What is eternally human how to understand. What is eternal is human. Image of nature as alive and animate

“The whole world is full of beauty...” Afanasy Fet

A whole world of beauty
From big to small,
And you search in vain
Find its beginning.

What is a day or an age?
Before what is infinite?
Although man is not eternal,
What is eternal is human.

Analysis of Fet’s poem “The whole world is from beauty...”

In 1859, in the St. Petersburg monthly magazine “ Russian word» Fet published an article “On the poems of F. Tyutchev.” Before moving on to an analysis of the work of his contemporary, the poet sets out his philosophical and aesthetic views. Over time, much of his perception has changed. The concept of beauty remains the same. Fet considered it a really existing element of the world around people. A creative person must have a special gift of clairvoyance. A certain angle of vision helps him see even the most banal object from a new perspective. In the external world, the artist captures beauty, which is his ideal, and embodies it in art. Fet's philosophical and aesthetic views are expressed not only in theory, but also in practice. Some of them are expressed in the poem “The whole world is from beauty...”. The exact date of its writing still remains unclear. Literary scholars indicate the interval between 1874 and 1886.

In the poem, thoughts are given in the same order as in the article. In the first quatrain, Fet talks about the place of beauty in the world. The second is about the relationship between humanity and beauty. The concept of clairvoyance, which is described in detail in the work “On the Poems of F. Tyutchev”, in the work “The Whole World of Beauty...” is expressed in the last two lines, distinguished by conciseness, accuracy and aphorism: “Although man is not eternal, that which is eternal, - humanely." The coincidence between prose and lyrics is also observed at the intonation level. Both the article and the poem are characterized by increased emotionality.

Fet's contemporary critics often did not accept his poetry and ridiculed it. The heyday of Afanasy Afanasievich’s creativity occurred in the sixties of the nineteenth century - in Russian Empire this is the time of Bazarov and nihilism. People tried to understand the world through science, to explain things the nature of which previously seemed an insoluble mystery. Fet's lyrics did not fit into such concepts. His poems are a recording of a fleeting sensation, and a purely individual one. He did not depict objects, but his personal view of them. Afanasy Afanasievich’s approach to creativity was partly due to the small number of verbs in his poems. This can be seen in the work “The Whole World of Beauty...”. In the eight-line, only two verbs are used, and they are almost identical in meaning - “you are looking” and “to find.”

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (1820-1892) was born in the village of Novoselki, Mtsensk district, on the estate of landowner A.N. Shenshina. In 1838, Fet was admitted to the verbal department of the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow University.

After graduating from university, he entered military service and until 1853 he lived in the small towns of the Kherson province, where the cuirassier Order Regiment was stationed. In 1853, Fet was transferred to the Uhlan regiment, stationed near St. Petersburg, and five years later he retired, bought land in the Oryol province and became a landowner. IN last years Fet moved to Moscow, where he died.

The work of Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet was distinguished by its originality and bold flight of imagination. Being by nature a rather gloomy person, rational in affairs, conservative in beliefs, Fet appears before us as a poet praising the beauty of nature and human feelings. Many critics have often noticed that Fet's poems are not as simple as they may seem at first glance. But in order to understand the work of Afanasy Afanasyevich, you need to learn to perceive it.

The main themes of Fet's lyrical poems are nature and love. The subject of Fet's lyrics is the spiritual world of man. It is the lyrical excitement of the poet himself that gives meaning to natural phenomena, imparts life to them, and enlivens them through lyrical emotion. The poet is characterized by a feeling of the internal unity of nature and the human soul. In his love lyric poems, Fet also focuses on elusive emotional experiences, on the first glimpses of emerging love affection.

The whole world is full of beauty, from great to small, and you seek in vain to find its beginning. What is a day or an age before that which is infinite? Although man is not eternal, what is eternal is human. Between 1874 and 1886

According to the Rodnoe Slovo Foundation

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet is perhaps the most famous lyric poet. His poetry flourished in the 1840s and is still blooming today, almost two centuries later.

