Despair (novel)
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Despair (Отчаяние (Otchayanie) in Russian) was written by Vladimir Nabokov and originally published as a serial in Sovremennye Zapiski during 1934. It was then published as a book in 1936 and later translated to English by the author in 1937.
In 1978 it was adapted into a movie, which premiered at The Cannes Film Festival on 19 May, directed by the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
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[edit] Plot summary
The hero of the story, Hermann Karlovich, a German businessman, meets a tramp in the city of Prague, whom he believes to be his exact double. Even though Felix, the double, is seemingly unaware of their resemblance, Hermann insists that their likeness is most striking. On a plausible pretext, he cajoles Felix into changing clothes with him; and as the novel nears its end, he shoots the tramp only to collect a large sum of insurance money.
Much to Hermann's surprise, it turns out that no resemblance whatsoever was discerned between the two men, and the murderer is captured by the police in a small hotel in France, where he is hiding. "Despair" is a story of false doubles, one of Nabokov's favorite themes. In it, doubling seems to be only an obsession with physical resemblances.
Almost all of Nabokov's fictions make ample use of doubling, duplication, and mirroring, mostly in Pale Fire and Lolita. "Despair" is a perfect introductory reading to the double topos in Nabokov's more complex novels, where other kinds of doubling (scenes, numbers, names, etc.) are brought into play.
[edit] Trivia
A case of life imitating art happened in 2004 in Germany, when 48 year old Christian Bogner fled from prison and killed unemployed gardener Engelbert Danielsen to assume his identity. The two men looked remarkably alike. Bogner was captured four days later by the police. He was carrying his victim's papers.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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