The Letter as a Text Belonging to Culture (Based on Yuri Lotman's Correspondence)

Abstract

Yuri Lotman's correspondence is a peculiar key by means of which we can study its author's creative personality. On the one hand it performs the function of “a text within a text” – it is the basic link in Lotman's text universe, and on the other – it plays the role of a context emphasizing the mechanisms that create the text in this universe. One of the significant mechanisms for creating the text space is in the case of Yuri Lotman the actualization of the relation of “I – Somebody Else” and “I – I”. The presence of “Somebody Else” in the researcher's creative consciousness is an indispensible condition for moving in the space of culture.