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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
The meaning and value of Fet's poetry have provided food for debate for over a century, but its musicality has long stood beyond question. Whatever the decision about their ultimate worth, his melodic lyrics undoubtedly call up some of the sweetest sounds of nineteenth-century Russian verse. Just as there is hardly a Russian poet who has been more widely or successfully parodied, so scarcely is there one who has been more often set to music. As a mid-century poet he had serious rivals for the favors of composers and yet defeated them all—A. K. Tolstoy, Polonsky, Mei, Grigoriev, even the redoubtable Nekrasov. His whole poetic manner seemed to impinge so far upon music itself that the composer could see immediately how the music should be written and set to work at once with the enthusiasm of any expert who suddenly finds before him a small challenge which is right in his own field.
1. Evidence of this is given by Gusev, V. E. in Pesni i romansy russkikh poetov (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965).Google Scholar On page 591 Gusev says, “On the texts of … Fet … a ’ great quantity of songs has been written (over 90 poems have been set to music by more than 100 composers).”
2. Eikhenbaum, Boris, Melodika russkogo liricheskogo stikha (St. Petersburg, 1922), pp. 119–95.Google Scholar
3. Zhirmunsky, Viktor, Voprosy teorii literatury (Leningrad, 1928)Google Scholar; reprinted in Slavistic Printings and Reprintings, vol. 34 (The Hague, 1962), pp. 89-153.
4. Bukhshtab, B. la., ed., A. A. Fet: Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (Leningrad, 1959), pp. 5–78 Google Scholar; Gustafson, Richard F., The Imagination of Spring: The Poetry of Afanasy Fet (New Haven and London, 1966)Google Scholar; Silbajoris, Rimvydas, “Dynamic Elements in the Lyrics of Fet,” Slavic Review, 26, no. 2 (June 1967): 217–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. “Krizis romantizma v russkoi lirike 40-50-kh godov XIX veka” (Moscow), 225 pp.
6. Tomashevsky, Boris V., Teoriia literatury: Poetika (Leningrad, 1925), p. 121.Google Scholar
7. Eikhenbaum, Melodika, p. 135, n. 1.
8. Gaidenkov, “Krizis,” pp. 176-77.
9. Eikhenbaum, Melodika, p. 177.
10. šilbajoris, “Dynamic Elements in the Lyrics of Fet,” p. 223.
11. Ibid.
12. Gustafson, Imagination of Spring, p. 177.
13. T. J. Binyon, Modern Language Review, 62, no. 3 (July 1967): 573-74.
14. Bukhshtab, Fet, pp. 39-40.
15. Eikhenbaum, Melodika, p. 146.
16. Gaidenkov, “Krizis,” p. 178.
17. Eikhenbaum, Melodika, p. 146.
18. Ibid., pp. 135-36, n. 1.
19. Letter to K. R., Dec. 27, 1886, quoted in Balukhaty, Sergei D., ed., Riisskie pisateli o literature, XVIII-XIX w. (Leningrad, 1939), 1: 447.Google Scholar
20. Gustafson, Imagination of Spring, p. 207.