His poetry reveals to us unnoticed moments from a bush of grass to silence. “What kind of sound is that in the evening twilight? God knows, - It’s a sandpiper or an owl moaning. There is parting in it, and there is suffering in it, And a distant unknown cry...” - his view of the world is very lyrical and attentive.
The style of his poems has a changeable mood. For example, “I came to you with greetings, To tell you that the sun has risen, That it is a hot light. It fluttered across the sheets...” and “And into the sore, tired chest, The moisture of the night blows... I am trembling..” - these are completely two different works, even as if written by two different poets. From the poems you can understand that Afanasy Fet is a very diverse person.
I like the lyrics in Fet’s poems. But regardless of this, I like the verse “This morning, this joy...” most of all. Usually, poems have verbs, but this one has none. This explains to us that without talking about the actions of an object, we still understand its richness.

Poetry lesson in 10th grade

Teacher of Municipal Educational Institution “Secondary School No. 9” Taranenko Olesya Mikhailovna

Topic: “A whole world of beauty...”

(philosophical lyrics by A. A. Fet)

Goals: introduce students to the philosophical lyrics of A. Fet,

the peculiarities of his poetic talent;

determine the originality of A. Fet’s lyrics; introduce into a complex world

melodious Fetov verse; identify means of expression

imparting musicality, melodiousness, melody

the poet's poems.

Decor

lesson: portrait of A. A. Fet, collections of the poet’s poems, slides

to the biography of the poet, his work, romance based on poetry

Epigraph: What is a day or an age

Before what is infinite?

Although man is not eternal,

What is eternal is human.

During the classes:

♪I. The teacher announces the topic, the goals of the lesson, and reads the epigraph.

II. Teacher's word

Admiring one of Fetov’s masterpieces, Yakov Petrovich Polonsky, in a letter to its author (dated October 25, 1890), was perplexed: “What kind of creature are you, where do you get such unctuously pure, such sublimely ideal, such youthfully reverent poems? What philosophy can explain the origin of such a lyrical mood?

You and I know that all real lyrics are philosophical.

(working with a dictionary ) Philosophy in a broad sense is the science of life, man and the world.

When evaluating a writer, we constantly use such a concept as the artist’s philosophy of life. Every person should have a philosophy of life. A. Fet’s philosophy of life was earthly Practical activities and worship of her beauty in all its manifestations. The philosophy of life lies in every poetic masterpiece.

The peak of A. Fet's poetic fame came in 1850-1860, a time of reforms, changes, and social changes. Literature was called upon to ardently participate in public affairs - and responded willingly.

In January 1858, the editor of the then fashionable magazine “Russian Messenger” M. Katkov approached Fet and enthusiastically called: “If only you could illustrate this event with your poetic pen!” Fet said nothing; he did not feel any strength to illustrate any events. He could never understand that art was interested in anything other than beauty (a card appears on the board with the key phrase “not politics, but pure beauty”).

Fet never demonstrated his civic position in his poetry. It can be restored from his essays, articles, letters, biographical facts, but never from poetry! Fet's man is immersed in nature, but not in history. For his refusal to write about topical events and express his public position, the younger generation took up arms against Fet. Fet's lyrics were appreciated by Turgenev, L. Tolstoy, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky.

Fet believed that the goal of a poet, the goal of poetry, the goal of art is to find in real life a beautiful moment, “stop” it mentally and secure it in your soul, giving it eternal life. A. Fet considered beauty to be the basis of the universe, of existence; beauty can transform life and a person.

(write on the board problematic issues )

So, Fet did not respond in poetry to the pressing issues of our time. Is this an advantage or a disadvantage?

We will look for answers to these questions in the poet's lyrics. Let's start with the biography of the poet.

III. Student's message on Fet's biography

Biography of Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet was born on November 23, 1820, in the village of Novoselki, Mtsensk district, Oryol province and in old manor Afanasy Neofitovich Shenshin. A year before his birth, A. Shenshin, traveling in Germany, fell in love with Charlotte-Elizabeth Föt. She left her husband, father, one-year-old daughter, and her country and fled with Shenshin to Russia.

Afanasy appeared before marriage, and therefore Shenshin adopted him. Under this name he lived for 14 years on the Oryol estate. Based on someone’s denunciation, a verdict was made that Afanasy could not be recognized as Shenshin’s son, since the child was born before marriage. Now the child was deprived of the opportunity to inherit Shenshin’s estate - he was deprived of his “clan” and “roots”. Afanasy's parents sent him to the German boarding house Krummer and did not even take him home for the holidays. Fet received a good education and three years later was able to enter the verbal department of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow University. At this time, Fet begins to study literature. And since 1842, his poems began to appear regularly on the pages of two leading magazines - “Moskvityanin” and “Domestic Notes”. Fet meets Pogodin, Shvyrev, Botkin, the Aksakov brothers, Apollo Grigoriev.

