Gradiva

Norbert Hanold, a young German archaeologist, becomes fixated on an ancient marble relief showing a woman with light, graceful steps. He names her Gradiva, after a Latin word for one who walks, and begins to imagine her life in the ruins of Pompeii. His scholarly routine is upended when he meets a real young woman whose appearance seems to match the figure he has been studying. Jensen's novella moves between the dusty museums of Rome and the sunlit streets of Pompeii, exploring how obsession, imagination and love can blur the line between the past and the present. It remains a short, elegant work that later drew the attention of Sigmund Freud, who wrote an essay on it.