Book Title: Gulliver's Travels
Author: Jonathan Swift
It was the period around the break of the eighteenth century, in pre-industrial Europe. Olden days, nascent notions of science, archaic styles of raiment, poetry, art and prose, the constant tug and pull of the Church with a rebellious public, the state maintaining a subtle but favorable balance between a minuscule chunk of the various deviations made by visionaries from its established codes, dubbing these as the 'manifestation of its progressive views', and the core of its existence, its hegemonic presence. There was a moat between the autocracy's intentions and the public's perception of them, so that the physical moat between the Royal Palace and the towns and countryside was much revered and respected.
Or, if I may say so safely, at least to the extent, that a world-renowned book published by a progressive Irish satirist emphasizes his pride for his nation with a great deal of force.
Which made me wonder- was it Swift speaking through Lemuel Gulliver? Or his most penetrative form of satire, which made Gulliver out as a staunch patriot, while Swift, watching bemusedly from the background, could chuckle silently at his newly-fabricated 'Model Citizen of the English Nation'?
Was it that imperialism was a fold in the fan of autocracy, and that while, perceptibly, the subjects were enjoying its breeze, they didn't consider questioning its multiple prongs?
Did it hold true, then, even three centuries ago, that among the thicket of problems, man owned to just those that perturbed him?
It may be, or it may not. I don't own a time-machine- I was just hypothesizing. For the authentic facts, I will have to rake up the internet, or for better results, multiple large libraries. But it does bring up a new possibility and dimension, and I will leave it there.
Speaking of hypotheses, I was amazed at the vision of a 17th-century satirist. 'Modern' is extremely well-defined in our minds. Of course, statisticians would vouch that anything that's modern, belongs to this century, was born in the past ten to twenty years (here, there could be some differences of opinion) and is still trending in some pocket of the world today. But there are also modern thought-processes and modern tastes for ancient thought-processes! So I'm not risking being politically incorrect, when I say that the third part of 'Gulliver's Travels', his journey to Laputa, illustrates Swift's 'modern' understanding of gravity. As he went on to describe the mechanical working of the floating island, making the discovery of lodestone the basis of his conjecture, I was struck by the power of construing existing facts and creating scientifically functioning fiction from them. It was believable, it was probably what Swift believed, but what makes it special is that he used a part of the truth, similarly acknowledged, to create his own version of the truth. That was brave, indeed, and a sampling of scientific thinking in the creative sphere.
And I mulled over the message that this observation conveyed- that what seems complete today, is still a fraction of what it will look like in the future. Progress is unstoppable, discoveries are unstoppable, and so is imagination. If everything was incomplete, and people were waiting for real conclusions to be drawn, it's a burst of faith that can help an author burst out of the bubble of wait, and write out his own hypothesis.
That's what writers of fantasy do, I know, but do appreciate, that fantasy, is born out of a conscious acknowledgment of deviating from the proven truth, while a combination of 'work-in-progress' theories and 'sci-imaginative' hypothesis is an example of letting the imagination take its course -restrained, but sure-footed.
That's my take on it, anyway.
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