Fet (or Foeth), Afanasi Afanasievich (1820-1892)

Russian lyric poet and translator. He captured in verse his personal feelings and fleeting impressions, particularly of nature and love, as in the four-volume Vechernie ogni/Evening Lights 1883-91. He was fiercely attacked by the anti-aesthetic, radical critics of the 1850s and 1860s. Fet's later poetry is more metaphysical in flavour. He was a lifelong friend of the writers Leo Tolstoy and Turgenev.