The angel handed me a book, saying, "It contains everything that you could possibly wish to know. " And he disappeared. So I opened the book, which was not particularly fat. It was written in an unknown character. Scholars translated it, but they produced altogether different versions. They differed even about the very senses of their own readings, agreeing upon neither the tops nor the bottoms of them, nor upon the beginnings of them nor the ends. Toward the close of this vision it seemed to me that the book melted, until it could no longer be distinguished from this world that is about us. -Paul Valery Quoted in Carolyn Forch=82, The Angel of History. New York: =09HarperCollins, 1994. =1A