^
Deaths
which occurred on a 19 October:
2006 More than 400 of the last 800 hippopotamuses,
around Lake Edward in the center of Virunga
National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killed by the Mai
Mai rebels since they set up a base there two weeks ago, according
to the Zoological Society of London. The rebels sell the ivory from
the hippopotamuses' canine teeth, and eat and sell their meat, so abundant
now in nearby markets that it sells (illegally) for only 20 US cents per
kilogram. The area used to have the greatest concentration of hippopotamuses
in Africa (22'000 in 1988). —(061023)
2006 UK Marine
Gary Wright, 22 [< photo], two children,
and a suicide bomber, in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, Afghanistan.
—(061020)
2005 A person hit by a car driven
by Ralph Parker, 93, who proves that, whether or not he is any good as a
parker, is a terrible driver. At 20:00 (24:00 UT), in his Chevrolet Malibu,
he stops at a tollbooth on Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg, Forida, inattentive
to the fact that there is a dead body lodged in his windshield (the result
of a collision about 5 km away). According to police, Parker was off by
about 10 miles when asked where he was and by two months on the date, and
he thought the body had just fallen from the sky. Parker's son, 66, said
he was aware his father had been deteriorating mentally, yet Parker's driver's
license was renewed in 2004 through age 99, based on Florida's lax renewal
policy (toughened for the state's 54'000 age-80-and-up drivers only by a
vision test). (By contrast, for example, Florida requires 16 hours' training
every two years for its licensed cosmetologists.) — (051114)
 2005
Trayshaun Harris, 6, Travante Greely Jr., 3, and Joshua Harris, 1,
stripped and thrown 3 m down into San Francisco Bay by their mother, Lashaun
Harris, 23, obeying to “voices in her head”, from fishing Pier
7 along the Embarcadero, in San Francisco, California, at 17:25 (00:25 UT
on 20 Oct). They were living in the Salvation Army's Garden Street shelter
in Oakland. The children's separated father is Travante Greely Sr. —
(051020)
2004 Steve Z. Miller, director of pediatric
emergency medicine at the Columbia University medical school in New York;
Dr. M. Bridget Wagner, an assistant dean at Ohio University's College
of Osteopathic Medicine; Dr. Clark Ator, 39, of Alpine,
Utah, a doctor and a Mormon bishop; Dr. Judith Diffenderfer,
of a clinic in Saginaw Township; Kathleen Gebard, an administrator
for Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine, working out of a
hospital in Dayton; Dr. Richard Sarkin, 54, of Buffalo,
N.Y., a pediatrician; Paul Talley, 44, of Mesquite, a Dallas-area
photographer; Rada Bronson; Matthew Johnson; Toni Sarantino; Mark
Varidin; pilot Kim Sasse Sasse; co-pilot
Jonathan Palmer, 29; aboard AmericanConnection commuter Flight
5966 from St. Louis, Missouri, which crashes at 19:50 as it approaches the
Kirksville Regional Airport [photo >]. Many of the passengers
were on their way to a conference on humanism in medicine. There are only
two survivors, both with broken bones.
2004 Four Iraqi national
guardsmen, by six mortar rounds fired at 09:45 at an Iraqi National
Guard base in Mashahda, Iraq. Some 80 persons are injured.
2004
A US civilian, by a mortar round fired at a US military compound
in Baghdad, Iraq. Seven persons are injured.
2003 Shadi Alwan,
14, Palestinian boy, by Israeli army gunfire, in the Rafah refugee camp,
Gaza Strip, in the evening.
2003 Israelis of the Duchifat
battalion Sergeant Elad Polak, 19, from Kiryat Motzkin;
Sergeant Roi Ya'acov Solomon, 21, from Tel Aviv; and Staff
Sergeant Erez Idan, 20, from Rishon Letzion, ambushed by
three Palestinians of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades close to Road 60, near
the Jewish enclave settlement Ofra and the Arab village Ein Yabrud, in the
West Bank near Ramallah. One Israeli is wounded.
