Mr. Golyadkin. Dostoevsky's story "The Double"

Double Fedor Dostoevsky

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Title: Double

About the book “The Double” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The story “The Double” is one of the key works of Fyodor Mikhailovich. It is especially interesting to read it, since the events described in the book are directly related to the writer. Just like the main character, Fyodor Dostoevsky was tormented by the splitting of his inner world. This theme of the formation of man in society closely resonates with the problem of moral choice, which is relevant not only in the 19th century, but also today.

The main character of the book “The Double” - civil servant Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin - is a gentle, honest and modest person who strictly adheres to moral principles. Feeling his weakness and uncertainty, his inability to make decisions, Golyadkin tries to pass off his softness as virtue. However, it seems to him that everyone is against him: they intrigue, offend and do not take him seriously. The main character desperately fights for his place in this world, and, conducting internal dialogues, gradually goes crazy...

The inner struggle has finally found its way external expression- at one moment Golyadkin saw next to him the second “I” - his twin, outwardly like two peas in a pod, but in character - completely different - self-confident, vile, dirty, evil. This Golyadkin Jr. established himself so firmly in his life that he began to displace the good-natured Golyadkin Sr., or rather, draw him into his essence. Internal dialogues did not stop, but now the reader clearly sees that the main character is trying to give explanations and find the reasons for this behavior, but helplessly falls into a deep pool of immorality. He achieves his goals through intrigue, slander and other dark deeds. In the story “The Double,” Fyodor Dostoevsky showed what the pursuit of what one wants in any way turns into. Gradually dissolving into his dark “I,” Golyadkin goes crazy from internal contradictions.

“The Double” picturesquely reveals life in St. Petersburg in the 19th century, echoing Gogol’s style. The book contains everything necessary for a fascinating read: a vivid image of the main character, humor and irony, a worthy ending that brings Golyadkin’s madness to the reader’s inner world and makes him think about his dark side. Fyodor Dostoevsky is a master of penetrating the soul and bringing his characters to life in the modern world. Reading this book is necessary for everyone who wants to understand the psychology of the great writer and, in fact, every person who is characterized by self-examination and the desire to understand his “I”.

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Quotes from the book “The Double” by Fyodor Dostoevsky

His position at that moment was like the position of a man standing over a terrible rapids, when the ground under him breaks off, has already swayed, has already moved, sways for the last time, falls, drags him into the abyss, and yet the unfortunate man has neither strength nor firmness the spirit to jump back, to avert your eyes from the yawning abyss; the abyss pulls him, and he finally jumps into it himself, hastening the moment of his own death.

The night was terrible - November, wet, foggy, rainy, snowy, fraught with fluxes, runny noses, fevers, toads, fevers of all possible kinds and varieties, in a word, all the gifts of St. Petersburg November.

No, madam, and again, things are not done that way, and the first thing is that there will be no cooing, don’t you dare hope. Nowadays a husband, my madam, sir, and a kind, well-bred wife must please him in everything. But they don’t like tenderness, madam, nowadays, in our industrial age; they say, the days of Jean-Jacques Rousseau are over. My husband, for example, now comes home hungry from his job - they say, darling, is there anything to snack on, drink some vodka, or eat some herring? so you, madam, should now have both vodka and herring ready. The husband will eat with gusto, but won’t even look at you, but will say: go to the kitchen, little kitten, and look after dinner, and maybe kiss you once a week, and even then indifferently...

Phoblaz you are, such a traitor!

Without any doubt, without blinking an eye, he would have fallen into the ground at that moment with the greatest pleasure; but what has been done cannot be undone...

“They spread a rumor that he had already given a signature to marry, that he was already a groom on the other side... And what do you think, Krestyan Ivanovich, to whom?”
- Right?

On the contrary, Krestyan Ivanovich; and, to say everything, I’m even proud of the fact that I’m not a big person, but a small one. I’m not an intriguer, and I’m proud of that too.

The dirty green, smoky, dusty walls of his small room, his mahogany chest of drawers, mahogany chairs, a table painted with red paint, an oilcloth Turkish sofa of a reddish color, with green flowers, and, finally, yesterday’s hastily taken off dress and abandoned in a lump on the sofa.

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3. Mysteries of the “Double”

"I challenge everyone to a fight"

One of Dostoevsky’s most mysterious works, the story “The Double,” in the first magazine version had the subtitle “The Adventures of Mr. Golyadkin,” and in the next edition Dostoevsky changed the subtitle, and it was already called “The Petersburg Poem.” There is still debate about this thing, mountains of literature have been written. They argue about the very meaning of the work.

Let's try to figure out where the dog is buried in this little story by Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky began writing it immediately after Poor People. Having literally finished one work, I sat down to another, but what’s interesting for the reader is that “Poor People” and “The Double” came almost simultaneously, the difference was only two weeks. “Poor People” was published in the “Petersburg Collection” in January 1846, and then “Double” was published in the journal “Otechestvennye Zapiski” on February 1.

Dostoevsky began work on this story in Reval (now Tallinn), a city that can be considered the birthplace of The Double. As the work neared completion, he wrote to his brother: “This will be my masterpiece.” Dostoevsky later read this story in Belinsky’s circle. Turgenev listened to this story. Everyone was delighted. Belinsky said that it was even stronger than “Poor People.” Others said it might be stronger " Dead souls Gogol, and “Dead Souls” was still the main masterpiece of that time.

But then suddenly everything changed, when the story was published, some kind of breakdown occurred. Belinsky changed his attitude; he considered this work a failure of Dostoevsky. To some extent, Fyodor Mikhailovich himself succumbed to these conversations, lost heart and also began to believe that the story was a failure for him. But here’s what’s interesting: after leaving hard labor, Dostoevsky turns again to “The Double.” For example, “Netochka Nezvanova” was not finished; it would have been much more logical for him to return and finish “Netochka Nezvanova.” No, he abandoned it, but he returned to “The Double”, tried to correct it, finish it and prove to everyone that it was a worthwhile thing.

Here he writes to his brother after hard labor: “This correction... will cost a new novel. They will finally see [they - that is, those who did not appreciate it], they will finally see what the “Double” is!.. In a word, I challenge everyone to a fight.” Well, this is very typical of Dostoevsky: “I challenge everyone to a fight.” And again he writes to his brother: “Why should I lose an excellent idea, greatest type in its social importance, which I was the first to discover and of which I was the herald.” And this is already 1859. How did it all end? Dostoevsky never completed the transformation of the “adventures” into a “poem”. He corrected some things, corrected quite a lot, and now we have “The Double” in two versions: as it first appeared in the magazine and as it was published in the early 1860s.

It is interesting that Dostoevsky will return to talk about “The Double” again 30 years after it appeared. In the “Diary of a Writer” of 1877, he says about this work: “This story was positively unsuccessful for me, but its idea was quite bright, and I have never pursued anything more seriously in literature than this idea.” This is said when “Crime and Punishment”, “Idiot”, “Demons”, “Teenager” were written. And on the eve of The Brothers Karamazov, he tells his brother that he has never pursued anything more serious than this idea! Here is one of big mysteries, over which modern philology and critics of the 19th and 20th centuries struggle: the meaning of “The Double”.

After Hoffmann and Gogol

The theme of duality itself is not new in literature. First of all, Hoffman comes to mind. In several works he has double heroes. This is the novel “Elixirs of Satan”, these are the short stories “Little Tsakhes”, “Doubles”, and some other works. Hoffmann's romantic theme of the duality of man came to Russian literature. In 1828, Antony Pogorelsky published the book “The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia.” Veltman also writes about duality. What new did Dostoevsky bring to this Hoffmannian theme?

Dostoevsky's hero is crazy. The process of madness, going crazy is described, which is also not new; first of all, Gogol’s “Notes of a Madman” comes to mind, and in many ways Dostoevsky is guided by this work. On what grounds does Dostoevsky's hero go crazy? About the same as Gogol's hero. Gogolevsky Poprishchin is also a titular adviser, like Golyadkin, he falls in love with the general’s daughter. There is such an urban romance: “He was a titular councilor, she was a general’s daughter.” So, it is not clear to our titular adviser why preference was given not to him, but to another person who has a higher rank: “Why is he better than me? What, does he have two noses, or what? The same person as me. So why is he a chamber cadet and I’m not?” This question about the reigning injustice worries him very much, and ultimately leads him to the brink of madness: “Why don’t I spanish king? Why shouldn't I be the Spanish king? The problem of self-identification of the individual arises, establishing one’s place in this world. This is both a social problem and, of course, a psychological problem.

In Dostoevsky’s “Poor People,” Makar Alekseevich Devushkin asks Varenka: “Why is it everything for others, but nothing for you? Why such injustice, who perpetrated it?” It is this thought about the unjust structure of the world that is the reason for the madness of both Poprishchin and Golyadkin. Here Dostoevsky follows Gogol.

A rag with ambition

Let's take a closer look at who Mr. Golyadkin is and how he differs from, say, Makar Alekseevich Devushkin. The first pages describe the morning of the titular adviser Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin. It must be said right away that a titular adviser is not such a small rank. This roughly corresponds to the rank of captain in the army, that is, he is not at the lowest level, but not at the highest either. He is the clerk's assistant, which means he is not a copyist, like Dostoevsky's previous hero. He is already writing papers, he is small, but he is the boss. And not so poor. I remind you how His Excellency gives Makar Alekseevich 100 rubles, for him this is a huge amount, but at the beginning of the story “The Double” Golyadkin recalculates his funds - he turns out to have 750 rubles. This is not such a small amount, an amount that, as the hero himself says, can lead far. She led him far, too far.

He has his own apartment! Makar Alekseevich Devushkin, as you remember, rents a corner in the kitchen, and Golyadkin has his own, unrented apartment. He has his own lackey, Petrushka. He has a brand new uniform, new boots, an overcoat - not like Devushkin or, say, Gogol’s hero, he has an overcoat with a raccoon collar. That is, he is, in general, a person who is not in poverty. He cannot be considered a poor person.

Then what is Mr. Golyadkin’s problem? We see at the beginning of the story how he is getting ready to go somewhere, preparing for some very important event. They bring him new boots, a new vest. Petrushka puts on a livery from someone else's shoulder. A carriage hired for one day arrives. Why does he need to rent a carriage, and one with coats of arms? We understand that our hero is going to some kind of enterprise, and then even stranger things happen.

