/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18256293]

dream books or books with a strong dream feeling, it does not have to be exclusively, but books with a fantasy and particular taste that give the dream feeling, I await your recommendations

[Anonymous No.18256537]

>>18256293

[Anonymous No.18256597]

>>18256293
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo

[Anonymous No.18256739]

[Anonymous No.18256775]

These. In the interview with gardener he said he based alll his books on his nightmares.

[Anonymous No.18256857]

Murakami unfortunately

[Anonymous No.18256971]

>>18256293
The last Unicorm

Moby Dick

Typee

The Sea Wolf

The Martian Chronicles

[Anonymous No.18256983]

>>18256775
This is the only time that these books have been mentioned in a thread where they actually hold some relevance.

[Anonymous No.18258579]

>>18256293
In Watermelon Sugar for sure.

[Anonymous No.18258602]

>>18256293
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

[Anonymous No.18258623]

>>18256775
I like how they segue the chapters with dream sequences. They already have a dream-like quality to them. I didn’t know that they were actually based on dreams/nightmares but that makes sense. What did you think of them?

[Anonymous No.18258646]

The Castle by Kafka

[Anonymous No.18258661]

>>18256775
>want to write
>used to have horrible nightmares
>stopped
It's like 16 Accords of Madness all over again.

[Anonymous No.18258684]

>>18256537
Very highly recommend this.
Also, Krzhizhanovsky's short stories, specifically Memoirs from the Future.

[Anonymous No.18258694]

I think Lolita is pretty dreamy

[Anonymous No.18259124]

>>18256293
The three stigmata of palmer eldritch

[Anonymous No.18260115]

>>18256293

[Anonymous No.18260263]

>>18256293
Buzzati's short stories

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260267]

Gerard de Nerval’s aurelia is phenomenally oneiric, has his dreams and Proust praised his prose most highly and Jung praised the accuracy of his dreams for their oneiric depth.

All of Dunsany is coated with a dream quality, quite a few of the poems of Verlaine are such, a titanic amount of Clark Ashton smith’s prose and poetry is dream like perhaps check out his hashish eater, Petrarch’s poetry especially Quando il soave mio fido conforto” is exceptionally dreamy, all of Keats is filled with an ethereal air as is much of Spenser and Ovid.

Much of Swinburne is oneiric, try garden of proserpine, Huysmans has some of the best oneiric prose in fiction, you can find a bit in a-rebours but much more in En-rade. Machen is another lovely choice. And while it’s memey, lovecraft does have very good pieces. I will post a few poems and prose until I get bored.

Ex oblivione by lovecraft

When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim’s body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.
Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars.
Once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream under the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight, iridescent arbours, and undying roses.
And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced by a little gate of bronze.
Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples. And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of bronze therein.
After a while, as the days of waking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dull world stript of interest and new colours. And as I looked upon the little gate in the mighty wall, I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return.
So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well hidden. And I would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely, but more lovely and radiant as well.


Cont

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260274]

>>18260267
Then one night in the dream-city of Zakarion I found a yellowed papyrus filled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city, and who were too wise ever to be born in the waking world. Therein were written many things concerning the world of dream, and among them was lore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples, and a high wall pierced by a little bronze gate. When I saw this lore, I knew that it touched on the scenes I had haunted, and I therefore read long in the yellowed papyrus.
Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the irrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew not which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into the unknown land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. So when I learned of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me through, I resolved to take it when next I awaked.
Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden valley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to the antique wall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar. From beyond came a glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of the land from whence I should never return.
But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of drug and dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hoped to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260286]

>>18260274
Quando il soave mio fido conforto by Petrarch


Whenever my gentle faithful comforter,
who means to set my weary mind at rest,
arrives and settles at my bed’s left side,
speaking sweet reason as she always does,
I feel myself grow pale with grief and fear,
and say, ‘Where have you come from, happy soul?’
Drawing a branch of palm
and one of laurel from her breast, she says,
‘From the serenity
of the empyreal heaven, a holy soul,
I make my way to comfort and console.’
With words and gestures and humility
I thank her, and I ask, ‘How do you come
to know of my sad state?’ And she replies,
‘Your constant weeping flowing like the seas
and all the boisterous winds of your sad sighs
travel to heaven, and disturb my peace.
Does it so much displease
that I have left life’s misery behind
and reached a better life?
Rather you should be glad of it, if you
loved me, as by your words you seemed to do.’
I answer her, ‘I mourn myself alone,
remaining here in darkness and in pain,

