Mcyri

Georgian folklore also had a significant influence on the poem. The Caucasian material in the poem is saturated with folklore motifs. Thus, the central episode of "Mtsyri" - the hero's battle with a leopard - is based on motifs of Georgian folk poetry, in particular the Khevsurian song about the tiger and the young man, a theme which is also reflected in Shota Rustaveli's poem "The Knight in Tiger Skin".

Belinsky writes of the poem: "What a fiery soul, what a mighty spirit, what a giants' nature this Mtsyri has! This is our poet's favorite ideal, this reflection in poetry of the shadow of his own personality. In everything Mtsyri says, his own spirit reeks, it strikes him with its own power."

Creation history

Autograph of the poem "Mtsyri" (1st page)

The plot of the poem was taken by Lermontov from Caucasian life. There is evidence of A. P. Shan-Girey and A. A. Khastatov about the origin of the idea of the poem, set out in the story of the first biographer of the poet P. A. Viskovatov. According to this story, Lermontov himself heard the story, which later formed the basis of the poem. During his first exile to the Caucasus in 1837, wandering along the old Georgian Military Road, he "came across... a lonely monk in Mtskheta... Lermontov... learned from him that he was a mountaineer who was captured as a child by General Yermolov... The general took him with him and left the sick boy with a monastery brotherhood. He grew up there; he could not get used to the monastery for a long time; he longed for it and made attempts to flee to the mountains. The consequence of one such attempt was a long illness that brought him to the edge of the grave...". This interesting story impressed Mikhail Yurievich and probably served as an impetus for the creation of "Mtsyri".

Nowadays it is impossible to establish how reliable the information reported by Viskovatov is. However, the story described in the poem could very well have happened in reality. The capture of mountaineer children by Russians during the Caucasian War was quite common. Lermontov may also have known of another such example: the unhappy fate of Russian artist Pyotr Zakharov, a Chechen by nationality who as a young boy was taken prisoner by the Russians and taken by the same general A. Yermolov. S. Stepanov noted in this connection in 2004: "Nowadays many people (and we) believe that Pyotr Zakharov was the prototype of Lermontov's Mtsyri"[3].

Georgian folklore also had a significant influence on the poem. The Caucasian material in the poem is saturated with folklore motifs. Thus, the central episode of "Mtsyri" - the hero's battle with a leopard - is based on motifs of Georgian folk poetry, in particular the Khevsurian song about the tiger and the young man, a theme which is also reflected in Shota Rustaveli's poem "The Knight in Tiger Skin".

At first the poem was titled "Beri" with a note: "Beri, in Georgian monk." The epigraph to the work was also different. It originally read: "On n'a qu'une seule patrie" ("Everyone has only one fatherland"), but later it was changed by Lermontov to lines from chapter 14 of the 1st Book of Kings: "Tasting little honey, and behold I die". This biblical saying carries the symbolic meaning of violation. The title was also changed by the poet, and in the collection "Poems of M. Lermontov" the poem was included under the title "Mtsyri", which better reflected the essence of the work. In Georgian, the word "mtsiri" (Gruz. მწირი) has a double meaning: in the first, "novice", "monk not serving", and in the second, "stranger", "foreigner", who arrived voluntarily or brought forcibly from a foreign land, a lone person without relatives, loved ones.

In addition to the epigraph and title, Lermontov reworked the content of the work. In particular, the poet excluded several fragments from the original edition. Some of the verses the writer, apparently, was forced to cross out for censorship reasons. For example, the lines in which Mtsyryri reproaches God for "having given him a prison instead of a homeland" were removed. Among other things, Lermontov removed from the work the lines that contained a description of the Highlanders - Mtsyri's compatriots, including his father, who appeared to the hero in his delirium as menacing horsemen, fighting for their freedom.

The poem was finally finished by the author, according to a note on the cover of Lermontov's notebook: "1839 August 5". A year later it was printed and became one of the two poems (the other was The Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilievich, the Young Oprichnik and the Merchant Kalashnikov) that were included in his lifetime collection of poems.

Plot

Where, merging, making noise,

Embraced, as if two sisters,

Streams of the Aragva and Kura,

There was a monastery.

