John. T. Morse - "John Quincy Adams"

Theodor Storm - "Aquis Submersus"

Susanna Moodie - "Life in the Backwoods"

Leonard Merrick - "A Chair on The Boulevard"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Bride of Dreams

F >> Frederik van Eeden >> The Bride of Dreams




Thereupon I saw two strange beings in the wilderness. Human beings also
- not demons. One was slate-colored like clay, the other brownish red
like baked earth. They were hard at work - and the thought crossed my
mind whether these were perchance the proletarians, who in this land
supported the luxurious people I had just now seen. They were busy with
a fire and I asked them something, about food or wood I believe.
Laughingly they explained: "That is scarce here." Then I pointed back
toward the land where I had left the people living in affluence:

"Yet it is not scarce there." Thereupon they laughed, feigning
indifference, and intimated, how I no longer remember, that they were
not envious of this, that these things were not essential, that it
should be so. I awoke pondering the meaning of this dream, which I did
not comprehend, and even now would not dare to explain entirely.

All that the perception during sleep teaches us, demands exactly as
much scientific thought and comparison, critical analysis and
selection, and building up into fixed, universal and lasting truth, as
do all our waking perceptions. There can be no other true revelation
than that of creative art and of science, established by all and for
all. What would a personal revelation signify, that depended on the
receptivity of a single individual, and could be affirmed in a few
words and, by suggestion, forced upon the unreceptive? Would it not be
as though the Divinity entrusted to the apostle the work of convincing
thousands, where he himself had found only one - the apostle -
susceptible to persuasion? Can such a revelation, spread by inculcation
and pressure, by authority and servility, be anything else than passing
fancy, and fleeting deception?

Therefore the study of the immaterial did not draw me away from the
world of day, but caused me to work in it with all the more zeal and
satisfaction, because I learned to look upon this world as our real
field of labor, where the riches that shall count on a higher plane of
vision are prepared.

Dreams only give us slight hints; the work must be done in this life.

But my dreams also showed me that solitude and seclusion could never
lead to the highest joy and purest bliss. Unspeakably happy as were the
moments of meeting with my dream bride, they were surpassed by those in
which a universal joy, a great and transcendent enthusiasm
simultaneously filling many beings - human happy beings - carried along
myself and my beloved in a wave of radiant festive bliss.

I have had them often, such dreams, and they were the most beautiful of
all. I know not whether they were the proclaimers of future or the
dawning of already existing reality - but I would see spectacles of
countless enthusiastic multitudes, processions of festive people
streaming together and marching in solemn rhythm, with jubilation and
sound of clarion. And we two, my beloved and I, were a part thereof, we
belonged to it; and a feeling of festiveness and of unlimited
confidence toward all possessed us, lifting us up into a bright and
joyous mood, and yet not detracting from our mutual affection, but
transfiguring and strengthening it.

Thereby - as through repeated experience I learned to understand them -
truths were pointed out to me in a peculiar symbolical way. Thus I once
saw in my dream many people building a large house and laying out a
path, and they did it with marvellous alacrity. And there was no one to
command them, to give directions, or point out anything.

The incredible swiftness with which the work advanced was due to the
fact that each one of the builders, down to the very least, knew and
comprehended the entire work and therefore did not need the slightest
direction.

I understood these hints better and better, and more and more clearly
comprehended what hindered man on his upward path - the dawning rays of
pure universal blessedness shone for me ever more brightly from out the
chaos of our confused personal and social life. But all the more
tormentingly I felt my impotence to bring about an effectual reform.

XX

Ah, what could I do, imprisoned as I was in the cage of my honorable
position, my definitely-prescribed sphere of action, my distinguished
connections, my luxurious domestic establishment, my reputation and my
money? The better I saw what society lacked for leading man toward the
highest development, the more I felt myself paralyzed when I wished to
contribute something toward his deliverance.

I felt as does the sailor on board a ship in distress who sees the safe
waters and rescue close at hand - he alone, of all the others - but he
has no authority, he knows that they would not believe him, discipline
prevents him from speaking. Then it is harder for him to do his duty
than for the others who plod on blindly, obedient to their superiors,
without seeing deliverance.

