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 PRINTED IN U.S. A 
 
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 BF173.F88 D3 1917 
 
 °®''lniiSi!?ii,.3!?,S,,.,f!i;*3"' = an interpretation i 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 034 218 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
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DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 An Interpretation in the Light of Psychoanalysis 
 
 of Gradiva, a Novel, by Wilhelm Jensen, 
 
 Which is Here Translated 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. SIGMUND FREUD 
 
 Author of "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," 
 "Leonardo da Vinci," etc. 
 
 TBANBUITED BY 
 
 HELEN M. DOWNEY, M.A. 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 DR. G. STANLEY HALL 
 President of Clark University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 
B P % 
 
 
 Copyright, 1917. by 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 PublUhed September, 1917 
 
 n-ST?!i-ff 
 
 
 < 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To Dr. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark 
 University, who first called to my attention the 
 charm of "Gradiva," by Wilhelm Jensen, and 
 suggested the possibility of the translation and 
 publication combined with the translation of 
 Freud's commentary, I am deeply grateful for 
 his kindly interest and effort in connection with 
 the publication of the book, and his assistance 
 with the technical terms of psychopathology. 
 , In this connection I am also indebted to Dr. 
 Smith Ely Jelliff e, who gave many helpful sug- 
 gestions as a result of his thorough reading of 
 the manuscript of the commentary. 
 
 I wish also to express my profound appreci- 
 ation to my friend. Miss M. Evelyn Fitzsim- 
 mons, for her generous help with the original 
 manuscript and other valuable comments offered 
 while she was reading the entire proof. 
 
 Helen M. Downey. 
 Worcester, Mass. 
 July 16, 1917. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Jensen's brilliant and unique story of "Gra- 
 diva" has not only literary merit of very high 
 order, but may be said to open up a new field for 
 romance. It is the story of a young archeolo- 
 gist who suffered a very characteristic mental 
 disturbance and was gradually but effectively 
 cured by a kind of native psychotherapeutic in- 
 stinct, which probably inheres in all of us, but 
 which in this case was found in the girl he for- 
 merly loved but had forgotten, and who restored 
 at the same time his health and his old affection 
 for her. 
 
 Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about 
 the work is that the author knew nothing of psy- 
 chotherapy as such, but wrought his way through 
 the labyrinth of mechanisms that he in a sense re- 
 discovered and set to work, so that it needed only 
 the application of technical terms to make this 
 romance at the same time a pretty good key to 
 the whole domain of psychoanalysis. In a sense 
 it is a dream-story, but no single dream ever 
 began to be so true to the typical nature of 
 dreams ; it is a clinical picture, but I can think of 
 no clinical picture that had its natural human in- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 terest so enKanced by a moving romance. "Gra- 
 diva" might be an introduction to psychoanaly- 
 sis, and is better than anything else we can think 
 of to popularize it. 
 
 It might be added that while this romance has 
 been more thoroughly analyzed than any other, 
 and that by Freud himself, it is really only one 
 of many which in the hterature of the subject 
 have been used to show forth the mysterious ways 
 of the unconscious. It indicates that psycho- 
 analysis has a future in literary criticism, if not 
 that all art and artists have, from the beginning, 
 more or less anticipated as they now illustrate it. 
 
 The translator is thoroughly competent and 
 has done her work with painstaking conscien- 
 tiousness, and she has had the great advantage of 
 having it revised, especially with reference to the 
 translation of technical terms from the German, 
 by no less an eminent expert in psychotherapy 
 than Dr. Smith Ely JeUiffe. 
 
 G. Stanley Hall. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FAQB 
 
 Pkeface iii 
 
 Intkoduction, hy Dr. G. Stanley Hall . . . v 
 
 PART I 
 
 GuADivA, a novel, hy Wilhelm Jensen .... 3 
 
 PART II 
 
 Delusion and Dkeam, in Gradiva, hy Dr. Sig- 
 mwnd Freud 121 
 
PART I 
 
 GRADIVA 
 
 A PoMPEiiAN Fancy 
 
 BY 
 
 WiLHELM Jensen 
 
GRADIVA 
 
 On a visit to one of the great antique collec- 
 tions of Rome, Norbert Hanold had discovered 
 a bas-relief which was exceptionally attractive to 
 him, so he was much pleased, after his return to 
 Germany, to be able to get a splendid plaster-cast 
 of it. This had now been hanging for some years 
 on one of the walls of his work-room, aU the other 
 walls of which were lined with bookcases. Here 
 it had the advantage of a position with the right 
 light exposure, on a wall visited, though but 
 briefly, by the evening sun. About one third 
 life-size, the bas-relief represented a complete fe- 
 male figure in the act of walking; she was stiU 
 young, but no longer in childhood and, on the 
 other hand, apparently not a woman, but a Ro- 
 man virgin about in her twentieth year. In no 
 way did she remind one of the nximerous extant 
 bas-reliefs of a Venus, a Diana, or other Olym- 
 pian goddess, and equally little of a Psyche or 
 nymph. In her was embodied something hu- 
 manly commonplace — ^not in a bad sense — ^to a 
 degree a sense of present time, as if the artist, in- 
 
4 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 stead of making a pencil sketch of her on a sheet 
 of paper, as is done in our day, had fixed her in 
 a clay model quickly, from life, as she passed on 
 the street, a tall, slight figure, whose soft, wavy 
 hair a folded kerchief almost completely hound; 
 her rather slender face was not at all dazzling; 
 and the desire to produce such effect was ob- 
 viously equally foreign to her; in the delicately 
 formed features was expressed a nonchalant 
 equanimity in regard to what was occurring about 
 her; her eye, which gazed calmly ahead, bespoke 
 absolutely unimpaired powers of vision and 
 thoughts quietly withdrawn. So the yoxmg 
 woman was fascinating, not at all because of plas- 
 tic beauty of form, but because she possessed 
 something rare in antique sculpture, a reahstic, 
 simple, maidenly grace which gave the impression 
 of imparting hfe to the relief. This was effected 
 chiefly by the movement represented in the pic- 
 ture. With her head bent forward a little, she 
 held slightly raised in her left hand, so that her 
 sandaled feet became visible, her garment which 
 fell in exceedingly voluminous folds from her 
 throat to her ankles. The left foot had advanced, 
 and the right, about to follow, touched the ground 
 only lightly with the tips of the toes, while the 
 sole and heel were raised almost vertically. This 
 movement produced a double impression of ex- 
 ceptional agility and of confident composure, 
 
GRADIVA 6 
 
 and the flight-like poise, combined with a firm 
 step, lent her the peculiar grace. 
 
 Where had she walked thus and whither was 
 she going? Doctor Norbert Hanold, docent of 
 archaeology, really found in the relief nothing 
 noteworthy for his science. It was not a plastic 
 production of great art of the antique times, but 
 was essentially a Roman genre production and 
 he could not explain what quality in it had 
 aroused his attention; he knew only that he had 
 been attracted by something and this effect of 
 the first view had remained unchanged since 
 then. In order to bestow a name upon the piece 
 of sculpture, he had called it to himself Gradiva, 
 "the girl splendid in walking." That was an 
 epithet apphed by the ancient poets solely to 
 Mars Gradivus, the war-god going out to battle, 
 yet to Norbert it seemed the most appropriate 
 designation for the bearing and movement of the 
 young girl, or, according to the expression of our 
 , day, of the young lady, for obviously she did not 
 I belong to a lower class but was the daughter of 
 ,a nobleman, or at any rate was of honorable 
 family. Perhaps — ^her appearance brought the 
 jidea to his mind involuntarily — she might be of 
 J the family of a patrician sedile whose ofiice was 
 connected with the worship of Ceres, and she was 
 on her way to the temple of the goddess on some 
 errand. 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 Yet it was contrary to the young archaeologist's 
 feeling to put her in the frame of great, noisyj 
 cosmopolitan Rome. To his mind, her calm, 
 quiet manner did not belong in this complex ma- 
 chine where no one heeded another, but she be- 
 longed rather in a smaller place where every one 
 knew her, and, stopping to glance after her, said 
 to a companion, "That is Gradiva" — ^her real 
 name Norbert could not supply — "the daughteii 
 
 of , she walks more: beautifully than any 
 
 other girl in our city." i 
 
 As if he had heard it thus with his own ears, 
 the idea had become firmly rooted in his mind, 
 where another supposition had developed almost, 
 into a conviction. On his Itahan journey, he had 
 spent several weeks in Pompeii studying the 
 ruins; and in Germany, the idea had suddenlj| 
 come to him one day that the girl depicted by the 
 rehef was walking there, somewhere, on the 
 peculiar stepping-stones which have been exca-l 
 vated; these had made a dry crossing possible^ 
 in rainy weather, but had afforded passage for 
 chariot-wheels. Thus he saw her putting one 
 foot across the interstice while the other was 
 about to follow, and as he contemplated the girlj 
 her inmiediate and more remote environment rose 
 before his imagination like an actuality. It 
 created for him, with the aid of his knowledge of 
 antiquity, the vista of a long street, among the 
 
GRADIVA 7i 
 
 houses of which were many temples and porticoes. 
 Different kinds of business and trades, stalls, 
 work-shops, taverns came into view; bakers had 
 their breads on display; earthenware jugs, set 
 into marble counters, offered everything requisite 
 for household and kitchen; at the street corner sat 
 a woman offering vegetables and fruit for sale 
 from baskets; from a half dozen large walnuts 
 she had removed half of the shell to show the 
 meat, fresh and sound, as a temptation for pur- 
 chasers. Wherever the eye turned, it fell upon 
 lively colors, gaily painted wall surfaces, pillars 
 with red and yellow capitals ; everything reflected 
 the glitter and glare of the dazzling noonday sun. 
 Farther off on a high base rose a gleaming, white 
 statue, above which, in the distance, half veiled 
 by the. tremulous vibrations of the hot air, loomed 
 Mount Vesuvius not yet in its present cone shape 
 and brown aridity, but covered to its furrowed, 
 rocky peak with glistening verdure. In the 
 street only a few people moved about, seeking 
 shade wherever possible, for the scorching heat 
 of the summer noon hour paralyzed the usually 
 bustling activities. There Gradiva walked over 
 the stepping-stones and scared away from them a 
 shimmering, golden-green lizard. 
 
 Thus the picture stood vividly before Norbert 
 Hanold's eyes, but from daily contemplation of 
 her head, another new conjecture had gradually; 
 
8 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 arisen. The cut of her features seemed to him, 
 more and more, not Roman or Latin, but 
 Greek, so that her Hellenic ancestry gradually; 
 became for him a certainty. The ancient settle- 
 ment of all southern Italy by Greeks offered 
 sufficient groimd for that, and more ideas pleas- 
 antly associated with the settlers developed. 
 Then the young "domina" had perhaps spoken 
 Greek in her parental home, and had grown up 
 fostered by Greek culture. Upon closer consid- 
 eration he found this also confirmed by the ex- 
 pression of the face, for quite decidedly wisdom 
 and a delicate spirituality lay hidden beneath her 
 modesty. 
 
 These conjectures or discoveries could, how- 
 ever, establish no real archaeological interest in 
 the little relief and Norbert was well aware that 
 something else, which no doubt might be under 
 the head of science, made him return to frequent 
 contemplation of the hkeness. For him it was 
 a question of critical judgment as to whether the 
 artist had reproduced Gradiva's manner of walk- 
 ing from life. About that he could not become 
 absolutely certain, and his rich collection of 
 copies of antique plastic works did not help him 
 in this matter. The nearly vertical position of 
 the right foot seemed exaggerated; in all experi- 
 ments which he himself made, the movement left 
 his rising foot always in a much less upright posi- 
 
GRADIVA 9 
 
 tion; mathematically formulated, his stood, dur- 
 ing the brief moment of lingering, at an angle of 
 only forty-five degrees from the ground, and this 
 seemed to him natural for the mechanics of walk- 
 ing, because it served the purpose best. Once he 
 used the presence of a young anatomist friend 
 as an opportunity for raising the question, but the 
 latter was not able to deliver a definite decision, 
 as he had made no observations in this connec- 
 tion. He confirmed the experience of his friend, 
 as agreeing with his own, but could not say 
 whether a woman's manner of walking was dif- 
 ferent from that of a man, and the question re- 
 mained unanswered. 
 
 In spite of this, the discussion had not been 
 without profit, for it suggested something that 
 had not formerly occurred to him; namely, ob- 
 servation from life for the purpose of enlighten- 
 ment on the matter. That forced him, to be sure, 
 to a mode of action utterly foreign to him; 
 women had formerly been for him only a concep- 
 tion in marble or bronze and he had never given 
 his feminine contemporaries the least considera- 
 tion; but his desire for knowledge transported 
 him into a scientific passion in which he surren- 
 dered himself to the peculiar investigation which 
 he recognized as necessary. This was hindered 
 by many difficulties in the human throng of the 
 large city, and results of the research were to be 
 
10 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 hoped for pnly in the less frequented streets. 
 Yet, even there, long skirts generally made the 
 mode of walking undiscernible, for almost no one 
 but housemaids wore short skirts and they, with 
 the exception of a few, because of their heavy 
 shoes could not well be considered in solving the 
 question. In spite of this he steadfastly con- 
 tinued his survey in dry, as well as in wet weather; 
 he perceived that the latter promised the quickest 
 results, for it caused the ladies to raise their skirts. 
 To many ladies, his searching glances directed 
 at their feet must have inevitably been quite 
 noticeable; sometimes a displeased expression of 
 the lady observed showed that she considered his 
 demeanor a mark of boldness or ill-breeding; 
 sometimes, as he was. a young man of very cap- 
 tivating appearance, the opposite, a bit of en- 
 couragement, was expressed by a pair of eyes. 
 Yet one was as incomprehensible to him as the 
 other. Gradually his perseverance resulted in 
 the collection of a considerable number of ob- 
 servations, which brought to his attention many 
 differences. Some walked slowly, some fast, 
 some ponderously, some buoyantly. Many let 
 their soles merely glide over the ground; not 
 many raised them more obliquely to a smarter 
 position. Among all, however, not a single one 
 presented to view Gradiva's manner of walking. 
 That filled him with satisfaction that he had not 
 
GRADIVA 11 
 
 been mistaken in his archaeological judgment of 
 the rehef. On the other hand, however, his ob- 
 servations caused him annoyance, for he found 
 the vertical position of the lingering foot beau- 
 tiful, and regretted that it had been created by 
 the imagination or arbitrary act of the sculptor 
 and did not correspond to reality. 
 
 Soon after his pedestrian investigations had 
 yielded him this knowledge, he had, one night, a 
 dream which caused him great anguish of mind. 
 In it he was in old Pompeii, and on the twenty- 
 fourth of August of the year 79, which witnessed 
 the eruption of Vesuvius. The heavens held the 
 doomed city wrapped in a black mantle of smoke ; 
 only here and there the flaring masses of flame 
 from the crater made distinguishable, through a 
 rift, something steeped in blood-red light ; all the 
 inhabitants, either individually or in confused 
 crowd, stunned out of their senses by the unusual 
 horror, sought safety in flight.; the pebbles and 
 the rain of ashes fell down on Norbert also, but, 
 after the strange manner of dreams, they did not 
 hurt him, and in the same way, he smelled the 
 deadly sulphur fumes of the air without having 
 his breathing impeded by them. As he stood 
 thus at the edge of the Forum near the Jupiter 
 temple, he suddenly saw Gradiva a short distance 
 in front of him. Until then no thought of her 
 presence there had moved him, but now suddenly 
 
12 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 it seemed natural to him, as she was, of course, a 
 Pompeiian girl, that she was living in her native 
 city and, without his having any suspicion of it, 
 was his contemporary. He recognized her at 
 first glance ; the stone model of her was splendidly 
 striking in every detail, even to her gait ; involun- 
 tarily he designated this as "lente festinans." 
 So with buoyant composure and the calm un- 
 mindfulness of her surroundings peculiar to her, 
 she walked across the flagstones of the Forum to 
 the Temple of Apollo. She seemed not to notice 
 the impending fate of the city, but to be given up 
 to her thoughts; on that account he also forgot 
 the frightful occurrence, for at least a few mo- 
 ments, and because of a feeling that the living 
 reality would quickly disappear from him again, 
 he tried to impress it accurately on his mind. 
 Then, however, he became suddenly aware that 
 if she did not quickly save herself, she must per- 
 ish in the general destruction, and violent fear 
 forced from him a cry of warning. She heard 
 it, too, for her head tiu-ned toward him so that her 
 face now appeared for a moment in full view, yet 
 with an utterly uncomprehending expression; 
 and, without paying any more attention to him, 
 she continued in the same direction as before. 
 At the same time, her face became paler as if 
 it were changing to white marble; she stepped 
 up to the portico of the Temple, and then, be- 
 
GRADIVA 13 
 
 tween the pillars, she sat down on a step and 
 slowly laid her head upon it. Now the peb- 
 bles were falling in such masses that they con- 
 densed into a completely opaque curtain; hasten- 
 ing quickly after her, however, he found his way 
 to the place where she had disappeared from his 
 view, and there she lay, protected by the project- 
 ing roof, stretched out on the broad step, as if 
 for sleep, but no longer breathing, apparently 
 stifled by the sulphur fumes. From Vesuvius 
 the red glow flared over her countenance, which, 
 with closed eyes, was exactly like that of a beau- 
 tiful statue. No fear nor distortion was appar- 
 ent, but a strange equanimity, calmly submitting 
 to the inevitable, was manifest in her features. 
 Yet they quickly became more indistinct as the 
 wind drove to the place the rain of ashes, which 
 spread over them, first like a gray gauze veil, then 
 extinguished the last glimpse of her face, and 
 soon, like a Northern winter snowfall, buried the 
 whole figure under a smooth cover. Outside, the 
 pillars of the Temple of Apollo rose, now, how- 
 ever, only half of them, for the gray fall of ashes 
 heaped itself hkewise against them. 
 
 When Norbert Hanold awoke, he still heard 
 the confused cries of the Pompeiians who were 
 seeking safety, and the dully resounding boom 
 of the SLirf of the turbulent sea. Then he came 
 to his senses ; the sun cast a golden gleam of hght 
 
14 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 across his bed; it was an April morning and out- 
 side sounded the various noises of the city, cries 
 of venders, and the rumbling of vehicles. Yet 
 the dream picture still stood most distinctly in 
 every detail before his open eyes, and some time 
 was necessary before he could get rid of a feeling 
 that he had really been present at the destruction 
 on the bay of Naples, that night nearly two 
 thousand years ago. While he was dressing, he 
 first became gradually free from it, yet he did not 
 succeed, even by the use of critical thought, in 
 breaking away from the idea that Gradiva had 
 lived in Pompeii and had been buried there in 79. 
 Rather, the former conjecture had now become to 
 him an established certainty and now the second 
 also was added, ^ith woful feeling he now 
 viewed in his living-room the old reUef which had 
 assimied new significance for him. It was, in a 
 way, a tombstone by which the artist had pre- 
 served for posterity the hkeness of the girl who 
 had so early departed this hfe. Yet if one looked 
 at her with enlightened understanding, the ex- 
 pression of her whole being left no doubt that, on 
 that fateful night, she had actually lain down to 
 die with just such calm as the dream had showed. 
 An old proverb says that the darlings of the gods 
 are taken from the earth in the full vigor of youth. 
 Without having yet put on a collar, in morning 
 array, with slippers on his feet, Norbert leaned on 
 
GRADIVA IS 
 
 the open window and gazed out. The spring, 
 which had finally arrived in the north also, was 
 without, but announced itself in the great quarry 
 of the city only by the blue sky and the soft air, 
 yet a foreboding of it reached the senses, and 
 awoke in remote, sunny places a desire for leaf- 
 green, fragrance and bird song; a breath of it 
 came as far as this place; the market women on 
 the street had their baskets adorned with a few, 
 bright wild flowers, and at an open window, a 
 canary in a cage warbled his song. Norbert felt 
 sorry for the poor fellow for, beneath the clear 
 tone, in spite of the joyful note, he heard the 
 longing for freedom and the open. 
 
 Yet the thoughts of the young archaeologist 
 dallied but briefly there, for something else had 
 crowded into them. Not until then had he be- 
 come aware that in the dream he had not noticed 
 exactly whether the living Gradiva had really 
 walked as the piece of sculpture represented her, 
 and as the women of to-day, at any rate, did not 
 walk. That was remarkable because it was the 
 basis of his scientific interest in the relief; on the 
 other hand, it could be explained by his excite- 
 ment over the danger to her life. He tried, in 
 vain, however, to recall her gait. 
 
 Then suddenly something hke a thrill passed 
 through him; in the first moment he could not 
 say whence. But then he realized; down in the 
 
16 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 street, with her back toward him, a female, from 
 figure and dress undoubtedly a young lady, was 
 walking along with easy, elastic step. Her dress, 
 which reached only to her ankles, she held lifted 
 a little in her left hand, and he saw that in walking 
 the sole of her slender foot, as it followed, rose 
 for a moment vertically on the tips of the toes. 
 It appeared so, but the distance and the fact 
 that he was looking down did not admit of cer- 
 tainty. 
 
 Quickly Norbert Hanold was in the street 
 without yet knowing exactly how he had come 
 there. He had, like a boy sliding down a railing, 
 flown like lightning down the steps, and was run- 
 ning down among the carriages, carts and people. 
 The latter directed looks of wonder at him, and 
 from several lips came laughing, half mocking 
 exclamations. He was unaware that these re- 
 ferred to him; his glance was seeking the young 
 lady and he thought that he distinguished her 
 dress a few dozen steps ahead of him, but only 
 the upper part ; of the lower half, and of her feet, 
 he could perceive nothing, for they were concealed 
 by the crowd thronging on the sidewalk. 
 
 Now an old, comfortable, vegetable woman 
 stretched her hand toward his sleeve, stopped him 
 and said half grinning, "Say, my dear, you prob- 
 ably drank a httle too much last night and are you 
 looking for your bed here in the street? You 
 
GRADIVA IT 
 
 would do better to go home and look at yourself 
 in the mirror." 
 
 A burst of laughter from those nearby proved 
 it true that he had shown himself in garb not 
 suited to public appearance, and brought him 
 now to realization that he had heedlessly run 
 from his room. That surprised him because he 
 insisted upon conventionahty of attire and, for- 
 saking his project, he quickly returned home, ap- 
 parently however, with his mind still somewhat 
 confused by the dream and dazed by illusion, for 
 he had perceived that, at the laughter and ex- 
 clamation, the young lady had turned her head a 
 moment and he thought he had seen not the face 
 of a stranger, but that of Gradiva looking down 
 upon him. 
 
 Because of considerable property. Doctor Nor- 
 bert Hanold was in the pleasant position of being 
 unhampered master of his own acts and wishes 
 and, upon the appearance of any inchnation, of 
 not depending for expert counsel about it on any 
 higher court than his own decision. In this way 
 he differed most favorably from the canary, who 
 could only warble out, without success, his inborn 
 impulse to get out of the cage into the sunny 
 open. Otherwise, however, the young archaeolo- 
 gist resembled the latter in many respects. He 
 had not come into the world and grown up in 
 
18 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 natural freedom, but already at birth had been 
 hedged in by the grating with which family tra- 
 dition, by education and predestination, had sur- 
 rounded him. From his early childhood no doubt 
 had existed in his parents' house that he, as the 
 only son of a university professor and antiqua- 
 rian, was called upon to preserve, if possible to 
 exalt, by that very activity the glory of his fa- 
 ther's name ; so this business continuity had always 
 seemed to him the natural task of his future. He 
 had clung loyally to it even after the early deaths 
 of his parents had left him absolutely alone; in 
 connection with his brilliantly passed examina- 
 tion in philology, he had taken the prescribed 
 student trip to Italy and had seen in the original 
 a number of old works of art whose imitations, 
 only, had formerly been accessible to him. Noth- 
 ing more instructive for him than the collec- 
 tions of Florence, Rome, Naples could be offered 
 anywhere; he could furnish evidence that the 
 period of his stay there had been used excellently 
 for the enrichment of his knowledge, and he had 
 retm-ned home fully satisfied to devote himself 
 with the new acquisitions to his science. That 
 besides these objects from the distant past, the 
 present still existed round about him, he felt only 
 in the most shadowy way; for his feelings marble 
 and bronze were not dead, but rather the only 
 really vital thing which expressed the purpose 
 
GRADIVA 19 
 
 and value of Human life; and so he sat in the 
 midst of his walls, books and pictures, with no 
 need of any other intercourse, but whenever pos- 
 sible avoiding the latter as an empty squandering 
 of time and only very reluctantly submitting oc- 
 casionally to an inevitable party, attendance at 
 which was required by the connections handed 
 down from his parents. Yet it was known that 
 at such gatherings he was present without eyes or 
 ears for his surroundings, and as soon as it was 
 any way permissible, he always took his leave, 
 under some pretext, at the end of the lunch or 
 dinner, and on the street he greeted none of those 
 whom he had sat with at the table. That served, 
 especially with young ladies, to put him in a 
 rather unfavorable light; for upon meeting even 
 a girl with whom he had, by way of exception, 
 spoken a few words, he looked at her without a 
 greeting as at a quite unknown person whom he 
 had never seen. Although perhaps archaeology, 
 in itself, might be a rather curious science and al- 
 though its alloy had effected a remarkable amal- 
 gamation with Norbert Hanold's nature, it could 
 not exercise much attraction for others and af- 
 forded even him little enjoyment in hfe according 
 to the usual views of youth. Yet with a perhaps 
 kindly intent Nature had added to his blood, with- 
 out his knowing of the possession, a kind of cor- 
 rective of a thoroughly unscientific sort, an unusu- 
 
20 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ally lively imagination which was present not only 
 in dreams, but often in his waking hours, and es- 
 sentially made his mind not preponderantlji 
 adapted to strict research method devoid of inter^^ 
 est. From this endowment, however, originated 
 another similarity between him and the canary. 
 The latter was born in captivity, had never known 
 anything else than the cage which confined him 
 in narrow quarters, but he had an inner feeling 
 that something was lacking to him, and sounded 
 from his throat his desire for the unknown. Thus 
 Norbert Hanold understood it, pitied him for it, 
 returned to his room, leaned again from the win- 
 dow and was thereupon moved by a feeling that 
 he, too, lacked a nameless something. Meditation 
 on it, therefore, could be of no use. The indefi- 
 nite stir of emotion came from the mild, spring 
 air, the sunbeams and the broad expanse with its 
 fragrant breath, and formed a comparison for 
 him; he was likewise sitting in a cage behind a 
 grating. Yet this idea was immediately followed 
 by the palUating one that his position was more 
 advantageous than that of the canary for he had 
 in his possession wings which were hindered by 
 nothing from flying out into the open at his pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 But that was an idea which developed more 
 upon reflection. Norbert gave himself up for a 
 time to this occupation, yet it was not long before 
 
GRADIVA 21 
 
 the project of a spring journey assumed definite 
 shape. This he carried out that very day, packed 
 a light vahse, and before he went south by the 
 night express, cast at nightfall another regretful 
 departing glance on Gradiva, who, steeped in the 
 last rays of the sun, seemed to step out with more 
 buoyancy than ever over the invisible stepping- 
 stones beneath her feet. Even if the impulse 
 for travel had originated in a nameless feehng, 
 further reflection had, however, granted, as a 
 matter of course, that it must serve a scientific 
 purpose. It had occurred to him that he had 
 neglected to inform himself with accuracy about 
 some important archaeological questions in con- 
 nection with some statues in Rome and, without 
 stopping on the way, he made the journey of a 
 day and a half thither. 
 
 Not very many personally experience the 
 beauty of going from Germany to Italy in the 
 spring when one is- young, wealthy and independ- 
 ent, for even those endowed with the three latter 
 requirements are not always accessible to such a 
 feehng for beauty, especially if they (and alas 
 they form the majority) are in couples on the 
 days or weeks after a wedding, for such allow 
 nothing to pass without an extraordinary delight, 
 which is expressed in numerous superlatives; and 
 finally they bring back home, as profit, only what 
 
22 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 they would have discovered, felt or enjoyed ex- 
 actly as much by staying there. In the spring 
 such duahsts usually swarm over the Alpine 
 passes in exactly opposite direction to the birds 
 of passage. During the whole journey they 
 billed and cooed around Norbert as if they were 
 in a rolling dove-cot, and for the first time in his 
 life he was compelled to observe his fellow beings 
 more closely with eye and ear. Although, from 
 their speech, they were all German covmtry peo- 
 ple, his racial identity with them awoke in him 
 no feeling of pride, but the rather opposite one, 
 that he had done reasonably well to bother as lit- 
 tle as possible vrith the Tiomo sapiens of Linnaean 
 classification, especially in connection with the 
 feminine half of this species; for the first time 
 he saw also, in his immediate vicinity, people 
 brought together by the mating impulse without 
 his being able to understand what had been the 
 mutual cause. It remained incomprehensible to 
 him why the women had chosen these men, and 
 still more perplexing why the choice of the men 
 had fallen upon these women. Every time he 
 raised his eyes, his glance had to fall on the face 
 of some one of them and it found none which 
 charmed the eye by outer attraction or possessed 
 indication of intellect or good nature. To be 
 sure, he' lacked a standard for measuring, for of 
 course one could not compare the women of to- 
 
GRADIVA 28 
 
 day, witH the sublime beauty of the old works of 
 art, yet he had a dark suspicion that he was not 
 to blame for this unkind view, but that in all ex- 
 pressions there was something lacking which or- 
 dinary life was in duty bound to offer. So he 
 reflected for many hours on the strange impulses 
 of human beings, and came to the conclusion that 
 of all their follies, marriage, at any rate, took the 
 prize as the greatest and most incomprehensible 
 one, and the senseless wedding trips to Italy 
 somehow capped the climax of this buffoonery. 
 
 Again, however, he was reminded of the canary 
 that he had left behind in captivity, for he also 
 sat here in a cage, cooped in by the faces of young 
 bridal couples which were as rapturous as vapid, 
 past which his glance could only occasdonally 
 stray through the window. Therefore it can be 
 easily explained that the things passing outside 
 before his eyes made other impressions on him 
 than when he had seen them some years before. 
 The olive foliage had more of a silver sheen; the 
 solitary, towering cypresses and pines here and 
 there were delineated with more beautiful and 
 more distinctive outlines; the places situated on 
 the mountain heights seemed to him more charm- 
 ing, as if each one, in a manner, were an individual 
 with different expression; and Trasimene Lake 
 seemed to him of a soft blue such as he had never 
 noticed in any surface of water. He had a feel- 
 
24 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ing that a Nature vmknown to him was svirround- 
 ing the railway tracks, as if he must have passed 
 through these places before in continual twilight, 
 or during a gray rainfall, and was now seeing 
 them for the first time in their golden abundance 
 of color. A few times he surprised himself in a 
 desire, formerly unknown to him, to alight and 
 seek afoot the way to this or that place because 
 it looked to him as if it mi^t be concealing some- 
 thing peculiar or mysterious. Yet he did not 
 allow himself to be misled by such unreasonable 
 impulses, but the "diretissimo" took him directly 
 to Rome where, already, before the entrance into 
 the station, the ancient world with the ruins of 
 the temple of Minerva Medica received him. 
 When he had finally freed himself from his cage 
 filled with "inseparables," he immediately secured 
 accommodations in a hotel well known to him, in 
 order to look about from there, without exces- 
 sive haste, for a private house satisfactory to 
 him. 
 
 Such a one he had not yet found in the course 
 of the next day, but returned to his "albergo" 
 again in the evening and went to sleep rather ex- 
 hausted by the unaccustomed Italian air, the 
 strong sun, much wandering about and the noise 
 of the streets. Soon consciousness began to fade, 
 but just as he was about to fall asleep he was 
 again awakened, for his room was connected with 
 
GRADIVA 25 
 
 the adjoining one by a door concealed only by a 
 wardrobe, and into this came two guests, who had 
 taken possession of it that morning. From the 
 voices which sounded through the thin partition, 
 they were a man and a woman who unmistakably 
 belonged to that class of German spring birds of 
 passage with whom he had yesterday journeyed 
 hither from Florence. Their frame of mind 
 seemed to give decidedly favorable testimony 
 concerning the hotel cuisine and it might be due 
 to the good quality of a Castellin-romani wine 
 that they exchanged ideas and feelings most dis- 
 tinctly and audibly in North German tongue: 
 
 "My only Augustus." 
 
 "My sweet Gretchen." 
 
 "Now again we have each other." 
 
 "Yes, at last we are alone again." 
 
 "Must we do more sight-seeing to-morrow?" 
 
 "At breakfast we shall look in Baedeker for 
 what is stiU to be done." 
 
 "My only Augustus, to me you are much more 
 pleasing than Apollo Belvedere." 
 
 "And I have often thought, my sweet 
 Gretchen, that you are much more beautiful than 
 the Capitoline Venus." 
 
 "Is the volcano that we want to chmb near 
 here?" 
 
 "No, I think we'll have to ride a few hours 
 more in the train to get there." 
 
26 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 "If it should begin to belch flame just as we 
 got to the middle, what would you do?" 
 
 "Then my only thought would be to save you, 
 and I would take you in my arms — so." 
 
 "Don't scratch yourself on that pin!" 
 
 "I can think of nothing more beautiful than to 
 shed my blood for you." 
 
 "My only Augustus." 
 
 "My sweet Gretchen." 
 
 With that the conversation ceased, Norbert 
 heard another iU-defined rustling and moving of 
 chairs, then it became quiet and he fell back into 
 a doze which transported him to Pompeii just 
 as Vesuvius again began its eruption. A vivid 
 throng of fleeing people caught him and among 
 them he saw Apollo Belvedere lift up the Capi- 
 toline Venus, take her away and place her safely 
 upon some object in a dark shadow; it seemed to 
 be a carriage or cart on which she was to be car- 
 ried off, for a rattling sound was soon heard from 
 that direction. This mythological occurrence did 
 not amaze the young archaeologist, but it struck 
 him as remarkable that the two talked German, 
 not Greek, to each other for, as they half regained 
 their senses, he heard them say: 
 
 "My sweet Gretchen." 
 
 "My only Augustus." 
 
 But after that the dream picture changed com- 
 pletely. Absolute silence took the place of the 
 
GRADIVA 2Tf 
 
 confused sound, and instead of smoke and fire- 
 glow, bright, hot sunlight rested on the ruins of 
 the buried city. This hkewise changed grad- 
 ually, became a bed on whose white linen golden 
 beams circled up to his eyes, and Norbert Han- 
 old awoke in the scintillating spring morning of 
 Rome. 
 
 Within him, also, however, something had 
 changed; why, he could not surmise, but a 
 strangely oppressive feeling had again taken pos- 
 session of him, a f eehng that he was imprisoned in 
 a cage which this time was called Rome. As he 
 opened the window, there screamed up from the 
 street dozens of venders' cries far more shrill to 
 his ear than those in his German home; he had 
 come only from one noisy quarry to another, and 
 a strangely uncanny horror of antique collections, 
 of meeting there Apollo Belvedere or the Capito- 
 line Venus, frightened him away. Thus, after 
 brief consideration, he refrained from his inten- 
 tion of looking for a dwelling, hastily packed 
 his valise again and went farther south by train. 
 To escape the "inseparables," he did this in a 
 third class coach, expecting at the same time to 
 find there an interesting and scientifically useful 
 company of Italian folk-types, the former models 
 of antique works of art. Yet he found nothing 
 but the usual dirt, Monopol cigars which smelled 
 horribly, little warped fellows beating about with 
 
28 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 arms and legs, and members of the female sex, 
 
 in contrast to whom his coupled covmtry- women 
 
 seemed to his memory almost hke Olympian 
 
 goddesses. 
 
 ■ •••••• 
 
 Two days later Norhert Hanold occupied a 
 rather questionable space called a "room" in 
 Hotel Diomed beside the eucalyptus-guarded 
 "ingresso" to the excavations of Pompeii. He 
 had intended to stay in Naples for some time to 
 study again more closely the sculptures and wall- 
 paintings in the Museo Nazionale, but he had 
 had an experience there similar to that in Rome. 
 In the room for the collection of Pompeiian 
 household furniture he found himself wrapped in 
 a cloud of feminine, ultra-fashionable travel-cos- 
 tumes, which had doubtless all quickly replaced 
 the virgin radiance of satin, silk or lace bridal fin- 
 ery ; each one clung to the arm of a young or old 
 companion, likewise faultlessly attired, according 
 to men's fashion standards ; and Norbert's newly 
 gained insight into a field of knowledge formerly 
 unknown to him had advanced so far as to permit 
 him to recognize them at first glance ; every man 
 was Augustus, every girl was Gretchen. Only 
 this came to light here by means of other forms of 
 conversation tempered, moderated and modified 
 by the ear of pubUcity. 
 
 "Oh, look, that was practical of them; we'll 
 
^ GRADIVA- gg 
 
 surely have to get a meat warmer like that too." 
 
 "Yes, but for the food that my wife cooks it 
 must be made of silver." 
 
 "How do you know that what I cook will taste 
 so good to you?" 
 
 The question was accompanied by a roguish, 
 arch glance and was answered in the affirmative, 
 with a glance varnished with lacquer, "What you 
 serve to me can be nothing but delicious." 
 
 "No; that surely is a thimble! Did the people 
 of those days have needles?" 
 
 "It almost seems so, but you could not have 
 done anything with that, my darling, it would be 
 much too large even for your thumb." 
 
 "Do you really think that? And do you like 
 slender fingers better than broad ones ?" 
 
 "Yours I do not need to see ; by touch I could 
 discover them, in the deepest darkness, among all 
 the others in the world." 
 
 "That is really awfuUy interesting. Do we 
 still really have to go to Pompeii also?" 
 
 "No, that will hardly pay; there are only old 
 stones and rubbish there ; whatever was of value, 
 Baedeker says, was brought here. I fear the sun 
 there would be too hot for your delicate com- 
 plexion and I could never forgive myself that." 
 
 "What if you should suddenly have a negress 
 for a wife?" 
 
 "No, my imagination fortunately does not 
 
30 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 reach that far, but a freckle on your little nose 
 would make me unhappy. I think, if it is agree- 
 able to you, we'll go to Capri to-morrow, my dear. 
 There everything is said to be very comfortable 
 and in the wonderful light of the Blue Grotto I 
 shall first reahze completely what a great prize I 
 have drawn in the lottery of happiness." 
 
 "You — if any one hears that, I shall be almost 
 ashamed. But wherever you take me, it is agree- 
 able to me, and makes no difference, for I have 
 you with me." 
 
 Augustus and Gretchen over again, somewhat 
 toned down and tempered for eye and ear. It 
 seemed to Norbert Hanold that he had had thin 
 honey poured upon him from all sides and that he 
 had to dispose of it swallow by swallow. A sick 
 feeling came over him and he ran out of the 
 Museo Nazionale to the nearest "osteria" to 
 drink a glass of vermuth. Again and again the 
 thought intruded itself upon his mind: — Why did 
 these hundred fold dualities fill the museums of 
 Florence, Rome, Naples, instead of devoting 
 themselves to their plural occupations in their na- 
 tive Germany? ,Yet from a number of chats and 
 tender talks, it seemed to him that the majority 
 of these bird couples did not intend to nest in the 
 rubbish of Pompeii, but considered a side trip 
 to Capri much more profitable, and thence orig- 
 inated his sudden impulse to do what they did not 
 
GRADIVA SI 
 
 do. There was at any rate offered to him a 
 chance to be freed from the main flock of this mi- 
 gration and to find what he was vainly seeking 
 here in Italy. That was also a duahty, not a 
 wedding duality, but two members of the same 
 family without cooing bills, silence and science, 
 two cahn sisters with whom only one could count 
 upon satisfactory shelter. His desire for them 
 contained something formerly unknown to him; 
 if it had not been a contradiction in itself, he 
 could have applied to this impulse the epithet 
 "passionate" — and an hour later he was already 
 sitting in a "carrozzella" which bore him through 
 the interminable Portiei and Resina. The jour- 
 ney was hke one through a street splendidly 
 adorned for an old Roman victor; to the right 
 and left almost every house spread out to dry in 
 the sun, like yellow tapestry hangings, a super- 
 abundant wealth of "pasta di Napoli," the great- 
 est dainty of the covmtry, thick or thin macaroni, 
 vermicelli, spaghetti, canelloni and fidelini, to 
 which smoke of fats from cook-shops, dust-clouds, 
 flies and fleas, the fish scales flying about in the 
 air, chimney smoke and other day and night in- 
 fluences lent the familiar delicacy of its taste. 
 Then the cone of Vesuvius looked down close by 
 across brown lava fields ; at the right extended the 
 gulf of shimmering blue, as if composed of liquid 
 malachite and lapis lazuli. The little nutshell on 
 
32 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 wheels flew, as if whirled forth by a mad storm 
 and as if every moment must be its last, over the 
 dreadful pavement of Torre del Greco, rattled 
 tlirough Torre dell'Annunziata, reached the Dios- 
 curi, Hotel Suisse and Hotel Diomed, which 
 measured their power of attraction in a ceaseless, 
 silent, but ferocious struggle, and stopped before 
 the latter whose classic name, again, as on his 
 first visit, had determined the choice of the young 
 archaeologist. With apparently, at least, the 
 greatest composure, however, the modern Swiss 
 competitor viewed this event before its very door. 
 It was calm because no different water from what 
 it used was boiled in the pots of its classic neigh- 
 bor; and the antique splendors temptingly dis- 
 played for sale over there had not come to light 
 again after two thousand years under the ashes, 
 any more than the ones which it had. 
 
 Thus Norbert Hanold, contrary to all expecta- 
 tions and intentions, had been transported in a 
 few days from northern Germany to Pompeii, 
 found the Diomed not too much filled with hu- 
 man guests, but on the other hand populously 
 inhabited by the musca domestica communis, the 
 common house-fly. He had never been subject 
 to violent emotions; yet a hatred of these 
 two-winged creatures burned within him; he con- 
 sidered them the basest evil invention of Nature, 
 on their account much preferred the winter to the 
 
GRADIVA 33 
 
 summer as tHe only time suited to human life, and 
 recognized in them invincible proof against the 
 existence of a rational world-system. Now they 
 received him here several months earlier than he 
 would have fallen to their infamy in Germany, 
 rushed immediately about him in dozens, as upon 
 a patiently awaited victim, whizzed before his 
 eyes, buzzed in his ears, tangled themselves in his 
 hair, tickled his nose, forehead and hands. 
 Therein many reminded him of honeymoon 
 couples, probably were also saying to each other 
 in their language, "My only Augustus" and "My 
 sweet Gretchen"; in the mind of the tormented 
 man rose a longing for a "scacciamosche," a splen- 
 didly made fly-flapper like one unearthed from 
 a burial vault, which he had seen in the Etruscan 
 museum in Bologna. Thus, in antiquity, this 
 worthless creature had likewise been the scourge 
 of humanity, more vicious and more inevitable 
 than scorpions, venomous snakes, tigers and 
 sharks, which were bent upon only physical in- 
 jury, rending or devouring the ones attacked; 
 against the former one could guard himself by 
 thoughtful conduct. From the common house- 
 fly, however, there was no protection, and it para- 
 lyzed, disturbed and finally shattered the psychic 
 life of human beings, their capacity for thinking 
 and working, every lofty flight of imagination 
 and every beautiful feeling. Hunger or thirst 
 
Si DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 for blood did not impel them, but solely the dia- 
 bohcal desire to torture; it was the "Ding an sich" 
 in which absolute evil had found its incarnation. 
 The Etruscan "scacciamosche," a wooden handle 
 with a bunch of fine leather strips fastened to it, 
 proved the following: they had destroyed the 
 most exalted poetic thoughts in the mind of 
 Aeschylus ; they had caused the chisel of Phidias 
 to make an irremediable slip, had run over the 
 brow of Zeus, the breast of Aphrodite, and from 
 head to foot of all Olympian gods and goddesses; 
 and Norbert felt in his soul that the service of a 
 human being was to be estimated, above all, ac- 
 cording to the number of flies which he had killed, 
 pierced, burned up or exterminated in hecatombs 
 during his life, as avenger of his whole race from 
 remotest antiquity. 
 
 For the achievement of such fame, he lacked 
 here the necessary weapon, and like the great- 
 est battle hero of antiquity, who had, however, 
 been alone and unable to do otherwise, he 
 left the field, or rather his room, in view of the 
 hundredfold overwhelnjing number of the com- 
 mon foe. Outside it dawned upon him that he 
 had thereby done in a small way what he would 
 have to repeat on a larger scale on the morrow. 
 Pompeii, too, apparently offered no peacefully 
 gratifying abode for his needs. To this idea was 
 
GRADIVA 35 
 
 added, at least dimly, another, that his dissatis- 
 faction was certainly caused not by his surround- 
 ings alone, but to a degree found its origin in 
 him. To be sure, flies had always been very re- 
 pulsive to him, but they had never before trans- 
 ported him into such raging fury as this. On 
 account of the journey his nerves were undeni- 
 ably in an excited and irritable condition, for 
 which indoor air and overwork at home during 
 the winter had probably begun to pave the way. 
 He felt that he was out of sorts because he lacked 
 something without being able to explain what, 
 and this ill-humor he took everywhere with him ; 
 of course flies and bridal couples swarming en 
 masse were not calculated to make life agreeable 
 anywhere. Yet if he did not wish to wrap him- 
 self in a thick cloud of self -righteousness, it could 
 not remain concealed from him that he was travel- 
 ing around Italy just as aimless, senseless, blind 
 and deaf as they, only with considerably less ca- 
 pacity for enjoyment. For his traveling com- 
 panion, science, had, most decidedly, much of an 
 old Trappist about her, did not open her mouth 
 when she was not spoken to, and it seemed to 
 him that he was almost forgetting in what lan- 
 guage he had communed with her. 
 
 It was now too late in the day tcfego into Pom- 
 peii through the "ingresso." Norbert femem- 
 
86 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 bered a circuit he had once made on the old city- 
 wall, and attempted to mount the latter by means 
 of all sorts of bushes and wild growth. Thus he 
 wandered along for some distance a little above 
 the city of graves, which lay on his right, motion- 
 less and quiet. It looked like a dead rubbish field 
 already almost covered with shadow, for the eve- 
 ning sun stood in the west not far from the edge 
 of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Round about on the 
 other hand it stiU bathed all the hilltops and fields 
 with an enchanting brilliancy of life, gilded the 
 smoke-cone rising above the Vesuvius crater and 
 clad the peaks and pinnacles of Monte Sant' An- 
 gelo in purple. High and solitary rose Monte 
 Epomeo from the sparkling, blue sea glittering 
 with golden light, from which Cape Misenum 
 reared itself with dark outline, like a mysterious, 
 titanic structure. Wherever the gaze rested, a 
 wonderful picture was spread combining charm 
 and sublimity, remote past and joyous present. 
 Norbert Hanold had expected to find here what 
 he longed for vaguely. Yet he was not in the 
 mood for it, although no bridal couples and flies 
 molested him on the deserted wall; even nature 
 was unable to offer him what he lacked in his sur- 
 roundings and within himself. With a calmness 
 bordering closely on indifference, he let his eyes 
 pass over the all-pervading beauty, and did not 
 regret in the least that it was growing pale and 
 
GRADIVA 37 
 
 fading away in the sunset, but returned to the 
 Diomed, as he had come, dissatisfied. 
 
 But as he had now, although with ill-success, 
 been conveyed to this place through his indiscre- 
 tion, he reached the decision overnight, to get 
 from the folly he had committed at least one 
 day of scientific profit and went to Pompeii on 
 the regular road as soon as the "ingresso" was 
 opened in the morning. In little groups com- 
 manded by official guides, armed with red Baede- 
 kers or their foreign cousins, longing for secret 
 excavations of their own, there wandered before 
 and behind him the population of the two hotels. 
 The still fresh, morning air was filled almost ex- 
 clusively by English or Anglo-American chatter ; 
 the German couples were making each other mu- 
 tually happy with German sweets and inspiration 
 up there on Capri behind Monte Sant' Angelo 
 at the breakfast table of the Pagano. Norbert 
 remembered how to free himself soon, by well 
 chosen words, combined with a good "mancia," 
 from the burden of a "guida" and was able to 
 pursue his purposes alone and unhindered. It 
 afforded him some satisfaction to know that 
 he possessed a faultless memory; wherever his 
 glance rested, everything lay and stood exactly as 
 he remembered it, as if only yesterday he had 
 imprinted it in his mind by means of expert ob- 
 
38 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 servation. This continually repeated experience 
 brought, however, the added feeling that his pres- 
 ence there seemed really very unnecessary, and a 
 decided indifference took possession of his eyes 
 and his intellect more and more, as during the 
 evening on the wall. Although, when he looked 
 up, the pine-shaped smoke-cone of Vesuvius gen- 
 erally stood before him against the blue sky, yet, 
 remarkably, it did not once appear in his memory 
 that he had dreamed some time ago that he had 
 been present at the destruction of Pompeii by the 
 volcanic eruption of 79. Wandering around for 
 hours made him tired and half -sleepy, of course, 
 yet he felt not the least suggestion of anything 
 dreamlike, but there lay about him only a con- 
 fusion of fragments of ancient gate arches, pillars 
 and walls significant to the highest degree for 
 archaeology, but, viewed without the esoteric aid 
 of this science, really not much else than a big 
 pile of rubbish, neatly arranged, to be sure, but 
 extremely devoid of interest; and although sci- 
 ence and dreams were wont formerly to stand on 
 footings exactly opposed, they had apparently 
 here to-day come to an agreement to withdraw 
 their aid from Norbert Hanold and deliver him 
 over absolutely to the aimlessness of his walking 
 and standing around. 
 
 So he had wandered in all directions from the 
 Forum to the Amphitheater, from the Porta di 
 
GRADIVA 39 
 
 Stabia to the Porta del Vesuvio through the 
 Street of Tombs as well as through countless 
 others, and the sun had likewise, in the mean- 
 while, made its accustomed morning journey to 
 the position where it usually changes to the more 
 comfortable descent toward the sea. Thereby, 
 to the great satisfaction of their misunderstood, 
 hoarsely eloquent guides, it gave the English 
 and American men and women, forced to go there 
 by a traveler's sense of duty, a signal to become 
 mindful of the superior comfort of sitting at the 
 lunch-tables of the twin hotels; besides they had 
 seen with their own eyes everything that could be 
 required for conversation on the other side of the 
 ocean and channel; so the separate groups, sati- 
 ated by the past, started on the return, ebbed in 
 common movement down through the Via Ma- 
 rina, in order not to lose meals at the, to be sure 
 somewhat euphemistically Lucullan, tables of the 
 present, in the house of Diomed or of Mr. Swiss. 
 In consideration of all the outer and inner cir- 
 cimistances, this was doubtless also the wisest 
 thing that they could do, for the noon sun of May 
 was decidedly well disposed toward the lizards, 
 butterflies and other winged inhabitants or visi- 
 tors of the extensive mass of ruins, but for the 
 northern complexion of a Madame or Miss its 
 perpendicular obtrusiveness was unquestionably 
 beginning to become less kindly, and, supposedly 
 
40 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 in some causal connection with that, the "charm- 
 ings" had already in the last hour considerably 
 diminished, the "shockings" had increased in the 
 same proportion, and the masculine "ah's" pro- 
 ceeding from rows of teeth even more widely dis- 
 tended than before had begun a noticeable tran- 
 sition to yawning. 
 
 It was remarkable, however, that simultan- 
 eously with their vanishing, what had formerly 
 been the city of Pompeii assumed an entirely 
 changed appearance, but not a living one; it 
 now appeared rather to be becoming completely 
 petrified in dead immobility. Yet out of it 
 stirred a feeling that death was beginning to talk, 
 although not in a manner intelligible to human 
 ears. To be sure, here and there was a sound as if 
 a whisper were proceeding from the stone which, 
 however, only the softly murmuring south wind, 
 Atabulus, awoke, he who, two thousand years 
 ago, had buzzed in this fashion about the temples, 
 halls and houses, and was now carrying on his 
 playful game with the green, shimmering stalks 
 on the low ruins. From the coast of Africa he 
 often rushed across casting forth wild, full blasts : 
 he was not doing that to-day, but was gently fan- 
 ning again the old acquaintances which had come 
 to light again. He could not, however, refrain 
 from his natural tendency to devastate, and blew 
 
GRADIVA 4.1 
 
 with hot breath, even though lightly, on every- 
 thmg that he encountered on the way. 
 
 In this, the sun, his eternally youthful mother, 
 helped him. She strengthened his fiery breath, 
 and accomplished, besides, what he could not, 
 steeped everything with trembling, glittering, 
 dazzling splendor. As with a golden eraser, she 
 effaced from the edges of the houses on the 
 semitae and crepidine viarum, as the sidewalks 
 were once called, every shght shadow, cast into all 
 the vestibules, inner courts, peristyles and bal- 
 conies her luminous radiance, or desultory rays 
 where a shelter blocked her direct approach. 
 Hardly anywhere was there a nook which success- 
 fully protected itself against the ocean of light 
 and veiled itself in a dusky, silver web; every 
 street lay between the old walls like long, rip- 
 pling, white strips of linen spread out to bleach ; 
 and without exception all were equally motion- 
 less and mute, for not only had the last of the 
 rasping and nasal tones of the English and Amer- 
 ican messengers disappeared, but the former 
 shght evidences of lizard- and butterfly-life 
 seemed also to have left the silent city of ruins. 
 They had not really done so, but the gaze per- 
 ceived no more movement from them. 
 
 As had been the custom of their ancestors out 
 on the mountain slopes and cliff walls, for thou- 
 
42 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 sands of years, when the great Pan laid himself 
 to sleep, here, too, in order not to disturb him, 
 they had stretched themselves out motionless or, 
 folding their wings, had squatted here and there; 
 and it seemed as if, in this place, they felt even 
 more strongly the command of the hot, holy, 
 noonday quiet in whose ghostly hour life must he 
 silent and suppressed, because during it the dead 
 awake and begin to talk in toneless spirit-lan- 
 guage. 
 
 This changed aspect which the things roimd 
 about had assumed really thrust itself less upon 
 the vision than it aroused the emotions, or, more 
 correctly, an unnamed sixth sense; this latter, 
 however, was stimulated so strongly and persist- 
 ently that a person endowed with it could not 
 throw off the effect produced upon him. To be 
 sure, of those estimable boarders already busy 
 with their soup spoons at the two "alberghi" near 
 the "ingresso," hardly a man or woman would 
 have been counted among those thus invested, but 
 Nature had once bestowed this great attention 
 upon Norbert Hanold and he had to submit to its 
 effects, not at all because he had an understanding 
 with it, however, for he wished nothing at all and 
 desired nothing more than that he might be sitting 
 quietly in his study with an instructive book in his 
 hand, instead of having undertaken this aimless 
 spring journey. Yet as he had turned back from 
 
GRADIVA 43 
 
 the Street of Tombs through the Hercules gate 
 \nto the center of the city and at Casa di Sallustio 
 had turned to the left, quite without purpose or 
 thought, into the narrow "vicolo," suddenly that 
 sixth sense was awakened in him; but this last 
 expression was not really fitting, rather he was 
 transported by it into a strangely dreamy condi- 
 tion, about half way between a waking state and 
 loss of senses. As if guarding a secret, every- 
 where round about him, suffused in light, lay 
 deathly silence, so breathless that even his own 
 lungs hardly dared to take in air. He stood at 
 the intersection of two streets where the Vicolo 
 Mercurio crossed the broader Strada di Mercurio, 
 which stretched out to right and left; in answer 
 to the god of commerce, business and trades had 
 formerly had their abodes here; the street cor- 
 ners spoke silently of it ; many shops with broken 
 counters, inlaid with marble, opened out upon 
 them; here the arrangement indicated a bakery, 
 there, a number of large, convex, earthenware 
 jugs, an oil or flour business. Opposite more 
 slender, two-handled jars set into the couftters 
 showed that the space behind them had been a 
 bar-room; surely in the evening, slaves and maids 
 of the neighborhood might have thronged here to 
 get wine for their masters in their own jugs; one 
 could see that the now illegible inscription inlaid 
 with mosaic on the sidewalk in front of the shop 
 
44 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 was worn by many feet ; probably it had held out 
 to passers-by a recommendation of the excellent 
 wine. On the outer-wall, at about half the height 
 of a man, was visible a "graffito" probably 
 scratched into the plastering, with his finger-nail 
 or an iron nail, by a schoolboy, perhaps de- 
 risively explaining the praise, in this way, that 
 the owner's wine owed its peerlessness to a 
 generous addition of water. For from the 
 scratch there seemed raised before Norbert Han- 
 old's eyes the word "caupo," or was it an il- 
 lusion. Certainly he could not settle it. He 
 possessed a certain skill in deciphering "gra,ffiti" 
 which were difficult, and had already accom- 
 plished widely recognized work in that field, 
 yet at this time it completely failed him. Not 
 only that, he had a feeling that he did not un- 
 derstand any Latin, and it was absurd of him 
 to wish to read what a Pompeiian school youth 
 had scratched into the wall two thousand years 
 before. 
 
 Not only had all his science left him, but 
 it left him without the least desire to regain it ; he 
 remembered it as from a great distance, and he 
 felt that it had been an old, dri^d-up, boresome 
 aunt, dullest and most superfluous creature in the 
 world. What she uttered with puckered lips and 
 sapient mien, and presented as wisdom, was all 
 
GRADIVA m 
 
 vain, empty pompousness, and merely gnawed 
 at the dry rind of the fruit of knowledge without 
 revealing anything of its content, the germ of 
 life, or bringing anything to the point of inner, 
 intelligent enjoyment. What it taught was a 
 lifeless, archaeological view and what came from 
 its mouth was a dead, philological language. 
 These helped in no way to a comprehension with 
 soul, mind and heart, as the saying is, but he, who 
 possessed a desire for that, had to stand alone 
 here, the only living person in the hot noonday 
 silence among the remains of the past, in order 
 not to see with physical eyes nor hear with cor- 
 poreal ears. Then something came forth every- 
 where without movement and a soundless speech 
 began; then the sun dissolved the tomb-like rigid- 
 ity of the old stones, a glowing thrill passed 
 through them, the dead awoke, and Pompeii be- 
 gan to live again. 
 
 The thoughts in Norbert Hanold's mind were 
 not really blasphemous, but he had an indefinite 
 feeling deserving of that adjective, and with this, 
 standing motionless, he looked before him down 
 the Strada di Mercuric toward the city-wall. 
 The angular lava-blocks of its pavement stiU lay 
 as faultlessly fitted together as before the devas- 
 tation, and each one was of a light-gray color, yet 
 such dazzling luster brooded over them that they 
 
46 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 stretched like a quilted silver-white ribbon pass- 
 ing in faintly glowing void between the silent 
 walls and by the side of column fragments. 
 
 Then suddenly — 
 
 With open eyes he gazed along the street, yet 
 it seemed to him as if he were doing it in a dream. 
 A little to the right something suddenly stepped 
 forth from the Casa di Castore e PoUuce, and 
 across the lava stepping-stones, which led from 
 the house to the other side of the Strada di Mer- 
 curio, Gradiva stepped buoyantly. 
 
 Quite indubitably it was she; even if the sun- 
 beams 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-rehef . Her head, 
 whose crown was entwined with a scarf which fell 
 to her neck, inchned 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, how- 
 ever, it was not a stone representation, everything 
 in uniform' colorlessness ; 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 tem- 
 ples, stood out, with golden-brown radiance, in 
 
GRADIVA 47 
 
 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, walk- 
 ing 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 be- 
 came 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 \\rhite, gleaming lava pave- 
 ment. 
 
 Gradiva crossed the stepping-stones with her 
 calm buoyancy, and now, turning her back. 
 
48 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 walked along on the opposite sidewalk; her desti- 
 nation seemed to he the house of Adonis. Before 
 it she stopped a moment, too, hut passed then, 
 as if after further deliheration, 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 numer- 
 ous 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 disap- 
 peared suddenly before the house of Meleager. 
 Norbert Hanold still stood without having moved 
 a limb. With his eyes, and this time with his cor- 
 poreal ones, he had surveyed, step by step, her 
 vanishing form. Now, at length, he drew a deep 
 
GRADIVA 49 
 
 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 noth- 
 ing, 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 Mercuric 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 cen- 
 
BO DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 tury before the destruction of Pompeii. A de- 
 scendant 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 pic- 
 tured 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 
 frojm his store of knowledge was added the fact 
 that Cleopatra was the name of the young wife 
 of Oeneus' 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-liter- 
 ary-historical-archaeological juggling in his head. 
 
 When he had passed the house of Castor and 
 PoUux and that of the Centaur, he stood before 
 the Casa di Meleagro from whose threshold there 
 looked up at him, still discernible, the inlaid greet- 
 ing "Ave." On the wall of the vestibule. Mer- 
 cury was handing Fortuna a pouch filled with 
 
GRADIVA 51 
 
 money; that probably indicated, allegorically, the 
 riches and other fortunate circumstances of the 
 former dweller. Behind this opened up the in- 
 ner court, the center of which was occupied by a 
 marble table supported by three griffins. 
 
 Empty and silent, the room lay there, appear- 
 ing absolutely unfamiliar to the man, as he en- 
 tered, 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 per- 
 istyle 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 center was a spring with a beautifully 
 wrought enclosure, which served as a fish-pool. 
 Apparently the house must have been the dwell- 
 ing 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 Gra- 
 diva had gone into Meleager's house, she had 
 
52 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 already dissolved again into nothing. At the 
 rear of the peristyle was another room, an oecus, 
 the former dining-room, likewise surromided on 
 three sides by pillars painted yellow, which shim- 
 mered from a distance in the light, as if they were 
 encrusted with gold. Between them, however, 
 shone a red far more dazzhng 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 oecus, as it did 
 atthe 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 tmdulating 
 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 
 
GRADIVA 53 
 
 senses, witE 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 slvmiber wand of the old vanquisher 
 of gods and men, but not with heavy stupor ; only 
 a dreamily sweet lovelinesa floated about his con- 
 sciousness. 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 re- 
 mained 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, unmis- 
 takably, to whom it belonged. He had found 
 what he was looking for, what had driven him 
 
54 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 con- 
 formity 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 color; apparently it consisted of 
 a fine, extremely soft, woolen 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 invol- 
 untarily he had raised his hand to his soft Panama 
 hat and removed it; and now he said in Greek, 
 
GRADIVA 56 
 
 "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 expres- 
 sion 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 sub- 
 stituted Latin for it and asked: "Was your fa- 
 ther a distinguished Pompeiian citizen of Latin 
 origin?" 
 
 To this she was equally silent, only about her 
 dehcately curved lips there was a slight quiver 
 as if she were repressing a burst of laughter. 
 Now a feeling of fright came upon him; appar- 
 ently she was sitting there before him like a si- 
 lent 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 cen- 
 turies before, or would have been so for a person 
 hearing it in a different state of mind. Yet every 
 
56 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 archaeologist suddenly realized that he 
 had already heard it thus in his imagination, and 
 involuntarily he gave audible expression to his 
 feehng, "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 re- 
 sponded, "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 hipi formally; as she did it, he un- 
 derstood 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 mar- 
 ble. May I beg you — rest it again on the step 
 in that way." 
 
 While he was speaking, something peculiar 
 
GRADIVA 57 
 
 had occurred. A golden butterfly, faintly 
 tinged with red on the inner edge of its upper 
 wing, fluttered from the poppies toward the pil- 
 lars, 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, slen- 
 der and tall, for she stood up with deliberate 
 haste, curtly and silently directed at Norbert an- 
 other glance, in which something suggested that 
 she considered him demented; then, thrusting her 
 foot forward, she walked out in her character- 
 istic 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 
 occ'u-red 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 Mediter- 
 ranean countries bore the name Cleopatra, and 
 this had also been the name of Caledonian Me- 
 leager'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 
 
58 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 was departing, "Are you coming here again to- 
 morrow in the noon horn- ?" 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 mipulse 
 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 Me- 
 leagro lay about him motionless and silent ; only 
 Cleopatra hovered on her red, shimmering, golden 
 wings, making slow circles again above the multi- 
 tude of poppies. 
 
 When and how he had returned to the "in- 
 gresso," Norbert Hanold could not recall; in his 
 memory he retained only the idea that his ap- 
 petite had peremptorily demanded to be ap- 
 peased, 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 ob- 
 tained from the fresh air there no mental relief, 
 but was returning to the hotel in the same condi- 
 tion in which he had left it. He found the other 
 
GRADIVA 69 
 
 guests busily occupied with dinner, had a little 
 bottle of Vesuvio wine brought to him in a comer 
 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 fore- 
 gone 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 fur- 
 ther 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 en- 
 tered his mind that he might possibly meet 
 
60 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 observa- 
 tions, he had occasionally poured wine from his 
 httle 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 Per- 
 seus, Cassiopeia and Andromeda with some 
 neighbors, 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 httle of the 
 circular movement of things might be ascribed to 
 the wine, too, that since noon all objects had dis- 
 played an inclination to whirl softly about his 
 head, and therefore he found, in the slight in- 
 
GRADIVA 61 
 
 crease, 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 archaeologist un- 
 dressed, 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 as- 
 sistance from the flies, awoke him, he could not 
 recall what, besides strange, Ovid-like metamor- 
 phoses, had occurred during the night about his 
 bed. Yet doubtless some mystic being, contin- 
 uously weaving dream-webs, had been sitting be- 
 side him, for he felt his head completely over- 
 hung and filled with them, so that all ability to 
 
62 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 Pom- 
 peii, 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 ar- 
 rival, along the old city-wall, and upon it walked, 
 in a wide semicircle, around the city of ruins to 
 the solitary, ungarded 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 en- 
 trance 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 
 
GRADIVA 6S 
 
 the ashes, but with his unreliable vision, he was 
 unable to distinguish what it was. Yet invol- 
 untarily he was impelled to go up to it and there 
 it stood, a tall, flowering asphodel-plant with 
 white, beU-like blossoms whose seeds the wind had 
 carried thither from outside. It was the flower 
 of the lower world, signiflcant 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 
 abeady crowding again to the Porta Marina and 
 the soup-plates. Only the air, suffused with 
 heat, stirred, and in the dazzling glare the sol- 
 itary 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 yester- 
 day, the vestibule, inner court and peristyle re- 
 ceived him, and between the pillars of the latter 
 
64 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 
 archaeology; 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 indif- 
 ferent thing in the world. He could not under- 
 stand 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 be- 
 fore, perhaps the one time in a century or a thou- 
 sand 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 
 
GRADIVA 65 
 
 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 hallucina- 
 tion practicing 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-humored and repellent had 
 
66 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 oc- 
 curred 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 ut- 
 terly imprepared. Yet that happened, if I re- 
 call 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 an- 
 swered, stuttering slightly, "No, I really don't 
 believe I was alive in the year 79 — ^it was per- 
 
GRADIVA 67 
 
 haps — ^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 recog- 
 nized 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 rec- 
 ognized me^gain? In the dream? By what?" 
 
