The passionate soul, he feels imprisoned..."[1] The poem's central episode, Mtsyri's fight with a wild cat was apparently based on the traditional Georgian folklore; there are 14 versions of the old Georgian song "Young Man and a Tiger", one of which (the Khevsur song) has been used by Shota Rustaveli in his epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin.

Citing the poet's relatives Akim Shan-Girey and Akim Khastatov, biographer Pavel Viskovatov suggested the following version of the poem's background:While travelling along the old Georgian Military Road and collecting the local tales and legends (which later have been incorporated into the new version of the Demon poem), Lermontov in Mtskheta came across an old Beri, a Georgian monk, a guardian and the last surviving member of the local monastery that had been closed earlier.

One such attempt proved to be all but fatal: he fell severely ill, nearly died and after that apparently submitted to his fate and even became friends with an elderly Georgian monk.

[2]Some scholars (I.Andronnikov, A.Lyubovich) later questioned the reliability of such version, others pointed out that taking away native Caucasian people's children was common practice for the Russian officers, and painter P.Z.

According to the same manuscript, Mtsyri was called originally Beri (A Monk, in Georgian) and featured an epigraph ("On n'a qu'une seule patria", There is only one fatherland) which later had been crossed out by the author.