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Under Western Eyes Capa comum – 18 dezembro 2007
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Sobre o Autor
Joseph Conrad (originally Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. In 1896 he settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern classics as Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes. He continued to write until his death in 1924. Today Conrad is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in English--his third language.
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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 trait—one of those subtle differences that are beyond the ken of mere professors. What must remain striking to a teacher of languages is the Russians’ extraordinary love of words. They gather them up; they cherish them, but they don’t hoard them in their breasts; on the contrary, they are always ready to pour them out by the hour or by the night with an enthusiasm, a sweeping abundance, with such an aptness of application sometimes that, as in the case of very accomplished parrots, one can’t defend oneself from the suspicion that they really understand what they say. There is a generosity in their ardour of speech which removes it as far as possible from common loquacity; and it is ever too disconnected to be classed as eloquence. . . . But I must apologize for this digression.
It would be idle to inquire why Mr. Razumov has left this record behind him. It is inconceivable that he should have wished any human eye to see it. A mysterious impulse of human nature comes into play here. Putting aside Samuel Pepys, who has forced in this way the door of immortality, innumerable people, criminals, saints, philosophers, young girls, statesmen, and simple imbeciles, have kept self-revealing records from vanity no doubt, but also from other more inscrutable motives. There must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion. Being myself a quiet individual I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace. Certainly they are crying loud enough for it at the present day. What sort of peace Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov expected to find in the writing up of his record it passeth my understanding to guess.
The fact remains that he has written it.
Mr. Razumov was a tall, well-proportioned young man, quite unusually dark for a Russian from the Central Provinces. His good looks would have been unquestionable if it had not been for a peculiar lack of fineness in the features. It was as if a face modelled vigorously in wax (with some approach even to a classical correctness of type) had been held close to a fire till all sharpness of line had been lost in the softening of the material. But even thus he was sufficiently good-looking. His manner, too, was good. In discussion he was easily swayed by argument and authority. With his younger compatriots he took the attitude of an inscrutable listener, a listener of the kind that hears you out intelligently and then—just changes the subject.
This sort of trick, which may arise either from intellectual insufficiency or from an imperfect trust in one’s own convictions, procured for Mr. Razumov a reputation of profundity. Amongst a lot of exuberant talkers, in the habit of exhausting themselves daily by ardent discussion, a comparatively taciturn personality is naturally credited with reserve power. By his comrades at the St. Petersburg University, Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov, third year’s student in philosophy, was looked upon as a strong nature—an altogether trustworthy man. This, in a country where an opinion may be a legal crime visited by death or sometimes by a fate worse than mere death, meant that he was worthy of being trusted with forbidden opinions. He was liked also for his amiability and for his quiet readiness to oblige his comrades even at the cost of personal inconvenience.
Mr. Razumov was supposed to be the son of an Archpriest and to be protected by a distinguished nobleman—perhaps of his own distant province. But his outward appearance accorded badly with such humble origin. Such a descent was not credible. It was, indeed, suggested that Mr. Razumov was the son of an Archpriest’s pretty daughter—which, of course, would put a different complexion on the matter. This theory also rendered intelligible the protection of the distinguished nobleman. All this, however, had never been investigated maliciously or otherwise. No one knew or cared who the nobleman in question was. Razumov received a modest but very sufficient allowance from the hands of an obscure attorney, who seemed to act as his guardian in some measure. Now and then he appeared at some professor’s informal reception. Apart from that Razumov was not known to have any social relations in the town. He attended the obligatory lectures regularly and was considered by the authorities as a very promising student. He worked at home in the manner of a man who means to get on, but did not shut himself up severely for that purpose. He was always accessible, and there was nothing secret or reserved in his life.
- Número de páginas343 páginas
- IdiomaInglês
- EditoraPenguin Books
- Data da publicação18 dezembro 2007
- Dimensões19.94 x 16.66 x 2.41 cm
- ISBN-100141441941
- ISBN-13978-0141441948
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Detalhes do produto
- Editora : Penguin Books (18 dezembro 2007)
- Idioma : Inglês
- Capa comum : 343 páginas
- ISBN-10 : 0141441941
- ISBN-13 : 978-0141441948
- Dimensões : 19.94 x 16.66 x 2.41 cm
- Ranking dos mais vendidos: Nº 478,522 em Livros (Conheça o Top 100 na categoria Livros)
- Nº 1,317 em Literatura e Ficção para Adolescentes: Clássicos
- Nº 7,098 em Importados de Ficção Clássica
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A Russian student in St.Petersburg is faced with a dilemma that must have been experienced in similar form by many others in many times and countries, and by many more in their imagination. What would I do, if...
Say, you were a German student with vaguely leftwing orientation in the early 70s, and Ulrike Meinhof had just gone underground, and by some strange combination of coincidences she turns up in your flat and asks for temporary shelter and some minor help in an escape plan.
This is the situation that Conrad puts his hero Razumov in. Not with Meinhof, silly, but with a freshly successful assassin of a high Russian politician; the 2 students knew each other barely.
From here, Conrad develops a compelling story of betrayal and espionage and political revolution, starting in St.Petersburg, then moving to Geneva. Like in real life, one might say. Switzerland becomes the playground for the Russian revolutionaries in exile and for their hunters. The title of the story means exactly that: Russian fights fought in the West for `them' to watch and wonder over.
(This book is another case of oddly misinforming book descriptions, here on an otherwise blameless Penguin: the back cover says that the book explores the conflict between East and West. What nonsense. The book explores no such thing.)
Conrad was far from sympathizing with `the Russians', but he seems to have known them quite well. His Razumov (the word means `reason' or `mind', says the writer of the notes) is a variation on Razkolnikov. Conrad disliked Dostoyevsky, who was `too Russian' for him, but he was rather obviously writing `against' him here. Razumov's guilt is his betrayal of the assassin, and his atonement/punishment comes in hard struggles between reason/self preservation and emotion.
The novel has a rather simple structure, for a major Conrad novel.
The narrator came into possession of Razumov's diaries; he paraphrases and summarizes them for us. (Why not stick to the fiction and let us read the `original' diary, as Nabokov might have done? - I thought of Nabokov here because VN, like JC, disliked Dostoyevsky; it may be an interesting subject to compare the differences of the dislikes of JC and VN.)
Part 1 is the story in St.Pete, by the diaries. Then we follow the narrator's personal experience in Geneva. Protagonists in the story have not read part 1, of course... This gives the narration a Hitchcockian flavor. We know more than the people in the story, and that drives suspense.
JC did not have the benefit of the Bolshevik revolution hindsight, that's why some of the politics are oddly off target. It could hardly be otherwise in 1910.
The novel has more women than most other Conrad books. This about the main female character: at the educational institutions, she was looked upon unfavorably. She was suspected of holding independent opinions.
Quite possibly, JC wrote women into this book as a defense mechanism. He had been attacked from that angle.
In the life work of Conrad, this novel is in a surprising position. He wrote it before he reached his prominent and profitable phase. It is not necessarily a shocking departure in terms of methods, but it is for sure a pure thriller: a precursor of Graham Greene and John Le Carre, and their next generation. There is nothing of the complexity and complication of Nostromo in this novel. Even the Secret Agent is much more complex.
I do not hesitate to include this in my short list of best Conrads.