A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

First published:Geroy nashego vremeni, 1839, serial; 1840, book (English translation, 1854)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: 1830-1838

Locale: Russian Caucasus

Principal characters

• “I”, supposedly Lermontov, Narrator One
• Maksim Maksimich, Narrator Two
• Grigoriy Aleksandrovich Pechorin, Narrator Three, the “Hero of Our Time”
• Bela, a young princess
• Kazbich, a bandit
• Azamat, Bela’s young brother
• Yanko, a smuggler
• Princess Mary, the daughter of Princess Ligovskoy
• Grushnitski, a cadet and suitor to Princess Mary
• Vera, the former sweetheart of Pechorin
• Lieutenant Vulich, a Cossack officer and a Serbian

The Story:

The Narrator meets Maksim Maksimich while on a return trip from Tiflis, the capital of Georgia, to Russia. The season is autumn, and in that mountainous region snow is already falling. The two men continue their acquaintance at the inn where they are forced to take refuge for the night. When the Narrator asks Maksim Maksimich about his experiences, the old man tells of his friendship with Grigoriy Pechorin, a Serbian who came from Russia about five years before to join a company of cavalry in the Caucasus.

To relieve their boredom on that frontier post, the soldiers played with Azamat, the young son of a neighboring prince. As a result of this friendship, the prince invited Maksimich and Pechorin to a family wedding. At that celebration, Pechorin and Kazbich, a bandit, met and were equally attracted to Bela, the beautiful young daughter of the prince. Azamat, observing this development, later offered to give Bela to Kazbich in exchange for the bandit’s horse. Kazbich laughed at the boy and rode away.

Four days later, Azamat was back at the camp and visiting with Pechorin, who promised to get Kazbich’s horse for the boy in exchange for Bela. The promise was fulfilled. Insane with rage at his loss, Kazbich tried to kill Azamat but failed. Suspecting that Azamat’s father had been responsible for the theft, Kazbich killed the prince and stole his horse in revenge for the loss of his own animal.

Weeks passed, and Pechorin became less attentive to Bela. One day she and Maksimich were walking on the ramparts when Bela recognized Kazbich on her father’s horse some distance away. An orderly’s attempt to shoot Kazbich failed, and he escaped. Kazbich, however, had recognized Bela, too, and a few days later, when the men were away from camp, he kidnapped her. As Pechorin and Maksimich were returning to camp, they saw Kazbich riding away with Bela. They pursued the bandit, but as they were about to overtake him, he thrust his knife into Bela and escaped. Although Pechorin seemed to be deeply grieved by Bela’s death, he laughed when Maksimich tried to comfort him.

The Narrator, having parted from Maksim Maksimich, stops at an inn in Vladikavkaz, where he finds life very dull until, on the second day, Maksimich arrives unexpectedly. Before long, there is a great stir and bustle in preparation for the arrival of an important guest. The travelers learned that Pechorin is the expected guest. Happy in the thought of seeing Pechorin again, Maksimich instructs a servant to carry his regards to his former friend, who has stopped off to visit a Colonel N——. Day turns to night, but still Pechorin does not come to return the greeting. Dawn finds Maksimich waiting at the gate again. When Pechorin finally arrives, he prevents Maksimich’s intended embrace by coolly offering his hand.

Maksimich anticipates warmth and a long visit, but Pechorin leaves immediately. Neither Maksimich’s plea of friendship nor his mention of Bela serves to detain Pechorin. Thus Maksimich bids his friend good-bye. The Narrator attempts to cheer him, but the old man remarks only that Pechorin has become too rich and spoiled to bother about old friendships. In fact, he will throw away Pechorin’s journal that he has been saving. The Narrator is so pleased to be the recipient of the papers that he grabs them from the old man and rushes to his room. The Narrator leaves the next day, saddened by the reflection that when one has reached Maksim Maksimich’s age, scorn from a friend causes the heart to harden and the soul to fold up. Later, having learned that Pechorin is dead, the Narrator publishes three tales from the dead man’s journal, as Pechorin himself had written them.

First, Pechorin wrote that Taman, a little town on the seacoast of Russia, was the worst town Pechorin had ever visited. For want of better lodging, he was forced to stay in a little cottage that he immediately disliked. Greeted at the door by a blind, crippled boy, Pechorin admitted to a prejudice against people with physical infirmities. To him, a crippled body held a crippled soul. His displeasure was enhanced when he learned there was no icon in the house—an evil sign.

In the night, Pechorin followed the blind boy to the shore, where he witnessed a rendezvous that he did not comprehend. The next morning a young woman appeared at the cottage, and he accused her of having been on the beach the night before. Later, the young woman returned, kissed him, and arranged to meet him on the shore.

Pechorin kept the appointment. As he and the young woman sailed in a boat, she tried to drown him; he, in turn, thrust her into the swirling, foaming water and brought the boat to shore. He was stunned to find that she had swum to safety and was talking to a man on shore. Pechorin learned that the man was a smuggler. The blind boy appeared, carrying a heavy sack that he delivered to the woman and the smuggler. They sailed away in a boat. Pechorin returned to the cottage to find that his sword and all of his valuables had been stolen.

Quite a different atmosphere pervaded Pechorin’s next experience, as described in his journal. While stopping at Pyatigorsk, a fashionable spa, he met Grushnitski, a wounded cadet whom he had known previously. The two men were attracted to Princess Mary, and Pechorin was angry—though he pretended indifference—because Princess Mary paid more attention to Grushnitski, a mere cadet, than she did to him, an officer. The men agreed that young society women looked upon soldiers as savages and upon any young man with contempt.

