The Garden of Forking Paths

by Jorge Luis Borges

  Others, conversely, believed that the most important thing was to eliminate useless works. These men, showing credentials that were not always false, invaded the hexagons, pored over a single volume and condemned whole shelves. To their ascetic zeal for cleansing we owe the senseless loss of millions of books. The names of these perpetrators are still cursed, but those who mourn the “treasures” destroyed in such frenzy overlook two well-known facts. One, that the Library is so vast that any loss caused by humans is necessarily minute. The other, that each copy is unique, irreplaceable, but since the Library is a totality there are always several hundred thousand imperfect copies—works that differ in no other detail than a letter or a comma. Contrary to general opinion, I take the view that the damage caused by the Purifiers’ raids has been exaggerated as a result of the terror these fanatics unleashed. A madness drove them to defeat the books of the Crimson Hexagon—books of a smaller than average size, which were all-powerful, illustrated, and magical.

  We also know of another superstition of that time—that of the Man of the Book. On some shelf in some hexagon, it was said, there must be a book that is the sum and substance of all the others. A certain librarian has studied it and he is akin to a god. In the language of this particular zone, traces of the worship of this long-dead official remain. Many have made pilgrimages in search of Him. For a hundred years, they vainly exhausted every possible path. How were they to discover the venerated secret hexagon that gave Him shelter? Someone suggested that they should try working backwards. To find book A, first consult book B, which will tell where A is; to find book B, first consult book C, and so on ad infinitum. I have squandered and used up my years in quests of this kind. It seems to me quite possible that on some shelf or other in the world there may be an all-embracing book.15 I pray the unknown gods that one man —just one, even if thousands of years ago—has examined and read it. If honour and wisdom and happiness are not my lot, may they be the lot of others. May heaven exist, even if my place is in hell. Let me be reviled and obliterated, so long as for a single instant—in a single being—Your vast Library finds justification.

  Unbelievers insist that in the Library nonsense is the norm, while reason (or even simple, lowly coherence) is an almost miraculous exception. I know they speak of “the feverish Library, any one of whose haphazard volumes runs the endless risk of turning into any other and that all books affirm, deny, or cast confusion on this fact like a god in a state of delirium.” These words, which not only denounce but also exemplify chaos, are a clear proof of bad taste and hopeless ignorance. In fact, the Library includes every verbal structure and every permutation that the twenty-five symbols permit but not a single piece of sheer nonsense. It is of no purpose to point out that the best book in the many hexagons I administrate is entitled Combed Thunder, and another The Plaster Cramp, and a third Axaxaxas Mlö. These titles, although at first sight meaningless, must lend themselves to some coded or allegorical interpretation. Such an interpretation consists of words and so, by definition, is in the Library. I can make no combination of letters—evendhcmrlchtdj—which the divine library has not envisaged and that in one or another of its secret languages does not hold some fearful meaning. Any syllable full of tenderness or fear uttered in any one of those languages is the all-powerful name of a god. To speak is to fall into tautology. The present futile, long-winded epistle already exists in one of the thirty-two volumes of the five shelves in one of the numberless hexagons—as does its refutation. (An n number of possible languages use the same vocabulary; in some, the symbol for “library” correctly denotes “a ubiquitous, ever-lasting system of hexagonal galleries,” but in others “library” is “bread” or “pyramid” or anything else, and the seven words that define it have another meaning. Are you sure, you who are reading this, that you understand my language?)

  The act of writing methodically distracts me from the current condition of mankind. The certainty that everything is already written negates or makes phantoms of us. I know of regions where young people prostrate themselves before books and crudely kiss their pages but do not know how to decipher a single letter. Epidemics, heresies, pilgrimages that inevitably degenerate into hooliganism, have decimated the population. I believe I mentioned suicides, whose numbers rise every year. Perhaps age and fear deceive me, yet I suspect that the human race—the only race—stands on the brink of extinction but that the Library will live on—its lights burning, unvisited, infinite, perfectly still, and bristling with precious, useless, incorruptible, secret volumes.

  I have just used the word “infinite.” I did not choose this adjective out of rhetorical habit. I do not find it illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge the world to be limited put forward the notion that in remote parts the passageways and stairways and hexagons might inconceivably end. This is absurd. Those who imagine the world to be without limits forget that these are defined by the possible number of books. I make bold to suggest the following solution to the age-old question: The Library is limitless and recurrent. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, he would discover after centuries that the same volumes were repeated in the same random order. This, when it occurred, would be an order—the Order. My solitude is cheered by this elegant hope.16

  The Garden of

  The Branching Paths

  To Victoria Ocampo

  In his History of the World War (page 252), Liddell Hart writes that an assault on the Serre-Montauban line intended for the twenty-fourth of July, 1916, and consisting of thirteen British divisions supported by fourteen hundred guns, had to be postponed until the morning of the twenty-ninth. The cause of this otherwise inconsequential delay, he goes on, was torrential rain. The following statement, dictated, checked, and signed by Dr Yu Tsun, one-time head of English at the Tsingtao Hochschule, throws new light on the event. The first two pages are missing.

  . . . and replaced the receiver. Immediately afterwards, I realized I knew the voice, which had answered in German. It was that of Captain Richard Madden. Madden speaking from Viktor Runeberg’s flat meant the end of all our efforts and—but this seemed, or should have seemed, quite secondary—of our lives as well. It meant that Runeberg had been arrested, or killed.17 Before the sun set that day, I would suffer the same fate. Madden was implacable. Or, rather, he felt bound to be implacable. An Irishman in the service of England, a man accused of half-heartedness and even treason, how could he fail to welcome and seize upon such a miraculous gift—the discovery, capture, and perhaps death as well, of two agents of the German Empire?

  I went up to my room; absurdly, I locked the door and threw myself down on the narrow iron bedstead. Outside the window were the usual slate roofs and an overcast six o’clock evening sky. It was hard to believe that this unremarkable day, without an omen, without a warning, was to be the day of my inescapable death. Despite my dead father, despite having been a child in one of Hai Feng’s symmetrical gardens, was I about to die? I then reflected that everything that happens does so only to oneself and only now. Centuries of centuries pass, but events take place only in the present; countless men are battling in the air, on land, and at sea, yet all that really happens is happening to me.

  The almost unbearable memory of Madden’s horse-like face put an end to these ramblings. In the depths of my hatred and fear (now that I have outwitted Richard Madden, now that my neck yearns for the noose, I can admit my fear), I realized that this troublesome and doubtless happy warrior had no idea that I possessed the secret—the name of the place on the Ancre where the new British artillery depot was located. A bird streaked across the grey sky, and automatically I converted it into an aeroplane and that aeroplane into many—over France—demolishing the depot with a rain of bombs. If only, before a bullet silenced my mouth, I could shout out the name of that place so that it could be heard in Germany! But a human voice is feeble. How could I make mine reach my commander’s ears? The ears of that warped, loathsome man, who knew nothing of R
uneberg or me except that we were in Staffordshire but who, in his drab Berlin office, was poring over endless newspapers, vainly awaiting information from us.

  “I must get out of here,” I said aloud. Without making a sound, I stood up. It was a pointless perfection of silence, as if Madden were about to pounce. Something—perhaps the simple need to confirm that my resources were nil—made me go through my pockets. I found what I knew would be there. My American watch; a nickel-plated chain and square coin; a key-ring with the useless but compromising keys to Runeberg’s flat; my notebook; a letter I decided to destroy at once (and didn’t); a crown, two shillings, and a few pence; my blue-and-red pencil; a handkerchief; my revolver with a single bullet. Foolishly, I picked it up and, to bolster my courage, weighed it in my hand. A gunshot can be heard from some distance, I vaguely judged. Ten minutes later, my plan was ripe. The telephone directory gave me the name of the one person who could transmit my message. He lived out in the suburbs, in Fenton, less than half an hour away by train.

