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

Quite indubitably it was she; even if the sunbeams did surround her figure as with a thin veil of gold, he perceived her in profile as plainly and as distinctly as on the bas-relief. Her head, whose crown was entwined with a scarf which fell to her neck, inclined forward a little; her left hand held up lightly the extremely voluminous dress and, as it reached only to her ankles, one could perceive clearly that in advancing, the right foot, lingering, if only for a moment, rose on the tips of the toes almost perpendicularly. Here, however, it was not a stone representation, everything in uniform colourlessness; the dress, apparently made of extremely soft, clinging material, was not of cold marble-white, but of a warm tone verging faintly on yellow, and her hair, wavy under the scarf on her brow, and peeping forth at the temples, stood out, with golden-brown radiance, in bold contrast to her alabaster countenance.

As soon as he caught sight of her, Norbert’s memory was clearly awakened to the fact that he had seen her here once already in a dream, walking thus, the night that she had lain down as if to sleep over there in the Forum on the steps of the Temple of Apollo. With this memory he became conscious, for the first time, of something else; he had, without himself knowing the motive in his heart, come to Italy on that account and had, without stop, continued from Rome and Naples to Pompeii to see if he could here find trace of her – and that in a literal sense – for, with her unusual gait, she must have left behind in the ashes a foot-print different from all the others.

Again it was a noonday dream-picture that passed there before him and yet also a reality. For that was apparent from an effect which it produced. On the last stepping-stone on the farther side, there lay stretched out motionless, in the burning sunlight, a big lizard, whose body, as if woven of gold and malachite, glistened brightly to Norbert’s eyes. Before the approaching foot, however, it darted down suddenly and wriggled away over the white, gleaming lava pavement.

Gradiva crossed the stepping-stones with her calm buoyancy, and now, turning her back, walked along on the opposite sidewalk; her destination seemed to be the house of Adonis. Before it she stopped a moment, too, but passed then, as if after further deliberation, down farther through the Strada di Mercurio. On the left, of the more elegant buildings, there now stood only the Casa di Apollo, named after the numerous representations of Apollo excavated there, and, to the man who was gazing after her, it seemed again that she had also surely chosen the portico of the Temple of Apollo for her death sleep. Probably she was closely associated with the cult of the sun-god and was going there. Soon, however, she stopped again; stepping-stones crossed the street here, too, and she walked back again to the right side. Thus she turned the other side of her face toward him and looked a little different, for her left hand, which held up her gown, was not visible and instead of her curved arm, the right one hung down straight. At a greater distance now, however, the golden waves of sunlight floated around her with a thicker web of veiling, and did not allow him to distinguish where she had stopped, for she disappeared suddenly before the house of Meleager. Norbert Hanold still stood without having moved a limb. With his eyes, and this time with his corporeal ones, he had surveyed, step by step, her vanishing form. Now, at length, he drew a deep breath, for his breast too had remained almost motionless.

Simultaneously the sixth sense, suppressing the others completely, held him absolutely in its sway. Had what had just stood before him been a product of his imagination or a reality?

He did not know that, nor whether he was awake or dreaming, and tried in vain to collect his thoughts. Then, however, a strange shudder passed down his spine. He saw and heard nothing, yet he felt from the secret inner vibrations that Pompeii had begun to live about him in the noonday hour of spirits, and so Gradiva lived again, too, and had gone into the house which she had occupied before the fateful August day of the year 79.

From his former visit, he was acquainted with the Casa di Meleagro, had not yet gone there this time, however, but had merely stopped briefly in the Museo Nazionale of Naples before the wall paintings of Meleager and his Arcadian huntress companion, Atalanta, which had been found in the Strada di Mercurio in that house, and after which the latter had been named. Yet as he now again acquired the ability to move and walked toward it, he began to doubt whether it really bore its name after the slayer of the Caledonian boar. He suddenly recalled a Greek poet, Meleager, who, to be sure, had probably lived about a century before the destruction of Pompeii. A descendant of his, however, might have come here and built the house for himself. That agreed with something else that had awakened in his memory, for he remembered his supposition, or rather a definite conviction, that Gradiva had been of Greek descent. To be sure there mingled with his idea the figure of Atalanta as Ovid had pictured it in his Metamorphoses:

– her floating vest

A polished buckle clasped – her careless locks

In simple knot were gathered —

Trans. by Henry King.