He stops by Gostiny Dvor. For some reason he evaluates silver and gold items. He bargains for a dinner tea set for 1,500 rubles, that is, exactly twice as much as he has money. Then he bargains and orders furniture (as they said then) for six rooms. He only has one room, but he orders furniture for six! Then he looks for an intricate ladies' toilet in the latest fashion. Why does he, a bachelor, need a ladies' toilet?

Why is Mr. Golyadkin doing all this? He, apparently, wants to appear a little taller than he actually is. The service is twice as high, the furniture is six times as high, there is some kind of game of promotion here, when a person, as they would say now, positions himself in a higher place in the hierarchy of life.

And finally, he rides in an absurd carriage around St. Petersburg. It gives him pleasure, which is quickly replaced by fear. He comes across his boss, who is terribly surprised to see Mr. Golyadkin in a bulky carriage, and here he is very interesting episode. Golyadkin hides in the corner of the carriage and says: “It’s not me. It’s not me, it’s someone else.” Here a split already begins, the “other” is the one he plays, in whose place he would like to be.

But where is Mr. Golyadkin going? He rushed to the ball with Mr. Berendeyev. ( Interesting names: Golyad and Berendey are, according to Russian chronicles, tribes that once lived on Russian soil). Golyadkin goes to Mr. Berendeev for a ball in honor of the birthday of his daughter, Klara Olsufievna. Nobody invited him to the ball. Moreover, he is persona non grata here. He apparently got into trouble at one time and was estranged from home, but nevertheless he goes. For what purpose? Again, apparently, he wants to prove to both others and himself that he is not such a small person.

And here's what's interesting. Mr. Golyadkin very often in his reasoning comes up with the word “rag,” from “rag,” and he repeatedly says and convinces himself that he will not allow himself to be “rubbed like a rag on which dirty boots are wiped.” “And I won’t let myself be rubbed like a rag.” And he decided to protest, the narrator already says, and to protest with all his might, to the last opportunity. True, the narrator begins to doubt: maybe, if anyone had wanted to, he would certainly have turned Mr. Golyadkin into a rag, but even in this case, even if “a mean, dirty rag would have turned out, but this rag would not have been simple, this rag would have been with ambition."

Before us is not just a small man, but a small man with ambition, and his ambition is that he wants to occupy more high position, which, it seems to him, is quite consistent with his nature. Well, why is he going to this unfortunate ball? Maybe he is in love with Klara Olsufyevna? Not at all. It just bothers him that the suitor is a man more successful than him, a certain Vladimir Semenovich, a young collegiate assessor (this is the next rank after the titular one), and also the nephew of the head of the office. And essentially, Mr. Golyadkin is going to give battle to his rival, to prove that he has no less rights to Klara Olsufyevna. He gets to this ball contrary to the ban, hides somewhere on the stairs, but then breaks through, gets to the ball, and it ends with him simply being lowered from these stairs. What a blow to pride, to painful ambition!

By the way, Mr. Berendeev’s ball is described in an interesting way. This description relates to the general meaning of the story. Dostoevsky very sarcastically, in Gogolian colors, describes the festival, where everyone plays their assigned role and wears a proper mask. Everyone pretends to be nobility, starting with the owner, who, through his long service, got a good deal of capital. The hint is quite clear: he knew how to take bribes. However, he and everyone else are playing noble people, and this also relates to the general idea of ​​the story. Mr. Golyadkin lives in a world where everyone plays the proposed role, but he did not get the most important one, and he inadmissibly violates the rules of the game.

The double phenomenon

Naturally, he is pushed out, expelled from the illegally occupied place. Then the time of the double comes. Mr. Golyadkin runs through the streets of St. Petersburg. It's November, snow and rain. A cannon shot is heard warning of flooding. The situation reminds us of something, something similar already happened in Russian literature, Dostoevsky likes to play on literary allusions, memories...

Well, of course, this is “The Bronze Horseman”, this is the moment of poor Eugene’s madness, when he is being chased by a horseman who has come down from the pedestal. The “Petersburg poem” in prose echoes the “Petersburg story” in verse. However, the roll call here is not only with Pushkin. “...the little dog, all wet and shivering, tagged along with Mr. Golyadkin and ran sideways next to him, hastily and intelligently looking at him. Some distant, long-forgotten idea - a memory of some long-ago circumstance - now came to his mind.” What kind of circumstance is this?

Dostoevsky's story can be read in different ways, in in this case the allusion appeals to the educated, well-read reader, who remembers that Mephistopheles first appeared to Faust in the form of a little dog. Both the vision of poor Eugene and the appearance of Mephistopheles, according to Dostoevsky, are somehow close to each other. A devilish obsession comes to the pages of “The Double” from Russian and world literature.

At this very moment, Mr. Golyadkin sees a certain stranger, who turns out to be his double, the stranger walks in front of him, enters his apartment, meets him. And this fifth chapter ends with ellipses after the phrase: “in a word, as they say, his double in all respects.” Readers have been arguing for a century and a half about what Mr. Golyadkin’s double is: is it nonsense, a phantom created by his imagination, or is it some kind of a real man, perhaps similar to Mr. Golyadkin. I think that Dostoevsky has both: he is both nonsense and a real person. How can it be?

Once Dostoevsky, already at the end of his life, wrote to one of his friends about what fantasy is in literature, and cited as an example “ Queen of Spades"Pushkin as the height of fantastic art. “At the end of the story,” writes Dostoevsky, “you don’t know how to decide: did this vision come from Hermann’s nature or is he really one of those who came into contact with another world,” that is, this vision of the old countess - or is it Hermann’s dream, or this is real contact with other world. “And you don’t know how to solve it,” says Dostoevsky. This, in fact, is the point, that you are lost and don’t know how to understand. This confusion is programmed by Pushkin; he deliberately puts his reader in a situation of uncertainty.

In The Double, Dostoevsky puts not only the hero, but also the reader on the brink of splitting. We are at a loss: the double is an illness and some kind of vision of Mr. Golyadkin, or it is a completely real person. Critics and literary scholars were also divided into two camps. It seems to me that, in principle, Dostoevsky deliberately structures his story in such a way as to “please” both of them. If we talk about the first appearance of the double, everything here suggests that he came out of the nature of Mr. Golyadkin himself: he was expelled, he lost himself, and he would like to hide or run away from himself.

The double in this understanding is the embodiment of Mr. Golyadkin’s thoughts, the realization of his own experiences. There are known works of psychiatrists who examined this story and wrote that Dostoevsky very accurately describes the moment of psychiatric illness. Doctor Yanovsky, who was well acquainted with Dostoevsky at that time, testifies that Dostoevsky then read a lot of medical literature. The “psychiatric” version works, but we’ll see what happens next.

By special order

In the next chapter, Mr. Golyadkin appears in the office and an unpleasant surprise awaits him. A certain new official appears, who is hired to serve in the same office, and this official turns out to be his double. He, as it seems to Mr. Golyadkin, looks like him, and his name is also Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin. And this doesn’t surprise anyone around! It turns out that he is no longer a phantom, because we see the reaction of the people around us and understand that this is a very real person, not a ghost. Thus, it turns out that the double in the story really has two natures. In one case it is a hallucination, and in the other it is actually a real official. At the end of the story, Mr. Golyadkin discovers that he is not so much like him.

This is one of the mysteries of “The Double”; we are always between two versions, fantastic and real. Following the latter, a certain new official (a real one) goes with Mr. Golyadkin to his home after the service, leads him into a frank conversation, extorts some information from him, and Mr. Golyadkin recklessly told him all his ins and outs over mugs of punch. And the next day Golyadkin Jr. behaves completely differently: he treats Golyadkin Sr. mockingly and boorishly and is not at all like that poor official who spent the whole night with him in friendly, obsequious outpourings. What's the matter? Where did this second Mr. Golyadkin come from and what role does he play? I have my own version on this matter, and I will try to present it. It has not yet been heard in the literature about Dostoevsky.

That's what I pay attention to. In the second chapter, Mr. Golyadkin goes to Krestyan Ivanovich Rutenspitz, a doctor of medicine, with whom he apparently begins to be treated, and Krestyan Ivanovich is interested not only in the “medical” details of Mr. Golyadkin’s life, and he feels some kind of catch when Krestyan Ivanovich asks him address. Indeed, why does a doctor need the address of an incoming patient? He also asks about his official affairs, and Mr. Golyadkin does not answer all the questions. And when they part, Krestyan Ivanovich looks after him carefully and curiously. The doctor disappears from the story and appears only at the end, unexpectedly, to take Mr. Golyadkin to madhouse. Krestyan Ivanovich is a serving man, has a significant order, and it can be assumed that in this capacity he should have informed where it should be that such and such an official had crossed the boundaries of what was permitted and his place was not in the office, but in a madhouse. In this case, it becomes clear why it is Krestyan Ivanovich (and not some other doctor) who comes to “arrest” Mr. Golyadkin at the end of the story.

Obviously, there was some kind of intrigue in which Golyadkin’s double was also drawn into it. This is confirmed by the episode when Golyadkin’s chief tells him how the second Golyadkin was hired, having come with a recommendation. “And from whom, sir?” - asks Golyadkin. “A good recommendation, they say; His Excellency, they say, laughed with Andrei Filippovich ... and said that it was good, and, perhaps, that they were not averse to it.” Don't mind what? Apparently, there was something special in this recommendation that one could laugh at, and then still say: we will not oppose this.

And then it turns out that this second Mr. Golyadkin immediately occupies the position of an official in the office on a special assignment. “I had a presentiment for a long time,” says Golyadkin first, “that he was on a special assignment.” And this “by special order” is repeated many times. So it will be quite realistic to assume that Golyadkin-2 did not accidentally go to Golyadkin-1’s apartment, his “special assignment”, obviously, was that he had to check Krestyan Ivanovich’s “signal”, find out completely what happens to Golyadkin, and report where it should be.

It is worth noting that in the plans for reworking the story there is an episode when both Golyadkins join Petrashevsky’s circle (the same one for which Dostoevsky was sentenced to death penalty), and the double turns out to be an informer. The Petrashevites were in fact arrested following the denunciation of an informant who had infiltrated the circle - P. D. Antonelli. The informer is essentially a professional double; this plan of the writer, who learned about Antonelli’s role during the investigation, only unfolded the role that Golyadkin-2 played in the story.

