“Horgörüyü nasıl yok edebilirsiniz, özellikle de yalnızca sofra adabındaki ya da gözkapağının yapısındaki farklılıklar gibi önemsiz şeylerden kaynaklanıyorsa?”
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İmparatorluk tehlikede, barbarlar örgütleniyor ve saldırıya hazırlanıyor. O yüzden önlem almalı. En sert, en kanlı yol seçilmeli. Barbarların kökü kurutulmalı ki huzura erebilmeli.. Ama böyle düşünmeyen biri var: sınır bölgelerinden birinin sulh hakimi.. Doğruları söyleyen tek adam olmayı mı hedefliyor? İnancı doğrultusunda şehit düşmeyi mi istiyor? Hayır..
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Sulh hakimi masum değil kesinlikle. Bölgesine gelen, barbarlarla savaşmaya hazırlanan albay ve askerlerden çok da farklı değil. Ama bakan gözleri artık görmeye başlıyor. Bir aydınlanma mı bu? Belki de artık kaybedecek bir şeyi kalmayışın rahatlığıdır üzerindeki..
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Utanç adlı eseriyle tanıdığım Coetzee bu kitabında sözde ‘uygarlığın kara çiçeğinin’ açmasını anlatıyor. Ve sorguluyor: “kim barbar? kim uygar?”
Sulh hakiminin ağzından anlatılanlar hayali bir yere ait ama bildiğimiz bir düzen. Sömüren, kanla beslenen, renginin üstünlüğüne inanan..
Hayali bir zaman ama aslında dün,yakın geçmiş ve şimdi..
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Utanç’taki erkek karakterin kendiyle yüzleşmesi gibi Barbarları Beklerken’de de ana karakter çıplak kalıyor. Utanıyor, pişmanlıkla doluyor, çaresiz kalıyor ve büyük bir çözülme yaşıyor.
Sadece düzen eleştirisiyle değil karakteri ete kemiğe büründürmesiyle de beni etkiledi Coetzee’nin anlatımı.
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Dost Körpe çevirisi ve Utku Lomlu kapak tasarımıyla (ki Coetzee kitaplarının kapak tasarımlarını çok beğeniyorum)

bütün yaz okudukça acı veren romanlarla boğuştum. sanki ömrümün en zor günleri daha önce de yaşanmış demek içindi.
hep barbarları bekliyor devletler. olmayan bir düşman, onuru hiçe sayan savaş.
coetzee'nin romanı o kadar denk düşüyor ki zamanımıza. iyi olmak mümkün değil, iyi kalmak mümkün değil. devletlerin savaşı hep aynı. insan hep kötü. işkenceci. zorba.
evet iyi yazarlar Nobel alıyorlar coetzee gibi. sonra? ne değişiyor?

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.

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؟

Man wundert sich vielleicht über die gute Bewertung, wenn man noch meinen ersten Leseeindruck im Kopf hat.
So ist das, Rotwein auch erst mal atmen lassen oder durch den Mixer jagen (übrigens mache ich das auch mit meinem Kaffee - Luft reinarbeiten).... Das ist mit den Barbaren jetzt auch passiert. Gedankenmixer angeschoben und festgestellt, da gibts deutlich mehr als zunächst die zweite Hälfte für mich hergab.

Coetzee spielt am Beispiel des Magistraten ein moralisch, ethisches Dilemma durch, das voller Verwirrungen, Unsicherheiten und Ambivalenzen ausgestattet ist.
• Eine Hiobsgeschichte, in der der Mensch vor sich selbst tritt – geprüft, zur Selbstreflexion gezwungen und mit Erkenntnissen daraus hervorgeht - dennoch ohne Gott und Segnung ins Ungewisse blickt
• Machtinstrumente / Feindbildschaffung – Foucault, Machiavelli
• Entfremdung: Ein Gregor Samsa Moment – der Magistrat ein Mensch voller Selbstzweifel- Der Penis des Magistrats und seine Sexualität als Symbol für das Unterwusstsein. Fremd im eigenen Körper. Die eigene Lust nicht zulassen können und dies über die Lust des Anderen kompensieren- Insbesondere die sexuelle Beziehung zu dem Barbarenmädchen interpretiere ich als Ausdruck der Machtlosigkeit und Unsicherheit des Magistraten – jemand der sich selbst nicht annehmen kann und nicht in der Lage ist einen anderen Menschen wirklich zu sehen. Der in seinem Weltbild festhängt, nicht hinter den Vorhang blickt, die Unfähigkeit die Barbaren zu verstehen und damit auch für gescheiterte Entwicklungspolitik stehen kann.
• Aufarbeitung und Umgang von und mit Vergangenheit/Historie : Der Magistrat, der aus Zeitvertreib die Klassiker liest: Flucht in die Vergangenheit ohne den Willen von Aufarbeitung und tieferem Verständnis - Passivität. Der Magistrat, der seine Ruhe haben will, sein friedliches Leben – die Lüge, in ruhigen Zeiten- das Feststecken in Historie, von der eigenen Geschichte erdrückt und die Suche der Erlösung von ihr.
Hier bin ich ganz stark an Sama Maanis Buch Respektverweigerung - Warum wir fremde Kulturen nicht respektieren sollten. Und die eigene auch nicht. erinnert worden.

Kapitel 1-3 haben mir am besten gefallen, da ich aktuell sehr auf Symbolik, kryptisches Erzählen und Interpretationsschlachten stehe. Die Natursymbolik aus Kapitel 3 ist phänomenal gut. Ab Kapitel 4 kommt er mehr ins Erzählen und ja, da bleib ich auch bei, interpretiert er sein Werk selbst. Das trifft nach wie vor nicht meinen Geschmack, verstehe aber, dass dies durchaus Sinn ergibt, da wir mit dem Magistraten einen Entwicklungsprozess der Selbsterkenntnis durchmachen, in dem die oben angeführten Punkte bearbeitet werden. Redundant wirkt es weiterhin auf mich, da die Gedanken des Magistrats immer wieder um dieselbe Problemstellung kreisen.

Sprachlich und ästhetisch trifft das Buch nicht ganz meinen Geschmack. Mir ist das sprachlich zu einfach und schlicht gehalten. Insbesondere in Kombination mit den expliziten Gewaltszenen bekommt das einen unangenehm stumpfen Drive. Da sagt mir die sprachliche/ästhetische Bearbeitung in Menschenkind deutlich mehr zu.

Der große Pluspunkt des Buches: Es ist auf ganz unterschiedliche weise lesbar und interpretierbar. Es rührt an, beschäftigt und quält.

Bir imparatorluğun varlığını sürdürmek için hayali düşmanlar ürettiği, bunlarla savaştan nemalanan yandaşların hemen harekete geçtiği, madem savaş varsa suçlanması gereken masumların bulunduğu, bu tezgahı anlayıp karşı çıkmak isteyen ancak çeşitli işkencelerle gücü tükenip zaman zaman düşünce yapısında bozulmaların meydana geldiği karakteri konu alan bir romanla baş başayız. Barbarları beklerken Coetzee'nin 1970'ler Güney Afrikası'na gönderme yaptığı bir roman. Maalesef ki okuyunca kendi zamanımızdan, on yıl, on beş, yirmi yıl öncesinden izler görüyoruz. İçimizde yer eden belli kitaplar gibi insanlık tarihinden bir kesit sanki yazılanlar.
Ana karakterin gözünden dinlediğimiz kitap baş kısmında bana durgun gelse de ilerleyen sayfalarda merkezdeki duyguyu çok güzel ön plana çıkarıyor. Bu esnada yan dallara detaylıca ayrılarak tekdüzelikten kurtuluyor. İşlediği konunun gerçekliği, bunu okura yansıtmasındaki beceri ile insanı içine çeken güzel bir okuma sunuyor bize. Sonunda ise ilerleyen zamanlarda kitabın ulaştığı okurların geçmişte neler yaşanmış diye şaşırdıkları, bizim gibi empati kuramadıkları bir dünyanın olması temennisiyle baş başa bırakıyor.

"From such beginnings grow obsessions: I am warned." pg.79

This quote, taken wildly out of context, serves as an accurate description of my first experience reading J.M. Coetzee. Having read this small book in its entirety throughout the last twenty four hours, I now have the urge to read his other works as soon as possible. It is interesting how Mr. Coetzee and this book in particular have become a recurring Goodreads meme of sorts over the last few weeks, so i'm guessing that i'm not alone in this newly emerged obsession.

'Waiting for the Barbarians' is the story of the Magistrate (the only name this character is given throughout the book) who has been in charge of a remote settlement on behalf of the Empire for many years. His methods seem to point at a rule through benevolence. Fears mount that a group of barbarians outside the city walls are planning an attack and the bureacratically mysterious Empire sends additional troops and agents in preparation. The agents are brutal in their dealings with suspected barbarians, and the Magistrate finds out what it means to be on the wrong side of the Empire upon engaging in actions that call his loyalty into question.

