A strangely shaped glass apparatus is placed before me on a very low table. It seems to be filled with water, and I do not know what character tells me that this liquid has the power of rendering transparent, without taking away their lives, all animals that are immersed in it for a few moments. I am surprised and doubtful, which is quite natural.

A cat was meowing at that moment in a corner of the room; I picked it up, put it in the apparatus and examined the result. Now I see that the animal gradually loses its first appearance and becomes luminous, translucent, diaphanous, like glass itself. It seems very much at ease in the middle of the vessel; it swims, stretches out, soon catches a transparent mouse like itself which I had not yet seen; and, thanks to the singular transmutation operated on these two beings, I distinguish the remains of the unfortunate rodent descending into the stomach of its ferocious enemy.

Have I ever seen anything like this in reality? Even supposing that the idea of this apparent digestion might have been suggested to me by vague recollections of the gas microscope, my imagination has always taken a characteristic part in this dream, for it was clearly a cat and not an infusorium that I gazed upon with astonishment.

Source: Dreams and how to direct them, 2022, pp 137-8; Daniel Bernardo's translation of Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger by Hervey de Saint-Denys, 1867.

EDITOR'S NOTE

In earlier chapters, Saint-Denys argued most dream images are collages of elements drawn from memories that can be combined freely but not altered much. I wasn't convinced. Example: Her Dead Brother. But later in the book, as here, he admits dream-imagination can alter those elements freely and playfully. That may not seem radical to modern readers, but remember: Freud, even a generation later, is more rigid, seeing blind forces and repression, not imaginative play; and Freud's opponents, like Nobel-winning neurologist Ramón y Cajal, saw dreams as mechanistic and downright meaningless. Many still do. Despite his waffling, give Saint-Denys credit!

Besides, it's an evocative image. One I think has more meaning than even S-D would admit. He was, along with Alfred Maury, one of the first to study his dreams empirically, seeking replicability, and experimenting on himself with stimuli while asleep to see what dreams resulted. In Cat and Mouse, the lab setting, and the fluid that reveals the inner workings of these creatures without harming them, suggest his dream approves his own dream experiments! The dream-cat doesn't mind immersion, observation, even transparency--as long as he lets the cat do its job.

--Chris Wayan

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