The Daguerreotype in Babel: Memory, Innocence, and Betrayal

What Is the Daguerreotype?

The daguerreotype is a real early photographic process invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in the 1830s. In R.F. Kuang's Babel, Daguerre visits the Royal Institute of Translation in 1837 with a heliographic camera that cannot quite capture stable images. The Institute turns the problem into a competition: students who can improve the device using silver-working magic may earn a patent share. A postgraduate named Anthony Ribben cracks the puzzle by working with the Latin imago – a word meaning “likeness” but also “ghost” or “spectre” – and by heating mercury vapour. The resulting daguerreotype becomes a local sensation, and the four friends – Robin Swift, Ramiz Rafi “Ramy” Mirza, Victoire Desgraves, and Letty Price – decide to have their portrait taken.

The Photograph Session

Letty insists on the portrait, saying she wants to remember “exactly how we were now, this year, in 1837.” The four pose stiffly: Letty and Victoire sit in chairs, hands folded; Robin and Ramy stand behind, unsure where to put their arms. The photographer tells them to stay still, and Robin, realizing he cannot hold a smile, tightens his mouth. The next day they retrieve the finished print. Victoire is disappointed: “it doesn't look like us at all.” Letty, however, is delighted and insists on buying a frame. Ramy finds the image unsettling. Robin privately reflects that the photograph is “also a kind of translation, and they had all become poorer in it.” This early association with translation – the loss that occurs when a moment is fixed – foreshadows the daguerreotype's later, darker meanings.

Recurrence of the Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype appears three times in the novel:

Introduction (Chapter 12 / Capítulo Nove): The photo is taken and displayed, initially a memento of friendship.
Siege (Chapter 37 / Capítulo Vinte e Nove): During the silver-working strike, Victoire gives the daguerreotype to Robin as a gesture of comfort and solidarity. Robin is paralyzed by grief after Ramy's death and Letty's betrayal; Victoire urges him to believe in a future. The picture now holds the weight of everything they have lost.
Epilogue (Capítulo Quarenta e Dois / EPÍLOGO): Victoire flees Oxford with the daguerreotype sewn into her dress, alongside Griffin's unopened letter. She carries it into exile as she boards a ship for America, knowing Letty will pursue her.

Changing Meaning

The daguerreotype shifts from a symbol of innocent fellowship to one of shattered memory and betrayal. Letty, who demanded the photograph, later becomes the person who betrays the group – she shoots Ramy, according to Robin's belief (Chapter 37). The image that once preserved a moment of uncomplicated happiness now mocks that happiness. For Victoire, the photograph becomes a tangible connection to the past she can never recover; for Robin, it is a painful reminder of the ideal that the British Empire (and Babel itself) could not sustain. The permanence of the daguerreotype contrasts with the fluid, living quality of the friends' lost camaraderie – exactly as Robin recognized when he called it a “poorer” translation.

Character Connections

Robin Swift: The daguerreotype represents his struggle with memory and identity. He processes the loss of his friends and his own complicity in the system. Receiving it from Victoire during the siege pushes him to accept that the past cannot be restored, only honored through action.
Victoire Desgraves: She becomes the keeper of the daguerreotype, a role that aligns with her position as the group's witness and eventual survivor. She rejects easy hope but insists on fighting, and the photograph is both a burden and a motivation.
Letty Price: Letty's desire to “freeze” the group reveals her desire for control. Her subsequent betrayal transforms the daguerreotype from a happy keepsake into evidence of the gulf between appearance and truth.
Ramy Mirza: Though he is the one who finds the photograph unsettling, his absence in later chapters gives the daguerreotype its elegiac quality. He is the ghost in the image – present but no longer living.

Theme Connections

Memory and Inexact Translation: The daguerreotype is explicitly compared to translation. Robin's insight that “they had all become poorer in it” echoes the novel's central theme that translation is never neutral; it always distorts. The photograph, like silver-working, attempts to capture meaning but loses the emotional reality.
Innocence and Experience: The friends in the photograph are innocent of the knowledge that will destroy their group – Ramy's death, Letty's betrayal, the colonial violence they will confront. The image becomes a testament to a world that no longer exists.
Betrayal and Loyalty: The person who wanted the photo most (Letty) is the one who breaks the fellowship; the person who keeps it (Victoire) is the most loyal. The object thus marks the tension between appearance and truth.
Colonial Extraction: The daguerreotype is improved by Babel's silver-working, a technology built on colonial exploitation and the labor of colonized translators. The “ghost” in the imago is a fitting metaphor for the spectral presence of those whom the empire has erased.

Four Study Questions with Answers

1. How does the daguerreotype function as a symbol of translation in Babel?

Robin reflects that the photograph is a kind of translation because it captures a visual likeness but loses the emotional truth of the moment. This mirrors how silver-working translation extracts power from languages while flattening their cultural contexts. The daguerreotype thus critiques the colonial idea that reality can be perfectly captured and controlled.

2. What does the daguerreotype's journey from Letty to Victoire to Robin reveal about loyalty among the four friends?

Letty initiates the photo but later betrays the group by shooting Ramy. Victoire keeps the daguerreotype and gives it to Robin during his lowest point, demonstrating that she remains loyal to the memory of their fellowship. Robin, receiving it, is forced to confront both his grief and the need to act. The object's trajectory shows that loyalty belongs not to the person who demands a record, but to those who carry the cost of remembering.

3. Why does Victoire carry the daguerreotype into exile in the epilogue?

Victoire sews the daguerreotype into her dress because it is a tangible link to her former self and to the friends she lost – especially Ramy. She rejects easy hope, but the photograph reminds her of what was destroyed by the empire and fuels her resolve to continue the fight. It is not an idealized keepsake; it is a testament to the price of resistance.

4. In what way does the daguerreotype reflect the broader theme of lost innocence in the novel?

The photograph captures a moment of uncomplicated unity before the collapse of the friends' fellowship. Its static nature means it cannot change, making it a haunting image of the innocence that Robin, Victoire, Ramy, and Letty could never regain. The narrative repeatedly shows how imperialism and betrayal corrode such bonds, and the daguerreotype stands as a frozen reminder of what the characters are fighting for – and what they have already lost.