From the Questions of Semiotics of the Subject

Abstract

The text is an attempt to consider once again an especially sore point in the structural-semiotic theory, namely the problem of „subjectivity”. The author critically develops the communicative model suggested by Yuri Lotman, in which understanding is born of the necessary compromise between the speaking person and the language (code) that he uses. Confronting this model with Yuri Knorozov’s „fascination theory” allows defining „self- communication” as a kind of text, in which the compromise between the person and the code is possibly the least. The author notices an analogy between „self-communication” and the poetical speech, in effect seeing the possibility of a person’s most complete manifestation in the literary text through the rhythmical structures present in it.

Translated by Tadeusz Karłowicz