La vraie clef des songes (dream book)

Také známý jako: La vraie clef des songes, La Vraie Clef des Songes, Clef des songes, clef des songes, ma Clef des songes, ma clef des songes

Kultura · Literatura FR

Overview

A clef des songes is a popular dream-interpretation handbook: an alphabetical list of dream images with their meanings for the future (a garden means a love-match, falling stars mean death, and so on). The genre goes back to Artemidorus's Oneirocritica and sold in huge numbers through the nineteenth century as cheap pedlar-literature (J. Carroy, Nuits savantes. Une histoire des rêves, 1800-1945, describes these books as widely circulated, and as opposed to the scientific dream study of the time). Many bore similar titles. Marie once calls hers La vraie clef des songes (027.0232); the author and edition are not named in the diary and I could not identify the book, so the entry does not point to one particular text.

Marie and this work

She uses it from late 1874 to mid-1875 as a half-serious oracle, and each time interprets the results in her own favour.

5 December 1874 (027.0162). She dreams of a fine garden and high mountains, which "par la clef des songes" means a marriage of money that will become a marriage of love.
11 December 1874 (027.0232). A dream means "mépris public, honte dans la famille si l'on en croit La vraie clef des songes."
13 April 1875 (031.0210). Brunet (a member of the household) brings her a Clef des songes, in which she reads that to see falling stars means death. "Je crois aux rêves, mais aux explications pas toujours." (Per the RSR note on the paragraph she then reinterprets the omen as meaning that she will be widowed four times and become very famous.)
27 April 1875 (032.0169). "Si on en croit ma Clef des songes, je me marierai dans très peu de temps."
18 June 1875 (034.0369). Playing with her fan in a dream: "rivalité d'amour, combat si l'on en croit ma Clef des songes."
22 July 1875 (037.0366). In a dream, Girofla offers her gherkins: "cornichons - vous épouserez un imbécile, dit ma clef des songes. C'est rassurant, je n'épouserai donc pas le Niçois."

Sources

Jacqueline Carroy, Nuits savantes. Une histoire des rêves (1800-1945) (as summarized in a web search; not read directly).
Internet Archive record for the 1867 La clef des songes (example of the genre).
Diary paragraphs as cited above.

Supersedes: `people/mentioned/LA_VRAIE_CLEF_DES_SONGES.md` (stub filed under people/).