The Geopoetics of Catastrophe : Russian Modernism on Italian Terrain

For the Russian modernists, Italy’s cataclysmic terrain proved no less arresting than its art and culture. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and the ruinous effects of tourism: these are the disasters that haunt their writings on Italy. Situated at the nexus of ecocriticism and aesthetics, The Geopoetics of Catastrophe posits that environmental upheaval was a potent force in the artistic engagement with Italy.

Following an itinerary that spans from Etna to Vesuvius, this study uncovers the devastated Italy found in the works of such writers as Alexander Blok, Joseph Brodsky, Zinaida Gippius, Maxim Gorky, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Vladimir Nabokov. Subject to the vagaries of Russian and world history, these authors were drawn to the many disasters that ravaged the Italian landscape. Italy became a critical site for mapping Russian cultural anxieties amid the social and political upheavals of the twentieth century. It inspired a transnational strain of writing rooted not in Europe’s metropolitan centres but rather in the destructive energies of the continent’s southern periphery.

By focusing on this realm of the imagination, this work shows that many of the key features of modern Russian literary culture were shaped by Italy’s perilous and imperilled terrain. The book expands the scope of Russian environmental criticism beyond the borders of the nation, outlining a geopoetics that reflects the breadth of geography, the depth of geology, and the creativity of poetics.