Waiting for the Barbarians

[arpad]

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 without the barbarians now, what's to come of us?
They were a sort of solution, those people.

K. Kavafis, 1908


- Чего мы ждем, собравшись здесь на площади?
- Сегодня в город прибывают варвары.

- Почто бездействует Сенат? Почто сенаторы
сидят, не заняты законодательством?

- Сегодня в город прибывают варвары.
К чему теперь Сенат с его законами?
Вот варвары придут и издадут законы.

- Зачем так рано Император поднялся?
Зачем уселся он у городских ворот на троне
при всех регалиях и в золотой короне?

- Сегодня в город прибывают варвары,
и Император ждет их предводителя,
чтоб свиток поднести ему пергаментный,
в котором загодя начертаны
торжественные звания и титулы.

- Почто с ним оба консула и преторы
с утра в расшитых серебром багряных тогах?
Зачем на них браслеты с аметистами,
сверкающие перстни с изумрудами?
Зачем в руках их жезлы, что украшены
серебряной и золотой чеканкой?

- Затем, что варвары сегодня ожидаются,
а драгоценности пленяют варваров.

- Почто нигде не видно наших риторов,
обычного не слышно красноречия?

- Затем, что варвары должны прибыть сегодня,
а красноречье утомляет варваров.

- Чем объяснить внезапное смятение
и лиц растерянность? И то, что улицы
и площади внезапно обезлюдели,
что населенье по домам попряталось?

- Тем, что смеркается уже, а варвары
не прибыли, и что с границы вестники
сообщают: больше нет на свете варваров.

- Но как нам быть, как жить теперь без варваров?
Они казались нам подобьем выхода.

Константин Кавафис 1908
__________________________________________________



Beautifully sarcastic. But I feel uneasy reading the poem. Like it is something wrong there. I can't define what.

___________________________________________________

Comments

[franz-josef.livejournal.com]

The last sentences are wrong today (but may be not in 1908). Barbarians are really coming, and they are really going to win. It's almost inevitable, don't worry ;-)
The difference is whether this victory would be like that in tne last years of Rome (or Byzantium) when not only the empires but their great and wonderful cultures were destroyed, or it would resemble something like a yong heir getting property beqeathed by his generous and friendly relative who has brought the young man up.
We are very old and decaying civilization. We need "barbarians". The problem is how to make them our pupils and heirs, not enemies and destroyers of our culture(s).

[zakat451.livejournal.com]

I do not care to bequeath my civilization to the barbarians. They do not deserve the things we have worked so hard to achieve. I would sooner see a nuclear winter on earth than see Islamism rule this planet.

[franz-josef.livejournal.com]

The "barbarians" we need are not islamists, even if they believe in Allah. Islamists are barbarians we need to destroy. But not by Bush's or Sharon's methods.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

Myself, I think it's the sense of despair inherent in the poem, the belief that salvation can only come from the ashes of destruction.

I disagree with franz_josef, at least about the status of the barbarians. I tend to view, say, Islamism as a desperate last gasp, an effort to keep Muslims away from a secular popular culture and a modernity that will corrode traditional religion. Too late; the young of Iran want freedom and rock music, and the Muslims of France oppose the veil.

[zakat451.livejournal.com]

These trades of moderation are irrelevant and are simply a symptom of "five steps forward, one step backward". Islamism will be spread on earth not necessarily through ideological dominance, but through simple numerical superiority and eventual significant military strength.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

"Five steps forward, one step backward" implies progress, doesn't it?

I'm skeptical that numerical superiority will ever happen, given ongoing trends of declining fertility rates and growing assimilation. Military strength, perhaps, but it would have to overcome the organizational and technological weaknesses which hamper the militaries of modern Muslim states. In so doing, of course, that would overcome many of the pre-modern futures of Muslim states. In the meantime, a Pakistani or Iranian conquest of Europe's massively unlikely.

[zakat451.livejournal.com]

By five steps forward, one step back I meant five steps forward for Islamism, one step backword into modernity. Dont forget that declining fertility rates exist only among the native European and other populations, that actually practice various forms of birth control. This is not the case with Islam, where all birth control is forbidden. Thus, in civilized countries where death rate is kept low, there is nothing preventing Muslims from achieving numerical superiority. As far as assimilation is concerned, I believe religion is more than enough of an overriding factor. After all, there's no reason one cant be an Islamist Englishman or Islamist Frenchman.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

Actually, birth control in Islam is permitted; abortion before the fifth month of pregnancy is more iffy, but there's more leeway than there is for Catholicism. Muslims worldwide are going through the demographic transition: In Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iran, the Muslim republics of the ex-USSR, and much of the Maghreb (the major sending countries of Muslim immigrants to Europe), fertility rates are either at replacement levels or dropping sharply. In the meantime, cultural assimilation is continuing rapidly; I wrote about the subject. The subject of religion is more difficult, but it isn't that long ago that Roman Catholicism was seen as a religion that couldn't fit into mainly Protestant and/or secular countries. It remains to be proven why Islam would be different.

[zakat451.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I'll have to research the topic some more, although I dont believe that they will be able to assimilate successfully into european culture without infusing it with their own.

[rfmcdpei.livejournal.com]

There will definitely be some influence. Compare the influence on the United States by the immigration of millions of Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe in the 1880-1920 period, beginning at a time when the country was almost entirely Protestant and with an Anglo-Celtic-Germanic population. Even so, I'm skeptical of the possibility of a wholesale reversion to conservatism prompted by Muslim immigrants, if only because they've got a stake in liberal societies themselves as individuals.

[alexbogd.livejournal.com]

Да, Вы уже второй человек среди моих френдов, кто вспомиинает это стихотворение. А я-то думал, что Кавафис в нашей культуре малоизвестен.

[cema.livejournal.com]

Ну, после того как его перевёл Бродский.

[lesoto.livejournal.com]

Спасибо, двести лет не читал Константина Кавафиса

serviceable villains

[vorona.livejournal.com]

Surreal bourgeois/lumpen collaboration - creepy, and a little too close to home, here. Reminds me of the WTO protests in Seattle - instead of arresting those clearly seen doing violent or destructive acts, the cops frequently waited, waited, waited, and then pepper-sprayed or shot with rubber pellets anyone nearby. Nice poem!