Mikhaïl Lermontov

Mikhaïl Iourievitch Lermontov (in; October 15th 1814 - July 27th 1841), Poet and Russian Novelist , often called the “poet of the the Caucasus”, was born with Moscow from Scottish ascent (of the Learmount family), but belonged to a sizeable family of the province of Tula and grows in the village of Tarkhanui, which preserves its remainders. It was same generation as Vassili Joukovski and Alexandre Pouchkine.

Its life

Because of the untimely death of his/her mother and military service of his/her father, the care of his childhood échut to his/her grandmother, who did not save any effort to give him best education than it could imagine. The intellectual atmosphere that it breathed in its youth differed little from that in which Pouchkine had grown, although the domination of the French had started to yield ground in front of the taste for the English, whereas Lamartine shared his popularity with Lord Byron.

College in Moscow, Lermontov passed to the university in 1830, but its career ended there abruptly in the part which he played in certain acts of insubordination to an opposing teacher. From 1830 to 1834, it went to school of the officers of the Guard of Saint-Pétersbourg, then was assigned with a regiment of hussards with Tsarskoïe Selo. The young soldier expressed his anger and that of the nation vis-a-vis the loss of Pouchkine (1837) in an impassioned poem addressed to the tsar Nicolas Ier, “the Death of the poet”, and the voice even which proclaimed that if Russia did not take its revenge on the assassin on his poet, a second poet would not be given to him, constituted an insinuation that such a poet had already come.

The tsar, however, seemed to find more impertinence than of inspiration in this address, since Lermontov was sent at once to the Caucasus as officer of dragons. He had lived in the Caucasus at ten years with his grandmother and felt at his place more deeply than only by the effect of memories of child. Austere and rough qualities of the mountain dwellers whom it was to fight, very as much as the decoration of the rocks and the mountains, proved to be close to its heart; the emperor had exiled it with his true region. He became acquainted there also with banished decembrists and rebellious intellectuals géorgiens.

Lermontov visited Saint-Pétersbourg in 1838 and 1839, then was returned to the Caucasus following a duel against Ernest de Barante, wire of the French ambassador. It is in 1839 qu' it wrote to the novel a hero of our time , which one says that it was with the source of the duel with Nicolaï Martynov, which was to him fatal in July 1841. For this tournament, it selected by express the edge of a chasm, so that if any combatant were wounded until losing foot, its destiny is sealed.

Its works

Lermontov published only one small collection of poems, in 1840. Three volumes strongly mutilated by the Censure were published in 1842 by Glazounov and of the complete editions of its work appeared in 1860 and 1863. Translation German by Bodenstedt of its poems, (“Michail Lermontovs poetischer Nachlass”, Berlin, 1842,2 volumes), which was in fact the first collection satisfactory, to Lermontov a broad reputation outside Russia gave. Its novel, heading a hero of our time , knew several translators (August Boltz, Berlin, 1852, etc). It depicts there the tragedy of the youth of its time, youth with the thoughts liberal and educated, which was dissatisfied social persistence, felt esseulée and held its life for futile. With this work, it created important premises for the development of the psychological novel in Russia, which is worth to him to be the founder of Russian realism.

In its poems of youth, it is still inspired by Pouchkine, but its poetic style frees soon, which is seen also in the change of the topics, as in the poem “the sail”. One speaks there about a happiness which is reached only by the combat. In other poems, it strongly reflects the thoughts and the feelings of the members of circles of revolted students, in particular indignation towards the Servage, the hatred of the despotism tsarist and the aspiration impassioned with freedom. In the unfinished novel “Vadim”, composed in 1832-34, it takes position with conviction for the oppressed peasants and draft of the insurrection of Pougatchev.

In the drama “Masquerade”, whose censure prohibits the publication, it tackles the nobility. Among his the most known poems, one finds “the demon”, “the beginner”, and, remarkable imitation of the old Russian ballade, “the song of the tsar Ivan Vassilievitch, the young person opritchnik and the valiant Kalachnikov merchant”.

See Taillandier, “the Poet of the Caucasus”, in “Review of the two worlds” (February 1855), reprinted in “Germany and Russia” (Paris, 1856), and Duduichkin, “Materials for the Biography off Lermontov”, prefaces some with the edition of 1863 of its work.

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