review ✓ PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook Ð Mikhail Lermontov
The first example of the psychological novel in Russia, A Hero of Our Time influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov, and other great nineteenth-century masters that followed. Its hero, Pechorin, is Byronic in his wasted gifts, his cynicism, and his desire for any kind of action-good or ill-that will stave off boredom. Outraging many critics when it was first published in 1840, A Hero of Our Time follows Pechorin as he embarks on an exciting adventure involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers.
This edition includes a new introduction, chronology, suggestions for further reading, maps, and full explanatory notes.
A Hero of Our Time
And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,
And from his fellow bacchanals would flee;
'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
But pride congealed the drop within his e'e...
- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto I, Stanza VI)
Another life that vanished too soon. Mikhail Lermontov was only 26 years old when he was killed in a duel. Same fate as another Russian genius, Alexander Pushkin, to whom he dedicated his poem Death of the Poet: And thus he died - for vengeance vainly thirsting / Secretly vexed by false hopes deceived... / His lips forever sealed.
Lermontov's poetry and prose are equally superb. At such a young age, he became one of the most important Russian writers of all time. And another favorite of mine. That was a nice surprise, because I honestly did not have high hopes for this book. I am not sure why. I did not expect such a beautiful and evocative writing, powerful enough to fill my heart with delight and break it, at the same time. Little I knew that Lermontov himself was kind of the personification of the Byronic hero, like the main character of this book, Pechorin, a man made of flesh, bones, arrogance, cynicism and melancholy. A captive of his own pessimism and that familiar feeling of emptiness and perpetual loss. A victim of the world.
Yes, such has been my lot from very childhood! All have read upon my countenance the marks of bad qualities, which were not existent; but they were assumed to exist—and they were born. I was modest—I was accused of slyness: I grew secretive. I profoundly felt both good and evil—no one caressed me, all insulted me: I grew vindictive. I was gloomy—other children merry and talkative; I felt myself higher than they—I was rated lower: I grew envious. I was prepared to love the whole world—no one understood me: I learned to hate. My colourless youth flowed by in conflict with myself and the world; fearing ridicule, I buried my best feelings in the depths of my heart, and there they died. I spoke the truth—I was not believed: I began to deceive. (93)
I have always read that bad people were not born, but made; almost embracing the argument that a warm environment can overcome any genetic predisposition. I'm not quite sure about that. Pechorin clearly thought that was his case. He was ready to love and the world taught him to hate.
This book is not a novel per se; it is divided into five novellas (Bela, Maxim Maximovich, and three extracts from Pechorin's diary—simply brilliant).The first part serves as an introduction to Pechorin's character. A young officer and Captain Maximovich started talking about the latter's peculiar friend, Pechorin, whom he had met in the Caucases. This young man had met a beautiful princess named Bela that soon became his next challenge. Bela's brother, Azamat, a whiny, obnoxious teenager, really wanted somebody else's horse. And Pechorin offered his assistance in exchange for Bela. Yes, a woman for a horse. So the little brat kidnapped his own sister and then he got his beloved horse. Charming fella.
By that time, I was a bit bored. I was about to take the narrator's offer:
Therefore, you must wait a bit, or, if you like, turn over a few pages. (26)
I didn't. I followed his advice:
Though I do not advise you to do the latter, because the crossing of Mount Krestov (or, as the erudite Gamba calls it, le mont St. Christophe) is worthy of your curiosity. (26)
Yeah. It was not.
In conclusion, time went by and Pechorin's free spirit got bored of Bela. While reading his response to Maximovich when he asked him about the princess I thought: “Finally. A first sign that this book can be amazing”. And it certainly was. A young man with a void in his heart, with needs that were impossible to satisfy, with the thought of death always in his head, couldn't be around the same people for a long time. He started to feel suffocated and the urge of escaping took over him. Like a Russian Childe Harold, the only option was to get away, to travel. To experience new things so he can reduce that void, to vanish his ennui. This situation is described with such a beautiful, dazzling writing.
(This next passage does not have spoilers, but I hid it because it is quite long and some people might prefer not to read the whole thing—but I just couldn't quote less without damaging the essence. So, you have been warned.)
