"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries."
While short and fairly simple, the first sentence of The Library of Babel sets the tone for the short story. It also establishes two important questions that Borges will explore throughout the story. The first question is how the Library functions as an extended metaphor for the universe. Borges will probe the limitations of this metaphor later in the story, but establishes the metaphor boldly in this sentence by suggesting that "the universe" and "the Library" are simply two names for the same thing. The second important question Borges introduces in this sentence is whether the Library, or the universe, is infinite or merely indefinite. The nature of infinity is one of the most important themes in the story, and the narrator of the story will eventually come to the conclusion that the universe is indeed infinite (though the number of possible books, which is to say unique bits of matter, are finite).
"(Mystics claim that their ecstasies reveal to them a circular chamber containing an enormous circular book with a continuous spine that goes completely around the walls. But their testimony is suspect, their words obscure. That cyclical book is God.)"
This quote is a parenthetical aside inserted into a paragraph near the beginning of the story. This paragraph otherwise provides a brief summary of the narrator's life and his beliefs about what will happen after his death. The quote is of particular importance because it is the first time religion is mentioned in the story. The narrator will henceforth compare many groups of people with strong beliefs about the Library to religious sects, even branding some as religious zealots for their practices. The narrator reveals his negative opinion of those who draw religious meaning from the Library when he asserts that "their testimony is suspect" (113).
"In order to grasp the distance that separates the human and the divine, one has only to compare these crude trembling symbols which my fallible hand scrawls on the cover of a book with the organic letters inside—neat, delicate, deep black, and inimitably symmetrical."
Here the narrator compares the letters he writes on the cover of a book to the infinitely more perfect, "divine" letters set down in the book, presumably by God. While earlier in the story the narrator seemed critical of those who turn to religion to explain the Library, he now reveals that he believes the Library was made by God. The narrator's argument is similar to the idea of intelligent design: the belief that the elegant, complicated nature of many things that exist in nature proves the existence of God. This quote is also metafictional, in that Borges, through the voice of the writer/narrator of the story, contemplates the fallibility of writers.
"The original manuscript has neither numbers nor capital letters; punctuation is limited to the comma and the period. Those two marks, the space, and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet are the twenty-five sufficient symbols that our unknown author is referring to. [Ed. note.]"
A reader might erroneously believe this footnote to be the words of Borges' editor or translater; in fact, both the writer and editor of the story are fictional characters created by Borges. The inclusion of this editor is Borges' rationale for how the writing from the universe within the story (the Library) reaches our own universe. From this footnote, the reader comes to understand that the editor must be able to understand and translate the language the narrator writes; this language cannot be English or Spanish since neither have twenty-two letters in their alphabets. The fictional editor has clearly taken liberties when translating, since capitals and various punctuation marks besides the comma and period are used throughout the story. This is another moment of metafiction in which Borges forces the reader to consider the interplay of language and meaning.
"This much is known: For every rational line or forthright statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense, and incoherency."
Since the Library represents the entire universe in "The Library of Babel," in this quote Borges implies that our universe is more senseless than sensical. Furthermore, the reader is challenged to question whether they are able to distinguish sense from nonsense, since there exist in the Library books that are completely true, books that are completely false, and lots of iterations that come close to the truth but are wrong in one or more ways. By using the word "leagues" and then listing three synonyms for nonsense, the author underscores just how unlikely it is that a given book is true or makes sense. There are infinite ways for a book to be false or senseless, while there is only one "true" version of a book.
"I know of one semibarbarous zone whose librarians repudiate the 'vain and superstitious habit' of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of the palm of one's hand....They will acknowledge that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but contend that the adoption was fortuitous, coincidental, and that books in themselves have no meaning."
In this quote, the narrator lays out the debate that has been going on in the Library throughout his lifetime: whether or not there is meaning to be gleaned from the books. While many librarians believe that some or all of the books can be understood, either in a certain language or through metaphor or code, the librarians described here believe none of the books hold any meaning. Moreover, they believe the fact that humans use writing as a means of communication does not mean the books in the Library are communicating anything in themselves; rather, the books always existed, so earlier librarians imitated their symbols when they created written language.
