The Myth of the Doubles/Twins in the Work of Lojze Kovačič
The Myth of the Doubles/Twins in the Work of Lojze Kovačič

Summary/Abstract: In 1993, Lojze Kovačič, the most prominent (and recently passed away) Slovene post-war fiction writer (due to his modernist autobiographical novels also called “the Slovene Proust”), wrote a short story, entitled A Tale of a Two-Headed Son. It is a story of an impoverished girl Jerica, who has given birth to an illegitimate son, a two-headed child, christened Janez. One of the two heads, sharing the same body, the socalled “right Janez” was good-natured, gentle and pious, while his left counterpart, the “left Janez” grew more and more mean and cruel in character and appearance. This difference became the cause for the twins’ constant disputes early on, and with years grew even more intolerable and painful. While the right Janez prayed, the left one “played with his ding-a-ling”; while the right brother fasted, the left one devoured everything in sight, causing his brother indigestion problems on top of ruining his fasting. One of the worst moments occurred when the left Janez began paying visits to a prostitute, and during one of such visits, no longer being able to fight it, the virtuous right Janez screamed out with pleasure. The story ends with a mutual showdown, the left Janez strangling his brother in a fit of rage and killing himself in the process. The final lines offer a kind of premortal reconciliation between the two brothers.

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