Uncanny Excavations: Khodasevich, Pompeii, and Remains of the Past

Abstract

On Easter Monday in 1925, shortly before leaving Sorrento for Paris, the Russian émigré writer Vladislav Khodasevich made a day trip to Pompeii, which provided him with the inspiration for his travel sketch, “Pompeiskii uzhas” (“Pompeian Horror”, 1925). In undertaking the trip, he followed in the footsteps of a long line of Russian artists and writers, including, most notably, Pavel Muratov, who had included a sketch of Pompeii in his Obrazy Italii (Images of Italy, 1911–12, 1924). Taking Muratov's account of Pompeii as a point of departure, this article argues that, for Khodasevich, Pompeii is not the museum city of Roman art and culture that it is for Muratov. Instead, it is a site of uncanny excavations of the past—a past that is embodied in skeletons, plaster casts, and other forms of remains and that calls forth a disturbing memory from his childhood. In its merging of the past and the present and the strange and the familiar, “Pompeian Horror” also evokes comparison with another work by Khodasevich inspired by the Easter he spent in Sorrento: the poem “Sorrentinskie fotografii” (“Sorrento Photographs,” 1925–26), which envisions memory as a series of double‐exposed snapshots. “Sorrento Photographs” recalls the earlier text not just in the general way in which images from the poet's past blend with those of his more recent experiences in southern Italy, but also in its repetition of key scenes and motifs from “Pompeian Horror.” However, in “Sorrento Photographs,” whose central tableau focuses on a religious procession in Sorrento on Good Friday, recollection of the past produces not horror but a sense of wonder, and remains of the past are miraculously transformed consonant with the Paschal themes of resurrection and renewal.