
A forgotten theory of dreams that inspired Vladimir Nabokov - lermontov
https://newrepublic.com/article/146906/night-vision
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stochastic_monk
This is fascinating.

Unmentioned, after commenting that Borges reviewed Dunne's work in 1940,
however, is that the permanence of objects in time relates thematically to
Jorge Luis Borges' own writing, recalling in particular The Garden of Forking
Paths [1941]. I couldn't prove a causal connection, but it seems to cast a a
commentary on Borges' post-1940 short stories.

Nabokov also played with the idea of reverie or dream-like states of
consciousness. I've only had the pleasure to have read Pale Fire this far, but
there is a careful blending of rational thought, creative (meta-)fiction,
"dream logic" and actual insanity. In it, untangling what's real and and
what's not left me with much the same sensation as trying to figure out
whether something once happened to me years before or I just had a vivid
dream.

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schoen
> the permanence of objects in time relates thematically to Jorge Luis Borges'
> own writing

Also very strongly to "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis_Tertius" (1940), which explicitly
mentions that topic, but maybe it's anachronistic (!) for your purposes here.

~~~
stochastic_monk
Literally, not literarily, anachronistic, to be precise. ;)

You’re entirely right.

I think that Borges and Hofstadter are writers whose work uniquely appeals to
computer scientists.

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brooklyn_ashey
Thanks for sharing this. I'll never forget reading Speak Memory. (!) The
opening sentences or somewhere near the opening ones concerned Nabokov's
meditation on death and birth and how alike they are. He talked about how
strange it is that before we are born, we aren't missed because we aren't yet
there. He goes into the feeling of thinking about this in a dreamlike manner
and there are several dreamy passages throughout the book. I agree it was his
best one. Thinking about him reading a corny dream book and being taken in by
it a bit humanizes him. Great article.

~~~
ppod
"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence
is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the
two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more
calm than the one he is headed for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an
hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something
like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been
taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically
unchanged — the same house, the same people — and then realized that he did
not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a
glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar
gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what
particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage
standing there on the porch; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse order
of events, his very bones had disintegrated."

~~~
brooklyn_ashey
Yes! yes! It's been over twenty years since I read this and it still calls to
me. Thank you for reminding me how beautiful and true that passage is. His
rhythm in this part is like a swing. Dream-like. Another lovely spot in the
book was when he called to a loved dog on a beach "Floss!". It was a great way
to end a section by letting it slip into memory like shouted words on a beach
fade after a loved dog, especially its name.

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leephillips
On the other hand:

In an interview (maybe reproduced in _Strong Opinions_?), Nabokov explains his
theory that the origins of dreams are the visual patterns produced by the eye
in darkness and interpreted by the sleeping brain.

~~~
rogual
I feel this is almost certainly right. Often when I fall asleep I literally
see my dreams forming out of the brown noise you see with closed eyes.

~~~
fouc
Interesting, it's always been black with hints of red (probably the blood in
the skin) to me, rather than blending together into a brown.

~~~
pasquinelli
i see black with drifting blue and green static.

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DennisP
> Dunne’s _Experiment_ seems to have become one of the secret wellsprings, or
> wormholes, of twentieth-century literature.

H.G. Wells, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Yeats, Joyce, and Agatha Christie were fans.
The Kindle version is available for $1.40.

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ilamont
Reading the sample of Dunne’s temporal geometry, I was reminded of the film
Donnie Darko, in which the protagonist repeatedly attempts to figure out a
similarly complicated early 20th century theory of time travel.

There's also a (possibly apocryphal) quote by Nabokov ('All the Russia I need
is with me, always with me. Literature, language and my own Russian childhood.
I will never return.') that would be burnished by the inclusion of dreams of
his long-lost homeland.

