‘WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS’: THE IMAGE OF THE OTHER IN DEREK MAHON’S ‘POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE BY CAVAFY’
‘WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS’: THE IMAGE OF THE OTHER IN DEREK MAHON’S ‘POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE BY CAVAFY’

Summary/Abstract: In ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, the Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy explains how the ruling class maintains its power within the context of meanings attributed to the Other, and tells how deeply the extinction of the Other shakes the current socio-political system. As an archetype for a great number of literary studies, this poem also inspires the Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon’s ‘Poem Beginning with a Line by Cavafy’. In this poem, Mahon examines the dilemma of the civilised-self by questioning the reigning Protestant obsession with Catholic presence. Grounded chiefly on the traces of ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ in ‘Poem Beginning with a Line by Cavafy’, this paper tells how the Protestants in Northern Ireland used Catholic presence politically to secure their sovereignty until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and how they transformed this perception of historical threat into a paranoia. The barbarians in both poems are practical scapegoats for the reigning order. Yet, unlike those Cavafy describes, Mahon’s barbarians live not beyond the borders, but together with the civilised-self, aping its lifestyle. The civilised-self perceives even this desire for levelling as a threat and gradually transforms into what it is frightened of, by positioning itself negatively against the Other. If Cavafy’s barbarians are a remedy for the decaying civilisation, Mahon’s barbarians are agents of the Protestant paranoia as well as an outcome of the culturally decayed society.

• Details
• Contents