My Interest In Russian Literature

The story of a human soul, even the pet­ti­est of souls, can hardly be less inter­est­ing and instruc­tive than the story of a nation…

Many of my ear­lier entries con­tain ref­er­ences to Russian Romantic lit­er­a­ture, but I’ve never explained my fas­ci­na­tion with it. I’ve always iden­ti­fied with ideas of the Byronic hero and Nihilism, whether they were ideals or philoso­phies I felt drawn to. It was one book that intro­duced me to these ideas, called A Hero Of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, a Russian poet (in the truest sense of the word) who died in a duel at 26. Whenever I meet some­one from Russia, I ask them if they’ve read it, in the hopes that per­haps I can gain some insight into this book from some­one who under­stands the orig­i­nal lan­guage. I read it when I was in grade 9, and so much of what the pro­tag­o­nist, Pechorin, made sense to me.

Death

Ah, well! If I must die, I must! The world will lose lit­tle, and I am weary enough of it all. I am like a man who yawns at a ball and doesn’t go home to sleep only because his car­riage hasn’t come.

During a brief phase, I’d say about year off and on in high school, I was at the very depths of depres­sion and some­what sui­ci­dal, but I could never bring myself to do it. I was just hop­ing death would take me. It was an easy way out. Not only did I have no rea­son to live, but my life was quite unpleas­ant. My best friend had ditched me for the pop­u­lar crowd¹, so my time at school was mis­er­able, then I’d come home to an empty life and par­ents that ignored me.

Ever since, I’ve felt like I’ve been liv­ing on bor­rowed time, wait­ing for the end to come, when it should have already arrived. That’s why I remain unp­hazed by the idea that I’m going to die, and accept­ing of the fact that it’ll hap­pen one day. As Pechorin says near the end of the novel, “After all, noth­ing worse than death can hap­pen — and death you can’t escape!”

There’s a par­tic­u­lar scene in the movie Onegin² that cap­tures the spirit of this mor­bid accep­tance. Onegin (played by Ralph Fiennes) has been chal­lenged to a duel that he can­not back out of, lest he be the sub­ject of ridicule, so he accepts. He’s fired upon as he’s walk­ing towards his oppo­nent, and, faced with death, sim­ply closes his eyes. The expres­sion of calm in his face shows that it’s out of reflex, instead of fear.

Vapidity

They are often endowed with many good qual­i­ties, but they have not an ounce of poetry in their souls.

One of the antag­o­nists of Pechorin is Grushnitsky, a poseur who walks with a fake limp to draw sym­pa­thy and wears a great­coat to look impor­tant. Pechorin and I share the same mock­ing scorn of such “fop­pery”. What can I say. I hate fake peo­ple. The ones who put on affec­ta­tions to seem unique or eccen­tric. The ones who pre­tend to be what they’re not. I know too many peo­ple like this, and I try to avoid them as much as possible.

Women

Mon cher, je méprise les femmes pour ne pas les aimer car autrement la vie serait un mélo­drame trop ridicule.

I don’t com­pletely agree with Pechorin’s atti­tudes towards women, as they can be quite sex­ist (he fre­quently com­pares them to thor­ough­breds, for exam­ple), but I do relate to his frus­tra­tions, and very con­tra­dic­tory opin­ions on them. It’s a love/hate rela­tion­ship — the typ­i­cal “can’t live with, can’t live with­out” idiom — that’s at once bor­der­ing between the indif­fer­ent and the impas­sioned. Perhaps this is due to the fact that my expe­ri­ences with women are so polar­ized. After all, the ones we love the most are also the ones that can hurt us the most.

Emotions

My whole life has been merely a suc­ces­sion of mis­er­able and unsuc­cess­ful denials of feel­ings or reason.

Much of my child­hood was spent feel­ing greatly dis­il­lu­sioned with the world. I was liv­ing with my par­ents, who made me believe that emo­tions were bad, not because they’re use­less, but sim­ply because the only emo­tion I expe­ri­enced with them around was depres­sion. I felt unloved and use­less, so I tried to cover up these sad emo­tions with logic, and Pechorin seemed to share this habit. It’s all the more relat­able because he’s not com­pletely in con­trol of them. He’s flawed and human, even though he’s part of the intelligentsia.

Even now, I find myself con­stantly try­ing to bal­ance my emo­tions, because I simul­ta­ne­ously appre­ci­ate them for their inspi­ra­tion, and despise them for their effect on me.

1. This was made espe­cially more painful by the fact that I was so inse­cure that I defined myself through oth­ers, being left with­out being anyone’s “best friend” meant that I was worth­less. [↑]
2. Written by Alexander Pushkin, arguably Lermontov’s biggest influ­ence. In fact, as the char­ac­ter Onegin was named after the river and lake, Onega, Pechorin was sim­i­larly named after the river Pechora. [↑]