woensdag 11 november 2009

Waiting for the Barbarians


Het is precies wat AdR stelt: 'la trahison des clercs', het verraad van de intellectuelen, die keer op keer de belangen van de machtigen dienen. Ook zij die kritisch lijken, maar nooit hun eigen belang uit het oog verliezen. Die met een zeker gevoel van kille superioriteit zeggen: 'Ja, maar het internationaal recht is niets zodra de politiek dwarsligt', en vervolgens hun brood verdienen aan het internationaal recht. En dan is er nog het slag dat kijkt uit welke hoek de wind waait. De cynicus, de opportunist, de verveling en de dood. We wachten...

Waiting for the Barbarians

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.

By Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933), translated by Edmund Keeley


Voor degenen die hun brood verdienen aan het recht. Mad Max.

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue...

4 opmerkingen:

Anoniem zei

They got some hungry creatures there,
they'll surely make a mess out of you...

(Heb ik wat gewonnen..?)
Ton

stan zei

nee ton, want het is fout. zet je oren open.

They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you

dat is het. wonderlijk dat jij van women, creatures maakt.
hmm.

Anoniem zei

Zakdoekjes meenemen bij de peepshow, Ton

anzi

AdR zei

Voor juristen als Van Genugten denk ik toch meer - als we het toc op Dylan houden:
something is happening and you don't know what it is
do you, Mr. Jones?

(You will never know).

Iemand die stelt dat de wetenschap zich ook al aan de smalle marges moet houden, dat is la trahison des clercs in volle naaktheid (excuseer de paradoxale uitdrukking).