The article introduces the concept “borderline epoch” concerning the first third of the 20th century. The author notes that personality as the object of interdisciplinary studies is included to the universal system of categories. However, there is a contradiction between the importance of the artistic conception of personality and the insufficient development of its categories in the literary system. To solve the problem the terms “categorical imperatives” and “hypothetical imperatives” introduced by E. Kant are used to represent artistic deontology of heroes of Belarusian literature. Particularly, hypothetical imperatives can be applied to describe linguistic phenomena related to the concrete national material. Its translation into the language of another culture shows that it is difficult to fill all the gaps and find proper equivalents. The conclusion of the peculiarities of national personality and its artistic models is made on the material of Belorussian prose of the first third of the 20th century.