Delusion and Dream : an Interpretation in the Light of Psychoanalysis of Gradiva

“Yes, who held his arm about her – ”

“Ah, so – ”

The two little words apparently lay upon Gradiva’s tongue as a favourite interjection, and she stopped after it for a moment before she added, “Did you think that on that account I might have worn it? and would that have made you a little – how did you say it before? – unhappy?”

It was apparent that he felt extraordinarily relieved and it was audible in his answer, “I am very happy about it – for the idea that the brooch belonged to you made me – dizzy.”

“You seem to have a tendency for that. Did you perhaps forget to eat breakfast this morning? That easily aggravates such attacks; I do not suffer from them, but I make provision, as it suits me best to be here at noon. If I can help you out of your unfortunate condition a little by sharing my lunch with you – ”

She drew out of her pocket a piece of white bread wrapped in tissue paper, broke it, put half into his hand, and began to devour the other with apparent appetite. Thereby her exceptionally dainty and perfect teeth not only gleamed between her lips with pearly glitter, but in biting the crust caused also a crunching sound so that they gave the impression of being not unreal phantoms, but of actual, substantial reality. Besides, with her conjecture about the postponed breakfast, she had, to be sure, hit upon the right thing; mechanically he, too, ate, and felt from it a decidedly favourable effect on the clearing of his thoughts. So, for a little while, the couple did not speak further, but devoted themselves silently to the same practical occupation until Gradiva said, “It seems to me as if we had already eaten our bread thus together once two thousand years ago. Can’t you remember it?”

He could not, but it seemed strange to him now that she spoke of so infinitely remote a past, for the strengthening of his mind by the nourishment had brought with it a change in his brain. The idea that she had been going around here in Pompeii such a long time ago would no longer harmonize with sound reason; everything about her seemed of the present, as if it could be scarcely more than twenty years old. The form and colour of her face, the especially charming, brown, wavy hair, and the flawless teeth; also, the idea that the bright dress, marred by no shadow of a spot, had lain countless years in the pumice ashes contained something in the highest degree inconsistent. Norbert was seized by a feeling of doubt whether he were really sitting here awake or were not more probably dreaming in his study, where, in contemplation of the likeness of Gradiva, he had been overcome by sleep, and had dreamed that he had gone to Pompeii, had met her as a person still living, and was dreaming further that he was still sitting so at her side in the Casa di Meleagro. For that she was really still alive or had been living again could only have happened in a dream – the laws of nature raised an objection to it —

To be sure, it was strange that she had just said that she had once shared her bread with him in that way two thousand years ago. Of that he knew nothing, and even in the dream could find nothing about it.

Her left hand lay with the slender fingers calmly on her knees. They bore the key to the solution of an inscrutable riddle —

Even in the dining-room of the Casa di Meleagro the boldness of the common house-fly was not deterred; on the yellow pillar opposite him he saw one running up and down in a worthless way in greedy quest; now it whizzed right past his nose.

He, however, had to make some answer to her question, if he did not remember the bread that he had formerly consumed with her, and he said suddenly, “Were the flies then as devilish as now, so that they tormented you to death?”

She glanced at him with utterly incomprehending astonishment and repeated, “The flies? Have you flies on your mind now?”

Then suddenly the black monster sat upon her hand, which did not reveal by the slightest quiver that she noticed it. Thereupon, however, there united in the young archæologist two powerful impulses to execute the same deed. His hand went up suddenly and clapped with no gentle stroke on the fly and the hand of his neighbour.

With this blow there came to him, for the first time, sense, consternation and also a joyous fear. He had delivered the stroke not through empty air, but on an undoubtedly real, living and warm, human hand which, for a moment apparently absolutely startled, remained motionless under his. Yet then she drew it away with a jerk, and the mouth above it said, “You are surely apparently crazy, Norbert Hanold.”

The name, which he had disclosed to no one in Pompeii, passed so easily, assuredly and clearly from her lips that its owner jumped up from the steps, even more terrified. At the same time there sounded in the colonnade footsteps of people who had come near unobserved; before his confused eyes appeared the faces of the congenial pair of lovers from the Casa del Fauno, and the young lady cried, with a tone of greatest surprise, “Zoë! You here, too? and also on your honeymoon? You have not written me a word about it, you know.”

