Spaces and Meanings: Semantics of the Cultural Landscape [1st ed.] 978-3-030-15167-6;978-3-030-15168-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-vii
Introduction (Olga Lavrenova)....Pages 1-9
Genesis of Culture in Space. Conception of Cultural Landscape in Context of Cultural and Philosophic Research (Olga Lavrenova)....Pages 11-52
Universal Categories of Culture in Landscape: Time and Transcendence (Olga Lavrenova)....Pages 53-93
Cultural Landscape as a Metaphor (Olga Lavrenova)....Pages 95-131
Cultural Landscape as a Sign System (Olga Lavrenova)....Pages 133-165
Cultural Landscape as Text (Olga Lavrenova)....Pages 167-212
Conclusion (Olga Lavrenova)....Pages 213-216

Citation preview

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 8

Olga Lavrenova

Spaces and Meanings Semantics of the Cultural Landscape

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress Volume 8

Series editor Dario Martinelli, Faculty of Creative Industries, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius, Lithuania

The series originates from the need to create a more proactive platform in the form of monographs and edited volumes in thematic collections, to discuss the current crisis of the humanities and its possible solutions, in a spirit that should be both critical and self-critical. “Numanities” (New Humanities) aim to unify the various approaches and potentials of the humanities in the context, dynamics and problems of current societies, and in the attempt to overcome the crisis. The series is intended to target an academic audience interested in the following areas: – Traditional fields of humanities whose research paths are focused on issues of current concern; – New fields of humanities emerged to meet the demands of societal changes; – Multi/Inter/Cross/Transdisciplinary dialogues between humanities and social and/or natural sciences; – Humanities “in disguise”, that is, those fields (currently belonging to other spheres), that remain rooted in a humanistic vision of the world; – Forms of investigations and reflections, in which the humanities monitor and critically assess their scientific status and social condition; – Forms of research animated by creative and innovative humanities-based approaches; – Applied humanities.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14105

Olga Lavrenova

Spaces and Meanings Semantics of the Cultural Landscape

123

Olga Lavrenova Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences RAS Moscow, Russia

ISSN 2510-442X ISSN 2510-4438 (electronic) Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ISBN 978-3-030-15167-6 ISBN 978-3-030-15168-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934368 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Semiotic Conception of Culture as Theoretic Frame of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Genesis of Culture in Space. Conception of Cultural Landscape in Context of Cultural and Philosophic Research . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Culture and Space: Noosphere and Pneumatosphere as Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Semiosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Culture and Space: Discourse in the Humanities . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Cultural Landscape: Category Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Landscape as Frame of Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 Cultural Landscape as Cultural Phenomenon . . . . . . . . 2.4.3 Noosphere Conception of Cultural Landscape . . . . . . . 2.4.4 Cultural Landscape as the Process and Result of Semiosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.5 Morphology and Structure of Cultural Landscape . . . . 2.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Universal Categories of Culture in Landscape: Time and Transcendence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Temporal Semantics of Cultural Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Rhythms of Time in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 Cultural Heritage as Repository of Events in Historic Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3 Mythological Time: ‘Everything Comes Back Full Circle...’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3.1.4 3.1.5 3.2 Sacred 3.2.1

Eternity Versus Timelessness . . . . . . . . . Morphology of the ‘Landscape of Time’ . Semantics of the Cultural Landscape . . . Mythological Archetypes of Developing of the Terrestrial Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Sacred Landscapes, Space and Ritual . . . 3.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Cultural Landscape as a Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and Understanding of Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Orientational and Ontological Metaphors, the Landscape and Beyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Iconicity of Metaphor and Cultural Landscape . . . . . . . . 4.4 Space/Landscape as Semantic Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Cultural Landscape as Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 City as Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Poetic Metaphors of the Cultural Landscape and Cultural Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Cultural Landscape as a Sign System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 A Sign and Sign Situation in Relation to Cultural Landscape Realities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 From Geographical Images to Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Geographic Images: Problems of Genesis and Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Axiological Measuring of Geographic Images . . . . . . . 5.3 Cultural Landscape Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Semiotic Structure of the Landscape: Spatial Codes and Precedential Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 Rules of Semiotics Applied to the Cultural Landscape . 5.3.3 Classification of Signs of Spatial and Semantic Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Cultural Landscape as Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 The Concept of a Text in Modern Cultural Science and Its Applicability to Realities of the Cultural Landscape 6.2 Cultural Landscape as Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 City as a Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7

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Strategies of Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Russian Landscape as a Text ‘Provoker’ . . . . Local Texts of Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural-Philosophical Aspects and Semantics of Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract The introduction raises the problem of relationships between culture and space, here we prove the usage of semiotic concept of the culture as a basic concept of the research. That part of semiosphere, were the characters are the geographical locations and their respective names as well as names of water objects, is denoted as the goal of the study. The author’s definitions of the terms “culture”, “geo-cultural space” and “cultural landscape” are introduced.

The problem of the relationship of culture and space, spatial characteristics of culture, is an area of constant interest of both, natural sciences and the humanities. Within the divergent studies of culture, in the context of noosphere reality, the culturally created meanings of the geographic space and landscape become gradually significant. The culture is re-structuring its dwelling space, and the ideas of the environment are being transformed into a symbol system. The area of direct contact of culture and the geographic space presents the semiosphere layer with signs expressed by toponyms, hydronyms and geographic objects proper. These signs form complex polyvalent relations applicable to basic laws of semiotics and semiology. Processes of referential filling of such signs, and their relationship within the system have not been yet sufficiently studied in cultural and philosophic discourse. The sign system created by culture as a result of reflecting on the containing landscape is genetically linked to the basic patterns and cultural codes. Archetypes and symbols on which the cosmogony and the world image are constructed keep their own pattern on the earth surface, and still there is no consensus on what is primary and what is secondary, i.e. comprehension of space as a category, or rather as a set of specific realities of a landscape. In cultural philosophy and culture, we still have not obtained a clearly developed system of signs and methods to determine the character and genesis of such interactions. Hence, research in this direction becomes very important now, as an attempt to bring different approaches and methods in the field of spatial semantics to a single system. It seems reasonable to suggest a synthetic approach to the problem study, based on different scientific discourses research, which can be similarly applied to the humanities and natural sciences research for the cultural landscape phenomenon study.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 O. Lavrenova, Spaces and Meanings, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3_1

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1 Introduction

Cultural landscape is a phenomenon within the semiosphere section where cultural sign systems appear to be directly connected with the geographic space in general as well as with its separate objects in particular. Hence, it is possible to raise the problem of cultural landscape study as a sign system, the problem of semantics of the cultural landscape. The study of this problem brings a whole array of separate studies on geography of spiritual culture, philosophic and cultural research in the field of geographic images and concepts as a cultural phenomenon to a new methodological level. In the humanities, the problem of interaction of culture and space has been primarily studied in linguistic and anthropological discourses not considering the cultural landscape phenomenon in its integrity. Similarly, the goal of defining signs genetically connected with geographic objects into a separate system with an ‘intertext’ potential and, simultaneously, a restricted degree of interpretation freedom due to geographical constants has not been set yet. The problem of modeling of geographic images recently inserted into cultural studies allows researching the interaction of culture and space on a new methodological level within phenomenology and cultural approach. Comprehension of space within the cultural context, study of cultural landscape semiotics lead to a new understanding of its organization, morphology, and give way to new opportunities in modeling geocultural interactions. Setting the problem of cultural landscape semantics allows reaching the next level of theorizing, from modeling geographical images to reading the spatial ‘text’. In this study we undertake the next step in theorizing the problem of interaction of culture and space, in understanding not as much the cultural reflection on space resulting in created images but more the substantiality of geocultural reality presented as a cultural landscape. It is the comprehension of culture being, in contemporary cultural anthropology, as a method of producing the meaning, senses and symbols, their expansion and fixing (Max Weber, Clifford Geertz), which is taken as a basic working theory. The being of culture in a geographic space is inseparable from the process of symbolizing the environment (in its abstract, cosmic, or geographic aspects), essential to a human consciousness. Understanding of space has many levels, from associative to sacred. As a result, sustainable views on geographic objects and sustainable culturally significant symbols, with different degrees of spatial connotations, are being formed. Culture, being a universal object of semiotics, is studied in this research as a subject of semiotizing of geographical space expressed in inherited and constantly resuming ‘framework’ that originates as a result of this continuous process, with its sources in far antique eras. According to contemporary anthropology claims, comprehension of space in antique cultures is similar to its developing, physical ungoverned ‘wild’ environment that turns into a sign, gains its fixed place in the world picture, yields to control on a sense level. The same semiotic processes can be defined in modern cultures. Geographic objects and/or toponyms become metaphors, symbols, signs in case when there are sustainable cultural associations with particular historic events, artifacts and unique characters in a natural landscape. This flexible in the meaningful

1 Introduction

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area and latent sign system continually owes its constant ‘reapers’, i.e. specific geographic objects. That is why we can claim that geographic space is inseparable from images and symbols created by culture, that gain characteristics of an integrated system which can be considered a geocultural space. National, regional, local cultures are more or less explicated in a cultural landscape of an appropriate territorial level. Geocultural space is regarded to be a set of particular information and territorial ‘clusters’, cultural landscapes of different taxonomic range (from urban to national cultural landscape). This notion as well as the notion of ‘culture’ has many interpretations, including even polar ones, in the humanities and natural sciences. The cultural landscape differently interpreted in different discourse, in this particular work, is being studied as a dynamic unity of geographic space and human activity in any of its possible expression. Information within the space and about the space that appears in the process of cultural activities will be studied as a component of the semiosphere and semiotic system in which majority of semiotic laws is respected. In this system, sign forms are geographic objects and toponyms per se. In such sign system, separate geographic objects and/or their toponyms designate particular sense categories and archetypes, and the territorial locality of their meanings ‘makes’ them interconnected, line them up into a system. In this monograph, the role and the place of information processes based on cultural genesis is being studied, as well as the methodology of their study within culturology and cultural and philosophic discourse. Questions of semiotic analysis of geographic images and cultural landscapes of various taxonomy ranges are raised here. The research of semiotics of cultural landscape morphologic elements was undertaken, as well as of the problems of expression in the geographic space and spatial categories of collective consciousness archetypes, and basic philosophic categories. Information on semantics of the cultural landscape is concentrated in various artistic and documentary texts expressing the mentality of local and national cultures, specific cultural reflection on its environment. The study of reflection of the geographic space in literary text and visual arts, as well as in folk art, contributes to the reconstruction of deep inside cultural processes. Through the specific applied methods, the artistic text becomes a learning instrument for processes and phenomena that take place in the geocultural space. We can study the latent semantics of the cultural landscape, the artistic text primarily, through the art most of all. Similarly, historic documents, visual arts, semantics of architectural forms, color, sound and music, and other such characteristics of natural and cultural environment can be used, with studying the meaning and sense of the place in the context of national and local culture.

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1 Introduction

1.1 Semiotic Conception of Culture as Theoretic Frame of Research Within the set problem of interrelationship of culture and space, it is similarly possible to study the ‘second nature’ related to the first one, i.e. artifacts and records in the context of landscape, or peculiarities of psychological perception of landscape and appropriate behavior patterns, or other aspects and results of that relationship. That is why it is necessary to initially determine the frame of the cultural conception for such discourse, considering that the views towards this or that conception naturally affect the result of research. There are many approaches to cultural research, and even more definitions of culture in modern humanities. And many attempts have been undertaken to classify all that diversity. Culture is a polymorphic phenomenon which may and must be studied from different points of view. It is likely to expect that different approaches to study it to be, sooner or later, re-systematized by the science in order to come closer in integrative comprehension of this phenomenon, at a new stage. Every step of such approach usually leads to the paradigm shift, if not to the complete change of paradigm. Classification by Alexandrova and Bykhovskaya (1997), and Karmin (2001) seems to be the most complete in their attempts to generalize the entire set of multidirectional studies, and to determine the main groups of concepts of culture. When summed up and slightly modified, all these classifications allow us to claim that in cultural studies we use the following approaches: • descriptive; • anthropological (culture as a way of life, as the ‘second nature’ created by humans in the process of their social practice’ (Gurevich 1972: 40)); • ethnographic (culture as a knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, traditions, and any other abilities and habits acquired by a human as a member of society (Taylor 1998)); • axiological (culture as summation of spiritual and material values); • model (culture as supreme expression of spiritual and artistic creation of the humanity); • normative (culture as regulations and rules that govern an individual and social life); • adaptive (culture as a way of adaptation to an environment and flexible world conditions); • historic (culture as a process and method of delivering the acquired experience from one generation to another); • functional (character of culture through its functions in a particular society); • semiotic (culture as a sign system); • symbolic (describing and analyzing the use of symbols in a culture); • hermeneutic (culture as multitude of texts comprehended and interpreted by humans); • ideational (culture as a system of ideas and other products of spiritual activity);

1.1 Semiotic Conception of Culture as Theoretic Frame of Research

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• psychological (behavior aspect of culture; culture as socially determined features of human psyche); • sociological (culture as a factor of social life organization, as a social activity of particular quality, with a developing perspective and progressive sense); • personal (as a level of a human development, a ‘projection’ of a human being on social relations system); • phenomenological (culture as a phenomenology reality); • synergetic (culture as a self-organizing open system). Not claiming to be theoretically and methodologically overwhelming, we shall frame the further work as an experience of reduction of different levels of interaction between culture and space, from philosophic to pragmatic, into the goal of study of semiosis, and transforming the geographic environment into the sign system by means of culture. Accordingly, the semiotic approach to culture is assumed to be the most promising (Kassirer 1923–1929; Lévi-Strauss 1958; Weber 1994; Lotman 2000, 2002; Pyatigorsky 1996; Mamardashvili and Pyatigorsky 1997; Revzin 1977; Uspensky 1995, 2004a, b, 2006; Mechanisms of Culture …, 1990; Ivanov and Toporov 1965; Toporov 2003, 2004; Egorov 2001, 2003, 2007; Gasparov 1995, 1999; Geertz 2004; Gritsenko 2000; Makhlina 1995, 2003, 2008, 2009; and other). This semiotic approach is not one-dimensional, it has multiple extensions and complications. We find it appropriate to expand it, in this work, by symbolic, hermeneutic, and ideational approaches. Under the semiotic conception of culture, its meaning ground, spiritual life independence, and its relative freedom of ideas from material forms are a must. The semiosis is studied as the expression of human spiritual nature connected with eidetic and phenomenology reality. Such reality shows its mostly adequate expression of the world of signs and symbols which presents the semantic ‘body’ of culture, and draws the utmost attention of scholars trying to understand its internal essence. For instance, Shor Y., a philosopher from St. Petersburg, claims that the way to comprehend culture as a specific phenomenon reveals itself when economic, social, legal, moral, artistic, etc. life may be viewed in “spiritual X-rays”, when all aspects of human living are seen through a spiritual prism as a symbolic, sign, and by all means consciously processed reality (Shor 2003: 52).

The phenomenology study targeted on cultural experience with search of senses and super/hyper senses allows to apply invariant ‘soft’ methods of research to a complex object, which allows to include them into methodology arsenal as one of possible conceptual ‘measures’ of semiotic approach. Within the semiotic conception, understanding of culture tends to a hierarchically organized system of different codes, i.e. secondary sign systems that use various formal and material means for coding the same content, resulting, in general, in a ‘world picture’, the worldview of a particular social community (Tolstoy and Tolstaya 1995: 7).

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Characters created by culture are in constant communication creating a system which to a large extent determines the existence of a culture, including its existence in space. Signs created by culture exist in constant communication thus forming systems that substantially determine the being of culture, including its being in space. Its representative description demands an adequate interpretation of sign systems. While the ‘civilization approach’ founded by Spengler develops the ideas of individuality of cultures, their isolation and tightness, impossibility of cross-cultural succession, the frames of semiotic conception make the cross-cultural communication possible, in case the translation and interpretation of signs and symbols are correct. ‘The unique self-consistent code with its interconnected model of information exchange appears at a higher level as a tendency of cultural self-organization of a human community’ (Lotman 2002: 64). In this work, we find it important to consider the understanding of culture and the methods of cultural research from the point of view of a system approach and synergy, regarding culture as an open self-organizing polymorphic system continuously interacting with other cultures, as well as with the environment. In such interaction, culture simultaneously acts as a ‘donor’ and an ‘accepter’, a subject and an object. The study of functioning of culture as an open system, from the semiotic point of view, was noticed by Yuri Lotman in his work “Culture and Explosion” (Lotman 2000: 12–149), describing unpredictable ways of semiosis at the point of ‘explosion’ in creative art, when new semiotic systems are being created, or the old ones are being thought over again. Let us underline here several positions, from the whole theoretical and methodological cultural set, that in our theoretical developments we will base on the cultural landscape semiotics. 1. The being of culture is a constant rise of senses transformed into symbolssigns, cultural codes that determine and provide the functioning of sociocultural systems. 2. Inside the culture and on its borders, there are continuous communicative processes between different semiotic systems that give birth to new meanings. 3. The being of culture, in principal, can be defined as a non-ceasing process of semiosis, with its results instantly read, interpreted, and returned again into the ‘melting pot’ of generating senses.

1.2 Definitions This work studies correlation of meanings of ‘culture’, ‘space’ and ‘landscape, ‘geocultural space’ and ‘cultural space’. The question of correlation of abstract physical space and geographic space is not taken into consideration in a landscape that ‘not only expands itself in a space but also inherits many of its principal properties and characteristics. However, the space itself can be clearly perceptive, become sensible by means of the landscape.

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Its elements structured the terrestrial space shaping it into the primary form (Svirida 2007: 11). The landscape is marked by such abstract categories of physical space as ‘up/down’, ‘horizontal/vertical’, ‘boundless/limited’. We will not suggest here any new definitions for a landscape and space but distinguish the following: Geographic space is the quasi-two-dimensional space of the earth ground. It is characterized by insularity, positive curvature (camber), quasi factualness, anisotropy in the gravitational field of the Earth. Anisotropy of geospace is expressed in nonsimilarity of horizontal and vertical directions (vertical movement is considerably complicated), resulting in a spherical structure of the Earth, as well as (to a lesser extent) in non-equivalence in latitudinal and longitudinal directions which is manifested by latitudinal zoning. Distance measures may be regarded not the Cartesian distance, but also the time, or means to cover the distance (BSE). Landscape is the main category of territorial division of geographical space, a particular territory homogeneous in origin and development history sharing the same geological basis, with similar type of terrain, hydrothermal conditions, soils, biocenosis, and natural set of morphological parts, faces and stows (Encyclopedia “ru.wikipedia”). The general view of a place, sometimes also referred to as a landscape, will be defined, in this study, by a French word paysage. Containing landscape is a common territory of an ethnos habitat as a sustainable cultural and historical human unity, formed on the basis of tribal kinship, similar mundane culture including the language of communication, religious cult, norms of everyday behavior, etc. Some original author’s definitions of basic notions are presented here as well. CULTURE in this work, will be referred as a self-organizing system, with a set of semiosis characteristics and a related system of values and standards broadcast into time and determining the life of a specific territorial human community. Territoriality, spatiality of culture we will note as a compulsory prescription not only because the culture is impossible without a geographical space, as well as a person without a body, but also because here we study the manifestations of culture directly related to its containing landscape, territorial and natural substrate on which it was born and is being developed. We assume the spatial concepts of culture per se to be important because, on the one hand, they come from the real experience of interaction between culture and space; while on the other hand, they influence perception and semiotizing of a particular landscape. Phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches may be used along with semiotic methods and approaches. GEOCULTURAL SPACE is an information semantic form of cultural existence in a space featuring a global integrity, with eidetic, ideational, symbolic component which arises on the basis of close relation with physical and socio-geographic realities and exists there.

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1 Introduction

CULTURAL LANDSCAPE is defined as a cluster of geocultural space as a cultural phenomenon, with matrix system and cultural codes expressed in signs and symbols directly connected with a territory and/or manifested in some material expression; this system may be interpreted as a text in its wide cultural meaning. By operating these notions we will build relations between them in order to pave the way towards the problem of cultural landscape semantics. Acknowledgements Yuri Vedenin, ex-director of Likhatchev Russian Research Institute for Cultural and Natural Heritage, for the creative impact on developing of this problem; Galina Zvereva, the Head of the Chair of Cultural History and Theory, Art History Department, Russian State University for the Humanities, and Valery Gubin, the Dean of Philosophy Department, for scientific consulting during the work on this monograph; Alexander Dobrokhotov and Dmitry Zamyatin, the reviewers.

References Alexandrova, E.Ya., and I.M. Bykhovskaya. 1997. Cultural Space as Object of Research and Transformation [Kul’turnoe prostranstvo kak ob”ekt issledovaniya i preobrazovaniya] Orientations of Cultural Policy 2. [Orientiry kul’turnoj politiki] Moscow. Egorov, B.F. 2001. Structuralism. Russian Poetry. Memoirs [Strukturalizm. Russkaya poe‘ziya. Vospominaniya]. Tomsk: Aquarius. Egorov, B.F. 2003. From Khomyakov to Lotman [Ot Khomyakova do Lotmana]. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Culture [Yazy‘ki slavyanskoj kul‘tury‘]. Egorov, B.F. 2007. Russian Utopias: A Historic Guide [Rossijskie utopii: istoricheskij putevoditel‘]. St.Petersburg: Iskussvo [Art]. Gasparov, M.L. 1995. Selected Articles [Izbrannye stat’i]. Moscow: New Literary Observer [Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie]. Gasparov, M.L. 1999. Meter and Meaning: On One of Cultural Memory Mechanisms [Metr i smysl: Ob odnom iz mekhanizmov kul’turnoj pamyati]. Moscow: RSUH. Geertz, C. 2004. The Interpretation of Cultures [Russian Transl.]. Moscow: Rosspen. Gritsenko, V.P. 2000. Culture as a Sign and Semiotic System [Kul‘tura kak znakovo-semioticheskaya sistema]. PhD dissertation, Krasnodar. Gurevich, A.Ya. 1972. Categories of the Medieval Culture [Kategorii srednevekovoj kul‘tury‘]. Moscow: Art [Iskusstvo]. Ivanov, V.V., and V.N. Toporov. 1965. Slavic Linguistic Semiotic Modelling Systems: (Ancient Period) [Slavyanskie yazy‘kovy‘e modeliruyushhie semioticheskie sistemy‘: (drevnij period)]. Moscow: Science [Nauka]. Karmin, A.S. 2001. Culturology [Kulturologiya]. St.Petersburg: Doe [Lan’]. Kassirer, E. 1923–1929. Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Bd. 1–3. Berlin. Lévi-Strauss, Cl. 1958. Anthropologie structurale. Paris: Plon. Lotman, Yu.M. 2000. Semiosphere. St.Petersburg: Art [Iskusstvo]. Lotman, Yu.M. 2002. History and Typology of Russian Culture [Istoriya i tipologiya russkoj kul‘tury‘]. St.Petersburg: Art [Iskusstvo]. Makhlina, S.T. 1995. Language of Art in the Cultural Context [Yazy‘k iskusstva v kontekste kul‘tury‘]. St.Petersburg: St. Petersburgs Academy of Culture [SPGAK]. Makhlina, S.T. 2003. Semiotics of Culture and Art [Semiotika kul‘tury‘ i iskusstva]. Reference Dictionary in 2 books. St.Petersburg: Composer [Kompozitor]. Makhlina, S.T. 2008. Semiotics of Sacral and Religions Representations [Semiotika sakral‘noreligiozny‘x predstavlenij]. Moscow: Aleteya.

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Makhlina, S.T. 2009. Semiotics of Everyday Culture [Semiotika kul‘tury‘ i iskusstva]. Moscow: Aleteya. Mamardashvili, M.K., and A.M. Pyatigorsky. 1997. Symbol and Conscience: Metaphysical Reflections about Conscience, Symbols and Language [Simvol i soznanie: Metafizicheskie rassuzhdeniya o soznanii, simvolike i yazy‘ke.]. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture [Yazy‘ki russkoy kul‘tury‘], Koshelev. Mechanisms of Culture …, 1990. Pyatigorsky, A.M. 1996. Selected Works [Izbranny‘e trudy‘]. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture [Yazy‘ki russkoy kul‘tury‘], Koshelev. Revzin, I.I. 1977. Structural Linguistics in the Present. Problems and Methods [Sovremennaya strukturnaya lingvistika. Problemy‘ i metody‘]. Moscow: Science [Nauka]. Shor, Yu.M. 2003. Culture as Emotional Experience (Cultural Humanities) [Kul‘tura kak perezhivanie (Gumanitarnost‘ kul‘tury‘)]. St.Petersburg: Saint-Petersburg Humanitarian University of trade unions [SPBGUP]. Svirida, I.I. 2007. Landscape in Culture as Space, Image and Metaphor [Landshaft v kul‘ture kak prostranstvo, obraz i metafora]. In Landscapes of Culture. Slavic world [Landshafty‘ kul‘tury‘. Slavyanskij mir], 11–42. Moscow: Progress-Tradition. Taylor, 1998. Taylor, E. 1989. Primitive Culture (Russian Transl.). Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature [Izdatel’stvo Politicheskoy Literatury]. Tolstoy, N.I, and S.M. Tolstaya. 1995. On the ‘Slavic Antiques’ Dictionary. In Slavic Antiques: Ethnolinguistics Dictionary, ed. Tolstoy N. Moscow: International Relations [Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya]. Toporov, V.N. 2003. The Text of Petersburg in Russian Literature: Selected Works [Peterburgskij tekst russkoj literatury‘: Izbranny‘e trudy‘]. St.Petersburg: Art [Iskusstvo]. Toporov, V.N. 2004. Research on Etymology and Semantics [Issledovaniya po e‘timologii i semantike]. Vol.1. Theory and Some of Its Applications [Teoriya i nekotory‘e chastny‘e ee prilozheniya]. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Culture [Yazy‘ki slavyanskoj kul‘tury‘]. Uspensky, B.A. 1995. Semiotics of Art [Semiotika iskusstva]. Moscow: Languages of Russian Culture, [Yazy‘ki russkoi kul‘tury‘]. Uspensky, B.A. 2004. Europe as a Metaphor and Metonymy (on Russian history) [Evropa kak metafora i kak metonimiya (primenitel‘no k istorii Rossii)]. Russian Studies in Philosophy [Voprosy‘ filosofii] 4: 13–21. Uspensky, B.A. 2004. The Crossing Gesture and the Sacred Space: Why do the Provoslavnye take the Crossing from Right to Left, and the Catholics from Left to Right? [Krestnoe znamenie i sakral‘noe prostranstvo: pochemu pravoslavny‘e krestyatsya sprava nalevo, a katoliki – sleva napravo?]. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Culture [Yazy‘ki slavyanskoj kul‘tury‘]. Uspensky, B.A. 2006. Cross and Circle: From the History of Christian Symbols [Krest i krug: Iz istorii xristianskoj simvoliki]. Moscow: Languages of Slavic Culture [Yazy‘ki slavyanskoj kul‘tury‘]. Weber, M. 1994. Selected Work: The Image of Society [Russian Transl.]. Moscow: Lawyer [Jurist].

Chapter 2

Genesis of Culture in Space. Conception of Cultural Landscape in Context of Cultural and Philosophic Research

Abstract This chapter is devoted to theoretical and methodological questions of the cultural genesis in space in the context of stated problem. The boundaries of the problem field are outlined in terms of semantic components in relationship of culture and space. The first section addresses noosphere and pneumatosphere as basic concepts for study of the problem. Modern science studying the interaction of culture and space viewes the scope of manifestations on Earth of a human mind as special noospheric reality. Discovers of noospheric concept Vladimir Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin were the first who noted that human activity has become a geological force. For the purposes of this study it is important to note the characteristics of noosphere, emphasized by founders and modern followers of the concept: • Inclusiveness, globality of the noospheric processes. • The energy of human culture or cultural biogeochemical energy is considered as an effective force. • Availability of the structure, of «nodes» and «threads» in the culture—which we have in terms of this work, are denoted as the nucleus and communication mechanisms of culture. • «Geographic memory» of noosphere, retaining in its information layers, knowledge about original landscapes later altered beyond recognition by civilization. Contemporary «multilevelness» metaphor of the space of noosphere emerged from correlation of different types of spaces created by man. The order of interdependence has different kinds of spaces one above the other, and above them, according to the hypothesis of some scholars (e.g., Lev Gumilyov, Robert Sack)—transcendental organizing impulses which pass through all the «layers» transforming ideas and thinking, and through them—the properties of the earth’s surface. Availability of axiological dimension—culture as a system of eternal values, culture defines the ideal of noospheric existence. Today scholars speak about «cruel noosheric reality», however Vladimir Vernadsky himself considered the disruptive, destructive activity as contrary to the idea of the noosphere, and for him this opposition was a guarantee of the continued existence of civilization. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 O. Lavrenova, Spaces and Meanings, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3_2

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Pavel Florensky’s conception of pneumatosphere as a sphere of the highest human values is important for us as having the same axiological component, which represents itself as one of fundamental dimensions of cultural landscapes in our work. In the concept of the noosphere and pneumatosphere there is a possibility of a deep understanding of cultural and spatial interaction, which is now unfolding in the statement that the existence of a culture in the geographical space is expressed not only in its physical development, but also in a semantic reconstruction. In the second section the concept of semiosphere proposed by Yuri Lotman and its subsequent development in modern humanitarian discourse is examined. In the original meaning of semiosphere as a universal unit of semiosis and semiotic space is confined to a single dominant culture and its system of codes, but more recent studies had interpreted it as an environment that enables the emergence and existence of cultures. In order to confirm the hypothesis put forward by us, we distinguish the following characteristics of semiosphere: • Heterogeneity of semiosphere arises due to the uneven flow of the processes of semiosis in culture and, accordingly, an uneven understanding of the external objects, including geographical features. This characteristic has the effect of semantic heterogeneity of geographical space. • Updatability of semiotic space of culture in the conceptual and semantic context of the enclusive landscape—a semiotic heterogeneity of geographical space serves as a subject-object frame of culture that provokes and guides the processes of semiosis. Culture is seen as a universal object of semiotics and subject for semiotisation of geographical space. From the perspective of the study of space semiotics a model of semiosphere is a complex web of cultural codes and systems of communication. Inside semiosphere any extra-linguistic reality, including the geographical space, is endowed with meaning, and moved to the category of signs. One more language is appearing and it is a code of semiospere—spatial and geocultural. In the third section the problem of relationship of culture and space is considered in the context of modern humanitarian discourse. Not so long ago in today’s humanitarian knowledge a recent tendency to explore geographic space and landscape involving the conceptual scope of linguistics and semiotics, and vice versa, to reflect the internal structure of the text, its philosophy through the conceptual scope of geography and landscape science significantly increased. Analysis of linguistic structures in terms of linguistics and philosophy of language leads to the understanding of the conditionality of certain linguistic structures with a system of spatial representations of culture. As a part of the problem of discourse, which in linguistics is considered extremely wide, the analysis of «discursive event» is conducted in the context of extra-linguistic conditions of its occurrence. There are an inclusive landscape of culture and geo-cultural space among them. On the

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other hand, metaphorically defined «discourse space» is treated as a special field of cognition. Among the philosophical studies the concept of «geophilosophy» should be noted, the concept was launched by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Using the metaphor of the ratio of land and territory they defined the subject-object relations of thought. It was an attempt of philosophical comprehension of the processes occurring in the interaction of culture and geographical space, the spatial characteristics of culture existence. An important step in philosophical theorization about space began with the work of Valery Podoroga, in which geographical space acts as the subject of the structuring of philosophical thought; in particular, the heritage of Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Marcel Proust; Franz Kafka is interpreted as «landscape worlds». As a result, the text takes on the landscape structure—the loci of meaning, semantic fields, territories and their borders and their relationships are singled out in it. Domestic cultural studies are mostly based on the Yuri Lotman’s conception of culture semiotics and semiosphere. The multilayer spatial picture of the world, posed by diverse human activities and producing images, symbols, signs is considered here. This approach of disclosure of multivalent genesis of sign systems will be used in this study, because semiotics of cultural landscape by definition—is a result of interaction within the territory of very different cultural strata and subcultures. In foreign sociology and cultural studies the conspicuous landmark is the problem of «producing the space», which is denoted by Henri Lefebvre. In his conception an important role plays functional-existential triad of «perception-reflection-living» of space. Today the construction of space is regarded in the context of social phenomenology of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. A special topic in the modern humanities interdisciplinary research is the geographical space as a factor of existentiality of culture. This direction is formed as a consequence of understanding of geographical constants in the very fabric of culture, the fact that an open system of a culture is opened both to geographic area and to the impact of the constants of the enclosing landscape. We can assert that the dichotomy—the culture and geographical space serving its extra-cultural frame—was withdrawn in the noospheric and semiospheric reality, combining them into a functional unity—the geo-cultural space. This creates a new synthetic theoretical and methodological approach and allows us to see culture in the relationship with geographical space as a single system. The forth section is devoted to the concept of cultural landscape where genesis, the structure of the concept is examined in the context of philosophy of culture and humanitarian discourse of geography. The concept of cultural landscape has developed at the intersection of natural sciences and the humanities. Cultural landscape in geography is originally meant as a natural landscape affected by human impact in varying degrees, as it is understood by Lev Berg, who introduced the term in 1915. Here and below, primarily humanitarian concept will be considered, under which the cultural landscape is interpreted as the

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result of culture and space interaction, and more as a cultural phenomenon than a phenomenon of space. Dating back into antiquity the theory of geographical determinism postulated the influence of the environment—of climatic conditions and the nature of the inclusive landscape in the overall structure of culture mentality. Different variations of this concept are used in cultural and ethnological studies, because it is rational. At least, the way of agriculture and settlement patterns of traditional culture are rather rigidly dictated by the natural landscape. On the other hand, the culture shapes the landscape, interfering in its structure harmoniously or destructively. Gradually, it accumulates signs of assimilation, structuring, meaning and—at some point a landscape transforms into a new quality and becomes a phenomenon of culture. According to the noospheric concept a cultural landscape is in particular formed by involving material and spiritual culture, by the modern (traditional and innovative) cultural heritage (Yuri Vedenin). Noospheric concept of cultural landscape allows us to consider the matter and the information, nature and culture in their functional unity. In modern humanities a natural component is displaced to periphery of concept of cultural landscape, which is starting to be regarded as a function of culture. The cultural landscape is also regarded as a reflection of culture on geographical environment, i.e. geographical images of space in culture, their genesis and structure are examined (Dmitri Zamyatin). It seems important to consider the cultural landscape as a process and a result of giving by man of the world sense-value categories, as an ongoing process and a result of semiosis, as a component of semiosphere and a cluster of geo-cultural space. The morphological structure of the cultural landscape is a derivative of culture mentality. Names of places and the material component of the cultural heritage (monuments, memorials) fix their meanings in space, forming new mental «matrices» of culture bearers of future generations. The cultural landscape has its territorial hierarchy, so it is equally fair to speak about the cultural landscape of locus/place, region, macroregion (country).

Paysages paisibles ou désolés. Paysage de la route de la vie plutôt que de la surface de la Terre. Paysages du Temps qui coule lentement, presque immobile et parfois presque en arrière. Paysages des lambeaux, des nerfs lacérés, des ‘saudades’. Paysages pour couvrir les plaies, l’acier, l’éclat, le mal, l’époque, la corde au cou, la mobilisation. Paysages pour abolir les cris. Paysages comme on se tire un drap sur la tête. L’espace du dedans. Henri Michaux

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The problem of multidirectional research of genesis of culture in space may vary from study of spatial characteristics of culture and information on a geographic space showing cultural genesis to artifacts and monuments/records spread on the earth surface. In this process, the categories that might seem abstract and subjective turn objective, e.g. in geography, spatial semantics in different cultures, sustainable views on geographic objects, image and sense of a place are regarded as geographic reality of a particular type (e.g.: Kalutskov 2008). Any culture exists in a geographic space which makes it dependable on the landscape peculiarities, areal features, climate, etc. The geographic space ‘restricts’ culture in many parameters, causes its obedience to its essential constants that cannot be governed by humans’ growing technical opportunities. The development of the geographical science causes almost similar cultural resonance. As the earth surface research goes on, many intra-cultural myths about the ecumenical periphery that supported many existential positions in its ‘centre’ have been dismantled. The great geographic discoveries provoked internal mutations of European culture since yet not digested and not meaningful information on geographic space demanded revision of the well-established picture of the world. On rethinking over the external borders of culture, its inner values, orientations, and categories are inevitably changed, in order to give unity to the world image, to give universal significance to the known geographic space and the place in it. While the external borders are changed, and the state borders are shifted as a result of geopolitics, the central loci of culture demand additional ‘weight’, in order to keep in balance the cultural space in general. The cultural space balance is reinstated as a result of change or re-distribution of sense imposed on geographical objects. Understanding of the problem of genesis of culture in space has led to an oncoming movement in natural sciences and in the humanities. In the second half of the 20th century, geographic science took up studying geographic space senses, the only field of limitless supremacy of culture over space. On the contrary, culturology and philosophy studies shifted from space categories to their local projections. (E.g.: Vorobyeva 2007a, b; Shkuropat 2004; Belokurov 2007; Silanyan 2002).

2.1 Culture and Space: Noosphere and Pneumatosphere as Basic Concepts My home is always there,in the heaven’s vault, Where one just hears lyre’s sounds, All with a spark of life have here their resort, A bard has, too, a space around. It gets the farthest stars by edges of his roof, And from a wall to one another There is a path whose measure can be proved Not by a look, but by a soul, rather. Mikhail Lermontov. My Home.

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Realizing itself in space, any culture becomes a spatial phenomenon which cannot be studied without concepts of noosphere and pneumatosphere that are used as a ground for majority of studies on interaction of a human and an environment, humanity and the planet. The concept of the noosphere (from Greek nus—mind) was worked out by Vladimir Vernadsky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in collaboration with Le Roy. Vernadsky and Chardin assumed that human activity becomes a geological power, and the idea which directs such activity is a specific factor of influence on the environment. Under the influence of the ideas technogenic processes are being changed, and, as a result, the whole set of Earth spheres changes as well. While the new agent is developed, biosphere, the sphere of living matter, starts quality changing and evaluating into noosphere: Overwhelmed by the living matter, the biosphere apparently increases its geological power, and being processed by the Homo sapiens scientific thought transforms into a new state, the noosphere (Vernadsky 1991: 25).

The Chardin noosphere presents more integrity than all previous covers, it is actually a new cover, ‘a thinking layer’, which, born in the late Tertiary period, has been unfolding ever since over the world of plants and animals, outside the biosphere, and above it (Teilhard de Chardin 1992: 149).

To Chardin, the Universe tissue has a ‘fundamental grit’ and is structured by filaments (fibers) that can be defined, in modern terminology, as unfolding in space nuclei and communicative mechanisms of culture. The spatial ‘horizontal’, ‘centers of fusion and noosphere transformation’, as well as the time ‘vertical’, on which the noosphere structural layers are ‘strung’, are revealed from Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere paradigm (Shishin 2003: 62).

Vernadsky wrote that transformation of the biosphere into the noosphere is activated by a specific kind of energy, the energy of human culture, or cultural biogeo-chemical energy (Vernadsky 1991: 126). It is exposed as a geological power, ‘materialized’ in the change of environment with the help of agriculture, cattle breeding, and industry. Studying the evolution of the biosphere into the noosphere, Vernadsky repeatedly underlined the regularity of this process. He examined the human culture history, the system of century-lasting cultural centers, such as the Chaldeans (Estuary) Kingdom, the Nile Valley, Egypt, pre-Aryan Northern India, Northern China, and underlined the millennial (though periodic, not continuous) nature of connections between them, thus indicating the unity and internal diversity of cultural space of the Earth, since time immemorial. He draws special attention to ‘simultaneous’ (s. 5-4 cc. BCE) movement of religious and philosophic thought that resulted in the first time when the idea of unity of all humanity, of humans as brothers, went beyond the borders of separate individuals , and gears life and dwelling conditions of people, or set goals for state formations (Vernadsky 1991: 37).

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Later, Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, a classic of cultural anthropology, explained this property of ‘synchronicity’ of ideas assuming that the noosphere ‘is including into itself, even partly, its future’ (Ivanov 2004: 46), the matrixes of not yet created cultural objects, not yet completed scientific ideas, that tend to be embodied almost simultaneously and independently from each other, in different parts of the Earth. By developing this idea, we can claim that the noosphere has ‘geographical memory’. For example, the medieval European landscape was mostly covered with woods, and the humans totally changed it while transforming their dwelling environment, leaving only some woody islands. Nevertheless, the wood landscape has been continuously present in fairy and folk tales, i.e. in cultural mentality which, at a certain historic era, completely transformed this area of the Earth surface. The initial natural landscape, even transformed beyond recognition, maintains its presence in the topos and toponyms of certain places, personal or general names of nations inhabited there (the ‘woodies’, the ‘fieldies’, the highlanders), in natural landscape allusions, associations, and artistic text metaphors (Svirida 2007: 12–13).

The most important thing for Vernadsky is that science grew up from philosophy, and philosophy, respectively, was created in several cultural centers. The human thought, their culture determined slow transformation of the space inhabited by the humans, the sources of transformation of the biosphere into the noosphere. It was not by chance that Vernadsky defined science as the main agent of such transformation. He wrote that ‘to scientifically understand means to frame a phenomenon into the scientific reality, i.e. cosmos’ (Vernadsky 1991: 38). The specific allegory of this statement does not prevent from seeing the thought which anticipates modern knowledge and describes, as well, the process of geographic space social organization where comprehension of space is a prevailing factor. An abstract scientific thought which formed in the world cultural centers already manifested itself as a geologic force. In the life-time of Vernadsky and Chardin the major mental intention towards the world had already been formed, the violence over the nature perceived as transformation and perfection became the element of the world thought typical for industrial culture of the 19-20th centuries, for the Christian capitalist society of the West. Cultural determinism ceased taking into account the natural factor considering it non-essential… (Turovsky 1998: 17).

Authors of the noosphere concept might have tried to correct such statements, easily assuming the future result of such human thought vector conditioned by rapid technical progress. Vernadsky noted that the growth of ‘cultural energy’ led to proportional human impact on the environment, up to its complete transformation. In the late 20th century, researchers claimed that the laws of the pristine biosphere operate as a critical, peripheral case; the biosphere becomes the subsystem of the planetary civilization; we experience the next step of developing of a global phenomenon that Le Roy, P. Teilhard de Chardin and Vernadsky called the noosphere (Nazaretyan 1991: 155).

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Studying the noosphere as the product of scientific thought both, Vernadsky and Chardin, conceived it in axiological way, as a kind of a positive change in space quality, a new higher stage in evolution of the space. Vernadsky suggested that the guarantee of further existence of the world civilization should be moral responsibility, consciousness of scholars, when using scientific discoveries and research, work for destructive, contradictory to the noosphere idea, goal (italics by O.L.) (Vernadsky 1991: 45).

Thus, the noosphere was meant to govern not only the science but also the culture with its moral principles. And the mind, within the ‘reason sphere’ conception is interpreted here in a broad way, as a spiritual and cultural activity in general. Contemporary scholars believe that it makes sense to distinguish the notions of the ‘noosphere’ (a specific historic condition of human mind genesis) and the ‘Noosphere’ (an ideal condition conceived in possible for human’s forms of reflection). The analysis of Vernadsky’s work allows to state that for him the ‘noosphere’ is a state of the biosphere connected with reason functioning within, scientific thought of the civilized humanity; the ‘Noosphere’ is a kind of a future condition of the cosmo-planetary system (organization) which appears in prospective when the mankind will be able to more or less optimize and harmonize the global human environment (Smirnov 2000: 105).

Smirnov also introduces the notion of ‘drastic noosphere’, or ‘noospheratu’, the one we live in. The value aspects of the noosphere teaching have been developed mainly by environmentalists. They deal more, compared with scholars of other fields, with the reality of ecological crisis caused by ignoring the eternal values when making economic and political decisions that unbalance the environment. The noosphere is the realm of Reason and Morality, when the essential interests of a person are fully revealed, when such planetary phenomena as science and culture reach a high degree of development (Muravykh 1997: 117).

The energy information exchange occurs between nature and culture through human activity. History of the last century shows that the trigger and almost all transformation potential lie in the realm of ideas, especially when they are turned into an ideology. Targeted landscape changes such as extensive development of virgin lands, construction of the Baikal-Amur railway, not completed although close to implementation project of transfer of Northern and Siberian rivers, appeared to be the ideas directed on obligatory landscape transformation. In China, making the rivers flow in the right direction caused their drying and periodic destructive and drastic floods. The moving and transformation of material matters (extraction of ore, sand, gravel; construction of buildings and communications) take place massively. Almost similar impact on the environment was caused by local, regional and world wars (with mass destruction weapon like napalm and nuclear bombs), accidents at large industrial facilities (in Chernobyl, Bhopal, etc.). Vernadsky who worked out his noosphere conception before the nuclear era, assumed that

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the energy available to mankind is not an unlimited value since it is determined by the biosphere size. And this factor predetermines the limit of cultural bio-geo-chemical energy (Vernadsky 1991: 131).

Vernadsky believed that civilization of “cultural humanity” cannot be discontinued nor demolished because it exists as a great natural phenomenon coherent with historically, to be more precise geologically, established biosphere organization. Forming itself, the noosphere gets, by all its roots, into connection with this crust, which has never, by any comparative extend, happened in human history (Vernadsky 1991: 40).

Leaving aside the argument that the nuclear energy discovery gave the humans way to wiping out not only themselves but the whole planet, let us emphasize Vernadsky’s idea on the rooting of humanity, hence culture, into the Earth shells. On our part, we note that the changes of quality characteristics of the planet’s space are no less significant than its direct facial conversion. Vernadsky laid, by his notion of the noosphere, possibility to become deeply aware of the culturalspatial interaction process that are being developed now, basing on the concept that the existence of culture within geographic space is expressed not only in its mastering and structuring of the environment but also in its comprehension as well as comprehension of our place in it. In the context of synergy paradigm, this interaction process shows ‘horizontal’ heterogeneity of the noosphere genesis which manifests itself by civilization shift (bifurcation points, in terms of synergy) where the transition to a new quality happens. Hence, the noosphere genesis should be regarded a nonlinear synergy process. It presents a pulsating mode both, in time and in space (Shishin 2003: 95).

As the noosphere genesis develops on, the quality characteristics of the space are changed, the space goes ‘squeezed’ and becomes pervious in all directions. Moreover, it becomes comprehended not only by an individual mind but by the part of human mentality that can use TV and Internet. This is one of the most important aspects of the noosphere teaching, together with the role of culture in the noosphere genesis, which has not been yet sufficiently studied. To Shishin, who made an attempt to solve this problem within the cultural philosophy, in its axiological part, culture, as a system of eternal values, puts an ideal pattern of the noosphere existence. From the point of view of the synergy concept, ‘culture functions as a goal determiner (determiner of the future) toward the noosphere genesis’ (Shishin 2003: 146); it creates the images, ideas, archetypes to be realized, in the future, in space and on the Earth surface. In this respect, recent studies bring closer conceptions of the noosphere and the pneumatosphere. The pneumatosphere concept as a supporting theory to the noosphere teaching was suggested by Pavel Florensky. He defined the pneumatosphere as a sphere of supreme spiritual and moral values which accumulates and translates the human spiritual experience, and which may be embodied in artifacts and texts as well as in

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landscapes. It is also necessary to highlight here Florensky’s concept that ‘culture on the whole might be interpreted as a practice of space organization’ (Florensky 1993: 55), thus, Florensky actually equaled the cultural activity and space organization. His later research shows more obvious, compared with the original concept, connection between the pneumatosphere and geographic space through artifacts and symbols, as expression of spiritual harmony and inert matter: For instance, harmony is embodied in the Athens Acropolis and the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, the maternity ideal in the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God, or the Sistine Madonna, etc. In this spiritual pneumatosphere, not only supreme and eternal but also generally accepted values, that are conceived practically without translation which is vital, are present. It is not important what country the man visiting the Athens is from, nor his mother tongue and his cultural level are important, anyway the Athens Acropolis will not let him stay indifferent. Deeper the recipient’s aesthetic perception is, more he will conceive the cultural object, more layers and senses will be exposed for him when learning about the artifact (Shishin 2003: 138).

In the light of the cross-cultural communication theory, the postulate of particular cultural ‘frames’ and ‘milestones’ that do not require interpretation due to their universality appears to be interesting. All in all, we can say that the pneumatosphere acts as an eidetic space which implies continuity and flexibility, while the noosphere, provided its omni-covering, implies heterogeneity due to heterogeneity of the biosphere and lithosphere, which is more appropriate for this study. Analyzing the so-called miraculous icons, Florensky wrote about the inability of culture to transfigure the inert matter, make its physical qualities finer, in modern terms, about the ‘manifestation of the subtle (eidetic) component in cultural artifacts’ (Shishin 2003: 131). It is not impossible that the cultural eidetism can expose itself on some part of the Earth surface; if the culture transforms the surrounding matter contributing to its refinement, the territory rich in cultural artifacts, and is connected with the supreme spiritual impulses of artists and thinkers. We assume that the Noosphere and pneumatosphere concepts should remain a theoretical basis in studies on culture and space since they more fully outline the range of problems in this field, suggest phenomenological unity of mental and instrumental human activity with the Earth surface, natural environment, and, which is quite possible, the Universe.

2.2 Semiosphere Alors vous étiez pris dans un réseau miraculeux qui vous changeait vousmême en plus vaste que vous… Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Citadelle. The ‘semiosphere’ was introduced as a term into scholarly practice by Yuri Lotman, by analogy with Vernadsky’s ‘noosphere’ and ‘biosphere’ concepts that influenced

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him (Lotman 1997: 629–630). To Lotman, the semiosphere is ‘a synchronous semiotic space that fills cultural boundaries, and acts, simultaneously, as a condition for separate semiotic structures, work and its offspring’ (Lotman 1996: 4). Though, contrary to the noosphere, overwhelming the whole geographic crust, the semiosphere notion was initially restricted by the expansion space of one dominating culture and its code system: The infrangible operating mechanism - the semiosis unit, shall be considered not a separate language but a semiotic space inherent to this particular culture (italics by O.L.). It is this space that we define as a semiosphere (Lotman 2000: 251).

Nevertheless, further on, this concept was tended to be an inherent part of other conceptual ‘spheres’ thus gaining their totality: Signs form texts, texts form culture, culture forms Semiosphere. … Semiosphere is the culture of all cultures, and the environment which ensures for them the possibility to emerge and exist (Lotman 2002a, b: 20).

The issue of the semiosphere is studied by foreign and Russian scholars; the most comprehensive overview of papers in this direction is available in the book by D. Smirnov (Smirnov 2008: 28). Among foreign researchers are as follows, Jasper Hoffmeyer (Hoffmeyer n/d), Kull (Kull 1998), Roger Abrantes (Abrantes n/d). Among some of our compatriots are V. Ivanov, V. Zinchenko, A. Erakhtin, A. Portnov, and other. Vyacheslav Ivanov, in the context of cultural anthropology, on the one hand, expands the meaning of the Semiosphere, and on the hand, restricts it due to language displays: The Semiosphere, being part of the Noosphere and the pneumatosphere, includes, in present time, first of all the natural language as the most capacious system of signs and texts, significant number of its specific variants or branches, spoken argots, social and local dialects and argots, and language texts adapted for special communicative conditions (Ivanov 2004: 99–100).

Existing on the Earth surface, culture inevitably symbolizes its living environment (Hudson and Pocock 1978: 33). Hence, the process of converting any field of the material world that culture deals with into a sign system, involves the geographic space as well. It is organically included into the semiosphere, the semiotic space of culture, ‘outside of which semiosis itself cannot exist’ (Lotman 1998: 444). If we connect statements on the semiosphere with realities of the geographic space which is comprehended by culture, it becomes obvious that its subjective variety emerges not only from objective variety of the geographic crust, but also due to non-equable comprehension of its objects. There are many places outside, and even inside territorial borders of national culture that are not significant for it. Although, some cities, rivers, mountain peaks appear to become specific semantic markers for the given culture, thus conditioning the structure of its local and global world image. To Lotman,

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2 Genesis of Culture in Space. Conception of Cultural Landscape … semiosphere demonstrates irregularity. Languages that fill the semiotic space are different by nature and relate to each other in the spectrum of complete translatability up to complete untranslatability (Lotman 2000: 252).

Irregularity of the semiotic space results in the semiotic irregularity of the geographic space. This is manifested in irregular distribution of significant cultural regions on the Earth surface, as well as in mismatch, in the geographic space, of junction points of different subculture languages within one total semiosphere. The author of this conception claims that culture organizes itself in the form of a particular “spatial-temporal” aspect outside of which it cannot exist. This organization is realized as the semiosphere and, at the same time, by the semiosphere. The outer world into which a human being is plunged, is being semiotized in order to become a cultural factor, i.e. it is divided into the area of objects, with some meaning, that symbolize, direct, that is having sense, and objects that present nothing but themselves. However, different languages that fill the semiosphere, this Argus Panoptes, distinguish, in outside reality, different things. The emerging in this mode stereoscopic picture assigns the right to speak on behalf of the culture in general. Simultaneously, considering all the difference between semiosphere substructures, they are organized within one common coordinate system, with the past, the present and the future on the temporal axis, and the inner space, outer space and their boundary – on the spatial axis (Lotman 2000: 259).

And we are going further to define, as one of the basic semiosphere attributes, its permanent updating within the landscape notional and sense context; semiotic irregularity of geographic space acts as a subject-object frame of culture provoking a certain direction of the semiosis, which repels from the “frames” and “milestones” set by the previous stages of culture genesis, in this particular space. To V. Abashev, a researcher of semiosis in culture, the Semiosphere adsorbs pattern forms of a natural landscape, and any of its parts could potentially enter a text paradigm. Locus and culture are not neutral to each other, they interact, and even the most natural origin of the place, its landscape, is involved into this interaction. The landscape is as much a cultural creature as it is a natural one. And this is true, even when no direct anthropogenic influence took place that might have changed natural forms of the landscape. Culture is not just situated in the space, but it reconstructs the space, by means of semiosis, in a sense manner (Abashev 2000: 35).

The contact of culture and geographic space realized via semiotic cultural codes is mainly expressed in comprehension of the space, and comprehension of the place of culture (local, regional, national) in it. In this regard, we are apt to agree with Simon Shama, American culturologist, that culture ‘constructs images and projects them onto the woods, water and stone’ (Shama 1995: 61), thus giving sense to the space and culture. In our opinion, this semantic reconstruction is the basis of semiotic structure of landscape which, later, gives structure to several cultural processes connected, directly or indirectly, with space perception and spatial and cultural codes production. On the other hand, the semiosphere, even in its abstract realities, by analogy with the geographic space, has its centre, periphery and boundaries. The semiosphere centre presents higher level of the semiosis development (Zamyatin 2006: 91), which

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‘comes to naught’ at periphery. Such centres may present ‘central problems’ developed by culture in a given time, almost everywhere, or, alternatively, have their location in the geographic space. Nevertheless, on the periphery, certain structures are accumulated that, on the next stage of development, may take the place of the nucleus, the centre. The boundary serves as a filter translating the chaos of the outside world into a structured text (Lotman 1992). ‘The inner space of the semiosphere is, paradoxically, simultaneous and irregular, asymmetric and total, one-mattered. Consisting of conflicting structures, it presents individuality as well. Self-description of such space requires the first person pronoun. One of the basic mechanisms of the semiotic individuality is the boundary. This boundary can be defined as a line where the periodic form ceases. Such space is defined as ‘our’, ‘my’, ‘cultural’, ‘safe’, ‘harmonically organized’, etc. It is opposed to ‘their-space’, ‘foreign’, ‘hostile’, ‘dangerous’, ‘chaotic’ (Lotman 2000: 257). Zinchenko compares the semiosphere with the expanding Universe: It has its stars, clusters, galaxies, nebula, black holes, self-manifesting flashes (enlightenments) of new and super-new knowledge, long-running (or slow-reaching) light of old knowledge; it has its molecules, atoms, i.e. a planetary-structured notions that can draw new notions into their orbit, and may move themselves at ‘foreign’ orbits; it has its ‘elementary’ particles (images, metaphors), penetrating the semiosphere at a thought speed. It also has its associative fields with strong and weak interactions, and its phase transitions (Zinchenko 1998: 126). For the sphere of knowledge, the semiosphere, number of dimensions is equal to the number of conceivable and inconceivable languages, added with indefinite range of notions and meaning. It does not fit in the Euclidean (even four-dimensional) space. Even the LobachevskiMinkovski-Einstein space will be insufficient for it (Zinchenko 1998: 127).

