J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) | Book Review and Analysis
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- Опубликовано: 30 июл 2024
- The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2003 was awarded to J. M. Coetzee. This is a reflection on Waiting for the Barbarians, which was inspired by C. P. Cavafy's 1898 poem of the same title (Περιμένοντας τοὺς Bαρβάρους) and by Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe (Il deserto dei Tartari), also known as The Stronghold (La fortezza), published in 1940.
My thoughts on Dino Buzzati's novel:
• Dino Buzzati's The Str...
My thoughts on Antonio di Benedetto's Zama (1956):
• Antonio di Benedetto's...
"Waiting for the Barbarians," by C. P. Cavafy (Κωνσταντίνος Πέτρου Καβάφης):
www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
Contents:
00:00 - Happy New Year, my friends! 😃
00:15 - Introduction
00:59 - My experience with J. M. Coetzee and my Nobel Prize project
02:47 - "Waiting for the Barbarians," by C. P. Cavafy
04:05 - Plot
05:38 - Structure
06:16 - Part I
08:02 - Part II
09:40 - Part III
10:38 - Part IV
11:46 - Parts V and VI
13:09 - The novel's main theme, and an unfortunate fact about He-Man
15:58 - Comparison with Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe
17:43 - Another important connection: Antonio di Benedetto's Zama
18:57 - The film adaptation (Ciro Guerra, 2019)
21:57 - Bottom line
Such a detailed and wonderful explanation thanks sir 😊
Thank you so much for watching and commenting, Anisha! 😃 So glad to hear you enjoyed it. Have a fantastic day, my friend!
Thanks for making a video about this fantastic book. "Waiting for the Barbarians" is a highly insightful book that helps to explain how colonialization and dehumanization work.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting, Leila! 😃 You're absolutely right about this novel. I think it should be mandatory reading, in the hope that we might keep history from repeating itself. Have an amazing day, my friend!
I've seen Waiting for the Barbarians on the shelf of my local bookstore before and always felt drawn to it. But for whatever reason I end up passing on it. You've convinced me to pick it up! Thank you for this insightful review and analysis Jorge!
Thank you so much, Marianne! 😃 I hope you enjoy this great novel. Please let me know what you think. Coetzee is such an amazing author. Have a fantastic day, and happy reading, my friend!
Happy new year to you too, my dear friend! 2024 couldn't have started in a better way with one of your videos! Thanks!
¡Feliz año nuevo, querida amiga! 😃 A million thanks. I'm happy to hear you enjoyed the video. My experience with Buzzati left me wanting to read more Italian literature. When I do, I will share my thoughts here. Have a wonderful day, Marinella!
Happy New Year Man
Happy New Year, my friend! 😃 Best wishes for 2024!
Happy new year Jorge! I wish you a fully creative year , reading important books, recording inspiring videos! Cavafis' poem was taught to us early on, in the Gymnasium years, but I wasn't aware of its influence on modern literature - though I have read Buzzati's book! I think Cavafis' poetry has been well translated into English and you might read it and enjoy it without the feeling that you lose something.
Happy New Year, George! 😃 Thank you so much, and best wishes to you too! I can imagine you read Cavafis in school. I'm truly interested in his poetry, and it is so wonderful to hear from you that the English translations are quite good. I always have that feeling when it comes to translation, especially with poetry. But I will definitely read Cavafis soon. Thanks again, my friend, and have an amazing day!
Happy New Year!
New to the channel, gradually going through your wonderful backlist of videos. Looking forward to learning about many hidden gems.
Do you have any favourite authors or works you keep returning to?
My favourite book in 2023 which was not a reread was The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. A close second would be Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman.
Happy reading and happy new year once again! 👋
Happy New Year, Paromita, and welcome to Jorge's Corner! 😃 Favorite authors, wow... My answer is not set in stone or anything, but here are 10 I really, really like: Borges, Cortázar, Bioy Casares, Kawabata, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, DeLillo, Onetti, Modiano, Chesterton. The Book of Disquiet! I need to read it asap; so many great readers have recommended it to me. I have a copy; I just need to find the right time. I've also heard great things about Vasily Grossman. Thank you so much for stopping by, my friend! Have a fantastic day!
