Gradiva

The Gradiva, The woman who walks, has become a modern 20th century mythological figure, from the novella Gradiva by the German writer Wilhelm Jensen, as she has sprung out of the imagination of a fictional character she may be considered unreal twice over.

In the book a young archaeologist is fascinated by a female figure in an antique bas-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 her in the ruins of Pompeii.

Sigmund Freud famously analysed the actions and dreams of this young archaeologist in his 1908 study, Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensens Gradiva. Through this study Freud not only saved the novella from being forgotten but caused the Gradiva to become a modern mythical figure.

The relief itself is not fictional but exists; it is now known by the name "Gradiva". The relief was described by Hauser as a neo-Attic Roman bas-relief, probably after a Greek original from the fourth century BCE. It shows in its complete state the three Agraulides sisters Herse, Pandrosus und 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, its complement in the Uffizi in Florence.

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 the first analyses of a literary work by him. Freud owned a copy of this relief, which hangs in his study (the room where he died) at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London — now the Freud Museum.

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