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Waiting for the Barbarians
For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.
J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.
J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.
152 pages, Paperback
First published October 27, 1980
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About the author
J.M. Coetzee
189 books5,174 followersJ. M. Coetzee is a South African writer, essayist, and translator, widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of contemporary literature. His works, often characterized by their austere prose and profound moral and philosophical depth, explore themes of colonialism, identity, power, and human suffering. Born and raised in South Africa, he later became an Australian citizen and has lived in Adelaide since 2002.
Coetzee’s breakthrough novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), established him as a major literary voice, while Life & Times of Michael K (1983) won him the first of his two Booker Prizes. His best-known work, Disgrace (1999), a stark and unsettling examination of post-apartheid South Africa, secured his second Booker Prize, making him the first author to win the award twice. His other notable novels include Foe, Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg, Elizabeth Costello, and The Childhood of Jesus, many of which incorporate allegorical and metafictional elements.
Beyond fiction, Coetzee has written numerous essays and literary critiques, contributing significantly to discussions on literature, ethics, and history. His autobiographical trilogy—Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime—blends memoir with fiction, offering a fragmented yet insightful reflection on his own life. His literary achievements were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
A deeply private individual, Coetzee avoids public life and rarely gives interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself.
Coetzee’s breakthrough novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), established him as a major literary voice, while Life & Times of Michael K (1983) won him the first of his two Booker Prizes. His best-known work, Disgrace (1999), a stark and unsettling examination of post-apartheid South Africa, secured his second Booker Prize, making him the first author to win the award twice. His other notable novels include Foe, Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg, Elizabeth Costello, and The Childhood of Jesus, many of which incorporate allegorical and metafictional elements.
Beyond fiction, Coetzee has written numerous essays and literary critiques, contributing significantly to discussions on literature, ethics, and history. His autobiographical trilogy—Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime—blends memoir with fiction, offering a fragmented yet insightful reflection on his own life. His literary achievements were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
A deeply private individual, Coetzee avoids public life and rarely gives interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,892 reviews
July 22, 2021
Waiting for the Barbarians is brief but it is like a candle lit at both ends - burning bright and chasing the dark away. The history of civilization is inside.
As a child loses its innocence growing up so civilization deprives human beings of their innate naturalness.
Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.
As a child loses its innocence growing up so civilization deprives human beings of their innate naturalness.
May 21, 2025
في نوعية من الكتب مينفعش تحكم عليها بمدي إستمتاعك بقرايتها قد ما بتحكم عليها بأهمية محتواها والفكرة اللي بتتناولها..
في إنتظار البرابرة من النوع دة..كتاب ممكن يكون مش ممتع بس من الكتب اللي صعب تتنسي..
الرواية بتتكلم عن إزاي أي سلطة عسكرية بتقدر تخلق عدو وهمي للتنكيل بالشعب من ناحية ولضمان إستمرارها في الحكم من ناحية تانية بحجة الحفاظ علي إستقرار البلاد!
"فكرة واحدة تشغل العقل الخفي للإمبراطورية:كيف لا تنتهي،كيف لا تموت،كيف تطيل عمرها.."
السؤال بقي هل بوجودك ضمن هذه السلطة معناه إنك تلغي ضميرك؟ هل من حقك تدافع عن مظلوم أو تحاول تعويضه بأي صورة من الصور حتي لو إنت واثق من عدالة قضيتك؟
هل السلطة حتسمح لك ولا حتتحول في يوم وليلة إلي عدو و سجين؟!
الكاتب كان من الذكاء إنه كاتب الرواية في زمن غير معلوم ومكان غير محدد حتي الاشخاص معظمهم من غير أسماء عشان الاحداث هنا مش بس تنفع لهذه الرواية لكن للأسف إحنا بنشوف زيها علي أرض الواقع في بلاد كتير..
كويتزي كاتب من العيار التقيل واخد البوكر مرتين وكمان واخد نوبل ..أول قراءة له..صحيح مش ممتعة..بس أكيد مش حتكون الأخيرة..
"الأسهل أن تصرخ ..الأسهل أن تتعرض للضرب وتصبح شهيداً.. الأسهل أن أدفن وأن يوضع رأسي علي كتلة من حجر من أن أدافع عن قضية العدالة بالنسبة للبرابرة!"
في إنتظار البرابرة من النوع دة..كتاب ممكن يكون مش ممتع بس من الكتب اللي صعب تتنسي..
الرواية بتتكلم عن إزاي أي سلطة عسكرية بتقدر تخلق عدو وهمي للتنكيل بالشعب من ناحية ولضمان إستمرارها في الحكم من ناحية تانية بحجة الحفاظ علي إستقرار البلاد!
"فكرة واحدة تشغل العقل الخفي للإمبراطورية:كيف لا تنتهي،كيف لا تموت،كيف تطيل عمرها.."
السؤال بقي هل بوجودك ضمن هذه السلطة معناه إنك تلغي ضميرك؟ هل من حقك تدافع عن مظلوم أو تحاول تعويضه بأي صورة من الصور حتي لو إنت واثق من عدالة قضيتك؟
هل السلطة حتسمح لك ولا حتتحول في يوم وليلة إلي عدو و سجين؟!
الكاتب كان من الذكاء إنه كاتب الرواية في زمن غير معلوم ومكان غير محدد حتي الاشخاص معظمهم من غير أسماء عشان الاحداث هنا مش بس تنفع لهذه الرواية لكن للأسف إحنا بنشوف زيها علي أرض الواقع في بلاد كتير..
كويتزي كاتب من العيار التقيل واخد البوكر مرتين وكمان واخد نوبل ..أول قراءة له..صحيح مش ممتعة..بس أكيد مش حتكون الأخيرة..
"الأسهل أن تصرخ ..الأسهل أن تتعرض للضرب وتصبح شهيداً.. الأسهل أن أدفن وأن يوضع رأسي علي كتلة من حجر من أن أدافع عن قضية العدالة بالنسبة للبرابرة!"
January 17, 2023
KAFKA TRA I BOSCIMANI
Accogliendo i barbari.
Qual è compito della letteratura, rassicurarci o metterci paura?
Con questo libro, Coetzee risponde senza dubbio adottando la seconda ipotesi.
Elizabeth Costello, nel romanzo omonimo, si descrive così, come se dovesse pubblicare un annuncio personale:
Divorziata, bianca, altezza 1.70, sessantenne, in corsa verso la morte che le corre incontro allo stesso passo, cerco dio, immortale, in qualunque forma terrestre, per fini per i quali non bastano le parole.
Coetzee è ormai settantenne, credo sia più alto di 1.70, se sia divorziato non saprei, ma immagino di sì.
E, soprattutto, suppongo che quale sia la risposta, lui la conservi nascosta, lontano dai riflettori e dalla curiosità pubblica.
A parte queste differenze, penso, che le parole di Elizabeth Costello descrivano a meraviglia lo stesso Coetzee.
Aspettando i tartari, il deserto dei barbari.
Alla Mostra del Cinema di Venezia 2019 (edizione #76) era in concorso l’adattamento cinematografico di questo magnifico romanzo di Coetzee del 1980, con lo stesso Coetzee unico scrittore impegnato a sceneggiare (errore, secondo me). La regia affidata al talentuosissimo colombiano Ciro Guerra alla sua prima prova fuori dei confini patrii.
Collaboratori al top (per esempio, Chris Menges alla fotografia, il nostro Jacopo Quadri al montaggio…). A me ha dato la sensazione di quelle super band di rocker che mettono in gioco e condividono più mestiere che anima. Nel senso che il risultato filmico ha aspetti belli e interessanti, ma tutto sommato non mi pare vada oltre la sufficienza.
L’errore maggiore è l’eccesso di manicheismo, dichiarato da subito. Appena entra in scena Johnny Depp, che è il colonnello poliziotto mandato a mettere ordine nella situazione di quella zona di confine (situazione che andrebbe benissimo se non fosse proprio il colonnello a attizzare, e scatenare, i presunti barbari che prima del suo arrivo vivevamo in pace senza problemi), si ha da una parte il cattivo dichiarato e sbandierato, il Male, vestito di blu notte, con occhiali da sole anche in interno, verga frustino in mano; e dall’altra il magistrato, vestito di chiaro, con l’espressione angelica di Mark Rylance, che in questa occasione sembra aver seguito corsi di recitazione da Gesù Cristo (tra l’altro, si inginocchia, lava e cura piedi). Esagerato. Si perde la sottigliezza, le sfumature, nel romanzo il magistrato non è così santificato.
C’è anche qualche momento di stanca, di noia, di ritmo lento.
Ma i costumi sono efficaci, le scenografie affascinanti, i paesaggi magnifici: Guerra sceglie di mostrare il Marocco (dintorni di Ouarzazade) come se fosse la Mongolia, il confine cinese. E per accentuare questa scelta trasforma i barbari, che nel romanzo si presumono essere africani, in gente dagli zigomi forti e gli occhi a mandorla. Tartari.
In effetti il capolavoro di Zurlini ritorna in mente e nelle citazioni ogni istante. E alla fine viene voglia di dire: ridatemi Il deserto dei Tartari!
Accogliendo i barbari.
Qual è compito della letteratura, rassicurarci o metterci paura?
Con questo libro, Coetzee risponde senza dubbio adottando la seconda ipotesi.
Elizabeth Costello, nel romanzo omonimo, si descrive così, come se dovesse pubblicare un annuncio personale:
Divorziata, bianca, altezza 1.70, sessantenne, in corsa verso la morte che le corre incontro allo stesso passo, cerco dio, immortale, in qualunque forma terrestre, per fini per i quali non bastano le parole.
Coetzee è ormai settantenne, credo sia più alto di 1.70, se sia divorziato non saprei, ma immagino di sì.
E, soprattutto, suppongo che quale sia la risposta, lui la conservi nascosta, lontano dai riflettori e dalla curiosità pubblica.
A parte queste differenze, penso, che le parole di Elizabeth Costello descrivano a meraviglia lo stesso Coetzee.
Aspettando i tartari, il deserto dei barbari.
Alla Mostra del Cinema di Venezia 2019 (edizione #76) era in concorso l’adattamento cinematografico di questo magnifico romanzo di Coetzee del 1980, con lo stesso Coetzee unico scrittore impegnato a sceneggiare (errore, secondo me). La regia affidata al talentuosissimo colombiano Ciro Guerra alla sua prima prova fuori dei confini patrii.
Collaboratori al top (per esempio, Chris Menges alla fotografia, il nostro Jacopo Quadri al montaggio…). A me ha dato la sensazione di quelle super band di rocker che mettono in gioco e condividono più mestiere che anima. Nel senso che il risultato filmico ha aspetti belli e interessanti, ma tutto sommato non mi pare vada oltre la sufficienza.
L’errore maggiore è l’eccesso di manicheismo, dichiarato da subito. Appena entra in scena Johnny Depp, che è il colonnello poliziotto mandato a mettere ordine nella situazione di quella zona di confine (situazione che andrebbe benissimo se non fosse proprio il colonnello a attizzare, e scatenare, i presunti barbari che prima del suo arrivo vivevamo in pace senza problemi), si ha da una parte il cattivo dichiarato e sbandierato, il Male, vestito di blu notte, con occhiali da sole anche in interno, verga frustino in mano; e dall’altra il magistrato, vestito di chiaro, con l’espressione angelica di Mark Rylance, che in questa occasione sembra aver seguito corsi di recitazione da Gesù Cristo (tra l’altro, si inginocchia, lava e cura piedi). Esagerato. Si perde la sottigliezza, le sfumature, nel romanzo il magistrato non è così santificato.
C’è anche qualche momento di stanca, di noia, di ritmo lento.
Ma i costumi sono efficaci, le scenografie affascinanti, i paesaggi magnifici: Guerra sceglie di mostrare il Marocco (dintorni di Ouarzazade) come se fosse la Mongolia, il confine cinese. E per accentuare questa scelta trasforma i barbari, che nel romanzo si presumono essere africani, in gente dagli zigomi forti e gli occhi a mandorla. Tartari.
In effetti il capolavoro di Zurlini ritorna in mente e nelle citazioni ogni istante. E alla fine viene voglia di dire: ridatemi Il deserto dei Tartari!
July 28, 2015
It is impossible to read this and not be reminded of an almost genetically programmed inferiority complex, the burden of history only the descendants of the colonized have to bear. Despite those smug pronouncements of the 21st century being an era of a fair and equitable world and the hard battles won in favor of interracial harmony, there's the fact of your friend barely suppressing a squawk of alarm when you express your admiration for Idris Elba - no female I am acquainted with in real life has learned to wean herself away from the fixation with a white complexion. Scrub your skin raw till it bleeds but never fall behind in the race to make it whiter because that's the color the world approves of. You can fawn over Simon Baker's blonde, light-eyed glory but not over Elba's hulking, ruggedly handsome perfection; heaven forbid you prefer the latter over the former. The 21st century is yet to cast its magic spell over the standards of physical beauty.
So if I, a citizen of a purportedly newer and better social order, can still feel the rippling aftershocks of the catastrophe called Imperialism from across the barrier of decades and centuries, what would a man like Coetzee have experienced, stranded in the middle of the suffocating sociopolitical stasis of Apartheid? Moral anguish? A bitter impotence? A premonitory sense of doom? Anger?
Fiction, I believe, must have been his preferred method of exorcizing these demons. And purge these emotions he did through the composition of this slim little novel which can be aptly described as a most heart-wrenching lament on the condition of the world of his times.
An anonymous magistrate stationed at a farthest corner of an unspecified Empire witnesses the death throes of its reign while recovering his own humanity at the loss of his position of power and influence. In the beginning he is convinced of his righteousness as a dutiful servant of the Empire who oversees the welfare his subjects with moderation but with the arrival of a bluntly tyrannical figure of authority whose methods differ vastly from his, he begins to question his own collusion in the maintenance of an unnatural order. Unable to stand as a mute witness to the horrendous abuse inflicted on innocent 'natives' on the false suspicion of their complicity with 'barbarians' or armed rebels who threaten the stability of the Empire, he clashes with the aforementioned administrator who undoubtedly represents the true face of any oppressor when divested of its sheen of sophistication. And thus begins his fall from grace culminating in a kind of metaphorical rebirth through extreme physical abasement.
In the fashion of Coetzee's signature didacticism the novel is rife with allegorical implications but as much as these can be deeply thought-provoking, sometimes they also resemble conveniently inserted contrivances. Like the pseudo-erotic entanglement that develops between the ageing magistrate and a young 'barbarian' girl who is left maimed and partially blinded after a violent bout of interrogation is amply demonstrative of a colonizer-colonized arrangement - the one bereft of power to drive the relationship in a desired direction becomes dependent on the volatile benevolence of the other party. Or the mounting paranoia about the anticipated attack of the 'barbarians' who, much like Godot, fail to appear and remain a myth till the end although emerging as the key factor hastening the impending demise of Empire. All the layers of meaning and symbolism could send a dedicated literature student into paroxysms of pleasure no doubt.
Wary as I am of Coetzee's often stilted world-building, my 5-star rating was an inevitability given my obsession with narratives containing a discernible vein of literary activism in harmony with notions of social justice. Here he also seems to have successfully reined in his pesky habit of turning his characters into sockpuppet-ish mouthpieces to tout his own passage-length worldviews. The narrator does occasionally morph into a pedagogue but his inner monologues never seem out of place given his unique circumstances. Besides it takes courage to acknowledge the fact of white man's guilt in a world which is yet to discard the rhetoric of 'white man's burden'.
So if I, a citizen of a purportedly newer and better social order, can still feel the rippling aftershocks of the catastrophe called Imperialism from across the barrier of decades and centuries, what would a man like Coetzee have experienced, stranded in the middle of the suffocating sociopolitical stasis of Apartheid? Moral anguish? A bitter impotence? A premonitory sense of doom? Anger?
Fiction, I believe, must have been his preferred method of exorcizing these demons. And purge these emotions he did through the composition of this slim little novel which can be aptly described as a most heart-wrenching lament on the condition of the world of his times.
It may be true that the world as it stands is no illusion, no evil dream of a night. It may be that we wake up to it ineluctably, that we can neither forget it nor dispense with it. But I find it as hard as ever to believe that the end is near.
An anonymous magistrate stationed at a farthest corner of an unspecified Empire witnesses the death throes of its reign while recovering his own humanity at the loss of his position of power and influence. In the beginning he is convinced of his righteousness as a dutiful servant of the Empire who oversees the welfare his subjects with moderation but with the arrival of a bluntly tyrannical figure of authority whose methods differ vastly from his, he begins to question his own collusion in the maintenance of an unnatural order. Unable to stand as a mute witness to the horrendous abuse inflicted on innocent 'natives' on the false suspicion of their complicity with 'barbarians' or armed rebels who threaten the stability of the Empire, he clashes with the aforementioned administrator who undoubtedly represents the true face of any oppressor when divested of its sheen of sophistication. And thus begins his fall from grace culminating in a kind of metaphorical rebirth through extreme physical abasement.
I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy, he the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow. Two sides of imperial rule, no more, no less.
In the fashion of Coetzee's signature didacticism the novel is rife with allegorical implications but as much as these can be deeply thought-provoking, sometimes they also resemble conveniently inserted contrivances. Like the pseudo-erotic entanglement that develops between the ageing magistrate and a young 'barbarian' girl who is left maimed and partially blinded after a violent bout of interrogation is amply demonstrative of a colonizer-colonized arrangement - the one bereft of power to drive the relationship in a desired direction becomes dependent on the volatile benevolence of the other party. Or the mounting paranoia about the anticipated attack of the 'barbarians' who, much like Godot, fail to appear and remain a myth till the end although emerging as the key factor hastening the impending demise of Empire. All the layers of meaning and symbolism could send a dedicated literature student into paroxysms of pleasure no doubt.
With the buck before me suspended in immobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to turn my gaze inward and see what it is that has robbed the hunt of its savour: the sense that this has become no longer a morning's hunting but an occasion on which either the proud ram bleeds to death on the ice or the old hunter misses his aim; that for the duration of its frozen moment the stars are locked in a configuration in which events are not themselves but stand for other things.
Wary as I am of Coetzee's often stilted world-building, my 5-star rating was an inevitability given my obsession with narratives containing a discernible vein of literary activism in harmony with notions of social justice. Here he also seems to have successfully reined in his pesky habit of turning his characters into sockpuppet-ish mouthpieces to tout his own passage-length worldviews. The narrator does occasionally morph into a pedagogue but his inner monologues never seem out of place given his unique circumstances. Besides it takes courage to acknowledge the fact of white man's guilt in a world which is yet to discard the rhetoric of 'white man's burden'.
January 28, 2021
Who is the real barbarian, the colonizer or the less developed colonized? I guess this was the main theme of the book for me.
Waiting for the Barbarian is a very powerful book but I enjoyed Disgrace by the same author more .
I observed that there are a few common themes in both books such as:
- the "disgrace of getting old". Both main characters are past their youth and are horrified by the way their body is getting older
- violence and rape
- a father witnesses atrocities being done to their daughter and is unable to intervene and save her
- moral questionable relationships that manage to get the main character into trouble and influence his destiny.
Waiting for the Barbarian is a very powerful book but I enjoyed Disgrace by the same author more .
I observed that there are a few common themes in both books such as:
- the "disgrace of getting old". Both main characters are past their youth and are horrified by the way their body is getting older
- violence and rape
- a father witnesses atrocities being done to their daughter and is unable to intervene and save her
- moral questionable relationships that manage to get the main character into trouble and influence his destiny.
June 14, 2024
Romanul lui Coetzee mi s-a părut la fel de bun ca și la prima lectură.
Într-un fort de la marginea Imperiului, viața curge liniștit. Sigur, există o vagă temere legată de niște presupuși „barbari”. Nimeni nu i-a zărit încă, nimeni nu a fost atacat de ei, dar credința în viclenia și cruzimea lor persistă în mințile cetățenilor.
Barbarii devin „reali”, abia din momentul în care fortul este inspectat de colonelul Joll, o brută, și autoritățile hotărăsc că a venit vremea unui război total. Barbarii trebuie să dispară de pe fața pămîntului. Trupele pornesc în expediții, străbat ținuturi aride și se întorc cu o mînă de prizonieri în zdrențe. Captivii nu par deloc niște războinici, nu au înfățișarea unor barbari veritabili. Asta nu-l împiedică pe colonelul Joll să-i tortureze și să-i ucidă, pentru a stabili „adevărul” voit de el. Și pînă la urmă, adevărul devine însăși tortura.
Invocînd un pericol „iminent”, Joll instituie un regim de teroare. Cetățenii asistă pasiv la aceste grozăvii. Singurul om care îndrăznește să-l înfrunte pe colonel e Magistratul, un bărbat „între două vîrste”, cel care administrase pînă atunci fortul și aplicase, cu prudență și bun simț, Legea. Firește, Magistratul nu e un sfînt, e un om ca oricare altul, cu păcate și slăbiciuni. Va fi supus la cazne înfiorătoate, va ajunge la limita rezistenței, se va umili în fața lui Mandel, unul dintre torționari, va cere îndurare...
În definitiv, barbarii sînt doar pretextul de a institui o dictatură a bunului plac, a instinctelor agresive și a lipsei de rațiune: „Soldații ajung să tiranizeze întregul oraș” (p.166). Iar fantasma barbarilor va justifica minciuna, despotismul și violența nesăbuită.
Într-un fort de la marginea Imperiului, viața curge liniștit. Sigur, există o vagă temere legată de niște presupuși „barbari”. Nimeni nu i-a zărit încă, nimeni nu a fost atacat de ei, dar credința în viclenia și cruzimea lor persistă în mințile cetățenilor.
Barbarii devin „reali”, abia din momentul în care fortul este inspectat de colonelul Joll, o brută, și autoritățile hotărăsc că a venit vremea unui război total. Barbarii trebuie să dispară de pe fața pămîntului. Trupele pornesc în expediții, străbat ținuturi aride și se întorc cu o mînă de prizonieri în zdrențe. Captivii nu par deloc niște războinici, nu au înfățișarea unor barbari veritabili. Asta nu-l împiedică pe colonelul Joll să-i tortureze și să-i ucidă, pentru a stabili „adevărul” voit de el. Și pînă la urmă, adevărul devine însăși tortura.
Invocînd un pericol „iminent”, Joll instituie un regim de teroare. Cetățenii asistă pasiv la aceste grozăvii. Singurul om care îndrăznește să-l înfrunte pe colonel e Magistratul, un bărbat „între două vîrste”, cel care administrase pînă atunci fortul și aplicase, cu prudență și bun simț, Legea. Firește, Magistratul nu e un sfînt, e un om ca oricare altul, cu păcate și slăbiciuni. Va fi supus la cazne înfiorătoate, va ajunge la limita rezistenței, se va umili în fața lui Mandel, unul dintre torționari, va cere îndurare...
În definitiv, barbarii sînt doar pretextul de a institui o dictatură a bunului plac, a instinctelor agresive și a lipsei de rațiune: „Soldații ajung să tiranizeze întregul oraș” (p.166). Iar fantasma barbarilor va justifica minciuna, despotismul și violența nesăbuită.
July 20, 2025
JM Coetzee offers a bizarre story in his novel Waiting for the Barbarians. We don't know where or when it takes place, and it doesn't matter. The narrator is the magistrate of a border town folded in on itself. Beyond the walls, in the mountainous desert, an arid and cold region, lie barbarians. We don't know much about them, except that this entire territory once belonged to them long ago. We fear them, but we don't know why. Probably because the Empire has decided so, we need a common enemy, so we invent this threat. However, the few barbarians we saw lived miserably in huts near the lake and the river. Be that as it may, the reader mainly witnesses the growing unease in the small community and the joyful arrival of an armed company sent as reinforcements. However, the narrator views this arrival with a suspicious eye.
Many compare "Waiting for the Barbarians" with "The Desert of the Tartars" by Dino Buzzati. Yes, there are similarities. For example, this fortress is a bastion of civilization on the borders of nowhere. But, while Buzzati's hero loses his mind, believing he is fulfilling his absurd duty to stand up to an invisible enemy (perhaps even disappeared?), Coetzee must wage war against his own. It is because the Empire fears these barbarians who are at its gates.
Moreover, the new armed company from the capital disperses small groups of these barbarians, takes some prisoners, and tortures them. The magistrate opposes it, takes pity on them, and, above all, comes to their aid. Moreover, he collects one of them at his home. This gesture earned him the animosity of the soldiers and the incomprehension of the civilians, who broke away from him. Why does he like them? Is he in league with them? Fear, always fear, governs people's minds, so we go after the barbarians more; we provoke them.
Coetzee offers us a reflection on the human condition. In the name of civilization, several protagonists commit the worst atrocities. That's saying a lot. But, finally, the armed company is defeated and scattered, and the remaining soldiers drop their weapons. The civilians are now defenseless. And the magistrate is now too old and isolated to do anything about it. All that remains is to wait for the barbarians. As their advance threatens the city, passions run wild, and we tear each other apart. For the civilians who can flee, it is a matter of choice; for the others, it is forfeiture. We realize how fragile civilization is. It's quite a reversal: the barbarians and the natives regain their rights in their ancestral lands. Many see it as an allegory; we can compare this situation with the segregationist regime that prevailed in South Africa, ensuring the supremacy of Afrikaans over blacks. In Waiting for the Barbarians, we can say that the author was correct because Apartheid was abolished eleven years later.
Many compare "Waiting for the Barbarians" with "The Desert of the Tartars" by Dino Buzzati. Yes, there are similarities. For example, this fortress is a bastion of civilization on the borders of nowhere. But, while Buzzati's hero loses his mind, believing he is fulfilling his absurd duty to stand up to an invisible enemy (perhaps even disappeared?), Coetzee must wage war against his own. It is because the Empire fears these barbarians who are at its gates.
Moreover, the new armed company from the capital disperses small groups of these barbarians, takes some prisoners, and tortures them. The magistrate opposes it, takes pity on them, and, above all, comes to their aid. Moreover, he collects one of them at his home. This gesture earned him the animosity of the soldiers and the incomprehension of the civilians, who broke away from him. Why does he like them? Is he in league with them? Fear, always fear, governs people's minds, so we go after the barbarians more; we provoke them.
Coetzee offers us a reflection on the human condition. In the name of civilization, several protagonists commit the worst atrocities. That's saying a lot. But, finally, the armed company is defeated and scattered, and the remaining soldiers drop their weapons. The civilians are now defenseless. And the magistrate is now too old and isolated to do anything about it. All that remains is to wait for the barbarians. As their advance threatens the city, passions run wild, and we tear each other apart. For the civilians who can flee, it is a matter of choice; for the others, it is forfeiture. We realize how fragile civilization is. It's quite a reversal: the barbarians and the natives regain their rights in their ancestral lands. Many see it as an allegory; we can compare this situation with the segregationist regime that prevailed in South Africa, ensuring the supremacy of Afrikaans over blacks. In Waiting for the Barbarians, we can say that the author was correct because Apartheid was abolished eleven years later.
March 3, 2020
"They do not care that once the ground is cleared the wind begins to eat at the soil and the desert advances. Thus the expeditionary force against the barbarians prepared for its campaign, ravaging the earth, wasting our patrimony."
Is this--my 5th one read--THE quintessential Coetzee? (I may or not be nodding my head.)
Earlier than "Life & Times of Micheal K.", it is here that we see the true beginnings of Coetzee's motifs, as well as the accomplished writer's poetics. A man whose fortune is reversed; a war-torn stage; a modern Holocaust; sadistic regimes. "Waiting for the Barbarians" is the Schindler legend reproduced: it evokes the same tension of living lives in a death camp, all the while keeping the First Person POV pulsating with life, afire, though always dwindling between morality and evil, between life & death.
Not so strange that of "Waiting for the Barbarians" Graham Greene wrote "A remarkable & original book." His spectacular "The Quiet American", also a novella robust with pathos and adventure, is emulated here as the Magistrate, torn apart over his conscience and his duties to the Empire, finds solace in one of the enemy. Because the voice of the protagonist is so damn credible, full of contradictions and deep thoughts it is that verisimilitude is fully achieved. We get both a man in complete "Hamlet" gear (perhaps as ill equipped as Coetzee's Slow Man, or his doe-eyed, hare-lipped Michael K. to the ravishes of a deeply-apathetic world) & a lesson in (far-flung, private, hidden) history.
It's pretty obvious to see why this deserves a very-coveted place in the canon, in literature. Here: a prime example of Post Colonial Lit. And also, let's not forget, a prime reason Coetzee got his Nobel Prize.
Is this--my 5th one read--THE quintessential Coetzee? (I may or not be nodding my head.)
