The essay “Why Tamara sacrifices herself in the poem “Demon.” Why the demon was overthrown, but Tamara was saved Why the demon was overthrown and Tamara was saved

In 1839, Lermontov finished writing the poem "The Demon". A summary of this work, as well as its analysis, is presented in the article. Today, this creation of the great Russian poet is included in the compulsory school curriculum and is known throughout the world. Let us first describe the main events that Lermontov depicted in the poem “The Demon”.

"Sad Demon" flies over the Earth. He surveys the central Caucasus from a cosmic height, its wonderful world: high mountains, stormy rivers. But nothing attracts the Demon. He feels only contempt for everything. The demon is tired of immortality, eternal loneliness and unlimited power that he has over the earth. The landscape under his wing has changed. Now he sees Georgia, its lush valleys. However, they do not impress him either. Suddenly, the festive revival that he noticed in the possessions of a certain noble feudal lord attracted his attention. The fact is that Prince Gudal wooed his only daughter. A festive celebration is being prepared at his estate.

The demon admires Tamara

Relatives have already gathered. The wine flows like a river. The groom should arrive in the evening. The young princess Tamara marries the young ruler of the Synodal. Meanwhile, the ancient carpets are being laid out by the servants. According to custom, the bride must, even before her groom appears, perform a dance with a tambourine on a roof covered with carpets.

The girl starts dancing. It is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful than this dance. She is so good that the Demon himself fell in love with Tamara.

Tamara's thoughts

Various thoughts are circling in the head of the young princess. She leaves her father's house, where she knew nothing was denied. It is unknown what awaits the girl in a foreign land. She is pleased with her choice of groom. He is in love, rich, handsome and young - everything that is necessary for happiness. And the girl drives away doubts, devoting herself entirely to the dance.

The demon kills the girl's groom

Lermontov continues his poem “The Demon” with the next important event. The summary of the episode associated with it is as follows. The demon is no longer able to take his eyes off the beautiful Tamara. He is fascinated by her beauty. And he acts like a real tyrant. The robbers, at the behest of the Demon, attack the princess's fiancé. The synodal is wounded, but rides to the bride’s house on a faithful horse. Having arrived, the groom falls dead.

Tamara goes to the monastery

The prince is heartbroken, the guests are crying, Tamara is sobbing in her bed. Suddenly the girl hears a pleasant, unusual voice, comforting her and promising to send her magical dreams. While in the world of dreams, the girl sees a handsome young man. She understands in the morning that she is being tempted by the evil one. The princess asks to be sent to a monastery, where she hopes to find salvation. The father does not immediately agree to this. He threatens a curse, but eventually gives in.

Murder of Tamara

And here Tamara is in the monastery. However, the girl did not feel any better. She realizes that she has fallen in love with the tempter. Tamara wants to pray to the saints, but instead she bows to the evil one. The demon realizes that the girl will be killed by physical intimacy with him. He decides at some point to abandon his insidious plan. However, the Demon no longer has control over himself. He enters her cell at night in his beautiful winged form.

Tamara does not recognize him as the young man who appeared in her dreams. She is afraid, but the Demon opens his soul to the princess, speaks to the girl passionate speeches, so similar to the words of an ordinary man, when the fire of desires boils in him. Tamara asks the Demon to swear that he is not deceiving her. And he does it. What does it cost him?! Their lips meet in a passionate kiss. Passing by the door of the cell, the watchman hears strange sounds, and then a faint death cry made by the princess.

The ending of the poem

Gudal was told about the death of his daughter. He is going to bury her in the family high-mountain cemetery, where his ancestors erected a small hill. The girl is dressed up. Her appearance is beautiful. There is no sadness of death on him. A smile seemed to freeze on Tamara’s lips. The wise Gudal did everything right. Long ago, he, his yard and estate were washed away from the face of the earth. But the cemetery and the temple remained undamaged. Nature made the grave of the Demon’s beloved inaccessible to man and time.

This is where Lermontov ends his poem “The Demon”. The summary conveys only the main events. Let's move on to the analysis of the work.

Specifics of the analysis of the poem "Demon"

The poem "Demon", which Lermontov created from 1829 to 1839, is one of the poet's most controversial and mysterious works. It is not so easy to analyze it. This is due to the fact that there are several plans for the interpretation and perception of the text that Lermontov created (“The Demon”).

The summary describes only the outline of events. Meanwhile, the poem has several plans: cosmic, which includes relationships with God and the Demon universe, psychological, philosophical, but, of course, not everyday. This should be taken into account when analyzing. To carry it out, you should turn to the original work, the author of which is Lermontov (“The Demon”). A summary will help you remember the plot of the poem, knowledge of which is necessary for analysis.

The image of the Demon created by Lermontov

Many poets turned to the legend of a fallen angel who fought against God. Suffice it to recall Lucifer from Byron’s work “Cain”, Satan depicted by Milton in “Paradise Lost”, Mephistopheles in Goethe’s famous “Faust”. Of course, Lermontov could not help but take into account the tradition that existed at that time. However, he interpreted this myth in an original way.

Lermontov (“The Demon”) portrayed the main character very ambiguously. The chapter summaries point out this ambiguity but leave out the details. Meanwhile, the image of Lermontov’s Demon turned out to be very contradictory. It combines tragic powerlessness and enormous inner strength, the desire to join the good, to overcome loneliness and the incomprehensibility of such aspirations. The demon is a rebellious Protestant who has opposed himself not only to God, but also to people, to the whole world.

Lermontov's protesting, rebellious ideas appear directly in the poem. The demon is the proud enemy of heaven. He is the “king of knowledge and freedom.” The demon is the embodiment of the rebellious uprising of power against that which fetters the mind. This hero rejects the world. He says that there is neither lasting beauty nor true happiness in him. Here there are only executions and crimes, only petty passions live. People cannot love or hate without fear.

Such universal denial, however, means not only the strength of this hero, but at the same time his weakness. The demon is not given the opportunity to see earthly beauty from the heights of the boundless expanses of space. He cannot understand and appreciate the beauty of nature. Lermontov notes that the brilliance of nature did not arouse, apart from cold envy, either new strength or new feelings in his chest. Everything that the Demon saw in front of him, he either hated or despised.

Demon's love for Tamara

In his arrogant solitude, the protagonist suffers. He yearns for connections with people and the world. The demon is bored with life exclusively for himself. For him, love for Tamara, an earthly girl, should have meant the beginning of a way out of gloomy loneliness to people. However, the search for “love, goodness and beauty” and harmony in the world is fatally unattainable for the Demon. And he cursed his crazy dreams, remained arrogant again, alone in the Universe, as before, without love.

Unmasking the Individualistic Consciousness

Lermontov's poem "The Demon", a brief summary of which we have described, is a work in which individualistic consciousness is exposed. Such revelation is also present in previous poems by this author. In this, the destructive, demonic principle is perceived by Lermontov as anti-humanistic. This problem, which deeply worried the poet, was also developed by him in prose (“Hero of Our Time”) and drama (“Masquerade”).

The author's voice in the poem

It is difficult to identify the author’s voice in the poem, his direct position, which predetermines the ambiguity of the work and the complexity of its analysis. M. Yu. Lermontov (“The Demon”) does not at all strive for unambiguous assessments. The summary you just read may have given you a number of questions to which the answer is not obvious. And this is no coincidence, because the author does not answer them in the work. For example, does Lermontov see in his hero an unconditional bearer (albeit suffering) of evil or only a rebellious victim of a divine “unjust verdict”? Was Tamara's soul saved for the sake of censorship? Perhaps for Lermontov this motive was just an ideological and artistic inevitability. Does the defeat of the Demon and the ending of the poem have a conciliatory or, on the contrary, non-conciliatory meaning?

The poem “The Demon” by Lermontov, a summary of the chapters of which was presented above, can prompt the reader to answer all these questions. They talk about the complexity of the philosophical problems of this work, about the fact that the Demon dialectically combines good and evil, hostility to the world and the desire to reconcile with it, the thirst for the ideal and its loss. The poem reflects the poet's tragic worldview. For example, in 1842 Belinsky wrote that the “Demon” had become a fact of life for him. He found in it worlds of beauty, feelings, truth.

"The Demon" is an example of a romantic poem

The artistic originality of the poem also determines the richness of its philosophical and ethical content. This is a vivid example of romanticism, built on antitheses. The heroes confront each other: Demon and God, Demon and Angel, Demon and Tamara. The polar spheres form the basis of the poem: earth and sky, death and life, reality and ideal. Finally, ethical and social categories are contrasted: tyranny and freedom, hatred and love, harmony and struggle, evil and good, denial and affirmation.

Meaning of the work

The poem that Lermontov created (“The Demon”) is of great importance. The summary and analysis presented in this article may have given you this idea. After all, deep problematics, powerful poetic fantasy, pathos of doubt and denial, high lyricism, plasticity and simplicity of epic descriptions, a certain mystery - all this should lead and led to the fact that Lermontov’s “Demon” is rightfully considered one of the pinnacle creations in the history of the romantic poem . The significance of the work is great not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in painting (Vrubel’s paintings) and music (Rubinstein’s opera, in which its summary is taken as a basis).

"Demon" - a story? Lermontov defined this work as a poem. And this is correct, because it is written in verse. The story is a prose genre. These two concepts should not be confused.

Lermontov sketched the first version of “The Demon” as a fifteen-year-old boy in 1829. Since then, he has repeatedly returned to this poem, creating its various editions, in which the setting, action and plot details change, but the image of the main character retains its features.

