Vladimir Veidle, literary critic, art historian, essayist and poet made his first
trip to Italy at seventeen in 1912 with his mother and his friend and school companion
Alexander Kurenkov. He described the event in his memories Sto dnei schastia ili Moia
pervaia Italiia (One Hundred Days of Happiness or my First Italy). The first chapter with
the emblematic title Obetovannaia zemlia (The Promised Land) clearly declared that this essay belonged to the tradition of Italian text of Russian culture. One notices especially its affinity with Obrazy Italii (Images of Italy) by Pavel Muratov with whom he shared the idea (although in different terms) that Russia belonged to Europe through its common classical and Christian heredity. The essay blends two themes: the one in a personal diary featuring the author’s own experience and the other devoted to the description of places.
Veidle’s Italy showed the beginning of a “new life” both concretely and spiritually. His
voyage represented for him the passage from adolescence to youth while the peninsula, like Beatrice for Dante, aroused in him the love associated with artistic sensibility teaching him to learn how to absorb the beauty of cities and countries along with their histories.
