-
XIII. The Excremental Vision
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
X I I I The Excremental Vision X y READER of Jonathan Swift knows that in his analysis of human nature there is an emphasis on, and attitude toward, the anal function that is unique in Western literature. In mere quantity of scatological imagery he may be equaled by Rabelais and Aristophanes; but whereas for Rabelais and Aristophanes the anal function is a part of the total human being which they make us love because it is part of life, for Swift it becomes the decisive weapon in his assault on the pretensions , the pride, even the self-respect of mankind. The most scandalous pieces of Swiftian scatology are three of his later poems-The Lady's Dressing Room, Strephon and Chloe, Cassinus and Peter-which are all variations on the theme: Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia --. Aldous Huxley explicates, saying, "The monosyllabic verb, which the modesties of 1929 will not allow me to reprint, rhymes with 'wits' and 'fits.' " 1 But even more disturbing, because more comprehensively metaphysical, is Swift's vision of man as Yahoo, and Yahoo as excrementally filthy beyond all other animals, in the fourth part of Gulliver's Travels. Nor is the anal theme a new feature in Swift's mature or later period; it is already adumbrated in A Tale of a Tub, that intoxicated overflow of youthful genius and fountainhead of the entire Swiftian apocalypse. The understanding of Swift therefore begins with the recognition that Swift's anatomy of human nature , in its entirety and at the most profound and profoundly disturbing level, can be called "The Excremental Vision." "The Excremental Vision" is the title of a chapter in Middleton Murry's book (1954) on Jonathan Swift.2 The credit 180 Part Five: STUDIES IN ANALITY for recognizing the central imponance of the excremental theme in Swift belongs to Aldous Huxley. In an essay in Do What You Will (1929) he says, "Swift's greatness lies in the intensity, the almost insane violence of that 'hatred of the bowels' which is the essence of his misanthropy and which underlies the whole of his work." 3 Murry deserves credit for his arresting phrase, which redirects criticism to the central problem in Swift. Aldous Huxley's essay had no effect on Quintana 's book The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (1936), which perfectly illustrates the poverty of criticism designed to domesticate and housebreak this tiger of English literature. Quintana buries what he calls the "noxious compositions" in a general discussion of Swift's last phase as a writer, saying, "From scatology one turns with relief to the capital verses entitled Helter Skelter, or The Hue and Cry after the Attorneys going to ride the Circuit, which exhibits Swift's complete mastery of vigorous rhythm." The excremental theme in the fourth pan of Gulliver 's Travels is dismissed as bad art (criticism here, as so often, functioning as a mask for moral prejudice): "The sensationalism into which Swift falls while developing the theme of bestiality .... Had part IV been toned down, Gulliver's Travels would have been a finer work of art." 4 It is reassuring to know that English literature is expounded at our leading universities by men who, like Bowdler, know how to improve the classics. The history of Swiftian criticism, like the history of psychoanalysis , shows that repression weighs more heavily on anality than on genitality. Psychoanalytical theorems on the genital function have become legitimate hypotheses in circles which will not listen to what Freud has to say about anality, or to what Swift had to say (and who yet write books on The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift). Even Huxley and Murry, though they face the problem, prove incapable of seeing what there is to see. After admitting into consciousness the unpleasant facts which previous criticism had repressed, they proceed to protect themselves and us against the disturbing impact of the excremental vision by systematic distortion, denunciation, and depreciation. It is a perfect example , in the field of literary criticism, of Freud's notion that the first way in which consciousness becomes conscious of a re- [54.196.27.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:22 GMT) The Excremental Vision pressed idea is by emphatically denying it.5 The basic device for repudiating the excremental vision is, of course, denunciation. Huxley adopts a stance of intellectual superiority-"the absurdity , the childish silliness, of this refusal to accept the universe as it is given." 6 Murry, echoing that paradoxically conservative philosopher...