Naidich E.E. Lermontov M. Yu., novel "A Hero of Our Time": reviews, analysis and characterization of heroes Characteristics of the main characters

Belinsky V. G "Hero of our time"<…>“A hero of our time” is the main idea of ​​the novel. In fact, after that the whole novel can be considered an evil irony, because most of the readers will probably exclaim: “What a good hero!” - Why is he so stupid? - we dare you

Shevyrev S.P. "A Hero of Our Time". Op. M. Lermontov. Two parts. SPb., 1840 With special cordiality, we are ready on the first pages of our criticism to welcome fresh talent, at its first appearance, and we willingly dedicate a detailed and sincere analysis of the “Hero of Our Time”, as

The novel "A Hero of Our Time" Lermontov's creative path began in the era of the dominance of poetic genres. The first prose work, the unfinished historical novel Vadim (the name is provisional, since the first sheet of the manuscript has not been preserved), dates back to 1833–1834.

Bykova N. G. "A Hero of Our Time" M. Yu. Lermontov began working on the novel in 1838, based on Caucasian impressions. In 1840, the novel was published and immediately attracted the attention of both readers and writers. They stopped before this with admiration and bewilderment.

"Criticism about the novel "Hero of Our Time" tell me pliz. "Criticism about the novel" Hero of Our Time" tell me pliz and got the best answer

Answer from HELL[guru]
Roman M.Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time" in the assessment of V. G. Belinsky
In an article devoted to the consideration of the pathos of the novel "A Hero of Our Time", Belinsky attributed Lermontov to the number of such "strong artistic talents" that appear very unexpectedly among the emptiness surrounding them. The interest aroused in Lermontov by several poems placed in the Notes of the Fatherland was finally confirmed after the publication of the novel A Hero of Our Time. This story was written not out of a desire to interest the public, but out of a deep creative need, which is alien to any motives other than inspiration. Belinsky notes that Lermontov's novel makes a "complete impression." The reason for this lies in the unity of thought, which gives rise to a sense of responsibility of the parts with the whole. Belinsky especially dwells on the story "Bela", after reading which "you are sad, but your sadness is light, bright and sweet." The death of a Circassian woman does not revolt the critic with a bleak and heavy feeling, for it appeared as a result of a reasonable necessity that we, the readers, foresaw. The very image of the captivating Circassian woman is depicted with infinite art. She speaks and acts very little, but we vividly see her in all the certainty of a wondrous being, we read in her heart.
Maxim Maksimych, in turn, does not suspect how deep and rich his nature is, how high and noble he is. This "rude soldier" admires Bela, loves her like a sweet daughter. The question arises: for what? Ask him, and he will answer you: "Not that he loved, but so - stupidity." All these features, so “full of infinity”, speak for themselves. In conclusion, Belinsky notes: “And let you meet Maximov Maksimych more.”
Belinsky admires the artistic skill of Lermontov, who in each part of his novel managed to exhaust its content and, in typical lines, "bring out everything internal" that was hidden in it as a possibility. As a result of all this, Lermontov appeared in the story as the same creator as in his poems. “A hero of our time,” writes Belinsky, discovered the power of young talent and showed his diversity and versatility. The main character of Lermontov's novel is Pechorin. The main problem of romanticism can be defined in one word - "personality". Lermontov is a romantic.
IN romantic works the individual, as a rule, opposes society, outside of which he cannot exist and in which, for one reason or another, he does not want to get along. This unsettledness of the individual in the world becomes an invariable collision of the majority of not only romantic, but also realistic poems and novels of the 19th century. This collision was first found and expressed in a specific Russian version by Pushkin in the theme of the “hero of time”, which was continued by Lermontov. Lermontov expressed his attitude to the main character in the title of the novel. So, the hero of our time is the main idea of ​​the work. But if this is true, then the whole novel may seem like an evil irony, because most of the readers will probably exclaim: “What a good hero!” Belinsky asks the question: “Why is he bad?” Blaming Pechorin for not having faith is pointless. After all, this is the same as blaming a beggar for not having gold. He would be glad to have it, but it is not given to him. In addition, Pechorin himself is not happy with his unbelief. He is ready to buy this faith at the cost of life and happiness. But her hour has not yet come. For his egoism, Pechorin despises and hates only himself. The soul of Pechorin is “not stony soil, not dried up from the heat of the earth.” It only needs to be loosened and watered with blessed rain - and it will grow out of itself luxurious flowers of heavenly love. To the objections of those who accuse Pechorin, for example, of the cold prudence with which he seduces the poor girl, not loving her, Belinsky replies that he does not even think of exposing the hero as a model of morality.
CONTINUED IN THE SOURCE
http://www.lermontov.info/kritika.shtml Criticism of Lermontov Mikhail Yurievich
review of Belinsky "a hero of our time"

The article analyzes the reviews of the editor of the magazine "Mayak" S.A. Burachka dedicated to the work of M.Yu. Lermontov - first of all, his novel "A Hero of Our Time". Relying on his own theory of the “Russian novel”, which, in its morality, should resist the Western European works of “violent” romanticism, Burachok turned the conversation about the aesthetics of Lermontov’s work into a religious and ethical plane. Comparison of the views of Burachka and the position of V.G. Belinsky in relation to the work of Lermontov is also the focus of our attention in this article.

Keywords: Lermontov, Burachok, Belinsky, "Mayak", "Hero of Our Time"

S.A. Burachok, who published together with P.A. Korsakov 1 since 1840, the periodical collection (since 1842 - already alone and in the format of a magazine) "Mayak", entered the history of Russian journalism as "a half-mad saint who taught Lermontov with the style of a literary gaer" (Vatsuro, Gillelson, 1986: 240). Some serious analysis critical articles Burachka was not exposed either in pre-revolutionary times 2 , much less in Soviet times 3 .

It is also symptomatic that, unlike his main opponent V.G. Belinsky, whose articles about M.Yu. Lermontov can be read in any collection of works of the "frantic" critic, Burachok's reviews were republished with an abridgement only in 2002 4 . A paradoxical situation has arisen: in any literary work about Lermontov, Burachok was mentioned as the main critic of The Hero of Our Time, but his articles were unfamiliar to a wide range of readers. Today, it is all the more important when literary criticism gets rid of Soviet stereotypes, gradually overcomes the outdated approach to literary criticism of the 1840s (as a one-dimensional model focused around the figure of Belinsky), to embrace the entire range of assessments of Lermontov’s work, to see not only those who were “pro ”, but also those who were “contra”, and not just repeat the phrase that set the teeth on edge that Burachok is an obscurantist, obscurantist and “fool” 5 .

A significant contribution to the analysis of Burachka's position on this issue was made by V.G. Mehtiyev (Mekhtiyev, 2004). It seems that the researcher even somewhat exaggerated the importance of Burachok and his publication in the history of Russian literature and journalism. Nevertheless, the ideological platform of the magazine "Mayak" and the position of its editor, which ultimately influenced Burachk's sharply negative assessment of Lermontov's novel "A Hero of Our Time", are still not fully clarified. Obviously, it is necessary to describe in more detail the ideological and aesthetic concept of Burachka, which is done in the proposed article on the example of Mayak's criticism of Lermontov's work.

Burachok was one of the first to comment on the novel “A Hero of Our Time” - in the fourth part of “Mayak” for 1840 (censorship permission - May 29, 1840), his anonymous review “Literary Books” (pp. 210-219) was published, which ended analysis of Lermontov's novel. In turn, this review was the fourth article in Burachka's program cycle, in which he intended to acquaint readers with his vision of the tasks of philosophy and literature. In the same volume of the Lighthouse, the previous parts of the cycle were published: “The Content of Philosophy” (pp. 81-101, subscript S.B.), “History of Philosophy” (pp. 101-146, subscript S.B.) , “Religious and moral-philosophical books” (pp. 147-176, signed by S.B.).

Burachka's analysis of the novel "A Hero of Our Time" organically fits into his theory of the "Russian novel", which, according to the critic, should, in its morality and purity, oppose the novels of European "frantic literature". Based on this belief, Burachok divides all Russian novels into three categories. The first one is “low”, where the plot (the plot, the climax and the denouement) “makes everything”. Burachkom also included in this category historical novels in which "only external deeds" of people are unfolded. The “neuter gender” is characteristic of moralistic novels, they analyze “in the faces of passion, prejudice, delusion”, that is, “external phenomena of social life”. Novels of the "high kind" have the virtues of the first two, but in addition to this, they depict "the inner life, the inner work of the human spirit, led by the spirit of Christianity to perfection, through the cross, destruction and struggle between good and evil" 6 .

In order to tangibly hurt the admirers of Lermontov's talent (and, I think, not least Belinsky), Burachok classified Lermontov's novel as "low". Therefore, even the virtues present in the work (“the external construction of the novel is good”, “the style is good”, 7 etc.) do not cover its shortcomings, the main of which is harmful, according to Burachka, ideological content. The content of "A Hero of Our Time" is "romantic in excellence, i.e. false at the base; harmony between causes, means, phenomena, effects and purpose - not the slightest<...>8 i.e. the internal structure of the novel is no good: the idea is false, the direction is crooked” (p. 210).

It is quite natural that in the figurative system of the novel, only Maksim Maksimych evokes positive emotions in Burachok: "... a hero of the past, simple, kind-hearted, a little bit literate, a servant to the tsar and people for life and death." But even the image of this character cannot be considered quite successful: “... would be the only encouraging face in the whole book, if the painter, for the greater success of his “hero”, did not take it into his head to set off the good-natured staff captain with an ebb d’un bon home [simpleton. - E.S.] - a funny eccentric "(p. 211).

It should be pointed out that Maksim Maksimych was considered a true "hero of the time" by other critics of the conservative camp (for example, S.P. Shevyrev in a review published in the February issue of Moskvityanin 9). It is interesting to note that this is how, apparently, Nicholas I assessed the image of Maxim Maksimych: “The character of the captain is well planned. When I began this essay, I hoped and rejoiced, thinking that he would probably be the hero of our time, because in this class there are much more real people than those who are usually called that ”(Quoted by: Eikhenbaum, 1969: 425).

On the contrary, Pechorin is an immoral person, an egoist and a proud man, through whose mouth evil is justified and aestheticized in the novel. Here is how, for example, Burachok understood the content of the first short story of “The Hero of Our Time” “Bela”: “theft, robbery, drunkenness [?! - E.S.], kidnapping and seduction of a girl, two murders, contempt for everything sacred, stiffness, paradoxes, sophisms, spiritual and bodily atrocities. According to Burachka, Bela's death caused only joy and relief in Pechorin: "Bela died, the commandant cries from the depths of her soul, and the hero laughs!" (p. 212). Although in fact, obviously, Pechorin's laughter is from the nervous shock that the character experienced; it is no coincidence that after the death of the heroine, Pechorin “was unwell for a long time, lost weight” 10 .

From the point of view of the Mayak critic, Pechorin's philosophy of life is based on the idea of ​​romantic freedom, which is understood in the spirit of "frantic literature". An adventurous plot, a lot of "intrigues", "heartbreaking" pictures and scenes - all this has its source in the "easy reading" of "violent romanticism". Burachok objects: “It's amazing how these heroes interpret themselves highly!<.>Their soul is firm - when it wallows in the mud of romantic frenzy" (p. 216). Such an assessment of Lermontov's hero, of course, did not allow Burachok to see the full complexity of the psychological pattern of the novel, to appreciate those elements psychological analysis, which the author introduced into the work, which ultimately led to a one-sided interpretation of the "Hero of Our Time". The “History of the Human Soul”, which so occupies Lermontov, remained inaccessible to Burachok.

The critic is sure that "the whole novel is an epigram composed of incessant sophisms, so there is no trace of philosophy, religiosity, Russian nationality." And the main mistake of Lermontov, a man, of course, talented, according to the author of "Mayak", was the wrong choice of the main character. Moreover, this choice came from the author’s desire to write in the taste of “frantic literature”, taking modern French and English literature as examples: “It’s a pity that he [Pechorin. - E.S.] died and erected a monument of “easy reading” on his grave, similar to a coffin that had been torn down, - outside it is beautiful, it glitters with tinsel, but inside it is rot and stench ”(p. 211).

The perniciousness of "easy reading" (regardless of Lermontov) is generally a favorite thought of the critic of "Mayak". So, in a review of Russian literature, which also included a review of Lermontov's novel, Burachok noted: “Of the thousand mortal inventions of the latest romanticism, easy reading is the most absurd, the most absurd and, I will add, the most harmful invention for literature!<...>By light reading they mean: idle talk, dressed in beautiful, playful forms, which, due to the lack of oral conversation in living rooms, would replace this conversation, to shuffle around, chat and kill time until the first opportunity. In essence, what the reviewer called “easy reading” can (with reservations, of course) be characterized as mass literature, which began to actively develop in Russia in the 1830s and 1840s due to an increase in the readership. It is no coincidence that Burachok always opposed the publications of F.V. Bulgarin, on the pages of "Mayak" he argued with the "Northern Bee", and the main character of the first satirical work of Burachka "A Tale without a Title" (in 1838 banned by censorship) was Baron Brambeus (O.I. Senkovsky) 12.

This does not mean that you do not need to show negative characters in your works at all, it’s just that, from the point of view of Burachok, you can’t write about them with such an approving intonation, as Lermontov did, and even more so you can’t consider them “heroes” and recognize Pechorin as a typical representative of the generation: “I don’t want to say by this that sinful, dirty and vicious human little things should be completely excluded from the number of materials and colors of belles-lettres and the reader should be lulled by only virtuous, bright, lofty, clean<...>no, I only want all the colors of the picture of the human heart to be truly true from the dark and light sides; so that readers are not taken to the office of ideal monsters, deliberately selected; so that the picture of the dirty side serves for something, and does not harm, and so that the author does not slander a whole generation of people, passing off a monster, and not a person, as a representative of this generation ”(pp. 212-213). It follows from this that Burachok did not at all understand Lermontov's ironic attitude to the concept of "hero" in the title of the novel.

Moreover, the critic of Mayak not only did not see Lermontov's irony in relation to Pechorin, he (quite, by the way, following the logic of romantic aesthetics) put an equal sign between the main character and the author: “... you sincerely regret why Pechorin, the real author of the book , so he used his beautiful talents for evil, solely because of a penny handout - the praise of people yawning from the emptiness of the head, soul and heart ”(p. 211). This passage in Burachka's review, apparently, especially offended Lermontov, who, in the first edition of the preface to A Hero of Our Time, wrote that the magazines "almost all were more than supportive of this book.<.>all except one, who, as if on purpose in his criticism, confused the name of the writer with the hero of his story, probably hoping that no one would read it; but, although the insignificance of this journal serves as sufficient protection for him, nevertheless, after reading rude and indecent abuse, an unpleasant feeling remains in the soul, as after meeting a drunk on the street. In the final text of the preface, which was printed in the second edition of the novel (1841), these words are removed.

After analyzing Lermontov's novel, Burachok, with his penchant for generalizations (sometimes superficial), turned to thinking about what the general relationship between art and morality is. According to Burachka, "literature should be a service to God in the face of humanity" (p. 217). Therefore, Lermontov's book is harmful, because it is immoral, in it Pechorin does not evoke in the reader that feeling of disgust that such an unattractive character should have evoked: “... what service will the portrait of such a hero bring to humanity? - Is it that after him the number of heroes will multiply much, and certainly will not decrease in any way, because the book is read, the hero is sweet, smart, sharp, in his very furies he seems only a victim of fate "(p. 217).

It should be pointed out that Burachok here formulated the main thesis (core) of his aesthetic concept: art should lead a person to God. Even in the introductory part of the review, where Lermontov’s novel was analyzed, it was said on this occasion: “The aesthetic feeling must obey the spiritual feeling: illuminated, warmed, fertilized by love, and love is God. Therefore, the goal of all fine works is the service of God in the face of humanity” (p. 191) 14 . Further in the article, Burachok outlined the boundaries of the concepts of “spiritual” and “soulful” and once again recalled the need to subordinate aesthetics to religious ethics: “Our spiritual forces: mind, sensuality and desire are very fragile without the support of spiritual forces: reason, feelings and will. The mind is equally logically and mathematically capable of thinking falsehood and truth, depending on the basis, the starting point, which the mind gives it. And when the mind is clouded, the mind grinds nonsense. aesthetic feeling<...>the most selfish feeling: in everything it seeks only itself, its own pleasures; it delights equally in the picture of evil and the picture of good. But in the light of a spiritual feeling, aesthetic tastes cannot bear pictures of evil, ugliness, and fury” (p. 218).

This fragment of the article appears to have contained a direct attack against Belinsky and his idea of ​​self-worth, the “isolation” of art. The critic of Otechestvennye Zapiski in the so-called "conciliatory" period insisted on the complete "autonomy" of art, attached exceptional importance to the "artistic point of view", because literature is a separate world that exists according to its own laws, it develops "immanently", by itself "in itself has no goal outside itself” 15 (an article on Woe from Wit, 1840). In the program article of this period, “Mentzel, critic of Goethe” (1840), Belinsky condemned V. Menzel for his reproaches of Goethe that he shunned socio-political issues: “Art should not serve society except by serving itself: let each goes his own way without interfering with each other.

A. Lavretsky rightly pointed out that criticism of Belinsky's "conciliatory" period "is both purely objective and purely tendentious." Belinsky believed that the poet ("the organ of the general and the world") cannot be mistaken. Objectivist was the idea that not artistry depends on the idea, on whether it is true or false, but the idea depends on artistry, which is objective and truthful and makes everything that is organically connected with it so: “Tendentious is the purpose of art, which gives to him Belinsky: a true work of art "reconciles with reality"; according to the aesthetics of the Belinsky border of the 30-40s. artistic creativity does not depend on the likes and dislikes of the artist, who in the process of creativity ceases to exist as a definite personality and turns into the voice of an absolute idea” (Lavretsky, 1968: 24-25). Therefore, according to Belinsky, "the fidelity of thought is tested by artistry", "the art of the writer" 17 .

Burachok, who devoted a separate article “The System of Philosophy of Otechestvennye Zapiski” to the analysis of Belinsky’s views, noted that the critic of the journal A.A. Kraevsky subordinated all aspects of creativity (ideological, philosophical, moral) to the aesthetically understood category of "artistry", thus absolutizing the "specialty" of the "intrinsic" Word, refusing the Divine nature of the latter, which gave birth to it. Burachok reproached Belinsky for "idolatry" and considered his belief in "the infallibility of poets" 18 to be erroneous.

It turned out that Belinsky (deliberately?) exalted both art and its creators to the utmost, made them sacralized and almost sacred. As rightly noted by V.G. Mekhtiyev, “in the idea of ​​the “isolation” of art, Burachok caught the craving of a “godless” person to create an “idol”, which here is the aesthetically understood beauty of a work of art and the “omniscience” of a creative person” (Mekhtiyev, 2004: 14). Burachka's controversy with Belinsky's views ended with an important postulate: the "rapid reproduction" of German "philosophical systems" led to the fact that "the goal of all elegant works was set solely to satisfy aesthetic taste, without subordinating them to any other conditions" 20. That is why the editor of "Mayak" took Lermontov's novel so negatively, which, according to Burachka, was written in the spirit of "frantic literature".

It is interesting to note that the analysis of "A Hero of Our Time" was highly appreciated by the famous novelist M.N. Zagoskin, who sent a letter to the journal addressed to P.A. Korsakov. In it, he conveyed his admiration for Burachok's article: ". I would have rushed to Burachka on the neck - but unfortunately, his neck is in St. Petersburg, and my hands are in Moscow. Zagoskin fully shares the idea of ​​Mayak's critic that A Hero of Our Time is a "nasty absurdity" written for the needs of the public, and he evaluates the journal itself as a "publication<...>in which it is said directly that without religion there can be no good literature” 21 .

So, an analysis of Burachok's responses to Lermontov's novel showed that the editor of Mayak wanted to translate the conversation about the aesthetics of the work into a religious and ethical plane. The critic feared that the idea of ​​the "self-worth" of art would lead to its immorality. V.G. Mekhtiyev correctly noted that these ideas of Burachok were consonant with the pathos of many subsequent Russian thinkers (Mekhtiyev, 2004: 187) and acquired a finished form from one of the greatest culturologists of the 20th century, V.V. Weidle, who argued that during the development of mankind, art never performed only an “aesthetic function”, but in modern times the situation changed, which led to “aesthetic egoism”, that is, the destruction of “faith in the integrity of the individual”, “refusal of creativity, that is, from the Creator in itself, the refusal to merge with the creative basis of the world”, which ultimately symbolizes the “disease of art” (Veidle, 1996: 42, 46, 65, 90, 140).

Nevertheless, such a perception of art by Burachok led to an obvious aesthetic "deafness", in which, for example, a novel by a minor writer A.P. Bashutsky "The Petty Bourgeois" was placed above Lermontov's novel, and the spiritual poems of P.A. Korsakov - higher than Lermontov's lyrics 22 .

At the same time, we emphasize once again that the demands that Burachok made to Lermontov's novel A Hero of Our Time undoubtedly reflected the moral maximalism characteristic of Russian literature, which determined its national identity. V.G. is absolutely right. Mehdiyev: “The attacks of the magazine [Mayak]. - E.S.] against Lermontov’s work testify not to the “lack of spirituality” of the poet’s works, but to their involvement in the absolute scale of their requirements, to the exceptional spiritual intensity of the poet’s work” (Mekhtiyev, 2004: 188). Otherwise, Burachok simply would not have argued with him, as with another "literary fly" (an expression of the editor of "Mayak").

Notes

1 P.A. Korsakov is the censor of the first and second editions of the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time" (St. Petersburg, 1840; 1841).

2 An exception is the article by A.A. Grigorieva Opposition to stagnation. Features from the history of obscurantism ”(Vremya. 1861. No. 5. P. 1-35). It seems to us that Grigoriev’s assessment of Burachka is deeply correct: “Wherever it comes to philosophical principles, Mr. Burachek<...>is a logical thinker, a dialectician who has developed his own original method, with which one can argue, but which one could not but respect” (Ibid., p. 17). At the same time, Grigoriev's idea of ​​changing the aesthetic program of "Mayak" in last years publications (from conservative to reactionary-obscurantist) seems unconvincing. It is no coincidence that for a critic it remains declarative, not confirmed by concrete examples from Burachka's journal.

3 It is significant that in an informative article directly devoted to this topic and published in the “Lermontov” volume of the “Literary Heritage”, N.I. Mordovchenko, having analyzed in detail the critical reviews about Lermontov V.G. Belinsky, mentions Burachka in passing, simplifying the latter’s complex position: “Burachka’s judgments are not without interest in the sense that they were not only cruder and more primitive, but also more consistent than the judgments of other reactionary critics. Burachok openly scolded Lermontov, while others announced the recognition of his poetry, but minus the works of accusatory and rebellious direction" (Mordovchenko, 1941: 781). In the authoritative "Lermontov Encyclopedia" there is a 48-line note about the editor of "Mayak", also sustained in extremely negative tones (Popov I. V. Burachok S. A. // Lermontov Encyclopedia. M., 1981. P. 73). As we will try to show in this article, Burachka's position in relation to Lermontov's work was much more complicated.

4 Two articles by Burachka (“A Hero of Our Time”. M. Lermontov. (Conversation in the Living Room)” and “Poems by M. Lermontov. (Letter to the Author)”) were published by V.M. Markovich with excellent comments by G.E. Potapova and N.Yu. Zavarzina in the anthology “M.Yu. Lermontov: pro et contra” [M.Yu. Lermontov, 2002, p. 53-65; 96-119] and simultaneously published in the journal Literature with comments by S.I. Sobolev (Sobolev L.I. Stepan Burachok about Lermontov // Literature. 2002. No. 31. Access mode: http://lit.1september.ru/article.php?ID=200203105).

5 The last is the famous epigram of S.A. Sobolevsky, written in the 1840s and included in all modern textbooks on the history of Russian journalism: “Enlightenment Lighthouse / Publishes a big fool, / Nicknamed Korsak; / The fool helps, / Nicknamed Burachok ”(Epigram and satire. From the history of the literary struggle of the 19th century. M .; L., 1931. T. 1. P. 461).

6 S.B. [S.A. Burachok] Hero of our times. Tradesman // Lighthouse. 1840. Part 5. S. 22.

7 S.B. [S.A. Burachok] Literary books // Lighthouse. 1840. Part 4. P. 210. In what follows, Burachok's review will be quoted from this edition, indicating the page in parentheses.

8 At this point, Burachok referred to another part of his review, where he reflected on the correct construction of the novel: “... in a novel, as in history, the external must be the signature of the internal: phenomena must follow from causes and be explained by consequences. The inner, as the most important, should be in the foreground. The characters, incidents, plot and denouement should be just scenery, means that will certainly lead to a reasonable, bright goal.<...>Where this is not there, there is no novel, but only an idle book, with emptiness in its entire format, empty laces, pointless chatter, food for one idleness, unworthy high art, - the craft of a magician ”(p. 193).

9 In Shevyrev's review of Maxim Maksimych, the following is said: “Of course, we must give first place to Maxim Maksimovich among the side characters. Which integral character a native Russian good-natured man who has not been penetrated by the subtle infection of Western education; who, with the imaginary outward coldness of a warrior who had seen enough of the danger, retained all the ardor, all the life of the soul; who loves nature inwardly, without admiring it, loves the music of a bullet, because his heart beats stronger at the same time. (Moskvityanin. 1841. No. 2. S. 517).

10 Lermontov M.Yu. Hero of our time // Collected. cit.: In 6 vols. M.; L., 1954-1957. T. 6. S. 237.

11 S.B. [S.A. Burachok] Literary books. pp. 200-201.

12 Drafts of this story are now kept in the S.A. Burachka in the manuscript department of the Pushkin House of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RO IRLI. F. 34. items 14, 15).

13 Lermontov M.Yu. Decree. op. T 6. S. 563.

14 It is noteworthy that Gogol looked at art in exactly the same way, who considered it “invisible steps to Christianity” (Gogol N.V. Complete collection of works: In 14 vols. B. M., 1937-1952. Vol. 8. S. 269). Nevertheless, unlike Burachka in Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, Gogol highly appreciated Lermontov's talent and, pointing to the poems "Angel", "Prayer", etc., did not consider his work immoral. Although, of course, “no one has ever played so lightly with his talent and tried so hard to show him some kind of even boastful contempt as Lermontov” (Ibid., vol. 8, p. 402).

15 Belinsky V.G. Full coll. cit.: In 13 t. M., 1953-1959. T. 3. S. 431.

16 Ibid. S. 403.

17 Ibid. S. 404.

18 S.B. [S.A. Burachok] System of Philosophy of Otechestvennye Zapiski // Mayak. 1840. Part 9. S. 9.

19 It should be emphasized that, having overcome the tendencies of the "conciliatory" period in himself, Belinsky abandoned the idea of ​​"objectivity" and "isolation" of art. Already at the beginning of December 1840, the critic defined the article about Menzel as “nasty” (Belinsky V.G. Decree. Op. T. 11. S. 576), and his aesthetic position as a whole - as erroneous: “Yes, Botkin, stupid I was with my artistry, because of which I did not understand what content is ”(V. G. Belinsky, decree. Op. T. 12. P. 85). However, the thesis that art should be a "step" to religion, Belinsky consistently denied until the end of his life. Thus, the main controversy between Mayak and Otechestvennye Zapiski unfolded in the mid-1840s. In the annual review Russian Literature in 1845, Belinsky unambiguously expressed his position on this issue: “One magazine [Mayak. - E.S.]<...>accusing all Russian literature of various heresies<...>he accused the “Library for Reading” and “Notes of the Fatherland” of the same, probably based on the fact that they do not contain articles of theological content. Yes, they were not and will not be in Fatherland Notes, because theology is not included in their program. The critic believed that “writing about theological subjects should be the exclusive right and duty of people of the clergy” (V. G. Belinsky, Decree, op. vol. 9, pp. 403-404). One can hardly agree with the "frantic Vissarion", because the peculiarity of Russian Orthodox culture is that many (if not the most significant) spiritual works were created in the 19th century by secular people (A.S. Khomyakov, I.V. Kireevsky and others .), when the phenomenon named by A.M. Panchenko "secular holiness" (Panchenko, 1999: 361-374).

20 S.B. [S.A. Burachok] System of Philosophy of Otechestvennye Zapiski. S. 19.

21 Letter to M.N. Zagoskin // Mayak. 1840. Part 7. S. 101-102.

22 It is interesting to note that such aesthetic “deafness”, which, like Burachok, comes from the recognition of the primacy of religion over art, is quite typical of many modern representatives of “religious philology” (S.G. Bocharov’s term). So, M.M. Dunaev in his fundamental work "Orthodoxy and Russian Literature" calls the largest (!) Writer of our time V.N. Krupin, because "among the Russian writers who lived in literature at the turn of the century and millennium, he most consistently and consciously established himself in Orthodoxy" (Dunaev, 2000: 391).

Bibliography

Vatsuro V.E., Gilelson M.I. Through the "mental dams": Essays on books and the press of Pushkin's time. M., 1986.

Veidle V.V. Dying of art. Reflections on the fate of literary and artistic creativity. St. Petersburg, 1996.

Dunaev M.M. Orthodoxy and Russian literature. M., 2000. T. 6.

Lavretsky A. Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov in the struggle for realism. M., 1968.

M.Yu. Lermontov: pro et contra / comp. V.M. Markovich, G.E. Potapova, entry. article by V.M. Markovich, comment. G.E. Potapova and N.Yu. Zavarzina. St. Petersburg, 2002.

Mekhtiev V.G. Mayak magazine: spiritual opposition to the aesthetic ideas of journalism in the 1840s. and romanticism M.Yu. Lermontov. Khabarovsk, 2004.

Mordovchenko N.I. Lermontov and Russian criticism of the 40s // M.Yu. Lermontov. M., 1941. Prince. 1. (Lit. heritage; T. 43/44). pp. 745-796.

Panchenko A.M. Russian history and culture. SPb., 1999.

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E. E. Naiditsch

"HERO OF OUR TIME"
IN RUSSIAN CRITICISM

"A Hero of Our Time" is one of the books that, having passed through the centuries, retain their attractive power and continue to excite the minds and hearts of many generations.

Immediately after the publication of the story “Bela” in the March issue of Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1839, Belinsky noted in the pages of the Moscow Observer magazine that “Lermontov’s prose is worthy of his high poetic talent.” He drew attention to the simplicity and artlessness of the story, to its brevity and significance. Belinsky saw in the story an antidote to the romantic literature about the Caucasus that was fashionable in those years, and above all to the stories of Marlinsky. He writes that, unlike the latter, "such stories introduce the subject rather than slander it."

Shortly after the publication of a separate edition of the novel, in Otechestvennye Zapiski (1840, No. 5) and Literary Gazette (1840, No. 42, May 25), two short reviews by Belinsky were published, preceding detailed analysis novel. Belinsky emphasized the originality and originality of A Hero of Our Time and, with amazing courage and foresight, declared that the novel was a "completely new world of art."

Belinsky drew attention to the fact that "A Hero of Our Time" is not a collection of disparate stories and short stories, but a single novel, the components of which "cannot be read separately or viewed as individual works» (IV, 173).

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Belinsky considered the “Hero of Our Time” as a closed artistic whole: “There is not a page, not a word, not a line that would be sketched by chance; here everything comes out of one main idea and everything returns to it” (IV, 146). The basis of the novel, according to the critic, is the idea developed in the main character - Pechorin.

Here Belinsky for the first time expressed a judgment, which later became generally accepted, about the gradual disclosure of the character of the protagonist from story to story.

Belinsky saw in Lermontov's novel "a deep sense of reality, a true instinct for truth", "deep knowledge of the human heart and modern society" (IV, 146). According to the critic, "the novel should arouse universal attention, all the interest of our public," since "in the main idea of ​​​​the novel ... lies the important modern question of the inner man."

All these thoughts of Belinsky were further developed in his article on the "Hero of Our Time", published in "Notes of the Fatherland" in 1840 (No. 6, 7).

Analyzing the image of Pechorin, Belinsky was still in captivity of the erroneous ideas of "reconciliation with reality." He believed that life's contradictions are only a necessary moment in the development of the absolute idea that dissonance will be resolved by harmonious harmony (IV, 238-239). Belinsky considered Pechorin's condition as a temporary illness, reflecting a "transitional state of mind." However, despite this position, Belinsky, precisely with his characterization of Pechorin, immediately outlined a progressive line in evaluating the novel. Even before the reactionary critics declared the image of Pechorin a slander of Russian life, Belinsky came out with a passionate defense of Pechorin, proving that this is a life image, deeply connected with reality.

“The art of a poet,” Belinsky wrote, “should consist in developing the task in practice: how a character given by nature should be formed under the circumstances in which fate puts it” (IV, 205). Emphasizing the nobility, depth and power of Pechorin's spirit and explaining his actions, which are in sharp contradiction with his nature, the circumstances in which the hero is placed, Belinsky placed the responsibility for this not on Pechorin himself, but on the time in which he lives. An analysis of Pechorin's image led Belinsky to the main conclusion: "The 'Hero of Our Time' is a sad thought about our time..." (IV, 266).

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The historical and literary significance of Belinsky's analysis of the image of Pechorin is very great. It can be said that in the article about "A Hero of Our Time" one of the main features of Russian critical literature has already been noted. realism XIX in .: the image of the character of a typical representative of modern society is given in such a way that it leads to a denial of the relations that prevail in society. Belinsky here for the first time in Russian criticism expresses the idea, later formulated with the utmost clarity by Chernyshevsky: "How to condemn an ​​individual person for what the whole society is to blame for."

Belinsky's article opens a series of speeches by Russian critics about "superfluous people"; it compares the images of Onegin and Pechorin, reflecting the corresponding periods in the development of Russian society. Onegin's characterization enables Belinsky to convincingly substantiate main idea articles - about Pechorin's typicality.

In a letter to V.P. Botkin dated August 12, 1840, Belinsky wrote: “... I am very glad that you liked my 2nd article about Lermontov, “the second part of the article about“ A Hero of Our Time ””. Her short tone is the result of my state of mind: I can neither affirm nor deny anything, and involuntarily I try to keep to the middle. However, my future articles should be better than the previous ones: the 2nd article on Lermontov is the beginning of them. From the theory of art, I want to turn again to life and talk about life...” (XI, 540). This turn, which emerged in the process of working on an article about "A Hero of Our Time", involuntarily led Belinsky to one contradiction.

At the beginning of the analysis, Belinsky emphasized that the reason for the "fullness of impressions" lies "in the unity of thought that was expressed in the novel." “In all stories there is one thought, and this thought is expressed in one person, who is the hero of all stories” (IV, 199). In the reviews preceding the article, Belinsky wrote: "Mr. Lermontov's novel is imbued with a unity of thought...". The critic put forward this thesis in connection with the interpretation of the novel as a separate, closed whole. In the second part of the article, when Belinsky turns from theories about art to life, he deviates somewhat from his previous conclusions: “... the novel, striking with its amazing unity Feel, does not strike at all with the unity thoughts... he writes. “It is this unity of feeling, and not of ideas, that binds the whole novel” (IV, 267).

Such a change is due to the fact that after a specific analysis of the novel, Belinsky came to the conclusion that the strength of the novel lies primarily in the formulation of the most important social and domestic issues, and not in their solution: “There is something unsolved in it, as if unspoken .. such are all modern social questions expressed

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in poetic works: it is a cry of suffering, but a cry that relieves suffering” (IV, 267).

The first response of the press of the reactionary camp to Lermontov's novel was an article by S. O. Burachka (“Conversation in the Living Room”), published in the journal Mayak (1840, part IV). Having identified the author of the novel with Pechorin, Burachok indignantly wrote that in "A Hero of Our Time" "there is neither religiosity nor nationality", that the image of Pechorin is a slander on Russian reality, "on a whole generation of people", that "in nature, such insensitive, unscrupulous people are impossible”: “In whom the spiritual forces are even a little bit alive,” the critic concluded, “for those, this book is disgustingly unbearable.”

The only exception from the number of "disgusting and dirty" heroes, according to Burachka, is the image of Maxim Maksimych in the novel. Outraged by the insufficiently respectful attitude of the author to this character, the critic of The Lighthouse considered The Hero of Our Time as an example of the latest "romantic literature" devoid of moral

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foundations, and contrasted Lermontov's novel with the insignificant novel of A.P. Bashutsky "The Petty Bourgeois", published simultaneously with him.

At the beginning of June 1840, even before the publication of Belinsky's article, but after his preliminary reviews, a sharp review of the "Hero of Our Time", belonging to N. A. Polevoy, appeared in Son of the Fatherland.

With the light hand of Burachok, the comparison of A Hero of Our Time with Bashutsky's The Petty Bourgeois became one of the polemical methods of reactionary criticism. In order to belittle the significance of Lermontov's novel, Polevoy devoted his review to both works at once, characterizing them as "sick creatures drawn between life and death into a small interval of their poor, ephemeral existence."

If Polevoy and Burachok differed in their assessment of the "Peaceful Man", then in relation to the "Hero of Our Time" they had complete unanimity. Polevoy's words that criticism is useless for many writers, "just as rain and dew are useless for plants whose roots have been undermined by an inexorable worm" were only a repetition of Burachok's reasoning.

The fact that this anonymous review belongs to N. Polevoy is confirmed by the fact that in the same issue of Son of the Fatherland, where the review of A Hero of Our Time was published, there was a note by N. Polevoy in which he announced his departure from the magazine. He wrote that this was the last issue in which he appeared as a member and editor of the departments of criticism, bibliography and mixture. At the end of the review of "A Hero of Our Time" there are lines directly related to this circumstance: "Mm. It is sad to look at modern Russian literature, and the duty of a reviewer is now becoming a heavy, unbearable duty! It is unlikely that anyone, having devoted some time to her, will not want to atone for dismissal from her with all sorts of donations, will not want to buy peace of mind with silence, leaving everyone to do what he pleases. Blessed is he who can lay down a critical pen and repeat Virgil's verse: Deus nobis haec otium fecit! .

These lines of Polevoy are especially interesting because, to some extent, they also represented an answer to the poem "Journalist, Reader and Writer" by Lermontov.

N. I. Mordovchenko established that "Journalist, Reader and Writer" was a kind of literary and social declaration of Lermontov, put forward on the eve of the publication of the novel. In the image of a journalist and in his speeches, as N. I. Mordovchenko showed, “it is impossible not to recognize some essential features of the appearance of N. Polevoy” . Polevoy answered Lermontov's poems about the tragic fate of the writer with words about "heavy, unbearable"

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duties of a journalist who wants to "buy peace of mind with silence."

The review of the "Hero of Our Time", which belonged to O. I. Senkovsky, is very ambiguous. "G. Lermontov, - wrote Senkovsky, - happily got out of the most difficult situation in which a lyrical poet can only be, placed between exaggerations, without which there is no lyricism, and truth, without which there is no prose. He put on a cloak of truth for exaggeration, and this outfit is very fitting for them.

What Senkovsky's praises were worth can be judged by his sharply negative review of the second edition of A Hero of Our Time. Senkovsky wrote that after the death of Lermontov, one can talk about his work objectively and that "one cannot pass off a Hero of Our Time as anything higher than a nice little student's sketch." Senkovsky's review provoked a sharp rebuke from Belinsky in his response to the third edition of The Hero of Our Time (Literaturnaya Gazeta, March 18, 1844).

The publisher of Sovremennik P. A. Pletnev greeted Lermontov’s novel kindly, comparing in a brief review of A Hero of Our Time with Karamzin’s A Knight of Our Time. He wrote that these works are marked by “the seal of true talent; each took on the lively, bright colors of the era of their creation; everyone is destined to listen in silence to the peevish antics of judges who, being deprived of the ability to think and feel, console themselves with their inalienable right - to scold everything that is attractive and living.

A special place in the speeches of reactionary criticism is occupied by the laudatory review of F. Bulgarin, published in the Northern Bee (1840, June 30). " best novel- wrote Bulgarin - I did not read in Russian. Shortly after the appearance of Bulgarin’s article on the pages of Otechestvennye Zapiski, Belinsky wrote about the true background of this article: “false friends have appeared who speculate on Lermontov’s name in order to imaginary impartiality (similar to purchased addiction) to improve his unenviable reputation in the eyes of the crowd” (IV, 373).

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The speculation that Belinsky wrote about was that Bulgarin importunately emphasized his objective attitude towards the writer, who constantly appears on the pages of an organ hostile to the Northern Bee. Bulgarin took an interesting position in resolving the main issue that arose in the controversy surrounding the novel. He borrowed from Belinsky the idea that the novel revealed the disease of Russian society, and thus parted ways with Burachok. But this disease, according to Bulgarin, was "the stigma of the West on the modern generation." Having condemned Burachok for his harsh article, the publisher of Severnaya Pchela, like the critic of Mayak, approached the novel from a moralistic standpoint and saw in it only moral lesson: “What does a brilliant upbringing and all secular advantages lead to without positive rules, without faith, hope and love” - such, according to Bulgarin, is the dominant idea of ​​the novel.

The most complete and detailed assessment of A Hero of Our Time, coming from the reactionary camp, belongs to S.P. Shevyrev. Shevyrev formulated his main thesis in the article “A look at modern education Europe" ("Moskvityanin", 1841, No. 1) and then developed it in a special article devoted to Lermontov's novel ("Moskvityanin", 1841, No. 2).

The main idea of ​​Belinsky's articles about "A Hero of Our Time" is the assertion of Pechorin's connection with modern life, proof that Pechorin is "a real character." The critic of Moskvityanin opposed this provision: “The entire content of Mr. Lermontov’s stories, except for Pechorin,” Shevyrev argued, “belongs to essential life; but Pechorin himself, with the exception of his apathy, which was only the beginning of his moral illness, belongs to the dreamy world produced in us by the false reflection of the West. This phantom, only in the world of our imagination, having materiality.

Behind the opposite of Pechorin's assessments, the opposite of the views of Shevyrev and Belinsky, their different attitude to Russian reality, is easily revealed. Shevyrev wrote in his article that if Pechorin is recognized as a hero of our time, then "consequently, our age is seriously ill."

Shevyrev also accused Lermontov of naturalism. According to the critic, the image of Pechorin is not only false in its basis, but also artistically

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incomplete, because evil, like main subject of a work of art, can only be depicted by large features of the ideal type (in the form of a titan, not a pygmy), and Lermontov in "A Hero of Our Time" allegedly delves into "all the details of the decay of life." Pechorin "belongs to those pygmies of evil with whom the narrative and dramatic literature of the West is now so abundant."

A significant place in Shevyrev's article is occupied by the analysis of the theme of the Caucasus in the work of Lermontov, in particular in "A Hero of Our Time". “Here,” Shevyrev wrote, “Europe and Asia converge in great and irreconcilable enmity. Here Russia, civilly arranged, repulses these ever-torn streams of mountain peoples who do not know what a social contract is ... Here is our eternal struggle ... Here is the duel of two forces, educated and wild ... Here is life! .. How why not rush here to the imagination of the poet?

In the spring of 1841, in the preface to the second edition of A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov summed up the literary controversy that unfolded after the publication of the novel. The writer gave a sharp rebuke to Shevyrev, ironically commented on the opinions of Burachok. In the preface to the novel, Lermontov acted as a supporter of Belinsky. As N. I. Mordovchenko showed, the final part of the preface, devoted to the author's assessment of Pechorin, is in direct accordance with what Belinsky wrote. Lermontov's preface evoked an enthusiastic response from Belinsky in a review of the second edition of the novel and was quoted in its entirety on the pages of Notes of the Fatherland (V, 451-456).

We should pay attention to one more fact related to the controversy around the "Hero of Our Time". Shortly after the publication of Shevyrev's articles on "A Hero of Our Time" and on Lermontov's poems ("Moskvityanin", 1841, No. 4), the poet wrote the poem "Dispute" and submitted it for publication in "Moskvityanin". The transfer of the poem to the Slavophile journal was a kind of response to Shevyrev's criticism. A. S. Khomyakov, one of the most prominent employees of the Moskvityanin, wrote in a letter to N. M. Yazykov in the summer of 1841: “In the Moskvityanin there was an analysis of Lermontov by Shevyrev, and the analysis is not entirely pleasant, in my opinion, somewhat unfair .

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Lermontov answered very prudently: he gave the glorious play “The Dispute between Shat and Kazbek” to the “Moskvityanin”, wonderful verses.

The appearance of a poem with the title "Dispute" in the organ of literary opponents should, obviously, testify to the poet's disagreement with Shevyrev's criticism, should have emphasized that the best response to criticism is artistic creativity in the same direction. The choice of the theme of the poem was not accidental. After all, the magazine "Moskvityanin" constantly wrote about the historical mission of Russia, and Shevyrev, in an article about "A Hero of Our Time", spoke at length about the struggle between Russia and the Caucasus. The struggle itself, the dispute between these two forces, Shevyrev interpreted in an abstractly idealistic way and considered it irreconcilable and eternal.

Lermontov in the poem "Dispute" in response to these reactionary arguments of Shevyrev gave a picture of the struggle between Russia and the Caucasus, striking in its strength artistic images, colorfulness, philosophical depth and accuracy. His literary opponents had no choice but to recognize this poem as beautiful and place it on the pages of their magazine (Moskvityanin, 1841, No. 6).

These are the main stages of the controversy that unfolded in 1840-1841. after the release of "A Hero of Our Time".

The analysis of "A Hero of Our Time" was to take a large place in Belinsky's unrealized article about Lermontov in the "History of Russian Literature" he had conceived. Belinsky stressed that the promised articles on Gogol and Lermontov "will not in the least be a repetition of what has been said" (VII, 107).

In articles about Pushkin 1843-1846. Belinsky characterized the "Hero of Our Time" as a folk, national work. He refuted the opinion of those who believed that "purely Russian nationality" should be sought only in works that draw content "from the life of the lower and uneducated classes." The critic pointed out that a poet depicting the life of educated estates can claim "the loud title of a national poet" and put "A Hero of Our Time" on a par with "Woe from Wit" and "Dead Souls", calling these works national and excellent in artistic relation (VII, 438-439).

Comparing the novels of Lermontov and Pushkin, Belinsky wrote: “The Hero of Our Time was the new Onegin; barely four years have passed - and Pechorin is no longer a modern ideal ”(VII, 447). In an article about V. Sollogub’s story “Tarantas”, Belinsky developed this idea: “After Onegin and Pechorin, in our time, no one has taken up the image of our hero

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time. The reason is clear: the hero of the present moment is a person at the same time surprisingly polysyllabic and surprisingly indefinite, all the more requiring enormous talent for his portrayal” (IX, 79).

An assessment of the image of Pechorin in the perspective of the development of Russian society and the growth of advanced social thought was given by Belinsky in connection with the analysis of the novel by A. I. Herzen “Who is to blame?”.

According to Belinsky, “... in the last part of the novel, Beltov suddenly appears before us as some kind of higher, brilliant nature, for whose activity reality does not provide a worthy field ... this is no longer Beltov, but something like Pechorin ... The resemblance to Pechorin is extremely disadvantageous for him” (X, 321-322).

This remark by Belinsky in a review of Russian literature in 1847 anticipated the statements of revolutionary-democratic criticism of the 50s and 60s, which compared the image of Pechorin with the entire gallery of "superfluous people" in Russian literature.

The early critical articles of A. Grigoriev also date back to the 1940s.

The first of them, “On the Elements of Drama in Present-day Russian Society,” raises the question of the “miserable state” of the Russian stage, which is dominated by hackneyed romantic dramas with “an ideal formed from medieval concepts of love and Eastern concepts of a woman.”

A. Grigoriev calls on writers to create a drama on themes Everyday life, where the author would show that special side of reality, "which drives a certain century and a famous people."

In this article by A. Grigoriev, the influence of the ideas of Belinsky and Herzen is felt, in particular in the views of A. Grigoriev on the role of love in human life and society.

A. Grigoriev's article consists of two letters. In the first letter, the critic claims that in “Pechorin, despite his impressionability, there is still a suffisance of his own I who worships only himself, who did not suffer painfully from that noble, grace-filled suffering, which, finding food in itself, inexorably survives petty, limited egoism in order to create conscious egoism, imbued with a sense of the whole and respect for oneself and others, as parts of a great whole. According to the critic, this limitedly egoistic ideal was overcome in the work of Lermontov, "who ... was as much higher than his Pechorin as Goethe was higher than his Werther" . “Look how in Lermontov himself this egoism burned out and cleared, how this feeling of love from boredom and idleness,

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the feeling of a soul suffering from emptiness, the feeling of negation, was transformed into a rational and human idea in the poems of his last era, and especially in the poem:

Let the crowd stigmatize
Our Unsolved Union.

A harbinger of the disputes that flared up in the 50s was another speech by A. Grigoriev - "Review of journal phenomena for January and February" (1847). Welcoming the appearance of Herzen's novel "Who is to blame?", A. Grigoriev saw in modern literature the presence of two different schools - "the Lermontov school, the school of tragedy, and the humorous school, the school of Gogol".

This opposition of the two schools ran counter to the concept of Belinsky, who united the work of Gogol and Lermontov into a single literary movement.

For completeness of the review, it should be briefly said about the assessment of the "Hero of Our Time" in the review of V. T. Plaksin on the edition of Lermontov's works in 1847.

Its author is a teacher of literature in a number of educational institutions of St. Petersburg (and, by the way, in 1834 Lermontov's teacher at the school of guards ensigns), the compiler of educational manuals, in which, according to Belinsky, "remnants of classicism" were combined with "the heavy need to mix their concepts with new ones, recognize authorities” (VI, 345).

This characteristic is quite applicable to the analysis of the "Hero of Our Time" in Plaksin's review. Declaring the novel Lermontov's best work, and the portrayal of Pechorin artistically impeccable, Plaksin immediately declares that Pechorin in "Taman" allegedly has nothing to do with Pechorin in "Bel", that "A Hero of Our Time" is just an artificial combination of separate stories , for a number of characters in the novel may "be or not be." Paraphrasing some of Belinsky’s provisions and arguing that Pechorin combines “what nature gave him and what the despotism of the spirit of the times imposed on him,” Plaksin defines Lermontov’s novel as a satirical work that reveals the dual nature of man, with his certain ability for good and evil .

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The progressive line outlined by Belinsky in the evaluation of Lermontov's novel was continued by Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov.

In a review of M. Avdeev’s novels and stories (“Contemporary”, 1854, No. 2), Chernyshevsky showed that Avdeev’s novel “Tamarin”, contrary to the wishes of the author, turned into an enthusiastic panegyric to Tamarin, since the novelist was guided “not by reality, but by a falsely understood Lermontov's novel. Chernyshevsky emphasized that there was little in common between Pechorin and Tamarin. Tamarin - “this is Grushnitsky, who appeared to Mr. Avdeev in the form of Pechorin” (II, 214).

In a remarkably accurate and brevity formulation, Chernyshevsky defined the main meaning of “A Hero of Our Time”: “Lermontov, a deep thinker for his time, a serious thinker, understands and presents his Pechorin as an example of what the best, strongest, most noble people become under the influence of the social environment of their circle” (II, 211).

In the review "Russian Literature in 1851" (“Moskvityanin”, 1852, No. 2, 3) A. Grigoriev argued that Pechorin developed “under the influence of circumstances alien to Russian life”, that he “lost his grandiosity in the person of Tamarin, and the most negative Lermontov trend finally exhausted itself in novel "Who is to blame?"

A. Grigoriev sought to prove Lermontov's weakness as a thinker, to prove that “the word of Lermontov's activity, by its very nature, was incapable of further development. This word was a protest of the individual against reality - a protest that came out not from a clear understanding of the ideal, but from the conditions that consisted in the painful development of the personality itself.

Arguing in his review of literature for 1852 that the Lermontov trend had died, A. Grigoriev confirmed this with references to the novel Tamarin, in which he saw an unusually successful, albeit unconscious, parody of The Hero of Our Time.

A similar trend in relation to the image of Pechorin was outlined a little earlier by A.V. Druzhinin in “Letters from a Nonresident Subscriber on Russian Journalism” (letter 7, September 1849) in connection with the appearance in Sovremennik of the first part of Tamarin.

On many issues, Druzhinin disagreed with A. Grigoriev. For example, he believed that Avdeev “in the person of Pechorin noticed the poorest

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his side, or, better, not the side with which the creation of Lermontov is deep and wonderful. But in its main focus, Druzhinin was very close to A. Grigoriev, like the latter, dinning the image of Pechorin: “He was a hero in a small drama, an excellent actor on the stage of a provincial theater”, “in Pechorin itself there is absolutely nothing immensely high”, Pechorin is not endowed with "not a single extraordinary ability", this person "is not in the least grandiose and does not exceed the crowd with his head." In front of Byron's heroes - Manfred, Gyaur, Childe Harold, Pechorin "seems like a miserable child who has known one millionth part of life ...", etc.

A few years later, in the article "Tales and Stories of I. S. Turgenev" (1857), Druzhinin, comparing the hero of Turgenev's story "Bretter" Avdey Luchkov with Pechorin, spoke with complete clarity about the reason for his dislike for the hero Lermontov. It turns out that readers and critics have been “up to now too indulgent towards pissed off person, without taking the trouble to explain what this anger, which is so pleasant for them, rests on. The significance of Turgenev's story lies, according to the critic, in the fact that, thanks to the image of Luchkov, the heroes of our time are brought "to fresh water" and brought "from the melodramatic pedestal." “The embittered hero,” Druzhinin writes further, “taken as he was understood in the forties, is angry due to various mysterious reasons, due to a lack of activity for his person ...” .

By the forties, Druzhinin means Belinsky, and by his contemporaries, who support embittered people, he means revolutionary democrats. “Even one of our poets of high talent with innocence calls himself an embittered person,” wrote Druzhinin about Nekrasov.

Thus, the negative attitude towards the hero of Lermontov of reactionary criticism was still explained by political motives, the struggle against revolutionary protest.

It was not for nothing that a little later A. Grigoriev wrote about Lermontov's types - Arbenin, Mtsyri, Arseny: “After all, take a closer look at them, at these foggy, but powerful images: behind Lara and Corsair, maybe Stenka Razin will look into them.”

The opinions of A. Grigoriev and A. Druzhinin coincided in another very important point, despite the apparent difference in the understanding of Lermontov's novel. Both of them saw the causes of Pechorin's suffering not so much in social conditions as in the very nature of the hero. A. Grigoriev

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noted the "morbid development of the personality itself" Pechorin. Druzhinin wrote that the tragedy of Pechorin is that he can not direct their abilities “to a noble and sympathetic goal; due to his pride, incapable of work and consciousness of his emptiness, he painfully tosses and turns in a circle of relationships that present him neither joy, nor means to good, nor ways to improvement.

The above assessment of "A Hero of Our Time" in Chernyshevsky's review of Avdeev's novels and stories opposed these views and at the same time deepened and made Belinsky's thoughts more concrete.

In "Essays on the Gogol period" (seventh article - "Contemporary", 1856, No. 10), the critic noted that the character of Pechorin in Belinsky's article on "A Hero of Our Time" (1840) was considered from an abstract point of view, as a product of modern life in general . According to Chernyshevsky, this abstraction consisted not only in the application of the theory of reconciliation with reality, but also in the absence of social analysis. Belinsky "did not look for features in Pechorin that belong to him as a member of our Russian society" (III, 241). In the above characterization, Chernyshevsky, filling this gap, speaks of “the influence on people like Pechorin, social environment of their circle. Assessing the "Hero of Our Time", Chernyshevsky unconditionally attributed Lermontov to the writers of the Gogol direction in Russian literature. Such a combination of the names of Lermontov and Gogol acquired special significance in the 1950s, because reactionary criticism contrasted the names of Gogol and Lermontov.

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In an article about L. Tolstoy's "Childhood and Adolescence" and "Military Stories" characterizing L. Tolstoy's psychological analysis as an image of the "dialectic of the soul", Chernyshevsky notes: "Of our other most remarkable poets, this side of psychological analysis is more developed in Lermontov" (III , 423). Citing a quote from "A Hero of Our Time" - "Pechorin's memorable reflections on his relationship to Princess Mary", - Chernyshevsky concludes: "Here, more clearly than anywhere else in Lermontov, the mental process of the emergence of thoughts is captured ...". However, the critic notes, “this still does not have the slightest resemblance to those images of the course of feelings and thoughts in a person’s head that are so loved by Count Tolstoy” (III, 423).

Chernyshevsky constantly turned to The Hero of Our Time, illustrating his idea that “there is no artistry without conciseness”: “In the novels and stories of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, a common property is the brevity and speed of the story” (II, 69). “Read three, four pages of The Hero of Our Time, The Captain's Daughter, Dubrovsky - how many are written on these pages!” (II, 466).

In the second half of the 1950s, Chernyshevsky also turned to the "Hero of Our Time" in connection with the unfolding controversy about "superfluous people."

In the conditions of the growth of the liberation movement and the revolutionary situation of the late 50s and early 60s, Chernyshevsky, and then Dobrolyubov, as literary critics, first of all turned to the analysis of works that, in their opinion, contribute to the liberation struggle. Chernyshevsky's articles on the poems of N. Ogarev, "Russian Man on Rendez-Vous" and others put forward the task of creating an image goodie, a new man, a revolutionary raznochinets, who was supposed to replace the "superfluous people", the heroes of the previous period in the history of Russian society. If earlier Chernyshevsky emphasized the historically progressive role of Lermontov's hero, now he draws attention to the limitations of this progressiveness, which distinguishes Pechorin from the heroes who characterize a new stage in social development. "Pechorin<по сравнению с Онегиным>, - writes Chernyshevsky, - a person of a completely different character and a different degree of development. His soul is really very strong, thirsty for passion; his will was really strong, capable of energetic activity, but he cared only about himself personally. No general questions interested him. Is it necessary to say that Beltov is completely different ... It is even less possible to find a similarity between Rudin and Pechorin: one is an egoist who thinks of nothing but his own personal pleasures; the other is an enthusiast,

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completely forgetting about himself and completely absorbed by common interests ... ”(IV, 699).

These lines were directed against the critic of “Notes of the Fatherland” by S. S. Dudyshkin, who spoke in an article about the novels and stories of I. S. Turgenev (“Notes of the Fatherland”, 1857, No. 1) with statements that almost all “ extra people”, and especially the heroes of Turgenev are directly connected with the “Hero of Our Time”.

This new trend in assessing the image of Pechorin was most sharply, distinctly and fully manifested in Dobrolyubov's article "What is Oblomovism?" ("Contemporary", 1859, No. 5). Already a little earlier (in the article “Literary trifles of the past year”), Dobrolyubov compared new people - raznochintsy - with their predecessors, figures of the noble period: “in their judgments, people rise not by how much great strength and talents were hidden in them, but by how much they wished and knew how to do good to mankind ... ".

The lack of socially useful activity among the heroes of the best stories and novels of the 40-50s, including Pechorin, allowed Dobrolyubov in the article “What is Oblomovism?” compare these heroes with Oblomov and characterize this feature of theirs as Oblomovism.

In order not to weaken his blow to noble liberalism with various reservations, Dobrolyubov introduces into the article replicas of "profound people" who argue with the author, and, answering them, emphasizes that he meant more Oblomovism than Oblomov's personality. “Under different conditions, in a different society, Onegin would have been a truly kind fellow, Pechorin and Rudin would have done great feats, and Beltov would have turned out to be a truly excellent person.”

The assessment of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov did not oppose Belinsky's views, but was their development in new historical conditions. Belinsky’s thoughts that the image of Pechorin correctly reflected Russian life, that his character is explained by time, and the main meaning of the novel is not in the trial of the hero, but in the condemnation of that era, received a clear political expression in Dobrolyubov’s article. However, the main focus of Dobrolyubov's criticism was not in the historical assessment of "superfluous people", but in exposing noble liberalism.

Herzen spoke out against the position of Sovremennik on the issue of the so-called accusatory literature and on "superfluous people". The direct reason for his speech was the above-mentioned article "Literary trifles of the past year", where Dobrolyubov exposed liberal accusers,

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criticizing private shortcomings and not encroaching on the foundations of the autocratic-feudal system.

Herzen's insufficiently consistent democratism, his vacillations towards liberalism, caused controversy on the issue of assessing "superfluous people." Herzen argued with the previous opinions of Sovremennik (see the above-mentioned articles by Chernyshevsky), not yet knowing about the discrediting of "superfluous people" undertaken by Dobrolyubov in the article "What is Oblomovism?".

Herzen focuses on the progressive historical role of “superfluous people”: “... Onegins and Pechorins were completely true, they expressed the real sorrow and fragmentation of Russian life at that time ... Our literary flankers of the last set are now poking fun at these weak dreamers who broke without a fight, over these idle people who did not know how to find themselves in the environment in which they lived. It’s a pity that they don’t agree - I myself think that if Onegin and Pechorin could, like many, adapt to the Nikolaev era, Onegin would be Viktor Nikitich Panin, and Pechorin would not have disappeared on the way to Persia, but he would have ruled like Kleinmichel, by means of communication and would interfere with the construction of railways. But the time of Onegins and Pechorins has passed. Now in Russia there is no superfluous people, on the contrary, are now lacking for these huge plows of hands. Whoever now does not find a case, he has no one to blame, he really empty man, fistula or lazy person. And therefore, very naturally, Onegins and Pechorins become Oblomovs.

Public opinion, which spoiled the Onegins and Pechorins because it sensed in them their suffering, turn away from the Oblomovs ".

