A forgotten theory of dreams that inspired Vladimir Nabokov | Hacker News Reader

A forgotten theory of dreams that inspired Vladimir Nabokov

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75 pointslermontov13 comments

This is fascinating.

Unmentioned, after commenting that Borges reviewed Dunne's work in 1940, however, is that the permanence of objects in time relates thematically to Jorge Luis Borges' own writing, recalling in particular The Garden of Forking Paths [1941]. I couldn't prove a causal connection, but it seems to cast a a commentary on Borges' post-1940 short stories.

Nabokov also played with the idea of reverie or dream-like states of consciousness. I've only had the pleasure to have read Pale Fire this far, but there is a careful blending of rational thought, creative (meta-)fiction, "dream logic" and actual insanity. In it, untangling what's real and and what's not left me with much the same sensation as trying to figure out whether something once happened to me years before or I just had a vivid dream.

> the permanence of objects in time relates thematically to Jorge Luis Borges' own writing

Also very strongly to "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis_Tertius" (1940), which explicitly mentions that topic, but maybe it's anachronistic (!) for your purposes here.

Literally, not literarily, anachronistic, to be precise. ;)

You’re entirely right.

I think that Borges and Hofstadter are writers whose work uniquely appeals to computer scientists.

Thanks for sharing this. I'll never forget reading Speak Memory. (!) The opening sentences or somewhere near the opening ones concerned Nabokov's meditation on death and birth and how alike they are. He talked about how strange it is that before we are born, we aren't missed because we aren't yet there. He goes into the feeling of thinking about this in a dreamlike manner and there are several dreamy passages throughout the book. I agree it was his best one. Thinking about him reading a corny dream book and being taken in by it a bit humanizes him. Great article.

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is headed for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged — the same house, the same people — and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse order of events, his very bones had disintegrated."

Yes! yes! It's been over twenty years since I read this and it still calls to me. Thank you for reminding me how beautiful and true that passage is. His rhythm in this part is like a swing. Dream-like. Another lovely spot in the book was when he called to a loved dog on a beach "Floss!". It was a great way to end a section by letting it slip into memory like shouted words on a beach fade after a loved dog, especially its name.

On the other hand:

In an interview (maybe reproduced in Strong Opinions?), Nabokov explains his theory that the origins of dreams are the visual patterns produced by the eye in darkness and interpreted by the sleeping brain.

I feel this is almost certainly right. Often when I fall asleep I literally see my dreams forming out of the brown noise you see with closed eyes.

Interesting, it's always been black with hints of red (probably the blood in the skin) to me, rather than blending together into a brown.

i see black with drifting blue and green static.

I see green blobs. As I fall asleep they become pictures, and I know I’m about to fall asleep for real when they become photorealistic.

> Dunne’s Experiment seems to have become one of the secret wellsprings, or wormholes, of twentieth-century literature.

H.G. Wells, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Yeats, Joyce, and Agatha Christie were fans. The Kindle version is available for $1.40.

Reading the sample of Dunne’s temporal geometry, I was reminded of the film Donnie Darko, in which the protagonist repeatedly attempts to figure out a similarly complicated early 20th century theory of time travel.

There's also a (possibly apocryphal) quote by Nabokov ('All the Russia I need is with me, always with me. Literature, language and my own Russian childhood. I will never return.') that would be burnished by the inclusion of dreams of his long-lost homeland.

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