“Uno stupendo angolino dell’Europa”. Il soggiorno napoletano di Dmitrij Miljutin nel 1841

Abstract

The Russian general and future Ministry of War (1861-1881) Dmitriy Alekseyevich on 7 January 1841 landed in Naples, where he stayed for about a month. His journey in Italy had begun in early December 1840. He was profoundly impressed by the beauty of the town which “can perhaps only compete with Constantinople” and its surroundings, which also arose his wonder. His strong interest in the geological aspect of the volcanic area and the manifestation of the chthonic forces of nature led him to the crater of Vesuvius, from which he would admire an extraordinary panorama against the backdrop of a terse sky. Although he considered it pointless to repeat what had already been reported many times by other more skilled pens he declared his intention to limit himself to reporting only his personal memories; in his Vospominanija Milyutin meticulously reported every impression arisen by what he saw and described his travel experience with precision and abundance of details. The lucid and, at times, severe chronicle of his Neapolitan sojourn (he dwells on every single aspect: from hotel hospitality to the food, the artistic heritage, the local population and the natural environment) alternated with reflections and the externalization of a vivid feeling of astonishment. His recollections and impressions of his trip to Naples are contained in the first volume (Vospominanija) of his vast and valuable memoir, which covers a period between 1839 and 1881 and which so far does not seem to have received any particular attention from scholars of travel literature. The aim of this paper is to analyze the cultural, sociological, and artistic portrait of Naples and its surroundings drawn by Dmitriy Milyutin, with the intention of stressing the author’s cultural perception, determined by an intense yet contradictory sensation of extraneousness mixed with the inexplicable and indefinite nostalgia that fueled his regret for his detachment.