Monday, January 08, 2007

oneirical vision


The nets are here transformed into a oneirical vision, a perceptive exploration to unveil the complexity concealed behind the reality.


From the English Translation of a brochure accompanying Istos, an exhibition of works by the Italian photographer Massimillano Lattanzi, now showing at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Guatemala City

Oneirical is a curious translation of the french onirique, which according to a definition that I pulled off Google (define: onirique) means "relatif aux rêves, qui rappelle un rêve ou qui est inspiré par le rêve" -- or as sloppily translated by Bablefish: "Relating to the dreams, which points out a dream or which is inspired by the dream".

This is a new one for me -- at first I thought they were going for "unique" and then wondered (somewhat sheepishly) if they weren't talking about "onanism". Wikitionary spits up an instance of the word as "oneiric," which I suppose will have to do.

The closest word I can think of in English common usage would be "reverie", but that doesn't quite do it, does it? It doesn't have that delicious sense of something unique and vision-like -- it describes instead a driftless dreamer, not one who listens to dreams.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oneirical comes from the GREEK word oneirikos (oνειρικός <-όνειρο=dream),which means related to a dream or dream-like,from where as well comes the french onirique!!!Didn't it occur to you that in french dream is "reve"?There's no connection.

Related Posts with Thumbnails