2003 Alija
Izetbegovic, born on 08 August 1925, former President of Bosnia
who declared independence on 06 April 1992, which precipitated a devastating
42-month war against the 2/3 Muslim and Croat majority by the 1/3 Serb minority,
backed by Serbia. — more
2001 Basim Salim Alembasher, 13, Palestinian, by a shell,
fired by Israeli troops stationed at “Nevi Dekalim” enclave settlement.
This happened near the “Altofah” roadblock, west of Basim's home in Khan
Younis, Gaza Strip. Some reports say that Basim was playing with a recently
fired unexploded shell, when it exploded.
2001 Saed Abdulkader
Alaqra, 24, Palestinian, hit in the chest and the abdomen by heavy
machinegun fire from Israeli soldiers stationed in the “Albaloa” area, north
to Ramallah, where Alaqra was in front of his residence.
2001
Marim Sabiah, 28, Abad Abu Sarur, 25, and Musa Abu Abid, 22, Palestinians,
by gunfire from Israeli troops invading Bethleem.
^
2001: 374 of 418 on board refugee boat sinking
in Indonesia.
A
worn-out pump draining water from their leaky Indonesian boat breaks
down in the Indian Ocean. As the wooden vessel fills with water, dozens
of men bailed frantically, some with their bare hands. 200 persons,
mainly terrified women and children are trapped in the overcrowded
hold. The boat sinks in 10 minutes as heavy rain fell on the otherwise
placid sea. Most of those who manage to get off the boat drown after
floating for hours. Of the 418 people aboard — mostly refugees
from Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries — only 44 survive
the disaster.
News
of the tragedy would only be made public three days later. Most of
the immigrants were Iraqis, but that there were also Afghans, Palestinians,
and Algerians on board. On 18 October 2001 the vessel had sailed from
a fishing port in southern Sumatra after the refugees had paid $4000
each for the journey. At about 14:00 the hull sprang a hole. The mechanic
could not fix it and the boat sank.
Thousands of migrants head for Australia every year from Southeast
Asia. Leaky, unseaworthy vessels overloaded with passengers and cargo
routinely leave Indonesian ports without working radios or enough
lifejackets.
On the day the
ship sailed 21 passengers asked to get off and were put ashore on
an Indonesian island. Early in the morning of 19 October, the captain
announced that the engine had stopped and the ship was taking on water.
Maritime disasters, with large
loss of life, are common in Indonesia. Sea safety is often lax and
shipping laws are ignored and rarely enforced. Criminal gangs with
links to corrupt Indonesian authorities routinely pack hundreds of
people into leaky fishing boats for the one-way run to the nearest
Australian territorial waters, about 350 km south of Java.
In April 2000, up to 350 asylum seekers
were feared drowned off northern Australia, although their deaths
were never confirmed. In December 2000, unconfirmed reports said that
two boats carrying up to 163 persons sank in bad weather en route
to Australia's Ashmore Island.
Indonesia does not have a coast guard. Its navy is badly equipped
and has minimal search-and-rescue capability. The heartless Australian
government has recently tried to crack down on asylum seekers from
the Middle East as well as Central and South Asia. Australia has demanded
that Indonesia do more to stop the migrants, and has refused to let
many land on its territory, transferring them to neighboring Pacific
island states for processing. |
2001 Digna Ochoa, leading Mexican human rights lawyer,
murdered. This would increase the pressure on President Fox to demonstrate
that he is committed to human rights. In early November 2001, he would at
long last grant a pardon to peasant ecologists Rodolfo Montiel, 46, and
Teodoro Cabrera, 55, who had been in prison for more than two years. Digna
Ochoa had defended them and accused the army of forcing false confessions
out of them through torture.
2000 Four persons and a suicide
bomber who detonates the explosives he is wearing, near the town
hall of Colombo, Sri Lanka. 23 others are injured. The Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are probably responsible.
1999
Russian planes destroy Chechen military convoy, killing 40 (CNN)
1994 23 personas muertas y 20 heridas por un atentado
suicida de Hamas en Tel Aviv contra un autobús urbano.
1988
Car bomb kills 7 Israelis, wounds 11 near Lebanon border
1986 Samora Moisés Machel, militar y político, presidente
de Mozambique.
