Now I propose to note down the characteristics of Dreams, especially my infernal Dreams, as they occur to me—as so many parts of the Problem to be solved. [...]
The first point of course is the Vision itself—that we see without eyes and hear without Ears.—
The second (& which I have never seen noticed) is—that we live without consciousness of Breathing. You never suppose the Men & Women of the Dream to breathe—<you do not suppose them not to breathe>—the thought is wholly suspended—and absent from your consciousness.
The third concerns the qualities & relations of Somnial or Morphean Space— [...]
The fourth is the spontaneity of the Dream-personages—Each is its own centre—herein so widely differing from the vivid thoughts & half-images of poetic Day-dreaming. —In sleep you are perfectly detached from the Dramatis Personæ—and they are from you.
The 5th is the whimsical transfer of familiar Names and the sense of Identity and Individuality to the most unlike Forms & Faces. [...]
6th. Conversion of bodily Pain into some passion of the Mind—Heart-burn becomes intense Grief, with bitter Weeping; Pain in the Umbilical Region becomes Terror [...]
7th. Imaginary Air-piercing, Air-shooting, skimming, soaring by successive Jerks of Volition or rather a nisus-analogue of inward volition./
8. & most interesting—the apparent representative character of particular Forms and Images, repr. I mean, each of some particular organ or structure—Ex. gr. I have never of later years awaked, desiderio mingendi*, but the preceding Dream had presented some water-landskip, Lake, River, Pond, or Splashes, Water-pits. [...]
9. The frustration most common in Dreams.
10. Non-descript & yet not composite Animals—the magnificent Fassades [sic] of Architecture.
11. The occasional sui generis Elysean Sunshine—/
Entry 5360, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 4: 1819-1826, ed. Kathleen Coburn and Merton Christensen, London: Routledge, 2002.
* desiderio mingendi - with the urge to urinate
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