To Dream Is to Create; to Desire Is to Summon

To Dream Is to Create; to Desire Is to Summon is a maxim voiced by Josiana to Gwynplaine, expressing her conviction that desire can bring into being what had seemed impossible. In the scene, it turns her confession of passion into a claim that imagining and wanting have summoned him to her.

Meaning and Form

Josiana tells Gwynplaine, “to dream is to create; to desire is to summon.” The balanced clauses make dreaming an act of creation and desire an act of calling forth. She reinforces the thought by saying that building up a chimera provokes reality, and that the mystery she invokes produces a result: Gwynplaine is there before her. The statement is her interpretation of their encounter, not an independently established supernatural rule.

Dramatic Context

The maxim comes during Josiana’s impassioned appeal to Gwynplaine. She describes the distance that had separated them as immeasurable, then treats his arrival as the fulfillment of her desire. Her language moves from an image of cosmic separation to a direct invitation, presenting the meeting as the answer to an inward summons.

Narrative Function

The expression gives Josiana’s desire a forceful, almost magical vocabulary: she casts longing not as passive feeling but as an agency that makes an imagined meeting real. That confidence also heightens the scene’s tension. The maxim establishes what she believes about the encounter, while Gwynplaine’s trembling response leaves his reception of her appeal distinct from her certainty.