Karen von Blixen was born on this day in 1885.
People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special
kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and
ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real
glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the
freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the
freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of
the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that
there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether
outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views,
rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of.
Strangers appear and are friends or enemies, although the person who dreams has
never done anything about them. The ideas of flight and pursuit are recurrent
in dreams and are equally enrapturing. Excellent witty things are said by
everybody. It is true that if remembered in the daytime they will fade and lose
their sense, because they belong to a different plane, but as soon as the one
eams lies down at night, the current is again closed and he remembers their
excellency. All the time the feeling of immense freedom is surrounding him and
running through him like air and light, an unearthly bliss. He is a privileged
person, the one who has got nothing to do, but for whose enrichment and
pleasure all things are brought together; the Kings of Tarshish shall bring
gifts. He takes part in a great battle or ball, and wonders the while that he
should be, in the midst of those events, so far privileged as to be lying down.
It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea
of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain
anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to
work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off,
that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to
the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams.
The thing which in the waking world comes nearest to a
dream is night in a big town, where nobody knows one, or the African night.
There too is infinite freedom: it is there that things are going on, destinies
are made round you, there is activity to all sides, and it is none of your concern.
Isak Dinesen, from Out of Africa
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