He could not recall the verses word for word, but their content was present in his mind; and from his store of knowledge was added the fact that Cleopatra was the name of the young wife of Œneus’ son, Meleager. More probably this had nothing to do with him, but with the Greek poet, Meleager. Thus, under the glowing sun of the Campagna, there was a mythological-literary-historical-archæological juggling in his head.

When he had passed the house of Castor and Pollux and that of the Centaur, he stood before the Casa di Meleagro from whose threshold there looked up at him, still discernible, the inlaid greeting “Ave.” On the wall of the vestibule, Mercury was handing Fortuna a pouch filled with money; that probably indicated, allegorically, the riches and other fortunate circumstances of the former dweller. Behind this opened up the inner court, the centre of which was occupied by a marble table supported by three griffins.

Empty and silent, the room lay there, appearing absolutely unfamiliar to the man, as he entered, awaking no memory that he had already been here, yet he then recalled it, for the interior of the house offered a deviation from that of the other excavated buildings of the city. The peristyle adjoined the inner court on the other side of the balcony toward the rear – not in the usual way, but at the left side and on that account was of greater extent and more splendid appearance than any other in Pompeii. It was framed by a colonnade supported by two dozen pillars painted red on the lower, and white on the upper half. These lent solemnity to the great, silent space; here in the centre was a spring with a beautifully wrought enclosure, which served as a fish-pool. Apparently the house must have been the dwelling of an estimable man of culture and artistic sense.

Norbert’s gaze passed around, and he listened. Yet nowhere about did anything stir, nor was the slightest sound audible. Amidst this cold stone there was no longer a breath; if Gradiva had gone into Meleager’s house, she had already dissolved again into nothing. At the rear of the peristyle was another room, an œcus, the former dining-room, likewise surrounded on three sides by pillars painted yellow, which shimmered from a distance in the light, as if they were encrusted with gold. Between them, however, shone a red far more dazzling than that from the walls, with which no brush of antiquity, but young Nature of the present had painted the ground. The former artistic pavement lay completely ruined, fallen to decay and weather worn; it was May which exercised here again its most ancient dominion and covered the whole œcus, as it did at the time in many houses of the buried city, with red, flowering, wild poppies, whose seeds the winds had carried thither, and these had sprouted in the ashes. It was a wave of densely crowded blossoms, or so it appeared, although, in reality, they stood there motionless, for Atabulus found no way down to them, but only hummed away softly above. Yet the sun cast such flaming, radiant vibrations down upon them that it gave an impression of red ripples in a pond undulating hither and thither. Norbert Hanold’s eyes had passed unheeding over a similar sight in other houses, but here he was strangely thrilled by it. The dream-flower grown at the edge of Lethe filled the space, and Hypnos lay stretched in their midst dispensing sleep, which dulls the senses, with the saps which night has gathered in the red chalices. It seemed to the man who had entered the dining-room through the portico of the peristyle as if he felt his temples touched by the invisible slumber wand of the old vanquisher of gods and men, but not with heavy stupor; only a dreamily sweet loveliness floated about his consciousness. At the same time, however, he still remained in control of his feet and stepped along by the wall of the former dining-room from which gazed old pictures: Paris, awarding the apple; a satyr, carrying in his hand an asp and tormenting a young Bacchante with it.

But there again suddenly, unforeseen – only about five paces away from him – in the narrow shadow cast down by a single piece of the upper part of the dining-room portico, which still remained in a state of preservation, sitting on the low steps between two of the yellow pillars was a brightly clad woman who now raised her head. In that way she disclosed to the unnoticed arrival, whose footstep she had apparently just heard, a full view of her face, which produced in him a double feeling, for it appeared to him at the same time unknown and yet also familiar, already seen or imagined; but by his arrested breathing and his heart palpitations, he recognized, unmistakably, to whom it belonged. He had found what he was looking for, what had driven him unconsciously to Pompeii; Gradiva continued her visible existence in the noonday spirit hour and sat here before him, as, in the dream, he had seen her on the steps of the Temple of Apollo. Spread out on her knees lay something white, which he was unable to distinguish clearly; it seemed to be a papyrus sheet, and a red poppy-blossom stood out from it in marked contrast.

