title: Karolína Kurková

text: Karolína Kurková (; born 28 February 1984) is a Czech model and actress, known for her work as a former Victoria's Secret Angel and "Vogue" cover star. Mario Testino praised the "proportions of her body and her face, as well as her energy level", which he said "ma[de] her a model who could fit almost into any moment". "Vogue" editor Anna Wintour called her the "next supermodel".


title: Karolína Kurková

text: In 2007, Kurková was among the world's top-earning models, having earned an estimated $5 million. She placed 6th in the "Forbes" annual list of the highest-earning models that same year.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Karolína Kurková was born in Děčín, Czechoslovakia, to Josef Kurka, a Czech basketball player, and a Slovak mother. While Kurková was young, she was made fun of for her height. But after a friend sent photos of Kurková to an agency in Prague, at age 15, she landed a runway appearance, as well as gigs for commercial and print advertising. She later traveled to Milan to gain more experience and signed a modeling contract with Miuccia Prada.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: In September 1999, Kurková appeared in the American edition of fashion and lifestyle magazine "Vogue", and, after moving to New York City at the age of 17, appeared on the cover of the February 2001 edition.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Following her "Vogue" cover, Kurková became recognized at haute couture fashion shows. Additionally, the lingerie brand Victoria's Secret chose her to be a part of 2000's fashion show webcast, though she was only 16 at the time. Prominent fashion houses such as Yves Saint Laurent signed Kurková to contracts, while print campaigns for Chanel, Tommy Hilfiger, Max Mara, Bottega Veneta, Donna Karan, Celine, Fendi, Elie Saab, rag & bone, Jean Paul Gaultier, Roberto Cavalli, Valentino, Louis Vuitton, John Galliano, Mango, Christian Dior, Hugo Boss, Versace, H&M, and others helped expose her even more. In the 2002 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, she wore the "Star of Victoria" Fantasy Bra. Other runway credits of hers include Alberta Ferretti, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Calvin Klein, Carolina Herrera, Chanel, Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Givenchy, Gucci, Karl Lagerfeld, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Stella McCartney, Versace, and Vera Wang.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková notably tripped on her long gown and fell down as she was leading the finale of the Versace Fall/Winter 2002 fashion show. However, it didn't hinder her career and she was named "Model of the Year" at the 2002 VH1/"Vogue" Fashion Awards, in part for her work ethic, having worked 23 weeks straight. Photographed by Steven Meisel, she was presented on the September 2004 cover of American "Vogue" as one of the "Models of the Moment".


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková has appeared on over 51 "Vogue" magazine covers internationally, including the French, Italian, UK, German, Russian, Greek, and Korean editions, and has also appeared in international editions of "Elle", "Vanity Fair", and "The Face". She has worked with noted fashion photographers like Steven Klein, Mario Sorrenti, and Mario Testino. During the Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2004 Couture show, she was wearing a corseted princess gown that was so vast and outrageously ornate that she got stuck in the fabric and had to be manhandled off the catwalk.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: After being contracted as a Victoria's Secret Angel in 2005, she was featured in the 2006 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, showcasing the $6.5 million "Hearts On Fire" Fantasy Bra decked with almost 2,000 diamonds weighing with a centerpiece diamond brooch weighing . During this same Victoria's Secret show, she opened the segment, dressed as a fantasized sexy air hostess. Due to a design flaw, her right shoe flapped opened and slipped off her foot half way down the catwalk, causing Kurková to continue walking with only one shoe on as nothing had happened. The video got more than 600,000 views, and the incident was soon considered a "legendary moment".


title: Karolína Kurková

text: As an Angel, she received a star on the Hollywood "Walk of Fame" prior to the 2007 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, appeared on the February 2008 cover of "Esquire", re-creating the classic 1966 Angie Dickinson cover for the magazine's 75th anniversary, and was chosen as part of "People" magazine's 100 most beautiful people in the world. In December 2007, she was featured in print ads for Dell.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková has a smooth indentation in place of a navel due to surgery she had as an infant, and photographs are often altered by the addition of an image of a belly button to hide this.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: In November 2008, E! Entertainment Television voted her the world's sexiest woman, beating Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson, and fellow Angels Gisele Bündchen, Heidi Klum and Adriana Lima. Kurková modeled for Bottega Veneta spring 2011 campaign in a classic Hitchcock style.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: On 24 January 2011, Kurková was one of the most talked-about models of the grand show organized by the French lingerie brand in the style of the Victoria's Secret shows. She notably opened the show in an underskirt holding a real living lamb. Later on in the show, she returned to the catwalk wearing a billowing black kimono complete with a five-meter train. When she was entering the catwalk, the garment's train slipped off the catwalk and got stuck under it, forcing Kurková to remove her whole cloak, to the audience's applause. The incident was widely reported in the media, to the point that the brand Etam published a video of it on their official YouTube channel.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: In September 2018, Kurková became the first cover model of "Vogue Czechoslovakia". The first released cover featured her from behind with a back tattoo that has a strong symbolic meaning to the history of the two countries in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of former Czechoslovakia.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková made her film debut alongside Frankie Muniz, Harvey Keitel, and Amber Valletta in Howard Himelstein's 2007 coming-of-age dramedy, "My Sexiest Year". She played Courtney A. Kreiger / Cover Girl in the live action 2009 "" film. She was a guest judge on the fifteenth season of "America's Next Top Model" and fourth season of "Germany's Next Top Model".


title: Karolína Kurková

text: She appeared on the 2008 Academy of Country Music Awards along with Dwight Yoakam in presenting the "Top Female Vocalist" award to Carrie Underwood.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: In September 2010, Kurková guest-starred on NBC's "Chuck" season 4 episode, "Chuck Versus the Suitcase". She played "Sofia Stepanova", an enemy spy posing as a supermodel.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková appeared alongside German model Eva Padberg on the reality television show "Das perfekte Model", a model casting-show similar to "Germany's Next Top Model". The show aired in spring 2012 on German television broadcast VOX. The show was canceled in summer 2012 due to low ratings. Kurková made a guest appearance on television series "30 Rock" in Season 6, Episode 9 titled "Leap Day" in February 2012.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková appeared as herself in an episode of "Person of Interest", in a subplot where the character of Detective Fusco (Kevin Chapman) protects Kurková from Armenian gangsters. The subplot, which is interspersed throughout the episode, takes up less than two minutes of screen time and is played for comic relief. Kurková was also a supermodel coach on OXYGEN'S "The Face", alongside Naomi Campbell and Coco Rocha.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: According to ABC News, she cooperates with pediatricians and healthcare providers to found Gryph and IvyRose, a herbal care product line for children.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková use to live in New York City's TriBeCa district and enjoys courtside basketball games at Madison Square Garden.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: On 8 January 2009, FoxNews.com reported that Kurková suffered from hypothyroidism, which led to her unusual heavier physique and caused Kurková to be panned by fashion critics, when she walked the runway for Cía Marítima and Victoria's Secret in June 2008 and November 2008, respectively. In February 2012 at the Council of Fashion Designers of America forum on "A Well Balanced Life", Kurková spoke about her thyroid problems:


title: Karolína Kurková

text: In July 2009, she announced she was expecting her first child with her fiancé, Archie Drury. Kurková revealed that Drury had proposed to her while on holiday in Cape Town, South Africa, and they were married before the birth of their son, Tobin Jack Drury, which occurred on 29 October 2009. On 5 November 2015, Kurková gave birth to their second son, Noah Lee Drury. On 27 April 2021, Kurková gave birth to their daughter, Luna Grace Drury.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: In March 2006, Kurková received an award from the non-profit organization "Women Together" for her humanitarian work. Kurková was honored for working for the welfare of children through organizations such as "the Beautiful Life Fund", "Free Arts", and "Global Youth Action Network". Kurková received the "Atmosphere Magazine" Award at the Madrid Planet Hollywood restaurant on 18 December 2003.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková was named one of the world's "50 Most Beautiful People" by "People" magazine in 2004, and remains the youngest model ever to win "Model of the Year" at the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: Kurková was listed by "Forbes" as one of the top-earning supermodels in the world. In 2012, she was honored as "Style Icon" at the Vienna Awards for Fashion and Lifestyle.


title: Karolína Kurková

text: She also received the GALA Spa Award in the category of "Beauty Idol", which was awarded by one of Germany's people magazines. In early 2013, Kurková released her own fragrance in cooperation with LR Health & Beauty Systems, an international operation company. The fragrance cooperation already earned Kurková a nomination at the 2013 Duftstar Awards in the category "Novelties – Lifestyle (Women)".


title: David Niven Jr.

text: David Niven Jr. is a British film producer, film actor and script writer who was an executive at Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures. He is the son of actor David Niven and Primula Rollo.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: Niven was the head of the William Morris Agency in Europe, which he left for Columbia Pictures in 1970. His many clients included Robert Woods. He was managing director of Paramount Pictures England until 1975, when he turned his focus to film production.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: In 1976, he produced "The Eagle Has Landed", and in 1979, he produced "Escape to Athena", which starred his father. He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1985 as Executive Producer of "The Night They Saved Christmas" which he co-wrote with James C. Maloney.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: Niven was a regular on the 1990 edition of "To Tell the Truth", which was hosted by Gordon Elliott making 14 appearances.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: During the 1990s he was the chair emeritus of the Recording Artists, Actors and Athletes against Drunk Driving (R.A.D.D) group in Hollywood, and founder of the bicycle safety group See a Child, Save a Child. In 2002 he successfully campaigned for a Child Safety Day and Week which was accepted by the City of Los Angeles.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: At a book launch by Jackie Collins in 1987, Niven was asked if he would ever write a book about his life, to which he replied "But how can I when everything, everything, I have ever done, said or thought appears in Jackie's novels."'There's nothing left,' he laments. 'I don't know why the headings on some of the chapters shouldn't be, 'I'd like to dedicate this to...' "


title: David Niven Jr.