  I am a coward. I now confess it, now that I have carried out a plan which was nothing if not risky. I know it was a terrible thing to do. I certainly did not do it for Germany. I care nothing for a barbaric country that forced me into the ignominy of spying. What is more, I now know of an Englishman—a modest man—who in my view is Goethe’s equal. I only spoke to him for an hour, but for that hour hewas Goethe. I did the deed because I felt my commander had little regard for men of my race—for my numerous ancestors, who unite in me. I wanted to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies. Meanwhile, I had to get away from Captain Madden. At any moment his hand and his voice could sound at my door. I dressed quietly, bade myself farewell in the mirror, went downstairs, peered along the empty street, and slipped out. The station was only a short distance away, but I thought it best to take a taxi. That way, I told myself, I would run less risk of being spotted. As it was, in the deserted street I felt utterly visible and defenseless. I remember telling the driver to stop just before he reached the entrance. I alighted with deliberate, almost painful, slowness. My destination was the village of Ashgrove, but I bought a ticket for a station farther along the line.

  The train was due to leave in a minute or two—at eight fifty. I quickened my step; the next train would arrive at nine-thirty. There was hardly anyone on the platform. Boarding, I made my way along the corridor. I remember some farmworkers, a woman in mourning, a youth engrossed in Tacitus’s Annals, a wounded but happy soldier. Finally, we moved off. A man I recognized came dashing, too late, onto the platform. It was Captain Richard Madden. Devastated, trembling, I shrank down in my seat, pulling away from the fearful window.

  My devastation changed to a state of almost abject bliss. I told myself that I had already crossed swords and had scored the first hit by eluding, if only for forty minutes, if only by a stroke of luck, my adversary’s attack. This small triumph, I argued, foreshadowed total victory. Nor was it such a small triumph, since without the precious advantage afforded me by the train timetable I would be in prison or dead. I argued (no less falsely) that my cowardly joy proved I was a man who could bring the assignment to a successful end. Out of my weakness, I drew a strength that did not let me down. I foresee that man will daily give in to ever more hideous deeds, and that soon there will be no one but warriors and bandits. I give them this advice: To perform a hideous deed, a man must tell himself that he has already done it; he must force upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. This I did, as my eyes—those of a man already dead—took in the passing of that day and the gathering of the night. The train ran smoothly past a copse of ash trees, coming to a halt in what seemed open countryside. No one called out the name of the station.

  “Ashgrove?” I asked some boys outside the window.

  “Ashgrove,” they replied.

  I got down. A street lamp lit up the platform, but the boys’ faces remained in shadow.

  “Are you going to Dr Albert’s house?” one of them asked.

  Before I could reply, another said, “It’s a good distance from here, but if you take the first road on the left and then left again at each turning, you can’t go wrong.”

  I tossed them a coin (my last), made my way down some stone steps, and set off along the lonely road. It descended slowly, its surface unmade. Branches met overhead, and a low full moon seemed to keep company with me.

  For a moment, I thought that Richard Madden had somehow fathomed my desperate plan, but soon I realized this was impossible. It occurred to me that the advice to keep taking a left turn was the normal way to reach the central point of certain mazes. I know something about labyrinths. Not for nothing am I the great-grandson of the famous Ts’ui Pên, who was governor of Yunnan and who renounced office in order to write a novel that teemed with more characters than the Hung Lu Meng and to construct a maze in which all mankind might lose its way. Thirteen years he dedicated to these diverse labours, but a stranger’s hand struck him down, and his novel proved meaningless and no one ever found the maze.

  Under English trees I contemplated that lost labyrinth, imagining it pristine and inviolate in a mountain fastness. I imagined it obliterated by paddies or under water; I pictured it endless, no longer consisting of octagonal pavilions and of paths that turn back on themselves but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms. I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of a meandering, ever-growing labyrinth that would encompass the past and future and would somehow take in the heavenly bodies. Absorbed in these imaginings, I forgot my predicament as a hunted man. For untold moments, I felt I was a detached observer of the world. The living, twilit fields, the moon, the remains of the evening were playing on me; as was the easy slope of the road, which removed any chance of tiring. The evening was intimate, infinite. The road descended and branched across now shadowy pastures. A high-pitched, almost syllabic music drifted in, blurred by leaves and distance, and then moved off on wafting breezes. I reflected that a man can be an enemy of other men, of other moments of other men, but not of a country—not of fireflies, words, gardens, waterways, sunsets.

  I came to a high, rusty gate. Through its bars I made out an avenue and a sort of pavilion. At once, I grasped two things. The first was trivial, the second almost beyond belief. The music came from the pavilion, and the music was Chinese. This was why I had accepted it, without paying it any special heed. I do not remember whether there was a bellpull or a button or whether I called by clapping my hands. The scratchy music went on.

  From the inner depths of the house came a light, whose beam the trees intersected and sometimes blotted out. Shaped like a drum, the paper lantern was the colour of the moon. It was carried by a tall man, whose face I could not see, because the light blinded me. Opening the gate, he said slowly, in my language, “I see that the pious Hsi P’êng feels bound to correct my solitude. You have no doubt come to inspect the garden?”

  I recognized the name of one of our consuls and echoed, baffled, “The garden?”

  “The garden of branching paths.”

  Something stirred in my memory, and with utter conviction I said, “The garden of my ancestor Ts’ui Pên.”

  “Your ancestor? Your illustrious ancestor? Step inside.”

  The damp path zigzagged as in my childhood. We entered a library of Eastern and Western books. I recognized, bound in yellow silk, some manuscript volumes of the Lost Encyclopedia compiled for the Third Emperor of the Luminous Dynasty but never printed. A gramophone record still revolved beside a bronze phoenix. I also remember a famille rose vase and another, many centuries older, in that shade of blue copied by our potters from Persian craftsmen.

  Dr Albert watched me, smiling. He was, as I have said, tall, with sharp features, grey eyes, and grey whiskers. There was something of the priest and also the sailor about him. He told me he had been a missionary in Tientsin “before aspiring to become a Sinologist.”

  We sat down—I on a long, low divan, he with his back to the window and to a
grandfather clock. I worked out that my pursuer, Richard Madden, would not appear for at least an hour. My irrevocable plan could wait.

  “A strange fate, Ts’ui Pên’s,” said Stephen Albert. “Governor of his native province, a learned astronomer and astrologer, a tireless interpreter of the canonical books, a chess player, a famous poet and calligrapher—he gave up everything to write a book and build a maze. He renounced the pleasures of oppression, justice, the plural bed, banquets, and even learning to cloister himself for thirteen years in the Pavilion of Limpid Solitude. Upon his death, his heirs found nothing but a chaos of manuscripts. The family, as you must know, wanted to consign them to the flames, but his executor—a Taoist or Buddhist monk—insisted on their publication.”

  “Ts’ui Pên’s blood kin still curse that monk,” I replied. “The publication was pointless. The book is an indecisive pile of contradictory drafts. I have examined it on a couple of occasions. In the third chapter the hero dies, in the fourth he is alive. As for Ts’ui Pên’s other enterprise, his labyrinth— ”

  “Here it is,” Dr Albert said, pointing to a high, lacquered writing cabinet.

  “An ivory labyrinth!” I exclaimed. “A miniature labyrinth.”

  “A labyrinth of symbols,” he corrected. “An invisible labyrinth of time. It has been granted to me, a barbarous Englishman, to unravel this delicate mystery. After more than a hundred years, the details are irrecoverable, but it is not difficult to surmise what took place. Ts’ui Pên may once have said, ‘I am retiring to write a book.’ And on another occasion, ‘I am retiring to build a maze.’ Everyone imagined these to be two works; nobody thought that book and labyrinth were one and the same. The Pavilion of Limpid Solitude stood in the centre of what was perhaps an elaborately laid-out garden. This may have suggested a physical labyrinth. Ts’ui Pên died, and no one in his vast domains ever found the labyrinth. The confusion of the novel suggested to me that it was the labyrinth. Two facts corroborated this. One, the curious story that the maze Ts’ui Pên had planned was specifically infinite. The second, my discovery of a fragment of a letter.”