borges' The Library of Babel and the entirety of project moon
so i've been reading jorge luis borges' the library of babel and wanted to share what i've found, where project moon has taken inspiration and what it might imply for their worldbuilding, and inferred theories. everyone who played/watched lobcorp is aware that the end card of lobcorp is angela declaring the conception of the library of babel, literal and obvious, so it is confirmed a source of inspiration.
the structure of the library
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.
I declare that the Library is endless. Idealists argue that the hexagonal rooms are the necessary shape of absolute space, or at least of our perception of space. They argue that a triangular or pentagonal chamber is inconceivable.
Let it suffice for the moment that I repeat the classic dictum:
The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any hexagon and whose circumference is unattainable.
the structure of the library of ruina is obviously taken from this, clearly observed in the book burning screen:
but i also find it fascinating that it is hexagonal from the perspective of it being angela's ego: hexagons are the structure that pack the best and thus logically it is only obvious it would be chosen for the creation. efficient and rational.
there's a certain line i find quite fascinating,
(Mystics claim that their ecstasies reveal to them a circular chamber containing an enormous circular book with a continuous spine that goes completely around the walls. But their testimony is suspect, their words obscure. That cyclical book is God.)
this description really brings to my mind the image of a book like a pillar of sorts.
the background in ruina has series of random numbers and letters, not too different from the description of the books in the library of babel.
Like all the men of the Library, in my younger days I traveled; I have
journeyed in quest of a book, perhaps the catalog of catalogs. Now that my eyes can hardly make out what I myself have written, I am preparing to die, a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born.
3. the twenty five letters
twenty five and not twenty six. twenty two letters, and three punctuations: period, comma, and space. a friend has suggested that the punctuations may correspond to a/b/c corp.
throughout the story, one concept is continuously emphasised: that the library is the universe. the library is the entire world itself. in ruina, people can be turned into books. human beings can be reduced to the books that make up the library. this makes the fact that the sinners of limbus company are book characters quite interesting too.
This philosopher observed that all books, however different from one another they might be, consist of identical elements: the
space, the period, the comma, and the twenty-two letters of the alphabet.
only humans are allowed within the city, and anyone else is thrown out or executed. we can infer that every person that turns into a book, that book has meaning. in the story, the vast majority of the books in the library are made of mostly nonsense (though there is no book which is all nonsense). human beings are books with completely coherent meaning, monsters are those without. the whole world may be a library, but the outskirts are a mass of unsorted, largely meaningless and incoherent masses of information, while the city is an organised library.
Infidels claim that the rule in the Library is not "sense;' but "non-sense; 'and that "rationality" (even humble, pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception. They speak, I know, of "the feverish Library, whose random volumes constantly threaten to transmogrify into others, so that they affirm all things, deny all things, and confound and confuse all things, like some mad and hallucinating deity." Those words, which not only proclaim disorder but exemplify it as well, prove, as all can see, the infidels' deplorable taste and desperate ignorance. For while the Library contains all verbal structures, all the variations allowed by the twenty-five orthographic symbols, it includes not a single absolute piece of nonsense.
Their name is execrated today, but those who grieve over the "treasures" destroyed in that frenzy overlook two widely acknowledged facts: One, that the Library is so huge that any reduction by human hands must be infinitesimal. And two, that each book is unique and irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles-books that differ by
no more than a single letter, or a comma.
the head famously does not like clones or machines, things that can replace every individual, original human. this is a reflection of the head's rarely-sighted concern for mankind (owing to apocalypse bird), this insistence that every human being must be respected in their individuality.
5. the inquisitors and the head
For four centuries, men have been scouring the hexagons âŚ. There are official searchers, the "inquisitors." I have seen them about their tasks: they arrive exhausted at some hexagon, they talk about a staircase that nearly killed them-rungs were missing-they speak with the librarian about galleries and staircases, and, once in a while, they take up the nearest book and leaf through it, searching for disgraceful or dishonorable words.
this, i feel, could refer both to the arbiters as well as n corp. n corp is actually not too dissimilar from the head and its policies: the heavy-handed, demiurge-like protection of mankind and its sanctity through violent means. anthropocentric belief, elimination of entities that don't fit the criteria, trying to prevent a future they don't want no matter what it takes. sheltering mankind within the wings, safe from the outskirts; sheltering people by forcing them to live life through canned experience, so they may never ever seek to leave plato's cave and only be satisfied with the shadows on the wall.
I am perhaps misled by old age and fear, but I suspect that the human species-the only species-teeters at the verge of extinction, yet that the Library enlightened, solitary, infinite, perfectly unmoving, armed with precious volumes, pointless, incorruptible, and secret-will endure.
humanity will endure, must endure; and this is the ark that will fulfill that purpose.
