There Babel Libraryit would also make the largest library in the world pale, because it is such a large place as to contain all possible books. Would contain in several volumes any combination of letters, punctuation and spaces, Precisely for this reason, building it would be impossible for space issues, and useless because finding you an accomplished sense information would become almost unlikely. In fact it is one of the most fascinating worlds never given birth by the mind of a writer, Jorge Luis Borgeswhich talks about it in a short short story published in 1941, then included in the “Finzioni” collection. It is not just a story, it is a real metaphor of the universe, infinity, knowledge … and chaos. The title clearly recalls the Tower of Babela symbol of a humanity that wanted to rise to the sky by building an immense tower, right in the city of Babylon. According to the Bible, God punished this Hybris (presumption) With the confusion of languages: the chaos was born, and the tower remained unfinished.
The structure of the Borges library
Borges resumes the story of the Babel Tower and transforms it, his library is in fact perfect in form, but incomprehensible in content. Like the tower, it is the result of thehuman ambition to contain absolute knowledge. The author describes the library as a Infinite building (although mathematically calling it infinite is not exact, given that the number of volumes contained in it is calculable) made of all the same hexagonal galleries; Each gallery has shelves on almost all walls, full of identical books in the format, but unique in content; In fact, each book has 410 pages and each page has 40 lines made up of 80 characters chosen by an alphabet of 25 symbols: the letters of the alphabet, more space, point and comma. These are therefore 25 overall symbols, multiplied by each space available in a book.
The total number of possible combinations it’s gigantic: 25 elevated to 1,312,000 and also, find something useful In Babel’s library it is practically impossible: even if we know that the perfect book exists, it could exist in millions of slightly different versions.
Simulations and websites
Make physically Babel’s library is simply inconceivable: As far as the number of books is “finished”, it is so vast and absurd as to overcome all human, technological and material ability. However, someone tried to view it: an artist created a 3D modela hypnotic animation that gives the idea of the geometric infinity and the mental labyrinth of which Borges speaks. But the real coup d’etat came from Jonathan Basilewho created a Website capable of simulating the entire library: Libraryofbabel.info. All the books, all the pages, all the combinations already written, already there, not generated, but indexed mathematically: you can look for any phrase, which is then sensible in the context in which it is located is almost impossible. In fact, as in the Babel Library, billions of absurdities are also found next to the truth.
The inspiration of the writer
Borges did not invent everything from scratch. The idea of a total library had already appeared in other authors: German Kurd Lasswitzfor example, spoke of it in 1904, and even earlier Jonathan Swift He imagined in “Gulliver’s travels” a car that allowed to write random books by turning cubes with words printed above. Really Aristotle He spoke of letters such as atoms capable of creating tragedies or comedies, depending on how the mixes.
The most fascinating thing, which makes this imaginary structure always current, is that The library speaks of us men, of our desire for order, of truth, of meaning. But also of the loss in front of the overload of information. In an era like the current one, where Everything is online and every opinion has its oppositeBorges’ intuition is more current than ever. At the end of the story, the author leaves us with a disturbing vision: the human species will be extinguished, but The library will remain, full of answers that no one will ever read.