In the article “Superfluous people and bile” (“The Bell”, 1860, No. 83, October 15), Herzen decisively separates the “superfluous people” of the Nikolaev time, whom he recognizes as “real” from modern superfluous people, “between whom nature itself erected Oblomovskiy ridge": "the extra people were then just as necessary, how necessary now, so that they don’t exist, ”concluded Herzen.

The difference between the views of Herzen, on the one hand, and Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, on the other, was not in the historical assessment of the role of Pechorin and other superfluous people (here, basically, their views were the same), but in the legitimacy of comparing Onegin and Pechorin with the noble liberals of the 50s years.

Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky emphasized the social community of the "superfluous people" of both periods and contrasted them with the "new people", raznochintsy revolutionaries. Herzen, who himself was a leader of the 1940s,

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defended the historical progressiveness of Pechorin - among other superfluous people - and considered it unlawful to compare them with the noble liberals of the 50s.

Unlike Belinsky, and then Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, Herzen understood Pechorin somewhat one-sidedly. In the article “Once again Bazarov” (1868), he wrote: “Lermontov was a friend of Belinsky for years, he was with us at the university, and died in the hopeless hopelessness of the Pechorin direction, against which both the Slavophiles and we were already rebelling.”

These words about the “Pechorinsky direction” are connected with the contradictory attitude of Herzen towards Lermontov. In the work “On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia”, along with a wonderful and historically accurate portrait of Lermontov (“he completely belongs to our generation ...”), there are lines that echo the above: “Lermontov ... has become so used to despair and hostility that not only did not look for a way out, but also did not see the possibility of a struggle or an agreement.

The democratic tradition in the assessment of the "Hero of Our Time" was continued by D. I. Pisarev and N. V. Shelgunov. Rejecting Lermontov's poetic heritage, Pisarev highly appreciated Lermontov's prose. In connection with the analysis of the novel by I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons" (" Russian word”, 1862, No. 3), he sought to show “in what relationship Bazarov is to various Onegins, Pechorins, Rudins, Beltovs and other literary types, in which, in past decades, the younger generation recognized the features of their mental physiognomy” .

Pursuing goals close to Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, Pisarev tried to establish similarities and differences between "superfluous" and "new" people, but due to the lack of genuine historicism, he greatly simplified the views of his predecessors. He called Onegin and Pechorin “bored drones”, saw a difference in temperament between them: “Onegin is colder than Pechorin, and therefore Pechorin fools much more than Onegin ... A little Onegin, a little Pechorin has been and still is with us every little bit smart a person who owns a wealthy fortune, who grew up in an atmosphere of nobility and did not receive a serious education.

For Pisarev, Onegins and Pechorins are people who stand out from the masses thanks to their mind, but do not have ideals, goals in life. “Other people, smart and educated,” have “their own ideal,” but “for these people, for lack of firmness, things stop at words.” Pisarev concludes his discussion about superfluous people and about Bazarov with the following formula:

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“In a word, the Pechorins have a will without knowledge, the Rudins have knowledge without a will; the Bazarovs have both knowledge and will, thought and deed merge into one solid whole.

Pisarev pays special attention to the image of Pechorin in the article "Realists" ("Russian Word", 1864, No. 9-11). "The Pechorins and the Bazarovs are made from the same material..."; they “do not resemble each other in the nature of their activity, but they are completely similar to each other in typical features of nature: both of them are very smart and quite consistent egoists, and both of them choose everything from life that is possible at a given moment. choose the best ... ". This comparison of the realist Bazarov and Pechorin is connected with the ideological positions of Pisarev of these years, with his attempt to oppose the traditions of Russian progressive thought with vulgar materialism. Hence the lines: “More intelligent people, people like Lermontov and his hero Pechorin, resolutely turned away from Russian Macaulayism and sought pleasure in love.”

“Under Russian Macaulayism,” Pisarev meant the activities of the “Granovskys and their students the Bersenevs”: “The Pechorins were smarter than the Bersenevs in every respect,” Pisarev continued, “and that’s why it was they who had no way out of the world of boredom and from love affairs .. The Pechorins had no choice, and their constant idleness can in no way serve as proof of their mental frailty. Even the opposite."

The lack of a concrete historical approach largely prevented N.V. Shelgunov from correctly assessing the "Hero of Our Time", who devoted a very significant part of his article "Russian Ideals, Heroes and Types" to the image of Pechorin ("Case", 1868, No. 6-7) .

Shelgunov argued that the types created by Pushkin, Lermontov and Turgenev were "empty and useless", that "no serious social thought guided these writers".

Shelgunov wrote that in Pechorin we meet "a type of force, but a force crippled, aimed at an empty struggle, spent on trifles for unworthy deeds." “... You can’t intimidate Pechorin with anything, you can’t stop him with any obstacles ... Despite his effeminate appearance, aristocratic manners to outward civilization, Pechorin is a pure savage, in whom an elemental, unconscious force walks, like

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in some Ilya Muromets or in Stenka Razin. But Stenka Razin, in terms of the goal of his aspirations, is immeasurably higher than Pechorin.

Shelgunov explains Pechorin's character social reasons, belonging to an aristocratic circle: “Pechorin is not a“ hero of our time ”, but a“ salon hero ”, a loner cut off from the world, waging a struggle with individuals, instead of fighting principles” .

In his article “Very dangerous!!!” Herzen, for polemical purposes, united the criticism of "superfluous people" in Sovremennik and in the journals of the moderate-liberal camp. In fact, the views of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov had nothing in common with this criticism, which denied the progressive significance of the image of Pechorin for the 40s.

So, for example, for S. S. Dudyshkin, the images of “superfluous people”, and above all Pechorin, were deeply alien. A liberal critic called them "seekers of strong sensations", deceitful, arrogant, loud phrases that close themselves from any activity. The main drawback of Pechorin and other "superfluous people", in his opinion, is that they "did not harmonize with the situation." Dudyshkin called on writers to depict people who have come to terms with reality. This gave Herzen reason to speak ironically about Pechorin, who became Kleinmichel.

Dudyshkin's hatred for Pechorin was so strong that he devoted a significant part of the introductory article to Lermontov's Works to the analysis of this image, in which he fully revealed the political motives of his hostility. “Pechorin has more of Byron’s character than a Russian officer”, “Pechorin now belongs to the weakest creations of Lermontov.” According to Dudyshkin, Pechorin's success is due to the fact that he fell into tune during the period of "complete denial of life" in the literature of the 40s. And this denial is unacceptable for Dudyshkin.

As already noted, in the same camp with the liberal Dudyshkin was the theorist of pure art A. V. Druzhinin, who ironically wrote in the "Library for Reading" (1857) about Pechorin as an "embittered" hero brought down from a pedestal. In the same year, on the pages of the Russian conversation, the Slavophile critic K. S. Aksakov, repeating some of Shevyrev’s thoughts in his Review of Modern Literature, called Lermontov “the last Russian poet of the imitative era” and saw the direction

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the poet's work "in a strange tyranny, in the complacency of dry, cold egoism, in which all the innermost evil of the former abstract direction finally came out." Considering the direction of Lermontov's prose to be false, K. S. Aksakov wrote: “ humorous story, comedy - this is where the real place is for the Pechorins, for secular passions and suffering. This idea about humor, about Gogol's principle, which should resist Lermontov's negation, was expressed earlier by A. Grigoriev on the pages of Moskvityanin.

According to his conclusions, A. D. Galakhov, who appeared in 1858 in the Russky Vestnik with an extensive article about Lermontov, adjoined the above assessments of the Hero of Our Time. “From a moral point of view,” wrote Galakhov, “the actions of Lermontov’s heroes cannot be justified: they are immoral in civil and in general human terms.”

Galakhov replaces the specific historical and social approach to the image of Pechorin with vague provisions about the "state of society" in the transitional era of "the mental and moral mood of European life." In The Hero of Our Time, Galakhov sees the features of Russoism and the influence of Byron. Despite the obvious exaggeration of these influences, Galakhov made a number of indisputable observations. In the fair opinion of the latest researchers, in this work of Galakhov, the principles of the then emerging cultural-historical school are substantiated.

A. Grigoriev tried to take a peculiar position in the unfolding controversy around the image of Pechorin. In the article “The Development of the Idea of ​​Nationality in Our Literature since the Death of Pushkin” (Vremya, 1861, No. 2-5), he devoted a whole section to the “opposition of stagnation”, analyzing in detail Burachok’s reactionary articles about “A Hero of Our Time” and Lermontov’s poems. Citing excerpts from Mayak, he showed the falsity and absurdity of Burachok's attacks on Pechorin and Lermontov.

In the second half of the 50s, A. Grigoriev reconsiders his views on the role of the individual and the meaning of protest. In this regard, his attitude towards the image of Pechorin and the work of Lermontov also changed. Turning to the controversy of the 40s, A. Grigoriev made it clear to readers that the criticism of the 50s, debunking Pechorin, did not go far from Burachok.

The contradictory position of A. Grigoriev was that he

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He compared criticism of Mayak not only with reactionary-liberal journalism, which belittled the importance of Pechorin, but also with revolutionary-democratic criticism of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov.

If Herzen in the article “Very dangerous!!!” united these speeches of opposing camps for polemical purposes, clearly understanding the difference in their views, for A. Grigoriev, who did not rise to social analysis, these differences were not clear. The contradictory position of A. Grigoriev also consisted in the fact that he went as far as recognizing the legitimacy of protest as an expression national identity of the Russian people and re-evaluated the image of Pechorin just at the moment when such recognition was no longer progressive enough, since it was already about specific forms of protest, about “new people” replacing the “extra person” of the 40s years.

The most significant work of A. Grigoriev about Lermontov was a series of articles “Lermontov and his direction. The extreme facets of the development of a negative view” (“Time”, 1862, No. 10-12). The central place in these articles is given to the "Hero of Our Time". This work, which ended the long-term dispute between A. Grigoriev and Lermontov, has not yet received a correct assessment in the literature. Describing the critic's attitude towards Lermontov generally, some researchers did not take into account that A. Grigoriev radically changed his views on Lermontov in comparison with the articles in the "Moskvityanin" of the early 50s.

If earlier for A. Grigoriev Pechorin was "a ghost alien to Russian life", now Pechorin's character was considered by him as a national phenomenon. “These disturbing beginnings,” the critic notes, “are not alien to our national essence in general.”

A. Grigoriev already wrote about the “charming” and heroic sides of Pechorin: “Pechorin attracted us all irresistibly and can still captivate ... After all, perhaps this nervous gentleman, like a woman, would be able to die with Stenka’s cold calm Razina in terrible agony. The disgusting and funny sides of Pechorin in him are something pretense, something mirage, like all our high society in general ... the foundations of his character are tragic, perhaps terrible, but not funny at all.

The critic also solves the question of Pechorin's moral responsibility in a new way: “Not on them alone,” writes A. Grigoriev, “put all the blame for the insane waste of energy for nothing, waste on trifles or even on evil.

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The tragic in them, of course, does not belong to them, but to the forces that they carry within themselves and madly spend or absurdly distort, but in any case it is truly tragic.

According to A. Grigoriev, in the Pechorin type, “all the“ immense ”strengths of our spirit”, “our positive traits, our higher elements. No one has yet succeeded in debunking this type. “We killed only the false, conditional sides of it with comedy ... Our attempts to replace this type with another turned out to be even more soap bubbles, to put forward a positively active type in its place.”

Pechorin's preference for "superfluous people" of the 40s, in particular Beltov, is explained by the peculiarities of the critic's worldview. A. Grigoriev considered all kinds of theories as the suppression of individuality; he still denied the need for a revolutionary upheaval, since he believed that life and art are determined by eternal and unchanging national principles.

It should be noted that the correct understanding of the article "Lermontov and his direction" was hampered by two circumstances. First, by the fact that A. Grigoriev sometimes uses separate parts of his previous articles, without bringing some of the old formulations into full compliance with his changed views. Secondly, A. Grigoriev raises a number of questions and solves them in the very process of writing the article, giving all the pros and cons so broadly that the main trend is not immediately revealed. Therefore, the final part of the article, where the final conclusions are formulated, is of particular importance.

According to A. Grigoriev, the Pechorin type remains unrevealed in Russian literature: “Alienated from the broad folk life who comprehended its forms only with a vague, although ingenious instinct, closed in on cold top hostel, locked in the most conventional sphere, the artist, as an artist, is looking for some kind of, but a certain, tangible image. And here is Pechorin; all the slime of mirage life has stuck to it, and this husk is upholstered in comic development. But all the same, he is a strength and an expression of strength, without which life would turn sour in the benevolence of the Maximov Maksimovichs, in their, albeit heroic, but negatively heroic irresponsibility, in that humility that easily turns from high to lamb with us.

