Few poems in literature, comparable to Mikhail Lermontov’s “The Dream,” exist.
It’s a triple prophecy. The poem strikes via two worlds—first, a brutal actuality the place an individual (probably the poet himself) lies dying, blood seeping, from a deadly wound below the scorching solar of Dagestan. As he dies, he desires of a night feast, far faraway from the warmth, demise, and desolation, in his native village. He imagines a distant reminiscence of himself interspersed of their small conversations. However one girl, separate from the chatter, is misplaced in a melancholic reverie, and in a imaginative and prescient, she sees him bleeding, dying, alone, below the scorching solar of Dagestan.
The dying particular person desires of a girl who desires of the dying particular person. It’s a improbable poem, the type that sends goosebumps down one’s backbone.
There’s a merciless precognition at work right here. Lermontov himself died in a duel, on the foot of Mashuk mountains.
It’s nearly as if Lermontov foretells his personal demise and the detached march of time. It’s not only a dream; it’s a glimpse right into a deadly future, the place the poet watches his personal demise unfold with eerie calmness.
Lermontov, in his brief life, was a titan of literature. But, he was somebody to not be emulated, though there was a wierd enchantment about their lives. One is reminded of the Gnarls Barkley lyric: “My heroes had the guts to lose their lives out on a whim / And all I bear in mind is pondering I wish to be like them”
Right here is the total poem, translated by Nabokov:
In midday’s warmth, in a dale of DagestanWith lead inside my breast, stirless I lay;The deep wound nonetheless smoked on; my bloodKept trickling drop by drop away.
On the dale’s sand alone I lay. The cliffsCrowded round in ledges steep,And the solar scorched their tawny topsAnd scorched me – however I slept demise’s sleep.
And in a dream I noticed a night feastThat in my homeland with shiny lights shone;Amongst younger girls topped with flowers,A merry speak regarding me went on.
However within the merry speak not becoming a member of,One in all them sat there misplaced in thought,And in a melancholy dreamHer younger soul was immersed – God is aware of by what.
And of a dale in Dagestan she dreamed;In that dale lay the corpse of 1 she knew;Inside his breast a smoking wound confirmed black,And blood ran in a stream that colder grew.
