Gradiva / Blud a sny v Gradivě Wilhelma Jensena – Freud Sigmund (2021)

The famous novella Gradiva by Wilhelm Jensen from 1902 (published in book form in 1903) tells the story of a young archaeologist, Norbert Hanold. Erroneous ideas and suggestive dreams lead him from home to distant Italy, where he searches for a mysteriously walking girl he knows from an ancient relief and has already named Gradiva for himself. A ghostly encounter that takes place in the ruins of Pompeii in the heat of the midday sun forces Hanold and the reader to doubt whether it is reality or a dream. Is Gradiva an illusion, or a real girl made of flesh and blood? Can Hanold rely on his judgment, or has he been completely overtaken by delusional ideas? His Italian expedition gradually becomes a pilgrimage into the dark corners of his own soul and a return to himself. The novella Gradiva has continued to inspire numerous literary and artistic works (including those by André Breton, André Masson, Salvador Dalí) and films long after its creation. It also caught the attention of the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who dedicated a separate study to its analysis. "Poets and writers are valuable allies, and their testimonies should be highly valued, for they often have awareness of many things between heaven and earth that our school wisdom can only dream of," Freud asserts in his analysis Delusion and Dreams in Gradiva.