Contents

Preamble

Preface

I. “UNREAL WAR!”

1. Disbelief

2. The Curtain

3. Numbers

II. CARNIVALS

1. Black Magic

2. A “Stage-Prop World”

3. The Stage Moves Abroad

4. The Great Projective Screen: The Globe

III. THE FIRESTORM

1. “The Most Inhospitable Place on Earth”

2. The Field of Consciousness

3. The Mole’s View and the Panorama

4. Discovery: Eyes and “Tongues”

IV. A WORLD OF THINGS: OCCUPATION

1. Scraps of Paper, Plaster Walls

2. In Medias Res: People as Things

3. “The New”: The Shred of Platinum, the Explosion

4. “Books, Toys, and Everything . . .”

V. ANIMALS

1. Flight

2. The Cracked Mirror

3. Animals, Angels, and History

VI. WALL, WATCHTOWER, CHIMNEY

1. Sending Messages

2. The USSR: Arrival

3. The USSR: June 22, 1941

4. Japan: “Prisoners of War,” a Contradiction in Terms

5. Germany: Factories of Destruction

6. Communication across Time: The Boxes at 68 Nowolipka Street

VII. THE END OF TIME

1. The Riddle

2. Clocks

3. Narration

4. Calendars, Defeat, and the End of Time

VIII. DEFENSE

1. Armed Resistance

2. Ties that Bind: “City, City”

3. Ties that Bind: Farms and Fields

4. Which Past, Which Future?

IX. “WRITE AND RECORD!”

1. “Dear Reader . . .”

2. “Our Language Lacks Words . . .”

X. THE GREAT REVOLT

1. The Revolt against Rhetoric

2. Helen of Troy and the “Bloodthirsty Abstractions”

3. The Literary Movements

4. Which Tongue, Which Speech?

Notes