The Purpose of Verse: To Settle Slights and Even Scores
Swift did not view poetry along the lines of Wordsworth as being ideally suited for celebrating nature. Nor was he exactly like Poe in his ability to create a strong narrative every bit as entertaining as a short story written in prose. He was certainly no innovator or experimenter in form. The verse of Swift is really not far removed thematically from his fiction and essays: it was a tool with which to wield his enormous intellect, great wit and profound conviction that everybody was out to get him. Okay, perhaps that is overstating things a bit, but there is no doubt that a great many poems in this volume (and others) are designed as responses to real or perceived insult or injury to himself. While “The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod” may sound like a lighthearted romp into fantasy narrative, it is actually a thinly veiled allegorical assault against a man who failed to support Swift in his desire for the abolishment of a certain tax. “Prometheus” turns out to be not so much about the mythic figure who stole fire from the gods as about a contemporary of Swift’s whose offenses against him were so great that he appears in a number of other poems and stories as a figure suffering the same torrent of personal invective. For Swift, the purpose of poetry was not the transmission of grand observations about beauty in the world, but a means of settling petty scores. Fortunately for him, he did so with such an abundance of style and wit, it becomes easy to overlook the negative aspects.
Poetry as the Language of Anti-Romance
A number of poems are directed toward the titular character of “Stella” which was a pseudonym chosen to disguise the identity of Ester Johnson, Swift’s lifelong friend and most likely the love of his life, though they never advanced to a romantic relationship. Four of the poems are written ostensibly to honor the occasion of the anniversary of Stella’s birth, but like so much of Swift’s verse, everything is not as it seems. The real target of these poems is not Stella (Ester) at all just as the motivation is not romance. The Stella birthday poems thematically united as another example of Swift’s approach to satire. The decidedly anti-romantic verse becomes Swift’s means of delivering a message of his opinion on the state of the traditional genre of writing birthday odes commissioned by the aristocratic court. Needlessly to say, Swift’s opinion of the artistry of these odes was quite low.
Excrement
Several poems included in this collection are prime examples of a particular and peculiar theme running throughout Swift’s works: “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,” “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” “Strephon and Chloe,” and “Cassinus and Peter.” So peculiar that it has even been given a name: Swift’s excremental poems. While the focus of these poems is on bodily functions not typically reserved for poetic flights of fancy, one should not assume that Swift is being merely vulgar for the sake of vulgarity. There is a method to his thematic madness. The focus on the excremental process is the subject of satire within the narrative of the individual poem, but fits allegorically within the larger perspective of Swift’s fundamental philosophy. He was a man who felt that sanitizing the human condition did society no great benefit. For society to evolve, it must face the ugliness of existence that cannot be so readily sanitized merely by choosing to excise it from the narrative.
