Sleep and Its DerangementsHammond, William A. (William Alexander)
Science
Sleep and Its Derangements
Hammond, William A. (William Alexander)
Sleep -- Physiological aspects; Sleep disorders
And yet many remarkable stories are related, which tend to show the high
degree of activity possessed by the mind during sleep. Thus it is said of
Tartini,[35] a celebrated musician of the eighteenth century, that one
night he dreamed he had made a compact with the devil, and bound him to
his service. In order to ascertain the musical abilities of his servitor,
he gave him his violin, and commanded him to play a solo. The devil did
so, and performed so admirably that Tartini awoke with the excitement
produced, and seizing his violin, endeavored to repeat the enchanting
air. Although he was unable to do this with entire success, his efforts
were so far effectual that he composed one of the most admired of his
pieces, which in recognition of its source he called the “devil’s sonata.”
Coleridge gives the following account of the composition of the fragment,
Kubla Khan:
“In the summer of 1797, the author, then in ill health, had retired to a
lonely farm-house, between Perlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of
Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an
anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in
his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or
words of the same substance, in Purchas’s Pilgrimage: ‘Here the Khan Kubla
commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus
ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.’ The author
continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the
external senses, during which time he had the most vivid confidence that
he could have composed not less than from two to three hundred lines, if
that, indeed, can be called composition, in which all the images rose up
before him as _things_ with a parallel production of the corresponding
expression without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking,
he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole; and
taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the
lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called
out by a person on business from Perlock, and detained by him above an
hour; and on his return to his room, found to his no small surprise and
mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim
recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet with the exception
of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed
away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had
been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter.”
Dr. Cromwell,[36] citing the above instance of poetic inspiration during
sleep, states that, having like Coleridge taken an anodyne during a
painful illness, he composed the following lines of poetry, which he wrote
down within half an hour after awaking. These lines, though displaying
considerable imagination, are not remarkable for any other quality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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