1983 Maurice Bishop, prime minister
of Grenada, and others, murdered in coup.
1970
Lázaro Cárdenas, político y militar mexicano.
1954
Max “Mopp” Oppenheimer, German artist born on 01 July
1885.
1949 Más de 4000 muertos y de 100'000 personas
sin hogar a causa de los fuertes temporales que cayeron sobre Guatemala.
1945 Newell Convers Wyeth, born on 22 October 1882,
US painter famous for his illustrations of Treasure Island and
Robin Hood. He dies together with his grandson
when the car he is driving is struck by a train. — MORE
ON WYETH AT ART “4” OCTOBER with
links to images.
^
1943 Some 40 Japanese soldiers as North Borneo
revolts
Local
Chinese and native Suluks rise up against the Japanese occupation
of North Borneo. The revolt, staged in the capital, Jesselton, resulted
in the deaths of 40 Japanese soldiers. The Japanese had begun scooping
up islands in the Dutch East Indies in late 1941. Kuching, on the
northern coast of Borneo, was taken in December; January of '42 saw
the fall of Brunei Bay and Jesselton, also in North Borneo. The British
and Dutch forces on the islands were dealt swift and severe blows.
Attempts by the Allies to hold on to other islands in the region--Malaya,
Sumatra, and Java--began shortly thereafter, with British General
Archibald Wavell commanding a unified force of British, Dutch, and
Australian soldiers. It was a disastrous failure.
The treatment of Allied and civilian prisoners in the Japanese-controlled
islands was horrendous, with hundreds dying of disease and starvation.
The rebellion of Chinese settlers and native Suluks in the Borneo
capital of Jesselton, although delivering a blow to the Japanese to
the tune of 40 dead occupying soldiers, was dealt with quickly and
brutally. The Japanese destroyed dozens of Suluk villages, rounded
up and tortured thousands of civilians, and executed almost 200 without
trial. In one extreme example of cruelty, several dozen Suluk women
and children had their hands tied behind them and were hanged from
their wrists from a pillar of a mosque. They were then shot down by
machine-gun fire. North Borneo would not be liberated until 1945,
mostly the work of Australian forces. The next year, it would be made
a colony of Britain. That region of Borneo controlled by the Dutch
was given sovereignty in 1949 after a rebellion by Indonesian forces.
|
1942 Jan Trampota, Czech artist born on 21 May 1889.
1938 Fidencio Constantino Síntora “el Niño Fidencio”,
of hamlet El Espinazo (where he lived since 1921), municipio de Mina, Nuevo
León state, Mexico, born on 13 November 1898. During his life, and even
more so after his death, he was and is still reputed as a holy worker of
miracle cures, whose seekers flock to El Espinazo on the anniversaries of
his death.
1937 Ernest Rutherford, born on 30 August
1871, British physicist who laid the groundwork for the development of nuclear
physics. He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908.
^
1920 John Reed, born on 22 October
1887, US poet-adventurer whose short life as a revolutionary writer
and activist made him the hero of a generation of radical intellectuals.
Reed, a member of a wealthy Portland
family, was graduated from Harvard in 1910 and began writing for a
Socialist newspaper, The Masses, in 1913. In 1914 he covered
the revolutionary fighting in Mexico and recorded his impressions
in Insurgent Mexico (1914). Frequently arrested for organizing and
defending strikes, he rapidly became established as a radical leader
and helped form the Communist Party in the United States. He covered
World War I for Metropolitan magazine; out of this experience
came The War in Eastern Europe (1916).
He became a close friend of Lenin and was an eyewitness to the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, recording this event in his best known
book, Ten Days That Shook the World (1919). When the US Communist
Party and the Communist Labor Party split in 1919, Reed became the
leader of the latter. Indicted for treason, he escaped to the Soviet
Union and died of typhus; he was buried with other Bolshevik heroes
beside the Kremlin wall. Following his death the Communist Party formed
many John Reed clubs, associations of writers and artists, in US cities.
|
1914 Julio Argentino Roca, militar y político argentino.
1913 Alejandro Pidal y Mon, político y escritor
español.
1897 Anton Müller, Austrian artist
born on 29 June 1853.
1890 Sir Richard Francis Burton,
viajero, escritor y filólogo inglés.
1890 Emile
Mathieu, mathematician
1878 Bienaymé,
mathematician
1875 Sir Charles Wheatstone, físico
e inventor británico.
^
1864 Rebs and Yanks at Battle of Cedar Creek
Union General
Philip Sheridan averts a near disaster in the Shenandoah Valley when
he rallies his troops after a surprise attack by General Jubal Early
and scores a major victory that almost destroys Early's army. Through
the summer of 1864, Early moved his army with impunity around the
Shenandoah and surrounding area. General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant
dispatched Sheridan to take care of Early's army, which was distracting
Grant and preventing him from applying the full pressure of the Union
army on the forces of Robert E. Lee around Petersburg, Virginia. Sheridan
performed his task well, defeating Early at Winchester, Fischer's
Hill, and Tom's Brook. By mid-October, Sheridan's troops were busy
destroying the rich harvest of the Shenandoah to deny food supplies
to Lee's army. Sheridan departed for a military conference in Washington.
Before he returned, Early launched a devastating attack on the surprised
Yankees. Throughout the morning of 19 October the Rebels drove the
Union troops back more than three miles. By late morning, Early slowed
the attack despite the urgings of General John B. Gordon, who insisted
that Early press his assault to achieve total destruction of the Federal
force. Returning from Washington, Sheridan heard the battle from Winchester
and began a furious, 12-mile ride to the front. Along the way, he
met his straggling troops and retreating soldiers and turned them
back toward the battle for a counterattack. This effort, which was
later called "Sheridan's ride," became legendary. After Early cut
off his assault, an eerie silence settled on the battlefield. Sheridan
orchestrated his counterattack by 4 p.m., and it was devastating.
The Yankees tore through the Confederate lines and sent Early's army
in retreat. Sheridan lost 5,500 out of 31,000 troops. Early lost almost
3000 of the 22'000 men in his command, but nearly all of the Confederate
artillery was captured in the Union counterattack. It was the last
major battle in the campaign, and Early was never able to mount a
serious offensive again. |
1785 Jean Hugues Taraval, French artist born on 27 February
1729. — more
with links to images.
1781 Major General Lord Charles
Cornwallis surrenders to George Washington and Count de Rochambeau at Yorktown,
Va. Cornwallis surrenders 7157 troops, including sick and wounded, and 840
sailors, along with 244 artillery pieces. Losses in this battle had been
light on both sides. The Revolutionary War is effectively ended.
1758
Masucco Agostino Masucci (or Masucco), Italian artist born in 1691.
^
1745 Jonathan Swift,
born in Dublin on 30 November 1667, he was an Irish author and Anglican
dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin (from 1713), the foremost
prose satirist in the English language.
Swift's father, Jonathan Swift the elder,
was an Englishman who had settled in Ireland after the Stuart Restoration
(1660) and become steward of the King's Inns, Dublin. In 1664 he married
Abigail Erick, who was the daughter of an English clergyman. In the
spring of 1667 Jonathan the elder died suddenly, leaving his wife,
baby daughter, and an unborn son to the care of his brothers. The
younger Jonathan Swift thus grew up fatherless and dependent on the
generosity of his uncles. His education was not neglected, however,
and at the age of six he was sent to Kilkenny School, then the best
in Ireland. In 1682 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he was
granted his bachelor of arts degree in February 1686 speciali gratia,
his degree being a device often used when a student's record failed,
in some minor respect, to conform to the regulations.
He continued in residence at
Trinity College as a candidate for his master of arts degree until
February 1689. But the Roman Catholic disorders that had begun to
spread through Dublin after the Revolution of 1688 in Protestant England
caused Swift to seek security in England, and he soon became a member
of the household of a distant relative of his mother, Sir William
Temple [25 Apr 1628 – 27 Jan 1899], at Moor Park, Surrey. Swift
was to remain at Moor Park intermittently until Temple's death.
