Historical dream account · English · machine translation
The classroom turned into a lily garden
Marcel Foucault
Le rêve : études et observations (1906) · Original 1906 edition, observation II, printed pp. 38, 39; PDF pages 56, 57
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1. I admonish a pupil in a rather fatherly manner: I do not remember my words, but only my attitude and the sound of my voice. I am seated at a desk very like the one in my classroom at Mâcon. (I was then a teacher at the lycée in Mâcon.) The pupil is seated at a table that likewise resembles those in my classroom. Other pupils are there too; I see them only very indistinctly, and the same is true of the tables, to such a degree that I could not say whether I am in my classroom at Mâcon or the one at Digne (where I was a teacher the previous year): I think it is a confused combination of the two. But I see very clearly the pupil to whom I am speaking: he occupies the second place from the end of the table; his face, bearing, and clothes are those of one of my pupils from the previous year, whose name I have forgotten, although I can see him very clearly in my mind; he was not very intelligent or hardworking. He listens to my remarks, his face a little red, his eyes a little white and more prominent than usual, and his expression seems to mean that he is sorry but has little confidence in his future successes.
2. The dream scene in the foreground is as though superimposed upon a second, which is itself combined with a third. The table in front of which the pupils of the preceding scene are seated merges in my mind with a bed in my garden, in which tall reddish lilies, still in bud, are planted at intervals of 60 to 80 centimeters. (In reality, the lilies are not planted in a straight bed, but along the inner edge of an oval flowerbed; it is the identification of the straight table with the strip of lilies that makes the line of lilies appear straight.)
3. At the foot of one of the lilies, and even to some extent throughout the whole strip of earth, I see invasive weeds, especially a wild buttercup, a large clump of which spreads beside a lily, with other indistinct weeds.
Read the original French account
La classe changée en jardin de lis
1° J'admoneste un élève, d'une façon plutôt paternelle : je ne me rappelle pas mes paroles, mais seulement mon attitude et le son de ma voix. Je suis assis à un bureau qui ressemble beaucoup à celui de ma classe de Mâcon. (J'étais alors professeur au lycée de Mâcon.) L'élève est assis à une table qui ressemble également à celles de ma classe. D'autres élèves sont là aussi, je ne les vois que d'une façon très confuse, et il en est de même des tables, à tel point que je ne saurais dire si je suis dans ma classe de Mâcon ou dans celle de Digne (où j'était professeur l'année précédente) : je crois que c'est une combinaison confuse des deux. Mais je vois très nettement l'élève auquel je parle : il occupe la deuxième place à partir du bout de la table; sa figure, son attitude, ses vêtements, sont ceux d'un de mes élèves de l'année précédente, dont j'ai oublié le nom, quoique je le revoie très bien mentalement; il était peu intelligent et peu travailleur. Il écoute mes observations, la figure un peu rouge, les yeux un peu blancs et plus saillants que de coutume, et sa physionomie a l'air de vouloir dire qu'il est désolé, mais qu'il n'a pas grande confiance dans ses succès à venir.
2° Le tableau de rêve du premier plan est comme superposé à un deuxième, qui est lui-même combiné à un troisième. La table devant laquelle sont assis les élèves du tableau précédent se confond dans mon esprit avec une plate-bande de mon jardin, dans laquelle sont plantés, à des distances de 60 à 80 centimètres, de grands lis rougeâtres encore en boutons. (En réalité, les lis ne sont pas plantés dans une plate-bande droite, mais en contre-bordure dans un massif ovale; c'est l'identification de la table droite avec la bande des lis qui fait apparaître la ligne des lis comme droite.)
3° Au pied de l'un des lis, et même un peu dans toute la bande de terre, je vois de mauvaises herbes envahissantes, notamment une renoncule sauvage, dont une large touffe s'étale auprès d'un lis, avec d'autres mauvaises herbes indistinctes.
Source & context
English machine translation. The original account, source credit and publication terms remain available.
Foucault dates this personal notebook observation 7 June 1895. He says he was called awake at 6 AM, dressed and went into another room before writing. The three numbered tableaux belong to one report. His internal waking-context parentheses remain in the narrative; his later theory about their combination is outside the dream excerpt. The printed French ‘j’était’ is retained rather than silently corrected.
Marcel Foucault, recorded in Marcel Foucault, Le rêve : études et observations (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1906), observation II. The book author/recorder and dreamer are credited separately. French editorial title and navigation themes added; no generated dream prose or modern translation.
Foucault dates this personal notebook observation 7 June 1895. He says he was called awake at 6 AM, dressed and went into another room before writing. The three numbered tableaux belong to one report. His internal waking-context parentheses remain in the narrative; his later theory about their combination is outside the dream excerpt. The printed French ‘j’était’ is retained rather than silently corrected.
Public domain in the United States (1906 edition) ↗
The original French 1906 edition is public domain in the United States by expired publication term; Archive metadata reports NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT for copyright-region US. The NoC-US statement describes this US-only basis, not a new Archive or Google license and not blanket worldwide clearance. No modern translation is used. Marcel Foucault is the printed author and the dreamer of this account; his 1865–1947 dates also support expiry in ordinary life-plus 70 territories from 2018, without asserting every territorial rule. The acquired Google-derived scan includes a noncommercial-use request for the files and attribution/watermark instructions. This account uses underlying expired text; it does not license or republish the scan files or remove their watermarks.
Source locator and text provenance
Original 1906 edition, observation II, printed pp. 38, 39; PDF pages 56, 57
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
French descriptive editorial title and navigation themes only. Complete bounded source narrative retained with internal parentheses and dialogue. Running-page/scanning furniture and the outer quotation marker are excluded from the transcription, not erased from source files. Original line wraps are reflowed, source lexical hyphens retained, and only scan-confirmed OCR repairs are made. The complete reversible raw/final ledger is pinned separately. No generated narrative, new translation or added dream episode.
- Account text SHA-256
- 058dafa88e9dff8446b3ce9e096f3066f92dbf689a6e79a270dcf572dac79504
- Source file SHA-256
- 3038f6fa4ca96a887e3a181b4e7b24178911a3ebf2da282e5c644bb9589c8dd2
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.