Christa Giles

150
Esther éclatât comme une mystérieuse fleur,
dans le pays du songe. 410
He sees and interprets the ˝symbols˝ in the dream solely in
relation to the biblical myth. But then, significantly,
Huysmans moves Jacques beyond this limited
interpretation as ˝l’insondable enigme du Rêve˝ 411
continues to haunt him. He therefore begins to question the
very nature of dreams and dreaming, examining old
theories and rejecting them. He questions the belief that
dreams prophesy the future or warn the dreamer of
potential good or evil events. He further examines the
contemporary belief that dreams were a mere
transmutation of impressions of life, and therefore simply a
product of sense impressions.
Jacques finds these explanations unsatisfactory, and
in an interesting passage, foreshadowing Freud, speaks of
the possibility of dreams connecting with the past, the
realm of childhood:
Y avait-il, d’autre part, un nécessaire
association des idées si ténue que son fil
échappait a l’analyse, un fil souterrain
fonctionnant dans l’obscurité de l’âme,
portant l’étincelle, éclairant tout d’un coup