Confinement in Paul Auster's Moon Palace and the New York Trilogy

III. LANGUAGE

A WORDS AND WORLDS

1/ Constitution of worlds

The Library of the Universe

Auster's fiction -as previously seen- has a Russian doll-like structure. In each novel occurs a multitude of internal stories that are all very closely interwoven. Moreover, we have seen that connections also take place between his different books, be they works of fiction, autobiographical works or even essays. Besides, a global understanding of Auster's work necessitates a knowledge of all his books, each one being a key to enter and understand his universe. And indeed, Auster's work constitutes a universe in itself, i.e. a coherent unity among all his books and himself. So, each one of his books can be compared to a planet with its own independence but that belongs nevertheless to a larger order: Auster's universe. It is therefore reasonable to assume that his words constitute a world. There is a significant point here and that is that the universe is often compared to a library. For instance, in
Les Mots et Les Choses, Michel Foucault quotes Charles Bonnet who exposes the following comparison: «Je me plais à envisager la multitude innombrable de Mondes comme autant de livres qui composent l'immense Bibliothèque de l'Univers ou la vraie Encyclopédie universelle.»^162(*) Now, how can one fail to notice the similarity between this statement and a remark from Auster as a young boy: «He remembers speculating that perhaps, the entire world was enclosed in a glass jar and that it sat on a shelf next to dozens of other jar-worlds in the pantry of a giant's house.»^163(*) If we replace jars by books, the shelf then becomes a bookshelf and the pantry a library.But the most eloquent description of the Universe as a library is perhaps the one made by Jorge Luis Borges in La Bibliothèque de Babel:

L'Univers (que d'autres appellent la Bibliothèque) se compose d'un nombre indéfini, et peut être infini, de galeries hexagonales, avec au centre de vastes puits d'aération bordés par des balustrades très basses. De chacun de ces hexagones, on aperçoit les étages inférieurs et supérieurs, interminablement. (...) Chacun des murs de chaque hexagone porte cinq étagères; chaque étagère comprend trente-deux livres, tous de même format; chaque livre a quatre cent dix pages; chaque page, quarante lignes, et chaque ligne, environ quatre-vingts caractères noirs.^164(*)

This detailed description of the Universe as an immense library is significant concerning the point at stake here, that is that the words form sentences which form paragraphs which form books which form...the Universe. But, later on, Borges exposes an axiom of the Library which is crucial: «Il n'y a pas dans la vaste Bibliothèque, deux livres identiques. (...) la Bibliothèque est totale et ses étagères consignent toutes les combinaisons possibles des vingt et quelques symboles orthographiques (nombre quoique très vaste, non infini), c'est à dire tout ce qu'il est possible d'exprimer dans toutes les langues.»^165(*) So, according to Borges, the Universe is total though not infinite and this comes from the very nature of our language which is itself not infinite. This opinion seems to be shared by Auster, but this will be our subject in another part of this essay.

* ¹⁶² Michel Foucault, Les Mots et Les Choses (Paris : Gallimard, 1988), page 100.

* ¹⁶³ The Book of Memory in The Invention of Solitude, page 168.

* ¹⁶⁴ Jorge Luis Borges, La Bibliothèque de Babel, in Fictions (Paris : Gallimard, 1983), pages 71-73.

* ¹⁶⁵ Ibid, page 75.