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.

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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. [↑]