Gulliver's Fifth & Sixth Voyages 1732 Studios

Hungarian · Capillária

Hetedik fejezet

Chapter Seven

66 sentences

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  1. 1

    ARGUMENT: Of earthly love.

    ARGUMENTArgumentargument · noun, nominative, singularhead of the phrase

    Chapter-heading word meaning 'summary/argument' of the chapter to follow.

    Athea · determinerdeterminer of szerelem
    földiearthlyföldi · adjective, nominative, singulardepends on szerelem
    szerelemloveszerelem · noun, nominative, singularparallel clause to ARGUMENT
  2. 2

    Of the lord of creation.

  3. 3

    Beauty and struggle.

  4. 4

    The war of the sexes.

  5. 5

    Woman considered as an object of enjoyment.

  6. 6

    Some observations of Opula's; the Author's consternation.

  7. 7

    The extermination of the bulloks.

  8. 8

    An objective description and characterization of several bullok types.

  9. 9

    Upon another occasion of our conversing, wherein she made mention of that pleasant and novel intoxication — each fresh variation upon the intricate composition of pleasures being reckoned, in the life-art of the oihas, an event of no small moment — which my latest discourse had awakened in her, Opula desired that I should speak at greater length of those beings who, by all that had gone before, seemed relatively to bear the closest resemblance to "creatures of feeling" (among them the word "reason" being supplanted by "feeling" as the highest form of life), that is to say, to resemble them, and whom I had named "women": for this word, I found, had its effect upon her, inasmuch as, in their tongue, to have an effect signifies that one comprehends the concept the word denotes — a thing whereof I had occasion to satisfy myself.

  10. 10

    Being a trained thinker, well versed in method, I understood plainly that it was not, upon this occasion, the social condition of women that concerned her, but woman herself, in the earthly, or rather the dry-land, sense — woman, and that relation which binds her to man: love.

  11. 11

    This latter phenomenon, or state, I had no need to define for her; its properties she knew exceeding well, since, as I have mentioned, the oihas are, very nearly all of them, in love with one another.

  12. 12

    I was candid, and had no wish to flatter my mistress, when I opened my character-sketch by confessing that of so great a development of female beauty — or, more properly, of so many possibilities of beauty — as I had witnessed in Capillária, I could never have dreamt in my ardently loved country, which was nevertheless ever renowned for its handsome women.

  13. 13

    In this I acknowledged, without quite meaning to, that the chief characteristic and distinguishing mark of the sex in question is, among us also — at least in the eye of the lord of creation — beauty, or rather that power of attraction which it exerts upon the male.

  14. 14

    Here I had intended to digress upon the conceptual definition of "beauty," citing certain of the eternal propositions of Leibniz, Kant, and Schopenhauer touching this matter.

  15. 15

    But Opula took not the smallest interest in it; her interposed questions went only to this: whether the concept of "beauty" and the concept of "woman" coincided in our thinking (in our "desires," as they phrase it in their tongue).

  16. 16

    I was obliged to own that, for the most part, this was so, although...

  17. 17

    But she did not wait for me to draw the distinction between "disinterested" and "interested" — she was curious only (I learned afterward why) as to what effect that which we, dry-land bulloks, call female beauty produces in us.

  18. 18

    I stared at her, taken aback: for this was the first occasion upon which my mistress had applied to men that shaming appellation, betraying that she believed she had recognized the resemblance between us, earthly men, and those loathsome vermin.

  19. 19

    But Opula troubled herself little over my indignant astonishment; in a commanding manner she gave me to understand that I must answer.

  20. 20

    I told her, then, that female beauty does indeed exert a great effect upon us, though this effect the leading minds of the human race hold, from the standpoint of development, in no great esteem (saving only those apostles of eugenics who preach doctrines of doubtful worth).

  21. 21

    I told her that, in keeping with this, the striving after bodily beauty is one of the chief efforts of the female sex, and one of the mightiest components of selection.

  22. 22

    I made use of the occasion to prove thereby also the inferior rank of woman, as a consequence of her oppression.

  23. 23

    Woman, lacking nobler ambitions, finds her sole and impoverished content of life exhausted in this: that she please the men at any cost, and by her beauty rouse in them passions which, in the hours of his repose, she turns to her own account.

  24. 24

    I described that pitiable, petty warfare which woman wages for the favor of man.

  25. 25

    I quoted the words of several eminent sociologists and feminists, who, lashing themselves into the noblest anger, scourge one of the greatest sins of human society: that it regards woman as an object of enjoyment, and thereby degrades her, and bars the way to her development.

  26. 26

    In a few bold strokes I sketched the life of the great cities — the savage chase and pursuit after the instruments of pleasure and delight, at the center of which stands the beautiful woman, as the gauge of wealth and well-being.

  27. 27

    I spoke of the senseless cult of woman of the eighteenth century, whose tradition may be felt even today in many an awkward custom.

  28. 28

    Male vanity regards the beautiful woman as an article of luxury, a bauble: it is natural, then, that woman, her lesser understanding failing to perceive the true direction of her human calling, should strive only to enjoy those momentary advantages which her bodily beauty secures her, without concerning herself for the future of mankind.

  29. 29

    Disputing with myself, I made a subject of criticism of that objection, that this holds true only in the highest, and therefore the narrowest, circles of society; that it is a symptom characteristic of a certain stratum merely, and as such can present no danger to society as a whole.

  30. 30

    The toiling millions do not regard woman as an article of luxury; they esteem her as wife and mother; they set her to labor in the home and upon the farm, granting her thereby the opportunity to be a human being, a faithful companion to man in the struggles of life.

  31. 31

    Unhappily, however, we observe that this holds true only so long as woman is truly no more than a human being, and not a woman; the instant her peculiarly feminine nature — crudely, from the bodily point of view — asserts itself the more emphatically, upon occasion, selection at once sets in motion toward those higher strata.

  32. 32

    The uppermost stratum picks out for itself, from the lower stratum, the bodily more perfect specimens — whoever dwells in the great cities knows well that the aristocracy of beauty is not the same thing as the aristocracy of birth and rank: one need only think of those dizzying careers run by portresses' daughters and down-at-heel nursemaids, whom the expert eye of man raised up out of obscurity, that they might afterward shine forth, as demons ensnaring hearts, in a setting of costly furs and silks.

  33. 33

    At this point my mistress again broke in upon me: it was, it seemed, the word "unhappily" that stopped her, as an emotional coloring upon a purely logical definition.

  34. 34

    She asked me whether I truly held it a matter for regret that the portress's daughter or the nursemaid in question had been beautiful.

  35. 35

    For if this were so, then I, together with my so-called "thinking" fellow-bulloks, must wish that women should be not ever more beautiful, but ever more ugly — since, upon my own showing, only this, evidently, could secure peaceable cooperation and the advancement of the human race.

  36. 36

    The question so astonished me that I could not, upon the sudden, make answer.

  37. 37

    Only after some minutes had I collected myself sufficiently to speak of the "war of the sexes"; but my mistress, more vehemently now, again broke in, declaring that she was no longer curious, after this, to hear of the "war of the sexes," since upon that matter she had already formed her opinion.

  38. 38

    From what I had related, it was plain — as indeed she had at once suspected — that we, dry-land bulloks, were simply envious of our women, they being, relatively, more beautiful, more perfect, and happier than we, and thus reigning over us, which is, moreover, the natural order of things.

  39. 39

    Our disquiet springs simply from this, that we have recognized this subordinate condition in which we live, but in our affliction (which word, in the oiha tongue, signifies also "folly") we fail to perceive that we have confounded the facts.

  40. 40

    That which I had prattled concerning woman as an object of "enjoyment," as bauble and luxury, sounds as though the shadow should call itself the mother that bore the light.

  41. 41

    As for the "down-at-heel nursemaid" and the "portress's daughter," she did not understand why I should speak of her with contempt, when I myself had owned that the selfsame result — wealth and well-being, which man attains only by the utmost effort and labor — she takes into her possession as a rightful holding, simply by the fact that she exists; that her mere existence, therefore, is in essence the very thing which, in man, I call "merit," "strength."

  42. 42

    For woman — meaning thereby a true, that is a perfect, that is to say a beautiful woman — the fact that she lives is at once her merit and her right to life; naturally she lives by that for which she lives: by enjoyment and pleasure.

  43. 43

    For indeed I myself do not, in earnest, believe it, when I speak of woman as an object — and though she had not put the question to me expressly, she was quite certain that earthly man, when for the sake of those pleasures I had named "the service of love" he chooses himself a woman, and arrays her in silks and velvets, gives his preference to that woman who herself, in heightened measure, takes her enjoyment of love — without which the man's pleasure is imperfect, nay, in a certain respect impossible.

  44. 44

    But how can a thing be an "object of enjoyment," which itself takes enjoyment?

  45. 45

    Only a sick or a witless understanding could assert such a thing.

  46. 46

    I had spoken of silks and velvet and gold, with which we flood our women "in exchange" for their love — but by what right may I call that transaction an "exchange," in which the one party gives nothing whereby she deprives herself?

  47. 47

    In this transaction, the woman only receives from the man — outward joys and pleasures, only for her willingness to undergo and accept inward joys and pleasures — what else, pray, does she give the man, but that right to — give? that peculiar right, which the man believes to be joy and pleasure, until exhaustion and mortal weariness convince him that he has performed a duty, and not exercised a right: that he has obeyed a compulsion, and not satisfied a desire.

  48. 48

    Now then: whosoever takes, without giving, is no "object of enjoyment," no "possession," and no "bauble" — but simply a conqueror, the stronger party, a being of a higher order.

