Wilhelm Jensen - Delusion and Dream: In Wilhelm Jensens Gradiva

To Dr. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, who first calledto my attention the charm of Gradiva, by Wilhelm Jensen, and suggestedthe possibility of the translation and publication combined with thetranslation of Freud's commentary, I am deeply grateful for his kindlyinterest and effort in connection with the publication of the book, andhis assistance with the technical terms of psychopathology.

In this connection I am also indebted to Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, whogave many helpful suggestions as a result of his thorough reading of themanuscript of the commentary.

I wish also to express my profound appreciation to my friend, Miss M.Evelyn Fitzsimmons, for her generous help with the original manuscriptand other valuable comments offered while she was reading the entireproof.

HELEN M. DOWNEY.
Worcester, Mass.

Jensen's brilliant and unique story of Gradiva has not only literarymerit of very high order, but may be said to open up a new field forromance. It is the story of a young archologist who suffered a verycharacteristic mental disturbance and was gradually but effectivelycured by a kind of native psychotherapeutic instinct, which probablyinheres in all of us, but which in this case was found in the girl heformerly loved but had forgotten, and who restored at the same time hishealth and his old affection for her.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the work is that the authorknew nothing of psychotherapy as such, but wrought his way through thelabyrinth of mechanisms that he in a sense rediscovered and set to work,so that it needed only the application of technical terms to make thisromance at the same time a pretty good key to the whole domain ofpsychoanalysis. In a sense it is a dream-story, but no single dream everbegan to be so true to the typical nature of dreams; it is a clinicalpicture, but I can think of no clinical picture that had its naturalhuman interest so enhanced by a moving romance. Gradiva might be anintroduction to psychoanalysis, and is better than anything else we canthink of to popularize it.

It might be added that while this romance has been more thoroughlyanalysed than any other, and that by Freud himself, it is really onlyone of many which in the literature of the subject have been used toshow forth the mysterious ways of the unconscious. It indicates thatpsychoanalysis has a future in literary criticism, if not that all artand artists have, from the beginning, more or less anticipated as theynow illustrate it.

The translator is thoroughly competent and has done her work withpainstaking conscientiousness, and she has had the great advantage ofhaving it revised, especially with reference to the translation oftechnical terms from the German, by no less an eminent expert inpsychotherapy than Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe.

G. STANLEY HALL.

BY

WILHELM JENSEN

On a visit to one of the great antique collections of Rome, NorbertHanold had discovered a bas-relief which was exceptionally attractive tohim, so he was much pleased, after his return to Germany, to be able toget a splendid plaster-cast of it. This had now been hanging for someyears on one of the walls of his work-room, all the other walls of whichwere lined with bookcases. Here it had the advantage of a position withthe right light exposure, on a wall visited, though but briefly, by theevening sun. About one-third life-size, the bas-relief represented acomplete female figure in the act of walking; she was still young, butno longer in childhood and, on the other hand, apparently not a woman,but a Roman virgin about in her twentieth year. In no way did she remindone of the numerous extant bas-reliefs of a Venus, a Diana, or otherOlympian goddess, and equally little of a Psyche or nymph. In her wasembodied something humanly commonplacenot in a bad senseto a degreea sense of present time, as if the artist, instead of making a pencilsketch of her on a sheet of paper, as is done in our day, had fixed herin a clay model quickly, from life, as she passed on the street, a tall,slight figure, whose soft, wavy hair a folded kerchief almost completelybound; her rather slender face was not at all dazzling; and the desireto produce such effect was obviously equally foreign to her; in thedelicately formed features was expressed a nonchalant equanimity inregard to what was occurring about her; her eye, which gazed calmlyahead, bespoke absolutely unimpaired powers of vision and thoughtsquietly withdrawn. So the young woman was fascinating, not at allbecause of plastic beauty of form, but because she possessed somethingrare in antique sculpture, a realistic, simple, maidenly grace whichgave the impression of imparting life to the relief. This was effectedchiefly by the movement represented in the picture. With her head bentforward a little, she held slightly raised in her left hand, so that hersandalled feet became visible, her garment which fell in exceedinglyvoluminous folds from her throat to her ankles. The left foot hadadvanced, and the right, about to follow, touched the ground onlylightly with the tips of the toes, while the sole and heel were raisedalmost vertically. This movement produced a double impression ofexceptional agility and of confident composure, and the flight-likepoise, combined with a firm step, lent her the peculiar grace.

Where had she walked thus and whither was she going? Doctor NorbertHanold, docent of archology, really found in the relief nothingnoteworthy for his science. It was not a plastic production of great artof the antique times, but was essentially a Roman genre production,and he could not explain what quality in it had aroused his attention;he knew only that he had been attracted by something and this effect ofthe first view had remained unchanged since then. In order to bestow aname upon the piece of sculpture, he had called it to himself Gradiva,"the girl splendid in walking." That was an epithet applied by theancient poets solely to Mars Gradivus, the war-god going out to battle,yet to Norbert it seemed the most appropriate designation for thebearing and movement of the young girl, or, according to the expressionof our day, of the young lady, for obviously she did not belong to alower class but was the daughter of a nobleman, or at any rate was ofhonourable family. Perhapsher appearance brought the idea to his mindinvoluntarilyshe might be of the family of a patrician dile whoseoffice was connected with the worship of Ceres, and she was on her wayto the temple of the goddess on some errand.