SOURCE: “The Double,” in Dostoevski the Adapter: A Study in Dostoevski's Use of The Tales of Hoffmann, University of North Carolina Press, 1954, pp. 14–37.

Dostoevski's point of departure in the creation of The Double was clearly enough Poprischchin, hero of Gogol's The Diary of a Madman, a short story. Upon this fundamental figure, now rechristened Golyadkin (Poordevil), it was his intention to graft the whole lore of “Doppelgängerei” and his own analysis of that lore. The prime difficulty, which he could not resolve, was the disparity of the two things. The lore of “Doppelgängerei” implied whole volumes, not only stories and novels, but even philosophical tracts, for the theme itself, so far as it entered literature, was but an elaborated detail out of the complex of German Romantic thought. Yet he went ahead with the almost impossible task of forcing so much matter into the compass of a short novel, drawing from sources which were, to be sure, related in theme, but widely different in artistic form. The finished work as we have it may be defined as a combination of the basic character and theme from Gogol's Diary of a Madman, a brief bit of Gogol's The Nose, possibly another brief bit from “Pogorel'ski's” The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia, an episode from Hoffmann's Kater Murr (a novel), important features from Hoffmann's Die Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht (a short story), and still more important features from Hoffmann's Die Elixiere des Teufels, a full-length and complex novel. The wonder is that the result was not a hopeless hodge-podge. It must be admitted that the work is not crystal clear, but it must also be admitted that the twenty-four-year-old author had in mind a conception of sheer genius,—which lay just beyond his technical powers at that stage of his life. In the completed work trivialities are juxtaposed with passages of astonishing force and grandeur, and in the last analysis it is the latter which prevail.

The thirteen chapters of The Double occupy a time-span of four days, of which the first and fourth far transcend the second and third in importance. (Compare the structure of The Idiot.) Essentially there is only one character, as in the crucial Gogol tales, The Diary of a Madman and The Overcoat, all other persons being seen only as they appear to the hero. The true scene of action is the hero's mind, the whole tragedy is an inner tragedy. We behold despair in the act of tearing the edifice of Reason down to ruin.

On the morning of the first of the four days Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a titular councillor, is discovered in the act of waking. It is striking that on the very first page of this “realistic” narrative such a point should be made of the hero's uncertainty as to whether he is awake or asleep. A state of waking dream was a favorite Romantic and Hoffmannian subject. Golyadkin does awaken, and into a quite habitual world, a real and sorry world of shabby clothes, shabby furniture, and shabby existence. The reader craving realism may at this point feel assured that he is not being misled into some Romantic fantasy.

Yet why do things look at Mr. Golyadkin, rather than he at them?

The dirty green, smoke-begrimed, dusty walls of his little room with the mahogany chest of drawers and chairs, the table painted red, the sofa covered with American leather …, and the clothes taken off over night and flung in a crumpled heap on the sofa, looked at him familiarly.

On the following page of the story Mr. Golyadkin examines his bill-fold:

… the roll of green, grey, blue, red, and particolored notes looked at Golyadkin, too, with approval.

Things in this room seem to be alive with a life of their own:

… the samovar standing on the floor was beside itself, fuming and raging in solitude, threatening every minute to boil over, hissing and lisping in its mysterious language, to Mr. Golyadkin something like, “Take me, good people, I'm boiling and perfectly ready.”

In a truly realistic story things are not “looking” and “talking” like the animated objects that fill the houses of Archivarius Lindhorst or Prosper Alpanus. However, the realism-craving reader of 1846 might take comfort that the room was filled with objects that were perfectly normal, exactly identified and minutely described.

Mr. Golyadkin is attended by a rascally servant named Petrushka, blood brother to the rascal Selifan who attended Chichikov in Dead Souls and to the barber in The Nose, but even before summoning him Mr. Golyadkin darts out of bed to look into the little round looking-glass that stood on the chest of drawers:

“What a thing it would be,” he exclaims, “if I were not up to the mark today, if something were amiss, if some repulsive pimple had made its appearance. …”

The second section of Gogol's The Nose, that parody of Hoffmannian “Doppelgängerei,” begins:

Kovalyov the collegiate assessor woke up early … stretched and asked for a little looking-glass that was standing on the table. He wanted to look at a pimple which had come out upon his nose the previous evening. …

Upon looking into that little mirror Kovalyov was horrified to behold that “there was a completely flat space where his nose should have been.” During the remainder of the story he has to contend not only with his marred countenance but with the nose itself which turns up in public dressed in the uniform of a civil councillor to play against him all the nasty tricks of an antagonistic double. Happily Mr. Golyadkin finds only reassurance in his mirror.

Now The Nose, while it reduced “Doppelgängerei” to an absurdity, drew part of its subject matter from Hoffmann's Die Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht, particularly from the last section of that tale which dealt with Erasmus Spikher's lost mirror-image, one of the many variants of the “double” theme. Dostoevski's story is related twice over to the Sylvesternacht, directly, and through the Gogolian derivative, and it is by no accident that Mr. Golyadkin's first action on this day is to run to look into his mirror. More than once he will encounter mirrors and mirror-like reflections, and with subtle indirection it is implied that his Double, the second Mr. Golyadkin, is his mirror-image.

After the state of waking dream, the objects with life of their own, and the dubiously Romantic motif of the mirror, the story continues in pure Gogolian vein as Mr. Golyadkin inspects the second-hand livery which Petrushka has acquired for this special day. Dressed now in his best clothes, he has the servant drive him into the center of the city. They pass some insolent young puppies of clerks who act much as similar young clerks used to act with Akaki Akakievich. Mr. Golyadkin is outraged at their insolence. His employer also passes, and Mr. Golyadkin is filled with the same anxious servility that used to mark the poor clerk Poprischchin. As the scene becomes more urban we are aware that this is to be, in Gogol's sense, a “Petersburg story.” The subtitle, in fact, is “A Petersburg Poem.”

The destination, surprisingly enough, of this trip is the office of Krestyan Ivanovich Rutenspitz, Doctor of Medicine and Surgery. “Rutenspitz” (whip-tip) is surely not intended as very friendly humor, and “Krestyan” may well be a bi-lingual pun: “Christian,” a German name, and “krest'yanin,” the Russian word for peasant. Quite possibly the doctor represents a fragment of autobiography and sarcasm, recalling a German doctor named Riesenkampf who had been a fellow-roomer with Dostoevski in the dark days just after graduation from the Engineering Academy in 1843.

Chapter II gives an account of Mr. Golyadkin's visit to the doctor. It is a very strange call. Utterly at a loss for words, he cannot for the life of him tell Rutenspitz why he has come. Obviously he is not a stranger to the doctor and the latter clearly considers him a nuisance. The prescription is to be as before: go out with friends, “not to be hostile to the bottle,” avoid solitude. To all this Golyadkin keeps insisting that he is “quite all right,” “just like other people.” Launched into speech now, he talks faster and faster, overwhelming the bewildered doctor with office gossip, tales of enemies that surround him, of the plots they hatch to destroy him, but coming back to the assertion that he is “quite all right,” “just like other people.” What is more, he is a man of action, he can take care of himself. The doctor is all at sea; after all, Dostoevski implies, he is only a German. Suddenly Golyadkin fixes him with his eye, stares, then bursts into tears and sobs uncontrollably. For an instant reality is present to his conscious mind, he knows he is unbalanced, and he weeps for hopelessness and helplessness. The final speech of Poprishchin in the madhouse is moving, but this passage is ten times more terrifying and more moving. The strange interview ends. As he passes out the door Golyadkin loses his feeling of utter surrender. Arrogantly he says to himself: “That doctor is extremely silly. He may treat his patients all right, but still … he's as stupid as a post.”—This scene with an actual doctor, even though the doctor does little, shows Dostoevski's awareness of the medical nature of schizophrenia and removes his hero from all dualism of a merely symbolic nature. This man is beset with a real mental illness, not a division of alliances between the Real and the Ideal or between the Good and the Bad. This chapter had no literary source, it was based on direct observation from life.

From the doctor's office Golyadkin goes on a fantastic shopping tour. (Chapter III.) He visits various stores, prices articles, changes money into smaller denominations, orders furniture enough to supply six rooms, but winds up his business with the actual purchase of only a pair of gloves and a bottle of perfume. In his dream world he is preparing for marriage with his employer's daughter, Klara Olsufevna, again paralleling Poprishchin's infatuation with his employer's daughter. Golyadkin next goes to a restaurant for lunch and there he examines himself anew in the restaurant mirror.

Now he is ready for the real errand of the day, a call at the home of his employer Olsufi Ivanovich. It is Klara Olsufevna's birthday and a party is being given. Mr. Golyadkin has no invitation but he believes it is his right to appear. Petrushka drives him to the door, he enters, and is refused admittance by the servants. In the presence of arriving guests he is told, in fact, that the master has given strict orders not to admit him. Precipitately he rushes back to the carriage and orders Petrushka to drive home. In the next moment he reverses the command and they drive back to the house,—a superb symbol for a mental fixation,—but even as they do so, Golyadkin is stricken with terror and once again, without even stopping, the carriage swings out into the street and disappears.

Up to this point the story has presumably presented realistic facts and actions. This realism is none the less ambiguous. It would be more correct to say that the story has presented the eerie unreal world seen by a man in the shadow of madness. These events are Mr. Golyadkin's fantasy. The fantasy is about to pass into delirium.

Several hours later Klara Olsufevna's birthday party is in full swing. (Chapter IV.) But Mr. Golyadkin is to be found huddled in the darkness and bitter cold—on the back stairs to his employer's apartment! He has been there a long time. And all that time he has been debating how he can slip in and join the party, for he is “all right,” he is “quite well,” he is “just like everyone else,” he belongs here. Finally he summons the courage and darts in, throwing aside his coat as he goes. The whole company is appalled. His prepared speeches die on his lips, he can say nothing. The women retreat from him, the men sneer, his employer is shocked, Klara hides. All this is seen through Golyadkin's eyes and the kaleideoscope turns of his mind make a brilliant passage of imaginative writing. The impressions of the room mingle with impressions gained from books he has read. He recalls the French minister Villesle, the Turkish minister Martsimiris, the beautiful Margravine Luise, the Jesuits, his own room, Petrushka. He thinks that if the chandelier were suddenly to fall how he would rush to save Klara. The butler approaches. Golyadkin tells him one of the candles is about to fall out of the chandelier. The butler assures him that the candle will not fall and says that someone outside wishes to speak at once with Mr. Golyadkin. They argue. A tear glitters on Golyadkin's eyelash. He will not go. He feels like an “insect,” yet he turns and walks straight toward Klara Olsufevna and asks her to dance with him. The young lady shrieks, everyone rushes toward them, Golyadkin is torn away from her and propelled laughing, talking, explaining, apologizing, out into the vestibule. His hat and coat are thrust upon him. Then he feels himself falling, then lying in the outer courtyard, while the orchestra within strikes up a new piece. He stands perplexed, then

he started off and rushed away headlong, anywhere, into the air, into freedom, wherever chance might take him.

To some degree this scene is an intensified version of Dostoevski's own feelings about refined soirées and his place in them. On one occasion he had been so mortified by an ill-timed argument with the young and somewhat patronizing Turgenev that he rushed out of the house. When his coat was held for him he was so excited that he could not get his arms into the sleeves. In utter exasperation he seized the coat and ran out into the night in precipitate flight.

But here may be seen an example of how autobiographical experience is blended with literature to the transformation into something quite new.

In more than one story of Hoffmann's the hero turns from an “impossible situation” and flees as fast as his feet will carry him from the scene. In the opening section of Die Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht the narrator, identified only as the “travelling enthusiast,” attends a New Year's Eve party at the home of the Justizrat. Among the guests is Julie, his former beloved,—she will become Giulietta, the Venetian courtesan of Act II of Offenbach's opera,—who treats him so heartlessly that he becomes desperate. Her repulsive husband, the frivolousness of the dancing and card-playing guests increase his desperation until he suddenly leaves the party and runs “out—out into the stormy night.” The next section, Die Gesellschaft im Keller, begins:

To walk up and down Unter den Linden may at other times be pleasant, but not on St. Sylvester's Night (i.e. New Year's Eve) amid a good sound frost and snow-squalls. Bare-headed and coatless as I was, I finally realized that as icy shivers pierced through my feverish heat. Away I went across the Opera Bridge, past the Palace—I turned a corner, ran across the Schleusenbrücke past the Mint.—I was on Jägerstrasse close by Thiermann's store. …

Just so, at the beginning of the new chapter (V), Mr. Golyadkin

ran out on the Fontanka Quay, close to the Izmailovski Bridge,

and later, after his adventure with the stranger, discovered that he

had run right across the Fontanka, had crossed the Anichkov Bridge, had passed part of the Nevski Prospekt, and was now standing at the turning into Liteini Street,

whence he goes eventually down Italianski Street to his own house on Shestilavochni Street. Hoffmann was the poet of Berlin and Gogol and the young Dostoevski were the poets of Petersburg. How uncannily all three authors meet again here: the “travelling enthusiast,” Akaki Akakievich, and Mr. Golyadkin, all know the streets of the capital on a night of wind and snow and bitter cold, when a fierce emotion drives them to their fates. When Akaki Akakievich stumbled out of the office of the Person of Consequence into the stormy night, he found that

