Waiting For the Barbarians by C P Cavafy

An interesting poem by the Greek poet C. P Cavafy (1863-1933). His poetry never got the attention it deserved during his lifetime because as a gay man he couldn't really publish his poems but fortunately since his death his poems are receiving wide critical acclaim.  Here is one of his most famous poems: 

Waiting for the Barbarians by C. P. 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 just in 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.

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

About a year or two ago my fellow book blogger Jane at her excellent website Reading, Writing, Working, Playing reviewed Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome (2018).  Jane gave this novel a positive review and I agree.  Finding Langston is an award winning young adult novel.  It's geared towards middle school kids but can be read and appreciated at any age.

The book is set in 1946 and the narrator, eleven year old Langston, has recently moved with his father from Alabama to Chicago.  Langston is having a tough time.  Chicago is a big intimidating city and the kids at his new school are mean.

But mostly, Langston misses his mother who recently passed away.  His father works hard and is exhausted at night.  He doesn't talk much and is dealing with his own grief at his wife's death.  Langston, therefore, is on his own spending his days going to school, dodging the bullies, and missing his Mom and the way things used to be with his family in Alabama.

And then one day Langston spots a library and decides to go inside.  He sees a book by a writer with his first name and becomes curious.  It's a book of poetry by Langston Hughes and he is transformed.  From there he goes on to look up other writers from the Harlem Renaissance and by the time the book ends young Langston has grown in so many ways.

Finding Langston is about the power of books to change our lives as they did for eleven year old Langston.  He found the poet he was named after and in doing so he found himself.

The Ray Bradbury Reading Challenge And How It's Going

I've been taking the Ray Bradbury Reading Challenge for two weeks now and it's going very well.  And so I wanted to share some of what I have been reading and learning.  I won't list all of the poems, essays and short stories I read.  Instead I will just note my favorites.

Poems - I have been using Harold Bloom's Best Poems of the English Language.  This collection of poetry starts in the Middle Ages and ends in the late 20th century and I am working through this list in chronological order making sure only to select short poems.  And what I am learning is that being a poet in Tudor England could be a dangerous profession.  Three of the poets I read wound up in the Tower of London.  Sir Thomas Wyatt, Chidiock Tichborne and Robert Southwell S.J.  It was a brutal time. 

Regarding my favorite poems I would recommend three:  Edmund Spencer's One Day I Wrote Her Name which is perfect for Valentine's Day.  William Blake's Chimney Sweeper poem When My Mother Died I Was Very Young. There is a strong Victorian/Charles Dickens vibe to this poem about the lives of young boys, many of them orphans, forced into chimney sweeping work.  And I also recommend Walt Whitman's poem O Captain My Captain, a moving tribute to Abraham Lincoln. 

Essays - I read so many fine essays.  Joan Didion's On Keeping A Notebook, Vivian Gornick's The Anti-Social Novelist which is her review of a recent biography of John Steinbeck but a book review by Vivian is always so much more.  My favorite essay would have to be Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's Dialogue of A Self and Soul: Plain Jane's Progress in which they analyze the novel Jane Eyre:

"It seems not to have been primarily the coarseness and sexuality of Jane Eyre which shocked Victorian reviewers but ... it's anti-Christian refusal to accept the forms customs and standards of society ... They were disturbed not so much by the proud Byronic sexual energy of Rochester as by the pride and passion of Jane herself ... In other words what horrified the Victorians was Jane's anger.

Short Stories - I had 3 favorites:  A Coward by Guy de Maupassant about a foolish young man who in an effort to impress his friends challenges another man to a duel.  I also really liked The School-Teacher's Story by Mary Wilkins Freeman and In Dark New England Days by Sarah Orne Jewett  Both of these stories are set in 19th century New England and have a really nice gothic spooky aspect to them.  

So I do recommend this challenge provided you choose short poems and though I may be breaking the Bradbury rules I have expanded my view of essays to include articles in magazines and book reviews.  I don't know if I will continue posting about the challenge but I did want to share a bit of what the experience has been like

Finally let me thank the great Ray Bradbury for this challenge.  He is sadly no longer with us but his excellent novels and short stories live on. 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

"Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father".

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a classic of world literature.  Since it's publication in 1958 this critically acclaimed novel has been translated into 50 languages, been read by millions and is taught in high schools and colleges worldwide.   The book is set in Nigeria during the late 19th century in the years just prior to the arrival of the missionaries and colonialism which would end the culture and customs of the Igbo community.

Chinua Achebe has said that in writing Things Fall Apart he was partly responding to novels like Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  Achebe wanted people to know that there was a vibrant and worthwhile culture in rural villages like Umuofia.  He does this beautifully in Things Fall Apart.  

But Achebe doesn't sugar coat life in Umuofia.  Some of the customs can be quite violent and women are definitely second class citizens.  The central character in Things Fall Apart is Okonkwo.  He is a leader in the village, admired for his strength and courage.  Okonkwo's life has been determined by his intense desire not to be like his father, a man he regards as weak and idle.  Okonkwo is a man with a fierce temper.  His wives and children are afraid of him.  But change is coming to Umuofia and Okonkwo is powerless to stop it.

"There were many men and women in Umuofia who did not feel as strongly as Okonkwo about the new dispensation. The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia.  And even in the matter of religion there was a growing feeling that there might be something in it after all, something vaguely akin to method in the overwhelming madness"

It can be hard to convey in a review how brilliant this novel is, except to say that from the very first page I knew I was holding something special in my hands and that feeling carried through right up till the end of the book.  I highly recommend Things Fall Apart.

The Ray Bradbury Challenge

"I'll give you a program to follow every night, a very simple program…one poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time, comparing them…But that means that every night then, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay—at the end of a thousand nights you’ll be full of stuff, won’t you?” - Ray Bradbury

So I have decided to take the Ray Bradbury Challenge.  Not for a thousand nights but from now till the end of the year.  I started yesterday and it's amazing what you learn even in two days from taking this challenge.  And the best part is that poems, essays, short stories are easily available online at no cost and even better if you have a Kindle unlimited subscription.

Here are the choices I made yesterday, Jan 31, 2023, and my thoughts on what I read:

Poem: Lament for the Makaris by William Dunbar (1460 -1530) - recommended by Harold Bloom in his book Great Poems of the English Language.  It's a powerful poem but you have to have a modern translation because it's written in an Old English style which I found very hard to decipher.

Essay: On The Morning After the Sixties by Joan Didion (1934 - 2021)  This essay published in 1970 is included in Didion's collection of Essays The White Album.  It's my first time reading Joan Didion and what a marvelous writer she is .  

Short Story:  The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) This is considered a classic short story by Ambrose Bierce, often taught in schools and available free online.  It's a very creepy tale, reminiscent of Poe, and should be included in the horror genre. 

I am also keeping a journal so that I will remember the poem, short story and essay I read for each day throughout 2023.  For example, in today's challenge I have decided to go with:  

Poem: They Flee From Me by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503- 1542)  Essay: Beware of Feminist Lite by Chimamanda Ngozi (born 1977)  The Fly by Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)  

It's my first time reading Wyatt, Ngozi and Mansfield and I have found out some interesting things.  Sir Thomas Wyatt was a great poet but also an Ambassador in the Tudor Court during the reign of Henry VIII and he was close to Anne Boleyn.  How close is up for debate but when Anne Boleyn was arrested, Thomas Wyatt was also thrown into the Tower of London.  Fortunately, Wyatt had connections and so was released from prison.  Here is a passage from They Flee From Me which is frank in terms of Wyatt's relations with women but also the turmoil that must have been going on at the Tudor Court:

"They flee from me, that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them, gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not remember

That sometime they put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range,

Busily seeking with a continual change"

And so thank you Ray Bradbury and when in the days, weeks and months ahead a poem, essay or short story really grabs me I will be sure to discuss it here at Reading Matters.