The uni­verse (which oth­ers call the Li­bra­ry) is com­posed of an ^∞in­de­fi­nite and per­haps ∞_te num­ber of _al gal­ler­ies, with vast air shafts be­tween, sur­round­ed by very low rail­ings. From any of the _s 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 floor to ceil­ing, scarce­ly ex­ceeds that of a nor­mal book­case. One of the free sides leads to a nar­row hall­way which op­ens on­to an­oth­er gal­lery, ⁼iden­ti­cal to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the hall­ways there are two very small clos­ets. In the first, one may sleep stand­ing up; in the oth­er, sa­tis­fy one’s fe­cal ne­cess­i­ties. Al­so through here pas­ses a spi­ral stair­way, which sinks ab­ys­mal­ly and soars up­wards to re­mote dis­tan­ces. In the hall­way there is a mir­ror which faith­ful­ly dup­li­cates all ap­pear­an­ces. Men us­u­al­ly in­fer from this mir­ror that the Li­bra­ry is not ∞_te (if it real­ly were, why this il­lu­so­ry du­pli­ca­tion?); I pre­fer to dream that its po­lish­ed sur­fa­ces re­pre­sent and pro­mise the ∞_te… Light is pro­vi­ded by some spher­i­cal fruit which bear the name of lamps. There are two, trans­vers­al­ly placed, in each . The light they em­it is in­suf­fi­cient, ^∞in­ces­sant. Like all men of the Li­bra­ry, I have tra­vel­led in my youth; I have wan­der­ed in search of a book, per­haps the cat­a­logue of cat­a­logues; now that my eyes can hard­ly de­ci­pher what I write, I am pre­par­ing to die just a few leagues from the in which I was born. Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pi­ous hands to throw me over the rail­ing; my grave will be the ^∞fa­thom­less air; my bo­dy will sink ^∞end­less­ly and de­cay and dis­solve in the wind gen­er­ated by the fall, which is ∞_te. I say that the Li­bra­ry is ^∞un­end­ing. The id­eal­ists ar­gue that the _al rooms are a ne­ces­sa­ry form of ab­so­lute space or, at least, of our in­tu­i­tion of a space. They rea­son that a _ar or _al room is in­con­ceiv­a­ble. (The my­stics claim that their ec­sta­sy re­veals to them a _ar cham­ber con­tain­ing a great _ar book, whose spine is con­tinu­ous and which fol­lows the com­plete of the walls; but their tes­ti­mo­ny is sus­pect; their words, ob­scure. The cy­cli­cal book is God.) Let it suf­fice now for me to re­peat the clas­sic dic­tum: The Li­bra­ry is a whose ex­act cen­ter is any one of the _s and whose cir­cum­fer­ence is in­ac­ces­si­ble.
There are five shelves for each of the _’s walls; each shelf con­tains thirty-five books of uni­form format; each book is of four hun­dred and ten pages; each page, of for­ty lines, each line, of some eigh­ty let­ters which are black in co­lor. 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, in spite of its tra­gic pro­jec­tions, is per­haps the cap­i­tal fact in his­to­ry) I wish to re­call a few ax­ioms.
First: The Li­bra­ry ex­ists ab ^∞ae­ter­no. This truth, whose im­me­di­ate cor­ol­la­ry is the fu­ture ^∞eter­ni­ty of the world, can­not be placed in doubt by any rea­son­a­ble mind. Man, the im­per­fect lib­rar­i­an, may be the pro­duct of chance or of ma­le­vo­lent de­mi­ur­gi; the un­i­verse, with its el­e­gant en­dow­ment of shelves, of en­ig­ma­tical vol­umes, of ^∞in­ex­haus­tible stair­ways for the tra­ve­ler and la­trines for the seat­ed lib­rar­i­an, can only be the work of a god. To per­ceive the dis­tance be­tween the di­vine and the hu­man, it 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 or­tho­graph­i­cal sym­bols are twenty-five in num­ber. § The or­i­gi­nal man­u­script does not con­tain di­gits or ca­pi­tal let­ters. The punc­tu­a­tion has been li­mi­ted to the com­ma and the pe­riod. These two signs, the space and the twenty-two let­ters of the al­pha­bet are the twenty-five sym­bols con­si­der­ed suf­fi­cient by this un­known au­thor. [Editor’s note.]  This find­ing made it pos­si­ble, three hun­dred years ago, to for­mu­late a ge­ne­ral the­o­ry of the Li­bra­ry and solve sa­tis­fac­tor­i­ly the pro­blem which no con­jec­ture had de­ciph­er­ed: the form­less and cha­o­tic na­ture of al­most all the books. One which my fa­ther saw in a on cir­cuit fif­teen nine­ty-four was made up of the let­ters MCV, per­verse­ly re­peat­ed from the first line to the last. An­oth­er (very much con­sul­ted in this ar­ea) is a mere la­by­rinth of let­ters, but the next to last page says Oh time thy py­ra­mids. This much is al­rea­dy known: for ev­e­ry sen­si­ble line of straight­for­ward state­ment, there are leagues of sense­less ca­co­pho­nies, ver­bal jum­bles and in­co­her­en­ces. (I know of an un­couth re­gion whose lib­ra­rians re­pu­di­ate the vain and su­persti­tious cus­tom of find­ing a mean­ing in books and ⁼e­quate it with that of find­ing a mean­ing in dreams or in the cha­o­tic lines of one’s palm… They ad­mit that the in­ven­tors of this writ­ing im­i­tat­ed the twen­ty-five nat­ural sym­bols, but main­tain that this app­li­ca­tion is ac­ci­den­tal and that the books sig­ni­fy no­thing in them­selves. This dic­tum, we shall see, is not en­tire­ly fal­la­cious.)
For a long time it was be­lieved that these im­pe­ne­tra­ble books cor­re­spon­ded to past or re­mote lang­ua­ges. It is true that the most an­cient men, the first lib­ra­ri­ans, used a lan­guage quite dif­fer­ent from the one we now speak; it is true that a few miles to the right the tongue is di­a­lec­ti­cal and that nine­ty floors far­ther up, it is in­com­pre­hen­si­ble. All this, I re­peat, is true, but four hun­dred and ten pa­ges of in­al­ter­a­ble MCV’s can­not cor­res­pond to an­y lan­guage, no mat­ter how di­a­lec­ti­cal or ru­di­men­ta­ry it may be. Some in­sin­u­a­ted that each let­ter could in­flu­ence the fol­low­ing one and that the va­lue of MCV on the third line of page 71 was not the one the same se­ries may have in an­oth­er pos­i­tion on an­oth­er page, but this vague the­sis did not pre­vail. Oth­ers thought of cryp­to­graphs; gen­er­al­ly, this con­jec­ture has been ac­cep­ted, though not in the sense in which it was for­mu­la­ted by its ori­gi­na­tors.
