Lermontov's poem poèt
—tolpa
and
ja
—bog
) is grounded both in the
weltanschauung typical for the genre of romantic lyric poetry and that
typical for civic poetry. The text of the poem urges the reader to
simultaneously accept two mutually exclusive sets of premises which
are conflated in order to construct a single vertical hierarchical
structure bog—poèt (ja)—tolpa.
The validity of this structure as well as the credibility of any
statement made by the narrator is undermined not only by internal
contradiction, but also by the presence of a horizontal axis
grad—pustynja.
Any movement along this axis
upsets or inverts the hierarchy.
Within the context of Lermontov's entire ouevre, this poem may be
read as an indication of the general direction that his lyric poetry
was taking in the last few months of his life. The text attempts to
unite the motifs that comprise the lyrical hero
(liri&chachek;eskij geroj
—Tynjanov,
Ginzburg)—by definition a subjective construct that manifests
itself across a number of texts. (A similar attempt is made in