Like a Jekyll and Hyde Thing
An examination of the dual nature of man—goodness and evil co-existing side by side and such—is conveyed through a long piece of description prose in which the “wild beast” part seems to take on an aspect of existence all its own and separate. Before then, however, the two are clearly situated as co-existent principles within a single entity:
“His temper grew savage as the days went by, and he was glad to discover that that there was so much of a brute in him. He had nothing else to put his trust in. For it was as though there had been two human beings indissolubly joined in that enterprise. The civilized man, the enthusiast of advanced humanitarian ideals thirsting for the triumph of spiritual love and political liberty; and the stealthy, primeval savage, pitilessly cunning in the preservation of his freedom from day to day, like a tracked wild beast.”
Razumov
Imagery is utilized early on to portray the fundamental interior character of Razumov. Importantly, the narrator suggests a chasm exists deep within, an empty void needing desperately to be filled:
“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.”
The Underlook
In a quarter of town home to “the very poor” where the faces were bleary and unwashed and the only illumination is a light not just yellowish, but dim as well, a house can be found. Razumov makes his way through deep snow packed in even thicker by the claustrophobic closeness of high walls. A spectacularly effective bit of imagery says all that needs to be said about this particular domicile:
“The house was an enormous slum, a hive of human vermin, a monumental abode of misery towering on the verge of starvation and despair.”
The Spirit of Russia
The setting is Russia and the Russian character informs the story’s themes almost as a direct response to what Dostoyevsky was presenting at the time. Of course, Dostoyevsky was a staunch nationalist and believer in the superiority of the Russian…despite being profoundly mistreated by its leaders. Conrad on the subject of Russian supremacy: not so much.
“For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of Russian revolt. In its pride of numbers, in its strange pretensions of sanctity, and in the secret readiness to abase itself in suffering, the spirit of Russia is the spirit of cynicism. It informs the declarations of her statesmen, the theories of her revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations of prophets to the point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, and the Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent”
