Mikhail Yuryevich
Lermontov
is a Russian Romantic writer
and poet, sometimes called
"the poet of the Caucasus",
was the most important
Russian poet after Alexander
Pushkin's death. His influence
on later Russian literature is
still felt in modern times, not
only through his poetry, but
also by his prose. His poetry
remains popular in Chechnya,
Dagestan, and beyond Russia.
Lermontov was born in Moscow to a
respectable noble family of the Tula
Governorate, and grew up in the village
of Tarkhany (in the Penza Governorate),
which now preserves his remains.
According to one disputed and
uncorroborated theory his paternal
family was believed to have descended
from the Scottish Learmonths[1], one of
whom settled in Russia in the early 17th
century, during the reign of Mikhail
Fedorovich Romanov. However this claim
had neither been proved nor disproved,
and thus remains a legend.
After the daughter's death, Yelizaveta
Alekseyevna devoted all her love to her
grandson, always in fear that his father
might move away with him. Either because
of this pampering or continuing family
tension or both, Lermontov as a child
developed a fearful and arrogant temper,
which he took out on the servants, and
smashing the bushes in his grandmother's
garden.
As a small boy Lermontov listened to stories about the
outlaws of the Volga region, about their great bravery and
wild country life. When he was ten, Mikhail fell sick, and
Yelizaveta Alekseyevna took him to the Caucasus region for
a better climate. There, young Lermontov for the first time
fell in love.
The intellectual atmosphere in which he grew up
differed little from that experienced by Pushkin,
though the domination of French had begun to give
way to a preference for English, and Lamartine
shared his popularity with Byron. In his early
childhood Lermontov was educated by a Frenchman
named Gendrot. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna felt that this
was not sufficient and decided to take Lermontov to
Moscow, to prepare for gymnasium.
In Moscow, Lermontov was introduced to
Goethe and Schiller by a German pedagogue,
Levy, and shortly afterwards, in 1828, he
entered the gymnasium.
Also at the gymnasium he became
acquainted with the poetry of Pushkin and
Zhukovsky, and one of his friends,
Katerina Hvostovaya, later described him
as "married to a hefty volume of Byron".
This friend had at one time been an object
of Lermontov's affection, and to her he
dedicated some of his earliest poems, "
The Beggar ".
At that time, along with his poetic passion, Lermontov also
developed an inclination for poisonous wit, and cruel and
sardonic humor. His ability to draw caricatures was matched
by his ability to pin someone down with a well aimed
epigram or nickname.
After the academic gymnasium, in the August
1830, Lermontov entered the Moscow University.
Having been struck deep by his son's
alienation, Yuri Lermontov left the
Arseniev house for good, only to die a short
time later. His father's death on such a
note was a terrible loss for Mikhail, and is
reflected in his poems: "Forgive me, Will
we Meet Again?" and "The Terrible Fate
of Father and Son".
The events at the University led Lermontov to seriously reconsider
his career choice.
He became an officer in the guards. There Lermontov 1830 to
1834 he attended the cadets school in Saint Petersburg, and in
due course got a chance to show his incredible strength: he and
another junior officer would tie steel ramrods, as if they were simple
ropes, into knots, until they were caught at this task . When they
were caught doing it,by General Schlippenbach he yelled them
"What are you kids doing, pulling pranks like these?" and since
then Lermontov would laugh:"Such kids! to tie steel ramrods into
knots!"
At that time he began writing poetry. He also took a keen
interest in Russian history and medieval epics, which
would be reflected in the Song of the Merchant
Kalashnikov, his long poem Borodino, poems addressed to
the city of Moscow, and a series of popular ballads.
Borodino
The Song of the
Merchant Kalashnikov
To express his own and the nation's anger at the loss of Pushkin (1837)
the young soldier wrote a passionate poem the latter part of which was
explicitly addressed to the inner circles at the court, though not to the
tsar himself. The poem all but accused the powerful "pillars" of
Russian high society of complicity in Pushkin's murder.
A landscape painted by Lermontov. Tiflis, 1837
The tsar, however, seems to have found more
impertinence than inspiration in the address,
for Lermontov was forthwith sent off to the
Caucasus as an officer in the dragoons. He
had been in the Caucasus with his
grandmother as a boy of ten, and he found
himself at home, with feelings deeper than
those of childhood recollection. The stern and
rocky virtues of the mountain tribesmen
against whom he had to fight, no less than the
scenery of the rocks and of the mountains
themselves, were close to his heart; the tsar
had exiled him to his native land.
