A Health Resort Mystery

For centuries, spa and health resort towns were once in vogue in Europe; the continent is riddled with towns that were developed to be a getaway from the worries and tediousness of quotidian existence. This tradition originated from ancient Greek and Roman civilizations but declined with the fall of the Roman Empire and the advent of the Medieval times. However, interest in health resort towns once again grew during the Renaissance due to the influences of Arabs. Spa towns like  Montecatini and Abano in Italy and Baden-Baden in Germany were slowly attracting visitors. Through kings, emperors, and other aristocratic visitors, such health resorts and spa towns increased in popularity. The wealthy bourgeoisie shortly followed the trend as these spa towns provided an opportunity to mingle with aristocrats. Spa towns have then transformed into both a center of health and a center of social life.  

Spa towns have become integral to the European lifestyle. Their relevance has trickled into the vast ambit of literature. They have become the settings of literary works such as Russian writer Konstantin Fedin’s Sanatorii Arktur (1939, trans: The Arktur Sanatorium) and his countryman Anton Chekhov’s short story Dama s sobachkoj (1899, trans: The Lady with the dog). The latter was instrumental in placing the literary spotlight on the bathing resort of Yalta in the Crimean Peninsula. Meanwhile, the former is a response to another novel set in a health resort, German Nobel Laureate in Literature Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain). The Magic Mountain, without a doubt, is one of the, if not the most prominent literary works. Transcending time, it remains one of the most recognized literary titles. It also immortalized Davos, a health resort tucked in the Swiss Alps.

The Magic Mountain’s influences stretch far and wide. The novel was referenced in equally popular writer Haruki Murakami’s novel Norwegian Wood (1987) and in Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion (1964). Mann’s preferred work, the book also inspired songs, a movie, and even a painting. It was also The Magic Mountain that served as the inspiration for another Nobel Laureate in Literature’s latest novel. In 2022, Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk published Empuzjon. Horror przyrodoleczniczy. The novel was made available to Anglophone readers in 2024, exactly 100 years after the publication of the work that inspired it. Carrying the title The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, it was translated by Antonia Lloyd-Joyce, the same translator who worked on Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych, 2009).

Just then he is overcome by a familiar sense of sadness, typical of those convinced of their own impending death. The world around him feels like stage scenery painted on a paper screen, as if he could stick a finger into this monumental landscape and drill a hole in it leading straight to nothingness. And as if nothingness will start pouring out of there in a flood, and will catch him up too, grab him by the throat. He has to shake his head to be rid of this image. It shatters into droplets and falls onto the leaves.

 Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

Like the novel that inspired it, The Empusium was set in the years before the escalation of the First World War. At the heart of the novel was a twenty-four-year-old Polish man named Mieczysław Wojnicz. In September 1913, the student from Lwów arrived at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort tucked in the Silesian mountains. Professor Sokołowski sent the engineer-in-training – like The Magic Mountain’s hero Hans Castorp – to the sanatorium near the Guesthouse to convalesce from the mild case of tuberculosis he was suffering from. The sanatorium was established by Dr. Hermann Brehmer in a valley in the Sudetes. The medical facility is one of the first to treat tuberculosis and, as the novel describes it, the prototype for other health resorts, including Davos. Unfortunately, the sanatorium was full, prompting Wojnicz to seek refuge in the Guesthouse. In the meantime, he bid his time while waiting for slots to become available at the main kurhaus.

The readers become privy to Wojnicz’s thoughts, insights, and childhood memories through a third-person lens for Wojnicz. Like Hans, he was hoping that the purity of mountain air, coupled with a healthy lifestyle, would help him recover from his malady. Tuberculosis, however, was not Wojnicz’s only affliction. He was also suffering from anxiety and an “exaggerated fear of being spied on.” Wojnicz was not the only one waiting for slots in the sanitarium to become available; the Guesthouse was brimming with men of varying ages who were also waiting for available slots, including the Guesthouse’s owner Wilhelm Opitz. These male patients comprise an eclectic cast and in their midst Wojnicz found himself. Meanwhile, they bide their time by walking around and exploring the town or socializing with each other.

