Hamlet by William Shakespeare in the Artistic Perception of Afanasy Fet and Ivan Turgenev (To the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Afanasy Fet)

The article covers a fragment from the history of relations between Afanasy Fet and Ivan Turgenev connected with the name of William Shakespeare and the tragedy The Tragicall Histone of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. In the dialogue of the two Russian writers, the English playwright was the subject of lively aesthetic conversations and disputes related to the principles of artistic comprehension of the real world and understanding of the laws of verbal art. In addition, at different times, Fet and Turgenev tried on the role of Shakespeare’s translator with more or less success. In their own poetry and prose, in the 1840s, Shakespeare found individual reflections, in which priority was given to the tragedy Hamlet and its central characters. Fet and Turgenev read the story of the Prince of Denmark with equal relevance, but gave it slightly different interpretations. For Fet, the tragedy of Shakespeare’s character lays in the depth of internal suffering that arose due to the unbearable hardships of fate, while Turgenev saw its basis in an extreme moral and psychological contradiction. With these differences, the writers’ concepts grew from a single source - Goethe’s interpretation of Hamlet’s image. One of the main manifestations of the suffering nature of Hamlet for Fet was the tragic fate of Ophelia. Giving it universal significance, he poeticized it in eleven poems created in the period from 1842 to 1847, which, in different compositions and at different times, he combined into the cycle “To Ophelia”. Hamlet’s bride, as Fet interprets, embodies the idea of a sensually beautiful female image depicted in a single romantic-impressionistic tonality, and also associated with the poetic tradition of Vasily Zhukovsky and Alexander Pushkin. Turgenev actively perceived the image of Fet’s Ophelia: the writer used the intonations of this lyrical character in the image of his Sophia from the story “The Hamlet of the Shtchigri District” (1849). Entering into a dialogue with the poet and including the first line of Fet’s poem “At Dawn” in his story, Turgenev endows the brief life history of a village girl with similar mysterious and melancholic properties. The description of Sophia’s fate is made in a tangible elegiac tone with a steady growing movement towards drama. In accordance with the law of Shakespeare’s ambivalence, together with lofty features, Turgenev does not avoid the usual prosaic features in the image, which, however, does not break its lyrical integrity. Turgenev and Fet agree on the desire to give their images a universal human meaning, which is also achieved with the help of a natural text of poetical and philosophical content.

Keywords

Authors

References