The doppelganger (Saramago)

The double (Portuguese: O Homem Duplicado ) is a novel by José Saramago that was published in Lisbon in 2002 . The topic is both the change in the identity of the history teacher Afonso due to his doppelganger and the change in the identity of the reader, who is drawn into a discussion about the novel by the author and thus becomes a co-author. The novel was filmed in 2013 by director Denis Villeneuve with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead role under the title Enemy .

content

The reclusive history teacher Tertuliano Máximo Afonso notices an actor in a video film in a supporting role who looks astonishingly similar. Afonso determines the real name of his doppelganger and contacts him, the actor Daniel Santa-Clara. They set up a meeting and find that they are identical in their facial features, in their voice, and even in their scars and birthmarks - nature has duplicated them down to the smallest detail.

While the history teacher begins to come to terms with his doppelganger, the actor is driven by injured vanity and sexual greed to take his place for one night with the history teacher's mistress. He blackmailed the history teacher, had him equip him with his clothes and car and started a night of love without return: the teacher's mistress discovered the deception in a tiny detail in the morning and both died in a car accident on the way back, presumably after it was in the car there had been fisticuffs. The history teacher is thus deprived of his lover and his previous identity, but the wife of the actor, with whom the history teacher spent the same night in revenge, offers her surprisingly affectionate lover the identity of her failed husband as a substitute.

While the history teacher waits for his new companion to return from her husband's burial in the teacher's borrowed identity, another double of the actor calls the history teacher, who is just beginning to ponder his new identity. The teacher arranges a meeting in a remote place and, tired of the confusion, pocket the actor's revolver, which is now loaded.

Narrative

The narrator, who is close to the figure of the history teacher, reports linearly of the events that follow the discovery of the double in the video. The story progresses slowly: only after about half of the printed pages does the main character know the real name of their doppelganger, after fifty pages the two meet for the first time and after about 300 pages the novel has enough start-up for the following dramatic endings and punchlines taken.

Major cause of action and delay initial Pointenersparung is the number of digressions , which scatters the narrator as a companion to the main character and rapporteur on his work of writing. In some places the author also adds subjunctive allusions to possible chains of events that have not yet been pursued in this novel. Orientation for the reader is also not made easier by the fact that the author is sparing with punctuation marks and generous with changes of tense .

The style of Saramago is mainly determined by three craft strategies:

The first strategy is to often announce the characters' fears and future events in advance or comment on them afterwards. The author no longer refers to what is actually staged, but rather to the narrative he has created or is still conceiving.

A second strategy are passages in which the narrator justifies his literary decisions for the reader: " As if they were a kind of time machine, these four words, nothing happened, are mainly used in situations in which ... " or: " ... because A few hours ago ((meaning the time that has elapsed for the reader!)) we learned that ... "Or:" (...) seductive terms like fate, doom or destiny have no place in this discourse "Or: " The question arises whether what has just been written, beginning with the word" Self-honorable "and ending with" Needs ", is not actually ... " With these and many other technical explanations, the narrative is deconstructed again and again. For example: " Before we continue, however, the harmony of this narrative requires that we devote a few lines to the analysis of a contradiction that may have gone unnoticed (...) A little digression to the last pages of the previous chapter immediately reveals this fundamental contradiction Eyes lead (...) . "

A third strategic decision is a stylistic self-criticism on the part of the author, which is in close correspondence with the reading experiences of his readers. On several occasions the author provokes a certain weariness with the lengthy breathlessness and the interruption of the increasingly thinning thread of the plot by one of the astonishing digressions - until he admits that he has described something " with perhaps exaggerated accuracy " or " that the first part of the sentence is actually sufficient would have "or" that (it) might not have required such a detailed and cumbersome explanation on our part. "

As part of the experimental works of contemporary authors, Saramago and his doppelganger made a contribution to the attempt to expand conventional forms of literature production and reception by deconstructing narration.

expenditure

• José Saramago: The Doppelganger (German by Marianne Gareis), Rowohlt: Reinbek near Hamburg (2006) ISBN 978-3-499-23598-6