The genre of the novel, the hero of our time, is defined as. The genre of the work is "Hero of Our Time". Psychological novel by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov. Related works by Lermontov

The image of a lonely, disappointed person at odds with society runs through all of Lermontov’s work. In the lyrics and early poems this image is given in a romantic manner, outside the social environment and real life. There's a problem in A Hero of Our Time strong personality, which knows no peace and cannot find use for its powers, is solved by realistic means of writing.

In romantic works, the reasons for the hero's disappointment are usually not revealed. The hero carried “fatal secrets” in his soul. Often a person's disappointment was explained by the clash of his dreams with reality. So, Mtsyri dreamed of a free life in his homeland, but was forced to languish in a gloomy monastery that resembled a prison.

Following Pushkin, who gave examples of realistic works of art, Lermontov showed that a person’s character is influenced social conditions, the environment in which he lives. It is no coincidence that Lermontov depicted the “water society” of Pyatigorsk, forcing Pechorin to remember the life of the St. Petersburg high society salons. Pechorin was not born a moral cripple. Nature gave him a deep, sharp mind, a responsive heart, and a strong will. He is capable of noble impulses and humane actions.

After the tragic death of Bela, “Pechorin was unwell for a long time and lost weight.” In history, quarrels with Grushnitsky stand out especially clearly positive qualities his character. So he accidentally learns about the vile plan of the dragoon captain. “If Grushnitsky had not agreed, I would have thrown myself on his neck,” admits Pechorin. Before the duel, he is again the first to express his readiness to reconcile with the enemy. Moreover, he provides “all the benefits” to Grushnitsky, in whose soul “a spark of generosity could awaken, and then everything would work out for the better.”

Pechorin was keenly touched by the moral torment of Princess Mary. His feeling for Vera, who alone understood him “perfectly with all... petty weaknesses, bad passions,” is genuine. His hardened heart warmly and passionately responds to the emotional movements of this woman. At the mere thought that he could lose her forever, Vera became to him “more precious than anything in the world, more valuable than life, honor, happiness." Like a madman he rushes on a lathered horse after the departed Vera. When the driven horse "clattered to the ground," Pechorin, who did not flinch at gunpoint, "fell on the wet grass and, like a child, cried."

Yes, Lermontov’s hero is no stranger to deep human affections. However, in all life's encounters, good, noble impulses ultimately give way to cruelty. “Ever since I’ve been living and acting,” Pechorin argues, “fate has somehow always led me to the denouement of other people’s dramas, as if without me no one could die or despair. I was the necessary face of the fifth act : involuntarily I played the pathetic role of an executioner or a traitor."

Pechorin is guided only by personal desires and aspirations, regardless of the interests of the people around him. “My first pleasure is to subject everything that surrounds me to my will,” he says. Pechorin's word does not diverge from deed. He really plays "the role of an ax in the hands of fate." Bela is killed, kind Maxim Maksimych is offended, the peace of the “peaceful” smugglers is disturbed, Grushnitsky is killed, Mary’s life is shattered!

Who is to blame for the fact that Pechorin’s wonderful talents perished? Why did he become a moral cripple? Lermontov answers this question with the entire course of the narrative. Society is to blame, the social conditions in which the hero was brought up and lived are to blame.

“My colorless youth passed in a struggle with myself and the light,” he says, “my best feelings, fearing ridicule, I buried in the depths of my heart; they died there.”

“In my first youth...,” Pechorin tells Maxim Maksimych, “I began to madly enjoy all the pleasures that can be obtained for money, and, of course, these pleasures disgusted me.” Entering the big world, he fell in love with beauties, but his heart “remained empty”; took up science, but soon realized that “neither fame nor happiness depend on them at all, because the most happy people-t are ignorant, and fame is luck, and in order to achieve it, you just need to be clever." “Then I became bored,” Pechorin admits and comes to the conclusion: “... my soul is spoiled by light.” It’s hard for a gifted person , like Onegin,

Look at life as a ritual And follow the orderly crowd, without sharing with it Neither common opinions nor passions.

Pechorin says more than once that in the society in which he lives there is neither selfless love nor true friendship, no fair, humane relations between people, no meaningful social activities.

Disappointed, doubting everything, morally suffering, Lermontov's hero is drawn to nature, which calms him down and gives him true aesthetic pleasure. Landscape sketches in Pechorin's Journal help to understand the complex, rebellious character of the novel's protagonist. They strengthen the motive of loneliness, Pechorin’s deep emptiness and at the same time indicate that in the depths of his consciousness lives a dream of have a wonderful life worthy of a person. Taking a close look at the mountains, Pechorin exclaims: “It’s fun to live in such a land! Some kind of joyful feeling is poured in all my veins. The air is clean and fresh, like a child’s kiss; the sun is bright, the sky is blue - what could be more, it seems? - Why are there passions, desires, regrets? The description of the morning in which Pechorin’s duel with Grushnitsky took place is colored with deep lyricism. “I remember,” notes Pechorin, “this time, more than ever before, I loved nature.”

Lermontov created a truthful one, typical image, which reflected the essential features of an entire generation. In the preface to the novel, the author writes that Pechorin is “a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development.” In the image of Pechorin, Lermontov pronounces his sentence to the younger generation ZO's. "Admire what the heroes of our time are like!" - he says with the entire content of the book. They are “no longer capable of making great sacrifices, either for the Good of humanity, or even for their own ... happiness.” This is a reproach the best people era, and a call to civic deeds.

Lermontov deeply and comprehensively revealed inner world of his hero, his psychology, conditioned by time and environment, told “the story of the human soul.” "A Hero of Our Time" is a socio-psychological novel.

The image of a lonely, disappointed person at odds with society runs through all of Lermontov’s work. In the lyrics and early poems, this image is presented in a romantic manner, outside the social environment and real life. In "A Hero of Our Time" the problem of a strong personality who knows no peace and cannot find use for his powers is solved by realistic means of writing.
In romantic works, the reasons for the hero's disappointment are usually not revealed. The hero carried “fatal secrets” in his soul. Often a person's disappointment was explained by the clash of his dreams with reality. So, Mtsyri dreamed of a free life in his homeland, but was forced to languish in a gloomy monastery that resembled a prison.
Following Pushkin, who gave examples of realistic works of art, Lermontov showed that a person’s character is influenced by social conditions, the environment in which he lives. It is no coincidence that Lermontov depicted the “water society” of Pyatigorsk, forcing Pechorin to remember the life of the St. Petersburg high society salons. Pechorin was not born a moral cripple. Nature gave him a deep, sharp mind, a responsive heart, and a strong will. He is capable of noble impulses and humane actions.
After the tragic death of Bela, “Pechorin was unwell for a long time and lost weight.” In the story of the quarrel with Grushnitsky, the positive qualities of his character stand out especially clearly. So he accidentally learns about the vile plan of the dragoon captain. “If Grushnitsky had not agreed, I would have thrown myself on his neck,” admits Pechorin. Before a duel, he is the first to express his readiness to reconcile with the enemy. Moreover, he provides “all the benefits” to Grushnitsky, in whose soul “a spark of generosity could awaken, and then everything would work out for the better.”
Pechorin was keenly touched by the moral torment of Princess Mary. His feeling for Vera, who alone understood him “perfectly with all... petty weaknesses, bad passions,” is genuine. His hardened heart warmly and passionately responds to the emotional movements of this woman. At the mere thought that he could lose her forever, Vera became for him “more expensive than anything in the world, more expensive than life, honor, happiness.” Like a madman he rushes on a lathered horse after the departed Vera. When the driven horse “clattered to the ground,” Pechorin, who did not flinch at the barrel of the pistol, “fell on the wet grass and cried like a child.”
Yes, Lermontov’s hero is no stranger to deep human affections. However, in all life's encounters, good, noble impulses ultimately give way to cruelty. “Ever since I’ve been living and acting,” Pechorin argues, “fate has somehow always led me to the outcome of other people’s dramas, as if without me no one could die or fall into despair. I was the necessary face of the fifth act: involuntarily I played the pitiful role of an executioner or a traitor.”
Pechorin is guided only by personal desires and aspirations, regardless of the interests of the people around him.

