Ragnarök

In dreams, wrote Coleridge, images embody the feelings we think they cause; we do not feel fear because a sphinx is threatening us, we dream a sphinx to explain a fear we are feeling. If this is so, how can a mere chronicling of such images transmit the bewilderment, the awe, the terror, the menace, and the jubilation which wove that night's dream? None the less, I shall attempt just such a chronicle; the fact that my dream was made up of a single scene may remove or lessen the intrinsic difficulty.

The setting was the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters; the time, late afternoon. Everything, as is normal in dreams, was somewhat different; a slight magnification changed the details. We were choosing officials; I was speaking to Pedro Henríquez Ureña, who in real life had died many years earlier. Suddenly the uproar of a demonstration or a carnival parade deafened us. From the direction of the port came human and animal cries. A voice shouted, 'They're coming!' and then, 'The gods! The gods!' Four or five of them broke from the mob and took up places on a platform in the Great Hall. We all applauded, weeping; they were the gods, returning from centuries of exile. Made taller by the dais, heads held high and chests out, they proudly received our homage. One clutched a branch, which of course was in keeping with the simple botany of dreams; another, in a broad gesture, extended a hand that was a claw; one of Janus's faces looked askance at Thoth's curved beak. Excited by our cheers, perhaps, one - I no longer know which - broke out into a triumphant, unbelievably sour cackle, a kind of whistling gargle. From that moment on, things changed.

It all started with a perhaps unfounded suspicion that the gods could not speak. Centuries of fugitive, half-wild life had atrophied their human faculties; the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome had been ruthless to these wanderers. Low foreheads, yellowish teeth, the sparse beards of half-breeds or of Chinese, and bestial snouts proclaimed the degeneration of this Olympian race. Their garments spoke not of genteel poverty but of the vulgar opulence of dockside gambling dens and brothels. In a buttonhole, a carnation bled; in a tight-fitting jacket you almost made out the bulk of a dagger. Suddenly we felt that they were playing their last card, that they were cunning, ignorant, and cruel, like aged beasts of prey, and that if through pity or fear they let us win they would end up destroying us.

We took out our heavy revolvers (in the dream suddenly there were revolvers) and cheerfully we slew the gods.

[1959]