Lotman-Text in Text
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The Text within the Text Author(s): Yury M. Lotman, Jerry Leo and Amy Mandelker Source: PMLA, Vol. 109, No. 3 (May, 1994), pp. 377-384 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463074 . Accessed: 14/04/2013 23:21
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Yuy M. Lotman
The
Text
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YUR Y M. LOTMAN (192293) was professor of Russian literature at Tartu State University and the leading figure in the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics, as well as an honorary member of the Modern Language Association. He is best known for his work on Pushkin, structuralism, and the semiotics of Russian culture. He was the author of fourteen books, including The
Translators'note. Thefirstfew pages of this essay are not printed here. In this omitted portion YuryLotman distinguishes between two major functions of texts. The first function is the adequate transmission of information, and the second is the generation of new meanings. The most desirable conditionfor the first function is the complete overlap of codes betweensenders and receiversof messages. Since this situation is virtually impossible, an intermediary is developed, which Lotman terms the "text-code." The text-code, of which the Bible is the most obvious example, serves an interpretive and prescriptive role in the transmissionof texts. The traditional linguistic, structuralapproach to analyzing texts, exemplified by VladimirPropp's Morphology of the Folktale, often results in the constructionof a text-code. The linguistic, structuralapproachpresupposes a closed set or system whose elements can produce an infinite series of texts. In contrast, the secondfunction of texts suggests an immanent, literary approach that attempts to situate texts within the confluence of their contexts, antecedents, and descendants. A text analyzed in its second function will be noted for the heterogeneity of its constituentelements, some of whichform "texts within texts." In the remainder of this essay, presented here in its entirety except for one elision, Lotman develops this approach, which he associates with the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.
of the ArtisticText, Structure Semiotics of Film, and The Universeof the Mind, and of
hundredsof articles.
IS a mechanism constituting a system of heterogeneous semiotic spaces, in whose continuum the message [associated with the first textual function] circulates. We do not perceive this message to be the manifestation of a single language: a minimum of two languages is required to create it. No text of the type I am interested in considering here can be adequately describedfrom the perspectiveof a single language. Either we may speak of continuous encoding by means of a double code-in which case,
"TheText withinthe Text" is a translationof "TeKc B TeKcTe, " whichappearsin Tpy,bi no 3HaKOBbIM CHCTeMaM (14 [1981]. 3-19), and is published here with permission.
ATEXT
377
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The Text withinthe Text
readers perceive one or the other organization, depending on their viewpoints-or we may note the combination of general codifications, beginning with a dominant code and continuing with local coding at the second, the third, and further degrees. Under the latter conditions basic processes of codification that are usually unconscious and, as a result, imperceptible emerge in the sphere of structural consciousness and become significant at the conscious level. Thus, in Tolstoy's example the purity of a glass of water becomes perceptible only because of the detritus and chips that fall into the glass: the detritus is the additional material included in the text that elicits the basic underlying code-"purity"from the sphere of the structural unconscious. The play with meaning that arises in the text, the slippage between the various kinds of structural regularities, endows the text with greater semantic potential than have texts codified by means of a single, separate language. Therefore, in its second function the text is not a passive container, a mere receptacle for content introduced into it from the outside, but has itself become a generator of further texts. The process of generation not only expands structures but also stimulates their interaction. The interaction of the structures in the closed [3aMKHyTbI] world of the text extends to become an effective mechanism in the semiotics of a culture. A text of this kind is always richer than any individual language and is not automatically deducible from a single language. This type of text is a semiotic space within which languages interact, interfere with one another, and organize themselves hierarchically. If Propp's method is oriented toward the elaboration of a single text-code underlying a plurality of texts-which are presented as a bundle of variants of a single text-then Bakhtin's method, beginning with MapKCH3MH (|I13bIKa (Marxism and the Philosophy of JIOcoHl4)I Language), is the opposite: not only is a single text composed of various subtexts but, more to the point, the subtexts are mutually untranslatable. The text is thus revealed to be internally in conflict. In Propp's description the text tends toward panchronic equilibrium: an examination
of narrative texts makes clear that, in essence, there is no movement in them, only an oscillation around some homeostatic norm (equilibrium is violated and then reestablished). In Bakhtin's analysis inevitable action, change, and destruction are latent even in the stasis of the text. Therefore, there is a plot [ciioxeT] even in instances that would appear to be far removed from the problems of plot [cioweT].The natural arena for exploring the text is the folktale for Propp and the novel and the drama for Bakhtin .... When a text interacts with a heterogeneous consciousness, new meanings are generated, and as a result the text's immanent structure is reorganized. There are a finite number of possibilities for such restructurations [perestroiki, nepecTpoHKH], and this condition limits the life of any text over the centuries and also delimits of the restructuration[perestroika,nepecTpoHKa] a monument when cultural contexts change, as well as restricting the arbitrary imposition of meanings that lack formal means of expression. Pragmatic links can materialize in peripheral or automatic structures but cannot introduce into a text codes that are principally absent from it. However, the destruction of texts and their conversion into material for the creation of new, derivative texts-from the construction of medieval buildings on the foundations of antique ruins to the creation of contemporary plays "according to the motifs" of Shakespeare -are also a part of the process of culture. Nevertheless, the pragmatic impulse cannot be coerced for different kinds of reinterpretations of the text; this principle con[nepeocMblcJIeHHa] stitutes the active aspect of textual functioning itself. As a generator of meaning, as a thinking mechanism capable of working, the text needs an interlocutor. This requirement reveals the profoundly dialogic nature of consciousness. To function, a consciousness requires another consciousness-the text within the text, the culture within the culture. The introduction of an external text into the immanent world of another text has far-reaching consequences. The external text is transformed in the structural field of the other text's meaning, and a new message is created.
