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The unusual composition of the novel is the hero of our time. Features of the composition of the novel "A Hero of Our Time" by M. Lermontov. Why was the chronology of the presentation of the episodes of the life of the protagonist violated

The unusual composition of the novel is the hero of our time. Features of the composition of the novel "A Hero of Our Time" by M. Lermontov. Why was the chronology of the presentation of the episodes of the life of the protagonist violated

19.07.2020

I am like a man yawning at a ball
who does not go to sleep just because
that his carriage is not yet there. But the carriage is ready ...
M. Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov in the novel "A Hero of Our Time" creates a portrait of a typical representative of the 30-40s of the XIX century. Pechorin, according to the author, "a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development." His path almost copies the fate of Onegin, with some adjustments for the time being.
Lermontov not only shows the hero, but wants to explain and substantiate his character by the conditions of the life that Grigory Alexandrovich leads. To do this, the author violates the chronology of the narrative. The chapters in the novel are not arranged in the order of events, but according to the internal logic that the author adheres to.

They should follow in this order: “Taman”, “Princess Mary”, “Fatalist”, “Bela”, “Maxim Maksimych”, “Foreword to the magazine”. Lermontov, on the other hand, puts “Bela” as the first chapter, in which he describes the hero through the eyes of staff captain Maxim Maksimych, who understands little about a complex personality

Pechorin, but only reflects the actions and actions of the hero. Following the narrator, we also quite vaguely imagine the true reasons for the behavior of Grigory Alexandrovich.

We unwittingly include him in the category of villains who can laugh after the death of a beloved woman. After the death of Bela, Maxim Maksimych decided: “You know, more for decency, I wanted to console him, I started talking; he (Pechorin) raised his head and laughed! .. My skin ran cold from this laughter ... ”
In the next chapter, "Maxim Maksimych", we learn that Pechorin does not want to see his old friend, and we do not understand the hero's motives for this act at all. The picture is completed by a portrait. He is of medium height, broad-shouldered, thin at the waist, and when walking, he did not swing his arms - a sure "sign of a secret character."

Pechorin has an almost childlike smile. With blond hair - a mustache and dark eyebrows - "a sign of breed in a person." Brown eyes he was not laughed at when he laughed. And the author makes comments that "this is a sign - or an evil disposition, or deep permanent sadness."

Lermontov, creating a psychological portrait of the hero, lifts the veil of mystery over him. Then in the journal, actually in the diary, Pechorin will explain many of his actions and reveal to the readers a soul that suffers from these actions no less than his victims. The hero asks himself the question: why is everything destroyed, no matter what he touches? “Sometimes I despise myself… isn’t that why I despise others too?.. I look at suffering and joy only in relation to myself, as food that supports my spiritual strength… my first pleasure is to subordinate everything that surrounds me to my will” .

Happiness for Pechorin is intense pride. So, through his fault, the life of “peaceful smugglers” was destroyed, Grushnitsky was killed, the hearts of Vera and Princess Mary were broken, Bela died ... how many more victims can be attributed to him? Pechorin admits that two people coexist in him: one does things, the other judges them.

But is our hero so bad? Grushnitsky and his friends are much worse than him, they were preparing a murder in a duel. Pechorin knew about this, but until the last minute he believed in the nobility of Grushnitsky, and when he was mean, Grigory Alexandrovich killed him.

Yes, he is guilty of Bela's death, but he also suffers deeply, does not want to see Maxim Maksimych, so as not to reopen the wound, it is too deep. The hero hides his feelings under the mask of indifference, which is why he is sometimes unpleasant to readers. Pechorin considers excessive emotionality a manifestation of weakness, therefore he prefers to look like an egoist and a scoundrel, rather than a lyrical and dreamy fool, which Grushnitsky keeps.
Relations with Princess Mary can be attributed to the merits of Pechorin rather than to his “evil acts”. This love awakened the soul of a secular young lady; suffering, she cries and laughs, simple human emotions and experiences become close to her. Her soul opened up to the world, and is this not the main thing!
Thus, thanks to the complex composition, Lermontov was able to convey to the reader the main idea of the novel, showed a typical representative of the new generation, achieved the task, and this is what the novel was written for.

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Features of the composition of the novel "A Hero of Our Time" come from the fact that the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov became an advanced work of its time: in it the author used a new genre of a psychologically oriented novel, a new image of the protagonist and, accordingly, a new compositional articulation of the work.

