Une « Babel » moderne dans les cimes : cité sanatoriale et utopie thérapeutique dans Les « Heures de silence » de Robert de Traz et dans Siloé de Paul Gadenne
A modern “Babel” at the mountain tops: a sanatorial city and a therapeutic utopia in Robert de Traz's Hours of silence and Paul Gadenne's Siloé

Summary/Abstract: Often perceived as the result of empirical speculation, the sanatorium, intended for the treatment of tuberculosis patients in the first half of the 20th century, was at first sight a therapeutic utopia originating in the medical profession. In this enclosed space, it is the doctor that exercises the authority and their recommendations have the value of injunctions. However, a reversal of this order is depicted in two 20th-century novels: Les “Heures de silence” by the Swiss writer Robert de Traz (1884-1951), and Siloé by Paul Gadenne (1907-1956), a French author who was himself a regular visitor to such care institutions. In these works, the unity of place - the sanatorium - becomes a convenient device for questioning the world of the healthy on three levels: the ego, the relationship to others and the relationship to natural space. Because the "tubercular condition" neutralises the differences between individuals, it questions the primacy of health and paradoxically outlines a balanced lifestyle based on the idiorhythmic alternation between solitude, social life and immanence.

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