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“Don’t think I speak symbolically or in riddles. What I am saying is the truth – the whole, simple and tremendous truth.

“To be an actor in a dream is not what pains me most. There are poets who have said that man’s life if but the shadow of a dream, and philosophers who have hinted that all reality is but hallucination. I instead, am haunted by another thought: who is this someone who dreams me? Who is this nameless, unknown being to whom I belong, who suddenly brought me out of the darkness of his tired brain and whose awakening will just as suddenly extinguish me, like a flame in the wind? How many days have I spent thinking of this master of mine, asleep; thinking of my creator busy with the course of my ephemeral life! He must be someone great and powerful, a being for whom years are minutes, someone who can live the entire life of a man in just one of his nights. His dreams must be so vivid and powerful and deep that they can cast forth images in such a way that they seem real. Perhaps the whole world is but the ever-changing result of the crossing of dreams dreamt by beings identical to him. But I won’t generalize: let us leave metaphysical trifling to reckless philosophers! For me, it is enough to know with absolute certainty that I am the imaginary creature of a vast and enormous dreamer.

“But who is he? That is the question that’s been troubling me for so long, ever since I discovered the nature of the stuff I was made on. Surely you understand how important this question is to me? On its answer hangs my entire fate. The actors in dreams enjoy ample freedom, and for that reason my life has not been entirely determined by my birth but to a large extent by my free will. However, it has become necessary for me to know who it was that was dreaming me in order to choose my way of life. At first I was terrified by the idea that the slightest thing might wake him – that is, destroy me. A shout, a noise, a whisper might suddenly fling me into nothingness. In those days I used to care for life, so I would torture myself in vain, trying to guess the tastes and passions of my unknown master, trying to give to my existence the attributes and shapes that might please him. All the time I trembled with the thought that I might commit an act that would offend him, frighten him – and therefore wake him. For a while I imagined him to be a sort of paternalistic, evangelic deity, and I tried to lead the most virtuous and saintly of lives. At another time I pictured him as a classic pagan hero, and I would crown myself with vine-leaves and sing songs in praise of wine and dance with young nymphs in forest clearings. Once I believed that I was part of the dream of a pure and immortal sage who managed to live in a superior spiritual world, and I spent long sleepness nights counting the stars and measuring the earth and trying to find out how living creatures were made.

“But in the end I grew tired, humiliated to think I was but the spectacle of this unknown and unknowable master. I realized that the fiction of a life was not worth such base and servile flattery. And I began to wish ardently for that which in the beginning had caused me such terror – his awakening. I deliberately filled my life with gruesome images so that the sheer horror might wake him. I tried everything to achieve the peace of annihilation, I did all within my power to interrupt the sad comedy of my apparent life, to destroy this ridiculous larva of a life that somehow likens me to men.