The author himself, after the publication of his novel in its finished form, admitted that not a single word, not a single line in it arose by chance, everything written was subordinated to one main goal - to show readers their contemporary - a man with noble and bad inclinations, who, obeying the feeling self-love, he was able to realize in life only his vices, and his virtues remained only good desires.

When the novel was just published, critics and ordinary readers had a lot of questions that related to the compositional division of this work. We will try to consider the main of these issues.

Why was the chronology of the presentation of the episodes of the main character's life broken?

The features of the composition of "A Hero of Our Time" are related to the fact that we learn about the life of the protagonist in a very inconsistent way. The first part of the novel tells how Pechorin kidnapped the Circassian Bela from his own father, made her his mistress, and later lost interest in this girl. As a result of a tragic accident, Bela was killed by the Circassian Kazbich, who was in love with her.

In the second part, entitled "Maxim Maksimovich", readers will learn that several years have passed since the death of Bela, Pechorin decided to go to Persia and died on the way there. From Pechorin's diary, it becomes known about the events that happened to the main character before meeting Bela: Pechorin got into a funny adventure with smugglers on Taman and in the city of Kislovodsk he met the young Princess Mary Ligovskaya, whom, unwittingly, fell in love with himself, and then refused to share her feelings. There was also a duel between Pechorin and Grushnitsky, as a result of which the latter was killed.

The novel "A Hero of Our Time" ends with the part "Fatalist", which tells about a private episode from the life of Pechorin.

Studying the plot and composition of "A Hero of Our Time", literary critics agree that the author violated the chronological presentation of the main character's life in order, on the one hand, to emphasize the chaotic life of Pechorin, his inability to subordinate his fate to one main idea, on the other hand, Lermontov tried to reveal the image of his main character gradually: at first, readers saw him from the side through the eyes of Maxim Maksimovich and the narrator-officer, and then only got acquainted with Pechorin’s personal diary, in which he was extremely frank.

What is the relationship between plot and plot in a novel?

The innovation of Lermontov as a prose writer contributed to the fact that the plot and plot of the novel "A Hero of Our Time" do not coincide with each other. This leads to the fact that the reader pays more attention not to the external outline of events from the life of the protagonist, but to his inner experiences. Literary critics have dubbed this method of constructing a work “tense composition”, when readers see the heroes of the novel at the peak moments of their fate.

Therefore, the composition of Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time" is a unique phenomenon in the history of Russian literature: the author talks about key episodes from the life of his hero, giving him a description precisely at the moments of the highest life trials: these are Pechorin's love experiences, his duel with Grushnitsky, his skirmish with drunken Cossack, his dangerous adventure with smugglers on Taman.

In addition, Lermontov resorts to the reception of a ring composition: for the first time we meet Pechorin in the fortress in which he serves with Maxim Maksimovich, the last time we see the hero in the same fortress, before he leaves for Persia.

How does the compositional division of a work help to reveal the image of the protagonist?

According to most literary critics, the originality of the compositional solution of the novel helps to consider in detail the image of Pechorin.
In the first part of Bela, Pechorin's personality is shown through the eyes of his commander, the kind and honest Maxim Maksimovich. The author debunks the myth of beautiful love between a savage woman and a young educated nobleman that existed in the literature of that time. Pechorin does not in any way correspond to the image of a young romantic hero, which was created in the works of the writer's contemporaries.

In the second part of "Maxim Maksimovich" we meet more detailed description personality of the protagonist. Pechorin is described through the eyes of the narrator. Readers get an idea of the character's appearance and behavior. The romantic halo around Grigory Alexandrovich flutters completely.

In "Taman" Lermontov refutes the myth of romantic love between a girl engaged in smuggling activities and a young officer. A young smuggler with the romantic name Ondine does not behave at all sublimely, she is ready to kill Pechorin only because he turned out to be an unwitting witness to her crime. Pechorin is also characterized in this part as a man of an adventurous warehouse, ready for anything to satisfy his own desires.

Part "Princess Mary" is built on the principle of a secular story: it has a love story and a conflict between two officers for possession of the girl's heart, which ends tragically. In this part, the image of Pechorin receives a complete realistic characterization: readers see all the external actions of the hero and the secret movements of his soul.

In the last part of the novel The Fatalist, Lermontov poses the most important questions for him about the meaning of human life on earth: is a person the master of his own destiny or is he led by some kind of evil fate; is it possible to cheat one's fate or is it impossible, etc.? In the last part, Pechorin appears before us in the form of a man who is ready to fight fate. However, readers understand that this struggle will eventually lead him to an early death.

