§ 1. The Pliant Nature of the Dream

First Section

The Dream-Life According to Its Universal Manifestation.

§ 1. The Pliant Nature of the Dream.

There is surely no more faithful friend, one who has accompanied us so lovingly throughout the whole of life, as the dream. Even upon the countenance of the infant he expresses, through a blissful smile, his kindly, friendly presence. But he follows the boy yet more powerfully; for the boy already possesses more than the flowing mother's breast, more than the deep-souled gaze of the mother's eye. For him, nature, life, freedom, merry companionship are the whole interest of life; and out of the song of birds, out of the many-shimmering colors of the meadow-plants, out of shrubs and hedges, out of joyful chasing and comradely wrestling, the dream weaves for him his most precious joys by night. But when the boy has grown large, and rises up a stately and handsome youth, emulating and marveling at the ideals of Rome and Greece, painting for himself the fragrant meadows of his own life's future, loving his friends, scarcely daring to gaze upon maidenly beauty: then the dream takes this too into his brush, and conjures forth, more beautifully than in reality, Grecian heroes and Cicero, the love of friendship and blossoming longing for the maiden, within his paradises; and the future-forms of hope, the immeasurable ideals of glowing youthful vigor, rise up like fairy castles, gold, flowers, and bright diamonds within the dream's regard. Nor does the dream forget to remember the virtuous maiden herself; he follows her, reverent and dutiful, as befits one before chaste beauty, and with the wings of the zephyr, with the invisible, flattering essence of flowers' fragrance, he fans before her worlds scarcely dared even in presentiment; and upon the carpets of the springtime meadow he lets her leap and dance, with her companions all around, in the lovely round-dance; youths swarm caressingly near, laying their whole full manly heart, in the form of a blossom, before the fair one. Or else the dream frightens her, teasingly, letting her stumble in the race for the hoop, yet catching her up again more swiftly than she herself could, lest the tender one's poised, graceful limbs be exposed; or he vexes her, by granting another the victory of beauty, leaving her standing disconsolate, alone and forsaken, while the full round-dance of maidens surges away, brisk, upon the arms of the youths. — With like constancy, though grown more serious through the iron nature of manhood, he follows the man. Here he has no games, no flowers to paint; here he paints the man's struggles. Now he leads the man into threatening cliffs, where he must first fight his way up to the laughing summit of the mountain; now he sets him in the midst of war and cannon, and bids him now be brave and bold, great, unshaken in the battle of the airy dream-idea, and helps him stoke his courage in surging muscle and arm.