The date is a ready-made of temporal experience. It is innocent in the face of calendar-fixed catastrophes and yet provides an opportunity: for remembrance and repetition; for narrative and event. The book examines the emergence of the date from the paratext, the transgression of its supposed function of being merely an indication. Mediating between fictional and historical experience, the date leads to aesthetic epicenters of the 20th century. From Pushkin to Prigov, from Malevich to Bernhard, from Shklovsky to Derrida, the book shows that the date can do more than simply belong.