A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail IUr'evich Lermontov [7]
In addition to the tsar’s disdain, Lermontov’s hero—given a character of such terrific vices and virtues—received a mixed but vigorous reception by reading audiences when it emerged in 1840. And Pechorin’s personage is so clearly wrought that, it seems, the public and various critics jumped to the conclusion that the book was largely autobiographical. Indeed, Lermontov had also spent time in the military in the Caucasus, and, given his poems, was also subject to the cynical inclinations of his generation. In his poem “Meditation” of 1838, he writes, “I look upon our generation with sorrow! Its future is either empty or dark . . . And life already tires us, like flat path that leads nowhere . . .” Lermontov was not so terribly different from his hero in life experience and outlook, but he was resistant to such a facile reading of the book and writes in his preface, “Not long ago, several readers, and some journals even, succumbed to the misfortune of believing in the literal meanings of the words in this book. Some were awfully offended, in all seriousness, at the fact that they were presented with such an unprincipled person as the ‘hero of our time’; indeed, others very shrewdly observed that the author had painted his own portrait and the portraits of his acquaintances . . . That sorry, old ruse!”
Such defenses on the part of Lermontov need not concern us too much nearly two hundred years later. Indeed, that they both served in the Caucasus, and that they both fought in duels gives them much in common. For Pechorin, duels and Russian roulette bring about questions that are central to the book, and indeed central to life: “Is there such thing as predestination? . . . And if there is definitely such thing as predestination—why were we given free will, and reason? Why should we atone for our actions?” In this book, and in real life, the duel is a manifestation of such questions. And of course, duels were meant to be the stuff of honor and heroics, and yet so many duels in Russia at the time were fought over petty disagreements—if not out of sheer boredom. More heroes doing unheroic things in an age of cynicism. Smaller ironies among one great big one: we lead our lives as though we have choice in our actions and responsibility for these actions, but is “the fate of a man written in the sky” (as Pechorin and his friends discuss in “The Fatalist”)?
What is eerie is that not only did Pechorin and Lermontov share experiences and a troubled sense of purpose, but there is a duel scene in A Hero of Our Time that almost perfectly describes Lermontov’s own death a year or so after the novel emerged. Prince Alexander Vasilchikov, eyewitness to this fateful duel on July 15, 1841, between Lermontov and his opponent Martynov, whom Lermontov had apparently insulted, described the scene of the poet’s death thus:
At that moment, and for the last time, I glanced at him and I will never forget the calm, almost gay, expression which played upon the poet’s face in front of the barrel of the pistol already directed at him. Martynov approached the barrier with rapid steps and fired. Lermontov fell as if he had been cut down on the spot, without making a movement either forward or backward, without even succeeding in putting his hand to where he had been hurt, as those who have been wounded or grazed usually do. We rushed up. There was a smoking wound in his