Borders in Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and “The Demon”
by Nicole Gonik
A rare reader of Lermontov fails to notice the broad range of similarities between his narrative poem “The Demon” and the novel A Hero of Our Time, particularly between the protagonists of the two works: the eponymous Demon and Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin. What underlies most similarities between the two texts and their respective characters is the motif of border crossing, whether physical or metaphorical. In this paper, I will discuss the idea of borders in and between “The Demon'' and A Hero of Our Time, paving the way for a parallel reading of the two works by Lermontov.
Borders in “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time can be grouped into four categories. The first category consists of “intrinsic borders” drawn within each text. These are the borders the Demon and Pechorin cross or contend within the respective spaces they navigate, whether they are geographical lines Pechorin transgresses or the border between Heaven and Earth crossed by the Demon. The second category is that of “comparative character borders”: the often-blurred borders between the two protagonists themselves, such as the line between the human (Pechorin) and super-human (the Demon). The third category pertains to “intertextual borders,” with “The Demon” being a work of romantic poetry and A Hero of Our Time a realist novel (both works, completed around the same time, mark the transition from Romanticism to Realism in the nineteenth-century Russian literary tradition). Finally, the last category consists of “extratextual borders”: these comprise outside influences on both works, as well as the borders that Lermontov’s texts had to cross on their way to publication.
Intrinsic Borders
Both Pechorin and the Demon encounter borders within their respective plotlines that are intrinsic to each text. Many of these borders are outlined by the fact that both characters are in exile – as was Lermontov himself, exiled to the Caucuses for writing “Death of the Poet” (1837), his controversial poem on Pushkin’s death. One of the few details revealed about Pechorin’s backstory is that he, too, has been exiled to the Caucuses and, hence, is bound to cross geographical borders (those between St. Petersburg and the Caucuses region, as well as between the towns he travels to while there). Throughout the novel, each place he stops at is temporary, and all the settings are simply stops on his way. Moreover, Pechorin does not have a final destination in mind, so he is essentially on the way to nowhere. Looking at Pechorin’s travels through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope (that is, through the relationship of time and space in literature), it becomes clear that Pechorin’s constant change of settings has important implications for him as a character. In a novel, according to Bakhtin, the road is a realized metaphor for the “path of life,” and intersections on this path signify turning points in the character’s life” (Bakhtin, 120). However, Pechorin is not fundamentally changed by or at any of the settings or intersections he travels through. As a result, it seems that Pechorin does not have a “path” at all. Chronologically, the last detail revealed about Pechorin is that he “died on his way back from Persia” (A Hero of Our Time, 63), meaning that he crossed more geographical borders before dying. The lack of specificity in this detail emphasizes that Pechorin, even in death, cannot be tied to any permanent location.
Likewise, the Demon is in an exile of sorts too. The poem’s first stanza reveals that he has been “long-since outcast” from Heaven, and is doomed to endlessly roam “above the sinful world” (“The Demon,” 107). The border between Heaven and Earth is one that the Demon has been sent over, without being able to cross back, but he sees Tamara as a way to touch upon Heaven once more. By depicting both protagonists in constant wandering, Lermontov puts them in a state of “double” exile: exile by itself only means that one cannot return to a specific place, but it does not prevent one from settling elsewhere. The exile of both Pechorin and the Demon is doubled because neither is capable of settling anywhere at all.
Furthermore, Pechorin’s geographical border-crossing has to do with the colonial context of the novel: as an officer demoted to the Caucuses, he is part of the Russian imperial campaign. Pechorin’s position as the colonizer drives his initial interest in Bela, the young Caucasian princess whom he kidnaps and who is eventually killed, due to his actions. For him, Bella is interesting mainly because she is “exotic.” He views her as part of the Caucasian landscape; not someone, but something he can possess. As Pechorin tells Maksim Maksimich, Bela will just have to get used “to the idea that she is mine, for she won’t belong to anybody but me” (A Hero of Our Time, 24). The colonial context contributes to the power imbalance between him and Bela, as well as her family. Pechorin is able to toy with their lives, facing no consequences from his own higher-ups. The fact that Pechorin’s actions are so blatantly immoral even adds an ironic touch to the novel. Lermontov still adopts the colonial view, but instead of making his hero a “chivalrous Christian soldier” and carrier of civilization, as was often the case in storylines involving Russian officers engaging with Caucasian women, it makes Pechorin “assume the guise of a local bandit” and “adhere to savage standards” in his methods of capturing Bela instead (Layton 236-237). In other words, Lermontov gives Pechorin the colonizer’s position of power while allowing him to act in the same way that is deemed “savage” and “uncivilized” by the colonizing power.
The actions of the Demon can also be interpreted as an allegory for colonialism. While such concepts as nation, race, and ethnicity are inapplicable to him, the way he intrudes into Tamara’s life in the Caucuses is reminiscent of the way a colonizing nation intrudes the lands it has come to colonize, with no regard for the people indigenous to those lands. The violent death of Tamara’s fiancé, orchestrated by the Demon, is but one example. Of course, the Demon does not represent Russia. In fact, his “name” and genealogy as a literary character are less Russian than British (the Demon’s affinities with England will be discussed in greater detail under the category of “extratextual borders”). But whether British or Russian, his exploitative actions still add a colonial dimension to the poem, making the Demon resemble Pechorin in this respect.
Both Pechorin and the Demon find themselves on the border between life and death. The Demon may be immortal, but Tamara is not, and her death (and ascent to Heaven) is a tragedy for the Demon. Pechorin, too, sends a few characters over this border, whether directly (like Grushnitsky whom he kills in a duel) or not (like Bela). Neither protagonist, however, crosses the border of life and death as unconditionally and dramatically as their victims. The Demon never crosses it at all: his “finale” is the same permanent, lonely existence above the Earth he had been confined to before seeing Tamara. Pechorin does die, but his death occurs “off-stage” and comes with very little detail. Interestingly, there is virtually no discussion in the novel of what awaits Pechorin after death (save for Bela’s regret that due to their differing religions, they will not meet in the afterlife). It is even possible to imagine that in his afterlife, Pechorin would be reincarnated as the Demon.
