| From the shambles of man's fall from linguistic unity with the destruction of Babel arose the library, a human construction which seeks to reassemble the scattered bits of knowledge into a visible whole. Yet, gradually, as the ever larger masses of documents threaten to expand beyond human control, the library becomes less and less accessible. Its outward visibility is countered by an inner opaqueness; its dream of unity becomes a threat; its rigid orders intimate a brutal usurpation of power.;But the burning of the library does not resolve the conflict or absolve man from the deadly rigid order he has constructed in his search for the Absolute. For fire is a complex element; the burning of the library has a sexual as well as a purificatory component. The madness of the librarians, their fears, and their disgust have a sexual as well as a linguistic aspect. As a review of the basic texts discussed in this thesis demonstrates (Chapter VI), in the rigidity of the library and the metamorphosis of the flames the librarian plays out a game of mythic, metaphysical proportions, as a denied sexuality is resurrected in fiery holocaust.;Overshadowed by the rigid orders he constructs, the librarian goes mad, a process which is exemplified in Cervantes' Don Quixote, Nabokov's Pale Fire, and O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds (Chapter II). This madness of the books is paralleled by a delirium of the catalogue, as the catalogue proliferates towards infinity, overwhelming the library it was intended to organize. No longer does the librarian insanely seek to overlay the library upon the world; in Borges and in Anatole France's The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, the library is the world (Chapter III). Consequently, the library-world, once a place of refuge, becomes a horrible place, full of noxious, unnatural growth (cf. Sartre's Nausea, Goytisolo's Count Julian, and Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (Chapter IV)). When the library becomes disgusting or fear-provoking, the desire to extirpate and purify the area gains force. In Williams' Paterson and Canetti's Auto-da-Fe (Chapter V), the means of this purification/destruction is by fire. |
