Books: The Hating Dean

SWIFT—Carl Van Doren—Viking ($3). One of the greatest writers of the language, Jonathan Swift has never had an adequate biographer. Carl Van Doren’s book about him will not be the best or the last, but it is a reminder of what a subject has been so long neglected. Critic Van Doren has not attempted an exhaustive account, writes without footnotes or scholarly impedimenta. Swift is less a narrative biography than an interpretation of character.

The human centre of Swift’s life—his relations with “Stella”‘ and “Vanessa”‘— has always been a mystery, is not cleared up by Van Doren. Two women were in love with Swift all their lives; he married nobody. Van Doren states the difficulties, then begs the question. “He may have been impotent, gossip suggests . . . . he may have had syphilis . . . he may . . . have married Stella privately. . . . But all these arguments … are … as good as another. Not one of them is as simple and sufficient as the conclusion that Swift . . . was only, in marriage as in other matters, extraordinary.”

Irish-born, greatest man in Ireland of his day, Swift “never thought of himself as Irish, and always resented it if others thought him so. Though he had been born in Ireland, he had been a member of the English gentry plantedthere to rule it.” He never regarded himself as primarily a writer. He published only one piece in his life (the pamphlet Proposal for the Extension of Religion) signed with his own name. Though a minister of the Church of England, Swift was born, says Van Doren, with a genius for hate. “Hatred was native to Swift, as love was to St. Francis. If Swift has been more frequently misunderstood than St. Francis, it is because men are allowed to love without giving reasons for it, but not to hate.” His bitterest satire has become a harmless nursery tale (Gulliver’s Travels). One of the most lucid minds of a lucid century, he died insane.

The Author. Carl Van Doren, 45, one-time literary editor of the Nation, long-time lecturer on English and U. S. literature at Columbia, is head editor of the Literary Guild, husband to able Literary Editrix Irita Van Doren of the New York Herald Tribune. Author Van Doren has always liked Swift, has been trying for years to find time to do a book about him. Other books: The Life of Thomas Love Peacock, The American Novel, The Roving Critic, Many Minds, James Branch Cabell.