Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Double: Post #1, a Conventional View

The Double (1) is a novella about Mr. Golyadkin, who has a nervous breakdown when his identical twin-like “double” discredits and displaces him at work and socially.

In a letter, Dostoevsky referred to The Double as his own “confession” (2). “Like his character…Dostoevsky was subject to ‘hallucinations’ which may very well have included delusions [paranoia? having a double?] similar to Golyadkins’s” (2). The Double involves “the splitting of Golyadkin’s personality and the appearance of the double: the internal process is simply given dramatic reality” (2).

Early critics of the work complained that “Dostoevsky was simply portraying a case of paranoia and mental breakdown with no larger significance than that of a case history…‘madness for the sake of madness’” (2).

In the Diary of a Writer, Dostoevsky acknowledged “that ‘my story was not successful’; but he continued to claim that ‘its idea was clear enough, and I have never contributed anything to literature more serious than this idea’” (2).

“Golyadkin’s double represents the…internal split…Dostoevsky’s first grasp of a character-type that became his hallmark as a writer. Golyadkin is the ancestor of all of Dostoevsky’s great split personalities, who are always confronted with their quasi-doubles or doubles (whether in the form of other ‘real’ characters, or as hallucinations) in the memorable scenes of the great novels…” (2).

“The mature Dostoevsky felt that the discovery of this ‘underground’ type, whose first version is Golyadkin, constituted his greatest contribution to Russian literature…its ultimate source lay in Dostoevsky’s own psychology” (2).

1. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Double: Two Versions [1846/1866]. Translated from the Russian by Evelyn Harden. New York, Ardis, 1985.

2. Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt 1821-1849. Princeton University Press, 1976, Volume One [of five], pp. 295-312.