Under Western Eyes edition by Joseph Conrad Literature Fiction eBooks
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Under Western Eyes edition by Joseph Conrad Literature Fiction eBooks
Although Conrad was originally from Poland (which was then part of Russia), most of his books give no evidence of this; they are tales of the sea or stories taking place in England or Latin America. But "Under Western Eyes" is about the Russian revolutionary movement just before the Revolution there and takes place entirely in Russia and among Russian emigres in Geneva. Conrad shows great understanding of Russian culture and the great discontent that existed there, indicating often that this is something Westerners cannot understand. As always, he offers remarkable insights into the motivations of the characters. There is also much local color regarding life in both St. Petersburg and Geneva. The book bears strong resemblance to Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, particularly the crime scenes and the police interrogations. Ultimately this is a book about psychology, not politics. Conrad's prose can be slow going for modern readers at times, but this book is well worth the effort and is one of Conrad's best.Product details
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Under Western Eyes edition by Joseph Conrad Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
...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.
Very timely topic as it tells the story of a terrorist plot set in czarist Russia. Conrad tells this story in an unusual way, with the English narrator using the diary of the main character (a Russian) as a kind of source material. Hence the title, telling the story of Russian revolutionists through his Western eyes. Amazing that the story was written in the decade before the revolution. Fascinating characters. Almost like Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment as a psychological study of the main character's internal struggles with his own integrity.
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.
Although Conrad was originally from Poland (which was then part of Russia), most of his books give no evidence of this; they are tales of the sea or stories taking place in England or Latin America. But "Under Western Eyes" is about the Russian revolutionary movement just before the Revolution there and takes place entirely in Russia and among Russian emigres in Geneva. Conrad shows great understanding of Russian culture and the great discontent that existed there, indicating often that this is something Westerners cannot understand. As always, he offers remarkable insights into the motivations of the characters. There is also much local color regarding life in both St. Petersburg and Geneva. The book bears strong resemblance to Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, particularly the crime scenes and the police interrogations. Ultimately this is a book about psychology, not politics. Conrad's prose can be slow going for modern readers at times, but this book is well worth the effort and is one of Conrad's best.
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