Notes toward a theme

Research notes from research on semiotics and twentieth century theory, interspersed with the flotsam of everyday life in Tartu, Estonia.

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We are immersed in the space of language. Even in the most basic abstract conditions, we cannot extract ourselves from this space, which simply envelops us, and yet it is a space of which we are also a part and which, simultaneously, is part of us. And as a result of this, our relationship with language is far from ideal: we need to exert a tremendous effort to push ourselves beyond the limits of language and it is precisely to language that we ascribe our lies, deviations from the norm, and the majority of our defects and perversions. The struggle with language is as old as language itself. History convinces of its hopelessness on the one hand and of its unlimited potential on the other.

Lotman, Culture and Explosion, p 114

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‘Outsiders’ often can offer a fresh look at the material, and their perspective can be stimulating and thought provoking. Post-colonial scholarship, initially led by literary and cultural studies specialists, undoubtedly made an important contribution to questioning various prejudices and stereotypes in the existing scholarly traditions. Yet, at times post-colonial scholars’ attempts to answer historical questions with the tools of literary and cultural studies have led to misunderstanding, simplification and even caricaturing of the material which they have critiqued.

Response to Alexander Etkind’s review of Marina Mogilner’s Homo imperii: Istoriia fizicheskoi antropologii v Rossii | Tolz | Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research

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Thrown together in the greatest confusion were notes and outlines, manuscript drafts from all periods, variant versions, typescripts with copious revisions by Wolfe, fragments of many duplicate typings, unfinished letters, random paragraphs on whatever subject was uppermost in his mind at the time, telephone numbers, lists of his friends, trips, publications, and other categories, and incidentally a shirt collar which he may have missed. In the identification and sorting of this material, weeks often elapsed before the scattered pages of a given piece could be assembled, and years will pass before scholars will have imposed final order on the last group of sheets.

-Thomas Little, "The Thomas Wolfe Collection of William B. Wisdom", p 283 in Harvard Library Bulletin, v. 1, No. 3, 1947

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fashion inspiration

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you've been reading microfilm for too long when...

you confuse the russian word "bolshevik" for the russian word for "wizard"

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summary of today's microfilm researches:

leninleninkrupskayalenin

picturessketchesstories

leninleninkrupskayalenin

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"Just as Athene, in ancient legend, sprang from the head of Zeus in full panoply, helmeted and spear in hand, so was he, it might seem, born with a pencil, marking a musical score and with a conductor's baton in his hand."

Balakirev

M. O. Zetlin and Olga Oushakoff

Russian Review , Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn, 1944), pp. 67-82

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In the Romantic heyday, when literature was becoming ever more popular and popular literature was supplying all these things with ebullience and abandon, his task was not easy. Romantic history plays, facile as Hernani, fateful as The Cenci, were bursting out on all sides. Pushkin seems to have determined, in Boris Godunov, to write a history play showing how unco-operative history is with romance, with happy endings or with tragic ones. History just goes grumbling on. Dramatically Boris Godunov is a disappointing play: everybody said so – ‘nothing in this piece is complete,’ complained Pushkin’s old enemy Bulgarin. But as a kind of tableau of historical inquiry it is extraordinarily suggestive. It ends on an anti-climax, an anti-demonstration. The crowd are ordered to shout: ‘Long live Dimitri Ivanovich’ (the pretender who has displaced Boris’s son). They do so. End of play. But not quite, because the censor objected, and said it would be more decorous to orthodox Tsarist ears if the crowd were silent. Very well, said the amused author, and he wrote a final stage direction – ‘Narod bezmolvstvuet,’ ‘the people are silent’ – which has become a Russian proverb. As Pushkin must have seen, from the point of view of history, from the point of view of an anti-romantic history tableau, the two endings were the same. No opinion is uttered: there is only the finality of openness.

-Cutting it short John Bayley

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June 22, 2011 vandals stole a golden cross from the graves of Yuri Lotman and Zara Mints

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Воейков — Г.Лотман

Настя — Ф.Чайковская

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Жюри обсуждает премьеру 20/IV 1983

aктер театра "Ванемуйне" Райво Адлас

профессор ТГУ Юрий Лотман

актриса театра "Ванемуйе" Лиина Орлова

профессор ТГУ Павел Рейфман

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Ilves responses:

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/111786

 Tweets from June 6:

toomas hendrik ilves ‏@IlvesToomas

Sorry, not conserv. or leftist. Just can't fathom why following agreed upon EU fiscal rules justifies smug & snide gloating re: my country.

toomas hendrik ilves ‏@IlvesToomas

Let's sh*t on East Europeans: their English is bad, won't respond & actually do what they've agreed to & reelect govts that are responsible.

toomas hendrik ilves ‏@IlvesToomas

But yes, what do we know? We're just dumb & silly East Europeans. Unenlightened. Someday we too will understand. Nostra culpa.

toomas hendrik ilves ‏@IlvesToomas

Guess a Nobel in trade means you can pontificate on fiscal matters & declare my country a "wasteland". Must be a Princeton vs Columbia thing

toomas hendrik ilves ‏@IlvesToomas

Let's write about something we know nothing about & be smug, overbearing & patronizing: after all, they're just wogs: [link to Krugman article]

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Pushkin never did become a “state” writer, as Volkov himself shows. But missing from his account are the fear and violence of Nicholas’s rule, not to mention the crushing boredom, servility and rigid etiquette at his court, which took a heavy toll on the poet’s life and art. By the time Pushkin was killed in a duel, he was desperately in debt, depressed and beleaguered. None of this darkness really interests Volkov, who lashes out at the scholar Yuri Lotman for his unflattering description of Nicholas: “Lotman seems to be describing his boss at a state university in Soviet times rather than the autocrat of all Russia.” Volkov rushes instead to Nicholas’s defense: “In decrying the emperor’s treachery, did Pushkin scholars try to see the situation not from Pushkin’s point of view (which they all do) but from ­Nicholas’s?”

Arts Czars

By JENNIFER HOMANS

Published: February 25, 2011