The study of this palimpsest provides numerous interesting insights into Eco's work, but who can say that any are the correct path? In fact, we have only discovered another divergent fork in the maze since both the Inquisitors and the Fraticelli could be the heretics of Borges' work. Even if we were to choose one, who then is to say it is right, or does exist? Perhaps Borges' work has no bearing on Eco's. What we must do is come to the same conclusion that William and Adso come to at the end of The Name of the Rose: "The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless" (Eco 492).
In the end, Borges and Eco only provide the labyrinth, but do not say which is the correct route to take, and perhaps only one does not exist.
Works Cited
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Borges, Jorge Luis. "The Library of Babel." Ficciones. Trans. Emece Editores. Ed. Anthony Kerrigan. New York: Grove Wenfield,1962. 79-88.

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt, 1984.

Architecture of the Infinite Library
E-mail the Author