A passage from 'A Hero of Our Time' by Mikhail Lermontov
What a fantastic character, this Pechorin. Wish I had conceived of him. This was written in 1840. Compare to the anti-heroes of Laclos, Kierkegaard's seducer, or the protagonist in Joyce's 'A Painful Case.' It's pure Nietzsche, pure Freud. The best part is that you can only wish you knew this guy, had him on your side, so that you might be able to approximate to his ruthlessness and sincerity. The following is from the fictional Pechorin's journal entries:
I often wonder why I'm trying so hard to win the love of a girl I have no desire to seduce and whom I'd never marry. Why this womanish coquetry? Vera loves me more than Princess Mary will ever love anybody. If she were some unattainable beauty I might have been attracted by the difficulty of the undertaking. But that isn't the case, so it can't be that restless urge for love we suffer from in youth, that drives us from one woman to the next till we meet one who can't abide us. That's when our constancy begins, our true never-ending love that might be described mathematically by a line stretching from a point into space. The reason for this endlessness is simple: we can never attain our goal - our end, that is.
Why do I bother? Is it envy of Grushnitsky? Poor fellow, he's got nothing to envy. Or am I possessed by that vile but irresistable urge which makes us destroy another's fond illusions for the petty satisfaciton of saying to him, when he asks in desperation what he can believe in: 'My dear fellow, the same thing happened to me, but as you see, I dine well, sup well, sleep soundly, and hope to succeed in dying without any cries and tears.'
And yet there's boundless pleasure to be had in taking possession of a young, fresh-blossomed heart. It's like a flower that breathes its sweetest scent to the first rays of the sun. You must pluck it at once, breathe your fill of its scent and cast it on the roadway to be picked up, perchance, by another. I've an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers.
I'm no longer capable of losing my head in love. Ambition has been crushed in me by circumstances, but it comes out in another way, for ambition is nothing more than a lust for power and my chief delight is to dominate those around me. To inspire in others love, devotion, fear - isn't that the first symptom and the supreme triumph of power? To cause another person suffering or joy, having no right to do so - isn't that the sweetest food of our pride? What is happiness but gratified pride? If I thought myself better and more powerful than everyone else in the world, I should be happy. If everyone loved me I should find inexhaustible founts of love within myself. Evil begets evil. The first time we suffer, we see the pleasure to be had from torturing others. The idea of evil cannot enter a man's mind without his wanting to fulfill it in practice. Someone has said that ideas are organic creations, that the moment they are conceived they have form, this form being action. The most active man is the one who conceives most ideas, and so a genius stuck in an office chair must either die or go mad, and, in the same way, a man of strong physique who leads a sedentary and temperate life will die of apoplexy.
Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage. They are the property of youth, and anyone who expects to feel their thrill throughout his life is a fool. Tranquil rivers often begin as roaring waterfalls, but no river leaps and foams all the way to the sea. Tranquility, however, is often a sign of great, if hidden, power. Intensity and depth of feeling and thought preclude wild outbursts of passion; in pain and pleasure the soul takes careful stock of all, and sees that so it must be. It knows that without storms the constant heat of the sun would dry it up. It gets steeped in its own existence, coddles and chides itself like a loved child. Only this higher state of self-knowledge can give man a true appreciation of divine justice.
Reading over this page, I see that I've wandered a long way from the point. It doesn't matter. After all, I'm writing this journal for myself, and anything I care to put in it will one day be a precious memory for me.
I often wonder why I'm trying so hard to win the love of a girl I have no desire to seduce and whom I'd never marry. Why this womanish coquetry? Vera loves me more than Princess Mary will ever love anybody. If she were some unattainable beauty I might have been attracted by the difficulty of the undertaking. But that isn't the case, so it can't be that restless urge for love we suffer from in youth, that drives us from one woman to the next till we meet one who can't abide us. That's when our constancy begins, our true never-ending love that might be described mathematically by a line stretching from a point into space. The reason for this endlessness is simple: we can never attain our goal - our end, that is.
Why do I bother? Is it envy of Grushnitsky? Poor fellow, he's got nothing to envy. Or am I possessed by that vile but irresistable urge which makes us destroy another's fond illusions for the petty satisfaciton of saying to him, when he asks in desperation what he can believe in: 'My dear fellow, the same thing happened to me, but as you see, I dine well, sup well, sleep soundly, and hope to succeed in dying without any cries and tears.'
And yet there's boundless pleasure to be had in taking possession of a young, fresh-blossomed heart. It's like a flower that breathes its sweetest scent to the first rays of the sun. You must pluck it at once, breathe your fill of its scent and cast it on the roadway to be picked up, perchance, by another. I've an insatiable craving inside me that consumes everything and makes me regard the sufferings and joys of others only in their relationship to me, as food to sustain my spiritual powers.
I'm no longer capable of losing my head in love. Ambition has been crushed in me by circumstances, but it comes out in another way, for ambition is nothing more than a lust for power and my chief delight is to dominate those around me. To inspire in others love, devotion, fear - isn't that the first symptom and the supreme triumph of power? To cause another person suffering or joy, having no right to do so - isn't that the sweetest food of our pride? What is happiness but gratified pride? If I thought myself better and more powerful than everyone else in the world, I should be happy. If everyone loved me I should find inexhaustible founts of love within myself. Evil begets evil. The first time we suffer, we see the pleasure to be had from torturing others. The idea of evil cannot enter a man's mind without his wanting to fulfill it in practice. Someone has said that ideas are organic creations, that the moment they are conceived they have form, this form being action. The most active man is the one who conceives most ideas, and so a genius stuck in an office chair must either die or go mad, and, in the same way, a man of strong physique who leads a sedentary and temperate life will die of apoplexy.
Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage. They are the property of youth, and anyone who expects to feel their thrill throughout his life is a fool. Tranquil rivers often begin as roaring waterfalls, but no river leaps and foams all the way to the sea. Tranquility, however, is often a sign of great, if hidden, power. Intensity and depth of feeling and thought preclude wild outbursts of passion; in pain and pleasure the soul takes careful stock of all, and sees that so it must be. It knows that without storms the constant heat of the sun would dry it up. It gets steeped in its own existence, coddles and chides itself like a loved child. Only this higher state of self-knowledge can give man a true appreciation of divine justice.
Reading over this page, I see that I've wandered a long way from the point. It doesn't matter. After all, I'm writing this journal for myself, and anything I care to put in it will one day be a precious memory for me.
posted by Tongue-tied Lightning at 4:55 PM
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