"Waiting for the Barbarians" by C.P. Cavafy, tr. Aliki

C.P. Cavafy, 1900

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS

—What are we waiting for, gathered in the agora?

            The Barbarians are arriving today.

—Why is nothing happening in the Senate?

    Why do the Senators sit making no laws?

            Because the Barbarians are arriving today.

            What laws can the Senators make now?

            When the Barbarians come, they will make laws.

—Why did our emperor wake up so early,

    and, in the city’s grandest gate, sit

    in state on his throne, wearing his crown?

            Because the Barbarians are arriving today,

            and the emperor is waiting to receive

            their leader. In fact, he prepared

            a parchment to give them, where

            he wrote down many titles and names.

—Why did our two consuls and the praetors

    come out today in their crimson, their embroidered togas;

    why did they don bracelets with so many amethysts

    and rings resplendent with glittering emeralds;

    why do they hold precious staffs today,

    beautifully wrought in silver and gold?

            Because the Barbarians are arriving today,

            and such things dazzle them.

—Why don’t the worthy orators come as usual

    to deliver their speeches and say their peace?

            Because the Barbarians are arriving today

            and they are bored by eloquence and harangues.

—Why should this anxiety and confusion

    suddenly start. (How serious faces have become.)

    Why have the streets and squares emptied to quickly,

    and why has everyone returned home so pensive?

            Because night’s fallen and the Barbarians 

                              have not arrived.

            And some people came from the borders

            and they say the Barbarians no longer exist.

    And now what will we do with no Barbarians?

    Those people were some kind of solution.

Tr. Aliki Barnstone, 

from The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy:A New Translation

The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy:
A New Translation,
Translated by Aliki Barnstone,
Foreword by Gerald Stern
W.W. Norton, 2006

Constantine Cavafy with cane and hat in hand

 Photograph dated 1896, Alexandria, Egypt

A Gender Neutral Rendering of a Passage from Proverbs that Deals with Wisdom

Sophia in Ephesus by Thérèse Gaigé 

As a woman and the daughter of a Christian mother and a Jewish father, I have been tormented in church (Episcopal) by two things: the masculine pronoun to refer to God and the passages, especially in John, that serve as the foundation for anti-Semitism. Today when I heard this beautiful passage from Proverbs, I was inspired (and I mean INSPIRED) to do a gender neutral translation. My problem is that when I have to say "Our Father" to refer to the Most High, I feel that I am lying. I don't believe that God is a man! Jesus may be the masculine and the Holy Spirit and Wisdom (Sophia) may be feminine, but the Source must not have a gender. Some of the teachings say that God doesn't have a gender, but we use "he" as a gender neutral pronoun. This has been thoroughly debunked by now, I hope. I am very happy with this translation. I did a little research on the names of God (which I really didn't have to do, but I always research even the things I think I already know because I can always learn more). I felt that this translation was truly a devotional practice, expanding God to be larger than the masculine pronoun. I felt the spirit of Sophia coursing through me! I was inspired also by Cathy Rosenholtz's sermon on the Holy Trinity in which she said, "We have made God so small." I have no doubt that God is so small, so large, so beyond human comprehension, yet always letting us into Their Mystery.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Does not Wisdom call,
     and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
     at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
     at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
"To you, O people, I call,
     and my cry is to all that live.
The MOST HIGH created me at the beginning of Their work,
     the first of Their acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
     at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
     when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
     before the hills, I was brought forth--
when the CREATOR had not yet made earth and fields,
     or the world's first bits of soil.
When the LIGHT established the heavens, I was there,
     when the NAME drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when the ANCIENT OF DAYS made firm the skies above,
     when the OVERSOUL established the fountains of the deep,
when the SOURCE assigned to the sea its limit,
     so that the waters might not transgress Their command,
when the SUPREME BEING marked out the foundations of the earth,
     then I was beside Them, like a master worker;
and I was daily the HOLY PARENT’S delight,
     rejoicing before Them always,
rejoicing in Their inhabited world

     and delighting in the human race."

My friend Claire Schaffer wrote: Thanks, Kiki, for this translation. As much as I agree on the gender points you make, I wonder if you view God as a being (as in SUPREME BEING)? Also, can you be comfortable with "their" as the singular gender/neutral pronoun? 

I answered: I asked myself about whether to go further in my explanation about the experience of translating the names of God, but left my commentary as it was for a time. I'm grateful for you question because things reveal themselves with dialogue. With regard to God a being, yes, I do feel comfortable about that because one of the names of God is "I am" (as in Exodus, God tells Moses to tell the people that "I AM" sent him. As for the Supreme part, that word has some negative associations, but I think that that name should apply to God, though perhaps not to humans. My answer to the question about "their/them" as the gender neutral pronoun is two-fold. On the grammatical level, I used to correct my students when they wrote a construction such as "Everyone has a right to their free speech." But I realized that "they/their" is emerging as the gender neutral pronoun and that's just the way that language develops. Some experts on grammar are now saying that "they/their" as the gender neutral pronoun is correct. But apart from that, there are precedents in other languages as well as English for pronouns that are both plural and singular. For example, "you" is both singular and plural, though certain regions of the country make disctinctions (y'all, youse). There is also the "royal we." In Spanish and other Romance languages the formal and the plural second person are the same pronoun (usted in Spanish). On a theological level, I think it makes sense to use "they/their" as the gender neutral pronoun, and there's ample scriptural and theological justification for that usage in the Old and New Testaments. In Genesis 1:26, God says "Let us make humanity in our image." God has both feminine and masculine aspects in the Jewish tradition. In the Christian tradition, the Holy Trinity is the three-personed God. I love what the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew says that God is a love relationship and therefore is Love (my paraphrase). There are some icons that depict the Holy Trinity as three very androgenous beings, the most famous one is by the 14th-15th Century Russian icon painter, Andrei Rublev.