Celebrate Poe

Poe's Dream Poems

July 11, 2022 George Bartley Season 2 Episode 125
Celebrate Poe
Poe's Dream Poems
Show Notes Transcript

This episode starts by briefly looking at some of accounts of dreams in world literature.  Then the episode specifically delves into Poe’s three major “Dream Poems” - A Dream, Dreamland, and the classic A Dream Within a Dream.  The ghost of Mr. Poe also takes a look at “Imitation” - a poem that is said to highly influence “A Dream Within A Dream."


  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:16 Interpreting Richard III
  • 03:12 Dreams in Literature
  • 9:56 A Dream
  • 11:54 Dreamland
  • 17:32 Imitation and A Dream Within a Dream
  • 24:59 Future Episodes
  • 26:43 Sources
  • 27:03 Outro



  • What are some examples of dreams in word literature?
  • Explain how the subject of dreams runs through Poe’s works.
  • Which is darker - A Dream or Dreamland?
  • What is Poe’s most famout “dream poem“
  • How did ‘imitation” influence “A Dream Within a Dream”



00:00 Intro

Welcome to Celebrate Poe, a deep dive into the life, times, and works of America’s Shakespeare - Edgar Allan Poe.  This is episode 126 - Poe’s Dream Poems.   I try to begin and end each episode with an exerpt from Come Rest in This Bosom - said to be Edgar Poe's favorite song.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only by night.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.


These words by Edgar Allan Poe deal with the subject of dreams - a topic that runs throughout many of his works. 

01:16 Interpreting Richard III

If you tuned in to listen to several episodes about Poe at the University of Virginia, well, I am afraid I going to need to disappoint you and postpone those episodes until next month.  This July 28, I am supposed to interpret Shakespeare’s Richard III for the Indianapolis Shakespeare Company at the awesome Taggart Ampitheater in Riverside Park Indianapolis.  This version of  Richard III should be especially interesting because it combines two art forms - Shakespeare and rap music into basically a hig-hop version of Richard III - called Ricky 3.  Check out some of the videos of interpreters for the deaf i signing rap music in American Sign Language - most are awesome!I   So it should be a lot of fun - more about that later.
I had interpreted Richard III before (Richard III is Shakespeare’s second longest play0 but this version has been edited down to about 2 hours.)  I was certainly going to mention the play in this podcast, but wondered what could Richard III have to do with Edgar Poe ??? - finally it came to me that Shakespeare (especially Richard III) and Edgar Poe (especially in his more supernatural poems) have a great deal to do with each other - especially in the area of Dreams.  In a future episode, I am going to talk about the three sections of Richard III where William Shakespeare specifically uses some very interesting dreams to further the action.  And the ghost of Mr. Shakespeare will be here to help me along.

03:12 Dreams in Literature

Dreams have been used throughout literature - for example, In Homer’s epic poem The Illiad, the god Zeus uses a false dream to convinced Agamemnon to attack the city of Troy.
Or think of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  Here Ebenezer Scrooge experiences what are usually interpreted as extended dreams where he encounters the Ghost of Christmas, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the horrifying Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
In Wuthering Heights by Jane Austen, the characters are often guided by their dreams. 
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll used what could be interpreted as a dream within a dream setting.  In the novel, Alice becomes  lost in a dream state to make connections and subtle observations on her waking life - something I am sure we  all do.
Of course no list of dreams in literature would be complete without mentioning The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.  The great psychologist writes that activity in our unconscious mind can be interpreted. Freud theorizes that dreams are all forms of wish fulfillment or an attempt by the sleeping mind to produce a solution from unresolved issues in our past.  Freud even has a connection to Poe - you see, Princess Marie Bontaparte - yes, one of THOSE Bontapartes - was a member of Freud;s inner circle - not surprisingly, she was quite wealthy and was able top pay the Germans to allow Freud to leave Germany and avoid Nazi persecution.  Marie Bontaparte became a lay analyst and writer of many papers and books. Her most ambitious task was a 700-page psychobiography of Edgar Allan Poe. She was fascinated by Poe's gothic stories--with the return to life of dead persons and the eerie, unexpected turns of events. Her fascination with Poe can be traced to the similarity of her early traumatic life experiences with those of Poe.  I am currently reading her psychobiography  of Poe online in preparation for several future episodes about Marie Bontaparte and Poe.
And I will be getting into some of the many, many occasions where Shakespeare has lines about dreams in a future episode this month.
i could go on and on - but let’s get back to Edgar Allan Poe.  Much of Poe’s work takes place in a dream-like atmosphere. Even his most famous work, The Raven, has a unreal quality.  The narrator writes “While I pondered, nearly napping’ - you can almost see him trying to stay awake - half aware and half in an altered state.  And I think The Pit and the Pendulum has a definite dreamlike quality - as the narrator undergoes horrible forms of torture - often not sure what is happening - are the walls closing in? what do I do with rats crawling over me? - in this case, the stuff that nightmares are made of.  I could go on and on talking about the dreamlike qualities of many of Poe’s works - from terrors at night to supernatural expressions of love, but today I want to talk about three poems by Edgar Allan Poe that specifically have the word Dream in their titles.
These are poems where Poe specifically deals with dreams in general. The are not used as a forerunner of something specific that happens in the future such as Shakespeare’s description of 3 dreams in Richard III/
Those 3 poems by Poe include A Dream, Dreamland, and A Dream Within a Dream - with an earlier version - some really fascinating stuff.

