A l'ombre de la montagne

The mythology of sanatoriums was immortalized in a famous novel by Thomas Mann who used them as a metaphor for Europe's headlong rush towards the First World War: a world apart on the sunny peaks of the Swiss Alps, in elegant Art Deco buildings, where time no longer seems to exist. Naps in the sun on the terrace, short walks and frequent meals in the sumptuous dining rooms; a world of unique relationships, of light-hearted despair, inhabited by young people, where the echoes from the world are muffled… The tuberculosis also has a very unusual status: “The whole disease is simply transformed love”, writes Mann, falling in with a long tradition that sees it as a “spiritual” affliction that heightens desire and ennobles the patient