“Show me a plague, and I’ll show you the world!”

Anna Margit, Loneliness, 1967, from the art collection of Dr Laszlo Levendel, oil on canvas

June 2020

In two essays separated by a decade - “Illness as Metaphor”, 1978 & “AIDS and its Metaphors”, 1989 - Susan Sontag describes the damaging affects of using physical illness as a metaphor for psychological/spiritual malaise. Sontag also argued passionately against ascribing a punitive moral charge against the ill:

"With the modern diseases (once TB, now cancer), the romantic idea that the disease expresses the character is invariably extended to assert that the character causes the disease–because it has not expressed itself. Passion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses." 1.

Stigma has always attached itself to the sick. Diseases change, the language used to describe disease changes, but stigmas always remain. In the case of tuberculosis, of which Sontag’s father died, there was a deep mistrust of the restless, urban underclass and their unsanitary, immoral ways. So deep was the ignorance about TB for so long, that for centuries its lethal contagion remained unknown and it was believed to be hereditary. How many times have we heard it said, anger is a cancer, ergo angry people get cancer. With AIDS it was all too easy to point the quivering moral finger at homosexuals and drug addicts. As for scarcely understood Covid-19, perhaps it’s still too early to know where the stigma will fall, but the ostensible “meaning” of the pandemic is already doing the rounds. Mother Earth’s revenge, Mother Earth’s call for quiet, Mother Earth is culling. Disease as demographic correction. As Sontag says, illness, even once understood, always needs to stand for something else:

“There is a peculiarly modern predilection for psychological explanations of disease, as of everything else. Psychologizing seems to provide control over the experiences and events (like grave illnesses) over which people have in fact little or no control.” 2.

Sontag’s point is that disease is biological, and to deny, or obfuscate this fact is to lay the blame for the disease at the patient’s door. It’s an important point to make, and to keep making, as the denial of science and facts continue to be ubiquitous. My June Poetic Boost is dedicated to the pulmonologist and art collector Dr Lászlo Levendel who for decades treated patients with TB, as well as alcoholics suffering from TB. Dr Levendel had the insight and compassion to understand the traumatizing effects of disease, and he dedicated his life to the holistic healing of his patients.

Dr Laszlo Levendel in the early 1950s

In 1952 Dr Lászlo Levendel began his career in the Korányi Sanatorium, nestled in the Buda hills. He and his wife, Dr Maria Lakatos, a rheumatologist, spent their entire working lives at the sanatorium. Their methods were new and progressive and not entirely approved of by the ruling Communist Party, but they were largely left alone, (after some early scrapes), because their outcomes were so successful. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, whilst curing countless patients, the Levendels also amassed one of the most important Modern art collections in Hungary.

