Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov (Михаил Юрьевич Лермонтов), (October 15, 1814–July 27, 1841), a Russian writer, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", was the most important presence in the Russian poetry since Alexander Pushkin's death until his own death in duel at the age of 26. In one of his best-known poems, written on January 1, 1840 he described his intonations as "iron verse steeped in bitterness and hatred".

Contents

1 Early life 2 Fame and exile 3 Works 4 See also 5 External links 6 Lermontov's poem

Early life

Lermontov was born in Moscow to a respectable family of the Tula province, and grew up in the village of Tarkhany (in the Penza government), which now preserves his remains. His family traced descent from the Scottish Learmounts, one of whom settled in Russia in the early 17th century.

His grandmother—on whom the whole care of his childhood was devolved by his mother's early death and his father's military service—spared neither cost nor pains to give him the best education she could imagine. The intellectual atmosphere which he breathed in his youth differed little from that in which Pushkin had grown up, though the domination of French had begun to give way before the fancy for English, and Lamartine shared his popularity with Byron.

From the academic gymnasium Lermontov passed in 1830 to the Moscow University, but there his career came to an untimely close through the part he took in some acts of insubordination to an obnoxious teacher. From 1830 to 1834 he attended the school of cadets at Saint Petersburg, and in due course he became an officer in the guards. All this time he was writing much poetry imitative of Pushkin and Byron. 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.

Fame and exile

To his own and the nation's anger at the loss of Pushkin (1837) the young soldier gave vent in a passionate poem addressed to the tsar, and the very voice which proclaimed that, if Russia took no vengeance on the assassin of her poet, no second poet would be given her, was itself an intimation that such a poet had come already. The poem all but accused the powerful "pillars" of Russian high society of complicity in Pushkin's murder. Without mincing words, it portrayed this society as a cabal of venal and venomous wretches "huddling about the Throne in a greedy throng", "the hangmen who kill liberty, genius, and glory" about to suffer the apocalyptic judgement of God. Cleaving the repressive atmosphere of 1830's Russia like a lightning bolt from a still sky, the poem had the power of Biblical prophecy, though the poet's contemporaries were often more likely to perceive it as the ravings of a madman.

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 of dragoons. He had been in the Caucasus with his grandmother as a boy of ten, and he found himself at home by yet deeper sympathies than those of childish recollection. The stern and rocky virtues of the mountaineers against whom he had to fight, no less than the scenery of the rocks and of the mountains themselves, proved akin to his heart; the emperor 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, occassioned his play Masquerade. Otherwise, his unreciprocated 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 his being returned to the Caucasian army, where he distinguished himself in the hand-to-hand fighting near the Valerik River.

By 1839 he completed his only full-scale novel, A Hero of Our Time, which prophetically describes the duel in which he lost his life in July 1841. In this contest he had purposely selected the edge of a precipice, so that if either combatant was wounded so as to fall his fate should be sealed. Much of his best verse was posthumously discovered in his pocket-book.

Works

During his lifetime, Lermontov published only one slender collection of poems (1840). Three volumes, much mutilated by the censorship, were issued a year after his death. His short poems range from indignantly patriotic pieces like Fatherland to the pantheistic glorification of living nature (e.g., I Go Out to the Road Alone...) Lermontov's early verse has been accused of puerility, for, despite his dexterious command of the language, it usually appeals more to adolescents than to adults. But that typically Romantic air of disenchantment was an illusion of which he was too conscious himself. Quite unlike Shelley, with whom he is often compared, he attempted to analyse and bring to light the deepest reasons for this metaphysical discontent with society and himself (e.g., It's Boring and Sad...)

Both patriotic and pantheistic veins in his poetry had incalculable repercussions throughout later Russian literature. Boris Pasternak, for instance, dedicated his 1917 poetic collection of signal importance to the memory of Lermontov's Demon. Such was the name of a long poem, featuring some of the most mellifluent lines in the language, which Lermontov rewrote upon a number of occassions, until his very death. The poem, which celebrates 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 account of his only novel, Lermontov should be considered one of the founding fathers of the Russian prose. A Hero of Our Time is actually a tightly knitted collection of short stories revolving around a single character, Pechorin. Short stories are intricately connected, so that a reader could follow from a superficial glimpse of the character's actions to understanding his philosophy and secret springs of seemingly mysterious behavior. Innovative structure of the novel inspired several imitations, notably by Vladimir Nabokov in his novel Pnin (1955).

See also

Mikhail Lermontov (ship)

External links

• Online Lermontov shrine (http://lermontov.niv.ru/)
• Some tetxs by Lermontov in the original Russian (http://ilibrary.ru/author/lermontov/)

Lermontov's poem

The Dream is one of Lermontov's last poems, featured in his posthumous diary. Nabokov, whose translation follows, thought this "threefold dream" prophetic of the poet's own death.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.cs:Michail Jurjevič Lermontov

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