DREAM GALAXY

Diary & poem of record · Cities & buildings

The deserted city of blood

Unidentified city · c. 1877 (diary sequence)

I dreamed that I was wandering along a narrow street of vast length, upon either hand of which was an unbroken line of high straight houses, their walls and doors resembling those of a prison. The atmosphere was dense and obscure, and the time seemed that of twilight; in the narrow line of sky visible far overhead between the two rows of house-roofs, I could not discern sun, moon, or stars, or color of any kind. All was grey, impenetrable, and dim. Underfoot, between the paving-stones of the street, grass was springing. Nowhere was the least sign of life: the place seemed utterly deserted.

Original text — Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part I: Dreams, Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland

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Source
Dreams and Dream-Stories, Part I: Dreams — Anna Bonus Kingsford; edited by Edward Maitland, posthumous edition; dreams recorded c. 1876–1887. Part I, IV. The City of Blood
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Diary & poem of record
Place
Unidentified city · British
Date
c. 1877 (diary sequence)
Uncertainty
Low — First-person diary dream. The chapter has no explicit calendar date; the approximate year follows its position among dated 1877 entries.
Imagery
City · House · Darkness · Road
Feelings
Unease · Loneliness

Another way to look at this dream

Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.

City

Do you know this city? Were you looking for a way, hurrying, or lost?

Jung · The centre

In 1927 Jung dreamed of a dark, sooty Liverpool; at its centre was a square with a pool, an island and a single magnolia tree in bloom, lit as if by sunlight. He took it as an image of a centre in the psyche — what he called the Self.

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Song-dynasty memoir Literature

After Kaifeng fell, Meng Yuanlao wrote down the lost capital street by street and called the book a “dream of splendour”, comparing his memory to the Yellow Emperor waking from his dream of the land of Huaxu.

Meng Yuanlao, Dongjing Meng Hua Lu (1147), preface

Hebrew Bible Myth & scripture

The builders of Babel set out to make a city and a tower reaching heaven, and end scattered, no longer speaking one language.

Genesis 11:1–9

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House

Whose house was it — one you know, or one you only know in the dream? Which room did you spend the most time in?

Jung · The house as psyche

In 1909 Jung dreamed of a house whose cellar led down into older and older layers — Roman, then prehistoric. He later took it as an image of the psyche, with the oldest layers at the bottom.

C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962)

Phenomenology Philosophy

Gaston Bachelard argued that the house “shelters daydreaming”: the attic and cellar of a childhood home stay with us as places to imagine from.

Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1958)

Chinese fiction Literature

In chapter 5 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Baoyu dreams his way into the Land of Illusion, a palace of cabinets holding registers of the household’s fates.

Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber, ch. 5

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Darkness

What could you not see in the dark — and did it feel like something could see you?

Jung · Nigredo

Jung borrowed the alchemists’ word nigredo, “blackening”, for the dark first stage of a transformation — a time of confusion that comes before anything clarifies.

C. G. Jung, “Psychology and Alchemy”, Collected Works 12

Greek myth Myth & scripture

In Hesiod’s family tree of the gods, Night (Nyx) is the mother of Sleep (Hypnos) and of the tribe of Dreams. Darkness here is where dreams come from.

Hesiod, Theogony 211–212

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Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.

Dreams that share its images