and the people around him. “My first pleasure is to subject everything that surrounds me to my will,” he says. Pechorin's word does not diverge from deed. He really plays “the role of an ax in the hands of fate.” Bela is killed, kind Maxim Maksimych is offended, the peace of the “peaceful” smugglers is disturbed, Grushnitsky is killed, Mary’s life is shattered!
Who is to blame for the fact that Pechorin’s wonderful talents perished? Why did he become a moral cripple? Lermontov answers this question with the entire course of the narrative. Society is to blame, the social conditions in which the hero was brought up and lived are to blame.
“My colorless youth passed in a struggle with myself and the light,” he says, “my best feelings, fearing ridicule, I buried in the depths of my heart; they died there.”
“In my first youth...” Pechorin tells Maxim Maksimych, “I began to madly enjoy all the pleasures that can be obtained for money, and, of course, these pleasures disgusted me.” Entering the big world, he fell in love with beauties, but his heart “remained empty”; took up science, but soon realized that “neither fame nor happiness depend on them at all, because the happiest people are ignorant, and fame is luck, and to achieve it, you just need to be clever.” “Then I became bored,” Pechorin admits and comes to the conclusion: “... my soul is spoiled by light.” It’s hard for a gifted person, like Onegin,
Look at life as a ritual And follow the orderly crowd, without sharing with it Neither common opinions nor passions.
Pechorin more than once says that in the society in which he lives there is no selfless love, no true friendship, no fair, humane relations between people, no meaningful social activity.
Disappointed, doubting everything, morally suffering, Lermontov's hero is drawn to nature, which calms him down and gives him true aesthetic pleasure. Landscape sketches in Pechorin's Journal help to understand the complex, rebellious character of the novel's protagonist. They strengthen the motive of Pechorin’s loneliness, deep emptiness and at the same time indicate that in the depths of his consciousness lives a dream of a wonderful life worthy of a person. Taking a close look at the mountains, Pechorin exclaims: “It’s fun to live in such a land! Some kind of gratifying feeling flowed through all my veins. The air is clean and fresh, like a child's kiss; the sun is bright, the sky is blue - what would seem to be more? “Why are there passions, desires, regrets?” The description of the morning in which Pechorin’s duel with Grushnitsky took place is colored with deep lyricism. “I remember,” notes Pechorin, “this time, more than ever before, I loved nature.”
Lermontov created a truthful, typical image, which reflected the essential features of an entire generation. In the preface to the novel, the author writes that Pechorin is “a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development.” In the image of Pechorin, Lermontov pronounces a verdict on the younger generation of the 30s.

Lermontov passes judgment on the younger generation of the ZO-s. “Admire what the heroes of our time are like!” - he says with the entire content of the book. They are “no longer capable of making great sacrifices, either for the Good of humanity, or even for their own ... happiness.” This is both a reproach to the best people of the era and a call to civic deeds.
Lermontov deeply and comprehensively revealed the inner world of his hero, his psychology, conditioned by time and environment, and told “the story of the human soul.” "A Hero of Our Time" is a socio-psychological novel.

Genre of the novel "Hero of Our Time"

Following Pushkin, who gave examples of realistic works of art, Lermontov showed that a person’s character is influenced by social conditions, the environment in which he lives. It is no coincidence that Lermontov depicted the “water society” of Pyatigorsk, forcing Pechorin to remember the life of the St. Petersburg high society salons. Pechorin was not born a moral cripple. Nature gave him a deep, sharp mind, a responsive heart, and a strong will. He is capable of noble impulses and humane actions.

After the tragic death of Bela, “Pechorin was unwell for a long time and lost weight.” In the story of the quarrel with Grushnitsky, the positive qualities of his character stand out especially clearly. So he accidentally learns about the vile plan of the dragoon captain. “If Grushnitsky had not agreed, I would have thrown myself on his neck,” admits Pechorin. Before the duel, he is again the first to express his readiness to reconcile with the enemy. Moreover, he provides “all the benefits” to Grushnitsky, in whose soul “a spark of generosity could awaken, and then everything would work out for the better.”

Pechorin was keenly touched by the moral torment of Princess Mary. His feeling for Vera, who alone understood him “perfectly with all... petty weaknesses, bad passions,” is genuine. His hardened heart warmly and passionately responds to the emotional movements of this woman. At the mere thought that he could lose her forever, Vera became for him “more expensive than anything in the world, more expensive than life, honor, happiness.” Like a madman he rushes on a lathered horse after the departed Vera. When the driven horse “clattered to the ground,” Pechorin, who did not flinch at gunpoint, “fell on the wet grass and cried like a child.”

“My colorless youth passed in a struggle with myself and the light,” he says, “my best feelings, fearing ridicule, I buried in the depths of my heart; they died there.”