Earlier than "Life & Times of Micheal K.", it is here that we see the true beginnings of Coetzee's motifs, as well as the accomplished writer's poetics. A man whose fortune is reversed; a war-torn stage; a modern Holocaust; sadistic regimes. "Waiting for the Barbarians" is the Schindler legend reproduced: it evokes the same tension of living lives in a death camp, all the while keeping the First Person POV pulsating with life, afire, though always dwindling between morality and evil, between life & death.
Not so strange that of "Waiting for the Barbarians" Graham Greene wrote "A remarkable & original book." His spectacular "The Quiet American", also a novella robust with pathos and adventure, is emulated here as the Magistrate, torn apart over his conscience and his duties to the Empire, finds solace in one of the enemy. Because the voice of the protagonist is so damn credible, full of contradictions and deep thoughts it is that verisimilitude is fully achieved. We get both a man in complete "Hamlet" gear (perhaps as ill equipped as Coetzee's Slow Man, or his doe-eyed, hare-lipped Michael K. to the ravishes of a deeply-apathetic world) & a lesson in (far-flung, private, hidden) history.
It's pretty obvious to see why this deserves a very-coveted place in the canon, in literature. Here: a prime example of Post Colonial Lit. And also, let's not forget, a prime reason Coetzee got his Nobel Prize.
November 9, 2017
هذا هو ما تقدمه الحضارات الغربية، بعد ان يأتي البرابرة للتجارة مع المستوطنة او البلدة الحدودية لإمبراطورية ما. تجدهم نائمين في البرك وفِي الطرقات والمجارير بعد ليلة سكر وخمر.
لم تكن البلدة تتعرض الى اَي خطر، فالبرابرة لا يراهم احد الا في موسم معين يتاجرون وينفقون اموالهم على الخمر ثم يغادرون.
حتى جاء العسكر وتحت شعارات حب الوطن والخطر المحيط بالوطن يبدأون حملة تعقب للبرابرة وأسرهم وتعذيبهم.
هكذا هم العسكر في كل مكان وزمان يعرفون كل شيء ويفهمون بكل شيء والمدني حتى لو كان قاضيا ويدير بلدة بدون اَي مشاكل، يصبح خائنا وعميلا للبرابرة.
فلسفة الحياة يقدمها هذا المؤلف في روايته بأسلوب رائع ونظرته للحياة يقدمها من خلال هذا القاضي الذي يعشق بلدته ولَم يتخلى عنها حتى بعد هرب العسكر وسرقتهم لخيرات البلدة.
مراعاته النفسية رهيبة خلال التعرض للتعذيب والاتهام بالخيانه والعمالة. وكان بانتظار المحاكمة التي لم ولن تحصل لانها قضية عسكر والوطنية والانتماء للوطن هو الاتهام الذي يقولون انه تجاوزه ولكن دون دليل.
الشخصيات في الرواية غامضة والاسلوب السردي أضاف عليها غموضا اكثر باستثناء القاضي الذي تجري الرواية على لسانه.
أحببتها
لم تكن البلدة تتعرض الى اَي خطر، فالبرابرة لا يراهم احد الا في موسم معين يتاجرون وينفقون اموالهم على الخمر ثم يغادرون.
حتى جاء العسكر وتحت شعارات حب الوطن والخطر المحيط بالوطن يبدأون حملة تعقب للبرابرة وأسرهم وتعذيبهم.
هكذا هم العسكر في كل مكان وزمان يعرفون كل شيء ويفهمون بكل شيء والمدني حتى لو كان قاضيا ويدير بلدة بدون اَي مشاكل، يصبح خائنا وعميلا للبرابرة.
فلسفة الحياة يقدمها هذا المؤلف في روايته بأسلوب رائع ونظرته للحياة يقدمها من خلال هذا القاضي الذي يعشق بلدته ولَم يتخلى عنها حتى بعد هرب العسكر وسرقتهم لخيرات البلدة.
مراعاته النفسية رهيبة خلال التعرض للتعذيب والاتهام بالخيانه والعمالة. وكان بانتظار المحاكمة التي لم ولن تحصل لانها قضية عسكر والوطنية والانتماء للوطن هو الاتهام الذي يقولون انه تجاوزه ولكن دون دليل.
الشخصيات في الرواية غامضة والاسلوب السردي أضاف عليها غموضا اكثر باستثناء القاضي الذي تجري الرواية على لسانه.
أحببتها
February 22, 2019
After the shock of the recent Paris attacks I don’t know precisely why it made me recall Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians that I read a few years ago. Yesterday it was a terrorist attack and perhaps no direct result of imperialism, but maybe the fears that the recent events provoked in me are somewhat akin to those suffered in this tiny frontier settlement with the arrival of interrogation experts. Today we don’t know how to defend ourselves against such tragedy, how can we escape or where next will it hit? As we feel its aftershocks how can we not taste the same bitter impotence of those stranded in other periods of darkness that derive simply from the worst parts of human nature; or how can we not feel a premonition of doom that there is not much that can be done.
Waiting for the Barbarians is superb and a relatively easy book to read despite its deeper meanings. Coetzee states simply “Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.” He is probably right.
There is much more in this brief 150 pages book:
Not much more that I can say… Just read Waiting for the Barbarians, and appreciate Coetzee at his best.
____
Waiting for the Barbarians is superb and a relatively easy book to read despite its deeper meanings. Coetzee states simply “Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.” He is probably right.
There is much more in this brief 150 pages book:
“You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.”
Not much more that I can say… Just read Waiting for the Barbarians, and appreciate Coetzee at his best.
____
October 3, 2022
Hace unos días vi una muy recomendable película titulada The Report. En ella se cuenta la historia de la redacción del informe que el Senado estadounidense realizó sobre el programa de "Interrogación y Detención" de la CIA tras el 11-S. En dicho informe se hizo constar que unos psicólogos sin experiencia en interrogatorios ni en terrorismo idearon un protocolo de interrogatorio basado en la tortura. Las premisas de dicho protocolo coinciden con las del personaje de la novela de Coetzee (1980), el Coronel Joll:
“… una situación en la que investigo para dar con la verdad, en la que tengo que presionar para encontrarla. Al principio solo obtengo mentiras, así es, primero solo mentiras, entonces hay que presionar; después más mentiras, entonces hay que presionar más; luego el desmoronamiento, tras este seguimos presionando, y por fin la verdad. Así es como se obtiene la verdad.”Los interrogatorios de la CIA, de la misma forma que los de la novela, fueron del todo ineficaces, y en ambos casos consta que los interrogados terminaban confesando, si es que contaban algo, cualquier cosa con tal de detener la tortura, con el consiguiente y posterior consumo de recursos en la comprobación y seguimiento de las pistas falsas. Lo más terrible de todo, si es que algo puede ser más terrible, es que informes parecidos realizados con anterioridad habían llegado a las mismas conclusiones y no se tuvieron en cuenta. Los psicólogos se embolsaron 81 millones de dólares por el asesoramiento.
Uno llega a preguntarse si un elemento esencial de estos bárbaros interrogatorios no es otro que el placer que los torturadores obtienen de los mismos, algo que también insinúa Coetzee en su novela.
“Al observarle me pregunto qué sentiría la primera vez que lo invitaron como aprendiz a retorcer los alicates o apretar las tuercas o hacer lo que tengan por costumbre: ¿se estremeció siquiera ligeramente al saber que en ese mismo instante estaba traspasando el límite de lo prohibido?”Otro punto importante que aborda Coetzee es la utilización del miedo como arma del Poder para su subsistencia, un miedo que infunde directamente mediante la represión e indirectamente mediante la demonización de un supuesto enemigo exterior, que ni siquiera tiene por qué existir o ser una amenaza, y para el cual ellos se reivindican como la única protección posible.
“No existe a lo largo de la frontera mujer que no haya visto en sueños la mano morena de un bárbaro surgiendo bajo su cama para agarrarle el tobillo. Ni tampoco hombre que no se haya atemorizado con visiones de los bárbaros celebrando orgías en su hogar, rompiendo los platos, incendiando las cortinas y violando a sus hijas.”Y paralelamente a todo ello, están las reflexiones de un miembro civil de ese poder, un miembro bien intencionado, amable, que se enfrenta a la dura represión del ejército y que termina siendo consciente de su antigua participación en el juego del poder.
“Yo era la mentira que un Imperio se cuenta a sí mismo en los buenos tiempos, él la verdad que un Imperio cuenta cuando corren malos vientos. Dos caras de la dominación imperial, ni más ni menos.”Un magistrado que es testigo de los injustos desmanes que comete el poder y al que tarda en enfrentarse, con el consiguiente sentimiento de culpa, para terminar sufriéndolo en sus propias carnes.
“Desde entonces nunca volvió a ser enteramente humana, dejó de ser hermana de todos nosotros. Se rompieron ciertos vínculos, su corazón no pudo volver a abrigar ciertos sentimientos. Yo también, si vivo lo bastante en esta celda con los espíritus no sólo del padre y de la hija sino además con los del hombre que ni siquiera a la luz de la lámpara se quitaba sus discos negros de los ojos y del subordinado cuyo trabajo consistía en mantener la parrilla encendida, me contagiaré y me convertiré en un ser que no cree en nada.”Toda esta reflexión está realmente bien, con momentos de gran dramatismo que se leen sin respirar. Pero después hay otra parte de la novela, bastante extensa, con cavilaciones sobre el deseo, la vejez, las cosas importantes de la vida…, muy al margen de todo lo anterior, que se me hicieron pesadas. Tampoco me gustó como concluye la historia y el optimismo que ella refleja, ni el buenismo excesivo de esa declaración del protagonista, “Creo en la paz, y tal vez incluso en la paz a cualquier precio”, que es justo la actitud que el poder necesita y a la que le puede poner un precio demasiado alto.
February 23, 2019
Pain is truth?
Maybe, according to the obscure man in power who thinks people lie until they are broken by torture. However, the truth he gets is not factual truth, but rather psychological nakedness. And it is not the pain, but the fear that guides the narrative. Fear of pain, fear of change, fear of the Barbarians.
Each dictatorship built on injustice needs Barbarians for protection. Or fear of barbarians, to be more precise. As long as they lurk in the desert, brutal laws seem to make sense.
The need for a wall is an effective way of staying in power - more so than the alternative of actually having a wall, or of building a relationship to the Barbarians.
Apart from La Peste and 1984 this probably is the scariest description of the human condition I know.
It doesn't need a realistic setting to be true. Fear and pain are there already. The rest is doubtful in any case.
Maybe, according to the obscure man in power who thinks people lie until they are broken by torture. However, the truth he gets is not factual truth, but rather psychological nakedness. And it is not the pain, but the fear that guides the narrative. Fear of pain, fear of change, fear of the Barbarians.
Each dictatorship built on injustice needs Barbarians for protection. Or fear of barbarians, to be more precise. As long as they lurk in the desert, brutal laws seem to make sense.
The need for a wall is an effective way of staying in power - more so than the alternative of actually having a wall, or of building a relationship to the Barbarians.
Apart from La Peste and 1984 this probably is the scariest description of the human condition I know.
It doesn't need a realistic setting to be true. Fear and pain are there already. The rest is doubtful in any case.
August 29, 2024
The air is full of sighs and cries.
He is a country magistrate; a supervisor and collector of taxes; an official in the service of the Empire, biding his time, waiting to retire.
But when the news arrives that there is unrest among the barbarians and that traders have been attacked and plundered, he finds himself reluctantly entangled in the Empire’s unjust games.
But can he stand witness to the atrocities committed in the name of ‘Civilization’ and do nothing?
I am the same man I always was; but time has broken, something has fallen in upon me from the sky, at random, from nowhere.
But what do these ‘Barbarians’ really want? Do they want to kill and plunder? Do they want to destroy? Or do they want their lands back? Do they want to be free to move about with their flocks from pasture to pasture as they used to?
How do you eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations in the structure of the eyelid? Shall I tell you what I sometimes wish? I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them.
When arrests are made and interrogations and tortures begin, so begin the Magistrate’s doubts and uncertainties; what is right? What is wrong; what is fair and what is unjust? And soon he finds himself asking: What is civilization? And who are the real Barbarians?
The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves…not on others.
He is a country magistrate; a supervisor and collector of taxes; an official in the service of the Empire, biding his time, waiting to retire.
But when the news arrives that there is unrest among the barbarians and that traders have been attacked and plundered, he finds himself reluctantly entangled in the Empire’s unjust games.
But can he stand witness to the atrocities committed in the name of ‘Civilization’ and do nothing?
I am the same man I always was; but time has broken, something has fallen in upon me from the sky, at random, from nowhere.
But what do these ‘Barbarians’ really want? Do they want to kill and plunder? Do they want to destroy? Or do they want their lands back? Do they want to be free to move about with their flocks from pasture to pasture as they used to?
How do you eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations in the structure of the eyelid? Shall I tell you what I sometimes wish? I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them.
When arrests are made and interrogations and tortures begin, so begin the Magistrate’s doubts and uncertainties; what is right? What is wrong; what is fair and what is unjust? And soon he finds himself asking: What is civilization? And who are the real Barbarians?
The crime that is latent in us we must inflict on ourselves…not on others.
February 2, 2019
افتعال الحكومات للأخطار للدخول في حروب ضد أعداء وهميين... فكرة واقعية جدا
الراوي قاضي في بلدة في الواحات على حدود امبراطورية ما, يعارض قائد الجيش القادم لمحاربة البرابرة المسالمين المقيمين خارج الحدود بدعوى ان الامبراطورية مهددة بهجوم البرابرة وأنهم خطر على الأمن
الرواية تعرض الكثير من القضايا.. حقيقة السلطة, التعذيب, الاحتقار ونظرة المستعمِر الدونية لسكان الأرض الأصليين, العدالة والقانون اللي ما كان لهم أي قيمة في مواجهة سلطة القوة والبطش
السرد رائع والأسلوب يعتمد على الحوار الداخلي لبطل الرواية وتأمله فيما يدور في نفسه وفيما يجري من أحداث
عنوان الرواية مقتبس من عنوان قصيدة للشاعر كونستنتين كفافي, يقول في نهاية القصيدة:
... .. لم يأت البرابرة
لأن أناسا قدموا من الحدود
وقالوا أن ليس ثمة برابرة
والآن, ماذا نفعل بدون برابرة؟
لقد كان هؤلاء حلا من الحلول
الراوي قاضي في بلدة في الواحات على حدود امبراطورية ما, يعارض قائد الجيش القادم لمحاربة البرابرة المسالمين المقيمين خارج الحدود بدعوى ان الامبراطورية مهددة بهجوم البرابرة وأنهم خطر على الأمن
الرواية تعرض الكثير من القضايا.. حقيقة السلطة, التعذيب, الاحتقار ونظرة المستعمِر الدونية لسكان الأرض الأصليين, العدالة والقانون اللي ما كان لهم أي قيمة في مواجهة سلطة القوة والبطش
السرد رائع والأسلوب يعتمد على الحوار الداخلي لبطل الرواية وتأمله فيما يدور في نفسه وفيما يجري من أحداث
عنوان الرواية مقتبس من عنوان قصيدة للشاعر كونستنتين كفافي, يقول في نهاية القصيدة:
... .. لم يأت البرابرة
لأن أناسا قدموا من الحدود
وقالوا أن ليس ثمة برابرة
والآن, ماذا نفعل بدون برابرة؟
لقد كان هؤلاء حلا من الحلول
January 15, 2009
I’m going to write two Waiting for the Barbarians reviews. The first, in italics, is the one that someone seems to expect, the second is the one I would normally write. Take your pick!
Waiting for the Barbarians always reminds me of this time I was on a cross-country flight from DC to Oakland. This 400 pound Samoan guy in a black silk suit sat across the aisle from me. He feverishly wrote in his journal the entire flight, whispering things like “holy fuck!” and “yes, shit, I’ve got it!” to himself over and over again until the flight attendants asked him to stop before they had to kick his fat ass off the plane for scaring the shit out of the old ladies who thought he might be a terrorist and didn’t realize his sumo knot wasn’t the same as a turban. By the way, a Samoan once almost sodomized me (it was an honest misunderstanding) in the Thai embassy in Paris. I’d tell you about that but I don’t want to get too far away from the book. Finally curiosity got the best of me and I leaned over and asked the Samoan what he was doing. He looked me up and down, well, as much up and down as you can look while the object of your attention is sitting in an airline seat, and said, “Fuck you.”
I said, “Fuck you back, asshole. Who do you think you are, Joll or Mandel?”
He froze and responded, “What the fuck did you say?” So I repeated what I said. Then he said, “So you’ve read Waiting for the Barbarians? What did you think?”
I told him I thought it was pretty good.
He said, “Fuck that pretty good shit. I wrote my dissertation on that book.”
I immediately regretted asking because everybody knows that anybody talking about his dissertation is boring as shit, but I had just pissed, and I couldn’t pretend I had to go again, so I politely listened.
He continued, “Remember that show called Designing Women? That one with Delta Burke, the lady who married that guy from the show where he drove around in an RV and helped people? Listen! Designing Women IS Waiting for the Barbarians. Delta Burke, or Suzanne Sugarbaker, is the Empire. And remember her sister? Julia Sugarbaker? The one Dixie Carter played? She was the magistrate, the one they put in jail. Julia was always trying to be reasonable and keep the peace and Suzanne kept messing things up. Holy fuck, my dissertation chair creamed his pants when he read my final draft. He said it was the best literary analysis he had ever read, especially since I focused on the temporal nature of government and the ever-shifting role of fortune by focusing on the way that Charlene was first played by Jean Smart and then replaced by Jan Hooks.”
I was in awe. “Man, I used to watch that show all the time. I think my first masturbatory fantasies were about Delta Burke. I still like big girls.”
“I’m with ya, brother.” We high-fived across the aisle and he went back to writing. He never told me what he was writing about.
Ok, here’s my real review…
Waiting for the Barbarians was my introduction to Coetzee, and I’m glad for goodreaders for pointing me in the direction of a guy who can flat-out write. Now, there are a slew of good reviews of this book (Tadpole’s, Donald’s) so rather than copy my esteemed peers I’ll add a few elements I felt were particularly important.
First, I admire Coetzee’s handling of the psychology of isolation and persecution. At no point does the author paint the magistrate as a noble hero; a lesser author, I think, would have played up that angle to the text’s detriment. The passages about the magistrate alone, in the granary, are quite powerful.
Second, I admire the author’s description of the breakdown of the body. He does a fantastic job of describing how quickly one can fade while at the same time acknowledging the toughness of the desire to keep breathing.
I had a hard time, and this is my fault, with the desire to overlay South African history (about which I know next to nothing) over my interpretation of the text. My gut tells me that Coetzee wanted to transcend South African, and even governmental, overtones and delve deeper into the darkest parts of human nature. He does a fine job in a quick 150 pages. Maybe I’ll read Disgrace in the future as well.
Waiting for the Barbarians always reminds me of this time I was on a cross-country flight from DC to Oakland. This 400 pound Samoan guy in a black silk suit sat across the aisle from me. He feverishly wrote in his journal the entire flight, whispering things like “holy fuck!” and “yes, shit, I’ve got it!” to himself over and over again until the flight attendants asked him to stop before they had to kick his fat ass off the plane for scaring the shit out of the old ladies who thought he might be a terrorist and didn’t realize his sumo knot wasn’t the same as a turban. By the way, a Samoan once almost sodomized me (it was an honest misunderstanding) in the Thai embassy in Paris. I’d tell you about that but I don’t want to get too far away from the book. Finally curiosity got the best of me and I leaned over and asked the Samoan what he was doing. He looked me up and down, well, as much up and down as you can look while the object of your attention is sitting in an airline seat, and said, “Fuck you.”
I said, “Fuck you back, asshole. Who do you think you are, Joll or Mandel?”
He froze and responded, “What the fuck did you say?” So I repeated what I said. Then he said, “So you’ve read Waiting for the Barbarians? What did you think?”
I told him I thought it was pretty good.
He said, “Fuck that pretty good shit. I wrote my dissertation on that book.”
I immediately regretted asking because everybody knows that anybody talking about his dissertation is boring as shit, but I had just pissed, and I couldn’t pretend I had to go again, so I politely listened.
He continued, “Remember that show called Designing Women? That one with Delta Burke, the lady who married that guy from the show where he drove around in an RV and helped people? Listen! Designing Women IS Waiting for the Barbarians. Delta Burke, or Suzanne Sugarbaker, is the Empire. And remember her sister? Julia Sugarbaker? The one Dixie Carter played? She was the magistrate, the one they put in jail. Julia was always trying to be reasonable and keep the peace and Suzanne kept messing things up. Holy fuck, my dissertation chair creamed his pants when he read my final draft. He said it was the best literary analysis he had ever read, especially since I focused on the temporal nature of government and the ever-shifting role of fortune by focusing on the way that Charlene was first played by Jean Smart and then replaced by Jan Hooks.”
I was in awe. “Man, I used to watch that show all the time. I think my first masturbatory fantasies were about Delta Burke. I still like big girls.”
“I’m with ya, brother.” We high-fived across the aisle and he went back to writing. He never told me what he was writing about.
Ok, here’s my real review…
Waiting for the Barbarians was my introduction to Coetzee, and I’m glad for goodreaders for pointing me in the direction of a guy who can flat-out write. Now, there are a slew of good reviews of this book (Tadpole’s, Donald’s) so rather than copy my esteemed peers I’ll add a few elements I felt were particularly important.
First, I admire Coetzee’s handling of the psychology of isolation and persecution. At no point does the author paint the magistrate as a noble hero; a lesser author, I think, would have played up that angle to the text’s detriment. The passages about the magistrate alone, in the granary, are quite powerful.
Second, I admire the author’s description of the breakdown of the body. He does a fantastic job of describing how quickly one can fade while at the same time acknowledging the toughness of the desire to keep breathing.
I had a hard time, and this is my fault, with the desire to overlay South African history (about which I know next to nothing) over my interpretation of the text. My gut tells me that Coetzee wanted to transcend South African, and even governmental, overtones and delve deeper into the darkest parts of human nature. He does a fine job in a quick 150 pages. Maybe I’ll read Disgrace in the future as well.
June 28, 2020
A novel as thin and tight and sharp as razor wire. WFTB was an allegorical nightmare filled with both moral clarity and an intense and heavy sadness. It is interesting to read this at the same time as The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. It also reminds me again and again of Mayer's fantastic book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. How can Coetzee have written so clearly in 1980 about our modern culture of torture, Empire, degradation and fear? Again, just an amazing book.
November 6, 2022
بانتظار البرابرة
عن صناعة الغول نتحدث، حينما يستحث الشعب جُلّ مخيلته فيخلق لنفسه غولاً, ثم يغذيه فضلة خوفه حتى يتضخم الغول ويلتهم صانعه. عن هوس الجموع نتكلم، عن أن يعتزل الشعب التفكير ويتبع ما يقال له ويسمعه دون التوقف هنيهة لإعادة التفكير فيغدو مطرقة طيعة بيد المحرضين، يهشم رأسه على رأس غيره، وما من رابح هنالك. نناقش فكرة العدالة، أيمكن تطبيقها على الأرض؟ أما الضمير وما أدراك مالضمير؟ ذلك النواح الذي لا ينقطع، فيخيرك ما بين الصراع اللانهائي معه أو أن تردي نفسك لتخرس إلحاحه.
هذه الرواية من النوع الذي أصنفه ضمن (للعظة لا للتسلية)، حيث أن الأحداث ليست بتلك الدرجة من التشويق، غير أن الطرح المحكم يدفعك إلى التفكر ملياً. ذكرني النص بالعمى لساراماجو، إذ لا توجد أسماء، لا زمان ولا مكان. كما أن الفكرة كونية لا تخص أمّة بعينها ولا حقبة بذاتها. أضف إلى أن الروايتيّن يكشفان جوانباً قاتمة ودنيئة مما يخبئه الإنسان تحت قناع الحضارة.
يعيش الحاكم الكهل في منطقة حدودية متاخمة لموطن البرابرة, قطعة أخرى التقمتها الإمبراطورية من أرض البرابرة. يعيش الناس في رغد حتى يقرر المكتب الثالث أن البرابرة هم العدو, وأنهم يتربصون بالإمبراطورية. عندها تنقلب المدينة إلى سجن كبير, والحياة إلى جحيم مقيم. وحده الكهل يملك تفكيراً مستقلاً وضميراً نقياً. لذا يدفع الثمن غالياً. كما هو الحال مع الأعمال الأدبية الخالدة, تجد النص مهيئاً للعديد من التفسيرات. هل الإمبراطورية في النص كناية عن الإمبرياليات التي تخلق أعداءً تخوف بها شعوبهم وإن كان أولئك الأعداء لا يملكون سوى العصي والخناجر؟ أم أن البرابرة هم الشياطين التي تخلقها مخاوفنا وتتسبب في سقوطنا؟ هل يُعبّر تعلق الحاكم بالفتاة البربرية عن مخلب الضمير الذي ما ينفك يخمش روحه, أم أنه يصور الرغبات الإنسانية التي لا تُفسر؟
احترت كثيراً في تقييم الكتاب من حيث عدد النجوم. يستحق الكثير لقاء موضوعه وطرحه، إلى جانب اللغة الشاعرية البسيطة. ينقص الكتاب شيء من الإمتاع، شيء من الأحداث يدفعك لتقليب الصفحات بسرعة. وبالرغم من أنها رواية قصيرة نوعاً إلا أنها استغرقت مني وقتاً ليس بالهين. يدل هذا على عمقها وبنفس الوقت على قلة امتاعها.
سؤال أخير من وحي الرواية: إذا أنت اغتصبت حق إنسان, فأنى لك أن تنصفه دون إعادة حقه؟
عن صناعة الغول نتحدث، حينما يستحث الشعب جُلّ مخيلته فيخلق لنفسه غولاً, ثم يغذيه فضلة خوفه حتى يتضخم الغول ويلتهم صانعه. عن هوس الجموع نتكلم، عن أن يعتزل الشعب التفكير ويتبع ما يقال له ويسمعه دون التوقف هنيهة لإعادة التفكير فيغدو مطرقة طيعة بيد المحرضين، يهشم رأسه على رأس غيره، وما من رابح هنالك. نناقش فكرة العدالة، أيمكن تطبيقها على الأرض؟ أما الضمير وما أدراك مالضمير؟ ذلك النواح الذي لا ينقطع، فيخيرك ما بين الصراع اللانهائي معه أو أن تردي نفسك لتخرس إلحاحه.
هذه الرواية من النوع الذي أصنفه ضمن (للعظة لا للتسلية)، حيث أن الأحداث ليست بتلك الدرجة من التشويق، غير أن الطرح المحكم يدفعك إلى التفكر ملياً. ذكرني النص بالعمى لساراماجو، إذ لا توجد أسماء، لا زمان ولا مكان. كما أن الفكرة كونية لا تخص أمّة بعينها ولا حقبة بذاتها. أضف إلى أن الروايتيّن يكشفان جوانباً قاتمة ودنيئة مما يخبئه الإنسان تحت قناع الحضارة.
يعيش الحاكم الكهل في منطقة حدودية متاخمة لموطن البرابرة, قطعة أخرى التقمتها الإمبراطورية من أرض البرابرة. يعيش الناس في رغد حتى يقرر المكتب الثالث أن البرابرة هم العدو, وأنهم يتربصون بالإمبراطورية. عندها تنقلب المدينة إلى سجن كبير, والحياة إلى جحيم مقيم. وحده الكهل يملك تفكيراً مستقلاً وضميراً نقياً. لذا يدفع الثمن غالياً. كما هو الحال مع الأعمال الأدبية الخالدة, تجد النص مهيئاً للعديد من التفسيرات. هل الإمبراطورية في النص كناية عن الإمبرياليات التي تخلق أعداءً تخوف بها شعوبهم وإن كان أولئك الأعداء لا يملكون سوى العصي والخناجر؟ أم أن البرابرة هم الشياطين التي تخلقها مخاوفنا وتتسبب في سقوطنا؟ هل يُعبّر تعلق الحاكم بالفتاة البربرية عن مخلب الضمير الذي ما ينفك يخمش روحه, أم أنه يصور الرغبات الإنسانية التي لا تُفسر؟
احترت كثيراً في تقييم الكتاب من حيث عدد النجوم. يستحق الكثير لقاء موضوعه وطرحه، إلى جانب اللغة الشاعرية البسيطة. ينقص الكتاب شيء من الإمتاع، شيء من الأحداث يدفعك لتقليب الصفحات بسرعة. وبالرغم من أنها رواية قصيرة نوعاً إلا أنها استغرقت مني وقتاً ليس بالهين. يدل هذا على عمقها وبنفس الوقت على قلة امتاعها.
سؤال أخير من وحي الرواية: إذا أنت اغتصبت حق إنسان, فأنى لك أن تنصفه دون إعادة حقه؟
September 12, 2016
Coetzee has written a great little novel for us all. You should read it.