In bourgeois literary criticism, “The Demon” was constantly put in connection with the tradition of works about the spirit of evil, richly represented in world literature (“Cain” and “Heaven and Earth” by Byron, “The Love of Angels” by Myra, “Emak” by A. de Vigny, etc. .) But even comparative research led the researcher to the conclusion about the deep originality of the Russian poet. Understanding the close connection of Lermontov’s creativity, including romantic, in the contemporary Russian reality of the poet and with the national traditions of Russian literature, which is the guiding principle for Soviet Lermontov studies, allows us to pose a new question about the image of the Demon in Lermontov, as well as about his romantic poetry in general . That romantic hero, who was first depicted by Pushkin in “Prisoner of the Caucasus” and in “Gypsies” and in which the author of these poems, in his own words, depicted “the distinctive features of the youth of the 19th century,” found complete development in the romantic image of the Demon. In “The Demon,” Lermontov gave his understanding and his assessment of the individualist hero.

Lermontov used in “The Demon”, on the one hand, the biblical legend about the spirit of evil, overthrown from heaven for his rebellion against the supreme divine power, and on the other hand, the folklore of the Caucasian peoples, among whom, as already mentioned, legends about the mountain spirit were widespread , which swallowed up a Georgian girl. This gives the plot of “The Demon” an allegorical character. But underneath the fantasy of the plot there is hidden a deep psychological, philosophical, social meaning.

If the protest against the conditions that suppress the human personality left the pathos of romantic individualism, then in “The Demon” this is expressed with greater depth and strength.

The proud affirmation of personality, opposed to the negative world order, is heard in the words of the Demon: “I am the king of knowledge and freedom.” On this basis, the Demon develops that attitude towards reality, which the poet defines in an expressive couplet:

And everything that he saw before him
He despised or hated.

But Lermontov showed that one cannot stop at contempt and hatred. Having settled for absolute denial, the Demon also rejected positive ideals. In his own words, he
Everything noble has been dishonored
And he blasphemed everything beautiful.

This led the Demon to that painful state of inner emptiness, disembodiment, hopelessness, and loneliness in which we find him at the beginning of the poem. The “Shrine of love, goodness and beauty”, which the Demon left again and, under the impression of beauty, reveals itself to him in Tamara - this is the Ideal of a beautiful, free life worthy of a person. The plot of the plot lies in the fact that the Demon acutely felt the captivity of the sharp Ideal and rushed towards it with all his being. This is the meaning of the attempt to “revive” the Demon, which is described in the poem in conventional biblical and folklore images.
But development recognized these dreams as “crazy” and cursed them. Lermontov, continuing the analysis of romantic individualism, with deep psychological truth, hides the reasons for this failure. He shows how, in the development of experiences about an event, a noble social ideal is replaced by another - individualistic and egoistic, returning the Demon to its original position. Responding with “temptation with full speeches” to Tamara’s pleas, the “evil spirit” forgets the ideal of “love, goodness and beauty.” The demon calls for departure from the world, from people. He invites Tamara to leave “the pitiful light of his fate,” invites her to look at the earth “without regret, without pity.” The Demon places one minute of his “unacknowledged torment” above “the painful hardships, labors and troubles of the crowd of people...” The Demon was unable to overcome selfish individualism in himself. This caused the death of Tamara and the defeat of the Demon:

And again he remained, arrogant,
Alone, as before, in the universe
Without hope and love!..

The defeat of the Demon is proof not only of the ineffectiveness, but also of the destructiveness of individualistic rebellion. The defeat of the Demon is the recognition of the insufficiency of “denial” alone and the affirmation of the positive principles of life. Belinsky correctly saw in this the inner meaning of Lermontov’s poem: “The demon,” the critic wrote, “denies for affirmation, destroys for creation; it makes a person doubt not about the reality of truth, as truth, beauty, as beauty, good, as good, but as this truth, this beauty, this good. He does not say that truth, beauty, goodness are signs generated by a person’s sick imagination; but he says that sometimes not everything is truth, beauty and goodness that is considered to be truth, beauty and goodness.” To these words of the critic it should be added that the demon did not hold on to this position and that this characteristic fully refers not to Lermontov’s hero, but to Lermontov himself, who managed to rise above the “demonic” denial.

This understanding of the ideological and social meaning of Lermontov’s poem allows us to understand its connection with the socio-political situation of the post-December period. Through a deep ideological and psychological analysis of the sentiments of those representatives of the generation of the 30s who did not go beyond individualistic protest, Lermontov in a romantic form showed the futility of such sentiments and put forward to progressive forces the need for other ways to fight for freedom. If we take “The Demon” with modern Russian reality, it is not immediately revealed due to the conventionality of the plot of the poem, then in Lermontov’s realistic novel about the hero of the time, where the same socio-psychological phenomenon is captured, this connection appears with complete clarity.

Overcoming romantic individualism and revealing the inferiority of “demonic” negation confronted Lermontov with the problem of effective ways to fight for personal freedom, the problem of a different hero.

Wide open, bottomless, full of torment eyes... Inflamed lips, baked from internal fire. The gaze, full of despair and anger, is directed somewhere straight ahead. This is the head of a proud thinker who has penetrated the secrets of the Universe and is indignant at the injustice reigning in the world. This is the head of a suffering exile, a lonely rebel, immersed in passionate thoughts and powerless in his indignation. This is the Demon in one of Vrubel’s drawings. This is exactly what Lermontov’s Demon is, a “mighty image,” “mute and proud,” which shone for the poet with “magically sweet beauty” for so many years. In Lermontov's poem, God is depicted as the strongest of all the tyrants in the world. And the Demon is the enemy of this tyrant. The most cruel accusation against the creator of the Universe is the Earth he created:

Where there is no true happiness,
No lasting beauty
Where there are only crimes and executions,
Where petty passions only live;
Where they can’t do it without fear
Neither hate nor love.

This evil, unjust god is like the protagonist of the poem. He's somewhere behind the scenes. But they constantly talk about him, they remember him, the Demon tells Tamara about him, although he does not address him directly, as the heroes of other works of Lermontov do. "You are guilty!" - the reproach that the heroes of Lermontov’s dramas throw at God, accusing the creator of the Universe of crimes committed on Earth, since it was he who created the criminals.

... omnipotent god,
you could know about the future,
Why did he create me? –
The heavenly rebel Azrael, the hero of a philosophical poem created simultaneously with the youthful editions of “The Demon,” turns to God with the same reproach.
Lermontov loves understatement, he often speaks in hints, and the images of his poems become clearer when they are compared with each other. Such comparisons are especially helpful when revealing the complex and difficult-to-understand poem “The Demon.”
Azrael, like the Demon, is an exile, “a strong creature, but defeated.” He is not punished for rebellion, but only for “instant murmur.” Azrael, as told in Lermontov’s poem, was created before people and lived on some planet distant from Earth. He was bored there alone. He blamed God for this and was punished. Azrael told his tragic story to the earthly girl:
I outlived my star;
She scattered like smoke,
Crushed by the hand of the creator;
But certain death is on the brink,
Looking at the lost world,
I lived alone, forgotten and sire.

The demon is punished not only for murmuring: he is punished for rebellion. And his punishment is more terrible, more sophisticated than Azrael’s punishment. The tyrant god, with his terrible curse, incinerated the soul of the Demon, making it cold and dead. He not only expelled him from paradise - he devastated his soul. But this is not enough. The all-powerful despot held the Demon responsible for the evil of the world. By the will of God, the Demon “burns with a fatal seal” everything it touches, harming all living things. God made the Demon and his fellow rebels evil, turned them into an instrument of evil. This is the terrible tragedy of Lermontov’s hero:

Only God's curse
Fulfilled, from the same day
Nature's warm embrace
Forever cooled down for me;
The space turned blue before me,
I saw the wedding decoration
Luminaries I have known for a long time:
They flowed in crowns of gold!
But what? Former brother
I didn't recognize any of them.
Exiles, their own kind,
I began to call in desperation,
But the words and faces and glances of evil,
Alas, I didn’t find out myself.
And in fear I, flapping my wings,
He rushed - but where? For what?
I don’t know - former friends
I was rejected like Eden
The world has become deaf and mute for me...

The love that flared up in the Demon’s soul meant rebirth for him. The “inexplicable excitement” that he felt at the sight of Tamara dancing enlivened the “dumb desert of his soul”,
And again he comprehended the shrine
Love, kindness and beauty!

Dreams about past happiness, about the time when he “wasn’t evil” woke up, the feeling spoke in him “in a native, understandable language.” Returning to the past did not at all mean for him reconciliation with God and a return to serene bliss in paradise. To him, an ever-searching thinker, such a thoughtless state was alien; he did not need this paradise with carefree, calm angels, for whom there were no questions and everything was always clear. He wanted something else. He wanted his soul to live, to respond to the impressions of life and to be able to communicate with another kindred soul and experience great human feelings. Live! Living life to the fullest is what rebirth meant for the Demon. Having felt love for one living being, he felt love for all living things, felt the need to do genuine, real good, admire the beauty of the world, everything that the “evil” god had deprived him of was returned to him.
In the early editions, the young poet describes the joy of the Demon, who felt the thrill of love in his heart, very naively, primitively, somehow childishly, but surprisingly simply and expressively:
That iron dream
Passed. He can love, he can,
And he really loves!..

The "Iron Dream" strangled the Demon and was the result of God's curse, it was a punishment for the battle. In Lermontov, things speak, and the poet conveys the power of his hero’s suffering with the image of a stone burned by a tear. Feeling for the first time “the longing of love, its excitement,” the strong, proud Demon cries. A single, stingy, heavy tear rolls from his eyes and falls onto the stone:
To this day, near that cell
The stone is visible through the burnt hole
A hot tear like a flame,
An inhuman tear.

The image of a stone burned by a tear appears in a poem written by a seventeen-year-old boy. The demon was the poet's companion for many years. He grows and matures with him. And Lermontov more than once compares his lyrical hero with the hero of his poem:
I'm not for angels and heaven
Created by God Almighty;
But why do I live, suffering,
He knows more about this.