Norbert was again outside before Meleager’s house in the Strada di Mercurio. How he had come there was not clear to him, it must have happened instinctively, and, caused by a lightning-like illumination in him, was the only thing that he could do not to present a thoroughly ridiculous figure to the young couple, even more to the girl greeted so pleasantly by them, who had just addressed him by his Christian and family names, and most of all to himself. For even if he grasped nothing, one fact was indisputable. Gradiva, with a warm, human hand, not unsubstantial, but possessing corporeal reality, had expressed an indubitable truth; his mind had, in the last two days, been in a condition of absolute madness; and not at all in a silly dream, but rather with the use of eyes and ears such as is given by nature to man for reasonable service. Like everything else, how such a thing had happened escaped his understanding, and only darkly did he feel that there must have also been in the game a sixth sense which, obtaining the upper hand in some way, had transformed something perhaps precious to the opposite. In order to get at least a little more light on the matter by an attempt at meditation, a remote place in solitary silence was absolutely required; at first, however, he was impelled to withdraw as quickly as possible from the sphere of eyes, ears and other senses, which use their natural functions as suits their own purpose.

As for the owner of that warm hand, she had, at any rate, from her first expression, been surprised by the unforeseen and unexpected visit at noon in the Casa di Meleagro in a not entirely pleasant manner. Yet, of this, in the next instant, there was no trace to be seen in her bright countenance; she stood up quickly, stepped toward the young lady and said, extending her hand, “It certainly is pleasant, Gisa; chance sometimes has a clever idea too. So this is your husband of two weeks? I am glad to see him, and, from the appearance of both of you, I apparently need not change my congratulations for condolence. Couples to whom that would be applied are at this time usually sitting at lunch in Pompeii; you are probably staying near the ‘ingresso’; I shall look you up there this afternoon. No, I have not written you anything; you won’t be offended at me for that, for you see my hand, unlike yours, is not adorned by a ring. The atmosphere here has an extremely powerful effect on the imagination, which I can see in you; it is better, of course, than if it made one too matter-of-fact. The young man who just went out is labouring also under a remarkable delusion; it seems to me that he believes a fly is buzzing in his head; well, everyone has, of course, some kind of bee in his bonnet. As is my duty, I have some knowledge of entomology and can, therefore, be of a little service in such cases. My father and I live in the ‘Sole’; he, too, had a sudden and pleasing idea of bringing me here with him if I would be responsible for my own entertainment, and make no demands upon him. I said to myself that I should certainly dig up something interesting alone here. Of course I had not reckoned at all on the find which I made – I mean the good fortune of meeting you, Gisa; but I am talking away the time, as is usually the case with an old friend – My father comes in out of the sun at two o’clock to eat at the ‘Sole’; so I have to keep company there with his appetite and, therefore, I am sorry to say, must for the moment forego your society. You will, of course, be able to view the Casa di Meleagro without me; that I think likely, though I can’t understand it, of course. Favorisca, signor! Arrivederci, Gisetta! That much Italian I have already learned, and one really does not need more. Whatever else is necessary one can invent – please, no, senza complimenti!”

This last entreaty of the speaker concerned a polite movement by which the young husband had seemed to wish to escort her. She had expressed herself most vividly, naturally and in a manner quite fitting to the circumstances of the unexpected meeting of a close friend, yet with extraordinary celerity, which testified to the urgency of the declaration that she could not at present remain longer. So not more than a few minutes had passed since the hasty exit of Norbert Hanold, when she also stepped from the house of Meleager into the Strada di Mercurio. This lay, because of the hour, enlivened only here and there by a cringing lizard, and for a few moments the girl, hesitating, apparently gave herself over to a brief meditation. Then she quickly struck out in the shortest way to the gate of Hercules, at the intersection of the Vicolo di Mercurio and the Strada di Sallustio, crossed the stepping-stones with the gracefully buoyant Gradiva-walk, and thus arrived very quickly at the two ruins of the side wall near the Porta Ercolanese. Behind this there stretched at some length the Street of Tombs, yet not dazzlingly white, nor overhung with glittering sunbeams, as twenty-four hours ago, when the young archæologist had thus gazed down over it with searching eyes. To-day the sun seemed to be overcome by a feeling that she had done a little too much good in the morning; she held a grey veil drawn before her, the condensation of which was visibly being increased, and, as a result, the cypresses, which grew here and there in the Strada di Sepolcri, rose unusually sharp and black against the heavens. It was a picture different from that of yesterday; the brilliance which mysteriously glittered over everything was lacking; the street also assumed a certain gloomy distinctness, and had at present a dead aspect which honoured its name. This impression was not diminished by an isolated movement at its end, but was rather heightened by it; there, in the vicinity of the Villa of Diomede, a phantom seemed to be looking for its grave, and disappeared under one of the monuments.

It was not the shortest way from the house of Meleager to the “Albergo del Sole,” rather the exactly opposite direction, but Zoë-Gradiva must have also decided that time was not yet importuning so violently to lunch, for after a quite brief stop at the Hercules Gate, she walked farther along the lava-blocks of the Street of Tombs, every time raising the sole of her lingering foot almost perpendicularly.

The Villa of Diomede – named thus, for people of the present, after a monument which a certain freed-man, Marcus Arrius Diomedes, formerly promoted to the directorship of this city-section, had erected near by for his lady, Arria, as well as for himself and his relatives – was a very extensive building and concealed within itself a part of the history of the destruction of Pompeii not invented by imagination. A confusion of extensive ruins formed the upper part; below lay an unusually large sunken garden surrounded by a well-preserved portico of pillars with scanty remnants of a fountain and a small temple in the middle; and farther along two stairways led down to a circular cellar-vault, lighted only dimly by gloomy twilight. The ashes of Vesuvius had penetrated into this also, and the skeletons of eighteen women and children had been found here; seeking protection they had fled, with some hastily gathered provisions, into the half-subterranean space, and the deceptive refuge had become the tomb of all. In another place the supposed, nameless master of the house lay, also stretched out choked on the ground; he had wished to escape through the locked garden-door, for he held the key to it in his fingers. Beside him cowered another skeleton, probably that of a servant, who was carrying a considerable number of gold and silver coins. The bodies of the unfortunates had been preserved by the hardened ashes; in the museum at Naples there is under glass, the exact impression of the neck, shoulders and beautiful bosom of a young girl clad in a fine, gauzy garment.

The Villa of Diomede had, at one time, at least, been the inevitable goal of every dutiful Pompeii visitor, but now, at noon, in its rather roomy solitude, certainly no curiosity lingered in it, and therefore it had seemed to Norbert Hanold the place of refuge best suited to his newest mental needs. These longed most insistently for grave-like loneliness, breathless silence, and quiescent peace; against the latter, however, an impelling restlessness in his system raised counter-claims, and he had been obliged to force an agreement between the two demands, such that the mind tried to claim its own and yet gave the feet liberty to follow their impulse. So he had been wandering around through the portico since his entrance; he succeeded thus in preserving his bodily equilibrium, and he busied himself with changing his mental state into the same normal condition; that, however, seemed more difficult in execution than in intention; of course it seemed to his judgment unquestionable that he had been utterly foolish and irrational to believe that he had sat with a young Pompeiian girl, who had become more or less corporeally alive again, and this clear view of his madness formed incontestably an essential advance on the return to sound reason; but it was not yet restored entirely to normal condition, for, even if it had occurred to him that Gradiva was only a dead bas-relief, it was also equally beyond doubt that she was still alive. For that irrefutable proof was adduced; not he alone, but others also, saw her, knew that her name was Zoë and spoke with her, as with a being as much alive, in substance, as they. On the other hand, however, she knew his name too, and again, that could originate only from a supernatural power; this dual nature remained enigmatic even for the rays of understanding that were entering his mind. Yet to this incompatible duality there was joined a similar one in him, for he cherished the earnest desire to have been destroyed here in the Villa of Diomede two thousand years ago, in order that he might not run the risk of meeting Zoë-Gradiva again anywhere; at the same time, however, an extraordinary joyous feeling was stirring within him, because he was still alive and was therefore able to meet her again somewhere. To use a commonplace yet fitting simile, this was turning in his head like a mill-wheel, and through the long portico he ran around likewise without stopping, which did not aid him in the explanation of the contradictions. On the contrary, he was moved by an indefinite feeling that everything was growing darker and darker about and within him.