When interacting with the geographic space, the important principle of cultural thinking of a human is exposed: the real space becomes an iconic image of the semiosphere, i.e. the language expressing various extra-spatial meaning, and the Semiosphere, in its turn, converts the real spatial world which surrounds a human according to its image and similarity (Lotman 2000: 320).

‘Extra-spatial attributes’ might be of any level of abstraction, from sensual to transcendental. Things difficult to express in words are encrypted in a symbol, which, in fact, in the area of meaning has eidetic nature. As Pavel Florensky wrote, a symbol is ‘something that presents not what it is, or more than it is, and however selfmanifesting through it’ (Florensky 1988: 44). The semiosis process seems to be similar to the sphagidation theory developed by Georgui Nissky, of the Greek patristics school), since in both cases, ‘superposition of the soul signs onto the matter’ happens (Florensky 2000: 16). On the other hand, modern researchers introduce the ‘concept of the fifth quasimeasuring where the objective world exposes itself to a human being. This is semantic field, a system of meanings’ (Leontiev 1983: 253). Thus, the system of meanings is introduced into the number of inherent characteristics of the space inhabited by humans. To A. Iovlev, ‘the space taken in isolation as an abstraction is already a meaning bearer’ (Iovlev 1999: 105). We can add that any geographic object implicitly

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bears this meaning of abstract space, inset, as in a Russian matryeshka doll, in all its other senses. Regarding the semiosphere as well as the noosphere, conclusions are found that it presents a complex open system, ‘with a non-linear progress, and therefore prediction of its behavior seems possible only within strategic gravity lines where the determinism laws are in force’ (Prigogine 1991). When it comes to moment of the next strategic choice, the determinism laws stop working, and the system happens to find itself on the field of endless number of possible development ways. This is the situation of the ‘semiotic threshold’ (Lotman 1992), and while passing through it the semiosphere might crucially change the direction of its development (Puchkov 1999: 117). In geographic space, it is expressed in shifting of cultural centers that are centres of semiosis as well, since it is activity of the semiosis that features the cultural focus. One of the most historically significant semiotic thresholds is, assumingly, the Great Geographic Discoveries that completely changed the European culture world picture. From the point of the semiotic space studies, the semiosphere model is a complex interweaving of many cultural languages and texts of various quality, and, in the present, it is gradually replacing the models of secondary sign systems in semiotics. Mixture of diverse languages and communication systems is typical for the Semiosphere. Different Semiosphere languages may differently describe and interpret nonlinguistic natural reality by giving it sense and shifting it to some sign category. From this angle, the spatial language of the semiosphere becomes one of full-fledged languages that serve for storage and transmission of information on natural and social peculiarities of human life (Puchkov 1999: 117).

Modern scholars quite naturally conclude that the semiosphere can be considered a semiotic component, or the noosphere dimension unit. Portnov claims that development of communication systems and information transmission are ‘one of most essential features of the noosphere genesis’ (Portnov 1990: 68), and in this process, the sign system which has much more abilities for coding of semantic and pragmatic information takes the prime position. It makes possible to semantize semiotic phenomena of non-sign origin (natural phenomena, artifacts, etc.), as well as to semantize, in rather wide range, signs of other types, and traces of their life (Portnov 1990: 48).

Smirnov has all the right to state that the modern concept of the Semiosphere should be studied within the Noosphere formation context, and become a generally integrated scientific problem. He notes that, by the late twentieth century, in the world scientific thought, there has been a steady trend to ontologization: This tends to affect. the semiotic science as well, and most clearly manifests in the semiosphere concept. Semiotic studies have gradually shifted from the area of specific research to the competence of philosophical disciplines (Smirnov 2008: 51).

As to the pneumatosphere, in his opinion, it affects the symbolizing (meaningful) side of symbols (signs) (Smirnov 2008: 31). Smirnov offers a new scientific direction,

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semiosophy of the Noosphere universum’ which he considers ‘a field of knowledge which allows revealing principles and mechanisms of functioning and development of the Noosphere-semiotic organization, realizing in the substrate of the noosphere and semiotic reality (Smirnov 2008: 8).

Within the context of the cultural landscape semantics, such an approach appears to be rather promising, since it allows studying culture as a geographic reality, and the geographic space, the landscape, as a cultural sphere.

2.3 Culture and Space: Discourse in the Humanities Wide landscapes expanding like army Hide spaces deep in the spaces. Andrei Bely. Russ. In the modern humanities, studies of interaction between culture and space have been held in several directions, i.e. linguistic, phenomenology, philosophic, humanitariangeographic. In majority of philosophic and cultural studies, the term ‘space’ is used metaphorically, and this can be explained, for instance, from the point of sociology, by predisposition of society to see itself in spatial scheme forms (Bourdieu 1993: 39). We can say, there is a latent dispute of various disciplines for the right of using the ‘space’ concept in their own utilitarian purposes and theoretic work. In all those directions, essential and semiotic aspects of interaction of culture and space are, more or less, studied, and we are going to enlarge them for the targeted study. From the linguistic and language philosophy point, the center of modern humanitarian knowledge is defined as the intersection of language (actual thinking practice) and space (the single instrument where the value appears due to alignment of differences) (Kristeva 2000: 428–429).

As a property of the space, in this case, we’ll recognize the ability to produce new attributes as a result of inherent irregularity. The language structures analysis leads to understanding of the geographic space role in the life of culture. Linguistic research shows that, in many languages, hence for the whole semiosphere, the expression ‘to be in a place’ also means ‘to be part of this place’ (Wierzbitcka 1972). Within the discourse problem which, in linguistics, is broadly studied, in particular, as ‘practice with its own coupling forms as well as its own sequence forms’ (Foucault 1996: 168), the analysis of ‘a discourse event’ is hold in the context of extra-linguistic conditions of its birth, including culture and space conditions. On the other hand, the ‘space of discourse practices’ is studied, which allows to expect and match, in speech, events of different genesis and different time of birth, by reproducing dynamics of reality. Foucault points, in the texts, ‘archaeological territories’

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implying internal diversity and localization of the phenomenon which has particular sense and event boundaries that allow considering it, in relation to practically unlimited ‘discourse space’, a separate territory. Passing from the discourse to the language itself, we can see that spatial categories coded in language (as ‘extra-linguistic conditions’) quite clearly and definitely report about consistent patterns in relationship between national culture and space. This served as a methodology ground for ethnolinguistics, ethnosemiotics, ethnosemiology, that take all this wide subject area as a single object, the language of culture in semiotic meaning of the word, the units of which may have different substance belong to different codes, although form one sign system with general ‘content plan’ (there is one and the same ‘world picture’ that backgrounds all forms of culture and language (Tolstaya 1996: 235).

Discovery of this packed in language world picture (including its spatial coordinates) is, from the point of this problem study, of major interest since several studies (e.g.: Berezovich 2000) are directly related to cultural semiotization of its spatial environment. In Russian ethnology, ‘structural-semiotic interpretation of ethnographic material covering the so-called comprehensive space, or spatial aspects of symbolic (ideological) side of culture’ is becoming popular (Tishkov 2003: 278). Meanwhile, ‘spatial practices, or the inhabited space where ideas and actions are being combined, are not actually studied, not explained’ (Tishkov 2003: 278). The cultural landscape, being the subject of this study, is considered the embodiment of such spatial practices, their marker and means of expression. Therefore, our research indirectly affects this scope of interaction between culture and space as well. Among many philosophic studies on the interaction of culture and space, the ‘geophilosophy’ term must be underlined. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari who suggested this term believed that the thought is not a thread stretched between a subject and an object, and not a circling of latter around the former. The thought seems to realize itself more through correlation of the territory and the earth (Deleuze and Guattari 1980).

This metaphor is an attempt of philosophic understanding of the processes that happen when culture interacts with geographic space, as well as of features of spatial life of culture. D. Zamyatin interprets this correlation, declared by the French scholars, as ‘de-territorization process’ (opening off the territory, from territory to earth), and ‘re-territorization process’ (from the earth to territory, recovery of territory through earth). It is these presumably transition zones that allow talking about play with geographic space and by geographic space (Zamyatin 2004a: 34). In the Post-Modernist Encyclopedia and the Newest Philosophic Dictionary, the landscape is used by post-modernist philosophy in the context of constituting the philosophic paradigm of multidimensional genesis structure and human thought. The ‘landscape’ term sets a frame of knowledge for functioning of conjugate wordforms that were, in the middle of the late twentieth century, engaged into proper philosophic concepts (plane, surface, depth, etc.).

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The landscape is constituted as a particular structural position to conceive the world, and as a result, styles and forms of an intellectual discourse correlate with corresponding physical practices, asserting themselves within boundaries of expressive and communicative part of a text. An important stage in philosophic theorizing on the space subject became the work of V. Podoroga. He presents the geographic space as a frame of philosophic thought, makes it an object of philosophic comprehension and structuring of philosophic thought; for instance, the legacy of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Proust, and Kafka are interpreted as ‘landscape worlds’. Such interpretation emerged as a result of special care with which the above named philosophers defined the ‘position’ of their personal world view and correlated with it (‘position’) spatial images. Hence, it’s necessary to read the papers of these philosophers as a text which, in Podoroga metaphoric frames, has landscape and space connotation: The movement of text lines indicates the extra-territoriality of such work; when reading them we leave category, genre, disciplinary boundaries, and as if drift from one semantic content to another, with no obstacles on our way. The thought is topological since it has its place, and is unthinkable without it (Podoroga 1995: 18, 24).

In philosophic works by Podoroga, transcendental images are inextricably linked with a landscape, defining it as a measuring instrument, or blue-print for philosophical reflection, to analyze the writing: Three constitutive elements are sky – horizon – earth. A landscape image is determined by the geometry of a complex curve, which connects the points of the earth and the sky in that very configuration which reflects the strength of their interaction. However, contrary to the Chinese landscape metaphysics, in the European one, there is no meditative peace, nor contemplation, not completed in themselves world lines that create balanced space for natural elements and the human being. A landscape image remains an image which demonstrates not much as a certain ‘sense of nature’, but more an imaginary plan of a place where an architectonic ideal of a philosophic system, or philosophy requisites can be accommodated: Diogenes and the barrel, Empedocles and the volcano, Kant and the cathedral spire, Kierkegaard and the Morah, Heidegger and ‘the hut’, Nietzsche and the Upper Engadin glacial abyss (Podoroga 1995: 26–27).

Philosophical images are constructed by analogy with geographical ones. Podoroga’s research is a specific response to the landscape phenomenology challenge which appeared almost simultaneously with the release of his book: ‘If a landscape can be made similar to a text, there is, undoubtedly, a reversal mode – to see a text as a landscape’ (Kagansky 1995: 38).

As a result, the text ‘spills’ into the geographic space, acquiring, thereby, a landscape structure—sense loci, sense fields, territories and their boundaries, and relationship between them are terminated as part of a literary text. Philosophers study the space-time continuum of culture as well where a particular “metaspace-time” of projection, necessary and sufficient for causing in it all other processes and results of human activity, is postulated (Barkova 2003: 4).

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On the other hand, within the philosophy framework, the ‘reflection’, ‘projection’ of philosophy categories by culture into geographic space reality is studied, as well as the reverse process, i.e. formation of categorical apparatus according to reflection on the given space. The process of development of real geographic space by mentality of culture influences its internal attributes, especially when it comes to local culture; Formation of spatial features of culture is accompanied by extra-, intra-polarity of culture; spatial isolation of culture; ontological dialogism of cultures (Vorobyeva 2007a: 11).

Similar approach to spatial concepts was formed in works on culturology. To Lotman, spatial picture of the world is multi-layered: it includes the mythological universum, as well as scientific modeling, and mundane ‘common sense’. Meanwhile, for an ordinary human, these (and some other) layers form a heterogeneous mixture that functions as a unity. This substrate is uploaded by images created by art or more sophisticated scholar knowledge, and also by re-coded spatial images onto the language of other models. The result is a complex and constantly mobile semiotic mechanism (Lotman 1996: 296).

This approach of disclosure of polyvalent genesis of sign systems will be used in this work, since the semiotics of cultural landscape is, by its definition, a product of interaction with the territory of various cultural strata and subcultures. The problem of ‘space production’ was raised by Henri Lefebvre in his work on the space construction produced by society in the process of economic activity and cultural creativity (Lefebre 1991). In his concept, the functional-existential triad, ‘perception-understanding-living’ of the space, is significant. According to N. Anferova, who has analyzed a number of foreign authors’ works, problems of space production by society are studied, recently, in line with the concept of construction of social reality, presented, in social phenomenology, to P. Berger and T. Luckmann; they are also based on semiotic interpretation of the mythologizing as naturalization, ‘making concepts natural’ by constant upgrade with new meanings, connotative systems. These issues, in detail, are related to the concept of modern mythology by R. Bart, performative discourse research by P. Bourdieu, post-industrial economy of signs by G. Bodillard, and other (Anferova 2009: 63).

As suggested by D. Zamyatin who develops ‘humanitarian geography’, in culturology, ‘every space is essentially boundary, and takes its place in between of various spaces, times and concepts’ (Zamyatin 2004a: 43). This phenomenon encourages scholars to research in ‘philosophy of the boundary’ which, at the same time, is a product and a constant provoker of the semiosis. These works gain more emphasis when studied as a complex of intercultural ‘cracks’ and field research of boundary spaces. A separate topic in modern humanities of interdisciplinary nature is the geographic space as a factor of cultural being. This trend has been formed as a result of understanding geographical patterns in the substance of culture itself, which suggests that the open system of culture is open towards the geographic space as well, to the effects of the patterns of the landscape. To summarize the work in this area, let us note that, on the one hand, the culture absorbs some of the patterns of the environment reflected in its various elements,

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from language metaphors to traditional methods used in agriculture. The flip side of the coin is that the geographic space is perceived as an image of something different, as a non-culture, which is important for the culture genesis, possible for perception only when opposed to something beyond it, something of a different nature. Natural world and physical and geographic space are contiguous, and are perceived by culture as something external, setting its frames and denoting constant patterns as a starting point for cultural identity and its mentality. Unlikeness of a human as a cultural being demands opposition to the natural world perceived as a non-cultural space. The boundary between these two will not only separate a human from other living beings but will also run inside human psyche and activity (Lotman 2000: 31).

In this regard, M. Puchkov distinguishes a language of meta-description existing as a sub-language’, in the semiosphere structure. The system of meta-description describes the mere reality of semiotic processes that occur, and indicate their general nature. Communication and information exchange in the Semiosphere structure show dialogic structure, and presence of at least two interacting parts in the act of communication: an author and a recipient (that might act as both, object and subject), or two languages with an interpretation of a statement occurring between them. The dialogue and the “search of a stranger” (Bakhtin 1979) are the basis of the semiosphere life (Puchkov 1999: 117).

To describe the contact between two cultures (friend/foe) a mirror metaphor is used. As Toporov writes, ‘it is appropriate to talk about two mirrors put opposite to each other’ (Toporov 1997: 6), it is possible to talk about ‘a distorted (or almost recorded) mode of reproduction, more precisely, two reproductions, with each of them having its own distortion, - ‘friendly’ in ‘foe’, or ‘foe’ in ‘friendly’ (Toporov 1997: 6). Does the space have its own ability to reflect? This is a mirror where reflections are not erased but stored, only old reflections are blurred randomly, due to historic event, or deliberately, e.g. the attempt to demolish Russian Orthodox architectural monuments and even the whole loci, during the Bolshevik era in Russia. Hence, geographic space, as well as nature, is the ‘external’ reality, the otherness of which is a mere illusion. Similarly to extra-text reality which is not an initial but a derived form in regards to a text, non-culture opposed to culture stands as its derivative. Non-culture is always specific for that given culture. Culture is in constant dialogue with the space external to it, structuring it according to its likeness. But the same dialogue is existentially significant for the culture itself, in its due course culture gains and develops its identity (its selfhood)… (Lotman 2002a, b: 19).

In such sense, the physical and geographic space in the context of its comprehension is a derivative of culture. Prehistoric awe to the savage undiscovered environment, hidden in depth of the subconscious of a contemporary human, since the medieval era, stands as a cultural experience reproduced in mythological forms of the antiquity. It exists in a modified mythology up to the present time, in the tourist

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or traditional folk stories about the hidden world creatures tricks, from the Russian Leshiy (forest evil spirit) to Snow Ogre. Just like between a culture and the other one there are intersecting semantic fields, boundaries between a culture and a geographic space as a non-culture are eroding while a culture expands into outside, not only by means of road, housing, construction, etc. but on the level of information and semiotic processes. To P. Pellegrino, the space as such was considered, in Ancient Greece philosophy, as a choros (boundary) opposed to chaos, compression of chaos and choros. Hence, the space is something that governs the world by pointing boundaries. It sets boundaries before and after. Giving names to chaos it lightens things, and puts boundaries on them. It is opposed to disorder, giving sense to one of those two. This is the space of limitless ground with both, intervals and location (Pellegrino 1999: 73).

It is worth pointing here that, to this Italian scholar, the space is anthropomorphic; metaphorically reflecting on the space as a subject, Pellegrino, naturally, studies it in the cultural context of social genesis. In his conception, space and time are not only the aspects of genesis, they are the conditions of its existence, the opportunity to give sense to its presence, as well as its absence, to its life and death (Pellegrino 1999: 89).

In the context of interdisciplinary research of the problem of interaction between culture and space, over the past few decades, substantial terms have formed that, depending on research approach, might have some meaningful nuances. Majority of theoretical studies, within the humanities, use the term ‘space’ metaphorically, thus denoting an interesting problem of constructing a metaphor in research purposes. In constructing scientific metaphors, immanent properties of geographic space are exploited, such as containment, length, ranging, structural organizing of objects, etc. These metaphors are based on a personal and cultural experience of space living as a philosophic category, or the space as a geographic condition. The mystical experience of space living by different personalities—Dante, Swedenborg, other—also becomes the property of culture, and influences ongoing semiotic processes that affect the space. In philosophy, the term ‘cultural space’ has been used as an already settled one which is primarily defined as means of existence of a human being in culture. V. Toporov in his well-known work The Cultural Space and Meetings in It, writes that culture is not only a place where senses are born but also the space where they are exchanged, “transmitted” and tend to be interpreted from one language of culture into another (Toporov 1989: 7).

Hence, in this case, the concepts of culture and place/space are equated. We assume that by using this term he, in most cases, metaphorically defined culture as a repository which allows co-existence of various manifestations not hypothetically (high-low culture) but, once again, as being ranged and compared.

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The term ‘cultural space’ is mostly used in cultural studies. Several approaches can be distinguished in comprehension of this notion, they were generalized in the work by E. Vorobyeva: cultural space as a cultural epoch; cultural space as an eidetic space; cultural space as a symbolic space; cultural space as integrator of physical, historic, symbolic, eidetic sense (Vorobyeva 2007a: 13).

She also proposed the following approach to understand spatial categories of culture: ‘culture acting as an eidos-space meaning “the image of space” presents reflection of the real world’ (Vorobyeva 2007a: 12), which conditions the existence of the space of culture, and cultural space as objective reality. We cannot but agree that, provided the senses, symbols, and eidoi are directly connected with value categories of culture, the content of cultural spaces is made by values, rules, behavior standards. Such approach to cultural space allows recreating the image of extinct cultures, to understand many cultural phenomena (Babaeva 2001: 27).

Vorobyeva notes such property of the cultural space as dialoguity, since it is ‘not only a sphere of co-existence of different cultures but also an opportunity for a dialogue between them’ (Vorobyeva 2007b). Communicative nature of cultural space was highlighted by Kim Min Su as well (Kim 2004). According to V. Tishkov, anthropologist and ethnologist, the ‘cultural space includes interaction of four substances, or elements: space, time, sense and communication’ (Tishkov 2003: 290). He pays much attention to organizing and using of geo-space by culture, since without taking into account time, sense and communication, it’s impossible to study this side of human culture; similarly, without taking into account key notions, one of which is the category of spatial place, or space clusters, meaning culturally constructing spatial sense and situation (Tishkov 2003: 290).

Space as such is generally eliminated from some concepts of the cultural space which is defined, for example, by the authors of linguistic-cultural dictionary as ‘a form of existence of culture in human mind, it is culture reflected by mind, cultural genesis in the mind of its bearers’ (Russian Cultural… 2004: 10–11). Actually, this term denotes a number of information-emotional mental facts inherent for the given culture, and ‘includes all existing and potentially possible ideas on cultural phenomena in members of national-linguistic-cultural community’ (Russian Cultural… 2004: 10–11). Researchers underline the cognitive nature of this concept; it is based on cognitive framework taken as a definitely structured knowledge network, and nationally marked and culturally determined views mandatory, necessary for all members of national-linguistic-cultural community (Russian Cultural… 2004: 10–11).

The problem of semantic frames of culture, quite well-turned in the mentioned dictionary, in our opinion, does not condition the use of the term ‘space’, which

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can be justified only by the use, in a metaphoric key, of its inherent properties of extension and totality. The term ‘cultural space’ is widely used in scientific research, at the edge of natural sciences and the humanities, i.e. in geography of culture. In this field, according to analytical work by R. Turovsky, it is used for marking cultural-geographic communities of various size that are initially set by toponymy, physical geography, nationality (including the past), mundane ideas, etc., i.e. are set a priori with unclear and blurred boundaries and selection criteria (Turovsky 1998: 57).

The problem of functional interaction of culture and space, as the ground for the birth of a new substance having properties of the former and the latter from interaction components,–cultural space—is present both, in natural sciences and the humanities. In geography, such unity is perceived a priori, since, even starting from the middle twentieth century, scholars use the concept of ‘territorial community of people’, which actually defines the territory as an immediate frame of a local culture. On the other hand, the reverse process is being observed in cultural sciences, i.e. the borrowing of the notional apparatus from geography, the use, in regards of culture, of special geo-morphological terms and concepts describing processes of change of terrain (e.g. peneplainisation, denudation, and ablation). As a result, there is a change in interpretation and understanding of phenomena that are being treated with a claim for objectivity typical, for instance, for geologic processes. In the first place, this is the way to interpret quantity attributes of social activity on the Earth surface. As B. Rodoman, one of modern classics of theoretic geography, states the relief interpretation is important not for geo-morphology but for quasi-geomorphology, the direction in theoretic geography which not only uses the concept of the relief but also makes the statistic relief similar to the physical relief of the lithosphere giving way to similar processes (Rodoman 1999: 75).

Though, statistics is only the ‘dry residue’ of cultural genesis. Transgression of the terms and, hence, images and symbols from one category field to some other allows to clearly present the spatial development of cultural and political processes, effectively interpret narrative and linguistic peculiarities of art works. It is worth noting that it is fundamental analogy between the earth (geographic) relief and the relief of culture that lies in the bases of such transfer of concepts from one scientific field into another (Zamyatin 2006: 50).

For example, I. Svirida writes that the relief inherent to natural landscape became one of spatial characteristics of culture, which serves as structuring means of organizing such complex systems as human beings and their culture. The relief is inherent to cultural processes with rhythm and length, peaks and falls, tracks of divergent information flows, various ideological and art movements (Svirida 2007: 15).

The same is observed in the cultural semiotics. Lotman writes about drafting a ‘semiotic map’ for higher meta-level cultural codes which ‘will have clear borders between regions, and equally ranged surfaces’ (Lotman 2002a, b: 66); there is an

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obvious geographic imagery added to a discourse with an aim to brightly highlight the interpreted phenomenon. We can argue that there is no dichotomy of culture and geographic space as its off-cultural frame in noosphere and semiosphere reality that unite culture and non-culture into a functional one. This creates a new synthetic theoretic-methodology approach which allows seeing the culture in relationship with geographic space as a single system. A particular ‘vertical’ interpretative structure is formed, based on physicalgeographic realities, the landscape, and—then—artifacts imposed on them (roads, cities, monuments, etc.). The next ‘layer’ are images created by culture around natural and hand-made objects (‘geoculture’, to Zamyatin); then—as the essence of images, symbols, signs come; higher there are spatial categories of culture that are practically not connected with the Earth surface. From the synergy approach point, the geographic space is seen as a system focused on generating chaotic attractors, floating and unpredictable. These attractors, depending on events and ideas related to them, polarize semiosis by creating semantic heterogeneity of space. Focusing on this study, it is necessary to decide on one of basic terms denoting such unity. Since the term ‘cultural space’ is often used in relation to internal collisions of culture not directly related to the geographic space, though we assume that when using the term ‘space’ in any of its cultural connotations we should take into consideration the territorial and local aspects even if it is only a springboard for further flight of philosophical thought, we are going to use another term. We believe that information and semantic form of existence of cultures in space should be distinguished as the geo-cultural space—the unity which has eidetic, ideational, symbolic component, emerges and exists basing on and in close interconnection with physical- and socio-geographic realities. Transition from the cultural space to geo-cultural is performed by means of engaging the consistent patterns of the geographic space existence, ideal and local geographic images, into the philosophic and culturologic discourse. The geo-cultural space has its own ‘clusters’–hierarchy of cultural landscapes.

2.4 Cultural Landscape: Category Analysis I’m ready to go—where there’s more sky – but pure longing now won’t set me free from the still-youthful hills of Voronezh, to those, clear, and wholly-human, of Tuscany. O. Mandelshtam. Do not compare… The conception of cultural landscape has been developed primarily in geography, and during the last decades, in its bordering fields, on the junction of culturology and philosophy of culture that only started showing interest to this object of research and problem area (see e.g. Kolbovsky 2003; Shishin 2003).

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Expression of post-nonclassical trends in geography has, in fact, withdrawn from natural science frames a whole field concerning study of spatial characteristics of culture. Therefore, the developments of culture-geography scholars should be included into the humanities discourse, when studying the cultural landscape as a result of interaction of culture and space, and even more as cultural than spatial phenomenon.

2.4.1 Landscape as Frame of Culture ‘Landscape’ as well as ‘culture’ is a ‘term containing various hidden meanings (connotations), and therefore it cannot have a completed definition’ (Bastian 2004: 56–65. Quot.: Kalutskov 2008: 38). In the Russian language, the word ‘landxaft’ (landscape) is a tracing from German ‘landshaft’. Many studies were made to determine the genesis of this term (Cosgrove 1984; Groth and Wilson 2003; Olwig 1996; Tutyunnik 1998, 2004); one of the latest ones is within cultural geography, by V. Kalutskov. The word ‘land’ has morphological and semantic analogues in many languages, and presents, in many cases, variation of the ‘earth’ notion, though meaning the ‘developed space—the earth free of woods, a field, a meadow; also, such space is situated in a valley or a callow because such territories are mostly convenient for development, in the first place, regardless of the kind of people and environment (Kalutskov 2008: 24). The genesis of the suffix ‘-shaft’ goes back to the old German language word ‘scaf’ meaning a form, view, order, plan, condition (Tutyunnik 2004). Hence, despite the abundant number of landscape definitions, the genesis of this term shows that originally it contains the unity of territory and its order governed by culture. The word ‘landscape’, according to historical terminology and semantic research, is genetically based on politics (Tutyunnik 2004). It is in the political sphere that the term ‘landscape’ was in demand, and used in the form of ‘lantscaf’, for the first time in the eleventh century, by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, in the situation of state-building, i.e. uniting of disparate Germanic tribes into single state entity. The term ‘landscape’ covers not only the lands but also the people living on those lands. Thus, the nature and the ethnos are considered whole, a natural-cultural complex (Kalutskov 2008: 14).

E. Banse, a German geographer, believed that ‘Landschaft’ definitely has spiritual content and meaning (Banse 1928). We cannot but agree with R. Turovsky, geographer and political scholar, that the heuristic value of the ‘landscape’ concept lies in the fact that ‘it helps to describe intricate complexes of phenomena that are formed on the earth surface’ (Turovsky 1998: 14). Cultural genesis takes place in a particular space-time continuum which gives us right to discuss the frames set by the landscape and possibilities it offers on the stage of national consciousness and mentality formation. Classical works by Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky and J. Watson, American scholar, state that national self-consciousness, psychological peculiarities of a nation are

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majorly determined by peculiarities of the landscape they belong to (SemyonovTyan-Shansky 1927; Watson 1970). In some research, landscape features and attributes of local culture are studied as an a priori form of existence for its members (See e.g. Shor 2003: 157). The same ideas are met in linguistic research, e.g. in the work by A. Nikolova who, suggesting an axiom in order to study the language representation of the space category, writes that: historically, one of the initial qualities of space conceived by a human, along with the mundane one, is the geographic space. To organize the life, the humanity had to, firstly, learn and understand their habitat space, to navigate in it, study it and measure for their practical needs. History of all ancient civilizations shows what a significant role in their development belonged to the environment, the territory occupied by a state, its topologic and size characteristics. The first realities of every-day life the humans came across, along with the routine objects, were plots of the surrounding landscape: fields, valleys, mountains, forests, meadows, rivers, lakes, etc., where they accommodated, and that they gradually mastered and used, more and more expanding the discovered territories (Nikolova 2002).

This idea referred to as the concept of ‘geographical determinism’ has a long history rooted in the ancient times; the influence of geographic conditions on rites and morals of peoples was described by Democritus, Hypocrites, Herodotus, Polybius, in the Medieval era, by Arabic historian Ibn Khaldun, later by Montesquieu, Turgot, Herder. Though, these thinkers distinguished, from the whole complex of geographic environment, first of all, climatic conditions. Buckle, an English historian of the nineteenth century, in his History of Civilization in England paid attention not only to the climate but to the general picture of nature as factors conditioning irregularity of development of civilization (See: Stolyarova 1999: 60). Frenchman Charles Baudelaire believed that nations are ‘huge animals whose organization is adequate to their environment’ (Baudelaire 1962: 221). The greatest response was gained by K. Ritter who, writing in the middle nineteenth century, developed this line of philosophizing in relation to geographic knowledge. P. Chaadayev, the Russian thinker, would say, the Russian nation ‘was made by our governors and our climate’; ‘Russian history is determined by the geographic element, and is, at the same time, an essential element of our political greatness the true matter of our mindlessness’ (Chaadayev 1989: 153, 154). By the late eighteenth century, P. Chekalevsky wrote, ‘Fine art as well as earthly fruit are received differently depending on the climate of the land which produces them, and according to diligence they are grown with’ (Chekalevsky 1997: 14).

To V. Kluchevsky, a historian of the second half of the nineteenth—early twentieth century, social and psychological features of the Russian nation are determined by natural conditions such as, for instance, ‘not having a habit of continuous and scheduled work’. L. Mechnikov (Mechnikov 1995) who studied the role of grand rivers in cultural and civilization development, carried out the conception of geographical determinism beyond Russia. In the early twentieth century, in philosophic and political movement of Euroasialism (N. Trubetskoy, P. Savitsky, V. Vernadsky, and other), Russian diverse and extensive landscape is defined as a unique potential for development of

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civilization. P. Savitsky, regarding interaction of culture and space, emphasized their inseparable connection: As one of conceptions addressing the socio-historic world, it is possible and necessary the perception of its separate parts as a ‘common-living establishments… of wide range’ constructed on the bases of ‘genetic from time immemorial ties’ between plant, animal, mineral realms, on the one hand, and a human being, with the routine and spiritual world, on the other hand (Savitsky 1997: 282).

He proposed the term ‘topodevelopment’ of human communities which includes the development itself, evolution, into the name of a place. Culture develops the landscape from within, the place serves as a ground for development of a particular community. Both come together: ‘Socio-historic environment and its territory should merge for us into a whole thing, a geographic individuality, or a landscape’ (Savitsky 1927: 29). N. Trubetskoy proposed the term ‘geosophy’ which he considered being a space philosophy which explains the laws of correlation of a society and a territory. About half a century later, G. Gachev, explorer of national images of the world, wrote: The nature where a nation grows up and makes its history is the first and evident factor that determines the face of national integrity. It is a factor permanent in action. The earth body—the wood (its quality), mountains, sea, desert, steppe, tundra, permafrost, or jungle; temperate or crucially changing climate , wildlife, vegetation—all these terminate the further type of labor and life and the world model… (Gachev 1994: 63).

The same conclusions are made by modern scholars concerning cultural landscapes in other countries. Exploring the Balkan culture as a derivative of the geographic space of the Balkan Peninsula, T. Tsyvyan notes the peculiarities of such connection: Division-separation and connection-joining, scattering in the sea and compactnesstogetherness on the continent, level and plumb, plain and uneven ground, internal and external focus, centre and periphery, openness and closeness, are what qualify the Balkan space and what ‘people living in that space cannot ignore, people have to treat those categories in antithetical bifurcation as the essence of their existence, as their life topic’ (Toporov). This proposal to take the Balkan space as a matrix according to which ‘human life is produced’ leads to a conclusion that the ‘Balkan’ modus vivendi has been determined by this matrix (but not only by it) for thousands of years (Tsyvyan 1990: 72).

Modern researches basing on well-known facts of art history suggest such version of geographic determinism as cultural- and art-genesis of natural landscapes (Svirida 2007: 17), their potential and predisposition for development of culture and art. On the other hand, culture, to a certain extent, forms the landscape (except, for instance, some forms of relief that can only appear due to natural tectonic or erosion processes), giving to the nature of a place such properties that it didn’t bear before human interference’. The result of human impact on a natural object is transformed into a natural property of the latter. The process of impact and transformation disappears, after a long time, and its results seem to be original properties of the object, non-separable from it (Kabo 1947: 12).

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Changes in the landscape can be initially naturemorphic (See details: Turovsky 1998: 22), such as landscape architecture, agricultural grounds, embankments, moats. Let us underline that such elements of a transformed landscape that seemingly are natural might bear most diverse semantic load, from specific language and text of gardens to heroic connotations with even flattened and bushy trenches of World War II, or moreover the Napoleon War, as it is in case of the Borodino battle field in Russia. This landscape transformed by culture educates the next generations of people that take this modification of the space and environment as one of cultural codes.

2.4.2 Cultural Landscape as Cultural Phenomenon Culture can be studied as geographic reality (Spencer and Thomas 1969, 1978; Druzhinin 1988, 1999; Druzhinin and Suschiy 1994), since the diversity of existing cultures is determined by unlikeness of historic experience in the space. In the early historic stages of human development, up to the Christian Middle Ages, ‘human life was trying to survive in some pores of nature that had not been yet animated by human activity’ (Gurevich 1972: 48). More the landscape was mastered less the culture stayed dependent on it, and even more projected itself into the landscape. Traditional forms of nature development as well as forms of construction, over the centuries, created cultural landscapes blend into the environment and organized by analogy with cosmologic concepts of a particular national culture. Culture ‘animates’, or ‘gives spirit’ to a landscape. Some scholars believe that landscapes are rather a cultural than natural phenomenon. as soon as a landscape idea, myth or image is embodied in a place they are all turned into means of constructing new categories, creating new metaphors that are more real than their references, and that become part of a landscape (Shama 1995: 61).

To Georgui Gachev, culture ‘domesticates’ the ‘version of nature’ given to it. According to philosopher E. Kolbovsky, the landscape becomes a cultural phenomenon ‘while accumulating in it non-geotropic features, signs of development, structuring, comprehension’ (Kolbovsky 2003). In this process, accumulation of ‘non-geotropic signs’ occurs gradually, though a moment occurs when the amount of changes made by humans in a landscape surpasses utilitarian needs of ‘usefulness’ and comfort: the produced excess of energy and information transforms into a new quality creating the landscape metaphysics which, later on, acquires its own continuous meaning, and sets a vector of further development of man-made nature. The landscape metaphysics is its ‘spirit’, ‘image’ (in Polish, ‘landscape’ means ‘land-image’), which consists of many symbols featured in art, painting, folklore (Kolbovsky 2003).

The term ‘metaphysics’ used by V. Podoroga to denote the mysterious connection between the geographic space and the inner space of a text, here is used to indicate the obvious landscape properties that are, nevertheless, subtle and cannot be practically measured. We find the introduction of a new term unjustified, it only makes the terminology ‘smoke’ stronger, since the ‘spirit of the place’, ‘image of the place’

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are already well-established concepts in relation to local non-material attributes of a landscape. According to David Harvey, representations of the space are genetically linked to social and cultural practices, although, once established and rooted in culture they tend to regulate those practices themselves (Harvey 1996). All this was perfectly summoned by V. Kagansky who determined that the landscape is ‘an environment, a sphere and value of culture’ (Kagansky 1995: 2). The cultures grown up on natural landscape nutrition appear to be very closely connected with the landscape, and as a result a quality new space phenomenon—cultural landscape—is founded (See e.g.: Kagansky 2001; Cosgrove 1984, 1989; Jakle 1987; Appleton 1990; Bourassa 1991; Von Maltzahn 1994; Fitter 1995; Shama 1995; Landscape and Power 1994). The concept of the cultural landscape was introduced, for the first time, by Russian geographer Berg, in 1915 (Berg 1915). The definition he gave indicated all landscapes that were purposely developed by the humans. A few years later, Karl Sauer (Sauer 1925, 1927), a founder of the cultural geographer scientific school, used the same term. In the American tradition, the cultural landscape is separated from natural and presents a sum of man-made changes in the natural landscape. Here, the cultural and natural landscape, in total, present the landscape as it is, as an integral phenomenon. This approach seems to be non-productive, since from the semiotic point of view, even elements of a natural landscape may stand for signs and symbols, i.e. elements of culture. Even the landscape that may seem pristine, in fact, have already become a part of culture, since they serve as an environment, habitat, and source of inspiration for a human being (Turovsky 1998: 13),

as a modern political expert and culturologist R. Turovsky claims. In Russian science, the theory of cultural landscape was initially developed by geographers most of all. One of the first of them was Y. Saushkin who studied, from this point, only positive results of human activity. In such context, the cultural landscape which includes comfort, rational design, esthetical value, was opposed to ab-cultural, not endowed with these positive attributes. This approach is now being developed, in theoretic geography, by B. Rodoman who believes that any landscapes mainly developed by people may be broadly named cultural, as to their specific positive-value meaning only population friendly anthropogenic landscapes, opposed to “ab-cultural”, “spoiled“ones, may be named such (Rodoman 1980: 118).

In geography, there is a term ‘anthropogenic landscape’ to describe a landscape transformed by a human (See: Nizovtsev 2007). The concept of anthropogenic landscape was not adapted by culturology and cultural philosophy, and in this study we shall not apply to it as well, firstly, because of its terminological failure, since it is not easy to imagine a landscape created by a human on his own, as is follows from its ‘anthropogenic’ predicate; secondly, this study is focused on the problems of interaction of culture and the landscape.

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2.4.3 Noosphere Conception of Cultural Landscape The modern theory of the cultural landscape which studies culture and the geographic space in their integrity was developed following V. Vernadsky’s conception of the noosphere. Y. bin’s definition of the cultural landscape is in line with the noosphere conception. According to this definition, the cultural landscape is studied as a natural-cultural territorial complex, formed as a result of evolutional interaction of nature and human, their socio-cultural and economic activity, which consists of typical combinations of natural and cultural components that are in sustained relationship and interdependence (Vedenin and Kuleshova 2004: 13–16).

Y. Vedenin and M. Kuleshova (Vedenin 1988, 1990, 1997; Vedenin and Kuleshova 2001) include, toponyms, artifacts and man-made landscape forms that act as markers of historic events, and archive and bibliographic sources into the cultural landscape. Y. Vedenin notes the landscape ability to accumulate the potential of intellectual and spiritual energy (Vedenin 1997: 8), and formulates the information paradigm of the cultural landscape (Vedenin 2004), according to which it equally receives material and spiritual culture, modern (traditional and innovative) and cultural legacy. Turovsky includes into the cultural landscape not only ‘markers’ but also historic events that took place in a particular area, as well as famous people who lived and worked in this territory, cultural samples produced in it and describing it (books, paintings, etc.), ethno-cultural peculiarities of the local population, their language, religion life and economic culture (Turovsky 1998: 25).

He is quite right in studying three intangible components of the landscape, the information component as a kind of database on the local culture, the analytical component covering expert research work on culture, and finally, the ideal, or spiritual component, the whole range of creative expression of human spirit in this area that produced here this particular ethnos, language, religion, history, “passionate” elite, art, routine and economic life (Turovsky 1998: 26).

Let us summarize them as included into the landscape: (a) non-material legacy, including symbols and signs; (b) processes of on-going cultural genesis directed on transfiguration and reflection, on giving sense to the environment. To philosopher M. Shishin who tends to the axiological position within the noosphere conception, the cultural component in a cultural landscape should: a) preserve its basic natural characteristics, first of all, biodiversity and energy balance of the territory; b) have structural-rhythmical and material-energetic unity with the natural component, c) strengthen the subtle energy harmonic influence of the natural landscape. Moreover, human beings as an intangible part of the cultural landscape should work hard to spiritually and morally ‘accommodate’ themselves into it so that it should not be destroyed but, quite contrary, enriched in eidos construction, raising altogether (Shishin 2003: 2002).

Landscapes that do not fit the criterion of harmonic interaction of culture and nature, in a particular locus, from that point of view, are defined as ab-cultural. There are conceptual issues in this position, that appear to be rather productive for study of

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cultural landscape semantics, i.e. the axiological approach allows to study bipolarity of environment features in a ‘good-bad/bad-good’ frames, etc.; since the system of values stands as an integral part of any culture trying, on a sense level, ‘to erupt’ everything that does not fit the positive value system pole, to dissociate itself from the negative by designating it as an ab-culture, non-culture, the back side of culture. All this is naturally reflected in semiosis, including its connection with a landscape. The otherness of nature in respect to culture gets into a complicated interaction with eternal and temporal values, and the otherness of anti-values (that are periodically turned into temporal values). A complex mixture is formed where temporal values like, for instance, industrialization, get their expression in space; later these landscapes are inverted in the sense coordinate system and turn into infernal, acquire new semantic connotations in art. For instance, such is ‘the zone’ in the Stalker by Tarkovsky, a post-industrial landscape hostile to humans and endowed with a will of its own. The axiological approach paves the way to the problem of ‘ideal landscapes’, not yet polished in science, literature nor mass media ideas of what a landscape will be like in the distant future, provided that culture will realize its value system, consistent with the environment, in it. The noosphere conception of cultural landscape, in our opinion, is definitely productive, since it allows studying the matter and information, nature and culture in their functional unity, leaving place for semantics, rather than just a link to this bipolar though holistic phenomenon.

2.4.4 Cultural Landscape as the Process and Result of Semiosis In geography, the cultural landscape always has two components, natural and cultural (See: Kagansky 1997), and one of the conceptual problems is their correlation (See: Kalutskov and Krasovskaya 2000). In humanitarian geography which tends more to culturology than geography, the natural component is being displaced to the periphery of the cultural landscape concept. G. Isachenko who has analyzed the substantive discussion in geography and humanities claims that, in number of papers, the role of natural factors in forming of the cultural landscape is reduced to the background, to the paysage, i.e. the external component of the landscape (Isachenko 2003).

The paysage as an observable projection of cultural landscape functionality on the territory bears in itself symbolic connotation but this visual aspect demands a separate study. Geographers make an analogy between the landscape and the culture in their ‘environmental’ and ‘continuity’ properties, ‘those “environments” are total and overwhelming, and the people living there are differently plunged in them’ (Kagansky 1995: 4);

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the landscape is a continuum, it is present, like the terrain and climate, anywhere on the land; different types of it gradually turn one into other (Rodoman 1995: 5).

Such continuity of the geocultural space does not disturb the process of allocations of cores (foci, centers) where its various properties are maximally focused, as well as conceptual or natural boundaries that stay in functional interaction, and allow arguing on a particular earth surface section as an integral landscape. In humanities studies, from two concepts packed in the ‘cultural landscape’ term, the ‘culture’ is being stressed, as well as its product, material and non-material, although an opposite trend can be observed here, to attain the functional and phenomenological unity of culture and landscape through the noosphere conception (see the above mentioned work by M. Shishin). Even the geography science community believes that there is nothing in the space that does not exist in culture (V. Kagansky). In the culturology work by D. Zamyatin, cultural landscapes are territories or spaces perceived and observed through the ‘prism’ of culture, socio-cultural values, signs and symbols. Hence, cultural landscapes are mainly image-production spaces, the spaces that promote active birth and formation of geographic images. Cultural landscapes, by themselves, are closely connected with emotional, rational and conceptual experience of space (Zamyatin 2004b).

In modern cultural philosophy research (Vorobyeva 2007a: 17–18) developing in the semiotic conception context, the cultural landscape is conceived as a living space of a group of people, meaning that this space is, at the same time, integral and differentiated, and pragmatically, semantically and symbolically mastered. Continuity of the landscape is noted where the combination of zones, facies and places determines emerging of material, sign, symbolic, semantic connections and relations. The landscape is ‘polysemantic, multifunctional, multitextual, unlike the cultural space that can express senses and relations of the same order’ (Vorobyeva 2007a: 17–18), it is studied as the ground for the cultural space constructing, and terms of its existence. Let us emphasize that ‘multi-qualities’ of the landscape that are also noted by geographers (Kalutskov 2008; Kagansky 1995), allow it to act, in some cases, as a cultural code: every place of the landscape has multitude of functions, is used for different purposes, serves different groups for solving different problems. Every place, and even the ground of its existence is polysemantic, multifunctional, multi-contextual (Kagansky 1995: 34).

The cultural landscape is also studied as the process and result of comprehension, by a human, of the world, giving it meaningful and valuable categories, such as the image featuring the system of values, the mode of development, social organization and structuring the habitat space as the social space expressing forms of being of different space-time relations. We consider essential the dynamic attributes of culture that are expressed in the landscape, the possibility to study the cultural landscape as a non-stop process of semiosis. The process of reflection, when the culture conceives the non-culture, constructing by the culture itself (based on realities and constants of the given natural landscape), and turns into the cultural landscape formation process.

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Non-material components of the cultural landscape are explored in cultural and humanitarian geography as well as in culturology in similar methods, i.e. the image and symbolic landscape study, where the image of the place and culture-landscape modeling are used. The cultural landscape is studied not only as a phenomenon but also as a knowmenon, the subject of intellectual contemplation (Turovsky 1998: 24), since the landscape is given not only for the eyes but for all sensual organs, it is conceivable not by a specialized spiritual organ but by the personality as a whole (Kagansky 1989: 11).

In this respect, it is important as a cultural element which structures a personality, and determines its inclusion into the semiosphere.

2.4.5 Morphology and Structure of Cultural Landscape The landscape can and should be interpreted as a structure (Tutyunnik 1990) which by itself also has many interpretations that vary depending on the territory unit taken as an elementary one. In regards to the cultural landscape, if taken as an elementary unit, we will determine a separate geographic object and place/locus that, in physical geography, in regards to the natural landscape will be designated as a ‘natural landmark’. The term ‘locus’ is a cultural phenomenon by itself. Philologist and culturologist V. Abashev argues that the genesis of the word ‘place/locus’ is connected with the deepest layers of archetypal consciousness, since in one of its meanings the word ‘place’ (mecto) in the Russian language stands for placenta. Such linguistic interpretation of the locus and relations with it in terms of maternal link is not accidental. When giving names to natural landmarks, towns or streets, erecting monuments, preserving legends, the humans symbolically organize the space that once meant nothing to them turning it into their life place (Abashev 2000: 22). In anthropology, the cultural landscape is sometimes perceived as a ‘receptacle’ of the local culture which once again underlines its ‘female’ hypostasis in the cultural context, and as anthropologist Clifford Geertz writes, people that are not transformed by rites of a particular place do not exist indeed, never existed and, which is even more important, may not exist in principle (Geertz 2004: 4).

At this point, there is an interesting reflection of philosopher E. Kolbovsky on the role of the place, locality in the cultural landscape that are ‘main elements of the life space, and their composition is formed from the sense and emotional load they are nominated to’ (Kolbovsky 2003). In our opinion, the locus, in the semiosphere context, plays the role of semiotic unit capable to get into communication, derive new senses neighboring other elements of the cultural landscape, both structural and morphological. The phenomenology approach in study of cultural landscapes in cultural geography suggests that

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the geospace of cultural phenomena is not the space of material object as they are but the space of senses. The main methodological setting of the phenomenology approach supporters is refusal for any claims to identify the objective world laws without regards to the human mind. Here, the most important aim of cultural geography becomes identification and description of sense meanings between consciousness and the artifacts observed on the earth surface. Subjective-reflexive setting and the phenomenological approach opened new grand opportunities for cultural geography, such as follows: semantic analysis of the space and environment quality of different sociocultural and ethnic groups, study of symbol system, sense and value of a place, topophilic and topophobic concepts, structure of geographic images of the space, etc. (Streletsky 2009: 28).

V. Kagansky, within the phenomenological approach (to his own definition, landscape phenomenology of culture and cultural phenomenology of landscape (Kagansky 1995: 2)), defines the location of geographic objects and their immanent characteristics as the elements generating sense: every place has sense, and it is connected with the cultural ground of the landscape, and its spatial location (Kagansky 2001: 61). Culture veils the elements of landscape with a sense net (Steins 1988), including it into the semiosphere. Cultural landscapes and the symbols within bear the ideal and values of culture, they essentially have the ability to foresee the aim, to be teleological. While the whole culture presents meta-information, hereditary collective memory, the cultural landscape is a part of such memory that sets rules and modes of human activity in nature (Kolbovsky 2003).

The landscape structures may vary depending on the research approach. For instance, R. Turovsky distinguishes two types of morphostructures in the cultural landscape: • the gnoseology type is distinguished by the mode of sensual or intellectual cognition, the landscape has paysage (material, physical) and non-material structure; • the creative type—by the subjects of landscape genesis, the landscape has natural and anthropogenic layers, with the latter including not only material forms but spiritual and information structures (Turovsky 1998: 24–27). It also describes the temporal (historic) and functional structures of the cultural landscape. The latter is distinguished by its functions (or roles) of particular local cultures in the context of the cultural landscape of a higher hierarchy rank. Functioning of local cultures results in formation of ‘centre-periphery’ structures, or the phenomenon of polycentrism (taking into account centers of innovations and traditional culture). This, in its turn, causes the cultural landscape polarization (Turovsky 1998: 30–35). Centricity, multiscaleness and anisotropy (Kalutskov 2008: 89–100), polyrhythm (Kagansky 1995: 41) are considered immanent spatial properties of the cultural landscape. Multiscaleness provides its ‘almost infinite capacity for sense’ (Kagansky 1995: 39). The landscape structure, the centre-periphery ratio may have their semantic significance. The position and location of the periphery depends of what is chosen to be the centre. Special attention should be drawn to multiscaleness of the cultural landscape.

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2 Genesis of Culture in Space. Conception of Cultural Landscape … The principle of multiscaleness of the space is in the ability for complexity and reorganization which is the direct result of studying such space from various ‘points of view’ (internal, external). This means that one and the same place in a local, regional, all-Russian scale, etc. will be endowed with various evaluative senses (Kalutskov et al. 1998: 107).

The principle of multiscaleness allows talking with similar certainty on the cultural landscape of a city, regions of various ranks, and a country. On each of these levels new sense nuances of cultural and geographic information will appear. Hence, the image of one and the same place may vary as we ‘approach’ it (from national level to local), or as we ‘move away’ from it, it may dissolve in the image of bigger territories, and even disappear in correlation with more vibrant and significant places in culture and history of a country. V. Kagansky introduces the notion of polyperiphery, ‘a periphery that longs to many various external centres when their zones of influence are spanned’ (Kagansky 2002a, b: 16), which assumingly concerns the major part of the Russian territory. For the polyperiphery, the image of the rhizome seems to be actual, since contrary to centered (and even multicentered) systems with their hierarchy communication and preloaded links, the rhizome is an accentuated system, non-hierarchical and not meaningful, with no General, without organizing memory or the central remote control, determined only by circulations of states (Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 32).

Multilevel cultural landscapes are ‘nested’ into each other but their spatial hierarchy cannot be defined with the same certainty as it is found in the classical landscape studies (Isachenko 2003). Landscape hierarchies are not universal, the landscape is multi-hierarchical. For every landscape component and/or groups populating it, there are particular hierarchy systems; their own systems though growing from the general continuous landscape (Kagansky 1995: 43).

R. Turovsky suggests the analogies of cultural and physical-geographic hierarchy: ‘cultural world, country, culture–natural zone’, ‘country, ethnos – landscape country’, ‘region, subethnic group – the province’, ‘subethnic dialect group – landscape, landscape region’, ‘town, group of villages – area’, ‘cultural objects complex, village, town quarter – landmark’, ‘separate object of culture and nature (temple, palace, museum) – facies’ (Turovsky 1998: 51).

We don’t find this kind of rigid allocation of taxonomic ranks of cultural landscapes appropriate since, in the semiotic conception context, basic cultural codes and semiotic processes appear to be pervasive on all levels of local communities, although semantic and sign ‘net’ covering landscape elements has, by all means, its own hierarchy depending on its level of functioning of local, regional and national culture. If the structure genesis of natural landscapes vary the structure of hierarchically subordinate cultural landscapes, in majority cases, is repeated which allows to talk on them as fractals (Mandelbrot 1982) … with their images not depending on the scale. This is a recursive model every part of which repeats in its development that of the whole model in general (Shishin 2003: 141).

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The reason is that local, regional, national levels of culture are similar in their structure as well as the given space structured by them. The recent definition of the fractal as a ‘score with the capacitive dimension bigger than its topological dimension’ (Mandelbrot 2002: 530) leads to one more interpretation of the cultural landscape as a fractal, since the score of its semantic and image measurements is always bigger than physical ones, due to the culture that actually brings to life the very notion of the geographic space provides the spatial (in fact, image) infinity of the space representation (Zamyatin 2006: 46).

The axiological approach (connected with the semantic one) suggests that the value system regulating the life of a community has its projection on the accommodating landscape, on its hierarchy. ‘Floating’ hierarchy of values and senses in culture leads to formation of many centres, and ‘world axes’ corresponding to them. When cultural values are changed, the redistribution of the ‘poles’ and centres in the cultural landscape is also apt to change. The most striking example is the status change of the Trinity-Serguius Lavra and Solovki monasteries as well as many other spiritual and religious centers of the Russian cultural landscape, beginning from the October Revolution up to the present time. The nature of communication between elements of the system, the structure of the cultural landscape as it is bears its own semantic value, and can be interpreted as a ‘message’ since it presents information on the cultural landscape genesis and its functional peculiarities which is fixed in the space and in cultural codes connected with the space. The landscape geography is as semantic as the text syntax (Kagansky 1995: 42). Sense-giving event, in local or national history, acts like bifurcation points in the cultural landscape system, i.e. new centres and new relations are being formed. Hence, the internal spatial organization of the cultural landscape is a derivative of the mentality of culture. It is constructed on the importance of certain places, on taboos, local mythology, and other kept ecological traditions. In addition, it is preserved and supported in social mind and memory of the community as a collective creator and organizer of ‘its own’ inner cultural landscape. Such mental maps of a community are identified only by means of specific studies. On the other hand, the spatial organization of the cultural landscape is a real construction reflecting natural and economic features of the developed territory (Kalutskov 2008: 101).

Toponymy and material component of the cultural heritage (architectural constructions, monuments) can rather firmly fix the senses in the real space thus forming new mental ‘matrix’ of the next generations culture bearers.

2.5 Conclusions The basis of this study is the semiotic concept of culture which allows analyzing its manifestations in space and reflection of space as semiosis processes, and their results as a semiotic system. From this viewpoint, any processes in culture can be studied as semiosis processes, any phenomena as sign systems.

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As a basic conception of our further discourse on interaction of culture and space the noosphere conception is taken which studies them in their functional unity designated here as the geocultural space. The cultural landscape, structural unit of the geocultural space is the result and process of interaction of culture and the geographic space on a given section of the earth surface, from a locus to a country. Among many concepts we distinguish those that recognize both, material and non-material elements of culture as components of the cultural landscape. The object of this research is the semantic component of the geocultural space and cultural landscape which mainly belongs to the sphere of human mind and social consciousness, to cultural mentality. Several directions of interpretation of this cultural landscape component might be suggested, in the context of the semiotic theory of culture, since ‘the boundaries of interpretation are, at the same time, the boundaries of the perceived world’ (Kubryakova et al. 1996: 180). In this case, we interpret the cultural landscape as a system of matrixes and codes of culture expressed in signs and symbols directly connected with a territory. Stratification of the cultural landscape, from the physical geographic space to spatial eidoi of culture, allows studying its semantics on various ‘strata’, cultural categories, metaphors, images, signs.

