“City of dreams” · “city of nightmares”

The expression “City of dreams” / “city of nightmares” recasts Vienna as a city whose promise of dreams gives way to fear. It joins Viktor’s private unease to the public danger of political violence, making the change in the city’s character a measure of how sharply the story’s world has darkened.

From Dream to Nightmare

In Viktor’s dream, Vienna is first named as the city of dreams, but the phrase is immediately unsettled: these are not comforting dreams. The city belongs instead to nightmare creatures, and the dream places Viktor naked before Liesel and Kata in a public trial. Neither the women nor the witnesses notice his nakedness; the crowd laughs at the absurdity of his situation. The phrase therefore carries both the city’s imaginative allure and the exposure, judgment, and disorientation that haunt Viktor.

A City Changed by Political Violence

The expression returns in a changed form when Vienna itself has changed. The city of dreams has become a city of nightmares, fear, and anticipation. Political violence is described as a tide lapping around the city’s baroque buildings, while café and ballroom music continues as if an older social rhythm might persist. Against that apparent continuity, the dance becomes a dance of death. The paired wording makes the contrast between familiar cultural life and mounting danger impossible to ignore.

Private Loss and Public Foreboding

The city’s transformation also frames a personal absence: when Viktor telephones the Goldene Kugel, she has gone. The passage does not explain her departure, but its placement amid the city’s fear and anticipation lets the expression gather a private note of loss without reducing the political threat to personal misfortune. Vienna’s dreams have not simply vanished; they have become inseparable from uncertainty about what, and whom, can still be found.