UNDER WESTERN EYES

by JOSEPH CONRAD




"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 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.