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The Deserted House

Dreamed summer 1940 by Jindrich Styrsky

I am standing in front of an old derelict house built of rough stone, unplastered. The windows and door are boarded up. I walk around it to see if there might be a way in. When I've walked around three sides, I notice on the eastem side, where the house abuts a garden, female legs protruding from the wall. As if a woman has been immured here. A stocking and a shoe cover one leg, and the other has been picked clean to the bone. I want to get into the house. Bears. I rip one of the boards from a window and break into the house. Then I barricade the window and am satisfied I'm safe. I lie down on a bed and sleep. -- -- -- A particular noise jolts me from the dream -- -- -- maybe it was my regular breathing. Light enters the room, and in a corner above me, above the bed, are giant cobwebs, dense, as if hundreds ofyears old, but instead of spiders there are two copulating frogs -- -- -- breathing deeply -- -- --

Legs emerge from a stone wall; sketch of a dream by Jindrich Styrsky. Click to enlarge.
Dream of the Deserted House, 1940, pencil 		Frogs mate on the ceiling; sketch of a dream by Jindrich Styrsky. Click to enlarge.
Dream of the Deserted House, 1940, pencil
Ruined stone house, sketch by Victor Hugo. Click to enlarge.
Victor Hugo's book illustration
La maison visionée

NOTE FROM 1940

After many years, this past spring I reread Victor Hugo's Toilers of tbe Sea and compared the translation with the original edition (Les Travailleurs de la Mer) that included Hugo's xylograph illustrations, The source of this dream obviously is one of the illustrations: LA MAISON VISIONNÉE.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Styrsky argues the dream is cryptomnesic: recalling information the conscious had forgotten. Sure, but are legs bursting out of a wall (or getting hunted by bears, or frogs defying gravity to mate on the ceiling) cryptomnesic images from Victor Hugo, too? Or Styrsky originals, meaning... what?

Oh, well! My dreamwork, too, is often partial--some elements traced to their roots or meanings, while others...

SOURCE: Dreamverse by Jindrich Styrsky (Twisted Spoon Press, 2018), pp107-8; primary source Sny, 1925-1940 ("Dreams, 1925-40") posthumously published (1970).

TITLE: Styrsky titled all his dreams "Dream of..."; I shortened to avoid a logjam under D.


LISTS AND LINKS: homes - stone - legs & feet - bones - hunted! - bears - beds - false waking & nested dreams - frogs - surreal dreams - cryptomnesic & book-inspired dreams - pencil dream art - more Jindrich Styrsky - on the ceiling again, Lolligagging

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