Спор о России: Фет и классики русской прозы
Lecture by Michael Weisskopf
(The lecture will be given in Russian)
The lecture is based on Michael Weisskop’s latest book “The Agony and the Resurrection of Romanticism” (Moscow, New Literary Review, 2022).
The great Russian poet Afanasii Fet received his basic education in the German-speaking Baltia environment and forever internalized the Protestant work ethic set by the Old Testament, as well as a persistent dislike of reli-gious rituals. In contrast with Russian intelligentsia’s as-pirations, he was a staunch supporter of capitalism pro-tected by the monarchy. His attitude towards Russia and Orthodoxy retained the specific ambivalence of the Ger-man subjects of the Russian empire. Fet's debates with Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol (a retrospective po-lemic), covered the acute social and political problems in post-Reform Russia, the situation of peasants, and re-ligious issues.