THE CONCEPT OF THE BARBARIANS IN CONSTANINE CAVAFY’S AND IVAN DŽEPAROSKI’S POETRY

Abstract

This paper examines the intertextual transformations of the figure of the barbarians in modern poetry through a comparative analysis of two poems: Constantine Cavafy’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1898) and Ivan Džeparoski’s The Barbarians Are Not Waiting for Anyone (2008). The theoretical framework integrates Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism, Julia Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality, Renate Lachmann’s cultural memory, and Dubravka Oraić-Tolić’s theory of citation. The analysis demonstrates that the barbarians in modern poetry do not constitute a stable topos but rather a dynamic discursive position that shifts across different historical, poetic, and ideological contexts. Cavafy’s poem functions as a hypotext, establishing a model of deferral and semantic emptying in which the barbarians operate as an alibi for power. In Džeparoski’s intertextual rearticulation, this matrix is historicized and ironized through illuminative citation strategy; thus, the barbarians are revealed as a product of historiographical discourses, while their function as a ‘solution’ proves paradoxical. The analysis concludes that the intertextual recurrence of the barbarian figure does not lead to a stabilization of meaning but to its constant displacement, constituting the barbarians as a metalyrical figure that marks the boundary of poetic language itself.