 "At the very first; by your manner of walk- 
 ing." 
 
 "Had you noticed that? And have I a special 
 manner of walking?" 
 
 Her astonishment had grown perceptibly. 
 He replied, "Yes — don't you reahze that? A 
 more graceful one — at least among those now liv- 
 ing — does not exist. Yet I recognized you im- 
 mediately by everything else too, your figvure, 
 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 mo- 
 ment I don't know exactly — what is it — and you 
 saw it there then?" 
 
 Now he told her that the sight of it had at- 
 tracted 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 
 
68 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 daily and the idea had come to him that it must 
 represent a young Pompeiian girl who was walk- 
 ing on the stepping-stones of a street in her na- 
 tive 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, 
 
GRADIVA 69 
 
 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?" 
 
 It was noteworthy that her aroused interest 
 brought her back to that, and he said, "If I may 
 ask—" 
 
 With that he stopped, for he suddenly remem- 
 bered with fear that yesterday she had suddenly 
 risen and gone away when he had asked her to lie 
 down to sleep again on that step, as on that of 
 the Temple of Apollo, and, associated darkly with 
 this, there came to him the glance which she had 
 directed upon him in departing. Yet now the 
 calm, friendly expression of her eyes remained 
 and as he spoke no further, she said, "It was nice 
 that your wish that some one might stiU be alive 
 concerned me. If you wish to ask anything of 
 me on that account, I will gladly respond." 
 
 That overcame his fear, and he rephed, "It 
 would make me happy to get a close view of you 
 walking as you do in the bas-relief." 
 
 Willingly, without answering, she stood up and 
 
TO DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 walked along between the wall and the pillars. 
 It was the very buoyantly reposeful gait, with 
 the sole raised almost perpendicularly, that was 
 so firmly imprinted on his mind, but for the first 
 time he saw that she wore, below the raised gown, 
 not sandals, but light, sand-colored shoes of fine 
 leather. When she came back and sat down 
 again silently, he involuntarily started to talk of 
 the difference in her foot-covering from that of 
 the bas-relief. To that she rejoined, "Time, of 
 course, always changes everything, and for the 
 present sandals are not suitable, so I put on 
 shoes, which are a better protection against rain 
 and dust; but why did you ask me to walk before 
 you? What is there peculiar about it?" 
 
 Her repeated wish to learn this proved her not 
 entirely free from feminine curiosity. He now 
 explained that it was a matter of the peculiarly 
 upright position of the rising foot, as she walked, 
 and he added how for weeks he had tried to ob- 
 serve the gait of modern women on the streets in 
 his native city. Yet it seemed that this beautiful 
 way of walking had been completely lost to them, 
 with the exception, perhaps, of a single one who 
 had given him the impression that she walked 
 in that way. To be sure, he had not been able to 
 establish this fact because of the crowd about her, 
 and he had probably experienced an illusion, for 
 
GRADIVA 71 
 
 it Had seemed to him that her features had re- 
 sembled somewhat those of Gradiva. 
 
 "What a shame," she answered. "For con- 
 firmation of the fact would surely have been of 
 great scientific importance, and if you had suc- 
 ceeded, perhaps you would not have needed to 
 take the long journey here; but whom were you 
 just speaking of? Who is Gradiva?" 
 
 "I have named the bas-relief that, because I 
 didn't know your real name and don't know it 
 yet, either." 
 
 This last he added with some hesitancy and 
 she faltered a moment before replying to the 
 indirect question, "My name is Zoe." 
 
 With pained tone the words escaped him: 
 "The name suits you beautifully, but it sounds 
 to me hke bitter mockery, for 'Zoe' means 'life.' " 
 
 "One must adapt himself to the inevitable," 
 she responded. "And I have long accustomed 
 myself to being dead; but now my time is over 
 for to-day; you have brought the grave-flower 
 with you to conduct me back. So give it to me." 
 
 As she rose and stretched forth her slender 
 hand, he gave her the asphodel cluster, but was 
 careful not to touch her fingers. Accepting the 
 flowering branch, she said, "I thank you. To 
 those who are more fortunate one gives roses in 
 spring, but for me the flower of oblivion is the 
 
!ra DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 right one from your hand. To-morrow I shall 
 be allowed to come here again at this hour. If 
 your way leads you again into the house of Me- 
 leager, we can sit together at the edge of the 
 poppies, as we did to-day. On the threshold 
 stands 'Ave' and I say it to you, 'Ave' !" 
 
 She went out and disappeared, as yesterday, 
 at the turn in the portico, as if she had there sunk 
 into the ground. Everything lay empty and 
 sUent again, but, from some distance, there once 
 rang, short and clear, a sound hke the merry note 
 of a bird flying over the devastated city. This 
 was stifled immediately, however. Norbert, who 
 had remained behind, looked doAvn at the step 
 where she had just been sitting; there something 
 white shimmered; it seemed to be the papyrus leaf 
 which Gradiva had held on her knees yesterday 
 and had forgotten to take with her to-day. Yet 
 as he shyly reached for it, he found it to be a little 
 sketch-book with pencil drawings of the different 
 ruins in several houses of Pompeii. The page 
 next to the last showed a drawing of the grifiin- 
 table in the central court of the Casa di Meleagro, 
 and on the last was the beginning of a reproduc- 
 tion of the view across the poppies of the dining- 
 room through the row of pillars of the peristyle. 
 That the departed girl made drawings in a sketch- 
 book of the present mode was as amazing as had 
 been the fact that she expressed her thoughts in 
 
GRADIVA 73 
 
 German. Yet those were only insignificant 
 prodigies beside the great one of her revivifica- 
 tion, and apparently she used the midday hour 
 of freedom to preserve for herself, in their present 
 state, with unusual artistic talent, the surround- 
 ings in which she had once lived. The drawings 
 testified to delicately cultivated powers of percep- 
 tion, as each of her words did to a clever intel- 
 lect; and she had probably often sat by the old 
 griffin-table, so that it was a particularly precious 
 reminder. 
 
 Mechanically Norbert also went, with the little 
 book, along the portico and at the place where 
 this turned, he noticed in the wall a narrow cleft 
 wide enough to afford, to an unusually slender 
 figure, passage into the adjoining building, and 
 even farther to the Vicolo del Fauno at the other 
 side of the house. Suddenly, however, the idea 
 flashed through his mind that Zoe-Gradiva did 
 not sink into the ground here — that was essen- 
 tially unreasonable, and he could not understand 
 how he had ever believed it — but went, on this 
 street, back to her tomb. That must be in the 
 Street of Tombs and rushing forth, he hastened 
 out into the Strada di Mercurio and as far as the 
 gate of Hercules ; but when, breathless and reek- 
 ing with perspiration, he entered this, it was al- 
 ready too late. The broad Strada di Sepolcri 
 stretched out empty and dazzlingly white, only 
 
,74 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 at its extremity, behind the glimmering curtain of 
 radiance, a faint shadow seemed to dissolve un- 
 certainly before the ViUa of Diomede. 
 
 Norbert Hanold passed the second half of the 
 day with a feeUng that Pompeii was everywhere, 
 or at least wherever he stopped, veiled in a cloud 
 of mist. It was not gray, gloomy and melan- 
 choly as formerly, but rather cheerful and vari- 
 colored to an extraordinary degree, blue, red and 
 brown, chiefly a light-yellowish white and ala- 
 baster white, interwoven with golden threads of 
 sunbeams. This injured neither his power of 
 vision, nor that of hearing, only, because of it, 
 thinking was impossible, and that produced a 
 cloud-wall whose effect rivaled the thickest mist. 
 To the young archaeologist it seemed almost as if 
 hourly, in an invisible and not otherwise notice- 
 able way, there was brought to him a little bottle 
 of Vesuvio wine, which produced a continuous 
 whirling in his head. From this he instinctively 
 sought to free himself by the use of correctives, on 
 the one hand drinking water frequently, and on 
 the other hand moving about as much and as far 
 as possible. His knowledge of medicine was not 
 comprehensive, but it helped him to the diagnosis 
 thiat this strange condition must arise from ex- 
 cessive congestion of blood in his head, perhaps 
 associated with accelerated action of the heart; for 
 
GRADIVA 75 
 
 he felt the latter, — something formerly quite un- 
 known to him — occasionally beating fast against 
 his chest. Otherwise, his thoughts, which could 
 pot penetrate into the outer world, were not in the 
 least inactive within, or more exactly, there was 
 only one thought there, which had come into sole 
 possession and carried on a restless, though vain 
 activity. It continually turned about the ques- 
 tion of what physical nature Zoe-Gradiva might 
 possess, whether during her stay in the house of 
 Meleager she was a corporeal being or only an 
 illusory representation of what she had formerly 
 been. For the former, physical, physiological 
 and anatomical facts seemed to argue that she had 
 at her disposal organs of speech and could hold a 
 pencil with her fingers. Yet Norbert was over- 
 whelmed with the idea that if he should touch her, 
 even lightly place his hand on hers, he would then 
 encounter only empty air. A pecuhar impulse 
 urged him to make sure of this, but an equally 
 great timidity hindered him from even thinking 
 of doing it. For he felt that the confirmation of 
 either of the two possibilities must bring with it 
 something inspiring fear. The corporeal exist- 
 ence of the hand would thrill him with horror, and 
 its lack of substance would cause him deep pain. 
 Occupied vainly with this problem, which was 
 impossible to solve scientifically, without experi- 
 ment, he arrived, in the course of his extensive 
 
76 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 wanderings that afternoon, at the foothills of the 
 big mountain group of Monte Sant' Angelo, ris- 
 ing south from, Pompeii, and here he unexpect- 
 edly came upon an elderly man, already gray- 
 bearded, who, from his equipment with all sorts of 
 implements, seemed to be a zoologist or botanist 
 and appeared to be making a search on a hot, 
 sunny slope. He turned his head, as Norbert 
 came close to him, looked at the latter in siu*- 
 prise for a moment and then said, "Are you 
 interested in Faraglionensis? I should hardly 
 have supposed it, but it seems thoroughly prob- 
 able that they are found not only in the Faragliom 
 of Capri, but also dwell permanently on the main- 
 land. The method suggested by my colleague, 
 Eimer, is really good; I have already used it often 
 with the best of success. Please remain quite 
 still—" 
 
 The speaker stopped, stepped carefully for- 
 ward a few paces and, stretched out motionless on 
 the ground, held a little snare, made of a long 
 grassblade, before a narrow crevice in the rock, 
 from which the blue, chatoyant, little head of a 
 lizard peeped. Thus the man remained without 
 the sEghtest movement, and Norbert Hanold 
 turned about noiselessly behind him and retvirned 
 by the way he had come. It seemed to him dimly 
 that he had already seen the face of the lizard- 
 hunter once, probably in one of the two hotels; 
 
GRADIVA 77 
 
 to this fact the latter's manner pointed. It was 
 hardly credible what foolishly remarkable pur- 
 poses could cause people to make the long trip to 
 Pompeii; happy that he had succeeded in so 
 quickly ridding himself of the snare-layer, and 
 being again able to direct his thoughts to the prob- 
 lem of corporeal reality or um'eality, he started 
 on the return. Yet a side street misled him once 
 to a wrong tiu^n and took him, instead of to the 
 west boundary, to the east end of the extensive 
 old city- wall; buried in thought, he did not notice 
 the mistake imtil he had come right up to a build- 
 ing which was neither the Diomed nor the 
 Hotel Suisse. In spite of this it bore the sign 
 of a hotel; nearby he recognized the ruins of the 
 large Pompeiian amphitheater and the memory 
 came to him that, near this latter, there was an- 
 other hotel, the Albergo del Sole, which, on 
 account of its remoteness from the station, was 
 sought out by only a few guests and had remained 
 unknown to even him. The walk had made him 
 hot ; besides, the cloudy whirling in his head had 
 not diminished; so he stepped in through the open 
 door and ordered the remedy deemed useful by 
 him for blood congestion, a bottle of lime-water. 
 The room stood empty except, of course, for the 
 fly-visitors gathered in full numbers, and the un- 
 occupied host availed himself of the opportunity 
 to recommend highly his house and the excavated 
 
78 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 treasures it contained. He pointed suggestively 
 to the fact that there were, near Pompeii, people 
 at whose places there was not a single, genuine 
 piece among the many objects offered for sale, 
 but that all were imitations, while he, satisfying 
 himself with a smaller number, offered his guests 
 only things undoubtedly genuine. For he ac- 
 quired no articles which he himself had not seen 
 brought to the light of day, and, in the course 
 of his eloquence, he revealed that he had also been 
 present when they had found near the Forum the 
 young lovers who had clasped each other in firm 
 embrace when they realized their inevitable de- 
 struction and had thus awaited death. Norbert 
 had already heard of this discovery, but had 
 shrugged his shoulders about it as a fabulous in- 
 vention of some especially imaginative narrator, 
 and he did so now, too, when the host brought in to 
 him, as authentic proof, a metal brooch encrusted 
 with green patina, which, in his presence, had 
 been gathered with the remains of the girl from 
 the ashes. When the arrival at the Sun Hotel 
 took it in his own hand, however, the power of 
 imagination exercised such ascendency over him 
 that suddenly, without further critical considera- 
 tion, he paid for it the price asked from English 
 people, and, with his acquisition, hastily left the 
 Albergo del Sole, in which, after another ttu-n, 
 he saw, in an open window, nodding down, an 
 
GRADIVA 79 
 
 asphodel branch covered with white blossoms, 
 which had been placed in a water-glass ; and with- 
 out needing any logical connection, it rushed 
 through his mind, at the sight of the grave-flower, 
 that it was an attestation of the genuineness of 
 his new possession. 
 
 This he viewed with mingled feehngs of ex- 
 citement and shyness, keeping now to the way 
 along the city-wall to Porta Marina. Then it 
 was no fairy tale that a couple of young lovers 
 had been excavated near the Forum in such an 
 embrace, and there at the Apollo temple he had 
 seen Gradiva he down to sleep, but only in a 
 dream; that he knew now quite definitely; in 
 reality she might have gone on still farther from 
 the Forum, met some one and died with him. 
 
 From the green brooch between his fingers a 
 feeling passed through him that it had belonged to 
 Zoe-Gradiva, and had held her dress closed at the 
 throat. Then she was the beloved fiancee, per- 
 haps the young wife of him with whom she had 
 wished to die. 
 
 It occurred to Norbert Hanold to hurl the 
 brooch away. It burned his fingers as if it had 
 become glowing, or more exactly, it caused him 
 the pain such as he had felt at the idea that he 
 might put his hand on that of Gjradiva and en- 
 counter only empty air. 
 
 Reason, nevertheless, asserted the upper hand ; 
 
80 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 he did not allow himself to be controlled by im- 
 agination against his will. However probable it 
 might be, there was still lacking invincible proof 
 that the brooch had belonged to her and that it had 
 been she, who had been discovered in the yomig 
 man's arms. This judgment made it possible 
 for him to breathe freely, and when, at the dawn 
 of twilight, he reached the Diomed, his long wan- 
 dering had brought to his sound constitution need 
 of physical refreshment. Not without appetite 
 did he devour the rather Spartan evening meal 
 which the Diomed, in spite of its Argive origin, 
 had adopted, and he then noticed two guests, 
 newly-arrived in the course of the afternoon. By 
 appearance and language they marked themselves 
 as Germans, a man and a woman; they both had 
 youthful, attractive features endowed with in- 
 tellectual expressions ; their relation to each other 
 could not be determined, yet, because of a certain 
 resemblance, Norbert decided that they were 
 brother and sister. To be sure the young man's 
 fair hair differed in color from her light-brown 
 tresses. In her gown she wore a red Sorrento 
 rose, the sight of which, as he looked across from 
 his corner, stirred something in his memory with- 
 out his being able to think what it was. The 
 couple were the first people he had met on his 
 journey who seemed possibly congenial. They 
 talked with one another, over a Uttle bottle, in not 
 
GRADIVA 81 
 
 too plainly audible tones, nor in cautious whis- 
 perings, apparently sometimes about serious 
 things and sometimes about gay things, for at 
 times there passed over her face a half -laughing 
 expression which was very becoming to her, and 
 aroused the desire to participate in their conver- 
 sation, or perhaps might have awakened it in 
 Norbert, if he had met them two days before in 
 the room otherwise populated only by Anglo- 
 Americans. Yet he felt that what was passing 
 through his mind stood in too strong contrast to 
 the happy naivete of the couple about whom there 
 undeniably lay not the shghtest cloud, for they 
 doubtless were not meditating profoundly over 
 the essential nature of a girl who had died two 
 thousand years ago, but, without any weariness, 
 were taking pleasure in an enigmatical problem 
 of their life of the present. His condition did not 
 harmonize with that; on the one hand he seemed 
 superfluous to them, and on the other, he recoiled 
 from an attempt to start an acquaintance with 
 them, for he had a dark feeling that their bright, 
 merry eyes might look through his forehead into 
 his thoughts and thereby assume an expression 
 as if they did not consider him quite in his right 
 mind. Therefore he went up to his room, stood, 
 as yesterday, at the window, looking over to the 
 purple night-mantle of Vesuvius and then he lay 
 down to rest. Exhausted, he soon fell asleep and 
 
82 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 dreamed, but remarkably nonsensically. Some- 
 where in the sun Gradiva sat making a trap out 
 of a blade of grass, in order to catch a lizard, and 
 she said, "Please stay quite still — ^my colleague is 
 right; the method is really good and she has used 
 it with the greatest success." 
 
 Norbert Hanold became conscious in his dream 
 that it was actually the most utter madness, and 
 he cast about to free himself from it. He suc- 
 ceeded in this by the aid of an invisible bird, who 
 seemingly uttered a short, merry call, and car- 
 ried the hzard away in its beak ; afterwards every- 
 thing disappeared. 
 
 On awakening, he remembered that in the 
 night a voice had said that in the spring one gave 
 roses, or rather this was recalled to him through 
 his eyes, for his gaze, passing down from the win- 
 dow, came upon a bright bush of red flowers. 
 They were of the same kind as those which the 
 young lady had worn in her bosom, and when he 
 went down, he involuntarily plucked a couple and 
 smelled of them. In fact, there must be some- 
 thing peculiar about Sorrento roses, for their 
 fragrance seemed to him not only wonderful, but 
 quite new and unfamiliar, and at the same time 
 he felt that they had a somewhat liberating ef- 
 fect upon his mind. At least they freed him 
 from yesterday's timidity before the gatekeepers. 
 
GRADIVA 83 
 
 for he went, according to directions, in through 
 the "ingresso" to Pompeii, paid double the 
 amount of admission fee, and quickly struck out 
 upon streets which took him from the vicinity of 
 other visitors. The little sketch-book, from the 
 house of Meleager, he carried along with the 
 green brooch and the red roses, but the fragrance 
 of the latter had made him forget to eat break- 
 fast and his thoughts were not in the present, but 
 were directed exclusively to the noon hour which 
 was still far off ; he had to pass the remaining in- 
 terval and for this purpose he entered now one 
 house, now another, as a result of which activity 
 the idea probably occurred to him that Gradiva 
 had also walked there often before or even now 
 sought these places out sometimes — his supposi- 
 tion that she was able to do it only at noon was 
 tottering. Perhaps she was at liberty to do it in 
 other hours of the day, possibly even at night in 
 the moonlight. The roses strengthened this sup- 
 position strangely for him, when he inhaled, as he 
 held them to his nose ; and his deliberations, com- 
 plaisant, and open to conviction, made advances 
 to this new idea, for he could bear witness that 
 he did not cling to preconceived opinions at all, 
 but rather gave free rein to every reasonable ob- 
 jection, and such there was here without any 
 doubt, not only logically, but desirably vahd. 
 Only the question arose whether, upon meeting 
 
84 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 her then, the ej^es of others could see her as a 
 corporeal being, or whether only his possessed the 
 ability to do that. The former was not to be de- 
 nied, claimed even probabihty for itself, trans- 
 formed the desirable thing into quite the opppsite, 
 and transported him into a low-spirited, restless 
 mood. The thought that others might also speak 
 to her, and sit down near her to carry on a con- 
 versation with her, made him indignant; to that 
 he alone possessed a claim, or at any rate a privi- 
 lege, for he had discovered Gradiva, of whom no 
 one had formerly known, had observed her daily, 
 taken her into his life, to a degree, imparted to 
 her his life-strength, and it seemed to him as if 
 he had thereby again lent to her hfe that she 
 would not have possessed without him. There- 
 fore he felt that there devolved upon him a right, 
 to which he alone might make a claim and which 
 he might refuse to share with any one else. 
 
 The advancing day was hotter than the two 
 preceding; the sun seemed to have set her mind 
 to-day on a quite extraordinary feat, and made it 
 regrettable, not only in an archaeological, but also 
 in a practical connection, that the water system 
 of Pompeii had lain burst and dried up for two 
 thousand years. Street fountains here and there 
 commemorated it and likewise gave evidence of 
 their informal use by thirsty passers-by, who had, 
 in order to bend forward to the jet, leaned a hand 
 
GRADIVA 85 
 
 on the marble railing and gradually dug out a 
 sort of trough in the place, in the same way that 
 dropping wears away stone; Norbert observed 
 this at a corner of the Strada della Fortuna, and 
 from that Mie idea occurred to him that the hand 
 of Zoe-Gradiva, too, might formerly have rested 
 here in that way, and involuntarily he laid his 
 hand into the Uttle hollow, yet he immediately re- 
 jected the idea, and felt annoyance at himself 
 that he could have done it; the thought did not 
 harmonize at all with the nature and bearing of 
 the young Pompeiian girl of a refined family; 
 there was something profane in the idea that she 
 could have bent over so and placed her lips on the 
 yery pipe from which the plebeians drank with 
 coarse mouths. In a noble sense, he had never 
 seen anything more seemly than her actions and 
 movements ; he was frightened by the idea that she 
 might be able to see by looking at him that he had 
 had the incredibly unreasonable thought, for her 
 eyes possessed something penetrating; a couple 
 of times, when he had been with her, the feeling 
 had seized him that she looked as if she were seek- 
 ing for access to his inmost thoughts and were 
 looking about them as if with a bright steel probe. 
 He was obliged, therefore, to take great care that 
 she might come upon nothing foolish in his mental 
 processes. 
 
 It was now an hour until noon and in order to 
 
86 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 pass it, he went diagonally across the street into 
 the Casa del Fauno, the most extensive and mag- 
 nificent of all the excavated houses. Like no 
 other, it possessed a double inner court and 
 showed, in the larger one, on the middle of the 
 ground, the empty base on which had stood the 
 famous statue of the dancing faun after which 
 the house had been named. Yet there stirred in 
 Norbert Hanold not the least regret that this 
 work of art, valued highly by science, was no 
 longer here, but, together with the mosaic picture 
 of the Battle of Alexander, had been transferred 
 to the Museo Nazionale in Naples; he possessed 
 no further intention nor desire than to let time 
 move along, and he wandered about aimlessly in 
 this place through the large building. Behind 
 the peristyle opened a wider room, surrounded by 
 nvmierous pillars, planned either as another repe- 
 tition of the peristyle or as an ornamental garden; 
 so it seemed at present for, hke the dining-room 
 of the Casa di Meleagro, it was completely cov- 
 ered with poppy-blooms. Absentmindedly the 
 visitor passed through the silent dereUction. 
 
 Then, however, he stopped and rested on one 
 foot; but he found himself not alone here; at 
 some distance his glance fell upon two figures, 
 who first gave the impression of only one, be- 
 cause they stood as closely as possible to each 
 other. They did not see him, for they were con- 
 
GRADIVA 87 
 
 cerned only with themselves, and, in that corner, 
 because of the pillars, might have believed them- 
 selves undiscoverable by any other eyes. Mu- 
 tually embracing each other, they held their lips 
 also pressed together and the unsuspected spec- 
 tator recognized, to his amazement, that they 
 were the young man and woman who had last 
 evening seemed to him the first congenial people 
 encoimtered on this trip. For brother and sister, 
 their present position, the embrace and the kiss, 
 it seemed to him, had lasted too long. So it was 
 surely another pair of lovers, probably a young 
 bridal couple, an Augustus and Gretchen, too. 
 Strange to relate, however, the two latter did 
 not, at the moment, enter Norbert's mind, and the 
 incident seemed to him not at all ridiculous nor 
 repulsive, rather it heightened his pleasure in 
 them. What they were doing seemed to him as 
 natural as it did comprehensible; his eyes clung 
 to the hving picture, more widely open than they 
 ever had been to any of the most admired works 
 of art, and he would have gladly devoted himself 
 for a longer time to his observation. Yet it 
 seemed to him that he had wrongfully penetrated 
 into a consecrated place and was on the point of 
 disturbing a secret act of devotion; the idea of 
 being noticed there struck terror to his heart and 
 he quickly turned, went back some distance 
 noiselessly on tiptoe and, when he had passed be- 
 
88 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 yond hearing distance, ran out with bated breath 
 and beating heart to the Vicolo del Fauno. 
 
 When he arrived before the house of Meleager, 
 he did not know whether it was abeady noon, and 
 did not happen to question his watch about it, but 
 remained before the door, standing looking down 
 with indecision for some time at the "Ave" in the 
 entrance. A fear prevented him from stepping 
 in, and strangely, he was equally afraid of not 
 meeting Gradiva within, and of finding her there; 
 for, during the last few moments, he had felt 
 quite siu-e that, in the first case, she would be stay- 
 ing somewhere else with some younger man, and, 
 in the second case, the latter would be in company 
 with her on the steps between the pillars. To- 
 ward the man, however, he felt a hate far stronger 
 than against all the assembled common house- 
 flies; until to-day he had not considered it pos- 
 sible that he could be capable of such violent in- 
 ner excitement. The duel, which he had always 
 considered stupid nonsense, suddenly appeared to 
 him in a different light; here it became a natural 
 right which the man rnjiu'ed in his own rights, or 
 mortally insulted, made use of as the only avail- 
 able means to secure satisfaction or to part with 
 an existence which had become purposeless. So 
 he suddenly stepped forward to enter; he would 
 challenge the bold man and would — this rushed 
 
GRADIVA 89 
 
 upon him almost more powerfully — express un- 
 reservedly to her that he had considered her some- 
 thing better, more noble, and incapable of such 
 vulgarity. 
 
 He was so fiUed to the brim with this rebelhous 
 idea that he uttered it, even though there was not 
 apparently the least occasion for it, for, when he 
 had covered the distance to the dining-room with 
 stormy haste, he demanded violently, "Are you 
 alone?" although appearances allowed of no 
 doubt that Gradiva was sitting there on the steps, 
 just as much alone as on the two previous days. 
 
 She looked at him amazed and replied, "Who 
 should still be here after noon? Then the people 
 are all hungry and sit down to meals. Nature 
 has arranged that very happily for me." 
 
 His surging excitement could not, however, be 
 allayed so quickly and without his knowledge or 
 desire, he let slip, with the conviction of certainty, 
 the conjecture which had come over him outside; 
 for he added, to be sure somewhat foolishly, that 
 he could really not think otherwise. 
 
 Her bright eyes remained fixed upon his face 
 until he had finished. Then she made a motion 
 with one finger against her brow and said, 
 "You — " After that, however, she continued, 
 "It seems to me quite enough that I do not re- 
 main away from here, even though I must expect 
 that you are coming here at this time; but the 
 
90 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 place pleases me arid I see that you have brought 
 me my sketch-book that I forgot here yesterday. 
 I thank you for your vigilance. Won't you give 
 it to me?" 
 
 The last question was well founded for he 
 showed no disposition to do so, but remained mo- 
 tionless. It began to dawn upon him that he had 
 imagined and worked out a monstrous piece of 
 nonsense, and had also given expression to it; 
 in order to compensate, as far as possible, he now 
 stepped forward hastily, handed Gradiva the 
 book, and at the same time sat down near her on 
 the step, mechanically. Casting a glance at his 
 hand, she said, "You seem to be a lover of roses." 
 
 At these words he suddenly became conscious 
 of what had caused him to pluck and bring them 
 and he responded, "Yes, — of course, not for my- 
 self, have I — ^you spoke yesterday — and last 
 night, too, some one said it to me — people give 
 them in spring." 
 
 She pondered briefly, before she answered, 
 "Ah, so- — yes, I remember. To others, I meant, 
 one does not give asphodel, but roses. That is 
 polite of you; it seems your opinion of me is im- 
 proved." 
 
 Her hand stretched out to receive the red 
 flowers and, handing them to her, he rejoined, "I 
 believed at first that you could be here only dur- 
 ing the noon hour, but it has become probable to 
 
GRADIVA 91 
 
 me that you also, at some other time — that makes 
 me very happy — " 
 
 "Why does it make you happy?" 
 
 Her face expressed lack of comprehension — 
 only about her lips there passed a slight, hardly 
 noticeable quiver. Confused he offered, "It is 
 beautiful to be alive; it has never seemed so much 
 so to me before — I wished to ask you?" He 
 searched in his breast pocket and added, as he 
 drew out the object, "Has this brooch ever be- 
 longed to you?" 
 
 She leaned forward a little toward it, but shook 
 her head, "No, I can't remember. Chronologi- 
 cally it would, of course, not be impossible, for it 
 probably did not exist until this year. Did you 
 find it in the sun perhaps? The beautiful, green 
 patina surely seems familiar to me, as if I had 
 already seen it." 
 
 Involuntarily he repeated, "In the sun? — .why 
 in the sun?" 
 
 " 'Sole' it is called here. It brings to light 
 many things of that sort. Was the brooch said 
 to have belonged to a young girl who is said to 
 have perished, I beheve, in the vicinity of the 
 Forimi, with a companion?" 
 
 "Yes, who held his arm about her — " 
 
 '•Ah, so—" 
 
 The two little words apparently lay upon 
 iGradiva's tongue as a favorite interjection and 
 
92 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 Httle — ^how did you say it before? — un- 
 happy?" 
 
 It was apparent that he felt extraordinarily re- 
 heved 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 morn- 
 ing? That easily aggravates such attacks; I do 
 not suffer from them, but I make provisions, 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 be- 
 tween 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 reahty. 
 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 favorable effect on the clearing of 
 
GRADIVA 93 
 
 his thoughts. So, for a httle while, the couple 
 did not speak further, but devoted themselves si- 
 lently to the same practical occupation xmtil 
 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 noxirishment 
 had brought with it a change in his brain. The 
 idea that she had been going around here in Pom- 
 peii such a long time ago would no longer har- 
 monize with sound reason; everything about her 
 seemed of the present, as if it could be scarcely 
 more than twenty years old. The form and color 
 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 con- 
 tained something in the highest degree incon- 
 sistent. Norbert was seized by a feehng 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 aUve 
 
94 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 or had been living again could only have hap- 
 pened 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 Me- 
 leagro, 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 incompre- 
 hending 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 shghtest quiver 
 that she noticed it. Thereupon, however, there 
 united in the young archaeologist two powerful 
 
GRADIVA 95 
 
 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 neighbor. 
 
