Then, phantom-like, this cross sinks and, in its stead, there rises
shining, the image of a voluptuous, unclad woman, in the same position
of the crucifixion. Other painters of less psychological insight have,
in such representations of temptation, depicted sin as bold and
triumphant, near the Saviour on the cross. Rops, alone, has allowed it
to take the place of the Saviour on the cross; he seems to have known
that the thing repressed proceeds, at its recurrence, from the agency of
repression itself.
If Norbert Hanold were a living person, who had, by means of archæology,
driven love and the memory of his childhood friendship out of his life,
it would now be legitimate and correct that an antique relief should
awaken in him the forgotten memory of the girl beloved in his childhood;
it would be his well-deserved fate to have fallen in love with the stone
representation of Gradiva, behind which, by virtue of an unexplained
resemblance, the living and neglected Zoë becomes effective.
Miss Zoë, herself, seems to share our conception of the delusion of the
young archæologist, for the pleasure which she expresses at the end of
her “unreserved, detailed and instructive lecture” is hardly based on
anything other than her readiness to refer his entire interest in
Gradiva to her person. This is exactly what she does not believe him
capable of, and what, in spite of all the disguises of the delusion, she
recognizes as such. Her psychic treatment of him has a beneficent
effect; he feels himself free, as the delusion is now replaced by that
of which it can be only a distorted and unsatisfactory copy. He
immediately remembers and recognizes her as his good, cheerful, clever
comrade who has not changed essentially; but he finds something else
most strange—
“That a person must die to become alive again,” says the girl, “but for
archæologists that is of course necessary.” (_G._ p. 102.) She has
apparently not yet pardoned him for the détour which he made from the
childhood friendship through the science of antiquity to this relation
which has recently been established.
“No, I mean your name—Because Bertgang has the same meaning as Gradiva
and signifies ‘the one splendid in walking.’” (_G._ p. 102.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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