Smarra ou les démons de la nuit: Songes romantiques

The poet stages a sequence of nocturnal visions that together form a macabre, dreamlike narrative: a prologue, an extended récit and episodic interludes combine as successive dreams interrupt and transform one another, describing oppressive sensations of suffocation, encroaching walls, and nocturnal phantasms. Interspersed prefaces reflect on the origins and methods of the fantastic, on the relation between waking invention and dream-imagery, and on the challenge of translating and reproducing a heightened, pictorial style. The work examines the psychology of nightmares, the porous boundary between imagination and belief, and the Romantic appetite for the serious fantastic through densely descriptive language and abrupt transitions that mimic the logic of sleep.