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[excerpt]
book view
More about Blecher
and his work here
forthcoming :
Transparent Body
& Other Texts
also by the author:
Adventures in
Immediate Irreality
Scarred Hearts
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the illuminated burrow
A Sanatorium Journal
by Max Blecher
translated from the Romanian by Gabi Reigh
afterword by Gabriela Glăvan
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, its imaginative distortion of real experiences is reminiscent of Bruno Schulz as well
as the Surrealist autofiction of André Breton and Michel Leiris. Set in the sanatoria where Blecher received treatment for spinal
tuberculosis, the ostensible narrator is forced to confront the power and limitations of memory as he attempts to capture the last
moments of life as they pass “like ash ... through a sieve,” one final effort to reclaim the beauty of days spent straddling the
boundary between waking and dreaming, encountering the marvelous both inside and outside the sanatorium's walls, inside and outside
his very body. As his physical powers decline and he becomes permanently bedridden, the narrator’s life migrates to his inner consciousness,
an “illuminated burrow” where reality is indistinguishable from fantasy, where the surreal and the mundane seamlessly fuse to enact the fears
and fascinations elicited by the vibrant world that is gradually slipping away.
In a letter to Saşa Pană, Blecher explained his method:
My ideal of writing would be to transpose into literature the high tension found in a Salvador Dalí painting. That cool dementia, perfectly legible and essential, is what I would like to achieve.
Explosions that occur between the walls of the room and not at a distance between chimerical and abstract continents. ... Surrealism should hurt like a deep wound.
The imagination is nothing more than an extension of matter.
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— Roger Caillois
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ISBN 9788086264585
166 pp., 135 x 190 mm
hardcover with ribbon bookmark
2 color plates
illustrated endpapers
literature : novel
release dates:
UK/Europe: October 2022
US/Canada: November 2022
order directly:
airmail shipping & handling incl.
will post in September
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