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From Orientalism to Cultural Capital From Orientalism to Cultural Capital From Orientalism to Cultural Capital presents a fascinating account of the wave of Russophilia that pervaded British literary culture in The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920s the early twentieth century. The authors bring a new approach to the study of this period, exploring the literary phenomenon through two theoretical models from the social sciences: Orientalism and the notion of ‘cultural capital’ associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Examining the responses of leading literary practitioners who had a significant impact on the institutional transmission of Russian culture, they reassess the mechanics of cultural dialogism, mediation and exchange, casting new light on British perceptions of modernism as a transcultural artistic movement and the ways in which the literary interaction with the myth of Russia shaped and intensified these cultural views. Olga Soboleva teaches Comparative Literature at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests are in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian and European culture. • Her recent publications include The Only Hope of the World: George Bernard Shaw and Russia (2012), The Silver Mask: Soboleva and Wrenn Harlequinade in the Symbolist Poetry of Blok and Belyi (2008) and articles on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Chekhov, Boris Akunin and Victor Pelevin. Angus Wrenn has taught Comparative Literature at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 1997. His most recent publications include The Only Hope of the World: George Bernard Shaw and Russia (2012), Henry James and the Second Empire (2009) and articles on the reception of Ford Madox Ford and Henry James in Europe. ISBN 978-3-0343-2203-4 Olga Soboleva and Angus Wrenn www.peterlang.com PETER LANG From Orientalism to Cultural Capital From Orientalism to Cultural Capital From Orientalism to Cultural Capital presents a fascinating account of the wave of Russophilia that pervaded British literary culture in The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920s the early twentieth century. The authors bring a new approach to the study of this period, exploring the literary phenomenon through two theoretical models from the social sciences: Orientalism and the notion of ‘cultural capital’ associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Examining the responses of leading literary practitioners who had a significant impact on the institutional transmission of Russian culture, they reassess the mechanics of cultural dialogism, mediation and exchange, casting new light on British perceptions of modernism as a transcultural artistic movement and the ways in which the literary interaction with the myth of Russia shaped and intensified these cultural views. Olga Soboleva teaches Comparative Literature at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research interests are in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian and European culture. • Her recent publications include The Only Hope of the World: George Bernard Shaw and Russia (2012), The Silver Mask: Soboleva and Wrenn Harlequinade in the Symbolist Poetry of Blok and Belyi (2008) and articles on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Chekhov, Boris Akunin and Victor Pelevin. Angus Wrenn has taught Comparative Literature at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 1997. His most recent publications include The Only Hope of the World: George Bernard Shaw and Russia (2012), Henry James and the Second Empire (2009) and articles on the reception of Ford Madox Ford and Henry James in Europe. ISBN 978-3-0343-2203-4 Olga Soboleva and Angus Wrenn www.peterlang.com PETER LANG From Orientalism to Cultural Capital From Orientalism to Cultural Capital The Myth of Russia in British Literature of the 1920s Olga Soboleva and Angus Wrenn PETER LANG Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National- bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2016963039 Cover image: Bernard Partridge, ‘The Bear Hug’,Punch , 17 May, 1922. Cover design: Peter Lang Ltd. ISBN 978-3-0343-2203-4 (print) • ISBN 978-1-78707-394-4 (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-78707-395-1 (ePub) • ISBN 978-1-78707-396-8 (mobi) DOI 10.3726/b11211 This book is an open access book and available on www.oapen.org and www.peterlang.com. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 4.0 which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2017 Wabernstrasse 40, CH-3007 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net This publication has been peer reviewed. Contents List of Figures vii Professor Philip Ross Bullock Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The East Wind of Russianness 17 Chapter 2 John Galsworthy: Is It Possible to ‘De-Anglicise the Englishman’? 