From "The Library of Babel"
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of
an indefinite, perhaps an infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with enormous
ventilation shafts in the middle, encircled by very low railings. From any
hexagon the upper or lower stories are visible, interminably. The distribution
of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves--five long shelves per
side--cover all sides except two; their height, which is that of each floor,
scarcely exceeds that of an average librarian. One of the free sides gives upon
a narrow entrance way, which leads to another gallery, identical to the first
and to all the otehrs, To the left and to the right of the entrnce way are two
miniature rooms. One allows standing room for leeping; the other, the
satisfaction of fecal necessities. Through this section passes the spiral
staircase, which plunges down into the abyss and rises up to the heights. In
the entrance way hangs a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. People
are in the habit of inferring from this mirror that the Library is not infinite
(if it really were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that the
polished surfaces feign and promise infinity. . . .
Light comes from spherical fruits called by the name of
lamps. There are two, running transversally, in each hexagon. The light they
emit is insufficient, incessant.
Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth. I have journeyed in search of a book, perhaps of the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can scarcely decipher what I write, I am preparing to die a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born. Once dead, there will not lack pious hands to hurl me over the banister; my sepulchre shall be the unfathomable air: my body will sink lengthily and will corrupt and dissolve in the wind engendered by the fall, which is infinite. I affirm that the Library is interminable. the idealists argue that the hexagonal halls are a necessary form of absolute space or, at least, of our intuition of space. they contend that a triangular or pentagonal hall is inconceivable. (The mystics claim that to them ecstasy reveals a round chamber circling the walls of the room; but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. That cyclical book is God.) Let it suffice me, for the time being, to repeat the classic dictum: The Library is a sphere whose consummate center is any hexagon, and whose circumference is inacessible.
From “Funes the Memorious”:
We, at a stroke, perceive three cups lying on a table; Funes would see all the shoots and clusters and fruit comprised by a vine. He knew the shapes of the southern clouds at dawn on April 30, 1882, and could compare them in his memory with the streaks on a book of Spanish cover that he had seen only once and with the swirls on the foam raised by an oar in the Río Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho.
From “Aleph”
“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he
peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships,
islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short
time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces
the lineaments of his own face.”
“On the back part of the step,
toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable
brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this
movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's
diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual
and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things,
since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming
sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a
silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth
(it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in
a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw
in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen
in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow,
tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of
their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I
saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a
ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a
summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny --
Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as
a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled
and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the
colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in
Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I
saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the
delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out
picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing
cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers,
pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a
Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting
made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had
written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita
cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been
Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling
of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and
angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the
Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I
felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object
whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the
unimaginable universe.
I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.”