Deciphering ‘The Library of Babel’

Through this essay I’m try to discuss the reason why Jorge Luis Borges uses Mathematical shapes and references from Mythologies or from Religious text. 

Introduction

Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer was one of the most beloved Latin American storytellers of the twentieth century. He was also an early contributor to magical realism, a genre of literature in which the abnormal is presented to readers alongside the mundane. Jorge Luis Borges most famous works include Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), The Aleph (1949) and The Book of Sand (1975).  All of them deal with fictional places and toy with the idea of infinity and mythical creatures that immerse the reader in magical worlds. The stories have been influenced by all genres of literature; from ancient Greece through the 20th-century vanguard movements.

Change in Style

In 1938, with his father gravely ill from a heart ailment, Borges obtained an appointment in a municipal library in Buenos Aires. Before year's end, his father died. Borges, himself, came close to death from septicaemia, the complication of an infected head injury. This period of crisis produced an important change in Borges. He began to write prose fiction tales of a curious and highly original character. These pieces seemed to be philosophical essays invested with narrative qualities and tensions. Others were short stories infused with metaphorical concepts. Ten of these concise, wellexecuted stories were collected in Ficciones (1944). A second volume of similar tales, entitled The Aleph, was published in 1949. Borges's fame as a writer firmly rests on the narratives contained in these two books, to which other stories were added in later editions. The reason for this change could be that, during the time of the crisis he may had come  closer to religion and philosophy of life which led him to become more spiritual person and once he was fine he thought of writing  stories base on the knowledge he had acquired.

  
The Library of Babel (1941)

One of the most famous Jorge Luis Borges except is: “The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps the infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons, one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from the floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal bookcase.….”

Many consider the text is Prophesy about the creation of Internet: a global library in which all texts are related and interlinked. According to Borges, the finite library represented the universe before mankind, although it would appear infinite to the human eye.

 
I don’t know how to put this but if we go to check the literal meaning of words Babel and Google, then this is what I got the meaning:
Babel: the idea of confusion (with reference to Genesis).
Google: derive from googly, which also means a dishonest or disreputable person, a crook or rogue.
And if we go with the above meanings then the story and the interpretation that Jorge Luis is telling us about the “INTER-NET or the WORLD WIDE WEB” begins to make sense. 

Now talking from religion’s point of view, Borges calls particular attention to the theme of order at the end of the story. He writes, "If an eternal traveller should journey in any direction, he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder—which, repeated,
becomes order: the Order" (118). The repetition and capitalization of the word gives it a sense of grandness. Furthermore, since the word "order" is used and sometimes capitalized in religious contexts, this same quote ties the narrator's desire for sense and repetition in the Library to a yearning for assurance in old age through religious faith.

The Library of Babel  is full of religious allusions and allegories, beginning with the title. The story of the tower of Babel, which the title of the story alludes to, is contained in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. The story tells of a time when all people spoke the same language and used this ability to communicate to work together on a tower that would go all the way to the heavens. God, feeling that humans were overstepping their bounds, scattered the people around the world and caused them to speak different languages. While the two stories are connected by themes of language, in Borges' story, we do not see God interfere in the affairs of man in any particular way.

When the narrator lists the books that must exist in the Library, many are religious texts. Included in the examples of books that must exist are: "the detailed history of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels, the faithful catalogue of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogue, the proof of the falsity of those false catalogue, a proof of the falsity of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary upon that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death..." (115). Listing potential religious texts along with texts explicitly called true and false casts doubt upon whether religious texts accepted by certain religions are true.

The Book-Man is one of many symbolic representations of God and religion in the Library, but he is perhaps the most important because he seems to represent the final religious views of the narrator as an old man. The Book-Man is a hypothetical librarian who has read one book—also hypothetical— which contains the key to understanding all other books in the Library. The narrator believes that such a book must exist, because all books, true and false, must exist in the Library. But the Book-Man does not necessarily exist, because the cipher could exist without being read. The Book-Man himself represents humans' desire to play God by seeing the order and meaning of all things in the universe. Furthermore, it is important that the narrator's belief in the Book-Man takes faith, and this faith makes the narrator both uncomfortable and, ultimately, hopeful, allegorically representing man's struggle with religious belief and blind faith.

Now speaking about the theme of Infinity in "The Library of Babel," many librarians spend their whole lives moving between nearly identical rooms, but the narrator notes that even after a lifetime of searching for a particular book, he is "preparing to die, a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born" (112). Through the fact that the narrator has only witnessed a tiny part of the infinite Library, Borges suggests that each human will only get to experience a small amount of the mysteries and possibilities of life.

“The methodical task of writing distracts me from the present state of men. The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms. I know of districts in which the young men prostrate themselves before books and kiss their pages in a barbarous manner, but they do not know how to decipher a single letter.”

Here in this quote, the books in the Library are collectively compared to a god, to you better understand this line I would like to this same from a different book, "They affirm all things, deny all things, and confound and confuse all things, like some mad and hallucinating deity" .This is somewhat different from the way the narrator has been referencing God throughout the short story as the creator of the Library. By comparing the books specifically to a "mad and hallucinating" god, the narrator creates a negative, hopeless tone regarding finding meaning in the Library. The comparison in the second implies that humanity not only lacks progress but is moving backward because of the struggle to find meaning.

By quoting two different version of a same line I would like to put forward my point which is base on Language, so like everyone know that Borges was not only an author, but also translated works from English, French, German, Old English, and Old Norse into Spanish. He grew up bilingual in Spanish and English and learned these other languages while attending school in Switzerland. These early childhood experiences left him with a great fascination with language, and the theme of language appears in many of his stories.

In this story he states that there are books in the library written in every language that exists, and the author comes to the conclusion that many or perhaps all of the books could be read in different languages to have different meanings, provided the languages use the same alphabet. In one strange moment of the story, the narrator directly asks the reader whether they think they understand what the narrator is writing, since it could be one of these texts with different meanings in different languages. This effect is compounded by the fact that the story has supposedly been translated by a fictional editor/translator, which is evidenced by the fact that the books in the Library are all written in a language with twenty-two letters and two types of punctuation, while the story, whether read in Spanish or English, is in a language with more than twenty-two letters and varied punctuation. Through the discomfort caused by this moment in the text and the narrator's musings about the many languages in the books in the Library, the reader is forced to think about the way language and translation mediate the relationship between an author's meaning and a reader's understanding, that is at times it is difficult for readers to understand what the writer is trying to convey through his work. The good example of such mistakenness is this story itself, the reason for this can be, first, poor translation and second, readers not being aware of the concepts use by the writer.

 
Hexagram 

According to Argentinian mathematician Guillermo Martínez, Borges at least had knowledge of mathematics at the level of first courses in algebra and analysis at a university – covering logic, paradoxes, infinity, topology and probability theory. He was also aware of the contemporary debates on the foundations of mathematics.
Daniel Dennett's 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea includes an elaboration of the Library of Babel concept to imagine the set of all possible genetic sequences, which he calls the Library of Mendel, in order to illustrate the mathematics of genetic variation. Dennett uses this concept again later in the book to imagine all possible algorithms that can be included in his Toshiba computer, which he calls the Library of Toshiba. He describes the Library of Mendel and the Library of Toshiba as subsets within the Library of Babel.

Usage in theosophy:

The Star of David is used in the seal and the emblem of the Theosophical Society (founded in 1875). Although it is more pronounced, it is used along with other religious symbols. These include the Swastika, the Ankh, the Aum, and the Ouroboros. The Star of David is also known as the Seal of Solomon that was its original name until around 50 years ago. In Hindu tradition the hexagram or the mandala symbolizes the nara-narayana, or perfect meditative state of balance achieved between Man and God, and if maintained, results in "moksha," or "nirvana".

Scientifically speaking the atom is made from positive particles known as protons and negative particles known as electrons. Electrons ‘mate’ with protons in order to find balance. This process is sometimes referred to as the ‘chemical union.’

The same is true of the human body and mind. When we balance our emotions with analytical thought, we evoke the forces governed by the universal laws of nature and become creators of our reality. The building blocks of creation

Atoms are of course the building blocks of creation. Modern science believes the first atoms occurred immediately after the Big Bang in the form of hydrogen. After that they regenerated to create other elements consisting of more than one proton and one electron.

This scientific explanation is one of the meanings at the heart of the Star of David. And that heart is the hexagon. Look at nature and you find the hexagon is one of the principal governing patterns that is dominant in the natural world. And it is at the core of mankind as well.

The hexagon is found in the structure of DNA. It is the formation of the chains that produce the double-helix macromolecule. But the hexagon is not limited to Earth.

One of the most fascinating discoveries of the NASA Voyager and Cassini missions was a cloud vortex on Saturn in the shape of a hexagon. Thus this mysterious sixsided pattern is the fabric of matter in both the microscopic realm and the macrocosm.  

But what does this all mean? Well, to the ancient sages that incorporated the hexagon into their system of sacred geometry, the hexagon represented the potential for life. 

Conclusion
After all my above study on The Tower of Babel, the hexagon and the allergy of library as universe, I have come to a conclusion that by using this things in his story The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges is trying to tell is that even through our universe is circular, but the centre will be hexagonal and that the all knowing God is the only one knows our past, present and the future and no matter how much ever we use our brain we’ll never know the ultimate truth.
‘At that time it was also hoped that a clarification of humanity's basic mysteries -- the origin of the Library and of time -- might be found. It is verisimilar that these grave mysteries could be explained in words: if the language of philosophers is not sufficient, the multiform Library will have produced the unprecedented language required, with its vocabularies and grammars. For four centuries now men have exhausted the hexagons ... There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything.’