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

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 the project of a spring journey assumed definite shape. This he carried out that very day, packed a light valise, 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 feeling, 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 archæological questions in connection 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 independent, for even those endowed with the three latter requirements are not always accessible to such a feeling 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 they would have discovered, felt or enjoyed exactly as much by staying there. In the spring such dualists 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 country people, his racial identity with them awoke in him no feeling of pride, but rather the opposite one, that he had done reasonably well to bother as little as possible with the homo sapiens of Linnæan 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-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 expressions there was something lacking which ordinary 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 occasionally 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 charming, 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 feeling that a Nature unknown to him was surrounding the railway tracks, as if he must have passed through these places before in continual twilight, or during a grey rainfall, and was now seeing them for the first time in their golden abundance of colour. 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 might be concealing something 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 excessive 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 exhausted 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 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 favourable 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 distinctly 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 still 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 climb near here?”

“No, I think we’ll have to ride a few hours more in the train to get there.”

“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 ill-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 Capitoline 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 carried off, for a rattling sound was soon heard from that direction. This mythological occurrence did not amaze the young archæologist, 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 completely. Absolute silence took the place of the confused sound, and instead of smoke and fire-glow, bright, hot sunlight rested on the ruins of the buried city. This likewise changed gradually, became a bed on whose white linen golden beams circled up to his eyes, and Norbert Hanold 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 possession of him, a feeling 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 Capitoline Venus, frightened him away. Thus, after brief consideration, he refrained from his intention 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 arms and legs, and members of the female sex, in contrast to whom his coupled country-women seemed to his memory almost like Olympian goddesses.

Two days later Norbert 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-costumes, which had doubtless all quickly replaced the virgin radiance of satin, silk or lace bridal finery; 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 publicity.

“Oh, look, that was practical of them; we’ll 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 awfully 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 complexion, and I could never forgive myself that.”

“What if you should suddenly have a negress for a wife?”

“No, my imagination fortunately does not reach that far, but a freckle on your little nose would make me unhappy. I think, if it is agreeable 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 realize 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 agreeable 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 hundredfold dualities fill the museums of Florence, Rome, Naples, instead of devoting themselves to their plural occupations in their native 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 originated his sudden impulse to do what they did not do. There was at any rate offered to him a chance to be freed from the main flock of this migration and to find what he was vainly seeking here in Italy. That was also a duality, not a wedding duality, but two members of the same family without cooing bills, silence and science, two calm 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 Portici and Resina. The journey was like 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 greatest dainty of the country, 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 influences 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 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 through Torre dell’Annunziata, reached the Dioscuri, “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 archæologist. 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 neighbour; and the antique splendours temptingly displayed 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 expectations and intentions, had been transported in a few days from northern Germany to Pompeii, found the “Diomed” not too much filled with human 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 considered them the basest evil invention of Nature, on their account much preferred the winter to the 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 splendidly 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 injury, 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 paralysed, 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 for blood did not impel them, but solely the diabolical 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 Æschylus; 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, according 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 greatest 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 overwhelming number of the common 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 added, at least dimly, another, that his dissatisfaction was certainly caused not by his surroundings alone, but to a degree found its origin in him. To be sure, flies had always been very repulsive to him, but they had never before transported him into such raging fury as this. On account of the journey his nerves were undeniably 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-humour 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 himself in a thick cloud of self-righteousness, it could not remain concealed from him that he was travelling around Italy just as aimless, senseless, blind and deaf as they, only with considerably less capacity for enjoyment. For his travelling companion, 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 language he had communed with her.

It was now too late in the day to go into Pompeii through the “ingresso.” Norbert remembered 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, motionless and quiet. It looked like a dead rubbish field already almost covered with shadow, for the evening sun stood in the west not far from the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Round about, on the other hand, it still 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’ Angelo 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 surroundings 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 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 indiscretion, 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 commanded by official guides, armed with red Baedekers 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 exclusively by English or Anglo-American chatter; the German couples were making each other mutually 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 observation. This continually repeated experience brought, however, the added feeling that his presence 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 generally 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 confusion of fragments of ancient gate arches, pillars and walls significant to the highest degree for archæology, 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 science 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 Amphitheatre, from the Porta di Stabia to the Porta del Vesuvio through the Street of Tombs as well as through countless others, and the sun had likewise, in the meanwhile, 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 traveller’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, satiated by the past, started on the return, ebbed in common movement down through the Via Marina, 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 circumstances, 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 visitors 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 in some causal connection with that, the “charmings” had already in the last hour considerably diminished, the “shockings” had increased in the same proportion, and the masculine “ah’s” proceeding from rows of teeth even more widely distended than before had begun a noticeable transition to yawning.