But where in the manifest dream-content is found the trace and
representation of that discovery of Hanold’s for which we find that the
new delusion is substituted, the discovery that Gradiva lives with her
father in the third hotel of Pompeii, the “Albergo del Sole,” which he
has not been acquainted with? Well, it stands in its entirety and not
even much disfigured in the dream; but I dread to point it out, for I
know that even with the readers whose patience with me has lasted so
long, a strong opposition to my attempts at interpretation will be
stirred up. Hanold’s discovery is given in full in the dream-content, I
repeat, but so cleverly concealed that one must needs overlook it. It is
hidden there behind a play on words, an ambiguity. “Somewhere in the sun
Gradiva sat”; this we have rightly connected with the locality where
Hanold met the zoologist, her father; but can it not also mean in the
“Sun,” that is, in the “Albergo del Sole,” in the “Sun Hotel” Gradiva
lives? And doesn’t the “somewhere” which has no reference to the meeting
with her father sound so hypocritically indefinite for the very reason
that it introduces the definite information about the whereabouts of
Gradiva? According to previous experience in the interpretation of real
dreams, I am quite sure of such a meaning in the ambiguity, but I should
really not venture to offer this bit of interpretation to my readers, if
our author did not lend me here his powerful assistance. On the next day
he puts into the mouth of the girl, when she sees the metal brooch, the
same pun which we accept for the interpretation of the dream-content.
“Did you find it in the sun, perhaps? It brings to light many such works
of art”; and as Hanold does not understand the speech, she explains that
she means the “Sun Hotel,” which is called “Sole” here, whence the
supposed antique is also familiar to her.
And now may we make the attempt to substitute for Hanold’s “remarkably
nonsensical” dream unconscious thoughts hidden behind it and as unlike
it as possible? It runs somewhat as follows: “She lives in the ‘Sun’
with her father; why is she playing such a game with me? Does she wish
to make fun of me? Or could it be possible that she loves me and wishes
me for a husband?” To this latter possibility there now follows in sleep
the rejection, “That is the most utter madness,” which is apparently
directed against the whole manifest dream.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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