The cover of Babel by Rebecca F. Kuang

Despite being a novel, Babel by Rebecca F. Kuang reads like a vigorous treatise on colonialism as exploitation of people, resources and languages. Much of the book’s emphasis on language as the site of power relations, in particular, reminded me of a wonderful essay by Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word, a history of the world seen from a linguistic perspective and thus focused on the connection between linguistic dominance and political dominance. Kuang pointed out in an interview that her decision to use English to write about the British Empire and its exploitation of the colonized through translation projects may be seen as a contradiction, because it seems like she is tacitly accepting English as the only possible language a writer could use today as a vehicle for their message, its power of resonance and possible implications in terms of success, sales, cultural relevance and international prestige so strong as to be irresistible. Yet I think Kuang’s statement dowplays her own gargantuan effort in bringing together all the facets of colonialism and resistance to colonialism. Her words suggest a far too humble approach to her extraordinary book, which makes an effort in including all possible arguments both in favour and against the Empire and dominion of one country (and consequently language) over the others, not because the author doesn’t want to choose sides, but because she chooses to explore the issue of colonialism in all its contradictions, its need to assimilate and annihilate the Other abroad while seemingly producing stability, progress, prosperity and multiple breakthroughs in culture, science, politics, society and institutions at home. One of the most intriguing aspects of the book is precisely the way each character follows a narrative arc which is consistent with their ideas on the Empire and on how it can either benefit or ultimately destroy them. Robin, Ramy, Victoire, Griffin, Anthony, but also Letty, to name some of the most important actors in play, all show a heroic side, their reasonings and final decisions building up to a truly epic on the Empire and a possible Resistance to its arrogant inevitability. There is some torture and violence involved, and some people may find these parts difficult to deal with, yet I think they are there for a reason; after all, the book’s subtitle is “The necessity of violence”, so readers are warned in advance on where the content might be headed. The real torture, in my view, is the one we can’t see but only guess at – the endless, numerous deaths and casualities looming in the dark, behind the core tenets of translation as it is used at Babel: language is both war and peace, a tool wrecking havoc upon the enemy and consuming them so that the system in place runs smoothly in perpetuity.

Indeed, the parts on languages, especially on Chinese characters and their multiple renderings in English, are to me the most fascinating parts of the book. “Languages are only shifting sets of symbols – stable enough to make mutual discourse possible, but fluid enough to reflect changing social dynamics.” This concept is one of the main issues the book revolves around: cultural and linguistic relativism, as well as a clear hint at what Chinese represents as a language, an endless shift of meanings within meanings hidden inside and beneath each set of characters combined together. Up until Book Four, I had the impression the fictional plot served only as an excuse to develop a nonfictional debate about languages, translation and power. Yet the last two books (as, in retrospect, the others) are so enmeshed in politics, history and plot-driven decisions to contradict my former impression. After reading the whole of Babel, there’s no doubt the book is a novel, though rich in political, historical, linguistic and cultural references. It is also an original combination of realism and fantasy, the silver-making and match pair uttering such a brilliant idea to immediately turn the book into a contemporary classic. This is how Kuang describes the silver bars mechanism, which can work only if the translator actually thinks in both languages simultaneously: “It’s a particular kind of mental state. You do speak the words, but more importantly, you hold two meanings in your head at once. You exist in both linguistic worlds simultaneously, and you imagine traversing them.” A metaphor for translating but most of all for writing, silver-making is intoxicating to those who actually know how to use it, like the “foreigners” (that is, in the Empire’s view, inferior, non-British individuals) working at Oxford’s Translation Centre. “In that fraction of a second Robin felt the source of its power, that sublime, unnamable place where meaning was created, that place which words approximated but could not, could never pin down; the place which could only be invoked, imperfectly, but even so would make its presence felt. A bright, warm sphere of light shone out of the bar and grew until it enveloped them both.” Mastering this power literally is like “rewriting the world”; that is why, when things go sour, Robin and his friends can turn to silver making and match pairing once again, and use their to their own advantage to reverse the Empire’s drive towards assimilation and annihilation.

If I had to choose a final concept which may encapsulate the message of the entire book, I would choose this one: “There was no innate, no perfectly comprehensible language; there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No, a thousand worlds within one. And translation – a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them.” No language will ever be the dominant one, unless it loses something of itself – its pristine integrity, its prestige, or simply its dominant status – along the way. Kuang’s decision to use English in writing such a powerful story on the possibility of revolution as language and the other way round bears no contradiction at all; it’s rather a critique on the Empire by using one of its most powerful tools and turning it around, with significant residual parts coming from elsewhere, from the “peripheral” languages and cultures which will always fight to reinstate their presence in the cracks of the dominant culture, seeping through its contradictions and its sense of superiority.

To those who think our hopeless times constantly immersed in hate, cynicism and disdain can’t produce a masterpiece, or a classic actually worth reading, I say: read Babel and ponder over its beauty and visceral urgency. Dream the revolution, and revel in the symphony of languages and their multiplicity.