TIME SHELTER
By Georgi Gospodinov
Translated by Angela Rodel
One of the more promising treatments for dementia is “reminiscence therapy,” which uses artifacts and pictures to improve mood and awareness. Some have even built ‘dementia villages’ that mimic the environment of patients’ early days: cinemas, diners, bus stops. While proponents argue that such environments enhance patients’ humanity, others have criticized them as “Truman Show” stage art.
There is, of course, a degree of deception underlying these more compelling interventions, and not all memories released are happy ones. The morality of artificially bringing people back to the past, and the broader question of whether this really brings comfort — whether giving in to nostalgia is curative or pernicious — is the central question of Georgi Gospodinov’s newly translated novel, “Time Shelter.”††
Gospodinov is not much concerned with the usual trappings of fiction. He introduces a geriatric psychiatrist named Gaustine, but makes it clear that he is a figment of the narrator’s imagination, “whom I first invented and then met in flesh and blood.” Before we can understand what this means, the two men meet in Zurich, where the narrator, a writer, seeks literary inspiration and the doctor has found investors to help him recreate the past. Gaustine plans to painstakingly reproduce historic spaces for dementia patients “in accordance with their internal time”, helping them to “remember” the parts of themselves that have “fallen apart” over the course of their lives. (Deft execution of such puns is testament to the talent of the novel’s translator, Angela Rodel.) As his accusations resurface, word spreads about Gaustine’s achievements, and he opens new clinics across Europe, including one in Gospodinov’s native Bulgaria. .
With his success, Gaustine worries about the psychological consequences of commuting too easily between the decades. He brings the narrator to one of his spaces, a simulated 1968 complete with vintage cigarettes and gin, and hints that they should be building cities, even entire countries, from the past. Soon, Gaustine is lamenting humanity’s failed dreams for the 21st century. “Part of the failure of the future,” he announces, “is also the failure of medicine.” He and the visitors of his ‘time residences’ come to see the past as a cure not only for dementia, but also for present-day anomie and anxiety.
