Jurij M. Lotman ON THE METALANGUAGE OF A TYPOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF CULTURE (1)

1.0 The problem of developing a typology of culture should not be considered new. It occurs periodically at certain moments of scientific and general cultural development. One can say that every aspect of culture creates its own conception of cultural development, that is, its own cultural typology. In addition, one can distinguish two of the most common approaches:

1.1 'One's own culture' is considered to be the only one. To it is contrasted the 'lack of culture' of other groups. Such will be the attitude of the Greek to the barbarian, just as all other types of contrast between the 'chosen' group and the profane. In addition, 'one's own' culture is contrasted to someone else's precisely by the feature 'organization' *> 'non-organization'. From the point of view of that culture which is accepted as the norm and whose language becomes the metalanguage of that cultural typology, the systems which are opposed to it appear not as other types of organization, but as non-organization. They are characterized not by the presence of other features, but by the absence of features of structure. Thus, in the Primary Chronicle, the Poljane, who have 'customs' and 'law', are contrasted to other Slavic tribes which have neither real customs nor law. Law — some pre-established order — has a divine origin. To it is opposed the unorganized will of the people. In this antithesis, that which is created by man is considered disorderly and contrasted to the order of a higher organization. The Poljane live according to law ? Vjatiči, ... kriviči [i] pročii poganii ne vedušče zakona Božija, no tvorjašče sami sobě zakon. 'The Vjatiči, ... Kriviči [and] other pagans do not know the law of God, but create their own law' (2) Another form of organization is custom, the following of the behavioral norms of the fathers. The behavior of animals is contrasted to it as disorder-ly. The Poljane have customs ? Drevljane živjaxu zvěrinskim obrazom. 'The Drevljane lived in a beastly fashion.' (3) Poljane bo svoix otec' obyčai imut' krotot" i tix" i styděn'e k" snoxam" svoim" i k" sestram" k" materjam" i k["] roditelem" svoim", k" svekrovem" i k deverem" veliko styděn'e iměxu, bračnyi obyčai imexu ... a Drevljane živjaxu zvěrin'skim obrazom", živušče skot'ski, ubivaxu drug" druga, jadjaxu vsja nečisto i braka u nix" ne byvaše ... odin" obyčaj imjaxu - živjaxu v lěsě jakože i vsjakii zvěr'. 'For the Poljane have the meek and gentle customs of their fathers, have humility toward their daughters-in-law and their sisters and mothers and their parents; they have great humility toward their mothers-in-law and their brothers-in-law; they have marriage customs ... but the Drevljane lived in a beastly fashion, living like cattle, they killed each other, ate everything uncleaned and marriage did not exist among them ... they had one custom — they lived in the forest like any wild animal.' (4) And though the chronicler goes on to describe various forms of the organization of life among the Drevljane — weddings, funerals — he does not see organization in this, but only a manifestation of 'animal' disorder.

1.2 We detect a variant of the relationship between these two components of a typological description (in the framework of the same contrast 'culture — lack of culture'), for example, in European culture of the 18th century. Here 'nature', not 'culture', is the norm which determines the metalanguage of a typological description of culture. All types of culture standing in opposition to 'nature' are thought of as something whole which is not subject to internal differentiation. They are described as unnatural and are opposed to the 'natural' norms of the life of 'primitive' people. These latter also are not internally differentiated, since they appear as the embodiment of the only norm of the Nature of Man. This contrast lay at the basis not only of numerous artistic texts of the 18th century and of publistic tracts, but also of a number of ethnographic descriptions, which had determined the metalanguage of cultural typology.

2.0 Another approach to cultural phenomena is connected with the admission of the existence in the history of mankind of several (or many) internally independent types of cultures. The metalanguage of typological description is therefore determined according to what position the writer of the description himself adheres to, i.e., in the last analysis, to what culture he himself belongs: at the basis are oppositions of a religious, psychological, national, historical, or social type.

2.1 Despite all the differences between the above-mentioned systems of description, they do have important features in common:

2.1.1 The language of the description is not different from the language of the culture of that society to which the researcher himself belongs. For this reason the typology established by him characterizes not only the mate-rial being described by him but also that culture to which he belongs. Thus, the comparison of views on basic questions of cultural typology which are fixed in texts of various periods is interesting material for research in typologies, which has long been valued from this point of view.

The inconveniences connected with the use of the language of one's culture as the metalanguage of description appear in considerable relief in attempts to make a typological study of one's own culture. Such a description can produce only the most trivial results: 'One's own' culture appears to be deprived of a specific character.

2.1.2 The language of description is not different in content from this or that scientific conception. It is connected with one or another explanation of the essence of the culture. The rejection of a concept in chemistry or algebra cannot spread to the metalanguage which the given science uses. An essential feature of the language of science is that its usefulness is proved by different criteria than those which prove the validity of scientific ideas. But the description of cultural phenomena in the language of psychological, historical, or sociological oppositions is a part of a specific scientific interpretation of the essence of the phenomenon under study and cannot be used in a different non-formal interpretation.

2.1.3 Any of the above-mentioned methods of cultural description absolutize the differences in the material under study and preclude the possibility of differentiating the common universals of human culture. Thus, for example, the formula of historicism, the absolutizing phasic configuration in history, which arose under the influence of the philosophical ideas of Hegel, created the mechanism for describing historical movement as a successive change of different epochs. Considering human history as a stage in the universal development of ideas, Hegel proceeded principally from the notion that the only possible history is human history and that the only possible culture is human culture. Moreover, at each separate stage of its development the universal idea is realized only in a single national culture which, at that moment, appears as the only one from the point of view of the universal historical process. But a unique phenomenon cannot have a peculiarity which demands at least two contrasting systems. That is why such a concept of historicism not only emphasizes but also absolutizes the difference between epochs. That which does not appear as a difference in the process of comparison is not noticed at all.

The history of culture overcomes this difficulty by supplementing the historical-typological description with social-typological, psycho-typological, etc., ones. In the present article we are not concerned with the question of the scientific validity of various approaches to the study of the very content of historical-cultural material. We are concerned only with the problem of the metalanguage of science. It should be noted that, from this point of view, such a path does not appear successful. It precludes, in essence, the possibility of uniformity in the description of material.

2.2 Thus, one can formulate the following problem: the study of the typology of culture presupposes as a special task the awareness of the need to develop a metalanguage which would satisfy the demands of contemporary scientific theories, i.e., which makes it possible to make the object of scientific examination not only some culture, but also the method of describing it, having isolated this as a separate task. (5)

2.3 The creation of a uniform system of metalanguage, which would not coincide in any part of the description with the language of the object (as was the case in all previous cultural typologies in which the language of the latest synchronic cultural cross-section invariably functioned as the metalanguage of the entire description), will be a prerequisite for determining the cultural universals, without which it clearly makes no sense to speak of a typological study.

2.3.1 A general scientific prerequisite for the study of culture from the point of view of universals is the possibility of comprehending all the variety of existing cultural texts as a single structurally organized system.

