Dream Galaxy

Literary dream · Transformation

A living globe made of drops

Russia · 1869 (novel)

This globe was alive—a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one dividing into many.

Original text — War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude), Leo Tolstoy; trans. L. & A. Maude

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Source
War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude) — Leo Tolstoy; trans. L. & A. Maude, 1869 / 1922–23 (translation). Book XIV, Ch. 15
Rights
Public domain (US)
Record type
Literary dream
Place
Russia · Russian
Date
1869 (novel)
Uncertainty
Moderate — Pierre’s dream as a prisoner of war, in Tolstoy’s War and Peace (Maude translation).
Imagery
Water · A stranger · Time · Crowd
Feelings
Awe · Wonder · Calm

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Dreams of becoming someone or something else, or of not knowing whether one is awake, have long interested writers on lucid dreaming; Stevenson credited such night work with parts of Jekyll and Hyde.

Stevenson (1888)

Mythological

Metamorphosis is one of mythology’s oldest engines — Ovid’s Metamorphoses gathers hundreds of beings changed into trees, birds and stars.

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Chinese traditions

Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream gave Chinese thought the idea of wuhua, “the transformation of things”, and the phrase “Zhuang Zhou dreams of the butterfly” remains shorthand for the blurred line between self and world.

Zhuangzi, Qiwulun

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images