The wind

Let the wind take
Over his big tree desert
There do remain in the vortex of leaves
There scaraventi down to not break you
Against the dark clouds
When the moon edging of solid silver
Leading them away furiously
And in extreme solitude

The Wind, Thor Vilhjálmsson

Crimson Hexagon

By this art you may covered the variation of the 23 letters. . . - The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sect. II, IV Mem.

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts in the middle, bordered by very low railings. From any hexagon one can see the upper and lower floors, endlessly. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty-five large shelves at a rate of five per side, covering all sides except one, their height, which is the same for each plan, far exceeds that of a normal library. The free sides leads to a narrow hallway that leads to another gallery, identical to the first and all. To the right and left of the hallway there are two tiny closets. One can sleep standing up, the other to meet the needs faeces. Hence goes the spiral staircase, which rises and sinks in the remote. In the hallway is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it were, why this illusory duplication?), I prefer to dream that these surfaces appear silver and promise the infinite ... Light proceeds from spherical fruits that have the name of lamps. There are two hexagon, a cross. The light they emit is insufficient, incessant.

Like all men of the Library, in youth I traveled, I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalog of catalogs, and now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die a few leagues from I was born. Dead, there will be pious hands to throw me off the railing, my grave will be the unfathomable air: my body will sink long and corrupt and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite. I affirm that the Library is unending. The idealists argue that the hexagonal rooms are a necessary form of absolute space or, at least, of our intuition of space. They reason that it is triangular or pentagonal room is inconceivable. (The mystics claim to have, in the ecstasy, the revelation of a circular room with a great book by the circular rib continues, which is right around the walls, but their testimony is suspect; their words, obscure. This book Cyclical God). Suffice it for now, classical repeat the sentence: "The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any hexagon and whose circumference is inaccessible".

Each wall of each hexagon are five shelves, each shelf contains books thirty-two standard format and each book is four hundred and ten pages, each page, of forty lines, each line, forty black letters. There are also letters on the spine of each book, these letters do not indicate or prefigure what the pages will say. I know that this incoherence at one time seemed mysterious. Before summarizing the solution (whose discovery, regardless of its tragic projections, is perhaps the capital fact in history) I recall a few axioms.

First: The Library exists from all eternity. Of this truth, whose immediate corollary is the future eternity of the world, no reasonable mind can doubt. Man, the imperfect librarian, may be the work of chance or of malevolent demiurge, the universe, with its elegant endowment of shelves, of enigmatic volumes, of indefatigable ladders for the traveler and latrines for the seated librarian, can not be the work of a god. To perceive the distance that exists between the divine and the human, is enough to compare these crude wavering symbols which my fallible hand scrawls on the cover of a book, with the organic letters inside: punctual, delicate, perfectly black, inimitably symmetrical.

Second: The number of twenty-five orthographical symbols is ^1. This finding allowed, three centuries ago, to formulate a general theory of the Library and solve satisfactorily the problem which no conjecture had deciphered permit: the formless and chaotic nature of almost all the books. One of these, which my father saw the hex circuit fifteen ninety-four was made up of the letters MCV, perversely repeated from beginning to end. Another (very much consulted in this area) is a mere labyrinth of letters, but the last page says Oh time thy pyramids. It is well known: for a reasonable line, for a news story correctly, there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal and farragini of inconsistencies. (I know of a barbaric region whose librarians repudiate the vain and superstitious custom of finding a meaning in books, and compare it to that of finding a meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of the hand ... They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but maintain that this application is accidental and that the books signify nothing in themselves. This statement, as we shall see, is not entirely wrong).

Until recently it was believed that these impenetrable books corresponded to preferred languages ​​or remote. Now, it is true that the oldest men, the first librarians, used a language quite different from what we speak today, it is true that a few miles to the right the tongue is dialectical and ninety floors above is most incomprehensible. All this, I repeat, it is true, but four hundred pages of inalterable MCV can not correspond to any language, dialectical or rudimentary it is. Some insinuated that each letter could influence the next, and that the value of MCV in the third line of page 71 was not the same as the same series could be in another line to another page, but this vague thesis did not prosper. Others thought to encryption, this hypothesis has been universally accepted, but not in the sense in which it was formulated by its originators.