The Dr Levendels in the 1960s

In the Levendels’ day the term holistic was regarded in an unfavourable light by the Communist Party. Perhaps the rigid genre boundaries insisted upon in the cultural sphere were similarly pursued in the medical community? Or perhaps it was the emphasis on individual pathologies that went against the ideological grain? Either way, the idea that the mind and spirit must be healed in concert with the body was one that was actively implemented and pursued at the Korányi Sanatorium. In the post-war, Stalinist era in which Dr Levendel began his career no one was immune from trauma, as he well knew from personal experience. Dr Levendel had been deported to forced labour camp in 1941 and made to slave for a war he despised in brutal, sub-human conditions for  four years. It made him especially sensitive to the traumas of his patients, many of whom were also alcoholics. He began each treatment by preparing a detailed personal history of his patients, including their family background, living conditions, social factors and mental health. Many of his patients were artists, or writers, or the widows of artists and writers. Many knew each other and recommended him to one another. It was not only Dr Levendel’s extraordinary humanistic spirit that deepened the doctor-patient relationship, it was the nature of the disease itself. The cure and the rehabilitation were often long, and sometimes repeat infections occurred. All of this meant that there was time to build close relationships. Dr Levendel’s pioneering work was enabled by his boss Dr Miklós Böszörményi, who had also survived the Nazi forced labour camps. Böszörményi was an inspiring figure who had simultaneously attended the Academy of Music while studying medicine. In 1958 Dr Levendel employed the psychologist/autodictat intellectual Árpád Mezei with whom an active programme of art therapy and psychology was implemented at the sanatorium. The Party also looked unfavourably on psychology, as focus on the individual was inimical to its social agenda. From 1948 onwards psychologists were largely deployed into neurological research. However the fact that Levendel was able to hire Mezei was a sign of the respect with which his work was regarded, and also the Party’s desire to promote “socialist health care” success stories. Dr Maria Lakatos, Levendel’s wife, was a rheumatologist and primarily worked on the post-operative respiratory rehabilitation of the patients, many of whom gave her works of art as gifts, as they did her husband. Together with the physiotherapist and dancer, Ágnes Kövesházi Kalmár (known as Katzi), they pioneered the physical rehabilitation of TB patients in Hungary. The Levendels’ success in the treatment of TB would however have been impossible without the enormous scientific strides of the early twentieth century. Prior to that TB had ravaged humanity for hundreds of years.

1920s American TB poster, from the National Library of Medicine

TB is an ancient disease and one of the earliest known cases of zoonotic transfer. Evidence of the disease has been found in bison dating back 17,000 years, but whether TB emerged from bovines, or another animal is unknown. Pre-historic human remains from as far back as 4000 BCE have shown evidence of TB. In Europe alone it was responsible for the deaths of 25% of people between the 1600s and 1800s. In 1815, 1 in 4 deaths in England was due to “consumption”. In 1918 in France, 1 in 6 people were still dying from TB. It was only in the 1880s that TB’s highly contagious nature was properly understood, whereupon governments began mass public campaigns to transform social interactions, especially in densely populated urban areas which were hotbeds of transmission. Spitting in public was banned, personal hygiene education was instituted, people were urged to keep their distance from one another. All of these measures faced serious social resistance. TB although not limited to the urban poor disproportionately affected them, with porters, street vendors, factory workers and those living in over-crowded housing being hardest hit.

In the mid-19th century a German doctor by the name of Alexander Spengler claimed to have found the cure. It was pure, simple and available in abundance, but it would not come cheap. However it would put a lot of space between those that were dying of TB in the cities, and those that would eventually die in those hallowed mountain top sanatoriums that Spengler pioneered. The idea that light, fresh air and sunshine are all somehow healing is embedded in our popular beliefs about health. Nice as they are, if you can get ‘em, it was eventually a combination of improved sanitation, pasteurization, vaccination and the development of the antibiotic streptomycin in 1946 that eventually ended TB’s stranglehold. But in the 19th century, Spengler’s cure, flawed as it was, was widely regarded as best practice. The stately mountain sanatoriums with their airy rooms, big windows, wide verandas and outdoor reclining beds continued to proliferate apace in Europe.  By the early 20th century huge TB  sanatoriums had been built throughout Europe, not all of them as lovely as Spengler’s Schatzalp in Davos, which was immortalised in Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel “The Magic Mountain”, and seen again more recently in Paolo Sorrentino’s film “Youth”. However the essential elements of Spengler’s model were studied and replicated everywhere. The Korányi Sanatorium where the Levendels worked was originally built in 1901 in the Buda hills outside Budapest, and it incorporated many aspects of Spengler’s alpine cure, minus the alps, the cowshed treatment (best forgotten), the marmot-fat rubbing (ibid.) and the ice showers. The mountain cure has endured, both as an alpine escape fantasy, and a Modernist architecture success story. Today light-filled, airy spaces remain architectural gold standards, sought after in homes and aspired to on holidays. The alpine sanatorium of yesterday may have failed to deliver medically, but its legacy endures in temples of complementary medicine and luxury spa retreats the world over.    

