Slowly reading de la Mare’s Behold, This Dreamer,, which I don’t think anyone else is reading, suggested the bibliographic thread indicated by the thread title. Even passages relevant to the topic embedded in longer works will be OK. Pool our knowledge?

Sleep and dreams are not the same, but it would be tough to exclude dreams from a sleep topic. On the other hand maybe we can usually omit items about elaborate dreams where the element of sleep is negligible. I violate this guideline below. But I’d rule out, for example, all of Dunsany’s so-called “dreamer’s tales.”

Two musical works I like:

A composition credited to Trebor called “En seumeillant” on disc 2 of a 2-CD set by Sour Cream that’s called The Passion of Reason. I think you can find this track on YouTube. It seems to me more like music from Lothlorien in Tolkien’s LOTR than anything else I have heard.

Edmund Rubbra’s orchestration of “His Dreame” from Giles Farnaby. It’s from Rubbra’s Opus 50, Improvisations on Virginal Pieces by Giles Farnaby. I have this on a Naxos CD.

For a poem, “The Sea-Bell” by Tolkien from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. In the book’s introduction this poem is said to be from a manuscript that labels it “Frodos Dreme.” It is related to “dark and despairing” dreams he suffered after his return to the Shire. I suppose it’s not a good choice for this topic because the sleep-element doesn’t even appear in the poem. But if you’ve never read it, you may have a special discovery. Tolkien has been recorded reading it.

It seems to me Philip K. Dick wrote a relevant story called “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.”

Artworks, not of dreams, but of sleepers? Leighton’s Flaming June?

So how about it, ED folk?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 8 Sep 21 | 11:07PM by Dale Nelson.

Chekhov's story “Sleepy” truly is a horror story.

"Proxy" by John Metcalf is about homicidal somnambulism (or multiple personality, maybe). The main character wakes up weary and totally done every morning, as if he was drinking all night, and is haunted by strange visions of a blur female face and a shadowy landscape he cannot localize in place or time. One day he is led by some inner instinct to a country spot among dunes where he finds the girl dead, buried under some yellow grasses and branches with dead leaves. It was he who had had dates with her and killed her in the end while he was fast asleep, acting under the influence of sleep walking.

And, of course, "Sleeping Beauty" deals with the theme of sleep to a certain measure. :-)

You thus, Minicthulhu, remind me of the La Sonnambula (sp?) opera.

Sleep and dreams are inseparable. In sleep we live in our lives a parallel reality. What would sleep be without dreams?! It would be like death. "Sleeping Beauty" says it all. What else could be said of it? Sleep under anesthesiology can also produce something to similar effect, although it is not really sleep - sleep wise it is closer to death. Dreams are the uses of natural sleep. The brain is constantly active during sleep, even when we can't remember that we dreamed. So describing sleep as separate from dreams, is rather meaningless. Compare a dead face, to a sleeping face - dreams are flickering over the sleeping face.

Good point, Knygatin, but I wanted to steer the thread towards passages that did give attention to sleep as such, rather than it becoming an anthology of passages about dreams. There are lots of dream-passages in literature and memoirs, psychological studies, etc., but we can also consider sleep as such in art, music, and literature. I could have made this clearer in the original post!