Constantine P. Cavafy's "Waiting for the Barbarians"
Poems as Teachers, Episode 03
Friends:
Thanks for your interactions in Substack since we’ve started this miniseries of Poetry Unbound called “Poems as Teachers: Conflict and the Human Condition.”
The offering in today’s episode is from Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933), a Greek-speaking poet who spent almost all of his life in Egypt as the tides of power surged, with the British, French, and Turkish-Ottoman empires exerting influence in a region that always deserved its own autonomy.
“Waiting for the Barbarians” is among the best known poems by Cavafy (he’s most commonly known simply by his surname). While he was often recognised as a poet of history, making specific reference to particular times, characters, and places in antiquity, here he avoids all that, creating a classic tableau without time-bound markers. The city square, the leaders, the manipulation, the threat, the anticipation, the control: they are as much about today as they are about then.
Some conflicts do have enemies, yes. Those are not the conflicts referred to in today’s exploration. Other conflicts are theaters, designed for the manipulators of the drama to exert control. “The barbarians” of the poem’s title never come, yet the people are beholden to the spectacle of threat. Where are those who are speaking out? They have been silenced, it seems.
Today, I’d love to hear where imagined threat has played a powerful part in your life. To what end? Did you invent it? Did someone else? What happened when you discovered how hollow the fear was? Who exposed it for you?
I’m sure that we’ll both agree and disagree with each other. Talk truthfully in the comments; I’m uninterested in us making enemies of each other while we are sitting under the teaching of Cavafy’s brilliant poem.
Coming from a childhood home of abuse, instability and unpredictability, I functioned for decades from a position of fear. When finally I realized I had the power to lovingly remove myself from those dynamics everything changed, yet nothing changed, but everything changed...my perspective, assumptions, reactions and sense of self.
As I’ve stated in past posts, I’m a philosophy educator in higher education. my focus is on philosophy of art, freedom of speech, ethics, and the intersection of values and technology. So I’m squarely inside the domains of the so-called culture wars, and the cringe worthy term cancel culture. Personally, I believe the threats attributed to this domain to be hollow, but the threats from the mob are real. I walk a fine line between engaging honestly and openly with challenging topics and holding back, playing it safe. what’s more, as an adjunct, my position is tenuous at best. While I’m fairly certain I have the backing of my department, if push came to shove, I don’t know if I would have the same confidence in the upper administration.