I have spoken of visual sensations. They are the principal ones. But the
auditory sensations nevertheless play a role. First, the ear has also
its internal sensations, sensations of buzzing, of tinkling, of
whistling, difficult to isolate and to perceive while awake, but which
are clearly distinguished in sleep. Besides that we continue, when once
asleep, to hear external sounds. The creaking of furniture, the
crackling of the fire, the rain beating against the window, the wind
playing its chromatic scale in the chimney, such are the sounds which
come to the ear of the sleeper and which the dream converts, according
to circumstances, into conversation, singing, cries, music, etc.
Scissors were struck against the tongs in the ears of Alfred Maury while
he slept. Immediately he dreamt that he heard the tocsin and took part
in the events of June, 1848. Such observations and experiences are
numerous. But let us hasten to say that sounds do not play in our dreams
so important a role as colors. Our dreams are, above all, visual, and
even more visual than we think. To whom has it not happened--as M. Max
Simon has remarked--to talk in a dream with a certain person, to dream a
whole conversation, and then, all of a sudden, a singular phenomenon
strikes the attention of the dreamer. He perceives that he does not
speak, that he has not spoken, that his interlocutor has not uttered a
single word, that it was a simple exchange of thought between them, a
very clear conversation, in which, nevertheless, nothing has been heard.
The phenomenon is easily enough explained. It is in general necessary
for us to hear sounds in a dream. From nothing we can make nothing. And
when we are not provided with sonorous material, a dream would find it
hard to manufacture sonority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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