اسفار اربعه
سفرنامه ى گاليور از چهار سفر تشكيل شده؛ هر بار گاليور، مثل سندباد بحرى، به سفرى دريايى ميره، ولى طوفان يا وقايع ديگه باعث ميشه سر از جزيره اى ناشناخته دربياره.

سفر اول: لى لى پوت
گاليورى كه در ساحل خوابيده، و وقتى بيدار ميشه مى بينه دست و پاش رو با ريسمان به زمين بستن و هزاران انسان كوچولو دورش جمع شدن. معروف ترين صحنه ى كتاب.
لى لى پوتى ها، نماينده ى انسان هاى كم خرد و حقير هستن، جنگ هاشون حقير، افكارشون حقير، زندگى شون حقير، و تقابل اين شرايط با عظمت گاليور، شرايط كميكى ايجاد مى كنه.

سفر دوم: برابدينگ نگ
گاليورى كه در خانه ى عروسك يك دختربچه ى غول پيكر زندگى مى كنه، و دختربچه مثل عروسك تر و خشكش مى كنه. اين هم صحنه ى آشناى ديگه ى كتاب.
غول هاى برابدينگ نگ، بر عكس لى لى پوتى ها، نماينده ى انسان هاى بزرگ هستن. پادشاهشون ساعت ها با گاليور بحث مى كنه و از رسوم انسان ها مى پرسه و از حماقت انسان ها تعجب مى كنه.

روى هم رفته اين دو سفر پر ماجراتر و خنده آورتر هستن. به نظر ميرسه حوصله ى نويسنده بعد از اين دو بخش، كم كم ته مى كشيده.

سفر سوم: لاپوتا
اگه انيمه ى زيباى ژاپنى "لاپوتا: قلعه اى در آسمان" از هايائو ميازاكى رو ديده باشيد، اون انيمه از اين بخش سفرنامه الهام گرفته، هر چند از لحاظ مضمون به هم ارتباطى ندارن.
سرزمينى ويران و فقير، ولى پر از دانشمندانى كه به جاى حل مشكلات مردم، به مسائل انتزاعى و بى فايده مى پردازن. در حالى كه قلعه ى پرنده ى پادشاه، با ساكنان فيلسوفش، در بالاى ابرها سير مى كنه و از زندگى واقعى مردم سرزمينش بى خبره.

سفر چهارم: سرزمين هوينهم ها
اسب هاى عاقل و سخنگويى كه انسان هاى وحشى و نفهم (كه "ياهو" ناميده ميشن) رو به ارابه و گاوآهن مى بندن. اين فصل تماماً لحنى تعليمى داره، و به دور از ماجراجويى هاى طنزآميز دو فصل اول، فقط به انتقاد از رذائل انسانى مى پردازه.

چرا كتاب رو خوندم؟
يك اخترفيزيك دان، هشت كتاب رو پيشنهاد كرده بود كه هر فرد تحصيل كرده و روشن انديشى بايد مطالعه كنه. بعضى از كتاب هاى اين ليست رو خونده بودم (عهدين، شهريار ماكياولى و هنر رزم سون تزو) ولى بعضى ديگه رو نه (منشأ انواع داروين، ثروت ملل آدام اسميت و...).
با توجه به تصويرى كه از انيميشن گاليور داشتم، ("من از اولشم مى دونستم..." و كاپيتان ليچ بدجنس و كلاغش كه مى خوان نقشه ى گنج گاليور رو تصاحب كنن) هيچ وقت فكر نمى كردم كتاب خاصى باشه. وقتى اسمش رو توى اين ليست ديدم، تعجب كردم، و چون در دسترس بود سراغش رفتم و ديدم كه خيلى از عناصر انيميشن در كتاب وجود نداره و بيشتر وقايع انيميشن ساخته و پرداخته ى ذهن انيماتورها بوده.
البته كتاب خيلى خوبى بود، ولى از همين جا اعلام مى كنم كه جاش توى اون ليست نبود، و اگه من بودم كتاب هاى مهم تر ديگه اى رو جاش ميذاشتم.

لينك ليست هشت كتاب:
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/ne...

So nice to finally enjoy Gulliver's Travels in its entirety - thanks to my library book club. We had a lively discussion and I was amazed how much I learned when we dissected and dug below the surface. Didn't know what I was missing and having the members of the book club (ages ranged from early 20s - 90+) to discuss and share ideas with taught me more than reading by myself ever could.

So much more than just a fantastical tale of a man journeying to mystical lands. This is thinly veiled satire...super thin.

A seafaring Englishman ends up in four fairytale worlds where people are small, gigantic, smarties in the maths, and where people are horses. By the second journey you'd think he'd be done with all this, but in the end he's done with humans and has trouble living amongst his own kind.

Written in the old style where listing off occurrences constituted an adventure and a perfectly well constructed story, Gulliver's Travels can be at times a tedious read. It's filled with a laundry list of actions ("I did this and then I did this"), and when you think some tension or conflict is a brewin' you get simple expedients flatly stated ("I was faced with an obstacle and so I overcame it by doing this.") After a time it all becomes trying and uninspiring, making the turning of pages ever more difficult.

However, if you've come to this book looking for condemnation of the human race's worst foibles, you've come to the right place. Swift dispatches venom towards the leeches of humanity. Lawyers, for instance, get blasted left, right and center. I'm one of those people that feels we're not much better, and sometimes not any better, than base animals, so I was okay with the author's bashing of my fellow man. Those who don't understand anything beyond "Humans! We're #1!" aren't going to like this.

Regardless of its faults, I'm glad I finally got around to reading the original, full-length version. In school I read an abridged and sanitized version, which left out all the mentions of genitalia and bodily functions. This is much better with all the pee and tits included!


PS: Check out my video review of Gulliver's Travels here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKpYD...

Un novela clásica mordaz, satírica y rebelde. Una crítica demoledora y emponzoñada a la sociedad de aquella época que, sorprendentemente (?), se ajusta perfectamente a la nuestra. Un final que da para pensar un rato e invita a que cada "yahoo" saque sus propias conclusiones...

I’ve been reading How to Read Literature and he mentioned this book in passing. I must have read this the first time in my 20s – and might not have finished it, since this time I didn’t remember the Houyhnhnms at all, and given that this is much of the point of the end of the book (and of the book itself) I can only assume I stopped before I got there. I actually read it this time because a lot of the research I’ve been doing at work relates in one way or another to intercultural understanding – and it suddenly dawned on me that this book might have some nice quotes I could pop into some journal articles we are writing at the moment that would add a bit of colour to them. That hasn’t quite proven to be the case, but it certainly has had me thinking.

This is such a great book, it would be pretty hard to overstate just how great it is. And it really hasn’t aged in the ways that you might think it would – given it was written in 1726. I mean, it is still very readable, with the intervening 300 years obviously marking the language, but not to the point where the prose is incomprehensible.

I told a friend of mine I was reading this and she said she’s written an essay about it at Uni and still loved the book. Someone else I knew years ago who had studied literature at Uni once told me that the books you love from Uni are the books you got a good mark for on an essay you wrote about them – which is more cynical than sceptical, but amusing too nonetheless. I told my friend that I felt odd about reading this book this time because I’ve been looking for ideas on intercultural understanding, but I’ve come away wondering if anyone other than someone from Ireland could have written this book – which, being a strange sort of Irishman myself, makes me sound decidedly not all that interculturally understanding. I don’t really know all that much about Swift’s life, but I think you would need to feel that you were both an ‘insider’ and an ‘outsider’ to have written this book – and the Anglo-Irish were pretty much that – inside and outside at the same time, I mean. I also think that being inside and outside at the same time is a pretty good ‘place’ to be. A full sense of belonging is close to a universal evil – particularly when it allows us to decide who ‘doesn’t belong’. White Australia’s attitude to Asylum Seekers is a tragic case in point.

