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Well, that's too
bad, especially in our country. Our public is still so immature
and simple-hearted that it doesn't understand a fable unless it
finds the moral at the end.
It fails to grasp
a joke or sense an irony--it simply hasn't been brought up
properly. It's as yet unaware that obvious violent abuse has no
place in respectable society and respectable books, that education
nowadays has worked out a sharper, almost invisible, but
nevertheless deadly weapon, which behind the curtain of flattery
cuts with a stab against which there is no defense. Our public is
like the person from the sticks who, overhearing a conversation
between two diplomats belonging to hostile courts, becomes
convinced that each is being false to his government for the sake
of a tender mutual friendship.
This book recently had the misfortune of being taken literally by
some readers and even some reviewers. Some were seriously shocked
at being given a man as amoral as the Hero of Our Time for a
model. Others delicately hinted that the author had drawn
portraits of himself and his acquaintances . . . What an old, weak
joke! But apparently Russia is made up so that however she may
progress in every other respect, she is unable to get rid of
foolish ideas like this. With us the most fantastic of fairy tales
has hardly a chance of escaping criticism as an attempt to hurt
our feelings!
A Hero of Our Time, my dear readers, is indeed a portrait, but not
of one man. It is a portrait built up of all our generation's
vices in full bloom. You will again tell me that a human being
cannot be so wicked, and I will reply that if you can believe in
the existence of all the villains of tragedy and romance, why
wouldn't believe that there was a Pechorin? If you could admire
far more terrifying and repulsive types, why aren't you more
merciful to this character, even if it is fictitious? Isn't it
because there's more truth in it than you might wish?
You say that morality will gain nothing by it. Excuse me. People
have been fed so much candy they are sick to their stomachs. Now
bitter medicine and acid truths are needed. But don't ever think
that the author of this book was ever ambitious enough to dream
about reforming human vices. May God preserve him from such
foolishness! It simply amused him to picture the modern man as he
sees him and as he so often--to his own and your own
misfortune--has found him to be. It's enough that the disease has
been diagnosed--how to cure it only the Lord knows!
THE BOOK
A Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov (1814-1841),
1840, 1841. Fiction. Russian novel. Romanticism. Realism. Title
Geroy nashego vremeni in Russian; this is the second edition
(1841), including the author's preface. This complete HTML e-text
is based on the translation from the Russian into English by
Martin Parker, published by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1947,
1951, in the public domain in the United States of America. (A
translation that has also been reprinted by but not copyrighted by
the Everyman Library, 1995, revised and edited by Neil Cornwell,
University of Bristol, ISBN 0-660-87566-3.) Illustrations are from
the Moscow edition. We have extensively modified the Parker
translation here, mostly by attempting to render it into modern
American English and at the same time to restore what we consider
the most likely original meaning. |