I saw how men suffered misery through gigantic misunderstandings, which
like great clouds of mist enveloped and confused the nations. I saw
them blundering with their tongue and their words as children who have
their first paint box and get as much color smeared over their dresses,
hands and faces as on the paper. And on this mess-work they build their
treaties, with this mess-work they enact laws, and thus messing,
blundering and squandering they prepare their food, their clothing and
their habitation.

From words wrongly understood and wrongly employed arose the bloody
frenzy of revolutions, the grim party-rage, the useless slaughtering
and disputing and the fatal dissipation of thinking and working powers.
In their blind faith in reason and the True Word men destroyed their
own and each other's joy and happiness, not realizing that they all
wanted one and the same thing, for which they employed many different
terms.

I saw how they all acted from the mighty impulse of the herd-instinct,
the group-sense, the sacred gift of Christ, warrant of their power and
safety - but at the same time how they all thought they acted from
personal, independent judgment and reasonable conviction, to their own
miserable confusion and wretchedness.

I saw the grouping into rich and poor, because the wholesome craving
for luxury and abundance is corrupted and weakened through neglect of
the tie of love, so that the individual thinks that he alone can be
luxurious and happy in a world of wretches, and thus no one attains
blessedness. And this once more: - because there are no two people who
with the same word know that they mean the same thing.

And I saw the demagogues taking advantage of our good instincts, of the
craving for luxury, of the group-sense, to start up fatal currents
through the influence of hollow catchwords and ridiculous
over-estimation of self. As though the poor who had known nothing but
poverty and envy would be better proof against luxury than the rich; as
though self-insight and self-restriction were possible without culture;
as though the perfect maturity of every individual, which demands the
very highest organization and efficiency, and which in name is called
the Christian ideal, could be attained all at once, without practice,
without development, without patient discipline.

All this I saw, and what could I do? My sphere of activity bound me to
fixed duties and to my superiors. I worked in a definite
group-confederacy, the political world of diplomats, and to go beyond
this meant immediate expulsion and ostracism.

Well, yes, in the clubs and "circles" people speak more freely. There
one sometimes hears the entire diplomatic service ridiculed with
cynical sarcasm by those of inferior rank, and the superiors listen
smilingly, as though regretting that their higher dignity forbade them
this freedom of speech. In these circles many a sharp word would
sometimes escape me too, in regard to the structure of national
prosperity, still everywhere based upon the want of the weaker, and
also regarding the mighty ones on earth with whom I associated, and who
were yet so often embarrassed and foolish when obliged to say something
concerning the highest human gifts - wisdom, art and beauty. And from
some vague confusion of thought, characteristic of the chaos of their
ideas, I was known there as "the red duke," or sometimes too as "the
Christian diplomat."

But nothing could weaken my conviction that the chaos is busy arranging
itself, at first blindly, with a cruel indifference to suffering,
driven by an inscrutable impulse - but by degrees with clearer
consciousness, more insight, more skill, in proportion as higher wisdom
gradually pairs itself with wider active power.

It was plain to me that if there ever was a time in human history in
which men were awaiting a hero, a Messiah, a redeemer, it is ours. No
opinion is more foolish than the one that in our age there would be no
room for a prophet. But he must not be a moralist preaching repentance,
not a speculative builder of systems, not a man of lamentations and
warnings, but a poet in very deed.

Riper than was the French revolution for the advent of an organizing
and suggestively powerful general and ruler like Napoleon, is our time
for the advent of the wise and high-minded administrator, who will make
use of the group-confederacy, the herd-spirit, so much stronger and
more consolidated to-day than ever before.

I also knew what the qualities and talents of this hero should be. The
time of the great generals is past; the brute power of force is no
longer needed for establishing, only for preserving. The commercial
alliance covers the entire world course, and tolerates war only as a
secondary aid. The honor of the soldier becomes that of the police, the
peace preserver.

But the qualities of the general, the ability for organizing, for
ruling and for the bearing of responsibility, these remain equally
necessary.

The Messiah of our time must be the hero-organizer who brings order
into the confused operations and the half-conscious action of our
society. And as in the time of the generals, it was only the
poet-generals, the great dreamers of a world-realm, such as Alexander,
Cæsar and Napoleon, who shone out through all the ages as heroes and
geniuses, so in our time, it will be the poet organizer, the dreamer of
a world fellowship, who will attain still greater heroism, and much
more lasting honor.

