A Fable for Our Time
James Bond may play the role of the handsome prince to Tatiana’s sleeping princess in Fleming's From Russia With Love, but Bond learns early on that he reminds the beautiful cipher clerk of another literary figure. Although this information is passed along to him by “M” and may be part of the backstory dreamed up by the twisted geniuses of SMERSH, since Tatiana confirms the comparison to Bond later on, this could represent her actual opinion.
She says Bond reminds her of her favorite character from a book by Lermontov. Mikhail Lermontov’s first and only novel was A Hero of Our Time, the story of an attractive but dangerous Byronic figure, a military officer named Grigory Pechorin.
Critics have suggested that the title of Lermontov’s novel is meant to be ironic, as if to say, in these troubled times, even a guy like this looks like a hero. It’s tempting to think that by reminding us of Pechorin, Fleming could be warning readers about viewing James Bond as any sort of role-model. Like Lermontov’s protagonist, Bond is an inveterate gambler and womanizer who makes unfortunate choices and is frequently unable to protect the people he cares about. But I think Fleming is commenting less about Bond in general, than about Bond’s current adventure, which, after all, is a version of what is probably the world’s most beloved fairy tale.
By invoking Lermontov’s flawed hero in the context of his own retelling of "Sleeping Beauty," Fleming seems to imply that in the post-war era, with its somber memorials to slain millions, political boundaries that are being swiftly dissolved and redrawn, in a world where the threat of nuclear annihilation looms just over the horizon, what happens at the end of his tale is the new version of “and they all lived happily ever after.” So get used to it.
The final pages of From Russia With Love find the hero dead or dying and the heroine a helpless captive, her ultimate fate uncertain. But let’s not forget that it’s still a win for the good guys. Things could have been so much worse.