who, as we said, had the start of him in his literary career; but he never became his imitator. Lermontoff never entered, like Pushkin, into a compromise with the society in which he was compelled to live: till the day of his death he was in deadly conflict with it. The 14th of December 1825, which brought to a close the milder reign of Alexander, during which more liberal political aspirations had been permitted to grow up, and which inaugurated with a bloody act of vengeance the long and oppressive despotism of Nicholas, was a critical day for modern Russian life, as well as for its literature. Pushkin's literary career was then at its culminating point, while Lermontoff's was only just beginning. Alexander Herzen says: Nothing can show more forcibly the change which passed over the public mind in 1825 than a comparison of Pushkin with Lermontoff. Pushkin was frequently discontented, sad, wounded, and indignant, but nevertheless inclined to peace. He longed for it; he did not doubt its possibility. A chord of memory connecting him with the Emperor Alexander's régime was still vibrating in his heart. Lermontoff was so much accustomed to despondency and resistance, that he not only never sought to free himself from it, but did not even understand the possibility of making the attempt. Lermontoff never learned to hope; he did not acquiesce, simply because there was nothing which could have compensated him for his acquiescence; nor did he proudly offer, like Pestel and Ryleieff, his head to the executioner, for he was convinced of the uselessness of such a sacrifice; he gave up the struggle, and finally died without any great end before him. The sound of the pistol which destroyed Pushkin called Lermontoff's soul into life. He wrote a powerful ode, in which he exposed the mean intrigues which led to the fatal duel that caused Pushkin's death, -intrigues that had been fostered by literary ministers and journalistspies, exclaiming, Vengeance, emperor, vengeance !' This appeal, his only inconsistency, the poet had to expiate in exile in the year 1837. In 1841 the remains of Lermontoff were buried in a tomb at the foot of the Caucasus. None of those who heard thee understood what thou saidst before thine end. The deep and bitter sense of thy last words has been lost."'* Very fortunately that which Lermontoff wrote during the four last years of his life has not been lost. He belongs entirely to our generation. We, indeed, were too young to be sharers in the events of the 14th of December, but it awakened our political consciousness, and we saw the banishments and the executions which followed. Forced to silence, and to repress our tears, we learned to live inwardly and to brood over our thoughts in secret,-and what thoughts! No longer ideas of a civilising liberalism, of progress; but of doubt, negation, and fury. Accustomed to such emotions, Lermontoff could not, like Pushkin, take refuge in lyrics. In all his enjoyments, in all his fancies, Verses by Lermontoff on the death of Prince Odoieffski, one of those sentenced on the 14th of December. he was haunted by the shadow of scepticism. Something serious, even melancholy, was written on his brow, and runs through all his poems. But it was by no means mere abstract thought adorning itself with the flowers of poetry; no, the reflections of Lermontoff are his poetry-his strength and his torment. He had deeper sympathies with Byron than Pushkin ever had. It was his misfortune that he possessed too much penetration, and that he had the boldness to say much that was dangerous without disguise. Weak and irritable natures never pardon such sincerity. Lermontoff was spoken of as the spoiled child of an aristocratic house, as one of those idlers who die from satiety and ennui. People did not choose to see how much this man suffered, how he struggled before he ventured to speak out his thoughts. Men in general accept with greater indulgence bitterness and insults than a certain ripeness of mind,-than that isolation which sets itself free alike from the fears and hopes of the people at large, and dares to declare that it has done so. When Lermontoff left St. Petersburg for his second exile in the Caucasus, he was weary and exhausted. He said to his friends that he would seek death, and he kept his word.” The painful conflicts amid which his life was placed, the restraints put upon his genius and his fiery truth-loving mind, probably contributed largely to the irritability and peevishness of his temper; a disposition which entangled him more than once in quarrels, and even in several duels. One of these duels was punished by imprisonment in a fortress, and the last was the cause of his premature death at the age of thirty. To give some conception of his personal appearance, we may quote from Herr Bodenstedt the following account of his meeting with him: "It was at Moscow, in the winter of 1840-1, shortly before Lermontoff's last journey to the Caucasus, that I dined with Paul