Abstract
In the novel, and in prose more generally, the world is typically presented through various voices and viewpoints: in Bakhtin’s terms this is dialogism, heteroglossia and so on, a variety or multiplicity of voices or languages; in lyric poetry, on the other hand, the world is typically presented through the eyes and voice of the lyric persona alone, the language and world-view are unitary.1 In Geroi nashego vremeni (‘A Hero of Our Time’, 1840, 1841) this epistemological basis of prose is clearly manifested in the narrative structure and can be seen to be one of the explicit concerns of Lermontov as author, as poet turned prose-writer.2 In fact the traditional view of Geroi nashego vremeni as a portrait of Pechorin that progresses from outside to inside is not adequate by itself to account for the book as a whole; instead, as well as reading into Pechorin, we can read the novel additionally as a study in prose, a demonstration of the way in which the world is presented in a prose text (indeed, in his Foreword Lermontov presents his novel as an education in reading for a ‘poorly-educated’ public [p. 202]). Accordingly, the theme of multiplicity or variety of voice, language and viewpoint, and derived motifs such as relativism, contradiction and the combination or alternation of opposites can be seen to inform the novel at every level, acting as its constructive principle as well as the character portrait.3
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Notes
For Bakhtin’s most detailed exposition of the novel in these terms, see M. Bakhtin, ‘Slovo v romane’ (1934–35), in his Voprosy literatury i estetiki. Issledovaniia raznykh let (Moscow, 1975), pp. 72–233; for a translation, see M. M. Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in Michael Holquist (ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press Slavic Studies, 1 (Austin and London, University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 259–422.
This duality of medium is also shared by the two primary narrators, the travel writer and Pechorin: in a note the travel writer explains that it was natural for him to translate Kazbich’s song into verse, while Pechorin implies that he is a poet when he expresses gratitude to women for reading poetry. See M. Iu. Lermontov, Sochineniia v shesti tomakh, edited by N. F. Bel’chikov and others (Moscow and Leningrad, 1954–57), Vol. VI (1957), Proza, pis’ma, pp. 214, 308. Further references to this edition are given within the text, citing page numbers only (translations are my own).
Lewis Bagby has made a study of the use of Bakhtinian double-voicing in the novel, but not as a constructive principle: Lewis Bagby, ‘Narrative Double-voicing in Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time’, Slavic and East European Journal, XXII (1978), 265–86.
For studies of narration in the novel, see especially Viktor Vinogradov, ‘Stil’ prozy Lermontova’, Literaturnoe nasledstvo, XLIII–XLIV (1941), 517–628 (pp. 564–626);
and Miroslav Drozda, ‘Povestvovatel’naia struktura Geroia nashego vremeni’, Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, XV (1985), 5–34;
both these studies raise themes which relate to the approach taken here. Paul Debreczeny, however, sees the novel as a disguised lyrical verse tale in which the distinction of narrative voices is an illusion: Paul Debreczeny, ‘Elements of the Lyrical Verse Tale in Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time’, in V. Terras (ed.), American Contributions to the Seventh International Congress of Slavists, Vol. II, Literature and Folklore (The Hague and Paris, Mouton, 1973), pp. 93–118 (pp. 100–110).
Iu. M. Lotman, ‘O probleme znachenii vo vtorichnykh modeliruiushchikh sistemakh’, Uchenye zapiski Tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, CLXXXI, Trudy po znakovym sistemam, II (1965), 22–37.
Boris Eikhenbaum emphasises Lermontov’s resolution of problems of narration in Geroi nashego vremeni against the background of the prose of the 1830s; in particular, the composite structure of different stories grouped around a central hero can be seen as a development of the story cycles of the 1830s (Pushkin’s Povesti Belkina and so on) towards the large form of the novel: B. Eikhenbaum, Lermontov. Opyt istoriko-literaturnoi otsenki (Leningrad, 1924), pp. 144–56. Concerning the discreteness of the separate stories,
see Jean Bonamour, ‘Naissance d’un roman: remarques sur le cas d’Un héros de notre temps’, Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, XXVIII (1987), 403–9.
Christopher Turner, in his logistically presented study of the novel as a character portrait, is forced to suggest that the main point of ‘Bela’ is to tell us something about Pechorin, but only enough to stimulate further interest, while at the same time establishing the reliability of the travel writer (through his nature descriptions) so that he can establish in turn the reliability of the other two narrators, Maksim Maksimych and Pechorin: C. J. G. Turner, Pechorin: An Essay on Lermontov’s ‘A Hero of Our Time’, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 5 (Birmingham, Birmingham University, 1978), pp. 5–10.
Concerning this theme, see V. N. Turbin, ‘“Situatsiia dvuiazychiia” v tvorchestve Pushkina i Lermontova’, in I. S. Chistova and others (eds), Lermontovskii sbornik (Leningrad, 1985), pp. 91–103 (pp. 100–3).
See M. Austin, ‘New Light on Lermontov’s “Bela”’, Russian Language Journal, XL (1986), 161–5.
Concerning Russia, the East and the West in Lermontov’s later work, see Iu. M. Lotman, ‘Problema vostoka i zapada v tvorchestve pozdnego Lermontova’, in I. S. Chistova and others (eds), Lermontovskii sbornik (Leningrad, 1985), pp. 5–22.
Richard Gregg has attempted to show a development in Pechorin’s character, but the novel, while it does give a little, still hinders any thorough perception of such a development: R. Gregg, ‘The Cooling of Pechorin: The Skull beneath the Skin’, Slavic Review, XLIII (1984), 387–98.
Concerning Pechorin as artist, see I. Arian, ‘Some Aspects of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, IV (1968), 22–32.
Concerning the all-pervasive use of dramatic terms in ‘Kniazhna Meri’ see William Mills Todd III, Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin: Ideology, Institutions, and Narrative (Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 152–61.
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Aizlewood, R. (1990). Geroi nashego vremeni as Emblematic Prose Text. In: McMillin, A. (eds) From Pushkin to Palisandriia. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21065-7_3
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