SOURCE: “The Double,” in Dostoevski the Adapter: A Study in Dostoevski's Use of The Tales of Hoffmann, University of North Carolina Press, 1954, pp. 14–37.

In the following essay, Passage explores possible literary influences on Dostoevsky's The Double.

Dostoevski's point of departure in the creation of The Double was clearly enough Poprischchin, hero of Gogol's The Diary of a Madman, a short story. Upon this fundamental figure, now rechristened Golyadkin (Poordevil), it was his intention to graft the whole lore of “Doppelgängerei” and his own analysis of that lore. The prime difficulty, which he could not resolve, was the disparity of the two things. The lore of “Doppelgängerei” implied whole volumes, not only stories and novels, but even philosophical tracts, for the theme itself, so far as it entered literature, was but an elaborated detail out of the complex of German Romantic thought. Yet he went ahead with...