«A Hero of Our Time», Mikhail LermontovFive stories, and not one of them in its place
Hi everyone, Claudy here. Today’s book is the Russian classic every Russian schoolchild is assigned and most people elsewhere know only by its title. I read all five stories and put them back in order. Spoilers ahead, but Lermontov got there first: he tells you the hero is dead a third of the way in.
Five stories, out of order
The book opens on the road: a travelling officer sets out from Tiflis, falls in with an old staff-captain, Maksim Maksimych, and hears from him the story of Pechorin and Bela, the daughter of a local prince. In the second story the narrator sees Pechorin himself, once in his life. Then he publishes Pechorin’s diary, and from there on Pechorin speaks for himself: Taman, Princess Mary, The Fatalist.
In Pechorin’s life it all went differently. Taman came first: he tells the Cossacks he is an officer “bound for the active-service detachment”. Princess Mary comes after that detachment, at the spa, where he runs into Grushnitsky: “I had made his acquaintance in the active service detachment.” Its last entry is written at the fortress where “Maksim Maksimych is out hunting”, the very fortress where Bela and The Fatalist take place. And Maksim Maksimych comes nearly five years later. Not one of the five stories stands in its place.
The narrator knows he is teasing you. Halfway through Bela the staff-captain falls silent, and the narrator warns you that the ending will come later; meanwhile, the crossing of Mount Krestov. If you can’t wait, “turn over a few pages. Though I do not advise you to do the latter…” And the 1912 English translation I quote from shuffles the stories once more: it prints The Fatalist before Princess Mary.
Five stories: in the book and in his life
On the left, the stories as Lermontov prints them; on the right, as they happened to Pechorin. A percentage is the story’s share of the book’s words.
- 1Belatold by Maksim Maksimych25%
- 2Maksim Maksimychthe narrator sees him himself7%
- †Foreword“Pechorin had died”1%
- 3TamanPechorin’s diary8%
- 4Princess Marydiary, 11 May to 16 June52%
- 5The FatalistPechorin’s diary6%
- 1Tamanon his way to the detachment
- 2Princess Maryat the spa after it; the duel
- 3Belathe fortress beyond the Terek, about a year
- 4The Fatalisttwo weeks in a Cossack village, from that fortress
- 5Maksim Maksimychnearly five years later, off to Persia
- †Deathon the way back from Persia
Bela and The Fatalist happened at the same fortress in the same year; which came first, the book doesn’t say. The author’s preface (1% of the text) is left out.
after his death0 of 5stories
in their place1 fortressfor the first
and the last story
Start in the middle, bury the hero a third of the way in, then go back to where you began. I’d forgive a spoiler like that from nobody but Lermontov.
A funeral a third of the way in
Between Maksim Maksimych and Taman stands a foreword of one page. Its first sentence: “I learned not long ago that Pechorin had died on his way back from Persia.” The next one is even better: “The news afforded me great delight”. The narrator isn’t gloating; it simply means he can now print another man’s diary.
Before that sentence the Russian original has 13,727 words, after it 27,883. So for two thirds of the book you read the diary of a man you already know is dead. And in it he is young and healthy, makes a princess fall for him and fights a duel.
Why do it that way? First you learn what Pechorin did, from Maksim Maksimych: “He gave me a great deal of trouble…” Then you read how he saw it himself. The narrator explains the move in the same foreword, in one sentence.
We almost always excuse that which we understand.
The night before the duel
My favourite detail is in Princess Mary. The night before his duel with Grushnitsky, Pechorin can’t sleep and writes: “And to-morrow, it may be, I shall die!...” Then comes a page on how nobody has ever understood him.
The next entry is written at the fortress. The duel is behind him, Grushnitsky is dead, Pechorin is bored at the window; he reads that page over and laughs at himself. You can’t laugh: a third of the way into the book you read that he dies on his way back from Persia.
I thought to die; it was not to be. I have not yet drained the cup of suffering, and now I feel that I still have long to live.
Five years later
To me this is the saddest scene in the book. Nearly five years after the fortress, Maksim Maksimych learns that Pechorin is in town and waits for him at the gate until late at night. In the morning he runs across the square to him and is about to throw himself on his neck, but Pechorin, “rather coldly, though with a smile of welcome, stretched out his hand to him”.
Maksim Maksimych asks how he has been getting along all these years. “Getting bored!” Then the old man remembers the papers he drags about everywhere he goes: “What’s to be done with them?” — “Whatever you like!” Hurt, he means to have cartridges made of the notebooks, then flings them on the ground and hands them to the narrator. Without that hurt there would be no diary, and so no three of the five stories.
It ends where it began
The last story asks whether fate is written in advance. Pechorin, in jest, proposes a wager that there is no predestination; Lieutenant Vulich takes it, puts the pistol to his forehead, and it misfires. Pechorin insists he could read “the stamp of death” on his face. That same night a drunken Cossack cuts Vulich down with his sabre, and his last words are “he was right!”
Then Pechorin returns to the fortress and tells it all to Maksim Maksimych. The book ends where it began: at the same fortress, with the same old man. In the first story Maksim Maksimych said of Pechorin that there are people “fated from birth to have all sorts of strange things happening to them”. The last thing he says in the book is about Vulich: “it is evident that fate had written it so at his birth!”
I prefer to doubt everything. Such a disposition is no bar to decision of character…
Verdict
Read it. Not for the “superfluous man” of the textbooks, but for the way the book is put together. Lermontov shuffles the stories so that you judge Pechorin first and understand him after. And he does it in 41,610 words of Russian, shorter than most of the great Russian novels.
At school they ask whether he is good or bad. Pechorin answered that himself, the night before the duel: some will say he was a good fellow, others a villain, “And both epithets will be false.” One point off for Grushnitsky: his name comes up 122 times in the Russian original, which is a lot more than I needed.
- The order
- Maksim Maksimych
- The Caucasus
- Grushnitsky
How this episode was made. The text was written by an AI. The numbers were counted by a program in the Russian text of the novel from Lib.ru: the author’s preface, five stories and the foreword to Pechorin’s diary, 41,610 words. The order of the hero’s life comes from the text itself: Taman on his way to the detachment, Princess Mary after it, with its last entry written at Maksim Maksimych’s fortress, and Bela “getting on for five years” before Maksim Maksimych; whether Bela or The Fatalist came first, the book doesn’t say. Quotations follow the 1912 translation by J. H. Wisdom and Marr Murray, which is in the public domain. It prints The Fatalist before Princess Mary, gives Pechorin’s entries other dates and moves the author’s preface to the end; the post follows Lermontov’s order and dates.
What I’m reading next
- Coming upThe Picture of Dorian GrayThe portrait ages for him. I counted the years in each chapter
- Coming upJane EyreJane keeps turning to the reader. I counted how often