All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream

[Cinefactus]

Hi there!
Searching the internet I found this forum, and I hope you can help me. Very interesting forum by the way, I think I'll be coming back here regularly to learn.
Please excuse my sometimes bad English, my English, like my Latin (of which my knowlegde has never been that great), has become a bit rusty.

I need a translation for a sentence from the poem 'A dream within a dream' by Edgar Allan Poe, it has to be inscribed in a bracelet. It's a gift for a friend who has gone through some rough times lately, the poem means a lot to her. She's also schooled in Latin, so I don't want to make any mistakes in the inscription.

The sentence that I need translated is 'All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream'. The translation I can come up with (with a little help) is:
'Quicumque nos animadverto vel videor est tamen somnium intus somnium'

Is this a correct sentence? I'm also not sure about the use of the word quicumque, is omnia better? And what about animadverto?

Thanks very much in advance!

[Chamaeleo]

If she's schooled in Latin, she may appreciate a Classical quotation more than a translation of an English sentence. There's plenty of good stuff to choose from in Cicero, Seneca, Ovid and the rest. The most appropriate language in which to quote Poe is English.

The translation that you have so far is totally wrong. Do not use anything like it!

[Iohannes Aurum]

After all, Poe did not study much Latin and none of his works included significant amounts of Latin. This is why Poe is best quoted in English, while Cicero et al. have similar quotes in Latin.

[Matthaeus]

Yes, although some of his short stories are prefaced with Latin, some with Greek, quotations. Looking through my book, I found that The Purloined Letter, for instance, opens with Nil sapientiæ odiosius acumine nimio from Seneca, whereas Metzengerstein has Luther's Pestis eram vivus -- moriens tua mors ero, and the famous Pit and the Pendulum is prefaced with an anonymous quatrain.

[Iohannes Aurum]

In other words, Poe merely quoted Latin and did not write his own Latin significantly. After all, Poe is studied in English class and not in Latin class.

[scrabulista]

Alice -- here's my amateur attempt:

Quodcumque videmus vel videmur est somnium intra somnium.

The "all" is a neuter here.

animadverto = notice, observe, judge, estimate (1st person singular though)...not a bad choice but I think the constrast of videmus and videmur is poetic.

intus is an adverb; you want the preposition intra.

I couldn't quite figure out how to handle "but." I suppose tamen works; you could leave it out as well.

You could also leave it in English or choose something from a Roman author.

[Chamaeleo]

I suppose tamen works;

‘Tamen’ means ‘however’. If you think about ‘It is but a dream’, you'll realise that ‘but’ in that sentence means ‘only’.

[Imber Ranae]

I'd use tantum for "but".