In the Second Republic, learning to write and read was supposed to be a tool for the modernization and emancipation of the uneducated classes on the one hand, and the creation of a linguistically standardized national culture on the other. In many discourses of the time, illiteracy was equated with "darkness" and a threat to social life, while the written word was equated with civilization and participation in public life. In the book Power of Letters, I consider how these beliefs were processed and parodied by the Polish avant-garde, especially the Warsaw Futurists.