A Hero of Our Time
This lean period bore a few fruits: "Khadji-Abrek" (1835), his first ever published poem, and 1836's "Sashka" (a "darling son of Don Juan," according to Mirsky), a sparkling concoction of Romanticism, realism and what might be termed a cadet-style verse. The latter remained unfinished, as did "Princess Ligovskaya" (1836), a society tale which was influenced at least to some extent by Gogol's "Petersburg Stories" and featured characters and dilemmas not far removed from those that would form the base of "A Hero of Our Time".