@@JorgesCorner Thanks so much for the kind welcome and response.
Borges...recently read Collected Fictions and Selected Non-Fiction (the Penguin editions) and really liked them. Keen to reread them in 2024. The one I couldn't get into was Selected Poems but will try again.
Cortazar: I am so sad to say I read Hopscotch and didn't get it at all. Translation was by Gregory Rabassa, don't think that was an issue? Along with Borges, I really wanted to like Cortazar but I failed so miserably with his magnum opus that now I am demotivated. 🥺
Bioy Casares: Read The Invention of Morel, liked it a lot. Also read the book on Fantasy edited by Borges and Silvina O Campo to which I think Casares contributed? (At least it seemed so from the foreword)
Kawabata: I adored Snow Country and really liked the recent translation release The Rainbow. Want to read The Thousand Cranes and the Mountain book whose title I am forgetting. 🤣
Faulkner is not for me: Read Absalom Absalom and The Sound and Fury, not my cup of tea.
De Lillo: Read and liked White Noise, didn't love it.
Haven't read the other authors on your list but Chesterton is on my radar.
I am trying to get into more Spanish literature translated into English with one huge caveat: I don't get magical realism. 🤣 You name the author - I have tried and failed - Marquez, Rushdie, Okri, Murakami (?), Fuentes, The Obscene Bird At Night whose author I forgot.
Surrealism I can follow - hence Borges, even Calvino, but magical realism eludes me.
I am keen to continue my project. Today I read Zama by Antonio di Benedetto, nice book. Wish I could get into Cortazar, otherwise guess its rereading Borges.
P.S. Sorry for rambling, I do this a lot when I find such a great channel with unique book content. Happy reading!
Love this detailed comment, my friend! You have read pretty much everything. 😃 Here we go. Borges: Yes, the poetry is something else. I personally enjoy it, but it's also difficult to translate, like all poetry. Cortázar: No problem. Many readers dislike Hopscotch, so you're in good company. It's not my favorite of his novels; that would be 62: A Model Kit, but this is one of those novels one has to read in spite of their opening pages. (I appreciated it at the end.) In any case, I prefer Cortázar as a short story writer. I did a video on his top 10 short stories a long time ago. Bioy: If you liked Morel, you may want to continue with The Dream of Heroes. It's different, but it was one of my favorites. Kawabata: I love all of his works, but Thousand Cranes is excellent and The Sound of the Mountain is my personal favorite, along with Beauty and Sadness. Faulkner: Absalom is his masterpiece and my favorite; if you've read this one and The Sound and the Fury and you did not enjoy them, you can safely skip his other works. I know many excellent readers who dislike Faulkner, by the way. DeLillo: I didn't like White Noise initially. My favorite by him is Mao II. Magical realism: I totally understand! You know, I really like the non-magical García Márquez: No One Writes to the Colonel, for example, and his short stories. Love in the Time of Cholera is not magical realism either, but it did not speak to me personally. Have you read Juan José Saer? The critic Beatriz Sarlo called him the most important Argentine author after Borges. I recommend The Witness (historical, comparable to Zama), Nobody Nothing Never, or Scars. Manuel Puig and Ricardo Piglia are interesting too. Argentine literature has plenty of options outside of magical realism, as you can tell by di Benedetto. I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed Zama! Thank you once again for the wonderful comment. Have an amazing day, my friend, and happy reading!
@@JorgesCorner Thanks so much for the thoughtful reply. I have noted down the author recommendations (I have not read Juan Jose Saer yet for example) you mentioned and also put Mao II on my radar.