In her face surprise was expressed; under the lustrous, brown hair and the beautiful, alabaster brow, two rarely bright, starlike eyes looked at him with questioning amazement. It required only a few moments for him to recognize the conformity of her features with those of the profile. They must be thus, viewed from the front, and therefore, at first glance, they had not been really unfamiliar to him. Near to, her white dress, by its slight tendency to yellow, heightened still more the warm colour; apparently it consisted of a fine, extremely soft, woollen material, which produced abundant folds, and the scarf around her head was of the same. Below, on the nape of the neck, appeared again the shimmering, brown hair artlessly gathered in a single knot; at her throat, under a dainty chin, a little gold clasp held her gown together.

Norbert Hanold dimly perceived that involuntarily he had raised his hand to his soft Panama hat and removed it; and now he said in Greek, “Are you Atalanta, the daughter of Jason, or are you a descendant of the family of the poet, Meleager?”

Without giving an answer, the lady addressed looked at him silently with a calmly wise expression in her eyes, and two thoughts passed through his mind; either her resurrected self could not speak, or she was not of Greek descent and was ignorant of the language. He therefore substituted Latin for it and asked: “Was your father a distinguished Pompeiian citizen of Latin origin?”

To this she was equally silent, only about her delicately curved lips there was a slight quiver as if she were repressing a burst of laughter. Now a feeling of fright came upon him; apparently she was sitting there before him like a silent image, a phantom to whom speech was denied. Consternation at this discovery was stamped fully and distinctly upon his features.

Then, however, her lips could no longer resist the impulse; a real smile played about them and at the same time a voice sounded from between them, “If you wish to speak with me, you must do so in German.”

That was really remarkable from the mouth of a Pompeiian woman who had died two centuries before, or would have been so for a person hearing it in a different state of mind. Yet every oddity escaped Norbert because of two waves of emotion which had rushed over him, one because Gradiva possessed the power of speech, and the other was one which had been forced from his inmost being by her voice. It sounded as clear as was her glance; not sharp, but reminiscent of the tones of a bell, her voice passed through the sunny silence over the blooming poppy-field, and the young archæologist suddenly realized that he had already heard it thus in his imagination, and involuntarily he gave audible expression to his feeling, “I knew that your voice sounded like that.”

One could read in her countenance that she was seeking comprehension of something, but was not finding it. To his last remark she now responded, “How could you? You have never talked with me.”

To him it was not at all remarkable that she spoke German, and, according to present usage, addressed him formally; as she did it, he understood completely that it could not have happened otherwise, and he answered quickly, “No – not talked – but I called to you when you lay down to sleep and stood near you then – your face was as calmly beautiful as if it were of marble. May I beg you – rest it again on the step in that way.”

While he was speaking, something peculiar had occurred. A golden butterfly, faintly tinged with red on the inner edge of its upper wing, fluttered from the poppies toward the pillars, flitted a few times about Gradiva’s head and then rested on the brown, wavy hair above her brow. At the same time, however, she rose, slender and tall, for she stood up with deliberate haste, curtly and silently directed at Norbert another glance, in which something suggested that she considered him demented; then, thrusting her foot forward, she walked out in her characteristic way along the pillars of the old portico. Only fleetingly visible for a while, she finally seemed to have sunk into the earth.

He stood up, breathless, as if stunned; yet with heavy understanding he had grasped what had occurred before his eyes. The noonday ghost hour was over, and in the form of a butterfly, a winged messenger had come up from the asphodel meadows of Hades to admonish the departed one to return. For him something else was associated with this, although in confused indistinctness. He knew that the beautiful butterfly of Mediterranean countries bore the name Cleopatra, and this had also been the name of Caledonian Meleager’s young wife who, in grief over his death, had given herself as sacrifice to those of the lower world.

