Dream-Land

Dear Reader,




I'm feeling dreamy today...dreamy enough to take down Edgar Allan Poe from his long-standing position on my bookshelf, blow off the layer of dust that has accumulated on the cover, and while away the evening in Dream-Land.


If you are lucky enough, my dearest reader, to have been blessed with an actual social life, then you probably have no idea what all my allusions to dreams and Dream-Land are pertaining to. While the name Edgar Allan Poe almost immediately calls to mind some of his most famous works, like the poem 'The Raven', or the short story 'The Pit and the Pendulum', I shall not be talking about them today. I shall, in fact, be talking [typing?] about a certain poem, entitled 'Dream-Land', which I stumbled across while reading my extremely sizeable edition of 'The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe'.


Of course, being Edgar Allan Poe, the poem is a bit...spooky. But cool. Anyway, for lack of better blog-fodder, I have decided to quote the poem, and tell you what I think it means--that is, if you have managed to stay awake for the duration of the poem recital, my socially-dynamic reader. Here we go--








Edgar Allan Poe
'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 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 mountains--near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,--
By the grey woods,--by the swamp
Where the toad and newt encamp,--
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,--
By each spot the most unholy--
In each nook most melancholy,--
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past--
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderers by--
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth--and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region--
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis,--oh 'tis an Eldorado*!
But the traveller, traveling through it,
May not--dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed 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.






Eidolon* -- Phantom.
Thule* -- The most northerly region of the habitable world to ancient Greek geographers. In this context, I think it simply means a place that's very, very far away.
Titan* -- A primitive god of Greek mythology, possessing great strength and size. So, 'Titan woods' presumably means a vast tract of huge trees.
Eldorado* -- A mythical city, built entirely out of gold. That is, in the context of this poem, a place of great riches and opportunities; an emotional or spiritual goal.







Well, there you have it. I sincerely hope I haven't bored you into a state of comatose, dear reader, because I'm not done yet.


I think the poem is about, well, a dream land; a place you only visit in your dreams, which is ruled by a phantom, called NIGHT. The way this dreamer talks, it's as if he just went from one dream world to another. Those lines 'from a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime, / Out of SPACE--out of TIME' seem to imply that the world he came from was just as dreamy and bizarre as the Dream-Land itself. Could this realm of timelessness and spacelessness be the realm of sleep? I could be wrong, but that's what I came up with after reading and re-reading the poem.


In the second stanza, the dreamer goes on to describe the landscape of this dream world. Pretty surreal, if you ask me. I mean, bottomless valleys, boundless floods, chasms, caves, and Titan woods. All of which are covered by a layer of wet, dripping dew; so thick that no one can see what they really look like. Not to mention the everlasting crumbling of mountains into the 'shoreless seas', that surge and 'aspire' up into the fire-filled skies. Then there are the lonely, dead, still, and endlessly outspreading lakes; that seem to be cold ('chilly') with the profusion of snowy, lolling lilies growing there. There is one thing I don't understand about this stanza, though. How can there be lakes and mountains if there is no shore? But maybe the dreamer was exaggerating about how vast the sea was in this dream world. It is a poem, after all; not everything is supposed to be taken literally.


And then, the really spooky part. According to the dreamer, in the most 'unholy' and 'melancholy' places of this Dream-Land, where all the Ghouls live, anybody passing through will meet 'Sheeted Memories of the Past': ghosts, obviously. The apparitions of the dreamer's friends that have, in fact, been dead and buried for a long time.


But I guess the dreamer got over his fear of meeting these ghosts from his past, because the next stanza tells us that an encounter between these long-separated friends isn't necessarily an unpleasant one. It says that 'for the heart whose woes are legion'--basically, anyone with a lot to be miserable about--Dream-Land is a serene and relaxing place. As for the 'spirit who walks in shadow'--sounds like a classic case of depression to me--it's an Eldorado, the Promised Land, everything they've ever wanted.


In this land, NIGHT--the King--forbids anybody passing through his kingdom to open their eyes. That whole line about 'the uplifting of the fringed lid' just means the opening of your eyes--the lid being the eyelid, the fringe being the eyelashes, of course. So, you can only see the Dream-Land with closed eyes, and never when you're awake. I think the 'darkened glasses', which is the only thing we're allowed to behold the Dream-Land through, is sleep.


Finally, the last stanza. The dreamer has just returned home, but this time he calls the Dream-Land the 'Ultimate dim Thule', with a capital 'U'; meaning that the dream world is a more ultimate Thule than the real world. Or something like that.


Well, that's it, dear reader. I have run out of steam and ideas. I hope you've enjoyed reading this post as much as I have enjoyed composing it. Til next time, sayonara!







Yours,




Figgy the Dreamer