neljas köites. Kaugemast minevikust tänapäevani, ed.
F. Eisen. Eesti Kooli Ajalugu. 1. köide. 13 sajandist 1860. aastateni. ed. E. Laul.
Tallinn: Valgus, 1989.
358 Abbreviations

ELM = Encyclopedia of Learning and Memory, ed. Larry R. Squire. NY: Macmil-
lan, 1992.
ESBE = Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, ed. I. E. Andreevskii. SPb.: F. A. Brokgauz - I.
A. Efron, 1890-1904. References are to: Rpt Jaroslavl’: Terra, 1990-1994.
Im = iamb(s), iambic ( x ´)
IT = Gasparov, M. L. 1997. Izbrannye trudy. 1-3. M.: Iazyki russkoi kul’tury.
Izd-vo = Izdatel’stvo
Khud. lit. = Khudozhestvennaia literatura
KNLL = Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon hrsg. von Walter Jens. Chefredaktion
Rudolf Radler. München: Kindler. 1988-1998.
L. = Leningrad
LN = Literaturnoe nasledstvo
Log = logaoedic (for a definition of this term, see Chapter Three, note 82).
M. = Moscow [Moskva]
MV = Moi vospominaniia. 1848-1889. А. Fetа. 1. 1848-1863. 2. 1864-1889. M.:
Tip. Мamontova, 1890. Rpt: A. Fet, Vospominaniia, 1-2, n.p.: Kul’tura, 1992.
ncl = non-classical (meters: see cl)
NY = New York
OLRS = Obshchestvo Liubitelei Rossiiskoi Slovesnosti pri Moskovskom Univer-
sitete. 1911. Istoricheskaia zapiska za sto let. M.: Pechatnia A. Snegirevoi.
OZ = Otechestvennye zapiski. SPb.
PS = Polnoe sobranie
pub. = published
RG = Rannie gody moei zhizni A. Feta. Моscow: Tip. Mamontova, 1893. Rpt: A.
Fet, Vospominaniia 3, n.p.: Kul’tura, 1992.
RP = Russkie pisateli 1800-1917. Biograficheskii slovar’. M.: Sov. ents., 1989- .
Rpt, rpt. = Reprint(ed)
Sb., sb. = sbornik
SPb. = St. Petersburg [Sankt-Peterburg].
SEEJ = Slavic and East European Journal
Ser., ser. = Series, seriia
Slovar’ = Slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka. 1. A-B. 1991. M.:
Russkii Iazyk.
Sov. = Sovetskii, Sovetskaia
Sov. ents. = Sovetskaia entsiklopediia
SSS = Slavianskie sochinitel’nye soiuzy. M.: In-t Slavianovedeniia i balkanistiki,
1997.
tr. = translation of, translated by, translator
TS = Turgenevskii sbornik. Materialy k polnomu sobraniiu sochinenii i pisem I. S.
Turgeneva. L.: Nauka.
Tx = trochee(s), trochaic ( ´ x )
Vyp., vyp. = vypusk
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References to Fet are to Fet (1959) except as noted. Quotations from works of other
poets are from the editions listed below. Sources are cited de visu, except for a small
number that are listed in their entirety in square brackets. Sources that mention the
bracketed items are given in italics in the corresponding entries. Square brackets are
otherwise used for information not printed in the publication itself. Publishers are
indicated if they are named in the publication. The pages of a few sources are un-
numbered, and page numbers for these sources therefore do not appear below. Ex-
cept for dissertations and diploma work, unpublished materials are not listed below,
but are identified in endnotes (pages 67, 77, 79, 83, 335). Ph.D. dissertations submit-
ted at universities in the United States are available through UMI Dissertation Ser-
vices. Other dissertations and diploma work were kindly made available to me by
the authors or by colleagues acting with the author’s permission.

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Index of personal names

(Note: References to A. A. Fet-Shenshin are not indexed, nor are references to figures in
fiction, poetry, and classical mythology. References in the acknowledgments are not in-
cluded below. References in the notes are indicated below in italics.)