From his mouth issued a call to the girl who was departing, “Are you coming here again to-morrow in the noon hour?” Yet she did not turn around, gave no answer, and disappeared after a few moments in the corner of the dining-room behind the pillar. Now a compelling impulse suddenly incited him to hasten after her, but her bright dress was no longer visible anywhere; glowing with the hot sun’s rays, the Casa di Meleagro lay about him motionless and silent; only Cleopatra hovered on her red, shimmering, golden wings, making slow circles again above the multitude of poppies.

When and how he had returned to the “ingresso,” Norbert Hanold could not recall; in his memory he retained only the idea that his appetite had peremptorily demanded to be appeased, though very tardily, at the “Diomed,” and then he had wandered forth aimlessly on the first good street, had arrived at the beach north of Castellamare, where he had seated himself on a lava-block, and the sea-wind had blown around his head until the sun had set about half-way between Monte Sant’ Angelo above Sorrento and Monte Epomeo on Ischia. Yet, in spite of this stay of at least several hours by the water, he had obtained from the fresh air there no mental relief, but was returning to the hotel in the same condition in which he had left it. He found the other guests busily occupied with dinner, had a little bottle of Vesuvio wine brought to him in a corner of the room, viewed the faces of those eating, and listened to their conversations. From the faces of all, as well as from their talk, it appeared to him absolutely certain that in the noon hour none of them had either met or spoken to a dead Pompeiian woman who had returned again briefly to life. Of course, all this had been a foregone conclusion, as they had all been at lunch at that time; why and wherefore, he himself could not state, yet after a while he went over to the competitor of the “Diomed,” “Hotel Suisse,” sat down there also in a corner, and, as he had to order something, likewise before a little bottle of Vesuvio, and here he gave himself over to the same kind of investigations with eye and ear. They led to the same results but also to the further conclusion that he now knew by sight all the temporary, living visitors of Pompeii. To be sure, this effected an increase of his knowledge which he could hardly consider an enrichment, but from it he experienced a certain satisfying feeling that, in the two hostelries, no guest, either male or female, was present with whom, by means of sight and hearing, he had not entered into a personal, even if one-sided, relation. Of course, in no way had the absurd supposition entered his mind that he might possibly meet Gradiva in one of the two hotels, but he could have taken his oath that no one was staying in them who possessed, in the remotest way, any trace of resemblance to her. During his observations, he had occasionally poured wine from his little bottle to his glass, and had drunk from time to time; and when, in this manner, the former had gradually become empty, he rose and went back to the “Diomed.” The heavens were now strewn with countless, flashing, twinkling stars, but not in the traditionally stationary way, for Norbert gathered the impression that Perseus, Cassiopeia and Andromeda with some neighbours, bowing lightly hither and thither, were performing a singing dance, and below, on earth, too, it seemed to him that the dark shadows of the tree-tops and buildings did not stay in the same place. Of course on the ground of this region – unsteady from ancient times – this could not be exactly surprising, for the subterranean glow lurked everywhere, after an eruption, and let a little of itself rise in the vines and grapes from which was pressed Vesuvio, which was not one of Norbert Hanold’s usual evening drinks. He still remembered, however, even if a little of the circular movement of things might be ascribed to the wine, too, that since noon all objects had displayed an inclination to whirl softly about his head, and therefore he found, in the slight increase, nothing new, but only a continuation of the formerly existing conditions. He went up to his room and stood for a little while at the open window, looking over toward the Vesuvius mound, above which now no cone of smoke spread its top, but rather something like the fluctuations of a dark, purple cloak flowed back and forth around it. Then the young archæologist undressed, without having lighted the light, and sought his couch. Yet, as he stretched himself out upon it, it was not his bed at the “Diomed,” but a red poppy-field whose blossoms closed over him like a soft cushion heated by the sun. His enemy, the common house-fly, constrained by darkness to lethargic stupidity, sat fiftyfold above his head, on the wall, and only one moved, even in its sleepiness, by desire to torture, buzzed about his nose. He recognized it, however, not as the absolute evil, the century-old scourge of humanity, for before his eyes it poised like a red-gold Cleopatra.

