Lotman, Yuri
1992 Russian
2009 (?) English

“Where gradual processes ensure succession, explosive ones ensure innovation.”

“Lotman, here, presents the notion of ‘inspiration’ as the ‘moment of explosion’ as an element which, as stated earlier, is ‘out of time’ and recognisable only in retrospect, at which stage it is no longer viewed as explosive but is framed by its participation in the gradual development of culture.”

“”The state of explosion is characterized by the moment of equalisation of all oppositions. That which is different appears to be the same. This renders possible unexpected leaps into completely different, unpredictable organisational structures. The impossible becomes possible. This moment is experienced out of time, even if, in reality, it stretches across a very wide temporal space. […] This moment concludes by passing into a state of gradual movement. What was united in one integrated whole is scattered into different (opposing) elements. Although, in fact, there was no selection whatsoever (any substitution was made by chance) the past is retrospectively experienced as a choice and as a goal-oriented action. Here, the laws of the gradual processes of development enter into the fray. They aggressively seize the consciousness of culture and strive to embed the transformed picture into memory. Accordingly, the explosion loses its unpredictability and presents itself as the rapid, energetic or even catastrophic development of all the same predictable processes.“”

“Death is marked out as both the beginning and the end.”

“Explosion is part and parcel of linear dynamic processes. He distinguishes between binary and ternary structures, emphasising that explosion in the latter takes the form of a specific form of dynamic, whereas in the latter it permeates the multiple layers of semiotic space at different speeds and different intervals, such that whilst its effects are felt throughout all the layers of culture, traces of the old remain to which the ternary system strives to adapt itself, transporting them from periphery to centre. In binary structures, by contrast, the explosion penetrates life in its entirety, replacing all that previously existed in an apocalyptic manner.”

Let us “look forward … with an eye to the past, and our feet firmly in the present.”