In an instant it (the storm) had blown a quinsy into his throat, and when he got home he was not able to utter a word;

while Dostoevski describes this flight of Golyadkin's as taking place on

an awful November night—wet, foggy, rainy, snowy, teeming with colds in the head, fevers, swollen faces, quinsies, inflammations of all kinds and descriptions. …

The verbal echo is from Gogol, but the party, the flight, and the destination are paralleled in Hoffmann. The “travelling enthusiast” finally entered a beer-cellar where all the mirrors were draped over with cloth out of deference for the client Erasmus Spikher, who had surrendered his mirror-image to the temptress Giulietta and therefore could not bear to look into mirrors where he could not see himself. With him is Peter Schlemihl, the man who had sold his shadow. (Hoffmann here borrows him wholesale out of Chamisso's famous fairy-tale.¹)

In short, the “travelling enthusiast” encounters two men who have lost their doubles. Mr. Golyadkin is about to lose his, not just his shadow or his mirror-reflection, but the half of his psychologically sundered self.

The plan of the Sylvesternacht, which the story has now begun to parallel, is here interrupted but will be resumed later. At this particular juncture Dostoevski's mind may be seen to swerve suddenly to another scene from Hoffmann's works where the hero does not simply encounter other men with doubles,—and lost doubles at that,—but encounters for the first time his own double. It is the fine passage toward the end of Part I, Section 2 of the novel Kater Murr,² where Kreisler abruptly flees from a somewhat different kind of “impossible situation” and rushes out into the palace gardens of Sieghartshof. It is late afternoon.

Kreisler paused in the middle of the bridge which led across a broad arm of the lake to the fisher-hut and looked down into the water, which reflected with magic shimmer the park, with its wonderful groups of trees, and the Geierstein which towered above them and which bore its white-shining ruins upon its brow like a crown. The tame swan that answered to the name of Blanche was paddling about the lake, its lovely neck proudly held aloft, rustling its flashing wings. “Blanche, Blanche,” cried Kreisler aloud as he stretched out both his arms, “sing thy loveliest song and do not think that thou wilt then die!” …

Dark clouds were moving up and throwing broad shadows across the mountains, across the forest, like black veils. Muffled thunder was rolling off to the south, louder rushed the night wind, rushed the brooks, and simultaneously individual tones of the weather-harp resounded like organ tones. Startled, the birds of the night arose and swept through the thicket shrieking.

Kreisler awoke from his dreaming and glimpsed his dark form in the water. It seemed to him as though Ettlinger, the mad painter, were looking up at him from the depths. “Hoho,” he shouted down, “hoho, are you there, beloved Double, old comrade?—. … If they have sent you down undeservedly to Orcus, I'll pass on all sorts of news to you!—Know, honored madhouse inmate, that the wound which you dealt that poor child, the beautiful Princess Hedwiga, still has not healed. … Do not attribute it to me, my good fellow, that she takes me for a ghost, specifically for your ghost.—But when I am at leisure to prove to her that I am no disgusting spook, but the Kapellmeister Kreisler, along comes Prince Ignatius cutting across my path, who is obviously laboring under a ‘paranoia,’ a ‘fatuitas,’ ‘stoliditas,’ which, according to Kluge is a very pleasant kind of actual folly.—Don't ape all my gestures, painter, when I am talking seriously to you!—Again? If I weren't afraid of a head cold, I would jump down to you and beat you properly.—Devil take you, clownish mimic!”

Kreisler quickly ran away.

The identity of the mad painter Ettlinger is one of the points left by the author for clarification in the third and last part of the novel, but that part was never written. Some scholars have deduced that he was the actual father of Kreisler and hence that his madness foreshadows that of Kreisler, but these are unresolved questions. Kreisler standing on the bridge and looking at his own image in the water below addresses the image as “Double,” yet speaks to him as though he were the mad Ettlinger who had attacked and wounded the Princess Hedwiga.

The first drops of a beginning rain drive Kreisler immediately afterward to seek shelter in the fisher-hut where his friend, the wise Meister Abraham, lives. As he approaches the cottage he receives a shock:

Not far from the door, in the full glow of the light, Kreisler caught sight of his own image, his very self (sein eigenes Ich), walking along beside him. Seized by the profoundest horror, Kreisler plunged into the cottage and sank pale as death into the arm-chair.

To behold one's double signified, according to folk beliefs, one's approaching death. Meister Abraham inquires what has happened to affect his friend so strongly:

With difficulty Kreisler got possession of himself, then spoke in a hollow voice: “It cannot be otherwise, there are two of us—I mean I and my Double, who leaped out of the lake and pursued me here.—Have mercy, Master, take your dagger and strike the rascal down—he is mad, believe me, and can destroy us both. He conjured up the storm outside.—Spirits are abroad in the air and their chorale rends the human heart!—Master—Master, lure the swan here—it shall sing—my song is frozen, for the Double (der Ich) has laid his white cold hand upon my heart, he will have to take it away if the swan sings—and go down again into the lake.”

Meister Abraham laughs and quickly explains away his friend's terrors: the sounds are made by the wind in the weather-harp,—a sort of giant æolian harp made of tuned steel strings and stretched between buildings in the open,—and the vision of the Double walking beside him was an optical illusion created by the lighted lamp and the concave mirror in the entryway. To convince Kreisler, Abraham steps outside and immediately two Abrahams may be seen in the twilight. For the moment, the whole episode seems to be reduced to comic error caused by an optical illusion. What Hoffmann might have made of it in the unwritten part of the novel no one can say, but it is surely meant to be more than a comic error. It symbolizes Kreisler's present fear of madness and his sense of impending catastrophe and undoubtedly prefigured some future situation in reality; in other words, potentiality pressing forward to become fact.

In the case of Mr. Golyadkin, madness and catastrophe are also potentialities pressing forward to become fact, not in the future but at the present moment. His frantic and random flight from Klara Olsufevna's party into the stormy darkness brought him, when “it was striking midnight from all the clock towers in Petersburg,” to the Izmailovski Bridge.

