Lotman's World

The world is in every person. Microcosms have no boundaries. They are exactly as big as the imagination of their owner. Juri Lotman's imagination was clearly very big. The entire universe fit into it - a large portion of Russian literature, the semiosphere the size of the galaxy, and detailed knowledge of wartime lines of communication. As a cosmopolitan, he traveled about various orbits, gathering and recording different kinds of information. The time came when ideas that came about as the result of processing of information started to look for a means of expression. Some of them found their way out through picture drawings, others by way of written words. In Lotman's world, Hitler and Stalin meet, and images of St. Petersburg and Tartu intertwine. The round table of semioticians as Eco, Uspenski, Toporov, Jegorov, Ivanov, Pjatigorski and others is given the floor, the battlefield alternates with domestic idyll, signs alternate with meanings. Shrove buns, herring and a moustache are also undoubtedly an inseparable part of Lotman's inner and outer cosmos. There are as many worlds as there are people. But there is only one Lotman's World.