„Meran podobno cudów dokazuje” – kurortowy świat w powieści Ludwiki Godlewskiej "Po zdrowie"

Abstract

This article is devoted to the forgotten debut novel Po zdrowie (“For Health”) by Ludwika Godlewska, whose action takes place in an exclusive South Tyrolean spa resort – Meran – popular at the close of the nineteenth century. The novel, not devoid of psychological ambition, depicts a small circle of Polish patients residing in Villa Parva. In Godlewska’s work, nineteenth-century struggles with the “white plague,” known to the author from her own experience, are presented in two dimensions: as an individual tragedy shown through the prism of the patients’ daily struggles, supported by doctors and their relatives, and as a challenge to science that late-nine teenth-century scholars sought to overcome. The treatment in which the protagonists place their faith was rooted in the medical recommendations of the time. Belonging to the genre of the spa novel, Godlewska’s work is presented here within a broad cultural context (the functioning and social role of spas in the nineteenth century, illustrated by the example of Meran, contemporary methods of treating tuberculosis, etc.). Given the nature of the novel and the main theme of this journal issue, an interdisciplinary approach has been adopted, drawing on the case-study method.