Count Sergei Uvarov, for example, in the early 19th century, proposed three pillars of Russian identity: View all 3 comments. Jan 13, aPriL does feral sometimes rated it really liked it Shelves: The fact that the Westerner narrator is an uncomprehending observer whose character's eyes are in the title 'Under Western Eyes' and that the Russian character of the story, Razumov, has the reputation as a great listener strikingly so, pun intended is told us, gentle reader, upfront by the author Joseph Conrad, made strongly explicit.

It must mean something. Razumov is an unformed human being, which in the first chapter is spelled out both in the description of his face as well as his react The fact that the Westerner narrator is an uncomprehending observer whose character's eyes are in the title 'Under Western Eyes' and that the Russian character of the story, Razumov, has the reputation as a great listener strikingly so, pun intended is told us, gentle reader, upfront by the author Joseph Conrad, made strongly explicit.

Razumov is an unformed human being, which in the first chapter is spelled out both in the description of his face as well as his reactions in discussions -he is easily swayed. He is a third year philosophy!?! In this silent listening he is unusual because apparently most Russians are observed to talk much like parrots. Throughout the book people seem to be uncomprehending observers and listeners and speakers of disjointed words. The most uncomprehending is a drunken servant, beaten black and blue while passed out thus he has no idea of how it happened but that the Devil father of lies!

Another servant, a woman acting as a secretary to a revolutionary, is doing the job but she feels unhappy. She is a very bad secretary because no one really notices who she really is. She herself had no idea that the job would make her so unhappy until she got the job and got to know the people she was working for. Back to Razumov, it is noted in the first pages many people think he is a strong personality because of his lack of speech. What is made clear to us, gentle reader, is he fears and respects authority and simply wants his college degree.

Instead, the plot thickens when a group of revolutionary students mistake him for one of them. He is forced into choosing sides due to a fatal bombing by a student who then wants Razumov to hide him. Fear drives Razumov to turn the bomber over to the police, who then recruit him to be a spy. He reluctantly tries to spy, but he cannot rid himself of a strong distaste and disgust for it all. The expat Russians living in Geneva, where the action is taking place, believe him a hero and attempt to draw him into their plots against the czar. The sister of the bomber is desperate to hear of her brother's last moments from Razumov believing him to be her brother's friend.

Her mother Mother Russia? The narrator, as a teacher of languages he comprehends many words; however he admits he can make no sense of how the Russians feel about things. In an interesting side note he finally understands more when he reads Razumov's diary; in other words, a book. While Conrad's book is about the conditions of the expat Russians he observed in Geneva which might represent the issues behind the Russian Revolution, I think since Conrad literally skims over those conditions with such a minimal use of words his real object was exposing why the Russians fail to politically organize as he saw it.

The book is really a very sly, and harsh, condemnation of the Russian soul in not translating into effective self-help. Dostoevsky seems to explore the inevitability of personality over fate, along with the mores of culture and class over morality, of history over free will in shaping Russian soul and destiny.

Conrad seems to be ascribing the inability of the Russian heart and mind to coalesce decisively into clear thoughtful words philosophy as the source of political failure. He also appears to be saying that that failure is fatally crippling to any action taken. I think Conrad is also making a point that the West finds the East difficult to understand due to lack of philosophical words we can comprehend which the West assumes is due to language differences, but Conrad seems to be saying the West can't understand the East because the East is incomprehensible to itself. Of course maybe I'm getting this all wrong but my musings allow me to feel Conrad is writing a clever book here.

Oct 11, Kim rated it really liked it Shelves: Under Western Eyes is a novel by Joseph Conrad published in The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Crime and Punishment.


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Conrad was reputed to have detested Dostoevsky, which isn't at all nice and he shouldn't have let it be known if he did. But that is the first thing I ever read about the book, well besides the title and author name on the cover. I, of course, had to go find out why Conrad despised Dostoevsky, who I would have thought, if I didn't know better, wrote Under Western Eyes. Here is what I found: I have an idea that his real hatred for Dostoievsky was due to an appreciation of his power.

