On Artistic World Of The Novel “The Underground, Or A Hero Of Our Time”

Russian contemporary Makanin B. published the novel “The Underground, or a Hero of Our Time”(The Underground for short) in 1998 and it became representative one of post-realistic works. It is also the main research subject of this paper. In the title of this paper “On Artistic World of the Novel ‘The Underground, or a Hero of Our Time’” the word “world” means creative characteristics. Therefore general post-realistic artistic characteristics of the novel are main content of this paper.The paper starts with a brief summary of main characteristics of Russian post-realism and Makanin’s post-realism for clarification of the reason why the novel “The Underground” is defined as a post-realistic work, and makes further research on three main creative characteristics of this novel. The new underground man is the novel’s central character who demonstrates characteristics of the superfluous man, the small man and the traditionally underground man, his character is mixed and contradictory. Understanding and choosing of opportunities vary greatly from individual to individual, so the new underground man fragment. On time and space construction in the novel spaces move and change. The tube-shaped apartment, corridors, the police, the mental hospital form a complex multistage chronotop-mode: meeting chronotop, metaphorical chronotop and misplaced chronotop. Chronotops reflect Necessity and contingency of success or failure of “Maintenance of personality” in the period of the social turbulence and the transition and show that Makanin rethink the crisis of a lack of individuality and spiritual values in the modern world. Makanin applyes intertextuality to the novel: the Intertextuality of titles, the Intertextuality of themes and the Intertextuality of plots.This paper aims to show where are artistic values of Makanin’s post-realistic creation, to prove the legitimacy and the important significance and function of post-realistic literature in the course of development of Russian literature by comprehensive and detailed analysis of the novel “The Underground”.