Literary dream · People & kin
Why is the babe weeping?
Russia · 1880 (novel)
Not far off was a village, he could see the black huts, and half the huts were burnt down, there were only the charred beams sticking up. … And in her arms was a little baby crying.
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- Source
- The Brothers Karamazov (trans. Constance Garnett) — Fyodor Dostoevsky; trans. Constance Garnett, 1880 / 1912 (translation). Book IX, Ch. 8
- Rights
- Public domain (US)
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Russia · Russian
- Date
- 1880 (novel)
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Mitya’s dream after his interrogation, in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (Garnett translation).
- Imagery
- House · Fire · Child · Mother · Crowd · Snow & ice
- Feelings
- Grief · Tenderness
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Family members, friends and strangers populate most dreams. Freud read many such dreams as wishes in disguise; contemporary researchers emphasise continuity with waking relationships and concerns.
Freud, Dream Psychology (1920)
Mythological
Dreams in epic and scripture are often addressed to someone — a wife waiting for a husband, a son receiving a vision for his family — and are told aloud to be understood.
Odyssey XIX; Genesis 37
Chinese traditions
Confucius lamented that he no longer dreamed of the Duke of Zhou; in Chinese letters, dreaming of someone is a measure of how much they are on one’s mind.
Analects 7.5
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- Who is dead in the White House? Washington, D.C., USA · early April 1865 (as reported)
- A mother praying for a father who never returns Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Dreaming of my late wife at her window Mizhou (Zhucheng, Shandong), China · 20th day of the 1st lunar month, 1075
- My mother lacked a pair of gloves London, England · 29 June 1667
- A fire in a hotel in a strange city Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1913
- Father, don’t you see that I am burning? Central Europe · before 1900