The Double

The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Double follows Titular Councillor Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin over a few days of escalating disgrace and disintegration in St Petersburg. He wakes, dresses elaborately, withdraws a large sum of money, and hires a carriage, evasively avoiding colleagues and behaving oddly at the doctor Christian Ivanovich Rutenspitz's office, where he speaks in vague, defensive hints about enemies, masks, and intrigue without ever explaining himself clearly. His true purpose emerges: uninvited, he intends to attend the birthday ball of Clara Olsufyevna, daughter of his former patron, State Councillor Olsufi Ivanovich Berendeyev. Turned away at the door by the butler Gerasimych on Olsufi Ivanovich's orders, and humiliated before his section head Andrey Philippovich, Golyadkin nonetheless sneaks in through the back stairs, forces his way into the ballroom, makes a disastrous scene attempting to explain and then to dance with Clara Olsufyevna, and is forcibly ejected. Fleeing through a stormy November night along the Fontanka embankment, Golyadkin repeatedly encounters a mysterious stranger who turns out to be his exact double—identical in appearance, name, and patronymic. The double follows him home and is let in by his servant Petrushka as though expected. The next day, this second Golyadkin appears at the office itself, hired to work at the same desk, and is treated by everyone as an unremarkable new colleague, even praised for a "family resemblance." Golyadkin senior alternates between relief (hoping the whole matter will blow over) and mounting paranoia. The double ingratiates himself with a sob story of poverty and hardship, is invited home, eats and drinks with Golyadkin, and writes him sentimental verses—only to vanish the next morning, then reappear at the office as a scheming rival: stealing Golyadkin's finished report to present it as his own, winning the praise and favor of their superior Andrey Philippovich, publicly humiliating Golyadkin with mocking familiarity (pinching his cheek, fillipping his stomach) in front of colleagues, and escaping pursuit. Increasingly desperate, Golyadkin is further undone by a bizarre incident at a restaurant, where he is charged for eleven pastries he did not eat—his double having impersonated him to run up the bill. He writes indignant letters demanding explanations, first to the double directly and then to a colleague, Provincial Secretary Vakhrameyev, who lodges with the same landlady, Karolina Ivanovna, whom Golyadkin had once had dealings with; Vakhrameyev's reply is full of hostile insinuations about Golyadkin's ruined reputation and defends the double's good character. Golyadkin's servant Petrushka returns home drunk and evasive, worsening his master's confusion about whether the letter was even delivered properly. Golyadkin suffers a night of nightmarish visions in which countless identical doubles multiply and turn society against him. The next day, increasingly unable to distinguish reality from delusion, he goes to the office to investigate through the clerk Ostafyev, bribing him for information, and learns that another clerk, Ivan Semyonovich, has been seated in his place and that his double has been sent off on "special business" carrying His Excellency's portfolio. The narrative breaks off as His Excellency's carriage arrives and the double jumps out, with Golyadkin senior recognizing him just as the text ends.

By Fyodor Dostoevsky · First published 1846 · Genre: Psychological Fiction, Philosophical Fiction, Drama · 13 chapters · 75,927 words

First lines

IT was a little before eight o'clock in the morning when Titular Councillor Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin woke from a long sleep, yawned, stretched, and finally opened his eyes completely. He lay motionless in bed, however, for a couple of minutes more, like a man who is not yet quite sure whether he is awake or still asleep, and whether what is happening around him is real and actual or only the continuation of his disordered dreams. Soon, however, Mr Golyadkin's senses began to receive more clearly and distinctly their usual ordinary impressions. The dingy-green, smoke-begrimed, dusty walls of his little room, his mahogany chest-of-drawers, the imitation mahogany chairs, the red-painted table, the Turkish divan covered in reddish oilcloth with a pattern of little green flowers, and finally the clothes hastily removed the day before and flung down in a heap on the sofa, all looked familiarly back at him. Finally, the dull, dirty, grey autumn day peered into the room at him through the cloudy window-panes with a grimace so sour and bad-tempered that Mr Golyadkin could no longer have the slightest doubt: he was not in some far-distant realm but in the capital, in the town of St Petersburg, in his own flat on the fourth floor of a large and imposing building in Shestilavochny Street. Having made this important discovery, Mr Golyadkin convulsively closed his eyes, as though regretting his recent awakening and wishing to bring his sleep back for a minute. But a moment later he leapt from his bed with one bound, probably because he had at last stumbled upon the idea round which his scattered thoughts, not yet reduced to order, had been revolving. As soon as he had sprung out of bed he ran to the small round mirror standing on his chest-of-drawers. Although the sleepy, short-sighted, rather bald figure reflected in the glass was of such an insignificant character that nobody at all would have found it in the least remarkable at first glance, its owner was evidently quite satisfied with all he saw there. ‘It would be a fine thing,' said Mr Golyadkin half aloud, ‘it would be a fine thing if something was wrong with me today, if a pimple had suddenly appeared out of the blue, for example, or something else disastrous had happened; however, for the moment, it's all right; for the moment everything is going well.' Very pleased that everything was going well, Mr Golyadkin put back the mirror where it had been before and, disregarding the fact that he was barefooted and still wore the costume in which he was accustomed to retire to bed, he ran to the window and with great concern began searching with his eyes for something in the courtyard on which the windows of his apartment looked out. Whatever he was looking for in the courtyard was evidently also completely satisfactory; his face lighted up with a complacent smile. Then, but not before glancing behind the partition into the cubby-hole where his servant Petrushka slept, to make sure that Petrushka was not there, he tiptoed to the table, opened a drawer in it, rummaged in the very back of the drawer and finally drew out a shabby green wallet from under some yellowed old papers and odd scraps of rubbish, opened it carefully and peered with cautious enjoyment into its innermost hidden pocket. The packet of green, grey, blue, red and rainbow-coloured paper inside it seemed to look back at Mr Golyadkin in a friendly and approving fashion; with a beaming countenance he laid the open wallet in front of him on the table and briskly rubbed his hands together in token of extreme delight. Finally he took it out, his comforting packet of bank-notes, and began for the hundredth time since the previous day to count them over, carefully rubbing each piece of paper between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Seven hundred and fifty roubles,' he concluded at last in a low voice. ‘Seven hundred and fifty roubles. an impressive sum! It's a nice amount,' he went on, in a voice trembling and somewhat faint with satisfaction, pressing the packet between his hands and smiling significantly, ‘a very nice amount! Anybody at all would think so! I'd like to see the man for whom it was a trifle! That amount could take a man a long way. '

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psychological thriller · literary fiction · Russian literature · gothic fiction · surrealism · existentialism · absurdism · paranoia · schizophrenia · mental illness · social commentary · political satire

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