Solitary Confinement

In this extraordinary 1951 memoir, Burney recalls his 18-month incarceration in a grim five-by-ten-foot cell and the contemplations that preserved his sanity during his prison term. A British secret agent arrested by the Gestapo in France in 1942, Burney endured beatings, interrogations, starvation, and the constant threat of death. More challenging than all these was the struggle of passing day after day in a cell stripped of all stimuli, with Burney’s sole agency invested in waiting until night to devour his daily chunk of bread. Mind games, singing, and daydreams soon gave way to more profound epistemological, metaphysical, and theological speculations, drawing the untutored young man toward a nondualistic vision that transcended good and evil, biblical wrath and love, and perhaps even life and death. In precise and searching terms, Burney describes the transformation of his dungeon into an anchorite’s cell. These insights are further elaborated in Burney’s allegorical 1962 colloquy Descent from Ararat, appended here, which suggests that humanity return to Eden by uprooting our knowledge of good and evil, while “respecting each other’s idiocy.” Hugh Purcell’s invaluable afterword adds context for both works, revealing Burney’s early and later life, including his subsequent transfer to the hell of Buchenwald and his lifelong struggles with PTSD.