“In my first youth...,” Pechorin tells Maxim Maksimych, “I began to madly enjoy all the pleasures that can be obtained for money, and, of course, these pleasures disgusted me.” Entering the big world, he fell in love with beauties, but his heart “remained empty”; took up science, but soon realized that “neither fame nor happiness depend on them at all, because the happiest people are ignorant, and fame is luck, and to achieve it, you just need to be clever.” “Then I became bored,” admits Pechorin and comes to the conclusion: “... my soul is spoiled by the light.” It’s hard for a gifted person, like Onegin,

Look at life as a ritual And follow the orderly crowd, without sharing with it Neither common opinions nor passions.

Pechorin more than once says that in the society in which he lives there is no selfless love, no true friendship, no fair, humane relations between people, no meaningful social activity.

Disappointed, doubting everything, morally suffering, Lermontov's hero is drawn to nature, which calms him down and gives him true aesthetic pleasure. Landscape sketches in Pechorin's Journal help to understand the complex, rebellious character of the novel's protagonist. They strengthen the motive of Pechorin’s loneliness, deep emptiness and at the same time indicate that in the depths of his consciousness lives a dream of a wonderful life worthy of a person. Taking a close look at the mountains, Pechorin exclaims: “It’s fun to live in such a land! Some kind of joyful feeling is poured in all my veins. The air is clean and fresh, like a child’s kiss; the sun is bright, the sky is blue - what could be more, it seems? - Why are there passions, desires, regrets? The description of the morning in which Pechorin’s duel with Grushnitsky took place is colored with deep lyricism. “I remember,” notes Pechorin, “this time, more than ever before, I loved nature.”

Lermontov created a truthful, typical image, which reflected the essential features of an entire generation. In the preface to the novel, the author writes that Pechorin is “a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development.” In the image of Pechorin, Lermontov pronounces a verdict on the younger generation of the 30s. "Admire what the heroes of our time are like!" - he says with the entire content of the book. They are “no longer capable of making great sacrifices, either for the Good of humanity, or even for their own ... happiness.” This is both a reproach to the best people of the era and a call to civic deeds.

Lermontov deeply and comprehensively revealed the inner world of his hero, his psychology, conditioned by time and environment, and told “the history of the human soul.” "A Hero of Our Time" is a socio-psychological novel.

The question of the genre of “A Hero of Our Time” has always been important for literary scholars who have studied this work, because the novel itself by M.Yu. Lermontov is an innovative work of Russian classical literature.

Let's consider the genre of the work “Hero of Our Time” and its main compositional and plot features.

Genre originality of the novel

“A Hero of Our Time” was created by the author as a novel consisting of a number of stories. At the beginning of the century before last, such works were popular. In this series, it is worth paying attention to “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka” by N.V. Gogol or “Belkin’s Tale” by A.S. Pushkin.

However, Lermontov somewhat modifies this tradition, combining several stories not with the image of a single narrator (as was the case with Gogol and Pushkin), but with the help of the image of the main character - the young officer G.A. Pechorina. Thanks to this literary move, the author creates a new genre of socio-psychological novel for Russian literature, which will later be continued in the works of his followers F.M. Dostoevsky, I.S. Turgeneva, L.N. Tolstoy and others.

For the writer, the inner life of his main character comes to the fore, while the external circumstances of his life become only the background for the development of the plot.

Compositional features of the work and their influence on the genre of the novel

The genre of the novel “A Hero of Our Time” by Lermontov required the author to abandon the chronological sequence of the plot, which influenced the compositional structure of the work.

The novel opens with the story of how Pechorin stole a young Circassian woman, Bela, who later fell in love with him, but this love did not bring her happiness. In this part, readers see Pechorin through the eyes of Maxim Maksimovich, a Russian officer, staff captain, who turned out to be the commander of the fortress in which Pechorin served. Maxim Maksimovich does not fully understand the strange behavior of his young subordinate, however, he talks about Pechorin without condemnation, rather with sympathy. This is followed by a part called “Maxim Maksimovich”, which chronologically should have completed the novel. In it, readers learn that Pechorin died suddenly on the way to Persia, and the narrator received his journal, in which its author confessed his secret vices and life’s disappointments. As a result, the next parts of the novel are Pechorin’s diary, which tells about the events that happened to him before meeting Bela and meeting Maxim Maximovich.

The genre features of “A Hero of Our Time” are also manifested in the fact that each of the stories included in the novel has its own focus. The genre and composition of “A Hero of Our Time” allows us to conclude that the stories that make up the novel are a reflection of the themes and plots characteristic of the literature of that time.