Be prepared for a book that is going to squeeze your soul and play football with your heart. That was just a sample of the beauty that can be found in here. It might be the simplest plot in the world, but if it's wonderfully written, if the author lets me enter into his character's mind, then I feel like home. And that is exactly what happened to me with this novel. Lermontov deals with those universal feelings that defy time and with a masterful prose. No matter how many things we can buy, how many people we meet, occasionally we cannot escape from the inexorable feeling of emptiness. I cannot despise bored, hateful, cynic, manipulative, brutally honest Pechorin. Sometimes our desires are bigger than our own existence. And that is one of the worst tragedies of all.
* Also on my blog. 169 I started reading this book in ebook form because I was so eager to get to it, prompted by the references in the notes of Sasha Sokolov's Between Dog and Wolf which I'd just finished.
So imagine the following scenario: I'm reading Lermontov's book on my kindle, I'm listening to Mussorgsky's Night on Bare Mountain prompted by another Sokolov reference, and I've got a google map open on my iPad in order to follow the path Lermontov's narrator takes northwards from Tbilisi across the bare and brutal Caucasus mountains in a post-chaise drawn by three horses while a fierce storm rages and avalanches threaten to block the mountain passes through which he travels.
As my eyes scroll the kindle screen, I highlight each place mentioned and then mark the spot on the google map, and I continue to do that as I read about the characters' further journeys eastwards towards the Caspian Sea, and westwards towards the Black Sea, until finally the action ends somewhere in the middle near the town of Pyatigorsk, in a scene where an exhausted horse drops dead on a mountain path. A hero of his time indeed!
Back in our time, I take a screen shot of my map, and mark up the path I'd followed in the tracks of all those exhausted horses. And as I do that, I think about that extra layer of 'record' we all engage in every day, via selfies, food shots, travel shots, plus multiple other ways we use our always-ready-to-shoot cameras, though they contain no film, but nevertheless record the film of our lives, a documentary that will exist long after after we ourselves have left the frame.
Lermontov left the frame a long time ago, in 1841 to be exact, at the shockingly young age of 27, just slightly older than the 'hero' of this book, Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin.
Like Pechorin, Lermontov was stationed with the Russian army in the Caucasus in the 1830s, and this book reads at times like a documentary record of his life there. There are many passages that describe landscape in the kind of pictorial terms that allow us to see what his narrator saw, and even hear what he heard.
Around us all was still, so still, indeed, that it was possible to follow the flight of a gnat by the buzzing of its wings. On our left loomed the gorge, deep and black. Behind it and in front of us rose the dark-blue summits of the mountains, all trenched with furrows and covered with layers of snow, and standing out against the pale horizon, which still retained the last reflections of the evening glow. The stars twinkled out in the dark sky, and in some strange way it seemed to me that they were much higher than in our own north country. On both sides of the road bare, black rocks jutted out; here and there shrubs peeped forth from under the snow; but not a single withered leaf stirred, and amid that dead sleep of nature it was cheering to hear the snorting of the three tired post-horses and the irregular tinkling of the harness bell.
The documentary feel of this book is further reinforced by the way Lermontov fills us in on the different peoples who lived in the Caucasus area during that time, the Georgians, Ossetians, Chechens and Circassians, and how those mountain tribes were viewed by the more sophisticated characters from Moscow and St Petersburg who narrate the story.
Like a skilled film maker, Lermontov plays around with the chronology of this documentary-like story, and also with the camera angles. We first hear of Pechorin in a tale recounted to the narrator as he shelters from the storm on the bare mountain at the beginning of the book. Then later, by chance, the narrator meets Pechorin in person and gives us his own impressions of the 'hero'. Finally we get extracts from Pechorin's diaries, written earlier and so predating both the meeting with the narrator and the story the narrator first heard in the mountains. It's a clever structure providing a very modern feel to this record of a 'hero' of his time.
And since I've been reflecting on the many ways we now record every moment of our lives, it has to be said that Lermontov achieved an extraordinary feat here. Not only does the book record the places he'd visited and the things he'd seen, it also records the circumstances of his own death as if he'd made a screen shot of a future moment in time: towards the end of the book, he creates a scenario in which Pechorin is challenged to a duel by an army acquaintance. One of the two dies from the wounds he receives.
Not so very long after writing that scene, Lermontov himself became involved in a duel, just like Alexander Pushkin, and his famous character, Eugene Onegin, before him. Lermontov's duel, which was the result of a challenge by an army acquaintance, took place while he was stationed in the Caucasus region in 1841. He died from the wounds he received.
……………………………
Although I began reading this book in digital form, I finished it in the Penguin Classics edition which I eventually bought in my local bookshop, certain that I wanted to make a place for Lermontov on my real-life bookshelves. And imagine my surprise when I opened the book. After reading the foreword, the introduction, and the acknowledgments, I found a double page spread containing a map tracing the path of the events of the story. But the printed map was not nearly as clear or as meaningful as the one I'd 'recorded' myself.
For once, I was glad to have chosen an ebook!
Oh, and now I'm reading Pushkin... 169 Ask a Westerner about great Russian writers, and chances are you will hear the names of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Chekhov. But my mind instead immediately jumps to the earlier, more Romanticist generation of the early 19th century - Pushkin and Lermontov, two young geniuses, neither of whom has lived to see 40.
It’s easy to forget how ridiculously young Lermontov was. Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, was killed in a duel at only 37. Lermontov, the second-greatest, died in the same ridiculous way — but at the age of only 26. And by that young age he already reached fame and recognition, having barely spread his literary wings.
(Funnily enough - in the saddest way possible - Lermontov himself wrote a passionate and angry poem Death of the Poet about Pushkin’s death, condemning the societal scorn that pushed Pushkin to such an end - only to repeat the same fate himself. And both Pushkin and Lermontov have written and condemned pointless duel scenes in both of their greatest works - Pushkin in Eugene Onegin, Lermontov in this one, A Hero of Our Time. Writing the scathing Death of the Poet about Pushkin’s death was what earned the young previously little-known writer both skyrocketing fame in the literary circles and displeasure of the Tsar, culminating in basically what amounted to the exile to serve in the army in the Caucasus mountains - the place where his masterpiece A Hero of Our Time is set and where Lermontov himself eventually was killed.)
The Romanticism gave us the much loved and much hated Byronic hero - a noble solitary scoundrel, misunderstood, lonely and suffering, brooding and disillusioned, dark and alluring, haughty and cynical, yet charismatic and irresistible to women, painfully self-aware — and blinding in his superiority to the otherwise banal and mediocre society. Countless characters were inspired by this — just think of Eugene Onegin in Pushkin’s novel, for instance. (The painful echoes of the allure of such heroes still are heard in so much of romance and young adult literature to this day.)
In A Hero of Our Time Lermontov portrays his stark disillusionment with such a Byronic hero, shocking and scandalizing society. You’d expect him to paint Pechorin in a more dramatic or sympathetic light — given the inherent allure in such a character, especially to a very young writer who idolized Byron actually lived a life similar to that of a Byronic hero.
(Supposedly, Lermontov himself was not the nicest person. A very wealthy and spoiled young man, he was famous for seducing women and breaking their hearts, writing rambunctious and lurid poetry after joining a cadet school, a sharp and caustic wit that could border on casual cruelty, impressive intelligence bordering on cynical arrogance, and boundless bravery in war battles leaning towards careless recklessness. But again, the man was only 26 when he died, with no chance to ever reach maturity and wisdom of age, to outgrow the swagger stage of a young rich guy with all the life ahead of him.)
But there is no alluring glow to Pechorin’s character. Pechorin is an appalling egotistical arrogant cynical fellow, an antihero surely, who still embodies the Byronic ideal perfectly, but in this case so appalling to the society still full of admiration for Byronic tragic antiheroes, that Lermontov in the foreword to the novel had to point out (translation is mine):
“[…] This is a portrait, indeed, but not of one man: it is a portrait comprised of the vices of our entire generation, in all of their form. You will tell me again that a man cannot be this bad, and I will tell you that if you could believe in the possibility of the existence of all the tragic and romantic scoundrels, why wouldn’t you believe in the reality of Pechorin? If you enjoyed creations much more terrible and uglier, why would this character, even as an invention, not find mercy with you? Is it because that he carries more truth than you would have wished for?”
Pechorin certainly has a remarkable insight into his appalling character, and is quite contradictory in his complexity. He tends to be spot-on in astute recognition of human fallacies, which fuels his cynicism. He is very well-aware (and almost alarmed by) his purposelessness and a tendency towards self-destruction. His pride in his detachment and cynicism even briefly falters when his genuine feelings for Vera lead him on a mad gallop to reach her — but that flame is extinguished quickly, and we know that from here on he goes on to carelessly destroy young Bela and her family.
