Week 12: Dreams

by Daryl L.L. Houston

641: Hans Reiter often dreams of Leathesia difformis, a seaweed plant that grows on rocks and other seaweed and that he has never seen in person.

652: Hans Reiter’s father, speaking with a member of the visiting National Socialist party committee who has come to Reiter’s house to visit, becomes somewhat confrontational but eventually cowers and wonders if he ought not to throw himself at the feet of the man, whom he describes as a dreamer. Afterward, he “shook his head at each word the other uttered, as if he wasn’t convinced (in fact he was terrified), as if it were difficult for him to understand the full scope of the other mans’ dreams.”

675: A soldier who has gotten lost in the tunnels of the Maginot line on the western front dreams of God in human form. In the dream, he’s sleeping under an apple tree and is awakened by a country squire. The squire turns out to be god, and he offers to get the soldier out of the tunnels in exchange for the purchase of the soldier’s soul. The soldier asks to go back to sleep, and God says that he already owns the soldier’s soul, so the soldier ought not to be a fool and ought to take the deal. The soldier agrees and signs in blood a contract written in some other language (not German or English or French). Then God leaves and the soldier decides to say a prayer. He notices that the apples on the tree have dried up like raisins or prunes, and he hears a metallic noise. He sees long plumes of smoke in the valley, and suddenly a hand grabs him by the shoulder; it turns out to be a real rescuing hand in real life waking him up.

680: Reiter is stationed at Castle Dracula in Romania and dreams about the inside of the crypt. The dignitaries and artsy folk who are visiting the castle (outside the dream) are (inside the dream) in an amphitheater and are laughing, except for one officer, who weeps and looks for a place to hide. One of the men reads a poem by Wolfram von Eschenbach (author of the Parzifal poem that Reiter earlier reads and delights in) and then spits blood. The men have agreed to eat the Baroness Von Zumpe, who was one of the visitors and also happened to be the niece of the owner of the estate Reiter worked on when younger.

684: General Entrescu pontificates about art and compares cubism (to its detriment) to “the dream of a single illiterate Romanian peasant.” Baroness Von Zumpe asks what he figures the peasants of Romania dream and how he knows.

692: Reiter and companions, having navigated the secret passages in the walls of Castle Dracula to witness Baroness Von Zump and General Entrescu having what seems to be porn-quality sex (complete with porn-quality penis), begin to masturbate. Comrade Wilke “seemed to be dreaming, or, more accurately, momentarily breaking through the massive black walls that separate waking from sleep.”

694: Reiter returns to his home and to the baroness’s uncle’s estate while on leave. He asks the gamekeeper at the estate about the baroness, and he shrugs. The shrugs, we’re told, “could mean he didn’t know or that reality was increasingly vague, more like a dream.”


You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or create a trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Week 12: Dreams”


  • Comment from d

    Open up the Archimboldi forum!

  • Comment from Rise

    Looks like Hans could be the boy Pelletier dreamed about in Week 2. The dream about Pelletier vacationing in the Greek islands, renting a boat, and meeting a boy who spent the whole day diving. It’s also the dream where the water was alive.

    • Comment from bosilawhat

      The other thing that immediately struck me about this section is that so far we’ve had dreams where water and the ocean are sources of terror, yet here we find a boy who is seemingly more comfortable in the water than on land.

      There’s also a bit on page 559 that describes the border between Sonora and Arizona as “a chain of haunted or enchanted islands.” It continues equating the desert and the ocean: “The desert is an endless sea.” Is Archimboldi the one character who can face the vast unknown of the desert/sea without fear?

  • Comment from Daryl

    Rise, that’s a very astute observation. Even having been paying special attention to the dreams, I hadn’t made that connection.


Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.



Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.