Antiquitopia

It seems like I am thinking about Babel/Babble lately with my last post and just (re)reading "Library of Babel" by Borges. I had read this short story in college, and it has persisted in my memory ever since. This library is eternal and infinite. Each room is a hexagon with the same number of shelves and books on each wall (except two). Two walls lead to adjacent hexagons, while a spiral staircase infinitely moves up and down to different floors with ever new hexagons. There are no two books alike in the library, but the books contain all possible combinations of twenty-five symbols, with all possible syntaxes, languages, books, writing, and, well, babble. As such, this same blog posting will be already found somewhere in the library (as well as any past and future postings I may write and miswrite). The inhabitants of this library are called librarians. The main character is a librarian who has been searching for the book of books, the catalogue of catalogues, all of...

I think I will just quote from the master of quotes without commentary (or little commentary outside of this sentence), itself Walter Benjamin's ultimate goal, from his own "Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting": Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order? ...the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth. To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves. Make your own order of my chaos of quotation, my poaching of words.