An Abyss of Dreams by Giacomo Donis
Meta-memoir, 'after' memoir. Aristotle's Meta-physics comes 'after' his Physics. 'An Abyss of Dreams' is a 'meta' book, an 'after' book. A dream itself has no 'before' but only a 'present,' which in consciousness is already an 'after.' This is the author's 'dream book': he recounts, vividly, his real nighttime dreams, of the night before, and of years and decades before. His two cats tell their tales, chasing their tails, 'after' their lives and their deaths. His protagonists: Pound, Artaud, Conrad; Hegel, his logic, philosophy of spirit, and 'anthropology'; Aristotle; and Freud. And Plato, (affectionately) accused of being the father of contemporary totalitarianism. This Abyss originates in Hegel's lines on the 'night of the world,' the 'terrible,' the nocturnal abyss of conscious life, pure self, 'the interior of nature,' where 'suddenly a bloody head darts out and just as suddenly vanishes.' Meanwhile, for Freud, 'old eel,' dreams are wish fulfillment. What! asks the author, in 'Why Dream?', the first of the two novellas in this volume. Wish fulfillment? Then why do I only have nightmares? I only dream what I do not wish for! Why, Siggy, why? Why dream? Aristotle is next, with his schoolmate at Plato's Academy, Eudemus, known to us only for his (relatively) famous dream, and for Aristotle's lost dialogue dedicated to him, 'On the Soul.' Eudemus, our real hero. Who, unlike Aristotle, was to be famous only for his dream, celebrated, and fatally distorted, by Platonists, forever. But, we dream, not by Aristotle, forever tormented by the dream itself and, especially, by its totalitarian distortion. This is the premise of the second novella, 'I Dream of Eudemus': Eudemus, 'psyche iatros,' dreamed as the first 'soul doctor' in history. The first, and already a rebel: no drugs, no! 'Abyss therapy.' Dreams have long afterlives: 'An Abyss of Dreams' is 'meta'-memoir. With its cats, and its dreams, we travel through the entire history of psychiatry, from ancient Greece to present-day Venice. Where, dressed in a moon suit, Eudemus visits the author's great friend, and psychiatrist, in Intensive Care, in the Venice hospital. Chasing their tails, author and Eudemus together see, for themselves, reaching out from the eyes of their friend, the beginning, and the end, of the soul: the night of the world.
FOR THOSE who are natural contrarians, certain substantial writers like Cendrars, Borges, or Nabokov constantly stimulate and entertain (especially if they respect cats)My current literary hero, Giacomo Donis, a Venetian writing in English, having long renounced his US citizenship (see The Empty Shield, 2020), has no living peer. 'An Abyss of Dreams', described as a 'meta-memoir,' amiably proposes Plato as the father of modern totalitarianism. With a mixture of Vian's absurdism, Benjamin's intellectualism and Iain Sinclair's defiant eclecticism, two substantial novellas and commentaries attempt to confront Freud and pretty much every major thinker since Aristotle. Stunning! - Michael Moorcock, New Statesman Books of the Year 2022
Born in the United States in 1950, Giacomo Donis has lived in Venice, Italy, since 1972. 'Love it or leave it.' 'An Abyss of Dreams' is the companion volume of his political autobiography 'The Empty Shield' (2020).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781848618466 |
| ISBN 10 | 1848618468 |
| Title | An Abyss of Dreams |
| Author | Giacomo Donis |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Shearsman Books |
| Year published | 2022-11-18 |
| Number of pages | 416 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |