Laurence Kelly

In a meadow, not far from the cemetery of Pyatigorsk, a town lost in the mountain range of the Caucasus, drenched by torrential rain, a man sits in the grass. Cradling the head of a dying man in his lap, deadly wounded by a fatal shot in the duel that just ended, Mikhail Glebov, the second of the duelist, is trying to pull his grey coat over the frozen face. The blood oozing out of the wound, caused by the bullet that perforated the heart and lungs, mingles with the rain and taints the grass. The thunder booms between the mountains. In the dark, the tethered horses neigh, rear, and paw the ground with their hooves. The lightning illuminating the scene is incessant and “frightening beyond words”.

Mikhail Lermontov, the writer of “A Hero of our Time”, second in his talent only to the great Pushkin, has just been killed at the age of twenty six.

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