Introduction to Semiotics of Cultures, 2010 Juri Lotman – Universe of the Mind Chapter 7 Duality of Symbols Vesa Matteo Piludu University of Helsinki

Symbols: otherness and archaistic features Symbols are always connected to signs of other orders or languages The content of symbols are generally highly valued in culture A symbol is for example a religious sign used in a non-religious situation as art: novels or painting There is always something archaic in symbols Sometimes symbols go back to pre-literate or oral cultures (fairy tales)

Symbols Symbols preserves long and relevant texts in a condensed form (image, icon)

The vertical cut A symbol never belongs to one synchronic section of a culture It always cuts across that section vertically coming from the past And passing on into the future A symbol’s memory is always more ancient than the memory of its non symbolic text content

Texts: heterogeneous Every texts of a culture is heterogeneous, it form a complex plurality of voices, coming from different ages and times Symbols, as powerful symbols, as condensed elements of cultural memory, can transfer texts, plots outlines, from one level of memory to another The symbols activated cultural memory The symbols prevent the disintegration of culture in isolated layers (no communication between classicism and romanticism)

Duality of Symbols Symbols reveals their duality By one hand the symbol is conservative, it has elements of repeatability and invariance The symbol is a seed, it exists before the text, it comes from the depths of cultural memory The symbol is like an emissary from other cultural epochs A reminder of the ancient foundation of a specific culture To the other side A symbol actively correlates with the cultural context of the text, transform it and is transformed by it So there are many variant of the same symbol, that could have different meaning in different texts of different ages or places

Tree possibilities The cultural context is strong, able to change the meaning of ancient symbols The symbol is so strong that it’s able to change the cultural context The symbols and the contexts are equally strong and they are changing each others in a complex and dynamic way

The most active symbols The most historically active symbols have a great number of variants in texts of different epochs and cultures

The texts: multidimensionality Are often multidimensional, containing symbols from different times Their expression could be open, profane But the content of their symbols could be referred to a more secret, unclear or even sacred domain dedicated to only a certain group of receivers, able to read “between the lines” Romantic dream: art express the inexpressible (sacred, passion)

Link between symbol and texts The link that the writer, artist or message sender established between a symbol and a certain text, never exhaust all the semantic valence (=possible meanings) of the symbol The link establishes only one possible variation Original artists or communicator could also reverse the meaning of symbols and establish unexpected relationships

Writers as “reader” and interpreters of symbols Dostoevsky was an assiduous reader of newspapers and collector of incidents He considered the role of the writer similar to the doctor’s one: a decoder of (social) symptoms, symbols presents in the news Original medical “semiotics”: symptomology Also for Turgenev the writer was a recorder of social processes And every character is a symbol, representative of something

Dostoevsky's plans for a “poem” called Emperor There are some notes about the plot Mirovich tries to persuade a young man who had grown up in total isolation and who know nothing of temptation of life to follow him “He shows him the world, from the loft (the Neva and so on) … He shows him God’s world. “it’s all yours if you want it. Let’s go!” What symbol?

Emperor and Gospel The temptation of Jesus, when he is lifted to a high place (a mountain, the roof of the temple), the Devil shows the world lying at his feet In Dostoevsky the high place is the loft of the prison tower, and the character have a demonic role in a urban space (St. Petersburg) Clear gospel symbolism

Dostoevsky’s Idots More complicate symbolism Criminal trials as symptoms and symbols But the symbolism is more subtitle: there is a mystery and is expressed the impossibility to express thing precisely, as in a documentary The reality is interpreted not with realism but as a metaphorical plot, full of symbols that should be interpreted The word doesn’t describe things, but allude to more deep concepts

Dostoevsky’s Idots Hyppolite’s inexpressible symbolism Hyppolite In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone’s brain, there is something that cannot possibly conveyed to others, thought you wrote volumes about it and spent thirty-five years in explaining your idea; Something will always be left that will obstinately refuse to emerge from your head