The role of composition in the novel "A Hero of Our Time" is very important. It is thanks to the unusual compositional division of the work that the author manages to achieve the full realization of his creative idea - the creation of a new psychologically oriented genre of the novel.

The presented compositional features of the work can be used by students of grade 9 when preparing material for an essay on the topic “Features of the composition of the novel“ A Hero of Our Time ””.

Artwork test

Lermontov's novel "A Hero of Our Time" became the first socio-psychological and realistic novel in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century. The author defined the purpose of his work as "the study of the human soul." The structure of the novel is peculiar. This is a cycle of stories combined into a novel, with a common protagonist, and sometimes a narrator.

Lermontov wrote and published stories separately. Each of them can exist as an independent work, has a complete plot, a system of images. First, the story "Taman" was written, then - "The Fatalist", later the author decided to create a "long chain of stories" and combine them into a novel. The author considered the main task to be the disclosure of the character and inner world of the hero, an established representative of the generation of the 30s of the XIX century. Lermontov himself was from this unfortunate generation of noble youth, who could not prove themselves by serving for the good of the motherland. The youth and time of maturity of these people took place in the conditions of government reaction after the suppression of the Decembrist uprising. Bright ideals were lost, life goals were absent. As a result of such a social situation, heroes with the character of Pechorin appear.

During the work on the novel, the author edited his work three times, changing the order of the chapters. In the third, final, edition, the stories follow in this order: "Bela", "Maxim Maksimych", "Taman", "Princess Mary", "Fatalist". In the chapter "Taman" Pechorin's notes begin, and in the story "The Fatalist" they end. Such a composition allowed the author to embody the philosophical meaning of the work.

The novel has two prefaces containing comments for readers and critics. One is written for the novel as a whole, the other for Pechorin's diaries. The diary can be attributed to genre components. Travel notes are the basis of the story. The characters move through life and talk about their experiences.

Each story included in the novel has its own title and plot. In the novel, the author used the "ring composition". It begins in the middle of events and reaches the ordinary, non-heroic death of the hero. After that, the events are described from their beginning to the middle. The peculiarity of the composition also lies in the fact that the action of the novel begins in the fortress and ends in it. We know that Pechorin leaves the fortress for St. Petersburg, and then for Persia, but in the plot he returns to the fortress again. Lermontov builds his novel in the form of two parts that oppose each other and at the same time are interconnected. In the first part, the hero is characterized from the outside, and in the second part, his image is revealed from the inside. The composition of the image of the main character is also peculiar. The author introduces his hero to us gradually, revealing all his new features. In "Bel" Maxim Maksimych tells about him, a decent man, but a simple one. For him, Pechorin is a mystery, since he has not yet met representatives of high society with a broken psyche. The content of the next story lifts the veil of mystery over the personality of the protagonist a little more. Only Pechorin's diary, his confession, finally gives an idea of the true thoughts and feelings of this controversial hero.

The writer shows his hero not as he grows up, but in various situations with different people. Younger or older hero in this or that story is not of fundamental importance for the overall goal of Lermontov. The main thing for the author is to show the world of Pechorin's feelings, to reveal his moral attitudes. Moreover, Pechorin is an established person, he does not change in the course of the story, since he does not draw conclusions from what is happening to him. He is selfish and will never change, because he cannot be critical of himself. He is also incapable of loving anyone but himself. Lermontov turned out not a biography novel, but a portrait novel, and a portrait of the soul, and not of appearance. The author was interested in the moral changes that occurred with people of the generation of the 1930s, for whom time stopped in the era of total prohibitions and suppression.

Thus, Lermontov's novel is distinguished by a violation of the chronological sequence of events and by the fact that the narrator changes several times in the course of the story. This made the work original, innovative and allowed the author to penetrate deeply into the spiritual world of his hero.

When the novel was just published, critics and ordinary readers had a lot of questions that related to the compositional division of this work. We will try to consider the main of these issues.

Why was the chronology of the presentation of the episodes of the main character's life broken?

The novel "A Hero of Our Time" ends with the part "Fatalist", which tells about a private episode from the life of Pechorin.

What is the relationship between plot and plot in a novel?

How does the compositional division of a work help to reveal the image of the protagonist?