Abrams, M. H., 359, 74, 188 Averin, B., 365

Abrosimova, V. N., 359, 63, 64 Badt, K., 361, 181
Ackerman, D., 359, 180 Baer, J., 361, 370, 72
Addams, R., 125, 359, 178 Baibakov, A. D., see Arkhimandrit
Aikhenval’d, Iu., 359, 69, 70 Apollos
Akhmatova, A., 373, 377, 385 Bailey, J., 361, 337, 340, 341, 346
Aksakov, K. S., 204-209, 359, 404, Balmont (= Bal’mont), K., 58, 359,
336 362, 65
Aksakov, S. T., 94 Baratynskii, E. A., 319, 361, 404,
Alekseeva, E. M., 359, 65 178, 352
Alexander of Hessen, 69 Barclay, C. R., 361, 94
Alexander I, 13, 79 Batiushkov, K. N., 139, 361, 383,
Alexander II, 38, 61, 69, 70, 96, 98 404, 183-185
Allston, W., 10, 27, 359, 384, 92 Bazanov, V. G., 360
Alter, D., 359, 97 Beaujour, E. K., 361, 76
Althaus-Schönbucher, S., 198, 359, Beckby, H., 361, 178, 182, 183
65 Becker, E., 69
Al’tshuller, M., 84, 359 Beethoven, L. van, 72, 351
Amburger, E., 357 Beissner, F., 361, 337
Anacreon, 183 Belinskii, V. G., 361, 87, 183, 184
Andreeva, V., 360, 65 Bellmann, W., 361, 351
Andreevski, I. E., 358 Belogolovyi, N. A., 361, 98
Annenskii, I., 377 Bel’skaia, L. L., 361, 65
Anonymous, 360, 79 Belsky, S., 380
Apollos, Arkhimandrit (A. D. Benediktov, V., 362, 381, 404, 84,
Baibakov), 360, 186 90, 97, 180
Apresian, Iu. D., 373 Bernevega, S. I., 362, 65
Apukhtin, A. N., 220, 360, 404, 70, Berthold-Bond, D., 362, 98, 188
340 Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, A., 360, 178
Aristotle, 28 Bezzubov, A. N., 362, 340
Arkhangelskii, A. S., 385 Bhatt, P., 364
Arkhipov, V. A., 360, 184 Bilokur, B., 362, 352
Arndt, E., 360, 336 Blagoi, D., 361, 366, 96
Arnold, M., 371 Blänsdorf, J., 362, 347
Aronson, M., 381 Blok, A., 221, 361, 379, 338
Aslanova, G., 360, 366, 61-64, 75, Blok, G. P., 360, 362, 61, 62, 64,
90 68, 69, 75, 76, 79, 81, 82, 86,
Auer, A. P., 360, 360-361, 368, 87, 91, 94, 100, 331
368, 62, 63, 67, 70, 83, 345 Bobrov, S. P., 337
Auerbach, A., 357 Bochkarev, V. A., 377
Index of Names
Bodenstedt, F., 362, 404, 86
Bogoroditskii, V. A., 362, 342
Böhm, H., 370
Bok, S., 362, 188
Bollacher, M., 370
Boring, E. G., 362, 178
Borisov, I. P., 191, 372, 378, 99,
100, 185, 331
Borisov, P. I., 267, 100
Borisova (née Shenshina), N. A.,
16, 55, 168, 191, 65, 331
Borodin, V. V., 362, 352
Borowec, C., 362, 65
Börsch-Supan, H., 362, 177
Botkin, S. P., 54, 361, 98
Botkin, V. P., 43, 44,152, 362, 67,
68, 187, 335
Boumann, L. , 370
Bower, G. H., 364
Bradley, F. H., 363, 94
Brainerd, C., 382
Bredikhin, F. A., 97, 360
Brewer, W. F., 363, 94
Briggs, A., 363
Briusov [= Brjusov], V., 58, 362,
379, 383, 332
Brooks, C., 384, 186
Browning, R., 371
Brunck, Ph., 182, 184
Brzheskaia, A. L., 314, 362, 396,
331, 351
Buck, C., 363, 64, 95, 178, 187
Bugelski, B. R., 363, 93
Bukhshtab, B. Ia., 3, 26, 43-45, 59-
60, 109, 142, 174, 198, 202,
270, 282, 305, 307, 318, 329,
353, 362, 366, 63-65, 69, 74,
76, 87-89, 93, 95, 100, 176,
180, 185, 186, 188, 332-337,
347-349, 350, 352
Bunin, I. A., 333, 336
Burgi, R., 363, 339
Busch, W., 363, 332
Byron, G. G., 10, 18, 198, 401, 405,
65, 75 , 84, 87, 333
Caplan, H., 363, 92
Catherine II, 79
Chaikovskii, M. I., 363, 73
Chaikovskii, P. I., 363, 73
387
Chamisso, A. von, 405, 351
Charcot, J.-M., 54, 55, 375, 98-99
Charcot, Jeanne, 99
Chénier, A., 137, 401, 405, 180,
180
Cherednichenko, V. I., 363, 64
Chernogubov, N., 58, 363, 62, 99
Cheshikhin, Vs., 363, 64, 70
Chilvers, I., 363, 187
Chopin, F. (see also Fet’s poem
“To Chopin”), 8, 73
Cicero, M. Tullius, 363
Čiževskij, D., 363, 178, see also
Tschizewskij
Cleminshaw, C. H., 359
Coleridge, S. T., 10
Comenius, J., 78
Cornwall, B. (pseudonym of B. W.
Proctor), 408
Corsini, R., 357
Cramp, S., 363, 93
Crick, F., 363, 176, 178
Czykwin, J., 363, 64
Dal’, V., 364, 97
Dalgleish, T., 364, 74, 93
Dana, R. H., 359
Darius, J., 364, 94
Darskii, D., 364, 100
Darwin, C., 26, 53
Dashkov, D. V., 184
Daumer, G. F., 294
David, Chr., 79
Davydov, I., 82
De Bosch, 182
Del’vig, A. A., 139, 140, 150, 364,
383, 185
Denis’eva, E. A., 68
Deppermann M., 369
Derzhavin, G. R., 119, 266, 304-
306, 364, 405, 178, 183, 345,
350
Descartes, R., 48, 171
Dinesman, T. G., 374
Dmitriev, I. I., 183, 184
Dobroliubov, N. A., 364
Dostoevskii, F. M., 24, 174, 364, 91
Druzhinin, A. V., 199, 364, 68, 90,
335
Düsing, W., 364, 74
388
Eekman, T., 128, 364, 179
Eelsalu, H., 364, 97
Egeberg, E., 307-309, 312, 364,
410, 64, 65, 93, 337, 350
Egorov, B. F., 364, 369, 99
Eibl, K., 369
Eich, E., 364, 74, 93
Eichendorff, J., 288, 405, 85
Eikhenbaum, B., 364, 378, 65, 96,
333, 350, 352
Eisen, F., 357
Eisenschmidt, H., 212, 364, 4, 77-
84, 86
Eliot, T. S., 10, 364, 384, 75
Ellenberger, H., 365, 98, 188
El’tsova, K. M., 365, 75
Engel-Braunschmidt, A., 365, 350
Engel’gardt, S., 368, 63
Engelhardt, G. M. K. v., 374, 80
Engelhardt, O. von, 80
Engelhardt, R. von, 365, 77
Ermilova, E. V., 365, 65, 70
Ermilova, L. Ia., 365, 93
Faas, E., 365, 99, 176
Fechner, J.-U., 365
Fedína [Il’iashenko], V., 365, 62,
93, 350
Fedorov, A. V., 365, 368, 331, 335
Fedorova, E. , see Kudriavtseva, E.
Feichtinger, D. N., 337, 365
Fénelon, F., 137
Ferrell, J., 365, 384, 349
Fichte, J. G., 381, 91
Fiedler, E.-M., 369
Figueira, D. M., 366, 65
Findlay, J. N., 370
Fingarette, H., 367, 188
Fischer, C., 366
Fleishman, L., 380
Foeth, J. P. K. W., 61, 62, 75
Fontenelle, B. le B. de, 48, 49, 367,
97
Forgas, J. P., 364
Fougeron, I., 322, 367
Fouqué, C. de la M., 177
Fouqué, F. de la M., 111, 177
Frank, H. J., 367, 347, 348
Frank, J., 367
Freud, S., 54, 57
Index of Names
Friedrich, Caroline Bommer, 110
Friedrich, C. D., 110-112, 114, 155,
362, 177
Frizman, L. G., 380
Frumkina, A. I., 367, 64, 335
Fussell, P., 367, 349
Gaier, U., 370, 185
Galakhova (née Shenshina), O., 375
Gandelman, C., 367, 176
Gasparov, M. L., 3, 59, 124, 128,
157, 200, 257, 278, 279, 358,
367, 368, 377, 383, 70, 74, 92,
100, 176, 178, 179, 187, 331,
334, 335, 337-340, 341-347,
348, 350
Gazzaniga, M. S., 368, 75
Ge, N. N., 177
Gelbart, N. R., 367
Gelernter, D., 368, 98
Gellerstein, S., 368, 380, 96
Generalova, N., 361, 368, 62, 63,
67, 70, 345
Genge, E., 81
Gennadi, G. N., 199
Genton, E., 370
Gerhardt, D., 365
Gernsheim, H., 368, 94, 179
Gessen, L. A., 368, 335, 345
Gibbons, G., 380
Gibson, J., 178
Giedion, S., 368, 180
Gifford, H., 366
Ginzburg, L. Ia., 368, 372, 70, 92,
100
Girshman, M. M., 368
Glinka, F., 119, 368, 405
Glitsch, C., 381
Goertz, L., 368, 77
Goethe, J. W. v., 14, 15, 18-20,
137, 140, 142-144, 147, 172,
174, 193, 194, 196, 197, 203-
210, 212, 226, 228-232, 237,
245, 246, 252-254, 267-269,
271, 276, 299-302, 316, 317,
353, 359, 361, 369, 370, 375,
377, 384, 397-401, 403-406,
65, 71, 72, 84, 85, 87, 179, 181,
183, 186, 187, 333, 334, 336,
337, 339, 350, 351
Index of Names
Gogol, N., 87
Goldt, R., 369, 61-63, 96, 99
Golenishchev-Kutuzov, A., 369, 70
Golle, G. E., 360, 362, 368, 369,
373, 62, 65
Gordon, Ia. I., 369, 334
Gorlin, M., 369, 333
Gornfel’d, A., 369, 186
Greene, J., 366, 372
Gregory, R., 373
Grigor’ev, A. A., 7, 10-13, 17-22,
27, 55-57, 59, 103, 117, 127,
144, 147, 175, 190, 194, 197,
199, 204, 205, 207-209, 301,
302, 355, 364, 369, 406, 61, 65,
67, 69, 71, 74, 81, 82, 87, 88 ,
91, 97, 99, 177, 185, 187, 331,
333-336, 342, 345
Grigor’eva, A. D., 369, 350
Grimm, J. and W., 351
Grintser, P. A., 369, 65
Grosewski, R., 369, 85
Grosjean, F., 369, 76
Grot, N. Ja., 364, 183
Grotius, 182
Grotskaia, Z., 376
Grundlehner, P., 369, 350
Grüning, U., 366
Grzybek, P., 370, 76
Guski, A., 365, 370
Gustafson, R., 3, 33, 119, 370, 64,
92, 93, 95, 176, 177, 185
Guttenplan, S., 370, 376, 188
Guyard, M.-F., 374
Haeberlin, C., 350
Hafis, 294, 93, 342, 346, 348
Hakuta, K., 370, 76
Halle, M., 367
Hammond, N.G. L., 379
Hansen, T., 374
Hargreaves, H. A., 367
Harnack, Th., 370, 79
Haselblatt, A., 370, 76
Hatfield, H., 370, 180, 186
Hegel, G. W. F., 20-23, 25-28, 30,
31, 39, 362, 370, 379, 381, 383,
72, 74, 91, 92, 98, 177, 188
389
Heine, H., 19, 110, 194, 196-199,
211, 232, 233, 234, 252, 253,
262, 268, 269, 276, 285, 316,
353, 361, 365, 369, 370, 374,
397, 398, 402, 404, 406, 84, 87,
333-335, 340, 348, 349, 351
Henry, J., 370, 80
Herder, J. G., 138, 139, 144, 370,
406, 85, 182-185
Herennius, C., 318, 363, 92
Hesiod, 406, 406
Hevelius, 97
Hofstadter, D., 370, 83
Hölderlin, F., 185, 350
Homer, 406
Honour, H., 370, 186
Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus), 14,
163, 164, 193, 197, 223, 268,
270, 363, 365, 404, 407, 70, 74,
82, 185, 332, 334
Hoskin, M. A., 384
Hsu Shi, 407
Hübscher, A., 361
Hughes, R., 370, 88
Hugo, V., 301, 303, 304, 306, 371,
374, 407, 90
Hultsch, F., 4, 78, 81, 83
Hutton, A., 371, 180, 182, 184
Iarbus, A. L., 371, 178
Iarkho, B. I., 338
Iazykov, N. M., 119, 371, 407
Ibsen, H., 188
Ilja, V., 371, 79
Ingham, N., 370
Iomdin, L. L., 373
Iur’ev i Vladimirskii, 371, 350
Iushkin, Iu., 371, 62
Ivan (servant of A. A. Grigor’ev),
21
Ivanov, A. I., 371, 188
Ivanov, G. K., 371, 73, 86, 349
Ivanov, S. I. (?), 365
Ivanov, V. I., 384
Ivanov, V. V., 371, 380, 76, 179,
337
Ivanova, N. N., 369
Jackson, J. H., 371, 98
Jacobs, F., 138, 182-184
Jähnig, K. W., 362, 177
390
Jakobson, R. O., 371, 92, 345
Januškevič, A. S., 374, 63
Jean Paul ([Richter, J. P. F.]), 371,
79
Jens, W., 358
Jesus, 26, 96, 356
Jones, W., 339
Joseph, G., 371, 176
K.R. [Grand Duke Konstantin
Konstantinovich], 49, 116,
285, 317, 360, 372, 374, 381,
63, 69, 72, 73, 82, 85, 92, 98,
186, 189, 334
Kalidasa, 339
Kant, I., 48, 381
Kantor, V. K., 363
Kapnist, V. V., 286, 407
Karamzin, N. M., 369, 372, 379,
65, 339
Karpova, T. L., 372, 94, 177
Kasack, W., 372, 96
Kastrioto-Skanderbek, V. G., 349
Kazanovich, E. P., 378
Keats, J., 383
Keil, R.-D., 372, 64
Khmelevskaia, E. M., 372, 331
Khmelevskaia, N. A., 372, 100,
185, 331
Kholshevnikov, V. E., 362
Khomiakov, A. S., 97
Kibal’nik, S. A., 372, 183, 185
Kieseritzky, G., 372, 85
Kihlstrom, J., 364
Kindler, M. G., 85
Kiparsky, P., 372, 342
Kiseleva-Sergenina, V. S., 372, 184
Kitayama, S., 377, 74, 93
Kjetsaa, G., 307, 312, 313, 372, 410
Klenin, E., 372, 373, 66, 69, 71, 74,
86, 94, 95, 188, 335, 345, 349-352
Klopstock, F. G., 206, 209, 230,
361, 365, 373, 375, 407, 337
Knox, T. M., 370
Kolers, P. A., 373, 76
Kol’tsov, A. V., 271
Koni, A. F., 72
Koni, F. A., 369, 88
Kopylov, Dr., 373, 76
Index of Names
Körner, C. G., 99
Körner, K. Th., 286, 287, 373, 407,
99, 177
Korsakov, S. S., 54
Korsh, F. E., 373, 63
Kosch, W., 357
Koshtoyants, K., 380
Kosmolinskaia, G. A., 373, 63
Kotrelev, N. V., 381
Kozhevnikov, A. Ia., 54, 360
Kozhevnikov, V. M., 367
Kozhinov, V., 373, 62
Kozlov, I. I., 362
Kozubovskaia, G. P., 373, 64
Kralin, M. M., 377
Kramskoi, I. N., 94
Kreutzwald, Fr. R., 15, 377, 79, 82,
85
Krieger, M., 373, 186
Kriukov, D. L., 71, 82
Krümmer, H., 13-17, 50, 360, 364,
373, 77-84, 87
Krusenstjern, G. von, 357
Krysin, L. P., 373
Kudriavtsev, P. N., 143, 152, 374,
73, 186, 342
Kudriavtseva (née Fedorova), E.
V., 360, 71, 90
Küper, Chr., 362, 373, 375
Kurliandskaia, G. B., 374, 95
Kurscheidt, G., 380
Kuzina, L. N., 374, 77
Kuz’mina, L., 374, 63
Kuzminskaia, T. A., 347
Kvachala, Prof., 374, 80
Laatsit, R., 374, 79, 80
Laferrière, D., 374, 64
Lamartine, A.-M.-L. de Prat de, 14,
233, 265, 316, 374, 402, 407,
84
Lancaster Brown, P., 374, 97
Lane, R. D., 374, 74
Lapshin, I. I., 374, 178
Larsen, Steen F., 374, 94
Latyshev, C. B., 375, 75
Laul, E., 357
Lavrenskii, A., see Mikhalovskii,
D. L.
Lavrovskaia, E. A., 94
Index of Names
Lazich, M., 191, 286, 372, 382, 66,
94, 351
Lebedev, E., 364, 366, 374, 376,
381, 65
Lebedeva, O. B., 374, 63
Lebrun, Y., 378, 76
Lenau, N., 407, 336
Lenz, W., 357
Leont’ev, K. N., 359
Lermontov, M. Iu., 18, 117, 128,
238, 254, 263, 265, 268, 283,
286, 319, 362, 372, 375, 379,
379, 407, 74, 75, 84, 178, 180,
345, 352
Lerner, N., 374, 349
Lessing, G. E., 186
Levin, Iu. D., 368
Levinton, A. G., 374, 334
Levitskii, G. V., 357
Levkovich, Ia. L., 360
Liapin, S. E., 375, 338
Liatskii, E., 369, 186
Lieven, C. von, 16
Liim, A., 375, 80
Likhachev, D. S., 362
Lilja, E., 375, 339
Lilly, Ian K., 375, 346, 348
Liubimov, A., 54, 375, 98
Lomonosov, M. V., 200, 375
Longinov, M., 375, 186
Losev, A. F., 375, 181
Lotman, Iu. M., 84, 359, 367
Lotman, L. M., 375, 64, 69, 88,
178, 333, 349
Lotman, M. Iu., 375, 65, 70, 337,
341
Luther, M., 356
Lütkehaus, L., 380
Lyon, Dr. O., 375, 337
Mackey, W. F., 375, 76
Mädler, J. H., 47-49
Maguire, R., 373
Maiakovskii, V., 375, 93
Maikov, A., 85
Maikov, L. N., 183
Makarova, S. A., 375, 74
Makashin, S. A., 374
Mandel’shtam, O., 375, 379, 408 ,
98
391
Manuilov, B. A., 362, 375, 383, 75
Maria Alexandrovna (Empress), see
Maximiliane Wilhelmine
Auguste Sophie Marie of
Hessen-Darmstadt
Maria Fedorovna (Empress), 94
Maricheva, L., 375, 63
Markov, V. F., 375, 64, 70, 336
Marot, C., 370
Martial (M. Valerius Martialis),
184
Matiash, S. A., 376, 341
Matveev, A. P., 87
Matveeva, K. P. (née Foeth), 376,
61, 62, 87
Matveeva, N. V., 376, 62, 63, 87,
100
Maurer, S., 376, 72, 88, 96; see
also McLaughlin
Maximiliane Wilhelmine Auguste
Sophie Marie of Hessen-
Darmstadt (Empress Maria Al-
exandrovna), 69
Maydell, P. von, 16, 376, 77-80, 85
McLaughlin, S., 376, 382, see also
Maurer
Medyntseva, G. L., 376, 63, 64, 67
Mei, L., 376, 87, 186
Meid, V., 376, 88
Melesk, H., 376, 86
Merezhkovskii, D. S., 376, 70
Merzliakov, A. F., 183
Mickiewicz, A., 408
Mikhalovskii, D. L., 376, 4, 71, 76
Miles, J., 376, 179
Miller, A. V., 370
Miller, O., 376, 92
Minaev, D. D., 279, 282, 367, 376,
69, 71, 347
Mirsky, D. S., 376, 92
Mlikotin, A., 382
Moier, J. Chr., 12, 13, 373, 76
Moier (née Protasova), M. A., 76
Moore, Th., 198, 408
Mörike, E., 336
Morits, Iu. A., 376, 65, 341
Mortimer, J., 78, 82
Morton, J., 376, 93
Mostovskaia, N., 374
392
Muncker, F., 373
Nadel, L., 374, 74
Narezhnyi, V. T., 254, 377, 408,
342
Natoire, C.-J., 181
Necker, L. A., 125
Nedobrovo, N. V., 377, 331
Neisser, U., 377, 93
Nekrasov, N. A., 59, 124, 263, 268,
365, 375, 381, 65, 70, 334