“Like my demon, I am the chosen one of evil,” the poet says about himself. He himself is as much a rebel as his Demon. The hero of the early editions of the poem is a sweet, touching young man. He wants to pour out his anguished soul to someone. Having fallen in love and felt “goodness and beauty,” the young Demon retires to the top of the mountains. He decided to abandon his beloved, not to meet with her, so as not to cause her suffering. He knows that his love will destroy this earthly girl locked in a monastery; she will be severely punished both on earth and in heaven. The terrible punishments of “sinning” nuns have been told many times in works of literature, foreign and Russian. Thus, in the novel in verse “Marmion” by Walter Scott, it was described how a young beautiful nun was walled up alive in a dungeon wall for love and an attempt to escape. A scene from this novel, “The Trial in the Dungeon,” was translated by Zhukovsky.
The young Demon also manifests the sense of true goodness that has awakened in him in the fact that he helps people who are lost in the mountains during a blizzard, blows snow off the face of the traveler “and seeks protection for him.” Vrubel has a Young Demon. He, like Lermontov, was haunted by this “mighty image” for many years.
Vrubel’s painting “The Seated Demon” (1890) depicts a strong young man with long muscular arms, somehow surprisingly helplessly folded, and a completely childish, naive face. It seems that if he gets up, he will be a long, long, quickly grown, but not yet fully developed teenager. The physical strength of the figure especially emphasizes the helplessness, childishness of the facial expression with the downturned corners of the soft, slightly limp, sad mouth and the childish expression of sad eyes, as if he had just cried. A young demon sits on the top of a mountain and looks down into the valley where people live. The whole figure and look express the endless melancholy of loneliness. Lermontov had been working on The Demon since 1829. In the early versions of the poem, the action takes place in some unspecified country, somewhere on the seashore, in the mountains. Some hints suggest that this is Spain. After his first exile to the Caucasus, in 1838, Lermontov created a new edition. The plot became more complicated thanks to the poet’s acquaintance with the life and legends of the peoples of the Caucasus. The poem was enriched with bright, living pictures of nature. Lermontov transferred the action to the Caucasus and described what he himself saw. His Demon now flies over the peaks of the Caucasus. Lermontov perfectly conveys different types of movement: rocking, dancing, flying. And now we see the Demon flying. The very instrumentation of the first two lines of the poem creates a feeling of smooth flight:
I flew over the sinful earth...

It’s as if we can hear the distant, barely audible sound of wings, and in the distance the shadow of a flying Demon stretched out in the ether flashes. The change in rhythm gives the impression that the Demon is approaching:
Since then the outcast has wandered
In the desert of the world without shelter...

A shadow flashing in the distance turns into the figure of a flying living creature, still deformed by the distance. The demon is getting closer. The sounds become more audible, louder, as if heavier. You can already discern a somewhat buzzing sound of wings: “outcast” - “wandered.” And finally, the flying Demon is almost above us. This feeling is created by a short line:
And evil bored him.

Making a noise with its wings above our head, the Demon moves away again. And now he is already far away, in the heights:
And over the peaks of the Caucasus
The exile of paradise flew by...

The first part of the Demon's path is the Georgian Military Road to the Cross Pass, its most majestic and wild part. When you look from below at the harsh rocky peak of Kazbek, covered with snow and ice, you are overcome for a moment by a feeling of cold, homelessness, loneliness, similar to the one with which the Demon never parted. Lermontov’s poetic landscapes of the Caucasus have a documentary character, as do his drawings: “I quickly took pictures of all the remarkable places I visited.” But in his drawings, Lermontov emphasized the severity of the treeless rocky mountains even more strongly than in reality, as if he were making illustrations for a poem, comparing these gray, naked rocks with the desolation of the soul of his hero. But now the action of the poem develops. And the Demon has already flown over the Cross Pass:
And before him there is a different picture
Living beauties bloomed...

This dramatic change in landscape is true. It amazes everyone who passes through Krestovaya Mountain:
Luxurious Georgia Valley
They spread out like a carpet in the distance.
And Lermontov, with the same skill with which he had just described the harsh and majestic landscape of the Caucasus Range to the Cross Pass, now paints a “luxurious, lush edge of the earth” - with rose bushes, nightingales, spreading, ivy-covered plane trees and “ringing running streams” . The full life and luxurious picture of nature prepares us for something new, and we begin to involuntarily wait for events. Against the backdrop of this fragrant earth, the heroine of the poem appears for the first time. Just as the image of the Demon is complemented by the landscape of the rocky mountains, so the image of the young, full-of-life Georgian beauty Tamara becomes brighter in combination with the lush nature of her homeland. On a roof covered with carpets, among her friends, Prince Gudal's daughter Tamara spends her last day in her home. Tomorrow is her wedding. Lermontov's heroes have brave and proud souls, greedy for all the impressions of life. They desire passionately, they feel passionately, they think passionately. And in the dance, Tamara’s character was revealed. This is not a serene dance. “Sad doubt” darkened the bright features of the young Georgian woman. Her beauty was combined with the richness of her inner life, which attracted the Demon to her. Tamara is not just a beauty. This would not be enough for the Demon's love. He sensed a soul in her that could understand him. The thought that excited Tamara about the “fate of a slave” was a protest, a rebellion against this fate, and the Demon felt this rebellion in her. It was to her that he could promise to open “the abyss of proud knowledge.” Only a girl whose character contained rebellious traits could be addressed by the Demon with these words:
Leave your old desire
And a pitiful light to his fate;
The abyss of proud knowledge
In return, I will open it for you.

There is some similarity of characters between the hero and heroine of the poem “The Demon”. The philosophical poem “The Demon” is at the same time a psychological poem. It also has a huge social meaning. The hero of the poem bears the features of living people, the poet’s contemporaries. The action of Lermontov's philosophical poems (“Azrael”, “Demon”) takes place somewhere in outer space: there, on separate planets, there live creatures similar to people. His heavenly rebels experience human feelings. And their rebellion against the heavenly tyrant included a lot of the author’s own anger against the earthly autocrat. The poem “Demon” breathes the spirit of those years when it was created. It embodied everything that they lived, that they thought about, that the best people of Lermontov’s time suffered from. It also contains the contradiction of this era. Progressive people of the 30s of the last century passionately searched for the truth. They sharply criticized the surrounding autocratic-serfdom reality, with its slavery, cruelty, and despotism. But they didn't know where to find the truth. Lost in the kingdom of evil, they fought powerlessly and protested, but did not see the path to the world of justice and felt endlessly alone.
Having grown up and brought up in a feudal country, they themselves were largely poisoned by its vices. Lermontov embodied the features of lonely suffering rebels in the image of the Demon. This is a hero of the intermediate era, when for advanced people the old understanding of the world has died, but the new one does not yet exist. This is a rebel without a positive program, a proud and courageous rebel, outraged by the injustice of the laws of the Universe, but not knowing what to oppose to these laws. Like the hero of Lermontov's novel Pechorin, the hero of his poem is an egoist. The demon suffers from loneliness, strives for life and people, and at the same time, this proud man despises people for their weakness. He places one minute of his “unacknowledged torment” above “the painful hardships, labors and troubles of the crowd of people.” Like Pechorin, the Demon cannot free himself from the evil that poisoned him, and, like Pechorin, he is not guilty of this. But the Demon is also a symbolic image. For the poet himself and for his advanced contemporaries, the Demon was a symbol of the cunning of the old world, the collapse of the old concepts of good and evil. The poet embodied in him the spirit of criticism and revolutionary negation. “The spirit of criticism,” wrote Herzen, “is summoned not from hell, not from the planets, but from a person’s own chest, and it has nowhere to disappear. Wherever a person turns away from this spirit, the first thing that catches his eye is himself with his questions.” Belinsky revealed the symbolic meaning of the image of the Demon. The demon, he wrote, “denies to affirm, destroys to create; it casts doubt on a person not about the reality of truth as truth, beauty as beauty, good as good, but as this truth, this beauty, this good... that’s why it’s terrible, that’s why it’s powerful, because it will hardly give rise to doubt in you that hitherto you considered it an immutable truth, as the ideal of a new truth already appears to you from afar. And while this new truth is only a ghost, a dream, an assumption, a guess, a premonition for you, until you realize it, have not mastered it, you are the prey of this demon and must know all the torments of unsatisfied aspiration, all the torture of doubt, all the suffering of a joyless existence " A few years after Lermontov’s death, Ogarev speaks of the Demon as follows:

He is fearless in the struggle, joy is rude to him,
From the dust he builds everything again and again,
And his hatred for the fact that it is necessary to destroy,
Holy to the soul, as holy is love.

There are many contradictions in the poem “The Demon,” which Lermontov created over the course of a decade. They were preserved in the final stages of work. Lermontov did not finish his work on the poem. At the end of the 30s, Lermontov moved away from his Demon and in the poem “A Fairy Tale for Children” (1839-1840) called it “children’s delirium.” He wrote:

My young mind used to outrage
A mighty image, among other visions,
Like a king, dumb and proud, he shone
Such magically sweet beauty,
What was scary... and my soul was sad
She was shrinking - and this wild nonsense
Has haunted my mind for many years.
But I, having parted with other dreams,
And I got rid of him - in poetry.

At the turn of the 40s, a new creative stage began for the poet. He went from denial to affirmation, from the Demon to Mtsyri. In the image of Mtsyri, Lermontov most fully revealed himself, his own soul, which was well understood by his advanced contemporaries. Belinsky called Mtsyri Lermontov’s favorite ideal, and Ogarev wrote that this is the clearest and only ideal of the poet.
Lermontov did not finish work on “The Demon” and did not intend to publish it. There is no authorized copy, much less an autograph of the poem in this edition. It is printed according to the list according to which it was printed in 1856 by A.I. Philosopher, married to a relative of Lermontov, A.T. Stolypina. A.I. Filosofov was the tutor of one of the great princes and published this edition of “The Demon” in Germany, in Karlsruhe, where at that moment the court of the heir was located. The book was published in a very small edition, especially for courtiers. On the title page of Filosofov’s list it is written: “Demon.” An eastern story, composed by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov on December 4, 1838...” There is also a date for the list: “September 13, 1841,” which indicates that this list was made after Lermontov’s death.

