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| notes & pictures - story 5 |
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Dream language can contain subversive
themes in a superficially innocent content. This is English
understatement. This is literally 'under the statement'.
Assaults of the established order or advertisements of
sexual proclivities can be subtly described without the
writer being discovered or 'outed'.
1) I'm a biker, but your secret is safe with me.
2) Remember the days when pubs hung notices on their doors
that read 'No Bikers', well they still do, although sometimes
it reads a bit posher, 'sorry, no motorcyclists.'
The poet Coleridge said, "I should much wish…to float
about along an infinite ocean…& wake once in a million
years for a few minutes - just to know I was going to
sleep a million years more". In her bedlam vision,
the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, wrote 'my
imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, towards
the 'hideous phantasm of a man'.
A letter from a French cleric written in 1178 and sent
to Nicholas of St Albans gives an inkling of how the English
attitude is linked to the sea: 'Your island is surrounded
by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are affected
by the nature of the element in which they live. Unsubstantial
fantasies slide easily into their minds. They think their
dreams to be visions, and their visions to be divine.
We cannot blame them, for such is the nature of their
land.'
For centuries the English were perceived as 'seers of
visions'. The druidic priests were renowned for their
visionary powers. The earliest histories were propped
up by a vision. The goddess Diana appeared before Brutus
to say that: 'Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there
lies, sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old.'
Crucially important figures in contemporary literature
would discuss in a sober manner about angels and the like,
willing no suspension of disbelief. |
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