The time of eloquence is also past. The elusive phrases of oratorical
logic only blind young nations, and even America is outgrowing the
authority of the orator who is solely an orator.

But the time of the drama and of music is not past, and he who knows
how to handle these mighty suggestive expedients can turn the course of
humanity. The herd will follow him though he lead them into the
wilderness or the desert. Wagner and Ibsen have proved it.

But some day, and probably soon, it will come to pass that the hero of
the new times, the poet organizer, will join hands with the one
suggestively mighty through music and drama, or perchance that these
rare powers shall be united in one man.

And only then shall the herd be led into green pastures and shall be
satisfied and shall see the day of maturity dawning.

I say it, I, old hermit among the philistines, and my peace rests upon
this knowledge. I had not the gift for ruling, for organizing, for
leading. I was not eloquent. I had not the power of music or drama. I
could not attempt to be this hero, this "Sotèr" of mankind, for I knew
what was required of him. But I knew and still know that he shall be
born with the infallible certainty with which statistics foretell the
number of geniuses and defectives, the number of those above and below
the normal. His birth is approaching, and speedily moreover, as surely
as the birth of a majority of sons after a man-slaughtering war. For
the race has need of him, Christ requires him.

And if I myself cannot be he, still I can be his John the Baptist,
testifying of him, happy and enthusiastic in my solitude, in this
desert of caddishness and provincialism.

XXI

I had been married seventeen years and my youngest child was eight
years old when I returned to this same Holland, where so many strands
of my rope of destiny are fastened. Little had changed in my life.
Order and peace reigned in my family, prosperity in the sphere of my
activities. Lucia seemed wholly satisfied and ruled her household with
quiet devotion. My children were fair and well brought up. I felt my
growing attachment to them and to their mother, as every creature is
attached to the creatures and the things that have long been its daily
companions - an affection from symbiosis, I might call it. Yet with my
inmost being I remained a stranger to them, and my affection for them
retained its forced quality. An ever-growing discontent was gathering
in me. The older I grew, the nearer I saw the time approaching when age
would make me powerless, the more intense became the strain. I felt as
though I should die without really having lived. I did not fear death,
but to be doomed to die without having revealed my true life, this was
a prospect quite unbearable to me.

I lived on, strengthened only by my dream nights, but it seemed as
though they were driving and spurring me on to something more - to an
act, to an outbreak. They became rarer and I encountered greater
difficulties in attaining the light and in seeing Emmy in my dreams.
Often it was but a desperate struggle to force my way through chambers,
garrets, and corridors. I could no longer see the unobstructed blue
sky, I could no longer attain the ecstasy of joy so greatly desired, I
could no longer pray in earnest, the voice of my dream-body grew husky
and weak, sometimes when I called Emmy, it sounded as though I spoke in
the tones of a dying man.

Moreover my temptations became stronger. As soon as the flame of life
burns more dimly, the demons regain their influence and their wanton
tricks are more successful. Lucia's maternal instincts were satisfied,
and her allurement, which had always seemed the same as seduction to
me, lost its power and was most easily evaded. But the old tormenting
life in the big cities began anew, not easier but harder to bear with
the advancing years, for the shame and the self-contempt are greater;
and the contrast between what one appears to be before the world, and
what one knows oneself to be, becomes more painful the older one grows.

And the while I knew that I harbored thoughts and intentions and even
planned deeds for which everyone, and above all, Lucia and my children,
considered me too good, I at the same time felt something like contempt
for their complacence, their content; I felt angry at this careless,
happy household, in this great, imperfect world, full of misery,
ugliness, error and confusion, this open wound from which it behooves
each of us to suffer until it is healed.

The great love that burned in me, the great love for Christ, led me to
what most people would call godless ingratitude. I cursed my prosperity
and only with difficulty bore my apparent wedded happiness. I felt as
does the soldier, who is left behind at the warm, comfortable hearth
while the army to the strains of music marches out to take the field.

