Sleep Talk
“Sleep Talk” is a brief, uncanny prose piece by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, written in May 1926, near the end of his life. In a series of numbered fragments, the speaker turns bodily sensations into startling, grotesque images: a stomach becomes a whale, a fevered mouth sprouts ferns, diarrhea recalls a cycad, stomach rumbling suggests shark eggs, and melancholy feels like lice clinging to the folds of the brain. The humor is dry, strange, and uneasy, balancing absurdity with physical distress. Though miniature in form, the piece shows Akutagawa’s distinctive ability to transform private discomfort into vivid, surreal metaphor, making the body seem at once comic, alien, and faintly menacing.
I
My stomach is a whale. The very whale Columbus is said to have sighted. At times it seems ready even to spout. I have grown utterly tired of hearing it bellow.
II
Whenever I run a fever, my tongue and mouth fill up with ferns.
III
Am I the only one who, whenever he has diarrhea, is reminded of a great cycad?
IV
When I listen to my stomach rumbling, I feel as though I myself were somehow laying shark eggs.
V
Whenever I begin to sink into melancholy, I start to feel as though lice were clinging to every fold of my brain.
(May 1926)