text: Away from film, Niven invested in the restaurant Drones, in Pont Street, London in 1972, which he recommended be named after Bertie Wooster's fictional club. At his request a picture of his father was positioned on the wall. The restaurant was later run by Marco Pierre White's restaurant group White Star Group. The location changed under new owners and closed in 2007.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: Noël Coward was Niven's godfather, and gave him a silver cocktail shaker with the inscription "Because, my Godson dear, I rather / Think you'll turn out like your father." Niven knew Jane and Peter Fonda, Mia Farrow, Nancy and Frank Sinatra Jr., and Candice Bergen growing up.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: Niven was married to actress and producer Barbara Niven from 1993 to their divorce in 1998. He had previously had a relationship with Natalie Wood during the 1960s. He married his second wife Beatrice Anne Reeve, daughter of Annette de la Renta in 2000, but divorced in 2005. In 2009 he sold his house on Sunset Boulevard for $5 million.


title: David Niven Jr.

text: In 1994 Niven and his brother Jamie gave the Online Archive of California their father's archive. In 2009 Michael Munn released a biography of his father, David Niven, by which Niven Jr. was horrified. Niven and his brother had been close to their father and they challenged many of the claims in the book.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon (credited to Lennon–McCartney). The song closes side one of their 1969 album "Abbey Road". It features Billy Preston on organ. It was the first song recorded for the "Abbey Road" album but one of the last songs to be finished, on 20 August 1969, the last time all four Beatles were together in the studio.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: Lennon wrote the song about his love for Yoko Ono. It begins in time, with an arpeggio guitar theme in D minor, progressing through E and B before cadencing on an A augmented chord. In this chord sequence, the F note is a drone. The bass and lead guitar ascend and descend with a riff derived from the D minor scale. As the last chord fades, a verse begins in time, based on the A and D blues scales, with Lennon singing ""I want you / I want you so bad ..."" The two blues verses alternate, before the reappearance of the E chord, and McCartney playing a notably aggressive bass riff. That functions as a transition to the main theme throughout the song. The main theme repeats with Lennon singing ""She's so heavy"", with a long sustain on the last word.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: The second set of verses are rendered instrumentally with lead guitar. Another repeat of the "She's So Heavy" theme (this time featuring harmonies) is followed by Lennon singing a livelier repeat of the "I Want You" verse. During the next E transition, Lennon lets loose a primal scream of ""Yeah"", until his voice breaks. The song's coda consists of a three-minute repetition of the "She's So Heavy" theme, with the arpeggios double tracked, intensifying with "white noise" fading in as the theme continues, which consists of multi-tracked guitars from Lennon and George Harrison, Moog white-noise from Lennon, and drums and bass from Ringo Starr and McCartney respectively. In the middle of the 15th repetition of the theme, the song abruptly ends.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: The song was rehearsed several times during the "Get Back/Let It Be" sessions. The basic track, and Lennon's guide vocal (which is used in the master), were recorded at Trident Studios on 22 February 1969, shortly after shooting for the "Let It Be" film ended. Lennon played the lead guitar, as Harrison stated:


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: Lennon and Harrison overdubbed multi-tracked heavy guitars on 18 April 1969. Billy Preston's Hammond organ and Ringo Starr's congas were added on 20 April 1969. "I Want You" received the "She's So Heavy" vocals on 11 August, and thus the title became "I Want You (She's So Heavy)". "'She's So Heavy' was about Yoko," Lennon told "Rolling Stone". "When you're drowning, you don't say, 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me.' You just scream."


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: Three takes from 22 February were edited into a master (second generation), which was overdubbed, mixed down on 18 April (third generation), and overdubbed on 18 April, 20 April, 8 August and 11 August. Different overdubs were made to the second generation tape on 8 August. The mix is the third generation for 4:37 and then the second generation tape, which has white noise produced by the Moog synthesizer played by Lennon and additional drums added on 8 August. The final overdub session for "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", which included the final mixing and editing, was the last time all four Beatles worked in the studio together.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: The final master lasted 8:04, but Lennon decided on a surprise ending. During the final edit with the guitars, drums and white noise climaxing endlessly, he told recording engineer Geoff Emerick to "cut it right there" at the 7:44 mark, bringing the song (and side one of "Abbey Road") to an abrupt end.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: On the Beatles' remix album "Love", the three-minute guitar coda from "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is attached to "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", and snippets of that song and "Helter Skelter" are mixed in with the repeated guitar riff. The abrupt ending of the original is retained, but it cuts to wind-like white noise, not to silence as on the original. The mix also included the organ solo and the guitar solo from the Trident studio outtake.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: "Pitchfork"s Jillian Mapes describes "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" as a song in which Lennon "predates heavy-metal transcendence". In 2015, Josh Hart and Damian Fanelli, writing for "Guitar World", placed it 34th in their list of the "50 Heaviest Songs Before Black Sabbath", and called the track a "bluesy rocker" that "might have inadvertently started doom metal".


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: Jo Kendall of "Classic Rock" magazine similarly states that "I Want You" predated "Black Sabbath's creation of doom rock by several months" and comments on its "Santana-like Latin blues section". James Manning of "Time Out London" recognises the song as the foundation for stoner rock.


title: I Want You (She's So Heavy)

text: The song is featured in the movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" during the scene where Big Deal Records president B.D. Hoffler (Donald Pleasence) negotiates the contract with the band over a sex-and-drug-induced dinner.


title: Tamasin Day-Lewis

text: Lydia Tamasin Day-Lewis (born 17 September 1953) is an English television chef and food critic, who has also published a dozen books about food, restaurants, recipes and places. She writes regularly for "The Daily Telegraph", "Vanity Fair", and "Vogue".


title: Tamasin Day-Lewis

text: Day-Lewis was born in Hammersmith, London. Day-Lewis is the daughter of Anglo-Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis, who served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in his last years, and his second wife, British actress Jill Balcon. She is Jewish on her mother's side, a descendant of 19th-century immigrants from Poland and Lithuanian Jews from what is now Latvia. Her brothers are actor Sir Daniel, Nicholas and Sean Day-Lewis (who wrote a biography of their father). After attending Bedales School, she read English at King's College, Cambridge from 1973 until 1976.


title: Tamasin Day-Lewis

text: In October 2012, Day-Lewis and her brother Daniel donated papers belonging to their father to Oxford University, including early drafts of his work and letters from figures such as actor John Gielgud and poets W. H. Auden, Robert Graves and Philip Larkin.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Les Misérables" is a sung-through musical based on the 1862 novel "Les Misérables" by French poet and novelist Victor Hugo. Having premiered in Paris in 1980, it has music by Claude-Michel Schönberg and original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, with an English-language libretto by Herbert Kretzmer. The London production has run continuously since October 1985 – the longest-running musical in the West End, and the second-longest-running musical in the world (after "The Fantasticks").


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: There have been several recordings of this material, including ones by the original London cast and original Broadway cast. However, there are no recordings containing the entire performance of songs, score, and spoken parts as featured on stage; "The Complete Symphonic Recording" comes closest, but a pair of songs that were cut from the show following the initial London run, as well as one song only present in the Original French Concept Album, are not included.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: The "Overture" is the opening song and a dramatic instrumental introduction that establishes the setting as Toulon, France, 1815. The "Work Song" flows from the "Overture", the former opening with a choir of imprisoned men singing a melody later used in "Look Down" but eventually becoming a dark duet between the prisoner Jean Valjean and the guard Javert. In early versions, such as in the Original London Recording, the "Overture" was essentially just a minor version of the beginning of "At the End of the Day", but is now almost exclusively played with part of the same melody as the "Work Song" and "Look Down". This theme becomes a leitmotif throughout the musical.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "On Parole" is the second song in the Prologue. Sometimes this is the first half of "Valjean Arrested, Valjean Forgiven", but is commonly known as the first part of "The Bishop of Digne". Valjean travels trying to find a place to work/stay, however he is shunned almost everywhere he goes. The Bishop brings him in and supplies food and wine.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: The song contains two parts, the first in which Valjean is invited in by the Bishop and steals the silver, the second, where Valjean is caught by two constables. The former is often cut out of recordings. When both parts are played, the song is usually known as "The Bishop of Digne".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "What Have I Done?" is the fourth and final song in the Prologue, sung by the main character, Jean Valjean.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: The music of "At the End of the Day" is fast and intricate, with different melodies coinciding as sung by various groups of poor women and men, female workers, solos by certain workers, and repetitious instrumentation.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "I Dreamed a Dream" is a solo sung by Fantine during the first act and one of the play's most famous numbers. Most of the music is soft and melancholic, but towards the end becomes louder and taut with frustration and anguish as she cries aloud about the wretched state of her life and her unfair mistreatment.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Lovely Ladies" is a song from the first act. It is followed by "Fantine's Arrest" and sometimes the two are counted as one song. Fantine, now unemployed, wanders to the docks where she eventually turns to prostitution to survive.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Fantine's Arrest" is a song from the first act. It follows "Lovely Ladies" (the two are sometimes counted as one song). Fantine expresses her anger toward Valjean when she believes he is against her. She is overwhelmed by emotion when she thinks of her dying daughter and asks God to let her die instead. Valjean's appearance in the song is sometimes referred to as "Valjean's Intervention". This song is followed by "The Runaway Cart".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Runaway Cart" is a song from the first act, divided into two parts. The chorus, Fauchelevent, and Valjean sing the first with instrumental parts. Valjean sings the second one and Javert on a medium-paced tune often picked up by Javert or other policemen (first sung in "Valjean Arrested, Valjean Forgiven"). The song is cut heavily or left completely out in most recordings. It is known in the School Edition as "The Cart Crash". In the 2012 film, the first part of the song follows "At The End of The Day" with the second part following "Fantine's Arrest"


