Cover art for Three Dreams
Pages:
48
Format:
Paperback
ISBN
9781955190008
Dimensions:
4.5" x 7"
April 20, 2021

Three Dreams

$8.00

"When we are told in childhood that, at midnight, when sleep draws near to our souls and darkens our dreams, the dead arise from their sleep and in churches act out the masses of the living, we shudder then at death, on account of the dead…" —Jean Paul, "The Dead Christ Proclaims That There Is No God"

“Dream Upon the Universe” is a translation by Thomas De Quincey of a dream from Richter’s late work Der Komet (1820), and is published in “Analects from Richter” in De Quincey’s Essays (London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1886, 304-307pp).

The fragment published here as “A Dream” was not included in Sterne’s collected works until a French study of his work, published in 1870 by Paul Stapfer, included it as Fragment inédit (New fragment). Its roundabout providence has not stopped several generations of scholars from including it in definitive editions of his work.

“The Dead Christ Proclaims That There Is No God” is a new version of “Rede des toten Christus vom Weltgebäude herab, dass kein Gott sei”, a chapter in Jean Paul’s novel Siebenkäs (1797). The present version is a revised palimpsest of Edward Henry Noel’s and Alexander Ewing’s versions of the chapter in Richter’s novel (respectively, London: Sampson Low, 1845; London: George Bell, 1895).

Jean Paul is the nom-de-plume of Johann Paul F. Richter (March 21, 1763–Nov. 14, 1825), a German writer of long novels noted for their digression, warmth, and humor. After several early satirical works (at the “vinegar-factory”, he would say), he hit a stride in the 1790s with The Invisible Lodge (1793), Hesperus, or 45 Dog-Post Days (1795), Siebenkäs (1797), Titan (1803), and Flegeljhare (1805).

Laurence Sterne (Nov. 24, 1713–March 18, 1768) was an Anglo-Irish author and cleric, best known (and rightfully so) for the novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, as well as the novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy and his collected sermons. “Fiction had scarcely gotten started,” wrote William Gass of Sterne, “and, already, Sterne saw all round it—as well as through.”

Pages:
48
Format:
Paperback
ISBN
9781955190008
Dimensions:
4.5" x 7"

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