[1056] Waiting for the Barbarians

Guest poem submitted by Zubaer Mahboob, <zubaer_mahboob@>:

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

     The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

     Because the barbarians are coming today.
     What laws can the senators make now?
     Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

     Because the barbarians are coming today
     and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
     He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
     replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

     Because the barbarians are coming today
     and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

     Because the barbarians are coming today
     and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

     Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
     And some who have just returned from the border say
     there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

	-- Constantine Cavafy

Translated by Edmund Keeley.

An empire awaits its end, its ruling class awash in all the trappings of
opulence but rudderless without a guiding moral compass, and dissipating
under the weight of boredom and finery. Cavafy's poem tells hauntingly of
the ultimate hollowness of tyranny - an apt theme for our times. The
novelist JM Coetzee adopted the title of this poem for his 1982 novel
"Waiting for the Barbarians", a scantily-veiled denunciation of the
apartheid regime. If you enjoy the mythical landscape of this poem, you
might also enjoy the vivid imaginary empire created in that book.

Zubaer.

[Minstrels Links]

Constantine Cavafy:
Poem #217, Ithaka
Poem #296, Footsteps
Poem #522, In Harbor

From: sandi_ordinario@

Comments on Poem #1056, Constantine Cavafy"s Waiting for the Barbarians

I think the scenario is taken from the fall of the Roman Empire with
Barbarians about to sack or take over the reigns from the Establishment.
Perhaps the poet's motivation in writing may have sprung from his
reading of Gibbon.

The establishment (Rome) is eagerly awaiting the coming of the Barbarians
and in this anticipation, all routine functions stop. The powers that be
are ready to make compromises designed to bestow titles and imposing 
names for them as a means to either secure their present positions or 
cushion their exit. Material things also such as jewels and "elegant 
canes worked in silver and gold" are also offered (though indirectly) to
these Barbarians.

No talk or discussion according to the poet is appropriate from the point
of view of the old establishment because they could not negotiate from a 
position of strength. They can only compromise weakly from an effete position.

The Establishment waits and waits but the would be saviors do not come.

It is a poignant expression from the poet to wish that "young blood (barbarians)
could infuse life to a dying establishment or order but if these are 
non-existent, the hopes for continuity for a revised or revitalized order is
replaced by fear for the eventual dissolution inevitably comes as 
"night has fallen."

So what is the poet advocating? My take is that the Barbarians, the wild men,
the world order shakers so to speak should be resolute in taking over the 
status quo before the complete collapse of the present order.

This is a subtle tribute to the ushering in of the unconventional or unorthodox
which in turn after their tenure might also become conventional and orthodox
until they too would be overthrown by new Barbarians. An application of Hegel?

Superior thoughts.

Sandi 

From: "Robert Kedney" <rok2@>

This poem has been used by American Socialists to justify paring the
Defense establishment of the United States; though the events of 11
September 2001 clearly point there are an endless number of barbarians
outside the gates.




            A quote from Hamlet (Act V, scene II) best characterizes the
need to prepare to defend the nation:  "there's a special providence in
the fall of a sparrow.  If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to
come, it will be now, if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness
is all."

             One thing the author never addresses is how does one deal
with the barbarians born within the walls - those who have been
convinced by American Socialists - that they are entitled to have their
fellow citizens to take care of them.

Rok

From: Anil Menon <anilm411@>

There's a classic essay by Antonio Candido that discusses this poem
with some insight.

"Four Waitings", Antonio Candido (tr. Howard S. Becker), Sociological
Theory, Vol 10, No. 1 (1992), pp. 21-42.

It's probably worth adding that the essay is not about past or current
American foreign policy, though of course, it could be read that way.

Candido (citing Bowra) mentions several co-temporaneous poems (40s,
50s)  with the same theme. Valery Briusov's "The Arrival of the Huns"
and Stefen George's "The Burning of the Temple."

Arthur Herman's "The Idea of Decline in Western History" is a good
antidote to these doom 'n gloom poets.

--Anil Menon