...apie žmogaus prigimtį, kuri nesikeičia per amžius...

[...]"Mes taip ir numirsime nieko neišmokę. Giliai visuose mumyse slūgso kažkas tvirto kaip granitas, ko niekaip neišmokysi."

...apie barbarus tupinčius kiekviename is mūsų ir tik laukiančius palankios progos pasirodyti...
...apie prievartą rinktis...

[...]"karo prasmė: priversti ką nors rinktis tai, ko jis nepasirinktų savo laisva valia."

...apie laisvę, tiksliau - "laisvės priespaudą". (106 psl.)

...apie beviltiškumą belaukiant...

[...]"Ir dar galvoju: "Kažkas žiūrejo man į veidą, o aš to vis dar nematau."

p.s. man dar labai jau šiuolaikiškai/lietuviškai (greičiausiai ne tik) sugrojo ši pastraipa: "Aikštėje buvo surengtas mitingas su deglais siekiant pasmerkti "bailius ir išdavikus".[...] Ištikimųjų šūkiu tapo MES PASILIEKAME: juo ištepliotos visos sienos. Stovėjau tą vakarą patamsy didžiulės minios pakraštyje (niekam neužteko drąsos likti namie), klausydamasis, kaip šiuos žodius skanduoja tūkstančiai balsų. Nugara nuėjo pagaugais."... 174 psl.

P.s.s. Filmas ateina...oi nezinau nezinau...

رواية مزلزلة وتترك في النفس أثراً لا يزول.
كويتزي أكثر من رائع
كاتب رصين ومتمكن.

Pardon my egocentrism, but I think this book starts with a description of me as its reader:

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 canonised 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.

Coetzee is a good writer, but this book was underwhelming. His point about the barbarians was obvious from the very beginning and the narrator was too wishy-washy to make any impression on me. This strikes me as the sort of literature that people like because it is so easy to understand while also being self-consciously literary, whereas I prefer writing that is more complex and less conventional.

A magistrate in a garrison on the frontier of an unnamed empire narrates this shortish novel (about 150p) and Coetzee packs so much in to think about. Isolation and loneliness. The treatment of native peoples, colonialism in general, what is justice. The narrator comes to wonder which side the barbarians are actually on. Skilfully written, the message is powerful.
I decided to read this after watching a trailer for a film based on this book the other day. I’ll be interested to see how well they do it.

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.

"À Espera dos Bárbaros” é um livro de Coetzee de 1980, escrito em pleno clima de Apartheid, na África do Sul, ao qual não é alheio, antes pelo contrário. A grande influência de Coetzee está na obra maior de Dino Buzzati, “O Deserto dos Tártaros” de 1940, escrito em plena Itália fascista. As obras tocam-se pela alegoria do forte fronteiriço e do inimigo quase invisível que a todos afeta a todos oprime trabalhando uma espécie de impotência nos protagonistas, ainda que os objetos que os motivam e sustentam sejam bastante distintos, o que acaba por ditar também todo um tom e fluxo estéticos distintos.

Assim, Buzzati usa a alegoria da espera e do tempo que passa para dar conta da inconsequência das nossas ações enquanto condição de vida, o que alguns veem como alegoria de uma luta contra o fascismo, embora para mim Buzatti tenha conseguido ir além dessa variável temporal, geográfica e política. Já Coetzee centra-se num conflito de forças que definem um mal-estar condicionador de uma vida sob um aparelho ideológico, o Apartheid. O magistrado de Coetzee percebe que o modo como os “bárbaros” são tratados é desumano, no entanto existe uma espécie de impotência que paira sobre si e o conduz a um isolamento e alheamento do sofrimento humano. Quando resolve dar um passo e atuar, tudo na sua vida é virado ao contrário, porque é essa a força da condição do lugar, “ou estás connosco ou estás com eles”, mesmo que ele na verdade não tenha percebido aquilo que fez como qualquer ajuda. Isto acaba sendo o mais interessante da obra de Coetzee, o facto da pessoa do magistrado nunca chegar a ganhar plena consciência dos problemas, apenas nele emerge uma espécie de instinto ou intuição que lhe mostra que o tratamento dado aos “bárbaros” é desprovido de senso.