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Svirida, I.I. 2007. Landscape in Culture as Space, Image and Metaphor [Landshaft v kul‘ture kak prostranstvo, obraz i metafora]. In Landscapes of Culture. Slavic world [Landshafty‘ kul‘tury‘. Slavyanskij mir], 11–42. Moscow: Progress-Tradition. Teilhard de Chardin, P. 1992. The Divine Milieu (Russian transl.). Moscow: Renaissance [Renesans]. Tishkov, V.A. 2003. Requiem for Ethnos. Socio-cultural Anthropology research [Rekviem po e‘tnosu. Issledovaniya po social‘no-kul‘turnoj antropologii]. Moscow: Science [Nauka]. Tolstaya, S.M. 1996. Ethnolinguistics [Etnolingvistika]. In Institute of Slavic and Baltic Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences. 50 Years [Institut slavyanovedeniya i balkanistiki. 50 let], 235–248. Moscow: Indrik. Toporov, V.N. 1989. The Space on Culture and Meetings in it [Prostranstvo kul‘tury‘ i vstrechi v nem]. In East—West. Research. Translations. Publications [Vostok—Zapad. Issledovaniya. Perevody‘. Publikacii], 6–17. Moscow: Sciense [Nauka]. Toporov, V.N. 1997. The Metaphor of the Mirror in Research of Interlinguistic and Ethnocultural Contacts [Metafora zerkala pri issledovanii mezh“yazy‘kovy‘x i e‘tnokul‘turny‘x kontaktov]. Slavic Studies [Slavyanovedenie] 1: 5–15. Tsyvyan, T.V. 1990. Linguistic Grounds of the Balkan World Model [Lingvisticheskie osnovy‘ balkanskoj modeli mira]. Moscow: Sciense [Nauka]. Turovsky, R.F. 1998. Cultural Landscapes of Russia [Kul’turnyi landshaft Rossii]. Moscow: Heritage Institute. Tutyunnik, Y.G. 1990. Landscape as a Structure [Landshaft kak struktura]. In Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Izvestiya RAN]. Geographical Series/Regional Research of Russia 2: 116–122. Tutyunnik, Y.G. 1998. Understanding of the Landscape [Ponimanie landshafta]. In Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Izvestiya RAN]. Geographical Series/Regional Research of Russia 2: 30–38. Tutyunnik, Y.G. 2004. On the Origin of the Word ‘Landscape’ and its Original Meaning [O proisxozhdenii i pervonachal‘nom znachenii slova «landshaft»]. In Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Izvestiya RAN]. Geographical Series/Regional Research of Russia 4, 17–31. Vedenin, Y.A. 1988. Art as One of Factors of Cultural Landscape Formation [Iskusstvo kak odin iz faktorov formirovaniya kul‘turnogo landshafta]. In Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Izvestiya RAN]. Geographical Series/Regional Research of Russia 1, 17–24. Vedenin, Y.A. 1990. Problems of Cultural Landscape Formation and its Research [Problemy‘ formirovaniya kul‘turnogo landshafta i ego izucheniya]. In Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Izvestiya RAN]. Geographical Series/Regional Research of Russia 1, 3–17. Vedenin, Y.A. 1997. Essays on Geography of Art [Ocherki po geographii iskusstva]. St.Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin Publ. Vedenin, Y.A. 2004. Information Paradigm of Cultural Landscape [Informacionnaya paradigma kul‘turnogo landshafta]. In Cultural Landscape as an Object of Legacy [Kul‘turny‘j landshaft kak ob“ekt naslediya], 68–81. Moscow: Heritage Institute. Vedenin, Y.A., Kuleshova, M.S. 2001. Cultural Landscape as an Object of Cultural and Natural Legacy [Kul‘turny‘j landshaft kak ob“ekt kul‘turnogo i prirodnogo naslediya]. In Proceedings of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Izvestiya RAN]. Geographical Series/Regional Research of Russia 1, 7–14. Vedenin, Y.A., Kuleshova, M.S. 2004. Cultural Landscapes as a Legacy Category [Kul‘turny‘e landshafty‘ kak kategoriya naslediya] In Cultural Landscape as an Object of Legacy [Kul‘turny‘j landshaft kak ob“ekt naslediya], 13–16. Moscow: Heritage Institute; St.Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin Publ. Vernadsky, V.I. 1991. Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon [Nauchnaya my‘sl‘ kak planetnoe yavlenie]. Moscow: Science [Nauka]. Von Maltzahn, K.E. 1994. Nature as Landscape. Dwelling and Understanding. Montreal and Kingston, London, Buffalo: McGill-Queens University Press.

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Vorobyeva, E.A. 2007a. Cultural Landscape as a Factor of Cultural Being (according to ethnic world image of East Lake Baikal region) [Kul‘turny‘j landshaft kak faktor by‘tijnosti kul‘tury‘ (na primere e‘tnicheskoj kartiny‘ mira Vostochnogo Zabajkal‘ya)]. Doctoral Dissertation, Chita. Vorobyeva, V.A. 2007b. Cultural Bordering Regions as a Form of Comprehension of Cultural Being. In Proceedings of the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia 14 (37), Masters Notes Journal, 32–35. St.Petersburg. Watson, J.W. 1970. Image geography: the myth of America in the American scene. Br.J. Advmt.Sci. 27: 71–79. Wierzbitcka, A. 1972. Semantic Primitivies. Frankfurt: Athenäum Verlag. Zamyatin, D.N. 2004a. Meta-Geography: Space of Images and Images of Space [Meta-geografiya: prostranstvo obrazov i obrazy‘ prostranstva]. Moscow: Agraf. Zamyatin, D.N. 2004b. Russian Manor: Landscape and Image [Russkaya usad‘ba: landshaft i obraz]. Man [Chelovek] 6: 35–44. Zamyatin, D.N. 2006. Culture and Space. Modeling of Geographical Images [Kul‘tura i prostranstvo. Modelirovanie geograficheskix obrazov]. Moscow: Sign [Znack]. Zinchenko, V.P. 1998. Psychological Pedagogy [Psikhologicheskaya pedagogika]. Samara: Samara Press House.

Chapter 3

Universal Categories of Culture in Landscape: Time and Transcendence

Abstract This chapter focuses on interpreting such features of the world picture as a sense of time and space, comprehension of the dichotomy of «sacred–profane» in the cultural landscape. Universal categories of culture, determining its mentality and existence create a sustainable object, which Aron Gurevich defines as «a model of the world» («world view», «image of the world»), typical for a given culture and era—that «grid», which determines the perception of reality and nature of the activity. Universal categories form the basic cognitive matrix and the basic semantic «tools» of culture. Such subtle categories as time and transcendence can be expressed through a symbol and a sign, and respectively they can also be expressed in the semantics of the cultural landscape. The first section shows us the time as category of culture, manifesting in the cultural landscape. Temporal and spatial concepts vary in different types of cultures, they are inherited from generation to generation for centuries, or they are replaced by a new paradigm for decades. The correlation of space and time is interesting in the point that a model of the world from the archaic to modern admits interaction and interpenetration of these categories. In the cultural landscape time has several beats, it takes on the spatial characteristics—it has loci or clusters, where it is concentrated, there are ways in which it moves along with the nomads and innovations, there are the crossroads where it is possible both direct and reverse flow of time. The different rhythms of time, manifesting itself in the cultural space, give to the cultural landscape the property of fluidity and plasticity. Geological, mythological, historical and physical time is always present in the cultural landscape. Through the process of semiosis certain loci in cultural landscape can become a spokesman even of such categories as eternity and timelessness. As a result the cultural landscape becomes a «landscape of time», where the names of places appear as signs of a quality time, generated by the culture. This allows us to build a spatial metaphor for time, sealing its sense of human exploration. Understanding the space-time in its diversity constantly creates new meanings in the culture, expands the boundaries of semiosphere. The second section deals with the semantics of the sacred landscape, the process of transformation of the landscape or geographic area as a whole into the expression of the archetypes of human consciousness. Despite the fact that the image of the world in the modern world culture is formed mainly by natural science paradigm through this paradigm a more or less «visible» original religious and mythological world picture © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 O. Lavrenova, Spaces and Meanings, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3_3

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is seen. It was studied by Mircea Eliade, Vladimir Toporov, Aron Gurevich, Nikolai Terebikhin, Gaston Bachelard and others. The basis of religious-mythological image of the world is a cosmogony, as it applied to real geographical space. The structure of world records the basic ontological and cosmological categories, so, depending on the various aspects of philosophy, either the whole space becomes sacred, or a cleavage appears, separating the world into sacred and profane. In the cultural landscape such mythological categories as the center and the axis of the world are expressed, the Cosmos–Chaos, heaven and hell also find their images. Sacred loci become such through a ritual (the naming, dedication, the building of worship, worship), they form a network, efficient within the culture spawned. Sacred space usually has two options of interpretation—not only as a text but also as an icon. Understanding the semantics of sacred landscape leads to a new understanding of its organization, morphology and gives a new possibility of modeling geo-cultural interactions.

A sense of basic truth in every soul nests The seed that’s sacred and eternal: In flesh of time it always can embrace Space, endless, and the century’s kernel. Mikhail Lermontov. My Home Universal categories of culture that determine its mentality and genesis in all its manifestations concepts and forms of perception of reality, are time, space, change, cause, destiny, number, relation between sensual and super-sensual, the ratio of parts and the whole (Gurevich 1972: 20).

The list of these categories can be extended. They make, altogether, a sustainable formation which A.Gurevich defines as ‘a world model’ (‘picture of the world’, ‘world image’) typical for a given culture and era, that very ‘grid origin’ which governs the perception of reality and the nature of activity. These major categories purportedly precede the concepts and world view formed within a society and its members and groups, and therefore, despite any difference in ideology or concepts of those individuals or groups, basically obligatory and universal for the whole society concepts and views can be found, and no ideas, theories, nor philosophic, esthetic, political, religions concepts and systems can be formed without them. The named categories form the basic semantic ‘equipment’ of culture. < … > These categories are embodied in language as well as in other sign systems (in art, science and religious language), and it’s impossible to think of the world missing these categories as much as to think at all beyond the language category (Gurevich 1972: 15–16).

To A. Ivanova, whose opinion we support, the world picture acts as a universal algorithm (cognitive matrix) by means of which real cultural landscapes turn into artistic worlds. Even considering all their specific differences, ethnic world cultures are formed basing on several typical structural models. Each of them is based on its own

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‘screenplay’ of perception and conceptualization of the natural and social environment by a given ethnic community (Ivanova 2009: 43).

And quite contrary, the same universal categories that find themselves materialized in space take their direct part in formation of the cultural landscape. For instance, a very important in culture category of the other is expressed not only in metaphoric and interpersonal space but also in the landscape, i.e. fences, hedges, administrative and natural borders that divide local cultures. The modern spatial world picture to Yuri Lotman includes the mythological universe, the scientific modeling as well as the routine common sense. And for an ordinary person, these (and some other) layers form a heterogeneous mixture which functions as a unity… This substrate is uploaded with images created by art or more deep scientific knowledge, as well as with de-coded into the language of other models of spatial images. As a result, a complex and perpetually moving semantic mechanism is being formed (Lotman 1996: 296).

The scientific world picture does not contradict the mythological one, they are ‘divorced’ in different layers of mind, and hence, of perception. …From the very beginning the humans share a single space… Human contemplation of space and time precedes all external sensations (Sheller 1994: 157–158).

The category of transcendence is similarly important for a human being. It is possible to talk of these three categories—space, time, transcendence—as basic for the world picture. In the physically perceptive given reality the humans have only one of three, the space within which they can express the other two, thus developing a balanced Universum. The landscape becomes one of cultural forms of their perception and expression, along with the social and natural environment, cultural and religious practices, timer mechanisms and magic bowls. Pavel Florensky when studying the problem of the name of God, comes to the conclusion that transcendental categories can be expressed in culture only through a symbol which is ‘such a reality that is bigger than itself’ (Florensky 1988: 73). According to modern work in the semiotic conception of culture, ‘the time within the structure of culture has a sign essence. A sign is a bearer of the time parameters’ (Batov 1987: 17). In dialectics of space and time relation, a subject is born for a symbolic life (Prieto 1991). Time and transcendence, the most necessary and subtle categories of culture, give an impression of the initially set life substance, receive a sign expression, are being trapped by them, as neutrinos by specific nets, are being objectified and turned into symbols, yet not separately but as a genesis ontological ground of the cultural landscape.

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3.1 Temporal Semantics of Cultural Landscape 3.1.1 Rhythms of Time in Space As a bird in the air, as a fish in the ocean, As a slick worm in the raw ground layers, As a salamander in the fire – Such is a human being in the time… Vladimir Khodasevich. Home The problem of time has traditionally been discussed by physicists and philosophers, and recently by culturologists, anthropologists, sociologists, by studying not absolute but ‘humanized’ time, the time that is lived by people, the duration of which is conditioned by tradition, calendar structure, psychological peculiarities of individuals and societies as well as by history and prognostics. Awareness of time by humans and society ‘happens according to the events that cover it and not under any physical parameters’ (Yakovleva 1994: 86). Temporal and spatial concepts vary in different types of culture, are inherited from one generation to another, for centuries, or can be changed by a new paradigm in decades. Time and space, as Gurevich defines them in his Categories of Medieval Culture, are ‘the the main parameters of the world existence and basic forms of human experience’. Modern ordinary reason is governed, in its practical activity, by the abstractions of ‘time’ and ‘space’. The space is understood as a three-dimensional, geometric and equally prolonged form which can be divided into comparable segments. The time is conceived as a pure duration, an irreversible sequence of events from the past through the present into the future. Time and space are objective, their qualities do not depend on the matter which fills them (Gurevich 1972: 26).

Space and time, these universal notions are given to humans in perception though are always comprehended within the framework of universal categories of their culture: Human beings are not born with the sense of time, their time and space concepts are always defined by the culture they belong to (Gurevich 1972: 27).

Apart from the Einstein theory of relativity, or the Minkowski’s space-time continuum operating in physical values, the correlation of space and time is interesting because the world model, say, in archaic cultures allows inter-flow between these categories: time is able to gain spatial qualities, the space can be characterized by ‘internal intensive properties of time’ (Toporov 1983: 231–232). The Renaissance personas considered time as ‘similar to culture, it was not just a mere duration but “essercizio”, activity, the being of culture’ (Batkin 1995: 115). To Dal, time is a ‘space in genesis (being)’. In European cultural tradition and languages, there is a way of conceptualization of time where the time does not run, and we move through it toward the future (Lakoff and Johnson 2008: 71). In this metaphor time

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is assimilated with space in its qualities. ‘Time becomes spatialized’ (Kedrov 2005: 556) in the Kedrov’s hypothetic space of metaphors (more about it in the next chapter). And finally, according to modern semiospherelogy, space is not only twisted but is also being subjectified, “turned into time”, and even more than that, is changed for a time, is being transformed into it. Time, in its turn, is being transformed into space < … > Ideas and actions become its measurements. The past, present and future get together in one point (Zinchenko 1998: 129).

In the cultural landscape, the same running of the ‘humanized’ time is found and imprinted which is interwoven and inter-layered as the genesis and dynamics of the natural landscape go on. In this respect, time has several rhythms, it gains spatial attributes, it has loci-clots to be concentrated in, it has its ways to move along with nomads and innovations, has its junctions where both, straight and reverse time flows are possible. Different rhythms of time manifesting themselves in the cultural space give it the property of flow and flexibility. ‘The signs of time are disclosed in the space, and the space becomes comprehensive and can be measured by time’ (Bakhtin 1975: 235); this peculiarity of human perception is certainly reflected in literature. The Bakhtin’s chronotope, as one of principles of description in a fiction work, is based on what can be considered ‘an organic attachment, increment of life and its events to a place’ (Bakhtin 1979: 374). Modern scholars tend to transfer the chronotope concept from the field of the artistic space into the real one. In V.Iovlev’s opinion, he is a theoretician of architecture, who defines the chronotope as a ‘static state of space in time’ (Iovlev 1999: 107), ‘the time concentrates information and social energy’. One of the chronotope’s parameters is the intensity of social activity that generates such energy. The density of time and space are related concepts. There are overloaded zones in space, and there are “rush hours” in time. < … > chronotope is not just a physical unit of space-time but also a bearer of content and sense of human activity. It is an atom of construction of the architectural image of the world’ < … > The content and sense of a particular space are related to the time. The sense of architectural form in a historic time constantly changes (e.g. transition of a functional construction into a monument, change of functions, reconstruction process, etc.) < … > The chronotope is connected with emotional patterns of environment. Space as an abstraction is dead, the time gives life, activity, emotional and sensual charge to it (Iovlev 1999: 104–105).

The time directly perceived by humans and objectified in space is by all means emotionally and symbolically meaningful. For ethnologist V. Tishkov, linearity and quantity of modern (calendar-watch) time is nothing but one of its characteristics. The modern time is a quality, otherwise there wouldn’t be any talk of ‘our hard time’, ‘good old times’, that ‘time flies’, or ‘time is money’. ‘Significance and values attributed to time have fundamentally contextual character. Thus, we can distinguish the cultural time (tempus) that is subjective and personal-social, and can also have political sense, from a kind of absolute (or natural-cosmic) time (chronos) (Tishkov 2003: 266, 270).

The absolute (physical) space-time, in the natural science conceptions, is indivisible. V.Vernadsky in his review named The Problem of Time in Modern Science wrote:

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3 Universal Categories of Culture in Landscape … It is obvious, provided space and time are parts, that manifestations and different sides of one and the same indivisible whole, it’s not possible to make scholar conclusions about time without paying attention to space. And vice versa, everything reflected in space is more or less reflected in time (Vernadsky 2000: 185).

Time is often studied as a substance function, and with the cultural landscape it is the function of social-cultural matter that organizes the internal structure of the cultural landscape. That is why the space-time interaction ratio becomes much more complex in regards to the cultural landscape the space-time structure organization of which is determined by human mind, social and sociocultural group mentality. Hence, the relation of space and time is interpreted in science studying cultural reflection on space: The geo-sophia which can be understood as a discipline studying and interpreting vast spaces is definitely not an analogue of history-sophia, as it might be considered within the chronologic conception, but something more extended and expanded in conceptual sense. < … > Universal geopolitical (or geosophic, despite this unusual term) images must be summoned to effectively and very compactly ‘compress’ the traditional geographic space, also ‘compressing’ its specific temporal characteristics… (Zamyatin 2004a: 50).

Time flickers in space, it reveals itself with more or less power. In the cultural space, it’s possible to identify places where the historic time runs at different speed, goes down, stops, or comes up rushing into the future at incredible speed. In the cultural landscape, geologic, mythological, historic and physical time is constantly present. The first shows itself in the shift of lithosphere plates, in sea transgressions and regressions, other geologic processes that form the appearance of regions or natural landscapes. The second one is connected with a particular place of mythological history written in holy scriptures or preserved in legends, geo-biographies of legendary heroes and saints. It is purportedly materialized in holy monuments dedicated to those heroes or events, gains a chance to ‘dissolve’ into the real geographic space through embodiment in visible and tangible images. In the archaic mythological consciousness, time and space are emotionally filled: …Time as much as space can be good or bad, favorable for some activities and dangerous and hostile to other; there is a sacred time, the time for feast and sacrifice, of recording a myth connected with the return of the ‘time immemorial’, as well as there is a sacred space, particular holy places and whole worlds governed by specific powers (Gurevich 1972: 29).

Historic time is shown in the records of ancient and relatively current events described not only by historians but survived in abandoned and active temples, in art and architecture records, in petroglyphs and menhirs. This explains the heart thrill familiar to many of those who have eye-witnessed the ancient pieces not in museums but in the cultural landscape, exactly where the unknown master put his cutter on the rock to carve deer and sharp-horned goats. For a person with a good amount of knowledge, there is a chance, due to such signs, not only to deeply watch but to see and read the plentiful layer of information… And finally, physical time runs by its inherent laws connected with the planet circles and its axis angle, a day is changed by a night, a month is followed by a month, summer gives way to autumn, winter comes after autumn. And even this

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time gains its semantic connotations as, for instance, in the poem by Josef Brodsky Plato Elaborated: The time flowing, contrary to the water, Horizontally from Tuesday to Wednesday In the darkness might be ironing out the wrinkles And erasing its own traits. These senses might be manifested in the cultural space as, for instance, the use of a modified desert landscape (horizontal, sand) in Dali’s works symbolizing an inexorable time flow. Each kind of time and space has its own rhythm. The mythological time rhythm is determined by religious festivals, the rhythm of closely connected with it sacred space—with places of worship and rituals. Historic time is rhymed by periods of prosperity and degradation of cultures, war and peace that leave their traces in the landscape. Talking again about Lev Gumilyev’s conception of Ethnogenesis, we can note a welcoming though that the natural landscape, by stimulating the genesis and development of an ethnos, directs and organizes the time, from its steady flow to the eventful, historic one. The humans develop a place, the place serves as a support for the society living there, and that is how the topo-genesis is formed (Savitsky 1997: 282–284), the concept of which was introduces into the science by Petr Savitsky. Nevertheless, not quite any territory happens to become a topo-genesis. < … > The genuine topo-genesis are territories of combination of two and more (natural–O.L.) landscapes (Gumilyev 1990: 186–187).

3.1.2 Cultural Heritage as Repository of Events in Historic Time The present moment can survive the pressure of ages, and maintain its integrity, stay as it is ‘now’. If only it’s possible to master how to pull it out from the time soil not damaging its roots, lest it wither. O. Mandelshtam. Francois Villon To describe the time passing in history it is possible to use a metaphor and say that history as an eventfully materialized time gives one more dimension to space-time. The historical angle of vision shows us the physical cosmos moving centrifugally in a fourdimensional frame of Space-Time; it shows us life on our planet moving evolutionarily in a five-dimensional frame of Life-Space-Time; and it shows us human souls raised to a sixth dimension by a gift of Spirit, moving through a fateful exercise of their spiritual freedom, either towards their Creator or away from Him (Toynbee 1996: 504).

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A separate issue which we are not going to study here is the life circle of a cultural landscape obviously noticeable in ordinary (vernacular) regions (Pavlyuk 2007). The space develops in time, and catches, shots, materialize the time, fixes the stages of its flow and its speed. The cultural layer impartially fixes the time speeding or slowing its flow, the eras of blossom or decline of culture, eras of its stagnation. Mundus senescit—the world is getting old. For an archaic mind, ‘the time is as real and material as the whole world’ (Gurevich 1972: 91), though in modern mentality, archaic layers are revealed if not in every-day life then in specific semiotic systems, including semantics of the cultural landscape. Time manifests itself in space as a creator accumulating cultural and spiritual treasures, and a destroyer ruthlessly demolishing monuments and artifacts that serve as milestones keeping, in the cultural landscape, historical events or spiritual ups and downs of their heroes. The metaphor of the ‘power of time’ (Arutunova 1997), the time-destroyer is always present both, in mentality, language, and signs that whatsoever have their ‘time component’. In this context, the cultural heritage is considered something apt to be under the power of time, as well as the evidence, the results of the historic time flow embodied in artifacts and records that always are in the state of opposition with its destructive force. Due to this property of time, ‘historical layers can never be presented in full, and some of them at all, especially the most ancient ones’ (Turovsky 1998: 27) in the paysage segment of the cultural landscape. Historic constructions are much more inclined, compared with natural elements of a landscape that similarly experience the power of time and erosion processes, to express the very idea of time, the ‘sign of unity of temporal and historic processes, spatial and temporal ground’ (Svirida 2007: 28). This was the reason, in the eighteenth century park and garden art, for the motive of quasi-ruins as the symbol of time to appear. The time should be fruitful, states the western culture paradigm, which is supported by its thinkers such as Antoine de Saint-Exupery: You wouldn’t see the time as a sand seller who does everything in vain, but a reaper who sheaves. < … > No good if the running time turns us to dust and gives it to the wind, it’s better when it improves us. The time needs to be inhabited. < … > I can feel it leak. The time should not flow in such an obvious way. It should gain form, grow and get old. It should become a thing, a construction (Saint-Exupery 1994: 14, 19, 30).

Space and time are conceived by induction, from particular to the general. Time intervals imprinted in artifacts (production time, context of the era) line up into a historic chain of events-artifacts that co-exist in a single place in the cultural landscape. There also exist loci and ‘matryeshka’ objects where one time is hidden inside the other one (a new temple erected on the foundation of the old one, and deeper into the ground ancient burials can be found, etc.). As a French geographer Vidal de la Blanche used to think, a landscape is an autobiography of the culture related to it, and tastes and values of people, and it could be read as a book (Blanche 1926). V. Tishkov suggests the conceptions of culturology time, or the time of culture which is

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studied as the most important aspect of the world model, as a feature of length of existence, rhythm, tempo, sequence, coordination of change of cultural condition in general, and of its elements as well as of meaningfulness for the humans (Tishkov 2003: 268).

Within our conception, it is historic time since history is inseparable from culture. In the landscape, the cultural heritage, especially the location of cult constructions, shows that the ‘time strings’ are stretched through the space. In some places, cultural continuity reveals as a force interlacing historic and mythical time into a tight knot, which is reflected in modern studies: Temples were rarely built from scratch. They were always preceded by sanctuaries through which they picked up the golden thread of succession coming from mythological times (Shaposhnikova 2000: 97).

Herewith, the preceding culture is often ‘effaced’ as an ancient manuscript parchment. It remains in the memory of culture, in legends and historical documents, perhaps, to be more clearly revealed in the form of a ‘palimpsest’ later when the cultural layer is opened, as it happened with Troy, Pompeii, Chersonese in the Crimea, or when one of visible ‘historical layers’ are actualized: ‘on a territory, historical layers are usually presented by separate constructions of a particular era, seldom by architectural ensembles’ (Turovsky 1998: 27). In modern culture, the ‘exposed’ and museum ‘landscapes of historic time’ are of particular importance, such as Arkaim, Chersonese, etc., where constructions of other epochs are released from the underground thereby are gained from the time which hid them under a thick cultural layer. Material evidence of distant eras, like stone tools and Neolithic art, are being moved from soil layers into regional history museums, thus once again becoming a part of cultural landscape on information and analytic level (when described by scholars). The cultural space develops over time, and catches, shots the time flow, events, materializes, fixes them it artifacts, architectural constructions and monuments, types of agriculture, new layers of cultural formations. Lev Gumilyev studied artifacts as ‘crystallized passionarity’ arguing, on the contrary, that heritage falls out of time: … what was done survives its creators as well as those for whom it was done, and their heirs, for the inert substance enclosed in a form exists out of time (Vernadsky 1965: 135). Here, time is separated from space. It is a record of what is gone, it is a trait of the passed life (Gumilyev 1990: 454).

When artifacts and records are studies in the context of their semantic load in culture and the cultural landscape, then material heritage, on the contrary, appears to be a visible stratification of time, and stimulus for time ‘inversion’ in the mind of people that get in touch with it, since in contact with legacy objects, ‘aura’ of the place, human mind goes back to historic events trying to catch the rite or style, taste and smell of the bygone epoch. What happens is the pulling out of a given historic event or time period from the depths of time that O. Mandelshtam wrote about. Historic periods, in some cases, can be described as a cultural landscape state. It is obvious in landscapes that experienced colonization of some other culture. K. Sauer identified several types of landscape, on the USA material, that correspond

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with different eras, i.e. Indian landscape, pioneer landscape, farmer landscape (Sauer 1997: 189–192). The time as it is and modes of its measuring may also become a legacy or museum object in the landscape. For instance, in Tomskaya Pisanitsa museum-reserve at the turn of the 20–21 centuries when the humanity dramatically felt the running time and started thinking about its nature and measure, an exposition called Time and Calendars was founded, expressing the concept of time and its measurement in different forms of cultural traditions. Various calendar models and calendars of different times and cultures were collected there. The possibility to register the time process has caught the human mind since ancient eras, and put the life in circles and order. First calendars of the Stone Age, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Scandinavia, Ancient Slaves and Siberia, as well as hunting/fishing calendars are on exhibit in one outdoor exposition which is a significant sense element of the cultural landscape of this museum-reserve. Considering the whole cultural landscape of Tomskaya Pisanitsa, in the museum context, is dedicated to historic time, its process from Neolith to modern era, this exposition give its semantics quite a new semantic level forwarding it into the orbit of Bergson’s time definition: ‘Time is an invention, or nothing at all’ (Bergson 1966: 341).

3.1.3 Mythological Time: ‘Everything Comes Back Full Circle…’ This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment, there runs a long eternal lane backwards: behind us lies an eternity. < …> In every instant beings being; round every ‘here’ rolls the ball ‘there’. The center is everywhere. Curved is the path of eternity. Fr. Nietzsche. Thus Spoke Zarathustra Je suis espace et temps, où devenir. Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Citadelle. At this point, the problem of the semantic field of ‘space-time’ can be naturally discussed. The time vector seems to be invariably directed into the future though the archetypes of traditional culture that pull the time back are deeply rooted even in the modern secularized society. From time immemorial, as the legacy of preliterate civilizations, there is a desire to preserve the records about order, not violation, about laws, not accidents… Here, the foreground is occupied not by chronicles or newspaper reviews but by a calendar, a rite which keeps this order, a ritual which allows preserving all this in the collective memory (Lotman 1987: 5). Mythological time is a kind of ‘initial’, ‘first’ time (or ‘the-time-before’) prior to historic or empirical time. It is the time of the first objects, first actions and first creations. Sometimes this time is named sacral, contrary to empiric or profane time (Tishkov 2003: 268).

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One of the main features of mythological time is its cyclic recurrence which is opposed to unidirectional vector of historic time. ‘Cyclic consciousness’ is tuned for typing (identification of what exists with what happened not once), and the ‘linear’ one for individuation (Yakovleva 1994: 101). Cosmological consciousness suggests that, in time process, one and the same ontologically given text is repeated… Meanwhile, historic consciousness is in principle assumed for linear and irreversible < … > time (Uspensky 1989: 32–33). Mythical Time, the initial one, is not identified with the historic past, it is the Time of the source meaning that is appeared ‘at once’, and no other Time existed before because no Time could not exist before the reality told by the legend appeared (Eliade 1994: 50).

Linear time may be connected with unique historic events showing the ‘step-bystep’ development of society. It is not only history that sets the vector of experienced time but also the ‘end of the world’ concept. Christian consciousness applied the ‘concept < … > about uniqueness and singularity of key events in the destiny of the world’, ‘tied in an original synthesis the cyclic and linear time features (in this regard, ideas of both irreversibility and finiteness of time…)’ (Yakovleva 1994: 98).

As Mircha Eliade claims, …Christianity, compared with other religions, brought new meaning into the concept and knowledge of liturgical time arguing that historically Christ existed as a personality. For a believer the liturgy takes place in a Historic Time blessed by the God’s Son incarnation (Eliade 1994: 50).

There is a time before Christ and after his birth, i.e. the world divided into two parts. Let us add that, with the Christian chronology, the space changed, the pagan shrines in the cultural landscape were demolished, thread down, and the cosmography and pagan myth calendar recorded there was erased. A. Gurevich writes that the time of the Christian myth and that of the pagan myth differ profoundly. Pagan time was apparently conceived only in myth forms, as a ritual, change of seasons and generation, whereas in medieval society the category of mythological, sacred time (‘history of revelations’) coexists with the category of earthly, worldly time, and both are integrated into the category of historic time (‘salvation history’) (Gurevich 1972: 99).

It is worth noting that the Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, and, moreover, founders of newer religions (like Rev. Moon) are personalities whose historicity is an integral part of the religious tradition and picture of the world, where sacred time has some historical analogies. Nevertheless, not every religious tradition has the ‘end of times’ concept which is an important ontological constant of Christianity. There is one more linear time definition which classifies it as different from historic time. This European phenomenon firstly appears with Descartes. It is already completely abstracted from both, events and history which bears moral sense. It has no qualities, it is balanced, irreversible, with no beginning nor end. It’s main attribute, the length, makes it measurable (Panova 2003: 358).

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The circle rhythm is conceived beyond history; such concept as the time direction is inconceivable here. In particular, for ancient mind, the historic process ‘had no exodus, no start, everything is repeated, exists in an eternal cycle, in an eternal recycle’ (Berdyaev 1990b: 23). The circle rhythm was mainly determined not only by the essence of mythological consciousness but also the change of seasons which organizes the ‘circle’ human activity: Time-space of a traditional human is not as chronologically linear as ours; it’s more expanded into the past and the future; even the present moment happens to be surrounded by various layers of time. < … > The ‘cyclic time’ notion applies to the economic year circle. Holistic perception of time by a traditional human can be better seen on a spherical model. The radius of such sphere may differ with different people in different cultures. The general trend is in its expansion. Sphere time links with sphere space. < … > When space spans the upper and lower world its spherical nature becomes obvious (Chesnov 1998: 34).

It is interesting that in his above quote modern anthropologist Yan Chesnov suggests a purely spatial model, excluding any dynamism, to describe qualities of time. If cyclicality implies a dynamic state of the world, the spherical model implies stability. Chesnov introduces one more concept, a distributive time of tradition ‘pregnant’ with explosion. Distributive time may be predicted by its top substitutes. < … > Within its conception, what is ought to be done in one moment is banned, up to tough sanctions, in another one. < … > Distributive time is never ended, it is always in process of formation. This is not a linear development. At any time, it suggests bifurcation, a choice, a gap, a constantly floating zero point of cultural genesis (Chesnov 1998: 48–49).

The semantic load of cyclic and linear time is more profound than multidirectional movement, and is rooted in the ancient dichotomy of ‘humanized’ time and space that is generated by the division of the world into the sacred and the profane. For a religious person, time is not homogenous, it means a sacred and profane space, a sacred and profane time. Sacred Time is reversible by nature, meaning that it is literally the first mythological Time transfigured into the present. Any religious festival, any Time of liturgy is a recording in the present of a sacred event which took place in the past, ‘in the very beginning’. Thus, Sacred Time can be returned and repeated countless times. From a certain point of view, it can be describes as a ‘flowing’, not making any irreversible ‘extension’ one. This is utterly ontological ‘Parmenides’ time, it is always equal to itself, does not change, nor flows away’ < … > ‘A religious person lives in two times, and the most significant of the two is the Sacred which paradoxically appears to be circular, reversible, apt to be restored Time, some mythical eternal present which periodically is restored by means of rites (Eliade 1994: 48, 49).

Sacred Time might be a closed or open circle, a spiral. While rites are repeated return to the initial time happens, though on a quality different level, since from era to era, the quality of the ethnic mentality changes, as well as experience of ancient rites and peculiarities of the sanctuary structure. Spiral time combines the features of cyclic and linear time. No exact coincidence with the past event can be found but every current event has its analogue in the initial time (Panova 2003: 358).

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‘The mechanism of the time ‘return’, i.e. the rites have their own localization in the cultural landscape. Sanctuaries, temples, prayer stones, and other forms of sacred space organization are repositories of sacred time, the means of expression, visual and tangible manifestations in a mundane material space. Mircha Eliade notes that …some understanding of discontinuity and heterogeneity of Time may be found in a nonreligious person as well. There is, along with a monotone time of work, a time of celebrations and performances, i.e. ‘holiday time’ (Eliade 1994: 49).

And there are appropriate places like parks, clubs, etc., as well as ‘guides’ for such places like Timeout in Moscow and other issues.

3.1.4 Eternity Versus Timelessness Eternity will be your spouse, The world – a shrine. Nikolai Gumilyev. To the People of the Future Car angoisse et ferveur échoient aux mêmes. Toutes deux sont sentiment de l’espace et de l’étendue. Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Citadelle Eternity is the inner time of religious art, the space of an icon. Here comes the metaphor of ‘the world as an icon’ when the dynamic system, under certain conditions and from a certain point, may act as a semantic net reflecting the structure of the Eternal World. In such a system in the sacred centers, the strings of prayerful silence connect the eternity with the temporal. In materialist conception, Eternity is the infinite lifetime of the material world conditioned by non-creation and indestructibility of the matter and its attributes, the material unity of the world (Philosophical Encyclopedic… 1989: 87).

In the traditional values system, Eternity is not the infinity of time as is considered by the materialists. It is a different quality of ‘space-time’ and a different quality of being. We can compare two poetic passages that show the adapted by culture scientific world view and the religious one: …It’s over a hundred years now That intelligent people know That time and space do not exist, It’s nothing but subjective ghost, Or simply, just a cheating. Vladimir Solovyev I had a revelation that there’s no time, The shaped planets are motionless, Immortality leads to death,

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And that after death immortality comes. Konstantin Balmont Staying in time and eternity are two different ways of being in different worlds that co-exist as a visible and invisible world < … > The boundary between these worlds is pervious (Muryanov 1978).

At such point, the boundary is a crack in the genesis structure which allows moving from one space into another, with other measures and other worlds, from time into no time, into the initial point of creation, ‘proto-time’ having the potential of timespace where although no time nor space ever existed. Apart from the initial Eternity, in majority of cultural traditions, there is a notion of ‘another world’, time-space of other qualities where the angels, saints and deities dwell. According to Berdyaev’s idea, ‘another world’ is the ‘enlightenment and transfiguration of our existence, the victory of the fallen time’ (Berdyaev 1991: 306). That is, the mere existence of time testifies to inferiority of our world with its inexorable laws of the past-present-future and possibility to calculate time. By opposing the ‘quantity’ time to the ‘non-calculable’ eternity it’s possible to find an analogy of opposing the physical space to non-physical, ideal, speculative (existential quasi-space, the space beyond existence). The latter is not responsive to ‘quantify’ laws of length and measurement. In both cases, the basis of this opposition is the “calculation” (Heidegger’s term) of the matter, i.e. time-space. The quantity ‘marks’ the physical world (Yakovleva 1994: 88).

Another understanding of eternity is the ‘ripen’ time which outlived its calculable feature. ‘Well’, A. de Saint-Exupery is saying through his hero, ‘when you come closer to God, He is the silence of eternity. Everything is already said and done there’ (Saint-Exupery 1994: 128). History manifests itself in the quantitative flow of time, succession of events and states of the world in general, as well as of a separate place where historic events of various ‘space’ (from a small place to the global) and ‘time’ extend (from one generation to eras) take place. Though, the ideal of a historic event ‘resonance’ is the eternity.1 History is nothing but a deep interaction between eternity and time, continuous invasion of eternity into time. < … > history is a continuous struggle of the eternal with the temporal (Berdyaev 1990b: 53).

The super-sense of history might be found in the gradual ‘ripening’ of time leading to the silence of eternity. Escape from the net of the terminal vain world is the aim of spiritual seeking in different religious traditions. In Christian thought, earthly time is correlated with eternity, and in certain crucial moments, history is as if ‘breaking into’ eternity. A Christian strives to pass from the vale of tears time into the eternal heaven of those selected by God (Gurevich 1972: 99). 1A

rather common note may be found on the WWII memorial monuments ‘Your heroic deeds are immortal’. Similar words about the ‘eternal resonance’ may vary on memorial slabs and monuments of various historical periods.

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Eternity is exposed in materialized, ‘spaced’ history; on every stage, shrines were built that symbolize if not the eternity itself, the path to it, in order to functionally overcome boundaries between eternity and the terminal vain world. Not only temples but also caves, deserted places, mountain picks became effective participants or prerequisites of the ‘spiritual deed’ which is beyond the temporal world. Take me inside, Mother Desert, < …> Teach me, Mother Desert, To do the will of God! Deliver me, Mother Desert, From the evil torture of eternity! Lead me, Mother Desert, To the realm of heaven! (Dove Book 1991: 156) In this context, the desert acts like the path into the other space-time, the heaven derived from Eternity. (In Christian tradition, the realm of heaven, paradise, eternal life, eternal bliss have certain inner dynamics, respectively, it is hardly possible to talk about that very Eternity which is beyond time, ‘The earthly virtues become eternal in heaven’ (Valla 1543: 989; quoted in Batkin 1995: 243); in such interpolation of the earthly and temporal into eternal, Eternity itself turns into endless lasting. The cultural landscape organized by the ‘image and likeness’ of other world landscape can serve as a mediator between the worlds. Belief in the heavenly Jerusalem became one of the motives for making the New Jerusalem in Russia, through symbolic and direct similarities the landscape becomes a ‘carbon copy’ of not only the earthly Jerusalem but also the heavenly one. That is how comes the blessing felt by believers in this place. Naturally, people of other traditions, or those who do not know enough the tradition in such place-mediators cannot read the text of this cultural landscape with its symbols that turn a piece of earth ground into an icon. In the Buddhist tradition, nirvana is sometimes referred to as a place. The Russian language has similar space metaphors related to eternity as well as to time. The embodiment of eternity in the landscape can be seen in the Egyptian pyramids that, even in the period of their construction, were governed by realization of this thought in symbolic space by the banks of the Nile. The Egyptian pyramids can serve as ‘magnificent monuments of the ancient civilizations “time that stopped”. Time goes on in daily life but this is the time of illusive visible world, as to the true time it is eternity of higher reality which is not apt to change. Ancient Egyptians considered the world a handmade production of the creator, and the past and future exist there in the present’ (Gurevich 1972: 30).

The semantic antipode of eternity is timelessness not as an absence but as the ‘death’ of time. In the ‘time—timelessness’ context, time has ethic connotations. Simeon of Polotsk, for instance, considered the time measure as a deed done within time, and a ‘good’ time is the time of action; no action – not time at all, thus fruitless and ‘deedless’ no-time wins though its enemy is also the time that demolishes that no-time. And the deed should be good, creative, developing peace and life. Evil ‘tricks’ are not compatible with time, they kill it (Toporov 2003a: 377).

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Thus, the time of human life must be creative, with the time gaining its flesh and form, contrary to the time that ‘turns everything in ashes’. Time has its own ‘gallows’ in any town landscape where, they say, people ‘kill’ or ‘burn’ their time, i.e. make its flow senseless. Such places have no inner rhythm, they are sort of perpetual time ‘eaters’, loci of timelessness.

3.1.5 Morphology of the ‘Landscape of Time’ Time is far greater than space. Space is a thing. Whereas time is, in essence, the thought, the conscious dream of a thing. And life itself is a variety of time. The carp and bream are its clots and distillates. As are even more stark and elemental things, including the sea wave and the firmament of the dry land. Including death, that punctuation mark. Josef Brodsky. Keep Until the Cold Season… ‘Mastering’ of time by technical means of civilization influences the perception of the geographic space by culture. The space is being ‘compressed’ as a shagreen skin. New means of transportation and communication made it possible to cover much more distance per a time unit then decades ago, not mentioning the older centuries. As a result, the world became much smaller. In human life, the category of speed which combines the concepts of space and time acquired great importance (Gurevich 1972: 28).

Hence, time as one of immanent categories of culture if manifested in the cultural landscape through its plasticity, physiognomy, symbolism. Time is indestructible. It cannot but influence space, so a place cannot but be even partly the consequence of time as well (Mitin 2004: 53–54).

As a result, landscapes became ‘landscapes of time lived and over-thought by culture’. This is profoundly noticeable in local landscapes. For instance, space and time behave themselves in the town of Mtsensk, Orlov region of Russia, miraculously. They are already intertwined here, and as much as it is not possible to separate them. Mtsensk seems to be an anomaly, a reservation of space-time communities. History of Mtsensk is not a pure history; it is deeply tied with spatial transformations of the town (Mitin 2004: 54).

Time gives dynamism, fluidity to space. Let us refer back to the classical work of Vladimir Vernadsky where he summarizes paradigms and hypotheses of natural sciences of his time. The following passage confirms this idea: The heterogeneity of (space) is expressed dynamically, i.e. detected in time; in the same obvious way, during a time, its anisotropy is stated (Vernadsky 2000: 190).

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Vernadsky, retelling Faraday, wrote that space is pervaded by ‘lines of power’ that have ‘particular structure which is beyond the metrics of space’ (Vernadsky 2000: 188). Pervasiveness of space by ‘lines of power’ structuring it may have not only physical but metaphorical expression as well, genetically connected with culture. Vernadsky pointed out that in geometric reality, time is expressed by a vector which, however, depending on geometric or physical structure of space may not be necessarily the straight line of Euclidean space (Vernadsky 2000: 190).

Cultural space makes the metrics of time more complex. Every representative of a particular culture conceives time and space by induction, although in the light of an ethnic group mentality, from an event and place to the general time flow and landscape sculpture. We are inevitably confronted by the fact that the qualities that are immanent for time have, in one way or another, their semantic parallels in the geocultural space and cultural landscape. The development of territory by culture is in paving the routes, ritual guarding, stating sacred places and marking boundaries. This is not a mere turn into sacred. The orderly territory is integral and differentiated. It has its center and periphery, places for the living and the dead, and worship centres (Chesnov 1998: 133).

And the elements of the cultural landscape structure define different qualities of time. Most common geocultural images of time passing and dynamics, of space division is a route, a river. In both cases, time passing symbolizes the movement in space, moving of waters or humans on the earth ground which is visible and tangible. (Interestingly, moving of air—the wind—does not bear such semantic load as the flow of time, and is used only as a metaphor of transience, change.) For peoples of the North, the river was one of central elements of spatial organization of life rites and calendar cycles (Terebikhin 1993: 66).

In most cases the river flow and time flow are metaphors of irreversible movement. The route can be returnable. Toporov and Chesnov write on the cultural semantics of the route as follows: The route in myth-poetic and religious models of the world is an image of connection between two marked points in space. Constant and inalienable property of route space is its difficulty (Toporov 1988c: 352). … The road is not a mere movement in space, it also happens in time, with its ‘before’, ‘now’ and ‘after’ (Chesnov 1998: 177).

A route and a road are polysemantic concepts that always have their space-time expression since they imply a start, an end, a length, and the start (impulse, goal setting) determines the destination (goal). Traveling leads out of the ordinary time boundaries, gives the momentum of sense to the time associated with the goal setting. A pilgrimage or any other movement

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in space undertaken for spiritual goals beyond the ordinary life often becomes an equivalent to traveling in time. On the other hand, it is a route blessed by a sacred time. Hence, a pilgrimage has its laws of space-time that differ from the physical continuum. The ultimate goal of a pilgrimage is achieved through soul efforts, and not by crossing the geographic space; this cultural model was perfectly expressed by Nikolai Gumilyev in his poem named Pilgrim: … Akhmet is very old, and his way is tough, Midnight fogs are chilling, soon He might fall down exhausted and mute, Wrapped in his tattered robe, shivering, In one of those occidental towns where Sycamores are whispering at night While the black-beard muezzin is Singing verses of the Valley Beauty. He might fall down though his sleepless spirit Was not in vain by Allah blessed, And Azrael like a passionate lover Will embrace him and accompany Through the path allowed only for Demons, prophets and the stars. All what a man could do He did – and Mecca he will see. A different time flow is connected with a different state of mind which can be achieved through a prayer, meditation, or by taking psychotropic drugs (shaman’s travels). Almost every culture has fairy tales, legends about the places with a different time. The plot telling about a wanderer who finds himself in a strange place and world (usually the world of the dead), spends three days there, and returns back home to discover that many years (decades) have passed since (See, e.g.: How the Merchant’s Son.. 1992), is very typical and proves that the idea of uneven distribution of the time speed on the earth is tightly kept in the traditional world picture; as well as the idea of the earth ground quality which allows moving, at particular loci, into different dimensions of space-time. Even if these crucial cases without an exact location in a real geographic space are not taken, there is, in the cultural landscape, an inevitably present ‘time landscape’ featuring in the uneven distribution of flow, direction and quality of time in space. The mentioned above forms of the ‘humanized’ time draw their own picture on the earth ground. There are loci where time is striving to eternity, or zero (initial point), i.e. holy places. The most highlight cultural and spatial point seems to be the ‘centre of the world’ as a place to cross the time limits and contact the Eternity, or the zero point of time, i.e. beginning of the world. … Symbolism of towns, temples, houses < … > is connected with the idea of some “World Centre”. Religious experience concealed in the Centre symbolic seems to be as follows: a

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person wants to be situated in the space ‘opened upwards which allows communicating with the divine world’ (Eliade 1994: 61).

There is an etymological relativity between templum (Lat. temple) and tempus (Lat. time) that might be interpreted through the concept of ‘intersection’ (Eliade 1994: 52; Usener 1920: 191). A vivid connection of sacred space and time is realized through the symbolism of the sanctuary. For instance, in India, the altar construction repeats the cosmogony by symbolically setting a year (360 bricks in the walls and the altar), in other words, each time when a fire altar is constructed not only the World is created once again but also a’Year is set’, the time is regenerated in its new creation. < … > Hence, a new altar is constructed in order to bless the World, i.e. to include it into the Sacred Time (Eliade 1994: 51).

In the ‘center—periphery’ structure, the center is connected with the rhythm, regularity, order of time and events, while the time landscape periphery is unstable, dynamic, non-rhythmic, tends from order to chaos. In the symbolic ‘Centre of the Universe’ consciousness seeks penetration beyond the phenomenal world into the noumenal. This transition is sometimes performed not symbolically, consciousness moves into ‘another dimension’ of space-time, with an inversion of inner, personal, and external space, which is encouraged, for instance, by the ‘pyramid effect’ in Giza. Andrei Bely described his climbing the Cheops pyramid: The foot of the pyramid was out of sight, and I felt as if on an asteroid, on a celestial body, and then turned inside out while the zodiac, the Sun, all that became my own skin. I covered myself with the zodiac like the peach pulp covers its bone. I was a bone inside the peach, myself, watching myself with a multi-eyed stellar sphere. And when I came down back to the pyramid foot I felt myself totally transformed (Quot. In: Kedrov 2001: 368–369).

There are initiative spaces, such as the sea in the Pomor culture, to leave the time river flow and touch the Eternity. ‘The sea’ (as much as ‘the field’ in the ancient Russian legislation) is a sacred space where trial, battle, ‘argue of life and death’ happen, where not the physical human qualities (the flesh) are tested, but their spiritual and moral grounds. That’s where the different nature of the ‘sea death’ comes from. For the violator of the divine and human rules it’s a punishment, a penalty for the crime (‘eternal death’). For those who live in peace with the world, the sea death turns to be a salvation, rebirth (‘eternal life’) (Terebikhin 1993: 12).

There are loci where an associative inversion of time (the time of cultural genesis or personal human history) happens causing strong historical associations. The reverse flow of time can be connected with ethical categories as well. Cruelty, ignorance, commitment to rituals involving killing of a human as an evil source are a spiritual inversion which makes the time go backwards, into involution. And as mentioned above, there are ‘black holes’, the places of time ‘death’, the places to burn the life in vain, of ethereal time flow. The time in space experienced by a human individual, a particular culture or community is polymorphic, thus gaining landscape qualities such as unevenness and integrity, initially set, with a certain internal structure and logic, not as obvious as in

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the landscape, nevertheless, always tangible. This allows constructing, in regards of time, spatial metaphors compressing its sense of being populated and developed by humans. As Boris Pasternak wrote, … being, in my opinion, is a historic being, and a man is not a dweller of some geographic point. It is years and centuries that serve him as a land, a country or space. He is the dweller of the time (Pasternak 1990: 222).

Anyway, space-time constantly generated new senses in culture, expands borders of the semiosphere and allows seeing the horizons of the unknown and not even marked existential questions.

3.2 Sacred Semantics of the Cultural Landscape 3.2.1 Mythological Archetypes of Developing of the Terrestrial Space …The children of the Earth, We are looking up into the night space, Striving to learn the world laws through the stars, To link them with our finite destinies By stretching ropes from our side to the Altair. A. Chizhevsky Modern anthropology suggests that it is awareness of the God’s law which became the initial impetus for semiotization of space realizing in different forms of expression in different cultures. Nikolai Berdyaev claimed, All social teachings of the nineteenth century lacked the awareness of a human being as a cosmic creature and not just a ground society consumer dwelling on the earth ground, the understanding that a human communicates with the world of the depth and the world of the height (Berdyaev 1990a: 130).

That’s how the human multidimensional inner world which conditions striving to go beyond the three-dimensional space is conceived. The semantics of the Latin word sacer shows the dual character of the “sacred”, as follows: dedication to gods, incurable stains, glorified and cursed, worthy of adoration and causing horror (Benveniste 1995: 348).

The sacred semantics disguises the world in the categories of holy and terrible, transcendental and infernal. Trying to express these categories, archetypes of human consciousness in the spatial environment leads to its sacralization. In the sacred semantics of the cultural landscape, the role of the signifier is played by archetypes, transcendental concepts and categories and their corresponding symbols. The map of the world turns into an icon reflecting the traditional world view and expressing by its

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different parts ‘vertical’ layers of the universe on the plane. In this space, there is place for supernatural and mythological characters too. One of the most common methods for studying the sacred entity of the cultural landscape suggests learning the language semantics, literature, folklore, since the main archetypes and their correlation with geographic space and natural landscape are most brightly reflected in the language. The Age of Discovery in European cultures started the process of accumulation of actual knowledge in geographic space thus displacing the paper drawn assumptions about the world. The world image of modern culture is primarily formed by the natural science paradigm, and with the success in industrial civilization the space within became countable. In Western Europe entering the Renaissance, a new ‘world model’ started to shape. A prominent place in it was occupied by newly organized space (Gurevich 1972: 82).

Today, symbolic meaning of certain geographic sites and areas are more or less preserve the memory of the icon world and the holy text which is mostly expressed in local landscapes of traditional cultures. V. Vasilkova writes about the essence of traditional culture as the ‘social incarnation’ of the perfect order, i.e. sacred order which is set and given by the Divine origin, and kept in cultural archetypes of the humanity. Such an order, according to mythological representations, is set under the laws of universal similarity. Using modern scientific analogies, it is possible to say that the world order is unfolded, structured similar to the global fractal reproducing, in each sector (fragment) of the world picture, the original structural pattern which is described in the myths as the cosmos forming from the chaos (Vasilkova 1999: 376).

Summarizing the studies of sacral categories classicists including the works related to space, let us emphasize that, in the traditional world picture, any place is characterized not by pure geographic coordinates since the spatial subsistence of the world picture is full of emotional and religious sense, and the geographic space is a religious and mythological space as well (Gurevich 1972: 44).

To V. Toporov, the mythological and poetic space is characterized not by continuity but by heterogeneity, by corpuscles with different value (importance) of its various parts. Modern scholars distinguish such a definition as ethno-mythological and religious-mythological geography grounded on rather archaic layers of mythological and poetic mind which originated the ethnocentric world model being, in the same time, the confessional world picture. And the cosmologic scheme creators position themselves in the center of it (Terebikhin 1993: 8).

The basis of religious and mythological image of the world is cosmogony applied to a real geographic space. Depending on diverse aspects of the world view, either the whole space becomes sacred, or a schism occurs, the division of the world into sacred and profane. On the one hand, provided the world view comes from the Bible texts postulating the creation and the God almighty, the geographic space as it is becomes the manifestation of the Divine will. In the early Christian world view, landscape

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elements were considered the God’s creation. In the context of such world perception, the ‘divine plan’ is realized in actual objects and phenomena thus carrying out their sacred sense, ‘the essence and true content of all natural phenomena’ (Melnikova 1998: 23). The division of the world into sacred and profane is conditioned by the religious world perception. Mircha Eliade explains this by the structure and organization of the religious mind: For a religious person the space is not homogeneous: it has many breaks, schisms, one of its parts dramatically differ from other (Eliade 1994: 22).

The world picture dating back to antiquity is centered since any culture has the semantics of the World centre and world axis, Axis Mundi, coming from the ancient era. The World is expanding around this cosmic axis < … > hence, the axis is in the ‘midst’, in the ‘Earth navel’, in the Centre of the World (Eliade 1994: 31).