It is on record that he once told Galsworthy that Dostoievsky was "as deep as the sea", and for Conrad it was the depth of an evil influence. Dostoievsky represented to him the ultimate forces of confusion and insanity arrayed against all that he valued in civilization. He did not despise him as one despises a nonentity, he hated him as one might hate Lucifer and the forces of darkness.

Richard Curle whoever that is Dostoevsky he resented and rejected, but sharing many of his concerns, found the Russian novelist sufficiently absorbing to engage him in an ideological and artistic polemic. Matlaw another person I have no idea who he is claims that "The patent similarity of two great novels, Crime and Punishment and Under Western Eyes, is unique in literature".

Although this may be an exaggeration, what is certain is that there is no other Conrad text that invites to be read, at least in part, as a polemical response to the work of another writer. Conrad despised Russian writers as a rule, due to his parents' deaths at the hands of the Russian authorities, making an exception only for Ivan Turgenev. It doesn't seem very nice to despise all Russian writers for something done to his parents, why do they get all the blame?

Did he hate all Russian doctors too, or bakers, or, well, you know what I mean. I guess I'll give him a point for liking one guy anyway. Another thing I came across looking for the Conrad-Dostoevsky link, had nothing to do with Dostoevsky, but my favorite author was mentioned: Beloved by critics, read by millions of students, and lost in the middle. No other novelist has written so many recognized classics and still been so forgotten. Consider his offerings in my assembled version of the Western Canon. Otherwise, no other celebrated literary heroes, from Henry James to William Faulkner, can outmatch him.

And then we have Vladimir Nabokov's opinion on both writers: A favorite between the ages of 8 and Essentially a writer for very young people. Certainly inferior to Hemingway and Wells. Nothing I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, hopelessly juvenile. Romantic in the large sense. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing.

Nobody takes his reactionary journalism seriously "The Double". His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's "Nose. I wonder what the guy had to say about other authors, if he liked anyone but himself. Ok, on to the book. We begin with meeting the narrator, an English teacher of languages living in Geneva, he is going to be narrating the personal record of Kyrilo Sidorovitch Razumov.

He spends a little bit of time in the beginning telling us it isn't his story, he has no high gifts of imagination, he is just telling us the story, that kind of thing. He begins by telling us that Razumov is a third year student in philosophy which sounds awful at St. Razumov wants only to study, he plans to win the silver medal; "Razumov, going home, reflected that having repaired all the matters of the forthcoming examination, he could now devote his time to the subject of the prize essay. He hankered after the silver medal.

The prize was offered by the Ministry of Education; the names of the competitors would be submitted to the Minister himself. The mere fact of trying would be considered meritorious in the higher quarters; and the possessor of the prize would have a claim to an administrative appointment of the better sort after he had taken his degree. He is the son of no one. Perhaps, one person, perhaps another, but he considers himself all alone, the son of Russia. He receives a modest but sufficient allowance from an obscure attorney, attends the obligatory lectures regularly and is considered a promising student.

Also, he is always accessible and has nothing secret in his life. That's Razumov, or it was until he came home one day and found Victor Haldin, another student, in his room. It seems that there has been an attempt on the life of the Minister of State, he is said to be invested with extraordinary powers. He is described as a; "fanatical, narrow-chested figure in gold-laced uniform, with a face of crumpled parchment, insipid, bespectacled eyes, and the cross of the Order of St. Procopius hung under the skinny throat.

Procopius after this, I've never heard of him before. Minister of State who's name I can't remember, is an awful man who serves the monarchy by "imprisoning, exiling, or sending to the gallows men and women, young and old, with an equable, unwearied industry. Haldin jumps right in by telling Razumov that it was him who murdered the Minister that day. As for Razumov; "Razumov kept down a cry of dismay. The sentiment of his life being utterly ruined by this contact with such a crime expressed itself quaintly by a sort of half-derisive mental exclamation, "There goes my silver medal!

From this point on nothing good happens, not that I can think of anyway. People are either murdering each other, planning to murder each other, or just got murdered by one of the others. I felt long before this point that I had fallen into Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Nothing good ever happened in that book either. In fact, I can't think of a Russian book I've read that had any happy people in it. I should go back and re-read all my Russian authors carefully, looking for anyone who laughs, or even smiles. Smiles when they aren't about to kill someone else that is.

But for now, Razumov goes out to find help in getting Haldin away, away from the scene of the crime, away from the city, and mostly away from his room. Remember, all he wants in life right now is a silver medal, but this is what he is thinking: They would set about discovering a conspiracy. Everybody Haldin had ever known would be in the greatest danger.

Unguarded expressions, little facts in themselves innocent would be counted for crimes Razumov saw himself shut up in a fortress, worried, badgered, perhaps ill-used. He saw himself-at best-leading a miserable existence under police supervision Haldin doesn't get help. The revolution goes on and on. People keep hating each other. Oh, and Razumov doesn't get a silver medal. Jan 30, J. That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression is very Russian.

It almost seems that Conrad needs the fecundity of the South Seas, or of the African Interior, to counterbalance his methods, his approach. Here in the awfully civilized central European capitals we may find him unusually soap-operatic and slightly overdone. Or maybe it is so close to home for the writer, Polish and born in the Ukraine, that every last semi-l That propensity of lifting every problem from the plane of the understandable by means of some sort of mystic expression is very Russian.

Or maybe it is so close to home for the writer, Polish and born in the Ukraine, that every last semi-loyalty must be analyzed and parsed into oblivion. It is fairly safe to say at this point that Conrad was looking to present his view of the opposite of pan-Russianism, whether red or white, or at least to point to the cracks in the foundation. In Russia and adjacent Europe were so wracked by revolutionary fervor and anarchist violence that the rather conservative author may have wanted to counter the onrush of history as he saw it.

That the orphaned Conrad's father was a patriotic Pole who flaunted the authority of Russian hegemony, that it was an era when the world was on the brink, would both have been influential. There is so much here to have loved that it's hard to call it what it seems, though. It does miss, though, and there is some evidence that Conrad was looking to settle certain scores with his novel that set the whole project into the 'contrivance' category. But not right away. As often with Conrad, locale, character and exposition on-the-fly are frontloaded and forced into the narrative mix quite early in the story; much as a modern film will mesh those elements directly into the first few shots, rather than languish in establishing shots or chit-chat from minor characters to set the stage.

We're in the midst of it, right away, rather than waiting for a staged introduction. And even the 'Narrator' here is something of a ploy, as he too will come to be a major player, very early in the second act. Speech has been given to us for the purpose of concealing our thoughts My impression is that it is part of the plan that some details will get lost in the rush, perhaps just mislaid, and some uncertainties will continue further into the mix, as we reach the inner frames of the story. All the better to play when required, on inner storylines when and where the emphasis is needed, rather than as mere introduction.

Often this works as a stunning reverberation in a Conrad novel, but sometimes not, as in Under Western Eyes. The risk is a bit like telling a restrained and methodical story of a woman eating an apple, and then reframing it by saying she is in the garden of eden, and named Eve. Even in ranting against the rebels, the author is bloodthirsty in his condemnation the empire. Even in looking to upset the mystic, pan-Slavic logic of revolution, Conrad wants to indict not the ideals but the weaknesses of the personality types to whom a broad revolution will appeal. And he has no shortage of strange characters to present.

As usual with Conrad, we are immersed here within multiple frames of a narrative plan that rearranges, slightly, the stream of events we are to witness. Frames of various perspectives overlay the minimal action, while the emphasis is left to fall on the viewpoint, the spin, at any given point. And here as with Henry James, often enough the broth is beautiful but the soup is overcooked. Having said that, there are interesting resonances at hand, in Conrad's tale of a self-doubting and panicky student fallen into the embrace of international intrigue.

