itself does.”

  W hich is a paradox, to be sure, since Master U lta n ’s library

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  Plan[e]t Engineering

  contains the crystal and is itself the Library, or perhaps the

  B ibliotheque, of All Books. W hat does it mean?

  Prim arily, it seems to me, that the library is folded in u p o n itself like

  a Klein bottle, th o u g h in a m ore profo u n d sense. T h is folding in of the

  library, this sense that the library is larger than the w orld th at contains

  it, is m odern as far as I know. A nd yet there is some flavor of the ancient

  about it, of books that have not been read since before they were

  w ritten, of the w orm and the dust. Jorge L uis Borges’s “T h e L ibrary of

  Babel” has rightly been called Kafkan in its sense of enorm ity and

  oppression: “ In the entrance way hangs a m irror, w hich faithfully

  duplicates appearances. People are in the habit of inferring from this

  m irror that the L ibrary is not in fin ite (if it really were, why this illusory

  duplication?); I prefer to dream that the polished surfaces feign and

  prom ise in f in ity ... ” But both Kafka an d Borges are tw entieth century

  writers. Since the w rong direction is so often found to be the rig h t

  direction in the end, let us begin by looking in the w rong direction for

  the m eaning of this m odern notion: backw ard to the words themselves.

  B ibliotheque comes to us from the L atin bibliotheca, a library, or

  perhaps (more directly) from bibliothecula, a small collection of

  books. (You can see that French qu in the cu.) But there are m eanings

  behind the m eaning: biblius is papyrus, an Egyptian reed, an d theca

  is a case, a cover, an envelope, that w hich envelops and contains.

  S urrounded by o u r little collection of books, then, we sit in the m idst

  of a sw am p on the U pper Nile. T h e green and slender tongues of the

  papyrus, higher than our heads, w hisper about us in their m illions of

  m illions as they w hispered before time was invented in the tow n we

  now call El Kab (anciently Nekheb) near Thebes. And though we

  cannot see them , we know they w hisper of crocodiles.

  Library takes us to Europe and that vast E uropean forest of w hich

  only the traces of the traces rem ain, but that m arked so m any of us so

  m uch m ore than we realize, giving to those w ho dw elt there blue eyes

  and w hite, paper-like skin, eyes and com plexions suited to skulking

  thro u g h its green shades.

  For that w ord liber is only “ bark,” the inner bark of those ghostly

  4

  Books in The Book of the New Sun

  trees, u p o n w hich the first books know n to the in h ab itan ts of L atium

  were w ritten. O u r little library, then, is a forest too, a place of bark.

  T h e very paper of o u r books is m ade from the wood of countless trees;

  the word book itself m eans beech, and the innum erable leaves of those

  beeches w hisper forever in our m inds. I said a m om ent ago that only

  the traces of the traces of th a t ancient forest rem ain. But th at forest,

  w hich we call by custom vast, was really no t so vast after all. It

  covered w hat are now France, G erm any, E ngland, and Poland, w ith a

  few other countries and parts of a few m ore, such as Italy —only a

  sm all fraction of the lan d area of this inconsiderable planet of ours.

  (T he largest forest of o u r w orld is still existent, th o u g h m ost of us

  have never heard of it. It is the T aiga of Siberia, and w ith an area of

  about three m illio n square m iles it is nearly as large as the w hole of

  Europe.)

  Yet am o n g the traces of the traces we m ust co u n t the w orld of books,

  and that w orld is already larger by far than the orig in al forest that

  gave it birth, an d it is grow ing larger every day.

  Now having glanced tow ard the past, let us look to the future. In

  T h e Sw ord o f the L ictor, Dr. Talos says, “ Look about y o u —d o n ’t you

  recognize this? It is ju st as he says!”

  “ W hat do you m ean?” Severian asks.

