Self and Double in Audioslave and Charalambides

the double was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death’, as [Otto] Rank says; and probably the ‘immortal’ soul was the first ‘double’ of the body. […] Such ideas, however, have sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind of the child and of primitive man. But when this stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death. (Freud, The Uncanny, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, p. 940)

The double as discussed by Freud and Otto Rank is a concept that often engages artists, from the most diverse backgrounds. I was struck by the uncanny appearance of the double in Audioslave’s ‘Exploder’ and Kyriakos Charalambides’ ‘(Hi)Story with a horse in it’. In both texts, the artist encounters his double, and ultimately destroys him.

Audioslave’s ‘Exploder’ deals with themes of mental illness: the first stanza describes a man who has been committed to a mental institution, the second a girl who copies her father and commits suicide and a boy who hears voices and kills his mother. Each stanza is followed by the chorus, which almost ritualistically repeats that ‘If you’re free you’ll never see the walls’. This fits in with the theme of questioning control over one’s actions: the girl in the second stanza commits suicide despite having expressed the intention not to (‘she said she’d never do the same, then did just what he’d done’), while the boy who kills his mother is presumably acting on the instructions of the mysterious voices in his head (‘no one knows what they said, now his mother’s dead’). In the third stanza, the speaker looks upon himself, quite literally: he encounters his double:

I saw a man who had a face that looked a lot like me
I saw him in the mirror and I fought him in the streets
Then when he turned away I shot him in the head
Then I came to realize I had killed myself

In this instance, the speaker’s belated recognition of himself intensifies the uncanny sense of the encounter. In Charalambides’ poem, there is a similar delay in recognition, although this is because the speaker is initially unable to see his double. He is told by others that he can be seen riding his horse through the skies of Lefkosia, but it takes time for him to encounter himself:

Όμως μια μέρα σαν κι αυτή – παράξενο! – είδα
τούτο που λέγανε. Και μη νομίσεις
πως σου μιλώ για πήγασους και τα τοιαύτα.
Άλογο ήτανε, γερό και στιβαρό
χωρίς φτερά και μ’ ένα χαλινάρι
χοντρό σαν το χαλάζι – εγώ π’ ουδέποτε
σ’ άλογο ανέβηκα, και να καλπάζω.

But a day like that – strange! – I saw
what they were talking about. And don’t think
that I’m telling you about pegassi and suchlike.
A horse it was, strong and solid
without wings and with reigns
as thick as hail – and I who never
on a horse had ridden, up there and galloping.

In this case, the sense of the uncanny is evoked both by the existence of the double, and by his seeming disdain of the laws of Physics. He is riding through the sky on a real, solid, heavy horse. Like in ‘Exploder’, the speaker must assert himself over his double through an act of violence. He pierces the sack of air holding the horseman aloft, and drags him to the ground, finally killing him:

Όμως τον πρόλαβα μπροστά στο βασιλιά
και μια και δυο τον ξετελειώνω – να μη λένε
ότι με βλέπουνε καβάλα στ’ άλογό μου
επάνω από τον ουρανό της Λευκωσίας.

But I caught up with him before the king
and chop chop, I finish him off – so they don’t say
that they see me astride my horse
up in the sky of Leukosia.

The main difference between these two murders of the double is that in ‘Exploder’ the speaker only discovers that he has killed his double after the event, where as in ‘horse’ the speaker deliberately murders his double to protect the integrity of the identity of the self. However, the violent outcome in these two instances may point towards the desire of the artist to control the image of the self. While ‘Exploder’ creates an uncanny setting through the questioning of the accuracy of perception entailed in the delayed recognition of the double, the same degree of uncanny is evoked in Charalambides’ poem through the dreamlike structure of the narrative. The sequence of events is presented as causal, but this association is elusive to the wakeful mind.

In conclusion, it could be argued that the figure of the double poses a particular threat to the artist, and must be eradicated at all costs. Also, American rock music and Cypriot-Greek intellectual poetry have things in common.