Recognition of the legitimacy of the protest itself and the need for its merger with the "broad people's life" is one of the most striking insights of A. Grigoriev, in his concept of the "Hero of Our Time".

Solving similar problems, F. M. Dostoevsky turned to Lermontov.

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He spoke out against the understanding of the people by the liberal "Notes of the Fatherland", which, mixing the people with the common people, rejected the people and Onegin and Pechorin. On this issue, Dostoevsky shared Belinsky's opinion, developing his argumentation in the spirit of his theory of "soilism". According to this view, after the era of rapprochement with Europe, the privileged Russian society It turned out to be separated from the people by a deep abyss and felt the need to turn to popular soil.

Civilization was a process of self-awareness of Russian society. Onegin (and then Pechorin) expressed “to dazzling brightness precisely all those features that could be expressed in only one Russian person ... at the very moment when civilization for the first time was felt by us as life, and not as a whimsical inoculation, but at the same time, all the perplexities, all the strange, unsolvable questions of that time, for the first time from all sides, began to besiege Russian society and ask to enter its consciousness.

The type of Onegin, “the sufferer of Russian conscious life,” writes Dostoevsky, “finally entered the consciousness of our entire society and began to be reborn and develop with each new generation. In Pechorin, he reached the point of insatiable, bilious malice and a strange, highly original Russian opposition of two heterogeneous elements: selfishness to self-adoration and at the same time malicious self-disrespect. And all the same thirst for truth and action, and all the same eternal fatal “nothing to do!”. From anger and as if to laughter, Pechorin rushes into a wild, strange activity that leads him to a stupid, ridiculous, unnecessary death.

Dostoevsky's attitude towards A Hero of Our Time changed dramatically later on. This was connected with the general evolution of his worldview, with the struggle of the writer against revolutionary ideology, with the strengthening of reactionary ideas about the people, who supposedly are characterized only by humility and religiosity. Dostoevsky writes that in Russia there could not have been such “bad people” as Pechorin, that we “were ready, for example, to highly value in our time various bad little men who appeared in our literary types and borrowed for the most part from a foreign language.” Unconditionally condemning Lermontov’s novel, Dostoevsky concludes: “Remember: you never know we had Pechorins, who really and really did a lot of bad things after reading A Hero of Our Time” .

An attempt at a socio-historical explanation is now being replaced by psychological reasoning that at one time attachment

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Russian people to the Pechorin type was allegedly associated with filling the quality of “strong hatred” that was missing from the people. And this quality, according to Dostoevsky, is precisely what the people do not need. Thus, the most reactionary views on Lermontov's novel are resurrected in The Writer's Diary.

If the reactionary point of view on "A Hero of Our Time" was expressed by Dostoevsky in the "Diary of a Writer" with complete clarity, then the liberal-bourgeois critics of the 80-90s were characterized by a combination of reactionary views on Lermontov's novel with all sorts of reservations that mask the political meaning of their views.

So, for example, in the monograph about Lermontov by N. A. Kotlyarevsky (1891), despite general discussions about the “spirit of the times” and “transitional era in the life of society”, there is no specific historical analysis of the “Hero of Our Time”.

According to the liberal scientist, Pechorin is “not an integral type, not a living organism”, but “rather a single type than a collective one”, he could not be called a hero of his time, “was not the Onegin of his time”. These provisions of N. A. Kotlyarevsky were directed against the article by Belinsky, who sought to emphasize the typicality of Pechorin, against the views expressed by Lermontov in the preface to the second edition of the novel.

The following trick is quite characteristic of a liberal critic: while disagreeing with Belinsky on the main point, he develops the weak side of his article on A Hero of Our Time. The image of Pechorin is considered by him as "a reflection of one moment in spiritual development writer”, which should be followed by reconciliation.

The lack of a true understanding of Lermontov is discovered by Kotlyarevsky in a pedantic analysis of the spiritual qualities and character of Pechorin. It turns out that Pechorin's main vice is that he has no "desire to become in a normal position to surrounding life”, “for him there are no questions of life”, etc.

The concept of N. A. Kotlyarevsky in basic terms, and sometimes even in the same formulations, was repeated by another representative of the cultural-historical school in literary criticism - A. N. Pypin. For him, “A Hero of Our Time” is also just an excerpt from an unfinished big plan, and Pechorin is just a reflection of contradictions. inner world the writer himself.

“Lermontov,” writes Pypin, “depicted the internal struggle taking place in himself, the struggle strong personality or a domineering spirit with the conditions of limited life, or, in particular, with the conditions of society.

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We also note that A. N. Pypin, ignoring the general concept of Dobrolyubov, expressed in the article “What is Oblomovism?”, One-sidedly used a wording taken out of context and stated that for Dobrolyubov Pechorin was only a variation of the Oblomov type.

A different interpretation of the novel, in comparison with representatives of the cultural-historical school, was given by P. A. Viskovaty, a scientist close to semi-officially conservative scientific circles. Describing the "Hero of Our Time", P. A. Viskovaty argued that one cannot "blame Lermontov for the fact that the people of his generation, and, perhaps, the generation that followed him, took his satire as an ideal ...". The researcher sought to prove that Lermontov's satire did not reach "to the extreme limits", since, denying the phenomena of contemporary life, the poet "was far from having a negative attitude towards the eternal questions and tasks of life." However, Viskovaty saw these "strings of the positive" primarily in religious motifs, which, in his opinion, were developed in Lermontov's lyrics in recent years.

Viskovaty opposed the identification of Lermontov and Pechorin. In order to explain the similarity of the writer with his hero noted by his contemporaries, he wrote about Lermontov: “Having hit a young man in St. Petersburg in public life, he soon began to realize all its pettiness and futility and express it in his works ... scourging contemporaries, he scourged himself , such as he was when he walked with them on the same road.

Dissonance in the jubilee literature of 1891 sounded the voice of the populist critic N. K. Mikhailovsky, who emphasized in the article “Hero of Timelessness” (Russkiye Vedomosti, July 15 and August 8, 1891) the active, protesting, heroic principle in Lermontov’s work. Throughout Mikhailovsky's article runs the thought of Lermontov the wrestler, suffering in an era of timelessness from the inability to apply his "immense forces." Mikhailovsky compares Lermontov in this respect with Pechorin. However, Mikhailovsky could not give a true analysis of The Hero of Our Time, because he considered all of Lermontov's work as an illustration of the populist theory of the "hero and the crowd." "FROM early youth, one can say from childhood, until his death, - Mikhailovsky wrote, - Lermontov's thought and imagination were directed to the psychology of a born powerful person ... ". According to Mikhailovsky, Pechorin was one of such powerful people who sought to subjugate those around him.

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The relationship between the Lermontov hero and society received an anthropological explanation from Mikhailovsky: “To act, fight, win hearts, one way or another operate on the souls of near and far, loved and hated - such is the vocation or fundamental requirement of the nature of all outstanding actors works of Lermontov, and of himself.

Mikhailovsky emphasized the individualism of Pechorin and other Lermontov's heroes, and saw this as the norm of behavior. Mikhailovsky's views were a step backwards in comparison with the assessment of Lermontov's work by the revolutionary democrats.

The decadent criticism of the beginning of the 20th century also turned to The Hero of Our Time.

D. S. Merezhkovsky created a mystical portrait of Lermontov, a messenger from underworld, solving religious and philosophical problems in the spirit of Merezhkovsky himself. In accordance with this, the decadent critic arbitrarily interpreted Lermontov's novel, putting an equal sign between Pechorin and Lermontov. Pechorin's bifurcation, in his opinion, is explained by the eternal struggle between light and darkness, Pechorin's "immense forces", his consciousness of his high purpose, "fatalism", playing with death - unearthly origin, attitude towards Vera - "disgust for Christian marriage", etc. . P.

Lermontov's novel, imbued with deep historicism, raising the most pressing social and political issues, is considered by Merezhkovsky in complete isolation from reality, from any social problems.

On the decline of liberal-bourgeois criticism at the beginning of the 20th century. The work of a representative of its other wing also testifies. The propagandist of the psychological method in literary criticism D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky saw in Pechorin a self-portrait of the writer, reproducing "the most important aspects of Lermontov's nature, his mentality, his psychological attitude towards people, his social well-being".

The determining factor, according to Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, is Pechorin's innate qualities, primarily "egocentrism". However, the "conditions of society" and the "spirit of the times" do not allow Pechorin to turn to social activities, and therefore he reveals

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pathological biases. Pechorin is a "picture of the disease" of egocentrism and, at the same time, "the pathology of Lermontov's own soul." Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky interprets Lermontov's words about "illness" in the preface to "A Hero of Our Time" as an anomaly in Pechorin's personality. The psychological critic separates from the social. In his opinion, society does not determine the character of a person, but only influences the development of innate qualities. In an effort to artificially reconcile his views with the traditions of Russian democratic criticism, Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky does not claim, like Kotlyarevsky, that the image of Pechorin is false and atypical. He recognizes the typicality of Pechorin, but deprives this concept of social meaning. The typicality of Pechorin, according to Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, is in the widespread occurrence of such a disease, in that such individuals "are not rare in the psychology of people of the 30s and 40s." Hence the paucity of conclusions: Lermontov is a "born melancholic", and his artistic work is a means of getting out of melancholy.

The fifth chapter of Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky's work "The History of the Russian Intelligentsia" is devoted to the analysis of the image of Pechorin. Separate correct observations and correct thoughts (about the commonality of the psychology of Pechorin and the leading representatives of the Russian intelligentsia of the 30s) are devalued by the subjectively idealistic general concept of this book. To the question "who is to blame?" in the fact that superfluous people become such, the liberal critic answers: "... the absence of culture and intellectual tradition, due to which a gifted person does not receive proper endurance in work ...".

Despite the phrases about "social well-being", Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky's psychological criticism led readers away from the real contradictions revealed in Lermontov's novel, and in this respect connected with Merezhkovsky's reasoning.

Democratic traditions in the assessment of Lermontov's work at the beginning of the 20th century. were developed in the book of P. A. Kropotkin. Being in exile for many years, he gave a short course of lectures on Russian literature, relying, as he indicated in the preface, on the works of Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, as well as contemporary populist literary critics.

Kropotkin gave a characterization of "A Hero of Our Time" in the spirit of revolutionary democratic criticism. He emphasized the progressive meaning of Lermontov's pessimism, associated with "a powerful protest against everything vile in life": "Pechorin is a brave, intelligent, enterprising person who treats everything around him with cold contempt.

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He is undoubtedly an outstanding person and stands higher than Pushkin's Onegin; but above all, he is an egoist, squandering his brilliant abilities in all sorts of crazy adventures, always somehow backed by love ... Such were the heroes of our time, and we must admit that in this case we are not dealing with a caricature. In a society free from material concerns (in the era of Nicholas I, under serfdom) and not taking any part in the political life of the country, talented people, unable to find an outlet for their strength, often rushed into the maelstrom of adventure, like Pechorin.

Kropotkin's views were not a new word in the evaluation of Lermontov's novel. However, the very fact of publishing the History of Russian Literature, based on the advanced traditions of Russian criticism, was very timely. It is no coincidence that this book was published by the publishing house of the Znanie partnership, led by M. Gorky.

A new stage in the study of Lermontov and his novel was opened by G. V. Plekhanov, who substantiated from a Marxist position the need for a historical approach to the study of Lermontov's work.

In the article “The Centenary of the Birth of Belinsky” (1911), Plekhanov wrote: “Art owes its origin to social man, and this latter changes along with the development of society. Therefore, to understand this piece of art means not only to understand its basic idea, but also to find out for yourself why this idea interests people - although, perhaps, few people - of this time. Plekhanov clarifies the historical circumstances under which the poems “Borodino” and “Duma” arose: “To resolve this issue, it will be necessary to remember that Lermontov was born in October 1814 and that, consequently, he had to spend his youth in a society that was completely suppressed by the reaction, which greatly intensified after the failure of the well-known Decembrist movement ... ".

In the preparatory works on Belinsky, Plekhanov noted that in the article "A Hero of Our Time", "despite all the arguments, historical Pechorin's meaning is not understood. The character of Pechorin is explained from the point of view of personal psychology ... Pechorin suffers from the fact that he has not yet come to terms with reality. It is so, but not so. For him to come to terms with reality was the same as for Alexander the Great to become

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Studying the history of literature and social thought "from the point of view of mutual relations and mutual influence of social classes", Plekhanov in the article "A. I. Herzen and serfdom"(1911) expresses the idea "of the role of the serf front" in the moral development of those "representatives of the" negative "direction of our social thought, who came from a noble environment." “I’ll point to Lermontov,” Plekhanov writes, “... isn’t it this close communication that threw into his soul first the seeds of that "negative" mood, which subsequently developed in such a peculiar way - it would be more correct to say: so peculiarly underdeveloped, - in it? .