Among the characters Wojnicz met at the Guesthouse are Longis Lukas, a Catholic professor from Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad); August August, a Viennese lover of ancient Greek mythology; and Thilo von Hahn, a German Fine Arts student. It is a cosmopolitan selection, to say the least; it is again reminiscent of The Magic Mountain. Being nearly of the same age, Wojnicz wanted to befriend Thilo; Thilo was palpably sicker than Wojnicz. While the two young men would eventually build rapport, Wojnicz was ambivalent about Thilo’s eccentricity. Thilo confides to his friend that the “landscape is capable of killing a person.” This was exacerbated when the lifeless body of Opitz’s wife was found. Her husband immediately ruled her death as a suicide; her death barely came as a surprise to him. Thilo, however, had other ideas. He believed her death was not a case of suicide. Death permeates the story; after all, it markets itself as a “horror story”.

Frau Opitz’s death wasn’t the first nor the only one. Wojnicz would learn about other mysterious deaths and disappearances that hounded the health resort and the town: every year a man dies here, sometimes two, ripped to pieces in the forest. A visit to the local cemetery with Thilo unveiled something more sinister. The cemetery was brimming with headstones inscribed with the same November day of death. More strange events occur following Frau Opitz’s demise. This did not escape Wojnicz’s notice. Wojnicz would be further unsettled by the legend of the Tutschi, fictional female dolls residing in the depths of the forest; and the roaring, crazed-sounding stag whose piercing howls pervade the nighttime air. This also underlines the Nobel laureate’s fixation with the occult and mythic. All of these exacerbated his anxieties, prompting him to try to uncover the various phenomena taking place in the guesthouse and the lush forest above the town.

The concept of “nation” does not speak to me at all. Our emperor, yours and mine, says that only “people”exist, nations are an invention. The paradox lies in the fact that nation-states are in desperate need of other nation-states – a single nation-state has no raison d’etre, the essence of their existence is confrontation and being different. Sooner or later, it will lead to war.

  Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

Beyond the elements of adventure and Wojnicz’s innate curiosity, what propels the story are the philosophical intersections the novel is riddled with. The occupants of the Guesthouse gather every evening and drink a hallucinogenic local liqueur, Schwärmerei. These evening gatherings eventually transformed into a catalyst for not only social interactions but also an avenue for men to take part in discourses about issues prevalent during the period. Each character, interestingly, purports to represent various facets of society and contrasting ideas and perspectives. It was also through them that Tokarcuzk examined the prevailing attitude of and the changes slowly sweeping Europe during the period. The subjects they discuss and debate span a cornucopia of subjects. For one, they argue on various political issues, such as the prevalence but slow dismantling of imperialism and the rise of democracy and even socialism.

The male patients also discussed the nature of evil. The looming war was also interjected into their discussions. However, their most pervasive and contentious discourses revolve around women. The question of women’s inferiority to men was a prevalent conversation starter: Woman represents a bygone, inferior stage of evolution. Further, regardless of their discourses – even the most abstract – they often circle back to the subject of women. Misogyny permeated the story as the men underline how women have historically underperformed in every aspect of society. In the ambit of literature, for instance, they mentioned how literature is lacking in prominent and influential female voices. They concluded that men are the more intelligent species while women are the more delicate, sensitive, and impulsive. It is these tendencies that make women rely on men. They also concluded that women don’t have autonomy over their bodies because they belong to humankind.

The men blamed women for the destabilization of social order. They believe that men are natural leaders and, as such, men must lead and regulate the world. Male desire, on the other hand, “must be instantly satisfied, otherwise the world would collapse in chaos.” Their misogynistic rants permeate the story. Men who exhibit female qualities are frowned upon. One character’s struggles also stem from his father’s intention to make a man out of him. As these details unfold, the “horror” that hounds the Guesthouse further takes a metaphorical shape. The horror, at the onset, is an allegory for several elements, including the lung disease that is subduing the male patients, the looming war, the mysteries, and the deaths that hound the Guesthouse. However, horror, in Tokarczuk’s universe, takes a more sinister and complex shape because, through her unflinching gaze, toxic masculinity and the patriarchy are even more ominous horrors that persist in the contemporary.