When, in the morning, the sun, with lively assistance from the flies, awoke him, he could not recall what, besides strange, Ovid-like metamorphoses, had occurred during the night about his bed. Yet doubtless some mystic being, continuously weaving dream-webs, had been sitting beside him, for he felt his head completely overhung and filled with them, so that all ability to think lay inextricably imprisoned in it and only one thing remained in his consciousness; he must again be in Meleager’s house at exactly noon. In this connection, however, a fear overcame him, for if the gatekeepers at the “ingresso” looked at him, they would not let him in. Anyway it was not advisable that he should expose himself to close observation by human eyes. To escape that, there was, for one well informed about Pompeii, a means which was, to be sure, against the rules, but he was not in a condition to grant to legal regulation a determination of his conduct. So he climbed again, as on the evening of his arrival, along the old city-wall, and upon it walked, in a wide semicircle, around the city of ruins to the solitary, unguarded Porta di Nola. Here it was not difficult to get down into the inside and he went, without burdening his conscience very much over the fact that by his autocratic deed he had deprived the administration of a two-lira entrance fee, which he could, of course, let it have later in some other way.

Thus, unseen, he had reached an uninteresting part of the city, never before investigated by any one and still mostly unexcavated; he sat down in a secluded, shady nook and waited, now and then drawing his watch to observe the progress of time. Once his glance fell upon something in the distance gleaming, silvery-white, rising from the ashes, but with his unreliable vision, he was unable to distinguish what it was. Yet involuntarily he was impelled to go up to it and there it stood, a tall, flowering asphodel-plant with white, bell-like blossoms whose seeds the wind had carried thither from outside. It was the flower of the lower world, significant and, as he felt, destined to grow here for his purpose. He broke the slender stem and returned with it to his seat. Hotter and hotter the May sun burned down as on the day before, and finally approached its noonday position; so now he started out through the long Strada di Nola. This lay deathly still and deserted, as did almost all the others; over there to the west all the morning visitors were already crowding again to the Porta Marina and the soup-plates. Only the air, suffused with heat, stirred, and in the dazzling glare the solitary figure of Norbert Hanold with the asphodel branch appeared like that of Hermes, Psyche’s escort, in modern attire, starting out upon the journey to conduct a departed soul to Hades.

Not consciously, yet following an instinctive impulse, he found his way through the Strada della Fortuna farther along to the Strada di Mercurio, and turning to the right arrived at the Casa di Meleagro. Just as lifelessly as yesterday, the vestibule, inner court and peristyle received him, and between the pillars of the latter the poppies of the dining-room flamed across to him. As he entered, however, it was not clear to him whether he had been here yesterday or two thousand years ago to seek from the owner of the house some information of great importance to archæology; what it was, however, he could not state, and besides, it seemed to him, even though in contradiction to the above, that all the science of antiquity was the most purposeless and indifferent thing in the world. He could not understand how a human being could occupy himself with it, for there was only a single thing to which all thinking and investigation must be directed: what is the nature of the physical manifestation of a being like Gradiva, dead and alive at the same time, although the latter was true only in the noon hour of spirits – or had been the day before, perhaps the one time in a century or a thousand years, for it suddenly seemed certain that his return to-day was in vain. He did not meet the girl he was looking for, because she was not allowed to come again until a time when he too would have been dead for many years, and was buried and forgotten. Of course, as he walked now along by the wall below Paris awarding the apple, he perceived Gradiva before him, just as on yesterday, in the same gown, sitting between the same two yellow pillars on the same step. Yet he did not allow himself to be deceived by tricks of imagination, but knew that fancy alone was deceptively depicting before his eyes what he had really seen there the day before. He could not refrain, however, from stopping to indulge in the view of the shadowy apparition created by himself and, without his knowing it, there passed from his lips in a grieved tone the words, “Oh, that you were still alive!”

His voice rang out, but, after that, breathless silence again reigned among the ruins of the old dining-room. Yet soon another sounded through the vacant stillness, saying, “Won’t you sit down too? You look exhausted.”

