Skip to main content

“La Sonnambula and the City of Sleep: A Fragment of a Dream”

Image from amazon.com

“La Sonnambula and the City of Sleep: A Fragment of a Dream” is one of many texts collected in an anthology of P. Craig Russell’s work, titled Isolation and Illusion: Collected Short Stories 1977-1997. In this wordless tale, Russell employs colorless, romantic and surreal illustrations to evoke the strange opulence of a dream world. The plot begins with a frame story in which the protagonist sleepwalks. While sleepwalking, she dreams of being an angel who joins others to journey to the City of Sleep where they gather at a tower and peer through the window at a Rude Goldbergesque machine that generates the world of dreams. Upon entering this world, the angels soar through the air, narrowly escape the predators of the sea, and revel in their own splendor. Eventually, the protagonist leaves the group and returns alone to the city where she re-enters the tower and exits the dream world that it creates. “La Sonnambula” pairs well with Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” which was composed one night after an opium influenced dream. Coleridge was interrupted while writing the lines of poetry that came to him from his dream, causing him to forget the remainder. Like Russell’s tale, Coleridge’s poem is “a fragment of a dream.”

  • “La Sonnambula and the City of Sleep: A Fragment of a Dream” by P. Craig Russell
  • High School
  • Dark Horse Comics
  • 10pp.
  • Published 1985
  • 1-56971-838-5
  • $14.95
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Becoming a Comics Librarian and the Importance of Joining a Community of Practice

  Originally published April 5, 2023 Library Developments Blog |  Library Development and Networking Division Texas State Library and Archives Commission ***** As a freshly-minted librarian, I was hired to serve at THE high school bearing my district’s name alongside an amazingly zany, veteran librarian who knew the current collection inside and out as she’d been the one to revitalize it with bond money just prior to my arrival. To say that I was intimidated about what I could possibly have to contribute is more than an understatement. So when the moment of truth arrived and I was handed a “small” purchase order to get my feet wet, I. Was. Stymied! Her  fingerprints were all throughout that collection, and what  she  didn’t read our assistant  did . How would I ever fit into this team?! What could I possibly contribute?! To be honest… after teaching a core, tested subject for fifteen years, I was just beginning to read young adult literature regularly...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Equity Statement

Although I’ve led a relatively privileged life, I’ve never been allowed the luxury to forget that I am Black and that this life is Promethean fire, stolen from those who would refuse me such power. From a young age, I was raised with an awareness that the life I enjoyed was hard-won, secured by generations of conscious decisions to undermine institutional inequity, and that it could only be retained and furthered by never seeming too Black,  always outworking non-Black peers,  and pretending obliviousness to shock at my excellence. I was groomed to live as an exemplar of this rhetorical triangle, persuading the powers of American society not to bar my way to success and perhaps even grant the same opportunities expected by my non-Black peers. At home, I was taught to blend into non-Black America as a successful woman capable of navigating any social register. I grew up the daughter of college-educated professionals in an upper-middle class, predominantly white neighborhood in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

ARSL 2024 Conference Recap

  Originally published October 25, 2024 Library Developments Blog  |  Library Development and Networking Division Texas State Library and Archives Commission Waiting outside Gate 21 where the scent of pizza from the nearby Eastside Pies booth filled the air, I excitedly chatted about the transitional weather with my new teammate – to quote James Hurst “summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born” – the logistics of traveling for work, and our preparedness to attend the 2024 Association for Small and Rural Libraries (ARSL) conference . Neither of us truly knew what to expect, but we had been told that ARSL is THE conference for rural and small libraries, with conference organizers who not only understand the constraints of these libraries but also the unique opportunities for their being chrysalises of change. The conference theme “Libraries are (r)Evolutionary” proclaimed the event aimed to provide an opportunity for exploring the transformative power of rural and sm...
Post a Comment
Read more