A Dance to the Music of Time, by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1635.

A Dance to the Music of Time, by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1635. Wallace Collection, London.

Time

Volume VII, Number 4 | fall 2014

Miscellany

During his first trip to New York City in 1964, Samuel Beckett went to a doubleheader at Shea Stadium with his friend Dick Seaver, who explained the game of baseball to the Irish writer. Halfway through the second game, Seaver asked, “Would you like to go now?” To which Beckett replied, “Is the game over, then?” “Not yet,” said Seaver. Beckett concluded, “We don’t want to go then before it’s finished.” The Mets won both games, unlike their double loss two months earlier in what had been the longest doubleheader in Major League history, clocking in at nine hours and fifty-two minutes.

In time history must become a fairy tale—it will become again what it was in the beginning.

—Novalis, c. 1798