Text, Narrative, Interpretation
Summary
Albert A. Stepanyan
The paper deals with the fundamental aspects of historical study and writing. The focus of them makes the personality of the historian being involved in cultural texts of the present and past. His dialogue with the «voices» of different epochs is one of the main components of historical reflection. In its turn, it motivates the scope and essence of the «questioning» of the past and opening the way to overpassing the imaginative ambiguity of the past and memory. This makes the real start of historical investigation comprising the activity of the historian from the verification of historical facts to their clustering in textual and narrative units. Only in this consequence, the interpretation of single events and large historical blocks are possible. They open the content and essence of history. And the historian gains ability of answering the fundamental questions of his investigation formulated far back by Herodotus – how, when, and why?