We don't know much about Nikolai Solomonovich Martynov. He never wrote about himself, although he started his memoirs twice. For some reason, he was ignored by his comrades in the military school, fellow soldiers, and participants in the last duel. Until now, the words of E. G. Bykhovets are often repeated: "This is terrible." They call him a graphomaniac, an embittered loser. But it is unlikely that this characteristic is quite correct. Bykhovets wrote about him under the impression of Lermontov's death. But in the same letter, she reported that Lermontov recommended Martynov to her as a comrade, a friend. A fool as a friend? Unclear. And why was Lermontov happy when he found out on arrival in Pyatigorsk that Martynov was also there? Why did you come to Martynov shortly before the duel to "take your heart out"? Not to M. P. Glebov or S. V. Trubetskoy, but to Martynov. And Martynov was not a failure: he was rich, handsome in his own way, was a success with women, and in the Caucasus he received an order and the rank of major at the age of twenty-five. Nor was he a graphomaniac; he rarely wrote, and everything he wrote would have made up a small book. But he apparently did not attempt to be published, although his poems would have found a place among the mass of mediocre poems published at that time.

The language and style of works can tell you a lot about a person. Let's try to analyze Martynov's poems. Unfortunately, the works of the junker era have not reached us, when, according to the testimony of his older sister, he and Lermontov "stabbed each other"all the time. Obviously, even then Martynov formed a view of Lermontov as the same as everyone else ("we all wrote at that time no worse than Lermontov," their comrade A. I. Arnoldi argued already in 1884), although he later wrote about Lermontov's mental superiority over other junkers and even wondered how he "could to achieve those brilliant results with so little work (? - O. P.) and in such early years." However, this confession was made thirty years after the duel.

The first impression of Martynov's poems is quite favorable. His writing was apparently easy, his language fluent, and his rhythm and rhyme almost always unmistakable. But he did not like (or did not know how) to work on the work, much remained unfinished ("A Terrible Dream") or only begun ("Gouache", memories). Several poems were written by him in St. Petersburg in 1836. Then silence. But in

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In 1840, when Martynov and Lermontov were almost side by side in the Caucasus (Lermontov in the fortress of Grozny, Martynov in Gerzel-aul and in the village of Chervlennaya), he wrote a lot, probably under the impression of conversations and disputes with Lermontov, because he sometimes secretly, sometimes explicitly polemics with him. After the duel, he is silent for a long time.

The language of his works is simple. There are almost no archaisms: this last one ("Guasha"), the right hand; all his wealth is on the earth!.. ("Chechen Song") "that's almost all. Much more common words are quite modern: expedition, axiom, designed, disproportionate, operation, atmosphere, color. But this is in prose. He probably knew that such words were inappropriate in poetry. He was also not fond of exotic vocabulary, although it is difficult to write about the Caucasus without it. In Guasha, these are bashlyk, beshmet, chadra (he even made a note of this word). In "Gerzel-aul" - pilav; shashlik; mullah in arkhaluk. A little more in the "Chechen Song": the bridle, the bloody calla, the cherished Top, the rifle of Hadji Mustafa. And there is also a rather interesting image that draws the eyes of a beautiful woman: "They are barely blacker/Blued steel/Dagestani heavy blades". In some places there are boilerplate expressions: "You have blue eyes. / Alive, full of fire" ("Impromptu"), " Like a madman love/I need his blood..." ("Chechen Song"). Pushkin borrowed "high Duma full" ("Neva").

But it is not these minor interspersions in ordinary speech that characterize Martynov's language, but the military vocabulary. In it, he feels free, sometimes even flaunts it. And if in Lermontov's poems the officer is rarely felt, then in Martynov's almost always. Here are some words and expressions in the "Gerzel-aul": "The Cossacks have moved forward", "they will run towards the horses", "shots fly from the prisoshek", "they pulled the chain", "the colonel carried the company on his shoulders", "the whole company is on his tail", "they whine shrilly","I turned on my hind legs." In the "Terrible dream" - "gallop jerky", "tremble", etc. He readily uses the commands: "On the horse!", " On the wagons!", " Comb, follow me! Cut the road!". His descriptions of troops and their movements are quite expressive:

The flanks are covered by a long chain

Pairwise moving shooters;

From them to the west is a smooth steppe

Patrols are going to the Cossacks (...)

The vanguard has already stopped,

The Cossacks dismounted,

Bivouac marching outlined,

Places are divided for parts;

They are joined by battalions,

And into the trestle of the gun at the same moment.

Align the columns in a line,

Staff jump... noise and shouting ...

("Gerzel-aul")

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His vocabulary is not poor. Here he describes the condition of the regimental commander in a "Terrible Dream":

Its nothing for this moment

Doesn't make you laugh, doesn't take up (...)

Sad,sad,sad,

Upset, overcast, anxious,

Torn,cornered,fired up,

Killed, stabbed, destroyed!

He is no stranger to a sense of humor, however, rude, and sometimes cruel. This is how he depicts the parade formation:

...There is a cavalry regiment.

Like a slender forest, the peaks flash by,

The weather vane is brightly colored,

All people and horses are great,

Like a monument to Tsar Peter! (...)

