The Importance of Sleep

“Nature’s gentle nurse” -Shakespeare

Sleep is vital to our mental and physical wellbeing. Shakespeare referred to it as “Nature’s gentle nurse.”

Sleep is also an enduring artistic motive. Consider, for example, the painting below, titled “Flaming June” (by Frederic Leighton, 1895). We see the allegorical figure of sleep, resting in beautiful repose. It’s a stunning depiction of sleep as an aesthetic ideal.

But sleep also invariably reminds us of death. Edgar Allen Poe joked that he dreaded sleeping because it was “a little slice of death.”

Indeed, any painting of a sleeping figure is bound to blur the boundaries between the living and the dead.

Consider, for example, the painting below, by John Singer Sargent. We see two sleeping female figures. They look peaceful, but the image also reminds us of a funerary boat. This lends a certain dreamy, wistful quality to the painting. It’s almost as if Sargent is having a premonition of the long sleep that awaits us all.

Another striking depiction of sleep comes from Van Gogh, titled “Siesta/Rest from work. (1890) But instead of “corpses”, we see two laborers taking a nap in the fields (below). This painting can be interpreted in two different ways: as a romantic depiction of rural life, or as an indictment of the feudal life, in which the peasants are rendered symbolically dead. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.

It helps to know that Van Gogh was inspired by a painting made by Jean-Francois Millet in 1866. For comparison, see below.

Here the figures look more destitute, and the shoes cast off by the man, and thrown aside next to the sickle, make them more reminiscent to corpses than in Van Gogh’s image, which is warm and sensual in comparison.

These are but a few examples of the artistic depiction of sleep. And we haven’t even touched upon the nature of dreams.

Hopefully these paintings will encourage you to get a good night’s sleep this weekend. And if you’re someone who struggles to sleep (as I do), then here’s a Borges poem, titled “Sleep”, which might just help you nod off tonight.

Here’s to a good night’s sleep!

Julian

Sleep, by Jorge Luis Borges

If sleep is a truce, as it is sometimes said,

A pure time for the mind to rest and heal,

Why, when they suddenly wake you, do you feel

That they have stolen everything you had?

Why is it so sad to be awake at dawn?

It strips us of a gift so strange, so deep,

It can be remembered only in half-sleep,

Moments of drowsiness that gild and adorn

The waking mind with dreams, which may well be

But broken images of the night's treasure,

A timeless world that has no name or measure

And breaks up in the mirrors of the day.

Who will you be tonight, in the dark thrall

Of sleep, when you have slipped across its wall?

Translated by R.G. Barnes