Descriptions of dreams in literature most likely appeared along with the literature itself even before the appearance of this word. Dreams are described in ancient mythology and the Bible, in epics and folk legends. The Prophet Muhammad told about his many dreams, and his ascension to heaven, according to many Islamic theologians, took place in a dream. There are references to dreams in Russian epics and Aztec legends.
Morpheus - the god of sleep and dreams in ancient Greek mythology
There is a fairly extensive and ramified classification of literary dreams. A dream can be a part of a story, a decoration for a work, a plot development, or a psychological technique that helps describe the thoughts and state of the hero. Of course, dreams can be of mixed types. The description of a dream provides the writer with a very rare freedom, especially for realist literature. The author is free to start a dream from anything, to develop its plot in any direction and end the dream anywhere, without fear of accusations by criticism of implausibility, lack of motivation, far-fetchedness, etc.
Another characteristic feature of the literary description of a dream is the ability to resort to allegories in a work in which a simple allegory would look ridiculous. FM Dostoevsky masterfully used this property. In his works, descriptions of dreams are often replaced by a psychological portrait, which would take dozens of pages to describe.
As already noted, descriptions of dreams have been found in the literature since ancient times. In the literature of the New Age, dreams began to appear actively from the Middle Ages. In Russian literature, as the researchers note, the flowering of dreams begins with the work of A.S. Pushkin. Modern writers also actively use dreams, regardless of the genre of the work. Even in such a down-to-earth genre as a detective, the famous commissioner Maigret Georges Simenon, he stands firmly on solid ground with both feet, but he also sees dreams, sometimes even, as Simenon describes them as “shameful”.
1. The expression "Vera Pavlovna's dream" is known, perhaps, much broader than the novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky "What is to be done?" In total, the main heroine of the novel, Vera Pavlovna Rozalskaya, had four dreams. All of them are described in an allegorical, but rather transparent style. The first conveys the feelings of a girl who has escaped from a hateful family circle through marriage. In the second, through the arguments of two acquaintances of Vera Pavlovna, the structure of Russian society is shown, as Chernyshevsky saw it. The third dream is devoted to family life, more precisely, to whether a married woman can afford a new feeling. Finally, in the fourth dream, Vera Pavlovna sees a prosperous world of pure, honest and free people. The general content of the dreams gives the impression that Chernyshevsky inserted them into the narrative solely for censorship reasons. While writing the novel (1862 - 1863) the writer was under investigation in the Peter and Paul Fortress for writing a short proclamation. To write about a parasite-free future society in such an environment was tantamount to suicide. Therefore, most likely, Chernyshevsky outlined his vision of the present and future of Russia in the form of a girl's dreams, during the periods of wakefulness of the leading sewing workshop and who understands feelings for different men.
Descriptions of dreams in "What to do?" helped N.G. Chernyshevsky to get around censorship obstacles
2. Viktor Pelevin also has his own dream of Vera Pavlovna. His story "The Ninth Dream of Vera Pavlovna" was published in 1991. The plot of the story is simple. The public toilet cleaner Vera makes her career with the room she works in. First, the toilet is privatized, then it becomes a store, and Vera's salary grows with these transformations. Judging by the way of thinking of the heroine, she, like many of the then Moscow cleaners, received a liberal arts education. As she philosophizes, she first begins to notice that some of the products in the store, and some of the customers and clothes on them, are made of shit. At the end of the story, streams of this substance drown Moscow and the entire globe, and Vera Pavlovna wakes up to the monotonous muttering of her husband that she and her daughter will go to Ryazan for several days.