 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 appar- 
 ently 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 peo- 
 ple who had come near unobserved ; before his con- 
 fused eyes appeared the faces of the congenial 
 pair of lovers from the Casa del Fauno, and the 
 yoimg lady cried, with a tone of greatest surprise, 
 "Zoe! You here, too? and also on your honey- 
 moon? 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 light- 
 
96 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ning-like illumination in him, was the only thing 
 that he could do not to present a thoroughly ridic- 
 ulous 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 unsub- 
 stantial, but possessing corporeal reality, had ex- 
 pressed 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 hap- 
 pened 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 httle more hght on the matter by 
 an attempt at meditation, a remote place in soli- 
 tary silence was absolutely required ; at first, how- 
 ever, 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 sur- 
 
GRADIVA 97 
 
 prised 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 in- 
 stant, there was no trace to be seen in her bright 
 countenance; she stood up quickly, stepped to- 
 ward 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 ap- 
 parently need not change my congratulations for 
 condolence. Couples to whom that would be ap- 
 plied are at this time usually sitting at lunch in 
 Pompeii; you are probably staying near the 'in- 
 gresso' ; 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, 
 unhke yours, is not adorned by a ring. The at- 
 mosphere 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 
 laboring also under a remarkable delusion; it 
 seems to me that he believes a fly is buzzing in his 
 head; well, every one 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 
 
98 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 my- 
 self that I should certainly dig up something in- 
 teresting alone here. Of course I had not reck- 
 oned at all on the find which I made — I mean the 
 good fortune of meeting you, Gisa; but I am talk- 
 ing away the time, as is usually the case with an 
 old friend — My father comes in out of the sim 
 at two o'clock to eat at the 'Sole'; so I have to 
 keep company there with his appetite and, there- 
 fore, 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, signorl Arrivederci, Gi- 
 setta ! 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 ex- 
 pressed herself most vividly, naturally and in a 
 manner quite fitting to the circvmistances of the 
 unexpected meeting of a close friend, yet with 
 extraordinary celerity, which testified to the ur- 
 gency of the declaration that she could not at 
 present remain longer. So not more than a few 
 
GRADIVA 99 
 
 minutes had passed since the hasty exit of Nor- 
 bert Hanold, when she also stepped from the 
 house of Meleager into the Strada di Mercurio. 
 This lay, because of the hour, enhvened only here 
 and there by a cringing hzard, 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 Gra- 
 diva-walk, and thus arrived very quickly at the 
 two ruins of the side wall near the Porta Erco- 
 lanese. 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 archaeol- 
 ogist had thus gazed down over it with searching 
 eyes. To-day the sun seemed to be overcome by 
 a feehng that she had done a little too much good 
 in the morning; she held a gray 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 heav- 
 ens. It was a picture different from that of yes- 
 terday; the brilhance which mysteriously glittered 
 over everything was lacking; the street also as- 
 sumed a certain gloomy distinctness and had at 
 
100 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 present a dead aspect which honored its name. 
 This impression was not diminished by an iso- 
 lated movement at its end, but was rather height- 
 ened 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 ex- 
 actly opposite direction, but Zoe-Gradiva must 
 have also decided that time was not yet importun- 
 ing 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 nearby for his lady, Arria, as well as 
 for himself and his relatives — was a very exten- 
 sive building and concealed within itself a part 
 of the history of the destruction of Pompeii not 
 invented by imagination. A confusion of exten- 
 sive ruins formed the upper part; below lay an 
 unusually latge sunken garden surrounded by a 
 well preserved portico of pillars with scanty rem- 
 
GRADIVA 101 
 
 nants 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 -subter- 
 ranean 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 an- 
 other 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 gar- 
 ment. 
 
 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 soli- 
 tude, 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- 
 
102 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 like loneliness, breathless silence, and quiescent 
 peace; against the latter, however, an impelling 
 restlessness in his system raised comiter-claims, 
 and he had been obliged to force an agreement be- 
 tween 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 equilib- 
 rium, 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 irrefut- 
 able proof was adduced ; not he alone, but others 
 also, saw her, knew that her name was Zoe 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 orig- 
 inate only from a supernatural power; this dual 
 
GRADIVA 103 
 
 nature remained enigmatic even for the rays of 
 understanding that were entering his mind. Yet 
 to this incompatible duaUty 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 Zoe-Gradiva 
 again anywhere; at the same time, however, an 
 extraordinarily 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 miU-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 con- 
 trary, he was moved by an indefinite f eeUng that 
 everything was growing darker and darker about 
 and within him. 
 
 Then he suddenly recoiled, as he turned one of 
 the four comers 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 re- 
 jected. 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 consider- 
 
104 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ably higher, her slender feet, which hung down 
 free in the sand-color 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 ap- 
 peared, 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 out- 
 side." 
 
 Now, for the first time, he saw that it was rain- 
 ing; 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 ridicu- 
 lous, and for the moment Norbert Hanold feared, 
 far more than danger of death, appearing ridicu- 
 lous. 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 unagined that you were making scientific 
 
GRADIVA 105 
 
 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 archaeologist 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 mad- 
 ness." 
 
 Gradiva's feet stopped moving and she re- 
 joined, still addressing him familiarly, "Your 
 power of understanding has not yet progressed 
 that far, Norbert Hanold. Of course, I can not 
 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, per- 
 plexed and half stuttering — "where is that?" 
 
 "Diagonally across from your house, in the 
 
106 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 corner house; in my window, in a cage, is a ca- 
 nary." 
 
 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 sim begins to seem warm again. In that 
 house hves my father, Kichard Bertgang, pro- 
 fessor of zoology." 
 
 Norbert Hanold's eyes opened to a width never 
 before attained by them, and then he said, "Bert- 
 gang — then are you — are you — Miss Zoe Bert- 
 gang? But she looked quite different — " 
 
 The two dangling feet began again to swing a 
 little, and Miss Zoe Bertgang said in reply, "If 
 you find that form of address more suitable be- 
 tween 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 favored 
 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 
 
GRADIVA 107 
 
 a little didactic, ill-humored curtness, and Nor- 
 bert had thereby been overwhelmed by a feeling 
 that he was running the risk of shpping into the 
 role of a big school-boy scolded and slapped in 
 the face. That caused him to again seek mechan- 
 ically for an exit between the pillars, and to the 
 movement which showed this impulse Miss Zoe's 
 last utterance, indifferently added, had reference; 
 and, of course, in an undeniably striking way, be- 
 cause 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 simimer thirst of the meadows of the Cam- 
 pagna, 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, in- 
 deed, made escape out into the open air impos- 
 sible, 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 
 
108 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 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 peo- 
 ple (I count girls such) must surely have some- 
 thing with which they can occupy their thoughts 
 and the like. Then you were that something, but 
 when archaeology 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 child- 
 hood 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 for- 
 merly pulled so often, were as boresome, dry and 
 tongue-tied as a stuffed cockatoo and at the same 
 time as grandiose as an — archaeopteryx ; I believe 
 the excavated, antediluvian bird-monster is so 
 called; but that your head harbored an imagina- 
 tion 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 sud- 
 
GRADIVA 109 
 
 denly 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 Zoe 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, ex- 
 pressive 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-colored, fine cashmere ma- 
 terial which fell in soft, voluminous folds, com- 
 pleted 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 Ve- 
 suvius, 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 incomprehen- 
 sibility; and in consideration of all the circum- 
 stances, there was incontestably present, in the 
 judgment of Norbert Hanold, some mitigating 
 
110 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ground for his madness in for two days consider- 
 ing Gradiva a resurrection. 
 
 Although he stood there dry under the portico 
 roof, there was estabhshed, 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 ser- 
 mon — for the speaker sat as if in a pulpit-chair — 
 might have helped especially; at least thereat a 
 transfigured hght appeared in his eyes, such as 
 awakened hope for salvation through faith pro- 
 duces 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, Zoe — ^my good, happy, clever comrades- 
 it is most strange — " 
 
 "That a person must die to become alive again; 
 but for archaeologists that is of course neces- 
 sary." 
 
 "No, I mean your name — " 
 
 "Why is it strange?" 
 
 The young archaeologist showed himself famil- 
 iar with not only the classical languages, but also 
 
GRADIVA 111 
 
 with the etymology of German, and continued, 
 "Because Bertgang has the same meaning as 
 Gradiva and signifies 'the one splendid in walk- 
 ing."' 
 
 Miss Zoe Bertgang's two sandal-like shoes 
 were, for the moment, because of their movement, 
 reminiscent of an impatiently see-sawing wag- 
 tail waiting for something; yet the possessor of 
 the feet which walked so magnificently seemed 
 not at present to be paying any attention to philo- 
 logical explanations ; by her countenance she gave 
 the impression of being occupied with some hasty 
 plan, but was restrained from it by an exclama- 
 tion of Norbert Hanold's which audibly emanated 
 from deepest conviction, "What luck, though, 
 that you are not Gradiva, but are like the con- 
 genial young lady!" 
 
 That caused an expression as of interested sur- 
 prise 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." 
 
112 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 "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 pic- 
 ture 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 wag- 
 tail swinging through the air, so that she already 
 stood again on Gradiva-f eet, before his glance had 
 consciously caught up with her descent ; and con- 
 tinuing 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 Hartle- 
 ben, or whatever new name she has, to be of scien- 
 tific 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!" 
 
 Zoe Bertgang said this in the absolutely polite, 
 but also equally indifferent tone of a most well- 
 
GRADIVA 113 
 
 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, be- 
 cause 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 devi- 
 ation in the living picture from the stone one. 
 The latter lacked something possessed by the for- 
 mer, 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 to- 
 gether. 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 incompre- 
 hending listener, who could not see herself, es- 
 caped 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 
 
114 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 in the little dimple. Apparently, however, with- 
 out 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 cap- 
 ture, now remaining so long that no doubt could 
 survive that he succeeded in completely accom- 
 plishing 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 ViUa 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 hor- 
 ror. Then, however, a sensible idea became up- 
 permost in Miss Zoe 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." 
 
 From this it was to be concluded that during 
 that hour something must have been discussed. 
 
GRADIVA 115 
 
 for it indicated a helpful desire to instruct, which 
 the young lady vented on Norbert. Yet, from 
 the reminding words, he did not gather this, but 
 something which, for the first time, he was becom- 
 ing terribly conscious of; this was apparent in the 
 repetition, "Your father — what will he — ?" 
 
 Miss Zoe, however, interrupted, without any 
 sign of awakened anxiety, "Probably he will do 
 nothing; I am not an indispensable piece in his 
 zoological collection; if I were, my heart would 
 probably not have clung to you so unwisely. Be- 
 sides, from my early years, I have been siu:e that a 
 woman is of use in the world only when she re- 
 Uevea a man of the trouble of deciding household 
 matters; I generally do this for my father and 
 therefore you can also be rather at ease about 
 your future. Should he, however, by chance, in 
 this case, have an opinion different from mine, 
 we will make it as simple as possible. You go 
 over to Capri for a couple of days ; there, with a 
 grass snare — you can practise making them on 
 my little finger — catch a Hzard Faraglionerms. 
 Let it go here again, and catch it before his eyes. 
 Then give him free choice between it and me, 
 and you will have me so surely that I am sorry for 
 you. Toward his colleague, Eimer, however, I 
 feel to-day that I have formerly been ungrateful, 
 for without his genial invention of lizard-catch- 
 ing I should probably not have come into Me- 
 
116 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 leager's house, and that would have been a shame, 
 not only for you, but for me too. 
 
 This last view she expressed outside of the Villa 
 of Diomede and, alas, there was no person present 
 on earth who could make any statements about 
 the voice and manner of talking of Gradiva. Yet 
 even if they had resembled those of Zoe Bertgang, 
 as everything else about her did, they must have 
 possessed a quite unusually beautiful and roguish 
 charm. 
 
 By this, at least, Norbert Hanold was so 
 strongly overwhelmed that, exalted to poetic 
 flights, he cried out, "Zoe, you dear life and lovely 
 present — we shall take our wedding-trip to Italy 
 and Pompeii." 
 
 That was a decided proof of how different cir- 
 cumstances can also produce a transformation in 
 a human being and at the same time unite with 
 it a weakening of the memory. For it did not 
 occiu* to him at all that he would thereby expose 
 himself and his companion on the journey to the 
 danger of receiving, from misanthropic, ill-hu- 
 mored railway-companions, the names Augustus 
 and Gretchen, but at the moment he was thinking 
 so little about it that they walked along hand in 
 hand through the old Street of Tombs in Pompeii. 
 Of course this, too, did not stamp itself into their 
 minds at present as such, for a cloudless sky 
 
GRADIVA 117 
 
 shone and laughed again above it; the sun 
 stretched out a golden carpet on the old lava- 
 blocks ; Vesuvius spread its misty pine-cone ; and 
 the whole excavated city seemed overwhelmed, 
 not with pumice and ashes, but with pearls and 
 diamonds, by the beneficent rain-storm. 
 
 The brilhance in the eyes of the young daugh- 
 ter of the zoologist rivaled these, but to the an- 
 nounced desire about the destination of their 
 journey by her childhood friend who had, in a 
 way, also been excavated from the ashes, her wise 
 lips responded : "I think we won't worry about 
 that to-day; that is a thing which may better be 
 left by both of us to more and maturer considera- 
 tion and future promptings. I, at least, do not 
 yet feel quite alive enough now for such geograph- 
 ical decisions." 
 
 That showed that the speaker possessed great 
 modesty about the quality of her insight into 
 things about which she had never thought until 
 to-day. They had arrived again at the Hercules 
 gate where, at the beginning of the Strada Con- 
 solare, old stepping-stones crossed the street. 
 Norbert Hanold stopped before them and said 
 with a peculiar tone, "Please go ahead here." 
 A merry, comprehending, laughing expression 
 lurked around his companion's mouth, and, rais- 
 ing her dress slightly with her left hand, Gra- 
 
118 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 diva rediviva Zoe Bertgang, viewed by him with 
 dreamily observing eyes, crossed with her calmly 
 buoyant walk, through the sunlight, over the step- 
 ping-stones, to the other side of the street. 
 
PART II 
 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 IN 
 
 WILHELM JENSEN'S GBADIVA 
 
 BY 
 
 De. Sigmund Feeud 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 In a circle of men who take it for granted that 
 the basic riddle of the dream has been solved by 
 the efforts of the present writer,^ curiosity was 
 aroused one day concerning those dreams which 
 have never been dreamed, those created by au- 
 thors, and attributed to fictitious characters in 
 their productions. The proposal to submit this 
 kind of dream to investigation might appear idle 
 and strange ; but from one view-point it could be 
 considered justifiable. It is, to be sure, not at aU 
 generally believed that the dreamer dreams some- 
 thing senseful and significant. Science and the 
 majority of educated people smile when one offers 
 them the task of interpreting dreams. Only 
 people stiU chnging to superstition, who give con- 
 tinuity, thereby, to the convictions of the ancients, 
 wiU not refrain from interpreting dreams, and the 
 writer of "Traumdeutung" has dared, against the 
 protests of orthodox science, to take sides with the 
 
 1 Freud: Traumdeutung, 1900. (Leipzig and Wien, 1911) trans- 
 lated by A. A. Brill, M.D., Ph.B. Interpretation of Dreams, 
 N. Y., 1913. 
 
 121 
 
123 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ancients and superstitious. He is, of course, far 
 from accepting in dreams a prevision of the fu- 
 ture, for the disclosure of which man has, from 
 time immemorial, striven vainly. He could not, 
 however, completely reject the connections of 
 dreams with the future, for, after completing 
 some arduous analysis, the dreams seemed to him 
 to represent the fulfilment of a wish of the 
 dreamer; and who could dispute that wishes are 
 preponderantly concerned with the future? 
 
 I have just said that the dream is a fulfilled 
 wish. Whoever is not afraid to toil through a 
 difficult book, whoever does not demand that a 
 complicated problem be insincerely and untruth- 
 fully presented to him as easy and simple, to save 
 his own effort, may seek in the above-mentioned 
 "Traumdeutung," ample proof of this statement, 
 and may, until then, cast aside the objection that 
 wiU surely be expressed against the equivalence 
 of dreams and wish-fulfilment. 
 
 We have, however, anticipated. The question 
 is not now one of establishing whether the mean- 
 ing of a dream is, in every case, to be interpreted 
 as the fulfilment of a wish, or, just as frequently, 
 as an anxious expectation, an intention or deliber- 
 ation, etc. The first question is, rather, whether 
 ithe dream has any meaning at all, whether one 
 (should grant it the value of a psychic process. 
 Science answers, No; it explains the dream as a 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 123 
 
 purely physiological process, behind which one 
 need not seek meaning, significance nor intention. 
 Physical ex citati ons play, during sleep, on the 
 psychic instrument and bring into consciousness 
 sometimes some, sometimes other ideas devoid of 
 psychic coherence. Dreams are comparable only 
 to convulsions, not to expressive movements. 
 
 In this dispute over the estimation of dreams, 
 writers seem to stand on the same side with the 
 ancients, superstitious people and the author of 
 "Traumdeutung." For, when they cause the 
 people created by their imagination to dream, 
 they follow the common experience that people's 
 thoughts and feelings continue into sleep, and 
 they seek only to d epict the psychic states of their 
 heroes through th e^dreams of the latter. Story- 
 tellers are valuable allies, and their testimony is to 
 be rated high, for they usually know many things 
 between heaven and earth that our academic wis- 
 dom does not even dream of. In psychic knowl- 
 edge, indeed, they are far ahead of us, ordinary 
 people, because they draw from sources that we 
 have not yet made accessible for science. Would 
 that this partizanship of literary workers for the 
 senseful nature of dreams were only more un- 
 equivocal! Sharper criticism might object that 
 writers take sides neither for nor against the 
 psychic significance of an isolated dream; they are 
 satisfied to show how the sleeping psyche stirs 
 
124 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 under the stimuli which have remained active in 
 it as off-shoots of waking life. 
 
 Our interest for thgjEasLinJEhich. story-tellers 
 miake use of dreamsJ&.nDt, however, made less in- 
 tense by this disillusionment. Even if the inves- 
 tigation should teach nothing of the nature of 
 
 jdreams, it may perhaps afford us, from this angle, 
 'a little-insight' into the nature of creative, literary 
 
 \producti0n. Actual dreams are considered to be 
 imrestrained and irregular formations, and now 
 come the free copies of such dreams ; but there is 
 much less freedom and arbitrariness in psychic 
 life than we are inclined to believe, perhaps none 
 at all. What we, laity, call chance resolves itself, 
 to an acknowledged degree, into laws ; also, what 
 
 Hwe call arbitrariness in psychic life rests on laws 
 only now dimly surmised. Let us see ! 
 
 There are two possible methods for this inves- 
 tigation; one is engrossment with a special case, 
 with the dream-creations of one writer in one of 
 his works ; the other consists in bringing together 
 and comparing aU the examples of the use of 
 dreams which are found in the works of different 
 story-tellers. The second way seems to be by far 
 the more effective, perhaps the only justifiable 
 one, for it frees us immediately from the dangers 
 connected with the conception of "the writer" as 
 an artistic unity. This unity falls to pieces in 
 investigations of widely different writers, among 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 125 
 
 whom we are wont to honor some, individually, as 
 the most profound connoisseurs of psychic life. 
 Yet these pages will be filled by an investigation 
 of the former kind. It so happened, in the group 
 of men who started the idea, that some one re- 
 membered that the bit of fiction which he had 
 most recently enjoyed contained several dreams 
 which looked at him with familiar expression and 
 invited him to try on them the method of "Traum- 
 deutung." He admitted that the material and 
 setting of the little tale had been partly respon- 
 sible for the origin of his pleasure, for the story 
 was unfolded in Pompeii, and concerned a young 
 archaeologist who had given up interest in life, 
 for that in the remains of the classic past, and 
 now, by a remarkable, but absolutely correct de- 
 tour, was brought back to life. During the pe- 
 rusal of this really poetic material, the reader ex- 
 perienced all sorts of feelings of familiarity and 
 concurrence. The tale was Wilhelm Jensen's 
 "Gradiva," a little romance designated by its 
 author, himself, "A Pompeian Fancy." 
 
 In order that my further references may be to 
 familiar material, I must now ask my readers to 
 lay aside this pamphlet, and replace it for some- 
 time with "Gradiva," which first appeared in the 
 book-world in 1903. To those who have already 
 read "Gradiva," I will recall the content of the 
 story in a short epitome, and hope that their mem- 
 
126 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ory will of itself restore all the charm of which 
 the story is thereby stripped. 
 
 A young archaeologist, Norbert Hanold, has 
 discovered at Rome, in a collection of antiques, 
 a bas-rehef which attracts him so exceptionally 
 that he is delighted to be able to get an excellent 
 plaster-cast of it which he can hang up in his study 
 in a German university-city, and study with in- 
 terest. The relief represents a mature, young 
 girl walking. She has gathered up her volumi- 
 nous gown slightly, so that her sandaled feet be- 
 come visible. One foot rests wholly on the 
 ground; the other is raised to follow and touches 
 the ground only with the tips of the toes while^ 
 sole and heel rise almost perpendicularly. The 
 unusual and especially charming walk repre- 
 sented had probably aroused the artist's atten- 
 tion and now, after so many centuries, captivates 
 the eye of our archaeological observer. 
 / This i nterest o f. the hei^iia-ilxe described bas- 
 >" rehef is the_basicjgsychologicaLf_act_Qf our jstory. 
 It is not immediately explicable. "Doctor Nor- 
 bert Hanold, docent of archaeology, really f oxmd 
 in the relief nothing noteworthy for his science." 
 (Gradiva, p. 5.) "He could not explain what 
 quality in it had aroused his attention; he knew 
 only that he had been attracted by something and 
 this effect of the first view had remained un- 
 changed since then," but his imagination does not 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 127 
 
 cease to be occupied with the relief. He finds in 
 it a "sense of present time" as if the artist had 
 fixed the picture on the street "from life." He 
 confers upon the girl represented walking a name, 
 Gradiva, "the girl splendid in walking," spins a 
 yarn that she is the daughter of a distinguished 
 family, perhaps of a "patrician sedile, whose 
 ofiice was connected with the worship of Ceres," 
 and is on the way to the temple of the goddess. 
 Then it is repulsive to him to place her in the mob 
 of a metropolis, rather he convinces himself that 
 she is to be transported to Pompeii and is walk- 
 ing there somewhere on the peculiar stepping- 
 stones which have been excavated; these made a 
 dry crossing possible in rainy weather, and yet 
 also afforded passage for chariot-wheels. The 
 cut of her features seems to him Greek, her Hel- 
 lenic ancestry unquestionable. All of his science 
 of antiquity gradually puts itself at the service of 
 this or other fancies connected with the relief. 
 
 Then, however, there obtrudes itself upon him 
 a would-be scientific problem which demands solu- 
 tion. Now it is a matter of his passing a critical 
 judgment "whether the artist had reproduced 
 Gradiva's manner of walking from life." He 
 cannot produce it in himself; in the search for 
 the "real existence" of this gait, he arrives only 
 at "observation from life for the purpose of en- 
 lightenment on the matter" (G. p. 9). This 
 
128 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 forces him, to be sure, to a mode of action utterly; 
 foreign to him. "Women had formerly been for 
 him only a conception in marble or bronze, and 
 he had never given his feminine contemporaries 
 the least consideration." Society life has always 
 seemed to him an unavoidable torture; young 
 ladies whom he meets, in such connections, he fails 
 to see and hear, to such a degree that, on the next 
 encounter, he passes without greeting, which, of 
 course, serves to place him in an unfavorable light 
 with them. Now, however, the scientific task 
 which he has imposed upon himself forces him in 
 dry weather, but especially in wet weather, to 
 observe diligently the feet of ladies and girls on 
 the street, an activity which yields him many a 
 displeased, and many an encouraging glance from 
 those observed. "Yet one was as incomprehen- 
 sible to him as the other." (G. p. 10.) As a re- 
 sult of these careful studies, he finds that Gra- 
 diva's gait can not be proved to exist really, a fact 
 which fills him with regret and annoyance. 
 
 Soon afterwards he has a terribly frightful 
 dream, which transports him to old Pompeii on 
 the day of the eruption of Vesuvius, and makes 
 him an eye-witness of the destruction of the city. 
 "As he stood thus at the edge of the Forum near 
 the Jupiter temple, he suddenly saw Gradiva a 
 short distance in front of him. Until then no 
 thought of her presence there had moved him, but 
 
DELUSION AND DKEAM 129 
 
 now suddenly it seemed natural to him, as she 
 was, of course, a Pompeiian girl, that she was liv- 
 ing in her native city and, without his having any 
 suspicion of itj was his contemporary." (G- p- 
 11. ) Fear about her impending fate draws from 
 him a cry of warning, in answer to which the un- 
 perturbed apparition turns her face toward him. 
 Unconcerned, she continues her way to the por- 
 tico of the temple, sits down there on a step and 
 slowly rests her head upon it, while her face keeps 
 growing paler, as if it were turning to white mar- 
 ble. As he hastens after her, he finds her, with 
 calm countenance, stretched out, as if sleeping, 
 on the broad step; soon the rain of ashes buries 
 her form. 
 
 When he awakes, he thinks he is still hearing 
 the confused cries of the Pompeiians, who are 
 seeking safety, and the dully resounding boom of 
 the turbulent sea ; but even after his returning 
 senses have recognized these noises as the waking 
 expressions of life in the noisy metropolis, he re- 
 tains for some time ttie belief in the reality of 
 what he has dreamed ;.when he has finally rid him- 
 self of the idea that he was really present, nearly 
 two thousand years ago, at the destruction of 
 Pompeii, there yet remains to him, as a firm con- 
 viction, the idea that Gradiva lived in Pompeii 
 and was buried there in the year 79. His fancies 
 about Gradiva, due to the after-effects of this 
 
100 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 dream, continue so that he now, for the first time, 
 begins to mourn her as lost. 
 
 While he leans from his window, prepossessed 
 with these ideas, a canary, warbling his song in 
 a cage at an open window of the house opposite, 
 attracts his attention. Suddenly something like 
 a thrill passes through the man not yet completely 
 awakened from his dream. He believes that he 
 sees, in the street, a figure like that of his Gra- 
 diva, and even recognizes the gait characteristic of 
 her; without dehberation he hastens to the street 
 to overtake her, and the laughter and jeers of the 
 people, at his unconventional, morning attire, 
 first drive him quickly back home. In his room, 
 it is again the singing canary in the cage who 
 occupies him and stimulates him to a comparison 
 with himself. He, too, is sitting in a cage, he 
 finds, yet it is easier for him to leave his cage. , As 
 if from added after-effect of the dream, perhaps 
 also under the influence of the mild spring air, 
 he decides to take a spring trip to Italy, for which 
 a scientific motive is soon found, even if "the im- 
 pulse for travel had originated in a nameless feel- 
 ing." (G. p. 21.) 
 
 We will stop a moment at this most loosely 
 motivated jovu-ney and take a closer look at the 
 personality, as well as the activities of our hero. 
 He seems to us still incomprehensible and foolish ; 
 we have no idea of how his special folly is to ac- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 131 
 
 quire enough human appeal to compel our inter- 
 est. It is the privilege of the author of "Gra- 
 diva" to leave us in such a quandary; with his 
 heauty of diction and his judicious selection of 
 incident, he presently rewards our confidence and 
 the undeserved sympathy which we still grant to 
 his hero. Of the latter we leam that he is already 
 destined by family tradition to be an antiquarian, 
 has later, in isolation and independence, sub- 
 merged himself completely in his science, and has 
 withdrawn entirely from life and its pleasures. 
 ' Majile_and_brqnze are, for his feelings, the only 
 things really alive and expressing the purpose 
 and value of human life. Yet, perhaps with kind 
 intent. Nature has put into his blood a thoroughly 
 unscientific sort of corrective, a most lively imagi- 
 nation, which can impress itself not only on his 
 dreams, but also on his waking life. By such 
 separa^n of imagj natiojQ flnrl intpllpctnal oa-pac- 
 jty, heis destined to be a poet or a neurotic, and 
 he belongs to that race of beings whose realm is 
 not of this world. So it happens that his interest 
 is fixed upon a bas-relief which represents a girl 
 walking in an unusual manner, that he spins a 
 web of fancies about it, invents a name and an 
 ancestry for it, and transports the person created 
 by him into Pompeii, which was buried more than 
 eighteen hundred years ago. Finally, after a re- 
 markable anxiety-dream he intensifies the fancy 
 
132 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 of the existence and destruction of the girl named 
 Gradiva into a delusion which comes to influence 
 his acts. These performances of imagination 
 would appear to us strange and inscrutable, if we 
 should encounter them in a really living person. 
 As our hero, Norbert Hanold, is a creature of an 
 author, we should like to ask the latter timidly 
 if his fancy has been determined by any power 
 other than his own arbitrariness. 
 
 We left our hero just as he is apparently being 
 moved by the song of a canary to take a trip to 
 Italy, the motive for which is apparently not clear 
 to him. We learn, further, that neither destina- 
 tion nor purpose are firmly established in his 
 mind. An inner restlessness and dissatisfaction 
 drive him from Rome to Naples and farther on 
 from inhere; he encounters the swarm of honey- 
 moon travelers and, forced to notice the tender 
 "Augustuses" and "Gretchens," is utterly unable 
 to understand the acts and impulses of the 
 couples. He arrives at the conclusion that, of 
 all the follies of humanity, "marriage, at any rate, 
 took the prize as the greatest and most incompre- 
 hensible one, and the senseless wedding trips to 
 Italy somehow capped the climax of this buffoon- 
 ery." (G. p. 23.) At Rome, disturbed in his 
 sleep by the proximity of a loving couple, he flees, 
 forthwith, to Naples, only to find there another 
 "Augustus" and "Gretchen." As he believes 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 133 
 
 that he understands from their conversation that 
 the majority of those bird-couples does not intend 
 to nest in the rubbish of Pompeii, but to take 
 flight to Capri, he decides to doj^hat-they do not 
 dg^^nd finds himself in Pompeii "contrary to ex- 
 pectations and intentions" a few days after the be- 
 ginning of his journey, — without, however, find- 
 ing there the peace which he seeks. 
 
 The role which, until then, has been played by 
 the honeymoon couples, who made him uneasy 
 and vexed his senses, is now assumed by house- 
 flies, in which he is inclined to see the incarnation 
 of absolute evil and worthlessness. The two tor- 
 mentors blend into one; many fly-couples remind 
 him of honeymoon travelers, address each other 
 probably, in their language, also as "My only 
 Augustus" and "My sweet Gretchen." 
 
 Finally he cannot help admitting "that his dis- 
 satisfaction was certainly caused not by his sur- 
 roundings alone, but to a degree found its origin 
 in him." (G. p. 35.) He feels that he is out of 
 sorts because he lacks something without being 
 able to explain what. 
 
 The next morning, he goes through the "in- 
 gresso" to Pompeii and after taking leave of the 
 guide, roams aimlessly through the city, notably, 
 however, without remembering that he has been 
 present in a dream some time before at the de- 
 struction of Pompeii. Therefore in the "hot. 
 
134 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 holy" hour of noon, which the ancients, you know, 
 considered the ghost-hour, when the other visitors 
 have taken flight and the heap of ruins, desolate 
 and steeped in sunlight, lies before him, there stirs 
 in him the ability to transport himself back into 
 the buried life, but not with the aid of science. 
 "What it taught was a lifeless, archaeological view 
 and what came from its mouth was a dead, philo- 
 logical language. These helped in no way to a 
 comprehension with soul, mind and heart, as the 
 saying is, but he, who possessed a desire for that, 
 had to stand alone here, the only living person in 
 the hot noonday silence, among the remains of 
 the past, in order not to see with physical eyes 
 nor hear with corporeal ears. Then — the dead 
 awoke, and Pompeii began to live again." (G. 
 p. 45.) While thus, by means of his imagina- 
 tion, he endows the past with hfe, he suddenly 
 sees, indubitably, the Gradiva of his bas-relief 
 step out of a house and buoyantly cross the lava 
 stepping-stones, just as he had seen her in the 
 dream that night when she had lain down to sleep 
 on the steps of the Apollo temple. "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 ac- 
 count 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. 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 135 
 
 — ^for, with her unusual gait, she must have left 
 behind in the ashes a foot-print different from all 
 the others" (G. p. 47). 
 
 The suspense, in which the author of "Gra- 
 diva" has kept us up to this point, mounts here, 
 for a moment, to painful confusion. Not only 
 because our hero has apparently lost his equilib- 
 rium, but also because, confronted with the ap- 
 pearance of Gradiva, who was formerly a plaster- 
 cast and then a creation of imagination, we are 
 lost. Is it a hallucination of our deluded hero, 
 a "real" ghost, or a corporeal person? Not that 
 we need to believe in ghosts to draw up this list. 
 Jensen, who named his tale a "Fancy" has, of 
 course, found no occasion, as yet, to explain to us 
 whether he wishes to leave us in our world, decried 
 as dull and ruled by the laws of science, or to 
 conduct us into another fantastic one, in which 
 reality is ascribed to ghosts and spirits. As 
 "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" show, we are ready to 
 follow him into such a place without hesitation. 
 The delusion of the imaginative archaeologist 
 would need, in that case, to be measured by an- 
 other standard. Yes, when we consider how im- 
 probable must be the real existence of a person 
 who faithfully reproduces in her appearance that 
 antique bas-relief, our list shrinks to an alterna- 
 tive: hallucination or ghost of the noon hour, A 
 slight touch in the description eliminates the for- 
 
136 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 mer possibility. A large lizard lies stretched out, 
 motionless, in the sunlight; it flees, however, be- 
 fore the approaching foot of Gradiva and wrig- 
 gles away over the lava pavement. So, no hal- 
 lucination; something outside of the mind of our 
 dreamer. But ought the reahty of a rediviva to 
 be able to disturb a lizard? 
 
 Before the house of Meleager Gradiva disap- 
 pears. We are not surprised that Norbert Ha- 
 nold persists in his delusion that Pompeii has be- 
 gun to live again about him in the noon hour of 
 spirits, and that Gradiva has also returned to life 
 and gone into the house where she lived before the 
 fateful August day of the year 79. There dart 
 through his mind keen conjectures about the per- 
 sonality of the owner, after whom the house may 
 have been named, and about Gradiva's relation to 
 the latter; these show that his science has now 
 given itself over completely to the service of his 
 imagination. After entering this house, he again 
 suddenly discovers the apparition, sitting on low 
 steps between two yellow pillars. "Spread out 
 on her knees lay something white which he was 
 unable to distinguish clearly; it seemed to be a 
 papyrus sheet — " (G. p. 54). Taking for 
 granted his most recent suppositions about her 
 ancestry, he speaks to her in Greek, awaiting 
 timorously the determination of whether the 
 power of speech may, perhaps, be granted to her 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 137 
 
 in her phantom existence. As she does not an- 
 swer, he changes the greeting to Latin. Then, 
 from smihng hps, come the words " 'If you wish 
 to speak with me, you must do so in German.' " 
 
 What embarrassment for us, the readers! 
 Thus the author of "Gradiva" has made sport of 
 us and decoyed us, as if by means of the reful- 
 gence of Pompeiian sunshine, into a little delusion 
 so that we may be milder in our judgment of the 
 poor man, whom the real noonday sun actually 
 burns ; but we know now, after recovering from 
 brief confusion, that Gradiva is a hving German 
 girl, a fact which we wish to reject as utterly im- 
 probable. Reflecting caknly, we now await a dis- 
 covery of what connection exists between the girl 
 and the stone representation of her, and of how 
 our young archaeologist acquired the fancies 
 which hint at her real personality. 
 
 Our hero is not freed so quickly as we from the 
 delusion, for, "Even if the belief brought happi- 
 ness," says our author, "it assumed everywhere, 
 in the bargain, a considerable amount of incom- 
 prehensibility." (G. p. 109.) Besides, this de- 
 lusion probably has subjective roots of which we 
 know nothing, which do not exist for us. He 
 doubtless needs trenchant treatment to bring him 
 back to reality. For the present he can do noth- 
 ing but adapt the delusion to the wonderful dis- 
 covery which he has just made. Gradiva, who 
 
138 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 had perished at the destruction of Pompeii, can 
 be nothing but a ghost of the noon hour, who re- 
 turns to life for the noon hour of spirits; but why, 
 after the answer given in German, does the ex- 
 clamation escape him: " 'I knew that your voice 
 sounded hke that' "? Not only we, but the girl, 
 too, must ask, and Hanold must admit that he has 
 never heard her voice before, but expected to hear 
 it in the dream, when he called to her, as she lay 
 down to sleep on the steps of the temple. He 
 begs her to repeat that action, but she then rises, 
 directs a strange glance at him, and, after a few 
 steps, disappears between the pillars of the court. 
 A beautiful butterfly had, shortly before that, 
 fluttered about her a few times ; in his interpreta- 
 tion it had been a messenger from Hades, who was 
 to admonish the departed one to return, as the 
 noon hour of spirits had passed. The call, " 'Are 
 you coming here again to-morrow in the noon 
 hour?' " Hanold can send after the disappear- 
 ing girl. To us, however, who venture a more 
 sober interpretation, it will seem that the young 
 lady found something improper in the request 
 which Hanold had made of her, and therefore, in- 
 sulted, left him, as she could yet laiow nothing of 
 his dream. May not her delicacy of feeling have 
 realized the erotic nature of the request, which was 
 pi'ompted, for Hanold, only by the connection 
 with his dream? 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 139 
 
 After the disappearance of Gradiva, our hero 
 examines all the guests at the Hotel Diomed table 
 and soon also those of Hotel Suisse, and can then 
 assure himself that in neither of the only two 
 lodgings known to him in Pompeii is a person to 
 be found, who possesses the most remote resem- 
 blance to Gradiva. Of course, he had rejected, as 
 unreasonable, the supposition that he might really 
 meet Gradiva in one of the two hostelries. The 
 wine pressed on the hot soil of Vesuvius then 
 helps to increase the day's dizziness. 
 
 The only certainty about the next day is that 
 Norbert must again be in Meleager's house at 
 noon; and, awaiting the hour, he enters Pompeii 
 over the old city -wall, a way which is against the 
 rules. An asphodel cluster of white beU-flowers 
 seems, as flower of the lower world, significant 
 enough for him to pluck and carry away. All his 
 knowledge of antiquity appears to him, however, 
 while he is waiting, as the most purposeless and 
 indifferent matter in the world, for another inter- 
 est has acquired control of him, the problem, 
 "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?" (G. p. 64.) He is 
 also worried lest to-day he may not meet the lady 
 sought, because perhaps she may not be allowed 
 to return for a long time, and when he again sees 
 
140 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 her between the pillars, he considers her appear- 
 ance an illusion, which draws from him the grieved 
 exclamation, "'Oh, that you were still alive I'" 
 This time, however, he has evidently been too 
 critical, for the apparition possesses a voice which 
 asks him whether he wishes to bring her the white 
 flower, and draws the man, who has again lost his 
 composure, into a long conversation. Our author 
 informs us, readers, to whom Gradiva has al- 
 ready become interesting as a living personality, 
 that the ill-humored, and repellent glance of the 
 day before has given way to an expression of 
 searching inquisitiveness or curiosity. She really 
 sounds him, demands, in explanation of his re- 
 mark of the preceding day, when he had stood 
 near her as she lay down to sleep, in this way 
 learns of the dream in which she perished with 
 her native city, then of the bas-relief, and of the 
 position of the foot, which attracted the young 
 archaeologist. Now she shows herself readj'- to 
 demonstrate her manner of walking, whereby the 
 substitution of light, sand-colored, fine-leather 
 shoes for the sandals, which she explains as adap- 
 tation to the present, is established as the only 
 deviation from the original relief of Gradiva. 
 Apparently she is entering into his delusion, 
 whose whole range she ehcits from him, without 
 once opposing him. Only once she seems to have 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 141 
 
 been wrested from her role by a peculiar feeling 
 when, his mind on the bas-relief, he asserts that 
 he has recognized her at first glance. As, at this 
 stage of the conversation, she, as yet, knows noth- 
 ing of the relief, she must be on the point of mis- 
 understanding Hanold's words, but she has im- 
 mediately recovered herself again and only to us 
 will many of her speeches appear to have a double 
 meaning, besides their significance in connection 
 with the delusion, a real, present meaning, as, for 
 example, when she regrets that he did not suc- 
 ceed in confirming the Gradiva-gait on the street. 
 " 'What a shame ; perhaps you would not have 
 needed to take the long journey here.' " (G. p. 
 71.) She learns also that he has named the bas- 
 relief of her "Gradiva," and tells him that her real 
 name is Zoe! 
 
 " 'The name suits you beautifully, but it sounds 
 to me like bitter mockery, for "Zoe" means 
 "life." ' " 
 
 " 'One must adapt himself to the inevitable,' " 
 she responds. " 'And I have long accustomed 
 myself to being dead.' " 
 
 With the promise to be at the same place again 
 on the morrow, she takes leave of him, after she 
 has obtained the asphodel cluster. "'To those 
 who are more fortunate one gives roses in spring, 
 but for me the flower of oblivion is the right one 
 
14-2 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 from your hand.' " (G. p. 71.) Melancholy is 
 suited to one so long dead, who has now returned 
 to hfe for a few short hours. 
 
 We begin now to understand and to hope. If 
 the young lady, in whose form Gradiva is again 
 revived, accepts Hanold's delusion so completely, 
 she does it probably to free him from it. No 
 other course is open; by opposition, one would 
 destroy that possibility. Even the serious treat- 
 ment of a real condition of this kind could pro- 
 ceed no differently than to place itself first on the 
 ground story of the delusion-structure, and inves- 
 tigate it then as thoroughly as possible. If Zoe 
 is the right person, we shall soon learn how one 
 cures delusions Uke those of our hero. We should 
 also hke to know how such a delusion originates. 
 It would be very striking, and yet not without ex- 
 ample and parallel, if the treatment and investi- 
 gation of the delusion should coincide and, while 
 it is being analyzed, result in the explanation of 
 its origin. We have a suspicion, of course, that 
 our case might then turn out to be an "ordinary" 
 love story, but one may not scorn love as a heahng 
 power for delusions ; and was not our hero's capti- 
 vation by the Gradiva-relief also a complete infat- 
 uation, directed, to be sure, at the past and liffc 
 less? 
 
 After Gradiva's disappearance, there is heard 
 once more a distant sound like the merry note of 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 143 
 
 a bird flying over the city of ruins. The man 
 who has remained behind picks up something 
 white, which Gradiva has left, not a papyrus leaf, 
 but a sketch-book with pencil drawings of Pom- 
 peii. We should say that the fact that she has 
 forgotten the little book, in this place, is a pledge 
 of her return, for we assert that one forgets noth- 
 ing without a secret reason or a hidden motive. 
 
 The remainder of the day brings to our hero 
 all sorts of remarkable discoveries and facts, 
 which he neglects to fit together. In the wall of 
 the portico where Gradiva disappeared, he no- 
 tices to-day a narrow cleft, which is, however, 
 wide enough to afford passage to an unusually 
 slender figure. He recognizes the fact that 
 Zoe-Gradiva does not need to sink into the 
 ground here, an idea which is so senseless that 
 he is now ashamed of the discarded belief, but 
 that she uses this route to go back to her tomb. 
 A faint shadow seems to him to dissolve at the 
 end of the Street of Tombs, before the so-called 
 Villa of Diomede. Dizzy, as on the previous day, 
 and occupied with the same problem, he wanders 
 now about Pompeii, wondering of what physical 
 nature Zoe-Gradiva may be and whether one 
 might feel anything if one touched her hand. A 
 peculiar impulse urges him to undertake this ex- 
 periment and yet an equally great timidity in 
 connection with the idea restrains him. On a hot. 
 
144 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 sunny slope he meets an older man who, from his 
 equipment, must be a zoologist or a botanist, and' 
 seems to be busy catching things. The latter 
 turns to him and says, " 'Are you interested in 
 Faraglionensis? I should hardly have supposed 
 it, but it seems thoroughly probable that they are 
 found not only in the Faraglioni of Capri, but 
 also dweU permanently on the mainland. The 
 method suggested by my colleague, Eimer, is 
 really good ; I have already used it often with the 
 best of success. Please remain quite still,' " — ( G. 
 p. 76.) The speaker stops talking then, and holds 
 a little snare, made of a long grassblade, before 
 a narrow crevice, from which the blue, chatoyant, 
 little head of a lizard peeps. Hanold leaves the 
 lizard-hunter with the critical thought that it is 
 hardly credible what foolishly remarkable pur- 
 poses can cause people to make the long trip to 
 Pompeii, in which criticism he does not, of course, 
 include himself and his intention of seeking foot- 
 prints of Gradiva in the ashes of Pompeii. The 
 gentleman's face, moreover, seems familiar to 
 him, as if he has noticed it casually in one of the 
 two hotels ; the man's manner of addressing him 
 has also sounded as if directed at an acquaintance. 
 As he continues his wandering, a side street leads 
 him to a house not previously discovered by him; 
 this proves to be the Albergo del Sole. The 
 hotel-keeper, who is not busy avails himself 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 145 
 
 of the opportunity to recommend highly his house 
 and the excavated treasures in it. He as- 
 serts that he was present when there were found 
 near the Forum the young lovers who, on realiz- 
 ing their inevitable destruction, had clasped each 
 other in firm embrace and thus awaited death. 
 Hanold has already heard of that before and 
 shrugged his shoulders over it, as a fabulous in- 
 vention of some especially imaginative narrator, 
 but to-day the words of the hotel-keeper awaken 
 in him credulity, which soon stretches itself more 
 when the former brings forth a metal brooch en- 
 crusted with green patina, which, in his presence, 
 was gathered, with the remains of the girl, from 
 the ashes. He secures this brooch, without fur- 
 ther critical consideration, and when, as he is leav- 
 ing the hotel, he sees in an open window, nodding 
 down, a cluster of white asphodel blossoms, the 
 sight of the grave-flower thrills him as an at- 
 testation of the genuineness of his new posses- 
 sion. 
 
 With this brooch, however, a new delusion 
 takes possession of him or, rather, the old one 
 continues for a while, apparently not a good omen 
 for the treatment which has been started. Not 
 far from the Forum, a couple of young lovers 
 were excavated in an embrace, and in the dream 
 he saw Gradiva lie down to sleep in that very 
 neighborhood, at the Apollo temple. Was it not 
 
146 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 possible, that in reality she went still farther 
 from the Forum to meet there some one with 
 whom she then died? 
 
 A tormenting feeling, which we can perhaps 
 compare to jealousy, originates from this sup- 
 position. He appeases it by referring to the un- 
 certainty of the combination, and so far regains 
 his senses as to be able to have his evening meal 
 in Hotel Diomed. His attention is attracted by 
 two, newly-arrived guests, a man and a woman, 
 whom, because of a certain resemblance, he con- 
 siders brother and sister — in spite of the differ- 
 ence in the color of their hair. They are the 
 first people whom he has encountered on this 
 trip who seem possibly congenial. A red Sor- 
 rento rose, which the young girl wears, awakes 
 in him some memory — he can not recall what. 
 Finally he goes to bed and dreams ; it is remark- 
 able nonsense, but apparently concocted of the 
 day's experiences. "Somewhere in the sun Gra- 
 diva sat making a trap out of a blade of grass, 
 in order to catch a lizard and she said, 'Please 
 stay quite still — ^my colleague is right; the method 
 is really good, and she has used it with greatest 
 success !' " He resists the dream, even in his 
 sleep, with the criticism that it is, of course, utter 
 madness, and he succeeds in getting rid of it with 
 the aid of an invisible bird, who utters a short, 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 147 
 
 merry call and carries the lizard away in his 
 beak. 
 
 In spite of all this ghostly visitation, he awakes 
 rather cleared and settled mentally. A rose- 
 bush, which bears flowers of the kind that he no- 
 ticed yesterday on the yomig lady, recalls to him 
 that in the night, some one said that in the spring 
 one gave roses. He plucks some of the roses, 
 involuntarily, and there must be some association 
 with these which has a liberating effect upon his 
 mind. Rid of his aversion to human beings, he 
 takes the customary road to Pompeii, laden with 
 the roses, the brooch and the sketch-book, and 
 occupied by the different problems relating to 
 Gradiva. The old delusion has become full of 
 flaws; he already doubts if she is permitted to 
 stay in Pompeii in the noon hour only, and not 
 at other times. Emphasis, on that account, is 
 transferred to the object recently acquired, and 
 the jealousy connected with it torments him in 
 aU sorts of disguises. He might almost wish 
 that the apparition should remain visible to only 
 his eyes and escape the notice of others; in that 
 way, he might consider her his exclusive prop- 
 erty. During his ramble awaiting the noon 
 hour, he has a surprising encoxmter. In the Casa 
 del Fauno he happens upon two people who 
 doubtless believe themselves undiscoverable in a 
 
148 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 nook, for they are embracing each other and their 
 lips meet. With amazement he recognizes in 
 them the congenial couple of yesterday evening; 
 but for brother and sister their present position, 
 the embrace and the kiss are of too long dura- 
 tion. So it is a couple of lovers, probably a 
 young bridal-couple, another Augustus and 
 Gretchen. Strange to relate, the sight of this 
 now arouses in him nothing but pleasure, and 
 fearful, as if he had disturbed a secret act of de- 
 votion, he withdraws unobserved. A deference 
 which has long been lacking in him has been re- 
 stored. 
 
 Arriving at Meleager's house, he is afraid that 
 he may find Gradiva in the company of another 
 man, and becomes so excited about it that he can 
 find no other greeting for her than the question: 
 " 'Axe you alone?' " With difficulty she makes 
 him realize that he has picked the roses for her; 
 he confesses to her the latest delusion, that she is 
 the girl who was found in the Forvmi in her 
 lover's embrace and to whom the green brooch 
 had belonged. Not without mockery, she in- 
 quires if he foimd the piece in the sun. The lat- 
 ter — ^here called "Sole" — brings to light many 
 things of that sort. As cure for the dizziness, 
 which he admits, she proposes to him to share a 
 lunch with her and offers him half of a piece of 
 white bread wrapped in tissue paper; the other 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 149 
 
 half of this she consumes with apparent appetite. 
 Thereat her faultless teeth gleam between her 
 lips and, in biting the crust, cause a slight crunch- 
 ing sound. To her remark, " 'It seems to me as 
 if we had already eaten our bread thus together 
 once two thousand years ago. Can't you remem- 
 ber it?'" (G. p. 93) he cannot answer, but 
 the strengthening of his mind by the nourishment, 
 and all the evidences of present time in her do 
 not fail to have effect on him. Reason stirs in 
 him and makes him doubt the whole delusion that'' 
 Gradiva is only a noonday Ghost; on the other 
 hand, there is the objection that she, herself, has 
 just said that she had already shared her repast 
 with him two thousand years ago. As a means 
 of settling this conflict there occurs to him an 
 experiment which he executes with slyness and 
 restored courage. Her left hand, with its slender 
 fingers, is resting on her knees, and one of the 
 house-flies, about whose boldness and worthless- 
 ness he formerly became so indignant, alights on 
 this hand. Suddenly Hanold's hand rises and 
 claps, with no gentle stroke, on the fly and on 
 Gradiva's hand. This bold experiment affords 
 him twofold success, first the joyous conviction 
 that he actually touched a really hving, warm 
 hand, then, however, a reprimand, before which 
 he starts up in terror from his seat on the step. 
 For from Gradiva's lips come the words, after she 
 
150 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 has recovered from her amazement, " 'You are 
 surely apparently crazy, Norbert Hanold.' " 
 
 Calling a person by name is recognized as the 
 best method of awakening him, when he is sleep- 
 ing, or of awakening a somnambulist. Unfortu- 
 nately we are not permitted to observe the results, 
 for Norbert Hanold, of Gradiva's calling his 
 name, which he had told to no one in Pompeii. 
 For at this critical moment, the congenial lovers 
 appear from the Casa del Fauno and the young 
 lady calls, in a tone of pleasant surprise, " 'Zoe! 
 You here, too? and also on your honeymoon? 
 You have not written me a word about it, you 
 know !' " Before this new proof of the living 
 reality of Gradiva, Hanold flees. 
 
 Zoe-Gradiva, too, is not most pleasantly sur- 
 prised by the vmexpected visit which disturbs her, 
 it seems, in an important piece of work. Soon 
 composed, she answers the question with a glib 
 speech, in which she informs her friend, and es- 
 pecially us, about the situation; and thereby she 
 knows how to get rid of the young couple. She 
 extends her compliments, but she is not on her 
 wedding-trip. " 'The young man who just went 
 out is laboring also under a remarkable delu- 
 sion ; it seems to me that he believes a fly is buzzing 
 in his head; well, every one has, of course, some 
 kind of bee in his bonnet. As is my duty, I have 
 some knowledge of entomology and can, there- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 151 
 
 fore, 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 enter- 
 tainment and make no demands upon him. I 
 said to myself that I should certainly dig up some- 
 thing 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.' " 
 (G. p. 97.) Zoe now feels obhged to leave at 
 once, to be company for her father at the "Sole." 
 So she goes, after she has introduced herself to us 
 as the daughter of the zoologist and lizard- 
 catcher, and has admitted in ambiguous words 
 her therapeutic intentions and other secret ones. 
 The direction which she takes is not that of the 
 Sun Hotel, in which her father is awaiting 
 her, but it seems to her, too, that in the region of 
 the Villa of Diomede a shadowy form is seeking 
 its burial-place and disappears under one of the 
 monuments ; therefore, with foot poised each time 
 almost perpendicularly, she directs her steps to 
 the Street of Tombs. Thither, in shame and 
 confusion, Hanold has fled, and is wandering up 
 and down in the portico of the court without stop- 
 ping, occupied with setthng the rest of his prob- 
 lem by mental efforts. One thing has become 
 unimpeachably clear to him; that he was utterly 
 foolish and irrational to believe that he com- 
 
162 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 muned with a young Pompeiian girl who had be- 
 come more or less physically alive, again; and 
 this clear insight into his madness forms incon- 
 testably an essential bit of progress in the return 
 to sound reason. On the other hand, however, 
 this living girl, with whom other people also com- 
 mimicate, as with one of a corporeal reality like 
 theirs, is Gradiva, and she knows his name; for 
 the solution of this riddle his scarcely awakened 
 reason is not strong enough. Emotionally, also, 
 he is not calm enough to be equal to so difficult 
 a task, for he would most gladly have been buried 
 two thousand years ago in the Villa of Diomede, 
 only to be sure of never meeting Zoe-Gradiva 
 again. A violent longing to see her struggles, 
 meanwhile, with the remnants of the inclination 
 to flee, which has persisted in him. 
 
 Turning at one of the four corners of the col- 
 onnade, he suddenly recoils. On a fragmentary 
 waH-ruin there sits one of the girls who met 
 death here in the Villa of Diomede ; but that at- 
 tempt to take refuge again in the realm of mad- 
 ness is soon put aside ; no, it is Gradiva, who has 
 apparently come to give him the last bit of her 
 treatment. She interprets rightly his first in- 
 stinctive movement to flee, as an attempt to leave 
 the place, and points out to him that he cannot 
 escape, for outside a frightful cloudburst is in 
 progress. The merciless girl begins the exami- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 153 
 
 nation with the question as to what he intended in 
 connection with the fly on her hand. He does 
 not find courage to make use of a definite pro- 
 noun, but acquires the more valuable kind 
 needed to put the deciding question. 
 
 " '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 un- 
 derstand — but I can't understand either how its 
 owner could use my name in upbraiding me for 
 my — ^my madness.' " (G. p. 105.) 
 
 " '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 discov- 
 ery again I should not have needed to come to 
 Pompeii, and you could have confirmed it for me 
 a good hundred miles nearer.' " 
 
 '"A himdred miles nearer; diagonally across 
 from your house, in the corner house ; in my win- 
 dow, in a cage, is a canary,' " she discloses to the 
 still bewildered man. 
 
 This last word touches the hero Kke a memory 
 from afar. That is surely the same bird whose 
 song has suggested to him the trip to Italy. 
 
 " 'In that house lives my father, Richard Bert- 
 gang, professor of zoology.' " 
 
 As his neighbor, therefore, she is acquainted 
 with him and his name. It seems as if the dis- 
 
•154 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 appointment of a superficial solution is threaten- 
 ing us — a solution unworthy of our expectations. 
 
 As yet Norbert Hanold shows no regained in- 
 dependence of thought, when he repeats, — 
 " 'Then are you — are you Miss Zoe Bertgang? 
 But she looked quite different — ' " 
 
 Miss Bertgang's answer shows then that other 
 relations besides those of neighborliness have 
 existed between them. She knows how to inter- 
 cede for the f amihar manner of address, which he 
 has, of course, used to the noonday spirit, but 
 withdrawn again from the living girl; she makes 
 former privileges of use to her here. " '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 be- 
 fore with each other as friends, every day, and 
 occasionally beat and cuffed each other for a 
 change, but if, in recent years, you had favored 
 me with even one glance you might perhaps have 
 seen that I have looked hke this for a long time.' " 
 
 A childhood friendship had therefore existed 
 between the two, perhaps a childhood love, from 
 which the familiar form of address derived its 
 justification. Isn't this solution perhaps as su- 
 perficial as the one first supposed? The fact that 
 it occurs to us that this childhood relation ex- 
 plains in an unexpected way so many details of 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 165 
 
 what has occurred in the present intercourse be- 
 tween them makes the matter essentially deeper. 
 Does it not seem that the blow on Zoe-Gradiva's 
 hand which Norbert Hanold has so splendidly 
 motivated by the necessity of solving, experi- 
 mentally, the question of the physical existence of 
 the apparition, is, from another standpoint, re- 
 markably similar to a revival of the impulse for 
 "beating and cuffing," whose sway in childhood 
 Zoe's words have testified to? And when Gra- 
 diva puts to the archaeologist the question 
 whether it does not seem to him that they have 
 once already, two thousand years ago, shared their 
 limcheon, does not the incomprehensible question 
 become suddenly senseful, when we substitute 
 for the historical past the personal childhood, 
 whose memories persist vividly for the girl, but 
 seem to be forgotten by the young man? Does 
 not the idea suddenly dawn upon us that the fan- 
 cies of the young man about his Gradiva may be 
 an echo of his childhood memories? Then they 
 would, therefore, be no arbitrary products of his 
 imagination, but determined, without his know- 
 ing it, by the existing material of childhood im- 
 pressions already forgotten, but still active in 
 him. We must be able to point out in detail the 
 origin of these fancies, even if only by conjecture. 
 If, for instance, Gradiva must be of pure Greek 
 ancestry, the daughter of a respected man, per- 
 
156 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 haps of a priest of Ceres, that predisposes us 
 fairly well for an after-effect of the knowledge of 
 her Greek name — Zoe, and of her membership in 
 the family of a professor of zoology. If, how- 
 ever, these fancies of Hanold's are transformed 
 memories, we may expect to find in the disclos- 
 lu-es of Zoe Bertgang, the suggestion of the 
 sources of these fancies. Let us listen; she tells 
 us of an intimate friendship of childhood; we 
 shall soon learn what further development this 
 childhood relation had in both. 
 
 " '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 pleas- 
 ing 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 some- 
 thing, but when archaeology overcame you, I 
 made the discovery that you — excuse the familiar- 
 ity, but your new formality sounds absurd to me 
 — I was saying that I imagined that you had be- 
 come 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 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 157 
 
 different from what I did formerly for when, 
 occasionally, I met you at a party, even last win- 
 ter, you did not look at me and I did not hear your 
 voice; in this, of course, there was nothing that 
 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 — archaeopteryx ; 
 I beheve the excavated antediluvian bird-monster 
 is so called ; but that your head harbored an imag- 
 ination so magnificent as here in Pompeii to con- 
 sider me as 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 in- 
 vented. 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.' " 
 (G. p. 107.) 
 
 So she thus tells us clearly enough what, with 
 the years, has become of the childhood friendship 
 for both of them. With her it expanded into an 
 intense love affair, for one must have something, 
 you know, to which one, that is, a girl, pins her 
 affections. Miss Zoe, the incarnation of clever- 
 ness and clarity, makes her psychic life, too, quite 
 
158 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 transparent for us. If it is already the general 
 rule for a normal girl that she first turns her 
 affection to her father, she is especially ready to 
 do it, she who has no one but her father in her 
 family; but this father has nothing left for her; 
 the objects of science have captured all his inter- 
 est. So she has to look around for another per- 
 son and clings with especial fervor to the play- 
 mate of her youth. When he, too, no longer has 
 any eyes for her, it does not destroy her love, 
 rather augments it, for he has become like her 
 father, like him absorbed by science and, by it, 
 isolated from life and from Zoe. So it is granted^ 
 to her to be faithful in unfaithfulness, to find her 
 father again in her beloved, to embrace both with 
 the same feeling as we may say, to make them 
 both identical in her emotions. Where do we 
 get justification for this Httle psychological anal- 
 ysis, which may easily seem autocratic? In a 
 single, but intensely characteristic detail the au- 
 thor of the romance gives it to us. When Zoe 
 pictures for us the transformation of the play- 
 mate of her youth, which seems so sad for her, 
 she insults him by a comparison with the arch- 
 aeopteryx, that bird-monster which belongs to 
 the archaeology of zoology. So she has found 
 a single, concrete expression for identifying the 
 two people ; her resentment strikes the beloved as 
 well as the father with the same word. The 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 159 
 
 archaeopteryx is, so to speak, the compromise, or 
 intermediary representation in which the folly of 
 her beloved coincides with her thought of an anal- 
 ogous folly of her father. 
 
 With the young man, things have taken a dif- 
 ferent turn. The science of antiquity overcame 
 him and left to him interest only in the women of 
 bronze and stone. The childhood friendship 
 died, instead of developing into a passion, and the 
 memories of it passed into such absolute forget- 
 fulness that he does not recognize nor pay any at- 
 tention to the friend of his youth, when he meets 
 her in society. Of course, when we continue our 
 observations, we may doubt if "forgetfulness" is 
 the right psychological term for the fate of these 
 memories of our archaeologist. There is a kind 
 of forgetting which distinguishes itself by the 
 difficulty with which the memory is awakened, 
 even by strong objective appeals, as if a subjec- 
 tive resistance struggled against the revival. 
 Such forgetting has received the name "repres- 
 sion" in psychopathology; the case which Jensen 
 has presented to us seems to be an example of 
 repression. Now we do not know, in general, 
 whether, in psychic life, forgetting an impression 
 is connected with the destruction of its memory- 
 trace; about repression we can assert with cer- 
 tainty that it does not coincide with the destruc- 
 tion, the obliteration, of the memory. The re- 
 
.160 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 pressed material cannot, as a rule, break through, 
 of itself, as a memory, but remains potent and 
 effective. Some day, under external influence, 
 it causes psychic results which one may accept as 
 products of transformation or as remnants of for- 
 gotten memories ; and if one does not view them 
 as such, they remain incomprehensible. In the 
 fancies of Norbert Hanold about Gradiva, we 
 thought we; recognized already the remnants of 
 the repressed memories of his childhood friend- 
 ship with Zoe Bertgang. Quite legitimately one 
 may expect such a recurrence of the repressed 
 material, if the man's erotic feeUngs chng to the 
 repressed ideas, if his erotic life has been involved 
 in the repression. Then there is truth in the old 
 Latin proverb which was perhaps originally 
 aimed at expulsion through external influences, 
 not at inner conflict: "You may drive out nat- 
 ural disposition with a two-pronged fork, but it 
 will always return," but it does not tell all, an- 
 nounces only the fact of the recurrence of re- 
 pressed material, and does not describe at all the 
 most remarkable manner of this recurrence, 
 which is accomphshed as if by maUcious treason; 
 the very thing which has been chosen as a means 
 of repression, — like the "two-pronged fork" of 
 the proverb — becomes the carrier of the thing re- 
 curring; in and behind the agencies of repression 
 the material repressed finally asserts itself victo- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 161 
 
 riously. A well-known etching by Felicien Rops 
 illustrates this fact, which is generally over- 
 looked and lacks acceptance, more impressively 
 than many explanations could; and he does it in 
 the typical case of the repression in the lives of 
 saints and penitents. From the temptations of 
 the world, an ascetic monk has sought refuge hi 
 the image of the crucified Savior. Then, phan- 
 tom-like, this cross sinks and, in its stead, there 
 rises shining, the image of a voluptuous, unclad 
 woman, in the same position of the crucifixion. 
 Other painters of less psychological insight have, 
 in such representations of temptation, depicted 
 sin as bold and triumphant, near the Savior on 
 the cross. Rops, alone, has allowed it to take the 
 place of the Savior on the cross ; he seems to have 
 known that the thing repressed proceeds, at its 
 recurrence, from the agency of repression, itself. 
 If Norbert Hanold were a living person, who 
 had, by means of archaeology, driven love and 
 the memory of his childhood friendship out of 
 his life, it would now be legitimate and correct 
 that an antique relief should awaken in him the 
 forgotten memory of the girl beloved in his child- 
 hood; it would be his well-deserved fate to have 
 fallen in love with the stone representation of 
 Gradiva, behind which, by virtue of an unex- 
 plained resemblance, the living and neglected Zoe 
 becomes effective. 
 
162 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 Miss Zoe, herself, seems to share our concep- 
 tion of the delusion of the young archaeologist, 
 for the pleasure which she expresses at the end of 
 her "unreserved, detailed and instructive lec- 
 ture" is hardly based on anything other than her 
 readiness to refer his entire interest in Gradiva to 
 her person. This is exactly what she does not 
 believe him capable of and what, in spite of all the 
 disguises of the delusion, she recognizes as such. 
 Her psychic treatment of him has a beneficent 
 effect; he feels himself free, as the delusion is now 
 replaced by that of which it can be only a dis- 
 torted and unsatisfactory copy. He immedi- 
 ately remembers and recognizes her as his good, 
 cheerful, clever comrade who has not changed es- 
 sentially; but he finds something else most 
 strange — 
 
 " 'That la person must die to become alive 
 again;' " says the girl, " 'but for archaeologists, 
 that is, of course necessary.' " (G. p. 110.) 
 She has apparently not yet pardoned him for the 
 detour which he made from the childhood friend- 
 ship through the science of antiquity to this rela- 
 tion which has recently been established. 
 
 " 'No, I mean your name — Because Bertgang 
 has the same meaning as Gradiva and signifies 
 "the splendid one splendid in walking." ' " (G. 
 p. 110.) 
 
 Even we are not prepared for that. Our hero 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 163 
 
 begins to rise from his humility and to play an 
 active role. He is, apparently, entirely cured of 
 his delusion, lifted far above it, and proves this by 
 tearing asunder the last threads of the web of 
 delusion. Patients, also, who have been freed 
 from the compulsion of their delusion, by the 
 disclosure of the repression behind it, always act 
 in just that way. When they have once under- 
 stood, they themselves offer the solutions for 
 the last and most significant riddles of their 
 strange condition in suddenly emerging ideas. 
 We had already believed, of course, that the 
 Greek ancestry of the mythical Gradiva was an 
 after-effect of the Greek name, Zoe, but with the 
 name, Gradiva, we had ventured nothing; we 
 had supposed it the free creation of Norbert 
 Hanold's imagination and behold! this very name 
 now shows itself to be a remnant, really a transla- 
 tion of the repressed family-name of the suppos- 
 edly forgotten beloved of his youth. 
 
 The derivation and solution of the delusion are 
 now completed. What follows may well serve as 
 a harmonious conclusion of the tale. In regard 
 to the future, it can have only a pleasant eflPect 
 on us, if the rehabilitation of the man, who for- 
 merly had to play the lamentable role of one 
 needing to be cured, progresses, and he succeeds 
 in awakening in the girl some of the emotions 
 which he formerly experienced. Thus it hap- 
 
164 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 I)ens that he makes her jealous by mentioning 
 the congenial young lady, who disturbed them in 
 Meleager's house, and by the acknowledgment 
 that the latter was the first girl who had im- 
 pressed him much. When Zoe is then about to 
 take a cool departure, with the remark that now 
 everything is reasonable again, she herself not 
 least of all, that he might look up Gisa Hartle- 
 ben, or whatever her name might now be, and be 
 of scientific assistance to her about the purpose 
 of her stay in Pompeii, but she has to go now 
 to the Albergo del Sole where her father is al- 
 ready waiting for her at lunch, perhaps they may 
 see each other again sometime at a party in Ger- 
 many or on the moon, he seizes upon the 
 troublesome fly as a means of taking possession 
 of her cheek, first, and then of her lips, and as- 
 sumes the aggressive, which is the duty of a man 
 in the game of love. Only once more does a 
 shadow seem to fall on their happiness, when Zoe 
 reminds him that now she must really go to her 
 father, who will otherwise starve in the "Sole." 
 
 "'Your father what will he—?'" (G. p. 
 
 115.) 
 
 But the clever girl knows how to silence the ap- 
 prehension quickly : " 'Probably he will do noth- 
 ing ; I am not an indispensable piece in his zoolog- 
 ical collection; if I were, my heart would prob- 
 ably not have clung to you so unwisely.' " 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 165 
 
 Should the father, however, by way of exception, 
 in this case, have an opinion different from hers, 
 there is a sure method. Hanold needs only to go 
 over to Capri, there catch a lacerta faraglionensis, 
 for which purpose he may practise the technique 
 on her little finger, then set the animal free again 
 here, catch it before the eyes of the zoologist and 
 give him the choice of the faraglionensis on the 
 mainland or his daughter, a proposal in which 
 mockery, as one may easily note, is combined 
 with bitterness, an admonition to the betrothed, 
 also, not to follow too closely the model after 
 which his beloved has chosen him. Norbert 
 Hanold sets us at rest on this matter, as he ex- 
 presses, by aU sorts of apparently trivial symp- 
 toms, the great transformation which has come 
 over hini. He voices the intention of taking a 
 wedding trip with his Zoe to Italy and Pompeii, 
 as if he had never been indignant at the newly- 
 married travelers, Augustus and Gretchen. His 
 feelings towards this happy couple, who so un- 
 necessarily traveled more than one hundred miles 
 from their German home, have entirely disap- 
 peared from his memory. Certainly the author 
 is right when he cites such weakening of memory 
 as the most valuable mark of a mental change. 
 Zoe replies to the announced desire about the des- 
 tination of their journey, "by her childhood 
 friend who had, in a way, also been excavated 
 
166 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 from the ashes" (G. p. 117) , that she does not yet 
 feel quite alive enough for such geographical de- 
 cision. 
 
 Beautiful reality has now triumphed over the 
 delusion. Yet an honor still awaits the latter 
 before the two leave Pompeii. When they have 
 arrived at the Hercules Gate, where, at the be- 
 ginning of the Strada Consolare, old stepping- 
 stones cross the street, Norbert Hanold stops and 
 asks the girl to go ahead. She understands him, 
 and "raising her dress slightly with her left hand, 
 Gradiva rediviva Zoe Bertgang, viewed by him 
 with dreamily observing eyes, crossed with her 
 calmly buoyant walk, through the sunlight, over 
 the stepping-stones." With the triumph of erot- 
 icism, what was beautiful and valuable in the 
 delusion is now acknowledged. 
 
 With the last comparison of "the childhood 
 friend excavated from the ashes," the author of 
 the story has, however, put into our hand the key 
 of the symbolism which the delusion of the hero 
 made use of in the disguise of the repressed mem- 
 ory. There is no better analogy for repression, 
 which at the same time makes inaccessible and 
 conserves something psychic, than the burial 
 which was the fate of Pompeii, and from which 
 the city was able to arise again through work with 
 the spade. Therefore in his imagination the 
 young archaeologist had to transport to Pompeii 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 167 
 
 the original figure of the relief which reminded 
 him of the forgotten beloved of his youth. Jen- 
 sen, however, had a good right to linger over the 
 significant resemblance which his fine sense 
 traced out between a bit of psychic occurrence in 
 the individual and a single historical event in 
 the history of man. 
 
II 
 
 It was really our intention to investigate with 
 the aid of definite analytic method only the two 
 or three dreams which are found in the tale "Gra- 
 diva"; how did it happen then that we allowed 
 ourselves to be carried away with the analysis of 
 the whole story and the examination of the psy- 
 chic processes of the two chief characters? Well, 
 that was no superfluous work, but a necessary 
 preparation, f Even when we wish to understand 
 the real dreams of an actual person, we must con- 
 cern ourselves intensively with the character and 
 the fortunes of this person, not only the experi- 
 ences shortly before the dream, but also those of 
 the remote past. ' I think, however, that we are 
 not yet free to turn to our real task, but must stiU 
 linger over the piece of fiction itself, and perform 
 more preparatory work. 
 
 Our readers will, of course, have noticed with 
 surprise that till now we have considered Norbert 
 Hanold and Zoe Bertgang in all their psychic 
 expressions and activities, as if they were real in- 
 dividuals and not creatures of an author, as if 
 the mind of their creator were absolutely trans- 
 
 168 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 169 
 
 parent, not a refractory and cloudy medium; and 
 our procedure must seem all the more surprising 
 when the author of "Gradiva" expressly dis- 
 avows the portrayal of reality by calling his tale 
 a "Fancy." We find, however, that all his pic- 
 tures copy reality so faithfully that we should not 
 contradict if "Gradiva" were called not a 
 "Fancy," but a study in psychiatry. Only in 
 two points has Wilhelm Jensen made use of his 
 license, to create suppositions which do not seem 
 to have roots in the earth of actual law: first, 
 when he has the young archaeologist find a genu- 
 inely antique bas-relief which, not only in the de- 
 tail of the position of the foot in walking, but in 
 all details, the shape of the face, and the bearing, 
 copies a person living much later, so that he can 
 consider the physical manifestation of this per- 
 son to be the cast endowed with life ; second, when 
 the hero is caused to meet the living girl in Pom- 
 peii, whither his fancy has transported the dead 
 girl, while he separates himself, by the journey 
 to Pompeii, from the living girl, whom he has 
 noticed on the street of his home city ; this second 
 instance is ho tremendous deviation from the pos- 
 sibihties of life ; it asks aid only of chance, which 
 undeniably plays a part in so many human fates, 
 and, moreover, makes it reasonable, for this 
 chance reflects again the destiny which has de- 
 creed that through flight one is delivered over to 
 
170 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 the very thing that one is fleeing from. More 
 fantastic, and originating solely in the author's 
 arbitrariness, seems the first supposition which 
 brings in its train the detailed resemblance of the 
 cast to the living girl, where moderation might 
 have limited the conformity to the one trait of the 
 position of the foot in walking. One might then 
 have tried to let one's own imagination play in or- 
 der to establish cormection with reality. The 
 name Bertgang might point to the fact that the 
 women of that family had been distinguished, 
 even in ancient times, by the characteristic of a 
 beautiful gait, and by heredity the German Bert- 
 gang was connected with those Romans, a woman 
 of whose family had caused the ancient artist to 
 fix in a bas-relief the pecuharity of her walk. 
 As the individual variations of human structure 
 are, however, not independent of one another, 
 and as the ancient types, which we come upon in 
 the collections, are actually always emerging 
 again in our midst, it would not be entirely im- 
 possible that a modern Bertgang should repeat 
 again the form of her ancient forbear, even in 
 all the other traits of her physique. Inquiry of 
 the author of the story for the sources of this 
 creation might well be wiser than such specula- 
 tion; a good prospect of solving again a bit of 
 supposed arbitrariness would probably then ap- 
 pear. As, however, we have not access to the 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 171 
 
 psychic life of the author, we leave to him the un- 
 diminished right of building up a thoroughly 
 yahd development on an improbable supposition, 
 a right which Shakspere, for example, has as- 
 serted in "King Lear." 
 
 Otherwise, we wish to repeat, Wilhelm Jensen 
 has given us an absolutely correct study in psy- 
 chiatry, in which we may measure our under- 
 standing of psychic life, a story of illness and 
 cure adapted to the inculcation of certain 
 fundamental teachings of medical psychology. 
 Strange enough that he should have done thisl 
 What if, in reply to questioning, he should deny 
 this intention? It is so easy to draw comparisons 
 and to put constructions on things. Are we not 
 rather the ones who have woven secret meanings, 
 which were foreign to him, into the beautiful 
 poetic tale ? Possibly ; we shall come back to that 
 later. As a preliminary, however, we have tried 
 to refrain from interpretations with that tend- 
 ency, by reproducing the story, in almost every 
 case, from the very words of the writer; and we 
 have had him furnish text as well as commen- 
 tary, himself. Any one who will compare our 
 text with that of "Gradiva" will have to grant 
 this. 
 
 Perhaps in the judgment of the majority we 
 are doing a poor service for him when we declare 
 his work a study in psychiatry. An author is to 
 
17a DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 avoid all contact with psychiatry, we are told, 
 and leave to physicians the portrayal of morbid 
 psychic conditions. In reality no true author has 
 ever heeded this commandment. The portrayal 
 of the psychic life of human beings is, of course, 
 his most especial domain; he was always the pre- 
 cursor of science and of scientific psychology. 
 The borderline between normal and morbid psy- 
 chic conditions, is, in a way, a conventional one, 
 and, in another way, in such a state of flux that 
 probably every one of us oversteps it many times 
 in the course of a day. On the other hand, 
 psychiatry would do wrong to wish to limit itself 
 continually to the study of those serious and 
 cloudy illnesses which arise from rude disturb- 
 ances of the dehcate psychic apparatus. It has 
 no less interest in the lesser and adjustable devia- 
 tions from the normal which we cannot yet trace 
 back farther than disturbances in the play of psy- 
 chic forces ; indeed, it is by means of these that it 
 can understand normal conditions, as well as the 
 manifestations of sei'ious illness. Thus the au- 
 thor cannot yield to the psychiatrist nor the 
 psychiatrist to the author, and the poetic treat- 
 ment of a theme from psychiatry may result cor- 
 rectly without damage to beauty. 
 
 The imaginative representation of the story of 
 illness and its treatment, which we can survey 
 better after finishing the story and relieving our 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 173 
 
 own suspense, is really correct. Now we wish to 
 reproduce it with the technical expressions of our 
 science, in doing which it will not be necessary to 
 repeat what has already been related. 
 
 Norbert Hanold's condition is called a "delu- 
 sion" often enough by the author of the story, 
 and we also have no reason to reject this designa- 
 tion. We can mention two chief characteristics 
 of "delusion," by which it is not, of course ex- 
 haustively described, but is admittedly differen- 
 tiated from other disturbances. It belongs first 
 to that group of illnesses which do not directly 
 affect the physical, but express themselves only 
 by psychic signs, and it is distinguished secondly 
 by the fact that "fancies" have assumed control, 
 that is, are believed and have acquired influence 
 on actions. If we recall the journey to Pompeii 
 to seek in the ashes the pecuharly-formed foot- 
 prints of Gradiva, we have in it a splendid ex- 
 ample of an act under the sway of the delusion. 
 The psychiatrist would perhaps assign Norbert 
 Hanold's delusion to the great group of paranoia 
 and designate it as a "fetichistic erotomania," be- 
 cause falling in love with the bas-relief would be 
 the most striking thing to him and because, to his 
 conception, which coarsens everything, the inter- 
 est of the young archaeologist in the feet and 
 foot-position of women must seem suspiciously 
 like fetichism. All such names and divisions 
 
174 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 of the different kinds of delusion are, however, 
 substantially useless and awkward.^ 
 
 The old-school psychiatrist would, moreover, 
 stamp our hero as a degenere, because he is a 
 person capable, on account of such strange predi- 
 lections, of developing a delusion, and would in- 
 vestigate the heredity which has unrelentingly 
 driven him to such a fate. In this, however, Jen- 
 sen does not follow him; with good reason, he 
 brings us nearer to the hero to facilitate for us 
 aesthetic sympathy with him; with the diagnosis 
 "degenei'e," whether or not it may be justifiable 
 to us scientifically, the young archaeologist is at 
 once moved farther from us, for we, readers, are, 
 of course, normal people and the measure of hu- 
 manity. The essential facts of heredity and con- 
 stitution in connection with this condition also 
 concern the author of "Gradiva" little; instead, 
 he is engrossed in the personal, psj'^chic state 
 which can give rise to such a delusion. 
 
 In an important point, Norbert Hanold acts 
 quite differently from ordinary people. He has 
 no interest in the living woman ; science, which he 
 serves, has taken this interest from him and trans- 
 ferred it to women of stone or bronze. Let us 
 not consider this an unimportant peculiarity; it is 
 really the basis of the story, for one day it hap- 
 
 1 The case N.H. would have to be designated as hysterical, not 
 paranoiac delusion. The marks of paranoia are lacking here. 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 175 
 
 pens that a single such bas-rehef claims for itself 
 all the interest which would otherwise belong only 
 to the hving woman, and thereby originates the 
 delusion. Before our eyes there is then unfolded 
 the story of how this delusion is cured by a fortu- 
 nate set of circumstances, the interest transferred 
 back again from the cast to the living girl. The 
 author of the story does not allow us to trace the 
 influences because of which our hero begins to 
 avoid women; he only suggests to us that such 
 conduct is not explained by his predisposition 
 which is invested with a rather fanciful — we 
 might add, erotic — need. We learn later also 
 that in his chUdhood he did not avoid other chil- 
 dren; he was then friendly with the little girl, was 
 inseparable from her, shared with her his lunches, 
 cuffed her, and was pulled around by her. In 
 such attachment, such a combination of tender- 
 ness and aggression, is expressed the incomplete 
 eroticism of child life, which expresses its activi- 
 ties first spitefully and then irresistibly and 
 which, during childhood, only physicians and 
 writers usually recognize as eroticism. Our 
 author gives us to understand clearly that he has 
 those intentions, for he suddenly causes to 
 awaken in his hero, with suitable motive, a lively 
 interest in the gait and foot-position of women, 
 an interest which, in science, as well as among the 
 ladies of his home-city, must bring him into dis- 
 
176 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 repute as a foot-fetichist, and is to us, however, 
 necessarily derived from the memory of his child- 
 hood playmate. The girl, to be sure, was char- 
 acterized, as a child, by the beautiful walk with 
 her foot almost perpendicular as she stepped out, 
 and through the portrayal of this very gait an 
 antique bas-relief later acquired for Norbert 
 Hanold great significance. Let us add, more- 
 over, immediately, that the author of "Gradiva" 
 stands in complete agreement with science in re- 
 gard to the derivation of the remarkable manifes- 
 tation of fetichism. Since the investigations by 
 Binet we really try to trace fetichism back to 
 erotic impressions of childhood. 
 
 The condition of continued avoidance of 
 women gives the personal qualification, as we 
 say, the disposition for the formation of a delu- 
 sion; the development of psychic disturbance be- 
 gins at the moment when a chance impression 
 awakens the forgotten childhood experiences 
 which are emphasized in an erotic way that is at 
 least traceable. Awakened is really not the right 
 term, however, when we consider the further re- 
 sults. We must reproduce our author's correct 
 representation in a mode of expression artisti- 
 cally correct, and psychological. On seeing the 
 relief Norbert Hanold does not remember that he 
 has seen such a foot-position in the friend of his 
 youth; he certainly does not remember and yet 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 177 
 
 every effect of the relief proceeds from such con- 
 nection with the impression of his childhood. 
 The childhood-impression, stirred, becomes ac- 
 tive, so that it begins to show activity, though it 
 does not appear in consciousness, but remains 
 "imconscious," a term which we now use unavoid- 
 ably in psychopathology. This term "uncon- 
 scious" we should now like to see withdrawn from 
 all the conflicts of philosophers and natural phi- 
 losophers, which have only etymological signifi- 
 cance. For psychic processes which are active 
 and yet at the same time do not come through into 
 the consciousness of the person referred to, we 
 have at present no better name and we mean noth- 
 ing else by "unconsciousness." If many thinkers 
 wish to dispute as unreasonable the existence of 
 such an unconscious, we think they have never 
 busied themselves with analogous psychic phe- 
 nomena, and are under the spell of the common 
 idea that everything psychic which is active and 
 intensive becomes, thereby, at the same time, con- 
 scious, and they have still to learn what our author 
 knows very well, that there are, of course, psychic 
 processes, which, in spite of the fact that they are 
 intensive and show energetic activities, remain 
 far removed from consciousness. 
 
 We said once that the memories of the child- 
 hood relations with Zoe are in a state of "repres- 
 sion" with Norbert Hanold; and we have called 
 
178 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 them "unconscious memories." Here we must, 
 of course, turn our attention to the relation be- 
 tween the two technical terms which seem to 
 coincide in meaning. It is not hard to clear this 
 up. "Unconscious" is the broader term, "re- 
 pressed," the narrower. Everything that is re- 
 pressed is unconscious ; but we cannot assert that 
 everything unconscious is repressed. If Han- 
 old, at the sight of the relief, had remembered 
 his Zoe's manner of walking, then a formerly 
 unconscious memory would have become imme- 
 diately active and conscious, and thus would have 
 shown that it was not formerly repressed. "Un- 
 conscious" is a purely descriptive term, in many 
 respects indeiinite and, so to speak, static; "re- 
 pressed" is a dynamic expression which takes 
 into consideration the play of psychic forces and 
 the fact that there is present an effort to express 
 all psychic activities, among them that of becom- 
 ing conscious again, but also a counterforce, a 
 resistance, which might hinder a part of these 
 psychic activities, among these, also, getting into 
 consciousness. The mark of the repressed ma- 
 terial is that, in spite of its intensity, it cannot 
 break through into consciousness. In Hanold's 
 case, therefore, it was a matter, at the appearance 
 of the bas-relief on his horizon, of a repressed 
 unconscious, in short of a repression. 
 
 The memories of his childhood association witK 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 179 
 
 the girl who walks beautifully are repressed in 
 Norbert Hanold, but this is not yet the correct 
 view of the psychological situation. We remain 
 on the surface so long as we treat only of mem- 
 ories and ideas. The only valuable things in psy- 
 chic life are, rather, the emotions. All psychic 
 powers are significant only through their fitness to 
 awaken emotions. Ideas are repressed only be- 
 cause they are connected with hberations of emo- 
 tions, which are not to come to hght ; it would be 
 more correct to say that repression deals with the 
 emotions, but these are comprehensible to us only 
 in connection with ideas. Thus, in Norbert Han- 
 old, the erotic feelings are repressed, and, as his 
 eroticism neither knows nor has known another 
 object than Zoe Bertgang of his youth, the memo- 
 ries of her are forgotten. The antique bas-relief 
 awakens the slumbering eroticism in him and 
 makes the childhood memories active. On ac- 
 count of a resistance in him to the eroticism, 
 these memories can become active only as un- 
 conscious. What now happens in him is a 
 struggle between the power of eroticism and the 
 forces that are repressing it; the result of this 
 struggle is a delusion. 
 
 Our author has omitted to give the motive 
 whence originates the repression of the erotic life 
 in his hero; the latter's interest in science is, of 
 course, only the means of which the repression 
 
180 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 makes use; the physician would have to probe 
 deeper here, perhaps in this case without finding 
 the foundation. Probably, however, the author 
 of "Gradiva," as we have admiringly emphasized, 
 has not hesitated to represent to us how the awak- 
 ening of the repressed eroticism results from the 
 very sphere of the means which are serving the 
 repression. It is rightly an antique, the bas- 
 relief of a woman, through which our archaeolo- 
 gist is snatched and admonished out of his aliena- 
 tion from love to pay the debt with which we 
 are charged by our birth. 
 
 The firist manifestations of the process now 
 stimulated by the bas-relief are fancies which 
 play with the person represented by it. The 
 model appears to him to be something "of the 
 present," in the best sense, as if the artist had fixed 
 the girl walking on the street from life. The 
 name, Gradiva, which he forms from the epi- 
 thet of the war-god advancing to battle. Mars 
 Gradivus, he lends to the ancient girl; with more 
 and more definitions he endows her with a person- 
 ality. She may be the daughter of an esteemed 
 man, perhaps of a patrician, who is associated with 
 the temple service of a divinity ; he believes that he 
 reads Greek ancestry in her features, and finally 
 this forces him to transport her far from the con- 
 fusion of a metropolis to more peaceful Pompeii, 
 where he has her walking over the lava stepping- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 181 
 
 stones which make possible the crossing of the 
 street. These feats of fancy seem arbitrary 
 enough and yet again harmlessly unsuspicious. 
 Even when from them is produced, for the first 
 time, the impulse to act, when the archaeologist, 
 oppressed by the problem whether such foot-posi- 
 tion corresponds to reality, begins observations 
 from life, in looking at the feet of contemporary 
 women and girls, this act covers itself by con- 
 scious, scientific motives, as if all the interest in 
 the bas-relief of Gradiva had originated in his 
 professional interest in archaeology. The women 
 and girls on the street, whom he uses as objects 
 for his investigation, must, of course assume a 
 different, coarsely erotic conception of his con- 
 duct and we must admit that they are right. 
 For us, there is no doubt that Hanold knows as 
 little about his motives as about the origin of 
 his fancies concerning Gradiva. These latter 
 are, as we shall learn later, echoes of his memories 
 of the beloved of his youth, remnants of these 
 memories, transformations and disfigurements of 
 them, after they have failed to push into con- 
 sciousness in unchanged form. The so-called 
 aesthetic judgment that the relief represents 
 "something of the present" is substituted for the 
 knowledge that such a gait belongs to a girl 
 known to him and crossing streets in the present; 
 behind the impression "from life" and the fancy 
 
182 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 about her Greek traits, is hidden the memory of 
 her name, Zoe, which, in Greek, means life; Gra- 
 diva is, as the man finally cured of the delusion 
 tells us, a good translation of her family-name, 
 Bertgang, which means splendid or magnificent 
 in walking; the decisions about her father arise 
 from the knowledge that Zoe Bertgang is the 
 daughter of an esteemed university instructor, 
 which is probably translated into the antique as 
 temple service. Finally his imagination trans- 
 ports her to Pompeii not "because her calm, quiet 
 manner seems to require it," but because, in his 
 science, there is found no other nor better anal- 
 ogy to the remarkable condition in which he has 
 traced out, by vague reconnoitering, his memo- 
 ries of his childhood friendship. If he once cov- 
 ered up what was so close to him, his own child- 
 hood, with the classic past, then the burial of 
 Pompeii, this disappearance, with the preserva- 
 tion of the past, offers a striking resemblance to 
 the repression of which he has knowledge by 
 means of so-called "endopsychic" perceptions. 
 The same symbolism, therefore, which the author 
 has the girl use consciously at the end of the tale, 
 is working in 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.' " (G. p. 98.) At the end (G. p. 117), 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 183 
 
 the girl answers to the announced desire about the 
 destination of their journey, "by her childhood 
 friend who had, in a way, also been excavated 
 from the ashes." 
 
 Thus we find at the very beginning of the per- 
 formances of Hanold's fancies and actions, a 
 two-fold determination, a derivation from two 
 different sources. One determination is the one 
 which appears to Hanold, himself; the other, the 
 one which discloses itself to us upon reexamina- 
 tion of his psychic processes. One, the con- 
 scious one, is related to the person of Hanold; 
 the other is the one entirely unconscious to him. 
 One originates entirely from the series of associ- 
 ations connected with archaeological science ; the 
 other, however, proceeds from the repressed 
 memories which have become active in him, and 
 the emotional impulses attached to them. The 
 one seems superficial, and covers up the other, 
 which masks itself behind the former. One 
 might say that the scientific motivation serves 
 the unconscious eroticism as cloak, and that sci- 
 ence has placed itself completely at the service 
 of the delusion, but one may not forget, either, 
 that the unconscious determination can effect 
 nothing but what is at the time satisfactory to the 
 scientific conscious. The symptoms of d elusion 
 — fancier as w-eU as acts — are results of a com- 
 promise, between two psychic streams, and in a 
 
184. DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 compromise the demands of each of the two par- 
 ties are considered; each party has been obhged 
 to forego something that he wished to carry out. 
 Where a compromise has been estabhshed, there 
 was a struggle, here the conflict assumed by us 
 between the suppressed eroticism and the forces 
 which keep it aUve in the repression. In the for- 
 mation of a delusion this struggle is never ended. 
 
 Attack and resistance are renewed after every 
 compromise-formation, which is, so to speak, 
 never fully satisfactory. This our author also 
 knows and therefore he causes a feeling of dis- 
 content, a peculiar restlessness, to dominate his 
 hero in this phase of the disturbance, as pre- 
 liminary to and guarantee of further develop- 
 ments. 
 
 These significant peculiarities of the two-fold 
 determination for fancies and decisions, of the 
 formation of conscious pretexts for actions, for 
 the motivation of which the repressed has given 
 the greater contribution, will, in the further prog- 
 ress of the story, occur to us oftener and perhaps 
 more clearly; and this rightfully, for in this Jen- 
 sen has grasped and represented the never-fail- 
 ing, chief characteristic of the morbid psychic 
 processes. The development of Norbert Han- 
 old's delusion progresses in a dream, which, 
 caused by no new event, seems to proceed en- 
 tirely from his psychic life, which is occupied by 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 185 
 
 a conflict. Yet let us stop before we proceed to 
 test whether the author of "Gradiva," in the for- 
 mation of his dreams, meets our expectation of a 
 deeper understanding. Let us first ask what 
 psychiati-y has ±Qiiay_abQut bis ideas ofthe origin 
 of a delusion, how it stands on the matter of the 
 role of repression and the unconscious, of con- 
 flict and compromise-formation. Brifefly, can 
 our author's representation of the genesis of 
 a delusion stand before the judgment of 
 science? 
 
 And here we must give the perhaps unex- 
 pected answer that, unfortunately, matters are 
 here actually just reversed; science does not 
 stand before the accomphshment of our author. 
 Between the essential facts of heredity and con- 
 stitution, and the seemingly complete creations 
 of delusion, there yawns a breach which we find 
 filled up by the writer of "Gradiva." Science 
 does not yet recognize the significance of repres- 
 sion nor the fact that it needs the unconscious 
 for explanation to the world of psychopatholog- 
 ieal phenomena; it does not seek the basis of de- 
 lusion in psychic conflict, and does not regard its 
 symptoms as a compromise-formation. Then 
 our author stands alone against all science? No, 
 not that — if the present writer may reckon his 
 own works as science. For, he, himself, has for 
 some years interceded — and until recently almost 
 
186 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 alone ^ — for the views which he finds here in 
 "Gradiva" by W. Jensen, and he has presented 
 them in technical terms. He has pointed out 
 exhaustively, for the conditions known as hys- 
 teria and obsession, the suppression of impulses 
 and the repression of the ideas, through which 
 the suppressed impulse is represented, as a char- 
 acteristic condition of psychic disturbance, and 
 he has repeated the same view soon afterwards 
 for many kinds of delusion.^ Whether the im- 
 pulses which are, for this reason, considered are 
 always components of the sex-impulse, or might 
 be of a different nature, is a problem of indiffer- 
 ence in the analysis of "Gradiva," as, in the case 
 chosen by the author, it is a matter only of the 
 suppression of the erotic feeling. The views 
 concerning psychic conflict, and the formation of 
 symptoms by compromises between the two 
 psychic forces which are struggling with each 
 other, the present writer has found valid in cases 
 professionally treated and actually observed, in 
 exactly the same way that he was able to observe 
 it in Norbert Hanold, the invention of our au- 
 
 iSee the important work by E. Bleuler, AfFektivltat, 9ug- 
 gestibilitat. Paranoia, translated by Dr. Charles Ricksher in N. Y. 
 State Hospitals Bulletin, Feb., 1912, and Die diagnostischen 
 Assoziationsstudien by C. Jung, both Zurich, 1906. 
 
 2Cf. Freud: Sammlung der kleiner Schriften zur Neurosen- 
 lehre, 1906. Translated in part by A. A, Brill, M.D. Ph.B. 
 Nervous and Mental Disieases Monograph Series No. 4. Selected 
 Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses. N. Y., 1912. 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 187 
 
 thor.^ The tracing back of neurotic, especially 
 of hysterically morbid activities to the influence 
 of unconscious thoughts, P. Janet, the pupil of 
 the great Charcot, had undertaken before the 
 present writer, and in conjunction with Josef 
 Breuer in Vienna.^ 
 
 It had actually occurred to the present writer, 
 when, in the years following 1893, he devoted him- 
 self to investigations of the origin of psychic dis- 
 turbances, to seek confirmation of his results from 
 authors, and therefore it was no slight surprise to 
 him to learn that in "Gradiva," pubhshed in 1903, 
 an author gave to his creation the very founda- 
 tion which the former supposed that he, himself, 
 was finding authority for, as new, from his ex- 
 periences as a physician. How did the author 
 come upon the same knowledge as the physician, 
 at least upon a procedure which would suggest 
 that he possessed it? 
 
 Norbert Hanold's d^ugion, we said, acquires 
 further development through a dream, which he 
 has in the midsFof his efforts to authenticate a 
 gait like Gradiva's in the streets of his home-city. 
 The content of this dream we can outhne briefly. 
 The dreamer is in Pompeii on that day which 
 
 iCf. Bruchstiick eiiier Hysterie- Analyse, 1905. 
 
 2Cf. Breuer u. Freud, Studien, liber Hysterie, 1905. Leipzig 
 and Wlen, translated by A. A. Brill, M.D. Ph.B. Nervous and 
 Mental Diseases Monograph Series No. 4. Selected Papers on 
 Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses. 
 
1188 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 brought destruction to the unfortunate city, ex- 
 periences the horrors without, himself, getting 
 into danger, suddenly sees Gradiva walking 
 there and immediately understands, as quite nat- 
 ural, that, as she is, of course, a Pompeiian, she 
 is living in her native city and "without his hav- 
 ing any suspicion of it, was his contemporary." 
 He is seized with fear for her, calls to her, 
 whereupon she turns her face toward him mo- 
 mentarily. Yet she walks on without heeding 
 him at all, lies down on the steps of the Apollo 
 temple, and is buried by the rain of ashes, after 
 her face has changed color as if it were turning 
 to white marble, until it completely resembles a 
 bas-relief. On awakening, he interprets the 
 noise of the metropolis, which reaches his ear, as 
 the cries for help of the desperate inhabitants of 
 Pompeii and the booming of the turbulent sea. 
 The feeling that what he has dreamed has really 
 happened to him persists for some time after his 
 awakening, and the conviction that Gradiva lived 
 in Pompeii and died on that fatal day remains 
 from this dream as a new, supplementary fact 
 for his delusion. 
 
 It is less easy for us to say what the author of 
 "Gradiva" intended by this dream, and what 
 caused him to connect the development of this 
 delusion directly with a dream. Assiduous in- 
 vestigation of dreams has, to be sure, gathered 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 189 
 
 enough examples of the fact that mental_ dis- 
 turbance js^ connected with and proceeds from 
 dreams/ and even in the hfe-history of certain 
 eminent men, impulses for important deeds and 
 decisions are said to have been engendered by- 
 dreams; but our comprehension does not gain 
 much by these analogies; let us hold, therefore, 
 to our case, the case of the archaeologist, Nor- 
 bert Hanold, a fiction of our author. At which 
 end must one lay hold of such a dream to intro- 
 duce meaning into it, if it is not to remain an 
 unnecessary adornment of fiction? I can imag- 
 ine that the reader exclaims at this place; "The 
 dream is, of course, easy to explain — a simple 
 anxiety-dream, caused by the noise of the metrop- 
 olis, which is given the new interpretation of 
 the destruction of Pompeii, by the archaeologist 
 busied with his Pompeiian girl!" On account of 
 the commonly prevailing disregard of the activi- 
 ties of dreams, one usually limits the demands 
 for dream-explanations so that one seeks for a 
 part of the dream-content an external excitation 
 which covers itself by means of the content. 
 This external excitation for the dream would be 
 given by the noise which wakens the sleeper; the 
 interest in this dream would be thereby ter- 
 minated. Would that we had even one reason to 
 
 1 Sante de Sanctis, I Sogni. (Original in Italian.) Translated 
 into German, Die Traume, by Mr. Otto Schmidt, 1901, Hall6, a. S. 
 
