The travel prose of Russian writers of the first third of the XX century is characterized by the search for genius loci - the genius of a place, that spiritualized image of a place or even a specific object that appears in the consciousness of the perceiving traveler under the influence of historical and cultural associations and reminiscences. Italy was of particular interest to Russian writers in this respect. "In every book written about Italy, if only Italy is the goal of a certain "pilgrimage of the soul", there are certainly many lyrical pages, " - so the art critic and prose writer P. P. Muratov in the preface to his book about Italy, published in 1924, formulated the intentions and genre principles of his journey-a series of essays about Italian art and literature, with plot lines of biographies of artists and writers, permeated by the twilight light of the impending doom of this cultural world-myth (Muratov P. P. Images of Italy, Moscow, 1994). The world of material culture, given by the writer in visible images, fused with the spiritual world-an appeal to other times and a past life, its spirit, the subjective tone of the narrative turns the text on Italian art into a kind of epic about the lost alma mater of European civilization. Muratov's" Images of Italy "in the tradition of travel prose of Italian travels by Russian writers has become a kind of" tuning fork "(see essays on Italy by G. Boyadzhiev, V. Nekrasov, N. Ilina) and a myth about a myth, because the very attempt to reconstruct that contemplative image of the world has become a kind of "tuning fork" (see essays on Italy by G. Boyadzhiev, V. Nekrasov, N. Ilina).- page 24 The new attitude to life, which is present in Muratov's book, later turned out to be completely impossible. This was already felt in the Italian essays of B. K. Zaitsev, to whom "Images of Italy", also a passionate Italianist, is dedicated. "Italy" was written by Zaitsev for 12 years, covering the time of two devastating wars. His ... Read more