The suspense, in which the author of Gradiva has kept us up to this point, mounts here, for a moment, to painful confusion. Not only because our hero has apparently lost his equilibrium, but also because, confronted with the appearance of Gradiva, who was formerly a plaster-cast and then a creation of imagination, we are lost. Is it a hallucination of our deluded hero, a “real” ghost, or a corporeal person? Not that we need to believe in ghosts to draw up this list. Jensen, who named his tale a “Fancy,” has, of course, found no occasion, as yet, to explain to us whether he wishes to leave us in our world, decried as dull and ruled by the laws of science, or to conduct us into another fantastic one, in which reality is ascribed to ghosts and spirits. As Hamlet and Macbeth show, we are ready to follow him into such a place without hesitation. The delusion of the imaginative archæologist would need, in that case, to be measured by another standard. Yes, when we consider how improbable must be the real existence of a person who faithfully reproduces in her appearance that antique bas-relief, our list shrinks to an alternative: hallucination or ghost of the noon hour. A slight touch in the description eliminates the former possibility. A large lizard lies stretched out, motionless, in the sunlight; it flees, however, before the approaching foot of Gradiva and wriggles away over the lava pavement. So, no hallucination; something outside of the mind of our dreamer. But ought the reality of a rediviva to be able to disturb a lizard?
Before the house of Meleager Gradiva disappears. We are not surprised that Norbert Hanold persists in his delusion that Pompeii has begun to live again about him in the noon hour of spirits, and that Gradiva has also returned to life and gone into the house where she lived before the fateful August day of the year 79. There dart through his mind keen conjectures about the personality of the owner, after whom the house may have been named, and about Gradiva’s relation to the latter; these show that his science has now given itself over completely to the service of his imagination. After entering this house, he again suddenly discovers the apparition, sitting on low steps between two yellow pillars. “Spread out on her knees lay something white, which he was unable to distinguish clearly; it seemed to be a papyrus sheet” (G. p. 55). Taking for granted his most recent suppositions about her ancestry, he speaks to her in Greek, awaiting timorously the determination of whether the power of speech may, perhaps, be granted to her in her phantom existence. As she does not answer, he changes the greeting to Latin. Then, from smiling lips, come the words, “If you wish to speak with me, you must do so in German.”
What embarrassment for us, the readers! Thus the author of Gradiva has made sport of us and decoyed us, as if by means of the refulgence of Pompeiian sunshine, into a little delusion so that we may be milder in our judgment of the poor man, whom the real noonday sun actually burns; but we know now, after recovering from brief confusion, that Gradiva is a living German girl, a fact which we wish to reject as utterly improbable. Reflecting calmly, we now await a discovery of what connection exists between the girl and the stone representation of her, and of how our young archæologist acquired the fancies which hint at her real personality.
Our hero is not freed so quickly as we from the delusion, for, “Even if the belief brought happiness,” says our author, “it assumed everywhere, in the bargain, a considerable amount of incomprehensibility.” (G. p. 102.) Besides, this delusion probably has subjective roots of which we know nothing, which do not exist for us. He doubtless needs trenchant treatment to bring him back to reality. For the present he can do nothing but adapt the delusion to the wonderful discovery which he has just made. Gradiva, who had perished at the destruction of Pompeii, can be nothing but a ghost of the noon hour, who returns to life for the noon hour of spirits; but why, after the answer given in German, does the exclamation escape him: “I knew that your voice sounded like that”? Not only we, but the girl, too, must ask, and Hanold must admit that he has never heard her voice before, but expected to hear it in the dream, when he called to her, as she lay down to sleep on the steps of the temple. He begs her to repeat that action, but she then rises, directs a strange glance at him, and, after a few steps, disappears between the pillars of the court. A beautiful butterfly had, shortly before that, fluttered about her a few times; in his interpretation it had been a messenger from Hades, who was to admonish the departed one to return, as the noon hour of spirits had passed. The call, “Are you coming here again to-morrow in the noon hour?” Hanold can send after the disappearing girl. To us, however, who venture a more sober interpretation, it will seem that the young lady found something improper in the request which Hanold had made of her, and therefore, insulted, left him, as she could yet know nothing of his dream. May not her delicacy of feeling have realized the erotic nature of the request, which was prompted, for Hanold, only by the connection with his dream?