190 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 suppose that the metropolis had been noisier than 
 usual on this morning! If, for example, our 
 author had not omitted to inform us that Hanold 
 had that night, contrary to his custom, slept by 
 an open window! What a shame that our 
 author didn't take the trouble! And if an 
 anxiety-dream were only so simple a thing! No, 
 this interest is not terminated in so simple a way. 
 ^The connection with the external, sensory 
 stimulus is not at all essential for the dream-for- 
 mation. The sleeper can neglect this excitation 
 from the outer world; he may be awakened by it 
 without forming a dream, he may also weave it 
 into his dream, as happens here, if it is of no use 
 to him from any other motive; and there is an 
 abundance of dreams for whose content such a 
 determination by a sensory excitation of the 
 sleeper cannot be shown. No, let us try an- 
 other way. 
 
 Perhaps we can start from the residue which 
 the dream leaves in Hanold's waking hfe. It 
 had formerly been his fancy that Gradiva was a 
 Pompeiian. Now this assumption becomes a 
 certainty and the second certainty is added that 
 she was buried there in the year 79.^ Sorrowful 
 feelings accompany this progress of the forma- 
 tion of the delusion like an echo of the fear which 
 had filled the dream. This new grief about Gra- 
 
 1 Compare the text of "Gradiva," p. 14. 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 191 
 
 diva will seem to us not exactly comprehensible ; 
 Gradiva would now have been dead for many 
 centuries even if she had been saved in the year 
 ,79 from destruction. Or ought one to be per- 
 mitted to squabble thus with either Norbert 
 Hanold or his creator? Here, too, no way seems 
 to lead to explanation. We wish, nevertheless," 
 to remark that a very painful, emotional stress 
 clings to the augmentation which the delusion 
 derives from this dream. 
 
 Otherwise, however, our perplexity is not dis- 
 pelled. This dream does not explain itself; we 
 must decide to borrow from "Traumdeutung" by 
 the present writer, and to use some of the rules 
 given there for the solution of dreams. 
 
 One of these rules is that a dream is regularly 
 connected with the day before the dream. Our 
 author seems to wish to intimate that he has fol- 
 lowed this rule by connecting the dream di- 
 rectly with Hanold's "pedestrian investigations." 
 Now the latter means nothing but a search for 
 Gradiva whom he expects to recognize by her 
 characteristic manner of walking. The dream 
 ought, therefore, to contain a reference to where 
 Gradiva is to be found. It really does contain 
 it by showing her in Pompeii, but that is no news 
 for us. 
 
 Another rule says: If, after the dream, the 
 reality of the dream-pictures continues unusually 
 
193 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 long so that one cannot free himself from the 
 dream, this is not a kind of mistake in judgment 
 called forth by the vividness of the dream-pic- 
 tures, but is a psychic act in itself, an assurance 
 which refers to the dream-content, that some- 
 thing in it is as real as it has been dreamed to be, 
 and one is right to beheve this assurance. If we 
 stop at these two rules, we must decide that the 
 dream gives real information about the where- 
 abouts of Gradiva, who is being sought. We 
 now know Hanold's dream; does the application 
 of these two rules lead to any sensible meaning? 
 Strange to say, yes. This meaning is dis- 
 guised only in a special way so that one does not 
 recognize it immediately. Hanold learns in the 
 dream that the girl sought lives in the city and in 
 his own day. That is, of course, true of Zoe 
 Bertgang, only that in his dream the city is not 
 the German university-city, but Pompeii, the 
 time not the present, but the year 79, according 
 to our reckoning. It is a kind of disfigurement 
 by displacement; not Gradiva is transported to 
 the present, but the dreamer to the past; but we 
 are also given the essential and new fact that he 
 shares locality and time with the girl sought. 
 Whence, then, this dissimulation and disguise 
 which must deceive us as well as the dreamer 
 ^bout the peculiar meaning and content of the 
 'dream? Well, we have already means at hand 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 193 
 
 to give us a satisfactory answer to this question. 
 Let us recall all that we have heard about the 
 nature and origin of fancies, these preliminaries 
 of delusion. They are substitution for and rem- 
 nants of different repressed memories, which a 
 resistance does not allow to push into conscious- 
 ness, which, however, become conscious by heed- 
 ing the censor of resistance, by means of trans- 
 formations and disfigurements. After this com- 
 promise is completed, the former memories have 
 become fancies, which may easily be misunder- 
 stood by the conscious person, that is, may be 
 understood to be the ruling psychic force. Now 
 let us suppose that the^. dreamr£ictures are the 
 so-called physiological dghision-prgducts of a 
 man, the compromise-results of that struggle be- 
 tween what is repressed and what is dominant, 
 which exist probably even in people absolutely 
 normal in the daytime. Then we understand 
 that we have to consider the dream something 
 disfigured behind which there is to be sought 
 something else, not disfigured, but, in a sense, 
 something offensive, like Hanold's repressed 
 memories behind his fancies. One expresses the 
 admitted opposition by distinguishing what the 
 dreamer remembers on waking, as manifest 
 dream-content, from what formed the basis of 
 the dream before the censor's disfigurement, the 
 latent dream-thoughts. To interpret a dream, 
 
a94 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 then, means to translate the manifest dream-con- 
 tent into the latent dream-thoughts, which make 
 retrogressive the disfigurement that had to be ap- 
 proved by the resistance censor. When we turn 
 these dehberations to the dream which is occupy- 
 ing us, we find that the latent dream-thoughts 
 must have been as follows: "The girl who has 
 that beautiful walk, whom you are seeking, lives 
 really in this city with you ;" but in this form the 
 thought could not become conscious; in its way 
 there stood the fact that a fancy had established, 
 as a result of a former compromise, the idea that 
 Gradiva was a Pompeiian girl, and therefore 
 nothing remained, if the actual fact of her living 
 in the same locality and at the same time was to 
 be perceived, but to assume the disfigurement: 
 you are living in Pompeii at the time of Gradiva ; 
 and this then is the idea which the manifest 
 dream-content realizes and represents as a pres- 
 ent time which he is living in. 
 
 A dream is rarely the representation, one 
 might say the staging, of a single thought, but 
 generally of a number of them, a web of 
 thoughts. In Hanold's dream there is conspicu- 
 ous another component of the content, whose dis- 
 figurement is easily put aside so that one may 
 learn the latent idea represented by it. This is 
 the end of the dream to which the assurance of 
 reality can also be extended. In the dream the 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 195 
 
 beautiful walker, Gradiva, is transformed into a 
 bas-relief. That is, of course, nothing but an 
 ingenious and poetic representation of the actual 
 procedure. Hanold had, indeed, transferred his 
 interest from the hving girl to the bas-relief; the 
 beloved had been transformed into a stone relief. 
 The latent dream-thoughts, which remain uncon- 
 scious, wish to transform the relief back into the 
 hving girl ; in connection with the foregoing they 
 speak to him somewhat as follows : "You are, of 
 course, interested in the bas-relief of Gradiva 
 only because it reminds you of the present, here- 
 living Zoe." But this insight would mean the 
 end of the delusion, if it could become conscious. 
 
 Is it our duty to substitute imconscious 
 thoughts thus for every single bit of the manifest 
 dream-content? Strictly speaking, yes; in the 
 interpretation of a dream which had actually 
 been dreamed, we should not be allowed to avoid 
 this duty. The dreamer would then have to give 
 us an exhaustive account. It is easily under- 
 stood that we cannot enforce such a demand in 
 connection with the creature of our author; we 
 will not, however, overlook the fact that we have 
 not yet submitted the chief content of this dream 
 to the work of interpretation and translation. 
 
 Hanold's dream is, of course, an anxiety- 
 dream. Its content is fearful; anxiety is felt by 
 the dreamer in sleep, and painful feelings remain 
 
196 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 after it. That is not of any great help for our 
 attempt at explanation; we are again forced to 
 borrow largely from the teachings of dream- 
 interpretation. This admonishes us not to fall 
 into the error of deriving the fear that is felt in a 
 dream from the content of a dream, not to use the 
 dream-content like the content of ideas of waking 
 life. It calls to our attention how often we 
 dream the most horrible things without feeling 
 any trace of fear. Rather the true fact is a 
 quite different one, which cannot be easily 
 guessed, but can certainly be proved. s^The fear 
 of the anxiety-dream corresponds to a sex-feel- 
 ing, a libidinous emotion, like every neurotic fear, 
 and has, through the process of repression, pro- 
 ceeded from the libido.^ In the interpretation of 
 dreams, therefore, one must substitute for fear 
 Sgxual excitement. The fear which has thus 
 come into" existence, exercises now — not regu- 
 larly, but often — a selective influence on the 
 dream-content and brings into the dream idea- 
 tional elements which seem suitable to this fear 
 for the conscious and erroneous conception of the 
 dream. This is, as has been said, by no means 
 regularly the case, for there are anxiety dreams in 
 which the content is not at all frightful, in whichy 
 
 1 Cf. Sammlung kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, V., and 
 Traumdeutung, p. 344(. Traumdeutung translated by A. A. Brill, 
 M.D., Ph.B., Interpretation of Dreams, N. Y., 1913 (p. 441). 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 197 
 
 therefore, one cannot explain consciously the 
 anxiety experienced. 
 
 I know that this explanation of fear in dreams 
 sounds odd, and is not easily believed; but I can 
 only advise making friends with it. It would, 
 moreover, be remarkable if Norbert Hanold's 
 dream allowed itself to be connected with this 
 conception of fear and to be explained by it. 
 We should then say that in the dreamer, at night, 
 the erotic desire stirs, makes a powerful advance 
 to bring his memory of the beloved into conscious- 
 ness and thus snatch him from the delusion, ex- 
 periences rejection and transformation into fear, 
 which now, on its part, brings the fearful pic- 
 tures from the academic memory of the dreamer 
 into the dream-content. In this way the pecuhar 
 unconscious content of the dream, the amorous 
 longing for the once known Zoe, is transformed 
 into the manifest-content of the destruction of 
 Pompeii and the loss of Gradiva. 
 
 I think that sounds quite plausible so far. 
 One might justly demand that if erotic wishes 
 form the undisfigured content of this dream, 
 then one must be able to point out, in the trans- 
 formed dream, at least a recognizable remnant of 
 them hidden somewhere. Well, perhaps even 
 this will come about with the help of a suggestion 
 which appears later in the story. At the first 
 meeting with the supposed Gradiva, Hanold re- 
 
198 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 members this dream and requests the apparition 
 to he down again as he has seen her/ There- 
 upon the young lady rises, indignant, and leaves 
 her strange companion, in whose delusion-ridden 
 speech she has heard the suggestion of an im- 
 proper, erotic wish. I think we may adopt Gra- 
 diva's interpretation; even from a real dream one 
 cannot always demand more definiteness for the 
 representation of an erotic wish. 
 
 Thus the application of some rules of dream- 
 interpretation have been successful on Hanold's 
 first dream, in making this dream comprehensi- 
 ble to us in its chief features, and in fitting it into 
 the sequence of the story. Then it must prob- 
 ably have been produced by its author with due 
 consideration for these rules. One could raise 
 only one more question: why the author should 
 'introduce a dream for further development of 
 ^the delusion. Well, I think that is very cleverly 
 arranged and again keeps faith with reality. 
 We have already heard that in actual illness the 
 formation of a delusion is very often connected 
 with a dream, but after our explanation of the 
 nature of dreams, we need find no new riddle in 
 this fact. Dreams^and-delusion spring from the 
 same source, the repressed ; the dream is, so to 
 
 iG. p. 67: "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." 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 199 
 
 speak, the physiological delusion of the normal 
 human being. Before the repressed has become 
 strong enough to push itself up into waking hfe 
 as delusion, it may easily have won its first suc- 
 cess under the more favorable circimistances of 
 sleep, in the form of a dream having after-effects. 
 During sleep, with the diminution of psychic ac- 
 tivity, there enters a slackening in the strength 
 of the resistance, which the dominant psychic 
 forces oppose to the repressed. This slackening 
 is what makes the dream-formation possible and 
 therefore the dream becomes, for us, the best 
 means of approach to knowledge of the uncon- 
 scious psyche. Only the dream usually passes 
 rapidly with the reestabhshment of the psychic 
 revival of waking hfe, and the ground won by 
 the unconscious is again vacated. 
 
in 
 
 In the further course of the story there is an- 
 other dream, which can tempt us, even more per- 
 haps than the first, to try to interpret it and fit 
 it into the psychic hfe of the hero; but we save 
 little if we leave the representation of the author 
 of "Gradiva" here, to hasten directly to this sec- 
 ond dream, for whoever wishes to interpret the 
 dream of another, cannot help concerning him- 
 self, as extensively as possible, with every sub- 
 jective and objective experience of the dreamer. 
 Therefore it would be best to hold to the thread 
 of the story and provide this with our commen- 
 taries as we progress. 
 
 The new delusion of the death of Gradiva at 
 the destruction of Pompeii in the year 79 is not 
 the only after-effect of the first dream analyzed 
 by us. Directly afterwards Hanold decides 
 upon a trip to Italy, which finally takes him to 
 Pompeii. Before this, however, something else 
 has happened to him; leaning from his window, 
 he thinks he sees on the street a figure with the 
 bearing and walk of his Gradiva, hastens after 
 her, in spite of his scanty attire, does not over- 
 take her, but is driven back by the jeers of the 
 
 200 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 201 
 
 people on the street. After he has returned 
 to his room, the song of a canary whose cage 
 hangs in the window of the opposite house calls 
 forth in him a mood such as if he wished to get 
 from prison into freedom, and the spring trip is 
 immediately decided upon and accomplished. 
 
 Our author has put this trip of Hanold's in 
 an especially strong light, and has given to the 
 latter partial clearness about his subjective proc- 
 esses. Hanold has, of course, given himself a 
 scientific purpose for his journey, but this is not 
 substantial. Yet he knows that the "impulse to 
 travel has originated in a nameless feeling." A 
 peculiar restlessness makes him dissatisfied with 
 everything he encounters and drives him from 
 Rome to Naples, from there to Pompeii, without 
 his mood's being set right, even at the last halt- 
 ing-place. He is annoyed by the foohshness of 
 honeymoon travelers, and is enraged over the 
 boldness of house-flies, which populate the hotels 
 of Pompeii ; but finally he does not deceive him- 
 self over the fact that "his dissa.tisf action was 
 certainly not caused by his surroundings alone, 
 but, to a degree, £QundJts_fi{i^.iaJiim-" He 
 considers himself over-excited, feels "that he was 
 out of sorts because he lacked something with- 
 out being able to explain what, and this ill-humor 
 he took everywhere with him." In such a mood 
 he is enraged even at his mistress, science; as he 
 
a02 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 wanders for the first time in the glow of the mid- 
 day sun through Pompeii, all his science had left 
 him without the least desire to rediscover it ;" he 
 remembered it as from a great distance, and he 
 felt that it had been an old, dried-up, boresome 
 aunt, dullest and most superfluous creature in the 
 world." (G. p. 44.) 
 
 In this uncomfortable and confused state of 
 mind, one of the riddles which are connected with 
 this journey is solved for him at the moment 
 when he first sees Gradiva walking through Pom- 
 peii; "he became conscious for the first time that 
 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 Mteral sense, — for, with her 
 unusual gait, she must have left behind in the 
 ashes a foot-print different from all the others." 
 (G. p. 47.) 
 
 As our author has put so much care into the 
 delineation of this trip, it must be worth our 
 while to explain its relation to Hanold's delusion 
 and its place in the sequence of events. The 
 journey is undertaken for motives which the 
 character does not at first recognize and does not 
 admit until later, motives which our author desig- 
 nates directly as "unconscious." This is cer- 
 tainly true to life; one does not need to have a 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 203 
 
 delusion to act thus; rather it is an everyday 
 occurrence, even for normal people, that they are 
 deceived about the motives of their actions and 
 do not become conscious of them until subse- 
 quently w^hen a conflict of several emotional cur- 
 rents reestablishes for them the condition for 
 such confusion. Hanold's trip, therefore, was 
 intended, from the beginning, to serve the de- 
 lusion, and was to take him to Pompeii to 
 continue there the search for Gradiva. Let us 
 remember that before, and directly after the 
 dream, this search filled his mind and that the 
 dream itself was only a stifled answer of 
 his consciousness to the question of the where- 
 abouts of Gradiva. Some force which we do not 
 recognize, however, next prevents the plan of the 
 delusion from becoming conscious, so that only 
 insufficient pretexts, which can be but partially 
 revived, remain as a conscious motivation for the 
 trip. The author gives us another riddle by hav- 
 ing the dream, the discovery of the supposed 
 Gradiva on the street, and the decision to make 
 the journey because of the influence of the sing- 
 ing canary follow one another hke chance occur- 
 rences without inner coherence. 
 
 With the help of the explanations which we 
 gather from the later speeches of Zoe Bertgang, 
 this obscure part of the tale is illuminated for our 
 understanding. It was really the original of 
 
204 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 Gradiva, Miss Zoe, herself, whom Hanold saw 
 from his window walking on the street ( G. p. 15) , 
 and whom he would soon have overtaken. The 
 statement of the dreamer — "she is really living 
 now in the present, in the same city with you," — 
 would, therefore, by a lucky chance, have ex- 
 perienced an irrefutable corroboration, before 
 which his inner resistance would have collapsed. 
 The canary, however, whose song impelled Han- 
 old to go away, belonged to Zoe, and his cage was 
 in her window, in the house diagonally opposite 
 from Hanold's (G. p. 105). Hanold, who, ac- 
 cording to the girl's arraignment, was endowed 
 with negative hallucination, understood the art of 
 not seeing nor recognizing people, and must from 
 the beginning, have had unconscious knowledge 
 of what we do not discover until later. The signs 
 of Zoe's proximity, her appearance on the street, 
 and her bird's song so near his window intensify 
 the effect of the dream, and in this condition, so 
 dangerous for his resistance to the eroticism, he 
 takes flight. The journey arises from the recov- 
 ery of the resistance after that advance of erotic 
 desire in the dream, an attempt at flight from 
 the living and present beloved. It means prac- 
 tically a victory for repression, which, this time, 
 in the delusion keeps the upper hand, as, in his 
 former action, the "pedestrian investigations" of 
 women and girls, the eroticism had been victori- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 205 
 
 ous. Everywhere, however, the indecision of the 
 struggle, the compromise nature of the results 
 was evident ; the trip to Pompeii, which is to take 
 him away from the living Zoe leads, at any rate, to 
 her substitute, Gradiva. The journey, which is 
 undertaken in defiance of the most recent dream- 
 thoughts, follows, however, the order of the man- 
 ifest dream-content to Pompeii. Thus delusion 
 triumphs anew every time that eroticism and re- 
 sistance struggle anew. 
 
 This conception of Hanold's trip, as a flight 
 from the erotic desire for the beloved, who is so 
 near, which is awakening in him, harmonizes, how- 
 ever, with the frame of mind portrayed in him 
 during his stay in Italy. The rejection of the 
 eroticism, which dominates him, expresses itself 
 there in his abhorrence of honeymoon travelers. 
 A httle dream in the "albergo" in Rome, caused 
 by the proximity of a couple of German lovers, 
 "Augustus" and "Gretchen," whose evening con- 
 versation he is forced to overhear through the thin 
 partition, casts a further light on the erotic tend- 
 encies of his first great dream. The new dream 
 transports him again to Pompeii where Vesuvius 
 is just having another eruption, and thus refers 
 to the dream which continues active during his 
 trip; but among the imperiled people he sees 
 this time — not as before himself and Gradiva — 
 but Apollo Belvedere and the Capitoline Venus, 
 
206 DELUSION AND DREAM: 
 
 — doubtless ironic exaltation of the couple in the 
 adjoining room. Apollo lifts Venus, carries her 
 away, and lays her on an object in the dark, 
 which seems to be a carriage or a cart, for a "rat- 
 tling sovmd" comes from it. Otherwise the 
 dream needs no special skiU for its interpreta- 
 tion. (G. p. 26.) 
 
 Our author, whom we have long relied on not 
 to make a single stroke in his picture idly and 
 without purpose, has given us another bit of tes- 
 timony for the non-sexual force dominating 
 Hanold on the trip. During hours of wander- 
 ing in Pompeii, it happens that "remarkably, it 
 did not once appear in his memory that he had 
 dreamed some time ago that he had been present 
 at the destruction of Pompeii by the volcanic 
 eruption of 79." (G. p. 38.) At sight of Gra- 
 
 I diva he first suddenly remembers this dream, and 
 at the same time the motive of the delusion for 
 
 i, his puzzling journey becomes conscious. Then 
 what other meaning could there be for forgetting 
 the dream, this repression-boundary between 
 the dream and the psychic condition of the jour- 
 ney, than that the journey is not the result of 
 the direct instigation of the dream, but of the jig; 
 jection of Jhis_JaJier, as the emanation from a 
 psycEcTorce which desires no knowledge of the 
 secret meaning of the dream? 
 
 On the other hand, however, Hanold is not 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 207 
 
 happy at this victory over his eroticism. The 
 suppressed psychic impulse remains strong 
 enough to revenge itself, by discontent and inter- 
 ception, on the suppressing agency. His long- 
 ing has changed to restlessness and dissatisfac- 
 tion, which make the trip seem senseless to him. 
 His insight into the motivation of his trip is ob- 
 structed in service of the delusion; his relation 
 to science, which ought, in such a place, to stir all 
 his interest, is upset. So our author shows his 
 hero, after flight from love, in a sort of crisis, in 
 an utterly confused and unsettled condition, in 
 a derangement such as usually appears at the 
 chmax of illness if neither of the two strugghng 
 forces is so much stronger than the other, that 
 the difference could establish a strict, psychic re- 
 gime. Here then our author takes hold to help 
 and to settle, for, at this place, he introduces 
 Gradiva, who undertakes the cure of the delu- 
 sion. With his power to direct to a happy solu- 
 tion the fortunes of all the characters created by 
 him, in spite of all the requirements which he 
 has them conform to, he transports the girl, from 
 whom Hanold has fled to Pompeii, to that very 
 place and thus corrects the folly which the delu- 
 sion caused the young man to commit in leaving 
 the home-city of his beloved for the dead abode 
 of the one substituted for her by his fancy. 
 With the appearance of Zoe Bertgang as Gra- 
 
208 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 diva, which marks the climax of the suspense of 
 the story, our interest is soon diverted. If we 
 have hitherto been living through the develop- 
 ments of a delusion, we shall now become wit- 
 nesses of its cure, and may ask ourselves if our 
 author has merely invented the procedure of 
 this cure or has carried it out according to 
 actually existing possibilities. From Zoe's own 
 words in the conversation with her friend, we 
 have decidedly the right to ascribe to her the in- 
 tention to cure the hero. (G. p. 97.) But how 
 does she go about it? After she has cast aside 
 the indignation which the unreasonable request, 
 to lie down to sleep again, as "then," had evoked 
 in her, she appears again next day, at the same 
 place, and elicits from Hanold all the secret 
 knowledge that was lacking to her for an under- 
 standing of his conduct of the previous day. 
 She learns of his dream, of the bas-relief of Gra- 
 diva, and of the pecuharity of walk which she 
 shares with the rehef . She accepts the role of a 
 spirit awakened to life for a short hour, which, 
 she observes, his delusion assigns to her, and in 
 ambiguous words, she gently puts him in the way 
 of a new role by accepting from him the grave- 
 flower which he had brought along without con- 
 scious purpose, and expresses regret that he has 
 not given her roses. (G. p. 71.) 
 
 Our interest in the conduct of the eminently 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 209 
 
 clever girl, who has decided to win the lover of 
 her youth as husTiand, after she has recognized 
 his love behind his delusion as its impelhng force, 
 is, however, restrained at this place probably be- 
 cause of the strange feeUngs that the delusion 
 can arouse even in us. Its latest development, 
 that Gradiva, who was buried in the year 79, can 
 now exchange conversation with him as a noon- 
 spirit, for an hour, after the passing of which she 
 sinks out of sight or seeks her grave again, this 
 chimaera, which is not confused by the perception 
 of her modern foot-covering, nor by her igno- 
 rance of the ancient tongues, nor by her command 
 of German, which did not exist in former times, 
 seems indeed to justify the author's designation, 
 "A Pompeiian Fancy," but to exclude every 
 standard of clinical reality; and yet on closer 
 consideration the improbability in this delusion 
 seems to me, for the most part, to vanish. To be 
 sure, our author has taken upon himself a part of 
 the blame, and in the first part of the story has 
 offered the fact that Zoe was the image of the 
 bas-rehef in every trait. One must, therefore, 
 guard against transferring the improbability of 
 this prehminary to its logical conclusion that 
 Hanold considers the girl to be Gradiva come 
 to life. The explanation of the delusion is here 
 enhanced by the fact that our author has offered 
 us no rational disposal of it. In the glowing sun 
 
210 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 of the Campagna and in the bewildering magic 
 powers of the vine which grows on Vesuvius, our 
 author has introduced helpful and mitigating cir- 
 cumstances of the transgression of the hero. 
 The most important of all explanatory and ex- 
 onerating considerations remains, however, the 
 facility with which our intellect decides to accept ! 
 an absurd content if impulses with a strong emo- ; 
 tional stress find thereby their satisfaction. It' 
 is astonishing, and generally meets with too little 
 acceptance, how easily and often intelligent peo- 
 ple, under such psychological constellations, give 
 the reactions of partial mental weakness, and 
 any one who is not too conceited may observe this 
 in himself as often as he wishes, and especially 
 when a part of the thought-processes under con- 
 sideration is connected with unconscious or re- 
 pressed motives. I cite, in this connection, the 
 words of a philosopher who writes to me, "I have 
 also begun to make note of cases of striking mis-, 
 takes, from my own experience, and of thought- 
 less actions which one subsequently explains to 
 himself (in a verj?^ unreasonable way). It is 
 amazing but typical how much stupidity thereby 
 comes to light." Now let us consider the fact 
 that belief in spirits, apparitions and returning 
 souls (which finds so much support in the re- 
 ligions to which, at least as children, we have all 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 211 
 
 clung) is by no means destroyed among all edu- 
 cated people, and that many otherwise reasonable 
 people find their interest in spiritism compatible 
 with their reason. Yes, even one become dispas- 
 sionate and incredulous may perceive with shame 
 how easily he turns back for a moment to a belief 
 in spirits, when emotions and perplexity concur 
 in him. I know of a physician who had once lost 
 a patient by Basedow's disease and could not rid 
 himself of the slight suspicion that he had per- 
 haps contributed by unwise medication to the 
 unfortunate outcome. One day several years 
 later there stepped into his office a girl, in whom, 
 in spite of all reluctafnce, he was obliged to recog- 
 nize the dead woman. His only thought was 
 that it was true that the dead could return, and 
 his fear did not give way to shame until the visi- 
 tor introduced herself as the sister of the woman 
 who had died of that disease. Basedow's disease 
 lends to those afflicted with it a great simi- 
 larity of features, which has often been noticed, 
 and in this case the typical resemblance was far 
 more exaggerated than the family resemblance. 
 The physician, moreover, to whom this happened 
 was I, and therefore I am not inclined to quarrel 
 with Norbert Hanold over the clinical possibility 
 of his short delusion about Gradiva, who had re- 
 turned to hfe. That in serious cases of chronic 
 
212 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 delusion '(paranoia) the most extreme absm-di- 
 ties, ingeniously devised and well supported, are 
 active is, finally, well-known to every psychia- 
 trist. 
 
 After his first meeting with Gradiva, Norbert 
 Hanold had drunk his wine in first one, and then 
 another of the hotels of Pompeii known to him, 
 while the other guests were having their regular 
 meals. "Of course, in no way had the absurd 
 supposition entered his mind" that he was doing 
 this to find out what hotel Gradiva lived and ate 
 in, but it is hard to say what other significance 
 his action could have. On the day after his sec- 
 ond meeting in Meleager's house, he has all sorts 
 of remarkable and apparently disconnected ex- 
 periences; he finds a narrow cleft in the wall of 
 the portico where Gradiva had disappeared, 
 meets a foolish lizard-catcher, who addresses him 
 as an acquaintance, discovers a secluded hotel, 
 the Albergo del Sole, whose owner talks him 
 into buying a metal brooch encrusted with green 
 patina, which had been fopnd with the remains 
 of a Pompeiian girl, and finally notices in his own 
 hotel a newly-arrived, young couple, whom he 
 diagnoses to be brother and sister, and congenial. 
 All these impressions are then woven into a "re- 
 markably nonsensical" dream as follows : 
 
 "Somewhere in the sun Gradiva sat making a 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM gl3 
 
 trap out of a blade of grass in order to catch a 
 lizard, and she said, 'Please stay quite still — my 
 colleague is right; the method is really good and 
 she has used it with the greatest success.' " 
 
 To this dream he offers resistance even while 
 sleeping, with the critique that it is indeed the 
 most utter madness and he casts about to free 
 himself from it. He succeeds in doing this, 
 too, with the aid of an invisible bird who utters 
 a short, merry call, and carries the lizard away 
 in his beak. 
 
 Shall we risk an attempt to interpret this 
 dream also, that is, to substitute for it the latent 
 thoughts from whose disfigurement it must have 
 proceeded? It is as nonsensical as one could ex- 
 pect a dream to be and this absm-dity of dreams 
 is the mainstay of the view which denies to the 
 dream the character of a valid psychic act, and 
 has it proceed from a desultory stimulus of the 
 psychic elements. 
 
 We can apply to this dream the technique 
 which can be designated as the regular proce- 
 dure of dream-interpretation. It consists in dis- 
 regarding the apparent sequence in the manifest 
 dream but in examining separately every part 
 of the content, and in seeking its derivation in 
 the impressions, memories and free ideas of the 
 dreamer. As we can not examine Hanold, how- 
 
214. DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 ever, we must be satisfied with reference to his 
 impressions, and may with due caution substitute 
 our own ideas for his. 
 
 "Somewhere in the sun Gradiva sat catching 
 lizards, and said,". What impression of the day is 
 this part of the dream reminiscent of? Unques- 
 tionably of the meeting with the older man, the 
 lizard-catcher, for whom Gradiva is substituted 
 in the dream. He was sitting or lying on a "hot, 
 suniiy" slope and spoke to Hanold, too. Even 
 the utterances of Gradiva in the dream are copied 
 from those of the man. Let us compare: "'The 
 method suggested by my colleague, Eimer, is 
 really good; I have already used it often with the 
 best of success. Please remain quite still.' " — 
 Quite similarly Gradiva speaks in the dream, 
 only that for the colleague, Eimer, is sub- 
 stituted an unnamed woman-colleague ; the often 
 from the zoologist's speech is missing in the 
 dream, and the connection betw'een the state- 
 ments has been somewhat changed. It seems, 
 therefore, that this experience of the day has 
 been transformed into a dream by some changeis 
 and disfigurements. Why thus, and what is the 
 meaning of the disfigurements, the substitution 
 of Gradiva for the old gentleman, and the intro- 
 duction of the puzzling "woman-colleague"? 
 
 There is a rule of dream-interpretation as fol- 
 lows : A speech heard in a dream always origi- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 215 
 
 nates from a speech either heard or uttered in 
 waking life. Well, this rule seems followed 
 here ; the speech of Gradiva is only a modification 
 of a speech heard in the daytime from the zoolo- 
 gist. Another rule of dream-interpretation 
 would tell us that the substitution of one per- 
 son for another, or the mixture of two people 
 by showing one in a position which characterizes 
 the other means equivalence of the two people, 
 a correspondence between them. Let us ven- 
 ture to apply this rule also to our dream; 
 then the interpretation would follow: "Gradiva 
 catches lizards, as that old gentleman does, 
 and Uke him, is skilled in lizard-catching." 
 This result is not comprehensible yet, but we 
 have another riddle before us. To which im- 
 pression of the day shall we refer the "woman 
 colleague," who is substituted in the dream for 
 the famous zoologist, Eimer? We have here 
 fortunately not much choice; only one other 
 girl can be meant by "woman-colleague," the con- 
 genial young lady in whom Hanold has conjec- 
 tured a sister traveling with her brother. "In 
 her gown she wore a red Sorrento rose, the sight 
 of which, as he looked across from his comer, 
 stirred something in his memory without his be- 
 ing able to think what it was." This observa- 
 tion on the part of the author surely gives us the 
 right to assert that she is the "woman-colleague" 
 
gl6 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 of the dream. What Hanold cannot remem- 
 ber is certainly nothing but the remark of the 
 supposed Gradiva, as she asked him for the 
 grave-flower, that to more fortunate girls one 
 brought roses in spring. In this speech, how- 
 ever, lay a hidden wooing. .What kind of lizard- 
 catching is it that this more fortunate woman- 
 colleague has been so successful with? 
 
