World Dream Bank home - add a dream - newest - art gallery - sampler - dreams by title, subject, author, date, place, names

Snake Girls

Dreamed April/May 2010? by Judith Schalansky

[Schalansky was staying in a cabin in the Alps, trying to work on a book.]

I was toying with the idea, which I had thought original at the time, of writing a guide to monsters... [but] I was a little disappointed... each new story soon turned out to be an amalgamation of old familiar set pieces, and each figure an unsurprising hybrid of the imaginary and the true to life. In short, there was not exactly an abundance of species, indeed real life was considerably more eccentric than fiction...

Then, on the twelfth or thirteenth night, I dreamed of a bathtub full of snakes with short stout bodies that actually reminded me more of monitor lizards with their legs amputated. The strangest thing about them was that each one had a girl's head with a youthful, rosy face and blonde hair braide into long plaits. I tried speaking to them but they remained mute, and instead took off into the air and flew round the room. Their facial expressions were the only sign that they had feelings like me.
Flying snake-girls. Dream by Judith Schalansky, sketch by Wayan. Click to enlarge.
When I woke up, I found myself thinking of Baku, the Japanese monster with an elephant's head, a bull's tail, and the paws of a tiger, that fed mostly on human nightmares, and wondered whether it would have liked the tasted of mine.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Schalansky's snake girls are not, of course, new; nagas and lamias (even flying ones) go way back. So what was the dream saying? Even if they choose not to speak with her, she recognizes they aren't the folkloric monsters she's been reading of; their shapes are strange but their souls are... akin to her own.

As I look through the World Dream Bank's examples of snake dreams, a surprising number are empathetic like this; especially women's dreams. More men seem to fear snake people in their dreams (though by no means all).

SOURCE: An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky, (English ed. 2020), p.65-66 (intro) & 70-71 (dream). I added title (to aid searches) and sketch (because I had fun).
DATE: She wrote Inventory 2016-17. Her April/May retreat was "years ago" at that time.


LISTS AND LINKS: writers & writing - animal people - reptiles - snakes & snake people - two contrasting dreams of a Lamia - flying in dreams (or must it always be wonderful you that flies?) - empathy - woodcuts & scratchboard dream art - more Schalansky: dreams of Rapa Iti

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites