Under Western Eyes

The thing you have to be prepared for when reading Conrad's political novels, is that he was writing 100 years ago and a disturbing amount of what he portrays fits the present day, and probably always will. I suppose I should see this as the mark of a talented author--he's really just describing people, and we really don't change--but I can't read one of these without becoming somewhat disillusioned by just how little has changed in 100 years of "progress".

Anyway, to the story. This is the least action-packed of Conrad's works that I've read, and it's kind of refreshing. All the real "action" happens before the book starts, and to a character who barely appears in the book himself. The story, instead, is about the consequences for show more everyone else around him. It's a brilliant ruse to focus on what Conrad does best anyway: writing about emotions and interpersonal conflict, honesty, suspicion, honour and malice. And in the end, the small story of turbulence in a few peoples' lives illustrates much better than any broad narrative could the astonishing power of abstract ideas like patriotism and political systems to crush the individuals caught up in their way.

My one frustration with this book, in common with several of Conrad's others, is that at times he gives the narrator character himself too much attention, and manages to come across rather pompous as a result. I think an editor could have improved this book by cutting a few soliloquies out.... show less

Apolitical Russian student Razumov comes home one evening to find a fellow student, Haldin, waiting for him in his rooms. Haldin tells him that he has assassinated a despotic government minister on the street that morning, and has come to Razumov for refuge and help.

Conrad is awesome. The unbidden tangle Razumov is suddenly put into forces him into a series of choices that, whichever way he turns, will transform his life forever. Much of the book takes place in Geneva - the original murder having taken place in St Petersburg - and is told by an English teacher living there, who knows but is never a part of the Russian emigre revolutionaries' community, and doesn't quite understand them (his are the 'western eyes'). The book covers some show more of the same ground as Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, but (in my view) in a more credible way, and in a far more challenging one: whereas Raskolnikov's crime is clearly bad and there is a clear good in opposition to it, Razumov's problem leaves him with no good options. Whatever he does in choosing between Tsarist autocracy and the revolutionary utopians will be bad, and he have to face incredible guilt - but he has to choose one, he cannot do anything else. Conrad's writing is often a bit of tangle to read, but I thought this was easier that some of his other books - and where it is difficult, it works because it is about characters at war with themselves in convoluted ways. Great stuff. show less

The slippery entry and exit from the variety of characters in Under Western Eyes distinguishes the novel in their number, not in the employment of the formal device itself, which Conrad frequently employed. For here, not only does Conrad dwell among a nest of revolutionaries and expats turned out from their homeland, Russia, but in particular on the psychology of the two key characters, Natalia, the sister of a revolutionary who himself was caught and executed because of the betrayal by Kyrilo, a fellow student of the victim. Forced into exile himself, Kyrilo comes face to face with Natalia and her mother in Geneva. It is there that all the barriers to guilt fall away and Kyrilo and Natalia come to terms with themselves.

Of the host of show more plotters, schemers, and poseurs that populate the novel's pages, only Natalia seems to emerge intact, sure of her mission in life and duty to others. The rest prove to be nothing more than psychotics whose damage runs from the severe in, yes, Kyrilo and Nicotin to the recoverable in Sophia and Peter.

One note about Natalia. Her role as a mediator of sorts, a heart that unites the workers of the hand with the workers of the mind would be taken up later, with the figure of Maria, in Fritz Lang's film, Metropolis. In that case, the leader of yet another totalitarian ideology would find it an appealing metaphor around which to organize society in Germany during the 1930s. show less

The thing you have to be prepared for when reading Conrad's political novels, is that he was writing 100 years ago and a disturbing amount of what he portrays fits the present day, and probably always will. I suppose I should see this as the mark of a talented author--he's really just describing people, and we really don't change--but I can't read one of these without becoming somewhat disillusioned by just how little has changed in 100 years of "progress".