Then he suddenly recoiled, as he turned one of the four corners of the colonnade. A half-dozen paces away from him there sat, rather high up on a fragmentary wall-ruin, one of the young girls who had found death here in the ashes.

No, that was nonsense, which his reason rejected. His eyes, too, and a nameless something else recognized that fact. It was Gradiva; she was sitting on a stone ruin as she had formerly sat on the step, only, as the former was considerably higher, her slender feet, which hung down free in the sand-colour shoes, were visible up to her dainty ankles.

With an instinctive movement, Norbert was at first about to run out between the pillars through the garden; what, for a half-hour, he had feared most of anything in the world had suddenly appeared, viewed him with bright eyes and with lips which, he felt, were about to burst into mocking laughter; yet they didn’t, but the familiar voice rang out calmly from them, “You’ll get wet outside.”

Now, for the first time, he saw that it was raining; for that reason it had become so dark. That unquestionably was an advantage to all the plants about and in Pompeii, but that a human being in the place would be benefited by it was ridiculous, and for the moment Norbert Hanold feared, far more than danger of death, appearing ridiculous. Therefore he involuntarily gave up the attempt to get away, stood there, helpless, and looked at the two feet, which now, as if somewhat impatient, were swinging back and forth; and as this view did not have so clearing an effect upon his thoughts that he could find expression for them, the owner of the dainty feet again took up the conversation. “We were interrupted before; you were just going to tell me something about flies – I imagined that you were making scientific investigations here – or about a fly in your head. Did you succeed in catching and destroying the one on my hand?”

This last she said with a smiling expression about her lips, which, however, was so faint and charming that it was not at all terrifying. On the contrary, it now lent to the questioned man power of speech, but with this limitation, that the young archæologist suddenly did not know how to address her. In order to escape this dilemma, he found it best to avoid that and replied, “I was – as they say – somewhat confused mentally and ask pardon that I – the hand – in that way – how I could be so stupid, I can’t understand – but I can’t understand either how its owner could use my name in upbraiding me for my – my madness.”

Gradiva’s feet stopped moving and she rejoined, still addressing him familiarly, “Your power of understanding has not yet progressed that far, Norbert Hanold. Of course, I cannot be surprised, for you have long ago accustomed me to it. To make that discovery again I should not have needed to come to Pompeii, and you could have confirmed it for me a good hundred miles nearer.”

“A hundred miles nearer” – he repeated, perplexed and half stuttering – “where is that?”

“Diagonally across from your house, in the corner house; in my window, in a cage, is a canary.”

Like a memory from far away this last word moved the hearer, who repeated, “A canary” – and he added, stuttering more – “He – he sings?”

“They usually do, especially in spring when the sun begins to seem warm again. In that house lives my father, Richard Bertgang, professor of zoology.”

Norbert Hanold’s eyes opened to a width never before attained by them, and then he said, “Bertgang – then are you – are you – Miss Zoë Bertgang? But she looked quite different – ”

The two dangling feet began again to swing a little, and Miss Zoë Bertgang said in reply, “If you find that form of address more suitable between us, I can use it too, you know, but the other came to me more naturally. I don’t know whether I looked different when we used to run about before with each other as friends every day, and occasionally beat and cuffed each other, for a change, but if, in recent years, you had favoured me with even one glance, you might perhaps have seen that I have looked like this for a long time. – No, now, as they say, it’s pouring pitchforks; you won’t have a dry stitch.”

