Mikhail Lermontov Quotes
Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.
Lermontov, Mikhail. Vadim. Translated by Helena Goscilo, Ardis, 1984, p. 42.
This is a particularly ironic quote. Although Arafat verbally and officially opposed torture, but used it frequently within the PLO and its “law enforcement” efforts amongst the Palestinians.
He was finally brought to justice after being protected by the right wing for many years. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. See related quote.
This statement was published in a major magazine of the time. It referred to a notorious lynching in the South where the victim had been brutally tortured and burned to death. In this case the victim had apparently committed a horrible crime. The Bishop condemned the horrific nature or the lynching but took the view that it was an act of insanity and that the relatives of the child killed by the lynching victim may well have been driven to insanity by the act However, this lynching, like most all in the South was not just an act of vengeance—insane or not—by relatives of a victim, it was participated on by a large mob, many of whom had no relationship to any of the parties. Whites who committed horrible crimes were rarely lynched, but many accused Blacks were lynched even though they turned out to have been innocent.
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837 and the greatest figure in Russian Romanticism. His influence on later Russian literature is still felt in modern times, not only through his poetry, but also through his prose, which founded the tradition of the Russian psychological novel.
