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Originally Posted by ccowie
I found this book meandered a lot. I didn't like the way it was narrated from The Professor of Languages, but I guess that was the point; viewing the story from western eyes.
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Apparently you had a lot of company in disliking the use of The Professor of Languages. I didn't quite get the point, either. Conrad wrote the following in a 1920 forward that is included in the Penguin edition:
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What I was concerned with mainly was the aspect, the character, and the fate of the individuals as they appeared to the Western Eyes of the old teacher of languages. He himself has been much criticized; but I will not at this late hour undertake to justify his existence. He was useful to me, and therefore I think that he must be useful to the reader both in the way of comment and by the part he plays in the development of the story. In my desire to produce the effect of actuality it seemed to me indispensable to have an eye-witness of the transactions in Geneva. I needed also a sympathetic friend for Miss Haldin, who otherwise would have been too much alone and unsupported to be perfectly credible. [Conrad, Joseph (2007-08-02). Under Western Eyes (Penguin Classics) (Kindle Locations 6207-6211). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.]
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Originally Posted by ccowie
In that regard I think that Conrad's criticisms of the Russian regime was actually quite measured and not quite as "western" as I had expected. He seemed equally critical of the revolutionaries, which caught me off guard. Frankly, when they weren't just plain violent and murderous they were bumbling fools. I thought they'd inspire more hope. Perhaps I just missed something.
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In the same 1920 preface, Conrad writes this:
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The most terrifying reflection (I am speaking now for myself) is that all these people are not the products of the exceptional but of the general— of the normality of their place, and time, and race. 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; and the world is brought once more face to face with the truth of the saying that the tiger cannot change his stripes nor the leopard his spots. (Kindle Locations 6221-6227).
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Originally Posted by ccowie
And again, I was really surprised at how balanced and evenhandedly Conrad chooses to portray a view "under western eyes."
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From the same preface:
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My greatest anxiety was in being able to strike and sustain the note of scrupulous impartiality. The obligation of absolute fairness was imposed on me historically and hereditarily , by the peculiar experience of race and family, in addition to my primary conviction that truth alone is the justification of any fiction which makes the least claim to the quality of art or may hope to take its place in the culture of men and women of its time.(Kindle Locations 6197-6201).
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