"Moral cripple". Pathology of personality.

– The novel "A Hero of Our Time". 118

Perhaps the first who made an attempt to understand the novel culturally were Western literary critics. The novel did not arouse enthusiasm in them, for the same reason they failed to appreciate Pushkin: Lermontov in the novel is too European, not “Russian” enough, too universally human to “satisfy the spicy taste of Romanesque and Anglo-Saxon Russopaths”. 119 The novel, you see, criticized Russian specifics, which means that it is not interesting for a Western specialist. On the contrary, I see in the criticism of Russian culture the main merit of the novel and the greatest civic merit of the author. The novel captures with a deep minor key, some kind of doom, a sense of an impending catastrophe, from the first to the last line it is permeated by the melancholy of the author of the work. "It's boring to live in this world, gentlemen!" - as if these words are not spoken by Gogol. Lermontov, as a doctor, prescribes “bitter medicines” to society, as an analyst of culture pronounces “caustic truths,” and we see the suffering of a citizen poet. This is a novel-sentence to a Russian person who wants to feel like a person, but his attempt to rise above the generally accepted, to become something like the Don Quixote of Russian society, nothing but embarrassment comes out. This ugly attempt is followed by a trail of blood, a chain of shattered hopes, broken destinies, the hero's annoyance at himself - a moral cripple, a man "neither this nor that", his moral devastation, despair. Pechorin's self-analysis, aimed at seeing the personality in himself, reveals with boundless longing ... his inability to live, because the personality in Russia bears the features of social pathology. This conclusion is the main pathos of the novel "A Hero of Our Time". Lermontov's conclusion has general literary and general cultural significance. Pechorin is not just a hero of Russian society in the first third of the 19th century. He is a portrait of a man whom the world calls Russian. "Pechorin's disease". Confession of a "moral cripple". In the preface to the novel, Lermontov says that his book is a portrait of Russian society, but "a portrait made up of vices" and that "the disease is indicated" in the novel. What is this "disease"? Criticism of the Soviet period unanimously asserts that the novel contains criticism of the social order, the structure of Russian society that suppresses the individual, and that Pechorin is a victim of his imperfection, and the essence of the novel is to justify the need to free the Russian people from this oppression. Such a conclusion, at first glance, seems to be possible from Pechorin’s monologues, which often say “tired”, “boring”, “my life becomes emptier day by day”, “my soul is spoiled by light”. But this is only at first glance. The root cause of Pechorin's vices is in himself - what kind of person, such is the society that he forms and in which he lives. Pechorin points a magnifying glass at his soul, and before us is the confession of a Russian person - a moral cripple, revealing a clinical picture of his deformity. The essence of the disease is the absence of qualities that, starting from the gospel times, humanity, busy with the formation of personality, needs more and more. The "moral cripple" is a pathological split, a split between the understanding of the need to change and the inability to change oneself. An inferiority complex reigns in Pechorin, a conscious misleading of oneself and others, self-deception, it is dominated by what in this book is called social pathology. Pechorin is stuck in a state of "inseparability and incoherence." Hence indifference to life, contempt for people and oneself, inability to love, feel deeply, laugh, cry, inability to openness and friendship, envy, constant focus on conspiracies, intrigues, revenge, attempts to take revenge on the Other and on oneself for one’s inferiority, focus on self-destruction, death. V. G. Belinsky threw the concept of "Pechorin's disease" into public circulation. But then, in the 19th century, this concept reflected only a conjecture of literary criticism about some deep, albeit unclear, inferiority of the Russian people. The culturological methodology deployed in this book makes it possible to reveal the secret of Lermontov's logic of the analysis of Russian culture, to understand "Pechorin's disease" as a disease of Russia, and thus to see in the novel "A Hero of Our Time" not only a fact of literature, but a fact of culture. V. V. Afanasiev writes: “Lermontov ... collected in him (in Pechorin - A. D.) a lot of things that are found in the best people of his generation. Pechorin is a strong, deeply feeling, talented person, capable of much and much good, but ... he does not forgive people for imperfections and weaknesses and even seeks to put them on occasion in a position where these qualities would be revealed to the end ... And yet he does it (as in the case of Grushnitsky) with the hope that the person will change his mind and turn for the better. This is a character that can cause the most opposite feelings - sympathy or complete denial ... He is well educated, read a lot, and he has a philosophical mindset. In his journal there is a lot of subtle reasoning, revealing his familiarity with the works of many great thinkers. This is a modern Hamlet, in which there is as much mystery as in the hero of Shakespeare. 120 The religious critic Afanasyev in 1991, in essence, repeats what the non-religious populist V. G. Belinsky wrote about Pechorin more talentedly in 1841: “What a terrible person this Pechorin is! exclaims Belinsky. “Because his restless spirit demands movement, activity seeks food, his heart yearns for the interests of life, therefore the poor girl must suffer!” "Egoist, villain, monster, immoral person!" - strict moralists will shout in unison. Your truth gentlemen; but what are you fussing about? What are you angry about? Indeed, it seems to us that you have come to the wrong place, sat down at a table at which no instrument has been placed for you ... Do not come too close to this person, do not attack him with such passionate courage: he will look at you, smile, and you will condemned, and on your confused faces all will read your judgment. 121 No, gentlemen. Neither the bright assessment of the critic of the early 19th century, nor the tedious assessment of the critic of the late 20th - early 21st centuries. are not suitable today. Pechorin is sick, and his illness is progressing, he is decomposing. Enough to revere the talent, intelligence and education of Pechorin. Educated? But who is not educated today? Capable of subtle reasoning? Was not Dostoevsky's "little man" perishing in contradictions capable of deep and even very subtle reasoning? Talented? Wasn't Oblomov, dying and rotting on the couch, talented? But he himself said about himself that he was "ashamed to live." Smart? Weren't Pushkin's Captive, Aleko, Tsar Boris, Onegin, Salieri pathologically bifurcated, stuck in a moral impasse? Does he have a restless spirit, is he active, does he have an interested heart? Bearer of bold freedom? But the falcon, the petrel, the old woman Izergil and Pavel Gorky were the bearers of bold freedom. Everyone knows what came out of their Bolshevik freedom. Is there a lot of mystery in Pechorin, a lot of mystery? The answer to Belinsky-Afanasiev in a colorful and failed prophecy ... Belinsky himself: “In this man (Pechorin - A.D.) there is strength of mind, and the power of will, which you do not have; something great flashes in his very vices, like lightning in black clouds, and he is beautiful, full of poetry even in those moments when human feeling rises up against him ... He has a different purpose than you. His passions are storms that purify the realm of the spirit; his delusions, no matter how terrible they are, are acute illnesses in a young body, strengthening it for a long and healthy life. These are fevers and fevers, and not gout, not rheumatism and hemorrhoids, with which you poor people suffer so fruitlessly ... Let him slander the eternal laws of the mind, placing the highest happiness in saturated pride; let him slander human nature, seeing in it only egoism; let him slander himself, taking the moments of his spirit for its full development and mixing youth with manhood - let it! .. A solemn moment will come, and the contradiction will be resolved, the struggle will end, and the scattered sounds of the soul will merge into one harmonious chord! .. ". 122 The prophecy of the first Russian populist did not come true. The justification of the mysterious Russian soul did not take place. It was not possible to prove how good the mystery of this riddle is, how attractive its mystery is. Dynamics of Russian culture in the XIX-XXI centuries. showed that there was no fortitude or power of will in the human material called "Pechorin". The glimpse of something beautiful and great turned out to be a mirage, worthlessness, emptiness. "Harmonic chord" did not take place. The internal contradiction in Russian culture between the old and the new, statics and dynamics, tradition and innovation not only was not resolved, but turned into a split in society. Pechorin, the hero of two centuries, turned out to be an insignificant slave of his duality. The fact that from the first third of the XIX century. seemed promising, requiring faith, from the standpoint of the experience of the late XX-beginning of the XXI centuries. turns out to be a devastating "Pechorin's disease" that requires analysis. The enthusiastic lines of Belinsky, who carried out the populist order, are read today as naive, but honest. The boring lines of Afanasiev, who is fulfilling a religious order, are read as a farce, a lie and a deliberate misleading of the reader. In justifying Pechorin, do we not resemble a ruddy-faced tragic actor brandishing morality like a cardboard sword? How much can you repeat the fiction about the mystery and depth of Pechorin? Should we start talking about his inferiority complex, about the disintegration of his personality, about the social pathology of Russian society as a society of the Pechorins? However, Belinsky is right: one cannot approach the analysis of this image with the assessment of “immoral” and at the same time be unarmed. There is something fundamental in this image, but so far unnamed in criticism, not yet analyzed and therefore not understood, misunderstood, the analysis of which allows us to reasonably call Pechorin immoral. What? "Pechorin's disease" as a pathology. Inability to love.“Bela’s love was for Pechorin a full glass of sweet drink, which he drank at once, without leaving a drop in it; and his soul demanded not a glass, but an ocean from which one could draw every minute without reducing it ... ”, 123 - Belinsky writes about Pechorin’s love for Bela. And he clarifies: “A strong need for love is often mistaken for love itself, if an object is presented to which it can aspire.” 124 So, in Pechorin, according to Belinsky, there is a strong need for love, understood as the ability to drink to the last drop, to draw, to take without measure. But the need to love - is it just a need to take? Isn't it the other way around? Isn't love the result of a need, basically, to give, donate, sacrifice? The need to take, called love, is a way of destroying the ability to see the Other, to understand oneself through the Other, the ability to self-change, the formation of third meanings, dialogue, cultural synthesis, a qualitatively new development. The assessment of Pechorin's love has not changed much in the studies of Russian Lermontov scholars over the years since the publication of Belinsky's work. Whether Pechorin loved or, as Belinsky believes, only betrayed his need for love for love - this topic cannot simply be declared, the ability / inability of this character to love must be proved through an analysis of his culture. The beginning of my analysis is on the assumption that Pechorin is incapable of love. The method of analysis is based on Pechorin's own confessions. The task of analysis is to destroy the position of those who admire the "oceanic" scale of Pechorin's love, the depth of Pechorin's nature, or the hero's need to love, without bothering too much with understanding the logic of love as a cultural phenomenon. In all the plots of Pechorin's relationship with Bela, Vera, Princess Mary, with secular beauties, his "heart remained empty." Pechorin believes that he can afford to love only if others love him: "If everyone loved me, I would find endless sources of love in myself." Lermontov's analysis of Pechorin's ability to love makes one turn to the methodology of the logic of love in the Bible, because the similarity of the methodologies is obvious. In the Sermon on the Mount, the task is to change the emphasis in the relationship of love: a person should not just allow another to love him, not just be an object of love, but first of all love himself: “If you love those who love you, what thanks do you have? for even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? for sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what thanks do you have for that? for even sinners lend to sinners in order to get back the same amount. But you love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing”; 125 “If you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not the publicans do the same? 126 Pechorin brings back the formulation of the question of love in the pre-Jesus era: "I only want to be loved." "Only" is the key word here. Jesus' thought is directed against the Old Testament Pechorin's "only." Love is always a gift and to some extent a sacrifice. But Pechorin frankly admits that his love did not bring happiness to anyone, because he did not sacrifice anything for those whom he loved; he loved for himself, for his own pleasure; he only satisfied the strange need of the heart, greedily absorbing the feelings of women, their tenderness, their joys and sufferings - and could never get enough. The inability to love is not harmless. It's an incapacity-predator. Trampling openness, she laughs at the human. For Pechorin, there is immense pleasure in the possession of a young, barely blossoming soul. He, like a Vampire, appreciates the defenselessness of a soul that has fallen in love. Love is like an open flower, the best aroma of which evaporates towards the first ray of the sun; it must be torn off at that moment and, after breathing it to its fullest, throw it on the road: maybe someone will pick it up! Since Pechorin began to understand people, he has given them nothing but suffering. He looks at the sufferings and joys of others only as food that supports his spiritual strength. Pechorin's ambition is nothing more than a thirst for power, and his first pleasure is to subordinate everything that surrounds him to his will. To arouse in oneself a feeling of love, devotion and fear - isn't it the first sign and the greatest triumph of power? To be the cause of suffering and joy for someone, without having any right to it - is not this the sweetest food of pride? “What is happiness?” Pechorin asks himself. And he answers: "Intense pride." Pechorin despot. He admits: “She will spend the night without sleep and will cry. This thought gives me immense pleasure; there are moments when I understand the Vampire…”. Confessing his inability to love and enjoying the suffering of his victims, Pechorin, in his own way, answers the call of Jesus and Russian literature of the 18th century. "love one another." He is a principled opponent of the logic of the New Testament, he is closer to the emotions of the Vampire, Judas. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane - Judas: "Judas! Do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? 127 . A kiss, it turns out, can betray. Looks, promises, vows, touches, kisses, hugs, sex - all this Pechorin scornfully calls love, and betrays Bela, Vera, Mary with them. A bored pathologist, he enjoys detailed analysis of the agony of his victims. “Evil is not so attractive in anyone,” Vera says about Pechorin.

