Christopher Hitchens once wrote, “in the summer of 1914 the roof of the over-admired European civilization simply fell in.” The conditions that led to the collapse of reason and the death of 16 million people during World War I haunt The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, Olga Tokarczuk’s wry new novel (translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones; 320 pages; Riverhead).
Set in the fall of 1913, just months before the start of the First World War, the novel’s protagonist Mieczysław Wojnicz, a young engineer arrives at a “consumption free” mountain resort in Görbersdorf, an Alpine town in Prussian Silesia (now Sokołowsko, Poland). Wojnicz is beset by afflictions that his father determined would be best resolved in the mountain air under the care of a doctor and a rigorous health regime.
Young Wojnicz takes a room at a Guesthouse for Gentleman near the sanatorium. Here, he meets the long-term patients suffering from tuberculosis whom he quickly learns have a tradition of gathering nightly for conversation while quaffing the local drink Schwӓrmerei (German for “excessive sentiment” or “enthusiasm”). Among the patients is a theosophist, a socialist humanist, a Catholic traditionalist, and thus the observant Wojnicz is exposed to a range of prevailing points of view. “Wojnicz had noticed that every discussion, whether about democracy, the fifth dimension, the role of religion, socialism, Europe, or modern art, eventually led to women.” The views of Optiz, the proprietor of the guesthouse, are typical: “Whether we like it or not, motherhood is the one and only thing that justifies the existence of this troublesome sex.” Wojnicz tries to settle in but finds his companions a bit odd, and becomes troubled by the inexplicable disappearances, deaths, and other mysteries he stumbles upon which seem to alarm no one but him.
The set-up of The Empusium shares similarities with The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, which also features a young protagonist arriving at a sanatorium that treats tubercular patients in the Alpine resort town of Davos, Switzerland, in the years before the war. Like Mann’s novel, The Empusium can be read as a Bildungsroman and as a satire, exploring the distorted views of civilized society. Tokarczuk’s novel, however, has modern twists and can be read as a Gothic horror murder mystery with a wickedly arch take on gender dynamics and the Western canon. There is an underlying theme of man versus nature and the surrounding forest, psychedelics, and mycelium all come into play to further complicate the narrative—making The Empusium a novel that defies easy classification.
Tokarczuk employs at least two narrators: an omniscient narrator and occasionally an ambiguous narrator-character who steps in from within the story structure. One senses that forest spirits, or perhaps the titular Empusa, a female shapeshifter from Greek mythology, observe and comment on the male characters:
“Their feet mechanically crush the forest litter, snap the small plants, tear up the moss, and squash the tiny bodies of insects that have failed to heed the vibrations heralding imminent annihilation. For a short while after they pass, beneath the forest floor the mushroom spawn quivers, that vast, immense, motherly structure transmits information to itself—where the intruders are, and in which direction they are bending their steps.”
The passage suggests that the men are incompatible with nature, and the language also hints at the devastation from trench warfare that is to come.
Tokarczuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018, is a deft storyteller who tackles monumental themes with wit and intelligence. Both here in The Empusium and in her other works, such as in her fragmented novel encapsulating the 20th century, Primeval and Other Times, the depth of her prose rewards the patient reader.
H. L. Onstad’s fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Harvard Review, Solstice Magazine, and HA Journal, a publication of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities.