Poland: A Materialized Settlement and a Metaphysical Landscape in Legends of Origin of Polish Jews

This chapter describes a website project that springboards and complements a "ficto-memoir" or perhaps a straight up novel entitled, The Man Who Swam Into History; The True Story of My Jewish Family Written by California Institute of Technology History Professor, Robert Rosenstone. It was published by the University of Texas Press in 2005, the novel recounts the family migrations of three generations, commencing with the picaresque character, Chaim Baer. This website project offers us the possibility of reaching beyond the immediacy of the text, so that while listening and journeying on this narrative tale we are journeying, too, with our mouse: with each click one window balloons atop another, or the spoken text is silenced abruptly and a random association is made to the next screen. The value of an internet voyage is that the user can create itineraries through space; or literary musings of movements that track urban patterns where each city is highlighted by its vectors to history.