In 1844 he graduated from the university and experienced new blows of fate: his mother and uncle died. The poet was left penniless. Literature did not give money. Since childhood, Fet was accustomed to consider himself a nobleman, so he decided to enter military service in order to receive hereditary nobility. Since 1853, he has been actively engaged in poetry and publishes his poems in the Sovremennik magazine.

In 1857 he married Marya Botkina, sister of the critic Vasily Botkin and the famous doctor Sergei Petrovich Botkin. In July 1860, Fet acquired the Stepanovka estate of 200 acres and rushed “from literature to farming.”

By the mid-1870s, having entered old age, Fet achieved material and spiritual well-being. In 1873, after petitioning “for the highest name,” he received the right to nobility and was returned to the fold of the Shenshin family. Fet became a friend of the royal family, and became especially close to Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, the Grand Duke and an extraordinary poet. He became rich: in 1877 he acquired a new estate - the Vorobyovka estate, then bought a house in Moscow. At the end of his life, Fet had a wonderful circle of friends: Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Strakhov, Yakov Polonsky, Vladimir Solovyov.

So, Fet felt the hardships of everyday life throughout his life, but did not at all want to be inspired by this sorrow. The poet believed that the calling of art is to transform the world through Beauty. And in order to understand the poet’s philosophy of life, we must hear his poems.

IV. Reading by heart the poem “I came to you with greetings...” (1843)

(students write the title of each poem in a notebook and later draw conclusions)

(during the conversation, reference cards appear on the board with key phrases significant for the work of A. Fet)

— What images does the poet create in this poem?

(The sun, forest, birds are images created by the poet in the poem. Fet’s poetry consists of specific images The poet, like a painter, sees visible details earthly existence and connects them so that it turns out holistic image of the world.

— How does a poet manage to create a world of living nature? What artistic and expressive means?

Fet uses personifications. The sun is personified. This is the most visible image. It is all in motion, it seems to embrace the world of living nature. And not only the leaves tremble, waking up, but also the sun itself trembles through the leaves with its life-giving light. The poet manages to compare two incomparable phenomena: the sun and leaves. And we get a holistic image of the world.

Let's turn to stanza 2. Let's read it. What role do repetitions play in stanza 2?

(The words “the forest woke up” do not seem to satisfy the poet, and he adds “all woke up.” And then the poet continues: “the forest woke up with every branch, every bird fluttered.”)

— How do you understand the line “and spring is full of thirst”? What is thirst?

This is very thirsty. Spring thirst is a thirst for life, a desire to enjoy it and glorify the Creator.

— How does the poet see the world? ( writing in a notebook)

(The poet helps to see the beauty of the world, its spring blossoming, the awakening of the soul, its desire for something sublime - for a bright life, for song, for creativity).

So, the real world is conveyed in Fet’s lyrics in specific details. Does another poem evoke a similar feeling? How concrete and vivid is the picture painted here?

V. Teacher's word

It has long been noted that Fetov’s word multidimensional. The poet puts the word in unusual positions, draws us into new, unexpected states of mind.

Often Botkin, Strakhov, Polonsky, Tolstoy pointed out the “ambiguity” of the “disclaimer” in Fet’s poems. A curious “slip” in the poem “Bees”.

VI. An expressive reading of the poem “Bees” (1854).

- What do you think is the “slip” in this poem that his friends could point out to Fet?

In stanza 1, “A bee crawls into every carnation of fragrant lilac, singing.”

In the final 3rd stanza, Fet transforms the lilac into a bird cherry.

Let's speculate, do you think the poet made a serious “mistake”?

Lilac, bird cherry - words of the same series, in our minds are associated with the spring renewal of life. And does it matter which of these flowers the bee crawled into?

— How can we explain this “reservation” made by Fet, perhaps deliberately? Does it matter to him whether it is lilac or bird cherry?

It is important for Fet to convey an unconscious feeling of melancholy - a special state of mind, something between joy and sadness.

— Find the main line in the poem, where the hero is overwhelmed...

The lyrical hero does not pay attention to the flowers and bees, he is busy with something else: “And I just can’t understand whether it’s in the flowers or in my ears.”

So, reservations are considered through the prism of Fet’s philosophical lyrics.

Fet always defended such reservations. The victory was won by the poet’s sixth sense, with which Fet was able to see “music” even where the “non-poet” did not suspect its presence.

What is another feature of Fet’s philosophical lyrics?

One of the goals of Fet’s philosophical lyrics is to convey special condition

(notebook entry)

- Let's continue, guys, have you tried writing poetry? In literature lessons you write essays. What can inspire you?

What can inspire a poet? He will tell us about this...

VII. The story of the creation of one poem

A. A. Fet loved beauty: music, flowers, beautiful people. And when he met talent, he was “in seventh heaven.”

T. A. Kuzminskaya told how she once had to sing in the presence of many famous people, among whom was Fet. She sang, but in her heart she was very worried that Fet would criticize her. When she sang, Fet praised the excellent performance of the romance and asked her to sing again ♪ once. The next morning, Fet handed Kuzminskaya a piece of paper with written poems. It was the poem “The Night Shined. The garden was full of the moon..."

VIII. Listening to the romance “The Night Shined. The garden was full of the moon..."

— Many musical works have been created based on Fet’s poems. Why do you think?

- Let's now read this poem and try to hear the same music.

- Let's work differently now. We will not analyze the poem traditionally now. I give you my thoughts on this poem. Find examples from the text for these theses.

(students read the thesis and find answers in the text).

The lyrical hero experiences delight and admiration for the power of vocal art.

—What causes the poet’s feelings and experiences?

What is the theme of the poem? What images do we see in the poem?

The joy of experiencing life. Night, piano, singer’s voice, image of a girl. With Fet, everything merges in a single harmony. The poet creates a holistic, dynamic picture in which the generalization and combination of images of nature, love, music help the poet express the fullness of the joy of perceiving life.

— What do you see as the philosophical nature of A. Fet’s poem? Why is he talking about music and singing again?

The poem tells how the poet experiences 2 meetings with his beloved, between which there is a long separation. But the singer’s magical voice frees the lyrical hero from “the insults of fate and the burning torment of the heart”; The human soul completely opens up to beauty, dissolves in it and gains strength to live on: to believe, hope, love.

Which of these theses would you take as an idea?

Art can truly ennoble a person, cleanse the soul and enrich it. We forget about our problems, failures, and get away from the everyday bustle.

IX. Filling out the table

So, we looked at several of Fet’s poems, talked about the features of Fet’s lyrics, marked them on the board, and summarized them in a notebook. I would like to understand how well you understood the topic of the lesson. From the proposed options, select those answers that correspond to the following question: what is the peculiarity of Fet’s philosophical lyrics? Which answers are redundant?

The focus is on the lives and suffering of ordinary people.

Detailed description of natural phenomena.

Description of smells, sounds, light, colors in verse.

Expert in German philosophy.

Avoids poetic detail.

An image of nature alive and animate.

Musicality of the works.

Commitment to “clean beauty” rather than politics.

Nature can characterize a person's feelings and moods. The merging of the inner and outer world in poetry.

The problem of the existence of the Universe.

X. See the question at the beginning of the lesson.

Let's go back to those again problematic issues, which were given at the beginning of the lesson and we will answer them.

Moscow University professor Pyotr Kudryavtsev wrote: “It seems to me that millions of people are grateful to A. Fet for revealing to them the beauty of the world, the beauty of life and love.”

XI Teacher's final words

Fet experiences the world through feelings. He builds his philosophy on culture and the cult of beauty. The poet sees the value of beauty in the fact that it helps a person escape from everyday life. Beauty is for the artist, who is above humanity, since a poet and a person are not the same thing. Therefore, in his poems there are no complaints about fate or disappointments, although Fet’s life path was not easy.

A whole world of beauty

From big to small,

And you search in vain

Find its beginning.

What is a day or an age?

Before what is infinite?

Although man is not eternal,

What is eternal is human.

This is what A. Fet wrote.

- How do you understand the meaning of the last stanza of the poem, which became the epigraph of our lesson?

Perhaps this is the philosophy of life of the Russian poet A. Fet

XII. Dz 1) learn by heart your favorite poem by A. Fet.

2) write a miniature “But God, how I love...”

(philosophical lyrics by Fet)

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet (1820-1892)

Two Universes A.A. Feta

Fet's poetic activity began in the 1840s. and continues until the early 1890s. Thus, Fet’s work connects both periods of the literary process of the second half of the 19th century century. Fet's lyrics capture the logic of the movement of human consciousness in the second half of the 19th century, despite the fact that the poet never addressed the social problems of the century. Even his own biography remained outside the scope of his work. We can talk about the biography of the spirit. Fet formulated his poetic position at the very beginning of his journey in the verses of 1843, “I came to you with greetings.”

At a time when a new direction of the “natural school” was being formed in literature, calling for depicting the prose of life, Fet defended the poet’s right to “sing what he does not know,” what is only ripening. This vagueness and incompleteness of poetic thought could be supported by supporters of “pure” art and not by “new” poetry. In the 1850s Nekrasov will publish his poetic declarations, where he will formulate the law of the new poet - to preach love “with the hostile word of denial.” Fet would respond to this poetic statement three decades later with the 1887 poem “Muse.” The poem begins with a hidden reminiscence from Nekrasov.

You want to curse, sobbing and groaning,

Seek scourges to the law,

Poet, stop! Don't call me -

Call Tisiphone from the abyss.

It ends with the statement that the essence of poetry is “to heal from torment,” but not from those everyday, social, historical ones, but from the torment that is sent to a person by his spirit, striving to break free from bodily snares. Fet calls this completely different torment “the joy of suffering.” Poetry is the liberation of the spirit. And this is its only task and goal.

Even earlier, in the 1850s, when a dispute broke out in magazines between “pure” and “tendentious” poetry, Fet had already created his “Muse” (1854), which cannot be fully attributed to “pure” poetry.

Oh no! Under the haze of a jealous veil

Youth showed me a different muse:

Weighed down by a strand of fragrant hair

A wondrous head with a knot of heavy braids;

The last flowers in her hand trembled;

The abrupt speech was full of sadness,

And female whims, and silvery dreams,

Unspoken torment and incomprehensible tears.

We are worried about some kind of languid indolence,

I listened as words were met with a kiss

And for a long time without her my soul was sick

And full of unspeakable desire.

“Unspoken torment”, “incomprehensible tears”, “unspoken” as pain of the soul - this is what becomes the subject of Fetov’s lyrics. It is paradoxical that the subject of the poetic word becomes that which cannot be expressed, before which the word is powerless. Fet has a poem that begins with this paradoxical statement “I won’t tell you anything...” (1885), in which the poet emphasizes that the word is too crude to convey the state of mind that a person wants to throw out of himself. The search for a word adequate to the state of mind occurs before the reader’s eyes both in the early 1843 poem “I came to you with greetings...”, and in the late 1885 “I won’t tell you anything...”. How to convey oneself in a word, how “the song matures”, “how the heart blooms”?

The word Feta loses its applied precision and acquires associative precision. Fet, exploring the sphere of the “inexpressible,” speaks in words the language of music or the language of impressionist painting.

At the same time, his lyrics are structured. It clearly indicates the evolution of the lyrical “I,” which is unlike all existing examples in poetry. In Fet's lyrics, the universal model of human existence is indicated by the poem “The whole world is from beauty...”, written between 1874 and 1886.

The first quatrain is constructed in violation of grammatical norms.

A whole world of beauty

From big to small,

And you search in vain

Find its beginning.

The first two lines are missing a verb, no action. We don't know what happens to the world because of beauty. But the absence of action-movement creates a large-scale picture of the integrity of all things, small and large. And this whole is beauty. These lines can also be read in such a way that beauty is the beginning of the integrity of the world, its source, connecting together the great and the small. Beauty is the basis of the integrity of being.

The third and fourth lines contain the theme of man. Man has been trying to find the beginning of the universe, to unravel the riddle of the universe from the moment of his appearance in the world. And the entire experience of human existence suggests that the universe does not give its secrets to man.

