Mikhail Lermontov - Russian Literature Greatest Writer

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Lermontov started to take seriously his poetic mission. He wanted to have an earlier retirement so he can begin a literary career. Although he wanted to retire earlier, authorities would not allow him to do it. He for some reason was not eligible for awards. In 1841 an incident occurred in a ball launched by Alexandra Vorontsov, where Lermontov involuntarily ignored the Tsar’s two daughters and this caused concerns among their family and high military ranks. Besides this, Lermontov went to this ball and he did not report it to his commanding officer, for this reason they ordered that Lermontov will have to leave the city in 24 hours and join Caucasus regimen.

Private Life

I believe that some of his stories were influenced by the way Lermontov lived his private life. He was very romantic and most of the time he was struggling with strong passions. In some of his verses he showed that he was exaggerating his emotional fights and some people say his real life adventures were misleading. When he was 10 years old he fell in love. When he was 15 he wrote about this love story taking it seriously. Lermontov stated in his diary "Some people, like Byron, think early love is akin to the soul prone to fine arts, but I suppose this is the sign of soul that's got much music in it". Later on at the age of 16, he fell in love with Yekaterina Sushkova, who once described him saying, “Assigned to be my 'errand boy' he was carrying my hat, umbrella and gloves, leaving them behind from time to time... Both Sashenka and I, while giving him credit for his intelligence, still treated him like a baby which drove him mad. Trying to be perceived as a serious young man, he recited Pushkin and Lamartine and never parted with a huge volume of Byron."

At the age of 16 also, he fell in love with another 16-year-old girl called Varvara Lopukhina. She also loved him; however, her parents obligated her to marry a 37-year-old richer man. For this reason Lermontov was heartbroken.

When he was 20, he met his old love Yekaterina again. However, Lermontov wanted to have revenge. He wanted to seduce her and then leave her behind and devastated by the eyes of everybody.

For all of these passionate love stories, Lermontov earned a reputation of womanizer.

When reading about Lermontov’s love life, I discovered that his real love was for Lopukhina and she was the main inspiration of some of his novels. For example, the two characters in A Hero of Our Time, Princess Vera and Mary, are inspired in her.

Works

Although his literary career just lasted six years, he left a big legacy. He just published one collection of poems. He began writing poetry when he was just 13 years old. He wrote more than 30 large poems and more than 600 minor poems. His poetry was mainly divided into two branches – the Russian Middle Age history and the Caucasus. It is also important to mention that Lermontov also wrote some poems considered pornographic that circulated in manuscripts; they were not allowed for younger upper-class women. These types of poems were only written once. I just found this interesting because I did not know this before. He also wrote a novel, A Hero of Our Time, and 5 dramas.

A Hero of Our Time includes five linked stories and one of them is Princess Mary. The one I am interested in. In this story we can clearly see that Pechorin inclines toward the romantic stereotype. We already know that a romantic work is the one that rejects the reality of society and is guided by a higher purpose such as the nature or the natural world. It also implies emotion. However, we can also see that Lermontov changes a little the romantic stereotype with Pechorin. After reading Princess Mary, one can clearly see that Pechorin has the characteristics of a romantic hero; however, he doesn’t possess a heroic status and the sympathy of the audience. In my opinion, it was not good what Pechorin did to Grushnitsky, Mary and Vera because he shows no compassion for his fellows; he cannot act selflessly. Maybe this was what Lermontov wanted just to change the romantic stereotype. Lermontov uses Pechorin to give importance to the nature as well. He shows metaphoric comparisons to nature. For example, he wrote in A Hero of Our Time, “There is no feminine gaze that I would not forget at the sight of mountains covered with curly vegetation, and illumined by the southern sun, at the sight of the blue sky, or at the sound of a torrent that falls from crag to crag”. The main romantic characteristics that he shows in Princess Mary is the awareness that Pechorin had about himself and the natural world that surrounds him; he is always looking how he will benefit his personal interests. Pechorin is free from societal constraints. However, he abuses of it crushing those people around him – showing the realities of humanity. For example, he uses princess Mary as a pawn to attack men that he considers unworthy, he also uses Vera as a pawn to stroke his ego. He refers to women as his. He, for example, says to Grushnitski in Princess Mary, “…my Mary is a very charming gir”. By saying this I believe that he talks about women as if they were objects; he makes them inferior as men. What I also found interesting from Princess Mary is that Lermontov does not allow the characters in the novel to judge Pechorin as he probably is judged by most of the readers. For all these reasons, I believe that Lermontov wanted to change the way the world is view in romanticism. He wanted the reader to stop viewing the world through rose-colored glasses and see the realism of the moral and societal consequences from Pechorin’s actions; therefore Lermontov wanted to give his protagonists like Pechorin a tragic character defects to capture reader’s attention.

As I said before, I believe that everything that surrounds the writer affects what he writes. In fact, we could see previously that Lermontov many times considered suicide and in consequence many of the protagonists in his stories end up committing suicide. Some people described Lermontov as a person who would say frivolous jokes and that was how he gained some of his enemies. Lermontov did not have a easy life. Maybe everything that happened to him shaped his personality that way. Due to this, he also shaped the protagonists in his stories that way. He wanted to change the romanticism stereotype because he wanted everybody to see real life. He made Pechorin the way he was because Lermontov was womanizer as well. He had a clear method of showing his ideas, Lermontov would try them again and again until he would find the perfect setting and proper place for them.

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