A Hero of Our Time

The collection includes two works by Mikhail Lermontov: "Princess Ligovskaya" and "A Hero of Our Time". These are texts in which the gap between a person and the world they are forced to fit into is especially acute.
Lermontov's heroes are intelligent, sensitive, and complex. They keenly feel falsehood, notice details, and understand more than is beneficial for them, and therefore cannot live "as they should". They try to live in a world where everything has already been decided for people: where feeling is awkward, and being oneself is inconvenient. They do not reject life, but cannot find a place in it where it would be truly warm and free.
These stories are about the inner tension that does not let go, not about love or fate, but about the attempt to preserve something authentic within oneself when surrounded by expectations and roles. And in this lies the main point: Lermontov writes about a person who finds it difficult to be oneself in any time.