The mystery of the death of Mikhail Lermontov: Who had reasons to wish the death of the poet?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

176 years ago, July 27 (old style - July 15) 1841 was killed in a duel poet Mikhail Lermontov … Since then, the controversy has not ceased about what caused this murder, and who benefited from it. The poet's biographers put forward dozens of different versions - from mystical to political. There are so many secrets in this story that it is really very difficult to restore the true picture of events today.

The reason for the duel was the taunt that Lermontov said to his friend Nikolai Martynov in the presence of the ladies. The retired major loved to wear Caucasian clothes and amazed young ladies with a dagger that always hung from his belt. Lermontov advised Emilia Verzilina, to whom both felt sympathy, to be wary of this "highlander with a large dagger." He was not known as a bully and had never before participated in a duel, but this time he felt insulted and demanded satisfaction. In fact, Lermontov himself provoked the challenge to a duel.

Many of his contemporaries complained about Lermontov's bad character. They say he was called "poisonous reptile" behind his back. The joke about Martynov is far from the only and relatively harmless one. The poet was given the following description: “He was capricious and nervous in character. At times he is obliging to the point of cloying and amiable, now he is absent-minded, indifferent and inattentive. He was sometimes cheerful, sometimes sad. He could be silent for hours, and when they turned to him, they received bile and sarcasm in response."

Some believed the duel was a cover for a planned assassination. During the Soviet era, the most popular version was the political "order" - allegedly Lermontov was shot by order of the chief of gendarmes Benkendorf or Nicholas I himself. They wrote that the poet was expelled from St. Petersburg by order of the emperor himself, that in Pyatigorsk he was watched by gendarmes, and the duel was probably not random. Other researchers agreed that Lermontov's fate was a foregone conclusion long before the duel, and the enemies were only looking for an excuse to set one of his acquaintances against the poet.

However, the version of "the deliberate murder of Lermontov by agents of Nicholas I" can hardly be considered sufficiently reasoned. The emperor really called the poem "Death of a Poet" "shameless freethinking, more than criminal" and sent the poet to the Caucasus into the active army, he had reasons for dissatisfaction, but not for hatred, and even more so for murder. The attempt to present the poet as a victim of autocracy looks too far-fetched. Lermontov was unlikely to be so dangerous for the emperor that he resorted to the most extreme measures.

Supporters of the version of a planned murder also put forward the assumption that there was someone third in the duel, a hired killer who lurked in the bushes and shot at the poet from below. The reason for this explanation is the unusual nature of Lermontov's injury: the bullet passed from bottom to top at an angle of 35 degrees. However, Martynov's shot sounded right after the poet raised his hand and fired into the air. From recoil, he could deviate a little back, and then the bullet could really enter at such an angle.

Another version of Lermontov's death is suicide disguised as murder. Some researchers are sure that the poet himself was looking for death as a kind of deliverance from the life that weighed upon him. Therefore, he deliberately provoked Martynov into a quarrel and a challenge to a duel. Before the fatal shot, Lermontov was calm, he did not use his right of a duelist and with the words "I will not shoot this fool" raised his hand up and fired into the air. And as if deliberately exposed himself to Martynov's bullet. In a duel with de Barant in 1840, he also fired into the air. He had a presentiment of his early death and seemed to be waiting for it, as evidenced by the prophetic lines of many of his poems. Lermontov's biographers claim that all his life he was obsessed with a passion for self-destruction and more than once put himself at risk. And they conclude that the poet himself planned and organized his own execution.

Some see mysticism in the death of the poet, calling his death the last in a series of deaths of the "accursed family" of the Lermontovs. Allegedly, none of them lived to a ripe old age and died a natural death. His grandfather, because of unhappy love, committed suicide by drinking a glass of "some rubbish", his mother died at the age of 21 from consumption, his father died at the age of 44. And with the death of Mikhail Yuryevich, this unfortunate family was cut short. Mysticism was also seen in the mirror dates of the poet's birth and death - 1814 and 1841, drawing parallels with the tragic events in the history of the whole country that happened a century later at the same time.

Perhaps so many versions arose simply because fans of the great poet's work still find it difficult to believe that a harmless joke could cause a fatal duel and end Lermontov's life at the age of 26. There are many secrets associated with the poet's name. Mysteries of Lermontov's portraits: what did the poet really look like?