Second, that the number of these symbols is twenty-five.17 The discovery of this fact three hundred years ago led to the formulation of a general theory of the Library and to a satisfactory solution of a problem which, until then, no hypothesis had addressed—namely, the formless and random nature of almost all books. One, once seen by my father in a hexagon of Circuit 1594, consisted of a relentless repetition, from beginning to end, of the letters M C V. Another, frequently consulted in this zone, is nothing more than a labyrinth of letters but its second-to-last page reads, ‘O time your pyramids.’ We now know that for every coherent or straightforward line there are leagues of nonsensical, clashing sounds, verbal hodgepodge, and gibberish. (I know of a wild hinterland whose librarians reject the superstitious and pointless custom of looking for meaning in books, which they equate with seeking meaning in dreams or in the haphazard lines of one’s hand. They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that their use is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This notion, as we shall see, is not entirely false.)
For a long time it was believed that these impenetrable books were works in dead or remote languages. It is true that earliest man, the first librarians, used a language very different from the one we speak now; it is true that some miles to our right the language spoken is a dialect and that ninety floors above us that dialect is incomprehensible. All this, I repeat, is true, but four hundred and ten pages of unbroken lines of M C V can be part of no language, however primitive or however much of a dialect it may be. Some people suggested that each letter might have a bearing on the one after it and that the meaning of M C V in the third line of page 71 was not the same as that of these letters in another position on another page, but this embryonic theory came to nothing. Others believed that these letter sequences were codes, a hypothesis that has been widely accepted, although not in the sense intended by its originators.
Five hundred years ago, the head of an upper hexagon18 came across a book as confused as the rest but which had almost two pages of identical lines. He showed his find to a peripatetic cryptographer, who told him they were in Portuguese. Others said they were Yiddish. Within a hundred years, the language had been established as a Samoyed-Lithuanian dialect of Guarani, with inflections from classical Arabic. The contents, which were also decoded, proved to be theories of synthetic analysis, illustrated by endlessly repeated examples of variations. Such examples led one librarian of genius to stumble on the Library’s fundamental law. This thinker noted that all the books, however different they may be, have identical elements—the space, the full stop, the comma, and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. He also claimed something that all travelers have confirmed—that in the whole vast Library no two books are the same. From these undeniable premises he deduced that the Library is complete and that its shelves hold all possible permutations of the twenty-odd symbols (a number which, although vast, is not infinite) or, in effect, everything that can be expressed in all languages—a history of the future down to the last detail, the autobiographies of the archangels, a true catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false ones, a proof of the falseness of these catalogues, a proof of the falseness of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, a commentary on this gospel, a commentary on the commentary on this gospel, a true account of your death, translations of each book into all languages, interpolations from each book into every other book.
When it was announced that the Library was the repository of all books, the initial response was one of unrestrained joy. Men everywhere felt they were lords of a secret and still intact treasure. There was no individual or world problem for which an eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe had been justified and at a stroke had usurped the limitless dimensions of hope. At the time, there was much talk of the Vindications—books of apologia and prophecy, which justified for ever the actions of each man on earth and held wondrous mysteries concerning his future. Thousands of avid seekers abandoned their comfortable native hexagons and rushed upstairs and down, driven by a fruitless urge to find their particular Vindication. These pilgrims wrangled in the narrow passageways, uttering dark curses and seizing each other by the throat on the divine stairways; they flung the deceiving books into the bottomless pit of the shafts and were hurled to their deaths by men from distant regions. Others went mad. The Vindications exist (I have seen two that tell of people in the future, who may not be imaginary), but the seekers forgot that the likelihood of a man’s finding his own apologia—or some false version of it—is next to nil.
It was also hoped at that period that the fundamental mysteries of human life—the origin of the Library and of time—would be revealed. Clearly, these deep mysteries can be explained in words, and, should the language of philosophers be inadequate, the multiform Library will doubtless have produced the undiscovered language that is required, together with its vocabulary and grammar. For four hundred years, men have been exhausting the hexagons. There are official searchers, or inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their work. They always arrive bone weary, talking about a stairway with missing steps, which was nearly the death of them. They talk to the librarian about galleries and staircases. Sometimes they pick out the nearest book and leaf through it in search of shameful words. Plainly, none of them expects to find anything.
Of course, the excessive hope was followed by extreme depression. The conviction that some shelf in some hexagon held precious books and that these precious books were inaccessible seemed almost too much to bear. A blasphemous sect suggested that the searches stop and that everyone keep scrambling and re-scrambling the letters and symbols until, through an improbable stroke of luck, the canonical books emerged. The authorities felt obliged to lay down strict rules. The sect disappeared, but in my childhood I saw old men who for long periods hid in the privies, with some metal disks in a forbidden shaker, trying feebly to ape the divine disorder.
