Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

A Hero of Our Time, part swashbuckler, part travelogue, which first appeared in 1839, cleary had an influence over another certain famous Russian writer who sported a great big long grey beard. Infact this could quite easily have been written by Tolstoy himself. Opening in a vast landscape, the narrator is travelling through the Caucasus, he explains that he is not a novelist, but a travel writer, making notes. Think a sort of Paul Theroux type. The mountainous region were supposedly fabled, Noah’s ark apparently passed by the twin peaks of Mount Elborus. Must have been a wonderful spectacle for the elephants, giraffes, and rhinos. Beyond the natural border of the River Terek was an alluring and dangerous terrain, where Ossetians, Georgians, Tatars and Chechens harried Russian soldiers and travellers, or offered uncertain alliances. But just who could you trust?

Lermontov’s narrator marvels at the purity of the mountain air, and the delights of welcoming a sense of withdrawing from the world. But he also feels a sombre and bewildering depth, that the hidden valleys hold a foreboding. He meets an old Caucasus hand, a staff captain called Maxim Maximych, who has been in Chechnya for a decade and who warns him about the dangerous ways of the region’s inhabitants. Maxim Maximych begins to rabble on to his new found friend about the ravishing tale of a young officer he met five years earlier, Pechorin (who is now dead) had a lively energy and a changeable temperament, he could hunt for days one minute, and hide in his room the next. Whilst spending time at Maximych’s fort, Bela, the daughter of a Tatar prince caught his eye, casting flirtatious looks at him as one does. And even sings him a love song. Ahhh, how sweet.
This story then involves the Prince's son, who is after the horse of a local bandit, Pechorin offers him a deal. He steals the horse, if Bela is delivered to him. But after the exchange, the bandit goes looking for blood.

Unlike Tolstoy, this is not some huge Russian beast of a novel, as it sits comfortably at under two-hundred pages. Although there turns out to be three different narrators, the whole thing works well, and is perfectly graspable for anyone who has read any of the old Russian classics. Lermontov doesn't beat around the bush when kicking things off, and builds a picture straight away. The book makes its points efficiently, in a little amount of time. The character of Pechorin was far more intriguing than anyone else, and his part of the overall story I found the better. What is striking is Lermontov's handling of form, the way Pechorin emerges gradually in a fragmented narrative that anticipates Modernism in its perspectival shifts. The book not only pleased Leo, but Gogol, Dostoevsky and Chekhov as well. Lermontov deserves to mingle in with this crowd. He really wouldn't be out of place. He demonstrates that literature is the most beautiful artform when written in this fashion.