Alçakgönüllü Bir Öneri'nin denemelerden, uzun aforizmalardan oluşan bir kitap olduğunu söyleyeceğim. Çünkü yazar fikirlerini direkt "Görüşler", "Düşünceler" şeklinde açıklıyor. Öte yandan, Papini'nin Gog'unu anımsatan bir tarafı da var. Swift'in felsefî yaklaşımını görmeyi sevdim. Kitaba adını veren son öykünün ise fazla alçakgönüllülük içerdiğini düşünüyorum. Birbirinizi yiyerek daha iyisini yapabilirdiniz Bay Swift. =)

ever so slightly disturbed with the idea of eating babies to reduce the number of people living in the streets. overall this was just a book fill of surprises and kept making me question everything i know and believe. not a bad little book though.

points were made !!

I had high hopes for his satirical essays, especially A Modest Proposal, but alas, I am disappointed.

Let’s start with A Modest Proposal; I did a bit of research after reading and found out that this was supposed to “disgust and enrage the reader,” and that’s exactly what it did. Basically, Ireland was deeply in debt and streets were crowded with woman and child beggars. So, Swift proposes a cannibalistic solution: plump the infants and then sell them to men and rich families to eat as a delicate meal, whether it be “stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.” But what disgusted me the most was the role of the women in this imagined society: a “constant breeder” of children. Even worse, this was repeated at a nauseating frequency. I get that this is not to be taken seriously, but I don’t appreciate this type of satire - it just doesn’t sit right with me. Apparently, the purpose of this essay was mock the rich, blame the Irish government, and shed some light on the status quo. So, I’ll blame my dislike on my oblivion to the history of Ireland.

Other than that, this is a collection of essays written in the 1700s that discusses Christianity and politics while integrating Latin and alluding to famous philosophers. (I didn’t finish 2 and only finished 2 in total, but there were a lot more that I chose not to read). Thanks to my limited knowledge, I was clueless and had difficulty understanding the main ideas (but that's my problem, not the writer's). Maybe I'll revisit this in the future after I learn more about Europe’s history, and hopefully, I’ll appreciate his uniquely satirical way of sending a message.

Nutshell: misanthropic rightwinger thinks that he’s funny, but he’s just a dick.

The foregoing conclusions are authorized by the author, who admitted in a letter to fellow douchebag Pope:

I have got materials toward a treatise proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show that it would be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy, … the whole building of my Travels is erected. (21)

Several texts in this collection:

A Tale of a Tub--
Lots of derridean outworks here, including the opening dedication to some inbred aristocrat

I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your Lordship a list of your own virtues, and at the same time be very unwilling to offend your modesty; but chiefly I should celebrate your liberality towards men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just going on in the usual method to peruse a hundred or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract to be applied to your Lordship. (27)

Fourth such outwork explains the title:

seamen have a custom when they meet a Whale to fling him out an empty Tub, by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the Ship. This parable was immediately mythologised; the Whale was interpreted to be Hobbes’ “Leviathan,” which tosses and plays with all other schemes of religion and government, whereof a great many are hollow, and dry, and empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation. This is the Leviathan from whence the terrible wits of our age are said to borrow their weapons. The Ship in danger is easily understood to be its old antitype the commonwealth. (39-40)

Preface otherwise makes sure to avoid going forward “without declaiming, according to custom, against the multitude of writers whereof the whole multitude of writers most reasonably complain” (40). Speaker of the preface notes that in England it’s fine to state openly that “we live in the very dregs of time” (46)—not sure how to take that, as the layers of irony here are numerous—but it would be consistent with the retrograde politics.

The ‘Tale’ proper proceeds as an allegory of three guys (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist) who inherit cloaks (church praxis) from their father’s will (scripture) and go about dicking up their cloaks. This allegory is intermingled with digressions. The Introduction makes plain that the text is concerned with “oratorical machines” (50), from whose company attorneys are apparently excluded (?). We see that the scheme of “oratorical receptacles or machines contains a great mystery, being a type, a sign, an emblem, a shadow, a symbol, bearing analogy to the spacious commonwealth of writers and to those methods by which they must exalt themselves to a certain eminency above the inferior world” (53).

