The Demon / Демон. Книга для чтения на английском языке

The Demon / Демон. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov

Русская классическая литература на иностранных языках (Каро)

Предлагаем вниманию читателей сборник произведений великого русского писателя и поэта М. Ю. Лермонтова. В книгу вошли поэмы «Демон», «Мцыри», «Песня про купца Калашникова» и избранные стихотворения, написанные автором в период с 1831 по 1841 гг.

Mikhail Lermontov

The Demon

В© РљРђР Рћ, 2019

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M.В Y. Lermontov

(1814–1841)

When we think of Lermontov, we see in our minds a huge mountain-peak somewhere in the heart of the Caucasus. Eternal silence reigns in its clefts and gorges. Its mass of ice and stone looks a picture of gloomy solitude. It seems to be indifferent to the turmoil of life. Still, there is boiling lava deep in its heart. Time and again it shakes from the fury of compressed inner forces. On its bare stony body little trees with lacy foliage climb higher and higher; and when the world is in bloom, winds laden with fragrance blow on its ragged brow, bringing the lure of distant lands.

Such is the poet Lermontov. This is, perhaps, why he loved the Caucasus all his life.

He is the most tragic of the Russian poets. From his very boyhood he was full of disdain for humanity, whose life he thought shallow, empty, and ugly; at the same time, he was irresistibly attracted by this very meaningless life. He cherished the ideal of a demon, a proud, lonely, and powerful superhuman creature challenging peaceful virtues and conventional happiness; at the same time he was fiercely craving for mortal love and sunlit human happiness, the absence of which filled his heart with pain. He had a cool and strong intellect, a power of analysis and criticism which revealed the futility of endeavor in this world and dictated an attitude of bored aloofness; at the same time he was torn by mad passions prompting him to the most unreasonable actions. He was inclined to protest, to repudiate, to curse, and almost without noticing he drifted into a prayer or saw the vision of an angel singing his quiet song over В«a world of grief and tearsВ».