'The
dream does never trouble itself about things which are not
deserving of our concern during the day, and trivialities
which do not trouble us during the day have no power to
pursue us whilst asleep.'
Sigmund
Freud,
On Dreams (1901), translated by M.D. Eder
"'Dreams mean nothing," Crick croaks, "just neural
housecleaning. The quicker we forget our dreams the
better." He's telling me my dreams, where I get my best
sets and characters are meaningless. Meaningless to whom,
exactly? They can't even think straight. As if "meaning"
floats about in a vacuum, with no relation to time, place,
or person.'
William
S. Burroughs,
from My Education: A Book of Dreams (Picador, 1995)
'Homer was aware that dreams are ambiguous and that it was
not easy to distinguish between reliable ones, which reach
us "through the gate of horn", and misleading ones that
come "through the gate of ivory".'
Robert
Flaceliere,
from Devins et Oracles Grecs
'The casual connection between two ideas is either left
without presentation, or replaced by two different long
portions of dreams one after the other. This presentation
is frequently a reversed one, the beginning of the dream
being the deduction, and its end the hypothesis. The direct
transformation of one thing into another in a dream seems
to serve the relationship of cause and effect.
The dream never utters the alternative "either/or", but
accepts both as having equal rights in the same connection.
When "either/or" is used in the reproduction of dreams, it
is to be replaced by "and".
Sigmund Freud,
On Dreams (1901), translated by M.D. Eder
Dream
If dreaming really were a kind of truce
(as people claim), a sheer repose of mind.
why then if you should waken up abruptly,
do you feel that something has been stolen from you?
Why should it be so sad, the early morning?
It robs us of an inconceivable gift,
so ultimate it is only knowable
in a trance which the nightwatch gilds with dreams,
dreams that might very well be reflections,
fragments from the treasure-house of darkness,
from that timeless sphere that does not have a name,
and that the day distorts in its mirrors.
Who will you be tonight in your dreamfall
into the dark, on the other side of the wall?
Jorge
Luis Borges,
from Selected Poems (Penguin, 1999)
Translation © Alastair Reid, 1999
"Islam
is probably the largest night-dream culture in the world
today. The night dream is thought to offer a way to
metaphysical and divinatory knowledge to offer clarity
concerning action in the world."
Iain
Edgar,
(social anthropologist,
Durham University)
'When the dream appears openly absurd, when it contains an
obvious paradox in its content, it is so of purpose.
Through its apparent disregard of all logical claims, it
expresses a part of the intellectual content of the dream
ideas.'
Sigmund
Freud,
On Dreams (1901), translated by M.D. Eder
'If
I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.
Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be
what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be.
And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?'
Lewis
Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland
'There seems to be no "not" in dreams.'
Sigmund
Freud,
On Dreams (1901), translated by M.D. Eder
'Dream
long enough and dream hard enough / you will come to know /
dreaming can make it so.'
William Burroughs, from My Education: A Book of Dreams
(Picador, 1995)