De Quincey Dream example essay topic

During what is generally defined as the Romantic period, many poets, scientists and philosophers were greatly intrigued by dreams. Southey kept a dream journal, as did Sir Humphry Davy, a close friend of Coleridge's; Thomas B eddoes wrote of dreams from a medical perspective in Hygeia and dreams were often a hot topic of conversation at the dinner parties of those who kept company with poets and the like (Ford 1998: 5). There were many contradictory theories on the importance, interpretation and origin of dreams, at this time. Some believed that dreams were a form of divine inspiration, others that they were caused by spirits that temporarily possessed the body of the sleeper, while there were those who thought that dreams were a manifestation of the body's physical condition. De Quincey and Coleridge were two writers who both held an exceptional interest in dreams, each with their own ideas on the subject.

In this essay I propose to examine De Quincey's and Coleridge's ideas on dream and daydream, and to show that opium was a profoundly influencing factor in their lives, works and dreams. I shall start by briefly outlining some of De Quincey's and then Coleridge's ideas on dreams; I shall then move on to ask what was the effect of opium on their creativity, dreams and imagination, before looking at how dream and daydream are distinguished in their ideas. Finally I wish to include a brief section on the anticipation of Freud, and to close with the question of how important opium was to the writing of my chosen authors. Since dreams and opium are so intertwined in both Coleridge and De Quincey I feel it is appropriate to consider the two subjects alongside each other.

In Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, dreams and opium are considered simultaneously because he records the largest effect of his opium-eating to have been on his dreams. He first became aware of the effects by a re-awakening of a faculty generally found in childhood: I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms; in some, that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye; others have a voluntary, or a semi-voluntary power to dismiss or summon them... In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me: at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passes along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories... (De Quincey 1996: 67). This seems to concern his daydreams, or at least dreams or visions that he had when he was not asleep. At the same time he notes that a sympathy arose between the waking and sleeping states of his brain and that what he called up and painted on the darkness, was then transferred into his sleeping dreams: he attributes all of these circumstances to his increasing use of opium.

De Quincey also records two other important changes attributed to opium: For this and all other changes in my dreams, were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy... I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had re-ascended (De Quincey 1996: 68). This is the first and the second is that his sense of space and time were both powerfully affected, 'Buildings and landscapes, &c. were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive... This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time' (De Quincey 1996: 68). It is not clear whether these effects took place in dream or waking or both; for De Quincey dream meant many things including imagination itself, but I would venture to suggest that both his waking visions and his dream were distorted in such a way.

Although De Quincey does not deal with the importance of dreams directly, his emphasis on the subject belies his fascination. He wrote the Confessions primarily to demonstrate the 'marvellous agency of opium' (1996: 78), but the agency of dreams comes a very close second in his concerns. In the sequel to Confessions, entitled Suspiria de Profundis, De Quincey develops some of his ideas further, but it is mainly an autobiographical piece, his childhood thoughts, however, remembered through the darkness of the opium nightmare that consumed him in adulthood. De Quincey uses some of his dreams to construct a series of prose poems around their imagery. Levan a and our Ladies of Sorrow is a personal mythology of terror; The Apparition of the Brocken, a distancing exercise through use of a double image; and Savannah-La-Mar, a beautiful metaphor for the past, visible through the waves of time, but never to be returned to. Thus here we see De Quincey's use of dream in the composition process, dream as a kind of poetic imagination.

De Quincey writes with much candour and from a seemingly objective stance on his adventures, or misadventures with opium. He allows us to see how his waking visions, his dreams and thus his imagination were affected by the use of the popular drug; and this in turn can be very useful in analyzing the work of other writers, who may have used opium but did not write about its effects. Coleridge was much coyer than De Quincey was about his opium habit; he refers to it as an anodyne, in the preface to Kubla Khan, which lulled him into a profound sleep. It is therefore unclear as to whether Coleridge's vision of the pleasure dome was a sleeping dream or a daydream, what is almost certain is that it was induced by opium. While De Quincey's notions on dream were relatively diminutive and distinct, Coleridge's were much deeper and harder to trace. There is a widespread difference of opinion between critics as to just what Coleridge's philosophies on dream actually were, and some conclude that he saw no moral connection between his dreams and his waking life whatsoever (Ford 1998: 2).

This is quite a ridiculous conclusion, when he was clearly preoccupied with many aspects of dream, if he had felt that they were in no way related to his waking life, surely his interest would have been as passing as Southey's who kept his dreams as nothing more than curiosities. One particular area that Coleridge spent much time musing over was whether or not his dreams were creations of his mind, the supernatural or complex physiological processes (Ford 1998: 27); the notion of dreams as possessing the dreamer was also a great source of anxiety for him and other Romantic writers. While De Quincey made little of the distinctions between waking dream and sleeping dream, other than that opium seemed to affect them both, Coleridge sought to understand and define the various different types of dream state, from daydream and reverie, to sleep and opium vision. Jennifer Ford in her Coleridge on Dreaming writes, 'He... subtitled two of his most intriguing poems a "Poet's Reverie" and a "Vision in a Dream" carefully choosing the descriptions of reverie and dream.

