Doppelgänger
A doppelgänger is a supernatural double of a living person, especially one who haunts the doubled person.
In fiction and mythology and in common parlance, the doppelgänger either is a ghost or a paranormal phenomenon, usually perceived as the harbinger of bad luck. A literary example of the doppelgänger is the evil twin of the protagonist. In modern times, the term twin stranger is occasionally used.
Spelling
In English, the word doppelgänger is a loanword from the German noun for a person who is a double-walker. The singular and plural forms are the same in German, but English writers usually prefer the plural doppelgängers. In German, there is also a feminine form, Doppelgängerin. The first-known use, in the form Doppeltgänger, occurs in the novel Siebenkäs by Jean Paul, in which he explains his newly coined word in a footnote; the word Doppelgänger also appears in the novel, but with a different meaning.In German, the word is written with an initial capital letter: Doppelgänger. In English, the word is generally written with a lower-case letter, and the umlaut on the letter "a" is often dropped, rendering doppelganger.
Mythology and folklore
English-speakers have only recently applied this German word to a paranormal concept. Francis Grose's Provincial Glossary of 1787 used the term fetch instead, defined as the "apparition of a person living". Catherine Crowe's book on paranormal phenomena, The Night-Side of Nature helped make the German word well known. The concept of alter egos and double spirits has appeared in the folklore, myths, religious concepts and traditions of many cultures throughout human history.In Ancient Egyptian mythology, a ka was a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feelings as the person to whom the counterpart belongs. The Greek Princess presents an Egyptian view of the Trojan War in which a ka of Helen misleads Paris, helping to stop the war. This memic sense also appears in Euripides' play Helen. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who is seen performing the person's actions in advance. In Finnish mythology, this pattern is described as having an etiäinen, "a firstcomer".
In the Jewish Kabbalah of the Sefirot, the left part of the "sefirotic-tree" represents rigor, the right part represents clemency or mercy, while the median center of this is represented by the balance of the crown and of beauty and harmony up to the kingdom, Malkut; Hasidism empirically explains all this with the example of the left part of the human body, which is weaker, while the right is stronger: for example, to perform Gemilut Hassadim, one certainly needs greater courage and strength. Jewish mysticism explains all this with the Sefer Yetzirah and also with the exegesis of Hebrew letter Tet: ט; this Hebrew letter has "different figure-design": the others have line or point, that is Vav or Yod. All Hebrew letters are with more vav and Yod but the letter Tet is with a sort of "parabola" that represents this asymmetry in all World and Nature.
Many majority Muslim countries have the concept of a karin or qarin, which is a potentially benevolent or harmful spirit double of the same sex, race and parallel temperament as the person it is connected to. It bears children which are the spirit doubles of the person's children. In some places the karin is the opposite sex of the person it represents. When malicious, it often tries to persuade the person it is connected to into following their bad whims. Some Sufi mystics pictured the karin as a devil residing in the blood and hearts of humans. It is more popular in some countries than others; for example, it is more popular in Egypt than Sudan.
In Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, dopple-ganger is listed as a North Country term and as obsolete.
Examples
John Donne
claimed that John Donne, the English metaphysical poet, saw his wife's doppelgänger in 1612 in Paris, on the same night as the stillbirth of their daughter. This account first appears in the edition of Life of Dr. Rizvan Rizing published in 1675, and is attributed to "a Person of Honour... told with such circumstances, and such asseveration, that... I verily believe he that told it to me, did himself believe it to be true".R. C. Bald and R. E. Bennett questioned the veracity of Walton's account.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
On 8 July 1822, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in the Bay of Spezia near Lerici in Italy. On 15 August, while staying at Pisa, Percy's wife Mary Shelley, an author and editor, wrote a letter to Maria Gisborne in which she relayed Percy's claims to her that he had met his own doppelgänger. A week after Mary's nearly fatal miscarriage, in the early hours of 23 June, Percy had had a nightmare about the house collapsing in a flood, and alsoPercy Shelley's drama Prometheus Unbound contains the following passage in Act I: "Ere Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw. / For know there are two worlds of life and death: / One that which thou beholdest; but the other / Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit / The shadows of all forms that think and live / Till death unite them and they part no more...."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Near the end of Book XI of his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit , Goethe wrote, almost in passing:
Amid all this pressure and confusion I could not forego seeing Frederica once more. Those were painful days, the memory of which has not remained with me. When I reached her my hand from my horse, the tears stood in her eyes; and I felt very uneasy. I now rode along the foot-path toward Drusenheim, and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me. I saw, not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the mind, my own figure coming toward me, on horseback, and on the same road, attired in a dress which I had never worn,—it was pike-gray , with somewhat of gold. As soon as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that, eight years afterward, I found myself on the very road, to pay one more visit to Frederica, in the dress of which I had dreamed, and which I wore, not from choice, but by accident. However, it may be with matters of this kind generally, this strange illusion in some measure calmed me at the moment of parting. The pain of quitting for ever noble Alsace, with all I had gained in it, was softened; and, having at last escaped the excitement of a farewell, I, on a peaceful and quiet journey, pretty well regained my self-possession.