Plekhanov believed that, unlike Herzen and Belinsky, Lermontov’s freedom-loving ideas did not develop due to the loneliness of the poet, the absence of a circle of like-minded people: “His poetry is dominated by a note of individual protest of a proud and independent personality against a vulgar social environment.”

In the preparatory work for this work, Plekhanov wrote: “The example of Lermontov ... What would it lead to if everyone were like that? To what Lermontov or Pechorin became. “Loneliness in the circle of animals is harmful.” Plekhanov's desire to explain Lermontov's work as a reflection of popular interests and moods was undoubtedly fruitful. However, Plekhanov limited this influence of the "fortified front" and did not take into account the full depth of the influence of folk life on the writer.

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The shortcomings of Plekhanov's approach to the history of literature and Lermontov's work were manifested to a greater extent in his characterization of Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev as everyday writers of noble families who did not oppose the foundations of the ruling system, but only criticized its negative sides.

In a speech dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the death of N. A. Nekrasov (published in a separate pamphlet abroad in 1903 and included in Plekhanov’s collection “For twenty years” in 1905), Plekhanov said: “Poetry and all the fine literature of the previous the social era was with us mainly poetry of the upper nobility..

Who is Eugene Onegin? An educated Russian nobleman "in Harold's cloak". What is Pechorin? Also an educated nobleman and in the same cloak, only tailored in a different way ... ".

The "noble point of view" of Pushkin, Lermontov and Tolstoy, according to Plekhanov, did not consist in protecting class privileges ("Not at all! These people were very kind and humane in their own way, and the oppression of the peasants by the nobles was sharply condemned - sometimes, at least, - some of them"), but in the fact that they portrayed the life of the nobility "not from their negative side, that is, not from the side from which the conflict of interests of the nobility with the interests of the peasantry would be revealed.<...>The relationship of these people to the class subordinate to them was either completely dispensed with or depicted with one or two features. “... We don’t know at all, for example, how Pechorin treated his peasants.”

The attitude towards Lermontov as a writer of the "higher nobility", an indication that Lermontov bypassed the peasant question in "A Hero of Our Time" - all these judgments, organically arising from Plekhanov's historical and literary concept, objectively led to an incorrect assessment of the significance of noble writers in the development of the Russian revolutionary liberation movement. Only on the basis of Lenin's doctrine of three periods in the development of the Russian revolutionary liberation movement, Lenin's theory of reflection, did a deep Marxist coverage of Lermontov's work and his novel become possible.

The traditions of the revolutionary democrats and Plekhanov in their assessment of Lermontov were developed in M. Gorky's lectures on the history of Russian literature, read by him in 1909 at a party school on the island of Capri.

Gorky emphasized in the work of Lermontov an effective principle,

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"greedy desire for business, active intervention in life", revealed the progressive social significance of Lermontov's pessimism. In Gorky's lectures on Lermontov, the central place is occupied by the analysis of the image of Pechorin, his comparison with Lermontov.

Comparing the conversation between Pechorin and Werner with the poem “Both Boring and Sad,” Gorky wrote: “Again, we see a complete coincidence of the author’s feelings and thoughts with the feelings and thoughts of his hero. It is important for us to know that Onegin is a portrait of Pushkin, and Pechorin is a portrait of Lermontov ... ".

At the same time, Gorky believes that in A Hero of Our Time there is no longer a complete fusion between the author and the hero: “Pechorin was too narrow for him; following the truth of life, the poet could not endow his hero with everything that he carried in his soul, and if he did this, Pechorin would be untruthful.

In other words, Lermontov was both wider and deeper than his hero; Pushkin is still admiring Onegin, Lermontov is already half-indifferent towards his hero. Pechorin is close to him, because in Lermontov there are features of pessimism, but Lermontov's pessimism is an effective feeling, in this pessimism contempt for modernity and its denial, a thirst for struggle and longing and despair from the consciousness of loneliness, from the consciousness of impotence. His pessimism is all directed at secular society.

Returning to the characterization of Pechorin, Gorky noted that “Pechorin and Onegin are alien to the so-called social issues, they live a narrow personal life, they are both strong, well-endowed people and therefore do not find a place for themselves in society.

Gorky's views on noble literature and Lermontov's work reflected Plekhanov's conception, developed in Plekhanov's speech on Nekrasov quoted above. Gorky associated the images of Onegin and Pechorin with "noble self-criticism." "How the children of the serfs came to worship the slaves of their fathers and their own: in a word, let's see how the master portrayed himself in literature" . This is how Gorky formulated his task, characterizing Lermontov's novel.

The position about the typicality of Pechorin for his time, put forward by Belinsky, received a deep concrete historical understanding only in Soviet literary criticism. Image central hero novel in the best of the latest works about Lermontov began to be considered in all its

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complexity and inconsistency as a reflection of the most important contradictions of Russian reality in the 30s of the XIX century.

A significant contribution to the study of "A Hero of Our Time" was made by the largest Soviet Lermontov scholar B. M. Eikhenbaum, who turned to the problems and texts of this novel for many years. Already in his early work “Lermontov. An Experience in Historical and Literary Evaluation” (L., 1924) “A Hero of Our Time” is regarded as a “synthesis” of those quests in the field of a new narrative form that were so “characteristic of Russian fiction of the thirties”. A large amount of factual material, carefully collected and originally illuminated in this book by B. M. Eikhenbaum, received even wider and new coverage in later works researcher.

In the most detailed comments of B. M. Eikhenbaum to the "Hero of Our Time" (Lermontov's works in the editions of Academia, vol. V, 1937; Goslitizdat, vol. IV, 1940; Academy of Sciences of the USSR, vol. VI, 1957), the creative the history of the novel, its texts were studied, its final edition was established. The artistic form of Lermontov's novel was analyzed in these comments in close connection with his ideological content. The “Hero of Our Time” was characterized from the same point of view in B. M. Eikhenbaum’s study “Lermontov’s Literary Position” (“Literary Heritage”, vols. 43-44, 1941). One of the main parts of this work was the establishment of live and direct connections between the novel and Lermontov's program poems of 1837-1839.

Paying attention to Lermontov’s assessment of Pechorin, which, according to the poet himself, was contained in the title of his book, B. M. Eikhenbaum wrote: “The title really sounds ironic, and otherwise it cannot be understood:“ These are the heroes our time!” This title brings to mind the lines of “Borodin”, to which Belinsky drew attention: “Yes, there were people in Nowadays, not like the current tribe: the heroes are not you! ”However, the irony of this title is turned, of course, not against the very personality of the hero, but against“ our time ”, this is the irony of“ Duma ”and“ Poet ”. This is how the evasive reply of the author of the preface, "I don't know," should be understood. This means: “Yes, an evil irony, but directed not at Pechorin himself, but at you, the reader, and at the whole of modernity.”

The question of the socio-political significance of the novel was raised and resolved with particular poignancy by B. M. Eikhenbaum in an article about "A Hero of Our Time", published in this edition.

The chapter on the “Hero of Our Time” in the book by L. Ya. Ginzburg “Creative

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path of Lermontov" (L., 1940) characterized the novel as the most important stage on Lermontov's path from romanticism to realism, as a work in which the tragic image protesting hero, bearer of the philosophy of his era.

In 1940, S. N. Durylin's book "The Hero of Our Time" by M. Yu. Lermontov was published. Despite the fact that this work was built as " tutorial", even now it has not lost its significance, even for specialists, as the best real commentary on Lermontov's novel.

A fruitful influence on the study of "A Hero of Our Time" was made by N. I. Mordovchenko's article "Lermontov and Russian criticism of the 40s", published in the Lermontov volume of "Literary Heritage" (vols. 43-44). Belinsky's views were considered here for the first time in their historical development, taking into account their political orientation and literary and aesthetic significance.

A new and very fruitful approach to studying the peculiarities of the style and composition of "A Hero of Our Time" was in the article by V. V. Vinogradov "The Style of Lermontov's Prose" ("Literary Heritage", vols. 43-44). Describing the verbal and artistic structure of the novel, the specifics of its style and the language of the characters, V. V. Vinogradov showed how the style of "A Hero of Our Time" is associated with the development of the national literary language and with the formation of realism in Russian literature of the late 30s - early 40s years.

In the jubilee volume of the Literary Heritage, an article by B.V. Tomashevsky “Lermontov’s Prose and Western European literary traditions". Unlike pre-revolutionary comparative works, A Hero of Our Time was considered by a Soviet researcher as a phenomenon of Russian national literature and, at the same time, a fact of world literature.

The place of the "Hero of Our Time" in Russian history fiction it was correctly shown in 1947 in the article by A. G. Zeitlin “From the history of the Russian socio-psychological novel” (“Historical and Literary Collection”, Moscow, 1947).

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The results of the study of "A Hero of Our Time" are most fully summed up in the book of E. N. Mikhailova "Prose of Lermontov" (M., 1957), rich in original observations. In the same year, an article by S. A. Bakh “The work of M. Yu. Lermontov on the language of the novel “A Hero of Our Time”” (“Scientific Notes of the Saratov State University”, vol. LVI, 1957, pp. 83-98) appeared.

Of the works devoted to particular problems of the creative history of the "Hero of Our Time", the most significant are the studies of D. D. Blagoy "Lermontov and Pushkin (the problem of historical and literary continuity)", N. I. Bronstein "Doctor Mayer" and I. L. Andronikov "Lermontov in Georgia in 1837". The first of them gives a detailed comparison of "Eugene Onegin" with "Hero of Our Time"96

“The life and work of M. Yu. Lermontov. Research and materials". M. Goslitizdat, 1941.

"Literary Heritage", vol. 45-46, 1948.

AND. Andronikov. Lermontov in Georgia in 1837. M., 1955, pp. 115-129; 176-177; 198-202; 224. Ed. 2nd, Tbilisi, 1958.

"History of Russian Literature", vol. VII. M.-L., Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1955, pp. 341-362; A.N.Sokolov. History of Russian literature, vol. 1. M., Izd. Moscow un-ta, 1960, pp. 736-748; "History of Russian literature of the XIX century", ed. F. M. Golovenchenko and S. M. Petrova, vol. 1. M., Uchpedgiz, 1960, pp. 315-322.

"The Fate of Lermontov" - Portraits of M.Yu. Lermontov. V. Bryusov. The history of the poet's soul. And sullenly You concealed what the thought languished about, And came out to us with a smile on your lips. Write an essay "My impression of Lermontov" using the key words and conclusions recorded in the lesson. A. Herzen. Sonnet "To the portrait of Lermontov". Motives of Lermontov's lyrics. M.Yu. Lermontov: personality, fate, era.

"Criticism Fathers and Sons" - Critics ("Fathers and Sons"). Sovremennik responded to the novel with M.A. Antonovich’s article “Asmodeus of Our Time”. The dispute, in essence, was about the type of a new revolutionary figure in Russian history. The novel "Fathers and Sons" in reviews of critics (N.N. Strakhov, D.I. Pisarev, M.A. Antonovich). Antonovich saw in it a panegyric to the “fathers” and a slander on the younger generation.

"Lermontov's lyrics" - Self-portrait of M.Yu. Lermontov. To mix sadness, which is not sharper, With raptures, which have never happened K. Balmont. N.F. Ivanova. Father M.Yu. Lermontov. Grandmother M.Yu. Lermontova E.A. Arseniev. “And again alone, and again I live by myself” Lyrica M.Yu. Lermontov. And again alone, and again I live by myself ”Lyric M.Yu. Lermontov.

"Roman Lermontov Hero of Our Time" - Lesson Objectives: The originality of the plot of the novel. Why is the plot of each story based on unusual events? The novel "A Hero of Our Time" is a psychological portrait of a hero. Grushnitsky. The novel is a study of the inner world of the hero. Pechorin About himself. Belinsky about the novel. Vera. Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov 1814 - 1841.

"The novel A Hero of Our Time" - Construction of the novel "A Hero of Our Time". Kislovodsk. Michael is 6-8 years old. Stay in places of military operations. The history of the creation of the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time". IN Cossack villages. "Maxim Maksimych". After participating in hostilities, Pechorin receives a vacation. "Princess Mary". Chronological order(plot of the work).