Evocations of Italy: A Russian Modernist Iteration of Il Viaggio Educativo
About this Event
Between 1911 and 1924, the Russian art historian, novelist, essayist, and critic Pavel Muratov (1881-1950) published a dazzling trilogy of travel impressions entitled Obrazy Italii, previously untranslated but now rendered into English by Lena Lenček under the title Evocations of Italy (Northwestern University Press, 2026). At once erudite and lyrical, philosophical and practical, historical and of its moment, this strange and unclassifiable text is as radical in its free-wheeling bending of generic conventions as was Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy in its own time. Yet, as this presentation will demonstrate, this brilliant “impossible” text deliberately deploys multiple discursive modalities in its objective of reanimating and reconstituting the classical Italian tradition of il viaggio educativo (the educational journey) so as to provoke in his contemporary readers as equally the readers of today, a remolding of aesthetic and ethical values.
Speaker
Lena Lenček, Professor Emerita of Russian and Humanities, Reed College
Moderator
Justin Weir, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Harvard University
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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