Bruno Schulz: Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
“Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” is a short story published in a collection of stories by the same name by the Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz (1892-1942). The slim collection of stories came out in 1937 and it, together with another slim collection called Cinnamon Shops (published three years earlier) constitute Schulz’s complete works. The two slim volumes center around a family, in which the son, Joseph, stands in for Schulz himself. “Sanatorium” tells of Joseph’s trip to see his father in a health facility, the sanatorium, located in a town very similar to and yet profoundly different from the southeastern town of Drohobycz where Schulz and his family actually lived. World War II interrupted Schulz’s career and led to the tragic end of his life. First the Soviet army, then the Nazis occupied the town. In 1942, a Nazi Gestapo officer shot and killed Schulz in the street as he was carrying home a loaf of bread.
To include “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” in a work on dreams is an interpretive decision, as unlike Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the story provides no concrete indication that it is a dream. The type of framing found in Alice or the film version of the "Wizard of Oz" is absent here. Nonetheless, internal clues in the story point to it being a dream or at least to operating with dream-like logic. I contend, therefore, that whether or not the story is a dream, it is set in a dream space.
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