The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (43) by Goya is no doubt a chilling image. The animals hover over the man, seemingly a representation of the fears within his mind. The shadowy bats’ creepiness, the owls’ screeching faces and wide eyes, and the glowing glares of two lynxes do a fantastic job of instilling fear. The scary creatures in our nightmares terrify us when we sleep, but sometimes they represent actual stressors which affect us in real life. The owl directly to the left of the man’s head is clutching one of his tools, maybe a magnifying glass. Goya takes this print to the next level by making the owl physically interact with the man’s life. One of his fears, represented by this owl, is so severe that it has crept into reality, perhaps interfering with his work. I think Goya might have been depicting the human tendency to keep certain fears buried within our minds until they get so bad that they start noticeably affecting us. Worse still, I noticed that the black lynx or cat at the center of the image is not attacking the man or even looking at him: it’s looking at us, the reader, crouched as if ready to pounce. Perhaps Goya is sending us a warning to confront our fears head-on before they take control of us and put us in danger.
2 thoughts on “Warning: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”
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While on the topic of this particular plate, I think it is necessary to comment on Dali’s subsequent reinterpretation of it. In Goya’s time, printing had not yet evolved beyond black and white – the nature of aquatint and intaglio printing does not permit color. It is fitting, then, that Dali’s principal addition to the piece is color. His rendering of this image includes a number of features which contribute, in my opinion, to the effect that Goya intended to elicit in the viewer. Primarily, the sleeping man is clad in red. Red is a universal symbol for fear, anger, and malevolence. The man is literally cloaked in red, but metaphorically, he is surrounded by hate and these negative sentiments. Another striking instance of color is the eyes of the bats. You mentioned how these are already terrifying; they are flitting around the man’s unconscious mind, taking up his possessions in their grasp and staring keenly at the viewer. Dali enforces this ideas by painting their eyes an unsettling orange. This endows their eyes with a power that black and white printing necessarily cannot convey. The eyes of the lynx or the cat are also glowing orange. Finally, Dali paints over the desk, removing the caption and substituting a drawing of a sphere composed of two interlocking parts. I believe that this image represents the duality of reason and imagination in their proper stations. Goya believes that, when coupled with one another, reason and imagination give rise to genius, but any disruption in this harmony is what leads to terror and lunacy. Dali’s reworking of the desk shows an awareness of this notion. Finally, Dali signs both his name and Goyas, signaling that his work is less a replication of an original but rather an expansion of an idea.
Ellie, this is a great analysis. I did not notice at first that the lynx is looking at the reader, and this realization is eerie, almost as if the lynx is staring down its audience in a way as to say that whatever is haunting the sleeping man is coming for us next.
Also to note is that the owls/bats flying in the background extend far back into the distance, in a seemingly never-ending stream. Maybe Goya is trying to show that many of the problems faced in life seem infinite and unstoppable; a chain force beyond our control.
I wish that Goya worked more with dreams, or if he has, I would love to know more. It seems like a realm that he would excel at illustrating.