It’s interesting how the best-regarded work of the man usually thought of as a poet is a slim novel written in prose. But really, the prose is ridiculously unbelievably poetic, so perhaps it’s not strange at all.
“The dancing choirs of the stars were interwoven in wondrous patterns on the distant horizon, and, one after another, they flickered out as the wan resplendence of the east suffused the dark, lilac vault of heaven, gradually illuminating the steep mountain slopes, covered with the virgin snows. To right and left loomed grim and mysterious chasms, and masses of mist, eddying and coiling like snakes, were creeping thither along the furrows of the neighbouring cliffs, as though sentient and fearful of the approach of day.”
This book is told in five parts, told out of chronologic order:
- It opens with “Bela”, where our narrator, while traveling through the Caucasus in the middle of the Russian multi-decade expansion to that territory, known collectively as the Caucasian Wars, meets an old army man Maxim Maximych, who tells him a story of his younger officer friend Grigory Pechorin, a world-weary rich man of twenty-five or so, and his kidnapping and seduction of a young local girl Bela five years prior, followed by the tragic end of this romance shortly before Pechorin would have been tired of this conquest.
- Then we move on to “Maxim Maximych”, a short piece where the narrator meets Pechorin himself (and what an unpleasant figure Pechorin turns out to be!) and comes into possession of Pechorin’s travel journals.
Three excerpts from these journals conclude the novel, after a brief interlude informing the reader that by now Pechorin is dead:
- “Taman”, where pre-Caucasus Pechorin poetically runs afoul of a small band of smugglers;
- “Princess Mary”, a long section chronologically preceding the events of “Bela”, where Pechorin tells us of his cruel courtship of a young noble woman done at the request of a married woman whom he actually loves, ending tragically for a former friend, the girl and Pechorin himself, who may or may not have actually fallen in some sort of love;
- and finally, “The Fatalist”, a short piece on the inevitability and predetermination of destiny and death.
“On reading over these notes, I have become convinced of the sincerity of the man who has so unsparingly exposed to view his own weaknesses and vices. The history of a man’s soul, even the pettiest soul, is hardly less interesting and useful than the history of a whole people; especially when the former is the result of the observations of a mature mind upon itself, and has been written without any egoistical desire of arousing sympathy or astonishment. Rousseau’s Confessions has precisely this defect—he read it to his friends.”
Putting Pechorin aside (which would undoubtedly injure his vanity and pride), another protagonist of the novel is the setting - the majestic Caucasus Mountains, where he spent a large part of his life, a lot of it in military service punctuated by leisurely pursuits, the place where he ultimately lost his own life in ridiculous unnecessary duel.
“What a glorious place that valley is! On every hand are inaccessible mountains, steep, yellow slopes scored by water-channels, and reddish rocks draped with green ivy and crowned with clusters of plane-trees. Yonder, at an immense height, is the golden fringe of the snow. Down below rolls the River Aragva, which, after bursting noisily forth from the dark and misty depths of the gorge, with an unnamed stream clasped in its embrace, stretches out like a thread of silver, its waters glistening like a snake with flashing scales.”
“A childish feeling, I admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become as children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again. He whose lot it has been, as mine has been, to wander over the desolate mountains, long, long to observe their fantastic shapes, greedily to gulp down the life-giving air diffused through their ravines—he, of course, will understand my desire to communicate, to narrate, to sketch those magic pictures.”
The ridiculous duel that cost Mikhail Lermontov his life at age twenty-six robbed literature of a budding genius. I can only imagine how interesting his voice would have been as a mature writer, a man with more life to experience, more illusions to be shattered, more mountains to climb.
I first read it while in elementary school, not understanding anything about it but persevering with weird childish stubbornness. Since then I’ve read it a few more times, each time appreciating Lermontov’s astute understanding of human nature more and more. And now I am a decade older than Lermontov ever had a chance to be, and I still find it utterly brilliant. 169 - بطل من هذا الزمان، الرواية او مجموعة النوفيلات لميخائيل ليرمانتوف تتضافر لتشكل اقنوماً واحداً يمثل الشخصية الرئيسية بتشورين!
