Wolfram Lotz, a German playwright and poet, spent five years reading thousands of dream accounts from online forums in over 25 European languages, from English to Swiss Romansh. The result is 'Dreams in Europe,' an anthology that reveals a surprising consistency in how Europeans dream: their subconscious narratives often bend toward anticlimaxes.
Prosaic Dreams and Missing Imagination
“Europeans seem to dream quite prosaically,” Lotz said. “Of course dreams are always fantastical and ambiguous, but many of the dreams I have collected seem to lack imagination.” The collected dreams, translated into German and edited into short stories, show a pattern: an adventure or daring journey is interrupted, sidetracked, or fizzles out.
One dream features a woman chased by murderers, only to end up watching TV with them and cracking hazelnuts. Another involves a young woman discovering in a dream that she is responsible for the Holocaust, but she gets distracted by a business meeting. A man dreams of advising French President Emmanuel Macron on social policy but instead talks about haircuts and dog training.
Narrative Structures and European Mentality
Lotz noted that the narrative structures are consistent across secular and religious regions. “All these collected dreams have an understated melancholy or sadness. There isn’t much transcendence left in the European mentality: God is dead, and the present lies mutely in front of us, without facing the future,” he said.
He attributes this to modern life: when ill, we take medicine; when robbed, we call insurance. “That has something to do with how we live on this continent,” Lotz added.
Political Events and Exceptions
While big events like Brexit, Trump, and Covid barely surface in the dreams, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears frequently in Ukrainian- and Russian-language forums. One dreamer meets Boris Johnson and has tea with Angela Merkel, possibly inspired by Johnson “wanting to have his cake and eat it” during Brexit negotiations. Another dreams of advising Macron on social divisions.
Dreams Set in the US
Many European dreams are set in the United States. One dreamer weeps upon discovering that US states have “separated” on a map, which Lotz compared to learning about parents’ divorce. “I look at a dream like that and I think: surely it knows something about how Europeans’ relationship with the United States is changing,” he said. “Dreams aren’t just froth. They know something.”
Meaning in Absence of Meaning
Lotz, an award-winning playwright whose work 'Holy Scripture I' has a cult following, said it is not his job to decipher the dreams. Some defy interpretation, such as a dream about a bird living in someone’s anus or app icons falling off an iPad. The meaning, the book suggests, can lie in the absence of meaning.
“When the media talks about Europe, it rattles through a series of discursive chains: Brexit, Frontex, Schengen and so on,” Lotz said. “But it barely touches on the reality of what Europe feels like. For me, the mission of this book is to explore this continent beyond the discourse.”
