“O sonho não é uma fuga. Nossos pensamentos noturnos — mesmo os mais bizarros — saem do mesmo cadinho que nossos pensamentos diurnos. Não podemos esperar destituir durante o sono os desejos, os medos ou a mera mudança da mente que molda cada fase de nossa existência.

O sonho não é uma revelação. Se um sonho oferece ao sonhador alguma luz sobre si mesmo, não é a pessoa de olhos fechados que faz a descoberta, mas a pessoa de olhos abertos, suficientemente lúcida para organizar os pensamentos.

O sonho — uma miragem cintilante cercada de sombras — é essencialmente poesia.”

Este diário-duplo, escrito pelo surrealista Michel Leiris, nasce quando o autor percebe, de certa maneira, que a tinta com que seus sonhos são escritos, influi e se mistura nas páginas do seu próprio diário; naturalmente, sem que force, a bruma que cobre os sonhos também cobre a sua vida real.

Estreita-se a margem entre vida e sonho (e daí vem o título desta edição, ou, da francesa, ainda melhor: (vulgarmente) Noites Claras e Dias Escuros).

Na minha opinião todos deveriam tirar um tempo para ler estes sonhos, vislumbres oníricos, que se apresentam este diário de múltiplos donos, pois, conforme você vai lendo, você vai percebendo que este diário também é o seu diário; e os sonhos do Leiris, desencadeiam na sua (e na nossa) vida, memórias incompreensíveis de sonhos que ficaram marcados no nosso inconsciente.

‘‘Basta um pequeno ajuste de iluminação ou um leve tropel de retórica para que a vida cotidiana assuma a mesma distância incerta dos sonhos, ou, para que o sonho seja desmistificado, diluído no cotidiano.”

A demarcação porosa entre vigília e sonho é desfeita. Como diz o grande Nerval: “O sonho é uma segunda vida.” e “aqui começa o que chamarei de invasão do sonho na vida real.” Neiris faz a mesma descoberta: a vivacidade profundamente gravada e misteriosa que experimenta nos sonhos, também experimenta em certos episódios de sua realidade.

“As últimas palavras de Nerval, um bilhete (de suicídio?) deixado na mesa da cozinha de sua tia: “Ne m’attends pas ce soir, car la nuit sera noire et blanche”. Não espere por mim esta noite, pois a noite será preto e branca.”

O livro é curto, onírico, poético, certas vezes, exageradamente surreal, mas, extremamente interessante:

“1942, Sonho: Eu sou o ator Jean Yonnel e estou declamando uma espécie de tragédia raciniana. De repente, não me lembro mais das minhas falas. Passo a falar devagar, em frases curtas e bruscas, embora ainda mantendo meu fervor declamatório; proclamo que, o esquecimento que me acometeu, tornou-me consciente da peça, logo, não posso mais representá-la como costumava fazer, uma performance que só em fluxo, só em falta de consciência tornava-se possível.”

Vamos vivendo como o sonho, passando por essa noite sem noite como Michel Leiris a chama; essa noite duplamente noturna dada a ausência e subtração de si em si mesma, essa noite da qual também nós somos subtraídos e escultados, e assim postos em um estado que não é o dormir e nem o despertar: suspensos entre o ser e o não-ser.

“1924, vida real: Tendo retornado de Mainz, onde trabalhava como jornalista, e prestes a partir novamente para Le Havre, sua terra natal, Georg es Limb nosso autor de L’Enf ant polair e daquele Soleils bas decorado pelas gravuras prodigiosamente agudas e arejadas de André Masson — estava dividindo meu quarto no apartamento da mãe por alguns dias.

Por volta das duas da manhã, acordo e vejo Limb sentado no sofá que estava usando como cama, lançando um olhar perplexo ao redor do quarto.

O sofá parece estar completamente envolto em gaze, como se estivesse coberto com uma rede mosquiteira.

Quando lhe pergunto qual é o problema, ele responde que pensou que alguém havia pendurado cortinas em volta do sofá para enforcá-lo.

Nesse ponto, a ilusão desaparece.”

Paro por aqui para não estragar mais a experiência que é lê-lo.

Vulgarmente: o que importa para Leiris no sonho são as evocações de novos sentimentos, de um sentido que não é sentido, e não o lugar comum, de dotar o sonho de significados e significações. É o sonho como sonho, a noite como dia, e o dia como noite. Essa abordagem faz com que o livro flua suavemente, uma experiência rápida mas gostosa, que deixo como uma curiosa recomendação, que se você for experiente no francês ou no inglês, você o lê em não mais que duas horas.

“Estas experiências já foram sonhos; são agora, signos de poesia.” (p. xxii), prefácio do Maurice Blanchot.

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It feels odd to rate people's dreams, even though I realize relating them in meaningful fashion does take a great deal of skill. No rating, then, other than the unnumbered variety: I love when excellent authors let us into what their minds get up to while sleeping.

FINAL REVIEW

French surreal fiction writer Michel Leiris in 1922. Nights as Day, Days as Night - More than one hundred entries in this book, the author's dream journal, composed over a span of forty years. Here is the very first entry: In front of a crowd of gawking spectators - of whom I am one - a series of executions is being carried out, and this rivets my attention. Up until the moment when the executioner and his attendants direct themselves toward me because it is my turn now. Which comes as a complete and terrifying surprise.

What I especially enjoy about this dream is how Leiris, as dreamer, is initially merely a spectator but then there is a radical shift - the main players within the dream, the executioner and his attendants, turn their attention on the dreamer. Which leaves us with the question: Now that his turn has come, what will be the experience of the dreamer if he is executed? Similar in spirit to all the other dreams in his journal, Michel Leiris neither poses the question nor provides an answer since he regards his dreams as a kind of poetry, dream prose poems to be recorded free of analysis or commentary.

As Maurice Blanchot notes in his excellent ten-page forward, for Michel Leiris, dream is not an escape; rather, dreams emerge from the same crucible as our waking day thoughts; we can’t shake off our desires and fears. Indeed, Leiris begins his dream journal with a quote from Gerard de Neval: “Dream is a second life.” For me, reading this book was a decidedly intimate experience; I had the distinct feeling dream was even more than the author’s second life – dream took center stage; dream was his primary life. And, why not? Michel Leiris was a highly creative literary artist who, similar to nearly all his fellow surrealists, favored a dream narrative over the more conventional forms of poetry and the novel.

Turning to the entries themselves, poetry and the arts are frequent subjects and abiding themes, as when Michel Leiris, as dreamer, walks along a broad Paris avenue and passes a huge dark building that turns out to be a psychiatric hospital. The patients are out on the sidewalk, each caged up, sort of, by a circle of bars that comes up to his or her waist. All the lunatics are screaming and waving their arms. Michel recognizes several people, among them Georges Gabory, whom he congratulates on his recently published book of poems. After looking carefully, making sure no hospital guard is watching, Georges escapes from his cage and joins Michel on a long walk.

In another entry, Michel observes a bit of dialogue between André Breton and Robert Desnos as the two men perform as actors on a stage. Or, on further reflection, Michel might be actually reading the words on a page with stage directions. And in still another entry, a Scotsman plays a bagpipe in the shape of a gigantic bloated man in the manner of Picasso’s “Baigneuse.” With dreams like these, is it any surprise Michel Leiris had a longtime affiliation with the surrealists and surrealism?

Here is one of my favorites, a shorter three sentence entry: One night, drunk, on the Boulevard de Sebastolpol, I pass an old wretch of a man and call out to him. He answers: “Leave me alone . . . I am the master of the heights of cinema.” Then he continues on his way to Belleville.

As readers, we may ask: How does the dreamer know he is drunk and what does it feel like to be drunk within a dream? How does being under the influence of alcohol affect the clarity of the dream? Are the words Michel calls out garbled? Again, as the poetry is in the dream itself, Michel Lieris recounts as accurately as possible the dream content without further elaboration or explanation. Such is the nature of dreams that in a curious and ticklish way, the more quizzical, the more perplexing and puzzling, the greater the entry’s poetic and imaginative power.

Another surreal entry: My friend André Masson and I are soaring through the air like gymnasiarchs. A voice calls up to us: “World-class acrobats when are the two of you finally going to come down to earth?” At these words, we execute a flip over the horizon and drop into a concave hemisphere.

I encourage anyone who feels the call to join these acrobats of the sky, anyone ready to take the leap into concave hemispheres, to treat your imagination to this collection of surreal dreams. And when you return to earth, you can also join Michel Leiris when he becomes part of a cubist painting, that is, when his very being, via his gaze, projects itself into the painting, into a cubist world without perspective.