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The transformation is made unpredictable by the complexity of the components participating in the textual interaction and by the multiplicity of their levels. However, the transformation occurs not only within the entering text; the entire semiotic situation inside the other text is also changed. The introduction of an untranslatable, alien semiosis excites the "mother" text: attention shifts from the message to the language as such and discovers the manifest nonhomogeneous codification of the mother text. In these conditions, the various subtexts that constitute the mother text begin to differentiate and transform themselves according to the new, alien laws, producing new information. Removed from semiotic equilibrium, a text becomes capable of self-development. The powerful external textual eruptions in a culture conceived of as a huge text not only lead the culture to adapt outside messages and to introduce them into its memory but also stimulate the culture's selfdevelopment, with unpredictable results. Let us consider two examples of this process. The well-being of a child's intellectual apparatus in its initial state of development does not guarantee that the child's consciousness will function normally. The child must meet others and be exposed to outside texts that stimulate its intellectual development. A related example is the "accelerated development" of a culture (Gachev). A well-established, archaic culture is capable of remaining in a state of cyclic enclosure and balanced immobility for an extraordinarily long time. The irruption of external texts into the sphere of such a culture activates the mechanisms of self-development. The greater the rupture and the more difficult it is to decipher the intruding texts by recourse to the codes of the mother text, the more dynamic will be the ultimate condition of the culture. Comparative study of the semantics of the different "cultural explosions" in world history reveals the simplistic nature of the concepts established by Voltaire in his Essai sur les mours et l'esprit des nations 'Essay on the Customs and Spirit of Peoples' and by Condorcet in his Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain 'Outline of a Historical Picture of
the Progress of Human Reason' and further developed by Hegel in his idea of the unified path of the world spirit. From these points of view, world cultures in all their diversity can be reduced either to different stages in the evolution of a single universal reign of culture or to "errors" that lead the mind into wilderness. In the light of this observation, it seems natural that "advanced" cultures should view "backward" cultures as somewhat deficient, and the "backward" culture's aspiration to catch up with the "advanced" culture and assimilate into it is also comprehensible. "Accelerated development" reduces the variety and complexity of world civilization and, as a result, diminishes it to a monotonal Text; in other words, the process is one of informational degradation. However, this hypothesis is not confirmed by empirical reality: such a leveling does not take place in the course of the cultural explosions in world history. What does occur are processes that are diametrically opposed to each other. The dynamic condition of semiotic systems presents a curious particularity. While a system is developing gradually, it incorporates neighboring texts that are easily translatable into its language. In moments of cultural (or, in general, semiotic) explosion, the texts incorporated are more distant and are untranslatable (or incomprehensible) from the point of view of the system. In these moments the more complex culture does not always play the role of stimulus for the more archaic one; the opposite tendency is also possible. Thus in the twentieth century texts from archaic and primitive cultures powerfully erupted into European civilization, which consequently displayed increasing dynamic excitation. It is precisely the differences among cultural potentials, the difficulties in deciphering texts by means of languages of existing cultures, that are essential to bringing about such transformations. At the beginning of our era, for example, during the pagan adoption of Christianity, foreign texts connected with Christian culture were incorporated into a textual world that found them inaccessible because of their cultural complexity. For the medieval civilizations of the Mediterranean, however, the same texts were difficult to
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The Text withinthe Text
grasp because the texts seemed primitive. In each case the result was similar: the texts provoked a powerful cultural explosion that ruptured a world's infantile or senile stasis and inaugurated a state of dynamism. Earlier we emphasized the typological difference between two ontological orientations: one identifies a multitude of texts with a single Text, and the other transcribes the problem of the diversity of codes within the text's borders, so that the Text's stratification into texts becomes an internal law. But this problem can also be examined in its pragmatic aspect. Detailed examination of any civilization will reveal texts of great complexity. Thus the auditor's pragmatic disposition contributes to whether a text's Proppian or Bakhtinian aspect is activated. This question is closely connected to the problem of the text's relation to its cultural context. Culture is not a chaotic collocation of texts but a complex, hierarchical functioning system. Every text inevitably appears in at least two perspectives, two types of contexts, opposed on the axis homogeneity-nonhomogeneity. Seen in relation to other texts, the text seems homogeneous with them, while from the other viewpoint, outside the system, it appears alien and incomprehensible. In the first case the text is located on the syntagmatic axis, in the second on the rhetorical axis. A rhetorical effect occurs when one text is juxtaposed with another that is semiotically nonhomogeneous with it. Meaning is formed as much by the interaction between semiotically heterogeneous, mutually untranslatable layers of the text as by the complex conflicts of meaning between the text and its context. Just as the artistic text tends toward polyglotism, so its artistic and general cultural contexts cannot be monologic. Because any cultural context is complex, its constitutive texts must be examined equally on the syntagmatic and on the rhetorical axes. It is the juxtaposition of these axes that brings the semiotic structure of unconscious mechanisms into the sphere of conscious semiotic creation. The problem of the diverse juxtapositions of heterogeneous texts posed accurately in the art and culture of the twentieth century is, in reality, one of the most ancient issues at the center of the theme "the text within
the text."1 Neo-rhetoric, of intensifying interest in contemporary scholarship, is a related area of investigation. The text within the text is a specific rhetorical construction in which the determining factor in the author's construction of the text and in the reader's reception of it is the differentialcodification of various parts of the text. The transition from a semiotic system of textual comprehension to a system of internal structural boundaries constitutes the basis for the generation of meaning. This condition, above all, intensifies the moment of play in the text: from an alternative mode of codification the text acquires features of a more sophisticated conventionality, and the text's ludic character is accentuated-its ironic, parodic, theatrical, and other such meanings. Simultaneously, the role of the text's boundaries is highlighted-both the external boundaries separating the text from the nontext and the internal ones demarcating different levels of codification. The boundaries are mobile: shifts toward one in the text's orientation [ycTaHoBKa] or another code result in changes in the boundaries' structures as well. For example, proceeding from the well-established tradition that defines the pedestal of the sculpture or the frame of the painting as nontext, the art of the baroque epoch introduces these components into the text, converting the pedestal into a stone, for instance, and by means of plot [cioxeTHo] conjoining it with a figure into a single composition. Including the pedestal or frame in the text intensifies the ludic moment because the conventionality of these elements also keeps them excluded, distinct from what is inherent in the basic text. When the figures of a baroque sculpture climb on the pedestal or descend from it or when figures in a painting leap down from the frame, the effect is to emphasize rather than to obscure the fact that one element belongs to material reality while the other belongs to artistic reality. A similar play with observers' perceptions of alternative realities occurs when theatrical action descends from the stage into the real, everyday space of the auditorium. Play between the real and the conventional is an integral part of any occurrence of a text within
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a text. In the simplest occurrence the included section is encoded in the same way as the remaining text and thus is doubly coded. Examples are a painting within a painting, a play within a play, a film within a film, and a novel within a novel. The delineated section is doubly encoded in accordance with identifiable artistic conventions, and therefore it encourages the perception of the remaining space of the text as real. Thus Hamlet offers not merely a text within a text but also Hamlet within Hamlet. The play performed on Hamlet's initiative reiterates in a markedly conventional manner the play composed by Shakespeare: first the pantomime, then the distinctly conventional rhymed monologues, interrupted by the prosaic remarks of the audience-Hamlet, the king, the queen, and Ophelia. The conventionality of Hamlet's play emphasizes the reality of Shakespeare's.2 To accentuate this response in the reader, Shakespeare introduced metatextual elements: the director of the play appears before us on the stage. In a scene anticipating Federico Fellini's 8/2, Hamlet issues instructions to the actors, directing their performance. Shakespeare thus stages not only a play but, more important, a theatrical rehearsal. Duplication is the most simple aspect of the coded organization and the structural constructions of consciousness. It is no accident that myths of the genesis of the arts share a basis in duplication: rhythm from the echo, painting from the use of coal to outline shadows on rock, and so forth. In painting and cinematography the mirror is the most common instrument for creating localized subtexts by duplicating patterns. It is essential to recognize, however, that duplication by means of a mirror is almost never simple replication. Rather, the right-left axis is reversed, or, even more frequently, a perpendicular axis is superimposed on the canvas or screen, creating a dimension or viewpoint outside the surface. In Velazquez's painting Venus and Cupid, besides the viewpoint of the observer, who sees Venus from behind, an additional perspective is added, directed on Venus's face, visible in the depths of the mirror. In Jan van Eyck's Portrait of the Banker Arnolfiniand His Wife the effect is even more complicated: the mirror hang-
ing in the background reflects from behind the backs of Arnolfini and his wife (who face the viewer) and also shows the guests they are greeting, who enter from the side of the viewer's perspective. From the depths of the mirror a gaze is projected that is perpendicular to the canvas (meeting the gaze of the viewer) and that traverses the boundaries of the painting's actual space. Mirrors in baroque interiors often played the same role, refracting the architectural space by creating an illusory infinity: the reflection of a mirror in a mirror, the duplication of space through the reflection of a painting in mirrors,3 or the fragmentation of internal and external boundaries through the reflection of windows in mirrors. The mirror can fulfill another function, however. In duplicating, the mirror deforms, and thus it reveals how its representation, apparently natural, is in fact a projection using a specific modeling language. The mirror in van Eyck's painting is convex (see the portrait of Hans Burgkmayr and his wife painted by Lucas Furtenagle, in which the wife holds a convex mirror almost at a right angle to the surface of the canvas, acutely deforming the reflections): Arnolfini and his wife are not only shown from the front and the back but also projected onto both spherical and flat surfaces. In Luchino Visconti's film Senso (The Wanton Countess) the heroine, immobile and passionless, is juxtaposed to her dynamic reflection in a mirror. See also the fragmenting effect of reflection in a broken mirror in two other films, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le corbeau (The Raven) and Marcel Carne's Le jour se leve (Daybreak). The widespread literary mythology of reflections in mirrors and of a world "through the looking glass" can be seen as evolving from archaic beliefs about mirrors as windows into a world beyond. A literary equivalent of the mirror motif is the theme of the double. Just as the world through the looking glass is an estranged model of the ordinary world, the double is an estranged reflection of a person. An image of someone altered according to the rules of specular reflection (enantiomorphism), the double appears as a combination of features that preserve an invariant identity while having been rearranged.
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Applying the concept of right-left symmetry permits an exceptionally broad range of interpretations-the corpse is the double of the living, nonmatter of matter, ugliness of beauty, the criminal of the saintly, the insignificant of the great, and so forth-establishing a wide field of possibilities for artistic modeling. The signifying nature of the artistic text is dual. On the one hand, the text acquires an autonomous existence, independent of the author, and thus becomes a real thing, among the things of the real world. On the other hand, the text continuously reminds us that it is the creation of someone and signifies something. This duality illuminates the play of reality versus fiction in the semantic field that Pushkin characterized by the words "Haa BbIMbICJIOM cie3aMLI
o6oJIbIOCb" 'Brought to tears over an invention.' The rhetorical union of things with the signs of things (collage) in a textual unity produces a doubled effect, simultaneously emphasizing both the conventionality and the absolute authenticity of the artifice. As indications that the text deals with realia (taken from the external world and not the handiwork of the author), documents of indubitable authenticity may be incorporated. For example, topical paintings may be inserted in a film (see Andrey Tarkovsky's 3epKajio[Mirror]). Pushkin, in Ay6poBcKoro (Dubrovsky), presents the documents of a complete, authentic eighteenth-century court case, changing only the proper names. In more complicated instances a factual subtext may be deauthenticated by an impression of authenticity derived from another source. Nonetheless, the function of the authentic subtext within the rhetorical unity of the text is to create the semblance of reality. Mikhail Bulgakov's novel MacTep H MaprapHTa (The Master and Margarita) is constructed of two interwoven autonomous texts. One recounts events unfolding in the Moscow of the author's time, and the other relates events taking place in ancient Jerusalem. The Moscow text uses all the indicators of reality; these chapters, filled with authentic details familiar to the reader, have an everyday flavor and present a direct extension of the reader's contemporary world. The Moscow material is offered as a given primary text and is neutral in tone. By contrast,
the chapters recounting events in Jerusalem consistently maintain the character of a text within a text. If the first text is Bulgakov's creation, the second is created by the novel's heroes. The irreality of the second text is emphasized by metatextual discussions of how it should be composed-for example, this comment: Jesus
"Ha CaMOM aeJie HHIKoraa He 6biIO B )KHBbIX. BOT H HyICHO Ha 3TO-TO rJiaBHbIH cAeiaTb ynop" 'in
fact was never among the living. We cannot place too great an emphasis on this fact' (426). If the tendency of the first text is to prove that it has a real denotatum, the second text demonstratively asserts that its own denotata do not exist. This technique receives a sustained development in the chapters on Jerusalem-first Woland's narrative, then the Master's novel; by these means, the Moscow chapters appear to present a visible reality while the Jerusalem chapters represent a narrative that must be heard or read. The Jerusalem chapters are invariably introduced by the endings of the Moscow chapters, which thus also become beginnings, emphasizing the secondary nature of what follows: "3aroBopHui HerpoMKo,
