The Illuminated Burrow

Max Blecher began writing ‘The Illuminated Burrow’ in 1937 and continued working on it until his death the following spring, but its full version was only published posthumously in 1971. It was the final ‘novel’ in what can be called a trilogy that includes ‘Adventures in Immediate Irreality’ and ‘Scarred Hearts’, and like those, it is composed in the vein of the Surrealist autofiction reminiscent of the work of Andr Breton and Michael Leiris. Set in the sanatoria where Blecher received treatment for spinal tuberculosis, the narrator is forced to confront the power and limitations of memory as he attempts to capture a dying man’s last moments of life as they pass ‘through a sieve,’ one final effort to rescue the beauty of days spent straddling the boundary between waking and dreaming, encountering both inside and outside the sanatorium’s walls.