Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - III
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as he lies there before the battle begins, with the white
tents of the camp stretched out before his eyes, while
the Cossack horses, small and thin, stand with hanging
heads by his side. We feel the sun burn, catch a glimpse
of the Cossack sentinels, two by two, in the distance,
hear the first bullets and the first cries. And the more
thoroughly we become acquainted with Lermontof as a
man and as an author, the dearer he becomes to us.
It is emblematical that his life was a series of slights
and exiles in a land where, as he himself has somewhere
said, “no one comes forward, except those who go
backward.” His poetry produces its effect by its strong
personal originality. He began, like all Russian authors,
under foreign influences, particularly the German
romanticism of terror, — a work of his youth has the title
Menschen und Leidenschaften; afterwards, like the Poles
and Pushkin, he looks up to Byron as the great poet of
the age; but, although he dies so very young, younger
even than Shelley, his manly and proud face stands out
before us with pure and distinct features.
He was too much occupied with his own thoughts and
his own affairs to be able to unfold the broad Russia to
our gaze; he was a revolutionary romanticist, but still
a romanticist. Shortly after him, or at the same time
with him, new influences had begun to exert a force in
Russian literature and intellectual life, which were
destined to displace him and Pushkin.
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