All faces are the same cut,

And the camp is the same as the other!

All the ammunition is ready to go,

Horses have a haughty look,

And from the tail to the bangs

The coat is equally shiny. (...)

What about officers? - A series of paintings,

And all as if one!

The ease with which he was given a verse often led to verbosity. One or two characteristic details are not enough for him, he wants to photograph everything, as it were, and he does not know how to select the most expressive ones.

But sometimes Martynov is also inclined to think seriously. Here in the story "Guasha" he characterizes secular society: "... from constant treatment in the same environment, in view of the same interests, people narrow their view of life, they form a completely wrong and one-sided judgment about the merits of man in general. (...) The external form takes precedence over the internal content." Or such a maxim about male friendship (in "Gerzel-aul"): "No one is obliged to love,/ But kind hearts love." Therefore, his translation from Henri Chenier, unfinished, unfinished, but sometimes quite successful, looks not entirely unexpected.:

... Freedom,

Like Hercules, I'm invincible,

An altar is erected to her under clouds of smoke,

And the look of her eyes became the law of the people!..

The walls of the towers fell from the breeze,

And her first cry was courageous and terrible.

Powerful hands angry child

He washed his native cradle in the blood of his enemies,

And blood trickled down from the warlike diapers.

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No, Martynov was not stupid and not so incompetent. This to some extent explains Lermontov's attitude towards him as a comrade. But Lermontov's jokes are also understandable, because Martynov was self-confident, proud and prone to drawing. Martynov himself did not understand Lermontov very well. In the story "Guasha", he makes an attempt to portray a real "hero of the time", clearly contrasting him with Pechorin. The plot of the story is close to the plot of "Bela": a Russian officer falls in love with the daughter of a peaceful Circassian, and she also loves him. But Prince Dolgoruky is the antipode of Pechorin. He treats Guasha like a child who should not be offended. By portraying the prince as the ideal hero, Martynov does it quite straightforwardly, simply listing his positive traits. Dolgoruky is distinguished by valiant prowess and at the same time discipline. He has "a cheerful disposition and an inexhaustible good nature; moreover, he has never spoken ill of anyone or envied anyone." He has an "exalted soul". And although "the Petersburg environment spoils people," Dolgoruky "came out clean and unharmed from this stupefying pool." In the Caucasus, " in every demoted person, he saw first of all an unfortunate person who should be helped." "Pride or arrogance was uncharacteristic of him."

"Gouache" was left unfinished. But in" Gerzel-aul " Martynov's polemic with Lermontov becomes especially obvious. We can almost confidently assume that Lermontov's "Valerik" was familiar to Martynov. This is evident from the construction, from the similarity of many scenes. Martynov's poem is almost twice the size of Lermontov's, compositionally looser. In "Valerike", the beginning and end form a kind of ring, framing a series of military scenes. Martynov begins with an image of an army returning from a campaign. In the future, he can not tear himself away from the war scenes. The entire second part of the poem is a description of punitive expeditions, dear to the author's heart. Scenes that are similar in content to scenes from "Valerik" have a completely different color. Lermontov's thoughts about the senselessness of wars are alien to Martynov, he is completely absorbed in describing dashing campaigns, the valor of the Cossacks (he himself served in the Cossack troops), and glorifies cruelty towards the Chechens. In "Valerike" , after addressing the addressee, a description of the military camp follows. Martynov, telling about the return of the troops, also depicts the camp. Lermontov sees not only Russians, he admires the" yellow faces " of the Tatars, their clothes, their guttural dialect. Martynov also noticed a non-Russian: "He is an Armenian from Nakhichevan, half-cunning, half-idiot." Here it is brief. But in general, his descriptions are verbose. Here is Lermontov's episode, reflected in one phrase:

I rode on horseback into the rubble,

Who did not have time to jump off the horse...

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A similar episode in Martynov turns into a whole story of an officer:

"We went to bayonets many times... (...)

I was on horseback, where can I go?

And I see, it's bad, they'll treat you,

But I didn't have time to look around,

What do they call it: "Get down, they're firing!"

A shot rang out-and buckshot

I was showered with everything;

I answered them with a big speech,

But it's still intact, nothing!"

The tone of the story is boastful, which is often found in Martynov. Never with Lermontov.

One of the central places in "Valerike" is the scene of the captain's death. Martynov also tells about the death of a wounded soldier, in detail, with digressions, and ends like this:

And I asked myself involuntarily:

Am I to die like this?..

He doesn't hide the fact that he doesn't want to die.

War is not just about winning. Lermontov talks about this briefly:

As at Yermolov went

To Chechnya, to an accident, to the mountains;

How they fought there, how we beat them,

Just like it got to us...

Martynov also admits:

But not everything went well for us (...)

Yes, so uninvited guests will be accepted,

That God forbid my feet to carry away ...

But he blames the failures of peaceful Chechens, who allegedly warned their non-peaceful friends about the upcoming campaign. And then it goes to the winning tones. "Our chief, a brave man at heart, "is the first to" ride a horse: / " Grebnya, follow me! Cut off the road!"/ And grebentsy is already on fire." And he will not fail to say that the Grebentsi Cossacks, having seized the bodies of the dead Chechens, tie them to the tails of their horses and " drag them in triumph to the village."

