A Hero of Our Time
1840
Published in 1840, this slender novel invented the modern Russian soul. Lermontov gave his country its first true antihero: Grigori Pechorin, a disaffected officer stationed in the wild Caucasus, charming and hollow, brilliant and destructive. Across five interwoven narratives, we watch him seduce and abandon a local princess, duel with rivals, observe everything with sardonic detachment, and leave wreckage behind him without apparent regret. Pechorin is not simply wicked; he is ennui made flesh, a man cursed with consciousness so acute it renders all feeling meaningless. The Caucasus mountains blaze through these pages as more than scenery: they are the external landscape of an internal emptiness. This is the first psychological novel in Russian literature, and it made possible everything that followed. Dostoevsky's brooding criminals, Turgenev's superfluous men, the existential anguish of the 19th-century Russian novel all trace back to this book. For readers who crave moral complexity, for those who suspect that the most interesting characters are the ones who cannot be easily understood, Pechorin remains an unforgettable mirror.
Editions
X-Ray
“Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“In the first place, [his eyes] never laughed when he laughed. Have you ever noticed this peculiarity some people have? It is either the sign of an evil nature or of a profound and lasting sorrow.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“We practically always excuse things when we understand them””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“Yes, such has been my lot since childhood. Everyone read signs of non-existent evil traits in my features. But since they were expected to be there, they did make their appearance. Because I was reserved, they said I was sly, so I grew reticent. I was keenly aware of good and evil, but instead of being indulged I was insulted and so I became spiteful. I was sulky while other children were merry and talkative, but though I felt superior to them I was considered inferior. So I grew envious. I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate. My cheerless youth passed in conflict with myself and society, and fearing ridicule I buried my finest feelings deep in my heart, and there they died. I spoke the truth, but nobody believed me, so I began to practice duplicity. Having come to know society and its mainsprings, I became versed in the art of living and saw how others were happy without that proficiency, enjoying for free the favors I had so painfully striven for. It was then that despair was born in my heart--not the despair that is cured with a pistol, but a cold, impotent desperation, concealed under a polite exterior and a good-natured smile. I became a moral cripple; I had lost one half of my soul, for it had shriveled, dried up and died, and I had cut it off and cast it away, while the other half stirred and lived, adapted to serve every comer. No one noticed this, because no one suspected there had been another half. Now, however, you have awakened memories of it in me, and what I have just done is to read its epitaph to you. Many regard all epitaphs as ridiculous, but I do not, particularly when I remember what rests beneath them.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“What of it? If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“Afraid of decision, I buried my finer feelings in the depths of my heart and they died there.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
“Out of life's storm I carried only a few ideas - and not one feeling.””
— Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov
