After Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) is best known in the West today as the author of the novel A Hero of Our Time. But at the time of his death, aged only 26, he was widely regarded as Russia's greatest living poet. He achieved almost instant fame in 1837 with On the Death of a Poet', his tribute to Pushkin - whose death in a duel foreshadowed Lermontov's own. Over the course of the next four years he wen...