The Historiography of Babel

When Borges’ Library of Babel is invoked, it is normally described synchronically, i.e., at one particular moment in time. Indeed, I suspect that our current understanding of the Library, or any understanding of the Library, depends on ignoring its diachronic aspect. When this is acknowledged we understand that we are dealing merely with the ravings of a madman. “The Library of Babel” is incomprehensible.

According to the narrator, there is no doubt that the Library has a history. He himself claims, for example, to have a biography. “I have travelled in my youth,” he tells us. “I am preparing to die.” And while the Library is said to exist eternally, it has a history of ancient and modern conflict and struggle. It has a social order. It has a notion of genius.

And yet it has no school. No hospital. No family dwellings. It has neither a legal system nor a prison industry. It has no seat of government.

As in our own Universe, however, the most significant events in the history of the Library seem to be quite recent: “a general theory of the Library” was developed three hundred years ago. Five hundred years ago a book was found that would later allow “a librarian of genius to discover the fundamental law of the Library.”

“For a long time it was believed that these impenetrable books belonged to past or remote languages. It is true that the most ancient men, the first librarians, made use of a language quite different from the one we speak today.”

The library itself does not change, yet its language does.

These apparently historical facts raise important questions of scholarship, journalism and documentation. Where, after all, is the living history of the library recorded? How were the various theories of the library communicated, discussed and discarded? Where are the newspapers and the scholarly journals? Where is the much more orderly catalogue of these writings, which have been produced, not by the original builders of the library, but by its melancholy librarians? Where, in the vast library, is there room for discourse?

The lack of answers to these questions suggests a very simple solution, which I have suggested in an earlier post. There is only one ‘gallery’ in the library. It may contain little more than a single book, a mirror and a deranged mind. These implements are sufficient to conjure up the infinite and incoherent fantasy of a total library.

Misprision

The artist is concerned with producing something that will be enjoyable even after a successful revolution.

Ezra Pound, "The State", SP, p. 184

My favourite act of misreading, as far as my own misreadings are concerned, had me thinking Tony Tost had written, "We usually know a poem that is dispatched from the State when we read it," in "Disarm the Settlers". Though I quickly realized my mistake, the sentence has stuck with me. I'd say it remains a "Tostian" attitude in any case.

I've been thinking about it in relation to Soft Targets 2 and was reminded of it again when I read Pound's "The State", in which he makes his familiar distinction between "the state as convenience" (res publica) and "the state as infernal nuisance".

I think there is an important relation between the State and the Poet. I think all states depend on a certain "disposition" or configuration of emotion in their populations. Poetry tweaks that configuration, and may therefore be inimical to the interests of state at a particular time. (Tonight I am not wholly committed to the idea that any degree of emotional precision is anti-statist, but the thought does cross my mind sometimes.)

Pound said that the politician who picks the right artist is "blessed". That is, the (true) artist is always way ahead of the revolution. I like this idea. I don't like the equal and opposite idea: the artist who sides with the right politician is blessed. This may only be a matter of emphasis, but I think it makes all the difference.

Soft Targets and the Enemy

The official job description of the U.S. Poet Laureate contains a puzzling metaphor.

"The Poet Laureate ... serves as the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans."*

We consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary (8th edition, 1990):

The Poet Laureate has been fixed to an exposed part of America to divert the poetic impulse of its people into the earth or sea.

"We seek an inadequate enemy, one who comes to capitulate. We seek the declared enemy," says the editorial We of Soft Targets.

I will let all this stand as an ideogram.

_________
*As of July 8, 2013, this is still how the page at the Library of Congress reads.

Image/Device (2)

[An expanded version of my comment to the last the post.]

I think the most precise statement I've made about (my older ideas about) the image can be found in "The History of the World".

The image is detached
from appearances,
and applied to surfaces
with equal ease.
The image is what can be done
without effort,
and seen,
without strain.
The image is easy.

On my new hypothesis, it would look like this:

The image is detached
from appearances;
the device is applied
to surfaces.
Both, with equal ease.
The device is what can be done
without effort.
The image is what can be seen
without strain.
The image is easy.
So is the device.

You just glance at it.
You push the button.

It is important here to keep in mind that neither the detachment of the image nor the application of the device will necessarily "work". The operation may fail.

The point is that "operating" the device demands an insignificant amount of effort compared to the results it can achieve (if it works). "Insignificant" is exactly the right word. It is not the act of pushing the button but the operation of the device that is significant. Herein the comedic force of the child or tramp who pushes an unmarked button out of curiosity.

("Operating an image" would be the wrong phrase. I can't think of the correct pangrammatical homologue of "operating a device".)

The role of the image (originally) or image/device (hypothetically) has to be to offer a "free" experience, i.e., a way of engaging with our experiences in an unconstrained way. We must be (absolutely) able to take them or leave them. Note that you can't just take or leave your perceptions and your actions, nor your sensations and motivations. You're to an important extent "stuck" with them. Images and devices are different in exactly that regard. (Just as intuitions and institutions are different exactly in regard to their immediacy.)

Looking for that older statement, I also found a post on "apparatus" and "machination". There might be something there.

Image/Device

I just reread an earlier post on what might be called "the picturing of the world and the machining of history". It reveals an ambiguity in the pangrammaticon. I normally want "the image" to be in the center, between the concept and the emotion, so that the image can attach itself "freely" to either side of the divide. But in that post I seem to have pushed the image into the claws of philosophy and posited a "device" to occupy the poet.

I'm not sure that's a bad idea.

It suggests an application for the distinction between drawing and diagram as well. Philosophy patrols the conversion of images into drawings (scientific representations); poetry patrols the conversion of devices into diagrams (political representations). And, in both cases, vice versa.

Life, then, (or experience, or the "whole thing", or grammar, what-you-call-it) is the conversion of images into devices (or simply the confusion of images and devices).

Pictures are for philosophers? Machines are for poets?

Like I say, it appeals to me.