The second quatrain begins with a summary of the person’s search. Man created time, which measures the universe. But beyond human capabilities lies infinity. She is incomprehensible. Before her, all human efforts seem futile. These two lines make human existence meaningless. But the third and fourth ones cross this out and say the opposite.

What is a day or an age?

Before what is infinite?

Although man is not eternal,

What is eternal is human.

Eternity, which has conquered man, exists only because man exists, for without him no one would know that it exists. The Universe, with all the objectivity of its existence, is impossible without man. Without him she is only an endless void.

The picture of a universe empty without man is created in the poem “Never” (1879). Its plot is based on the return of a person to the world after death. Reverse movement from death to life proves that with the departure of a person the world dies, deprived of its life-giving principle.

Where to go, where there is no one to hug,

Where time is lost in space?

Come back, death, hurry up to accept

The last life is a fatal burden.

And you, frozen corpse of the earth, fly,

Carrying my corpse along the eternal path!

In such a structure of the world there is no place for God and there is no immortality. With the death of a person, the universe is destroyed, eternity loses its meaning. But at the same time, Fet’s poetry is devoid of pessimism and notes of despair. On the contrary, even in later poems, such as “I still love, I still languish...” (1890), “How difficult it is to repeat living beauty...” (1888) the outcome of life is presented as the last joy of existence.

I still love, I still yearn

Before the world's beauty

And I will never deny

From the caresses sent by you.

In Fet's poetry there are two equal-sized universes: the universe and man.

Two worlds have ruled for centuries,

Two equal beings:

One envelops a man,

The other is my soul and thought.

(“Good and Evil”, 1884)

The first exists as beauty that only humans can perceive. It, like a “barely noticeable dewdrop,” reflects the “face of the sun.” The drama of human existence in Fet’s lyrics is associated with the feeling that he is unable to overcome eternity, to understand the mystery of existence: “to be a deity without thoughts.” But this drama is experienced without strain, without despair. A person cannot be oppressed by his “involuntary anxieties,” because in the universe of his spirit he “soars, all-seeing and all-powerful,” without stooping to earthly prose. In the title of the poem “Good and Evil,” the poet brings out the problem that worried the person initially. Fet's contemporaries viewed it differently. For example, for Chernyshevsky, good and evil are only social categories, they are outside of morality. For Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, good and evil belong to the realm of the spirit. Without their permission, the historical existence of man is impossible. They are the essence of drama in a person’s life. For Fet, the drama of man is not in the struggle between good and evil in man, but in something completely different.

Already in Fet’s early lyrics, his two universes are indicated in small landscape sketches “A Wonderful Picture...” (1842) and “A Wavy Cloud...” (1843). In the first poem, a picture of universal peace is created. A person’s gaze slides from the earth (“white plain”) to the sky (“full moon”) and back: “the light of the high heavens” - “brilliant snow.” The integrity, the completeness of the world is in its incompleteness, in the flow of heaven to earth, earth to sky. This universe exists objectively and “encompasses man.” But immediately an image of the one created by man is created. He feels the integrity and completeness of the objective world - “a wonderful picture! How dear you are to me,” but the ties with this homeland are fragile, ready to break, and then the miracle will disappear. The lonely running of a sleigh destroys the picture of universal peace, as in Lermontov’s 1841 poem “I go out alone on the road...” the flinty path ahead of man disrupts the idyll of the universe.

The same picture is created in the poem “By a wavy cloud...”. But the loneliness of a person sounds more dramatic in it.

My friend, distant friend,

Remember me!

But the drama of being in the universe has not yet been fully comprehended by the man of Fet’s early lyrics. The titles of poems from the 1840s - 1850s, for example, “The Bay of the Sea,” “On a Boat,” “Mountain Gorge,” “Foggy Morning,” “Lonely Oak,” speak for themselves. Their hero feels himself in the lap of nature. This world exists for him. He is in it, “like the first inhabitant of paradise.” And he is the center of the universe.

The earth is like a vague, silent dream,

She flew away unknown

And I, as the first inhabitant of paradise,

One saw the night in the face.

Was I rushing towards the midnight abyss,

Or were hosts of stars rushing towards me?

It seemed as if in a powerful hand

I hung over this abyss.