What is the end result? If we accept Golyadkin-2 as a real person who carries out a special mission to identify and pursue Golyadkin-1, then everything falls into place, and it becomes clear why Mr. Golyadkin feels like a hunted animal. This is not just a mania - this can, of course, be explained psychologically - but it is also a real persecution, when external forces seek to oust Mr. Golyadkin from the place he occupies.

A terrible abyss of completely similar

The motive of ousting a person from the place he occupies runs through the entire story and is accumulated in Mr. Golyadkin’s letter to Vakhrameev: “I ask you, my dear sir, to convey to these persons [those persons who are persecuting me] that their strange claim and ignoble fantastic desire to displace others from the boundaries occupied by these others by their existence in this world, and to take their place, deserve amazement, contempt, regret and, moreover, a madhouse.” There are certain forces that are really pushing me out of my place - this is the idea of ​​a double, formidable in essence, and it is only pedaled in Mr. Golyadkin’s nightmare.

He dreams that his double, as he is called, “a person known for his indecent behavior,” is trying to take his place in the service and in society, to discredit his reputation, to appropriate his achievements. There is a little bit of Hoffmann here, of little Tsakhes, who appropriated to himself the virtues of the people around him. He crushed them under himself, squeezed the best juices out of them, appropriated them for himself. This is very important and quite life theme which, as we understand, comes from romanticism, and in Dostoevsky receives a continuation no less significant than in Hoffmann himself.

In Mr. Golyadkin’s nightmare, this repression, the replacement of a person with some kind of likeness of him, takes on completely phantasmagoric forms. Mr. Golyadkin is running, he is trying to escape from his double, but “with every step he took, with every kick of his foot on the granite of the sidewalk, it jumped out, as if from underground, along the same exact, completely similar and disgusting depravity of the heart - Mr. Golyadkin. And all these completely similar ones immediately started... running one after another, and in a long chain, like a string of geese, they stretched and hobbled after Mr. Golyadkin, so that there was nowhere to escape from the completely similar ones... Finally, a terrible abyss of completely similar ones was born - so that the whole capital was finally filled with absolutely similar people.” This scary fantasy of Dostoevsky can easily be found in modern consonances, when people are replaced by some kind of phantoms, when the human personality is dispersed and in its place there is a huge number of some kind of substitutes. Mr. Golyadkin’s terrible dream gives the story the features of a dystopia, as they would say now.

Anatomy of relationships with superiors

What is the nature of duality? Why is a person being replaced by a similar creature? A psychological explanation is possible: the reason lies in our hero himself, since his double carries within himself the qualities that Mr. Golyadkin envies. He would like to be, as they would say now, successful, he would like to be dexterous, cunning, resourceful, but he can’t do it, something is stopping him. Maybe some moral considerations. He endlessly repeats that he is not an intriguer, but from the very importunity of the repetitions it follows that he still wants to be an intriguer.

The double is the realization of his hidden desires and potentials. How can this be proven? On that very night with his double, what does Mr. Golyadkin dream about? He wants to make his double his ally: “We, my friend, will be cunning, we will be cunning at the same time; for our part, we will carry on intrigue to spite them.” But he never tires of repeating that he is not an intriguer. His dreams come from his ambitions. Once again I will repeat his signature phrase: “I am not a rag on which boots are wiped, I am not a rag, I will not allow myself to be rubbed.”

But if not a rag, then who? Obviously, this desire sits in him, which was expressed in the famous epoch-making slogan: “He who was nothing will become everything.” He wants to become everything! Not just take your place, but take the place of the strong. And, by the way, in the remade “Double” Dostoevsky was going to reveal this motif even more through the parallel of Golyadkin and... Garibaldi. The idea, so to speak, Garibaldian, the idea of ​​protest, force, in some ways already Napoleonic, reveals itself in projection little man. But Dostoevsky’s duality, I repeat, is explained dually. That is, the point is both in Golyadkin himself and in the fact that the whole world is structured this way. Let's remember once again about the ball at Mr. Berendeyev's.

Duality is the result of the properties and characteristics of the world in which our hero lives. From the very beginning, when the double appears, what is Golyadkin indignant about? “And by what right is all this being done? Who authorized such an official?” That is, he appeals to the authorities: why did the authorities allow it, and he rejects the assumption that these may be the laws of nature, perhaps the Lord God wanted it this way. No, everything is decided by the authorities.

In the reworking of “The Double,” Dostoevsky was going to strengthen this idea, and this is what we read there: “In Golyadkin you can see how confused a person is, because except for the administration, no one knows anything.” “Except for the administration,” that is, the world is built on veneration of rank, on the relationship between superiors and subordinates. Dostoevsky calls all this: “the anatomy of all Russian relations to the authorities,” the writer here acts as a very caustic satirist. Here, for example, is how Mr. Golyadkin turns to his superiors and tries to whitewash himself: “I am not freethinking at all, Anton Antonovich, I am freethinking,” “I take the beneficent authorities for my father.” This is what Dostoevsky calls the anatomy of all Russian relations to superiors.

And then a wonderful scene when His Excellency leaves the office and is seen off by his subordinates. “All the officials stood motionless and respectfully waiting. The fact is that His Excellency stopped at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for his carriage, which had been delayed for some reason, and was having a very interesting conversation with two advisers.” And nearby, at a respectful distance, the rest, and, of course, “smiled very much, seeing that His Excellency deigned to joke and laugh.” Listen, how familiar this all is: the bosses deign to joke, and everyone around pretends how witty it is.

“The officials crowded at the top of the stairs also smiled and waited for His Excellency to laugh again... But most of all, apparently, the unworthy and ignoble enemy of Mr. Golyadkin [that is, his double] was happy and felt pleasure. At that moment he even forgot all the officials... He became all ears and eyesight, somehow strangely shrank, probably to listen more comfortably, without taking his eyes off His Excellency, and occasionally only his arms, legs and head twitched with some barely noticeable convulsions that exposed all the inner, hidden movements of his soul.” Oh my God, it's like watching TV. This is what Dostoevsky calls “the anatomy of all Russian relations to superiors.” And this is also the beginning of a split, when a person does not belong to himself, when he plays some rather vile role.

I cannot help but recall one episode here related to Pushkin. This was recorded by one of his remarkable contemporary, Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova-Rosset, when she met Pushkin in Tsarskoe Selo. Very upset Pushkin. She asks him what happened. He says: “I just met the Tsar (Nicholas I).” “Why are you so upset?” “He was very kind to me, very disposed, very supportive.” “Well, that’s great. What's wrong with that? “And I felt,” says Pushkin, “how meanness spread through all my veins.” So in “The Double” we observe the beginning of a split personality, when a person ceases to be himself, when he plays this role associated with his relationship to his superiors.

“Writer’s face” and trolling readers

It should also be said about how the story is constructed, how the story of Mr. Golyadkin is told. At first, the narrator seems to take the hero’s point of view and at the same time gives his assessments, sometimes ironic, sometimes sympathetic. For example, it is described how Mr. Golyadkin looks at his 750 rubles in banknotes: “Probably, a pack of green, gray, blue, red and various colorful pieces of paper also looked very friendly, approvingly at Mr. Golyadkin... Finally he took it out, his comforting stack of government banknotes.” The narrator is speaking here, and the words “comforting” and “looked friendly” are, of course, the hero’s perception, so the narrator plays with us and goes over to the hero’s side. In philology, this is called improperly direct speech. The hero’s speech seems to invade the narrator’s speech, and the further, the more, and when the double appears, the narrative breaks down, the narrator goes to the side, and we begin to see everything only through the eyes of Mr. Golyadkin himself.

When the narrator withdraws himself, when he stops explaining anything to us at all, this, of course, is Dostoevsky’s kind of game with readers, a game that he began back in “Poor People.” His remark in a letter to his brother is known that everyone read “Poor People” and everyone was looking for “the author’s face,” “but I,” says Dostoevsky, “didn’t show them mine.” That is, he plays with the reader and hides behind the characters, but in “Poor People” he simply hides behind the characters’ letters, but here he still shows himself (as a narrator), and then suddenly hides and leaves us alone with Mr. Golyadkin. On modern language this could be called trolling. The author plays pranks, trolls his readers, confuses them, and he does not explain what is really happening, going to the side.

“The Double” is an experiment by Dostoevsky, looking for new forms of storytelling. The late Dostoevsky will find new forms, but even then he will play with the readers, appearing and disappearing and leaving us alone with the heroes. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin called the latter polyphony. But it seems to me that it is somewhat more complicated. Still, starting from “The Double” we see that the author appears and disappears. Try to play this game with Dostoevsky, try to solve “The Double,” try to understand why the author is playing this game with you. Maybe that big and bright idea of ​​the “Double” will come forward, about which Dostoevsky proudly writes even 30 years later in “The Diary of a Writer.”

An attempt to penetrate human nature

I think that among the critics, Dostoevsky’s contemporaries, practically no one was able to penetrate to this bright idea, to penetrate into the essence of “The Double,” even Belinsky, I’m not talking about other members of the circle, but there was one critic who, in my opinion, managed to see it, catch it. This is Valeryan Maykov, a wonderful critic, in my opinion, deeper and stronger than Belinsky himself. He, unfortunately, lived a very short life, like a meteor, he flashed on the horizon of Russian criticism. Dostoevsky valued him extremely, both then and later. He is from the talented Maykov family, brother of Apollo Maykov, a poet.

Valeryan Maykov gave “The Double” perhaps the most accurate description: “In this work, he [that is, the author] penetrated so deeply into the human soul, so fearlessly and passionately peered into the innermost manipulation of human feelings, thoughts and deeds, that the impression made by reading The “double” can only be compared to the impression of an inquisitive person penetrating into chemical composition matter." The critic is right: “The Double” was an attempt to penetrate into human nature. And a discovery was made, to which the author returned many times later.

We will encounter the motif of duality more than once in Dostoevsky’s novels. In Crime and Punishment, the composition includes a system of doubles, repeating to some extent Raskolnikov. In The Idiot there is a remarkable discussion about the “double thoughts” inherent in human nature. Versilov in “The Teenager” breaks icons and says that it wasn’t him, it was a double who did it. And finally, in The Brothers Karamazov the devil is Ivan Fedorovich’s double, a figment of his imagination and a phenomenon from another world. I think that the theme of duality did not leave Dostoevsky throughout his entire work.

And finally Last year life, letter from Dostoevsky to Ekaterina Yunge dated April 11, 1880. The girl complained of a split personality, when she realizes that she cannot, should not do this, but still does it. The Golyadkin collision is partly recognizable. And this is what Dostoevsky answered her: “What do you write about your duality? But this is the most common trait in people... not quite ordinary, however. A trait inherent in human nature in general. ...You are dear to me, because this bifurcation in you exactly like in me, and has been in me all my life. This is great pain, but at the same time great pleasure.”