Anyway, to the story. This is the least action-packed of Conrad's works that I've read, and it's kind of refreshing. All the real "action" happens before the book starts, and to a character who barely appears in the book himself. The story, instead, is about the consequences for show more everyone else around him. It's a brilliant ruse to focus on what Conrad does best anyway: writing about emotions and interpersonal conflict, honesty, suspicion, honour and malice. And in the end, the small story of turbulence in a few peoples' lives illustrates much better than any broad narrative could the astonishing power of abstract ideas like patriotism and political systems to crush the individuals caught up in their way.

My one frustration with this book, in common with several of Conrad's others, is that at times he gives the narrator character himself too much attention, and manages to come across rather pompous as a result. I think an editor could have improved this book by cutting a few soliloquies out.... show less

“Under Western Eyes” (1911) is a story which takes place as revolution is fomenting in autocratic Russia. The author Joseph Conrad was a British subject, but born Konrad Korzeniowski and from his childhood well acquainted with revolution; his father was a radical in Poland as it attempted rebellion unsuccessfully against Russia, a rebellion in which four of his uncles were killed or imprisoned.

The book gets off to a brilliant start; a young student Razumov finds himself unwillingly swept into a terrorist attack against the State, and from that moment on finds that he cannot return to a simple life of study with the goal of advancement into society. In a twist of fate he is credited with a revolutionary act, one he disagrees with, show more and one he cannot distance himself from. Despite his aloof nature, he seems to possess a magnetism which leads to him being admired and claimed by both sides of the struggle, one he wanted no part of. He’s a “wrong man” caught in the middle and ends up racked with guilt for his actions, as well as hatred for those who have put him in this position.

Conrad made the larger political struggle a human one in this way, and showed those involved “behind the scenes”, flawed human psychologies and all. I liked how he showed the ideological faults of both sides of the struggle as well; indeed, objectivity was one of his goals. He states in his ‘author’s note’: “The ferocity and imbecility of an autocratic rule rejecting all legality and in fact basing itself upon complete moral anarchism provokes the no less imbecile and atrocious answer of a purely Utopian revolutionism encompassing destruction by the first means to hand, in the strange conviction that a fundamental change of hearts must follow the downfall of any given human institutions. These people are unable to see that all they can effect is merely a change of names. The oppressors and the oppressed are all Russians together…”

I was reminded of a couple of things as I read the book, though these are by no means perfect analogies. The balance reminded me of John Lennon’s lyrics in the song ‘Revolution’, “Well you know we all want to change the world, but when you talk about destruction, don’t you know you can count me out.” Secondly, as Razumov finds himself haunted by guilt in several forms after a violent act at the book’s outset, he reminded me a bit of Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment”. Apparently Conrad was not a Dostoevsky fan so he probably wouldn’t appreciate the parallel.

Some of Conrad’s writing is quite nice, such as the portraits he paints of the Laspara daughters “prowling about enigmatically silent, sleepy-eyed, corsetless, and generally, in their want of shape and the disorder of their rumpled attire, resembling old dolls”, but in general I found the book too sculpted and meticulous after Part One. There is not enough rawness and passion, and when the first-person English writer begins taking a larger role in Part Two, the text is too repetitive and slow. It picks up nicely at the very end but needed editing.

Quotes:
On “change”:
“As if anything could be changed! In this world of men nothing can be changed – neither happiness nor misery. They can only be displaced at the cost of corrupted consciences and broken lives – a futile game for arrogant philosophers and sanguinary triflers.”

On happiness:
“He merely thought that life without happiness is impossible. What was this happiness? He yawned and went on shuffling about and about between the walls of his room. Looking forward was happiness – that’s all – nothing more. To look forward to the gratification of some desire, to the gratification of some passion, love, ambition, hate – hate too indubitably. Love and hate. And to escape the dangers of existence, to live without fear, was also happiness. There was nothing else. Absence of fear – looking forward. ‘Oh! the miserable lot of humanity!’ he exclaimed mentally…”

On hotels, I’m sure this will come to mind on my next business trip:
“The walls were white, the carpet red, electric lights blazed in profusion, and the emptiness, the silence, the closed doors all alike and numbered, made me think of the perfect order of some severely luxurious model penitentiary on the solitary confinement principle.”