As we have remarked, the traditional formula of historicism, which implies the possibility of only one culture - human culture, activized thereby the features of internal differentiation, which distinguished one stage from another. In such an approach, that which was common to all human culture had no alternative and, consequently, was not significant. The possibility of imagining a civilization not of the earth permits one to speak of human culture as one system. This gives the problem of cultural universals a new meaning.

3.0 In the present work an attempt is made to construct a metalanguage of cultural description on the basis of spatial models, in particular, utilizing the apparatus of typology: of that mathematical discipline which studies those properties of spaces that do not change with homeomorphic changes. The assumption is made that the apparatus for describing the topological proper-ties of figures and trajectories can be used as a metalanguage when studying cultural typology.

3.1 Let us examine some texts which we intuitively sense as belonging to one cultural type, and let us choose those which will be most different in the structure of their internal organization. Let us assume that these will be a text of sacral meaning, a ballet and a code of judicial norms. Let us think of them as variants of some invariable text and attempt to construct it. If we perform this work consistently enough and with a steadily enlarging range of texts, then in the final analysis we will obtain a textual construct which will be the invariant of all the texts belonging to the given cultural type. These texts themselves will appear as its realization within semiotic structures of various types. Such a textual construct we will call a cultural text.

3.2 A cultural text is the most abstract model of reality from the position of a given culture. For this reason it can be defined as the world view of a given culture.

3.2.1 A necessary property of a cultural text is its universality. A view of the world is related to the whole world and contains, in principle, everything. To pose the question of what is found beyond its boundaries is, from the point of view of the given culture, just as senseless as to pose it in relation to universum.

Certainly, one can imagine a situation in which individual, totally unrelated texts, between which peculiar ruptures occur, function in some consciousness. We will be faced with similar situations in describing the pathological features of the intellect or the early stages (in age or in an ethnological sense) of its development. It is obvious that in all these cases we will be dealing with facts which are beyond the realm of cultural typology and, consequently, are not directly related to our problem. If one succeeds in describing a collective in which separate texts, ideas, and types of behavior within the bounds of each level are not connected in one view of the world, then one should speak of its pre-cultural or supra-cultural condition.

3.2.2 One should differentiate two problems: the spatial structure of the world view and spatial models as a metalanguage of the description of cultural types. In the former case the spatial characteristics belong to the object being described, in the latter — to the metalanguage of description.

However, a definite relationship exists between these two totally separate schemes. One of the universal peculiarities of human culture, possibly connected with the anthropological features of human consciousness, is the fact that the world view invariably acquires features of spatial characteristics. The very construction of a world order is invariably conceived on the basis of some spatial structure which organizes all its other levels. Thus, a homeomorphic relationship appears between the metalinguistic structures and the structure of the object. In this case, spatial models act as a kind of metalanguage, while the spatial structure of the world view acts as the text in this language.

3.2.3 On the level of a cultural text it would seem that we are dealing with the pure structure of content, since everything which relates to the various planes of expression was 'removed' during the reduction of the variety of actual texts to an invariant cultural text. However, since a spatial characteristic is an unavoidable and also the most formal

component of any of the views of the world belonging to human culture, it becomes that level of the content of a universal cultural model which acts as the plane of expression in relation to others. This also permits one to hope that the system of spatial characteristics of cultural texts, when isolated as an inde-pendent system, can act as the metalanguage of their uniform description.

4.0 Cultural texts may be differentiated into two types of sub-texts:

4.0.1 Those characterizing the structure of the world. This group of sub-texts is distinguished by immobility. They answer the question: 'How is it constructed'?'. If they reproduce a dynamic view of the world, then this is an immanent change according to the system: 'Universal set A is transformed into universal set B'.

A fundamental characteristic of this group of sub-texts will be a type of discreteness of space (described in topological notions of continuity, proximity, boundaries, and others).

The description of the space of a given cultural text will act as a metalanguage in which the researcher conducts a discussion about the internal organization of a given model of the world (not only spatial, but also social, religious, ethical and other). However, a cultural text is characterized not only as a definite scheme of classification reproducing the structure of the world. It also includes categories of evaluation, the idea of an axiological hierarchy of cells of general classification. In the language of spatial relationships, these concepts will be expressed by means of spatial orientation. If the type of division reproduces a scheme of the structure of the world, then the concepts 'top — bottom', 'right — left', 'concentric — eccentric', 'inclusive — exclusive' (i.e., 'including me — excluding me') shape the evaluation.

4.0.2 Those characterizing the place, disposition and activity of man in the surrounding world. This sub-group is dynamic. It describes the movement of the subject within some continuum, the structure of which is characterized in the texts of the first sub-group (see 4.0.1). The texts of the second sub-group are distinguished from the first by their plot quality. They break down into situations (episodes), and answer the questions: 'What happened and how?', 'What did he do?'. Topological concepts, which are connected with a trajectory, with a means of shifting a point, and, in particular, a theory of graphs, can become the apparatus for describing the plot.

4.1 Inasmuch as the changes of the type described in 4.0.1 (changes in the conditions of the world) form an invariable, immobile picture, which cannot be said of those spoken about in 4.0.2, the opposition 'immobile — mobile' acquires special meaning, enabling the classification of the elements of a text.

4.1.1 The immobile elements of a text form cosmological, geographic, social, etc., structures of the world — everything, which can be united under the concept 'hero's environment'.

4.1.2 The 'hero' is the mobile element of the text.

4.1.3 The above-formulated approach allows one to differentiate between characters. No matter what continuum (magic, epic-heroic, social, etc.) the characters are acting in, they can be divided into immobile characters fixed in some cell of that continuum, and mobile characters. The former cannot change their environment. The function of the latter is precisely in the movement, from one environment to another. Thus, in the Russian fairy tale, the father and brothers are fixed in relation to one environment ('house'), Baba Jaga, or to another ('forest'), but the hero shifts from sphere to sphere. S. Ju. Nekljudov has beautifully illustrated the mobility of the hero and the local immobility of his opponents using the Russian bylina as an example. (6) The same thing could be examined in the chivalrous tale as well as any other texts with a distinctly expressed plot quality.

Odysseus, Orpheus, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Rastignac, Čičikov, Pierre Bezuxov are heroes who make a 'journey', and realize movement within that universal space which is their world. To them are contrasted those characters which are fixed in some sphere of this space: magic, geographic, social and other.

4.1.4 The immobile heroes are personified circumstances, being merely the name of their surroundings. It is more convenient to describe them as phenomena of the structure of 4.0.1. They completely fit the classificatory principles of the given world view, being differentiated, from its point of view, by their maximum generality (typicality). The mobile heroes conceal within themselves the possibility of destroying the given classification and establishing a new one or of representing the structure not in its invariant essence but through its multifaceted variation.

4.1.5 That is why, for the audience within a given picture of the world, the plot sub-group is always more informative.

4.2 Type 4.0.1 can be expressed in independently existing texts of lower levels than can the cultural text. All texts without a plot, from epic almanacs to the lyric verses, are of this type. Type 4.0.2 does not form independent texts. Structure 4.0.1 is present in them either explicitly or implicitly.

5.0 The space of a cultural text is a universal set of elements of the given culture, since it is the model of everything. It follows from this that one of the basic features of the structure of some cultural text is the nature of its fragmentation-boundaries dividing its internal space.

5.1 We will call the descriptions of cultural texts which are constructed with the help of methods of spatial modeling, and in particular, topological ones, cultural models. One will be able to consider actual texts as interpretations of these models.

5.2 The basic characteristics of cultural models are: (1) types of frag-mentation of universal space; (2) the dimension of the universal space; (3) orientation.

5.3 A boundary divides the cultural space into continuums which contain a point or a set of points. A semantic interpretation of a cultural model consists in establishing the correspondences of its elements (space, boundary, points) to phenomena in the objective world.

6.0 One can consider the existence in a cultural model of one basic boundary which divides cultural space into two different parts as one of the most common features of a cultural model. Cultural space is continuous only within these parts and is broken at the place of the boundary.

6.1 Let us indicate several types of the most simple divisions of cultural space.

6.1.1 Given: A two-dimensional(plane) space. It is divided by a boundary into two parts, with one of them having a limited and the other an unlimited number of points such that both together compose a universal set. From this situation it follows that the boundary in the given instance must be a closed curve, homeomorphic to circle. Then, in accordance with Jordan's theorem, the boundary divides the plane into two areas - external (E) and internal (I).

The simplest semantic interpretation of such a cultural model is the opposition represented in Fig. 1.

6.1.2 The superposition of a defined space with the point of view of the bearer of the text gives the cultural model this type of orientation. (7) We will call direct orientation that orientation which results from a superposition of the point of view of the text and the internal space of the cultural model (Fig. 2); the inverse orientation is a superposition of the points of view of the text with the points of external space and is illustrated in Fig. 3. In direct orientation the vector of orientation is directed from the center of the internal space; in inverse orientation toward the center.

6.1.3 Depending on the orientation, the opposition 'we — they' may acquire a twofold interpretation: we (I) <-> they (E)

Nas malo izbrannyx, ščastlivcev prazdnyx ... 'There are few of us chosen, idle fortunates ...' (Puškin)

we (E) <-> they (I)

Mil'ony - Vas, Nas - t'my, i t'my, i t'my ... 'There are millions of you, of us — legions, and legions, and legions ...' (Blok).

6.1.4 In as much as the internal space is closed, filled with a finite group of points, and the external — open, the interpretation of the opposition 'internal — external' as a spatial record of the antithesis 'organized (having structure)? unorganized (not having structure)' is natural. In various cultural texts it can have a different type of interpretation, being realized, for example, in the oppositions:

I E one's nation <-> foreign nations (race, tribe) (races, tribes) initiated <-> laymen culture <-> barbarism intelligentsia <-> masses cosmos <-> chaos

In a given case, the presence in any of these contrasts of the feature of organization, on the one hand, and its absence, on the other, is important. Organization acts as a strong member of opposition: it contains a marked feature, and its antithesis only shows its absence. Organization is considered an entrance into a closed world. The evaluation, which in any of these oppositions can be, in principle, twofold (which will correspond to the two possible methods of spatial orientation at the time of record), is not important. Thus, the opposition: 'initiated ? lay' may be connected with the fact that the cultural text is oriented from the point of view of an initiated person, and initiation is appraised very positively. Such is the membership to Christianity in European texts of the Middle Ages or to Freemasonry in Masonic texts. However, in the opposition 'plebeian (as 'simply a man') -H-aristocrat (a man of estate)' in democratic texts of the 18th century or 'poor of spirit (standing outside) ? pharisee' of the biblical texts, it is the 'not entering', 'not being initiated' (ignorance, without protection, being outcast) which will be evaluated positively. A similar position is characteristic of the poetry of Marina Cvetaeva with her theme of ostracism and the orphan:

Est' v mire lišnie, dobavočnye, Ne vpisannye v okoem. (Ne čisljaščimsja v vašix spravočnikax, Im svaločnaja jama — dom.)

'There are in the world the superfluous, extra, Not recorded in anything. (Not enumerated in your records, To them the waste pit is home.)' (8)

6.1.5 Since the feature of the closed world is marked, the typical scheme of a direct model will be: 'We have N'. N can vary: 'wisdom', 'holiness', 'nobility', where N is the feature which is evaluated. A typical scheme of the inverse model will be: 'They have N', where N also may vary, but will always be a feature either rejected in general (compare Archbishop Avvakum on the Nikonites: Razumnye! Mudreny vy so d'javolom! 'Judicious ones. You are wise with the devil!'); (9) V. Kjuxel'beker on the court aristocracy:

Tam govorjat ne russkim slovom Svjatuju nenavidjat Rus'.

'There they speak not in Russian words, They hate Holy Russia.' (10)

or N may be that which the 'they' have, but which should be taken away:

Ščastliva žizn' moix vragov! 'Happy is the life of my enemies!' (11)

In this case (Preloženie psalma 143 [Interpretation of Psalm 143]), the following is interesting. Lomonosov's model — the biblical text of Psalm 143 — gives the scheme of a

direct orientation ('we have'): Da budut žitnicy naši polny, obil'ny vsjakim xlebom, da plodjatsja ovcy naši tysjačami i t'mami na pažitjax našix. Da budut voly naši tučny; da ne budet ni rasxiščenija, ni propaži, ni voplej na ulicax našix. Blažen gorod, u kotorogo cto est'. Blažen narod, u kotorogo Gospod' est' Bog. 'May our granaries be full, abundant with all sorts of grain, may our sheep propagate in thousands and multitudes in our pastures. May our oxen be fat; may there be neither plunder nor loss, nor wailing on our streets. Blessed is the city which has this. Blessed is the nation whose Lord is God'. (12) Lomonosov transforms this into an inverse orientation ('they have'), the result of which is that the evaluation of the presence changes into the opposite orientation (one does not find this in the translations of Psalm 143 by Trediakovskij and Sumarokov - all three translations were done for the famous poetry competition of 1743):

Pšenicy polny gumna ix, Nesčetno ovcy ix plodjatsja, Na tučnyx pažitjax xranjatsja Stada v trave volov tolstyx.

Cela obširnost' krepkix sten, Vezde stolpami ukreplennyx... Tarn voplja v stognax net stesnennyx Ne znajut skorbnyx tam vremen

Ščastliva žizn' moix vragov!

'Their threshing floors are full of wheat, Their sheep multiply innumerably, On fertile pasture land, herds of Fat oxen are kept in grass.

Safe is an expanse of strong walls Fortified everywhere with pillars ... No restrained howls are there in haystacks, They know not sorrowful times there.

Happy is the life of my enemies!'

6.1.6 Let us examine two particular instances of the model under stud) which arise when it is superposed with various types of cultural texts.

