Sleep Has His House

by Anna Kavan

A classic later novel by Anna Kavan.

A largely autobiographical account of an unhappy childhood, this daring synthesis of memoir and surrealist experimentation chronicles the subject's gradual withdrawal from the daylight world of received reality. Brief flashes of daily experience from childhood, adolescence, and youth are described in what is defined as "nighttime language"—a heightened, decorative prose that frees these events from their gloomy associations.

The novel suggests we have all spoken this dialect in childhood and in our dreams, but these thoughts can only be sharpened or decoded by contemplation in the dark. Revealing that side of life which is never seen by the waking eye but which dreams and drugs can suddenly emphasize, this startling discovery illustrates how these nighttime illuminations reveal the narrator's joy for the living world.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Novels, 20th Century, Classics, Womens, Literary Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Anna Kavan was born "Helen Woods" in France on April 10, 1901 to wealthy expatriate British parents.

Her initial six works were published under the name of Helen Ferguson, her first married name. These early novels gave little indication of the experimental and disturbing nature of her later work. I Am Lazarus (1945), a collection of short stories which explored the inner mindscape of the psychological explorer, heralded the new style and content of Kavan's writing. The change in her writing style and physical appearance coincided with a mental breakdown. During this time, Helen also renamed herself Anna Kavan after a character in her own novel Let Me Alone.

Around 1926 Anna became addicted to heroin. Her addiction has been described as an attempt to self-medicate rather than recreational. Kavan made no apologies for her heroin usage. She is popularly supposed to have died of a heroin overdose. In fact she died of heart failure, though she had attempted suicide several times during her life.

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A progressive withdrawal from the outside world, from sun and reality, from the true as accepted by consensus. A retreat into oneself, away from a comforting ersatz reality repeatedly rejected as unreal, a duplicitous truth tarnished by tendrils of harsh falsity, a retreat into a darkened inner womb-world (tomb-world?!) which, for this troubled brilliant writer-voice seems to contain much more personal truth than that beyond. Or is the self as deceptive as the other?

Oh Anna Kavan, is this (as they say) your murk-shaded memoir of a childhood of resistance against the sun-blind day you were pointed into by rough authoritative hands? Or a novel of the welcome embrace of madness that stands just inside the threshhold of genius? Your surrealist paint-smears of recollection and dream reformed into a new narrative of determined escape? Or an essay on the dangers of two universes that struggle constantly for domination in each of us, without and within? Is the bright and sun-burned plaza or the noirest of under-cellars the more guilty of obfuscation?

As impossible prose, this is magnificent, and even at its most delirious there seems enough outside attachment (imposition?) to give it meaning. It's a slippery half-seen meaning, yes, one that I find myself continually in struggle with Kavan for, meaning that is a fight to keep hold of against her continuous receding, receding, receding back along those shaded interior horizons without end. But I can feel the significance that lurks here anyway, the burningly real, precarious as its position may become. And so this stands, with Kavan's even-finer Ice (I am sucker for its plotting and glacial imagery), as example of the kind of surrealism whose reeling insanity never reels entirely beyond the pale of some kind of half-felt (or often fully-felt) urgent purpose. And so keep retreating, Anna, I can still see you, see you, see you

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place.

Holy fuck.

There's really no way to begin to write about this book; rather, it must be experienced on its own terms—in the nighttime logic Kavan employs to render the visions and logic of dreams in prose that is as erudite and learned as it is nightmarish and downright bizarre.

To call Kavan's style in Sleep Has His House "surreal" is to miss the mark. As Kavan herself states in a introductory passage to the text: "No interpretation is needed of the language we have all been speaking since childhood and in our dreams." The images, scenes, confusions, and even the melancholy found in the narrator B.'s rejection of the world of light and all that it entails is familiar to all writers—and certainly to all dreamers: "The dream closes in to the central dead spot..."

Kavan clarifies that "for the sake of unity a few words before each section indicate the corresponding events" in terms of "real" temporal time. And these intercalary chapters are so eerily reminiscent—not in their tone or treatment, but in their almost predictable and perfect placement—of the intercalary chapters in Virginia Woolf's The Waves as they make the two texts companion shadow pieces of sorts. Whereas Woolf is concerned with plumbing the depths of consciousness of six main characters, eventually absorbing all of these "moments of being" replete with images, sense perceptions, and subjectivized linguistic nuances, Kavan goes even deeper. Focusing on B. rather than a wider chorus of characters as does Woolf, Kavan's world is already hermetic; indeed, in eschewing all light and concentrating instead on the darkness—and the logic even a pitch-black room holds for an individual's conscious connections—allows her to descend several layers below the unconsciousnesses for which Woolf's own text is so highly praised.

But Kavan's deep unconsciousness is not one of pure despair, nor are the images and temporal connections so subjective to prevent the reader entrance into this world of shadows and utter darkness. Because we all share this language we have "been speaking since childhood and in our dreams," the connections become clearer as the reader works to patch together the at times overload of senses with which Kavan bombards him or her. In essence, the logic of the nighttime with which she is concerned is one that is deeply familiar, one that is hardly uncanny despite how it might feel upon first reading Sleep and stumbling over the opening sections.

The most rewarding part of Kavan's prose is her unique ability to blend reality and fantasy, truth and fiction, and the public and the personal. While Sleep Has His House can be, and likely has been read, as a private document too insular to be deciphered by a reader, I would counter this rather strongly. However, like Woolf's The Waves, Kavan's Sleep is a work that requires a familiarity with her prior work, style, treatment, and especially as it evolved over time to the subjectivized and almost inverted world one sees in books like Ice , but which are shattered even more in works like Sleep.

We know a lot about Freud's influence on Woolf's life and work, and The Waves' slow descent into several layers of consciousness—and its focus on deep unconsciousness—is one meagre testament to that debt. Kavan does reference Woolf's Orlando once in Sleep Has His House, making the connection between the two seem a valid one to draw here. Kavan also appears to know her Freud (although perhaps from the wrong side of the couch, which is not to say insights cannot be offered by the analysand any more than they can by the analyst), and, if Freud had lived, I'm certain he would have learned many a thing about the unconscious and its many levels; subjectivized sensory perceptions and how these can somehow be shared or at least understood by individuals from entirely different circumstances; and the formative years of childhood from a book like Kavan's.

We are often scared of examining the depths, but with the right guides—e.g., Dante's Virgil guiding the way through the Inferno—we have many lessons to learn about ourselves and the dark world we tend to ignore, whether out of fear, anxiety, trepidation, or because we have been conditioned to think that the world of light is the only one that matters. Explore the depths, then; do not be afraid of the darkness. You will remain intact, albeit changed irrevocably: "survivor of all voyages and situations... I." The "I" will survive, if you trust in Kavan's journey, as well we all should.

[Sinem A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buz ve Kartal Yuvası ndan sonra bu kitabı okumak farklı bir Anna Kavan ile tanışmama neden oldu.
Yazar Uyku Tanrısının Evi ni diğer iki kitabından çok daha önce kaleme almış. Bu kitabın ilk eserlerinden olduğunu anlamak zor olmadı. Biraz daha acemi biraz daha belirsiz, tekinsiz bir Anna Kavan ile tanışmış oldum.
Otobiyografik öğelerin de yer aldığı söylenen bu kitapta sınırlarda uçlarda bir dille karşı karşıyayız bitmeyen bir ikilik, şiir gibi imgeler..
Tarzını ve yazarı sevenlere tavsiye ederim ama yazarı tanımak isteyenler için hala en iyi eseri Buz diye düşünüyorum.
İyi okumalar....

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stars have thrown their spears down and departed. There seems to be nothing except primordial chaos outside the window. Utterly still, utterly alone, I watch the darkness flower into transient symbols. And now there is danger somewhere, a slow, padded beat, like cushioned paws softly approaching. What an ominous sound that is to hear in the night. (p9)

Sleep Has His House is an extraordinary book, one that defies description – or, at least, it defies my powers of description. It's a fusion of novel, memoir and literary experiment. On the back cover of my copy, it's said to have 'startled with its strangeness in 1948'; it is no less startling or strange in 2020, though it's gratifying to know that it is now regarded as one of Kavan's best, having been poorly reviewed on publication.

The narrative is largely composed of surreal dream-scenes; they are structured around the (by all accounts somewhat autobiographical) story of a girl known as B. Sometimes writing in first person, and sometimes observed, B relates her conviction that human existence is divided between the 'day world' and the mysterious language of the night. As the day-to-day experience of her childhood becomes more difficult, B retreats into what she calls the night world or nightland. 'I had to prevent the day world from becoming real,' she tells us; 'I waited all through the day for the moment of going home to my night world.' This dark, fantastical space represents an escape from the isolation B endures in her daily life.

At school and at home it was the same; I was alone. This I accepted and knew it would always be so, wherever I went, and whatever happened to me. There was no place for me in the day world. My home was in darkness and my companions were shadows beckoning from a glass. (p101)

Sleep Has His House is a feast of language. Glance at any page and you will find a sentence or phrase unique in its beauty. 'The descending swell burns translucent'; 'livid swaths of light fall as if cut by a scythe'. Reflections from silverware create 'smothered prismatic gleams'; through the gap between curtains, 'a small moon quizzes coldly'; a figure beckons from 'the sapphire recessive night', and 'a huge spectral white owl with lambent eyes' glides overhead. Rarely have I encountered such painterly descriptions, such vivid, powerful images.

