Dvojnik i "tajnovito"
Doubling, Dividing And Interchanging Of The Self: The 'Uncanny' Subjectivity In Dostoevsky's The Double

Summary/Abstract: This paper addresses a new model of meaning structuring Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella, The Double (1846) that moves away from the contextual literary background of nineteenth century Realism in which it was initially published. Dostoevsky's depiction of madness, hysteria and anxiety through The Double's protagonist, Golyadkin, indicates that there is less of an emphasis on the social and religious aspects of the novella than on the psychological complexities of the subject. Dostoevsky's innovative insight into the mind prompts the question of the wider aesthetic frame in which The Double can be understood. The frame which suggests itself because of its emphasis on the unconscious is Freudian psychoanalysis. In this paper, The Double is treated as a text whose poetics ground the Freudian psychoanalytic theories depicted in his paper on "The 'Uncanny'" (1919), which stresses the significance of repression that constitutes a split in identity. By examining and analysing Golyadkin through the framework of psychoanalysis offered by Freud's "The 'Uncanny'," which addresses such concepts as Oedipal anxiety, repression, castration and the split in subjectivity, the contention of this paper is to offer Dostoevsky as an innovative and inventive author whose insights into the world of psychoanalysis were far ahead of his literary-historical context.

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