CLASSICS REVISITED
Heroes of our times
RAVI VYAS
AARK ARTS
ALL characters in the great Russian novels, to a greater or lesser degree, go through a struggle between two forces: the longing for privacy and the urge to go places: introversion, that is, interest directed within oneself, towards one's inner life of thought and imagination; and extroversion, interest directed outward, towards the external world of people and tangible values. This is what makes a psychological novel. Or, put it another way, all characters, big or small, think. Take for example, the university scholar who may present both sides. The man may be a bookworm and he may also be, at times, an extrovert — and the bookworm and the extrovert may fight within one man. Of course, different temperaments may make different decisions, and there are minds in which the inner world persistently triumphs over the outer one, or vice versa. But the very fact of a struggle going on or liable to go on between two versions of a man in one man — introversion and extroversion — means that it could lead to a lack of purpose and a paralysis of will.
Superfluous man
Pechorin, the hero of Lermontov's classic novel, A Hero of Our Time is that typical Russian character whose pursuit of an inner life in the ardent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake makes him a "superfluous man" — a man whose superior talents set him apart from the mediocre society but doomed to waste his life partly through lack of opportunity but because he lacks any real purpose or strength of will.
A Hero of Our Time is what the title implies, the life and character of a man who is typical of his age. The novel consists of five separate stories that relate episodes in the life of this contemporary hero. The first, "Bela", relates the narrator's meeting on the road from Tiflis to Vladikavkoe with the Caucasian veteran, Captain Maxim Maximych. Maxim Maximych tells the story of Pechorin who was his subaltern for a time in a fort on the mountain frontier and of Pechorin's love affair with a Caucasian girl. In the second, the narrator meets Pechorin himself and comes across his journal.
The remaining three stories are extracts from the journal of Pechorin. The first, "Taman", relating an incident he had with some smugglers in the town of that name is a masterpiece of Russian fiction. Or, so it was considered by Chekhov who owed much of his method to its atmospheric construction. Next comes "Princess Mary" which itself can be regarded as a complete short novel. It is the diary of Pechorin, describing his stay at the Caucasian waters that reveals the man within. It is analytic and a large part of the entries are a direct dissection of his mind in an aphoristic style. The last story, "The Fatalistic", in which Pechorin is nothing but a narrator and plays no part. It is an intensified anecdote on the lines of Pushkin's short stories.
At odds with the world
Pechorin, the hero, is a strong, silent man with a poetic soul who, either from shyness or a contempt for the herd, especially the aristocratic herd, assumes the mask of a snob and a bully. Unlike the classic type of "superfluous men" who opt out of society, Pechorin is a strong character at odds with the world. He is proud, ambitious, strong-willed but having found that life does not measure up to his expectation of it, he has grown embittered, cynical and bored. At the age of 25 (as he is in the book) he has experienced all that life has to offer and found nothing that gives him more than a passing satisfaction or interest. He sees that life has let him down, failed to provide for him some cause that would be worthy of his superior powers. So, he is reduced to dissipating his considerable energies to petty adventures. And he embarks on his adventures with no illusions that he was doing no more than a temporary escape from boredom.
The only comfort Pechorin has is his conviction of his own perfect knowledge and mastery over life. You could call it intellectual arrogance; he therefore despises emotions and prides himself on the supremacy of his intellect over his feelings. "The turmoil of life has left me with few ideas, but no feelings," he tells his friend, Dr. Werner and to prove it he rides roughshod over the feelings of other people. His total insensitivity for the comfort and happiness of other people is repeatedly demonstrated in the novel and his victims are lucky if they get off with a broken heart (as Vera and Princess Mary), the less fortunate (Bela and Grushniksky) pay with their lives.
Appetite for power
Pechorin is just not indifferent to the feelings of other people — he positively enjoys persecuting them; in some cases, the persecution is unplanned; in other cases he deliberately sets about to destroy them. He talks in his journal of his insatiable appetite for power, of the pleasure he derives in destroying others' hopes and illusions, and of his view of other people as fodder to nourish his own ego. His own frustrated ambitions and resentment against life turn him into a hunter in a grand style. As he remarks during his campaign to woo Princess Mary: "There are times when I can understand the Vampire." It is this aggressive, active instinct that distinguishes Pechorin from the run-of-the-mill heroes.
Victory of reason
Pechorin's penchant for contradicting others, bred from his own experiences in life, is an essential part of his personality. His whole life, he says, has been a succession of attempts to go against the heart or his feelings. He claims he had resolved the conflict between "the head and the heart" by the victory of reason over feeling and was proud of his immunity to emotional experiences. His brain, he believed, would save him from his feelings. But this was a piece of self-deception. He may be free from illusions about life, but he was still subject to the power of his emotions.
For instance, Bela's death, the stirrings of old love for Vera, his pity for Princess Mary even as he is plotting her unhappiness, makes him feel guilty. And he wonders at the same time why people hate him! He consoles himself by saying that perhaps it was "fate" that made him so. Heroes will also always find their justifications.
Pechorin-type figures can be found everywhere, past, present and future. "This is how the hero of our time must be," Lermontov wrote. "He will be characterised either by decisive inaction, or else by futile inactivity." You can find them here if you look closely. Intellectuals, bureaucrats, politicians — the power elite who follow closely the grand conspiracy of Pechorin style: "Each side tells the other what the other wants to hear." So nothing happens.
A Hero of Our Time, M.Yu. Lermontov, first published 1840, Penguin Books, 1983 edition, £1.75.
Other books consulted: History of Russian Literature, Mirsky; Lectures on Russian Literature, Vladmir Nabokov; The Complection of Russian Literature, Andrew Field.
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