Like the distinct, pleasant, pervasive presence of the smell of sandalwood, the aroma of Mikhail Yur’evich Lermontov’s only novel, A Hero Of Our Time, with its distinct prose, poetic descriptions of the salubrious, mountainous Caucasus and its gripping narrative in the unraveling of its narcissistic, manipulative, anti-hero Grigory Alexandrovich Pechorin, stays with this reader even after putting down the novel.Well, this tome is acclaimed as the “first example of the psychological novel in Russia.” But, I found it to be a beautiful, cohesive, rendition of 5 distinct novellas:1. Bella2. Maxim Maximych3. Taman4. Pricess Mary5. The FatalistCuriously, while Taman, Princess Mary, and The Fatalist are chronologically antecedents to Bella and Maxim Maximych, the former trifecta constituting the so-called “Journal entries of Pechorin” has been organized as a cohesive unit of journal entries that follows the latter duo of Bella and Maxim Maximych. This kind of organization, presented itself as a unique style of narrative prose, that was new to me and seemed to be more efficacious to cotton on to the mindless, purposeless, aimless superfluous machinations of our antihero Pechorin.Throughout my reading, I just could not stop marveling over the irony between the dual lives lost to senseless duels of the time, namely the contemporary heroes of Russian Literature – Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov – both of whom were:* great poets, who turned to prose* were killed in duels within 4 years apart* Pushkin was 37 and Lermontov was barely 26, when they died* Unlike in this novel where Pechorin wins a duel and gets to be alive, Lermontov was not lucky to be alive, the same way we have Onegin in Pushkin’s work win a duel, while he was not lucky to be alive himself, either.Which brings me to the final chapter of this work that talks about predestination. Talk of cruel irony here!Albeit Lermontov shellacks, his readers and the intelligentsia (of his time) of not being able to differentiate the creator from his created work, I just could not see myself not being able to see the Byronic Lermontov, with his own excesses, cynicism, and fatalism accurately reflected and portrayed in Pechorin. "Russia seems to be made in such a way that everything can change, except absurdities like this, and even the most fantastic fairy-tale can hardly escape being criticized for attempted libel. The Hero of Our Time is certainly a portrait, but, not of a single person. It is a portrait of the vices of our whole generation in their ultimate development. You will say that no man can be so bad, and I will ask you why, after accepting all the villains of tragedy and romance, you refuse to believe in Pechorin. You have admired far more terrible and monstrous characters than he is, so why are you so merciless towards him, even as a fictitious character? Perhaps he comes too close to the bone?"At one point, when Pechorin writes of himself, I could not stop from wondering, whether this could have also been the senseless attitude of Lermontov, of his own life as well: "What if it does? If I die, I die. It will be small loss to the world, and I’ve had about enough of it myself. I’m like a man yawning at a ball, who doesn’t go home to bed because his carriage hasn’t come. But when it arrives – farewell!"For Mikhail Lermontov, this precise moment came in the form of challenging his acquaintance to a duel, in which he was killed instantaneously. Just 26 years of age. The place was Pyatigorsk, which ironically is the same place for a duel at this novel. Plain-chilling!Now, one does not get to see Pechorin as evil per se. He is not. He also prides himself as not being emotional, albeit, at several points in the novel, he definitely comes out to be so. But, we can all agree that he is an extremely complex character. The future Fyodor Dostoyevsky would go onto mine into the hearts and souls of such extremely complex characters as Lermontov’s Pechorin.So, I beg to differ with Lermontov’s own indifferent take on small loss to the world. “No, Lermontov! Yours was a big loss to all of us!” How many more of Pechorins, had the world lost, due to his tragic life cut short?There are so many wonderful passages I have underlined in my copy (multiple times), as they are just too good. Echoing his own troubled childhood, after losing his Mom and being isolated by his maternal grandmother so as to be extirpated from his father as well, Lermontov’s own melancholy with his ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) come out beautifully in this passage, when Pechorin narrates this soliloquy to Princess Mary. "Yes, that’s been my lot ever since I was a boy. Everyone saw in my face evil traits that I didn’t possess. But they assumed I did and so they developed. I was modest, and was accused of being deceitful, so I kept to myself. I had a strong sense of good and evil; instead of kindness I received nothing but insults, so I grew resentful. I was sullen, while other children were gay and talkative. I felt superior to them, and was set beneath them, so I became jealous. I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, so I learned to hate. I spent my blighted youth in conflict with myself and the world. Fearing ridicule, I hid my best feelings deep within me, and there they died. I spoke the truth, but no one believed me, and so I took to deceit. Knowing the world and the mainsprings of society, I became adept at the art of living… I became a moral cripple. One half of my soul had ceased to exist. It had withered and died, so I cut it off and cast it away. But the other half was still active, living for the service of others. But no one noticed it, because no one knew of the dead half.”Without reflecting at some level, the naked truth in that, one cannot understand neither Pechorin nor his creator Mikhail Yur’evich Lermontov.I absolutely recommend his novel with a solid 5-star rating, as I loved it to the core.