6.1.6.a In a definite — very large — group of cultural texts one finds the opposition: A <-> Z, where A is the invariant of such concepts as the visible world, the earthly world, the world of the living, 'this' world, and Z is the invariant of the concepts: the world after death, the world of non-people (gods and the dead, without differentiation), the unearthly, 'that' world. In superposing on this opposition the spatial model under study, A appears a the closed internal space, and Z as the external space. In this case, 'this world will be contrasted to 'that' one as the organized world (i.e., 'understood', one's own) to the chaotic ('incomprehensible'), foreign world. The creatures of 'that' world must be disharmonic, ugly (compare the description of the monsters in Vij and in Tat'jana's dream, or: Beskonečny, bezobražny / V mutnoj mesjaca igre / Zakružilis' besy razny ... 'Unending, ugly / in the turbid play of the moon / Various demons whirled …')

6.2 Complication of the model arises in the mutual superposition of the opposition I ? E, where both members belong to the earthly word, and the boundary between them goes through A and the opposition A <-> Z. A scheme where I and E compose the space A, and E 2 forms Z results (Fig. 4).

6.2.1 Such a situation is impossible in practice since it contradicts the rule about the presence of 'one' basic boundary within a cultural model. It can arise either as a conditional generalization of a real collision in which, in different areas of consciousness (for example, political and religious), models which divide cultural space in different ways function at the same time, or as a result of the transformation of one of the boundaries into the fundamental one and the other into the supplementary one. Let us examine these cases.

6.2.1.a Boundary 1 (between I and E 1) becomes the basic one and subordinates boundary 2 (between E 1 and E 2). Some primitive collective has two types of idols. Some are found in the internal territory of the tribe. Their defensive, protective function clearly reveals their membership to I (they fortify the boundary between E and I but do not attempt to pass through it as is done by the dangerous creatures from E). One can say with certainty that the gods in I will be anthropomorphic and, those that dwell beyond the boundary of the

internal world (forest, river, sea) will have monstrous features. The gods of E will be more terrible and, consequently, more powerful. At this stage, disorder as a feature of the elements will be perceived as something higher in relation to the orderliness of the internal, human world. Ethnography cannot supply us with a description of a collective which thought of itself as the only one, exhausting by itself all humanity and contrasted only to the nonhuman world. However, the magic tale preserves such a picture of the world for us. Now let us imagine that 'other' human collectives appear in the external world. The fact that they are strange makes us think of them as unorganized, a part of E. Then the gods of E become (in 'our' eyes) 'their' gods and the gods of I — 'ours'. 'Disorganization' as a feature of the other social group is perceived as an inferior quality. 'Their' unorganized gods must be weaker than 'our' orderly ones. There follows the triumph of the anthropomorphic gods, the monsters become the conquered gods of the 'barbarians', boundary 1 subordinates boundary 2 to itself.

This, in particular, brings us to the fact that the gods are accommodated within the human world, consolidating themselves beyond definite geographical points. This can be genetically related to the system of local animistic cults but it is very distinct functionally. Note: In passing, one can make the following observation: The appearance of the gods depends on the nature of the spatial fragmentation.

6.2.1.b Boundary 2 dominates boundary 1. For example, the social or ethnic boundaries become mythicized. The zone of E 1 becomes assimilated to E 2. A nomadic people living 'by the helmet' (Polovtsians of the Lay of Prince Igor's Campaign) are for 'us' at the same time 'children of the devil'. They are protected by pagan gods (Slavic, but with an unorganized cult) — Div, Karna, Žlja. The idols with an organized cult (Dažd'bog, Veles) belong to the 'internal' world and therefore are not opposed to the Christian pantheon.

Analogous to this is Fekluša's picture of the world in Ostrovsky's Groza [Storm] ('foreign' people are thought of as monstrous beings with dogs' heads, Lithuania 'fell from the sky') or the old-world landowners in Gogol's story with the same name: beyond the forest surrounding the house (the forest is homeomorphic to the boundary of the world and the house to the world) is an unknown land where 'robbers' dwell and where death comes from.

6.3 However, in spite of attributing to beings living on the other side of the boundary (gods, forest animals, birds, the deceased, other nations), a chaotic organization (non-organization) or 'the kind we have', there may exist the notion that the other world has a particular organization of its own. This notion arises in connection with the following structural peculiarities of the world view: The opposition 'organization ? disorganization' can divide that and this side of the world but it cannot draw a boundary within the former. However, in actual cultural texts, not only the contrast between the world of the living and the world of the dead (or gods) is frequently depicted, but so is the division of gods into good and bad or something similar to this. E breaks up into two distinct zones, each of which is severely and simply evaluated. The evaluation is expressed in a sharp spatial orientation of the model ('top ? bottom', 'right ? left'). (13) A scheme (Fig. 5) results which, apparently, is homeomorphic to the scheme (Fig. 6).

7.0 The boundary is an essential element of the spatial metalanguage of a cultural description. The nature of the boundary is determined by the dimensionality of the space it delimits (and vice versa). Since in the cultural model the continuity of space is broken at the extreme points, the bounda-ry always belongs but to one space — the internal or external — and never to both at the same time.

Such are the walls of a house ('At the Walls of a House' of Maeterlinck, in Blok's poetry), the whole system of boundaries in Old-World Land-owners,

Tjažkij, plotnyj zanaves u vxoda, Za nočnym oknom - tuman ...

'A heavy, thick curtain at the entrance, — Beyond the night window — fog ...' (Blok)

the curtain, a night window — differentiate space into internal ('home') and external space, but belong to the internal. The forest in the magic tale, the sea or river in a myth, belong to the external space.

7.1 The boundary in a cultural text can act as an invariant of the elements of actual texts — both those having spatial features and those without them. Thus, in the scheme 'city ? world', the role of the boundary is played by the wall and gate which have a clearly expressed spatial characteristic (Jaroslavna rano plačet v Putivle na zabrale 'Early in the morning, Jaroslavna weeps in Putivl on the rampart'). Beyond the 'rampart' begins the world of the elements: wind, river, sun, at the will of which her husband's life was given; it is revealing that as long as the boundary of the internal space follows the real boundaries of the Russian land — the 'war hill' and the Donec — each river appears in its geographical reality. It is impossible to confuse the Don, Dniepr, Donec, Stugna. To all of these together is opposed but the half-mythical Kajala (14) flowing in the 'external' world of the Polovetsian steppe. The reality of the Russian geographical space, when going beyond its bounds, changes into a fantastic-mythical geography. But as soon as the Putivl wall becomes the boundary of the internal space, the difference between the Dniepr and the Donec ceases to be important: These are two names for one river to which Jaroslavna addresses herself. The example of Jaroslavna at the Putivl wall is interesting in another way: Here are blended the E of the magic tale and myth, populated with evil and powerful non-human beings, and the E of the feminine model of the world in a chivalrous epoch — a space in which soldiers delajut mužskoe delo 'do the manly deed' (in the words of Vladimir Monomax). Russian texts persistently stress that war is not a female affair (počto smušaets' aki ženy 'why do you worry like women'). (l5) Various types of E can easily be contaminated in as much as they possess a common feature — they are always incomprehensible to me, constructed on a logic foreign to me. Beyond the walls of the Putivl there exist, for Jaroslavna, natural laws and laws of war — 'men's affairs' — which are strange and external to her world. However, non-spatial relations can also act as a boundary: a feature separating the members of the opposition 'cold ? warm', 'slave ? free'. A basic property of the boundary is the break of the continuity of space, its inaccessibility: No nedostupnaja čerta mež nami est'... 'But there is an inaccessible boundary between us' (Puškin).

