Summary
This book centers on the literary type of the “superfluous man” and a Byronic hero. In some ways this character anticipates modern antiheroes like Patrick Bateman or Walter White, at least in broad outline. It is widely treated as the first major Russian psychological novel in prose. The book opens from the perspective of a writer traveling through the Caucasus. The writer befriends Maksim Maksimych, a veteran staff captain, who regales him with stories—chief among them the tale of Bela, in which Pechorin figures. After further travel they meet Pechorin himself. The reunion is stiff: Pechorin is polite but distant and soon leaves for Persia. He had long ago left his notebooks with Maksim; when Maksim reminds him, Pechorin says he may do what he likes with them. The offended Maksim is about to destroy the papers when the narrator takes them instead. Much of what follows comes from those diary extracts (Taman, Princess Mary, The Fatalist), in Pechorin’s own voice.
We find that Pechorin is in equal parts cynic and romantic. He is one of those characters who needs women to love him but has no desire to love in return. He “feels” more deeply than the people around him, and the lack of anyone who shares that inward life has left him numb. People take him for a scoundrel because of his cynicism; he would say he is one of the few who are not pretending.
The book follows Pechorin through those episodes as he juggles several love affairs and a duel, none of which end well.
Lermontov ends with a brief explanation and defense of himself. Many readers took Pechorin for a model to imitate; in the preface to the second edition he insists that Pechorin is a composite portrait of the vices of his generation, not a hero to copy, and he disavows any claim to be a moral reformer, only an observer. To his critics he writes this memorable response:
The Russian public is like a simple-minded person from the country who, chancing to overhear a conversation between two diplomatists belonging to hostile courts, comes away with the conviction that each of them has been deceiving his Government in the interest of a most affectionate private friendship.
Thoughts
At this point in history the Byronic hero, or in modern terms the edgy antihero, has become such a mainstay of literature and entertainment that it is hard not to view Pechorin as a little silly, perhaps like the emo kid in high school who keeps insisting that “no one gets me.” This makes me wonder what Lermontov would have made of how common Pechorin characters have become. Looking through some of the references I was surprised to find that this book is actually referenced in one of my all-time favorites, The Fall by Albert Camus. Now that I see the reference it makes sense, but I would never have made the connection on my own.
When it comes to the writing, the jump from writer to Maksim to Pechorin to Pechorin’s journals did not pay off for me. Unless some literary message was supposed to come through that chain of narrators, it felt like needless filler before the main event, Pechorin’s journals.
In the beginning, when we are initially accompanying the writer, Lermontov’s descriptions of the Caucasus are so vivid as to make it impossible not to wish you could be in the same caravan, picking your way across the windswept rugged terrain.
I will end this review with another comical quote from Pechorin which feels strangely familiar with the rise of the red-pill community. I guess there is nothing new under the sun:
Ever since poets have written and women have read them (for which the poets should be most deeply grateful) women have been called angels so many times that, in very truth, in their simplicity of soul, they have believed the compliment, forgetting that, for money, the same poets have glorified Nero as a demigod… …Women ought to wish that all men knew them as well as I because I have loved them a hundred times better since I have ceased to be afraid of them and have comprehended their little weaknesses.