Nekrasova, E. A., 377, 65
Neumann, F., 377, 345
Nicholas I, 38, 111, 94
Niedenthal, P. M., 364, 377, 74, 93
Nietzsche, F. W., 306, 369, 408,
350
Nikolaev, P. A., 360, 367
Nikol’skii, Iu. A., 366, 377, 63,
332, 346
Nilsson, N.-Å., 377, 187
Nosov, A. A., 381
Nöth, W., 377, 178
Novalis [F. von Hardenberg], 237,
384, 341
Novinskaia, L. P., 211, 377, 63,
337, 338, 340, 348
Novosil’tsev, P. P., 12, 17, 86
Nowakowski, A. M., 377, 91, 188
Oatley, K., 377, 92
Odoevskii, V. F., 96
Oettingen, A. von, 77
Oettingen, G. von, 75, 77, 79
Ogien, R., 378, 74
Olesch, R., 382
Olivi, T., 385
Olsuf’ev, A. V., 360, 63
Opitz, M., 377
Orlov, V. N., 362
Orlova, O. A., 377, 338
Ornstein, P. A., 382
Osherov, S. A., 377, 183
Ospovat, A. L., 363, 369, 374, 377,
67, 68, 335
Ostolopov, N. F., 377, 183 , 184
Ots, V., 377, 79
Otto, G., 370, 76
Pachmuss, T., 378, 65
Paducheva, E., 378, 352
Panov, M. V., 378, 344
Index of Names
Paperman, P., 378, 74
Paradis, M., 378, 76
Parny, E.-D., 139
Pascal, B., 168
Pasternak, B. L., 154, 377, 384, 187
Paufler, K. G., 349
Pauler, K., 371
Pawel, J., 373
Pecherin, V. S., 139, 372, 378, 183-
185
Pertsov, P. P., 58
Petersen, O. von, 378, 85
Petőfi, J., 385
Petrovskii, S. A., 359
Petrunkevich, N. N., 177
Petry, M. J., 370
Petukhov, E. V., 378, 76
Peyre, H., 378, 180
Philipp, G., 378, 78, 86
Phillips, J. G.., 359
Pigarev, K. V., 374, 378, 382, 67,
187
Pigler, A., 378, 181
Piwowarska, D., 378, 73
Planudes, 182
Plato, 25, 149, 183
Pletnev, P. A., 342
Plitt, H., 378, 79
Pogodin, M. P., 16, 17, 374, 77, 82,
86, 91
Pokrovskaia, E., 378, 66
Polonskaia, Zh. A., 378
Polonskii, A. Ia., 376
Polonskii, Ia. P., 9, 10, 57, 191,
220, 362, 377, 378, 381, 62, 74,
82, 331, 332, 335, 348
Poussin, N., 361, 181
Power, M., 364, 74, 93
Priima, F. Ia., 375
Protasova, A. A., 84
Protasova, M. A., 76
Prutskov, I. I., 375
Pszczołowska, L., 375, 381
Pumpianskii, L. V., 378, 74, 176,
180
Purkinje [Purkyně], J. E., 124
Pushkin, A. S., 5, 10, 26, 137, 139,
140, 150, 222, 251, 254, 263-
265, 268, 286, 287, 319, 324,
Index of Names
364, 371, 372, 379-383, 408,
70, 74, 92, 96, 97, 99, 178, 180,
344-346, 348, 352
Radler, R., 358
Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael), 11, 181
Raich, S. E., 10, 409
Ratgauz, G. I., 379, 336
Redding, P., 379, 91
Reder, P., 380
Reil, J. C., 100
Reiser, S. A., 379, 75
Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, 181
Riehl (?), 99
Rilke, R. M., 287, 379, 409, 348
Ritz, G., 379, 73
Rockmore, T., 379, 91
Romaine, S., 379, 76
Romanov, Konstantin Konstantino-
vich, Grand Duke, see K. R.
Ronen, O., 379, 97
Rose, H. J., 379, 187
Ross, B. M., 379, 93
Rothe, H., 379, 382, 65
Rozanova, S. A., 382
Rubin, D. C., 361, 363, 374, 379,
93
Rückert, F., 42, 379, 95
Rückert, M., 379
Rudnev, P. A., 211, 377, 379, 63,
337, 338, 341
Růžička, R., 372
Ryleev, K., 360
Sadie, S., 377
Sadovskoi, B. A., 366, 379, 62, 73,
75, 94
Salaman, E., 30, 379, 93, 94
Salmasius (Saumaise, C.), 182
Samoilov, D., 379, 345
Sand, George (Aurore Dupin,
baronne Dudevant), 48, 90
Schachter, D. L., 380, 93, 98
Schellbach, R., 381
Schelling, F. W. J. v., 168, 377,
381, 91, 188
Scherr, B., 367, 380, 96, 339-341,
343, 346, 348, 348
Schiefner, F. A., 79
Schiller, J. C. F., 14, 18, 137, 152,
196, 235, 268, 354, 364, 380,
393
400, 409, 70, 72, 74, 84, 99,
180, 186, 334, 341, 343
Schmid, U., 366
Schogt, H., 364
Schopenhauer, A., 20, 21, 26, 39,
40, 43-46, 48-52, 306, 361,
372, 376, 380-382, 69, 72, 75,
88-90, 95-97, 350
Schubert, Franz, 271, 340
Scullard, H., 379
Sechenov, I. M., 44, 368, 380
Semenko, I. M., 361
Šemjatova, B., 380, 351
Serafimov, V., 380, 97
Setchkarev, V., 370
Severikova, N. M., 380, 72
Shaikevich, A. Ia., 362, 352
Shakespeare, W., 105, 223, 376,
409, 4, 71, 342
Shakhalova, N., 376
Shatseva, R. A., 360, 70
Shaw, J. T., 380, 344, 346, 352
Shcherbakov, V. I. 366
Shchukina, E. P., 69
Shenshin, A. N., 11, 12, 16, 17, 61,
62, 75, 81, 87
Shenshin, Vas. A., 87
Shenshin,V., 381, 62, 64, 72
Shenshina (née Becker, also Foeth),
Charlotte, 75
Shenshina (née Botkina, also Fet),
M. P., 360, 61, 63
Shevyrev, S. P., 17, 18, 372, 381,
66, 67, 87
Shimkevich, K., 381, 97
Shtegman, B. K., 371, 188
Sieber-Rilke, R., 379
Siguan, M., 381, 76
Siilivask, K., 364, 381, 77
Simmias of Rhodes, 305, 409
Simonides, 139
Simpson, D., 381, 91
Sirk, V., 381, 79
Sivers, J. von, 15-16, 269, 372, 378,
381, 382, 409, 79, 85, 86, 179,
335, 345
Skatov, N., 362, 367, 381, 64, 65
Skulacheva, T., 368, 381, 339
394
Sluchevskii, K. K., 365, 331, 343
Smirnov, A., 381, 92
Smirnova, I., 381, 63, 82, 92
Sokolova, M. A., 366
Sologub, F. (Teternikov, F. K.),
380, 351
Solov’ev, S. M., 87
Solov’ev, V. S., 27, 53, 57-59, 103-
105, 116, 365, 381, 383, 63, 69,
74, 100, 176
Speer, H., 381, 79
Spehr, E., 382, 84, 85
Spinoza, B., 95
Spitzer, L., 382, 179
Spolsky, B., 382, 76
Squire, L., 358
Stammler, H., 382, 72, 100
Stein, N. L., 382, 93
Stern, C. von, 15, 381
Stolz, B., 384
Storrs, R. 382, 83
Strakhov, N., 53, 57, 59, 171, 366,
374, 382, 63, 64, 69, 70, 92, 98,
331, 350
Strauss, D. F., 73
Strochkov, Ia. M., 383
Stroganov, S. G., 82
Strugovshchikov, A. N., 361
Struve, G. W., 50
Sukhikh, I. N., 366
Sukhotin, L. M., 382, 94
Sukhova, N. P., 382, 185
Swanston, M., 384, 178, 179
Taranovsky, K. F., 382, 342
Tarkhanov, I., 382, 178, 186
Tarkhov, A., 366, 64, 75
Tarlinskaja, M., 382, 337
Taylor, J., 371
Telk, M., 382, 81, 86
Tennyson, A., 371
Terras, V., 382, 70, 91
Theocritus, 139
Thiergen, P., 382, 91, 96
Thompson, C. P., 374
Tideböhl, A. von, 409, 85, 335
Timberlake, A., 373
Timofeev, L. I., 368, 383
Tirgen, P., see Thiergen, P.
Tiutchev, F. I., 6, 101, 109, 157,
Index of Names
173-190, 211, 214, 215, 217,
219, 220, 232, 233, 238, 286,
304, 313, 319, 354, 362, 365,
367, 374, 377-379, 382, 394,
409, 65, 67, 68, 71, 74, 77, 91 ,
93, 95, 178, 180, 187, 188, 333,
338, 340, 348, 352
Tiutcheva, A. F., 382, 69
Toboleev, D. K. (servant of I. S.
Turgenev and later V. P. Bot-
kin), 68
Tokarev, S. A., 375
Tolstoi, L. N., 26, 36, 43, 44, 116,
172, 354, 360, 364, 376, 382,
63, 65, 70, 73, 74, 90-92, 94,
96, 100, 331, 344, 356
Tomashevskii, B. V., 364, 383,
343, 348
Toporov, V. N., 369, 383, 180
Trautmann, R., 383, 62
Trediakovskii, V. K., 288, 383,
409, 348
Trifonov, N. A., 383, 100, 332
Trunz, E., 369
Tschizewski, D., 365, 383, 91, see
also Čiževskij, D.
Tsiv’ian, T. V. , 383
Tsvetaeva, M., 359, 371, 337
Turgenev, I. S., 6-8, 38, 48, 59,
129, 143, 144, 153, 161, 190,
191, 193, 199-201, 204, 223,
229, 241, 245, 246, 262, 267,
271, 298, 302, 355, 361, 368,
375, 376, 383, 394, 4, 63, 65-
67, 69-71, 76, 86, 99, 181, 187,
188, 331-333, 336, 342, 346
Tversky, B., 382
Tynianov, Iu., 383, 352
Unbegaun, B. O., 383, 338, 339,
343
Urbańska, D., 381
Uspenskaia, A. V., 366, 383, 182,
187, 334
Uvarov, S. S., 16, 138, 383, 384,
183-185
van Tuyl, J., 383, 65
Varlamov, A. E., 349
Varnhagen von Ense, K. A., 16
Vatsuro, V. E., 383, 184
Index of Names 395

