Name: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Rating: 4 (2 reviews)

Bruno Schulz

Calling upon his own childhood and experiences, Schulz portrays the family relationships, perceptions, and coming of age of a Polish youth

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

Tim Pendry

Bruno Schulz was a writer of crepuscular fantasy who sometimes feels like a kinder Ligotti. He got no kindness out of life in the end, being deliberately murdered by a Gestapo officer (Schulz was a Polish Jew) on his way back to the Drohobycz Ghetto in 1942. This particular novella is, like all his work, hard to get a fix on. The writer takes a train to a sanatorium where his father sits literally, it would seem, in a state between life and death and he too finds himself in transit eventually, also in a state that might be somewhere between the two. This is not a story from which you should expect any firmness or clarity. It has all the quality of a lucid dream. Indeed, I cannot think of any writer as good as Schulz in reproducing dream states. I suspect that for many readers its imagery will prey on the mind for a while after finishing the tale. What it means is less certain. Perhaps the point is that, as pure literature, there is no point in trying to find any meaning or perhaps there are multiple layers of meaning as one might find in a dream. My suspicion is that the meaning lies in the lack of coherent meaning. The imaginative skill of Schulz is impressive if only for the restraint he shows in not trying to hint at meaning. It is a story to let flow over you and be a little disturbed by. It does seem to be about death and loss in some way - there is a grieving in this story which is more than just sadness.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

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