LERMONTOFF, lyWinOn-tof, MIKHAIL Yu RYEVITCJI (1814-41). The greatest Russian poet after Pushkin. He lost his parents at an early age and was reared by his grandmother. After a few years' sojourn in the Caucasus, he entered in 1828 the school for nobles attached to the Moscow University, and in 1830 the university, from which he was expelled in 1832 for miscon duct. He then entered a military school at Saint Petersburg and became an officer of the Imperial Guard Hussars in 1834. A poem written in 1837 after Pushkin's death, "On the Death of a Poet," in which he openly reproached the courtiers for Pushkin's death, so displeased Nicholas I. that he sent him to serve in the Army of the Caucasus as an ensign. Pardoned in IS38. he returned to Saint Petersburg, but. in 1840, after a duel with Ba rante, son of the FrenclA Ambassador, he was again sent to the Caucasus. Here he was killed in a duel by his comrade Martynoff, who thought him self described in Grushnitski, a character in Lermontoff's Hero of Our Time. A purely sub jective poet, he was alone in society, little under stood by his friends, who always feared him and sometimes hated him for his merciless ridicule and stinging satire. He was the Byron of Russia, and in striving after intellectual heights he breathed freely away from 'loathsome so ciety' in the high regions of the Caucasus, which produced an indelible impression on him in his childhood. lermontoff began one of Ins best longer poems, "The Demon." when barely fifteen,
and continued rewriting it until his death; yet careful study reveals little difference in the power of its various drafts. His fame spread like wildfire after the ill-starred "On the Death of a Poet," and when, a short time later, he pub lished his "Song of the Merchant Kalashnikoff," he was easily at the head of the Russian poets. This is the finest specimen of its kind in Rus sian literature—an artistic production, faithfully preserving the spirit and form of the folk song. Besides various dramatic and epic works, he wrote a great number of lyric poems. The /len, of Our Time, a prose novel consisting of live separate sketches, appeared with a preface in 1841, but installments of it were originally pub lished in a periodical during 1s:30-40. The novel is of some autobiographical value. The best editions of Lermontotf's works art' those by 1'. A. Viskovatoff (1591), A. 1. Vvedyenski I I slit 1. and I. M. Bolda koff (1591). 7'he Hero of nur Time was translated into English by Pulski (1854), anonymously (1854 ), and, with a bio graphical sketch. by Ivan Nestor-Sehnurmann (Cambridge University Press, 1599). The Circas sian Boy (Mtsyri). translated by S. S. Conant (Boston, 1875) ; and The Demon, translated kr Stephen ( London. 1875). F. F. Fiedler's ilerman translations of Lermontott's poems are remark able for their fidelity to the original.