Mikhail Lermontov describes his poetry as "iron…

Mikhail Lermontov describes his poetry as "iron verse steeped in bitterness and hatred" in one of his best-known poems, written on January 1, 1840.

Sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", the twenty-five-year-old Russian publishes his Byronic romance, A Hero of Our Times, later in the year.

In January 1839 Andrey Krayevsky, now at the helm of Otechestvennye Zapiski, had invited Lermontov to become a regular contributor.

The magazine publishes two parts of the novel, "Bela" and "The Fatalist", in issues 2 and 4, respectively, the rest of it appear in print during 1840 and earn the author widespread acclaim.

The partially autobiographical story, describing prophetically a duel like the one in which he will eventually lose his life, is told in five closely linked tales revolving around a single character, a disenchanted, bored and doomed young nobleman.

Later it will come to be considered a pioneering classic of Russian psychological realism.

Shallow pleasures offered by Saint Petersburg's high society have started to wear Lermontov down, his bad temper growing even worse.

Lermontov's popularity at the salons of Princess Sofja Shcherbatova and of Countess Emilia Musina-Pushkina causes a lot of ill feeling among men vying for attention of these two most popular Petersburg society girls of the time.

In early 1840 Lermontov insults one of these men, Ernest de Barante, the son of the French ambassador, in the presence of Shcherbatova.

De Barante issues a challenge.

The duel takes place almost at the exact spot where Pushkin had received his fatal wound: by Tchernaya Retchka.

Lermontov finds himself slightly injured, then arrested and jailed.

His visitors in jail include Vissarion Belinsky, an avid admirer of Lermontov's poetry who, like many, continue to have problems with making sense of his dual personality and incongruous, difficult character.

Due to the patronage of the Guard's Commander, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, Lermontov receives only a mild punishment

With the Tsar's initial demand for three months' imprisonment dropped, Lermontov goes back to exile in the Caucasus, to the Tengin infantry regiment.

In the house of the Finnish-Swede philanthropist Aurora Karamzin, where his friends gather to say farewells, he churns out an ad lib, "Tuchi nebesnye, vechnye stranniki" (Heavenly clouds, eternal travelers...).

It makes its way as a final entry into Lermontov's first book of verse, published by Ilya Glazunov & Co in October 1840, and will become one of his best-loved short poems.