At last Mr. Golyadkin halted in exhaustion, leaned on the railing in the attitude of a man whose nose had suddenly begun to bleed, and began looking intently at the black and troubled waters of the canal. There is no knowing what length of time he spent like this. All that is known is that at that instant Mr. Golyadkin reached such a pitch of despair, was so harassed, so tortured, so exhausted, and so weakened in what feeble faculties were left him that he forgot everything. …

Suddenly terror strikes him. “Was it my fancy?” he asks himself. The import of the question is not disclosed to the reader immediately, but presently a stranger passes, at sight of whom Mr. Golyadkin's terror increases. Again the figure approaches, makes no answer to Mr. Golyadkin, and vanishes. Mr. Golyadkin begins to run. The figure appears anew running parallel to him. As they approach Mr. Golyadkin's house it outdistances him, goes up his stairway, through his doorway, is received by Petrushka without question, and when Mr. Golyadkin arrives in his room, there is the figure sitting on his own bed. The figure is identical to himself in every detail. It is his Double. Here the chapter and the first day of the story end, with all clarification postponed,—in good Hoffmannian fashion,—until another time.³

The two-fold connecting link between the two stories and with the Sylvesternacht was undoubtedly the mirror-image. Kreisler had identified his reflection in the water with the reflection in the concave mirror in Abraham's vestibule and believed that his Double had risen from the lake to follow him. In all likelihood Dostoevski conceived originally of a reflection of Mr. Golyadkin in the waters of the canal but this became impossible when he placed the time at midnight in the midst of storm. Yet it is on a bridge that the second Mr. Golyadkin first appears to him and then, as in Kreisler's case, reemerges later to follow him home.

For Mr. Golyadkin, however, no swan shall sing, that is the Heavenly Grace of music is not vouchsafed to him, nor shall any Meister Abraham comfort him. Dostoevski's hero, in contrast to Hoffmann's, is utterly alone. He differs from his prototype further in that it is understood, despite the coming of the Double, that the self has split under the strain of anguish, has broken in two, and that the Double is Mr. Golyadkin's illusion. It is a part of his personality which has escaped the control of his rational mind and now seems to have a separate existence. The author's “clinical” attitude was new in fiction in 1846, yet it is prefigured in several respects in the most elaborate of Hoffmann's “Double” stories, the novel Die Elixiere des Teufels, and from that work Dostoevski now proceeded to draw further materials for the amplification of his theme.

The second period of twenty-four hours in our story occupy Chapters VI and VII and are pitched in a much lower key than the preceding section.

When Mr. Golyadkin awakes the morning after his midnight encounter on the Izmailovski Bridge, he recalls the previous events but dismisses them as more intrigues on the part of his enemies at the office. After delaying over several pipes he goes to work as usual. Scarcely is he settled at his desk when a door opens and through it comes his Double, the second Mr. Golyadkin. The latter is a clerk too, and he will work at a desk just opposite the real Mr. Golyadkin, that is in the position of a mirror image. (Is the reader intended to imagine that a mirror hangs on the office wall?) Cold sweat stands out on Mr. Golyadkin. When the Double goes briefly into the inner office Mr. Golyadkin takes the opportunity of speaking with the chief clerk, Anton Antonovich. The latter acknowledges the presence of a new office member who bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Golyadkin—(Does Dostoevski mean to say that all clerks look alike as a class?)—and asks him whether they are related. To Mr. Golyadkin it seems preposterous “to talk of a family resemblance when he could see himself as in a looking-glass.” The talkative Anton Antonovich rambles on about Doubles and remarks that an aunt on his mother's side saw her Double just before her death. At the end of the office day Mr. Golyadkin makes haste to leave his work, but there in the street inexplicably his Double is to be found walking beside him. Humbly, deferentially, in halting sentences such as the real Mr. Golyadkin would have used, the new clerk requests his friendship, and Mr. Golyadkin, touched by the request, asks him home to supper.

Chapter VII presents the supper scene. It is a comico-pathetic one of a very lonely and friendless man who has had to create a second self to bear him company. At this point the situation strikingly resembles the beginning of “Pogorel'ski's” The Double or My Evening in Little Russia, where the author's Double appears for just this reason to the lonely nobleman and bachelor on his remote Ukrainian estate. The “Evenings” are the account of the discussions they had and the stories they told each other.⁴ But where these two Antoni's were much concerned with philosophy and literature, the two Golyadkins find much pleasure in chit-chat about the city. Theirs is a cozy feast of small talk. Before long they call each other “Yasha,”⁵ make mutual confessions, and even plot a little counter-conspiracy to confound the intriguers at the office. From the concluding paragraphs it is clear that Mr. Golyadkin is drunk and for a moment it looks as though the whole story might prove an alcoholic hallucination. The second day stands as a comic interlude in the whole work.

On the morning of the third day Mr. Golyadkin awakes to find no trace at all of his guest. (Chapter VIII.) When Petrushka brings the tea his manner is so ambiguous and he speaks so strangely about “the other one” that Mr. Golyadkin is alarmed. After the brief entente cordiale the dualism is about to enter its antagonistic phase.

Arriving at the office, Mr. Golyadkin finds his worst fears confirmed. His Double, last night so friendly, so confiding, has preceded him and already is busy at the task of destroying his reputation with his superiors. He blithely takes credit for the work which Mr. Golyadkin performs subserviently; he taunts him for his slowness, his shyness, his bald spot, his middle-aged paunch-belly; he makes a fool of him before the other clerks; he exposes all his fears, all his wounded pride, for the whole world to see. In the face of such treatment Mr. Golyadkin meekly bows and even takes a certain satisfaction from his deliberate humility.

It is clear that the new Mr. Golyadkin is the latent aggressive phase of Mr. Golyadkin's character and that this phase is slipping from his control. The Double is clever, he is successful, he is both sly and gay, he is a man of action, in short, a devil of a fellow. He has another trait, which since Dostoevski's time has come to be thought of as a commonplace in schizophrenics: he is implacably hostile to the milder phase of the split personality. His sole aim is to destroy the antithetical self. A struggle to the death is the only possible course now.

It is in this deadly struggle of the antithetical selves that we find embodied much of the matter of Hoffmann's novel Die Elixiere des Teufels, not in the form of story elements now, though some of these will enter presently also, but rather as a distilled essence. Die Elixiere des Teufels relates the life of the runaway monk Medardus from the time of his apparent sainthood in his monastery, through his flight into the world and the mad course of passion and crime he pursued there, to his ultimate return to the monastery and his holy death. In this case the Double of Medardus is not a hallucination but an actual person, Count Viktorin, half-brother to the monk. Not only do they look absolutely identical, but there is at times an interpenetration of their personalities and experiences that goes beyond a rational explanation. At each stage of Medardus's strangely guided journey through the world Viktorin appears, and each time the deadly enmity between the two comes close to destroying the sinning, yet never fatally lost Medardus.

When first they meet, Viktorin is discovered sitting on the edge of a mountain cliff overlooking the Devil's Chasm. The monk, seeing him there apparently in a position ready to fall, attempts to save him, but at the touch of his hand Viktorin does fall and Medardus is horrified to think that he has actually caused the young man's death. Presently a groom appears, greets Medardus as his master, and from his talk it becomes plain that Viktorin had been planning to adopt monk's garb, pose as the Confessor of Euphemie, the adulterous wife of a certain Baron von F., and carry on his nefarious love affair under the cloak of religion. Straightway Medardus allows the groom to guide him to the castle of Baron von F. and there lives out Viktorin's evil plans. The result is tragedy thrice compounded and eventually Medardus flees from the house with the guilt of two murders upon him. Just outside the gate, when the pursuit is hot behind him, Medardus once again meets Viktorin's groom whom “chance” has prompted to come to his master with horses, coach, and a complete wardrobe.

On the way to the “mercantile city” the coachman loses his way in the darkness and Medardus is forced to become the guest of a forester. In the forester's house lives a half-mad monk in whose habit is sewn the name-tag: Medardus. His biography as retold by the forester is the story of Medardus's own childhood,—just as the life-story told by the second Mr. Golyadkin to the first in Chapter VII was actually the life story of the real Mr. Golyadkin. When Medardus, now dressed as a nobleman, is shown this fugitive monk, who is, of course, Viktorin, the latter passes into a kind of frenzy of hatred and screams:

“Come up to the roof-top. There we shall wrestle with each other, and whoever throws the other down shall be king and drink blood!”

The spectacle fills Medardus with horror, and of himself, he says:

“More than ever divided within myself, I became ambiguous to myself, and an inner horror came over my own being with a destructive power.”

The “monk” Viktorin, who of late had been quite calm and lucid, now reverts to a bestially raving madness so that the forester decides he must be sent away lest he harm some member of the family in the forest-house.

Considering himself well rid of this creature “whose appearance reflected his own Self with features distorted and ghastly,” Medardus continues his travels, coming eventually to a Residenzstadt, where he is presented at court. To the same court comes Aurelie, whom Medardus knew and loved at the home of her father, Baron von F. and whose brother, Hermogen, he had murdered. She denounces him as her brother's murderer, with the result that he is arrested and imprisoned. With lies born of desperation, he steadfastly maintains he is a Polish gentleman on his travels, but he is caught in the web of his own falsehoods until, suddenly, Viktorin is discovered in a madhouse of the same city and the crime is fastened upon him. Medardus is set free. In meditation of the state of affairs, he says:

“… the conviction arose in me that it was not I who had been the ruthless criminal at the castle of Baron von F., who slew Euphemie, Hermogen, but rather that that deranged monk whom I had met at the forest-house had committed the deed. …”

Once his “innocence” is established, a wave of good fortune pours over the unrepentant sinner. Aurelie retracts her accusation and now admits that she loves Medardus. Their wedding day is set. It coincides precisely with the day appointed for the execution of Viktorin, and as the ceremonies begin, the hangman's cart passes the palace with the victim. Glimpsing Medardus at the window, the wretched Double cries:

“Bridegroom, bridegroom! Come … come up to the roof … to the roof … there we shall wrestle with each other and whoever throws the other down shall be king and drink blood!”

The sight and the challenge of his other self sting Medardus into telling the truth. He laughs as he wildly declares his true identity, then turns, stabs Aurelie, leaps out of the window, cuts the prisoner's bonds with the same dagger, and vanishes through the crowd. That night in a dark forest Medardus drops to the ground from exhaustion. As he makes an effort to rise he is seized from behind by Viktorin, still in monk's garb. “You can't run,” he laughs, “you can't run, you've got to carry me!” Then begins a fierce struggle which goes on and on in the darkness until consciousness is lost.

Three months later Medardus comes to himself:

A gentle warmth pervaded my inner being. Then I felt a movement and a prickling in all my veins. This feeling was transformed into thought, but my Self was divided hundredfold. Every member had its own movement, its own awareness of life, and the head commanded the members in vain. Like faithless vassals, they refused to assemble under its leadership. Now the thoughts of the separate parts began to circle like gleaming dots faster and faster, until they formed into a fiery circle. This became smaller as the speed increased, until at last it seemed a motionless ball of fire. …

These are my limbs that are stirring, I am waking up.

He is in a monastery in Italy. He is lying in bed dressed in the habit of a monk. In the habit is sewn the name-tag: Medardus.

A long section of Italian adventures follows, until Medardus finally arrives at the monastery in Germany from which he had originally set out. His arrival is even more dramatic than if he had come simply from his own adventures, for a few days previously a beggar in rags had presented himself at the monastery gate, declaring himself to be Medardus the runaway. He was taken in but the prior doubted the alleged identity. Then illness came upon the man and, with death imminent, he summoned the prior and confessed that he was not Medardus but Count Viktorin. His confession is one of the most striking passages in the novel.

“It seems to me that I must soon die, but first I must unburden my heart. You have power over me, for however much you try to conceal it, I perceive that you are St. Anthony and that you know best what evils your elixirs cause. I had high plans in mind when I determined to represent myself as a clerical gentleman with a big beard and a brown cowl. But when I actually looked into myself, the strangest thoughts seemed to arise from within me and embodied themselves in a corporeal form which was horrible and which was my own Self. This second self had fearful power and hurled me down, as from out of the black stones of the deep chasm the princess, snow-white, rose out of the swirling, foaming waters. The Princess took me up into her arms and washed my wounds, so that presently I felt no pain. I had indeed become a monk, but the Self of my thoughts was stronger and drove me on so that I had to murder the Princess who had rescued me and whom I loved very much, and to murder her brother as well. They threw me into a dungeon, but you yourself know, holy Anthony, in what way you carried me off through the air after I had swilled your accursed drink. The green Forest-King entertained me badly, despite the fact that he recognized my princely rank. The Self of my thoughts appeared at his home and did all sorts of hateful things to me, and since we had done everything together, wanted to remain in a joint relationship with me. That was arranged, but soon after, as we were running away from there, because people wanted to cut off our head, we separated again. When the foolish Self, however, kept trying always and forever to feed upon my thoughts, I knocked it down, whipped it hard, and took its coat away.”⁶

Shortly after this confession Viktorin apparently dies, but his death, like his confession, was illusion. His body, brought to the monastery courtyard preparatory to burial, mysteriously vanishes. He returns for the great solemnities at which Aurelie is to take the veil of a nun. While Medardus undergoes his last and hardest temptation, watching, as a humble monk among fellow-monks, his beloved becoming the bride of Christ, Viktorin suddenly appears in the throng of worshippers, rushes into the sanctuary, and fatally stabs Aurelie, thus fulfilling the act once before attempted by Medardus. As Aurelie, now the nun Rosalia, dies, the murderer vanishes as suddenly as he had appeared. Not long afterwards Medardus dies, a manifest saint.