A novel to be read by every generation. An allegory of every empire (including those past, those current and those to come). Empires need enemies in order to maintain control. Hence the 'infidels, savages, Jews, Muslims, barbarians and terrorists' that we civilized empires constantly hold up as threats to our very existence.
And how do empires respond to real or imagined barbarians? By behaving like barbarians, by becoming barbarians.
Think Guantanamo. As an executive with Canada's refugee program, I was once given access to a rather lengthy document provided as a guideline to US officials involved questioning captured suspected 'enemies'. It was a guideline to being 'barbarian'. Guantanamo still exists.
Indeed, when reading the book, I had to go back and check the publication date (1980) to assure myself that it was not written as a condemnation of G.W.Bush and his War on Terror. Of course it isn't. I suspect that it has a lot more to do with South Africa and it's horror of apartheid. Here the memory of Steve Biko and his fellow apartheid colleagues comes to mind.
Basically, this story is about the wrongness of empire. Empire leads to a need for 'them' and 'us', usually in the form of racism, the lowest humanity can go. This in turn leads to the adoption of methods for which the enemy is condemned. Inhumanity breeds inhumanity.
Those who support the empire, such as the Magistrate in this story, are often blissfully, perhaps willingly, unaware of the evil of the empire. They support the empire unquestionably ... until, perhaps, their humanity comes through. One can always hope.
Were the Barbarians really a threat? It is doubtful. They only appear as prisoners who are subsequently tortured. The Empire needs enemies. Think of the British Empire. They had constant little wars against anyone who spoke against them in the colonies. The mess and the tactics we see in Syria, Iraq, Egypt etc. today all copy those of the British Empire. The American Empire carries that British legacy forward. Indeed, think of an American president since the end of World War II who has not sent US forces to fight the undemocratic barbarians out there. (We can give Jimmy Carter a break here.). It's time to admit that empire leads to evil. Even the best of us get sucked into the vortex of this evil.
Coetzee has given us a strong message. A copy should come in every newborn's gift package. A great way to learn to read.
A novel to be read by every generation. An allegory of every empire (including those past, those current and those to come). Empires need enemies in order to maintain control. Hence the 'infidels, savages, Jews, Muslims, barbarians and terrorists' that we civilized empires constantly hold up as threats to our very existence.
And how do empires respond to real or imagined barbarians? By behaving like barbarians, by becoming barbarians.
Think Guantanamo. As an executive with Canada's refugee program, I was once given access to a rather lengthy document provided as a guideline to US officials involved questioning captured suspected 'enemies'. It was a guideline to being 'barbarian'. Guantanamo still exists.
Indeed, when reading the book, I had to go back and check the publication date (1980) to assure myself that it was not written as a condemnation of G.W.Bush and his War on Terror. Of course it isn't. I suspect that it has a lot more to do with South Africa and it's horror of apartheid. Here the memory of Steve Biko and his fellow apartheid colleagues comes to mind.
Basically, this story is about the wrongness of empire. Empire leads to a need for 'them' and 'us', usually in the form of racism, the lowest humanity can go. This in turn leads to the adoption of methods for which the enemy is condemned. Inhumanity breeds inhumanity.
Those who support the empire, such as the Magistrate in this story, are often blissfully, perhaps willingly, unaware of the evil of the empire. They support the empire unquestionably ... until, perhaps, their humanity comes through. One can always hope.
Were the Barbarians really a threat? It is doubtful. They only appear as prisoners who are subsequently tortured. The Empire needs enemies. Think of the British Empire. They had constant little wars against anyone who spoke against them in the colonies. The mess and the tactics we see in Syria, Iraq, Egypt etc. today all copy those of the British Empire. The American Empire carries that British legacy forward. Indeed, think of an American president since the end of World War II who has not sent US forces to fight the undemocratic barbarians out there. (We can give Jimmy Carter a break here.). It's time to admit that empire leads to evil. Even the best of us get sucked into the vortex of this evil.
Coetzee has given us a strong message. A copy should come in every newborn's gift package. A great way to learn to read.
February 26, 2021
رواية رائعة، عميقة ومؤثرة تستحق أن تُقرأ.
.
.
.
“أي طير يمتلك قلبًا ليغني في أيكة من أشواك؟”.
“أننا نبقى أحياء مثل فروع في ذاكرة من عرفناهم”.
“إن مشاهد القسوة تفسد قلوب الأبرياء!”.
“ما فائدة وضع أجهزة الإنذار بالخطر عندما يكون المجرمون والحرس المدني هم الأشخاص أنفسهم؟”.
“تأتي كافة المخلوقات إلى العالم حاملة معها ذكرى العدالة. ولكننا نعيش في عالم من القوانين. عالم أفضل من الدرجة الثانية. ليس بمقدورنا عمل أي شيء بشأنه. نحن مخلوقات خربة. كل ما نقدر عليه جميعًا هو دعم القوانين، دون أن نسمح بتلاشي ذكر العدالة”.
“عندما يعاني بعض الناس ظلمًا فإنه قدر أولئك الذين يشهدون معاناتهم أن يعانوا الخزي منه."
“الجريمة الكامنة في دواخلنا، يتوجب علينا إنزالها على أنفسنا، وليس على آخرين”.
ج. م. كوتزي.
May 9, 2019
Waiting for the Barbarians, my first novel by the 2003 recipient Nobel Prize in Literature, was a distinguished piece of fiction, one of urgency and profundity, written with a lingering Faulkneresque prose. The story of an imaginary Empire, set in an unspecified place and time, yet recognizable as a version of his country of birth, South Africa, allows Coetzee some esthetic distance from his subject, for even while remaining locked with the history of his moment, he isn't completely at the mercy of its local chaos and ugliness. The result is a realistic and stark political fable, that strongly seeps into one's consciousness.
At the Empire's edge live barbarian tribes, who visit the border towns only for trade or medicine. The Magistrate of one of these towns (the unnamed central character) is moderately corrupt yet not brutal man who surveys his realm with a good heart, fills out the pages in an unbroken present tense. From the outset the Magistrate is confronted by a Colonel, an uneasy bureaucrat sent by the the Third Bureau which states the the barbarians are preparing to mutiny. And we also realize that this is to be a novel not about nuances of character but about a clash of moral styles, a drama of representative ways of governing. After the Barbarians are rounded up, broken by torture, and then released, an impassive girl remains and is taken to the Magistrate. He takes on the role of caring for her, but in a sort of way that dominates her weaknesses. The novel then, has arguably it's best moments, when he decides to return her to the tribe, and thus sets off on horseback on a dangerous journey into distant regions, where the coldness, hunger pains, and fear are described with such dazzling vividness, before upping the tension levels to it's finale.
A powerful, and ultimately rewarding novel, beautifully told, but also harrowing in places, that does deal with some pretty unsavoury topics, one being rape, but on a deeper level Coetzee's novel simply examines the nature of civilisation, the complexities of the human condition which lead to violence, and how little we truly understand one another, or even try to. Just going by this novel alone, I can see why the Nobel committee had him in their sights.
At the Empire's edge live barbarian tribes, who visit the border towns only for trade or medicine. The Magistrate of one of these towns (the unnamed central character) is moderately corrupt yet not brutal man who surveys his realm with a good heart, fills out the pages in an unbroken present tense. From the outset the Magistrate is confronted by a Colonel, an uneasy bureaucrat sent by the the Third Bureau which states the the barbarians are preparing to mutiny. And we also realize that this is to be a novel not about nuances of character but about a clash of moral styles, a drama of representative ways of governing. After the Barbarians are rounded up, broken by torture, and then released, an impassive girl remains and is taken to the Magistrate. He takes on the role of caring for her, but in a sort of way that dominates her weaknesses. The novel then, has arguably it's best moments, when he decides to return her to the tribe, and thus sets off on horseback on a dangerous journey into distant regions, where the coldness, hunger pains, and fear are described with such dazzling vividness, before upping the tension levels to it's finale.
A powerful, and ultimately rewarding novel, beautifully told, but also harrowing in places, that does deal with some pretty unsavoury topics, one being rape, but on a deeper level Coetzee's novel simply examines the nature of civilisation, the complexities of the human condition which lead to violence, and how little we truly understand one another, or even try to. Just going by this novel alone, I can see why the Nobel committee had him in their sights.
February 10, 2020
Çizdiği hayali coğrafyayla, okuyucuya dünyanın herhangi bir yerinde herhangi bir "öteki"ni rahatça resmettiren çarpıcı, kuvvetli bir roman Barbarları Beklerken. Gücün, erkin, ufacık bir bakış açısı değişikliğiyle nasıl da yerle bir olabileceğini ne güzel anlatmış.
spoiler:
Barbarlara karşı savaş açmaya gidenlerin, dönüş yolunda bir sürü kayıpla eve dönüp, aslında hiç savaşa girmediklerini sadece onları izlerken bir sürü sebeple asker kaybettiklerini anlattıkları bölüm benim için romanın en zirve noktasıydı.
Tavsiye ediyorum.
spoiler:
Barbarlara karşı savaş açmaya gidenlerin, dönüş yolunda bir sürü kayıpla eve dönüp, aslında hiç savaşa girmediklerini sadece onları izlerken bir sürü sebeple asker kaybettiklerini anlattıkları bölüm benim için romanın en zirve noktasıydı.
Tavsiye ediyorum.
May 7, 2025
“These are the only prisoners we have taken for a very long time," I say. Normally we would not have any barbarians at all to show you. This so called banditry does not amount to much. They steal a few sheep or cut out a pack animal from a train. Sometimes we raid them in return. They are mainly destitute tribespeople with tiny flocks of their own, living along the river. The old man says they were coming to see the doctor. No one would have brought an old man and a sick boy along on a raiding party."
“I try to subdue my irritation at his cryptic silences, at the paltry theatrical mystery of dark glasses hiding healthy eyes. He walks with his hands clasped before him. "Nevertheless," he says, "I ought to question them. This evening, if it is convenient. I will take my assistant along. Also I will need someone to help me with the language. The guard, perhaps. Does he speak it?"
“I am aware of the source of my elation: my alliance with the guardians of the Empire is over, I had set myself in opposition. The bond is broken, I am a free man. Who would not smile? But what a dangerous joy! It should not be so easy to attain salvation. Have I not simply been provoked into a reaction by one of the new barbarians usurping my desk and pawing at my papers? As for this liberty which I am in the process of throwing away, what value does it have to me?”
"What is that noise?" I ask when the guard brings my food. They are tearing down the houses built against the south wall of the barracks, he tells me: they are going to extend the barracks and build proper cells. "Ah yes," I say: "time for the black flower of civilization to bloom." He does not understand.”
"I am waiting for you to prosecute me! When are you going to do it? When are you going to bring me to trial? When am I going to have a chance to defend myself?" I am in a fury. None of the speechlessness I felt in front of the crowd afflicts me. If I were to confront these men now, in public, in a fair trial, I would find the words to shame them.”
************
In this 1980 novel 2003 Nobel Prize winner J M Coetzee writes about a frontier Magistrate of the Empire who is visited by the Colonel, an imperial censor investigating the rumors of barbarians who are indigenous nomads. There is thought to be a rebellion brewing in the colony. Although there is no evidence to speak of in the region the Magistrate is compelled to show the Colonel a prison where a small boy and his sick grandfather are held for cattle theft. They are tortured, the old man dying and the boy forced to aid in the reconnaissance of outlying areas of illusory insurrection.
This is a stunning and frightening book about the conceits that civilization can attain. Although the local Magistrate has warned the Colonel of his ignorance and tries to persuade him from his folly it is of no use, he has a job to do for the Empire. On a horse back pulled carriage he proceeds into the wilderness while the Magistrate dreams of prisoners bodies turning into bees. As the Magistrate bids him farewell the farmers bend to their work and wave him goodbye. Coetze describes ruins of past civilizations he has had dug up by detainees on two day sentences or by conscripted labor.
They discover ancient writings on wooden tablets and the Magistrate tries to piece them together and figure out what has been written. He spends nights in the excavated ruins trying to discern what the ghosts of people before him are saying. The Colonel returns with scores of natives from the frontier with claims they are rebels, some women, children and infants. The Magistrate is vocal in his denunciation of their treatment but has no success in affecting the results. Coetze wrote the book during apartheid in South Africa, where he lived and it is clear where the ideas came from.
The Magistrate encounters a young native woman who is begging in the square, whom the Colonel had marched back to town and released. Citing vagrancy laws he takes her into his home behind the walled compound, after offering to have her returned to where she was abducted from, while aware of his complicity in her plight. Blind and crippled from the torture the Magistrate washes her feet, while studying the wounds of her torment. He becomes closer to her and gives her work as a kitchen maid. The Magistrate speaks the local language, the origin of which Coetzee has not made clear.
The woman is a daughter of another man who died during questioning. The brutality is difficult to imagine, let alone bear. She sleeps in his bed but there is no sexual relationship for months. He convinces her to return to her family and tribe and she agrees. In the winter they cross the barren desert, the steppe and to the snowy mountains with several soldiers and a guide, almost dying along the way, until they find the native people described as rebels by the Empire, who are nomadic shepherds. He offers her the choice between the wilderness and civilization but she doesn’t want to go back.
When the Magistrate returns to the imperial outpost he is brought before a military tribunal for collaboration with the enemy. There’s a confusion in the mind of Coetze’s narrator about the woman he has befriended and had a contradictory relationship with, one that reflects the basic question of his presence, a colonist confronted with a dilemma. The novel isn’t grounded geographically or temporally, it could be in Asia, Africa or America. Written as a first person narrative it can be trying but it is understandable why Coetzee chose this, in order to delve deeply into the Magistrate’s mind.
In addition to being a Nobel laureate, Coetzee has won the Booker twice, the Jerusalem Prize, the Tait Black Memorial, the Commonwealth Writers Prize twice, one handed to him personally by Queen Elizabeth, the French Prix Etrange and the South African Order of Mapungubwe for good measure. The language is stirring and sublime. Coetzee clearly knows the subject he is approaching. Of course the barbarians are everyone who decides to colonize and impose their will for personal gain in the name of Empire. The writer is a strong critic of conquest during its long history of manifestations.
“I try to subdue my irritation at his cryptic silences, at the paltry theatrical mystery of dark glasses hiding healthy eyes. He walks with his hands clasped before him. "Nevertheless," he says, "I ought to question them. This evening, if it is convenient. I will take my assistant along. Also I will need someone to help me with the language. The guard, perhaps. Does he speak it?"
“I am aware of the source of my elation: my alliance with the guardians of the Empire is over, I had set myself in opposition. The bond is broken, I am a free man. Who would not smile? But what a dangerous joy! It should not be so easy to attain salvation. Have I not simply been provoked into a reaction by one of the new barbarians usurping my desk and pawing at my papers? As for this liberty which I am in the process of throwing away, what value does it have to me?”
