Although I greatly enjoy the pages of Voltaire and those of several of his disciples, it is those of Swift that I believe elevates irony to a truly noble manifestation. There is no doubt: it takes genius to handle irony; but this mocking irony, which provokes a malicious puckering of the lips, is not a first-rate expression of the spirit, unfortunately. Swift’s irony rarely causes this pleasant effect; more often than not, what it causes is astonishment. It is hard to find anyone who resembles him… Swift’s lines seem to repel jokes of any kind; the intelligence that understands them immerses itself in a perplexity that doubts what it reads; it is something very, very far from mockery, more like aggression. From this, we note: if Voltaire’s irony bothers many; there is no one who escapes Jonathan Swift’s irony unscathed.
Jonathan Swift’s Irony