3. Ryunosuke Akutagawa in 1927 published a story with the eloquent title "Dream". His hero, a Japanese artist, paints a picture from a model. She is only interested in the money that she will receive for the session. She is not interested in the artist's creative throwings. The artist's demands annoy her - she posed for dozens of painters, and none of them tried to get into her soul. In turn, the model's bad mood irritates the artist. One day he kicks the model out of the studio, and then sees a dream in which he strangles the girl. The model disappears, and the painter begins to suffer from pangs of conscience. He cannot understand whether he strangled the girl in a dream or in reality. The question is resolved quite in the spirit of Western literature of the twentieth century - the artist writes off his own bad deeds in advance for adherence to dreams and their interpretation - he is not sure whether he performed this or that action in reality, or in a dream.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa showed that it is possible to mix dream with reality for selfish purposes
4. The dream of the chairman of the house committee Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy was possibly inserted into Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita in order to entertain the reader. In any case, when the Soviet censorship removed from The Master and Margarita the humorous scene of the artistic interrogation of the currency dealers, its absence did not affect the work. On the other hand, this scene with the immortal phrase that no one will throw $ 400, because there are no such idiots in nature, is an excellent example of a humorous sketch. Much more significant for the novel is the dream of Pontius Pilate on the night after Yeshua's execution. The procurator dreamed that there was no execution. He and Ha-Notsri walked along the road leading to the moon and argued. Pilate argued that he was not a coward, but that he could not ruin his career because of Yeshua, who committed a crime. The dream ends with Yeshua's prophecy that now they will always be together in the memory of people. Margarita also sees her dream. After the Master is taken to an insane asylum, she sees a dull, lifeless area and a log building from which the Master emerges. Margarita realizes that she will soon meet with her lover either in this or in the next world. Nikanor Ivanovich
5. The heroes of the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky see many and tasteful dreams. One of the critics even noted that there is no writer in all European literature who more often used sleep as an expressive means. The list of works by the classic of Russian literature includes "How Dangerous It Is to Indulge in Ambitious Dreams", "Uncle's Dream" and "The Dream of a Funny Man." The title of the novel "Crime and Punishment" does not include the word "sleep", but its main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, has five dreams in the course of the action. Their topics are varied, but all the visions of the killer of the old woman borrower revolve around his crime. At the beginning of the novel, Raskolnikov hesitates in a dream, then, after the murder, he is afraid of exposure, and after being sent to hard labor, he sincerely repents.
Rasklnikov's first dream. As long as there is pity in his soul
6. In each of the books "Potterians" J.K. Rowling has at least one dream, which is not surprising for books of this genre. They mostly dream of Harry, and nothing good or even neutral happens in them - only pain and suffering. Noteworthy is a dream from the book "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets." In it, Harry ends up in the zoo as a specimen of an underage sorcerer - as it is written on a plate hanging on his cage. Harry is hungry, he lies on a thin layer of straw, but his friends do not help him. And when Dudley starts hitting the bars of the cage with a stick for fun, Harry screams that he really wants to sleep.
7. About Tatiana's dream in Pushkin's “Eugene Onegin” probably millions of words are written, although the author himself dedicated about a hundred lines to it. We must pay tribute to Tatyana: in a dream she saw a novel. More precisely, half of the novel. After all, a dream is a prediction of what will happen to the characters in Eugene Onegin next (the dream is almost exactly in the middle of the novel). In a dream, Lensky was killed, and Onegin contacted evil spirits (or even commands her) and, in the end, ended badly. Tatiana, on the other hand, is constantly unobtrusively helped by a certain bear - a hint of her future husband-general. But to understand that Tatyana's dream was prophetic, one can only finish reading the novel. An interesting moment - when the bear brought Tatyana to the hut, in which Onegin was feasting with evil spirits: a dog with horns, a man with a rooster's head, a witch with a goat's beard, etc., Tatyana heard the screaming and clinking of a glass “like at a big funeral”. At funerals and subsequent commemorations, as you know, glasses do not clink - it is not customary to clink glasses at them. Nevertheless, Pushkin used just such a comparison.
8. In the story "The Captain's Daughter" the episode with Petrusha Grinev's dream is one of the strongest in the entire work. An unwise dream - the guy came home, he is being led to his father's deathbed, but on him lies not his father, but a shaggy man who demands that Grinev accept his blessing. Grinev refuses. Then the man (it is implied that this is Emelyan Pugachev) begins to right and left hack everyone in the room with an ax. At the same time, the terrible man continues to talk to Petrusha in an affectionate voice. The modern reader, who has seen at least one horror movie, seems to have nothing to be afraid of. But A. Pushkin managed to describe it in such a way that goosebumps run down the skin.
9. German writer Kerstin Geer has built a whole trilogy "Dream Diaries" on the dreams of a teenage girl named Liv Zilber. Moreover, Liv's dreams are lucid, she understands what each dream means and interacts in dreams with other heroes.
10. In Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, the writer skillfully used the technique of introducing the description of dreams into the narrative. Anna and Vronsky almost simultaneously dream of a disheveled, small man. Moreover, Anna sees him in her bedroom, and Vronsky is generally incomprehensible where. The heroes feel that nothing good awaits them after this meeting with the man. Dreams are described roughly, with just a few strokes. Of the details, only Anna's bedroom, a bag in which a man crumples something iron, and his muttering (in French!), Which is interpreted as a prediction of Anna's death during childbirth. Such an indistinct description leaves the broadest scope for interpretation. And memories of Anna's first meeting with Vronsky, when a man died at the station. And the prediction of Anna's death under the train, although she still does not know about it either by sleep or spirit. And that the man did not mean the birth of Anna herself (she is just pregnant), but her new soul before her death. And the death of Anna's very love for Vronsky ... By the way, this same man appears several times, as they say, in “real life”. Anna sees him on the day she met Vronsky, twice during a trip to St. Petersburg and three times on the day of her suicide. Vladimir Nabokov generally considered this peasant to be the bodily embodiment of Anna's sin: dirty, ugly, nondescript, and the “clean” public did not notice him. There is another dream in the novel, which is paid attention to very often, although it does not look too natural, attracted. Anna dreams that both her husband and Vronsky caress her at the same time. The meaning of sleep is as clear as spring water. But by the time Karenina sees this dream, she no longer harbors illusions either about her feelings, or about the feelings of her men, or even about her future.
11. In the short (20 lines) poem by Mikhail Lermontov "Dream", even two dreams fit. In the first, the lyrical hero, dying of injury, sees his "home side" in which young women feast. One of them sleeps and sees in a dream a dying lyric hero.
12. The heroine of the novel by Margaret Mitchell "Gone with the Wind" Scarlett had one, but often repeated dream. In it, she is surrounded by a thick opaque fog. Scarlett knows that somewhere very close in the fog is something very important to her, but does not know what it is and where it is. Therefore, she rushes in different directions, but everywhere she finds only fog. The nightmare was most likely caused by Scarlett's despair - she took care of several dozen children, injured, and sick without food, medicine and money. Over time, the problem was resolved, but the nightmare did not leave the main character of the novel.
13. The protagonist of Ivan Goncharov's novel Oblomov sees his carefree life as a child. It is customary to treat a dream in which Oblomov sees a calm, serene rural life and himself, a boy, whom everyone cares for and indulges him in every possible way. Like, Oblomovites sleep after dinner, how is this possible. Or Ilya's mother does not allow him to go out in the sun, and then argues that it may not be good in the shade. And they also want every day to be like yesterday - no desire for change! Goncharov, describing Oblomovka, of course, deliberately exaggerated a lot. But, like every great writer, he is not completely in control of his word. In Russian literature, this began with Pushkin - he complained in a letter that Tatyana in Eugene Onegin “got away with a cruel joke” - she got married. So Goncharov, describing rural life, often falls into the top ten. The same afternoon dream of the peasants suggests that they live quite richly. After all, the life of any Russian peasant was an endless emergency. Sowing, harvesting, preparing hay, firewood, the same bast shoes, a few dozen pairs for each one, and then corvee still - there really is no time to sleep, except in the next world. Oblomov was published in 1859, when changes in the form of the “liberation” of the peasants were in the air. Practice has shown that this change was almost exclusively for the worse. It turned out that “like yesterday” is not the worst option at all.
14. The heroine of Nikolai Leskov's story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" Katerina received an unambiguous warning in her dream - she would have to answer for the crime she had committed. Katherine, who poisoned her father-in-law to hide adultery, a cat appeared in a dream. Moreover, the cat's head was from Boris Timofeevich, poisoned by Katerina. The cat paced the bed in which Katerina and her lover lay and accused the woman of a crime. Katerina did not heed the warning. For the sake of her lover and inheritance, she poisoned her husband and strangled her husband's boy-nephew - he was the only heir. The crimes were solved, Katerina and her lover Stepan received a life sentence. On the way to Siberia, her lover abandoned her. Katerina drowned herself, throwing herself into the water from the side of the steamer with her rival.
Katerina's love for Stepan led to three murders. Illustration by B. Kustodiev
15. In the story of Ivan Turgenev “The Song of Triumphant Love”, the heroes in a dream managed to conceive a child. “Song of Triumphant Love” is a melody that Muzio brought from the East. He went there after losing to Fabius the battle for the heart of the beautiful Valeria. Fabio and Valeria were happy, but had no children. Returning Muzio presented Valeria with a necklace and played “The Song of Triumphant Love”. Valeria dreamed that in a dream she entered a beautiful room, and Muzio was walking towards her. His lips burned Valeria, etc. The next morning it turned out that Muzia dreamed exactly the same thing. He bewitched the woman, but Fabius removed the spell by killing Mucius. And when, after a while, Valeria played “Song ...” on the organ, she felt a new life in herself.
