Dreams and Stones [Hardcover]

Magdalena Tulli (Author), Bill Johnston (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

Hailed as one of the most brilliant contributions to the literature of Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of Communism, Dreams and Stones won the prestigious Koscielski Foundation Prize in Poland in 1995. Telling the story of the growth of a great city, Tulli relates its history by entering the lives of the stones from which the buildings and monuments are constructed, as well as the dreams of people and objects interwoven with the city’s history. Revealing the inner lives of buildings, mirrors and news-paper -photographs, she explores the design of the city, its growth and its workings. Dismantling the city piece by piece, Tulli reveals a very different metaphysical landscape lying, literally, beneath and around it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[a] hypnotic narrative about the rise of a mysterious, unnamed city." -- San Diego Union Tribune, June 20. 2004

"dexterously braids cords of memory, imagination, and elegaic intensity." -- Rain Taxi, Spring 2004

About the Author

Magdalena Tulli was born in 1955. "In Red" (Wczerwieni, 1998), her second book, also received great critical acclaim in Poland and elsewhere. Tulli lives in Warsaw, where she works as a psychologist and translator. Johnston is Director of the Polish Studies Center at Indiana University. His translations include Gustaw Herling's The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories (New Directions, 2003), Jerzy Pilch's His Current Woman (Grove, 2002), and Stefan Zeromski's The Faithful River (Northwestern, 1999). In 2005, he won an ASTEEL translation prize for Tulli's Dreams and Stones.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 110 pages
• Publisher: Archipelago Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972869263
• ISBN-13: 978-0972869263
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Eastern European

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Life will always be imperfect, but dreams they can be what you make of them, May 30, 2008

By 

Bethany L. Canfield "Dreadlock Girl" (Corvallis, OR,USA.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dreams and Stones (Hardcover)

Architecture, dreams, life, lines and asphalt is where Magdalena Tulli takes the readers of Dreams and Stones. Along for the ride of a city, where the stones of reality will fall, but only the dreams survive. Life will always be imperfect, but dreams they can be what you make of them.

Magdalena Tulli could take the most hideously boring subject and write beautiful sentences. I adore her writing, it is deep, intense and ambiguous. She dares to go places that her readers may not be able to follow, yet she fear not as she takes them there. Dreams and Stones is a balance between the mystical dream world and the harsh reality of life. Life is too real, dreams are too far gone. I could drool over this book, there are certain key sentences which I will share, that might as well be screaming "I CAN'T BELIEVE NO ONE HAS WRITTEN ME YET!!!!", but she does, and does it with ease and a tenderness that willingly ushers the reader into a new place.

In saying all that, I can come clean and say that a lot of her writing was very deep for me, or just too hard for me to grasp. I love strange and weird and unsettling, however I am not fully able to comprehend what was hard for me about this book. Tulli's writing is incredible, yet many times I just had no idea where she had taken me and what she was writing about. I felt as though it were poetry in form of prose, which would make sense because so much of poetry is how it speaks to the individual, therefore making poetry on the hard-to-understand side sometimes. Throughout the book I was rocked out of my seat with her writing, others I was only holding on by a molecule. It could be that it was too philosophical for me, I am not sure.

The writing, it is heaven though, here are two quotes from the book:

Eventually the day came when the sofas were chopped up for firewood; a stray shell released the letters from their drawers. Paper turned to ashes, windowpanes shattered, door frames and tiled stoves were smashed to pieces. But this too failed to stop the pain. For pain does not belong to those who experience it but rather they belong to it (p. 71).

But their brightness always arises from darkness and their beauty from horror. The tangle of dreams, untouched by pruning shears, fills the whole world; it can even be said that it is the world and that the inhabitants of the city - along with their houses, their beds, their blankets, their recollections and their unanswerable questions- are only necessary for the dreams to be dreamed.
Only for dreams to be dreamed? What about maintaining order in the world? What about polishing floors, making repairs? Surely the reason why people sleep at night is to gather strength for the labors of the day? (p. 78).

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inscrutable silence of Stone . . ., May 31, 2004

By 

John E. Carlson "Johnny" (Everett, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dreams and Stones (Hardcover)

translated from the Polish to English by Bill Johnston

This slim volume, filled with vivid imagery and metaphor held, for me, a poetic inspiration on nearly every page. It is about the birth, growth and decay of a city, or all cities. At the same time, less about some unnamed city as about human idealism and dreams -- resignation and denial -- and finally the eureka of realization and understanding or the epiphanies a person can
eventually reach. Hauntingly entwined in the whole story is the inscrutable silence of Stone . . . hence the title.

On one level the symbolic language and imagery might be enjoyed for the art of writing itself, but on various other levels, it might be speaking of politics, religion, faith, doubt and
disillusionment. It is a beautiful book. I was about to cite some lines, but no single quotation seems adequate outside the whole. However, since I've been thinking this labor day weekend
about loved ones gone, and some that are suffering, I will share a tiny passage that I liked about "returning home."

". . . Drowning sailors do not remember which port they are headed for. Relinquishing unrealistic goals, they give themselves entirely to the waves and know relief. One way or another all of them -- including those who have already come to rest on the bottom -- will return safely
home." Here one might substitute the "waves" for "God." The book can probably be read by most people in a single sitting, though I took time reading it and putting it down and reading
more later, savoring the whole vision.

I forgot to mention that, given the author's home country, much of it was probably an evaluation commentary or critique) of the dream and ultimate failure of the communist system imposed on
Poland and other central and Eastern European countries and communities.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I did not enjoy this book - very grateful it's short!, November 9, 2010

By 

Terry "Terry" (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dreams and Stones (Hardcover)

I ordered this book for a book club I recently joined and was extremely disappointed in it. The publisher's blurb was quite intriguing. Unfortunately, the book was not. This genre really requires the reader to have a taste for abstract prose. For those with this taste, the book is probably as good as it's lauded to be. There are no characters, no dialog, really no plot. I found it tedious to read and will be selling my still lovely, pristine copy in the very near future. (I confess, though, I really don't like James Joyce's long works either. Mercifully, Tulli's book is MUCH shorter than Joyce, though I put them in the same category of unreadable rambling.)