“All this I have seen in the dreams of the night clearer than I can force myself to see them in dreams of the day. So that it would have been nothing new to me the other night to fall into an architectural dream if that were all, and yet I have to tell of things strange and new that befell me after I had fallen asleep.”
Source: A Dream of John Ball (1886), Ch. 1: The Men of Kent
Context: When I was journeying (in a dream of the night) down the well-remembered reaches of the Thames betwixt Streatley and Wallingford, where the foothills of the White Horse fall back from the broad stream, I came upon a clear-seen mediæval town standing up with roof and tower and spire within its walls, grey and ancient, but untouched from the days of its builders of old. All this I have seen in the dreams of the night clearer than I can force myself to see them in dreams of the day. So that it would have been nothing new to me the other night to fall into an architectural dream if that were all, and yet I have to tell of things strange and new that befell me after I had fallen asleep.
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William Morris 119
author, designer, and craftsman 1834–1896Related quotes
Philopatris, xxi, as translated in the epigraph, p. 8
The White Stone (1905)
“All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.”
Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets
“I don't dream at night, I dream at day, I dream all day; I'm dreaming for living.”
Translation 2: I'm going to wash myself, don't kiss me yet, while I haven't washed myself yet. – You? even when I would rub myself with Byzantine oil, you wouldn't kiss me, unless I'd force you with magnetic powers. There's a certain power in nature. Today you will dream you are kissing me. Payback time for the bad dream you caused me last night.
Translation 1: Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376, pp. 109 https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT109– 110 https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT110.
da Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna (19 November 2018). "An Ingenious Frédéric Chopin" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/books/review/fyderyk-chopin-alan-walker-frederic-chopin-biography.html in The New York Times.
Oltermann, Philip and Walker, Shaun (25 November 2020). "Chopin's interest in men airbrushed from history, programme claims: Journalist says he has found overt homoeroticism in Polish composer’s letters" https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/25/chopins-interest-in-men-airbrushed-from-history-programme-claims in The Guardian.
Picheta, Rob (29 November 2020). "Was Chopin gay? The awkward question in one of the EU's worst countries for LGBTQ rights" https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/29/europe/chopin-sexuality-poland-lgbtq-debate-scli-intl/index.html at CNN.
Chilton, Louis (30 November 2020). "Frédéric Chopin’s same-sex love letters covered up by biographers and archivists, claims new programme: Swiss radio documentary explored evidence of the great composer’s attraction to men" https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/chopin-frederic-composer-gay-letters-b1761548.html in The Independent.
From Chopin's Polish letters
Original: (pl) Idę się umywać, nie całuj mię teraz, bom się jeszcze nie umył. Ty? chociażbym się olejkami wysmarował bizantyjskimi, nie pocałowałbyś, gdybym ja Ciebie magnetycznym sposobem do tego nie przymusił. Jest jakaś siła w naturze. Dziś Ci się śnić będzie, że mnie całujesz. Muszę Ci oddać za szkaradny sen, jakiś mi dziś w nocy sprowadził.
Source: Polish: To Tytus Woyciechowski in Poturzyn (1830-09-04) https://chopin.nifc.pl/en/chopin/list/675_to-tytus-woyciechowski-in-poturzyn at Fryderyk Chopin Institute website.
"What's in a Kiss?" (song)
Gilbert O'Sullivan, "What's in a Kiss?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouajeMalTcw (song on YouTube)
Gilbert O'Sullivan, "What's in a Kiss?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-C3LsISY6Q (A 1981 live performance, with other material. On YouTube)
Song lyrics
Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), IV
Context: Oh, everyone laughs in my face now, and assures me that one cannot dream of such details as I am telling now, that I only dreamed or felt one sensation that arose in my heart in delirium and made up the details myself when I woke up. And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my God, how they shouted with laughter in my face, and what mirth I caused! Oh, yes, of course I was overcome by the mere sensation of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in my cruelly wounded heart; but the actual forms and images of my dream, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream, were filled with such harmony, were so lovely and enchanting and were so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor language, so that they were bound to become blurred in my mind; and so perhaps I really was forced afterwards to make up the details, and so of course to distort them in my passionate desire to convey some at least of them as quickly as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help believing that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times brighter, happier and more joyful than I describe it. Granted that I dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will tell you a secret: perhaps it was not a dream at all!