Under Western Eyes quotes

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.

Officially and in fact without a family (for the daughter of the Archpriest had long been dead), no home influences had shaped his opinions or his feelings.

He was as lonely in the world as a man swimming in the deep sea.

The word Razumov was the mere label of a solitary individuality. There were no Razumovs belonging to him anywhere. His closest parentage was defined in the statement that he was a Russian.

But a celebrated professor was a somebody. Distinction would convert the label Razumov into an honoured name. There was nothing strange in the student Razumov’s wish for distinction.

A man’s real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.

Returning home on the day of the attempt on Mr. de P⸺’s life Razumov resolved to have a good try for the silver medal.

A material refuge. He had nothing. He had not even a moral refuge—the refuge of confidence. To whom could he go with this tale—in all this great, great land?

Razumov stamped his foot⁠—and under the soft carpet of snow felt the hard ground of Russia, inanimate, cold, inert, like a sullen and tragic mother hiding her face under a winding-sheet⁠—his native soil!⁠—his very own⁠—without a fireside, without a heart!

He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above his head the clear black sky of the northern winter, decorated with the sumptuous fires of the stars.

Razumov stood on the point of conversion. He was fascinated by its approach, by its overpowering logic.

For a train of thought is never false.

The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence, in secret fears and half-formed ambitions, in the secret confidence combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, in the love of hope and the dread of uncertain days.

For a train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence, in secret fears and half-formed ambitions, in the secret confidence combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, in the love of hope and the dread of uncertain days.

In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied aspirations, many brave minds have turned away at last from the vain and endless conflict to the one great historical fact of the land.

They turned to autocracy for the peace of their patriotic conscience as a weary unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the faith of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual rest.

To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only.

No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.

Razumov had reached that point of vision. To escape from it he embraced for a whole minute the delirious purpose of rushing to his lodgings and flinging himself on his knees by the side of the bed with the dark figure stretched on it;

Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice, for moral support.

Who knows what true loneliness is⁠—not the conventional word, but the naked terror?

To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only.

Then to the Prince, explaining courteously—

“We want that bird alive. It will be the devil if we can’t make him sing a little before we are done with him.”

The grave-like silence of the room with its mute clock fell upon the polite modulations of this terrible phrase. The Prince, hidden in the chair, made no sound.

Nothing would change. There was the familiar gateway yawning black with feeble glimmers marking the arches of the different staircases.

The sense of life’s continuity depended on trifling bodily impressions.

The trivialities of daily existence were an armour for the soul. And this thought reinforced the inward quietness of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs familiar to his feet in the dark, with his hand on the familiar clammy banister.

The sense of life’s continuity depended on trifling bodily impressions.

The trivialities of daily existence were an armour for the soul.

And this thought reinforced the inward quietness of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs familiar to his feet in the dark, with his hand on the familiar clammy banister.

He did not tell me. He was a wretch from my point of view, because to keep alive a false idea is a greater crime than to kill a man. I suppose you will not deny that? I hated him!

Visionaries work everlasting evil on earth.

Their Utopias inspire in the mass of mediocre minds a disgust of reality and a contempt for the secular logic of human development.”

“I suppose,” I addressed Miss Haldin, “that you will be shocked if I tell you that I haven’t understood—I won’t say a single word; I’ve understood all the words. … But what can be this era of disembodied concord you are looking forward to.

Life is a thing of form.

It has its plastic shape and a definite intellectual aspect. The most idealistic conceptions of love and forbearance must be clothed in flesh as it were before they can be made understandable.”

Haldin in her armchair by the window. The shadow of autocracy all unperceived by me had already fallen upon the Boulevard des Philosophes, in the free, independent and democratic city of Geneva, where there is a quarter called “La Petite Russie.”

Whenever two Russians come together, the shadow of autocracy is with them, tinging their thoughts, their views, their most intimate feelings, their private life, their public utterances⁠—haunting the secret of their silences.

What struck me next in the course of a week or so was the silence of these ladies. I used to meet them walking in the public garden near the University.

Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them.

They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment⁠—often of remorse.

Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured—that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.”

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment—often of remorse.

Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured⁠—that is the definition of revolutionary success.

There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.”

I have no long beard like the good hermit of a romantic ballad; my footsteps are not tottering, my aspect not that of a slow, venerable sage. Those picturesque advantages are not mine.

I am old, alas, in a brisk, commonplace way.

And it seemed to me as though there were some pity for me in Miss Haldin’s prolonged glance. She stepped out a little quicker.

“I look also after this animal,” continued the dame de compagnie, keeping her hands folded quietly in front of her; and she bent her worn gaze upon the cat. “I don’t mind a bit.

Animals have their rights; though, strictly speaking, I see no reason why they should not suffer as well as human beings.

Do you? But of course they never suffer so much. That is impossible. Only, in their case it is more pitiful because they cannot make a revolution. I used to be a Republican. I suppose you are a Republican?”

“

How can you tell truth from lies?

” he queried in his new, immovable manner.

“In Russia, and in general everywhere—in a newspaper, for instance.

The colour of the ink and the shapes of the letters are the same.

”

The water under the bridge ran violent and deep.

Its slightly undulating rush seemed capable of scouring out a channel for itself through solid granite while you looked. But had it flowed through Razumov’s breast, it could not have washed away the accumulated bitterness the wrecking of his life had deposited there.

“

The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one,

” he said, in a very friendly tone. “But I see how it is, Kirylo Sidorovitch. You aim at stoicism.”

Petersburg.

A witch in Parisian clothes, he thought.

A portent! He actually hesitated in his advance, and did not even comprehend, at first, what the rasping voice was saying.

“But you have been told to bring Nathalie Haldin here. Am I not right? Of course I am right. I was not in the room, but I know. I know Peter Ivanovitch sufficiently well. He is a great man.

Great men are horrible.

Well, that’s it. Have nothing to do with her. That’s the best you can do, unless you want her to become like me—disillusioned! Disillusioned!”

She murmured without any animosity—

“So do the tables and chairs.”

He understood that the bitterness accumulated in the heart of that helpless creature had got into her veins, and, like some subtle poison, had decomposed her fidelity to that hateful pair. It was a great piece of luck for him, he reflected;

“Is it strange? No one is told my name. No one cares. No one talks to me, no one writes to me. My parents don’t even know if I’m alive.

I have no use for a name, and I have almost forgotten it myself.

”

Yes! While it lasts. But we women are in love with love, and with hate, with these very things I tell you, and with desire itself. That’s why we can’t be bribed off so easily as you men.

In life, you see, there is not much choice. You have either to rot or to burn. And there is not one of us, painted or unpainted, that would not rather burn than rot.

”

“The subservient, submissive life. Life? No! Vegetation on the filthy heap of iniquity which the world is.

Life, Razumov, not to be vile must be a revolt⁠—a pitiless protest⁠—all the time.

”

“Good, that,” he said to himself, while her eyes rested upon him, black and impenetrable like the mental caverns where revolutionary thought should sit plotting the violent way of its dream of changes. As if anything could be changed!

In this world of men nothing can be changed⁠—neither happiness nor misery. They can only be displaced at the cost of corrupted consciences and broken lives⁠—a futile game for arrogant philosophers and sanguinary triflers.

Those thoughts darted through Razumov’s head while he stood facing the old revolutionary hand, the respected, trusted, and influential Sophia Antonovna, whose word had such a weight in the “active” section of every party. She was much more representative than the great Peter Ivanovitch.

“My poor father would have said that.” Sophia Antonovna did not smile. She dropped her eyes. “Not that his God ever helped him.

It’s a long time since God has done anything for the people.

Anyway, it’s done.”

“Leave off railing,” she checked him explosively. “

Remember, Razumov, that women, children, and revolutionists hate irony, which is the negation of all saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all action.

Don’t rail! Leave off. … I don’t know how it is, but there are moments when you are abhorrent to me. …”

It was as if this Ziemianitch could not possibly have done anything else. And Sophia Antonovna’s cocksure and contemptuous “some police-hound” was characteristically Russian in another way. But there was no tragedy there. This was a comedy of errors.

It was as if the devil himself were playing a game with all of them in turn.

First with him, then with Ziemianitch, then with those revolutionists. The devil’s own game this. … He interrupted his earnest mental soliloquy with a jocular thought at his own expense. “Hallo! I am falling into mysticism too.”

For the terribly heavy sentence turned Councillor Mikulin civilly into a corpse, and actually into something very much like a common convict.

It seems that the savage autocracy, no more than the divine democracy, does not limit its diet exclusively to the bodies of its enemies. It devours its friends and servants as well.

The downfall of His Excellency Gregory Gregorievitch Mikulin (which did not occur till some years later) completes all that is known of the man. But at the time of M.

“

The blind can do that best. I have had the misfortune to be born clear-eyed.

And if you only knew what strange things I have seen! What amazing and unexpected apparitions! … But why talk of all this?”

“Listen, Kirylo Sidorovitch. I believe that the future shall be merciful to us all. Revolutionist and reactionary, victim and executioner, betrayer and betrayed, they shall all be pitied together when the light breaks on our black sky at last.

Pitied and forgotten; for without that there can be no union and no love.

”

“Listen, Kirylo Sidorovitch.

I believe that the future shall be merciful to us all.

Revolutionist and reactionary, victim and executioner, betrayer and betrayed, they shall all be pitied together when the light breaks on our black sky at last. Pitied and forgotten; for without that there can be no union and no love.”

“Do you know why I came to you? It is simply because there is no one anywhere in the whole great world I could go to. Do you understand what I say? Not one to go to.

Do you conceive the desolation of the thought⁠—no one⁠—to⁠—go⁠—to?

”

“

Yes, I am washed clean,

” muttered Razumov, who was dripping from head to foot, and passed through the inner door towards the staircase leading to his room.

After all, it is they and not I who have the right on their side!—theirs is the strength of invisible powers. So be it. Only don’t be deceived, Natalia Victorovna, I am not converted.

Have I then the soul of a slave? No! I am independent⁠—and therefore perdition is my lot.

”

A flash of lightning enabled them to observe him walking away quickly. One of the men shouted, and was starting in pursuit, but the woman had recognized him. “It’s all right. It’s only that young Russian from the third floor.”

The darkness returned with a single clap of thunder, like a gun fired for a warning of his escape from the prison of lies.

He must have heard at some time or other and now remembered unconsciously that there was to be a gathering of revolutionists at the house of Julius Laspara that evening.

After some words of greeting, disregarded by Razumov, Laspara (ignoring purposely his guest’s soaked condition and his extraordinary manner of presenting himself) mentioned something about writing an article. He was growing uneasy, and Razumov appeared absentminded. “

I have written already all I shall ever write,

” he said at last, with a little laugh.