https://libraryofbabel.info/theory.htmlThe first paragraph of Borges’ “The Library of Babel” offers a minute description of the universe he has doomed his librarians to inhabit. Which is why I was shocked to reread the story recently and discover my mental image was completely wrong. He describes a vast architecture of interconnecting hexagons each with four walls of bookshelves and passageways leading to other identical hexagons. I had made the assumption that six walls minus four walls of book shelves equals two such passageways. I read to my astonishment:
The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon's six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens onto another gallery, identical to the first-identical in fact to all.
One of the hexagon’s free sides opens onto a vestibule - how could this be? So much of the story told by our narrator conjures endless, desolate expanses of hexagons, repeating infinitely and inspiring both the reverence of the God who created them and despair at a life trapped inside them. But this would only be possible if the hexagons had two openings each - otherwise the structure would terminate at its first junction.
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