In search of more of Dostoyevsky's works, I came across this book at flipkart. None of the books I had read till now publicised any other work of Dostoyevsky other than a couple mentions of "Poor Folk". So these stories seemed to be as good a choice as any other to continue on my Dostoyevsky collection. Plus, the combination of these two in one book seemed to be appealing for some reason. Hence I ordered the book.
The two stories are quite remarkable in their own sense. The Double is a hallucinatory ramble by a "titular councillor". It was written in the early years of Dostoyevsky and not received with the appreciation that it deserved. But it served as the basis of Dostoyevsky's character building style and later resurfaced in traces in many of his more prominent works. Dostoyevsky tries to explore the consciousness of a clerk who is trying desperately to hold on his own. What Dostoyevsky actually intends to convey by the "split" of characters is vague and confusing. Whether the split is psychological or physical is left to the reader's discretion. But the book is enjoyed more for its character build than its story's flow. In contrast, The Gambler is much more refined and understandable. The characters are well defined and well expressed in the typical Dostoyevskian way. And the store is far less incredulous than The Double. In The Gambler, Dostoyevsky tries to put his own experiences around gambling into a compendium that he wrote in haste. This story was produced side by side with his most famous work - Crime and Punishment and was done with a dead-line strangling him. Never the less, none of these reflect upon the story itself.
Mr. Goliadkin is the protagonist of The Double and he is a titular councillor in the service of his excellency (whoever that is). But Goliadkin is not good with words. He is not slick and lacks even the most basic of etiquette. The artless protagonist humiliates himself in a ball in front of the one he loves and while he returns to his quarters in anguish and daze, he encounters his double. The story meanders there on. This double replaces him in his office as well as in society. People do not seem to notice the horrid circumstance that has befallen the unfortunate Goliadkin while he tries to maintain his originality and hold himself as his own in the presence of a demeaning and cunning double.
The Gambler is the notes of Alexi Ivanovich, an outchitel or tutor in the household of a general who is indebted to a frenchman and in love with a french seductress. The hero is in love with the general's stepdaughter who in turn is mysteriously tied to the frenchman. They are all counting on a certain inheritance to deliver them from the dark fate that they behold. But the grandma who is supposed to mete the inheritance suddenly turns up in the foreign town they are vacationing in and blows away all her fortune on roulette. Alexi Ivanovich, a compulsive gambler, waits for his time and when his love, Polina comes to him to bare her heart, he goes out to the tables to win for her. And he never manages to recover from his lust for the tables.
I particularly favour The Gambler over The Double. The reason in part is the uncertain flow of the story which gives a very uneasy feeling of being lost while reading the story. Even so, the character of Goliadkin is probably much better expressed than any other of Dostoyevsk's characters, despite it's ill form. The Gambler was a much more engrossing and satisfying piece of work. Needless to say, my journey through the Dostoyevskian lands is far from over.
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