Under Western Eyes: Man’s Estate — Existential Absurdity or Existential Suffering?

Abstract

Conrad remains at the height of his powers and his interest in politics continues but, in Under Western Eyes, the scene shifts to the Continent. Given his Continental experience and origins, it is natural and understandable that Conrad should write on what has been called the Russian theme, but the theme is not one peculiar to Conrad or rare or new in English literature. Its beginnings lie in the Elizabethan age and it constitutes a long-established tradition. In 1911, the year of publication of Under Western Eyes, there appeared thirteen English novels on this theme.¹

Russia was the conventional background borrowed from detective stories, and Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff, and from many melodramas. That is to say, I imagined barbaric houses, glittering and spangled bedizened Asiatic people. The reality was so different.

(Maurice Baring, The Puppet Show of Memory, 1922)