Mikhail Lermontov Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Priscilla Meyer

Critical Essay by Priscilla Meyer

SOURCE: "Lermontov's Reading of Pushkin: The Tales of Belkin and A Hero of Our Time," in The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Thought, edited by Derek Offord, St. Martin's Press, 1992, pp. 58-75.

In the following excerpt, Meyer maintains that Lermontov modeled A Hero of Our Time on Aleksandr Pushkin's Póvesti Békina (Tales of Belkin) story cycle.

In 1830 Lermontov wrote in his notebook: 'Our literature is so poor that I can't borrow anything from it'. The following year, Pushkin 'descended to humble prose', and published The Tales of Belkin (Póvesti Békina).

As many have shown, Lermontov was an attentive reader of current Russian literature. This study shows that, unlike others among Pushkin's contemporaries, who regarded his tales as frivolous, Lermontov studied them carefully, and, understanding them as a review of the materials available to Russian prose writers in 1831, structured his novel, A Hero of Our Time (Geroi...
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