We don't know much about Nikolai Solomonovich Martynov. He never wrote about himself, although he started his memoirs twice. For some reason, he was ignored by his comrades in the military school, fellow soldiers, and participants in the last duel. Until now, the words of E. G. Bykhovets are often repeated: "This is terrible." They call him a graphomaniac, an embittered loser. But it is unlikely that this characteristic is quite correct. Bykhovets wrote about him under the impression of Lermontov's death. But in the same letter, she reported that Lermontov recommended Martynov to her as a comrade, a friend. A fool as a friend? Unclear. And why was Lermontov happy when he found out on arrival in Pyatigorsk that Martynov was also there? Why did you come to Martynov shortly before the duel to "take your heart out"? Not to M. P. Glebov or S. V. Trubetskoy, but to Martynov. And Martynov was not a failure: he was rich, handsome in his own way, was a success with women, and in the Caucasus he received an order and the rank of major at the age of twenty-five. Nor was he a graphomaniac; he rarely wrote, and everything he wrote would have made up a small book. But he apparently did not attempt to be published, although his poems would have found a place among the mass of mediocre poems published at that time. The language and style of works can tell you a lot about a person. Let's try to analyze Martynov's poems. Unfortunately, the works of the junker era have not reached us, when, according to the testimony of his older sister, he and Lermontov "stabbed each other"all the time. Obviously, even then Martynov formed a view of Lermontov as the same as everyone else ("we all wrote at that time no worse than Lermontov," their comrade A. I. Arnoldi argued already in 1884), although he later wrote about Lermontov's mental superiority over other junkers and even wondered how he "could to achieve those brilliant results with so little work (? - O. P.) and in such early years." Howeve ... Read more