''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory'

Austin Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and the 117-line title poem appeared in The Massachusetts Review in 1970. Here’s a brief excerpt: 

“In prose, plain as pike, pillory,

In octosyllabic verse turning the two-way

Corner of rhyme, Swift wrote of privy matters

That have to be my text. The Lilliputian

March-by of the crack regiments saluting

On high the double pendulosity

Of Gulliver, glimpsed through a rent in his breeches;

The city square in admiration below. But who

Could blame the Queen when that almighty

Man hosed the private apartments of her palace,

Hissed down the flames of carelessness, leaving

The royal stables unfit for Houyhnhnms, or tell (in

A coarse aside) what the gigantic maidens

Of Brobdingnag did in their playfulness with

The tiny Lemuel when they put him astride

A pap, broader than the mizzen mast of his

Wrecked ship, or hid him in the tangle below." 

 

Clarke reminds us of three scenes from Gulliver’s Travels (1726). The first is set in Lilliput, where the emperor commands Gulliver to stand in a field with his legs wide apart while the army rides through the giant’s arch:

 

“His Majesty gave Orders, upon pain of Death, that every Soldier in his March should observe the strictest Decency with regard to my Person; which, however, could not prevent some of the younger Officers from turning up their Eyes as they passed under me. And, to confess the Truth, my Breeches were at that time in so ill a Condition, that they afforded some Opportunities for Laughter and Admiration.”

 

That may stand as my favorite phrase in Swift, the arch-coiner of memorable phrases: “Laughter and Admiration”—rooted, of course, in exhibitionism, voyeurism, and a joyous sense of smutty-mindedness. In a distinctly Irish phrase, worthy of Flann O’Brien, Clarke refers chastely to “double pendulosities.” Next, Gulliver is briefly a hero when he puts out the fire in the Lilliputian empress’ quarters:

 

“I had, the Evening before, drunk plentifully of a most delicious Wine called Glimigrim . . . which is very diuretic. By the luckiest Chance in the World, I had not discharged myself of any Part of it. The Heat I had contracted by coming very near the Flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the Wine begin to operate by Urine; which I voided in such a Quantity, and applied so well to the proper Places, that in three Minutes the Fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble Pile, which had cost so many Ages in erecting, preserved from Destruction.”

 

The empress, however, “conceiv[ed] the greatest abhorrence of what I had done,” leading to Gulliver’s eventual escape from Lilliput. Because of such raucous humor, Gulliver’s Travels must be among the most frequently bowdlerized of classics, and most readers probably have never read Gulliver’s description of the gigantic Brobdinagian maid who put Gulliver to use, also mentioned by Clarke:

 

“The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant frolicksome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples; with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular.”

 

Clarke is reminding us that Swift’s work shouldn’t be censored or confused with “dirty books.” His taste for bawdy and scatology is never prurient. It may be obscene but it’s never pornographic. Even so gifted a reader as Dr. Johnson failed to appreciate Swift’s peculiar genius:    

 

“The greatest difficulty that occurs, in analysing his character, is to discover by what depravity of intellect he took delight in revolving ideas, from which almost every other mind shrinks with disgust. The ideas of pleasure, even when criminal, may solicit the imagination; but what has disease, deformity, and filth, upon which the thoughts can be allured to dwell?”