It occurs to Pechorin that such aimlessness cannot but be a misinterpretation of the mystic handwriting of life. “It cannot be that I came purposeless into the world. A purpose there must have been, and surely mine was an exalted destiny because I feel within my soul powers immeasurable. But I was unable to discover that destiny. I allowed myself to be carried away by the allurements of passions innane and ignoble. From that crucible I issued hard and cold as iron.”... “My chief pleasure is to make everything around me subject to my will. To be the cause of suffering or joy to another without having a definite right to be—is it not the sweetest food for our pride?” Lermontov is honest. He makes no attempt to vindicate a type. He must have smiled at his hater, his incipient superman, shattered by fate casting himself on the bare steppe after killing his horse in a mad ride, and clasping his body to the earth. Did he think to merge himself with the great “I am”? “Alas! there cometh a time when man shall no longer give birth to a star. Alas! there cometh the time of the most contemptible man who can no longer despise himself!” * * * * * Thus spake Zarathustra! Not submission, self-abnegation, Tolstoyanism, but wholesome self-hatred, acknowledging in one’s self but a bridge to beyond-man. Pechorin saw life as an end in itself. He was a creature of the surface, he feared to plunge into the blue depths. One smiles at his childlike attempt to be self-efficient, isolated, damnable. But one is impatiently sorry that his splendid vitality was turned from healthful pioneering to the puny triumphs of the ballroom, and the conquest of hysterical ladies. Young Russia despises life except as a means. It will hurl revolutions into the world’s face, it will build empires. Life will be a hot flame of action and not a hectic afterglow of spent passion. ---------- [3] _A Hero of Our Time, by A. Lermontov. New York, Alfred A. Knopf._ The Tree HELEN HOYT On the way to the factory, In the block as you leave the car, Growing from cinders Is a tree. And it has leaves .... Green .... All around are the factory walls And small sooty houses with bleak steps And babies crawling among flies .... In summer I have felt the pavements Pouring out heat like ovens. O tree, how can you be so patient! Editorials and Announcements _A Real Orchestra in San Francisco_ It’s a quite amazing phenomenon: here in this town encased in philistinism there is a symphony orchestra, conducted by a radical young man who knows his business, playing a series of modern music programs during the summer!