Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841)

I have just returned from a conference in Montreal after defending my dissertation, and have just finished moving to a new apartment to stop my job at Ohio Wesleyan so I have not written for a while. But I have just finished reading a nice little book A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, a Russian poet and near contemporary of Pushkin. It is a short novel set in the Caucasus like the picture above. Composed of various narratives concerning an unfeeling Russian dandy. However, Lermontov like Pushkin died in a duel. Here is an eerily prescient poem he wrote shortly before dying:



The Dream


In noon's heat, in a dale of Dagestan
With lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;
The deep wound still smoked on; my blood
Kept trickling drop by drop away.


On the dale's sand alone I lay. The cliffs
Crowded around in ledges steep,
And the sun scorched their tawny tops
And scorched me -- but I slept death's sleep.


And in a dream I saw an evening feast
That in my native land with bright lights shone;
Among young women crowned with flowers,
A merry talk concerning me went on.


But in the merry talk not joining,
One of them sat there lost in thought,
And in a melancholy dream
Her young soul was immersed -- God knows by what


And of a dale in Dagestan she dreamt;
In that dale lay the corpse of one she knew;
Within his breast a smoking wound shewed black,
And blood coursed in a stream that colder grew.