The image of Naples in Pushkins creative consciousness. Article 3.Anthropological concept of Naples: I am a Neapolitan artist….

The third paper of the cycle is devoted to Egyptian Nights, which is one of the selected A.S.Pushkin's narratives featuring the toponym of Naples in the open text of an anthropological manuscriptwhere one of the main characters is a Neapolitan improvisator. By presenting the main character as anative of Naples rather than a mere Italian, Pushkin provided the text with essential characterologicalmeaning, which, in its turn, did not impede further generation of meaning in its various forms.The paper focuses on reconstruction of meaning concerning associative overtones of the toponymof Naples in creative consciousness of the Russian poet. Therefore, ethnographic and folkways descriptionsof Russian travelogues can serve as reliable and expressive evidence of psychological characteristicsof Pushkin's hero. As to the ideological aspect, automatically assumed in a merely politicalcontext where the first associative chains of meaning were generated in connection with the sound ofthe word "Naples" in Pushkin's consciousness, it is necessary to explain the historical time of creationof Egyptian Nights. This question may help to shed light on this unfinished piece of Pushkin's writing,at least, in the hypothetical modality, which, for some reason, seems to be avoided by contemporaryresearchers. It is a question of principle with reference to Pushkin not only as a person keen on "itemingtime in the calendar" but also as the author operating the category of historical time as an importantassociative sense-bearing factor.Characterological details of the image of the Neapolitan communicated in Pushkin's narrative andanalysed against the associative background of folkways fragments of the Russian Neapolitana of1800-1825 (Ch. Dupaty's, F.P. Lubyanovsky's, V.B. Bronevsky's, A.A. Shakhovskoy's itineraries)reveal undeniable conformity to the common opinion of Russian travellers about the Neapolitan variantof the Italian national character.On the basis of the dates of time of action in works of Russian Pushkinists, the text analysis ofEgyptian Nights (comparing it to Chapter 1 of Eugene Onegin) and mentions of Angelica Catalani'stours in the Russian periodical press, (whom Pushkin knew as reports bout her tour were published inthe Syn Otechestva (The Son of the Fatherland) in the issues the poet read to follow the polemics concerninghis poem Ruslan and Lyudmila), the article makes the conclusion that the time of action islikely to be limited to the time interval between 1824 and 1826. Thereupon, the autobiographical dataof the Neapolitan improvisator make it possible to interpret him as a political insurgent compelled toemigrate after the Carbonari defeat (in particular, he informs Charsky that he has been compelled toleave his homeland and desperately needs money to improve his financial situation).Thus, the image of the Neapolitan topos personified in Pushkin's hero having unambiguous socialand political denotation in its primary version and organised by the concept of political freedom in themiddle of 1830s, comes back through its aesthetic representation in freedom of creativity to the samepolitical motive at an incomparably higher anthroposophical level, which makes it possible to establishbilateral ambivalent connections among the character, the topos and the epoch, where all componentsare regarded as interdependent and inseparable structural elements.

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