According to Yuri Lotman, the word “symbol” is one of the most ambiguous in the system of semiotics. The expression “symbolic meaning” is widely used as a simple synonym for significance. At the same time, the symbol is a kind of “capacitor” of all the principles of symbolism, and at the same time it takes us beyond its limits.

The symbolic space is an organic part of the semiosphere. The symbol is an intermediary between the synchronization of the text and the memory of culture. The structure of symbols of a particular culture forms “a system isomorphic and isofunctional to the genetic memory of an individual” (Y. M. Lotman, Universe of the Mind, Moscow, 1996). 

The symbol in the cultural system is in the center of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s attention, when in the early 2000s in Moscow he begins his work on the “Symbolarium” – a projected collection of symbols of different cultures and of universal symbols, based on the ideas of Pavel Florensky, proposed in the early 1920s (V.V. Ivanov, Introduction to the Symbolarium project, Moscow, 2015). 

Among the questions for consideration are: simple symbols (circle, cross) as the “core” of culture, symbol memory (archaic symbols in a new textual environment), symbols of identification (flags, statues, names, bodies standing for nations, ideologies etc.), symbol as a “gene” of creativity (in contemporary art, literature, theater, music), linguistic symbols and coding of rules of conduct (verbs in natural language and predicates in artificial languages). 

Categorie:040.06- New Symbolarium