The deities of dream

Offenser la pudeur des divinités du songe. (...) S'entretenir d'idées pures et saines pour avoir des songes logiques. Prenez garde à l'impureté qui effarouche les bons esprits et qui attire les divinités fatales. Quand vos rêves sont logiques ils sont une porte ouverte ivoire ou corne sur le monde extérieur.

Gérard de Nerval, feuillet détaché

To offend the modesty of the deities of dream. (...) To have to do with pure and healthy ideas in order to have logical dreams. Beware the impurity that frightens away the good spirits and brings down the fatal deities. When your dreams are logical they are an open portal of ivory or horn to the exterior world.

Au cœur du rêve

Au cœur du rêve, je suis seul. Dépouillé de toutes mes garanties, dévêtu des artifices de langage, des protections sociales, des idéologies rassurantes, je me retrouve dans l’isolement parfait de la créature devant le monde. Plus rien ne subsiste du moi construit ; c’est à peine si, en cet instant où je ne suis plus que moi-même, j’ai encore la conscience d’être quelqu’un. Je suis un être humain, n’importe lequel, semblable à mes semblables. Mais il n’y a plus de semblables dans cette solitude. Il ne reste de moi que la créature et sa destinée, son inexplicable et impérieuse destinée. Avec stupeur, je découvre que je suis cette vie infinie : un être dont les origines remontent au delà de tout ce que je puis connaître, dont le sort dépasse les horizons où atteint mon regard. Je ne sais plus autour de quelles pauvres raisons j’ai organisé la petite existence de cet individu que j’étais. Je suis seulement que m’apparaissent maintenant les raisons de ma vie véritable : elles demeurent innomées, mais présentes ; elles sont ce que j’éprouve, l’immensité de mon étendue réelle. 

 

 Albert Béguin, L’Ame romantique et le rêve, 1939

 

At the heart of the dream, I am alone. Stripped of all my guarantees, disrobed of the artifices of language, social protections, comforting ideologies, I find myself in the perfect isolation of the creature before the world. Nothing more remains of the constructed self; in the instant when I am no more than I myself, barely am I aware of being someone. I am a human being, any human being, a fellow to my fellow men. But there are no more fellow men in this solitude. All that is left of me is the creature and its destiny, its inexplicable and imperious destiny. With bewilderment, I discover that I am this infinite life: a being whose origins go back beyond all that I am capable of knowing, whose fate extends farther than the  horizons of my gaze. I no longer know the paltry reasons around which I organised the petty existence of the individual that I was. I have being only because it is now that the reasons of my true life appear to me: they dwell unnamed, but present; they are what I experience, the vastness of my real expanse. 

 

Hypnolatry / psychology

Once was a god whose lovely face,

Wan as the poppy and arched in wings,

So haunted a votary with his grace

And the still wonder that worship brings,

That, having sipped of Helicon’s springs,

He cast his beauty in bronze. And now

Eternal slumber bedims his brow —

Hypnos: and Dream was his dear son.

Not ours these follies. We haunt instead

Tropical jungles drear and dun,

And see in some fetish of fear and dread

Our symbol of dream — that brooding head!

And deem the wellspring of genius hid

In a dark morass that is dubbed the Id. 

Walter de la Mare, from ‘Dreams’, The Fleeting and Other Poems, 1933

Worlds concealed

En värld är varje människa, befolkad
av blinda varelser i dunkelt uppror
mot jaget konungen som härskar över dem.
I varje själ är tusen själar fångna,
i varje värld är tusen världar dolda
och dessa blinda, dessa undre världar
är verkliga och levande, fast ofullgångna,
så sant som jag är verklig. Och vi konungar
och furstar av de tusen möjliga inom oss
är själva undersåtar, fångna själva
i någon större varelse, vars jag och väsen
vi lika litet fattar som vår överman
sin överman. Av deras död och kärlek
har våra egna känslor fått en färgton.