On the one hand, Asgard was built in the center of the world, and, provided that the ‘space is mythological, it inevitably lacks topographic certainty’ (Gurevich 1972: 44), many mythological spaces are situated there that are apparently in the same plane, on the earth ground, giving a higher status to the geographic space, sanctifying it. On the other hand, the centrality is expressed in the semantic structure of the cultural landscape depending on ‘ethno-mythological organization of the space’ (Kalutskov et al. 1998: 107), and genetically dating back to pagan mythology. Thus, according to Gurevich’s studies, Mirgard, the human world in Scandinavian mythology, was expressed in real topography in estate manors seen as small world centres. A farmer estate contained the world model. It is clearly seen in Scandinavian myths that preserve many traits of beliefs and views once common to all Germanic nations. The human world of Mirgard (Mi∂gar∂r) literally means the ‘middle manor’. Mirgard is surrounded by ? the hostile world of monsters and ogres that inhabit Utgard (Utgar∂r), ‘something located beyond the home fence’, i.e. not cultivated chaotic part of the world (Gurevich 1972: 42).

The center of the religious and mythological world picture does not necessarily coincide with the locus of its creation. Location of the world Centre beyond the cultural landscape is observed when the confessional outlook dominates the archaic one. For the overwhelming majority of the world religions believers, the Holy Land is situated far from their home, where the actions described in the holy texts and mentioned in sacred stories took place. Like any other mythological system, the Christianity created its own sacred, i.e. holy space, or to be more precise, comprehended as sacred some of the real space areas. Such became the ‘biblical’ region, Palestine first of all, with the center in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus Christ lives, preached and died. In Christian geography, this is the most sacred space which is reflected in the name of Palestine as the Holy Lands, and Jerusalem as the central point of medieval maps (Melnikova 1998: 34). Jerusalem was the world center in medieval maps due to the Old Testament, the words from the Book of Ezekiel,

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…thus said the Lord God: this is Jerusalem! I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her (Ez. 5:5)

For Buddhists, the holy land is India, the place of birth, enlightenment and nirvana of the Buddha; in Moslem religion, the cities of Mecca and Medina connected with the life of the Prophet, where the Kaaba stone is worshipped by the faithful. Unique semantic inversions are found sometimes when a foreign cultural space is perceived as one’s own, and moreover, when it turns to have sacred attributes connected with the native cultural landscape. Such a foreign-native sacred space, for Russian culture, was antiquity. Here is quite appropriate Pavel Florensky’s claim about the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, the sacred monastery center for the Russian Orthodox church: It’s possible to say that the Lavra is the realization or the implementation of the Russian idea, or say, entelechy with Aristotle. That’s how this incredible attraction appears in the Lavra! It is only here, at the noumenal center of Russia you can live in the capital of Russian culture, while everything outside is only its periphery and suburbs… Departing from this balance point of various powers of Russian life you start losing your balance, and your personal harmonious development is jeopardized by specialization and techniques. I’m almost approaching that very word about the area pervaded with spiritual energy of St.Serguis, to the word which I still haven’t managed to find an expression for. The word is antiquity. Having found my life in this heart of Russia, the only legitimate heiress of the Byzantine Empire, and due to it and at the same time directly in ancient Ellada, I’m saying this here in the Lavra, with the thought that everything visible here is relentlessly pervaded with connotations in most intimate depths of culture, with Hellenic antiquity. Here I mean not the external and therefore just incidental fruit of antiquity, and even not historical interactions, though indisputable and numerous, but the very spirit of culture, the tones of its music that might be similar to some generic lore with the tiniest specific details, and intonations and voice tones that can go only in the family, although with no, which seems embarrassing, visual similarity (Florensky 1991: 275).

The ‘center—periphery’ opposition in religious and mythological picture of the world might also be expressed in the degree of unreality of geocultural space, by its distancing from the center. Here emerges the location of fairy tale and mythological event in ‘nowhere lands’ situated maximally far away from the actual mundane space. In the modern world, every cultural center, or even quite a homogeneous cultural region where a traditional culture prevails, like the northern part of European Russia, positions itself as the world centre, and might be taken as an initial point of view in a centralized (or) world picture. The world of traditional culture constructed under this model is dualistic and is divided into a real (me/native) and supernatural (foreign). Structurally, this model is anthropocentric and regional since spatially it is constructed once and again regarding the bearers of a particular cultural tradition and their homes. Hence, the central (native) region becomes the focus of positive attributes, and the foreign one of those negative, with the intensity gradually increasing from the nucleus towards the periphery and boundaries (Ivanova 2009: 43).

As Mircha Eliade argues basing on quite extensive ethnological data,

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3 Universal Categories of Culture in Landscape … expressing of the sacred creates the world ontologically. In the homogeneous and infinite space where no navigation point is possible, where you cannot be orientated, hierophania detects an absolute ‘starting point’, some ‘Centre’ (Eliade 1994: 22–23).

Centered landscapes are perceived as manifestations of the divine, and later on as administrative or state authorities. The center is often taken as a locus of power endowed by the Supreme. In the modern world, according to political science studies, ‘the image of the centre becomes transparent in almost any analytical discourse about the power’ (Kaspe 2007: 26). This political and mythological discourse is inherent to all empire centers from the Roman era. According to Shils’ definition (Shils 1975), the imperial center is ‘earthly-transcendental’, and it is a transmission channel of sacred meaning and their conversion into the gesture of power. This is what, first of all, distinguishes it from other kind of centers; delivery of sacred meaning into the social body is realized in any society, though the points of their copying are more or less numerous, they compete with each other, and do not coincide with mundane center (centers), and relations with the latter are competitive, at best, or antagonistic, at worst (Kaspe 2007: 53). The projection of the center from the outside and from the Supreme formed, in G. Knabe’s opinion, consciousness that the Roman Empire is a specific, unique < … > phenomenon separated from the outside world, as if standing hierarchically far above the world, with the nations of the world more or less defective and created for obedience (Knabe 1994: 254).

Hence, all cultural landscapes of macro-regions that had imperial origin were and are firmly centered, leaving the right for their capitals to believe the Divine power myth which is anyway transformed into modern consciousness. Therefore, in the religious and mythological space, a special place is given to cities that to some extent have capital functions. When a city is correlated with the world as a temple situated in downtown to the city, i.e. when it stands for an idealized model of the universe, it, as a rule, is located ‘in the Earth centre’ (or rather, despite its location it is given the central position, is considered the centre). Jerusalem, Rome, Moscow in various texts are shown as centres of particular worlds. Being a perfect embodiment of its native land, it can simultaneously serve as a prototype of the heavenly city, and as a sacred place for the outside lands (Lotman 1992: 9).

In semantics of such cities the sacred symbols of the natural landscape is transformed, where the emphasis is given to highlands and mountains as the symbol of the ontological vertical. The concentric position of a city in the semiotic space, as a rule, is connected with the image of a city of the hill (or in the mountains). Such a city stands as an intermediary between the heaven and the earth (Lotman 1992: 10).

Significance of some of such centers goes far beyond ethnic culture. Such surmounting of national borders is possible in studies of international religious worlds.

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In ancient European maps, the continents were places crosswise to Jerusalem since, under medieval concepts, the Holy Sepulchre was the world centre (Kalutskov, Ivanova, Davydova, Fadeeva and Rodionov 1998: 109).

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jerusalem was worshiped in the Christian world not only as a place of the most dramatic and fateful stories of the New Testament but also as a prototype of the Heavenly Jerusalem which was a spiritual vector of many national cultures. This vector was clearly observed in the Russian oecumene. The world picture based of the cosmogonic mythology is divided into two categories closely connected with the center-periphery categories, Cosmos and Chaos are embodied in real geographic space. Chaos is a specific non-space, or before-space which is left by the space emerging in the center of the world, i.e. Cosmos. Semiotic and existential ordering is characterized by cosmization of geographic space, as was pinpointed by M. Eliade: …Cosmization of unknown lands is always consecration; when people organize a space they follow the gods’ patterns (Eliade 1994: 28).

In Nordic mythology, Chaos which was previous to creation was located in the North by the sea covered with ice, in the ‘great void’ where the void was seen not as a negative concept, not as the opposite of fullness but as a potency, a kind of state conditioning the further world order, and infused with magic power (Gurevich 1972: 44).

According to observations of Ivanov and Toporov (1965), the sea in the Slavic mythological world picture has a high status though the ancient Slavs lived far from the sea, which could be most likely explained by the legacy of more ancient IndoEuropean cosmogonic beliefs, with the sea and ocean being the initial space prior to creation. In the Russian Pomor culture, the sea is a chthonic space. As N. Terebikhin claims, if the sea is a dead realm then any movement in this locus of religious and mythological space is similar to an actual experience of death, or rather of the sea-death (Terebikhin 1993: 12).

This is an initiatory space where personal qualities of humans, their sins/virtues determine their destiny. Universal binary oppositions of culture (life—death, Cosmos—Chaos) are attributes of both archaic and modern thinking, though reduced. With the perception of geographic space they appear in the form of ethnocentrism and oppositions: my—foreign, space order—space chaos, centre—edge of the earth, life space—initiatory death space. ‘The axis of the world’ in the sacred space not only determines its center but also gives it a spiritual dimension, an ontological vertical which reveals most clearly in the Christian world picture where stratification of the ‘heaven’ occurs, and the more noble a man is the higher his soul will go. The pagan world of the dead was far from being ‘the upper’ in many cultures, it could be located on the ground or under it. With the transition from pagan traditions to Christianity, the religious and mythological space is set in a hierarchal order (Gurevich 1972: 64).

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Jacob’s ladder which connects Heaven and Earth becomes dominating in the medieval space. This idea was expressed with an extraordinary strength by Dante. Not only the order of the infernal world with the matter and evil concentrated in the lower layer of hell, and the good spirit crowns the divine heights, but any movement in the Comedy is verticalized: cliffs and cellars of the infernal abyss, bodies collapsing under the weight of sins, gestures and looks, the very Dante’s vocabulary, everything draws attentions to the categories of ‘up’ and ‘down’, to polar transitions from the sublime to the low. These are key coordinates of the medieval world picture (Gurevich 1972: 66).

In pagan and early Christian mythology, the mountain landscape is always presented as an alien, hostile to people populating the ‘humanized’ plains. Mountains and hillsides are the natural habitat of dragons, giants, evil spirits. The waters are equally hostile to people, and are the home of monsters (Melnikova 1998: 13).

Nevertheless, as soon as the ontological vertical appears the mountains are perceived as its expression in the landscape. No visible signs of expression of the semantic vertical in the geocultural space were often necessary. Summarizing medieval sources, A.Gurevich claims that ‘in Christian topography’, geographic information is mixed together with biblical stories. Positive knowledge was filled with moral and symbolic content: earthly roads seemed to merge with the paths to God, and the system of religious and ethical values was imposed on cognitive values supervising the latter, since, for the humans of that era, ideas about the earth surface could not be compared by its significance with the teaching of salvation. ‘Christian topography’ could easily transfer a human from earthly dwelling to four rivers of paradise (Gurevich 1972: 66).

The nature of organization of the internal space according to the above mentioned categories is diverse for different types of culture. The cultures of Egypt and Babylon were organized as territories along the river axes, with the latter acting as the ‘world axes’ (Livraga 1995). Other cultures were formed ‘facing the sea’, and the openness to the water space was, again, iconic because the sea always symbolized the area of the Unknown, Chaos which is larger and older than the world organized on the shore. The images of heaven and hell were established in the religious and mythological space of the Middle Ages. On the one hand, infernal landscapes in texts have the traits of a real although idealized or exaggerated landscape, sort of a ‘natural and paysage apocalypse’ (Sokolov 2002: 208). On the other hand, they happen to be closely related to the real space both, in literature and cartographic tradition. Dante’s hero (his contemporaries believed it was the author himself and not his hero) found the entrance into hell from a real landscape. As to paradise, it was located in the real geographic space in medieval maps, in India (Miller 1895–1896). Y. Lotman argues that such medieval concept about heaven and hell contradicted with the Orthodox dogma demanding that the righteous should live in sorrow on the earth, and will rejoice after death.

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However, the idea of heaven and hell as being included in the geographic space replaced the strong contrast by the progressive gradation of increasing righteousness and fun simultaneously. Intrusion of the ‘local’ ethics deformed some core ideas of Christianity. In the ‘home–monastery’ link, the geographical factor is hardly noticeable, and a common scale of Christian ethics rates here: sorrow comes with a positive sign, and fun with the negative one (Lotman 2000: 302–303).

Vulgar ideas of transcendental concepts of heaven and hell are often based on impression from idealized natural landscapes. ‘Notions of heaven emerge from the idealized natural environment typical to this or that culture’ (Tuan 1976: 113). And vice versa, ‘all cultural landscapes are symbolic, they express the strong human desire to turn the Earth into heavenly paradise’ (Jackson 1979: 3–7; quot.: Kalutskov 2008: 32). M. Sokolov is reflecting on the ancient Russian records: When you are reading the famous line about the “Rusky land bestowed with much beauty”, and what then comes is naming of lakes, rivers, sources, mountains, hill, oak forests, valleys, towns, villages, gardens (Tale of Destruction of the Russ Land, 13th c.), it seems that you can have some preliminary observation of the Renaissance Weltlandshaft. However, actually we have the same life being, not praising the concrete-general Russian paysage but the Christian faith rooted in its incredible scope, praising that Christian range of humans which can finally emerge and, therefore, be depicted only beyond the last apocalyptic line. This is the paysage of a divine and not earthly land (Sokolov 2002: 195–106).

V. Fedorov notes that ‘etymological paradise’ means ‘a place fenced from everywhere’. In mythology, this is a place of eternal bliss of the righteous in the hereafter. Objectifying of the paradise image in cultural tradition (literature, iconography, folklore) develops in three directions, paradise as (a) a garden, (b) a city, (c) the sky. And all of them are equivalent in the view of heaven as a ‘peaceful, orderly, decorated, human friendly, sheltered space’. There is by all means fresh water (the symbol of grace). The character (or rather quality) of winds, clean and light, is also mentioned. Being ‘lightened with God’s glory’ and blessed by His real presence, paradise does not need any temple as a special holy place’ (Fedorov 2004: 8). Fedorov’s study of modern visual culture states that the image of paradise, from the Middle Ages to the present time, hasn’t practically changed, it is the same pristine though human friendly landscape which is situated in the tropics. The image of hell in different religious myths shows some common features, like as follows: 1) hell is a negative, ‘overturned image of the celestial hierarchy; 2) dark space of hell is clearly stratified; 3) fire is naturally blended with ice there (Fedorov 2004: 9).

Hence, trying to bring up natural landscape connotations suggests the idea of a volcano eruption surrounded by high mountain glaciers of the neighboring peaks. In today visual culture, hell is a clearly expressed toxic industrial landscape, hyperactive industrial environment polluted with miasma of technological monsters. The environment developed by humans got out of control and scares them even more than mythological pictures of hell (Fedorov 2004: 11).

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Spaces and landscapes symbolizing Cosmos, the Centre of the world, the Sky axis are latently present in culture, and are actualized only through spiritual experience. A huge number of people live in the cities that are symbols of the universe in the world culture without knowing this significance. On the contrary, displays of Chaos and Death categories in space, even in mundane culture, remain significant. The reason is that similar symbols are gained predominantly those grounds that somehow become the sources of unique experience which actualize spiritual and moral strength in humans. This is why the categories of Chaos and Death in relation to space are perceived not as a zone of non-existence but more as an initiatory place which prepares a human for returning into the ‘promised land’ quality transformed. Russian philosopher-cosmist N. Fedorov (Fedorov 1994) raised the question of significance for a human being of the vertical and horizontal spatial axes (and their relativity with the earth ground and Cosmos), denoting their semantics as a life and death. The dichotomy of sacred and sin places creates the ‘current’ of people moving in the geocultural space, the pilgrimage. This phenomenon is still present in different cultures. And as its final aim it might mean either arriving into holy places (Mecca, Jerusalem, etc.) or just moving. I. Glushkova describes the Hindu pilgrimage named vari as an important and even self-sufficient movement, while the goal (tirtkha) turns into a geographical barrier meaning the limit of movement (Glushkova 2000: 235).

In the Middle Ages, the pilgrimage, according to Gurevich, was considered not as a mere movement to the holy places but as a spiritual path to God, as the following of Christ. The Homo viator, according to Tauler, moves from the ‘humanity’ of Christ to His ‘divinity’, and finds the “fat pastures” of truth on his way’. ‘Moral improvement took the form of topographic movement (into the deserted place or monastery from the ‘world’). Becoming a saint was also considered a movement in space: a saint could be taken to heaven during his life, as well as a sinner could be subverted into hell (Gurevich 1972: 67).

The path appeared to be a spiritual quest (Harms 1970). The archetype of the boundary condition between oppositions in a geocultural space has its expression in modern mentality of culture, in polysemantic concept of the border, the frontier, changing boundary between the mastered and non-mastered world, Cosmos, Chaos. The frontier, in fact is a mental space which assimilated and absorbed the features of the real geographic space, and became a dynamic place of ideas, i.e. the geography of ideas (Zamyatin 1999: 56).

3.2.2 Sacred Landscapes, Space and Ritual What birds plunge through is not the intimate space in which you see all forms intensified. (Out in the Open, you would be denied

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your self, would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches from us and construes the world: to know a tree, in its true element, throw inner space around it, from that pure abundance in you. Surround it with restraint. It has no limits. Not till it is held in your renouncing is it truly there. Reiner M. Rilke The religious and mythological picture of the world finds it reflection not only as a manifestation of the basic cosmological categories in the geographical area as such but in making sacred certain landscapes and their elements. The landscapes able to make memorable impression serve as a framework for primitive nations that build their myths in it (Lynch 1960). Perhaps, they are these properties of the environment that build the fundamental principle of such phenomenon as ‘personalizing of space’ (Rapoport 1972) in primitive cultures. Depending on the nature of the environment impact on the human psyche, the basic cosmological categories are embodied in the latter. Landscapes causing fear are perceived as the manifestation of Chaos (Tuan 1979), the infernal powers. Sacralization of a place, its distinguishing in the spatial structure, begins with making it ‘horrible’, then (and not always) it might become holy (Shepanskaya 1995: 161).

They try to sanctify dangerous places where the powers of primitive horror are located thus eliminating their dirty, infernal properties, and this particularly typical for the North Russian tradition. They erect a cross or a chapel in the places where evil spirits like capering, in the most terrifying (i.e. important for communication) points (Shepanskaya 1995: 164).

According to the E. Berezovich who studies the North Russian tradition, that’s where the stories of the crosses put in an unclean area, or the icons that sanctify the locus come, thus turning a particular place into a holy one by giving it Christian saintliness… (Berezovich 2000: 229).

On the contrary, the landscapes causing friendly and peaceful feelings become manifestations of Cosmos, and considered centers of the local world. In Russian toponymy, even geographic objects, not connected with a cult though bearing their specific properties that distinguish them from the other grounds may become sacred. Genuine sacredness is attributed to the objects of two types: firstly, the water objects, lakes, springs; secondly, rapids and rocks’ (Berezovich 2000: 224), that ‘have some positive extreme, higher harmony… (Toporov 1995b: 8).

They might be involved into a ritual space, or stay beyond it, at the level of ‘holy’ beauty which ultimately symbolizes the Divine harmony. In traditional folk culture, even after the Christianization which actually has not lost its connection with pagan culture, the worship of the ‘holy beauty’ and natural elements has been always present, and, in Christianity, used to have its historic and dogmatic variations, from denial to delight. For instance, St. Francis of Assisi, in one of his hymns,

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3 Universal Categories of Culture in Landscape … addresses directly the elements of nature. German Dominican monk named Suzon, in a letter, encourages his spiritual daughter < … > to rejoice ‘the beautiful unity of the world’ (schone allicheit der welte). Two or three centuries later, it’s possible to witness such appeals to the main elements and landscape unity in fine art (Sokolov 2002: 200).

Areas that immanently cannot ‘compete’ the perfect ones are being turned, due to creative cultural energy, into something different, having if not aesthetic though symbolic connotations with the divine world, expressed exactly in those views that a particular culture builds its world picture with. Artistic-creative and routine human activity in the natural landscape resulting in an integrated and geographically localized set of natural and social-cultural phenomena, in case of the religious and mythological space, is mainly ritual by nature. It is targeted on cosmization of the living space, and delineation of manifestations of Cosmos and Chaos in the landscape. Each boundary made by humans on the earth ground is an attempt to organize the chaos, put it under the human control (Tuan 1979). Sacralization of a place through its name is quite typical in local landscapes of traditional ethnocultural communities. A place is announced sacred not as an attributive for an existing toponym but as a proper name or one of its parts. Sometimes it might be a specific toponymic trace of a religious ritual both, pagan and Christian, of an activity scenario separated from the rest and putting a place out from an ordinary space into the sacred one. According to the studies of the Russian toponymy undertaken by E. Berezovich, in traditional culture, …a locus becomes holy due to neighboring a cult object; compare the extreme exposure of this point in the following legend: the lake named Saint, ‘there was a church here, and in the morning a lake appeared’ (Ust-Kubensky region, Vologda area, Maksimovskaya). Sometimes the emphasis is given not to cult objects but to cult activities that contributed to sanctification of the locus: Saint after penance, ‘the place was sanctified there’ (Mezhdurechensky region, Vologda area, Yaskino) (Berezovich 2000: 223). ‘… In the minds of toposystem bearers, holy places are linked not only with a particular cult construction but also with various events connected with worship activity, as well as with the priests: the lake named Holy Water, when the village lacks rain, the priest goes to the lake and acts the cross procession’ (Nyuksensky region, Vologda area, Ozerki), the town of Svyatoi (Saint) Ugor, ‘they brought clay (ugor) to build the church, that’s why it’s Saint Ugor’ (Velsky region, Arkhangelsk area, Alekseevo), < … > Holy Island, ‘they say a priest used to play cards on this island (Babayev region, Vologda area, Nikolskoye)’ (Berezovich 2000: 223).

In the last case, a modern semantic inversion seems to be interesting, sinful priest’s pastime is connected with the toponym expressing holiness. In deciphering ‘holy’ toponyms, the motif of immersion of a temple into the water thus making the lake holy often appears. Chaos absorbing Cosmos gives the former structure and meaning, makes it sacred. In traditional culture, a settlement is organized according to the views on the structure of Cosmos, and practically universal ethno-mythological model of the world is adapted to real cultural landscapes and natural features of the environment. For instance, A. Ivanova compares the landscapes of Central Russia, with settlements

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located on watersheds and rivers, and two characters of Domovoy and Leshy (supervisors, respectively, of home and woods). In between of those two extreme point the rest spirits of homes and natural spheres, depending on correlation of topophilia/topophobia, take their places: (+) Domovoy (home master) – Dvorovoy (yard master)–Bannik (sauna master)–Ovinnik/Gumennik (barn master)–Polevik (field master)–Vodyanoi/Rusalka (male and female water evil spirits)–Leshy (evil lord of the woods) (-)’ (Ivanova 2009: 43). In the Russian North populated by the Northern ethnic groups, watersheds are usually waterlogged, so the settlements were founded by the riverside. So, in the local world picture, the main place was taken ‘not by two (as in Central Russia) but three characters, Domovoy (the central one), Leshy and Vodyanoi (the boundary ones): (-) Vodyanoi–Bannik–Gumennik/Ovinnik–(+) Domovoy–Ovinnik–Poludnitsa–Leshy (-) (Ivanova 2009: 44).

The nearest natural objects inhabited by various genius loci (spirits of the place) are included into the field of the ‘sense gravity’ of a traditional settlement. And the homes are not only in balance with the landscape and situated in it; combined with the trees, wells, etc., it founds a micro-landscape representing, in its construction, a certain natural landmark. A traditional folk abode is always in harmony with nature (Chesnov 1998: 178).

Most popular archaic symbols, though somehow edited, are present in every local cultural landscape, and do not demand special explanation for an outside viewer who knows the language of religious and mythological spatial symbols. The Road is a polysemantic symbol of the Path in Russian culture. The River is seen as a ‘kernel’ of the local universe, and as the world path (Toporov 1988b: 276). The Hill, the highest place in the settlement, usually crowned with a church or a monastery, is the symbol of the earth striving into the Heaven, a prayer. In Christian tradition, mountains and rocks may symbolize the axis of the world and Christ Himself, and the rock fractures–His wounds. < …>. Every highland was given, in myths and epics of the traditional mind, a special status. The highlands stood as mediators between terrestrial and celestial realms. Hence the memorial function of hills and mounds appeared… (Svirida 2007: 24).

At this point, the discourse of the inverted space should be noted, the space of a loss, the space deprived of the Divine Grace as a result of human gilt, which became one of the basic reasons, e.g. in modern culture of the Urals where the demolished mountains transformed into pits filled with water are, at present, one of elements of the cultural landscape. The Forest, in European culture born in the woods, is a sacred place by definition. G.Bashlyar who studied the poetics of space consistently developed this idea. The forest bearing its ‘magic space going deep into eternity beyond the leaves and trunks, the space disguised from the view though transparent for action, is truly a psychological transcendent’ (Bross 1939; quot.: Bashlyar 2004: 163). ‘The woods were sacred before deities entered them. Deities started dwelling in the sacred woods. They only gave human, too human features to the law of forest dreams. < … > The forest is a before-me, before-us. < … > When the dialectics of me/not-me becomes more flexible, I can feel that meadows and fields are with me, together-with-me, together-with-us’ (Bashlyar 2004: 163–164).

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The Forest is a landscape prior-form of existence in European culture, and therefore it is distinguished by Bashlyar as a separate, not similar to other natural form of Another. The Ample Space, to Bashlyar, may be named the philosophy of dreams. ‘Contemplation of the greatness defines a specific position, a particular state of soul when a dream takes the dreamer beyond the present world and opens for him a realm marked with the sign of eternity. < … > A dream is a state completely developed from the very first moment. We cannot see its beginning, nevertheless it always starts similarly. It goes from a close object, and instantly happens to be far away, in a different place, in an extraterrestrial space’ (Bashlyar 2004: 161). ‘…Both spaces, of the intimate and the outside world, are in tune with the “infinity”’ (Bashlyar 2004: 176).

One releases the other. In this concept, we can find an important idea of the overflow of consciousness into the following sequence: ‘perception of the landscape—symbol—feeling—interiorizing of the landscape (spatial image)—releasing of archetypes’, which is the basis of sacralizing of the landscape by culture, and semiotizing of the space in general. Such context fits landscapes that are usually semantically poor, like a plain and a desert. According to R. M. Rilke’s verse, ‘The plain is a feeling which makes us greater’. G. Bashlyar gives the image of the desert from The Most Beautiful Desert of All by Philippe Diole. ‘For Diole, “those patchwork mountains, sands and dry rivers, stones and merciless sun”, all that world marked with the sign of the desert “is attached to the inner space”’ (Bashlyar 2004: 177),

and therefore it can widen the mind, open to the humans, depending on their state of mind, Cosmos and the transcendental world: ‘…Leaving the environment of habitual feelings, we enter into communication with the space that refreshes us mentally’. ‘New cosmism always refreshes our inner being, the new cosmos opens itself when we release ourselves from the bonds of sensuality that was essential before’ (Bashlyar 2004: 178).

The most capacious space symbol which contains the whole universe in any cultural landscape is the cross. The cross in a landscape is a crossroad, one of sacred places in traditional culture. A crossroad is a horizontal projection of the vertically, from the Earth to the Heaven, oriented Cross, as well as the symbol of human destiny, or a bifurcation point, depending on the path of the further development. Human spiritual and life path depends of the decision a human being makes at the crucial moment of life. Depending on the road a traveler chooses at a crossroad, his further route will be. Crossings or crossroads < …>, path starting points show us the closest similarity with the human life line. There, from one starting point as the focus, the paths go into different directions. Ancient nations considered such places blessed by gods (Snegirev 1865: 176).

A reverse semantics is possible here when the cross is seen as a crossroads in the deepest existential sense:

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A person of myth and poetic mind is standing before a cross as a junction where there is death on the left, and life on the right, but doesn’t know where is the left and the right in that metric mythological space which is set by the cross image (Toporov 1988a: 12).

From this predicament, the way out might be told only by the heart which, in its turn, symbolically presents the junction of the earthly and heavenly paths. One of the pictures by Nicholas Roerich painted after the Central Asian expedition is called Stupa in Sheh. Christ and Buddha Juncture. Here, the junction crowned with the sign of Eternity and Teaching bears quite different semantics, i.e. in one geographical point, as the legend has it, at a different time, paths of two great Teachers that brought new knowledge to the humanity, came together. Almost five centuries divide their paths but the memory of the place, layers of legends and stories connected these two Names, and the space, opposed to time, acted as a great unifier. The brightest expression of sense of the landscape cosmization is presented in ritual constructions and signs. The sign series located in the landscape under specific rules contribute to quality changes of religious and mythological space, limiting of Chaos and expansions of Cosmos. Such ritual system is mostly developed in Chinese traditional culture. With the help of the Chinese rules of geomancy, ‘harmful effects’ of natural elements displayed in the landscape are neutralized or converted into favorable. For this purpose, first of all, visual characteristics of the landscape are being changed, and stone constructions disguising harmful for the viewer points like mountain clefts are built, as well as artificial handmade mountains of perfect forms, etc. (De Groot 1998: 71). The main purpose of these rituals is to adjust abodes of the living and the dead for communication and balanced composition with the flows of cosmic breath in a given locus (Chatley 1917: 175). Interaction of the inherent properties of a terrain and its further transformation by means of ritual constructions in the Christian tradition has not been put in such a perfect system. In this respect, we should mention the semantics of the geography of Orthodox churches. In the Russian culture, an icon or a church is an expression of the cosmic structure concept. ‘A church < … > is incomparably small before the Universe depicted by it; but in this mere insignificance < … > a mortal limited creature strove to depict the distance, the wideness, and the endless height in order to fill it with everything that, in the blind nature, stays alive only for a moment’ (Fedorov 1993: 83). A cathedral is ‘the most generalized, semantically rich image of the universe’ (Myths.. 1988: 93).

The location at intersection of power lines of the area, according to some scholars, is used due to bio-location methods at the stage of foundation. St. Seraphim Sarovsky advised, when seeking a place for a church, to pay attention to the places where the birds land, thus taking into account the genuine properties of the landscape. Studies of the North Russian tradition tell about quite a different principle in locating churches (Terebikhin 1993). The place for a church was chosen through a particular ritual which symbolized God’s providence (an icon was put on the water down by the river, or into a sleigh drawn by a wild stallion, so it could find the place itself). From that moment, it was the feeling of beauty of the master that managed the church construction.

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The surprising harmony of the old Russian churches location in the landscape can be, most probably, explained by the fact that the old master followed the beauty principle which turns a landscape into an icon and provides the highest resonance of a symbol landscape with transcendental categories. To M. Shishin’s hypothesis, natural objects and complexes have an original subtle component. The combination of the subtle natural impact and spiritual awareness generated by human mind is the most effective. Nevertheless, it is obviously possible to distinguish, among natural systems, the landscapes that more or less meet the design of the church constructor. Putting a cultural object into the context of a natural complex should not distort the original natural harmony but enhance it and focus on it. Apparently, the architects who had the most subtle spiritual intuition were able to solve such questions most successfully. A person in such a church is apt to experience both, the influence of the temple and of natural energies that, respectively, can ‘redecorate’ his mind and thoughts. It seems natural to assume the influence of the church on the landscape and vice versa. Thus, in this space and time aspect, radiation of rather a complex character must occur (Shishin 2003: 134–135).

The principle of monastery construction was different. During the Renaissance, there is an opposition of the hermit’s shelter (cave) and the beauty of the world. … Saint Simeon the New Theologian criticized excessive mental exaltation or the ‘ecstasy’ (contrary to the calm and reserved ‘hesychia’), and quite impartially compared it with a paysage full of sun light which might a person, isolated in a dark cell, without any idea of the sun nor the outside world beauty, abruptly see. Hence, a brightly lightened paysage appealing to deep admiring looks like an idle vanity, or even a spiritual blindness. No wonder that soaring above the earth, i.e. ideal situation for Weltlandshaft perception, was explicitly designated (in the iconography of Alexander the Great flying on a lion-gryphon) as the symbol of pride which usually was on the first place in the major sins list (Sokolov 2002: 197).

Ascetic abodes were founded in totally ‘not caught by the eye’ and gloomy Egyptian deserts and highlands (where the green band of the Nile could be hardly seen), or in the deep woods in Europe, those “Northern Thebes”. The decisive factor was not a stunning view, nor the visual interest but a miracle and benefit. In other words, it was a sacred record which firmly connected this place with a miraculous event or the life of a spiritual pioneer, as well as life considerations such as, first of all, a fresh water source (Sokolov 2002: 196–198).

An austere paysage was much praised, ‘a humble place devoid of consolation and vanity aids’ (John of the Ladder 2008: 3, 7). Among such “humble” monasteries in austere places, there are many most glorious centers of spiritual life. For instance, Optina Desert situated in a harmonious and calm paysage which has nothing extraordinary picturesque not aesthetically pleasing (the romanticism visually increases when the viewer is inside the monastery, and can admire it whole place together with the Zhizdra river side by the town of Kozelsk; besides, the aesthetic “comfort” is added with rich historic and literary associations) (Sokolov 2002: 198).

A specific case is sacralizing the landscape and its elements, when mentioned in holy texts or sacred stories which resulted in the ‘merge’ of the holy text with the cultural landscape. Such sacred landscape symbolized not cosmological categories

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but the events of the sacred history. Such landscape-text brings up a desire to ‘read’ it. A sacred, i.e. consecrated by church as a very holy place, space brought up the desire to visit it. For a devout Christian, pilgrimage was a unique opportunity, incomparable with any other chance, to get in touch with the holy objects. Unlike in Islam, Christianity does not oblige every believer to make the pilgrimage, however, there are many different ways to encourage them to do so. < … > In addition to the most sacral center, Jerusalem, there are many local ones, some of them have been very popular in the Christian world (Melnikova 1998: 111).

The pilgrims ‘read’ the holy history through the geography of the Holy Land. There is an example of such ‘reading’ in The Description of the Holy Land by Wirzburgensis (1890). The geography of the Holy Land by Iohannes is in fact the New Testament story recalled by a pilgrim as he is moving in space (Melnikova 1998: 112).

The places connected with the life and death of Jesus Christ, the prophets and saints, when ‘read’ in the right way, become landscapes-mysteries, and as a result of such trips the pilgrims repeated the way of the Savior carrying the cross, or the path of a saint, full of martyrdom and revelations. The geocultural space of Central Asia is highlighted with signs and temple complexes connected with the name of Maitreya, the Buddha of the future. Nicholas Roerich who crossed Central Asia thoroughly noted and described such signs developing a text in the text, the signs of the future spiritual world in his diary. In Dhrasa, there is only the first sign of Maitreya. But in ancient Maulbek, the huge statue of Maitreya is powerfully standing by your way. Every traveler must pass this rock. Two hands rising to the sky is the call of distant worlds. Two hands down is the blessing of the earth. They know, Maitreya is coming… < … > Maitreya is standing as a symbol of the future. But we also saw the signs of the past. There are pictures of deer, sharp-horned mountain goats and horses on the rocks (Roerich 1992: 93–94).

Here is one more entry from the diary: Even the days that seem inactive are full of signs. There is a wonderful casket. There are records about the North. And there are records about a monastery new Kuldji. And there comes Maitreya. < … > There are times called “an event balloon” when any circumstance comes to one and the same public ending. It’s seventeen years since we’ve been watching the phenomenon of the busy evolution. Between the grave of the passing and the cradle of the future, electrons of an incredible energy bring together neoplasms. And a hermit painter in the mountains is confidently portrays the battle and victory of Maitreya. He confidently puts the patterns and distinctions of the coming, and the marks of the passing (Roerich 1992: 158).

When a sacred landscape is turned into a text, its desacralizing might occur. Then a sacred space of one culture transferred, on the toponym level, into another culture becomes an element of the secular language. This happened to the sacred space of Ancient Greece which was inherited, together with the ancient legacy, in the Russian Enlightenment era. What happened was the secularization of toponyms symbolizing extraterrestrial concepts of ancient cosmogony that became part of the

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poetic language, in Russian secular culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Lavrenova 1998). In the era of total urbanization, desacralization of geocultural space occurs. ‘Old cities symbolized the cosmos structure, new ones symbolize social ideals’ (Tuan 1976: 197). New cities do not have even the inverted sacredness which is inherent in St.Petersburg. ‘Artificial cities’ like Petersburg are no less important in the national cultural landscape. Such cities are its semiotic antithesis, negation which adds some inner tension to the cultural space, a particular semantic ‘potential difference’. An eccentric city is situated “on the edge” of the cultural space, by the sea, by the river mouth. Here, not the antithesis of the “earth/sky” but the opposition of the “natural/artificial” is actualized (Lotman 1992: 10).

The existence of two capitals in one cultural space territorially polarizes the national culture, focuses on its internal flow. The sacred space usually has two variants of its interpretation, not only as a sacred text but also as an icon. The study of its symbolism demands appropriate knowledge on the signified. Culturology, anthropology, philosophy in some way tend to comprehend the processes of transcendental categories exposure in the geocultural space. Comprehending of the space in the cultural context leads to new understanding of its organization, morphology, and directs to new opportunities in modeling geocultural interactions.

3.3 Conclusions ‘The greatness of the world expands due to deepening of the hidden life of the soul’ (Bashlyar 2004: 170), concludes G.Bashlyar poetizing the process of comprehension of space-time. The space is expanded by culture which gives it much more notions than it can provoke by itself including universal categories of culture. And vice versa, landscapes transformed by culture that bear the feeling and semantics of endlessness awake the soul of an individual for action, his/her inside and outside search in the limitless Universe. In the modern picture of the world and its paradigm in the humanities, these basic settings of culture towards the landscape are very important, and form, from the natural landscape, its sacred and temporal modification. According to D. Zamyatin, the genesis of image and geographical view of the world is connected with the setting of syncretic composition of poetry and myth. Poetic and mythological world view, at early stages of human community development, combines two views on the terrestrial space. The first one is measuring and topographical, or geometric. Virtually, any cosmogony contains a number of topographic or geometric indications that parameters it within tiny, by modern standards, oecumenes The second one is chorological, when cosmogonic outlook is focused on the ‘heavenly’ point of view, and the coordinates of the familiar world are measured vertically on the speculative scale (Zamyatin 2004a: 62).

Stratification of the world starts ‘sticking together’ in a common place where, in the cognitive code of culture, the ‘time-money’ metaphor becomes dominant.

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Time and transcendence in the landscape happen to be overlapping in the myth space; mythological and eschatological time is the element of sacred dimensions of cultural landscape transformation, while the ritual acted in the sacred space organizes the mythological time flow. Desacralized time and space also organize the cultural landscape in the same rhythm. Accordingly, it is possible to talk about coherence of expression of the sacred and temporal fields in the cultural landscape.

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Zamyatin, D.N. 1999. Modeling of Geographic Images [Modelirovanie geograficheskix obrazov]. Smolensk: Oykumena [Oecumene]. Zamyatin, D.N. 2004a. Meta-Geography: Space of Images and Images of Space [Meta-geografiya: prostranstvo obrazov i obrazy‘ prostranstva]. Moscow: Agraf. Zinchenko, V.P. 1998. Psychological Pedagogy [Psikhologicheskaya pedagogika]. Samara: Samara Press House.

Chapter 4

Cultural Landscape as a Metaphor

Abstract This chapter is devoted to analysis of geographical images from the viewpoint of the theory of metaphor. Having defined the landscape as a process and a result of semiosis, we tried to find a place in it to such semiotic concept as a metaphor. Nina Arutyunova supposes that an image, a metaphor and a symbol arise spontaneously in the process of artistic development of the world and that their meaning is not fully formed, as both the metaphor and the symbol are subject to interpretation rather than understanding. In a metaphor the meaning is important; in a symbol the form is important. The cultural landscape is a place for both of them, because in culture genetically related to the landscape actual geographical objects having some visual, quantitative and qualitative characteristics (height of mountains, river length, the breadth of the plains) act as symbols. For example, the Volga River, a symbol of the Russian soul is different from other rivers of the Russian Plain in its length, depth and exceptional width downstream. The third chapter examines the cognitive theory of metaphor in terms of comprehension of the landscape as a complex concept to which metaphors open up «epistemological access», and vice versa, the landscape—as a concept, organizing a series of abstract frames (Gestalts) in the mentality of culture. In the study of cultural landscape a metaphor is used as a tool for learning, giving birth to new meanings. The first section is dedicated to matching of the concept of cultural landscape in the proposed definition and to the contemporary theory of metaphor, which lies in the problem field of cognitive science exploring the processes of perception, categorization, classification and understanding of the world, as well as in the scope of cognitive linguistics (George Lakoff, Mark Jonson, Nina Arutyunova, Anatoly Baranov, Yuri Karaulov, Elena Kubryakova, Eric MacCormack, Anatoly Chudinov, Vladimir Porus, Eduard Budaev and others). A metaphor is defined as a manifestation of the analog capabilities of the human mind as a way of categorizing, conceptualization and explanation of the world. Interrelationship of culture and space is metaphorical in nature. In terms of the semantics of the cultural landscape one of the important theories, elaborated by George Lakoff and Mark Jonson, describes the process of metaphorization as bipolar interaction between the two structures of knowledge —cognitive structure of source

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and cognitive structure of the target. In the process of metaphorization so called metaphorical projection—partial structuring of goal according to the modeled source is taken place. As a result of the projection an object is conceptually organized in the image of the source. In the case of participation of metaphorical projections in the formation of the cultural landscape, its structure is partly influenced by those images or categories, which play a role of the source. Sometimes it may reverse the direction of metaphor. For example, the metaphor «life—a river» might well be corresponded with the metaphor «water—this is life». Both metaphors mentioned referred to well-defined landscape connotations, which implicitly arise in the minds of the media culture either during the utterance of this metaphor, or when one looks at the landscape from the high bank of a river. In the second section we consider the orientational and ontological (structural) metaphors, and the landscape—as a source of metaphorical projection, which in the context of the descriptive theory of metaphor (developing cognitive theory of metaphor) is described in the same manner as a metaphorical model (M-model), as a «bunch» of signifying descriptors. An entire field of metaphorical meanings in the culture is constructed according to the image of the landscape and its individual elements. It is justified to see images of a landscape as the meaning of structural metaphors. For example, the scheme of the images used in the metaphor of «journey/path» refers to the landscape component, for it implies the overcoming of obstacles, in the case of the spiritual path—an ascent. Obstacles have connotations of rough terrain, climbing involves a metaphorical transfer of the structure of mountain landscapes. Metaphors of «container» and «visual fields» are also structured by landscape M-model. Orientational metaphors make seemingly abstract concept spatial as constructed by analogy with the perception of space—on the oppositions «up—down», «inside—outside», «center—periphery», etc. The physical basis of metaphor of «happiness corresponds to the top» may be not only referred the position of a human body, as George Lakoff and Mark Jonson claimed, but to the perception of a man as he has climbed mountains. The third section investigates the possibility of iconic metaphors (one with shaped brightness) in relation to the interpretation of cultural landscape realities. From this point of view a metaphor, which includes names of the places can be considered. The most striking visual metaphors transfer related place names in the category of iconic signs. For example, a sustainable culture-geographical metaphor «the gold-domed Moscow» creates out of two images a new semantically extended mental construct. The first one is a visual appearance of the city, its architectural feature—an abundance of gold-domed churches. The second one is a latent image of the mythological giant with the golden head, symbolizing the state power. The second metaphor is hidden away under the pressure of the first, but it is impossible to deny its existence. Spatial metaphors have similar imagery. (For example, the metaphors, structuring the concepts «up—down» and specific landscape connotations entering into the very flesh of the language—«Soar to the clouds», «to be on top of Happiness», «lay low»). Each concrete landscape appears as a metaphor, depending on the nature and type: a mountain landscape—as a metaphor for the ontological vertical, a flat steppe

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landscape—as a metaphor for the limitlessness and infinity, a river landscape—as a metaphor for life and ways and so on—all sorts of variations. All these metaphors are iconic, and the brightness of the image, constructed in language, is replaced by visualization of the image, observed or represented as a landscape in this case. In the fourth section, space and/or landscape is seen as a semantic challenge, generating new meanings. In a number of philosophical papers there is an abundance of spatial and landscape metaphors, on the one hand, structuring philosophical thought into spatial images (thus geographic space serves as a metaphor—as a category of structuring of thought), on the other hand—a secondary reflection of philosophy of space and cultural landscape is triggered on the basis of the reverse of metaphors. Some of these metaphors are analyzed in the Dmitri Zamyatin’s works, and by his definition, for example, in Michel Foucault’s works geographical space becomes its own metaphor. A metaphor of rhizome is used in humanitarian geography, sociology and philosophy of culture, the notion was introduced by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; the metaphor of rhizome implies an infinitely branching system having to withstand constant linear and centered structures (both in respect of being and thinking) typical for classic European culture. As an alternative metaphor, influencing subsequent research in the field of cultural space, the concept of the metametaphor proposed by Konstantin Kedrov is based on the theory of a double inversion of the inner and outer space, used before by Pavel Florensky in his analysis of Dante’s «Divine Comedy». According to Konstantin Kedrov’s theory a hollow, a well, a crack in the mountain, sometimes a wall, a tunnel, i.e. quite recognizable landscape elements are the metaphorical stage of the hypothetical script of approaching black hole, and therefore the attempts to express the categories of physical eternity and infinity can be considered in the real landscape as a metametaphor (spiritual dimensions of eternity and infinity are expressed in the cultural landscape through the symbol, that was discussed in detail in previous chapter). The fifth section is devoted to generalizations of the problem field of the claimed «cultural landscape as a metaphor». In the cultural landscape as a specific area of culture metaphors are sufficiently used, including: anthropomorphic metaphors (e.g. «Moscow is the heart of Russia») and transfer of value from one geographical location to another (e.g. «Moscow is the Third Rome»), cosmographical metaphors, where not only particular geographical objects are already involved rather than landscape as a whole, like a Space in representations of related culture. Of course, at the level of local landscapes the most common are anthropomorphic metaphors, equating the mountains, lakes, forests to a human body or its elements. For example, George Lakoff and Mark Jonson consider the metaphor «a mountain is a man», which is expressed in such tokens as the «foot of the mountain», «shoulder of the mountain». In their view such metaphors are marginal in culture and language. But in our view it can be said that the metaphor creates specific discourse of travel in the mountains, acts as a «discursive practice» (Anatoly Baranov) for a particular subculture. In mountain climbing and tourist folklore the metaphor «a mountain is a man» becomes a fundamental, structuring thinking and activities of members of this subculture, defining the relationship with the landscape. It is the basis for a kind of neopagan

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cult—for example, it defines the custom to greet the mountains before climbing and to put a stone in the stone pyramid, reminding obo—a tribute of respect and gratitude for the stages of the path successfully crossed. The sixth section deals with the most capacious and polysemantic metaphor for contemporary culture—the city and the urban landscape—serving as a metaphor for consciousness, a metaphor of Heavenly city, the metaphor of an integrated society, as a metaphor of infernal (opposite to ideal) space. Urbanization covers all the spaces, from the geographical to the internal, from real to unreal. The city seems to be a poly scale metaphor of consciousness (Lidia Starodubtseva); it can express the structure of consciousness starting from a single human being to mankind. This metaphor suggests a «double shift» of values between «city» and «consciousness» as both the city and the consciousness are similar structurally and conceptually. Such metaphors as «city—Heavenly city», «city—infernal space» are connected with a metaphor «city-consciousness», as both concepts rooted in the mind and the soul of man according to centuries-old Christian tradition may be a place for the erection of Heavenly city and the abode for infernal beings and vices. Along with the fact that the city is the metaphor of consciousness, in every urban culture mythological archetype of the city is realized, having the consciousness, affecting its inhabitants, their activities and way of thinking. Echoes of this metaphor we find in the Vladimir Toporov’s «Petersburg text». When it comes to a particular town on the map, it is noteworthy that its metaphorical value varies depending on geographic location. The city on a hill, the city near the sea, the city at the crossroads and «the city in general» (typical, faceless city)—are well-established metaphors of culture, applicable to various cities, responding the features embodied in the metaphors. The seventh section analyzes the poetic metaphors of the cultural landscape of Russia and the global geo-cultural space based on Russian eighteenth—midtwentieth century poetry. Poetry reveals opportunities of hermeneutic understanding of the core of the geocultural space. Infinite possibilities of interpretation lie here, including the cultural landscape as a phenomenon of culture. Poetic lines unleash a metaphorical sense, which is grown in the thickness of cultural images (Paul Ricœur). Poetry brings into the world of metaphors unexpected innovations (Gaston Bachelard). In our view there is precedence of the poetic image (including a spatial metaphor), which lies in the dependence of the creative consciousness on the nature of unconsciousness, as it expressed in the cultural codes, transforming at the birth of a poetic image. An analysis of poetic texts revealed the following metaphors of the cultural landscape of Russia and some of its structural elements.

The most important thing is to be master of metaphors. But you cannot learn it from someone else,

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it is the property of talent, because to verse good metaphors means to notice similarity. Aristotle. Poetics (On Poetics Art) Metaphor is a cultural phenomenon, a kind of a ‘litmus test’ for basic images and mentality of culture. It is also one of the instruments for cognizing reality, names of objects, for creating art images and generating new notions. Metaphor can be a means of theoretical representation of sociocultural interaction, of extrapolation, modeling and hypnotizing, as well as a means of abstraction and idealization, and nomination, creation and conceptualizing of social reality (Baranov 2005). Main functions of metaphor, in philosophical knowledge, are as follows: nominative and ontological; instrumental, explanatory and methodological; ethical and emotional (Akishkina 2009). The theory of metaphor has been developing since the era of Aristotle to the present, and all its internal fluctuations can be divided into two types. The first one is the theory of comparison which genetically tends to metaphoric expression of two or more objects, similar or not much alike. The second one is the theory of semantic effect postulating that metaphor is connected with verbal opposition or interaction of two semantic meaning, i.e. metaphorical expression and surrounding literal context (Searle 1990: 315).

According to J. Ortega y Gasset’s definition, ‘metaphor makes’ the hand of intellect longer; its role in the logics might be as of a fishing rod or a rifle. This, however, doesn’t mean that it extends the boundaries of the thinkable. Not at all. It only gives access to what is vaguely seen on its far frontiers. Without metaphor on our mental horizon a virgin area might have been formed which formally falls under the jurisdiction of our thought but actually is not mastered and cultivated (Ortega y Gasser 1990: 72).

Ortega y Gasset also believed that metaphor is not only a means to describe the objects of high degree of abstraction but also a way to disguise them since metaphor is partly rooted like a taboo. Metaphor cunningly hides an object masking it by some other thing; metaphor wouldn’t have any sense if not for the instinct encouraging a human to escape everything real (Ortega y Gasset 1991: 249).

Hiding and exposing the reality are the main functions of metaphor of which the second one is surely of the most interest for culture researchers. The sufficiently vast area of the culture and space interaction also has a metaphoric nature. The space and the landscape as a particular exposure of the former can act as a metaphor. In the process of metaphorization, many sense connotations appear due to which the untranslatable information, both of landscape and culture, is being transferred. Therefore, spatial and landscape metaphors are certainly of high informational value for a researcher. We shall study the cognitive theory of metaphor from the point of comprehension of the landscape as a complex concept the ‘epistemological access’ to which

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can be opened by metaphors, and vice versa, the landscape as a concept structuring a whole set of abstract frames (gestalt) in the mentality of culture. As noted by E. McCormack, viewed from the inside, metaphors function as cognitive processes with the help of which we deepen our understanding of the world and develop new hypotheses. Studied from the outside, they function as intermediaries between the human mind and culture. New metaphors change the everyday language which we use, and at the same time change our ways of perception and understanding of the world (McCormack 1990: 360).

This double mode of studying metaphor, internal and external, seems to be rather productive since it allows varying the position of the researcher in complex processes forming the image and sense ground of the cultural tissue. As classics of the cognitive theory of metaphor George Lakoff and Mark Johnson claim ‘there are few human instincts more basic than territoriality’ (Lakoff and Johnson 2008: 55). The study of metaphors allows penetrating into reality of the cultural landscape, revealing its structure, and vice versa, finding a whole layer of concepts defining metaphoric processes which are rooted in the cultural perceptions of the landscape.

4.1 Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and Understanding of Landscape Everything creaks and sways. The air trembles from comparisons. Not one word better than another, The earth hums with metaphor… O. Mandelshtam. The One Who Found the Horseshoe Within the cognitive theory which defines metaphor as a tool to understand the world, it is assumed that metaphors ‘clearly express, for all members of a given culture, main values and orientations of a society’ (Gusev 2002: 219), but we believe that such clarity might not be realized by ordinary members of a culture that perceive and use metaphors as variants of mundane conversation. The meaning of metaphors is usually a quest for the ‘dwellers of the ivory tower’ (this very metaphor was introduced into the Russian language through translation of American sociology). Metaphors in culture act as ‘means of introducing symbols in cultural consciousness’ (Porus n/d). Modern cognitive science (G. Lakoff, M. Johnson, N. Arutyunova, A. Baranov, Y. Karaulov, E. Kubryakova, E. McCormack, and other) postulates denial of the theory of comparison; it considers metaphor, according to the definition of political scientist A. Chudinov, who summarized these studies, a basic mental operation, a means of cognition, structuring and explaining the world (Chudinov 2001), as well as a way to categorize and conceptualize it. Study of this mental operation essentially

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directs the scholars to basic thinking structures, to the process on ‘not only national specific view of the world but its universal image’ (Arutyunova 1990: 6), which by all means offers spatial concepts. Nevertheless, two basic properties of metaphor, similarity and difference of concepts, objects, semantic fields, is being also discussed by the cognitive theory supporters since these properties are connected with the same cognitive processes and the structure of thinking and the language. The semantics of metaphoric image is rooted in its genesis going back into archetypical and value layers of culture. This idea has been discussed in the theory of metaphor for almost a century. A. Richards in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), following the tradition coming from Vico and Herder, views of Shelley and Coleridge on the metaphoric basis of the language (See: Gogonenkova 2004), on its immersion into culture, defines metaphor as a fundamental principle of the language, its conceptual ground. Metaphoric processes in the language, interchange of word meaning which we observe by studying explicit metaphors, are imposed on the world we perceive which by itself is a product of an earlier or unintentional metaphor… (Richards 1990: 56).

In the 1980s, Lakoff and Johnson developed this idea arguing that metaphor is not limited by the language that human thinking process and the conceptual system as a whole are dominantly metaphoric, and the metaphoric structure of main concepts predominantly defines most fundamental cultural values (Lakoff and Johnson 1990: 404). The problem of metaphoric process and its components which is important for us to comprehend the landscape as a metaphor is being discussed from different points of view. Paul Ricoeur assumes that there is a structural analogy between cognitive, imaginative, and emotional components of the completed metaphoric act, and the metaphoric process becomes concrete and complete by drawing them from such structural analogy and additional functioning (Ricoeur 1990b: 433).

Consequently, the learning process through metaphor inevitably includes an image (which will be described in details here), and a feeling, emotion, possibly, as a reaction to this image. To explain metaphor as a certain cognitive process, we can assume the existence of deep structures of the human mind as a device which generates the language. Metaphor suggests a certain similarity between its semantic referents’ properties since it should be clear, and on the other hand, dissimilarity between them since it is intended to develop some new meaning, i.e. to be suggestive (McCormack 1990: 358).

