Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov is the genius of the Russian poem. Much is known about his life and work, much less about his mother and father. Lermontovās parents are not a simple fate. Their life path and love were quite tragic.
Portraits of father and mother M. Yu. Lermontov
It is known what the names of Lermontovās parents were, that they belonged to the nobility. Only a few portraits of unknown artists have survived to the present. In the paintings, a thin girl, painful and surprisingly sad, and a young man are Lermontov's parents. Portraits left a memory of how these people were who gave the world a great poet.
Maria Mikhailovna Arsenyeva (Lermontova)
The mother of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov - the only daughter of Elizabeth Alekseevna and Mikhail Vasilyevich Arsenyev - was born on March 17, 1795. The girl was a fragile, sickly child. Having survived the death of her father at age 15 , she increasingly went into reading books and playing music. As people who knew her noted in her memoirs, she was pleased to read sentimental novels that brought up amazing dreaminess in her and disturbed the imagination of a young girl.
Maria Mikhailovna was very musical: she played the clavichord and performed sensitive romances, the words of which she wrote to herself in albums, there were also sentimental elegy about love and separation, friendship and betrayal, French acrostic. We can say that Maria Mikhailovna was an ordinary provincial young lady, one of those about whom it is written in many novels. In Tarkhany, the family estate of Maria Mikhailovna, they remembered her as a man of amazingly kind and sympathetic. They said that a thin, pale lady walked around the peasant houses and helped people.
The love of Maria Mikhailovna Arsenyeva (Lermontova)
A characteristic feature of the sensitive nature of Maria Mikhailovna was emotional tension, expressed in impetuosity: the girl always sought to defend her desires, to prove her innocence, sometimes even contrary to the opinion of relatives.
It happened when the future parents of Lermontov, the great poet, met. Maria Mikhailovna met the recently retired, young, handsome officer Yuri Petrovich Lermontov. Firm in her decisions, Maria Mikhailovna immediately stated that this was exactly the person she was looking for, that he should become her chosen one. Future parents of Lermontov fell in love with each other. Their biography is intertwined.
Relatives strongly opposed this marriage, and there were reasons for this: being descendants of the Stolypin, the Arsenyevs were proud of their noble family, their condition allowed them to have important connections at court. All this did not allow the mother to happily agree to the marriage of her daughter and Yuri Petrovich. But, despite this, the future parents of Lermontov did not give up.
Yuri Petrovich Lermontov
Lermontov's father, Yuri Petrovich, although he was a nobleman, but did not belong to a noble family, had no special achievements in the service. That is what bothered the relatives of Maria Mikhailovna. The only thing the chosen one could be proud of was his ancestor. Georg Andreev Lermont was a native of Scotland. In the autumn of 1613 he was adopted in the Moscow State, where in 1620 he was granted the estate in Galich, Zabolotsky volost.
According to a tradition of his kind, Yuri Petrovich Lermontov chose a military career. He graduated from the First Cadet Corps, which was located in St. Petersburg, and served in the Kexholm Infantry Regiment. Yuri Petrovich participated in the war with Sweden and France, was in the battles. Due to a serious illness, he was dismissed from military service with the rank of captain. Despite his state of health, during the war with Napoleon, in 1812, he took part in a noble militia organized in the Tula province. The health of Lermontov's father was noticeably shaken, he had to be treated for a long time.
Marriage of Yuri Petrovich and Maria Mikhailovna
Indeed, the choice of Maria Mikhailovna, according to many, was surprisingly good-looking, well-read and āheardā, charming, kind and a little hot-tempered, which especially gave him an image of romance. Yuri Petrovich had a significant drawback - he was poor: debts, a constantly mortgaged estate, three unmarried sisters - all this did not make him an attractive bridegroom, according to the thoughts of his mother. Elizaveta Alekseevna believed that the retired captain is not capable of any business, and can only take care of the young ladies. As it turned out, the mother's heart was not mistaken.
But Lermontovās future parents stood their ground. Their biography reports that they were firmly convinced of their intention to get married. In particular, Maria Mikhailovna confidently stood her ground. And Elizaveta Alekseevna allowed this marriage. In 1811, the engagement took place, and in 1814 in Tarkhani - a magnificent wedding of the young.
Lermontov family life
Parents of Mikhail Lermontov were not happy for long. Maria Mikhailovna, not without reason, reproached her husband for numerous infidelities. Once, at the next scene, Yuri Petrovich lost his temper and, in a fit of anger, hit his wife very hard in the face with his fist. A nervous shock aggravated the illness of Maria Mikhailovna: consumption began to develop, which prematurely brought the young mother to the grave.
Subsequently, Lermontov's son recalled how much his father sobbed when his mother was buried. But it was already impossible to return anything. Little Misha was left without a mother, his father - without a wife. Elizaveta Alekseevna, the grandmother of the great poet, did not forgive her son-in-law, all her life she considered him guilty of the death of her only daughter.
Separation of father and son
After the death of his wife, Lermontovās father moved to his family estate in the Tula volost. He left little Misha in the care of his grandmother, Elizabeth Alekseevna, who made great efforts not to give her only grandson to her father. In her opinion, and not without reason, Yuri Petrovich was not able to raise his son the way an aristocratic family wanted: he could not spend several thousand a year on teaching a child languages, drawing, music and much more.
There is an unconfirmed version that Elizabeth Alekseevna offered her son-in-law 25 thousand rubles so that he would not interfere in the education of little Michel. Indeed, the grandmother, having a great fortune, thus made a will that the grandson would become her only heir only if the father would not take part in his upbringing. With such a difficult condition, Yuri Petrovich was forced to agree, and the relationship between father and son has since been limited to rare meetings.
In spite of everything, the relations of father and son were distinguished by mutual affection: they endured separation difficultly, their brief meetings brought the joy of communication, but the partings were painted with hopeless bitterness. The father always followed his sonās successes, was proud of what he was doing, and believed that Misha had a bright future. And I was not mistaken.
Yuri Petrovich Lermontov died on October 1, 1831, he was buried in the village of Shipovo, Tula province. Later, in 1974, the ashes of the father of the great poet was transported to Tarkhany.
Family tragedy
Lermontov's parents had a difficult fate. The family tragedy of a child who grew up without parents was reflected in his work. He spoke many times about his grief - the early death of his mother, about the āterrible fateā of living away from his father, not being able to communicate with someone whom you love immeasurably. History has preserved not only the names of Lermontovās parents, but also the sad pages of their biography.
Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva was able to outlive everyone: the only deceased only daughter Marya Alekseevna, the unloved son-in-law of Yuri Petrovich, whom she always considered guilty of the death of her daughter. And the one who was the meaning of her life, her grandson Mishenka. The great poet Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov died in a duel on July 15, 1841.