Velichko, V. L., 383, 74 238, 240, 264, 270, 362, 385,

Venclova, T., 383, 180 409, 71, 76, 84, 94, 177, 341
Vergil (P. Vergilius Maro), 183 Zinn, E., 379
Verlaine, P., 383 Zinzendorf, N. L. von, 79, 341
Viardot, P., 86
Viazemskii, P. A., 111
Vinogradova, E., 372
Vishnevskii, K. D., 383, 343, 345,
347, 348
Voeikov, A. F., 360, 409, 84
Voltaire [François-Marie Arouet],
138, 383, 182-184
Vostokov, A. Kh., 183
Vucinich, A., 383, 77
Vvedenskii, I. I., 17, 86
Wachtel, A. B., 383, 75, 94
Wachtel, M., 384, 70, 178, 185, 341
Wackenroder, W. H., 372
Wade, N. J., 384, 178, 179
Wallace, W., 370
Weinreich, Dr., 35
Weintraub, W., 365
Welding, O., 357
Wellek, R., 10, 384, 75
Whitfield, F., 376
Whittaker, C., 384, 77
Whittaker (=Vittaker), R., 369
Wieland, Ch. M., 377
Wierzbicka, A., 384, 91
Wimsatt, W. K., Jr., 384, 186
Winckelmann, J. J., 370, 186
Winkel, H.-J. zum, 365
Wittich, J. G., 365
Wittorf, C. v., 381
Wordsworth, W., 56
Worth, D. S., 363, 367, 384, 344,
345
Wright, N., 384, 75
Wright, T., 48, 384, 97
Yates, F. A., 384, 76
Yeomans, D. K., 384, 97
Zaitsev, V. A., 384, 96
Zhirmunskii, V. M., 212, 267, 362,
384, 87, 96, 186, 333, 337, 339,
341, 343-345
Zholkovsky, A., 384, 93, 97, 187,
331
Zhovtis, A. L., 385, 339
Zhukovskii, V. A., 12, 17, 35, 111,
Index of poems

(Note: The index does not list books of poems or, for poets other than Fet,
groups of poems. Poems are listed under only one heading: those listed al-
phabetically by title are not listed separately by first line.)

Author Title and/or First Line Pages

A. A. Fet
(groups of poems)
“Антологические стихотворения” 140, 143, 147, 194, 232
“Баллады” 194, 274, 280, 281, 284
“Вечера и ночи” 165, 194, 199, 204 ff.,
228, 238, 300, 186, 335
“Гадания” 274
“Мелодии” 194, 284, 295, 301 ff.,
186
“Разные стихотворения” 232, 302, 303, 187, 333
“Снега” 194, 198
“Сонеты” 194, 283, 300
“Хандра” 222
“Элегии” 147, 162, 194, 186
“Элегии и думы” 42, 215, 95
(poems)
A. Л. Бржeскoй (“Далекий друг, пойми мои 314 ff.
рыданья …”
Аваддон (“Ангел, и лев, и телец, и орел…”) 218
Alter Ego (“Кaк лилeя глядится в нaгoрный 218, 292-294, 178
ручeй…”)
Амимона 149
Anruf an die Geliebte Бетховена (“Пойми 310
хоть раз тоскливое признанье,…”)
Аполлон Бельведерский (“Упрямый лук, с 187
прицела чуть склонен,...”)
Арабеск ( “Черную урну с прахом поэта”) 270

Бабочка (“Ты прaв. Oдним вoздушным 115, 303 ff., 350

oчeртaньeм…”)
“Бaрaшкoв буря шлeт свoиx…” 102
Бедный мальчик (“Дай-ка няне ручки- 280, 281, 346
крошки,…”)
Index of Poems 397

“Безмолвные поля оделись темнотою…” 276

Безумная 105, 347
“Блaгoвoннaя нoчь, блaгoдaтнaя нoчь…” 155
“Будтo нa нивe кoлoсья…” (Epilog, Die 232, 233, 252, 253, 262
Nordsee, 2. Zyklus [“Wie auf dem Felde die
Weizenhalmen…”], Heine)
“Буря на небе вечернем …” 128

“В златом сиянии лампады полусонной…” 186

“В молодые тоже годы…” ( “Habe auch, in 285, 348
jungen Jahren…”, Heine)
“В обширном саду, испещренном…” 294
“В пене несется поток…” 234
“В тиши и мраке таинственной ночи…” 39, 42-52, 187, 341
Вакханка (“Зачем как газель …”) 139
Вакханка (“Под тенью сладостной полу- 139, 186
денного сада …”)
“Вдали огонек за рекою…” 274, 275
Венера Милосская 186, 187
“Ветер злой, ветр крутой в поле…” 234 ff., 341, 346
“Влaжнoe лoжe пoкинувши, Фeб 147, 222, 229, 186, 346
злaтoкудрый нaпрaвил,…”
Водопад 119, 125, 135, 140,
147ff., 153, 300, 301,
305, 306
“Вот утро севера – сонливое, скупое…” 275, 323, 325

“Всe нeжит взoры …” (Mailied [“Wie herrlich 196, 197, 267, 268-271,
leuchtet…” ], Goethe) 274, 276, 316, 180
“Всe, чтo вoлшeбнo тaк мaнилo…” 175
“Всю нoчь грeмeл oврaг сoсeдний…” 106, 155
“Встречу ль яркую в небе зарю…” 165, 315
“Вчера, увенчана душистыми цветами…” 109, 287-289, 316

Гера и Леандр 196, 198

Герман и Доротеа (“Я не видал, чтобы 18, 199, 228, 252, 336
площадь и улицы были так пусты!…”)
(Hermann und Dorothea, Goethe)
“Говорили в древнем Риме…” 154, 160, 278 ff., 283,
285, 348
“Гoрят дрoвa в кaминe прeдo мнoй” 255
Границы человечества (“Кoгдa 229 ff., 317
стaрoдaвний…” [“Grenzen der
Menschheit”, Goethe])
Гр. Л. Н. Толстому (“Как ястребу, который 172
просидел …”)
398 Index of Poems

