[In the following essay, Manning provides a brief analysis of The Double.]

The Double marks Dostoyevsky's first attempt to delve deeply into the mysteries of human psychology, but, despite the high hopes with which he published the book, it did not prove successful and many years later in the Journal of a Writer, November, 1877 (ed. Lazhechnikov, p. 456), he confessed,

This story positively did not succeed, but the idea was quite brilliant, and I never introduced into literature anything more serious than this idea. But the form of this story was absolutely not successful. I corrected it afterwards strongly, fifteen years later, for the then “Complete Collection” of my works, but I was then again convinced, that this thing was completely unsuccessful, and if I should now work on this idea and express it again, I would choose a completely different form; but in '46 I had not found this form and was not master of the story.

It is a frank admission of failure, but unfortunately at no time did Dostoyevsky definitely tell us what idea he was endeavoring to set forth and critics have been no more successful in defining it than in coming to an agreement as to the reality of the second Golyadkin. Many have seen the idea as having some sociological or social content, but it may be merely an attempt to picture objectively the mental disintegration of a man by objectifying his thoughts and aspirations and delusions. The story is almost impossible to visualize and the strange way in which the second Golyadkin appears and disappears will confuse the most careful reader.

Let us look first at a few points in it. At the opening we find Ivan Petrovich Golyadkin in a bad way physically and still more psychically. He has even been to consult a physician, Krestyan Ivanovich, who tells him that he must change his manner of living and not be afraid of society. Apparently in an effort to do this, he hires a carriage to attend the party in honor of Klara Olsufyevna, to which he has not been invited and from which he is turned away for some unexplained reason. After his discomfiture, he wanders around the streets and becomes aware of another man who walks home to his own apartment. He is sure that “his nocturnal visitor was no other than himself—Mr. Golyadkin himself, a second Mr. Golyadkin but completely as he, himself—in a word, what is called his double in all relations.” (Ed. Lazhechnikov, p. 218 f.)

The next morning this second Golyadkin appears in his office, directly facing him. It arouses no interest among the other officials that there should be two men of the same name in the office. Dostoyevsky implies that the second is a new man (cf. p. 225), but the conversation of Golyadkin and Anton Antonovich does not take the form which we should expect, had the second Golyadkin been an apparition or had the older Golyadkin made a mistake as to the identity or name of the new official.

That same evening Golyadkin invites his new friend home and the stranger tells a story which is almost certainly that of Golyadkin himself, of his unjust treatment in the provinces, of his coming to Petersburg and of his first assignment to duty in the capital. Yet we have no reason to believe that the senior Golyadkin is now wearing a borrowed uniform or is unsure of his position except for his peculiar illness, his fear of unnamed enemies, and his unexplained scandalous conduct with Karolina Ivanovna. As so often in his early works, Dostoyevsky avoids a consistent picture of the events preceding the story and plunges into the action without making clear at any time what is the genesis of the present situation. We are asked to accept Golyadkin's attitude and to see everything through his eyes, but the author does not explain to us the real situation.

The two Golyadkins spend the night together, but by morning the guest has disappeared without a trace and Petrushka grimly remarks to his master that “the master is not at home” and only later does he grunt out that the other had left an hour and a half before. Later he makes the cryptic remark “Good people live honorably, good people live without falsehood, and are never doubles” (cf. p. 282). The servant may be alluding to the double or to the intrigues into which his master pushes so zealously.

After this night, the role of the second Golyadkin changes. He is no longer the friendly suppliant. He is rather the successful careerist accomplishing without an effort all that the older man could not gain by intrigue and double-dealing and at the same time the cynical revealer of all that lurks in the back of the senior's mind. He knows at each moment how to exasperate and annoy the first Golyadkin and how to compel him to display to his associates all of his bad sides. Yet it is interesting and perhaps a consequence of the official's insanity that he never notices his rival talking with the other men in the office and the second Golyadkin only appears when he can annoy his rival.

This leads the first Golyadkin to the interchange of letters, but these are never delivered and we are left in the dark as to whether they really exist and whether Petrushka is actually sent to deliver them, or tries to do so.

The confusion continues until Golyadkin is retired and again we are not sure whether this retirement is because of insanity or because of the scandal with Karolina Ivanovna. Then comes the fatal letter from Klara with whom Golyadkin imagines himself in love and by whose father he has apparently been greatly helped. Bem considers this like the others imaginary. Osipov (Dvoynik, “Petersburgskaya Poema,” in A. L. Bem, O Dostoyevskon, I, 44), believes that it may be a practical joke on the part of some rough practical jokers. This is hardly probable for it would introduce a completely extraneous note into the story.

Golyadkin has already had his dream of achieving success and then being confused by his rival who possesses those qualities that he himself is desirous of acquiring. In a sense Golyadkin feels toward the double as Salieri does to Mozart in the little drama of Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri. It is a recognition that his own ideals are better than his reality, an unconscious tribute to those sides of his character which he refuses to recognize.

It precipitates however the final tragedy. Golyadkin visits his Excellency and then through a doorway which he took for a mirror appears the second Golyadkin and dominates him exactly as he had dreamed. From there he dashes to the house of Olsufy Ivanovich, and again finds there Andrey Semenovich and the second Golyadkin, whom for a moment he pardons. But then Krestyan Ivanovich appears and takes him off to the insane asylum, while the face of the double long remains behind him in the carriage, until he drops into forgetfulness.

All this makes the second Golyadkin a strange figure. He is treated as definitely real and yet there is no proof that he has a real existence outside of the ideas of the first Golyadkin. He is and he is not almost at one and the same moment. The two Golyadkins really represent the two sides of the character of the first man, the mean and sordid and intriguing official and the collection of memories of the past and hopes for the future that throng around his unhappy head.

It was a startling device that the young author assayed, but it is no more fantastic, even if less palpable, that the assumption of magic caps which render the wearer invisible as in Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila. or of the paraphernalia in any tale of magic and of the supernatural. Yet it cannot be convincing. The human intellect is not prepared to see people separate into two beings and move in the same environment. Dostoyevsky never tried it again. Hereafter to express his doubles, he employed devices as in A Raw Youth, where Versilov changes from one side of his nature to the other behind the scenes, or in the Brothers Karamazov, where the devil appears to Ivan when he is alone and mocks him by throwing at him his own words. Or, as in the “Land Lady,” he presents his hero as in a state of delirium where anything is possible.

The goal of Dostoyevsky in this novel is really intelligible. It is to present in objective form the lucid and illucid reactions of an insane man in his social and business life. It is to express in objective form the actions and the aspirations of a man in conflict with himself. Yet the device chosen is unsuccessful. The human mind cannot visualize this kind of existence. We demand that the second Golyadkin be a real person or an apparition. He is neither and both at the same time. It is idle to discuss whether the letters are real or imaginary. It is idle to discuss whether there are two or one man in the apartment and in the office. We can only read the story and accept the reality as Golyadkin accepted it without asking questions or seeking for definite answers to the question.

We have a real picture of a paranoiac with his delusions and his moments of lucidity. We have one man and two and if we can accept the stories of magic that have existed since the earliest ages of man, we must read this with the same confidence in the integrity and intentions of the author. Our minds refuse to do this. Dostoyevsky himself realized this after the novel was published. He admitted his failure and he went on to find other devices for thus revealing the deepest sides of human psychology, but he did not try again to present them simultaneously to the public in two different but similar bodies. The Double is a milestone on the way to his greater works, but it represents a false step which has remained to produce discussion and baffle the reader and the scholar.