title: Under Western Eyes (Annotated)
author: Joseph Conrad
description: Joseph Conrad (born Jzef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857  3 August 1924) is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English. He was granted British nationality in 1886, but always considered himself a Pole. Though he did not speak English fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent), he was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe. Joseph Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of nineteenth-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors, including T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Graham Greene, and more recently Salman Rushdie. Many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, Conrad's works. Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national experiences and on his personal experiences in the French and British merchant navies to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world, while profoundly exploring human psychology. Appreciated early on by literary critics, his fiction and nonfiction have since been seen as almost prophetic, in the light of subsequent national and international disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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  * * *
  
  
    
    
  Under Western Eyes
  
  
    
    
  [PART FIRST  
    
  ](Under%20Western%20Eyes_split_001.html#filepos1763)[I  
    
  ](Under%20Western%20Eyes_split_001.html#filepos9220)[II  
    
  ](Under%20Western%20Eyes_split_001.html#filepos42260)[III
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  # Under Western Eyes
  
  
  ### Joseph Conrad
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  * PART FIRST
  
  
  * I
  
  
  * II
  
  
  * III
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "I would take liberty from any hand
  
  
  as a hungry man would snatch a piece of bread."
  
  
  
  
  
  Miss HALDIN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ###
  
  
  PART FIRST
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  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