which the 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 filled with tenderness and fear,
which is not, in one of these languages

the powerful name of a god.

To speak is to fall into tautology.

This wordy and useless epistle already exists in one of

the thirty volumes of the five shelves of one of the innumerable hexagons - and its refutation as well.

(An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some of them,
the symbol library allows the correct definition a ubiquitous and lasting system of hexagonal galleries,

but library 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 certitude 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 degenerate into banditry,
have decimated the population.

I believe I have mentioned suicides, more and more frequent with the years.

Perhaps my old age and fearfulness deceive me, but I suspect that the human species - the unique species -

is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure:
illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless,
equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, 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 possible 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 traveler were to cross it in any direction,
after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder
(which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order).

My solitude is gladdened by this elegant hope 4.