Five hun­dred years ago, the chief of an up­per § Be­fore, there was a man for ev­ery three _s. Su­i­cide and pul­mo­na­ry di­sea­ses have des­troyed that pro­por­tion. A mem­ory of un­speak­a­ble me­lan­cho­ly: at times I have tra­vel­ed for many nights through cor­ri­dors and along po­lished stair­ways with­out find­ing a sin­gle lib­rar­i­an.  came upon a book as con­fu­sing as the oth­ers, but which had near­ly two pa­ges of ho­mo­ge­ne­ous lines. He showed his find to a wan­der­ing de­co­der who told him the lines were writ­ten in Por­tu­guese; an­oth­er said they were Yid­dish. With­in a cen­tu­ry, the lan­guage was es­ta­blished: a Sa­moye­dic Lith­u­a­ni­an di­a­lect of Gua­ra­ni, with clas­si­cal Ar­ab­i­an in­flec­tions. The con­tent was al­so de­ciph­ered: some no­tions of com­bi­na­tive an­al­y­sis, il­lus­tra­ted with ex­am­ples of va­ri­a­tion in ^∞un­li­mi­ted re­pe­ti­tion. These ex­am­ples made it pos­si­ble for a lib­ra­ri­an of gen­i­us to dis­co­ver the fun­da­men­tal law of the Li­bra­ry. The think­er ob­served that all the books, no mat­ter how di­verse they might be, are made up of the same el­e­ments: the space, the pe­ri­od, the com­ma, the twen­ty-two let­ters of the al­pha­bet. He al­so al­leged a fact which tra­ve­lers have con­firmed: In the vast Li­bra­ry there are no two id­en­ti­cal books. From these two in­con­tro­ver­ti­ble pre­mi­ses he de­duced that the Li­bra­ry is to­tal and that its shelves re­gis­ter all the pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions of the twen­ty-odd or­tho­graph­i­cal sym­bols (a num­ber which, though ex­treme­ly vast, is not ∞_te): in oth­er words, all that it is gi­ven to ex­press, in all lan­guages. Ev­e­ry­thing: the mi­nute­ly de­tailed his­to­ry of the fu­ture, the arch­an­gels’ au­to­bi­o­graph­ies, the faith­ful cat­a­log of the Li­bra­ry, thou­sands and thou­sands of false cat­a­logues, the de­mon­stra­tion of the fal­la­cy of those cat­a­logues, the de­mon­stra­tion of the fal­la­cy of the true cat­a­logue, the Gnos­tic ­gospel of Ba­si­li­des, the com­men­ta­ry on that gos­pel, the true sto­ry 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 of ex­tra­va­gant hap­pi­ness. All men felt them­selves to be the mas­ters of an in­tact and sec­ret trea­sure. There was no per­so­nal or world prob­lem whose el­e­gant so­lu­tion did not ex­ist in some . The un­i­verse was jus­ti­fied, the uni­verse sud­den­ly ur­urp­ed the ^∞un­li­mi­ted di­men­sions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vin­di­ca­tions: books of ap­ol­o­gy and proph­e­cy which vin­di­ca­ted for all time the acts of every man in the un­i­verse and re­tained pro­di­gious ar­ca­na for his fu­ture. Thou­sands of the gree­dy ab­an­doned their sweet na­tive _s and rushed up the stair­ways, urged on by the vain in­ten­tion of find­ing their Vin­di­ca­tion. These pil­grims dis­pu­ted in the nar­row cor­ri­dors, prof­fered dark cur­ses, stran­gled each oth­er on the di­vine stair­ways, flung the de­cep­tive books in­to the air shafts, met their death cast down in a si­mi­lar fa­shion by the in­ha­bi­tants of re­mote re­gions. Oth­ers went mad… the Vin­di­ca­tions ex­ist (I have seen two which re­fer to per­sons of the fu­ture, to per­sons who are per­haps not ima­gi­na­ry) but the sear­chers did not re­mem­ber that the pos­si­bi­li­ty of a man’s find­ing his Vin­di­ca­tion, or some treach­er­ous var­i­a­tion there­of, can be com­pu­ted as ze­ro.
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 _s… 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.
As was nat­u­ral, this in­or­di­nate hope was fol­lowed by an ex­ces­sive de­pres­sion. The cer­ti­tude that some shelf in some held pre­cious books and that these pre­cious books were in­ac­ces­si­ble, seemed al­most in­to­le­ra­ble. A blas­phe­mous sect sug­ges­ted that the sear­ches should cease and that all men should jug­gle let­ters and sym­bols un­til they con­struc­ted, by 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, for long per­i­ods of time, would hide in the lat­rines with some me­tal disks in a for­bid­den dice cup and feeb­ly mim­ic the di­vine dis­or­der.
Oth­ers, in­verse­ly, be­lieved it was fun­da­men­tal to el­i­mi­nate use­less works. They in­va­ded the _s, showed cre­den­tials which were not al­ways false, leafed through a volume with dis­plea­sure and con­demned whole shelves: their hy­gie­nic, as­ce­tic fur­or caused the sense­less per­di­tion of mil­lions of books. Their name is ex­e­cra­ted, but those who de­plore the “trea­su­res” des­troyed by this fren­zy neg­lect two no­ta­ble facts. One: the Li­bra­ry is so en­or­mous that any re­duc­tion of hu­man or­i­gin is ∞_es­i­mal. The oth­er: ev­e­ry co­py is un­ique, ir­re­place­a­ble, but (since the Li­bra­ry is to­tal) there are al­ways se­ver­al hun­dred thous­and im­per­fect fac­si­mi­les: works which dif­fer on­ly in a let­ter or a com­ma. Coun­ter to gen­e­ral op­in­ion, I ven­ture to sup­pose that the con­se­quen­ces of the Pu­ri­fi­ers’ de­pre­da­tions have been ex­ag­ger­a­ted by the hor­ror these fa­na­tics pro­duced. They were urged on by the de­li­ri­um of try­ing to reach the books in the Crim­son : books whose for­mat is smal­ler than us­u­al, all-pow­er­ful, il­lus­tra­ted and ma­gi­cal.
We also know of an­­oth­er su­per­sti­tion of that time: that of the Man of the Book. On some shelf in some (men rea­soned) there must ex­ist a book which is the for­mu­la and per­fect com­pen­di­um of all the rest: some lib­ra­ri­an has gone through it and he is an­al­o­gous to a god. In the lan­guage of this zone ves­ti­ges of this re­mote func­tion­a­ry’s cult still per­sist. Ma­ny wan­dered in search of Him. For a cen­tu­ry they ex­haus­ted in vain the most va­ried areas. How could one lo­cate the ve­ner­a­ted and sec­ret which housed Him? Some­one pro­posed a re­gres­sive met­hod: To lo­cate book A, first con­sult a book B which in­di­cates A’s po­si­tion; to lo­cate book B, con­sult first a book C, and so on to ∞ … In ad­ven­tures such as these, I have squan­dered and was­ted my years. It does not seem un­like­ly to me that there is a to­tal book on some shelf of the un­i­verse; § I re­peat: It suf­fi­ces that a book be pos­si­ble for it to ex­ist. On­ly the im­pos­si­ble is ex­clu­ded. For ex­am­ple: no book can be a lad­der, al­though no doubt there are books which dis­cuss and ^–ne­gate and de­mon­strate this pos­si­bi­li­ty and oth­ers whose struc­ture cor­res­ponds to that of a lad­der.  I pray to the un­known gods that a man—just one, ev­en though it were thou­sands of years ago!—may have ex­a­mined and read it. If ho­nor and wis­dom and hap­pi­ness are not for me, let them be for oth­ers. Let hea­ven ex­ist, though my place be in hell. Let me be out­raged and an­ni­hi­la­ted, but for one in­stant, in one be­ing, let Your en­or­mous Li­bra­ry be jus­ti­fied. The im­pi­ous main­tain that non­sense is nor­mal in the Li­bra­ry and that the rea­son­a­ble (and even hum­ble and pure co­he­rence) is an al­most mi­ra­cu­lous ex­cep­tion. They speak (I know) of the “fe­ver­ish Li­bra­ry whose chance vol­umes are con­stant­ly in dan­ger of chang­ing in­to oth­ers and ⁺af­firm, ^–ne­gate and con­fuse ev­ery­thing like a de­li­ri­ous di­vi­ni­ty.” These words, which not on­ly de­nounce the dis­or­der but ex­em­pli­fy it as well, no­to­ri­ous­ly prove their au­thors’ ab­o­mi­na­ble taste and des­pe­rate ig­no­rance. In truth, the Li­bra­ry in­cludes all ver­bal struc­tures, all va­ri­a­tions per­mit­ted by the