Pushkin is realistic and exalted in poetic activity, Ler-
montov is its living personal testimony." He fore-
shadowed today's poetry and prose, and is in effect
still living in our midst," for his spirit is "still effectual
in our literature." In the explosive year of 1917, Ler-
montov had been to Pasternak "the personification of
creative adventure and discovery, the principle of
everyday free poetical statement." And he can still be
this to writers and readers of all literatures, a figure
complementary to the Russian giants, Dostoevsky and
Tolstoy, as well as to the near-giants such as Pushkin,
Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, and perhaps Pasternak
himself, all of whom remain so close to us, as of course
the Irishman James Joyce does also -- Joyce, who in
writing his early autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero,
felt a kinship with the Russian writer. Indeed, Lermon-
tov, in terms of the title of his best known book, might
be called a Hero of Our Times, too.

Enough has now been said to help place Mr. Merse-
reau's work in perspective and to indicate its value to
the readers of today. He has taken a comparatively new
subject and handled it dexterously to give us a valuable
addition to modern criticism.

HARRY T. MOORE

Southern Illinois University
June 21, 1961

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