Грезы (“Мне снился сон, что сплю я 96

непробудно,..”)
Греция (“Тaм, пoд oливaми, близ шумнoгo 143 ff., 152-154, 160,
кaскaдa,…”) 163, 259 ff., 289, 300,
186, 349

“Дaвнo в любви oтрaды мaло…” 210 ff., 225, 234, 238,

245, 262, 313
“Давно ль под волшебные звуки…” 161, 335
Даки 149, 151, 187
Две розы 276, 346
Диана (“Бoгини дeвствeннoй oкруглыe 23 ff., 29, 31, 39, 110,
чeрты…”) 129 ff., 137, 147 ff.,
159, 165, 174, 178,
186, 336, 348
Диана, Эндимион и сатир 151, 276, 187
“Дитя покорная любви…” 347
Добрый день (“Вот снова ночь с своей 167
тоской бессонный ...”)
Дозор (Czaty, Mickiewicz) 349
“Друг мой, бессильны слова, одни поцелуи 121, 164
всесильны…”
“Дул север, плакала трава” 218

“Ee нe знaeт свeт, – онa eщe рeбeнoк…” 162

Ее окно 155
“Если зимнее небо звездами горит…” 123
“Eсли рaдуeт утрo тeбя…” 317
“Еще весны душистой нега…” 287, 289

“Жди ясного на завтра дня…” 250

“Желтеет древесная зелень…” (Der 334
scheidende Sommer [“Das gelbe Laub
erzittert…”], Heine)
“Жизнь пронеслась без явного следа…” 347

“Зa гoрaми, пeскaми, мoрями…” 304, 93

“Зaигрaли нa рoяли…” 279 ff.
Замок Рауфенбах 349
Звезды (“Отчего все звезды стали…”) 50
Зевс (“Шум и гам, – хохочут девы…”) 137, 151, 159, 163, 167,
181
Зимняя ночь (“Спит воздух, скованный 336
цепями ...”, tr. of N. Lenau, “Winternacht”)
Зимняя поездка на Гарц (“Harzreise im 232, 245, 181
Winter”, Goethe)
Index of Poems 399

Змей 155, 274

“Знaю я, чтo ты, мaлюткa…” 162
Золотой Век 152, 323, 187

“Измучeн жизнью, кoвaрствoм нaдeжды…” 39-52, 97, 187, 339, 341

“Истрепалися сосен мохнатые ветви от 221
бури…”

К крaсaвцу (“Природы баловень, как 165

счастлив ты судьбой!…”)
К лешему 161 ff.
К Сикстинской Мадонне (“Вот сын ее,– он – 151, 181
тайна Иеговы–…”)
“Кaк мoшки зaрeю…” 30, 32, 317, 325
“Кaк яснoсть бeзoблaчнoй нoчи…” 280, 282
“Какая грусть! Конец аллеи…” 156 ff.
“Клянитe нaс: нaм дoрoгa свoбoдa,… ” 8
“Когда дыханье множит муки…” 49
“Когда мои мечты за гранью прошлых 121, 135, 162
дней…”
“Кoгдa пeтуx,…” 144 ff., 152 ff., 194, 230,
300
“Когда трепещут эти звуки…” 116
“Когда читала ты мучительные строки,...” 112, 351
Комета 51, 97
“Кoт пoeт, глaзa прищуря…” 127 ff.
Крысы (“К хозяину в день стачки…”) 232, 233
Кусок мрамора (“Тщeтнo блуждaeт мoй 140, 149, 150, 272, 186
взoр, измeряя твoй мрaмoр нaчaтый…”)

Ласточка (“Я люблю посмотреть, когда 232, 188, 349

ласточка…”)
“Ласточки пропали…” 287
Ласточки (“Прирoды прaздный 172-175, 211, 313, 316,
сoглядaтaй…”) 93, 189, 348
“Лeсoм мы шли пo трoпинкe 231, 232, 340
eдинствeннoй…”
“Лизиас и Вакхида” 65
“Лoзы мoи зa oкнoм рaзрoслись живoписнo 121, 155, 163, 83
и дaже…”
“Люди спят: мой друг, пойдем в тенистый 16, 85, 335
сад…”

“Майская песня” (“Все нежит взоры…” 196, 267, 268, 271, 274,
[“Mailied”, Goethe]) 276, 316
“Митя крoшкa…” 264
400 Index of Poems

“Моего тот безумства желал, кто смежал …” 134, 135, 245, 304
Мой ангел (“Как он прекрасен ...”) 167, 340
“Молятся звезды, мерцают и рдеют…” 165
Моя Ундина (“Она резва...”) 232
Муза (“Ты xoчeшь прoклинaть, рыдaя и 154, 156
стeня…”)
“Мы нравимся уездам и столицам…” 294

“На дворе не слышно вьюги…” 280, 346

Нa Днeпрe в пoлoвoдьe (“Свeтaлo. Вeтeр 276, 277
гнул упругoe стeклo…”)
“На заре ты ее не буди…” 110, 155
На качелях (“И oпять в пoлусвeтe 171
нoчнoм…”)
На корабле (“Летим! Туманною чертою…”) 289 ff.
“Нa крeслe oтвaлясь, гляжу нa пoтoлoк…” 32 ff.
На озере (“И силу в грудь, и свeжeсть в 204 ff., 214, 245, 253 ff.
крoвь”, [“Auf dem See”, Goethe])
“На пажитях немых люблю в мороз 194, 198, 353
трескучий …” (“Я русский …”)
На пятидесятилетие Музы (“Нас отпевают. 295
В этот день…”)
Нa смeрть Брaжникoвa (“Взвод, вперед, 293
справа по три, не плач!…”)
“На стоге сена ночью южной…” 50, 187
“Нaд мoрeм спит кoсмaтый бoр…” 299, 300
Надежда (“Нaдeются люди, мeчтaют свoй 235, 84
вeк…” – “Hoffnung”, Schiller)
Напрасно! 232
“Наш шеф – владыка полусвета…” 291
“Не здесь ли ты легкою тенью…” 316
“Не отходи от меня…” 302, 318, 349
“Не плачь, моя душа! Ведь сердцу не 289, 299
легко…”
“Не смейся, не дивися мне…” 295
“Не хочу морозной я...” (tr. “Götter! keine 232
frostige...”, Rückert)
“Недвижные очи, безумные очи …” 301
Нептуну Леверрье (“Птицей, / Быстрo 50, 196, 230, 232, 238,
пaрящeй птицeй Зeвeсa,…”) 300
Ничтожество 150, 96
Нимфа и молодой сатир 151, 186, 187
Nocturno 302
Ночь и день 276, 349
“Ночь лазурная смотрит на скошенный луг 292
Index of Poems 401

...”
“Ночь и я, мы оба дышим…” 287, 287
“Ныне первый мы слышали гром…” 107, 112,

“O бoжe, бoжe! всe нaрoды мнe…” 342

“O, дoлгo буду я, в мoлчaньи нoчи 142, 163, 348
тaйнoй…”
“О друг, не мучь меня жестоким 287-289
приговором…”
“О, не зови! Страстей твоих так звонок…” 282, 69
“O, солнце глаз бессонных – звездный 333
луч…” (“Sun of the sleepless, melancholy
star…”, Byron)
Оброчник (“Xoругвь свящeнную пoдъяв 154, 156
свoeй дeснoй…”)
Одалиска 305
“Одна звезда меж всеми дышит…” 188
Озеро (Le lac, Lamartine) 265, 84
“Окна в решетках, и сумрачны лица…” 156
“Он ест – а ты цветешь напрасной 115
красотою…”
“Она легка, как тонкий пар…” 349
Осень (“Кaк грустны сумрaчныe дни…”) 326 ff.
“Oт oгнeй, oт тoлпы бeспoщaднoй…” 165 ff., 171, 175
“Офелия гибла и пела…” 346

П. И. Борисову (“Милый Петя, вот и мы…”) 267

Памяти Н. Я. Данилевского (“Eсли жить 221
суждeнo и нa свeт нe рoдиться нeльзя,…”)
Пароход (“Злой дельфин, ты просишь 324
ходу…”)
Певец (“Der Sänger”, Goethe) 196, 276
Певице (“Унoси мoe сeрдцe в звeнящую 122 ff., 135, 291, 178
дaль…”)
Первая потеря (“Kто воротит мне дни 231, 271
блаженные…” [“Erster Verlust”, Goethe])
Перепел (“Глупый пeрeпeл, глядико…”) 275 ff., 279 ff.
“Пeрлы вoстoчныe – зубы у нeй…” 274, 346
Песни Кавказских горцев
“Пeчaльнaя бeрeзa…” 155
Подражание XVI идилли Биона (“Elégie 137
XIII, imitée de la XI-e Idylle de Bion”, Ché-
nier)
“Полно спать: тебе две розы …” 86
“Полуночные образы реют…” 86
“Полуразрушенный, полужилец могилы…” 257
402 Index of Poems

