The Libraries of Eternity

I once had a dream. I dreamt of a library. In this library were the works of all the greatest authors in history. The titles of the books were unfamiliar to me, however. The Return of the Third Son by Charles Dickens, In Pursuit of Peace by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The King's Last Order by Alexander Dumas. Being an enormous fan of Dumas and Dickens, I was understandably confused that here were books I had never heard of, written by my favorite authors.

I sought out the librarian to inquire as to the origin of these books and if perhaps they were mislabeled. The librarian was an impossibly tall, lean fellow whose mere presence inspired silence and respect for his august position. I asked of this great man how it is that there were books here on his shelves that appeared to be written by my favorite authors but were nevertheless unheard of by me. He responded by asking me a question. "What was Charles Dickens final written work?" Well, that would of course be the mystery of Edwin Drood, which was unfortunately left unfinished when Charles Dickens died. The librarian took me in hand and led me to a shelf at the heart of the library. He removed a volume and handed it to me. "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"

"Yes, that's the one," I remarked.

"Take a look at it."

I thumbed through the book for a moment, then flipped to the book's list of contents. This book contained 12 chapters. Now I knew that at the time of Charles Dickens death he had only written 6 of the planned 12 parts of this story. I pointed this out to the Librarian.

"This library in which you now stand contains the works of the greatest authors ever to live on the Earth. However, you will not find here a single book written during their mortal lives. The books contained on these shelves before you were all written after the author had completed their mortal probation."

At this revelation I took a look again and the sheer size of the library. It was vast, I looked down between the enormous shelves and could not see an end to the aisle in which I stood. Finally it dawned on me, why would an author stop writing, stop creating, stop imagining, simply because he or she had passed from this mortal world into the next.

The libraries of Eternity await us, a place where there is no end, no limit, to the contributions of humans to literature, music, art, theater, film, etc.