Far from experiencing hashish as an artificial paradise, Nerval’s Coleridgian caliph finds himself cast into an existential limbo whose most lucid moments, significantly enough, occur when he is least certain of his identity: ‘unsure that he was a god, unsure at times that he was even a caliph, he found it nearly impossible to reassemble the scattered fragments of his thoughts’. (Location 656)
As he made his way through the astonished crowd, the faithful got a closer look at him and cried out: ‘The man is blind! The hand of God is upon him!’ Hakim recognized the old man he had formerly met on the square of Roumeliah and, as sometimes happens when a stray occurrence in one’s waking life suddenly triggers an unexpected rhyme with an incident from a forgottten dream, in a flash he saw his twofold life – his day-to-day existence and his ecstatic visions – come together as one. (Location 1222)
But even if I saw her again, would I dare ask who or what she is? Sometimes I suspect that it was all an illusion created by this damned weed. It may well be affecting my rational powers… so much so that I can no longer even distinguish between dream and reality.’ (Location 1243)
As they approached Saturn, the planet grew in size, racing through the firmament girded by its luminous ring and orbited by its seven moons. (Location 1249)
Note: wd they have been aware of this ?
I was under the impression that I had grown quite tall and that, flooded as I was with electrical forces, I was sure to knock down anybody who approached me. (Location 5179)
