Gradiva
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Gradiva (Latin, "The one who walks") is a bas-relief of a robed woman. This Italian sculpture was the basis for the 1903 novel Gradiva: A Pompeiian Fancy by German writer Wilhelm Jensen, which in turn became the basis for Sigmund Freud's famous 1907 study Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva ("Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens Gradiva").
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Plot introduction
The story is about an archaeologist named Norbert Hanhold who holds a fascination for a woman depicted in a relief that he sees in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Hanhold later dreams that he has been transported back in time to meet the girl, whose unusual gait captivates him as he imagines her walking on the stepping stones that cross the roads in Pompeii while the hot ashes subsume the city in 79 AD.
Allusions/references from other works
Sigmund Freud famously analysed Hanhold's dreams ("Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens Gradiva", 1907), a unique example of his psychoanalysing a fictional character. Freud interpreted Hanhold's fetish as being a substitution for unresolved feelings for his childhood playmate, Zoe Bertgang.
Freud owned a copy of this relief, which can be found on the wall of his study (the room where he died) in 20 Maresfield Gardens, London—now the Freud Museum. The relief is believed to have been taken from an original held in the Vatican Museum (rather than Naples, where Jensen fictionally places it).
Salvador Dalí used the name Gradiva as a nickname for his wife, Gala Dalí. He used the figure of Gradiva in a number of his paintings, including Gradiva encuentra las ruinas de Antropomorphos (Gradiva finds the ruins of Antropomorphos). The figure Gradiva was used in other Surrealist paintings as well. Gradiva (Metamorphosis of Gradiva), 1939, by Andre Masson explores the sexual iconography of the character.
References
- Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva (1903)
- Sigmund Freud's Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva (1907)
See also
