A Hero of Our Time

Mikhail Lermontov, J. H. Wisdom, Marr Murray

• Editore: Dover Publications
• Anno: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486120942
• Argomento: Literature
• Categoria: Classics

`Of lasting appeal to readers of all countries and centuries.`—Vladimir Nabokov
Russian literature's first major prose novel, this gripping work was a primary influence on Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and other great nineteenth-century writers. Mikhail Lermontov, `the poet of the Caucasus,` drew upon his personal Byronic exploits to create these tales of treachery, abductions, and sexual intrigue. Published in 1840, one year before the author's death at age twenty-six in a duel, the novel retains its overwhelming power and fascination.
Centered on the escapades of Pechorin, a dashing young officer and the hero of the title, the book consists of a series of interconnected short stories. The picaresque adventures revolve around Pechorin's escapades and reflect his cynical but passionate worldview. Set amid the rugged Caucasian wilderness—an exotic land populated by bandits and smugglers, transplanted society women, and lawless freebooters—it offers a thrilling blend of brutality, elegance, and enduring romance.

BOOK V

THE THIRD EXTRACT FROM PECHORIN’S DIARY PRINCESS MARY

CHAPTER I

11th May.

YESTERDAY I arrived at Pyatigorsk.

I have engaged lodgings at the extreme end of the town, the highest part, at the foot of Mount Mashuk: during a storm the clouds will descend on to the roof of my dwelling.

This morning at five o’clock, when I opened my window, the room was filled with the fragrance of the flowers growing in the modest little front-garden. Branches of bloom-laden bird-cherry trees peep in at my window, and now and again the breeze bestrews my writing-table with their white petals. The view which meets my gaze on three sides is wonderful: westward towers five-peaked Beshtau, blue as “the last cloud of a dispersed storm,”²⁶ and northward rises Mashuk, like a shaggy Persian cap, shutting in the whole of that quarter of the horizon. Eastward the outlook is more cheery: down below are displayed the varied hues of the brand-new, spotlessly clean, little town, with its murmuring, health-giving springs and its babbling, many-tongued throng. Yonder, further away, the mountains tower up in an amphitheatre, ever bluer and mistier; and, at the edge of the horizon, stretches the silver chain of snow-clad summits, beginning with Kazbek and ending with two-peaked Elbruz. . . Blithe is life in such a land! A feeling akin to rapture is diffused through all my veins. The air is pure and fresh, like the kiss of a child; the sun is bright, the sky is blue—what more could one possibly wish for? What need, in such a place as this, of passions, desires, regrets?

However, it is time to be stirring. I will go to the Elizaveta spring—I am told that the whole society of the watering-place assembles there in the morning.

Descending into the middle of the town, I walked along the boulevard, on which I met a few melancholy groups slowly ascending the mountain. These, for the most part, were the families of landed-gentry from the steppes—as could be guessed at once from the threadbare, old-fashioned frock-coats of the husbands and the exquisite attire of the wives and daughters. Evidently they already had all the young men of the watering-place at their fingers’ ends, because they looked at me with a tender curiosity. The Petersburg cut of my coat misled them; but they soon recognised the military epaulettes, and turned away with indignation.

The wives of the local authorities—the hostesses, so to speak, of the waters—were more graciously inclined. They carry lorgnettes, and they pay less attention to a uniform—they have grown accustomed in the Caucasus to meeting a fervid heart beneath a numbered button and a cultured intellect beneath a white forage-cap. These ladies are very charming, and long continue to be charming. Each year their adorers are exchanged for new ones, and in that very fact, it may be, lies the secret of their unwearying amiability.

Ascending by the narrow path to the Elizaveta spring, I overtook a crowd of officials and military men, who, as I subsequently learned, compose a class apart amongst those who place their hopes in the medicinal waters. They drink—but not water—take but few walks, indulge in only mild flirtations, gamble, and complain of boredom. They are dandies. In letting their wickers-heathed tumblers down into the well of sulphurous water they assume academical poses. The officials wear bright blue cravats; the military men have ruffs sticking out above their collars. They affect a profound contempt for provincial ladies, and sigh for the aristocratic drawing-rooms of the capitals—to which they are not admitted.

