И время и место: Историко-филологический сборник к шестидесятилетию Александра Львовича Осповата

²⁶ Толстой не принял обвинений в безнравственности, которые через Маркевича предъявил балладе Катков. Отстаивая автономию искусства (которое не может и не должно быть «учебником жизни»), поэт, однако, взял под защиту богатыря-певца в письме Маркевичу от 9 октября 1871 года: «Впрочем, с уверенностью могу Вам сказать, что, по сведениям, которые я собирал насчет описываемого происшествия, Попович и девица, проплыв 25 минут на лодке, сошли на берег в деревне по названию Папусевка, Авсеевы лозы тож, где их повенчал добрый священник отец Герасим Помдамурский, в чем ему содействовал благочинный Сократ Борисович Гермафродитов, случайно находившийся там» (379–380).

²⁷ Стихотворение «То было раннею весной…» тоже посвящено прошлому, «утру наших лет», когда поэт был счастлив, а не вспоминал о счастье.

Emily Klenin A Most Russian Russian in a Nascent Estonia Fet and Kreutzwald

Afanasij Fet’s memoirs lovingly memorialize the non-occurrence of events of no obvious significance, non-episodes that are punctuated with narrative codas about people readers have never heard of. So, for example, “in the course of my three-year stay [at boarding-school, 1835-37]… there was not a single fatality among the 70 pupils. And even illnesses were very rare. Not only was the word ‘doctor’ not mentioned at the school, there was not even a place called an infirmary” [Fet 1893: 98]. The text goes on to introduce “one of the most learned of the institution’s teachers, Eisenschmidt,” who did get ill and (presumably for lack of a place called an infirmary) suffered his illness in his room, where he was ministered to overnight by the pupils. Keeping the patient’s pipe lit for the duration while taking a chance to smoke it themselves, the boys turned his room into a veritable smokehouse. And there the chapter ends.

It was perhaps reasonable for Fet to mention that pupils did not often die at his school, since deaths of young people were proportionately commoner then, while preceding text stresses the physical rigors of school discipline. And if the learned teacher Eisenschmidt came to Fet’s mind only in this medical connection, then this would be the passage where we would most naturally make his acquaintance. And yet readers can be forgiven for seeing the passage as evidence of the ageing poet’s garrulousness. Do we really need to know this? What purpose can be served by Fet’s saying that while at school he never so much as heard the word ‘doctor’? Of all the words Fet never heard at school, why does this one bubble up?

Fet’s school was located in what is today an Estonian town of some 14,500 inhabitants. The town is called V^oru in Estonian (and in the local language – V^oro) but was known to both Russians and Germans in Fet’s day by its German name Werro (Russian Beppo).¹ In English both names are still used. The town is not one of the region’s oldest centers, or one with an especially rich cultural tradition. It was founded in 1784, by order of Catherine II,² for the purpose of creating a population center linking Baltic Dorpat (Tartu), about 70 km away, with Russian Pskov, from which Werro lies some 80 km distant.³

The general area, wasted and then acquired by Peter I in his Great Northern War, was still relatively under-populated in the latter eighteenth century, and the foundation of the town was an early initiative among the many intended by Catherine and her successors to improve the administration of the region and, eventually, to russify it (a project of which Catherine herself was, at least in the short term, unhopeful).⁴ Werro registered 242 inhabitants in 1787 and by 1825 had nearly tripled in size: its population of 708 represented a gain of about 12 people a year.⁵ From 1825 to 1849, the rate of growth rose to about 32 people a year, more than doubling the 1825 population, to 1481. As the population grew, its ethnic composition also changed: over three quarters of the founding population was ethnically German, and Estonians (who were then generally serfs) constituted under 10 %. According to a count made in 1817 (in the midst of the 1816-19 process of manumitting serfs, first in Estland and then in Livland), the proportion of Estonians in Werro had increased to 17.5 % and the proportion of Germans had fallen to about two thirds. This ethnic shift persisted across the nineteenth century.⁶ Fet’s three-year stay in Werro thus took place during a time of burgeoning growth, albeit on a modest provincial scale. This growth and the accompanying change in ethnicity entailed changes in culture and social class, and sometimes, as will appear below, conflicting perspectives on issues of local importance. The demographic picture also suggests that the town stood in need of increasing social services – schools such as the one Fet attended and medical services such as those the word for which Fet says he never heard.