This author describes metaphor as an interrelated three level process: (1) metaphor as a language process, a possible move from an ordinary language to diaphora, epiphora and back to ordinary language; (2) metaphor as a semantic and syntactic process, i.e. explanation of metaphor in terms of linguistic theory; (3) metaphor as a cognitive process moved into the context of a more wide evolutional cognition, i.e. metaphor not as a semantic process but also as a basic cognitive process without which no new knowledge would be possible (McCormack 1990: 381). Metaphoric processes

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in the cultural landscape, in our opinion, affect mostly semantic and cognitive layers although the linguistic part takes place too, especially in orientation metaphors that structure the perception of space in general, and the landscape in particular which will be discussed here further on. From the point of view of cultural landscape semantics, one of the theories describing the metaphorical process as a bipolar interaction of two knowledge structures seems to be important, i.e. the cognitive structure of the ‘source’ (source domain), and cognitive structure of the ‘target’ (target domain). It is really important that, in the metaphorical process, partial structuring of the target sample is based on the source one, ‘metaphorical mapping’, or ‘cognitive mapping’ occurs (See: Lakoff 1990; Turner 1990; Baranov 2008; Budayev 2007). As a result of such mapping, the target becomes clearer or conceptually organized in order to be available for a mind patterned with codes and frames of a particular culture, and this is the essence of the cognitive potential of metaphor. For instance, the ‘life is a river’ metaphor might correspond with the ‘water is life’ metaphor. Though, in most cases, the inversion of the sources and target is not possible. Both mentioned metaphors have quite certain landscape connotations within which a human uses these metaphors in oral and written speech, or when he goes out to the steep bank of a wide river, and his soul is thrilled with deep feelings set by culture. Hence, metaphors are part of cultural codes that define the relationship of humans and space. If the landscape is studied from the point of view of metaphor we can see that its morphological elements (mountains, rivers, cities, temples, landfill, etc.) play a dual role. On the one hand, they are cognitive structures of the source defining the structure of some ontological concepts (recall the ‘life is a river’ metaphor). On the other hand, real geographic objects may play the role of the target as ‘the Volga Mother’, for instance. Let us refer to these two metaphorical roles of the landscape in detail.

4.2 Orientational and Ontological Metaphors, the Landscape and Beyond And the seafarer, In the unbridled thirst of the vast space, Dragging over the watery ruts The fragile instrument of the geometer, Will compare the pull of the earth’s fold With the sloughing surface of the sea. O. Mandelshtam. The One Who Found the Horseshoe. Space, and the available for the humans geographic space in particular, as well as the experience of interaction with it stands as the ground of the language metaphorics, the basis of spatial metaphors and image constructions and frames connected with them. Spatiality is rooted in the language, and we can hardly argue with Julia Kristeva

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who says that the language is syntagmatic (is realized through ‘extension’, ‘presence’ and ‘metonymy’), and at the same time is it systematic (implies ‘associativeness’, ‘absence’ and ‘metaphor’) (Kristeva 2000: 43). These properties of language allow finding similarities with the cultural landscape and cultural space. On the contrary, theorists of semiotics have to use spatial metaphors, as G. Derrida does, to describe language realities. … Peculiarity of writing is connected with the complicated spatial multi-expansion expression which implies diastema, specializing of time, as well as revealing, at some starting point, such meanings that the irreversible linear sequence which moves from one given point to another strives, though not always successfully, to dislodge (Derrida 2000: 363).

Provided the landscape is the source, in the context of the cognitive theory of metaphor, its development into the descriptive theory, the landscape suggests to be a metaphorical model (‘grapes’ of signified descriptors (See: Baranov and Karaulov 1991; Baranov and Karaulov 1994), M-model) for a number of meaning concepts many of which are basic for the culture which uses them. Semantically connected fields of descriptors happen to be crucial for some discourses, and for the culturological discourse operating the landscape M-models in particular. For the landscape M-model as well as other similar models, the hierarchical order is essential, when separate elements of the landscape may act as its elements, while preserving their interdependence; various types of metaphors suggest that rivers flow into the sea, roads lead to cities, and mountains tower valleys. The concepts on the landscape structure generalize, in course of metaphorizing, the practical experience of the humans in this world. It should be noted that knowledge in the source field is organized as image schemes related to simple cognitive structures that are permanently reproduced in the process of the human interaction with reality. The image patterns include such categories as e.g., ‘container’, ‘path’, ‘balance’, ‘up-down’, ‘forward-backward’, ‘part-whole’ (Baranov 2008: 11).

These orientational metaphors can be added with the category of ‘right-left’ which rather important for the Russian culture where the right is associated with the righteous and the left with the infernal, with deceit and lies. We can also add to the Baranov definition that most of these categories are genetically connected not only with the physical experience of self-awareness of the human body but with the movement in space, in the urban or natural landscape. In the cognitive theory of metaphor, structural (or ontological, or conceptual) and orientational metaphors are distinguished. In case of the structural metaphor, one concept is structurally and metaphorically comes into order in terms of another. This happens when there is a sustainable similarity between the source field and the target one that is settled in the language and cultural tradition. According to Baranov’s definition who summarizes theoretical propositions of Lakoff and Johnson, the European cultural metaphors include such mappings as TIME IS MONEY , ARGUMENT IS WAR, LIFE IS A JOURNEY , etc. Conceptual metaphors may form coherent conceptual structures of a more global level, the ‘cognitive models’ that are purely psychological

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and cognitive categories with their properties resembling the cognitive psychology gestalt (Baranov 2008: 11).

Metaphorical mapping which exists as if abstractly, not tied to a particular landscape inevitably imposes an imprint on its perception. A human looking at a river cannot escape the subconscious metaphor that ‘life is a river’, provided his culture has such a metaphor. The scheme of images very frequently used in ‘journey/path’ metaphors suggests a landscape component since it means overcoming obstacles, or ascension referring the spiritual path. Obstacles connote with rough terrains, ascension suggests metaphoric transfer of the mountain landscape structure. However, there are elements of the landscape that are not easily applied to reverse metaphorical mapping. E.g. it is a marsh. Some European national languages contain such a metaphor as ‘calm and almost uneventful and senseless life is a marsh’. Moving in the opposite direction, dealing with marsh in a real landscape suggests a connotation of ‘a marsh as danger and death’. This metaphorical transfer is fixed in culture mostly due to films that transmit geographic reality (nature shooting) set in a certain plot frame. There are several famous Russian movies where the heroes and anti-heroes die in the mire, e.g. The Dawn are Quiet Here, The Evil Spirit of Yambui, or The Hound of the Baskervilles based on the English detective story. The topic of the marsh as death also appears in the American production of the Lord of the Rings based on the book by the English writer John R. Tolkien. Nevertheless, the traditional American film production does not develop this topic because marsh territories, although can be found in Alaska and Florida, do not much influence the national culture which associates itself primarily with prairies of the middle and far West. As to Russian and English culture, marsh landscapes and coherent mentality is an important morphological element, signifying and denoting descriptor. Not a quite clear, at first sight, link of cognitive structures of ‘a calm life—marsh—death’ can be found if we remember that Russian culture has a ‘calm life is spiritual death’ metaphor’. The landscape acts as a spatial unfolding of meanings; concepts and their corresponding signs unfold on the earth surface. In respect to the landscape, in the mentality of culture, mechanisms of transformation of quantity feature into quality ones. This is particularly exposed in differentiation and delineation of territories where there are no clear natural boundaries, as Lakoff and Johnson note: … And such defining of a territory, putting a boundary around it, is an act of quantification. Bounded objects, whether human beings, rocks, or land areas, have sizes. This allows them to be quantified in terms of the amount of substance they contain. Kansas, for example, is a bounded area – a CONTAINER – which is why we can say: There’s a lot of land in Kansas (Lakoff and Johnson 2008: 55).

Visualization of a landscape suggests that a paysage is directly related to the ‘visual field’ conceptual metaphor. Both the visual field and restricted, as a result of mental operations, territory are interpreted as containers thus contradicting the landscape concept which presents structural and ontological unity. In this regard, we can use one of theoretical positions of Lakoff and Johnson:

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We conceptualize our visual field as a container and conceptualize what we see as being inside it. Even the term ‘visual field’ suggests this. The metaphor is a natural one that emerges from the fact that, when you look at some territory (land, floor, space, etc.), your field of vision defines a boundary of the territory, namely, the part that you can see (Lakoff and Johnson 2008: 55).

When one system is organized according to the sample of another, and metaphor organizes the whole system of concepts with respect to one another, we can talk of orientational metaphor. In most cases, orientational metaphors turn assumingly abstract notions into spatial ones since they are formed similarly to perception of space. The ‘up-down’ seme, ‘natural—cultural landscapes’ and the seme of the cultural value system are concentrated in this kind of metaphors. Studying the metaphor of HAPPY IS UP, Lakoff and Johnson underline that such metaphorical orientations are not arbitrary. They have a basis in our physical and cultural experience. Though the polar oppositions up-down, in-out, etc., are physical in nature, the orientational metaphors based on them can vary from culture to culture. For example, in some cultures the future is in front of us, whereas in others it is in back (Lakoff and Johnson 2008: 35).

Taking into consideration that the cognitive topology of the source determines, to a certain extent, the mode of comprehension of the target, it’s possible to say that orientational metaphors structure the culture and language in the context of spatial frames, Lakoff and Johnson believe that basic physical experience generating orientational metaphors is primarily a body experience, e.g. the physical basis of ‘happy is up; sad is down’ is that drooping posture typically goes along with sadness and depression, erect posture with a positive emotional state (Lakoff and Johnson 2008: 36).

Philip Wheelwright explains the nature of this metaphor as follows, every human being is a subject to the physical law of gravity that is why it is more difficult to go up then go down; this naturally associates the idea of ascension with achievement, as well as various images connoting height and ascension with superiority, and even a privileged power position. Various images connected with the experience of ‘up’ such as an arrow shot into the air, a star, a mountain, a stone pillar, a growing tree, a citadel, became meanings (despite all other meanings that might be given to other expressions) of something worth desiring, an object of aspiration, the Good, in a sense (Wheelwright 1990: 98). In the Russian landscape, such metaphor connotations are even more definite since they say that a person can be ‘on top of happiness’ or on the contrary, ‘is down on the bottom’, ‘met the bottom’, and ‘rolled down into the abyss’. Physical and emotional experience universal for most cultures is not only in bodily experience. When someone is going up a hill or a mountain this person assumingly experiences euphoria due to opening horizons which could cause the birth of a new metaphor. In other words, the same orientational metaphor might more likely emerge as the result of interaction of a human and a landscape. The metaphor of the spiritual life path as overcoming of a rough terrain and ascending a mountain is often found in

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literature, though perhaps only Saint-Exupery’s metaphor is based on such a bright cultural and landscape image as ‘power lines’ that his hero speaks about, and they not only embody the ideas of physical effort but have cultural genesis. … The most important thing for a human are taut power lines that keep his tension, give rise to fervor, zeal, spirituality, he badly needs the echo responding to every step, the wells and tribulations of the heavenly ascent. The one who succeeds in climbing the top, with his knees and elbows skinned, can never compare his joy with the restricted satisfaction of the sedentary that will pull the ragged flesh up the hill to lie on the grass (Saint-Exupery 1994: 322).

Here, the power lines are metaphor too, meaning the sense fullness and tension of the space in the cultural context. The space which is not lived through and semantically intensive is solid, its physical characteristics is only an excuse for further reflection and understanding. To Wheelwright, in more significant samples of symbolic art, those in particular that influenced the humans most of all in religious and artistic way, ‘up’ and ‘down’ do not appear in pure form but are always fused with other relative ideas and images, with the searing light of divine wisdom, on the one hand, and chaotic darkness of martyr, loss and punishment, on the other. The ‘down’ notion is also associated with the second symbolic meaning which has less traits in phraseology of the colloquial language though played a more important role in myths and poetry. ‘Down’ refers to the generous bosom of the earth, the matriarch and wet nurse of all the living beings. The contrast of ‘up-down’, when acquiring a more tangible form, relatively to the sky and the earth, can be easily personified (Wheelwright 1990: 98–99). We can hardly argue this since, provided that, in a language, ‘happy is up’, then in artistic images metaphors, especially in cinematography, we can see how a happy hero with his hands wide open is falling down thus simultaneously realizing the image of the blessing crucifixion and the Mother Earth. This bodily experience fixed in cinematography is, naturally, possible only in the natural landscape, in an open field (devoid of woods) which, at the same, provides the physical and spiritual contact with the Sky and the Earth. In our opinion, it is also interesting to study natural schemes of the ‘right-left’ connotations. The asymmetry of the internal organization of living organisms, the left and right notions define a specific ‘state of space’ occupied of the body of living organisms. As V. Vernadsky writes, a living substance tends to change the lays of Euclidean geometry not only inside the organisms but also in the environment populated by them. Geometrical rightness and leftism might appear only in the space where the vectors are polar and enantiomorphic. Apparently, this geometric property is connected with absence of straight lines and dramatically expressed crookedness of life (Vernadsky 1991: 24).

In the space of living organisms, leftism prevails, all proteins rotate the light plane on the left, and as it was proven by Pasteur, all crystal compounds of eggs, grains, etc. are leftward, i.e. in their crystal structure; isotopes are distributed by the left helical spiral. And this is the level of spatial perception, micro-level inaccessible to traditional culture which spawned metaphor, a kind of axis with a positive value on

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its ‘right’ pole. We can surely refer again to the position of Lakoff and Johnson about the primary physical experience with the right hand as the leading one. However, there is also a landscape connotation fixed in Russian culture. In the landscape, the right and left curviness of the river is most clearly seen on the banks, as a result of Carioles force (an effect whereby a mass moving in a rotating system experiences a force) the water surface is twisted to the right bank (in the northern hemisphere) (Bogomolov and Sudakova 1971: 113), hence the right river bank in the northern hemisphere is always steeper while the left is flat. The steep river bank, the ravine, in the Russian culture system code is always more important which can also explain the axiological nonequivalence of the ‘right-left’ metaphor.

4.3 Iconicity of Metaphor and Cultural Landscape And there amid the woods, the mountain is crossing, The elephant raises its trunk to take the fruit from the tree. G. Derzhavin. Morning … Where the elephants play the apes like the mountains play during the earthquake… V. Khlebnikov One of metaphor properties characterizing its image brightness is defined as iconicity which links it with the theory of signs of Charles Peirce, which we will refer to in more detail in the next chapter. Iconicity of metaphor is neither logical truth nor ontological reality, and depends on cultural codes (Eco 1984). Paul Ricoeur writes on this subject as follows, … metaphor brightness lies in its ability to “show” meaning it expresses. A kind of visual measurement is suggested here which might be named an iconic function of metaphorical meaning. Similarly to the scheme which serves as a matrix of categories, an iconic image is a matrix for a new semantic coherence which emerges on the ruins of old semantic categories destroyed by the blast of contradiction (Ricoeur 1990a, b: 417, 444).

We believe that, in the cultural landscape, this very ‘fusion of meaning and image typical for the iconized sense (sens iconisé) takes place’ (Ricoeur 1990a: 452), Ricoeur used to write about. We are eager to support Ricoeur’s statement that iconicity includes the verbal aspect, to the extent that it provides fixation of the similar inside the different, and despite them, though on the pre-conceptual level. Thus, Aristotle’s view, i.e. noticing similarity coincides with iconicity, i.e. to distinguish the type, catch the similarity of distant terms, this is what ‘to present to the view’ means (Ricoeur 1990a: 444).

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It is possible, from this point of view, to study metaphors with toponyms. Strikingly bright visual metaphors transfer related to them toponyms into the iconic signs category. For instance, ‘golden-domes Moscow’, a set cultural-geographical metaphor doubles the sense with two images. The first one is the visual view of the city, its specific architecture abundant with gold-domes churches. The second one is the latent mythological image of a gold-headed colossus symbolizing the state power. The second one is locked under image pressure of the first but we cannot deny its presence. There are toponyms as well, directly including metaphor as a visual image such as the Crimean mountain named Ayu-Dag, or Bear Mount, which looks like a bear leant to the sea. On the other hand, as mentioned above, it is quite possible to see landscape images as the sense of structural metaphors. Unlike association, iconicity assumes control over the image from the sense part; in other words, iconicity is an image built into the language (Ricoeur 1990a: 449).

And here we cannot ignore the obvious fact that spatial metaphors have similar imagery. E.g., metaphors that structure the ‘top-down’ concept, and particular landscape connotation that were included into the language, such as ‘to touch the clouds’, ‘to be on the top of happiness’, ‘to lay on the bottom’. The concept of ‘to see as’, related with metaphor iconicity and the name of Wittgenstein, was fully introduced into scientific context by Hester (1967). ‘To see as’ serves as a bridge between the verbal and quasi-visual linking into unity the meaning and the image while the image becomes the meaning supporting the metaphor (Ricoeur 1990a: 451–452). To see as is a feeling-action, intuitive by nature, which allows us choosing, from the quasisensor flow of something imagined which emerges with reading, relevant aspects (Hester 1967:180). To explain a metaphor means to give a list of meanings where the image is seen as sense (Ricoeur 1990a: 450).

An image can be seen quite clearly as sense mostly in metaphors where a landscape acts as a source, and any concept receives an image of a mountains, river, marsh, etc.; less clearly, when a landscape/place acts as a metaphorical projection target. The cultural landscape is full of metaphorical images that are latent, hidden in orientational metaphors, or obvious that makes the informational layer of a place in the cultural landscape. Territorial objects in their generalized abstract sense might act as metaphors. These are a sea, a river, a mountain, a desert. Consciousness is determined through landscape metaphors, while the inner space of the human spirit through the external space. Poet John Hopkins wrote as follows, ‘Oh! The mind, mind has mountains’. Another example is the metaphor of ‘the soul like a burnt desert’ typical for many cultures. Every landscape appears to be seen as a metaphor depending on its details, a city landscape as metaphor of the heavenly city, metaphor of consciousness, metaphor of a complex society, and even metaphor of the infernal (anti-ideal) space, a mountainous

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landscape as an ontological vertical metaphor, a plain landscape as metaphor of infinity and vastness, a river landscape is the life and path metaphor, etc. in any possible variations. All these metaphors are iconic, and the brightness of the image constructed in the language, in this case, is replaced by visualization of the image watched from this or that point of view, or sometimes not watched at all, as a paysage which organically enters the identity of regional and local culture when its members see themselves and their place inseparably connected with the basic paysage.

4.4 Space/Landscape as Semantic Challenge The day had five heads; For a solid five twenty-four hours, shrinking, I was proud of space, because it sprouted on yeast.. O. Mandelshtam In culture, world images are constantly generated and modified, however stayed unchanged in written art, journalistic and scientific texts that represent a specific ‘time cut’ of the picture of the world where images are the embodiment of the unique author thinking, and spatial stereotypes, myths, metaphor of a given era, conglomerate of individual vision, and conventional view of the world which determines genesis of culture. Creation of a bright metaphoric image is based on a specific contrast, using conceptual similarity between visually dissimilar objects and phenomena. More these phenomena extend from each other, more embarrassing their comparison, and more vivid and interesting the expression of the image through metaphor is. What important is the ‘semantic innovation due to which new relevance, new sequence are set in such a way that they ‘create sense’ of the statement as a whole’ (Ricoeur 1990b: 419). The tension and contradiction that arise in such a comparison, ‘a semantic challenge’, or to use J. Cohen’s expression, ‘semantic impertinence’, bring to life metaphoric sense as it is which is ‘not a semantic collision itself but some new sequence which occurs in response to a challenge’ (Ricoeur 1990a: 438). Boundaries and structure of the occurring image may vary from a word or word combination to a composition of an art work, from a separate author phrase to polyphony of a phenomenon or a place presenting all data on a given object within a separate culture. Concepts about the geographic space formed in a culture can also, in some cases, be studied as metaphors. Sometimes metaphors are deliberately designed by scholars in order to give a phenomenon more vivid and ‘dimensional’ description. In such cases, the cognitive essence of the metaphorical process becomes most evident. A separate trend of the humanities studies is a metaphorical interpretation of space. The space acts as a semantic challenge generating new meanings. In several twenty-century studies in philosophy and art work significant ‘metamorphosis of metaphor’ can be observed that is more or less related with geographic

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space. Some of these metaphors were analyzed in studies of D. Zamyatin (See: 2004). E.g., in works by Foucault expansion of spatial metaphors, in fact, resulted in the fact that the geographical space turned into its own metaphor, became similar to it (Zamyatin 2004, 32–33).

Deleuze and Guattari, in Rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari 1976, 1980), introduced the metaphor of infinite branching system (Fr. rhizome, root) which, to their thinking, must confront the linear structure (both of being and thinking) that are, in their opinion, typical of classical European culture. The rhizome structure described and interpreted by the authors with a number of examples absolutely met the demands of ‘relaxed’ philosophical comprehension of geographical space. Apparently, the image of the rhizome perfectly reproduces assumingly relaxed and ‘resting’ space (Zamyatin 2004: 33). Using the expression of Wheelwright, we can say that, in this case, the valuable thing is the way the external (real or fictional) world objects move in the spiritual and cultural field, and gain a new ‘spiritual depth’ with the help of cool fever of imagination’. This process is described as ‘semantic movement’, and idea of such movement is hidden in the world ‘metaphor’ since the movement (phora) is included into the meaning of this word, and is a semantic movement, that very double act of spreading and connecting which occurs in imagination, and represents the essence of the metaphoric process (Wheelwright 1990: 83).

Such is the new understanding of the rhizome space which is, in particular, studied as an alternative to the space organized by the ‘centre-periphery’ principle, with their strict subordination (See: Kaspe 2007). It’s possible to overview, as a metaphor process, the extension of a new, in philosophy and culturology, trend to study the geographic space and landscape with the help of conceptual sphere of linguistics and semiotics, and vice versa, to reflect on the inner structure of the text and its philosophy using the conceptual sphere of geography and landscape science. Theoretical geography also uses semantic movement which shows a tangible philosophical depth, e.g. presenting such a traditional geographical concept as zoning as a conceptual metaphor of the dialectic law. Zoning in all its forms is one more, and this time, a pure spatial form of manifestation of the dialectic law of transition from quantitative change into qualitative. The terminal form of transition from quantity to quality determines the presence of periods of change and development of an object; the spatial form is manifested in the presence of zones that, as we have noted, can be in correlation with historical periods. Gradual qualitative change of zonal factors in space leads to more or less abrupt qualitative change of the matter, and is expressed in division of a given space into zones (Rodoman 1999: 67).

The theory of regioning in geography is based on this principle, which distinguishes areas and boundaries in a non-discrete continuous space. Modern theories that are beyond the cognitive study field may be interesting, for interpretation of cultural landscape, from the point of cognitive theory of metaphor, to show the possibility of expanding horizons and possibilities of the theory. We consider as such the theory of metaphor suggested by K. Kedrov, a philosopher and

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poet (Kedrov 1999, 2004). Metaphor is studied as reorientation of inner and outer space as a result of reading the ‘meta-code’ of culture which is beyond logical knowledge. From this point of view, metaphor seems to be a synthesis of Lobachevsky’s geometry and geometry of Riemann in the cultural sphere which allows studying the inversion of images, first of all as spatial, and such inversion presumably has analogues in the physical world. The main specificity of metaphor is double inversion of the inner and the outer (inside out), of the litotes with the hyperbole. The structure of metaphor has a spatial aspect; Serguei Kapitsa noted its resemblance to the methods of projective geometry and affine transformations in mathematics. ‘Metaphor is a projection of almost infinite space-time into Euclidean geometry’ (Kedrov 2005). Analyzing scenarios of initiation mysteries, Kedrov shows that a hollow, a well, a crack in a mountain, and sometimes even a wall, a tunnel, i.e. well-known elements of a landscape, present a metaphorical stage of a hypothetical scenario of approaching the black hole. From this point, it is possible to study the attempts to express the category of eternity and infinity in a real landscape as a metaphor. The metaphor topic is actually thought over in G. Bashlyar’s Poetics of Space who analyzes the statement of Joe Bousquet on the inner space of the tree: Space is nowhere. Space is in there like honey in the hive. In the realm of images, honey in the hive is beyond any elementary dialectics of the content and contained. Metaphorical honey is not subject to be taken inside. Here, in the inner space of the tree, honey is something different than a ‘core’ The ‘honey of the tree’ fills flowers with flavor. It is the sun inside the tree. Who adores honey knows that honey can be concentration and radiation power in a row. If the inner space is presented as honey it transmits the ‘expansion of infinity’ to the tree. If we take complex metaphysical terms can we possibly say that Joe Bousquet discovered the space-substance, honey-space, or space-honey? (Bashlyar 2004: 175).

The concept of the space is rooted in the theory of metaphor indirectly, through the mentality of culture, influencing the perception of geographic space. For instance, when Paul Ricoeur describes the metaphor theory of interaction based on the problem of transition from literal incoherence to metaphorical coherence of two semantic fields he expresses his idea as follows, Here the spatial metaphor happens to be useful, within which the distance change between the data occurs as if inside the logical space. New relevance or coherence essential for an important metaphorical statement emerges from the type of semantic proximity which abruptly occurs between words despite the distance between them. Objects or ideas that were distanced now seem to be close (Ricoeur 1990b: 420).

4.5 Cultural Landscape as Metaphor Nothing compares to you, Old Moscow! Everything here is like it used to be, In the heart of Saint Russ,

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Here, behind the Kremlin Wall Its holy places are! V. Brusov Good morning, my lovely city, The heart of my Motherland! V. Lebedev-Kumach Thus, by self-organizing in geographic space, culture turns it into metaphor. Matching semantic fields of various geographical objects literally distant from each other generates capacious and stable metaphors like ‘Moscow is the Third Rome, the fourth will never be’. It should be clearly understood that ‘Rome’ as the most popular metaphor of power, in Western culture, was tried by various geopolitical centres and states that claimed to become empires. In these metaphors, concepts of the closest degree of relativity along with semantic markers of otherness (another, the second, the third) were used. All European nations, states, monarchies claimed to be sister of Rome. France should become another Rome independent of Rome, yet Rome (Foucault 2005: 90, 132).

The Third Rome actually traveled for a long time in the politicized idea of the Empire transfer (translatio imperii) having lost geographic coordinates and its real shape (Svirida 2007: 22).

In Russia, the concept of the Third Rome was not as much a metaphor of power but a metaphor of spiritual succession. It was formed as the concept of Russia being the successor in the Orthodox world (after the collapse of Constantinople) which was stated in the letter written by a monk named Philotheus to Vasily III, in the late fifteenth century. Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about this historic period and its mentality as follows, Russia’s mission is to be the bearer and guardian of true Christianity, the Orthodoxy. This is a religious destiny. Russia is the only Orthodox kingdom, and, in this sense, is a universal kingdom like the first and the second Rome. In spiritual poetry, Russ is a universe, and the Russian tsar is the king of kings, and Jerusalem is similar to Russ, Russ is where the true faith is (Berdyaev 2008: 37).

This was also related to the idea of the Bible space as their ancestral land, or just their own space. In geocultural space, specific ‘landscape-metaphors’ formed historically, and were organized not only on the principle of semantic fields coherence but also the transfer of toponymy and landscape structure. In the middle seventeenth century the ‘transfer’ of rivers of the Palestinian landscape to the Russian land was carried in New Jerusalem, patriarch Nikon’s monastery, where they reproduced sacred topography and toponymy of Palestine (Oliver, Tabor, Bethany, Gethsemane, Jordan) (Svirida 2007: 22).

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The North American cultural landscape mainly presents a ‘quilt’ of such metaphors when toponymy, and sometimes structure of European settlements was transferred to the discovered land, without even using in toponymy the word ‘new’, contrary to names like New York, New Orleans, etc. To B. Uspensky, such metaphorical toponymy indicates cultural orientation (Uspensky 2004a). The example above tells about a landscape/place as the target of metaphorical mapping. In such metaphors, the experience of interaction of culture with a particular landscape/place, and discourse practices of the M-model landscape are present. M-model ‘mountain’ will always more or less be present in metaphor defining, for instance, Kazbek. In such cases, we believe it is possible to say that semantic processes in geocultural space present a spatial illustration of abstract metaphorical processes due to the fact that spatial metaphors were inherent. Metaphor merges with reality in case of a number of cultural phenomena of metaphorical nature. According to Kaspe’s definition which seems to be absolutely perfect, metaphor is reality; reality is metaphor; or to be more precise, there is a whole class of phenomena in regard to which no distinction of reality nor trope can be applied since the essential for the latter ‘transfer of meaning’ is not, in this case, one way – one time process but a cycle closed in itself. Neither the starting nor the final point of this movement can be detected, and such metaphors function as indivisible, ground and immanent to human thinking modes of symbolic organization of reality (Kaspe 2007: 21).

Specific geographic objects that are most significant for national culture turn into stable metaphors. They are used in everyday life, fiction, as well as scientific papers on culture and geography. For instance, in the work by Vedenin on the cultural landscape of Russia (Vedenin 1997), he used poetic metaphors of different authors that appeared as a result of creative processing of historic-cultural and geographic material: ‘Russian North as a live memory of Russia’, ‘Novgorod-Pskov land as a historic outpost of Russian in the West’, ‘Saint-Petersburg as a fraction of Europe dropped by Peter’s the Great will on the old Russia’s borders’, ‘Central Russia lands as the heart of Russia’, ‘Russian black soil area as a poetic soul of Russia’, ‘Russian steppes of Povolzhye (or the Volga region) and the Urals as the Eastern face of Russia’ (the subtext of the last metaphor seems to be interesting due to ambiguity; is Russia oriented to the East, or is there a Western face of Russia which the author keeps silent about although the ‘double face’ of Russia was founded in its state arms featuring the two-headed eagle). ‘Mother Volga’, ‘Father Ural’, ‘Kiev, mother of Russian cities’ are family related metaphors applied to micro-landscape of the country that are rooted in Russian culture. While Kiev was actually the capital of the old Russ, the Volga and Ural are by no means the ancestral home of Russia, its ‘genetic parents’. As G. Fedotov wrote, we easily renounced of Kiev fame and infamy starting our race from the Oka and Volga rivers; By occupying the steppe, Russia starts loving it, and finds its new homeland here. The Volga, the Tartar river, becomes ‘Mother and milk nurse’ (Fedotov 1993).

In such cases ‘family relations’ in space are built not on the principle of historical sources but on the economic principle, your parents meaning your breadwinners.

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‘Khan Altai’ is metaphor of the social hierarchy transferred to the hierarchy of the cultural landscape since the Altai mountains are really dominant in rather extensive physical- geographic region. On the regional level, there are legends about relations of geographic objects and their legendary prototypes of a family type. Legends of Bie the Hero and Katun the Beauty, of the Baikal and its daughter Angara, etc., transfer geographic objects into metaphorical ‘space’ where the confluence of rivers, the location of mountains in relation to rivers and lakes, i.e. peculiarities of the landscape morphological structure, are interpreted as social communication. Anthropomorphic view on the space and landscape is the most common frame for appropriate metaphors which dates back to pagan and Christian medieval mentality. Deep layers of collective individual consciousness learning the world through its body are expressed in such a way. The birth of anthropomorphic metaphors of space is rooted in the distant antiquity. The identity of the microcosm and macrocosm is one of the main semantic axes of the medieval world image, and is based on the biblical mythology under which the human flesh of the first man appeared from the soil, his blood from the dew and the sun, his eyes from the deep sea waters, bones from stones, his veins and hair from the grass (Enoch).

Summing these views, Gurevich writes about the system of views of that era: Elements of the human organism are identical to the elements of the Universe. The human flesh comes from earth, his blood from water, his breath from air, and the heat comes from fire. Every part of the human body corresponds to a part of the universe, the head to the sky, the chest to the air, the stomach to the sea, legs to the soil, bones to stones, veins to branches, hair to the grass, and feelings to the animals.

There were also more detailed landscape metaphors, e.g. in the Old Norse poetry, body parts were related to the objects of animate and inanimate nature, and vice versa, the head was called ‘the sky’, fingers ‘the branches’, water was ‘the earth blood’, stones and rocks were bones, grass and woods were ‘hair of the earth’. Before turning into metaphors, these assimilations reflected understanding of the world that did not contain a clear contrast between the human body and the rest of the world, and transfers from one to another seemed fluid and uncertain (Gurevich 1972: 41).

Modern concepts, though on the idea level, regard this transformation as ‘a human being—biosphere’ unity which exists mainly in various ecological social movements. ‘The earth face covered with wrinkles’ seen as rock cracks, cavities, crevices, grooves, hollows, and trenches is rather widespread. Wounds of the earth body are furrows, craters, trenches, pits, quarries of open mining. ‘A landscape/macro-region is a human body’ metaphor can be quite frequently found in moderns cultures. In the Russian cultural landscape, the most stable metaphor of two capitals as two vital parts of one body is ‘Petersburg is the head, Moscow is the heart’. The desire to see the human body, or just the face, in a local landscape, especially the mountainous one (since it gives more space for imagination) stays invariable. For instance, the profile of Russian poet M. Voloshin can be seen in the contours of a

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rock in Koktebel, or the human face in the painting The Spirit of the Himalayas by Nicholas Roerich, and multiple ‘mountain ranges as lying women’ in oral culture of the Crimea, Caucasus, Urals, and Altai highlanders. In the language, ‘landscape is a human body’ metaphor is fixed in set expressions like the ‘river arm’, in ‘lakes are the eyes of the earth’ metaphor, and vice versa, ‘eyes are bottomless/blue lakes’ repeatedly replicated in the world literature (in Song of Songs the bride’s eyes are ‘lakes of Heshbon’). H. D. Thoreau, an American writer, philosopher and naturalist of the nineteenth century, wrote in his famous Walden that the lake is the most beautiful and expressive feature of the landscape; it is the eye of the earth, and by looking into it we can measure the depth of our own heart (Thoreau 1980: 220). G. Bashlyar, researcher of the space poetics repeats this idea, … A water pool is the eye of a paysage, water’). Assumingly, the paradigm of images provides unity of our spiritual world, understanding and continuity in culture (Pavlovich 1999: XXIX).

The arguments above come close to the following statement by J. Ortega y Gasset: Lately, metaphor covered reality like lace, like a cloak. Now, metaphor strives to free itself from non-poetic, or real covers, and the problem is to realize metaphor by turning it into res poetica (Ortega y Gasset 1991: 251).

We believe that poetic texts are often define the core of the understandable space more precisely than scholar studies, structuring it through unexpected images that give polysemantic variety to the landscape. We will study Russian poetry and its spatial and geographical metaphors as marks of the cultural landscape of the country, and perception/reproduction of the world geocultural space.1 In Russian poetry, metaphors of different types occur, due to convergence of geographic objects of different semantic content, geographic object with abstract ideas and anthropomorphic images, etc. Primarily, metaphors determine the inner space of Russia, its cultural landscape, and support the system character of metaphoric concepts related to the geographic space. Sometimes the same metaphorical images, or ‘gestalt’ (to Lakoff and Johnson) are manifested in centuries which emphasizes their continuity (it should be noted here that poetry tends to escape repetition in images). Poets use both the least stable author metaphors and stable, historically fixed in cultural ones, and at the same time try to add some novelty in the fixed meaning. One of the most logical metaphors coming from the traditional world image is Russia—anthropomorphic entity located in geographical space which acts as the container of this entity. In poetry, this metaphor goes back to the eighteenth century. Mikhail Lomonosov created the following image: … Russia is joyous now! Having touched the clouds She cannot overview her power, She is abundant with glory, And is resting now in the fields Full of fruit, where the Volga, Dnieper, Neva and Don calm The sleep of herds with their pure streams. She is sitting with her legs stretched Into the steppe which separates us 1 Data

on the Russian poetry research published in the thesis (Lavrenova 1998) will be shown here.

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Like a vast wall from China; She cheerfully turns her face And counts her treasures Putting her elbow down on the Caucasus. This iconic image allows reading the imperial nature of Russia, and its geographical boundaries, with her legs to the East, to China, and her ‘elbow on the Caucasus’ which consistently fits the later metaphor of ‘St. Petersburg—the head’, ‘Moscow—the heart’, determining the ‘head and chest’ of this creature/macrolandscape on the European territory. And this macro-entity is feminine. Two centuries later, Velimir Khlebnikov in his Azy and Uzy produced another image within the same ‘gestalt’, and realized popular in folk mythology metaphor ‘rivers—hair of mythological creatures’. We can also see here how the poet’s personality comes in touch with a masculine, in this case, macro-creature whose position in the space can be hardly found since all Russian rivers turn into his hair: I’m hairy with rivers… Look! The Danube is running over my shoulders And like a whirlwind, the Dnieper turns blue with rapids. The Volga fell down into my arms, And the mountain fence is combing the hair. And one long hair I’m taking with my fingers, The Amur where a Japanese woman gives her prayers To the sky with her hands clasped during the storm. The same mythical character appears in the poem by Nikolai Kluyev, and at this time, the macro-landscape of European Russia acts as a ‘container’, a living space, not a body: Our great bath is from the Kama and Oka, Mountains and valleys are its wooden benches, The patterned bucket is the lake of Ilmen, Where Svyatogor enjoys his hot bath! As to Vladimir Mayakovsky he created the image of the country without mythology. All Russia is one single Ivan, and his hand is the Neva, his heels are the Caspian steppe. Russia is an endless space. This metaphor which equates the limitlessness and Russia is not often found in poetry though is expressed in rather vivid images.

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Almost half of the world combining in itself, My Russia is widely stretched. N. Nekrasov Russia is an extended continent. V. Khlebnikov From lake Baikal to the warm Crimea The Rye Ocean will overflow. N. Kluyev Who is sleeping there from India to Byzantium Isn’t that Russia? N. Gumilyev Philosophical and artistic essays of Georgy Gachev revive and combine two metaphors, of the infinite space and anthropomorphic nature that gives even more emphasis to the femininity of Russia. Under Gachev, Russia is “an infinite space’. Here, space is more vital than time. Russia is a huge snow doll sprawling in breadth, it is spread from the Baltic sea to the Great wall in China, and her heels are the Caspian steppe… (Gachev: 1997: 622).

Russia is transcendence, the holy land, the Holy Virgin. The poetic work of the eighteenth century is full of such paraphrases of Russia as the Northern Eden, paradise shifted from India (where it was shown on the medieval European maps) to the North. Since the early nineteenth century, Russian poetry has shown the set expression ‘Holy Russ’ which contains a vast layer of stereotypes and associations where ignorance (Rus. ubozhestvo meaning ‘near the god’) is not contrary to the spiritual glory. Poet Feodor Tutchev describes Russia as a land spread across Eurasia. Moscow and Peter’s city, and Constantine’s city These are the sacred capitals of the Russian kingdom But where is its limi? And where are its borders To the north, to the east, to the south and to the sunset? The fates will be revealed in future times Seven inner seas and seven great rivers… From the Nile to the Neva, from the Elbus to China, From the Volga through the Euphrates, from the Ganges to the Danube… This is the Russian kingdom… and it won’t ever pass As the Spirit foresaw and Daniel prophesied What is interesting here is the embodied into the poetic metaphor expansion of national consciousness rightly spreading itself to all territory of the continent including the sacred rivers of Indian and Sumerian cultures, adding also the Nile in Africa (assumingly as an associative geographical analogue of ancient Egyptian

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culture). This metaphor proves once again that culture of Russia assimilates the cultural legacy of other countries and regions, and on the information level, absorbs geographic realities of countries and mother cultures that consider her ‘own’. As Andrei Bely wrote, the Tsar-city, Constantingrad (or, Constantinople, as they say), belongs (to the Russian Empire) as the rightly bequest (Bely 1993).

By the early twentieth century, the image of the Holy Russia as a holy entity and holy land was logically completed in poetry by passing into the spiritual space without trying to expand in the geocultural space. Oh Russ, the holy Virgin Who was higher than death! You came down to the ground From the star womb. S. Esenin Free of any regrets about the past I understood your highness. Yes, you are my native Galilee For me, non-resurrected Christ. A. Block Russia will come down lightly into the far hell To bless you. O. Mandelshtam And you, fire storm, go crazy and burn me, Russia, Russia, Russia, Messiah of the coming day! A. Bely, To Motherland China and Europe, North and South Will come together for a round dance in a palace, To marry the abyss and the daylight. God blesses them, Russia is their mother. N. Kluyev In the last metaphor, ‘spiritual expansion’ of the image of Russia which becomes mother of the world is of interest. Russia is Rome. Like all other European cultures Russia, in the eighteenth century tries on the role of Rome. Its otherness is underlined by its geographic location. Russia is ‘Northern Rome’. This positions it in the world geocultural space too, it does not claim for the role of the West despite the position of its successor. In Russian poetry, its ancestral home is the antiquity civilization (as noted in Russia’s specific names used in poetry). However, having designated itself as the North or the East, it recognizes its identity and self-sufficiency.

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The metaphor emerging due to convergence of two toponyms definitely changes its meaning if a world direction taken as a ‘source’. In this case, due to metaphorical mapping, defining of its position in the world geocultural space occurs rather than internal structuring of the ‘target’. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, poetry used a stable metaphor of Russia is North. In the late nineteenth century this naming of Russia practically disappeared from poetic texts; instead showed up a synonym defining its position in the geocultural space, i.e. metaphor still conceptual in Russian culture, Russia is Asia. In the world view system, Russia as if shifted to the south-east. You are Russia, my Russ… sia.. Asian land. S. Esenin O my Rus! My wife! Our long path Is painfully clear! Our path has pierced our breast like an arrow Of ancient Tatar will. A. Block The idea of the Asian roots of Russia as one of reasons for self-designation of Russia as ‘Asia’ in Russian poetry, and emerging of the appropriate metaphorical mapping, subsequently contributed to ‘assignment’ of Hindu and even Chinese geographical realities in poetry. However, direct statements about certain geographical objects that belong to Russia as its ‘legal bequest’ are seldom found in poetry although the emotional tone of the ‘distant homeland’ regarding practically all centres of ancient cultures is more common. Metaphor Russ is the great steppe was fixed in the culture of the Silver Age in two famous poems, The Scythians by Gumilyev and Pan mongolism by Solovyev, and also sounds as a refrain in Esenin’s verses: With other names The other steppe arises. Saint Petersburg: • Palmyra of the North. This metaphor was widespread in the eighteenth century, and it brought closer two cultural centres of different times as well as structured Petersburg in the boundaries of the concept, or ‘gestalt’ of the southern capital transferred to the north with all its grandeur. The Bible tells that Palmyra was founded by king Solomon, and respectively Petersburg gained the structure of the city ‘sanctified by the Holy Scripture and tradition’. • Capital of the world. In the Silver Age poetry, the capital city has such definitions as a ‘global city’ (A. Block), Mandelshtam described it as follows: Oh if you are a star, Petropolis, your city, Your brother, Petropolis, is dying!

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• Not Russia. ‘Western temptation’ up to complete contradiction between the capital and the country. I will leave the capital for Russia… V. Brusov – Fictional, artificial city the greatness of which ‘is attributed exclusively to the strong will of Peter the Great’ (Gettner 1993). Clouds like hair stood on end Above the smoky pale Neva. Who are you? Oh, who are you? Whoever You might be the city is your fiction. B. Pasternak Moscow: • Biblical city. Sumarokov equates the Moscow Kremlin to Zion. • Mother, ‘was mother of all Russian cities’ (G. Derzhavin), ‘mother of cities of Russia’ (A. Pushkin), ‘beloved mother’ (N. Nekrasov). • Historic and spiritual source: ‘old’ (F. Tutchev), ‘ancient’ (A. Fet), ‘the first throne’ (N. Nekrasov, F. Tutchev’, ‘old’ (V. Khlebnikov), ‘holy’ (V. Brusov), ‘the white throne’ (N. Kluyev). Moscow presents the religious and spiritual capital of Russia in poetic metaphors of the Silver Age, and later its ‘Asian traits’ are highlighted: Golden drowsy Asia Is having a nap on the domes. S. Esenin … Buddhist Moscow O. Mandelshtam The Volga: • Tsarina (queen), ‘Tsarina the Great of rivers’ (V. Brusov). • Mythological river in V. Khlebnikov’s poetry that revived the river’s ancient name of ‘Ra’. The Caucasus: • Anthropomorphic masculine entity, ‘morose Kazbek’, ‘evil Terek’ (A. Pushkin). In M. Lermontov’s poetry the Caucasus, despite the poet’s unwilling stay in this region, is described as ‘grey, blue, and great’. However, both poets endowed the Caucasus and its inner geography with a wide range of emotional colors used in exotic and romantic way. • Tsar (king), To you, the Caucasus, the stern king of the earth, I dedicate again my careless verses. M. Lermontov

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• Mythological space, ‘Ararat rich in Biblical cloth’ (O. Mandelshtam). … Behind the scene of the underground Where Prometheus suffered and faded… B. Pasternak • Danger, under Pasternak, The Kura is creeping like a gas attack Towards the Aragua squeezed by mountains. … Like a pot of poisoned food Dagestan was smoking inside. The Ural mountains are feminine. Despite the limited use of the iconic metaphor of ‘mountain - a breast, a woman’ in culture, Pasternak has an interesting author’s metaphor which changes the gender of the macro-region (‘Ural-father’): Without a midwife, in the dark, unconscious, Bumping the night with her hands, the Ural Rocks cried out, and falling down dead, Blind with pain, gave birth to morning. Let us highlight several most bright poetic metaphors of the external geocultural space. Europe is a senior lady. Metaphor of the ‘old Europe’ is expressed towards the territory in general, ‘worn-out’, ‘Europe with her old head knelt’ (A. Pushkin). This metaphor is applicable to many of its inner realities, ‘faded old Cologne’ (V. Brusov), ‘old Cologne’ (O. Mandelshtam), ‘old fervent Paris’ (A. Block), ‘old Prague’ (B. Pasternak), ‘merry old Poland’ (N. Gumilyev). Great rivers are entities that unite the world. Author’s metaphor by Velimir Khlebnikov fully fits the archaic world perception. The only difference is in the geographic (global) scale. Where the Volga says ‘lo-’ The Yangtze answers ‘ve’, And Mississippi will says ‘all’, The old Danube mutters ‘world’, The Ganges waters will tell ‘me’… The double metaphors that join different toponyms and their meanings in one sense space seem to be interesting as meta-metaphors of geography. These images are not typical for a common sense system, they are not of systematic nature, and they express a new mode of comprehension of geographic objects including the geographical map.

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Paris You are the Maelstrom of the humanity. V. Brusov All deserts are one tribe, from the beginning of time, but Arabia, Syria, Gobi — they’re only ripples of the vast Sahara wave that roared its satanic spite. N. Gumilyev Describing Africa, Gumilyev uses a cartographic metaphor, which includes a ‘pear’ hanging, judging by the outline of the continent, ‘upside down’: You are hanging like a gigantic pear On the ancient tree of Eurasia. In the Silver Age poetry, there are metaphors where toponyms and their corresponding images act as a ‘source’ structuring and defining universal thoughts and feelings: ‘my love is burning midday of Java’ (V. Brusov), ‘the song broke out in the heart like freedom in the East’ (V. Khlebnikov). In such cases the symbolic meaning of the geo-object is used, or one of its stereotypes in culture. Through the stereotypical view on the hot climate of Java an ardent love is expressed, as much as the dream of freedom is expressed though the capacious symbol of the East. Many of these metaphors happen to be ontologically compatible (See: Baranov 2003) within the established world view, when united by a discourse. Cognitive and semantic compatibility is seldom observed. For instance, the M-model of ‘personalization’ extremely widespread in relation to geographical objects contradicts with their hierarchy in the geocultural space. An attempt to combine them into a complete image will result in the following: Russia as an entity consists of such independent and conscious entities as the Urals, the Volga, the Don, etc.

4.8 Conclusions Studying predominantly the epistemological function of metaphor we also find to its ontological function which is grounded first of all in the process of construction of reality expressed in metaphor. Metaphor does not only creates new words, i.e. new terminology, but a whole language world pictures (Akishkina 2009:56),

and in the given case, a whole picture of the cultural landscape almost similar to it since spatial views and codes of culture constitute its essence. Metaphor allows getting inside the deep structure of cultural landscape reality, creates many sense connotations that result in transferring of untranslatable information both geographic and cultural. Informational fullness of metaphors related to the

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cultural landscape which appears due to the sense polyphony emerging as a result of convergence of semantic fields of geo-objects in the geocultural space, as well as their toponyms, is beyond doubt. There are plenty of meanings encrypted in every cultural landscape, and part of them is defined by metaphors fixed in culture and/or literature (as in case of authorized poetic metaphors not prone to reproduction and development). ‘Grapes’ of signified and denotative descriptions in every metaphor simultaneously form semantic ‘fields’ not only in linguistic and culturological but also in their geographical understanding; through metaphoric use of toponym they form sense ‘aura’ of a particular geographic object. It is a kind of discourse practice of culture in regard to space. ‘In the landscape as a whole, metaphors lose their integrity neighboring other metaphors, and form a symbolic space, the space as a system of symbols. Discussing the place of metaphor in line with other semiotic concepts N. Arutyunova notes that both the metaphor and the symbol are rather an object of interpretation than understanding, they do not convey messages that is why cannot serve as a communication tool (Arutyunova 1990: 23). An image is psychological, metaphor is semantic, symbols are imperative, and a sign is communicative (Arutyunova 1990: 26).

Metaphor and a symbol are similar and different. To Arutyunova, in metaphor, the integrity of the image is preserved, the image may shift to background but don’t dissolve. A symbol behaves differently. Due the general trend to simplify the meaning, a separate feature may gain symbolic significance, i.e. its color, shape, location in space. Division of the image into symbolic elements makes it possible to read it. An image turns into a ‘text’. Although symbols (like metaphors) do not depend on each other they allow consolidating into a system (Arutyunova 1990: 24).

While the text structure is studied by modern philosophers through ‘transfer’ of meanings from space to the text, in case of study of geocultural space, the ‘landscape is a text’ metaphor appears to be most effective cognitive construction, moreover that its structural units are loci symbols with definitely dual nature, spatial and imageinformational. Here we cannot but agree with Y. Lotman that … we can define the whole chain of objects from an elementary artistic text of a metaphor type (‘image’) to culture as a text-producing device (Lotman 2002: 158).

At this point, it is important that metaphor can be studied as a text progenitor. By analogy, we can observe formation of a cultural landscape text from metaphor and a symbol fixed in a cultural tradition and/or text.

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Chapter 5

Cultural Landscape as a Sign System

Abstract This chapter reveals specific of semiosis, where geographical objects take part as a «material envelope» of signs and/or their names. The first section discusses some theoretical principles of semiotics, concerning in particular the categories of signs and sign situation in relation to the realities of the cultural landscape. Culture is based on the semiotic mechanisms, it is continuously generated new signs and preserved existing ones, both of them come into the communication process, i.e. acquire, transform and transmit information (Yuri Lotman). A sign is a very vast concept, we will not introduce the new definition, but take it to the broader sense as an object which, under certain conditions (in particular sign situation), has a value not equal to the object itself. According to some definitions, not only the objects, events and actions can serve as a sign (information signal), but also images, playing the role of representatives of another object, properties or relations. To paraphrase Alexander Piatigorsky, we can say that people can use loci, geographical objects as characters precisely because some properties inherent in them (not in the psyche of the people and not in the acts of signal communication) objectively allow for such use. We propose to consider the ontological duality of objects in the geo-cultural space—they are not only or mainly representatives of the physical reality, but of culture itself, and when the name of the object—place name—is used as a sign, there is always the image of the thing beyond and physical reality of the city, river, mountain, plain associated with this image. The architectural features of the city, length, size, physical and geographical peculiarities of the natural landscape components are usually included in geographical image. Unlike metaphor, considered earlier in the context of geo-cultural space, the main function of the sign is a communicative function. In the case of the cultural landscape metaphors may be reduced to symbols, and vice versa, they can return a quality of metaphorical projections in both cases adding to and enriching the images associated with this or that geographical object in a specific culture. In this case, signs with symbolic meaning are generated. For geographical objects in the context of culture we can talk about the symbols, more valued than the sign, and related to it by their nature. Symbols are closer to the making of images, and the more meanings symbols have the richer is their content. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 O. Lavrenova, Spaces and Meanings, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3_5

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So called cultural signs are considered, signs having a cultural component in the denotative or connotational part (Yulia Pikuleva). All semiotic forms in the cultural landscape have cultural component mainly in its denotative component. The content of signs that is a part of the cultural landscape is as multidimensional, as the meaning of the lexical unit. In the second section we investigate the relation of images and signs in the cultural landscape. The sign is the information unit; the concept of the sign includes the information carried by the sign, and the amount of knowledge about the object or concept denoted by this sign. Information processes perform an organizing role in all the «spaces» , conditionally allocated within the geographical space, particularly related to human activity—i.e. in economic, socio- and geo-cultural spaces. Information and sign processes are studied in the materialized forms of their manifestation and in the form of so-called «intangible heritage» , which is also recognized as an integral part of the cultural landscape. Also it is examined the evolution of culture in its living space—the ways of introduction of new impulses (innovation), the spatial aspects of their interaction with the long-established structures of the cultural landscape. A man, a bearer of a culture, transforms the perceived spatial information in accordance with the code of culture (if under the code of culture to understand the system of internally related concepts that define human behavior in culture). Culture understands space, and it is associated with the birth of multi-level geographical images—from image of the world to the image of place. Stable images of a geographical objects, locality, landscape elements, that exist in the public consciousness and/or recorded in works of art, are referred to as the image of the place and become, in turn, an integral part of the cultural landscape. From the visual landscape images arises the symbolic landscape of culture; the construction of symbolic imagery passes through the stages of schematization—the isolation of characteristic detail of the landscape, conventialization—anchorage the detail of this code of value, providing meaningful parts (a slope, a review, meaningfulness) and finally—the birth of the matrix circle of meaning (Evgeny Kolbovsky). Semiotics of the perceived landscape-space can be considered as the language of space, and may act as a «modeling package of culture» (Yuri Lotman). In the Dmitri Zamyatin’s concept geographical images represent a research construct, where the most important nuances of all the values and meanings associated with a particular place are structured and identified. Although the geographic image exists in culture, like any other image, the priority of space in the mentality of culture leads to what it is perceived and re-presented as a «cloud of meanings» , swirling around the site/landscape with its own coordinates in geographical space and its geographic features. As elements of the image of the place such phenomena as topophily (affection to some places) and topophoby (disgusting to some places) are considered (Yi-Fu Tuan). Sign systems of cultural landscapes are «crystallized» coming out of the system of geographical images with the assistance of symbolic and metaphorical elements. The third section is devoted to the semiotics of cultural landscape.

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Semiotic structure of the cultural landscape of the local level is based on the sign objects and environmental zones, which are also full of meaning. Spatial codes are distinguished and they govern semiotization of local space—these codes are: architectonical structure (volumes, plastic form), object-function (functions of objects), social and symbolic—according that the significant form (of monument, a triumphal arch, etc.) becomes the term of spatial judgment and acquires its meaning only if it is installed at the appropriate place (Leonid Chertov). Appealing to another territorial and hierarchical level, which is not perceived immediately for its scale, we can say that in the cultural landscape of the region and macroregion architectonic code do exist not in the direct perception of objects, but in their images. The volume and mass of mountain systems and plains, depressions and seas are read through a map; they are perceived and interpreted through the luggage of geographical knowledge, which a person receives in secondary school. Subject-functional codes at masroterritorial level are relatively rare, since such thing as a narrow functional object doesn’t exist, except for science cities, military installations and military grounds. Existed during the Soviet period labeled regions of specialized industrial production, such as «the forge of the country», «the breadbasket of the country» is now a thing of the past. Analogues of expression having a subject-predicate structure in the cultural landscape of the country can serve the cities if their building were a kind of symbolic act. Such, for example, as St. Petersburg and Komsomolsk-on-Amur—the first one was a «window to Europe» and at the same time was the equivalent of the name of the patron saint of its creator, the other—was assigned the Soviets at the far eastern frontier and carried in its name the idea of communism. Renaming of cities in the Soviet period and the emergence of city-names, such as the Kirov, Kuibyshev and others, also served as a statement of names of the new political elite in the cultural landscape. New Jerusalem bores both in its name and semantics of its internal structure religious idea of Heavenly city, the heavenly Jerusalem, and of Jerusalem as analogue of terrestrial city. Signs-names of the places, signs-geographical objects, signs-landscapes may have precedential genesis or may be a spokesmen for a «typical situation», «typical, standard landscape» . A precedential cultural symbol acts as a kind of cultural character and correlates with the notion of value as a cultural value characteristics (Yulia Pikuleva). With respect to the dichotomy of a cultural (and/or historical) precedent and a «typical situation» in the case of objects of geographical space super-personal character (known to all members of the community) of the sign is important, its relevance in terms of process of cognition (cognitive and emotional), its constant or regular use among certain culture. Geographic objects and landscape elements become symbols in the case if in the culture there are strong associations with the momentous historical events, with the artifacts and unique features of the natural landscape. Considering the cultural landscape as a sign system, we can observe that it complies with the most of the rules of semiotics—minimization of the original text, discrete transfer of continuous content, delimitation of the text, metonymy.