(“On a haystack at night in the south…”, 1857)

A man plays with the abyss, it takes his breath away, and he only has a presentiment that the game can become fatal. In his late poem of 1890, “On the Swing,” he fully comprehends her fatal character.

The movement from heaven to earth and from earth to sky, which determined the space of the early poems, is not yet drama, but only its premonition. It will become dramatic in the finale life path. The “terrible” proximity of earth and sky, gratifying in youth, in the finale is perceived as fate, the inevitability of which makes one swing more and more recklessly on the board of life, or play with life.

The game of life in the early poems is not perceived as a game. This is the natural state of a living being in a beautiful world. The universe of the Fetov man does not yet allow anything that interferes with the manifestation of delight in beauty. In the poem “I'm Waiting...The Nightingale Echo” (1842), the joy of experiencing this delight is not disturbed by anything. In changing states natural world and no alarming notes have yet crept into the human world.

I'm waiting... There's a breeze from the south;

It’s warm for me to stand and walk;

The star rolled to the west...

Sorry, golden one, sorry!

But in the poem of 1886, repeating the plot of the poem of 1842 “I am waiting, overwhelmed with anxiety...”, the state of the human universe is exactly the opposite. If in early poem“the nightingale’s echo”, “grass in diamonds”, the sky in the stars, man - all this together exudes the joy of being, then in the later the shadow of disappearance lies on everything. The song of a mosquito is a cry. A falling leaf, the flight of a beetle, broken like a string, anxiety in a person’s heart from anticipation of a meeting that may not happen.

Quiet under the forest canopy

Young bushes are sleeping...

Oh, how it smelled like spring!..

It's probably you!

The moving motif of all of Fet's lyrics, the motif of fire, acquires dramatic content in his late work. Man is like a star and, like a star, he burns out in the universe. His life is a “fiery book.”

Let you rush like me, submissive to the moment,

Slaves like me are my natural number...

("Among the Stars" (1876)

It is not measured by the dates of death and birth, although he is a slave to these “innate numbers” that do not depend on him, like stars, which also have their own term. True life lies in the “flight of the heart,” in the inner fire that makes a person admire beauty and create. But over the course of life, a person feels how this fire fades away, how his connection with the universe becomes thinner, how the “fiery book” he wrote goes out.

It’s not a pity for life with languid breathing,

What is life and death? What a pity about that fire

That shone over the whole universe,

And he goes into the night and cries as he leaves.

(A.L. Brzheskoy “Distant friend, understand my sobs...”, 1879)

All the drama of the poet’s later lyrics is in the exclamation “I don’t want to believe!” in the fact that a person is burning, that the inspiring beauty of the universe is mercilessly burning him, that “the flight of the poor heart ends with one powerless languor.”

I don't want to believe it! When in the steppe, how wonderful it is,

In the midnight darkness, untimely grief,

In the distance in front of you is transparent and beautiful

The dawn suddenly rose

And my gaze was involuntarily drawn to this beauty,

Into that majestic brilliance beyond the entire dark limit, -

Did nothing really whisper to you at that time:

There's a man burned out there!

(“When you read the painful lines...”, 1887)

Fet’s poetry, it would seem, did not in any way touch on the historical problems of the era, for which he was more than once reproached by such venerable contemporaries as, for example, F.M. Dostoevsky. Fet's personal life with its tragic ups and downs was not directly reflected in any of his poetic creations. But nevertheless, we can say that Fet’s poetry fully reflects the existence of a person in the 19th century, just like the novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Fet captures the dialectic of the spirit, just like Dostoevsky the dialectic of consciousness, and Tolstoy the dialectic of the soul. Fet, like all the classics of the second half of the 19th century, is immersed in the problems of personal self-determination. His person is embodied not in doing social good, not in “resolving thoughts,” but in pure creativity, in the flight of the spirit. And, like other heroes literature of the 19th century centuries, in its existence experiences the eternal path of humanity.

Fet A.A. Smile of beauty / A.A. Fet. – M., 1995.

Research

Bukhshtab, B.Ya. A.A. Fet. Essays on life and creativity / B.Ya. Accounting headquarters. – L., 1990.

Skatov N.N. Nekrasov and Fet / N.N. Skatov. // Skatov N.N. Nekrasov. Contemporaries and successors. – M., 1986. – P. 151-197.