Borders charted by religion deserve a special mention in both works. Pechorin faces one with Bela: he may not hold religious beliefs, but still comes from a Christian background, while Bela is Muslim. The Demon faces a different kind of religious border with Tamara. She, as a Georgian, is Christian Orthodox. The Demon himself is, of course, outside of these categories, but he does have a role in the Christian doctrine – that of darkness and evil. Tamara knows that, which is why she attempts to resist him by committing herself to a monastery and praying. Her faith puts yet another border between them.
One border that only the Demon contends with, however, is that between the human and the superhuman realms. Tamara is human while the Demon is not. But the human-superhuman border would be better examined through a comparative analysis of the Demon and Pechorin.
Comparative Character Borders
The border between Pechorin as a human and the Demon as a supernatural being is far less clear-cut than it may seem. The differences between the two characters’ backstories and roles in the two texts make Pechorin, in a sense, more demonic than the Demon himself, and vice versa: the Demon more human than his earthly counterpart (this is particularly evident in “Bela,” the first part of Lermontov’s novel). Strange as it may sound, the Demon has a clearer backstory than Pechorin. Unlike the novel, the poem gives an exposition on the Demon before his fall from grace: he was once a “pure cherubim” who “knew no evil, no suspicion” (“The Demon,” 107). Pechorin, on the other hand, is introduced to the reader already as devoid of any beliefs, ideals, or ability to make meaningful human connections. We never find out exactly what, if anything, made him this way.
This background highlights one important difference between the two characters as exiles: unlike the Demon, Pechorin is a perpetual outsider by choice. He may have been exiled to the Caucuses, but there is no divine power preventing him from settling into a social group or making a home for himself, as is the case with the Demon. The Demon was forced into exile by God, so he is kept in eternal loneliness by a force more powerful than himself. Pechorin, to be fair, was also sent to the Caucuses by those who hold power over him as an officer, but there is no one preventing him from connecting with other people and new places. This relationship, in other words, is counterintuitive: the Demon, a supernatural, nearly all-powerful being is a victim of someone else in his story, while Pechorin, an ordinary human, is not.
Another way that the Demon is humanized and Pechorin is demonized lies in how each character is affected by their state of exile. The Demon’s exile is his primary cause of suffering: he dreams of his days back in Heaven (or, in his case, back “home”) and even sees Tamara as a “return ticket.” In other words, like a human who has been forced to leave home, he yearns to go back. Meanwhile, Pechorin may be suffering too, but not because of his exile. In a conversation with Maksim Maksimich (the narrator in “Bela”), Pechorin admits that when he was first transferred to the Caucuses, it was the “happiest time of [his] life” (A Hero of Our Time, 39). The adventure and proximity to violence and death offered by his transfer temporarily relieved him of boredom, which plagues him constantly otherwise. This is a typical trait of the literary type Pechorin belongs to: the superfluous man, introduced into Russian literature by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin. Like Onegin, Pechorin is “superfluous” in the sense he cannot find a place, a role, or a community to belong to. Onegin traded high-society city life for the countryside, but did not find a place for himself there either. Pechorin leaves St. Petersburg for the Caucuses, but is similarly disappointed and disillusioned. These characters are doomed to live without a sense of belonging. One may go so far as to assume that had Pechorin not been formally exiled, he would set out to travel anyway. This is evident from his conversation with Maksim Maksimich: “there is one remedy left for me: to travel,” Pechorin confesses (A Hero of Our Time, 40). Traveling to new locations and adventures is his method of running away from his perpetual boredom and emptiness. The differences in how the two characters are affected by their exile show that the concept of “home” is virtually missing from Pechorin’s character, while it is a constant reference point and source of nostalgia for the Demon.
Aside from the physical borders, we can see that Pechorin and the Demon continue to act counterintuitively to what would be expected from them as a demon and a human: they cross the “borders” charted by these very roles. This can be observed first and foremost in their behavior towards their victims: Tamara and Bela. Of course, the Demon, unlike Pechorin, cannot be judged by human moral standards, since evil is his natural element and has always been his prime “occupation.” Therefore, his actions are not a violation of any social norms, while Pechorin’s are. Still, it is clear that Tamara means much more to the Demon than Bela to Pechorin. First of all, when the Demon first sees Tamara, “his dumb soul’s emptiness was slowly / filled with loud chords of blissful sound – / and once again he reached that holy / shrine where love, beauty, goodness gleam!” (“The Demon,” 112). Meanwhile, soon after kidnapping Bela, Pechorin makes a bet with Maksim Maksimich that “she will be [his]” (A Hero of Our Time, 26). For the Demon, Tamara is a chance at salvation; for Pechorin, Bela is just a way to feed his ego, an object to capture. Furthermore, it seems like Tamara’s death is far more consequential for the Demon than Bela’s death for Pechorin. The narrator notes that the Demon is “left there isolated / in all the world – no love, no hope!” (“The Demon,” 142) after Tamara’s soul is taken away. Pechorin does fall ill after Bela’s death, but when Maksim Maksimich mentions Bela during their later encounter, he simply confirms that he remembers her and “feigns a yawn” (A Hero of Our Time, 59). In fact, Pechorin gets bored with Bela even before she dies. He openly admits it, noting that her “ignorance and naivete” is just as suffocating to him as the “coquetry” of city women, and that he “find[s] her company dull” (A Hero of Our Time, 40). In contrast, the Demon never loses his obsession with Tamara. After she dies and the Angel comes for her soul, the Demon interjects with the words “She’s mine!” (“The Demon,” 141). This indicates that he really did plan on spending an eternity with Tamara’s soul. However selfish, his intentions were permanent. Considering the “border” between the demonic and the human roles in Lermontov’s texts, it seems odd that it is the Demon, not Pechorin, who is affected by the death of his victim. After all, the Demon has been around for a literal eternity, while Pechorin, however jaded, has had much less time to get accustomed to love and loss. The difference also shows that the Demon’s speeches to Tamara were said in earnest, while Pechorin’s words to Bela were but calculated manipulations.