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In relation to the signs of the space-semantic web the classical classification of Charles Peirce is applied—symbolic, index and iconic signs are single out in the cultural landscape. But symbolic and index signs are most used. Interpretation of the cultural landscape as a sign system can be expanded using a more modern classification based on the «base sign» , developed by Abraham Solomonik. Geographical locations and place names serve as natural, imaging, linguistic, hieroglyphic (writing systems) signs. The symbolic level of the sign system, as the maximum level of abstraction, according to Abraham Solomonik expressed in mathematical codes, is practically inapplicable to the cultural landscape. So, if we consider the semantics of geographic objects, which is readable within semiosphere of world culture, the geo-cultural space appears as a spatial-semantic network. The nodes of the network are the cities, rivers, mountain peaks and mountain ranges filled with history, meanings and ideals of humanity. Different objects of spatial-semantic networks are in complex, rich with nuances, but undeniable relationship. For example, the relationship of names and corresponding cities, such as «Vatican—Jerusalem—Constantinople» is read as symbols of the two branches of Christianity. Otherwise, for example, the bipolar attitude to «Jerusalem—Mecca» is read as the unmerging of two cultural and religious worlds.

The gardens, ponds, and fences, made pure By burning tears, and the whole great span, Creation-are only burst of passion Hoarded in the hearts of men. B. Pasternak. Definition of Creativity Scientific thinking of the New Age has changed the experience of the geographic space. However, the asymmetry of the geographic space and its close connection with the general world view results in its remaining, in modern consciousness, as an area of semiotic modeling. It’s enough to mention the easy way of metaphorization which generates such concepts as the East and the West and the semiotic sense of renaming geographic locations, etc. Geography is apt to easily turn into symbols (my italics – O.L.) Yuri Lotman wrote (Lotman 2000: 303).

In development of this Lotman’s idea regarding the cultural landscape, it can be stated that the geocultural space is also full of symbols and signs. In the first chapter we defined the cultural landscape as an ongoing process and the result of semiosis. We can agree that one and the same (territorially) landscape may act as a field of ‘sense interference’ in ‘different cultures (human communities) both in time and space (Isachenko n/d).

In the cultural landscape, signs, symbols and images connected with it communicate with each other forming symbolic systems as well as with the culture which consumes and develops those thus provoking semiotic processes of the next level. It is necessary to study the landscape as a sign system as well as laws of formations and existence of such system that emerge independently of specificity of any single landscape and/or place.

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In this chapter the cultural landscape will be studied primarily in the context of the semiotic tend genetically going back to the work of Charles Peirce and William Morris which demands distinguishing, in the semiotic system, discrete meanings and their classification, and registering separate semiotic units (Puchkov 1999: 118);

and here we will be more focused on semantics than pragmatics and syntax (in its meaning of establishing links with other signs).

5.1 A Sign and Sign Situation in Relation to Cultural Landscape Realities Alles Vergängliche Ist nur ein Gleichnis; Das Unzulängliche, Hier wird’s Ereignis… Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Faust. The theory of signs, in our opinion, appears to be quite effective in relation to information structures of the cultural landscape. Originating, as modern scholars believe, in stoic philosophical school of ancient Greece (the third century BC) it studies ways of emerging and functioning of signs. To V. Grechko who studies history and theory of the question, it is significant that the Stoics discovered the elements, or ‘things’ that form the so-called sign situation, or semiosis, i.e. the terms necessary for functioning of a sign. This is the famous triad with two components being bodily and one non-bodily (i.e. the ideal side of a sign in the human brain) (Grechko 2003: 38).

This triad and its derivatives may become the subject to criticize (See: Belousov 2006: 339–572) but in this study the question of the constituent parts of the mental construction and its structure is not basic. A sign and sign systems make the traditional research field of linguistics. However, under the statement of Claude Levi-Strauss that ‘culture has a structure similar to the language structure’ (Levi-Strauss 1958: 79), an ‘invasion’ of the linguistic approach in the cultural science with the semiotics has happened. Such approach allows more clear structuring the studied phenomena presenting them as a sign system similar to the language in its manifestation and laws. Umberto Eco argues that … semiology is the science not only of sign systems per se but it studies all phenomena of culture purportedly as sign systems basing on the assumption that virtually every cultural phenomenon is primarily communication… (Eco 2004: 257).

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L. Batkin who did not support the structural methodology position, nevertheless, believed that ‘culture contains nothing but meanings (and modes of their transition)’ (Batkin 1985: 304) According to the above-mentioned tradition of the Tartu-Moscow school which develops structural conception, culture is based on semiotic mechanisms connected, first of all, with the storage of signs and texts, secondly, with their circulation and transformation, and, thirdly, with production of new signs and new information. The first mechanisms determine cultural memory, its connection with tradition, and support the process of its self-identification, etc.; the second ones determine internal and external cultural communication, translation, etc.; and finally, the third ones enable innovation and are connected with various creative activities. All other functions of culture are derived from these basic semiotic functions (Lotman 2002: 13).

And more, Since in culture there are no before- nor beyond-sign formation interpretation of any cultural phenomenon should be started with their semiotic analysis, with decryption (Lotman 2002: 13).

Sign is a very capacious concept (See: Alefirenko 2005; Grechko 2003; Nikitin 1988; Reznikov 1964; Reformatsky 1967; Eco 2004). Definitions given to it in scientific works, dictionaries and encyclopedias are multiplying day by day. Broadly speaking, a sign is an object which, under certain conditions (in a particular sign situation) has a certain value. And again, in broad interpretation, a sign situation emerges in case when ‘something exists instead of something else’ (Maslov 1997). To Peirce, a sign has three main components; (1) material cover, (2) the designated object, (3) rules of interpretation set by humans. In his linguistic work, de Saussure reflected about the sign as a structured whole where the connection between the signifier and the signified is determined by community (culture) and does not depend on the ‘substance’ and the form of a sign and an object. Russian scholar Reformatsky (1967: 28–37) highlights several features inherent to a sign, including the materiality (access to sensory perception), focus on the meaning, mismatch of the sign content and its material features, conditioning of the sign content by its various features that are analytically distinguished and separated from the non-distinguished ones, and conditioning of the sign and its content by location and the role of the sign within the sign system. In our opinion, it is important that physical/corporeal components involved in semiosis must have certain qualities that allow involving them into this process. Although corporeal components initially do not bear sense and start meaning something only when they are connected, within cultural (including geographical) boundaries, with a particular object framed in a particular meaning, ontological and phenomenological premise of the semiotic theory suggests that living being can use things as signs exactly due to the grounded in things (not in psyche of living being, and not in signal communication acts) properties objectively allow such use (Pyatigorsky 1996: 30).

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This idea seems interesting because in this definition everything said about things that might be attributed to loci, geographical objects forming the cultural landscape. To Pyatigorsky, properties of things, and equally of loci, providing semiosis are as follows: The first of this kind of things is the property to be at every given moment something of one type and of another type, i.e. to be two different things. This provision does not imply that a thing, at a time, is (meaning exists) and is not itself since only being simultaneously two things it can be itself (duality property). The second property can be considered imaginability of every single thing beyond its place (locus) while the concept of this thing suggests its specific spatial characteristics (location, size, etc., in total referred to as spatio). Imaginability of a thing beyond locus (abstracted from spatio) might be understood as its simultaneous genesis in a series of specific positions (position) that change depending on the movement of the subject using this thing (who is followed by the ‘observer of things’). This property can be named the position property (Pyatigorsky 1996: 31).

Locus in its geographical sense (as a geographical object) cannot be physically moved. In this case the ‘thing’ coincides with its ‘position’, locus and spatio. It is the cultural and spatial context that changes (the latter is provided by new construction or destruction, alteration of landscape elements), which equally provides the position property for geographical objects. The third property is thought as the ability of a thing ‘to join’ the existing fugitive situation used by its subject as a fact which takes place prior to this (or any other conceivable) situation; or vice versa, the very fact of time fixing (both in a chronological and most general form) suggests the possibility of its ‘rolling forward’ (projection), possibility of its ‘future’ situational use, its assimilation by the subject in a series of specific situations. This property is referred to as a projection property (Pyatigorsky 1996: 31).

Pyatigorsky argues that in the sign is the signified’ semantic opposition, ‘the signified’ is not a thing but in any given application of this concept to particular scholar disciplines ‘the signified’ will anyway act as a thing, and the sign as not-a-thing. When things and signs are studied, or to be more precise, are psychologically analyzed according to our attitude towards them both, things and signs do exist as things (Pyatigorsky 1996: 32).

At the same time, signified things seem not to be connected with material mediators of signs. At this point we are more close to the position of A. Losev that a thing can be a sign but a sign cannot be a thing. Here we deal with some special kind of being, neither material nor ideal. … A sign undoubtedly belongs to this field of sense, being neither a material body which it signifies nor a material bearer deprived of which it actually cannot be, nor just a particular system of relations that could exhaust it to the end (Losev 1982: 236).

A. Losev in his later work summarized multiple interpretations of the sign concept, and came to a conclusion that the terms sign or meaning cannot be defined in the starting points of their genesis. The sources of these categories should not have final definitions (Losev 1982: 33). His work also contain clarification on the function not

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only of a sign but also an image, a category which is extremely important for our conception of the cultural landscape semantics, and which will be studied in detail a bit later. According to a number of definitions, they are not only objects, phenomena and actions that may act as a sign (information signal) but also images that may represent a different object, properties or relations. Hence, we suggest studying the ontological duality of objects in the geocultural space. They represent physical reality less than culture, and when the name of an object (toponym) is used as a sign it is always followed by an image of the ‘thing’, i.e. physical reality of a related to it city, river, mountain, valley (architectural peculiarities of a city, its length, size, physical-geographical features of natural landscape components). In today’s Internet space they discuss that a sign is an artificial material phenomenon or a thing (sign mediator) randomly produced in an irregular for them situation in order to cause images of other, different phenomena and things. Artificial signs (marks) form the material structure of the sign mediator (Ibraev 2010).

In our case, in addition to images different from the toponym-sign it signifies the images of a geographical object. Unlike metaphor studied previously in the context of the geocultural space, the main function of a sign is communication, i.e. taking, converting and transmitting information. With the objects of the cultural landscape, metaphor might be reduced into signs, and vice versa, return to their qualities of metaphorical mapping, in both cases replenishing and enriching images related, in a specific culture, with a particular geo-object. In this case sings with symbolic meaning are generated which is a type of conventionally conditioned meaning formed on the basis of metaphorization and metonymization mechanisms where the name of specific object acts as the signifier for an abstract meaning (Pestova 1980: 92).

Regarding geo-objects in the context of culture, it is possible to talk about symbols essentially allied to the notion of a sign, and at the same time being closer to an image presenting other images, contents and relations. Multiple meanings and polysemantics not typical (or not useful in terms of its constructive use) for a sign are fully present in a symbol which becomes more informative due to more meanings it contains. A. Losev in the axiomatic of the language theory wrote that ‘any sign can have an infinite number of meanings, i.e. to be a symbol’ (Losev 1982: 64). Nevertheless, he criticized Y. Lotman because in Lotman’s work ‘a sign’ is …full of endless sense possibilities which we consider essential for the concept of a symbol (Losev 1982: 243).

Symbols included into the geocultural space are generated in art and philosophy where a symbol is one of the most important categories. Modern researchers introduce the cultural sign concept thus emphasizing that a sign belongs to the cultural world. A sign acts as a specific psychological “instrument”, as a means of transformation of psyche from natural (biological) into cultural (historic) sphere (Pikuleva 2006:116).

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With this term Y. Pikuleva defines signs that have within their meaning, which is considered as content in its composition, a cultural component in its denotative or connotative part. Hence, the cultural sign concept is related with the category of meaning (Pikuleva 2006: 118).

A cultural sign is a kind of a treasury and is a unit of a cognitive-rational level including a layer of “ordinary and practical consciousness” and “a layer of traditional consciousness”, and is used in mass communication to enhance influence on the message recipient (Pikuleva 2006: 116).

Various notions of the term of a sign seem to result in its fuzziness but, on the other hand, allow observing variation semantics, semantic fluidity, and polysemy of extra linguistic sign systems. Therefore, here we will not give a new definition of our own but will take as a basis a broad interpretation of a sign. An enhanced understanding of a sign tends to a result when, under Bolinger, ‘… not a single word can be reduced to a finite set of meanings but it always means something else’ (Bolinger 1965: 567; quot.: Bickerton 1990: 284). Similarly, not a single text on a territory does not exhaust it and is not identical to the ‘prototype’ as well as the whole complex of texts. The content of signs that is a part of the cultural landscape is as multidimensional as the semantic content of a lexical unit. Pavel Florensky wrote about the linguistic content (sense) unit, The layers of the word system store inexhaustible energies that are deposited there for ages have been flown down from millions of lips (Florensky 1990: 270).

The internal energy of the compressed sense imprisoned in narrow frames of a sign can be released in metaphor, literary texts, artistic images, and vice versa, be packed and acquire additional sign forms.

5.2 From Geographical Images to Signs The blue island is rich with porters, Green Crete where their gift was baked In the sound ground. Can you hear The dolphin’s flippers batting underground? This is the sea fallen and passed Happily in the burnt clay, And the vessel’s cold power Split into waves and eyes. O. Mandelshtam According to Losev’s definition, ‘a sign is generally referred to the sphere of information’ (Losev 1982: 42). So, before coming close to the cultural landscape as a sign

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system we will study the polyphony of informational processes in a landscape drawing much attention to such informational entities as geographic and/or landscape images.

5.2.1 Geographic Images: Problems of Genesis and Reference Image as a cultural phenomenon is an independent object of the science of imagology which has been developed as an independent field of knowledge on notions and images since the middle twentieth century, although its roots are going back into the far past. Modern imagology ‘was initiated mainly by representatives of psychology and literary studies’ (Mylnikov 1999: 11). Italian psychologist Henri Meneghetti is among them, and he studied primarily the content of symbols and their compliance with the life reality combining them into the notion of ‘imago’ (Meneghetti 1991). One of the targets of the science of images is reconstruction of ethnic/ethnic-cultural picture of the world in different eras. Images of the world have their own dynamics, discreteness/comprehensiveness conditioned by cultural mentality of different regions and historic eras, from hunters focus perception of space to the medieval epic where the whole world is imagined as a complex of separate points (loci), royal palaces and battle fields. Existence of loci is determined by laws of epic heroism according to which the space deprived of heroic attributes, i.e. not filled with heroic activity, doesn’t mean anything, and i.e. does not exist. The space between the loci is beyond the epic-heroic world, it is ‘void’, ‘senseless’, and the loci are adjacent to each other developing the ‘point’ structure of space. The movement, i.e. moving from one point to another, is important only in its final points where the ‘heroic’ events take place. ‘Intermediate’ space is not filled with action, it is compressed, and separate points of the epic world are as if adjacent to each other (Melnikova 1998: 12).

Finding integrity of the world was undertaken by constructing medieval ‘cosmographies’, up to the present image constructed by mass media which is extremely close to geographic reality but is full of political myths and stereotypes. Images and concepts fixed in a language and set in mentality present a ‘cognitive basis’ (Russian Cultural…, 2004: 10–11) of culture which serves as a basis for the world image of majority of members of this community. Florensky, talking on worshiping long before the imagology was established, suggested a hypothesis about an image and image prototype. No doubt that we can hardly talk on the identity of a territory and views about it although we can actually talk on the functional and ontological integrity of place/landscape/region and its image existing in culture. An image in relation to geographical objects is nothing else but a fragment of a world picture including concepts of a local culture, spatial, time and event (historic) context. Images both generally and in this particular case are genetically connected with views. According to ideas of Gottlob Frege, a view appears

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from memories of sensible impression a human has acquired. A view is subjective, it is often imbued with emotions, clarity of its individual parts is different and apt to change; even one and the same person at different time can have different views related with one and the same sense; views of one person differ from someone else’s (Quot.: Leontiev 1969: 56).

Dichotomy of the subjective and the objective, individual and typical for a socialcultural group or a culture in general is a property immanent for images and views. Collective and individual consciousness (the ratio of which was successfully studied by Durkheim (1995) are reflected in them. The first one includes beliefs, views, value system that a person possesses in terms of tradition or deliberately along with a particular social-cultural group. The second one is based on individual experience and thoughts. Individual consciousness is usually being correlated with that of collective otherwise the human genesis in a society would be difficult. Levi-Bruhl reflecting on collective views called them ‘the product not of thought but faith’ that is transmitted from one generation to another ‘imposing a personality’ (Levy-Bruhl 1994: 20). In this regard we should recall the social view term introduced in science by Serge Moscovici. Denise Jodlet suggested the most popular definition of the term, the category of social view means a specific form of learning, i.e. knowledge of the “common sense” the content, function and reproduction of which is socially conditioned. Social determinism of the context and the process of representation are predetermined by the context and terms of their occurrence, circulation channels, and finally, by functions serving in interaction with the world and people (Quot.: Makarov 1998: 47).

The important point in this definition is that a view, from a purely subjective phenomenon produced by an individual mind, turns into a social property. In the context of this study we are interested in the images of geographic space or landscape/locus being the property of ‘collective consciousness’ and even of ‘collective unconsciousness’ of culture that determine further individual perception of the cultural landscape and/or its components as part of a cultural code which allows arguing beyond the views of social-cultural groups. Emerging of multilevel geographic images, from the world image to the place image, is the result of cultural comprehension of space. Sustainable views on a geographical object, locality, landscape elements in social consciousness and/or fixed in works of art are defined as a view of locus, and become in their turn an integral part of a cultural landscape. The image of a place, its sense (sense of place, genius loci) include visual and aesthetic characteristics of a place, its emotional impact, its symbolism (Hudson and Pocock 1978: 80). At this stage, geographic images are the prerogative of the humanitarian geography research field using mainly methodology of cultural philosophy and culturology. There are studies of other aspects of interaction of humans and geographic environment that do not use the geographical image concept such as regional identity study, cognitive maps drawing, image/place/region formation, etc. Regional identity is also interesting from the point of a region shifting itself to the North or West (which is reflected in self-naming and self-identification of the population), when it moves in a constructed by its own culture space of the country micro-region and actually identifies itself within it. But in this work we do not study such aspects.

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Cultural code determines the direction and characteristics of information and sign processes that, in their turn, act as organizers in all terms of scholar ‘spaces’ connected with human life, that is economic, social and geocultural. This single consistent code and the information exchange model connected with it occurs as a tendency of cultural self-organization of a group (Lotman 2002: 64).

Cultural code appears to be the term of informational processes flow in all mentioned above ‘spaces’ of human genesis. Informational processes in the geocultural space are studied, first of all, in objectified forms of their manifestation. There is a popular way of studying relations between culture and environment by landscape appearance (which can be interpreted as a sign mediator). This approach is realized in the works of cultural geographers, culturologists and theorists of architecture (See: Duncan 1987; Barabanov 1999; Tanguy 1999), with every phenomenon perceived as a message, as information both, visual and textual. Landscape types with certain relationship of culture and natural environment are distinguished basing on visual information. Through the landscape appearance we can clearly see the ‘valuation’ of space, its semantics in a particular culture which can actually be typologized. For instance, the sacred landscapes are distinguished in this way, landscapes of conquest and overcoming of the naturally given space, and landscapes of harmoniously organized culture in space. There are information systems that are developed by community for internal use in order to maintain and preserve the cultural landscape. American researcher Cosgrove defined a landscape as a mode of vision supervised and produced by the elite (Cosgrove 1984). According to A. Ivanova, in a landscape, a special place is occupied by verbal information channels, i.e. the language and folklore (literally translated as ‘folk wisdom’ or ‘people’s knowledge’) that are not only the cultural landscape elements (along with the natural environment, human community, economic and residential infrastructure) but also ‘languages’ of its representation, interpretation, retranslation in space and time (Ivanova 2009: 42).

A. Sokolova in her monograph (Sokolova 2007) studies in detail geographical images in folk lexicon and reveals patterns of perception and representation of space by bearers of traditional culture. Images of macro-regions in the geocultural space exceeding perceptual potential of an individual are always perceived and studied indirectly, including the mode of verbal information via mass media, scientific, artistic and reference literature, and works of art. In such process of perception the integral experience of description, analysis and space evaluation developed by a group of people or the humanity in general is used. The spirit of the place is a fruit of a certain historic period and culture of a certain community that is why it is not always perceived beyond this culture (Isachenko 2003).

Thus, the ‘spiritual load’ of places connected with the life and work of national talents can be perceived only by those who have sufficiently adapted the information.

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Image/information component of the cultural landscape is closely linked with the concept of cultural legacy since the events important for cultural history as well as personalities inevitably add something new to the ‘valuation’ of the space. According to the generalizing informational paradigm of the cultural landscape by Vedenin, a certain informational layer which creates the image of the landscape and becomes its part as one of its most important components is formed around every object. An essential part of the informational layer is made by views of the local population, journalists, scholars, artists, conservators and other professionals about the use, importance and value of movable and immovable objects of heritage as well as such categories as, e.g. religious beliefs, folklore and social relations (Vedenin 2004: 68).

A separate type of images of place is general, ‘benchmark’ and/or ‘average’ visual and semantic images typical for this or that cultural landscape. The ‘national paysage’ concept is closely linked with paysage painting and literature, fixed in works of art, and reproduces in culture. An English landscape (Lowental and Prince 1964, 1965) presents manicured lawns and low green fences. A Malorossian (Ukrainian) landscape is white-painted adobes, the steppe and open fields in misty haze. A typical Russian landscape shows villages with onion-domes churches located mostly on river or lake banks, fields and birch copses, haymaking peasants, bell sounds and folk songs (Vedenin 2004);

and so on and so forth. Paysage painting has its genre peculiarities and historical fluctuations that in their turn influence the landscape, firstly, the garden landscape which as much as any other art form depends on the style of the leading cultural era; gardens of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism, Rococo and Romanticism had different aesthetics and semantics (Likhatchev 1998). Whole landscape images are formed not so much by the set of elements but metric correlation between them, reproduction of which makes the landscape ‘iconic’; the ‘message’ is created by putting the significant form on a certain place (Kolbovsky 2003).

We support the opinion of Kolobovsky that the landscape symbol appears from visual landscape images. The landscape is perceived through the sum of ‘pics’ seen from different points reading of which demands knowledge of a symbolic code and is based on the mechanism of spatial synthesis linked with the ability of images to present information in a integral and immediately caught form. Landscape images (‘whirlpool’, ‘at a crossroads’, ‘among the open valley’, ‘by the lake’, ‘the eternal rest’, ‘three poplars in Plyuschikha’) are intermediaries between sensual phenomena and spiritual content in the culture of a certain civilization, they are centre that groups images of other modalities around them; this is the extraordinary role of landscape symbols in cognition in general. In this certain culture, constructing of symbolic images goes through a number of general stages: schematization – distinguishing the steep river bank from all other ones, conventionalization – fixing the code word ‘steep’, and giving meaningful parts to it (slope, view, importance), and finally – the birth of circled meanings matrix ‘The Volga river flows along the steep banks’ (Kolbovsky 2003).

The aesthetic-semantic system which allows cognizing the landscape presents a landscape code in culture (Kolbovsky 2004: 22–30). Ordinary and seemingly unremarkable landscape elements like woods, a river, a road, buildings, may act as signs and messages of the ‘spatial text’.

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This theory has been developed by T. Krasovskaya who writes that ‘historic human experience constantly processes these images correlating its adequacy with the surrounding world. At the same time, preserving of an ideal space essential to a certain culture is a quality of historic memory. This image is formed by the ethnocultural landscape (Krasovskaya 2009: 12). D. Zamyatin who develops methodology of geographic images modeling defines them simultaneously both as ‘sustainable spatial concepts formed in various sphere of culture as a result of human activity (mundane and professional)’ (Zamyatin 2006: 92), ‘a complex of bright, typical focused signs, symbols, key concepts that describes any real spaces (territories, regions, countries, landscapes, etc.)’ (Zamyatin 2006: 93), and ‘a spatial system which is formed or forms itself from elements of geographic spaces that transform into particular signs and/or symbols accumulating most interesting, from the image point of view, traits and properties of the studied (researched) geographic places of a given culture’ (Zamyatin 2006: 94).

However, first of all, according to Zamyatin’s conception, geographic images are a research construct, a kind of an ‘essence’, ‘bunch’ of geographic representations in culture created by a researcher in the process of their formalization and compression. In this way associative layers are eliminated, and the actual results of geographic images modeling are distinguished, that present mental-analytical construction where the creative will of the researcher plays a considerable role. D. Zamyatin believes that geographic images pervade the entire tissue of culture, have many levels of abstraction/reality, from ideal to local, and a complex structure which includes archetypical, event, metaphor, and finally geographic connotations. When modeling geographic images, a researcher, depending on the targets, distinguishes any layer of information related with a certain place. Geographic images in development are oriented on the fundamental image-archetype acting as a chaotic attractor in the sphere of spatial categories of culture where … it’s possible to view geographic space images as a continuum autonomous from specific, rigidly fixed geographical objects (a building, a hill, a church, a marina, a city, etc.). A sort of procedure tissue, some mental-geographic ‘mist’ is being formed which allows, at a certain moment, distinguishing images necessary for the spatial analysis (Zamyatin 2006: 53–54).

In our opinion, we ought to agree with D. Zamyatin that in a number of parameters geographic images are close to the concept of ‘frame’ which was borrowed, in this case, not from the theory of metaphor but the theory of artificial intellect conceived as a structure of data for representing a stereotypical situation. The frame may be seen as a network of nodes and links between them, and semantically close frames are united in a frame system. A frame contains, on low levels, terminals and cells for filling typical samples and data. The same terminals may join various frames. The same traditional geographic knowledge may take part in formation of different geographic images. Thus, geographic knowledge develops into depth, and the already created geographic images structure and as if strengthens it (Zamyatin 2006: 99).

Geographic knowledge here is studied, in our opinion, as one of components of the world image which, on the one hand, is based on the image system, and on the other hand strives to formalize this system.

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5.2.2 Axiological Measuring of Geographic Images Mais cette voix ne parle que dans le silence. …Et de même que pour la ville, de même pour l’empire. Se fasse un calme extraordinaire et tu vois tes dieux. A. de Saint-Exupery. La citadel. Human activity and genesis in the landscape are of emotional and axiological aspects connected with basic cultural archetypes and cultural codes that are different in different historic periods. Semantic reorganization of geographic space by culture begins with its physical development followed by semiosis which takes place in accordance with axiological poles and value system. For instance, in medieval Europe ‘road and bridge construction was considered a holy deed’ (Gurevich 1972: 39), i.e. was an absolutely positive activity as much as any other anthropogenic impact in the environment adapting it for human convenience. Hence, physically developed, ‘cultured’ spaces characterized as pervasive are undoubtedly topophilic, as a result of reorganization of Chaos into Cosmos which has been considered in the Western culture a good conversion. Every new stage of development was accompanied by revision of the established system of signs considered, in the landscape, geographical objects and their names (toponyms). New areas were conquered in the nature, a non-culture related to Chaos under Western cosmology and mythology, and were included in the sphere of culture and semiosphere. As to the nature and the natural landscape, we can repeat that culture although it ‘is looking on the other as if in a mirror’ is trying to deprive its surface of the mirror property to imprint its own trait forever. Discussing this process we tend to agree with D. Zamyatin that spaces purportedly change their images on their own under the “pressure” of the paths that are developed everywhere (Zamyatin 2004: 36).

However, a moment comes when cultural expansion into the area of non-culture essentially reduces the sphere of influence of the other, and it loses the ground for self-reflection. In the twentieth century, the internal collapse of the closed in itself metropolitan culture started where, within the conventional sign system, slums and ghettos began to feature woods and mountains (in their medieval emotional and semantic context) inhabited by trolls or evil spirits, i.e. topophobic territories. Chaos becomes man-made and loses its potential to develop Cosmos into beauty. In connection with the problem of geographic images it is appropriate to refer to the concept of topophilia (Tuan 1976). Topophilia is one of vital aspects in formation of the place and landscape image studied by anthropocentric humanistic and humanitarian geography. Topophilia as a genetic basis for many images directly depends on the value system of culture, its intentions towards the containing landscape and the geographic space in general. This term proposed by American scholar Yu-Fu Tuan means the feeling of affection arising towards a geographical object. The feeling of hostility towards a place he designated as topophobia (Tuan 1979). Thus, topophilia/topophobia describes

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the emotional connection between a human and a space/place, degree of empathy through which several layers of human consciousness are expressed, i.e. personal, social, transcendental, and the collective unconscious. Emotional relationship of human and geographic realities is conditioned by several facts, i.e. amount and quality of information about objects, peculiarities of the basic world picture. Even visual perception of a landscape and feelings experienced toward it mean less than cultural, religious and philosophical values. As a result any landscape becomes an expression for other categories, and the attitudes to them determine the attitude towards the landscape. It is possible to study images of a happy space described by G.Bashlyar as a particular case in topophilia. To Bashlyar, the space captured by imagination cannot stay indifferent, measured and cognized in geometric categories. It is about the experienced space which is experienced not due to its objective qualities but with utmost imagination involvement it is capable of. In particular, such space is almost always has gravity. It concentrates genesis inside the guarding boundaries (Bashlyar 2004: 22–23).

Hence, we can outline that the inhabited space adequate to a personality tends to evoke positive feelings and images. It cannot be structurally decomposed, it is the starting point of semiosis, and ‘any really inhabited space essentially bears the home concept’ (Bashlyar), home as space, home as a refuge with conceivable boundaries. The phenomenon of nostalgia in this context can be explained through a lost city, country, language or tradition which turns into ‘home’. In regards with the inhabited space, such archetypes as ‘Cosmos’, ‘Chaos’, ‘a vertical’ and ‘the world centre’ are being actualized. We agree with G.Bashlyar that: (1) Our imagination presents home as a vertical entity. Home is erected. Its peculiarities are defined vertically. Home awakens vertical consciousness in us. (2) Our imagination draws home as a concentric entity. It awakens central consciousness in us. A house seems to be an ‘atom’ of the urban landscape and city image, and sometimes its symbol as the Batllo house designed by Gaudi which became one of symbols of Barcelona. And it is more than true regarding religious constructions such as St.Basil Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, or Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Topophilia might be connected not only with the feeling localized on the inhabited space but with absence of boundaries which actualizes concepts of infinity and limitlessness rooted in cultural mentality. Although the ‘…impression of immensity is rooted inside us and is not necessarily connected with the object of contemplation’ (Bashlyar 2004: 25), such impression and the associated feeling of affection is awaken by landscapes either really not having visual boundaries expect the horizon—the steppe, desert, sea—or those that concentrate masses and relief shapes incomparable with a human—mountains, the Great Canyon, Niagara Falls, etc. In culture, geographic images of a place/landscape fix its properties, though sometimes lost, and present cultural memory including the unrealized variants of development. For instance, the project of swapping Siberian rivers will exist in the image of Siberia and its cultural landscape for a long time, as the Soviet era symbol of

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barbaric exploitation of natural resources, the symbol which ultimately showed the victory of reasonable intelligence over the administration will. We see as the most interesting information and semiotic processes that result in turning of geographical objects into a differently ordered system of their images. Such system has its inner hierarchy of geo-objects significance in a given culture, its own structure closely connected with the structure of the geographic space but is not equivalent to it. The unique pattern of meanings that have their coordinates in the geographic space develops, in the long run, the structure of the cultural landscape of a country. Such components as a ‘centre—periphery’ are revealed, while the space of the province with its antithesis and semantic background for capital cities, at a closer examination, happens to be unique in each unit and does not demand opposition to the capital for its cultural identification. System of centres, focused on themselves, the meaning of entire countries or regions prevail in study of geographic images. Most often these centres are the capital, administrative or spiritual. The meaning grows when it concerns the study of most dynamic cultural layers, i.e. the creative elite is more open to outside information influence than traditional culture, the spatial views of which are based on religious and mythological archetypes. Thus, in Russian culture Moscow is presented as the symbol of Russia in its ‘nativeness’ by the capital city poetic elite of the eighteenth and early twentieth century (See: Lavrenova 1998), Paris as the symbol of France, Jerusalem as the symbol of the Bible space, etc. And besides that, any local culture traditionally fills its geographic centre with eschatological sense. The meaning might have different spatial resonance, from local to global. For instance, the ‘farther’ is the place, provided it is not the country or cultural capital, more often the unique meaning of its selectiveness and centrality disappears, and cultural-historic associations connected with this place as a dominant of the place image become significant. Concentration in a region of a developed system of centre, significant for the national picture of the world, shows its ‘mental development’ by culture, and forming of a ‘self-identification core’ of the cultural landscape which does not always coincide with the previously developed territories. Sometimes, judging from semantic content of images and other information parameters, this core shifts to foreign territories. For instance, according to the Russian eighteenth century poetry, Europe but not the European part of Russia was considered the most ‘mentally developed’ and significant territory in the aristocratic culture of the Russian Enlightenment (Lavrenova 1998). Hence, in our opinion, the system of geographical images is a kind of ‘saturated solution’ of meanings and symbols from which the sign systems of cultural landscapes are crystallized. Images transform into signs with the help of symbolic and metaphoric elements.

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5.3 Cultural Landscape Semiotics What are we to do with the plains’ beatennes, With their miracle’s drawn-out hunger? Is not the opennes we think in them Beheld by us, seen, as we fall asleep? And ever the question grows: Whither and where are they? And does there not across them slowly creep He about whom we cry out in our sleep, The Judas of the non-created space. O. Mandelshtam

5.3.1 Semiotic Structure of the Landscape: Spatial Codes and Precedential Signs Every sign can get its full significance only in the context of other signs when the context is considered the widest principle (Losev 1982: 59).

Objects—images—sings—symbols in the landscape and geocultural space are of interest due to their direct neighborhood with the other, and such neighborhood in the physical space conditions their communication. According to some modern scholars, communicative function is inherent not only to signs but also to images; if we take the “communication” term in the widest sense we will discover the communicative function in an image as well. But this wide sense of communication makes us abandon the use of concepts of information and communication. We can hardly argue that by means of an image we can get any information or message. This happens only when an image takes the role of a sign but this role is not leading for an image. No doubt that an image can ‘tell’ something, and with an image we can communicate, although may turn into an unappropriate use of concepts or meanings (Taran 2011).

Images joining a communication, in most cases, are deprived of their original polysemantics and act as signs. In this way the sense of space is developed that are studied primarily in regard of an urban landscape in architecture philosophy. We will partly use these developments when ‘playing’ with landscape dimensions. The sense of space, to Pellegrino, a theoretician of architecture, is born from articulation whether it is articulation from the signified to the signifying, from the content to the contained, or from the formed to the forming. Therefore, sense is an order of a semiological structure. But sense is also connected with the contextual size of processes, and in this case it is a combinational fruit of territorial units that produce local events. It acquires spatial-temporal existence (Pellegrino 1999: 80).

In the previous section the images that occur around a territorial unit were discussed, and this point shows another aspect, ‘materialization’ of sense, its ‘transition

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from abstract existence into spatial-temporal one through naming of the space’ (Pellegrino 1999: 82). To Pellegrino, any branch of semiology of space studies a mode by which a territory is organized and which is realized through the ‘users’, i.e. local and regional culture. The semiotic structure of the local landscape is built on signs and environmental zones that are full of sense, too. Various spatial codes regulating semiotization of space are distinguished, such as architectonic, objective-functional, social-symbolic, and each of them plays its role in human activity. According to L. Chertov’s classification, the architectonic code sets standards of a subject’s response to relationship between objects, the objective-functional code expresses function of objects in subject-object relations, the social-symbolic code regulates the mediation of inter-subjective relations. Being involved into different aspects of activity these codes address different levels of consciousness and use different types of semiotic means. That is why they do not compete nor duplicate each other but are used together as a more or less wide set of means of understanding the semiotized space (Chertov 1999: 100).

Architectonic code ‘is a set of visually perceptible signs of the forces that affect formation, preservation or change of visible spatial forms’ (Chertov 1999: 94). The size of objects (buildings, hills, ponds, etc.), masses and ‘voids’, form of objects, horizontal and vertical orientation, place in space, all these are not only ‘signs of power’ but they develop the ‘power field’ of sense-forms where the role of grammar belongs to the rules of formations of meaningful spatial relations. Organized under these rules, spatial constructions form ‘syntagms’ of the architectonic code. However, the substantial difference of spatial syntagmatics from temporal one is that it doesn’t depend on the linear principle of the signifying which is considered, to F. de Saussure, the basis of the entire linguistic mechanism. Spatial syntagms do not develop in one dimension but simultaneously in three dimensions of anthropomorphic coordinates where the ‘height’, ‘length’ and ‘width’ have different dynamic indexes (Chertov 1999: 95).

Regarding the written above it’s worth noting that if we upgrade to one level in the territorial hierarchy and study the regional cultural landscape the architectonic code here will be given not in the direct perception of objects but in their images. Mountain systems and plains, hollows and seas are volumes and masses not perceived directly though the importance of their architectonic properties in culture may sometimes be read by means of geographic maps. Objective-functional codes of space allow, in a local landscape, distinguishing places of recreation, meetings, production, etc. In the cultural landscape of macro regions objective-functional codes are quite rare since there is no narrow functional purpose of objects except science towns, military camps and firing fields. Typical for the Soviets figure names of specialized industry regions like ‘the smithy of the country’ did not extend. In semantics of the local cultural landscape, in the context of the social-symbolic code big role is played by separate sign objects like a monument of architecture, statue, a railway station, gates, etc.

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The volume of an architectural construction may be perceived as a sign: a City Hall as a symbol of power; a railway station as gates to other cities, a symbol of traveling; a residential building as a symbol of security, comfort (Iovlev 1999: 105).

L. Chertov succeeded in formulating the genesis laws of meaning of objects in the context of the symbolic code. …The erection of a monument on a square or, vice versa, its removal, can be studied as an analogue of a statement which has a subject-predicate structure. Thus, a monument on a square serves as a spatial equivalent of a name, and its place in space becomes a predicate of an opinion supporting the public recognition of the depicted person. A monument commemorating an event, or a cathedral symbolizing a religious idea develop more complex construction since they cannot be reduced to a sign serving only nominative functions (Chertov 1999: 100).

A signifying form (a monument, triumphal arch, etc.) becomes a term of spatial thinking and acquires its sense only when installed at an appropriate place. Appealing to a different territorial and hierarchical level, it is possible to say that cities when their construction is a specific symbolic act may similarly become analogues of a statement in the cultural landscape of a country. The examples at this point are Saint-Petersburg and Komsomolsk-na-Amure. The first was meant as the ‘window into Europe’, and simultaneously repeated the name of the patron saint of its founder; the second fixed the Soviet power in the Far East borders of the country and contained the idea of communism in its name. Renaming of the cities during the Soviet era an appearing of the cities-personal-names such as Kirov, Kuibyshev, etc., also served as a symbolic statement of the new political elite in the cultural space. New Jerusalem brought out, both in its name and inner semantic structure, the religious idea of the Heavenly City, heavenly Jerusalem and the analogue of Jerusalem on the earth. According to N. Zamyatina, the observing points (in some cases, smelling points, hearing points, etc.) may act’ as specific sign objects in a local landscape. The latent symbolic layer reflects sign objects that are not visually (or in any other way of monitoring) reflected in the landscape, i.e. separate texts concerning the territory as well as the total information on a particular topic (Zamyatina 2009: 50).

Regarding the town of Kasimov, the period of the Kasimov kingdom is distinguished as such information, the period of the regular river navigation, ore mining in the suburbs, etc. Analysis of social-symbolic systems in the landscape allows observing that the elements of a landscape that bear sense may be purposefully “placed” in a landscape (monuments, pillars, memorial tables), but more often a community (or even an author) give certain sense to other natural or anthropomorphic objects; these may be “cherished” oaks, groves, cliffs, old buildings, etc. Deep sense is usually endowed to places associated with specific events or a person’s activity. It often happens when objects designed with a particular symbolic purpose are endowed with new sense… (Zamyatina 2009: 46).

A separate sense unit of a city landscape as a sign system, to V. Iovlev, is an architectural chronotope

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observed in multitude of spatial-temporal archetypes. Their artistic meaning is expressed in the system of spatial-temporal signs. This is a variety approach of the initial description of a phenomenon. Further study of the chronotope is related with distinguishing invariants in different spatial-temporal archetypes (Iovlev 1999: 107).

Toponym-signs, geographical-objects-signs, landscape-signs can have precedential genesis, or express ‘a typical situation’, ‘typical standard landscape’ which has been already discussed. It is a kind of a stereotype, a fragment of the conceptual world picture, notably, a minimized-invariant fragment (which can be clearly seen in animation where a birch or a mixed fur-tree and birch forest is a standard site in Russian folk tales and their later modifications). A precedential cultural sign acts as a variety of a culture sign, and correlates with the concept of significance as a cultural value feature, precedential cultural signs are valuable in intellectual and emotional regard, they are signs of different nature (verbal and nonverbal), repeatedly used in various communication acts, with their overpersonal character, associated with the facts of culture of a given community, and that haven’t lost the “cultural memory” (Lotman) about the source, authorship and/or previous contexts of use (Pikuleva 2006: 118).

As to dichotomy of the cultural (and/or historical) precedent and ‘typical situation’, with the objects of the geographic space we use theoretical developments of authors of the lingua-culturologic dictionary The Russian Cultural Space; they refer to as precedential phenomena the following ones: 1) well-known to every member of a national-lingua-cultural community (‘of an overpersonal character’); 2) relevant in the cognitive (learning and emotional) aspect; 3) appeal to which is repeated in the speech of members of a national-lingua-cultural community (Russian Cultural... 2004: 16).

Precedential situation which may occur in the geocultural space is a kind of ‘standard, ideal’ situation connected with a number of particular connotations, various features of which have the cognitive base; the precedential situation signifier might be a precedential statement or name (e.g. Khodynka, Time of Troubles), or a non-precedential phenomenon (an apple, seduction, cognition, an exile, as attributes of the same situation) (Russian Cultural... 2004: 17).

Let us underline here that the non-precedential phenomenon, as given by the authors of the dictionary, also has the attributes of ‘the garden of paradise’, which is featured in poetry, and semantics of gardens of the Western Middle Ages, and landscape painting (Likhatchev 1998: 70–71) by forming of a sustainable iconic sign (will be discussed below). A precedential situation can be formed not only by events but also by texts which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. Geographical objects and elements of a landscape become symbols provided that in culture there are sustainable associations with dramatic historical events, artifacts or unique features of the landscape. National history, embodied in the cultural landscape of the country, turns into symbols.

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Motivation-symbols are, as a rule, landscape sign of ethnical integrity perceived as an ethnic group destiny. For Russian people, these are the Volga, Kulikovo and Borodino battle fields, Damp Mother Earth (Mat’ Syra Zemlya) where the Virgin and Saint Andrew walked (Chesnov 1998: 77).

In case of actualization of the archaic and religious-mythological layers of culture, geographical objects, localities, elements of landscapes, geographic space as a whole become expressions of archetypes of human consciousness which was discussed in detail in Chap. 2.

5.3.2 Rules of Semiotics Applied to the Cultural Landscape The cultural landscape is a semiotic system where almost all rules of semiotics are observed. For instance, the rule of minimization, reduction of the original, and, similarly to reduction of cultural mentality to its ‘cognitive base’, minimization is carried out not by “volume” reduction but by “quality reduction”, through developing an invariant of perception of a cultural object… (Russian Cultural… 2004: 10–11).

Information contained in both physical-geographic and cultural landscape shows extreme diversity. ‘…Ethnocultural information might be manifested in different ways, exists in different versions’ (Berezovich 2000: 23), and one of them is toponymy. Initially a toponym stands for a name or sign in a landscape. To Losev, linguistic name ‘is an active factor in formation, or to put it better, re-formation of the signified, hence the meaning itself’; it ‘comes not just from the reflection of reality in the human mind or thought but from active intervention into reality, from active selection of that what a human needs for communication, in other words, from communicative use of reality, and therefore its remaking or presenting’ (Losev 1982: 11, 13).

We can add that naming of geographical objects, places, tracts, elements of microlandscapes is an act of conquering the space prior to its physical development. Yuri Lotman wrote about the cultural function of proper names in space, Conscious behavior is impossible without a choice, i.e. the moment of individuality, and therefore implies the existence of the space filled with proper names (Lotman 2000:36)

which, in our opinion, can be attributed firstly to a toponymicon which allows navigating in space. A toponym, provided it was formed as quintessence of the landscape attributes, does not transmit all its content but only one most significant feature. As a result, some toponyms allow reading typical feature of a landscape that existed a few centuries ago (sometimes still extant) and is still there in the name, i.e. vegetation, terrain,

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rivers and lakes and their condition. Thus, the river named Nadym (from the Nenets ‘nyadey’ meaning Reindeer Moss River) runs in the area rich with reindeer moss (Russian Onomastics… 1994: 121); the town named Elets (from Russian ‘eletz’ meaning fir-tree or oak wood, oak shrub) shows that the given geographic name initially appeared as a name of the fir-tree wood or small forest considered a natural border (Russian Onomastics… 1994: 64).

A geographical object (and its toponym) involved into the national cultural history becomes a sign which means not only most typical feature of the landscape but also those that are considered symbolic in the most general value system of the given culture. As a result, the principle of reducing the initial set of signs is observed, and only the brightest and mostly focused in the toponym-symbol signs are left from initial multiple meanings. Hence, the functioning toponymic material demands not the ‘cultural names’ analyses but rather a more thorough culturally oriented understanding of the entire toponymicon, and a specific cultural hermeneutics of the geographical names system (Berezovich 2000: 13).

Thinking over a toponymicon it is necessary to bear in mind the landscape and toponymic strata that stand as witnesses of historic genesis of culture on a given section of the earth surface. The cultural landscape space (Cosmos) consists of the developed, covered with strata, part – the landscape-toponymic oecumene, and not covered (void) – landscape-toponymic Lacuna. Developing in time, the strata go through several stages, i.e. birth, development, fading and disappearance. Rather often a stratum does not disappear completely, it stays extant as a ‘relic’. It is possible to distinguish a number of strata in the cultural landscape of the southwestern part of Moscow region: the Balt, Russian (sovereign), Soviet (kolkhoz), and dacha (country-house) (Glukhov 2009: 66).

As a result, a landscape-toponymic palimpsest is formed in which the relic toponymicon, although ‘transparent’ through the modern geographic names network, becomes a set of sounds signifying a geographic object. Its original meaning given at naming, the one in which the part of geographic information necessary for communication in the passed away culture was stressed, stays conceivable only for the narrow circle of linguists. The principle of discrete transmission of a continuous content is observed in the cultural landscape not only due to discretion of the continuous informationspatial stream. In the sign system of the cultural landscape, information continuously (although not equally, with more information in one place than another) distributed in space turns intro information concentrated in a number of points separated from each other by ‘void’ space. In this case, the places the fullest of information become specific symbols of a holistic landscape. Ordering of information in the cultural landscape does happen but not in a strict sense sequence. The principle of delimitation, division of the text, is not always appropriate for the cultural landscape. For instance, one cannot claim that the sense of the toponym-symbol ‘Moscow’ is apt to division into meanings of toponym symbolic

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of Moscow region towns. Nevertheless, population of Moscow region is clearly perceived as the Muscovites by people of other regions of Russia. And a toponymsign like Moscow has the same structure and can act as a perfect model for other signs. The use of the toponym of state capitals as an analogue of the states in the geopolitical discourse can be studies as a synecdoche (from the Greek ‘recognition’), changing a word signifying a part of a whole by a word signifying the whole (generalizing synecdoche), or vice versa, changing of a word signifying a whole by a word signifying a part of a whole (narrowing synecdoche). Regarding toponyms-signs, the trope of metonymy, replacement of the name based not on similarity but contiguity, i.e. contact of things in space or in time, is observed. While in the Urals, the toponym ‘Moscow’ is applied to the population of both Moscow region and Central Russia, the metonym replacement ‘Moscow—Russia’ is typical abroad. According to Trubeeva, who studied this question in detail, there are several models of metonymic replacement of toponyms, they are as follows: 1) The name of the part of the world, region – countries (states) situated in that part of the world or region: They are not looking forward to meeting us in the Baltic. 2) The name of the part of the world, region – population of these countries or region: I believe, Europe is closer to us, and better understands us. Metonymic replacement of toponyms conditioned by temporal connection between the concepts of adjacent objects is presented by the same model: geographic name – period when an event connected with this place took place: Before the Wimbledon started only few people regarded him as favorite. Metonymic replacement of toponyms conditioned by partial connection between the concepts of adjacent objects (synecdoche) are presented by different models, as follows: 1) The name of a country, capital city – the government: The US is asking Ukraine for explanation. < …> 2) The name of a country (state) – the national army: After the war Iraq started reducing its forces (Trubeeva 2006: 293).

In the geocultural space, to B. Uspensky, when studying a toponym the situation of metonymy and metaphor should be distinguished; assimilation of a traditional term related to some initial territory might have a character of metonymy or metaphor. When England is called Great Britain we observe metonymy. When a city in US is named New Orleans or New York, metaphor is clearly observed (Uspensky 2004a).

In other words, when a toponym is used to name a bigger territory compared with the original one it is metonymy which indicates cultural expansion and not cultural orientation as metaphorical toponymy does. In the cultural landscape, as much as in any other sign system, only the meanings for which the sign system has means of expression are fixed. Characteristics of the geographical object that caused its use as a sign correlate with the signified, categories of thinking of a particular culture and ethnic group. In a landscape, even transcendental categories might be expressed if they initially have spatial-sign expression like, for instance, ‘the world axes, ‘the world line’.

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5.3.3 Classification of Signs of Spatial and Semantic Network Sign classification by Charles Peirce (Peirce 2000), we believe, is applicable to the cultural landscape most of all. According to his theory, signs-toponyms depending on their meaning can be symbolic (a sign symbolizing general property of the signified), iconic (a sign has a direct resemblance to the signified), and indexical (causal relationship between the sign and the signified). In the two latter cases primarily geographical objects and not their names act as signs. Symbolic-index signs where a geographical object, its visual, eventful, historic features are inextricably connected with a toponym are most frequently used. And in most cases they are cities. A city by itself is a symbol of a complex society (Lynch 1960); it merges sociocultural and architectural features that are commonly present as associations when it is mentioned. In capital cities, this property is expressed at its brightest. At the level of extreme abstraction, all complexity of a city can be expressed in the name, e.g. Rome, or in a monument or building like the Eiffel Tower, in architectural elements like New York skyscrapers, or in a slogan or a nickname (Tuan 1976: 192).

Regarding the already mentioned capitals, in Russian culture Moscow usually symbolizes the soul of Russia (symbolic sign), the idea of its Asian legacy (index sign—non-European form of construction, etc.). Rome is the symbol of European Mediterranean culture (symbol) and the expression of the idea of Catholicism (index). Provincial towns act as such not as often as e.g. Ismail, Narva, Port Arthur, and other towns symbolizing events of the military history, and the Russian Golden Ring towns associated with the ancient history of Russia and its architecture. Symbolic signs as toponyms of rivers since causal relationship between them and their meaning in culture are weaker than in case of city toponyms. E.g., in Russian culture, the Indus and Ganges are symbols of wealth and prosperity of exotic India, the Neva is the symbol of the state (in Russian poetry the attributes ‘imperial’ and ‘royal’ are used in connection with it). Pure iconic signs are rare since for the use of a geographical object as such it should bear well-defined characteristics correlated with the sign system of cultural mentality meaningful in its semiosphere. For instance, an iconic sign in Russian culture is the Urals (Ripheus) meaning the border, limit. The extent and mountain terrain, position between the old developed cultural space and recently colonized Siberian space, hard accessibility until the early nineteenth century are the traits of the Urals that played their role in using it as an iconic sign. The iconographic worldview has been preserved in the internal organization of the cultural landscape of the country. The studies (Lavrenova 1998) show that, in Russian poetry, Russian culture is territorially organized, similar to the iconic. The horizontal axis of space is shown in major rivers of European Russian (the Volga, the Dnieper, the Don). The vertical axis connecting the earth and the sky passes via Moscow, the focus of Russian culture before the 1917 October Revolution, and via the capital city of Saint-Petersburg, the cultural center which is simultaneously the infernal pole where the axis ‘deepens’ into ‘the underworld’. To the east of the Urals,

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beyond the border dividing Cosmos and Chaos, the space of the potential strength of the state is spread out, i.e. Siberia. In Ricoeur’s opinion, ‘… sensations accompany and add imagination through visual relationship’ (Ricoeur 1990: 431). Due to the picture which occurs in mind, a text or metaphor can be studied as an iconic sign. The same is true for toponyms; toponyms that ‘are heard’ and have many stereotypical images in mass mind, in cultural mentality they act as iconic signs. If we study ‘the iconic as the emotionally experienced’ (Ricoeur 1990: 431) the local cultural landscape can be presented as a system of iconic signs or a polyvalent iconic sign which transforms by reducing information into a hieroglyph. The hieroglyphic model (which is similarly found in any other mode of writing) visually unites all the diversity of forms and functions of a sign Any verbal or nonverbal sign might be used on such levels, in such role and configuration that are not prescribed by its ‘essence’ but are born of the game of differences (Derrida 2000: 363).

Differences of the relief, tracts and facies of the natural landscape, and sense differences make the ‘N-dimensional’ hieroglyph of the cultural landscape combining natural and cultural components. The basic color (hints of green in vegetation, red sand, grey stone, etc.) and the sound of the landscape (rivers roaring far, bird singing, vehicle noise), plasticity of the relief, and architectural forms can influence beyond consciousness affecting deep layers of the perceiver’s personality, and are connected with cultural archetypes. Hence, we can summarize that, on a local level, the mentioned ‘standard landscapes’ are first of all perceived as an iconic sign expanded in space. All the above mentioned signs are being re-included into culture through understanding which acts as a necessary term and moment of objective existence of the sign in human activity and communication. Due to understanding the necessary organic component of the sign, its sense appears. However, the act of understanding together with sign formation are not given to a researcher or watcher directly as opposing him operation objects. This also means that the sign generally existing as the unity of the sign material and meaning cannot directly become the object of operation (Schedrovitsky 1971: 220).

Thus, to operate signs-toponyms and signs-geo-objects in particular, it is necessary to undertake a series of logical operation. Classification based on the ‘basic mark’ worked out by Solomonick (1995) is less applicable to the cultural landscape as a sign system although such mental operation might help to reveal some of its hidden properties. As a starting stage in philo- and ontogenesis, sign systems, based on natural signs (real objects or phenomena) not available for direct watching, are distinguished. The appearance of a landscape or a paysage acts as such a sign system. Forms of hills, meandering rivers, plasticity of plains, etc., are apt to deciphering, and according to these natural signs history is restored, e.g. it is possible to describe the glace era according to the form of moraine boulders, and burial mounds can tell about ancient tombs.

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It has been already much said about geographical images that can, within this classification, act as a sign-image basic for the sign system of the relevant type. Solomonick’s conception presents the sign-image as a picture of a phenomenon or an object related to it on the isomorphic principle. In our case, isomorphism is unattainable but geographical images are more or less similar in structure, symbolic and content component with relevant geographical objects. It is argued that image sign systems prevail in culture, and for the cultural landscape this type is the most expressive. The cultural landscape as a cultural phenomenon is a sign system of an image type with its own image paradigm and conditional syntax principally different from other systems. Language sign systems the basis of which is a word or its equivalent, in a landscape, are present on the toponym level and artistic, scholar, advertisement and legal texts connected with a geographical object. A word sign, although of a conventional and conditional term, is more informative then a sign-image but in the cultural landscape case these signs appear to be genetically linked due to the systems of views forming the image that, in their turn, are partially formed by written texts. The systems based on the basic sign of a hieroglyph, i.e. system of writing, are vital for representation of the cultural landscape in the form of geographic maps, map charts and models of geographic images. In this form both, geographical research data and reflections on the geographic space in the humanities, and structure of geographic images revealed by their phenomenological interpretation are recorded. These systems of writing compose the information layer of any cultural landscape, and the basis of its further interpretation by culture as well as developing invariants of a new level. To Solomonick, the highest level of hierarchy of sign systems is mathematical codes the basic sign of which is a symbol. In such reading, a symbol is practically not applicable to the cultural landscape as a sign system. There are, of course, statistic calculations of economic-geographic, sociogeographic and geological reality but these are neither the phenomena nor the mode of description that are beyond the discourse in the humanities within which we comprehend the cultural landscape. Hence, when the semantics of geographic objects is studied within the semiosphere of the world culture the geocultural space is seen as a spatial-semantic network. The nodes of such network are cities, rivers, mountain peaks and mountain ranges filled with history, senses and human ideals. Some of them are so significant in event and mythological human history that are seen as geographic ‘mapping’ of transcendent, divine archetypes. Infernal component inevitably present in the semantics of a modern city is also vital as the ‘wrong side’ of the world view. Different objects of spatial-semantic network are in complex, rich in nuances but undeniable relationship. For instance, relationship of toponyms ‘Vatican—Jerusalem—Constantinople’ are read as symbolic of two branches of Christianity, while the bipolar relationship ‘Jerusalem—Mecca’ is read as an impossible merging of two cultural and religious worlds. In every internally coherent spatial and semantic network a special place is taken by its boundaries.

