work
The Demon
"The Demon"
also: Демон, Demon
Mikhail Lermontov's narrative poem (written 1829-1839, published posthumously), in which a fallen angel, the Demon, falls in love with the Georgian princess Tamara. Invoked in the opening of "A Fish's Love" (1892) as the first in a mock-escalating series of precedents for impossible love (the Demon and Tamara, the swan and Leda, a clerk and his superior's daughter) that sets up the carp's own hopeless passion. Distinct from Anton Rubinstein's 1871 opera of the same name, which is based on this poem.
Reading notes
- A Fish's Love §1 Did not Lermontov's demon fall in love with Tamara, and the swan with Leda
The narrator opens with a mock-escalating chain of precedents for hopeless or transgressive love -- a fallen angel for a mortal princess (Lermontov's narrative poem "The Demon"), a god for a mortal queen (Zeus as swan and Leda), and finally a clerk for his superior's daughter -- before landing, bathetically, on a fish's love for a bathing summer visitor. The joke depends on treating Romantic and mythic grandiosity as simply one more entry on a list that ends in a provincial dacha pond.