poem "He was born for happiness, for hopes..."). Legacy Critics see Sashka as an important point in Lermontov's evolution from a purveyor of 'Byronic' romanticism to a social realist. According to the Lermontov Encyclopedia, the poem's most obvious predecessors were Byron's Don Juan and Beppo, but it was also continuing the Russian tradition of A Dangerous Neighbour by Vasily Pushkin, Sashka by Alexander Polezhayev and Alexander Pushkin's Yevgeny Onegin and The House in Kolomna. The author's major intention was to create a portrait of a young man of his generation, a "common fellow" (not an exceptional "hero") and he did this in a jovial manner, using simple language. The subtitle, "The Moral Poem", anticipated, apparently, the criticism concerning the supposed "amorality" of love-making scenes (Sashka and Tirza, Sashka's father and Mavrusha, a cook's daughter). According to the Lermontov Encyclopedia, "the cynicism of the poem's certain episodes was aimed at demonstrating the immorality of the relationship in the serfdom-based upon Russian society." References 1836 poems Poetry by Mikhail Lermontov