The World of the East in the works of A. Fet

Dai Mengjie PhD in Philology Postgraduate student, Department of History of Russian Literature, Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Leninskie Gory, 1 daimengjie@yandex.ru

Introduction

      The presence of philosophy in the texts of Russian writers is quite natural. Many researchers in their works focus on the peculiarities of the formation of the creative path of authors from Russia, emphasizing the proximity and understanding of eternal problems, motives, and the meaning of life.

A.A. Fet is one of such authors. The personality is attractive from the point of view of the analysis of creativity and the foundations of the ideological meaning of the formation of the creative path and the presence of a philosophical orientation in poetry.

Whether this is a natural phenomenon in this particular author and in what exactly the world of the East manifests itself in the work of A. Fet – it remains to be found out in this article. A number of examples are collected here – excerpts from the poetry of A.A. Fet as a sign of proof of the eastern philosophical orientation of the texts.

The purpose of the work is to illustrate the world of the East in the works of A. Fet.

Among the main tasks of the work is: analysis of the historical time in which A. Fet lived and worked from the position of the influence of philosophy on various spheres of life of Russian society; a detailed examination of the presence of Eastern philosophical motives in the work of the Russian writer using excerpts of texts.

As for the theoretical study of the topic and the methodological basis, the works in which the analysis of the theme of the East in the works of A. Fet is mentioned by the following authors are considered:

The main part

In the second half of the 70s of the XIX century, an event occurred in the cultural life of Russia that surprised many scientists and artists: the main work of the famous German philosopher A. Schopenhauer "The World as Will and Representation" (first volume) was published in Russian translation ^[1]. The translation was carried out by A.A. Fet, a recognized world writer, poet, able to convey particularly subtle motives in the work and understand the innermost meaning inherent in it^[2].

It is known that he undertook the translation of Kant's fundamental work "The Critique of Pure Reason", but after learning about the already existing Russian translation, he turned to the translation of Schopenhauer's works. He performed it brilliantly and received positive feedback from specialists, philosophy lovers^[3].

In many works, when studying the personality of A.A. Fet and his philosophical orientation, the question arises – who was he really and who can he be considered more? Was he a critic of philosophy, an adherent of Kantian views, or, in principle, a lover of the East, which was reflected in his work?

The peculiarities of A. Fet's poetics and the identity of his lyrics with philosophical motives were first considered in the works of N. Kudryavtsev. He wrote that the writer had talent and was able to convey hidden meaning through symbols, to touch the notes of the soul through unconsciousness^[4].

A. Grigoriev writes, comparing A. Fet with Zhukovsky and Pushkin, that there is a tendency in the writer's work to deeply comprehend reality. A. Fet's poetry, according to Grigoriev, is filled with philosophy and is similar to Goethe's poetry^[5]

A. Fet, according to critics, was able to communicate subtle motives by imposing impressions, which were transmitted through symbols and philosophical categories^[6]. As A. Grigoriev writes, A. Fet's poetry is painful, as it touches on acute topics and leaves a strong mark on the reader's soul.

Another researcher, N. Strakhov, writes about A. Fet's poetry as fresh, unworn. The Russian writer fills his poems with symbols for deeper understanding^[7].

D. Blagoy writes about A. Fet, comparing poetry with the works of A. Pushkin, as a writer of poetry of reality, romanticism and simultaneous logic ^[8].

A.V. Druzhinin emphasized a certain confusion, duality of A. Fet's work, which gradually became more complicated and more symbolized by the influence of the environment, the presence of a circle of friends and influence on the writer^[9].

All these facts suggest that A. Fet had deep thinking and a strong creative craving for writing unique poetry, combining interesting symbols^[10].

It was very important to cite the classical theories of the classics with regard to the work of A. Fet, since they were able to quite succinctly set the vector of research of his work and search for the presence of philosophical trends in his poetry.

When getting acquainted with the specific works of A.A. Fet's creativity, it can be concluded that, of course, the poet was both a philosopher and a writer. He managed to combine the two principles and express it in his works. Therefore, when revealing the chosen topic, it is important to give examples of quotations from his works for a detailed interpretation and visualization of the question.

