This remarkable book by one of the great writers of our time includes essays on a proposed universal language, a justification of suicide, a refutation of time, the nature of dreams, and the intricacies of linguistic forms.

Introduction The Wall and the Books Pascal's Sphere The Flower of Coleridge The Dream of Coleridge Time and J. W. Dunne The Creation and P. H. Gosse Dr. Américo Castro is Alarmed A Note on Carriego Our Poor Individualism Quevedo Partial Enchantments of the Quixote Nathaniel Hawthorne Note on Walt Whitman Valéry as a Symbol The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald About Oscar Wilde On Chesterton The First Wells The Biathanatos Pascal The Meeting in a Dream The Analytical Language of John Wilkins Kafka and his Precursors Avatars of the Tortoise On the Cult of Books The Nightingale of Keats The Mirror of the Enigmas Two Books A Comment on August 23, 1944 About William Beckford's Vathek About The Purple Land From Someone to Nobody Forms of a Legend From Allegories to Novels The Innocence of Layamon For Bernard Shaw The Modesty of History New Refutation of Time Epilogue Index