Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov

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Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov , 1814–41, Russian poet and novelist. Given an extensive private education by his wealthy grandmother, Lermontov began writing poetry when he was 14. He first attracted public attention in 1837 with the inflammatory poem "On the Death of the Poet," written to protest the death of Pushkin in a duel. A cavalry officer in the czar's army, he was temporarily banished to the Caucasus, where he had recuperated from illness as a child, and the area's stirring landscape became a prevailing element in his work. Of his early verse, which, like his life, was greatly influenced by Byron, only the lyric "The Angel" (1830) is equal to his later work.

Lermontov's poetic reputation, second in Russia only to Pushkin's, rests upon the lyric and narrative works of his last five years. The Demon (1829–41, tr. 1930), his narrative poem about the love of a fallen angel for a mortal, was used by Anton Rubinstein as the basis of an opera. Mtsyri (1833; tr. The Circassian Boy, 1875) reflects Lermontov's antireligious feeling and idealization of primitive life. His heroic poems include "The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov" (1837, tr. 1929). Lermontov's partially autobiographical novel A Hero of Our Time (1840, tr. 1958, 1966, 2005) consists of five tales describing aspects of the life of Pechorin, a disenchanted, bored, and doomed young nobleman. The novel is considered a pioneering classic of Russian psychological realism. Lermontov, who had once sought a position in fashionable society, became enormously critical of it. His caustic wit made him numerous enemies, and, like Pushkin, he was killed in a duel.

Bibliography: See biography by J. Lavrin (1959); studies by J. Mersereau (1962), L. Kelly (1977, repr. 1983), B. M. Eikhenbaum (1981), J. G. Garrard (1982), E. Etkind, ed. (1992), R. Reid (1997), V. Golstein (1998), I. Kutik (2004), and D. Powelstock (2005).

Lermontov, Mikhail Yurevich (1814–41), Russian lyric poet and the author of three romantic plays, most of whose work fell foul of the censor. His first play The Spaniards, written in 1830, deals ostensibly with the Spanish Inquisition but is in reality aimed at the despotism of the Tsar; it was banned, not to be performed in Russia until after the Revolution in 1917. His next, written two years later, was given the German title Menschen und Leidenschafter to indicate its kinship with the Sturm und Drang movement and particularly with the works of Schiller. Based on a family conflict which recalls Lermontov's own unhappy home life, it is again an indictment of contemporary society. In a later rewritten version Lermontov gave it a wider application, with less stress on the family and more on the struggles of the rebellious hero confronting a hostile world. His most important play and the only one by which he is now remembered is Masquerade, written in 1835. Showing clearly the influence of Shakespeare—the theme is very similar to that of Othello—and Byron, it depicts the tragedy of a man who murders the wife he loves because he suspects her of infidelity. In deference to the censor the play was later given a happy ending, but it was not produced until 1852 and then only in a mutilated text. The full version was first seen in 1864, and then not again until Meyerhold produced it in 1917 at the Alexandrinsky, where it was the last play to be performed before the October Revolution. It now forms part of the permanent repertory of the Soviet theatre. In a translation by Robert David MacDonald it was seen at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow in 1976.