Therein lies another difference between the two characters: the Demon cannot lie, while Pechorin lies constantly. This once again goes against the conventions of their roles as demon and human, since demons are usually associated with duplicity and dishonesty. As a result, the readers are privy to more of the Demon’s inner thoughts and feelings than Pechorin’s. Just as the rest of the characters in A Hero of Our Time see only the image of Pechorin that he has crafted for them himself, the readers of Lermontov’s novel are shut out of Pechorin’s psyche. For that matter, how deeply was Pechorin affected by Bela’s death? The fact that he fell ill immediately after shows that he was distressed, but was it because he cared about Bela and felt guilty, or was his pride just wounded because he failed to protect his “property”? Similarly, when he yawns in response to Maksim Maksimich’s mention of Bela, is it because he was unaffected by his loss, or because he wanted Maksim Maksimich to believe that he was unaffected? Even the parts of the novel that consist of Pechorin’s own journals, in which he is the narrator, leave the reader (and, to be sure, Pechorin himself) with questions. For example, what can be made of Pechorin’s sudden desire to be with Vera (his old flame in “Princess Mary”)? Pechorin was so desperate to see her one last time that he rode his horse to death and broke down sobbing when he realized that his efforts were futile. And yet, he cannot explain why this desire appeared or why it passed, leaving it up to the reader to figure out. Pechorin is therefore isolated not only from the characters who surround him, but from the audience of Lermontov’s novel. The wall that Lermontov builds between his character and everyone else suggests that Pechorin cannot be understood by anyone else in principle. And although the responsibility for this lack of understanding from others belongs to no one other than Pechorin himself, he is genuinely bothered by it. It is telling that when he overhears the other officers in “Princess Mary” insult him behind his back, he is not just angered, but also confused and upset by their words: “What do they all hate me for?” (A Hero of Our Time, 147). Lermontov highlights the tragedy of his character by showing that Pechorin is a mystery not only to those around him, but also to himself. In contrast, the omniscient narrator of the poem lays bare all of the Demon’s thoughts and motives. In short, the human character’s motives are a mystery not only to the readers, but also to himself, while the supernatural being’s motives are entirely clear, whereby the border between them – and, by extension, between the two works – is effectively blurred.
Lermontov’s Demon differs significantly from the typical demons in Russian culture. Unlike the singular figure of Satan, “demons” have always been associated with plurality and portrayed in the Orthodox tradition as “perpetual irritants” (Franklin 41), often coming in disguise to act as a playful nuisance. In Russian literature before Lermontov, demons had most prominently been portrayed in this “light” and comical way by Gogol (Franklin 43). In contrast, Lermontov’s demon resembles a ghost far more than a demon per se. There is nothing comic about him. He is not described as one of many, but rather as a lone figure. He may have been exiled from Heaven, but he has not been banished to Hell. In fact, Hell is mentioned only by Tamara in the poem. This typical “Christian location” (Wigzell 65) of the demon, in other words, is missing from Lermontov’s portrayal. Nor does Lermontov’s demon “possess” any human body: he does not disguise himself, instead appearing to Tamara as an abstract voice. Not only does he avoid a typical demonic activity (taking over the body of another person, or even an animal); he does not have a physical form at all. Speech is the only way he can make himself known to Tamara. The language used to describe the Demon is also often more characteristic of a ghost than a demon. For example, the poem’s first stanza refers to him as a “soul of all the banished” (duh izgnaniia). Ghosts are, essentially, the departed souls of those once living, while demons typically do not have souls at all. Furthermore, the Demon’s days back in Heaven are described much in the way that a person’s life would be narrated, making his banishment from Heaven akin to death. Even the fact that the word “Demon” is capitalized throughout the poem gives it the impression of a human name. The character’s ambiguous status further dilutes his role as a “demon.” We are told that the Demon’s primary occupation is evil, which “[leaves] him deeply bored” (“The Demon,” 108), but no details are given as to what this means. This was not the case in the earlier drafts of the poem, however, which included interactions between the Demon and Satan and made it clear that the former was a servant to the latter. As he worked on his poem, Lermontov edited this out, endowing his Demon with a less clear, unconventional status (Reid 197).
Yet there is one example where the human-superhuman border between the Demon and Pechorin plays out according to expectation: the border of time. Pechorin, as the title of the novel informs us, is “a hero of his time,” that is, a representative of his time period. Lermontov sums it up in his prologue to the novel: “A Hero of Our Time … is indeed a portrait, but not of a single individual; it is a portrait composed of all the vices of our generation in the fullness of their development” (A Hero of Our Time, 2). Pechorin’s cynicism and immorality are designed as a reflection of the Russian (upper-class) society at the time, leaving young men like Pechorin with no opportunities to realize their potential and talents, making them “superfluous.” A Hero of Our Time was meant, among other things, as a social critique. In contrast, the Demon, a supernatural being, is by definition timeless. He is mythologically eternal and, presumably, unaffected by the time period. His story, therefore, is not meant to serve as social commentary, at least not as much as Pechorin’s.
Intertextual Literary Borders
The main intertextual literary border that comes between these two works has to do with the gradual transition of Russian literature from Romanticism to Realism at the time. One way in which this border becomes apparent lies in the portrayals of Tamara and Bela. The respective victims of the Demon and Pechorin are similar in many ways: both are Caucasian princesses who led a carefree life before their fatal encounters with the protagonists; both initially resist their male antagonists, despite having no real chance to defend their autonomy. For example, Tamara asks her family to commit her to a monastery in an attempt to free herself of the Demon’s presence; in their dialogue, she tries to reject him: “deceitful spirit, you must leave me! / Be still, I’ll not believe the foe” (“The Demon,” 128). Bela, too, initially rejects Pechorin: when she is first kidnapped, she “[sits] in a corner, wrapped up in her veil” and “neither speaks nor looks at anyone” (A Hero of Our Time, 24). However, both Tamara and Bella gradually give in – Tamara to the Demon’s speeches, and Bela to Pechorin’s manipulations. Tragically, both end up dead as a result of their encounters with the Demon and Pechorin.
