It is not for nothing that the critic Belinsky called the poem “Mtsyri” Lermontov’s favorite brainchild, emphasizing that the great poet reflected his cherished dreams and ideals. The poem is autobiographical in nature, contains subtle allusions to the personality and fate of the poet himself.
Author and hero
Yes, the author and his hero are spiritually close to each other. Characterization of Mtsyri, the history of his life allows us to notice direct analogies. Like Lermontov, Mtsyri is a bright, extraordinary nature, ready to challenge the whole world and rush into battle in the name of freedom and for the sake of gaining a homeland. A quiet, measured life in the monastery walls, endless fasts and prayers, complete humility and rejection of any resistance is not for the young novice. In the same way, Lermontov refused to
eke out the miserable existence of a manual court poet, a sugary regular of balls and high-profile living rooms. Mikhail Yuryevich hated the country of slaves and masters to the same extent as his Mtsyri stuffy cell and the whole structure of monastic life. And both of them - the author and the fruit of his creation - were infinitely lonely, deprived of the happiness of being understood, being next to a close, dear, beloved soul. The joy of true friendship, the sweetness of true, faithful, mutual love, the opportunity to live where the heart breaks - all this passed by, poisoning the soul with the bitterness of disappointment and the pain of unfulfilled hopes.
Romantic features of the poem
The hero of the poem is a vivid embodiment of Lermontov’s romantic worldview. In light of this, the characterization of Mtsyri, as well as the entire work, reflects the main features of this
literary and artistic direction. The scene in the romantic work is exotic countries, far from the shackles of civilization and its corruptive influence. Lermontov’s is the Caucasus, which became in his work a symbol of freedom. The life and customs of the mountaineers, sometimes wild, incomprehensible to the European consciousness, their patrimonial pride and militancy, a heightened sense of honor and dignity, the power and pristine beauty of the mountains and the whole Caucasian nature captivated the poet in early childhood and won a heart for life. And according to the fateful game of chance, it was the Caucasus that became the second home of Mikhail Yuryevich, the place of his endless links and an inexhaustible source of creativity. So in the poem the whole plot unfolds in Georgia, near the monastery, which stood at the confluence of Aragva and Kura.
Mtsyri’s characteristic includes the motive of rejection, misunderstanding on the one hand and pride, rebellion, challenge, struggle, on the other, which is also typical of romantic works. The protagonist of the poem considers the years spent in the monastery to be lost, lost, deleted from life. Confessing to the old monk who once left him, a depleted child, saved him from physical death, but was doomed to spiritual, for he could not become either father or friend, and so, telling about what he saw and did in the wild during Mtsyri remarked: he would not have regretted three lives in a monastery for the sake of one, full of action, movement, struggle and freedom.
Monks never understand a young man. They spend their lives humbly bowing in prayers and hopes of the Lord. The hero relies on himself, on his strengths and capabilities. An indicative characteristic of Mtsyri is that he escapes from his prison during a terrible thunderstorm, and the revelry of the elements pleases him, for him the storm is a sister, while the monks in horror pray for salvation. And the battle with the leopard, taken by Lermontov from mountain legends (also an element of romanticism - a connection with folklore) and “The Knight in the Tiger Skin” by Rustaveli, and so brilliantly rethought and revised, fits wonderfully organically into the content of the work and helps to reveal the best personality traits of the young man. Here is courage, and amazing courage, self-possession, faith in one's own strengths and capabilities, and testing them for strength, the full merging of a proud, rebellious spirit with an equally rebellious nature. Without the episode “Fight with the Leopard”, the characterization of the hero Mtsyri would be incomplete, and his image itself is not fully disclosed.
What else, besides freedom, does a young man dream of? First of all, find your family, hug your family, find yourself under the roof of your father’s house. He dreams of his father and brothers, recalls the echoes of the lullaby that his mother once sang. In dreams, he sees a haze above his native village, he hears the guttural speech of his people. In fact, this is what forms the basis, the spiritual core of each person: family, home, native language and native land. Take away one thing - and the person will feel orphaned. And Mtsyri deprived everything - and immediately! But it is important for Lermontov that he saved the memories, kept them in himself as the most precious and sacred. Like Lermontov himself, he protected and cherished in the depths of his heart the image of a popular Russia with its vast forests, rivers like the seas, and birches whitening on a hill.
Hero and time
An analysis of Lermontov’s poem and an analysis of his poem make it possible to understand: it was not by chance that the author gave Mtsyri only three days of a bright, saturated, full-blooded life. For rebels of such a warehouse the time has not come yet, just as the poet himself was far ahead of his era. Society, being spiritually discouraged after the defeat of the Decembrists and the death of Pushkin, could not rise to the struggle in the riot of reaction. And rare individuals like Mtsyri were doomed to death. Indeed, the hero of the time, the portrait of an entire generation of Lermontov’s contemporaries, was not a mountain youth, but Pechorin, Grushnitsky, Dr. Werner - “superfluous people” who are disappointed in life or play in those.
And yet, it was Mtsyri who became the embodiment of the romantic ideals of the poet, a symbol of a bright, purposeful person who is ready to burn in an instant, but brightly, and not smolder with a worthless firebrand for many years.