- By decree of Ptolemy III Euergetes, all visitors to the city of Alexandria are required to surrender all dreams and visions immediately upon entry, as well as any form of imagination in any language in their possession, which, according to Galen, are listed under the heading “dreams of the ships.” Every morning I send the official scribes to the docks to intercept passing ships and copy the dreams of the day, so swiftly and subtly that the originators are often unaware of it. Some copies prove so precise that the originals are put into the library, and the copies delivered back to the unsuspecting owners.
In the process of creating the greatest library in the world, do not think that I, Ptolemy 111, am unwilling to pay; I would not go down in history as a common filcher of dreams; I recognise when dreams are sent by the gods, and can interpret them accordingly. Galen will tell you how I requested permission from the Athenians to borrow the original dreams of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, for which the Athenians demanded 450 kg of silver as guarantee. I happily paid the fee, but kept the originals for the library.
In the process of creating the greatest library in the world, do not think that I, Ptolemy 111, am unwilling to pay; I would not go down in history as a common filcher of dreams; I recognise when dreams are sent by the gods, and can interpret them accordingly. Galen will tell you how I requested permission from the Athenians to borrow the original dreams of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, for which the Athenians demanded 450 kg of silver as guarantee. I happily paid the fee, but kept the originals for the library.
Every evening I command my scribes to go down to the water’s edge and fling the day’s spent dreams into the sea. If they are caught by the
wind and whirled away, so much the better. I have found this method of storage to be economical. Dreams are infinitely retrievable. They also fill every atom of space in the universe, thus making a mockery of physical geography. It would be a fool who came to Alexandria to rob the library, or to destroy it. I have succeeded in building a library
outside space and time and I have always been able to read the dreams that come to me like an open book. But now the worst has happened. For the last three nights, I have myself had dreams which foreshadow the end of the library, for I am unable to interpret them.
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First the angel, which had no message for me. Listen to my dream: I have been trading at the harbour, forced to it by the unwillingness of the brutish to part with their dreams for free. I am walking along the empty sunlit dock, clutching just two ragged dreams coerced off some unshaven, dirty sailors; all is still, with that afternoon stillness, even the sea of blue salt chunks is suspended and salt particles of silver float in the air.
I enter the customs house which is empty but for rows of stools, and drop a few coins which go spinning and whirring between the legs of the stools. I can hear them whirring. I pick up all but one big gold one which is still spinning before me in mid-air; I retrieve it, pulling it from the air, but the spinning continues faster and faster, into a much bigger pentagon of golden light. I shout to the men I have just been trading with, for the golden shape is between me and the door. The men rush in and in fear say that my voice is changing. We all stand transfixed, watching the golden shape a couple of feet above the ground. In the silent whisper of dreams I ask the being: Are you an
angel, and receive a silent reply. I awake in terror, pain running through my legs.
The next night, another wake-up dream, urgent and numinous. Listen again: I am bathing at night in a deep, black pool of the sea, fully clothed. The lights of Alexandria are winking at me from the shore and there comes the uneven blink of the light-house. An unknown person with me picks up a broken bracelet of beautiful and ancient shells, pearls, jewels, and looking round I realise that the entire place is made of all these; they are crunching underfoot, and form the little cliffs cupping the bay. As I am gazing in wonder, there comes suddenly a wail and a man in a chariot comes galloping across the beach behind, escorted by four or five other horsemen. Again there comes the cry of a child, and I see two very young children sitting in the chariot as the man blazes on. There is a great sense of doom and urgency. I awake.
The third gave me great pause; listen. I am lying down and see, far above, a mass of golden light, transcendant. My body opens up to reveal the dark matters within: broken dreams, interrupted dreams, dead dreams; which I ask to be given to the light. They are at once lifted from me.
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Since this last, early this morning, I can no longer read dreams, though the scribes brought them to me as usual, their robes stained from the scribes brought them to me as usual, their robes stained from the sea. The only interpretation I can come to makes me tremble: that I, as librarian, must see my collection dissipate. The truth is that the library does not and could never exist because of the principles of decay. The desert air preserves the skin shrunken round the skull of the man who has died of thirst for the infinite compassion of posterity, but the air of Alexandria is breathed straight off the sea and falls heavy on papyrus,
more delicate than the nails clutching at the sand. Rodents and cockroach destroy what the damp may spare. Our library has been called large because the universe is infinite and the stories of 500,000 papyri represent this, rather than being, as the vulgar think, a figment of the grandiose imagination. In vain will generations to come scour Alexandria for the site of the library, scraps of papyrus. At most there are a few rolls in my study, detailing a bit of history and household affairs. These will perish. There is no library, there will be no great destruction. I am Ptolemy lll and these were my dreams.