If the complex and melodramatic events of this novel seem remote from Mr. Golyadkin's situation, it must be remembered that Dostoevski was deliberately transposing this romantic subject matter into what he considered Gogolian comedy and that he was doing this within the confined limits of a short story about an obscure office employee. In Chapter XIII we shall see a more concrete borrowing from Hoffmann's novel, but just now we should keep in mind that the intensity of the Medardus-Viktorin conflict underlies the antagonism of the two Golyadkins. It should be noted further that Dostoevski has not given roughly equivalent will to both phases of the divided personality but that the “real” Mr. Golyadkin meekly suffers while his aggressive Double is wholly active. Typical of this is the conclusion of Chapter VIII where, having emerged together from the office on this difficult day, the insolent Double is seen suddenly departing gaily in a cab while Mr. Golyadkin is left standing forlorn and alone by a lamp post.

With Chapter IX the story reverts to the general outline of Die Abenteuer der Sylvesternacht. After the “travelling enthusiast's” unhappy evening at the soirée of the Justizrat and after his wild flight through the streets of Berlin, he arrived coatless and exhausted in a certain beer-cellar where he encountered Peter Schlemihl, the man without a shadow, and Erasmus Spikher, the man without a mirror-image, that is to say, two men whose Doubles were lost. Mr. Golyadkin now goes to a restaurant and there has a new encounter with his Double.

He is very hungry when he arrives. He orders a pie, sits down and eats it. Then he goes to pay the cashier. With astonishment he is told that he has consumed not one but eleven pies. He protests indignantly, but, not wishing to make a scene, he agrees to pay. All of a sudden he becomes aware of the reason for his plight:

In the doorway of the next room, almost directly behind the waiter and facing Mr. Golyadkin, in the doorway which, till that moment, our hero had taken for a looking-glass, a man was standing—not the original Mr. Golyadkin, the hero of our story, but the other Mr. Golyadkin, the new Mr. Golyadkin.

As we would now say, Mr. Golyadkin, with his meek phase predominant, had cautiously eaten according to his poverty, then with a shift of his aggressive phase into predominant position, he had eaten ten more pies, not so much from hunger as from the will to torment and to humiliate his other Self.

The remainder of the chapter departs again from the Sylvesternacht pattern to take Mr. Golyadkin home to write a letter of protest about his Double's conduct. Here Dostoevski does not play quite fair with the reader. In each of several details he is evasive when we would most like to know precisely what happens. Petrushka, for example, merely laughs slyly when his master gives him the letter to deliver. While waiting for his return with the answer, Mr. Golyadkin walks to the home of his employer but does not enter. He comes back home and falls asleep. When Petrushka does finally return, the fellow is thoroughly drunk and unable to answer any questions. He declares at one minute that he delivered the letter and in the next minute says there was no letter. Golyadkin indignantly dismisses him. Then his eye catches something on the table. It is a letter, the answer to his protest. It tells him that he is a fool. He immediately writes a reply in which he urgently requests an interview in which to explain himself. When he awakes next morning this letter has disappeared. The question rises as to whether there ever were any letters except as Mr. Golyadkin composed them, both originals and replies. Quite possibly he maintained both parts of the correspondence himself. Or, still more probably, there is simply no rational explanation. The episode surely represents Dostoevski's version of that part of The Diary of a Madman where Poprishchin acquires the very informative letters written by the two dogs, Madgie and Fido, to each other. At any rate, the episode shows once again that Dostoevski was indeed writing his story with The Diary of a Madman for a basis.

In the same way, Chapter X shows that most closely related in his mind to the Gogol basis was Hoffmann's Sylvesternacht, for now the strange dreams that beset Mr. Golyadkin as he sleeps from the third far into the fourth and last day of his story are the exact counterpart of Chapter 3 of the Hoffmann tale. After his encounter with Schlemihl and Spikher in the beer-cellar, the “travelling enthusiast” repaired to a room at the “Golden Eagle” for the night. There, as he slept until far into the morning, he was beset with strange dreams.

The dreams take the form of a phantasmagorical recapitulation of the New Year's Eve party at the home of the Justizrat. There, the “travelling enthusiast” reports,

… I was sitting on the ottoman next to Julie. But presently it seemed to me as though the whole company were a funny Christmas display at Fuchs's store, or Weide's, or Schloch's, or some other, and the Justizrat a dainty sugar-plum figure with a note-paper jabot. …

The siren Julie again offers him the goblet of steaming punch from which the blue flame rises. Erasmus Spikher in the form of a squirrel leaps upon his shoulder and warns him that Julie is a figure come to life out of the monitory paintings of Breughel, Callot, and Rembrandt. With his squirrel tail he beats the blue flame and cries: “Drink not! Drink not!”

But now all the sugar-plum figures of the display came alive and moved their hands and feet comically. The sugar-plum Justizrat tripped up to me and in a faint little voice cried: “Why all the fuss, my good fellow, why all the fuss? Stand on your own good feet, for I've been noticing for some time now how you are walking around in the air over the chairs and tables.”

Again Julie tempts. This time it is Peter Schlemihl who cries to the “travelling enthusiast”: “This is Mina who married Rascal.” (Characters out of Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl.) In approaching to say this, Schlemihl has stepped on several of the sugar-plum figures, causing them to groan aloud.

These now multiplied by the hundreds and by the thousands and tripped up around me and up my person in a motley and loathsome throng. They buzzed around me like a swarm of bees.

The sugar-plum Justizrat clambered as far as my collar, which he clutched tighter and tighter. “Accursed Justizrat!” I cried, and started up awake.

It is a bright clear day and already eleven o'clock in the morning.

