Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814–1841) was born in Moscow and raised largely by his grandmother on her estate at Tarkhany. He studied at Moscow University, then trained as a cavalry officer in St Petersburg and was commissioned in the Life-Guard Hussars. His poem on the death of Pushkin (1837) made him famous and led to his exile to the Caucasus, where he served again in 1840.

Lermontov wrote lyrics, narrative poems such as The Demon and Mtsyri, and the novel A Hero of Our Time. He was killed in a duel at Pyatigorsk in 1841, aged twenty-six. The Demon, begun in his teens and revised over many years, was finished in 1839 and first published abroad in 1856. The version here is by Francis Storr (1894), in rhymed couplets.