"The Library of Babel" represents all the trademark attributes of a Borges story. The first is that the story itself is only about 10 pages in length, yet the style of writing is dense and picked with different ideas, allusions, and enigmatic, self-contained references (such as the "Crimson Hexagon"). Borges often wrote his stories as if the universes he depicted existed before he wrote about them and would continue to exist after. In fact, one of his favorite ideas was an imaginative reality becoming so popular and ubiquitous that it would replace the current reality (such as "Tlon"). Another trademark attribute of "The Library of Babel" is that it represents a mathematical concept (such as infinity) through language. Borges is often compared to Escher, as both artists repeatedly sought to represent infinity in different art forms. One website theorized that the above painting by Escher, imagined as a sphere, could be thought of as a visualization of the world of "The Library of Babel."
In "The Library of Babel," the universe is depicted as a series of hexagonal, interconnected rooms, all containing the same amount of books, each containing the same amount of characters. Eventually, it is discovered that no two books are the same and the universe itself is composed of all the possible variations of text. If we do some simple math, 410 pages * 40 lines * 40 characters = 1,312,000 characters. Each position of each character has 25 different possibilities. So 25^1,312,000 is the number of possible books. As has been pointed out again and again, this is a number which makes the number of atoms in the universe microscopic.
The inhabitants of Borges' universe become obsessed with finding the book that will predict their future or decipher the universe. Madness ensues, as the sheer amount of books means that no one will ever find the one they want. In addition, even if they found a book catered to them, there is no way to know whether or not it was factual, given the amount of books that would contain false predictions. The overriding irony is that, since all variations are contained, each book has a corresponding translation book that would assign it meaning. Yes, Borges was way ahead of the postmodern curve.
In 1621, Oxford University scholar, mathematician, and St. Thomas Church vicar Robert Burton wrote The Anatomy of Melancholy. A confessed melancholic himself, Burton intended his book to be a study of depression throughout the ages and various beneficial remedies. The quote that prefaces "The Library of Babel" ("By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters...") is from the section on mental exercise, specifically mathematics. Burton writes,
let him demonstrate a proposition in euclid, in his five last books, extract a square root, or study algebra: than which, as Clavius holds, 'in all human discsiplines nothing can be more excellent and pleasant, so abstruse and recondite, so bewitching, so miraculous, so ravishing, so easy withal and full of delight,'… By this means you may define ex ungue leonem, as the diverb is, by his thumb alone the bigness of Hercules, or the true dimensions of the great Colossus, Solomon’s temple, and Domitian’s amphitheatre out of a little part. By this art you may contemplate the variation of the twenty-three letters, which may be so infinitely varied, that the words complicated and deduced thence will not be contained within the compass of the firmament; ten words may be varied 20,320 several ways: by this art you may examine how many men may stand one by another in the whole superficies of the earth, some say 148,456,800,000,000, assigning a square foot to each; how many men, supposing all the world as habitable as France, as fruitful and so long-lived, may be born in 60,000 years; and so may you demonstrate with Archimedes how many sands the mass of the whole world might contain if all sandy, if you did not but first know how much a small cube as big as a mustard-seed might hold; with infinite such. But in all nature what is there so stupend as to examine and calculate the motion of the planets, their magnitudes, apogeums, perigeums, eccentricities, how far distant from the earth, the bigness , thickness, compass of the firmament, each star, with their diameters and circumference, apparent area, superficies, by those curious helps of glases, astrolabes, sextants, quadrants, of which Tycho Brahe in his Mechanics, optics (divine optics), arithmetic, geometry, and such-like arts and instruments?
Shortly before this passage , Burton comments on the bible as a cure for melancholy, writing
Nay, what shall the Scripture itself?—which is like an apothecary’s shop, wherein are all remedies for all infirmities of mind, purgatives, cordials, alteratives, corroboratives, lenitives, etc. 'Every disease of the soul,' saith Austin, 'hath a peculiar medicine in the Scripture; this only is required, that the sick man take the potion which God hath already tempered.' Gregory calls it 'a glass wherein we may see all our infirmities,'
These two themes are found in "The Library of Babel." The first is the idea that any conceptualization of the universe can only exist in our thoughts, as the actual size would be much too big for us to measure. Mathematics allows us to envision the unimaginable, using relativity (of size, not general relativity). The second is the idea that reading (specifically, reading the Bible) leads to an infinite variety of interpretations, with each reader using his own life and reading experiences as a rosetta stone to seek a possible "cure". This would become the foundation of postmodern literary theories.
In our internet age, "The Library of Babel" certainly seems prescient. We now have instant accsess to more information than we could ever possibly read in a lifetime. As a result, "Babel" is often called upon as an example of information overload. One interesting thing about computers, is that, now people have actually created working models of "The Library of Babel" with the aid of computer programming. Computers have made possible what once purely existed in thought. Below is a computer rendered depiction of what one of the chambers might look like and a link to the library itself.
]]>
I MEAN IT!
]]>