Analysis of The Demon

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov 1814 (Moscow) – 1841 (Pyatigorsk, Caucasus Oblast)



“...Cold and regretless shalt thou view this sphere,
Where crime’s inseparable from fate,
Where beauty only blossoms to grow sear,
Where all is miserable, where, without fear
No one can either love or hate.
Know’st thou, Tamára, what is mortal love?
A febrile movement of the blood!
Years roll away—the pulse can scarcely move,
Love’s wither’d branches cease to bud.
Who can resist new beauty’s luring bait?
Who, parting, never shed a tear?
Who can withstand the tedium of fate,
The weariness of all things here?
No, my beloved, believe, ’tis not thy lot
To perish in a living grave,
In silence, languish on this narrow spot,
Of brutal jealousy the slave....”


Scheme ABAABCDEDBFBGHIHI
Poetic Form
Metre 10111111 110100011 1101010111 11110001011 11110111 111111101 0110101 1101011101 1110111 110111101 11010101 1101010011 01001111 1101011111 11000101 0101011101 11010001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 670
Words 116
Sentences 10
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 17
Lines Amount 17
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 507
Words per stanza (avg) 112
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

34 sec read
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Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837 and the greatest figure in Russian Romanticism. more…

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