twen­ty-five or­tho­graph­i­cal sym­bols, but not a sin­gle ex­am­ple of ab­so­lute non­sense. It is use­less to ob­serve that the best vo­lume of the many _s un­der my ad­mi­ni­stra­tion is en­tit­led The Combed Thun­der­clap and an­oth­er The Plas­ter Cramp and an­oth­er Ax­ax­ax­as mlö. These phra­ses, at first glance in­co­he­rent, can no doubt be jus­ti­fied in a cryp­to­graph­i­cal or al­le­go­ri­cal man­ner; such a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is ver­bal and, ex hy­po­the­si, al­ready fi­gures in the Li­bra­ry. I can­not com­bine some char­ac­ters
dhcmrlchtdj
which the di­vine Li­bra­ry has not fore­seen and which in one of its sec­ret tongues do not con­tain a ter­ri­ble mean­ing. No one can ar­ti­cu­late a syl­la­ble which is not filled with ten­der­ness and fear, which is not, in one of these lan­guages, the pow­er­ful name of a god. To 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 _s—and its re­fu­ta­tion as well. (An n num­ber of pos­si­ble lan­guages use the same vo­ca­bu­la­ry; in some of them, the sym­bol Li­bra­ry al­lows the cor­rect de­fi­ni­tion a ub­i­qui­tous and las­ting sys­tem of _al gal­ler­ies, but Li­bra­ry is bread or py­ra­mid or an­y­thing else, and these se­ven words which de­fine it have an­oth­er value. You who read me, are You sure of un­der­stan­ding my lan­guage?)
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. Ep­i­de­mics, he­re­ti­cal con­flicts, pe­re­gri­na­tions which in­ev­it­a­bly de­ge­ne­rate in­to ban­dit­ry, have de­ci­ma­ted the pop­u­la­tion. I be­lieve I have men­tioned the su­i­cides, more and more fre­quent with the years. Per­haps my old age and fear­ful­ness de­ceive me, but I sus­pect that the hu­man spe­cies—the un­ique spe­cies—is ab­out to be ex­tin­guished, but the Li­bra­ry will en­dure: il­lu­mi­na­ted, so­li­ta­ry, ∞_te, per­fect­ly mo­tion­less, equ­ip­ped with pre­cious vol­umes, use­less, in­cor­rup­ti­ble, sec­ret.
I have just writ­ten the word “∞_te.” I have not in­ter­po­la­ted this ad­jec­tive out of rhe­to­ri­cal ha­bit; I say that it is not il­lo­gi­cal to think that the world is ∞_te. Those who judge it to be li­mi­ted pos­tu­late that in re­mote pla­ces the cor­ri­dors and stair­ways and _s can con­cei­va­bly come to an end—which is ab­surd. Those who im­a­gine it to be with­out li­mit for­get that the pos­si­ble num­ber of books does have such a li­mit. I ven­ture to sug­gest this so­lu­tion to the an­cient prob­lem: The Li­bra­ry is ^∞un­li­mi­ted and cy­cl­i­cal. If an et­er­nal tra­ve­ler were to cross it in any di­rec­tion, af­ter cen­tur­ies he would see the same vol­umes re­pea­ted in the same dis­or­der (which, thus re­pea­ted, would be an or­der: the Or­der). My so­li­tude is glad­dened by this el­e­gant hope. § Le­ti­zia Ál­va­rez de To­le­do has ob­served that this vast Li­bra­ry is use­less: ri­go­rous­ly speak­ing, a sin­gle vol­ume would be suf­fi­cient, a vol­ume of or­di­na­ry for­mat, prin­ted in nine or ten point type, con­tain­ing an ∞_te num­ber of ∞_ly thin leaves. (In the ear­ly se­ven­teenth cen­tu­ry, Ca­va­lie­ri said that all so­lid bo­dies are the su­per­im­po­si­tion of an ∞_te num­ber of planes.) The hand­ling of this sil­ky va­de me­cum would not be con­ve­ni­ent: each ap­pa­rent page would un­fold in­to oth­er an­al­o­gous ones; the in­con­cei­va­ble mid­dle page would have no re­verse.