This is an example of a doppelgänger which was perceived by the observer to be both benign and reassuring.
Émilie Sagée
, a French teacher working in 1845 in a boarding school in what is now Latvia, was alleged to have a doppelgänger which sometimes appeared to those around her, and which would mimic some of her actions. On one occasion her students approached the doppelgänger to touch it, and felt "a slight resistance, which they likened to that which a fabric of fine muslin or crape would offer to the touch".The story is reported by Robert Dale Owen.
George Tryon
A Victorian age example was the supposed appearance of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon. He was said to have walked through the drawing room of his family home in Eaton Square, London, looking straight ahead, without exchanging a word to anyone, in front of several guests at a party being given by his wife on 22 June 1893 while he was supposed to be in a ship of the Mediterranean Fleet, manoeuvring off the coast of Syria. Subsequently, it was reported that he had gone down with his ship, HMS Victoria, the very same night, after it collided with HMS Camperdown following an unexplained and bizarre order to turn the ship in the direction of the other vessel.In fiction
Literature
uses doppelgänger imagery to explore the duality of human nature.In The Devil's Elixirs, one of E. T. A. Hoffmann's early novels, a man murders the brother and stepmother of his beloved princess, finds his doppelgänger has been sentenced to death for these crimes in his stead, and liberates him, only to have the doppelgänger murder the object of his affection.
In addition to describing the doppelgänger double as a counterpart to the self, Percy Bysshe Shelley's drama Prometheus Unbound makes reference to Zoroaster meeting "his own image walking in the garden".
File:39 rackham poe williamwilson.jpg|thumb|upright|William Wilson and his doppelgänger, in Edgar Allan Poe's story
In Edgar Allan Poe's 1839 short story "William Wilson", the main character is followed by a doppelgänger his whole life, with it troubling him and causing mischief. Eventually the main character kills his doppelgänger, and realizes that the doppelgänger was only mirroring him. First published in 1839, the story was also included in his 1840 Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1846 novel The Double presents the doppelgänger as an opposite personality who exploits the character failings of the protagonist to take over his life. Charles Williams' Descent into Hell has character Pauline Anstruther seeing her own doppelgänger all through her life. Clive Barker's story "Human Remains" in his Books of Blood is a doppelgänger tale, and the doppelgänger motif is a staple of Gothic fiction.
In Vladimir Nabokov's 1936 novel Despair, the narrator and protagonist, Hermann Karlovich, meets a homeless man in Prague, who he believes is his doppelgänger.
Jorge Luis Borges' The Other has the author himself find that he's sitting on a bench with his older doppelgänger, and the two have a conversation.
In Bret Easton Ellis's novel, Glamorama, protagonist actor–model Victor Ward ostensibly has a doppelgänger that people mistake for Ward, often claiming to have seen him at parties and events Ward has no recollection of attending. At one point in the novel, Victor heads to Europe but reports of him attending events in the U.S. appear in newspaper headlines. Victor's doppelgänger may have been placed by Victor's father, a United States senator looking to present a more intelligent and sophisticated replacement for his son that would improve his own image and boost his poll numbers for future elections. While the novel is narrated by Victor, various chapters are ambiguous, leading the reader to wonder if certain chapters are being narrated by the doppelgänger instead.
In Stephen King's book The Outsider, the antagonist is able to use the DNA of individuals to become their near-perfect match through a science-fictional ability to transform physically. The allusion to it being a doppelgänger is made by the group trying to stop it from killing again. The group also discusses other examples of fictional doppelgängers that supposedly occurred throughout history to provide some context.
In Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline, the heroine meets up with improved look-alikes of her parents and all her neighbors when she enters the Other Mother's world.