f conscience about
this piece of work. The story might have been better told of course. All
one's work might have been better done; but this is the sort of
reflection a worker must put aside courageously if he doesn't mean every
one of his conceptions to remain for ever a private vision, an
evanescent reverie. How many of those visions have I seen vanish in my
time! This one, however, has remained, a testimony, if you like, to my
courage or a proof of my rashness. What I care to remember best is the
testimony of some French readers who volunteered the opinion that in
those hundred pages or so I had managed to render "wonderfully" the
spirit of the whole epoch. Exaggeration of kindness no doubt; but even
so I hug it still to my breast, because in truth that is exactly what I
was trying to capture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch--never
purely militarist in the long clash of arms, youthful, almost childlike
in its exaltation of sentiment--naively heroic in its faith.

J. C.

1920.

UNDER WESTERN EYES

It must be admitted that by the mere force of circumstances "Under
Western Eyes" has become already a sort of historical novel dealing with
the past.

This reflection bears entirely upon the events of the tale; but being as
a whole an attempt to render not so much the political state as the
psychology of Russia itself, I venture to hope that it has not lost all
its interest. I am encouraged in this flattering belief by noticing
that in many articles on Russian affairs of the present day reference is
made to certain sayings and opinions uttered in the pages that follow,
in a manner testifying to the clearness of my vision and the correctness
of my judgment. I need not say that in writing this novel I had no other
object in view than to express imaginatively the general truth which
underlies its action, together with my honest convictions as to the
moral complexion of certain facts more or less known to the whole world.

As to the actual creation I may say that when I began to write I had a
distinct conception of the first part only, with the three figures of
Haldin, Razumov, and Councillor Mikulin, defined exactly in my mind. It
was only after I had finished writing the first part that the whole
story revealed itself to me in its tragic character and in the march of
its events as unavoidable and sufficiently ample in its outline to give
free play to my creative instinct and to the dramatic possibili