The Full Circle_ , _The Moon is Blue_ , _You Bright and Risen Angels_ , _The Talking Ass_ , and _The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea_—that might also give one pause to consider other connections, and perhaps a different perspective, on the work of Borges. ## IV. I will, therefore, in order to understand Borges' stories, take a critical look at two Borges texts that, I believe, are the most relevant to their telling of stories, a look at two of Borges' essays: the essay "The Total Library" (a phrase that, in turn, reminds one of a Borges story); and the essay "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (a phrase that, likewise, has a connection to Borges' writing). In the essay "The Total Library," Borges explains his interest in the library as a whole, and its importance in giving his imagination the necessary space to play around in. Borges states: "It is in library research that I have enjoyed a form of seclusion, since it has allowed me to keep going with the stories I write—for that is what I really do—with no danger of their ever being read by anyone but myself." He is also saying, perhaps, that libraries allow people to be alone with their thoughts, that is, to be alone with their imagination. Borges notes that "libraries are a means of preserving oneself, of surviving one's time, and of keeping oneself silent, alone. They are a means of remaining anonymous and of never needing anything" (Borges 1987: 75). His reading and rereading of books is another version of being alone with his imagination—a version that is also a form of freedom. If Borges' library was just for him, this idea of his library, this idea of freedom through literature, or his imagination, leads me to read two stories that I take, in turn, to be a version of his experience with "the library." "The Library of Babel" is the title story of Borges' first collection. The Borges library that we know of as a whole consists of more than seven hundred stories. But in the Borges story, the library takes a variety of forms: the library becomes books, and is also a "city" and a "civilization." Thus we find a Borges story that includes a reading of Borges as a library. Borges writes, "I decided then that the essence of writing lies in the rewriting of texts, just as it lay in the past in the invention of hieroglyphs. As to what I am doing now, I would say that I am composing the story of the destruction of all stories" (Borges 1987: 12). Thus Borges' story ends with the destruction of literature: with one of literature's fictions: the library, and with the library's destruction. And this destruction, as noted earlier, has an important implication for "what the story might be." The Borges story suggests that it is a question of a kind of freedom. If Borges' library represents the freedom of writing, then when all literature is destroyed, literature dies. And freedom dies with it. Thus Borges gives "The Library of Babel" the final line, "The universe of thought is finite; its splendor incalculable" (Borges 1987: 13). Yet "The Library of Babel" might also be read as the story of Borges' imagination. That is, the Borges story is an exploration of a kind of imaginative play. On the one hand, one can read the Borges story as something of a fable, or a parable, about literature, and thus about imagination. As Borges writes in his short story "Death and the Compass": > The world is not what it seems to be. It is what I will it to be. > > I see what I desire, and always, what I desire has no reality. When the night falls I become invisible, not visible. To attain this state I can employ a drug. In its effect it is similar to the power used by hypnotists. It makes the world and my own perceptions vanish. Without the drug it is not possible to enter that condition in which every object is reduced to a dream and yet the dream seems solid. My will is my substance. If, as some assert, the universe is but one of innumerable bubbles, it is certain that some part of me will be outside of it. For I do not believe that what is outside is indifferent to that which is within. It follows from this that my soul could traverse the boundaries of the universe with no effort, like a shadow crossing a field, passing from one side to another. I can change form as I can change garments: a little, but little is enough. (Borges 2002: 18) One is reminded here of Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," a text that I will go on to discuss. "The Library of Babel," written as the first story in a collection of seven, is the Borges story most likely to be read as a parable about literature and the imagination. In the Borges story, there is the image of a library, or a bookshelf, or book, that is an image of an imaginative realm. It is an image that is a part of the story, of Borges' idea of a library, and at the same time it is an image of a state of mind: the mind at play in imagining something, and at the same time the mind "at play" in reading something, or in reading something from beginning to end. And this reading of "The Library of Babel" is an image of a state of mind that can be associated with Borges' description of a moment when one uses a drug, such as the one Borges describes in the short story "Death and the Compass," which one uses to "become invisible." But it is also an image of Borges' own imaginative realm—an image that could be an invitation into that realm, a place where a literary Borges would imagine to be a place where, like "Books," Borges himself exists. ## V. Thus Borges' library, and this library's most famous work, "The Library of Babel" (Borges 1987), are also related to Borges' story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (Borges 1996). This Borges story is, itself, about writing, or about Borges' writing. At one point in his story, Borges notes that this story is about reading as well as writing: "reading and writing are two diverse, if not incompatible, activities that, once conceived, preclude each other. A reader can hardly become a writer" (Borges 1996: 2). That is, there is the Borges story, about Borges' books, but also "about Borges as reader" (Borges 1996: 6). And Borges' writing allows Borges to think about Borges' reading. In Borges' story about reading, Borges' character (Pierre Menard) writes a story, a novel, that he has found in a book that he reads. And his novel, like any book, is made up of stories, of the kind of stories that might be found in Borges' library. Menard writes a short story, a tale of four lines, that is written about a boy who is in a barbershop. This four-line story becomes the story that Menard uses to describe a barber's shaving the hair of a man: it is a story that becomes a part of his story—a story Borges uses to tell the story of his writing. One can read this Borges story about writing as a kind of "autobiography" (Borges 1996: 14), or a life story. There is a sense in which Menard becomes Borges' alter ego, and in a sense it is Borges who is Menard's subject: Menard as Borges, the identity of the character Borges, and the characters of his stories. It is as if Borges writes Borges into existence, to write Borges into being, in the kind of story Borges is writing. And it is also as if Borges writes Borges as a character in Borges' other story, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (Borges 1990), the story of the origin of Borges' book, "The Garden of Forking Paths." Borges' library is at one level a collection of stories and stories, and these stories are themselves Borgesian in Borges' own sense: "Borges" is a Borgesian writing, Borges writes a story about Borges writing Borges. One could go further to say that Borges' library, and what Borges does with his library—the images of the library that Borges' writing creates, in this case the image of Borges writing Borges—could itself be called a Borgesian library, in that Borges' books, in Borges' writing, give rise to other stories, and these other stories are always in some way Borgesian—in Borges' sense of the word. In the story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," Borges describes a situation where fiction is created as a copy of reality: this copy, called