This is a fairly generic plot description, essentially a reworking of the book description provided above. The reason for this is because that is not the real story here. Coetzee's prose is very close to perfect, as it seems that each word of this book was written with such precision and exactness. There is no excess writing going on here, and each word must hold its place in the arrangement in order to achieve the desired effect. This book is truly beautiful in its grotesqueness

'Waiting for the Barbarians' was written in 1980, but some of the descriptions of torture read like a compendium of newspaper headlines from the last few years. I challenge anyone to read this book and not recall terms such as Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, or waterboarding. One of the brilliant ways that Coetzee has achieved this "pulled from the headlines" feeling is through the use of allegory. The Empire, the geographical setting, and the time period in which the story takes place are never explicitly stated, and this seems to give the work a timeless quality.

Coetzee also manages to subtly weave so many themes into this small volume (160 pgs.). These include such things as questions of the nature of justice, how the world treats those that are considered different or "the enemy", and the nature of the state as an instument of control.

One of the themes that I have personalized from this book is the question of what it means to be a man from the viewpoint of standing up for basic human kindness and dignity. The Magistrate failed to take a stand against the injustices that he saw early in the story and despite his relative position of power and comfort this seemed to take a toll on him through guilt, a sense of incompleteness, and sexual impotence. He seems to regain part of his whole as he stands up to the brutal agents of the state, albeit at the price of pain, humiliation, and loss of status. Perhaps i'm being too overly-analytical here, but in recent years I have noticed a disturbing portrayal of men arise in mainstream entertainment as being typically lazy, scheming (usually overweight) dolts. If you doubt this assertion, I direct you to the tv show "Everyone Loves Raymond", Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, and any role played by actor Kevin James. When the alien archeologists are sifting through the rubble in the distant future and stumble across these DVD boxed sets, they will obviously conclude that the ambitious, beautiful, career-oriented women kept us around solely because we had the market cornered on seminal fluid. What's more, most of us work for large, impersonal corporations (an interesting parallel for the Empire). When layoffs are announced two weeks before Christmas, we are usually too busy being damned glad that our names are not on the list as opposed to speaking up for those that have just been shat upon. Has that aspect of our manhood been downsized in this current age, or are we (read "I") too busy rushing home to type up "clever" book reviews to seize the little, day-to-day opportunities to make a difference? WWtD?*

*Disclaimer: Anyone who may be reading this and comes to the assumption from the previous paragraph that i've gone Gandhi in 2009, keep in mind that i'm speaking about standing up for basic human decency for everyone except those people who pull out in front of me while driving. I still think that they should be pistol whipped...

No sé si Coetzee sea para mí. Lo he debatido durante toda la lectura de este libro. Sé que la intención del autor era esa, la de incomodar y la de hacerte dudar, incluso, de si lo que sientes por el protagonista es empatía o repudio. Está claro que hay una profunda crítica moral a los Imperios occidentales y la barbarie de las colonizaciones. La primera reflexión es esa justamente, ¿quienes son los bárbaros, ellos, los de afuera, los desconocidos, o nosotros? Este nosotros es una primera persona en la que está narrada esta novela. Es el punto de vista de un funcionario del Imperio (no se sabe cuál), un magistrado entrado en años que, según palabras de ese enigmático y obscuro personaje llamado Coronel Joll, quiere ser "el único hombre justo". El único hombre justo en medio del atropello e injusticias que se cometen hacia ese pueblo nómada que ellos llaman "bárbaros", que viven detrás de ese puesto de frontera, en medio del desierto y la estepa, bajo un clima inclemente, el cual, quizás es el mayor enemigo del ejército aquel comandado por Joll, quien asegura que los bárbaros planean un ataque. Pero los ataques a la ciudad amurallada y fortín son sigilosos, si es que lo son, y no nos queda claro si son reales o fantasiosos, o parte de una leyenda que se va cimentando en esa tierra de nadie.

En medio de todo ello, asistimos al flujo de pensamiento del magistrado, quien es un puñado de contradicciones que bien representan la condición humana, o quizás, SU condición humana, entre sus propios prejuicios, sus propios fantasmas, su noción de lo justo, su conciencia que se ve a sí misma como superior y sus actos fallidos por levantar una voz aleccionadora que, tal cual como la ven sus coterráneos y, sobre todo, aquellos policías enceguecidos por la violencia irreflexiva y sin sentido, nos suenan más a delirios y frases inútiles que se las lleva el viento que a lecciones valiosas de humanidad. Y esta es una de las razones por las que la lectura es dura y áspera, no solo por la degradación física a la que llevan al protagonista en su periplo por "defender" a los bárbaros -defenderlos con palabras-, sino porque sabemos que aquello cae en saco roto, y el saco roto es el propio protagonista, que también auto-cuestiona su posición y su percepcion frente a ese otro.