 On the next day Hanold surprises the sup- 
 posed brother and sister in tender embrace and 
 can thus correct his mistake of the previous day. 
 They are really a couple of lovers, on their honey- 
 moon, as we later learn, when the two disturb, so 
 unexpectedly, Hanold's third meeting with Zoe. 
 If we will now accept the idea that Hanold, who 
 consciously considers them brother and sister, 
 has, in his unconscious, recognized at once their 
 real relation, which on the next day betrays 
 itself so unequivocally, there results a good mean- 
 ing for Gradiva's remark in the dream. The red 
 rose then becomes a symbol for being in love; 
 Hanold understands that the two are as Gradiva 
 and he are soon to be; the lizard-catching ac- 
 quires the meaning of husband-catching and 
 Gradiva's speech means something like this: 
 "Let me arrange things; I know how to win a 
 husband as well as this other girl does." 
 
 Why must this penetration of Zoe's intentions 
 appear throughout in the form of the speech of 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 217 
 
 the old zoologist? Why is Zoe's skill in hus- 
 band-catching represented by that of the old man 
 in hzard-catching? Well, it is easy for us to an- 
 swer that question; we have long ago guessed 
 that the lizard-catcher is none other than the 
 professor of zoology, Bertgang, Zoe's father, 
 who must, of course, also know Hanold, so that 
 it is a matter of course that he addresses Hanold 
 as an acquaintance. Again, let us accept the 
 idea that Hanold, in his unconscious, immedi- 
 ately recognizes the professor, — "It seemed to 
 him dimly that he had already seen the face of 
 the lizard-hunter probably in one of the two 
 hotels." Thus is explained the strange cloaking 
 of the purpose attributed to Zoe. She is the 
 daughter of the lizard-catcher; she has inherited 
 this skill from him. The substitution of Gra- 
 diva for the lizard-catcher in the dream-content 
 is, therefore, the representation of the relation 
 between the two people, which was rcognized by 
 the unconscious; the introduction of "woman- 
 colleague" in place of colleague, Eimer, allows 
 the dream to express comprehension of her court- 
 ship of the man. The dream has welded two of 
 the day's experiences in one situation, "con- 
 densed" as we say, in order to procure, to be sure, 
 very indiscernible expression for two ideas which 
 are not allowed to become conscious ; but we can 
 go on diminishing the strangeness of the dream 
 
gl8 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 still more and pointing out the influence of other 
 experiences of the day on the formation of the 
 manifest dream. 
 
 Dissatisfied by the former information, we 
 might explain why the scene of the lizard-catch- 
 ing was made the nucleus of the dream, and sup- 
 pose that the other elements in the dream- 
 thoughts influence the term "lizard" in the mani- 
 fest dream. It might really be very easy. Let 
 us recall that Hanold has discovered a cleft in 
 the wall, in the place where Gradiva seems to 
 him to disappear; this is "wide enough to afford 
 passage to an unusually slender figure." By 
 this perception he is forced in the day-time to 
 an alteration in his delusion; Gradiva did not 
 sink into the ground when she disappeared from 
 his sight, but was going back, by this route, to 
 her grave. In his unconscious thought he might 
 say to himself that he had now found the nat- 
 ural explanation for the surprising disappear- 
 ance of the girl; but must not forcing one's self 
 through narrow clefts, and disappearing in such 
 clefts recall the conduct of lizards? Does not 
 Gradiva herself, then, in this connection, behave 
 like an agile, little lizard? We think, therefore, 
 that the discovery of this cleft in the wall had 
 worked as a determinant on the choice of the 
 "lizard" element for the manifest dream-content ; 
 the lizard-situation of the dream, therefore, repre- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 219 
 
 sented this impression of the day, and the meet- 
 ing with the zoologist, Zoe's father. 
 
 What if, become bold, we now wished to at- 
 tempt to find in the dream-content a representa- 
 tion also for the one experience of the day which 
 has not yet been turned to account, the discovery 
 of the third hotel, "del Sole"? Our author has 
 treated this episode so exhaustively and hnked so 
 much with it, we should be surprised if it, alone, 
 had yielded no contribution to the dream-forma- 
 tion. Hanold enters this hotel, which, because 
 of its secluded situation and its distance from the 
 station, has remained unknown to him, to get a 
 bottle of lime-water for congestion of blood. 
 The hotel-keeper uses this opportunity to extol 
 his antiques and shows him a brooch which, it was 
 alleged, had belonged to that Pompeiian girl who 
 was found near the Forum in fond embrace with 
 her lover. Hanold, who had never before be- 
 lieved this frequently repeated story, is now com- 
 pelled, by a force strange to him, to believe in 
 the truth of this touching story and in the gen- 
 uineness of the article found, buys the brooch 
 and leaves the hotel with his purchase. In pass- 
 ing, he sees nodding down at him from one of 
 the windows a cluster of white, asphodel blossoms 
 which had been placed in a water-glass, and he 
 feels that this sight is an attestation of the gen- 
 uineness of his new possession. The sincere con- 
 
220 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 viction is now impressed upon him that the green 
 brooch belonged to Gradiva, and that she was 
 the girl who died in her lover's embrace. The 
 tormenting jealousy, which thereupon seizes him, 
 he appeases with the resolution to assure himself 
 about this suspicion, the next day, from Gradiva, 
 herself, by showing the brooch. This is a 
 strange bit of new delusion; and shouldn't any 
 trace point to it in the dream of the following 
 night? 
 
 It will be well worth our while to get an under- 
 standing of the origin of this augmentation of 
 the delusion, to look up the new unconscious idea 
 for which the new bit of delusion is substituted. 
 The delusion originates under the influence of 
 the proprietor of the Sun Hotel, toward whom 
 Hanold conducts himself in so remarkably cred- 
 ulous a manner, as if he has received a sugges- 
 tion from him. The proprietor shows him a 
 small metal brooch as genuine, and as the pos- 
 session of that girl who was found in the arms of 
 her lover, buried in the ashes, and Hanold, who 
 could be critical enough to doubt the truth of the 
 story as well as the genuineness of the brooch, 
 is caught, credulous, and buys the more than 
 doubtful antique. It is quite incomprehensible 
 why he should act so, and no hint is given that the 
 personality of the proprietor himself might solve 
 this riddle for us. There is, however, another 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 221 
 
 riddle in this incident, and two riddles sometimes 
 solve each other. On leaving the "albergo," he 
 catches sight of an asphodel cluster in a glass at 
 a window, and finds in it an attestation of the 
 genuineness of the metal brooch. How can that 
 be? This last stroke is fortunately easy of solu- 
 tion. The white flower is, of course, the one 
 which he presented to Gradiva at noon, and it is 
 quite right that through the sight of it at one 
 of the windows of this hotel, something is cor- 
 roborated, not the genuineness of the brooch, 
 but something else which has become clear to 
 him at the discovery of this formerly over- 
 looked "albergo." In the forenoon he has al- 
 ready acted as if he were seeking, in the two 
 hotels of Pompeii, where the person hved who 
 appeared to him as Gradiva. Now, as he stum- 
 bles so unexpectedly upon a third, he must say 
 in the unconscious: "So she lives here"; and 
 then, on leaving: "Right there is the asphodel 
 flower I gave her; that is, therefore, her win- 
 dow." This, then, is the new idea for which the 
 delusion is substituted, and which cannot become 
 conscious because its assumption that Gradiva is 
 living, a person known by him, cannot become 
 conscious. 
 
 How then is the substitution of the delusion 
 for the new idea supposed to have occurred? I 
 think thus: that the feeling of conviction which 
 
222 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 clung to the idea was able to assert itself and 
 persisted, while another ideational content re- 
 lated to it by thought-connection acted as substi- 
 tute for the idea itself which was incapable of 
 consciousness. Thus the feeling of conviction 
 was connected with a really strange content, and 
 this latter attained, as delusion, a recognition 
 which did not belong to it. Hanold transfers 
 his conviction that Gradiva lives in this house to 
 other impressions which he receives in this house, 
 becomes, in a way, credulous about what the pro- 
 prietor says, the genuineness of the metal brooch, 
 and the truth of the anecdote about the lovers 
 found in an embrace, but only by this route, that 
 he connects what he has heard in this house with 
 Gradiva. The jealousy which has been lying 
 ready in him gets possession of this material, 
 and even in contradiction to his first dream there 
 appears the delusion that Gradiva was the girl 
 who died in the arms of her lover, and that the 
 brooch which he bought belonged to her. 
 
 We notice that the conversation with Gra- 
 diva, and her gentle wooing "through the flower" 
 have already evoked important changes in Han- 
 old. Traits of male desire, components of the 
 libido are awakened in him, which, to be sure, 
 cannot yet dispense with the concealment 
 through conscious pretexts; but the problem of 
 the corporeal nature of Gradiva, which has pur- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 223 
 
 sued him this whole day, cannot disavow its deri- 
 vation from the erotic desire of the young man 
 for possession of the woman, even if it is dragged 
 into the scientific world by conscious stress on 
 Gradiva's peculiar hovering between hfe and 
 death. Jealousy is an added mark of Hanold's 
 awakening activity in love; he expresses this at 
 the opening of the conversation on the next day, 
 and with the aid of a new pretext achieves his 
 object of touching the girl's body, and of striking 
 her, as in times long past. 
 
 Now, however, it is time to ask if the course 
 of delusion-formation which we have inferred 
 from our author's representation is one otherwise 
 admitted or possible. From my experience as 
 physician, I can answer only that it is surely the 
 right way, perhaps the only one, in which the 
 delusion receives the unswerving recognition due 
 its clinical character. If the patient believes in 
 his delusion so firmly, it does not happen because 
 of inversion of his powers of judgment, and does 
 not proceed from what is erroneous in the delu- 
 sion; but in every delusion there lies also a little 
 grain of truth; there is something in it which 
 really deserves belief, and this is the source of 
 the conviction of the patient, who is, to this ex- 
 tent, justified. This true element, however, has 
 been repressed for a long time; if it finally 
 succeeds in pushing into consciousness (this 
 
224 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 time in disfigured form), the feeling of a con- 
 viction clinging to it, as if in compensation, is 
 over-strong and now clings to and protects the dis- 
 figurement-substitute of the repressed, true ele- 
 ment against every critical impugnment. The 
 
 • conviction at once shifts itself from the uncon- 
 scious, true element to the conscious, erroneous 
 one connected with it, and remains fixed there as 
 
 v a result of this very displacement. The case of 
 delusion-formation which resulted from Han- 
 old's first dream is nothing but a similar, if not 
 identical, case of such displacement. Yes, the 
 depicted manner of development of conviction in 
 the delusion is not fundamentally different from 
 the way in which conviction is formed in normal 
 cases, where repression does not enter into play. 
 All our convictions lie in thought-contents in 
 which the true and the false are combined and 
 they stretch over the former and the latter. 
 They differentiate at once between the true and* 
 whatever false is associated with it and protect 
 this, even if not so immutably as in the delusion, 
 against merited critique. Associations, protec- 
 tion, likewise, have their own value even for nor- 
 mal psychology. 
 
 I will now return to the dream and lay stress 
 on a small, but not uninteresting feature which 
 establishes a connection between two occasions of 
 the dream. Gradiva had placed the white aspho- 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 226 
 
 del flower in definite contrast to the red rose ; the 
 finding of the asphodel flower again in the win- 
 dow of the Albergo del Sole becomes a weighty 
 proof for Hanold's unconscious idea which ex- 
 presses itself in a new delusion; and to this is 
 added the fact that the red rose in the dress of the 
 congenial young girl helps Hanold again, in the 
 unconscious, to a right estimation of her relation 
 to her companion so that he can have her enter 
 the dream as "woman colleague." 
 
 But where in the manifest dream-content is 
 fovmd the trace and representation of that dis- 
 covery of Hanold's for which we find that the 
 new delusion is substituted, the discovery that 
 Gradiva lives with her father in the third hotel of 
 Pompeii, the Albergo del Sole, which he has not 
 been acquainted with? Well, it stands in its en- 
 tirety and not even much disfigured in the dream; 
 but I dread to point it out, for I know that even 
 with the readers whose patience with me has 
 lasted so long, a strong opposition to my attempts 
 at interpretation will be stirred up. Hanold's 
 discovery is given in full in the dream-content, I 
 repeat, but so cleverly concealed that one must 
 needs overlook it. It is hidden there behind a 
 play on words, an ambiguity. "Somewhere in 
 the sun Gradiva sat"; this we have rightly con- 
 nected with the locality where Hanold met the 
 zoologist, her father ; but can it not also mean in 
 
226 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 the "Sun," that is, in the Albergo del Sole, in the 
 Sun Hotel Gradiva lives? And doesn't the 
 "somewhere" which has no reference to the meet- 
 ing with her father sound so hypocritically in- 
 definite for the very reason that it introduces the 
 definite information about the whereabouts of 
 Gradiva? According to previous experience in 
 the interpretation of real dreams, I am quite sure 
 of such a meaning in the ambiguity, but I should 
 really not venture to offer this bit of interpreta- 
 tion to my readers, if our author did not lend me 
 here his powerful assistance. On the next day he 
 puts into the mouth of the girl, when she sees 
 the metal brooch, the same pun which we accept 
 for the interpretation of the dream-content. 
 " 'Did you find it in the sun, perhaps? It brings 
 to light many such works of art' " ; and as Hanold 
 does not understand the speech, she explains that 
 she means the Sun Hotel, which is called "Sole" 
 here, whence the supposed antique is also familiar 
 to her. 
 
 And now may we make the attempt to substi- 
 tute for Hanold's "remarkably nonsensical" 
 dream unconscious thoughts hidden behind it and 
 as unlike it as possible? It runs somewhat as fol- 
 lows : "She lives in the Sun with her father ; why 
 is she playing such a game with me? Does she 
 wish to make fun of me? Or could it be possible 
 that she loves me and wishes me for a husband?" 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 227 
 
 To this latter possibility there now follows in 
 sleep the rejection, "That is the most utter mad- 
 ness," which is apparently directed against tke 
 whole manifest dream. 
 
 Critical readers have now the right to inquire 
 about the origin of that interpolation, not for- 
 merly estabUshed, which refers to being made fun 
 of by Gradiva. To this "Traumdeutung" gives 
 the answer; if in dream-thoughts, taunts and 
 sneers, or bitter contradictions occur, they are 
 expressed by the nonsensical course of the mani- 
 fest dream, through the absurdity in the dream. 
 The latter means, therefore, no paralysis of 
 psychic activity, but is one of the means of repre- 
 sentation which the dream-work makes use of. 
 As always in especially difficult passages, our 
 author here comes to our assistance. The non- 
 sensical dream has another postlude in which a 
 bird utters a merry call and takes away the lizard 
 in his beak. Such a laughing call Hanold had 
 heard after Gradiva's disappearance. It really 
 came from Zoe who was shaking off the melan- 
 choly seriousness of her lower world role; with 
 this laugh Gradiva had really derided him. 
 The dream-picture, however, of the bird carrying 
 away the lizard may recall that other one in a 
 former dream in which Apollo Belvedere carried 
 away the Capitoline Venus. 
 
 Perhaps the impression now exists with many 
 
228 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 readers that the interpretation of the lizard- 
 catching situation by the idea of wooing is not 
 sufficiently justified. Additional support is 
 found here, perhaps in the hint that Zoe, in 
 conversation with her colleague, admits about her- 
 self that very thing which Hanold's thoughts 
 suppose about her, when she tells that she had 
 been sure of "digging up" something interesting 
 for herself here in Pompeii. She thereby delves 
 into the archaeological series of associations as 
 he did into the zoological with his allegory of 
 lizard-catching, as if they were opposing each 
 other and each wished to assume properties of 
 the other. 
 
 Thus we have finished the interpretation of the 
 second dream. Both have become accessible to 
 our understanding under the presupposition that 
 the dreamer, in his unconscious thought, knows 
 all that he has forgotten in his conscious, has in 
 the former rightly judged everything which, in 
 the latter, he delusively misconstrues. In this 
 connection we have, of course, been obhged to 
 make many assertions which sounded odd to the 
 reader because they were strange to him and prob- 
 ably often awakened the suspicion that we were 
 giving out as our author's meaning what is only 
 our own meaning. We are ready to do every- 
 thing to dissipate this suspicion and will there- 
 fore gladly consider more exhaustively one of the 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 229 
 
 most knotty points — I mean the use of ambiguous 
 words and speeches as in the example, "Some- 
 where in the Sun Gradiva sat." 
 
 It must be striking to every reader of "Gra- 
 diva" how often our author puts into the mouths 
 of both the leading characters speeches which 
 have double meaning. For Hanold these 
 speeches are intended to have only one meaning, 
 and only his companion, Gradiva, is affected by 
 their other meaning. Thus, after her first an- 
 swer, he exclaims : " 'I knew that your voice 
 sounded so,' " and the yet unenlightened Zoe 
 has to ask how that is possible, as he has never 
 before heard her speak. In the second conver- 
 sation, the girl is for a moment puzzled by his 
 delusion, as he assures her that he recognized her 
 at once. She must understand these words in the 
 meaning that is correct for his unconscious, as 
 his recognition of their acquaintance which 
 reaches back into childhood, while he, of course, 
 knows nothing of this meaning of his speech and 
 explains it only by reference to the delusion 
 which dominates him. The speeches of the girl, 
 on the other hand, in whose person the most bril- 
 liant mental clarity is opposed to the delusion, are 
 made intentionally ambiguous. One meaning of 
 them falls in with the ideas of Hanold's delusion, 
 in order to enable her to penetrate into his con- 
 scious comprehension, the other raises itself above 
 
230 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 the delusion, and, as a rule, gives us the inter- 
 pretation of it in the unconscious truth which has 
 been represented by it. It is a triumph of wit 
 to be able to represent the delusion and the truth 
 in the same expression. 
 
 Interspersed with such ambiguities is Zoe's 
 speech in which she explains the situation to her 
 girl friend and at the same time rids herself of 
 her disturbing society; it is really spoken out 
 of the book, calculated more for us readers than 
 for her happy colleague. In the conversations 
 with Hanold, the double meaning is chiefly 
 established by the fact that Zoe makes use of the 
 symbolism which we find followed in Hanold's 
 first dream, in the equivalence of repression and 
 destruction, Pompeii and childhood. Thus on 
 the one hand she can, in her speeches, continue 
 in the role which Hanold's delusion assigns to 
 her, on the other, she can touch upon the real 
 relations, and awaken in Hanold's unconscious 
 a knowledge of them. 
 
 " 'I have long accustomed myself to being 
 dead.' " (G. p. 71.) " Tor me, the flower of 
 oblivion is the right one from your hand.' " (G. 
 p. 71.) In these speeches is given lightly the re- 
 proof which then breaks out clearly enough in her 
 last sermon when she compares him to an arch- 
 aeopteryx. " 'That a person must die to become 
 alive again; but for archaeologists that is, of 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 231 
 
 course, necessary,'" (G. p. 110) she continues 
 after the solution of the delusion as if to give us 
 the key to her ambiguous speeches. The most 
 beautiful symbolism appears, however, in the 
 question: (G. p. 93.) " 'It seems to me as if 
 we had already eaten our bread thus together once 
 two thousand years ago. Can't you remember 
 it?' " In this speech the substitution of historic 
 antiquity for childhood, and the effort to awaken 
 his memory of the latter are quite unmistakable. 
 
 Whence, therefore, comes this striking prefer- 
 ence for ambiguous speeches in "Gradiva"? It 
 seems to us not chance, but the necessary sequence 
 from the preliminaries of the tale. It is nothing 
 but the counterpart of the twofold determination 
 of symptoms in so far as the speeches are them- 
 selves symptoms and proceed from compromises 
 between the conscious and the unconscious; but 
 one notices this double origin in the speeches 
 more easily than in the acts; and when, as the 
 phability of the material of conversation often 
 makes possible, each of the two intentions of a 
 speech succeeds by the same arrangement of 
 words in expressing itself weU, then there is pres- 
 ent what we call an "ambiguity." 
 
 During the psychotherapeutic treatment of a 
 delusion, or an analogous disturbance, one often 
 evolves such ambiguous speeches in patients as 
 new symptoms of the most fleeting duration, and 
 
282 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 can even succeed in making use of them, whereby, 
 with the meaning intended for the consciousness 
 of the patient, one can, not infrequently, stimu- 
 late the understanding for the one valid in 
 the unconscious. I know from experience that 
 among the uninitiate this role of ambiguity 
 usually gives the greatest offense, and causes the 
 grossest misunderstanding, but our author was 
 right, at any rate, in representing in his produc- 
 tion this characteristic feature of the processes of 
 the formation of dream and delusion. 
 
ly 
 
 With Zoe's entrance as physician there is 
 awakened in us, we said, a new interest. We are 
 eager to learn if such a cure as she accomphshes 
 on Hanold is comprehensible or possible, whether 
 our author has observed the conditions of the pass- 
 ing of a delusion as correctly as those of its devel- 
 opment. 
 
 Without doubt a view will be advanced denying 
 to the case portrayed by our author such a princi- 
 pal interest, and recognizing no problem requir- 
 ing an explanation. For Hanold nothing more 
 remains, it might be asserted, but to solve his delu- 
 sion again, after its object, the supposed Gradiva, 
 conveys to him the incorrectness of all his asser- 
 tions and gives him the most natural explanations 
 for everything puzzling; for example, how she 
 knows his name. Thereby the affair would be 
 settled logically; as, however, the girl in this case 
 has confessed her love, for the satisfaction of his 
 feminine readers, our author would siu'ely allow 
 the otherwise not uninteresting story to end in the 
 usually happy way, marriage. More consistent, 
 and just as possible, would have been the different 
 
 233 
 
284. DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 conclusion that the young scholar, after the ex- 
 planation of his mistake, should, with polite 
 thanks, take his leave of the young lady and in 
 that way motivate the rejection of her love so that 
 he might offer an intense interest to ancient 
 women of bronze or stone, or the originals of these, 
 if they were attainable, but might have no idea of 
 how to deal with a girl of flesh and blood of his 
 own time. The archaeological fancy was most 
 arbitrarily cemented into a love-story by our 
 author, himself. 
 
 In discountenancing this conception as impos- 
 sible, our attention is first called to the fact that 
 we have to attribute the change beginning in Nor- 
 bert Hanold not to the relinquishment of the de- 
 lusion alone. At the same time, indeed before the 
 solution of the latter, there is in him an undeniable 
 awakening of the desire for love, which, of coxu-se, 
 results in his asking for the hand of the girl who 
 has freed him from delusion. We have already 
 shown under what pretexts and cloakings, cm-ios- 
 ity about her corporeal nature, jealousy, and the 
 brutal male impulse for possession are expressed 
 in him in the midst of the delusion, since repressed 
 desire put the first dream into his mind. Let us 
 add the further testimony that in the evening after 
 the second talk with Gradiva a living woman for 
 the first time seems congenial to him, although he 
 still makes the concession to his abhorrence of 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 235 
 
 honeymoon travelers, by not recognizing the con- 
 genial girl as newly married. The next fore- 
 noon, however, chance makes him witness of an 
 exchange of caresses between the girl and her sup- 
 posed brother, and he draws back shyly as if he 
 had disturbed a holy ceremony. Disdain for 
 "Augustus" and "Gretchen" is forgotten and re- 
 spect for love is restored to him. 
 
 Thus our author has connected the treatment 
 of the delusion and the breaking forth of the de- 
 sire for love most closely with one another, and 
 prepared the outcome in a love-affair as neces- 
 sary. He knows the nature of the delusion even 
 better than his critics ; he knows that a component 
 of amorous desire has combined with a component 
 of resistance in the formation of the delusion, and 
 he has the girl who undertakes the cure discover in 
 Hanold's delusion the component referring to her. 
 Only this insight can make her decide to devote 
 herself to treating him, only the certainty of 
 knowing herself loved by him can move her to 
 confess to him her love. The treatment consists 
 in restoring to him, from without, the repressed 
 memories which he cannot release from within; it 
 would be ineffective if the therapeutist did not 
 consider the emotions; and the interpretation of 
 the delusion would not finally be: "See; all that 
 means only that you love me." 
 
 The procedm"e which our author has his Zoe 
 
236 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 follow for the cure of the delusion of the friend 
 of her youth, shows a considerable resemblance, 
 no, complete agreement, essentially, with a thera- 
 peutic method which Dr. J. Breuer and the 
 present writer introduced into medicine in 1895, 
 and to the perfection of which the latter has since 
 devoted himself. This method of treatment, first 
 called the "c,athartic" by Breuer, which the pres- 
 ent writer has preferred to designate as "analytic" 
 consists in rather forcibly bringing into the con- 
 sciousness of the patients who suffer from dis- 
 turbances analogous to Hanold's delusion, the 
 unconscious, througii the repression of which they 
 have become ill, just as Gradiva does with the 
 repressed memories of their childhood relations. 
 To be sure, accomplishment of this task is easier 
 for Gradiva than for the physician ; she is, in this 
 connection, in a position which might be called 
 ideal from many view-porats. The physiciai.i 
 who does not fathom his patient in advance, and 
 does not possess within himself, as conscious mem- 
 ory, what is working in the patient as unconscious, 
 must call to his aid a complicated technique in 
 order to overcome this disadvantage. He must 
 learn to gather with absolute certainty, from the 
 patient's conscious ideas and statements, the re- 
 pressed material in him, to guess the unconscious, 
 when it betrays itself behind the patient's con- 
 scious expressions and acts. The latter then does 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 237 
 
 something similar to what Norbert Hanold did 
 at the end of the story, when he re-translates the 
 name, Gradiva, into Bertgang. The disturbance 
 disappears then by being traced back to its origin; 
 analysis brings cure at the same time. 
 
 The similarity between the procedure of Gra- 
 diva and the analytic method of psychotherapy is, 
 however, not limited to these two points, making 
 the repressed conscious, and the concurrence of 
 explanation and cure. It extends itself to what 
 proves the essential of the whole change, the 
 awakening of the emotions. Every disturbance 
 analogous to Hanold's delusion, which in science 
 we usually designate as a psychoneurosis, has, as 
 a preliminary, the repression of part of the emo- 
 tional life, to speak boldly, of the sex-impulse, and 
 at every attempt to introduce the unconscious and 
 repressed cause of illness into consciousness, the 
 emotional component necessarily awakens to re- 
 newed struggle with the forces repressing it, to 
 adjust itself for final result, often under violent 
 manifestations of reaction. In reawakening, in 
 consciousness, of repressed love, the process of 
 recuperation is accomplished when we sum up 
 all the various components of sex-impulse as 
 "love" and this reawakening is irremissible, for 
 the symptoms on account of which the treat- 
 ment was undertaken are nothing but the 
 precipitations of former struggles of repression 
 
2S8 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 and recurrence and can be solved and washed 
 away only by a new high-tide of these very pas- 
 sions. Every psychoanalytic treatment is an at- 
 tempt to free repressed love, which has formed 
 a miserable compromise-outlet in a symptom. 
 Yes, the conformity with the therapeutic process 
 pictured by the author in "Gradiva" reaches its 
 height when we add that even in analytical psy- 
 chotherapy, the reawakened passion, whether love 
 or hate, chooses the person of the physician as 
 its object every time. 
 
 Then, of course, appear the differences which 
 make the case of Gradiva an ideal one such as the 
 technique of physicians cannot attain. Gradiva 
 can respond to the love which is pushing through 
 from the unconscious into the conscious; the 
 physician cannot; Gradiva was herself the object 
 of the former repressed love; her person offers at 
 once a desirable object to the freed erotic activity. 
 The physician has been a stranger, and after the 
 cure must try to become a stranger again; often 
 he does not know how to advise the cured patient 
 to apply in hfe her regained capacity for love. 
 To suggest what resources and makeshifts the 
 physician then employs to approach with more or 
 less success the model of a love-cure which our 
 author has drawn for us, would carry us too far 
 away from our present task. 
 
 *Sq,w, however, the last question which we have 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 239 
 
 already evaded answering several times. Our 
 views about repression, the formation of delusion 
 and related disturbances, the formation and inter- 
 pretation of dreams, the role of erotic life, and the 
 manner of cure for such disturbances are, of 
 course, not by any means the common property of 
 science, to say nothing of being the possession of 
 educated people. If the insight which makes 
 our author able to create his "Fancy" in such a 
 way that we can analyze it like a real history of 
 disease has for its foundation the above-men- 
 tioned knowledge, we should Uke to find out the 
 source of it. One of the circle who, as was ex- 
 plained at the beginning, was interested in the 
 dreams of "Gradiva" and their possible interpre- 
 tation, put the direct question to Wilhelm Jensen, 
 whether any such similar theories of science had 
 been known to him. Our author answered, as 
 was to be expected, in the negative, and rather 
 testily. His imagination had put into his mind 
 the "Gradiva" in whom he had his joy; any one 
 whom she did not please, might leave her alone. 
 He did not suspect how much she had pleased the 
 readers. 
 
 It is easily possible that our author's rejection 
 does not stop at that. Perhaps he denies knowl- 
 edge of the rules which we have shown that he fol- 
 lows, and disavows all the intentions which we 
 recognized in his production; I do not consider 
 
240 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 this improbable; then, however, only two possibil- 
 ities remain. Either we have presented a true 
 caricature of interpretation, by transferring to a 
 harmless work of art tendencies of which its crea- 
 tor had no idea, and have thereby shown again 
 how easy it is to find what one seeks and what one 
 is engrossed with, a possibility of which most 
 strange examples are recorded in the history of 
 literature. Every reader may now decide for 
 himself whether he cares to accept such an ex- 
 planation; we, of course, hold fast to the other, 
 still remaining view. We think that our author 
 needed to know nothing of such rules and inten- 
 tions, so that he may disavow them in good faith, 
 and« that we have surely found nothing in his 
 romance which was not contained in it. We are 
 probably drawing from the same source, working 
 over the same material, each of us with a different 
 method, and agreement in results seems to vouch 
 for the fact that both have worked correctly, 
 Our procedure consists of the conscious obser- 
 vation of abnormal psychic processes in others, ir 
 order to be able to discover and express their laws. 
 Oiu" author proceeds in another way; he directs 
 his attention to the unconscious in his own psyche 
 listens to its possibilities of development anc 
 grants them artistic expression, instead of sup' 
 pressing them with conscious critique. Thus h( 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 241 
 
 learns from himself what we learn from others, 
 yrhat laws the activity of this unconscious must 
 follow, but he does not need to express these laws, 
 need not even recognize them clearly; they are, as 
 a result of his intelligent patience, contained in- 
 carnate in his creatures. We unfold these laws by 
 analysis of his fiction as we discover them from 
 cases of real illness, but the conclusion seems irre- 
 futable, that either both (our author, as well as 
 the physician) have misunderstood the uncon- 
 scious in the same way or we have both under- 
 stood it correctly. This conclusion is very valu- 
 able for us; for its sake, it was worth while for us 
 to investigate the representation of the formation 
 and cure of delusion, as well as the dreams, in 
 Jensen's "Gradiva" by the methods of therapeu- 
 tic psychoanalysis. 
 
 We have rea^feed the end. An observant 
 reader migKtremind us that, at the beginning, we 
 had remarked that di-eams are wishes represented 
 as fulfilled and that we stiU owe the proof of it. 
 Well, we reply, our arguments might well show 
 how unjustifiable it would be to wish to cover the 
 explanations which we have to give of the dream 
 with the formula that the dream is a wish-fulfil- 
 ment; but the assertion stands, and is also easy to 
 demonstrate for the dreams in "Gradiva." The 
 latent dream-thoughts— we know now what is 
 
^42 DELUSION AND DREAM 
 
 meant by that — may be of numerous kinds; in 
 "Gradiva" they are day-remnants, thoughts 
 which are left over unheard, and not disposed of 
 by the psychic activity of waking life. In order 
 that a dream may originate from them the coop- 
 eration of a — generally unconscious — wish is re- 
 quired ; this establishes the motive power for the 
 dream-formation; the day-remnants give the ma- 
 terial for it. In Norbert Hanold's first dream 
 two wishes concur in producing the dream, one 
 capable of consciousness, the other, of course, be- 
 longing to the unconscious, and active because of 
 repression. This was the wish, comprehensible 
 to every archaeologist, to have been an eye-wit- 
 ness of that catastrophe of 79. What sacrifice 
 would be too great, for an antiquarian, to realize 
 this wish otherwise than through dreams! The 
 other wish and dream-maker is of an erotic 
 nature : to be present when the beloved lies down 
 to sleep, to express it crudely. It is the rejection 
 of this which makes the dream an anxiety-dream. 
 Less striking are, perhaps, the impelhng wishes 
 of the second dream, but if we recall its interpre- 
 tation, we shall not hesitate to pronounce it also 
 erotic. The wish to be captured by the beloved, 
 to yield and surrender to her, as it may be con- 
 strued behind the lizard-catching, has really a 
 passive masochistic character. On the next day 
 the dreamer strikes the beloved, as if imder the 
 
DELUSION AND DREAM 24)3 
 
 sway of the antagonistic, erotic force; but we 
 must stop or we may forget that Hanold and 
 .Gradiva are only creatures of our author. 
 
 THE END