"What is that noise?" I ask when the guard brings my food. They are tearing down the houses built against the south wall of the barracks, he tells me: they are going to extend the barracks and build proper cells. "Ah yes," I say: "time for the black flower of civilization to bloom." He does not understand.”
"I am waiting for you to prosecute me! When are you going to do it? When are you going to bring me to trial? When am I going to have a chance to defend myself?" I am in a fury. None of the speechlessness I felt in front of the crowd afflicts me. If I were to confront these men now, in public, in a fair trial, I would find the words to shame them.”
************
In this 1980 novel 2003 Nobel Prize winner J M Coetzee writes about a frontier Magistrate of the Empire who is visited by the Colonel, an imperial censor investigating the rumors of barbarians who are indigenous nomads. There is thought to be a rebellion brewing in the colony. Although there is no evidence to speak of in the region the Magistrate is compelled to show the Colonel a prison where a small boy and his sick grandfather are held for cattle theft. They are tortured, the old man dying and the boy forced to aid in the reconnaissance of outlying areas of illusory insurrection.
This is a stunning and frightening book about the conceits that civilization can attain. Although the local Magistrate has warned the Colonel of his ignorance and tries to persuade him from his folly it is of no use, he has a job to do for the Empire. On a horse back pulled carriage he proceeds into the wilderness while the Magistrate dreams of prisoners bodies turning into bees. As the Magistrate bids him farewell the farmers bend to their work and wave him goodbye. Coetze describes ruins of past civilizations he has had dug up by detainees on two day sentences or by conscripted labor.
They discover ancient writings on wooden tablets and the Magistrate tries to piece them together and figure out what has been written. He spends nights in the excavated ruins trying to discern what the ghosts of people before him are saying. The Colonel returns with scores of natives from the frontier with claims they are rebels, some women, children and infants. The Magistrate is vocal in his denunciation of their treatment but has no success in affecting the results. Coetze wrote the book during apartheid in South Africa, where he lived and it is clear where the ideas came from.
The Magistrate encounters a young native woman who is begging in the square, whom the Colonel had marched back to town and released. Citing vagrancy laws he takes her into his home behind the walled compound, after offering to have her returned to where she was abducted from, while aware of his complicity in her plight. Blind and crippled from the torture the Magistrate washes her feet, while studying the wounds of her torment. He becomes closer to her and gives her work as a kitchen maid. The Magistrate speaks the local language, the origin of which Coetzee has not made clear.
The woman is a daughter of another man who died during questioning. The brutality is difficult to imagine, let alone bear. She sleeps in his bed but there is no sexual relationship for months. He convinces her to return to her family and tribe and she agrees. In the winter they cross the barren desert, the steppe and to the snowy mountains with several soldiers and a guide, almost dying along the way, until they find the native people described as rebels by the Empire, who are nomadic shepherds. He offers her the choice between the wilderness and civilization but she doesn’t want to go back.
When the Magistrate returns to the imperial outpost he is brought before a military tribunal for collaboration with the enemy. There’s a confusion in the mind of Coetze’s narrator about the woman he has befriended and had a contradictory relationship with, one that reflects the basic question of his presence, a colonist confronted with a dilemma. The novel isn’t grounded geographically or temporally, it could be in Asia, Africa or America. Written as a first person narrative it can be trying but it is understandable why Coetzee chose this, in order to delve deeply into the Magistrate’s mind.
In addition to being a Nobel laureate, Coetzee has won the Booker twice, the Jerusalem Prize, the Tait Black Memorial, the Commonwealth Writers Prize twice, one handed to him personally by Queen Elizabeth, the French Prix Etrange and the South African Order of Mapungubwe for good measure. The language is stirring and sublime. Coetzee clearly knows the subject he is approaching. Of course the barbarians are everyone who decides to colonize and impose their will for personal gain in the name of Empire. The writer is a strong critic of conquest during its long history of manifestations.
August 6, 2019
Incisive and gripping, told in prose that reads to me like a cold clear stream: always moving, with occasional surprising depths of insight. I found to be especially profound his insights into empire and its dissolutions, which seem quite relevant today (in America). I won't rehash the plot, but suffice it to say that I loved the almost fairy-tale aspect of it--the setting that was nowhere and everywhere, no time and yet somehow timeless. A real work of art.
March 8, 2022
Ummm, so apparently this has been made into a film, to be released later this year? Hmmm. Not what I was expecting to pop up while watching a Youtube clip from All This, and Heaven Too. Of course it would star Johnny Depp, probably only because he wanted to wear those sunglasses. I did like Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse so that's fine, I guess. How am I supposed to feel about this and why am I only discovering this now? I just don't quite see--how--why. JM Coetzee is the last author on earth whose books I expect to be adapted to film. Then again, there was that adaptation of Disgrace that I never watched.
If I ever watch it (Johnny Depp would be the reason I don't watch it), I would watch it just for the scenery (it was filmed in Morocco!) as that is one aspect of the book (completely beside the point, I realize) I particularly enjoyed. Sigh, here I go, Dear Diarying on Goodreads again.
If I ever watch it (Johnny Depp would be the reason I don't watch it), I would watch it just for the scenery (it was filmed in Morocco!) as that is one aspect of the book (completely beside the point, I realize) I particularly enjoyed. Sigh, here I go, Dear Diarying on Goodreads again.
December 1, 2020
Coetzee (1940-), en Esperando los Bárbaros (1980), nos habla de dos mundos antagónicos: el imperio colonial occidental conquistador y el «bárbaro» (tribus nómadas en este caso), y lo hace mostrándonos el punto de vista de un hombre (administrador de un fuerte fronterizo) que pertenece al imperio, pero que vive (convive) desde hace mucho tiempo en la frontera de esos dos mundos.
A través de la narración en primera persona de ese hombre, asistimos a su completa transformación: primero asimilación, después, dudas sobre su fidelidad y, finalmente, rebelión contra su propio mundo que termina reconociendo como opresor.
Es difícil entender a los «otros» sin convivir con ellos, sin ser participes de su cultura, de su rutina diaria, sin conocer el espacio donde se mueven, de donde sacan su sustento. Esto es lo que nos enseñan los constantes monólogos del administrador. Su incomprensión hacia unos asesinatos, torturas, etc. (sin ningún ápice de pudor o respeto a la ley) que solo se entienden desde un distanciamiento moral tan grande como puede existir entre el hombre y las bestias. Solo es posible tal grado de horror si se considera al otro como un ser inferior.
La prosa intensa, pero sencilla del autor nos enfrenta a nuestros propios demonios como occidentales a través de las constantes críticas hacia ese imperio pasado, en el que podemos reconocer algunos de sus comportamientos como actuales, aunque, eso sí, revestidos de la sutileza suficiente para no hacernos sentir culpables.
Sin duda, merece la pena leerlo.
A través de la narración en primera persona de ese hombre, asistimos a su completa transformación: primero asimilación, después, dudas sobre su fidelidad y, finalmente, rebelión contra su propio mundo que termina reconociendo como opresor.
Es difícil entender a los «otros» sin convivir con ellos, sin ser participes de su cultura, de su rutina diaria, sin conocer el espacio donde se mueven, de donde sacan su sustento. Esto es lo que nos enseñan los constantes monólogos del administrador. Su incomprensión hacia unos asesinatos, torturas, etc. (sin ningún ápice de pudor o respeto a la ley) que solo se entienden desde un distanciamiento moral tan grande como puede existir entre el hombre y las bestias. Solo es posible tal grado de horror si se considera al otro como un ser inferior.
La prosa intensa, pero sencilla del autor nos enfrenta a nuestros propios demonios como occidentales a través de las constantes críticas hacia ese imperio pasado, en el que podemos reconocer algunos de sus comportamientos como actuales, aunque, eso sí, revestidos de la sutileza suficiente para no hacernos sentir culpables.
Sin duda, merece la pena leerlo.
March 8, 2022
يبدو ان الخوف ليس فقط حرفة الحضارة و صنعتها ، انما ايضا سبيلها الوحيد
June 13, 2008
Coetzee writes for academics. He writes to teach lessons, to have his themes discussed and perhaps to be chuckled at. I find his books rather deliberate, hardened and inevitable. Now, he’s a fine writer, can turn a passable phrase and get conceptual without becoming a total bore; but, he has a tendency to interpret his books for you and the mannerisms and hobbies of the characters in “Waiting for the Barbarians” slot them too neatly into representative categories, which makes this more of an allegory or morality tale than a novel.
Set against the (necessary) paranoia and deafness of empire, “Waiting for the Barbarians” inhabits the balanced and reflective perspective of an amicable boondocks magistrate who finds his duties growing morally questionable just when they should be at their automatic, pre-retirement best. He’s the nice-guy-who-didn’t-really-want-to-have-to-accept-his-complicity-with-the-atrocities-committed-on-the-periphery-of-empire, the guy who is almost remorseful that he can’t quite turn a blind eye to torture and arbitrary imprisonment . . . oh wait . . . that’s right, unless you are currently some sort of progressive activist or a waterboarding cog, he is supposed to represent you! And what do you need to know? Well, unless you are a television-fed collision monkey, nothing, probably, and Cotezee doesn’t motivate with his writings; he just sort of lays it out there, where you knew it was.
His treatment of permanence, of marking, of spoiling and claiming, losing and being forgotten, is multi-layered and well integrated into the love relationships of the book. However, the interplay of these themes would have been more rewarding if the narrator did not signpost and dissect each area of overlap.
A few examples of the endearing narrative deadpan: addressing his cock, “Why do I have to carry you about from woman to woman, I asked: simply because you were born without legs? Would it make any difference to you if you were rooted in a cat or a dog instead of in me?”
“They are tearing down the houses built against the south wall of the barracks, he tells me: they are going to extend the barracks and build proper cells. ‘Ah yes,’ I say; ‘time for the black flower of civilization to bloom.’ He does not understand.”
And then an example of the more pedantic and obvious, “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 it 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.”
The novel operates capably along this spectrum.
Set against the (necessary) paranoia and deafness of empire, “Waiting for the Barbarians” inhabits the balanced and reflective perspective of an amicable boondocks magistrate who finds his duties growing morally questionable just when they should be at their automatic, pre-retirement best. He’s the nice-guy-who-didn’t-really-want-to-have-to-accept-his-complicity-with-the-atrocities-committed-on-the-periphery-of-empire, the guy who is almost remorseful that he can’t quite turn a blind eye to torture and arbitrary imprisonment . . . oh wait . . . that’s right, unless you are currently some sort of progressive activist or a waterboarding cog, he is supposed to represent you! And what do you need to know? Well, unless you are a television-fed collision monkey, nothing, probably, and Cotezee doesn’t motivate with his writings; he just sort of lays it out there, where you knew it was.
His treatment of permanence, of marking, of spoiling and claiming, losing and being forgotten, is multi-layered and well integrated into the love relationships of the book. However, the interplay of these themes would have been more rewarding if the narrator did not signpost and dissect each area of overlap.
A few examples of the endearing narrative deadpan: addressing his cock, “Why do I have to carry you about from woman to woman, I asked: simply because you were born without legs? Would it make any difference to you if you were rooted in a cat or a dog instead of in me?”
“They are tearing down the houses built against the south wall of the barracks, he tells me: they are going to extend the barracks and build proper cells. ‘Ah yes,’ I say; ‘time for the black flower of civilization to bloom.’ He does not understand.”
And then an example of the more pedantic and obvious, “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 it 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.”
The novel operates capably along this spectrum.
March 3, 2025
Pardon my egocentrism, but I think this book starts with a description of me as its reader:
That's me wearing what I would call, in much less words, “sunglasses”. But, to be more specific than that, I'll also name the lenses: one is Kafka, the other one, Beckett. I might be biassed (or “blind”), but I couldn't help reading this book through these lenses. Coetzee is in fact so brilliant, that if I take the glasses off, I have to “squint” at his radiant prose and let myself hypnotised by his flowing lines. He writes in a sort of domesticated Beckettian style (1) and grounds the Kafkaesque universe in a more realistic prose (2).
1. Coetzee studied Beckett extensively and regarded him as one of his masters. I think that this influence is mostly shown, though quite subtly, in the syntax, in the very tone and cadence of the sentences in this book. Otherwise, the South African is of course much more epic than the great Irish writer whose narratives strove to the extreme minimalism of an exhausted, barrely reccounting voice. It’s the persistence of an ambiguous narrator, that “can’t go on”, but still “goes on” speaking in and about a darkening world, that Coetzee took from Beckett, albeit using here the voice of a particular “magistrate” in some “Empire” to tell us about a more objectively recognizable, palpable though invented world, with fictionalised socio-political dimensions that probe our own.
2. For example, Coetzee sticks to the concrete problems of Justice, he only depicts its down to earth implications. What Kafka does is much more subtle: the law (das Gesetz) is highly ambiguously presented in the autonomous parable In front of the Law (Vor dem Gesetz) and although that text is included and minutely discussed in The Trial (Der Process), there were no definitive conclusions drawn from it. Due to it being so pithy, Kafka’s parable can be approached from much more angles (existential and metaphysical ones included) than Coetzee’s novel. I can also compare this latter to other parables by Kafka, such as The Great Wall of China (Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer), In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie) or An Old Manuscript (Ein altes Blatt). The strength of these short texts lies in them staying parables – their frame is not filled up with superfluous fiction – thus, their concision preserves their ambiguity and depth and keeps them forever open for new interpretations. I would argue that Coetzee has a narrower scope in building too much and too realistically, inside a parabolic structure, he clutters the fable perspectives with (often moral) hints that make it easier to point to “what the author wanted to say” or to "where his heart lies". The larger the narrative, the lesser the riddle, I’m tempted to say. But then again, The Trial itself, even as a longer novel than Waiting for the Barbarians is also a much bigger riddle than it.
That was a comparison of a very general aspect – of how Coetzee and Kafka approach “the law”. Similar comparisons can be made about how they depict whole fictional socio-political structures or mechanisms of power. But let’s now compare a particular aspect of their work, a motif they share – torture. Here again, Coetzee is more concrete and down to earth than Kafka, who shows torture as a ritual and a mistery. Let’s look at this passage from Waiting for the Barbarians:
In Coetzee it is as in the ancient Greek tragedies: everything gory happens only behind the scene and is communicated to us afterwards. The act is retold by somebody who witnessed it, be it also the narrator himself. We are not the direct spectators of the inflicted violence or we don’t read about it in an “objective” prose and "while" it takes place. In this way, these scenes appear to us as more credible than if they would have been directly put on the scene (or in an objective narrative), as in a "live" spectacle. They are merely confessed, disclosed, reported or told and thus seem to have been taken from the realm of the real. The word “obscene” is originally the very name of this technique, with its prefix functioning just like the “ob” in “obliterate”: out of the scene, out of the text.
In Kafka, torture is depicted directly (it is literally, etymologicaly, "obscene"), but its vividness is in fact a veil (or the scene’s curtain), because in his work, torture is always an obscure ritual – you can see it, but your mind already simultaneously wanders about its meaning. “Obscure” stems from an Indo-European root meaning “cover”. The ritual of the torture that we are shown in full-frontal way is nevertheless a cover up for a greater reality. At some point in The Trial (Der Process), in K.’s office, after hours, we have a sort of unexpected, at a first glance merely a queer, vintage S&M scene…:
[See the first comment for the German original quote]
By opening the door to the lumber-room, K. suddenly uncovers this scene and in the same moment arrests it, as if turning it into a single instant, a picture. Everything is there, but not moving, the hand holding the cane is ready to flog, everyone is stopped in position. All this is, first of all “komisch”, which, in German, doesn’t mean plain "comical", but also strangely or awkwardly so. The unseriousness of the scene almost cancels its obscure sense. “What can we make of such silliness?”, we might ask ourselves as readers, but if we wander only at such a level, at the apparently superficial side of the scene, we are trapped in it. The arrested instant, suddenly opened to view, cannot be reduced to itself, it is not self referent; your mind, if it wanders deeper into it, refuses it as such, because it would be absurd. It’s a close-up of a scene from a context that you only have an intuition of. It’s out of place, happening in a lumber-room, in K’s office, but it belongs to a larger context, just that the bigger picture is out of focus. You try to puzzle it up and think, “these are the agents, or rather some naive minions of an obscure Justice system, they apply the Law dutifully and indiscriminately, thus also on themselves”. But your mind wanders still and you cannot “put a finger on it”. Yet this is probably the most accessible and light scene of torture in Kafka. It’s much harder to understand the torture & execution machine from In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie). There we have “writing on the body” as torture: the commandment that the condemned prisoner has transgressed is pierced in his skin by numerous needles, thus the reason he was sentenced for, his realisation of this sentence – his reading of the command with the whole body – and its/his execution are supposed to come slowly and simultaneously together, during twelve hours of methodical punishment. If we take only the main points of this hyperdimentionalised torture device into consideration, it becomes apparent how one can get lost in the labyrinth of its interpretation.
In Coetzee, torture is retold, referred to us and thus appears to be real. We are (supposed to be) struck by its indirect, but paradoxically vivid image. The point made is: torture is torture. It’s a tautological approach, but highly efficient for its purpose. In Kafka, torture is torture and something else at the same time.
In conformity to this tautological approach of Coetzee, we even find in Waiting for the Barbarians a passage that is downright the plainest and pithiest definition of (the purpose of) torture as torture that we might discover anywhere (if my guess is right), even if we were to peruse everything written on it, in fiction and nonfiction or secret documents alike:
Radically different than in Kafka, in Coetzee torture points to its direct consequence as an ultimate reality: Pain.
Coetzee is essentially a realist and his fictional socio-political environment is easier to pinpoint – Apartheid South-Africa comes to mind as a first, obvious, association – and to decipher, than Kafka's. He offers us an intimate glance into the mechanisms of power from the ambiguous perspective of one of its agents, the Magistrate. Simultaneously, the outer fable side (that we construct from the not always reliable narrator’s viewpoint) of the novel presents the eternal, universal contrasts and conflicts between a nameless “Empire” (only once figuratively called the “Empire of light”) and the equally generic “barbarians”. Although no places on our planet are explicitly indicated, many zones of conflict, along with the author's own homeland, would perfectly fit the fable frame of this novel. Nevertheless, I think that the universes of Kafka and Beckett are more profound by being more ambiguous than Coetzee’s. They are also paradoxically larger, precisely because they are more claustrophobic and harder to place somewhere, whether outside or inside us. They are infrauniverses.
That being said, I don't have any problems with authors writing under strong influences, if they keep a clear mind of their own and do a good job. And Coetzee certainly does a tremendously good one. He is brilliant, though no better than his masters! A famous remark comes to mind, about “dwarfs on the shoulders of giants” (nani gigantum humeris insidentes), an expression first attributed to Bernard of Chartres, but I’ll transcribe here an aphorism taken from William of Conches's Glosses on Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae of the year 1123:
Coetzee is not a “dwarf”, of course, (or only via this famous allegorical description) but I would argue that he is neither a “giant” of literature. He doesn’t bring anything radically new to it. His work, though considerably original, is rather additive than revolutionary.
I would risk saying that some things might have been simply taken from Kafka:
1. The travelling torturer (an “upstart policeman”, the cool colonel Jull with the fancy sunglasses) seems to have his prototype in the character of the dignitary visiting The Penal Colony in Kafka’s homonymous work (In der Strafkolonie). And also the town where most of the slight action of the Coetzee’s novel takes part is described more or less as a penal colony (it’s a civil, more than military, outpost of the Empire, but it often accommodates prisoners):
2. A little boy with “a wound that wouldn't heal”, reminded me of the one in A Country Doctor (Ein Landarzt).
3. The magistrate, an administrative cogwheel of the Empire, is our narrator. He reminded me of Klamm from The Castle (Das Schloss). When K. only sees Klamm once through a keyhole, here the magistrate’s own perspective is our keyhole to the dark chamber of oppression and torture.
4. A passage like “gossip that reaches us long out of date from the capital”, brings to mind the same motif from Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer.
5. Even a detail in a description – “On the flat roofs of the town I can make out by moonlight the shapes of other sleepers.” – reminded me of a fragment of Kafka’s, titled Nachts. [see second comment for it]
I don't want to be punctilious, these can simply be Coetzee’s legitimate autorial winks, or small tributes to Kafka (or mere coincidences).
Although it is driven by slightly more action than Il deserto dei tartari (The Tartar Steppe) or Les rivages de Syrtes (The Opposing Shore), the big, potentially epic scale of Waiting for the Barbarians remains only sketched. We are peeking at it through the keyhole of the magistrate’s – the ambiguous narrator’s – perspective. He ends up internalising the clash between the “Empire of light” and the “barbarians” and resolving it in his “heart”:
As you might have excused my egocentrism in the beginning, you may now pardon my Dead Poets Society style of ranking this book together with other, similar ones. To measure their Greatness, we shall use the famous graph with the two axes, an horizontal one for Perfection and a vertical one for Importance:
While Waiting for the Barbarians scores higher on the vertical “I” (it’s a harsher and more impending parable, more contemporary and relevant to us) than Il deserto dei tartari and Les rivages de Syrtes (these fables are already innocent classics), it scores less on the horizontal “P” for being written in a slighter sublime style than its Italian and French correlatives, that are impregnated by a more harmonious cohesion of the enchanting narrative and its fable intent. Intersecting all lines, we can see clearly now that these three works average as equal in Greatness.
By the way, I think the Nobel committee has always used this ranking system – long before dr. J. Evans Pritchard phd. of the Dead Poets Society. My bet is that Kafka would have never fit into these measurements, even if he would have published more, survived tuberculosis and fascism and finished his novels. The lives of Proust and Joyce were also too short for them to make it on the Nobel Blackboard – although not that short if you throw a glance at their biographies and also, in doing that, take in consideration how acknowledged they actually were during their lifetime by many of their great contemporaries. Beckett, who inherited literary merits from both, was lucky to be longevous enough to becanonised Nobeled while still alive – at age 63. Proust and Joyce died at age 51 and 58 respectively, but nevertheless they were too fresh for their times. Only a Wunderkind like Thomas Mann made it when he was relatively still in his prime, at age 54. The Nobel committee’s precociousness in acknowledging him can be well understood since Mann wrote “classic works of contemporary literature” (from the prize motivation), that is, good old nineteenth century prose in the twentieth century, mixing well established German philosophy with expansive fin de siècle observations. Easy to see why he scored high on both the Importance and Perfection axes. And if you were wondering, Faulkner got the Nobel as a surrogate of Joyce, eight years after the great Irishman died, when the sober Swedes finally realised their blunder and made a nobel gesture of atonement. The real winner that year was The Stream of Consciousness, but maybe it is always so, it’s The Consciousness that streams and streams and streams and streams, sometimes for decades on end, before it fills all Stockholm’s ports where it cools for a while, gets saltier, turns classic and it’s finally prized.
I HAVE NEVER seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind? I could understand it if he wanted to hide blind eyes. But he is not blind. The discs are dark, they look opaque from the outside, but he can see through them. He tells me they are a new invention. ‘They protect one’s eyes against the glare of the sun,’ he says. ‘You would find them useful out here in the desert. They save one from squinting all the time. One has fewer headaches.
That's me wearing what I would call, in much less words, “sunglasses”. But, to be more specific than that, I'll also name the lenses: one is Kafka, the other one, Beckett. I might be biassed (or “blind”), but I couldn't help reading this book through these lenses. Coetzee is in fact so brilliant, that if I take the glasses off, I have to “squint” at his radiant prose and let myself hypnotised by his flowing lines. He writes in a sort of domesticated Beckettian style (1) and grounds the Kafkaesque universe in a more realistic prose (2).
1. Coetzee studied Beckett extensively and regarded him as one of his masters. I think that this influence is mostly shown, though quite subtly, in the syntax, in the very tone and cadence of the sentences in this book. Otherwise, the South African is of course much more epic than the great Irish writer whose narratives strove to the extreme minimalism of an exhausted, barrely reccounting voice. It’s the persistence of an ambiguous narrator, that “can’t go on”, but still “goes on” speaking in and about a darkening world, that Coetzee took from Beckett, albeit using here the voice of a particular “magistrate” in some “Empire” to tell us about a more objectively recognizable, palpable though invented world, with fictionalised socio-political dimensions that probe our own.
2. For example, Coetzee sticks to the concrete problems of Justice, he only depicts its down to earth implications. What Kafka does is much more subtle: the law (das Gesetz) is highly ambiguously presented in the autonomous parable In front of the Law (Vor dem Gesetz) and although that text is included and minutely discussed in The Trial (Der Process), there were no definitive conclusions drawn from it. Due to it being so pithy, Kafka’s parable can be approached from much more angles (existential and metaphysical ones included) than Coetzee’s novel. I can also compare this latter to other parables by Kafka, such as The Great Wall of China (Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer), In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie) or An Old Manuscript (Ein altes Blatt). The strength of these short texts lies in them staying parables – their frame is not filled up with superfluous fiction – thus, their concision preserves their ambiguity and depth and keeps them forever open for new interpretations. I would argue that Coetzee has a narrower scope in building too much and too realistically, inside a parabolic structure, he clutters the fable perspectives with (often moral) hints that make it easier to point to “what the author wanted to say” or to "where his heart lies". The larger the narrative, the lesser the riddle, I’m tempted to say. But then again, The Trial itself, even as a longer novel than Waiting for the Barbarians is also a much bigger riddle than it.
That was a comparison of a very general aspect – of how Coetzee and Kafka approach “the law”. Similar comparisons can be made about how they depict whole fictional socio-political structures or mechanisms of power. But let’s now compare a particular aspect of their work, a motif they share – torture. Here again, Coetzee is more concrete and down to earth than Kafka, who shows torture as a ritual and a mistery. Let’s look at this passage from Waiting for the Barbarians:
‘Sometimes there was screaming, I think they beat her, but I was not there. When I came off duty I would go away.’
‘You know that today she cannot walk. They broke her feet. Did they do these things to her in front of the other man, her father?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘And you know that she cannot see properly any more. When did they do that?’
‘Sir, there were many prisoners to take care of, some of them sick! I knew that her feet were broken but I knew nothing about her being blind till long afterwards. There was nothing I could do, I did not want to become involved in a matter I did not understand!’
In Coetzee it is as in the ancient Greek tragedies: everything gory happens only behind the scene and is communicated to us afterwards. The act is retold by somebody who witnessed it, be it also the narrator himself. We are not the direct spectators of the inflicted violence or we don’t read about it in an “objective” prose and "while" it takes place. In this way, these scenes appear to us as more credible than if they would have been directly put on the scene (or in an objective narrative), as in a "live" spectacle. They are merely confessed, disclosed, reported or told and thus seem to have been taken from the realm of the real. The word “obscene” is originally the very name of this technique, with its prefix functioning just like the “ob” in “obliterate”: out of the scene, out of the text.
In Kafka, torture is depicted directly (it is literally, etymologicaly, "obscene"), but its vividness is in fact a veil (or the scene’s curtain), because in his work, torture is always an obscure ritual – you can see it, but your mind already simultaneously wanders about its meaning. “Obscure” stems from an Indo-European root meaning “cover”. The ritual of the torture that we are shown in full-frontal way is nevertheless a cover up for a greater reality. At some point in The Trial (Der Process), in K.’s office, after hours, we have a sort of unexpected, at a first glance merely a queer, vintage S&M scene…:
[See the first comment for the German original quote]
On one of the next evenings, as K. was passing along the corridor which separated his office from the main staircase – today he was almost the last to leave, only two employees in despatch were still at work by the light of a single bulb – he heard sighs from behind a door which he had always assumed concealed a lumber-room, though he had never seen the room himself. He stopped in amazement and listened again to make sure he was not mistaken. It was quiet for a while, then again there were sighs. At first he thought of fetching one of the clerks – it might be useful to have a witness – but then he was seized by such burning curiosity that he positively tore the door open. It was, as he had correctly guessed, a lumber-room. Useless old printed forms and empty earthenware inkpots were strewn beyond the threshold. But in the room itself stood three men, stooping under the low ceiling. A candle on a shelf gave them light. ‘What are you doing here?’ K. asked, his words tumbling out in his excitement, but not speaking loudly. The one who clearly dominated the others and first caught the eye was wearing a kind of leather outfit which left his neck down to the chest and both his arms bare. He made no answer. But the two others cried: ‘Sir, we are to be flogged because you complained about us to the examining magistrate.’ Only now did K. see it was the warders Franz and Willem and that the third man held in his hand a cane to flog them with.
