Dorveille

April 15, 2024

Greetings from another time,

I’m in the middle of reading ‘Harlem Shuffle’, and among the excellent writing there was a gift, a single word, that just delighted me so much I had to tell you. 

Dorveille.

I’ll speculate that this is a new word for you, it was for me. I’ll confess that most of what I’ve forgotten in Mrs. Calvo’s high school French class was lost minutes after the information was offered.  But I would have recognized dorveille.

Last night I woke to a notion of something, not movement or light, but the presence of a thought.  Just the lightest awareness, as if a moth had eased into the room.  I stared into the dark for a long while, torn by the need for sleep and the feeling that wanted my attention.

I’m grateful to be pulled awake by this kind of thing.  For decades I was jarred during the night by worries or demands of the next day. This awakening is different.  It is as if a friend had dropped by to share something interesting.  Some nights I can ignore it, other times I know I shouldn’t.

Built into this resistance to getting up in the middle of the night is self-preservation of sorts.  We all know that proper sleep is imperative to good health, and there is plenty of research that connects a happier life to a good night’s sleep.  I feel that pressure in the middle of the night, staring at the motes floating in the dark, glancing at the clock and making deals, feeling like I’m failing at an important task.

Floating around in existence, just outside my French periphery, is the word dorveille and with it the little grace that we sometimes need in the middle of the night.

Generations ago, perhaps as recent as the 1800’s, it was common for people to sleep in segments.  In a time when the day basically ended when it got dark, people were in bed by seven or eight, and it was common that they would be awake perhaps by two.  This was dorveille.  Not the grating of insomnia, but the gentle, natural waking as part of the sleep cycle everyone experienced.

In this time between ‘first sleep’ and ‘second sleep’, people may tend to small things allowable in the dark.  Not work, not anything too ambitious, unless they had candles or a lantern.  Instead, the time was often used for prayer, for consideration of dreams, which were fresh in the vestiges of sleep.  Some would write, if they could, there would be intimate conversations in the dark, the examination of what might be pushed aside in the demands of the light of day.

When the body suggested the time was right, people went back to sleep and stayed there until it was light again.  It was not a sleep disorder, it was as natural as hunger or a siesta.

Ironically, what brought me awake last night was this very word, dorveille.  As a writer I have learned to open the gifts I’m given when they occur, to absorb them and build little scaffoldings around them so I can make use of them.  I have learned that to trust my memory to keep the impression, and whatever creativity was inspired, is a risky thing.  And so, I find myself making sentences in the dark, little three dimensional puzzles composed of sounds and feelings and tastes.  And when I feel the pull too strongly, and remember my lesson, I get up and go write them all down.

I eased down the stairs, my knees muttering, and padded quietly to my den.  I came to my desk and wrote out a few things I knew I would recognize, and then turned off the light and curled up in the big ass leather chair in my den.  I covered up with the perfect afghan, and slid down onto the pillow there, and fell into deep, dreamless sleep.

I am not ready to shift my life to sleeping in phases.  But relieved of the pressure of ordinary, routine sleep patterns, I can accept when dorveille calls to me, especially in service of my creativity.  I can take the moment to tend to the words that call me, or whatever other matters, and then return to the rest that waits.

You might wonder why I felt called to share any of this.  I am not prescribing that we change our lifestyles to that of the pre-industrial revolution.  I am simply pointing out that sometimes the pressure of living a certain way comes into perspective when we see it has not always been so.  And so maybe, some restless night, when you feel frustrated by the elusive sleep, you can simply accept what is and enjoy a sample of dorveille.

Hope this finds you awakish,

David

Copyright © 2024 David Smith