ON THE ISSUE ABOUT LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING OF A LITERARY TEXT

In the article the problem of plurality of interpretations of a literary text is investigated. The article develops new aspects of typology of understanding, according to which linguoconceptual analysis of the short story by V. Shukshin «I want to live» is carried out. The plurality of interpretations of a literary text is explained by the objective properties of the text itself and by the peculiarities of the perceiving consciousness.
The principal properties of a literary text are the presence of implicit meanings, subtext and the ability of linguistic units to a semantic increment: the word in the work of art expresses more than it means in the
system of language, acquires a symbolic or individual author’s meaning or actualizes several of its meanings. The possibility of discovering and understanding of these features depends on the degree of social, mental
and linguistic development of the individual. The relationship between the level of understanding and the generation of different interpretations of the same text is established. At the semantic level of understanding, the reader is limited to the event series of the literary text. At the cognitive level of understanding, a more developed linguistic personality focuses not so much on the factual as on the conceptual information explicated in the text. The highest level of understanding of the literary text – approaching to the author’s idea – is determined by the reader’s ability to catch not only explicit conceptual information, but also implicit, which is hidden behind repetitive details and images and reflects the author’s experience of mastering reality. The plurality of interpretations often reveals a semantic inversion, which can be manifested even in the interpretation of realistic texts. The typology of understanding reflects the degree of complexity of the process of interpretation of a literary text and opens up opportunities for the development of a linguistic personality.