This is satire, but there certainly isn’t a laugh a page in this book – much of the humour is ‘clever’ in the sense that you are meant to see the underlying absurdity of the situation. And the trustworthiness of what we are reading is challenged from the first page. Essentially the first thing that happens in the book is that we are told that the person who edited the manuscript admits to cutting out about half of the contents of that Gulliver had written in his manuscript. A letter from Gulliver immediately following this, in which Gulliver disowns the book that follows. Then we are told that Gulliver’s original manuscript no longer exists. Little of Gulliver’s letter makes sense to us yet – since we are not yet meant to have any idea that we are Yahoos or what a Houyhnhnm is. Still, despite not having enough information to understand this letter until the end of the book, it is pretty clear from Gulliver’s tone that he is hardly happy about either what has been done to his manuscript or with the book’s reception – which he had hoped would have transformed human nature. Not your standard travel book, then.

Swift plays with the absurdity of the situations he creates beautifully. At one point Gulliver in Lilliput he is accused of having an affair with one of the women there – and struggles to defend himself, providing all sorts of excuses as to why this would be impossible, other than the somewhat obvious defence of him being as in tall in feet as she is in inches.

In Brobdingnag, where he is confronted with the opposite problem, people who are effectively giants compared to him, there is a nice inversion where he is almost worked to death by the farmer who puts him on display. I say inversion, because the west not only made a habit of exhibiting people from other lands, but even had human zoos. This delightful little practice went on until the early 20th century, long enough for us to have actual photographs of these ‘exhibits’.

There’s a wonderful and brutal discussion of law and lawyers in the book – something that makes it clear that lawyers have been the butt of jokes for a very long time. It basically says that lawyers are so used to arguing that black is white, that if you need to hire one to argue a case for you, it’s probably better to pretend you are in the wrong, so they can bring their actual skill set to the task, rather than get them to argue the justice of your case.

And Swift will often twist the knife right at the end of a paragraph when you might least expect it. One of my favourite passages being:

“I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many ages, has flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians, nor from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in England.”

The Houyhnhnms are a race of horses – though, more moral than humans. Gulliver would have liked to have lived out his days with these philosopher kings, but their land has a breed of humans called Yahoos who are presented as degenerate humans and the Houyhnhnms are worried that Gulliver, a slightly better example of their kind, might escape to them and cause them to rebel. This part of the story reminded me of say Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge – where a Western man finds spiritual enlightenment in a distant land – Gulliver becomes a Houyhnhnms by temperament, effectively. Here, though, the enlightenment comes at the cost of a general misanthropy towards his own kind – Gulliver becomes so repulsed by his fellow humans he can barely stand to be in the same room of even his own wife and family. In the end he spends his time in the company of the horses in his stable. We like to think travel broadens the mind, but it can also do the opposite. It can confirm our prejudices about the inferiority of other nations – if the history of the British empire teaches us anything, it is that spending time in other nations isn’t enough to encourage us to treat the people in those nations as fellow humans.

But if that is true, the opposite can also be true. Travel can also make us disgusted by our own people too. Our desire to belong to groups, to create an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, and our desire to ‘improve’ the world can cause incredible harm.

This book is, of course, satire – where no one, other than the horses, perhaps, comes out of this smelling of roses. And even then, the Houyhnhnms and their rational utopia we are all supposed to strive toward emulating are a little too willing to kill Gulliver off on a very remote chance he might just one day do them some imagined harm.