Percepción que incluye un extraño viaje a través del deseo, la sexualidad y el erotismo fallido, su erotismo fallido. Ese deseo por ese cuerpo del otro (del otro ajeno, desconocido, lo bárbaro) encarnado en una muchacha bárbara que recoge de la calle, luego de haber sido torturada cruelmente, ese cuerpo doliente y extraño con el que se relaciona a través de lo sensorial y que no termina de ser sensual, ese cuerpo que no comprende, que desea, que toca, con el que hace rituales de aceites, pero que no se atreve a penetrar por propio prejuicio y por su conciencia contradictoria. Y es aquí en donde más me ha producido rechazo la narración, o el personaje, o quizás la forma en la que Coetzee construye al personaje, pues sí, la muchacha es un enigma que finalmente se resuelve de una forma absolutamente machista occidentalizada (según mi punto de vista). Todos estos pasajes son francamente perturbadores. Pero también hay otros que lo son, sobre todo cuando apresan bárbaros; las torturas y la suma crueldad a las que les someten, e incluso, a las que es sometido el propio protagonista.

En suma, una novela dura que busca romper cualquier zona de confort, pero a la vez con una pluma exquisita, con una narración impecable que no debe dejar indiferente a nadie. Los profundos cuestionamientos hacia los procesos deleznables de colonización y el evidente mea culpa (del protagonista, del propio Coetzee) que envuelve la novela son sin duda de un alto valor social y cultural. Pero también las reflexiones del propio personaje como sujeto acerca de la virtud, la justicia, el deseo, el otro y la construcción de ese otro, son el otro gran valor de esta novela.

P.D.: La película de 2019 de Ciro Guerra retrata bastante acertadamente a los personajes. Johnny Deep como el Coronel Joll es remarcable, de hecho, no se puede ya leer el libro sin verle a él como el cruel e impávido Joll. Robert Pattinson como Mendel está formidable igualmente. Mark Rylance como el magistrado también es una gran interpretación, aunque reproduce un poco menos esos sentimientos contradictorios que despierta el protagonista en la novela de Coetzee (no sabes si empatizas o te genera rechazo), aunque algo muy bien logrado, por ejemplo, es su manera de hablar que resulta cansina (tal como se lo imaginaría uno cuando lee la novela). Debo decir que primero vi la película y ello quizás influyó en mi lectura de la novela, pero cabe aclarar que aunque la cinta está muy bien lograda en cuanto a personajes, atmósfera y estructura narrativa, ciertamente no logra profundizar en los dilemas morales del protagonista que se muestran en la novela. Aquí está más heroificado y con menos bemoles que en el libro, en el que resulta más patético. Como casi siempre con toda adaptación cinematográfica de una obra multidimensional y profunda, quedan fuera muchas cosas, pero sí vale totalmente la pena verla. Las escenas finales son magistrales.

مانند داستان زندگی و زمانه میکل ک ،در این کتاب نیز المان‌های ضد استعماری و ضد نواستعماری زبان داستان‌نویسی کوتزی وضوحا به چشم می‌خورد. تمام داستان حول زندگی یک شهردار و دغدغه‌هایش در مورد برخورد با بومیان یا به قولی، بربرها در منطقه‌ای مرزی در یک امپروطوری خیالی می‌چرخد. از شروع گروه سفر در میانه کتاب، المان هیجان نیز به داستان تزریق شده و بر جذابیت آن می‌افزاید
نکته قابل توجه درمورد ترجمه آثار کوتزی این است که ترجمه تمام کتاب‌های او تا سال هشتاد و هفت در ایران ،بدون اجازه و حتی اطلاع نویسنده صورت گرفته (البته که روال کار در ایران چنین است). با این حال کیفیت ترجمه در سطح قابل قبولی قرار دارد

Büyük bir hayranlık ve keyifle okudum. İktidar, öteki, adalet, etik, insan olmanın yükü ve düştüğü tuzaklar o kadar güzel yedirilmiş ki bu romanın içine, kitabı okumadığım zamanlarda dahi zihnim sürekli o topraklarda dolaştı. Peşinizi hayat boyu bırakmayacak romanlardan.

