Mihail J. Ljermontov

Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov (1814–1841) was one of the most important Russian writers of Romanticism. He was born on October 15, 1814 in Moscow, and grew up on his grandmother's estate. Already in his youth, he showed exceptional literary talent and was educated at Moscow University and at the military school in Saint Petersburg. His life was marked by strong feelings of loneliness, rebellion, and a critical attitude towards society.

He gained wider fame with the poem The Death of a Poet, written after the death of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. Due to his harsh criticism of the aristocracy, he was exiled to the Caucasus, whose landscapes and peoples strongly influenced his creativity. In his works, he dealt with the themes of freedom, fate, love, and the conflict between the individual and society.

Lermontov's most famous prose work is Hero of Our Time (1840), one of the first psychological novels in Russian literature. Among his important poetic works are Demon, Novich and numerous lyrical poems. He died on July 27, 1841, in a duel near Pyatigorsk. Despite his short life, he left a deep mark on Russian and world literature and is considered one of the greatest successors of Pushkin's literary tradition.