Before Christ

“Before Christ” is invoked as one side of a playful contrast between historical eras, but the passage makes chronology less a stable measure than another material for verbal confusion. Its brief appearance among references to antiquity, political conflict, and dating systems links the past to the book’s restless mixing of historical signs.

The Dating Contrast

The passage addresses a “B.C. minding missy” and immediately sets that designation against an invitation to prefer “A.D.” The contrast is explicit, yet it does not settle into a straightforward account of historical periods: both labels are treated as options in a teasing address, folded into the same shifting wordplay as engagements, naval battles, and the passage’s other allusions.

History as Verbal Material

The surrounding lines move from the “Dark ages” and “daisy roots” to “Minnowaurs and naval actiums,” then onward to the Blitzenkopfs, a haunted chamber, and political figures. The sequence does not organize these references into a continuous chronology. Instead, historical names and eras collide in a compressed verbal landscape where the past is repeatedly presented, distorted, and made available for fresh associations.

Function in the Passage

The B.C./A.D. opposition supplies a recognizable historical division, but the passage’s comic address unsettles the authority that division might otherwise carry. “Before Christ” is not developed into a date or a specific event; it functions as a marker within a larger performance of temporal and linguistic disorder. The juxtaposition with A.D. makes the conventional calendar audible while the surrounding transformations prevent it from becoming a stable framework.