O.K. back to classics.
With everything else that I read - and my interests are obviously unrepentantly omnivorous - some time ago I have decided that every month there should be a place for a time honoured classic, just so that I don't get completely buried alive in celebrity biographies or some frothy, lightweight guilty pleasure. The idea is very recommendable indeed, unfortunately yours truly had not really persevered with it, since:
a) I actually love the excitement of random choices, suggestions and spur-of-the-moment inspirations
b) Having a list of must-do usually provokes a resistance to it so it feels like an obligation
c) Because they were written centuries ago, classics demand far more concentration and effort than something written currently
Having this blog as reminder and looking back at the previous year, my reading list clearly shows only three classics read during twelve months, which is far from what I had in mind. The reasons are mentioned above but I also have to add that in all honesty, these old novels genuinely feel more like a task than like exciting experience - once I'm finished with them, I feel proud of myself for actually being disciplined enough to plow trough something so flowery and slow-moving like almost 300 years old novel but for all their highly esteemed and deserved historical status, they feel like a work contrary to my previous choice of "Shōgun" which kept me awake until early hours with the greatest pleasure and which left my head buzzing. Since classic-a-month comes off as a challenge, I wonder is it also because I need to read them with some continuity before it becomes a habitual joy instead of being - as it is presently - occasional chore that takes forever to finish, while modern popular novels just whizz by themselves so thrillingly? The amassed list of classics-to-read is already intimidating enough and perhaps too ambitious but before I completely give up on this idea (which I consider from time to time) and just accept that whatever I was forced to read in the school was enough, I will try to give it another go and hopefully by the force of habit - if I give it proper chance - my classic-of-the-month might get a foothold.
Yay, I have just finished it today.
Some four decades ago I have read obviously only shortened version that usually gets served as children's literature, therefore I was familiar with only first and the most popular chapter (A Voyage to Lilliput) but actually there is so much more to "Gulliver's Travels" than diminutive Lilliputians. Much has been made about Jonathan Swift's literary attack on various forms of than-current authorities and what it all means, was he poking fun at the church or government, crown or parliament but in all honesty it don't really matter 300 years later - what we can clearly see is that he is turning reality completely topsy turvy and gleefully chuckling to himself created fantastic world where horses talk, ministers deserve their positions by dancing on the rope, petitioners are commanded to crawl on their bellies and lick the floor in front of the throne and such.
The obvious explanation of Gulliver's timeless appeal is that the novel can be read, explained, poked, probed and analysed from many different perspectives. It can be enjoyed as a children's story - specially the first chapter with Gulliver saving the royal castle by pissing on it - or you can see it as a sharp satire and criticism of society that he lived in. You can see it also as a either clever variation on both Marco Polo and Robinson Crusoe or as a forerunner or later widely popular novels by Jules Verne. Myself, I am tempted to see it as Swift's own version of ancient tale of Sinbad the Sailor (Odysseus?) that only on a surface describes main hero's amazing adventures but actually talks about human character and ridiculousness of our principles.
After Lilliput, Gulliver is shipwrecked time and time again (mirroring Robinson Crusoe which surely influenced him) first to the land of giants (Brobdingnag) where he becomes treasured entertainment for royal ladies ("The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant frolicsome girl of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over particular"), than to the flying island Laputa where scientists spend their lifetimes studying the most ridiculous and pointless experiments and after many sideways & byways, he ends in the country of Houyhnhnms where horses are wise and humanoids (named Yahoos) are dangerous and ignorant. It is novel of almost ridiculously fantastic imagination, literary equivalent of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and deservedly considered a classic, however from time to time it shows his age much more than Robinson Crusoe because Swift too often feels compelled to moralise and compare various fantastic kingdoms to what he have left at home in England - but the heart of the novel is sharp, witty and so uniquely eccentric that it is no wonder that it survived for 300 years.
"Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist."
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