POE GHOST ENTERS (SOUND)
Hello, Mr. Poe.

Greetings, Mr. Bartley.  I am here ready to talk about the University of Virginia.

Actually, Mr. Poe, I have decided to continue and deal with that area next month,

That is certainly surprising - but I guess it is your podcast.

See -  my reasoning is this - in a few weeks I am going to be the ASL interpreter for a production of Richard III.  And in my attempts to find a topic to compare your works with Richard III, I decided to do some episodes about the use of 3 or so of your works that deal specifically with dreams, as well as 3 dreams used to further the plot in Richard III.   Now would you able to talk about dreams?

There are few areas I enjoy more.

09:17 A Dream

In 1827, I wrote a poem that was later called ”A Dream.”  The poem is a lyric poem that first appeared without a title in Tamerlane and Other Poems.

Could you tell us what a lyric poem is?

Ah yes, a lyric poem is simply a private expression of emotion by an individual speaker.
Thank you.

One might say that the narrator's "dream of joy departed" in A Dream causes him to compare and contrast the dream state with and "broken-hearted" reality.
And could you clarify exactly WHEN the the poem got a title?
I believe Its title was attached when it was published in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems in 1829.

[[A Dream]]
A wilder’d being from my birth
My spirit spurn’d control,
But now, abroad on the wide earth,
Where wand’rest thou my soul?
 In visions of the dark night
I have dream’d of joy departed —
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

And what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turn’d back upon the past?

That holy dream — that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheer’d me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding —

What tho’ that light, thro’ misty night
So dimly shone afar — [page 33:]
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day — star?

A Dream could be interpreted as a poem in which I expressed  my inability to distinguish between the dream and the reality, because I was exceedingly haunted by memories of “a dream of joy departed.”


That is a fascinating interpretation.

Dreamland 11:54

Dreamland was first published in the June 1844 issue of Graham's Magazine, and was the only poem I published that year.It was republished in a June 1845 edition of the Broadway Journal.

 In the poem, the dream-voyager arrives in a place beyond time and space and decides to stay there.


I believe that your biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn, called it "one of your finest creations", with each phrase contributing to one effect: a human traveler wandering between life and death.

Remember that Dreamland was a poem that I wrote in 1844 - 5 years before my earthly demise. In the poem, I wanted to indicate the dream-voyager’s arrival in and decision to remain in an extraterrestrial place somewhere beyond time and space. The destination is a forsaken landscape of “mountains toppling evermore / Into seas without a shore” and filled with gothic images of ghouls dwelling by dismal tarns and pools, shapes of dark memory, and a general sense of loss and anguish. Yet the dream- voyager perceives the beauty within the horror, “a peaceful, soothing region” that can never be apprehended by the rational restraints of the waking state: “Never its mysteries are exposed / To the weak human eye unclosed.”

Mr. Poe, how would you compare A Dream from 1827 to “Dream-Land” written fourteen years later in 1844?

That is a most interesting question. I believe that the general sense of loss and anguish is as stark in Dream-land as in the earlier poem, although it could be argued that the terrain is darker and the images more frightening. In the 17 years since the publication of the earlier poem, I believe I eliminated the subtleties in which I first viewed my faculties as clouded “with a ray.”  in the later poem, I attempted to turn them to more horrific scene of chaos, ghouls, and intense feelings of loss and pain. Despite such images, however, I remained hopeful. I asserted that within the dark realm filled with frightening shapes exists a peaceful and beautiful place that people can reach, but only in their dreams.

Could you tell us about the poem’s publication history?

Ah yes, it first appeared in the June 1844 issue of GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE and was republished in the June 28, 1845, issue of the BROADWAY JOURNAL.

Mr. Poe - would you favor us with a Dreamland

Certainly.

DREAM-LAND.
————
BY a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE — out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead, —
Their still waters, still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached my home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead, —
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily, —
By the mountain — near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, —
By the gray woods, — by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp, — [column 2:]
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls, —
By each spot the most unholy —
In each nook most melancholy, —
There the traveler meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past —
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by —
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the worms, and Heaven.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have journeyed home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

For the heart whose woes are legion
’T is a peaceful, soothing region —
For the spirit that walks in shadow
’T is — oh ’t is an Eldorado!
But the traveler, traveling through it,
May not — dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills the King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringéd lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.


