「こんな夢を見た。」- why not この?


This is the first line of 夏目漱石's story 第一夜, The first night. The story then
goes on to describe the narrator's dream.

It is translated as "I had dream" but I am struggling to align the normal
meaning of こんな (This kind of...) to the story.




I feel you are letting your own translated English words get in the way ---
"this kind of". Even though, 「こんな[夢]{ゆめ}」 CAN mean "this kind of dream" if it
were used in another context, that is not what it means in this one.

For 「こんな夢」 to mean "this kind of dream", one generally needs to have already
explained to the readers what kind of dream it was in the context.

In this story, 「こんな夢を見た」 is the first sentence. My own translation would be
something like:

"I had a dream that went like this."

You cannot use 「この夢」, either, unless you have already explained what the dream
was like. If you said 「この夢を見た。」 out of nowhere, Japanese-speakers would reply
「どの夢？」、「何の夢？」、「どの夢のこと？」, 「えっ、何のこと？」 etc.




I feel you are letting your own translated English words get in the way ---
"this kind of". Even though, 「こんな[夢]{ゆめ}」 CAN mean "this kind of dream" if it
were used in another context, that is not what it means in this one.

For 「こんな夢」 to mean "this kind of dream", one generally needs to have already
explained to the readers what kind of dream it was in the context.

In this story, 「こんな夢を見た」 is the first sentence. My own translation would be
something like:

"I had a dream that went like this."

You cannot use 「この夢」, either, unless you have already explained what the dream
was like. If you said 「この夢を見た。」 out of nowhere, Japanese-speakers would reply
「どの夢？」、「何の夢？」、「どの夢のこと？」, 「えっ、何のこと？」 etc.

