Under Western Eyes (1911)

Intrigueing book. Told by a narrator who is involved in the periphery of the action. he's an English language teacher, and is the western eyes of the title. he sees it as his duty to pass on what happened and present the Russians at the core of the story in a manner understandable to the western mind. the chief protagonists are Razumov and Natalia Haldin, she the sister of a revolutionary who throws himself on Razumov after committing a bombing raid that kills a minister, but also innocent bystanders. This Razumov can't accept, so instead of helping Haldin escape, he betrays him to the authorities. He does this with no emotional involvement, he is apolitical and detached from society. The book traces his progression from detached individual to someone who care about truth and is prepared to act in the interest of truth, even if is personally disadvantages him. It doesn't quite end up in the way that you think it will. ( )

From the book box Moem sent to me.

V.S. Naipaul couldn't have put it better when describing the merit of this book (paraphrased): The novel begins with the promise of Dostoevskian themes, but trails off into analysis.

But those first one-hundred pages: six stars. Amazing... ( )

Joseph Conrad’s purpose in Under Western Eyes is to show to the West that Czarist Russia is a land too harsh and alien to be understood without accounting for the debilitating effect of autocracy on everyone, no matter what their political views. It is to show “the gigantic shadow of Russian life, deepening… like the darkness of an advancing night.”

The novel begins in St. Petersburg with the assassination by anarchists of a state minister. We then meet a university student, an orphan, named Razumov as he returns to his lonely apartment one afternoon. He discovers hiding in his apartment a fellow student, an acquaintance but not a close one, named Haldin. Haldin is the assassin, and he wants Razumov to help arrange his escape.

Razumov has only ill-formed political ideas, but his dilemma is more than a moral one. If he helps Haldin he’s likely to be caught and executed. If he turns him in, the question will immediately arise: Why did the assassin think you would help him? Even under the most optimistic outcome, he will still be under police surveillance for the rest of his days. Razumov vacillates, rationalizes, and finally decides to betray Haldin. This leads, as he knew it would, to hours of tense interrogation and nights of lonely fear.

For reasons not immediately given, Razumov then journeys to Geneva, Switzerland, where he makes contact with a group of Russian revolutionaries in exile. Among them are Haldin’s mother and sister. Knowing only that Haldin praised Razumov in his letters, the pair cling to him for news of their loved one’s last words and deeds. He is treated as a hero by the very people he has hurt the most, and it only adds to his inner turmoil that Razumov can’t help loving Haldin’s sister.

The novel is narrated by an Englishman, a language teacher in Geneva, who consults Razumov’s diary to complete the story. He comes to realize that Russia cannot be understood on the basis of English standards. “I think sometimes that the psychological secret of the profound difference of that people consists in this, that they detest life, the irremediable life of the earth as it is, whereas we westerners cherish it with perhaps an equal exaggeration of its sentimental value.” And regarding the prospects for successful reform: “…at this moment there yawns a chasm between the past and the future. It can never be bridged by foreign liberalism.”

Under Western Eyes is a dark and tense psychological drama with political observations that seem only too prophetic in light of subsequent events that kept Russia under the heel of autocracy. ( )

A political novel of great and disturbiing power.