Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements

Summary/Abstract: Nabokov’s dictum on the merging of “the precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science” in a work of art has been often cited. Somehow it’s always seemed familiar to me: I was lucky enough to learn from people who appreciated the precision of poetry and the aesthetical bliss of scientific adventure. I’m speaking of an informal circle of humanitarians later called the Tartu–Moscow semiotic school: Yuri Lotman, Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Mikhail Gasparov, Eleazar Meletinsky, Aleksandr Pyatigorsky, and others. The importance of their work and their presence in Tartu is hard to overestimate.

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