Mr. Golyadkin's dreams also review the past. He beholds his superior Andrei Filipovich in an attitude of condemnation. He sees himself a distinguished guest in a distinguished gathering, until, just as his success is most brilliant, the other Mr. Golyadkin comes to spoil it. He sees himself rushing out into the street to hail a cab,

but with every step he took, with every thud of his foot on the granite of the pavement, there leaped up as though out of the earth a Mr. Golyadkin precisely the same, perfectly alike, and of a revolting depravity of heart. And all these precisely similar Golyadkins set to running after one another as soon as they appeared, and stretched in a long chain like a file of geese, hobbling after the real Mr. Golyadkin, so there was nowhere to escape from these duplicates—so that the real Mr. Golyadkin, who was in every way deserving of compassion, was breathless with terror; so that at last a terrible multitude of duplicates had sprung into being; so that the whole town was obstructed at last by duplicate Golyadkins, and the police officer, seeing such a breach of decorum, was obliged to seize all these duplicates by the collar and to put them into the watch-house, which happened to be beside him. … Numb and chill with horror, our hero woke up. …

It seemed as though it were rather late in the day. It was unusually light in the room. The sunshine filtered through the frozen panes and flooded the room with light. …

It actually was one o'clock.

The motif of the multiplying doubles will occur again at the dénouement.⁷

We are now at early afternoon of the fourth and last day. The rest of Chapter X is devoted to another office sequence, unfortunately not very well differentiated from the former one. At the end of the day Mr. Golyadkin invites his Double and rival to a coffee house for a serious consultation. Their colloquy there (Chapter XI) is very interesting from the viewpoint of modern psychology, and it has no connection whatever with Hoffmann. The Double constantly makes off-color remarks about the waitresses and also flirts shamelessly with them, while the real Mr. Golyadkin lowers his eyes and confesses that he is “absolutely pure.” The sexual suggestions sink deep into consciousness. The two leave the coffee house, take a cab together and drive to the home of Olsufi Ivanovich. There the Double goes in, while the real Mr. Golyadkin flees away. He goes to a tavern, and while there draws from his pocket a letter which he had no idea existed. How it came into his pocket he cannot imagine. (The motif of the Madgie-Fido letters from The Diary of a Madman again.) It is an appeal from Klara Olsufevna to rescue her that night from her tyrannical parents and a hated suitor. Mr. Golyadkin is intensely preoccupied by this letter, so much so that he occasions a scandalous scene in the tavern by attempting to leave without paying his bill. The bill paid, he hurries home to plan the rescue of Klara. At home he finds the official notice of his discharge from his position, and Petrushka is packing his effects preparatory to leaving his service.

Feverishly brooding over his plans for rescuing Klara, Mr. Golyadkin takes a cab (Chapter XII) and tells the driver to take him to the Izmailovski Bridge. No sooner started in that direction than he changes his mind and has the driver take him to the home of “His Excellency,” one of his higher superiors. It is now early evening.

His Excellency has guests. But, no matter. Mr. Golyadkin goes right into the midst of the assembled guests. The light is so brilliant that he is dazzled.

At last our hero could distinguish clearly the star on the black coat of His Excellency, then by degrees advanced to seeing the black coat and at last gained the power of complete vision. …

The mirror-reflection of every shiny surface now fascinates him. Readers of Hoffmann's Sylvesternacht will recall how Erasmus Spikher shrank from the sight of a highly polished snuff-box because it resembled a mirror. Mr. Golyadkin's gaze is held by the flashing star, then it is caught by the patent leather shoes on His Excellency's feet. His words are, of course, utterly unintelligible to His Excellency. The situation becomes more desperate by the minute, and now, “through a door which our hero had taken for a looking-glass” comes the impertinent Double to delight in his discomfiture. With his eyes on His Excellency's patent leather shoes and his mind pondering the nature of leather, polish, rays of light in artists' studios, Mr. Golyadkin is lost in a morass of gibberish. Suddenly he feels himself seized, propelled toward the door. “Just as it was at Olsufi Ivanovich's,” he thinks. And so it is. His coat is tossed into the street after him. Then he finds himself in a cab. To the driver he cries to drive to the Izmailovski Bridge.

It is not clear just what Dostoevski intended by this fixation of Golyadkin's to return to the Izmailovski Bridge. Perhaps the unfortunate hero wished to return to the place where the Double went forth from him, in the hope of inducing the Double to return to him once more.

The foregoing chapter (XII), interesting as it is, is nevertheless regrettable in that it makes for repetition both of Chapter IV and the final Chapter XIII. No doubt Dostoevski wished to convey the impression of reality spinning about Mr. Golyadkin's consciousness in faster and faster tempo. Unfortunately, the reader sometimes feels as though he were spinning too.

The grand climax of Die Elixiere des Teufels occurs at the ceremonies where Medardus watches with renunciation while his beloved Aurelie is made a nun. In religion she takes the name Rosalia for the saint whose intercession for Medardus and for his sinning ancestors has been a recurrent theme of the book. The monastery church is full of people for the occasion, music rolls through the incense laden air, masses of flowers adorn the high altar. It is as though all the senses were receiving their consecration. As the bride of Christ, her vow spoken, waits to have her hair shorn, suddenly the wild Viktorin makes his way to her and stabs her to death by the altar. He escapes forever, but manifest miracle attends the death of the beautiful nun, while to Medardus comes the mysterious painter in his customary purple mantle to speak the final words of consolation. The painter is actually the monk's sinful ancestor five generations removed, whose sin is now expiated and whose miraculously prolonged life may now find rest. Heaven and Hell are present at this culminating scene of the novel, which has the form of a saint's legend, for this is the triumphant overthrow of the works of Evil by the Powers of Good.

The final chapter of The Double is not like this scene, but it is analogous to it. This whole finale, at which Mr. Golyadkin appears once again at the home of Olsufi Ivanovich, presents neither a realistic room nor realistic guests. The previous visit in Chapter IV may be called realistic in so far as it correctly portrayed what a half demented man saw, but this time Dostoevski is not merely repeating himself. Mr. Golyadkin here appears before a kind of Last Judgment.

Not only the drawing-room but the entire house is described as being full to overflowing. There are “masses of people, a whole galaxy of ladies.” They are there, row on row, like the heavenly hosts. Klara Olsufevna is there, dressed in white, with a white flower in her hair,—like an angel. Olsufi Ivanovich is enthroned in an arm-chair like a heavenly judge. Mr. Golyadkin's office superiors are there and they gather about the judge. A solemn hush falls. The Double stands in the throng at some remove from the soul awaiting judgment. White, dazzling light pervades the whole place. At a sign from the superiors, the perfidious Double takes Mr. Golyadkin's hand, then bends and kisses him “with his Judas kiss”:

There was a ringing in Mr. Golyadkin's ears, and a darkness before his eyes; it seemed to him that an infinite multitude, an unending series of precisely similar Golyadkins were noisily bursting in at every door of the room.

