I don’t think that dreaming is the strict opposite of thinking. What I do know inclines me to believe that it is, in sum, only a freer, more abandoned form.
Dream and thought are two sides of the same fabric–front and back–dream comprises the side where the weave is lusher but looser, thought the side where the weave is more austere but tighter.
When the imagination cools off, shrinks, defines and clarifies itself, the dream side turns over and lets the thought side appear. Yet both however have their own characteristics; they cannot be confused once you clearly distinguish them.
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In order to progress thought needs to take shape in words, dream develops in images. Dream spreads and does not demand any effort to develop. Without the aid of words, thought does not advance.
Disciplined, out of necessity, thought follows a course and requires, in order to expand, a tension, a concentration of all available intellectual forces.
But it returns what it borrows, it is the mind’s healthy exercise; dream, to the contrary, exhausts it, it is the mind’s dangerous exercise.
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The power of dream is innate out of necessity; whereas one must educate and strengthen that of thought.
But, if it is a question of poetry, where shall we go to find its precious, rare material if not to the dizzying edge of the precipice?
What is of more interest, the success of a conventional arrangement, more or less subtle and ingenius, of words, or the profound, mysterious echoes, from who knows where, which stir in the depths of the abyss?
The poet’s dream is the immense, finely meshed net hopelessly dragging through the waters’ depths in search of a problematic treasure.
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Yet what characterizes thought is that it requires a (logical) sequence and that it always demands, for its own satisfaction, a conclusion. If I treat it the same as a dream, instead of prospering, like dreams, it gets bogged down, comes to a halt, and dies.