THE TOPOS OF SANATORIUM IN LITERATURE: “THE SANATORIUM ZONE” BY MYKOLA KHVYLIOVY IN THE DISCOURSE OF UKRAINIAN AND WORLD LITERATURE

Abstract

This article is an attempt to understand the peculiarities of the topos of sanatorium, focusing on the one of the main Mykola Khvyliovy’s work, “The Sanatorium Zone”. In this text, the topos of sanatorium in the literature was considered both as a result of the “healing tourism” of writers (in particular, the outstanding Ukrainian author Lesya Ukrainka and writers of the “our twenties” period), and as an attractive writer’s artistic decision to depict the common coexistence of completely different characters. During the article the theory of the “sanatorium text” by the Swiss literary critic Jens Herlth and the concept of heterotopia of the French poststructuralist Michel Foucault became helpful. According to Michel Foucault heterotopia is, first of all, utopia – a place without a real place. In our opinion, it is important to consider the work of Mykola Khvyliovy through such points. In this article different variations of interpretations of the words “zone” and “sanatorium” were taken into account. We are inclined to interpret the “sanatorium” according to the American literary critic and philosopher Susan Sontag, who wrote about the sanatorium, in particular, as an insane asylum. “The Sanatorium Zone” we also consider in the context of world literature. An attempt was made to compare the Ukrainian novel with such works: “Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann, “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” by Bruno Schulz, “The Obscene Bird of Night” by Jose Donoso. The topos of sanatorium becomes unifying for the artistic world of texts by authors from the different literatures. It is determined how the sanatorium appears in the analyzed texts and how it impact on the character level, the passage of time in the text etc. Its liminal nature is traced, because the sanatorium is often a kind of boundary between life and death.