Portrait of Michel Lieris by Francis Bacon.
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FINAL REVIEW

French surreal fiction writer Michel Leiris in 1922. Nights as Day, Days as Night - More than one hundred entries in this book, the author's dream journal, composed over a span of forty years. Here is the very first entry: In front of a crowd of gawking spectators - of whom I am one - a series of executions is being carried out, and this rivets my attention. Up until the moment when the executioner and his attendants direct themselves toward me because it is my turn now. Which comes as a complete and terrifying surprise.

What I especially enjoy about this dream is how Leiris, as dreamer, is initially merely a spectator but then there is a radical shift - the main players within the dream, the executioner and his attendants, turn their attention on the dreamer. Which leaves us with the question: Now that his turn has come, what will be the experience of the dreamer if he is executed? Similar in spirit to all the other dreams in his journal, Michel Leiris neither poses the question nor provides an answer since he regards his dreams as a kind of poetry, dream prose poems to be recorded free of analysis or commentary.

As Maurice Blanchot notes in his excellent ten-page forward, for Michel Leiris, dream is not an escape; rather, dreams emerge from the same crucible as our waking day thoughts; we can’t shake off our desires and fears. Indeed, Leiris begins his dream journal with a quote from Gerard de Neval: “Dream is a second life.” For me, reading this book was a decidedly intimate experience; I had the distinct feeling dream was even more than the author’s second life – dream took center stage; dream was his primary life. And, why not? Michel Leiris was a highly creative literary artist who, similar to nearly all his fellow surrealists, favored a dream narrative over the more conventional forms of poetry and the novel.

Turning to the entries themselves, poetry and the arts are frequent subjects and abiding themes, as when Michel Leiris, as dreamer, walks along a broad Paris avenue and passes a huge dark building that turns out to be a psychiatric hospital. The patients are out on the sidewalk, each caged up, sort of, by a circle of bars that comes up to his or her waist. All the lunatics are screaming and waving their arms. Michel recognizes several people, among them Georges Gabory, whom he congratulates on his recently published book of poems. After looking carefully, making sure no hospital guard is watching, Georges escapes from his cage and joins Michel on a long walk.

In another entry, Michel observes a bit of dialogue between André Breton and Robert Desnos as the two men perform as actors on a stage. Or, on further reflection, Michel might be actually reading the words on a page with stage directions. And in still another entry, a Scotsman plays a bagpipe in the shape of a gigantic bloated man in the manner of Picasso’s “Baigneuse.” With dreams like these, is it any surprise Michel Leiris had a longtime affiliation with the surrealists and surrealism?

Here is one of my favorites, a shorter three sentence entry: One night, drunk, on the Boulevard de Sebastolpol, I pass an old wretch of a man and call out to him. He answers: “Leave me alone . . . I am the master of the heights of cinema.” Then he continues on his way to Belleville.

As readers, we may ask: How does the dreamer know he is drunk and what does it feel like to be drunk within a dream? How does being under the influence of alcohol affect the clarity of the dream? Are the words Michel calls out garbled? Again, as the poetry is in the dream itself, Michel Lieris recounts as accurately as possible the dream content without further elaboration or explanation. Such is the nature of dreams that in a curious and ticklish way, the more quizzical, the more perplexing and puzzling, the greater the entry’s poetic and imaginative power.

Another surreal entry: My friend André Masson and I are soaring through the air like gymnasiarchs. A voice calls up to us: “World-class acrobats when are the two of you finally going to come down to earth?” At these words, we execute a flip over the horizon and drop into a concave hemisphere.

I encourage anyone who feels the call to join these acrobats of the sky, anyone ready to take the leap into concave hemispheres, to treat your imagination to this collection of surreal dreams. And when you return to earth, you can also join Michel Leiris when he becomes part of a cubist painting, that is, when his very being, via his gaze, projects itself into the painting, into a cubist world without perspective.


Portrait of Michel Lieris by Francis Bacon.
( )

A dream journal. In a word; uneven.

May 29-30, 1929
Lined up single file, each one mounting the preceding one, eight dogs copulate before my very eyes. I am informed that they have been trained to do this as a stunt.

August 28-29, 1942
[...] I remember leaving the theater, still in that heightened state every spectacle ought to induce in us, and being horribly upset that I had to deal with the crush of the subway and the hassles at the ticket booth because of some error I had made in small change. I railed against this obligatory return to my senses; I had been bathing in a myth, and in a split-second it had all evaporated. ( )