Its Enigmas, Its Glamour, and Its Illusions
Who is the “I” of the dream? Who is the person to whom one attributes this “I,” admitting that there is one? Between the one who sleeps and the one who is the subject of the dream’s plot, there is a fissure, the hint of an interval and a difference of structure; of course, it is not truly another, another person, but what is it? And if, upon awakening, we hastily and greedily take possession of the night’s adventures, as if they belonged to us, is it not with a certain feeling of usurpation {of gratitude as well}? Do we not preserve the memory of an irreducible distance, a distance of a peculiar sort, the distance between me and myself, but also the distance between each of the characters and the identities—even certain—that we lend them, a distance without distance, illuminating and fascinating, which is like the proximity of the remote or contact with the faraway? An intrigue and a questioning that refer us to an experience often described of late: the experience of the writer when, in a narrative, poetic, or dramatic work, they write “I,” not knowing who says it or what relation they maintain with themselves.
In this sense, the dream is perhaps close to literature, at least to its enigmas, its glamour, and its illusions.
~Maurice Blanchot
“Dreaming, Writing” ~ Friendship ~ {tr. Elizabeth Rottenberg} ~ Stanford : Stanford UP, 1997 / pg 141-2
