DREAMS

This is not an essay on dreams. There is just one question that interests me in this entry, also explaining the reason for its particular placement in the Truth subsection of the Philosophy section. Are dreams “true”? Or are they “lies,” finding no hard corroboration in the reality of living?

The answer, as I see it, should already be clear to all who are by now familiar with my concept of the “truth of fiction.” Dreams are a form of involuntary fiction, and, being fiction, they ought to be true by definition.

Which also leads us to the intriguing question of unconscious creation. Is such a thing even possible? Apparently, it is, and very much so, to which the eerie “reality” of dreams serves as a convincing indication. The fact that we frequently forget the substance of our dreams, except for the realization that we had been dreaming something, does not negate the fact that some sort of “creation” had indeed taken place.

Our next question is no less intriguing. Remember the previously quoted spectacular definition of genius, in the Last Words of Lord Edward George Bulwer-Lytton: “Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can”? Are we then to assume that our dreams have something in common with the imperative compulsion of a genius: born out of necessity just because they must? Mind you, we are not discussing here the intrinsic quality and aesthetic value of different forms of creation, but merely the fact that this general class of creativity exists.

Perhaps surprisingly, the line between dreams and artistic creation is very thin. It may be argued that music is a virtually subconscious form of creativity, akin to dreaming. We may go even further, following the line established by Nietzsche, which states that thinking itself is frequently an unconscious process, which takes us even closer to acknowledging a far more substantial common ground between dreams and reality than an obstinate rationalist would ever allow.

An interesting follow-up discussion, which follows next in the separate entry Daydreaming, explores the closer than expected connection between conscious “dreams” and the creation of fiction.