Introduction. For the rhythm emergence threefold repetition of one or another component of a literary text is necessary. The rhythm-forming principles in verse and prose are different, in poetic speech it is mainly meter, rhyme, stanza; the rhythm of fiction is more diverse and variable. There are several types of rhythmically organized prose: rhythm of fiction, “rhythmi-cal prose”, “ornamental prose”, metrized, rhymed prose. Purpose: to reveal some factors of rhythmic prose in “Servants of the old century” by I. A. Goncharov. Materials and methods. The main subject of the study is a short fiction of the writer. The research method is a typological one, which allows to reveal certain regularities of using artistic techniques in the writer's works. Results, discussion. The rhythmic organization of works by I. A. Goncharov is the least studied aspect of the poetics of the writer, to the study of which literary scholars turned only in the early 21st century. The scientific originality of the article is determined by the study of rhythm-forming factors in the prose cycle of “Servants of the old century” by I. A. Gon-charov. Conclusion. In “Servants of the old century” by I. A. Goncharov both rhythm-forming factors typical for his early works and new ones – different rhetorical figures of addition are discovered. The dominant rhythm-forming technique is anti-thetic parallelism and its variety – hiatus. The function of rhythm is not only to compositionally structure the text, but also to focus the reader's attention on the most important semantic fragments of the text.