never approaches Byron’s craftsmanship.

Vadim does, however, point ahead to A Hero of Our Time in several respects. Lermontov’s loose integration of biographical events is present in both works. Vadim and Pechorin are both bitter, alienated types who quickly turn into villains and remain villains, although the frantic, flowery, emotional outpourings that accompany Vadim’s activity are absent in A Hero of Our Time. The glaring shortcomings of this youthful work are partly redeemed by nature and locale descriptions of a much higher quality, the work of a credible poet. In the same manner, the uneven features of A Hero of Our Time contrast sharply with the novel’s accomplished poetic passages. In the end, Vadim’s transformation into a macabre monster did not mesh with the rest of the clumsily fragmented settings, and Lermontov abandoned the work.

Princess Ligovskaya

Lermontov’s next attempt, Princess Ligovskaya, written in the period 1836-1837 and then put aside unfinished, shows remarkable improvement. The structure of the narrative mirrors the already popular society tale, which chronicled the mores of the upper classes, frequently from a satiric point of view. The resulting tone ridiculed the empty, superficial activities of the rich. Superimposed on this setting was a love intrigue, usually featuring a wealthy female aristocrat and her lower-class admirer. Lermontov’s tale has all of these elements and adds autobiographical notes by reflecting his romantic involvements with Varvara Lopukhina and Ekaterina Sushkova.

Princess Ligovskaya also points strongly to A Hero of Our Time. The Princess Vera of the former becomes the Princess Mary of the latter, and the introspective officer Pechorin of this work is clearly a prototype for Lermontov’s major hero of the same name. What makes Princess Ligovskaya noteworthy is the quality of character portrayal, which rises far above the rudimentary efforts of the Russian tale of manners and morals. Lermontov fleshes out his protagonist, detailing his lifestyle in a way that no Russian author before him had been able to do. The description of the tensions attending infiltration of a higher social class is excellent, judged by the standards of the time. The author still had difficulties with believable plot development, however, and other insufficiencies are also evident in the novel. With prolonged exile in the Caucasus, Lermontov turned his attention to other issues and places. He left Princess Ligovskaya incomplete and transferred the best of it to A Hero of Our Time.

A Hero of Our Time

The tendency of nineteenth century Russians to see in literature an ideological weapon colored the reception of A Hero of Our Time from the start. Guided by the eminent social critic Vissarion Belinsky, readers first and foremost scanned each new literary work for its hidden political connotations. The practice of imparting such challenges even to works that did not seem to contain them found wide acceptance, inasmuch as it was taken for granted that authors had to mask their ideological intent from strict censorial probings by clothing it in innocuous fictional garb. Thus the radical critics, led by Belinsky, fit A Hero of Our Time to their expectation by ascribing Pechorin’s psychological defects to the shortcomings of Nicholas I’s regime. Pechorin was seen as the typical intelligent young man of his time, lacking all opportunity to use his talents and thus forced to waste his creative energies in petty intrigues of a personal nature. Lermontov’s own rebellious temperament and his criticism of high society in previous prose and a number of provocative poems supported a tendentious understanding of the novel. Indeed, when sections of it first appeared in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski in 1839-1840, Lermontov was on his way to exile in the Caucasus. The text itself, however, goes far beyond a political interpretation to reveal a tortured individual at odds with himself.

Lermontov’s originality in unfolding his hero’s complex personality is one of the principal strengths of the novel. The stylistically diverse, seemingly unconnected sections not only present a successful merging of several short prose genres—travel sketch, society tale, military adventure story, diary—but also illuminate Pechorin’s character from different angles. At first, Pechorin is a hearsay figure, rendered enigmatic by the kind but unsophisticated staff captain Maxim Maximych, whose own conservative mentality does not grasp the depth of the hero’s personality. Maxim Maximych is, on one hand, attracted to Pechorin’s exceptional unconventionality; on the other hand, he is puzzled and put on guard by Pechorin’s cruelty, a duality experienced by all who encounter Pechorin. The staff captain’s secondhand account leaves the impression that Pechorin has carelessly abducted a local girl, Bela, charmed her into falling in love with him, abandoned her, and shrugged off her subsequent death with an indifferent smile. The fact that this behavior masks an inability to express emotion, that Pechorin actually suffers deeply, escapes the simple Maxim Maximych.

The reader receives a fragmented but psychologically more correct view from the educated editor of Pechorin’s journal. In contrast to the careless daredevil portrayed by Maxim Maximych, the editor’s Pechorin is a delicate, reticent person, almost feminine and vulnerable. His childlike countenance, however, is belied by steely, cold eyes that warn others to keep their distance. With reader interest thus firmly established, Lermontov moves to unfold his hero’s character further through the latter’s own view of himself in diary form.

