Presented here together, in their entirety - in the original Russian and in a facing English translation, new for this edition - are two masterpieces of Russian literature by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), both set in the Caucasus: The Demon, a narrative poem, and A Hero of Our Time, a novel. The Demon was deemed so scandalous at the time it was written that it was first published in Russia only in 1856 - and then only in a handful of copies for the royal family! It tells of a beautiful Georgian princess, Tamara, who awakens long-forgotten feelings of love in a Demon when he sees her dancing on the eve of her wedding. After the untimely death of her would-be husband, Tamara enters a convent, but a voice continues to tempt her. At last the Demon appears to her, to profess his love... and Tamara's soul hangs in the balance... A Hero of Our Time is many things at once: a travelogue documenting the astounding natural beauty of the Caucasus and the spirit of its many peoples; an adventure novel with everything from kidnappings to duels; a catalogue of tragic romantic encounters; a novel of (bad) manners; and a disturbing psychological study of its infamous anti-hero, Pechorin, the first (alongside Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin) of many deeply conflicted - if not demonic - figures in Russian literature. As Lermontov himself makes clear, the idea that Pechorin is "heroic" is to be taken with a great deal of irony! Mirroring each other in many ways, these two works are productively read together, with The Demonproviding a fantastical poetic overture to the realist prose of A Hero of Our Time. Together, they make for captivating reading. Book 4 in the "Reading Russian" series, this edition provides the original text and facing English translation, together with all the vocabulary notes and reference tables you need to make sense of the original. Designed to help students of Russian begin to enjoy real Russian literature in the original without constantly reaching for a dictionary, this parallel-text edition features a new translation made specifically for this purpose, as well as detailed Russian vocabulary notes, including all the important forms you need (especially aspectual pairs and conjugation types for all verbs). The original Russian text is marked for stress, but is otherwise unedited and unsimplified.

Presented here together, in their entirety -- in the original Russian and in a facing English translation, new for this edition -- are two masterpieces of Russian literature by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), both set in the Caucasus: The Demon, a narrative poem, and A Hero of Our Time, a novel. The Demon was deemed so scandalous at the time it was written that it was first published in Russia only in 1856 -- and then only in a handful of copies for the royal family! It tells of a beautiful Georgian princess, Tamara, who awakens long-forgotten feelings of love in a Demon when he sees her dancing on the eve of her wedding. After the untimely death of her would-be husband, Tamara enters a convent, but a voice continues to tempt her. At last the Demon appears to her, to profess his love... and Tamara's soul hangs in the balance... A Hero of Our Time is many things at once: a travelogue documenting the astounding natural beauty of the Caucasus and the spirit of its many peoples; an adventure novel with everything from kidnappings to duels; a catalogue of tragic romantic encounters; a novel of (bad) manners; and a disturbing psychological study of its infamous anti-hero, Pechorin, the first (alongside Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin) of many deeply conflicted -- if not demonic -- figures in Russian literature. As Lermontov himself makes clear, the idea that Pechorin is "heroic" is to be taken with a great deal of irony! Mirroring each other in many ways, these two works are productively read together, with The Demon providing a fantastical poetic overture to the realist prose of A Hero of Our Time. Together, they make for captivating reading. Book 4 in the "Reading Russian" series, this edition provides the original text and facing English translation, together with all the vocabulary notes and reference tables you need to make sense of the original. Designed to help students of Russian begin to enjoy real Russian literature in the original without constantly reaching for a dictionary, this parallel-text edition features a new translation made specifically for this purpose, as well as detailed Russian vocabulary notes, including all the important forms you need (especially aspectual pairs and conjugation types for all verbs). The original Russian text is marked for stress, but is otherwise unedited and unsimplified.

In its adventurous happenings–its abductions, duels, and sexual intrigues–A Hero of Our Time looks backward to the tales of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, so beloved by Russian society in the 1820s and ’30s. In the character of its protagonist, Pechorin–the archetypal Russian antihero–Lermontov’s novel looks forward to the subsequent glories of a Russian literature that it helped, in great measure, to make possible.

A brilliant new translation of a perennial favorite of Russian literature The first major Russian novel, A Hero of Our Time was both lauded and reviled upon publication. Its dissipated hero, twenty-five-year-old Pechorin, is a beautiful and magnetic but nihilistic young army officer, bored by life and indifferent to his many sexual conquests. Chronicling his unforgettable adventures in the Caucasus involving brigands, smugglers, soldiers, rivals, and lovers, this classic tale of alienation influenced Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov in Lermontov's own century, and finds its modern-day counterparts in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, and the films and plays of Neil LaBute.

Mikhail Lermontov's book, A Hero of Our Time, was written in 1840 and is an important work of psychological realism. This volume includes articles by theorists from various perspectives.

The subject of this poem, by Mikhail Lermontov, is full of simplicity and grandeur. Satan flying through space recalls the happy time when, as a holy angel, the purest charms and sweetest privileges of heaven were his. Homeless he wanders, weary of spreading sin, and of possessing a power that encounters no opposition. Below he beholds the varied beauties of the Caucasus, its majestic mountains and pellucid rivers, and afar the rich valleys of fair Georgia; yet Nature's sweetest scenes produce no effect on him beyond a feeling of cold envy-all that he sees he hates! At last a beautiful Georgian, by name Tamara, attracts his attention, as amid her handmaids at her father's castle she joyously awaits her princely bridegroom. On beholding her, the Demon is once more conscious of the force of beauty and love. Her bridegroom, at his instigation, is attacked and slain by a band of robbers, while on his way to the nuptials, and Tamara, overcome with grief and harassed by the insidious and passion-inspiring voice of Satan, seeks refuge in a convent. Thither he follows her, and in a powerful dialogue inspires her with compassion for his forlorn hopelessness. In the embrace of the Demon she dies. As an Angel is bearing her soul to heaven, the Evil One intercepts their course, declaring-" She is his;" but the angel repulses him with the reply of mercy that Heaven is open to love. Thus again is he left, alone and hopeless in space, while the contrite soul of his victim is borne onwards to Paradise. The similarity of the subject with that of "Faust," and of the character with that of Lucifer in "Cain," will doubtless strike all at first; but on closer perusal the reader cannot help but discover, in " The Demon" of Lermontov, a character that differs in every way from the Mephistopheles of Goethe and the Lucifer of Byron. The softening effect that love is able to produce for the time being on the impersonation of all evil, is as marvelous in its conception as it is thrilling in the manner in which it is told in the Russian.