7.2 It is precisely because the impossibility of penetrating the boundary is part of the structure of any model of culture, that the most typical construction of the plot is movement across the spatial boundary. The scheme of the plot appears as a struggle against the structure of the world.

7.3 One should differentiate the plot collision (penetration across the boundary of space) and the non-plot collision — the effort of internal space to protect itself by strengthening the boundary and that of external space which seeks to destroy the internal, having broken down the boundary. The path of the hero who overcomes the boundaries (the hero of the magic tale; Dante, wandering in the circles of Hell; Rastignac, breaking a path for himself into high society), is differentiated in principle from the encroachment of external space which breaks the boundary of internal space (the monsters encroach upon the circle of chalk in Vij, the invasion of Napoleon destroys the internal world of the Bolkonskij estate).

7.4 Depending on the orientation of the model, a tendency to strengthen the boundary may occur (its destruction is comparable to the destruction of the model itself):

A v naši dni i vozdux paxnet smert'ju: Otkryt' okno - čto žily otvorit'.

'And in our times even the air smells of death To open a window is to open veins.' (16)

Such is the poetry of the house, comfort, culture. To it is contrasted the poetry of the elements, of invasion. Compare the theme of the destruction of the house, the throwing open of a window, the opening of veins in Cvetaeva (this is the same image which Pasternak uses but with the opposite orientation):

Vskryla žily: neostanovimo, Nevosstanovimo xleščet žizn'. Podstavljaj že miski i tarelki! Vsjakaja tarelka budet - melkoj, Miska - ploskoj. Čerez kraj - i mimo – Vzemlju černuju...

'[I] opened the veins: unceasingly, Irretrievably, life gushes out. Place under bowls and plates! Every plate will be shallow, Every bowl — flat. Over the edge — and beyond — Into the black earth ...' (17)

Compare the conflict of home and lack of home in Poema konca [Poem of the End] ('Pomilujte, cto - dom? - Dom v serdce moem - Slovesnost'!' 'Forgive me, this is a home? — Home is in my heart — Literature!')

Za gorodom! Ponimaeš'? Za! Vne! Perešed val! Žizn', cto mesto, gde žit' nel'zja. Evrejskij kvartal...

'Beyond the city! Understand? Beyond! Outside! A wave passed! Life — it is the place where one cannot live: A Jewish quarter...' (18)

Poetry of destruction, non-existence, of immersion in the elemental essence of the external world, in combination with the poetry of the hearth which excludes it (Stixi o sirote [Poems about an Orphan] which poeticizes a closed space: tower, island, cave, skin, womb), gives rise in Cvetaeva's texts to an oxymoronic image of an unhomely home:

Lopušinyj, romašnyj Dom - tak malo domašnij!

'A burry, camomile — like House is so little like a home!'

There are two opposing orientations in the text concurrently: The direct one creates the poetry of the house; the inverse one considers and justifies the view of it from the point of view of the one without a home:

Ne rassevšijsja sidnem I ne paxnuščij sdobnym. Za kotoryj ne stydno Pered zlym i bezdomnym: Ne stydjatsja že bašen Pticy - noč' perespav. Dom, kotoryj ne strašen V čas narodnyx rasprav.

'Not dissipating in idleness and not smelling of richness. Beyond which one is not ashamed Before evil and the homeless: Birds are not ashamed Of towers — sleeping through the night. The home which is not frightful At the time of national reprisals.' (19)

The intrusion of external space (of the elements) into internal space, of chaos into the cosmos, will be very important for the model of the world of Tjutčev and Turgenev.

8.0 The establishment of the relations between cultural models and cultural texts, i.e., the semantic interpretation of cultural texts, requires specific rules of correspondence. This problem needs special study. Let us show merely one of the ways — the establishing of an isomorphic relation between man and the entire model of the world or its parts.

8.1 In this way, there emerge various types of anthropomorphism of the world, such as the notion that the world, which is divided into organized (cosmic) and unorganized (chaotic) spheres, is on the whole isomorphous with man who also contains these two elements.

Such is Tjutčev's picture of the world with its fundamental similarity of man to both the cosmos (/ sladkij trepet, kak struja, / Po žilam probežal prirody, / Kak by gorjačix nog eja / Kosnulis' ključevye vody... 'And a sweet shudder, like a stream, / Ran across the veins of nature, / As if spring waters / Touched her hot legs...' (20)) and chaos (O, strašnyx pesen six ne poj / Pro drevnij xaos, pro rodimyj! / Kak žadno mir duši nočnoj / Vnimaet povesti ljubimoj! 'Oh, don't sing these frightful songs / Of ancient chaos, our native chaos! / How greedily the world of night soul / Attends to the beloved tale!'). (21) Analogous to this are the Masonic notions of reason and passions as two cosmic elements, political conceptions which identify the government with the head and the people with the feet, etc. The isomorphism of man can be established in relation to a point in the internal space or to the entire internal space. One can distinguish a large group of models for which some suprahuman organization will be anthropomorphic and man will be isomorphic with a part of himself. Thus, for Rousseau, I is isomorphous with man. In a 'natural condition', the boundaries of I are physical boundaries of a distinct individual and man is isomorphous with

himself. But in a social situation, the society which concluded the pact becomes a personality; its boundaries are the boundaries of I and it is entirely isomorphic with man. The people comprising it are members of a political body and are isomorphic with parts of themselves.

9.0 We have examined only one — the most primitive — cultural model. Among the causes for the appearance of more complex structures, one can point out the following. In determining the laws of a semantic study of one or another model, we proceed from the point of view of our own world view. However, every model of the world contains its own ideas about semantic interpretation, and this requires complication of the cultural model.

9.1 One of the fundamental characteristics of cultural types is their relation to the problem of semiotics. Therefore, in order to be suitable for a description of cultural types, the language of spatial relationships must be able to model various structures of sign systems.

9.1.0 The other side of the question will be: In this or any other cultural text, is the problem of semiotics found to be in any sort of relation with the spatial characteristics of the world picture?

9.1.1 To the first question, one can answer only affirmatively: In determining the simple correspondence between any points of one space and the points of another, we can easily model the relations of meaning as spatial relations.

9.1.2 The study of cultural types convinces one that as soon as the problem of sign and sign systems is set forth as one of the fundamental typological characteristics, the relations of binary correlates between points of I and of E and these areas as a whole may be determined. The nature of these relationships, what acts as content, what as expression, how the very concept 'to have meaning' is interpreted, all of these depend on the nature of the cultural model.

9.2.0 In studying some texts, for example those of the Middle Ages, we come across multi-levels of semantic constructions: the same element in the text may acquire different meanings in everyday, political, moral-philosophical, and religious contexts.

9.2.1 Let us present a model of the world in which this very world is thought of as a sign or as a set of signs in the form of two spaces, each broken up into an equal number of sections, with a fixed mutual relation of simple correlation between these sections. In this case, relationships of motivation and non-motivation can arise between these two worlds. The motivated relations may have an iconic or a symbolic character.

9.2.2 As an example of a motivated connection, one can point to the Middle Ages model of the world. Here, the connection between specific sections of one space and the corresponding sections of another will be thought of as eternal or established by God but always one which is a part of the immutable essence of the world as its most important characteristic.

9.2.2.a This connection may be iconic. Such a case is observed in the rationalistic dogmas of the Middle Ages and in some idealistic philosophic systems (for example, Hegel's). The material world is a sign, an expression of an absolute idea. It is its frozen reflections of the world, iconographically exact. It is precisely for this reason that man's study of the material world is also self-awareness of the absolute idea.

In this case, the relation between I and E will be topological: there will not only be a relation of simple correspondence between the points com-prising this set, but also one of continuity, since both spaces share an identical number of dimensions.

Thus, in Hegel's system, I is a part of E. One can imagine a hypothetical model of the rationalistic dogmas of the Middle Ages in the form of two (or more) spheres, distributed concentrically and with a simple correlation of points. If, by chance, we have to deal with the multi-level semantics of a sign, the set of binary oppositions — given the fact that each time

different groups of spherical surfaces will appear as the fundamental opposition 'I/E' — will enable one to construct a semantic paradigm.

Thus, for example, for many medieval systems, any human act in earthly life becomes a moral fact only if it bears punishment or reward after death; i.e., if it exists not in and of itself but is paired with some corresponding thing on the other side of the boundary 'life before death «-» life after death'. From this point of view, the important thing is what distinguishes a sin from a good deed. Between all types of sin, on one hand, and all types of good acts, on the other there is established a distinction which minimizes, to a certain extent, the differentiation within these groups.

However, as soon as a text sets for itself the task of depicting a narrower group of characters who are related only to the world of pious men (patericons) or to the world of sinners (for example, the descriptions of hell), the need for an internal delimitation of these groups arises. In this way the tendency arises to consider various sins as a quantitative increase of sin, which can be expressed in numerical markers (the number of circles of hell in Dante) and their spatial correlation (depth). Here, the paradigmatic set of all the circles is constructed as a system of binary oppositions in which each new border acts at some moment as the fundamental spatial boundary dividing 'these' from 'those'.

The similar rhythm of earthly life and hell is expressed not only in the fact that every descent into the world after death has the character of a journey, but also in the iconical reflection of the nature of the sin in the type of punishment.

9.2.2.b The mystical medieval model of the world also proceeds from the idea that all facts of life on earth have meaning and, consequently, are in simple correlation with points of the other world. But simple correlation of space in this case is not complemented by their continuity: E has greater regularity than I. Therefore, phenomena in I are not iconic in their essence but alluding signs, symbols.

A spatial model of such a system represents the relation of two spaces, of which one is at least one dimension larger than the second. In constructing a multi-level semantic model, each new level acquires a supplementary dimension. As an example let us cite the medieval theocratic conception of the state: the events of everyday practical life, from this point of view, are real only to the extent in which they have state meaning (the reciprocally correlated I - practical life, and E — state life, arise). But even state life has meaning only as the realization of the 'eternal city'. Another binary relationship arises: I is state life, which is only the expression, while the hierarchy of heavenly law and order acts as the content. But even this latter is differentiated into church — the earthly sign of celestial being — and heaven. The transition to each new semantic level in this system is a mystery. The relationship between the content and the expression is pre-determined but not iconic, and, in a spatial model, each new semantic level will be a dimension larger than the preceding one.

9.2.3 The essential difference between the rationalistic and mystical medieval pictures of the world given thus receives its interpretation in symbolic expression such as in an icon or symbolic allusion (compare the notion of the corporal aspect of man as the likeness of god and of the body as the temple of the soul). An interesting example of this is found in Dante's Divine Comedy. Dante constructs the entire grandiose building of the world as a construct of contrasting and correlative spaces in which earthly life, purgatory, and paradise are, on the one hand, correlated, in a complex manner and form a hierarchy of meanings, and, on the other hand, lie in the same dimension, at least to the extent that together they form a single construct, including a geographic one. But Dante was unable to rationalize the scheme sufficiently to endow the Empyrean - the dwelling place of gods and angels — with a limited local characterization. He contrasted it to the whole world structure as nonspace ? space: Perch? non ? in luogo, e non s'impola 'Because it's in no place and has no fixed bounds' (it is inter-esting how the negation of space in this formula is connected with the negation of orientation). (22) However, Dante, the Thomist and Aristotelian, could not himself feel that such a solution was organic. In other places in his work it becomes apparent that the supraspatial Empyrean is reflected with iconic accuracy in the spatial structure of heaven!

The heavens, in their division into nine spheres, are related to the nine ranks of angels as is 'an impression to a stamp'. (23)

Thus the difference between the rationalistic and mystical medieval models of the world can be reduced to the fact that I and E will form a topological space in the first but not in the second.

9.2.4 A simultaneous awareness of the sign nature of the world and the lack of motivation for these signs arises in systems which regard the relation of I to E not as eternal and pre-determined, but as the result of the ill-intended or stupid inventions of people. Money or signs of worth do not have independent value and, in general, do not exist outside of a relation to a specific context. But this relation is 'invented'. The ability to form signs in this system is conceived of as evil.

10.0 The problem of the 'point of view' of a cultural text is solved by orienting the spaces and graphs of the cultural model. The convertibility of cultural models lies in the fact that each of the models can be realized in texts with a direct or inverse orientation. The types of orientation become more complex as the cultural model becomes more complex: differently directed systems of orientation can arise in locally organized sections of a text since sub-groups of space occur with their own divisions into I and E. The most complex models are characterized by a simultaneous functioning of both orientations.

11.0 The division of cultural space into I and E may lie at the basis of several types of models, for example: (1) I and E are separate and not homeomorphic spaces; (2) E is reflected in I; (3) I is a part of E, etc. Relations of type 1 are represented in, for example, fairy-tale texts; of type 2 — in medieval symbolism; of type 3 — in historicism of the Hegelian type (E is the universal of an absolute idea; I is the material reality of an historical stage) or in the contemporary scientific world view which considers Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics, as a particular instance of other systems that are acknowledged by contemporary science.

11.1.0 The division of space into I and E creates merely a very crude apparatus for describing cultural models. Let us cite examples of more complex systems.