An excruciating sequence of agonized reversals draws our anti-hero along the path: One of the scores Conrad wants to settle is surely with the ghost of Dostoevsky. Protagonist and unwilling co-collaborator Razumov is well beyond his depth by the first page of the book, and once led to the circle of spies in Geneva he becomes the plaything of the era's worst influences, the fool of history.

The operatic character-types of the spies of Geneva are straight out of Maltese Falcon or, perhaps, Dante. Dark gargoyles look down over all of the proceedings, but even more diabolical ones lie in wait, behind the locked doors of the conspirators. Sep 06, Xan Shadowflutter rated it liked it Shelves: I'm of two minds of this book.

I've read this is Conrad's response to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment , and perhaps in someway it is, but I think this is first and foremost about destiny and how forces beyond your control can converge to take control of your life. Someone commits a crime of great consequence and implicates you through association. You understand the danger. You make decisions you feel forced to make yet still regret. Now the decisions you make have great consequence I'm of two minds of this book.

Now the decisions you make have great consequence for yourself and others. You are becoming someone you don't want to be. Yet no matter what you do, no matter which way you squirm, you are implicated and therefore involved. Soon your entire life has changed, kidnapped by fate.

Destiny plays with you as it will. The question is what can you do, if anything, to retake control of your life. That is what is good about this book. What is not good about this book is the narrator. He represents Europe, I'm quite sure, but the reason why is never explained. Nor do I understand what Conrad is saying about Europe, except possibly that it is old and musty.

And the narrator's also unreliable, or at least he's trying his best to convince us he is. He tells us as much, anyway.

So now we are seeing everything unfold through the eyes of a false witness. Are we forced us to question everything? To what purpose is this done? And why does the narrator take up so much space? What's the deeper meaning I'm missing? If you figure it out, please let me know.

You Have Either to Rot or to Burn. In short, it is probably worse to be made to burn than to burn. A deaf Razumov is crushed by a tramcar and crippled. Tekla finds him and stays by his side at the hospital. A few months pass and Mrs Haldin has died.


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Natalia has returned to Russia to devote herself to charity work after giving Razumov's record to the narrator. Tekla has taken the invalid Razumov to the Russian countryside, where she looks after him. The novel was initially published in , when the failed revolution of in Russia was history. Conrad started work on the novel soon after his fiftieth birthday.

In this version "Razumov", the story that would become Under Western Eyes, over the next two years, was intended to extend and rework ideas in the plot of The Secret Agent. Pinker, to whom Conrad was very heavily in debt, seems to have lost patience with his author's pace of work and precipitated a quarrel. Shortly after a heated exchange, Conrad collapsed, his doctor diagnosing "a complete nervous breakdown" that had "been coming for months". Describing her husband's breakdown, Jessie Conrad wrote: Elsewhere she recalls how Conrad, in delirium, "spoke all the time in Polish, but for a few fierce sentences against poor J.


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Pinker" [8] His delusions apparently included symptoms of persecution mania. In , Conrad wrote an Author's Note for this novel, reflecting on its changed perception due to events of history, specifically the Russian Revolution of He said "It must be admitted that by the mere force of circumstances Under Western Eyes has become already a sort of historical novel dealing with the past. The novel is fundamentally connected to Russian history. Its first audience read it against the backdrop of the failed Revolution of and in the shadow of the movements and impulses that would take shape as the revolutions of Despite Conrad's protestations that Dostoevsky was "too Russian for me" and that Russian literature generally was "repugnant to me hereditarily and individually", [11] critics have long discerned the influence of Crime and Punishment on this work.