"Demon" (1838 September 8 days)

An authorized copy of this edition of the poem, donated by V.A. Lermontov, has survived. Lopukhina (by her husband Bakhmetyeva) and was with her brother, A.A. Lopukhin, a friend of Lermontov, and his friend at Moscow University. The precious manuscript has reached us. A large notebook made of beautiful thick paper is sewn with thick white threads, as Lermontov usually sewed his creative notebooks. It is kept in Leningrad, in the library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin. The cover is yellowed, torn and then glued back by someone. Although the manuscript was rewritten in someone else's smooth handwriting, the cover was made by the poet himself. At the top – large – is the signature: “Demon”. Bottom left, small: “September 1838, 8 days.” The title is carefully written and enclosed in an oval vignette. We also find Lermontov's handwriting on one of the pages of the poem at the very end. The lines written by Lermontov in a notebook given to his beloved woman, among the pages soullessly written out by the clerk, acquire a special intimate meaning. They are perceived with excitement, like someone else's secret being accidentally discovered. The page, written by the scribe's hand, ends with the following verses:
Elusive clouds
Fibrous herds...

On the next page we see Lermontov's handwriting. The poet tries to write evenly and beautifully, but, out of habit, as always, the lines written in his small, uneven handwriting rush up and bend down:
The hour of separation, the hour of meeting -
They are neither joy nor sorrow;
They have no desire for the future
And I don’t regret the past.
On a day of languid misfortune
Just remember them;
Be to the earthly without participation
And careless, like them.

And then the scribe continues to carefully rewrite the poem. But at the end, Lermontov’s hand appears again. Below the line, following the poem, he writes a dedication. In this edition of “The Demon” the progressive content of the poem is most fully and clearly expressed. The difference between the two editions is very noticeable in the second part of the poem and is especially pronounced in the finale. Their comparison is of great interest to the reader. Making a list of “Demon” based on two lists of different editions, Belinsky called them lists “with big differences” and during correspondence he gave preference to this edition, giving options for the second at the end. While under the impression of “The Demon,” Belinsky wrote to V.P. Botkin in March 1842 about Lermontov’s work: “... the content extracted from the bottom of the deepest and most powerful nature, the gigantic swing, the demonic flight - proud enmity with the sky - all this makes us think that we have lost in Lermontov a poet who content would have gone further than Pushkin.” In connection with “Masquerade”, “Boyar Orsha” and “Demon” Belinsky said: “... this is a satanic smile at life, twisting infant lips, this is “proud enmity with heaven,” this is contempt for fate and a premonition of its inevitability. All this is childish, but terribly strong and sweeping. Lion nature! A terrible and powerful spirit! Do you know why I decided to rant about Lermontov? I just finished rewriting his “Demon” yesterday, from two copies, with big differences - and even more in them is this childish, immature and colossal creature.
“Proud enmity with the sky” is a quote from this edition of “The Demon.”
“The “demon” has become a fact of my life, I repeat it to others, I repeat it to myself, for me there are worlds of truths, feelings, beauties,” Belinsky wrote in the same letter, having just finished rewriting the poem in this edition.

The mystery of Lermontov's Demon

The poem “Demon” is a landmark work by Lermontov. And not because it is the fruit of ten years of hard work and is not inferior in its artistic merit to the best examples of his lyrics or the bewitching prose of “A Hero of Our Time.” For some reason, the sophistication and perfection of the verses of the poem are not of paramount importance here and recede into the background. But the theme itself and the plot, which allows for various interpretations, literally attract attention, force you to read it carefully and think hard. After reading “The Demon,” one cannot help but feel that Lermontov breathed into his work a certain mystery that tormented and worried him and which he himself was not able to fully resolve. Lermontov's Demon does not look like his biblical counterpart, this alone fuels the interest of researchers, in addition to everything in his image one can see strength and inner power, which, it seems, the biblical Satan never dreamed of. We are faced with an exceptional phenomenon that exceeds our experience gleaned from reading God-benefiting Christian works. Lermontov's Demon is as mysterious as the poet himself; these are doubles who seem to have lived the same life and were fed by the same ideas. To get to the bottom of the latter means to get closer to the solution to the “Demon”.

The main event that turned the Demon's life upside down was his expulsion from paradise. This happened before the events unfolding in the story (the poem has the subtitle “An Eastern Tale”). “Happy firstborn of creation”, “pure cherub”, he “shone” in paradise, in the “dwelling of light”, in an atmosphere of benevolent attention,

When a running comet

Hello with a gentle smile

Loved to swap with him...

Beauty and love surrounded him, but overnight everything changed. For an unknown reason, not specified in the story, the Demon was removed from the monastery of eternal prosperity and deprived of his angelic rank. The text says nothing about the details of the Demon’s departure; the author limits himself to only indicating that his hero became an “exile from paradise”:

It was not a celestial angel,

Her divine guardian...

Crown of rainbow rays

Didn't decorate it with curls.

But, on the other hand, the Demon has not yet become an inhabitant of the underworld:

It was not the terrible spirit of hell,

Vicious martyr - oh no!

It looked like a clear evening:

Neither day nor night, neither darkness nor light!

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, but it is already clear that this is still a young, fledgling Devil. He, of course, differs from Satan from the times of monotheism, this is the same shadow of God that was discussed earlier, this is the evil spirit of the Old Testament, who has not yet made a final choice in favor of hell. Here is the original moment of Lermontov's plan.

The demon is a kind of outcast and among fellow sufferers:

Exiles of their own kind,

I began to call in desperation,

But the words and faces and glances of evil,

Alas! I didn't recognize it myself.

Another unexpected clarification of the biblical myth: the fallen angels, according to Lermontov, were not very related to each other. Each of them escaped alone. Although in the end they all gathered under the wing of Lucifer-Satan, they came to their patron in different ways. Our hero was generally lost at one time and did not know where the “fate of events” was taking him:

At the free whim of the current

So damaged rook

Without sails and without a rudder

Floats without knowing its destination.

A boat sailing to an unknown destination is a more than impressive image. Is it possible not to sympathize with someone in such a situation? It becomes even more dramatic when we consider that the Demon has not lost either his power or his strength. After his ill-fated exile, he rules over the earth, in his charge is a crowd of “office” spirits, whom he calls his brothers. It seems that everything has worked out just fine - live and reign! But instead, the Demon wanders “in the desert of the world without shelter.” He began to do evil (more out of resentment than consciously and systematically!), but even evil quickly became boring to him.

And suddenly the Demon saw Tamara. A young Georgian princess, she was more beautiful than all the mortal maidens who had ever appeared on earth. The demon fell in love:

...He suddenly felt within himself,

The silent soul of his desert

Filled with a blessed sound -

And again he comprehended the shrine

Love, kindness and beauty!

The insensitive proud man turns into a romantic, dreaming of new happiness, of a possible rebirth:

He became familiar with a new sadness;

A feeling suddenly spoke in him

Once native language.

Love came to the Demon when, it seemed, nothing in the sublunary world could touch his attention. Miraculously, he was given a chance to return to his previous state and find heaven again. Later he confesses to Tamara:

As soon as I saw you -

And secretly I suddenly hated

Immortality and my power.

I was jealous involuntarily

Incomplete earthly joy;

It hurt me not to live like you,

And it’s scary to live differently with you.

An unexpected ray in a bloodless heart

Again warmed up alive,

And sadness at the bottom of the ancient wound

She moved like a snake.

What is this eternity to me without you?

What kind of “ancient wound” began to bother the Demon again? The poet limits himself to simply mentioning the affairs of bygone days, giving the reader the right to figure everything out for himself. But it leaves some clues. The topic of immortality of the “exile from paradise” that he casually touched upon and the seemingly accidental comparison of the sadness hidden “at the bottom of an ancient wound” with a serpent cannot but revive in our memory the story of the Fall. Seduced by the dream of eternal life, the Demon revealed the mystery of love to our ancestors. He loved Eva, love for her is his “ancient wound,” but he loved, so to speak, platonically. Lermontov specifically emphasizes this point: once addressing Tamara, the Demon calls her “my first friend.” By supplementing the well-known biblical story with small details, the poet makes the image of his hero more attractive than required by the Christian tradition.

Lermontov carefully, but very persistently encourages us to believe in the truthfulness of the Demon. He is not a heartthrob at all, he had no girlfriends before, and it seems that for the sake of the “unearthly” feeling that has arisen in him, a miracle can happen. Moreover, the (powerful!) Demon himself passionately desires this:

I want to make peace with the sky,

I want to love, I want to pray,

I want to believe in goodness.

From the very first lines of the story, the reader sympathizes with the Demon: we always feel sorry for the punished, that’s how we are made. And here, on top of everything, it turns out that he himself seems to be trying in every possible way to make amends for his guilt before God, even to fall on his knees before Him. Who would dare to doubt the sincerity of such an intention? Brought up on fairy tales with happy endings, we already expect decisive declarations of eternal devotion from lovers.

But everything happens literally exactly the opposite. Tamara, “the victim of an evil poison,” withers day by day. Unable to hide her torment, she confesses to her father:

I'm tormented by an evil spirit

An irresistible dream;

I'm dying, have pity on me!

Give it to the sacred monastery...

The girl believes that in the monastery God will protect her from the persecution of her ghostly friend. The “messenger of heaven, the cherub” is on duty at the door of her cell. Only the “beautiful sinner” is sad here too, now from the impossibility of dating the one who came to her in dreams “with eyes full of sadness and wonderful tenderness of speech.” She dreams of a new meeting and languishes in anticipation of it. The girl’s soul belongs entirely to her chosen one, the only thing left is “little” - he must cross the limit set for him and take possession of her. This step frightens the Demon:

He wants to leave in fear...

His wing doesn't move!

And a miracle! From darkened eyes

A heavy tear rolls down...

The Weeping Demon... A great, brilliantly created image! The demon for the first time comprehended the melancholy of love, its excitement. He is no longer overwhelmed by the platonic deification of the object of his love and his silent adoration. Tears are a sure sign of a passionate desire to possess your beloved, to merge with her into one whole. And no one can stop him: neither the cherub - God's messenger, nor the Almighty Himself. The demon enters the girl’s cell and gives her the “deadly poison of a kiss,” the last pleasure in her earthly life... The demon dreams of taking Tamara’s soul with him, keeping it as a memory of his one, unique, divine (!) love. But he is not the only one who decides the issues of eternal existence. The Lord intercedes for the soul of the poor girl. Through his lips, one of the holy angels announces to the Demon that

With clothes of mortal earth

The shackles of evil fell from her.

Tamara stood the test of love, did not give up on it, remained faithful to its ideals and died for its eternal triumph.

I redeemed it at a cruel price

She has her doubts...

She suffered and loved -

And heaven opened for love!

This is God's decision, His impartial judgment and His final verdict. He saves Tamara's soul from wandering through the depths of hell, but at the same time separates her from the Demon forever.

Lermontov's poem is not just a brilliant work of art. It also contains deep philosophical ideas. It is no coincidence that Lermontov worked on the poem for ten years. Eight of its editions are known, differing both in plot and in the degree of poetic skill. All this leaves no doubt that, having prepared his work for publication in 1839, Lermontov dotted all the “i’s” and considered it a complete and thoughtful work. True, some modern researchers, surprisingly, consider the poem mysterious and contradictory. Trying to prove this point of view, I. B. Rodnyanskaya (leading critic of the New World) in her article “The Elusive Demon” formulates a whole series of questions that, in her opinion, are insoluble. We will reproduce them sequentially (they are typed in italics) and try to give “Lermontov” answers to them.

Critic.Does the author see in his Demon a principled (albeit suffering) carrier of evil or only a rebellious victim of an “unjust sentence”; In this regard, to what extent does Lermontov rank with the biblical reputation of an “evil spirit”?

Author. The critic craves a clear and definite answer, without thinking that by accepting any of the proposed options, we will destroy Lermontov’s image of the Demon, turning him into a “dead man” (this is what later Christianity did). All fallen angels were looking for their way to hell. Our hero went through the crucible of love suffering, so Lermontov came up with. This is the path when the rebellious victim of an “unjust sentence” turns into a principled carrier of evil. We are witnessing firsthand the continuing fall of the Demon. Showing this was one of the main tasks of the poem. And how the poet painfully solved it is evidenced by its numerous editions.

Lermontov treated his Demon “humanly,” portrayed him “alive,” and reflected the dialectic of his spiritual tossing. The biblical reputation of an “evil spirit” undoubtedly did not dominate the poet. He looked into such depths of the history of the human spirit, where there was still “no smell” of Christianity. In the articles - “Ends and beginnings, “divine” and “demonic”, gods and demons,” Lermontov’s “Demon” and his ancient relatives,” Lermontov’s “Demon” surrounded by ancient myths” - Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov offered a solution to the mystery of the Demon. “He is an ancient poet, he is an old poet,” he writes and explains: “Lermontov called it “demon”, and the ancients called it “god”... The love of the spirit for an earthly girl; whether it is a heavenly spirit or some other spirit, evil or good, this cannot be decided immediately. It all depends on how we look at love and birth, whether we see in them the starting point of sin, or the beginning of the streams of truth. This is where religious rivers cross. And the interest of “The Demon,” historical and metaphysical, lies in the fact that he stood at the intersection of these rivers and again thoughtfully raised the question of the beginning of evil and the beginning of good, not in a narrow moral sense, but in a transcendental and broad sense.”

Lermontov's work contains the spirit of ancient religions. Literary critics for the most part do not realize this. That’s why their Demon is “eluding”, crawling (!). And for them Lermontov is not a brilliant poet and thinker, the creator of a new myth (V.V. Rozanov), but a “first-grader” who took on a topic that was beyond his strength and failed to reveal it fully.

Critic.To what extent is the free will of the hero striving for rebirth - is the impracticability of his “crazy” dreams predetermined from the outside, or does he still bear personal responsibility for the death of the heroine and for his tragic failure?

Author. Yes, he does, Tamara would not have died if he had not crossed the threshold of her cell. Another thing is that this step was predetermined at the moment when the Demon fell in love. Everything else developed according to the will of fate. The demon is a fatalist, and that says it all.

Critic.What does the very idea of ​​rebirth, “new life” mean in the poem - does the Demon offer Tamara to return him to heaven, or to become his “heaven”, to share and brighten up his former fate, promising in return “super-stellar edges”, autonomous from the divine-angelic heavens, and co-reign over the world?

Author. Rozanov, in his article “The Demon of Lermontov and His Relatives,” writes: “Lovers are still great stargazers, star-thinkers, star-sensualists. Let someone explain why lovers become addicted to the stars, love to look at them and sometimes begin to compose songs for them, solemn, serious:

The night is quiet. The desert listens to God

And star speaks to star, -

as our romantic poet wrote, for whom love flickered both in an oak leaf and in a cliff, flickered during life and beyond the grave.” Analyzing this poem, Vasily Vasilyevich very insightfully remarked at one time (article “To the lecture of Mr. Vl. Solovyov on the Antichrist”): “I deliberately wrote “god” with a small letter, although this word is printed in Lermontov’s works with a capital letter, because here, as you already want there, but, in any case, it is not about “Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate,” that is, not about a well-known historical Person. Can you feel my thought? I want to say that if you immediately read Lermontov’s poem and ask point blank: is it talking about Christ and even is this poem, so to speak, evangelical in spirit, then you will immediately answer: “no! No!" And I will say “no,” and that’s where I catch both you and Lermontov: what kind of “god” is he talking about then, and with such a separate (note!) line:

Am I waiting for something, do I regret anything?

The poor boy, because he wrote this as a cadet, is in some strange confusion “waiting” for “God” and “regrets” about the “God” he is leaving behind. Our ancient ancestors associated their gods with the firmament and the stars twinkling on it. “Suprastellar edges” is the world of hoary antiquity, this is the Cosmos of ancient myths and the dream of a golden age when people were like gods. Christianity with its “divine-angelic” heavens replaced the old mythology, but nothing died, only the epithets “evil” and “good” changed. Lermontov in “The Demon” looked into our pagan past and gave us the feeling of the cosmic element reigning over the world, so clearly present in the most ancient myths of mankind. “It doesn’t matter if he knew nothing about them - this is an atavism of antiquity. In ancient times, his poem would have become a sacred saga, sung by the Orphics, represented in the Eleusinian mysteries. The meeting place, this secluded monastery, where Tamara’s parents took him, would have become a revered place, and the “Demon” himself would not have remained with a common family name, but would have been designated a new one, his own, near Adonis, Tammuz, Bel, Zeus and others” (article "Demon" of Lermontov and his ancient relatives). Lermontov intuitively saw the origin of the fallen angel, who was previously a god. Finding “heaven” for the Demon means returning to his previous state, when he was the god of the Universe and dreamed of eternal love. The demon confesses to Tamara:

In my soul, since the beginning of the world,

Your image was imprinted

He rushed in front of me

In the deserts of the eternal ether.

“Suprastellar edges” is a “desert of eternal ether,” where Tamara (in the Demon’s dreams) was assigned the role of a goddess and where she was supposed to co-reign with her heavenly husband, the Demon.

Critic.And if the Demon’s monologues confirm both desires, is the obvious contradiction explainable solely on a psychological level (passionate, confused speeches of a lover, seeking a reciprocal impulse by all means)?

Author. The demon is in love, his speeches may seem confusing, but we do not see any contradictions in them. In the “supra-stellar regions” Tamara, with her love, will return the Demon to the sky, become his sky, share and brighten up his former fate. Lermontov created his own myth, different from the Christian one. This is what, following Rozanov, our literary scholars should repeat.

Critic.Or take at least the meeting of the Demon with the cherub in Tamara’s cell - should it be considered a turning point, fatal for the hero’s self-determination in life?

Author. Yes, you should. The monastery marks the limits of God's dominion on earth. By crossing them, the Demon openly challenges God. A madly loving Demon enters where he is strictly forbidden to enter, and will be punished for it. Here is a very important dialogue that took place between two lovers:

Tamara

You have sinned...

Daemon

Is it against you?

Tamara

They can hear us!..

Daemon

Tamara

Daemon

He won't glance at us:

He is busy with the sky, not the earth!

Tamara

And the punishment, the torment of hell?

Daemon

So what? You will be there with me!

Tamara, as a loving and compassionate soul, worries, first of all, about the fate of the Demon. She understands that by penetrating the monastery fence, he sinned, and sympathizes with him. Demon's answer, however, is somewhat puzzling. The impression remains that he was caught by surprise and is simply stalling for time. And the whole point is that the Demon is wondering what sin Tamara is asking him about. Or that he infiltrated the monastery, or about older intrigues against the girl’s fiancé, whom

...an insidious dream

The crafty Demon was indignant:

He is in thoughts, under the darkness of the night,

He kissed the bride's lips.

Spurred on by sweet visions, the impatient groom disdained the custom of his ancestors and did not say a prayer at the chapel that stood on the road. The price for this was an enemy bullet. The demon was an accomplice and, one might say, the organizer of the murder of his successful rival, which is why he hesitated in answering Tamara. With his counter question, he tried to clarify whether the girl had guessed about his fatal secret. True, even in this situation, the Demon could console himself with the illusion that he helped save the girl from an unenviable existence in the groom’s house, where they were waiting

Freedom's playful child,

The sad fate of the slave,

The Fatherland, alien to this day,

And an unfamiliar family.

