Interlocutors Fet

The Literary Heritage celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. My first acquaintance with this legendary edition occurred more than 60 years ago and was not entirely accidental. In short, the story is as follows. In the high school of the school of the then school (this is the end of the 40s), a general passion for “literature” most often had its own reason for the personality of the teacher. Our Anna Alekseevna Yasnopolskaya managed to arouse in us an interest in independent reading - do not think that the texts - we already read the binge - but critical articles and serious comments on the texts.

I opened the pre -war "literary inheritance" with a tenth -grader thanks to the comments to the Blok in the "symbolist" volume (27/28; 1937). And when the school librarian launched me to the distant regiments, where all the “line trace” stood without exemptions-I felt that my future was connected with something similar ...

This year, the second book of Tom 103 “Lithuania” - “A.A. Fet and its literary environment” (about the first book of this volume, see my notes “Fet in correspondence with Vasily Botkin”). Here is a correspondence of Fet with Leo Tolstoy, with Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy, with a critic of Nikolai insurance and poet K.R. - Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov.

Once Boris Budbat insightfully noted that “the periods of Fet's life are sharply separated from each other. The last period occurs in the late 70s. The long -term activity of the energetic, hard, firmly pursued the landowner gave abundant fruits. ”

These fruits are, first of all, the possibility of a comfortable and relatively calm life in Fetu's estate Vorobyovka (Shchigrovsky district of the Kursk province.), Which became a true house for the Fata family. Starting from 1877, Fet and his wife and wife moved only to the winter and already in early March went back to Vorobevka.

Friend of Fet N.N. Strakhov, a well-known literary critic who often stayed in Vorobyevka, wrote: “The stone house is surrounded from the east with the same stone services, and from the south and west a huge park for 18 tithes, consisting of most of the centuries-old oaks. <...> many nightingales, rooks and heron, nesting in the garden, flower beds, broken down on the river, a fountain, arranged in the very fountain. The bottom against the balcony ... ” The Fet himself already arranged the fountain, but it is significant that now he could engage in a fountain, and not oats, since the main chores on the estate were entrusted to the manager hired by Fet.

So, in the late 70s, Afanasy Afanasevich Fet is a zealous owner, an experienced landowner and a famous writer, while not too healthy a person in his declining years. A painful shortness of breath does not allow him to walk in his own beautiful park, since the park is located on a slope. In the 80s. Due to the disease of the eye, Fet is forced to dictate even deeply personal letters to his secretary. He looks an old man, although his “choleric” temperament and the severity of perception and experiences have hardly changed.

In Vorobyovka, after a long break, poetic inspiration returns to Fet-and in the 80s one after the other, collections of his poems “Evening Lights” will be released.

For me, as the reader, Fet's correspondence with Sofya Andreevna Tolstoy and with K.R.

Moreover, in correspondence with K.R. They draw attention not so much for the Feta’s etiquette letters (they remain etiquette when discussing the problems of the poetic language, which the correspondence is mainly devoted to) as the letters of the Grand Duke addressed to Feta.

The older generation of readers Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov is not so much known as the poet (for obvious reasons in Soviet times, his poems were not published), but as the author of words - I mean the expression "Tchaikovsky’s romance for words ...".

As it usually happens with the best samples of the genre, whether it is a Russian romance or German Lieder, the text in such works is so merged with music that we love this whole, and We remember, as a rule, only the name of the composer - of course, for known exceptions.

“I dissolved the window”, “Oh, a child, under your window ...”, “Already extinguished the lights in the rooms” and many other classic examples of the Russian romance were written precisely for the verses of K.R. - Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Glazunov, Glazunov, Kui. So the verses of K.R. We heard many times, without thinking about either the author or about the verses themselves, and only specialists read his correspondence and dramatic works - correspondence and dramatic works.

The letters addressed to Fetu are interesting primarily by their language.

This is a lively and expressive Russian language, moreover, deliberately lacatory, without difficult periods and rhetorical frills. It seems that K.R. Just writes as he thinks and feels. However, there is no need to have special experience to feel that each letter is an example of a carefully developed style. Typically, such grace has a shade of coldness and artificiality, but letters of K.R. Fetu is read as written spontaneously, where the author is concerned only to be at the same time short, accurate - and respectful to the addressee.

