“In the East God has sacred places…”

Abstract

The author analyses A.A. Fet's poem “The Nightingale and the Rose”, included in the collection “Poems” (1850). He points out that the collection aroused the interest of leading critics of the second half of the 19th century such as Apollo Grigoriev, Lev May and Osip Senkovsky. A.A. Fet's poem “The Nightingale and the Rose” particularly attracted their attention. The most significant characteristics of the poem are identified in the present study from the point of view of these critics; similarities and differences in its assessment are noted, and their reasons are explained. In particular, attention is drawn to the lively interest of the romantic era (both in European and Russian art culture) for the East. Characteristics of the image of the East are given, as well as names of writers and titles of their works. The author points to a foreign source of A.A. Fet's poem “The Nightingale and the Rose”, which turned out to be an inaccurate translation of Hafiz, reflecting not so much the specifics of Hafiz's ghazals as their interpretation by the translator with his European vision of the East. The text of A.A. Fet is a version of the Eastern ghazal in Russian. A digression about the historical and philological study of the word “rose” in the works of A.N. Veselovsky, and the tradition of using the theme of love between the Nightingale and the Rose in the poetry of A.S. Pushkin, N.M. Yazykov, A.V. Koltsov are presented. The author notes the original features in the interpretation of these images in the poetic text of A.A. Fet and points out the programmatic nature of the poem “The Nightingale and the Rose”, as testified by the poet's repeated references to the text and the corrections he inserted in view in a new publication.