npHHeM ero aKueHT rnoqeMy-TOnponai:Bce
npocTo: B 6ejIoM nae
. . . B 6ejioM niaiwe
c KpoBaBbIM noa6oeM, mapKaioimei Kasajie. . . BbIIIenj npoKypaTop IIOXOAKOi PHHCKOH
'He spoke softly, and Hiyaen IoHTHHIlHnJaT" therefore his foreign accent was somehow less noticeable. It all happened very simply: In a white robe. .. .' (Here the first chapter ends and the second begins.) 'In a white robe with a bloodred lining, shuffling along like a cavalryman... the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, emerged' (435; first ellipsis in orig.). The chapter "Ka3Hb" ("Punishment")is introduced as Ivan's dream:4 "u eMy CTaJo CHHITbCA, 'TO COnHHue yce
CHHIKaJIocbHaAJbIcoH rFopohi, H 6bijia 3Ta ropa ouenieHa ABOHHbIM oueneHmeM . . . Cojmue JIbcoi Haa CHHMIaJiocb yce rFopoii, H 6biia 3Ta
ouenJIeHHeM"'and he ropa ouernIeHa ABOHHbIM
began to dream that the sun was already sinking over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was encircled by a double cordon . .' (Chapter 15 ends, and chapter 16 begins.) 'The sun was already sinking over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was encircled by a double cordon' (587-88; ellipsis in orig.). Further on, the text on
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tion of somethingthat was itself a reflection. The essentialand most traditionalmeans of combinations is the textuallyencodingrhetorical frame. A normal compositional (thatis, neutral) constructionis based, in part, on the fact that a, TbMa... TbMa, npoKypaTopoM ropo .... co CpeAIH3eMHoro MOpa,HaKpbijia the framingof the text (the frameof a picture, npHImeamaa the bindingof a book or the publisher's inforHeHaBHMHMbMIi npoKypaTopoM ropoa" 'even until the break of day, Margaritawould gladly mation on the back, a singer's coughing before have continuedto rustlethe pages of the note- an aria, tuning of instruments by an orchestra, book, would not tire of glancing through the the words "Now, listen"before an oral narrapages, kissing them, and rereadingthe words tion, and so forth) is extraneousto the text. "Thegloomytwilightemanating fromthe Medi- Locatedoutsidethe text'sboundaries, the frame terraneandarkened the town the procurator warns of the initiation of the text. The frame hated .. ." Yes, gloom . . .' (Chapter 24 ends, begins to intrudeinto the text as the auditor's and chapter 25 begins.) 'The gloomy twilight attentionshifts to informationabout the code. fromthe Mediterranean darkened the Evenmore complicated are cases wherethe text emanating town the procurator hated' (714; ellipses in and its frameare interwoven, so that each both frames and is framed.5 orig.). Once the distinctionbetweenthe real and the Anotherpossibleconstruction is the presentaunreal is established, however, the reader's inertion of one text as an uninterrupted account tia is disturbed by the game of redetermining the whilea secondis introduced into it in fragments, boundaries betweenthesetwo spheres.The most such as citations,references, epigraphs,and the fantasticeventstake place in the Moscowworld like. Presumably the readerunitesthe fragments world into whole texts. Other insertionsof this type (the "real"world),while the "imaginary" of the Master'snovelis constructed to according may be read both as belonging to the text strictrulesof verisimilitude of the everyday.On them and as divergent from it. The surrounding the level at which elementsof the plot [cimeT] more the code of the text insemination [or fragthe allocationof the qualitiesof real ment] appearsuntranslatable interrelate, accordingto the and irreal is the reverse of what it was before. In code of the surroundingtext, the more the of elements metatextual semioticelementsof each are made perceptible. addition, commentary are introduced into the Moscow plot line, albeit Double or multiplecodifications of the entire the scheme: the author text are similarlymultifunctional. We must recrarely, creating following relates his heroes' adventures, and his heroes in ognize the instanceswhere the theaterencodes turn tell the history of Jeshua and Pilate: "3a the day-to-daybehavior of individuals,transKTO CKa3aJI MHOH, IHITaTeJIb! Te6e, qTO HeT Ha forming it into "history,"while a "historical BeTeHacToAiiieH,sepHoH, BseHO JIno6rBH?"'Get event"is considered a naturalsubjectfor paintthee behind me, reader! Who told you that true ing.6And in some cases, when distant and deeternallove does not exist on earth?'(632). pendent untranslatable codes are brought the rhetorical-semiotic momentis more Finally,the story withinthe story, in its ideo- together, offers the stressed. philosophicalimplications, Bulgakov Thus, in the 1950s,duringthe heavily not only to distancerealitythrough height of the excitementover neorealismand opportunity La terratrema'TheEarthTremliteraryplay (as Jan Potocki, for example,does afterproducing in Talesfrom the Saragossa Manuscript)but also, Visconti bles,' demonstrativelypromulgated in a more profound sense, to transcend the Senso through the operatic code. As the basic of the ephemeralreal generalcode of two differentstrata,he presents nitty-grittysuperficiality world and to ascendto the authenticessenceof framesin whicha livingactor(Franz)is mounted world mystery. Specularity exists between the insidea Renaissance fresco.
pa3rFJISI,bIBaTb HX H leJIOBaTb H nepemHTbIBaTb cIosBa:-TbMa, npHiimeamaa co CpeJHI3eMHOrO MOpA, HaKpbIJia HeHaBHMHMbIH
Jerusalem is introduced as the Master's composition: "XOTS6bI Ao caMoro paccBeTa, MorJia MaprapHTa imejecTeTb JICTaMH TeTpagei,
two texts, but whatever appears to be a real object turns out to be only the deformed reflec-
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Culture in its entirety may be considered a text -a complexly structured text, divided into a hierarchy of intricately interconnected texts within texts. To the extent that the word text is etymologically linked to weaving, the term's original sense has been restored.
dreaming of him dying. The repetition of the first stanza as the last creates a space that can be represented as a Mobius strip, one side of which signifies the dream and the other reality. 5On figures of interweaving see Shubnikov and Kopchik 17-18. 6See Lotman; Francastel 211-38.
Works Cited Notes
1See the work of M, Drozda, dedicated to the problem of the European avant-garde. 2The characters in Hamlet watching the theatricality of the comedians suspend their disbelief and thus become transformed into an extratheatrical public. This explains their transition into prose speech and emphasizes Hamlet's obscene remarks, which recall the comments of the audience in Shakespeare's time. In fact, there emerges not only a theater within the theater but also an audience within the audience. To convey this effect adequately to modern theatergoers, the hero at that moment should remove his makeup and sit with them, so that the stage is yielded to the comedians playing The Mouse-trap and his remarks seem to come from the public. 3Derzhavin writes: "KapTHHbI B 3epKanax AbImarm,/ MycCa, MpaMop H 4ap()op . . ." 'Paintings in mirrors breathed, / Musia, marble, and porcelain . . .' (213). 4A dream inside a novella is a traditional kind of text within a text. Greater complexity is apparent in Lermontov's "COH"("Dream"; "BrnojnHeBHbIni aap B aoJIHHe A[arecTaHa.. ." 'In the noonday heat in the distance of Dagestan ...'), where the dying hero sees in his dream the heroine Bulgakov, Mikhail. MacTepi MaprapHTa[The Master and Margarita]. PoMaHbI: Bejna rsapmWa-TeaTpaJTbHbIH H MaprapHTa[Novels: White Guard,A poMaH-MacTep Theatrical Novel, The Master and Margarita]. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia, 1973. Derzhavin, Gavriil R. "BeJmMoxca" [A Grandee]. CTHxoTBopeHHa [Verses].Leningrad:Sovetskii pisatel', 1957. 210-18. Francastel, Pierre. La realit figurative. Gonthier, 1965. Gachev, Georgy. )KX3Hb xyoaoecTBcHHoro co3HaHHa: no HCTOPHH o6pa3a [The Life of Artistic ConOqepKH sciousness: Observations on the History of the Image]. Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1981. no ceMHOTHKe Lotman, Iurii. CTaTbH KyJIbTypbI i THHnoIorHH [Essays on Semiotics and the Typology of Culture]. Tallinn: Aleksandra, 1992. Vol. 2 of M36paHHbIe CTaTbH B TpeX TOMaX [Collected Essays in Three Volumes]. B HayKe Shubnikov, A. V., and V. A. Kopchik. CHMMeTpAIS H HCKyccTBe [Symmetry in Science and Art]. 1972.
