Houyhnhnm
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Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Jonathan Swift's satiric Gulliver's Travels. The name can be pronounced either [ˈhuːɪnəm] (BE) or [ˈhwɪnəm/huˈɪnəm] (AE).[1]
Houyhnhnms contrast strongly with the Yahoos, savage humanoid creatures: whereas the Yahoos represent all that is bad about humans, Houyhnhnms have a stable, calm, and rational society. Gulliver much prefers the Houyhnhnms' company to the Yahoos', even though the latter are biologically closer to him.
Interpretation of the Houhynhnms has been vexatious. It is possible, for example, to regard them as a veiled criticism by Swift of the British Empire's treatment of non-whites as lesser humans, and it is similarly possible to regard Gulliver's preference (and immediate division of Houyhnhnms into color-based hierarchies) as absurd and the sign of his self-deception.
Book IV of Gulliver's Travels is the keystone, in some ways, of the entire work, and critics have traditionally responded to the subject of whether Gulliver is insane (and therefore just another victim of Swift's satire) or not by questioning whether or not the Houhynhnms are truly admirable. The Houhynhnm society is based upon reason, and only upon reason, and therefore the horses practice eugenics and genocide based on their analyses of benefit and cost. They have no morality and no religion, and therefore they are not particularly moved by pity or [by] a belief in the intrinsic value of life. Gulliver himself, in their company, builds the sails of his skiff from "Yahoo skins." They have a poor concept of individuality; none of the Houhynhnms have names, and Gulliver's "Master" himself assents to Gulliver's eventual exile only because the other Houhynhnms ask him to. At the same time, the Houhynhnms have a society with perfect peace and efficiency, and they care for Gulliver for a while.
On the one hand, the Houyhnhnms have an orderly and peaceful society. They possess philosophy and have a language that is entirely pure of political and ethical nonsense. They possess, for example, no word for a "lie" (and must substitute a phrase -- to say a thing which is not). They also have a form of art that is derived from nature. Outside of Gulliver's Travels, Swift had expressed longstanding concern over the corruption of the English language, and he had proposed language reform. He had also, in Battle of the Books and in general in A Tale of a Tub, expressed a preference for the Ancients (Classical authors) because their art was based directly upon nature, and not upon other art. On the other hand, Swift was profoundly mistrustful of attempts at reason that resulted in either hubris (e.g. the Projectors satirized in A Tale of a Tub or in book III of Gulliver's Travels) or immorality (e.g. the speaker of A Modest Proposal, who offers an entirely logical and wholly immoral proposal for cannibalism). The Houyhnhnms embody both the good and the bad side of reason, for they have the pure language Swift wished for and the immorally rational approach to solving the problems of humanity (Yahoos); the extirpation of the Yahoo population by the horses is very like the speaker of A Modest Proposal.
When Gulliver returns to England at the end of Gulliver's Travels, he finds the smell and look of his countrymen intolerable. He regards all around him as Yahoos, and spends much of his time in the stables near his horses, with whom he converses.
Some of Jonathan Swift's dark vision affects the subtext of the Planet of the Apes movies.
- ^ Daniel Jones: English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press 1997. ISBN 0-521-45272-4, ISBN 0-521-45903-6
