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 acquire enough human appeal to compel our
interest. It is the privilege of the author of _Gradiva_ to leave us in
such a quandary; with his beauty 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 learn that
he is already destined by family tradition to be an antiquarian, has
later, in isolation and independence, submerged himself completely in
his science, and has withdrawn entirely from life and its pleasures.
Marble and bronze 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 imagination, which can impress itself
not only on his dreams, but also on his waking life. By such separation
of imagination and intellectual capacity, he is 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 remarkable
anxiety-dream he intensifies the fancy 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 destination nor purpose
are firmly established in his mind. An inner restlessness and
dissatisfaction drive him from Rome to Naples and farther on from there;
he encounters the swarm of honeymoon travellers, 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 incomprehensible one, and the senseless wedding
trips to Italy somehow capped the climax of this buffoonery.” (_G._ p.
30.) 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 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 do what they do not do, and finds himself in Pompeii, “contrary to
expectations and intentions,” a few days after the beginning of his
journey—without, however, finding there the peace which he seeks.
The rôle 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 tormentors blend into one; many fly-couples
remind him of honeymoon travellers, address each other probably, in
their language, also as “My only Augustus” and “My sweet Gretchen.”
Finally he cannot help admitting “that his dissatisfaction was certainly
caused not by his surroundings alone, but to a degree found its origin
in him.” (_G._ p. 40.) 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 “ingresso” 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 destruction of Pompeii. Therefore in the “hot, 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, archæological 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 corporeal ears. Then—the dead awoke, and Pompeii began to live
again.” (_G._ p. 48.) While thus, by means of his imagination, he endows
the past with life, 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 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.” (_G._ p. 50.)
The suspense, in which the author of _Gradiva_ has kept us up to this
point, mounts here, for a moment, to painful confusion. Not only because
our hero has apparently lost his equilibrium, but also because,
confronted with the appearance 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
archæologist would need, in that case, to be measured by another
standard. Yes, when we consider how improbable must be the real
existence of a person who faithfully reproduces in her appearance that
antique bas-relief, our list shrinks to an alternative: hallucination or
ghost of the noon hour. A slight touch in the description eliminates the
former possibility. A large lizard lies stretched out, motionless, in
the sunlight; it flees, however, before the approaching foot of Gradiva
and wriggles away over the lava pavement. So, no hallucination;
something outside of the mind of our dreamer. But ought the reality of a
_rediviva_ to be able to disturb a lizard?
Before the house of Meleager Gradiva disappears. We are not surprised
that Norbert Hanold persists in his delusion that Pompeii has begun 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 personality 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. 55). 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 in her phantom existence. As
she does not answer, he changes the greeting to Latin. Then, from
smiling lips, 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 refulgence 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 living German girl, a fact which we wish to reject as utterly
improbable. Reflecting calmly, we now await a discovery of what
connection exists between the girl and the stone representation of her,
and of how our young archæologist 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 happiness,” says our author, “it assumed everywhere,
in the bargain, a considerable amount of incomprehensibility.” (_G._ p.
102.) Besides, this delusion 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
nothing but adapt the delusion to the wonderful discovery which he has
just made. Gradiva, who had perished at the destruction of Pompeii, can
be nothing but a ghost of the noon hour, who returns to life for the
noon hour of spirits; but why, after the answer given in German, does
the exclamation escape him: “I knew that your voice sounded like 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 interpretation 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
disappearing 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,
insulted, left him, as she could yet know nothing of his dream. May not
her delicacy of feeling have realized the erotic nature of the request,
which was prompted, for Hanold, only by the connection with his dream?
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
resemblance 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 bell-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 interest 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 her between the pillars, he considers her appearance
an illusion, which draws from him the grieved exclamation, “Oh, that you
were still alive!” 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 already become interesting as a living
personality, that the ill-humoured 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 remark
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 archæologist. Now she shows herself ready to
demonstrate her manner of walking, whereby the substitution of light,
sand-coloured, fine leather shoes for the sandals, which she explains as
adaptation 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 elicits from him, without once opposing
him. Only once she seems to have been wrested from her rôle 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 nothing of the relief, she must be on
the point of misunderstanding Hanold’s words, but she has immediately
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 succeed 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. 69.) She learns also that he has named the
bas-relief of her “Gradiva,” and tells him that her real name is Zoë!
“The name suits you beautifully, but it sounds to me like bitter
mockery, for ‘Zoë’ 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 from your hand.” (_G._ p. 70.) Melancholy is
suited to one so long dead, who has now returned to life 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
treatment of a real condition of this kind could proceed no differently
than to place itself first on the ground story of the
delusion-structure, and investigate it then as thoroughly as possible.
If Zoë is the right person, we shall soon learn how one cures delusions
like those of our hero. We should also like to know how such a delusion
originates. It would be very striking, and yet not without example and
parallel, if the treatment and investigation of the delusion should
coincide and, while it is being analysed, 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
healing power for delusions; and was not our hero’s captivation by the
Gradiva-relief also a complete infatuation, directed, to be sure, at the
past and lifeless?
After Gradiva’s disappearance, there is heard once more a distant sound
like the merry note of 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 Pompeii.
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
nothing 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 notices to-day a narrow cleft,
which is, however, wide enough to afford passage to an unusually slender
figure. He recognizes the fact that Zoë-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 Zoë-Gradiva may be and
whether one might feel anything if one touched her hand. A peculiar
impulse urges him to undertake this experiment, and yet an equally great
timidity in connection with the idea restrains him. On a hot, 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 dwell 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. 74.) The speaker stops talking then, and holds a little
snare, made of a long grass-blade, 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 purposes 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 of the opportunity to
recommend highly his house and the excavated treasures in it. He asserts
that he was present when there were found near the Forum the young
lovers who, on realizing 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
invention 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 encrusted with green
patina, which, in his presence, was gathered, with the remains of the
girl, from the ashes. He secures this brooch without further critical
consideration, and when, as he is leaving 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 attestation of the genuineness of his
new possession.
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 neighbourhood, at the Apollo
temple. Was it not 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 supposition. He appeases it by referring to the
uncertainty 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 considers brother and sister—in spite of
the difference in the colour of their hair. They are the first people
whom he has encountered on this trip who seem possibly congenial. A red
Sorrento rose, which the young girl wears, awakes in him some memory—he
cannot recall what. Finally he goes to bed and dreams; it is remarkable
nonsense, but apparently concocted of the day’s experiences. “Somewhere
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 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, 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
noticed yesterday on the young 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 all 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 property.
During his ramble awaiting the noon hour he has a surprising encounter.
In the Casa del Fauno he happens upon two people who doubtless believe
themselves undiscoverable in a 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 duration. 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 devotion, he withdraws unobserved. A deference which has long been
lacking in him has been restored.