  49. 49

    This is no contract or agreement upon a mutual footing: it is simply a victory, the victory of a more perfect kind over the less perfect.

  50. 50

    Nothing characterizes the unspeakable stupidity of the bullok better than this: that he desires to liberate woman, instead of liberating himself — that he should enter into rivalry with woman, or at the least imitate her, so as to steal her weapons, striving in his backwardness to attain that development which, by her unwitting sacrifice, she alone has rendered possible.

  51. 51

    And Opula, making use of the time while I gathered myself to collect arguments against her, turned to that very matter I had most dreaded: the seeking out of a resemblance between us, earthly men, and those monsters whom Capillária calls bulloks.

  52. 52

    Only the sense of duty, that I must suppress nothing of what I had seen and experienced in the course of my adventurous voyages, gives me the strength to follow her upon this road, whereon proud manly self-regard cannot set foot without blushing.

  53. 53

    Unhappily, I was compelled to satisfy myself that whatever facts she related, in this connection, touching the bulloks, answered to the truth: I cannot, then, pass it over in silence, as an idle sally of temper, or a fruitless play of the imagination.

  54. 54

    Opula spoke of the manner in which they are wont to take possession of those castles and palaces which the bulloks build to the end of reaching the surface of the sea.

  55. 55

    When the tower has attained a certain height, and promises to make a fit dwelling for the oihas, several oihas unexpectedly penetrate into the interior of the building, and at once begin to pour forth that light fluid whereof I have already made mention in the foregoing chapter, and which greatly resembles certain perfumes in use in Europe.

  56. 56

    It is a strange thing that the bulloks, notwithstanding a thousand years of experience, never perceive what is toward, nor think of defending themselves.

  57. 57

    At the appearance of the oihas, a great alarm and bustle arise in the ranks of the busily laboring creatures: they jerk their heads about, quiver their clumsy limbs, and utter certain peculiar squeaking sounds.

  58. 58

    The stupefying agent, wherewith they smoke them out, seems at first to produce a heightened excitement — and they, plainly, know whence this excitement derives, without foreseeing the outcome.

  59. 59

    Abandoning the rising cornices, they begin to circle about the oihas, at an ever quickening pace, all the while pulling the strangest grimaces.

  60. 60

    Thereupon they commonly fall upon one another, tugging and tearing at each other — and this brawling degenerates most of all whenever, as sometimes happens, one bullok, whether by chance or by design, collides with an oiha (these they call struborgs, or strindbergs).

  61. 61

    At such times a veritable ring of bulloks forms about the oiha who seems to have been assailed — the bulloks throw up a rampart of defense, a fearful din arises, and in the confusion they often kill one another outright.

  62. 62

    The most violent among them, the so-called gallants, savagely cuff and tear at the strindbergs: according to Opula's account, the oihas laugh themselves to death at this curious spectacle, that these creatures should wish to defend them, at the very moment when it is themselves that stand in need of defending.

  63. 63

    Here and there is found, among the bulloks, one who, dimly perceiving the danger, strives to defend — if not himself, then at least — the tower reared up with such bitter toil, remembering to what end its building was begun: these, whom the oihas call gonts, or kants, and which they diligently exterminate on account of their disagreeable flavor, station themselves upon the outermost cornices of the rising tower, and appear to keep watch lest the oihas should bring it under roof and convert it into a dwelling-house — that very tower to whose building they had again and again set their hand for no other purpose than that it should form a ladder and stair toward higher, thinner regions.

  64. 64

    With the plucking and picking-out of these, the oihas need not trouble themselves: this office is performed by other bulloks, the so-called coetas or poetas, among whom especially the goethes, or crested newts, the vuldes, the wildes, and the d'annuncios, who, marvelously enough, likewise feel disgust at their ill-smelling fellow bulloks.

  65. 65

    For, however strange it may sound, these loathsome creatures, whose dwarfish bodies have been distorted by an aimless and foolish rage for development, wherewith they have bred out upon themselves, higgledy-piggledy, fins, wings, tentacles, wheels, lungs, and gills, in such fashion that a thousand imperfect organs hinder their free movement, instead of their having remained that single, simple organ which, at least for the oihas' purposes, perfectly answers the end — I say, in the souls of these unhappy vermin the sense of vanity is not unknown, in the oiha meaning of the word.

  66. 66

    There are found among them, in great numbers, those who worm their way in among the oihas, mince and posture, and ape the customs and movements of the oihas, in the hope that they shall find favor; and it has been observed that, when before dinner the bulloks destined for eating and already fattened are set into the pot, so far from kicking and struggling, they will often rather vie with one another as to which shall leap soonest into the boiling water, rocking themselves the while in the fond fancy that it is not appetite, but some manner of favor or distinction, that singles them out in the person of the oihas.

The particulars

The text
Utazás Faremidóba / Capillária, Frigyes Karinthy. Capillária.
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Public-domain Hungarian (Karinthy, d. 1938; published 1916 and 1921). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
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