Waiting for the Barbarians

My infatuation for John Coetzee has now been well documented on this blog, and my homage is almost complete. In his third novel, Waiting for the Barbarians he develops the mode of Conrad and draws from his own debut, Dusklands, telling of the horrors of a directionless Imperial station in the middle of the nameless outback. Coetzee opens the first page with yet another example of his emphasis upon the face. Here, however, the face is obscured by some peculiarly unnamed objects.

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 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.

Coetzee's great regard for the master, Samuel Beckett, is obvious if only through his intense, affectionate, and superb introduction to the fourth Centenary edition of Beckett's complete works. Indeed, the name, Waiting for the Barbarians may even be a slight nod in the direction of Waiting for Godot. The novel captures the absurdity, the cyclicality, the futility, and the horrors of Beckett's classic play. The existential question, also, does not go unnoticed. During a moment of not uncommon personal reflection, the nameless protagonist confronts the real possibility of being hanged for treason:

I truly believe I am not afraid of death. What I shrink from, I believe, is dying as stupid and befuddled as I am.

This concern for dying as though unprogressed becomes a repeated refrain throughout, and it brings to mind the lucid, brilliant, distillation of existential futility courtesy of Beckett. In Godot, Vladimir is heard to say:

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps.

P.S. What a wonderful word: "lingeringly".