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Who Am I?" is a song from the first act, a solo sung by the main character Jean Valjean. It is rather slow-paced, and shares a melody with Valjean's solo in "One Day More", as well as the ten-years-later sequence after the Prologue.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Fantine's Death", also known as "Come to Me", is a song from the first act. It is followed by "The Confrontation". It is slow-paced and the tune is very soft. It has the same melody as the more famous "On My Own".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: The main opposing characters Jean Valjean and Javert sing "The Confrontation". It follows "Come to Me" and is followed by "Castle on a Cloud". The song is low and slow-paced. The instrumentation behind the vocals is the same as in the "Work Song", the melody partly also picks up that song. The song's highlight is Javert and Valjean singing in counterpoint, with the lead alternating.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Castle on a Cloud" is a solo for the part of young Cosette. She sings about a castle where she does not have to sweep floors and a lady all in white looks after her. It is followed by a tag that breaks away from the main melody, involving the first entrance of Mme Thénardier, which is cut from many recordings. Mme Thénardier verbally abuses Cosette, orders her to fetch some water from a well, praises her daughter young Éponine (a silent role), and again refers to Cosette (after Éponine points to her to show she did not leave), warning that she never asks twice.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Master of the House" is one of the better-known songs of the musical. It introduces the Thénardiers and the crooked way that they operate their inn. The song is preceded by a lengthy introduction sung largely by regulars at the inn and Thénardier himself, which is cut from almost all recordings.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Well Scene" is sung by Valjean and Young Cosette. Cosette is walking alone in the woods with a bucket of water. Valjean arrives and Cosette sees him. Valjean tells her to not be afraid. He asks for her name and Cosette tells him. He takes the bucket for her and walks her back to the inn. (only in the new video production in 2013 and in Czech version)


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Bargain" and "The Waltz of Treachery" are two intertwined songs. Much of the number is often cut from recordings. The latter part of "The Waltz of Treachery" is largely instrumental. It flows directly into "Look Down".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Suddenly" is a song created for the 2012 film. The song "explains what happens when Valjean takes Cosette from the inn and looks after her". The song appears only on the film and related soundtracks.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Look Down", sometimes referred to as "Paris: 1832", or in the School Edition as "The Beggars", involves one of the best-known themes in the musical, imitating that which is first heard in the "Work Song". It is important for plot, introducing Gavroche, Enjolras, Marius, the adolescent Éponine, the adolescent Cosette, and the plight of the working poor; it flows directly into "The Robbery". The song comes after "Stars" in the Original London Recording and the 2012 film.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Robbery" is a lesser-known song from the musical. The young adults Eponine, Marius, and Cosette are introduced (though Cosette's part in the scene is silent). Marius and Cosette bump into each other and fall in love at first sight. Thénardier attempts to rob Jean Valjean, realizing he is the one "who borrowed Cosette", a brawl breaks out. Éponine cries out as Javert arrives on the scene (a segment of the song commonly known as "Javert's Intervention") but, because Javert does not immediately recognise Valjean, the latter escapes; Thénardier then convinces Javert to let him go and pursue Valjean instead.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Stars" is one of the two chief songs performed as a solo by Javert. It is among the better-known songs from the musical. It comes before "Look Down" in the Original London Version and the 2012 film.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Éponine's Errand" is an important scene in the show in which Marius asks Éponine to discover where Cosette lives and then take him to her. It is clear that Éponine is reluctant to encourage the brewing romance between Marius and Cosette, but because of her love for Marius, she cooperates. The first part follows the same melody as "L'un vers l'autre" ("Towards One Another"), a solo for Éponine that appeared on the original concept album but did not make it to the current version. This tune appears throughout the show.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The ABC Café – Red and Black", on most recordings referred to as simply "Red and Black", introduces the group of young student revolutionaries, who have formed an organization called the Friends of the ABC. The song name is a mixture from the Café Musain, which was their favourite meeting place in the book and their name, "La Société des Amis de l'ABC" (literally in English, the Society of Friends of the ABC). The name is a pun, as in French "ABC" when pronounced one letter at a time is "abaissé", which is also the word for "lower" (therefore, "Friends of the Lower Class or the Poor"). The song consists of many different changing parts. The song involves a tag, in which Gavroche enters and announces to the students that General Lamarque is dead; Enjolras then sings a solo about how this is a sign for the beginning of the revolution, transitioning directly into "Do You Hear the People Sing?"


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Do You Hear the People Sing?" is one of the principal and most recognizable songs from the musical, sometimes (especially in various translated versions of the play) called "The People's Song". A stirring anthem, it is sung twice: once towards the end of the first act, and once at the end of the musical's Finale. Instrumentally, the theme is also prominent in the battle scenes. In the 2012 movie, it is performed after "One Day More".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: At the special "Les Misérables" 10th Anniversary Concert in 1995, "Do You Hear the People Sing?" was sung as an encore by seventeen different actors who had played Jean Valjean around the world. Each actor sang a line of the song in his own language (except for Jerzy Jeszke, who although Polish sang a line in German, having performed the role of Valjean in Germany), and the languages sung included French, German, Japanese, Hungarian, Swedish, Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, Danish, Icelandic and English.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Rue Plumet – In My Life", referred to on most recordings as simply "In My Life", is among the better-known songs from the musical. It largely involves a duet between Cosette and Valjean, though Marius and Éponine also sing near the end. In the Original London recording alone, it plays alongside a Cosette solo, "I Saw Him Once", ("Te souviens-tu du premier jour ?" in the original 1980 French production) cut out of all other recordings.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Attack on Rue Plumet" is a three-part song, the first part of which plays in only two recordings: a long version in the 1980 Original French recording and a much-shortened version only on the Complete Symphonic Recording and added into the beginning of "The Attack on Rue Plumet". The second is best known and is played in all recordings while the third is again more important for plot than music. On the London Original Cast recording, it is called the "Plumet Attack". Éponine, bringing Marius to Valjean's house to see Cosette, stumbles upon her father Thénardier and his gang Patron-Minette, made up of Brujon, Babet, Claquesous, and Montparnasse, preparing to rob the house; Éponine screams, dispersing the robbers, while Valjean is led to believe that Javert or his minions have discovered his whereabouts at last, and so prepares to leave at once with Cosette. It is one of the lesser-known songs of the musical, yet serves as an important plot point. Interestingly, the large majority of this song's music is not heard anywhere else in the musical.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "One Day More" is a choral piece with many solos: all of the main characters (except for Fantine and The Bishop, both of whom have died by this point) sing in it in a counterpoint style known as dramatic quodlibet, as well as parts by the ensemble. It is the finale to Act 1. The song borrows themes from several songs from the first act.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: Each character sings his/her part to a different melody at the same time (counterpoint), before joining for the final chorus:


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: The song was used by Bill Clinton in his successful 1992 campaign for the presidency of the United States. Another version was used by Barack Obama supporters during his successful 2008 election campaign. It was also used as a finale to the at The O2, sung by the OLC with Ramin Karimloo singing the part of Enjolras.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Building the Barricade" is the entr'acte of the musical and contains a new theme, which transitions into Éponine's appearance at the barricade, and her sung dialogue with Marius and later with Valjean as she passes to him a letter from Marius intended for Cosette. It is often cut out of recordings in part or completely. On the Complete Symphonic Recording, this song is mislabeled "At the Barricade".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "On My Own" is a solo part for Éponine. The refrain of the song is the same tune as that of ""Fantine's Death (Come to Me)"", although it adds a bridge and the tune of the verses are different. Beginning in the key of D, modulating to B♭ (even though the song does not actually change key), then ending in F, this is her most important song. In the film adaptation, the song comes after "The Attack on Rue Plumet" and before "One Day More".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "At the Barricade", also called "Back at the Barricade", begins with an instrumental reprise of the "Red and Black" and a sung reprise of the "Upon These Stones" musical themes. It is also the first of the two times that a National Guardsmen sings a warning to the revolutionaries. On the Complete Symphonic Recording, this song is mislabeled "Building the Barricade".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Javert's Arrival"(also known as “Javert at the Barricade” or "Javert's Return"), involves Javert's return to the barricade to report on the enemy's plans; however, he is interrupted by Gavroche's exposing him as a spy in "Little People".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Little People" begins as Gavroche proudly and merrily uncovers Javert's identity as an undercover police inspector.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: The Original London Recording included a much longer version sung by Gavroche, sung in the first act, between "Look Down" and "Red and Black". This original version was related to Gavroche being able to be useful even though small, rather than the uncovering of Javert. For later versions of the musical, the song was halved to its current length. Gavroche's gleeful uncovering of Javert is sung to an entirely different melody, already used in the Original French Version and is much shorter, before leading to the musical bit that was left in.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "A Little Fall of Rain" is the song of Éponine's death. Éponine, the eldest daughter of the Thénardiers, tells Marius that she loves him, and dies in his arms. Marius's reaction to her death in the musical is quite different from that in the novel. In the book, Marius does not really care much about Éponine until she dies, whereas in the musical they are portrayed as best friends, and he and his fellow students mourn her death, "fighting in her name"; Marius is quite devastated by his best friend's death, even crying while holding her in his arms, and refusing to let go when his fellow students try to take her body away, and refusing the comfort of Enjolras, and continuing to cry over his best friend being gone forever. The title lyric is often misinterpreted; she thinks she is wet because of rain, but Marius sees it's blood from her wound(s) that's "everywhere".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Night of Anguish" is a musical interlude scene. The exact definition of this song and the following are hazy; sometimes the few lines following Éponine's death are named "Night of Anguish", sometimes it is the scene directly after the first attack that includes the dialogue between Valjean and Javert, that receives this name. In the 2012 film, this song following Eponine's death is omitted and replaced with a non-vocal musical interlude.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The First Attack" begins as a largely instrumental number with only some short lines of singing; there also several lines shouted by revolutionaries during the attack. Depending on the definition of the song, it includes the scene in which Valjean sets Javert free. This scene, even though musically relatively uninteresting, is very important for the plot.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Drink with Me" is the revolutionaries' mellow song as night falls and they await their enemy's retaliation.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: Valjean begs God to save and return Marius to Cosette, even if he must sacrifice his own life for Marius' safety. In a documentary on the Blu-ray of the film adaptation, Claude-Michel Schönberg revealed that the song was written specifically for Colm Wilkinson.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Dawn of Anguish" is another minor interlude in which Enjolras and the revolutionaries realize that the people of Paris are not joining their revolution. Without the masses rising up to support them, they accept that the uprising's failure is inevitable and so Enjolras tells all the women and fathers of children to return to their homes, since they will only die if they remain at the barricades while he and the students remain to continue the fight.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Second Attack" or "Death of Gavroche" features Gavroche running into the enemy line of fire to retrieve ammunition for the revolutionaries, only to be killed during a reprise of his "Little People" solo.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: James Fenton had written another song for Gavroche's death, called "Ten Little Bullets", using the melody of Gavroche's solo in "Look Down". The song did not make it past recordings, probably not even there. Only the Broadway Revival version restarted using it in 2006.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Final Battle" is a mostly instrumental number, often omitted from recordings. It repeats the first bar of the theme from "Do You Hear the People Sing?" with some variations and key changes, before erupting into a final reprise of the "Red and Black" theme, ending on a discordant chord instead of the major chord of that theme.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Sewers" is mostly a lengthy completely instrumental reprise of "Bring Him Home", though it also incorporates "Dog Eats Dog", a solo performed by Thénardier. In it, Thénardier describes his robbing the dead bodies from the battle at the barricades and justifies his actions by saying that somebody has to "clean them up...as a service to the town". He also declares that God is dead and that the only thing looking down from the heavens is the "harvest moon". It is one of the darkest songs of the musical.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: The song was notably absent in the 2012 film adaptation, which instead contained a shorter chase-action sequence, scored primarily to "Look Down", in its place. The omission of the song allows Thénardier's character in the film to remain somewhat comical, though he is still shown in the sewers robbing dead bodies.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Javert's Suicide" is the second and last chief song performed solely by Javert. It is preceded by a repeat of the beginning of "The Confrontation" theme (which is sometimes cut from recordings or incorporated into "The Sewers"), in which Valjean asks Javert for one hour to bring Marius to a hospital, a request to which Javert, this time, agrees. After Valjean leaves, Javert contemplates the paradox of hunting the man who has spared him his life; he proceeds to jump to his death in the river. The song is instrumentally an exact reprise of Valjean's Soliloquy, though sung by Javert with changed lyrics. Part of an instrumental from Stars is heard at the end of song as he is falling.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: In "Turning", the women of Paris mourn the loss of the students and their own hopeless cycles of childbirth and misery. It is set to the melody of "Lovely Ladies". It is also the only song in the musical not sung by a major character.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" is a solo sung by the character Marius, who is mourning the death of all of his friends who were killed at the barricade. Part of it is to the tune of "The Bishop of Digne".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Every Day" or "Marius and Cosette" is a two-part song sung by Cosette, Marius and Valjean. The second part is often known as "A Heart Full of Love (Reprise)". The 2012 film only used the second part.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Valjean's Confession" is sung by Valjean and Marius. Though important for the plot, the music is more important as an introduction to "Who Am I?".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Wedding" is a very brief song, also known as the "Wedding Chorale", and is sung by the guests on Cosette and Marius's wedding. The second part is a dialogue-heavy song that is often abridged or cut, sung by Marius and the Thénardiers. This part is sometimes called "The Waltz of Treachery (Reprise)" as it is sung to a similar melody.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Beggars at the Feast" is the second big musical number sung by the Thénardiers, in which they proclaim how through their treacherous ways they always manage to come out on top before waving the audience goodbye with the mocking line "When we're rich as Croesus, Jesus, won't we see you all in hell". It is a reprise of the "Master of the House" theme.


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "Valjean's Death" is the penultimate (or last, depending on the song organization) musical number in "Les Misérables". This and the "Finale", into which it flows without pause, are sometimes counted as one song. The combination is often known as "The Epilogue" (as the musical also has a Prologue). Fantine and Éponine come to welcome him into salvation. "Valjean's Death" borrows the tune from "Fantine's Death" and "On My Own", and towards the end, "Bring Him Home".


title: Songs from Les Misérables

text: "The Finale", also known as "Do You Hear the People Sing? (Reprise)", is the last song in the musical; it is often incorporated with "Valjean's Death" into a single track on recordings, simply entitled "Epilogue".


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (; ; – ) was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837 and the greatest figure in Russian Romanticism. His influence on later Russian literature is still felt in modern times, not only through his poetry, but also through his prose, which founded the tradition of the Russian psychological novel.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was born in Moscow into the respectable noble family of Lermontov, and he grew up in the village of Tarkhany (now Lermontovo in Penza Oblast). His paternal family descended from the Scottish family of Learmonth, and can be traced to Yuri (George) Learmonth, a Scottish officer in the Polish–Lithuanian service who settled in Russia in the middle of the 17th century. He had been captured by the Russian troops in Poland in the early 17th century, during the reign (1613–1645) of Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov. Family legend asserted that George Learmonth descended from the famed 13th-century Scottish poet Thomas the Rhymer (also known as Thomas Learmonth). Lermontov's father, Yuri Petrovich Lermontov, like his father before him, followed a military career. Having moved up the ranks to captain, he married the sixteen-year-old Maria Mikhaylovna Arsenyeva, a wealthy young heiress of a prominent aristocratic Stolypin family. Lermontov's maternal grandmother, Elizaveta Arsenyeva (née Stolypina), regarded their marriage as a mismatch and deeply disliked her son-in-law. On 15 October 1814, in Moscow where the family temporarily moved to, Maria gave birth to her son Mikhail.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The marriage proved ill-suited and the couple soon grew apart. "There is no strong evidence as to what precipitated the quarrels they'd had. There are reasons to believe Yuri had grown tired of his wife's nervousness and frail health, and his mother-in-law's despotic ways," according to literary historian and Lermontov scholar Alexander Skabichevsky. An earlier biographer, Pavel Viskovatov, suggested the discord might have been caused by Yuri's affair with a young woman named Yulia, a lodger who worked in the house. Apparently it was her husband's violent, erratic behavior and the resulting stresses that accounted for Maria Mikhaylovna's early demise. Her health quickly deteriorated and she developed tuberculosis and died on 27 February 1817, aged only 21.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Nine days after Maria's death a final row broke out in Tarkhany and Yuri rushed away to his Kropotovo estate in Tula Governorate where his five sisters resided. Yelizaveta Arsenyeva launched a formidable battle for her beloved grandson, promising to disinherit him if his father took the boy away. Eventually the two sides agreed that the boy should stay with his grandmother until the age of 16. Father and son separated and, at the age of three, Lermontov began a spoilt and luxurious life with his doting grandmother and numerous relatives. This bitter family feud formed a plot of Lermontov's early drama "Menschen und Leidenschaften" (1830), its protagonist Yuri bearing strong resemblance to the young Mikhail.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In June 1817 Yelizaveta Alekseyevna moved her grandson to Penza. In 1821 they returned to Tarkhany and spent the next six years there. The doting grandmother spared no expense to provide the young Lermontov with the best schooling and lifestyle that money could buy. He received an extensive home education, became fluent in French and German, learned to play several musical instruments and proved a gifted painter. While living with the grandmother, Mikhail hardly met with his father.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: But the boy's health was fragile, he suffered from scrofula and rickets (the latter accounted for his bow-leggedness) and was kept under close surveillance of a French doctor, Anselm Levis. Colonel Capet, a Napoleon army prisoner-of-war who settled in Russia after 1812, was the boy's first, and best-loved governor. A German pedagogue, Levy, who succeeded Capet, introduced Mikhail to Goethe and Schiller. He didn't stay for long and soon another Frenchman, Gendrot, replaced him, soon joined by Mr. Windson, a respectable English teacher recommended by the Uvarov family. Later Alexander Zinoviev, a teacher of Russian literature, arrived. The intellectual atmosphere in which Lermontov grew up resembled that experienced by Aleksandr Pushkin, though the domination of French had begun to give way to a preference for English, and Lamartine shared popularity with Byron.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Looking for a better climate and treatment at the mineral springs for the boy, Arsenyeva twice, in 1819 and 1820, took him to the Caucasus where they stayed at her sister E. A. Khasatova's. In summer 1825, as the nine-year-old's health started to deteriorate, the extended family traveled south for the third time. The Caucasus greatly impressed the boy, inspiring a passion for its mountains and stirring beauty. "Caucasian mountains for me are sacred", he wrote later. It was there that Lermontov experienced his first romantic passion, falling for a nine-year-old girl.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Fearing that Lermontov's father would eventually claim his right to bring up his son, Arsenyeva strictly limited contact between the two, causing young Lermontov much pain and remorse. Despite all the pampering lavished upon him, and torn by the family feud, he grew up lonely and withdrawn. In another early autobiographical piece, "Povest" (The Tale), Lermontov described himself (under the guise of Sasha Arbenin) as an impressionable boy, passionately in love with all things heroic, but otherwise emotionally cold and occasionally sadistic. Having developed a fearful and arrogant temper, he took it out on his grandmother's garden as well as on insects and small animals ("with great delight, he would squash a hapless fly and bristled with joy when a stone he'd thrown would kick a chicken off its feet"). Positive influence came from Lermontov's German governess Christina Rhemer, a religious woman who introduced the boy to the idea of every man, even if that man was a serf, deserving respect. In fact, Lermontov's poor health served in a way as a saving grace, Skabichevsky argued, for it prevented the boy from further exploring the darker sides of his character and, more importantly, "taught him to think of things... seek pleasures that he couldn't find in the outer world, deep inside himself."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Returning from his third trip to the Caucasus in August 1825, Lermontov began his regular studies with tutors in French and Greek, starting to read German, French and English authors' original texts. In summer 1827 the 12-year-old for the first time travelled to his father's estate in Tula Governorate. In autumn of that year he and Yelizaveta Arsenyeva moved to Moscow.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: After having received a year of private tutoring, in February 1829 the fourteen-year old Lermontov took exams and joined the 5th form of the Moscow University's boarding-school for the nobility's children. Here his personal tutor was poet Alexey Merzlyakov, alongside Zinoviev, who taught Russian and Latin. Under their influence the boy started to read a lot, making the best of his vast home library, which included books by Mikhail Lomonosov, Gavrila Derzhavin, Ivan Dmitriev, Vladislav Ozerov, Konstantin Batyushkov, Ivan Krylov, Ivan Kozlov, Vasily Zhukovsky, and Alexander Pushkin. Soon he started editing an amateur student journal. One of his friends, his cousin Yekaterina Sushkova (Khvostova, in marriage) described the young man as "married to a hefty volume of Byron". Yekaterina had at one time been the object of Lermontov's affections and to her he dedicated some of his late 1820s poems, including "Nishchy" (The Beggar). By 1829 Lermontov had written several of his well-known early poems. While "Kavkazsky Plennik" (Caucasian Prisoner), betraying strong Pushkin influence and borrowing from the latter, "The Corsair", "Prestupnik" (The Culprit), "Oleg", "Dva Brata" (Two Brothers), as well as the original version of "The Demon" were impressive exercises in Romanticism. Lord Byron remained the major source of inspiration for Lermontov, despite the attempts of his literary tutors, including Semyon Rayich, the head of the school's literature class, to divert him from that particular influence. The short poem "Vesna" (The Spring), published in 1830 by the amateur "Ateneum" magazine, marked his informal publishing debut.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Along with his poetic skills, Lermontov developed an inclination towards poisonous wit and cruel, sardonic humor. His ability to draw caricatures was matched only by his ability to pin someone down with a well aimed epigram. In the boarding school Lermontov proved an exceptional student. He excelled at the 1828 examinations; he recited a Zhukovsky poem, performed a violin étude and won the first prize for his literary essay. In April 1830 the University's boarding school was transformed into an ordinary gymnasium and Lermontov, like many of his fellow-students, promptly quit.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In August 1830 Lermontov enrolled in Moscow University's philological faculty. "Petty arrogance" (as Skabichevsky puts it) prevented him from joining any of the three radical students' circles (those led respectively by Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolai Stankevich and Alexander Hertzen). Instead he drifted towards an aristocracic clique, but even this cream of the Moscow's "golden youth" detested the young man for being too aloof, while still giving him credit for having charisma. "Everyone could see that Lermontov was obnoxious, rough and daring, and yet there was something alluring in his firm moroseness," fellow-student Wistengof admitted.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Attending lectures faithfully, Lermontov would often read a book in the corner of the auditorium, and never took part in student life, making exceptions only for incidents involving grand-scale trouble-making. He took an active part in the notorious 1831 Malov scandal (when a jeering mob drove the unpopular professor out of the auditorium), but wasn't formally reprimanded (unlike Hertzen, who found himself incarcerated). A year into his university studies, the final, tragic act of the family discord played itself out. Deeply affected by his son's alienation, Yuri Lermontov left Arsenieva's house for good, only to die a short time later of consumption. His father's death under such circumstances was a terrible loss for Mikhail and is reflected in his poems "Forgive Me, Will We Meet Again?" and "The Terrible Fate of Father and Son". For some time he seriously considered suicide; tellingly, each of his early dramas "Menschen und Leidenschaften" (1830) and "A Strange Man" (1831) ends with a protagonist killing himself. All the while, judging by his diaries, Lermontov, maintained a keen interest in European politics. Some of his University poems like "Predskazaniye" (The Prophecy) were highly politicised; the unfinished "Povest Bez Nazvaniya" (The Untitled Novel)'s theme was the outbreak of popular uprising in Russia. Several other verses written at the time – "Parus" (The Sail), "Angel Smerti" (Angel of Death) and "Ismail-Bei" – later came to be regarded among his best.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In Lermontov's first year as a student no exams were held: the University closed for several months due to the outbreak of cholera in Moscow. In his second year Lermontov started to have serious altercations with several of his professors. Thinking little of his chances of passing the exams, he opted to leave, and on 18 June 1832, received the two-year-graduate certificate.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In mid-1832 Lermontov, accompanied by grandmother, traveled to Saint Petersburg, with a view of joining the Saint Petersburg University's second-year course. This proved impossible and, unwilling to repeat the first year, he enrolled into the prestigious School of Cavalry Junkers and Ensign of the Guard, under pressure from his male relatives but much to Arsenyeva's distress. Having passed the exams, on 14 November 1832, Lermontov joined the Life-Guard Hussar regiment as a junior officer. One of his fellow cadet-school students, Nikolai Martynov, the one whose fatal shot would kill the poet several years later, in his biographical "Notes" decades later described him as "the young man who was so far ahead of everybody else, as to be beyond comparison," a "real grown-up who'd read and thought and understood a lot about the human nature."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The sort of glittering army career which tempted young noblemen of the time proved a challenge for Lermontov. Books there were a rarity and reading was frowned upon. Lermontov had to indulge mostly in physical competitions, one of which resulted in a horse-riding accident which left him with a broken knee that produced a limp. Learning to enjoy the heady mix of drills and discipline, wenching and drinking sprees, Lermontov continued to sharpen the poisonous wit and cruel humour which would often earn him enemies. "The time of my dreams has passed; the time for believing is long gone; now I want material pleasures, happiness that I can touch, happiness that can be bought with gold, that one can carry it in one's pocket as a snuff-box; happiness that beguiles only my senses while leaving my soul in peace and quiet," he wrote in a letter to Maria Lopukhina dated 4 August 1833.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Concealing his literary aspirations from friends (relatives Alexey Stolypin and Nikolai Yuriev among them), Lermontov became an expert in producing scabrous verses (like "Holiday in Petergof", "Ulansha", and "The Hospital") which were published in a school's amateur magazine "Shkolnaya Zarya" (School-Years' Dawn) under monikers "Count Diarbekir" and "Stepanov". These pieces earned him much notoriety and, with a hindsight, caused harm, for when in July 1835 for the first time ever his poem "Khadji-Abrek" was published (in "Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya", without its author's consent: Nikolai Yuriev took the copy to Osip Senkovsky and he furthered it to print), many refused to take the young author seriously.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Upon his graduation in November 1834, Lermontov joined the Life-Guard Hussar regiment stationed near St. Petersburg in Tsarskoye Selo, where his flatmate was his friend Svyatoslav Rayevsky. Grandmother's lavish financial support (he had his personal chefs and coachmen) enabled Lermontov to plunge into a heady high-society mix of drawing-room gossip and ballroom glitter. "Sardonic, caustic and smart, brilliantly intelligent, rich and independent, he became the soul of the high society and the leading spirit in pleasure trips and sprees," Yevdokiya Rostopchina remembered. "Extraordinary, how much youthful energy and precious time had Lermontov managed to spare upon wanton orgies and base love-making, without seriously damaging his physical and moral strength", biographer Skabichevsky marvelled.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: By now Lermontov had learnt to lead a double life. Still keeping his passions secret, he took a keen interest in Russian history and medieval epics, which would be reflected in "The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov" and "Borodino", as well as a series of popular ballads. During what he later referred to as "four wasted years" he finished "Demon", wrote "Boyarin Orsha", "The Tambov Treasurer's Wife" and "Masquerade", his best-known drama. Through Rayevsky he became acquainted with Andrey Krayevsky, then the editor of "Russky Invalid"'s literary supplement, in a couple of years' time to become the editor of the influential journal "Otechestvennye Zapiski".


