23rd October- Notes, thoughts, Reflections- 'The library of Babel'

23nd October

“The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges





http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/reese/classes/artistsbooks/The%20Library%20of%20Babel.pdf

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RdW8njsec38C&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=in+the+universal+library+imagined+by+borges+akira+mizuta&source=bl&ots=jCFxOca1eZ&sig=G9uQSJ0EQnjV31jmUitzmWjxSp0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiJup7IrubWAhXD1hoKHR0ODyYQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=in%20the%20universal%20library%20imagined%20by%20borges%20akira%20mizuta&f=false

The library of Babel is a piece of writing that not only resonates with me but seemed more historically relevant today than ever. There is two points of interest here;

Historical relevance- published 1941 (translated into other languages later). Is the book more relevant today? the current situation of international trade but closed borders? The written word both embodying this and also contradicting as the differing books and word fluidly flow across the library based borders. The book had many historical pretexts and references much of Aristotle inspired theory. This extended theology is surprisingly accessible within the book.

'Certain examples that Aristotle attributes to Democritus and Leucippus clearly prefigure it, but its belated inventor is Gustav Theodor Fechner, and its first exponent, Kurd Lasswitz. [...] In his book The Race with the Tortoise (Berlin, 1919), Dr Theodor Wolff suggests that it is a derivation from, or a parody of, Ramón Llull's thinking machine [...T]he elements of his game are the universal orthographic symbols, not the words of a language [...] Lasswitz arrives at twenty-five symbols (twenty-two letters, the space, the period, the comma), whose recombinations and repetitions encompass everything possible to express in all languages. The totality of such variations would form a Total Library of astronomical size. Lasswitz urges mankind to construct that inhuman library, which chance would organize and which would eliminate intelligence. (Wolff's The Race with the Tortoiseexpounds the execution and the dimensions of that impossible enterprise.)' (1) 

'Many of Borges' signature motifs are featured in the story, including infinity, reality, cabalistic reasoning, and labyrinths. The concept of the library is often compared to Borel's dactylographic monkey theorem. There is no reference to monkeys or typewriters in "The Library of Babel", although Borges had mentioned that analogy in "The Total Library": "[A] half-dozen monkeys provided with typewriters would, in a few eternities, produce all the books in the British Museum." In this story, the closest equivalent is the line, "A blasphemous sect suggested [...] that all men should juggle letters and symbols until they constructed, by an improbable gift of chance, these canonical books."
Borges would examine a similar idea in his 1975 story, "The Book of Sand" in which there is an infinite book (or book with an indefinite number of pages) rather than an infinite library. Moreover, the story's Book of Sand is said to be written in an unknown alphabet and its content is not obviously random. In The Library of Babel, Borges interpolates Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri's suggestion that any solid body could be conceptualized as the superimposition of an infinite number of planes.
The concept of the library is also overtly analogous to the view of the universe as a sphere having its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere. The mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal employed this metaphor, and in an earlier essay Borges noted that Pascal's manuscript called the sphere effroyable, or "frightful".
In any case, a library containing all possible books, arranged at random, might as well be a library containing zero books, as any true information would be buried in, and rendered indistinguishable from, all possible forms of false information; the experience of opening to any page of any of the library's books has been simulated by websites which create screenfuls of random letters.[2]The quote at the beginning of the story, "By this art you may contemplate the variation of the twenty-three letters," is from Robert Burton's 1621 The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Philosophical implications[edit]
There are numerous philosophical implications within the idea of the finite library which exhausts all possibilities. Every book in the library is "intelligible" if one decodes it correctly, simply because it can be decoded from any other book in the library using a third book as a one-time pad. This lends itself to the philosophical idea proposed by Immanuel Kant, that our mind helps to structure our experience of reality; thus the rules of reality (as we know it) are intrinsic to the mind. So if we identify these rules, we can better decode 'reality'. One might speculate that these rules are contained in the crimson hexagon room which is the key to decoding the others. The library becomes a temptation, even an obsession, because it contains these gems of enlightenment while also burying them in deception. On a psychological level, the infinite storehouse of information is a hindrance and a distraction, because it lures one away from writing one's own book (i.e., living one's own life). Anything one might write would of course already exist. One can see any text as being pulled from the library by the act of the author defining the search letter by letter until they reach a text close enough to the one they intended to write. The text already existed theoretically, but had to be found by the act of the author's imagination.[3] Another implication is an argument against certain proofs of the existence of God, as it is carried out by David Hume using the thought experiment of a similar library of books generated not by human mind, but by nature.[4]Quine's reduction[edit]

In a short essay, W. V. O. Quine noted the interesting fact that the Library of Babel is finite (that is, we will theoretically come to a point in history where everything has been written), and that the Library of Babel can be constructed in its entirety simply by writing a dot on one piece of paper and a dash on another. These two sheets of paper could then be alternated at random to produce every possible text, in Morse code or equivalently binary. Writes Quine, "The ultimate absurdity is now staring us in the face: a universal library of two volumes, one containing a single dot and the other a dash. Persistent repetition and alternation of the two is sufficient, we well know, for spelling out any and every truth. The miracle of the finite but universal library is a mere inflation of the miracle of binary notation: everything worth saying, and everything else as well, can be said with two characters."[5]' 

The above extract is quoted from wikipedia. This is obviously an issue as the reliability of the writing is compromised. However, the links and the surrounded reading has been of great use to me.  The concepts, themes and philosophy within the Library of babel is very complicated and many historical aspects apply. Therefore the 1941 historical relevance can not be overlooked. The time brought great theological and philosophical investigations. Those today are almost tested, has the theory been realised and underpinned  by history now?
The modern day historical implications are partly as follows. The integration of books over one another and the influence on bok has upon another. The modern world sees lives being led as separate with the always present gaze of the others. This affects how the book then reads themselves and sees their own place within the hexagonal structure. The power of certain books as translators is more of deciders now as to who gets read, celebrity parasocial influences. 

Linguistic power- The entire focus of the writing discusses the 'books' as an all encompassing concept. Each book in each language holds all there is to know. All that could ever be written. The fact this concept is then written offers a strange inception of words. The use of words, books and written documentation is metaphorically embodied by the concept of 'the library' and the philosophy around it. The library of babel both mocks and fully explain the human condition,
The end of the book is unknown to the beginning yet the begining is waiting for the end. This philosophy can not only apply to life but artistic practice. The process of the work, be that visual, research based or written work is dependent on the beginning and has an unknown end. My visual practice relies on this heavily as the end visuality of the work is unknown to the beginning, this also goes for colour combination used. Therefore, I see parallels with the written side but also the visual aspect of my work can relate to the narrative of the library and the book's own anxieties.