Suspiria de Profundis · Chapter
Dreaming explained
De Quincey reflects on the grandeur of human dreams and the faculty of dreaming, arguing that it is a powerful but neglected capacity that requires solitude and often opium to fully develop.
What happens
De Quincey reflects on the grandeur of human dreams and the faculty of dreaming, arguing that it is a powerful but neglected capacity that requires solitude and often opium to fully develop. He explains that his own dreams were shaped by two agencies: childhood afflictions and opium, which together amplified the intensity and reality of his dream visions. He describes the terrifying expansion of time and space in dreams, and concludes with a note on the lost balance of his narrative due to printing accidents.
Themes in this chapter
Dreams and the Subconscious
Central theme: the faculty of dreaming as a grand, powerful, and often neglected human capacity, amplified by opium and childhood experiences.
Solitude and Meditation
De Quincey argues that solitude is essential for developing the power of dreaming, and that modern social life dissipates this faculty.
Time and Mortality
Opium's power to amplify time in dreams is explored, making it elastic and immeasurable beyond human scales.
Memory and the Past
The chapter revisits childhood afflictions as a key agency that, combined with opium, shaped the narrator's dreams.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Reflects on his own dreaming faculty and the dual influences of childhood and opium.
- Thomas De Quincey
Authorial voice discussing the purpose of the Confessions and his personal dream experiences.
Key passages
“He whose talk is of oxen will probably dream of oxen; and the condition of human life, which yokes so vast a majority to a daily experience incompatible with much elevation of thought, oftentimes neutralises the tone of grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming, even for those whose minds are populous with solemn imagery.”
People dream about what occupies their daily lives, and most people's mundane routines prevent them from having grand or elevated dreams, even if they have rich inner thoughts.
De Quincey explains how ordinary life suppresses the potential for magnificent dreaming.
“No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude. How much solitude, so much power.”
A person cannot fully develop their intellectual abilities without regularly spending time alone; the more solitude, the greater the mental power.
De Quincey emphasizes the necessity of solitude for intellectual and dream development.
“Time becomes infinitely elastic, stretching out to such immeasurable and vanishing termini that it seems ridiculous to compute the sense of it, on waking, by expressions commensurate to human life.”
In dreams under opium, time expands so vastly that upon waking it feels absurd to measure it in ordinary human terms like years or generations.
Describes the dream-time dilation effect of opium.