Som när en väldig ångare passerar
långt ute, under horisonten, där den ligger
så aftonblank. – Och vi vet inte om den
förrän en svallvåg når till oss på stranden,
först en, så ännu en och många flera
som slår och brusar till dess allt har blivit
som förut. – Allt är ändå annorlunda.

Så grips vi skuggor av en sällsam oro
när något säger oss att folk har färdats,
att några av de möjliga befriats.

 

Gunnar Ekelöf, Färjesång, Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm, 1941

 

Every human being is a world, peopled

with blind creatures in dark revolt

against the self, the king that rules over them. 

In every soul a thousand souls are imprisoned,

in every world a thousand worlds are concealed

and these blind, these nether worlds 

are real and alive, albeit unfulfilled,

as genuinely as I am real. And we kings

and princes of the thousand potential creatures within us

are themselves subjects, themselves imprisoned

in some vaster creature, whose self and being

we understand as little as our master

does his master. Their death and their love

imbue our own feelings with their tint.

 

The same as when a huge steamer passes

out at sea, below the horizon, which spreads

so evening-bright. — And we know nothing of it

till the swell reaches us on the shore,

first one wave, then another and many more,

which breaks and crashes, till all returns

to what it was before. — Yet all is different.

 

So too are we shadows seized by a strange unrest

when something tells us that they are on the move,

that some of the potential creatures are set free.   

An epitaph

Son of man, tell me,

Hast thou at any time lain in thick darkness,

Gazing up into a lightless silence,

A dark void vacancy,

Like the woe of the sea

In the unvisited places of the ocean?

And nothing but thine own frail sentience 

To prove thee living?

Lost in this affliction of the spirit,

Did'st thou then call upon God 

Of his infinite mercy to reveal to thee

Proof of his presence -

His presence and love for thee, exquisite creature

    of his creation?

To show thee but some small devisal 

Of his infinite compassion and pity even

    though it were as fleeting

As the light of a falling star in a dewdrop?

Hast thou? O, if thou hast not,

Do it now; do it now; do it now!

Lest that night come which is sans sense,

    thought, tongue, stir, time, being,

And the moment is for ever denied thee,

Since thou art thyself as I am.

 

Walter de la Mare,  ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ (1936)

Tenebrae exteriores

‘. . . that we mortals should dread the tomb—that’s only natural. And it’s when we are nearing the end that what may be called the real takes on another colour, sir. You look at those about you and can’t any more so surely rely on what they are, if you take me. As you once could. There is so thin a crust, sir, in a manner of speaking, between being awake and asleep—very fast asleep indeed. A sip of a doctor’s drug, and not only the lantern goes out but everything it shone on. I had that experience myself not more than a month or two since—only a decayed tooth, sir: outer darkness, and then the awakening. If that comes. It is like as if we were treading a flat fall of untrodden snow and suddenly it is thin ice—cat ice, as we used to call it when we were boys—and we are gone. Not, mind you, that the waters of death, however cold they may be, are not—well, the waters of life. Faith is faith. . . .’

 

Walter de la Mare,  ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ (1936)

The mind of Nature

© Alistair Ian Blyth

"Language is the means of human communication. In human awareness, it is language that limns the outer and the inner world to an equal extent. It is with the help of language that I talk to people. Outside of human communication language loses its meaning, it becomes dispensable.

 

"I am a human being, a part of the world, a product thereof. I am the mind of Nature, its understanding. I am a part of human society, a unit thereof. With my help both Nature and Humanity transform themselves, perfect themselves, improve themselves. But just as the understanding has not yet grasped all the secrets of the microcosm, in the domain of the macrocosm it is still only a talented child embarking on its first marvellous discoveries.

 

"I, the poet, live in a world of enchanting mysteries. They everywhere surround me. Plants in all their multiformity—grass, flowers, trees—the mighty realm of primitive life, the foundation of all living things, my brothers, feeding me with both their flesh and their air—all of them live alongside me. How can I reject kinship with them? The variability of the vegetal landscape, the combination of leaf and branch, the play of the sun on the fruits of the earth—all these are a smile on the face of a friend bound to me by ties of blood kinship."