Most interesting is the use of ellipsis to omit materials (as we may have noted regarding  Gulliver’s Travels). Author has a ‘hiatus’ regarding “faction” (54) and regarding Calvinism (140). (In the “Mechanical Operation” text, infra, he also specifically omits the explanation of “the whole scheme of spiritual mechanism,” i.e., ostensibly the point of the text, because “it was thought neither safe nor convenient to print it” (162).) Best elision, from the famous essay on madness, while working through the important problem of “how it is possible to account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions” (118-19) (which is substantially identical to Ayn Rand’s epistemology, no?): “There is in mankind a certain […] and this I take to be a clear solution of the matter [!]” (120). So, there it is.

Nice jab at ‘critics,’ insofar as we are told:

For it hath been objected that those ancient heroes, famous for their combating so many giants and dragons and robbers, were in their own persons a greater nuisance to mankind than any of the monsters they subdued; and therefore, to render their obligations more complete, when all other vermin were destroyed, should in conscience have concluded with the same justice upon themselves, as Hercules most generously did. (72)

Criticism is thereafter cunningly identified with the intention

to travel through this vast world of writings; to peruse and hunt those monstrous faults bred within them; to drag out the lurking errors, like Cacus from his den; to multiply them like Hydra’s heads; and rake them together like Augeas’ dung; or else drive away a sort of dangerous fowl who have a perverse inclination to plunder the best branches of the tree of knowledge, like those Stymphalian birds that ate up the fruit. (73)

So, good to see that he has developed an enlightened attitude toward his interlocutors, for whom, I think, he has just recommended suicide.

On the other hand, text will, at another moment, with perhaps a different speaker, suggest that Homer, “a person not without some abilities, and for ancient of a tolerable genius,” is nevertheless full of “many gross errors” (92).

Anyway, have dwelled overlong on the “Tale,” which is first rate overall. Much of interest that I haven’t mentioned. Suffice to say that one speaker recommends a derridean oblique approach:

get a thorough insight into the index by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the backdoor. For the arts are all in a flying march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking from the rear. (104)

“A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit”—
Opens with the suggestion that Mohammed “is known to have borrowed a moiety of his religious system from the Christian faith”(153), and then descends to the bizarre proposition that “there are three general ways of ejaculating the soul” (155). Inter alia, deduces a “history of fanaticism” (167 ff.).

After the ‘Tale,’ we have “A Tritical Essay,” “Meditation Upon a Broomstick,” “On Political Lying,” “The Drapier Letters,” and “A Character, Panegyric, and Description of the Legion Club,” about which little need be said. Also included:

“Thoughts on Various Subjects”—
A collection of generally non-satirical gnomics. I fucking hate the gnomic. Here, author outs himself as troglodyte with such items as “Law in a free country is, or ought to be, the determination of the majority of those who have property in land” (193). Uh, fuck you? Also: “Those who are against religion must needs be fools” (195). Whatever? This text also includes the famous ‘confederacy of dunces’ line deployed later by Toole.

“An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity in England”—
Builds a distinction between “nominal” and “real” Christianity; he won’t defend the latter, as it has “been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and power” (201), which strikes me as a nasty disqualificatory thesis. Seriously, you have a state church and you wrote this to oppose repealing the Test Act, no? (“Nothing can be more notorious than that the Atheists, Deists, Socinians, Antitrinitarians, and other subdivisions of freethinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment; their declared opinion is for repealing the sacramental test” (210). FFS. FFS!)

“A Modest Proposal”—
Obviously one of the great essays in English literary history. One thing I note now in reading through this time is that the impetus for the eponymous proposal is that “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout,” which is the first overt reference to cannibalism in the text (259).

(No “Battle of the Books,” weirdly.)

