The very first monument to Mikhail Lermontov was erected in Pyatigorsk, not far from the place where he died. The poet’s body was reburied from Pyatigorsk long ago, but the city where he spent the last months of his life, where his last poems were born, was not in vain awarded the first monument to Lermontov in Russia.
"I was happy with you, gorges of mountains"
Lermontov wholeheartedly loved the mountains, loved the Caucasus. Ever since the time when grandmother Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva brought him very young to Hot Waters, as Pyatigorsk was once called. Many lines of his works are devoted to the Caucasus, the beauty of its nature. Perhaps that is why that love is perceived by us so tragic. Lermontov got here by the will of fate after his first exile to the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment for the rebellious poem "To the Death of a Poet", then he came here all summer to rest. And from where he has not returned.
That house of Lermontov in Pyatigorsk, which he rented from the parade ground major Vasily Ivanovich Chilaev, is still standing. Now it has a museum of the poet. And the monument, which became the first to immortalize Lermontov in stone, was erected in the city square, which was smashed specially before the opening. Behind him is the foot of Mount Mashuk, where on July 27, 1841, the poet's life ended in a duel. His gaze is fixed on the crown of Elbrus, the majestic peak of the Caucasus Mountains so beloved by the poet. The monument to Lermontov in Pyatigorsk, a photo of which every tourist who has visited the city takes with him, is a symbol of selfless love for the poet of enlightened minds of that time.
To the thirtieth anniversary of the death of the poet
In the history of Russia, almost everything knows the history of Lermontov’s duel and the name of his killer. This was told at school in the lessons of native speech, it is written about in textbooks. And the names of those who initiated the installation of the first monument to him, who created it, are known mainly by professional writers.
Not many people initiated the installation process so that their names were hard to remember. In 1870, the poet Pyotr Kuzmich Martyanov published the following lines in the journal World Labor: “Petersburg and Kronstadt erect monuments to Kruzenshtern and Bellingshausen, Kiev to Bogdan Khmelnitsky and Count Bobrinsky, Smolensk to Glinka, why not Pyatigorsk, with its thousands of visitors? to take initiatives in the construction of a monument to M. Yu. Lermontov? " The main tenant of the Caucasian Mineral Waters, Andrey Matveevich Baykov, warmly supported the idea of Martyanov. In the group of initiators there was one more name - Alexander Andreevich Vitman, a doctor and an adviser to Pyatigorsk. Baykov and Wittman requested assistance from Baron A.P. Nikolai, who was then the head of the Main Directorate of the Caucasian Viceroy - Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov. So a year later, through many hands, Tsar Alexander II learned about the initiative to erect a monument to Lermontov in Pyatigorsk. His highest permission for this event was received on July 23, 1871, almost on the day of the thirtieth anniversary of the death of the poet.
Thousands, rubles, pennies
The king’s response also spelled out what funds the monument would be built on. He notified of "… the opening of a ubiquitous subscription in the Empire to collect donations to this monument." A fundraising committee was immediately created, and the Ministry of Finance began registering donations.
The first installment came from two unknown peasants from the Tauride province. He was two rubles. But soon donations began to come from everywhere. Some amounts went down in history. So, a check for a thousand rubles is a lot of money in those years, ”sent Prince Alexander Illarionovich Vasilchikov, who was Lermontov’s second in that fateful duel. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, paid one kopek from an official, Mishchenko was so indignant that he even described this incident as a warning to posterity. And the fact that the ordinary peasant Ivan Andreichev added this contribution to the ruble, he also described.
In just 18 years, during which money was received for the monument to Lermontov in Pyatigorsk, 53 thousand 398 rubles and 46 kopecks were collected.
Competition for the best project
By 1881, the collected money was already enough to start the project of the future monument. The installation committee managed to recapture the city of Pyatigorsk as a place of permanent residence of the monument, although some members of the committee suggested installing it in one of the two capitals, motivating it with the fact that “Lermontov belongs to all of Russia”, and in return offering to open the Lermontov museum in Pyatigorsk.
In total, three rounds were held to select the best monument design. Neither the first nor the second rounds, and more than 120 proposals were sent to them, did not reveal that special sketch that the whole commission would approve. The results of the third round were announced on October 30, 1883. 15 applicants sent their projects to it, among which number 14 was a sketch of the future monument. He came from the then-famous sculptor Alexander Mikhailovich Opekushin, who created a monument to Alexander Pushkin three years earlier, which was installed on Tversky Boulevard in Moscow. The monument to Lermontov in Pyatigorsk, which suggested the installation of Opekushin, was notable for its simplicity of composition, included only a few minor details, but according to the author’s intention, he was supposed to reflect the short but vibrant life of the poet. And this idea was accepted by the commission members.
One portrait and one drawing
Oddly enough, it was not so easy to achieve the portrait similarity of the bronze poet with his face during his life. The death mask for some reason was not removed from Lermontov. Under the model of his appearance, Opekushinin was provided with only a self-portrait of the poet, painted by him in watercolor four years before his death, and a pencil drawing of his fellow soldier Lermontov, Baron D.P. Palen, painted in 1840, in which the poet was depicted in profile.
Huge work was done by Alexander Mikhailovich Opekushin. The monument to Lermontov in Pyatigorsk was subsequently recognized as the most accurate in terms of portrait similarities with the poet. And this was not surprising, because the sculptor created many drawings by Lermontov before providing them for comparison to the poet’s living acquaintances, among whom was his second Vasilchikov. Facial features were written on a sketch chosen by experts directly under the leadership of Alexander Illarionovich, before the final version of the monument was approved. The author wanted not only to give the statue a portrait resemblance, but also to create a highly artistic work of art worthy of a poet.
From Crimea and Petersburg - Pyatigorsk
As a result, the author of the monument to Lermontov in Pyatigorsk not only created the statue of the poet, but also proposed a drawing of the pedestal for it. Light slabs of granite were to be laid out in the form of a monumental rock, on which, apart from the lyre, laurel wreath and feather, there were no more decorations. Everything is concise, but each of the details had to carry a deep symbolic meaning.
In St. Petersburg, at the A Moran bronze foundry, the bronze statue itself (2 meters 35 centimeters high) and details of the pedestal decor were cast. Then the sculpture, while in Pyatigorsk urgently arranged a square and installed a pedestal, was put up in the capital for public viewing.
For the pedestal, blocks of light granite were brought specially from the Crimea - only eight units. The sculptor himself chose the place for the monument long before its installation. Thanks to this, it was possible to organically link the statue of the poet and the surrounding area. According to his drawing, local craftsmen were engaged in the construction of the pedestal. The installation of a bronze sculpture of the poet, which was first delivered to Pyatigorsk by rail, then by supply, was led by Opekushin himself, and the craftsmen brought by him from the capital helped him. The total height of the monument after installation was 5 meters 65 centimeters.
Wreaths and speeches at the foot of Mashuk
Initially, the opening of the monument was planned for October 1889. But Alexander Mikhailovich Opekushin could not come to Pyatigorsk in October, and many visitors to the Waters would like to be present at this significant event, and therefore the date of the monument's opening was postponed to Sunday, August 16.
In addition to Opekushin, to personally see how the monument to Lermontov will be unveiled in Pyatigorsk, almost all members of the committee for its installation, the local nobility, the heads of the Water Department, city officials, residents of the surrounding area and visitors to the resort arrived at the ceremony. A report was collected on the collection and expenditure of money, after which the curtain was removed from the monument as snow-white as the top of Elbrus.
Wreaths of fresh flowers, silver, metal, lay at the feet of the poet. Solemn speeches were made on the importance of the poet’s creative heritage for the Russian people, the Lermontov march, composed by V. I. Saul, and the poem Before the Monument of M. Yu. Lermontov, read by the author Kosta Khetagurov. A small play, “At the Lermontov Monument”, was written by G. Schmidt.
Andrei Matveevich Baykov alone was not among those present. At this time, he was seriously ill, was in a resort in Merano, in Austria, where he died a month after the opening of the monument.
The very first and best today
That bronze Lermontov, for which the whole world raised money, became not only the first monument erected to the poet, but also the best of all that exists today. This opinion was expressed by art historians, historians, and writers a long time ago. How many new monuments were erected after that, but it remains unchanged: the best monument to Lermontov is in Pyatigorsk. A photo of him, along with images of what was installed by Pushkin on Tversky, is found in almost all encyclopedias. At the feet of the poet on the front side of the pedestal are two inscriptions; in the upper part: "M. Yu. Lermontov, "a little lower -" August 16, 1889 ".
The face of the bronze Lermontov as if conveys poetic lines that are about to spill out on paper, his expression seems so inspired. But the pen is indestructible, the book fell out of the hands of the poet, and his gaze is turned to the snowy Elbrus. Behind is Mashuk. Even these details carry a high meaning: behind the past, ahead - eternity. This captures the great Russian poet Lermontov in Pyatigorsk. Photo of the monument on the background of the infamous mountain for many tourists is more expensive than the images of the beautiful peaks of the Caucasus Range.
House under the reed roof
In May 1841, wanting to spend several months in his beloved Pyatigorsk, Lermontov arrived in the Caucasus. I stumbled upon a simple, but rather well-kept house, covered with reeds, on Nagornaya street, on the outskirts of the city. We managed to come to an agreement with the owner of the house, a retired para-major V.I. Chilaev for 100 rubles in silver - a rather considerable amount, but it allowed to rent a house for the whole summer. In such mansions he once “settled” his Pechorin, the same house became the last earthly refuge of the poet.
After the fatal duel, long before the building turned into the Lermontov House-Museum, in Pyatigorsk they cared little for this house. The owners often changed, none of them followed its arrangement, gradually the structure began to decline. The first thing the locals did when the threat of collapse became quite obvious was to make and fasten to the wall a memorial marble slab, which hangs to this day. There are only a few words on it: “The house in which the poet M. Yu. Lermontov lived”. Only in 1922 the department of public education of Pyatigorsk issued the right to own a house. Over the year, he managed to bring in the proper form for the museum.
Today it is almost the only monument preserved in its original form, associated with Lermontov. Here, not only this house, but all the houses in the quarter stand as they stood in 1841 - a unique case.
From Pyatigorsk cemetery to the family crypt in Tarkhany
They brought a lifeless body of the poet after a duel on a rainy Tuesday July 27 to the house, from here they led him to the last, as they thought, way to the Pyatigorsk cemetery.
The grandmother who brought up Mikhail Lermontov, Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva, eight months after the death of her grandson, obtained the right to rebury and moved the poet’s body to the family estate of Tarkhany in the Penza province, where his mother and grandfather were already lying in the family crypt by that time. But the Lermontov Museum in Pyatigorsk was replenished with the poet’s personal belongings, which were donated by the second cousin of Mikhail Yuryevich - Evgeny Akimovna Shan-Girey.
The reburial took place on May 5, 1842. And on the first grave of Lermontov in the Pyatigorsk cemetery, a memorial plaque was erected, where, like the monument and the house under the reed roof, numerous fans of his work come.
Favorite places of Lermontov in Pyatigorsk
Not only the city square, museum complex and cemetery is visited by many tourists in Pyatigorsk. There are several beautiful places in the mountains where the poet once loved to visit, where tourist routes now lead. Among the main attractions - Lermontov's grotto in Pyatigorsk on the spur Mashuk. There is a painting written by the poet in 1837 - “View of Pyatigorsk”, which depicts this spur. He, by the will of Lermontov, became a secret meeting place for Pechorin and Vera.
Until 1831 it was an ordinary mountain cave, from which a stunning view of Pyatigorsk opened. Then the Bernardazzi brothers (Johann and Joseph, local builders) converted it into a grotto, installed benches in it, and an iron grill appeared only in the seventies of the XIX century. The cast-iron memorial plaque "Lermontov's Grotto" was installed in 1961. Far from the city and the people of Lermontov here rested from the hustle and bustle.
