Primary Texts
The Circular Ruins
A wizard comes to the circular ruins to dream a man into existence. Fire agrees to animate the dreamed son, but requires that he be sent to tend another ruined temple. In the end, the wizard learns that he too is but a dream creation.
Read a print version:
(English) Borges, Jorge Luis. "The Circular Ruins." Collected Fictions. Viking, 1998.
Sun, Moon, and Talia
The 17th century Italian tale is commonly believed to be the chief source of Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty.” One of the chief differences between the tales is that in Basile’s version the King does not wake Talia, but instead enjoys sexual relations with her while she sleeps. Moreover, Talia gives birth to two babies while asleep, and awakens only when one of them sucks out the enchanted splinter.
Check out a print version:
(English) Basile, Giambattista. “Sun, Moon, and Talia.” [“Sole, Luna, e Talia”]. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. Ed. Jack Zipes. Trans. Jack Zipes. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 685-688.
A Lover's Discourse
Fragments about love from the lover’s point of view. I include Barthes’s text here because he alludes to watching the lover sleep. However, his scrutiny of the sleeping body recalls the powerful associations between sleep and death. “It is evident that I am fetishizing a dead body.”
Check out a print version:
(English) Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Trans. Richard Howard. Hill and Wang, 1979.
(French) Barthes, Roland. Fragments d’un discours amoureux. [Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse]. Paris: Seuil, 1977.
The Red Inn
You spend the night at an inn sleeping next to a man who has a lot of gold. When you next wake up, the man is murdered, you are covered in blood, and the gold is gone. Is a man capable of committing a crime in his sleep? Balzac’s chilling tale explores the relationship between “l’idée” (the idea) and “le fait” (the deed).
Check out a print version:
(English) Balzac, Honoré de. Juana, and the Red Inn. Trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Dodo Press, 2006.
(French) Balzac, Honoré de. L’Auberge rouge. Gallimard, 2005.
Ursule Mirouët
A drama of religious conversion and financial succession hinges upon information revealed through magnetic somnambulism and dream. This is the most readable and elegant of Balzac’s somnambulism novels.
Check out a print version:
(English) Balzac, Honoré de. Ursule Mirouet. Trans. Donald Adamson. Penguin Classics, 1976.
(French) Balzac, Honoré de. Ursule Mirouët. La Comédie humaine. [The Human Comedy]. Ed. Pierre-Georges Castex. Vol. 3. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. 12 vols. 1976-81.
Seraphita
Another of Balzac’s metaphysical novels that features his version of mystical somnambulism influenced by Swedenborg. A gender-shifting angel proclaims the unity of the material and spiritual worlds as s/he ascends into heaven.
Check out a print version:
(English) Balzac, Honoré de. Seraphita. Trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Dodo Press, 2006.
(French) Balzac, Honoré de. Séraphîta. La Comédie humaine. [The Human Comedy]. Ed. Pierre-Georges Castex. Vol. 11. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. 12 vols. 1976-81.
La Peau de Chagrin
A desperate young man comes into possession of a talisman that grants his every wish, but for every wish granted, shortens his life. Balzac’s 1831 novel is a fascinating study of the relationship between desire, death, and also sleep—because only in sleep can Raphael cease wanting and forestall his death.
READ THE NOVEL ONLINE (in French)
Check out a print version:
(English) Balzac, Honoré de. The Magic Skin/La Peau de Chagrin. Trans. Ellen Marriage. Dodo Press, 2006.
(French) Balzac, Honoré de. La Peau de chagrin. La Comédie humaine. [The Human Comedy]. Vol. 10. Paris: Gallimard, 1979. 12 vols. 1976-81.
Maitre Cornelius
Cornelius Hoogworst is a silversmith and notorious miser whose treasure is periodically robbed. Only when a young gentleman apprentices himself to the smith (with the aim of gaining access to the lovely women next door) is the secret of the robberies revealed. Let it also be noted that Cornelius is a frequent sleepwalker…
Check out a print version:
(English) Balzac, Honoré de. Maitre Cornelius. Trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Mondial, 2005.
