[.uk] Under Western Eyes (Dover Thrift Editions) (ISBN 0486431649)

The Reluctant Revolutionary:
Joseph Conrad had famously hard feelings for the Russians, occupiers of his Polish homeland. In "Under Western Eyes" (1911), Conrad employs tough love in depicting the Russian character, hopelessly divided between reckless radicalism and reactionary reasonlessness, between devotion and despair. Razumov is a college student in St. Petersberg content to labor under the Czarist system, under which he hopes to advance through study. Fate intervenes in the form of a fellow student, Victor Haldin, fresh from blowing up a secret police chief, who thinks Razumov is the man to aid his escape. Razumov is horrified instead, not at the murderous nature of the act but what it could mean to Razumov's future. Will he turn Haldin in, or try and get him out of the city? The introduction of my Penguin edition notes a popular criticism of "Under Western Eyes" is that its characters "exist only for the sake of the ideas." That's a problem of much of Conrad's fiction, and after the very taut and thrilling first part is over, we are treated to a number of garden-path colloquies in Geneva that slow things down considerably. But the ideas Conrad deals with, about Russia's political and philosophical underpinnings, are often fascinating and certainly to the point, especially considering the novel was written as the real Russia stood ready to implode from the strife depicted here. Conrad tended to view revolutionaries with cynical remove, especially when they employed violence as a means to an end, yet many of the revolutionaries we meet here are a more sympathetic lot than the nihilistic goons of "The Secret Agent." "You have either to rot or to burn," explains Sophia Antonovna, a genuinely good character who supports the revolution. She's not one to wither quietly while there's injustice to be fought. Razumov might disagree. It's not that he believes in the system, just the futility of fighting it. "The exceptional could not prevail against the material contacts which make one day resemble another," he tells himself. "Tomorrow would be like yesterday." But as he is pushed into the world of revolution despite himself, he finds himself doubting more and more the shaky pillars of his prior existence. It's not clear to me which point-of-view Conrad held; likely he saw the merits of every ideology depicted here, a relativism that made him doubtful of any one solution. Certainly "Under Western Eyes" is about as even-handed a book about revolutionary struggle as you might care to read, compelling, deep, and quotable from first page to last. One wishes that Conrad could have sustained the dramatic force of the Part First in the latter three-fourths of the novel, but what you get is one of Conrad's most important books. Those thinking novels about Russians are reflexively depressing and opaque are not going to have their minds changed here, but they will enjoy the chance at seeing one of the world's most complicated nations through the prism of one of literature's most discerning, eloquent minds.

Words are the greatest foes of reality:
An English teacher (the 'Western Eyes') tries to find the truth behind the autobiography of a Russian agent, for 'words are the greatest foes of reality', and 'speech has been given for the purpose of concealing our thought.' The Russian agent betrayed a friend-terrorist and meets afterwards his sister and mother. His friend combatted autocratic despotism, the destroyer of the spirit of progress and truth, of freedom, law and justice. This novel is Conrad's version of Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment': 'A moral spectre is infinitely more effective than any visible apparition of death.' Conrad was a visionary: 'A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow minded fanatics and tyrannical hypocrites. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement but it passes away from them.' His picture of the world of revolutionary conspirators is excellent: double agents, opportunists, naive idealists, hypocrites, rogues, agitators, fanatics and cynics. 'It did not matter what it was, vanity, despair, love, hate, greed, intelligent pride, a stupid conceit, it was all one to him as long as the man could be made to serve.' But this book has many flaws: melodramatic overreactions (attack on Ziemianitch, secret love of Razumov), high improbabilities (confession of Razumov, interventions of 'Western Eyes') or the ultimate verdict ('he was the victim of an outrage. He had confessed voluntarily.') Joseph Conrad was an ambitious writer, but this book has not the same high standard as his masterpieces 'Heart of Darkness' and 'Lord Jim'. A worth-while read.

The Greatest Russian Novel...:
...of the 20th Century written in English by a Pole! Honestly, you could remove any and all of the prepositional qualifiers from that assertion, and I'd still be willing to defend it. Under Western Eyes is a superb novel in every way - in emotional impact, in intelligence, and in narrative art - and it is very specifically a Russian novel as well as a novel about Russia. Anecdotes suggest that Conrad wrote it in response to his reading of Dostoevsky; if so, he exceeded his model in dazzling narrative acrobatics and in intelligence. The central character, Razumov, is the most dislikable anti-hero in all fiction, so it's an amazing feat of empathy by which Conrad brings us to care about his fate. Conrad's genius as a narrator is his ability to place himself and the reader in a realm of detachment, so that every event and every character can be observed from several angles at once. The "unreliable narrator" is child's play for Conrad. I don't want to spoil any of the prismatic effect of Conrad's narrative structure by telling any more of the tale of Under Western Eyes, but I will mention that the title is not insignificant. The Russia portrayed in this novel is a land of cynicism and naivete intertwined - hyper-emotionalism and psychological repression in equal measure - omnicompetent surveillance and hopeless myopia - ruthless bureaucracy and utter disorganization - a land in short of oxymoronic self-destruction. This is NOT, however, the Russia of Communism! The novel was written in 1911! This is Russia as it existed under the Tsarist autocracy, and everything about it clamors for revolution. It's interesting to compare Conrad's portrayal of the old regime with the nostalgic and idealized version served up by Vladimir Nabokov in his memoir "Speak, Memory." Nabokov wrote far more beautiful sentences, but Conrad saw deeper. The horror for us, post-Stalinist readers, in Conrad's depiction of the pre-revolutionary state-of-things is that we KNOW that change will not change much, that autocratic, arbitrary repression will be replaced by...more of the same. Conrad wrote two novels aground, away from the sea - this one and The Secret Agent. They are among his best. Some readers of today seem to find Conrad's style involuted and dry, and blame it on his status as a 'second-language' writer. To my mind, they are missing the point, the complex lensing of perspective through the minds of Conrad's narrative intermediaries. This is a book to be read slowly and observantly; the effort will be rewarded.

