1088 The final section, on cultural semiotics as semiotics of cultural history offers the trope… er… slogan… saying, “Culture is memory.”

On the fundament, the literary text_2bf offers something to remember, if for no other reason than it is encoded as a text. Texts may survive to be available to the future.  Parole_2af is often not so lucky.

Time is cruel

So many texts have been lost.  Precious few oral traditions remain intact.

The issue is twofold.  The text or the oral tradition needs to survive.  Also, a code for translation must be retained… or… recoverable.

This is one of the problems with the writing of ancient Mesopotamia, where there are few texts that have more than one script in a single document.

1089 Lotman spends many hours reflecting on text and code.

Some of his reflections end up in his book, Universe of the Mind.

1090 The author presents a table on Lotman and Uspenskij’s views of the temporal aspect of chronotopical analysis.

1091 Of course, the above table does not correspond to Torop’s original table_2bf (fundament and derivative, Figure 1).

Perhaps, this table further develops and refines Bakhtin’s semiological structuralist model_2c (Figure 2).  

However, it is hard not to imagine that the above figure translates into an interscope.

1092 Say what?

1093 The Tartu-Moscow School expresses two interscopes, the fundament culminates in the semiological structuralist model_2c and the derivative rises to a yet-to-be-determined perspective-level actuality_2c.

1094 Bakhtin’s notes and scribbles express two interscopes as well.  These two interscopes constitute two adjacent tiers within a model more expansive than the semiological_2a structuralist_2b model_2c.  The construction of Torop’s article intimates that this expanse is well worth investigating.

1095 The way that Lotman’s thing includes time shows how Torop’s tables_2af entangle a language_2am of presence_1b (as well as meaning_1a).  Lotman recognizes_2bm time_2af as a formal requirement of the chronotope_2am and forces Torop to construct his own table (Figure 4 on page 330) as a way to situate_2bf that entanglement_2a.

1096 Here is a juxtaposition of the virtual nested form in the category of secondness for the derivative interscope and Torop’s reconstruction of Lotman’s approach.

1097 A virtual nested form proceeds down a column in a three-level interscope.

Here are the columns in the realm of actuality₂.

1098 In the general form of the derivative interscope, a perspective-level actuality_2c (to be determined) brings the situation-level actuality of {cognition_2bm [substantiates] social interaction_2bf} into relation with the possibility of {a literary text_2af [entangling] a language_2am of meaning_1a, presence_1b and message_1c}.

1099 For Torop’s table addressing Lotman (Figure 4), the perspective-level actuality_2c of {semiotic arrangements_2cm[substantiate] human conditions_2cf} virtually brings the situation-level actuality of {Lotman’s recognition of time_2bm[substantiates] Lotman’s thing with respect to time (as a three-level table)_2bf} into relation with the content-level possibility that {Torop’s tables as text_2af [entangle] the chronotope’s formal requirements_2am of the normal context of the Tartu-Moscow School_3a}.

1100 Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Cultural history manifests in the framework of the semiotics of the text, where the text is a representation of culture.

Bakhtin’s culture, that is.

Lotman’s culture, too.

1101 If Bakhtin’s insights are formalized as text by Torop’s tables, then Torop’s tables constitute a semiological structuralist model_2c of Bakhtin’s insights_2af and support the entanglement of a language_2am that sounds very much like any language of interpretation.

What is the meaning_1a, presence_1b and message_1c of the chronotope?

Lotman’s thing focuses on time and produces a variation of the fundament interscope.

Torop’s table of Lotman’s consideration of time produces a categorical stairway to a perspective-level actuality_2c in the derivative interscope.

1102 Once again, what is Lotman’s thing?

Oh, yes, it is the archaeological recovery of an insight that is present… at least in potential… since the very origins of Slavic civilization.

In the beginning is the Word, and the Word as matter substantiates the human condition as form.

1103 Here is a picture.

Such is the resolution, of the confounding where history substantiates culture and culture entangles semiotics.

1104 My thanks to Peeter Torop, for putting pen to paper and for building the tables that demonstrate the fecundity and the surprising beauty of the first iteration of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.  May a second iteration follow.