Nikolai Zabolotsky, 1957

 

Слово есть средство человеческого общения. Слово рисует в чело­веческом сознании мир внешний и мир внутренний в одинаковой степени. С помощью слова я обращаюсь к людям. Слово вне челове­ческого общения теряет свой смысл, оно делается необязательным.

 

Я — человек, часть мира, его произведение. Я — мысль при­роды и ее разум. Я — часть человеческого общества, его едини­ца. С моей помощью и природа и человечество преобразуют самих себя, совершенствуются, улучшаются. Но так же, как разум еще не постиг всех тайн микрокосма, он и в области макрокосма еще толь­ ко талантливое дитя, делающее свои первые удивительные от­ крытия. 

 

Я, поэт, живу в мире очаровательных тайн. Они окружают меня всюду. Растения во всем их многообразии — эта трава, эти цветы, эти деревья — могущественное царство первобытной жизни, основа всего живущего, мои братья, питающие меня и плотью своей, и воз­духом, — все они живут рядом со мной. Разве я могу отказаться от родства с ними? Изменчивость растительного пейзажа, сочетание листвы и ветвей, игра солнца на плодах земли — это улыбка на ли­це моего друга, связанного со мной узами кровного родства. 

 

Н. А. Заболоцкий.  «Почему я не сторонник абстрактной поэзии» Метаморфозы / Николай Заболоцкий; сост., подгот. текста, вступ. статья и коммент. И. Е. Лощилова. — М.: ОГИ, 2014. С. 606

 

 

Lodeinikov

 

В краю чудес, в краю живых растений,

Несовершенной мудростью дыша,

Зачем ты просишь новых впечатлений

И новых бурь, пытливая душа?

Не обольщайся призраком покоя:

Бывает жизнь обманчива на вид.

Настанет час, и утро роковое

Твои мечты, сверкая, ослепит. 

(...)

И в этот миг жук в дудку задудил.

(...)

И постепенно превращалось в пенье

Шуршанье трав и тишины.

Природа пела. Лес, подняв лицо,

Пел вместе с лугом. Речка чистым телом

Звенела вся, как звонкое кольцо.

(...)

Николай Заболоцкий, Лодейников, 1932-1947

 

 

In the land of wonders, land of living plants,

Exhaling a wisdom as yet imperfect,

Why do you seek fresh impressions

And fresh tempests, inquisitive soul?

Be not deluded by the phantom of peace;

Life is outwardly deceptive betimes. 

The hour will come, and the fateful morn

Will blaze out, blinding your dreams.

(...)

 And just then the beetle blew his pipe.

(...)

And the rustling of grasses and silence

Little by little were transformed into song.

Nature sang. The forest, lifting her face,

Sang with the meadow. The pure-bodied river

Chimed forth like a ringing bell. 

(...) 

Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958), Lodeinikov, 1932-1947

 

 

 

   

 

 

Hiddenness

The hiddenness of perfect things; a shrinking delicacy and mysticism of sentiment (...) the fatality which seems to haunt any signal beauty, whether moral or physical, as if it were in itself something illicit and isolating; the suspicion and hatred it so often excites in the vulgar--these were some of the impressions, forming as they do, a constant tradition of somewhat cynical pagan sentiment, from Medusa and Helen downwards, which the old story [the Metamorphoses of Apuleius] enforced on him. A book, like a person, has its fortunes with one; is lucky or unlucky in the precise moment of its falling in our way, and often by some happy accident ranks with us for something more than its independent value.

Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean (1885)

Die Selbstsprache

Gerade das Eigentümliche der Sprache, daß sie sich bloß um sich selbst bekümmert, weiß keiner. (...) Wenn man den Leuten nur begreiflich machen könnte, daß es mit der Sprache wie mit den mathematischen Formeln sei – Sie machen eine Welt für sich aus – Sie spielen nur mit sich selbst, drücken nichts als ihre wunderbare Natur aus, und eben darum sind sie so ausdrucksvoll – eben darum spiegelt sich in ihnen das seltsame Verhältnisspiel der Dinge. Nur durch ihre Freiheit sind sie Glieder der Natur, und nur in ihren freien Bewegungen äußert sich die Weltseele und macht sie zu einem zarten Maßstab und Grundriß der Dinge. 

Novalis, Monolog, 1798

Precisely what is peculiar to language, the fact of its being concerned only with itself, is known to no one. (...) If only one could be made to understand that with language it is the same as with mathematical formulae – they make up a world of their own – they play only with themselves, express nothing but their own wondrous nature, and this is why they are so expressive – this is why the strange interplay of things is mirrored in them. It is only through their freedom that they are elements of Nature, and only in their free movements does the World-soul manifest itself and make them a delicate measure and outline of things. 

After rain

Lars Gustafsson

(1936-2016)

After rain

Summer rain's sky like an X-ray film

where light and shadows mingling show through.

Silent forest and not a single bird.

Your own eye like a droplet spilled under clouds,

reflecting the world: light and vague shadows.

And suddenly you know who you are:

a baffled stranger between soul and clouds,

only by the thin membrane of an image

are the world's depth and the eye's darkness kept separate.

 

Suis-je celui qui rêve?

Chaque créature à son tour se trouve, tôt ou tard, avec plus ou moins de clarté, de continuité et surtout d’urgence, devant cette insistante question : suis-je celui qui rêve? Question aux aspects infinis, qui touche à nos raisons de vivre, aux choix que nous devons faire entre nos possibilités intérieures, au problème de la connaissance comme à celui de la poésie. (...) Est-ce moi qui rêve la nuit? Ou bien suis-je devenu le théâtre où quelqu’un, quelque chose, déroule ses spectacles tantôt dérisoires, tantôt pleins d’une inexplicable sagesse? Lorsque je perds le gouvernement de ses images dont se tisse la trame la plus secrète, la moins communicable, de ma vie, leur assemblage imprévu a-t-il quelque rapport significatif avec mon destin, ou avec d'autres événements qui me dépassent? Ou faut-il croire que j’assiste simplement à la danse incohérente, honteuse, misérablement simiesque, des atomes de ma pensée, livrés à leur absurde caprice?

Albert Béguin, L’Âme romantique et le rêve. Essai sur le romantisme allemand et la poesie française, Libraire José Corti, Paris, 1939

 

Every being in turn finds itself, sooner or later, with greater or lesser lucidity, continuity and, above all, urgency, faced with the pressing question: Am I the one who dreams? A question of endless facets, which touches on our very reasons for living, on the choices that we have to make between our inner potentialities, on the problem of knowledge and that of poetry alike. (...) Is it I who dreams at night? Or have I simply become the theatre where somebody or something stages performances that are now ridiculous, now filled with inexplicable wisdom? When I lose control of its images, from which is woven my life’s most secret, least communicable fabric, does their unexpected assembly have any significant relationship to my fate, or else other events that are beyond me? Or am I to believe that I merely witness the incoherent, shameful, wretchedly ape-like dance of my mind’s atoms, given over to absurd whim?

The way inwards (2)

På natten

 

Ett öga rullar över golvet, jag vrider mig inåt.

    Dörren är stängda läppar, lövet är tungt att bära.

Sakta växer hår och naglar in i tystnaden.

    Dörrens läppar är stängda för omvända värden.

Ingen blixt är hemma under drömmens ögonlock,

    Men nattens åska går i det fördolda.

 

Gunnar Ekelöf, Dedikation, 1934

At Night

An eye rolls over the floor, I turn inwards.

    The doors are closed lips, the leaf is heavy to bear.

Into the silence slowly grow hair and fingernails.

    The doors' lips are closed to obverse values.

No flash of lightning finds a home under the dream's eyelids,

    But night's thunder rolls in the hiddenness.

    

Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (5)

 

I had now the whole south of France, from the banks of the Rhône to those of the Garonne to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure——at my own leisure——for I had left Death, the lord knows——and He only——how far behind me——“I have followed many a man thro’ France, quoth he—but never at this mettlesome rate”——Still he followed,——and still I fled him——but I fled him chearfully——still he pursued——but like one who pursued his prey without hope——as he lag’d, every step he lost, softened his looks——why should I fly him at this rate?

 

Vol. VII, Chap. XLII

 

——Bon jour!——good morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to be well mounted, than go o’foot——and obstructions in the glands are dangerous——And how goes it with thy concubine——they wife——and thy little ones o’both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady—your sister, aunt, uncle and cousins——I hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore-eyes.——What a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—glister—blister?——And why so many grains of calomel? and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——By my great aunt Dinah’s old black velvet mask! I think there was no occasion for it.

Vol. VIII, Chap. III

 

—— “And drink nothing ?—nothing but water?”

——Impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain,——see how they give way!——

In swims Curiosity [zvědavost], beckoning to her damsels to follow——they dive into the centre of the current——

 Fancy [obraznost] sits musing upon the bank [břeh], and, with her eyes following the stream [řeka], turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bowsprits.——And Desire [touha], with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other——

O ye water-drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain that ye have so often governed and turned this world about like a mill-wheel,——grinding the faces of the impotent,—bepowdering their ribs—be-peppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature——

Vol. VIII, Chap. V  

 

——No; I shall never have a finger in the pie (so here I break my metaphor)——

Crust [kůrka] and crumb [střída]
Inside [dužina] and out [slupka]

Top and bottom——I detest it, I hate it, I repudiate it——I'm sick at the sight of it——

’Tis all pepper,

        garlic,
        staragen,
        salt, and  

        devil’s dung——by the great arch-cook of cooks, who does nothing, I think, from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent inflammatory dishes for us,I would not touch it for the world——

Vol. VIII, Chap. XI

In love !——said the Corporal,—your Honour was very well the day before yesterday, when I was telling your Honour the story of the King of Bohemia—Bohemia! said my uncle Toby - - - - musing a long time - - - What became of that story, Trim ?

We lost it, an’ please your Honour, somehow betwixt us—but your Honour was as free from love then as I am——’Twas just whilst thou went'st off with the wheel-barrow—with Mrs. Wadman, quoth my uncle Toby——She has left a ball here—added my uncle Toby, pointing to his breast——

Vol. VIII, Chap. XXVIII

Though the Corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle Toby's great Ramallies wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce any great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished. The Corporal, with cheery eye and both arms extended, had fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with a better air——had Spleen given a look at it, ’twould have cost her ladyship a smile——it curl’d every where but where the Corporal would have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, would have done it honour, he could as soon have raised the dead. 

Vol. IX, Chap. II

Privy matters (2)

Cette distinction est trop obscure, nostre chouse vaut mieux, & puis j’ay mis dehors tous ceux qui n’aiment point raillerie,(*) soyez les bien ventrus,(†) la panse (‡) fait l’homme : je vous prie ça en liberté, y a-il personne de vous qui ait le ventre tendu, qui veuille aller en Purgatoire ? (§) tout est libre & bon en son temps, lieu & endroit ; ce fut un Moyne de S. Denys, disciple de Genebrard,(‖) qui m’aprit à nommer ainsi le privé, pource qu’on s’y purge.

[Béroalde de Verville], Le Moyen de parvenir. Oevure contenant la raison de tout ce qui a esté, est, & sera. Avec demonstrations certaines & necessaires, selon la rencontre des effets de VERTU. Et adviendra que ceux qui auront nez à porter Lunettes s’en serviront, ainsi qu’il est escrit au dictionnaire à dormir en toutes langues, S. Recensuit Sapiens ab A, ad Z. Imprimé cette année [1616] 

* ceux qui n’aiment point raillerie — i.e., the agelasts, whose inability to laugh is a mark of their inhumanity. In the Letter to Lord Odet, Cardinal de Châtillon, Rabelais names the agelasts alongside the cannibals and misanthropes as men that are desraisonnés, devoid of reason, like irrational beasts—solus homo ridet.