Idiots and romantic symbolism In Hyppolite’s there is a clear reference to the romantic concept of the inexpressible truth The language and the meaning are always inadeguate The truth could be understood only by approximation, allusions by the interpretation of symbols

Baratynsky from Complete Poetry The word for Baratynsky Alien to plain meaning For me is a symbol Of Feelings for which I have not found expression in languages

Idiots Also the characters are symbols (name, identifying marks) According to Lotman Nastasya Filipovna is a character based on the La Dame aux Camélias And also to Susanna and the elders Rembrandt in the Dresden Gallery, visited by Dostoevsky

La Dame aux Camélias novel by Alexandre Dumas Adapted for stages, films, ballets "woman with a past" Influenced Verdi’s Traviata

Lady with the Camelias

Mucha’s version

Italian film (Mauro Bolognini)

Ballet

Nastasya Filipovna Tragic heroine in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot. daughter of an aristocrat with no money still a young child, falls under the "protection" of a rich rogue named Totski. she had suitable private education As she grows older, Totski visits her only occasionally on the estate where he has left her it seems likely that during this time Nastasya was coerced into the position of a kept woman by Totski Totski married another woman and hopes to satisfy her by giving her an apartment in St. Petersburg

Following adventures Tragic finale, after various adventures with Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin Nastasya, refuses Myshkin, claiming that she cannot 'ruin him,' and tells the company that she will marry Rogozhin. Myshkin tries again to save her from the fate that she feels she deserves, telling her: "You're so awfully unhappy that you really think you are yourself to blame... I- I shall respect you all my life, Nastasya Filippovna."

Nastasya Filippovna: A Woman Scorned by Nicola Smith From the beginning of Part One, Nastasya Filippovna appears to be a fascinating, wild creature who is rebelling against the "natural” role of woman for her time. The shock and scandal that seems to surround her exploits suggests that her actions are not within the confines of her "role". However, the more we come to know her the more we see that she has been exploited by society of the time and the men that surround her and desire to possess her. Unable to stand up under the destructive forces that surrounded her, the strongest, most promising character was reduced to insanity by Dostoyevsky. It seems that he may sympathize with her situation, given the use of word choice we have seen, and even some of the ironic, yet sad depiction of a young girl violated. Filippovna must die to escape the tragic and unjust plight of a woman scorned.

Nastasya Filippovna. Illustration for F. Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Idiot.” 1956

1647 Rembrandt - Susanna und die beiden Alten

Susanna and the elders

Susanna and the Elders by Alessandro Allori

Susanna and the Elders by Jan van Noordt

Susanna and the Elders by Artemisia Gentileschi

Symbol and artistic inspiration The symbol accumulate and organize new experience around previous symbols and signs, it turns into a memory condenser Future authors could selectively combine elements of symbols (Lady of Camelias, Susanna or Nastasya) to build up other plots (ballets, films)

Symbol Can be expressed in synchronic verbal-visual forms which can be projected onto various texts or transformed under the influence or texts and authors

Vladimir Tatlin Monument to the Third International 1919

Breughel the elder, 1563 Tower of Babel

Reversion of symbols Tower of Babel – rebellion against God (negative), peoples divided in many languages Revolution as a rebellion against the Tsars, nobles, priests, capitalists (social gods): positive Artist as a creative daemon: extreme individualist against the artistic systems: positive Marx: The proletariat (positive, hearth) are storming heaven (negative, capitalists) The value of earth and heaven is reversed The myth of separation of people is reverted in the union of the people Incredible chain: Genesis, Breughel, Marx, Romanticims, Avant Garde, International, Tatlin

Revertion The in the Tatlin case the cultural context (Soviet propaganda) was quite strong and it changed the meaning of an ancient symbol (tower of Babel)

Symbol as a mediator Mediator between the synchronicity of the text (the role of Tatlin’s work for Soviet propaganda) And the cultural memory (the strong references to Genesis and art history)

Il quarto stato Pellizza da Valpredo 1901