From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Despair

Author	Vladimir Nabokov
Original title	Отчаяние
Translator	Vladimir Nabokov
Country	Germany
Language	Russian
Publisher	Sovremennye Zapiski
Publication date	1934
Published in English	original 1937, revised by the author in 1965

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.

The protagonist of the story, Hermann Karlovich, a Russian emigre businessman, meets a tramp in the city of Prague, whom he believes to be his exact double. Even though Felix, the supposed doppelgänger, is seemingly unaware of their resemblance, Hermann insists that their likeness is most striking. After some time, Hermann shares with Felix a plan for both of them to profit off their shared likeness by having Felix briefly pretend to be Hermann. But after Felix is disguised as Hermann, Hermann kills Felix in order to collect the insurance money on Hermann. But as it turns out, there is no resemblance whatsoever between the two men, and the murderer is captured by the police in a small hotel in France, where he is hiding.

Hermann is another example of Nabokov's use of the unreliable narrator. Throughout the novel, Hermann's perception is skewed and his word cannot be trusted--he admits as much in the beginning of the novel when he shares with the reader his love of spinning yarns. The reader can never be positive if Hermann is accurately narrating the events because he tends to conflate his own skills and talents while ignoring reality around him.

"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.

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.

• Our resemblance struck me as a freak bordering on the miraculous. What interested him was mainly my wishing to see any resemblance at all. He appeared to my eyes as my double, that is, as a creature bodily identical with me. It was this absolute sameness which gave me so piercing a thrill. He on his part saw in me a doubtful imitator. I wish to lay stress, however, on the dimness of those ideas of his. He would certainly not have understood my comments upon them, the dullard.
  • Chapter I

• I have grown much too used to an outside view of myself, to being both painter and model, so no wonder my style is denied the blessed grace of spontaneity. Try as I may I do not succeed in getting back into my old self; the disorder there is far too great; things have been moved, the lamp is black and dead, bits of my past litter the floor.
  • Opening line of Chapter II

• Doppelgänger

• Despair Book Information
• IMDB Despair Page