Dream Galaxy

Literary dream · Water

I jumped into the sea and regretted it

Tokyo, Japan · 1908

とうとう死ぬ事に決心した。それである晩、あたりに人のいない時分、思い切って海の中へ飛び込んだ。ところが——自分の足が甲板を離れて、船と縁が切れたその刹那に、急に命が惜しくなった。

Original text — Ten Nights of Dreams, First Night, Natsume Sōseki

At last I decided to die. One night, when no one was around, I threw myself into the sea. But — the instant my feet left the deck and I was cut off from the ship, I suddenly wanted to live.

Translation · Editorial translation (draft)

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Source
Ten Nights of Dreams, First Night — Natsume Sōseki, 1908
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Literary dream
Place
Tokyo, Japan · Japanese
Date
1908
Uncertainty
Moderate — Contains a depiction of a suicide attempt.
Imagery
Boat · Sea · Falling · Darkness · Sun
Feelings
Loneliness · Fear · Grief

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Early dream researchers often linked water imagery to bodily sensation and mood; later psychoanalytic writers read deep water as a figure for what lies below awareness. Modern researchers treat such readings as interpretive traditions rather than findings.

cf. Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911)

Mythological

Many cosmologies begin with primordial waters — the deep of Genesis, the Babylonian Apsu, the cosmic ocean of Hindu myth — so water often stands for origins, boundaries and crossings between worlds.

Comparative mythology

Chinese traditions

In Chinese poetry water carries time and loss — “all things flow east like water” (Li Bai) — while Daoist texts praise water as soft yet enduring.

Li Bai; Daodejing ch. 8

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images