The article traces the perception of V. Zhukovsky’s poetical heritage by Konstantin Fofanov. As it is shown in this work, Fofanov’s understanding of “the first Russian romanticist’s” literary biography contains genre, motif and life-creating aspects, which are analyzed here and lead to the conclusion about the forging influence of Zhukovsky’s artistic world onto the lyrical system of Fofanov as a pre-symbolist. For Fofanov his musings about Zhukovsky have become an occasion to express his understanding of the Russian literary classics and to put a crucial question for him - about the correlation between verse and prose as two different types of the writer’s self-affirmation. Another set of motifs associated with Zhukovsky derives from Fofanov’s visit in 1887 to the ceremony of the opening of Zhukovsky’s monument. This fact was re-thought by Fofanov in the perspective of the famous poetic theme - exegi monumentum. Finally the “ballad fear”, introduced to the Russian literature by Zhukovsky, acquires in Fofanov’s interpretation distinct social connotations while the ballad genre model as a whole starts to function as a part of the socially-oriented literature.