Historical dream account · English · machine translation
The mirror that shows a whole life
Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863)
Friedrich Hebbels Tagebücher. Zweiter Band (1887) · Printed p. 263
Dreamer identified by the source: Tine (as named by Hebbel)
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Tine had a dream last night that was heavenly in its beauty and yet horrifying. In a high, vaulted room, one of her colleagues at the Hofburgtheater shows her a mirror in which she can see her whole life. She looks into it and sees her own face, at first very youthful and bathed in rosy light, so youthfully indistinct that she only recognises it at the third or fourth transformation. Then the rosy light disappears and the face grows paler and paler, until at last she cries out in horror, “Now my skeleton is coming; I don’t want to see that!” and turns away. At first the mirror itself was cloudy, as if misted over; it gradually grew clearer as the faces became more distinct.
Den 3. Juny.; year not repeated in this heading.
Read the original German account
The mirror that shows a whole life
Einen himmelschönen und doch grauenvollen Traum hat Tine gestern Nacht gehabt. Ihr wird von einer ihrer Colleginnen am Hofburgtheater in einem hohen gewölbten Zimmer ein Spiegel gezeigt, in welchem sie ihr ganzes Leben sehen könne. Sie schaut hinein und erblickt ihr eigenes Gesicht, erst tief-jugendlich, von Rosenlicht umflossen, so jugendlich-unbestimmt, daß sie es erst bei der dritten oder vierten Verwandlung erkennt, dann ohne Rosenlicht, nur bleicher und immer bleicher, bis sie zuletzt mit Entsetzen ausruft: nun kommt mein Geripp, das will ich nicht sehen! und sich abwendet. Der Spiegel selbst war Anfangs trübe, wie angelaufen und wurde nach und nach heller, wie die Gesichter deutlicher wurden.
Source & context
English machine translation. The original account, source credit and publication terms remain available.
Hebbel records Tine’s dream, as named in the source; he is the recorder rather than its dreamer. She fears seeing her skeleton and turns away before it appears. After the dream, Hebbel adds his waking reflection that dream and poetry are identical; that separate interpretive reflection is not part of the dream narrative.
Friedrich Hebbel, Friedrich Hebbels Tagebücher. Zweiter Band (Berlin: G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1887), edited by Felix Bamberg, Printed p. 263. Dreamer: Tine (as named by Hebbel); recorded by Friedrich Hebbel. Original German witness: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Biogr.506sv-2, via Internet Archive. Editorial title and navigation metadata added by Synastry; source wording, narrative uncertainty and distinct reported voices retained.
The diary heading reads Den 3. Juny., without repeating a year. Gestern Nacht is retained as a relative date; no normalized exact dream date is assigned.
Public domain in the United States (original German 1887 edition) ↗
Original German diary passage from the independently witnessed 1887 second volume, edited by Felix Bamberg (1820–1893), of Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863). The 1887 publication has an expired-US-publication basis; author/editor ordinary life-plus-70 terms have elapsed. No modern edition or English translation is copied. Public archive access is not itself a reuse grant; no new licence or blanket worldwide clearance is asserted.
Source locator and text provenance
Printed p. 263
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Original-scan-witnessed OCR letter/punctuation repairs; long-s transcribed as s; physical line/page furniture and division hyphens normalized exactly as the reversible ledger records. Historical spelling, wording and dream uncertainty retained. Complete dream report and its final mirror-description sentence; stop before the em dash introducing Hebbel’s waking dream/poetry reflection. No skeleton is actually seen.
- Account text SHA-256
- 873f2cecf2d358b9f2cf39b0e2f3c900ed6dd05d54936ab0f53b69f6bce501a7
- Source file SHA-256
- ebd64c69b8734682c1c03d597a68ea4332c644f521634ab61208df941367032c
Content notes
- Historical recollection
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.