The tragedy of Pechorin (based on Lermontov's novel "A Hero of Our Time")

"Hero of our time"- one of the most outstanding works of Russian classical literature, and Pechorin - one of the brightest characters. Personality Pechorin ambiguous, it can be perceived in different ways: favorably or negatively. But in any case, this image is tragic.

The novel consists of five independent stories, each of which has its own title, plot and genre characteristics. What unites these works into a single whole is the main character, Pechorin, an extremely complex and contradictory nature. It is interesting that the compositional “evilness” of the work, and especially the fact that already in the middle of the novel the reader learns about the death of Pechorin, also emphasize the tragedy and unusual role of the protagonist .

In order to reveal his personality as deeply as possible, the author even uses a double narrative: in the first two parts, Maxim Maksimovich tells about Pechorin's life, in the last three we have the opportunity to hear the voice of Pechorin himself. It is interesting that the author in this part chooses the form of confession: his hero speaks to us from the pages of a personal diary. And such a technique helps to understand the riddle of the Pechorin character even deeper.

Drawing a portrait of Pechorin, the author notes the unusual features of his hero. Pechorin's eyes "did not laugh when he laughed." The author concludes: "This is a sign of either an evil character, or a deep constant amount." And already in these lines the key to revealing the image of the protagonist is given.

In my opinion, it is not by chance that the author gives a portrait of Pechorin only in the second part. Having begun the novel with Bella's tragic love for Pechorin, Lermontov gradually shifts his attention to the "passion for contradictions" and the split personality of the hero. This, in fact, led to such an ending.

Pechorin at first sincerely wanted to make Bela happy. However, he is simply not capable of long-term feelings, because the hero is not looking for love first, but for “cure” for boredom. Pechorin constantly wants something extraordinary, he is even ready to risk everything for the sake of fulfilling his whim. At the same time, he involuntarily destroys other people's destinies, and this contradiction of Pechorin reveals, as the author writes, the "illness" of a whole generation of that time.

All his life, Pechorin strove to become an integral nature, the way he was in his youth, when his life was drawn by its mystery. Having become "skillful in the art of life", Pechorin quickly became disillusioned with people, in life, social activities, and sciences. A feeling of despair and despondency arose in him, which the hero decided to hide from everyone. However, from himself, because in the diary he constantly resorts to analyzing his thoughts and experiences. Moreover, he does this in such detail and with such scientific interest, as if he is conducting some kind of experiment on himself.

He tries to understand himself, without making excuses and without hiding the reasons for his actions. Such ruthlessness to himself is a rare quality, but it is not enough to explain all the complexities of his nature.

It is interesting that for some reason Pechorin is inclined to blame society for his shortcomings. He says that the environment saw signs of “bad inclinations” in his face. That is why, Pechorin believes, they ended up in him. It doesn't even occur to him to blame himself.

Pechorin’s trouble is that he perfectly understands how to prevent suffering, and at the same time he never refuses satisfaction to deliberately torment others: “To be the cause of suffering and joy for someone, without having any right to it, is not sweet food for our pride? “Appearing in someone's life, Pechorin causes grief to everyone; smugglers run away, leaving an old and poor blind boy; Bella's father and Bella herself die; Azamat takes the path of crime; killed in a duel by Grushnitsky; Mary suffers; offended by Maxim Maksimovich; Vulich dies tragically.

Or evil Pechorin? Perhaps so. Angry and cruel, but above all - unhappy, lonely, mentally and physically exhausted. Is anyone to blame for this? Not at all.

After all, a serious enemy of every person is himself, and Pechorin, so deftly knows how to dominate others, play on their "weak strings", he is completely incapable of mastering himself.

Pechorin makes a terrible confession that the suffering and joy of other people "support his mental strength." And here we can conclude that the "half" of the soul, which was characterized by modesty, willingness to love the whole world, the desire to do good, simply evaporated, leaving only the ability to act.

Calling himself a “moral cripple,” Pechorin is, in fact, right: how else can you call a person deprived of the opportunity to live in full force and forced to be guided by the impulses of only one, not the best half of his soul? Interestingly, in a conversation with Werner, Pechorin admits: “I weigh, analyze my own desires and actions with strict curiosity, but without ardor ... There are two people in me: one lives in the full sense of the word, the other thinks and judges him ... "

And it is precisely that half of the soul that he considered destroyed is really alive. Contrary to his own convictions, Pechorin is capable of a sincere great feeling, but the love of a hero is complex. Why does he want Vera's love in the first place? In my opinion, he wanted first of all to prove to himself that he could overcome the inaccessibility of this woman. However, only when Pechorin realizes that he can lose forever the one who truly understood him, the feeling for Vera flares up with renewed vigor.

As you can see, constantly running away from the real himself, Pechorin still cannot do this to the end. And this is precisely the tragedy of this image: Pechorin suffers not only because of his shortcomings, but also his positive qualities, because every second he feels how much strength in him dies uselessly. In his devastated soul there is no strength for love, there is strength only for introspection and self-deception. Having not found the slightest meaning in life, Pechorin comes to the conclusion that his only purpose on earth is the destruction of the hopes of other people. Moreover, he grows cold even to his own death.

The deepening of the author into the inner world of the protagonist, finally, acquires a philosophical sound. This approach allows Lermontov to shed light on the question of a person's responsibility for his actions, the choice of a life path and morality in general.

What condemns and what justifies Lermontov in Pechorin (Option: The complexity and inconsistency of Pechorin's character)

Selfishness is suicide.

A proud man dries up like a lonely tree...

I. Turgenev

The strip that stretched from 1825 through the 30s and 40s of the 19th century turned out to be dead timelessness. Herzen was right when he said that "the future generation will stop more than once in bewilderment" in front of this "smoothly killed wasteland, looking for the lost paths of thought."

For the people of the epoch of Nicholas it was a very difficult task to keep faith in the future in spite of all the ugliness of real, daily impressions, to find the strength in themselves, if not for political struggle, then for active work.

The dominant type of that era was the type of personality known under the bitter name of the "extra person".

Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin belongs entirely to this type, which made it possible for Herzen to call the protagonist of Lermontov's novel "Onegin's younger brother."

Before us is a young man suffering from his restlessness, in despair asking himself questions: “Why did I live? For what purpose was I born? And, it’s true, it existed, and, it’s true, I had a high appointment, because I feel immense strength in my soul ... But I didn’t guess this appointment. He has not the slightest inclination to follow the beaten path of the worldly man. How fitting for a young man, he is an officer, he serves, but is by no means cured.

Pechorin is a victim of his hard time. But does Lermontov justify his actions, his mood? Yes and no. We cannot but condemn Pechorin for his attitude towards Bela, towards Princess Mary, towards Maxim Maksimych, towards Vera. But we cannot but sympathize with him when he caustically ridicules the aristocratic "water society", breaks the machinations of Grushnitsky and his friends. We cannot but see that he is head and shoulders above everyone around him, that he is smart, educated, talented, brave, energetic.

We are repelled by Pechorin's indifference to people, his inability to true love, to friendship, his individualism and egoism.

But Pechorin captivates us with a thirst for life, the ability to critically evaluate his actions. He is deeply unsympathetic to us with a waste of his strength, those actions that bring suffering to other people. But he himself suffers greatly. Therefore, Lermontov often justifies his hero.

