More obvious influence, though, was Pushkin, and the motivation of the protagonist Vladimir's wanderings looked very much like that formulated in the poem The Prisoner of the Caucasus ("High society reject, a nature's friend / He left his native place...").
Vladimir, who feels as an outcast to the society, is engaged in a feud between Westernizers and Slavophiles (for whom "a local cucumber is sweeter than grapevine"), then succumbs to the blows of fate and turns into a typical landowner, a "mindless 'sky-smoker'".
[1] For all that, according to the biographer Fyodor Pryima, "Two Fates is in many ways an original work, noted, if not for its artistic maturity, then with daring political verve, containing ideas which were akin to those the Decemberists had as regarding the Russian history.
"[2] Of the poem's main character, Maykov wrote in a letter to Pavel Viskovatov: "Vladimir is so ambivalent: some of his views are pro-Russian, akin to those expressed by Moskvityanin, which I share myself, others smack of Belinsky-inspired Westernizing...
"[6] Nikolay Chernyshevsky wrote in a letter to Alexander Pypin: "What is remarkable in Two Fates is [its author's] passionate love for our homeland and for science.