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Every culture starts with the division of the world into internal (‘our’) space and external (‘their’) space. Interpretation of such division depends on cultural typology. However, this division belongs to universals. Boundaries might divide the living from the dead, settled from nomadic, a town from a steppe, and can be of state, social, religious or any other character. It is really amazing how civilizations not connected with each other can find identical expressions to describe the world on the other side of the boundary (Lotman 2000: 257).

The latent image of a boundary is a ‘void sign’, and is rather weighty in the cultural landscape sign system of any taxonomic rank. The boundary due to its ontological essence seems to be one of most important elements of semiosis, having also its spatial expression. …Most “hot” points of semiosis are the semiosphere boundaries. The concept of a boundary is ambiguous. On the one hand, it divides, and on the other, connects. It is always a boundary with something, and therefore simultaneously belongs to both bordering cultures, and both adjacent semiospheres. A boundary is bi- and polylingual. A boundary is a mechanism of text translation of alien semiotics into the language of ‘ours’, a place of transformation of the ‘external’ into ‘internal’, it is filter membrane which transforms alien texts to make them applicable for the internal semiotics of the semiosphere though keeping their foreign nature (Lotman 2000: 262).

In cultural landscapes, a boundary has its manifestation in a site, and is a place of cross-cultural communication, a particular field of enriching senses, especially when it concerns boundaries not only of local but also national cultures. Spatial-semantic network is apt to be of multilevel division. Changing the level of the world culture and religious worlds to the level of national cultures, many spatial-semantic units meaningful in the context of the cultural landscape semiosphere of a country can be discovered. Such division is possible up to the local level when elements of the observed plot of a landscape, i.e. a paysage, act as signs. Here, in addition to the meanings concentrated in spatial forms and having historic and archetypical genesis, aesthetics takes its rightful place. In Vyacheslav Ivanov’s opinion, different types of semiotic systems vary in the nature of proportion between the signifying side and the signified. In art, for instance, the signifying side prevails, while in science and mysticism the signified one (Ivanov 2004: 125). Geocultural space as a semiotic system, in our opinion, represents an equilibrium relation of these sides. Geographic objects and their toponyms that become symbols always involve visual characteristics or connotations that are certainly important since they make, in majority cases, the basis of semiosis. However, the signified connected with the geographic space, in this system, are similarly important, and mainly affect the perception of the geographical object when getting directly in touch with it.

5.4 Conclusions

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5.4 Conclusions Thus, the nature of relations of culture and geographic space allow talking on the cultural landscape as a sign system due to which the geocultural space can be studied in all its abundance and uniqueness of local sense and interconnections between them. The sign system of the cultural landscape is additional, i.e. divisible into elementary components, and which is more complicated, into sub-systems. It is not stable since one and the same toponym might change its meaning over time. Relations between elements of this sign system are relations of informational proximity expressing the quantity and quality of information about a geographic object inserted into the toponym-sign. Such semantic network is always centrifugal, every element is being valued from the center. The node of the network is always appropriate to the toponym of the culture the views of which on space are being studied (ethnocentrism phenomenon). Such systems tend ‘to branch’ making many affiliated/derived meanings, and, with the sign mechanism of culture discovered by Lotman (2002, 65), the law of complexity of semiotic structures leads to difficulties in understanding them, and reduces the possibility of unambiguous decryption. The picture becomes more complex due to the fact that texts and codes in the cultural system tend to changing ranks thus getting universality or shrinking to strict individual conceptuality (Lotman 2002: 66).

And this is more than right regarding the multilayer branching system of the cultural landscape. Unlike the translingual approach which deals with multicast semiology systems ‘meaning under the language, and never beyond it’ (Barthes 1975: 115), the semiotic approach to the cultural landscape reveals many meanings that exist beyond the language, in the subconscious field. Geographic information becomes a sign passing a number of general stages: views, an image, schematization of the ‘cloud of meanings’ of a geographical image, conventionalization, i.e. binding of the code meaning connected with a certain geographical object, and giving meaningful details, distinguishing information that turns into a sign which is also included into the matrix of the sense circle. The cultural landscape semantics problem allows getting into the next level of theorizing, that is reading it as a ‘text’.

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Chapter 6

Cultural Landscape as Text

Abstract This chapter special attention is paid to theoretical and methodological issues of studying the cultural landscape by means of textual methods. In the first section we discussed the history of structural and poststructural understanding of the text. Yuri Lotman’s concept of the text and the concept of semiosphere significantly expand the possibilities for studying not only culture, but the geographical space that is transformed by culture—the cultural landscape. Concept of textuality loses certainty of its borders and covers an extremely broad scope of human activity. Necessarily subjective mental constructs in the perception and scientific interpretation of reality were pointed by Boris Gasparov who introduced the concept of presumption of textuality into scientific. The presumption of textuality according to Boris Gasparov (in respect of acts of speech) is the need to submit a statement or event as direct and entirely foreseeable phenomenon. In the context of the presumption of textuality cultural landscape is an ideal object of study. The formation and existence of the cultural landscape defines its semantic structure, where not only events but also places associated with them are perceived as significant and carry a certain message to society. The criterion for significance of place in the culture supports the use of its name as a unit of the text and the ability of name for the formation of secondary (figurative) values, i.e. for denomination (Elena Berezovich). The secondary or figurative meanings of place names represent the message—for example, the secondary meanings of names Kamchatka and Kolyma doesn’t cause any serious discrepancies. These messages may be read in their historical and, accordingly, the semantic consistency. Sometimes, the loci-messages are used to generate new messages, for example, in the development of pilgrimage routes and thematic tours. In other cases, reading the loci-messages, the interpretation of place meanings and the local text of culture depends on the intentions of the perceiver. Names of places allow us to consider the texts of the cultural landscape as a «rolled-up mnemonic programs» (Yuri Lotman). Signs-place names and corresponding geographical objects are in certain respects to each other. The process of creating of any text is indicated by Alexander Piatigorsky as a subjective situation. Subjective situation in the cultural landscape continues infinitely, and the process of reading (perception) also does not stop, respectively, the subjective and the objective situations coincide in time. Culture doesn’t not only deal with (inherits, reflexes) previously created and captured in the geographical space senses, © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 O. Lavrenova, Spaces and Meanings, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3_6

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but also makes its own changes, even as a result of perception, if it involves revising messages created earlier. In this regard, with respect to the space semantically ordered by culture, nothing can be more appropriate than the notion of intertext, which occurs as a result of «reading-writing», as a space of convergence of various citations (Julia Kristeva). We come to the fact that the concept of the text is perceived and interpreted extremely broad—as flexible hierarchical, adjustably structuring system of significant elements (Vladimir Abashev), which allows us to interpret the cultural landscape as a text. In the second section patterns of existence of the text of the cultural landscape are examined. In the cultural landscape, as it was already noted, there is a fixation of meanings in space, which are changing, in spite of all its fluidity, nevertheless these meaning are associated with the place/region or macroregion of their appearing. The spatial structure of the cultural landscape can serve as a text, where each element has strong values and meanings. The intersection of meanings in a single locus gives the increment of meaning. The very multivalency in the space has a value of «cultural saturation», bordering on with the concept of cultural heritage. Elements of structure «center—province—periphery—the border» determine meanings of each specific geographical objects, occupying a certain place in this matrix. Roads in the cultural landscape serve both a spokesmen idea of communication and proper communication, especially actual in travelling, generating new meanings (the classics of the genre—«Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow» by Alexander Radishchev). The concept of palimpsest is applied to cultural landscape; the concept is used in interpretation and analysis of other texts of culture. Culture texts of various epochs are manifested in the landscape; overlapping one another, forming unique combinations, many of them falling into a new cultural-historical context are «read» again, sometimes with diametrically opposite permutation of emphasis and meanings. The logic of the sign system of cultural landscape is nonlinear; it doesn’t have a clear narrative structure. One can imagine the cultural landscape as netting meanings. If there are nodes, there is a fabric of irregular weaving. In the structure of the cultural landscape the emphasis is made on the selection of system of centers and semantically meaningful territories. In the cultural landscape there are polysemantic signs and lacunae of meaning. Actually the natural properties of the area have their meaning, but only in the presence of the observer. Lacunas may arise as wrong side of meanings in a particular system of philosophical, aesthetic, ethical origin. It is like natural landfills or «tent cities» of homeless that recur in the landscape of the city, but in places, virtually uncontrolled by urban civilization. The concept of the «escheated» area allocated by researchers there where weaker qualities or features for which this or that territory belongs to the great cultural or economic center of gravity is interesting in this respect. In cultural studies, though culture is seen as a text, the structural unit of the text is not defined. But the spatial component of culture requires a manifestation of the structure. In the cultural landscape the locus/place can become the structural unit, but in a different sense—as the locus-symbol, locus-message, locus-sign, for it implies that the symbolic value is connected to a particular territorial unit.

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The third section presents opportunities to explore the urban landscape rendered as a text. City is a special type of cultural landscape, which has a hyper-semantic richness, where each element and relationship of elements bears a message. A cityscape is full of symbols and messages where semantic of bypassed historical periods is transmitted; the elements of urban structure are also charged semantically—the planning of historical center and outskirts speak for themselves, etc. Deep ideas or the archetypes of world culture lie in the notion of the city. Myths, symbols and images serve as the basis of perception and reading the city: squares, circles, vertical lines are perceived in their archetypical sense—as a mandala (a symbolic scheme of the universe) of a city (Alexander Barabanov). Exploring the semantics of the landscape of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Toporov identifies such coefficients as: straightness, curvature, sloping streets; organization of space; indoor-outdoor space; the discontinuity-continuity and separation-fusion of space. The city has its own «language»—its physiognomic elements and objects (streets, squares, monuments, etc.), the city is interpreted in cultural studies as the heterogeneous text and has some common sense. The internal structure of the city, like the internal structure of the text, consists of a system of units and nodes (Kevin Lynch), links (relations) and the properties inherent in the city (the text), as a whole. Cities like literary texts have their own genre image that expresses to some extent the meaning of the place, the meaning of the city (Ekaterina Koneva). The fourth section discusses possible strategies for reading the text of the cultural landscape. In contemporary philosophy of culture (Valery Podoroga) the process of reading is understood as an attempt to understand the Other. The reader engages into communication with a text, which may be presented as the entity that understands its reader. The text grows, pervades its reader. Therefore, «reading» the text of the cultural landscape is similar to the method of modeling images of place offered by Dmitri Zamyatin—latent information is converted by a researcher, who comes in an active communication with it, in the space-sign model. In the act of reading the text of the cultural landscape one should take into account the fact that semiotic systems, as they determined by Yuri Lotman, while being read require a translation, as the semiotic mechanisms—that are not only essential for accurate transmission of the text, but they are mechanisms of the creative consciousness. The message, which appears as the text, suggests at least two cultural codes, not identical but equivalent—one encodes the text; the other is used for its decoding. Given that the exposition of the text of the cultural landscape is non-linear and does not determine by itself the direction of reading, that gets the reader more opportunities for deciphering and interpretation. In the cultural landscape there are always some areas, lines, and «blocks» for reading. The texts-landscapes of national history are easiest for reading. For example, the study of the semiotic structure of the cultural landscape of Russia based on Russian Poetry (Olga Lavrenova) shows that it is «frozen in the space a wave of colonization». Earlier developed European part of Russia is separated from the

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structureless, internally chaotic the space-place name Siberia by border-frontier of the Ural Mountains. The same text of the cultural landscape of Russia can not be read in historical, but also in religious and mythological way. This reading, in contrast to the historical, is more versatile and at the same time more general. Texts of cultural landscapes of regional and local levels can be read in the same vein. Geopolitical reading (in the prism of politics in the cultural landscape of Russia, where quite other structural elements stand out –for example such as «red belt»), reading from the history of ideas or geobiography of individuals can be justified. Reading of the landscape has a few other key approaches. First, it is determined by the point review, and secondly, plastic landscape, its rhythm, structure stand out as important elements. Reading of the landscape has three main levels—poetry (sensitive), aesthetic and cognitive. In the fifth section, another strategy for reading of the text of the cultural landscape is proposed—through local cultural texts representing a body of art, documentary and folklore texts related to a specific place. The texts of works of art serve as generators of meanings for a specific cultural landscape/place. The presence of texts that are genetically related to the landscape implies that the landscape as a semiotic system is also built on the principle of «mosaic of citations», as the product of absorption in the informational component of the landscape of other texts and while reading this intertext—the generation of other texts are launched. Vladimir Toporov fundamentally investigated for the first time the issue with local text of culture by the resorting to the example of St. Petersburg text of Russian culture, which he defined as a construct of a general nature, characterized by semantic overcompaction, which he termed as synthetic supertext tuned to a higher meanings and purposes, having a semantic connection, wholeness, the presence of the core rising to a single source. Vladimir Toporov examines and classifies (in axiological and ontological key) semantic aspects of the image of the city, ranging from high to low, explores the myths that underlie the text of St. Petersburg—the myth of the creator, the eschatological myth, the myth of the ontological opposition to Moscow. Nature and landscape features serve as one of the storylines in the St. Petersburg text. It is fully justified to view the Petersburg text not only as a meaning, but also as a communication function of the landscape of St. Petersburg, transmitting itself as a message «to Russia» and outside. Vladimir Abashev investigated Perm text of Russian culture. Analyzing the written sources starting from Epiphanius the Wise, Boris Pasternak to modern «samizdat» poetry, posters and brochures, the researcher includes semiotizated features of the landscape, history, geography, consumer attitudes and behavior in the Perm text. As the result paradigm of the local text is determined, here we can find both specific objects of the urban landscape and complex hybrid units like the «Permian animal style». An important element of Perm text is the ability of of its name «Perm» to be applied in anagrams, which are used as giving birth to meanings in shaping the image of the city. Resonance of Perm text in Russian culture, of course, can not be compared to the St. Petersburg text. Nevertheless, since the time of Aleksander Pushkin, pronounced the famous «from Perm to Tavrida» in the poem, addressed to

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«the slanderers of Russia», the name of «Perm» sounds like some kind of expression of existent ultimacy. Another limit can be found in the above mentioned poem filled with patriotic fervor «To the slanderers of Russia»—Tavrida—inspired Aleksander Lyusy to study the text of the Crimea, which is a more recent variation on the theme of ancient myth. The same author explores the Caucasus text of Russian literature, where, unlike other local texts, themes of captivity, love and revenge are clearly expressed. Miron Petrovsky considers Kyiv text not in the regard of Russian culture in general, but in Mikhail Bulgakov’s literary heritage, where the city of Kiev is interpreted as the eternal city (Rome-Jerusalem), perishing in a global cataclysm. The plastic landscape of Kyiv and its metaphysics (inverting spaces) are reflected in the storylines of many novels. The reflection on «the genius and the place» is no less interesting than the local texts, in this reflection authors from different positions and with different methodological arsenal study images of places and spatial concepts in some classical works of Russian literature. The monograph of Pyotr Vail «Genius Loci» seems to be the most significant study of concepts of space, made in philological vein. The sixth section—it is another strategy for reading of the cultural landscape, this time with the help of travel, which as a cultural phenomenon has its own semantic categories. The semantics of the cultural landscape requires not a dispassionate observation in the direct contact with it, but empathy—the study applying hermeneutical method of research. Worldly, mundane space is available to third-party observation and description, but it is very poor in its semantics. These spaces exist simultaneously in one and the same cultural landscape, and a traveller moving along the face of the planet, chooses in which of them he will make his way and accordingly how rich and polysemantic his observations will be. Travelling is seen as the geographical self-awareness of culture, as a prototype of a metaphor and concept of the way that is one of the fundamental in any culture. There is a classification of travel in the context of semiosphere—it is a vector in the plane for everyday travel, circling for eternal wanderers or cursed mythological characters, the vector of ascent—for spiritual journeys and pilgrimages.

I love you provincial haunts, off the map, the road, past the farms, the more tired and faded the book, the greater for me its charms. Slow files of carts lumbering by you spell out an alphabet flowing from meadow to meadow. And I found you always my favourite reading And it’s suddenly written again, here in first snow is the spider’s

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cursive script, runners of sleighs where ice on the page embroiders. B. Pasternak As was shown in the previous chapters, the information component of the cultural landscape contains signs, symbols, and metaphors. If signs and symbols are studied in their communication the research approach becomes applicable to the cultural landscape, which allows a new angle of seeing this phenomenon and studying its structural and morphologic peculiarities. The cultural landscape can be interpreted as a text. In this chapter, the cultural landscape will be studied mainly in the context of semiotics based on the work of F. de Saussure, M. Bakhtin and A. Losev. The peculiarity of this trend is in studying the language not as a set of discrete units but as an integrated system, “a flow” (to Losev) which is expressed in a text and in speech, or secondary phenomena. F. de Saussure contrasted diachronic and synchronic language study suggesting distinguishing the synchronous approach, and studying the system-text in momentary equilibrium of its elements (Saussure 1977). From this point of view of a semiotic system, a sign is a dialectical unity of the signifying (expression plane) and the signified (content plane) in linear relation. And a communicative act, not a singular discrete sign, is taken as a unit of speech expression which has an author and an addressee. The basis of semiosis is in contrast between the language and the text, and human activity is a secondary phenomenon based on a meta-code (Puchkov 1999: 199).

6.1 The Concept of a Text in Modern Cultural Science and Its Applicability to Realities of the Cultural Landscape Woven as one with the rest, Every leaf is trembling by itself, But infinitely in gusts of tissue, Called by alien worlds, And the only thing born by earth Are long fluttering yarns… O. Mandelshtam Up to the 1980s, a rather rigid understanding of what is a text prevailed in Russian science. One of fundamental definitions of a text was considered that of A. Pyatigorsky, where one of the most important elements is a conscious transmission of a message. Firstly, only a message which is spatially (i.e. optically, acoustically, or in some other mode) fixed. Secondly, a text shall be considered a message the spatial fixation of which was not a random phenomenon but a necessary means of a conscious transmission of this message by its author or any other persons. Thirdly, it is assumed that the text is conceivable, i.e. does

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not need deciphering, does not contain any linguistic obstacles for its understanding, etc. Obviously, this concerns only a particular (in time and space) level of understanding although allows some interpretation, but generally involving a more or less adequate reception of the message (Pyatigorsky 1996: 16–17).

Structuralism, while studying literary or other texts, tends to catch structure within them, a forming mechanism which generates all products of human social-symbolic activity. Methodology of “rigid” scientist structuralism directly oriented onto lingua-semiotic models by Saussure and Jacobson aimed at discovering “on the other side” of empirical genesis of cultural objects some underlying immanent abstract unities (“languages”, or “codes”), and then formalize them using structural and semiotic methods (Kosikov 2000: 5).

According to Saussure’s tradition, a text acts as a language manifestation (Lotman 2002: 188). The Western tradition of structural research of culture which evaluated from structuralism to post-structuralism and post-modernism (Barthes, Butler, Guattari, Deleuze, Derrida, Jameson, Kristeva, Lacan, Leotard, Lodge, Fokkema, Foucault, Hassan) used to identify the problems of interaction of a text and reality, of cultural functions of a text, discourse and piece of work, specificity of various discourse practices, intertextual dimension of culture, writing problem, that condition relations between an author and a reader as those of social and cultural interaction (Kannykin 2003: 12). In Russia, this tradition was supported and developed by the Tartu-Moscow semiotics school (Lotman, Pyatigorsky, Revzin, Toporov, Uspensky, Ivanov, Egorov, Gasparov). Within this tradition, a new stage of text understanding was suggested. For the Tartu structuralism, a text is not only a result of somebody’s intensive use of a ready language (even if the term “language” is conceived in the most general meaning) but of any involuntary and spontaneous action, as well as any object with a given sense. In other words, there are no a priori and objective qualities that something is a text; a text is a cultural function, something which is identified as a text if it functions as a text. Culture can be interpreted as a text and (collective) consciousness. Consciousness which is a text reading itself… (Lotman 2002: 18–19).

Semiotics of culture acts as a discipline studying interaction of differently organized semiotic systems, inner unevenness of semiotic space, necessity of cultural and semiotic polyglotism (Lotman 2002: 158).

The works by L. Murzin who defined culture as the highest language level laid out into texts seem to be of interest. Problems of philosophy of text were developed not by structural but ‘substantial’ paradigms of knowledge. M. Bakhtin, a founder of modern philosophy of text who developed the ideas of dialogism, polyphony, and chronotope, postulated, ‘The possible text and its interpretation are everywhere’ (Bakhtin 1979: 309). In different theoretical variation this tradition was followed by Gadamer, Mamardashvili, Bibler, Rudnev, and others. Due to their work new fundamental grounds of hermeneutics as

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the art of text interpretation, the conception of text as means of logos organization forming the phenomenal matter, and questions of cultural dialogue were developed. In Batkin’s opinion, humanitarian research should be oriented on the text, and any text as another confirmation of total isomorphism, but only on “this one”, this unique and specific text, i.e. seen as such (Batkin 1986: 107).

Semiotization of geographic space which occurs in the course of cultural genesis can be described using post-structuralist conception with its thesis that culture as a complex and multiple interweaving of many heterogeneous codes, discourses and voices can be defined as Text (text means “weaving”, “tissue”) into which every new work-statement is being woven (Kosikov 2000: 37).

Modern authors of this trend discover new problems. Thus, in the work of Kostyaev (2003), culture is presented as a text, and is studied in the context of discursive practices, and the process of sense-genesis is studied. In his work Kannykin (2003) reveals existential specifics of a text as the bustling center of human subjectivity, sense, and values, and sets main presumptions and tendencies of methodology of modern ‘text-centric’ humanitarian knowledge. The concept of ‘text’ is used to determine the whole body of meaningful artifacts expressed both in verbal and any other form the most important property of which is the principal possibility to interpret them (Kannykin 2003: 16).

He also studies relations between the text and extra-textual structures of semiotic and non-semiotic nature in order to reveal ontological status of the text in ‘textreality’—‘text-culture’ opposition; i.e. the text is opposed to culture in a way. On the contrary, we tend to follow the position of scholars from Novosibirsk considering the ‘text’ some sign organization that could be studied as an independent cultural phenomenon. Moreover, due to spreading of semiotic ideas, any cultural phenomenon can be studied as a sign system in the sphere where it is valuable not as such but as an object featuring knowledge and skills of its creators, their level of civilization, and development of relations. And therefore all these are texts of different kind’ (Antipov et al. 1989: 35).

Provided the target of study is not scholarly knowledge but something else (meanings, their links, interpretation, etc.), ‘there is some obvious specific culturology activity manifesting in formation of hermeneutic universum’ (Antipov et al. 1989: 30). The reflection on particular sphere of human life results in forming of a new cultural text. Coming back to the work of classics, let us underline as one of vital methodological approaches used here the textual presumption which, according to Gasparov (regarding the speech activity), is readiness and even demand to imagine something which is realized as a statement in the quality of an immediate and completely visible phenomenon (Gasparov 1996: 324).

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Gasparov underlines inevitable subjectivity of mental constructs in perception and scholarly interpretation of reality. The textual presumption action is that having realized some text as a whole we thus seek its understanding as a whole. This “whole” might be of any complexity and components; the search of “wholeness” should not be considered as if we seek absolute integration of all text components into one consistent semantic construction. Shor, philosopher from St. Petersburg, generally states that ‘post-modernism and poststructuralism lead the humanities to the logical limit in understanding all reality as a text. One can read the text, and the text demands interpretation. Since the semantic structure of the text is multi-valued it can and must have many interpretations. Therefore, while the natural science knowledge goes deeper, assumingly to the unambiguous law or structure of the studied object, the humanitarian consciousness has as its “final point” the “phenomenology obviousness” of the object, the text demanding many variants of interpretation. Hence, humanitarian knowledge is an “intellectual dance” around an object, demonstration of more new modes of its understanding, new sense aspects, and image “faces” (Shor 2003: 216).

The interpretive nature of knowledge is the distinctive feature of humanitarian knowledge in general and cultural sciences in particular. The theory of interpretation is based on the ideas of Paul Ricoeur, one of the main representatives of modern hermeneutics, according to which any manifestation of culture and human activity is studied as a symbolic text. This text is of intentional structure with double meaning where ‘to understand’ means to interpret the text so that beyond one sense another one emerging during the interpretation process could be seen. Lotman’s semiosphere conception essentially expands possibilities of poststructuralism in the field of studies not only of culture but also the geographical space transformed by it, i.e. the cultural landscape. … Within the semiosphere conception, the notion of textuality is not limited by literature and even culture in its narrow sense. It covers an extremely broad scope of results of informational and creative interaction between a human and the reality, the routine behavior. In particular, the feature of textuality understood in that way can quite correctly determine the life place of a human in the semiotic mapping through which the place enters the national culture semiosphere through one of its topos (Abashev 2000: 9).

The world picture including that expressed in onomastics is seen as reflection of internal peculiarities of culture. … The nature of every ethnic group and every human being, the name-giver, is embodied in the onomastic world picture (Materials… 1993: 3).

Formation of the cultural landscape takes place within the historic process. The ambivalence of the cultural landscape means ‘the fact of inclusion of history (society) into the text, and the text into history’ (Kristeva 2000: 432). History as such is one of the ‘authors’ of the cultural landscape text. It is history that creates polyphony of senses, sometimes contradictory. History is the text itself. Carlyle the Scot in different parts of his work, and in his essay about Cagliostro in particular, surpassed Bacon’s assumption, he declared that the world history is the Holy Scripture which we decipher and write groping, and in which they also write us. Later Leon Blum said, “There is not a single human being on the earth who can tell who he is. No one knows why he is here, what his acts, feelings and thoughts correspond to, and what his true name

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is, his eternal Name in the list of Light… History is a huge liturgical text where iota and dots are as significant as lines and chapters although importance of both is not conceivable for us, and is deeply hidden”. According to Mallarmé, the world exists for books; according to Blois, we are lines, or words, or letters of a magic book, and this eternally written book is the only thing the world has, or rather, it is the world (Borges 1984: 222).

Although … post-structuralism radically revised the very concept of history as a sense congruous process replacing it by the pointless “becoming” moved by multitude heteronymous “desires” (Kosikov 2000: 10)

nevertheless, as a result of historic process consistent views on value of events, therefore the places connected with them are being formed. Uspensky considered the possibility of interpretation of the historic process as a text, the sequence of messages written by society. Perception of certain events as significant, regardless of whether they are products of sign activity, is a key factor, this or that interpretation of an event text predetermines the further course of events. The key is some “language” which determines perception of facts, both real and potentially possible, in the appropriate historic and cultural context. Hence, the events are ascribed significant – the text of events is being read by society. Then it’s possible to say that, in its elementary phase, the historic process appears to be the process of generating new “phases” on some “language” of reading by a social addressee (society) that determines the response’ (Uspensky 1996: 12). As a result of such interpretation the ‘historic process might become a communication between a society and a person, society and God, society and the fate, etc. (Uspensky 1996: 12).

By analogy with the historic process interpretation, the process of forming and existing of the cultural landscape can be imagined where not only events but also places related with them are perceived as significant and bearing a certain message for society. The criterion of significance of a place in culture can possibly be the use of its toponym as the text unit, and ability of the name to develop secondary (figurative) meanings, i.e. to denominate (compare: secondary meaning of such toponyms as Babylon, Siberia, Kamchatka) (Berezovich 2000: 19).

Secondary or figurative meanings of toponyms can be messages. Toponymy allows studying texts of the cultural landscape as twisted mnemonic programs (Lotman 2002: 190), especially considering all landscape-toponymic strata. These messages can be read in their historic, and hence sense sequence, i.e. as a text. As Chertov noted, what happens is the sequential organization of space into texts thought of and structured according to particular cultural norms. This suggests, firstly, to distinguish spatial element and structures responsible for sense transmission, secondly, to establish norms of their interpretation, and thirdly, to term their use by interpreters. Thus, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic rules forming the “language” are termed, as this concept was defined by one of father of semiotics (Morris 1983), or the “spatial code” (Chertov 1999: 93).

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Sometimes loci-messages are used to produce new texts, e.g. to carry out pilgrimage routes and thematic tours. In other cases, reading of loci-messages, interpretation of sense of a place, and local cultural text depend on the intentions of the perceiver. Pyatigorsky defines the process of any text production as a subjective situation. The text is created in a specific unique situation of connection, a subjective situation, and is perceived depending on the time and place in countless objective situations… The subjective situation might not be described in the text, it might happen not to be apt to reconstruction based on the text (Pyatigorsky 1996: 18).

In absolute majority of events when geographic objects are named, and their sense sequence defined, the culture of the human communities linked with the signified territory acts as the subject. Hence, the subjective situation in the cultural landscape goes on endlessly although some subjects-ethnicities, having created a number of “messages”, cease to exist. Hence, in regards to the cultural landscape as a text, it is not right to dissolve in time the subjective and objective situation. Production of any, not only literary text precedes its perception. Perception of the text starts immediately after its complete production. Any (not only signal) information from the object can change the subjective situation, and we will essentially deal with a different text, different subjective situation (Pyatigorsky 1996: 25).

In the case with the cultural landscape, such rule is not observed since modern culture does not only perceive (inherit, reflect) the earlier produced and fixed in the geographical space senses but also adds its own changes even as a result of perception, if there is some rethinking of messages that were produced earlier. With this regard, the space semantically organized by culture can be applied to the concept of intertext introduced by Kristeva. … Intertext should be considered a space of convergence of any possible citations. The act of emerging of the intertext should be studied as the result of the “readingwriting” procedure, the intertext is written in the process of reading of somebody else’s discourse… (Kosikov 2000: 36–37).

Hence, studying the culture expressed in space we happen to be no strangers to methodology of structuralism, unification of the liberal sciences under the sign of linguistics (Kosikov 2000: 4). … The expansion of the “linguistic” approach to cultural phenomena is not a kind of “translation” of culturology terms into linguistic terms, but rather a different and structurally more clear approach to culture as a systematic whole (Tolstoy 1995: 16).

Summarizing, we can see that the concept of the text as a flexible within its borders, hierarchic but fluently structuring system of significant elements, expanding from an individual statement to multi-element and heterogeneous symbolic formations (Abashev 2000: 7),

appears to be rather wide to interpret the cultural landscape as a text. Any ‘space organized as a means of sense expression turns into a text in a wide, semiotic sense’ (Chertov 1999: 93).

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6.2 Cultural Landscape as Text … And the scriptures of roads written in the desert. M. Voloshin So, the cultural landscape is a sign system, with signs in complex and multivalent relations, and that is why it can be studied as a text available for reading. We support Kagansky’s idea that a landscape, text, cultural human body, and architecture, etc. can be seen as actualization of one cultural matrix; there are reasons to distinguish common styles for a text, urban environment, landscape (Kagansky 1995a: 3–4),

and it is necessary to think over the continuous spatial-semantic tissue of the landscape (Kagansky 1995a: 2). The meanings of the cultural intertext are flowing, not fixed, constantly ‘drifting’ from work to work, from one artifact to another. In the cultural landscape, as it was mentioned, the fixation of senses in space takes place. Senses might modify, be added, or disappear, though in the case of their fixation on a place they can be easily observed and their genesis deciphered. Polysemantics of toponym-signs and their interaction in space is usually read by a lay person intuitively, on hermeneutic level, and is rarely thought of. Reading of the cultural landscape text of the living place is possible only with a kind of an abstract view and reflection. The essence of relationship between a human and a landscape is expressed in routine being of the living place. This can be illustrated by an abstract from Saint-Exupery’s fiction text. The road, the barley field, the hillside talk differently to a stranger, and to those who were born here. A conventional viewer doesn’t snatch any marvels, even doesn’t see anything, the native picture has long rested in his heart (Saint-Exupery 1994: 18).

The information enclosed in the landscape is often perceived by its population subconsciously, although they can sufficiently value its importance. That is why for an inhabitant the process of sign awareness of the conventional place is similar to the process of self-reflection. Such latent information can be moved into the spatial-sign model. Intersection of meanings in a single locus augments sense. Polyvalence of meanings in space is understood as ‘cultural fullness’ which is very close to the notion of cultural legacy. The very structure of the cultural landscape can act as a text where every element has sustainable meanings and senses. A specific element of the cultural landscape structure is a road expressing the idea of communication. Among them, roads as cultural phenomena can be distinguished, e.g. such symbols of the Soviet era as BAM (Baikal-Amur railroad), etc. Kagansky proposed four structural elements, a kind of a matrix of the landscape: Centre—Province—Periphery—Border (Kagansky 2001: 65). Meanings of every geographic object directly depend on its status in such matrix. It is appropriate to recall here one of theoretical statements of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics

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that ‘a text contrary to a language is endowed with sense, and such sense is inseparable from the structure of the text’ (Lotman 2002: 15). Kagansky believes that ‘syntagmatics of the landscape as a quasi-text is huge, and dramatically dominates the paradigm’ (Kagansky 1995b: 34). In our opinion, this is not always right. In the case of the urban cultural landscape, the paradigm might prevail the syntagm. In the cultural landscape, in this case, the conception of a palimpsest is applicable (initially the term means a manuscript written on a parchment on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing). Similarly in one space, in one landscape, cultural texts of different periods can be laid on one another composing unique combinations many of which ‘are read’ anew falling into a new cultural and historical context, though sometimes with diametrically opposite change of meanings and accents. In addition, every landscape text ‘is oriented on its own dominants each of which, in particular contexts, “closes” by itself all the rest’ (Mitin 2004: 56). A holistic cultural landscape with the polyphony of its meanings presents all layers of the palimpsest at once justifying the statement that the cultural text is a ‘multidirectional, variable “interweaving” of its codes of different types, thus embodying a cultural polysemy’ (Kannykin 2003: 16). Latent semantics of the cultural landscape is more than often studied through literary texts which will be specified further on. Historical documents are also used as well as paintings, architectural forms, color, sound and music, and other features of the natural environment, special survey data, advertisement texts of tourist companies, recreational activity analysis that allow research of a place semantics in the context of national and local culture. Study of such heterogeneous data more or less contributes to distinguishing senses and meaning that, in a particular society, culture or subculture, correspond with the studied geographic object. The logic of the cultural landscape sign system is not linear which is quite consistent with the fact that ‘… the text knows no end nor beginning, internal hierarchy, linear order, and narrative structure’ (Kosikov 2000: 38). The cultural landscape can be possibly imagined as weaving of meanings, when there are knots and an irregularly knitted tissue. A landscape is a symbol of irregularity. The term ‘landscape’ is used in this very sense when it comes to texts, philosophy, and other not related to geography notions and things. A reverse process happens here, from symbolizing space to symbolizing spatial concepts of pure speculative categories. Coming back to analogies in linguistic philosophy it is appropriate to recall that ‘letters and silence’ of Roland Barthes postulate the self-destruction of a language. Silence exempts from the context. The silence turns here into some congenerous poetic time, it cuts up language layers and makes you feel every word, not as a fragment of a cryptogram but a flash of light, yawning emptiness or the truth meaning death and freedom … Formal instrument turns into silence covered with flesh (Barthes 2000: 89, 91).

The lacuna of sense and time might be imagined, in the cultural landscape, similar to the dark matter being the structural element of the Universe. But are there any ‘empty’ places in the landscape? Actually, natural properties of a terrain are already its sense though only in the eyes of the viewer. Crossing the desert a human

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being overcomes the space of a certain quality which has stable connotations in the world culture that everyone bears. Thus, situation of understanding of space is born, for a single traveler or observer. It will remain in one’s personal experience and add new aspects and meaning into the whole intertext of culture only it will be splashed in writing (on paper or digitally) or audio-visual form. Lacuna might also occur as the wrong side of meanings in a particular system of philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical origin; as random dumps or ‘tent towns’ of the homeless usually emerging in the urban landscape, in the areas beyond the control of the urban civilization. In this respect, the concept of the ‘dying’ area seems interesting, where qualities and features defining a territory weaken losing their gravity towards a big cultural or economic centre. Here, similar to description of objective laws of zoning, some of the basic concepts of mathematics and math physics might be appropriate as a linearly ordered set and field. In fact, a city, an industrial center developing concentric zones around it is surrounded as if by the gravitational field where power lines can be found, and tension of its field and the work of its power calculated (Rodoman 1999: 67).

The ‘dying’ areas of the geocultural space where power lines born by culture weaken can be also described as the sense lacuna, and admit that without such ‘silent areas’ in the holistic cultural landscape no structure developed by fluctuating informative and semantic fullness, a relief of senses, could be possible. And what we can actually highlight as the structural unit in the cultural landscape studying it as a text? In linguistics, the unit of the text is determined by the word which has its spatial connotations in the linguistic theory, …The status of a word as the smallest unit of the text is not only the mediator linking the structural model with its cultural (historic) environment but also a regulator managing the process of transition from diachrony into synchrony (the literary structure). The word ‘status’ gives the word spatial characteristics, it functions in three dimensions (subject – recipient – context) as a set of seme elements in dialogue relations, or as a set of ambivalent elements (Kristeva 2000: 429).

In culturology, while it is studied as a text, such structural unit is not defined. However, the spatial component of culture requires expressing the structure. In the cultural landscape as a text, the locus/place though in a different meaning might become a structural unit as a locus-symbol, locus-message, locus-sign since its symbolic meaning is linked with a particular territorial unit. Infinity or a point as extra-scale concepts of geometric space express abstract, transcendental or fiction spaces such as hell, paradise, Neverland, etc. have their symbols in the geocultural space. According to post-structuralism concepts, any text somehow indicates a certain ‘transcendental signified’ which happens to the projection and embodiment of our need in such signified, and its presence is subjected to an endless “delay” like a mirage endlessly retreating into the infinite far. The transcendental signified is able to show only traits of its absence (Kosikov 2000: 46).

Theories of presence, in the cultural landscape, of a transcendental impulse were studied in modern Western humanitarian geography, for instance, in the work of R.D.

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Sack (Sack 1980). Anyway, the semiotic component of any cultural landscape can be studied in compliance with this conception. In this case, the hypothesis on the transcendental signified is an essential demand of consciousness which perceives messages and signs spread in the geographic space, and strives to see something more integral than the cultural due to which they emerged.

6.3 City as a Text … the city which wide opened for conscious units The glass books For the eye of the sky. To let the wind wander And move the glass pages… V. Khlebnikov The urban cultural landscape is a specific space with specific semantic fullness every element of which and their ratio carries a message. A city is a relatively autonomous from the environment space semiotics of which is studied in detail in the theory of architecture. City as a text is viewed as the spatial-temporal concept of ‘city’ through linear-temporal concept of ‘text’, i.e. practically an axiom of contemporary humanities. Study of the cultural landscape through the universal concept of text is necessary for more integral reading of the system of cultural codes, senses, and meanings fixed in space. A city is a tongue, and this tongue might be probably a language; a city speaks to its population, we talk to our city, the city we find ourselves in only because we live there, walk there, and watch it (Barthes 1970: 12).

This statement of Barthes became classical and is cited in many research papers on urban semiotics. Barthes, reflecting on urban allusions of Victor Hugo, supports his idea that the city is a writing, and the person moves about in the city, i.e. its user (which is what we all are, users of the city), is a sort of reader who, according to his obligations and movements samples fragments of the utterance in order to actualize them in secret . It is a poem which u-turns the signifying and this u-turn should be ultimately tried and felt, and sung by semiology (Barthes 1970: 13).

The idea of the city is based on deep archetype ideas of the world culture, i.e. the world axis, the world mountain, the world tree, and it is possible to read the city with the help of images-metaphors where buildings are seen as anthropomorphic creatures communicated with each other. Myths, symbols and images serve as the basis of perception, i.e. reading of the city: squares, circles, vertical lines, etc. are perceived in their archetypal meaning, as an urban mandala (a symbolic diagram of the universe) (Barabanov 1999: 342). V. Toporov samples as culturally meaningful and text-generating elements of the urban physiognomy, St. Petersburg in particular, the following factors:

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straightness, curvature, broken street line; space organization; ‘open/closed’ space; ‘continuity—non-continuity’; ‘disunity—fusion’ of space (Toporov 2003b: 39–40). The city possesses its own ‘language’, he speaks to us with its streets, squares, waters, islands, gardens, buildings, monuments, people, history, ideas, and could be conceived as a sort of heterogeneous text which purportedly makes general sense based on which a certain sign system could be reconstructed and realized in a text (Toporov 2003b: 22).

A city in metaphors and symbols of culture is seen as a semantic vertical. It is interesting to highlight that in this context catacomb cultures, e.g. communities of the first Christians, can be studied as an inverted ontological hierarchy expressed in the landscape. In the urban landscape, culture develops a common field of interrelations of the environment, culture and nature, with the latter being to some extent inhibited by urban construction projects, though it keeps its role in urban mythology. The urban space reproduces deep cultural meanings, reveals value-regulatory system of the culture. Correct interpretation of the urban landscape allows seeing deepest structures of human society, understanding ‘the heart’ of the culture. ‘The spirit’, ‘the heart (soul)’ of culture can be compared with a vector striving into the future which simultaneously is guarding the integrity of the era. It is the cultural space that allows coexisting of past and modern cultural layers. Developing in time, culture does both, renews and preserves itself due to succession mechanisms. In the process of transmission, some of cultural values happen to be rejected, and something is added too. Usually the losses are unrecoverable but sometimes they are returned due to activity of new generations, but in fact, are being changed somehow. These processes are mainly spontaneous (Babaeva 2001).

According to Koneva, stereotypes identified during the urban environment analysis meet iconic forms of the texts to words, word combinations, and phrases, etc., and are means of architectural language. Their values are not constant, they vary depending on the era context, and condition the complex process of communication of a human being and the urban environment and the general environment. A city which is modeled by the concept of text gains the status of a complex and diverse ideographic sign with a sense, and expresses its sense and expressive meaning. In this function, a city is not only a passive storage device but a transmitter of information (sense-images), and acts as a generator which exists in dynamics of polyphonic system of reality (Koneva 1999: 414).

Koneva defines a city as a sensually perceived phenomenon (space) expressed with the help of special natural and man-made signs; it also is integral, and at the same time, autonomous (independent) (Koneva 1999: 414).

A city corresponds with the concept of text, first of all, in sensual perception, and inner integrity (unity) and autonomy that are inherent in the text (Literature and Encyclopedic…, 1987).

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In the internal structure of the city (similar to that of the text) three vital groups of phenomena are distinguished: links and relations, unit system (from simple to allocated, sampled under composition-spatial traits), and properties essential especially for the city (text) as an integrity. Links and relations sample communication structure of the city: roads, ways, streets, etc. This is mainly linear-spatial objects bearing the sense of “direction”, i.e. trajectories and movements within the whole organism (Koneva 1999: 416–417).

The city image, to Lynch (1982) is composed from ways (communications) determined by landmarks (buildings and other architectural and dimensional elements); these ways include knots, places of concentration of senses and dominants. Cities like literary texts have their own genre image expressing in some way the sense of a place, sense of a city. There are legend, myth, tale cities (Athens, Crete, Atlantis, Bukhara…), history cities (Rome, Beijing, Kiev, Moscow…), fairy tale cities (Baghdad, Delhi, ancient Japanese cities, Russian “gingerbread towns” – Gorodetz, Yaroslavl, Kizhi, Kostroma…), poem cities (Verona, Venice, Moscow, Russian cities on the Volga…), novel cities (Paris, St. Petersburg …), detective story cities (London, Chicago, New York, Palermo…), fiction cities (“perfect cities” existing only in draft, modern Japanese cities) (Koneva 1999: 426).

Urban landscape is full of symbols and messages transmitting sense-images of the past historic periods. Elements of the urban structure are semiotic as well; the planning of the historic downtown, suburbs, etc., tells by itself. The text of the city is inevitably involved into some (historic, real or contingent) context, and is similar to the writings (texts) of a certain era (Koneva 1999: 427).

The city-text develops under its own laws and can be de-structured and assembled under certain rules despite the fact that the combination of semiotic units of the urban space and giving them sense does not correspond to the combination of sense and words in linguistics (Puchkov 1999: 137).

In the urban landscape, it is important that the urban text takes place in iconic, acoustic, kinesthetic and lexical aspects of semiosis constructing an imagined, poetic space of images and myths over the real one. Every big city exists simultaneously as an imaginary city, more complicated compared with its material counterpart. The city-text constantly, throughout its life, creates its own mythology. A myth is, in terms of semiotics, a secondary sign system or meta-system constructed over the reality in order to turn it into mythology, and transfer into the category of repetitive circular controlled processes; a city is a producer of mythology and even history, and it is not always possible to separate the one from the other (Puchkov 1999: 138).

Urban mythology can be read by constructing humanitarian-geographical images (Zamyatin et al. 2008: 547–575), writing their subject line into the open for interpretation text, or rather the intertext of the city.

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6.4 Strategies of Reading Reddish stubble is like a book, Furrows are like ancient scripts. N. Kluyev The process of text reading is an object of attention of philosophers and experts of culture who are trying to determine where the boundary between reading and understanding lies, which is an extremely important element of the cognitive theory of knowledge. To illustrate philosophical approach to the process, here is a long quotation from Podoroga. Reading means to be on the other side of one’s own cognitive procedure, beyond oneself, be before the thought and language. And what is most important, when reading I step into the communicative strategy sphere which is organized not by my ability to understand but the structure of the work of philosophy. While reading it’s not me who understands, but I’m being understood (the text doesn’t need my understanding procedure). This conclusion has nothing improbable if we try to comprehend the reading space as a space which makes possible our understanding on a dramatically different communication level. The reading space is a pace of the thought as an event, moreover the event precedes and includes the thought; it is the hotbed of not yet ready meaning of what is thought, that haven’t yet died in a philosophy term, and not yet included, due to the latter, into the category system architectonics. In the reading space, the power of a philosophy work is weakened, only the text is growing wide there. When I want to read I want a text because it makes possible to make me the Other, I strive to it as the Other is strived, since the text is not a mere set of philosophical terms organizing the meaning field but a specific matter of reading which is “woven” (Nietzsche), is “a special body” (Husserl), a kind of a “body” (Valery, Barthes), and is felt as a “texture” (Merleau-Ponty); the text is erotic. The text which is opened in the reading space is our other body which we want to possess again and again. As we read it doesn’t cease to grow and capture the world which recently belonged only to us (Podoroga 1995: 23).

Reading of the text of the cultural landscape is similar to the method of modeling space images widely presented in the monograph by Zamyatin (1999). The basic principle of such techniques should be conversion of latent information into the space-symbolic model. To N. Zamyatina who is working in the same direction, reading of the landscape in general is in understanding meanings of individual elements of the landscape, and interpreting it is in understanding its sense (Zamyatina 2009: 46).

In the act of reading of the cultural landscape, it should be taken into account that semiotic mechanisms, as they are defined by Lotman, are not mere means of communication for accurate transmission of a text but mechanisms of creative consciousness. Creative consciousness involves an absolutely different structure. It suggests that between the mode of my text coding and somebody else’s there is not automatic similarity but equivalence (Lotman 2002: 153).

Accordingly, ‘to define the given message as a “text” it should be at least twice coded’ (Lotman 2002: 158). An ideal communicative situation suggests that the sender and the recipient using the same code transmit and receive the same information and the sent and the received messages are equal. However,

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the normal situation in a different case when the exchanging messages do not use the same code but two different and to some extent overlapping codes. Hence, the communicative act is not a passive transmission of information but a translation, re-coding a message (Lotman 2002: 64).

As a result, ‘the reader’ acts as cryptographer and interpreter of cultural codes of the landscape, and this is especially important when information was ‘encoded’ by a different culture of a different historic era culture. To study the cultural landscape semantics, to study it from the point of view of textual characteristics, it is necessary to take into account relations between toponymsigns and locus-signs. To do this, extensive information presenting in an ordered set the cultural landscape image in general, and the image system of its geo-object components, should be ‘filtered’, i.e. most frequently repeated and used meanings should be selected. The result of such ‘filtration’ will be the cultural landscape model which adequately reflects the relation system of toponym-signs. The peculiarity of such transformation technique is in isolation of heterogeneous data, and first of all information on how inter-perception of territorial communities in certain places and regions happens. Similar studies have been already conducted on the basis of literary texts analysis (See: Lavrenova 1993). In such studies, an important role also belongs to hermeneutical methods of research. Under the provision of textual criticism, a coherent text differs from an unsystematic set of semantic messages by a specific textual relation, or exposition the main body of which is ‘sense relationship and its consequence’. Studying the cultural landscape as a text one can observe that sense relationship in it are ordered in space, and do not have a strictly fixed sequence. The exposition of such text is non-linear. A text in a book has a specific ‘tree’ sequence of statements with a next (built-on) sense relationship. In the cultural landscape, relations between toponymsigns and related geographical objects also have a branched, ‘rhizome’ structure, but sense relationship and its consequence do not develop in time but in space. Talking on philosophical texts that turn while reading into landscape metaphor, Valery Podoroga assumes several strategies of reading: Actions of reading look like cutting a fabric. Each patch forms a figure separating from the other by the cutting line, and the cut itself is done considering the size of each cut piece (and may be the cut including only physiological or climatic, or linguistic, or only geologic measurement of the thought). Every figure is a fragment of the read text with one dominating dimension. And the figure (or one fragment of the text) is linked with the other due to the cutting line. In other words, every separate line of reading is possible if it is cut according to the cutting line which by interrupting the reading gives it continuous pulsing (Podoroga 1995: 31).

While in the case of the text on paper there are several possible directions, line and ‘blocks’ of reading, it becomes even more true for the cultural landscape. One can most easily read landscape-texts of national history. For instance, study of the semiotic structure of the Russian cultural landscape on the Russian poetry material (Lavrenova 1998) shows that it presents ‘the wave of colonization frozen in space’. The old developed European part of Russia is separated from non-structural and internally chaotic toponym-space of Siberia by a boundary-frontier of the Urals.

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Several options of reading of the cultural landscape texts were given in the previous chapter. Hence, toponym-signs or messages simultaneously existing in space can be read as a certain sequence of messages, as a text. Micro-geography of local cultural landscapes is read in accordance with the local history. The same text of the Russian cultural landscape can be read not in historic but in religious and mythological way. Such reading, contrary to the historic one, is more universal, and at the same time, more general. In the same way cultural landscape texts of regional and local level can be read. Geopolitical reading as well as reading from the history of ideas or personal geo-biography fields is possible. Following the internal lines of the landscape text, its rhythm, and moving within it, a human being should act under the set sense parameters as power line; the text specific is that reading is followed by an action, reading turns into ‘dancing’. This dance process, moving within the landscape full of senses, was brilliantly described by Saint-Exupery: … Emptiness of the desert should be turned into life so that it could nourish the soul and heart, nourish the zeal and fervor, your desert needs to be pervaded with power line. They might be woven by nature or by the kingdom. You can walk in your desert as a man condemned to death, and then as a released man, either prepared to any surprise or free of any surprise, or like a stalker, and sometimes with a painful caution as if in your lover’s bedroom whose sleep you are afraid to disturb. … What is around you will lose its monotony, you will strictly follow the schedule imposed by the desert, and your dance will be generously tricky, rich and diverse (Saint-Exupery 1994: 319–321).

Landscape plasticity, its rhythm and structure may act as its meaning since they have many cultural connotations. The geography of the landscape is semantic as well as the text syntax (Kagansky 2001:36). Due to the system of symbols that have geometrical connotation on the collective unconscious level even a wild, unknown to the human landscape is perceived as a message with some super sense. Everything visible for the bearer of a culture turns into culture. To read a landscape means to find means for distinguishing the close layers between nature and culture where it was born and which gains its real sense only through the eyes of society looking at it. To find means for reading a landscape is to catch messages it is sending, thoroughly select codes that reflect the culture, our culture, and then to understand what these codes are trying to tell (Tanguy 1999: 193).

There are different levels of landscape reading, i.e. poetic, aesthetic and conceptual. Poetics of the landscape is emotional, sensual, erotic, sentimental basis in culture. Poetics of space were studied by Aristotle, Lao Tzu, Teilhard de Chardin, Kant and Merleau-Ponty. Even such element of the natural landscape like a moraine boulder can act as the Eros idea bearer, the pristine beauty which is essentially associated with knowledge of the Earth history. Here we can talk on turning scientific knowledge into aesthetic, sensual experience actualized in contact with particular landscape properties. Landscape Eros has deep mythological semantics.

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In mythology of many nations, agriculture especially planting is copulation of a human being and the earth. The earth can bear in response to the exposed love (Rodoman 1995a: 18).

Aesthetics of the landscape in the semiotic context can be studied as reading visual codes (auditory, olfactory). Aesthetics ranges the codes of reading. Ubiquitous lines in the landscape strongly structure space and generate strong emotions. A horizontal is calm, balance, serenity, melancholy, solitude, longing, it is a plain, steppe, something infinitely distant. A vertical is nobility, super-sensibility, pride which might express loneliness but also meekness because you feel so little near it… It is religious gothic and masculinity too, symbolized by a tree. An inclined line generates anxiety, stress, i.e. predicament but also search, hence, dynamism. A curve, if it’s long, causes tenderness but tenderness full of elasticity, and if it’s random – something not completed, a mystery, a dream. Lines always cease when intersect, thus giving points. If lines intersect in an illusory manner in the long run then a focus perspective point which can be real or virtual (i.e. without materialization) is observed (Tanguy 1999: 195–197).

Volumes, plans, rhythm, scale, contrast, alternation, transparency and opacity are also distinguished. Forest nature means closeness and openness at the same time and from all sides (Mandiargues 1956). … Rhythm weaves a paysage from point elements, lines and grids, and give vibration to space (Tanguy 1999: 199).

The landscape rhythm gives rhythm to moving in it, and as Rodoman perfectly notes, hilly area does not smoothly meet a traveler but in rhythmic portions, i.e. quanta of the paysage (Rodoman 1995b: 83).

The third level is cognitive, i.e. understanding the paysage system, singling out its elements, description, interpretation, that is in fact developing a new text coherent to initial information but upgrading it to a new level of abstraction and logical conclusions.

6.5 Russian Landscape as a Text ‘Provoker’ Disappear into space, disappear, Russia, my Russia… A. Bely. Despair Russia is our holy coutry. Russia is our beloved country. From the southern seas to the polar region Our forests and fields are spread. S. Mikhalkov. Anthem of the RF Geographic and historic peculiarities of the Russian landscape’s formation have become the subject of cultural reflection and a kind of ‘self-reflection’ of the cultural

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landscape expressed in a number of conceptual texts and doctrines, Slavonic, Western and Eurasian, and it has been developing since the period of its fixation on the Far Eastern borders. …One of the main historic and modern features of Russia is based on geography; Russian self-consciousness does not identify itself with a clearly fixed location in space, it extends on the entire territory of the former empire (Laruelle 2004: 11),

French scholar Marlene Laruelle notes observing this process from the outside, from a different cultural space. There is ‘a text in the text’ which has been developing, and where last (for now) ‘chapters’ were written in the twenty-first century. As a result, a kind of an intertext is written which is mainly based on spatial plots, and semiotizes certain geographic characteristics and elements of the Russian cultural landscape structure. The very name “Russia” is a toponym, a single selected, spatial, geographic notion which agrees with a single, whole geographical object (Kagansky 2001: 378),

postulates V. Kagansky, and immediately doubts all points of this definition. ‘Russian space is the subject of concern of the Russian culture’ (Akhiezer 2002: 72), perfectly noticed A. Akhiezer. Valery Podoroga believes that the archaic, deep layer of the “Russian soul” was accumulated not similarly to any other nation of stable culture, ‘settled’ features, and qualities, but from a set of amorphous, fluid, and absolutely spontaneous feelings, affects, i.e. from repetitive similar responses of a Russian human being to the extending space (Podoroga 1994: 132),

including wideness, formlessness, and absence of locus. Among many images and paradigms due to which Russia is reading its spatial text itself, there are three worth highlighting, they are as follows: Ample Space, Russia-Eurasia, and Centre-Periphery, directly connected with the space quality of this cultural landscape. While structure and boundaries might change, paradigms remain. Ample Space. Symbolizing of space by culture is mainly determined by its initial understanding of space as it is, and most adequately expressed in the language world picture where the ‘key ideas’, ‘pervasive motives’, ‘cultural scripts’ are of common knowledge, and usually not argued opinions on what is good or bad, what is wrong or right, i.e. opinions that are expressed in the language, and present some objective facts available for research. … They present a kind of ‘naïve axiology’ imprinted in the language (Wierzbitcka 2005: 466).