By opening the door to the lumber-room, K. suddenly uncovers this scene and in the same moment arrests it, as if turning it into a single instant, a picture. Everything is there, but not moving, the hand holding the cane is ready to flog, everyone is stopped in position. All this is, first of all “komisch”, which, in German, doesn’t mean plain "comical", but also strangely or awkwardly so. The unseriousness of the scene almost cancels its obscure sense. “What can we make of such silliness?”, we might ask ourselves as readers, but if we wander only at such a level, at the apparently superficial side of the scene, we are trapped in it. The arrested instant, suddenly opened to view, cannot be reduced to itself, it is not self referent; your mind, if it wanders deeper into it, refuses it as such, because it would be absurd. It’s a close-up of a scene from a context that you only have an intuition of. It’s out of place, happening in a lumber-room, in K’s office, but it belongs to a larger context, just that the bigger picture is out of focus. You try to puzzle it up and think, “these are the agents, or rather some naive minions of an obscure Justice system, they apply the Law dutifully and indiscriminately, thus also on themselves”. But your mind wanders still and you cannot “put a finger on it”. Yet this is probably the most accessible and light scene of torture in Kafka. It’s much harder to understand the torture & execution machine from In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie). There we have “writing on the body” as torture: the commandment that the condemned prisoner has transgressed is pierced in his skin by numerous needles, thus the reason he was sentenced for, his realisation of this sentence – his reading of the command with the whole body – and its/his execution are supposed to come slowly and simultaneously together, during twelve hours of methodical punishment. If we take only the main points of this hyperdimentionalised torture device into consideration, it becomes apparent how one can get lost in the labyrinth of its interpretation.
In Coetzee, torture is retold, referred to us and thus appears to be real. We are (supposed to be) struck by its indirect, but paradoxically vivid image. The point made is: torture is torture. It’s a tautological approach, but highly efficient for its purpose. In Kafka, torture is torture and something else at the same time.
In conformity to this tautological approach of Coetzee, we even find in Waiting for the Barbarians a passage that is downright the plainest and pithiest definition of (the purpose of) torture as torture that we might discover anywhere (if my guess is right), even if we were to peruse everything written on it, in fiction and nonfiction or secret documents alike:
'I am speaking of a situation in which I am probing for the truth, in which I have to exert pressure to find it. First I get lies, you see – this is what happens – first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth. That is how you get the truth.' [Colonel Jull]
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt. [The magistrate's conclusion]
Radically different than in Kafka, in Coetzee torture points to its direct consequence as an ultimate reality: Pain.
Coetzee is essentially a realist and his fictional socio-political environment is easier to pinpoint – Apartheid South-Africa comes to mind as a first, obvious, association – and to decipher, than Kafka's. He offers us an intimate glance into the mechanisms of power from the ambiguous perspective of one of its agents, the Magistrate. Simultaneously, the outer fable side (that we construct from the not always reliable narrator’s viewpoint) of the novel presents the eternal, universal contrasts and conflicts between a nameless “Empire” (only once figuratively called the “Empire of light”) and the equally generic “barbarians”. Although no places on our planet are explicitly indicated, many zones of conflict, along with the author's own homeland, would perfectly fit the fable frame of this novel. Nevertheless, I think that the universes of Kafka and Beckett are more profound by being more ambiguous than Coetzee’s. They are also paradoxically larger, precisely because they are more claustrophobic and harder to place somewhere, whether outside or inside us. They are infrauniverses.
That being said, I don't have any problems with authors writing under strong influences, if they keep a clear mind of their own and do a good job. And Coetzee certainly does a tremendously good one. He is brilliant, though no better than his masters! A famous remark comes to mind, about “dwarfs on the shoulders of giants” (nani gigantum humeris insidentes), an expression first attributed to Bernard of Chartres, but I’ll transcribe here an aphorism taken from William of Conches's Glosses on Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae of the year 1123:
The ancients had only the books which they themselves wrote, but we have all their books and moreover all those which have been written from the beginning until our time.… Hence we are like a dwarf perched on the shoulders of a giant. The former sees further than the giant, not because of his own stature, but because of the stature of his bearer. Similarly, we [moderns] see more than the ancients, because our writings, modest as they are, are added to their great works.
Coetzee is not a “dwarf”, of course, (or only via this famous allegorical description) but I would argue that he is neither a “giant” of literature. He doesn’t bring anything radically new to it. His work, though considerably original, is rather additive than revolutionary.
I would risk saying that some things might have been simply taken from Kafka:
1. The travelling torturer (an “upstart policeman”, the cool colonel Jull with the fancy sunglasses) seems to have his prototype in the character of the dignitary visiting The Penal Colony in Kafka’s homonymous work (In der Strafkolonie). And also the town where most of the slight action of the Coetzee’s novel takes part is described more or less as a penal colony (it’s a civil, more than military, outpost of the Empire, but it often accommodates prisoners):
‘We do not have facilities for prisoners,’ I explain. ‘There is not much crime here and the penalty is usually a fine or compulsory labour. This hut is simply a storeroom attached to the granary, as you can see.’ Inside it is close and smelly. There are no windows. The two prisoners lie bound on the floor.
2. A little boy with “a wound that wouldn't heal”, reminded me of the one in A Country Doctor (Ein Landarzt).
3. The magistrate, an administrative cogwheel of the Empire, is our narrator. He reminded me of Klamm from The Castle (Das Schloss). When K. only sees Klamm once through a keyhole, here the magistrate’s own perspective is our keyhole to the dark chamber of oppression and torture.
4. A passage like “gossip that reaches us long out of date from the capital”, brings to mind the same motif from Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer.
5. Even a detail in a description – “On the flat roofs of the town I can make out by moonlight the shapes of other sleepers.” – reminded me of a fragment of Kafka’s, titled Nachts. [see second comment for it]
I don't want to be punctilious, these can simply be Coetzee’s legitimate autorial winks, or small tributes to Kafka (or mere coincidences).
Although it is driven by slightly more action than Il deserto dei tartari (The Tartar Steppe) or Les rivages de Syrtes (The Opposing Shore), the big, potentially epic scale of Waiting for the Barbarians remains only sketched. We are peeking at it through the keyhole of the magistrate’s – the ambiguous narrator’s – perspective. He ends up internalising the clash between the “Empire of light” and the “barbarians” and resolving it in his “heart”:
Let it at the very least be said, if it ever comes to be said, if there is ever anyone in some remote future interested to know the way we lived, that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian.
As you might have excused my egocentrism in the beginning, you may now pardon my Dead Poets Society style of ranking this book together with other, similar ones. To measure their Greatness, we shall use the famous graph with the two axes, an horizontal one for Perfection and a vertical one for Importance:
While Waiting for the Barbarians scores higher on the vertical “I” (it’s a harsher and more impending parable, more contemporary and relevant to us) than Il deserto dei tartari and Les rivages de Syrtes (these fables are already innocent classics), it scores less on the horizontal “P” for being written in a slighter sublime style than its Italian and French correlatives, that are impregnated by a more harmonious cohesion of the enchanting narrative and its fable intent. Intersecting all lines, we can see clearly now that these three works average as equal in Greatness.
By the way, I think the Nobel committee has always used this ranking system – long before dr. J. Evans Pritchard phd. of the Dead Poets Society. My bet is that Kafka would have never fit into these measurements, even if he would have published more, survived tuberculosis and fascism and finished his novels. The lives of Proust and Joyce were also too short for them to make it on the Nobel Blackboard – although not that short if you throw a glance at their biographies and also, in doing that, take in consideration how acknowledged they actually were during their lifetime by many of their great contemporaries. Beckett, who inherited literary merits from both, was lucky to be longevous enough to be
March 2, 2025
„И до самия край ние няма да сме научили нищо. Изглежда, че някъде дълбоко във всички нас има нещо твърдо като гранит, което не можеш да научиш на нищо.“
„В очакване на варварите“ е чудесен роман, който разкрива мрачната същност на всяка империя! Джон Кутси майсторски е навлязъл в сърцевината на имперските надменност и жестокост, разказвайки трогателна човешка история... Главен герой в нея е съдия от далечен малък град до границата на империята, от чиято гледна точка проследяваме угнетителния начин на живот и насилието, извършвано от представители на абсолютната имперска власт. Романът съдържа различни ценни размисли и засяга доста тежки проблеми, но същевременно е изключително увлекателен и лесен за четене. Възхитен съм от стила на писане на Кутси!
„Империята не задължава своите служители да се обичат, а да изпълняват дълга си.“
„Излиза някак, че знам твърде много; а веднъж зарази ли се човек от това знание, изглежда, не може да се излекува. Не е трябвало да вземам фенера, за да видя какво става в колибата край хамбара. От друга страна, нямаше начин, щом веднъж съм взел фенера, да го оставя. Възелът сам се заплита и аз не мога да намеря края му.“
„Колкото по-малък е един град, толкова е по-богат на клюки.“
„Реших, че ще се противопоставям на цивилизацията, когато тя покварява добродетелите на варварите и ги превръща в подчинен народ...“
„И аз като съдия трябва да се боря вече двадесет години с това презрение към варварите, презрение, което изпитват и най-простите коняри и селяни. Как се изкоренява презрението, особено когато основанията за него се изчерпват с разликите в правилата за хранене и формата на клепачите?“
„Тази постъпка като проява на някакъв жест няма да промени нищо, няма дори да бъде забелязана. Независимо от това обаче заради мен самия, като жест към самия мен, трябва да се върна в прохладния мрак, да затворя вратата, да превъртя ключа и да запуша ушите си за патриотичните призиви за кръвожадност, да затворя устата си, никога вече да не говоря.“
„Не знаех обаче, че силният копнеж по нещо може да се загнезди някъде дълбоко в душата на човек и един ден без предупреждение да се отприщи.“
„Искам да му предам един урок, който отдавна съм научил. Изговарям бавно думите и гледам как ги чете по устните ми.
— Нашата скрита склонност към престъпност трябва да се излее върху самите нас — казвам аз. Кимам с глава, после пак кимам, за да му внуша това послание. — Не върху други хора — добавям и повтарям думите, като посочвам себе си, а след това него.“
„В очакване на варварите“ е чудесен роман, който разкрива мрачната същност на всяка империя! Джон Кутси майсторски е навлязъл в сърцевината на имперските надменност и жестокост, разказвайки трогателна човешка история... Главен герой в нея е съдия от далечен малък град до границата на империята, от чиято гледна точка проследяваме угнетителния начин на живот и насилието, извършвано от представители на абсолютната имперска власт. Романът съдържа различни ценни размисли и засяга доста тежки проблеми, но същевременно е изключително увлекателен и лесен за четене. Възхитен съм от стила на писане на Кутси!
„Империята не задължава своите служители да се обичат, а да изпълняват дълга си.“
„Излиза някак, че знам твърде много; а веднъж зарази ли се човек от това знание, изглежда, не може да се излекува. Не е трябвало да вземам фенера, за да видя какво става в колибата край хамбара. От друга страна, нямаше начин, щом веднъж съм взел фенера, да го оставя. Възелът сам се заплита и аз не мога да намеря края му.“
„Колкото по-малък е един град, толкова е по-богат на клюки.“
„Реших, че ще се противопоставям на цивилизацията, когато тя покварява добродетелите на варварите и ги превръща в подчинен народ...“
„И аз като съдия трябва да се боря вече двадесет години с това презрение към варварите, презрение, което изпитват и най-простите коняри и селяни. Как се изкоренява презрението, особено когато основанията за него се изчерпват с разликите в правилата за хранене и формата на клепачите?“
„Тази постъпка като проява на някакъв жест няма да промени нищо, няма дори да бъде забелязана. Независимо от това обаче заради мен самия, като жест към самия мен, трябва да се върна в прохладния мрак, да затворя вратата, да превъртя ключа и да запуша ушите си за патриотичните призиви за кръвожадност, да затворя устата си, никога вече да не говоря.“
„Не знаех обаче, че силният копнеж по нещо може да се загнезди някъде дълбоко в душата на човек и един ден без предупреждение да се отприщи.“
„Искам да му предам един урок, който отдавна съм научил. Изговарям бавно думите и гледам как ги чете по устните ми.
— Нашата скрита склонност към престъпност трябва да се излее върху самите нас — казвам аз. Кимам с глава, после пак кимам, за да му внуша това послание. — Не върху други хора — добавям и повтарям думите, като посочвам себе си, а след това него.“
January 10, 2022
En esta novela el premio Nobel sudafricano J.M. Coetzee, abandona el tono realista de otras obras y nos sitúa en un espacio y un tiempo indefinidos, en una especie de fuerte al borde del desierto, bastión de un poderoso Imperio siempre amenazado por los bárbaros que rondan sus fronteras. Como se ve, el tema es intemporal, todos los grandes imperios han construido muros y barreras para defenderse de los otros, los menos civilizados. Al mismo tiempo han abusado de ellos y los han esclavizado, en un fenómeno colonial que llega hasta nuestros días. También las corrientes migratorias se pueden interpretar en clave de bárbaros que intentan invadir el territorio civilizado. Por tanto son muchos los temas que toca Coetzee en esta obra, y muchos los niveles de lectura que ofrece.
El narrador es un alto magistrado, un burócrata del sistema, que poco a poco va tomando conciencia de los métodos que utiliza el Imperio para mantener su poder, de manera que su visión de las cosas se va transformando. Al conocer a una mujer bárbara se da cuenta de su humanidad indefensa y poco a poco se va rebelando contra la situación. Trata de convencer a la población de que los bárbaros no suponen una amenaza, pero la paranoia desatada por los militares se impone, y con ella un clima de violencia, torturas y opresión. El magistrado representa la voz de la razón y el esfuerzo por conocer a los otros y entender sus razones.
Ciertamente, el mensaje no es novedoso, pero la manera en que está articulada la historia y la figura poco ejemplar del héroe/anti-héroe – lleno de defectos pero abierto al cambio y al conocimiento - hace que sea una obra singular y, para mí, una lectura apasionante.
El narrador es un alto magistrado, un burócrata del sistema, que poco a poco va tomando conciencia de los métodos que utiliza el Imperio para mantener su poder, de manera que su visión de las cosas se va transformando. Al conocer a una mujer bárbara se da cuenta de su humanidad indefensa y poco a poco se va rebelando contra la situación. Trata de convencer a la población de que los bárbaros no suponen una amenaza, pero la paranoia desatada por los militares se impone, y con ella un clima de violencia, torturas y opresión. El magistrado representa la voz de la razón y el esfuerzo por conocer a los otros y entender sus razones.
Ciertamente, el mensaje no es novedoso, pero la manera en que está articulada la historia y la figura poco ejemplar del héroe/anti-héroe – lleno de defectos pero abierto al cambio y al conocimiento - hace que sea una obra singular y, para mí, una lectura apasionante.
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