1. An Announcement—The Wisest of Lines—A Poem
2. Ballet—Square Harmony—X
3. A Coat—A Wall—The Tables
4. The Wild Man with the Barometer—Epilepsy—If
5. The Square—The Rulers of the World—An Agreeable and Useful Function
6. An Accident—The Cursed “It’s Clear”—Twenty-four Hours
7. An Eyelash—Taylor—Henbane and Lily of the Valley
8. An Irrational Root—R-13—The Triangle
9. Liturgy—Iambus—The Cast-Iron Hand
10. A Letter—A Membrane—Hairy I
11. No, I Can’t; Let It Be without Headings!
12. The Delimitation of the Infinite—Angel—Meditations on Poetry
13. Fog—Thou—A Decidedly Absurd Adventure
14. “Mine”—Impossible—A Cold Floor
15. The Bell—The Mirror-Like Sea—I am to Burn Eternally
16. Yellow—A Two-dimensional Shadow—An Incurable Soul
17. Through Glass—I Died—The Corridor
18. Logical Debris—Wounds and Plaster—Never Again
19. The Infinitesimal of the Third Order—From Under the Forehead—Over the Railing
20. Discharge—The Material of an Idea—The Zero Rock
21. The Duty of an Author—The Ice-swells—The Most Difficult Love
22. The Benumbed Waves—Everything is Improving—I Am a Microbe
23. Flowers—The Dissolution of a Crystal—If Only (?)
24. The Limit of the Function—Easter—To Cross Out Everything
25. The Descent from Heaven—The Greatest Catastrophe in History—The Known—Is Ended
26. The World Does Exist—Rash—Forty-one Degrees Centigrade
27. No Headings. It Is Impossible
28. Both of Them—Entropy and Energy—The Opaque Part of the Body
29. Threads of the Face—Sprouts—An Unnatural Compression
30. The Last Number—Galileo’s Mistake—Would It Not Be Better
31. The Great Operation—I Forgave Everything—The Collision of Trains
32. I Do Not Believe—Tractors—A Little Human Splinter
33. This without a Synopsis, Hastily, the Last
34. The Forgiven Ones—A Sunny Night—A Radio-Walkryie
35. In a Ring—A Carrot—A Murder
36. Empty Pages—The Christian God—About My Mother
37. Infusorian—Doomsday—Her Room
38. I Don’t Know What Title—Perhaps the Whole Synopsis May Be Called a Cast-off Cigarette-Butt
39. The End
40. Facts—The Bell—I Am Certain

“I am only writing; this is an extract from my life today, this is an equation. And is not an equation, is not a formula, the same as a poem?”

“We do not know what happiness is outside the wall. We only know that there is unhappiness, that there is Chaos, wild beasts, that there is simply madness.”

“Love is a function, and it must be mechanized… And then this last source of all calamities, of these absurd catastrophes, these absurd ‘loves,’ will be crossed out.”

“And at this moment all the numbers, as one, eleven times, have the same thing: a rhythmic, measured, million-footed stride… The One State is one single enormous machine.”

“You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid. You love it because you cannot conquer it. For to love means: to see another as no one else has seen them.”

RECORD ONE

An Announcement
The Wisest of Lines
A Poem

This is merely a copy, word by word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper:

“In another hundred and twenty days the building of the Integral will be completed. The great historic hour is near, when the first Integral will rise into the limitless space of the universe. A thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the United State. A still more glorious task is before you,—the integration of the indefinite equation of the Cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing Integral. Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words.

“In the name of The Well-Doer, the following is announced herewith to all Numbers of the United State:

“Whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises, poems, manifestoes, odes and other compositions on the greatness and the beauty of the United State.

“This will be the first load which the Integral will carry.

“Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers!! Long live the Well-Doer!!!”

I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent—to a straight line! For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!

I, D-503, the builder of the Integral, I am only one of the many mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance; therefore I shall try to record only the things I see, the things I think, or to be more exact, the things we think. Yes, we; that is exactly what I mean, and “We” shall, therefore, be the title of my records. But this will only be a derivative of our life,—of our mathematical, perfect life in the United State. If this be so, will not this derivative be a poem in itself, despite my limitations? It will. I believe, I know it.

I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. I feel something similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It is I, and at the same time it is not I. And for many long months it will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the feet of the United State.

Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am ready.