Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

Assoc for Scottish Literature

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod” – from A Child’s Garden of Verses

Image: illustration by Charles Robinson (1870–1937) to “The Land of Nod”

Today, 25 September, is #WorldDreamDay

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#Scottish #literature #kidlit #poetry #19thcentury #RobertLouisStevenson #dream #dreams #dreaming

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47431/the-land-of-nod

The Land of Nod
by Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do —
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

Pen and ink illustration by Charles Robinson to Stevenson’s poem "The Land of Nod". The image is tall and thin; the right side is dominated by a black crag (or possibly a strange tree-trunk), in front of which, in the bottom right-hand corner, stand two fantastical bird-like creatures with scruffy feathers and outsized, beaked heads. Although not overtly threatening or frightening, they are unsettling in their appearance. Behind them, a small child, head bowed, toils up-slope with the aid of a staff. Strange, cloudy outcrops and buildings are in the background. In the top left-hand corner, a giant, long-nosed face peers over the top of the cliff.

Caption: "Up the mountain sides of dreams"

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“Stevenson relates examples of vivid dreams at length, as illustrations of this detailed, indigenous creation of narrative material, but also as a pathology which leads to the reification of such dream residuum in the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde…”

—Kevan Manwaring, “That Crafty Artifice: Stevenson’s Brownies and the Writing Process”

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #RobertLouisStevenson #dream #dreams #dreaming #WorldDreamDay

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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2018/07/that-crafty-artifice-stevensons-brownies-and-the-writing-process/

Assoc for Scottish Literature replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

“While he was yet a student, there came to him a dream-adventure which he has no anxiety to repeat; he began, that is to say, to dream in sequence and thus to lead a double life…”

—read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Chapter on Dreams” on @gutenberg_org

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #RobertLouisStevenson #dream #dreams #dreaming #WorldDreamDay

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https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30990/30990-h/30990-h.htm#page177

I should have said he studied, or was by way of studying, at Edinburgh College, which (it may be supposed) was how I came to know him. Well, in his dream-life he passed a long day in the surgical theatre, his heart in his mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing monstrous malformations and the abhorred dexterity of surgeons. In a heavy, rainy, foggy evening he came forth into the South Bridge, turned up the High Street, and entered the door of a tall land, at the top of which he supposed himself to lodge. All night long, in his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after stair in endless series, and at every second flight a flaring lamp with a reflector. All night long he brushed by single persons passing downward—beggarly women of the street, great, weary, muddy labourers, poor scarecrows of men, pale parodies of women—but all drowsy and weary like himself, and all single, and all brushing against him as they passed. In the end, out of a northern window, he would see day beginning to whiten over the Firth, give up the ascent, turn to descend, and in a breath be back again upon the streets, in his wet clothes, in the wet, haggard dawn, trudging to another day of monstrosities and operations.