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Zusatztext “In [ A Hero of Our Time ]! Lermontov managed to create a fictional person whose romantic dash to cynicism! tiger-like suppleness and eagle eye! hot blood and cool head! tenderness and taciturnity! elegance and brutality! delicacy of perception and harsh passion to dominate! ruthlessness and awareness of it! are of lasting appeal to readers of all countries and centuries.” –from the Translator’s Foreword by Vladimir Nabokov “[Lermontov’s] technique is surprisingly sophisticated! given the late development of the novel in Russian literature. Lermontov does not only dislocate chronology to achieve [his] result; in equally brilliant fashion he reinforces the effect by employing different contemporary literary genres . . . to create! in the end! a unified whole.” –from the Introduction by T. J. Binyon Informationen zum Autor MIKHAIL LERMONTOV was born in Moscow in 1814. Influential as a poet, novelist, and visual artist, Lermontov died in 1941 at the age of 26. VLADIMIR NABOKOV was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1899. After studying French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, he launched his literary career in Berlin and Paris. In 1940 he moved to the United States, here he achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. Lolita, arguably his most famous novel, was first published, by the Olympia Press, Paris, on September 15, 1955, and became a controversial success. Nabokov died in Montreux Switzerland in 1977. Klappentext 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.This edition includes a Translator's Foreword by Vladimir Nabokov, who translated the novel in collaboration with his son, Dmitri Nabokov. I BELA I was traveling post from Tiflis. My cart's entire load consisted of one small valise, which was half filled with travel notes about Georgia. Of these, the greater part, fortunately for you, have been lost, and the valise containing my remaining possessions, fortunately for me, is intact. The sun was already beginning to drop behind the snowy ridge when I rode into the Koyshaur Valley. The driver, an Ossetian, drove the horses tirelessly in order to make it up Koyshaur Mountain by nightfall, singing songs at the top of his voice. A glorious spot, this valley! On every side of the mountain are impregnable reddish cliffs hung with green ivy and crowned with clusters of plane trees, yellow precipices scoured by running water, and there, high up, a golden fringe of snows, while below, the Aragva, having embraced another nameless stream gushing noisily from a black, mist-filled gorge, has stretched out like a silver thread and shimmers like a snake with scales. When we reached the foot of Koyshaur, we stopped at an inn. Here, crowded noisily around, were a score of Georgians and mountaineers; close by, a caravan of camels had halted for the night. I was obliged to hire oxen to drag my cart up this accursed mountain because it was already autumn and the roads were icy--and this mountain was nearly two versts long. There was nothing to be done for it: I hired six oxen and several Ossetians. One of them hoisted my valise on his shoulders, the others began helping the oxen with their shouts--and nothing more. Behind my cart, a team of four oxen was pulling another with the greatest ease, despite the fact that it was piled high, to the very top. This circumstance amazed me. Walking behind the cart was its owner, who was smoking a small Kabardian pipe set in silver. He was wearing an o...