- خمس قصص تأخذنا من الحديث عن بيتشورين الى حديثه عن نفسه من خلال مذكراته، او بالأحرى تأخذنا من الظاهر والسطحي والرأي المتكون عنه، الى الباطن والحقيقي ومنطلق تكوين شخصيته! وهو بلا شك شخصية محيرة، مصنوعة من الغطرسة والسخرية والنرجسية والحزن، مسجونة داخل دائرةٍ من التشاؤم نتيجة الشعور المألوف بالفراغ والخسارة الدائمة!
- بتشورين يتأرجح بين ميكافيلي ونيتشة، وينخرط بعبثية مطلقة في الحياة بدون خط واضح المعالم (انكان خيراً او شراً)، ويحاول ان يقنع القارئ بأنه كان على استعداد لأن يحب لكن العالم علمه ان يكره! فيبدأ باللعب على مشاعر القارئ بين اقصى السلب واقصى الإيجاب، رغم ان الحبكة بسيطة لكنها مكتوبة بلغة رائعة (او ترجمة رائعة).
- الأسلوب السردي كان ممتازاً، التقديم الذي حصل للنوفيلا الأولى وجدته مبرراً اذ كان الكاتب يأخذنا من الخارج الى داخل بيتشورين، الشخصيات كانت بالحد المطلوب، فلا شخصيات زائدة لا حاجة لها ولا حشو لا طائل منه، قد تكون النهايات المتوقعة للشخصيات هي علامة الإستفهام لكنها نهايات منطقية في ظل عبثية الرواية..
- اخيراً، وبعيداً عما تمثله شخصية بيتروشين في السياق التاريخي وظلم القياصرة والنفي الذي حصل. فإن شخصية بيتروشين قد تترآى لكل منا في المرآة صباحاً خصوصاً حين تكون رغباتنا اكبر من وجودنا الفعلي، وهذه تراجيديا بحد ذاتها! 169
إن رواية مثل هذه لهي جديرة بأن تعيش لعشرات السنين و عندما تقرأها لا تشعر أبدا بأنها شيئا عفا عليه الزمن و غيرته الأحوال. هذا هو وقتها. الأن و ليس غدا. نفس الظروف البائسة التي تحيط بنا في دول الربيع العربي و أيضا تلك الدول التي سبقت و التي تنتظر.
الشباب الذي خرج إلى الميادين كله أمل و تفاؤل .. ماذا سيحدث إذا رجع خائبا؟ الإجابة هنا في ثنايا تلك الرواية و فيما تبثه من رسائل غير مباشرة.
حرص ليرمنتوف أن يسميها بطل من هذا الزمان و ليس بطلا مطلقا في كل زمان .. فالرواية كتبها بعد رصيد طويل من الإحباطات بعد قمع القيصر الروسي لانتفاضة ثورة النبلاء في العام 1825 م و التي ترتب عليها تلاشي أي أمل في الإصلاح من أعلى مما ترتب عليه انتظار روسيا قرنا كاملا ليأتي الإصلاح من أسفل في الثورة البلشفية الشيوعية في العام 1917 بعد وفاة ليرمنتوف نفسه و جميع من تنبأ بهذه الثورة بعدة عقود.
رغم أنه كتبها و عمره 25 عاما و مات بعدها بسنتين فقط إلا أنه يعد من أبرز الشعراء الروس على الإطلاق بعد بوشكين. و من المفارقات أيضا أنه و بوشكين عدا خير من وصف المبارزة في كتابتهما و خرج أبطالهما منتصرين في كلتا المارزتين أما تشيكوف الذي ألف مسرحية كاملة عن المبارزة و انتهت بالصلح ب��ن المتبارزين فقد مات على فراشه!
