The article is devoted to the problem of studying the category of text space, which is relevant for modern linguistics. In the last decade, interdisciplinary research conducted in cognitive and anthropological linguistics has changed the understanding of the semantic organization of a literary text. The text in its final form assumes a special material extension, sequentially connected sentences and super - phrasal units that produce semantic, but more specifically, semiotic space. The category of space in the text is perceived as a set of linear signs as a complex of meanings. With this interpretation, the text is considered as "a mental formation, a mental space that has a certain specificity". awareness of the "space of the text" allows linguists to present the text as an integral system in which structural connections are found that can help in the course of understanding the meanings inherent in the text. Thus, in modern research, it is necessary to study the text based on its spatio-temporal existence, because "the text is fixed in writing and is perceived through vision as a spatial phenomenon". For an objective linguistic expression of the category of mental space in the text, there is a certain set of lexical units and grammatical means by which the author creates a continuum of the work in front of the reader. The article lists the main linguistic means of expressing a spatial category, the analysis of which can lead to the essence of the work and highlight its continuum. The relevance of the study of the category of mental space in the text of a classical Russian writer lies in the search for an image of being a writer, in the ability to synthesize the national consciousness and the author's worldview by studying the language means of expressing spatial categories and ways to represent them in a literary text. Thus, the category of space in a literary text makes it possible to identify the characteristic features of the author's individual picture of the world. The article shows the linguistic features of the organization of the category of ethnomental space, the polar model of the world in the story of N. V. Gogol "the Enchanted place". The topos "cursed place" is an intermediate point between real and unreal space.