Gradiva
 | This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. (April 2021) |
| This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. (April 2021) |
The Gradiva, The woman who walks, is a modern 20th century mythological figure from the novella Gradiva by Wilhelm Jensen.[1]
Description
In the story, a young archaeologist is fascinated by a female figure in an antique Relief and gives her the name "Gradiva" after Mars Gradivus, the Roman god of war walking into battle. Later, not quite certain whether he is awake or dreaming, he meets Gradiva in the ruins of Pompeii.
Sigmund Freud famously analyzed the actions and dreams of this young archaeologist in his 1908 study, Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens Gradiva.[2] Freud's study saved the novella from obscurity and made Gradiva into a modern mythological figure.
The relief itself is not fictional; it is now known by the name "Gradiva," after the novel. The relief was described by Hauser as a neo-Attic Roman Relief probably after a Greek original from the fourth century BCE.[3] It shows in its complete state the three Agraulides sisters, Herse, Pandrosus and Aglaulos, deities of the dew. Hauser reconstructed the Agraulid-relief from fragments scattered over various museum collections.
The Gradiva fragment is held in the collection of the Vatican Museum Chiaramonti, Rome,[4] its complement is held in the Uffizi in Florence.
Jensen’s novella and Freud’s analysis
The protagonist of Jensen's novella, the young archaeologist Norbert Hanold, finds a relief with the figure of a young woman in a Roman antique collection. He is fascinated by her graceful walk and names her after Mars Gradivus, the Roman god of war walking into battle.
Freud's analysis is one of his first analyses of a literary work. Freud owned a copy of this relief, which hangs in his study at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, now the Freud Museum.
Recently discovered letters show Freud corresponded with Jensen.[5]
Adaptions
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 André Masson, explores the sexual iconography of the character. Gradiva, 'the woman who walks through walls' is the muse of Surrealism.[6]
In 1937, the Surrealist writer André Breton opened an art gallery on the Rive Gauche, 31 rue de Seine, christening it with the title Gradiva. Marcel Duchamp designed it, giving its door the form of a double cast shadow.[7]
The short artfilm Gradiva Sketch 1 (1978, camera: Bruno Nuytten) by the French cinéaste Raymonde Carasco was described as “a poetic construction about the fetishization of desire, one that seems to go against Freud's reading: the gracious movement of the maiden's foot is seen to be the object itself, not a mere referent, of male desire.”[8]
In 1986, the French surrealist writer and ethnographer Michel Leiris, together with Jean Jamin, founded Gradhiva, a journal of anthropology; since 2005, it has been published by the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.[9]
Notes
- ^ Jensen, Wilhelm (1903). Gradiva: ein pompejanisches phantasiestück ... C. Reissner.
- ^ Freud, Sigmund (1908). Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens "Gradiva". H. Heller.
- ^ Friedrich Hauser: Disiecta membra neuattischer Reliefs. Jahreshefte des Österr. Archäol. Institutes Bd. VI (1903) 79-107.
- ^ Cat. No. 1284
- ^ letters appended to John Fletcher, Gradiva: Freud, Fetishism, and Pompeian Fantasy in Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2013, Vol LXXXII, Number 4
- ^ Nadeau, Maurice, A History of Surrealism, (1965).
- ^ "Gradiva: What did Freud and the Surrealists See in Her?". DailyArt Magazine.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Eye of Sound – UbuWeb Film
- ^ "Gradhiva". Gradhiva. Quai Branly Museum. Retrieved 14 April 2016.
External links
Media related to Gradiva at Wikimedia Commons- Gradiva - Chiaramonti Museum, Rome
- Gradiva - Freud-Museum, London
- Freud Museum Exhibition Archive: Gradiva: The Cure Through Love
- Raymonde Carasco: Gradiva Sketch 1 (1978)
- DailyArt Magazine - Gradiva: What did Freud and the Surrealists See in Her?
