LERMONTOV, MIKHAIL YUREVICH Russian poet and novelist, often styled the poet of the Caucasus, was born in Moscow on Oct. 3, 1814, of Scottish descent, but belonged to a respectable family of the Tula government, and was brought up in the village of Tarkhanui (in the Penza govern ment). From the academic gymnasium in Moscow Lermontov passed in 1830 to the university, but there his career was cut short for insubordination. From 1832 to 1834 he attended the school of cadets at St. Petersburg, and became an officer in the Guards. To his own and the nation's anger at the loss of Pushkin (1837) the young soldier gave vent in a passionate poem (On the Death of the Poet), addressed to the tsar. Lermontov was forthwith arrested, court-martialled, expelled from the Guards, and sent off to the Caucasus to a line regiment. He had been in the Caucasus with his grandmother as a boy of ten, and he found himself at home by reason of yet deeper sympathies than those of childish recollection. His exile lasted only a year, however. He was in St. Petersburg in 1838 and 1839, and in the latter year wrote the work, A Hero of Our Times (Eng. trans. by R. I. Lipmann, 1886, and by J. S. Phillimore, A Hero of Nowadays, 1920). He had fought more than one duel, and in 1841 quarrelled over a lady with his old school-fellow, Mastinov. The rivals met near Piatigorsk, on July 15 (U.S.) and Lermontov was killed.
Lermontov published only one small collection of poems in 1840. Three volumes, much mutilated by the censor, were issued in 1842 by Glazunov; and full editions of his works were published in 1860 and 1863. To Bodenstedt's German translation of his poems (Michail Lermontov's poetischer Nachlass, 1842, 2 vols.) which indeed was the first satisfactory collection, he is indebted for a wide reputation outside Russia as one of the greatest Rus sian romantic poets. English translations of some of his poems are to be found in C. T. Wilson's Russian Lyrics (1887) and in J. Pollen's Rhymes from the Russian (1891). Among his best known poems are "Ismail-Bey," "Hadji Abrek," "Valerik," "The Novice" and, remarkable as an imitation of the old Russian bal lad, "The song of the tsar Ivan Vasilivitch, his young body-guard, and the bold merchant Kalashnikov." See Taillandier, "Le Poste du Caucase," in Revue des deux Mondes (Feb. 1855), reprinted in Allemagne et Russie (1856) ; Duduishkin's "Materials for the Biography of Lermontov," prefixed to the 1863 edition of his works; E. Duchesne, Michel Iourievitch Lermontov, sa vie et ses oeuvres (Iwo) ; The Demon, translated by A. C. Stephen (1875) and by E. Richter (Igto).