Futility Closet

In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll look at the strange phenomenon of poet doppelgängers -- at least five notable poets have been seen by witnesses when their physical bodies were elsewhere. We'll also share our readers' research on Cervino, the Matterhorn-climbing pussycat, and puzzle over why a man traveling internationally would not be asked for his passport. Sources for our feature on poet doppelgängers: John Oxenford, trans., The Autobiography of Wolfgang von Goethe, 1969. G. Wilson Knight, Byron and Shakespeare, 2002. Julian Marshall, The Life & Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1889. Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen, 2013. W.E. Woodward, The Gift of Life, 1947. The stories are recounted in the corresponding posts on Futility Closet: Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Owen, Powys. Listener mail: Little House of Cats has a photo of Cervino, the (purported) Matterhorn-scaling kitty cat of 1950. The Daily Mail has photos of Millie, Utah mountaineer Craig Armstrong's rock-climbing cat.