The door does indeed open and the Double, with vicious delight, identifies the newcomer as “Krestyan Ivanovich Rutenspitz, doctor of medicine and surgery, your old acquaintance.” Judgment has been passed, and this stern policeman of heaven will take him away to outer darkness. He is led down the stairs:

Faint with horror, Mr. Golyadkin looked back. The whole of the brightly lighted staircase was crowded with people; inquisitive eyes were looking at him from all sides; Olsufi Ivanovich was sitting in his easy-chair on the top landing, and watching all that took place with deep interest. …

It is the condemned soul's last lingering look backwards toward Paradise.

And now, a final touch from Die Elixiere des Teufels. When Medardus, elegantly dressed as a nobleman and travelling about the world, met his Double in monk's garb at the home of the forester, the effect was to send the wretched Viktorin back to his previous state of raving madness, so that the forester felt compelled to send him away for safety's sake. Medardus watched his departure:

When I came down, a rack-wagon bedded down with straw was standing in front of the door ready to leave. The monk was brought out. With face deathly pale and distorted, he allowed himself to be led along quite patiently. He answered no question, refused to take anything to eat, and scarcely seemed aware of the persons about him. They hoisted him into the wagon and tied him fast with cords, inasmuch as his condition seemed doubtful and they were not at all sure there would not be a sudden outburst of his inwardly repressed fury. As they secured his arms, his face became convulsively distorted and he emitted a low groan. His condition pierced my heart. He had become closely related to me, indeed it was only to his ruin that I owed my salvation. … Only as they started to drive away did his glance fall upon me, and he was suddenly seized with profound astonishment. Even when the wagon was disappearing into the distance (we had followed it as far as the wall) his head remained turned and his eyes directed toward me.⁸

So, now, as Mr. Golyadkin is conducted down the shining stairs from the white light to the waiting darkness, “the malignant Mr. Golyadkin junior in three bounds flew down the stairs and opened the carriage door himself,” and once the doomed man is seated inside and the vehicle gets under way, several persons, including the Double, run alongside. But “Mr. Golyadkin's unworthy twin kept up longer than anyone,” and he follows the carriage for some distance, gesticulating and throwing farewell kisses.

Mr. Golyadkin, half suffocated with fright, finally addresses Rutenspitz:

“I believe … I'm all right, Krestyan Ivanovich. …”

But a great voice “stern and terrible as a judge's sentence” rings out:

“You get free quarters, wood, with light, and service, the which you deserve not.”

Two fiery eyes stare at him from the darkness.

He is on his way to the madhouse, a real madhouse, like the one to which Poprishchin was sent. But he is also in Hell, the outer darkness pierced by two eyes of a watchful demon.

Our hero shrieked and clutched his head in his hands. Alas! For a long while he had been haunted by a presentiment of this.

So ends the remarkable story.⁹

Notes

1. This famous tale of the luckless fellow who sold his shadow to the “man in grey” originally appeared as Peter Schlemihl's wundersame Geschichte mitgeteilt von Adelbert von Chamisso und herausgegeben von Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqué, 1814. Its fame was almost instantaneous. Hoffmann's Sylvesternacht, which introduces Schlemihl into a new setting together with a patently imitated figure who has lost his mirror-image, was composed in the first week in January,—hence directly after New Year's Eve,—in the year 1815. On the night of the 13th Hoffmann gave a reading of the new work to a group of friends, of whom Chamisso was one.

2. Kater Murr, Erster Band, zweiter Abschnitt; the 8th “Makulaturblatt.”

3. For a notable instance of such procedure, which may not be unrelated to this chapter-close, see Die Elixiere des Teufels, end of the Erster Abschnitt des zweiten Teils, where the pair of Doubles wrestle all night in deadly combat in the forest until Medardus loses consciousness. It is never explained how he managed finally to elude his antagonist. The beginning of the following section (Zweiter Teil, Erster Abschnitt—Die Busse) describes Medardus coming to consciousness—three months later.

4. See Notes 4 and 7 to the preceding chapter.

5. Yasha is the diminutive of Yakov (James). The hero's full name is Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin.

6. Note the interpenetration of the lives of Medardus and Viktorin. This confession reads like the experiences of Medardus seen through the medium of a deranged mind.

7. Medardus, in a passage previously quoted, describes his waking in the Italian monastery by saying “… my Self was divided hundred-fold.”

   In this connection, another Tale of Hoffmann may be mentioned, Die Brautwahl, the opening chapters of which deal with the adventures of the hapless Privy Councilor Tusmann in the streets of Berlin on the night of the autumnal equinox. Tusmann has for opponents certain persons who control very potent magic and who have undertaken certain “operations” to forestall his marriage to the heroine, Albertine Vosswinkel, who is thirty years his junior. At one stage of the “operations” he finds himself compelled to waltz up and down the Spandauerstrasse with a broomstick (Chapter 3). Suddenly the place around him “teemed with Privy Councillor Tusmanns,” all of them waltzing with broomsticks.—A page or two previously he had tried to enter his own house, but there at the door he met “himself” and “stared wildly at himself with the same large black eyes as are located in his own head.”

   Tusmann's adventures will be used by Dostoevski as the partial basis for An Unpleasant Predicament, a short story of 1862, and it is quite likely that Die Brautwahl is to be included in the various Hoffmann works which contributed details to The Double. The primary point of connection would be the bizarre nocturnal adventures of the middle-aged hero in the streets of the capital.

8. It should be observed that this passage is paralleled within Hoffmann's novel by the scene where the would-be bridegroom Medardus looks down from the palace window to behold his Double being carried in the hangman's cart to execution. Undoubtedly both scenes are to be related to the final pages of Dostoevski's story.

9. Complex as this analysis has been, it has not wholly exhausted the elements that went into Dostoevski's story.

   See V. V. Vinogradov: Evoliutsiya russkago naturalizma, Leningrad, 1929, a series of six articles; Article 5: K Morfologii natural'nogo stilya. Opyt lingvisticheskogo analiza Petersburgskoi poemy “Dvoinik,” pp. 239 ff., fills four pages with linguistic and stylistic parallels between The Double and Gogol's Dead Souls.

   See also S. Rodzevich: K Istorii russkago romantizma in Russki Filologicheski Vestnik, LXXVII (1917), pp. 194–237. On page 223 Rodzevich mentions that Hoffmann's Klein Zaches and Prinzessin Brambilla have bearing on The Double, but does not elaborate his statement. The case for Prinzessin Brambilla is dubious except in so far as it deals with the interlocked worlds of reality and “higher reality,” in which respect it would run competition from various other works of Hoffmann. From Klein Zaches could very plausibly come the motif of Zaches's fateful fairy-gift of receiving credit for every good thing said or done by anyone in his presence. This would apply to the passages where Mr. Golyadkin Junior gets credit at the office for the work done by the staid Mr. Golyadkin Senior.