Why must this penetration of Zoë’s intentions appear throughout in the
form of the speech of the old zoologist? Why is Zoë’s skill in
husband-catching represented by that of the old man in lizard-catching?
Well, it is easy for us to answer that question; we have long ago
guessed that the lizard-catcher is none other than the professor of
zoology, Bertgang, Zoë’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, immediately 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 Zoë. She is the daughter of the lizard-catcher;
she has inherited this skill from him. The substitution of Gradiva for
the lizard-catcher in the dream-content, is, therefore, the
representation of the relation between the two people, which was
recognized by the unconscious; the introduction of “woman-colleague” in
place of _colleague, Eimer_, allows the dream to express comprehension
of her courtship of the man. The dream has welded two of the day’s
experiences in one situation, “condensed” 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 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-catching was made the nucleus of the dream, and suppose
that the other elements in the dream-thoughts influence the term
“lizard” in the manifest 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 natural explanation for the surprising
disappearance 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, represented this impression of the day, and the
meeting with the zoologist, Zoë’s father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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