After a time we moved from the table to the divans and, between cat winks, kept up a running conversation about the most diverse subjects. It was easy, natural talk, and no one felt embarrassed if he dropped off into a snooze in the midst of a sentence. The lights had been dimmed, there was a warm, fragrant breeze sifting through the open windows, and we were all so thoroughly sated that it didn’t matter in the least what was said or what answer was given.
Ulric had dropped off to sleep during a conversation with Marjorie. He hadn’t been asleep more than five minutes when he awoke With a jerk, exclaiming as if to himself: Golly, I thought so! Then, realizing that he was not alone, he mumbled something inaudible and raised himself on one elbow.
Was I asleep long? he asked.
About five minutes, said Marjorie.
That’s funny. It seemed to me like hours. I had one of those dreams again. He turned to me. You know, Henry, those dreams in which you try to prove to yourself that you are only dreaming.
I had to confess that I had never had one.
Ulric could always describe his dreams in great detail. They terrified him somewhat because, to his mind, they indicated that he never really fell into a state of complete unconsciousness. In the dream his mind was even more active than in the waking state. It was his logical mind which came to the fore when asleep. It was that which disquieted him. He went on to describe the endless pains he took, when dreaming, to prove to himself that he was not awake but dreaming. He would take a heavy ram-chair, for example, and lift it high in the air with two fingers, sometimes with his brother seated in the chair. And in the dream he would say to himself: There, nobody can do that if he’s awake—it’s impossible! And then he would perform other impossible feats, some of them quite extraordinary, such as flying through a partially-opened window and returning the same way, without disarranging his clothes or mussing his hair. Everything he did led to a suspected Q. E. D. which proved nothing, so he averred, because—Well, I’ll put it this way, Henry: to prove to yourself that you are dreaming you would have to be awake, and if you are awake you can’t be dreaming, can you?
Suddenly he recalled that what had started him dreaming was the sight of a copy of Transition lying on the dresser. He reminded me that I had once loaned him a copy in which there was a wonderful passage on the interpretation of dreams. You know the man I mean, he said, snapping his fingers.
Gottfried Been?
Yes, that’s the fellow. A rum one, that bird. I wish I could read more of him … By the way, you don’t have that issue here, do you?
Yes, I do, Ulric me lad. Would you like to see it?
I tell you what, he said, I wish you would read that passage aloud to us—that is, if the others don’t mind.
I found the copy of Transition and turned to the page.
Let us now turn to psychological facts. ‘At night all leaping fountains speak with a louder tone; my soul, too, is a leaping fountain,’ says Zarathustra … ‘Into the night life seems to be exiled’—these are the famous words from Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams—’into the night life seems to be exiled what once ruled during the day. This sentence contains the entire modern psychology. Its great idea is the stratification of the psyche, the geological principle. The soul has its origin and is built in strata, and what we learned before in the organic field apropos of the construction of the big brain from the anatomic-evolutionary standpoint out of vanished aeons, is revealed by the dream, revealed by the child, revealed by psychosis as a still existing reality. We carry the ancient…
Hear, hear! exclaimed Ulric.
We carry the ancient peoples in our souls and when the later acquired reason is relaxed, as in the dream or in drunkenness, they emerge with their rites, their pre-logical mentality, and grant us an hour of mystic participation. When the…
Excuse me, said Ulric, interrupting again, but I wonder if we could have that passage once again?
Sure, why not? I reread it slowly, allowing each phrase to sink in.
The next sentence is a honey, too, said Ulric. I almost know the damned thing by heart.
I continued: When the logical superstructure is loosened, when the scalp, tired of the onslaught of the prelunar states…
Golly! What language! Excuse me, Henry, I didn’t mean to interrupt again.
When the scalp, tired of the onslaught of the prelunar states, opens the frontiers of consciousness about which there is always a struggle, then there appears the old, the unconscious, in the magical transmutation and identification of the T, in the early experience of the everywhere and the eternal. The hereditary patrimony…
Of the middle brain! exclaimed Ulric. Jesus, Henry, what a line, that! I wish you would explain that to me a little more fully. No, not now … afterwards, perhaps. Excuse me.
The hereditary patrimony of the middle brain, I continued, lies still deeper and is eager for expression: if the covering is destroyed in the psychosis there emerges, driven upward by the primal instincts, from out the primitive-schizoid sub-structure, the gigantic archaic instinctive T, unfolding itself limitlessly through the tattered psychological subject.
The tattered psychological subject! Wow! exclaimed Ulric. Thanks, Henry, that was a treat. He turned to the others. Do you wonder sometimes why I’m so fond of this guy? (He beamed in my direction.) There isn’t a soul who comes to my studio capable of bringing me that sort of pabulum. I don’t know where he gets these things—certainly I never stumble on them by myself. Which only goes to show, no doubt, how differently we’re geared.
He paused a moment to fill his glass. You know, Henry, if you don’t mind my saying so, a passage like that could have been written by you, don’t you think? Maybe that’s why I like Gottfried Benn so much. And that Hugo Ball is another guy—he’s got something on the ball, too, what? The curious thing, though, is this—all this stuff, which means so much to me, I’d never have known about it if it weren’t for you. How I wish sometimes that you were with me when I’m with that Virginia bunch! You know, they’re really not unintelligent, but somehow this sort of thing seems to repel them. They look upon it as unhealthy. He gave a wry smile. Then he looked at Marjorie and Mona. Forgive me for dwelling on these things, won’t you? I know it’s not the moment to indulge in windy discussions. I was going to ask Henry something about the hereditary patrimony of the middle brain, but I guess we could leave it until some more suitable occasion. How about a stirrup cup?—and then I’ll be off.
He filled our glasses, then went over to the mantelpiece and leaned against it.
I suppose it will always be a thing of wonder and mystery to me, he said slowly, caressing his words, how we ran into each other that day on Sixth Avenue after a lapse of so many years. What a lucky day it was for me! You may not believe it, but often when I was in some weird place—like the middle of the Sahara—I would say to myself: ‘I wonder what Henry would have to say if he were here with me.’ Yes, you were often in my thoughts, even though we had lost all touch with one another. I didn’t know that you had become a writer. No, but I always knew that you would become something or somebody. Even as a kid you gave off something which was different, something unique. You always made the atmosphere more intense, more sparkling. You were a challenge to all of us. Maybe you never realized that. Even now, people who met you only once continue to ask me—’How is that Henry Miller?’ That Henry Miller! You see what I mean? They don’t say that about anyone else I know. Oh well … you’ve heard this a dozen times or more, I know.
Why don’t you get a good rest and stay the night? said Mona.
I’d like nothing better, but … He cocked the left eyebrow and twisted his lips. The scalp, tired of the onslaught of the prelunar states … Some day we’ll have to go into all this more thoroughly. Right now the gigantic archaic instinctive I is struggling upward through the schizoid sub-structure. He left off and began shaking hands with us. You know, he went on, I’m sure to have a fantastic dream tonight. Not a dream, but dozens of them! I’ll be slithering in the primal ooze, trying to prove to myself that I’m living in the Pleocene epoch. I’ll probably meet up with dragons and dinosaurs—unless the covering has been entirely destroyed by previous psychoses. He smacked his lips, as if he had just swallowed a dozen succulent bivalves. He
