On M. Yu. Lermontov’s “Sweets” and “Bitter Medicines”: An Attempt at “Interlinear” Reading of the Preface of A Hero of Our Time

This article analyses the Preface for the second edition of A Hero of Our Time by M. Yu. Lermontov written in the spring of 1841, which has not yet become the subject of a special study. The logic of the study is based on one of the provisions of V. G. Belinsky’s critical work on Lermontov’s novel postulating the principles of “interlinear” reading of the Preface, which, according to the critic, can only contribute to the correct understanding of the author’s intention of this text. The article pays special attention to the figurative and symbolic structure of the final paragraph of the Preface, potentially containing references to the texts of the Holy Scripture. The authors provide arguments about the conscious orientation of Lermontov’s thought to biblical sources, which is caused by the writer’s reaction to the first critical responses about the novel, where an important role belongs to the review of S. O. Burachok, as well as a deep creative understanding of “religious disputes” with V. F. Odoevsky, which took place at the time of Lermontov’s work on the Preface to the second edition of the book. The conceptual nature of the statement “people have been fed enough with sweets; their stomachs have deteriorated because of this: bitter medicines, caustic truths are needed” is notable in the dialogic discourse of the author’s Preface. This phrase actualises the reader’s different-quality perception of a literary work and implements the semantics of likening a book to an edible thing and is an obvious reminiscence from chapter 10 of The Revelation of Saint John the Theologian. The phenomenological approach based on this study within the framework of hermeneutic and biographical methods makes it possible to establish that the purpose of Lermontov’s book as a “bitter medicine”, which goes back to the symbolism of bitterness in the Apostolic Revelation, is directly related to the author’s intention. It prompts the reader to realise the illusory “sweetness” of his moral superiority over the hero, the perception of the value meanings of the novel as a single spiritual principle, in which both the world of the hero and the world of the reader exist. In conclusion, the article points to the metatextual unity of the Preface of A Hero of Our Time and the poem Prophet, whose marker is reminiscences from the Revelation of Saint John the Theologian, which makes it possible to speak about the poet’s book as a prophetic novel.