Some peculiarities of the artistic world of the novel “The haze lays down on the old steps” by Alexander Chudakov

The article suggests the analysis of Alexander Chudakov’s novel “The haze lays down on the old steps” which retains the features typical of the genre of the novel in the 19th century, and meets the contemporary requirements for this genre. That is, while clearly preserving and realizing what is usually called “the memory of the genre”, at the same time, it sets a new genre horizon, a milestone, as well as forms a new canon of the genre of the novel. Among other things, this is done at the expense of the original subject-object organization of the epic narration, first first-person, then thirdperson. Another technique is closely connected with this technique, it was established in the epic long before Chudakov, but received a new development in “The haze lays down on the old steps”. The reader is instilled into the fact that the protagonist (both in the function of the narrator, that is, the subject, I, and in object - he) and the biographical author is one and the same person. But such identity of the author and the protagonist is nothing more than a device, and the world of the novel is the artistic world, connected with the physical one, interpreting it with the help of artistic means. So, according to Chudakov as a writer and as a creator of the novel who meditates about his own works, the artistic world is certainly a fictional one, created, as it should be, according to its special - artistic - laws, a world which lies in another perspective as related to physical reality. However, at the level of the author’s intention the eccentric artistic world was made so that the recipient believed that it was the truth of life, but this is an artistic device that is very characteristic of a number of literary works, and in Chudakov’s novel he brought it to the climax. Chudakov’s book is quintessential for the genre of novel as applied to the context of the first decades of the 21st century, because it is based on its peculiar artistic world, irrelevant to physical reality, but at the same time deliberately posing as the “reflection” of the real world.