The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: Live at the Dream Mapping Symposium

SPEAKER_2 (0:13)

Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.

Phil Ford (0:49)

Hi, welcome to Weird Studies. This is Phil.

JF and I are back from our adventures in Gotham, a pair of hayseeds fresh from the turnip wagon, getting lost on the subway in marvelling at city ways. And by Crackie, we sure did have ourselves a time. For one thing, we got to see the tarot exhibition at the Morgan Library just before it closed. And for another thing, one of the lighting fixtures at our show exploded. An event you will hear, suitably edited, and what follows. Lucky for you, the podcast is an audio medium, so you can't smell the mephitic stench of chemical smoke that poured out of the mortally wounded device. And, because we had to open all the windows to air the place out, you can hear a remarkably determined exchange of vehicular aggro in the New York manor. An angry sonata for car horns. A lot of little things went weirdly wrong throughout the weekend, and the weather was awful. We were worried the show would be called off because of a fierce nor'easter that battered the region. In the end, everything worked out fine. More than fine. There was a delicate magic to the event, for which Alisa Minyukova and Kelly Bulkeley can take much credit. Alisa and Kelly have created the Dream Mapping Project, a global artists' collective exploring the realm of dreaming. And our show was a part of the Dream Mapping Symposium, a three-day event held at the Brooklyn Public Library. Alisa proposed that we should discuss Theodore Dostoevsky's late short story, Dream of a Ridiculous Man. And she also had the idea of having me read the story in full before our conversation. So in what follows, you will hear both the story and our conversation about it. But the magic, like the reek of the lithium battery smoke, cannot be fully experienced through a recording. You kinda had to be there. Reading Dostoevsky's strange and wondrous tale of a life-changing dream felt like an invocation, as if we were calling a spirit forth into a triangle of art. The spirit entered the room and the hearts of everyone gathered in it. You could feel it in the hush of attention that pervaded the whole event. And what was that spirit?

It was the spirit of Dostoevsky's Ridiculous Man, who, like Dostoevsky's Underground Man, is an exemplary modern, an apathetic and self-hating solipsist whose mind circles forever around its self-consciousness like a rat in a bucket.

But unlike the Underground Man, the Ridiculous Man achieves an improbable redemption, a redemption in the shape of a dream.

No announcements this week, aside from the perennial pitch for our Patreon, which of course is the finest Patreon of modern times.

So okay, on with the show.

J. F. Martel (4:28)

Lately, we've been followed by strange weather. Wherever we go, we get... So I think we may have to take responsibility for the nor'easter.

Phil Ford (4:37)

Yeah, sorry about that. It just got carried away.

J. F. Martel (4:43)

Thanks for being here. We're going to have a conversation. At least I had the wonderful idea of having Phil, with his sultry voice, read us the story first. And that way, we'll all be on the same page when it comes to the conversation. We'll all have experienced the story. So we're going to begin with Phil's reading, and then we'll have the chat afterwards.

Phil Ford (5:05)

All right. Thank you.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, a fantastic story.

I am a ridiculous man. Nowadays, they call me mad. That would be a step up in rank if they did not also persist in regarding me as ridiculous. But these days, I no longer get angry about that. These days, they are all dear to my heart, and even when they make fun of me, then too, for some reason, I cherish them, if anything, even more. I would join in the laughter, not so much of myself, but out of love for them. If it didn't make me so sad to look upon them. Sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I do.

Oh, how painful it is to be the only one to know the truth. But they won't understand this. No, they won't understand.

Formerly, I used to anguish a great deal over the fact that I seemed odd. Was not seemed. I was always peculiar. And I have been aware of this from the day I was born. Perhaps as early as seven years old, I was aware of my oddity. After that, I went to school, that then the university. And what do you think? The more I studied, the more it was born in upon me that I was odd. For me, therefore, it was as if the sole point of my entire university course had ultimately been to demonstrate and make clear to me how peculiar I was. As in my studies, so in life. With each passing year, this same awareness of the ridiculous figure I caught in all respects grew and strengthened. I was laughed at by everyone upon every occasion. But no one knew or gassed that if there was a man on this earth who knew better than anyone how ridiculous I was, that man was myself. And that was the thing I found most exasperating of all, that they did not know it. It was my own fault, however. I was always so proud that I wouldn't have wanted to admit it for the world. The pride grew within me as time went by, and if I had ever chanced to allow myself to admit that I was ridiculous to anyone at all, then I think I would have blown my head off with a revolver then and there, that very evening. Oh, how I suffered in my adolescence over whether I might break down and blurt it out unprompted to my school fellows.