After the disappearance of Gradiva, our hero examines all the guests at the “Hotel Diomed” table and soon also those of “Hotel Suisse,” and can then assure himself that in neither of the only two lodgings known to him in Pompeii is a person to be found who possesses the most remote resemblance to Gradiva. Of course he had rejected, as unreasonable, the supposition that he might really meet Gradiva in one of the two hostelries. The wine pressed on the hot soil of Vesuvius then helps to increase the day’s dizziness.
The only certainty about the next day is that Norbert must again be in Meleager’s house at noon; and, awaiting the hour, he enters Pompeii over the old city-wall, a way which is against the rules. An asphodel cluster of white bell-flowers seems, as flower of the lower world, significant enough for him to pluck and carry away. All his knowledge of antiquity appears to him, however, while he is waiting, as the most purposeless and indifferent matter in the world, for another interest has acquired control of him, the problem, “what is the nature of the physical manifestation of a being like Gradiva, dead and alive at the same time, although the latter was true only in the noon hour of spirits?” (G. p. 64.) He is also worried lest to-day he may not meet the lady sought, because perhaps she may not be allowed to return for a long time, and when he again sees her between the pillars, he considers her appearance an illusion, which draws from him the grieved exclamation, “Oh, that you were still alive!” This time, however, he has evidently been too critical, for the apparition possesses a voice which asks him whether he wishes to bring her the white flower, and draws the man, who has again lost his composure, into a long conversation. Our author informs us, readers, to whom Gradiva has already become interesting as a living personality, that the ill-humoured and repellent glance of the day before has given way to an expression of searching inquisitiveness or curiosity. She really sounds him, demands, in explanation of his remark of the preceding day, when he had stood near her as she lay down to sleep, in this way learns of the dream in which she perished with her native city, then of the bas-relief, and of the position of the foot, which attracted the young archæologist. Now she shows herself ready to demonstrate her manner of walking, whereby the substitution of light, sand-coloured, fine leather shoes for the sandals, which she explains as adaptation to the present, is established as the only deviation from the original relief of Gradiva. Apparently she is entering into his delusion, whose whole range she elicits from him, without once opposing him. Only once she seems to have been wrested from her rôle by a peculiar feeling when, his mind on the bas-relief, he asserts that he has recognized her at first glance. As, at this stage of the conversation, she, as yet, knows nothing of the relief, she must be on the point of misunderstanding Hanold’s words, but she has immediately recovered herself again, and only to us will many of her speeches appear to have a double meaning, besides their significance in connection with the delusion, a real, present meaning, as, for example, when she regrets that he did not succeed in confirming the Gradiva-gait on the street. “What a shame; perhaps you would not have needed to take the long journey here.” (G. p. 69.) She learns also that he has named the bas-relief of her “Gradiva,” and tells him that her real name is Zoë!
“The name suits you beautifully, but it sounds to me like bitter mockery, for ‘Zoë’ means ‘life.’”
“One must adapt himself to the inevitable,” she responds. “And I have long accustomed myself to being dead.”
With the promise to be at the same place again on the morrow, she takes leave of him, after she has obtained the asphodel cluster. “To those who are more fortunate one gives roses in spring, but for me the flower of oblivion is the right one from your hand.” (G. p. 70.) Melancholy is suited to one so long dead, who has now returned to life for a few short hours.
We begin now to understand and to hope. If the young lady, in whose form Gradiva is again revived, accepts Hanold’s delusion so completely, she does it probably to free him from it. No other course is open; by opposition, one would destroy that possibility. Even the serious treatment of a real condition of this kind could proceed no differently than to place itself first on the ground story of the delusion-structure, and investigate it then as thoroughly as possible. If Zoë is the right person, we shall soon learn how one cures delusions like those of our hero. We should also like to know how such a delusion originates. It would be very striking, and yet not without example and parallel, if the treatment and investigation of the delusion should coincide and, while it is being analysed, result in the explanation of its origin. We have a suspicion, of course, that our case might then turn out to be an “ordinary” love story, but one may not scorn love as a healing power for delusions; and was not our hero’s captivation by the Gradiva-relief also a complete infatuation, directed, to be sure, at the past and lifeless?