Sleepless Night
Exhibition by V. Svetlova.
On 14th October 1964, Vladimir Nabokov embarked on an experiment. For many years, he had struggled with insomnia and decided to document his dreams, following the instructions of the English philosopher and researcher John William Dunne. Over the course of eighty days, he recorded his dreams in accordance with the guidelines from Dunne’s book "An Experiment with Time". The aim was to test Dunne’s theory that, during sleep, the perception of time loses its rigid linearity, as it does when awake; consequently, a person gains the ability to experience clairvoyant, extrasensory dreams, where consciousness freely traverses the boundaries of past, present, and future. Thanks to the compilation and publication of sixty-four dreams on 118 cards with commentary by Nabokov scholar and translator Gennady Barabtarlo, the world was introduced to the unique book "Clairvoyance".