  “T h e castle? T h e monster? T h e m an of learning? I only ju st

  th o u g h t of it. Surely you know that ju st as the m om entous events of

  the past cast their shadow s dow n the ages, so now, yhen the sun is

  d raw ing tow ard the dark, o u r ow n shadows race into the past to

  trouble m a n k in d ’s dream s."

  W hat shadow is this? At present o u r history extends back about five

  th ousand two h u n d re d years. (P haraoh Menes ruled in Nekheb in

  3200 BC.) Let us assum e th at h u m a n k in d an d civilization as we know

  it endure ten percent longer than they have already, that is, for

  an o th er five h u n d re d and twenty years. R oughly thirty thousand titles

  are now being p ublished every year. (T h e Literary M arket Place lists

  one th ousand four hun d red and fifty trade p u b lish in g com panies for

  1982, and there are an o th er six th ousand or so publishers w ho are not

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  Plan[e]t Engineering

  trade publishers; you are now reading a book produced by one of

  th e m —a title that is probably no t even included in the thirty

  thousand.) Let us also assum e that the num ber of titles published

  each year does not increase, th o u g h it has tended to increase

  th ro u g h o u t most of history. By those assum ptions, an o th er five

  hun d red and twenty years will produce fifteen m illion six hundred

  thousand new titles.

  Suppose that by 2504 the span of h u m an life has increased

  sufficiently to give a scholar a career of a hundred years. Suppose that

  d u rin g his hundred-year career this centenarian scholar reads a book

  every day. H e w ill read thirty-six thousand, five h undred and

  twenty-five books, or less th an three percent of new books produced

  since our time. Im agine then w hat the situ atio n will be in Severian’s

  time for the scholar-heirs of a sequence of civilizations that may be

  over a m illio n years old.

  But you already have. All of us already have, I think, and that is the

  shadow that has come to h au n t us. Critics and reviewers (perhaps the

  most fallible of m en) speak of a certain book’s dying. If you go to the

  huckster room in w hich you b ought this excellent book and talk to

  the dealers a bit, you w ill discover that few books ever do.

  (U ndoubtedly, m any titles we w ould very m uch like to have for o u r

  collections were lost forever w hen C aliph O m ar ordered the three

  h undred thousand volum es in the Serapeum burned to heat the

  public baths of A lexandria; but astonishingly little has been lost

  since. We have several m anuscripts of G ilgam esh, for exam ple, a

  sword-and-sorcery novel m ore than five thousand years old.) T h e

  rarer a book becomes, the m ore zealously the existing copies are

  guarded, and w hen a book is sufficiently old, it is likely to be

  reissued, and certain to be m icrofilm ed, sim ply because of its age.

  But if we were to say all this to Master U ltan, he w ould only laugh.

  He m ust deal also w ith books im ported from other worlds, books that

  are often in strange forms, as we have seen. T h e experience of the

  conquistadores in the New World of Earth should serve as a w arning

  to us; in Peru, they found books w ritten by k n o ttin g string. These,

  6

  Books in The Book of the New Sun

  like so m any of the books in M aster U lta n ’s library, are books no one

  can now' read.

  Tw o h u n d re d years ago, Dr. Jo h n so n said that a m an w ould turn

  over half a library to m ake one book. Today, no one could possibly

  tu rn over half of any one of the m any thousands of large libraries on

  Earth. In the future the task of tu rn in g over large libraries w ill have to

  be left to com puters; and those of us w ho have trouble getting to

  sleep, as I do, can am use ourselves w ith the im age of those m a in frames of the co m in g decade, eq u ip p ed w'ith optical character readers and book-feed an d page-tu rn in g m echanism s, reading, reading

  through the n ig h t. (Cyriaca speaks of the ultim ate fate of these

  com puters and the books they will read in T he Sw ord of the Lictor:

  “ W hen the last m achine was cold an d still an d each of those w ho had

  learned from them the forbidden lore m an k in d had cast aside was

  separated from all the rest, there came dread in to the heart of each. For

  each knew him self to be only m ortal, and most, no longer young. And

  each saw th a t w ith his ow n death the know ledge he loved best w ould

  die. T h e n each of th e m —each su p p o sin g him self the only one to do

  so — began to w rite dow n w hat he had learned in the long years w hen

  he had harkened to the teachings of the m achines that spilled forth all

  the hidden know ledge of w ild things. M uch perished bu t m uch m ore

  survived, som etim es falling in to the hands of those w ho copied it

  enlivened by their ow n additions or weakened by o m issio n s... Kiss

  me, Severian.” )

  T h e library, or at least the large, p ublic library, has ceased to be a

  place for h u m a n beings and become a place for m achines. We hum an s

  are now confined to the little library, to the bib lio th eq u e or sm all

  collection of books; so let us exam ine w hat I believe is the only truly

  sm all collection to be found in T h e Book o f the N ew Sun, the four

  volum es th at Severian brings to T h e d a in T h e Shadow of the

  Torturer. In the chapter titled “T h e M aster of the C urators,” Master

  G urloes, you w ill recall, writes a note to M aster U ltan:

  “ ‘By the w ill of a court we have in o u r keeping the exulted

  7

  Plan[e]t Engineering

  person of the C hatelaine T hecla; an d by its further will we

  w ould furn ish to the C hatelaine T hecla in her confinem ent such

  com forts as lie not beyond reason and prudence. T h a t she may

  w hile away the m om ents u n til her time w ith us is com e—or

  rather, as she has instructed me to say, u n til the heart of the

  A utarch, whose forebearance knows no t walls nor seas, is

  softened tow ard her, as she prays—she asks that you, consonant

  w ith your office, provide her w ith certain books, w hich books

  are—

  "You may om it the titles, Cyby,” U ltan said. "H ow m any are

  there?”

  “ Four, sieur.”

  “ N o trouble then. P roceed.”

  “ ‘For this, Archivist, we are m uch obligated to you.’ Signed,

  ‘G urloes, M aster of the H onorable O rder com m only called the

  G u ild of T orturers.’”

  “ Are you fam iliar w ith any of the titles on Master G urloes’s

  list, Cyby?”

  “ W ith three, sieu r.”

  “ Very good. Fetch them , please. W hat is the fourth?”

  “T h e B ook o f the Wonders o f Urth and Sky, sieur.”

  A few pages later in the same chapter, Severian describes two of the

  four, neither of w hich is T h e B ook o f the Wonders of Urth and Sky:

  O ne of the three volumes Cyby had bro u g h t was as large

  as the top of a sm all table, a cu b it in w idth and a scant ell

  in height; from the arm s im pressed u p o n its saffian cover, I

  supposed it to be the history of some old noble family.

  T h e others were m uch sm aller. A green book hardly larger

  th an my hand and no thicker than my index finger appeared

  to be a collection of devotions, full of enam eled pictures of

  ascetic pantocrators and hypostases w ith black haloes and

  gem like robes. I stopped for a time to look at them, sharin g a

  8

  Books in The Book of the New Sun

  little, forgotten garden full of w inter sunshine w ith a dry

  fountain.

  T h a t p arag ra p h is full of the “ funny w ords” I have often been taxed

  w ith using; so for the benefit of those of you w ho have no t seen T h e

  Castle of the Otter, I w ould like to q u o te some of the definitions given

  there:

  Saffian: a leather made from goatskin or sheepskin (goatskin is

  better) an d tanned w ith sumac. It is often dyed in b rig h t colors.

  Ascetic: u n in clin ed to U rthly pleasures.

  Pantocrators: those w ho have m astered the physical. Also,

  in carn atio n s of the Pancreator. T hose fit for sp iritu al and

  p h ilo so p h ic al “ w restling.” O riginally, the w ord designated

  w hat we w ould call all-around athletes; bu t its figurative

  m eanings have overw helm ed its literal ones.

  Hypostases: the persons whose u n io n constitutes the Increate.

  It seems to me th at we can reasonably m ake two assum ptions about

  these four books. T h e first is that they are books T h e d a m ig h t

  reasonably ask to borrow, and the second is that they -all m ust have

  som ething to do w ith Severian. Note, for exam ple, that the pictures in

  the book of devotions are enam eled and that Severian w ill soon

  encounter Dorcas; Dorcas comes from a family once engaged in the

  m anufacture of cloisonne, and she once lived in a shop where it was

  sold. C loisonne is a colored decoration of enamels. In the rest of this

  essay, however, I w ill concentrate on the first assum ption, not

  w ishing to deprive you of the legitim ate pleasure of deducing the

  connections.

  T h e large book, w hich is so big th at Severian, in C hapter VII,

  cannot slip it th ro u g h the slot intended for food trays, is alm ost

  certainly a history of T h e d a ’s ow n family, its wide pages occupied by

  genealogical charts. (If she had been at the p o in t of m arrying at the

  time of her arrest, it m ight conceivably have been that of her

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  Planfejt Engineering

  husband-to-be’s; but since she never m entions a future m arriage, we

  may assum e none has been arranged.) T h is book, then, leads us to ask

  w ho the exulted fam ilies are and w hat it m eans to be an exultant.

  In the tim e of Severian, the C om m onw ealth is a poor country

  grow ing poorer. Its econom y is based on agriculture, on sm all farms

  like the one from w hich M elito has plainly sp ru n g and ranches like

  the one from w hich Foila m ust have come. If you look at the m ap in

  this book, you will see the farm land to the north and west of Nessus,

  where the low lands receive the greatest a m o u n t of rain an d the rain

  can be supplem ented w ith irrig atio n from the River Gyoll and its

  tributaries. It is grain from these farms and water from Gyoll that

  keep Nessus alive, of course. A lth o u g h so m uch of the city is deserted,

  like the ru in s Severian sees as he journeys u p the river on the Sam ru,

  and m uch of it is only thinly inhabited, like the district to w hich

  Dorcas goes w hen she leaves Severian, there are still m any districts

  la rg e ly to the n orth) that are hom e to m illions of people.

  And yet these m illio n s are only a rem nant of those w ho once lived

  in Nessus. T h e pam pas are encroaching year by year u p o n the

  farm land, and in tim e the p am p as will turn to deserts. As U rth ’s sun

  cools, m ore and m ore of U rth ’s water is being tied u p in its glaciers,

  and less and less is enterin g the atm osphere from its cooling and

  increasingly ice-covered seas. Eventually, as Severian sees in the house

  of Master Ash, the glaciers may com e dow n from the m ountains. By

  that tim e there w ill be few to m o u rn their com ing in the once-fertile

  lands about Nessus.

  In such a society as this, po o r and relatively stable over hundreds of

  years, pow er becomes concentrated in p articu lar families. Because we

  have the word econom ics and the w ord p o litics, and no w ord to m ean

  the two together, we th in k of them as com pletely different things. T h e

  fact is that their interaction is m ore than strong enough to justify o u r

  calling them one th in g , ju st as we call education (in w hich the

  student interacts so strongly w ith the in stitu tio n , a lth o u g h we have

  no w ord for his action up o n it or its action up o n him ) one thing.

  C hange, Wealth, and War are the great democrats. C hange m eans

  10

  Books in The Book of the New Sun

  that yesterday’s so lutions w ill no longer w ork on today’s problem s.

  Wealth, that education can be made available even to the poor. War

  m eans death for a generation of the aristocratic officer class that is

  expected to lead the troops, an d brings change (and often w ealth)

  w ith it. T h e great R ussian an d G erm an aristocratic systems were

  destroyed by World War I. In E ngland, the w ealth created by in d u strialization (E ngland was the first industrialized natio n ) stripped the aristocracy of all bu t the trappings of power, so th at wealthy nobles

 

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