The character of Pechorin is complex and contradictory. He is guided only by personal desires and aspirations, regardless of the interests of others. “My first pleasure is to subordinate everything that surrounds me to my will,” he says. Bela was ruined, Grushnitsky was killed, Mary's life was broken, Maxim Maksimych was offended. The hero of the novel says about himself: “There are two people in me. One lives in the full sense of the word, the other thinks and judges him. What are the reasons for this dichotomy? Who is to blame for the fact that the wonderful makings of Pechorin died? Why did he become a "moral cripple"? Lermontov answers this question with the whole course of the story. The society is to blame, the social conditions in which the hero was brought up and lived. “My colorless youth flowed in the struggle with myself and the light; my best feelings, fearing ridicule, I buried in the depths of my heart: they died there. I spoke the truth - they did not believe me: I began to deceive; knowing well the light and springs of society, I became skilled in the science of life ... ”, Pechorin admits. He learned to be secretive, vindictive, bilious, ambitious. His soul is "corrupted by the light." He is selfish.

But Belinsky also called Pushkin's hero "a suffering egoist" and "an egoist against his will." The same can be said about Pechorin. About Onegin, Belinsky wrote: "... The forces of this rich Naura were left without application, life without meaning, and the novel without end." And here is what he wrote about Pechorin: "... there is a difference in the roads, but the result is the same."

Pechorin is inherently disappointed in secular society. How caustic are the marks of the characteristics that he gives to representatives of the aristocratic society that has come to Pyatigorsk on the waters. These are societies of false people, rich and titled idlers, whose only interests are gossip, card games, intrigue, the pursuit of money, awards and entertainment. Among the "Moscow dandies" and fashionable "brilliant adjutants" stands out the figure of Grushnitsky. He is a clear antipode of Pechorin. If Pechorin attracts attention to himself, not at all caring about it, then Grushnitsky tries his best to “produce an effect”, for which he wears a thick Solatian overcoat. If Pechorin is truly deeply disappointed in life, then Grushnitsky plays in disappointment. He belongs to those people whose passion is to pose and recite. Such people "importantly drape themselves in extraordinary feelings, sublime passions and exceptional sufferings." Pechorin easily guessed Grushnitsky, and he was imbued with mortal hatred for him.

All Grushnitsky's actions are driven by petty pride, combined with weakness of character. That is why, in part, the author justifies the cruelty that Pechorin shows in a clash with Grushnitsky. However, Lermontov resolutely condemns his hero when people worthy of love and respect become victims of his cruelty and selfishness.

Why does Pechorin treat Princess Mary so cruelly? After all, she is so charming! And Pechorin himself distinguished her from the crowd of secular beauties, saying that “this Princess Mary is very pretty ... She has such velvet eyes ...” But Lermontov draws Mary not just as a girl with dreams and feelings, but also as an aristocrat. The princess is proud, arrogant, proud. A hidden struggle ensues between an aristocratic girl and a bored wandering officer. Offended Mary is no stranger to secular intrigue. Yearning Pechorin willingly goes towards adventure.

In a secret war, the will and courage of Pechorin won. His powerful character made an irresistible impression on the princess, who not so much understood as felt that Pechorin was attractive even in his vices. She fell in love with him, but did not understand his contradictory soul.

Pechorin is more than anything afraid of losing freedom and independence. “I am ready for any sacrifice except this one,” he says.

The story of Vera, the only woman whom Pechorin truly loved, is a sad story. His love brought her much grief and suffering. In a farewell letter, Vera says this about it: “You loved me as property, as a source of joy ...” We read with sincere sadness about Pechorin’s last meeting with Maxim Maksimych. The staff captain’s heart was filled with bitter resentment when he finally met again with a friend, who extended his hand to him with coldness and indifference. They parted dryly and forever.

The voice of the heart, the voice of the irresistible human need for love, friendship, kindness, in the happiness of giving oneself to others, was not heard by Pechorin, and yet this voice is the voice of truth. She remained closed to Pechorin. But, despite this, Pechorin strikes with fortitude and power of will. His dignity lies precisely in this undivided fullness of responsibility for his actions. In this Pechorin is a man worthy of being called a man. It is these qualities that cause a positive attitude to the protagonist of Lermontov's novel.

– The novel "A Hero of Our Time". 118
Perhaps the first who made an attempt to understand the novel culturally were Western literary critics. The novel did not arouse enthusiasm in them, for the same reason they failed to appreciate Pushkin: Lermontov in the novel is too European, not “Russian” enough, too universally human to “satisfy the spicy taste of Romanesque and Anglo-Saxon Russopaths”. 119 The novel, you see, criticized Russian specifics, which means that it is not interesting for a Western specialist. On the contrary, I see in the criticism of Russian culture the main merit of the novel and the greatest civic merit of the author.

The novel captures with a deep minor key, some kind of doom, a sense of an impending catastrophe, from the first to the last line it is permeated by the melancholy of the author of the work. "It's boring to live in this world, gentlemen!" - as if these words are not spoken by Gogol. Lermontov, as a doctor, prescribes “bitter medicines” to society, as an analyst of culture pronounces “caustic truths,” and we see the suffering of a citizen poet. This is a novel-sentence to a Russian person who wants to feel like a person, but his attempt to rise above the generally accepted, to become something like the Don Quixote of Russian society, nothing but embarrassment comes out. This ugly attempt is followed by a trail of blood, a chain of shattered hopes, broken destinies, the hero's annoyance at himself - a moral cripple, a man "neither this nor that", his moral devastation, despair. Pechorin's self-analysis, aimed at seeing the personality in himself, reveals with boundless longing ... his inability to live, because the personality in Russia bears the features of social pathology. This conclusion is the main pathos of the novel "A Hero of Our Time".

Lermontov's conclusion has general literary and general cultural significance. Pechorin is not just a hero of Russian society in the first third of the 19th century. He is a portrait of a man whom the world calls Russian.
"Pechorin's disease". Confession of a "moral cripple".
In the preface to the novel, Lermontov says that his book is a portrait of Russian society, but "a portrait made up of vices" and that "the disease is indicated" in the novel. What is this "disease"?

Criticism of the Soviet period unanimously asserts that the novel contains criticism of the social order, the structure of Russian society that suppresses the individual, and that Pechorin is a victim of his imperfection, and the essence of the novel is to justify the need to free the Russian people from this oppression. Such a conclusion, at first glance, seems to be possible from Pechorin’s monologues, which often say “tired”, “boring”, “my life becomes emptier day by day”, “my soul is spoiled by light”. But this is only at first glance. The root cause of Pechorin's vices is in himself - what kind of person, such is the society that he forms and in which he lives. Pechorin points a magnifying glass at his soul, and before us is the confession of a Russian person - a moral cripple, revealing a clinical picture of his deformity. The essence of the disease is the absence of qualities that, starting from the gospel times, humanity, busy with the formation of personality, needs more and more.

The "moral cripple" is a pathological split, a split between the understanding of the need to change and the inability to change oneself. An inferiority complex reigns in Pechorin, a conscious misleading of oneself and others, self-deception, it is dominated by what in this book is called social pathology. Pechorin is stuck in a state of "inseparability and incoherence." Hence indifference to life, contempt for people and oneself, inability to love, feel deeply, laugh, cry, inability to openness and friendship, envy, constant focus on conspiracies, intrigues, revenge, attempts to take revenge on the Other and on oneself for one’s inferiority, focus on self-destruction, death.

V. G. Belinsky threw the concept of "Pechorin's disease" into public circulation. But then, in the 19th century, this concept reflected only a conjecture of literary criticism about some deep, albeit unclear, inferiority of the Russian people. The culturological methodology deployed in this book makes it possible to reveal the secret of Lermontov's logic of the analysis of Russian culture, to understand "Pechorin's disease" as a disease of Russia, and thus to see in the novel "A Hero of Our Time" not only a fact of literature, but a fact of culture.

V. V. Afanasiev writes: “Lermontov ... collected in him (in Pechorin - A. D.) a lot of things that are found in the best people of his generation. Pechorin is a strong, deeply feeling, talented person, capable of much and much good, but ... he does not forgive people for imperfections and weaknesses and even seeks to put them on occasion in a position where these qualities would be revealed to the end ... And yet he does it (as in the case of Grushnitsky) with the hope that the person will change his mind and turn for the better. This is a character that can cause the most opposite feelings - sympathy or complete denial ... He is well educated, read a lot, and he has a philosophical mindset. In his journal there is a lot of subtle reasoning, revealing his familiarity with the works of many great thinkers. This is a modern Hamlet, in which there is as much mystery as in the hero of Shakespeare. 120

The religious critic Afanasyev in 1991, in essence, repeats what the non-religious populist V. G. Belinsky wrote about Pechorin more talentedly in 1841: “What a terrible person this Pechorin is! exclaims Belinsky. “Because his restless spirit demands movement, activity seeks food, his heart yearns for the interests of life, therefore the poor girl must suffer!” "Egoist, villain, monster, immoral person!" - strict moralists will shout in unison. Your truth gentlemen; but what are you fussing about? What are you angry about? Indeed, it seems to us that you have come to the wrong place, sat down at a table at which no instrument has been placed for you ... Do not come too close to this person, do not attack him with such passionate courage: he will look at you, smile, and you will condemned, and on your confused faces all will read your judgment. 121

No, gentlemen. Neither the bright assessment of the critic of the early 19th century, nor the tedious assessment of the critic of the late 20th - early 21st centuries. are not suitable today.

Pechorin is sick, and his illness is progressing, he is decomposing. Enough to revere the talent, intelligence and education of Pechorin. Educated? But who is not educated today? Capable of subtle reasoning? Was not Dostoevsky's "little man" perishing in contradictions capable of deep and even very subtle reasoning? Talented? Wasn't Oblomov, dying and rotting on the couch, talented? But he himself said about himself that he was "ashamed to live." Smart? Weren't Pushkin's Captive, Aleko, Tsar Boris, Onegin, Salieri pathologically bifurcated, stuck in a moral impasse? Does he have a restless spirit, is he active, does he have an interested heart? Bearer of bold freedom? But the falcon, the petrel, the old woman Izergil and Pavel Gorky were the bearers of bold freedom. Everyone knows what came out of their Bolshevik freedom.

Is there a lot of mystery in Pechorin, a lot of mystery? The answer to Belinsky-Afanasiev in a colorful and failed prophecy ... Belinsky himself:

“In this person (Pechorin - A.D.) there is strength of mind, and the power of will, which you do not have; something great flashes in his very vices, like lightning in black clouds, and he is beautiful, full of poetry even in those moments when human feeling rises up against him ... He has a different purpose than you. His passions are storms that purify the realm of the spirit; his delusions, no matter how terrible they are, are acute illnesses in a young body, strengthening it for a long and healthy life. These are fevers and fevers, and not gout, not rheumatism and hemorrhoids, with which you poor people suffer so fruitlessly ... Let him slander the eternal laws of the mind, placing the highest happiness in saturated pride; let him slander human nature, seeing in it only egoism; let him slander himself, taking the moments of his spirit for its full development and mixing youth with manhood - let it! .. A solemn moment will come, and the contradiction will be resolved, the struggle will end, and the scattered sounds of the soul will merge into one harmonious chord! .. ". 122

The prophecy of the first Russian populist did not come true. The justification of the mysterious Russian soul did not take place. It was not possible to prove how good the mystery of this riddle is, how attractive its mystery is.

Dynamics of Russian culture in the XIX-XXI centuries. showed that there was no fortitude or power of will in the human material called "Pechorin". The glimpse of something beautiful and great turned out to be a mirage, worthlessness, emptiness. "Harmonic chord" did not take place. The internal contradiction in Russian culture between the old and the new, statics and dynamics, tradition and innovation not only was not resolved, but turned into a split in society. Pechorin, the hero of two centuries, turned out to be an insignificant slave of his duality. The fact that from the first third of the XIX century. seemed promising, requiring faith, from the standpoint of the experience of the late XX-beginning of the XXI centuries. turns out to be a devastating "Pechorin's disease" that requires analysis. The enthusiastic lines of Belinsky, who carried out the populist order, are read today as naive, but honest. The boring lines of Afanasiev, who is fulfilling a religious order, are read as a farce, a lie and a deliberate misleading of the reader.

In justifying Pechorin, do we not resemble a ruddy-faced tragic actor brandishing morality like a cardboard sword? How much can you repeat the fiction about the mystery and depth of Pechorin? Should we start talking about his inferiority complex, about the disintegration of his personality, about the social pathology of Russian society as a society of the Pechorins?

However, Belinsky is right: one cannot approach the analysis of this image with the assessment of “immoral” and at the same time be unarmed. There is something fundamental in this image, but so far unnamed in criticism, not yet analyzed and therefore not understood, misunderstood, the analysis of which allows us to reasonably call Pechorin immoral. What? "Pechorin's disease" as a pathology.

Inability to love.

“Bela’s love was for Pechorin a full glass of sweet drink, which he drank at once, without leaving a drop in it; and his soul demanded not a glass, but an ocean from which one could draw every minute without reducing it ... ”, 123 - Belinsky writes about Pechorin’s love for Bela. And he clarifies: “A strong need for love is often mistaken for love itself, if an object is presented to which it can aspire.” 124 So, in Pechorin, according to Belinsky, there is a strong need for love, understood as the ability to drink to the last drop, to draw, to take without measure.

But the need to love - is it just a need to take? Isn't it the other way around? Isn't love the result of a need, basically, to give, donate, sacrifice? The need to take, called love, is a way of destroying the ability to see the Other, to understand oneself through the Other, the ability to self-change, the formation of third meanings, dialogue, cultural synthesis, a qualitatively new development.

The assessment of Pechorin's love has not changed much in the studies of Russian Lermontov scholars over the years since the publication of Belinsky's work. Whether Pechorin loved or, as Belinsky believes, only betrayed his need for love for love - this topic cannot simply be declared, the ability / inability of this character to love must be proved through an analysis of his culture.

The beginning of my analysis is on the assumption that Pechorin is incapable of love. The method of analysis is based on Pechorin's own confessions. The task of analysis is to destroy the position of those who admire the "oceanic" scale of Pechorin's love, the depth of Pechorin's nature, or the hero's need to love, without bothering too much with understanding the logic of love as a cultural phenomenon.

In all the plots of Pechorin's relationship with Bela, Vera, Princess Mary, with secular beauties, his "heart remained empty." Pechorin believes that he can afford to love only if others love him: "If everyone loved me, I would find endless sources of love in myself." Lermontov's analysis of Pechorin's ability to love makes one turn to the methodology of the logic of love in the Bible, because the similarity of the methodologies is obvious.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the task is to change the emphasis in the relationship of love: a person should not just allow another to love him, not just be an object of love, but first of all love himself: “If you love those who love you, what thanks do you have? for even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? for sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what thanks do you have for that? for even sinners lend to sinners in order to get back the same amount. But you love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing”; 125 “If you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not the publicans do the same? 126

Pechorin returns the formulation of the question of love to the pre-Jesus era: "I only want to be loved." "Only" is the key word here. Jesus' thought is directed against the Old Testament Pechorin's "only." Love is always a gift and to some extent a sacrifice. But Pechorin frankly admits that his love did not bring happiness to anyone, because he did not sacrifice anything for those whom he loved; he loved for himself, for his own pleasure; he only satisfied the strange need of the heart, greedily absorbing the feelings of women, their tenderness, their joys and sufferings - and could never get enough.

The inability to love is not harmless. It's an incapacity-predator. Trampling openness, she laughs at the human. For Pechorin, there is immense pleasure in the possession of a young, barely blossoming soul. He, like a Vampire, appreciates the defenselessness of a soul that has fallen in love. Love is like an open flower, the best aroma of which evaporates towards the first ray of the sun; it must be torn off at that moment and, after breathing it to its fullest, throw it on the road: maybe someone will pick it up! Since Pechorin began to understand people, he has given them nothing but suffering. He looks at the sufferings and joys of others only as food that supports his spiritual strength. Pechorin's ambition is nothing more than a thirst for power, and his first pleasure is to subordinate everything that surrounds him to his will. To arouse in oneself a feeling of love, devotion and fear - isn't it the first sign and the greatest triumph of power? To be the cause of suffering and joy for someone, without having any right to it - is not this the sweetest food of pride? “What is happiness?” Pechorin asks himself. And he answers: "Intense pride." Pechorin despot. He admits: “She will spend the night without sleep and will cry. This thought gives me immense pleasure; there are moments when I understand the Vampire…”.

Confessing his inability to love and enjoying the suffering of his victims, Pechorin, in his own way, answers the call of Jesus and Russian literature of the 18th century. "love one another." He is a principled opponent of the logic of the New Testament, he is closer to the emotions of the Vampire, Judas. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane - Judas: "Judas! Do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? 127 . A kiss, it turns out, can betray. Looks, promises, vows, touches, kisses, hugs, sex - all this Pechorin scornfully calls love, and betrays Bela, Vera, Mary with them. A bored pathologist, he enjoys detailed analysis of the agony of his victims. “Evil is not so attractive in anyone,” Vera says about Pechorin.

As Onegin understood that he was "a disabled person in love," so Pechorin understood that in love he was a "moral cripple." He wants to love, understands that he cannot love, that the desire and inability to love is a pathology, tries to understand the reason, does not understand and is in despair from the inability to change himself. Pechorin is stuck in the “sphere between” the thirst for total power over the Other, in which there can be no place for love, and the ability to love, that is, to be equal with the Other, between understanding one’s inseparability from the Old Testament interpretation of the logic of love and, on the other hand, the inability to merge with her completely, between understanding the need for a New Testament interpretation of the logic of love and the inability to merge with it completely. In this jamming is the meaning of "Pechorin's disease."

“Bela leaves a deep impression: you are sad, but your sadness is light, bright and sweet; you fly like a dream to a beautiful grave, but this grave is not terrible: it is illuminated by the sun, washed by a fast stream, whose murmur, together with the rustle of the wind in the leaves of elderberry and white acacia, tells you about something mysterious and endless, and above it, in on a bright height, some beautiful vision flies and rushes, with pale cheeks, with an expression of reproach and forgiveness in black eyes, with a sad smile ... The death of a Circassian does not revolt you with a bleak and heavy feeling, for she was a bright angel of reconciliation. The dissonance resolved into a harmonic chord, and you tenderly repeat the simple and touching words of the kind Maxim Maksimych: “No, she did well that she died! Well, what would have become of her if Grigory Alexandrovich left her? And that would have happened sooner or later!...”, 128 – this is how Belinsky writes sentimentally and romantically about the ruins, lies, blood, about the cynicism that Pechorin created in his relationship with Bela.

What causes tenderness in Belinsky, in me - indignation and sadness. What would happen to the kidnapped and abandoned Bela in love, if she were alive? She would have died of grief, shame and the feeling that she had touched an abomination. And Grigory Alexandrovich could get into a dirty story, become the laughing stock of people, and everyone would start to cringe at the lustfulness and uncleanliness of this very Russian person. However, twitching and annoyance would very quickly turn into indifference, because society in Russia is the absence of public opinion, indifference to everything that is duty, justice and truth, cynical contempt for human thought and dignity. Isn't that the case with Pushkin?

Words about bright and sweet sadness, about harmony and reconciliation, about the fact that “the dissonance was resolved”, Belinsky wrote in 1841 and still hoped for something. But one after another, the Crimean War broke out, the Japanese, the world war, then the revolution, the civil war, and it became clear that reconciliation did not work out, the internal dissonance in the Russian person in the XIX-XXI centuries. not only not resolved, but deepened. Today, the dissonance, the moral ugliness of the personality that is being formed in Russia, at the beginning of the analysis of which Lermontov stood, has put Russia before the threat of territorial disintegration. The disintegration of the personality in Russia, the death of the attempt to become a personality, the growing social pathology require a new analysis of the roots of the moral ugliness that dominates today in Russian man. And this must be done through the study of "Pechorin's disease."