레르몬토프의 서사시 <견습수도사>의 주인공 형상 연구

Abstract

The Novice which is picked as one of the masterpiece poem written in his later years by M.Yu.Lermontov together with Demon, is considered as one of the last romantic poetry that 19th century Russian literature yielded. At the same time, it is regarded that the poem embodies the poetics and attitude toward life of the mature poet by breaking the shell of Romanticism. This poem was completed in 1839, but the initial ideation goes all the way back to 1831. The idea of writing an essay of a young monk had evolved for several years to the protagonist of The Novice, and thus, the importance of the protagonist is very significant in the composition and poetics of the work. The most noticeable part in The Novice is the fact that the passionate confession of the protagonist-narrator and the figure formed through it firmly serves as the pivot in the composition of the poem, dominating and governing all the components in the work. So-called “hero-centric” tendency which is found in overall romantic works is especially prominent from Lermontov. The Novice shows an extreme case of this. Considering the points mentioned above, this paper mull over the composition of The Novice focusing on the figure of the protagonist. The main objectives of the paper are clarifying compositional significance of each part of the text and reviewing the personality and mental state of the hero that can be observed in each part.