Historical dream account · English · machine translation
Dream of the Man with the Wooden Head
Yves Delage
Le rêve : étude psychologique, philosophique et littéraire · Undated PUF witness, printed pp. 126
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I see three workmen, painters, coming toward me, one pulling and the others pushing a small cart loaded with the tools of their trade. As they pass in front of me, I see a kind of piece of rough, yellowish, cracked wood appear, seemingly covered with long, loosely attached fibers. This object moves forward and, as it passes in front of one of the workmen's faces, flings itself upon it and vanishes; but immediately the man appears to me with a wooden head, an immobile, yellow face, deeply ravaged and made stranger by those same fibers furrowing its bumpy surface. He looks at me for a moment with terrifying eyes, then the vision vanishes. I wake almost at the same moment and remember having noticed that morning, as I put it on the fire, a stripped, cracked log still covered with the separated fibers of the inner part of its bark.
Read the original French account
Rêve de l’Homme à la Tête de Bois
Je vois s'avancer vers moi trois ouvriers peintres, l'un tirant, les autres poussant une petite charrette chargée des ustensiles de leur métier. Au moment où ils passent devant moi, je vois paraître une sorte de morceau de bois brut, jaunâtre, fendillé et comme recouvert de longues fibres mal adhérentes. Cet objet s'avance, et, au moment où il passe devant la figure de l'un des ouvriers, il se jette sur elle et s'évanouit ; mais aussitôt l'homme m'apparaît avec une tête de bois, une face immobile, jaune, profondément ravagée et rendue plus étrange par ces mêmes fibres sillonnant sa surface bosselée. Il me regarde un instant avec des yeux terrifiants, puis la vision s'évanouit. Je me réveille presque au même moment et me rappelle avoir remarqué le matin, en la mettant au feu, une bûche écorcée, fendillée, revêtue encore des fibres dissociées de la partie interne de l'écorce.
Delage explicitly introduces this as his personal dream, reprinting an account from his work of 91. The awakening and remembered log are part of his own report. His proposed explanation involving fused memories is a historical inference, not an independently established cause. Later discussions in this book and any retelling of the same 1891 episode are not additional dreams. Source introduction — Yves Delage: “Comme exemple de la combinaison des éléments hétéroclites pour constituer des visions en apparence indépendantes des souvenirs, je citerai le rêve personnel suivant (j'en emprunte le récit à mon travail de 91) :”
Source & context
English machine translation. The original account, source credit and publication terms remain available.
Delage explicitly introduces this as his personal dream, reprinting an account from his work of 91. The awakening and remembered log are part of his own report. His proposed explanation involving fused memories is a historical inference, not an independently established cause. Later discussions in this book and any retelling of the same 1891 episode are not additional dreams. Source introduction — Yves Delage: “As an example of the combination of heterogeneous elements to form visions apparently independent of memories, I will cite the following personal dream (I borrow the account from my work of 91):”
Yves Delage (1854–1920), Le rêve : étude psychologique, philosophique et littéraire (Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, undated witnessed edition), printed pp. 126. 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. 126; IA leaves 152
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
- 8b867faddb4e432a2e0c7a46d926695876095578eeef308315536bc454cbcd93
- Source file SHA-256
- 961f1fb32efd7bf9e13ae0ddfad800d68f863f37ed79ca053ecd7459b91c8725
Content notes
- Frightening 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.