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Stevenson, Robert Louis
(dreams)The author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) suffered from recurrent nightmares throughout his life. Beginning in his early childhood, serious nightmares plagued him incessantly up through adulthood. He remained an uneasy sleeper until his untimely death from a brain hemorrhage.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of Stevenson’s most famous nightmare-based novels. It describes the story of a man suffering from a chemically induced, dual-personality disorder. Stevenson claimed that the inspiration for the plotline originated in a dream. The author was hard pressed for money, and for two days he brainstormed ideas for a book. He briefly considered the idea of a “double being” as the central character for a novel, but he discarded the concept. He then had a dream of Dr. Jekyll ingesting a powder before the astonished eyes of his pursuers and turning into Hyde. Stevenson claimed that this was only the first in a series of sequential dreams he experienced that went into his story.
Stevenson felt the impact of his dreams on his writing so clearly that he eventually wrote a book devoted to this theme: Across the Plains. He made many references to the “nocturnal theater” in his head and attributed the “little people” who ran it as being more responsible for his stories than he was.
The more I think of it, the more I am moved to press upon the world my question: Who are the Little People? They are near connections of the dreamer’s beyond doubt…. They have plainly learned like him to build the scheme of a considerable story in progressive order; only I think they have more talent; and one thing is beyond doubt, they can tell him a story piece by piece, like a serial and keep him all the while in ignorance of where they aim. Who are they, then? And who is the dreamer?
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Born Nov. 13, 1850, in Edinburgh; died Dec. 3, 1894, on the island of Upolu, Samoa. British writer.
A Scot by origin, Stevenson was the son of an engineer. He graduated from the faculty of law of the University of Edinburgh in 1875. He traveled a great deal. Suffering from a serious form of tuberculosis, he settled in the Samoan Islands in 1890.
Stevenson’s first printed work was The Pentland Rising (1866). His classic adventure story Treasure Island (1883; Russian translation, 1886) brought him world renown. In the strongly plotted novels Kidnapped (1886; Russian translation, 1901), The Master of Ballantrae (1889; Russian translation, 1890), The Wrecker (1892; Russian translation, 1896), and Catriona (1893; Russian translation, 1901) the world of profiteering and greed is counter-posed to pure aspirations and high morality. The historical novels Prince Otto (1885; Russian translation, 1886) and The Black Arrow (1888; Russian translation, 1889) combine the romance of adventure with a precise re-creation of local color and historical circumstances.
Stevenson’s psychological novella The Strange Case of Dr. Je-kyll and Mr. Hyde (1886; Russian translation, 1888) is a classic working out of the theme of the “split personality” in English literature.
In Russia, Stevenson’s works were translated by K. Bal’mont, V. Briusov, I. Kashkin, and K. Chukovskii. Several screen versions of Treasure Island have been made in the USSR. The contemporary British writer R. Delderfield offers an original in-terpetation of Treasure Island in his novel The Adventures of Ben Gunn (1956; Russian translation, 1973).
WORKS
Collected Works, vols. 1–35. London, 1923–24.In Russian translation:
Poln. sobr. romanov, povestei i rasskazov, vols. 1–20. St. Petersburg, 1913–14.
Sobr. soch., vols. 1–5. Moscow, 1967.
REFERENCES
Kashkin, I. “R. L. Stivenson.” In his book Dlia chitateliasovremennika. Moscow, 1968.Urnov, M. V. Na rubezhe vekov. Moscow, 1970.
Oldington, R. Stivenson. Moscow, 1973.
Balfour, G. The Life of R. L. Stevenson, vols. 1–2. New York, 1901.
Eigner, E. M. R. L. Stevenson and Romantic Tradition. Princeton, N.J.,1966.
Kiely, R. R. L. Stevenson .... Cambridge, Mass., 1964.
E. IU. GENIEVA