Conrad's use of an unreliable narrator is particularly interesting. The "teacher of languages" claims to be translating Razumov's private journal as well as narrating what he himself has witnessed, but his account of his sources of information is unconvincing from the beginning. He tries to establish his reliability by saying that he lacks the imagination to have made the story up but immediately undercuts his claim to be telling a true story by asserting that words are the enemy of reality.

The device of the diary is reminiscent of the manuscript in James's The Turn of the Screw where the governess's story comes from a manuscript of obscure origin. As in James's story, there is no reason to think that Razumov's diary, if it ever existed, was an objective account or that its purported translator has presented it accurately.

There is only an account by Conrad, an adopted Englishman who suffered under Russian tyranny, of an English language teacher's reaction to a story about Russian revolutionaries that the language teacher may or may not have, wholly or partly, made up, but Conrad certainly did so. That ambiguous narration, especially given the book's title, invites the reader to consider the novel as story about Russia and Russians but also about an Englishman's reaction to Russia and Russians.

Conrad's decision to use the complex narrative form found in Under Western Eyes was, apparently, based on the following considerations: The natural choice of third-person omniscient was likely rejected as it lacks the immediacy of first-person needed for this type of tale. The novel was adapted into a film in ; and into a full-length opera by John Joubert in , first performed by New Opera Company at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London.

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It was also adopted into a stageplay that premiered at Teatr Polski in Warsaw on June 8, [13]. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Michael Matin; Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction. Retrieved 23 April Joseph Conrad and his Circle.

Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad

Polish Theatre in Warsaw in Polish. Retrieved 15 June Works by Joseph Conrad. Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikisource. Relieved that he will not be suspected of any wrongdoing, Razumov agrees to venture to Geneva, Switzerland, as a Russian spy. In Geneva, Haldin's sister Natalia who is being tutored by the narrator, a professor of languages, learns of her brother's execution.

Shortly after, Natalia moves to another home and meets Tekla, secretary to revolutionary Peter Ivanovich. Because there was no way of knowing that Razumov is the man who betrayed her brother, Natalia receives Razumov as a friend. Razumov, who has been sent to Geneva to gain information on Ivanovich, falls in love with Natalia, and his personal turmoil increases because of his position as a government agent, which he has all but abandoned.

Because of his love for Natalia, Razumov is overwhelmed by how he betrayed Haldin. He makes a full confession to her and sends it in the mail. He then ventures to a revolutionary's home where there is a party. Razumov confesses that he is the one who betrayed Haldin, not Ziemianitch. Razumov is severely beaten, and as he leaves, he is hit and maimed by a tramcar.

Razumov lives out the remainder of his days under the care of Tekla, who found him in a secluded part of Russia.

Personal Conflict

After receiving and giving Razumov's confession to the narrator, Natalia also moves back to Russia where she does charity work. Petersburg, betrays one of his fellow students, Haldin, who is responsible for an assassination. Because Razumov has no family, he is easily recruited to work as a spy for the Russian government. His betrayal becomes an overwhelming personal struggle, however, when Razumov falls in love with Natalia, Haldin's sister, the classmate Razumov betrayed. Instead of obtaining information from Ivanovich, the man Razumov has been sent to spy on, he spends his time pursuing Natalia.

Razumov fully confesses his betrayal and mails it to Natalia. He then finds a group of revolutionaries and confesses to them that he is the one who betrayed Haldin. Razumov is subsequently attacked. Then, to further Razumov's downfall, he is hit and severely injured by a tramcar. Razumov carries out the rest of his life alone, crippled, and ashamed.

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Under Western Eyes by Conrad: Summary & Overview

Find a degree that fits your goals. Try it risk-free for 30 days. Add to Add to Add to. Want to watch this again later? The novel depicts the brutal downfall of a Russian university student who acts as a spy for the Russian government. Personal Conflict The story begins with a political assassination. Increased Turmoil In Geneva, Haldin's sister Natalia who is being tutored by the narrator, a professor of languages, learns of her brother's execution.