The first thing I did in Holland was to buy a little sail yacht. It was
anchored at Amsterdam, as from there I could sail on the Zuiderzee. One
day I had made an engagement with a colleague from the Austrian
legation, a clever, strong, young Hungarian to sail to E------, the
little town, then still unknown to me, where I now write these pages.

In those days I was passing through the gloomiest period of my life, I
was nauseated with all the sweetness around me, the oppressive
semblance of happiness suffocated and palled on me. I saw absolutely no
deliverance, not even an accident that might threaten to change the
course of my life - new abilities I should surely never acquire,
nothing seemed in view that could bring about a change in my unreal
existence. I was indeed willing humbly to submit if I must - but there
was something that incited and disturbed me, as though submission was
the very greatest sin.

Wanton suicide before I was brought to the last extremity filled me
with aversion and disgust. But the perils of my sailing expeditions had
again acquired for me their former attraction, as in the days when I
sailed the North Sea with my father. To die the death of Shelley, my
greatest-bard, is an honor I had desired from boyhood, and I thought:
If after all it must be, then why not now, before I sink still deeper?

The day before our expedition I was deeply depressed. The wind was
blowing strongly, but it was a summer day and my companion thought as
little as I did of postponing our undertaking.

When I fell asleep that night, I knew that I was falling asleep and I
retained perfect consciousness. In wondrous transition I suddenly rose
from the deepest dejection to the light, free, joyous, soaring life of
the dream. "Thank heaven!" I thought; "let the body sleep now, I rest,
and really I am not at all tired now. I can sing and move about, fly
and soar with thorough perceptive enjoyment." Soon after I was out of
doors in a vast wooded landscape under a sunny blue sky. For a long
time the dream world had not been so beautiful. I was enchanted and
grateful and soared upward. I met a bird, and talking aloud to myself
all the time, I said that I not only wanted perceptive enjoyment but a
being to understand me - spiritual and mental communion.

I saw a white bull - the animal which in ordinary dreams most alarmed
me - the most feared dream-animal; but I felt no fear and soared high
above him over a sea; there was no danger.

Then I called my beloved, just as always. But before I myself knew it I
had called not "Emmy," but "Elsie," and this same mistake I repeated,
without noticing my error. From out a dim valley I saw a maiden
approaching, younger and smaller than Emmy, with smooth blonde hair.
But I went to meet her nevertheless as though it were Emmy, and I
walked and talked with her. I talked Dutch, which I had pretty well
mastered by that time.

Then the maiden pointed to a dark, threatening thunder cloud which was
slowly drawing up over the blue sky. This was a symbol of disaster. But
I was proud and happy and not afraid and wanted to fold her in my arms.
But she was gone; the perfect clarity of my thoughts declined, but not
my sense of happiness. The dream then attained a symbolical
significance, as often happens. I saw a long line of human beings in
bondage, like a procession of slaves, and among them many priests. And
I said things that I knew would cost others their life, heresies about
the evil brought about by false religion, and I saw the poor creatures
growing pale with fright and the priests pale with anger, but I soared
out above them, and their hatred was powerless. Then I saw a large
building, a most peculiarly beautiful and impressive temple, with
mighty pillars of gray stone and carpeted with green moss. There none
might enter without permission of the priests. But I soared far out
above them, entering it from above by the windows. And everyone saw me
and was astonished, and there was a sort of silent recognition that I
was the only one that could do this, and the priests tried to deny the
fact and even to seize me. But I laughed at them, and when they wanted
to touch me I paralyzed them with a gesture.

And there was no palsied pride or hatred herein, but a calm
self-consciousness of freedom, personal authority and triumph - a good
and beautiful emotion.

When I awoke I was surprised that I had talked Dutch with Emmy. And I
doubted whether it had indeed been she, although the face was like hers
and I had indeed seen her in such youthful form before.

The following day we sailed with a stiff sou'-wester toward my little
city, which I was then to see for the first time. From time to time
there were rain showers, mist, with a rough and rising sea. My
companion and I had donned our yellow oilskins and we had our hands
full to keep the frail little craft in the right course. The sea was
deserted, the fisherman had taken refuge in the harbors. When we saw
the harbor of E------ before us and the little city veiled in gray
mist, the waves were dashing over the rear of the boat and the little
yacht was sinking her nose deep into the billows. We had to keep up
bailing her busily, and with mute suspense we gazed toward the pier for
which we were directly heading, expecting every minute to see the boat
fill with water or the rigging break. We could distinguish the people
on the stone pier which ran out into the sea. A crowd had gathered and
stood watching us with mute interest, anxious to see whether we should
make the landing safely. I was unusually calm and happy. I would have
drowned with perfect composure, but I knew that this time it was not
yet to be.

The black eyes of the Hungarian sparkled with pleasure and pride when
at last, by dint of skilful man?uvring, with furled sail we ran safely
through the narrow entrance of the port. He shouted in his excited way,
and the sober Hollanders, sent up a little answering cheer.

Then as we glided along past the line of people who stood thronging the
stone quay, amid the stupid indifferent or coolly critical boys' faces
and the faces of the fishermen, rough and weather-beaten as though
carved out of wood, I caught sight of a pair of eyes full of intense
interest and attention, that seemed to light up gladly as with relief,
in a little face still pale from suspense or anxiety. Amid the men
stood a young woman, bareheaded, the wet, blonde hair blowing about her
cheeks. She had thrown a dark gray shawl around her as though she had
run from the house just as she was to watch for us. She looked straight
at me with an expression of concern and gladness.

I nodded to her, as every Italian, seeing a sweet woman manifesting
concern in his danger which has aroused the general attention, would
do. I nodded gaily and waved to her as though to thank her for her
sympathy. She just gave a little smile and nodded back, not blushing,
nor embarrassed or prudish - but grave and confiding as though she had
expected it.

At the exchange of this greeting and these glances I had a curious
sensation. It was as if I had forgotten myself for a moment and did not
recognize myself, and as if everything I saw did not fit in the life of
the day. I thought of my dream and without yet consciously drawing any
inferences or comparisons, I for a moment was entirely gone from the
ordinary waking world and in the land of dreams again.

"Hallo! Muralto - the boat hook!" my Hungarian called out.

With a shock I came back to earth, and it seemed as if I had been off a
great way and as if everything I saw had been familiar to me, as though
I saw it again after a long absence.

Before I came back to my senses sufficiently to hand over the boat
hook, my eyes once more sought those of the young woman. But she had
vanished from the quay. I only just caught sight of the slender figure
in the gray shawl as she crossed the little square of the port. She
hurried along with a glad, light step as though she had come solely for
us and now went home, calm and well satisfied.

"What's the matter? What ails you, Muralto? Do you see anything
particular - or anyone?"

"Did you see the young woman standing on the quay?" I asked.

"No!" said the Hungarian, "I didn't remark her. I knew of course that
there were pretty girls here, but not that you knew them."

"I know no one here. I'm here for the first time," said I curtly,
abstractedly.

We went to the hotel and dried and warmed ourselves and ordered the
dinner. I looked at everything that, despite the rain, was to be seen
of the little town, later so dear to me, - the pretty gables, the
narrow little streets, glistening with water, the sombre elms creaking
and groaning in the storm, the yellow raging sea. I also saw the house,
in which I now live, and thought it a pretty, dignified little
structure with its free-stone gable, and its tall windows.

After that we regaled ourselves with food and drink, and my companion
said that after all I must surely have seen some good acquaintance of
mine, some little friend or other - for I was so quiet, so abstracted
and yet so merry.

That night I slept without dreams of any significance. But sleep itself
had a character of gently elevating joy, and the morning found me
without a semblance of the melancholy that so long had possessed me.

The weather had cleared, the wind gone down, the sky was blue. We
decided to sail back early.

As we were leaving the hotel and stopping a moment in the vestibule,
with the blue and white tiled marble flooring and the brown wooden
ceiling, the young woman, who yesterday had stood upon the quay, came
from the out-building and, running past us, went into the upper
chamber. Again she looked me straight in the eyes and nodded cordially.
I was even more confounded than the day before. But nevertheless I had
time to remark that she was very graceful and that she had fine and
noble features and long, aristocratic hands. Her eyes were bright and
had the clear lustre that I had seen in only one pair of eyes, and an
expression as though, together with me, they knew innumerable,
unutterable secrets.

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