An interesting psychological account of Czarist Russia:
Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes should be of interest to those with a particular interest in Russia, especially the period of the late 19th century. Others may find the book boring, given that it is largely devoted to dialogue rather than action and trite in that the main conflict is the inner struggle of a man with his conscience. The title refers to the fact that the story is told by an English professor of literature who comes across a diary written by the book's protagonist. The reason Conrad gives for this manner of telling the story is that, in his view, Western readers cannot comprehend the circumstances of life in imperial Russia and can only view them through the eyes of a fellow Westerner. On pages 106 and 107 he has the professor say, "for this is a Russian story for Western ears (sic), which, as I have already observed, are not attuned to certain tones of cynicism and cruelty, of moral negation, and even of moral distress already silenced at our end of Europe." I find this statement to be incredibly ethnocentric, and as events later proved, entirely wrong. He adds that Western European countries have already had their revolutions and thus are no longer able to fully understand czarist Russia. We can certainly argue with this viewpoint and in my view this literary device does more to get in the way of the story than to help explain it. In any case, the book begins with the professor saying that he has come across a manuscript written by a Russian student at St. Petersburg University, Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov. Razumov is impoverished and without family and sees his only chance for success in life as coming from academic success. Accordingly he largely avoids the other students and is intent on his studies. As he is in his room one evening another student, Victor Haldin, comes to see him proclaiming that he has just assassinated a prominent political figure and asks Razumov to help him to escape. Razumov, having no sympathy for Haldin's cause, is reluctant to get involved but finally agrees to go to the lodgings of a sledge driver who has agreed to drive Haldin away to safety. But when he finds the man he is drunk and Razumov cannot arouse him. After beating him in disgust he begins to walk back to his room, pondering what to do next. Fearful that if Haldin stays with him too long he will be implicated as well, Razumov decides to give him up to the authorities. Haldin is then captured and executed. Razumov is still under suspicion and finally receives a summons to go to the office of Councillor Milukin, who, as it turns out, is the head of the bureau in charge of revolutionary investigations. After what appears to Razamov to be a kind of cat-and-mouse game he is given permission to leave. As he puts his hand on the doorknob Milukin asks him where is going to go. At this point part one of the book ends and the scene shifts to Geneva in part two. Here we meet the mother and sister of Haldin. They see him as the hope for their future lives and are devastated when they learn of Haldin's death. The mother goes into a state of shock and stays in her room staring out the window, while the daughter, Nathalie, an idealistic, but naïve, young woman, tries to make the best of the situation. Other revolutionaries appear on the scene most notably Peter Ivanovitch, the leader of the group, Madame de S___, whose money is apparently financing their operations and Sophia Antonova, a long time revolutionary. The Haldin women receive a letter stating that a "friend" of Haldin is coming to Geneva and Nathalie begins to believe that this person will help them. The friend, of course, is Razumov, who has apparently reached an agreement with the government agents to spy on the revolutionaries. Razumov arrives and is accepted as a fellow revolutionary and friend of Haldin. He undergoes a difficult inner struggle trying to maintain this pretense, particularly in the light of the goodness and trust Nathalie shows him. The story then progresses as a struggle by Razumov with his conscience, whether to report on the revolutionaries or to reveal the truth about himself. The book bears some resemblance to Crime and Punishment with its psychological overtones and dialogues about good and evil, right and wrong. Much of parts two and three are devoted to conversations and it is only in the last part that there is dramatic action. I rate it as three stars because it is not as good as the best of Conrad (Lord Jim), nor is it on a level with the really good fiction of Russian writers. I could rate it at 3 and a half or even 4 as well. It can be interesting reading and thought provoking and does end in dramatic fashion.

*****:
A worthy novel with some incredible psychological insights, as well as insights into the Russian character that still hold true today. I was interested when reading this book to realize that Conrad sometimes did authorial "impressions" the way Darrell Hammond does comedic impressions on SNL. Hammond does Bill Clinton and John McCain on SNL. Well, Conrad is doing his "impression" of Dostoevsky in UNDER WESTERN EYES: the rapid-fire dialogue, the intensely introspective main character, etc. Conrad did his impression of Henry James in LORD JIM (which I didn't like, because I don't like James's excess verbiage). And here Conrad is impersonating Dostoevsky, and doing a good job of it.