» o i: i R ^ ' s i) R r \ M - \\ o R K

hilt empty wa\e-system. Poetry restores life and value u> matter,
and puts back the genotype into the world from which it was
banished.

Although we equated dream to |x»etry, we saw thai there
were essential differences. Poetry is cream e; dream is no:.
Poetry is creative because it is directed feeling. In dream the
associations are "free"—reality's images are manipulated accord-
ing to the genotype's desires, just as iron ill ings oier a magnet
"freely" arrange themselves along the lines of "force. In poetry,
however, feeling is fashioned into a social form by being made
to live in the common world of perceptual reality. Poetn
externalises emotion. The sell' is expressed—forcibly squee/ed
<?ut. Emotion is minted—made current coin. Feelings are gi\cn
social value. Work is done. Dream-work is precisely tiof labour*
poetic dream-work is; because one produces social commodities,
the other does not.

It is for this reason that poetry's technique differs from that
of dream. Below the surface of the dream lie the unconscious
instinctive wishes. Instinct is blind, it; cannot alter itself as long
as it is unconscious and incapable of self-condition ing, for it has
no will but only automatic responses to stimuli. These instinct-
ive wish-patterns dictate the dance of images in the brain,
which are associated with the wish-patterns by indirect affective
ties. But the ties themselves are suppressed hi dream, for every-
thing- that wakes the affects to action must l>e avoided if the
dreamer is to sleep on. The vast field of affect-laden images is
"out of bounds". "Let sleeping affects lie" is the motto of
dream-wishes. They are suppressed by being phantastically
gratified as easily as one makes a thoughtless habitual move
mem.

In poetic illusion the process is inverted. Dreams ascend from
the unconscious upwards and are therefore blind and un-
creative. Poems descend from the consciousness downwards and
are therefore aware and creative. Dream fearfully avoids the
dynamic region of the emotions, so as not to wake the sleeper
to action; poetry explores it courageously, so as to change the
inner world.

The memory-images of dream blindly followr the wire-pulling
of the instincts. But the words of poetry follow a purposeful
path. Their mission is, first to stir up the affects and then to
reorganise them. The only result of dream is a temporary and
arbitrary pattern of images drawn from reality and rearranged
at the behest of the instincts. "The world is not thus, but thus/*