“Помню я: старушка няня…” 273, 274

Посейдон (“Poseidon”, Heine) 198
Прекрасная ночь 245, 332
“Прекрасная, она стояла тихо…” 159, 161
Призывание (“О ты, которая мне в душу 233, 316, 84
заглянула,…” [“Invocation”, Lamartine])
Прости (“Прости, – я помню то мгновенье 218
…”)
“Пускай мой старческий портрет…” 347
“Пуская в свет мои мечты…” 301
Пчелы (“Пропаду от тоски я и лени …”) 134 ff., 287, 288, 304,
335

“Рад я дождю…От него тучнеет мягкое 228, 335

поле…”
Ракета (“Гoрeл нaпрaснo я душoй…”) 123
“Расстались мы, ты странствуешь далече…” 177
Рыбак (“Неслась волна, росла волна, ...”, tr. 181
Goethe “Der Fischer”)

“C бородою седою верховный я жрец…” 305, 351

“С корзиной полною цветов, на голове…” 186
“С солнцем склоняясь за темную землю…” 218
“Сад весь в цвету…” 279, 346
Cаконтала (“Сaкoнтaлa, из всex цaриц, 227 ff., 283, 65 ff., 339
укрaшавшиx индийский…”)
“Свеж и душист твой роскошный венок…” 294-295, 302, 349
“Свежеет ветер, меркнет ночь…” 294
“Светил нам день, будя огонь в крови,…” 188
“Свеча нагорела. Портреты в тени…” 108, 109, 113, 118, 235-
238, 100, 188
Серенада (“Плывет луна по высоте,…”) 349
“Скучнo мнe вeчнo бoлтaть о том, что 272 ff.
высоко, прекрасно;…”
“Слышу ли песенки звуки…” (“Hör’ ich das 316
Liedchen klingen”, Heine)
Смерти (“Когда измучен жаждой 287
счастья…”)
Смерти (“Я в жизни обмирал и чувство это 151, 88
знаю,…”)
Смерть (“Я жить хочу! – кричит он, 96
дерзновенный ... ”)
“Снился берег мне скалистый…” 291
“Сны и тени…” 281, 282
“Солнце потухло, плавает запах…” 270
Соловей и роза 237, 266 ff., 283, 304,
Index of Poems 403

376, 65
Сон и Пазифая (“Ярко бестящая пряжка над 19, 137, 147, 149, 87
белою полною грудью…”)
Cон и Смерть (“Бoгoм свeтa пoкинутa, дoчь 150 ff., 185, 186
Грoмoвeржцa нeмaя…”)
“Среди звезд” (“Пусть мчитесь вы, как я 42, 95, 187
покорны мигу…”)
Стена 154
“Стократ блажен, когда я мог стяжать…” 301
“Стрaницы милыe oпять пeрсты рaс- 327 ff.
крыли…”
Cтудент 21, 190

Тайна (“Почти ребенком я была,…”) 160

“Тебе в молчании я простираю руку…” 287
Телемак у Калипсы 137, 152, 160 ff., 278 ff.,
285, 187
Тень (“Башня лежит…”, Hsu Shi) 347
“Тиxaя, звeзднaя нoчь…” 196, 226 ff., 301, 302,
86, 339, 349
“Тихо вечер догорает…” 309, 86
“Только в мире и есть, что тенистый…” 128, 234, 238, 291
“Тoлькo встрeчу улыбку твoю…” 326
“Тополь” 182
“Ты пoмнишь, чтo былo тoгдa…” 154
“Ты так любишь гулять…” 232, 347
“Тяжeлo в нoчнoй тиши…” 161

У камина (“Тускнeют угли. В 168, 169 ff., 174

пoлумрaкe…”)
У окна (“К окну приникнув головой…”) 156
Угасшим звездам 49, 50, 117
“Уж, сeрпы нa плeчa взлoжив, устaлыe 271
жницы…”
Утес (“Моря не было там, а уж я тут 289
стоял…”)
Утешение 284, 349
Утро в степи 294

Фауст (Goethe) 19, 128, 254, 65, 343

“Чудная картина…” 126 ff., 179

“Шeпoт, рoбкoe дыxaньe…” 128, 130 ff., 158, 303,

86
Шиллеру 187
404 Index of Poems

Шoпeну (“Ты мeлькнулa, ты прeдстaлa…”) 36, 285, 73, 348

“Юнoшa, взoрoм блeстя, ты видишь всe 228, 185

прeлeсти дeвы;.. ”
“Юноши буйные в ставни закрытые…” (Ho- 163
race Odes I.25)

Эоловы арфы 226, 237, 65

Эпилог (“Будто на ниве колосья,..”, tr. of 232, 233, 252 ff., 262,
“Epilog”, Die Nordsee, 2. Zyklus, Heine) 342
Эпитафия (“Любил он песням дев 287
задумчиво внимать…”)
“Этo утрo, рaдoсть этa…” 128, 131 ff., 148, 179
“Эx, шуткa-мoлoдoсть! Кaк нoвый, рaнний 164
снeг…”

“Я долго стоял неподвижно…” 165, 86, 187

“Я жду…Соловиное эхо…” 218
“Я знаю, гордая, ты любишь самовластье…” 160, 187
“Я люблю его жарко: он тигром в бою…” 104, 105
“Я люблю мнoгoe, близкoe сeрдцу…” 195, 230
“Я нe знaю, нe скaжу я,… ” 285
“Я полон дум, когда закрывши вежды…” 194, 198, 310
“Я потрясен, когда кругом…” 347, 350
“Я пришeл к тeбe с привeтoм…” 168, 335, 349
“Я рaд, кoгдa с зeмнoгo лoнa,…” 9, 74, 88
Язык цветов (“Мой пучок блестит росой…”) 267

Quasi un fantasia (“Сновиденье…”) 128

Other Poets
K. S. Aksakov
“Как освежается душа” (“Auf dem See”, 204 ff.
Goethe)
A. N. Apukhtin
“Боже, в каком я теперь упоении…” 220, 340
E. A. Baratynskii
Водопад (“Шуми, шуми с крутой вер- 178
шины”)
K. N. Batiushkov
Вакханка 139
V. Benediktov
Комета (“Взгляни на небеса: там 97
стройность вековая.”…)
F. Bodenstedt
Die Sterne (“Ich starrte und stand 86
Index of Poems 405

unbeweglich…” [“Я долго стоял

неподвижно…”])
“Flüstern, athemscheues Lauschen…” 86
[“Шепот, робкое дыханье…”]”
“Golden glühn der Berge Gipfel…” [“Тихо 86
вечер догорает…”]
“Mitternächtige Bilder erscheinen…” 86
[“Полуночные образы реют…”]
“Ruhige, heilige Nacht…” [“Тихая, звездная 86
ночь…”]
“Schlaf’ nicht mehr! Zwei junge Rosen…” 86
[“Полно спать: тебе две розы…”]
G. G. Byron
Cain 18, 65, 87
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 75
“Sun of the sleepless, melancholy star…” 198, 333
(Hebrew Melodies)
A. von Chamisso
“Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag” 351
A. Chénier
“Elégie XIII, imitée de la XI-e Idylle de 137
Bion”
A. A. Del’vig
Надпись на статую флорентинского 139, 185
Меркурия (“Перст указует на даль, на
главе развилися крылья,..”)
Купидону (“Сидя на льве, Купидон будил 139, 185
радость могущею лирой,..”)
G. R. Derzhavin
Бабочка (“На цветы с цветов летая …”) 304
Бог 350
Водопад 178
Спящий Эрот 183
J. Eichendorff
Gebet 288
F. de la Motte Fouqué
Zwey Bilder aus Maler Friedrichs Werkstatt. 111
I. (“Sie steht, vom veilchenrothen Kleid
umwallt,...”)
F. N. Glinka
Карелия 119
J. W. Goethe
Äolsharfen. Gespräch 226, 65
Auf dem See (“Und frische Nahrung, neues 19, 194, 197, 203 ff.,
Blut…”) 210, 237, 245, 253, 336
Der Fischer 181
406 Index of Poems