But, be that as it may, he contributed to the disruption of the wedding and grief in Tamara’s family. The girl could never forgive such a thing, and it’s good for the Demon that she knew nothing about it. Another thing is that the Demon himself has a presentiment of his future fate. He knows that the Angel, who saw him at the door of his cell, will report everything to the Supreme Judge, and He will bring charges against him in full. The demon already feels the heat of hell, he does not calm Tamara down and does not deny the possibility of their future ending up in hell. He is only afraid of separation from his beloved.

Critic.And if this is so, then why is the Demon’s intention to penetrate Tamara qualified as “cruel intent” even before the collision with the Angel, which aroused in him an outbreak of “ancient hatred”?

Author. The demon goes against the will of God. By driving away the Angel, he takes upon himself the right to control the fate (soul) of the girl. This is the time to remember the Greek myth about Persephone, who was kidnapped by the god of the underworld Hades. After he married the girl, even Zeus could not rescue the captive. The only thing that the owner of Olympus could achieve was that Hades would release his wife into the world of living souls and sunlight for two-thirds of the year. In Russian mythology, a similar story played out between Koshchei, Marya Morevna and Ivan. In Lermontov, the Lord himself remained behind the scenes; his servants communicate with the Demon, but this, perhaps, only emphasizes the drama and depth of the confrontation between two opponents, two gods (!). The object of contention is the soul of a mortal girl, who plays a passive role in their struggle. The demon, having entered the cell, leaves its victim no choice. That is why his intention is qualified as “cruel intent.”

Critic.This scene seems to be the key to the entire concept of “The Demon,” and yet it is precisely this scene that gives rise to an endless series of questions. It is obvious that the Demon is deeply wounded by the “painful reproach” of the guardian Tamara, who judges him by the external court of the “crowd,” taking into account only his notoriety and not trusting the unexpected turn of his will. However, how did this hero’s resentment affect his subsequent assurances and vows?

I am the one whose gaze destroys hope;

I am the one no one loves;

I am the scourge of my earthly slaves,

I am the king of knowledge and freedom,

I am the enemy of heaven, I am the evil of nature...

This is a purely Christian representation of Satan, the Devil, but not Lermontov’s Demon. Here he is slandering himself, and this is psychologically understandable. Later, having calmed down, he will tell the truth about himself, and these confessions should be taken seriously.

Critic.Renouncing evil in front of Tamara, he lies - consciously, albeit enthusiastically? Or unconsciously - without realizing that his love is already poisoned by hatred?

...I have renounced my old revenge,

I renounced proud thoughts;

From now on, the poison of insidious flattery

No one's mind will be alarmed...

The demon refuses very specific vices, he wants to “believe in goodness,” but at the same time he does not forget to add:

...In love, as in anger, believe Tamara,

I am unchanging and great.

Let us repeat, Lermontov’s Demon is not the biblical Devil, the father of lies and verbiage. He is sincere to Tamara, and there is no hatred in his love.

Critic.In the finale, the defeated Demon discovers for himself, from the words of an angel (apparently, another angel: “one of the holy angels”) that, having taken the life of his beloved, he was an involuntary instrument of the heavenly plan, destining Tamara’s soul, not created for the world, for a speedy relocation to paradise So, quietly, the motif of the tempter deceived by heaven arises (by the way, familiar to medieval doctrinal literature). But was the “untimely” appearance of the Angel in Tamara’s cell a provocative part of this plan, which takes away the hero’s hope in advance - or a test of the Demon, whose outcome depended on him?

Find out! We've been waiting for her for a long time!

Is this a sufficient argument? Generally speaking, no. Moreover, if the story we are considering is attributed to the time when the Demon was still represented as one of the gods, then God himself should be thought of as the Old Testament Spirit, hovering over the desert of waters.

The idea of ​​a single God matured in the minds of the ancient Jews for a long time. The Bible gives us the opportunity to trace how this religious idea gradually and very difficultly established itself in Canaan. In the Hebrew original of the Bible, in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, it is directly stated that the world was created not by God in the singular (Hebrew “el”, “eloh” or “eloah”), but by gods (“elohim”). The poet is interested in the early state of the “heavenly office”, when the hierarchy of divine powers had not yet formed. There is still a “secret struggle” going on in heaven, and under these conditions it is hardly appropriate to think about unified planned actions of the angelic army. It is no coincidence that the demon tells Tamara that God is “busy with heaven, not with earth.” This is what he wants to take advantage of, hoping that the nun’s divine protection system will not work. There is a crazy adventure here, a detective story if you like, but both sides, as they say, are playing openly. Presence

An angel in a monastery is not a provocation, but, so to speak, a precautionary measure. But for the Demon, meeting him, of course, is a test. Let us remember how he hesitates and wanders near the monastery wall before entering it. And a tear, a heavy tear, rolling from the darkened eyes... The demon goes to fight for his love, and he hopes to win.

But “one of the holy angels” who stood in his way is none other than the Spirit of God himself, the head of the angelic forces, and the Demon could no longer defeat Him.

Critic.Or it may be that the cherub, on his own initiative, showed “special zeal” (A. Shan-Girey), and the whole scene, together with his stern warning: “To my love, to my shrine / Do not lay a criminal trail” - no more than a rudiment of a love triangle (Demon - Nun - Angel) from early editions?

Author. Most likely so, although this is not of fundamental importance. With these two lines, Lermontov “revitalizes” the situation and makes it credible. It is impossible not to fall in love with the beautiful captive; Angel is yet another “victim” of hers. If we talk about a love triangle, then in this case one of the unwritten “laws” of a loving heart is realized: a woman prefers an interesting, but vicious man to a righteous and positive man in everything.

Critic.Finally, as a result of the above and many other doubts: do the final sentence passed on the Demon by heaven and the apotheosis of the heroine have an internal, moral meaning - or does a tyrannical force simply triumph over the hero after Tamara’s posthumous “betrayal” to him, so that the moral outcome of the poem is connected precisely with his suffering intransigence?

Author. The poem confirms one simple and well-known rule: you cannot become happy by causing misfortune to another. The sin of killing the girl's groom came between the lovers, separated them and pulled the Demon into the hellish abyss. On the contrary, the bright, pure soul of the girl, unaware of this atrocity, found peace in the Garden of Eden. Paradise is open to love, untainted by evil thoughts and unrighteous deeds. This, we think, is the internal moral meaning of the poem. The apotheosis of the heroine of the poem, which I. B. Rodnyanskaya recalls, deserves a separate discussion. Lermontov exalts the feminine principle. The celestials cannot save the fallen angel. His only hope is Tamara, to whom he confidentially confesses:

Me to goodness and heaven

You could return it with a word.

Your love is a holy cover

Dressed, I would appear there,

Like a new angel in a new splendor...

A mortal woman is capable of surpassing God in healing a sick soul, the healing power of her love exceeds the capabilities of the Creator. We agree that this is not entirely in the Christian spirit, more precisely in the spirit of the late Christian tradition, where female images are invariably present in the background, or even third. In ancient religions such discrimination did not exist; the Eleusinian Mysteries, for example, are a holiday in honor of the Great Goddess Demeter. Lermontov restores heavenly harmony. “If gender is a mystery, incomprehensibility, has its “here” and its “there”, then just as there is a masculine principle and a feminine principle here, then there is also a “there”, in the structure of stars, or something, in the structure of light, in the ether, in magnetism , in electricity there is “courageous”, “brave”, “militant”, “formidable”, “strong” and there is “compassionate”, “tender”, “caressing”, “sweet”, “passive” (Rozanov V.V. Ends and beginnings, “divine” and “demonic”, gods and demons). This feeling was close to Lermontov, and he, like his hero, saw in the superstellar regions, in the darkness of millennia, the bright, divine face of the Foremother of humanity. The poet’s entire work is permeated with love for her. She is present in his poetry as the ideal image of a beloved, beautiful and unattainable. It is known how Belinsky marveled that the officer and duelist penetrated with amazing truth into maternal feelings in “The Cossack Lullaby.” The poet himself admitted: “Who will believe me that I already knew love when I was ten years old? No, I haven't seen anything like it since then, or so it seems to me because I have never loved as I did that time” (recorded July 8, 1830). And in the poem “June 1831, 11th Day” he writes:

And deception could not wean me off;

An empty heart ached without passions,

And in the depths of my heart wounds

Once upon a time there lived love, the goddess of young days...

We would like to think that the poet is speaking here not so much about his childhood as about the infancy of humanity. He was given the opportunity to look into the depths of thousands of years and give us the sensations of those eras. Only one poet saw further and deeper in this sense - Sergei Yesenin. How different they are in appearance and how amazingly consonant their poems about Nature are, that one, living thread that connects us with the past! In the article “Lermontov’s Demon and His Ancient Relatives,” Rozanov wrote: “Lermontov feels nature in a human-spiritual, human-shaped way. And it’s not that he used metaphors, comparisons, decorations - no! But he saw in nature exactly some kind of humanoid creature<…>In fact, everywhere in nature he reveals a different, enormous human being; opens the macrocosm of man, a small photograph of whom is given in me.”

The golden cloud spent the night

On the chest of a giant cliff...

…………………………..

But there was a wet trace in the wrinkle

Old cliff. Alone

It costs; thought deeply

And he cries quietly in the desert.

Or from the poem “Gifts of the Terek”:

But, leaning on the soft shore,

The Caspian Sea calmed down, as if sleeping,

And again, caressing, Terek

There is a murmur in the old man's ear.