Recommended for those who think praise was originally a pension paid by the world, readers affected in the head by tentiginous humour, and persons who have no children by which they can propose to get a single penny.

I've read only the title piece, which I've reviewed here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Yeri, tenkit nasıl yazılır yazarken nasıl eğlenir, yüzyıllar evvel en güzel örneğini yazmış Swift, tavsiye ederim..

Öncelikle şunu söylemek gerek: Bu derlemede Swift'in 1697-1729 yılları arasında yazdığı 8 yazıya yer verilmiş; bu yüzden, kitabı "Alçakgönüllü Bir Öneri ve Diğer Denemeler" diye adlandırmak daha yerinde bir tercih olurdu.
Swift, bir oklu kirpi: Eleştiri oklarını her yöne fırlatıyor; üstelik bunu iç karartan bir ciddiyetle değil, müthiş eğlenceli, pırıl pırıl bir zekâyla yapıyor. Zaten Britanyalılar'ın hiciv, nükte, iğneleme, kara mizah kategorilerinde belirgin bir yeteneği olduğuna hep inanmışımdır; Swift'te, buna bir de İrlandalı cüreti/cesareti ekleniyor. Burada bir araya getirilmiş, çoğu hiciv olarak sınıflandırılabilecek yazıların çoğunda, bir yergi üstadının kullandığı üç silahı, Swift'in de büyük bir ustalıkla kullandığını görüyoruz: Alegori, ironi, parodi. Bazı noktalarda fikirleri fazla sinikmiş gibi görünse de (oysa ki bir papazdır kendileri!), birkaç yerde cinsiyetçilik yapsa da, yazıların çoğunluğunu büyük bir zevkle okudum.

When one hears 'Swift', Gulliver's Travels usually comes to mind and that was an exceptional work of literature, so I think I'll experience him from a satirical angle.

Actually I ended up listening to this work (having acquired an audio version). Yes I admire Swift's irony in relation to every day situations, though it may seem a bit harsh, the method may at times be the only means of effectivly relating a message.

Summary: If we are not going to support policies that force America’s billionaires to care about taking care of the American system of government, and of their fellow Americans, then I guess we should go ahead and allow them to own people outright. This step would simply be applying the basic concept of current economic thinking to the situation, as a practical solution. I think the GOP should go ahead and get behind this, if they are really serious about their constant position of more tax cuts for the rich.

What do you do when the state of current politics makes you want to scream? Read this. THIS. Swift issues an Oh Snap that is so deftly, scathingly understated that it rips through all the “because reasons” arguments like rounds of armor piercing bullets through a convention of fleshy NRA delegates.

******* Here is my Modest Proposal*****(circa 2019)

“For preventing the poor, the homeless and the forgotten people of America, from being a burden on the upright taxpayer citizen, and for making them a benefit to the public and to themselves”


It is a deeply saddening and melancholy sight to those who travel through the countryside of this great land or regularly watch the cable news, to see the constant parade of ambulances and overdose victims, homeless persons and drug addicts, refugees and illegal immigrants, often with their children in tow, frequently in rags, covered in sores and tattoos, begging for a handout. These homeless, these addicts, these illegal immigrants, living or imprisoned amid the carnage (as even our President has said) of our once great country, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are reduced to begging, crime, illegal entry, drug dealing or gang membership for want of basic material goods such as, food, shelter and health care and, regretfully, opiates.

Those of us who are sufficiently advanced in years will remember that this problem has been growing from at least the early Reagan administration, or perhaps even Nixon, and has merely increased in depth and scope through multiple reforms of welfare, through the gradual privatization of public schools, through multiple rounds of generous tax cuts, through the deliberate and ever widening liberalization of trade and flow of capital, and the unceasing globalization of the American economy that has been steadily pursued first by the Republican Party and then with increasing enthusiasm by the Democratic Party over the past half century. None of these supposed economic solutions, from the cutting of welfare, to the cuts to public education, to the generous tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy, to the easing of rules to welcome corporate mergers, to the strengthening of creditor rights, none of these purported solutions has seemed to have any ameliorative impact on the problems of poverty, drug abuse, or illegal immigration, all of which have only seemed to increase over this period. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that whoever could, despite all of these failures of policy and blind alleys, discover a fair, effective and reasonable solution that would make these poor people sound, that would, once and for all, meaningfully reduce the number of homeless, destitute, illegal immigrants, addicts and criminals, would be more than well deserving of universal thanks and acclaim as a heroic preserver of our great nation.

But I do not intend to blow my own horn. It is not my intention to make such a proposal merely for approbation and reward. Rather, it would be sufficient reward for me to see the return to first principles, the application once again of time-honored methods, the growth once again of common sense across this great nation, and the rescue of the situation of these forgotten peoples. For my part, I have thought long and hard over this conundrum for many a month and year. I have read volumes of economics and political economy, suffered through mind-numbing historical documentaries, listened with quivering ear to the angry rhetoric of radio commentators and cable news punditry. I have always found these prognosticators to be vastly mistaken in their assumptions, to be devastatingly missing the point, to be shockingly blind to the pure application of their own classical economic principles.

My proposal is no more than a simple return to the basic principle of private ownership. The principle is thus: where an object is owned, its owner has an unimpeded right to control it for his own profit and is, by the immutable rules of classic economics, bound to take care of such property in order to further his own greater interest. When a person owns property exclusively, that person has a desire to take care of that property to ensure that he or she will profit from it, and will endeavor to devote adequate resources to the development of such property in order to reap a profit from it.

The problem (as I see it, and given my education in classical economics, I see it quite clearly, clearer than most) of the indigent, the homeless, illegal immigrants and drug addicts, is that no one is motivated to do anything for them because any amounts spent on such persons do not benefit anyone except those persons themselves. An able bodied adult is clearly capable of supporting and assisting in a wide variety of activities that many a wealthy benefactor would be interested in receiving support and assistance with. Even children from the tender age of at least eight are, properly trained, capable of a wide variety of household chores including trash collection and disposal, simple cleaning, pet and baby care. By nine or ten, they should be able work simple factory machinery, and by age eleven or twelve, as we have seen well demonstrated in Africa, are capable of wielding lethal weapons in an organized fashion, and so could be strong contributors to our national armed forces. The point of course, is not merely to obtain more labor from our population beginning at a younger age. No, it is much broader and, at the same time, much more simple than that. I have it from the Office of Budget and Management, which is on the verge of being eliminated by the current administration, that there are approximately 1.5 million households (including 2.8 million children) living in the United States who have less than $2 per day (before any government payment) on which to survive. These families struggle day to day for ample food, clothing, shelter, health and education. At the same time, the top five hundred thousand households in this great country of ours own approximately one half of the assets that are privately owned. Given this situation, a simple and straightforward application of the laws of supply and demand would be the most efficient and sustainable solution, i.e., to permit the top 1% to own the members of the bottom 10% percentile. But in fact, there is really no need to limit the supply of buyers or sellers in this way, and in the interest of having a true market-based economy, any person should be permitted to sell, and any person should be permitted to buy, not only time and services, but entire lives, if they so choose.

I think you will discover, when you have time to contemplate its genius, that this scheme has very much to recommend it. The trend of the present economy is already well on its way to beggaring large swathes of the self-employed. These people used to be children and spouses of middle managers, local bankers, university and college professors, assembly line workers, equipment and industrial salesmen, machinists, community hospital workers, public service employees, coal miners, teachers, stenographers, cashiers, floorwalkers, and small business employees, that is to say, what we used to refer to as the “middle class”. But the decade-after-decade of corporation mergers and acquisitions, the privatization of public services, and the resulting cost cutting (all in the good cause of “market efficiency” or “consumer savings”), offshoring of production, design and management, mechanization and automation, computerization and data creation, has resulted in the elimination of millions of these jobs that will never return to our shores in our lifetime. These persons now have no health care, no social benefits, and many, no hope. They struggle daily to make ends meet. This is on the one hand.