The main part of the Correspondence of Fet and S.A. Tolstoy was in the 80s, although they have been familiar for a long time, since Tolstoy’s marriage. Apparently, their further rapprochement contributed not only to the manor, but also by the Moscow neighborhood: in 1881, Fet bought a house in Plushchiya and in the winter often began to be from Tolstoy in Hamovniki.

Intensive and amazing frankness and content of Fet's correspondence with Sofya Andreevna

It occurs after its correspondence with Lev Nikolayevich stops. Tolstoy’s moral searches were strongly alien, but in Tolstoy’s letters, Fet persistently continued attempts to discuss these issues - apparently hoping for dialogue. Tolstoy ceased to answer him and the correspondence was interrupted.

In correspondence with Sofia Andreevna, Fet, as it were, turns to us the best side - he is open, able to deeply sympathize and understand the life of another person, which in other cases was not characteristic of him. S.A. I really needed sympathy and found a worthy confident in Fet. After many years, in the notes “My Life” she wrote:

“The life of Leo Nikolaevich was not bad, but she simply was not; It was manifested only in the hunt that he loved, the main thing, because the love of nature is always connected with it, and in walks alone, necessary for new thoughts and discussions of the future scripture. ”

There in the record from 1883 read:

“I was often sorry for myself, my personal lonely life, which goes to care for my husband and family, other needs woke up more often in me, the desire for personal life, so that someone participated in it closer, help me and love me not passionately, and affectionately and gently. But this has never happened in life. When passion has ended, she was replaced by a habit and coldness. ”

Fet, of course, did not just admire S.A., but was deeply attached to her and “ participated closer ” with his whole soul, seeing in S.A. The embodiment of her ideal of a woman is a variety of gifted and musical, an assistant to her husband and defender of his interests, mother and mistress.

For all the restraint characteristic of S.A. And to a large extent contrasting with impulse and rhetorically defeated style of Fet's letters, we feel that S.A. Constantly at the limit of physical and nervous capabilities. Moreover, she appreciates the opportunity, without hiding, to admit Fetu located to her.

So much has been written about the family life of Tolstoy and in general about Yasnaya Polyansky everyday life that, at first glance, the publication of another correspondence can hardly add something to already established ideas. Nevertheless, there is the impression that in this case both correspondents, due to the general past, long -standing sympathy, and above all, thanks to confidence in the unbiased and complete understanding - reveal us minds and souls.

Thirty years earlier, Fet wrote to his characteristic I.P. Borisov: “ So, my ideal world has been destroyed for a long time <...>. I’m looking for a mistress with whom I will live without understanding each other. ” In Svee to his wife, Marya Petrovna (nee Botkina), Fet found this, not expecting anything else from her. This, however, does not mean that the poet has disappeared the very need for an “ideal world” ...

In 1887, in the preface to his translations, the “metamorphosis” of Ovid Fet wrote: “The poet is the one who sees in the subject that another will not see another without his help.” Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya, a woman on the fifth ten, exhausted by clans, diseases of children and her husband, economic cares, proofreadings, negotiations with the publishers of Lev Nikolayevich - for Fet the embodiment of his ideal, a source of inspiration and a kindred soul. To many letters addressed to Sofya Andreevna, Fet attached recently written poems, which will subsequently be included in his collections “Evening Lights”. S.A. I responded to every poem and, as can be seen from the texts of her letters, not at all from simple courtesy.

The appearance of Fet in the same 1887 described in his diary K.R.: “ I saw in front of me an old man with a large gray beard, a little hunched over, with a bald head, in a tailcoat, fastened with several buttons, and with an Annensky cross on the neck and with spectacles sticking behind. I noticed his pronunciation in the Moscow Lad with “not tokmo” instead of “not only”, the right Russian speech and a thin voice . He spoke slowly, with the arrangement and often thinking ”(quotes: Literary inheritance. T.103. Prince 2. P. 656).

But the verses of this “old man” dated 1885, especially known thanks to Tchaikovsky’s romance:

I will not tell you anything
And I will not be alarmed at all
And about the fact that I am silently
I will not dare to hint for anything.

Is it surprising that in 1891, that is, six years later, Sofya Andreevna will write down in her diary:

“There was Fet with his wife, he read poetry - all love and love ... He is 70 years old, but he always arouses poetic and untimely young, dubious thoughts and feelings in me with his ever -living and always sings.”