The artistic reality of Salman Rudshi's novel "The Florentine Enchantress"

The article presents a reconstruction and analysis of Salman Rushdie's famous book "The Florentine Enchantress". It is not very clear why she is so named, there are more significant figures in the novel, for example, Emperor Akbar. The question is raised about the integrity of artistic reality and the peculiarities of readers' understanding of the novel. In connection with this statement, the author recalls his distinction between two ways of constructing a modern work of art: in the first, the artist recreates the world opposed to him (including in some cases himself, but as alienated), in the second, he creates a reality reflecting the peculiarities of his own consciousness (this approach is called "private realism"). It is proposed to carry out a reconstruction that allows you to understand the work of art in terms of how it is constructed, what its author wanted to say, whether it is possible to reconstruct what he did, whether he succeeded in the idea, what his work was, etc. The implementation of this program results in an analysis of Rushdie's personality characteristics, as well as a description of the main tasks that he solves (reviving the story, entertaining readers, expressing one's own beliefs). Rushdie creates characters who live in two different realities ‒ historical and modern, as a result, history is partially distorted, and the characters acquire contradictory features. The techniques by which the artistic reality of the novel is created are analyzed in detail. The first technique is the identification of historical subjects with non‒historical ones, the second is the connection of storylines necessary for the author, the third is a technique widely used by Rushdie, not only to connect different lines and realities, but also for his other two purposes (entertaining readers and expressing his own thoughts) ‒ it's magic and fantasy. The question is considered why many readers do not understand the "Florentine Enchantress" well. There are two reasons for this. One is related to the very attitude of understanding: readers start reading Rushdie's works, believing that they are looking at an ordinary novel, but in fact we are talking about the genre of private realism. The second reason lies in the unpreparedness of readers to work with such complex material, which involves recreating a complete work and reality based on the images, storylines, themes and other expressive means offered by the author.

understanding, misunderstanding, composition, artistic reality, plot, reconstruction, fairy tale, fantasy, fiction, history