Not only had the feet of the speaker indicated a return of impatience, or whatever it might be, but also in the tones of her voice there appeared a little didactic, ill-humoured curtness, and Norbert had thereby been overwhelmed by a feeling that he was running the risk of slipping into the rôle of a big school-boy scolded and slapped in the face. That caused him to again seek mechanically for an exit between the pillars, and to the movement which showed this impulse Miss Zoë’s last utterance, indifferently added, had reference; and, of course, in an undeniably striking way, because for what was now occurring outside of the shelter, “pouring” was really a mild term. A tropical cloudburst such as only seldom took pity on the summer thirst of the meadows of the Campagna, was shooting vertically and rushing as if the Tyrrhenian Sea were pouring from heaven upon the Villa of Diomede, and yet it continued like a firm wall composed of billions of drops gleaming like pearls and large as nuts. That, indeed, made escape out into the open air impossible, and forced Norbert Hanold to remain in the school-room of the portico while the young school-mistress with the delicate, clever face made use of the hindrance for further extension of her pedagogical discussion by continuing, after a brief pause: —

“Then up to the time when people call us ‘Backfisch,’ for some unknown reason, I had really acquired a remarkable attachment for you and thought that I could never find a more pleasing friend in the world. Mother, sister, or brother I had not, you know; to my father a slow-worm in alcohol was far more interesting than I, and people (I count girls such) must surely have something with which they can occupy their thoughts and the like. Then you were that something, but when archæology overcame you, I made the discovery that you – excuse the familiarity, but your new formality sounds absurd to me – I was saying that I imagined that you had become an intolerable person, who had no longer, at least for me, an eye in his head, a tongue in his mouth, nor any of the memories that I retained of our childhood friendship. So I probably looked different from what I did formerly, for when, occasionally, I met you at a party, even last winter, you did not look at me and I did not hear your voice; in this, of course, there was nothing which marked me out especially, for you treated all the others in the same way. To you I was but air, and you, with your shock of light hair, which I had formerly pulled so often, were as boresome, dry and tongue-tied as a stuffed cockatoo and at the same time as grandiose as an – archæopteryx; I believe the excavated, antediluvian bird-monster is so called; but that your head harboured an imagination so magnificent as here in Pompeii to consider me something excavated and restored to life – I had not surmised that of you, and when you suddenly stood before me unexpectedly, it cost me some effort at first to understand what kind of incredible fancy your imagination had invented. Then I was amused, and, in spite of its madness, it was not entirely displeasing to me. For, as I said, I had not expected it of you.”

With that, her expression and tone somewhat mollified at the end, Miss Zoë Bertgang finished her unreserved, detailed and instructive lecture, and it was indeed notable how exactly she then resembled the figure of Gradiva on the bas-relief, not only in her features, her form, her eyes, expressive of wisdom, and her charmingly wavy hair, but also in her graceful manner of walking which he had often seen; her drapery, too, dress and scarf of a cream-coloured, fine cashmere material which fell in soft, voluminous folds, completed the extraordinary resemblance of her whole appearance. There might have been much foolishness in the belief that a young Pompeiian girl, destroyed two thousand years ago by Vesuvius, could sometimes walk around alive again, speak, draw and eat bread, but even if the belief brought happiness, it assumed everywhere, in the bargain, a considerable amount of incomprehensibility; and in consideration of all the circumstances, there was incontestably present, in the judgment of Norbert Hanold, some mitigating ground for his madness in for two days considering Gradiva a resurrection.

Although he stood there dry under the portico roof, there was established, not quite ineptly, a comparison between him and a wet poodle, who has had a bucketful of water thrown on his head; but the cold shower-bath had really done him good. Without knowing exactly why, he felt that he was breathing much more easily. In that, of course, the change of tone at the end of the sermon – for the speaker sat as if in a pulpit-chair – might have helped especially; at least thereat a transfigured light appeared in his eyes, such as awakened hope for salvation through faith produces in the eyes of an ardently affected church-attendant; and as the rebuke was now over, and there seemed no necessity for fearing a further continuation, he succeeded in saying, “Yes, now I recognize – no, you have not changed at all – it is you, Zoë – my good, happy, clever comrade – it is most strange – ”

“That a person must die to become alive again; but for archæologists that is of course necessary.”

“No, I mean your name – ”

“Why is it strange?”

The young archæologist showed himself familiar with not only the classical languages, but also with the etymology of German, and continued, “Because Bertgang has the same meaning as Gradiva and signifies ‘the one splendid in walking.’”

