Anna Akhmatova. “The Twenty-First. Monday. Night...”: An Experience of Linguistic Hermeneutics

Abstract

This article describes two linguistic approaches to literary analysis. It is stated that in modern linguistics, the language-oriented approach occupies a much larger place than linguistic hermeneutics. The paper shows how linguistic hermeneutics differs from the linguistic analysis of a literary text. Further, the research setting of linguistic hermeneutics is determined: utmost attention to the language, with  all linguistic facts being considered as potential hermeneutic problems. The necessity of turning to the methodology of linguistic hermeneutics is substantiated not only in the case of obviously complex texts, but also in the case of texts that do not look as such. In addition, the main task of the linguistic hermeneutics of a literary text is formulated: to contribute to the maximum objectification of the process of interpreting linguistic facts as the most effective way of approaching the author’s intention. Using Anna Akhmatova’s poem “The Twenty-First. Monday. Night...”, the article demonstrates the possibilities of linguistic hermeneutics. Moreover, the author of this paper presents some interpretations of the poem and suggests his own interpretation. The hermeneutic difficulties faced by researchers when working with this text in particular and Akhmatova’s oeuvre in general can be explained by the fact that the religious aspect of her poetry had, for obvious reasons, been overlooked by Soviet literary criticism and did not come into focus until the mid-1990s. Today it can be argued that without taking into account religious motifs, the analysis of Akhmatova’s works would be not only incomplete, but also inadequate. The main conclusion of the article can be reduced to the following statement: “The Twenty-First. Monday. Night...” is a phenomenon of Christian (Orthodox) aesthetics, and an adequate interpretation of this poem has to take this into consideration.