Life's a dream. Unamuno, Life 3.2
We are a dream that dreams. Unamuno sounds like Chuang-tzu.
El universo visible, el que es hijo del instinto de conservación, me viene estrecho, esme (†) como una jaula que me resulta chica, y contra cuyos barrotes da en sus revuelos mi alma; fáltame en él aire que respirar. Más, más y cada vez más; quiero ser yo, y sin dejar de serlo, ser además los otros, adentrarme a la totalidad de las cosas visibles e invisibles, extenderme a lo ilimitado del espacio y prolongarme a lo inacabable del tiempo. De no serlo todo y por siempre, es como si no fuera, y por lo menos ser todo yo, y serlo para siempre jamás. Y ser yo, es ser todos los demás. ¡O todo o nada!
¡O todo o nada! ¡Y qué otro sentido puede tener el «ser o no ser»! To be or not to be shakesperiano, el de aquel mismo poeta que hizo decir de Marcio en su Coriolano (V, 4) que sólo necesitaba la eternidad para ser dios; he wants nothing of a god but eternity? ¡Eternidad!, ¡eternidad! Este es el anhelo: la sed de eternidad es lo que se llama amor entre los hombres; y quien a otro ama es que quiere eternizarse en él. Lo que no es eterno tampoco es real.
Gritos de las entrañas del alma ha arrancado a los poetas de los tiempos todos esta tremenda visión del fluir de las olas de la vida, desde el «sueño de una sombra» (σκιᾶς ὄναρ) de Píndaro, hasta el «la vida es sueño», de Calderón y el «estamos hechos de la madera de los sueños», de Shakespeare, sentencia esta última aún más trágica que la del castellano, pues mientras en aquella sólo se declara sueño a nuestra vida, mas no a nosotros los soñadores de ella, el inglés nos hace también a nosotros sueño, sueño que sueña.
The visible universe, child of our instinct for preservation, seems narrow to me, confining like a cell too small, and my soul beats ever against its bars, turning this way and that. Always I lack air to breathe, and this lack grows constantly, relentlessly, more oppressive with each moment. I want to be myself without ceasing, and I want to be others as well, to insinuate myself into the totality of all things visible and not—to extend myself into unlimited space, prolonging myself for endless time. If I am not everything forever, it is as though I never existed, and I would at least like to be utterly myself, my whole self, without end. To be myself is to be everyone else. All or nothing!
All or nothing! What other meaning can we find in Shakespeare's question: "To be or not to be?" The same poet says of Marcius (*) in his Coriolanus (IV, 7) that "he wants nothing of a god but eternity" (‡). Eternity! That is our aspiration. The thirst for eternity is what we call love amongst humankind, and whosoever loves another desires to become eternal in him. What is not eternal is not real, either.
Tossed upon life's heaving waves, poets of every time and place have felt their bowels give way to shouts. From these cries a vision's torn, of human life in all its forms: "a shadow's dream," says Pindar (♠); "life's but fantasy," thus Calderón (♣); and again from Shakespeare: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" (Tempest IV). The Englishman's formulation is even more tragic than the Spaniard's, as the latter declares only that our life is a dream, while the former makes us, the dreamers, into a dream as well—a dream of dreaming.
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(†) The word esme is strange to me. I am not certain of its meaning or derivation, though I suspect it shares something with the Catalan word esma, meaning something like compulsion or necessity.
(*) Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus (5th century BCE?) was a legendary Roman noble from the early Republic. Plutarch (Vita Coriolani) and Livy (2.33-40) recount his life, including a famous victory against the Volscians, for which our man took his name Coriolanus (since he conquered the city Corioli). When he was exiled from Rome for proposing that the plebs sacrifice privileges in exchange for famine relief, he went over to the Volscians and led an invasion. Supposedly, his mother and wife persuaded him to give this up, leading a delegation to meet with him outside the city when he arrived to take it. In the early seventeenth century CE (between 1605 and '08), Shakespeare made a play dramatizing these events⸺one of the last tragedies he wrote.
(‡) I do not know what edition of Shakespeare Unamuno was using, but I find his quotation in the fourth act, seventh speech, not anywhere in the fifth.
(♠) The phrase σκιᾶς ὄναρ comes from the eighth Pythian ode, lines 95-97 (quoted and translated below). The Greek poet Pindar (c. 518-438 BCE) composed this ode to celebrate the wrestler Aristomenes, for a victory in the Pythian games held to honor Apollo at Delphi. This victory probably took place some time in the early fifth century BCE.
ἐπάμεροι·
τί δέ τις; τί δ᾽ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ
ἄνθρωπος. ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν αἴγλα διόσδοτος ἔλθῃ,
λαμπρὸν φέγγος ἔπεστιν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μείλιχος αἰών·
Fleeting creatures, what are we?
Someone? No one? Shadow's dream.
Kindled by Zeus' shining ray
We bless our brief but glorious day!
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
What is life? 'Tis lunacy!
What is life? A fantasy!
Shadow casting made-up pall
And our greatest good is small.
For all of life is but a dream
And dreams themselves,
are only dreams.