Photograph by Jack McManus/The Irish Times
Washed ashore: A 70-foot model of Gulliver in Dublin, 2012.
Truly, Swift was a giant among men. Swift became the Heathcliff of an age
Denis Donoghue reflects
James Joyce wrote of him Ulysses: ‘The hundred-headed rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars, Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled.’
Swift could not have been a monster as many claimed, for he many friends, think of the diverse affections he inspired in Pope, Addison, Bolingbroke, Thomas Sheridan, Delany, Arbuthnot, Gay, many other men and at least a few women. It was Swift's essential honesty and humanity that made him prefer to seem a monster, Better to seem a monster than to be a hypocrite.
Truly, Swift was a giant among men. Swift became the Heathcliff of an age
Denis Donoghue reflects
He was always alone – alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella’s sweet smile came and shone upon him. When that went, silence and utter night closed over him. An immense genius: an awful downfall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling.
James Joyce wrote of him Ulysses: ‘The hundred-headed rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars, Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled.’
Swift could not have been a monster as many claimed, for he many friends, think of the diverse affections he inspired in Pope, Addison, Bolingbroke, Thomas Sheridan, Delany, Arbuthnot, Gay, many other men and at least a few women. It was Swift's essential honesty and humanity that made him prefer to seem a monster, Better to seem a monster than to be a hypocrite.
No comments:
Post a Comment