Diary & poem of record · Water
The letter on the seashore
Seashore, location unstated · 31 January 1877
I was walking alone on the seashore. The day was singularly clear and sunny. Inland lay the most beautiful landscape ever seen; and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks of which were white with glittering snows. Along the sands by the sea came towards me a man accoutred as a postman. He gave me a letter. It was from you.
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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, II. The Wonderful Spectacles
- Record type
- Diary & poem of record
- Place
- Seashore, location unstated · British
- Date
- 31 January 1877
- Uncertainty
- Low — First-person diary dream; the excerpt preserves the opening scene and does not split the dream into additional records.
- Imagery
- Sea · Snow & ice · Mountain · Writing · A stranger
- Feelings
- Wonder · Calm
Another way to look at this dream
Notes on the images in this dream from psychology, myth, folklore and semiotics. Each names its source.
Water
Was the water clear or muddy, still or rising? Which water in your own life — a place, a swim, a flood — does it bring back first?
Jung · The unconscious
Jung called water the most common image for the unconscious: something deep, below the surface, that we can look into but not see through.
C. G. Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, Collected Works 9i
Classical Chinese medicine Historical medicine
The Lingshu pairs dream images with the balance of yin and yang: when yin is excessive, one “dreams of wading through great water, and is afraid”. This is a historical theory about the body, not medical advice and not a way to diagnose anything.
Huangdi Neijing, Lingshu ch. 43 “Yinxie Fameng”
Hebrew Bible; Babylonian myth Myth & scripture
Several creation stories begin with primordial water — “darkness was upon the face of the deep” in Genesis, the fresh-water Apsu in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Here water is what exists before order.
Genesis 1:2; Enuma Elish I
Snow & ice
Was the snow fresh or old? Did it make a sound underfoot? Did the cold hurt, or wake you up?
Early dream research Dream research
Ellis gives cold from disturbed bed covers as a common bodily source of dreams, with the case of a sleeper who dreamed of being surrounded by snow on a mountain and woke tangled in the sheets, partly uncovered, on a cold night.
Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911), ch. IV, on tactile sensations
Chinese poetry Literature
Liu Zongyuan’s “River Snow” empties a whole landscape — no birds, no footprints — and leaves one old man fishing in the cold: snow as solitude.
Liu Zongyuan, “River Snow”
Mountain
Were you climbing it, looking at it, or already on top? What would reaching the summit mean to you?
Japanese custom Folk saying
An Edo-period saying ranks the luckiest images for the first dream of the New Year (hatsuyume): “first Fuji, second a hawk, third an aubergine”.
Edo-period saying on hatsuyume
Chinese poetry Literature
Li Bai climbs Mount Tianmu in a dream, sees a whole immortal world open up, then wakes on his pillow — and decides not to bow to the powerful.
Li Bai, “Dreaming of Tianmu” (c. 745)
Exploration notes, not a diagnosis, a prediction, or evidence of real events.
Dreams that share its images
- A melon in winter, still in his hand Northern Wei China · c. 500 (Northern Wei)
- A miracle drug called selvdrolla England · before 1911
- Asleep among the grapes Eleusis, Attica · c. 510 BCE
- A book read during sleep Atcham, England · March 5, 1885
- Swallowing pearls in the stream Nankang, Jiangxi, China · c. 880
- A shirt washed clean by fire Wu, China · 3rd century (Wu)