[imagem]
Placa numa praia de Durban, 1989.

Contudo o magistrado não deixa de se aproveitar da situação, da sua condição hierárquica para continuar a viver a sua vida, obter os seus prazeres, como se nada daquilo fosse verdadeiramente relevante para a sua condição individual. Claramente que sofre na pele os efeitos de uma potencial revolta contra o sistema, o que põe a nu como o sistema se perpetua. Por outro lado, se Buzzati deixa em aberto o fechamento, atirando para a consciência de cada um a extrapolação dos efeitos e impactos, Coetzee não é tão contido, e atira mesmo com uma proposta de desígnio ou cenário final expectável, como que prevendo o que viria a suceder 14 anos depois da publicação do livro.

Tendo a preferir Buzzati, a sua escrita é particularmente bela, e o modo como trabalha a alegoria, pela abstração, permite adaptar os contornos da narrativa à realidade de cada leitor, servindo em qualquer tempo e lugar. E no entanto o interessante é que é Coetzee quem mais abstraciona o espaço e o tempo, tornando difícil situar aquele forte em qualquer lugar específico, no entanto não o faz tão bem ao nível das ações, e nomeadamente ao nível das implicações sobre o protagonista. Não é por acaso que “O Desertos dos Tártaros” pertence à minha lista das melhores 15 obras de sempre.

Publicado no VI: https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

[Nota GoodReads: 4.5]

n  "Uyku artık şifa veren, yaşamsal güçleri geri getiren bir banyo değil, bir unutuş, yok oluşa her gece hafifçe bir dokunuş gibi."n (s.37)

Yok oluş sinsi bir rüzgar gibi her şeyi çürütüyor. Ölüm? Ölümden kaçacak yer var mı? Hepimiz kendi yok oluşumuzu sessizce bekliyoruz. Bir idam mangası karşısındaki kurbanlar gibi. Öyle değil mi?

Çöl... Çölün tozları omuzlarımızdan dökülüyor. Kızarmış ufuklarda sürekli gelecek olanın telaşı, ecelin tecellisi bekleniyor.

Nietzsche, dememiş miydi; n  "çöl büyüyor! Yazık [içinde] çöl gizleyene"n*

Elimde tuttuğum kitap, çölü ve sıcaklığı, teri ve kuraklığı evimin salonuna getirdi. Mersin'in nemiyle karışık boğucu havasının içinde yükselen insan-yuvaları binaları gören penceremden içeri tozlar girdi. Kırmızı, kuru, sert tozlar...
Yediğim bisküvi boğazımda düğümlendi.
Oysa ben bu kitabı, salonda uzandığım kanepede şöyle içim geçene kadar okumak için almıştım elime. John Bary'den Lion in Winter çalıyordu bütün bu dönüşüm yaşanırken.

Barbarları Beklerken dilimize ilk defa Beril Eyüboğlu'nun çevirisiyle 1985 yılında Adam Yayınları'ndan kazandırılmış. 88 yılına kadar Adam Yayınları'nın bastığı kitap 2001 yılına kadar raflarda görülmüyor. 2001 yılında Dost Körpe'nin çevirisiyle İthaki Yayınları'ndan yeniden basılan kitap 2006 yılında aynı çevirmen tarafından Can Yayınları'nda yeniden basılıyor. 2018'de üçüncü defa yenilenen kapak tasarımıyla yine Can Yayınları'ndan basımı yapılan baskı benim elimde tuttuğum baskı. Bu yıl kütüphaneme giren cevherlerden olan bu kitap, şimdilerde Ciro Guerra'nın yönetmenliğinde Johnny Depp'in oyunculuğuyla sinemaya uyarlanmış. Herhalde yakın zamanda herkes bu kitabı okuyor, konuşuyor olacak sinemaya uyarlandığı için.

Tatar Çölü kitabındaki atmosferin bir benzerini hissettiren kitap, zenofobik kısımlarıyla Boyalı Kuş kitabını da çağrıştırdı bana. Özellikle erotizmin şiddetle, ölümün yaşamla iç içe geçtiği kitapta uzamın bir boyut olarak içinde kayboluyoruz. Zaten çölün yarattığı atmosferi, bu atmosfer içindeki yalıtılmışlığı yeniden inşa eden yazarın da amaçladığı bu. Gerilimi, açlığı, korkuyu, tedirginliği sürekli hissetmek.