And now, Mr. Poe let’s take a look at one of your masterpieces - A Dream Within a Dream.

Certainly, but for your purposes, Mr. Bartley I think it might be appropriate to look at my poem “Imitation” first - it certainly does not have the word dream in the title, but was revised several times until it evolved into A Dream Within a Dream.

That could be very interesting.

17:32 Imitation and A Dream Within a Dream

Let me begin with a brief background. The poem "Imitation" was first published in my early collection Tamerlane and Other Poems. The 20-line poem is made up of rhymed couplets where the speaker likens his youth to a dream as his reality becomes more and more difficult. It has been considered possibly autobiographical be cause it was written during deepening strains in my relationship with John Allan.

Let me interject here - if this is your first time listening to Celebrate Poe, John Allan was Poe’s foster father.  John Allan never formally adopted Edgar, and their relationship was stormy - to say the least.

Are you ready for my poem “Imitation”?


Certainly,

IMITATION.

A dark unfathom'd tide

Of interminable pride—
A mystery, and a dream,
Should my early life seem;
I say that dream was fraught
With a wild, and waking thought
Of beings that have been,
Which my spirit hath not seen,
Had I let them pass me by,
With a dreaming eye!
Let none of earth inherit
That vision on my spirit;
Those thoughts I would control,
As a spell upon his soul:
For that bright hope at last
And that light time have past,
And my worldly rest hath gone
With a sight as it pass'd on,
I care not tho' it perish
With a thought I then did cherish.


And with that, let’s go into your masterpiece of dream poems -  
A Dream Within a Dream

Ah yes, A Dream Within a Dream was first published in the March 31, 1849, edition of the Boston-based story paper The Flag of Our Union.  Unfortunately, the next month, owner Frederick Gleason announced he could no longer pay for whatever articles or poems it published.


I am sorry, Mr. Poe.

Well, be that as it may, in A Dream Within A Dream, I attempted to question what is needed to distinguish between a dream and reality. I state  firmly at the end of the first stanza, “All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream.” In the second stanza, I attempted to express the torment of not being able to grasp the grains of sand within my hand and asked “can I not grasp / them with a tighter clasp?” The realization that I cannot save one grain of sand from “the pitiless wave” leads to my final question of doubt: “Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?”

Now “A Dream Within a Dream” was written seven months before my earthly demise, and during a time in which I felt an increasing frustration with my  writing and more intense feelings of loss.

I know that critic Dawn P. Sova has written that in the allegory of the cave in Plato’s The Republic. Plato postulates that prisoners chained together in a cave with a fire behind them and facing a wall on which their flickering shadows appear come to view those shadows as reality. Even when removed from the cave and confronted with objects in the real world, they will reject this “reality” in favor of the reality that they have come to accept, the flickering shadows on the wall. In a similar manner, it seems that you as the author of A Dream Within a Dream questions if everything that you (and the reader) experiences and sees is merely a dream, which leaves reality beyond your grasp.   
That is most interesting, Mr. Bartley.
So would you favor us with A Dream Within a Dream

Certainly.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TAKE this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Yes, Mr. Bartley - I do hope that the poem communicates the confusion felt by the narrator as he watches the important things in life slip away. Understanding that he cannot hold on to even one grain of sand, he is led to his final question of whether all things are just a dream.

Yes, Mr. Poe I can certainly see your point.  You know, it has been suggested that the "golden sand" referenced in the 15th line signifies the sand which is to be found in an hourglass - in other words, time itself.

Thank you Mr. Bartley - I do hope you have learned something about the importance of dreams in my works.  Farewell.

GHOST EXITS

24:59 Future Episodes
Future episodes - originally I intended to do 3 poems by Poe dealing with Dreams in this episode, Then the next episode I was going to deal with 3 sections of Richard III dealing with dreams.  But I found out that the subject A Dream Within a Dream on Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception was going to require an episode of its own.
So the next episode is titled “Is Inception a Dream Within a Dream”  - Inception is considered by many to be one of the best - if not THE best - science fiction movie ever made.  Now saying the movie Inception is a complex film can be viewed as an understatement.  The movie builds on the concept of a dream within a dream, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.  And all this is done through the complex use of dreams on various levels.  So join us for a very special episode of Celebrate Poe - “Is Inception a Dream Within a Dream?”

26:43 Sources
Critical Companion to Edgar Allan PoeL A Literary Reference to His Life and Work by Dawn B. Sova, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight R. Thomas and David K. Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man by Mary E. Phillips. and the National Library of Medicine web site.
27:03 Outro

Thank you for listening to celebratepoe.