SOURCE “The Nature of Referentiality in The Double,” in Dostoevski and the Human Condition after a Century, Alexej Ugrinsky, Frank S. Lambasa, Valija K. Ozolins, eds., Greenwood Press, 1986, pp. 41–51.

In the following essay, Pekurovskaya discusses “the nature of referentiality” in The Double.

With a notable persistence (more than thirty times)¹ number “two,” both cardinal and ordinal, appears in Dostoevski's narrative as the most explicit tool of executing the theme of the double referred to by the title of the novel. If his persistence is not gratuitous, which is a matter of simple certainty, one should be able to speak of some laws, governing the multiple usage and meaning of the word-sign “two.” And indeed the list of textual reference just reproduced suggests, not without an accord with the general concept of “two,” that all word-signs pertaining to the notion of “two,” denote either a simultaneity (“two gentlemen,” “two...