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The Cooling of Pechorin: The Skull Beneath the Skin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Richard Gregg
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Extract

Since Viktor Shklovskii first made the distinction, critics of fictional forms who invoke the concepts of siuzhet and fabula have been prone to exalt the former at the expense of the latter. The preference is hardly surprising. The fabula is after all an abstraction. It designates the narrative in its raw or pre-aesthetic form from which the finished artistic product (siuzhet) is ultimately shaped. And it is a simple matter of definition that the literary critic must be primarily concerned with the literary artifact rather than its ingredients.

If the priority is legitimate, its implications should not be misunderstood. For fabula and siuzhet are not, after all, inimical or competing concepts. Our apprehension of the one stems directly from our experience of the other. True, a triumphantly ingenious manipulator of the stuff of fiction (a Sterne, a Joyce, a Nabokov) may create a nonlinear siuzhet of such kaleidescopic and multilayered complexity that our perception of the events as they are supposed “actually” to have occurred may become blurred.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , Fall 1984 , pp. 387 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1984

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References

1. Shklovskii, Viktor, Literatura i kinematograf (Berlin, 1923), pp. 33–52 Google Scholar.

2. The only exception to this statement which I know is Turner's, C. J. Pechorin: An Essay on Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (Birmingham, 1978)Google Scholar, in which the author observes of the protagonist in “Taman ”': “If it be recognized that [he] differs from the Pechorin of other stories it is well to remind ourselves that Taman” represents the earliest stage of the fable. What we see here is a younger Pechorin, a less practiced player in the game of his life, and a less analytical introvert” (p. 24). While it would be possible to see the present article as an elaborate expansion of Turner's short, shrewd aperçu, actually his monograph came into my hands after the completion of this essay

3. Nabokov, Vladimir, “Translator's Foreword,” A Hero of Our Time, by Lermontov, Mihail(Garden City, 1958), pp. viii–ix Google Scholar. My agreement with Nabokov here must not preclude my calling attention to two questions raised by his chronological reconstruction. The first: what are the grounds for supposing that “Taman “’ occurred at least two years before “Princess Mary “? The second: why must we suppose that “The Fatalist” occurred before and not after “Bela “? Since Nabokov did not spell out his reasons (perhaps because he thought they were self-evident), I will take the liberty of offering my own.

To the first question the answer is, I believe, simply that, although it is a part of “Pechorin's Journal,” “Taman “’ is, unlike Princess Mary, not written in diary form. Rather it is an anecdote out of Pechorin's past. More specifically it is his retrospective glance on that period of his life which in Russian is called iunost’ (witness the words: “la szhal ee v moikh ob “iatiakh so vseiu siloiu iunosheskoi strasti.” Lermontov, Mikhail, Geroi nashego vremeni [Moscow, 1962], p. 49 Google Scholar). Now since theword iunost’ denotes an immature young man (late teens, early twenties), and since the Pechorin ofthe “Caucasian Trio” is about twenty-five (he is given exactly that age when he arrives at Fortress N.in “Bela “) we may fairly assume that at least two years separate the mature man from the iunosha of “Taman'.”

My reasons for thinking that “The Fatalist” chronologically precedes “Bela” are of a psychological order. Both stories unfold near Fortress N. where Pechorin has been exiled after his duel. Neither story contains any reference to events which occur in the other; so direct evidence is lacking. On the other hand we are told in “Bela” that Pechorin was sickly and thin “for a long time” after Bela's death. And the same source tells us that three months after that event Pechorin left the fort for Georgia. Clearly then Pechorin was for the last months of his sojourn troubled by feelings of remorse. But the image of the hero in “The Fatalist” is of a cocky young man who is maintaining a casual liaison with the pretty daughter of a local uriadnik. Of remorse or ill health there is not the slightest hint. Since it is virtually impossible to reconcile these acts and attitudes with the mental state implied in “Bela,” we must assume that the events recorded in “The Fatalist” occurred before, not after, the death of the heroine. Somewhat surprisingly Boris Eikhenbaum, probably the most eminent Soviet authority on Lermontov, basing his opinion, presumably, on the fact that Lermontov wrote “Bela” before “The Fatalist,” places the former before the latter. Eikhenbaum's discussion of the chronology of the various episodes may be found in Geroi nashego vremeni, ed. B. M. Eikhenbaum and E. E. Naidich (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo akademii nauk SSR, 1962), pp. 130–31. The footnotes in this article refer to this edition of the novel

4. The novel is replete with references to this emotional cooling process. Limiting myself to “Princess Mary” alone, I will cite: “I have already passed that period of the soul's life when oneseeks only happiness, when the heart feels the necessity to love strongly and passionately” (ibid.,p. 65). Of the feelings which his encounter with Vera elicits Pechorin writes: “Could it be that my youth with its beneficial storms wants to return?” (ibid., p. 66). Of that same woman's look of love: “I am [by now] used to such glances. But once they made my bliss” (ibid., p. 73). And a passage too long to quote dilates on the gradual metamorphosis of the youthful man of passion into the mature man of intellect (ibid., pp.76–77).

5. Ibid., p. 28.

6. Ibid., pp. 126–29.

7. At the outset of the story Pechorin, impatient with the local official who is unable to find him lodgings, cries: “Take me somewhere, you rascal! Even to the Devil, but somewhere!” (ibid.,p. 43). Near the end he roughs up and curses his Cossack batman for failing to protect his belongings (ibid., p. 51).

8. Ibid., p. 48.

9. Ibid., p. 50.

10. Ibid., p. 73.

11. This point has been well made by Peace, R. A. in “The Role of Taman” in Lermontov's Geroi nashego vremeni,” The Slavonic and East European Review, 45 (1967): 12–29 Google Scholar

12. I have in mind remarks like “in the olden days [such loving glances] played so despotically with my life” (Lermontov, Geroi, p. 48)—although Pechorin is no more than twenty-three at the time and is, as his behavior in the story demonstrates, anything but immune to the charm of such glances. The concluding sentence of the tale, implying a blasé indifference to the joys and sorrows of mankind (ibid., p. 51)—also belied by the hero's own actions—is another example of this somewhat sophomoric Byronism.

13. See n. 5.

14. Lermontov, Geroi, p. 75.

15. In contrast to the need to love another which he had felt in former times, he declares in “Princess Mary “: “Now I only want to be loved” (ibid., p. 65; emphasis added). Elsewhere he speaks of the “strange need of my heart,” which can never have its fill of “the feelings, tenderness, joys, and sufferings” of those whom he loved (ibid., p. 96). As Vera notes knowingly in her farewell letter, “No one is capable of desiring so constantly to be loved [as you]” (ibid., p. 105).

16. Ibid., p. 106.

17. Ibid., p. 61. Emphasis added.

18. Ibid., p. 75.

19. In “Princess Mary “: “There is no man in the world over whom the past has acquired such power as it has over me” (ibid., p. 61).

20. Concerning this violent outburst Pechorin comments: “It pleases me … that I am capableof weeping” (ibid., p. 106). In the light of his repeated statements that his emotional faculties are drying up this statement clearly implies that he fears that he will lose this capacity.

21. I have in mind his inability to weep at Bela's deathbed, about which later.

22. Ibid., p. 112.

23. It is in no way to impugn Pechorin's indubitable courage on this occasion to point out thatthere are other, more reasonable, and less risky, ways to smoke out an armed and desperate Cossack than to leap head first through the window of his hut and try to disarm him singlehandedly.

24. The comparison is Pechorin's own: “U menia v golove promel'knula strannaia mysl': podobno Vulichu ia vzdumal ispytat’ sud'bu” (ibid., p. 117).

25. Ibid., p. 114.

26. If any proof were needed that the native Circassians were victims of a “double standard” vis-à-vis the tsarist law enforcement agents, one need only ask if the authorities would have stoodidly by had Pechorin engineered the abduction of a Russian princess.

27. Ibid., p. 17.

28. This not unimportant distinction has sometimes been obscured by a faulty English translation.Pechorin is, however, perfectly explicit on the point: “Kogda ia uvidel Belu v svoem dome, kogda v pervyi raz, derzha ee na koleniakh, tseloval ee chernye lokony, ia glupets, dumal chto onaangel, poslannyi mne sostradatel'noi sud'boiu” (ibid., p. 28). The key word here is svoem, which according to the rules of Russian grammar can only be translated “my,” not “her.” Nabokov, asusual, has it right.

29. This of course does not mean that the story itself is free of irony. On the contrary, as R. A. Peace ( “The Role of‘Taman “ “) and others have noted, in terms of the siuzhet the entire tale is an excellent example of romantic irony: the swaggering lady-killer of “Bela” is shown up as a callow youth, who in fact is very nearly killed by a “lady. “

30. Ibid., p. 50.

31. Ibid., p. 59.

32. Ibid., p. 60.

33. Ibid., p. 104.

34. Ibid., p. 114.

35. See n. 5.

36. I exclude from this compositional breakdown the first five hundred words, which are basically “functional” or documentary in nature, describing as they do the circumstances leading up tothe second fortuitous encounter of the narrator and Maksim Maksimich.

37. Lermontov, Geroi, pp. 36–38.

38. This aspect of the portrait has been singled out and discussed by Vinogradov, V V. in his “Stil' prozy Lermontova,” Literaturnoe nasledstovo, 43–44 (1941): 596–97Google Scholar.

39. This does not mean, of course, that all the positive traits are bunched at the beginning of the portrait and all the negative aspects at the end. Rather Lermontov orchestrates his presentation in such a way that as a rule each negative detail follows—sometimes immediately, sometimes at a distance with other details intervening—its positive counterpart. Symbolically stated the pattern istherefore not: A, B, C, D, E/a, b, c, d, e (with the capital letter standing for the positive aspect,the lower-case letter for its negative counterpart), but rather something like: A, a, B, C, b, D, d,c, E, e.

40. This is the only exception to the “rule” that the negative qualification always follows theaffirmative statement. Since both the affirmation and the qualification are contained in a single,short sentence, however, the undercutting effect to which I refer is not wholly lost. Essentially the overall effect of the sentence is very similar to: “When he smiled his eyes did not. “

41. Lermontov, Geroi, p. 39.

42. Ibid., p. 42.

43. Ibid., p. 77.

44. This argument is open to the obvious objection that since much of Pechorin's journal remains unpublished, according to its editor, we cannot know whether these allegedly unpublished parts do not “cover” precisely those hiatuses from which I have just inferred a possible diminution in Pechorin's journalistic activity. But the fact that the evidence in question is allegedly fragmentary does not prevent us from drawing tentative conclusions from the evidence which we do possess.

45. See n. 12.

46. Lermontov, Geroi, p. 39.

47. I have in mind chapter 16 entitled “The Quarrel,” in which the hero allows himself to be insulted by a stranger in a restaurant and then avenges his mortification by being aggressively rude to a friend, who, like him, swallows the insult without requital. In “Counterparts” Farrington receives a dressing down from his boss and then vents his humiliation by thrashing his small son.

48. Ibid., p. 41.

49. In “Bela” Pechorin tells Maksim Maksimich: “As soon as I can, I shall set out, but not for Europe—God forfend!—I shall go to America, to Arabia, to India—perhaps I will die somewhere on the way” (ibid., p. 28).

50. Ibid., p. 96.

51. Ibid., pp. 36–38.

52. Ibid., p. 39.

53. Ibid., p. 38.

54. I am, methodologically speaking, “cheating” here, since I am momentarily invoking the nonchronological siuzhet, which at the outset I proposed to avoid. But the two orders of experience are, as I have already noted, not mutually exclusive. Indeed one of my basic points has been that the reader simultaneously—though not to an equal degree—responds to both.

55. The most remarkable instance of this prophetic strain is the poem “The Dream” (1841), where the persona sees himself shot dead “in a dale in Dagestan.” Lermontov's death from a pistol wound in Piatigorsk followed only a few months later.

56. I have in mind the familiar apergu that the successive shifts in point of view (two removes in “Bela,” one remove in “Maksim Maksimich,” zero removes in “Taman “’) bring us progressively nearer to the hero and his inner world.