Translated by Jerry Leo and Amy Mandelker Graduate Center City Universityof New York
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Yuy M. Lotman
The
Text
within
the
Text
YUR Y M. LOTMAN (192293) was professor of Russian literature at Tartu State University and the leading figure in the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics, as well as an honorary member of the Modern Language Association. He is best known for his work on Pushkin, structuralism, and the semiotics of Russian culture. He was the author of fourteen books, including The
Translators'note. Thefirstfew pages of this essay are not printed here. In this omitted portion YuryLotman distinguishes between two major functions of texts. The first function is the adequate transmission of information, and the second is the generation of new meanings. The most desirable conditionfor the first function is the complete overlap of codes betweensenders and receiversof messages. Since this situation is virtually impossible, an intermediary is developed, which Lotman terms the "text-code." The text-code, of which the Bible is the most obvious example, serves an interpretive and prescriptive role in the transmissionof texts. The traditional linguistic, structuralapproach to analyzing texts, exemplified by VladimirPropp's Morphology of the Folktale, often results in the constructionof a text-code. The linguistic, structuralapproachpresupposes a closed set or system whose elements can produce an infinite series of texts. In contrast, the secondfunction of texts suggests an immanent, literary approach that attempts to situate texts within the confluence of their contexts, antecedents, and descendants. A text analyzed in its second function will be noted for the heterogeneity of its constituentelements, some of whichform "texts within texts." In the remainder of this essay, presented here in its entirety except for one elision, Lotman develops this approach, which he associates with the work of Mikhail Bakhtin.
of the ArtisticText, Structure Semiotics of Film, and The Universeof the Mind, and of
hundredsof articles.
IS a mechanism constituting a system of heterogeneous semiotic spaces, in whose continuum the message [associated with the first textual function] circulates. We do not perceive this message to be the manifestation of a single language: a minimum of two languages is required to create it. No text of the type I am interested in considering here can be adequately describedfrom the perspectiveof a single language. Either we may speak of continuous encoding by means of a double code-in which case,
"TheText withinthe Text" is a translationof "TeKc B TeKcTe, " whichappearsin Tpy,bi no 3HaKOBbIM CHCTeMaM (14 [1981]. 3-19), and is published here with permission.
ATEXT
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The Text withinthe Text
readers perceive one or the other organization, depending on their viewpoints-or we may note the combination of general codifications, beginning with a dominant code and continuing with local coding at the second, the third, and further degrees. Under the latter conditions basic processes of codification that are usually unconscious and, as a result, imperceptible emerge in the sphere of structural consciousness and become significant at the conscious level. Thus, in Tolstoy's example the purity of a glass of water becomes perceptible only because of the detritus and chips that fall into the glass: the detritus is the additional material included in the text that elicits the basic underlying code-"purity"from the sphere of the structural unconscious. The play with meaning that arises in the text, the slippage between the various kinds of structural regularities, endows the text with greater semantic potential than have texts codified by means of a single, separate language. Therefore, in its second function the text is not a passive container, a mere receptacle for content introduced into it from the outside, but has itself become a generator of further texts. The process of generation not only expands structures but also stimulates their interaction. The interaction of the structures in the closed [3aMKHyTbI] world of the text extends to become an effective mechanism in the semiotics of a culture. A text of this kind is always richer than any individual language and is not automatically deducible from a single language. This type of text is a semiotic space within which languages interact, interfere with one another, and organize themselves hierarchically. If Propp's method is oriented toward the elaboration of a single text-code underlying a plurality of texts-which are presented as a bundle of variants of a single text-then Bakhtin's method, beginning with MapKCH3MH (|I13bIKa (Marxism and the Philosophy of JIOcoHl4)I Language), is the opposite: not only is a single text composed of various subtexts but, more to the point, the subtexts are mutually untranslatable. The text is thus revealed to be internally in conflict. In Propp's description the text tends toward panchronic equilibrium: an examination
of narrative texts makes clear that, in essence, there is no movement in them, only an oscillation around some homeostatic norm (equilibrium is violated and then reestablished). In Bakhtin's analysis inevitable action, change, and destruction are latent even in the stasis of the text. Therefore, there is a plot [ciioxeT] even in instances that would appear to be far removed from the problems of plot [cioweT].The natural arena for exploring the text is the folktale for Propp and the novel and the drama for Bakhtin .... When a text interacts with a heterogeneous consciousness, new meanings are generated, and as a result the text's immanent structure is reorganized. There are a finite number of possibilities for such restructurations [perestroiki, nepecTpoHKH], and this condition limits the life of any text over the centuries and also delimits of the restructuration[perestroika,nepecTpoHKa] a monument when cultural contexts change, as well as restricting the arbitrary imposition of meanings that lack formal means of expression. Pragmatic links can materialize in peripheral or automatic structures but cannot introduce into a text codes that are principally absent from it. However, the destruction of texts and their conversion into material for the creation of new, derivative texts-from the construction of medieval buildings on the foundations of antique ruins to the creation of contemporary plays "according to the motifs" of Shakespeare -are also a part of the process of culture. Nevertheless, the pragmatic impulse cannot be coerced for different kinds of reinterpretations of the text; this principle con[nepeocMblcJIeHHa] stitutes the active aspect of textual functioning itself. As a generator of meaning, as a thinking mechanism capable of working, the text needs an interlocutor. This requirement reveals the profoundly dialogic nature of consciousness. To function, a consciousness requires another consciousness-the text within the text, the culture within the culture. The introduction of an external text into the immanent world of another text has far-reaching consequences. The external text is transformed in the structural field of the other text's meaning, and a new message is created.
