POETRY BY A.A. FET AND M.E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of “A.A. Fet and M. E. Shchedrin”, which was only occasionally raised in the domestic literary criticism of the Soviet period. Attention is paid to biographical and historical-literary aspects. An attempt is made to systematize the critical assessments given by Shchedrin to Fet’s poetry. The article considers the specifics of Shchedrin’s position, which, according to Yu.V. Lebedev, did not reach the complete “destruction of aesthetics”, as happened with Pisarev and V. Zaitsev, and some techniques of poetics of criticism (e.g., dialogue with the reader). It is shown that the duality of the critic’s position, on the one hand, understanding the aesthetic value of Fet’s poetry, on the other, devaluing it by applying theoretical ideas of revolutionary democracy to it, is also seen in Shchedrin’s prose, repeatedly quoting lines of Fet’s poetry. Semantics and functions of “someone else’s speech” in Shchedrin’s prose are clarified, the mechanisms of quoting in various kinds of beating Fetov quotes are investigated.