29 pages • 58 minutes read
Jorge Luis BorgesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Told in the first-person point of view, “The Library of Babel” purports to be the work of an unnamed librarian attempting, near the end of his life, to understand the strange world in which he has lived from birth. The Library in which he lives and works is so vast that no one knows where its limits lie, or even whether it has any limits. As far as the librarian knows—drawing on the collective, historical knowledge of centuries of librarians—the Library comprises the entire universe and has existed for all time. Because of its uncertain boundaries, the Library offers The Promise of the Infinite—a promise equally tantalizing and threatening in that it cannot be tested: Since no one can find the Library’s boundaries, there is no way to know whether it has any. The librarian’s description of the ritual that will follow his death expresses the religious reverence that attaches to this mystery:
When I am dead, compassionate hands will throw me over the railing; my tomb will be the unfathomable air, my body will sink for ages, and will decay and dissolve in the wind engendered by my fall, which shall be infinite (Paragraph 2).
By Jorge Luis Borges
Borges and I
Jorge Luis Borges
Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges
In Praise of Darkness
Jorge Luis Borges
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
Jorge Luis Borges
The Aleph
Jorge Luis Borges
The Aleph and Other Stories
Jorge Luis Borges
The Book of Sand
Jorge Luis Borges
The Circular Ruins
Jorge Luis Borges
The Garden of Forking Paths
Jorge Luis Borges