Five hundred years ago, the head of an upper hexagon ² found a book so confused as the others, but where there were almost two pages of homogeneous, probably readable. He showed his find to a decoder walking, and they told him they were written in Portuguese, and others assured him that were written in Yiddish. Could finally settle down, after research that lasted nearly a century, that this was a Samoyed-Lithuanian dialect of Guarani, with inflections of classical Arabic. He also deciphered the contents: notions of combinative analysis, illustrated with examples of variations with unlimited repetition. These examples made it possible for a librarian of genius to discover the fundamental law of the Library.

This thinker observed that all the books, how diverse they were, made up of the same elements: space, dot, comma, the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. Stable, also, a fact which travelers have confirmed: there are, in the vast library, two identical books. From these incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of twenty-five orthographical symbols (numbers, although vast, is not infinite) all that is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogs of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogs, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogs, the demonstration of the fake catalog, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary that gospel, the commentary of the commentary on that gospel, the veridical account of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books.

When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly drew the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time there was much talk of Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which justified for all time the acts of every man of the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of ambitious abandoned the sweet native Allen and rushed up the stairs, pushed out of the bay about finding their Vindication.

These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, uttered dark threats, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into bottomless pits, they themselves were dying there, men of precipitation from remote areas. Many went mad. The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to people to come, and perhaps not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility that a man has his, or some perfidious variation of his, is essentially zero.

Although it was hoped, at that time, in the explanation of the fundamental mysteries of humankind: the origin of the Library and of time. It is likely 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 the same, and the vocabulary and grammar of this language. For four centuries, men tire the hexagons ... There are official searchers, inquisitors. I saw them carry out their work: always get discouraged; speak of stairs without a stair, where he almost killed; of stairs and speak with the librarian of galleries, occasionally, take the book more closely and browse , looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything.

Immoderate to hope, of course, happened too depressed. The certitude that some shelf in some hexagon hid precious books, that these precious books were inaccessible, seemed almost intolerable. A blasphemous sect suggested that s'interrompessero the investigation and that all men give themselves to mix letters and symbols, to build up to an improbable gift of chance, these canonical books. The authorities were obliged to issue severe orders. The sect disappeared, but in my childhood I have seen old men who have long s'occultavano in the latrines with metal disks in a cartridge case forbidden, and weakly rimediavano the divine disorder.

Others, by contrast, believed that the important thing was to eliminate useless works. Invaded the hexagons, exhibiting credentials are not always false, leafed through a volume and angrily condemned whole shelves: their hygienic frenzy, ascetic, was responsible for the senseless destruction of millions of books. Their name is execrated, but who is desperate for "treasures" that the frenzy of those destroyed, neglected two obvious facts. One: the Library is so enormous that any reduction of human origin is infinitesimal. Second, every copy is unique, irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles, ie works which differ only by a letter or a comma. Contrary to general opinion, I believe that the consequences of the depredations committed by the Purifiers have been exaggerated by the horror that those inspired fanatics. They pushed him by the delirium of winning books Crimson Hexagon: books of normal size smaller, all-powerful, illustrated and magical.

We also know of another superstition of that time: the Man of the Book. In some shelf in some hexagon (men reasoned) there must exist a book which is the key and perfect compendium of all the rest: some librarian has read and is like a god. In the language of this area are preserved some traces of the cult of the official remote. Many peregrinarono in search of him, went in vain in the most distant galleries. How to find the venerable secret hexagon which housed? Someone proposed a regressive method: To locate book A, consult first book B; to locate book B, consult first a book C, and so to infinity ... In adventures such as these I have squandered and consumed my years.

It does not seem unlikely that some shelf in the universe there is a total book ^3, I pray the unknown gods that a man - one, and even thousands of years! - May have examined and read. If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, they are for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for a moment, in a being, Thy enormous Library be justified.

