The Library of Babel — after Borges
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walk w a s d · catalogue f · a volume at random r · retrace t
f catalogue<br>g volumes of note<br>b register<br>h on the library<br>m sound
return to the shelves<br>on the library<br>sound
w a s d walk · f catalogue · g volumes of note · b register · r random volume · t retrace · j join others · m sound
THE CATALOGUE
state any text, up to 3,200 characters — the address where it stands, anywhere in the Library, will be computed
0 / 3200
among random letters the text embedded in an ordinary page<br>alone on the page the text, then unbroken space<br>at the head of the page the text first, random letters after
CONSULT THE CATALOGUE
GO TO ITS SHELF<br>read from here<br>record
or state an address
go
VOLUMES OF NOTE
what librarians have testified to; the arithmetic concurs
shared by librarians
none yet — open a volume and share it
1. No spine prefigures its pages. The titles above were located by inverting the lettering of the spines themselves; what those volumes contain, no one has read to the end.<br>Shared volumes travel the same wire as the lamps, and are kept there about a week.
REGISTER
what you have chosen to record
nothing recorded. record an address from the catalogue, or a volume while reading it.
the way back — t retraces one step
ON THE LIBRARY
a reconstruction · after “La Biblioteca de Babel,” 1941
First axiom: the Library exists ab aeterno. Each gallery is built to the testimony:<br>a hexagon; twenty shelves, five to each of four sides; thirty-two volumes to a shelf;<br>four hundred ten pages to a volume; forty lines to a page; eighty characters to a line.<br>The ceiling scarcely exceeds the height of a normal librarian. In the center of each<br>gallery, a ventilation shaft, bounded by a very low railing, open upon the floors above<br>and below, interminably. The free sides give onto narrow vestibules — two closets, a<br>mirror, a spiral stair — and so to the next gallery, identical to the first, identical<br>to all. The light is provided by two spherical fruits called bulbs; it is insufficient,<br>and unceasing.
Second axiom: the orthographic symbols are twenty-five in number.1<br>Every page in these galleries is a fixed, invertible function of its address. State a text<br>at the catalogue and the address whose page carries it is computed, not invented. The same<br>shelf will hold the same characters when you return, and after everyone now living has<br>stopped returning.
A traveler crossing the Library in one direction for centuries would find the volumes<br>repeating in the same disorder — which, repeated, becomes an order: the Order. The<br>arithmetic here wraps at the same period. The repetition is not a defect; it is the doctrine.
1. “The original manuscript of the present note does not contain digits or capital letters;<br>punctuation is limited to the comma and the period” — the story’s own footnote. These galleries<br>keep the testimony’s count exactly: twenty-two letters, the space, the comma, the period —<br>twenty-five symbols. The four letters the Latin alphabet can spare (c, q, x, z) are folded onto<br>their sounds, so whatever you type is reformed by ear before it is shelved — c→s/k, q→kw, x→ks,<br>z→s — and “jazz box” is found as jass boks. The idea of a navigable Library whose every<br>page is the invertible image of its address — so that any text you name already stands at a<br>computable, permanent location — is Jonathan Basile’s, realized at libraryofbabel.info<br>(2015); this is an independent work in that lineage, here given a walkable space and bound volumes.
2. On foot the corridor runs without end, and the stairs without end; the catalogue<br>re-centers the sphere for journeys no lifetime would survive.
3. Where the network permits, the Library is shared: other librarians appear as dark<br>figures carrying lamps. Nothing is transmitted but position — never what anyone reads<br>or searches. There are no names and no speech; but a volume may be shared, and<br>a pale ribbon will mark it on its shelf for whoever passes. Here and there a slip of<br>paper protrudes from a volume: on its first page, a real word occurs.
4. Every librarian wakes at the same entrance — hexagon zero — so newcomers meet there.<br>Afterward the catalogue scatters each of you across an address space no two will ever<br>share by chance; to find company again, join the others (the count at lower left,<br>or the key j ) re-centers you on a hexagon where someone is awake.
5. Reconstruction: three.js, a single file. The generating constants were fixed at first<br>printing and will not change. What you search is computed on your machine and recorded nowhere.
w a s d walk mouse look click take a volume<br>f catalogue r a volume at random g volumes of note<br>b register t retrace m sound esc close
go to its shelf<br>◂ vol<br>vol ▸<br>record<br>share volume<br>return it · esc
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THE LIBRARYOFBABEL
after the story by Jorge Luis Borges
By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters…<br>— Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. 2, sec. II, mem....