THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.1 Double, Double, Toil and Trouble The Avatar in Panamadouble was soon utilised for humour, farce, mistaken identity andfolklore, and was incorporated into early romantic literature. Sometimesits usage consisted of nothing more than its presentation at the end of awork to explain the preceding confusion or to explain away somethingthat required the readers’ prolonged suspension of disbelief.The German romantic obsession with otherness came fromtraditional eighteenth century adult fairytales or Märchen which drewupon British Gothic writing and which, in turn, were influenced by theGerman Schauerroman or tale of terror. 24 The ensuing literaturebecame a vehicle for tales dealing with split personality. It seemedevidently clear the best way of presenting a character’s internalopposing forces was their external embodiment and so romanticauthors used the doppelganger to give concrete form to the duality ofpersonality manifested by their heroes. Usually, there was no depth tothe created double, merely a physical likeness as the characters werereally only replicated. Eventually, duality came to be represented asboth opposition and likeness or as the complement of separatecharacters. The contribution that Jean Paul Richter made to thesuccess of the double motif is best seen in the influence he had on thework of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. 25Considered the foundation for modern psychoanalysis, FranzAnton Mesmer’s theory of magnetic union of the soul provided theorigins for the ‘animal magnetism’ theory of romantic philosopher, G.H.Schubert. 26 In Mesmer’s premise the fusion of the therapist’s soul withthat of the patient explained the surfacing of previously unknowncharacter traits during the magnetic or somnambulistic trance. Howeverit became apparent that these personality characteristics could not beattributed to the therapist’s influence. The idea of a second personality,alien to the first personality in the extreme, took hold and it wasconcluded that these traits had always been present just hithertoinaccessible to consciousness. This revelation of the ‘night-side’ of themind and the thought that a second personality existed but only24 Romantic writers knew how to reveal dark forces within man and focused on areasnot accessible to reason. The depiction of these dark forces used various techniques,but myths, fairytales and dreams were the three elements that were combined in theliterature of the Märchen. Leonard J Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight, eds. and trans.Selected Writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1969) 14.25 See Hoffmann’s “A New Year’s Eve Adventure” in 3.1 Looking-Glass Literature andthe Loss of Likeness, 164.26 Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) was a Viennese doctor who went to Paris in1778. He claimed the cause of illness was due to an uneven distribution of fluid whichwas redistributed during inducement of convulsive attacks or ‘crises’ brought on bymagnetic trances. It was during these states that the souls of the therapist/magnetistand the patient fused. Leon Chertok, and Raymond de Saussure, The TherapeuticRevolution: From Mesmer to Freud, trans. Dr. R. H. Ahrenfeldt (New York:Brunner/Mazel, 1979) 4.20