In your comparison, you might want to include Julio Cortazar's
short story "The Distances" in Blow-up and Other Stories; a particularly
jarring use of the double among the many examples in his fantastic
stories.  A privileged Argentine woman involuntarily merges with her
double--a Budapest beggar on a bridge over the Danube, and then is
horrified to watch herself walk away . . .
 
On Fri, 20 Sep 1996, Dan Gribbin wrote:
 
> I have not yet done anything resembling a systematic study of "La Double Vie
> de Veronique" but was happy to see a posting on it from Peggy Weaver in
> Santiago.  Kieslowski toys with the idea of a psychic connection between the
> two Veroniques, of course, by having the French Veronique express an
> unexplained sadness on the day that her Polish counterpart is dying.  Late in
> the film, the creation of two puppets to portray one character in the
> puppeteer's show, if interpreted on a human level, might be meant to suggest
> that each of us indeed has an alter ego.  Kieslowski gives us, in this film,
> alter egos who look exactly alike (which wouldn't necessarily have to be the
> case) and who, ironically, inhabit the same square in Kracow in the same
> instant, before the French tour bus pulls away.  The idea may be that the
> lives of alter egos are fated to interact at some point.  I want to do more
> thinking about the film and would love to have comments about what others
> have found in it.  In a course I teach involving both fiction and film from
> the last half of the 20th century, I have had the students study works
> involving the doppelganger or alter ego, including the film "Desperately
> Seeking Susan" and the short story by Philip Roth entitled "Eli, the Fanatic"
> from the collection "Goodbye, Columbus and Other Stories."
>
> Dan Gribbin
> Ferrum College
> Ferrum, VA
> [log in to unmask]
>
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