Lermontov visited Saint Petersburg in
1838 and 1839, and his indignant
observations of the aristocratic milieu,
wherein fashionable ladies welcomed
him as a celebrity, occasioned his play
Masquerade. His not reciprocated
attachment to Varvara Lopukhina was
recorded in the novel Princess
Ligovskaya, which he never finished.
His duel with a son of the French
ambassador led to Lermontov being
returned to the army fighting the war in
the Caucasus, where he distinguished
himself in hand-to-hand combat near the
Valerik River.
By 1839 he completed his most important novel, A
Hero of Our Time, which prophetically describes the
duel like the one in which he would eventually lose his
life.
A Hero of Our Time is actually a tightly knitted collection of short
stories revolving around a single character, Pechorin.
The short stories comprising this work are intricately connected,
and the reader moves from a superficial glimpse of the character's
actions to an understanding of his philosophy and of the secret
springs of his seemingly mysterious behavior.
Lermontov`s poem "Mtsyri" ("The Novice") tells the story of a
young man who finds that dangerous freedom is vastly
preferable to protected servitude, and speaks as eloquently as
anything written by Thomas Jefferson for the spirit of the
American revolution.
Both patriotic and pantheistic Lermontov's poems had enormous
influence on later Russian literature. Boris Pasternak, for instance,
dedicated his 1917 poetic collection of signal importance to the
memory of Lermontov's Demon, a long poem featuring some of the
most mellifluous lines in the language, which Lermontov rewrote
several times.
M.Vrubel “Demon”
The poem, which celebrates the
carnal passions of the "eternal
spirit of atheism" to a "maid of
mountains", was banned from
publication for decades. Anton
Rubinstein's lush opera on the
same subject was also banned by
censors who deemed it
sacrilegious.
On July 25, 1841, at Pyatigorsk, fellow
army officer Nikolai Martynov, who felt
hurt by one of Lermontov's jokes,
challenged Lermontov to a duel. The
duel took place two days later at the
foot of Mashuk mountain. Lermontov
chose the edge of a precipice for the
duel, so that if either combatant was
wounded, he would fall down the cliff.
Lermontov was killed by Martynov's
first shot. Several of his verses were
posthumously discovered in his
notebook.
Lermontov's life must be viewed as one of the most epic and dramatic in the history
of literature. After attacking the tsar as complicit in the de facto assassination of
Pushkin, Lermontov himself fell in a duel that many believe was also the work of a
tsarist conspiracy designed to silence nascent rebellion. His major works, which
can be readily quoted from memory by many Russians, suffer from the generally
poor quality of translation from Russian to English - Lermontov therefore, remains
largely unknown to English-speaking readers.
•10 questions
•Among my classmates(16-17 ears old)
Сон
В полдневный жар в долине Дагестана
С свинцом в груди лежал недвижим я;
Глубокая еще дымилась рана,
По капле кровь точилася моя.
The Dream
In noon's heat, in a dale of Dagestan
With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;
The deep wound still smoked on; my blood
Kept trickling drop by drop away.
Лежал один я на песке долины;
Уступы скал теснилися кругом,
И солнце жгло их желтые вершины
И жгло меня - но спал я мертвым сном.
On the dale's sand alone I lay. The cliffs
Crowded around in ledges steep,
And the sun scorched their tawny tops
And scorched me -- but I slept death's sleep.
И снился мне сияющий огнями
Вечерний пир в родимой стороне.
Меж юных жен, увенчанных цветами,
Шел разговор веселый обо мне.
And in a dream I saw an evening feast
That in my native land with bright lights shone;
Among young women crowned with flowers,
A merry talk concerning me went on.
Но, в разговор веселый не вступая,
Сидела там задумчиво одна,
И в грустный сон душа ее младая
Бог знает чем была погружена;
But in the merry talk not joining,
One of them sat there lost in thought,
And in a melancholy dream
Her young soul was immersed -- God knows by what.
И снилась ей долина Дагестана;
Знакомый труп лежал в долине той;
В его груди, дымясь, чернела рана,
И кровь лилась хладеющей струей.
And of a dale in Dagestan she dreamt;
In that dale lay the corpse of one she knew;
Within his breast a smoking wound shewed black,
And blood coursed in a stream that colder grew.