POGIB POET

(This is the final entry of a triptych on the great Russian poets Pushkin, Mayakovsky, and Lermontov.)

The title of this entry is taken from the famous poem by Mikhail Lermontov, written in commemoration of the death of Pushkin, the greatest Russian national treasure, tragically killed in a duel. Its author, a colossal genius in his own right, repeated Pushkin’s fate at the incredibly young age of twenty-six, yet in the course of his pitifully short life he managed to rise to the height of the second tallest peak of the Russian literature, both as an endearing romantic poet and as an exceptional author of deeply psychological prose. (Mind you, the first ever description of the deadliest version of the so-called Russian Roulette, belongs to his eerie story The Fatalist, which is a part of his novel Hero of Our Time.)

While he was alive, Lermontov had numerous admirers of his precocious talent, but even more sworn enemies. His was an angry and bitter genius much akin to the tragic hero of his famous long poem The Demon. “I am better than I appear,” Lermontov says about himself, and he is absolutely right. There is a vulnerable good and kind genius underneath the protective façade of an abrasive and wicked offender which appeared to all those who either did not know him well enough, or were not sensitive enough to the wounded soul of his poetry.

There is a telling story about his second and fatal duel, in which, like in the first, he deliberately shot away from his opponent, but this time his foe, whom Lermontov’s wicked personal satire had turned into the butt of every joke, was intent on shooting to kill. Having said that, I am not totally averse to thinking that Lermontov may have played the role of his own fatalistic character, with a death wish at that, eerily assuming that being tragically killed at such a young age was doubly assuring him of historical immortality.

Thus, at the tender age of twenty-six, died one of Russia’s most promising geniuses. A great romantic poet, a prodigiously skillful playwright, a writer of exceptional psychological prose, a true artist,--- he was one of those incredibly fragile beautiful flowers that needed very special tender and loving care, and did not get it. Once again did Russia mistreat one of her best, only to recognize him as one of her greatest just a few years after his tragic and totally preventable physical departure from this world.

(More on this unusual poetic troika will be found in my future entry on… Mikhail Bulgakov.)