In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

329 329 Chapter Six Sincere Lies: Irony and Seduction in Hero of Our Time Though she feels as if she’s in a play . . . she is anyway. —The Beatles, “Penny Lane” The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King. —Hamlet, act 2, scene 2 “OUR READING PUBLIC is still so young and naive that it does not understand a fable unless it Wnds a moral at its end. It does not get a joke and does not sense irony; it is simply badly brought up” (VI:202). These words, which appear in Lermontov’s introduction to the second edition of Hero of Our Time, have applied all too well to the reception of the novel from the moment of its Wrst appearance. Critics have strained to discern in the novel a deWnitive moral stance attributable to its author. The assumption behind these efforts is that in depicting his protagonist, Grigory Pechorin, Lermontov intended to convey a speciWc and stable moral message to his readers. Consequently, these interpreters have focused almost exclusively on uncovering the implied author’s ultimate opinion of Pechorin and the society in which he operates. As William Todd has put it, “For a century and a half readers have felt compelled to tip the scales back and forth between hero and world, seeking an excess of potential in one or the other and trying to defend one or the other as if these were a living person and a real world.”1 In prescribing an ironic reading in his introduction, Lermontov alerts us that this interpretive seesaw is an intentional effect. As Todd concludes , the novel’s “explicit invitations to contradictory understandings of Pechorin keep the reader moving back and forth in the text, seeking a resolution which never satisfactorily presents itself.”2 In other words, Lermontov intended from the outset for his novel to be controversial in precisely those ways in which it proved to be, thus confuting interpretations of the book that rest on the conventional moral convictions of the interpreter. By pursuing the speciWc character of the novel’s irony, however, it is pos- Becoming Mikhail Lermontov 330 sible to establish with greater precision Lermontov’s intention in the novel, and the signiWcance of that intention for the novel’s structure. Throughout the present book I have argued that Lermontov’s writings and behavior are driven by a radical Romantic individualism deeply at odds with contemporary societal and cultural norms. At the heart of Lermontov’s individualism lies a conception of the self as unique, and a deep-seated desire to express, assert , or re-create that self in the world. The drive to self-expression pervades Lermontov’s work from his earliest naive efforts to “express with the cold letter the struggling of thoughts.”3 He is simultaneously aware from the very beginning that language and society, which are conventional and exist prior to the unique self, are obstacles to its expression. Through language and society, culture tends to Wnalize the image of the self, assimilating the individual to its own set of established categories and thus dissolving its uniqueness. To be more speciWc, literary fame in Lermontov’s Russia brought with it interpretive frames, which, as collectively created structures, tended to constrict individuality . The seed of the contradiction is already present in Lermontov’s posing of the problem, for he frames culture as both necessary to the goal of selfexpression (as its medium and addressee) and as an obstacle to its achievement . The contradiction ramiWes through all levels of Lermontov’s life and works: he wrote reams of lyrics bemoaning the difWculty of self-expression; he castigated his readers for failing to understand him; he courted lovers with poems excoriating them for insincerity; and he mercilessly taunted members of the very high society to which he ceaselessly sought entrée. This form of Romantic individualism is familiarly Byronic, with one important difference. While Byron faced criticism in the free press, he enjoyed , at least for a time, the freedom of English law and the added status of aristocracy. The Russian individualist, on the other hand, no matter his rank, lived with the perpetual threats of social ostracism, government persecution, exile, and even death. While literature in the Russian 1830s offered opportunities for expression unavailable in other venues, these opportunities were fraught with mortal dangers. As Lermontov remarks with special irony in his introduction, in “decent society and in a decent book there can be no place...

Share