Further, he defines the meaning of such a bifurcation: “This is a strong consciousness, the need for self-report and the presence in the nature of your need of a moral duty to yourself and to humanity. This is what this duality means. If you were not so developed in mind, if you were more limited, you would be less conscientious, and this duality would not exist. On the contrary, great, great conceit would be born. But still this duality is a great torment.”

And then Dostoevsky gives his recipe for treatment, which he lived and tested: “Do you believe in Christ and in his vows? If you believe (or really want to believe), then surrender to it completely, and the torment of this duality will be greatly mitigated, and you will receive a spiritual outcome.” The story “The Double” leads us to such motives, which opened up new horizons for Dostoevsky in understanding the abysses that lurk in human nature. And “Double” - yes, an experiment, but one that was fraught with new knowledge.

Literature

1. Kasatkina T.A. “Double” F.M. Dostoevsky: psychopathology and ontology // Kasatkina Tatyana. About the creative nature of the word. The ontology of the word in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky as the basis of “realism in in the highest sense" M., 2004.
2. About Dostoevsky. Collection of articles ed. A.L. Bema: Prague 1929/1933/1936. M., 2007 (articles by D.I. Chizhevsky, N.E. Osipov, A.L. Bem).
3. Poddubnaya R.N. Duality and imposture // Dostoevsky: Materials and Research: 11. St. Petersburg, 1994.
4. Shchennikov G.K. Dostoevsky’s “Double” as a creative dialogue with E.T.A. Hoffman // Dostoevsky and world culture. Almanac No. 24. St. Petersburg, 2008.

A story begun in the summer of 1845 and completed on January 28, 1846 (first published: with the subtitle “The Adventures of Mr. Golyadkin”). Two decades later, “The Double” was published in a second, revised edition, included in this set. A separate edition of the story was also released:

The story had great creative history. The idea for it arose from Dostoevsky soon after graduation and began to be implemented in June 1845, when the writer was visiting his family in Revel. With him he shared his creative thoughts and read the written pages of the story. In the fall, work on “The Double” continued in St. Petersburg, but it did not proceed as quickly as the writer wanted, which he jokingly reported in a letter to his brother: “ Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin maintains its character completely. He's a terrible scoundrel, there's no attack on him; he doesn’t want to go forward, claiming that he’s not ready yet...” Having committed himself to submitting the text of the story to Otechestvennye zapiski by the beginning of the new year 1846, Dostoevsky was in a hurry and annoyed with himself: “... until the very last time, i.e. until the 28th, finished my scoundrel Golyadkin. Horror! Such are human calculations; I wanted to finish before August and held out until February!” ).

While working on the story, Dostoevsky was sure that he had succeeded in the hero, considering Golyadkin his chef-d'œuvre; preliminary reviews, in which "The Double" was called a work of genius, second in importance after "Dead Souls", also inspired the young writer. However, after publication, opinions changed, and the negative assessment of the story plunged him into despondency. He admits that he was hasty with the publication, deceived the expectations of readers and ruined the thing. A moment of creative crisis comes: “I was disgusted with Golyadkin.<...>Next to the brilliant pages there is badness, rubbish, it makes you sick to your stomach, you don’t want to read. This is what created hell for me for a while, and I fell ill from grief” ().

Later, planning a new edition, Dostoevsky decides to completely remake the story. Rough sketches for its intended processing into notebooks No. 1 (1861-1862) and No. 2 (1862-1864) speak of the expansion of the plan and the writer’s intention to give a more detailed picture of Russian society, to fill it with topical content. Instead, the writer only more clearly outlined the main lines of his narrative, removing unimportant episodes, monologues and dialogues characters. IN new edition he also weakened the parody meaning genre form“The Double”, removing the ironic annotations to the chapters and changing the subtitle. The changes made, apparently, did not satisfy the author. In the November issue of “A Writer’s Diary” for 1877, Dostoevsky once again returned to the theme of “The Double”: “This story was positively unsuccessful for me, but its idea was quite bright, and I have never pursued anything more seriously in literature than this idea. But the form of this story did not work for me at all.<...>if I now took up this idea and presented it again, I would take a completely different form; but in 1946 I didn’t find this form and couldn’t master the story.” Dostoevsky’s critical attitude to the story does not indicate the actual failure that befell “The Double,” but rather the exacting attitude of the writer to his talent.

The assessment and interpretation of the artistic concept of “The Double” was ambiguous: in critical literature, a certain evolution of views on the nature and essence of the work as a whole and the perception of the theme of duality in particular can be seen. Reviews of the story in lifetime criticism were mostly unfavorable. The authors of articles about the “Double” I.V. Brant, S.P. Shevyrev, K.S. Aksakov, Ap. A. Grigoriev considered it a failure both in terms of content and artistically. The new socio-psychological “underground” type discovered by Dostoevsky was mistakenly perceived as a parody of man in general. The unconventional form of storytelling was recognized as a weak attempt to imitate Gogol in depicting bureaucratic life, and fantasy was considered an excess in the Hoffmannian spirit. Evaluating the story by the standards of normative aesthetics of the 40s, short-sighted critics mistook the innovative symbolic-psychological nature of the story and the method of conscious de-aestheticization of reality for unjustified naturalism, distorting the image of the world and man. The story seemed to them a “monstrous creation” in which reality began to take the form of delirium. The negative reaction was also caused by inadequate manifestations of the psychophysical nature of man, which were unusual for readers of this era, many of whom did not consider this an achievement of literature: ““The Double” is a pathological, therapeutic work, but not at all literary...” (Grigoriev).

Initial critical reviews of The Double were supported by some Soviet literary critics in the 1950s and 1960s. So, V.V. Ermilov also saw in “The Double” a substitution of the social with the psychopathological. The artistic concept of the story by V.Ya. Kirpotin and V.I. Kuleshov. A different, positive point of view on the story from the moment of its appearance was contained in the works of V. Belinsky. Making allowance for the young author’s inexperience with regard to style and creative method, Belinsky recognizes his merits and creative courage in depicting the psychology of personality: “... the character of the hero is one of the deepest, boldest and truest concepts that Russian literature can boast of.” V.N. pointed out the depth of the moral and psychological problems of “The Double” and the typicality of the protagonist’s experiences to determine the social class. Maikov: “The Double reveals to you the anatomy of a soul perishing from the awareness of the disunity of private interests in a well-ordered society.” Some readers recognized themselves in “The Double” (Nechaev).

In criticism of the late XIX - early XX centuries. there has been an understanding of the main problem of “The Double” as an internal struggle in the soul of the hero, caused by the clash of two opposing moral and psychological principles. This interpretation is opposed by the analysis of the story in the works of a number of Soviet literary scholars. Proving that “The Double” was not Dostoevsky’s ideological and aesthetic breakdown, but at the same time not sharing the concept of the internal duality of consciousness of the protagonist, F.I. Evnin sees in the story the tragedy of the collision of a defenseless “little” person with the world of social injustice. The central conflict of “The Double” is defined by him not as internal, but as external, consisting in the replacement, displacement of Golyadkin from his place in life “ strongmen of the world this." The concept of “repression” has taken a strong place in dostoevistics. M.Ya. Ermakova derived Dostoevsky’s theme of replacing weak people not adapted to life with stronger and more predatory people from Lermontov’s work; in the notes to “The Double” in the PSS (in 30 volumes), the socio-psychological theme of the depersonalization of a person and his reduction by society to a humiliated position, found in “Poor People,” was associated with one of Dostoevsky’s favorite works - the novel by I.I. Lazhechnikov "Ice House". In the book by V.N. Zakharov's "Dostoevsky's System of Genres" also questions the theme of duality, or "underground", as the central theme of the story. The very genre of the “St. Petersburg poem,” according to the researcher, does not allow it to be classified as a work of a parody nature that exposes the flaws of human nature. the main task“The Double” seems to the author to be different: to consider the fate of the hero in a unique historical perspective of the St. Petersburg period of Russian history and, in correlation with the creative attitude of the writer himself, to depict the “restoration dead person, crushed unfairly by the pressure of circumstances, the stagnation of centuries and general prejudices.” Analysis of the chronotope, symbolic toponymy, symbolism of names gave the author grounds to consider “The Double” a story about suppression human personality in the conditions of an autocratic-bureaucratic system, about the elimination and displacement of a limited, but worthy person by his cruel and calculating double.
Simultaneously with the idea of ​​“repression,” the concept of Golyadkin’s split personality is being developed in the scientific literature. In its critical understanding, two aspects are identified. The first stems from the article by N.A. Dobrolyubov’s “Downtrodden People”, where for the first time the central theme of the story is defined as “the bifurcation of the weak, spineless and educated person between the timid directness of action and the platonic determination to intrigue, a split, under the weight of which the poor man’s mind finally collapses.” The critic views Golyadkin's dual consciousness as a consequence of the negative social conditions of his existence. G.M. also reflects on the story in the same vein. Friedlander: from his point of view, her grotesque-fantastic plot is used in “The Double” to show the internal contradiction of the hero, generated by social humiliation, the absurdity and injustice of the bureaucratic-hierarchical world. Similarly, Alb. Kovach considers the reason for Golyadkin’s internal duality to be both the hero’s social life and the socio-ethical sphere of his existence - the penetration into Golyadkin’s consciousness of the principles of an antagonistic society, which he unsuccessfully tries to reconcile with universal human values. In the coverage of criticism, the theme of repression receives a new interpretation as the replacement in the consciousness of moral principles with the concepts of benefit, self-interest, calculation, and intrigue. This gives rise to a dual state in the world, dooming it to painful suffering and disintegration of personality. A revision of the point of view on the “Double” also took place in the works of A.B. Udodova, K.I. Tyunkina, V.N. Belopolsky.