Temple was engaged in writing his memoirs
and preparing some of his essays for publication,and he had Swift
act as a kind of secretary. During his residence at Moor Park, Swift
twice returned to Ireland, and during the second of these visits,
he took orders in the Anglican church, being ordained priest in January
1695. At the end of the same month he was appointed vicar of Kilroot,
near Belfast. Swift came to intellectual maturity at Moor Park, with
Temple's rich library at his disposal. Here, too, he met Esther Johnson
(the future Stella), the daughter of Temple's widowed housekeeper.
In 1692, through Temple's good offices, Swift received the degree
of MA at the University of Oxford.
Between 1691 and 1694 Swift wrote a number of poems, notably six odes.
But his true genius did not find expression until he turned from verse
to prose satire and composed, mostly at Moor Park between 1696 and
1699, A Tale of a Tub, one of his major works. Published
anonymously in 1704, this work was made up of three associated pieces:
the Tale itself, a satire against “the numerous and
gross corruptions in religion and learning”; the mock-heroic“Battle
of the Books”; and the “Discourse Concerning the Mechanical
Operation of the Spirit,”which ridiculed the manner of worship
and preaching of religious enthusiasts at that period. In the“Battle
of the Books,” Swift supports the ancients in the longstanding
dispute about the relative merits of ancient versus modern literature
and culture. But A Tale of a Tub is the most impressive of
the three compositions. This work is outstanding for its exuberance
of satiric wit and energy and is marked by an incomparable command
of stylistic effects, largely in the nature of parody. Swift saw the
realm of culture and literature threatened by zealous pedantry, while
religion, which for him meant rational Anglicanism, suffered attack
from both Roman Catholicism and the Nonconformist (Dissenting) churches.
In the Tale he proceeded to trace all these dangers to a
single source: the irrationalities that disturb man's highest faculties,
reason and common sense.
After Temple's
death, Swift returned to Dublin as chaplain and secretary to the Earl
of Berkeley, who was then going to Ireland as a lord justice. During
the ensuing years he was in England on some four occasions (in 1701,
1702, 1703, and 1707 to 1709) and won wide recognition in London for
his personal charm and his wit as a writer. He had resigned his position
as vicar of Kilroot, but early in 1700 he was preferred to several
posts in the Irish church. His public writings of this period show
that he kept in close touch with affairs in both Ireland and England.
Among them is the essay “Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions
between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome,” in which
Swift defended the English constitutional balance of power between
the monarchy and the two houses of Parliament as a bulwark against
tyranny. In London he became increasingly well known through several
works: his religious and political essays; A Tale of a Tub; and certain
impish works, including the “Bickerstaff” pamphlets of
1708–09, which put an end to the career of John Partridge, a
popular astrologer, by first prophesying his death and then describing
it in circumstantial detail. Swift's works brought him to the attention
of a circle of Whig writers led by Joseph Addison, but Swift was uneasy
about many policies of the Whig administration. He was a Whig by birth,
education, and political principle, but he was also passionately loyal
to the Anglican church, and he came to view with apprehension the
Whigs' growing determination to yield ground to the Nonconformists.
A momentous period began for Swift
when in 1710 he once again found himself in London. A Tory ministry
headed by Robert Harley (later Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John
(later Viscount Bolingbroke) was replacing that of the Whigs. The
new administration, bent on bringing hostilities with France to a
conclusion, was also assuming a more protective attitude toward the
Church of England. Swift's reactions to such a rapidly changing world
are vividly recorded in his Journal to Stella, a series of
letters written between his arrival in England in 1710 and 1713, which
he addressed to Esther Johnson and her companion, Rebecca Dingley,
who were now living in Dublin. The astute Harley made overtures to
Swift and won him over to the Tories. But Swift did not thereby renounce
his essentially Whiggish convictions regarding the nature of government.
The old Tory theory of the divine right of kings had no claim upon
him. The ultimate power, he insisted, derived from the people as a
whole and, in the English constitution, had come to be exercised jointly
by king, lords, and commons.
Swift
quickly became the Tories' chief pamphleteer and political writer
and, by the end of October 1710, had taken over the Tory journal,
The Examiner, which he continued to edit until 14 June 1711.
