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LESLIE A. FIEOLn
what does this mean to
us?
What do Joseph's personal healing and
his consequent success (after
all,
An American Dream
did prove a
best seller, and more, a way back into writing again for its author)
mean to those who have helped make that success, critics or readers
or nonreading buyers of books? And the answer to that question
I have been pursuing throughout-reflecting on how the Jewish
Dreamer in Exile, thinking only of making his own dreams come
true, ends by deciphering the alien dreams of that world as well; thus
determining the future of
all
those who can only know what lies
before them dimly and in their sleep. It
is
the essence of the myth
I have been exploring that Joseph, the Master of Dreams, cannot
lie; for dreams tell only the truth, and the Dreamer is also a Dream.
But the final word on the subject has been said by Freud himself, in
his peroration to
The Interpretation of Dreams:
The ancient belief that dreams reveal the future is not entirely
devoid of truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream
certainly leads us into the future; but this future, which the
dreamer accepts as his present, has been shaped in the likeness
of the past by an indestructible wish.