After all, it is thanks to this logic of methodological analysis and disclosure of the topic that it can be concluded that A.A. Fet is a vivid example when philosophy, manifested in reflections on the eternal, beauty, categories of love, can not only be abstract, but also have concrete forms and manifest itself in certain documents – works.

A.A. Feta focuses on fundamental ontological problems, among which the problem of life and death is one of the main ones. Paradoxical is the fact that A. Fet had a negative attitude to the term "metaphysics", which is the equivalent of the concept of "philosophy". At the same time, he was able to express certain of his sensual intentions in relation to such eternal categories through the lines of his poetry.

The question immediately arises, in connection with what the fascination with philosophy could have happened and how exactly the influence of oriental motifs on the life and work of A.A. Fet occurred. Turning to history, the works of a number of researchers highlight the fact that in Russia, in the period of 30-40 years, representatives of the creative intelligentsia were inspired by the metaphysical theories of various scientists and were fond of philosophy, including Eastern.

A. Herzen, M. Bakunin, V. Belinsky, etc. they interpreted the philosophy of various foreign representatives of philosophical trends, filling their creative sketches with ideas they liked, interpreting them and popularizing them at the same time. At the same time, in the early 50s of the XIX century, the teaching of philosophy in Russian universities was banned. Thus, a kind of contradictory environment was prepared – the presence of a certain orientation of the interest of the Russian intelligentsia in foreign philosophy, on the other hand, a certain ban on its widespread dissemination.

How exactly A.A. Fet began to translate oriental motifs and interpret philosophical categories in his works is important to understand, giving a description of the origins of the poet's creative path.

At the beginning of his career, A. Fet was not absorbed by this trend (the popularity of foreign philosophy among Russian intellectuals), there was a kind of distancing and great independence in the formation of his creative writing style. At the age of 20 , A. Fet publishes a collection of poems "Lyrical Pantheon", which was noted by the Russian intelligentsia.

The subject matter of A. Fet's poetic creativity is extremely diverse in philosophical reflections, especially it concerns the final stage of the poet's life – a cycle of poems called "Evening Fires", one of the sections of which is "Elegies and Thoughts". This section contains poems richly filled with Schopenhauer's philosophy.

For example, "Death". The main idea is the feeling of the inevitability of death, which is filled with reflections on the final path, the inevitability of his personal disappearance. The hero turns to religion, traces the philosophical teachings of the East, where one of the directions is reincarnation. There is a conscious deception, as the idea of a variant of immortality arises. Right here. In this work, one can clearly see the immersion in the philosophical search for the meaning of life and death.

A person comes to the conclusion: unfortunately, immortality does not exist. All the options that are offered to achieve it are hopeless. Therefore, "blind people search in vain for where the road is, trusting the senses of a blind guide" ^[10].

But a person falls into despair, cannot agree with the doom and inevitability of death. A state of despair and hopelessness engulfs him. Below are the quotes – strings.

"Run away? Where to? Where is the truth, where is the mistake?

Where is the support to stretch out your hands to her?

No matter what the bloom is alive, no matter what the smile, -

Death is already triumphant under them."

This feeling of helplessness and the thought that there is no help in reflection and understanding of the inevitability of death fill the lines of the poem.

Life, despite its seemingly value, is temporary, transitory - "God's loud bazaar". Death is eternal, omnipotent, it is his "immortal temple"^[11].

This category is touched upon quite extensively and can excite the reader, make him reflect and reflect on the eternal, about his meaning of life. The motives of eternity and reincarnation are the eastern trend of philosophical thought.

The next interesting category is the "beauty" category. For A. Fet, beauty is not only an absolute and unconditional value, it is both the goal, the means, and the essence of art. At the same time, it is not abstract, not a kind of "once and for all acquired reality", it belongs to the subject and exists only in it and in connection with it. It is difficult to grasp. The only goal of the artist is to find, see, find it and embody it in the work.

"Only one side of the objects is dear to the artist, their beauty," Fet declares back in 1859 in an article about Tyutchev's poems, "but it is "spread throughout the universe."^[12]

According to Eastern philosophy, beauty becomes the very subject of art. This subject is highly objective, does not depend on the subjective view of the creator. Also, A. Fet himself wrote that everything can be an object of reflection in art, only it is necessary to find and embody beauty in these objects. This is creativity – to be able to convey the beauty of an object.

There are no other restrictions on creativity, according to Fet. But there are areas of life that are devoid of beauty, and, therefore, should not enter the realm of the poetic. The emphasis is on the spheres of life, not on objects. Individually, each object has this beauty given by nature. Such an attitude to beauty cannot be qualified as trivial aestheticism, of which several generations of critics and literary critics accused Fet, especially in the twentieth century.

We can say that in the interpretation of A.A. Fet, beauty is unconditional, ideal, material and concrete. And here there is a direct similarity with Schopenhauer's dictum – "every thing is beautiful."

According to A. Fet, beauty is also connected with morality, morality, the embodiment of goodness and truth. For example, we can say about the moral and ethical meaning of the well-known triad "Truth, Goodness and Beauty".

Beauty, as Fet understands it, by its natural nature cannot contradict the highest moral values, since it excludes all manifestations of evil, ugliness, horror not only in social life, but also in nature itself. Nightingales and butterflies,– Fet argues in one of his letters to Polonsky, "are beautiful natural phenomena, but life where "nightingales peck butterflies" is ugly and should be excluded from the sphere of beauty, and, consequently, art." The deep philosophical thought of this saying is obvious. It stimulates the reader to additional reflections on the eternal, moral categories.

The essence of Fet's aesthetic ideal can be defined as a constant striving for a kind of "purification by beauty" of everything that poetry touches, or, in the very accurate and correct expression of E. V. Ermilova, as a poetic recreation of life and man "in the aspect of the realized ideal." There is beauty, truth, and goodness. They are unconditional, eternal, ideal, at the same time objective, generally humane and universal.

When considering the linguistic features of the text, in A.A. Fet they abound with images-signals that refer the reader to a whole array of Eastern culture. The poet combines whole fragments of Syriac-Babylonian, Semitic, Japanese, Chinese and represents it through the direct name or draws their separate concepts and symbols (tao, emptiness) to the text:

"You sleep alone, forgotten in a wild place,

An ancient monastery!

Your vault has fallen; they are flying around screaming

Owl and bat.

And there are no glasses, and the whirlwind of the night is whistling

Into the hollow of the window,

Yes, the ivy grows, yes it directs its eyes

Midnight moon."^[13]

It is impossible not to notice the description of the landscape and the surrounding environment in the poem, which fills with additional imagery.

A. Fet's poetry has a clearly marked Orientalist outline for the prepared reader. In the poem "bending over the dark earth with the sun...", the truthfulness, reality, normality of our world become conditional. The entire existence of these categories is questioned:

"Scary is just something flickering pattern:

Grief, past secret reproach

In the confused course of impossible dreams

There were millions of tears scattered there.

It's embarrassing and painful that it's so incomprehensible

These foggy spots glow,

It 's like a message that has reached us vaguely…

Everything would, ah, everything would be carried away with you!".^[14]

The author uses images and concepts of Oriental culture primarily as exotic decorations (or illustrations) to the main content of the poems. This is an additional accent and a kind of invitation to immerse yourself in a different culture, while without losing touch with Russian culture.

What is important to note is that such "decorations" not only saturate poems with additional poetry, but also perform an auxiliary function – the world is most fully represented through them: they help the reader to look at it and understand the markers of Eastern culture involved in the text, which may be hidden or explicit.

Therefore, the process of reading poetry turns into a kind of game, where the reader can simply read or search for images–signals referring to a certain cultural array of Eastern philosophy. This is similar to the expansion of the poetic message (structurally resembles the "two reading plans" of Sufi poetry: visible and hidden meaning, where, for example, in the works of numerous variations on the theme of love for the earthly beauty, an appeal to God was hidden).

The following example can be given:

"Like a serene angel of heaven,

In the radiance of a quiet fire

You pray with a gentle soul

And for yourself and for me.You are from me in words of love

Doubts of the spirit of annihilation

And the heart with quiet wings

Your prayer of autumn."^[15]

The sacred beauty of nature, which was concealed in a philosophical understanding of life, is replaced by the ordinary, which creates an ironically tragic discourse.

"The tower lies,

You can count all the ledges.

Just that tower

Nothing will sweep away.

Her sun

Will not have time to steal, —

Are you looking, the moon

I put it down again."^[16]

The category "politics" and its interpretation from a philosophical point of view in the works of A. Fet are interesting. The poet's reflections on politics and in general – on its dimension – are embodied in the structure of the Eastern parable, implicated in the whole complex of Eastern philosophical systems. The main directions of the description of this category are interesting:

- special detailing in the spirit of Confucian teachings;

- the presence of postulation in the spirit of Taoism;

- reflections on true knowledge, characteristic in general for the cultures of the East;

- Buddhist explanation of everyday existence.

The comprehension of categories occurs by the author and "pours out" into texts.

"Hafiz is killed. What killed him, –

Your black eye, child, you should have asked.

Cruel nigger! how he reeks with arrows!

Wherever he throws them, there is a grave everywhere. Ah, if the bird of paradise has a soul,

Don't her wings flutter for you? No, don't scare me with a strict mind,

Nothing can force him here. Love is free. There is no barrier in the world,

Who would have stepped in her way. Oh, compassion! the voice of the heart is gentle!

At least you hurried to the rescue. To know what kind of special element you came out of, –

Hafiza the song has not defeated you"!

The involvement of the philosophy of the East in the works becomes a certain author's condition of the game. Searching and finding the appropriate "signal words" in the text brings the reader closer to deciphering the context on the principle of "having ears, let him hear" and awareness of the shortcomings of his own reality through the prism of Eastern culture.

The reader, reflecting on the categories, is absorbed in poetry and at the same time engaged in self-education due to the actualization of eternal categories, which are considered with special attention in Eastern philosophy and have their own distinctive features.

For A.A. Fet, the impression obtained as a result of cognition of the subject, and momentary, also plays a huge role. This impression is connected in his creative consciousness with the idea of his ideal "pure" essence, i.e. simultaneously with observation, "fading" there is an intuitive process of romantic idealization of the object, its correlation with the "pure" essence.

In the poetics of A.A. Fet, there is a fixation of instant impressions of being, mood as the main way of being the lyrical "I", subjectivity of perception of the world, depending on this impression or mood, striving for musical forms of expressiveness, etc.

This kind of "kinship" (but not an analogy) of the Fetov style was historically justified and real. In many works, this is explained by a certain connection with impressionism, since it was a special type of attitude that was organically characteristic of a person of the second half of the XIX century. Some write about Impressionism and philosophy as a "product of the inner mood of the epoch", because the artistic principles themselves are Feta, in many ways similar to the principles of the European predecessors of symbolism (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarm?), but developed independently of them.

This phenomenon is clearly of a transitional order: classical poets were able to merge the "natural" and "spiritual", "human" into an indissoluble integrity.

In the symbolic poetry of the writer, such a straightforward juxtaposition of the natural and the human was quite difficult to encode.

For example, the image of the road, which constantly accompanies the author's image of winter, deserves special attention.The road (path, path) is designed to move along it in a certain direction. It has a beginning and an end; it can have either a straight or a tortuous shape; it can be wide or narrow. These signs are the basis for the traditional metaphorical perception of the road as a human life. So, in the course of life, a person moves his own way.

"When on the road, accidentally,

I met a nice relative, —

And mother, and father, and sister

Kindly recognized me.

They asked me about my health,

Add yourself later,

That there is little change in me, —

One thing is that my face is pale"^[17] .

The above-mentioned understanding of life as a double being. Philosophical categories are united in symbolism, which is close to the author under the influence of the spirit of that time.

 A. Fet remained faithful to the end of his days to this direction of presenting his thoughts. This is especially clearly outlined in the cycle of poems "Evening Lights".

"And I, still humble,

Forgotten, thrown into the shadows.

I'm kneeling,

And, touched by beauty.

Lit the evening lights."^[18]

Symbolism and Eastern philosophy. This is exactly what we come to based on the results of the analysis of the creative path of A.A. Fet. A number of oriental symbols are conditioned by the theme of love, in particular the presence of a meditation motif, which is realized through infinity:

"There is in nature infinite

Secret dreams,

Overshadowed by the eternal

By the power of beauty.

There is a magic ether

Shadows and lights,

Not from the world, but for the world

They were born.

And powerless before them

Brushes and incisors.

But the consonants are alive

Prophetic Singers

They catch them and bring them in

On the tablet of ages.

And it will not shine, and it will not mow

The time of these dreams."^[19]

After acquiring such a distinct craving and commitment to philosophical trends and their transmission in his works, A.A. Fet wrote that he was not going to change his poetic principles, emphasized the importance of what he writes about in his works – about beauty, about death, about politics, about life, about the meaning of search.

The philosophical categories and aesthetic ideas of A. Schopenhauer are united by A.A. Fet and manifest themselves in another interpretation – the life of the soul and heart.

"Exhausted by life, by the treachery of hope,

When I give in to them in a battle with my soul,

And day and night I am closing my eyes

And somehow strangely sometimes I see clearly.

The gloom of everyday life is even darker,

Like after a bright autumn lightning,

And only in the sky, as a sincere call,

The golden eyelashes sparkle with stars.

...And these dreams in the world breath,

I rush like smoke and melt involuntarily,

And in this epiphany, and in this oblivion

It's easy for me to live and breathe, it doesn't hurt me"^[20].

With the help of symbols, the world of beauty is conveyed – the world of stars is mentioned. This is a metaphorical representation of the antipode of the everyday world, which is "pure".

In the world of human ideas, his essence is hidden – beautiful, kind, eternal.

"You can't be petty

At least for a moment not to be ashamed,

It is impossible before eternal beauty

Not to sing, not to praise, not to pray" (AA Fet. Spring, 1873).

The generalized image of Fet's philosophical poem is expanded, concretized. He does not describe life in general, but a specific socio-historical time. And at the same time, it is possible to convey the philosophical meaning through a sense of hopelessness, social pessimism.

It is also interesting that many philosophical trends of the East can be seen in A. Fet when analyzing the content of poems and when searching for identity with ancient authors.

For example, as it was shown above, A. Fet's landscape plays an important role in conveying the meaning of the poem. It is through the description of nature and landscape that the feelings and sensations of the main characters, philosophical categories are transmitted. This helps the reader to reflect more and think about the eternal. For example, in ancient Chinese authors who adhered to Eastern philosophy, landscape played a major central role in the transmission of meaning. For example, this could be seen when reading the works of Meng-Tzu, Tzu-Si, Zhang Zai^[21].

Thus, using the theoretical material of classical Russian researchers of A. Fet's creativity and continuing the main idea of the search for a philosophical direction in A. Fet's creativity, it can be concluded that oriental images undergo a certain rethinking taking into account the specifics of style and aesthetic tasks. They acquire the idiosyncrasies of the author.

Conclusion

Despite the generally insignificant frequency of motives of Eastern philosophy in the poetry of Athanasius Fet, it can be concluded that there are philosophical motives in the poetic speech under consideration, in particular regarding the expression of conceptual worldview foundations: the presence of unity and integrity of all living things, the infinity of being, the divine origin of life, reflections on death, symbolic transmission of secret meaning and the urge to reflections on eternal categories in the reader of the work of A.A. Fet.

The images show the presence of a deep level of semantics of the poetic text, translating the topics touched upon in poetry into the sacred plane. In our opinion, A.A. Fet's appeal to the motives of Eastern philosophy is due, on the one hand, to the depth and capacity of the author's own reflections due to his education and his own emerging writing style, and, on the other hand, to the popularity of symbolism, love and craving for philosophy in society.

While preserving their essence, oriental images undergo a certain reinterpretation, taking into account the specifics of the style and aesthetic tasks. They acquire the idiosyncrasies of the author.

The considered semantic transformation and symbolism in the poetic speech of prominent representatives of literature on the example of A.A. Fet with the concretization of fragments of the writer's work is a promising research direction.

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