Thus, in the Russian language, there are spatial adverbs that do not answer the questions ‘Where..?’ and ‘Where to..?’. The pole ‘nearby’ is real in the sense that it is situated in some particular spatial area, and the pole ‘far away’ is ir-real since it loses connection with the very idea of spatial localization (Yakovleva 1994: 47).

The adverb ‘far away’ might indicate the placement of an object in a different frame, some ‘mental space’ (Yakovleva 1994: 47). Specific ‘a-spatiality’ of spatial

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adverbs often indicating the transition of an object into a different quality more than perfectly correlates with the hypothesis of a-spatiality of Russian culture which is characterized by poor expression of regional self-consciousness (see works by L. Smirnyaguin). We should agree with the opinion that in the Russian world picture ample space is one the main values. The general idea not only of this word but many other words is claustrophobia, or rather the fear of little space and limitations, the attitude that a human needs wide space to feel comfortable. No space no piece, no space means heart uneasiness. A human can be genuine only in the ample space’ . ‘Russian views of the world tend more to striving to open, ample, wide space, in order to wander freely, to even be thoughtless and reckless (Zaliznyak et al. 2005: 68, 110).

As Shmelyev summarizes, the role of “Russian spaces” in formation of the “Russian world view” was highlighted by many authors. Chaadayev’s words are well-known, “We are no more than a geological product of extensive spaces”. Berdyaev titled one of his essays On the Power of Space over the Russian Soul. There are many other writings on this point, e.g. “In Europe, there is only one country where you can really understand what the space is, and it is Russia” (Gaito Gazdanov). “The first fact of Russian history is the Russian plain with its uncontrolled spill… this explains the fact that the word open space cannot be translated, since it has some hint inconceivable to a foreigner’, Vladimir Veidle, a well-known literary critic and art historian, wrote (Zaliznyak et al. 2005: 53).

This space is not perceived directly, though in Russian culture, the genre of a ‘meditation on the geographic map’ has existed for ages, philosophical reflection on the space of the country which due to its size cannot be ‘just’ a space but should have a certain super sense. What does this extraordinary space predict? Isn’t it here where the boundless thought should be born because you are boundless? Isn’t it here where the best warrior should be because there is space for him to go? (Gogol 1966: 355).

To the cultural landscape of Russia as an integrity within its present border the idea of development of Siberia and the Far East is immanent, first, expansive (Ermak and migrants of his expedition, inclusion of these territories into the Russian Empire), then intensive, i.e. exploration expeditions in the status of cultural intentions of the 1950s–1960s, development of the virgin lands, the Baikal-Amur railway. The Soviet song Broad is my Native Land written by Lebedev-Kumach is one of the precedent texts of Russian culture, and is not just pervaded with the typical Russian world view but is the description of the Russian language world picture fragment rapped into verse. Here is the wideness, and the vastness, and freedom, and native land, and the wind, and the free breathing (Zaliznyak et al. 2005: 75).

Philosophy of the Russian soul and national character is pervaded with geographical determinism ideas, which was discussed in detail in Chap. 1. For instance, Berdyaev believed that

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the vastness of the Russian land, the lack of boundaries and limits were expressed in the Russian soul structure. The Russian soul paysage corresponds to the Russian land paysage with the same boundlessness, formlessness, striving to infinity, and wideness. The West is crowded, everything is limited there, and formed, and distributed by categories, everything is conducive to education and civilized development, i.e. both the land and soul structure. One could say that the Russian nation “became victim” of the land immensity, its spontaneous nature (Berdyaev 1990b: 8).

Georgui Gachev defines Russia as ‘an infinite ample space’. ‘Specifics of Russian life are in huge distances’ (Gachev 1981: 62). Thinkers of the twentieth century came to conclusion that, in the Russian cultural landscape, space-time loses its integrity since space prevails: Here, space is more important than time. Russia is a large snow-white woman stretched wide from the Baltic Sea to the Great Wall in China, with the heels in the Caspian steppe…’, and more: ‘Far and Wide here are more privileged than Height and Depth, the world horizontal is more important than the vertical (Gachev 1997: 622).

A. Panarin opposes the West as a specific ‘time civilization’ to Russia as a ‘space civilization’ (Panarin 1996: 38, 39). The concept of void is related to space since the main part, almost 1/3 of Russian territory is not populated, hence only nominally (by naming and toponyms) is included into the cultural landscape. This is ‘space-fiction’ (Kagansky 2001: 401). Thus, the Russian cultural landscape is characterized not by continuity but discontinuity. We believe, on the contrary, it is possible to interpret ‘void’ space as structural using the ‘dark matter’ metaphor, and the result of such mental operation will show unpopulated territories as the cognitive base of Russian culture. In this act of self-cognition, self-denial will be the logical consequence; Russia does not mean population, hence not a culture but a territory. The territory, or space, ‘sponges’ both culture and time. These two are inside (‘have been absorbed’), and space is viewed outside (it is spoken about). ‘Russian open space’ as a key image-symbol affects directly and largely the world picture. Kondakov wrote that infinity of plains and roads stretching there for an unknown purpose is a typical and specific for Russian culture chronotope (Kondakov 1994: 63).

Its semantic field largely overlaps with such image-symbol as the ‘steppe’ which leads to a different problem, i.e. the problem of Euroasialism. Russia—Eurasia. Euroasialism is an invariant of geographical determinism taken up into the rank of ideology which is still relevant in the political discourse of Russian culture. Euroasialism supporters N. Alekseev, G. Vernadsky, P. Savitsky, N. Trubetskoy thought over the properties of Russia that could be derived from its location (Alekseev 1998; Vernadsky 1997; Savitsky 1997; Trubetskoy 1999; Exodus to the East 2008; Russian Node.., Russian Node of Euroasialism [Russkij uzel evrazijstva] 1997). Russia is featured by natural and landscape integrity, i.e. latitudinal stretching of taiga and steppe zones, continuous continental plains deprived of natural inland barriers. Both geographical and historical specifics of Russia-Eurasia are determined by its continental nature. The cornerstone of the spiritual structure of the civilization

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is a special ‘continent feeling’ contrary to the ‘West European sea feeling’ (Savitsky 2008a), and cultural and landscape fragmentation of Europe. Kagansky summarizes the landscape views of Eurasians by introducing his own version of spelling of the name of the continent: EurasiA is geographically balanced, its main parts-zones complement each other well; complementary and fruitfully interrelated zones of woods and steppes, the southern and the northern parts of EurasiA. In more modern and accurate words, EurasiA is based on the complementary principle of different types of landscape and the symbiosis of related to them different human communities. Latitudinal zones are associated with meridian rivers (Kagansky 2001: 417).

This makes explicit the internal structure of the cultural landscape, and hence, Russia is ‘a huge point’ (Kagansky 2001: 440), or ‘an idea about space’. Russia is not Europe with its Roman-Germanic civilization, and it not Asia either, with its life and culture that added certain elements into the Russian cultural treasury; nevertheless, there is some synthesis, conjugation of these cultures in the third culture which we call “Eurasian” (Shirokov 2008: 29).

Hence, Russia is not Europe, and it is not Asia either, but Eurasia, a specific geographical entity and cultural world which is given the name of the whole continent. Petr Savitsky postulates that Russia has two faces (Savitsky 2008c: 37), that ‘RussiaEurasia is a locked circle, a completed continent in itself’ (Savitsky 1927: 57). He also wrote about the migration of cultures, moving of cultural centres of the western part of the ‘old world’ from south to north, into the countries with colder climate (Savitsky 2008b), thus making too far-reaching conclusions about Russia’s destiny. Russia is a specific subcontinent the destiny of which determines its mission to keep the world in balance. T. Ochirova summarizes that due to its geographical position Russia situated on the boundary of two worlds, the eastern and the western, historically and geopolitically performs the role of a cultural synthesis which combines these two grounds (Ochirova 1994: 191).

In modern Russia, Euroasialism declares deep sense and ancient origins of Russian integrity, states true natural boundaries of the country. It insists on objectively justified inevitability of the great Russian empire and its special role in the world. Today, Euroasialism is becoming a major geopolitical myth (Kagansky 2001: 413, 415).

The Eurasian myth, to Kagansky, is a myth in its broadest meaning. Russia=Eurasia is a special place. It does not depend on time, does not obey to history. In this specific place, common laws have no power; the landscape doesn’t change, regions don’t form nor transform, empires don’t collapse, national states don’t emerge. Here, time runs in a special way, or just doesn’t. Everything depends on its own logic and causality, etc. Euroasialism is mythological sacralization of the state, space=state. Euroasialism is a myth of the great empire state (Kagansky 2001: 433).

Centre/centres—periphery/peripheries. The myth of the great empire state interjects with the myth of the centre of Russia which is not Russia. Even N. Karamzin

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wondered how such a diverse and actually wild territory corresponds with Moscow (in fact, at that time St. Petersburg was the capital). Isn’t it amazing that the lands divided by eternal natural barriers, immeasurable deserts and impassable woods, cold and hot climates, like Astrakhan and Lapland, Siberia and Bessarabia, could form one sovereign state with Moscow? (Karamzin 1989: 14–15).

At present, non-Moscow part of Russia differs from Moscow more dramatically than Russia differs from other countries; Moscow is the capital beyond the country’ and a ‘city-state’, ‘a capital or a metropolis?’, ‘a world city (Kagansky 2001: 388–391).

Russia rich with the periphery and province, in terms of the Westerners, is the cultural province of Europe. Nevertheless, the present interpretation reads the relations between Russia and Europe in other way. Europe is becoming for Russia not a metonymy but a metaphor; instead of becoming an integral part of ‘Great Europe’, Russia is becoming ‘New Europe’. But conscious orientation suggests confrontation between Russia and Europe; the very orientation on Europe suggests that initially Russia is not Europe (Uspensky 2004a).

At present, Moscow is considered a different periphery, an area of colonization for Asian-African ethnic communities, and invading animals and plants (Kagansky 2001: 395). The destiny not only of capitals but other centres of Russia is to become similar to a sparse constellation or an archipelago of islands in the periphery ocean, the secondary and external periphery, i.e. suburbia, scarcely developed, and the inner periphery, often secondary, as a result of depression and depopulation which captured far villages and local centers (Treyvish 2002: 369).

At this point, a functional inversion of the periphery and province occurs, i.e. resource and raw materials PERIPHERY (Tyumen North, Norilsk, Yakutiya) has clearly exchanged places with the PROVINCE, a well developed core of the country (Tula, Vologda, Pskov, etc.). The Australian formula of the centre of the periphery – the periphery in the center will be soon applicable for the Russian space (compare: the image of the country in mass media) (Kagansky 2001: 386).

Geographer Kagansky reflects on the present paradigms of Russia in the following way: Our country is huge, it is our wealth (a burden). Russia is the rightful heir and successor of Kiev Russ, and through it of Byzantium and Rome, and all this has to be crashed by modernization (you cannot modernize sacred things). Russia is the world bridge between East and West, a unique mission and destiny (a nightmare) (Kagansky 2001: 398).

Toporov in his famous essay on the St. Petersburg text wrote about the dual rule of nature and culture (Toporov 2003b: 35) in regards to the northern capital, although in the cultural macro-landscape of Russia this duality is of confrontation nature. Depending on the reader’s intention, this text announces either the rule of culture and ‘the Russian spirit’ or the rule of space.

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6.6 Local Texts of Culture He got back all streets and squares of St. Petersburg in the form of raw proofs, he typeset avenues, and stitched gardens. O. Mandelshtam. Egiptian Stamp. Yuri Lotman considered culture a ‘semiotic mechanism and artistic text’ (Lotman 2002: 162), and our interpretation of the cultural landscape as a text must include the problem of analysis of fictional texts related to a certain place by the plot, connotations, and allegory. It should be noted, first of all, that any culture has a set of ‘precedent texts’ (PT) presenting a particular paradigm of sample texts of national culture that become must-read in the process of socialization of a personality in a national-lingua-cultural community, since appellation to those is constantly repeated within that community. PT forms proto-texts of national culture, the foundation based on all other texts (even when they are argued or objected). The PT set belongs to a kind of meta-level accessed by almost any member of a certain culture during perception or generating of a text. They determine boundaries and main vectors of national cultural space development (Russian Cultural… 2004: 29).

For instance, a poem named Borodino which became the quintessence of the historic event combining and fixing sense polyphony in the geocultural space belongs to PT, and moreover, became a semantic milestone of Russian culture in general, a symbol of patriotic spirit and military glory. There are not many PT related to a certain locus while the number of fiction/artistic texts where the internal eventful space is connected with the real one is rather big. The cultural landscape is given sense and ‘signified’ for the second time through art, on the level of high culture and cultural legacy. There is St. Petersburg of Dostoevsky, Moscow and Kiev of Bulgakov, Paris of Hugo. The literary text chronotope is ‘splashed out’ onto the certain cultural landscape, and it turns out that literary and architectural chronotopes resonate, e.g. Petersburg of the era of Dostoevsky. It is a picture of space in its time and socio-psychological coloring. It is architectural environment in all its multiple contextual sense (Iovlev 1999: 104).

Thus, literary maps of Moscow, Petersburg and other cities appeared, as well as of natural landscapes richest in content. In various fiction and documentary texts that express mentality of local and national culture the semantics of the cultural landscape is recorded and/or generated. Study of the place reflection and geographic space in general in a literary as well as folk text gives chance to reconstruct deep processes of culture. Geographic space which becomes its own image (or images) can be both, the means, a universal instrument of topological analysis of writing, and different kinds of texts. Writing as a specific invariant of geographic space includes ample opportunity for imagegeographical research of literary works. Gradual deployment and representation of writing as a unique geographical process allows analyzing feedback in the ‘image – reality’ conditional system (Zamyatin 2004a: 40).

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A literary text becomes the instrument of cognition of processes and phenomena taking place in the geocultural space. Besides its communicative function, the text executes the sense-forming function performing here not as a mere passive covering of the text given in advance but as a sense generator (Lotman 2002: 189).

Fiction texts can fully act as generator of senses for the cultural landscape. Presence of texts genetically connected with a landscape means that a landscape as a semiotic system is built on the principle of ‘citation mosaic’, as the product of absorption into the informational component of the landscape of other texts, and thus generating new texts when the intertext is being read. The result is a new metaspace where each geographical place corresponds to an extensive network of dominants and clusters of sense, built as an integral and endlessly apt to analysis and new synthesis structure (Mitin 2004: 98),

which gives way for multiple cultural interpretations where, however, a grid of geographical constants is always present. Such metaspace is characterized by palimpsest properties. For instance, modern Polish literature researcher A. Baglaevsky writes about the city of Gdansk studying it through the prism of fiction texts that …textual Gdansk is a place-palimpsest of mixed and hidden civilization and material cultural layers, a specific alloy of traces, fragments, elements that can be “raked out” of new layers and can be read in different languages. … These layers can all together and not individually become “Gdansk” (Baglaevsky 1998; cit. in: Mitin 2004: 56).

Texts existing ‘around a place’, in Russian culturology and philology, were named as local texts of culture that have different semantic filling. The most complete definition of the genesis of local text was given by V. Abashev, in his monograph Perm as a Text. Historical life of a place (locus) is accompanied by a continuous process of symbolization the results of which are fixed in folklore, toponymy, historical narrations, in various oral genres telling about the place, and finally, in fiction literature. In the spontaneous and continuous process of symbolic representation of a place, a more or less stable grid of semantic constants is formed. They become dominant categories of the place description, and began to program this process as a kind of matrix of new representations. Thus a local text of culture is formed which conditions our perception of the place, and the attitude towards it (Abashev 2000: 11–12).

In his reflections Abashev is basing on the concept of super-text which was developed, in accordance with V. Toporov’s study of the text as a cultural unit, by N. Kuprina and G. Bitenskaya, linguists from Yekaterinburg. They designated super-text as a set of statements and texts limited temporally and locally, united in content and situation, characterized by moral targets, certain positions of the sender and recipient, with specific criteria of the normal/abnormal’ (Kuprina and Bitenskaya 1994: 215).

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Such super-text is presented by the entire corpus of texts that we consider a local text. In Abashev’s interpretation, boundaries of a local text are extensive, that is why it comes close to the already studied notion of the geographical image. Other scholars that used to deal with the local text of culture have limited their study to fiction and folklore. Here the importance of research reflection should be emphasized. The local text of culture can fully become integral and structural only as a result of hermeneutic, ontological, and semiological reflection. The classics of the genre determined the study of Petersburg Text of Russian Literature by V. Toporov. He was the first to discover, in the variety of fiction, epistolary and folklore texts about Petersburg, a construct of a general nature with specific sense of super fullness, which he labeled a synthetic super-text (Toporov 2003b: 23) oriented onto supreme senses and aims, and having semantic coherence, and a core going back to one source. According to his definition, the Petersburg text which is not a mirror just amplifying the effect but a device due to which the transfer “a realibus ad realiora” is made, turning material reality into spiritual values, and it clearly preserves the traces of its extra-textual substrate, and in its turn, requires from the consumer the ability to recover (“check out”) connection with what is beyond the text, is extra-textual for each node of the Petersburg text (Toporov 2003b: 7).

Toporov examines and classifies, in axiological and ontological key, sense aspects of the city, from supreme to low. One of the most striking images of the city is the myth of the demiurge, having both divine and infernal hypostasis. A separate chapter in the Petersburg text is opposed to Moscow which acts here as the image of the Other orienting on which and analyzing it comparatively the Petersburg text is being written. Toporov distinguishes two schemes of this opposition (Toporov 2003b: 16), and they might be imagined as ‘formality—cordiality’, and ‘civilization—village’. … The image of Petersburg in the Petersburg text is constructed as a mythologized antimodel of Moscow. It concerns an important characteristic feature combining diachronic and synchronic features, and having access into other spheres (up to ethical). Moscow, the Moscow space (body) is opposed to Petersburg and its space as something organic, genuine, almost natural (this is the reason of abundant plant metaphors in Moscow description) which appeared by itself without any will or planned intrusion, contrary to non-organic, artificial, purely “cultural”, put into life by a certain violent power according to a planned scheme, pattern, and rule. This explains the specific concreteness and down-to-earth reality of Moscow, contrary to abstraction, exaggeration, and phantoms of “fictional” Petersburg (Toporov 2003b: 20).

Toporov notes, in the Petersburg text, the uniformity of the city descriptions, and the presence in the city of ‘structures crucially conditioning behavior of the heroes’ (Toporov 2003b: 26), and he presumes the sacral and almost mythical character of these structures. Hence, the city as a subject influences the texts about it, and subjects them to certain constants given by its landscape. On the other hand, the Petersburg text doubles the sense of the city. One can see “super-semantics” of the Petersburg text senses of which (more precisely, the sense) exceed the empirically possible in the city, and large sums of the “empirical”. This

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supreme sense is an arrow directed into a new space of the increasing sense which is telling about life and salvation (Toporov 2003b: 28).

In such super-semantics is the internal self-sufficiency and independence manifested in the free treatment of the city’s ‘empiricism’. With all its striving into the sphere of super-senses, the Petersburg text cannot completely leave ‘empiricism’. There is place for the geographical location of the city, i.e. on the edge of the earth, by the sea, in the North; culture transforms this ‘outskirtness’ from emotionally neutral geographical givens into eschatological. In the Petersburg text, the aspect of description of Petersburg are formed from substrate elements of the natural sphere, and are as follows: climatic-meteorological (rain, snow, snow storm, wind, cold, heat, flooding, sunset, light nights, colors, light transmission, etc.), and landscape (water, land (ground), swell, monotonous terrain, plain, absence of natural vertical orientation, openness (open space), blankness (void), dismembered parts, edgy position, etc.) (Toporov 2003b: 29).

Toporov writes about the morphology of the city landscape manifested and even revealed in the Petersburg text. Chaotic and hostile natural structures are opposed to organized lines of avenues and vertical architectural forms. The sea, the water element for Petersburg situated on marshes and the coast become the basis of the eschatological myth about ‘cosmos dissolving in chaos, and defeated by the latter, and this chaos is majorly water’ (Toporov 2003b: 47). An important internal idea of Toporov’s reflection on the Petersburg text is in his prophecy and even messianic aspect. The Petersburg text is a powerful polyphonic resonant space in vibrations of which the disturbing syncopation of the Russian history and blood chilling “evil” sounds of time has been heard for long. Thus, this great text not only “reminded” of the city, and through it of the whole Russia, but warned about the danger, and we cannot but hope, or at least assume, that it also has a survival function the signs of which were shown not once during the last nearly two centuries (Toporov 2003b: 66).

Hence, ‘discoverer’ of the local text V. Toporov comprehended and represented the underlying fundamentals of the fusion of the landscape and culture, or rather the growing of the landscape into culture. In his interpretation, The Petersburg text is justifiably studied not only as a sense but a communicative function of the Petersburg landscape which transmits itself as a message ‘into Russia’ and beyond. This ‘message’ has become one of the basic codes of Russian culture in general. And meanwhile, one of the properties of the Petersburg text reflecting the quintessence of life in the ‘liminal’ state, on the edge, over the abyss, however with hidden germs of salvation ideas, became the matrix of being of Russian culture for more than a century. Summarizing Toporov’s reflections we can say that in this case the city, through the local text, has structured the national culture by giving certain ontological guidelines. Similarly to the Petersburg text, the Moscow text of Russian culture started to be thought over (See: Lotman 1997; Moscow and ‘the Moscow text’.., 1998; Moscow and ‘Moscow’.., Moscow and the Moscow Text of Russian Culture [Moskva i «moskovskij tekst» russkoj kul‘tury‘] 1998; Lusyi, n/d) but many things written in

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new research on the structure and genesis of the Moscow text had been already told by Toporov in comparative linguistics of ‘Moscow—Petersburg’. The Perm and the Urals texts are most developed of all local texts of Russian culture (See: Literature of the Urals.., 2000-2008; Geopanorama.., 2000). In the already mentioned monograph by V. Abashev, the paradigm, syntagm, and structure of the Perm text was studied, and it was recognized that, in the semiotic interpretation of Perm, not only the influence of universal symbols but also the influence of the Petersburg text as a cultural model can be found. Here, the myth of the demiurge finds its historic and cultural interpretation, and ‘Perm thus appears to be isomorphic to Petersburg not only by its regular city plan but also by its origin’ (Abashev 2000: 53). According to Abashev’s conception, the Perm text includes a rather wide range of sub-texts, it detects and sets the semantic structure and connectedness of all statements on Perm, and generally all sign manifestations of ‘the Perm features’ as well as the integrity of such set (Abashev 2000: 23).

Analyzing the written sources from Epiphanius the Wise and Pasternak to modern samizdat poetry, posters and ads, the researcher includes into the Perm text the semiotized peculiarities of the landscape, history, geography, mundane life and behavior. As a result, the paradigms of the given local text are determined containing both, specific objects of the urban landscape and complex syncretic entities like the ‘Perm wild animal style’. Styx Brook, Stephen of Perm, the Permian geological period, the Kama, the Death Tower, the town of Yuryatin by Pasternak, the Perm wild animal style, deep and abandoned ravines across the town, B-army, the Perm wooden sculpture, the Kama bridge, destiny of the three sisters by Chekhov, the legends of Chud’, the Perm Gulag, the caves, all these and many other semiotically transformed realities filling the history of Perm and dwelling in it, form the paradigm of the Perm text and its vocabulary. Syntagmatic structures combine symbols of Perm into more or less detailed narration, introduce them into diverse private texts, from an oral story and a newspaper article to a poem and a painting (Abashev 2000: 23).

Toporov only mentions the variations of the city name, including Pitinbryukh (in Russian meaning drink and eat) which corresponds, on the ‘folk-etymological’ level, with two main delights of ‘jolly Petersburg drinking and gluttony’ (Toporov 2003b: 69). As to the Perm text, the toponym and its anagramming and anagrammar replicating appear to be one of the keys to the mysterious sense since the name ‘Perm’ is semantically dense, not clear in meaning and etymology. Similar to the Russian anagram ‘Pim—mip’ (Rome—world) (Toporov 1987) which became the basis of the Eternal City, the anagram ‘Pepm—pepemeny’ (Perm—changes) influenced the forming of one of the Perm text plots on the change of the destiny when it comes to Perm. The analysis of the local Perm texts of the last century allows the conclusion that the constant interaction of two semantic dominants, i.e. messianic idea of the selected Perm land, and intensely experienced idea of outcast and curse of the place (Abashev 2000: 369).

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The resonance of the Perm text in Russian culture cannot compete that of the Petersburg text. Nevertheless, since the Pushkin era who announced the famous … from Perm to Taurida’ in the poem addressed to the ‘slanderers of Russia’, ‘for more than a century of Russian culture the name “Perm” was used to express a kind of existential limit. … For Pushkin, Chekhov and Nabokov “Perm” existed as an element of cultural topics, as a text twisted in the name (Abashev 2000:20).

Another geographical limit set in the poem full of patriotic fervor To Slanderers of Russia is Taurida. It inspired A. Lusyi to study the Crimea text (Lusyi 2003). Taurida was one of cultural coordinates of the Russian world picture delineated by Alexander Pushkin, and Lusyi took it as the south pole of the Petersburg myth in Russian culture (Lusyi 2003: 13). Toporov postulates the Petersburg text as a semantically connected unity which it acquired after the publication of ‘The Bronze Horseman’ by Pushkin, contrary to separate texts on Petersburg that had existed earlier. Lusyi, as well as Abashev, studies the problem of the Crimea text long before the semantic unity appeared, he raises the problem of ‘pre-texts’ (‘archi-texts, to G. Genette). The upper time level of the research is modern literature introducing something new and revitalizing ancient myths. To Lusyi’s interpretation, the Crimea text is a hypertext, ‘the stream of consciousness’ through ages which organically flows from one literary style to another, and changes the image of Taurida leaving untouched its deep mythological essence of the antiquity, as if changing garments according to the current fashion and time. A. Lusyi assumes that the Caucasus text (Lusyi 2009) is more attached to the landscape, paradigm, and is more geographic. In Pushkin’s era, the Caucasus became, for Russian culture, one more though not direct “window to Europe”, especially cultural and philosophical “window”. The image of the East attached to the Caucasus is a school of vision, “school of the soul”… (Lusyi 2009: 80).

The Caucasus text paradigm is imprisonment, love, revenge. The Caucasus mountains are constantly connected, in Russian literature, with the semantics of captivity and prison. A certain tradition of this connection was pointed in the poem by Pushkin and Lermontov, and continued by Leo Tolstoy in Prisoner of the Caucasus (Lusyi 2009: 89).

At the same time, as a general background in the Caucasus text, the symbol of mountains as a sign of the spiritual vertical and ascent is present. Mountains symbolize the place where the truth and knowledge are preserved, the beginning of the path where ‘a human being can rise to the Divine, and the Divine will be open for the human’; for a literary character, ‘mountains are associated with the image of the earthly Paradise’ (Lusyi 2009: 89–90). The anthropomorphic image of mountains and ‘mountain is a human’ metaphor are also actualized in literature. A very special element in morphology of the Caucasus text is the Terek river which, however, was never elevated to the rank of a symbol or paradigm, and in the text it rather acts as a punctuation sign, a comma. Up to the present day,

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the Caucasus text is presented as a system of interrelated and interdependent elements with the conception of literary-mythological archetype which forms its own artistic and philosophical “code” (Lusyi 2009: 96)

integral with the plot of works connected with the Caucasus. It is relative to the Petersburg text only by its liminality, life on the edge of death (but not on the earth edge), and while the Petersburg text is trying to overcome the situation in the messianic key, the Caucasus text remains within ancient mythology. In solar-ghostly myths, within forming of the primitive world view, the hero’s struggle with death is usually replaced by the act of taming or marrying the heroine symbolizing the death (Freudenberg 1998: 82–86).

Generally, the structure of the Caucasus text continues to mainly coincide with ancient mythic stories of Theses and Ariadna, Jason and Medea. The Kiev text of Russian literature especially by one of its masters, Mikhail Bulgakov, is presented in the monograph by Petrovsky (2008). Here, Kiev is an existentially significant space, and rather favorable for plot development in the work of Bulgakov as well as another Russian writer A. Kuprin. Bulgakov creates its own myth of the city where the landscape semantics of Kiev is reflected, its hills, street mazes and vertical, however, not its name. Nameless City in Bulgakov’s The White Guard calls to cultural connotations with Rome, the only City in European history which was essentially mentioned impersonally. By calling the site of his novel the City Bulgakov equated his native city on the Dnieper and the Eternal City on the Tiber: Kiev – City – Rome. Assumingly, there was no any regard for tradition considering Constantinople the second Rome and Moscow the third Rome. Bulgakov’s City is not the fourth Rome, and not the third or second ones, just Rome (Petrovsky 2008: 345).

This City is also Jerusalem. In Master and Margarita the city of Yershalaim is full with Kiev connotations. Kiev included into the mystery plan of literary creation bears a sense, the semantics of two Eternal Cities, secular and spiritual, of the city which is dying but immortal. Thus, in one of its local text components Kiev acquires transcendental symbols interconnected with eschatological motifs, but this is not a liminal space, life on the edge, this is a cultural and spiritual catastrophe, end of the world when the earthly City collapses, and the City of heaven survives. From Kiev contexts of Mikhail Bulgakov we are passing to another phenomenon which has become one of benchmarks of modern geocultural space, i.e. the reflection on ‘genius and locus’ where from different points of view and methodology the images of loci and concepts of space are studied in works of Russian literature classic authors. The most significant study seems to be Genius Loci by Peter Vail (Vail 2007) about the line of genuine crossing of an artiste’s creative work and his living place. In the works of Zamyatin (2008, 2009) and Zamyatina et al. (2008) the ‘genius and locus’ problem is studied as a part of local mythology and one of the local text components. Literary images of a place are partly described in the collection Love of Space (2008) about creative work of Boris Pasternak. L. Panova’s monograph The World, Space and Time in the Poetry of Osip Mandelshtam (Panova 2003) is

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written within the philological discourse without any geographical references since the images of certain locations in this monumental work are not studied. One more variant of the problem raised in this section is the so-called culturallandscape text which appears to be the result of representation and interpretation of the cultural landscape as a noosphere, ethno-cultural, and image-symbolic phenomenon. For instance, O. Kolomeytseva highlights methods of the culturallandscape text construction in poetry by Serguei Yesenin, The ornamental and iconic method involves creating of a complex “verbal ornament” taking into account the relation between components of the cultural landscape and its “iconic” spatial organization. Every step of the verbal image is made similar to the central bud of nature… Images-archetypes (borders, infinities) are expressed in terms of landscapepoetic images and symbols (fence, gates cliff, road, sky, etc.) (Kolomeytseva 2009: 50),

as well as the method of landscape-poetic images modeling, and comparative and geographical method (the Persian motif in Yesenin’s poetry). The scholar distinguishes properties of the cultural-landscape text, i.e. anisotropy which is fixed in opposition ‘vertical—horizontal’, ‘centre—periphery’, poly-centricity, and polyenormity. In modern culture ‘reading’ of the local text based on the texts of separate fiction work might happen. New reading routes are developed as e.g. Moscow of Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, St. Petersburg of The Bronze Horseman by Pushkin. The same effect occurs in the provincial landscape provided it was reflected in the work of national and world known writers. And it is not necessary at all that in the work of this rank the specific toponyms were mentioned. Thus, A. Platonov’s novel Chevengur, one of the most significant novels written in the 1920–1930s was published in Russia sixty years later and became an object of scholarly attention to the real space of the southern part of Voronezh region, the space which became the site of the philosophical novel-metaphor. The Chevengur toponym (purportedly, ‘twisted on the wrong side’ Boguchar) is an author’s fiction but there are real toponyms in the novel written in the text in their original phonetics and location. In the summer of 2000, an expedition reached the outskirts of Boguchar to read philosophical revelations of Platonov in the real cultural landscape (Baldin et al. 2000; Golovanov 2000). Moving in the spacetext took place as living in the text of a literary work, its polysemantic complexity. Hence, local texts include the loci into the cultural context in general, structure the landscape which bore them, and fill it with new senses and images. The local text is always present in communication with other local texts trying to gain independence in the ‘community’. In Russian culture, the Petersburg text is a kind of ‘starting point’ for self-reflection and representation of local texts.

6.7 Cultural-Philosophical Aspects and Semantics of Travel I cannot sit still, The stale air disturbs my chest;

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Like a groom striving for his bride I hasten to go far somewhere Which is like a bride under the veil! Far-away, mysterious far-away! Once I marry you I shall feel Pity for my wife, not bride! P. Vyazemsky Traveling is one of the ancient cultural phenomena and one of strategies of reading the cultural landscape text. A separate direction in cultural philosophy has developed concerning geographical images of movement, dynamics of geographic space. Traveling as the top of geographical self-discovery and at the same time as a strong position of “geographically” oriented philosophizing has drawn serious attention of scholars (Zamyatin 2004a: 35–36).

In this study, traveling is interesting for us as a means of reading and interpretation of the cultural landscape as well as an activity having from time to time latent or given super sense weaving it plot pattern in the space of the intertext. To overcome space means getting closer to its understanding. This is not mere understanding of particular landscape and nations but space as an abstract category. The travel of Columbus, in his time, was a symbolic exit from the mastered space into unknown; the Gibraltar strait, in the fifteenth century, was perceived by Europeans as the earth end with the Mare Tenebrorum (Sea of Darkness) beyond it. People did not know that Columbus discovered new continents, and the greatness of his deed was seen not in the fact that he discovered the western route to Indian but that he overcame the limit delivered to mankind from time immemorial. This was not by chance that onto the coat of arms of Spain a symbolic sign of overcoming the limit was added, i.e. two columns (Pillars of Hercules) with a ribbon and an inscription on it refuting the testament of Hercules plus ultra (Rashkonsky 1993: 32).

During the post-modern era, traveling became the main idea of the world unity; due to it the world, perhaps, for the first time was perceived as a totally connected geography (Zamyatin 2006: 119).

Travels turn into ‘ideology of the way’ (Jackson 1997). By traveling a personality becomes ‘more spatial’, boundaries are overcome including intrapersonal ones. In travel, symbolizing of space by culture is brighter than in other types of interaction. Initial quality of environment and its impact on the human psyche are of great importance. The fact that such impact might greatly vary from place to place within the same climatic zone with similar topography and vegetation was noticed by many travelers. For instance, Russian traveler V. Arsenyev wrote, Sometimes mountains and forests happen to have attractive and cheerful look. And you wish to stay with them forever. Sometimes it’s vice versa, mountains look dull and wild. And what a strange thing! This feeling is never personal, subjective, it’s always common for all people in the brigade (Arsenyev 1960: 10).

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Thus topophobia and topophilia loci in the geocultural space are being formed. Semantics of the cultural landscape in direct contact with it demands not a dispassionate observation but empathy, and investigating it by hermeneutical methods. Mundane, everyday space is available to an outside observation and description though it is rather semantically poor. These spaces coexist in time in the same cultural landscape, and a traveler moving across the planet surface chooses the space himself, and his decision determines how rich and polysemantic his observation will be. Different cultures have similar semiotic connotation of the way that can be classified as follows. Vector on the plane. Ordinary travel with mundane or academic aims, i.e. trade, tourist, etc. N. Roerich who crossed the Central Asia wrote on such travel. Various scientific expeditions grow in number. Iron birds fly in the air bringing news or just for speed. After all, these signs are aimed for something good. Let’s believe they are for the better. Tourist traveling is really the life university which gives nations a new breath of opportunities (Roerich 1995: 170).

Life experience accumulated during a travel is a precious crystal into the treasury of consciousness which might once, under the rays of spiritual wisdom, shine with new lights and give opportunity to expand consciousness. Circle movement. Mythological traveling of the cursed characters featuring infinite and aimless wandering; vagabondage as the variant of wandering in the real space and real life. Regardless the trajectory of wandering, here, the circle symbolizes a travel devoid of goal, and turned into punishment. In the Divine Comedy Dante summarizing philosophical ideas of his time and his personal mystical experience associates this circle movement with space organization of Hell which is opposed to quite differently organized space of Paradise. Sinful circle movement applies only to Hell since it is related with the narrowing space, its growing tightness, contrary to the expanding space of celestial spheres and infinity of sparkling Empyrean. The space of Hell is not only tight but also roughly material. It is opposed to an ideal, infinitely tightening to the one Point (Paradise XXVIII, 16 22–25; XXIX, 16–18) and simultaneously expanding without limits. The opposition is added by antitheses: ‘light – darkness’, ‘incense – stench’, ‘warmth – extreme heat or extreme cold’ that all together form the semiotic structure of Dante’s universe (Lotman 2000: 310).

Vector on the plane expanding the general field of cognition, i.e. scientific expeditions. Expeditions are led in ordinary desacralized space, hence qualitatively differ from conventional traveling by their informative character, although in some cases they are no more than a construction of the image of ‘the other’, the other world where the starting point of attitude is always culture and nature of the native country. Scientific expeditions present a specific case of interaction of a human and the geographical space because such traveling results in enriching the world culture and science with new knowledge, and new data, especially geographic and ethnographic. Analysis of the received data allowed many scholars reaching a new level of understanding of geographic laws. Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky who crossed hundreds of kilometers in

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Asia made a conclusion about necessity of separating geography ‘in broad sense’ and ‘in narrow sense’. The first one, in his opinion, is aimed to complete study of the globe, i.e. laws of its structure with the solid, liquid and air covers, laws of relation with other planets and organisms living there (Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky 1856: 7–8).

The second one, or physiography of the earth surface’, is aimed at ‘description of constant, indelible by ages features sketched by nature as well as changeable, temporal, man-made’ (Semyonov-TyanShansky 1856: 7–8).

Observations made by the scholar with the broadest outlook allowed introducing into science such fundamental methodological approaches as zoning, basics of the natural-economic zones doctrine, thus bringing the mankind closer to a better understanding of their home, the Earth, to form the modern image of the world, with the important role of the global conception. Beauty of style and beauty of the literary ‘portrait’ of a place is a distinctive feature of the travel notes of Russian travelers. Nevertheless, for scholars reading semantics of the cultural landscape without knowing the cultural code of the other nation foreign holy sites and symbols are no more than a sign of cultural identification in the ‘containing landscape’, although they can admire beauty too. Here is one of descriptions of the holy for Buddhists and actually inaccessible for Europeans city of Lhasa made by P. Kozlov. The most interesting city Europeans could imagine, and the most ideal for Tibetans is Lhasa, and it mesmerizes the traveler from afar when he for the first time from the nearest mountain ranges can see the Lhasa valley bordered by mountains, and of course, the Potala and the medicine temple situated on separate hills that are, as legends tell, were carried in packs from India. After the hard monotonous way Lhasa with the palace of the Dalai Lama and many temples shining brightly under the sun with their gilded roofs and ganchzhires are really impressive. A marvelous combination of the valley and holy hills, Marpo-Ri and ChzangpoRi, the transparent blue sky and bright sun, original buildings and red, gold and white colors bring to life a real fairy tale (Kozlov 2004: 48).

Description of the distant lands crossed by N. Przhevalsky are similarly beautiful, nevertheless he admitted, No matter how diverse is the traveler’s situation which is apt to change every day as the caravan goes on but still, despite the frequent novelty in this or that regard, the constant change of external impressions, the general inner life flow becomes monotonous (Quot.: Murzayev 1996: 217–218).

The scholars are drawn to traveling not only by the passion to know the other lands and customs, the desire to bring knowledge to their people and the world, but also to see the other stars under the other sky, as P. Kozlov used to write recalling the vital meeting with N. Przhevalsky (Memoirs about N. Przhevalsky 1929). ‘The use of traveling and comprehensive cognition’, Nicholas Roerich wrote,

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has probably never occupied the minds as at present. Soon the whole globe will be dotted with the traversed ways. However, it will be only the first level of cognition. And it will be necessary on each of these ways to look up high and to deeply penetrate inside in order to value all the diversity of opportunity which recently was not noticed at all (Roerich 1995: 195).

In the semantic field of culture, even a scientific expedition is a caravan going into the far, thus crossing the limits of the ordinary known world. At this point, there is always some special attitude towards travelers which brings them relatively close with the ancient cultural phenomenon, i.e. traveling to the end of the oecumene to seek the Unknown. Vector of uncertain orientation. A particular type of traveling where the direction is not given in advance since the space is characterized by its character to subjugate movement. In the Russian language there is, and is not by chance, a verb not translated into European languages without using which Russian-speaking people cannot ask for directions, nor tell about their travel experience, it is the verb “dobipatc” meaning that moving from one point to another is a long, hard and unpredictable process’ (Zaliznyak et al. 2005: 96).

Vector of ascending. Symbolizes spiritual traveling and pilgrimage. All religions describe the development of a human being in terms of the path, the way to God. In this context, the geographical space also tends to change turning into the spiritual one. What is the height of heaven, the width of the earth, the depth of the sea? John spoke: the father, the son and the holy spirit’ (Records of Literature.. 1980: 136),

is said in the apocryphal Conversation of Three Saints. Therefore, the image of the path and travel in the traditional culture is one of fundamentals. Traveling is perceived as an initiation into the great mysteries that can be learnt on the edge between life and death, since overcoming the undeveloped and even unimproved spaces is always dangerous. Pilgrimage to the holy places in its extreme form does not imply paysage admiring but only emotional experience with the events of the Holy Scripture or legends. A landscape becomes the symbol of historical or mythological events acting as an initiation. In this case, movement on the earth surface is regarded as a symbol and practically as an analogy of the spiritual path. According to many wanderers and hermits who sought spiritual transformation, the most helpful paysage for such purpose is a dim and austere one which has to be a ‘humble, devoid of comfort and vanity’ place (John of the Ladder 2008: The Word, 3, 17). Eyes and the soul must not be distracted by anything. This was the reason for leaving for the ‘desert’, a place devoid of conventional earthly comfort. Traveling in search of the Radiant City is of a different semantics. Here, two topics of the world culture are crossing, wisdom of the earth and the land of sages. By covering space, a human being open to perception of the earth beauty learns some wisdom from it. A paysage pleasing the eyes might become a supreme spiritual symbol only for those who try to see the reflection of the Divine Countenance in it.

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Desire to reach the lands of legendary sages, holy lands (meaning populated by sages), determines the traveler’s attitude towards the geographical space in general. Russian spiritual culture practiced a very special phenomenon named ‘strannichestvo’ (i.e. wandering from one holy place to another) which focused on the eternal longing for some different space, overcoming the horizontal space for the vertical into the heaven. Nicholas Roerich wrote about this phenomenon of Russian culture. From sea to sea, across all obstacles and difficulties, the travelers of the imagined city used to walk. Longing for the light city of Kitezh, restlessly walking to Belovodie, searching for the Holy Grail, doesn’t it all come from the pursuit when the attentive soulful look admiring the wealth of the kingdom of nature called relentlessly forward. It would be a lesser solution to assume that these travelers were mechanically pushed away by people rebelling behind them. However, the unforgettable Tver citizen exclaimed, “And we will leave for India abandoning all our troubles”, and he did, and having strengthen himself by the light of the travel came back with a wonderful experience (Roerich 1995: 70).

Berdyaev gave the following description of the ‘strannichestvo’ phenomenon: This type of wanderer is very typical for Russia and so wonderful. A strannik is the freest person in the world. He walks on the earth though his element is air, he hasn’t grown into the earth, he is not down to earth. A strannik is free from the world, and the burden of the earth and earthly life is reduced to his small knapsack on his shoulders. Greatness of the Russian people and its messianic aim to the supreme life are focused in the type of the strannik. In Russia, in the folk soul there is some infinite quest, the quest for the invisible city of Kitezh, invisible home. Open distant directions are calling for the Russian soul, and there is no delineated horizon for its spiritual eyes’ (Berdyaev 1990a: 12–13). Valery Podoroga interprets this in the following way: ‘Restlessness, “the rolling stone”, strannichestvo are expressions for some more properties of “the Russian soul” so often repeated in many textbooks. There is much ample space around, too much place but no my or your place, no place to dwell (Podoroga 1994: 133).

Semantics of overcoming space is a special topic, i.e. understanding of boundaries, and overcoming them. The beyond boundary, foreign space is a reason for trepidation, it is always the symbol of a forbidden space closed for those not invited. That is why every culture has legendary ‘heroes of the path’. ‘They are always on the way, and what’s more important, always cross the boundaries of forbidden spaces’ (Lotman 2000: 311). They are either people endowed with special (divine or infernal) properties, or are not humans (angels, demons, elementals). Special traveling of the strannichestvo type is the popular in the Middle Ages search for earthly paradise. In this context, the mere characteristics of activity are of particular importance. The traveler overcomes the hardship of the way and earthly sorrows purifying his soul, preparing it to accept a special spiritual joy. The most remote place, the paradise, is opposed to countries on the basis of fun, joy, and life comfort in the earthly sense. Given the importance of geographical remoteness it’s possible to explain why the feature of remoteness was necessarily included into the medieval utopia. The wonderful land is the land with a long way to it (Lotman 2000: 303).

Paradise was linked with the movement to the East (probably to meet the sun) and the South while hell with the North and the West.

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Later search of paradise were followed by search of Shambala when the West came in touch with the deepest concepts of the East. The ancient Buddhist tradition based of the text guidebooks to Shambala was transformed and assimilated by Western culture. The reality of Shambala, a point and infinity, proximity (one does not need to go somewhere, it should be found in one’s heart), and infinity (the seeker will never reach it if not invited). For a successful journey the quality of space must comply with the qualities of the human being. They are in tune when cultural and spiritual space either welcomes or ignores the alien. I have a land, it has grass and every animal but no thief, nor robber, nor envy, and my land is abundant with wealth. My land has no snake, nor toad, and if they come in they die (Records of Literature.. 1981: 468),

thus John the Presbyter speaks of his kingdom in an ancient Russian text. An attempt to decode this text clearly shows that it concerns the properties of the sacral space not to accept wanderers that do not get rid of their worst qualities (embodied in the medieval text in reptile images), which was described in mythology of many peoples. The Central Asian expedition of the Roerichs stands aside of other travels. The books by Nicholas and Yuri Roerich written on the results of their expedition certainly enriched the mankind with new geographic and ethnographic knowledge, and the collected material became the foundation of a scientific research institute, the ‘Urusvati’ Himalayan Research Institute. This expedition differs from any other due to the purpose which was aimed at understanding of the sacral space of Asia. A number of paintings by Nicholas Roerich featuring mountains paysages were related with the concept of Shambala. The Himalayas, in Hindu mythology, the abode of deity Parvati, act as the symbol of the world mount. Whoever beholds the Himalayas recalls the great significance of the Mount Meru. The blessed Buddha traveled in the Himalayas seeking light. There, near the legendary holy Stupa, in the presence of all gods, the Blessed received Enlightenment. Indeed, everything connected with the Himalayas has the great symbol of the Mount Meru standing in the Centre of the World (Roerich 1994: 45).

The semantic vector of ascending opposed to movement on the plane may have two more types. The first is penetration into depth, into sacred layers of the cultural landscape, followed by enlightenment, the path to unlimited spiritual heights. The second comes from the conception of place development (Savitsky 1997: 282–284) of human communities, the highest stage attainable for the saints, ascetics, sages, spiritual leaders, i.e. striving to the mount TOGETHER with the territory. Afterwards, the mass of people rush to the place of the spiritual feat, and historic events start forming (like the Crusade wars, construction of temples on the place of the Buddha’s feet print, etc.). Hence, even the alleged Samadhi place of the Gautama Buddha as well as the places of powerful spiritual elevation become magnets, points of tension of modern culture. Coming into contact with the aura of such places, a human, provided he is prepared to, acquires his own transcendental experience. The spiritual path implies the possibility to pass it following the pioneer. There are neither maps nor drawn routes on this path. But there are the Buddhist guidebooks to

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Shambala linking together geographical and sacred spaces with only some particular points marked, and movement from one to another is executed through meditation and praying.

6.8 Conclusions The strategy of ‘reading’ of the cultural landscape as a text revives ‘the world is a book’ and ‘a book is a world icon’ cultural metaphors. Culture which, under the post-structural tradition, is interpreted as a text, having semantically constructed the environment, develops a qualitatively different world filled with values and symbols; it later becomes self-valuable, and requires movement in the landscape-textual space, real or virtual traveling from one sense ‘node’ to another. The world structured and textualized by culture as well as a fictional or philosophical text calls for reading, it is immanent to Eros in the process of its genesis, cognition and understanding. By reading the text new senses are revealed and generated that affect the behavior strategies and actions in the landscape. The intertext of the cultural landscape bears properties of interactivity directed not only inside the text (generating of new meanings as a result of reading) but also outside (reading is ‘a dance’, reading is an action in space bringing forth a new sign system parallel to the initial one, provided it is not aimed at changing it).

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Chapter 7

Conclusion

Abstract This chapter contains the key results of the research. The main result of the work can be summarized as follows: The cultural landscape as a phenomenon of culture which is fixed in geographical space with the help of semiotic mechanisms—it is a special area of life of culture, having some certain functional and ontological self-sufficiency. Interpreting of the cultural landscape as a metaphor, a sign system and a text, undertaken in this paper, represents the author’s construct assisting to adequately show varied manifestations of the ontological and phenomenological essence of the cultural landscape and its corresponding culture.

The main result of this work can be formulated in the following way: The cultural landscape as a cultural phenomenon fixed in the geographic space with the help of semiotic mechanisms is a specific field of cultural genesis, with some functional and ontological self-sufficiency, and nevertheless, included into the semiosphere and noosphere. It perfectly reflects the law noticed by G. Smirnov that the processes forming the noosphere and developing the semiosphere take place in parallel, and affect each other dramatically. Semiotic systems give (or can give) a certain direction to development of human civilization, i.e. to the noosphere (Smirnov 2008: 44).

Interpretation of the cultural landscape as metaphor, a sign system or a text undertaken in this paper is a research construct which helps to adequately represent the ontological and phenomenological essence of the cultural landscape and its appropriate culture. Semantics of the cultural landscape is connected with its ontology, epistemology, and axiology. One of decisions of the universal problem of space can be reached through the cultural landscape which is a comprehended and organized representative part of the abstract physical space given to us not only in perception but also in images and symbols, on the conceptual and epistemological level. The cultural landscape can be studied metaphorically as the phenomenon of resonance of two reliefs, the ‘relief’ of cultural processes and that of the natural landscape, elements of which serve as objects of cultural, artistic, and aesthetic reflection, thus enhancing the resonance. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 O. Lavrenova, Spaces and Meanings, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 8, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3_7

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The study of semantics of the cultural landscape is still a relatively young field of research of the humanities, and is based on the conceptually new attitude to the subject of study, i.e. the geocultural space. Here, first of all, the value attitude towards space, and much lesser the sense are being studied. Comprehension of semantics of space in the context of culture and self-identification, and self-determination in the context of space leads to a new understanding of the structure and morphology of the cultural landscape, opens new opportunities in modeling geocultural interactions. The cultural landscape can be structured by senses distributed in space, and its reading is the movement from one point to another, from meaning to meaning. In many interpretations it tends to a ‘laying’ structure, i.e. the natural landscape is distinguished as a nutrient substrate, and the economic, social, cultural, and eidetic spaces are constructed over it. The full set of senses and symbols with the time saturation ‘packed’ in it (transience and dynamism), timelessness and eternity, the sacred and transcendent meanings, gives, to the cultural landscape, the properties of semantic flow, transformation of symbols and signs, their movement in space due to the changing in time values and realities of culture. The cultural landscape is a scale of values deployed in space where geographical objects and zones act as analogues of the social and/or cultural status, or as spiritual stages. The cultural landscape is a part of the semiosphere, the result and catalyst of processes of the cultural genesis and semiosis leaving their traces in space in the form of material objects and the system of images, metaphors, and signs. The cultural landscape is organized according to the semiotic modeling codes of culture, and thus it becomes the preserver and producer of cognitive codes of culture. In the cultural landscape, the discourse of space in culture (in the broadest sense, from a locus to Cosmos) is expressed. Thus, the global geocultural space, i.e. the field of spatial meanings of the world culture, is formed. Hence, genesis, evolution and structure of the cultural landscape are derivatives of physical and semiotic cultural development of the containing landscape, and they depend on: (1) geographical peculiarities of the landscape (mountain, plain, etc); (2) history of the culture (cultures) common to the landscape which has been developing and altering the landscape for thousands of years; (3) interaction of cultures regarded as the dialogue of cultures, i.e. language relations, relations of the sign system mutual exchange, which, in the landscape space, brings to life the sense polyphony; (4) the modern world picture and peculiarities of universal categories of culture; (5) modern semiotic processes and cultural mechanisms. By studying the cultural landscape we can discover one of philosophical aspects of the cultural genesis, its space and semantic aspect. The cultural landscape structure is determined by its physical and geographic constants, and the axiological and semiotic structure of culture by its value system, paradigm, and irregular semiotic processes that generate, in the cultural landscape,

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the nodes (centres) and peripheries of sense, its internal (cultural breaks) and external boundaries. From the cognitive point of view, the cultural landscape might be interpreted as metaphor; its elements can act as metaphorical models as well as the target role of the metaphoric projection determining the basis of the discourse practice in space for each bearer of culture. It seems appropriate here to recall the words of Frank Ankersmit on the importance of metaphor which is enhancing when the cultural landscape is studied as metaphor. Metaphor is perhaps the most powerful linguistic instrument which we have at our disposal for the transformation of reality into the world which is able to adapt to the human aims and purposes. Metaphor is able to “anthropomorphize” social and sometimes even physical reality, and by doing that, allows us, in the true sense of these words, adapting to the reality around us, and becoming relatives to it (Ankersmit 2003: 85).

The epistemological nature of metaphor which is expressed in establishing direct connection between seemingly distant concepts in order to enrich (expand, specify, associatively form) the sense field of the key concept, by connecting it with the system of senses of another concept (Akishkina 2009), aids culture to arrange and structure its world, and to match it. Given that we define the cultural landscape as metaphor, we recognize its role as an ‘adapter’ on a deeper ontological level since in such case understanding determines being. Semiotic mechanisms of culture manifest themselves relatively to the geographic space objects turning them into signs that exist in specific communicative relationship thus forming the cultural landscape as a sign system. Development of the natural landscape is equated to comprehension, and the wild uncontrolled environment becomes a sign system where the uncontrolled feature turns into a sign, takes its fixed place in the world picture, and becomes controlled at the semantic level. The space semiotically ordered by culture becomes inhabited. On the one hand, a human being of this or that culture transforms the perceived spatial information according to the cultural code of his culture (provided that cultural code is regarded the system of internally related conceptions that determine the human behavior within the culture), and on the other hand, the semiotics of the perceived paysage-space, the language of the space, might act as the ‘modeling cultural code’ (Lotman 1998: 444). When the cultural landscape is interpreted as a text it becomes available for reading at different levels, from local to macro-regional. Non-linear exposition of the text results in variations of reading. The strategies of reading might be different, i.e. visual readout of information using semiotic cultural codes (local landscapes), study of fiction texts connected with a certain place or region that represent local texts of culture (local, regional, macro-regional landscapes), traveling (landscapes of all territorial and hierarchical levels) which, as a cultural phenomenon, has its own semantics able to produce new meanings.

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