Mikhail Lermontov

It must have been around 2006 that my brother suggested I read Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. It took me ten years, I admit, but I've finally gotten around to it - and I'm glad I did: because A Hero of Our Time is one unusual, one captivating novella. 

To start, I should say that I greatly admired Lermontov's prose. I mean, talk about crystalline sentences: Lermontov could write - with clarity, with poise, and bravado. Here's a master in command of his craft.

Lucidity abounds, but so too does invention: Lermontov introduces a range of characters and perspectives; his tone shifts; his narrative veers in one direction and then another. I found this experience both unexpected and engaging, as if I were reading a novella reaching for more, reaching beyond its time. 

Still, there's a part of Hero that remains - for me, at least - unfinished, as if Lermontov couldn't fully answer the questions he'd posed. His central character, Pechorin, manifests this feeling most: mean and deceptive, he frustrates his lovers. And yet, at the same time, Pechorin can be respectful and cerebral, extending to his enemies a surprising civility. Pechorin's contradictions are clear - and yet their meaning is not. 

In his discussion of predestination (a discussion in which Pechorin is ultimately enveloped), Lermontov seems to have been focused less on action and more - in my estimation - on emotion. I wondered, particularly toward the end of the novella, as Pechorin fades from sight, whether Lermontov had constructed the entire book as a response to the question about whether personality and temperament might evolve - or whether they're unflinching, fated to their original condition.

Pechorin, so far as I could tell, does not evolve. But Lermontov seems to suggest there's time for the reader: to worry less about action and more about emotion; to "doubt" the reality we've inherited and create a new one in its place, one in which we're less cruel and more forgiving, one in which we defy fate and live with the same sense of purpose and clarity, well, as Lermontov's prose.