11.1.1 The magic tale divides cultural texts into I and E, attributing a magic property to the second. The boundary embodied in the text in the form of a river (bridge), forest, sea shore, etc., divides the space into that which is near to the usual dwelling of the hero (I) and that which is far from this place (E). But one more division is operative for the performer and the listeners of the tale: that which is near to them (I) — it cannot be contig-uous to the magic, and that which is far from them (tridevjatoe carstvo, tridesjatoe gosudarstvo 'A far away Kingdom, a far away realm'), which borders on the magic world. For the text of the tale it is I, but for the, listeners — it is the fairy-tale world belonging to E. In this way, both models function simultaneously.

11.1.2 Let us examine the cultural model which is characteristic of the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Its bearers recognize their world view in a contrast to the sharp division of the universal intelligence into E and I characteristic of the Middle Ages. Moreover in the medieval system, E was valuable and real and I, in which E was reflected, was valued merely as a system of symbolic allusions with E as their content. In the medieval sys-tem, I was (1) part of a universal set, (2) treated as base.

By contrast, the cultural model of the Enlightenment is structured in this way: (1) it has a null subset as E. Concerning the entire world as earthly does not signify an abolition of the internal boundary of space. The value of the earthly world would not have been acknowledged with such force had it not been contrasted to the emptiness in the place of the external space.

I ja b zaslušivalsja voln, I ja gljadel by, sčast'ja poln, Vpustye nebesa ... (24)

And I would listen to the waves, And I would gaze, full of happiness, Into the empty heavens ...

Viewing of the external space as an empty subset is connected with the opposite sensation — the feeling of the absurdity of the internal space

Na čto molit'tsja nam, čtob dal bog videt 'raj? Žit' veselo i zdes', liš' bližnimi igraj... Vot kak vertitsja svet! A dlja čego on tak, Ne vedaet logo ni umnyj, ni durak. (25)

'What should we pray for, that God let us see paradise? It's merry to live even here, to play games with one's neighbor ... That's how the world turns round! And why is it so, Neither the fool nor wiseman knows'.

(2) The earthly world is recognized as a higher value: it occupies the top cell in a value (oriented) model. But, since it is the only one, it is contrasted to an empty subset of the 'worthless' (lower) other world.

12.0 The plot of the text can be represented with the aid of a graph (the movement of some point within the cultural model) or the tree. The plot is always a mad — the trajectory of the displacement of some point in the space of the cultural model.

12.1.0 As has already been pointed out, the characters in plot texts are divided into immobile ones, — which are a part of one or another space — and mobile ones.

The movement of the characters in the plot consists of their crossing the spatial boundary of the model. Changes in the plot which do not lead to the crossing of the boundary are not considered movement.

12.1.1 Complex cultural models form a hierarchy of constructions, and complex cultural texts — a hierarchy of levels. The boundaries of the divi-sion of space on different levels may not coincide, so that episodic parts of a text may contain local substructures with a different type of ordering of space and with different boundaries of its division than other parts. This brings us to the fact that in complex plot texts the trajectory of the hero not only may intersect the fundamental boundary of the cultural model but can also be found in motion with regard to more particular delimitations.

12.2 The trajectories depicted with the aid of a line may be interpreted on the semantic level as the 'path of man', 'event' and, consequently, can reflect that which is considered an 'event' within the bounds of a given cultural text. Thus, for example, the death of a man, the acquisition or loss of wealth, marriage, etc., will be 'events' from the point of view of one system and will not be from the point of view of another. Compare the refusal of Russian military texts of the early feudal epoch to consider the death of a soldier as an 'event' (the words of Vladimir Monomax: Divno li ože muž' umerl" v polku ti lěpše sut' izmerli i rodi naši 'Is it strange that a man died in battle? Better men have also died even from among our ances-tors'; (26) the speech of Daniil Galickij before the army: Ašče muž 'ubien est' na rati, to koe čjudo est'? Inni že i doma umirajut bez slavy, si že so slavoj umroša 'If man is killed in battle, what is there strange about that? Others die at home without glory while these die with glory'. (27) In order for death to become an event from this point of view, it must be combined with glory or disgrace, it must be a sign and not just a fact. Similarly, for Gogol' in Teatral'nyj raz"ezd [Departure from the Theatre] love ceases to be an event, a transition across the boundary of structural spaces (Ne bolee li teper' imejut električestva čin, denežnyj kapital, vygodnaja ženit'ba, čem Ijubov'? 'Do not rank, financial capital, comfortable marriage have more electricity now than love?' (28)

12.3.0 Since in the language of a spatial model we define the plot event as a transition from one structure to another, a question arises about the fact that the moving element has 'its own' and 'alien' space. When we say: 'the character is formed by the given social milieu' or 'personifies the national character', we affirm the correlation of the character to some space of the cultural model (social, national, psychological).

12.3.1 The same actual texts may result in different pictures when examined on various levels of modeling. Thus, on the more abstract model the plot will be represented as the tree

of all the hero's movements which are possible within the framework of the given structure; or on a more concrete model, as the realization of one of these paths.

12.4 The relationship of the path of the hero to the space through which he travels, the types of description of plots, should become the subject of a special study.

12.4.1 Plots are reversible (the orientation of graphs is realized here). If there exists a plot: 'the hero crosses from internal space to external space, acquires something there and returns to internal space' (the magic tale), then there must also be the opposite plot: 'the hero comes from external space, suffers some loss and returns' (the plot about the incarnation of a god, his death here and return to 'his own' space).

Besides plot constructions in the form of a transition of the graph from I to E (and vice versa), another type is also possible: a simple correspondence is established between the internal graph of I (crossing the local boundaries of the subsets of I) and the internal graph of I. One reads 'event X has meaning Y'. The types of correspondence of the graph in I can also be established for E. Such are the plots about time in paradise and on earth (the apocryphal plot about the man who listened for a moment to the bird of paradise — 300 years passed on earth; the Gospel plot about the feeding of five thousand believers with five loaves of bread and two fish, with more left over than there was to begin with).

However, the Enlightenment realized its world view also through another cultural model which was no longer dependent of any contrasts external to itself. This model is structured on the opposition 'natural *> artificial' with a clear contrast of I (anthropological) as the natural, moral and high in the oriented model of the world, and E (social) as against nature, immoral and low. Characteristic is the fact that E here is a disorted I. It is its exact repetition with an inverse sign. If in the medieval model I and E have, in principle, a varying number of dimensions, then in this regard they are, in principle, equalized here.

From what has been said it is obvious that the same text can be described (and can be realized) in its actual function in the categories of several cultural models simultaneously.

NOTES

1 The original version of this article appeared in Trudy po znakovym sistemam [Works on Semiotics] IV (1969), 460-77.

2 Polnoe sobranie russkix letopisej [Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles], I (Moscow: Publishing House of Eastern Literature, 1962), p. 14 (author's italics).