Norbert Hanold’s heart stood still a moment. His head, however, collected this much reason; a vision could not speak; or was an aural hallucination practising deception upon him? With fixed gaze, he supported himself against the pillar.

Then again asked the voice, and it was the one which none other than Gradiva possessed, “Are you bringing me the white flowers?”

Dizziness rushed upon him; he felt that his feet no longer supported him, but forced him to be seated; and he slid down opposite her on the step, against the pillar. Her bright eyes were directed toward his face, yet with a different look from the one with which she had gazed at him yesterday when she suddenly rose and went away. In that, something ill-humoured and repellent had spoken; but it had disappeared, as if she had, in the meanwhile, arrived at a different view-point, and an expression of searching inquisitiveness or curiosity had taken its place. Likewise, she spoke with an easy familiarity. As he remained silent, however, to the last question also, she again resumed, “You told me yesterday that you had once called to me when I lay down to sleep and that you had afterwards stood near me; my face was as white as marble. When and where was that? I cannot remember it, and I beg you to explain more exactly.”

Norbert had now acquired enough power of speech to answer, “In the night when you sat on the steps of the Temple of Apollo in the Forum and the fall of ashes from Vesuvius covered you.”

“So – then. Yes, to be sure – that had not occurred to me, but I might have thought that it would be a case like that. When you said it yesterday, I was not expecting it, and I was utterly unprepared. Yet that happened, if I recall correctly, two thousand years ago. Were you living then? It seems to me you look younger.” She spoke very seriously, but at the end a faint, extremely sweet smile played about her mouth. He hesitated in embarrassment and answered, stuttering slightly, “No, I really don’t believe I was alive in the year 79 – it was perhaps – yes, it surely is a psychic condition which is called a dream that transported me into the time of the destruction of Pompeii – but I recognized you again at first glance.”

In the expression of the girl sitting opposite him, a few feet away, surprise was apparent, and she repeated in a tone of amazement, “You recognized me again? In the dream? By what?”

“At the very first; by your manner of walking.”

“Had you noticed that? And have I a special manner of walking?”

Her astonishment had grown perceptibly. He replied, “Yes – don’t you realize that? A more graceful one – at least among those now living – does not exist. Yet I recognized you immediately by everything else too, your figure, face, bearing and drapery, for everything agreed most minutely with the bas-relief of you in Rome.”

“Ah, really – ” she repeated in her former tone – “with the bas-relief of me in Rome. Yes, I hadn’t thought of that either, and at this moment I don’t know exactly – what is it – and you saw it there then?”

Now he told her that the sight of it had attracted him so that he had been highly pleased to get a plaster-cast of it in Germany, and that for years it had hung in his room. He observed it daily, and the idea had come to him that it must represent a young Pompeiian girl who was walking on the stepping-stones of a street in her native city; and the dream had confirmed it. Now he knew also that he had been impelled by it to travel here again to see whether he could find some trace of her; and as he had stood yesterday noon at the corner of Strada di Mercurio, she, herself, exactly like her image, had suddenly walked before him across the stepping-stones, as if she were about to go over into the house of Apollo. Then farther along she had recrossed the street and disappeared before the house of Meleager.

To this she nodded and said, “Yes, I intended to look up the house of Apollo, but I came here.”

He continued, “On that account the Greek poet, Meleager, came to my mind, and I thought that you were one of his descendants and were returning – in the hour which you are allowed – to your ancestral home. When I spoke to you in Greek, however, you did not understand.”

“Was that Greek? No, I don’t understand it or I’ve probably forgotten it. Yet as you came again just now, I heard you say something that I could understand. You expressed the wish that some one might still be alive here. Only I did not understand whom you meant by that.”

That caused him to reply that, at sight of her, he had believed that it was not really she, but that his imagination was deceptively putting her image before him in the place where he had met her yesterday. At that she smiled and agreed, “It seems that you have reason to be on your guard against an excess of imagination, although, when I have been with you, I never supposed so.” She stopped, however, and added, “What is there peculiar about my way of walking, which you spoke of before?”