The poet humanizes Nature. But in relation to the plot of “The Demon” we can talk about the exact opposite situation. Tamara, an earthly woman, is elevated by the poet to the status of a Goddess. In Lermontov's poem she is the embodiment of the primal element of Love, which participated in the creation of the world. And winning her love is the only opportunity for the Demon to soar again to heavenly heights. Actually, Lermontov himself (perhaps unconsciously!) spent his whole life looking for his ideal and was tormented because he did not find it. In this sense, “The Demon” is deeply autobiographical; Lermontov never found his “soul mate” and did not have time to taste the fruits (did not live!) of mutual, bright love.

The answer to the critic’s last question brought us to the topic of the autobiographical nature of Lermontov’s poem. And here it is quite natural to ask the question, the behavior of which social group of people is given in the image of the Demon? Despite the Marxist background, this topic has worried critics and philosophers of various directions. Thus, Vladimir Solovyov believed that the Demon’s mode of action, “judging impartially, is more befitting a young hussar cornet than a person of such high rank and such ancient years.” The above analysis, we hope, clearly shows how unsatisfactory this opinion is. In addition, the Soviet literary critic Ulrich Richardovich Vokht (1902–1979) analyzed this issue in detail and very successfully, in our opinion, in the article “The Demon” by Lermontov as a phenomenon of literary style.”

According to the researcher, after 1825, the local aristocracy found itself in a peculiar role of the Demon, that is, in the role of an outcast “class”, socially isolated and deprived of its previous dominant position. Among these “outcasts,” different movements emerged that adapted to the new situation in their own way. A completely special group among them, however, were those who did not want to integrate into the life of Nicholas Russia and dreamed of restoring the freedom and serene bliss of past days. They sympathized with the fate of the Decembrists and partly shared their criticism of the autocracy, but did not want any revolutionary upheavals. They dreamed, like Chaadaev, of influencing the tsar and in every possible way preventing the dominance of the bureaucracy and people obsessed with new economic ideas - from commoners to the heralds of capitalism. But their time was quickly running out. “Despair - not of a downtrodden person, but the proud despair of an aristocrat who has not renounced himself, his past position and the structure of his feelings - this is the main form of the Demon’s attitude to the world, his basic socio-psychological attitude. The intensity of the experiences reflected the strength of resistance of the outgoing class and the proximity of the crisis... The position of the old noble aristocracy in the 30s, deprived of its social significance, embittered at the existing order of things and at the whole world, repelled by earthly reality. Striving to restore oneself at least in a dream, intense in one’s subjective quest, majestic and mysterious in one’s own imagination - all this required for its literary reflection a carrier image of these exaggerated features of a sick consciousness” (U. R. Fokht).

Lermontov, the “sad Demon” of Russia, was one of these people. Even in his youth, he predicted the fate of the Russian monarchy (“The year will come, a black year for Russia”), stood up in defense of Pushkin and burned with love for the Motherland, bravely fought in the Caucasus, he, it seems, even in principle did not see himself fit in the future of the “Fatherland of benefit For". Isn’t this where the centuries-old, demonic melancholy in his poems comes from? A young, full of energy person, burdened by life and light!.. Margaret Mitchell, the author of the novel “Gone with the Wind,” said beautifully about such people: “ornamental nature”...

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The plot of this romantic poem was the legend of a fallen angel who was once part of God’s retinue, but then complained against Him because God was allegedly unjust and allowed evil. Having fallen away from God, the angel became a demon, a servant of Satan, and took up arms against God, supposedly out of love for humanity and with the expectation that people would abandon God. But the evil sown by the demon did not bear the fruits of good. It remained evil, not correcting humanity, but giving birth to even more sinners. And then the demon became disillusioned with Satan. He was tired of doing evil, and he decided to make peace with God, to fall again into His mercy.

Lermontov wrote a poem about what happened after the angel's flight from God and after the demon's disappointment in Satan. The question that was posed by Lermontov sounded something like this: is it possible to atone for sins, to return to the bosom of God, if the demon is not going to give up his previous beliefs? Can someone who remains an individualist be reconciled with God? Can a fallen angel, again seeking harmony with God, do good?

The poem “Demon” was created by Lermontov over the course of 10 years. Its final edition was compiled in 1839. During Lermontov's lifetime, the poem was not published and first appeared abroad.

Demon Image. The main character of the poem is the Demon, an image personifying the evil principle that reaches the general denial of the world. The demon is not just a skeptic. He suffers from a sense of the meaninglessness of existence, and this gives him a gloomy charm. The demon administers sole judgment over the world. He takes revenge on society, humanity and the Creator. Lermontov's Demon is associated with the European poetic tradition. Ultimately, this image goes back to the Old Testament prophecy about the destruction of Babylon, which speaks of a fallen angel who rebelled against God.

Lermontov’s demon is not at enmity with God, he wants to achieve harmony, again feel the value of goodness and beauty (“I want to make peace with God, / I want to love, I want to pray, / I want to believe in goodness”) through love for an earthly woman. The reader finds the Demon at a fatal, turning point in his fate. The demon recalls his former harmony with the world, “when he believed and loved.” The bitter irony of fate is that, thinking of taking revenge on God and the world, the Demon placed himself outside of moral values ​​and took revenge on himself. The individualistic position turned out to be fruitless and doomed the Demon to hopeless loneliness.

The demon is fed up with everything - both evil and good. God's peace, which he strives for, also does not arouse enthusiasm in him:

Proud spirit
He cast a contemptuous eye
The creations of his God,
And on his high forehead
Nothing was reflected.

Without any charm, the Demon looks at “luxurious Georgia,” the picture of which evokes nothing but “cold envy” “in the barren chest of the exile...”.

The demon is not satisfied either by falling away from earthly and worldly life, or by accepting God’s creation. He would like to maintain contempt and hatred for the earthly world and at the same time experience the bliss of merging with the world as a whole. This is impossible. Both heaven and earth live according to their own laws, without needing the Demon. And then Tamara suddenly strikes him with her beauty. She reminds the Demon of “better days,” and the “shrine of love, goodness and beauty comes to life in him!..”. Through love for Tamara, the Demon hopes, he will be able to once again touch world harmony.

So that only he can get Tamara, the “cunning Demon” outrages Tamara’s fiancé with a “treacherous dream” and contributes to his death. However, Tamara’s memory of her groom remains, her grief remains. The demon seeks to destroy them too. He offers Tamara his love, confusing her soul with doubt about the need to remain faithful and in memory of her lover:

He's far away, he won't know
He won't appreciate your melancholy...

Invading Tamara’s life, the Demon destroys the world of patriarchal integrity, and love for Tamara itself is filled with selfishness: the Demon needs her for his own revival and the return of lost harmony with the world. The price of this harmony is the inevitable and inevitable death of Tamara. Having left worldly life, she becomes a nun, but confusion does not leave her. Doubt also concerns the Demon:

And there was a minute
When he seemed ready
Leave cruel intent behind.

However, the sounds of the song heard, in which the Demon again heard the world harmony he desired (“And this song was tender./As if for the earth it/Was composed in the sky!”), resolves his doubts: the former feeling of harmony turns out to be so powerful that again takes possession of the Demon, but now irrevocably:

And he comes in, ready to love,
With a soul open to goodness,
And he thinks that there is a new life
The desired time has come.

But the good he longs for is achieved through evil. No wonder Tamara’s angel tells him: “To my love, to my shrine/Do not lay a criminal trail.”

And then it turns out that the Demon is still the same evil and insidious spirit: “And again the poison of ancient hatred awoke in his soul.” Tempting Tamara, he appears to her as a sufferer, sick of evil, knowledge and freedom, dislike of heaven and earth, rejection and loneliness. He asks for love and sympathy for his suffering:

Me to goodness and heaven
You could return it with a word.

The demon promises to throw “immortality and power”, “eternity” and “infinity of possessions” at Tamara’s feet. He wants to love and be kind without accepting God’s world as a whole, and therefore is doomed to skepticism and self-will:

Everything noble has been dishonored
And he blasphemed everything beautiful...

People turned out to be his obedient disciples, but they have hope for God's forgiveness. The Demon has no hope, no faith, he is forever immersed in the abyss of doubt, and the power of power, absolute freedom and omniscience turned into torments of suffering.

The demon promises Tamara limitless freedom and eternal love, which does not exist on earth, complete oblivion of the earthly sinful world, indifference to imperfect earthly life.

However, in that indifferent, cold and sinless existence where the Demon calls Tamara, there is no idea of ​​good and evil. The Demon himself suffers from this indistinguishability of good and evil. He wants to change places with Tamara: to immerse her in the world of his suffering and, having taken her life, again experience the harmony of the earthly and heavenly. He manages to gain the upper hand over an earthly woman who bestows love on him (“Alas! the evil spirit triumphed!/The deadly poison of his kiss/Instantly penetrated her chest”; “Two souls kissed in agreement..."). But the revival of the Demon is impossible. His triumph over Tamara turns out to be his defeat at the same time. Hoping for eternal happiness, for an absolute resolution of the contradictions of his consciousness, the Demon for one moment becomes both a winner and a loser. Introducing to harmony through love for an earthly woman and at the cost of her death did not materialize. The evil principle again appeared in the Demon.

The final word of the Demon thrown into the world was a curse:

And the defeated Demon cursed
Your crazy dreams,
And again he remained, arrogant,
Alone, as before, in the universe
Without hope, without love!..

The tragedy of the Demon unfolds against the backdrop of nature, which preserves its naturalness and grandeur. She continues to live her former spiritualized and harmonious life. The Demon's suffering for a harmonious utopia, his impulse for freedom, his passionate protest against the unjust order of existence would be justified if harmony were achieved not by self-will, but by a purposeful effort of creative effort.