“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 feel old and tired, I want to sleep. I sleep whenever I can nowadays and, when I wake up, wake reluctantly. Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.”

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"Waiting for the Barbarians" is a dark tale of xenophobia. At the edges of the author’s imagined Empire live nomads, commonly referred to as barbarians. The center of the action in this story is a remote outpost where an elderly Magistrate, unnamed, was managing to live out his days in relative peace. He is dutiful in carrying out his tasks, but is haunted by bad health….

The paranoid complications that the Imperial police brings to the outpost are not welcomed by the Magistrate. Armed forces have come to march out among the nomads in the wilderness to allegedly prevent them from attacking the outpost. The barbarians are herders and fishermen, with no such intentions. An old man and a young boy have been “captured” and brought to town and tortured. The old man dies and the boy is seriously wounded. Colonel Joll, a member of the Empire’s secret service, ''the Third Bureau,'' is convinced that, somehow, he’s got the information he needs to proceed. (Iraq, anyone?).

The Magistrate wants to be left alone by the authorities to live his quiet life. He rues the fact that he has chosen to live in the middle of the outpost, where more barbarians have been brought and held, instead of his entitled residence out of the main way.

“If I lived in the magistrate’s villa on the quietest street in town, holding sittings of the court on Mondays and Thursdays, going hunting every morning, occupying my evenings in the classics, closing my ears to the activities of this upstart policeman, if I resolved to ride out the bad times, keeping my own counsel, I might cease to feel like a man who, in the grip of the undertow, gives up the fight, stops swimming, and turns his face towards the open sea and death.”

The aging Magistrate is a kind of symbol of an aging Empire that will inevitably diminish and fall.

The story picks up in Part III in which the Magistrate decides to return a young “barbarian” girl, who had suffered broken feet and legs and became his sex slave, to her people. Accompanied by two soldiers and a guide, the Magistrate and the girl ride off on horseback on a dangerous journey into distant regions, an ordeal of cold, hunger and fear that critic Irving Howe says is “described with such dazzling vividness that it reminds one of the grueling journeys in T.E. Lawrence's ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom.''

This section is the author’s style at its best in this book….

“The sun has risen but gives off no warmth. The wind beats at us across the lake bringing tears to our eyes. In single file, four men and a woman, four pack-animals, the horses persistently backing to the wind and having to be sawed around, we wind away from the walled town into the bare fields…. The wind never lets up. It howls at us across the ice, blowing from nowhere to nowhere, veiling the sky in a cloud of red dust. From the dust there is no hiding: it penetrates our clothing, cakes our skin, sifts into the baggage. We eat with coated tongues, spitting often, our teeth grating. Dust rather than air becomes the medium in which we live. We swim through dust like fish through water.”

“Rolling down upon us over the snowy plain is a gigantic black wave. It is still miles away but visibly devouring the earth in its approach. Its crest is lost in the murky clouds. “A storm!” I shout. I have never seen anything so frightening….The storm-wall is not black any more but a chaos of whirling sand and snow and dust. Then all at once the wind rises to a scream, my cap is whirled from my head, and the storm hits us. I am knocked flat on my back.”

With his mission accomplished, the Magistrate returns home where he is surprised to be charged with treason and imprisoned. Meanwhile, Joll and his men had chased the barbarians beyond the frontiers of the Empire and were led out far into the desert where the nomads vanished.

After this exercise in futility, the troops return dispirited. The Magistrate is released from jail. The imperial forces leave. It’s all been for nothing, driven by a paranoid suspicion of “the other.” The story is a reminder of how fear and prejudice are often used to mobilize people to do evil and, in the process, destroy their own souls and sear their consciences.

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I have now read two of Coetzee's books. I confess that I find the dominant elements of irascibility and selfishness in his main characters----David Lurie in "Disgrace" and the Magistrate in this book----very irritating. Coetzee is famously reclusive and does not give interviews, but I suspect professional reviewers may be correct in seeing much of the author in these characters, including their opinions.

"When the main character expresses his own quavering judgments, one suspects that we are really getting the opinions of Coetzee," avers Irving Howe.

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On this note, I found this review of his book "Youth," by the erudite Lisa, of interest....

"I absolutely loathed the main character. There is no other way to describe what I felt, page after page, digging deeper into his psyche filled with pretentious nothingness and arrogance. This makes me wonder what the character meant to the author. Does he reflect Coetzee’s own development? If so, there is a huge amount of prejudice and misogyny in his world view, almost painfully evident in every sentence."

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...