Silver Age man Pavel Muratov: beauty expertise
Abstract
The article draws attention to the cultural historian Pavel P. Muratov, the author of the famous three-volume book Images of Italy. It is shown that in his understanding of art Muratov managed to successfully combine aestheticism and intellectual-emotional reading of artifacts. Implicitly, he thought in the categories, meanings, and concepts that would be formalized in science much later, but without using the modern terms “metatopography” or “atmosphere of place”, he, in fact, integratively generalized and synthesized in his works scientific, cultural-philosophical, cultural, historical, art historical, geographical, psychological, and other kinds of knowledge, which allowed him to optimize interdisciplinary resources of thinking and imagination in relation to vast and diverse material. In the article Muratov’s book is conceptualized and positioned as a scientific and artistic verification of Italy by Russia and Russia by Italy. Depicting Italy as an ideal model of harmony between nature and human creative activity, where the world of people organically fits into the environment without breaking it or disturbing the aesthetic balance, without tarnishing the primordial beauty, Muratov went far beyond the limits of artistic description and presented, in fact, an existential-philosophical account of his own experience of the beautiful. It is Beauty, understood in its concrete realization and comprehended in the context of personal involvement, became the subject of Muratov’s creative research. The article provides information about the life of the Russian writer and scientist, shows the importance of his works for modern Russia and Italy.
