“Let me have my dreams but not what I dream of.”
#197
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
1930s, On my Painting (1938)
“Let me have my dreams but not what I dream of.”
#197
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
Source: Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature (1955), p. 78
“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.”
As quoted in Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to Your Creativity (1997) by Jan Phillips, p. 176
Undated
“I have not seen you since, but you have often appeared to me in my dreams.”
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1499/
Variant: I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
Context: Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, Women Poets of Japan (1982), p. 14