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object:The Library Of Babel 2
class:short story
class:chapter
author class:Jorge Luis Borges
translator:Andrew Hurley
The Library of Babel
, By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters ....
Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. II, Mem. IV
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite,
perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery
is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low r,ailing. From any hexagon one can
see the floors above and below-one after another, endlessly. The arrange
ment of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each
side, line four of the hexagon's six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor
to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the
hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn
opens onto another gallery, identical to the first-identical in fact to all.
To the left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. One is
for sleeping, upright; the other, for satisfying one's physical necessities.
Through this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward
and downward into the remotest distance. In the vestibule there is a mirror,
which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this mirror
that the Library is not infinite-if it were, what need would there be for that
illusory replication? I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figura
tion and promise of the infinite ... . Light is provided by certain spherical
fruits that bear the name "bulbs." There are two of these bulbs in each hexa
gon, set crosswise. The light they give is insufficient, and unceasing.
Like all the men of the Library, in my younger days I traveled; I have
journeyed in quest of a book, perhaps the catalog of catalogs. Now that my
eyes can hardly make out what I myself have written, I am preparing to die,
a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born. When I am dead, com
passionate hands will throw me over the railing; my tomb will be the un
fathomable air, my body will sink for ages, and will decay and dissolve in the
wind engendered by my fall, which shall be infinite. I declare that the Li-113
THE LI BRARY OF BA BEL
brary is endless. Idealists argue that the hexagonal rooms are the necessary
shape of absolute space, or at least of our perception of space. They argue
that a triangular or pentagonal chamber is inconceivable. (Mystics claim
that their ecstasies reveal to them a circular chamber containing
an
enor
mous circular book with a continuous spine that goes completely around
the walls. But their testimony is suspect, their words obscure. That cyclical
book is God.) Let it suffice for the moment that I repeat the classic dictum:
The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any hexagon and whose circum
ference is unattainable.
Each wall of each hexagon is furnished with five bookshelves; each
bookshelf holds thirty-two books identical in format; each book contains
four hundred ten pages; each page, forty lines; each line, approximately
eighty black letters. There are also letters on the front cover of each book;
those letters neither indicate nor prefigure what the pages inside will say. I
am aware that that lack of correspondence once struck men as mysterious.
Before summarizing the solution of the mystery (whose discovery, in spite
of its tragic consequences, is perhaps the most important event in all his
tory), I wish to recall a few axioms.
First: The Library has existed ab ternitate. That truth, whose immedi
ate corollary is the future eternity of the world, no rational mind can doubt.
Man, the imperfect librarian, may be the work of chance or of malevolent
demiurges; the universe, with its elegant appointments--its bookshelves, its
enigmatic books, its indefatigable staircases for the traveler, and its water
closets for the seated librarian-can only be the handiwork of a god. In or
der to grasp the distance that separates the human and the divine, one has
only to compare these crude trembling symbols which my fallible hand
scrawls on the cover of a book with the organic letters inside-neat, deli
cate, deep black, and inimitably symmetrical.
Second: There are twenty-five orthographic symbols.' That discovery en
abled mankind, three hundred years ago, to formulate a general theory of
the Library and thereby satisfactorily solve the riddle that no conjecture had
been able to divine-the formless and chaotic nature of virtually all books.
One book, which my father once saw in a hexagon in circuit 15-94, consisted
of the letters M C V perversely repeated from the first line to the last. An
other (much consulted in this zone) is a mere labyrinth of letters whose
'The original manuscript has neither numbers nor capital letters; punctuation is
limited to the comma and the period. Those two marks, the space, and the twenty-two
letters of the alphabet are the twenty-five sufficient symbols that our unknown author
is referring to.
[Ed. note.]J ORGE LUIS B ORGES
114
penultimate page contains the phrase 0 Time thy pyramids. This much is
known: For every rational line or forthright statement there are leagues of
senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense, and incoherency. (I know of one
semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the "vain and superstitious
habit" of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempt
ing to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of the palm of one's
hand .... They will acknowledge that the inventors of writing imitated the
twenty-five natural symbols, but contend that that adoption was fortuitous,
coincidental, and that books in themselves have no meaning. That argu
ment, as we shall see, is not entirely fallacious.)
For many years it was believed that those impenetrable books were in
ancient or far-distant languages. It is true that the most ancient peoples, the
first librarians, employed a language quite different from the one we speak
today; it is true that a few miles to the right, our language devolves into dia
lect and that ninety floors above, it becomes incomprehensible. All of that, I
repeat, is true-but four hundred ten pages of unvarying M C V's cannot be
long to any language, however dialectal or primitive it may be. Some have
suggested that each letter influences the next, and that the value of M C V on
page
71,
line 3, is not the value of the same series on another line of another
page, but that vague thesis has not met with any great acceptance. Others
have mentioned the possibility of codes; that conjecture has been universally
accepted, though not in the sense in which its originators formulated it.
Some five hundred years ago, the chief of one of the upper hexagons2
came across a book as jumbled as all the others, but containing almost two
pages of homogeneous lines. He showed his find to a traveling decipherer,
who told him that the lines were written in Portuguese; others said it was
Yiddish. Within the century experts had determined what the language ac
tually was: a Samoyed-Lithuanian dialect of Guarani, with inflections from
classical Arabic. The content was also determined: the rudiments of combi
natory analysis, illustrated with examples of endlessly repeating variations.
Those examples allowed a librarian of genius to discover the fundamental
law of the Library. This philosopher observed that all books, however dif
ferent from one another they might be, consist of identical elements: the
space, the period, the comma, and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet.
He also posited a fact which all travelers have since confirmed: In all the Li-
'In earlier times, there was one man for every three hexagons. Suicide and dis
eases of the lung have played havoc with that proportion. An unspeakably melancholy
memory: I have sometimes traveled for nights on end, down corridors and polished
staircases, without coming across a single librarian.THE L I BRARY OF BABE L
115
brary, there are no two identical books. From those incontrovertible prem
ises, the librarian deduced that the Library is "total"-perfect, complete,
and whole-and that its bookshelves contain all possible combinations of
the twenty-two orthographic symbols (a number which, though unimagin
ably vast, is not infinite)-that is, all that is able to be expressed, in every
language. All-the detailed history of the future, the autobiographies of the
archangels, the faithful catalog of the Library, thousands and thousands of
false catalogs, the proof of the falsity of those false catalogs, a proof of the
falsity of the true catalog, the gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary
upon that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the
true story of your death, the translation of every book into every language,
the interpolations of every book into all books, the treatise Bede could have
written (but did not) on the mythology of the Saxon people, the lost books
of Tacitus.
When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first
reaction was unbounded joy. All men felt themselves the possessors of an
intact and secret treasure. There was no personal problem, no world prob
lem, whose eloquent solution did not exist-somewhere in some hexagon.
The universe was justified; the universe suddenly became congruent with
the unlimited width and breadth of humankind's hope. At that period there
was much talk of The Vindications-books of apologire and prophecies that
would vindicate for all time the actions of every person in the universe and
that held wondrous arcana for men's futures. Thousands of greedy indi
viduals abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed downstairs, up
stairs, spurred by the vain desire to find their Vindication. These pilgrims
squabbled in the narrow corridors, muttered dark imprecations, strangled
one another on the divine staircases, threw deceiving volumes down venti
lation shafts, were themselves hurled to their deaths by men of distant re
gions. Others went insane ... . The Vindications do exist (I have seen two of
them, which refer to persons in the future, persons perhaps not imaginary),
but those who went in quest of them failed to recall that the chance of a
man's finding his own Vindication, or some perfidious version of his own,
can be calculated to be zero.
At that same period there was also hope that the fundamental mysteries
of mankind-the origin of the Library and of time-might be revealed. In
all likelihood those profound mysteries can indeed be explained in words;
if the language of the philosophers is not sufficient, then the multiform
Library must surely have produced the extraordinary language that is re
quired, together with the words and grammar of that language. For fouru6
J ORGE LUIS B ORGES
centuries, men have been scouring the hexagons .... There are official
searchers, the "inquisitors." I have seen them about their tasks: they arrive
exhausted at some hexagon, they talk about a staircase that nearly killed
them-rungs were missing-they speak with the librarian about galleries
and staircases, and, once in a while, they take up the nearest book and leaf
through it, searching for disgraceful or dishonorable words. Clearly, no one
expects to discover anything.
That unbridled hopefulness was succeeded, naturally enough, by a
similarly disproportionate depression. The certainty that some bookshelf in
some hexagon contained precious books, yet that those precious books
were forever out of reach, was almost unbearable. One blasphemous sect
proposed that the searches be discontinued and that all men shuffle letters
and symbols until those canonical books, through some improbable stroke
of chance, had been constructed. The authorities were forced to issue strict
orders. The sect disappeared, but in my childhood I have seen old men who
for long periods would hide in the latrines with metal disks and a forbidden
dice cup, feebly mimicking the divine disorder.
Others, going about it in the opposite way, thought the first thing to do
was eliminate all worthless books. They would invade the hexagons, show
credentials that were not always false, leaf disgustedly through a volume,
and condemn entire walls of books. It is to their hygienic, ascetic rage that
we lay the senseless loss of millions of volumes. Their name is execrated to
day, but those who grieve over the "treasures" destroyed in that frenzy over
look two widely acknowledged facts: One, that the Library is so huge that
any reduction by human hands must be infinitesimal. And two, that each
book is unique and irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are
always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles-books that differ by
no more than a single letter, or a comma. Despite general opinion, I daresay
that the consequences of the depredations committed by the Purifiers have
been exaggerated by the horror those same fanatics inspired. They were
spurred on by the holy zeal to reach-someday, through unrelenting
effort-the books of the Crimson Hexagon-books smaller than natural
books, books omnipotent, illustrated, and magical.
We also have knowledge of another superstition from that period: be
lief in what was termed the Book-Man. On some shelf in some hexagon, it
was argued, there must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect com
pendium
of all other books,
and some librarian must have examined that
book; this librarian is analogous to a god. In the language of this zone there
are still vestiges of the sect that worshiped that distant librarian. Many haveTHE LI BRARY OF BA BEL
117
gone in search of Him. For a hundred years, men beat every possible path
and every path in vain. How was one to locate the idolized secret hexagon
that sheltered Him? Someone proposed searching by regression: To locate
book A, first consult book B, which tells where book A can be found; to lo
cate book B, first consult book C, and so on, to infinity .... It is in ventures
such as these that I have squandered and spent my years. I cannot think it
unlikely that there is such a total book3 on some shelf in the universe. I pray
to the unknown gods that some man-even a single man, tens of centuries
ago-has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of
such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven
exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and
annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enor
mous Library may find its justification.
Infidels claim that the rule in the Library is not "sense;' but "non-sense;'
and that "rationality " (even humble, pure coherence) is an almost miracu
lous exception. They speak, I know, of "the feverish Library, whose random
volumes constantly threaten to transmogrify into others, so that they affirm
all things, deny all things, and confound and confuse all things, like some
mad and hallucinating deity." Those words, which not only proclaim disor
der but exemplify it as well, prove, as all can see, the infidels' deplorable taste
and desperate ignorance. For while the Library contains all verbal structures,
all the variations allowed by the twenty-five orthographic symbols, it in
cludes not a single absolute piece of nonsense. It would be pointless to
observe that the finest volume of all the many hexagons that I myself admin
ister is titled
another,
Combed Thunder, while another is titled The Plaster Cramp, and
Axaxaxas mlo. Those phrases, at first apparently incoherent, are
undoubtedly susceptible to cryptographic or allegorical "reading"; that read
ing, that justification of the words' order and existence, is itself verbal and,
ex hypothesi,
already contained somewhere in the Library. There is no com
bination of characters one can make-dhcmrlchtdj, for example-that the
divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret tongues
does not hide a terrible significance. There is no syllable one can speak that is
not filled with tenderness and terror, that is not, in one of those languages,
the mighty name of a god. To speak is to commit tautologies. This point-
31 repeat: In order for a book to exist, it is sufficient that it be
possible. Only the
impossible is excluded. For example, no book is also a staircase, though there are no
doubt books that discuss and deny and prove that possibility, and others whose struc
ture corresponds to that of a staircase.118
J ORGE LUIS B ORGES
less, verbose epistle already exists in one of the thirty volumes of the five
bookshelves in one of the countless hexagons-as does its refutation. (A
number n of the possible languages employ the same vocabulary; in some
of them, the symbol "library" possesses the correct definition "everlasting,
ubiquitous system of hexagonal galleries," while a library-the thing-is a
loaf of bread or a pyramid or something else, and the six words that define
it themselves have other definitions. You who read me-are you certain you
understand my language?)
Methodical composition distracts me from the present condition of
humanity. The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us,
or renders us phantasmal. I know districts in which the young people pros
trate themselves before books and like savages kiss their pages, though they
cannot read a letter. Epidemics, heretical discords, pilgrimages that inevita
bly degenerate into brigandage have decimated the population. I believe I
mentioned the suicides, which are more and more frequent every year. I
am
perhaps misled by old age and fear, but I suspect that the human species
the only species-teeters at the verge of extinction, yet that the Library
enlightened, solitary, infinite, perfectly unmoving, armed with precious
volumes, pointless, incorruptible, and secret-will endure.
I have just written the word "infinite." I have not included that adjective
out of mere rhetorical habit; I hereby state that it is not illogical to think
that the world is infinite. Those who believe it to have limits hypothesize
that in some remote place or places the corridors and staircases and hexa
gons may, inconceivably, end-which is absurd. And yet those who picture
the world
as
unlimited forget that the number of possible books is not. I
will be bold enough to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: The Li
brary is unlimited but periodic. If an eternal traveler should journey in any
direction, he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are
repeated in the same disorder-which, repeated, becomes order: the Order.
My solitude is cheered by that elegant hope.4
Mar del Plata, 1941
4Letizia Alvarez de Toledo has observed that the vast Library is pointless; strictly
speaking, all that is required is
a single volume, of the common size, printed in nine- or
ten-point type, that would consist of
an
infinite number of infinitely thin pages. (In
the early seventeenth century, Cavalieri stated that every solid body is the super
position of an infinite number of planes.) Using that silken
vademecum would not be
easy: each apparent page would open into other similar pages; the inconceivable mid
dle page would have no "back."COLLECTED
FICTIONS
Jorge Luis Borges
TR!\SLATED
BY
Andrew Hurley
V IK ING

book class:Labyrinths



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