I Believe That The Black-and-white Photograph, Or

There Is Something Peculiarly Dispriting About The Emptiness That Wells Up When, In A Strange City, One Dials The Same Telephone Numbers In Vain.

No Matter Whether One Is Flying Over Newfoundland Or The Sea Of Lights That Stretches From Boston To Philadelphia After Nightfall, Over The Arabian Deserts Which Gleam Like Mother-of-pearl, Over The Ruhr Or The City Of Frankfurt, It Is As Though There Were No People, Only The Things They Have Made And In Which They Are Hiding.

How Happily, Said Austerlitz, Have I Sat Over A Book In The Deepening Twilight Until I Could No Longer Make Out The Words And My Mind Began To Wander, And How Secure Have I Felt Seated At The Desk In My House In The Dark Night, Just Watching The Tip Of My Pencil In The Lamplight Following Its Shadow, As If Of Its Own Accord And With Perfect Fidelity, While That Shadow Moved Regularly From Left To Right, Line By Line, Over The Ruled Paper.

At The Most We Gaze At It In Wonder, A Kind Of Wonder Which In Itself Is A Form Of Dawning Horror, For Somehow We Know By Instinct That Outsize Buildings Cast The Shadow Of Their Own Destruction Before Them, And Are Designed From The First With An Eye To Their Later Existence As Ruins.

...the Darkness Does Not Lift But Becomes Yet Heavier As I Think How Little We Can Hold In Mind, How Everything Is Constantly Lapsing Into Oblivion With Every Extinguished Life, How The World Is, As It Were, Draining Itself, In That The History Of Countless Places And Objects Which Themselves Have No Power Or Memory Is Never Heard, Never Described Or Passed On.