Lermontov

A Lermontov Reader, Edited and translated by Guy Daniels, Macmillan, New York (1965).

I picked up an old favorite of mine last night, a discovery from back in the old days of reading Russian literature, mainly up in Minneapolis, in my young twenties, while floundering as a Chem Physics student or an activist.

Among the big names—Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin—I would find references and seek them out in used book stores, and gathered quite a collection—maybe thirty books on a dozen different authors— some of which I read. Notable for me were Krylov and Lermontov. Lermontov is considered a 'romantic' poet; but what could that mean to someone?

I looked it up online right quick:

Of or pertaining to romance; involving or resembling romance; hence, fanciful; marvelous; extravagant; unreal; as, a romantic tale; a romantic notion; a romantic undertaking. [1913 Webster]—Dictionary.com, apparently quoting an old Webster's

What? I tried again:

4 a : marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized–Mirriam-Webster's Online Dictionary

Yuck. I could not survive as a literary critic. The little I've read of Lermontov I like because it gives voice to a tender homunculus I fancy is bound up in men, perhaps by artifice, perhaps by nature.

Below is an extraction of the Biographical Note at the front of the book.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born in Mosco on October 2 (O.S.) 1814. He entered Moscow University at age sixteen. Two year later, he suddenly left Moscow for St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the Cavalry Cadets' School. He was commissioned 'ensign' in the Life Guard Hussars in 1834, and began, so it would appear to lead a rather dissipated life. In 1837, Pushkin was killed in a duel and the younger poet wrote his famous accusatory poem, 'Death of a Poet,' for which he was court-martialed and 'exiled' to the combat zone in the Caucasus. The rest of his brief life was a whirlwind of activity: constant quarrels with the authorities, banishments, feats of bravery in battles, fleeting love affairs, and (miraculously) intensive literary work. In the summer of 1841, less than four years after Pushkin's death, his rightful successor met the same fate: he was killed in a duel.