A Hero of Our Time

While out travelling, the narrator - who we can assume is either Lermontov himself, or a fictionalised version thereof - meets an old soldier, Maxim, who is more than happy to share a tale or three of his life. 'Lermontov' is an appreciative listener, taking notes and jotting down places and names. This is why he is travelling, this is why he talks to people: For their stories, theirs lives, their experiences that you 'cannot find in the romances of Russia'. Maxim tells him the story of Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, another soldier who once shared his quarters. The picture he paints is an interesting one. On the one hand, he declares this Pechorin a great friend, but on the other, comments on his lack of emotion and coldness. He is capable of great generosity, and equally great hostility, the choice of which seems more a whim than for any reason. Maxim admires his education, wit and talent with women, but is offended by his lack of accountability. In the story Maxim tells, he and Pechorin travel to an Asian warchief's home, where Pechorin is infatuated with the leader's young daughter, Bela. Through a series of manipulative events - all arranged by Pechorin, without remorse or even satisfaction - the daughter is kidnapped and the young soldier falls in love. The story ends tragically, though not unexpectedly, and serves to whet our appetites for who this man really is. As narrated by Maxim, these stories are colorful, eventful, and written with great, broad strokes. Maxim is not a very educated man, and as such he is unable to properly paint the picture of Pechorin. But he has an admirable flair for description, which in his own, simple ways, are very effective. The narrator is more intelligent and inquisitive, commenting playfully on characters and situations, and viewing the world with an almost child-like glee. Everything is interesting, every road is worth travelling. The road he does happen to stumble upon is Pechorin's, and because the man being described is so different to the airy views of the narrator, it is interesting to watch him struggle with this enigma. The next section - which forms the meat of the story - are three short pieces written by Pechorin that the narrator managed to acquire from Maxim. Taman, the first piece, is probably as interesting as Maxim's story, although it reveals little of Pechorin's character. The third piece, The Fatalist, serves as a rounding out of who and what Pechorin is, and acts well as a finisher, being only 9 pages long. But it is the story of Princess Mary that is by far the most interesting. Set over a month, it chronicles the events of Pechorin's holiday at the Elizabeth Spring, a place where hopeful socialites mix with distinguished military men to secure strong marriages, or engage in clandestine affairs. A man Pechorin knows - not a friend, because, 'of two friends, one is always the slave of the other...I can never be a slave, and to command in these circumstances is too exacting',

This was Lermontov's only novel, published a year before his death in a duel at the age of 27. Although it was written in the late 1830s, it is strikingly modern both in its structure and in its treatment of the hero. In structure, the book consists of a collection of short stories and novellas rather than a single narrative. These stories, however, are linked in two ways. Firstly, all feature the same protagonist, Grigoriy Pechorin, a young officer serving with the Russian army in the Caucasus. Secondly, they are bound together by a complex framework featuring a single anonymous narrator (not to be identified with Lermontov himself), a traveller in the Caucasus. The first story, Bela, is supposedly told to this narrator by Maksim Maksimych, a brother-officer of Pechorin. The second, Maksim Maksimych, is related by the narrator himself and deals with a meeting between Pechorin and Maksim. The other three, Taman, Princess Mary and The Fatalist, are all told in Pechorin's own words, taken from his journal which has come into the narrator's hands after Pechorin's death. It is the fourth tale, Princess Mary, which is the longest and the one which lies at the heart of the work. Bela and Taman are adventure stories with an exotic setting (the Caucasus had the same sort of appeal for nineteenth-century Russians as India had for their British contemporaries). Maksim Maksimych is a linking narrative, and the final story, The Fatalist is an unsettling, spooky treatment of the concepts of fate and predestination. In Princess Mary, the mood changes abruptly from the romantic exoticism of the earlier stories. Pechorin is stationed in a fashionable spa town in the northern Caucasus. Here he has little to occupy his time, and becomes embroiled in liaisons with two women, the Mary of the title (the daughter of an aristocratic family), and Vera, a former mistress of his, now unhappily married to an older husband. As a result of these intrigues, Pechorin quarrels with Grushnitsky, a rival for Mary's affections, and the story culminates in a duel between the two men. The loose, episodic structure of the novel must have seemed very radical to readers in the first half of the nineteenth century. Lermontov also seems to prefigure later developments in the novel in his treatment of the character of Pechorin, a cynical, amoral figure who does not conform to the normal nineteenth idea of a literary "hero". This may make the title of the book seem ironic. Lermontov himself recognises this when he invents a dialogue between his narrator and his imaginary readers. The narrator says that the title of the book would be his reply should anyone ask him for his opinion of Pechorin's character. "But that is wicked irony!" Lermontov imagines his readers replying, to which the narrator's only comment is "I don't know.....". The suggestion is thereby given that the title can be taken both in an ironic sense and also at face value. In a limited sense, Pechorin can indeed be seen as a

This is one of the best Russian novels. It tells the story of a 19h century aristocrat who is bored with his life. The arrangement of the chapters itself is very interesting. In the first chapter we listen about the hero from his ex-boss. We actually meet him in the second chapter. The next three chapters are the extracts from his diary. The striking feature of the hero is that he only gives pain and problems to others. He does it with out any evil intention, in fact, it some how turns out that way. It is his fate, he knows about it and it pains him also (though it is no way going to help his victims). The author was also a very good painter. The hard cover edition I have contains 4 paintings by him (one of them was the cover). The death of Lermontov at such a young age was a great loss to the world literature.

As I read the beginning of A Hero of Our Time, I became bored with his descriptions of modern settings, and a man on a journey. However, I was fortunate enough to have the good sense of reading further. The characters bacame more scandulous, and the plots thickened to an eventual overtaking of themselves. This book brought insight into my life, and hope that I was not the only person that has dreaded the society and some people in it. Lermontov's genius is displayed perfectly as each character unfolds. His depictions of these people were more realistic than any other novel that I have ever read. Please read this novel and seek further into the plot. Instead, look into the characters, and the truth behind their actions, as they display human behavior.