الرواية عن ضابط شاب من الطبقة الأرستقراطية لديه احباطات جيله و طبقته يحاول أن يجد نفسه بشتى الطرق دون أن يجد العزاء أو اللذة في أي شيء. يقول عن نفسه:
كنت خجولا فاتهموني بالمكر فأصبحت كتوما. و كنت أحس بالخير و الشر إحساسا عميقا. و لكن أحدا لم يعطف عليّ. بل كانوا جميعا يؤذونني. فأصبحت حقودا أحب الإنتقام. و كنت حزين النفس و كان الأطفال الأخرون فرحين هدارين و كنت أشعر أنني فوقهم فقيل لي أنني دونهم فأصبحت حسودا. و كنت مهيأ لأن أحب جميع الناس فلم يفهمني أحد فتعلمت الكرْه. دفنت أنبل عواطفي في أعماق قلبي فماتت هنالك. و كنت أحب أن أقول الحقيقة فلم يصدقني أحد فأخذت أكذب.هذا هو بتشورين بطل زمان ليرمنتوف و هذا ما زرعناه اليوم في نفوس شبابنا. زرعة خائبة لا تبني إلا بمقدار ما تهدم و لا تصعد إلا إلى أسفل و لا تتقدم أبدا للأمام. نرى اليوم حصاد فشل الثورات فسادا و ديكتاتورية و إرهابا و ما خفي كان أعظم. لا زالت أمامنا فرصا ضئيلة بعدم إعلان الإستسلام و استئناف ما بدأناه فورا في جولة هي حتما الأخيرة للمهزوم قبل المنتصر. 169
ولد اليأس في قلبي. أصبحت روحي مشلولة. ذهب نصف نفسي. جف. تبخر. مات. قطعته و رميته بعيدا عني.
لا أدري أأنا أحمق أم أنا وغد. و لكن هناك شيئا لا مراء فيه و هو أنني جدير بالشفقة. ان لي نفسا أفسدتها حياة المجتمع الراقي و خيالا قلقا و قلبا لا يشبع من جوع. لا شيء يرويني. فسرعان ما آلف الألم و اللذة كليهما. و إن وجودي ليزداد فراغا يوما بعد يوم و لم يبق لي إلا مخرج واحد .. السفر.
“I sing whatever comes into my head. It'll be heard by who it's meant for, and who isn't meant to hear won't understand.”
Free will is the ability to choose...No! I would like to believe so. But there are countless limitations and restrictions which make me wonder why we have been granted with it, if we are going to be judged and chastised for our choices. This is such an argument of a man, Pechorin, who is often alienated for his nullifying philosophical and vilifying romantic views.
There is something superfluous about this story, a superficial one might think. I ask you, dear readers: Haven't you ever felt superfluous about your life at all? If the answer is NO, you better not read this book and also my super-superfluous words. If the answer is YES, I welcome you to read further, starting with the words of the poet whose words on superfluity are too profound to be categorized as superfluous:
That man of loneliness and mystery,
Scarce seen to smile, and seldom heard to sigh;
Whose name appalls the fiercest of his crew,
And tints each swarthy cheek with sallower hue;
Still sways their souls with that commanding art
That dazzles, leads, yet chills the vulgar heart.
What is that spell, that thus his lawless train
Confess and envy—yet oppose in vain?
What should it be, that thus their faith can bind?
The power of Thought—the magic of the Mind!
Linked with success, assumed and kept with skill,
That molds another's weakness to its will;
Wields with their hands, but, still to these unknown,
Makes even their mightiest deeds appear his own.
Such hath it been—shall be—beneath the Sun
The many still must labour for the one!
'Tis Nature's doom—but let the wretch who toils,
Accuse not—hate not—him who wears the spoils.
Oh! if he knew the weight of splendid chains,
How light the balance of his humbler pains!
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Our hero, a character of incompatibility, is not a romantic hero with overwhelming love for his women. But, at the same time, his feelings for them are genuine, even if they are only transient. The futility of existence and the certainty of death drives him away from the banal lives which others live, to live in an ineffable solitude. His fleeting romantic adventures do not give him much hope. He was strangely struck by the feminine tenderness and servile relationships. Fickle friendships made him disillusioned.
Triumph over others' losses and his being the reason for them made him relish his existence. Vanity extends his claws deep inside him. But he can’t help despising himself. There is nowhere he can go. There is no love which can absolve him from his troubled life. Lost loves make him more wretched. Friendship has become more or less an obligation rather than an enchantment. Life has become an After-Life he is afraid of. Duel has become his destiny.
No! our hero is a romantic hero... who sulks in his melancholy for his superfluous life. His women feel (No! he is not an infidel) that they are simply being enslaved by his futile pursuits and aimless adventures. He is not the one who is meant to be happy. With his growing dissatisfaction with his life, everyone gets rid of him or, sometimes, he forces them to... But nobody can understand how far he would go, just to take even a last look of his lost love, even if he needs to torment another soul willy-nilly. Such is the ordeal of our hero.
