Mikhail Lermontov.
RUSSIA'S GREAT ROMANTIC POET.
Born: October 3, 1814, Moscow.
Died: July 15, 1841, Pyatigorsk.
Mikhail Lermontov was descended from George Learmont, a Scottish officer who entered the Russian service in the early seventeenth century. His literary fame began with a poem on the death of Pushkin, full of angry invective against the court circles. For this Lermontov, a Guards officer, was court-martialed and temporarily transferred to the Caucasus.
With the conspicuous exception of The Angel (1831), the best of his poetry was written during the last five years of his life. The Last House-warming (1840), in which he protests against the transfer of Napoleon's body from St. Helena to the Invalides, is an example of his rhetorical power.
He was killed in a duel at the age of twenty-seven.
Here are three samples of his poems translated into English.
The Beggar (1830)
By gates of an abode, blessed,
A man stood, asking for donation,
A beggar, cruelly oppressed
By hunger, thirst and deprivation.
He asked just for a peace of bread,
And all his looks were full of anguish,
And was a cold stone laid
Into his stretched arm, thin and languished.
Thus I prayed vainly for your love,
With bitter tears, pine and fervor,
Thus my best senses, that have thrived,
Were victimized by you forever!
Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, October, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, May, 2001
Loneliness (1830)
It's Hell for us to draw the fetters
Of life in alienation, stiff.
All people prefer to share gladness,
And nobody - to share grief.
As a king of air, I'm lone here,
The pain lives in my heart, so grim,
And I can see that, to the fear
Of fate, years pass me by like dreams;
And comes again with, touched by gold,
The same dream, gloomy one and old.
I see a coffin, black and sole,
It waits: why to detain the world?
There will be not a sad reflection,
There will be (I am betting on)
Much more gaily celebration
When I am dead, than - born.
Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, November, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, May, 2001
"No, Not with You..." (1841)
No, not with you I fell in love so fast,
And not for me your beauty is succeeding;
I love in you my suffering preceding,
And youth of mine, that perished in the past.
And when sometimes my look is long and hard,
And penetrates your eyes of high perfection;
I'm busy with a secret conversation,
But not to you I send my words of heart.
To my youth's girl, my word of soul flies,
In features yours, I seek for other dears,
In lips alive -- the lips, so mute for years,
In eyes -- the flame of the extinguished eyes.
Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, May, 1998
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, May, 2001
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