The Labyrinth of Consciousness: Walter Benjamin on Dreams and the Underworld of the Mind

Searching for the byway to the unconscious.

“The logic of dreams is superior to the one we exercise while awake,” the poet, painter, and philosopher Etel Adnan wrote as she considered creativity and the nocturnal imagination. We know that in dreams consciousness hints at the nature of the universe, but we catch only flitting glimpses of what is revealed. And yet that unreckoned darkness is worth dwelling in, for in it we become differently — and perhaps more fully — ourselves.

That is what Wal...