Confession by Mikhail Lermontov

Confession

1831

I’m to believe, but with some fear,
For I haven’t tried it all before,
That every monk could be sincere
And live as he by altar swore;
That smiles and kisses of all people
Could be perfidious only once;
That, sometimes, they forgive the little
Mistakes, the others make by chance;
That time heals sufferers around,
The world is one of joy and gleam;
That virtue is not just a sound,
And life is more than a dream.

But rough and hardened life’s experience,    
Repulse my warm faith every time,
My mind, sunk, as before, in grievance,
Has not achieved its goal, prime,                   
And heart, full of the sharp frustrations,
Holds in its deep the clear trace
Of dead – but blest imaginations,
And vanished senses’ easy shades;
There will be none for it to fear,
And what’s a poison for all them,
Makes it alive and feeds it here             
With its ironic, mocking flame.    

Mikhail Lermontov

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lermontov/

The link to the poem: http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/lermontov/confession.html

-       Born on October 15, 1814 in Moscow, Russia ( Zhdanov)

(http://biography.yourdictionary.com/mikhail-yurievich-lermontov/)

-       Did not really mix with other people at the University of Moscow, even though the people that he was going to school with had the same goal that he had (Kelly, Laurence) (http://biography.yourdictionary.com/mikhail-yurievich-lermontov/)

-       Known for writing romanticism, mature writing, having realism and restrained language. (http://biography.yourdictionary.com/mikhail-yurievich-lermontov/)

-       When he was 3 years old, his mother died and then his grandparents were fighting to see which would take care of him. His grandmother ended up having custody, but he was so depressed so she tried and succeeded getting his inspirations up by taking him to Caucasus. (http://biography.yourdictionary.com/mikhail-yurievich-lermontov/)

-          One of his old acquaintances, Nikolay Martynov, challenged Lermontov to a duel because Martynov started to feel as if he was the target of the jokes that Lermontov was making. Lermontov ended up dying the evening of July 27, 1914, when he was only 26 years old.

Summary: The speaker seems to be first person. The narrator seems to try to tell the audience that no matter how hard life can get, you have to keep going. The narrator tells that life seems to get more difficult, and at some point, it makes people just want to stop and quit. But he is telling the readers that it’ll get better the harder you try and the more patient that you are. He has survived a traumatic event that the poet had experienced. So, he ended up expressing his feelings about how he felt intimated and lonely. Then, he explained that the experiences that we go through are survivable. The poet felt since he got through his occurrences. But, it seemed as if his experience that granted him with a guide. So, he tries to explain to the audience that the experiences that we go through doesn’t really kill us and make us weak, the way we make it seem. Instead, it makes us stronger the more we go through our circumstances.

Imagery and Figurative Language:

“My mind, sunk, as before, in grievance….” - The impact of this quote portrayed the struggle that he was fighting against his own mind that he felt when he was  grieving.

“There will be none for it to fear,

And what’s a poison for all them….” - The impact of this quote seemed to show that the poet was trying to tell the readers the challenge that you are going through in your life, you should not be afraid of since we all have to go through it.

“Makes it alive and feeds it here         

With its ironic, mocking flame…” - The impact of this last quote seems that the poet is explaining that going through the same process of life makes it alive and a spark in everyone’s life because no one is in it alone.

Tone: The tone(s) in this poem that the author seemed to portray was grieve, relaxed, instructive, and reflective. Grieve and Reflective are nice comparisons because when he was in grievance, he had these feelings and now he finally reflected those feelings onto the poem. Instructive and Relaxed are decent comparisons because he was giving his readers instructions on how to deal with their lives peacefully after he was relaxed.

Theme: The theme out of this whole poem was learning how to relax because life isn’t as easy as you would expect it to be. There are going to be some challenging flames or roses and kisses from a genuine person. Sometimes, life could seem very perfect. Other times, life could seem like a mocking fire that is willing to see you break down. But, throughout every broken heart that we have in life, every aspect progresses afterwards.

Other Aspects: There is a rhyme scheme in the poem, examples are “dream” and “gleam”, there are different rhyme schemes in every two lines. The poem seems to be a confessional and lyrical poem by the style it is written in. The repetition of the word “fear” is often in the poem. The different openings in the two different stanzas, there was the first one, when he seems to actually think about feeling fearful.  The poem is broken up into two stanzas that give two different tones. The first stanza tells how his expectations were for his perspective of the world before his experience. Then, the second stanza tells his perspective after he gets a view of reality. The time period that the poet was in back then had seemed that it was not really normal for people to express themselves that in that fearful way. The form contributes to the meaning of the poem by comparing and contrasting on his view of his world.