von Alsuvieff, a highly intellectual young Russian, at a French restaurant's much visited by the Muscovite boyards. During the dinner some acquaintances joined us; among them a young prince remarkably handsome, but of a somewhat limited understanding, though at the same time possessing so much good-humour that he permitted the others to ridicule him without resenting it. The easy wit, the sparkling intellect, the quick perception of exterior contrasts, in one word, the French esprit, is as familiar as the French language to the aristocratic Russians. We were already drinking champagne, and the lips of my companions were overflowing with jokes, both good and bad, when some of them suddenly exclaimed, Ah, Michael Turitsh!' to a young officer who entered, greeted Alsuvieff with a slight tap on his shoulder, and the young prince with a 'How do you do, you sly fox?' the rest of the party with a brief Good evening.' The new-comer was a man of gentlemanlike easy manners, middle height, and unusually elastic step. He stooped down for a cigar-case which he had dropped in taking out his pocket-handkerchief, and so showed a flexibility of figure which almost gave for the moment the impression that all his bones were broken, though his large chest and shoulders nevertheless showed them to be strong. The fair smoothly-combed hair, slightly curled at each side, left a remarkably high brow quite uncovered. The large thoughtful eye seemed in no way to participate in the satirical expression which played about his finely-cut mouth. He was evidently not in full uniform, a black handkerchief being tied carelessly round his neck, and the coat, from which the epaulettes were taken off, being only buttoned half-way, and leaving the brilliantly white linen visible. Until his arrival we had been talking French, and Alsuvieff introduced me to him in the same language. After a few hasty words, he sat down to dine with us. In speaking to the waiters he used expressions which, though common in the mouth of most Russians, were disagreeable to me in his mouth-for he was Michael Lermontoff. They were expressions which every foreigner soon learns to understand in Russia from hearing them daily and every where, but which no one of education (except a Greek or Turk, who is used to similar ones) would like to translate into his own language. Lermontoff, after having hurriedly eaten of some of the dishes and swallowed a few glasses of wine, at the same time not concealing his fine and well-kept hands, became very talkative; and what he said must have been exceedingly witty and comic, as he was several times interrupted by great laughter. I unfortunately did not understand it, having as yet too imperfect a knowledge of Russian to be able to follow him; I only observed that his wit was directed against various individuals, but that being several times decidedly rebuked by Alsuvieff, he thought it better to take the young prince exclusively for the butt of his sarcasms. The latter bore these observations for some time with his wonted good-nature; but at last, unable longer to endure it, he answered the hot-headed young man in a dignified way which proved that, in spite of his limited capacities, he was not without right feeling. Lermontoff seemed sincerely grieved to have offended the prince, who had been an old playfellow of his, and did all in his power to appease him, in which, indeed, he soon succeeded. I had known and loved Lermontoff from the first publication of his poems in 1840, but his manner and appearance on that evening were so little agreeable to me, that I felt no wish to know more of him. The first unpleasant impression, however, was soon to be followed by a better one. The very next evening, when I found him in the drawingroom of Madame von Momonoff, I saw him in his most amiable mood, --and he could be peculiarly amiable. If he gave himself up to another person, he did so with heart and soul, though perhaps this may rarely have occurred. He was bound by a close and steady friendship to the spirited Countess Rastoptshin, who consequently would be best able to give a full account of his character. People who did not know him sufficiently to overlook his weaknesses for the sake of his predominant excellencies mostly avoided him, because he was often carried too far by his satirical disposition; but he could likewise be good and gentle as a child; and, on the whole, a grave and even melancholy disposition was the prevailing one. This deep seriousness also formed the chief characteristic of his noble features, as well as of all his more important productions, to which the lighter and humorous poems stand in the same relation as did the sarcastic expression on his lips to his large thoughtful eyes. The Prometheus-like fate of Lermontoff many of his countrymen have shared; but from none of them did grief call forth similar pearls of tears to relieve the heart in life, and in death to crown the pale brow with a wreath of fame." Lermontoff