A Hero of Our Time

About the Author and the Translator

MIKHAIL YURIEVICH LERMONTOV was born in 1814. After his mother’s death in 1817, he was separated from his father and brought up at the estate of his aristocratic grandmother. Educated at home, he twice made journeys to the Caucasus and then studied in Moscow University Pension for the Nobility and the University (1830-32), although without sitting examinations. He then entered St. Petersburg Guards’ School and began writing poetry and autobiographical dramas in prose. In 1834 he was made an officer in the Guards Hussars. On Pushkin’s death in 1837, Lermontov was arrested for a poem of invective against court circles, The Death of a Poet, and was consequently expelled from the Guards and sent to the army in the Caucasus. When he returned to the capital he became involved in a duel and in 1840 was banished again to the Caucasus. He was twice cited for bravery, but the tsar refused to give him the award. On leave in 1841, hoping to retire and devote himself to literature, he was ordered back to the forces. He was challenged to a duel by another officer over a trivial insult and was killed on the spot. Lermontov is renowned as the one true Romantic poet produced by Russia and the one who reflected most strongly the current trend of Byronism. Many of his poems were set to music—Borodino and The Cossack Lullaby became popular songs and The Demon was made into an opera by A. Rubenstein. His other poems include The Novice, The Prayer, Novgorod, The Prophet, and My Country. Lermontov greatly influenced Dostoevsky and Blok, while Tolstoy and Chekhov regarded his prose as a model.

NATASHA RANDALL has published translations of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (shortlisted for the 2008 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize) and Osip Mandelstam’s poetry, as well as the work of contemporary writers Arkady Dragomoshchenko, Alexander Skidan, and Olga Zondberg. She is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times and lives in London.

NEIL LABUTE is a filmmaker and playwright whose work includes In the Company of Men and The Shape of Things. He lives in Chicago.