I have an inborn urge to contradict; my whole life has been a mere chain of sad and futile opposition to the dictates of either heart or reason.
A Hero of Our Time
On October 15th, 2014 Russia is marking the 200th anniversary of a great Russian romantic writer, poet and painter Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov.
Lermontov was born in Moscow on 15th October 1814. At the age of three his mother died and he was sent to live with his grandmother on her estate in Penzenskaya province. In 1827 the family moved to Moscow and attended boarding school. There he began to write poetry and study painting. Lermontov, like many other young writers at the time, was influenced heavily by English poet Lord Byron, as was shown by his first two poems Cherkesy and Kavkazsky Plennik (1928).
In 1830 Lermontov entered Moscow University. Students regularly discussed political and philosophical problems and it was in this atmosphere that Lermotov wrote a number of longer, narrative poems and dramas.
In 1832 he left Moscow and entered cadet school in St. Petersburg.
Upon his graduation in 1834 he was appointed to the Life-Guard Hussar Regiment stationed at Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin), close to St. Petersburg. In 1840 he was exiled to Caucases following a duel with the son of the French ambassador at St. Petersburg. However, in 1841 he was allowed to return in order to spend some time with his grandmother.
Views of Caucases by M.Lermontov
Lermontov died during a duel with a fellow officer in 1842. He was only twenty six years of age but had still shown himself to be a gifted poet, writer, and playwright who would go on inspire a number of other Russian artists.