And yet, there is one major difference between Tamara and Bela that, one might argue, can be attributed to the differences between the Romantic and the Realist traditions: Tamara is given a voice of her own, while Bela is not. Thanks to the omniscient narrator of the poem, the reader enjoys much more insight into Tamara’s inner conflict and thoughts. When she tries to pray herself free of the dark force taking over her, the narrator tells us that while “her heart may wish to pray in season / to holy saints, to him (the demon) it prays.” (“The Demon,” 124). The poem includes Tamara’s actual dialogue with the Demon, where she voices her reasons for succumbing to the Demon, from her own perspective: she says she “find[s] his words ... thrilling” and that they “ceaselessly disturb [her] mind” (“The Demon,” 132). While Tamara is ultimately helpless against the Demon, she nevertheless has a voice to express her struggle and reasoning, and even to make demands of the Demon. This suggests that she is not as powerless as Bela. In contrast, in A Hero of Our Time, we have little to no insight into Bela’s thoughts and subjectivity. Moreover, we do not even ever see her through a neutral perspective. Bela is always shown through the perspective of Maksim Maksimich, which, while sympathetic, still simplifies and infantilizes her. As readers, we know that Tamara’s world is by definition incompatible with the world of the Demon, just as Bela’s could never match Pechorin’s. But because the poem belongs to the Romantic tradition, the narrative voice given to Tamara creates an illusion that this a priori incompatibility could be at least negotiated, albeit never reconciled. Furthermore, the dialogue between Tamara and the Demon blurs the line between reality and fantasy. This, too, fits one of the most important themes of Romanticism: an attempt to bridge irreconcilable worlds. Conversely, since A Hero of Our Time is a work of Realism, this illusion is missing.
The border between Realism and Romanticism articulated by Lermontov can also be observed through the concept of “home,” which, as previously stated, is present for the Demon but missing for Pechorin. The Demon’s wish to return to Heaven from his existence on Earth can be attributed to the same Romantic theme: the desire to bridge worlds apart. In the Demon’s case, Heaven is the ideal fantasy he is trying to reach, while there is no “ideal world” for Pechorin. He has no ideal home to yearn for, and hence no irreconcilable worlds to bridge.
As the two works were being completed in the late 1830s and early 1840s, the Golden Age of Russian literature was coming to a close. Realism was replacing Romanticism as the main literary method. As it happens, prose was also replacing poetry around the same time. As a work of Romantic poetry, “The Demon” thus marked the transition to a new era that favored prose and Realism. A Hero of Our Time, by contrast, fits right into the changing paradigmatic trends of Russian literature of that period, making Pechorin a “hero of his time” not only in the social, but also in the literary sense. Pechorin’s character reflects both the historical time period and the artistic method through which his story is told.
Extratextual Borders
As he worked on both “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov looked outside Russia for influences and inspirations. Romanticism came to Russia from Europe, mainly England and Germany, making “The Demon” a work with tangible foreign influences. Lermontov’s portrayal of the Demon as a fallen angel inherits many similarly sympathetic portrayals of comparable characters by European Romantics, including Byron (and even earlier, such as Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost). Even the fact that Lermontov’s Russian Demon – Демон – is a mere transliteration of the English word, with all the middle letters of the two alphabets being the same, highlights the English influence. (A more familiar Russian synonym could be chosen, such as bes, chort, d’iavol, etc.). The capitalized spelling of “Demon” is also a tribute to Romanticism. Furthermore, much as A Hero of Our Time is a work of Realism, Pechorin as a character is a radical deconstruction of the Romantic Byronic hero.
This is not to say that Lermontov had no domestic influences. To repeat, Pechorin is the literary offspring of the eponymous hero of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. Both protagonists are “superfluous men,” traveling in search of a remedy to the boredom and emptiness that plagues them, wounding others in their paths. The influence is even more striking in the names of the two characters: Pushkin’s Onegin is named after the Onega River, and Pechorin after the wilder, more northern Pechora River. Lermontov’s hero is certainly colder, less tamed, and more dangerous to others than his literary predecessor. Moreover, it was Pushkin who, according to Robert Reid, first “introduced the word demon into the Russian literary vocabulary” with his 1832 poem, also titled “Demon” (Reid 199). Lermontov’s choice of the word “demon” for the title of his own poem over the possible Russian synonyms was likely influenced by Pushkin as well.
The concept of borders, central to our parallel reading of Lermontov’s two works, informs their histories of publication as well. “The Demon,” along these lines, had to cross geographical borders and, in a sense, the border of life and death, since it was first published outside Russia and after Lermontov’s death. Its path to completion and publication was anything but simple. Lermontov began working on “The Demon” in 1829, while still a teenager. After multiple drafts and revisions, the poem was finally finished in 1841, the year of Lermontov’s premature death. Initially banned in Russia, it first saw the light of day in 1856 in Karlsruhe, Germany. A slightly edited version came out in the same city the following year, with parallel editions published in Berlin. In Russia, the poem was not published until 1860. A Hero of Our Time had a much simpler path: Lermontov began working on the novel in 1838, completed it in 1839, and lived to see it published in Russia the following year, in 1840. Unlike “The Demon,” the novel did not have to cross geographical borders on its way to publication. Yet it is surprising that a work like A Hero of Our Time, exposing as it were the “the vices of our generation,” was published at home faster and with fewer censorship hurdles than “The Demon,” a Romantic poem with little if any relation to the historical reality.
Conclusion
Reading “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time in parallel and with the idea of borders in mind makes one wonder about the connections between the act of border-crossing and the state of being demonic. This question is raised byZinovy Zinik, a Russian author who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, in his book Emigration as a Literary Device. Emigration and exile, Zinik argues, are associated with a plethora of supernatural elements: the idea of flight, being forced to learn new languages (akin to “speaking in tongues”), having a warped view of time due the illusion that the old home will not change in one’s absence, and the desire to return to that ideal version of one’s former home, similar to the desire of a ghost to rejoin the land of the living. The Demon’s longing to return to his pre-exile self defines both his and Tamara’s tragic fates, and Pechorin’s “demonic” traits are certainly related to his state of perpetual wandering. This psychological and mythological identification of exiles as demons and vice versa goes far beyond Lermontov’s “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time, populating numerous other works of Russian literature, with Dostoevsky’s Demons as one example. While there may be no actual demons in Dostoevsky’s novel written thirty years later, it features characters who carry ideas and behavior Dostoevsky considered “demonic.” They bring these ideas to Russia from abroad, making their demonic appearance and impact contingent on border-crossing, however far removed they may be from Lermontov’s liminal characters.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited and translated by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson, 84–258. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Franklin, Simon. “Nostalgia for Hell: Russian Literary Demonism and Orthodox Tradition.” In Russian Literature and Its Demons, edited by Pamela Davidson, 31-58. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000.
Layton, Susan. Russian Literature and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Lermontov, Mikhail. A Hero of Our Time. Translated by Vladimir Nabokov. Woodstock, NY: Ardis Publishers, 2002.