The pre-realist fantasia opens up in an inchoate sort of Marie Laurencin dream of delicate tints. No form to speak of. Just a pearly billowing and subsiding of fondant chromatics. (p28)

A sombre landscape eventuates, worked out in blacks and greys and the very gloomiest shades of viridian. A scowling sky, ominous mountains, water cold, still and solid-looking as ice, trackless fir forests, the fine spray from the gigantic waterfalls fuming slowly like ectoplasm. (p79)

B is often portrayed calmly reading a book. In some scenes, she sits and reads quietly as the story of creation unfolds around her, as 'the monstrous efflorescence of the universe burgeons'. Here, the backdrops are evocative not just of art but of cinema, of the kind of visual effects impossible at the time Kavan was writing.

There's a split second's glimpse of the vast sad blackness of infinity before the perfectly bare void is spattered by this glittering exsurgence, this bursting fountain of molecules, instantly crystallizing to sequins of differing size... the stars roar past like stratoliners to destinations not checked in quadrillions... the thunderous revving of the cosmic machines settles to the steady beat of eternity. (p31)

The eye is checking a record of silence, space; a nightmare, every horror of this world in its frigid and blank neutrality. The actual scope of its orbit depends on the individual concept of desolation, but approximate symbols are suggested in long roving perspectives of ocean, black swelled, in slow undulation, each whaleback swell plated in armour-hard brilliance with the moonlight clanking along it; the endless, aimless, nameless shoreline, flat, bald-white sand, unbroken black-tree palisade; the heavy and horrid eternal onrush of breakers suddenly exploding their madness of futile power, millions of mad tons piling, booming, collapsing, swirling in chain-mail mosaic of mad moon splinters; blanched mountain range a ridge of clenched knucklebones. (p89)

(I think the above might be my favourite passage from the book, and also seems so perfectly representative of it... the rich beauty of the description set against the bleak images it relates, the overpowering sense of desolation, of loneliness.)

Yet, as you can see from the above ('... depends on the individual concept of desolation...'), Sleep Has His House possesses a sense of humour, of sorts. It is sometimes sardonic, sometimes absurd – 'remember a whatsit's whatsit may depend on your whatsit' – and some of what was presumably intended as near-nonsense, an expression of the limitless possibilities of the nightland, now seems oddly prescient ('the radio announces various kinds of truth to suit every listener').

I have sometimes found Kavan's short stories tough to get into, and have wondered whether I would ever recapture the sense of amazement I felt when I read Ice for the first time. Sleep Has His House brought that feeling back, and reminded me of everything I found so utterly entrancing about Ice. This is the sort of writing that leaves me reeling.

TinyLetter

[Hakan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uyku Tanrısının Evi, Anna Kavan’dan okuduğum ilk kitap. Gece ve gündüz diyalektiğinde, geceye, dolayısıyla da düşlere ağırlık veren zorlu bir anlatı. Her bölüm başındaki kısa metinler ise birer işaret fişeği niteliğinde. Bu anlatının otobiyografik bir özellik taşıdığı da anlaşılıyor. Kavan’ın hayatı hakkında dinlediğim bir podcast’ten ebeveynler - özellikle de annesi - bakımından talihsiz olduğunu biliyordum. Kitaba bu yansıyor. Ama kitabın ana gövdesi rüya tasvirleri. Eh, hayatının büyük bir bölümünü eroin bağımlısı olarak geçiren (ve muhtemelen aşırı dozdan ölen) bir yazar olunca karşımızda bu pek şaşırtıcı değil. Yer yer Kafka’yı çağrıştıran bir yönü de var. Kavan’ın kaplanlarıyla mücadelesine şahit olmak için cesaretiniz varsa buyrun bu ilginç yazarın dünyasına. Çeviri (Şefika Kamçez) iyi. Yakında Kavan’ın başyapıtı Buz’a da el atacağım.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morpheus, the Greek god of sleep, gave his name to the drug Anna Kavan long worshiped. And, despite the obvious dangers the drug threatens to one’s health, it’s not difficult to see why the drug’s effects, tied as they are to sleep, dreaming, and imagination, have long been alluring to artists—from De Quincey to Trocchi, Holiday to Hendrix, Reed to Cobain. In this interesting, experimental suite of prose pieces, Kavan explores sleep’s house, the images of her retreat through childhood and into young adulthood from the daylight world of objectivity into her own interior dream world.

