TODAY’S POLISH JOURNEYS TO ITALY - BETWEEN A PILGRIMAGE AND DECONSTRUCTION OF A MYTH

The article takes as its starting point Pavel Muratov’s book Images of Italy, considered a fundamental text for Polish accounts of travels to Italy in the 20th century. For the generation of Iwaszkiewicz and Herbert, a journey to Italy meant a true pilgrimage to “sacred places of culture”, accompanied by a strong sense of cultural inferiority. The next generation of Wojciech Karpiński and Ewa Bieńkowska treats the experience of a journey as a return to a common home, to the Italian that is European tradition marked with the great names of its predecessors. The youngest authors, Marek Zagańczyk and Adam Szczuciński, continue this tradition that may be called aesthetical, which is on the other hand contested by Dariusz Czaja, exploring another Italy little known to travellers - Calabria and, Basilicata - and opposing the model of a journey viewed as a continuous reference to others’ texts.