Anno Domini

Anno Domini is invoked as one side of a deliberately unsettled calendar choice: the speaker asks a listener to stop if she is oriented toward B.C., but to step forward if she prefers A.D. The contrast makes the dating system less a neutral measure than a verbal threshold within a passage crowded with historical allusions, fabricated names, and a grandiose promise to present the past anew.

A Choice Between Eras

The passage sets “B.C.” and “A.D.” against one another as competing temporal orientations. The speaker’s instruction to stop for a B.C.-minded listener and to step ahead for one who prefers A.D. turns chronology into a bodily, comic decision. Anno Domini is thus presented not through a date or a specific event, but as a direction within a shifting account of history.

History as Collision and Performance

The calendar contrast sits amid references to the Dark Ages, engagements, naval battles, and political figures. The passage moves abruptly from these historical markers to the exclamation about the “Blitzenkopfs,” then to invented or distorted names and the image of a haunted chamber. Its jumble makes historical time feel less like an orderly sequence than a crowded storehouse in which eras, battles, and public figures are repeatedly rearranged.

The Past Made Present

The passage culminates in the capitalized declaration “PANOPTICAL PURVIEW OF POLITICAL PROGRESS AND THE FUTURE PRE SENTATION OF THE PAST.” That formulation places Anno Domini within a broader comic tension: the past is not simply behind the present, but is being surveyed and presented again. The wordplay divides “presentation” across a space, making the act of representing history itself look provisional and performative. Anno Domini serves as one of the passage’s recognizable chronological signposts, even as the surrounding language unsettles any stable account of political progress.