Barbarları beklerken kitabının okurda asıl sordurduğu soru, bu barbarların gerçekte kim oldukları? Barbarlar olarak tahayyül edilenler mi? Yoksa biz miyiz barbarlar olan? Bu noktada alttan alta emperyalizm veyahut da modernite eleştirisi hissedilmiyor değil. Yazarın şiddetle erotizmi iç içe geçiren anlatım tarzıyla birlikte, baş karakterin mükemmel olmayan karakteri; bizleri sürekli mükemmel ve doğruyu yanlışı çok iyi bilen roman kahramanlarını okumaktan sıkılmış bizleri gerçekçiliğe sürüklüyor. Evet, bu eserin ana karakteri iyi yönleri, kötü yönleriyle bir insan. Bu yüzden bu kitap, insanın hikayesini sunuyor ortaya.

Bende varoluş sancısını artırdığını da söyleyebilirim. Özellikle ölüme karşı duyulan korku ve kitlesel ölümlerin bile artık sıradanlaştığı distopik bir mekan tasviriyle yaşam öyle basit görünüyor ki insana. Öyle değil midir zaten? Ölüm basitleştiği ölçüde yaşam da basitleşmez mi?

Kitabın 173. sayfasında yazarın zorbalığa karşı karakterine sordurduğu sorular, benim de aklımdan geçmişti. Zorbaların; "nasıl rahat uyuyabildikleri?" benim de hep aklımı kurcalayan bir konudur. Bazen aklıma gelir, acaba Auchwitz'de Yahudilerin gaz odalarından gelen çığlıklarını duyan o Alman eri, gece nasıl uyuyabildi?

"Çöl büyüyor,
Yazık [içinde] çöl gizleyene" demişti Nietzsche. İnsanı bütünüyle iyi, bütünüyle kötü göremeyiz. İnsanın içi iyilikle kötülüğün bir mücadele alanı mıdır yoksa? İki kurt hikayesini hatırlayın Cherokee'lerin. İnsanın içinde bir iyi bir de kötü kurt vardır. Sizin kişiliğinizi, yolunuzu, hikayenizi bunlardan hangisini beslediğiniz belirler.**

İşte bu kitabın geçtiği o bulanık uzam; iç içe geçmiş rüyalarla bezeli bu gri bulutların ufkunu kapladığı dünya, bir körün ama görebilen bir körün gördükleri; onlar yani bu çöl, bu surlar, bir hapishane odası.... Hepsi insanın içi. İnsanın Nietzsche'nin çöl tasvirindeki gibi, bu kitap işte insanın içinde uzayıp büyüyen çölün hikayesi!


Yazarın ana karakterinin tasvir ettiği o ölüm şekli;
n  "Şimdi tek istediğim hayatımı bildik bir dünyada refah içinde geçirmek, kendi yatağımda ölmek ve eski dostlar tarafından mezara kadar takip edilmek."n (s.108)
Ne güzel bir tasvir. Ne güzel bir dilek.
Ümit ediyorum ki, hepimizin sonu böyle olur.


M.B.
Mersin
10.09.2019



*Böyle Buyurdu Zerdüşt
** https://deanyeong.com/fight-two-wolve...

Barbarları Beklerken ötekiye ve güce dair çok kuvvetli bir roman. Adalet, ahlak, iktidar, iyi-kötü, devlet-vatandaş karşıtlığı, yabancı düşmanlığı vs. gibi evrensel temalar hayali bir ülkede geçen hikayeye çok güzel yedirilmiş. Bu kadar az sayfada bunu yapabilmek büyük başarı. Üstelik merak dozu da çok güzel ayarlanmış. Çok severek okudum. Okuduğum Coetzee’ler arasında beni en çok etkileyen oldu.

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!"

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…

tWaiting 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.

tFirst, 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.

tSecond, 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.

tI 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.

Coetzee e un scriitor grozav!