Characterization of Mtsyra in the light of Lermontov's romantic ideals

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The poem "Mtsyri" was not in vain called by the critic Belinsky Lermontov's favorite brainchild, emphasizing that the great poet reflected his cherished dreams and ideals in it. The poem is autobiographical in nature, contains subtle allusions to the personality and fate of the poet himself.

Author and hero

Yes, the author and his hero are spiritually close to each other. Characteristics of Mtsyri, the history of his life allow us to notice direct analogies. Like Lermontov, Mtsyri is a bright, extraordinary person, ready to challenge the whole world and rush into battle in the name of freedom and for the sake of finding the Motherland. Quiet, measured life in the monastery walls, endless fasting and prayer, complete humility and rejection of any resistance is not for a young novice. In the same way, Lermontov refused to drag out the miserable existence of a tame court poet, a sugary frequenter of balls and high-society living rooms. Mikhail Yuryevich hated the country of slaves and masters to the same extent as his Mtsyri stuffy cell and the whole way of monastic life. And both of them - the author and the fruit of his creation - were infinitely lonely, deprived of the happiness of beingwitnesses, to be close to a close, dear, beloved soul. The joy of true friendship, the sweetness of true, devoted, mutual love, the opportunity to live where the heart breaks - all this passed them by, poisoning the soul with the bitterness of disappointment and the pain of unfulfilled hopes.

Romantic features of the poem

The hero of the poem is a vivid embodiment of Lermontov's romantic worldview. In light of this, the characterization of Mtsyra, as well as the entire work, reflects the main features of this literary and artistic direction. The place of action in a romantic work is exotic countries, far from the shackles of civilization and its pernicious influence. For Lermontov, this is the Caucasus, which in his work has become a symbol of freedom. The life and customs of the highlanders, sometimes wild, incomprehensible to European consciousness, their tribal pride and militancy, a heightened sense of honor and dignity, the power and pristine beauty of the mountains and the entire Caucasian nature, captivated the poet in early childhood and won his heart for life. And according to a fatal game of chance, it was the Caucasus that became the second home of Mikhail Yuryevich, the place of his endless exiles and an inexhaustible source of creativity. So in the poem, the whole plot unfolds in Georgia, near the monastery, which stood at the confluence of the Aragva and Kura.

Mtsyra's characterization includes the motive of rejection, misunderstanding on the one hand and pride, disobedience, challenge, struggle on the other, which is also typical of romantic works. The protagonist of the poem considers the years spent in the monastery to be lost, lost, deleted fromlife. Confessing to an old monk who once left him, an emaciated child, saved him from physical death, but doomed him to spiritual death, for he could not become either a father or a friend to him, and so, telling about what he saw and did in the wild during escape, Mtsyri noted: he would not regret three lives in the monastery for the sake of one, filled with action, movement, struggle and freedom.

Monks will never understand a young man. They spend their lives humbly bowing their heads in prayer and hope in the Lord. The hero relies on himself, on his strengths and capabilities. An indicative characteristic of Mtsyra is that he escapes from his prison during a terrible thunderstorm, and the revelry of the elements pleases him, for him the storm is a sister, while the monks pray in horror for salvation. And the battle with the leopard, taken by Lermontov from mountain legends (also an element of romanticism - a connection with folklore) and Rustaveli's "The Knight in the Panther's Skin", and so brilliantly rethought and reworked, surprisingly organically fits into the content of the work and helps to reveal the best features of the young man's personality. Here is courage, and amazing courage, self-control, faith in one's strengths and capabilities and testing them for strength, a complete fusion of a proud, rebellious spirit with the same rebellious nature. Without the episode "Fight with the Leopard", the characterization of the hero Mtsyri would be incomplete, and his image itself would not be fully disclosed.

What else, besides freedom, does a young man dream of? First of all, find your family, hug your relatives, find yourself under the roof of your father's house. He dreams of his father and brothers, he remembers the echoes of a lullaby that his mother once sang. In his dreams, he sees smoke over his native village, hears the guttural speech of his people. In fact, this is what constitutes the basis, the spiritual core of every person: family, home, native language and native land. Take away one thing and the person will feel orphaned. And Mtsyri was deprived of everything - and immediately! But it is important for Lermontov that he saved his memories, kept them in himself as the most precious and intimate. Like Lermontov himself, he cherished in the depths of his heart the image of people's Russia with its boundless forests, rivers like seas and birch trees whitening on a hillock.

Hero and Time

Analysis of Lermontov's verse, analysis of his poem allow us to understand: it was not by chance that the author gave Mtsyri only three days of a bright, rich, full-blooded life. The time has not yet come for rebels of such a warehouse, just as the poet himself was far ahead of his era. Society, being in spiritual despondency after the defeat of the Decembrists and the death of Pushkin, in the rampant reaction could not rise to the fight. And rare loners like Mtsyri were doomed to death. After all, the hero of the time, the portrait of a whole generation of Lermontov's contemporaries, was not a mountain youth, but Pechorin, Grushnitsky, Dr. Werner - "superfluous people", disappointed in life or playing in those.

And yet, it was Mtsyri who became the embodiment of the romantic ideals of the poet, a symbol of a bright, purposeful personality who is ready to burn out in an instant, but brightly, and not smolder like a worthless firebrand for many years.