Lermontov, Mikhail. The Demon. Translated by Charles Johnston. New York: Random House, 1983.
Lermontov, M. Yu. Sobranie sochinenii v 4 tomakh. Vol. 2. Moscow: RAN, 1962.
Reid, Robert. “Lermontov’s Demon: A Question of Identity.” Slavonic and East European Review 60, no. 2 (1982): 189–210.
Wigzell, Faith. “The Russian Folk Devil and His Literary Reflections.” In Russian Literature and Its Demons, edited by Pamela Davidson, 59-86. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000.
Zinik, Zinovy. Emigratsiia kak literaturnyi priem. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011.
Borders in “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time can be grouped into four categories. The first category consists of “intrinsic borders” drawn within each text. These are the borders the Demon and Pechorin cross or contend within the respective spaces they navigate, whether they are geographical lines Pechorin transgresses or the border between Heaven and Earth crossed by the Demon. The second category is that of “comparative character borders”: the often-blurred borders between the two protagonists themselves, such as the line between the human (Pechorin) and super-human (the Demon). The third category pertains to “intertextual borders,” with “The Demon” being a work of romantic poetry and A Hero of Our Time a realist novel (both works, completed around the same time, mark the transition from Romanticism to Realism in the nineteenth-century Russian literary tradition). Finally, the last category consists of “extratextual borders”: these comprise outside influences on both works, as well as the borders that Lermontov’s texts had to cross on their way to publication.
Intrinsic Borders
Both Pechorin and the Demon encounter borders within their respective plotlines that are intrinsic to each text. Many of these borders are outlined by the fact that both characters are in exile – as was Lermontov himself, exiled to the Caucuses for writing “Death of the Poet” (1837), his controversial poem on Pushkin’s death. One of the few details revealed about Pechorin’s backstory is that he, too, has been exiled to the Caucuses and, hence, is bound to cross geographical borders (those between St. Petersburg and the Caucuses region, as well as between the towns he travels to while there). Throughout the novel, each place he stops at is temporary, and all the settings are simply stops on his way. Moreover, Pechorin does not have a final destination in mind, so he is essentially on the way to nowhere. Looking at Pechorin’s travels through the lens of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope (that is, through the relationship of time and space in literature), it becomes clear that Pechorin’s constant change of settings has important implications for him as a character. In a novel, according to Bakhtin, the road is a realized metaphor for the “path of life,” and intersections on this path signify turning points in the character’s life” (Bakhtin, 120). However, Pechorin is not fundamentally changed by or at any of the settings or intersections he travels through. As a result, it seems that Pechorin does not have a “path” at all. Chronologically, the last detail revealed about Pechorin is that he “died on his way back from Persia” (A Hero of Our Time, 63), meaning that he crossed more geographical borders before dying. The lack of specificity in this detail emphasizes that Pechorin, even in death, cannot be tied to any permanent location.
Likewise, the Demon is in an exile of sorts too. The poem’s first stanza reveals that he has been “long-since outcast” from Heaven, and is doomed to endlessly roam “above the sinful world” (“The Demon,” 107). The border between Heaven and Earth is one that the Demon has been sent over, without being able to cross back, but he sees Tamara as a way to touch upon Heaven once more. By depicting both protagonists in constant wandering, Lermontov puts them in a state of “double” exile: exile by itself only means that one cannot return to a specific place, but it does not prevent one from settling elsewhere. The exile of both Pechorin and the Demon is doubled because neither is capable of settling anywhere at all.
Furthermore, Pechorin’s geographical border-crossing has to do with the colonial context of the novel: as an officer demoted to the Caucuses, he is part of the Russian imperial campaign. Pechorin’s position as the colonizer drives his initial interest in Bela, the young Caucasian princess whom he kidnaps and who is eventually killed, due to his actions. For him, Bella is interesting mainly because she is “exotic.” He views her as part of the Caucasian landscape; not someone, but something he can possess. As Pechorin tells Maksim Maksimich, Bela will just have to get used “to the idea that she is mine, for she won’t belong to anybody but me” (A Hero of Our Time, 24). The colonial context contributes to the power imbalance between him and Bela, as well as her family. Pechorin is able to toy with their lives, facing no consequences from his own higher-ups. The fact that Pechorin’s actions are so blatantly immoral even adds an ironic touch to the novel. Lermontov still adopts the colonial view, but instead of making his hero a “chivalrous Christian soldier” and carrier of civilization, as was often the case in storylines involving Russian officers engaging with Caucasian women, it makes Pechorin “assume the guise of a local bandit” and “adhere to savage standards” in his methods of capturing Bela instead (Layton 236-237). In other words, Lermontov gives Pechorin the colonizer’s position of power while allowing him to act in the same way that is deemed “savage” and “uncivilized” by the colonizing power.
The actions of the Demon can also be interpreted as an allegory for colonialism. While such concepts as nation, race, and ethnicity are inapplicable to him, the way he intrudes into Tamara’s life in the Caucuses is reminiscent of the way a colonizing nation intrudes the lands it has come to colonize, with no regard for the people indigenous to those lands. The violent death of Tamara’s fiancé, orchestrated by the Demon, is but one example. Of course, the Demon does not represent Russia. In fact, his “name” and genealogy as a literary character are less Russian than British (the Demon’s affinities with England will be discussed in greater detail under the category of “extratextual borders”). But whether British or Russian, his exploitative actions still add a colonial dimension to the poem, making the Demon resemble Pechorin in this respect.
Both Pechorin and the Demon find themselves on the border between life and death. The Demon may be immortal, but Tamara is not, and her death (and ascent to Heaven) is a tragedy for the Demon. Pechorin, too, sends a few characters over this border, whether directly (like Grushnitsky whom he kills in a duel) or not (like Bela). Neither protagonist, however, crosses the border of life and death as unconditionally and dramatically as their victims. The Demon never crosses it at all: his “finale” is the same permanent, lonely existence above the Earth he had been confined to before seeing Tamara. Pechorin does die, but his death occurs “off-stage” and comes with very little detail. Interestingly, there is virtually no discussion in the novel of what awaits Pechorin after death (save for Bela’s regret that due to their differing religions, they will not meet in the afterlife). It is even possible to imagine that in his afterlife, Pechorin would be reincarnated as the Demon.
