Ożywczość semiotycznej optyki. Głośno myśląc nad kategorią żywotności (i) tekstu

The gloss is inspired by the Małgorzata Jankowska’s monography Vitality of the Canon. Semiotics of Modern Apocrypha and aims at presenting the complex relations between life and text – understood not only metaphorically, but also literally. Starting with the Yuri Lotman’s expression ‘the life of the text’ the author focuses on the one of the basic features of the semiosphere, i.e. dynamics and remaining unfinished. Referring to the so-called late Lotman, the author discusses such issues as explosion, unpredictability and motion in the relation to the text. The next part of the paper contains certain remarks on the convergences of Lotmanian and Mikhail Bakhtin’s view on the cultural dynamics and vitality of the text. The issue of the life of the text in the view of hermeneutics is being discussed in the next part of the article. The author refers to Gianni Vattimo’s concept of the transparency and ‘opaqueness’ as its opposite and juxtaposes it with the hermeneutic notion of the understanding which should not be fully performed. Apparently the lack of transparency and being not fully understood is what provides the desirable dynamics of text and culture. As Lotman writes, the text which is fully understood can only be displayed in a museum - it does not have a semiotic life any more. To interpret means to live – a text requires multiple interpretations and contexts to be alive.