28 Facts About Afanasy Fet

Afanasy Fet was born on 5 December 1820 to Afanasy Shenshin, a 44-year-old Russian landlord from Mtsensk, and Charlotte Becker, a 22-year-old daughter of Karl Becker, a German inn-keeper.

Fourteen years later, as Shenshin and Becker's marriage, registered in Germany, proved to be legally void in Russia, Afanasy Fet had to change his surname from Shenshin to Foeth, that of his biological father.

At age 14 Afanasy Fet Shenshin was sent to a German boarding school in Voru.

In 1850 a collection called Poems by A Fet heralded his successful return to the Russian literary scene.

In 1853 Nikolai Nekrasov invited Afanasy Fet to join Sovremennik, where he re-joined his old friends Ivan Turgenev and Vasily Botkin.

In Turgenev's house Afanasy Fet met Leo Tolstoy, then a young officer fresh from the Crimean War, which resulted in lifelong friendship.

Afanasy Fet came out in 1856 but proved to be little more than a re-worked and edited version of his 1850 book.

In 1857 in Paris Afanasy Fet married Maria Petrovna Botkina, described as an exceptionally kind and sympathetic person, totally devoid of jealousy, who was perfectly happy to treat her husband "like a nanny treats a child".

In 1858 Afanasy Fet retired from army service and returned to Moscow.

For eleven years Afanasy Fet served as a local Justice of the peace and became much respected both by peasants and by fellow landowners.

Unlike Tolstoy, though, who departed to the country looking for better working conditions, Afanasy Fet stopped writing altogether.

In 1860s Afanasy Fet translated Aeneid and Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation.

In retrospect, the best example of Afanasy Fet's prose is considered to be the short novel The Golts Family which told the tragic story of an alcoholic village doctor's social and mental decline.

In 1873 Afanasy Fet bought a second village, Vorobyovka, nearby Kursk and returned to writing poetry.

In 1881 Afanasy Fet bought a small house at Plyuschikha Street in Moscow.

Afanasy Fet seemed pleased with the lavishness of it, but later in the poem On My Muse's 50th Birthday referred to the celebration as a 'requiem'.

The circumstances of Afanasy Fet's death caused almost as much controversy as those of his birth.

In October 1892, Afanasy Fet moved from Vorobyovka to his Moscow house.

The family doctor Ostroumov, speaking to Afanasy Fet's wife, fearing that the poet was moribund, suggested that he take Communion.

Afanasy Fet's wife protested, but he seemed to be in great agitation and haste.

In retrospect, Afanasy Fet is regarded as the greatest lyric poet of Russia.

Afanasy Fet's verses were highly esteemed by Vissarion Belinsky, who ranked him on par with Mikhail Lermontov.

Osip Mandelstam considered Afanasy Fet to be the greatest Russian poet of all time.

Yet, Afanasy Fet was not a popular poet during his lifetime.

Afanasy Fet was the proponent of the romantic idea of the need for a poet to make a distinction between the two life spheres, the 'ideal' and the 'real' one.

Afanasy Fet considered natural philosophy to be a mechanism for examining ties, seen and unseen, between man and nature.

Afanasy Fet advocated the free development of human character and warned against exceedingly regulating social life.

Never an open person, over the years Afanasy Fet became even more secretive and self-centered.