Currently, a different approach to the problem of the split personality of the hero of “The Double” has prevailed, which is closely associated with the works of Russian religious philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. — Vl. Solovyov, N. Berdyaev, N. Lossky. For them, Dostoevsky is, first of all, a great anthropologist, a researcher of human nature, its depths and secrets. Dostoevsky is not only a realist writer, but also an experimenter, “the creator of the experimental metaphysics of human nature” ( Berdyaev N.A. Philosophy of creativity, culture and art: In 2 vols. M., 1994. T. 2. P. 152), depicting the eternal elements of the human spirit. Relying on this presentation about Dostoevsky, O.N. Osmolovsky comes to a new understanding of the “excellent idea” of the story: it is “the idea of ​​the psychological polarity of man,” “the drama of psychological duality,” and not “the idea of ​​replacing a person with a patriarchal consciousness with a bourgeois predator” (as, for example, F.I. Evnin believed). Dostoevsky could not consider himself a “harbinger” of the latter, because it has already been developed in Western European literature and by writers of the natural school. The story, according to the researcher, shows the extreme degree of impersonality - the hero’s madness, but man’s dependence on mass consciousness and the social environment, which suppress his personal freedom, comes from the initial imperfection of his spiritual nature. Thus, from the concept of social determinism in explaining the split personality of Golyadkina O.N. Osmolovsky moves on to the concept of free will. In the person of Golyadkin, in his opinion, Dostoevsky for the first time depicted the mass type of “underground man”, in which the original contradictions of the human soul are most clearly manifested. In the light of this they find new meaning the words of Dostoevsky: “Why should I lose an excellent idea, the greatest type in terms of its social importance, which I was the first to discover and of which I was the herald?”

A similar interpretation of the meaning of the story and the image of the main character, but not so much in the moral and psychological, but in religious aspect suggests S.I. Fudel. His point of view largely comes from Vl. Solovyov, who believed that Dostoevsky’s writings were imbued with a religious idea: “Having experienced the divine power in the soul, breaking through all human weakness, Dostoevsky came to the knowledge of God and the God-man,” “he took man in all his fullness and reality.” From the moment of writing the story, Dostoevsky’s main concept of man became the idea of ​​man’s struggle against evil in himself as a need for moral duty and as a reflection of the eternal confrontation between dark demonic forces and the forces of light in the Christian understanding of this problem. In light of the stated views on the content of “The Double”, a new reading and interpretation is needed symbolic meaning the technique of duality, the type of plot and the nature of the narrative, the genesis of the genre and the style of the story.

Golyadkin is a collective image of a Russian official who synthesized the moral and psychological properties inherent in the mental structure of a given social type in the works of Russians and European writers, especially Gogol and Hoffman. The type of official has traditionally existed in literature in its two polar varieties: in the image of a poor, pitiful, downtrodden, but conscientious servant and in the image of a careerist, a clever rogue-rogue, like a picaresque hero, striving to get a better job in life. According to Dostoevsky's plan, these two personality types, opposite in their moral content, were to be combined in one person - the experimental hero Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a titular adviser. However, in order not to violate the logic of character building and artistic truth, the writer resorts to the fantastic technique of duality: next to Golyadkin Sr., his twin Golyadkin Jr. appears, similar to him like two peas in a pod and miraculously sharing the same first and last name. The twin heroes are close, however, not only externally, but also in their spiritual essence: they both belong to the world of bureaucracy, have the same rather limited life program - to advance in their careers and take a worthy position in society. The only difference between them is that the first wants to achieve it in a direct and honest way, and the second through sycophancy and intrigue. They both embody, respectively, both artistic types with their inherent set of moral and psychological traits.

Golyadkin Sr. is efficient and helpful, but suffers from a complex of guilt and fear of life for fear of being embarrassed and losing the favor of his superiors. He is characterized by silence and withdrawn daydreaming. In this sense, Golyadkin is the brother of Poprishchin and Devushkin. He is a gray, ordinary man, proud, however, of his positive qualities: “I’m not an intriguer, and I’m proud of it.” Golyadkin hopes to achieve a promotion—receiving the rank of collegiate assessor—solely through recognition of his modest merits. On the contrary, his double personifies the type of arrogant careerist, adventurer and intriguer who does not disdain any means to achieve his goal. Researchers note in Golyadkin Jr. Byronic complex, which involves self-affirmation through spiritual violence over a weak being; Chichikovsky complex the use of circumstances for personal gain and the “new” complex of the “underground”, combining immorality with unlimited personal arbitrariness. There is no impassable border between the two types of officials; it is conditional and flexible. Everything that was so openly and cynically reflected in the younger Golyadkin was invisibly present in the soul of the elder Golyadkin, of which he was not aware. Dostoevsky brought out this subconscious essence of his hero as an independently acting person in the form of a double. The struggle of Golyadkin Sr. with the younger is a symbolic allegory of man’s struggle with evil rooted in the nature of his own soul. The tragic outcome of this struggle is the insanity of Golyadkin Sr. and the triumph of his sinister double. The hero finds himself defenseless and unarmed in front of his successful opponent. The reason for this lies not only in external circumstances, but also in himself.

The images of Golyadkin Sr. and his inseparable double became a genuine discovery of the early Dostoevsky, the pinnacle of his psychologism. Along with the image of the typical official, he depicted the entire “secret” psychology of his personality in interaction with social environment, showing what the downsides of his soul can result in and what dangerous, destructive forces are rooted in the spiritual nature of a seemingly harmless “little man.” From the very beginning, the subject of artistic depiction in the story is the hero’s self-awareness. This was first pointed out by M.M. Bakhtin: “We see not who he is, but how he recognizes himself; our artistic vision is no longer in front of the hero’s reality, but in front of the pure function of his awareness of this reality.” In an effort to reveal the hero’s self-awareness, Dostoevsky comprehends the depths of a person’s mental life.

Golyadkin Sr. is already a more developed personality compared to the characters in Gogol’s St. Petersburg stories, people innocently suffering under the yoke of a soulless bureaucratic machine. His way of thinking is new stage development of self-awareness of the “little man”, when he begins to think of himself as a certain significant amount and distinguish yourself from the general mass of bureaucrats. Dostoevsky captured that moment of personal self-development when the starting point of human life becomes the awareness of the possibility of free choice. The very state of inner freedom imparts to the human soul some kind of inner contentment, a sense of self-worth. It is this blissful feeling that Golyadkin experiences when, for the first time in his life, he makes an independent decision, going beyond the scope of his usual official activities, to take a ride in a blue carriage along Nevsky: “... Mr. Golyadkin frantically rubbed his hands and burst into quiet, inaudible laughter, like a man a cheerful character, who managed to play a nice thing and which he was very happy with.” Breaking out of the usual monotonous rhythm of life, the hero begins to create a new reality around himself. This primarily determines the author’s choice for his story adventurous plot, as well as the carnival atmosphere. His hero, on a whim, finds himself involved in some kind of theatrical performance. According to Bakhtin, the carnival worldview is characterized by cheerful relativity, pathos of change and renewal, emancipation, and liberation from conventions. All these signs are present in the story of Golyadkin’s adventures. The hero is driven primarily by an awareness of his own free will and an internal protest against humiliation and impersonality, which is expressed in the desire to declare his existence and the right to happiness and well-being. For the first time he faces the choice of his human essence. Meanwhile, the human essence that appeals to Golyadkin is very far from the ideal of a highly spiritual personality, and is even ridiculous: he just wants to be a person who occupies a high position in society. This is in to a certain extent It is natural: Golyadkin is part of a certain social organism - the bureaucracy - with an established system of values, and his freedom, therefore, does not go beyond its framework. By realizing his freedom, the hero achieves not spiritual, but quite definite earthly benefits, and follows the path of external rather than internal transformation. That's why he pays such close attention to his face and changes appearance. He does not live a rich spiritual life; his environment limits him creative potential purely selfish interests.

The plot of “The Double” is initially determined by the hero’s will to assert his own personality in the struggle to achieve a life status corresponding to it. These dreams of Golyadkin are symbolically reflected in the hero’s dream: “He saw himself in a wonderful company, where he was distinguished by his wit and courtesy so that everyone loved him, everyone gave him primacy.” On a personal level, the limit of his ambitious dreams becomes marriage to Klara Olsufievna, the daughter of his benefactor, State Councilor Berendeyev, which is prevented by a young official who has made a career, the nephew of the head of the department where Golyadkin serves. An external obstacle to achieving the goal is created, but there are also internal reasons why the hero fails to succeed. The initial situation, which determined the cold and hostile attitude of society towards Golyadkin, was determined by the unseemly act he committed: Yakov Petrovich wooed Klara Olsufievna after he signed a promise to marry the cook, the girl Karolina Ivanovna. The fact that the hero hides and then denies this immoral act repels his friends from him, in particular the official Vakhromeev, who informs him in a letter that “some people do not live according to the truth and, moreover, their words are false and well-intentioned.” looks suspicious." The hero motivates troubles in his love and social careers by the machinations of enemies who have conspired to destroy him. Without looking into his soul, he looks for the cause of all misfortunes in the people around him, alternately blaming everyone with whom fate brought him together: the German Caroline Ivanovna, the head of the department. Contrary to his statement “I don’t dislike petty duplicity,” Golyadkin is ready to denigrate his former patron: “...an old man! looks into the coffin, breathes his last breath<...>and they’ll spin some kind of woman’s gossip, so he’s already listening here...” Contempt for others is contrasted by the hero’s tenderly familiar attitude towards himself: “... you’re such a fool, you’re such a Golyadkin, that’s your last name!..”. Thus, Golyadkin is in opposition to the whole world. This defining personality trait of Dostoevsky’s hero was first captured by V.G. Belinsky: “Golyadkin is one of those touchy, ambitious people who are so often found in the lower and middle strata of society. It always seems to him that everyone is offending him with words and looks, that intrigues are being formed against him everywhere, that undermining is being carried out. This is all the more ridiculous because neither his fortune, nor his rank, nor his place, nor his intelligence, nor his abilities can arouse envy in anyone.” The downtroddenness and depression of spirit characteristic of Gogol's officials degenerates in Golyadkin into painful pride and ambition. The most important idea for him, the fact that he is not a “rag” that can be “overwritten.” On the one hand, Golyadkin’s consciousness reflects a sense of purpose in achieving life goals, on the other, a reaction to the influence of the world external to him, which is expressed in the painful experience of failures and the suffering of wounded pride.

Expanding the theme of the duality of human nature, Dostoevsky decisively departs from the Enlightenment concept of personality: in his hero, two natures can coexist in one person, one of which displaces the other. This in itself extraordinary phenomenon is clothed by the writer in the form of an entertaining plot of a single action. The novelty of the artistic form of “The Double” is associated with the writer’s experience in resolving deep ethical and psychological problems within the framework of a short narrative, in which the prosaic is intertwined with the incredible, the fantastic, and protocol precision with the timeless and eternal.

The action of the story is limited to four days in the life of the titular councilor. Chapters I-IV are devoted to the description of one day of light, during which the hero strives to satisfy his ambitious needs. The main conflict here is in the nature of Golyadkin’s ambitious confrontation with an environment that rejects him. Prevails mixed type the author's discourse, based on the alternation of descriptive and analytical fragments in unity with the dialogues of the characters, but at first the author prefers the method of self-disclosure of the character through a dialogized type of narration, rarely resorting to evaluative and psychological characteristics. The initial correlation between Golyadkin’s opinion of himself and his inner essence evokes the narrator’s ironic attitude towards the hero, whom he subsequently mockingly and condescendingly calls “our outspoken hero,” “the respectable Mr. Golyadkin,” “the well-intentioned Mr. Golyadkin.” The writer reveals the subtle psychological mechanism, which underlies the behavior of a person with exorbitantly expanded ambitions and unfounded claims to life. Finding himself unable to attract attention to himself and achieve what he wants in a direct way, he subconsciously begins to look for other ways to achieve his goal. This gives rise to the phenomenon of a split personality: by nature indecisive, conscientious, embarrassed, striving to be “like everyone else,” Golyadkin suddenly reveals unscrupulousness, resourcefulness, audacity, courage and swagger.

The psychology of duality is determined by a playful attitude towards the world, which, first of all, affects the deep essence of a person’s personality. Striving to appear in the eyes of society in the image of an honest, meek, straightforward official and possessing to a certain extent a share of these virtues, Golyadkin demonstrates qualities that are exactly the opposite at every step. In a number of episodes, starting from the first chapter, Golyadkin’s game complex behavior manifests itself openly. Having dressed himself in a new dress and hired a carriage with coats of arms, Golyadkin plays the role of a high-ranking official, a rich man who does not care to bargain for a significant amount of goods in the expensive shops of Gostiny Dvor. Golyadkin’s buffoonery is a kind of psychological compensation for the lack of an appropriate position in society. In this scene, the hero refutes his supposedly inherent inability to lie and act (cf.: “I only put on a mask for a masquerade, and I don’t wear it in front of people every day”). Contrary to the desire to live without a mask, Golyadkin unconsciously tries on a new social role that he secretly dreams of. This is the duality of his nature, which manifests itself in this case in two opposing psycho-emotional states: uncontrollable joy from a successful game and fear of being recognized. The hero’s unexpected thought becomes a psychological release, justifying him in the eyes of his superiors: “... pretend that it’s not me, but someone else, strikingly similar to me, and watch as if nothing had happened...”. This is how the appearance of a double is gradually prepared. The hero begins to play a double role in life that is not typical for him, as if carried away by some incomprehensible fate. O.G. Dilaktorskaya expresses the idea that the hero’s actions are guided by an evil force, pushing him to participate in a diabolical scenario: “The author invariably emphasizes: “Mr. Golyadkin quickly leaned forward, as if someone had touched a spring in him,” thereby revealing the character’s resemblance to a puppet. It’s also curious that it’s apparently the devil who’s pulling this puppet.” V.V. also points out the same detail. Vinogradov: the hero’s actions are mechanized, and he himself turns “into a puppet figure repeating<...>a certain range of movements." Thus, the hero’s behavior is predetermined by the action of mysterious forces that put him in a situation of testing and moral choice. Golyadkin finds himself in such a situation and next stage unfolding of an adventurous plot when he is refused admission to dinner party on the occasion of Clara Olsufievna's birthday. Two contradictory impulses are again fighting within him: the desire to fall through the earth and the temptation to be at the festival for everyone to see and rise in the eyes of the world. Yielding to this fatal attraction, Golyadkin secretly enters the Berendeyevs’ house and appears uninvited for the holiday. "Imposture"- Another one psychological complex, which the “little man” suffers from. Characterizing imposture as a serious illness of the Russian personality, R.N. Poddubnaya sees in Golyadkin’s behavior a “Khlestakovian” version of imposture: at the ball he tries to play the role of a gallant gentleman and a secularly educated person. V.E. Vetlovskaya finds commonality between Golyadkin and the “imaginary” or “false” hero folk tale, striving to take a place to which no one called him and which a true hero would consider unworthy. His mediocrity and ignorance of social etiquette completely undermine his reputation: Golyadkin is thrown out of the house in disgrace.

Expulsion is the culminating moment in the general chain of events and at the same time the most dramatic episode in the development of the psychological plot, because associated with the collapse of the hero’s illusions and shame for an unsuccessfully played role. The image of the inner world of the outcast Golyadkin forms the content of Chapter V. Finding himself on the street on a chilly autumn night, the hero is on the verge of despair, denying himself: “Mr. Golyadkin now not only wanted to run away from himself, but even to be completely destroyed, not to be, to turn into dust.” The personality crisis that befell Golyadkin is resolved unexpected turn plot - the appearance of a strange stranger on the bridge, who later turns out to be a double, a copy of the hero. “As if driven by some outside force,” Golyadkin rushed after the passerby. According to the observation of G.A. Fedorov, Golyadkin runs across four bridges of the same type and twice meets his double wandering in circles along the Fontanka bridges; he runs across the Anichkov Bridge - the bridge of the “twin brothers” Dioscuri, concentrating the architectural theme of “twin bridges” across the Fontanka. Thus, the artistic space of the story is symbolized, reflecting the movement of the hero in a closed (vicious) circle. On the one hand, the mysterious appearance of a double from the darkness of snowy St. Petersburg has a psychological justification - he could have been imagined by the hero, who is in a threshold state of the psyche, in extreme tension of mental strength. On the other hand, it is motivated by the writer’s appeal to the aesthetics of the irrational: in “The Double,” the author for the first time resorts to the technique of combining in-depth socio-psychological analysis with mysticism, belief in certain supernatural forces that reveal themselves in the world. By the will of these mysterious forces or by a coincidence, the double ends up serving in the same department as Mr. Golyadkin. In the research literature of the 1970s and 1980s. the concept of hallucinatory madness of Dostoevsky's hero prevailed (works by M.S. Gus, G.M. Friedlender, F.I. Evnin). The double, in the light of this concept, appears to be a ghost, a mirage, existing only in the mind of Golyadkin Sr., in his disordered imagination, and not in reality. A convincing argument for the physical reality of the double is given by V.N. Zakharov, textually proving that from the very first moment of his appearance he is recognized by the protagonist, narrator-chronicler and other characters as a genuine, real person, endowed at the same time with supernatural features.

The idea of ​​twinning in fiction has a mythological origin and is contained in the so-called twin myths. Their origins are rooted in ideas about the unnaturalness of twin birth, which was considered ugly by most peoples, and the twins themselves were considered terrible and dangerous creatures who came into contact with supernatural power and became its carriers. Therefore, the appearance of twins is seen sacred meaning. In archaic myths, twins often act as antagonists and behave as rivals, hostile towards each other. In the folklore tradition, the analogue of twins is the fairy-tale opponents of the hero, who replace him with themselves due to their complete external similarity - the image of Likh, a trait that is interpreted as a pest. V.E. Vetlovskaya in a row artistic details sees in the image of Golyadkin Jr. a fairy-tale feature: the suddenness of appearance, the adoption of someone else's appearance, acting, a special (short) leg, the triple fall of the horse on which the double is riding, etc. In the subsequent cultural tradition, the theme of twinning is associated with the theme of the double and his shadow. It was very widespread in Western European literature, starting with A. Chamisso’s fantastic story “The Extraordinary Story of Peter Schlemihl,” where the motif of the hero’s loss of his shadow is played out. Researchers point to the similarity of the theme of “The Double” with the Gothic novel by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Elixirs of Satan” and his stories “Little Tsakhes”, “The Double”, “The Bride’s Choice” in terms of the development of an adventurous plot, the image of a double, motivations associated with the religious concept of retribution for sins, complex intrigue with intricate relationships between characters. In the notes to the “Double” in the PSS (in 30 volumes) and researchers noted that in Russian. literature early XIX V. Before Dostoevsky, the motif of the hero’s meeting with his double was developed by A. Pogorelsky in his collection of short stories “The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia” (1828), and the theme of the splitting of moral consciousness was in the story by E.P. Combs “Double” in the collection “Stories of the Piryatinets” (1837), in the novel by A.F. Veltman “Heart and Thought” (1838), etc.

After the appearance of the double, the plot of the story reflects the interaction of the hero with the “other” Golyadkin and the world of bureaucracy. Chapters VI-VII describe the second day of Golyadkin’s adventures, when the hero tries to comprehend the phenomenon of meeting his likeness. At first, the double causes him shock, then the fear that his appearance might somehow “tarnish his ambition and ruin his career,” until he calms down with the thought that “nature is generous” and that the beneficent authorities, having seen God’s providence in the creation twins, will not refuse to accept both. Mr. Golyadkin’s double does not manifest himself at first as a fully formed personality; the formation of his character occurs miraculously within 24 hours: as a result of a terrible metamorphosis, from a timid, almost innocent, conscientious creature, as he appeared before Golyadkin, a terrible and unprincipled personality suddenly grows. According to the observation of V.N. Belopolsky, Golyadkin himself creates a double in his own image and likeness: in the hero’s initial disposition towards Golyadkin Jr. there is not genuine participation, but a conscious calculation: he decides to use him in the fight against his enemies: “Well, you and I, Yakov Petrovich, let's get together, let's live<...>like brothers<...>at the same time we will be cunning; for our part, we will carry on intrigue to spite them.” Golyadkin Jr. instantly assimilates the psychology of a novice careerist and skillfully applies it to the survival of Golyadkin Sr., his “benefactor” who gave him bread and shelter. From this moment on, the protagonist loses initiative and becomes an object malice your double. Beginning with Chapter VIII The external event plot of the story is expressed, on the one hand, in the chain of Golyadkin’s misadventures caused by the machinations of his double, putting him in tragicomic situations; on the other hand, in the response of the hero, trying to defend his honor and ambition. Episodes of this series of events include an attempt by Golyadkin Jr. to fraudulently cross the path of the hero in official matters, an indecent prank aimed at humiliating him in the eyes of his colleagues, a vile deception in a coffee house, where the double shamelessly took advantage of his resemblance to Mr. Golyadkin in order not to pay the bill. The climax of the plot action occurs at the moment when the hero, shocked by the events of the day, is forgotten in a heavy sleep.

