Month: June 2008

Quotable: Constantine Cavafy

A poem for this Friday: “Waiting for the Barbarians,” by Constantine Cavafy:

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

More poems by Cavafy here.



Ansari on The Office

Producers of The Office have announced that Aziz Ansari has joined the cast for their spin-off show. I am unreasonably excited about this–can’t wait to see what he’ll do.



Hage Takes IMPAC

The Guardian reports that this year’s IMPAC Dublin award has gone to Rawi Hage for De Niro’s Game:

A debut novelist writing in his third language has bested competitors including Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon and Margaret Atwood to take the world’s richest literary prize. First-time author Rawi Hage was this morning declared the winner of the €100,000 Impac Dublin literary award for his novel De Niro’s Game.

De Niro’s Game is set during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s, its title alluding to the Russian roulette which features in the celebrated Vietnam film drama. In Hage’s novel, the private lives and morals of two young friends are pushed badly out of shape by the relentless stresses and brutality of the conflict raging around them. The judges’ citation, delivered at a ceremony in Dublin’s City Hall earlier, praised De Niro’s Game for its “originality, its power, its lyricism, as well as its humane appeal … the work of a major literary talent.”

The novel comes out in paperback with Harper in the summer.



Indie-spensable

Powell’s bookstore has come up with a really neat idea: an indie subscription club whose members get a package of new books every six weeks. The package might include a signed first edition, or a title from the author’s backlist, or an advance copy of a new title, but the coolest part about this is that you don’t know what you’ll get until the package arrives. This would make a great gift. (Hint, hint, Alex.)