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The transformation is made unpredictable by the complexity of the components participating in the textual interaction and by the multiplicity of their levels. However, the transformation occurs not only within the entering text; the entire semiotic situation inside the other text is also changed. The introduction of an untranslatable, alien semiosis excites the "mother" text: attention shifts from the message to the language as such and discovers the manifest nonhomogeneous codification of the mother text. In these conditions, the various subtexts that constitute the mother text begin to differentiate and transform themselves according to the new, alien laws, producing new information. Removed from semiotic equilibrium, a text becomes capable of self-development. The powerful external textual eruptions in a culture conceived of as a huge text not only lead the culture to adapt outside messages and to introduce them into its memory but also stimulate the culture's selfdevelopment, with unpredictable results. Let us consider two examples of this process. The well-being of a child's intellectual apparatus in its initial state of development does not guarantee that the child's consciousness will function normally. The child must meet others and be exposed to outside texts that stimulate its intellectual development. A related example is the "accelerated development" of a culture (Gachev). A well-established, archaic culture is capable of remaining in a state of cyclic enclosure and balanced immobility for an extraordinarily long time. The irruption of external texts into the sphere of such a culture activates the mechanisms of self-development. The greater the rupture and the more difficult it is to decipher the intruding texts by recourse to the codes of the mother text, the more dynamic will be the ultimate condition of the culture. Comparative study of the semantics of the different "cultural explosions" in world history reveals the simplistic nature of the concepts established by Voltaire in his Essai sur les mours et l'esprit des nations 'Essay on the Customs and Spirit of Peoples' and by Condorcet in his Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain 'Outline of a Historical Picture of
the Progress of Human Reason' and further developed by Hegel in his idea of the unified path of the world spirit. From these points of view, world cultures in all their diversity can be reduced either to different stages in the evolution of a single universal reign of culture or to "errors" that lead the mind into wilderness. In the light of this observation, it seems natural that "advanced" cultures should view "backward" cultures as somewhat deficient, and the "backward" culture's aspiration to catch up with the "advanced" culture and assimilate into it is also comprehensible. "Accelerated development" reduces the variety and complexity of world civilization and, as a result, diminishes it to a monotonal Text; in other words, the process is one of informational degradation. However, this hypothesis is not confirmed by empirical reality: such a leveling does not take place in the course of the cultural explosions in world history. What does occur are processes that are diametrically opposed to each other. The dynamic condition of semiotic systems presents a curious particularity. While a system is developing gradually, it incorporates neighboring texts that are easily translatable into its language. In moments of cultural (or, in general, semiotic) explosion, the texts incorporated are more distant and are untranslatable (or incomprehensible) from the point of view of the system. In these moments the more complex culture does not always play the role of stimulus for the more archaic one; the opposite tendency is also possible. Thus in the twentieth century texts from archaic and primitive cultures powerfully erupted into European civilization, which consequently displayed increasing dynamic excitation. It is precisely the differences among cultural potentials, the difficulties in deciphering texts by means of languages of existing cultures, that are essential to bringing about such transformations. At the beginning of our era, for example, during the pagan adoption of Christianity, foreign texts connected with Christian culture were incorporated into a textual world that found them inaccessible because of their cultural complexity. For the medieval civilizations of the Mediterranean, however, the same texts were difficult to
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The Text withinthe Text
grasp because the texts seemed primitive. In each case the result was similar: the texts provoked a powerful cultural explosion that ruptured a world's infantile or senile stasis and inaugurated a state of dynamism. Earlier we emphasized the typological difference between two ontological orientations: one identifies a multitude of texts with a single Text, and the other transcribes the problem of the diversity of codes within the text's borders, so that the Text's stratification into texts becomes an internal law. But this problem can also be examined in its pragmatic aspect. Detailed examination of any civilization will reveal texts of great complexity. Thus the auditor's pragmatic disposition contributes to whether a text's Proppian or Bakhtinian aspect is activated. This question is closely connected to the problem of the text's relation to its cultural context. Culture is not a chaotic collocation of texts but a complex, hierarchical functioning system. Every text inevitably appears in at least two perspectives, two types of contexts, opposed on the axis homogeneity-nonhomogeneity. Seen in relation to other texts, the text seems homogeneous with them, while from the other viewpoint, outside the system, it appears alien and incomprehensible. In the first case the text is located on the syntagmatic axis, in the second on the rhetorical axis. A rhetorical effect occurs when one text is juxtaposed with another that is semiotically nonhomogeneous with it. Meaning is formed as much by the interaction between semiotically heterogeneous, mutually untranslatable layers of the text as by the complex conflicts of meaning between the text and its context. Just as the artistic text tends toward polyglotism, so its artistic and general cultural contexts cannot be monologic. Because any cultural context is complex, its constitutive texts must be examined equally on the syntagmatic and on the rhetorical axes. It is the juxtaposition of these axes that brings the semiotic structure of unconscious mechanisms into the sphere of conscious semiotic creation. The problem of the diverse juxtapositions of heterogeneous texts posed accurately in the art and culture of the twentieth century is, in reality, one of the most ancient issues at the center of the theme "the text within
the text."1 Neo-rhetoric, of intensifying interest in contemporary scholarship, is a related area of investigation. The text within the text is a specific rhetorical construction in which the determining factor in the author's construction of the text and in the reader's reception of it is the differentialcodification of various parts of the text. The transition from a semiotic system of textual comprehension to a system of internal structural boundaries constitutes the basis for the generation of meaning. This condition, above all, intensifies the moment of play in the text: from an alternative mode of codification the text acquires features of a more sophisticated conventionality, and the text's ludic character is accentuated-its ironic, parodic, theatrical, and other such meanings. Simultaneously, the role of the text's boundaries is highlighted-both the external boundaries separating the text from the nontext and the internal ones demarcating different levels of codification. The boundaries are mobile: shifts toward one in the text's orientation [ycTaHoBKa] or another code result in changes in the boundaries' structures as well. For example, proceeding from the well-established tradition that defines the pedestal of the sculpture or the frame of the painting as nontext, the art of the baroque epoch introduces these components into the text, converting the pedestal into a stone, for instance, and by means of plot [cioxeTHo] conjoining it with a figure into a single composition. Including the pedestal or frame in the text intensifies the ludic moment because the conventionality of these elements also keeps them excluded, distinct from what is inherent in the basic text. When the figures of a baroque sculpture climb on the pedestal or descend from it or when figures in a painting leap down from the frame, the effect is to emphasize rather than to obscure the fact that one element belongs to material reality while the other belongs to artistic reality. A similar play with observers' perceptions of alternative realities occurs when theatrical action descends from the stage into the real, everyday space of the auditorium. Play between the real and the conventional is an integral part of any occurrence of a text within
