Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.

Either because of this pampering or continuing family tension or boththe young Lermontov developed a fearful and arrogant temper which he took out on the servants and in vandalising his grandmother's garden. Lermontov's duel with a son of the French ambassador led to him being returned to the army fighting the war in the Caucasus where he distinguiMikhail Lermontovd himself in hand-to-hand combat at the Battle of the Valerik River the basis for his poem Valerik. He had been in the Caucasus with his grandmother as a boy of ten and he felt himself at home with emotions deeper than those of childhood recollection.

S. July 15] 1841) a Russian Romantic writer poet and painter sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus" became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837.