Twilight zones
Author
Faculty Advisor
Date
1989
Keywords
dreams, ideas, Inspiration dreams, scientific inspiration, lucid dreams, conscious awareness, creative potential, mental imaging, vision, sleep of experience
Abstract (summary)
One-night eighteenth-century composer Giuseppe Tarlini dreamed that he gave his violin to the Devil to test the latter's skill as a musician. The Devil played a beautiful solo, surpassing anything Tartini had ever heard. When he awoke, Tartini jumped out of bed and grabbed his violin, trying to recapture the Devil's music. Although "The Devil's Trill," as Tarlini entitled the composition, paled beside what he had heard in the dream, it is still considered to be the composer's best work Dreams have often offered fertile ground for new ideas and artistic insights. Such writers as Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, and Charlotte Bronte, for example, found their plots, characters, and settings in their dreams. But most people rarely heed their dreams, going through life unaware of the inspiration dreams can throw, seemingly out of nowhere. In one of the most famous accounts of scientific inspiration, German chemist Friedrich August Kekule claimed that in the 1860's he discovered the formula for the benzene ring in a dream.
Publication Information
Gackenbach, J.I. & Bosveld, J. (1989, November). Twilight zones. OMNI, 12(2), 74-79, 110-112.
DOI
Notes
Item Type
Article
Language
English
Rights
All Rights Reserved