Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2015 8 (7)

Authors

Mikhailova, Galina P.

Contact information

Mikhailova, Galina P.:Vilnius University 3 Universiteto Str., LT-01513 Vilnius, Lithuania; E-mail:

Keywords

Akhmatova; Gumilev; Hamlet; Ophelia; Rosetti; Siddal; Ricoeur; identity; life-world

Abstract

Based on P. Ricoeur’s theory of reading, the article provides a literary solution to the problem of self-identification, leading to the issue of a poet’s “narrative identity”. It is proved by the analysis of “Reading “Hamlet””, Anna Akhmatova’s early poem. Analysis of Akhmatova’s refiguration and study of this poetic configuration have showed the poet’s desire to achieve selfhood by identifying the life-world with Shakespeare’s texts. The article presents the comparison of cultural meanings, characteristic to Shakespeare’s characters (Ophelia and Hamlet) from the point of view of Russian and European readers, Anna Akhmatova’s predecessors and contemporaries. Special attention is paid to possible identification of Akhmatova with Elizabeth Siddal, one of the characters of the European cultural field, and to her fictional image of herself as Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Interpolating certain meanings of the read and interpreted cultural texts on the predicates of her own life situation of 1903- 1912, Akhmatova, first of all, clarifies her relationships with Nikolai Gumilev and solves the problem of preserving her own identity

Pages

1405-1418

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/19683

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).