UNDER WESTERN EYES. Джозеф Конрад

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       Joseph Conrad

      UNDER WESTERN EYES

      An Intriguing Tale of Espionage and Betrayal in Czarist Russia

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      2017 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-7583-988-6

      Table of Contents

       Under Western Eyes

       Notes on My Books – “Under Western Eyes”

       Memoirs, Notes & Letters

       A Personal Record; or Some Reminiscences

       The Mirror of the Sea

       Notes on Life & Letters

       Biography & Critical Essays

       Joseph Conrad (A Biography) by Hugh Walpole

       Joseph Conrad by John Albert Macy

       A Conrad Miscellany by John Albert Macy

       Joseph Conrad by Virginia Woolf

      UNDER WESTERN EYES

       Table of Contents

      "I would take liberty from any hand as a hungry man would snatch a piece of bread."

       —Miss HALDIN

Table of Contents

       PART FIRST

       I

       II

       III

       PART SECOND

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       PART THIRD

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       PART FOUR

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

      PART FIRST

       Table of Contents

      To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of those high gifts of imagination and expression which would have enabled my pen to create for the reader the personality of the man who called himself, after the Russian custom, Cyril son of Isidor—Kirylo Sidorovitch—Razumov.

      If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of living form they have been smothered out of existence a long time ago under a wilderness of words. Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

      This being so, I could not have observed Mr. Razumov or guessed at his reality by the force of insight, much less have imagined him as he was. Even to invent the mere bald facts of his life would have been utterly beyond my powers. But I think that without this declaration the readers of these pages will be able to detect in the story the marks of documentary evidence. And that is perfectly correct. It is based on a document; all I have brought to it is my knowledge of the Russian language, which is sufficient for what is attempted here. The document, of course, is something in the nature of a journal, a diary, yet not exactly that in its actual form. For instance, most of it was not written up from day to day, though all the entries are dated. Some of these entries cover months of time and extend over dozens of pages. All the earlier part is a retrospect, in a narrative form, relating to an event which took place about a year before.

      I must mention that I have lived for a long time in Geneva. A whole quarter of that town, on account of many Russians residing there, is called La Petite Russie—Little Russia. I had a rather extensive connexion in Little Russia at that time. Yet I confess that I have no comprehension of the Russian character. The illogicality of their attitude, the arbitrariness of their conclusions, the frequency of the exceptional, should present no difficulty to a student of many grammars; but there must be something else in the way, some special human