ذکر چندتا چیز مهمه:
اول اینکه خوشحالم بعد از مدتها از این کتاب یه ترجمه کامل در اومد. باقی یا خلاصه شده ست یا برای نوجوانان...
دوم سفرنامه ای که مخصوص به ليليپوت بود دو سوم فصل اول رو به خودش اختصاص میده نه همه سفرهایی که گاليور میگه...
سوم توی ويکيپدياي این کتاب به طرز بدی تمامی سفرها رو لوث کرده که خیلی بده اگر نخوندين کتابو سمت ويکيپدياش نرين.
چهارم به نظرم فصل سوم این کتاب خیلی خلاقانه نوشته شده. یعنی وقتی میبینی کتاب چند صد سال پیش نوشته شده و نویسنده از هر چیز که دور و برش بوده با خلاقانه ترین شکل استفاده کرده متحیر ميشيد.
پنجم خوندن این کتاب رو از دست ندين یه کلاسیک درجه یک که متاسفانه از بخش اولش خیلی استفاده شده... باقی چیزایی هم که تو ادامه کتاب اومده برای بار اول و فکر نمی کنم تو کتابای قبل از این اشاره ای بهش شده باشه مثل جزیره پرنده و حیوانات داراي قوه تعقل...
خلاصه من کتاب رو دوست داشتم از خوندنش کیف کردم. پیشنهاد میکنم از دستش ندين. همین.

Nonostante abbia avuto una storia editoriale un po’ travagliata (varie edizioni con altrettante sforbiciate tra il 1726 ed il 1735), I viaggi di Gulliver in vari paesi lontani del mondo, è considerato il capolavoro dello scrittore irlandese Jonathan Swift.
Già al suo esordio, tuttavia, fu minimizzato nel suo l’elemento fantastico e considerato come letteratura per l’infanzia.
Anche oggi, a onor del vero, l’opinione più diffusa – a cui il cinema ha contribuito- è che si tratti di un’opera leggera e comica.
Qualcuno ha sentito dire che, in realtà, si tratta di una satira ma è solo leggendola che si può entrare nello spessore di un’analisi sociale e politica che mi ha spesso sorpresa per la modernità di pensiero.

E’ il 1699, quando Lemuel Gulliver, s’imbarca come medico s’una nave diretta ai mari del Sud.
Così comincia un’avventura che – con alcuni ritorni in patria- porterà il protagonista a conoscere mondi e civiltà inimmaginabili.
Si parte dalla nota isola di Lilliput e si finisce nel regno dei Houyhnhnms dei cavalli che parlano e ragionano e vengono stimati da Gulliver come razza superiore a quella umana.

Sulla scia di un’abbondante letteratura di viaggio, Swift fa una parodia ridicolizzando i resoconti di chi si annuncia come viaggiatore non facendo, però, in realtà, che pubblicare opere che non aggiungono nulla alla conoscenza.
Gulliver è un medico, conosce, a suo modo, gli organismi, ma man mano, nei suoi viaggi, si apre alla possibilità di conoscere l’altronella sua essenza.
Dall’alto della supponenza umana, guarda e giudica i piccoli lillipuziani ed ogni volta si dovrà confrontare con altri popoli e forme di vita cambiando le proporzioni e la posizione del suo sguardo.
Questa idea che sottostà all’opera credo che sia geniale in un’epoca in cui sicuramente avere una percezione globale dell’umanità e libera da pregiudizi fosse molto più difficile.

Non posso negare che, in alcuni punti, il racconto risulti pedante (motivo per cui manca una stella) ma è comunque sorprendente per le analisi così calzanti anche a duecento anni di distanza:

“Quante innocenti e degne persone sono state condannate a morte o all’esilio per le pressioni di primi ministri su giudici corrotti o per malvagità di fazioni! Quanti furfanti sono stati innalzati alle più alte cariche di fiducia, di comando, di onore e di lucro! ”

Meraviglioso lo sdegno sferzante in cui Swift descrive le colonizzazioni:

” Ad esempio, una ciurma di pirati è spinta da una tempesta chissà dove; alla fine un mozzo avvista terra dalla cima dell’albero maestro; essi sbarcano per predare e mettere a sacco; trovano un popolo inerme; sono accolti con gentilezza; danno al paese un nuovo nome; ne prendono formale possesso in nome del loro Re; metton su una tavola tarlata o una pietra in memoria del fatto; assassinano due o tre dozzine di indigeni, ne portano via a forza un paio come campione, tornano in patria e sono perdonati. Di qui ha inizio un nuovo dominio acquistato per diritto divino. Si mandano navi alla prima occasione; gli abitanti sono scacciati o sterminati; i loro capi messi alla tortura perché rivelino i propri tesori; si autorizza ogni efferatezza e ogni lussuria, la terra fuma del sangue degli abitanti: e tale ignobile branco di beccai adoperato per così pia spedizione è quel che costituisce una colonia moderna mandata a convertire e civilizzare un popolo barbaro e idolatra.
Ma devo dire che tale descrizione non può in alcun modo riferirsi alla nazione inglese, che può esser di esempio al mondo intero per la saggezza, la cura e la giustizia a cui si ispira nel fondar colonie;”