These different moods and aware nesses could be seen as degrees or species of dreaming' (1998: 84). Just as De Quincey linked imagination and dreaming, Coleridge believed there was a connection too. He thought that imagination was a link between dreaming and disease; that disease could be influenced (either cured or caused) by dreams, and that the physical state of health of the body was influential upon his dreams (Ford 1998: 183). Such were some of Coleridge's thoughts on dreaming, scattered around his notebooks and marginalia and only relatively recently brought together and explored by Ford. By 1827 Coleridge was still not satisfied with any explanation of the origin of his dreams and was left with three possibilities from which he chose to make up his own mind (Ford 1998: 130). These were that dreams are intervention from the gods; they were malignant spirits possessing the dreamer; or they were a direct result of the body's health and position when sleeping.

De Quincey was equally stumped, declaring in Suspiria de Profundis that 'No man can account for all things that occur in dreams' (1996: 156). In the recent feature film Pandemonium on the subject of the life and drug use of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge's use of opium is presented as practically his sole source of inspiration. We are shown scenes of Coleridge and Wordsworth sitting at a table attempting to write The Wanderings of Cain in one night. Both sit without making a start for some time then Coleridge is prescribed some laudanum by his wife to soothe a toothache, and from that first sip his nib begins to scurry across the page. He awakes the next morning to find the laudanum finished, the work complete and poor Wordsworth still facing a blank piece of paper. From this point onwards Coleridge is an instant addict and all of the opium induced poetry flows (mostly in the wrong order), while the rest of the film becomes one long opium vision surrounding the composition and loss of Kubla Khan.

It is disappointing to assume that it was merely the opium that produced these poems, but it certainly can be seen as affecting them deeply. In Suspiria de Profundis De Quincey praises the power of opium to excite the imagination and dreaming: ... It is certain that some merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exercise; to some extent at least, and for some persons: but beyond all others is opium, which indeed seems to possess a specific power in that direction (1996: 88).

And in Confessions he writes, 'wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in the proper manner), introduces among them the most exquisite order, legislation and harmony' (1996: 40). De Quincey notices that opium can give access to trains of forgotten thought that otherwise are unlikely remembered, and Coleridge likewise makes this admission (Ford 1998: 86). Both writers therefore seemed to accept that opium was influential to their creative processes, and may have assisted their efforts in this area. De Quincey uses many dreamlike images in his The English Mail-Coach, all of which serve his purpose very well: for example the crocodile coachman, who introduces a touch of comic terror. The greatest effect of the opium on their writing was perhaps through the images of terror that the opium nightmares produced. De Quincey's dreams were always a cause for his concern, and both Coleridge and De Quincey found their nightmares to be full of dreadful faces and tumultuous occurrences.

Neither shrank from these dreams, but turned to their analysis and representation in literature; so in this way the opium dreams or nightmares may be seen to have assisted their creative processes. This similarity of imagery is picked up on in M.H. A brahms (Marcus 2004: 53), who suggests that the similarity of images in writers who took opium was because the opium had taken them to the same place in their visions and dreams. I would suggest that it is simply because the people who took opium and wrote about it were perhaps similar people with similar subconscious preoccupations, although I am ignorant to the true pharmacological action of the drug. Althea Hayter in her book, Opium and the Romantic Imagination, isolates clusters of images that are common to opium-eating authors.

She picks on sunken cities, vast temples, silvery expanses of water, cathedrals, domes, giant arches, pyramids, obelisks and ruins to name but a few. When poets first take the drug she writes that their work is blithe and fantastic, but as they grow reliant on it the imagery becomes much darker and more terrible; dark ruins, phantom ships, zombies &c. It is quite obvious that Kubla Khan exemplifies the first type, almost as perfectly as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner does the second. As we have already seen, the distinction between dream and daydream is extremely blurred in De Quincey. The visions that occupied his daily thoughts were sculptured in daylight and reappeared in his dreams at night, in what he called a 'dream-legend'. This sympathy between daydreams and dreams that De Quincey experienced he attributes entirely to opium (as I mentioned in my opening section).