This self-view has many facets because of Pechorin’s unwillingness and inability to analyze himself completely and honestly. Initially, Pechorin keeps readers at bay as he coolly relates his encounter with smugglers and the plot to kill him. He briefly acknowledges his own provocations and recognizes that he has destroyed the livelihood of simple people whose customs he did not understand. What he cannot do, then or later, is accept a share in the guilt. Instead, he hides behind the superiority of the Russian officer: “What have the joys and sorrows of humankind to do with me, a military man, moving through on official business.” In the “Princess Mary” section, long monologues facilitate a more probing self-analysis. Pechorin is aware that he is out of tune with his surroundings. He ascribes this disharmony to his intellectual superiority, his recognition that people around him are boring and shallow. With deft perception, Pechorin exposes the spa’s population as ridiculous, pinpointing and deflating the social pretensions of others. His continuous questioning of his own motives, childhood influences, feelings, and judgments raises him far above his environs in the reader’s discernment.

Lermontov’s achievements, however, are not complete with the creation of this introspective character, a new kind of character in Russian literature. The author also prompts his readers to see the inadequacies of Pechorin’s skepticism, to witness a demoniac personality’s avoidance of probing too deeply. Pechorin’s misanthropic behavior is balanced by a profound need to interact with people. Unable to express his feelings for fear of rendering himself vulnerable, Pechorin relates to others through destructive acts.

It is immaterial whether men and women love him, like him, hate him, or ignore him. All are, in the end, recipients of his malice. He ruins the petty smugglers’ wretched business, rebuffs the friendship offered by both the simple staff captain and the sophisticated Dr. Werner, brutally victimizes the naïve Princess Mary, equally brutally repays Vera’s loyalty by ruining her a second time, causes Bela’s death, and kills Grushnitsky in a duel. After each encounter, he mournfully reflects, accuses himself, cries, and once more retreats into his lonely, miserable existence. Each time, this withdrawal is of limited duration, for the drive to reach out to others soon asserts itself with an intensity he cannot control. Pechorin’s attempts at normal relationships, as with Vera and Dr. Werner, cannot be sustained. His innate fear of exposing himself in honest friendship soon forces him into an adversary position, from which he must assert his superiority. He cannot rest until he has devastated his partner in some manner. Though he analyzes his malice at length, he is unable to decipher the impulses that drive him. The fact that not all the nuances of Pechorin’s character are explored also attests the author’s skill. The causes of Pechorin’s alienation are, in the end, unknowable—both to himself and to others.

Such a perceptive rendering of the mysteries of human behavior had not been presented in Russian literature before, and this achievement far outweighs the novel’s rough spots. It must be kept in mind that Lermontov’s stylistic innovations are exceptional only when seen against the background of Russian fiction in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Judged by today’s standards, the novel is much less impressive. Plot advancement proceeds primarily through the device of having Pechorin eavesdrop on crucial conversations. Good descriptive passages alternate with florid clichés reminiscent of sentimental Romanticism. Pechorin’s attachment to Vera, a carryover from Princess Ligovskaya, is improperly motivated and explained. The “Fatalist” episode is poorly integrated. Liberal allusions to Western and earlier Russian literature make the narrative top-heavy, as do casually inserted autobiographical references. A host of other minor problems remind the reader that Lermontov is not a novelist par excellence.

Within the development of the Russian novel, however, the author occupies an impressive place. The unchronological arrangement of sections of the novel—similar to the sectioning in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929)—for the purpose of heightening reader tension and adding complexity is a technique that was not used by other authors until much later. In addition, Lermontov artfully integrates descriptions of nature into the work; for example, Pechorin’s inner turmoil is echoed in natural phenomena. On a larger scale, the harmony and magnificence of the Caucasus mountains are in jarring discord with the spiritual emptiness of the spa’s high society and the machinations of its villains. In this respect, Lermontov outstrips his own Romantic borrowings from Byron and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Neither nature nor intimate contact with simple tribes regenerates the disillusioned hero. On the contrary, Pechorin skillfully devastates civilized and untamed adversary alike. Seen from this perspective, Lermontov transcends the Romantic era with which his name is connected and widens its scope to include a hesitant realism.

On a contextual level, too, Lermontov made a significant contribution. The collision of Europeanized Russia with subjugated “primitive” cultures is cast into sharp focus in this novel. In line with the preferences of Romanticism, the exotic pagans often appear ethically superior or at least equal to their civilized conquerors. While A Hero of Our Time has much in common with Byron’s verse play Manfred (pb. 1817), Lermontov goes beyond the typically Romantic tragedy of Byron’s hero to reveal a much more modern understanding of the psyche. The psychologically split nature of Pechorin’s character, as he coldly manipulates people’s emotions as though they were marionettes while at the same time crying out silently for help and pity, bears a decidedly modern and universal stamp and explains the continuing appeal of this work.

The arguments about the philosophical orientation of the novel also continue. When it was first serialized, social critics, seeing in Pechorin the despairing intellectual of their time, battled conservatives, who labeled Pechorin un-Russian, satanic, and unreal and accused Lermontov of transferring his own abominable excesses to his fiction. Lermontov entered the fray in a foreword to the novel’s first appearance in book form, in 1840, accusing his readers of immaturity and simplicity. In subsequent decades, the richness of the novel began gradually to be understood, but in the mid-1970’s Soviet critics were still charging one another, in treatises far exceeding the length of the original work, with misunderstanding Lermontov’s intentions. The novel itself remains a favorite at home and abroad.