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r-.
184 AUGUST STArCKE
I held a walking-stick. On a board were two small cheeses, one red, the other yellow.
Partial Interpretation: I may say at once that the two storks by the sea represented my parents. The sea formed their two beds pushed close together. The small bird stood for my dead brother ; also my mother's breast, and the penis. I cannot express the beauty of the bird in the dream; however, the avocet really is a very beautiful bird. One of its peculiarities is that its beak is curved upwards; it is also long-legged, as my brother and I had been jokingly called. Its colour is white and black. I first had my attention drawn to this beautiful bird many years ago through an essay entitled "A Week in a Bird Paradise". In the same period- ical there was another essay by Frederik van Eeden on the stone- chat, also a black and white bird. The "bird with a decoy-tail" van Eeden has named it. I next thought of Boutens' fine poem on a swan from "Carmina" (carmine = pink). (The swan is also a bird of passage seen by the sea.) I had recently read this poem with deep emotion, and it brought to mind my brother. During the whole day previous to the dream there had been running in ray head Lohengrin's Parting Song, in which this stanza occurs:
Then blissfully, by the Grail accompanied. Returned the brother whom you thought dead.
This bliss (cf. also the Bird's Paradise) occurred' also in the dream, namely, the solemn rapture when I was again united with the beautiful bird. I am obviously jealous of this blissfulness, because I have transferred it to myself in the dream. This de- lightful frame of mind recalls another scene from a work by van Eeden (Eden = Paradise) in which he describes the feelings of "Little John" who, after weary wandering, sees at last the infinite sea across the dunes. John was also my brother's name.
Birds of passage are birds which come back in the spring, they are only absent for a while. A similar idea of life is asso- ciated with the name van Eeden, namely, Paul van Eeden's motto, "It is just for a moment", and his book "Paul's Awakening", which is the author's expression of his profound grief over his son's death. "Death and Transfiguration" it might also have been called, like a part of one of the Wagnerian musical dramas*.
» Footnote on reading the proof: This mistake has arisen through con- fusion with "Isoldes Liebestod" which has a similar meaning.