In the second part of "Maxim Maksimovich" we meet a more detailed description of the personality of the protagonist. Pechorin is described through the eyes of the narrator. Readers get an idea of the character's appearance and behavior. The romantic halo around Grigory Alexandrovich flutters completely.

Artwork test

GOOU "Nenets secondary boarding school

them. A.P. Pyrerki"

Features of the composition of the novel

"Hero of our time".

(abstract on literature)

Naryan-Mar-2009

Plan

I Introduction

II main part

III Conclusion.

Introduction

Composition is one of the most important means by which the writer invents the phenomena of life that interest him in the way he understands them, and characterizes the characters in the work.

The ideological task of the author also determined the peculiar construction of the novel. Its peculiarity is the violation of the chronological sequence of events, which is described in the novel. The novel consists of five parts, five stories, each with its own genre, its own plot and its own title.

"Maxim Maksimych"

"Taman"

"Princess Mary"

"Fatalist"

The hero who unites all these stories into something whole, into a single novel, is Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin. If you arrange the story of his life, invented in the novel, in a certain sequence, you get the following.

A former guards officer, transferred to the Caucasus for some reason, Pechorin goes to the place of his punishment. On the way, he calls in Taman. Here an adventure happened to him, which is told in the story "Taman".

From here he comes to Pyatigorsk ("Princess Mary"). For a duel with Grushnitsky, he was exiled to serve in the fortress. During his service in the fortress, the events told in the stories "Bela" and "The Fatalist" take place. Several years pass. Pechorin, retired, leaves for Persia. On the way there, he meets for the last time with Maxim Maksimych ("Maxim Maksimych").

The layout of the parts of the novel should be like this:

"Taman"

"Princess Mary"

"Fatalist"

"Maxim Maksimych"

And I wanted to figure out why M.Yu. Lermontov built his novel in a completely different way, why he arranged the chapters in a completely different order, what goals the author set for himself, what is the idea of the novel.

Compositional and artistic originality of the novel "A Hero of Our Time"

In 1839, Mikhail Lermontov's story Bela was published in the third issue of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. Then, in the eleventh issue, the story "The Fatalist" appeared, and in the second book of the magazine for 1840 - "Taman". In the same 1840, three short stories already known to the reader, telling about various episodes in the life of a certain Pechorin, were published as chapters of the novel A Hero of Our Time. Criticism greeted the new work ambiguously: a sharp controversy ensued. Along with the stormy enthusiasm of the "frantic Vissarion" - Belinsky, who called Lermontov's novel a work that represents "absolutely new world art", who saw in him "deep knowledge of the human heart and modern society", "richness of content and originality", the voices of critics who absolutely did not accept the novel sounded in the press. truly Russian" Maxim Maksimych. It is significant that Emperor Nicholas I also appreciated the "Hero ..." in exactly the same way. ". However, later discovering his mistake, he was very indignant at the author. The reaction of criticism forced Lermontov to supplement the novel with the author's preface and the preface to Pechorin's Journal during the reprint. Both of these prefaces play an important, defining role in the work: they reveal the author's position as voluminously as possible and give the key to unraveling Lermontov's method of cognition of reality.The compositional complexity of the novel is inextricably linked but with the psychological complexity of the image of the protagonist.

The ambiguity of Pechorin's character, the inconsistency of this image was revealed not only in the study of his spiritual world itself, but also in the correlation of the hero with other characters. The author forces the reader to constantly compare the main character with those around him. Thus, a compositional solution of the novel was found, according to which the reader gradually approaches the hero.

Having first published three short stories, which in the final version of the novel were not even the chapters of one part, Lermontov “made an application” for a work that was related in genre to Eugene Onegin. In "Dedication" Pushkin called his novel "a collection of motley chapters." This emphasized the dominance of the author's will in the presentation of events: the narrative is subject not only and not so much to the sequence of what is happening, but to its significance; episodes are chosen not according to the sharpness of the plot collisions, but according to the psychological richness. Conceived by Lermontov as a "long chain of stories," the novel assumed the same artistic task as Pushkin's. And at the same time, "A Hero of Our Time" creates in Russian literature a special, completely new type of novel, easily and organically combining the features of traditional novel genres (moral, adventurous, personal) and features of "small genres" that are widespread in Russian literature in 1930s: travel essay, bivouac story, secular story, Caucasian short story. As B. Eikhenbaum noted, "A Hero of Our Time was a way out of these small genres on the way to the genre of the novel that unites them."

The composition of the novel is subject to the logic of revealing the image of the protagonist. V. Nabokov in his "Preface to" A Hero of Our Time "wrote about the location of the short stories: "In the first two - "Bela" and "Maxim Maksimych" - the author, or, more precisely, the hero-narrator, an inquisitive traveler, describes his trip to the Caucasus along the Georgian Military Highway in 1837 or so. This is Narrator 1. Leaving Tiflis in a northerly direction, he meets an old warrior named Maxim Maksimych on the way. For some time they travel together, and Maxim Maksimych informs Narrator 1 about a certain Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, who, five years old, carrying military service in Chechnya, north of Dagestan, once kidnapped a Circassian woman. Maxim Maksimych is Narrator 2, and his story is called "Bela". On their next road trip ("Maxim Maksimych") Narrator 1 and Narrator 2 meet Pechorin himself. The latter becomes Narrator 3 - after all, three more stories will be taken from Pechorin's journal, which Narrator 1 will publish posthumously. The attentive reader will note that the whole trick of such a composition is to bring Pechorin closer to us over and over again, until, finally, he himself speaks to us, but by that time he will no longer be alive. In the first story, Pechorin is at a "second cousin" distance from the reader, since we learn about him from the words of Maxim Maksimych, and even in the transmission of Narrator 1. In the second story, Narrator 2, as it were, withdraws himself, and Narrator 1 gets the opportunity to see Pechorin with his own eyes. With what touching impatience Maxim Maksimych hurried to present his hero in kind. And here we have the last three stories; now that Narrator 1 and Narrator 2 have stepped aside, we find ourselves face to face with Pechorin.

Due to such a spiral composition, the time sequence appears to be blurred, as it were. The stories float, unfold before us, then everything is in full view, then as if in a haze, and then suddenly, retreating, they will reappear in a different perspective or lighting, just as a traveler sees from the gorge a view of the five peaks of the Caucasus Range. This traveler is Lermontov, not Pechorin. The five stories are arranged one after the other in the order in which events come to Narrator 1, but their chronology is different; in general it looks like this:

Around 1830, officer Pechorin, following official duty from St. Petersburg to the Caucasus to the active detachment, stops in the seaside town of Taman (a port separated from the northeastern tip of the Crimean peninsula by a narrow strait). The story that happened to him there is the plot of "Taman", the third story in the novel.

In the active detachment, Pechorin takes part in skirmishes with mountain tribes and after a while, on May 10, 1832, he comes to rest on the waters, in Pyatigorsk. In Pyatigorsk, as well as in Kislovodsk, a nearby resort, he becomes a participant in the dramatic events that lead to the fact that on June 17 he kills an officer in a duel. He tells about all this in the fourth story - "Princess Mary".

On June 19, by order of the military command, Pechorin is transferred to a fortress located in the Chechen Territory, in the northeastern part of the Caucasus, where he arrives only in the fall (the reasons for the delay are not explained). There he meets staff captain Maxim Maksimych. Narrator 1 learns this from Narrator 2 in "Bel", which begins the novel.

In December of the same year (1832), Pechorin left the fortress for two weeks for a Cossack village north of the Terek, where the story he described in the fifth, last story, “The Fatalist,” happened.

In the spring of 1833, he kidnaps a Circassian girl, who, four and a half months later, is killed by the robber Kazbich. In December of the same year, Pechorin leaves for Georgia and soon returns to St. Petersburg. We will find out about this in "Bel".

About four years pass, and in the fall of 1837, Narrator 1 and Narrator 2, on their way north, make a stop in Vladikavkaz and there they meet Pechorin, who is already back in the Caucasus, on his way to Persia. This is told by Narrator 1 in "Maxim Maksimych", the second story in the cycle.

In 1838 or 1839, returning from Persia, Pechorin dies under circumstances that may have confirmed the prediction that he would die as a result of an unhappy marriage.

