The Parnassians are represented by three poets, MAIKOV (1821-97), FET (1820-98), and POLONSKY (1820-98), all three of whom began to write about the same time, in 1840; none of these three poets was didactic, and all three remained aloof from political or social questions.
Maikov is attracted by classical themes, by Italy and also by old ballads, but his strength lies in his plastic form, his colour, and his pictures of Russian landscape; he writes, for instance, an exquisite reminiscence of a day's fishing when he was a boy.
The quality of Fet's muse, in contrast to Maikov's concrete plasticity, is illusiveness; his lyrics express intangible dreams and impressions; delicate tints and shadows tremble and flit across his verse, which is soft as the orient of a pearl; and his fancy is as delicate as a thread of gossamer: he lives in the borderland between words and music, and catches the vague echoes of that limbo.
"The world in shadow slipped away And, like a silent dream took flight, Like Adam, I in Eden lay Alone, and face to face with night."
He sings about the southern night amidst the hay; or again about the dawn--
"A whisper, a breath, a shiver, The trills of the nightingale, A silver light and a quiver And a sunlit trail. The glimmer of night and the shadows of night In an endless race, Enchanted changes, flight after flight, On the loved one's face. The blood of the roses tingling In the clouds, and a gleam in the grey, And tears and kisses commingling-- The Dawn, the Dawn, the Day!"
Polonsky's verse, in contrast to Fet's gentle epicurean temperament, his delicate half-tones and illusive whispers, is made of sterner stuff; and, in contrast to Maikov's sculptural lines, it is pre-eminently musical, and reflects a fine and charming personality. His area of subjects is wide; he can write a child's poem as transparent and simple as Hans Andersen--as in his conversation between the sun and the moon--or call up the "glory that was Greece," as in the poem when his "Aspasia" listens to the crowds acclaiming Pericles, and waits in rapturous suspense for his return--an evocation that Browning would have envied for its life and Swinburne for its sound.
But neither Maikov, Fet, nor Polonsky, exquisite as much of their writing is, produced anything of the calibre of Nekrasov, even in their own province; that is to say, they were none of them as great in the artistic field as he was in his didactic field. Compared with him, they are minor poets. There is one poet of this epoch who does rival Nekrasov in another field, and that is COUNT ALEXIS TOLSTOY (1817-75), who was also a Parnassian and remained aloof from didactic literature; yet, under the pseudonym of Kuzma Prutkov, he wrote a satire, a collection of platitudes, that are household words in Russia; also a short history of Russia in consummately neat and witty satirical verse. As well as his satires, he wrote an historical novel, _Prince Serebryany_, and more important still, a trilogy of plays, dealing with the most dramatic epoch of Russian history, that of Ivan the Terrible. The trilogy, written in verse, consists of the "Death of Ivan the Terrible," "The Tsar Feodor Ivanovitch" and "Tsar Boris." They are all of them acting plays, form part of the current classical repertory, and are effective, impressive and arresting when played on the stage.