Then the gray, dirty autumn day looks at him so angrily that “Mr. Golyadkin wakes up, wonders whether he’s awake or asleep, whether what he experiences is real or a continuation of his dreams, and his furniture and clothes look at him familiarly (Знакомо глянули на него). Can this really not have occurred to anyone before? At any rate, I can easily imagine Dostoevsky thinking “I’m going to write about Job, but not a righteous and admirable Job - rather, a miserable worm of an official with no redeeming qualities, someone who merely thinks he’s admirable, and I’m going to make the reader interested in him and his fate anyway.” It may or may not be relevant that Golyadkin repeatedly cries out “Господи бог (or боже) мой!”: Oh my Lord God!īut of course it takes a while to get to the escalating sufferings at first we get escalating weirdness. I assumed it must be a commonplace in Dostoevsky criticism, but to my astonishment, whether I googled or I got no relevant results. I do know that he read it repeatedly as a boy, that it stirred him profoundly, and that it had a great deal of influence on his later writing, and I know that the farther I read in The Double, the more irresistibly I was reminded of Job and his escalating sufferings.

I do not know whether Dostoevsky had the book of Job in mind when writing Двойник ( The Double). And the Double vexed Golyadkin, and tormented him, and Golyadkin lost his beloved Klara, and his servant Petrushka, and his apartment on Shestilavochnaya Street, and still he did not curse the department head, but groveled before him… And the department head said unto the Double, Behold, all that he has is in your power. And the department head said unto the Double, Have you considered my servant Golyadkin, that there is none like him in the department, one that fears me and eschews evil? And the Double said to him, Does Golyadkin fear you for naught? Have you not given him important work, and honors, and all that he has on every side? But put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.

Now there was a day when the men of rank came to present themselves before the department head, and the Double came also among them.

He had a beloved, Klara, and a servant, Petrushka, and an apartment on Shestilavochnaya Street, and he was a titular councilor. There was a man in the city of Petersburg, whose name was Golyadkin, and that man was blameless and upright, and one that feared the department head and eschewed evil.

The double dostoevsky novel