The Character of the Fantastic Space in Chingiz Aitmatov’s Novella The Piebald Dog Running Along the Shore

<jats:p>The proposed article analyzes the features of the organization of an imaginary space in Chingiz Aitmatov’s novella The Piebald Dog Running Along the Shore. Such a space in the work becomes the oneiric reality, one of the characters’ dream. The purpose of this article is to consider the dream as a part of the artistic whole of the story. The idea is formulated that the reality of a dream in a literary text is one of the variants of a fantastic, imaginary artistic space, along with a mythological one, also revealed in the writer’s texts. The dream represents a complexly organized structure. It can be considered as a special device in the work that determines a number of features of the text, both formal and substantive. Dream can influence a character’s perception of certain events happening to him, determine his actions. In the story, the dream becomes a special space-time formation for the character. It is a distant and close space, which does not really exist and becomes the only true reality for the character at the same time. Fantastic spaces - including the creation myth that frames the narrative and the myths constructed by the characters themselves - are superimposed upon objective reality, creating a complex unity. For Aitmatov’s characters, the real is practically not separated from the non-existent, fantastic.</jats:p>