Hermeneutical Phenomenology in Poetry

In this study, interpretation of artworks in hermeneutical phenomenology is introduced while the advantages of its methodology over current, competing commonplace viewpoints such as Structuralism, are manifested and emphasized. To this end, Ahmed Shamlou’s celebrated poem “The Wall” has been analyzed and examined. The new analysis has delved into phenomenological order, mythological, temporal, historical, and finally intersubjective domains of the meaning of the poem in a cyclic manner. Every cycle has shed some light on the meaningfulness of parts in the totality of the poem and cumulative nature of the meaning of the whole in terms of the parts in the unity and integrity of the poem. Moreover, the interplay of signifier and signified in Saussurian terms has been put into question and elevated beyond the so-called one to one relationship or correspondence between signifier and signified.