Narrator 1 posthumously publishes his journal, received from Narrator 2. Narrator 1 mentions the death of the hero in his preface (1841) to Pechorin's Journal, which contains Taman, Princess Mary, and Fatalist. Thus, the chronological sequence of five stories, if we talk about their connection with Pechorin's biography, is as follows: "Taman", "Princess Mary", "Fatalist", "Bela", "Maxim Maksimych". It is unlikely that in the process of working on "Bela" Lermontov already had an established plan for "Princess Mary". The details of Pechorin's arrival at the Kamenny Brod fortress, reported by Maxim Maksimych in "Bel", do not quite coincide with the details mentioned by Pechorin himself in "Princess Mary" In the first part, we see Pechorin through the eyes of Maxim Maksimych. This person is sincerely attached to Pechorin, but spiritually deep alien to him. They are separated not only by the difference in social status and age. They are people of fundamentally different types of consciousness and children of different eras. For the staff captain, an old Caucasian who began his service under General Yermolov and who forever preserved the "Yermolovsky" outlook on life, his young a friend is an alien phenomenon, strange and inexplicable. Therefore, in the story of Maxim Maksimych, Pechorin appears as a mysterious, enigmatic person: "After all, there are, really, such people whose family is written that various unusual things must happen to them! "What can explain this maxim to the reader? Nothing, except that Maxim Maksimych Pechorin does not understand and does not particularly strive to understand, loving him osto as "nice little".

Maxim Maksimych was not chosen by chance as the first narrator. His image is one of the most important in the novel, because this human type is very characteristic of Russia in the first half of the last century. Under the conditions of the Caucasian war, a new type of "Russian Caucasian" was formed - most often these were people like Yermolov, who put the law of strength and power above all else, and their subordinates - kind, sincere and non-judgmental warriors. This type is embodied in the image of Maxim Maksimych. We must not forget that the Caucasus was called "warm Siberia", and objectionable people were exiled there to the active army - in particular, many Decembrists. Young people also traveled to the Caucasus in a thirst to visit the "real business", they aspired to go there as to an exotic wonderland, to the land of freedom ...

All these features of the Caucasus are present in Lermontov's novel: we see everyday scenes as well as exotic ones; before us flash images of "fabulous" highlanders and ordinary, familiar to all habitues of secular living rooms. One way or another, they are all akin to Pechorin: there is something of a Circassian in him (remember his crazy horseback ride through the mountains without a road after the first meeting with Vera!); he is natural in the circle of Princess Ligovskaya. The only person with whom Pechorin has nothing in common is Maxim Maksimych. People of different generations, different eras and different types of consciousness; the staff captain and Pechorin are absolutely alien to each other. That is why Maxim Maksimych remembered his long-time subordinate, because he could not understand, unravel him. In the story of Maxim Maksimych, Pechorin appears as a romantic hero, meeting with whom became one of the brightest events in his life; while for Pechorin both the staff captain himself and the story with Bela are just an episode among others. Even at a chance meeting, when Maxim Maksimych is ready to throw himself into his arms, Pechorin has nothing to talk about with him: remembering Bela is painful, there is nothing to tell an old friend ... "I have to go, Maxim Maksimych." So, from the short story "Bela" (by the way, written later than others), we learn about the existence of a certain Pechorin - the hero of a romantic story with a Circassian woman. Why did Pechorin need Bela; why, having barely won her love, he is bored and languishing; why he rushed to beat her off Kazbich (after all, he fell out of love!); what tormented him at the bedside of the dying Bela, and why did he laugh when the kindest Maxim Maksimych tried to console him? All these questions remain unanswered; in Pechorin - everything is a mystery, the reader is free to explain the behavior of the hero to the best of his own imagination. In the chapter "Maxim Maksimych" the veil of secrecy begins to lift.

The place of the narrator is taken by the staff captain's former listener, a traveling officer. AND to the mysterious hero The "Caucasian short story" is given some living features, its airy and mysterious image begins to take on flesh and blood. The wandering officer does not just describe Pechorin, he gives a psychological portrait. He is a man of the same generation and probably close circle. If Maxim Maksimych was horrified when he heard from Pechorin about the boredom that tormented him: "... my life becomes emptyer day by day ...", then his listener accepted these words without horror, as quite natural: "I answered that there are many people who say the same thing; that there are probably those who tell the truth ... "And therefore, for the officer-narrator, Pechorin is much closer and more understandable; he can explain a lot in the hero: both "spiritual storms", and "some secrecy", and "nervous weakness". So the mysterious, unlike anyone else, Pechorin becomes a more or less typical person of his time, in his appearance and behavior general patterns. And yet the riddle does not disappear, the "oddities" remain. The narrator will note Pechorin's eyes: "they did not laugh when he laughed!" In them, the narrator will try to guess "a sign - either of an evil right, or of deep permanent sadness"; and will be amazed at their brilliance: "it was a brilliance like the brilliance of smooth steel, dazzling, but cold ... That is why the traveler is so happy when he gets Pechorin's notes:" I grabbed the papers and quickly took them away, fearing that the captain would not repent. The preface to Pechorin's Journal, written on behalf of the narrator, explains his interest in this person.