Tamara. Tamara acts as the antagonist of the rejected spirit in the poem. It personifies the naive consciousness of the patriarchal world. Tamara’s life before the Demon saw her was spent in the lap of beautiful nature. Tamara rejoices in the world, its colors and sounds. The death of the groom resonates with sadness in her heart. The demon is attracted to Tamara by her overflowing vitality, integrity and spontaneity. This integrity is determined by a way of life that excludes absolute freedom, knowledge and doubt. A meeting with the Demon means for Tamara a loss of naturalness and immersion in the field of knowledge. Earthly love is replaced by a powerful, superhuman passion, and the integral inner world cracks, revealing the confrontation between good and evil principles, appearing as loyalty to former love and an unclear dream (“Everything is a lawless dream / In it the heart beat as before”). From now on, contradictions tear Tamara’s soul apart and torment her. Tamara seemed to have eaten from the tree of knowledge. Since then, the princess has been constantly immersed in thought. Her “heart is inaccessible to pure delights,” and “the whole world is dressed in a gloomy shadow.” Tamara's soul becomes an arena of struggle between customs, patriarchal foundations and a new, “sinful” feeling.

Seduced by the Demon, Tamara ceases to perceive nature directly. Weighed down by an internal struggle (“Tired by the constant struggle...”), she anticipates her death (“Oh, have mercy! What glory? What do you need my soul for?”) and asks the Demon to give up, but his temptations turn out to be stronger.

Imbued with deep sympathy for the suffering of the spirit of evil, Tamara responds to him with love and sacrifices her life to this love. The soul of the deceased Tamara is still full of doubts, the “trace of transgression” is imprinted on her, but she is saved from the power of the Tempter Demon by an angel who washes away the signs of evil from the sinful soul with her tears. It turns out that God sent “tests” to Tamara, who, having overcome suffering and sacrificed herself, fell in love with the Demon so that he would turn to good. Therefore she is worthy of forgiveness:

With clothes of mortal earth
The shackles of evil fell from her.

The evil principle inspired by the Demon seems to change its nature: having accepted it, the heroine sacrifices herself, thereby protecting the eternal values ​​of the universe created by God.

If the Demon is thrown from the above-ground heights onto the sinful earth, then in a different everyday and social environment another hero will begin his literary life, who will resemble a fallen angel in many features and will also turn out to be a demonic personality with the same structure of feelings.

Such a person in the novel “A Hero of Our Time” is Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin.

In poetry, Lermontov completed the development of Russian romanticism, bringing his artistic ideas to the limit, expressing them and exhausting the positive content contained in them. The poet’s lyrical work finally solved the problem of genre thinking, since the main form turned out to be a lyrical monologue, in which the mixing of genres occurred depending on the change of states, experiences, moods of the lyrical “I”, expressed by intonations, and was not determined by theme, style or genre. On the contrary, certain genre and style traditions were in demand due to the outburst of certain emotions. Lermontov freely operated with various genres and styles as they were needed for meaningful purposes. This meant that thinking in styles was strengthened in the lyrics and became a fact. From the genre system, Russian lyrics moved to free forms of lyrical expression, in which genre traditions did not constrain the author’s feelings, but arose naturally and naturally.

Lermontov’s poems also drew a line under the genre of the romantic poem in its main varieties and demonstrated the crisis of this genre, which resulted in the appearance of “ironic” poems, in which other stylistic searches, trends in the development of the theme and organization of the plot were outlined, close to realistic.

Lermontov's prose preceded the “natural school” and anticipated its genre and stylistic features. With the novel “A Hero of Our Time,” Lermontov opened the way for the Russian philosophical and psychological novel, combining a novel with intrigue and a novel of thought, in the center of which a person is depicted analyzing and cognizing himself. In prose, according to A. A. Akhmatova, he was ahead of himself by a whole century.

Basic theoretical concepts

• Romanticism, realism, romantic lyrics, romantic “two worlds”, lyrical hero, lyrical monologue, elegy, romance, message, lyrical story, civil ode, ballad, idyll, romantic drama, autobiography, symbolism, romantic poem, “flight” (of the romantic hero ), “alienation” (of a romantic hero), romantic conflict, cycle of stories, psychological novel, philosophical novel.

Questions and tasks

1. What poems by Lermontov have you read?
2. Compare “Song of the prophetic Oleg” by Pushkin and “Song... about the merchant Kalashnikov” by Lermontov. Both works are called songs. Why did the authors use this particular word to denote the genre?
3. What features of the historical era and folk art does Lermontov take into account in the poem?
4. What signs allow us to consider “Mtsyri” a romantic poem? How does “Mtsyri” differ in its compositional and plot organization from Pushkin’s romantic poems? Trace the motive of “flight”, “alienation” in the poems of Pushkin and Lermontov.
5. What type of romantic poems does the poem “Demon” belong to (moral descriptive, mystery, ironic, historical)?
6. How does the plot of “The Demon” unfold and what is most important in it - the events or the spiritual life of the characters?
7. Tell us how you understand the romantic conflict in the poem. Why was the Demon overthrown and Tamara saved?
8. What features of the Demon were reflected in the character of Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin?

Images of evil spirits have always troubled the hearts of poets and writers. The power of good, embodied in God, had no other form. But the messenger of Hell did not bear any names: the Devil, Satan, and Lucifer. This proved that evil has many faces, and a person must be on guard, because he can succumb to temptation, and then the soul will go straight to hell.

However, in romantic literature of the early 19th century, especially Russian, images of evil spirits they became not so much villains as tyrant fighters, and the tyrant, paradoxically, was God himself. After all, it was he who demanded suffering from a person, forced him to blindly follow his will, sometimes sacrificing the most precious thing he had.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's poem “The Demon” was no exception. Behind basis of the plot the poet takes the well-known biblical legend about the spirit of evil cast out by God from heaven for rebellion against his power. The image of the Demon, who transgressed the laws of good and remained alone in the desert of a world that bored him, worried Lermontov all his life. Mikhail Yuryevich worked on the poem for 12 years.

At the beginning of the work, the poet sympathized with his hero. The Demon's desire to be limitless in feelings and actions, the challenge of everyday life, the audacity of rebellion against divine principles were attractive to young Lermontov. The demon is an unusual hero: he despises the limitations of human existence in both time and space. Once upon a time he "believed and loved", “I knew neither malice nor doubt”, but now “the long-outcast wandered in the desert of the world without shelter”.

Flying over the valleys of luxurious Georgia, he sees the young princess Tamara dancing. At this moment the Demon experiences inexplicable excitement, because “The desert of his dumb soul was filled with a blessed sound” And “he again comprehended the shrine of love, goodness and beauty”. But Tamara does not need his love, because she is waiting for her fiancé - the brave Prince Sinodal.

All the heroes of the poem, except for the Demon, are closed in the space of their fate. Tragic circumstances control them, and resistance to them is futile. The brave prince hurries to the wedding feast and passes the chapel, where he always brought "fervent prayer". As soon as “The daring groom despised the custom of his ancestors”, as soon as he crossed the boundary of the prescribed, death from "Evil Bullet Ossetian" overtook him. Maybe this is the Demon's revenge?

While creating his poem, Lermontov remembered an ancient legend he had heard in the Caucasus about the mountain spirit Hood, who fell in love with a beautiful Georgian woman. When the spirit of Good found out that Nino loves an earthly youth, unable to endure the pangs of jealousy, on the eve of the wedding he covers the lovers' hut with a huge snow avalanche. But Lermontov is not satisfied with the principle: “So don’t let anyone get you!” His Demon is truly ready to transform for the sake of love: he is devoid of the energy of evil and the thirst for revenge, and there is no jealousy in him.

For the Demon, love for Tamara is an attempt to liberate himself from the cold contempt for the world to which his rebellion against God doomed him. "He's bored with evil" because he does not encounter resistance from people who willingly use the Devil’s tips. Daemon "sowed evil without pleasure", He deprived of vanity satisfaction from his power over insignificant people.

When Tamara grieves for her dead fiancé, Demon

... He leaned towards her at the head of the bed;
And his gaze looked at her with such love.

At this moment he was neither a guardian angel nor "hell with a terrible spirit". When Tamara decides to narrow her life to the gloomy cell of the monastery, the Demon wants to return to her the full breadth of freedom and give her the space of eternity. He promises Tamara a paradise of omniscience, a paradise of freedom:

I will sink to the bottom of the sea,
I'll fly beyond the clouds
I will give you everything, everything earthly -
Love me!...

But the price of such freedom is too high - renunciation of all insignificant earthly things, that is, death. That's why Tamara wants to escape from "irresistible dream" evil spirit. An Angel comes to her aid, not believing in the Demon's transformation, so he returns him to his previous role as a villain. Thus, Heaven did not have enough faith in goodness, awareness of its power in Tamara’s soul and its possibility in the Demon. Tamara turned out to be able not only to love the Demon, but also to take care of the salvation of her soul. After her death "sinful soul" Tamara is washed by the tears of an Angel, because she “redeemed at a cruel price” the possibility that heaven might finally open up for her.

Tamara's death is a victory of love for the Demon, but he himself is not saved by this victory, because she is taken away by death, and his soul is taken by Heaven. Seeing how Tamara's soul “I drowned out the horror with prayer”, seeks salvation on the chest of an Angel, the Demon is finally defeated:

And the defeated Demon cursed
Your crazy dreams...

Lermontov saw the reason for the defeat of the Demon in the limited feelings of the Demon, including for Tamara, so he sympathizes with his hero, but also condemns him for his arrogant bitterness against the world. "The Eternal Murmur of Man" how his proud desire to stand on a par with nature is captured in image of a Demon. The divine world is more powerful than the world of personality - this is the position of the poet.

Critics assessed the image of the Demon differently. The symbolic image was revealed best by V. Belinsky. He wrote that the Demon makes a person doubt the truth: “As long as the truth is only a ghost, a dream for you, you are the Demon’s prey, because you must know all the torture of doubt.”

Saklya- hut, home of the Caucasian highlanders.

Analysis of the poem “Demon” is not the only work associated with Lermontov:

Type