Η άποψή μου για το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο, όπως φαντάζομαι και των περισσότερων ήταν ότι είναι μια παιδική ιστορία. Μεγάλο λάθος το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο είναι βαθιά πολιτικό και στηλιτεύει όλα τα κακώς κείμενα της εποχής του.

Lol, I love this book!

A book that has become so 'cartoonified' that you might find the real book hard to come to terms with. Happy to get it off my to read list! Question: is this book the first to use the term 'Yahoo(s)?' This book has become so ingrained in our collective conscious; just saw an episode of Lost in Space that swiped this story! A classic that still has much consideration when the political metaphors are deciphered!

This book was written in 1726. It's pretty old. I anticipated bland writing (check) with a LOT of detailed and seemingly insignificant description (check) and no real story line (check). Helps to be prepared for it. I find it also helps to read an old book out of a vintage edition--it's just that much more fun. Then you can build up a handy sense of romanticism about old literature and float through the dull parts. My copy is from 1947 with a dust cover that's falling apart and that burnt paper smell. Mmm. ;)

I picked this one up knowing a bit about the story. Most people associate it with giants, little tiny people and talking horses and generally assume that it's a children's book. But really it is far from it. I have read Swift's A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works wherein he proposes, in a voice of pure reasonableness, that the solution to the starvation and overcrowding of Ireland is for the poor to eat their own babies ('a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled'). So I am familiar with Jonathan Swift as a cutting satirist. And that's really what Gulliver's Travels is: layer upon layer of satire.

In one sense, it's a parody of travel writing. In the 1700s explorers were discovering the 'weird and the wonderful' and writing exaggerated literature about it. Gulliver insists that he is telling just the 'plain facts' while reporting his ridiculously fantastical accounts. And the bland writing style (oh yes it is bland) is all part of the parody.

And it is PACKED full of political commentary. The giants and the Houyhnhms and all the creatures/peoples he meets are really just sounding boards for Swift's critiques of human pride and self deception etc. The giant king, after hearing Gulliver rave about England, concludes that the English people are 'the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth'. Subtle? From voting to taxes to arithmetic and science, to gaming and alcohol and war and weaponry, to the legal system and the plight of the poor amidst the excessive expenditure and corruption of the upper classes. Phew. He covers it all.

So it's not really the easiest read. There's no story to get hooked in--it's like reading a series of letters or essays--and there is NO dialogue in the whole book. But it's clever, just because Jonathan Swift is clever. And the dry wit is amusing. It is also a forerunner in the genre of sci-fi/fantasy. So, I'd say 3.5 stars, maybe 4. If you like satire and are interested in English history and politics through literature, you'd like it. But better yet read A Modest Proposal--it's funnier and a lot shorter.

купуєш книжку, щоб почитати хорошу, перевірену часом, казку про ліліпутів та велетнів і натрапляєш на майстерну сатиру, довершену мізантропію і мегакруту дорослу книжку.
Свіфт грамотно починає з ліліпутів, що передбачливо має вау-ефект серед тодішнього початку-вісімнадцятистолітнього люду і завершує частиною, яка може тягатися з "Утопією" Мора. Власне третя частина про лапутян та струльдбругів і четверта про гуїгнгнмів та єгу - найцікавіші. В книжці така кількість критичних міркувань і здорового глузду, що не ясно, як це вивозили на початку 18 століття і автора привселюдно не спалили чи повісили.
Круто було б, якби про ліліпутів і велетнів було в молодшій школі, а останні частини давали вже в старших класах.