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According to received wisdom, the reception of Russian literature in English translation lowered self-consciousness in the use of the term soul by English authors. Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence provide evidence of an opposite effect. English translations of Russian literature from the 1880s onwards failed to mediate the fact that ... (dusa; soul) had and has a very different place in Russian language and culture than soul in English culture. Although not the only factor affecting literary uses of soul in early twentieth-century English literature, Russian literature had a significant and enduring impact on its use in English literary production.
Keywords: Anglo-Russian literary relations / Russian soul / D.H. Lawrence / Virginia Woolf / English modernism
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Bloomsbury and "soul"
In 1945, a London Brains Trust Broadcast located the influence of Russian on English literature primarily in the fact that Russian literature had made it respectable to write about the soul. Lovat Dickson, publisher and editor, claimed:
We owe Russia thanks for the fact that since the great Russian novels thrilled us at the end of the nineteenth century, we have been able in our own novels to talk about the soul without blushing. None of Dickens's or Thackeray's characters ever talked about the soul. The soul became interesting when it was found that it was possible to talk about it decently. (Brewster 187)
Certainly, the 1880s was both the take-offdecade for English translations of "the great Russian novels," and the decade in which a group of English politicians and intellectuals were named The Souls by Lord Charles Beresford, on the grounds that "You all sit and talk about each others' souls" (Abdy 10). Yet many English novelists between the 1880s and the end of the Second World War still blushed when using the term soul.
Virginia Woolf, foremost amongst enthusiasts for Russian soul during the Bloomsbury-centered Russian craze that reached its height during the First World War, described it not only as "the chief character in Russian fiction," but as a term that the English could not use freely (Essays 1 185).
The gulf between us and them is clearly shown by the difficulty with which we produce even a tolerable imitation of the Russians. We become awkward...