Thought I will share a bit about my 2024 translated works reading project with you, one language of focus is Spanish. Last year, I tried and bounced off quite a few classics such as THE Don Quixote (I know I am sad about it too), The Obscene Bird At Night (saw your great video on the book, wish I liked it), Terra Nostra. However I liked Isabel Allende's A Long Petal In The Sea and Borges' Collected Fictions. This year, I thought to expand my horizon and focus more on the non-Anglophone perspective of what is out there in Spanish and Latin American literature. For example, a native speaker whom I met on a forum suggested me The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa and I really liked it. So grateful for this channel too, of course you cover a variety of world literature but I have been going through your videos on e.g. Cortazar and it is such a gem. 🙏🏽
Anyway my most recent find is courtesy another friend on a Discord server who is also a native speaker and recommended me few authors: Antonio di Benedetto (that's why I read Zama), essays by Alfonso Reyes (haven't found yet), Jesus Gardea. They also recommended Juan Rolfo - whose Pedro Paramo I read and liked in 2023 and Rosario Castellanos. I started The Book of Lamentations today and I am overwhelmed with emotion. This is the book I have been waiting for, it is soo soo good.
Just wanted to share that, I now have some additional authors to check out thanks to you, so many thanks again🙏🏽🌷
Wow, it's such a joy to hear about your amazing literary journey! 😃 You have some great authors here. Terra Nostra is one of those books I'd like to read but I have other priorities, even in the context of Fuentes, whom I admire but do not count as one of my favorite authors. (I had the chance to shake hands with him once!) I still need to read Isabel Allende. I have a copy of The Feast of the Goat, but haven't read it yet. It's great to compare to other dictator novels. Juan Rulfo is a classic, yes, and his work is manageable, because he published only two major books. The Book of Lamentations is really one of the masterpieces of Latin American literature, so I can totally relate to your response to it. Thank you once again, my friend!
Hey, great review. I like your literal vs literary dichotomy, it seems apt. Somehow watching this brings me even closer to the Tartar Steppe. I like Coetzee and I've read K as well as Disgrace, but this seemed too plot driven to me. Perhaps, for my liking, he tells too much and doesn't show enough. Who knows, maybe I have to read his Jesus trilogy or the Doestoevsky novel. Anyway,
Thank you so much, Andrzej! 😃 I agree on the plot-driven nature of Michael K. and Disgrace, definitely. I even remember reading a review of Disgrace that said something to the effect that the allegory in that novel was a bit heavy-handed. It was great for me at the time, as I had not read Coetzee before, but Disgrace is not my favorite novel by him either. (More to come about this.) I also need to check out the Jesus trilogy. My next one will probably be The Master of Petersburg. I like the idea of Dostoevsky as a character, so we'll see. Have an amazing day, my friend!
Let's mention two things regarding Cavafy that you should check out. First the Greek "documentary":
The Night Fernando Pessoa Met Constantine Cavafy (2008) and then Durrell's Alexandria-Quartett (haha).
I can always count on you for great recommendations, my friend. Thank you so much! 😃 I hope we get the chance to talk Thursday. I've got a book haul coming up that you don't want to miss. Happy New Year!
Feliz año nuevo desde Alemania 🇩🇪💐
¡Muy feliz año nuevo, querido amigo! 😃 Mil gracias por la visita y el comentario, Hans-Georg, ¡y muchos saludos!
Hello, my teacher told us that this book is an allegory, could you explain? We needed to read the first chapter for our upcomming exam. I think your insights are very interesting so maybe you can help me understand it more.
Hello, Luna! 😃 My approach to allegory is that each reader looks for their own personal interpretation of a given text, but I guess in general you could say that this novel is an allegory of colonialism, in the sense that the Empire stands for any group that tries to control and/or impose its perspective on another group. The presence of the Magistrate suggests that there will always be somebody who will disagree and will try to make a change, for various motives, whether they be altruistic, selfish, a mix of both, etc. Hope this helps! Thank you so much for watching and commenting, and have a wonderful day!