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The death of Pushkin, who, as it was generally suspected, had fallen victim to an intrigue, ignited Russian high society. Lermontov, who himself never belonged to the Pushkin circle (there is conflicting evidence as to whether he'd met the famous poet at all), became especially vexed with Saint Petersburg dames' sympathizing with D'Anthès, a culprit whom he even considered challenging to a duel.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Outraged and agitated, the young man found himself on the verge of nervous breakdown. Arsenyeva sent for Arendt, and the famous doctor who had spent with Pushkin his last hours related to Lermontov the exact circumstances of what had happened. The poem "Death of the Poet", its final part written impromptu, in the course of several minutes, was spread around by Rayevsky and caused uproar. The last 16 lines of it, explicitly addressed to the inner circles at the court, all but accused the powerful "pillars" of Russian high-society of complicity in Pushkin's death. The poem portrayed that society as a cabal of self-interested venomous wretches "huddling about the throne in a greedy throng", "the hangmen who kill liberty, genius, and glory" about to suffer the apocalyptic judgment of God.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The poem propelled Lermontov to an unprecedented level of fame. Zhukovsky hailed the "new powerful talent"; popular opinion greeted him as "Pushkin's heir". D'Anthes, still under arrest, felt so piqued he was now himself prepared to challenge the upstart to a duel. Alexander von Benckendorff, a distant relative of Arsenyeva's and the founding head of the Tsar's Gendarmes and of his secret police, was willing to help her grandson out but still had no choice but to report the incident to Nicholas I, who, as it turned out, had already received a copy of the poem (subtitled "The Call for the Revolution", from an anonymous sender). The authorities arrested Lermontov, on 21 January he found himself in the Petropavlovskaya fortress and on 25 February got banished as a cornet to the Nizhegorodsky dragoons regiment to the Caucasus. During the investigation, in an act he considered cowardice, Lermontov faulted his friend, Svyatoslav Rayevsky, and as a result the latter suffered a more severe punishment than Lermontov did: was deported to the Olonets Governorate for two years to serve in a lowly clerk's position.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In the Caucasus Lermontov found himself quite at home. The stern and gritty virtues of the mountain tribesmen against whom he had to fight, no less than the scenery of the rocks and of the mountains themselves, were close to his heart. The place of his exile was also the land he had loved as a child. Attracted to the nature of the Caucasus and excited by its folklore, he studied the local languages (such as Kumyk), wrote some of his most splendid poems and painted extensively. "Good people are here aplenty. In Tiflis, especially, people are very honest... The mountain air acts like balsam for me, all spleen has gone to hell, the heart starts beating, the chest heaves," Lermontov wrote to Rayevsky. By the end of the year he had travelled all along the Caucasian line, from Kizlyar Bay to Taman Peninsula, and visited central Georgia.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov's first Caucasian exile was short: due to the intercession of General Benckendorff. The poet was transferred to the Grodno cavalry regiment based at Nizhny Novgorod. His voyage back was a prolonged one, he made a point of staying wherever he was welcome. In Shelkozavodskaya Lermontov met A. A. Khastatov (his grandmother's sister's son), a man famous for his bravery, whose stories were later incorporated into "A Hero of Our Times". In Pyatigorsk he had talks with poet and translator Nikolai Satin (a member of Hertzen and Ogaryov circle) and with some of the Decembrists, notably with the poet Alexander Odoyevsky (with whom, judging by "In Memoriam", 1839, he became quite close); in Stavropol became friends with Dr. Mayer who served as a prototype for Doctor Werner (a man Pechorin meets in "town S."). In Tiflis he drifted towards a group of Georgian intellectuals led by Alexander Chavchavadze, Nina Griboyedova's father.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The young officer's demeanor did not enchant everybody, though, and at least two of the Decembrists, Nikolai Lorer and Mikhail Nazimov, later spoke of him quite dismissively. Nazimov wrote years later:"Lermontov often visited us and talked of all sort of things, personal, social and political. I have to say, we hardly understood each other... We were unpleasantly surprised by the chaotic nature of his views, which were rather vague. He appeared to be a low-brow realist, unwilling to let his imagination fly, which was strange, considering how high his poetry soared on its mighty wings. He mocked some of the government's reforms – the ones we couldn’t even dream of in our poor youth. Certain essays, promoting the most progressive European ideas which we were so enthusiastic about, – for who could have ever thought it possible for such things to be published in Russia? – left him cold. When approached with a straightforward question, he either kept silent or tried to get away with some sarcastic remark. The more we knew him, the more difficult it was for us to take him seriously. There was a spark of original thought in him, but he was still very young."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov's journey to Nizhny took four months. He visited Yelizavetgrad, then stayed in Moscow and Saint Petersburg to enjoy himself at dancing parties and to revel in his immense popularity. "Lermontov's deportation to the Caucasus has made a lot of fuss and turned him into a victim, which did a lot to whip up his fame as a poet. People consumed his Caucasian poems greedily... On return he was met with enormous warmth in the capital and hailed as heir to Pushkin," wrote poet Andrey Muravyov.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Warmly welcomed at the houses of Karamzin, Alexandra Smirnova, Odoyevsky and Rostoptchina, Lermontov entered the most prolific phase of his short literary career. In 1837–1838 "Sovremennik" published humorous lyrical verses and two longer poems, "Borodino" and "Tambovskaya Kaznatcheysha" (A Treasurer Dame from Tambov), the latter severely cut by censors. Vasily Zhukovsky's letter to Minister Sergey Uvarov made possible the publication of "Pesn Kuptsa Kalashnikova" (The Song of Merchant Kalashnikov), a historical poem which the author initially sent to Krayevsky in 1837 from the Caucasus, only to be thwarted by censors. His observations of the aristocratic milieu, where fashionable ladies welcomed him as a celebrity, occasioned his play "Masquerade" (1835, first published in 1842). His doomed love for Varvara Lopukhina was recorded in the novel "Princess Ligovskaya" (1836), which remained unfinished. In those days Lermontov also took part in gathering and sorting out Pushkin's documents and unpublished poems.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In February 1838, Lermontov arrived at Novgorod to join his new regiment. In less than two months time, though, Arsenyeva ensured his transfer to the Petersburg-based Hussars Guard regiment. At this point, in Petersburg, Lermontov started working on "A Hero of Our Time", a novel which later earned him recognition as one of the founding fathers of Russian prose.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In January 1839 Andrey Krayevsky, now at the helm of "Otechestvennye Zapiski", invited Lermontov to become a regular contributor. The magazine published two parts of the novel, "Bela" and "The Fatalist", in issues 2 and 4, respectively, the rest of it appeared in print during 1840 and earned the author widespread acclaim. The partially autobiographical story, describing prophetically a duel like the one in which he would eventually lose his life, consisted of five closely linked tales revolving around a single character, a disenchanted, bored and doomed young nobleman. Later it came to be considered a pioneering classic of Russian psychological realism.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Shallow pleasures offered by Saint Petersburg's high society had started to wear Lermontov down, his bad temper growing even worse. "What an extravagant man he is. Looks like he's heading for the imminent catastrophe. Insolent to a fault. Dying of boredom, getting vexed by his own frivolousness but having no will to break free from these surroundings. A strange kind of man," wrote Alexandra Smirnova, the lady-in-waiting and Saint Petersburg fashionable salon hostess.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov's popularity at the salons of Princess Sofja Shcherbatova and of Countess Emilia Musina-Pushkina caused a lot of ill feeling among men vying for attention of these two most popular Petersburg society girls of the time. In early 1840 Lermontov insulted one of these men, Ernest de Barante, the son of the French ambassador, in the presence of Shcherbatova. De Barante issued a challenge. The duel took place almost at the exact spot where Pushkin had received his fatal wound by Tchernaya Retchka. Lermontov found himself slightly injured, then arrested and jailed. His visitors in jail included Vissarion Belinsky, an avid admirer of Lermontov's poetry who, like many, continued to have problems with making sense of his dual personality and incongruous, difficult character.