† ventrus — portmanteau of ventre and the past participle venu. The ventre/γαστήρ, or material corporeal substratum (материально-телесный низ — Bakhtin), which breaks down food in order for the body to put on new flesh, in an endless cycle of digestion and regeneration, particularly lends itself to jesting, to puns and word play, themselves a process of breaking down language to generate new meanings.

‡ la panse — the gut, bowels, paunch, from the Latin pantex, which was a vulgar term for venter (whence the French ventre), meaning both belly and womb, and, in the plural (pantices), tripe, sausages. The pantex/venter is the seat of the appetite, the material corporeal substratum, which defines and generates man's material nature: la panse fait l'homme.

§ Purgatoire — in Middle French the word could equally refer to spiritual and to physical purgation.

‖ Genebrard — Gilbert Génebrard (1535-1597). Benedictine theologian, Archbishop of Aix, ardent supporter of the anti-Huguenot Holy League in the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598).

This distinction is too subtle, our plan is the better, and I have heedfully expelled all who loathe laughter. I give you all a gut (good) welcome, ’tis the paunch that makes the man; here all is free. If any have tight bellies let them go to purgatory; there is a time for everything and a place too. (It was a monk of St. Denis, a disciple of Genebrard's, who taught me to call the privy purgatory, because it is there that a man purges him.)

Fantastic Tales or the Way to Attain—A Book Full of Pantagruelism Now for the First Time Done into English, trans. Arthur Machen. Privately Printed, Carbonnek, 1923

 

la panse fait l'homme

 

The Big Lie

Unwahrheit hat von einem höhern Gesichtspunkte noch eine viel schlimmere Seite als die gewöhnliche. Sie ist der Grund einer falschen Welt, Grund einer unaufloslichen Kette von Verirrungen und Verwicklungen. Unwahrheit ist die Quelle alles Bösen und Üblen. (Absolutes Setzen des Falschen. Ewiger Irrtum.) Eine Unwahrheit gebiert unzählige. Eine absolut gesetzte Unwahrheit ist so unendlich schwer auszurotten. 

 

Novalis, Fragmente

From a higher point of view, Untruth has a far worse side than it would ordinarily. It is the foundation of a false world, the foundation of an inextricable chain of aberrations and confusions. Untruth is the fount of all wickedness and evil. (Absolute positing of falsehood. Eternal error.) One untruth gives birth to countless others. An absolutely posited untruth is thus infinitely difficult to eradicate.

A dingy dream book

Once, indeed, now long ago, I found myself reading the first pages of a dingy and dumpy little book, a visionary book, murkily printed, and bound in what appeared to be shagreen, black shagreen. All that I can recall of its contents is a series of diagrams which appeared on pages 1 and 2. Against the first of these, a blank circle, was printed the word 'Reality'. Against the next, a blackened circle, was the word 'Unconsciousness'. The next circle showed a minute segment of white cut out of its black. This was labelled 'The Consciousness of an Ant'. The next, minus a rather larger segment, 'The Consciousness of Man'. From this I deduced--whether in the dream or on awakening I cannot say--that when, owing to the progress of the Superman, we arrive at Nirvana, all the black will have become white; that Reality and Consciousness will be coincident. 'I Am That I Am.' The infinite is All in All. This little revelation, as I say, was the subject matter of the first two pages of my dingy dream book. What, I wonder, were its last pages concerned with; and in what celestial library does it now repose?

Walter de la Mare, 'Dream and Imagination', Behold, This Dreamer! Of Reverie, Night, Sleep, Dream, Love-Dreams, Nightmare, Death, the Unconscious, the Imagination, Divination, the Artist, and Kindred Subjects, 1939