Llewelyn Powys

Abstract Llewelyn Powys was a patient at a Davos sanatorium in 1910–12, at the same time as Katia Mann. Although her letters from Davos have unfortunately been lost, Powys’ diaries and letters provide a wonderfully detailed picture of patient life at that period. Powys (a younger brother of John Cowper Powys), returned to his experiences in the sanatorium again and again in his writings, including in ‘A Consumptive’s Diary’ (1914), ‘A Struggle for Life’ (1925), and his fictional recreation of sanatorium life, Skin for Skin (1925), published shortly after Mann’s novel. As in The Magic Mountain, sex, death, and illness seem to walk hand in hand, confirming Mann’s vision of the ‘strange mixture of death and lightheadedness’ which pertained in Davos. Powys’ Davos diaries are full of sexual conquests (he was twenty-five at the time), as well as scenes of reading, X-ray treatment, hidden deaths, and fancy-dress balls. Powys was plagued by tuberculosis for the remaining thirty years of his life: the chapter explores his devotion to open-air treatment (including in a revolving hut); the entanglement of sex, death, and writing in his work; and his return to Davos in 1936 for the final three years of his life.