The narrator explains just how misguided attempts to find meaning are (at least according to these librarians) by comparing such attempts to dream interpretation and palm reading. This implies either that such superstitious practices exist in the world of the story, or that Borges included the line to make an explicit connection between the debate in the story and debates in our universe over superstition, religion, and meaning.
"All—the detailed history of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels, the faithful catalog of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogs, the proof of the falsity of those false catalogs, a proof of the falsity of the true catalog, the gnostic gospel of the Basilides, the commentary upon that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book into every language, the interpolations of every book into all books, the treatise Bede could have written (but did not) on the mythology of the Saxon people, the lost books of Tacitus."
In this quote, the narrator enumerates texts that must be included in the Library if the Library truly includes all arrangements of twenty-five symbols. Many of these texts are religious, which calls attention to debates over the veracity of certain religious texts. The narrator also references the catalog, a central symbol of the short story, and thousands of false catalogs, demonstrating how futile the narrator feels the search for the true catalog is.
This quote also has particular significance in the history of the story. The end of the quote, starting with "the treatise Bede could have written..." was eliminated in James E. Irby's translation. This is one of the largest discrepancies between translations of the work, and there is no consensus on why it was left out of the work. Regardless of the reason, the elimination of these two examples focuses the list even more on religious allusions and the symbols of true and false catalogs.
"I pray to the unknown gods that some man—even a single man, tens of centuries ago—has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place by in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.
This quote is a prayer of sorts from the narrator to gods he doesn't know if he believes in. Though the narrator has been critical of those he sees as superstitious or overzealous throughout the story, he too turns to religion when contemplating his own mortality. The narrator's greatest desire, as stated in this quote, is not only for some amount of order or meaning to exist in the Library, but for some human being to experience it. The repetition of "let" before his dying wishes gives the quote a strong rhythm, and the vivid, violent language demonstrates the intensity of the narrator's emotions.
"(A number n of the possible languages employ the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol 'library' possesses the correct definition 'everlasting, ubiquitous system of hexagonal galleries,' while a library—the thing—is a load of bread or a pyramid or something else, and the six words that define it themselves have other definitions. You who read me—are you certain you understand my language?)"
This quote builds on the narrator's earlier musings about whether different languages using the same alphabets would necessarily create words with different meanings depending on the language one is reading in. Here, he takes the example of the word "library" and describes how that particular combination of letters could have the meaning it has in "The Library of Babel" in one language and completely different meanings in other languages. He deepens this exploration even further by proposing that even if one found out the words making up the definition of "library" in another language, those words themselves would have other definitions, obscuring the original meaning.
Borges ends the quote with a moment of metafiction. Since the story employs a fictional editor who supposedly translated the work from its original language—the language with 22 letters used in the Library—into Spanish, the end of the quote calls attention to the fact that any translated work may differ greatly from the original. The effect of this textual moment is even greater when one is reading "The Library of Babel" in one of the languages it was later translated into, like English. If this is the case, and one is not reading the text as it was originally written by Borges, we have to ask: has Borges's original message been influenced and perhaps distorted by the translator?
"Letizia Alvarez de Toledo has observed that the vast Library is pointless; strictly speaking, all that is required is a single volume, of the common size, printed in nine- or ten-point type, that would consist of an infinite number of infinitely thin pages."
This quote is part of the footnote that ends the story. Ending with a footnote is an unusual move, and it stresses the importance of all the footnotes in the story. The footnote seems to be written by the fictional editor, though it is not explicitly stated, and the content of the footnote itself is a critique of the meaning and veracity of the entire story. In short, the quote states that another philosopher invented a metaphor for the universe that is more succinct than that of the Library: a single book made up of infinite pages. By ending with this quote, Borges prevents the reader from reading the story literally, pushing them to examine other ways the universe might be represented metaphorically.