but always sure that you have gone to heaven,
as sure as it were something I had seen.
I ask, would God and Nature ever put
so much of virtue in a youthful heart,
if everlasting life
had not been destined for the good you did?
You, one of those rare spirits
who lived with us in true nobility,
and then flew up to heaven suddenly!
‘But I, what can I do but weep for ever,
alone and wretched, nothing without you?
I wish that I had died within my cradle,
rather than feel what Love could bring me to!’
And she, ‘Why do you always weep and sigh?
It would be so much better if you flew
up from this earth, and weighed
all mortal things, and all that you have said,
more carefully, and did
your best to follow me, if you indeed
love me. Oh, pluck a single branch at last!’
‘I want to know,’ is my immediate question,
‘what these two branches mean or symbolise.’
And she, ‘You can yourself provide the answer,
since your pen gives to one of them such praise.
The palm is victory: I overcame,

still young, myself, the world; the laurel is
triumph, of which I’m worthy
thanks to that Lord Who helped me to that end.
You, harassed by the world,
must turn to Him, and pray that He may send
help that we may be with Him in the end.’
‘Is this the golden hair, the golden knot,’
I ask, ‘which binds me still, and those bright eyes
which were my sun?’ She answers me, ‘Do not
err like a fool, or speak or think like one.
I am a naked spirit, blest in heaven:
what you look for is dust, and so has been
for years; I look like this
to draw you from your trouble; once again
I shall be lovely, more
than ever, since I was both cruel and kind
for our salvation at the latter end.’
I weep; she wipes my eyes
with her bare hands; and then she softly sighs;
then speaks in harsh reproof
with such words as might break a stone in half;
and as she goes, my hope of sleeping goes.

[Anonymous No.18260292]

>>18260274
>>18260267
>it's those long-winded posts by the tripfag again

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260296]

The ceremony by Arthur machen

From her childhood, from those early and misty days which began to seem unreal, she recollected the grey stone in the wood.
It was something between the pillar and the pyramid in shape, and its grey solemnity amidst the leaves and the grass shone and shone from those early years, always with some hint of wonder. She remembered how, when she was quite a little girl, she had strayed one day, on a hot afternoon, from her nurse’s side, and only a little way in the wood the grey stone rose from the grass, and she cried out and ran back in panic terror.
‘What a silly little girl,’ the nurse had said. ‘It’s only the . . . stone.’ She had quite forgotten the name that the servant had given, and she was always ashamed to ask as she grew older.
But always that hot day, that burning afternoon of her childhood when she had first looked consciously on the grey image in the wood, remained not a memory but a sensation. The wide wood swelling like the sea, the tossing of the bright boughs in the sunshine, the sweet smell of the grass and flowers, the beating of the summer wind upon her cheek, the gloom of the underglade rich, indistinct, gorgeous, significant as old tapestry; she could feel it and see it all, and the scent of it was in her nostrils. And in the midst of the picture, where the strange plants grew gross in shadow, was the old grey shape of the stone.
But there were in her mind broken remnants of another and far earlier impression. It was all uncertain, the shadow of a shadow, so vague that it might well have been a dream that had mingled with the confused waking thoughts of a little child. She did not know that she remembered, she rather remembered the memory. But again it was a summer day, and a woman, perhaps the same nurse, held her in her arms, and went through the wood. The woman carried bright flowers in one hand; the dream had in it a glow of bright red, and the perfume of cottage roses. Then she saw herself put down for a moment on the grass, and the red colour stained the grim stone, and there was nothing else— except that one night she woke up and heard the nurse sobbing.
She often used to think of the strangeness of very early life; one came, it seemed, from a dark cloud, there was a glow of light, but for a moment, and afterwards the night. It was as if one gazed at a velvet curtain, heavy, mysterious, impenetrable blackness, and then, for the twinkling of an eye, one spied through a pin-hole a storied town that flamed, with fire about its walls and pinnacles. And then again the folding darkness, so that sight became illusion, almost in the seeing. So to her was that earliest, doubtful vision of the grey stone, of the red colour spilled upon it, with the incongruous episode of the nursemaid, who wept at night.
But the later memory was clear; she could feel, even now, the inconsequent terror that sent her away shrieking, running to the nurse’s skirts.

