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<\/a><\/p>\n“Take this kiss upon the brow!
\nAnd, in parting from you now,
\nThus much let me avow-
\nYou are not wrong, who deem
\nThat my days have been a dream;
\nYet if hope has flown away
\nIn a night, or in a day,
\nIn a vision, or in none,
\nIs it therefore the less gone?
\nAll that we see or seem
\nIs but a dream within a dream.<\/p>\n
I stand amid the roar
\nOf a surf-tormented shore,
\nAnd I hold within my hand
\nGrains of the golden sand-
\nHow few! yet how they creep
\nThrough my fingers to the deep,
\nWhile I weep- while I weep!
\nO God! can I not grasp
\nThem with a tighter clasp?
\nO God! can I not save
\nOne from the pitiless wave?
\nIs all that we see or seem
\nBut a dream within a dream?”
\n(Edgar Allan Poe)<\/p>\n
Everybody knows a film where the hero finds himself in a mysterious otherworldly reality until he (and the audience) wakes up. The major twist of the movie is often the realization that the main character(s) are already dead or dying (Jacob\u2019s Ladder, The Others) or the hero is crazy and living in a state of psychosis (Shutter Island). Usually there is no doubt in the narration that there is only one reality and what we have seen before must be some kind of distorted illusion or fantasy (however some movies play with the motive: Interception and Lost Highway doesn\u2019t come up with simples answers in the end).<\/p>\n
These stories seem to have a strong appeal to us. This seems sometimes astonishing because that type of twist (it was only a dream) could be also seen as kind of a bad joke. Sometimes I felt disappointment when I had to learn that the great solution in the end is that the hero\u2019s experience was only kind of a vision or dream.<\/p>\n
One reason why these stories appeal to us might be that we all have these \u201erealizations\u201c at a much smaller scale throughout our lives that everything is different as we thought it was before. Blows of fate could lead to a complete new point of view. Reviewing some decisions in the past we may think that we must have seen reality in a pretty different way at that time. This applies not only to individuals but also to whole societies. Normal habits of people living in the 50ties might look pretty weird today. We see reality in a different way. Our view of reality seems to be much more shaped by changing belief (systems) but also fears and certain moods rather than cold calculations.<\/p>\n
Maybe there is more about this. Edgar Alan Poe\u2019s well known poem suggests a much more ambiguous concept compared to the movies with their one big twist. \u201eAll that we see or seem\/Is but a dream within a dream\u201c.<\/p>\n
Wouldn\u2019t it be interesting if we would wake up a second time after we realized that our first experience was a dream of a psychotic vision but the real-real which we experienced after that is as crazy and dreamlike as our first experience of reality? Maybe we are caught in dreams and cannot escape. And we are not what we think we are.<\/p>\n
And maybe the \u201creality\u201d in which the hero awakes in some movies is kind of a false awakening. How do we know that our everyday reality is more real as a psychotic vision? Maybe our idea \u2013 or what we\u2019ve been told is real – is the only big lie.<\/p>\n
There are many intelligent interpretations of Poe\u2019s famous poem. Of course there is the overtone of personal loss, of regret at the movement of time and \u201cthe poem dramatizes a confusion in watching the important things in life slip away\u201c (Wikipedia). But most important, \u201cthe poem questions the way one can distinguish between reality and fantasy, asking, “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream? (Wikipedia)”
\nThis seems to be the obvious interpretation but there is more about Poe\u2019s true intentions. A helpful clue is the beginning of Alan Parson\u2019s Project\u2019s \u201eTales Of Mystery And Imagination\u201c with a narration from Orson Welles. The words are an encapsulation of a section in Poe\u2019s Marginalia, which gives us a little more to think about:<\/p>\n
\u201eFor my own part\u2028 I have never had a thought
\nWhich I could not set down in words
\nWith even more distinctness
\nThan that with which I conceived it.
\nThere is however a class of fancies
\nOf exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts
\nAnd to which as yet I have found it
\nAbsolutely impossible to adapt to language.
\nThese fancies arise in the soul
\nAlas how rarely, only at epochs
\nOf most intense tranquility
\nWhen the bodily and mental
\nHealth are in perfection.
\nAnd at those weird points of time
\nWhere the confines of the waking world
\nBlend with the world of dreams
\nAnd so I captured this fancy
\nWhere all that we see or seem
\nIs but a dream within a dream.\u201c
\n<\/a><\/p>\n