On life:
“The sense of life’s continuity depended on trifling bodily impressions. The trivialness of daily existence were an armour for the soul. And this thought reinforced the inward quietness of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs familiar to his feet in the dark, with his hand on the familiar clammy banister. The exceptional could not prevail against the material contacts which make one day resemble another. Tomorrow would be like yesterday.”

“But it was no use. He would be always played with. Luckily life does not last for ever.”

On parents (ok, and communism):
“The mere idea of marrying one day such another man as my father made me shudder. I don’t mean that there was any one wanting to marry me. There was not the slightest prospect anything of the kind. But was it not sin enough to live on a Government salary while half Russia was dying of hunger? The Ministry of Finances! What a grotesque horror it is! What does the starving, ignorant people want with a Ministry of Finances? I kissed my old folks on both cheeks, and went away from them to live in cellars, with the proletariat.”

On the poor:
“Her father was a clever but unlucky artisan. No joy had lighted up his laborious days. He died at fifty: all the years of his life he had panted under the thumb of masters whose rapacity exacted from him the price of the water, of the salt, of the very air he breathed: taxed the sweat of his brow and claimed the blood of his sons. No protection, no guidance! What had society to say to him? Be submissive and be honest. If you rebel I shall kill you. If you steal I shall imprison you. But if you suffer I have nothing for you – nothing except perhaps a beggarly dole of bread – but no consolation for your trouble, no respect for your manhood, no pity for the sorrows of your miserable life.”

On revolution:
“Destruction is the work of anger. Let the tyrants and the slayers be forgotten together, and only the reconstructors be remembered.”

On Russia:
“He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above his head the clear black sky of the northern winter, decorated with the sumptuous fires of the stars. It was a canopy fit for the resplendent purity of the snows.
Razumov received an almost physical impression of endless space and of countless millions.
He responded to it with the readiness of a Russian who is born to an inheritance of space and numbers. Under the sumptuous immensity of the sky, the snow covered the endless forests, the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense country, obliterating the landmarks, the accidents of the ground, leveling everything under its uniform whiteness, like a monstrous blank page awaiting the record of an inconceivable history. It covered the passive land with its lives of countless people like Ziemianitch and its handful of agitators like this Haldin – murdering foolishly.”

“That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression, is very Russian. I knew her well enough to have discovered her scorn for all the practical forms of political liberty known to the western world. I suppose one must be a Russian to understand Russian simplicity, a terrible corroding simplicity in which mystic phrases clothe a naïve and hopeless cynicism. 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.” show less

Joseph Conrad is a master of imprinting settings and characters whose minds and appearances
are both vivid and demanding.

Unfortunately, in Under Western Eyes, none of the characters inspire compassion or much interest.

Worse still, the plot drags on and on with scant suspense and a patchy and unsatisfying ending.

If only Razumov had tossed the brown packet of rubles to a poor person,
readers might have some respect for his evolving character.

Instead, we are faced with a man who makes an unenviable decision to turn in
a murderer who has killed to advance a cause which Razumov actually believes in.

He doesn't want this man who has come to him for safety and help to ruin his life;
he does that himself.

The more I read Conrad, the less impressed I am with his writing. But I mean “writing” here strictly in the sense of his command of English. It’s not completely fluent and too often it is heavily dependent on his knowledge of French (a language he was fluent in). Don’t misunderstand: I think his abilities in English—his fourth language, after all—are impressive. But I find his plotting, his themes, his ideas more than make up for his stilted English. The plot revolves around the protagonist who “betrays” an acquaintance who committed a political murder in Russia. The story focuses on his actions afterward, primarily his psychological state as he deals with what he has done. Conrad is reported to have said that “...in show more this book I am concerned with nothing but ideas, to the exclusion of everything else.” I wouldn’t disagree. But although it’s generally acknowledged one of Conrad’s great books, I found its cynicism and its preaching a bit too much to make it enjoyable. show less