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a text. In the simplest occurrence the included section is encoded in the same way as the remaining text and thus is doubly coded. Examples are a painting within a painting, a play within a play, a film within a film, and a novel within a novel. The delineated section is doubly encoded in accordance with identifiable artistic conventions, and therefore it encourages the perception of the remaining space of the text as real. Thus Hamlet offers not merely a text within a text but also Hamlet within Hamlet. The play performed on Hamlet's initiative reiterates in a markedly conventional manner the play composed by Shakespeare: first the pantomime, then the distinctly conventional rhymed monologues, interrupted by the prosaic remarks of the audience-Hamlet, the king, the queen, and Ophelia. The conventionality of Hamlet's play emphasizes the reality of Shakespeare's.2 To accentuate this response in the reader, Shakespeare introduced metatextual elements: the director of the play appears before us on the stage. In a scene anticipating Federico Fellini's 8/2, Hamlet issues instructions to the actors, directing their performance. Shakespeare thus stages not only a play but, more important, a theatrical rehearsal. Duplication is the most simple aspect of the coded organization and the structural constructions of consciousness. It is no accident that myths of the genesis of the arts share a basis in duplication: rhythm from the echo, painting from the use of coal to outline shadows on rock, and so forth. In painting and cinematography the mirror is the most common instrument for creating localized subtexts by duplicating patterns. It is essential to recognize, however, that duplication by means of a mirror is almost never simple replication. Rather, the right-left axis is reversed, or, even more frequently, a perpendicular axis is superimposed on the canvas or screen, creating a dimension or viewpoint outside the surface. In Velazquez's painting Venus and Cupid, besides the viewpoint of the observer, who sees Venus from behind, an additional perspective is added, directed on Venus's face, visible in the depths of the mirror. In Jan van Eyck's Portrait of the Banker Arnolfiniand His Wife the effect is even more complicated: the mirror hang-
ing in the background reflects from behind the backs of Arnolfini and his wife (who face the viewer) and also shows the guests they are greeting, who enter from the side of the viewer's perspective. From the depths of the mirror a gaze is projected that is perpendicular to the canvas (meeting the gaze of the viewer) and that traverses the boundaries of the painting's actual space. Mirrors in baroque interiors often played the same role, refracting the architectural space by creating an illusory infinity: the reflection of a mirror in a mirror, the duplication of space through the reflection of a painting in mirrors,3 or the fragmentation of internal and external boundaries through the reflection of windows in mirrors. The mirror can fulfill another function, however. In duplicating, the mirror deforms, and thus it reveals how its representation, apparently natural, is in fact a projection using a specific modeling language. The mirror in van Eyck's painting is convex (see the portrait of Hans Burgkmayr and his wife painted by Lucas Furtenagle, in which the wife holds a convex mirror almost at a right angle to the surface of the canvas, acutely deforming the reflections): Arnolfini and his wife are not only shown from the front and the back but also projected onto both spherical and flat surfaces. In Luchino Visconti's film Senso (The Wanton Countess) the heroine, immobile and passionless, is juxtaposed to her dynamic reflection in a mirror. See also the fragmenting effect of reflection in a broken mirror in two other films, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le corbeau (The Raven) and Marcel Carne's Le jour se leve (Daybreak). The widespread literary mythology of reflections in mirrors and of a world "through the looking glass" can be seen as evolving from archaic beliefs about mirrors as windows into a world beyond. A literary equivalent of the mirror motif is the theme of the double. Just as the world through the looking glass is an estranged model of the ordinary world, the double is an estranged reflection of a person. An image of someone altered according to the rules of specular reflection (enantiomorphism), the double appears as a combination of features that preserve an invariant identity while having been rearranged.
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7lheText withinthe Text
Applying the concept of right-left symmetry permits an exceptionally broad range of interpretations-the corpse is the double of the living, nonmatter of matter, ugliness of beauty, the criminal of the saintly, the insignificant of the great, and so forth-establishing a wide field of possibilities for artistic modeling. The signifying nature of the artistic text is dual. On the one hand, the text acquires an autonomous existence, independent of the author, and thus becomes a real thing, among the things of the real world. On the other hand, the text continuously reminds us that it is the creation of someone and signifies something. This duality illuminates the play of reality versus fiction in the semantic field that Pushkin characterized by the words "Haa BbIMbICJIOM cie3aMLI
o6oJIbIOCb" 'Brought to tears over an invention.' The rhetorical union of things with the signs of things (collage) in a textual unity produces a doubled effect, simultaneously emphasizing both the conventionality and the absolute authenticity of the artifice. As indications that the text deals with realia (taken from the external world and not the handiwork of the author), documents of indubitable authenticity may be incorporated. For example, topical paintings may be inserted in a film (see Andrey Tarkovsky's 3epKajio[Mirror]). Pushkin, in Ay6poBcKoro (Dubrovsky), presents the documents of a complete, authentic eighteenth-century court case, changing only the proper names. In more complicated instances a factual subtext may be deauthenticated by an impression of authenticity derived from another source. Nonetheless, the function of the authentic subtext within the rhetorical unity of the text is to create the semblance of reality. Mikhail Bulgakov's novel MacTep H MaprapHTa (The Master and Margarita) is constructed of two interwoven autonomous texts. One recounts events unfolding in the Moscow of the author's time, and the other relates events taking place in ancient Jerusalem. The Moscow text uses all the indicators of reality; these chapters, filled with authentic details familiar to the reader, have an everyday flavor and present a direct extension of the reader's contemporary world. The Moscow material is offered as a given primary text and is neutral in tone. By contrast,
the chapters recounting events in Jerusalem consistently maintain the character of a text within a text. If the first text is Bulgakov's creation, the second is created by the novel's heroes. The irreality of the second text is emphasized by metatextual discussions of how it should be composed-for example, this comment: Jesus
"Ha CaMOM aeJie HHIKoraa He 6biIO B )KHBbIX. BOT H HyICHO Ha 3TO-TO rJiaBHbIH cAeiaTb ynop" 'in
fact was never among the living. We cannot place too great an emphasis on this fact' (426). If the tendency of the first text is to prove that it has a real denotatum, the second text demonstratively asserts that its own denotata do not exist. This technique receives a sustained development in the chapters on Jerusalem-first Woland's narrative, then the Master's novel; by these means, the Moscow chapters appear to present a visible reality while the Jerusalem chapters represent a narrative that must be heard or read. The Jerusalem chapters are invariably introduced by the endings of the Moscow chapters, which thus also become beginnings, emphasizing the secondary nature of what follows: "3aroBopHui HerpoMKo,
