Afanasy Afanasievich Fet (Dec. 5, 1820 - Dec. 3, 1892), or Foeth, later changed his name to Shenshin, was a poet who dominated the Russian poetry during the last quarter of the 19th century.

Afanasy was the illegimate child of a German woman named Foeth by a rich Russian landlord named Shenshin. He spent his youth studying at the Moscow University, and serving in the army (until 1856). Stigma of illegitimacy haunted him all through his life, but it took years of litigation to obtain a right to use the prestigious name Shenshin (1876). Promotion in the army ranks helped him to secure the longed-for admission to Russian nobility, just in time when the serfdom was abolished.

Fet was often described as a mean personality of reactionary political views, but this doesn't concern his poetry. He held the view that a poet's lifestyle has little bearing to his art, and that artist doesn't have to be sincere. While in the army, he made friends with another officer, Leo Tolstoy, whom he always admired. Later he settled at the Stepanovka manor in his home district of Mtsensk and visited his illustrious neighbour as often as possible. In his later years, he also wrote literary reminiscences and translated works of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

When Fet first published his poetry in 1842, he was timid enough not to trust his own artistic taste. He therefore submited his verse to the examination of Ivan Turgenev, whom he respected as an arbiter of literary tastes. This tradition continued for many years, until Fet understood that Turgenev had expurgated from his verse the most personal and original elements of his artistic vision.

Subjects of Fet's poetry are far from being original: unhappy love, modest nature of Central Russia, perfection of Greek statuary, and majesty of God. But he treated them in an impressionistic manner, always trying to catch a moment of volatile change. He could write a poem consisting of nouns only and yet making an impression of restless dynamism.

His last pieces, arguably influenced by Baudelaire, are intricate and obscure: the images are meant to evoke (rather than to record) subtle associations of half-forgotten memories. He once said that the most important thing in poetry is a thread that would bind all the rambling associations into a tightly structured short poem.

Fet was never a popular poet during his lifetime. But he had a profound influence on the Russian Symbolists , especially Innokenty Annensky and Alexander Blok, and as such is firmly established among all-time Russian greats.

A sample of Fet's poem, with rhymes dropped

When you were reading those tormented lines

In which the heart's resonant flame sends out glowing streams

And passion's fatal torrents rear up,-

Didn't you recall a single thing?

I can't believe it! That night on the steppe

When, in the midnight mist a premature dawn,

Transparent, lovely as a miracle,

Broke in the distance before you

And your unwilling eye was to this beauty drawn

To that majestic glow beyond the realm of darkness,-

How could it be that nothing whispered to you then:

A man has perished in that fire!

15 February 1887