Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Que siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio; y de tal manera lo siguió, que junta mente començaron, crecieron y florecieron, y después junta fue la caida de entrambos. Language was always the companion of empire, and as such, together they begin, grow, and flourish. And later, together, they fall.

The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.

Never, Robin thought, would he understand these men, who talked of the world and its movements like a grand chess game, where countries and peoples were pieces to be moved and manipulated at will.

‘Language does not exist as a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts,’

And herein lies the difficulty – rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the author’s ideology and biases.

Never forget that you are defying a curse laid by God.’

Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence.

Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence.