“Hundred Years Have Passed…” Formula of Time and Seme of Memory

Abstract

In the proposed plot, fragments of memories testify to the exceptional importance that their scientific and classroom work had for Yu. M. Lotman and Z. G. Mints. Tartu scientists paid special attention to communication with the younger generation of philologists who were just deciding on their future path. The correct attitude to the student’s scientific studies, the virtuoso influence on him during a lecture, seminar, consultation have left in the memory of several generations unforgettable moments of meetings, conversations and first research initiatives under the auspices of their unobtrusive recommendations. Observations on the manner of work of Yu. M. Lotman in an unfamiliar audience, his ability to captivate a little-known document of a distant epoch with a projection on the peculiarities of everyday behaviour, on fixing the context of time, have been preserved in memory. Among the ways of deciphering “incomprehensible places”, this publication examines a joint article by scientists in 1974, where a “forgotten” memoir about A. Blok is presented. The methodology of the approach to little-known ego texts outlined in the article served to develop a possible commentary on the evidence of the Block's activities in the last years of his life, as well as to the interpretation of his droppings in notebooks. The role of “secondary witnesses” with their hitherto unaccounted materials about the Block is associated with the local (Baltic) culture of Russian Abroad.

Keywords

• yu. m. lotman
• z. g. mints
• a. blok “the last days of imperial power”
• sergei korenev
• memoir
• diary
• poet’s notebooks
• newspaper “segodnya”
• newspaper “slovo”
• memory mechanisms
• “secondary witness”
• extraordinary commission of inquiry
• general v. a. sukhomlinov.