(French) Balzac, Honoré de. Maître Cornelius [Master Cornelius]. La Comédie humaine. [The Human Comedy]. Ed. Pierre-Georges Castex. Vol. 11. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. 12 vols. 1976-81.
Louis Lambert
The life story of mad genius Louis Lambert, as narrated by his closest friend. Lambert is fascinated with the invisible world, which he theorizes according to a mystical Swedenborgianism, influenced by the nineteenth-century “sciences” of animal magnetism and somnambulism. Balzac’s novel is intriguing: less as a philosophical text, but more as a narrative attempt to compose a biography from fragments of a life.
Check out a print version:
(English) Balzac, Honoré de. Louis Lambert. Trans. Clara Bell and James Waring. Dodo Press, 2005.
(French) Balzac, Honoré de. Louis Lambert. La Comédie humaine. [The Human Comedy]. Ed. Pierre-Georges Castex. Vol. 11. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. 12 vols. 1976-81.
Cupid and Psyche
Jealous Venus sends her son to punish the beautiful mortal Psyche, but instead Cupid falls in love with her. He installs the girl in a castle and comes to her only at night so that she will remain ignorant of his identity. Spurred on by her mean-hearted sisters, who have convinced her that she must be living with a monster, Psyche spies upon the sleeping Cupid. He wakes when a drop of oil from her lamp falls upon his skin, and he flees, angry at her betrayal. Psyche then implores Venus to return Cupid’s love to her, and the goddess sends her to complete three difficult tasks.
Check out a print version: Apuleius. Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche. Trans. E.J. Kenney. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Yume [Dreams]The Wizard of Oz
1939
“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Based on L. Frank Baum’s novel, Victor Fleming’s musical leaves no doubt that Dorothy has dreamed her fantastical adventures in Oz, weaving themes and characters from her black and white waking life into a Technicolor odyssey.
Waking Life
2001
Richard Linklater turned live-action film into animation, creating a movie with an jumpy and yet fluid feel that perfectly corresponds to one of the overriding themes of the film: what is dream and what is real, and how do we know the difference? The main character glides in and out of conversations ranging from philosophy to physics, all while trying to figure out how to wake up.
Vanilla Sky
2001
Cameron Crowe’s remake of Abre los ojos more or less follows the story of the original Spanish film, although the denouement explains the mystery point by point, clearly delineating what is dream and what is real in the life of disfigured millionaire playboy David Aames. Stunning visuals and an evocative soundtrack give the film a distinctly different look and feel from the original.
Until the End of the World
1991
Sci-fi cult road movie in which a scientist invents a device that records people’s dreams.
Twelve Monkeys
1995
A convict is sent from the future to gather information about an epidemic that strikes in 1996. He appears to wake up in alternating time periods throughout the film. Terry Gilliam’s nightmarish tale questions the nature of reality, time, cause, and effect. The film was inspired by La Jetée (1962), in which the time traveler is plagued by a dream-like memory.
Spellbound
1945
Hitchcock’s psychiatric thriller purports to use Freudian dream analysis to solve the mystery at the center of the film. While the film stretches Freud to serve its narrative purposes, it does offer up a fascinating and beautiful dream sequence, designed by Salvidor Dali.
Sleeping Beauty (Disney)
1959
Very little about this Disney film resembles the tale as written by Perrault or the Grimm brothers. The curse unfolds in the usual way, but the sleeping princess is protected by three dimwitted but kindhearted fairies, and the prince ends up battling a dragon on his way into Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Much of the musical score was based on Tchaikovsky’s ballet “Sleeping Beauty.”
Passion of Mind
2000
A widow in France dreams every night that she is a literary agent in New York. Every night the literary agent dreams of life in France. Are the women doubles? Or is one real and one imaginary? Berliner’s film sets up some interesting questions about identity, but unfortunately the answer at the film’s conclusion wraps things up a little too neatly, emphasizing psychodrama over existential explorations.
Mulholland Dr.
2001
A woman survives an attempted murder but loses her memory. A bright-eyed young actress comes to L.A. to be a star. A film director deals with blackmail and threats. Toss in a cowboy, a dwarf, a mysterious blue box and key, and the Club Silencio, and you have David Lynch’s symbolic odyssey into the nightmarish dream of a dying woman.
Search
Syndicate
