“Waiting for the Barbarians”—Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)
Yes, I am able to read and translate from Greek as well as Japanese, although I’m much rustier (and really limited to translating relatively short poems, whereas in Japanese I simply prefer to do so).
Cavafy is one of the great gay poets of modern times but this particular poem, one of his most famous, has little of the erotic in it. It is rather one of the most accomplished, lapidary, and devastating portrayals in our poetry of a civilization in self-involved decline—rather like Verlaine’s Empire à la fin de la décadence, only regarding les grands Barbares blancs as, quite deliberately and self-consciously, an excuse. I think that Cavafy’s poem contains messages for our current age, unfortunately.
I’ve indulged in a couple of colloquialisms that most people who translate this poem don’t. It’s supposed to represent phrasings that I find especially snide or sardonic in other ways in the original.
Yes, I am able to read and translate from Greek as well as Japanese, although I’m much rustier (and really limited to translating relatively short poems, whereas in Japanese I simply prefer to do so).
Cavafy is one of the great gay poets of modern times but this particular poem, one of his most famous, has little of the erotic in it. It is rather one of the most accomplished, lapidary, and devastating portrayals in our poetry of a civilization in self-involved decline—rather like Verlaine’s Empire à la fin de la décadence, only regarding les grands Barbares blancs as, quite deliberately and self-consciously, an excuse. I think that Cavafy’s poem contains messages for our current age, unfortunately.
I’ve indulged in a couple of colloquialisms that most people who translate this poem don’t. It’s supposed to represent phrasings that I find especially snide or sardonic in other ways in the original.
Waiting for the Barbarians
Why are we awaiting, gathered in the agora?
Because the barbarians arrive today.
❦
Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators just sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians arrive today.
What would the Senate bother to legislate about?
The barbarians will legislate when they get here.
❦
Why did our Emperor get up so early this morning
And go to sit in the great gate of the city
Upright on his throne, in state, crowned?
Because the barbarians arrive today
And our Emperor is waiting to receive
Their leader. He went so far as to prepare
A parchment for him, festooned with titles
And names to bestow upon him.
❦
Why have our Consuls and Praetors come out
Today, in their embroidered crimson togas?
Why have they put on their amethyst-choked bracelets
And rings of bright, gleaming emeralds?
Why wield they their precious sceptres,
Blinged out, as they say, with silver and gold?
Because the barbarians arrive today,
And things like that amaze the barbarians.
❦
Why don’t the orators come out like always,
To lay it on the line, to say their piece?
Because the barbarians arrive today,
And rhetorical flourishes bore them.
❦
Why so worried all of a sudden,
So confused? (How serious everyone’s faces are!)
Why do the plazas and avenues empty so quickly,
Everyone loping home, so pensive?
Because it is night, and the barbarians have not arrived
And some coming in over the frontier
Say there are no longer such things as barbarians.
❦
What will become of us without barbarians?
Those people were, from a certain point of view, a solution.