“Mysteries of the Linguistic Sphinx”: Vyacheslav Ivanov and Mikhail Bakhtin in Ludmila A. Gogotishvili’s interpretation
Authors:   A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Fedotova Svetlana V. 
Published: January 2025

The article examines the linguistic interpretation of the problem of the influence of Vyach. Ivanov symbolism on the dialogical concept of Mikhail Bakhtin, first undertaken by Lyudmila Gogotishvili. The first part of the work provides a general description of the main stages of Gogotishvili’s work, in the context of which her linguo-philosophical concept of Russian symbolism was formed (from Ivanov to Bakhtin and Losev). It is assumed that the intention of this concept is connected with identifying the linguistic specificity of Ivanovo’s symbolism and the specific forms of its influence on two post-symbolist antipodes — the “dialogueist” Bakhtin and the “dialectician” Losev (this article is devoted only to the first of them). The second part reveals the originality of the third period of Gogotishvili’s linguistic philosophy (late 1990 — early 2000), within which the theme “Ivanov — Bakhtin” was developed from two sides (linguistic and philosophical), in different genres (challenging articles and preambles/comments in the publication of collected works by Bakhtin) and in two stages (first, an analysis of the linguistic mechanisms of myth according to Ivanov and dialogue according to Bakhtin, then — of the philosophical and aesthetic attitudes of the two thinkers). The third part analyzes in detail the linguistic (predicative) interpretation of symbol and myth, which determines the problematics and content of Gogotishvili’s articles about Ivanov; there is traced the logic of interpretation of the myth formula as a synthetic judgment; it is shown that the conclusions about the linguistic mechanism of myth, in which the semantic zones of the subject and predicate are antinomically crossed, are an accurate linguistic transcription of Ivanov’s basic theoretical provisions about symbol and myth. The fourth part reconstructs the “Ivanov-Bakhtin” plot, developed by Gogotishvili in rough drafts, in an article devoted to the predicative interpretation of the two-voiced word, monologism and polyphony according to Bakhtin, as well as in comments to his early philosophical treatise “Toward a Philosophy of the Act”, which has survived in fragments. Based on the chronology of the creation of these texts, the logic of Gogotishvili’s thought is hypothetically restored. In the rough drafts, she develops a parallel between Ivanov’s predicative concept of symbol and myth and Bakhtin’s predicative interpretation of the two-voiced word and dialogue. The article brings to the fore the linguistic interpretation of the main Bakhtinian concepts, without comparison with Ivanov symbolism. In the preamble and comments to the collected works, unfolds a proof of the fundamental kinship between Ivanov’s philosophical and aesthetic ideas and Bakhtin’s moral philosophy; although the linguistic issues disappear into the subtext, nevertheless, it is precisely this that defines Gogotishvili’s method: the reconstruction of Bakhtin’s holistic plan is based on the principle of antinomianism, proven in the first article about Ivanov. The appendix contains fragments of draft notes, which most fully present the relationship between the linguistic mysteries of Ivanov’s symbolism and Bakhtin’s dialogism, solved by Gogotishvili through a predicative interpretation of Ivanov’s formula of myth and Bakhtin’s two-voiced word.