npHHeM ero aKueHT rnoqeMy-TOnponai:Bce
npocTo: B 6ejIoM nae
. . . B 6ejioM niaiwe
c KpoBaBbIM noa6oeM, mapKaioimei Kasajie. . . BbIIIenj npoKypaTop IIOXOAKOi PHHCKOH
'He spoke softly, and Hiyaen IoHTHHIlHnJaT" therefore his foreign accent was somehow less noticeable. It all happened very simply: In a white robe. .. .' (Here the first chapter ends and the second begins.) 'In a white robe with a bloodred lining, shuffling along like a cavalryman... the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, emerged' (435; first ellipsis in orig.). The chapter "Ka3Hb" ("Punishment")is introduced as Ivan's dream:4 "u eMy CTaJo CHHITbCA, 'TO COnHHue yce
CHHIKaJIocbHaAJbIcoH rFopohi, H 6bijia 3Ta ropa ouenieHa ABOHHbIM oueneHmeM . . . Cojmue JIbcoi Haa CHHMIaJiocb yce rFopoii, H 6biia 3Ta
ouenJIeHHeM"'and he ropa ouernIeHa ABOHHbIM
began to dream that the sun was already sinking over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was encircled by a double cordon . .' (Chapter 15 ends, and chapter 16 begins.) 'The sun was already sinking over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was encircled by a double cordon' (587-88; ellipsis in orig.). Further on, the text on
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tion of somethingthat was itself a reflection. The essentialand most traditionalmeans of combinations is the textuallyencodingrhetorical frame. A normal compositional (thatis, neutral) constructionis based, in part, on the fact that a, TbMa... TbMa, npoKypaTopoM ropo .... co CpeAIH3eMHoro MOpa,HaKpbijia the framingof the text (the frameof a picture, npHImeamaa the bindingof a book or the publisher's inforHeHaBHMHMbMIi npoKypaTopoM ropoa" 'even until the break of day, Margaritawould gladly mation on the back, a singer's coughing before have continuedto rustlethe pages of the note- an aria, tuning of instruments by an orchestra, book, would not tire of glancing through the the words "Now, listen"before an oral narrapages, kissing them, and rereadingthe words tion, and so forth) is extraneousto the text. "Thegloomytwilightemanating fromthe Medi- Locatedoutsidethe text'sboundaries, the frame terraneandarkened the town the procurator warns of the initiation of the text. The frame hated .. ." Yes, gloom . . .' (Chapter 24 ends, begins to intrudeinto the text as the auditor's and chapter 25 begins.) 'The gloomy twilight attentionshifts to informationabout the code. fromthe Mediterranean darkened the Evenmore complicated are cases wherethe text emanating town the procurator hated' (714; ellipses in and its frameare interwoven, so that each both frames and is framed.5 orig.). Once the distinctionbetweenthe real and the Anotherpossibleconstruction is the presentaunreal is established, however, the reader's inertion of one text as an uninterrupted account tia is disturbed by the game of redetermining the whilea secondis introduced into it in fragments, boundaries betweenthesetwo spheres.The most such as citations,references, epigraphs,and the fantasticeventstake place in the Moscowworld like. Presumably the readerunitesthe fragments world into whole texts. Other insertionsof this type (the "real"world),while the "imaginary" of the Master'snovelis constructed to according may be read both as belonging to the text strictrulesof verisimilitude of the everyday.On them and as divergent from it. The surrounding the level at which elementsof the plot [cimeT] more the code of the text insemination [or fragthe allocationof the qualitiesof real ment] appearsuntranslatable interrelate, accordingto the and irreal is the reverse of what it was before. In code of the surroundingtext, the more the of elements metatextual semioticelementsof each are made perceptible. addition, commentary are introduced into the Moscow plot line, albeit Double or multiplecodifications of the entire the scheme: the author text are similarlymultifunctional. We must recrarely, creating following relates his heroes' adventures, and his heroes in ognize the instanceswhere the theaterencodes turn tell the history of Jeshua and Pilate: "3a the day-to-daybehavior of individuals,transKTO CKa3aJI MHOH, IHITaTeJIb! Te6e, qTO HeT Ha forming it into "history,"while a "historical BeTeHacToAiiieH,sepHoH, BseHO JIno6rBH?"'Get event"is considered a naturalsubjectfor paintthee behind me, reader! Who told you that true ing.6And in some cases, when distant and deeternallove does not exist on earth?'(632). pendent untranslatable codes are brought the rhetorical-semiotic momentis more Finally,the story withinthe story, in its ideo- together, offers the stressed. philosophicalimplications, Bulgakov Thus, in the 1950s,duringthe heavily not only to distancerealitythrough height of the excitementover neorealismand opportunity La terratrema'TheEarthTremliteraryplay (as Jan Potocki, for example,does afterproducing in Talesfrom the Saragossa Manuscript)but also, Visconti bles,' demonstrativelypromulgated in a more profound sense, to transcend the Senso through the operatic code. As the basic of the ephemeralreal generalcode of two differentstrata,he presents nitty-grittysuperficiality world and to ascendto the authenticessenceof framesin whicha livingactor(Franz)is mounted world mystery. Specularity exists between the insidea Renaissance fresco.
pa3rFJISI,bIBaTb HX H leJIOBaTb H nepemHTbIBaTb cIosBa:-TbMa, npHiimeamaa co CpeJHI3eMHOrO MOpA, HaKpbIJia HeHaBHMHMbIH
Jerusalem is introduced as the Master's composition: "XOTS6bI Ao caMoro paccBeTa, MorJia MaprapHTa imejecTeTb JICTaMH TeTpagei,
two texts, but whatever appears to be a real object turns out to be only the deformed reflec-
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Culture in its entirety may be considered a text -a complexly structured text, divided into a hierarchy of intricately interconnected texts within texts. To the extent that the word text is etymologically linked to weaving, the term's original sense has been restored.
dreaming of him dying. The repetition of the first stanza as the last creates a space that can be represented as a Mobius strip, one side of which signifies the dream and the other reality. 5On figures of interweaving see Shubnikov and Kopchik 17-18. 6See Lotman; Francastel 211-38.
Works Cited Notes
1See the work of M, Drozda, dedicated to the problem of the European avant-garde. 2The characters in Hamlet watching the theatricality of the comedians suspend their disbelief and thus become transformed into an extratheatrical public. This explains their transition into prose speech and emphasizes Hamlet's obscene remarks, which recall the comments of the audience in Shakespeare's time. In fact, there emerges not only a theater within the theater but also an audience within the audience. To convey this effect adequately to modern theatergoers, the hero at that moment should remove his makeup and sit with them, so that the stage is yielded to the comedians playing The Mouse-trap and his remarks seem to come from the public. 3Derzhavin writes: "KapTHHbI B 3epKanax AbImarm,/ MycCa, MpaMop H 4ap()op . . ." 'Paintings in mirrors breathed, / Musia, marble, and porcelain . . .' (213). 4A dream inside a novella is a traditional kind of text within a text. Greater complexity is apparent in Lermontov's "COH"("Dream"; "BrnojnHeBHbIni aap B aoJIHHe A[arecTaHa.. ." 'In the noonday heat in the distance of Dagestan ...'), where the dying hero sees in his dream the heroine Bulgakov, Mikhail. MacTepi MaprapHTa[The Master and Margarita]. PoMaHbI: Bejna rsapmWa-TeaTpaJTbHbIH H MaprapHTa[Novels: White Guard,A poMaH-MacTep Theatrical Novel, The Master and Margarita]. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia, 1973. Derzhavin, Gavriil R. "BeJmMoxca" [A Grandee]. CTHxoTBopeHHa [Verses].Leningrad:Sovetskii pisatel', 1957. 210-18. Francastel, Pierre. La realit figurative. Gonthier, 1965. Gachev, Georgy. )KX3Hb xyoaoecTBcHHoro co3HaHHa: no HCTOPHH o6pa3a [The Life of Artistic ConOqepKH sciousness: Observations on the History of the Image]. Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1981. no ceMHOTHKe Lotman, Iurii. CTaTbH KyJIbTypbI i THHnoIorHH [Essays on Semiotics and the Typology of Culture]. Tallinn: Aleksandra, 1992. Vol. 2 of M36paHHbIe CTaTbH B TpeX TOMaX [Collected Essays in Three Volumes]. B HayKe Shubnikov, A. V., and V. A. Kopchik. CHMMeTpAIS H HCKyccTBe [Symmetry in Science and Art]. 1972.
Translated by Jerry Leo and Amy Mandelker Graduate Center City Universityof New York
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