They claim that the wicked nonsense is normal in the Library, and that the reasonable (even humble and pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception. They speak (I know) of "feverish Library whose chance volumes are at constant risk of becoming other, and all claim, deny and confuse like a delirious divinity." These words, which not only denounce the disorder but exemplify it, testify to the generally poor taste and desperate ignorance of the pronunciation. In fact, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted from twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single absolute nonsense. Needless to observe that the best volume of the many hexagons under my administration is entitled Thunder combed, another The Plaster Cramp and another Axaxaxas subsume. These propositions, at first glance incoherent, are undoubtedly capable of a cryptographic or allegorical justification, that justification is verbal and, ex hypothesi, already figures in the Library. I can not imagine any combination of characters

dhcmrlchtdj

that the divine Library has not foreseen, and that in any of its secret tongues do not enclose a terrible significance. No one can articulate a syllable which is not filled with tenderness and fear, which is not in one of those languages, the powerful name of a god. Speak is to fall into tautology. This wordy and useless epistle already exists in one of the thirty volumes of the five shelves of one of the innumerable hexagons - and so well as his rebuttal. (An n number of possible languages ​​use the same vocabulary; in some, the symbol library allows the correct definition of ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries, but library is here for bread or pyramid or anything else, and other things are the seven words which define it. You who read me, are you sure of understanding my language?)

The methodical writing distracts me from the present condition of men, which the certainty of this, that everything is written, destroys or stultifying. I know of districts in which the young men prostrate themselves before books and kiss with barbarism pages, but they can not decipher a single letter. Epidemics, heretical discords, peregrinations which inevitably degenerate into banditry, have decimated the population. I think I have mentioned suicides, more frequent every year. M'inganneranno, perhaps, old age and fear, but I suspect that the human species - the only - is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible , secret.

Add: infinite. I do not introduce quest'aggettivo for rhetorical habit; say it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge limited supposed that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons could inconceivably cease, which is absurd. Who would imagine, without limits, forget that it limited the possible number of books. I venture to suggest this solution: The Library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler the traversasse in any direction, constaterebbe the end of time that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder (which, repeated, would be an order: the Order). This elegant ⁴ Hope welcomes my loneliness.

1941, Mar del Plata

^{1 The} original manuscript does not contain digits or upper case. Punctuation is limited to the comma and the point. These two signs, space, and twenty-two letters of the alphabet, the twenty-five symbols are sufficient to enumerate the unknown [Editor].

² First, for every three hexagons was a man. Suicide and pulmonary diseases have destroyed that proportion. Unspeakably sad fact: Sometimes I traveled for many nights polished corridors and stairs without finding a single librarian.

³ I repeat: why a book exists, it must be made ​​possible. Only the impossible is excluded. For example: no book is also a scale, although there are definitely books that discuss, who deny, that demonstrate this possibility and others whose structure corresponds to that of a ladder.

⁴ Letizia Álvarez de Toledo has observed that the vast Library is useless, strictly speaking, one need only a single volume, size, printed in the womb for nine or ten o'clock in the body, and composed of an infinite number of infinitely thin sheets. (Knights, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, said that every solid body is the superposition of an infinite number of planes). The handling of this silky vade mecum would not be convenient: each sheet is apparent in other similar sdoppierebbe; the inconceivable central film would not reverse.
Jorge Luis Borges' The Library of Babel

On Air: Oddities Consonanze Trabaci John (1580-1647) from "The Anatomy of Melancholy"

Comecar de novo

(Ivan Lins and Victor Martins)

Comecar de novo contar comigo
Vai valer failing ter amanhecido
I rebelado Ter, ter me debatido
I machucado Ter, ter sobrevivido
Ter virado mesa, ter me conhecido
Ter virado or barco, ter me socorrido
Comecar de novo contar comigo
Vai valer failing ter amanhecido

Shem as suas Garras always tao seguras
Sem teu or ghost, always your moldura
Sem suas escoras, sem teu or domain
Sem esporas Tuas, or sem teu fascínio
Comecar de novo contar comigo
Vai valer under penalty Já ter you esquecido
Comecar de novo

Hidden Song

My Wheel is in the dark!
I can not see a spoke
Yet know it's dripping feet
Go round and round.

My foot is on the Tide!
An unfrequented road -
Yet have all roads
A clearing at the end -

Some have Resigned the Loom -
Some in the busy tomb
Find quaint employ -

With some new - stately feet -
Royal Pass thro 'the gate -
Flinging the problem back
At you and I!
(Emily Dickinson)

On Air: Enrico Pieranunzi - Hidden Song

Changes Pt III

"I dream of water, and again I heard that dreaming of water mean change and water every time I dream I think, the curse, yet change. It will never end?

All about Finland Erlend Loe

Next Page »