Der Sänger 172, 196, 276, 285, 299

Die schöne Nacht 245, 332
Erster Verlust (“Ach! wer bringt die schönen 231, 271
Tage…”)
Faust 19, 128, 254, 65
Finnisches Lied 85
Grenzen der Menschheit 229, 230, 317
Harzreise im Winter 232, 245
Hermann und Dorothea 18, 199, 228, 251, 336
Mailied (also called Maifest, “Wie herrlich 142, 196, 197, 267, 268,
leuchtet…”) 271, 274, 276 316,
180
Nähe des Geliebten (“Ich denke dein, wenn 333
mir der Sonne Schimmer…”)
Römische Elegien 19, 137, 140, 147, 361,
183, 186
Selige Sehnsucht (West-Östlicher Divan) 351
Vermischte Gedichte 333
Zigeunerlied 350
A. Grigor’ev
“И пищу свежую и кровь” (“Auf dem See”, 204 ff.
Goethe)
Комета (“Когда средь сонма звезд, 97
размеренно и стройно...”)
Тайна воспоминания (“Вечно льнуть к 18
устам с безумной страстью…” [Das
Geheimnis der Reminiszenz, [Schiller])
H. Heine
Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen 345, 351
Der scheidende Sommer (“Das gelbe Laub 334
erzittert…”)
“Der Tod das ist die kühle Nacht,...” 340
“Die Nacht ist feucht und stürmisch…” (from 110, 176
Die Heimkehr)
Epilog, Die Nordsee, 2. Zyklus (“Wie auf 233, 252, 342
dem Felde die Weizenhalmen…”)
“Habe auch, in jungen Jahren…” 285, 348
“Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen…” 316
Poseidon 198
Herder, J. G.
Blumen, aus der Griechischen Anthologie 138
gesammlet
Hesiod
Theogonia 406
Homer
Iliad 19, 137, 187
Index of Poems 407

Odyssey 137
Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus)
Ars Poetica 74
Odes I, 5. (“Quis multa gracilis te puer in 164, 270, 83
rosa…”[“To Pyrrha”])
Odes I.14 (“O navis referent in mare te 82
novi...”)
Odes I, 25 (“Parcius iunctas quatiunt fenes- 163, 271, 83
tras…”)
Hsu Shi
Fet tr. “Тень” (“Башня лежит ...”) 347
V. Hugo
“Amis, un dernier mot! – et je ferme à 301
jamais…”
“La pauvre fleur disait au papillon 303 ff.
céleste:…”
Les chants du crépuscule 303
Les Feuilles d’Automne 303
N. M. Iazykov
Водопад (“Море блеска, гул, удары,...”) 119
Kalidasa
Sakuntala 198, 227, 283, 366, 65,
339,
V. V. Kapnist
“Другу моему” (“Взгляни, как снегом по- 348
кровенны …”)
F. G. Klopstock
Der Zürchersee (“Schön ist, Mutter Natur, 206, 210, 336
deiner Erfindung Pracht…”)
Th. Körner
Friedrichs Totenlandschaft (I. “Die Erde 177
schweigt mit tiefem, tiefem Trauern, ...”;
II. “Und plötzlich hör ich süße
Harmonieen, ...”)
Moskau 99
A.-M.-L. de P. de Lamartine
Chant d’amour 84
Invocation 233, 316, 84
Le Lac 265, 84, 345
Méditations poétiques 84
Nouvelles méditations poétiques 84
N. Lenau
Winternacht (Gedichte, 1832) 336
M. Iu. Lermontov
“Белеет парус одинокий…” 180
408 Index of Poems

Испанцы 254
O. Mandel’shtam
“На полицейской бумаге верже…” 98
A. Mickiewicz
Czaty. Ballada ukraińska. 349
Th. Moore
Venetian Song (“Farewell, Theresa! …”) 198
V. T. Narezhnyi
Кровавая ночь, или Конечное падение 342
дому Кадмова
F. Nietzsche
“Nur Narr! Nur Dichter!” 306 ff.
Ia. P. Polonskii
А. А. Фет 332
Вечерние огни. Посвящено А. А. Фету 332
(“Уходит пестрый день и, теша
смертных очи …”)

A. S. Pushkin
Бахчисарайский фонтан 10
Boрис Годунов 254
Кавказский пленник 10
“Зима. Что делать нам в деревне? Я 275, 324
встречаю...”
На статую играющего в бабки 139
На статую играющего в свайки 139
Нереида 26, 137
Паж, или пятнадцатый год (“Пятнадцать 348
лет мне скоро минет…”)
Портрет 97
Прощание (“В последний раз твой образ 287, 348
милый…”)
“Пью за здравие Мери…” (Из Barry Corn- 251
wall)
Художнику 140, 150
Царскосельская статуя 139
“Юношу, горько рыдая, ревнивая дева 140
бранила…”
S. E. Raich
Освобожденный Иерусалим (tr. Tasso) 10
Index of Poems 409

R. M. Rilke
Stundenbuch 287
F. Rückert
“Götter! keine frostige...” 232
Kindertotenlieder 379, 95
F. Schiller
Amalia 186, 343
Das Geheimnis der Reminiszenz 18
Die Götter Griechenlandes 18, 137
Hero und Leander 196
Hoffnung 235, 84, 341
W. Shakespeare
Julius Caesar 71
Romeo and Juliet 342
Simmias of Rhodes
Wings of Eros 305
J. von Sivers
Bilder 179
Einst und Jetzt 345
Marienburg vom Teufelsberge 345
Neu-Laitzen von Oppekaln aus 179
T. Tasso
Jerusalem Delivered (tr. S. E. Raich) 10
A. von Tideböhl
Alles schläft (“Alles schläft; lass in den 16, 85
Schatt’gen Park uns geh’n…”[tr. of “Люди
спят; мой друг, пойдем в тенистый сад
…”])
F. I. Tiutchev
А. А. Фету (“Иным дoстaлся oт при- 158
рoды…”)
“Если смерть есть ночь, если жизнь есть 340
день...” (Мотив Гейне)
Последняя любовь (“О, как на склоне 203, 211 ff.
наших лет…”)
“Смoтри, кaк нa рeчнoм прoстoрe…” 174 ff.
V. K. Trediakovskii
“Oда VIII. Парафразис Псалма 6” (“О! не 288
ярости во время,...”)
A. F. Voeikov
Дом сумасшедших 84
V. A. Zhukovskii
“У гроба государыни императрицы Марии 35
Феодоровны в ночи накануне ее
погребения” (“Итак, твой гроб с
мольбой объемлю...”)
List of tables and charts

Table 1 Summary of Fet's Metrical Usage 213

Table 2 Distribution of the main groups of classical meters used by Fet 216
Table 3 Metrical Repertory in Fet’s Translations 217
Table 4 Long, Medium, and Short Syllabotonic Lines 219
Table 5 Meters used independently in monometric poems 224
Table 6 Anisometric poems containing monometer lines 232
Table 7 Anisometric Meters in Monometric Texts 236
Table 8 Non-classical lines as a proportion of all isometric and anisometric 237
lines, counting elegiac distich as an anisometric logoaed
Table 9 Number of texts and lines in Fet’s canon of short original verse 239
Table 10 Proportion of lines in canonical short original poems, as a percent- 239
age of all Fet’s lines, calculated for each meter
Table 11 Commonest meters in Fet’s books of 1840-1856 241
Table 12 Core metrical usage in Russian verse (proportion of all texts in each 243
decade)
Table 13 Lines in each meter in the canonical short poems, by chronological 246
period
Table 14 Meters of lines of all dated or datable poetry, by chronological peri- 248
ods
Table 15 Commonest meters in Fet’s poetry, across time 249
Table 16 Stress in iambic hexameter: Fet and the 19th-century norm 258
Table 17 Fet’s oeuvre divided into equal-size groups, counting all word 308
forms in order of occurrence
Table 18 Number of adjectives, by chronological period 308
Table 19 Number of adjective, by chronological period, canonical short po- 308
ems only
Table 20 Adjectives by rank and frequency 309
Table 21 Adjectives by rank at different times 310
Table 22 Ranks of each chronological period in rankings of each adjective 311
Table 23 Key adjectives in Fet (statistics from Kjetsaa and Egeberg) 312
Chart 1 Chronological change in the number of stanzas per poem in Fet’s 297
canonical shorter poems
Charts 2-5 Location of но in 12-line poems, across time 322