Cont

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260305]

>>18260296
Afterwards, through the days of girlhood, the stone had taken its place amongst the vast array of unintelligible things which haunt every child’s imagination. It was part of life, to be accepted and not questioned; her elders spoke of many things which she could not understand, she opened books and was dimly amazed, and in the Bible there were many phrases which seemed strange. Indeed, she was often puzzled by her parents’ conduct, by their looks at one another, by their half-words, and amongst all these problems which she hardly recognized as problems, was the grey ancient figure rising from dark grass.
Some semi-conscious impulse made her haunt the wood where shadow enshrined the stone. One thing was noticeable; that all through the summer months the passers-by dropped flowers there. Withered blossoms were always on the ground, amongst the grass, and on the stone fresh blooms constantly appeared. From the daffodil to the Michaelmas daisy* there was marked the calendar of the cottage gardens, and in the winter she had seen sprays of juniper and box, mistletoe and holly. Once she had been drawn through the bushes by a red glow, as if there had been a fire in the wood, and when she came to the place, all the stone shone and all the ground about it was bright with roses.
In her eighteenth year she went one day into the wood, carrying with her a book that she was reading. She hid herself in a nook of hazel, and her soul was full of poetry, when there was a rustling, the rapping of parted boughs returning to their place. Her concealment was but a little way from the stone, and she peered through the net of boughs, and saw a girl timidly approaching. She knew her quite well; it was Annie Dolben, the daughter of a labourer, lately a promising pupil at Sunday school. Annie was a nice-mannered girl, never failing in her curtsy, wonderful for her knowledge of the Jewish Kings. Her face had taken an expression that whispered, that hinted strange things; there was a light and a glow behind the veil of flesh. And in her hand she bore lilies. The lady hidden in hazels watched Annie come close to the grey image; for a moment her whole body palpitated with expectation, almost the sense of what was to happen dawned upon her. She watched Annie crown the stone with flowers, she watched the amazing ceremony that followed.
And yet, in spite of all her blushing shame, she herself bore blossoms to the wood a few months later. She laid white hothouse lilies upon the stone, and orchids of dying purple, and crimson exotic flowers. Having kissed the grey image with devout passion, she performed there all the antique immemorial rite.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260316]

Gotta run so I’ll post one excerpt from the hashish eater by Clark Ashton smith, but i forgot to mention, you might also enjoy nabokov’s book on his own dreams.

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.
Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,
The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,
By jealous moons maleficently urged
To follow me for ever; mountains horned
With peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawed
With sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,
Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;
And continents of serpent-shapen trees,
With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,
Pursue my flight through ages spurned to fire
By that supreme ascendance; sorcerers,
And evil kings, predominanthly armed
With scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin whereon
Are worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,
Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,
With foam-like songs from silver fragrance wrought,
Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moons
Where viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,
With antic gnomes abominably wise,
Heave up their icy horns across my way.
But naught deters me from the goal ordained
By suns and eons and immortal wars,
And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose name
Is all the secret of forgotten glyphs
By sinful gods in torrid rubies writ
For ending of a brazen book; the goal
Whereat my soaring ecstasy may stand
In amplest heavens multiplied to hold
My hordes of thunder-vested avatars,
And Promethèan armies of my thought,
That brandish claspèd levins. There I call
My memories, intolerably clad
In light the peaks of paradise may wear,
And lead the Armageddon of my dreams
Whose instant shout of triumph is become
Immensity's own music: for their feet
Are founded on innumerable worlds,
Remote in alien epochs, and their arms
Upraised, are columns potent to exalt
With ease ineffable the countless thrones
Of all the gods that are or gods to be,
And bear the seats of Asmodai and Set
Above the seventh paradise.

[Anonymous No.18260349]

If you're looking for a fantasy dreamlike book, I'd recommend the King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany. There's something wistfully bittersweet about it, like the feeling of forgetting a dream as you wake up.

"And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills."

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260357]

>>18260349
Here’s a lovely poem of his. Though I would recommend his gods of pegana or his book of wonder over his king of elfland’s daughter, his work feels better in bursts.

Raw materials by Dunsany

THE down on the uncaught wing,
The dream that will not abide,
Sheep-bells softly a-ring
In fields that horizons hide,

The glow of remembered dawns,
Dew on the spider’s snare,
Light late on old lawns
Out of the fading air,

The mystery lurking just
On the other sides of trees,
Tales from books that are dust
Blown by on the breeze;

All that our ordered days
Fail to bring to our door,
Elves of the wood, and fays
Of the moonlight out on the moor;

Of these is poetry wrought,
And, when history’s over,
These by hearts shall be sought,
As bees yearn to the clover.

[Anonymous No.18260418]

>>18260357
Ah, thanks for sharing, I haven't read this one before.

And yes, I think you're right; there's something magical about reading Dunsany for a short time, but it vanishes if you've been sitting with it for more than a day or two.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18260439]

>>18260418
He’s still absolutely a favorite of mine, it’s just, just as dreams, best in shifting snapshots which are here, then shift away. Such is their ephemeral nature.