He then began preparing a pamphlet in support of the Tory drive for
peace with France. This, “The Conduct of the Allies,”
appeared on 27 November 1711, some weeks before the motion in favor
of a peace was finally carried in Parliament. Swift was rewarded for
his services in April 1713 with his appointment as dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral in Dublin.
With the death
of Queen Anne [06 Feb 1665 – 01 Aug 1714] and the accession
of George I [28 May 1660 – 11 Jun 1727], the Tories were a ruined
party, and Swift's career in England was at an end. He withdrew to
Ireland, where he was to pass most of the remainder of his life. After
a period of seclusion in his deanery, Swift gradually regained his
energy. He turned again to verse, which he continued to write throughout
the 1720s and early '30s, producing the impressive poem “Verses
on the Death of Doctor Swift,” among others.  By
1720 he was also showing a renewed interest in public affairs. In
his Irish pamphlets of this period he came to grips with many of the
problems, social and economic, then confronting Ireland. His tone
and manner varied from direct factual presentation to exhortation,
humor, and bitter irony. Swift blamed Ireland's backward state chiefly
on the blindness of the English government; but he also insistently
called attention to the things that the Irish themselves might do
in order to better their lot. Of his Irish writings, the Drapier's
Letters (1724–1725) and A Modest Proposal are
the best known. The first is a series of letters attacking the English
government for its scheme to supply Ireland with copper halfpence
and farthings. A Modest Proposal is a grimly ironic letter
of advice in which a public-spirited citizen suggests that Ireland's
overpopulation and dire economic conditions could be alleviated if
the babies of poor Irish parents were sold as edible delicacies to
be eaten by the rich.
Certain events in Swift's private life must also be mentioned. Stella
(Esther Johnson) had continued to live with Rebecca Dingley after
moving to Ireland in 1700 or 1701. It has sometimes been asserted
that Stella and Swift were secretly married in 1716, but they did
not live together, and there is no evidence to support this story.
It was friendship that Swift always expressed in speaking of Stella,
not romantic love. The question may be asked, was this friendship
strained as a result of the appearance in his life of another woman,
Esther Vanhomrigh, whom he named Vanessa? He had met Vanessa during
his London visit of 1707–1709, and in 1714 she had, despite
all his admonitions, insisted on following him to Ireland. Her letters
to Swift reveal her passion for him, though at the time of her death
in 1723 she had apparently turned against him because he insisted
on maintaining a distant attitude toward her. Stella died in 1728.
Scholars are still much in the dark concerning the precise relationships
between these three people, and the various melodramatic theories
that have been suggested rest upon no solid ground.
Swift's greatest satire, Gulliver's Travels, was published
in 1726. It is uncertain when he began this work, but it appears from
his correspondence that he was writing in earnest by 1721 and had
finished the whole by August 1725. Its success was immediate. Then,
and since, it has succeeded in entertaining (and intriguing) all classes
of readers.
Swift's masterpiece
was originally published under the title Travels into Several
Remote Nations of the World. This work is the most brilliant
as well as the most bitter and controversial of his satires. In each
of its four books the hero, Lemuel Gulliver, embarks on a voyage;
but shipwreck or some other hazard usually casts him up on a strange
land. Book I takes him to Lilliput, where he wakes to find himself
the giant prisoner of the six-inch-high Lilliputians. Man-Mountain,
as Gulliver is called, ingratiates himself with the arrogant, self-important
Lilliputians when he wades into the sea and captures an invasion fleet
from neighboring Blefescu [image >]; but he falls
into disfavor when he puts out a fire in the empress' palace by urinating
on it. Learning of a plot to charge him with treason, he escapes from
the island.
Book II takes Gulliver
to Brobdingnag, where the inhabitants are giants. He is cared for
kindly by a nine-year-old girl, Glumdalclitch, but his tiny size exposes
him to dangers and indignities, such as getting his head caught in
a squalling baby's mouth. Also, the giants' small physical imperfections
(such as large pores) are highly visible and disturbing to him. Picked
up by an eagle and dropped into the sea, he manages to return home.
In Book III Gulliver visits the floating
island of Laputa, whose absent-minded inhabitants are so preoccupied
with higher speculations that they are in constant danger of accidental
collisions. He visits the Academy of Lagado (a travesty of England's
Royal Society), where he finds its lunatic savants engaged in such
impractical studies as reducing human excrement to the original food.
In Luggnagg he meets the Struldbruggs, a race of immortals, whose
eternal senility is brutally described.
Book IV takes Gulliver to the Utopian land of the Houyhnhnms, grave,
rational, and virtuous horses. There is also another race on the island,
uneasily tolerated and used for menial services by the Houyhnhnms.
These are the vicious and physically disgusting Yahoos. Although Gulliver
pretends at first not to recognize them, he is forced at last to admit
the Yahoos are human beings. He finds perfect happiness with the Houyhnhnms,
but as he is only a more advanced Yahoo, he is rejected by them in
general assembly and is returned to England, where he finds himself
no longer able to tolerate the society of his fellow human beings.
[< 4 Yahoos pulling a Houyhnhnm on a kind of sledge]
Gulliver's Travels' matter-of-fact
style and its air of sober reality confer on it an ironic depth that
defeats oversimple explanations. Is it essentially comic, or is it
a misanthropic depreciation of mankind? Swift certainly seems to use
the various races and societies Gulliver encounters in his travels
to satirize many of the errors, follies, and frailties that human
beings are prone to. The warlike, disputatious, but essentially trivial
Lilliputians in Book I and the deranged, impractical pedants and intellectuals
in Book III are shown as imbalanced beings lacking common sense and
even decency. The Houyhnhnms, by contrast, are the epitome of reason
and virtuous simplicity, but Gulliver's own proud identification with
these horses and his subsequent disdain for his fellow humans indicates
that he too has become imbalanced, and that human beings are simply
incapable of aspiring to the virtuous rationality that Gulliver has
glimpsed. Mankind, Swift may be suggesting, must content itself with
a state that lies somewhere between the bestial and degenerate humanity
of the Yahoos and the inhuman virtue and rationality of the Houyhnhnms.
The closing years of Swift's life have
been the subject of some misrepresentation, and stories have been
told of his ungovernable temper and lack of self-control. It has been
suggested that he was insane. From youth he had suffered from what
is now known to have been Ménière's disease, an affliction
of the semicircular canals of the ears, causing periods of dizziness
and nausea. But his mental powers were in no way affected, and he
remained active throughout most of the 1730s, Dublin's foremost citizen
and Ireland's great patriot dean. In the autumn of 1739 a great celebration
was held in his honor. He had, however, begun to fail physically and
later suffered a paralytic stroke, with subsequent aphasia. In 1742
he was declared incapable of caring for himself, and guardians were
appointed.
Swift's intellectual
roots lay in the rationalism that was characteristic of late 17th-century
England. This rationalism, with its strong moral sense, its emphasis
on common sense, and its distrust of emotionalism, gave him the standards
by which he appraised human conduct. His moral principles are scarcely
original; his originality lies rather in the quality of his satiric
imagination and his literary art. Swift's literary tone varies from
the humorous to the savage,but each of his satiric compositions is
marked by concentrated power and directness of impact. His command
of a great variety of prose styles is unfailing, as is his power of
inventing imaginary episodes and all their accompanying details. Swift
rarely speaks in his own person; almost always he states his views
by ironic indiscretion through some imagined character like Lemuel
Gulliver or the morally obtuse citizen of A Modest Proposal.
Thus Swift's descriptive passages reflect the minds that are describing
just as much as the things described. Pulling in different directions,
this irony creates the tensions that are characteristic of Swift's
best work, and reflects his vision of humanity's ambiguous position
between bestiality and reasonableness.
IMAGES: Gulliver
tied down, by Vibert
[30 Sep 1840 – 28 Jul 1902] — Laputa
— Caricature of George III as The
King of Brobdingnag observing tiny Gulliver sailing.
