“Most of Them are Honourable”. Luigi Villari and the Armenians during the 1905-1906 Armenian-Tatar War

Luigi Villari’s book Fire and Sword in the Caucasus, published in London in 1906, is widely quoted by scholars working on the history of Transcaucasia, in particular in respect to the Armenian-Tatar war. Yet neither this text nor its author have been so far studied in detail. The Italian Luigi Villari (1876-1959) is a figure of considerable interest; he was a diplomat, traveler, and journalist. His father, Pasquale Villari (1827-1917), was an accomplished historian and politician who played an important role in nineteenth-century Italy; Villari’s mother was the British writer Linda White (1836-1915). It is remarkable that the author wrote a book an English at a time when this was not a popular language in Italy. He wrote extensively both in English and Italian about different topics, mainly related to history and international politics. It has been shown that, after the First World War, Villari joined Fascism and contributed actively to the regime’s propaganda in Great Britain. The present paper examines Luigi Villari’s book on the Caucasus, especially the author’s attitude towards the Armenians. I shall demonstrate that in his work, he handles negative stereotypes of the Armenians (“one of the most unpopular races of the East”), which were common in the Russian empire at the beginning of the twentieth century, in a rather interesting way.

Gasparo (Della) Vecchia, Architecture, and Russia

In the manuscript Architektura cyvilnaja (written in Venice in 1699), “Gasparo Vecchia” is mentioned by the Russian prince G.F. Dolgorukov as the author of a selection of Palladio’s and other famous architects’ texts, which were the sources Dolgorukov drew upon when writing his work. To my knowledge, Gasparo (Della) Vecchia has neither so far been properly identified nor his role studied in detail; in this paper, I try to shed some light on his relationship with Dolgorukov’s text by analysing a manuscript penned by the Italian artist and entitled Breve trattato d’architettura civile, here investigated for the first time. I shall argue that in Venice Della Vecchia continued to be involved with Russians for some time: a letter dated 1715 and addressed to Peter the Great contains his proposal for a garden with didactic ends, thereby demonstrating that Della Vecchia was fully aware of the tsar’s interests and goals.

M. Maurizio, V.S. Tomelleri (a cura di), Rivoluzione visiva attraverso visioni rivoluzionarie: alfabeti, cinema e letteratura in urss, Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Straniere Moderne, Torino 2018 (= “QuadRi. Quaderno di Ricognizioni”, VIII), pp. 146.

Book Review

N. Gogol’, Storie di Pietroburgo, a cura di C.G. De Michelis e N. Marcialis, Voland, Roma 2020 (= e.klassica, 12), pp. 113.

Book Review

M. Fin, H. Steenwijk (a cura di), Gerasim Zelić e il suo tempo, Firenze University Press, Firenze 2019, pp. 125.

Book Review

Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer’s Danae Tycjana Within the Framework of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy: Reading Ekphrasis Through the Prism of Aesthetic Experience

This article aims to discuss the relationship between word and image in literary works devoted to the so-called ekphrasis. The present research is organised as follows: I first discuss the concept of contemplative aesthetic experience as elucidated in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and then provide some theoretical reflections on its current interpretations; in the second part, I try to examine the poem Danae Tycjana from III Seria Poezji (1898), by the Polish modernist poet Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, through the lens of the concept of contemplative aesthetic experience. The analysis here carried out within the theoretical framework presented contends that the rhetorical device of ekphrasis should be understood as verbalisation of aesthetic aspects and experience. The last part of this paper investigates Titian’s painting Danaë (1545-1546, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples), one of several examples of the genre of erotic mythologies in Western art popularized by Titian, as the foundation for Tetmajer’s aesthetic experience and source of ekphrasis.

V.S. Tomelleri, Linguistica e filologia in Unione Sovietica. Trilogia fra sapere e potere, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2020 (= Eterotopie, 667), pp. 170.

Book Review

P. Lazarević Di Giacomo, M.R. Leto (a cura di), L’Adriatico tra sogno e realtà, Edizioni dell’Orso, Alessandria 2019 (= Studi interadriatici, 1), pp. 470.

Book Review

The Birthday of Boris Godunov

The life story of Tsar Boris Godunov, one of the most intriguing characters of Late Medieval Rus’, is still surrounded by unsolved enigmas, obscure gaps, and omissions. The date of his birth is to yet be verified and introduced into scholarly discourse. This paper presents evidence that, if interpreted appropriately, we argue it enables us to estimate Godunov’s birthday. Accurate dating is important for many reasons, for instance it helps us to contextualize and broaden our understanding of everyday life at the ruling house, the cult of personal patron saints, and aristocratic naming conventions in Rus’ between the 14th and the 17thcenturies.

J. Kochanowski, Treny. Treni. Lamenti, trad. di U. Norsa ed E. Damiani, a cura di G.O. Fasoli, introduz. di L. Marinelli, Agorà & Co., Lugano 2020, pp. 186.

Book review