Here is the well at last! . . . Upon the small square adjoining it a little house with a red roof over the bath is erected, and somewhat further on there is a gallery in which the people walk when it rains. Some wounded officers were sitting—pale and melancholy—on a bench, with their crutches drawn up. A few ladies, their tumbler of water finished, were walking with rapid steps to and fro about the square. There were two or three pretty faces amongst them. Beneath the avenues of the vines with which the slope of Mashuk is covered, occasional glimpses could be caught of the gay-coloured hat of a lover of solitude for two—for beside that hat I always noticed either a military forage-cap or the ugly round hat of a civilian. Upon the steep cliff, where the pavilion called “The Æolian Harp” is erected, figured the lovers of scenery, directing their telescopes upon Elbruz. Amongst them were a couple of tutors, with their pupils who had come to be cured of scrofula.

Out of breath, I came to a standstill at the edge of the mountain, and, leaning against the corner of a little house, I began to examine the picturesque surroundings, when suddenly I heard behind me a familiar voice.

“Pechorin! Have you been here long?”

I turned round. Grushnitski! We embraced. I had made his acquaintance in the active service detachment. He had been wounded in the foot by a bullet and had come to the waters a week or so before me.

Grushnitski is a cadet; he has only been a year in the service. From a kind of foppery peculiar to himself, he wears the thick cloak of a common soldier. He has also the soldier’s cross of St. George. He is well built, swarthy and black-haired. To look at him, you might say he was a man of twenty-five, although he is scarcely twenty-one. He tosses his head when he speaks, and keeps continually twirling his moustache with his left hand, his right hand being occupied with the crutch on which he leans. He speaks rapidly and affectedly; he is one of those people who have a high-sounding phrase ready for every occasion in life, who remain untouched by simple beauty, and who drape themselves majestically in extraordinary sentiments, exalted passions and exceptional sufferings. To produce an effect is their delight; they have an almost insensate fondness for romantic provincial ladies. When old age approaches they become either peaceful landed-gentry or drunkards—sometimes both. Frequently they have many good qualities, but they have not a grain of poetry in their composition. Grushnitski’s passion was declamation. He would deluge you with words so soon as the conversation went beyond the sphere of ordinary ideas. I have never been able to dispute with him. He neither answers your questions nor listens to you. So soon as you stop, he begins a lengthy tirade, which has the appearance of being in some sort connected with what you have been saying, but which is, in fact, only a continuation of his own harangue.

He is witty enough; his epigrams are frequently amusing, but never malicious, nor to the point. He slays nobody with a single word; he has no knowledge of men and of their foibles, because all his life he has been interested in nobody but himself. His aim is to make himself the hero of a novel. He has so often endeavoured to convince others that he is a being created not for this world and doomed to certain mysterious sufferings, that he has almost convinced himself that such he is in reality. Hence the pride with which he wears his thick soldier’s cloak. I have seen through him, and he dislikes me for that reason, although to outward appearance we are on the friendliest of terms. Grushnitski is looked upon as a man of distinguished courage. I have seen him in action. He waves his sabre, shouts, and hurls himself forward with his eyes shut. That is not what I should call Russian courage! . . .

I reciprocate Grushnitski’s dislike. I feel that some time or other we shall come into collision upon a narrow road, and that one of us will fare badly.

His arrival in the Caucasus is also the result of his romantic fanaticism. I am convinced that on the eve of his departure from his paternal village he said with an air of gloom to some pretty neighbour that he was going away, not so much for the simple purpose of serving in the army as of seeking death, because . . . and hereupon, I am sure, he covered his eyes with his hand and continued thus, “No, you—or thou—must not know! Your pure soul would shudder! And what would be the good? What am I to you? Could you understand me?” . . . and so on.

He has himself told me that the motive which induced him to enter the K——regiment must remain an everlasting secret between him and Heaven.

However, in moments when he casts aside the tragic mantle, Grushnitski is charming and entertaining enough. I am always interested to see him with women—it is then that he puts forth his finest efforts, I think!

We met like a couple of old friends. I began to question him about the personages of note and as to the sort of life which was led at the waters.

“It is a rather prosaic life,” he said, with a sigh. “Those who drink the waters in the morning are inert—like all invalids, and those who drink the wines in the evening are unendurable—like all healthy people! There are ladies who entertain, but there is no great amusement to be obtained from them. They play whist, they dress badly and speak French dreadfully! The only Moscow people here this year are Princess Ligovski and her daughter—but I am not acquainted with them. My soldier’s cloak is like a seal of renunciation. The sympathy which it arouses is as painful as charity.”

