me inside me

Thought behind the thought

Am I really what I seem to be? Is anyone, for that matter? I always feel that I have a number of 'me's and 'myself's hidden inside the person that I outwardly appear to be.
And they are an infinite set, no doubt! All the big and small 'me's neatly nestled within each other's shell. And if one were to open the outer shell, one would discover another shell inside, which in turn would open up to show one more!
And so it goes on. A 'me' within a 'me' kind of existence!

About the art
Is that what the Russians thought when they created these wooden dolls?

A matryoshka doll , also known as Russian nesting doll, refers to a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The first Russian nested doll set was made in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter at Abramtsevo. 

Traditionally the outer layer is a woman, dressed in a sarafan, a long and shapeless traditional Russian peasant jumper dress. The figures inside may be of either gender; the smallest, innermost doll is typically a baby turned from a single piece of wood. Much of the artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be very elaborate. The dolls often follow various themes, but the 'mother' and family remains the favourite.

The name Matryoshka may be derived from Russian female name Matriona. In old Russia among peasants the name Matriona or Matriosha was a very popular female name. Scholars say that this name has a Latin root "mater" and means "Mother". This name was associated with the image of of a mother of a big peasant family who was very healthy and had a portly figure. Subsequently, it became a symbolic name and was used specially to image brightly painted wooden figurines made in a such way that they could taken apart to reveal smaller dolls fitting inside one another.

The first Russian nesting doll set, consisting of a peasant mother and her 7 children, was painted by Maliutin.

Credit and Source of information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll

http://russian-crafts.com/crafts-history/nesting-dolls-history.html

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