J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 1979.
Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in this wistful vision. I am not unaware of what such daydreams signify, dreams of becoming an unthinking savage, of taking the cold road back to the capital, of groping my way out to the ruins in the desert, of returning to the confinement of my cell, of seeking out the barbarians and offering myself to them to use as they wish. Without exception they are dreams of ends: dreams not of how to live but of how to die. And everyone, I know, in that walled town sinking now into darkness (I hear the two thin trumpet calls that announce the closing of the gates) is similarly preoccupied. Everyone but the children! The children never doubt that the great old trees in whose shade they play will stand forever, that one day they will grow to be strong like their fathers, fertile like their mothers, that they will live and prosper and raise their own children and grow old in the place where they were born. What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one: I, wading in the ooze, am no less infected with it than the faithful Colonel Joll as he tracks the enemies of Empire through the boundless desert, sword unsheathed to cut down barbarian after barbarian until at last he finds and slays the one whose destiny it should be (or if not he then his son's or unborn grandson's) to climb the bronze gateway to the Summer Palace and topple the globe surmounted by the tiger rampant that symbolizes eternal dominion, while his comrades below cheer and fire their muskets in the air.
Both this book and Foe (1986) are worth your time.
"Waiting for the Barbarians" by Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933) , translated by Robert Pinsky:
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn't anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?Because the barbarians are coming today.
What's the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city's main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor's waiting to receive their leader.
He's even got a scroll to give him,
loaded 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,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying their 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 turn up 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 bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
There are no barbarians any longer.Now what's going to happen to us without the barbarians?
These people were a kind of solution.
as is the brilliant cavafy poem from which coetzee takes the title. the barbarians: "these people were a kind of solution...."
@toral, indeed. Thanks for the shout-out, I have added it to the post.
Re: "Both this book and Foe (1986) are worth your time." ... as a coda (of sorts), "Disgrace" is worth one's time too...
very cool