Editing Doppelgänger (section)

==Examples==
===John Donne===
[[Izaak Walton]] claimed that [[John Donne]], the English [[metaphysical poet]], saw his wife's doppelgänger in 1612 in Paris, on the same night as the stillbirth of their daughter. This account first appears in the edition of ''Life of Dr. Rizvan Rizing'' published in 1675, and is attributed to "a Person of Honour... told with such circumstances, and such asseveration, that... I verily believe he that told it to me, did himself believe it to be true".

{{blockquote|Two days after their arrival there, Mr. ''Donne'' was left alone, in that room in which Sir ''Robert'', and he, and some other friends had dinner together. To this place Sir ''Robert'' returned within half an hour; and, as he left, so he found Mr. ''Donne'' alone; but, in such ecstasy, and so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir ''Robert'' to behold him in so much that he earnestly desired Mr. ''Donne'' to declare  what had befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Mr. ''Donne'' was not able to make a present answer: but, after a long and perplexing pause, did at last say, ''I have seen a dreadful Vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this, I have seen since I saw you.''  To which, Sir ''Robert'' replied; ''Sure Sir, you have slept since I saw you; and, this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake.'' To which Mr. ''Donnes'' reply was: ''I cannot be surer that I now live, then that I have not slept since I saw you: and am, assure, that at her second appearing, she stopped, looked me in the face, and vanished.''<ref>Walton, Izaak. ''Life of Dr. John Donne.'' Fourth edition, 1675. Cited by Crowe in ''The Night-Side of Nature'' (1848).</ref>}}

R. C. Bald and R. E. Bennett questioned the veracity of Walton's account.<ref>Bald, R. C. ''John Donne: a Life.'' [[Oxford University Press]], 1970.</ref><ref>Bennett, R. E. "Donne's Letters from the Continent in 1611–12". ''[[Philological Quarterly]]'' xix (1940), 66–78.</ref>

===Percy Bysshe Shelley===
[[File:Percy Bysshe Shelley by Alfred Clint.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Percy Shelley]], per [[Mary Shelley]], had claimed to have met his own doppelgänger.]]

On 8 July 1822, the English poet [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]] drowned in the [[La Spezia|Bay of Spezia]] near [[Lerici]] in [[Italy]]. On 15 August, while staying at [[Pisa]], Percy's wife [[Mary Shelley]], an author and editor, wrote a letter to [[Maria Gisborne]] in which she relayed Percy's claims to her that he had met his own doppelgänger. A week after Mary's nearly fatal [[miscarriage]], in the early hours of 23 June, Percy had had a [[nightmare]] about the house collapsing in a flood, and also

{{blockquote|... talking it over the next morning he told me that he had had many visions lately—he had seen the figure of himself which met him as he walked on the terrace and said to him—"How long do you mean to be content"—No very terrific words & certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. But Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing is that Mrs. Williams saw him. Now Jane, though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination & is not in the slightest degree nervous—neither in dreams or otherwise. She was standing one day, the day before I was taken ill, [15 June] at a window that looked on the Terrace with Trelawny—it was day—she saw as she thought Shelley pass by the window, as he often was then, without a coat or jacket—he passed again—now as he passed both times the same way—and as from the side towards which he went each time there was no way to get back except past the window again (except over a wall twenty feet from the ground) she was struck at seeing him pass twice thus & looked out & seeing him no more she cried—"Good God can Shelley have leapt from the wall?.... Where can he be gone?" Shelley, said Trelawny—"No Shelley has past—What do you mean?" Trelawny says that she trembled exceedingly when she heard this & it proved indeed that Shelley had never been on the terrace & was far off at the time she saw him.<ref>Betty T. Bennett. ''The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.'' [[Johns Hopkins University Press]], [[Baltimore]], 1980. Volume 1, page 245.</ref>}}

Percy Shelley's drama ''[[Prometheus Unbound (Shelley)|Prometheus Unbound]]'' (1820) contains the following passage in Act I: "Ere Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw. / For know there are two worlds of life and death: / One that which thou beholdest; but the other / Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit / The shadows of all forms that think and live / Till death unite them and they part no more...."<ref>''Prometheus Unbound'', lines 191–199.</ref>

===Johann Wolfgang von Goethe===
Near the end of Book XI of his autobiography, ''[[Dichtung und Wahrheit]]'' ("Poetry and Truth") (1811–1833), [[Goethe]] wrote, almost in passing:

<blockquote>
Amid all this pressure and confusion I could not forego seeing [[Friederike Brion|Frederica]] once more. Those were painful days, the memory of which has not remained with me. When I reached her my hand from my horse, the tears stood in her eyes; and I felt very uneasy. I now rode along the foot-path toward Drusenheim, and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me. I saw, not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the mind, my own figure coming toward me, on horseback, and on the same road, attired in a dress which I had never worn,—it was pike-gray [''hecht-grau''], with somewhat of gold. As soon as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that, eight years afterward, I found myself on the very road, to pay one more visit to Frederica, in the dress of which I had dreamed, and which I wore, not from choice, but by accident. However, it may be with matters of this kind generally, this strange illusion in some measure calmed me at the moment of parting. The pain of quitting for ever noble [[Alsace]], with all I had gained in it, was softened; and, having at last escaped the excitement of a farewell, I, on a peaceful and quiet journey, pretty well regained my self-possession.<ref>''The Autobiography of Wolfgang von Goethe.'' Translated by John Oxenford. Horizon Press, 1969. This example cited by Crowe in ''The Night-Side of Nature'' (1848).</ref> </blockquote>

This is an example of a doppelgänger which was perceived by the observer to be both benign and reassuring.

===Émilie Sagée===
[[Émilie Sagée]], a French teacher working in 1845 in a boarding school in what is now [[Latvia]], was alleged to have a doppelgänger which sometimes appeared to those around her, and which would mimic some of her actions. On one occasion her students approached the doppelgänger to touch it, and felt "a slight resistance, which they likened to that which a fabric of fine muslin or crape would offer to the touch".<ref name=owen>{{cite book | author=[[Robert Dale Owen]] | title =Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World | publisher =J.B. Lippincott & Company | year =1860 | location =New York | pages=348–358 | url =https://archive.org/details/footfallsonboun01owengoog/page/348/mode/2up?}}</ref>

The story is reported by [[Robert Dale Owen]].<ref name=owen/>

===George Tryon===
A [[Victorian age]] example was the supposed appearance of [[Vice-Admiral]] Sir [[George Tryon]]. He was said to have walked through the drawing room of his family home in [[Eaton Square]], [[London]], looking straight ahead, without exchanging a word to anyone, in front of several guests at a party being given by his wife on 22 June 1893 while he was supposed to be in a ship of the [[Mediterranean Fleet]], manoeuvring off the coast of Syria. Subsequently, it was reported that he had gone down with his ship, [[HMS Victoria (1887)|HMS ''Victoria'']], the very same night, after it collided with [[HMS Camperdown (1885)|HMS ''Camperdown'']] following an unexplained and bizarre order to turn the ship in the direction of the other vessel.<ref>{{cite book
 |first=Christina
 |last=Hole
 |publisher=B. T. Batsford
 |year=1950
 |pages=21–22
 |title=Haunted England: A survey of English ghost-lore}}</ref>