I will give a simple illustration of this lyrical type of dream. A
little girl of about four years and three-quarters went with her parents
to Switzerland. On their way she was taken to the cathedral at
Strasburg, and saw the celebrated clock strike, and the figures of the
Apostles come out, etc. In Switzerland she stayed at Gimmelwald, near
Muerren, opposite a fine mass of snowy mountains. One morning she told
her father that she had had "such a lovely dream." She fancied she was
on the snow-peaks with her nurse, and walked on to the sky. There came
out of the sky "such beautiful things," just like the figures of the
clock. This vision of celestial things was clearly due to the fact that
both the clock and the snow-peaks touching the blue sky had powerfully
excited her imagination, filling her with much the same kind of emotion,
namely, wonder, admiration, and longing to reach an inaccessible height.
Our feelings commonly have a gradual rise and fall, and the organic
sensations which so often constitute the emotional basis of our lyrical
dreams generally have stages of increasing intensity. Moreover, such a
persistent ground-feeling becomes reinforced by the images which it
sustains in consciousness. Hence a certain _crescendo_ character in our
emotional dreams, or a gradual rise to some culminating point or climax.
This phase of dream can be illustrated from the experience of the same
little girl. When just five years old, she was staying at Hampstead,
near a church which struck the hours somewhat loudly. One morning she
related the following dream to her father (I use her own language). The
biggest bells in the world were ringing; when this was over the earth
and houses began to tumble to pieces; all the seas, rivers, and ponds
flowed together, and covered all the land with black water, as deep as
in the sea where the ships sail; people were drowned; she herself flew
above the water, rising and falling, fearing to fall in; she then saw
her mamma drowned, and at last flew home to tell her papa. The gradual
increase of alarm and distress expressed in this dream, having its
probable cause in the cumulative effect of the disturbing sound of the
church bells, must be patent to all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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