Translator’s Preface

Abstract

One of the great joys of translating the works of Juri Lotman is having the opportunity to be in such close proximity to a brilliant mind through, what Gayatri Spivak has called the “most intimate act of reading,” translation. Of course, it is also an enormous challenge as Lotman’s scholarship represents a triple-threat: built on an encyclopedic knowledge of art, literature and history, his scholarly writing is characterized by highly creative and interdisciplinary modes of argumentation and is presented with the energy and rhetorical prowess of a great storyteller.