TRAVELS INTO SEVERAL REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD, BY LEMUEL GULLIVER

Author: Jonathan Swift
Year: 1980 (1726)
Publisher: Forum
Language: Swedish (Translator Anna Berg-Mortensen) 

Meaning is floating. It is well established in the study of semantics and semiotics that communication through words, symbols, gestures, rituals, artefacts, and actions vary with the place, context, and time. A word that means one thing in one situation may have a different meaning in another. A simple expression such as “thank you” can carry a meaning of such disparate sentiments as gratitude, command, distancing, and irony depending on the situation, interpersonal relationship, and tone of voice. Meaning is transitory and particular to the moment in which it is created.  

One of the most radical changers of meaning is time. Not the least in the realm of literature. Literary history is littered with examples of masterpieces that have been morphed over the centuries so that they are today read and enjoyed in a completely different way than they were intended and received at the time of their birth. Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe as a testament to the rational Christian man’s superiority over the elements (and other peoples) but is in our times considered an exotic and somewhat naïve adventure for teenage readers. Mark Twain’s intention with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn was to highlight the social injustice in 19^th century America but has since then moved through a period of nostalgic literature only to end up in the same category as Robinson Crusoe. Moby Dick by Herman Melville seems to have moved in the opposite direction. I was written to impress the masses but has slowly been incorporated into the canon of American literature and is frequently mentioned in discussions on the essential Great American Novel.

Similarly, Jonathan Swift’s peculiar novel “Gullivers resor” (“Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver” or simply “Gulliver’s Travels”), has not been spared. The most recent movie adaptations as well as the cover art on most modern publications of the novel give no signs of it being directed at political scientists, pundits or policy-makers. Instead, they are in matinee-format and even musicals and the books are brightly coloured and often richly illustrated. This presentation is far removed from the original intention of the book.

Jonathan Swift was born in Ireland in 1667, less than 15 years after the end of the Confederate Wars. He soon moved to England where he tried to establish himself in the circles around Charles II. His ambition failed and after some years he was sent back to Ireland with the modestly prestigious seat as Deacon of St Patrick’s parish. This is where he began to write his most famous work of literary fiction intended and designed as a fierce assault on all things that the London elite pretended to: politics, power, money, knowledge, and honour.

Swift sends his protagonist, Dr Lemuel Gulliver, on four different voyages to imaginary lands, each of which allows him to dwell on particular features of English high society.

Gulliver’s first journey takes him to the land of the Lilliputians. Here he is faced with tiny people who make great problems out of tiny issues. They go to war over pointless matters, choose their senior government officials according to preposterous criteria, carry grudges, lie, and deceive. By Liliput, Swift ridicules the English political elite that dons ostentatious robes, use fancy vocabulary, and make all the pretentions of great men.  Through Gulliver’s eyes, the thick display of pomp and circumstance going on around his ankles can only appear as parodic and ludicrous.

The tables would soon be turned. In his next journey, takes him to Brobdingnag which turns out to be inhabited by giants. Having been left behind after a shore leave on an unknown coast he is captured and put in a cage. Although well taken care of and eventually settling into a reasonably comfortable lifestyle at the royal court, where he earns the friendship and attention of the king and queen, he remains a prisoner used for entertainment purposes. In his conversations with the king, Gulliver tries his best to impress him with accounts of the intricacies of English governance, judiciary system, and codes and morals. The deeper into his descriptions he ventures, the more absurd English customs appear to the king. He shrugs them off as unintelligible and without merit.

During his penultimate excursion, the ship on which Gulliver serves as a ship’s doctor is captured by pirates and Gulliver is put in a canoe to fend for himself on the open sea. By a stroke of luck, he reaches a previously unknown archipelago where he lands. Here he is soon surprised by an island floating in the air which turns out to be Laputa, the dwelling and communication vehicle of the ruler of Balnibarbi. In this episode, Swift goes after academia which he perceives to be aloof and disconnected from reality. Every senior citizen on Laputa is followed around by a servant, called “flapper”, whose main purpose is to nudge or strike their master with a cane or a bladder filled with pebbles from time to time to bring their attention back to the world around them, be it for the purpose of following a conversation or not to walk off a cliff. Gulliver seizes the opportunity to also visit the university town Lagado where various scientists have invested lots of thought and made absolutely no advancement in areas such as extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, turning human excrement back into food, or constructing a solar calendar based on the wind.     

Gulliver’s final and most decisive journey would also be the one that would ultimately change his life. After having been deposed as captain in a mutiny, he is marooned on an unknown shore. The first creature that he runs into makes an altogether adverse impression on him. He observes that they had no tail and most of the time walk on their hind limbs, their heads and parts of their torsos are covered with thick hair but the rest of their bodies are naked. Moreover, they are dirty, smelly, and loud. Surrounded by these beasts, he is rescued by two gallant horses which quickly disperse the screeching flock. Slowly it dawns on Gulliver, that the masters of this world are the highly intelligent, peaceful, and serene horse-people called Houyhnhm, and that the vermin he had first encountered, known locally as Yahoos, are in fact humans. Equally slowly, but infinitely more painfully, he must eventually reconcile with the fact that to the Houyhnhm, he is simply an unusually clean and communicative Yahoo. After his inevitable return to England, disgusted at himself and the Yahoos which we all at our essence are, he secludes himself from his family and society and spends the remainder of his days professing the glory of the horse-nation. Swift, finally, condemns forever mankind in its entirety.

As I read the novel, it seems to me that Swift grew increasingly bitter as he progressed. There is evidence that speaks against this proposal, most convincing of which is that he wrote the part about Houyhnhm before he had finished the visit to Laputa. Nevertheless, the leap from criticising the English elite, as he did by Lilliput and Brobdingnag, to dismissing humanity as a whole seems like a drastic escalation of Swift’s grievance. As the book was written over several years, such an emotional evolution is by no means unlikely. The publisher even had to delete some parts from the manuscript for fear of prosecution. This is political satire through and through.

But as we concluded at the beginning of this review, material changes with time. Even if we accept that “Gullivers resor” is satire and designed to visualise the absurdity of politics, I suspect that we read it differently than its contemporaries would. To us, the satire appears largely Menippean showcasing a broad criticism of general characteristics of our society, but to the contemporary reader, it would have constituted a vicious attack on specific institutions and even individuals more or less carefully veiled. After all, our time would to Jonathan Swift be as foreign as Lilliput or Brobdingnag ever were to Lemuel Gulliver.