The book has all of the beauties and difficulties of dreaming and madness, I guess. It’s alluring most of the time and startling occasionally. The novel’s originality draws you in but of course doesn’t quite hold your attention the same way that a traditional narrative does. So, whether its our fault from being trained to appreciate standard narrative technique through familiarity, or because dream-logic texts disjointed sequential images and free associations actually aren’t as compelling as straight narrative, it’s jus a lot harder to follow than a more traditional story. It’s a little tougher to stay engaged for the duration. So, the odd charms but also, by defying logic, contributes more toward entropy than cohesion in the long run. However, at a mere 190 pages, I was still interested and enjoying Sleep Has His House up to its conclusion even if the very nature of the text encourages one’s mind to wander somewhat.

Kavan’s beautiful and terse descriptive prose style is fabulous throughout, helping to hold the different dream narratives together stylistically. Also, the short seemingly autobiographical introductions to each dream-narrative help to frame them into something slightly more traditionally logical and coherent. While this could be something of a betrayal of the surrealist credo, I think it helped here. So we’re not actually—as the authorial voice seems to be—utterly locked into the house of sleep. Rather we’re peeking in through a window, watching the narrator disappear out of the sunlight deeper and deeper into that dark house of her personal dreams and nightmares.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Described as a memoir, Sleep Has His House charts a loosely connected course through dream-time in order to tell the story of an isolated childhood and adolescence leading into a full-scale retreat from society. In between the dream sequences are more straightforward bits of prose that help to maintain the tenuous chronology. There are also recurring characters, including Kavan's mother, that serve as anchors within the dream texts.

I read most of this book on a series of nights, lying in bed, as sleep slowly curled into my consciousness. I think this affected my reading of the book, to the point where I didn't want to pick it up in daylight. I also think it enriched my dreams, although I did not specifically dream of the book. But I did experience something new in one dream: in speaking to someone, I made a reference to a place I have only been to in my dreams; to my knowledge, it does not exist in waking life. I woke the next morning elated.

This book is said to be a Surrealist experiment, although I don't think Kavan identified herself with Surrealism. To me, labeling it as such cheapens Kavan's achievement. I think it's better to approach the book without any preconceived notions. Consider reading it at night, as your eyes slowly begin to close and you loiter at the edge of dream life.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Asylum Piece was Kavan in experimental first gear, then here I'd say she has moved up to a much more radical forth or fifth gear. This was another extraordinary piece of work. I didn't engage with it on an emotional level like I did with Asylum Piece (hence 4* and not 5), but my word, she knew how to string some beautifully crafted lyrical dream sequences together. Taking a journey into the realm of the subconscious; guided by the surreal; the psychoanalytical; the external factors of British post-war society - looking closer - how the violence of war deeply impacted the internal world, then it's clear to see the metaphors in regards to Kavan's own life taking shape in the narrative. Whilst the time spent in the real world is very short - sometimes as little as a few lines at the start of each sequence, it's the much longer passages of writing covering the dream world that impress. There is no doubt an underlying menace here, as through the struggle and slow mental collapse of the protagonist; the fear of being afraid all the time and totally alone, she surrenders herself over to the the depths of fantasy; where I found a fine line between both beauty and dread. It's a shame that Kavan didn't really get the attention she deserved until her last novel, Ice; and like Ann Quin (this novel being a lot closer to Quin's work than Asylum Piece was) this is another fine example of the British experimental female writer being at the top of their game.

[Mehmet]

"Kimi zaman bir üst kat penceresininden bakanın ben değil de annem olduğu duygusuna kapıldım." (s.41)

Pencereden dünyayı seyreden öznenin bu tasviri hatrıma Orhan Veli'nin İnsanlar şiirini getirdi.
"Annemin kucağından
Seyrettiğim insanlar gibi
küçüklüğümde...(Orhan Veli) *

Kavan'ın Buz ve özellikle Kartal Yuvası eserlerinde dikkatinizi çekeceği üzere; Kavan'da mekan bir obsesyondur. Bununla birlikte mekan aynı zamanda bir araçtır. Zamanın seyrinde mekan bir nevi eski bir limuzindir. Bu ev olur, şato olur, bahçe olur; değişir.

Kavan okumayalı uzun bir zaman oldu. Buz'un etkisinde kaldığımı hatta burada pek çok kişiye tavsiye ettiğimi hatırlıyorum. Bu kitap her ne kadar Kavan'ın en çok bilinen, üzerinde yazılan çizilen eserlerinden olsa da; Buz kadar beni etkilemedi.

Dilimize Şefika Kamcez'in çevirdiği, Mitos Yayınları'ndan çıkan bu eser artık basılmıyor, bu nedenle bulmak güç. Kavan'ın tüm eserlerini okumayı planlayanlar sahaflarda belki bulabilir. Şunu vurgulamak isterim ki metnin editörlüğü zayıf. Özellikle noktalama işaretleri ve yazım hataları göze batıyor.