Miss Zoë Bertgang’s two sandal-like shoes were, for the moment, because of their movement, reminiscent of an impatiently see-sawing wagtail waiting for something; yet the possessor of the feet which walked so magnificently seemed not at present to be paying any attention to philological explanations; by her countenance she gave the impression of being occupied with some hasty plan, but was restrained from it by an exclamation of Norbert Hanold’s which audibly emanated from deepest conviction, “What luck, though, that you are not Gradiva, but are like the congenial young lady!”

That caused an expression as of interested surprise to pass over her face, and she asked, “Who is that? Whom do you mean?”

“The one who spoke to you in Meleager’s house.”

“Do you know her?”

“Yes, I had already seen her. She was the first person who seemed especially congenial to me.”

“So? Where did you see her?”

“This morning, in the House of the Faun. There the couple were doing something very strange.”

“What were they doing?”

“They did not see me and they kissed each other.”

“That was really very reasonable, you know. Why else are they in Pompeii on their wedding trip?”

At one blow with the last word the former picture changed before Norbert Hanold’s eyes, for the old wall-ruin lay there empty, because the girl, who had chosen it as a seat, teacher’s chair and pulpit, had come down, or really flown, and with the same supple buoyancy as that of a wagtail swinging through the air, so that she already stood again on Gradiva-feet, before his glance had consciously caught up with her descent; and continuing her speech directly, she said, “Well, the rain has stopped; too severe rulers do not reign long. That is reasonable, too, you know, and thus everything has again become reasonable. I, not least of all, and you can look up Gisa Hartleben, or whatever new name she has, to be of scientific assistance to her about the purpose of her stay in Pompeii. I must now go to the ‘Albergo del Sole,’ for my father is probably waiting for me already at lunch. Perhaps we shall meet again sometime at a party in Germany or on the moon. Addio!”

Zoë Bertgang said this in the absolutely polite, but also equally indifferent tone of a most well-bred young lady, and, as was her custom, placing her left foot forward, raised the sole of the right almost perpendicularly to pass out. As she lifted her dress slightly with her left hand, because of the thoroughly wet ground outside, the resemblance to Gradiva was perfect and the man, standing hardly more than two arm-lengths away, noticed for the first time a quite insignificant deviation in the living picture from the stone one. The latter lacked something possessed by the former, which appeared at the moment quite clear, a little dimple in her cheek, which produced a slight, indefinable effect. It puckered and wrinkled a little and could therefore express annoyance or a suppressed impulse to laugh, possibly both together. Norbert Hanold looked at it and although from the evidence just presented to him he had completely regained his reason, his eyes had to again submit to an optical illusion. For, in a tone triumphing peculiarly over his discovery, he cried out, “There is the fly again!”

It sounded so strange that from the incomprehending listener, who could not see herself, escaped the question, “The fly – where?”

“There on your cheek!” and immediately the man, as he answered, suddenly twined an arm about her neck and snapped, this time with his lips, at the insect so deeply abhorrent to him, which vision juggled before his eyes deceptively in the little dimple. Apparently, however, without success, for right afterwards he cried again, “No, now it’s on your lips!” and thereupon, quick as a flash, he directed thither his attempt to capture, now remaining so long that no doubt could survive that he succeeded in completely accomplishing his purpose, and strange to relate the living Gradiva did not hinder him at all, and when her mouth, after about a minute, was forced to struggle for breath, restored to powers of speech, she did not say, “You are really crazy, Norbert Hanold,” but rather allowed a most charming smile to play more visibly than before about her red lips; she had been convinced more than ever of the complete recovery of his reason.

The Villa of Diomede had two thousand years ago seen and heard horrible things in an evil hour, yet at the present it heard and saw, for about an hour, only things not at all suited to inspire horror. Then, however, a sensible idea became uppermost in Miss Zoë Bertgang’s mind and as a result, she said, against her wishes, “Now, I must really go, or my poor father will starve. It seems to me you can to-day forego Gisa Hartleben’s company at noon, for you have nothing more to learn from her and ought to be content with us in the ‘Sun Hotel.’”