A Survey of Russian Literature, with SelectionsHapgood, Isabel Florence
History
A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections
Hapgood, Isabel Florence
Russian literature -- History and criticism
Still another poet was Afanasy Afanasievitch Shenshin, who wrote under
the name of Fet. Born in 1820, he began to write at the age of nineteen.
About that time, on entering the Moscow University, he experienced some
difficulty in furnishing the requisite documents, whereupon he assumed
the name of his mother during her first marriage--Fet. He reacquired his
own name, Shenshin, in 1875, by presenting the proper documents,
whereupon an imperial order restored it to him. From 1844 to 1855 he
served in the army, continuing to write poetry the while. Before his
death, in 1892, he published numerous volumes of poems, translations
from the classics, and so forth. Less talented than Count Alexei K.
Tolstoy, Apollon Maikoff, and other poets of that school, his name, in
Russian criticism, has become a general appellation to designate a poet
of pure art, for he was the most typical exponent of his school. Most of
his poems are short, and present a picture of nature, or of some
delicate, fleeting psychical emotion, but they are all filled with
enchanting, artistic charm. His poetry is the quintessence of aesthetic
voluptuousness, such as was evolved on the soil of the sybaritism of the
landed gentry in the circles of the '40's of the nineteenth century.
The oldest of all these worshipers of pure art was Feodor Ivanovitch
Tiutcheff (1803-1873). At the age of seventeen he made a remarkably fine
translation of some of Horace's works. He rose to very fine positions in
the diplomatic service and at court. Although his first poems were
printed in 1826, he was not widely known until 1850-1854. His scope is
not large, and he is rather wearisome in his faultless poems. The
majority of them are rather difficult reading.
A poet who did not wholly belong to this school, but wrote in many
styles, was Yakoff Petrovitch Polonsky (1820-1898).[26] Under different
conditions he might have developed fire and originality, both in his
poems and his prose romances. His best known poem is "The
Grasshopper-Musician" (1863). He derived his inspiration from various
foreign poets, and also from many of his fellow-countrymen. Among
others, those in the spirit of Koltzoff's national ballads are not only
full of poetry and inspiration, art and artless simplicity, but some of
them have been set to music, have made their way to the populace, and
are sung all over Russia. Others, like "The Sun and the Moon" and "The
Baby's Death" are to be found in every Russian literary compendium, and
every child knows them by heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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