#library of babel

[theartofasty]

"The Other Holy War" gouache on arches paper 60 x 40 cm very happy to finally be able to share what is now my largest illustration to this day with you all. This illustration was commissioned for the cover of the upcoming TTRPG "Let Us Build a Tower", an incredibly ambitious project with over 100 illustrations by an array of incredibly talented artists, for which the preview is now live on Kickstarter, make sure to bookmark it so you don't miss the launch ;) right now you can also find the full resolution file of this painting, along with the thumbnail sketch and charcoal value study (which will remain Patreon exclusive) on my Patreon, so make sure to check that out too!

#asty art #traditional art #body horror #cosmic horror #dark art #horror art #artists on tumblr #biblically accurate angel #angelcore #seraphim #ophanim #psychedelic art #library of babel #tower of babel #painting #gouache #gouache painting #traditional painting

[cannibalcaprine]

thinking about the Library of Babel again

specifically the end of it

Borge goes out of his way to point out that the Library has an end. there can only be so many combinations of 25 symbols (22 letters, 2 punctuation, 1 space), and if every Book in the Library is completely unique, then the Library should just be incomprehensibly large, not truly infinite

Borge's narrator believes that the Library is cyclical, if you travel far enough, you reach a point where the Hexagons, the Books, even the Librarians repeat again, making it an infinite collection of infinite copies of a finite number of books

but imagine if it isn't

imagine being some poor Librarian reaching the end of the Library

finding an incomprehensible fifth shelf of books that should not exist, a smooth wall, or a passageway leaving out to absolute nothingness

it's not even a void, a void implies that there's a space to be empty

just the end of the Universe, of everything that could possibly exist

and suddenly that incomprehensible vastness feels suffocatingly small

#library of babel

[mischeviousmae]

fact: 99 % of readers in the babel library quit just moments before they find the book of enlightenment keep reading!!!

#library of babel

[library-of-babel]

“The Library of Babel” by Piranesi (1770)

#jorge luis borges #city of babel #library of babel

[kolos013]

I've recently read a post on here about the library of babel, and I cannot seem to get it out of my head, because it is esssntially a cosmic horror of our own creation, and it fascinates me to no end.

For those that don't know, the library of babel is (or rather, was, since we made it real) a concept of a place, that has all the possible combinations of the letters of the alphabet (lower and uppercase), spaces, commas, and full stops, that fit into 400-something pages. The idea comes from some french guy, because of fucking course it does.

This is, of course, an incomprehensible amount of data. No mortal could ever hope to sort trough all of it. I imagine endless corridors and mazes with walls from floor to cieling piled with endless books, and scrolls, and scriptures, and poems, and laws, and research papers, and newspapers, and any other assorted literature. Every single text that ever has been written, or ever will be be written is, by defenition, there. Split into chapters, maybe, but there.

Every single pice of writing, string of letters EVER just so much as tought of, is present, yet you can only access it once you know exactly what you're looking for, rendering it practcally useless. It's vastness only outmatched in size by it's pointlessness. The irony is, that it's precisely its barely finite size that makes it essentially just a fun curiousity. If this is not the most eldrich horror shit that exists out there, I do not know what is. It both greatly entertains me and absolutely horrifies me to my core, this labirinth of text.

But you see, you can make a search request to the library. You can input any writing, and it will show you where exactly it can be found. This, however, is functionally useless. You can try, let's say, to find a complete version of a long lost greek epic, which we only have fragments of. You input it, and boom. 7 billion results. What you're looking for is in there. Certanly. But the rest of it? Well, the rest of it is just meaningless word salad, nay letter salad.

Thank you for reading a madman's ramblings, have a pleasant rest of the existential crisis we call life.

#library of babel #existential dread #cosmic horror #eldritch

[blandandtasteless]

I love @libraryofbabel-postlocator because dspite it not really being the case, it feels like a god tapping you on the shoulder with unfortunate news “you’re not original bub”

#library of babel #library of Babel post locator

[sobi-wan-kenobi]

No, I am not "Keysmashing" you hedonistic fiend

I am simply quoting line 15, page 394 of book "pjpdowjjbfyystv" from the Library of Babel

#library of babel

[smolandweirdwriter]

right i figured it was time to come clean: I loathed the secret history when I began; by the time I finished, I realized it was meant as a critique of classist white American society. It would appear none of its fanbase has arrived to this conclusion as well, as all that I found within tsh community was "gay nerds who commit murder lol". So perhaps I was looking too deeply into it. I am admitting to this because I began Babel yesterday and am 333 pages into it exactly and I find it riveting, fascinating, and fully containing everything I found lacking in the secret history. I have heard it was written in conversation with the secret history, and while I do see similarities, at the core, the secret history struck me as a warning, while babel strikes me as a rallying call

#donna tartt #the secret history #babel an arcane history #babel rf kuang #babel or the necessity of violence #babel #library of babel #robin swift #ramiz rafi mirza #rf kuang

[foxgirlruby]

Lying on my stomach in bed kicking my feet in the air as I write a bunch of hearts and flowers in a notebook like a lovestruck teenager but when you look to see what I have written there it’s all about the Library of Babel. I draw a big pink heart around “Library of Babel” and then swoon

#library of babel #shitpost #objectum

[dyst-blogs]

guy who goes to the library of babel and immediately finds bowser x luigi yaoi

#rowdyposting #library of babel #yaoi

[libraryofbabel-postlocator]

Where is YOUR post in the Library of Babel?

In Jorge Luis Borges' short story, The Library of Babel, every possible combination of every letter exists within in a seemingly infinite number of books in a seemingly infinite library. Most books are nonsense, random strings of letters occasionally interrupted by a space or period, but every once in a while, you'll come across a whole word or maybe an entire phrase. Because here's the thing about the library. There really is every combination of letters in there. So, yeah, there's a lot of nonsense, but there's also every sentence ever said, every paragraph ever written, every thought you've ever had. You could flip from a page of complete nonsense to a perfect recreation of a letter you wrote your friend as a kid, only to turn the page to find more random letters. Everything exists within the library. (You can find the full short story here)

The Library of Babel is a website that recreates Borges' idea. You can browse through the shelves, get sent to a random book, or search for a specific phrase.

So what am I doing here? I'm just a nerd who loses their mind over the idea of infinity and spends way too much time on tumblr. So, I'm taking some of my favorite posts I find and locating them in the library using the website mentioned above. In my posts I'll link the exact page, as well as list its location by page, book, shelf, wall, and hexagon (the hexagons are distinguished by an incredibly long list of characters, so they'll be put below the cut for convenience). The website does allow you to find pages that are exact matches to your search, but I personally prefer the results with random characters as they really give you that lone bit of coherence in a sea of nonsense vibe.

If you have any questions, go ahead and ask! I may add a qna to this post if I get any consistently.

#not a located post #the library of babel #library of babel #jorge luis borges

[generouspeachheart]

Favourites 🥀🕰✨️

#bookish #books #bookworm #books & libraries #dark academia #grunge academia #the secret history #francis abernathy #richard papen #henry winter #camilla mcaulay #charles mcaulay #bunny corcoran #if we were villains #babel #library of babel #donna tartt #m.l. rio #r f kuang

[anexistingexistence]

Is there even a demand for an Alter Ego -inspired novel based on the concept of the library of babel or am I writing this tome of mental instability and questionable underlying messages purely for self-indulgent reasons

#es my beloved #i dedicate this work of brainrot to you #alter ego game #alter ego caramel column #library of babel #writeblr #writerblr #fiction writing #an existing post

[reebslibrary]

"Why are you girls?"

"Well, I suppose we decided to be girls because being boys seems to require giving up half your brain cells"

i love this.

#babel an arcane history #book memes #quotes #chaotic academia #books & libraries #library of babel #rf kuang #robin swift #dark academia #books and reading #reading #historical fiction

[library-of-babel]

The Book of Sand

Gematria, geometry, reverence for the book, the word, the letter.

Mercury is closest to the (Desert) Sun, has the fastest orbit. Fastest of the Gods, pure thought and language, the essence of communication itself.

Quicksilver, Lord of Liquid Language and the Stellar Current.

From “The Book of Sand Vol. VIII Number VIII” (924 CE).

#book of babel #wanderer #pilgrim #library of babel #idea space

[sepublic]

AI “artists” seem like the type of people who’d dedicate their entire lives to the Library of Babel, unceasingly gambling away to find some ideal text, instead of y’know. Learning to come up with works on their own. Like the Purifiers, they’d destroy whatever they don’t understand, dismissing it as gibberish that’s just getting in the way of their mission… But not want to put in the effort to create, and instead appeal to a randomized algorithm made entirely by unthinking chance instead of real, human thought and feeling.

#ramblings #library of Babel #jorge luis borges