XII. What Is It Like to Be Bats? Paradoxes of The Double

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me,” wrote Pascal.2 Somehow, the “I” that is my universe is located at an infinitesimal point. How can infinity be so compact? In War and Peace, Pierre finds this mystery comic. Captured by the French, and seated by a campfire, he bursts into laughter: “They took me and shut me up . . . Who is ‘me’? . . . Me—is my immortal soul!” Pierre looks around at the fields, forest, “the bright shimmering horizon luring one on to infinity,” and thinks, “And all that is within me, and is me! . . . And they caught all that and put it in a shed and barricaded it with planks!”3 The moment provokes Pierre’s laughter because the fact it reports—consciousness located in a body—is absurd. It is unbelievable but true, which is a contradiction. And it is also both outlandish and the most common thing in the world. The fact that Pierre laughs, as if for the first time, at something we all know is what provokes the reader’s