Waiting For The Barbarians - A poem by Constantine P. Cavafy

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn't anything happening in the senate? Why do the senators sit there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What laws can the senators make now? Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting at the city's main gate on his throne, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader. He has even prepared a scroll to give him, replete with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say? Because the barbarians are coming today and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking. Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion? (How serious people's faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home so lost in thought? Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.

Poet: Constantine P. Cavafy
Poem: Waiting For The Barbarians

Year: Published/Written in 1904

Comment 6 of 6, added on June 22nd, 2009 at 3:41 AM.

This was the late great Palestinian scholar, Edward Said's favorite poem. It was read by his daughter at his funeral.

Aida Qasim from United States

Comment 5 of 6, added on May 30th, 2006 at 8:48 AM.

I personnally think tha t the barbarians here would signify the other as entity rather than the Romans, the Africans or what-so-ever. The other that we always need to identitfy ourselves. This is why perhaps that the barbarians do not arrive at the end of the poem. It is important noethe less to say that the political institutions and the ones who sustain them are dependent on the 'existence', at laest in the imaginary of the community, of those others to establish their cohesion, authority and sense of being united. Because to be united is mainly to be againt someone else. So for me the barbarians is tha t entity that any society holds to be its opposite so that to set itself as 'one'. While i truth no society is one,but instead it is always and ever many, heterogene and diverse.

koussaila from France

Comment 4 of 6, added on November 4th, 2005 at 5:05 AM.

Dear Alienor,

The barbarians is always the OTHER, in contrast to whom we form our identity

Elaine from Greece

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