Humanities & Social Sciences 7 (2015 8) 1405-1418 ~ ~ ~ УДК 821.161.1 Reading Akhmatova: on the Pathway to Finding Self Galina P. Mikhailova* Vilnius University 3 Universiteto Str., LT-01513 Vilnius, Lithuania Received 16.02.2015, received in revised form 19.04.2015, accepted 09.06.2015 Based on P. Ricoeur’s theory of reading, the article provides a literary solution to the problem of self-identifi cation, 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 refi guration and study of this poetic confi guration 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 identifi cation of Akhmatova with Elizabeth Siddal, one of the characters of the European cultural fi eld, and to her fi ctional 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 19031912, Akhmatova, fi rst of all, clarifi es her relationships with Nikolai Gumilev and solves the problem of preserving her own identity. <...> Introduction After T.V. Tsiv’ian’s article, written quite a long time ago (Tsiv’ian 1989), the study of the refl ection of Akhmatova’s lyrical subject in the mirrors of “the others” is one of the common principles in the analysis of the poet’s work. <...> In her later work Tsiv’ian dwelt upon the articulation of Akhmatova’s mirror theme in “the formation of self through the other” (Tsiv’ian 2001, 11). <...> All rights reserved identity by both Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine and the author herself1 . <...> To analyze Akhmatova’s pathway to self-awareness and self-realization I shall base on her reading and interpretation of some cultural texts, or, in other words, a literary solution of self-identifi cation problem, which makes it possible to dwell on “the modality in which one understands him/ herself through understanding texts, i.e. <...>