Historical dream account · English · machine translation
Dream of the Motorboat-Airplane
Yves Delage
Le rêve : étude psychologique, philosophique et littéraire · Undated PUF witness, printed pp. 152
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I am at Roscoff, beside the sea, some distance from the laboratory. Suddenly my attention is drawn by the familiar whirring of an airplane in full flight. I raise my head and see, fairly high in the air, a strange airplane formed of a simple cubical wicker basket, in which sits my distinguished colleague at the Faculty of Sciences, M. K... No wings; as a means of propulsion, a propeller turning behind the basket at the end of a long rod. The machine moves rapidly toward the sea. At this moment my attention is diverted by a motorboat coming ashore below my feet. I turn my eyes toward the airplane again and immediately find it, but its appearance has changed. It is a kind of long, heavy motorboat shaped like racing cars. But what drives it forward is still the same propeller that just now propelled the basket. This strange airplane, still piloted by M. K..., continues advancing and is now over the sea.
While I examine the machine, it suddenly changes direction and nosedives into a vertical fall, but soon pulls up and performs a daring loop. I remain speechless with surprise. The machine makes a second loop, then a third, but at each one it loses a little height, and at the third it plunges terribly into the sea, splashing the water violently around it. At this I wake.
Read the original French account
Rêve du Canot-Aéroplane
Je me trouve à Roscoff, au bord de la mer, à quelque distance du laboratoire. Tout à coup, mon attention est attirée par le bruissement bien connu d'un aéroplane en pleine course. Je lève la tête, et j'aperçois assez haut dans l'air un singulier aéroplane formé d'un simple panier d'osier cubique, dans lequel se tient assis mon distingué collègue à la Faculté des sciences, M. K... Point d'ailes ; comme engin propulseur, une hélice qui tourne à l'arrière du panier au bout d'une longue tige. L'appareil s'avance rapidement vers la mer. A ce moment, mon attention est détournée par un canot automobile qui accoste au rivage sous mes pieds. Je dirige de nouveau mes yeux vers l'aéroplane, et le retrouve aussitôt, mais il a changé d'aspect. C'est une sorte de long et lourd canot automobile de la forme des voitures de course. Mais ce qui le fait progresser, c'est toujours la même hélice qui, tout à l'heure, actionnait le panier. Ce singulier aéroplane, que dirige toujours M. K..., continuant d'avancer est maintenant au-dessus de la mer.
Tandis que j'examine l'appareil, brusquement celui-ci changeant de marche, pique du nez en bas en chute verticale, mais bientôt se relève et fait une boucle audacieuse. Je reste muet de surprise. L'appareil fait une seconde boucle, puis une troisième, mais à chacune d'elles, il perd un peu de hauteur, et, à la troisième, il fait dans la mer un terrible plongeon, en éclaboussant violemment l'eau autour de lui. Là-dessus je me réveille.
Delage introduces this as his own dream and speculates about entoptic lights in the adjoining source discussion. The airborne boat and crash are dream events; the colleague remains identified only by the printed M. K... . The source’s physiological explanation is a historical suggestion and is not independently verified. Its later retelling in this book is the same episode. Source introduction — Yves Delage: “Qu'on me permette de citer encore, avant d'abandonner ce sujet, un rêve personnel où les considérations précédentes permettent d'expliquer par le jeu éventuel des lueurs entoptiques des particularités qui ne laisseraient pas d'être assez troublantes, si l'on n'avait point cette ressource pour en trouver la raison.”
Source & context
English machine translation. The original account, source credit and publication terms remain available.
Delage introduces this as his own dream and speculates about entoptic lights in the adjoining source discussion. The airborne boat and crash are dream events; the colleague remains identified only by the printed M. K... . The source’s physiological explanation is a historical suggestion and is not independently verified. Its later retelling in this book is the same episode. Source introduction — Yves Delage: “Before leaving this subject, allow me to cite one more personal dream in which the preceding considerations make it possible to explain, through the possible play of entoptic lights, certain peculiarities that would be rather troubling if one did not have this resource for finding their explanation.”
Yves Delage (1854–1920), Le rêve : étude psychologique, philosophique et littéraire (Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, undated witnessed edition), printed pp. 152. Original French text from the University of Ottawa copy digitized by Internet Archive. The displayed title is the printed source heading.
The witnessed PUF title page is undated. Internet Archive supplies 1919 and a matching BnF record supplies 1924; neither is treated as an observed printed date or as the dream date. No exact dream date is inferred.
No Copyright – United States (original historical text) ↗
Only Yves Delage’s original French prose is used. The undated historical PUF witness is catalogued as 1919 by Internet Archive and a matching PUF edition is catalogued as 1924 by the Bibliothèque nationale de France; neither year is claimed to be printed in this witness. Both are before 1931 and the original text is public domain in the United States. Delage died in 1920; the ordinary author-life-plus-70 term has also elapsed where applicable. This is an expiry-based assessment of the original prose, not a new license from Internet Archive and not permission for any modern translation, edition or added material.
Source locator and text provenance
Printed pp. 152; IA leaves 178
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Selected the complete separately headed recalled account; omitted the printed title from its body, page furniture and adjacent theory or other accounts. Joined typesetter line wraps and split words while preserving the true compound celui-ci; retained source paragraph boundaries. Applied only the listed scan-verified OCR repairs. Retained the printed French source heading as the title, without translation, narrative expansion or identity inference.
- Account text SHA-256
- baa8a2b5e033bc14d2ee09593d3ce00a0b0e2b147f8e6c0a0b8ccc46f94cc350
- Source file SHA-256
- 961f1fb32efd7bf9e13ae0ddfad800d68f863f37ed79ca053ecd7459b91c8725
Content notes
- Accident imagery
Connections in the Loom
Titles, theme labels, illustrations and map connections are editorial navigation aids. They are separate from the account’s words and do not establish connections between real people.