The story "Bela" is a classic love story with a tragic and poignant ending. It is somewhat reminiscent of the romantic stories of the Decembrist A.A. Bestuzhev, published under the pseudonym Marlinsky. The stories “Taman” and “Fatalist” are action-packed works filled with mystical predestination, secrets, escapes and a love plot characteristic of this genre. The genre of the story “Princess Mary” is somewhat reminiscent of a novel in verse by A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin". There is also a description here secular society, which is equally alien as main character works - to Princess Ligovskaya, and to the main character - G.A. Pechorin. Like Tatyana Larina, Mary falls in love with a man who seems to her to be the embodiment of her ideal, but, having confessed her love to him, she also receives a refusal from him. The duel between Pechorin and Grushnitsky is plot-wise close to the duel that took place between Lensky and Onegin. The younger and more ardent hero Grushnitsky dies in this duel (just as Lensky died).

Thus, the features of the “Hero of Our Time” genre indicate that Lermontov laid the foundation for a new direction in Russian novelism - this direction can be called socio-psychological. Characteristic Features it became a deep attention to the world of personal experiences of the heroes, an appeal to a realistic description of their actions, the desire to determine the basic range of values, as well as the search for the meaningful foundations of human existence on earth.

Work test

“A Hero of Our Time” does not have an author’s definition of genre (story, novel). Lermontov seemed not to want to enclose Pechorin’s “biography of the soul” within a strict genre framework. This gave the author greater freedom in developing the plot and allowed a free manner of presentation. One can hardly suspect that the peculiarities of the construction of Lermontov’s novel were prompted by deliberate “techniques” and “methods”, “playing with form”. The rearrangement of events and the disruption of their chronology are not caused by any considerations regarding special “techniques of plotting.” The author did not need chronology, but “dialectics of the soul.” In the foreground is a psychological task to which everything else is subordinated.

When reading Lermontov's novel, one gets the impression that it poured directly from an excited chest in a single burst of inspiration. This is the case when the form of a work can least of all be reduced to a sum of techniques, to bare technique. Belinsky, as if anticipating the judgments of some modern researchers and polemicizing with them, wrote about “Hero of Our Time”: “The content is not in the external form, not in the combination of accidents, but in the artist’s plan, in those images, in those shadows and shimmers of beauty, which appeared to him even before he took up the pen, in a word, in a creative concept... He does not think, does not calculate, does not get lost in considerations: everything comes out to him by itself, and it comes out as it should... This cannot be done by first coming up with an abstract content, that is, some kind of beginning and ending, and then coming up with faces and willy-nilly forcing them to play roles consistent with the intended purpose.”

The form of Lermontov’s novel was born along with the idea, like the style and manner of narration, and “the naturalness of the story, so freely developing, without any exaggeration, so smoothly flowing by its own force, without the help of the author... The author does not drive circumstances like horses, but gives them develop ourselves.”

“A Hero of Our Time” in Belinsky’s interpretation is not a “collection” or “concatenation” of stories into which an “adventurous short story” (“Taman”) is “built in”. The critic attributed all this to the “external form” - before us is a novel, “in which has one hero and one main idea." In external fragmentation, Belinsky saw internal strict completeness, monolithicity, “completeness, completeness and isolation of the whole.”

Lermontov in “Hero of Our Time” did not create a “hybrid genre” of “travel essay”

With an inserted dramatic novella", and classic sample lyrical, psychological novel. The author’s starting point was his conviction that “the history of the human soul, even the smallest soul, is perhaps more curious and useful than the history of an entire people, especially when it is a consequence of the observation of a mature mind over itself and when it is written without a vain desire to excite participation or surprise."

Genre boundaries are always arbitrary, especially in the era of romanticism. At this time, there are no genres in an absolutely pure form: Transitions, junctions, moments of interpenetration, mutual enrichment are inevitable here. This, however, does not exclude the possibility of determining the genre of a work based on the predominant meaning of one or another principle in it. The specificity of the content is of great importance in art in relation to its types and genres. Generic, genre boundaries of expressive possibilities are conditional. But nevertheless, these boundaries exist.

“A Hero of Our Time” is a lyrical novel not only because it has one hero, but because its content is “ inner man“, but also because the personal element predominates in the narrative. The presence of the author is felt behind every line. Lermontov's novel caused fierce controversy from its very appearance in print.

Determining the genre of Lermontov’s work “Hero of Our Time”