I Always Like The Northern Birches, Some doubts surround the exact date of birth but reports suggest that Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet was born on the 5th December 1820 which was two years before his Russian nobleman father Afanasy Shenshin married the divorcee Charlotta Foeth in Germany. He was therefore placed into the category known as a raznochinet, literally a person who does not belong to any particular class or state. He was not allowed to take his father’s name of Shenshin and, not surprisingly, all of this was a source of great distress to Fet for the whole of his life.
As soon as he was old enough he was sent away to a boarding school in Estonia and from there he moved to Moscow University in 1838 to study philology. He began writing poetry while at university and was able to publish his first collection in 1840, called The Lyrical Pantheon. Fet really came to the attention of the literary world in 1842 when his poems were seen regularly in magazines such as Moskovityanin and Otechestvennye zapiski, all of which received a great deal of praise from all quarters.
I Always Like The Northern Birches by Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet
I Always Like The Northern Birches
Their view, so downcast and grave,
The fever, which poor souls scorches,
Cools like the mute speech of a grave.But yet, the willow, which branches,
With their long leaves, cast in a flood,
Is closer to a dream, that scourges,
And longer lives in our heart.
Their meadows – with bitter tears,
Tell birches to cold wind alone
Their common sufferings and fears.Believing that the whole ground
Is motherland of sacred grieves,
The weeping willow all around
Inclines its branches with long leaves.
