The Perfect Narcissist

The “superfluous man” is a 19th century Russian character, a woman’s worst nightmare. This man is a narcissistic, selfish, prideful man who thinks only of himself. A superfluous man not only has a huge ego and is completely full of himself but he’s also very self-conscious of himself. To comfort this ego, he will act in his own interest and comfort to make other lives miserable. He lives for control, power, and to believe that he is right despite obviously making the wrong decisions. This is a man who is often anti-social, bored with his life and also very lazy. He sometimes is a nobleman or he may not fit into social norms at all, he was not born wealthy or with privilege. In romantic relationships, this man lacks the ability to actively show his beloved that he loves her, by doing this he needs to stay control of this relationship. He cannot sacrifice anything for his beloved, he does not put her first, in fact he uses her to further boost his ego. The superfluous man manipulates and will seduce woman who show their interest in him, and of course this causes the man to plays games and further entertain the woman. In 19th century Russian culture, superfluous men was very common in society. What makes a “superfluous man” cherish his self-image?

In 19th century Russia, the superfluous man was common in society. This was a normal characteristic in a man that even literature in this particular time period represented this time and time again. This became a form of entertainment for this time period and even still now, authors like Alexander Pushkin and Ivan Turgenev have created novels of the reality.  In the novel A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, there is a short story within the novel, Princess Mary. In this short story there is a character named Perchorin who in this case would be our “Superfluous Man”. Pechorin had the characteristic of the average man in the 19th century, narcissistic behavior along with the manipulation of women. This was normal in society for a man to have all the power over the women, but in this novel Pechorin represented the worst type of man in the 19th century. “I was ready to love the world-none understood me and I learned to hate. My colorless youth was spent in a struggle with myself and with the world. Fearing mockery, I buried my best feelings at the bottom of my heart: there they died.” (Lermontov Pg 119) Pechorin was a man full of hate and spite and the only thing that made him happy was being hurtful to others. This was his lifestyle and the lifestyle of many other men in this time period, the women were property and the men had complete power and control.

The superfluous man was a standard lifestyle that was a big part in the development of Russian literature. This peculiar representation of the average man was a culture issue in the portrayal of the Russian mind. This familiar face in Russian culture created a sort of stereotype and image of what men were like and even how they treated women. To understand the superfluous man, we look at Russian literature and this meant for men of this time. “They pivot on the fact that whereas in literature the ‘superfluous man’ is and for artistic reasons remains only a ‘superfluous man’, the ‘superfluous man’ in real life was either too obscure to have left much or any trace, or else, if he did bequeath a memory to posterity, nearly always did so by transcending the characteristics limits of his type.” (Seeley 97) This was a time where for a man who was superfluous, he was already knew and everyone knew what he was like. This was almost like a tradition in men, in culture depending on their childhood, being superfluous was all they had set out for them.

As mentioned previously, they’re many factors needed in understanding the life, role, and traits of the superfluous man in Russian history. In important part of learning and understanding this lifestyle is to understand what goes through the head of a narcissistic man. Superfluous men are believed to be mentally and spiritually different in ways we might not fully understand. We know that for a superfluous man he is the only that matters, What this means for them is they cannot put others before them, even the ones they love and this might not even be their fault entirely. Superfluous men often suffer from a mental disorder that contain a factor of things that varies from childhood issues to physically neurological problems. Narcissistic Personality Disorder can be either in the form of a fantasy or actual behavior, according to researchers this disorder is the cause of  the need for unlimited success and and their arrogance. “A personality disorder is an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates from the norm of the individual’s culture. The pattern is seen in two or more of the following areas: cognition; affect; interpersonal functioning; or impulse control.” (Bressert 1) We assume that maybe superfluous men act the way they act but literature does not present the issue of this actually being a disorder.

As shown in many works of literature, every artist or author seems to have all the same ideas of romanticism and how it was represented. Specifically when looking deeper into the works of a Russian literature novelist like Alexander Pushkin, you get a sense of relationships and love in 19th century Russia and how this impacted both men and women. “That he was more than just peripherally concerned with romanticism and its significance is evident not only from a number of his works themselves but also from the repeated references to his subject in his correspondence and journals.” (Mersereau 25) For Russian culture its important that these poets and artists “spread the word” of what society was like in reality and often they did this through their work. Pushkin was well known and one of many to represent the superfluous man as a part of romanticism, by doing this he made it as a form of entertainment while also expressing his own views.

The superfluous man was a man well known in his time period, he could be identified by even the tiniest characteristic. To be superfluous could mean a number of things, yes you are selfish, arrogant, self centered and even be unable to show compassion for another person. Although this type of man was common, it was also accepted upon the community as just a regular man. Superfluous men were hated but also worshiped in a strange way. We might have no way of actually knowing why a man is superfluous but we know how popular they were in a time that praised romanticism.

Seeley, Frank Friedeberg. “The Heyday of the ‘Superfluous Man’ in Russia.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 31, no. 76, 1952, pp. 92–112. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4204406.

Lermontov. Mikhail I.U,and Marian Schwartz. A Hero of Our Time. New York: Modern Library, 2004.Print.

 

Mersereau, John. “Pushkin’s Concept of Romanticism.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 3, no. 1, 1963, pp. 24–41. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25599600.

 

“Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” Psych Central, 25 Sept. 2018, psychcentral.com/disorders/narcissistic-personality-disorder/.