The subject of feminism is germane to Tokarczuk and her oeuvre; she is a staunch feminist. While she was inspired by The Magic Mountain, indelible threads of Tokarczuk’s own brand of storytelling were astutely woven into the novel’s rich tapestry. The intellectual framework of Mann’s literary masterpiece served as a vessel for her probe into feminism and the pervasiveness of the patriarchy. Tokarczuk integrated her own elements to provide a literary journey distinct from its predecessor. As if to further make the message resonate, there was a palpable absence of female voices. Nevertheless, the male patients’ discourses are reminders of their lingering presence. This encapsulates how women were often perceived. They were seen by the men as mere objects who were analyzed and theorized in their philosophical and intellectual musings. As the older men around him debated, it dawned on Wojnicz how their decay was emanating from their acute view of the world and of women. Their decay was coming from within.

He now stood naked opposite the open cupboard. The small, cracked mirror above the washbasin reflected his body, which was divided into pieces, as if this image were part of a larger puzzle, for which each of us was given a whole life to put together. In his brain he saw, as in the windows of a huge room, what forms his future would take. He felt numerous, multiple, multi-dimensional, composite and complex like a coral reef, like a mycelium, whose true existence was underground.

  Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

The phallocentric belief systems, unfortunately, still dominate contemporary thoughts and ideals. The male patients were spouting appalling ideas about women. These ideas and thoughts were drawn and paraphrased from the works of prominent men considered titans of Western literature and thought. In the Author’s Notes, Tokarczuk names some of these thinkers. Among them are Plato and Hesiod in ancient Greece; Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud; and the rebels of post-mid-twentieth-century American literature William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Tokarczuk opens her notes with a succinct statement: “All the misogynistic views on the topic of women and their place in the world are paraphrased from texts by the following authors.” This underlines how contemporary ideas were passed on. In a way, history keeps repeating itself until and unless we dismantle these ideas.

As the foreground grapples with these various subjects, a supernatural voice lingers in the background. The third voice focalizing Wojnicz alternates with the mystical presence of a “we” voice. The specter of the we voice suggests that the events unfolding in the town and the Guesthouse are being observed by ethereal entities, perhaps even supernatural forces. The book’s title, which was never explained, appears to be a portmanteau for sanatorium and Empusa or Empousa. The empusa is a shapeshifting female demon from Greek mythology. The Empusa then transforms into a metaphor for the supernatural feminine energy that reverberates throughout the story. Toward the end of the story, Tokarczuk unmasks the “we” voices. They are ghostly observes but, seen from a different perspective, they are metaphors for the women who were oppressed by these men.

Tokarczuk’s first novel since being recognized by the Swedish Academy in 2018, The Empusium is a welcome addition to her lush oeuvre. Inspired by one of the most important literary masterpieces, it is a multilayered story that examines the European conditions of the time. The influences of The Magic Mountain were ubiquitous but Tokarczuk takes over the narrative and makes it distinctly her own. The Empusium brimmed with philosophical and intellectual debates about politics, science, the arts, and women. The novel draws strength from its extensive probe into toxic masculinity and patriarchy and how they adversely impact the feminine voice. They are among the many horrors that hound the story and society in general. It is another thought-provoking work from the Nobel Laureate in Literature but beyond its intricate examination of complex subjects, The Empusium underlines how, with each work, Tokarczuk pushes the limits of her writing and storytelling.

As if the world were built of plywood and were now delaminating before their eyes, as if all contours were blurring, revealing fluid passages between things. The same process affected their ideas, and so the discussion became less and less factual, because the speakers had suddenly lost their sense of certainty, and every word that had been reliable so far now acquired contexts, entailed allusions, or flickered with remote associations. Finally they sank into dreadful fatigue, and one after another floated off to their rooms, breathing heavily on the stairs.

  Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium
Book Specs

Author: Olga Tokarczuk
Translator (from Polish): Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publishing Date: 2024 (2022)
No. of Pages: 302
Genre: Historical, Literary, Bildungsroman

Synopsis

September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and to debate the great issues of the day: Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone – or something – seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world. Little does the newcomer realize, as he tries to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, with signature inventiveness, humor, and bravura.

About the Author

To learn more about the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature awardee Olga Tokarczuk, click here.