Ficciones: 7. The Library of Babel Summary & Analysis

Borges’s narrator describes his universe, which is a library. He describes the hexagonal galleries of bookshelves, which contain 20 bookshelves each. These galleries are identical, each with the same number of books and bookshelves that connect to one another through vestibules, where people can sleep or go to the restroom. The narrator himself is an old man. When he dies, another librarian will throw him into an abyss. He expects his fall to be “infinite.”

The narrator further explains aspects of the library. Each book has the same number of pages, with the same number of lines and the same number of letters in each line. Furthermore, each book has letters on the spine, but the letters do not reveal what the book will say. Librarians (people) in his universe believe that the library has always existed and was thus created by a god. Man, the narrator says, “may be the work of chance or of malevolent demiurges.”

Furthermore, there are 25 characters that exist in the library—22 letters, the period, the comma, and the space. Much of the work in the library seems like nonsense to the librarians, who believe that much of the work is written in an ancient or remote language. Still, while the narrator agrees that men used to speak and write in ancient languages, some of the more seemingly nonsensical texts do not correspond to any language, ancient or modern—for example, one book the narrator’s father found consists solely of the letters MCV, repeated over and over.

Because the library is infinite and contains every possible combination of letters, everything that can be expressed exists in the library. Furthermore, no text is alike. At first, the librarians rejoice at this fact: all information in the universe is theoretically at their disposal. However, this fact becomes overwhelming to the librarians, as most of the books are nonsense, and it would be impossible to search through all of them for meaning.

Some librarians believe that there is a book somewhere in the library that acts as a key to the library itself, but it would be nearly impossible to find. Many talk of a mysterious set of books called Vindications: “books of apology and prophecy, which vindicated for all time the actions of every man in the world and established a source of prodigious arcana for the future.” Many pilgrims go in search of these books, some going mad in the process.

The narrator himself can affirm that these Vindications exist, having seen two of them, but to find them all would be impossible. There are official “inquisitors” in the library whose sole purpose is to unlock its secrets. Some librarians, on the other hand, take it upon themselves to destroy “useless” works. This practice is looked down upon, but the narrator points out that, since the library is infinite and there are therefore countless facsimiles of each book (with one small difference from the original), the effect is negligible.

The narrator notices that these inquisitors seem exhausted. The librarian takes comfort in this idea that one of the books contains the secrets to the library. He imagines an immortal voyager exploring the library until he finds all the information repeating, taking comfort in the ultimate order of the universe.