He speaks of the infinite importance of studying the "history of the human soul", of the need to understand the true reasons for the motives, actions, character of a person: "... and maybe they will find justification for the actions that they have been accused of so far ..." All this is a preface confirms the spiritual closeness of the narrator and the hero, their belonging to the same generation and the same human type: remember, for example, the narrator’s reasoning about the “artful insincerity of a true friend”, which turns into “inexplicable hatred, which, lurking under the guise of friendship, awaits only the death or misfortune of a beloved subject to burst over his head with a hail of reproaches, advice, ridicule and regrets. How close these words are to the bitter thoughts of Pechorin himself about friendship, how they explain his conviction "I am not capable of friendship"!

The narrator's opinion about Pechorin is expressed unambiguously: "My answer is the title of this book." This is also the explanation of his intense interest in the hero: before us is not only a peculiar person, typical of his era. The hero of time is a personality formed by a given age, and in no other era such a person could have appeared. All the features, all the advantages and disadvantages of his time are concentrated in him. In the preface to the novel, Lermontov polemically states: "The hero of our time, my gracious sirs, is like a portrait, but not of one person: it is a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development." But he does not create his novel of "caustic truths" in order to castigate vices: he brings a mirror to society so that people see themselves, look into their own faces, try to understand themselves. This is the main task of Lermontov's novel. No matter how close Pechorin is to the narrator, he cannot fully understand him. For a complete, deep understanding, Pechorin must speak about himself. And two-thirds of the novel is his confession.

It is important that Pechorin, in no way being Lermontov's self-portrait ("An old and ridiculous joke!" - the preface says about such an interpretation), is often infinitely close to the author in his assessments, emotions, reasoning. This creates a special sense of the common fate of the people of the Lermontov generation. As in the "Duma", the poet, feeling himself within the generation, sharing his guilt and fate, with his understanding of the common tragedy, furious indignation and all the bitterness of reflections, goes out of the general mass, rises above it - to unattainable heights of the spirit.

The composition of Pechorin's Journal is very peculiar. It's like a novel within a novel.

The first short story "Taman" is a single story about the incident that happened to the hero. It outlines the main motives of the entire "journal": Pechorin's desire for active action; "curiosity", pushing him to put "experiments" on himself and others, to interfere in matters that do not concern him; his reckless courage and romantic attitude. And - the main thing! - the desire to understand what drives people, to identify the motives of their actions, to comprehend their psychology. We still do not understand why he needs this, but his behavior in the story with Bela is already becoming clearer to us.

"Princess Mary" is built from diary entries - this is an almost daily chronicle of Pechorin's life. He describes the events of the day. But not only and not so much of them. Please note: Pechorin is not at all interested in "general questions". We learn little about Pyatigorsk, about the public, about the events in the country, in the town itself, about the course of hostilities (and newcomers probably arrive every day - and tell!). Pechorin writes about his thoughts, feelings, his behavior and actions. If Grushnitsky had not been his former acquaintance, Pechorin would not have paid attention to him, but, forced to renew his acquaintance, he bursts out in the journal with a caustic epigram on Grushnitsky himself and those like him. But Dr. Werner Pechorin is interesting: this is a special human type, in some ways close to him, in many ways alien. At the sight of the charming Princess Mary, Pechorin begins to talk about legs and teeth, and the appearance of Vera, with her deep, tragic love, makes him suffer. See the pattern? Pechorin is not interested in playing the role of "disappointed", through and through imitative Grushnitsky, and at first the usual Moscow young lady Mary Ligovskaya is not interested either. He is looking for original, natural and deep natures, exploring, analyzing them, just as he explores his own soul. For Pechorin, like the officer-narrator, like the author of the novel himself, believes that "the history of the human soul ... is almost more curious and more useful than the history of a whole people ..."

But it’s not enough for Pechorin to simply observe the characters: life in its everyday, unhurried flow provides not enough food for thought. Was the naive Maksim Maksimych right, who considered Pechorin to be a "sort of" person, who "has written in his family that various unusual things should happen to him"? Of course no. The point is not that Pechorin is destined for various adventures - he creates them for himself, constantly actively interfering in his own destiny and in the lives of those around him, changing the course of things in such a way that it leads to an explosion, to a collision. So it was in "Bel", when he abruptly changed the fate of the girl, Aroma, their father, Kazbich, weaving their paths into an unthinkable ball. So it was in "Taman", where he intervened in the life of "honest smugglers", in "Princess Mary" ...

Everywhere, Pechorin not only changes and complicates the lives of those around him. He introduces into their fates his trouble, his thoughtlessness and craving for the destruction of the House - a symbol of peaceful life, non-participation in the common fate, shelter from the winds of the era. Deprives Bela of her home - her love does not allow her to return to her father; makes him run away from home, fearing parental anger, Aroma; makes "honest smugglers" abandon their shelter and sail into the unknown; destroys the possible homes of Grushnitsky and Mary ... Spiritual restlessness, eternal search, a thirst for true life and true activity lead Pechorin on and on, do not allow him to stop, close in the circle of family and loved ones, doom him to thoughtlessness and eternal wandering. The motive for the destruction of the House is one of the main ones in the novel: the appearance of a "hero of time", a person who embodied all the features of the era, creates an "explosion situation" - makes people feel all the tragedy of the century, because in the face of the general laws of time, a person is defenseless. Pechorin tests these laws on himself and on those around him. Pushing people against each other and with their destinies, he makes their souls manifest themselves in full, absolutely open up: love, hate, suffer - live, and not run away from life. And in these people, in their souls and destinies, Pechorin seeks to unravel their true destiny.

The story "The Fatalist", which concludes Pechorin's Journal, concentrates the main philosophical problems of the novel: the role of fate in a person's life and the opposition of individual human will to it. But "the main task of the chapter is not a philosophical discussion in itself, but the determination of Pechorin's character in the course of this discussion"

In conclusion, I would like to quote the words of V. G. Belinsky from the article “A Hero of Our Time”

I have placed in this book only what related to Pechorin's stay in the Caucasus; I still have a thick notebook in my hands, where he tells his whole life. Someday she will appear at the judgment of light; but now I dare not assume this responsibility for many important reasons.

We thank the author for the pleasant promise, but we doubt that he will fulfill it: we are firmly convinced that he parted with his Pechorin forever. This conviction is confirmed by the confession of Goethe, who says in his notes that, having written "Werther", which was the fruit of a difficult state of his spirit, he freed himself from it and was so far from the hero of his novel that it was ridiculous for him to see how he left his ardent youth is crazy ... such is the noble nature of the poet, with his own strength he breaks out of every moment of limitation and flies to new, living phenomena of the world, into the full glory of creation ... objecting his own suffering, he is freed from it; translating the dissonances of his spirit into poetic sounds, he again enters his native sphere of eternal harmony ... if Mr. Lermontov fulfills his promise, then we are sure that he will introduce Pechorin, who is no longer old and familiar to us, about whom there is still a lot to say. Perhaps he will show it to us reformed, recognizing the laws of morality, but, surely, no longer as a consolation, but to the greater chagrin of moralists; maybe he will force him to recognize the rationality and bliss of life, but in order to make sure that this is not for him, that he has lost a lot of strength in the terrible struggle, has become hardened in it and cannot make this rationality and bliss his property ... And it may be that: he will make him a participant in the joys of life, a triumphant winner over the evil genius of life ... But one or the other, and, in any case, redemption will be completely through one of those women whose existence Pechorin so stubbornly did not want to believe, based not on his inner contemplation, but on the poor experiences of his life ... This is what Pushkin did with his Onegin: the woman he rejected resurrected him from mortal sleep for a wonderful life, but not in order to give him happiness, but in order to to punish him for not believing in the mystery of love and life and in the dignity of a woman.

List of used literature

1. Belinsky V.G. "A Hero of Our Time": M. Lermontov's Works. Belinsky V.G. Articles about Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol - M. 1983.

2. Gerstein E. The fate of Lermontov M.1986

3. Korovin V.I. The creative path of Lermontov M 1973

4. Manuilov V.A. Roman M.Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time": Commentary. 2nd ed. add. - L., 1975.

5. Mikhailova E. Lermontov's prose. - M., 1975

6. Udodova V.T. Roman M.Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time". - M., 1989.

The unusual composition of the novel is the hero of our time. Features of the composition of the novel "A Hero of Our Time" by M. Lermontov. Why was the chronology of the presentation of the episodes of the life of the protagonist violated

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