Literary dream · Light & dark
A samurai racing the temple clock to enlightenment
Tokyo, Japan · 1908
和尚の室を退がって、廊下伝いに自分の部屋へ帰ると行灯がぼんやり点っている。
Withdrawing from the abbot’s room, I return along the corridor to my own room, where a paper lantern glows dimly.
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- Source
- Ten Nights of Dreams, First Night — Natsume Sōseki, 1908
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Tokyo, Japan · Japanese
- Date
- 1908
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — The samurai vows to reach enlightenment before the next chime of the clock, or kill himself.
- Imagery
- Temple · Light · Darkness · Time · War
- Feelings
- Helplessness · Unease
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Dreamers often report vivid light, shadow and colour. Ellis observed that vision dominates dreams even though the eyes are closed; some later writers treat light and dark as figures for knowing and not-knowing.
Ellis (1911), ch. IV
Mythological
Sun, moon and stars bow to Joseph in his dream; across cultures celestial lights mark rank, destiny and the order of the cosmos.
Genesis 37
Chinese traditions
The moon in Chinese poetry is a shared light across distance — the same moon seen by people far apart — which is why it appears so often in dreams of absent loved ones.
Su Shi; Du Fu
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- My friend, alive, no longer editing England · before 1911
- Two boys said: move your bed Jiankang (Nanjing), China · c. 480 (Southern Qi)
- The third day hence to fertile Phthia Athens, Greece · 399 BCE
- Buried a thousand years in stone Grasmere, England · c. 1817–1819
- A mother praying for a father who never returns Tokyo, Japan · 1908
- Already at the hospital, so no need to go Vienna, Austria · c. 1895