t, looking for infamous words. obviously, no one expects to discover anything. a
s was natural, this inordinate hope was followed by an excessive depression. the
 certitude that some shelf in some hexagon held precious books and that these pr
ecious books were inaccessible, seemed almost intolerable. a blasphemous sect su
ggested that the searches should cease and that all men should juggle letters an
d symbols until they constructed, by an improbable gift of chance, these canonic
al books. the authorities were obliged to issue severe orders. the sect disappea
red, but in my childhood i have seen old men who, for long periods of time, woul
d hide in the latrines with some metal disks in a forbidden dice cup and feebly 
mimic the divine disorder. others, inversely, believed that it was fundamental t
o eliminate useless works. they invaded the hexagons, showed credentials which w
ere not always false, leafed through a volume with displeasure and condemned who
le shelves, their hygienic, ascetic furor caused the senseless perdition of mill
ions of books. their name is execrated, but those who deplore the treasures dest
royed by this frenzy neglect two notable facts. one, the library is so enormous 
that any reduction of human origin is infinitesimal. the other, every copy is un
ique, irreplaceable, but, since the library is total, there are always several h
undred thousand imperfect facsimiles, works which differ only in a letter or a c
omma. counter to general opinion, i venture to suppose that the consequences of 
the purifiers depredations have been exaggerated by the horror these fanatics pr
oduced. they were urged on by the delirium of trying to reach the books in the c
rimson hexagon, books whose format is smaller than usual, all powerful, illustra
ted and magical. we also know of another superstition of that time, that of the 
man of the book. on some shelf in some hexagon, men reasoned, there must exist a
 book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest, some libraria
n has gone through it and he is analogous to a god. in the language of this zone
 vestiges of this remote functionarys cult still persist. many wandered in searc
h of him. for a century they have exhausted in vain the most varied areas. how c
ould one locate the venerated and secret hexagon which housed him someone propos
ed a regressive method, to locate book a, consult first book b which indicates a
s position. to locate book b, consult first a book c, and so on to infinity... i
n adventures such as these, i have squandered and wasted my years. it does not s
eem unlikely to me that there is a total book on some shelf of the universe. i p
ray to the unknown gods that a man just one, even though it were thousands of ye
ars ago. may have examined and read it. if honor and wisdom and happiness are no
t 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 t
he library and that the reasonable, and even humble and pure coherence, is an al
most miraculous exception. they speak, i know, of the feverish library whose ch