SWIFT ONLINE: |
|
Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's
Travels
A
Modest Proposal
A
Tale of a Tub |
The Lady's Dressing Room
The Battle of the Books, and Other Short Pieces
A
Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English
Tongue |
^ 1682 Thomas Browne,
English physician and author born on 19 Oct 1605. He is best known
for his book of reflections, Religio Medici.
After studying at Winchester and Oxford, Browne probably was an assistant
to a doctor near Oxford. After taking his M.D. at Leiden in 1633,
he practiced at Shibden Hall near Halifax, in Yorkshire, from 1634,
until he was admitted as an M.D. at Oxford; he settled in Norwich
in 1637. At Shibden Hall Browne had begun his parallel career as a
writer with Religio Medici, a journal largely about the mysteries
of God, nature, and man, which he himself described as “a private
exercise directed to myself.” It circulated at first only in
manuscript among his friends. In 1642, however, it was printed without
his permission in London and so had to be acknowledged, an authorized
version being published in 1643. An immediate success in England,
the book soon circulated widely in Europe in a Latin translation and
was also translated into Dutch and French.
Browne began early to compile notebooks of miscellaneous jottings
and, using these as a quarry, he compiled his second and larger work,
Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or, Enquiries into Very many received Tenets,
and commonly presumed truths (1646), often known as Browne's
Vulgar Errors. In it he tried to correct many popular beliefs
and superstitions. In 1658 he published his third book, two treatises
on antiquarian subjects, Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall, or, A Discourse
of the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk, and The
Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunciall Lozenge, or Net-Work Plantations
of the Ancients. Around the theme of the urns he wove a tissue
of solemn reflections on death and the transience of human fame in
his most luxuriant style; in The Garden, in which he traces
the history of horticulture from the garden of Eden to the Persian
gardens in the reign of Cyrus, he is especially fascinated by the
quincunx. A smaller work of great beauty and subtlety, entitled A
Letter to a Friend, Upon occasion of the Death of his Intimate Friend,
was published posthumously in 1690.
Browne had always been a Royalist, and his fame both as doctor and
as writer gained him a knighthood when Charles II visited Norwich
in 1671. He seldom left the city but corresponded with such men of
learning as John Evelyn [31 Oct 1620
– 27 Feb 1706], Sir William Dugdale [12 Sep 1605 – 10
Feb 1686], and John Aubrey [12 Sep 1605 – 10 Feb 1686]. Most
of his surviving letters, however, were written to his eldest son,
Edward Browne, and these give an intimate picture of his medical practice
and his relations with his family.
Browne has been criticized for the part he played as a witness in
the condemnation
as witches of Rose Cullender and Amy Denny, who were hanged on
17 March 1662 (not 1664 as incorrectly dated in the only eyewitness
account of the trial: A
Tryal of Witches... ). Browne not only did not include the
belief in witches among the vulgar errors which he endeavored to expose,
but, on the contrary, in Religio Medici, had written: "I
have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches. They
that doubt of them do not only deny them, but spirits; and are obliquely,
and upon consequence, a sort not of infidels, but Atheists."
THOMAS BROWNE ONLINE: |
| Christian
Morals
The Garden of Cyrus
Hydriotaphia: Urn
Burial
Pseudodoxia
Epidemica |
Religio Medici
Religio
Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend
Religio
Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend |
1609 Jacob Arminius, 49, the Dutch theologian who lent
his name to the beliefs (known today at Arminianism) which oppose the major
tenets of Protestant Reformed (Calvinist) theology.
1586 Danti,
mathematician
1553 Bonifazio Veronese de Pitati,
Italian artist born in 1487.
1298 Rindfleish--140
Jews of Heilbron Germany are murdered
1216 King John of England,
born on 24 December 1167, one of the most detested of English kings, dies
of dysentery at Newark and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry III
[01 Oct 1207 – 16 Nov 1272]. Among
other achievements, King John was excommunicated by Pope
Innocent III [1161 – 16 Jul 1216] in November 1209, defeated at
the Battle of Bouvines (27 July 1214) by French King Philippe Auguste [21
Aug 1165 – 14 July 1223], and forced by his own barons to sign the
Magna Carta on 17 June 1215.
|
^
On
a 19 October:
