since september i have come thru one of the most interesting and RELENTLESSLY challenging periods of my entire life...at least the one i still remember. for instance, coming home from a wedding in connecticut last night i had the interesting experience of being stoned by a tractor trailer driver who was crawling slowly along beside me in a two hour traffic jam on the section of Interstate 95 leading up to the George Washington bridge. my reaction to this is that is part of a mosaic of weird and wacky things that are occurring within, spiritually, and without in the sensate world.
during this period, in times of reflection the tale, for some reason, of Gulliver's Travels, has come to mind. once in a blue moon i feel especially 'called' to a book...like i'm supposed to read it. read...some dots are connected. if this is the same i am very curious what message the dots will have.
introduction (i am fascinated to learn about the author in this excellent piece by Louis A. Landa)
7 'let us begin his (JONATHAN SWIFT's) story, not as custom decrees, with his birth, but, perversely, with his epitaph. he penned his own EPITAPH (a pleasant practice now sadly fallen into desuetude), intent on embodying in a few pungent phrases the essential aspect of his character, that special vision he had of himself and wished posterity to respect. although dr. Johnson once remarked that 'in lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath', one feels the incontestable rightness of the commemorative words which Swift wrote into his will, with the request that they be inscribed in black marble, 'in large letters, deeply cut and strongly gilded'.
you remember how it goes, William Butler Yeats wrote. 'it is almost finer in english than in latin:
'HE HAS GONE WHERE FIERCE INDIGNATION CAN LACERATE HIS HEART NO MORE'.
..(of this...) Prof. maurice johnson has remarked in an excellent comment...Swift had in mind a larger liberation, not merely political (though that would be included), but a freeing of the human mind from error and the human spirit from baseness...
8 .. (of Swift)..he was perhaps more apt to exercise than suffer the proud man's contumely. (def. insulting display of contempt or actions) nevertheless, his vision of himself, as suggested by the epitaph, is no misrepresentation. many of his works and much of his career testify to an ABIDING CONCERN FOR THE PLIGHT OF MAN. fierce indignation did lacerate his heart as he observed the shackled human spirit/. the saeva indignatio hints at the wrathful moralist, one utterly incapable of looking at the world with detachment....
11...the book became an ethical or psychological case history, or both, of its author, in which the presumed intolerable misanthropy of Part IV, its debasement of humankind, showed - as S's first biographer maintained - the S himself was the degenerate Yahoo he had so infamously depicted as representative of man. other commentators of the later 18th century took a similar high (note ?im)moral line. a man who could thus libel human nature (note romans 3.10 - there is none good; there is not even one. there is none who understand. there is none who seek God. they are all turned aside. together they have become useless...) must be reflecting, it seemed, his own moral deformity and defiled imagination. inevitably and unconsciously the degraded nature of the author had a subtle influence on literary judgment. the ethical culpability of the writer lent strength to the view that the Fourth Voyage is an artistic failure, as though a Buddist should deny the literary worth of Dante's Divine Comedy or milton's paradise Lost because they are doctrinally unsound. yet it ought to be said to thee honor of the 18th century commentators that they paid the author...the compliment of believing him a sane man. it remained for the 19th century critics to take a new tack and elaborate a less defensible charge. though they readily accepted the view that Part IV could be explained in terms of a depraved author, they added that it might well be explained in terms of mad one...
13 ...born in ireland in 1667, a posthumous child in an Anglo-Irish family of little means, he nevertheless was fortunate enough to receive a good education through the aid of a relative...aged 14, entered trinity college, dublin...remained (there) until early in 1689, when the disruptions of the Revolution of 1688 succeeded the disruptions of post-Cromwellian ireland. reflecting on this period much later, in his AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FRAGMENT (C.1727), he recalled the ill treatment of his relatives, the neglect of his studies, and his sunken spirits: yet his university days certainly did not sour his nature and in the decade that followed 1689 the years were brighter. he passed a considerable portion of his time in england, in the household of sir william Temple as the secretary of that distinguished WHIG
(def. political party in england (1679-1832) that held liberal principles and favored reforms; later called the Liberal party)
statesman and diplomat...
in an interval in his residence with temple, S took an important step. in 1694 he went onto holy orders. there had been a rift with his patron, in what was at best a makeshift relationship, and his decision to enter orders resulted from a deep conviction that the Church was his mission in life than from the necessity of settling himself, an attitude that the 18th century did not find strange. he had been promised a good appointment. instead he found himself, in what must have seemed banishment, relegated to the bleak northeastern coast of ireland as a country vicar of 3 small rundown parishes...
in Kilroot...here, in a diocese recently shaken by scandal, in which the bishop had been deprived and a number of
14 clergymen excommunicated or suspended for such varied offenses as fornication, adultery, drunkenness, neglect of cures and simony, S began his long clerical career of half a century, fully exposed to the spiritual and physical dry rot of the Anglican Establishment in ireland. his parish churches were in decay; the temporalities of he Church had been alienated to laymen and he had only a handful of parishioners to serve. in striking contrast to his own moribund benefices was the flourishing presbyterian Kirk. the circumstances were highly appropriate for developing his detestation of nonconformity and his fear of its power; and we must recollect that his brilliant Tale of a Tub, with its satiric attack on religious dissent, dates from this period of S's career, when the experience of ulster Presbyterianism was fresh enough to give a dark and bitter tinge to that work.
it was an inauspicious and barren beginning for the youthful clergyman, bound to leave lasting impressions. he was soon to suffer another disappointment. leaving his desolate parishes behind, he returned to the household of Temple in 1696 with expectations of a good appointment in england, though not necessarily in the Church. but T's death in 1699 ended his hopes and once again he returned to ireland, this time as domestic chaplain to the earl of berkeley, one of the Irish Lord Justices. even now S thought that he had excellent prospects, preferment to a lucrative deanery, only to find that he was put off with three insignificant country parishes, united under the name of Laracor, and soon afterwards, perhaps as a conciliatory gesture, the prebend of dunlavin in st. patrick's cathedral and came to be looked upon as a rising clergyman in the church of ireland. at the same time he was maintaining his english connections. he published in 1701. in london, where he was then visiting, the first of his political pamphlets, A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions beween the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome. although this tract has some interest for S's political theory, it is more significant for personal reasons. by means of it he achieved influence and reputation with powerful leaders of the Whigs. several of the Whig statesmen, among them Lord Somers, to whom the Tale of a Tub was later dedicated, had been impeached by the House of Commons. taking advantage of the situation, S came to their defense, thus strengthening his friendly relations with the Whigs which had begun during his residence with Sir William Temple.
15 and with the Whigs in power in 1707, he became a logical emissary to represent the bishops of the irish Church in a matter of moment - a plea to Queen Anne for remission of certain clerical taxes paid to the English Crown, the First Fruits and Twentieth pars, imposts that fell heavily on the already impoverished irish clergymen. the importance of this mission in S's life cannot be over-estimated.in a significant sense this was the beginning of his public career. he appeared in england to make his plea to the Whig leaders and received encouragement from such powerful statesmen as Halifax, Somers, Pembroke and Sunderland. but the most powerful of all, the Earl of Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer, he did not win over -for political reasons. G, and in fact thee Whig government, wished the clergy of the irish Establishment to support legislation in ireland removing the Test Act, an act designed to preserve the exclusive political position of the Anglican Church in that country by excluding all except anglican communicants from holding public offices. if the clergymen of ireland lent their endeavors to this political manoeuvre, which was intended to ease the lot of the dissenters, Queen Anne's first minister indicated to S that he would influence the Queen to remit the First Fruits and Twentieth Parts. S's deepest convictions never received a more severe test. throughout his life he believed that the anglican Church as established by law should be THE church of england and ireland, firmly protected against political encroachments from the dissenters, though he granted the nonconformists the right of conscience and the practice of their beliefs. he never forgot what had happened to the Anglican Establishment under the rule of Cromwell and the Puritans; and the removal of the Test Act he conceived to be a significant step towards returning dissenters to power. much of the intensity of feeling against nonconformity in A Tale of a Tub and the Argument Against Abolishing Christianity derives from his fear that this might occur again. in this respect he was possibly more a man of the 17th than of the 18th century. in any case, at this critical moment in his career, his loyalty to the Church he served remained firm, at the expense of his personal fortune. he expected preferment from the Whigs and had a right to expect it. but he never wavered in his rejection of the terms proposed by the Lord Treasurer. and in what unquestionably were acts of sef-abnegation, he wrote several pamphlets opposing the policy of the Whig ministry and defining the tue principles of a Chruch-of -England man as he conceived them. but the incident left him biter and disappointed. at the same time it helps to explain why his enemies, who occasionally jibed without justice at his religious faith, never mocked at his devotion to the Church - a man, one of them declared, 'whose affection to the Church was never doubted, tho' his Christianity
16 was ever question'd'. in this period, from 1707-10, S grew familiar with the scheming methods of courts and statesmen and with the pointless delays and manoeuvers that could envelop an honorable project. unquestionably some of the cynicism about the political tribe so pervasive in his writing stems from these years. but there were other experiences in these busy months, more satisfying ones, as the widening of his friendships, which included Addison and Steele, the publication of the Bickerstaff Papers and the contributions to The Tatler
the late fall of 1710 proved a decisive point in S's career. it brought his shift in political allegiance from Whig to TORY, (def -member of Conservative party from the late 17th century to about 1832 that favored royal authority over Parliament and the preservation of the existing social and political order..) something his enemies never permitted him to forget though it was logical in all of its aspects. he watched with more pleasure than concern the all of he Whig statesmen who had rebuffed him and the accession to power of moderate Tories under the leadership of robert harley, later the Earl of Oxford, destined to figure so prominently in S's life. early in october he was received by harley , to whom he now made his plea in behalf of the irish clergy. H listened sympathetically, promised his support and, with a keen eye for the practical uses of literary genius, turned S to political journalism...
19...his greatness as a churchman, universally acknowledged, does not derive from defence of theological doctrine. this was not his metier. he was, all the evidence shows, a man of deep and untroubled faith, who thought it folly to enter into controversies about the infallible doctrines of christianity...the threats as he conceived them were social, economic, religious and political and both from within and without the church. he combatted them where he could, often with notable success. but in this sphere, as elsewhere, he had many moments of despair and pessimism. as he approached his 70th year he wrote gloomily, 'i have long given up all hopes of church or christianity'...
20 Swift's clerical profession, his position as dean and dignitary, not only gave him the opportunity, it imposed upon him the obligation to take cognizance of public and private distress. this duty he never scanted, either as a private citizen willingly using his own money or as a public figure with the prestige of his office. it was thus that he became an embodiment of the voice and conscience of ireland and was popularly hailed as the Hibernian Patriot. Yeats would have it that S's heart 'dragged him down into mankind', by which he means (i suppose) that S had a compulsion to express his humanity by sharing man's agonies. this suggests what one cannot miss in
21reading the irish tracts, their remarkable kinship to gulliver's travels. although these lesser works are lamentations over one hapless country, directed at specific evils in the social and economic order, we are always left with a strong sense that basically the troubles derive from the irrational nature of man - his ill use, in the language of gulliver's travels, of that 'small pittance' of reason which has fallen to him 'to aggravate (his) natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones which Nature had not given (him)'.
below are some excerpts from Part IV of Gulliver's Travels entitled 'A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms (note - 'human'?; those so designated are what we would call horses...who, in turn called people they had met, Yahoos.)
186 ( the author, who had just been robbed of his boat and forced onto this island, upon contact with the first living being there, writes...)' the master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his servants, to untie the largest of these animals, to take him into the yard. the beast and i were brought close togetheer and our countenances diligently compared, both by the master and servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word yahoo...
the great difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses, was to see the rest of my body so very different from that of a yahoo, for which i was obliged to my clothes..
190 ..the word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue, signifies a horse, and in its etymology, the perfection of nature.
(note - the rest of this account is much taken up with dialogue between the master horse, who is spoken to and of as, 'your' (and 'his') honour) and the abandoned human traveler who is under his care.)
198 ..my only concern is, that i shall hardly be able to do justice to my master's arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by a translation into our barbarous english.
in obedience therefore to his Honour's commands, i related to him the Revolution under the Prince of Orange; the long war with france entered into by the said price and renewed by his successor the present queen, wherein the greatest powers of Christendom were engaged, and which still continued: i computed, at his request, that about a million of yahoos might have been killed in the whole progress of it and perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunk.
he asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another. i answered they were innumerable, but i should only mention a few of the chief. sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern: sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post or throw it into the fire; what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, whit, red, or grey; and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean, with many more. neither are any wars so furious and bloody or of so long continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent.
sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, were neither of them pretend to any right. sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him. sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong and sometimes because he is too weak. sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have or have the things which we want; and we both fight, till they take ours or give us theirs. it is a very justifiable cause of war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence or embroiled by factions amongst themselves. it is justifiable to
199 enter into a war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round and compact. if a prince send forces into a nation where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death and make slaves of the rest in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. it is a very kingly, honourable and frequent practice, when one price desires the assistance of another to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he hath driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself and kill, imprison or banish the prince he came to relieve. alliance by blood or marriage is a sufficient cause of war between princes and the nearer the kindred is, the greater is their disposition to quarrel: poor nations are hungry and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever bee at variance. for these reasons, the trade of a soldier is a yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.
there is likewise a kind of beggarly princes in europe, not able to make war by themselves, who hire out their troops to richer nations, for so much a day to each man; of which they keep therr fourths to themselves and it is the best part of their maintenance; such are those in germany and many northern parts of europe.
what you have told me (said my master) upon the subject of war, does indeed discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to: however, it is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature hath left you utterly uncapable of doing much mischief. for your mouths lying flat with your faces, you can hardly bite each other to any purpose, unless by consent. then as to the claws upon your feet before and behind, they are so short and tender, that one of our yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before him. and therefore in recounting the numbers of those who have been killed in battle i cannot but think that you have SAID THE THING WHICH IS NOT.
i could not forbear shaking my head and smiling a little at his ignorance. and being no stranger to the art of war, i gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea-fights; ships sunk with a 1000 men, 20,000 killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses' feet; flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases left for food to dogs and wolves,
200 and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning and destroying. and to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, i assured him, that i had seen them blow up 100 enemies at once in a siege and as many in a ship and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of all the spectators.
i was going on to more particulars, when my master commanded me silence. he said, whoever understood the nature of yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action i had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice. but as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind, to which he was wholly a stranger before. he though his ears being used to such abominable words, might by degrees admit them with less detestation. that although he hated the yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a bird of prey) for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. but when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. he seemed therefore confident, that instead of reason, we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill shapen body, not only larger, but more distorted.
he added, that he had heard too much upon the subject of war, both in this and some former discourses. there was another point which a little perplexed him at present. i had said, that some of our crew left their country on account of being ruined by LAW; that i had already explained the meaning of the word; but he was at a loss how it should come to pass, that the law which was intended for every man's preservation, should be any man's ruin. therefore he desired to be farther satisfied what i meant by law and the dispensers thereof
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