On the other hand, there are at least half a million, and perhaps several million (and it may be even higher) households that have benefited wonderfully from the very same series of corporate amalgamations and out-sourcing, the very same automation and computerization, the very same privatization of public services, and who have seen their salaries and assets swell, their stocks skyrocket, and the balance of their bank accounts exceed their wildest expectations. These households tend to vie with one another as to who owns the fanciest cars, the fastest airplanes, the largest houses, the grandest estates, who takes the most lavish vacations, and who works the hardest on running the global economy. Why not allow them the additional competitive metric of who has the most and best appointed slaves?

You may be shocked by the word, but please give me a bit more of your patience. Much of modern marketing and politics comes down to a question of words. Is undesirable news good reporting or is it fake news? I think many Americans are flexible enough in mind to agree it can be either. So let us not call this system ‘slavery’, but the ‘human chattel’ system. That has a much more pleasant ring to it, much like the phrase ‘alternative fact’ has compared to the word ‘lie’.

So let us first consider the myriad advantages to this human chattel system. First, and most importantly, if these millions of persons in poverty become the property of others, the owner will, under the principle of private property, have an incentive to obtain the most from his or her investment. It will logically be in the self-interest of the owner(s) to ensure that their chattel is adequately fed, clothed and sheltered, much as wealthy families take good care of their cars, homes and other possessions, by keeping them in good repair and in respectable appearance. Much like the objects owned by these households, the state of their human chattel will also reflect upon them in the eyes of society.

The subject chattel, who could not previously afford adequate health care, will now be covered by the generous insurance (it would likely be casualty insurance) policy of their owner, who can well afford the tiny additional premium as an add-on to the policy by which they cover their estates, their top-of-the line cars, their art collections or their yachts. The owners would also, presumably, contribute to the adequate education of any offspring of their chattel, in accordance with the needs of the owners and the perceived talents of such offspring.

Of course, we must also consider the advantages for the property owner, the job-creator, if you will, whose interests are foremost. What advantage, besides competitive social one-upmanship, would a wealthy chattel owner obtain from such an arrangement?

First, free labor. The maintenance of a large estate entails a substantial amount of manual labor in order to keep it in good working condition for the master and mistress. Of course, I realize that this labor is not, strictly speaking, free. Food and board must be provided, as well as annual trips to the doctor, and some level of education to the “young-uns.” But compared to the cost of third party contracted labor, these costs will feel practically free. This is an advantage which should not be gainsaid. As we have seen through the years, savings and the potential for savings are nearly as powerful a motivator, even to the wealthy, as increases in income from tax cuts.

Secondly, there is the uplifting feeling of having such resources within one’s unfettered control. After a hard week of meetings and dinners and rounds of golf at Davos or Telluride or Mar-a-Lago, the enjoyment obtained by being able to pull down a long lane of properly pruned trees to a spotless and efficiently run mansion, to be able to put your feet up on a cleanly brushed ottoman and enjoy a cigar and a snifter of the finest, with a footman, a maid and a butler at your beck and call upon the mere tug of a rope is literally priceless. And such feelings of pride and ease need not be confined to the boundaries of one’s own estates. As slavery would be legal throughout the fifty states, one could travel anywhere in American with their ready assistants at hand. No more tiresome lining up for tickets or license plates or any such problems of interaction with the wiles of government bureaucracy or popular restaurants or entertainments. Moreover, travel with a large retinue does not have to be costly. As chattel is merely property, it would not be necessary to purchase airline seats, as such. The master’s property, to the extent not required for on-flight services, could be checked-in in appropriately designed crates, and smaller chattel could be stored in the overhead bin. For short-haul cross country travel, there is a low cost bus system that still runs all the major routes, and luggage is often shipped this way.

Of course, chattel, like other property, will be freely tradeable. The principle of a completely unregulated free market has been the basis for our society since at least the Reagan-Friedman “revolution.” Hence, another advantage to this proposal is that it creates a new market in which anyone can participate. Everyone has a body or a life to sell, and they will be free to sell it. Once they have converted themselves to some wealthy household’s property, they will be assured of protection from the storms and ravages of economic dislocations, of corporate downsizings, outsourcings, and further elimination of public jobs through privatization. They will no longer need to feel anxiety about whether their employment arrangements will end suddenly and they will be left out in the cold. Once they have become the property of a master or mistress, that master or mistress will be responsible for them. If their owner can no longer, for whatever reason, afford, or wish, to support them, such owner will of course be able to sell them to another master or mistress, because, unlike in current employer/employee relationships, they will continue have a value to their owner. This is of course the beauty of the principle of private property, which creates value where there was none before!

There may be up to five million households who can keep two or more slaves, and at least one million households who can afford to keep ten or more slaves, and as the system becomes more popular, the custom of slave ownership should spread even more broadly to a large proportion of the wealthiest American households. Assuming an average of three human chattel per household, this leads to a total human chattel number removed from the population of at least 10 million, and perhaps even 20 million persons, who will be rescued forever from economic hardship. The burden on the government finances will also be lessened by this amount, as these persons can also be removed from the welfare rolls and unemployment benefits, and Medicare and Medicaide.

Now I know there are those bleeding hearts among you, perhaps, more among the sore loser Democrats, than among the winning Republicans, who will tremble at this proposal, and perhaps assert that America already crossed this road over a century ago. But please hear me out. I am not advocating such brutal treatment as was meted out to the African slaves in certain, isolated incidents in the antebellum American South. Families do not necessarily have to be separated. This is will be a matter freely determined by the impartial hand of the unregulated market. The appropriateness of corporeal punishment will also be determined by these same market forces. Certainly no forms of punishment that could be defined as torture would be permitted by the market that we all know and have come to trust like an old friend. Moreover, in order to allay concerns about race, the subject chattel will not be limited by a particular skin color, but will be open to all comers. Any race, creed or ethnicity will be free to sell themselves into slavery, and the freedom of contract will be observed. As that respected philosopher of the Virginian founding fathers, John Locke, asserted, mutual consent will be the basis of contract; breaches will be redressable under civil law. And of course, the question of whether such chattel should have the right to vote is something that should be carefully and thoroughly debated. Both sides should be heard and considered, with the views of the property owners being given full and fair consideration.

With the application of proper principles, I can think of no valid or reasonable objection that could possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that, as a result, the number of free Americans will be much lessened in this great land. This is of course true, and I completely acknowledge it, but it was in fact one of the main reasons for my proposal in the first place. I desire the reader to observe that I have designed my proposal with the idea of the best and most appropriate fit with the current culture and values of America, that Shining City on the Hill, the Home of the Brave, that gleaming exception to the rest of the world, truly unique and ever forward-looking. Therefore, let no man talk to me about ridiculous alternatives, such as: returning to a progressive tax system; or restoring the rules restricting monopolies; or providing ample public funding for education; or increasing to any degree public support for health care; or practicing the Golden Rule of treating others as you would be treated; or quitting our petty animosities and factions; or being a bit more careful not to sell our country and consciences for the momentary gratification of the shock value to the other side. Lastly, of requiring the spirit of honesty, industry, and integrity in our elected and appointed government officials, and showing them only that measure of respect that they deem to show to us and to each other. I repeat, let no man waste his breath in talking to me of these or any other similarly ludicrous and laughable policies, until he has some glimpse of hope that there will ever be a hearty and sincere attempt by Republicans working together with Democrats, to actually put any of them into practice.

Brilliant in conception, but a tough read given the remoteness of the petty concerns of the time, Jonathan Swift's work shows a master satirist at work. Unlike Gulliver's Travels with its universal applicability and simple storyline, this is much more political invective than timeless satire. Nevertheless, no one can doubt Swift's brilliance as an essayist and wit.

The modest proposal would have been if someone had asked not to write this horrid thing.