Dream Galaxy

Memoir · Transformation

The scene at the window

Bournemouth, England · 1885

For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers.

Original text — A Chapter on Dreams, in Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays, Robert Louis Stevenson

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Source
A Chapter on Dreams, in Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays — Robert Louis Stevenson, 1888 (essay) / 1892 (collection). A Chapter on Dreams
Rights
Public domain (author died 100+ years ago)
Record type
Memoir
Place
Bournemouth, England · Scottish
Date
1885
Uncertainty
Low
Imagery
Writing · A stranger
Feelings
Wonder · Fear

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