3 Polnoe solbranie ..., 13.

4 Polnoe solbranie ..., 13.

5 Let us recall the definition of metalanguage, which reflects the accepted (more and more) understanding of this problem in contemporary logic: The theory of semantic stages should be related to the most important cognitive principles of semiotics. From this it follows that there exist things, essences, relations, etc., which belong to objective reality and which do not in themselves appear as signs of a language. These objects comprise a so-called zero level. The signs by which the objects of the zero level are designated belong to the language of the object or to the language of the first stage. Meta-language, or the language of the second stage, contains ail the signs which are indispensable for designating the signs of the language of the object. If the necessity to speak about such a metalanguage occurs, then this will be possible in the language of the third stage, etc.' (Georg Klaus, Moderne Logik [Berlin, 1964], p. 84).

6 S. Ju. Nekljudov, 'K voprosu o svjazi prostranstvennovremennyx otnošenij s sjužetnoj strukturoj byliny' [On the Problem of the Connection of Spatio-Temporal Relations with the Plot Structure of the Bylina], Tezisy dokladov vo vtoroj letnej škole po vtoričnym modelirujuščim sistemam, 16-26 avgusta 1966 [Theses of Papers at the Second Summer School on Secondary Modeling Systems, 16-26 August 1966) (Tartu, 1966).

7 The 'point of view' may be interpreted as the orientation of the cultural model with relation to some type of space.

8 Marina Cvetaeva, Izbrannye proizvedenija [Selected Works], (Moscow-Leningrad, 1965), p. 233. In the quotation above: ix dom - vaša svaločnaja jama 'their house is your waste pit', dom 'house' is a symbol of the most closed, most protected, 'internal' space: svaločnaja jama 'waste pit' is the maximal contrast to it (the local expression of exile, lack of protection in their maximal degrees; compare the antithesis of house and rubbish heap in biblical legends).

9 Avvakum, Kniga besed: Pamjatniki, istorii, staroobrjadčestva, XVII v. [Book of Conversations: Monuments of the History of the Old-Believers, the 17th Century), book I, part 1 (Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR, 1927), p. 292.

10 V.K. Kjuxel'beker, Izbrannye proizvedenija v 2-x tt. [Selected Works in Two Volumes], I (Moscow-Leningrad, 1967), p. 207.

11 M.V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sočinenij [Complete Collection of Works], VIII (Moscow-Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR, 1959), p. 116.

12 Biblija, ili kniga svjaščennogo pisanija vetxogo i novogo zaveta (The Bible, or the Book of Holy Writings of the Old and New Testaments] (St. Petersburg, 1908), p. 437.

13 Compare: Vjač. Vs. Ivanov, V.N. Toporov, Slavjanskie jazykovye modelirujuščie sistemy [Slavic Language Modeling Systems), (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), pp. 91-100.

14 See: L.A. Dmitriev, 'Glagol "kajati" i reka Kajala v. Slove o polku Igoreve' [The Verb kajati 'to confess' and the River Kajala in Lay of Prince Igor's Campaign], TODL XI (1953).

15 The house with its attributes: bed, stove and warmth, in general a closed and habitable space, is conceived of as the 'female world' in chivalrous and epic tales. The 'field' is contrasted to it as the 'manly' space. Thus, from the female's point of view E is the field, but from the man's point of view it is the house. Compare the biblical (and also in A.K. Tolstoy's ballad II'ja Muromec) plot of the departure of the hero from the closed (non-heroic, non-princely, 'woman's' - 'they love the female sex') space 'to freedom': into the steppe and the 'desert'. In the chronicle Svjatoslav, an ideal knight, does not have a home (he left mother and child in Kiev) and lives in the field (Velikoj poxvaly dostoin, Kogda čislo svoix pobed Sravnit sražen'jam možet voin I v pole ves' svoj vek živet 'Worthy of great praise. When the number of his victories/Is comparable to the battles of war/And he lives his whole life in the field' [Lomonosov)). Taras Bul'ba destroys all the utensils and leaves his home for the seč', in order not to 'become a woman' (to live at home and to live 'under a woman's skirt' are synonymous). He sleeps outdoors. He covers himself with a sheepskin because, at home, he likes to sleep in warmth. Compare the antithesis 'home - outside the home', as 'warmth - cold', in Starosvetskie pomeščiki [Old-World Landowners).

16 Boris Pasternak, Stixotvorenija i poemy [Verses and Poems] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1965), p. 177.

17 Marina Cvetaeva, Izbrannye proizvedenija [Selected Works] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1965), p. 303 (my emphasis, Ju. L.).

18 Izbrannye ..., 471 (author's emphasis).

19 Izbrannye ..., 315. Compare the fundamental ambivalence of 'one's own' and 'alien' space in Cvetaeva: O tam, stavšem zdes'... Mne k Vam (v Pragu iz Pariza — Ju. L.) xočetsja domoj: ins Freie: na čužbinu, za okno. I — o očarovanie — v etom ins Freie — ujutno, v nem živetsja: oblako, na kotorom možno stojat' nogami. Ne tot svet i ne etot, - tretij: sna, skazki, moj 'Oh there, having become here ... I want to go home to you (to Prague from Paris - Ju. L.) ins Freie: to strange lands, beyond the window. And — O enchantment — in this ins Freie — it's cozy, one lives there: a cloud on which one can stand on one's feet. Not this world nor

that, - a third: of dream, fairy tale, mine' (Marina Cvetaeva, Pis'ma k Anne Teskovoj [Letters to Anna Teskova] (Prague: Academia, 1969), p. 61). Tam 'there' and zdes' 'here', čužbina 'strange lands' and dom 'house', tot 'that' and etot 'this' world are equalized.

20 F. I. Tjutčev, Polnoe sobranie stixotvorenij [Complete Collection of Verse] (Leningrad, 1939), p. 41.

21 Polnoe sobranie ..., 41.

22 Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, 'Il Paradiso', XXII, 67.

23 'Il Paradiso', XXVII, 55-56.

24 A.S. Puškin, Polnoe sobranie sočinenij (Complete Collection of Works] III, book 1, (Izdatel'stvo AN SSSR, 1948), p. 322.

25 D.I. Fonvizin, Sobranie sočinenij v 2-x tt. [Collected Works in Two Volumes] (Moscow-Leningrad, 1959), I, pp. 211-12.

26 Polnoe sobranie russkix letopisej [Complete Collection of Russian Chronicles] I, (Moscow, 1962), p. 254.

27 Polnoe sobranie ... II, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1908), p. 822.

28 Gogol', Polnoe sobranie sočinenij [Complete Collection of Works],V (AN SSSR, 1949), p. 142. Compare the love parody in Revizor The Inspector General], which is not an event of the plot (it does not move the action of the play).

Juri M. Lotman, who is Head of the Department of Russian Literature at the State University of Tartu, was born in Leningrad, in 1922. His research work has focused on Russian literature of the 18th century, the typology of cultures, and the construction of a structural theory of literary texts. He has published numerous works in these and related semiotic domains, including his seminal book, l.ekcii po strukturalnoj poetiki. Since 1969, he has served as a member of the Editorial Committee of this journal.

from: Semiotica (Journal of the Association for Semiotic Studies), 14:2, 1975, pp. 97-123