GREGORY'S DREAM
299
left me. I think he blushed when he went out so hurriedly, but maybe
I am making
this
up for I remember that he had been unusually
flushed when he first arrived and had remained so throughout his
narration.
It didn't occur to me to think that I was more gifted at analyzing
dreams or life than was Gregory, but not having dreamed his dream
I thought I was perhaps less emotional about it than he was. Nor
did I have to be, I reflected, not being Jewish and having lived in
America all my life. I was meditating upon Gregory's sensitivity and
the twisted guilt, toward the Negro and perhaps toward that butcher,
which became untwisted in his dream, and I thought he should rather
be grateful for his enlightenment, particularly- but this is a thought
I may not be able to express very clearly- since it had occurred by
way of such interesting, beautiful and true images, in a kind of satis–
factory integration, as it were. I was already- in the afternoon, after
having done my day's work- already on my way to Gregory to com–
municate my thoughts to him. I was even feeling flattered at being
intelligent enough to anticipate a question of his. Even if he profited
(so he would react to my expositions; I knew him) by this dream
to change· his ideas about Negroes, and Jews, and Germans, and to
have new thoughts about the role he himself played as a sociologist,
he would ask if all this might not be overthrown by a new dream, and
what totally unexpected things a new dream might not reveal; and
thereupon I would answer that I found no objection to further reve–
lations but on the contrary considered it rather fortunate to have
dreams that are so obviously enlightening and accelerate the processes
by which we clarify ourselves and the world in which we live.
I say I was on my way to him when I had these thoughts. Yet
my contentment was suddenly disturbed. I realized how complacent
and self-congratulatory I was. First I was struck by the insight that
my whole chain of reasoning was purely intellectual: what if the
dream meant more to Gregory than something which could
be
solved
intellectually; more than a problem, no matter in which field-meta–
physics, mathematics, even sociology? Had he not, in his own words,
intimated as much? What
did
it mean? Yet this question was only like
a shocking flash; the thought which immediately followed it was in–
finitely more violent. In fact it made me stop in the middle of the
street, and some people probably looked at me. It began when, in
a mood of mere innocent curiosity, I asked myself what it meant that
in my reflections upon his dream I had contrasted him, the persecuted
Jew, with myself, the Gentile who at least didn't have the experience
of being persecuted, but who perhaps himself harbored feelings of
