A fifteenth-century Dutch painter walks the streets of Providence, RI; a young girl goes to sleep in a dark room; language itself is felt to conjure Charlemagne. Are these remembered scenes or imagined constructions? Do they emerge from history, dream, or chance? Acclaimed novelist Harry Mathews remarks of this book, Poets write the most accurate prose, and Keith Waldrop renders our visible and invisible world with uncanny, idiosyncratic fineness.