" 'white' sleep"

[Alice Faber]

Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> In his 1957 novel _A Death in the Family_, James Agee uses the term "a ' white ' sleep" [Agee's single quotes] to describe the very troubled sleep of an anxious character. The story is set in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1916.
>
> Is anybody familiar with this phrase?  The quotation marks seem to imply that Agee regarded it as idiomatic, but I can find no other reference to it.
>

I'm wondering if it isn't a translation from some European language. The
first thing that comes to mind for me is "white nights", with similar
meaning, in a Hebrew novel by Aharon Megged (I believe it might be _The
Lover_).

--
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Alice Faber                                    faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                           tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
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