BACKGROUND

Surrealist Jindrich Styrsky had a half-sister, Emilie, fifteen years older. She died when he was six, and haunted his dreams for the rest of his short life.

EMILIE

I am in my parents' garden. In front of the house and its small steps is a tiny enclosed garden of currants. The fruit trees here are in the exact same place as they are in reality.

But I am surprised to find a baroque gate giving onto a vast park and an underground passage, everywhere cascades of water, terracotta gnomes, garden castles, Chinese lanterns, and the ground strewn with salami skins and cheese wrappings. White tables, set as in a garden café, stand between the trees. I am aware that all these things do not actually belong here. I am with Emilie.

Suddenly she's not with me, and I'm watching C. bathe in our fishpond, which is situated in an unfamiliar landscape. It seems as if he's been there since yesterday. It's noon, but he keeps shouting that it's only 10 a.m.

Once more I'm in the garden, where a strange auto driving through the air squirms its way between the trees. Its inventor, a little gray man, is talking. On a path through the meadow I kiss his hand, which he accepts with an odd sort of satisfaction.

Then I am accompanying Emilie and feel as though I abandoned her 20 years ago. She is telling me about the parties she is hosting today, tomorrow, and the day after. We kiss on the steps, and she unbuttons my pants, wanting to show her love for me in every way possible.

All of a sudden Father is shouting at me that he's going to shoot me with a No. 10 revolver.

EDITOR'S NOTE

I'm generally skeptical of Freud and his Oedipal theories, but Styrsky's family structure resembled Freud's own--both boys had a sexy sort-of-mother figure much younger than Dad. Under those conditions...

But other families with other structures have other tensions!

SOURCE: Dreamverse by Jindrich Styrsky (Twisted Spoon Press, 2018), p.36 (text), 44 (ill.); primary source Sny, 1925-1940 ("Dreams, 1925-40") posthumously published (1970). Styrsky titled all his dreams "Dream of..."; I shortened to avoid a logjam in D.

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