ABSTRACT
My chapter examines the reception of Minoan Crete in the works of two Russian intellectuals, the artist Léon Bakst and the writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky, who belonged to the Russian ‘Silver Age’ – a label conventionally applied to cultural developments spanning the period 1898-1917, i.e. starting with the foundation of the art magazine Mir Iskusstva (World of Art, 1898-1904) in St Petersburg and ending with the Bolshevik revolution. More specifi cally, I shall focus on examples of theatrical productions created by Bakst for the famous Ballets Russes and other companies, and on Merezhkovsky’s historical novel The Birth of the Gods: Tutankhamon in Crete (1925) as well as his historical-religiousphilosophical treatise The Secret of the West: Atlantis-Europe (1930).
