In 1853, encouraged by Nikolay Nekrasov, Fet joined the then rising Sovremennik circle, meeting among new faces his old friends Ivan Turgenev and critic Vasily Botkin.
After his parents' separation, Blok lived with aristocratic relatives at the manor Shakhmatovo near Moscow, where he discovered the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, and the verse of then-obscure 19th-century poets, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet.