The barbarian invasions | Culture | EUROtoday

It is the title of a French-Canadian movie by Denys Arcand: The barbarian invasions. There is a elegant sequence in it. The protagonist, a college scholar who suffers from most cancers and needs to say goodbye to him, brings collectively all of his buddies, buddies, lovers, the entire gang. During the meal they discuss concerning the nice moments of humanity, the Greek splendor, the Renaissance lightning, when the lights illuminated like by no means earlier than, earlier than the amazement, the fear, earlier than the darkness.

There was a time throughout which the barbarians had been on the limits of the empires, on the opposite aspect of the partitions, far-off, that's the place they got here from. They had been anticipated, they had been feared. From the crests of the towers we watched them. There you will have them, Coetzee's character or Buzzati's, Officer Drogo, staring continuous on the plain of the Tartar desert. However, now the barbarians aren’t exterior, however inside, within the enclosure, on this aspect of the partitions. They not need to invade us, we’re those who knock down our personal partitions, those who take away stone by stone.

Through the cables, by means of the algorithms, right here we’re looting the villages, setting fireplace to the campers, to the books. We are the barbarians of whom Alessandro Baricco additionally spoke greater than 1 / 4 of a century in the past. We have stopped loving, pampering, loving depth, we love superficiality. And there we’re, browsing from display to display. Behind are the looted villages, the water wells that had been the bookstores, the crowded taverns. Behind are the books, the canvases, all the things that helped us breathe.

Drinking and consuming aren’t solely performed with the mouth and thru the trachea. It can be performed with the eyes, with the cortex. We eat the world in bites after we learn, after we look, after we hearken to a ebook, a canvas, a symphony. Everything else is famine, desert with out water, pure wasteland, wind. The few who keep within the towers, sniffing the horizon, searching for some verticality on the earth, aren’t saved both. There you will have them, perched on their mud towers, however they’ve already acquired the sleepwalking options of nomads, with barbaric cash of their pockets. The mud of the nice nothingness clouds their necks, they sweat profusely of their official duties.

Books, novels, had been as soon as bastions. The barbarians circled with their cavalry, however they didn’t dare. Sometimes they went into one or one other room, setting it on fireplace with the torch of 1 or one other literature prize. Now even that’s not essential, the Nobel is given to a troubadour, the rabble is given to a different, an actual creator, as a result of his verb is simply too abrupt, as a result of his books have an excessive amount of buttock, hips, chest, as a result of the sentence is simply too literary, as a result of there isn’t a narrative, as a result of the story tells nothing, as a result of it solely places the verb excessive as those that raised their spears and charged did up to now.

Then we get the paperback books, stuffed with lice. The awards arrive that reward writers who barely have kidneys, who breathe by means of their butts. But with a push on social networks, from those that knead, who destroy, like nobody else, with whom the dough is made, the marzipan, one thing very edible, one thing that’s not going to present you indigestion, which is pure sweet. The barbarians haven’t invaded us from exterior however from inside. They didn’t destroy the civilization of the ebook. There was no genocide, no holocaust by nice authors, no rebellion in arms, no burning towers. What has occurred is that the invasion got here from inside. The editors handed over the weapons, as did the authors, as did the readers.

From time to time one or one other seems, confused, badly injured, nonetheless dripping, with the dagger caught between his ribs. Even so, on all fours, he insists on writing, publishing, studying. Nowadays, most of those that purchase books aren’t readers. Nowadays most of those that write books aren’t authors. Books which have been motion pictures, books which have been written by well-known folks, these on the screens, these on tv, these on social networks. They are sometimes those hanging round within the entrance rows of gross sales. Having followers, having an viewers, has turn into the site visitors mild to go, to switch to the world of the ebook.

The barbarians didn’t come from exterior. They entered from inside. Now we surf the Internet, we surf from one piece of writing to a different, and there are the nets thrown away, the silver fish within the water, within the river. Soon not even that, we’ll open our cellphone and the algorithm will do the job of giving us the solutions, it’ll bathe us with its questions. We will probably be blissful as partridges, as a result of the invaders, I repeat, aren’t them, others, none, it’s us. The Tatars won’t ever come as a result of they’ve by no means left. They weren't those on the opposite aspect. They had been right here eternally. In right here, not exterior.

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