Southern Italy in Different Versions of Modernist Symbolization: from Merezhkovsky to Bunin

The article dwells on the semantically integral system of the Russian reception of Southern Italy in the heyday of Belle époque. Its connection with the European context dating back to Goethe and purely national features are shown. Based on Berdyaev's relevant texts, the imagological constants of the Silver Age "Russian Italy" are reconstructed. Three different models of it are demonstrated, opposing the "aesthetic" line of reflection of the images of this country in the mirrors of the arts, embodied by P.P. Muratov (Images of Italy, 1912): in the works of D.S. Merezhkovsky, M.A. Osorgin and I.A. Bunin. It is proved that they are united by an unexpected in the depiction of the bright Italian South anti-rhetoric, expressive asceticism, opposition to decorative redundancy and polemic in relation to the romantic apology of the "Mediterranean Arcadia". In the case of Merezhkovsky, this even laid the foundation for a special potential type of alternative poetics, which 'could' but never managed to reach the center of the writer's artistic system.