'I have an unfortunate disposition'

“‘Now look here, Maksim Maksimich,’ he [Pechorin] answered, ‘I have an unfortunate disposition: whether it is my upbringing that made me thus or whether God created me so, I don’t know: I only know that if I am a cause of unhappiness for others, I am no less happy myself. Naturally, that is poor comfort for them, nevertheless, this is a fact. In my early youth, from the minute I emerged from under my family’s supervision, I began madly to enjoy every pleasure that money could buy, and, naturally, those pleasures became repulsive to me. Then I ventured out into the grand monde, and, soon, I became likewise fed up with society: I have been in love with fashionable belles, and have been loved, but their love only irritated my imagination and vanity, while my heart remained empty ... I began to read, to study—I got just as sick of studies—I saw that neither fame nor happiness depended on them in the least, since the happiest people are dunces, while fame is a question of luck, and in order to obtain it, you only have to be nimble. Then I began to be bored ... Soon after, I was transferred to the Caucasus: this was the happiest time of my life. I hoped that boredom did not exist among Chechen bullets. In vain! After one month, I got so used to their buzzing and to the nearness of death, that, really, I paid more attention to the mosquitoes, and I was even more bored than before, because I had almost lost my last hope. When I saw Bela in my home, when for the first time I held her in my lap and kissed her black curls, I—fool that I was—imagined she was an angel sent me by compassionate fate ... I was wrong again. The love of a wild girl was little better than that of a lady of rank; the ignorance and the naïveté of one pall on you as much as the coquetry of the other. I still like her, I suppose; I am grateful to her for several rather sweet moments; I am ready to die for her—only I find her company dull. Whether I am a fool or a villain, I don’t know; but of one thing I’m sure, that I also deserve pity, even perhaps more than she. My soul has been impaired by the fashionable world, I have a restless fancy, an insatiable heart; whatever I get is not enough; I become used as easily to sorrow as to delight, and my life becomes more empty day by day; there is only one remedy left for me: to travel. As soon as I can, I shall set out—but not for Europe, God preserve! I shall go to America, to Arabia, to India—perchance I may die somewhere, on the way! At least, I am sure that this last consolation will not soon be exhausted with the help of storms and bad roads.’ He went on like this for a long time, and his words became engraved in my memory because it was the first time that I had heard such things from a man of twenty-five, and I hope to God it may also be the last ... ”

—Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (1839/rev. 1841) (trans. Vladimir Nabokov w/ Dmitri Nabokov 1958)