The Oxford Book of Dreams
(chosen by Stephen Brook), Oxford Univeristy Press, 1983.
Introduction: ..."Although this
anthology does contain examples od dream interpretation, most of the dreams in
this book are instances of the literary exploitation of the dream
experience. Of course, the distinction is in many respects a false
one, if only because the dream as a literary device is bound up with the use its
creator chooses to make of it. The invention of a dream is in itself an
act of interpretation...[H]ow exactly does one distinguish, even in literature,
between dream, daydream, hallucination, and reverie?..."
Index:: Nabokov, Vladimir 2, 45-6, 206-7, 243.
Prologue: "Human dreams do not
easily forget old grudges." (Perfection, 1974)
Love and Sex,: 45-6: [Humbert Humnbert is lodging with Mrs. Charlotte Haze
and her daughter Lolita.] "I have turned on the light to take down a
dream. It had an evident antecedent. Haze at dinner had benevolently proclaimed
that since the weather promised a sunny weekend we would go to the lake Sunday
after church [...] Big Haze and little Haze rode on horseback arount the
lake, and I rode too, dutifully bobbing up and down, bowlegs astraddle although
there was no horse between them, only elastic air - one of those little
omissions due to the absent-mindedness of the dream agent" (Lolita,
1955).
The absurd; 206-7: Singularly enough, I seldom if ever dreamed of Lolita as I
remember her - as I saw her constantly and bsessively in my conscious mind
during my daymares and insomnia. More precisely; she did haunt my sleep but she
appeared there in strange and ludicrous disguises [...] weeping in my
bleding arms...in a dream disorder of auctioneered Viennese bric-a-brac, pity,
impotence, and the brown wigs of tragic old women who had just been gassed." (
Lolita, 1955).
Interpretations; 243: " I discovered there was an endless source of robust
enjoyment in trifiling with psychitrists, cunningly leading them on; never
letting them see ethat you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them
elaborate dreams, pure classics in style ( which make them, the
dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake
'primal scenes'; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one's real
sexual predicament." (Lolita,1955).
Humbert dixit!