Closing the argument with the preface from the author,
A Hero of Our Time, my dear readers, is indeed a portrait, but not of one man. It is a portrait built up of all our generation's vices in full bloom. You will again tell me that a human being cannot be so wicked, and I will reply that if you can believe in the existence of all the villains of tragedy and romance, why wouldn't believe that there was a Pechorin? If you could admire far more terrifying and repulsive types, why aren't you more merciful to this character, even if it is fictitious? Isn't it because there's more truth in it than you might wish?
Note: Better read with Nabokov's translation. Truly Splendid!
Check out Florencia's amazing review of this great book. 169 A Hero of Our Time, part swashbuckler, part travelogue, which first appeared in 1839, cleary had an influence over another certain famous Russian writer who sported a great big long grey beard. Infact this could quite easily have been written by Tolstoy himself. Opening in a vast landscape, the narrator is travelling through the Caucasus, he explains that he is not a novelist, but a travel writer, making notes. Think a sort of Paul Theroux type. The mountainous region were supposedly fabled, Noah’s ark apparently passed by the twin peaks of Mount Elborus. Must have been a wonderful spectacle for the elephants, giraffes, and rhinos. Beyond the natural border of the River Terek was an alluring and dangerous terrain, where Ossetians, Georgians, Tatars and Chechens harried Russian soldiers and travellers, or offered uncertain alliances. But just who could you trust?
Lermontov’s narrator marvels at the purity of the mountain air, and the delights of welcoming a sense of withdrawing from the world. But he also feels a sombre and bewildering depth, that the hidden valleys hold a foreboding. He meets an old Caucasus hand, a staff captain called Maxim Maximych, who has been in Chechnya for a decade and who warns him about the dangerous ways of the region’s inhabitants. Maxim Maximych begins to rabble on to his new found friend about the ravishing tale of a young officer he met five years earlier, Pechorin (who is now dead) had a lively energy and a changeable temperament, he could hunt for days one minute, and hide in his room the next. Whilst spending time at Maximych’s fort, Bela, the daughter of a Tatar prince caught his eye, casting flirtatious looks at him as one does. And even sings him a love song. Ahhh, how sweet.
This story then involves the Prince's son, who is after the horse of a local bandit, Pechorin offers him a deal. He steals the horse, if Bela is delivered to him. But after the exchange, the bandit goes looking for blood.
Unlike Tolstoy, this is not some huge Russian beast of a novel, as it sits comfortably at under two-hundred pages. Although there turns out to be three different narrators, the whole thing works well, and is perfectly graspable for anyone who has read any of the old Russian classics. Lermontov doesn't beat around the bush when kicking things off, and builds a picture straight away. The book makes its points efficiently, in a little amount of time. The character of Pechorin was far more intriguing than anyone else, and his part of the overall story I found the better. What is striking is Lermontov's handling of form, the way Pechorin emerges gradually in a fragmented narrative that anticipates Modernism in its perspectival shifts. The book not only pleased Leo, but Gogol, Dostoevsky and Chekhov as well. Lermontov deserves to mingle in with this crowd. He really wouldn't be out of place. He demonstrates that literature is the most beautiful artform when written in this fashion. 169 بطل المفارقة، والتزييف، والحذاقة، والتصنع، والجرح باحترافية.
بطل من هذا الزمان أو ذاك الزمان .. فهو متجدد ولا يموت. يحيا في الجيل الذّي يحاول إعادة انبعاثة والترويج له.
ليس رجلاً بالمعنى المتعارف عليه.
بل جيش من الرذائل استولت على قلبٍ كان لإنسان.
كيف تخدش ببساطة من تحب؟
وتطعن في ظهره وتغرب شمسك عنه وكأنّها لم تشرق؟
وتتوارى خلف السخرية النكرة لتفسّر ما لم يطلب منك تفسيره ..
فقط لتهرب!!!
حينما تستولي العبثية، والأنانية على لب بشر، ماذا تنتظر خلف التتويج ..
بطلاً ينقذ
أم بطلاً يُدمي .. ثم لا يتوانى أن يضحك على حماقاته.
أجد أنّ قلبي امتلأ .. امتلأ بالألم من كل شيء ..
