Babel revisited

Authors

  • Juan José Gómez Cadenas Donostia International Physics Center
  • Marco Guagnelli INFN de Pavia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.22.22924

Keywords:

Babel, Borges, Almeida, Eco, Lucentini.

Abstract

In 1997 Iván Almeida, professor at the Borges Center in Aarhus, wrote to Umberto Eco, pointing out an apparent error in a recent article of his. Eco, copying verbatim the translation of the eminent Lucentini, asserts that the galleries of the celebrated Library of Babel, consist of «twenty-five shelves, five per side, covering all sides but one», while in the original version Borges assures that «twenty shelves, five per side, cover all but two sides». And that’s not all. In Lucentini’s translation we read that each of the volumes of the Library consists of forty lines and each line of forty letters. For Borges, however, the number of letters per line is eighty. In this article it is shown that these seemingly trivial errors contain a transcendent —perhaps terrifying— revelation about the Universe.

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Author Biographies

Juan José Gómez Cadenas, Donostia International Physics Center

Juan José Gómez Cadenas is a Particle Physicists. At the end of the nineties, he created the Borgesian Experimental Metaphysics Group with Marco Guagnelli, with the aim of investigating the metaphysical, metaphilosophical and metalinguistic implications of Borges’ work. «Babel Revisitada», written simultaneously in Spanish and Italian, is the best-known work of the group, which was dissolved shortly after the completion of the study. Currently he is Ikerbasque professor at the Donostia International Physics Center and director of the NEXT experiment, which seeks to demonstrate that the neutrino is its own antiparticle.  

Marco Guagnelli, INFN de Pavia

Marco Guagnelli is a Particle Physicist. At the end of the nineties, he created with Juan José Gómez Cadenas the Borgesian Experimental Metaphysics Group, with the aim of investigating the metaphysical, metaphilosophical and metalinguistic implications of Borges’ work. «Babel Revisitada», written simultaneously in Spanish and Italian, is the best-known work of the group, which was dissolved shortly after the completion of the study. Currently he is a researcher at the INFN in Pavia, specialized in numerical methods in theoretical physics.

References

Borges, Jorge Luis. Obras completas, Barcelona: Emecé Editores, 1989.

Borges, Jorge Luis, y Nicolas Helft. La biblioteca total. Vol. 59. No. 8. Sur, 1939.

Dawkins, Richard. River Out of Eden, New York: Basic Books, 1995.

Eco, Umberto. «¿Quanti Scaffali contiene la Biblioteca di Babele ?», L’Espresso, 6 de marzo de 1997, p. 206.

Kolb, Edward W.  and Turner, Michael S. The Early Universe, Redwood City: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

Weinber, Steven. The first three minutes, New York: Basic Books, 1988.

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Published

2021-12-30

How to Cite

Gómez Cadenas, J. J., & Guagnelli, M. (2021). Babel revisited. EU-topías. A Journal on Interculturality, Communication, and European Studies, 22, 37–45. https://doi.org/10.7203/eutopias.22.22924
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Issue

Vol. 22 (2021)

Section

PERSPECTIVES

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