Borders charted by religion deserve a special mention in both works. Pechorin faces one with Bela: he may not hold religious beliefs, but still comes from a Christian background, while Bela is Muslim. The Demon faces a different kind of religious border with Tamara. She, as a Georgian, is Christian Orthodox. The Demon himself is, of course, outside of these categories, but he does have a role in the Christian doctrine – that of darkness and evil. Tamara knows that, which is why she attempts to resist him by committing herself to a monastery and praying. Her faith puts yet another border between them.
One border that only the Demon contends with, however, is that between the human and the superhuman realms. Tamara is human while the Demon is not. But the human-superhuman border would be better examined through a comparative analysis of the Demon and Pechorin.
Comparative Character Borders
The border between Pechorin as a human and the Demon as a supernatural being is far less clear-cut than it may seem. The differences between the two characters’ backstories and roles in the two texts make Pechorin, in a sense, more demonic than the Demon himself, and vice versa: the Demon more human than his earthly counterpart (this is particularly evident in “Bela,” the first part of Lermontov’s novel). Strange as it may sound, the Demon has a clearer backstory than Pechorin. Unlike the novel, the poem gives an exposition on the Demon before his fall from grace: he was once a “pure cherubim” who “knew no evil, no suspicion” (“The Demon,” 107). Pechorin, on the other hand, is introduced to the reader already as devoid of any beliefs, ideals, or ability to make meaningful human connections. We never find out exactly what, if anything, made him this way.
This background highlights one important difference between the two characters as exiles: unlike the Demon, Pechorin is a perpetual outsider by choice. He may have been exiled to the Caucuses, but there is no divine power preventing him from settling into a social group or making a home for himself, as is the case with the Demon. The Demon was forced into exile by God, so he is kept in eternal loneliness by a force more powerful than himself. Pechorin, to be fair, was also sent to the Caucuses by those who hold power over him as an officer, but there is no one preventing him from connecting with other people and new places. This relationship, in other words, is counterintuitive: the Demon, a supernatural, nearly all-powerful being is a victim of someone else in his story, while Pechorin, an ordinary human, is not.
Another way that the Demon is humanized and Pechorin is demonized lies in how each character is affected by their state of exile. The Demon’s exile is his primary cause of suffering: he dreams of his days back in Heaven (or, in his case, back “home”) and even sees Tamara as a “return ticket.” In other words, like a human who has been forced to leave home, he yearns to go back. Meanwhile, Pechorin may be suffering too, but not because of his exile. In a conversation with Maksim Maksimich (the narrator in “Bela”), Pechorin admits that when he was first transferred to the Caucuses, it was the “happiest time of [his] life” (A Hero of Our Time, 39). The adventure and proximity to violence and death offered by his transfer temporarily relieved him of boredom, which plagues him constantly otherwise. This is a typical trait of the literary type Pechorin belongs to: the superfluous man, introduced into Russian literature by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin. Like Onegin, Pechorin is “superfluous” in the sense he cannot find a place, a role, or a community to belong to. Onegin traded high-society city life for the countryside, but did not find a place for himself there either. Pechorin leaves St. Petersburg for the Caucuses, but is similarly disappointed and disillusioned. These characters are doomed to live without a sense of belonging. One may go so far as to assume that had Pechorin not been formally exiled, he would set out to travel anyway. This is evident from his conversation with Maksim Maksimich: “there is one remedy left for me: to travel,” Pechorin confesses (A Hero of Our Time, 40). Traveling to new locations and adventures is his method of running away from his perpetual boredom and emptiness. The differences in how the two characters are affected by their exile show that the concept of “home” is virtually missing from Pechorin’s character, while it is a constant reference point and source of nostalgia for the Demon.
Aside from the physical borders, we can see that Pechorin and the Demon continue to act counterintuitively to what would be expected from them as a demon and a human: they cross the “borders” charted by these very roles. This can be observed first and foremost in their behavior towards their victims: Tamara and Bela. Of course, the Demon, unlike Pechorin, cannot be judged by human moral standards, since evil is his natural element and has always been his prime “occupation.” Therefore, his actions are not a violation of any social norms, while Pechorin’s are. Still, it is clear that Tamara means much more to the Demon than Bela to Pechorin. First of all, when the Demon first sees Tamara, “his dumb soul’s emptiness was slowly / filled with loud chords of blissful sound – / and once again he reached that holy / shrine where love, beauty, goodness gleam!” (“The Demon,” 112). Meanwhile, soon after kidnapping Bela, Pechorin makes a bet with Maksim Maksimich that “she will be [his]” (A Hero of Our Time, 26). For the Demon, Tamara is a chance at salvation; for Pechorin, Bela is just a way to feed his ego, an object to capture. Furthermore, it seems like Tamara’s death is far more consequential for the Demon than Bela’s death for Pechorin. The narrator notes that the Demon is “left there isolated / in all the world – no love, no hope!” (“The Demon,” 142) after Tamara’s soul is taken away. Pechorin does fall ill after Bela’s death, but when Maksim Maksimich mentions Bela during their later encounter, he simply confirms that he remembers her and “feigns a yawn” (A Hero of Our Time, 59). In fact, Pechorin gets bored with Bela even before she dies. He openly admits it, noting that her “ignorance and naivete” is just as suffocating to him as the “coquetry” of city women, and that he “find[s] her company dull” (A Hero of Our Time, 40). In contrast, the Demon never loses his obsession with Tamara. After she dies and the Angel comes for her soul, the Demon interjects with the words “She’s mine!” (“The Demon,” 141). This indicates that he really did plan on spending an eternity with Tamara’s soul. However selfish, his intentions were permanent. Considering the “border” between the demonic and the human roles in Lermontov’s texts, it seems odd that it is the Demon, not Pechorin, who is affected by the death of his victim. After all, the Demon has been around for a literal eternity, while Pechorin, however jaded, has had much less time to get accustomed to love and loss. The difference also shows that the Demon’s speeches to Tamara were said in earnest, while Pechorin’s words to Bela were but calculated manipulations.
Therein lies another difference between the two characters: the Demon cannot lie, while Pechorin lies constantly. This once again goes against the conventions of their roles as demon and human, since demons are usually associated with duplicity and dishonesty. As a result, the readers are privy to more of the Demon’s inner thoughts and feelings than Pechorin’s. Just as the rest of the characters in A Hero of Our Time see only the image of Pechorin that he has crafted for them himself, the readers of Lermontov’s novel are shut out of Pechorin’s psyche. For that matter, how deeply was Pechorin affected by Bela’s death? The fact that he fell ill immediately after shows that he was distressed, but was it because he cared about Bela and felt guilty, or was his pride just wounded because he failed to protect his “property”? Similarly, when he yawns in response to Maksim Maksimich’s mention of Bela, is it because he was unaffected by his loss, or because he wanted Maksim Maksimich to believe that he was unaffected? Even the parts of the novel that consist of Pechorin’s own journals, in which he is the narrator, leave the reader (and, to be sure, Pechorin himself) with questions. For example, what can be made of Pechorin’s sudden desire to be with Vera (his old flame in “Princess Mary”)? Pechorin was so desperate to see her one last time that he rode his horse to death and broke down sobbing when he realized that his efforts were futile. And yet, he cannot explain why this desire appeared or why it passed, leaving it up to the reader to figure out. Pechorin is therefore isolated not only from the characters who surround him, but from the audience of Lermontov’s novel. The wall that Lermontov builds between his character and everyone else suggests that Pechorin cannot be understood by anyone else in principle. And although the responsibility for this lack of understanding from others belongs to no one other than Pechorin himself, he is genuinely bothered by it. It is telling that when he overhears the other officers in “Princess Mary” insult him behind his back, he is not just angered, but also confused and upset by their words: “What do they all hate me for?” (A Hero of Our Time, 147). Lermontov highlights the tragedy of his character by showing that Pechorin is a mystery not only to those around him, but also to himself. In contrast, the omniscient narrator of the poem lays bare all of the Demon’s thoughts and motives. In short, the human character’s motives are a mystery not only to the readers, but also to himself, while the supernatural being’s motives are entirely clear, whereby the border between them – and, by extension, between the two works – is effectively blurred.
Lermontov’s Demon differs significantly from the typical demons in Russian culture. Unlike the singular figure of Satan, “demons” have always been associated with plurality and portrayed in the Orthodox tradition as “perpetual irritants” (Franklin 41), often coming in disguise to act as a playful nuisance. In Russian literature before Lermontov, demons had most prominently been portrayed in this “light” and comical way by Gogol (Franklin 43). In contrast, Lermontov’s demon resembles a ghost far more than a demon per se. There is nothing comic about him. He is not described as one of many, but rather as a lone figure. He may have been exiled from Heaven, but he has not been banished to Hell. In fact, Hell is mentioned only by Tamara in the poem. This typical “Christian location” (Wigzell 65) of the demon, in other words, is missing from Lermontov’s portrayal. Nor does Lermontov’s demon “possess” any human body: he does not disguise himself, instead appearing to Tamara as an abstract voice. Not only does he avoid a typical demonic activity (taking over the body of another person, or even an animal); he does not have a physical form at all. Speech is the only way he can make himself known to Tamara. The language used to describe the Demon is also often more characteristic of a ghost than a demon. For example, the poem’s first stanza refers to him as a “soul of all the banished” (duh izgnaniia). Ghosts are, essentially, the departed souls of those once living, while demons typically do not have souls at all. Furthermore, the Demon’s days back in Heaven are described much in the way that a person’s life would be narrated, making his banishment from Heaven akin to death. Even the fact that the word “Demon” is capitalized throughout the poem gives it the impression of a human name. The character’s ambiguous status further dilutes his role as a “demon.” We are told that the Demon’s primary occupation is evil, which “[leaves] him deeply bored” (“The Demon,” 108), but no details are given as to what this means. This was not the case in the earlier drafts of the poem, however, which included interactions between the Demon and Satan and made it clear that the former was a servant to the latter. As he worked on his poem, Lermontov edited this out, endowing his Demon with a less clear, unconventional status (Reid 197).
Yet there is one example where the human-superhuman border between the Demon and Pechorin plays out according to expectation: the border of time. Pechorin, as the title of the novel informs us, is “a hero of his time,” that is, a representative of his time period. Lermontov sums it up in his prologue to the novel: “A Hero of Our Time … is indeed a portrait, but not of a single individual; it is a portrait composed of all the vices of our generation in the fullness of their development” (A Hero of Our Time, 2). Pechorin’s cynicism and immorality are designed as a reflection of the Russian (upper-class) society at the time, leaving young men like Pechorin with no opportunities to realize their potential and talents, making them “superfluous.” A Hero of Our Time was meant, among other things, as a social critique. In contrast, the Demon, a supernatural being, is by definition timeless. He is mythologically eternal and, presumably, unaffected by the time period. His story, therefore, is not meant to serve as social commentary, at least not as much as Pechorin’s.
Intertextual Literary Borders
The main intertextual literary border that comes between these two works has to do with the gradual transition of Russian literature from Romanticism to Realism at the time. One way in which this border becomes apparent lies in the portrayals of Tamara and Bela. The respective victims of the Demon and Pechorin are similar in many ways: both are Caucasian princesses who led a carefree life before their fatal encounters with the protagonists; both initially resist their male antagonists, despite having no real chance to defend their autonomy. For example, Tamara asks her family to commit her to a monastery in an attempt to free herself of the Demon’s presence; in their dialogue, she tries to reject him: “deceitful spirit, you must leave me! / Be still, I’ll not believe the foe” (“The Demon,” 128). Bela, too, initially rejects Pechorin: when she is first kidnapped, she “[sits] in a corner, wrapped up in her veil” and “neither speaks nor looks at anyone” (A Hero of Our Time, 24). However, both Tamara and Bella gradually give in – Tamara to the Demon’s speeches, and Bela to Pechorin’s manipulations. Tragically, both end up dead as a result of their encounters with the Demon and Pechorin.
