(no subject)

[proximoception]

Is the mistake in the first paragraph of "The Library of Babel" deliberate?

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps an infinite, number of hexagonal galleries, with enormous ventilation shafts in the middle, encircled by very low railings. From any hexagon the upper or lower stories are visible, interminably. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves - five long shelves per side - cover all sides except two; their height, which is that of each floor, scarcely exceeds that of an average librarian. One of the free sides gives upon a narrow entrance way, which leads to another gallery, identical to the first and to all the others. To the left and to the right of the entrance way are two miniature rooms. One allows standing room for sleeping; the other, the satisfaction of fecal necessities. Through this section passes the spiral staircase, which plunges down into the abyss and rises up to the heights. In the entrance way hangs a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. People are in the habit of inferring from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it really were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that the polished surfaces feign and promise infinity...

Or is it there to make you stay up all night with someone trying to work out what all this would look like, only to find that there is exactly enough room for two identical labyrinths to weave through one another infinitely with no foot access between them (and where in the Library could one get a rope to climb down the air shaft?). There wouldn't even need to be another labyrinth: directly above and below every single chamber could be rooms filled with intelligible books, or the fabled smaller magic books, or identical copies of the concordance to the volumes of the library, or of the one true book that saves you, or even with the cylinder-spined book of God. The only way you might ever know these rooms existed - depending on the thickness of the floors and the width of the air shafts - would be upon suicide, in your infinite fall through the shaft, as you saw over and over again, while disintegrating, everything withheld from you your entire life. Could even Borges have imagined such cruelty in the demiurge?

Comments

[localcharacter.livejournal.com]

Ah, the topological question—that would be Chapter 4 of William Goldbloom Bloch's The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel. Though I don't think he comes up with anything quite as striking as the image of death as an infinite fall through inaccessible worlds.

[andalus.livejournal.com]

what does he come up with???

[localcharacter.livejournal.com]

Well, he's a mathematician, not a poet—though the book certainly has some beautiful images. The whole book is an attempt to unfold the mathematical ideas implied by the story, so I can't really summarize it: in one sense, Borges' story is a summary in anticipo of this book.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I checked the book out. He:

1. Like we did, considers the possibility that it's dyads all up and down - without noting that it's disproven by the text talking about going miles and miles off to the right.

2a. Like us, notes that there could be islands.

3. Like us, how there could be infinitely loopity snake lines (this impresses him, because what if someone screamed on the other side of the wall a lifetime might not suffice to get you to where they are and help them - this does not sound like a major concern of the librarian, however, and baselessly assumes also that the walls are thin). He fails to note that whatever labyrinth is formed this way must exist the same way on every floor. As you pointed out last night, the implications of a crazity winding labyrinth would have interested the speaker enough for him to speak of them.

4. He has a whole section discussing the implications of interpreting the weird line as meaning there is a stairway in one opening but not one in another - it just goes on and hits another room. I don't understand his warrant for this, given how it's translated above.

5. He doesn't go into what it would take to make each level an infinite, regular plane (the way we decided the story strongly implies it is), rather than an infinite line, whether straight or squiggly, or a dyad - how each would have to consist of parallel infinite lines and be 60 degrees off from the ones above and below.

6. He doesn't pick up on the secret labyrinth and secret rooms this renders possible.

7. He for little reason and to no consequence decides to give his hexagons certain measurements from a couple libraries Borges was familiar with.

Still, he does dig up some info about Borges originally wanting the rooms to be circles but not liking the wasted space in the interstices, hence the adaptation of hexagons. But with the super-short hallways this necessitates, you can't have regularity, you can only have a long squiggle (making it very difficult to say what might be different 'off to the right'), or various long squiggles and islands eternally cut off from each other (since all levels have to be duplicates if you're not going with our alternating angles method). There's something unappetizing about perfect regularity up and down and very random squiggliness existing identically on every single level, though it can't be discounted as an option. "To the right" might therefore just mean an arbitrary direction that the squiggle goes - downsquiggle as compared to upsquiggle. This might also explain the "14-92" number system: level 14, hex 92, counting from some arbitrary starting hex and level. You'd need level number, strand number AND hex number for the one we were discussing.

[andalus.livejournal.com]

i took the cycle number to be a measure of time myself, being something that the libraries are able to measure with some precision, unlike location, which is always vague and offhand

[andalus.livejournal.com]

but wait, no. (barring the fact that the preposition is more ambiguous in Spanish.) One which my father saw in a hexagon on circuit fifteen ninety-four... "A hexagon on" means (in english) that the hex itself is not demarcated. so there is a third number. "circuit" implies closed circuits, which is impossible in a horizontally regular libraryverse. and the last paragraph implies the idea of a circular universe isn't commonplace, so the straight lines of our regular libraryverse wouldn't be considered circuits. in english.

always the possibility that it was once known that the straight lines were circuits and the naming stuck though the meaning was lost.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Circuit does imply regularity. They could exist as artificial bounds, though - there's a lot of talk of zones and what not. They could even mean a four staircase square including all hexagons nearby. And if there are closed circuits, horizontally:

a. They must be very wide, since you can go many miles off to 'the right' (at which point it's implied you are in a foreign land, since the language is different).

b. As we established, everything under or over the circuit (since the circuit-ness of infinite lines is the librarian's personal heresy, not a general asumption) has to follow the same pattern. So if you're on 14-94, there's only one coordinate needed to establish your floor. The fourteen might mean it's the fourteenth grouping of however many numbers, but that seems a bit silly when base ten pretty much does that already. E.g. the fourteenth block of a hundred floors = 1394.

How is time regular in the library? How could it even be measured? I'd say the closest thing to measurement they could have would be the time it takes to get from one side of a hex to another, or from one staircase to another if the halls are regular lengths.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Does Spanish have a preposition that could mean either 'on' or 'at,' like French?

[andalus.livejournal.com]

"en" means at or on. but im looking at the spanish now while on the phone with j, and the preposition is "del,"

Uno, que mi padre vio en un hexágono del circuito quince noventa y cuatro

one which my father saw in a hexagon of circuit (continuous) 15 94

another ambiguity:

Por ahí pasa la escalera espiral, que se abisma y se eleva hacia lo remoto.

Por ahi is like "over there" or "along that way," making it very hard to place the staircase, though it's in the direction of the bathroom/vestibule.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Continuity 15-94? Because that could be a line.