double

Narratives questioning the ruler’s authenticity have existed since time immemorial—both as an effective weapon in political struggle and as an outlet for deep social anxieties. The tsar’s inauthenticity has two main forms: active (impostorism) and passive (the substitution of certain people or forces for the real one). The study focuses on Russian projections of the tsar-substitute narrative. It manifested itself most clearly and fully in relation to Emperor Peter the Great, the builder of modern Russian statehood. An analysis of the factual material revealed that it is more appropriate to speak not of a single plot, but of a more complex structure—a megaplot. Many of its elements emerged simultaneously at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, and from then until today, they have remained in a state of dynamic interweaving, mutual complementarity, and development. Some of them have acquired autonomy (miraculous rescue, the arrival of a savior), while others have narrowed to the level of motif (the shape-shifter). The mega-plot about the replaced ruler is built on two components, which can be roughly defined as realistic and mystical. The core of the realistic com- ponent is the replacement of the tsar (at a genetic level, in childhood, abroad) by certain very specific individuals, which is conceived as an actual event. The mystical plot threads are connected through the profound archetypes of the Double and the Changeling, which, by activating the age-old fears of the Shape-shifter—half-man, half-beast—introduce the apoca- lyptic Beast into the collective consciousness of the Petrine era. Along- side him, other aspects of the Antichrist are also realized—the God-fighter and false Christ, whose visualization in opposition circles is Peter the Great. The plots created during this crucial era proved exceptionally effective, leading to their use on the emperor’s political heirs. The mystical element remained in the public debates of the past, but resonated in Russian literature (the works of A. S. Pushkin and D. S. Merezhkovsky). Realistic element, on the contrary, is increasingly present today thanks to digital technology. The sensational plot of a ruler being replaced, complemented by spinoffs of miraculous rescues and the redeemer of royal blood, draws more and more new faces into its orbit.

The article explores the myth of the double and its manifestations in literature. The focus is on the novella “Adventure on New Year’s Eve” by E. T. A. Hoffman. The figures of doppelgängers in the novel and the wavering ego identities of the characters are consistently traced. The multiplicity of the self and its vacillation are examined through Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of total personality.

This   article   examines   the   structural   relationship   between Kant’s philosophy and the genre of Gothic literature, in view of the formation of the modern idea of the subject. The paradox of Kant’s idea of the sublime reveals the blind spot of the Subject: Reason does not (can not?) know itself. The phenomenon is noumenal at its very core insofar as the existential condition is not susceptible to objectification because the existential idea presupposes the inseparability of the subject from the object. From this point of view, the appearance of the figure of the gothic Double is inseparable from the emergence of the category of subject itself. Ultimately, the Subject is the Double. Duality is an ontological structure determining for Modernity – the Double is the matrix of reflexivity, and therefore of Reason and the Subject. This experimental hypothesis was developed by juxtaposing Immanuel Kant and Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s ideas of the determinism of nature and supernatural necessity.