Yuri Lotman is a distinguished professor, linguist and cultural philosopher, whose work has been translated into pan-European languages. The scientist’s works are voluminous and contain 800 popular science publications and novels.
Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman
A monograph on Pushkin occupies a special position in the works of Yu. M. Lotman. For these works, in 1993 Lotman was awarded the Pushkin Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the study "A. S. Pushkin. The Biography of a Writer", which is the standard of Pushkinism, the scientist shows the stages of development of the poet as a person and creator, and writes his life into the history of Russia and Europe. He also builds Pushkin’s biography as an original and completed highly artistic creation.
About the writer
In February 1922, Yuri Lotman was born in Petrograd in 1922. In 1939 he was enrolled in the faculty of Leningrad University - the choice of a specialty was largely influenced by the environment of his older sister. Well-known teachers and academics - Gukovsky, Orlov, Azadovsky, Tolstoy taught him science at the philology department, and Lotman Yu. M. created the first term paper at Propp. In October 1940, Lotman joined the army, and when the Second World War broke out, Lotman's artillery regiment was transferred to the front. Yuri Mikhailovich went through the war - four years later he met a victory in Berlin.
Post-war time
In 1946, after demobilization, Lotman returned to university studies. In 1950, he received a red diploma in philology, was unable to get a postgraduate study, so he began to teach at the Tartu Pedagogical Institute at the Faculty of Russian Language and Literature, and then headed the department of the educational institution.
In 1952 he defended his candidacy on the poetic relationship of Karamzin and Radishchev. In 1954 he became an assistant professor at the University of Tartu. Then there was the defense of a doctoral dissertation on "Ways of development of Russian literature of the pre-Decembrist period" and obtaining the title of professor. After this, for a long time, the writer was the head of the department of Russian literature.
Despite serious illness and blindness, Yuri Mikhailovich was engaged in science until the end of his life. In 1992, Lotman's last work, Culture and Explosion, on I. Prigogine's ideas on the laws of random processes was published. In 1993, on October 28, the days and biography of the writer ended in Tartu.
Lotman's books
A large proportion of Lotman's scientific research was devoted to the development of the works of A.S. Pushkin. The crown of the scientist’s work was "Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin's novel" Eugene Onegin. Commentary "and" A. S. Pushkin. Biography of the writer. " The professor’s research area also included semiology and structuralism. The scientist's research in this area is recognized by the international community, and he is one of the founders of literary structuralism. Lotman's first articles on these topics were published in the 1960s. The most popular and significant of the publications were: "Structure of a literary text", "Analysis of a poetic text", "Semiotics of cinema and problems of cinema aesthetics".
Pushkin's biography from Lotman
Lotman is everywhere with Pushkin: Yuri Mikhailovich described and sketched his main character everywhere - on the margins of texts of scientific lectures and paper envelopes. Pushkin’s biography was commissioned to write to the Leningrad publishing house Enlightenment. The first circulation was 600 thousand units, then millions of publications have already gone.
The work contains the works of Yu. M. Lotman about the life and work of A. S. Pushkin. The book is divided into four parts, the first is a biography of a Russian poet, the second is publications and analysis, the third is notes, reviews, ratings and reports on the poet’s creative process, the fourth part is given to the book “Eugene Onegin”, and Lotman’s popular “Comment” to the eternal work of Pushkin.
The preface was written by the popular linguist Yegorov, who for many years was a close friend of Yu. M Lotman, and tells the story of the professor’s life and his analysis of Pushkin’s works. The publication is intended for linguists, teachers and students of universities and schools and for people interested in Pushkin's creations.
Summary: "A. S. Pushkin"
Consider the summary of "Pushkin" Lotman - the third book of Yuri Mikhailovich - Pushkin's biography. A writer in a space of twelve printed pages outlined a very large amount of information.
The work included in an acceptable amount, without excess, a decent number of facts from the life of Pushkin and the events of that time. At the same time, the narrative concludes descriptions and gives assessments to people from the poet’s circle of friends: relatives, lyceum organizers, senior comrades — Chaadaev, Nikolai Turgenev and many other people. Cities and houses, writing and living customs, economic processes and spiritual breaks are outlined.
This turned out to be entertaining in itself, one can only admire the erudition of the writer, who knows much more than he presents on paper. But only erudition in our time is not easy to hit. The main significance of Lotkin’s “Pushkin”, as well as the interpretations of “Eugene Onegin,” is the interpretation of events and their construction in a certain construction.
Historicism works
Lotman's "Pushkin" is saturated with historicity. Yuri Mikhailovich, adhering to the custom of the 18th century, applies large letters for important and significant representations: History, Culture, Home, Power, Freedom. In imitation of this technique, it would be possible to talk about the primacy of Historicism in the story: Pushkin's biography is included in the great History, European and Russian, which, in turn, predetermined the growth of conceptual, moral, poetic norms, acted on facts, future and natures.
It is interesting that the preface to Lotman’s “Pushkin” was not given to the interpretation of the method with which the writer begins his work, not to a polemic with his predecessors and not to the story of Pushkin’s ancestors, but to the all-historical story about Russia and Europe of the twenty-fifths of the 19th century, a brief description of the main qualities of that period, World War 1812 and Decembrism.
