Situational Satire: A Commentary on the Method of Swift

1- . 1 ·1'" . /, . ] , ' 1 ~ SITUATIONAL SATIRE: A COMM:f:NTARY ON THE METHOD OF S\VlFT RICARDO QuiNTANA' . M UCH depends on the readiness with which we acknowledge the element of impersonality in literary art. The impersonality of drama we perceive and accept instinctive'ly, since our normal responses.to a· play are grounded in this 'very acceptance. vVe do no~t confuse the dramatjst with his characters; unless we are Roman tic critics writing on Shakespeare, .we do not take the play as direct expression of the writer•s personality. The play stands forth as an artifice; we are willing to thi~k of it and discuss it .in terms of structural form. How different in this respect our reaccions are to most non-dramatic forms of literary art can be measured by the degree to which we confound the writer and the written work. When we see 'the work and its author as interchangeable, when we take the work to .he an' act at the level of every-day behaviour, we .have pretty- well lost sight of the impersonal element and the.presence of anything in ·the nature of deliberate method and form. For such reasons we ofte11 find it hard to come to terms with the ly_ric poem as a poem, as~ co'nstruct, with the rest;r1t · that much of our commentary on poetry turns out to be either ·description of our impressions or reconstruction-largely imaginary-of a precise moment in the poet's emotional history with which we ha~e chosen to - . equate the poem. Perhaps we find it )lardest of ali' to a~~it of any dis--tinction between a satirist and his satiric composition-·and this despite the fact that satire is much more obviously a form of rhetoric than is lyric poetry.. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that Swife.s satiric method, which everywhere stares us in the face, is only dimly recog~ized to be a meth.od. V\1epraise Swift's style; we speak of his use ofallegory· and his mastery of disgust; but we do not foJlow through with conviction. Sooneror later we allow the personality of Swift to take over and in consequence · _to obsetire the artist, .the craftsman, who after all is only Jona than Swifes distant relative.· lt)s perfectly apparent-and here i.s a key that will unlock- the iirst door--that in every one of Swift's more notable p·rose satires we have a fictional ch.ar~cter or grqup of characters: Lemuel Gulliver; Isaat Bickerstaff ; M. B.,- Drapjer; the humanitar(an projector who writes A Modest Proposal; -the three brothers in the· Tale of a Tub. \tVhat we refuse to see is that Swift himself is not present, that it is the characters who are in complete charge. Swift's method is. uniformly by way of dramatic satire. He creates a fully realized character and 'a fully realized world for him to move in. Sometimes, ~sin Gullive-r•s Travels, the satiric action is d~veloped in terms of, the character's reactions to this world.; but frequently the action 130 \ • J I I II SITUATIONAL SATIRE IN .SWIFT , '131 ' ' is of essentially another sort, deriving from the crazy ass~rance with which ' the character· makes himself at home in his cloud~cuckoa-land, tidies- the place- up, a·nd_ proceeds 'to enlarge the bounds of his estate. The-difference referred· to is a reaJ one, a gemiine difference of method, something much more ponderable than the :Words which must be used to describe it, It is the difference between Gulliver- ~nd Bickerstaff, between the Travels and·t~e Par~ridge-Bickerstaff Papers.- Gulliver is a reluctant explorer, cast. by _storms an-d tides upo'n strange countries where he is compelled t() live ai: the mercy of the inhabitants. Isaac Bickerstaff, hy contrast, is at the me~cy of nothing: he assumes such complete control over the laws ~f logic and astt"ology that he does not hesitate ~o cof?.demn· a man to death and car.ry out the sentence.· The ]atter method is more characteris~ic of S~ift than the method employed- in Gulliver)s Travels...