"6. After searching for entire nights without knowing it, beyond sleep, beyond exhaustion, having traveled forests of lucid insomnia, you will reach a great deserted clearing where, holding your breath, your ear against the ground, you can hear the very heartbeat of silence. Then, as you rise, you will realize that you are surrounded by fairies."
In 1940 Belgian Surrealist Fernand Dumont wrote "Treatise on Fairies" for his daughter -- a small pamphlet of 20 numbered sections on various aspects of Fairies--some quite quirky and others lovely like the section above. You can see more Dorthy Lathrop's illustrations here.
**Art: Dorothy Lathrop, illus. for Down-Adown-Derry by de la Mare, 1922
Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for children and adults, published in English, French, Dutch, and Italian. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian "Commedia dell'Arte" tradition....
