20 pages • 40 minutes read
Edgar Allan PoeA Dream Within a Dream
Edgar Allan PoeFiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1849A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Lost love
In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe asserts that: “Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones” (Poe, 6). Of the melancholiest topics, his philosophy was that the most poetic was the death of a beautiful woman. Before and after his wife’s death, many of his poems featured the death of a young woman. “A Dream Within a Dream” could be read as following Poe’s principle, and that the other in the story is a dying woman.
However, the tone in the first stanza is more of a rejected lover. The speaker leaves the listener at their request, which does not line up with a usual deathbed interaction. He also responds to a particular insult from the listener: “You are not wrong, who deem / That my days have been a dream” (Lines 4-5) by attempting to defend his own viewpoint. This back and forth is more sensuous than the somber tone that usually accompanies a death.
Poe wrote a similar poem titled “Imitation” in 1827 after his first engagement with Sarah Elmira Royster ended. Around the time he wrote “A Dream Within a Dream,” Poe also had a canceled engagement with poet Sarah Helen Whitman. She withdrew from the engagement because of his alcoholism. While he did get back together with Sarah Elmira Royster again after 20 years, he ultimately died before their marriage.
In this case, Poe’s failed engagements more likely inspire the melancholy in the poem’s second stanza. While the listener may not be dead, they have withdrawn hope for love. This withdrawal of love may be more haunting to the speaker than a young woman’s death. Unlike in poems about the death of a lover, the speaker is tormented by psychological anguish and confusion. One could argue that this torment is more frightening than a supernatural haunting.
Human existence is driven by individual experience
In “A Dream Within a Dream,” Poe asks weighty questions about the nature of human existence and perceptions of reality. By saying, “All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream,” (Lines 10-11), Poe frames the unique way each person perceives the world as a layered set of dreams. This question of the boundary between reality and the unconscious dream world was not new in Poe’s day and continues to be a topic of study by scientists.
For Poe, positing that all of existence or “all that we see or seem” (Lines 10, 23) is subjective to the individual suggests that he does not believe there is an objective truth about the world. This subjectivity is a crucial feature of Romantic poetry, which prioritizes the individual imagination of the poet.
Indeed, recognizing subjective worldviews allowed these poets to address tension and miscommunication in their poems instead of arguing for objective universal truths. The back and forth conversation in the poem between the listener—who does not understand the speaker’s dreamy, imaginative behavior—allows the speaker to explain themselves and express that their way of seeing things is different from the listener.
This subjective view of reality may be read as an anticipation of existential philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Existentialism is a branch of philosophy that posits human existence as individual experiences shaped by how each person thinks, feels, and acts. Søren Kierkegaard—widely considered the first existentialist and a poet himself—was Poe’s contemporary.
The poem’s speaker uses his imaginative dream space in the second stanza to explore their feelings about losing the hope they once had. The image of “a surf-tormented shore” (Line 13) shows how his world is in tumult, possibly from the departure of the other. While the speaker may not literally stand on this stormy beach gathering sand, Poe applies metaphor as an extension of the speaker’s emotions. This is how the inner, subjective experience can be shared with the other, even if it may be too late for reconciliation.
Immortality through writing
While this poem is mainly about loss and futility, there are also nods to other writers who use sand to consider immortality. Poe’s thesis that reality is a dream within a dream does not address the possibility of death. While it is possible to die in a dream, one does not stay dead. If reality is a layer of dreams, then perhaps death is only an illusion as well.
The poem itself is a means of preserving love forever, immortalizing the beloved beyond their lifetime (or beyond the lifetime of a failed courtship). This is similar to how love is preserved forever in Spenser’s “Amoretti LXXV,” when the poet writes about his love in the poem (though not her actual name) to give their shared love immortality.
Another example of this is in William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence,” where the poet is guided by a higher power: “To see the World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wildflower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour” (Lines 1-4). In this poem, the speaker reaches a level of immortality by closely observing nature, understanding the natural world, and thus communing with a higher power.
However, while Blake sees immorality in the sand and the flowers, Poe’s speaker feels trapped in a never-ending flow of sand slipping away from him. For Poe, who outlived many of the people he loved, immortality is more a curse than a blessing.
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By Edgar Allan Poe
