Representations of Montenegrins in Italian travelogues on the occasion of the Savoy-Petrović wedding

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the image of Montenegrins in various Italian travelogues published at a time of significant interest among Italians about Montenegro, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This interest was encouraged by the marriage of the Italian Crown Prince Victor Emanuel to the Montenegrin Princess Jelena Petrović-Njegoš in 1896. By comparing the descriptions of Montenegrins in the books published in the ten years after that event, the article determines which features the Italian authors wanted to present to their readers, to what extent their presentation differs from the discourse about Montenegrins in the travel accounts published in earlier decades and which factors might have had an impact on this paradigm shift.

KEYWORDS:

• Montenegro
• Italy
• travel writing
• Savoy-Petrović wedding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For more information on the subject see: Todorov (1989); Leed (1991); Von Zweder (1994); Elsner and Rubies (1999); Duncan and Gregory (2002); Blanton (2002); Hooper and Youngs (2004); Hulme and Yuongs ([2002] 2005); Mills ([1991] 2005); Lisle (2006); Zilcosky (2008); Moroz and Sztachelska (2010); Thompson (2016); Das and Youngs (2019); Pettinger and Youngs (2020).

2 All translations in this article are my own. Interestingly, during the Balkan Wars, when Montenegro did have a railway, electricity, a port, a radio connection with Italy and a much more developed economy, it is described by Italian authors as an extremely backward country (Popović 2018, 37–38).

3 A complete change in the portrayal of the members of the ruling dynasty and members of the Montenegrin elite in the Italian travel discourse only occurs fifteen years later, during the Balkan Wars (Popović 2018, 36–37).

4 This image was also due to the fact that some significant travelogues, such as Historical and Political Journey to Montenegro (1820), written by the French officer Vialla de Sommières, who visited Montenegro in 1810, were partially translated and compiled in Italian several decades later, without the indication of the name of the author or of the time when the work was written.

5 For a more detailed analysis of Rossi's travelogue see Popović (2015).

6 Similar observations are present in the travelogue of the Dominican priest Vincenzo Vannutelli who visited Montenegro in 1885 (Vannutelli 1886, 120, 143–144).

7 This topic was also interesting for travellers of other nationalities. See Jezernik (2004, 118–121).

8 Evgenije Popović (1842–1931), under the pseudonym Emilio Tergesti, sent correspondence to numerous Italian newspapers from both Montenegrin and Herzegovinian military camps, acquainting his readers with the history, politics and way of life in Montenegro (Tergesti 1876a, 1876b). For a more exhaustive analysis of Serristori's book and the context of his visit see Popović (2016).

9 In order to illustrate the friendship between the two rulers, Mantegazza pointed out that the Turkish Sultan gave the Montenegrin Prince a beautiful palace on the Bosphorus, which housed the Montenegrin embassy (Mantegazza 1896, 106).

10 That is the case with the travelogue Le Monténégro (1877) by the French journalist and travel writer Charles Yriarte, which was first translated into Italian as an article in the first Italian travel magazine Il Giro del Mondo (1877, 5: 233–313), and then as a book (Il Montenegro, 1878). This travel account, published again in 1897, had a great influence on the creation of the image of Montenegro, both due to its large number of editions, and to the fact that Italian visitors used it as a source when writing their travelogues and books about Montenegro.

11 For a more comprehensive account of the various activities of Eugenio Barbaric regarding Montenegro see Popović (2020).

12 Mario Borsa's book about Montenegro is the most literary travelogue about the small Balkan principality from this period, and this author, by contrast with his fellow journalists, manages to avoid the idealisation of some aspects of the Montenegrin reality (Popović 2019, 335–336).

13 The attitude of Montenegrins towards medical interventions was previously described in an article by Evgenije Popović (Tergesti 1876b, 210–211).

14 Guido Cora also noticed differences between the Montenegrin tribes and expressed a similar opinion on the Vasojevici (Cora 1901, 55).

15 The romantic idealisation of Montenegro as an ancient heroic and healthy community was also present in the accounts of other foreign travel writers. See Jezernik (2004, 103, 141); Šistek (2009, 257–260); Čagorović and Carmichael (2006, 62, 66); McArthur (2010, 82); Bracewell (2008, 181).

16 Writers of other nationalities, including English, Russian, Czech and other authors, also show admiration for Montenegrins in this regard (Ford 1959, 356–357); McArthur (2010, 62, 64, 85–87); Šistek (2009, 256).

17 Other foreign visitors came to similar conclusions (Ford 1959, 361).

18 For more information on the numerous activities of this journalist related to Montenegro see Burzanović and Popović (2016).

19 This image of Montenegrin people changes drastically in the travel accounts produced by Italian writers during the Balkan Wars (Popović 2018, 38–39).