A Hero for Our Time

[El Capitan]

Has anyone read this book? I'm going to try and get a copy of it soon. From what I've read, it looks pretty good.

[Silvio]

Yes, I've read it and it's well worth getting hold of. It's
only the size of a novella and it's the only piece of
prose I've read by Lermontov but I've read several
times that it's excellence indicates that while Pushkin
was a finer poet, Lermontov was probably a finer
writer of prose, which is no small praise as I'm very
fond of Pushkin's short stories. Have you read about
the 'superfluous man' , a character that features in a
lot of 19th century Russian fiction?
Silvio  

[El Capitan]

Indeed, I find the superfluous man to be probably one of the greatest literary characters of all time. Although I don't always agree with the morality of the characters, superfluous men really do capture the zeitgeist of the early modern world. I also think that, at least in some of the more post-industrial countries, that the superfluous man is becoming increasingly applicable to many Westerners.

[Silvio]

Well, in that case you'll enjoy Pechorin - the 'hero' of
Lermontov's novella, who is a particularly amoral
example of the 'superfluous man'. I certainly feel a
great kinship for certain examples of this type: not
characters like Pechorin but more the feckless,
neurasthenic type. Someone with certain talents and
aptitudes but aware that they are without any greatness.
Silvio

[Silvio]

Are there many or indeed any admirers of the poetry
of Anna Akhmatova in the house? I'd be particularly
interested if there are any Russian speakers who
might be able to recommend which translators are the most worthy. It really is a tragic business when one's favourite writers must be read in translation.
Particularly when it's poetry
Silvio

[El Capitan]

I've finally gotten a copy of this book, and I'm halfway through the Bela segment of it. It's a very good book, I must say. It's not quite as dark as Dostoevsky's works, but it's still very good, and I especially love Lermontov's descriptions of the Caucasus. He makes it sound so beautiful, and it really makes me want to take a trip there sometime soon.

[Silvio]

While I havent read it for a long time, I also recall the
descriptive passages about the Caucasus. It does
sound beautiful. Stylistically he's more like the great
prose stories by Pushkin: The shot, for example, or
even The Cossacks by Tolstoy, dealing as it does with the same terrain. Still there's noone as charmingly amoral as Pechorin in the others. It has
a rather curious structure as well, don't you think?

[El Capitan]

Aye, the structure is really unique. At first I thought I'd bought the wrong book and that it was just a collection of short stories or something, but I looked it up on the internet and realised that that's how the book was meant to be. Very interesting.

[El Capitan]

So, I finished this book the other day, and it was awesome. I did find the beginning of Princess Mary to be a bit tedious, but once it picked up, the book was really good. I also liked the ending a lot, really good.

Spoiler Alert:

My one main criticism is that in his diary Pechorin spoils all of the tension and suspense that had been built in the pages preceding the duel by saying he'd won the duel at the start of the journal entry where he tells the details of the duel. To me, it would've been better without that first introductory remark, which ruined a lot of the surprise.

[Silvio]

Have you ever read a Pushkin short story called
'The Shot'? It's also about a duel but the suspense isn't sabotaged
silvio

[Kirald]

Hi, my name Kirill and I'm from Russia. I want to tell the history about this novel.
This novel in the first printed in Lermontovs time magazine, but only first chapter ("Bela"), and a lot of officials and the king, spoke well of the novel. But if you remember in the fist chapter the whole story is on behalf of Maxim Maksimych. And people thought - Maxim Maksimych is Hero of our time, who told about Pechorin. But when came second chapter, on the head of Lermontov poured criticism, on the part of officials and the king, I do not remember exactly what happened next, but the remaining chapters were published without any problems.
Bye/