And yet, there is one major difference between Tamara and Bela that, one might argue, can be attributed to the differences between the Romantic and the Realist traditions: Tamara is given a voice of her own, while Bela is not. Thanks to the omniscient narrator of the poem, the reader enjoys much more insight into Tamara’s inner conflict and thoughts. When she tries to pray herself free of the dark force taking over her, the narrator tells us that while “her heart may wish to pray in season / to holy saints, to him (the demon) it prays.” (“The Demon,” 124). The poem includes Tamara’s actual dialogue with the Demon, where she voices her reasons for succumbing to the Demon, from her own perspective: she says she “find[s] his words ... thrilling” and that they “ceaselessly disturb [her] mind” (“The Demon,” 132). While Tamara is ultimately helpless against the Demon, she nevertheless has a voice to express her struggle and reasoning, and even to make demands of the Demon. This suggests that she is not as powerless as Bela. In contrast, in A Hero of Our Time, we have little to no insight into Bela’s thoughts and subjectivity. Moreover, we do not even ever see her through a neutral perspective. Bela is always shown through the perspective of Maksim Maksimich, which, while sympathetic, still simplifies and infantilizes her. As readers, we know that Tamara’s world is by definition incompatible with the world of the Demon, just as Bela’s could never match Pechorin’s. But because the poem belongs to the Romantic tradition, the narrative voice given to Tamara creates an illusion that this a priori incompatibility could be at least negotiated, albeit never reconciled. Furthermore, the dialogue between Tamara and the Demon blurs the line between reality and fantasy. This, too, fits one of the most important themes of Romanticism: an attempt to bridge irreconcilable worlds. Conversely, since A Hero of Our Time is a work of Realism, this illusion is missing.
The border between Realism and Romanticism articulated by Lermontov can also be observed through the concept of “home,” which, as previously stated, is present for the Demon but missing for Pechorin. The Demon’s wish to return to Heaven from his existence on Earth can be attributed to the same Romantic theme: the desire to bridge worlds apart. In the Demon’s case, Heaven is the ideal fantasy he is trying to reach, while there is no “ideal world” for Pechorin. He has no ideal home to yearn for, and hence no irreconcilable worlds to bridge.
As the two works were being completed in the late 1830s and early 1840s, the Golden Age of Russian literature was coming to a close. Realism was replacing Romanticism as the main literary method. As it happens, prose was also replacing poetry around the same time. As a work of Romantic poetry, “The Demon” thus marked the transition to a new era that favored prose and Realism. A Hero of Our Time, by contrast, fits right into the changing paradigmatic trends of Russian literature of that period, making Pechorin a “hero of his time” not only in the social, but also in the literary sense. Pechorin’s character reflects both the historical time period and the artistic method through which his story is told.
Extratextual Borders
As he worked on both “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time, Lermontov looked outside Russia for influences and inspirations. Romanticism came to Russia from Europe, mainly England and Germany, making “The Demon” a work with tangible foreign influences. Lermontov’s portrayal of the Demon as a fallen angel inherits many similarly sympathetic portrayals of comparable characters by European Romantics, including Byron (and even earlier, such as Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost). Even the fact that Lermontov’s Russian Demon – Демон – is a mere transliteration of the English word, with all the middle letters of the two alphabets being the same, highlights the English influence. (A more familiar Russian synonym could be chosen, such as bes, chort, d’iavol, etc.). The capitalized spelling of “Demon” is also a tribute to Romanticism. Furthermore, much as A Hero of Our Time is a work of Realism, Pechorin as a character is a radical deconstruction of the Romantic Byronic hero.
This is not to say that Lermontov had no domestic influences. To repeat, Pechorin is the literary offspring of the eponymous hero of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. Both protagonists are “superfluous men,” traveling in search of a remedy to the boredom and emptiness that plagues them, wounding others in their paths. The influence is even more striking in the names of the two characters: Pushkin’s Onegin is named after the Onega River, and Pechorin after the wilder, more northern Pechora River. Lermontov’s hero is certainly colder, less tamed, and more dangerous to others than his literary predecessor. Moreover, it was Pushkin who, according to Robert Reid, first “introduced the word demon into the Russian literary vocabulary” with his 1832 poem, also titled “Demon” (Reid 199). Lermontov’s choice of the word “demon” for the title of his own poem over the possible Russian synonyms was likely influenced by Pushkin as well.
The concept of borders, central to our parallel reading of Lermontov’s two works, informs their histories of publication as well. “The Demon,” along these lines, had to cross geographical borders and, in a sense, the border of life and death, since it was first published outside Russia and after Lermontov’s death. Its path to completion and publication was anything but simple. Lermontov began working on “The Demon” in 1829, while still a teenager. After multiple drafts and revisions, the poem was finally finished in 1841, the year of Lermontov’s premature death. Initially banned in Russia, it first saw the light of day in 1856 in Karlsruhe, Germany. A slightly edited version came out in the same city the following year, with parallel editions published in Berlin. In Russia, the poem was not published until 1860. A Hero of Our Time had a much simpler path: Lermontov began working on the novel in 1838, completed it in 1839, and lived to see it published in Russia the following year, in 1840. Unlike “The Demon,” the novel did not have to cross geographical borders on its way to publication. Yet it is surprising that a work like A Hero of Our Time, exposing as it were the “the vices of our generation,” was published at home faster and with fewer censorship hurdles than “The Demon,” a Romantic poem with little if any relation to the historical reality.
Conclusion
Reading “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time in parallel and with the idea of borders in mind makes one wonder about the connections between the act of border-crossing and the state of being demonic. This question is raised byZinovy Zinik, a Russian author who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, in his book Emigration as a Literary Device. Emigration and exile, Zinik argues, are associated with a plethora of supernatural elements: the idea of flight, being forced to learn new languages (akin to “speaking in tongues”), having a warped view of time due the illusion that the old home will not change in one’s absence, and the desire to return to that ideal version of one’s former home, similar to the desire of a ghost to rejoin the land of the living. The Demon’s longing to return to his pre-exile self defines both his and Tamara’s tragic fates, and Pechorin’s “demonic” traits are certainly related to his state of perpetual wandering. This psychological and mythological identification of exiles as demons and vice versa goes far beyond Lermontov’s “The Demon” and A Hero of Our Time, populating numerous other works of Russian literature, with Dostoevsky’s Demons as one example. While there may be no actual demons in Dostoevsky’s novel written thirty years later, it features characters who carry ideas and behavior Dostoevsky considered “demonic.” They bring these ideas to Russia from abroad, making their demonic appearance and impact contingent on border-crossing, however far removed they may be from Lermontov’s liminal characters.
Works Cited
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Zinik, Zinovy. Emigratsiia kak literaturnyi priem. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2011.