Left: Portrait of Mikhail Lermontov. Right: Vasily Tropinin. Portrait of an Unknown Georgian Woman
“Soviet Russia”, 1987; Shevardnadze National Gallery of Georgia, TbilisiMikhail Lermontov wrote incredibly romantic poems. However, he had huge problems in love and relationships with women.
Either his appearance was repulsive or his character… In any case, it brought him great pain.
But, a quite curious story happened to him in 1837 in Georgia, when he was on his military service.
Lermontov decided to woo a local girl. She turned out to be more favorable than the cold, secular beauties back in St. Petersburg. Eventually, she invited him to her home. However, she immediately asked him for a favor: to help her take out of her house… the lifeless body of her previous suitor!
The young poet was taken aback, but helped the girl. And, allegedly, threw the body into the Kura River.
It is difficult to say whether the story has any truth to it, as the only evidence is Lermontov’s own letters he wrote to friends.
What happened next between him and the young Georgian woman, only history knows.
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