The whole work is permeated with historicity: this is noticeable in the image of people, facts, romance, life innovations. The historical awareness of the method makes it possible to explain the specifics of Pushkin's actions, as well as the identity of certain mysterious areas of biography and the creative process. Lotman’s book “Pushkin” satirically solves a long-standing polemic of critics about the object of Pushkin’s “secret” and “unrequited” love, which was touched upon in the verses and letters of the time of the southern exile. The work is intelligently motivated by worldly and writer's hoax, carried out by Pushkin in accordance with the romantic rules.
Pushkin's work
Pushkin’s works of the final period of his life are one of the stages of the poetic path and events of Russian literature. Actually, at this time, the poetic work of A.S. Pushkin reached development and depth. The works of this time predicted the paths of Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and have survived to this day as unique creations.
The extraordinary fullness of thoughts, laconicism of works with fundamental ideas make Pushkin's folklore of this period an entirely unique phenomenon of world literature. At the Pushkin holiday in 1880, Ostrovsky in his “Drinking Word about Pushkin” noted that the reader of Alexander Sergeyevich was wise, not noticing “his mental enrichment”.
Ostrovsky’s in-depth idea combines the result of reasoning and explains how to think freely: “Pushkin was admired and smarter, admired and smarter.” The poet did not give a final, motionless, but a bright and dynamic idea. Here is one of the classification properties of late folklore. The study of facts from the life of Pushkin of the last period is complicated by the fact that many ideas were unfinished.
Method of opposites
Adherence to the studied method of opposites, other oppositions important for the poet: dead - living, inhuman - human, motionless - mobile in different combinations, and the likelihood of moving the author's judgment increase the potential of interpretations and reviews, introducing an evaluation measure.
It is worth imagining Pushkin, observing at the celebration of the lyceum anniversary on October 19, 1828, that Yakovlev, the clowner, very similarly represented the St. Petersburg flood, represented the wax person, in other words, the moving statue of Peter, in order to comprehend the likelihood of the tricky arrangement of the comedic and tragic in the field of this theory.
Pushkin’s oppositely changing poetics predetermined the realism of poetic works and the depth of ideas that still allow him to be seen in him as a talented painter and deepest philosopher.
Research on Pushkin
“The sun of Russian poetry”, a genius, “our all” - in the school’s full-time program, the writer was erected on a pedestal, put into practically celestial life and destroyed the appearance of a real person.
But in fact, the poet’s biography is not exclusively Boldinsky autumn, a duel and early death at thirty-seven years. This, again, is a string of inventions, an extensive sphere of friendly contacts, the formation of a radically newest poetic manner, a large number of disagreements, dates, achievements and failures. For his short existence, the writer was an eyewitness to the war of 1812, a terrible flood in St. Petersburg and the revolt of the Decembrists.
In order to find out more about the writer, to discover unfamiliar episodes about the poet and to recall events that were the foundation of fairy tales, books and narratives, they read a selection of characteristic publications and books about Pushkin. You should read these works, so as not to overlook something significant.
Vincent Veresaev
“Pushkin in life. Pushkin’s Companions ” is one of the first monographs about the writer. Veresaev, as a skilled portrait painter, formed a full-fledged image of the character. Having compiled diaries and memoirs, the contemporaries' judgments, and his own scholarly research, he outlined a book that is still entertaining to readers - from linguists to admirers of life-writing prose.
Over the course of a certain period, the writer made extracts from the original sources related to the nature and disposition of Pushkin, his life perceptions, manners, and appearance. After collecting notes, I brought everything to a methodical schedule. And sorting through the accumulated notes, he noticed a bizarre and entertaining study, in which Pushkin perked up as if alive.
Book of Pavel Shchegolev
“The evil rock of Pushkin. He, Dantes and Goncharova. " Schegolev is popular as a brilliant prospector and as a talented falsifier. His first works were works on Vladimir Raevsky and essays on the events of social movements. In the period from 1905 to 1917, Schegolev printed a chain of memoirs of the Decembrists - M. A. Fonvizin, E. P. Obolensky, V. I. Shteyngelya and others.
Exemplary exploratory work overshadowed the production of fake notes by Anna Vyrubova (a close friend of the empress), which Shchegolev fabricated together with Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Nevertheless, the works of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin can be completely trusted. It was Shchegolev who, after the revolution, compiled, examined and studied declassified materials, printed securities and documents of foreign politicians, and also touched on the question of the audience with Nicholas I.
Reviews on the Pushkin study
On October 2, 1981, the work of Yuri Lotman, “A. S. Pushkin. Biography of the writer. " The manual for students. At the beginning of the 80s of the last century, reviews were published about Pushkin by Lotman, the main critics - Pushkinists Aidelman, Vatsuro, Gordin, Chumakov and others.
The work has long been considered a classic of Pushkin studies, translated into Hungarian, English, Italian, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Estonian, Czech, and is preparing to publish books in Korean. In the written archives of Yuri Lotman and Zara Mintz, reader reviews are preserved. A short study of them showed that the secret of Lotman’s “Pushkin” popularity is that the basis of the work is the question of the spiritual consent of a person, his conscious formation.
The excerpts of letters printed in the study show that people who know Lotman first of all appreciated the educational pathos of the work - the writer’s talent to elevate the reader to his mental and spiritual heights. The reader was first shown the ideas of Pushkin on the predestination and human value.