Kitabın içeriğine gelince; Kavan gerçekliği düşle iç içe geçirdiği sürreal dünyasında kendi çocukluğunu yeniden yaratıyor. Bunu yaparken bir "zaman makinesi" haline getirdiği ev'i kullanıyor. Kavan'ın sürreal dünyasında kaybolmak; adeta bilinçaltının derinliklerinde yol bulmaya çalışmaya benziyor. Karşımıza çıkan görüntüler, kesik; kopuk imgeler ama hepsi bir anının, belki büyük bir anının kristal tozları, fragmanları. Kavan, esrik bir yazar, bu eserini de esrimeyle yazmış sanki, bir şiir döker gibi dökmüş.

Yukarıdaki alıntıyı sürdüreyim;
"Köprüden yüzen balıkları seyreden insanlar gibi, dış dünyayı içinde bize yer olmayan yabancı bir gezegen gibi gördük. Issız pencere camının ardından bizimle hiç ilgisi olmayan gündelik yaşamı seyrettik." (s.41)

Zaman makinesi haline getirdiği "ev"in penceresinden dışarıyı seyreden özne; anneyle de bir "tekrarlama" ilişkisi içerisinde. Tekrarlayıcılığı şöyle ki, yaşamın anlam-sızlaştığı bu yolculukta bizler bizden öncekilerle benliklerimizi ayırabilir miyiz? Bunun sorusu kafamızda canlanıyor. Yani "ben" nerede başlar, benden öncekiler ve benden sonrakiler ile aramızdaki çizgi nerededir? Yaşadıklarımız bize özgün gibi gelir ama Kavan'ın kafamızda uyandırdığı sorulardan bir diğeri de budur. Yaşadıklarımız bize özgün müdür? Yoksa biz annemizin, annesinin, onların annelerinin bir soluk yansıması mıyızdır o pencerede?

Kavan'ın eserinde aynalar, pencereler ve cam yüzeyler zamanlar arasında kapı açarlar. Aynaya bakan özne kendinden öncekilerin yansımasını görür. Lakin yolun devam edeceği, yani kendinden sonrakilerin o aynaya bakacağı belirsizdir. Bir yerde geçen intihar iması öznenin geleceğine yönelik şüpheye düşürür.

Kavan'ın zamanı da uzamın sınırları içerisine çekerek biçiminden kopardığı ve onu "yol" ile özdeşleştirdiğini söyleyebiliriz belki de. Lakin bu yol, tek yöndür.

"Ama bir kez yola çıktıktan sonra geri dönemezdik. Yapılacak tek şey, nereye gideceğimizi bilmesek de yola devam etmekti." (s.140)

Rüyaların arasına adeta deus ex machine gibi giren felsefi diyaloglarında Kavan sık sık yaşama dair fikirlerini ifade eder. Bunlardan biri olan yukarıdaki alıntıda da gördüğümüz üzere yaşamı zoraki devam ettiğimiz bir yol üzerinde tasavvur ederken okur zamanın uzama, uzamın da zamana dönüştüğü bu yer değişiminin ayırtına varır. Kavan gerçekliği bütünüyle tersyüz eder ama bunu yaparken anlaşılırlığın dışına çıkmaz.

Yolun tek yönlüğü, geri dönüşemezliği, yerine konamazlığı; yaprak metaforuyla da karşımıza çıkar:

"Güzel bir yaprak yakalarsam cebime koyuyordum. Fakat onları cebimden çıkarıp baktığımda renkleri solmuş ve kırışmış bir çöple karşılaşıyordum." (s.49)

Kavan aslında burada yolun tersine dönemezliğiyle, irreversibilitesiyle mücadele halindedir. Zaman her şeyi çürütürken o buna direnmek ve zamanı dondurmak ister. Yaşadığı o an içinde her şeyi olduğu gibi saklamak. Cebine koyduğu yaprak, bütün güzel şeyler, güzel anılar ve hatta "an"ın kendisidir. Lakin asla saklanamaz, korunamaz anılar. Her şey tek yönlü bu yolda tersine döndürülemez bir şekilde çürümektedir.

Kavan'ın annenin ölümü travması neticesinde şekillenen ölüm korkusu; kitabın tamamında karşımıza şekil değiştirerek, kılık değiştirerek, imgeler altında saklanarak çıkar.

Anılar... Anılarla yüklü bir kitap ama aslında kitabın vurucu bir paragrafında özetlendiği üzere, bu malzeme zenginliği; zihni allak bullak eder ama elimizde kalan netice hep o yaprağın çürümüş kalıntılarıdır.

Ben Anna Kavan'ı okumayı seviyorum. Onun satırlarında bambaşka dünyalara gidiyorum. Onu anlamaya çalışırken kendi yaşamıma dair çıkarımlar yapıyorum.

