Another reason to love Jonathan Swift

[nickgutierrez]

http://readytogoebooks.com/JS-brm96.htm

This is one of his shorter works, called "A Meditation Upon a Broomstick", written in a style reminiscent of Robert Boyle's Meditations. Funny enough, if you're looking for it. Like most good satire, if you don't know that what you're reading is meant to be satirical, it is possible that you miss it altogether. (Example: the Landover Baptist website. I confess to thinking it was real for a moment when I first saw it, until I read the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen.)

Except that when I was looking through one of my books, I stumbled upon the backstory to this.

Swift was sometimes the family chaplain for the family of the Earl of Berkeley. Lady Berkeley sometimes asked him to read from books of meditation and devotion, and Swift absolutely HATED doing this. So, in order to dissuade the lady from asking him to do this in the future, he wrote this, put it in the family's copy of Robert Boyle's "Meditations", and read it when the lady asked him to read a passage.

With a straight face.

The lady didn't realize she had been taken for a fool until she praised the "meditation" to a group of friends. Naturally, her friends had not heard of this particular "meditation", so when they went to the volume to look it up, they found Swift's handwritten entry.

I fully expect this thread to drop down the page in no time flat, but I thought it was funny enough to share. :)

[nickgutierrez]

1. Kick

Oh come on, there's got to be one other Jonathan Swift fan kicking about the Lounge at this time of night. Right?

:yoiks:

[jurassicpork]

2. I love Swift

and his contemporary Alexander Pope. It's a shame that GULLIVER'S TRAVELS has been neatly defanged and sold as bedtime fodder for children.

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com

[nickgutierrez]

3. I was lucky enough to find an annotated version

If that hadn't happened, the commentary would have been totally lost on me when I first read it years ago - it required a level of historical knowledge that very few would be able to achieve in our times.

[jurassicpork]

5. Reading English Lit

...gave me a valuable insight and appreciation of history, a subject that the adolescent dunder-headed version of myself didn't appreciate at all. If you understand the historical and political context of a certain period in literature, you can gain valuable insight into each author's work that you would hitherto not have.

For instance, not knowing about the French revolutionary fervor in the early 18th century would rob some power from the work of Byron, Keats and especially Shelley, who was the sworn enemy of Lord Castlereagh.

And, of course, one needs to understand the Age of Reason in order to understand Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.

However, my favorite piece by Swift (and I don't pretend to have read everything he'd ever written) was "A Modest Proposal", which I used as the basis of an entry I'd made not too long ago on my blog.

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com

[xmas74]

10. Modest Proposal was always one of my favorites too.

The message is still as fresh and interesting now as it was then.

[khashka]

4. Swift was a god among men

I have "The Collected Works". and I read it and I laugh and just fall in love with him again every time.

Khash.

[nickgutierrez]

He's great at maintaining the literary equivalent of a "poker face"

It allows him to say something like, "I grant that this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children," without raising the eyebrows of those who aren't really paying attention.

Meanwhile, here's a not-exactly-accurate photograph of Mr. Swift not long after penning that line: :rofl:

[khashka]

8. A Modest Proposal

an all time fave :)

The funny thing... people thought he was serious! (Well he was, but not in the obvious way.)

Khash.

[Tom Kitten]

6. It took me a couple times to read it...

Had to imagine myself in that position reciting something like that to a bunch of aristocrats. What a droll piece!

I love Swift for one reason because he is so arch, he tells things so naturally and reasonably.

[jurassicpork]

7. I would love to be a fly on the wall

...during a conversation between him and Ambrose Bierce.

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com

[Tom Kitten]

11. that's funny I was thinking of him too

The Devil's Dictionary should be required reading in schools ! Ok maybe not but you catch my gist, didn't some school kids have to read Latin writers like Horace and Juvenal?

[jurassicpork]

13. Not only that...

...but they had to translate their original Latin and Greek into English. Nowadays, you'd be hard-pressed to find a kid who's even <i>heard</i> of Horace or Juvenal, who is more relevant than people think based on his "bread and circuses" line during the reign of Emperor Augustus.

But you're right. THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ought to be required reading, even tough Bierce had a distinctly conservative bias. But he was that rare conservative in that he actually had more than a brain stem.

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com

[nickgutierrez]

9. He makes "eating babies" sound like a reasonable solution

In fact, not only does he make it sound reasonable, he challenges anybody and everybody to come up with a better idea.

[jurassicpork]

12. Which was my point...

...when I did a take off last June, I think, on his essay proposing that Bush seek help in fighting the insurgency from al Qaeda.

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com

[Voltaire99]

14. Nice, thanks.

Good to see fellow Swifties on DU. :-)

[XemaSab]

15. yikes

uh... that's quite an outlook.