A statue of Apollo in a museum does not seem naked, but attach a tie to its neck and it will strike us as indecent ... The text is one of the compone…

- Yuri Lotman

Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system.

- Yuri Lotman

Poetic language features an iconic rather than a predominantly conventional relationship of form and content in which all language (and cultural) ele…

- Yuri Lotman

Art's effect is due to the tension resulting from the clash of the collocation of elements of two (or more) systems of interpretation. This conflict …

- Yuri Lotman

Certain supplementary restrictions imposed on the text compel us to perceive it as poetry. As soon as one assigns a given text to the category of poe…

- Yuri Lotman