It will be well worth our while to get an understanding 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 credulous a manner,
as if he has received a suggestion from him. The proprietor shows him a
small metal brooch as genuine, and as the possession 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 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
solution. 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 corroborated, not the
genuineness of the brooch, but something else which has become clear to
him at the discovery of this formerly overlooked “albergo.” In the
forenoon he has already acted as if he were seeking, in the two hotels
of Pompeii, where the person lived who appeared to him as Gradiva. Now,
as he stumbles 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 window.” 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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