Conrad and Russia

Young Joseph Konrad, therefore, preferred to emigrate and roam the seas alternatively than bow his neck before the rulers of the empire. Similarly, Wit Tarnawski thinks “Conrad is simply a kid of the atmosphere that occurred in Poland after the 1863 uprising, and his view of the planet was affected by the tragedy of the nation and the tragedy of his own life, the exodus of homelessness, loneliness, remorse for leaving the country” ( “Conrad. Man – author – Pole” (London, 1972, p.18). And erstwhile it comes to Conrad's relation with Russia, it's fair to look at his novel. “In the Eyes of the West” (titled in the first "Under Western Eyes", published in 1911 and written good years before the First planet War. The book so deals with the times of Tsarist Russia, known to the author from individual experiences. This fresh is not, let's say, Conrad's best track, the title itself fits more into the set of essays. Lovers of his work like “Lord Jim”, “Smudge of Shadow” or “Nostromo”. However, “In the eyes of the West” has not lost its validity in Russia’s assessments, so it remains an crucial fresh in this regard. Stanislaw Vincenz considered her even perfect.

Russia's nature was already penetrated by the Marquis de Custine in its loud account of the Tsars' country, published in 1843 and accepted with anger in St. Petersburg. Mikołaj I complained that it was his fault, due to the fact that he made it easier for “this bastard” to stay in Russia. It wasn't until 1910 that the Tsarsk censorship allowed...abbreviated translation of the book, but in 1917 its circulation was confiscated. Thus the Russians admitted how actual the observations of the Marquis de Custine were! In this work, Herzen saw the best book on Russia, adding that he could only dare a foreigner. The Marquis commented with full freedom, for example, that the Russian government is simply a war discipline, a state of siege regarded as a average state of society. Or "in France, revolutionary tyranny was a temporary evil erstwhile in Russia tyranny of despotism is simply a permanent revolution".

Conrad's analysis of Russian affairs took place before 1905, and was based on his own experiences, so he had deeper cognition of this vast country, frequently incomprehensible to the West. Eventually, he spent respective years of exile with his parents. A – as he wrote to John Galsworthy at the time of writing this fresh – “I am trying to capture the very soul of things Russian”... Atoli Conrad's researchers remind us that in 1905 the celebrated article “War and Autocracy”, published after the Russian-Japanese War, the author revealed a deep knowing of these “things Russian”. Here is simply a crucial passage of this article:

“Russia is and was a negation of everything worth surviving for. It is an abiding abyss, separating the East from the West, a bottomless abyss that has consumed all hope of mercy, all desire for individual dignity, liberty, knowledge, all refinement of the desire of the heart, all redeeming sigh of conscience. Those who have looked into this abyss know well that there is no support for anything that could service even the humblest needs of mankind...”

Is that enough? The intent of this analysis will not be understood only by Western people, for whom Russia remains a large mystery, but also, unfortunately, it fascinates them. Conrad's courts about Russia besides show the historical state of its character: Ivan the Terrible's cruel despotism, the autocracy of the Tsars, or Stalin's paranoid atrocities, the spray, Ochrana or yet the NKVD, then the KGB present besides the FSB... That is why Conrad wrote in his introduction to the fresh edition “In the Eyes of the West” in 1920 that “tigers will not change their stripes and leopard spots”...!

It should be stressed that he carefully distinguished the East (which he frequently described and valued) from Russia. Here are his words:

‘The despotism of Russian autocracy is all but European. But he is besides not Asian in his essence. It is something completely separate, not related to Europe or the East. It seems to be a visitation, a curse falling from heaven...on the endless plains of forests and steppes, lying on the border of 2 continents: a desert that neither the spirit of the East nor the West revives."

The main character of the fresh “In the Eyes of the West” is student Razumov. He deunciates his colleague Haldin, a fanatical revolutionary who is active in the assassination of the Tsar's minister, throwing a bomb... ( What an actual reason for knowing who invented terrorism in the 19th century!) On the another hand, the narrator of this fresh is an old Englishman, a language teacher, and he embodies the ignorance of Western people in relation to Russian matters. The motivations of Razumov can be written in trials, but in full it does so in a sense of duty, though most likely more from the temptation to approach the higher spheres of the Czarovian state, to the generals of Ochrana. There's a contradiction inside him due to the fact that he's dealing with a advanced police authoritative with sarcasm. Is he hoping to defend Prince K?

Conrad highlights the deficiency of morality in Razumov, besides his homelessness and at the same time the deficiency of household ties. On specified people, the strategy of delators was built, and in russian Russia the structures of informers were built. specified men were a blind instrument of dictatorship. In the course of the fresh Razumow undergoes a crisis of conscience, and it combines with fear of exposure. He suffers especially due to the fact that he falls in love with Haldin's sister! And in the end, he himself confesses his function in the group of sympathizers of the revolution, although not guilty... How it ends is easy to guess. A. Poleska writes about any parallels to Crimes and Punishments in the article “Conrad a Dostoevsky”. In Conrad's novel, the shadow of Siberia is visible, and, as Mikulin counsel says, in Russia it is allowed to think, and to think, provided that in the right way! Korzenowski had no illusions about Russia, and he made it clear in his 1905 article. His fresh “In the Eyes of the West” is not simply a condemnation of Russia, but a search for compassion for the citizens of this empire pushed to the very bottom of misery. In the Tsar State, due to the fact that there is simply a fresh about this era, there is simply a state so portrayed by Conrad: “The Oppressors and the Oppressors are all Russian together...” (at the end of the preface). And this diagnosis fits the communist era, whose parameters and mass crimes (exaggerating the repression of the Carat) Conrad couldn't have known at the time of his novel. Condemning the system, he at the same time felt pity for people acting against “the Destroyers of souls which aspire to perfection of human dignity” ( p.58). This is most likely the most acute accusation in this novel, and it precedes the modern diagnosis of Josif Brodski: “...no country has led the art of destroying souls to specified perfection as RussiaIt’s okay. ” Undoubtedly Conrad was the top depth of the humanist, a planetary man – as it is said – avant la lettre...Idealist looking forward to the future, but besides rationalist in this reflection: "...and fundamental change of hearts must follow the downfall of any given human institutions" (...the fundamental change of hearts should follow the fall of all human institutions). This change of heart was not possible for us to see or carry out in Poland after 1989, which is the reason for the constant illness of the state and society. And since December 2023 we have been paying for this with an unimaginable tragedy and disaster, which we cannot yet see fully, due to the fact that we have been blindfolded and we are being brought to destruction. And in that insidious maze, you can't see Ariadne with the thread that saves...

Marek Baterovich