Many Russians know by heart reams of Lermontov's lyric poetry, much of it expounding on ill-starred love or premonitory death amid awesome Caucasian scenery, while his mature Caucasian narrative poems,

[

] and

[

], rank among the finest of their genre in the Russian language. However, it is Lermontov's prose which, perhaps inevitably, travels best in translation; and, moreover, his reputation in this field rests almost entirely on

[

], first published in 1840 (second edition 1841), his only completed novel.

Depicted in A Hero of Our Time as a man virtually of no biography, the protagonist Pechorin's “whole life” is said by the travelling narrator to exist in another “fat notebook” (Lermontov, p. 51). Perhaps not

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Citation: Cornwell, Neil. "Kniaginia Ligovskaia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26813, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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