The basis of the poem - the tragic story of the Highlander boy, who was captured by a Russian general. He took him with him, but the dear child fell ill. The monks of a nearby monastery took pity on the little prisoner and left him to live in the cloister, where he grew up. So the young Mtsyri was doomed to a life away from his homeland and "away from the sunlight," which seemed to him like a life of a prisoner. The boy longed for his homeland all the time. Gradually, however, it was as if he had become accustomed to "captivity," learned a foreign language, was ready to accept a different tradition where he seemed to feel at home, had been baptized and was about to take a monastic vow. And at that very moment, as if from within the consciousness of a seventeen-year-old boy, something else arises, a powerful psychic impulse that makes him decide to flee. Mtsyri, taking advantage of the moment, escapes from the monastery. He runs to no one knows where. The sense of will gives the young man back even that which, it would seem, was taken away forever by captivity: the memory of his childhood. He recalls his native speech, his native village, and the faces of his loved ones - his father, sisters and brothers.

Analysis and Reviews

In the poem "Mtsyri" the action unfolds in the Caucasus, which entered the literary heritage of Mikhail Yurievich as a territory of endless freedom and wild liberty, where a man confronts the forces of nature that are known to surpass him, a space of endless adventure, battle with nature and battle with himself.

Mtsyri" reflects the usual Lermontovian motifs associated with the romantic hero's flight from his homeland, where he is not understood or recognized, to distant unknown lands. But the situation develops in reverse order: the hero flees not from his homeland, but to a homeland that is mysterious and unknown to him, since he was taken from there too young, and his memory has almost no memories of it.

"Mtsyri" as a romantic poem about the rebel hero had its predecessors in literature. In "Mtsyri" one can guess the influence of the poem "Chernets" (1825) by I. I. Kozlov, written in the form of a lyrical confession of a young monk. Despite the superficial similarity of the plots, the works have different ideological content. The connection with the Decembrist literature and the poetry of Johann Wolfgang Goethe is discernible. Besides, "Mtsyri" repeats many thoughts and individual poems from Lermontov's earlier poems, in particular "Confessions" and "Boyar Orsha".

The Confession of Mtsyri, by L. O. Pasternak, 1891

Many of Lermontov's contemporaries were reminded of another poem, Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, translated by Zhukovsky. Belinsky wrote that the verse "Mtsyri" "sounds and falls jerkingly, like the blow of a sword striking its victim. Its elasticity, energy and sonorous, monotonous fall are in amazing harmony with the concentrated feeling, the indestructible strength of the mighty nature and the tragic position of the hero of the poem."[6] But Byron's hero is opposed to the world and hates people. Lermontov's hero, on the other hand, aspires to people.

A special place in the poem is given to nature. Here it is not just a picturesque background, but an effective force, embodying formidable danger. And at the same time it brings the joy of enjoying its unique beauty, wild freedom, and allows the hero to fully express himself. In it - the greatness and beauty absent in human society.

The image of the monastery in the poem is a symbol of reality, hostile to natural naturalness and simplicity, which Mtsyri opposes. Lermontov's position is defined by the assertion that man's nature is the pledge of possible harmony, while society, on the contrary, is the source of disharmony. The problematics of the poem anticipates a typical Tolstoyian literary situation: the idea of simple patriarchal life as a social norm and the tragic inability of the hero to realize his aspiration for it.

"Mtsyri" is written in iambic iambic quadratus with exclusively male rhyme.

The work received the most praise from the poet's contemporaries and literary critics. Memories of reading "Mtsyri" by the author himself have survived.

It is described by A. Muravyev in his book "Acquaintance with Russian Poets" (Kiev, 1871, p. 27): "I happened once, - writes A. Muravyev, - in Tsarskoe Selo to catch his best moment of inspiration. On a summer evening I went to him and found him [Lermontov] at his desk, with a flaming face and fiery eyes, which were especially expressive of him. "What is the matter with you?" I asked. "Sit down and listen," he said, and in the same minute, in a burst of rapture, he read to me, from beginning to end, the whole magnificent poem of Mtsyri ... which had just poured out from under his inspired pen ... No story had ever made such a strong impression on me."

It is also known that Lermontov, on his name day, May 9, 1840 in Moscow, "read by heart to Gogol and others who happened to be here, an extract from his new poem Mtsyr, and they say he read it very well".

Belinsky writes of the poem: "What a fiery soul, what a mighty spirit, what a giants' nature this Mtsyri has! This is our poet's favorite ideal, this reflection in poetry of the shadow of his own personality. In everything Mtsyri says, his own spirit reeks, it strikes him with its own power."