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There is a scene in "Valerike" of a skirmish between a Cossack and a murid and-conclusion:

But in these skirmishes swashbuckling

Lots of fun, but not much use ...

Martynov tells about such a skirmish with many details. According to his version, the quick-witted uryadnik "put a bunch of needles on top of the charge in the rifle barrel," galloped to the dzhigit, " turned sharply on his hind legs... a shot rang out without a peal, " and the horseman fell, pierced by needles. The scene of the battle for the body of the dead man follows, ending, of course, with the victory of the Cossacks.

Again and again Martynov returns to the theme of punitive expeditions, praising their ruthlessness, sometimes even with some sadistic triumph and humor:

The village is burning not far away...

Then our cavalry is walking,

In other people's possessions, the court creates,

Invites children to warm up...

(that is, bask in your own burning house!)

...Everyone was in action;

And so they loved it,

That the talk is only about him (...)

Chechens knocked out with damage,

We have twelve bodies in our hands...

The Cossacks are happy to have the opportunity to " exercise (...) in the fire of everything that comes along the way."

All the way where we pass,

The sakli of the fugitives is ablaze;

If we catch cattle, we'll take them away,

There are plenty of loot for the Cossacks.

Fields sown with trample,

We destroy everything they have,

And about one thing only grumble:

You won't get to the very (...)

And their fruit trees

Soldiers cut down on bonfires.

There is no mercy... Exhausted,

Women come to give up,

Men, you look-all lay down.

There is also direct evidence in the "Gerzel-aul" that" Valerik " was known to Martynov (this was first pointed out by MM Umanskaya).

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Lermontov has a phrase: "There is no space for imagination." Martynov uses it to create a caricature portrait of Lermontov:

Here the officer lay down on the burka

With a learned book in his hands,

And he dreams of a mazurka,

About Pyatigorsk and balls.

He keeps dreaming about the blonde,

He's head over heels in love with her.

Here he is the hero of the match,

The guardsman is immediately removed;

Dreams give way to dreams,

Imagination is given space...

"The Learned Book" is also, obviously, an allusion to Lermontov, who received a wide variety of literature and even during the battle argued with the Decembrist V. N. Likharev about Kant and Hegel. Martynov pretends that he does not believe in the seriousness of reading Lermontov.

This is not the only attack against Lermontov. His impromptu epigram is well known, which touches not only Lermontov, but also N. A. Rebrova and E. A. Verzilin. Lermontov, usually not offended by jokes, regarded this epigram as gossip and wrote: "The scoundrel Monkey".

The last lines of the "Chechen Song"sound even sharper:

I'll kill Uzden!

He won't live to see the day!

Virgin, weep for him in advance!..

Like a madman love,

I need his blood,

With him in the world, we are cramped together!..

Grushnitsky's slightly modified words during his duel with Pechorin are recognized: "There is no place for us on earth together..." But only in Lermontov's dreams "the guardsman is immediately removed". Martynov is sure of himself: he is not Grushnitsky, who missed in six steps. And Lermontov, unlike Pechorin, did not shoot either Barant or Martynov in a duel.

Yes, Martynov is not as primitive as it is usually drawn. He is not stupid, not devoid of literary abilities, but cruel, does not tolerate anything that does not coincide with his views. Self-loving, self-loving, clearly overestimates his abilities. Therefore, he is not able to understand that Lermontov is a genius. He probably thought that Lermontov was just lucky, and for this "luck", and not for talent, he felt envy. And when there were rumors that he and his sister were depicted in the story "Princess Mary", ill-will turned into hatred. Obviously, a letter from his mother, in which she warned that

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Lermontov "will not spare your sisters". But immediately breaking off the relationship would mean that the gossip is fair.

In "Valerike" the question is clearly posed: "Pathetic man! What does he want?" And Martynov in" Gerzel-aul " answers: he does not want to be a pathetic person. He wants to be strong, fearless, merciless, if not like Napoleon, then at least like Ermolov. On a foreign land, he goes, " leaving traces of fire and destruction everywhere behind him." With someone who thinks otherwise, he is " cramped together in the world." And he takes aim at the author of" Valeric " so long and carefully that the seconds are ready to dilute them. Aims, as they taught in the army, "at half a person" to reduce the likelihood of a miss. There is no remorse. It is his father who builds a hospital for the poor to atone for his son's sin. And Martynov, exiled to Kiev, walks with beautiful women and bores the tsar with requests for clemency. Yes, the "pathetic person" remains himself. He will not go to the Caucasus, where the war has taken a different turn...

What interested Lermontov in Martynov? Human relationships are sometimes difficult to understand. A. S. Griboyedov was also a friend of F. B. Bulgarin. Onegin came together with Lensky, Pechorin maintained friendly relations with Grushnitsky. Perhaps Lermontov was interested in testing and honing his thoughts in disputes with a person of opposite views. But such relationships often ended tragically. Whether Lermontov thought about it, we do not know. Martynov was thinking.

Semibratovo, Yaroslavl region

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