"I'm some kind of anti-Browning": the counterpoint of the English pretext and subtext in the "Poem without a Hero" of A. Akhmatova

Abstract

The subject of the study is the intertextual dialogue of the "Poem without a Hero" by A. Akhmatova with texts by Robert Browning: the poetic diptych "Porphyria's Lover" and "My last Duchess". The object of the study is the counterpoint of the pretext and subtext of English literature in the multilayered and polysemantic text of the "Poem without a Hero", to which Akhmatova herself attributed the "triple bottom". The authors consider in detail the overlap of the motives of Browning's poems with the text of the "Poem without a Hero" and demonstrate the systemic "mirroring" of the reflection of situations: the complexes of the motives of the Browning diptych in Akhmatova are inverted. Particular attention is paid to the issues of various interpretations of the text of the poem "Porphyria's Lover" and related interpretation options for individual scenes and fragments in the text of the "Poem without a Hero". The main conclusions of the study are the establishment of an unambiguous semantic connection of the "Poem without a hero" with two Browning poems. The research methods include comparative-historical and intertextual. A special contribution of the authors to the study of the topic is the substantiation of the trace of Robert Browning's diptych in the text of "Poems without a Hero": traditionally, another work of Browning is indicated among the sources of the poem. The novelty of the research is determined by the involvement of new material and the proposal of a new reading of Akhmatova's self-identification as "anti-Browning". These words should be deciphered not only by projecting the relationship of the Browning and Barrett pair onto the Gumilev and Akhmatova pair, but also as a reference to the mirror reversal of the situations described by Browning in the dramatic monologues of the diptych.