THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

1.2 Fantastic Psychoanalysis and the Doppelganger The Avatar in Panamasetting where the narrator witnesses one of several visualhallucinations. Later, when he returns home, he sees the pages of abook being turned as if by invisible fingers although the “fauteuil étaitvide, semblait vide, mais je compris qu’il était là, lui, assis à ma place,et qu’il lisait” (88). 74 The explanation of an optical illusion or hallucinationdoes not settle the question as one never knows how much one suffersfrom such illusions or how radical the error of the senses is.Maupassant never ceased to explore the unreliability of the instrumentsof perception.In an imaginative description of the protagonist’s shift inconsciousness from one plane to another, Maupassant compares thesensation of falling asleep to drowning; a variation on the concept ofsuffocation endured by many a victim of the pursuing double: “Jusqu’aumoment où je tombe tout à coup dans le repos, comme on tomberaitpour s’y noyer, dans un gouffre d’eau stagnante” (64). 75 It is not clearwhether this occurs in the real or dream world, but when le horla attackssupposedly in the dream world, Maupassant’s description of thenightmare is remarkable as corresponds to the original meaning of theword that meant “night-fiend”: 76Je dors–longtemps–deux ou trois heures–puisun rêve–non–un cauchemar m’étreint. Je sensbien que je suis couché et que je dors,… je lesens et je le sais… et je sens aussi quequelqu’un s’approche de moi, me regarde, mepalpe, monte sur mon lit, s’agenouille sur mapoitrine, me prend le cou entre ses mains etserre… serre… de toute sa force pourm’étrangler. […] Cette nuit, j’ai senti quelqu’unaccroupi sur moi, et qui, sa bouche sur lamienne, buvait ma vie entre mes lèvres. Oui, il74 “the armchair was empty, seemed empty; but I realised that he was there, sitting inmy place, reading” (336).75“till the moment when I suddenly fall asleep like a man falling into a chasm full ofstagnant water to drown” (316).76 “These night fiends were held responsible for the experiences of terrifying dreams,and the word was then used to denote the dreams themselves, so that its originalmeaning is becoming forgotten. The word nightmare itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon neaht or nicht (=night) and mara (=incubus or succubus)”. Ernest Jones, “TheMare and the Mara: A Psycho-Analytical Contribution to Etymology” On theNightmare. 2nd edition. (London: Hogarth, 1949) 243.56