The Schatzalp Sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland

Air cure in a school sanatorium, London, 1932, Fox Photos/Getty Images

In 1961, Dr Levendel and Árpád Mezei organized an exhibition of art works created by their patients at Korányi. Art exhibitions had been held in hospitals before, indeed the term “art therapy” had been coined by British artist Adrian Hill in 1942 while recovering from TB in a sanatorium. What was significant about the 1961 exhibition was that the art works exhibited were all Modern in sensibility and execution, at a time when anyone who did not abide by the strict edicts of Socialist Realism was excluded, and even persecuted, for having other ideas. Many of the artists included in the 1961 show had few to no opportunities to exhibit their art in Socialist Hungary. https://www.nicolewaldner.com/poetic-boost/2019/3/27/gk1-kovsznai-did-not-exist

The Levendels did not set out to become art collectors. They became collectors by default. The art works that they purchased, or that were given to them as gifts, reflect the intimate nature of the relationships with their patients. They were often deeply personal, smaller scale works on paper, works not destined to be exhibited, but created to be savoured in close quarters. These artists are today widely celebrated as Modernist masters in Hungary.

Anna Margit, Loneliness, 1967, from the art collection of Dr Laszlo Levendel, oil on canvas

In Margit Anna’s 1967 painting “Loneliness”, two socially distanced chairs are drenched in a blazing sunset. A solitary figure sits alone on one of the chairs contemplating the sunset. Margit Anna was one of Dr Levendel’s first artist-patients and the two became lifelong friends.

Endre Balint, Green Bird, 1977, from the art collection of Dr Laszlo Levendel

Endre Bálint’s “Green Bird” from 1977 is a complex colour study whose mysterious winged creature seems to sway between naturalism and fantasy. He became a patient of Dr Levendel’s in 1962 after his return from exile in France.

Gusztav Sikuta, Knifeman, undated, from the art collection of Dr Laszlo Levendel, oil on canvas

Gusztáv Sikuta was a drawing teacher who was unable to continue working due to his alcoholism. He was one of Levendel’s patients and 9 of his works are now part of the Levendel collection. The figure in “Knifeman” (undated) is half-man, half-knife, at once menacing with his bladed limb, and handicapped by it too.

Lili Orszag, Black Boots, 1955, from the art collection of Dr Laszlo Levendel, oil on canvas

Lili Ország, who will be the subject of my next Poetic Boost, was not a patient of Dr Levendel, but she was being mentored by Endre Bálint. Her 1955 painting “Black Shoes” depicts several unpaired women’s work boots at the edge of an abyss. One boot, lined in red, is in free fall. Ország intended the painting as a memorial for the thousands of Jews who were shot into the Danube by the Nazis. https://www.nicolewaldner.com/poetic-boost/2017/11/28/blog-2-first-things

Art was not only exhibited in temporary exhibitions at Korányi, but Dr Levendel went to significant efforts to support his artist-patients by commissioning pieces for the hospital grounds. There were permanent outdoor sculptures and even a stained glass dome by Ferenc Bolmányi from 1969, a kaleidoscopic piece inspired by microscopic biological images.

Ferenc Bolmanyi’s stained glass dome, 1969, at the Koranyi Institute, Budapest

One of the most famous pieces in the Levendel Collection is Lajos Vajda’s 1936 drawing, “Still Life with Plate and Bird”. Vajda was a hugely influential figure in Hungarian Modern art circles. He died young of TB in 1941. His wife and fellow artist, Júlia Vajda, was a patient of Dr Levendel. Lajos Vajda was Endre Bálint’s mentor. In 1965 a permanent tribute to Vajda by Bálint was unveiled at Korányi.

Lajos Vajda, Still Life with Plate and Bird, 1936, from the art collection of Dr Laszlo Levendel, pencil on paper

Lajos Vajda, Self-portrait as an Icon, 1936, pastel on cardboard, Ferenczy Museum, Szentendre

Endre Balint, Lajos Vajda Memorial Mosaic, 1966, at the Koranyi Institute, Budapest, photo by szoborlap.hu

The community that the Levendels built up over decades at the Korányi Sanatorium extended beyond the institution and into their home. The Levendels had a wide circle of friends, many of whom were liberal intellectuals opposed to the dictatorship and focused on social change. Their apartment became one of the many private homes in which gatherings took place where new social agendas were discussed. This happened both informally, and later on more formally. On one such occasion, a young artist by the name of El Kazovszkij, who I absolutely adore and have written about on multiple occasions, was among the visitors to the Levendel home. https://www.nicolewaldner.com/poetic-boost/2017/10/15/my-muse-the-avenging-angel It was perhaps here that El Kazovszkij saw the famous Vajda drawing, “Still Life with Plate and Bird” in the flesh for the first time, and so a great artistic obsession was born. https://www.nicolewaldner.com/poetic-boost/2018/12/16/i-love-you-to-bits-el-kazovszkij-amp-artistic-obsession

Today the Levendel Collection which consists of hundreds of works of art on paper, paintings and sculptures is housed at the BTM Kiscelli Múzeum – Fővárosi Képtár in Budapest. 3.

The Levendels apartment in the 1980s, photo from Kieselbach Gallery, Budapest

 The title of my June Poetic Boost comes from a quote by Larry Kramer:

“Show me a plague, and I’ll show you the world!” 4.

What did Larry Kramer mean? That a plague, a pandemic reveals something true about our world that would otherwise remain hidden? If so, what could that be? And what is Covid-19 revealing about our world? Is it the astonishing ease with which this virus has brought the world to its knees? Or the speed with which it has exposed the shakiness of our institutions? Or is it our collective frailty in the face of our common, unseen enemy? In Virginia Woolf’s 1926 essay “On Being Ill”, she wrote about the startling dearth of writing devoted to disease in the wake of the Spanish influenza pandemic, a global catastrophe which killed tens of millions of people in 1918 and 1919. She argued passionately for the importance of writing about illness, both acknowledging the difficulty of this and calling for a new language to describe disease directly. Woolf also wrote about the divide between the healthy and the sick, and in so doing she unintentionally conjured a very contemporary image:  

“We float with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look around, to look up – to look, for example, at the sky.” 5

For millions of us, this may be the single, defining, collective experience of Covid-19. The lockdown, the shelter in place, the shielding, call it by any euphemism you wish. In one way or another we’ve all experienced it, or are still experiencing it, somewhere on earth today. The frustration, the flatness, maybe even the terror, of being shut in. But also the bliss of being given permission to just stop, look up and stare at the sky. ◊

See you in September for more about the brilliant, multi-talented painter Lili Ország. Stay safe.

1. “Illness as Metaphor” by Susan Sontag, 1978, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, NY

2. Ibid.

3. https://fovarosikeptar.hu/gyujtemenyek/   

In March 2018 the BTM Kiscelli Múzeum – Fővarosi Képtár in Budapest, which houses the Levendel Collection, held a joint exhibition with the Balatonfüred Vaszary Gallery entitled “Shelter at the Sanatorium – The Art Collection of Dr László Levendel”. The exhibition was curated by Anikó B. Nagy and Enikő Kali-Trutz. The wonderful exhibition catalogue was translated by Gábor Garnai and Beáta Molnár.    

4. The Larry Kramer quote is from “The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart: A Novel”, 2015, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, NY. I came across the quote in a NY Times article by Dwight Garner from April 11, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/opinion/sunday/covid-quotes-literature.html

5. Virginia Woolf, “On Being Ill”, 1926, published by T.S. Eliot’s journal “The Criterion”

6. TB lives on: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-26/tuberculosis-outbreak-at-st-vincents-hospital-in-sydney/12398918