Customer Reviews

The Library of Babel

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"The Library of Babel" is one of the most memorable stories by the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. This slim book contains Andrew Hurley's English translation of the story, eleven illustrations by Erik Desmazieres, and an introduction by Angela Giral.

"Library" is the quintessential "Borgesian" tale. The story concerns an infinite library, composed of endlessly connected hexagonal galleries, and populated by inhabitants among whom have risen various weird belief systems and subcultures. The first-person narrator is one of the library's residents. "Library" is a masterpiece of the fantastic and the metaphysical.

Giral notes in her introduction that Desmaziere's engravings are not literal representations of scenes from the story, but rather "the product of a parallel imagination, inspired to create in visual images his own, equivalent universe." The etchings have an elegant, majestic, and sometimes whimsical quality that effectively complements Borges' unique imagination. This book would make a nice gift for lovers of Borges, or of fantastic literature in general.

"The Library of Babel" is one of Borges' finest short fictions -- a meditation on the possible, the infinite, the nature of hope and the creation of meaning. The Library contains all possible books, all possible combinations of the 25 orthographic symbols in all possible languages, and therefore everything man is capable of knowing and expressing -- but it appears to have no order, no organization. It contains the true catalogue of the Library, as well as innumerable false catalogues, books proving the falsity of the false catalogue, and books proving the falsity of the true catalogue. Yet from chaos arises meaning: "There is no combination of characters one can make . . . that the divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance. There is no syllable one can speak that is not filled with tenderness and terror, that is not, in one of those languages, the mighty name of a god." (35)

This volume is intended for the lover of fine books and contains "only" this single, quite short, fantasy by Borges, beautifully illustrated with duotone etchings by Erik Desmazieres. The etchings are not particularly consistent with Borges' description of the Library, although they are plainly inspired by it. Although Desmazieres' Library appears to be physically bounded in a way that Borges' Library is not (there is no "outside" for Borges), the etchings present a magisterial universe that by the overwhelming size and fine detail of its rooms evokes a sense of the infinite in the same way that High Gothic cathedrals function. My only real quarrel with Desmazieres is that his Library is too populated. He captures the sense of infinite space, but misses the fundamental loneliness of the librarian.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in fine printing or as an addition to an existing collection of Borges' fiction. If you are new to Borges, I would recommend buying a more substantial collection of his work first, then buying this volume as a beautifully realized vision of one aspect of his universe.

Bibliophiles will be drawn to this wonderful little volume combining fine writing, fascinating artists engravings and top quality book production. Borges' meditation on the library of Babel - an infinite universe of hexagonal galleries containing every possible book - provides a metaphor for thinking about knowledge and truth. While only a few thousand words long, Borges' story draws the reader into a world both deeply familiar and utterly surreal. His descriptions of how people have searched for the ultimate truth, to be found (they imagine) in a volume somewhere on the endless library shelves, makes for an unsettling parable.

Print maker Eric Desmazieres provides eleven engravings, offering intricately detailed architectural drawings of the library - a monstrous, looming tower of Babel; huge internal chambers with book-shelves reaching into the darkness; urgent, scurrying librarians pushing books in barrows across narrow bridges, meticulously arranging volumes on shelves. The moody darkened images perfectly compliment Borges' prose.

The publisher, David R Godine, from Boston specialises in fine quality editions. The book itself is a wonderful example of the publisher's art. It too will have a well-deserved place in Borges' Library of Babel.

Jorge Borges, (1899-1986) was born in Beunos Aires and educated in Geneva, and was a prominent figure in the avant-garde Ultraist movement in the late teens and early 1920's. This book, a slim and highly cerebral volume which uses a theoretical library as a metaphor for the universe, with each volume a soul, each shelf an ideal, and perhaps curated by The Divine Ethereal, is a magnificent tour-de-force, yes, but is also highly accessible and certainly a viable choice for those of you who are new to Borges. His other fictional and non-fictional work can be very meaty and sometimes too complex. This particular edition, illustrated with gorgeous plates by the Moroccan printmaker Erik Desmazieres, is a marvelous addition to any serious library.

"The Library of Babel" is Jorge Luis Borges' take on an astounding library that contains every possible volume, of a given size and number of pages, that can be printed with a standard alphabet of a given number of characters. This library contains everything that could possibly be written, and so transcribes everything that could be experienced, thought, or imagined. And yet, although it is unimaginably large, it is mathematically of a finite size.

Borges did not originate this idea, and indeed got it from a short story by the minor turn-of-the-century German philosopher-author Kurd Lasswitz. But although the earlier author attempted to spice his story with pungent bits of business suggesting the hauntingly inhuman completeness of the library ("Fortunately it contains its own true index. Unfortunately it also contains every conceivable false index to itself."), he had nowhere near the quirky, evocative genius of Borges, who describes what happens when a librarian in the essentially infinite library dies of old age: he is dropped over the railing of one of the endlessly vertical ventilation shafts, to fall for centuries through the air, eventually desiccating and turning to dust.

The story of the Library of Babel is told from the inside, by a librarian who in his youth explored thousands of the galleries and rooms of the limitless institution, but is now content to stay close to the home shelves. There are hints of wars, revolutions, and the clash of bibliognostic creeds, all tied up by Borges to the essential mathematical nature of the library with malicious, dazzling cleverness.

Erik Desmazieres is a French lithographer renowned for his meticulous, surrealistic etchings (look for him on the Web). He undertook to produce a set of 21 illustrations for "The Library" several years ago, which were sold worldwide in limited editions, and bound into this delightful little volume along with Borges' short story. His illustrations are perfect for the Borges piece, although Plate II unaccountably shows the Babel-like "outside" of the library, big but not huge and not nearly infinite. This book is a must for Borges aficionados, even if you already have the "Library" in one of his volumes of collected stories.

This brief--but beautiful--volume brings artistic splendor to Borges's vision of the endless library. The etchings here, by a French artist, are stunning and illuminating. A perfect little piece of work.

I am anxious to read this book after puzzling over an exhibit in the San Diego Museum of Art for hours on end. This exhibit (March 8-June 22, 2008) is a reinterpretation of the book and is quite fascinating, although disturbing since it is wildly out of context.

This unique compelling story is beautifully supported by the remarkable illustrations. Borges in any format is worth time and reflection as he leads you through his wonderful labyrinths.

Let me start of by saying that the artwork of Erik Desmazieres in this nicely designed little hardcover is fantastic! His images captured the essence of what a library containing all of the knowledge of mankind would be - I wanted to be there perusing the shelves, absorbing the information.

But in the end, this an attractive, well designed hardcover of a short story, so I question its value to anyone but the collector of Borges' work. With this book, I am new to reading Borges, and I plan to read more of his work; and if I had encountered this story in his collection of short stories, I would have smiled at the end and thought "interesting filler story". But, I didn't read it in the collection, I read it in this beautiful book and thus feel that it didn't rate its own standalone volume.

Yes, the story is creative; but maybe I am dense or something as I didn't find it all that profound. I did pick up a few metaphors I could relate to, but, from the forward, I was really expecting some kind of mind blowing, thought-expanding experience; but, in the end, it turned out to be a quick read before bed of a book I won't keep.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.