1814: Mikhail Lermontov - Resources and General Discussion

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841)

Mikhail Lermontov was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, 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.

As a result of his early death at the age of 27, his oevre is relatively limited with four (unfinished) novels, six dramas and a substantial body of poetry.

144. A hero of our time
Finished reading: 16 December 2014



He knew himself a villain—but he deem'd
The rest no better than the thing he seem'd;
And scorn'd the best as hypocrites who hid
Those deeds the bolder spirit plainly did.
He knew himself detested, but he knew
The hearts that loath'd him, crouch'd and dreaded too.
Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt:
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, (I, XI) (1812–1818)

Vladimir Nabokov collaborated with Dmitri Nabokov on creating a translation of A hero of our time by Mikhail Lermontov. Apart from Nabokov's claim that their translation is more authentic, and more faithful to the Russian language conventions of Lermontov, perhaps the most decisive difference between this translation and other translations is that, in most translations A hero of our time is presented as a collection of related novellae and short stories, while Nabokov insists that the book is a novel, suggesting a plot structure which resembles the well-known Matryoshka dolls, of one story nested in another story, suggesting a structure of three levels. Nabokov supports this theory by illustrating a similar structure in a poem, written by Mikhail Lermontov, which lugubriously predicts his own death.

In eithet case, the story of A hero of our time is hard to follow, or, more likely, the story does not matter. What matters is the character of the main protagonist, Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin. From each of the five chapters or narratives, the image arises of Pechorin as a capricious character, wild and irresponsible, "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection", as Lord Macaulay would have it.

Mikhail Lermontov was a Russian author, who was born in 1814, and died at the early age of 27, in a duel in 1841. A Hero of Our Time was published at the height of the Romantic period, in 1840. The character of Pechorin can best be understood as bearing similarity to the "Byronic character" a type of character that despite its obvious flaws has remained popular in literature since the early Nineteenth century.

A hero of our time was written at a time when Mikhail Lermontov was stationed in Georgia, and the novel provides some beautiful descriptions of the rugged landscape there.

Thanks for this overview of both the novel and Lermontov.

I've got several titles from Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, and suspect there's a link between the two Russian authors. I wasn't previously familiar with Lermontov, and only superficially with Merezhkovsky simply from inheriting a few novels from my grandfather.

In turn, I had never heard of Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who, following the information on Wikipedia must be a very interesting author.

If I look at my own experience, reading in five foreign languages, it is already so obvious that what one gets if dependent on reading in just one language, for instance English, one has to forego an immensely rich variety of authors. Basically, only the top-level authors are translated, and even these authors are sometimes only represented by one work in translation. I

I also find that one single work often cannot be fully understood, unless one has a thorough knowledge and understanding or a broad swath of the cultural context, such as other fictional and (auto-) biographical writings by the same author, and literary works of that author's contemporaries, even extending to the further expression of culture of the epoch.

In the case of A hero of our time, we do at least have some cultural reference to Lord Byron and other contemporary authors who created so-called "Byronic heroes", cf Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. In this case, an annotated and expanded Norton Critical edition might be very useful, but as far as I can see there is no Norton Critical edition of Lermontov's A hero of our time.

I think you can consider yourself very lucky with the editions of works by Dmitry Merezhkovsky which you got from your grandfather. Translations of that author may be difficult to get. I think one of the charms of buyng second-hand books is the access they provide to out-of-print authors. And, of course, it is even nicer if you find these authors in your family library or get them from your (grand-) parents.