65 Chapter 3 H. G. Wells: Interpreting the ‘Writing on the Eastern Wall of Europe’ 101 Chapter 4 J. M. Barrie and The Truth about the Russian Dancers 143 vi Chapter 5 D. H. Lawrence: ‘Russia Will Certainly Inherit the Future’ 187 Chapter 6 ‘Lappin and Lapinova’: Woolf ’s Beleaguered Russian Monarchs 237 Chapter 7 ‘Not a Story of Detection, of Crime and Punishment, but of Sin and Expiation’: T. S. Eliot’s Debt to Russia, Dostoevsky and Turgenev 271 Bibliography 311 Index 329 Figures Figure 1 ‘Novelists Who May Be Read in A. D. 2029’, Manchester Guardian, 3 April 1929. 5 Figure 2 The number of texts (fiction) related to Russian subject-matter based on the bibliography in Anthony Cross, The Russian Theme in English Literature from the Sixteenth Century to 1980: An introductory survey and bibliography (1985). 36 Figure 3 The number of texts (fiction and first-hand travel accounts) related to Russian subject-matter based on the following sources: Fiction – Anthony Cross, The Russian Theme in English Literature from the Sixteenth Century to 1980 (1985). Travel literature – based on a combination of data from Anthony Cross, In the Land of the Romanovs: An Annotated Bibliography of First-hand English- language Accounts of the Russian Empire (1613–1917) (2014); Andrei N. Zashikhin, Britanskaia rossika vtoroi poloviny XIX-nachala XX veka (1995); H. W. Nerhood, To Russia and Return: An Annotated Bibliography of Travelers’ English-Language Accounts of Russia from the Ninth Century to the Present (1968). 37 Figure 4 H. G. Wells’ drawing of Lenin, letter to Upton Sinclair, early 1919. 137 Figure 5 Tamara Karsavina as Karissima and Basil Forster as Lord Vere in The Truth about the Russian Dancers (1920). Press Association collection. 147 viii Figure 6 Original design: The Truth about the Russian Dancers by Paul Nash. Victoria and Albert Museum. 170 Figure 7 Costume design by Paul Nash (for Tamara Karsavina). Victoria and Albert Museum. 172–3 Figure 8 Photo of Angelica Bell, daughter of Vanessa Bell and niece of Virginia Woolf, in costume as the Russian Princess from Woolf ’s novel Orlando. Tate Archive. 270 Preface How does the marginal become mainstream? And how does the recherché become démodé? These questions run through the chapters of this book like a red thread, structuring its arguments and provoking the reader to examine some familiar names and some familiar works, as well as a host of more unusual and overlooked material. And they are pertinent and pro- ductive questions, too, because they point to the dizzying rapidity with which Russian culture became known (if not always understood) in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, as well as the way in which that culture soon became reduced to cliché and myth. Said and Bourdieu structure the argument, as announced in the book’s title, but their work is never read reductively. Said’s ‘Orientalism’ is the explicit productive of ‘Orientalists’, writers and critics keen to paint a picture of Russia as bar- baric and ‘other’. And Bourdieu’s ‘literary field’ (a concept that has proved as productive as that of ‘cultural capital’) is one that is populated by agents and actors who are conscious of their choices, if not always of their exper- tise (or lack thereof ). In many ways, however, the ideas presented here are already implicit in Russian culture itself, which has long been aware of both its belatedness and its precocity, and how these seemingly contradictory features structure its relationship with the rest of the world. In his famous Lettres philosophiques, written (in French, no less) in the late 1820s and early 1830s, Pyotr Chaadaev announced both Russia’s lack of history and its negligible contribution to world culture: ‘Alone in the world, we have given it nothing, we have taught it nothing; we have added not a single idea to the multitude of man’s ideas; we have contributed nothing to the progress of the human mind and we have disfigured everything we have gained from this process.’ Alexander Herzen described Chaadaev’s writ- ings as ‘a shot that rang out in the dark night’, and indeed the mid-century saw a remarkable oscillation between those who defended Russia’s place in Europe, and those who sought to situate its riches elsewhere. The idea that self-definition was the product of a dialogue was, moreover, implicit x Preface in Herzen’s writings, and in words that might have served – in inverted form – as an alternative subtitle to this volume, he claimed that ‘we need Europe as an ideal, as a reproach, as a virtuous example; if Europe were not these things, then we should have to invent it.’ Both Chaadaev and Herzen might have been surprised to see their diagnoses wholly inverted by the fin de siècle, when it was Russia that found itself playing the role of the West’s own subconscious, unruly and disruptive, yet also libidinal and highly creative.