In Genesis, the story goes, that all people were once united and all spoke the same language. They sought to build a tower, high enough to reach the heavens. When God saw their collective ability to do just that, he scattered them and confounded their speech so that they would not be able to communicate and so not be able to achieve their full, united potential.

This story, combined of course with Borges’ The Library of Babel, inspired the title of my piece, for I wanted to look between the chaos, created by our differences, between the words that are imposed upon us, and seek those that some authority has forced us to disregard, seeking a more simple unity lying beneath them.

A snippet of text that created itself one distracted evening… (Excuse my grammatically incorrect use of commas to distinguish vocal pauses.)

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So, I wanted to tell you a story. That’s, kind of the point of this whole thing; me being here, you being here. The whole, construct that we’re working with here means that you’re going to listen to me, whether you enjoy yourselves or hate every second is kind of by the by, that’s down to you as much as it is down to me. But, enjoyment aside, I have 8-12 minutes of your attention, give or take. Which, considering I’ve been talking for about 90 seconds already and haven’t given you the least clue as to what story I’m about to tell you, isn’t all that long. And when I realised that, suddenly this felt like a pretty serious responsibility, that is, choosing which story to tell. I mean, I wasn’t quite sure which story I wanted to tell…

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I spent some time working out how directly Borges’ The Library of Babel was going to be involved in my actual script. This is a collection of, in my opinion, the most important extracts that I would like to involve in my final piece.

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Come, come, come. I hope you enjoyed your time in Great British Literature from the 19^th and 20^th century! Everyone does; plenty of familiar names in there. What I’ve got to show you is something quite different. For all isn’t as it seems to be.

The Great Library in which we stand, some call it the universe, contains all. Every story that is, has been and will be exists within this great library for I declare that the library is endless, infinite. Though today we stand in just one of an endless number of rooms, each constructed just as this one is, with six sides and four bookcases each holding 32 books of 410 pages, each page of 40 lines each line of approximately 40 letters, standing side by side, on every side, and one on top of the other, each with a single square shaft through which one can glimpse the others, continuing on from one another endlessly, and so know the limitlessness of the great library.

There is no combination of characters one can make that the divine library has not forseen, [and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance] for the Library is total, perfect, complete and whole. [For every rational line or forth-right statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense and incoherency.] The certainty that everything has already been written, annuls us.

Clearly no one expects to discover anything. And yet, I think, therefore I am, I wonder how it is then, tell me this, if every story exists why hasn’t every tale been told?

Why is it that we know and ‘love’ and remember those stories and simply accept them as the ones we should read, without question?

What if I could tell you a story that you had never heard, for you had never sought to find it?

This is my goal, my collection, my legacy.  [Methodological composition distracts me from the present condition of humanity] Here stands the works of a collector who sought the unseen stories, for, in order for a book to exist it is sufficient only that it be possible…

 

Yet, let me tell you this; the Library itself is infinite, that we have established, yet if every story can be written in 410 pages, each page of 40 lines each line of approximately 40 letters, those letters being only those belonging to our pre-existing, predetermined alphabet, the combination of those letters though unimaginably vast is not infinite.

Those who picture the world as unlimited forget that the possible number of books is not. Therefore, the library is unlimited, yet periodic. Travelling for the greatest length of time one would find them same volumes repeated in the same disorder which, in being so, becomes order.

[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 will be infinite.]

I am cheered by that. But must leave you with this and urge you to remember, it is not as it seems to be.

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
For all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

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Borges again, this poem seemed to sum up a lot of the anxiety I was feeling about being at a particular point in my life where I am reflecting on where I’ve been and with who, what it has meant and how much it has impacted upon and will influence wherever it is I shall be moving on to.

As a joint English student with a particular personal interest in poetry it is not surprising that the form heavily influenced my final script. This point will be discussed further when blogging about script creation.

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Jorge Luis Borges, Limites (1958), Online: http://genius.com/Jorge-luis-borges-limits-annotated , (accessed 12 March 2015).

Jorge Luis Borges – The Library of Babel

This is the key text that I wish to build my piece around; I chose it for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Borges’ imagery in this short story has stuck with me since I first came across the piece a year or so ago; that a ‘library’ doesn’t have to be just that, but can be eloquently translated into a haunting metaphor for the universe.

Secondly, I personally think that that metaphor is amazingly beautiful and powerful; are we, inhabitants of this universe, not all stories waiting to be read? Are we not all unique, full of meaning yet at times uninterpretable? Are we not all allocated a time and place and yet, are movable and transient? Do we not all try and read others in our search for understanding?

Thirdly, I like maths. I find a comfort in the structured organisation of solvable equations and projectable hypotheses. If I could therefore create Borges’ library, or at least a small part of it, I could perhaps create a space that is simultaneously abstract, irresolute and yet tangible and even reassuring. Creating the library seemed to me the perfect setting in which to order and represent my ideas.

Lastly, I wished to address the construct of storytelling, seeking knowledge through the written word and the reverence we assign such writing. Creating a library which was representative of the universe, centred on words, stories and books would, in my opinion, therefore highlight and amplify their status, and so be an ideal setting in which to question their purpose and power.