Monday, 30 June 2008 16:45
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Evelin Ilves, who are on a working visit to Russia, visited the Russian Library for Foreign Literature in Moscow today, where they presented the library with a bust of Juri Lotman, for many years a professor at the University of Tartu and one of the founders of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.
“Thanks to Juri Lotman we know that, in addition to a geosphere and biosphere we are also surrounded by a semiosphere. Thanks to him we know that culture is primarily communication, the exchange, translation and interpretation of a system of signs, total dialogue,” President Ilves said. “Thanks to Juri Lotman we also know that semiotics makes it possible to describe not only what is happening culturally, but also what is happening in politics and even in economic life.”
The Estonian Head of State called Juri Lotman a strong symbol of the Estonian-Russian cultural bridge, especially emphasizing his research on Pushkin.
The bust of Juri Lotman, which was financed by the Estonian Foreign Ministry and Rein Kilk, an entrepreneur who is a supporter of culture, will be installed in the garden of busts in the atrium of the Russian Library for Foreign Literature.
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