"A hero of our time" is the most important Lermont's work, the first Russian psychological novel and the announcement of Russian realistic writing. The main character is Pechorin, one of the first European characters of contradiction that is divided between being tired of pleasures but still unable to love and settle down. He thinks that […]
Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Lermontov was a famous writer and novelist with a number of works behind what made him unavoidable in many cultures. Mikhail Yuryevich was born October 15, 1814. in Moscow.
His childhood was anything but modest as he grew up in aristocratic family in Russia. Thanks to the different roots from his parents he had a chance to grew up in trilingual surroundings.
Mikhail ancestor was one of the Scottish Knights. The story of George Lermont, Mikhail ancestor started in Russia 1613. For Mikhail Lermontov worked Jean, Frenchman who was hired from Mikhail's grandmother. It wasn't enough to have a servant from France, for his upbringing was responsible nanny from Germany.
Unfortunately he lost his mother when he was just two years old, and that was a reason why his was took away from his father. The main person in charge of his upbringing became his grandmother. Lermontov graduated in Moscow. There he studied English literature.
Lot has happened to at the age of fourteen when he created the famous work "The prisoner of the Caucasus". That wasn't the only work because at that age he wrote many poems. He was not only a cadet in St. Petersburg at Emperor's School of Cavalry Guards, he was also a student in University of Moscow.
During his time as a cadet he became an Imperial Officer, and in that time his next big work "Borodino"was dedicated to the victory over famous general, Napoleon.
Lermontov was stunned by the duel and death of Alexander Pushkin and accused the autocratic Tsar Nicholas I and his "greedy throng around the Throne" in the "murder of the Genius". Arrested and exiled to the war in the mountains of Caucasus, he distinguished himself in battles and returned to the capital of St. Petersburg as a celebrity. Because it was so disillusioned with the life of aristocracy and their vanity fair, Lermontov created famous work "Masquerade".
Because of duel with a diplomat from France, he was exiled in the Caucasus. In 1839, he finished his first and only novel "A Hero of Our Time" with a prophetic rendition of a duel which paralleled the end of his own life in July 1841. That duel was possibly the work of the Tsar's conspiracy against yet another rebellious genius.
The knowledge of many foreign languages resulted with great work such as, "The Dream", "Prophet" and "The Cliff".
His sacrilegious "Demon", about an angel who falls in love with a mortal woman, inspired Anton Rubinstein on writing a lush opera. Boris Pasternak was influenced by Lermontov's mellifluent lines, and Vladimir Nabokov imitated the structural patterns of "The Hero of Our Time".
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov died July 27 1841 at age 26.
The Fatalist
"The Fatalist" is a name of the story from Lermontov's novel "A Hero of Our Time". This story takes place at the very end of the novel, and also can be read separately. The other parts of the novel also maintain their independence, being connected only through the main character Pechorin. The novel is divided […]