- We too could imagine a simpler labyrinth, a single string of hexagons too long for any mortal to traverse, without the capacious pits that grant a view on infinity and the knowledge of other paths. Anyone with the misfortune to find themselves inside such a space would never know if she walked an infinite line or a circle, if the ends of her path met or not. An infinite circle, Borges points out in another tale (“Ibn-Hakam al Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth”), would be, for finite eyes, indistinguishable from a line (were its circumference visible at all). “…They had arrived at the labyrinth. Seen at close range, it looked like a straight, virtually interminable wall…Dunraven said it made a circle; but one so broad its curvature was imperceptible.”
These lines immediately follow the complaint of his companion:
‘Mysteries ought to be simple. Remember Poe’s Purloined letter, remember Zangwill’s locked room.’
‘Or complex,’ replied Dunraven. ‘Remember the universe.’
It inspired me to write a poem: J'ai marché plus d'une fois vers un but précis. Loin de ce tome ultime et de ses facéties, Que cherchent les héros comme une autre Gorgone. Lisant chaque ligne dans ma quête infinie Plus impossible encore et plus simple à la fois, Puisque dans ce royaume, bâti autrefois, J’attends l'Amour qui absout de l'ignominie. Plongerait son regard; son regard qui délivre, Hébergerai mon âme dans sa palmeraie. Mais le hasard est cruel, et son couperet Sans fin, me laisse seul, isolé à poursuivre Ces lignes que tu lirais, toi que j'aimerais! ... According to google bot, this will roughly translate as : I have walked more than once towards a specific goal. Far from the Ultimate volume and its jokes, That heroes seek like another Gorgonian. Reading every line in my endless quest Even more impossible and simpler at the same time, Because in this kingdom, built in the past, I await the Love which absolves from ignominy. Diving her gaze; her gaze that delivers, Who will host my soul in her palm grove. But Chance is cruel, and its cleaver Endlessly, leaves me alone, isolated to pursue These lines that you would read, you that I would love! Dans la bibliothèque aux étroits hexagones, Espérant celle qui dans le semblable livre In the Library with narrow hexagons, Hoping for the girl, in the similar book
Fantastic poem, and I appreciate the translation. I work on French, on and off. For the first time, I identified a French pun in the wild a few months ago: “bombe anatomique”. I thought “ooli” was German, though.
that is very nice of you. Ooli.. come from Olivier. Back in 2000, I was in a chat room, and couldnt use 'Oli' (Short for Olivier) as a nickame.. so I added another "O" in front and I liked the look and strangeness of it Getting a pun in a foreign language is the highlight of learning a new language
That makes total sense, I work with an "Olivier" from France, actually. Ouf, you couldn't count the number of "merci"s and "perdon"s I used on the French subway with my huge bags of luggage during morning rush hour. Someone made me do it, I just wanted to Uber to the airport :(
Thanks for badging this, I considered it myself. Here’s to hoping more people read it.
I can't help but think this person is over-analyzing. I mean, other things happen that simply don't make sense if you think about them literally. The vestibules have bathrooms, but there's no indication of where food or water comes from. At one point a sect is mentioned that burns millions of books, but there's no mention of how they were able to start fires. The dead are apparently thrown out of the hexagons into an infinite fall, but there's no explanation of what part of the library's structure allows this to happen. Borges often toyed with literary formulae, frequently created impossibilities, and in one case (Pierre Menard) explicitly lampoons exactly the kind of analysis that the author here is doing. Who's to say Borges didn't make the "correction" for the sole purpose of screwing with nitpicky readers? To me, the story is an absurdist one (in the philosophical sense). If everything's already been written but there's no way to find the specific thing you're looking for, how do you find meaning in this universe? He describes various cults and governments that have formed. The narrator tells us that he's been searching for the book that will lead (through a chain of other books) to some kind of master book; if that's not a search for meaning I don't know what is. Then he goes on: Another discussion of meaning follows a short time later:It doesn't seem implausible to me that on some shelf in the universe there is a complete book; I pray to the unknown gods that a man - just one, even if it was thousands of years ago - has examined and read it. If honor, wisdom, and happiness are not for me, may they be for others. May heaven exist, even if my place is in hell. Let me be ridiculed and destroyed but that sometime, in one person, Your enormous Library be explained.
Some number n of possible languages use the same words; in some, the symbol 'library' has the same correct definition: 'the omnipresent and everlasting system of hexagonal galleries,' but 'library' means 'bread' or 'pyramid' or whatever else and the eight words that define it have some other meaning. You, who read me, are you sure that you understand my language?
Oh, they're totally overanalyzing. I think it's interesting as a justification for building the library of Babel, and I love the thought that went into this weird, useless thing that they've created for no purpose other than the reasons they claim (And as a tribute to Borges, obviously). The explanations feel as intrinsically useless as the tool itself to me. But they exist nevertheless - someone created them as a weird epistemological exercise of computational "Because I can" and a defiant "What if we did?" I love that. Anyway. Here's your comment, dug up lovingly from the library: https://libraryofbabel.info/bookmark.cgi?johnnyfive Here's mine, for the hell of it: