So many books, so little time

If anyone wants to read the whole thing, you can find it here, posted here in good faith, “to encourage in-depth discussion about all things related to books” - and written for nothing but love of the short story and Borges.

In any case, here’s a summary of my findings:

1. 'The Library of Babel’ is about a library that, while not infinite, is stupendously vast, in order to contain the total of all possible book generated according to a set off given parameters. Nearly every such book would be seeming gibberish. The narrator of the story offers as an example of rare, legible but ultimately inscrutable text ever found in the Library the phrase ‘O Time thy pyramids.'

2. I discovered the real-world origin of the phrase (and then in writing my piece, learnt a few others had a similar inkling too tho it’s only been conjecture so far).

3. Question is, why would Borges secrete this literary reference into the story, when the other references are explicit? as an easter egg? a private joke?

4. Consider that the narrator longs / hopes that someone will find the justification of the Library ("let his place be heaven even though my own place be hell.")

5. Now, I think I've discovered that Borges also obliquely mentioned where ‘O time thy pyramids' is located in the Library by giving us its circuit number.

6. That number, as I hope I show, is when Borges estimates the phrase was written in real literary history.

7. Considering that those words ‘O Time thy pyramids' could've been anywhere in a library that's many many times bigger than our own universe, then the chances it would be in a circuit number the same as the year it was written are vanishingly small.

8. It's in fact miraculous: a hint of divine design in seeming chaos, just what the narrator had longed for.

9. What's the point of this secret miracle then? a) The source of the reference reinforces the idea that the Library is a metaphor for time: arbitrary, random, falsely novel, neverchanging. The Library/time/the universe conceived of this way - as predestined, total, eternal, arbitrary -"annuls" the librarians, dismays them. But the secret miracle shows it's not arbitrary after all. They, like the narrator, like us readers, just never noticed it.

10. So but then why did Borges make this all so secret? Because I believe the reader was meant to overlook the ‘miracle' in the same way that the narrator longed for a divine justification to the Library, but overlooked one that was right in front of him. Which would make 'The Library of Babel’ a unique example, I think, in literature where the whole aesthetic and metaphysical point is for the reader to not even realise they missed something.

Anyway, I had fun writing this up, hope anyone who’s interested will have fun joining me down the rabbit-hole too.