Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening "Elephant and Obelisk" by Gian Lorenzo Bernini facing the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. The smaller pomegranate floating between two droplets of water may symbolize Venus, especially because of the heart-shaped shadow it casts. It may also be used as a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection. This female symbolism may contrast with the phallic symbolism of the threatening creatures. It has also been suggested that the painting is "a surrealist interpretation of the Theory of Evolution." In 1962, Dalí said this painting was intended "to express for the first time in images Freud's discovery of the
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening typical dream with a lengthy narrative, the consequence of the instantaneousness of a chance event which causes the sleeper to wake up. Thus, as a bar might fall on the neck of a sleeping person, causing them to wake up and for a long dream to end with the guillotine blade falling on them, the noise of the bee here provokes the sensation of the sting which will awaken Gala." The guillotine anecdote refers to a dream reported by Alfred Maury in "Le sommeil et les rêves" ("Sleep and Dreams") and related by Freud in "The Interpretation of Dreams". Dream