Siz de onu tanısaydınız, severdiniz.
Nedense aklıma şu dizeler geldi;

"Dayım gül takardı gömleğinin yakasına
Seni görse, eminim, mutluluktan ağlardı. (Ali Cengizkan) **


Sessiz komşular sahibi olun,
07.09.2019
M.B.

* http://www.siirleri.org/siir/4169/%DD...
** https://www.siir.gen.tr/siir/a/ali_ce...

Yorumu şuradan okuyabilirsiniz:
https://agacingovdesi.com/2021/03/28/...

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surrealist experimentation often means “elegant nonsense”, and this novel slips with ease into that category. Descriptions of dreams or attempts to recreate the unknowable darkness of Morpheus’s matter can never (for me) make for a captivating novel form and the screeds of well-written nonsensical prose in Kavan’s 1947 work pirouetted across my weary vision busting impressive shapes and sounds … having as little impact on my intolerant and flippant psyche as the bore at work who has the most amazing dreams EVER, and over the course of eight horror-packed hours will let you know about them at length. If you believe automatic writing has the power to unlock some of the mysteries of the subconscious (it doesn’t), then you might find this self-important gibberish mesmerising. Otherwise, step away from your desk, leave your colleague to prattle to himself, and never look back.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

More poetry than prose, this memoir is like tasting wine for the first time as a teenager; acrid, dangerous, and addictive.

I don’t know if it’s for everyone, but it was definitely for me. If you, too, know exactly what Kavan means, if the following passage resonates with you, you will love Sleep Has His House; I think this is probably the most important passage of the book, as the rest of the book has strings of this theme woven throughout:

“In time I found out what it was that the rain whispered. I learned from the rain how to work the magic and then I stopped feeling lonely. I learnt to know the house in the night way of mice and spiders. I learnt to read the geography of the house bones. Invisible and unheard I scampered down secret tunnels beneath the floorboards and walked a tightrope webbing among the beams. After that I never wished for other children to play with… I transmuted flat daylight into my night-time magic and privately made for myself a world out of spells and whispers.

Somewhere online I saw Kavan compared to Kafka, and I would very much agree with the comparison (to my favourite author- not a thing I do easily!) in terms of content- that dark, dreamy world of chaos and sin and imprisonment. Don’t think I’m weird, but I’d draw comparisons to the unexpected, unconventional logic of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies too (specifically, Howl's Moving Castle; the atmosphere is reminiscent somehow).

Stylistically Kavan/Kafka are quite different though. Kafka minces his words and throws them at you like tiny darts until his denouements, where he drops atom bombs on you. Kavan is dreamy, drifty, languid, lyrical. She takes her time building the suspense and pulling you along through the dark water, directing the blurry, nonsensical ocean current in which you are trapped.

She also has a way of using certain words in unexpected ways that make utter sense. “Antique rain” falls in her world, and you know at once what she means.

And Tale of Genji references? Eeeeeeee!

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Life is tension..." declares the author's Foreword, starting this book which above all justifies Kavan's reputation as a powerful and unique voice. A semi-autobiographical dream-voyage told in a startlingly cinematic style (it would be excellent material for a David Lynch film, already being close to a literary version of "Inland Empire"), with some extraordinary images and scenes, such as the Pythonesque "Liaison Officer", the ballet performance, and the tale of the "manikin" Professor. There is no whimsy here: written in 1948 it also shows a clear awareness of concentration camps, nuclear war, political repression, and the potential for a surveillance state, spurious and manipulated rebellion, propaganda and total war. The writing is taut and propulsive, running through a kaliedoscope of demented surrealist newsreel, predating some of French experimentalists of the 50s. In conclusion: one of the greatest novels you've never heard of.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update:
This definitely benefited from a second reading! I can't do it justice.

Original comments:
This probably wasn't the best time to attempt something so dense. I haven't been able to concentrate on anything, lately.

But I love Anna Kavan. Without her, I'd feel very alone in the world. I'll have to reread this when I can read it properly.

(I still think Ice is her masterpiece.)

[Paltia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very old friend that I have never let go.

[hafsah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ☆

read for uni — it's a modernist book, so naturally it's very abstract and difficult to grasp. i'm not even entirely sure i understood majority of it (which is the entire point, tbf). there's so many layers to this novel, i feel like i could spend an entire year analysing it. but for now, it was fine, i guess??

virginia woolf and anaïs nin fans are probably the only people i'd recommend this to lmao. it's such a specific type of novel, extremely ambiguous, it definitely won't appeal to the masses.

[Oğuz Kayra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buz'dan sonra yazarın okuduğum ikinci kitabı. Yer yer zor ve sanırım ilk kitabı olduğundan dolayı bazı bölümler dağınık geldi. Yine de Anna Kavan benim için çok ilgi çekici bir yazar ve her okuduğum kitabıyla birlikte bu seviye yükseliyor. Kartal Yuvası ve Bazuka kitaplarını da okumak için sabırsızlanıyorum.