must be placed among those who are par excellence called subjective poets; for his works reflect preeminently his own soul, its joys and sorrows, its hope and its despair. His heroes are parts of himself; in fact, his poems are his biography. This is, however, by no means to be understood as an intimation that he was deficient in all those qualities which distinguish the objective poet; on the contrary, several of his poems, particularly The Song of the Czar Iwan Wassiljewitsh, his young Lifeguardsman, and the bold Merchant Kalashnikoff, furnish ample proofs that he was fully capable of moulding figures quite independent of his own individuality. But he was one of those natures in whom all the chords that link them with their time vibrate so strongly that their creative power can rarely free itself from the influence of personal feelings, judgments, and reflections. These natures usually appear during the decay of old forms of society, in times of transition, of general scepticism, and of corrupt morals. In them the purer spirit of mankind seems to take refuge, and to make of them its mouthpiece. They criticise and doom the follies and vices of society by the disclosure of their own wounds, errors, and struggles on the one side; and, on the other, they heal, reconcile, and redeem this corrupt world by the insight they give into that beauty and ideal perfection of human nature of which genius always holds the secret. They generally blend in one the epic and the lyric element, action and reflection, narrative and satire. Barbier, and above all Lord Byron, are representatives of this class of poets; and both of these, as well as his countryman Pushkin, exercised a great influence over Lermontoff. From Pushkin he got the secret of Russian verse; with Byron he shared his scorn for society; from Barbier he learned the art of bitter satire and the iron strength of expression. But these influences by no means injured his originality; rather, on the contrary, did they give it more strength and finish. Striking in him is the realistic element, which, as we observed in writing on Pushkin, seems to form a chief feature in the literary character of the nation generally. With their lively impressionable natures, with their great power of observation, and the facility with which they assimilate the impres sions of others, the Russians seem qualified to develop preëminently that literary realism which tends to become the basis of all modern art. Lermontoff, wherever he directs his thoughts, stands on the firm ground of reality; and to this we owe the great precision, freshness, and truthfulness of the pictures in his epic poems, as well as the conscientious exactness in the lyric ones, which are always a true mirror of the dispositions of his mind. As he says himself in the introduction to Ismaïl Bey, one of his most beautiful poems, "And in this heart, erst dead so long, Of grief and passion to a song." Forced to serve in the army, which for so many years in vain struggled with the wild free-born tribes of the Caucasus, his mind became imbued with the elements of poetry there presenting themselves to his imagination. He sought relief in the solitude of the endless steppes, through which he was fond of galloping; in the grandeur of the mountain scenery, and in the uncivilised but chivalrous freedom of the beautiful race which peoples those countries. It is true, he threw himself heedlessly into the combat against the latter,-not, however, from any feeling of animosity or belief in the justice of the cause with which he was involuntarily identified, but merely because the excitement of battle did him good, because in it he found forgetfulness of his troubles, and because he did not much care for a life which he was unable to use in a nobler way. His predilection for the Circassian races is undeniable, and his most beautiful works prove this; for instance, the epic poem, which, in our opinion, is superior to all his other works, as well in the treatment of the subject itself as in the exquisite beauty of the pictures and the artistic finish of the whole. The poem is entitled Mtsiri, which means a novice living in a monastery, his vows yet unpronounced. The following is the outline of the narrative. A Russian general passes through Tiflis, carrying with him a Circassian boy, still quite a child. Ill and exhausted from the journey, he is left behind with the monks of a convent, who take care of him. The child is shy and wild as a mountain-goat, and at the same time tender as a reed. Proudly and silently does he bear his captivity, not a complaint escapes his lips, while he begins to fade away in mute grief. At last the tender care of a monk saves him; and though yet ever shy and serious, and often looking with sighs towards the east, he accustoms himself by degrees to the sounds of the foreign The German translator has changed this title into that of The Circassian Boy, which seems quite as well adapted to the subject. |