In the further course of the story there is another dream, which can
tempt us, even more perhaps than the first, to try to interpret it and
fit it into the psychic life of the hero; but we save little if we leave
the representation of the author of _Gradiva_ here, to hasten directly
to this second dream, for whoever wishes to interpret the dream of
another, cannot help concerning himself, as extensively as possible,
with every subjective and objective experience of the dreamer. Therefore
it would be best to hold to the thread of the story and provide this
with our commentaries 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 analysed
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 overtake her, but is driven
back by the jeers of the 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
processes. 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 halting-place. He is annoyed by the foolishness
of honeymoon travellers, and is enraged over the boldness of
house-flies, which populate the hotels of Pompeii; but finally he does
not deceive himself over the fact that “his dissatisfaction was
certainly not caused by his surroundings alone, but, to a degree, found
its origin in him.” He considers himself over-excited, feels “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.” In such
a mood he is enraged even at his mistress, science; as he wanders for
the first time in the glow of the midday 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. 48.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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