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Due to the patronage of the Guard's Commander, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, Lermontov received only a mild punishment; the Grand Duke chose to interpret the de Barante incident as a feat for "a Russian officer who came up to champion the honour of the Russian army". With the Tsar's initial demand for three months' imprisonment dropped, Lermontov went back to exile in the Caucasus, to the Tengin infantry regiment. In Karamzin's house where his friends gathered to say farewells, he churned out an "ad lib", "Tuchi nebesnye, vechnye stranniki" (Heavenly clouds, eternal travelers...). It made its way as a final entry into Lermontov's first book of verse, published by Ilya Glazunov & Co in October 1840, and became one of his best-loved short poems.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In early May 1840 Lermontov left Saint Petersburg, but arrived at Stavropol only on 10 June, having spent a whole month in Moscow, visiting (among other people) Nikolai Gogol, to whom he recited his then-new poem "Mtsyri". On arrival, Lermontov re-joined the Army as part of General Galafeyev's fighting unit on the left flank of the Caucasian front. The left flank had the mission of disarming the Chechen fighters led by Imam Shamil and of protecting the newly formed Russian Cossack settlement between the Kuban and Laba rivers. In early July the regiment entered Chechnya and went into action. Lermontov (according to the official report) "has been charged with the commandment of a Cossack troopers' unit whose duty it was to head into the enemy first". He became immensely popular with his men, whom regular army officers referred to as "the international gang of reckless thugs".


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Among officers Lermontov had his admirers and detractors. Generals Pavel Grabbe and Apollon Galafeyev both praised the young man for his reckless bravery. According to Baron Rossilyon, though, "Lermontov was an unpleasant and scornful man, always eager to seem special. He boasted his bravery – the one thing one was not supposed to be that proud of in the Caucasus, where bravery was business as usual. He led the gang of dirty thugs who, without ever using firearms, charged Chechen auls, led partisan wars and were calling themselves 'the Lermontov army'."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In July 1840 the Russian army got involved in a fierce battle at the Gekha forest. There Lermontov distinguished himself in hand-to-hand combat at the Battle of the Valerik River (11 July 1840), the basis for his poem "Valerik". "Lermontov's duty was to lead our forefront storm troopers and inform the headquarters of the advancement, which in itself was perilous since the enemy was everywhere around, in the forest and in the bushes. But this officer, defying danger, did an excellent job; he showed great courage and was always amongst those who'd break into the enemy lines first," General Galafeyev informed General Grabbe on 8 October 1840.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In early 1841 Arsenyeva received permission from the Minister of Defense, Count Kleinmichel, for Lermontov to visit Saint Petersburg. "Those three or four months he spent in the capital were, I think, the happiest time of his life. Received quite ecstatically by the high society, each morning he produced some beautiful verse and hasted to recite it to us in the evening. In this warm atmosphere good humour awoke in him again, he was always coming up with new jokes and pranks, making us all laugh for hours on end," Yevdokiya Rostopchina remembered.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: By the time both "A Hero of Our Time" and "Poems by M.Y. Lermontov" had been published, Lermontov, according to Skabichevsky, started to treat his poetic mission seriously. Looking for an early retirement that would have enabled him to start a literary career, he was making plans for his own literary journal which wouldn't follow European trends, unlike (in Lermontov's view) "Otechestvennye Zapiski". "I've learnt a lot from Easterners and I am eager to delve deeper into the depth of an Eastern mindset, which remains a mystery not only to us, but to an Easterner himself. The East is a bottomless well of revelations," Lermontov was telling Krayevsky.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: It soon became clear that for an early retirement there was no hope. Besides, despite General Grabbe's insistence, Lermontov's name had been dropped from the list of officers eligible for awards. In February 1841 an incident at a ball launched by Countess Alexandra Vorontsova-Dashkova (when Lermontov involuntarily snubbed the Tsar's two daughters) caused concern among the imperial family and in the high military ranks. It transpired that upon his arrival in February Lermontov had failed to report to his commanding officer, as was required, going instead to a ball – a grievous breach for someone serving under condition of punishment. In April Count Kleinmichel issued an order for him to leave the city in 24 hours and join his regiment in the Caucasus. Lermontov approached a seer (the same Gypsy woman who'd predicted Pushkin's death "from a white man's hand") and asked if the time would ever come when he'd be allowed to retire. "You will get your retirement, but of such a kind after which you won't ask for more," she responded, which made Lermontov laugh heartily.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: After visiting Moscow (where he produced no fewer than eight poetic pieces of invective aimed at Benckendorff), on 9 May 1841, Lermontov arrived to Stavropol, introduced himself to general Grabbe and asked for permission to stay in the town. Then, on a whim, he changed his course, found himself in Pyatigorsk and sent his seniors a letter informing them of his having fallen ill. The regiment's special commission recommended him treatment at Mineralnye Vody. What he did instead was embark upon the several weeks' spree. "In the mornings he was writing, but the more he worked, the more need he felt to unwind in the evenings," Skabichevsky wrote. "I feel I'm left with very little of my life," the poet confessed to his friend A. Merinsky on 8 July, a week before his death.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In Pyatigorsk Lermontov enjoyed himself, feeding on his notoriety of a social misfit, his fame as a poet second only to Pushkin and his success with "A Hero of Our Time". Meanwhile, in the same salons his Cadet school friend Nikolai Martynov, dressed as a native Circassian, wore a long sword, affected the manners of a romantic hero not unlike Lermontov's Grushnitsky character. Lermontov teased Martynov mercilessly until the latter couldn't stand it anymore. On 25 July 1841, Martynov challenged his offender to a duel. The fight took place two days later at the foot of Mashuk mountain. Lermontov allegedly made it known that he was going to shoot into the air. Martynov was the first to shoot and he aimed straight into the heart, killing his opponent on the spot. On 30 July Lermontov was buried, without military honours, thousands of people attending the ceremony.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In January 1842 the Tsar issued an order allowing the coffin to be transported to Tarkhany, where Lermontov was laid to rest at the family cemetery. Upon receiving the news his grandmother Elizaveta Arsenyeva suffered a minor stroke. She died in 1845. Many of Lermontov's verses were discovered posthumously in his notebooks.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Mikhail Lermontov was a romantic who seemed to be continuously struggling with strong passions. Not much is known about his private life, though in verses dedicated to loved ones his emotional strife seems to have been exaggerated, while rumours concerning his real life adventures were unreliable and occasionally misguided.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov fell in love for the first time in 1825, while at the Caucasus, a girl of nine being the object of his desires. Five years later he wrote about it with great seriousness, seeing this early awakening of romantic feelings as a sign of his own exclusiveness. "So early in life, at ten! Oh, this mystery, this Paradise Lost, it will be tormenting my mind till the very grave. Sometimes I feel funny about it and am ready to laugh at this first love of mine, but more often I'd rather cry," the 15-year-old wrote in a diary. "Some people, like Byron, think early love is akin to the soul prone to fine arts, but I suppose this is the sign of soul that's got much music in it," added the young man for whom the English poet was an idol.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: At sixteen Lermontov fell in love with Yekaterina Sushkova (1812–1868), a friend of his cousin Sasha Vereshchagina, whom he often visited in Srednikovo village. Yekaterina failed to take her suitor seriously and in her "Notes" described him thus:At Sashenka [Vereshchagina]'s I often met her cousin, a clumsy bow-legged boy of 16 or 17, with reddened eyes, which were clever and expressive nevertheless, who had a turned-up nose and caustic sneer... Everybody was calling him just Michel and so did I, never caring about his second name. Assigned to be my 'errand boy' he was carrying my hat, umbrella and gloves, leaving them behind from time to time... Both Sashenka and I, while giving him credit for his intelligence, still treated him like a baby which drove him mad. Trying to be perceived as a serious young man, he recited Pushkin and Lamartine and never parted with a huge volume of Byron."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Several 1830–31 poems by Lermontov were dedicated to Sushkova, among them "Nishchy" (The Beggar Man) and "Blagodaryu!, Zovi nadezhdu snovidenyem" (Thank you! To call the hope a dream...).


