A Hero of Our Time

Mikhail Lermontov

Many people start life expecting to end up as Alexander the Great or Lord Byron, then spend their whole lives as minor civil servants.

He speaks quickly, affectedly, and is one of those people who have a fine sentiment ready for every occasion in life, but lack all sense of beauty and make a solemn display of uncommon emotions, exalted passions and exceptional sufferings. Their greatest pleasure in life is to create an effect, and romantic provincial ladies find them madly attractive. When they get older, they settle down as country squires or take to drink, or occasionally both. They often have many good qualities, but they never have a scrap of poetry in them.

The princess, I fancy, is one of those women who want to be amused, and two dull minutes with you will finish you for good. Your silence must rouse her curiosity, your conversation must leave her wanting more. You've got to play on her feelings all the time. She'll scorn public opinion a dozen times for your sake and call it a sacrifice, but she'll get her own back by giving you hell, and then calmly declare that she can't stand you. If you don't get the upper hand, her first kiss won't give you the right to expect a second. She'll play with you till she's tired of it, then a couple of years later she'll marry some brute out of duty to Mama and persuade herself she's unhappy because it was not heaven's will to unite her with the only man she ever loved (you, that is) on account of his private's greatcoat, though under that thick grey coat there beat an ardent, noble heart...

Werner is a remarkable man in many ways. Like most doctors, he's a sceptic and a materialist, but he's also a poet of the true sort--always a poet in what he does and often, too, in what he says, though he's never written a line of verse in his life. He's studied all the living chords of the human heart in the way other people might study the sinews of a dead body. He's never managed to apply his knowledge, though, just as a first-rate anatomist sometimes has no idea how to cure a fever. As a rule Werner laughs at his patients behind their backs, but I once saw him in tears over a dying soldier. Werner was poor and dreamed of millions, but he would never lift a finger for the sake of money. He once told me he would rather do a favour to an enemy than a friend. The latter would mean selling his charity, while his enemy would hate him the more for his generosity

I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. Being always on the alert, catching their every glance, the hidden meaning of every word, guessing their next step, confounding their plans, pretending to be taken in and then with one fell blow wrecking the whole elaborate fabric of their cunning schemes--that's what I call living!

There's no one so susceptible to the power of the past as I am. Every memory of past joy or sorrow stabs at my heart and strikes the same old chords. It's silly the way I'm made: I forget nothing--absolutely nothing.

After all, I'm writing this journal for myself, and anything I care to put in it will one day be a precious memory for me.

When I reached home, I got on my horse and galloped out into the steppe. I love galloping through long grass on a fiery horse, with the desert wind in my face. I gulp the scented air and peer into the blue distance, trying to make out the hazy shapes that show up more distinctly every minute. Whatever sorrow weights on the heart, whatever anxiety troubles the mind, it vanishes in a moment. You feel peace at heart, and the troubled mind is cleared by bodily fatigue. There's no woman whose eyes I wouldn't forget when I see the blue sky and the wooded mountains, lit by the southern sun, or hear the roar of a cascading torrent.

What if it does? If I die, I die. It will be small loss to the world, and I've had about enough of it myself. I'm like a man yawning at a ball who doesn't go home to bed because his carriage hasn't come. but when it arrives--farewell!

Lermontov wrote Hero in the late 1830s. He might as well have written it late in the first decade of the 2000s. He said, "The Hero of our Time is certianly a portrait, but not of a single person. It is a portrait of the vices of our whole generation in their ultimate development." And to be honest, I can't say that Pechorin is really that different from the people you meet today. To be sure, most people would rebel and recoil if I applied the thoughts in the quotes above to them, but that doesn't stop them from having those thoughts in the safely insulated chambers of their minds, where they can rename and re-costume all the most despicable attitudes and actions and make them like beautiful wax figures. I would hazard that most of my generation has sizable wax doll collections in their consciences. We should pray we never face any fire, otherwise our moral sensibilities will melt and we might see ourselves for what we really are: Heroes of our Time.

Truth to tell, it still grieves me that she never once remembered me as she lay dying, though i think I loved her like a father. Well, God forgive her...and afterall, who am I that people should think of me when they're dying?