ance volumes are constantly in danger of changing into others and affirm, negate
 and confuse everything like a delirious divinity. these words, which not only d
enounce the disorder but exemplify it as well, notoriously prove their authors a
bominable taste and desperate ignorance. in truth, the library includes all verb
al structures, all variations permitted by the twenty five orthographical symbol
s, but not a single example of absolute nonsense. it is useless to observe that 
the best volume of the many hexagons under my administration is entitled the com
bed thunderclap and another the plaster cramp and another axaxaxas ml. these phr
ases, at first glance incoherent, can no doubt be justified in a cryptographical
 or allegorical manner. such a justification is verbal and, ex hypothesi, alread
y figures in the library. i cannot combine some characters, dhcmrlchtdj, which t
he 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 fille
d with tenderness and fear, which is not, in one of these languages, the powerfu
l name of a god. to speak is to fall into tautology. this wordy and useless epis
tle already exists in one of the thirty volumes of the five shelves of one of th
e innumerable hexagons and its refutation as well. an n number of possible langu
ages use the same vocabulary. in some of them, the symbol library allows the cor
rect definition a ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries, but libr
ary 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 c
ertitude 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 d
egenerate into banditry, have decimated the population. i believe i have mention
ed suicides, more and more frequent with the years. perhaps my old age and fearf
ulness deceive me, but i suspect that the human species the unique species is ab
out to be extinguished, but the library will endure, illuminated, solitary, infi
nite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptib
le, secret. i have just written the word infinite. i have not interpolated this 
adjective out of rhetorical habit. i say that it is not illogical to think that 
the world is infinite. those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote
 places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end 
which is absurd. those who imagine it to be without limit forget that the possib
le 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 trave
ler were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the sam
e volumes were repeated in the same disorder, which, thus repeated, would be a