The movement of the psychological plot here is connected with the whole complex of Golyadkin’s thoughts, feelings and sensations, which find their expression in the lengthy monologues of the characters, his remarks, indirect speech and are analyzed in the author’s comments. The first collision with the double causes protest and bewilderment in Golyadkin Sr., which gives way to doubts mixed with hope for a possible union. He even justifies Golyadkin Jr., feeling some kind of inner kinship with him. V.F. Pereverzev sees in the nature of both Golyadkins a common psychological complex - a desire for what is impossible, but adjusted for the selfish interest they pursue (see: Pereverzev V.F. Gogol. Dostoevsky: Research. M., 1982. P. 230). Further behavior of the double causes an increase negative emotions protagonist. Golyadkin recognizes him as a “completely depraved man” who has come to destroy him, making sure that in his person he has acquired a strong and powerful enemy. The inner world of the titular adviser is determined by concerns about restoring a damaged reputation, the desire to unravel the network of intrigues of his enemies and his double who took their side. Having made sure that the authorities give preference to Golyadkin Jr., the hero is shocked by the latter’s fantastic desire to completely oust him from the boundaries of existence that he occupies. Golyadkin’s just anger, his indignation at the encroachment on the holy of holies of his personality becomes the object of the author’s irony, to which is mixed a share of sympathy: “He could not agree to allow himself to be offended, much less allow himself to be wiped away like a rag<...>. We don’t argue, however, we don’t argue, maybe if someone wanted, if someone, for example, really wanted to turn Mr. Golyadkin into a rag, he would have turned him, he would have turned him without resistance and with impunity<...>if it were a rag, and not Golyadkin, it would be a mean, dirty rag, but this rag would not be simple, it would be a rag with ambition<...>at least with unrequited ambition and unrequited feelings...” In this single figurative definition of the protagonist, the narrator reveals the base essence of his hero - “a rag with ambitions”, revealing the insignificance, lack of spirituality of his thoughts and aspirations, deeply hidden behind the mask that he puts on himself. The author constantly emphasizes the hero’s internal instability and indecision, which indicates the precariousness of his moral composition. This quality is probably inherent in the symbolism of the hero’s surname: V.E. Vetlovskaya connects it with the hero’s habit of doing everything with caution (in the form Golyadka, the surname represents a metathesis: Golyadka - looking back). Thus, at one time the role taken by Golyadkin was beyond his strength strong personality, making its way in life, mysteriously separates from its carrier and becomes an independent entity. The character of the twin reflected all those traits of an intriguer and a hypocrite that were only faintly outlined in the original. The double adopts and turns against Golyadkin the means that he used to assert himself: ingratitude and unscrupulousness towards his patron Berendeyev, imposture, disregard for decency, playing with life. This is how Golyadkin Sr. displaces the positive content of his personality, turning into another person, just as his “unworthy twin”, in whose appearance demonic traits appear, displaces him from his place.
In chapters X-XI, new events - the news of Golyadkin’s resignation and general alienation - are interspersed with gloomy, melancholy thoughts and forebodings of the hero, contrastingly shaded sunlight nice winter day. The double inflicts even more painful blows on Golyadkin’s pride, so that he feels ridiculed, destroyed, and disgraced. In an almost insane state, the hero sets off in pursuit of his double and after unsuccessful attempt explanations with him in the coffee shop enters into an unequal struggle with him, chasing him in a droshky. Psychological stress at this moment reaches its limit: “his melancholy has grown to the last degree of its agony. Leaning on his merciless enemy, he began to scream.” Defeat deprives the hero of willpower and life, but for the third time in the course of the plot action the crisis is resolved: the hero receives a letter from Klara Olsufievna with a plea for abduction. In chapters XII-XIII, the driving motive of the plot again becomes the activity of Golyadkin, who makes a last desperate attempt to escape his evil fate. The hero struggles with two opposing aspirations: the readiness to humble himself in spirit and find protection from his superiors and the crazy thought of kidnapping. The action goes deep into the hero’s experience of his fate, and therefore the role of internal monologues and author’s comments on the hero’s moral and psychological state increases. Resentment accumulates in Golyadkin’s soul, the consciousness of his rejection and humiliation. The environment that the hero strives for repels him, becomes a continuous source of suffering and ultimately leads to mental illness. Dostoevsky depicts the hero's spiritual crisis, accompanied by growing madness due to unsatisfied ambitions. By the end of the story, the ironic tone takes on a tragic overtones, and the plot is filled with philosophical meaning. Golyadkin’s final defeat at the behest of his mysterious double is presented as a kind of retribution for the hero’s loss of humanity, aspiration for a career and material well-being by abandoning true moral values. In the finale, he voluntarily renounces his “I” and goes to the house of sorrow, accompanied by the sinister Doctor Rutenspitz. The hero failed to create himself as a person: he squandered the true human content of his soul in pursuit of mirages. His despair is weakness, passive suffering, the opposite of self-affirmation. Golyadkin’s tragedy lies in the loss of his personality at that stage of the development of his mental life when he just began to recognize himself as a human being.

V.N. Zakharov, examining the symbolism of the story, correlates the surname Golyadkin with the Baltic tribe “Golyad”, which dissolved and disappeared into the Slavic ethnic group during the era of Batu’s invasion. This suggests the tragic absorption of Dostoevsky's hero by his environment. The origins of the “St. Petersburg poem,” according to the researcher, lie in Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls,” which prompts reflection on the fate of Russia, the Russian people in general, and the “little man” in particular.

The style of the poem is determined by the type of narration on behalf of a fictional narrator with a pronounced expressive manner of speech. It clearly indicates the influence of Gogol’s tale, which depicts the hero’s mental movements and details of the surrounding environment, which sometimes result in enumeration. The predominant form of narration is indirect speech, conditioned by the dialogical appeal of the narrator to the hero. Modern researchers refute the conclusion of V.V. Vinogradov about the merging of author and hero during the transition of a narrative tale into Golyadkin’s speech. When transferring inner speech The narrator parodically breaks the character's words and phrases with his language and exaggerates the peculiarities of speech. This causes a comic effect and makes it possible to distinguish the author’s position from the hero’s position. The author's and someone else's words in the story are distinguished stylistically and intonationally. The narrator's speech is correct, expressive, figurative, at times ironic and mocking or imbued with lyricism. To describe the landscape, objective world and humans are characterized by the metaphorical nature of language. The author's consciousness is also embodied in evaluative and psychological judgments about the hero, reflections on various topics. Golyadkin's consciousness is manifested in the forms of primitive bureaucratic idiolect and official official phraseology using book-learned and proverbial expressions.

The general emotional tone of the narrative is consistent with the Gogol tradition of serious and funny. The author's ironic attitude towards the hero does not turn into ridicule of him, but is balanced by the awareness of the tragedy of the situation of the “little man”.

Arsentieva N.N. Double // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. St. Petersburg, 2008. pp. 55-64.

Lifetime publications (editions):

1846 - SPb.: Type. Iv. Glazunova and Comp, 1846. Eighth year. T. XLIV. February. pp. 263-428.

Second edition: St. Petersburg: Type. K. Zhernakova, 1846. Eighth year. T. XLIV. April. pp. 263-428.

1866 — Complete collection works by F.M. Dostoevsky. New, expanded edition. Publication and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1866. T. III. pp. 64-128.

1866 — New, revised edition. Publication and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1866. 219 p.

It may seem, and to some extent it is, that F. M. Dostoevsky’s work “The Double,” written in 1846, is a long, very dark and boring story from the genre classical era romanticism about a doppelganger, a human double - the dark side of personality and the antipode of a guardian angel. In such works of some authors, their hero may not cast a shadow or be reflected in the mirror. This often foreshadowed the character's death. The double becomes the embodiment of the shadow unconscious content (these are habits, desires, instincts, etc.) with its “decent and pleasant” ideas about itself. This double begins to feed at the expense of the protagonist and, as he weakens and withers, becomes stronger, more self-confident, displaces him and takes his place.

Analysis of the story

Dostoevsky made his unique work “The Double” very difficult to understand. A brief summary of it will be presented below.

However, there is something in it to think about and reflect on, because Dostoevsky delves too deeply into human soul, trying to pull out everything that many of us don’t want to see or notice. And therefore it is not so easy to immediately come to the right conclusions.

Dostoevsky was 24 years old when he wrote this story, or poem, as he himself called it. It was published in the magazine “Otechestvennye zapiski” after “Poor People”. In the image of the hero Golyadkin, the writer used the character traits of the writer Ya. P. Butkov, whose fate was somewhat similar to the life of the main character. And he wrote mainly on the topic of a small man - a petty official, the metropolitan poor, who was constantly in material need, always trembling with the people in charge. He knew this topic very well, since he was like that himself.

“The Double” (Dostoevsky): summary

The main character, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, holds the position of titular adviser. In himself, he is a harmless, simple-minded and gentle person. He repeatedly said to himself that he was a straightforward person, not an intriguer, and only wore masks at masquerade parties, as is customary in secular circles. On every occasion in conversation he tries to pass off these qualities as his own virtues.

Golyadkin feels like a small, weak and unprotected person. His unconscious fears, infringed ambitions and complexes showed in him a painful suspiciousness and a tendency to see offense in words, gestures and actions. It constantly seems to him that there are intrigues against him, that they are digging under him.

Reception at Rutenspitz

One gray autumn day, the hero wakes up at home, goes to the mirror, looks into it and sees there his “sleepy, blind and rather bald figure,” but, be that as it may, he remains pleased with it. And then he takes out his wallet and counts 750 rubles in it, saying that there is a significant amount there.

This is how Dostoevsky’s story “The Double” begins its development. The summary further tells that the hero is getting ready and going to an appointment with his doctor - Krestyan Ivanovich Rutenspitz.

When meeting him, he begins to talk to him abruptly, confusingly and constantly gets confused. He calls himself a humble and unpretentious person who loves tranquility, and not social noise, where you need to be able to compose a sincere compliment, but he has not learned any tricks. Then he begins to talk non-stop about how he is a small man, not an intriguer, which is something he is proud of. Golyadkin is outraged by the matchmaking of his boss’s nephew, Andrei Filippovich. Like, there are rumors about a “close friend” that he signed a contract to get married, but on the other hand he is already the groom, and the bride is just a shameless German woman, Karolina Ivanovna. Then Yakov Petrovich leaves, thinking that the doctor is stupid and does not understand anything, which leaves Krestyan Ivanovich in complete bewilderment.

And then Golyadkin goes to a dinner party and ball with State Councilor Olsufiy Ivanovich Berendeev in honor of the birthday of Klara Olsufievna, his daughter. But the servant on the threshold tells him that he is not ordered to be allowed in. Then Yakov Petrovich decides to sneak inside. The ball is crowded, and people's eyes immediately stop at Golyadkin. He hides in a corner out of fear and feels like a bug. And then he is completely thrown out onto the street.

Someone

So summary Dostoevsky's "Double" continues with a description of nature. The night was terrible, November, foggy, cold and wet. Golyadkin flees from “his enemies.” He also wanted to run away from himself or even “destroy himself.” He stopped for a minute and began to look into the muddy black water of the river.

This is where his very mysterious double appears. Dostoevsky (the summary also conveys this) saturates his work with one very strange and curious event.

Suddenly, the upset Yakov Petrovich notices that a passerby is walking along the sidewalk with a light coward, who will then meet him several times along the way. And the worst thing for him was to meet a stranger at home. And this Someone turned out to be his double in all respects - another Golyadkin Yakov Petrovich.

And in the morning he met him in his department at work. It was a new employee with the same last name and appearance, but he did not cause any confusion among his colleagues.

After work, the double expressed a desire to talk to Yakov Petrovich, who immediately invited him to his home.

Dinner

The owner treats the guest, gives him punch and dinner, and becomes so imbued with sympathy for him that he offers to be siblings with him, begin to intrigue in defiance of his enemies, and at the same time be cunning. Early in the morning the guest left unnoticed. Now Golyadkin’s double begins to curry favor with his superiors in the most base way, weaves insidious intrigues, and humiliates him in front of other officials: he pinches him on the cheek, then flicks him on the abdomen.

The real Golyadkin could not bear such insults: after the service, seeing his double on the stairs, he tries to strike up a conversation with him, but he unceremoniously gets into the carriage and leaves.

Now he often runs around with his superiors on important and special affairs this double. Dostoevsky's summary of the strange events is intensifying to the point of impossibility. Exhausted to the extreme, Yakov Petrovich writes a letter to his offender double, in which he asks for an explanation. He orders Petrushka to find out his address. The servant soon reports that he lives on Shestilavochnaya Street, but Golyadkin understands that this is his address and decides that the slacker Petrushka is drunk and does not understand what he is saying at all.

Letter from a woman

In the morning Golyadkin overslept and was late for work. In his department, he gives the letter to Mr. Double Yakov Petrovich. Colleagues look at the real Golyadkin with arrogant curiosity, and he looks for sympathy from everyone, but does not find it. He tries to explain himself to his double in the coffee shop, but all in vain.

Afterwards, Golyadkin discovers a letter from Klara Olsufievna, who tearfully asks to save her and makes an appointment with him. He reached into his pocket and found a bottle of medicine that Krestyan Ivanovich had prescribed to him a few days ago. It falls out of your hands and breaks.

Yakov Petrovich hires a carriage and goes first to His Excellency to ask for protection, but he is expelled to the hallway. Then Golyadkin rushes to Berendeev and waits for a signal from Klara Olsufievna. But soon guests notice him, and his double asks to come to Olsufy Ivanovich. He comes in and sits down next to him. Soon the crowd says: “He’s coming, he’s coming!” Krestyan Ivanovich appears in the room and takes Yakov Petrovich with him. At this time, a double runs after the carriage, but soon he too disappears. And the main character realizes with horror that Krestyan Petrovich is somehow different, completely different from the previous one. Golyadkin understands that he had a presentiment of this for a long time.

This is the sad note Fyodor Dostoevsky brings into his work. “The Double” (the summary, as we see, ended very sadly for the main character) is the work with which one could brilliantly end one’s literary career, as the critic Belinsky would say. However, for Dostoevsky it was only the beginning...

“The Double” is one of the early stories of the Russian classic Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, written by the author at the age of 24. The work appeared on the pages of Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1846 with the subtitle “Petersburg Poem. The Adventures of Mr. Golyadkin.

The grotesque fantastic story “The Double” tells the story of an ordinary St. Petersburg official Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a quiet, helpful, silent man. More than anything else, the timid Golyadkin dreams of getting a promotion and becoming his own man among the capital's secular elite. Under conditions of acute psychological stress, strange things begin to happen to Golyadkin. For example, one day he meets his double, who makes all of Yakov Petrovich’s unrealized dreams come true. Only Yakov Petrovich is no better off because he himself is still left behind, while the impostor is reaping the fruits of fame.

Dostoevsky began working on “The Double” in 1845, when he was visiting his brother Mikhail in Reval (today Tallinn, the capital of Estonia). Upon returning to St. Petersburg, the author continued writing the story. The work was going hard, “the scoundrel Golyadkin” did not want to succeed. As a result, in 1846 the story was completed and published in the second issue of Otechestvennye Zapiski. Despite positive reviews critics, in particular the venerable Vissarion Belinsky, who even then was very favorably disposed towards Dostoevsky, were blasphemed by the author of his “Double”. After a while, the story was remade, but it never satisfied the author.

Being the most demanding critic of his work, Dostoevsky complained that he had ruined an amazing idea, perhaps the best that he had ever had. The idea of ​​“The Double” is very bright, the writer shared, but the form leaves much to be desired. If I took the job now, I would invariably choose a different form.

No matter how the author criticized himself, his “Double” became the most important event in Russian XIX literature century. Continuing the traditions of Pushkin and Gogol, Dostoevsky turns to the theme of the “little man,” delving into his psychology. It shows not only external struggle the individual and the society that rejects him, but also the internal confrontation between the light and dark sides of the human “I”. To implement this idea, the author introduces a fantastic element, turning to the theme of doppelganger, duality.

The theme of the doppelganger (the dark double of man) was repeatedly used by Dostoevsky’s literary predecessors and followers. The most popular examples of works in which the doppelganger is present: “Christabel” by Samuel Coleridge, “The Elixir of Satan”, “The Sandman” by Theodor Hoffmann, “The Secluded House on Vasilyevsky” by Alexander Pushkin, “William Wilson” by Edgar Poe, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson, "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk.

Dostoevsky's "Double": summary

The main character, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, works as a titular adviser in one of the state institutions of St. Petersburg. More than anything in the world, timid Yakov Petrovich dreams of getting a promotion and becoming one of those brilliant officials who occupy the best seats in the theater, in front of whom doormen shuffle their feet, who are welcome at any social evening, at the sight of whom mothers nudge their unmarried daughters, so that they straighten their shoulders and straighten a stray curl.

The main obstacle to the desired lifestyle is the character of Yakov Petrovich. He does not know how to play around, sycophancy, weave intrigues, or fawn. “I’m not an intriguer, and I’m proud of it,” Golyadkin declares. True, Mr. Golyadkin has nothing to be proud of. He is not respected at work, his colleagues laugh at him, he is invisible to women and a laughing stock at social evenings. When Yakov Petrovich is kicked out of a ball held in the house of the rich man Olsufy Ivanovich Berendeev, the poor official experiences a nervous attack. It was on this ill-fated night that he met his double on the bridge.

The stranger looks exactly like Yakov Petrovich. Moreover, in the morning next day our hero finds him in his department. Having invited Golyadkin Jr. home, the “senior” rejoices, because now he has a comrade-in-arms with whom they can move mountains, “cunning together... to spite them, lead an intrigue.” However, the self-proclaimed Golyadkin chooses a more profitable model of behavior. The “senior” is not a comrade-in-arms for him, and therefore the double skillfully sucks up to the “right” people and in a matter of days becomes the darling of the entire department. Moreover, the “junior” shamelessly mocks Golyadkin Sr., turning the poor official into an object of universal ridicule. As a result, the double survives the real Golyadkin not only from the department, but also from society. The story ends with the distraught Yakov Petrovich being taken away in a carriage to an insane asylum.

Golyadkin Jr., aka the doppelganger of the real Golyadkin, is his opposite. To describe Golyadkin Sr., you can use the following characteristics: conscientious, embarrassed, indecisive, executive, helpful, silent, withdrawn, dreamy, gray, ordinary. We will characterize Golyadkin Jr. as follows: brave, daring, cheeky, quirky, arrogant, eloquent, self-confident careerist and adventurer.

Two sides of one personality
It is important to understand that in this case it is not appropriate to talk about the “good-bad” opposition. Golyadkin Sr. is far from ideal, and Golyadkin Jr. is what an official could become if he had the will, Vital energy and courage. Doppelganger in Dostoevsky is a synthesis of the hidden sides of personality that the hero does not dare to develop in himself.

Before the publication of “The Double,” there were two types of officials in Russian literature: a downtrodden, poor campaigner and a clever careerist, a rogue. Dostoevsky created an experimental image of Golyadkin, suffering from a split personality. With the help of his hero's psychological disorder, the author managed to combine both literary types in one person.

“The Double,” like any great work, is not just the story of one specific person. In his story, Dostoevsky shows St. Petersburg society as a whole and, using the example of collective images (this is exactly what the official Golyadkin is), talks about the prospects for the development of Russian history. These prospects, according to the author, are not very promising, because a society where success can only be achieved through hypocrisy and lies, where false ideals reign and dubious values ​​are revered, is doomed to destruction.

Society pushes out anyone who is different. It destroys the strong and reduces the weak to an oppressed position. Dostoevsky masterfully explored “the anatomy of the soul, perishing from the consciousness of the disunity of private interests in a well-ordered society” (V.N. Maikov).

Thus, Golyadkin’s split personality occurs as a result of severe psychological stress provoked by the negative social conditions of his existence. And by and large, not only the consciousness of the official Golyadkin is dual, but also the entire St. Petersburg society, in which moral principles are replaced by profit, self-interest, and intrigue. Who will win - Petersburg Sr. or Petersburg Jr. - is not yet known.

Analysis of the work

In critical literature, the genre of the story “The Double” is defined as grotesque-fantastic. The fantastic element (the appearance of Golyadkin’s double) was introduced into the plot for three reasons:

• to show two literary types of official (the downtrodden quiet one and the arrogant adventurer);
• to demonstrate how the poisonous influence of society awakens the worst qualities of human nature;
• to embody the idea of ​​human polarity, the individual’s struggle with internal evil.

The author needed the grotesque in order to depict the inconsistency and absurdity of the hero’s position in society. A striking example The grotesque thing, for example, is that none of the department employees were absolutely surprised when one fine day two Golyadkins came to work.