Arno Schmidt wrote Zettel’s Traum from 1963 to 1969. It appeared in 1970 as a facsimile of his typescript, 1,334 large pages written by typewriter and by hand. The title alludes, among other things, to the weaver Zettel, known in English as Bottom, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In German, Zettel also means a slip of paper.