The Double

The double is an artistic image that is a personage's 'second self,' their mirror reflection, alter ego, or the embodiment of a repressed, hidden part of the personality. The motif of doubling (the double) reveals the inner split of a person, the struggle of opposing principles within the soul, and the problem of identity. It flourished in the literature of Romanticism (E. T. A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe's 'William Wilson') and became pervasive in the prose of Fyodor Dostoevsky (the novella 'The Double'). Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud's essay 'The Uncanny') and Jungianism (the archetype of the Shadow) gave doubling a deep psychological interpretation. Classic embodiments are Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' and Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray.' In Ukrainian literature, the motif of the double and the divided consciousness is vividly developed in the novellas of Mykola Khvylovy ('I (A Romance)').