Others, conversely, believed that the most important thing was to eliminate useless works. These men, showing credentials that were not always false, invaded the hexagons, pored over a single volume and condemned whole shelves. To their ascetic zeal for cleansing we owe the senseless loss of millions of books. The names of these perpetrators are still cursed, but those who mourn the ‘treasures’ destroyed in such frenzy overlook two well-known facts. One, that the Library is so vast that any loss caused by humans is necessarily minute. The other, that each copy is unique, irreplaceable, but since the Library is a totality there are always several hundred thousand imperfect copies—works that differ in no other detail than a letter or a comma. Contrary to general opinion, I take the view that the damage caused by the Purifiers’ raids has been exaggerated as a result of the terror these fanatics unleashed. A madness drove them to defeat the books of the Crimson Hexagon—books of a smaller than average size, which were all-powerful, illustrated, and magical.
We also know of another superstition of that time—that of the Man of the Book. On some shelf in some hexagon, it was said, there must be a book that is the sum and substance of all the others. A certain librarian has studied it and he is akin to a god. In the language of this particular zone, traces of the worship of this long-dead official remain. Many have made pilgrimages in search of Him. For a hundred years, they vainly exhausted every possible path. How were they to discover the venerated secret hexagon that gave Him shelter? Someone suggested that they should try working backwards. To find book A, first consult book B, which will tell where A is; to find book B, first consult book C, and so on ad infinitum. I have squandered and used up my years in quests of this kind. It seems to me quite possible that on some shelf or other in the world there may be an all-embracing book.19 I pray the unknown gods that one man —just one, even if thousands of years ago—has examined and read it. If honour and wisdom and happiness are not my lot, may they be the lot of others. May heaven exist, even if my place is in hell. Let me
be reviled and obliterated, so long as for a single instant—in a single being—Your vast Library finds justification.
Unbelievers insist that in the Library nonsense is the norm, while reason (or even simple, lowly coherence) is an almost miraculous exception. I know they speak of ‘the feverish Library, any one of whose haphazard volumes runs the endless risk of turning into any other and that all books affirm, deny, or cast confusion on this fact like a god in a state of delirium.’ These words, which not only denounce but also exemplify chaos, are a clear proof of bad taste and hopeless ignorance. In fact, the Library includes every verbal structure and every permutation that the twenty-five symbols permit but not a single piece of sheer nonsense. It is of no purpose to point out that the best book in the many hexagons I administrate is entitled Combed Thunder, and another The Plaster Cramp, and a third Axaxaxas Mlö. These titles, although at first sight meaningless, must lend themselves to some coded or allegorical interpretation. Such an interpretation consists of words and so, by definition, is in the Library. I can make no combination of letters—evendhcmrlchtdj—which the divine library has not envisaged and that in one or another of its secret languages does not hold some fearful meaning. Any syllable full of tenderness or fear uttered in any one of those languages is the all-powerful name of a god. To speak is to fall into tautology. The present futile, long-winded epistle already exists in one of the thirty-two volumes of the five shelves in one of the numberless hexagons—as does its refutation. (An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some, the symbol for ‘library’ correctly denotes ‘a ubiquitous, ever-lasting system of hexagonal galleries,’ but in others ‘library’ is ‘bread’ or ‘pyramid’ or anything else, and the seven words that define it have another meaning. Are you sure, you who are reading this, that you understand my language?)
The act of writing methodically distracts me from the current condition of mankind. The certainty that everything is already written negates or makes phantoms of us. I know of regions where young people prostrate themselves before books and crudely kiss their pages but do not know how to decipher a single letter. Epidemics, heresies, pilgrimages that inevitably degenerate into hooliganism, have decimated the population. I believe I mentioned suicides, whose numbers rise every year. Perhaps age and fear deceive me, yet I suspect that the human race—the only race—stands on the brink of extinction but that the Library will live on—its lights burning, unvisited, infinite, perfectly still, and bristling with precious, useless, incorruptible, secret volumes.
I have just used the word ‘infinite.’ I did not choose this adjective out of rhetorical habit. I do not find it illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge the world to be limited put forward the notion that in remote parts the passageways and stairways and hexagons might inconceivably end. This is absurd. Those who imagine the world to be without limits forget that these are defined by the possible number of books. I make bold to suggest the following solution to the age-old question: The Library is limitless and recurrent. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, he would discover after centuries that the same volumes were repeated in the same random order. This, when it occurred, would be an order—the Order. My solitude is cheered by this elegant hope.20
The Garden of
The Branching Paths
To Victoria Ocampo
In his History of the World War (page 252), Liddell Hart writes that an assault on the Serre-Montauban line intended for the twenty-fourth of July, 1916, and consisting of thirteen British divisions supported by fourteen hundred guns, had to be postponed until the morning of the twenty-ninth. The cause of this otherwise inconsequential delay, he goes on, was torrential rain. The following statement, dictated, checked, and signed by Dr Yu Tsun, one-time head of English at the Tsingtao Hochschule, throws new light on the event. The first two pages are missing.
. . . and replaced the receiver. Immediately afterwards, I realized I knew the voice, which had answered in German. It was that of Captain Richard Madden. Madden speaking from Viktor Runeberg’s flat meant the end of all our efforts and—but this seemed, or should have seemed, quite secondary—of our lives as well. It meant that Runeberg had been arrested, or killed.21 Before the sun set that day, I would suffer the same fate. Madden was implacable. Or, rather, he felt bound to be implacable. An Irishman in the service of England, a man accused of half-heartedness and even treason, how could he fail to welcome and seize upon such a miraculous gift—the discovery, capture, and perhaps death as well, of two agents of the German Empire?
I went up to my room; absurdly, I locked the door and threw myself down on the narrow iron bedstead. Outside the window were the usual slate roofs and an overcast six o’clock evening sky. It was hard to believe that this unremarkable day, without an omen, without a warning, was to be the day of my inescapable death. Despite my dead father, despite having been a child in one of Hai Feng’s symmetrical gardens, was I about to die? I then reflected that everything that happens does so only to oneself and only now. Centuries of centuries pass, but events take place only in the present; countless men are battling in the air, on land, and at sea, yet all that really happens is happening to me.
The almost unbearable memory of Madden’s horse-like face put an end to these ramblings. In the depths of my hatred and fear (now that I have outwitted Richard Madden, now that my neck yearns for the noose, I can admit my fear), I realized that this troublesome and doubtless happy warrior had no idea that I possessed the secret—the name of the place on the Ancre where the new British artillery depot was located. A bird streaked across the grey sky, and automatically I converted it into an aeroplane and that aeroplane into many—over France—demolishing the depot with a rain of bombs. If only, before a bullet silenced my mouth, I could shout out the name of that place so that it could be heard in Germany! But a human voice is feeble. How could I make mine reach my commander’s ears? The ears of that warped, loathsome man, who knew nothing of Runeberg or me except that we were in Staffordshire but who, in his drab Berlin office, was poring over endless newspapers, vainly awaiting information from us.
‘I must get out of here,’ I said aloud. Without making a sound, I stood up. It was a pointless perfection of silence, as if Madden were about to pounce. Something—perhaps the simple need to confirm that my resources were nil—made me go through my pockets. I found what I knew would be there. My American watch; a nickel-plated chain and square coin; a key-ring with the useless but compromising keys to Runeberg’s flat; my notebook; a letter I decided to destroy at once (and didn’t); a crown, two shillings, and a few pence; my blue-and-red pencil; a handkerchief; my revolver with a single bullet. Foolishly, I picked it up and, to bolster my courage, weighed it in my hand. A gunshot can be heard from some distance, I vaguely judged. Ten minutes later, my plan was ripe. The telephone directory gave me the name of the one person who could transmit my message. He lived out in the suburbs, in Fenton, less than half an hour away by train.
I am a coward. I now confess it, now that I have carried out a plan which was nothing if not risky. I know it was a terrible thing to do. I certainly did not do it for Germany. I care nothing for a barbaric country that forced me into the ignominy of spying. What is more, I now know of an Englishman—a modest man—who in my view is Goethe’s equal. I only spoke to him for an hour, but for that hour hewas Goethe. I did the deed because I felt my commander had little regard for men of my race—for my numerous ancestors, who unite in me. I wanted to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies. Meanwhile, I had to get away from Captain Madden. At any moment his hand and his voice could sound at my door. I dressed quietly, bade myself farewell in the mirror, went downstairs, peered along the empty street, and slipped out. The station was only a short distance away, but I thought it best to take a taxi. That way, I told myself, I would run less risk of being spotted. As it was, in the deserted street I felt utterly visible and defenseless. I remember telling the driver to stop just b
efore he reached the entrance. I alighted with deliberate, almost painful, slowness. My destination was the village of Ashgrove, but I bought a ticket for a station farther along the line.
The train was due to leave in a minute or two—at eight fifty. I quickened my step; the next train would arrive at nine-thirty. There was hardly anyone on the platform. Boarding, I made my way along the corridor. I remember some farmworkers, a woman in mourning, a youth engrossed in Tacitus’s Annals, a wounded but happy soldier. Finally, we moved off. A man I recognized came dashing, too late, onto the platform. It was Captain Richard Madden. Devastated, trembling, I shrank down in my seat, pulling away from the fearful window.
My devastation changed to a state of almost abject bliss. I told myself that I had already crossed swords and had scored the first hit by eluding, if only for forty minutes, if only by a stroke of luck, my adversary’s attack. This small triumph, I argued, foreshadowed total victory. Nor was it such a small triumph, since without the precious advantage afforded me by the train timetable I would be in prison or dead. I argued (no less falsely) that my cowardly joy proved I was a man who could bring the assignment to a successful end. Out of my weakness, I drew a strength that did not let me down. I foresee that man will daily give in to ever more hideous deeds, and that soon there will be no one but warriors and bandits. I give them this advice: To perform a hideous deed, a man must tell himself that he has already done it; he must force upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. This I did, as my eyes—those of a man already dead—took in the passing of that day and the gathering of the night. The train ran smoothly past a copse of ash trees, coming to a halt in what seemed open countryside. No one called out the name of the station.