[John Haggerty · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know how boring it is when people go on and on about their dreams? That was kind of the experience I had with this book. I admire the effort and, to some extent, the structure, but I wish she could have given me a little bit more.

There is no plot, of course, and the narrator (or B, if you wish) ends up in essentially the same place that she started, without a whole lot of motion in between.

This places the majority of the burden on the writing itself. Sadly, I don't find Kavan's style (at least here) to be compelling enough for that. Some of the imagery is quite good, but her sentences don't really have a sense of rhythm, so they often feel flat and dry.

This was published posthumously, I notice, which is often not a good sign. I wonder if I would like Ice better.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was tempted to give only 3 stars, as I can't say it was a novel that floored me. But seeing as I read it with a tired, flickering, world-filled mind, this lack of a strong connection may have been more my fault than hers... Beautifully written, as one would expect from Kavan, and emotionally rich. I just think it is one of those works where one needs to be in the right place to receive it.

[Tülay]

GÜNDÜZ. Gece. Gece karanlık zaman: Merak zamanı; gündüz sorulamayacak sorular zamanı.s.30
Sevgi, bu hayatta en önemli şeylerden biri. Ne kadar başarılı olursak olalım, ne kadar çalışırsak çalışalım sevgi eksikliği varsa bu cok zor kapanan bir yara. Hatta kapanmayan, kabuk bağlayan zaman zaman kanayan bir yara. Özellikle de bu sevgisizlik çocukluk hatıralarında yer alıyorsa, hiç ama hiç unutulmuyor. Anna Kavan, gerçek ismiyle Helen Woods, bu sevgisizligi hayatının her döneminde hissetmiş bir yazar. Kavan, soyadını "Let Me Alone" romanindaki kocasından nefret eden bir kadın karakterden seçmiş. Varlıklı bir babanın ve onu sevmeyen narsist bir annenin bir çocuğu Anna Kavan. Kitabın başında yer alan kısa biyografisini okuduğumda "14 yaşındayken, babasi ona hayat boyu yalnızlık bırakarak öldü " cümlesi ilgimi çekti. Çünkü Kavan, sevgi gördüğü babasından mahrum olmuş, onu sevmeyen annesiyle başbaşa kalmıştı. Ve hayatı tamamen kararmıştı. İşte Kavan, bu karanlık dönemi bize gece metaforuyla sunuyor. Gerçek hayatta sormadığı soruları soruyor ve bunu surreal rüyalar yoluyla yapıyor. Bir nevi anneyle hesaplaşma. Gece anneyle olan ilişkiyi iyileştirme metaforu. Kitabın otobiyografik ögeler taşıdığını her rüya bölümün başında yer alan minik anekdotlardan anlıyoruz. Rüyalar bilinç dışı olduğu için metni anlaması zor. Kartal Yuvasi'ndan daha zor metin. O kitapta Kafkavari bir uslub vardi bu kitapta da öyle. Ucu açık ve boşlukları doldurmayı okuyucuya bırakan bir metin. Bence hüzünlü de bir metin. Herkesin sevebileceğini sanmiyorum. Ben sevdim. Okumak isteyenlere tavsiyemdir.

[James Tingle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read three Anna Kavan books so far and I've already reviewed the other two on here, those being Ice, which I gave five stars and I am Lazarus, which I also gave a five star rating. They are all really good in similar and different ways and I'd be hard pressed to say which one I liked the best, but if I had to choose, maybe it would be this one. Of the three I've read so far, I am Lazarus is the most straight forward, being a dark short story collection set in Blitz era London, Ice is a fair bit odder and pretty surreal and then Sleep Has His House is the most unusual and is the least conventional of the three by some way. The book is hard to define, but is roughly a mix of dark and melancholic childhood remembrances and dream-like scenarios, which each break away before completion and meld into other things, like dreams do, but always with a hint of some unfathomable, disturbing presence permeating it all somehow. At one point, she describes being in a house as a child and its gloomy and full of shadows and outside the rain is steadily falling, trees are dripping and roads are wet and slick, while inside she pads about carefully, almost listening out for something, but we don't know what that something is and she revels in these unknown, quiet childhood places, that are somewhere between her vivid imagination and stony reality...
A very hard book to adequately articulate what its about, a bit like Hyperdream by Helene Cixous, as you have to read it and see if you connect with it or not. Childhood dreamers who got lost in their own heads whilst sat staring out into the distance, like a lot of us did, will take to this book I expect and will likely find it hauntingly atmospheric and even a little bewitching perhaps...

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its so long ago that i read this that its surprising that I can remember so vividly the shiny black cover and the way it curled when it got damp in the bath. It seemed enigmatic, soporific. I would fall asleep reading it. Perhaps I took it too seriously, struggling to make sense of something that seemed almost profound, às her first book was.

[Esra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Itiraf ediyorum ki Uyku Tanrısının Evi,daha önce okuduğum hiçbir şeye benzemeyen tuhaf bir kitaptı; deneysel, sürreal  otobiyografik  ama olay örgüsü olmayan bir roman diyebilirim sanırım.
Uykuda kötü bir rüya görürken bazen insan kendine seslenir, "sadece rüya bu bak aç gözlerini her şey bitecek der ve görüntüler o anda erir gider,rahatlarsın." Bana olur bazen, gidişatını beğenmediğim rüyadan uyandırırım kendimi.
Bu romanda  ise gündüzün aydınlığından kaçıp, geceye, rüyaya, hayallerine sığınan bir küçük kız var.
Kendisine tehdit  ve düşmanlarla dolu gördüğü gündüzden kaçıp; aradığı gerçeğin güvendiği gecenin kollarında olduğuna inanan küçük bir kız.  Gecenin karanlığında rüyalarda sukünete sığınırken, gündüzün çirkin  aydınlığının  huzursuz eden sayıklamaları siniyor satırlara.
"Gündüz yaşamının gerçeğe dönüşeceğinden korktuğumdan, gerçekliği başka bir yerde kurmak zorunda kaldım."

Katı, sevgi göstermeyen ve despot bir annenin gölgesinde  büyümüş,  ilerleyen yıllarda yaptığı evliliklerden olan çocuklarını kaybetmiş ve  uyuşturucuya sığınmış yazar Anna Kavan. Romanın içindeki kız çocuğunun yalnızlığını da, her bölümün başına, o dönemi açıklayan bir  paragrafla iliştirmiş.Bu paragraflar sayesinde;  zengin ve büyüleyici tasvirlerle dolu ama nispeten konsantre olması zor olan, sizi de içine sürükleyen  rüya bölümlerini kavramak kolaylaşıyor.

Çok farklı bir deneyim oldu benim için.

[Jeffrey Bumiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this as an e book, but only because the physical copy didn't show up in time. Please allow me a strange comparison: This book reminded me of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, one of my favorite books when I was a child. Sleep Has His House is like a Child's Garden of Verses but instead of the innocence and wonder that Stevenson's succinct and lovely poems contain, this book contains a lifetime of gloom and strangeness. I mean this as a great compliment. However, I enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it. There's some great writing, and then there's some pretty lousy writing. The two poles are so drastic that it felt, at times, like it was written by two different people. The lack of a plot didn't bother me, the lack of a protagonist didn't bother me, the inconsistency in the quality of the writing did. I admire Kavan's experimentation and willingness to take chances and I think that's enough for me to read her again some time further down the road.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was reading some other reviews of this book, and a few people were saying that they find recountings of dreams to be boring. I’ve heard this in other contexts as well, and I simply don’t agree. I love hearing about people’s dreams, and if you feel the same way, then this book might interest you. It’s kind of like a dark dream memoir of the author’s lonely childhood. It’s dense and fantastical. Unfortunately there were a few racist profanities in this book that were completely unnecessary, so fare warning there

[lemma Kiernan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly immersive <3

"Are you afraid of the tigers? Do you hear them padding all round you on their fierce fine velvet feet?"

"The boots and the forest of dark legs close in, amalgamate into black blob-blot. The blob bulges, spreads steadfastly up to and over everything; blots out the room with a bulging and bursting of black bubble, inky cuttlefish ejaculation; and the brittle death trills still bleating. Blotchout."

[Deniz Ata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birbirini besleyen iki akış icinde geçen kurgu.Gündüzü temsil eden otobiyografik konular yalnızlık ,anne,baba ilişkileri ve diger ilişkiler ; geceyi temsil eden rüyalar imgeler , metaforlar daha özgür daha dışavuran bir anlatım . Zaman zaman da iki akış iç içe geçiyor. Okuduğun ilk kitap doğru seçim mi bilmiyorum ama bende merak uyandırmayı başardı .

[prashant · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Dannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

hard to explain why this book was good because its writing style is very loose prose
if you enjoy lispector or woolf you would enjoy this memoir told in dreams

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

“there was no place for me in the day world. my home was in darkness and my companions were shadows beckoning from a glass.”

[Luke Carbone]

Some gorgeous writing which inspires me to write. One of the most visual books I’ve read. Unfortunately it can be a tough read if you’re not in the mental space to consume it.
Reading in the morning on the way to work - perfectly enjoyable
Reading in the evening on the way home - almost impossible to follow along.
Loved the little summaries at the end of the chapter, would like to read more Kavan.