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In 1830 Lermontov met Natalya Ivanova (1813–1875), daughter of a Moscow playwright Fyodor Ivanov and had an affair with her, but little is known about it or why it ended. Judging by thirty or so poems addressed to "N.F.I", she chose a man who was older and richer, much to the distress of young Lermontov who took this as a 'betrayal'.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: While in the University 16-year-old Lermontov passionately fell in love with another cousin of his, Varvara Lopukhina" (also sixteen at the time). The passion was said to be reciprocal but, pressed by her family, Varvara went on to marry Nikolai Bakhmetyev a wealthy 37-year-old aristocrat. Lermontov was "astounded and heartbroken."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Having graduated the Saint Petersburg cadet school, Lermontov embarked upon the easy-going lifestyle of a reckless young hussar, as he imagined it should be. "Mikhail, having found himself the very soul of the high society, liked to entertain himself by driving young women mad, feigning love for several days, just in order to upset matches," his friend and flatmate Alexey Stolypin wrote.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In December 1834 Lermontov met his old sweetheart Yekaterina Sushkova at a ball in Saint Petersburg and decided to have a revenge: first he seduced, then, after a while dropped her, making the story public. Relating the incident in a letter to cousin Sasha Vereshchagina, he blatantly boasted about his newly found reputation of a 'Don Juan' which he's been apparently craving for. "I happened to hear several of Lermontov's victims complaining about his treacherous ways and couldn't restrict myself from openly laughing at the comic finales he used to invent for his vile Casanova feats," obviously sympathetic Yevdokiya Rostopchina recalled.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: By 1840 Lermontov had sickened of his own reputation of a womanizer and a cruel heartbreaker, hunting for victims at balls and parties and leaving them behind devastated. Some of the stories were myth, like the one concerning the French author Adèle Hommaire de Hell; well-publicised at the time (and related at some length by Skabichevsky) it was proved later to have never happened.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov's love for Lopukhina (Bakhmetyeva) proved to be the only deep and lasting feeling of his life. His unfinished drama Princess Ligovskaya was inspired by it, as well as two characters in "A Hero of Our Time", Princess Mary and Vera. In his 1982 biography John Garrard wrote: "The symbolic relationship between love and suffering is of course a favorite Romantic paradox, but for Lermontov it was much more than a literary device. He was unlucky in love and believed he always would be: fate had ordained it."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In his lifetime, Mikhail Lermontov published only one slender collection of poems (1840). Three volumes, much mutilated by censorship, were published a year after his death in 1841. Yet his legacy – more than 30 large poems, and 600 minor ones, a novel and 5 dramas – was immense for an author whose literary career lasted just six years.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Inspired by Lord Byron, Lermontov started to write poetry at the age of 13. His late 1820s poems like "The Corsair", "Oleg", "Two Brothers", as well as "Napoleon" (1830), borrowed somewhat from Pushkin, but invariably featured a Byronic hero, an outcast and an avenger, standing firm and aloof against the world.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In the early 1830s Lermontov's poetry grew more introspective and intimate, even diary-like, with dates often serving for titles. But even his love lyric, addressed to Yekaterina Sushkova or Natalya Ivanova, could not be relied upon as autobiographical; driven by fantasies, it dealt with passions greatly hypertrophied, protagonists posing high and mighty in the center of the Universe, misunderstood or ignored.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In 1831 Lermontov's poetry ("The Reed", "Mermaid", "The Wish") started to get less confessional, more ballad-like. The young author, having found taste for plots and structures, was trying consciously to rein in his emotional urge and master the art of storytelling. Critic and literature historian D.S. Mirsky regards "The Angel" (1831) as the first of Lermontov's truly great poems, calling it "arguably the finest Romantic verse ever written in Russian." At least two other poems of that period – "The Sail" and "The Hussar" – were later rated among his best.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In 1832 Lermontov tried his hand at prose for the first time. The unfinished novel "Vadim", telling the story of the 1773–1775 Yemelyan Pugachev-led peasant uprising, was stylistically flawed and short on ideas. Yet, free of Romantic pathos and featuring well-crafted characters as well as scenes from peasant life, it marked an important turn for the author now evidently intrigued more by history and folklore than by his own dreams.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Two branches of Lermontov's early 1830s poetry – one dealing with the Russian Middle Age history, another with the Caucasus – couldn't differ more. The former were stern and stark, featured a dark, reserved hero ("The Last Son of Freedom"), its straightforward storyline developing fast. The latter, rich with ethnographical side issues and lavish in colourful imagery, boasted flamboyant characters ("Ismail-Bey", 1832).


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Even as a Moscow University's boarding school student Lermontov was a socially aware young man. His "The Turk's Lament" (1829) expressed strong anti-establishment feelings ("This place, where a man suffers from slavery and chains; my friend, this is my fatherland"), the "July 15, 1830" poem greeted the July Revolution, while "The Last Son of Freedom" was a paean to (obviously, idealized) Novgorod Republic. But Lermontov, a fiery tribune, has never become a political poet. Full of inner turmoil and anger, his protagonists were riotous but never rational or promoting any particular ideology.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The Cadet School seemed to have stymied in Lermontov all interests except one, for wanton debauchery. His pornographic (and occasionally sadistic) Cavalry Junkers' poems which circulated in manuscripts, marred his subsequent reputation so much so that admission of familiarity with Lermontov's poetry was not permissible for any young upper-class woman for a good part of the 19th century. "Lermontov churned out for his pals whole poems in improvisational manner, dealing with things which were apparently part of their barrack and camp lifestyle. Those poems, which I've never read, for they weren't intended for women, bear all the mark of the author's brilliant, fiery temperament, as people who've read them attest", Yevdokiya Rostopchina admitted. These poems were published only once, in 1936, as part of a scholarly edition of Lermontov's complete works, edited by Irakly Andronikov.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: This lean period bore a few fruits: "Khadji-Abrek" (1835), his first ever published poem, and 1836's "Sashka" (a "darling son of Don Juan," according to Mirsky), a sparkling concoction of Romanticism, realism and what might be termed a cadet-style verse. The latter remained unfinished, as did "Princess Ligovskaya" (1836), a society tale which was influenced at least to some extent by Gogol's "Petersburg Stories" and featured characters and dilemmas not far removed from those that would form the base of "A Hero of Our Time".


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Arrested, jailed and sent to the Caucasus in 1837, Lermontov dropped "Princess Ligovskaya" and never got back to it. Much more important to him was "The Masquerade"; written in 1835, it got re-worked several times – the author tried desperately to publish it. Close to French melodrama and influenced by Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas (but also owing a lot to Shakespeare, Griboyedov and Pushkin), "Masquerade" featured another hero whose want was to 'throw a gauntlet' to the unsympathetic society and then get tired of his own conflicting nature, but was interesting mostly for its realistic sketches of the high society life, which Lermontov was getting more and more critical of.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov's fascination with Byron has never waned. "Having made the English pessimism a brand of his own, he's imparted it a strong national favour to produce the very special Russian spleen, which has been there always in the Russian soul... Devoid of cold skepticism or icy irony, Lermontov's poetry is full instead of typically Russian contempt for life and material values. This mix of deep melancholy on the one hand and wild urge for freedom on the other, could be found only in Russian folk songs," biographer Skabichevsky wrote.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In 1836–1838 Lermontov's interest in history and folklore re-awakened. Eclectic "Boyarin Orsha" (1836), featuring a pair of conflicting heroes, driven one by blind passions, another by obligations and laws of honour, married the Byronic tradition with the elements of historical drama and folk epos. An ambitious folk epic, "The Song of the Merchant Kalashnikov" (initially banned, then published in 1837 due to Vasily Zhukovsky's efforts), was unique for its unexpected authenticity. Lermontov, who haven't got a single academic source to rely upon, "entered the realm of folklore as a real master and totally merged with its spirit," according to Belinsky. Lermontov's "Cossack Lullaby" "went the whole round: from the original folklore source to literature, and from literature to living folklore. ... For one and a half centuries people have performed these literary lullabies in real lulling situations [in Russia]," according to Valentin Golovin.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: "Death of the Poet" (1837), arguably the strongest political declaration of its time (its last two lines, "and all of your black blood won't be enough to expiate the poet's pure blood", construed by some as a direct call for violence), made Lermontov not just famous, but almost worshipped, as a "true heir to Pushkin." More introspective but no less subversive was his "The Thought" (1838), an answer to Kondraty Ryleyev's "The Citizen" (1824), damning the lost generation of "servile slaves".


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Otherwise, Lermontov's short poems range from indignantly patriotic pieces like "Fatherland" to the pantheistic glorification of living nature (e.g., "Alone I set out on the road ...") Some saw Lermontov's early verse as puerile, since, despite his dexterous command of the language, it usually appeals more to adolescents than to adults. Later poems, like "The Poet" (1838), "Don't Believe Yourself" (1839) and "So Dull, So Sad..." (1840) expressed skepticism as to the meaning of poetry and life itself. On the other hand, for Lermontov the late 1830s was a period of transition; drawn more to Russian forests and fields rather than Caucasian ranges, he achieved moments of transcendental solemnity and clear vision of heaven and Earth merged into one in poems like "The Branch of Palestine", "The Prayer" and "When yellowish fields get ruffled..."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Both his patriotic and pantheistic poems had an enormous influence on later Russian literature. Boris Pasternak, for instance, dedicated his 1917 poetic collection of signal importance to the memory of Lermontov's "Demon". This long poem (started as early as 1829 and finished some ten years after) told the story of a fallen angel admitting defeat in the moment of his victory over Tamara, a Georgian "maid of mountains". Having read by censors as the celebration of carnal passions of the "eternal spirit of atheism," it remained banned for years (and was published for the first time in 1856 in Berlin), turning arguably the most popular unpublished Russian poem of the mid-19th century. Even Mirsky, who ridiculed Demon as "the least convincing Satan in the history of the world poetry," called him "an operatic character" and fitting perfectly into the concept of Anton Rubinstein's lush opera (also banned by censors who deemed it sacrilegious) had to admit the poem had magic enough to inspire Mikhail Vrubel for his series of unforgettable images.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Another 1839 poem investigating the deeper reasons for the author's metaphysical discontent with society and himself was "The Novice", or Mtsyri (in Georgian), the harrowing story of a dying young monk who'd preferred dangerous freedom to protected servitude. The Demon defiantly lives on, Mtsyri dies meekly, but both epitomize the riotous human spirit's stand against the world that imprisons it. Both poems are beautifully stylized and written in fine, mellifluous verse which Belinsky found "intoxicating".


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: By the late 1830s Lermontov became so disgusted with his own early infatuation with Romanticism as to ridicule it in "Tambov Treasurer's Wife" (1838), a close relative to Pushkin's "Count Nulin", performed in stomping "Yevgeny Onegin" rhyme. Even so, it is his 1812 War historical epic "Borodino" (1837), a 25th Anniversary hymn to the victorious Russian spirit, related in simple language a tired war veteran, and "Valerik" (defined by Mirsky as a missing link between the "Copper Rider" and the "War and Peace" battle scenes) that are seen by critics as the two peaks of Lermontov's realism. This newly found clarity of vision allowed him to handle a Romantic theme with Pushkin's laconic precision most impressively in "The Fugitive". Tellingly, while Pushkin (whose poem "Tazit"'s plotline was here used) saw the European influence as a healthy alternative to the patriarchal ways of Caucasian natives, Lermontov tended to idealize the local communities' centuries-proven customs, their morality codex and the will to fight for freedom and independence to the bitter end.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov had a peculiar method of circulating ideas, images and even passages, trying them again and again through the years in different settings until each would find itself a proper place – as if he could "see" in his imagination his future works but was "receiving" them in small fragments. Even "In Memory of A.I. Odoyevsky" (1839) the central episode is, in effect, the slightly re-worked passage borrowed from "Sashka".


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: "A Hero of Our Time" (1840), a set of five loosely linked stories unfolding the drama of the two conflicting characters, Pechorin and Grushnitsky, who move side by side towards a tragic finale as if driven by destiny itself, proved to be Lermontov's magnum opus. Vissarion Belinsky praised it as a masterpiece, but Vladimir Nabokov (who translated the novel into English) was not so sure about the language: "The English reader should be aware that Lermontov's prose style in Russian is inelegant, it is dry and drab; it is the tool of an energetic, incredibly gifted, bitterly honest, but definitely inexperienced young man. His Russian is, at times, almost as crude as Stendhal's in French; his similes and metaphors are utterly commonplace, his hackneyed epithets are only redeemed by occasionally being incorrectly used. Repetition of words in descriptive sentences irritates the purist," he wrote. D.S. Mirsky thought differently. "The perfection of Lermontov's style and narrative manner can be appreciated only by those who really know Russian, who feel fine imponderable shades of words and know what has been left out as well as what has been put in. Lermontov's prose is the best Russian prose ever written, if we judge by the standards of perfection and not by those of wealth. It is transparent, for it is absolutely adequate to the context and neither overlaps it nor is overlapped by it," he maintained.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: In Russia "A Hero of Our Time" seems to have never lost its relevance: the title itself became a token phrase explaining dilemmas haunting this country's intelligentsia. And Lermontov's reputation as an 'heir to Pushkin' there is seldom doubted. His foreign biographers, though, tend to see a more complicated and controversial picture. According to Lewis Bagby, "He led such a wild, romantic life, fulfilled so many of the Byronic features (individualism, isolation from high society, social critic and misfit), and lived and died so furiously, that it is difficult not to confuse these manifestations of identity with his authentic self. …Who Lermontov had become, or who he was becoming, is unclear. Lermontov, like many a romantic hero, once closely examined, remains as open and unfinished as his persona seems closed and fixed."


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The town of Lermontov, Russia (granted municipal status in 1956), the cruise liner MS "Mikhail Lermontov" (launched in 1970) and the minor planet 2222 Lermontov (discovered in 1977) were named after him.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: The crew of Soyuz TMA-21 selected "Tarkhany" as their call sign, after the estate where Lermontov spent his childhood and where his remains are preserved.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: On 3 October 2014, a monument to Lermontov was unveiled in the Scottish village of Earlston, the place being selected due to a suggested association of Lermontov's descent with Thomas the Rhymer. Until only a few years earlier, the connection had been little-known in Scotland.


title: Mikhail Lermontov

text: Lermontov has been depicted in numerous movies and TV series. In 2012 Azerbaijani movie "Ambassador of Morning", telling the story of another great poet, Abbasgulu Bakikhanov, Mikhail Lermontov was depicted by Oleg Amirbekov. In 2014, in memory of his 200th birthday, a biography documentary about him was released in Russia.


title: Karen David

text: Karen Shenaz David (born 15 April 1979) is a Canadian actress, singer, and songwriter, best known for portraying Princess Isabella Maria Lucia Elizabetta of Valencia in ABC's fairytale-themed musical-comedy television series "Galavant", as well as the Head of Spanish, Cesca Montoya, in the BBC One school-based drama series "Waterloo Road" and Layla in the American action film "". She starred as Angela in the ITV television series "Cold Feet", and played Princess Jasmine in the sixth season of "Once Upon a Time".


title: Karen David

text: She currently has a recurring role on The CW's "Legacies" as Emma, a guidance counselor and witch, alongside playing regular character Grace Mukherjee in "Fear the Walking Dead".


title: Karen David

text: David was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to a family of "Chinese, Parsi and a sliver of Jewish heritage". Her mother is of Parsi-Indian and Chinese descent, while her father is Indian-Jewish. She was raised in Canada and then at age 17, David moved to London to study at the Guildford School of Acting. She then moved back to Canada for a time in the late 1990s, studying radio and television arts at Ryerson University in Toronto.


title: Karen David

text: Upon finishing drama school, David joined the original cast of the West End musical "Mamma Mia!". She made her professional acting debut as part of the ensemble and as understudy of Ali and Lisa. A. R. Rahman, who had been invited to see the show by the director Shekhar Kapur, asked David to assist him and Don Black in the development of the material for the Bollywood-themed musical "Bombay Dreams". She performed songs on the show's US and Canada tour, and continued collaborating with Rahman at his Panchathan Record Inn and AM Studios in Chennai, India.


title: Karen David

text: She appeared in the music clip "Higher & Higher" (2000) and in two short television videos, "Dancers: The Trailer" (2002), playing the role of Jenny, and "The Paper Round" (2002), playing the role of a policewoman. She then landed a role in the musical "Bollywood Queen" (2003), as a member of the R&B band at the story's center. Through 2004 and 2005, she played Scarlet in MTV's "Top Buzzer".