Swift's 'Poetical Chymistry': Alchemy and Allusion in the Verse

Abstract

Swift began writing poetry at a time when the occult doctrines of the Renaissance had in general lost their philosophical and cultural power, yet he still chose to infuse some of his verse with allusions to these increasingly marginalized traditions. This article identifies the imaginative resources Swift found in alchemy, and explores how these relate to his preoccupations as a poet. In particular, it suggests that during his formative years especially, the appropriation of alchemical ideas offered Swift not only bountiful satiric vehicles, but also a distinctive means of writing playfully and often ironically about poetic creation, imitation and allusion, following a traditional figuration of literary composition as a form of ‘poetical chymistry’. In so doing, this article (i) situates Swift's attack on practical alchemy, particularly in the ‘Ode to the Honble Sir William Temple’, within the developing disciplinary distinctions between alchemy and chemistry; (ii) shows how the panegyric ‘To Mr. Congreve’ ironically employs a somewhat clichéd alchemical simile to encourage poetic originality; (iii) identifies a literary source for a key alchemical reference within ‘Vanbrug's House’, noting the sophistication with which Swift assimilates this borrowing into the satiric function of the poem; (iv) demonstrates how this allusion is reprised in the satire on Marlborough, ‘The Fable of Midas’; (v) argues that in his early verse particularly, Swift uses alchemical processes as appropriate metaphors for artistic creation in a wider indictment of his contemporary culture. Swift caricatures the Moderns as seeking perfection and profit, but producing base, artificial or insubstantial matter.