Conscience as an Experiment: The Russian Subtext of John Galsworthy’s Short Story “Conscience”

John Galsworthy, as it is quite widely known, was strongly influenced by Russian literature. What is much less known, or even realized, is that this influence had at least two major lines: (1) a literary line, connected with a vivid perception of style, plot, other aesthetic and ideological discoveries of Russian novelists, and (2) a cultural line that carried Galsworthy to philosophizing on such problems as national character, national culture, and the historical development of the European civilization. In this second respect, Chekhov can be considered the central figure for the English writer. This supposition is based on some Galsworthy’s essays in which Chekhov’s name is directly connected with the idea of “Russianness”, with such typical, according to the English writer’s point of view, Russian traits as “a passionate search for truth”, emotionality, self-knowledge, and self-declaration. Thus, these were, primarily, Chekhov’s works that served for Galsworthy as the basis for his very special-both aesthetic and ideological-experiment. Galsworthy conducted this experiment in his short story under a “Russian”, if not “Chekhovian”, title “Conscience” (cf., Chekhov’s short story “Bezzakonie” [Iniquity, Lawlessness]). Conscience is a very significant motif in Chekhov’s works, and it obviously plays an important role in works by many other Russian authors, including Dostoevsky, which is not something inexplicable. Unlike English culture, which, during the 17th-19th centuries, shifted from reliance on the inner moral voice in a human being to faith in outer moral rules, Russian culture, on the eve of the 20th century, still preserved the authentic Christian belief that conscience is the voice of truth in man. Since, in his essays, Galsworthy declared Chekhov the most authentic Russian writer of all he had known, it is natural to assume that whenever we speak about the English writer’s experiment dealing with the Russian concept, we should bear in mind Chekhov (as the key point to understand the experiment). The essence of the experiment can be described in terms of transplanting the Russian model of “life according to the voice of conscience” to the everyday English reality contemporary with the author within the aesthetic texture of his short story. As a result, the hero, who starts-rather unexpectedly both for himself and everybody around him- living according to his conscience, loses his social status, money, job, home, as well as trust of all those who know him. He excludes himself (and is excluded) from social life and from all possible connections with the human world: the only “world”, the only environment open for him is nature. The experiment Galsworthy made in his short story “Conscience” proves that the Russian model of “life according to the voice of conscience” is not viable in the circumstances of English reality (contemporary with the author).

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