ذلك التلاشي في اللاشيء يمزقني .. ويدفعني خارج ذاتي.
حينما توجتني القوة .. لم أجد من نفسي بُداً أن لا أكون حليفاً للخسارة، بل للمكر ما استطاعت إلى ذلك سبيلا.
لسبب ما .. لا أدري للماضي أم الحاضر وجدت الجسارة طبعي، والقدرة الفذة على استمالة القلوب لجانبي ..
ثم ماذا بعد .. ؟؟؟
من يجرؤ على المقاومة في سحقها بعد استمالتها إلا قلبي الجسور !!!
اتفق معك أنّك لا تحبني .. ولن تحبني ..
ولكن سترى أن في كل جيل من يقدرني ويجعلني رمزاً للبطولة.
في كل جيل وزمان سترى من يستهزئ بآلام الناس على طريقته الخاصة.
من يجفف سيل العاطفة البراقة، ليزرع الحقد والشر.
من يبني سدود العداء، ويهدم المودة، ويردم الحب.
ويتنازل عن المسلمات لعبثيته.
والمبادئ لهمجيته.
والخير لصالحة.
سترى البطولة بطولها وعرضها في من هو أسوء مني، وأقسى مني .. وأكثر مكراً وجرأة ..
وسترى أن لكل نوعٍ جمهوره، حتى أنا لي من يتوافق معي ويعرف قدري. 169 Vrouwen houden alleen van mannen die ze niet kennen.
Aan de hand van vijf ingenieus verbonden novellen krijgen we een indringend psychologisch portret van de jonge officier Petsjorin, het prototype van de Russische ‘overtollige mens’. Petsjorin is een gedesillusioneerde, amorele dandy. Ambivalentie viert hoogtij, nog versterkt door knipoogjes naar de clichés van het romantische genre.
Puntig, lyrisch, sarcastisch, vitaal proza zoals het tegenwoordig niet meer geschreven wordt. Helaas was ‘Ruslands tweede dichter’ hetzelfde lot beschoren als zijn grote held Poesjkin: hij stierf op 27-jarige leeftijd in een banaal duel. 169 أشعر برغبة في قول اشياء كثيرة عن هذه الرواية، ابحث عن كلمات وجمل تصف مشاعري أثناء قرائتها، أقول أن هذه الرواية تخدش النفس البشرية ترغمك على مقارنة نفسك بذاك البطل الذي يجري بين صفحات الرواية ، وأي بطل هو ذاك وأي جريمة أن يطلق أسم البطل على بتشورين الأناني ، الملول، الخبيث، المتقلب، المغرور ..
يولد أولئك الأبطال في زمن الإنحطاط، في زمن تختلط فيه القيم، تنتشر فيه قيم الإستبداد والتسلط، يخرج الأبطال على هيئة بتشورين كفكرة مشوهة ، كطلقة في وجه الهواء ، كصرخة لا تعرف أي وجهة، يولد الأبطال في ذاك الزمن كختم على جبين عصر مأساوي يبحث فيه الفرد عن غاية ، عن هدف نبيل فلا يجد في طريقه غير الأساليب الملتوية والفرص الشحيحة لتقلد الحياة ، تصبح الحياة ممراً ضيقاً لا يمر من خلاله إلا أولئك الأشخاص أو لنسمهم الأبطال المزيفين ..
أنا أراهم كثيراً في عالمنا اليوم، أقصد حيث أعيش وحيث تعيشون أنتم، في كل مكان نجد أمثال بتشورين وإن أختلفت الظروف والتصرفات، إلا أنها نفس النماذج البشرية تتحق في عصر الإنحاط في مجتمعنا ..
هذه الرواية عجيبة بالفعل، قرأتها للمرة الثانية، مازلت أشعر أنها من اجمل الروايات التي قرأتها في حياتي، سحرها ووصفها وأجواءها لا تفارق الذاكرة، تفسيرها وتحليلها للنفس البشرية في غاية الدقة والخصوصية ، في أحيان كانه يتحدث عنك أو يحلل ما تشعر به ..
للأسف أن ليرمنتوف مات في سن صغيرة ولم يكتب لنا سوى هذه الرواية، وإلا كنا سنحظى بمزيد من هذه الروايات العظيمة..
رواية لا تنسى، لا تنسى ..
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