So I would suggest that opium serves to bring dream and daydream closer together and to blur the divide between sleeping and waking visions, at least for De Quincey. Dream is such a flexible term for De Quincey that he comes to use it to mean both sleeping and waking dreams, and as a synonym for the imagination itself. For Coleridge the situation was quite different; he was extremely interested in the many different types of dream state that existed; one need only read Christ abel for proof of his notions, and see the explorations of sleeping and waking as well as the many different moods present. 'Frost at Midnight' also explores these different states of dream, in particular an in-between state: To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt... So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

(Coleridge 1999: 209). The sympathy between daydreams and dreams is also hinted at here, just as experienced by his fellow opium-eater De Quincey. Coleridge was convinced that dreams had a unique language, primarily expressed in images and sensations; and that the linguistic and psychological structure of language undergoes a transformation or translation into dreams. He believed that these dream languages were far less different to each other than the languages of different nations (Ford 1998: 56). Thus, presumably the distinction between dream and daydream, for Coleridge was quite a strong one. In conscious daydreams he would find himself using the language of everyday thoughts, one rooted in linguistics as well as images; then when he slept his daydreams were transformed into a language of dreams, universally understood.

Despite some differences as well as similarities, the fact remains that De Quincey and Coleridge were both early forms of dream psychologist, in a way that anticipated some of the ideas that Freud would publish years later. De Quincey in particular notes the importance of childhood experiences to his dreams, 'Whatsoever in a man's mind blossoms and expands to his own consciousness in mature life, must have pre-existed in germ during his infancy (1996: 113) ', and: Some of the phenomenon developed in my dream scenery, undoubtedly, do but repeat the experiences of childhood; and others seem likely to have been growths and fructifications from seeds at that time sown (1996: 92), both illustrate this emphasis. Elsewhere De Quincey treats us to further psychological theories: I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may, and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions of the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil... (1996: 69). He surely means opium and dreams to be just the sort of accidents that rend away the veil; exactly the kind of psychoanalysis that Freud would have been proud of. The fact that dream and imagination were so close in De Quincey's eyes, I believe, is also an important anticipation of the ideas of Freud.

Freud extended this idea and saw the importance of dream as a link to the subconscious mind, something that Coleridge and De Quincey did not quite arrive at but perhaps approached. I think that they were both aware that dream was a much deeper psychological phenomenon, quite unlike daydream, which is principally governed by conscious thoughts and desires. Coleridge was frustrated at his inability to interpret his own dreams, perhaps stemming from an unwillingness to embrace his darker impulses, something that Freud was certainly not afraid of. With Freudian ideas under his belt perhaps Coleridge would have gone much further into his dream explorations, just as the Surrealist movement attempted to years later.

It shared many of the Romantic ideals but was bettered by further scientific knowledge, which was unavailable to Coleridge and his contemporaries. Up to this point I have discussed how opium and dream intertwined in the work of Coleridge and De Quincey, their philosophies on dream and how opium affected both these philosophies and their dreams themselves. As I said before it is disappointing to assume that all of the poetry produced by Coleridge was simply due to his opium habit (as Pandemonium would have us believe), and not to his brilliance as a writer. Jennifer Ford's book gives much insight into Coleridge's philosophies on dream and pulls together his ideas from various scraps scattered throughout his work. However, it is lacking in that it almost entirely denies the influence of opium on Coleridge as a source of much of his dream imagery. She criticises Hayter for trivializing Coleridge by attributing all of his images to the drug.

It seems that neither viewpoint is quite right, and perhaps a stance somewhere in the middle would be most suitable. De Quincey writes: Whatever may the number of those in whom this faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are not perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He whose talk is of oxen, will probably dream of oxen... Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must have a constitutional determination to reverie (1996: 87).

So was it opium alone or opium in combination with a predisposition to dream magnificently that gave rise to Coleridge and De Quincey's dream imagery? I would suggest that the opium awakened dreams in men who had the potential to experience them; in men who had a good enough knowledge of language and poetic form to record their dreams accurately enough for transmission. After all opium was truly the opiate of the masses, by 1860 80,000 lbs was imported to England, a fashion that had started long before; and there has only ever been written the one Kubla Khan. De Quincey wrote that men are 'disguised in sobriety', so opium and dreams serve to expose the true mind of man and perhaps the unconscious mind. Whatever the effect of opium on Coleridge and De Quincey; on their philosophies, on their dreams and on their lives; one cannot truly know the depth or extent of it, but to take opium and go through the experience personally. It is certainly undeniable that it was an influence and an extremely important one that continues beyond the present: furthering the exposure of mans' psychology through the portal of dreams.

Bibliography

Coleridge, S.T., Poems, Everyman's Library, London, 1999.
Coleridge, S.T., Biographic Liter aria, William Pickering, London, 1847.
De Quincey, T., Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings, Oxford World's Classics, Oxford, 1996.
Ford, J., Coleridge on Dreaming, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.
Hayter, A., Opium and the Romantic Imagination, Faber and Faber, London, 1968.
Marcus, T., Opium in Literature and London, Issue 3. Zembla Magazine, London, 2004.