AUTHOR, NARRATOR, HERO IN M.YU. LERMONTOV’S NOVEL A HERO OF OUR TIME: NARRATIVE POETICS

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the correlation between the figures of the real author and the fictional author-narrator in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov A Hero of Our Time. It is shown that as a result of the inclusion in the text of the second edition of the novel (1841) of the author’s preface, containing Lermontov’s polemic with the reviewers of the first edition, there was an interference of the “I” of the real creator of the work and the “I” of the fictional author, to whom the stories Bela, Princess Mary and the preface to the diary of the protagonist are attributed. It is significant that some of the biographical features of Lermontov and the fictional author coincide, and the two prefaces overlap. Thanks to all this, the effect of a non-trivial literary game arose, based on the illusion of the authenticity of the events set forth in the novel: the real author seems to get acquainted with Pechorin. This game is fundamentally different from the Sternian play and violation of the boundaries of the real and the fictional in A.S. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, whose main characters are represented both by real persons and creations of the author’s imagination. Unlike Pushkin and many contemporary Russian prose writers, Lermontov does not expose, but, on the contrary, hides the fictional, purely literary nature of his narrative. At the same time, the creator of A Hero of Our Time does not resort to literary hoax, does not directly try to pass off either the first-level narrator or Pechorin as the real authors of the novel or part of it. The story of A. von Chamisso The Extraordinary Story of Peter Schlemil could serve as a model for such a game, in which the central character, who tells a fantastic story of the events of his life, is an acquaintance of the author and his real-life friends.