From a volume in the famous Library of Babel. This library,
believed to have existed ab
aeterno, is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite
number of hexagonal galleries, each arranged around a vast air shaft and
each containing twenty shelves. Philosophers believe that the Library is
a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference
is inaccessible. It has been determined that each shelf in each gallery
contains thirty-five books; each book, four hundred and ten pages; each
page, forty lines; each line, eighty letters. The Library appears to contain
all possible combinations of twenty-five orthographical symbols. No two
books are identical, and logic dictates that together they contain all
knowledge that may be expressed in all languages, including a catalogue
of all the books contained in the Library, a history of the universe, the
true story of your life, a detailed description of the manner of your death,
and this description of the Library itself. Many pilgrims have spent their
lives wandering from hexagon to hexagon, ransacking the shelves in
vain searches for books that would explain the meaning of things. The vast
majority of the volumes, however, remain obscure or impenetrable, apparently
full of senseless cacaphonies, verbal jumbles, and incoherencies.
Most contain no single line in any known language. This leaf is probably
aremnant of a volume torn apart by a frustrated seeker after truth and
then thrown into one of the air shafts. Provenance: Collection of Pierre
Menard.
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