AN EARTHLY PARADISE: NAPLES IN THE ACCOUNTS OF RUSSIAN TRAVELLERS AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY

The impressions of Russian travellers regarding the Italian region of Campania, the russkaya "neapolitana ”, are the subject of several studies that not only systematically catalogue the works of Russian intellectuals, artists and aristocrats, starting from the eighteenth century onwards, but also present an indepth critical examination aimed at incorporating Russian diaries, memoirs, short stories and poems into the extensive literature about travelling around Italy. In the panorama of literature regarding travelling around Italy, Naples undoubtedly occupies a central position, being the highpoint of a trip to the “Land of Lemons”, a distorted mirror of the myth of Italy for foreign travellers, who would virtually always reach the South at the end of their journey. The Neapolitan locus appears in a double guise - as a lively land, rich in wonders and a source of marvels as well as a place of filth, cowardice and extreme misery, sharply contrasting with the radiant serenity of its inhabitants. It was this antithesis that struck a great number of Russian travellers who journeyed to Naples from the eighteenth century onwards. In fact, for almost all of them, this city represented something “out of the ordinary”. The image of Naples and its surroundings, conveyed by memoirs, travel diaries, various descriptions and views, emphasises a vibrant dimension, an effect of extraordinariness, and the quirky cheerfulness of Neapolitans in the face of life’s adversities from extreme poverty to the ever-present apocalyptic threat in the shape of Mount Vesuvius, a paradigmatic challenge that captivates the foreign visitor. The accounts of Russian travellers about Naples and its surroundings intensified in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article examines a selection of memoirs recorded in the travelogues of a number of Russian “tourists” (P.P. Muratov, N.A. Lukhmanova, S.S. Glagol’ (Goloushev), V.V. Rozanov, M.A. Osorgin, M.V. Dobuzhinskiy, I.A. Bunin, V.V. Veydle), who, being enchanted by the Gulf of Naples, mapped its cultural and interpretative “geography”. While the red thread of the russkaya "neapolitana ” is essentially the inherently Russian perception of the Campania felix, where the expanse of the Gulf of Naples is perceived as a mirage to aspire to, despite the looming threat of Mount Vesuvius, each of the Russian travellers mentioned in this article contributes to the creation of an image of Naples and its surroundings that seeks to transcend the Romantic and Decadent cliches of “paradise vs hell”, as well as to provide the Russian reader with a cultural insight into the Neapolitan way of life and customs. From an imagological perspective, this part of Italy is regarded, described and narrated via the cognitive spectrum of the “outsider”, yet mediated at the same time by a somewhat deeper factual knowledge of the genuine Neapolitan life. The author declares no conflicts of interests.