Katherine > Recent Status Updates

“‘To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.’”

“”Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,’ observed the Marquis, ‘will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as thus roof,’ looking up to it, ‘shuts out the sky.’”

“The gears of history were turning fast in England. The world was getting smaller, more mechanized, and more unequal, and it was yet unclear where things would end up, or what that would mean for Babel, or for the Empire itself.”

“English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.”

“Because translation can never be perfect, the necessary distortions - the meanings lost or warped in the journey - are caught? And then manifested by silver.”

“Words are connected to the concepts they describe by something invisible, intangible - a mystical realm of meaning and ideas, emanating from a pure mental energy which only takes form when we ascribe it an imperfect signifier.”

I am loving this so far!!! At first it very much reminded me of The Secret History but I think I’m liking this a lot more. I do feel like I’m reading Robin’s inner monologue in the voice of Richard Papen but I have yet to see more facets of Robin’s character.

Also the setting?? Babel?? The concept of silver capturing the untranslatable nuances lost in translation between languages is just… i have no words