At that moment two ladies walked past us in the direction of the well; one elderly, the other youthful and slender. I could not obtain a good view of their faces on account of their hats, but they were dressed in accordance with the strict rules of the best taste—nothing superfluous. The second lady was wearing a high-necked dress of pearl-grey, and a light silk kerchief was wound round her supple neck. Puce-coloured boots clasped her slim little ankle so charmingly, that even those uninitiated into the mysteries of beauty would infallibly have sighed, if only from wonder. There was something maidenly in her easy, but aristocratic gait, something eluding definition yet intelligible to the glance. As she walked past us an indefinable perfume, like that which sometimes breathes from the note of a charming woman, was wafted from her.

“Look!” said Grushnitski, “there is Princess Ligovski with her daughter Mary, as she calls her after the English manner. They have been here only three days.”

“You already know her name, though?”

“Yes, I heard it by chance,” he answered, with a blush. “I confess I do not desire to make their acquaintance. These haughty aristocrats look upon us army men just as they would upon savages. What care they if there is an intellect beneath a numbered forage-cap, and a heart beneath a thick cloak?”

“Poor cloak!” I said, with a laugh. “But who is the gentleman who is just going up to them and handing them a tumbler so officiously?”

“Oh, that is Raevich, the Moscow dandy. He is a gambler; you can see as much at once from that immense gold chain coiling across his sky-blue waistcoat. And what a thick cane he has! Just like Robinson Crusoe’s—and so is his beard too, and his hair is done like a peasant’s.”

“You are embittered against the whole human race?”

“And I have cause to be” . . .

“Oh, really?”

At that moment the ladies left the well and came up to where we were. Grushnitski succeeded in assuming a dramatic pose with the aid of his crutch, and in a loud tone of voice answered me in French:

“Mon cher, je haïs les hommes pour ne pas les mépriser, car autrement la vie serait une farce trop dégoûtante.”

The pretty Princess Mary turned round and favoured the orator with a long and curious glance. Her expression was quite indefinite, but it was not contemptuous, a fact on which I inwardly congratulated Grushnitski from my heart.

“She is an extremely pretty girl,” I said. “She has such velvet eyes—yes, velvet is the word. I should advise you to appropriate the expression when speaking of her eyes. The lower and upper lashes are so long that the sunbeams are not reflected in her pupils. I love those eyes without a glitter, they are so soft that they appear to caress you. However, her eyes seem to be her only good feature... Tell me, are her teeth white? That is most important! It is a pity that she did not smile at that high-sounding phrase of yours.”

“You are speaking of a pretty woman just as you might of an English horse,” said Grushnitski indignantly.

“Mon cher,” I answered, trying to mimic his tone, “je méprise les femmes, pour ne pas les aimer, car autrement la vie serait un mélodrame trop ridicule.”

I turned and left him. For half an hour or so I walked about the avenues of the vines, the limestone cliffs and the bushes hanging between them. The day grew hot, and I hurried homewards. Passing the sulphur spring, I stopped at the covered gallery in order to regain my breath under its shade, and by so doing I was afforded the opportunity of witnessing a rather interesting scene. This is the position in which the dramatis personæ were disposed: Princess Ligovski and the Moscow dandy were sitting on a bench in the covered gallery—apparently engaged in serious conversation. Princess Mary, who had doubtless by this time finished her last tumbler, was walking pensively to and fro by the well. Grushnitski was standing by the well itself; there was nobody else on the square.

I went up closer and concealed myself behind a corner of the gallery. At that moment Grushnitski let his tumbler fall on the sand and made strenuous efforts to stoop in order to pick it up; but his injured foot prevented him. Poor fellow! How he tried all kinds of artifices, as he leaned on his crutch, and all in vain! His expressive countenance was, in fact, a picture of suffering.

Princess Mary saw the whole scene better than I.

Lighter than a bird she sprang towards him, stooped, picked up the tumbler, and handed it to him with a gesture full of ineffable charm. Then she blushed furiously, glanced round at the gallery, and, having assured herself that her mother apparently had not seen an...