Pechorin opened a campaign of revenge against Princess Mary. On one occasion he distracted an audience of her admirers; again, he outbid her for a Persian rug and then disparaged her sense of values by putting it on his horse. Her fury at these and other offenses gave Pechorin the satisfaction of revenge for her favor of Grushnitski.

Grushnitski wanted Pechorin to be friendly toward Princess Mary so that the cadet might be accepted socially through his association with her. Having seen Vera, a former lover of his but now married, Pechorin decided to court Princess Mary as a cover for his illicit affair with Vera.

As excitement mounted in anticipation of the ball, the major social event of the season, antagonism grew between Pechorin and Grushnitski and between Pechorin and Princess Mary. Grushnitski’s excitement and pride were the result of his promotion; Princess Mary would see him in his officer’s uniform.

Succumbing to Pechorin’s attitude of indifference, Princess Mary consented to dance the mazurka with him. Pechorin, wishing Grushnitski to suffer a nasty surprise, did not divulge this news when Grushnitski later boasted that he intended to have this honored dance with the princess.

After the ball, it was rumored that Princess Mary would marry Pechorin, and so he fled to Kislovodsk to be with Vera. Grushnitski followed, but not to continue his association with Pechorin, whom he deliberately ignored. A short time later, the princess and her party arrived in Kislovodsk to continue their holiday.

Still furious at the affront that had caused his disappointment at the ball, Grushnitski enlisted the aid of some dragoons in an attempt to catch Pechorin in Princess Mary’s room. When this effort failed, Grushnitski challenged Pechorin to a duel. According to the plan, Pechorin would have an empty pistol. Having discovered the plot, Pechorin compelled Grushnitski to stand at the edge of an abyss during the duel. Then he coolly shot the young officer, who tumbled into the depths below. Grushnitski’s death was reported an accident. Later, Princess Mary’s mother asked Pechorin to marry Princess Mary. He refused and wrote in his journal that a soft, protected life was not his way.

On another occasion, Pechorin and a group of Cossack officers were ridiculing the fatalism of the Muslims. Lieutenant Vulich, a renowned gambler, offered to prove his own faith in fatalism. While Pechorin and the Cossacks watched aghast, Vulich aimed a pistol at his head and pulled the trigger. No shot was fired. He then aimed at a cap hanging on the wall; it was blown to pieces. Pechorin was amazed that the pistol had misfired on Vulich’s first attempt. He was sure he had seen what he called the look of death on Vulich’s face. Within a half hour after that demonstration, Vulich was killed in the street by a drunken Cossack.

The next day Pechorin decided to test his own fate by offering to take the maddened Cossack alive, after an entire detachment had not dared the feat. He was successful. Later, when Pechorin discussed the incident with Maksim Maksimich, the old man observed that Circassian pistols of the type which Vulich used for his demonstration were not really reliable. He added philosophically that it was unfortunate that Vulich had stopped a drunk at night. Such a fate must have been assigned to Vulich at his birth.

Bibliography

Allen, Elizabeth Cheresh. A Fallen Idol Is Still a God: Lermontov and the Quandaries of Cultural Transition. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007. Critical examination of Lermontov’s writing, placing it within the context of his time and culture. Allen argues that he is a writer who defies categorization, straddling the line between Romanticism and realism. Includes an extensive analysis of A Hero of Our Time.

Bagby, Lewis, ed. Lermontov’s “A Hero of Our Time”: A Critical Companion. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press and the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, 2002. Provides background information to help teachers, students, and readers better understand Lermontov’s novel. Includes translated essays by Russian literary critics Boris Eikhenbaum and Vissarion Belinsky; discussions of the portrayal of women, the Caucasus, and Caucasian people in the novel; and contemporary reviews of the novel.

Eikhenbaum, B. M. Lermontov. Translated by Ray Parrott and Harry Weber. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1981. First published in Russia in 1924, this literary and historical evaluation of Lermontov’s works is still much admired for its role in placing them in Russian literary context.

Garrard, John. Mikhail Lermontov. Boston: Twayne, 1982. One of the best overviews of Lermontov’s life and works for the general reader. The section on A Hero of Our Time focuses on its literary background and on Pechorin as hero, including a psychological analysis and pointed insights into the extent of Lermontov’s identification with Pechorin.

Golstein, Vladimir. Lermontov’s Narratives of Heroism. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998. Focuses on the theme of heroism and the individual in Lermontov’s works, including A Hero of Our Time. Citations of works are in Russian with English translation.

Kelly, Laurence. Lermontov. New York: George Braziller, 1977. Reprint. London: Tauris Parke, 2003. An entertaining biography that does not deal directly with Lermontov’s works, but enriches the perceptive reader’s appreciation of their autobiographical aspects. The parallels between the lives and personalities of Lermontov and Pechorin are striking.

Mersereau, John, Jr. Mikhail Lermontov. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962. This revised doctoral dissertation provides a useful and readable critical analysis of Lermontov’s works. Contains a valuable discussion of Lermontov’s Romanticism and a detailed treatment of A Hero of Our Time.

Powelstock, David. Becoming Mikhail Lermontov: The Ironies of Romantic Individualism in Nicholas I’s Russia. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2005. Powelstock argues that Lermontov had a coherent worldview, which he defines as “Romantic individualism,” and he demonstrates how this philosophy explains contradictions in the writer’s life and works. Chapter 6 focuses on A Hero of Our Time.

Reid, Robert. Lermontov’s “A Hero of Our Time.” London: Bristol Classical Press, 1997. Reid approaches the novel from the perspective of modern literary criticism, including analysis of its plot and its representation of ethnicity. He also provides a history of the book’s critical reception. Includes bibliographical references.