Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Dominus illuminatio mea,

‘We’re always updating the classics – between the past century and now, we’ve become a lot better at certain languages, and there’s no reason why classics should remain so inaccessible. I’m currently working on a better Latin version of the Bhagavad Gita—’ ‘Never mind that Schlegel just put one out,’ Anthony quipped. ‘Over ten years ago,’ Vimal dismissed. ‘And the Schlegel Gita is dreadful; he said himself that he hadn’t grasped the basic philosophy that underlies the whole thing. Which shows, because he’s used about seven different words for yoga—’

even a gilded cage was still a cage.

The origins of the word anger were tied closely to physical suffering. Anger was first an ‘affliction’, as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a ‘painful, cruel, narrow’ state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in turn came from the Latin angor, which meant ‘strangling, anguish, distress’. Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe. And rage, of course, came from madness.*

‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi Raji’un’

Have you ever considered you might better make your point by being nice?’ ‘Nice comes from the Latin word for “stupid”,’* said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.’

He hoped. He hoped until hope became its own form of torture. The original meaning of hope was ‘to desire’, and Robin wanted with every ounce of his being a world that no longer was.

They both thought this was a matter of individual fortunes instead of systematic oppression, and neither could see outside the perspective of people who looked and spoke just like them.

Sterling glared at him. He was breathing very hard. It was the strangest thing, Robin thought, how much he’d worked himself up. His cheeks were flushed, and his forehead was beginning to shine with sweat. Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?

Let the pain slide off you like raindrops, without acknowledgment, without reaction, because to pretend it is not happening is the only way to survive.

Griffin’s face had turned paper-white, almost green. χλωρός, Robin thought stupidly; it was the only thing his mind could process, a memory of a frivolous debate over the translation of colour. He found himself remembering in detail how Professor Craft had questioned why they kept translating χλωρός as ‘green’, when Homer had also applied it to fresh twigs, to honey, to faces pale with fright. Was the bard merely blind, then? No. Perhaps, proposed Professor Craft, it was simply the colour of fresh nature, of verdant life – but that could not be right, for the sickly green of Griffin’s body was nothing but the onset of death.