Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
Another time he dreamed that he was upon a vessel, evidently in the rôle
of Sir Tidemand. And Gro actually came over the water to him like the
maiden Blidelille, "with roses like two blood spots upon her breast. She
had crossed her hands beneath them and fastened her pure gaze upon
Soelver, so that he was seized with terror and, without escaping her
look, fled to the lee of the vessel to the edge of the ship. Yet Gro
steadily drew nearer. Now she reached the ship's border and Soelver
retreated. Step by step she followed him, the painful gaze of her
deathly white face absorbed by his own. And he withdrew over to the
other border, drew back until he felt the railing hard behind him. Gro
stepped forward alone and it was not possible to stop her; he felt as if
she wished to press within him like the sped arrow to its goal. Finally,
in an instant, as her garment fluttered against him, he threw himself
with a loud cry to one side and saw, with a great horror, that Gro went
forward, through the railing as through air and disappeared on the other
side in the sea, while Soelver lay moaning upon the deck and saw before
him only the red roses, which fallen from her breast crept like living
blood over the ship's planks."
Was it dream or reality, which he saw when he opened his eyes? "The
sun's rays burst forth through a crack in a long, radiant arrow, which
bored itself into the floor and transfixed as it were something red that
began to glow." And as Soelver crept nearer his astonishment grew
deeper. "For hard by the vision of red were footprints breathed so to
speak upon the floor, fine, slender prints, directed toward him, no more
distinct than if a warm breeze had blown away the dampness from the
surface of a stone, leaving the outline of a foot fixed there." As he
now stooped down and with his hand felt for the blood red spot, his
fingers actually touched "a heavy full-blown rose, whose sweet strong
odor he drank as if in an intoxication of reality." No one had forced
his way in through the hatchway, of this he soon convinced himself. Gro
must have dropped it here while he was spinning dreams about her.
In the nights which followed "he slept in a kind of hunger to feel her
physically and tangibly in his arms." Then when it was again full moon,
he found on awaking, in a spot upon which fell the rays of moonlight, a
little gold cross, "whose six polished stones seemed to radiate
moonlight from themselves. It was as if the moonlight lay within his
hand. He watched the small cross sparkle--it was the same that he had
seen in dreams upon her rose wreath. Gro had been also within his
prison."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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